And so it begins…

First day of school is tomorrow.  At least it is for the high school senior.  The college senior and the college soph began classes at Iowa State on Monday.  So tomorrow marks the beginning of our 17^th and final year in our public school district.  I’m not sad about it.  As I explained previously we’re ready to be done with high school for a variety of reasons.  Regardless, here are couple things relevant to the start of school.

First, when I started my senior year in high school The Lost Boys had just been released.  The soundtrack included the INXS song Good Times.  Which, of course, leads to the inevitable debate about whether or not Good Times is a better song than New Sensation which came out the following summer.  The answer is New Sensation.  Anyway, nothing is out right now as cool as Lost Boys.  Mainly because Hollywood has no good ideas.  The reasons are many but mostly boil down to the fact that its run by intellectually hollow woke d-bags who have to rip off the 80’s by doing another Top Gun instead of coming up with their own ideas that don’t suck.  Which, if you’re them, is extremely difficult.  Why?  Most Gen-X 80’s scholars tend to settle on the loose idea that most people simply don’t like to lectured by smug entitled narcissists who revel in being tattletales and who honestly believe that they invented everything and absolutely NOTHING of any interest happened before them. 

So the high senior not only has to deal with the fact all the movies suck as she enters senior year but also that nothing out right now remotely compares to Whitesnake’s Here I Go Again video.  She’s stuck watching tiktoks about cats.  Now despite the efforts of some, our school district has thus far resisted efforts to turn it into a People’s Republic of Totalitarian Dumbassery.  She’s going to school tomorrow in-person and maskless.  Now most of the credit for that goes to the Legislature and the Governor for making Iowa the Freedom Capital of the Midwest.  Regardless, if high school looks anything like the mall did last Saturday, everybody agrees that masks are useless.  Advantage sanity.

The college soph is in the sorority house this year.  And despite starting her second year, she’s attending her first in-person classes.  Which means she’ll not only be walking within six feet of other humans but she’ll – gasp – be living with 9 other girls in the house.  For context I have to go back to August of ’89 to get an idea of how I felt about things as I entered my sophomore year at college.  Hmm…

Well, first thing is the top song in the country the week I started classes was Right Here Waiting by Richard Marx.  So, yes, the 80’s did have a few instances of head hanging shame.  But that same week Heaven by Warrant was also in the top 20.  So…awesome.  Also, I had to build the loft in my dorm room. I distinctly remember it going up easier than expected but I had to wedge it in by “borrowing” some excess pieces of wood “found” on various other floors of the dorm.  The soph showed up in the house and just had to pick a bunk in the cold air and stake out some closet space.  But as the semester begins things are as close to normal as one can expect on a college campus heavily influenced by woke communism.

The college senior moved into a new apartment a couple weeks ago.  Street access from the front door, three floors on the inside.  Two bedrooms up, two bedrooms down, with a kitchen and family room in the middle.  Not gonna lie, I’m super, super jealous.  It looks like a super cool brick brownstone on the outside and it is located on the same street I lived on my junior year and is really close to campus.  Which makes it even more cool.  It’s cooler and almost exactly the same rent she payed last year in a far less cool place on the fourth floor of building.  Just to be clear, as a Dad I much prefer street access to elevators and four flights of stairs.  As a college senior, she’s not as excited as I am for my buddies and I to stop by after home football games.  For convenience, I made a request for a few six-packs of Miller Lite Tallboys for those particular Saturdays this fall.  Can’t wait.  I’m making a playlist from the fall of ’91 just to make us feel more at home when we stop by.  So far I’ve got Naughty By Nature’s O.P.P., Mellencamp’s Get a Leg Up and Hole Hearted by Extreme. 

So happy first day of school from the Freedom Capital of the Midwest.  And remember – my freedom protects you and your freedom protects me.

Senioritis

School doesn’t start for the soon to be high school senior for about 5 and a-half week.  College classes start for the two older daughters a couple days before that.  So come the last week of August we will have two seniors.  Two.  One in high school and one in college. 

