It was about 1978 when I'd picked up a Rolling Stone magazine and was reading between classes. The article and photos were about a new rage in music out of the New York club scene. Bands like the Ramones, The Dead Boys,the Clash and of course,the Sex Pistols were bringing the first tastes of agro-rock to the underground of rock. They were loud, abrasive and fascinating. The high mecca for this new sensation was a crappy little club called CBGB. At least this was all I read and assumed to be gospel. Then I closed up the magazine and went to History class. To me Punk was born.

From this shift in popular music came New Wave. Now New Wave was something I could actually get in to. First off it was played on the radio and I could buy the records. Secondly, it didn't necessarily require shoving a hot safety pin through my nose to show my allegiance, which is always good. Especially when I was already suffering from a bad perm and maligned glasses frames courtesy of a dodgeball accident. Think: Napoleon Dynamite, except not as sexy. Well by the summer of 1978, The Cars had blown up with their debut album. Blondie was starting out well, and even the B-52's were a new and exciting act out of Georgia. Fortunately for me, a radio station in the Washington area had dedicated themselves to playing this new format. WAVA kept the new and exciting rock coming. I burned up at least one telephone calling in to win records or tickets. Soon other acts came forward such as Joe Jackson and Talking Heads. But to me, The Cars had the staying power. They were melodic and quirky, but not so much so. I could actually play their stuff without getting the obligatory, 'What's THIS crap?' from my dad on the first play through. I proclaimed that "The Cars" was one of the best albums EVER as "Let the Good Times Roll" blasted from the Sansui speakers, and my dad openly wondered if I was just a little retarded. Insert Teen Angst here.

Just about 3 months ago, I was listening to the library of songs on my home computer that I use to load my iPod. Most likely I was surfing the 'net, or goofing around on a guitar, just typical stuff we all do everyday. Find a project, put on some jams. Fine. A song comes up and Jack gives it a listen, says he's always liked it, and asked who it was by. I asked if he really liked it, and if he knew the words. He said he felt he DID know the words...or at least a big chunk of them. I reached over to my Taylor 614, tuned it up and delving deep into my huge library of 13 songs I actual know, sat down and played it for him. He sang along with great abandon, with a sense of true surprise that he DID know the words and that yes, the old man really COULD play it. Together we crossed a wonderful bridge: a song we both loved, that together we could perform. A seed was planted. The song was the punk band Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)".





Back to the following summer in 1979, New Wave had a full head of steam. By this time Elvis Costello was riding his popularity crest, Talking Heads had a new album out (Fear of Music), and the Cars delivered 'Candy-O'. I couldn't go anywhere without hearing the track "Let's Go". Not the mall, not in the car, and not at my girlfriend's house. Well mostly because I didn't have a girlfriend, but I digress. The band was huge. And they were touring.

Summers were spent in Oklahoma with mom. It was six weeks of not having to get up at 5:00am to throw papers, which automatically made it my favorite place AND time. The Will Rogers Theatre with its random double features (Mel Brooks' 'Vertigo' was second bill to 'The Deer Hunter'...talk about your ying and yang) was walking distance. The Patio, My Pi, and Beverly's were all great places to eat. And of course, it was time with mom. It was good. In contrast was the whole newspaper situation. The Daily Oklahoman versus The Washington Post. Ok, that part..was bad. I was used to the Sports section being 20 pages in Washington. Here the whole newspaper wasn't 20 pages. So I'd peruse the whole paper here and even got to the point of checking the classified as a matter of regular course. I had 6 weeks to kill, I wasn't about to miss out on knowing when the next farm auction was going to be held. One sleepy morning I flipped open the classified and saw it: Gold.

Tickets to the Cars.

Now with Jack, once he finds something he likes, the boy WILL stick with it. And in the past three months, he's been sticking with Green Day. All of Green Day. They'd pop up on a concert show like 'Storytellers' and we'd record it and he'd jam along with it. But this was different. He was paying attention to guitars and hand positions and the dialogue and the names of the performers. He was getting INTO this band. He was becoming emotionally invested. One evening as I was goofing around on my laptop, I looked up at him, and he was air guitar-ing with his eyes shut and belting out the words. But with a different intensity than before. I quietly mumbled to myself, "It's time."

The deal with the Cars tickets of 1979 was three-fold. One, it would be my first concert. Two, the tickets would have to be bought from a scalper. And lastly, it would require exactly half of my summer allowance from mom to pull it off. This was June. The show was in August. The upside if it all worked out?.. Third row center at the Civic Center...for MY band. The cost: $25. I said I wanted to do it. Foregoing golf, junk food, and shopping, I was committing to a band. I was driven to a small crumbling house on 18th street and paid the $25. In my hand was a life-changing event. The hard part was now waiting to do it.

