Daniel MacMaster: Dead

I just read on Sleaze Roxx that Daniel MacMaster died the other day from a simple strep virus. For those of you who don't know who he was (read: everyone but me, I'm guessing), here's the long and the short of it:

In the late 1980s Jason Bonham--son of the late John Bonham, deceased drummer for Led Zeppelin--put a band together and immediately earned national attention. I think this attention came for four reasons. 1) The Bonham name, 2) Jason Bonham is actually a hell of a drummer, 3) the singer sounded a lot like Robert Plant (also of Led Zep), and 4) The music was pretty good--catchy and inventive. Where does Mr. MacMaster fit into all of this, you ask? He was the singer I mentioned, I answer. Sounded like Plant v 2.0. Listen for yourself here. The band did fairly well for a little while, but then grunge came along and anything resembling classic rock or heavy metal (and these guys had both elements) was buried. Daniel MacMaster faded to obscurity, to live a life like most of us.

It jarred me a little to read this death report, because I hadn't thought of the band in years, but I remember them well and fondly. They got me through eight miserable months stationed in Norfolk, Virginia in 1989 and 1990. What was more disturbing, though, was to read that he was 39 years old.

Huh?

While I was sitting in my little room in the barracks, eating Cap'n Crunch and Ramen noodles out of a plastic bowl I kept in a desk drawer, this guy, who was only a year and a half older than me, was living the rock-star life. I've felt once again the sting of envy brought on by the early achievements of others*. Bleargh.

Still--the news could have been worse. It could have been Jason McMaster of Dangerous Toys who died. No offense to Daniel, but "Scared" is still one of the coolest songs ever. (And if you want to see more Robert Plant influence, check out JM's pose at the end of that video.)

So, yeah. It's sad. Another memory drawn up just because its source is squelched.

* I think Andy Galeon was the first to hit me with this kind of envy. He was the drummer for Death Angel. I was seventeen when their first album was released--he was twelve.

Happy Birthday, MFilly!

Actually, his birthday was yesterday, but I only have the time just now to throw together this slapdash effort. Happy Monkey Day!

I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into with this, but it amuses me.

I Challenge You

Thank you for reading after that. Here is my challenge:

Tell me how this speech fails. Not in overblown, general statements. Not in partisan blandishments. Tell me specifically, in concrete detail, how Senator Barack Obama is wrong.

Because unless I'm missing something, he's the smartest human who's run for the presidency in my lifetime, and one whom I'd like to see putting his hand on whatever book and becoming my boss.

Happy Birthday, Buckaroo!

Um. Happy birthday. Have lots of beer. Then, maybe, you'll forget this exists.

Until morning, when you log on again. Bwahahahaha! Ha.

Happy birthday.

On Reading Smart People

I read too many blogs. One of the too-many blogs I read as regularly as I can is The Edge of the American West. It's run by a couple of guys who teach history, and they're really smart.

Their most recent post is a history of American liberalism. It's smart. SMRT.

Eleven Days Later

It's been a while since I've felt compelled to post anything. It's not that nothing's happening--on the contrary, we've been as busy as ever. The parents came down last Friday and we've tried to show them all we know about our new home, as little as that is. We've visited Lake Thunderbird, the Canadian River winery (the ladies tasted everything they had to offer), and both schools where I teach. We've eaten at some of our favorite restaurants here, and we've only had to go to Target three times.

I have some books to post about (Letting Go by Philip Roth and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris), and this next week should be a busy one. For now, though, we'll just enjoy the last two days of the parents' visit and then gird our loins for the rest of the school year.

More Videos for Your Consumption

Just a few more, since I haven't done this in a week or so:

Tyketto - "Forever Young"
This is what Journey might have sounded like if Journey had been men instead of--whatever they were. Wait--Journey's still touring? Without Steve Perry? Can't wait to miss it.

Robert Randolph and the Family Band - "Ain't Nothin' Wrong with That"
Sly turned me on to these guys a while back. This song's a lot of fun.

Fishbone - "Sunless Saturday"
And I haven't thought of these guys in years. Great band almost nobody ever heard of. Much better than the better-known Living Colour*. Probably not a fair association, since about all they have in common is skin color, but that's the only way these guys came up back in 1991.

Living Colour - "Type"
Not their most popular song, but one I like better than "Cult of Personality"--if only because it hasn't had the hell played out of it for twenty years. Listen to that groove. Damn, that's a solid rhythm section.

*I wrote this and then watched the "Type" Video. On further review, I think it's an unnecessary comparison. I forgot how good LC really was. I like them both a lot. How's that?

A Post to Move Things

I just thought I'd post something to get the Jerilla out of the top spot. I've tortured him long enough. Maybe tonight I'll have enough energy to post something important(ish). I don't know what I have--cold, flu, ebola virus--but it's sapped everything but my will to live.

