I want to be adored (just like The Stone Roses), but I don’t want to be “doored” when I’m riding my bike.
The “Dutch Reach” is a simple way for car drivers to reduce the number of “doorings” tremendously. By opening your driver’s side door with your right hand instead of your left, you’re more likely to look backward for oncoming cyclists. Here’s a fun 90-second video from Outside magazine that demonstrates it:
Windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and saving cyclists’ lives. Thank you Holland!
Even in the 80’s, when Walkmans were all the rage, the Reese’s beat went on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJLDF6qZUX0
(What’s with the creepy store owner lurking in the background? He’s like Mr. Hooper‘s evil twin. And what’s with folks walking down the street eating peanut butter straight out of a plastic tub? Sure, that’s plausible.)
But not every combo works as well as PB and chocolate. Here’s Exhibit A: Swedish Fish flavored Oreos.
Swedish Fish are fine on their own, and original Oreos are a classic, but when you combine the flavors it’s clearly too much of a sweet thing. Waaaay too much of a sweet thing. We’re talking instant hyperglycemia. And the flavor combination isn’t quite as bad as orange juice + toothpaste, but it’s close.
This happens a lot with established brands like Oreo. Instead of trying to create new products, they just slap different flavors on their cash cows. Which is why these products actually exist:
And there’s plenty more where that came from. Lays is another big offender. They love cluttering the shelves with gems like these:
“I’d really like a handful of cappuccino flavored potato chips right now” – said no one ever!
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sriracha Oreos on shelves next summer.
It’s a recent photo of our 15-year-old son Peter (he’s just being a goofball throwing up gang signs – love his sense of humor), contrasted with a photo of him from what seems like weeks ago, but in reality was nearly a decade and a half ago. I know every parent says “it goes so fast” but I usually don’t think about it much, until I’m confronted with it every morning as I grab eggs out of the fridge.
Sure, it makes me sad to realize that our babies are growing up, but it’s also a great reminder to cherish making Peter’s breakfast every weekday morning (2 eggs, scrambled, with cheddar cheese) instead of considering it a thankless chore. Soon enough, he’ll be getting his own breakfast at college (and it had better not be kegs and eggs!).
This trip down memory lane made me think of a great tune from 22 years ago, a song by the Velvet Crush called “Time Wraps Around You.” (Never heard of the Velvet Crush? Neither has 99.4% of America – and that’s a crying shame.) It’s on one of my favorite “hidden gem” albums of all time, Teenage Symphonies To God.
Leonard Cohen, the “songwriter’s songwriter” passed away earlier this week. His best-known song, “Hallelujah,” had an interesting gestation period. It first came out on Cohen’s 1984 album, but didn’t really make much of a splash. Jeff Buckley covered it in spectacular fashion a decade later, but it wasn’t until after Buckley passed away in 1997 that the song actually hit the mainstream. It was featured in the first Shrek film in 2001, but again there was a bit of a twist. A version by John Cale (Velvet Underground) was featured in the movie, but a version by Rufus Wainwright was on the movie’s soundtrack album.
I think it’s great that Cohen was still writing and recording until the very end (his latest album came out earlier this year). I think it’s sad that he was cheated out of millions by his former manager and had to tour the world in his 70’s (387 shows from 2008-2013) just to try to replenish his nest egg.
While “Hallelujah” is Leonard Cohen’s most famous song, his tune “Democracy” is the one that’s really striking a chord with me during election week:
Just like with “Hallelujah” something tells me there might be a bit of a time lag before the lyrics of this song truly catch on as well, but I hope it’s soon:
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street The holy places where the races meet From the homicidal bitchin’ That goes down in every kitchen To determine who will serve and who will eat From the wells of disappointment Where the women kneel to pray For the grace of God in the desert here And the desert far away: Democracy is coming to the USA
Sail on, sail on Oh mighty ship of State To the shores of need Past the reefs of greed Through the Squalls of hate Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on
It’s coming to America first The cradle of the best and of the worst It’s here they got the range And the machinery for change And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst It’s here the family’s broken And it’s here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way Democracy is coming to the USA
It turns out we DO have something to look forward to in January: a new album from Japandroids! This dynamic duo from the Great White North (Vancouver, BC to be more specific) really knows how to rock. But don’t take my word for it, just put your earballs on the title track of the new disc:
Here are singer/guitarist Brian King and drummer David Prowse (no, not the guy who played Darth Vader) talking about the new album.
According to their interview with Pitchfork, the new album is a bit mellower and/or more diverse.
There’s a nice interview with Stereogum that also mentions the sonic diversity. I’m look forward to hearing the entire album. Meanwhile, here’s an absolute scorcher from their 2012 album Celebration Rock (one of my favorite albums from that year):
Good news for long-suffering Cubs fans: the Billy Goat Curse is no more.
Bad news for fans of every other MLB team: The Cubs have a great nucleus of young position players, great pitching and a fantastic manger… so the Billy Goat Curse has been replaced by a new curse: The Curse of the Obnoxious Cub Fans.
