Here are a few tunes that have caught my ear lately. A Nashville cat named Ron Gallo (he’s a Napoleon Dynamite doppelgänger) did a guerrilla video on the tourist strip that is Lower Broadway:
Here’s a video for another tune from his forthcoming album:
Ron Gallo’s album Heavy Meta comes out February 3.
And then there’s Alynda Lee Segarra, who goes by the stage name of Hurray for the Riff Raff. I loved her last album, Small Town Heroes, and really liked her performance in concert at an outdoor festival during that tour. Based on the first track from the new album, it should be a good one as well:
Hurray for the Riff Raff’s album The Navigator will be available on March 10th.
And in case you were wondering (you weren’t), my house wasn’t chosen as the site for Craig Finn’s living room tour stop in Cincinnati. That’s the bad news. The good news is the place that was chosen is five minutes from my house. So nearly as convenient and I don’t have to have 50 strangers in my living room. Win-win with Mr. Finn.
Call me a traditionalist (I’ve been called a lot worse), but I prefer baby names that are conventional (even Biblical). Yet it seems like the trend is running counter to that. Even if you ignore the celebrities (don’t do that, they crave your attention) and their outlier wacky baby names (Apple, North, Sky Blue, Bronx Mowgli, Pilot Inspektor, et al.), more people are giving their newborns what I like to call “last names as first names.” Which is all well and good – after all, these are their babies, not mine.
But I wonder if the parents have really thought through these newfangled names, especially on the girls’ side of the ledger. Because a couple of decades from now, if their daughters are traditionalists, they’ll wind up taking on a new last name…
And what happens if their daughter Riley Smith (“Riley” is #7 on the list of most popular girl baby names) winds up falling in love with a guy named Patrick Riley? That’s right, she could become Riley Riley!
What if Madison (popular name #18) Jones meets the man of her dreams, and his name is Jack Madison? What if Harper (#20) Collins wants to marry a dude named Ryan Harper? I know they say “love conquers all” but it would take a superhuman dose of love to overcome being called “Harper Harper” for the rest of your adult life.
Even going the hyphenated route would still be a bit confusing (Madison Jones-Madison? Sounds like a law firm.) Heck, even keeping the maiden name would probably cause some Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First”-style hijinks when you’re doing introductions in a social setting:
“Hi, I’m Patrick Riley and this is my wife Riley Smith.”
“I’m sorry, it’s loud in here, I didn’t catch your wife’s first name…”
“It’s Riley.”
“I thought that was your last name.”
“It is.”
“So what’s your wife’s first name?”
“Riley”
“No, not the last name, the first name”
“Riley”
“Riley is her first name?”
“Yes”
“And you’re a Riley too?”
“Yes”
“Then who is Patrick?”…
Maybe it’ll all work out, though. Maybe Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s daughter North West will marry a guy named Larry Starr. And they’ll live happily ever after (with their own reality show, of course).
As an auditory learner, a music lover, a kid from the radio era (OK, we did have a whopping 3 TV networks) and someone who spent a decade working in advertising, I’m hard-wired to like jingles. A few of those earworms that were created merely to move the merchandise are still stuck in my head decades after I last heard them.
As a kid in rural Arkansas, I used to stay up at night (and sometimes get up very early in the morning) and tune my transistor radio to WLS, a 50,000-watt powerhouse out of Chicago.
I remember a few of the songs from that era, although the 70’s weren’t a great time for rock and roll. Actually, I remember the band Journey doing a spoof of Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” most of all.
Sadly, the advertising jingle is a dying art. Now advertisers find it easier (read: lazier) to license an existing song or commission a pop knockoff. Here’s a great NPR interview with the “Jingle King” Steve Karmen. He wrote “I Love New York,” “This Bud’s for You,” “Nationwide is on your side” and dozens of other memorable jingles so it’s hard to argue with his title… although Barry Manilow got his start penning jingles for the likes of State Farm (“like a good neighbor…”) Band-Aid (“I am stuck on Band-Aid Brand…”) and McDonald’s (“You deserve a break today…”).
Where have you gone, “Oscar Meyer Wiener Song”? If White Hen stores were still around, and they sold cassette tapes of advertising jingles (or even 8-tracks), I’d totally buy the entire set.
Late last night, Stanford won the women’s NCAA volleyball championship in Columbus, OH.
One of the best players for the Cardinal was Morgan Hentz, a freshman from Lakeside Park, KY, just across the river from Cincinnati. She’s pretty easy to spot on the floor because she’s a libero, a defensive specialist, and wears a different colored jersey than the rest of her team. She’s also easy to spot because she’s often literally on the floor making fantastic digs.
I worked with Morgan’s dad Mike at an ad agency a couple of decades ago, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. Mike’s such a laid-back, low-key guy that if you talked to him about Morgan, you’d never realize what a superstar she is. But on last night’s broadcast, the announcers were raving about her. ESPN did two player interviews after the match, one with Inky Ajanaku (great name, btw), a fifth-year senior who missed all of last year with a knee injury, and one with Morgan:
And here’s some press about her. From the ESPN article about Stanford’s win:
The Cardinal also had a freshman at setter in Jenna Gray, who seemed older than her years directing the team; at libero in Morgan Hentz (27 digs), who covered the floor like a tarp; and at middle blocker in Audriana Fitzmorris, who like Plummer is 6-6 and has a lot of power. She had 10 kills and contributed to the Cardinal’s 12 total blocks.
“The very first play of our first practice back in August, [Hentz] dug a ball that the rest of the people went, ‘Oh, my gosh. She’s going to try harder than the rest of us on every play, and we’re going to have to change,'” Dunning said. “She has done it every drill of every practice since then and every game. That attitude she brings is just marvelous.”