Maybe later. For now, it's off to school.

Happy Birthday, Jam!

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

You look like a monkey

And you smell like one, too.

Happy birthday! Love you. Even if you're old.

I Like Smart People

I have said as little as I possibly can about George Walker Bush. It isn't healthy for me to think about him too much, to think that some people in America were stupid enough to vote for him--some were stupid enough to vote for him after he'd spent four years demonstrating his incompetence. There seems to be no floor low enough to support some peoples' sense.

I like the idea that our next president might be an intelligent human. A thoughtful person. I like the idea that the next president might be smarter than me. More eloquent than me.

I like smart people.

That's why I'm an Obama guy.

John McCain is not a bad man. He's brave, he's committed, and I think he has the best interests of America and Americans in mind. But he's a conservative, and because of that he's set the world up in an us-vs.-them paradigm that doesn't work and that has never worked. He's comfortable if circumstances fail people as long as his interpretation of the founders' intentions is kept intact. I was ready to vote for McCain over Gore in 2000--and then the Village Idiot won the Republican nomination. How did that happen? I don't know. I will never understand how Dubya got a single vote, let alone enough votes to make the Florida robbery plausible.

Hillary Clinton is not a bad woman. But her insistence on practicing negative politics and obfuscation make me want to strangle her. I believe she'd be a decent president, but I can't vote for her. The more I hear her speak the less I hear of her. It's like a focus group took possession of her head. There's no there there anymore.

I'm a Barack Obama guy. I read his book, Dreams From My Father, which struck me as a rare achievement: a candid memoir that was interesting and compelling, but one that lacked the self-importance it would seem necessary to bother writing a memoir. It's a great memoir. And I feel like Obama is a genuine man. Nothing he's said or done during his campaign has changed my opinion of him. This isn't just a candidate I wouldn't mind seeing in office--I actively want this man to be president. I've never been able to say that before. I've voted for Dukakis and Clinton, Gore and Kerry. In all of those cases I just thought they were lesser evils than G.H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and Dubya. Honestly--Dubya? Could there be a worse human being in charge of this country? I don't think so.

But I like Obama. He's intelligent and articulate. He seems thoughtful. Even when he takes on the cadences of MLK during his speeches, and I get a little uncomfortable with that, I feel as though he's still conveying valuable ideas, that he's committed to a humane platform.

As a side note: Keith Olbermann is my hero. Seriously. I liked him a lot when he co-hosted SportCenter with Dan Patrick in the mid-nineties, but he's infinitely more valuable now that he's brought his intelligence and outrage to nightly news--even if he's stuck on MSNBC, where nobody can see him. I like when my news people are intelligent and thoughtful.

So here's a question: Who are you voting for and why? If you're not voting, why not?

End of two Eras

Wow. Third post of the day. This is weird.

When I was a teenager I desperately wanted to play Dungeons and Dragons. I never seemed to know the right people at the right time, though. Most of my friends had no interest in the game, and the people I knew who did have interest had played it years ago and gotten bored with it.

So for years I've billed myself as such a geek that I couldn't find geeks willing to play D&D with me.

That's neither here nor there, I guess. But I saw today that Gary Gygax died.

Gary Gygax co-created Dungeons and Dragons. Pretty good run for a geek. Geeks unite!

On the other end of the spectrum: Brett Favre retired from the NFL today.

When Favre started playing for the Packers in the early '90s I was a die-hard Vikings fan. I was beyond rational. While watching games I'd scream, pound on furniture, curse, and throw things. If the Vikings lost I'd get worse. Through those years it was easy to hate the Packers--stupid Wisconsinite fans, pack of cheeseheads. They drink paint thinner before games, you know. Because they're stupid. And from Wisconsin. Which is stupid.

So it was easy to hate the Packers, but it was hard to hate Favre. Even when he almost singlehandedly beat the Vikings, as he did on more than one occasion, the way he played inspired at least admiration. Tough, modest, and unpredictable--if he'd been a Viking I might have worshipped him. Unfortunately, the Vikings have been doomed to a series of barely-competent quarterbacks going back at least as far as Two-Martini Tommy Kramer.

Then in the late nineties I lost all interest in professional football. And Favre kept playing. He's older than me, you know. Maybe the last NFL quarterback who is. And now he's retiring. And that's depressing. Because he kind of embodies football in the way that my boy Kevin Garnett embodies basketball. And because guys my age shouldn't be retiring yet.

There's No "Y" In There

Okay, so the last post reminded me of a recurring discussion. I've talked about this with a number of people, and the result is never satisfying. So here I'm going to bring it up again.

The word "coupon" is pronounced "koo-pon," not "kyoo-pon."

I have discused this with intelligent people and with morons. It doesn't matter--there are people of all mental abilities who say "kyoopon." But they're wrong.