So a couple things here.  First, senior year is awesome regardless of its academic level.  I’m not sure how the high school senior is going to top my senior year of ’87-’88 but since she’s a mini me, I have supreme confidence that she will be 100% invested in the full and total pursuit of senior year awesomeness in all of its red, white and Pabst Blue Ribbon glory.

Don’t confuse that for excitement or approval.  I mean, I’m her Dad.  And she suffers from the same affliction of unearned but extremely solid levels of confidence that I had back in the late summer of ’87.  But when your world view is heavily influenced by Ronald Reagan, Axel Foley and Whitesnake, self-assuredness is a given.  It is not until your time as a parent of three different high school seniors that you realize that you were, in fact, a dumbass.

Which brings me to my second realization, this coming school year will be our eighth consecutive year of high school parenting.  And we already have senioritis before the year even begins.  I mean, I’m done with high school parenting and all the crap that goes along with it.  Mentally, we’re college parents.  This is why the youngest kid gets away with everything.  You are exhausted.  Beaten down.  You’re like John McClane at the end of any one of the first three Die Hards.  And by the way Die Hard With a Vengeance is fantastic.  Unless you are talking about Return of the Jedi, the third installment of a series rarely is awesome.  Well, Christmas Vacation, Clear And Present Danger and Rocky III aren’t bad either. 

Regardless, we have high school parenting fatigue.  I know there are parents out there who really enjoy the high school years.  We did too at some point in the distant past that I can no longer recall but I’m sure happened.  Really, we just want it to be over though.  Because teenage brains are stupid and dealing with them on an hourly basis just ping pongs your emotions between rage and total bafflement that somebody would make certain decisions.  Sort of how anyone with a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights feels about Commie Jen Psaki’s regard for the First Amendment.  Anyway, we’re tired of the monosyllabic answers to EVERY SINGLE QUESTION.  I mean, yes, we understand that the brain is the last organ to fully develop taking until the mid-twenties…which explains why 18-24 year-olds have a positive view of socialism.  We’re tired of dealing with the weird phenomenon of them getting dumber as more of them show up and get together.  I mean seriously, what is the freaking deal with that?  Six of them are dumber than three of them.  We’re tired of finding old cereal bowls in bedrooms.  We’re tired of eye rolls and condescension regarding any decision we make.  I mean if I want to be despised for encouraging personal responsibility and consequences for your own actions, I’ll listen to Dr. Fauci. So that’s where we’re at.  Didn’t really expect it to play out this way.  So in the meantime I think I’ll continue to enjoy the rest of summer with cold American patio beers and some sweet hair metal tunes…at least until Psaki and Facebook determine that those beers and songs are filled with misinformation regarding the appropriate levels of fun we are allowed to have…

A Mostly Uninformed Guide To Independence Day Grilling

First thing you need to decide is the meat.  I’m partial to burgers.  I’m not judging or casting aspersions if you decide supplement your burger menu with brats or hot dogs.  I’m just not doing that.  Truth be told, brats and my gut get along roughly the same way as Ferris Bueller and Mr. Rooney.  And hot dogs…well…that’s not food.  Doesn’t matter if you call it a wiener, a frank or a red hot.  It’s still a hot dog.  Although I prefer calling them wieners.  Because saying wiener is funny and my sense of humor is still 14 years old. 

Now, I realize that the hot dog barons have gone to great lengths to disguise what the wiener truly is.  And to be frank (see what I did there?) nobody is completely certain what makes up the hot dog, although most wiener scholars agree it is some kind of combination of beef, pork, turkey, chicken and either raccoon or groundhog.  Depending on your preferences, you might dress your wiener up with pickle relish, onions, sliced tomatoes, sauerkraut, horseradish, pickles, chili, bacon or even jalapenos.  But most Americans stick with ketchup and/or mustard. 

Now since we’re Americans and we can always make wieners more interesting, we came up with the corn dog which rarely wanders outside of its native habitat of the Iowa State Fair.  Next, we developed the common American bagel dog.  The bagel dog, while a staple of suburban street cuisine, doesn’t normally make an appearance at the typical Independence Day cookout. 

Which brings us to the burger.  The venerable trustworthy delicious burger.  Burgers form the backbone of standard American grill fare the same way spandex and shredded jeans formed the backbone of hair metal attire.

