Ten days ago, Eddie Van Halen died. And for the last ten days, I don’t think I’ve listened to more Van Halen in that span since I was a teenager. I can’t say I was sad when I heard, I knew he was dealing with health issues for a long time, but when it does finally happen, it still packs a punch knowing that all you’re left with are recordings to remember him by, and the master guitar innovator will innovate no more.
Read moreCategory: Random
When the 2020 baseball schedule was announced I had this weekend circled. It doesn’t happen all that often, but the White Sox were to be in San Francisco May 8-9-10 to play the Giants. I’ve never been to San Fran, and it’s been on my list of places to visit for years now and I’ve just never gotten around to it.
When I do get there, I’ll be in Full Tourist Mode. Alcatraz, Golden Gate, etc. An extended trip with a few days out in Yosemite would be nice. But I need to go during baseball season, because I want to see a ballgame at Oracle Park. Ever since the park opened and the team moved from Candlestick I’ve wanted to go. It just looks like a beautiful park, built next to the water and an amazing view. I want to sit high up, perhaps down the first base line to get a good view of a ball hit out of the park into McCovey Cove. I don’t NEED to see the White Sox, but when the opportunity comes up once ever five or six years and I saw it on the schedule, I was interested.
Read more
One line. Eight words. One of my all time favorite lyrics in a song. Ever.
Read more
The Last Jedi Broom Boy
Last night as we were leaving Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker I overheard a boy, about 8-10 years old or so, and he says to his father “I wish Star Wars never ended.” That was by far the best moment of the whole night at the theater for me. I was that boy once. I wonder what happened to me where I don’t quite feel the same any more.
This movie was supposed to bring closure to The Skywalker Saga – 9 movies originally conceived by the mind of George Lucas some 40+ years ago. And it did that, I guess. While I don’t think Disney quite dropped the ball like George Lucas did with his overly-computer-generated prequels, I still think that these movies were poorly conceived. They seem very much like three movies that told their own stories, and had very weak threads holding them together.
Read moreIt’s been ages since I wrote anything here. Two website redesigns (one day job one side job) has pretty much taken all my keyboard energy lately.
Earlier tonight while working on side job site I had a 2nd window going with bootleg video I stumbled upon of one of my favorite concert experiences of all time: Pearl Jam at SummerFest in Milwaukee, July 8, 1995. It’s a horribly shaky and jerky video recording but decent sound given the circumstances. This is of course before everyone had a portable movie studio on their smartphone after all. I can only imagine this guy somehow sneaking in some honkingly large camcorder into the venue.
Read more
9/11
Not sure why this year was different. 18 is no milestone anniversary year. Birthday, perhaps. Lot of things can happen at 18 that previously weren’t avaiable. But 18 shouldn’t be anything special like 10 or 20.
But as I sat in my car, at times the speedometer topping out at 15 in a 65 zone and the brake getting an extensive workout, my mind started to wander. Usually when this happens in traffic I just blank out or lose myself in a song on the radio or the shape of a cloud overhead. Today, on September 11, memory kicked in and took over and filled the blank spaces with what had happened on this day in 2001.
Read more
Altan @ Abbey Pub Ticket Stub March, 2010
It’s funny how sometimes a simple Tweet can send my mind spinning in directions I wasn’t expecting. This morning, it was this one:
Gleanntáin Ghlas Ghaoth Dobhair came to mind immediately. It’s an Irish song written by Proinsias Ó Maonaigh about someone leaving Donegal, Ireland and heading to America, not necessarily a welcome choice at the time. I’ve never heard his own version of it, but my personal favorite rendition was done by his daughter Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh’s band Altan on their 25th Anniversary Celebration album in 2010. I was even lucky enough to see them in Chicago on the tour supporting the album when they stopped by the Abbey Pub (minus the RTE Concert Orchestra that played on the album, of course). So glad I got the opportunity to see them perform this one in person.
The Mandalorian on DisneyPlus
For years, I had an idea for a Star Wars story. Ideas bouncing around my head, but never put down in pixels or on paper. It had nothing to do with any Skywalkers, little if anything to do with The Force (especially the Light Side vs. the Dark Side, that’s for sure). It’s one of the biggest failures of my life to never put more time to sitting down and writing out more than random images that pop into my head that could have been stitched together into a pretty good story. I am glad, however, that someone else has a pretty close idea to what I was thinking and actually got Disney to do something about it. But I’ll get back to that. First, what was my idea?
Read more
Thank You, Roberto (nhl.com video screen grab)
I like that song. It’s catchy. I heard it seven times in one game.