Freshman libero Morgan Hentz, who has 84 digs in her last three matches, played a phenomenal match, getting to balls she had no right to come close to getting.
“The libero position is often overlooked but she is doing some acrobatic stuff in the back,” Ajanaku said. “It’s easy to be a great blocker if you only have to take up a certain part of the court and Morgan allows that for us.”
Hentz, who leads by example and effort, came up with a career-high 30 digs.
“Morgan, the day she got into the gym, you could tell that she was able to do some pretty special things,” Dunning said. “She has amazing range as a defender, she has amazing reactions, she’s very competitive, very driven. So she’s just stepped in and gone hard, and made everyone on our team go harder.”
I’m so happy for Mike, his wife Kerin and the entire Hentz family. Here’s to a repeat next year…
On his birthday, he enjoys cake. But every day of the year, he love-love-looooves apples. We’re talking a 3-4 apple a day habit. If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, this kid is going to top Methuselah’s record. He loves apples so much that we call him “Applehead Andrew.”
Andrew loves apples, and apples are fruit, and fruit is healthy… so what’s the problem? Well, Andrew’s favorite variety of apples is the Honeycrisp. Sure they’re super-sweet and oh-so-juicy… in fact they’re so addictive that I sometimes call them Honeycrack. But it seems like the darn things cost more per pound than caviar.
Sticker shock!
If you’re lucky, you can find ’em on sale for $1.99 a pound. When we see that, we fill our basement fridge with reinforcements… which Andrew quickly demolishes. But usually they’re in the $2.49-$3.49 a pound range. Nearly four times the going rate for most varieties. Why? Well, for starters, Honeycrisps were developed 20 years ago by David Bedford at the University of Minnesota, which still has a patent on them, so growers have to pay $1 per tree back to the university. Honeycrisps also are finicky about climate so they can’t be grown all over, and they’re much more labor intensive (the apples grow so large that the trees require a trellis system, the fruit on a single tree doesn’t all ripen at the same time, they’re more susceptible to diseases so they need more sprayings, and they bruise more easily so they need more TLC in handling/packing). It all adds up to a hefty price tag for these fancy pommes.
I guess we’ll have to suck it up and take out a second mortgage on our house so Applehead Andrew can keep on crunching. I suppose there are a lot worse “Honey” products that he could be bingeing on:
And Andrew’s obsession always reminds me of this fantastic duet about “champagne tastes on beer budget” from the brilliant John Prine and the incandescent Iris Dement:
I need your advice on a Christmas gift for my 15-year-old son. He told me he wanted some beets. I couldn’t find the “Doctor Dre” brand he mentioned, so will these do?
I’d hate to disappoint him. But beets are beets, right?
According to this sign, Rally’s has a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) burger.
It’s a slippery slope. First the burger learns what condiments you like on it. Then it cooks and serves itself to you. Then things take a turn for the worse:
you wind up serving the burger (literally and figuratively)
the burger becomes fully sentient, and you become Soylent
Ultimately, the AI burger stages a bloodless (but not ketchup-less) coup and overthrows the erstwhile Burger King.
So enjoy that buttery steak flavor for now. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!
WWII combat pilot. Astronaut. Senator. Most of us would be extremely lucky to have but one of those on our resume. John Glenn, who passed away this week, did it all… he even went back into space at the age of 77, aboard the Discovery space shuttle.
On February 20th, 1997, the thirty-fifth anniversary of the date he became the first American to orbit the earth, John Glenn announced his retirement from the Senate in a speech in his hometown of New Concord, Ohio, at Muskingum College, his alma mater. Here are a few excerpts that ring very true today:
To me, a willingness to build peaceful relationships with other countries is perhaps the most profound measure of a great nation.
The enemies I’m talking about are cynicism, apathy, selfishness, hostility toward government and incivility toward one another.
We didn’t win our world leadership by bemoaning our fate, by overemphasizing our shortcomings, by carping about what was bad — but by building on what was good. And we rose on the strength of our ideas and on the ingenuity and self-confidence of our people, with education for all, and emphasis on curiosity and research into the unknown.
Democracy in our country must be constantly reinvented – it must be fought for. And nothing worth fighting for comes easy.
Don’t tune out, cop out or drop out. Don’t give in to complacency and cynicism. Don’t ignore what is bad, but concentrate on building what is good… and never forget that in our democracy, the government is not “them” — it is “us.”
In fact, one thing I’ve learned in my 75 years on this planet is that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest. And I’ve learned that there is nothing in this world more special than the simple act of helping others.
Get the full range of information available to you. Don’t let your views of government and politics and world events be formed through the filter of other people’s biases or ignorance. Develop your own ideas, for you are the government. If you want to join a political party, by all means do so. But before you do, read up on the issues and define in your own mind what political values and principles are most important to you. Then choose a party. Don’t join a party just because your friends or your parents are associated with it.
Fight for equal rights for all people; battle racism and ethnic hatred; build bridges between people and generations. Your work may not make headlines or send you on ticker-tape parades – but you will make a difference. And you will know it. You will know it. and that will be reward enough.
If today’s politics lack civility, my reaction is not to run away — but to work harder until we make it better. When I see people in public office whose ideas and policies would lead us backwards instead of forward, would gut educational opportunities, would cut help to children who otherwise have little hope, would cast senior citizens aside, my impulse is not to quit but to stay and fight for the kind of future Ohio needs and America deserves.
I believe the day will come when this nation finally and forever lays aside racism, sexism and every other “ism” that divides and cripples us. And I believe we will yet make the old dream of justice a new American reality.
Playing Bowie’s “Space Oddity” would make sense here, but I have to give some love to a Cincinnati band instead:
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
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