Monthly Archives: March 2018

It’s your third birthday – have a beer!

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Don’t call Children’s Protective Services on me… I’m talking about a brewery. Braxton Brewing to be exact. Today is their third anniversary celebration (it was supposed to be last week but it got snowed out – thanks March!).

Braxton started with four guys and a dream. A father, his two sons, and a Yoda-like brewmaster.

L to R: Jake Rouse, Richard Dubé, Greg Rouse, Evan Rouse

Now they have two taproom locations, their beers are distributed in three states and their staff has grown exponentially. It’s a true American small business success story, and I couldn’t be happier for them.

My friend Keith Neltner created the killer logo

I worked with Greg Rouse, one of the founders, for 12 years. He left his full-time gig as a print production manager at our company a couple of months ago to take over as COO at Braxton. That was always the plan, but he was such a superstar at our company that our leadership had to hire two folks with 20+ years experience in print production to attempt to replace him. He was a great guy and a genius at what he did – we miss him dearly. But I’m thrilled that he’s able to work with his sons and wife every day now.

Nice job title!

I plan to drop by the celebration this afternoon, and if I do, I raise a glass to Greg, Tina, Jake and Evan, and to dreams coming true. #LiftOneToLife

 

Radio Daze: an interview with Lou Reed

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At the Cincinnati airport recently, I saw this sign:

I first spied the sign from afar, and my 53-year-old eyesight isn’t what it used to be, so I originally thought it read “Toni Basil.” Probably just wishful thinking on my part… after all, who wouldn’t want to see an airport food court restaurant named after the famed one-hit wonder singer of the global 1982 sensation “Mickey”?

Actually, before she found fame as a faux cheerleader, Toni was a founding member of the groundbreaking “pop and lock” dance crew known as The Lockers (along with Fred ‘Rerun’ Berry).

She also choreographed David Bowie’s tours in 1974 and 1987, and a couple of Talking Heads videos, including Once In A Lifetime:

So she’s NOT a one-hit wonder. But I digress. Seeing the Toni Basil sign…er, the Torn Basil sign, reminded me of an afternoon long ago when I was working at 97X, and my friend and fellow DJ Dave and I did an on-air bit where I impersonated Lou Reed.

Dave was kind enough to send a recording of that bit my way:

(In hindsight, my impersonation sounds vaguely like Lou Reed… mixed with Steven Wright…  but good enough for radio’s “theater of the mind.”) True story: one 97X listener, a rabid Lou Reed fan, heard the beginning of that bogus interview while he was driving in Cincinnati and immediately changed course and started speeding up to Oxford, Ohio (where 97X was) in hopes of meeting his idol. As soon as he heard “Lou” mention Toni Basil, he knew that he’d been had. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to an Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” moment.

Speaking of Orson Welles, you simply must watch (and rewatch) this video of a drunken Orson trying to record a wine commercial.

If you’re keeping score at home, we went from an airport food court sign to Citizen Kane. Sorry, that’s just how my feeble brain works. And finally, the real Lou:

 

 

 

 

We humans put the stink in extinction

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A week and a half ago, Sudan, the last male Northern White Rhino, died.

The New York Times article is here. Below are a few quotes to ponder as a fellow resident of Planet Earth:

“This is a creature that didn’t fail in evolution,” said Thomas Hildebrandt, head of reproduction management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin and one of the project’s leaders. “It’s in this situation because of us.”

“Sudan is an extreme symbol of human disregard for nature,” said Jan Stejskal, director of international projects at the Dvur Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic, where Sudan spent most of his life.

Every rhino species is under threat, said Cathy Dean, chief executive of Save the Rhino, an advocacy group, while the technical advances researchers are discussing may take 15 years to bear fruit.

“It may be too late for the northern white rhinos, but we still have time to save all the other species,” Ms. Dean said.

It’s on us. There’s still time, but the clock is ticking. Guitar god Adrian Belew tried to warn us way back in 1982, when he wrote this beautiful, bittersweet tune about the rhinos’ plight:

The baller and the bawler

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Yet another Xavier basketball coach has decide to leave my alma mater (and in this case his alma mater) for greener pastures.

Chris Mack is headed 90 miles south to take over at Louisville. (He’d better bring his Swiffer Wet Jet… there are a lot of messes to clean up.) I used to ask “why?” but having witnessed six coaches leave in my 36 years of rooting for the Muskies, I don’t cry and ask why anymore. I already know the reasons:

  • More cash – $30 million for a seven-year contract, which is waaay more coin than he earned at Xavier. In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of college b-ball, where one bad season can get you fired in many places, that’s some darn good peace of mind for a 49-year-old in a young man’s game.
  • Family ties – Mack is born and raised in Cincinnati and his parents still live here. He played for Xavier, and was an assistant coach before taking the helm nine seasons ago. But his wife is from Louisville, and her family still lives there. Anyone who has ever had to play grandbaby tug of war at Thanksgiving or Christmas can appreciate that it’s his wife’s family’s “turn” with their three kids.
  • Prestige – as much as many Xavier fans hate to admit it, Xavier is still a notch or two below the blue blood programs. Louisville plays in the ACC, and has a storied basketball history. Two official titles (they had to vacate a third, in 2013) and eight Final Fours. Meanwhile X has yet to make a Final Four.
  • Bigger – U of L plays in the new Yum! Center in downtown Louisville, which holds 22,090 for b-ball… nearly twice the capacity of Xavier’s Cintas Center and the third largest arena in the country. Also, as a public university with an enrollment of 22,000 each year (more than three times Xavier’s annual enrollment), they have a much larger fan and donor base. (And lower academic standards… which matters greatly when you are recruiting basketball “student-athletes.”)
  • A new challenge – when Chris Mack’s Xavier mentor Skip Prosser left XU for Wake Forest, he quoted Faulkner: Sometimes you have to say goodbye to the things you know and hello to the things you don’t. (Skip was a man of letters… a perfect fit for Xavier. Yet he left too.)
  • Bigger fish in a smaller pond – Cincinnati has the Reds, Bengals and another Top 25 program three miles from Xavier’s campus. In Louisville, the Cardinals reign supreme.
  • Timing – Mack probably felt he had taken Xavier as far as he could take them. This year they won the Big East regular season for the first time, rose as high as #3 in the Top 25, and got a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament. With four key players from this year’s team departing and a weaker class of incoming recruits, next season was going to be a letdown with or without him.

Before he cut ties, he cut down a few nets.

It was a great nine-year run: Mack became Xavier’s career leader in coaching wins this season (215 overall), won conference championships in the Atlantic 10 and the Big East, and made the NCAA tourney eight times, with three Sweet Sixteens and an Elite Eight.

So I wish Mack well in his new adventure. And I agree with what Xavier AD Greg Christopher said yesterday:

“At the end of the day, this program is beyond any one player, any one coach, any one president. At the end of the day, this program has been built over four decades with great coaches, great players and great administrators who have helped build it to where it is. I would hope a program transcends any one single person. Now, our all-time winningest coach is really important and was a big part of that. (Mack) deserves a lot of credit, both as a player, an assistant, and head coach, so, again we wish him the best as he moves forward.” 

Odds and ends

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Some photo phun (and one deep thought) to start your week:

Only in California can there be such a thing as an “organic” blow dry. It’s just air, right?

 

G is for ground, and S is for… Second Floor? Maybe it’s the Willy Wonka elevator and it stands for Space…

If it’s truly a hand-picked team, why are they looking for folks to apply? They must not be very good at hand-picking. 

 

Love the “diversity” shot, but the kid on the lower left looks like he is being held hostage.

 

Clearly the language has changed since this album was released.

 

I wish another small, Jesuit university had made the Final Four, but this is a nice consolation prize. Ramble on!

But seriously…

[No need for a caption on this one.]

 

Colvin and Lovett? Love it!

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Last night I saw Lyle Lovett and Shawn Colvin in concert at the Taft Theater in downtown Cincinnati. I brought along the missus because it was a perfect date night show: acoustic, sit-down, 8 p.m. start time on a “school night.” Plus, my wife is a big fan of Lyle, and I love Shawn… win-win.

 

Both of them took turns joking around with each other… and playing songs from their rich catalogs, with the other person adding harmony vocals on quite a few tunes.

Just for fun, Shawn threw in bits of a couple of show tunes (“Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music and “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks) because those were the type of albums her parents had (along with albums from folk singers like Pete Seeger and The Kingston Trio). She also played the Talking Heads “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)” during the encore – brilliant! [Sidebar: She’s always been great at covering songs from other folks. Steve Earle gives her a lot of credit for helping him turn his life around: “When my [drug] habit had taken me out of everything, she recorded my song, “Someday.” That was a little light in a lot of darkness. Part of me originally starting thinking that maybe I was worth saving.”]

A few observations about the gig:

  1. Both Lyle and Shawn have 30+ years of performing under their belt (Lyle’s debut album came out in ’86, Shawn’s in ’89) and their voices are still amazing. (Videos below are songs from their respective debuts.)
  2. Lyle could easily have been a stand-up comedian, in the Richard Wright mold… he’s got a deadpan delivery that lands subtle punchlines every time, and is a master of the pregnant pause.
  3. They were able to command an audience of 2,000 with just their voices and their acoustic guitars because their songwriting is so strong.

Toward the end of the show, Lyle mentioned “Shawn and I would be doing this anyway if we went over to each other’s houses… thank you for letting us pass this off as a ‘show’.” But he’s being too humble, as usual. Sure, if I were picking the set list, I might’ve chosen a few different tunes than the ones they performed, but there’s a magic in their words and their voices that’s rare indeed.

This is NOT the view from our seats… we were in the nosebleeds.