First, condiments.  Lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions.  Absolutely.  You pick.  The real decision comes with cheese.  First, it’s Independence Day so American cheese occupies whatever place on the cheese plate indicates awesomeness.  Next, cheddar.  Cheddar cheese is American cheese’s sometimes cool cousin.  Looks similar, adheres to grilled meats in a natural way but just not as good as American.  Kinda like Canada. 

Other choices?  Well there’s swiss. But I don’t really like to allow swiss onto the cheese menu for Independence Day.  The swiss aren’t really reliable allies and there are consequences for that.  Then there’s pepper jack, gouda and provolone I guess.  But here’s the deal, outside of pepper jack, I don’t like to get too creative with the cheese choices.  So, if you must, include some pepper jack.  But be forewarned.  Pepper jack isn’t for everybody.  Like free speech is to the left.

Finally, the meat.  Or meats.  Most, if not all, of your burgers should rightfully be beef.  Good ol’ midwestern raised beef.  If you were to compare burgers to NATO, beef is the USA.  Beef carries the entire cookout, smells great on the grill only to hear the Germans complain there isn’t any bratwurst. 

Next comes your bird meat.  Which is pretty much limited to turkey.  Turkey burgers are good.  But they’re not for Independence Day.  It’s like wearing a “I’m with AOC” shirt to a tailgate.

Your next grouping are your alternative burgers.  Elk.  Venison.  Bison.  Native to North America, high in protein and low in cholesterol.  Include them among your 4^th of July grilled meats.  Elk burgers are awesome.  Legit awesome.  Plus you feel like frontiersman eating what you kill.  Which, or course, you’re not.  You picked them up in the health section of the grocery store.  Doesn’t matter.  Wear a suede jacket with fringe and a cowboy hat when grilling these to get the full experience.

So there are some ideas for the grill.  My suggestion is you fire it up, take a pair of tongs and couple them with several ice cold beers.  Something nostalgic.  Stroh’s.  Pabst Blue Ribbon.  Old Milwaukee.  Miller High Life.  It’ll make it feel like the 70’s.  Which should seem familiar anyway with high gas prices, runaway inflation and left-wing crazies blowing up police stations…

Maximum Liberty Play List

Granted, if you’re like me the play list you listen to on Independence Day pretty much consists of Kid Rock, Toby Keith, and the theme to Monday Night Football.  That being said, I have put some thought into a potential play list for you guys.  Or at least a basic foundation from which you can enjoy cold beers, grilled burgers, the Bill of Rights and loud, colorful freedom explosions.

Just to get this out of the way, yes, every play list you develop for this weekend needs to include Lee Greenwood’s “Proud To Be An American” and Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”  If you just raised your eyebrows at that assertion, then I can only assume that you cheered for the Soviets in Lake Placid.

Aside from those reliable measures of your love for the Constitution, here are a few more suggestions.  Suggestions that were, in fact, aided by Miller Lite tallboys.

We’re Not Gonna Take It

More than once Dee Snider has called out the elite, self-appointed Ivy League overlords of both political parties who also happen to populate many of the key spots in government, media, education and finance.  So Dee and the boys paraphrased the Declaration of Independence and wrote “We’re Not Gonna Take It.” 

Born Free

Listen if you’re part of the demographic that likes driveway beers, hair metal and the First Amendment then Kid Rock is going to make sense to you.  If you’re part of the demographic who likes The View, lockdowns and Green Day, then this song isn’t for you.  If you’re confused where you fall, go to Youtube.  Watch these Kid Rock videos:  Johnny Cash, Tennessee Mountain Top and Greatest Show On Earth.  If they offend you and just don’t make any sense, you fall into the latter group. 

Coming to America and Forever in Blue Jeans

I just couldn’t decide which song deserved to be on the list so I put them both on it.   We had the 8-Track of Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits and we played it A LOT during family car trips during the summers way back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.  So nostalgia plays a role here but so do the lyrics.  Neil’s grandparents were immigrants from Poland and Russia.  Immigrants from Poland and Russia know what real facism and communism look like.  Coming to America is a tribute the Great American Melting Pot.  Forever in Blue Jeans is about how the simple things are really the important things.

