Confession of a Springsteen fan

I love Bruce. It wasn't always that way.

I grew up in a country and gospel household where rock and roll was not played. My mom had every Kenny Rogers and Oak Ridge Boys and Alabama LP that was available The closest thing to rock was a K-Tel album of soft rock love songs.

I didn't know who Bruce was until I was 12 and "Dancing in the Dark" came onto MTV. Even then I didn't see what the big deal was. Then came "Born in the USA" and I was hooked. So I bought that tape and every album since. I've been to 2 concerts and plan on seeing him this spring.

But it wasn't until I bought the "Live at Hammersmith Odeon" album that I really got into the pre- "Born to Run" stuff. I'd never been that interested because you never heard anything from the first 2 albums on the radio and I can't recall him even playing songs from them live. The turning point was the performance of "Lost in the Flood" on the Hammersmith CD. "Spirit in the Night" and "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" also opened my eyes.

So today, a mere 26 years into being a fan of Springsteen, I finally bought "Greetings from Asbury Park". It was like a revelation. He was 23 freaking years old when this album was released. I was still trying to graduate college at 23 and here Bruce was writing and performing songs that should have launched him into stardom. Somehow this album didn't and it wasn't until "Born to Run" that he made it big. That this album didn't go supernova when it came out is a reflection/condemnation of popular music back in 1973.

I still need to pick up "The Wild, The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle" to throw off the self-branded title of poseur. Aside from Rosalita I have not much familiarity with that album, so I'm hoping it's as much a discovery as "Asbury Park" was.

I though this was funny...

I hope my lawyer friends forgive me.

1057 Channels and Something Good is On

I'm not a big TV watcher, but I'm beginning to think the medium is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, at least in my eyes. Right now I'm watching "Life on Mars" and that's preceded by "Lost". I'm not about to do any synopsis of these series but both have paranormal/fantasy/sci-fi overtones to them and so it may just be the appeal to my inner geek.*

*My inner geek is actually threatening to overtake me completely but that's a topic to visit some other time.

Off the top of my head there are 6 shows I make an honest attempt to watch each week:

Lost
Life on Mars*
Battlestar Galactica
Family Guy
Doctor Who
Torchwood

*Michael Imperioli's mustache on the show should get it's own billing; it's practically a character all itself.

5 Sci-Fi and 1 animated comedy.

It must be a case of arrested development.

The Night the Binky Vanished

For the last 6 months at least we've talked about getting Hana off her binky. It never got past the discussion stage and the pediatrician has not set a timetable so we decided not to mess with the status quo.
Alas fate intervened tonight as binky has gone bye-byes and Shelley and I are bracing for a very long night.
UPDATE: Hana did pretty well. We tried to put her down at her normal time. When she asked where binky was we told her "Binky's gone away". She laid down in bed but kept calling for her bink for about 5 minutes when she then started calling for mommy. I went in and she said "Where's Binky?" and I told her that binky was gone and wouldn't be back and that Hana had to be a big girl now and sleep without it. You could see the heartbreak on her face as it finally hit her. She started to cry and I offered to bring her back to our bed for a bit. She watched Blue's Clues then fell asleep between us. I took her back to bed and she slept soundly until 3 AM, when Shelley said she heard Hana cal out for binky again. Shelley went in there, reminded her there's no binky, and Hana went right back to sleep. When I woke her up this morning she did not even ask about it. I think we've moved on!

We'll See How Long This Lasts....

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to write more - on this blog, my weekly column for my APBA hockey league and some new content for my baseball league. Well, in January I wrote 2 hockey columns, zero baseball and nothing here. Heck, my weekly newsletter for my employees was only sent out twice last month. I have failed miserably in this endeavor.

I'll call January a mulligan and give myself a fresh start for February. There will be no thematic content here - one day could be about the girls, the next about politics, work, movies, music, high school - whatever is percolating in my brain when I sit down to right. I'll try to avoid to much navel-gazing but there are no guarantees.