Lyle also said that being able to do what you love every day is truly a blessing. Here’s hoping they keep sharing their incandescent talents with us for many years to come.

 

Hawk(ing) eyes

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World-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away last week. He left us with several gems worth pondering:

This seems like a fitting song for Professor Hawking…

Basketballs out my eyeballs

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I took vacation days this past Thursday and Friday, and have spent the last four days camped out in my basement man-cave, watching college hoops. Three TVs and a laptop… feasting on the Madness of March (I had to put it that way to avoid the trademarked term… aw, what the heck: March Madness. March Madness.)

Yesterday’s action didn’t end well. First the University of Cincinnati Bearcats (a 2-seed), blew a 22-point second-half lead. Then my beloved Xavier Musketeers (a 1-seed) blew a 12-point second-half lead. Worst sports day in the history of the city, easily.

But it’s still the best sports weekend ever invented. A 16-seed knocked out a #1 seed in the first round, for the first time ever.

Loyola-Chicago and their 98-year-old nun chaplain are headed to the Sweet 16.

DALLAS, TX – MARCH 17: Sister Jean Dolores-Schmidt celebrates after the Loyola Ramblers beat the Tennessee Volunteers 63-62 in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament at the American Airlines Center on March 17, 2018 in Dallas, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

 

Buzzer beaters galore.

Tons of favorites getting knocked off. It truly is madness.

Earle is a King

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I saw Steve Earle perform at the venerable Mercantile Library in downtown Cincinnati last night.

It wasn’t a full-on concert, it was a “Words and Music” performance, meaning Steve did about eight songs, and also read from his novel and collection of short stories, then took questions from the audience.

He talked about his heroes – Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Bob Dylan. He mentioned how the Vietnam War changed not only those who went and their families, but the entire country… and inspired his album Copperhead Road. He played his song “Devil’s Right Hand” after telling a funny yet moving story about his then-14-year-old son (Justin Townes Earle – a great singer/songwriter in his own right) stealing one of his guns, and how it changed his views on gun control.

Steve dropped out of school and ran away from home at age 14. He talked about how he regretted his lack of formal education, and often wished he could be a Writer (capital W)… until someone pointed out that as a songwriter he was writing stories that people could sing along to as they’re riding in their cars. Damn straight! One of the songs he did last night is probably my favorite tune of his, called “Someday.” In four minutes, it paints a vivid picture and captures the yearning of small-town kids better than any novel I’ve read.  (The lyrics and a live performance are below.)

I saw Steve in a similar intimate, small-room setting back in the early 90s, at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, California. That was back when he was hooked on drugs. He wound up homeless, then in jail.

He’s been sober for 20+ years now, and I’m sure glad he’s still around to share his Writing with us.

 

Here’s the song wrote for Guy Clark after he passed away:

Back in my day…

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The whole “we had to walk ten miles to school, barefoot, in the snow, and it was uphill… both ways” trope is played out; it’s useful only for comedians and great-grandparents. But, believe it or not, my siblings and I have a similar story… and it’s totally true!

I was reminded of it recently when I saw a sweet Ford Ranchero in L.A.

Ford Ranchero. Accept no substitutes (looking your way, Chevy El Camino). 

My wife wondered why I was taking pictures of an old car… but then again, she wonders about a lot of the stuff I do (e.g. saving dryer lint… it’s great for starting fires in our fire pit!) But seeing that car reminded me of the white Ford Ranchero we had back in my grade school days.

Not our actual car… but you probably already knew that.

On cold mornings, it wouldn’t start. So my three siblings and I had to push it down our driveway (a short stretch, but with a decent downhill slope) so my dad could pop the clutch and start it. Usually that brief launch would work, but if not, we’d have to give it another push, down past the Church of Christ and onto the dirt road, where there was another downhill run. So before we even got into the car (OK, truck, but barely) to go to grade school at Holy Redeemer (which was, you guessed it, 10 miles away), we were winded and tired. It’s a handy story to use on my kids when they want me to drive them to the bus stop (~200 yards from our house) on winter mornings.

Also, you might be wondering why my dad thought a mini pickup with only a bench seat would be a good vehicle for a family of five. You’re not alone – I wonder the same thing. The most likely reason is because that was only car on the used car lot that fit our meager budget when our previous clunker bit the dust.

I can’t quite recall how we all fit into the cab… memories are hazy nearly 50 years down the line. I think there was enough room behind the seat for one or two of the kids to stand up and ride. I’m sure we looked like a clown car when we were unloading at school… or one of those overloaded bicycles or mopeds from a third world country.

I never gave it much thought back then… it was just how we rolled (and sometimes pushed). But now it’s great leverage to use on my kids. And it allows me to state equivocally that Subaru Brats, with their fancy-pants extra seats, were for mollycoddled whippersnappers.

Back in my day, we didn’t need extra seats. We didn’t have a seat at all… and we liked it!  Now get off my lawn!

 

 

 

 

 

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