As a parent we all want to do right by our kids and teach them the things in life they need to succeed. Study hard, play nice with others, clean your room, etc. And at the end of the day if they pick up the majority of those things we are happy. But there are also little things that he like to hope we can have someday as well, and presenting something that we enjoy a lot to them and in turn having them enjoy it is a real slice of heaven. We can force feed sports or dance or reading onto them and many times if it doesn't stick we have a real sense of let down. But when it DOES stick, when they do find that enthusiasm as truly as we do, it's a wonderment. So after seeing Jack get into his band, it became clear to me that may be whatever the cost, it would be something he and I could truly enjoy together. So I made my move. I got online and bought tickets. Good tickets. Then I made a plan.

The Cars show was opened by Nick Gilder (Hot Child in the City), and he was appropriately loud and pretty bad honestly. Then after a fashion the real show started.
Of course they opened with "Let's Go", and to this day I still get goosebumps. Rik Ocasek had a lightning bolt guitar strap and the whole band didn't move 5 steps the whole show. And it was awesome. I was deaf as a doorknob for 2 days later. Which meant I had to play the album just that much louder at the duplex we were in, and by this point mom was about to ship me off to anywhere if she had to listen to side 2 of that record one more time. Three days later, we were on a plane heading home to Washington, DC and that stupid paper route. But I had my concert t-shirt on the whole way.

My plan with Jack was to take him out of school early, and drive to Dallas on a Thursday night, see the show and rely heavily on my world class insomnia to get us home by 3:00am on Friday morning hoping he'd fall asleep on the way home. The rest of the family showed up at school to see the expression on his face when I told him he was about to go see HIS band. And it was so worth it. Little boys don't tear up at much. This little boys did. At the show he jumped, screamed, pumped his fist, yelled at authority, and got hoarse. He also got a t-shirt and wore it the whole way home.

And it was heaven to me, for together we had crossed a bridge permanently. His first concert is one he won't ever forget. Which for me was all I wanted. I wanted him to be rewarded for investing in something he can call his. Twenty years from now when he's at work, he'll be able to say his first show was a punk band in all of it's loudness and crudeness and fascination.



As we walked out of the venue after a 3 hour show, Jack leaned into me and said, "Dad, I can truly say I had the time of my life."





(in front of Green Day tour bus)

Friday February 5, 2010
Late at Night.


"I know you're different. You know I'm the same."
Second Nature, Rush (Peart)



I guess one projects his respective interests on his kids whether they want it or not. Almost by simple osmosis they absorb what goes on around them and to some level it is appreciated and taken in or more likely, completely discarded. The interests that have staying power have a certain victory quality, or at least an affirmation of quality. These 'quality' activities help instill interests for one's kids and at least potentially, one's deeper future generations. Seeing what sticks is when it gets fun. Completely, utterly fun.

My oldest is arguably the most gentle soul I know. Hardly a quiet kid, yet he is exceptionally caring and acutely aware of others, being gracious and kind almost to a fault. He has the physical size that if he were to be a bullying sort, he could have his way in many instances. The fact that I have to teach him how to be aggressive on a basketball court, is still heart-warming. Now, mind you, once he's been given permission to literally throw his weight around, he will. I've seen him play with a controlled aggression that both is inspiring and impressive. But as soon as the game is over, he's back to being his gentle self, quietly drawing with an acumen that never fails to take my breath away.



The youngest on his own merit, is a ball of energy with a true passion for sports. All sports. The DEEP sports: "Dad, turn it back...it's women's billiards." He is the guy ESPN was made for. Athletics come easily to him, and he can and may do anything he wants inside chalk lines, fairways or under bright lights. He runs about the house in what seems like an unlimited number of sports uniforms, starting as Kevin Durant and then shape-shifting into Adrian Peterson in mere seconds. He insists I work on my alley-oop release. He has a very particular facemask he wants on his helmet. And the visor that goes with it. He knows all the rules to many of the games, flooring even me last Sunday during the Federer final in the Aussie Open when he told me without TV prompting that it was a break point for Federer in the third set tie-breaker. I kept my mouth shut not wanting discourage the kid as I stepped on him with my wealth of tennis knowledge, only to have Dick Enberg remind the audience that it was break point for Federer here in the third set tiebreaker. I flipped over to see what was going on in Women's billiards.