Yankee Rose

July 3-6, 1986 was Liberty Weekend in America.  President Reagan led America in celebrating 100 years of the Statue of Liberty.  Yankee Rose is a 100 mph, testosterone fueled, monster truck of freedom dedicated to Lady Liberty. 

Summertime

There may not be a song on the planet that better describes a holiday weekend barbecue with friends, family and freedom more than Will Smith’s Summertime.  But if Americans unabashedly celebrating George Washington, Ayn Rand and John Rambo with grilled meats covered in cheese, Dads in jean shorts and high caliber water guns offends you, then our friendship is going to last about as long as Joe Biden’s lucidity.

Getting’ Better

Optimism is not an American trait.  It’s a human trait.  And no country on earth engenders optimism the America does.  Tesla sings it this way, “I’ve been changin’ the scene, if you know what I mean.  Good things are comin’ my way.  And now I’m livin’ my life, and I try doin’ it right, Sun shinin’ every day.”  Show up.  Work hard.  Save money.  Go to church.  Believe in yourself.  Don’t be a victim.  And when you get a chance, kick back and party like its your job.

I Wanna Rock

What?  I do.  And if you despise commies but love big guitar riffs and individual rights then a second Twister Sister song slides right into your inventory of freedom tunes.  This is the AC-130 Gunship of freedom rock songs.  Do you think the woke flag burning lockdown enthusiasts who believe America was never great and get emotional fulfillment by wearing black on the 4^th of July while fantasizing about blowing up Mt. Rushmore wanna rock?  No.  They don’t.

My Life

Billy Joel, intentionally or not, absolutely nailed an easily understood description of individual freedom perfect for Independence Day: “I don’t care what you say anymore, this is my life.  Go ahead with your own life, leave me alone.”  Amen, brother.  Amen.

Sweet Freedom

First, if you haven’t watch Running Scared in awhile, go do it on Monday.  You’ll need some time in the basement dealing with your Busch Light hangover.  This is one of those forgotten 80’s classics.  Sweet Freedom is its theme song and you really can’t go wrong when you put the word “sweet” directly in front of the word “freedom.”

Banned In The USA

When is the last time you listened to this song?  Been almost 30 years right?  Go do it.  I’ll wait…

Yeah, you get it now.

American Rock ‘n Roll

I just really like this song and it’s titled American Rock ‘n Roll.  So yeah.

East Bound and Down

Because America needs more Burt Reynolds and more black Trans-Ams.

Something To Be Proud Of

Who am I kidding here…just throw on any song from Montgomery Gentry.  You could go with Damn Right I Am, My Town or Hell Yeah pretty easily.  In fact, you should.  Add those to the list.  Because, you know, this is America and if you want to play a song you can.  I mean, at least until, Pelosi starts regulating speech and outlawing actual words.  But in the meantime, “Am I proud of where I stand? Damn right I am.”

Crazy Nights

Kiss is the OG’s of American badass pyrotechnic party rock.  Which means they represent the foundation of middle finger irreverent freedom.  Which, by the way, I share some sympathies.  Crazy Nights, besides being awesome, is about liking what you like and being who you are.  So for 50 year-old dudes who like a lot of stuff from the late 80’s and early 90’s, this song resonates.

Bonus Track – Kiss My Country Ass

Now I ain’t country.  But this song offends the same people who get offended by waving the red, white, blue on the 4^th of July so it gets a spot on the list.

There you have it.  Assuming you don’t believe the Soviets were unfairly cast as the bad guys in Red Dawn, go and celebrate American awesomeness on the 4^th of July like it was meant to be celebrated.

Mowing And Freedom

I like mowing.  Sure the first few mows of the year are tough because your back and legs aren’t in mowing shape yet.  Plus, whatever endurance and functional strength you gained from shoveling snow off your driveway and sidewalks has dissipated by the time you roll into April.  By the time you get to your first mow your body isn’t ready for mowing because you’ve spent the last month watching college basketball which requires exactly zero of the same skills it takes to nail a really quality and enjoyable mow.  However your alcohol tolerance should be at peak performance levels.