The best defense of the "kyoopon" violation is that there are other words with the letter "u" that are pronounced "yoo." This is undeniably true. Take "cute" or "pure." But that's not the whole structure, is it? Both of those words move straight from the consonant sound to the letter "u." The word "coupon" does not. There's an intervening "o." Thank the French for that.

Show me another "ou" word that also contains a "y" sound in that syllable. They don't exist. Here's one my brother's been throwing around for years: You don't eat "syoop" do you? No. You eat "soop." That's right--soup. "Through" is pronounced "throo," not "thryoo."

Here's a word that has "ou" and still has a "y" sound: "You." Because there's a friggin' "y" there. There's no "y" in "coupon."

It's KOO-pon.

And this post wins the prize for most extensive use of quotation marks for the mentioning of words.

Way Too Funny

I know I said I wouldn't do this anymore, but I have to post this video for all to see. Why? Because it amuses me. And it's true. I don't get sick too often, but when I do I'm a total baby about it. Whine, whine, whine. Here's a clip exaggerating that just a little bit.

Heh.

No More Whining

Now that I got that last post out of my system, I'm determined not to whine anymore about the day-to-day frustrations in my life. Seriously, it's gotten to the point where I sound like a little kid. Am I entitled to a smooth ride? No. Is everything supposed to go my way? No.

Like we used to say in the navy, "Wah-fucking-wah."

So this is it. If my classes are mean to me, if traffic sucks, if the price of gas isn't what I want, you won't hear about it here. I learned a long time ago (and then have relearned at least a hundred times) that dwelling on negativity just compounds the problem. So it ends here.

No more whining.

February: The Tough Month

It's been a while since I posted anything other than videos or quick blurbs about nothing. It isn't that I haven't had the time--hell, I've been working hard to find ways to put off working--but I haven't had the mental capacity to even consider what to write, let alone bother trying to compose my thoughts on a subject.

The truth is, February was a tough month. And the difficulty with February started way back in October. When we got to Norman I felt lucky to get work right away, but I still had to hold out for two and a half months before I'd get paid. We made it, even if it was stressful. Just part of living the glamorous adjunct life, I guess. But then around the middle of October I realized, "Rut-roh. That not-getting-paid thing is going to happen again at the end of January." Sure, this time I'd only go one month without pay, but could there be a worse time? Right after Christmas? Right after a planned drive to Minnesota (and all the costs that entails, even if others are entirely too generous with us). No pay going into February? The month with Valentine's Day? The month with Michele's birthday? Her first birthday ever spent out of reach of her family? A birthday that might be made easier for her if I can do something to make a big deal about it? An actual milestone birthday on top of that?

Needless to say, I've been a basket case for months (I heard that "your whole life" from the back . . .), and I considered staying behind in Oklahoma over winter break so I could find a job and just keep working--keep the difficulty to a minimum. For a number of reasons I decided that wasn't going to work out, so I made the trip and gritted my teeth for the coming depression.

And that's the funny thing about stress. Even though I knew I could make the situation more bearable by picking up a weekend job I didn't. I tried a few times, made some halfhearted stabs at some extra work, but in the end just sighed and resigned myself to a month of self-loathing.

And then one of my sections was cancelled (not enough enrolled), so I had a smaller paycheck to look forward to on the other end of February. That was nice.

Add into that strain a class that insists on challenging every announcement I make. Add to that a few job openings I needed to get myself together to apply to. Add to that my complete inability to write on any of my projects. And on top of that goes a further inability to even read productively. I was a mess. A mess of my own making.

But now it's March, and I've submitted my applications, and I see the end of this stack of grading easing over the horizon, and I got paid on Friday. So the tightness in my chest has loosened a little. I'm less likely to make a (misplaced) snarky comment to anyone (poor Michele--this was not a good month). Maybe now I can write, can spend some time thinking without my thoughts meandering off in negativity like a drunken butterfly headed for the pretty forest fire.

Maybe now I can blog. There's plenty to talk about. Even if my decision on Election Day will be a no-brainer (Obama's my first choice, but if Hillary wins the Dem nomination I have her ranked next --here's my list 1. Obama, 2. Clinton, 3. A loaf of bread, 4. Ralph Nader, . . . 389. The BTK killer, 390. Paris Hilton, 391. Carrot Top, 392. John McCain (or any other conservative)).

And it gets better: in two weeks my mom and Skiffy* and the Cat Whisperer** are driving down for a ten-day visit over Spring Break. The weather is beautiful (75 and sunny yesterday), and the trees are budding. I feel almost human. Almost.

* I need to find a better name for him. "Skiffy" was momentarily funny, but it isn't anymore and it doesn't exactly encapsulate who he is. I'm working on it.
** "The Cat Whisperer," however, stays. Because it's perfect.