My dad came to the photography game while stationed in Thailand. Buying a Nikon F2A and a couple lenses and putting them to use when he got back to the mainland. And after he put them them to good use, he turned around and used them for making my sister and I just a litta bit crazy. Trips to Annapolis, Kill Devil Hills and Gettysburg were recorded with frame after frame of teenage ennui. Back in the good old days the cameras had film in them and the really good film made not prints, but slides. Yes, with a giant-ass bed sheet, my incredibly bad haircut and hideous glasses could be blown up to be the size of a small dirigible. Uproarious laughter by the photographer always accompanied the pained exhibit. The upside was having to sit in the dark of a bathroom trying to feed the photo-sensitive film into canisters and then letting the film dry, then ultimately sliced and mounted into slides. Homemade slides.

My grandpa was a mortician, and I write that with a morbid warmth in my heart. He was a gentle soul and deeply religious. He always knew there was another life after this and so he trod lightly in this life. For 97 years. He was also was a premier sportsman, and the rules of 'needing what you take, and taking what you needed' always applied. "If you hunt it, kill it. And if you kill it, you better eat it", ring in my ears every time I grab my fishing rod or shotgun. So along with family and friends he would hunt the Canadian north for trophies and dinner. Not necessarily in that order. He had a son who would become a provincially ranked shooter at 16. Guns weren't looked upon with any more regard than we'd give a ax. It was a tool...a tool you could really hurt yourself with if you went to screwing around with it, but if it was used correctly it was handy as a pocketknife, a handkerchief or a 30 lb. ball of camp wire. Guns back in the good old days didn't have a monster 30x scope with drop compensation built in. No, you put the sight on the moose/deer/elk/caribou and trust yourself. He got good at shooting because he had folks to feed.






Last weekend, my gentle giant drove me to the verge if insanity as we sat through a heavy downfall of snow, sleet and ice. It was my job,... no, duty... to thaw out the truck and drive him to...the gun store. Not any gun store for any 9 year old. No, the store where..they...know...him. I literally parked the truck, let him out, and continued to pound the windshield wipers into some usable fashion. After 10 minutes, I walked into the store where I completely expected him to be over by the cleaning rags and pouting that I hadn't come in and talked guns with the shopkeeper, but alas to my poorly hidden delight was my son shouldering and lowering a Browning, a Beretta, and a Remington, respectively. He was the only one in there as a customer. He was serious. He was passionate. We couldn't shoot, so we went where they talk about shooting. I bought a case of shells and did what every good dad would: loaded his butt up in the freezing truck and went to the OTHER gun store. He told me of each gun behind the counter. Told me his preferences. Told me what he would buy tomorrow if he had the money. He researched it all in books and magazines he bought with Christmas money. Other kids want to know the cheat codes for the latest war video games. Mine wants to know the magazine capacity of a Remington 11-87 versus a Browning Citori. He's figured out choke sizes. He competes in sporting clays tournaments as a Sub-junior. I didn't teach him that. I couldn't teach him that. It came from a different generation. Or two. Echoes from the past. Needing to be heard. Soothed.


This week, the youngest and I were doing what would be the equivalent of flipping baseball cards. We each grab our respective iPods and run through the music library and try to turn each other onto what music interests us. He truly has his own tastes, as do I. But many more times than not, we agree that we like a tune and flip it into our current playlist rotation. This week he turned me onto The Killers, a current pop band from Las Vegas. And honestly, I've been wearing it out. Conversely, I knew I'd made an impression on him as I walked past his bedroom at bedtime, only to hear the muffled sound of a kid under the blankets doing the trademark 'Whoa-oh-oh-oh's of "The Trooper" a song of the Crimean War from 80's heavy metal godfathers Iron Maiden. A 21st century "Mays for Mantle". One can teach children to listen to some music. No one can force personal preferences like this if they won't stick on their own. I love it that he likes my music. But I love it that I love HIS music.


Today my full photo card from the last 3 months has finally worked its way to the photo store to have enlargements made to ultimately have framed. As I turned the disk over, I dug deep and found my very serious voice and said, "Don't screw this up. I mean it." Of course I have everything backed up in two disks here at the house and online. Honestly the disk could be tossed to the wind and it would be just fine. But still, it felt like handing in a term paper. A term paper I really tried on; knowing there was some seriously good stuff in there. The disk was opened and the sales guy confirmed that this was good stuff, and that working with it wouldn't be a problem. It felt like pressing the lens to the slide on the viewer and seeing the image. Seeing the image come out perfectly. Even if it was my bucked teeth, bad hair and mismatched clothes.




Still, it was perfect.





And completely, utterly fun.