Why am I doing this? Quite frankly I think I can actually feel my brain atrophying. Blame it on too much Noggin, TV sports and talk radio. This is an attempt to keep a few neurons sharp and it's better than me firing up another game of Out of the Park Baseball.

I plan on writing every other day during the week and at least once on the weekends. Feel free to bookmark and check back and please offer some criticism, encouragement and anything else you feel is needed.

Maya breaks a board

She's growing up

One day she's earned her first belt in karate, and 2 days later she is starting 1st Grade.

This growing up thing is getting tough on me.

Willaim F. Buckley

Buckley passed away this past week. Although a staunch conservative, he was a likeable guy and had a great sense of humor. I was way too young to follow the discourse on Firing Line but his sarcastic wit appealed to an aspiring smart-ass like me. As I got older and more politically knowledgeable I discovered that Buckley was the Father of Reagan-era conservatism, or as I call it now, "Real Conservatism". Unfortunately those days are long past, and odds are I'm voting for Obama if he ends up with the Democratic nod, as McCain is too much of a closet neo-con for my tastes. Hopefully someone will emerge as the conservative conscious, much like Buckley did in the 50's. Otherwise the party may be doomed to 80's style Democratic irrelevance.

Movie News

Sad news from Hollywood...

Roy Scheider passed away at the age of 75. Great actor, and of course in Jaws had one of those all-time memorable movie quotes, "You're gonna need a bigger boat". He was also in "The French Connection", "Marathon Man" and "All That Jazz".

He made some turkeys after "All That Jazz" but you always knew he was giving the audience an honest performance.

Daddy Day Care

Nana is on a cruise, and Aunt Nikki won't be in town until Wednesday, so Hana gets to spend the next 2 days at home with Daddy.

Hana will be fine; see, she knows how to get into the crackers by herself, so she's not gonna starve! Please direct your prayers towards me!

Scary

The horrified looks of the fans behind Richard Zednick says it all.

The latest reports say his surgery went well and he is resting comfortably in a Buffalo hospital. Long-term he should be fine and able to continue his NHL career.

Although it looks like this story will have a happy ending, there should be some criticism lobbed at the NHL for not stopping the game after the injury occurred. It was obvious that players on both teams were shaken up by what happened.

Kaspersky hates me

Everytime I check out any of my blogs or any blogspot in general, Kaspersky pops up and tells me it's a phishing site. Seems to be a phenomenon across the blogspot-o-sphere:

http://bloggerstatusforreal.blogspot.com/2008/02/phishing-attack-warning-messages-from.html
http://forum.kaspersky.com/index.php?showtopic=60158&pid=548180&st=0&#entry548180
http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help-howdoi/browse_thread/thread/31a80832b526e172

I guess a tube is broken....

Yahoo! and MSN

If this goes through, I will be a full-time Google/Gmail user. I left MSN for Yahoo! because I hated MSN and Hotmail. I wonder if Yahoo (enough with the exclamation point) ever commissioned a study to see how many of their users were MSN refugees. If this merger happens, I expect Gmail usage to surge.

In semi-protest I canceled my Yahoo Premium service. Using the "new" Yahoo mail client without the protection of Premium's ad elimination is a trying experience. It is a fugly looking creature with all the ads. It also seems slower. In fact, I've had to switch to "Classic" to retrieve emails that just couldn't seem to come through.

Gmail isn't pretty either, but it is not nearly as trashed with ads as Yahoo "plain".

Stupor Tuesday

Maryland is not part of Super Tuesday, and I'm not even sure if they hold a caucus or a primary for the 7 registered Republicans that live in the state. As things stand, John McCain is going to put some distance between himself and Mitt Romney. Mike Huckaby took West Virginia, but who really takes West Virginia seriously? Romney did not beat McCain too badly in Massachusetts, and last I looked Romney was not threatening to win anywhere else. If things play out, McCain will be on the ballot come November. And the Republican Party slides farther and farther away from the ideals that Reagan brought to it almost 30 years ago.

New Blog!

This is my personal blog, aside from the hockey and baseball musings. This is my forum to ramble on about whatever happens to be on my mind.