One of the top reasons I like mowing because it is good thinking time.  Some guys use their time on the shitter for thinking time.  And that’s not a bad strategy.  Nobody is coming in the bathroom while you’re in there so it’s quiet.  Pro tip if you really want to be left alone while you’re in there – make some short audible comments that end in a question mark.  Like, “hmmm?” or “what the…?” Sounds stupid doesn’t it?  It works.  But the downside is that eventually your legs fall asleep and your stuck in there like Sgt. Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon 2.  So I use my mowing time for deep thinking.

But there are some dudes who don’t like mowing.  And while I intellectually understand that these dudes exist, don’t confuse that for sort of empathy.  Generally speaking I think these dudes fall into one of two groups.  Farmers.  Or communists.

1) Farmers

Farmers don’t like mowing.  You know why?  Because they don’t make any money mowing.  They are spending money to mow.  They have to burn gas and they have to push a machine instead of riding in it.  Granted a lot of farmers have commercial grade riding mowers or an attachment to one of their assortment of tractors which allows them to not only mow really tall grass but also take down relatively small trees in the process.  Which sounds awesome.  But I guess it makes sense that if you have to spend a lot of time in a combine making money, mowing is kind of a letdown.  Mostly because they aren’t sitting in a giant air-conditioned combine guided by GPS so their rows are perfect while they listen to podcasts about FDR’s failure at the Teheran Conference in 1943.

2) Communists. 

Communists hate anything that an individual can accomplish on their own without the help of the government intelligentsia.  Mowing is a threat to everything commies believe in. 

A single individual operating with autonomy on private property?  Unacceptable. 

The ability to assess your work immediately without approval from the statist illuminati?  Forbidden.

Taking pride in one’s own work and being able to celebrate the fruits of that work?  Capitalist piggishness.

An independent Dad using varying mow patterns as an art form?  Art that doesn’t equally distribute wealth, abolish private property and glorify state reeducation camps!?!?!  To the gulag with you!

America, that’s why

So this Independence Day weekend, take joy in the mundane self-determined tasks that we often overlook.  Because we’re only one more nutjob socialist in the US Senate away from being locked in our houses again.

Also, if the opportunity arises, head down to your local fireworks retailer.  My suggestion for those of you who aren’t sure what to purchase is to look for products that are called something along the lines of “Dr. Boom’s Mad Dog TNT Eagle Claw Blaster Shells.”  Another decent guideline is look for things that recommend you stand outside of some kind of “blast zone radius.”  If something is labeled with “maximum allowed by law” or “high altitude atomic freedom storm” also should give you confidence.

Lastly, if a neighbor attempts to impose some of sort local communist diktats about noise ordinances, just respond with a simple “America, that’s why.” 

Happy Independence Day everybody.

Home School

So Iowa closed schools for the rest of the year.  Some of you think this was a decision way overdue.  Some of you think this isn’t necessary.  But all of us think it sucks.

One of the girls already knew she was home until August.  Iowa State had already decided to go fully online for the rest of the semester.  Which, if you think about it, really makes you wonder why the hell we give so much taxpayer money to these universities if they can just go ahead and do everything without a campus.

Anyway, K-12 schools got the bullet today from the Governor.  Which means the soph and senior aren’t going back.  Feel awful for our senior.  She’s having an extremely rough day.  The high school has haphazardly figured out a way to provide continuous online learning.  Safe to say, however, that the motivation for high school kids isn’t something that can be consistently counted upon.  But since we’re now officially stuck in homeschool, I’m going to make some changes.  Because, as fate would have it, I am now the school board and the principal.  So the course requirements have changed.

It has become glaring obvious that our public school district spends very little time teaching kids anything about communism and the Cold War.  This is just a rough estimate but I’d guess, percentage wise, that about ZERO percent of the time is spent on this.  So I’ve developed a new class.  It’s called Communism Sucks.  To start with we’ll spend a little time on a unit I’ve named Communism and Starvation: Best Friends.  We’ll do a case study on the relationship between authoritarianism and stupidity.  Specifically, we’ll look at the Governor of Michigan.  Additionally, we’ll look at appropriate responses to communism in our own towns.  I’ll focus on the movie Red Dawn.  Finally, we’ll write a paper on Diet-Communism.  You may know it by it’s modern name – Socialism.

