Month: August 2024

  • ODDS and ENDS: Premier League Begins, Commuting to School, and Change is Coming

    (You can have yours, just gimme mine…)

    Later today, the Premier League starts up for the season. Clearly, and no one can dissuade me from this, Tottenham Hotspur will win the whole League. Yup, they will sit atop the table and lord it over Man City, and the forever a league-bridesmaid; Arsenal. Sure, Spurs qualified for the Europa League, just falling short of the Champions League goal, but hey! We’ll take whatever hardware that is offered. Am I over confidant? You Bet’cha! (I am a Cowboys fan, after all.)  I have paid for all the services, against my better judgement, so I will be able to watch every match. Not sure if I can get myself to go to the local Spurs bar and start drinking at 7am on game day, but we’ll see – that still feels like a goal to aim for in the next year or two. Either way, I’m ready for English football. (An Aside: I will still keep my eye on Brentford, as I still like the scrappiness of that team. They’re fun to root for.) I do feel that a new Tottenham scarf could be in my future, maybe even a sweater. Putting it out there, see if it manifests itself. You know. #COYS

    I had a moment this morning, when I was taking the kid to school, I started to ponder how different the way my kid goes to school is compared to how I went to school when I was her age. The kid takes the subway to school, and is accompanied by me. Sometimes a friend from school will be on the train with us, but most mornings, it’s just us. Sometimes we chat, sometimes she reads. It is the subway, so every now and then, an incident has happened; crazy guy, someone begging for change, homeless guy sleeping on a bench, or people yelling at each other. On the whole, most mornings the people on the train are tired, not in the mood to interact with anyone, and just want to be left alone. At her age, my family lived in a generic suburb, and I walked down the block in the neighborhood and caught the school bus with about five or so other kids. No one escorted me; I would say bye to my mom, and walk out the door. The bus stop could be dicey on certain mornings. This was grade school, kindergarten to 6th grade, so you could have 5 to 12-year-olds out there. Some mornings it was “Lord of the Flies” with kids being shitty to each other, but most days it was just a conversation about cartoons. Getting on the bus had its own perils; social order, and ostracization could be on full display. Would you get a seat? Who would you sit with? Would it be an older kid who would bully you the whole way to school? The anxiety, drama and fear! When I think about it, the subway isn’t so bad.

    And as school has started and Autumn is on its way, I have started to think that this is the time to begin the process of change. Or at least evaluation to determine if change is needed. I do know that if I am thinking about change, I should change. I need a better work schedule, and a more rigorous regime at the gym, as pants are getting tight. (I might have mentioned that.) I should get better sleep, and possibly change up my wardrobe – more sportscoats? Maybe this is a moustache year? Not that something needs to give, but it would be nice to change things up. I don’t think I ever want to be set in my ways. Roots are good, but being unable to bend with the wind sounds detrimental.

  • Coaching My Kid

    I like soccer/football. If you follow this blog, then you know that I support Tottenham Hotspur, and follow all the major international football tournaments. I am a fan, through and through.

    My daughter knows I’m a football fan, and on occasion will watch a match with me. Yet, I think she has come to believe that my dedicated fandom also equals that I know how to physically play soccer.

    I mean, I know how to kick a ball with the inside of my foot. I also can explain the offside rule…

    My daughter is going to try out for a travel soccer team, and she wants to be prepared. As a man who strives to be a good father, I am 100% in support of her ambition, and am willing to do anything to help out. For me, that meant going to YouTube and watching a video on teaching your kids the fundamentals of soccer by running several different drills.

    My kid, to say the least, was very surprised that I needed to watch a video, as she explained to me that she expected that I should “just know” how to coach soccer. I won’t say disappointed, but I think she is now coming to understand that when I yell at the Tottenham players that “I could do that!” when they mess up a play, I don’t actually mean that I could do that.

    Better she learn that now.

    As for coaching her; it’s actually fun. I have a drill checklist, and we go to the park every day and run through them. I find myself saying cool coach stuff like, “give me ten more.” Or “Dig deep and try that again.” She responds positive to it, which reinforces that I know what I am doing.

    And maybe I do know what I am doing.

  • Barbarian Movies – Bad Movie Bible

    If I had a spirit animal, it would be Rob Hill.

    In case you missed it, I’m a huge fan of bad movies, and also a particular adamant fan of Rob Hill and his Bad Movie Bible YouTube channel. The above Barbarian video is the latest entry in Hill’s “Borrowing Blockbusters” series, which examines a movie that had an enormous, if not game changing, affect on the genre, and the inevitable rip-off movies that followed. I found it surprising that I had seen many of these rip-off Barbarian movies, especially all the films that came from Italy.