New Year's Day 2010


"There's a brand new dance
but I don't know its name."
- David Bowie, "Fashion"


I suppose at the beginning of a new year many will sit down and look at goals and plans for the future. Most will tend to hope their ship stays righted and on the same course. Others will look for a better circumstance. All of us will hope and pray against unusual or untoward events. Primarily, I'll hope to go another year without having to clean out my closet.

Yes, it has come down to that. My last dug-in entrenchment must remain intact. I know it's the home of old cameras, audio gear of each of the past 3 decades, photo albums, diplomas, unsent warranty cards and game-worn hockey jerseys from players with careers as long as 7 years, but it's mine. The boys treat it like untapped treasure, wandering out with things unseen in a generation, wanting to know 'what's this go to?'. Discovering parts of started coin collections, weather radios, gold plated graduation pens, polarizing lenses and even a gold crown from the upper left bicuspid of my beloved grandfather. Stuff with stories behind it. Treasure.

And then there's the clothes...

The previous assaults have come as loaded questions such as,"Do you think you could get much for this on eBay?" or "Exactly what year did you buy this?". The best is, "Tell me precisely when you might wear this again?" as a pair of ultra double pleated front Ralph Lauren labeled pants that honestly would fit Ralph Kramden are wagged in front of me. I answered with what I always answer with: "Tuesday."

I don't have fashion sense. I don't need to. I work in pajamas. Part of the reason I chose my job is because I can work in pajamas. The biggest decision I make about my wardrobe is "light blue or dark blue." When I come home, I toss on a pair of jeans, a different pair of sneakers and something lavish like a thunder sweatshirt.





Yee-haw.

There was a time where I was the clothes horse though. I dated a bona fide clothes horse for awhile and that was simply a different artform. It was serious stuff. It was contagious. For a while there, I could honestly tell you the difference in this year's and last year's Liz Claiborne shoes. And with some pride, I might add. I became a ladies shoe snob. To this day, I will tell a patient that she is the "Nicest shoes of the Day"-winner, but they really do have to be nice. We're talking at least a three inch heel and black strappy covers everything, except maybe red patent...huh?...where was I? But I digress. Fashion scouting reports, field trips, mental note-taking at church. Once purchased, everything had a shelf life. Oscar de la Renta was likely shorter lived than anything with Oscar Meyer on it.

Someone will have to explain to me the whole jeans thing. Guys denim that has been 'bedazzled' and then charged $300 for, needs to come with an explanation. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. But. In my previous lifetimes, those fashion choices usually required a lost wager, photographs of compromising nature and a great deal of alcohol. I don't give a damn how big the dragon is across my ass, I ain't wearing it. Unless, of course, it can get me in a position of compromising nature while consuming a great deal of alcohol.

On a matter of principle, I went way retro and bought some plain old Levi 501's. That's right boys and girls. Button fly. I felt like I'd stormed the halls of fashion like Napoleon as I threw on a pair in my size 33/33's, sucking it in with all my might...only...to...not...have to. They fit. It felt awesome. And then in some weird reality, it didn't. I felt small and puny. Now wait, I still bought them, after all that label on your butt is like walking around with the Stanley Cup, regardless if you've spent 1500 hours in the gym or have a highly functioning tape worm.

I think I have four suits, which after buying one Italian suit with a simply surreal handmade custom shirt (I think the real word is 'blouse'..and for $350 it better have it's own word) is three suits too many. Honestly, if left to my own devices, I'd go into the deep end for suits. I read once where an Italian designer said a full tailored suit should be the most comfortable thing you own, and laughed. Then I got one. I stopped laughing. Nice shoes are the same way. It's probably criminal in certain circles that I only have four pairs of shoes not used specifically for triathlon training, but I return to the point of my daily routine.


But maybe that speaks to the whole closet thing. I don't particularly 'out-grow' things, and I've rarely bought too much stuff that was completely 'out there'. (except for my one pair of hideous "Jamz-esque meets MC Hammer" sweats...deliciously awful) They would have had to have survived multiple 'consolidations'. (Consolidation is what is referred to as "I'm throwing your crap out,honey.") But the stuff that remained is showing signs of life. Those Wayfarers of yesteryear are now on fire on the Champs-elysee. As are the Izods, Polos and Fred Perry's. Packrats rejoice.

So after all these years of accumulating junk and tossing so many tons more, perhaps I'm entitled to keep my closet as is. Perhaps we all are allowed. Fashion is having a zero-effect on me, or perhaps I'm having a zero-effect on fashion.

So what's left?



Stories, trinkets and nick-naks.



Treasure.