Roberto luongo on Chelsea Dagger while speaking on “The Jeff O’Neil Show” on 993 The Fox in Vancouver
Today, Roberto Luongo announced his retirement. I will miss him.
One of my favorite games in which I was in attendence was April 24, 2011, Game Six of the Western Conference Playoffs opening round. The Hawks, a year removed from their first Stanley Cup win in decades as well as the squeaking into the playoffs after the first salary cap purge rebuild season, had dropped the first three games of the series to the Canucks. After winning games four and five, we felt things might be turning around and they might have a chance at actually eliminating Vancouver for the third straight playoffs. Or, the Canucks would win Game Six and elimante the Hawks and we’d all be going home miserable.
Luongo didn’t start Game Six after being pulled in the previous two routs by the Hawks, and wasn’t even seen on the bench for most of the game. Cory Schneider slotted in for him instead, and had made 17 of 19 saves until the third period moment when Kevin Bieksa tripped Michael Frolik on a breakaway. A penalty shot was awarded and Frolik almost stretched Schneider in two scoring on the penalty to tie the game, and the whole UC was up in arms.
While Frolik took his glove-tap lap along the bench, Schneider was writhing in pain in his own net. Slowly the crowd started to notice this. Low rumblings started amongst the cheering and Chelsea Dagger playing, but soon the cheering turned to a droning “LOOOOOOUUUUUU” sound to welcome Roberto back onto the United Center ice.
To his credit, Luongo came out and blanked the Blackhawks for the rest of regulation and 15:29 of overtime, blocking 12 of 12 shots. Then at 15:30 Ben Smith buried a rebound of a Hjalmarsson shot passed Luongo.
Roberto came back and made 31 saves on 32 shots in a Game 7 overtime win to get the last laugh of the series to move the Canucks on to the next round and send the Blackhawks home. They’d end up just short of a Cup in defeat by the Bruins weeks later. But looking back, while the animosity between the two teams would last for a few more seasons, that was the pinnacle of the rivalry.
The Hawks coming out on top of Roberto and the Canucks more often than not might have made it easier to like him in the end. There were a lot of characters over the years in the rivalry and many of them were easily disliked. But I never disliked Roberto. and I hope he never stops Tweeting.
Important Safety Information For Your Community 2017/2018 From Your Neighborhood Exelon Power Plant
My current house is approximately 8 miles north west as a bird flies from Dresden Generating Station, a nuclear power plant with two active reactors. Occasionally we’ll get an item in the mail from Dresden with instructions of what to do in case of an emergency. It’s not something I worry about every day, but it’s something to keep in the back of the mind to remember should the unthinkable happen.
Read more
This Won't Take Long, by Matt Pais
A former coworker friend of mine, Matt Pais, recently self-published a book of short stories titled This Won’t Take Long. Stories are grouped into categories such as Politics, Relationships, Pop Culture, Travel, etc. They live up to the billing as each story is very short and digestible, perfect for our “I don’t have time for (fill in the blank” culture we find ourselves in.
Read more
Got some podcast swag in the mail today. While back I started listening to the Says Who podcast by Maureen Johnson and Dan Sinker. They started the podcast as a coping mechanism to get through the final weeks of the 2016 election, and when everything went to hell after that they decided to keep it up. We all need to cope somehow and help each other get through this.
Read more
Message in a Bottle, Washed up on the Shore
One thought about starting up a journal again that I’ve had is: why here? Why write these words on your own site rather than just use an established social media or other service which might draw more eyes?
Part of that I answered in a previous post, I’m not doing this for other people to read. I’m doing this for myself. I’m perfectly fine with these words living on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere rather than in the streaming river of social media newsfeeds that a handful of friends and relatives might see on Facebook or even fewer strangers on Twitter might click on.
Read more
Masterclass.com Neil Gaiman screenshot.
Earlier this year my wife Jen gifted me a year long membership for MasterClass.com. If you’re not familiar with the site it’s basically a series of video lectures on various topics, usually by famous celebrity types. You can learn comedy from Steve Martin, directing from Ron Howard, how to cook from Gordon Ramsey, how to play tennis from Serena Williams, etc. The roster of people they’ve lined up hosting these lessons is pretty deep.
Read more
Writing at the home office.
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve started to do some kind of online writing. Whether you call them essays, blog posts, diary entries, whatever, in one form or another I’ve tried doing this in the past with various measures of success or lack thereof. Consider this just another in that series of attempts at writing on a consistent basis.
Read more
