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2009

Father’s Day 2009

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It’s a minor miracle. For the first time in recent memory, I was able to find my dad a father’s day present that he not only liked, but actually got sort of excited about. You see, my dad is not just difficult to shop for; he’s damned near impossible. He has almost no hobbies, and when he says “don’t get me anything,” I think he really means it.

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This year, though, I came up with something really unusual. Since I’m working temporarily in a museum where many city archives have landed, I was able — OK, my boss was able — to find a large photo of the entire 1950 Greensboro Fire Department, with captions identifying everyone in the department, including my dad, who was in his second (and final) year there at the time. He really liked it and was really excited about it, and is planning to take it to show all his friends, etc. It was one of those rare moments when I actually felt like I’d done something kind of cool for my dad. It was nice.

Don’t forget to call your own dad today, if he’s still around.

Zombie Time

The great thing about (unintentionally) waking up three hours earlier than you really need to is that by 10:30, you feel like you’ve really gotten a lot done. The bad thing is that by 11:00, you’re so tired you don’t care.

Alternatively

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The new Pittsburgh Magazine has a blurb about an upcoming Kid Rock show where he’s described as an “Alternative/Southern rocker”. Ahem. I’ll ignore the fact that he’s actually from Michigan, but using the term “alternative” to describe Kid Rock is a little like calling Wal-Mart an exclusive boutique. Kid Rock is about as mainstream (not to mention talentless, irritating, boring…) as it gets.

But I guess that’s pretty much true of just about everything that labels itself “alternative” nowadays. I’m a middle-aged guy who doesn’t really even follow new music all that closely anymore. If someone like me has heard of every act in Billboard’s “Top Ten Alternative” chart, there is absolutely nothing alternative about it. Yes, I understand that there are actual alternatives to “alternative” but I’m talking about the genre which is now little more than a marketing term and pretty much consists of three types of music:

  1. Over-aggressive metal-inspired schlock that is more or less the same crap Korn was doing badly more than a decade ago,
  2. White trash rap-funk-metal that pales in comparison to what the Red Hot Chili Peppers were doing two decades ago, and,
  3. Bland rehashes of the Foo Fighters (and I include the actual Foo Fighters in this group as well, since they now sound pretty much like a bland rehash of themselves).

Anyway, as long as I’m ranting on pop culture, here are three more thoughts:

  • If your radio station plays a jingle that goes “cool songs in the morning on K-104.7” and then follows it with, say, “Faith” by George Michael, people are bound to ask “What’s wrong with this picture?”
  • There is no such thing as a “gas saving SUV” and no radio commercial will ever convince me otherwise.
  • Unless they go on a shooting spree, Jon and Kate will never be newsworthy*. Neither will Perez Hilton. And that’s good.

*Yes, I’m admitting here that about two weeks ago, until we both read Leonard Pitts’ column on the subject**, neither the hubby nor I had a clue who the fuck Jon and Kate were as they glared at us from tabloids in the supermarket.

**I’m also admitting here that Leonard Pitts is kind of my favorite newspaper columnist these days. But that’s off-topic.

Randomly Wednesday

Random stuff for my first weekday at home in quite a while:

Got to read five chapters before class tonight. Tomorrow’s excitement: PHP maintenance on many sites.

Could my life get any more exciting?