  • Good, Old Fashion, Mindless TV

    I don’t know if you’re like me, but there is a good chance that you might be. And in that case, do you also have trouble finding something to watch on one of the many streaming services that you subscribe to? Honestly, I remember having this same problem when I had 200 channels on my cable service. It’s not a new problem, I guess is what I’m saying.

    Yet, when I am searching for something to watch, I need whatever it is that I am looking for to be really good. Like, really, really good. Like brag to my friends good, and be the first one to talk about it good. I need whatever the new show is to be a Ted Lasso, or Breaking Bad, or Mad Men. Also, it would help if it was weird and quirky, like Severance, or really epic like Game of Thrones or that Lord of the Rings show…

    And that’s when I found myself yearning for different kind of show, a different style of show, like a good old fashion mindless scripted tv show. Something with a little action, fun characters, maybe a little silly but defiantly a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Not to get all retro, but like classic Magnum P.I., or Hunter, Remington Steel, or Matt Houston. Hell, I’d even take Rip Tide or a Scarecrow and Mrs. King at this point.

    What those shows also had in common was a commitment to the status quo of a morally correct world. You know, bad guys get caught, wrongs get righted, the heroes make sacrifices to ensure justice is served. (Also, these shows had heroes that had no problem killing people who were bad guys. Taking a life cause never caused them to lose sleep at night.) Every episode was a tightly contained story, solved in 22 to 44 minutes, wherein our heroes were never challenged to the point to where they needed to learn or grow in any way. And next week it would start all over again. It was pure entertainment that only taught the lesson that bad guys lose, and good guys win.

    That’s what I am looking for, and I don’t want to retread classic tv, because ventures into nostalgia always leave me disappointed, as those shows were way better in my memory. No, I’m looking for a modern mindless, morally status quo show.

  • Road Trip Thoughts, Part Three (Unedited)

    The drive back to New York City was over two days. We drove four hours to a hotel south of Harrisburg, then on Sunday, we’d drive four more hours and be back home. I had planned for enough time, so if we saw something that we wanted to look at, we stop and it wouldn’t throw off any schedules.

    Growing up, on family car trips, we had a running joke, which was “we’ll hit it on the way back.” See, mainly the only time we took a road trip was to go up to Illinois to visit family, which we did just about every Summer. My father is an easy-going man, but when it came to driving, we had a schedule to stick to. And though we made this trip every year, there were attractions along the way, and when me and my brothers would squawk to him about stopping to see the world’s largest ball of twine, he’d tell us that we’d hit it on the way back. Then two weeks later, as we were passing the exit for the twine, and the old man would ask us if we wanted to stop, all of us wanted to be home badly, so we’d him that we’ll do it next year. You now see how this cycle repeats itself. At some point, we all came to understand that “hitting it on the way back” was as good as a no.

    With the kid in the car, and on a father daughter adventure, I was determined to not say no to stuff the kid wanted to see. Now, deep in my core, I wanted to be home as soon as possible. I still had a sick wife at home that might need some nursing, and I didn’t want to delay her chance to see her daughter as soon as possible. Yet, when we’d see a sign for something, and I offered to stop, the kid kept telling me; she wanted to get home. She wanted to see mom, and be in her bed. I know I could have stopped – forced her to experience a natural cavern with her dad – but forcing her to do something wasn’t the point of the exercise.

    When we checked into our hotel south of Harrisburg, I knew I had to feed the kid. Luckily, there were plenty of chain restaurants all around us – with unlimited salads and breadsticks, chips and hot sauce, or whatever it is they give you at a road house from Texas. None of it sounded appealing to either one of us.

    “What was the one food you were missing at camp?”

    “Sushi.”

    “I can work with that.” One quick search and I found a sushi place two minutes from our hotel in a very gray cement strip mall – and it wasn’t a chain.

    This is where I got my wish, “Order whatever you want.” And she wanted miso soup, and something called Rock Shrimp for an appetizer. I let her pick out the rolls as well, and she selected an eclectic group. Salmon, and tuna, and something with cream cheese in it, which she had never had before and wanted to know what it was like. “Let’s find out.”

    I don’t know if I’m doing a good job as a father, and I bet I will never know. By not trying to screw her up, I know that I am screwing her up. I don’t want her to be afraid to try things in this world, to go out and do something. That was a huge hurdle for me to overcome. So much of my youth was always staying in the orbit of my parents. Never straying too far. They always encouraged me to go forth, leave the nest and explore, so I honestly feel that whatever was holding me back was me. When I broke free and move away from everything that I had known, it was difficult, and I felt like I was abandoning them – I felt guilty. I still feel guilty from time to time.

    I don’t want her to feel like that. Maybe I do force this on her – pushing her out into the world, telling her that she will leave, and that’s okay, and that’s what you should do. Don’t be afraid to leave what you know. I hope it lands; I hope that she learns this lesson sooner than I did.