Here’s a picture of my two younger kids last night before they went trick-or-treating.
Harry Potter and a Rastafarian – quite a contrast. My two older sons are in high school and therefore too old to go trick-or-treating. Which reminds me of November 1st, 1978, when I was a freshman in high school and had “aged out” of the Halloween goody-grabbing process. However, my sister who is two years younger still was allowed to go with her friends. We lived in the sticks of Arkansas so my dad had to drive her 10 miles into the sprawling metropolis of Clarksville (population 6000) in order for her to get any decent trick-or-treating done.
The next morning my older sister, older brother and I had to get up before daylight and make the 60-mile drive to our high school. (There were only four Catholic high schools in the entire Baptist Bible Belt state of Arkansas, and that was the nearest one for us.) While my older sister drove and my brother rode shotgun, I sat in the back seat of our Ford Pinto. (Deathtrap! Actually ours was a Pinto stationwagon so it wasn’t as dangerous, or so I thought.) When we arrived at our high school, I started walking toward the building and my brother, who was walking behind me, said “Whoa, what happened?”
Apparently my younger sister had spilled a Milk Dud… a single, solitary Milk Dud… in the backseat of the car. And yours truly had proceeded to sit on aforementioned Milk Dud for more than an hour, giving the choocolate-coated caramel plenty of time to warm up and ooze into my pants. My tancorduroy pants. The resemblance to a “pooped my pants” accident was uncanny.
Oh, and did I mention that November 1st was First Quarter Awards day? The entire high school student body assembled in the gym and anyone who won an award had to make a long, solitary walk to the podium at center court to claim their certificate of achievement. I was slated to get two awards.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to scrape “a delicious blend of smooth milk chocolate and chewy caramel” out of the wales of corduroy pants, but it’s virtually impossible. Thankfully my older brother had an oversized jacket and I wore that thing the entire day, even though it was about 80 degrees outside.
Ever since that fateful day, I have flashbacks every time I go to the movie theater.
My good friend Walter’s mom Gertrude passed away last weekend at the age of 78, after a long and valiant battle with ovarian cancer.
Most of my friends and I are now at the age where parent departures are happening with more and more frequency. Most of my buddies have lost at least one parent; many have lost both of them and are now middle-aged orphans, as am I. As Walter said in his email, Gertrude had a wonderful life. Given her age and her cancer diagnosis, her departure wasn’t really a surprise, but that doesn’t make it any easier to say goodbye to the folks who raised you.
Walter has led a very Forrest-Gump-like life. When he was a young kid, his parents were good friends with Tom Cruise’s parents – Walter has a picture of Tom Cruise at his 6th birthday party. In high school, he was a star defensive back for a team that won state, and also had a bit part in the movie Stripes, appearing in the opening scene as one of two kids who run away without paying after getting a taxi ride from Bill Murray. He was in ROTC at Xavier, and has dozens of great stories from his summers at Army training camps. He graduated from the University of Kentucky law school, worked as an attorney in Horse Cave, KY (more great stories from this era), got his Masters in tax from the University of Denver and worked for big accounting firms in Minneapolis and Cleveland, then became a border patrol agent before returning to Louisville to teach high school and coach football. Now he’s a practicing attorney and still does some tax law work on the side.
Walter was also one of the groomsmen in my wedding in June of 1997. He had to race back to Fort Wayne, Indiana on the night of our wedding because his father had suffered a massive heart attack. Sadly, his dad died a couple days later. So June 21st, 1997 is a day that is etched into both of our memories, for polar opposite reasons.
I met Wally during our freshman year of college, way back in the Jurassic Era (a.k.a. 1982). He’s always been one of those guys that you felt comfortable talking to, even about the most difficult subjects. With Walt, you can always have a discussion that is deeper than the typical guy conversations about sports and… other sports. I think a lot of Walt’s simpatico in that area comes from his mom. After her first career as a mother, she spent more than 20 years as a counselor, seminar leader, speaker and workshop facilitator. She always had a deep spirituality about her and she passed that on to her kids.
Here’s an excerpt from her obituary:
Whenever a parent of one of my friends dies, I like to pass along the Ray Bradbury short story called “The Leave-Taking,” partly because Ray Bradbury is the greatest author that ever lived, but mostly because truer words have never been spoken than the line in the story that says “no person ever died that had a family.”
Tomorrow I’ll make the 90-minute drive down to Louisville to pay my last respects to Gertrude Martin, but her spirit is so strong that I know there ain’t no grave that can hold her body down.
I’ve blogged about the band Lucius before. And I’ll do it again. Because they’re just so darn good. They’ve had quite a run lately. Last weekend they sang with My Morning Jacket and Roger Waters at the annual Bridge School Benefit concert put on by Neil and Pegi Young.
And on Tuesday they knocked it out of the park with this incredible performance on Late Night with Seth Meyers, showcasing not just their vocal range but also their emotional range (and their fabulous matching outfits, as per usual).
Their fall tour started today. Here are all the dates… if they come anywhere near your town, check ’em out.
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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