My second course requirement will focus on the late 80’s and early 90’s.  It’s a class I like to describe as Cultural Studies in Awesomeness.  It is divided into three units:  Hair Metal, Movie Quotes, and The Mall.  Each Unit is subdivided into key topics.  For example the first three topics under Hair Metal are:

Joe Elliot’s shredded jeans in Pour Some Sugar On Me – A creative and rigorous look into the macro and micro impacts of shredded jeans and bad ass guitar riffs.

We’re Not Gonna Take It:  Song or The Guiding Principles of Life?  Our aim is to analyze Dee Snider’s lyrics as a unique look at the changing motivations of parents stuck at home with their kids.

Poison.  A look into the major philosophical theories about Poison and their songs, from 1986 to modern times.  The aim is for students to critically evaluate why Poison is better than virtually everything they listen to.

The last course is still in development but it focuses on life skills.  We start with a short but informative chapter called Shut The F Up and Listen.  Once we’ve mastered that, and I expect significant potholes on our journey to understanding, we move onto Chapter 2 which is called Self-Reliance and Skepticism.  We focus on simple lessons like if it smells like crap, and somebody in authority tells you that it isn’t crap, then it is probably socialism.  Chapter 3 should be amongst the favorites.  It is tentatively titled Your Feelings Are Stupid, Suck It Up and Stop Complaining.  But like I said that is just a working title.

We’ll see how it goes.  Just kinda mapping out the timeline now…

Thanksgiving Part 2

The college soph is home for Thanksgiving.  She gets the whole week.  Having her home  is one of the cool parts of Thanksgiving.  I’m also pretty sure coming home is what solidified Thanksgiving as my favorite holiday.

Thanksgiving my sophomore year of college was 1989.  And my friends and I did what everybody did that week.  We went to see Back to the Future II to find what in hell happened to Doc Brown.  The day after Turkey Day, my friends and I loaded into a buddy’s car and drove down to the Illinois Class 2A high school state championship game.  Why?  Well, our old high school was playing…and it gave us an excuse to drink a case of Milwaukee’s Best Light on our way down.  And on our way back if I remember correctly.  And, yes, it was just as awesome as it sounds.  Nothing, other than Keystone Light I suppose, says 1989 more than case of cold MBL’s.  Seriously, when Young MC’s Bust a Move was in the Top 10 and Motley Crue’s Kickstart My Heart had just debuted on the charts, how could it not be?  MBL’s and Young MC?  “This here’s a jam for all the fellas, Tryin’ to do what those ladies tell us.”

Prior to that Thanksgiving, the holiday pretty much consisted of gravy, football and putting up the Christmas tree the day after.  All of which was, of course, awesome but none of it included MBL’s.

A few years later in 1992 I was only a few weeks from graduating.  I had a buddy who was staying with us over Thanksgiving so we did what any 22 year-olds with almost no responsibilities and a lot of free time would do, we sat around all day playing Sega NHL Hockey and then went to the bar in the evening.  A few miles from my house was a bar called Sneakers.  Once we all turned 21, my friends and I spent a fair amount of time there when we were all home.  And by fair amount, I mean all the time.  All of it.  Anyway, for the first few days before Thanksgiving and after we’d exhausted ourselves playing Sega, four of us would meet at Sneakers for pitchers of Miller Lite.  But this particular Friday after Thanksgiving is what really made it my favorite holiday.  It began like the rest of week in that we’d all met at Sneakers again.  First, I figured out our waitress was a girl I went to grade school with who was two years older than me and was good friends with my older sister.  One of those cool Thanksgiving coincidences that happen when you come home.  Then, a few at a time, some of our friends from high school began to show up.

And remember this is before cellphones.  We weren’t texting each other or posting pics of ourselves announcing our location.  For whatever reason, we all just showed up.  Smaller groups.  Bigger groups.  People we hadn’t seen in awhile.  It was like Field of Dreams.  Except instead of a baseball field in a corn field, it was a bar off Rt. 14 in Crystal Lake, Illinois with cheap pitchers of Miller Lite.

For whatever reason the thing I remember the most clearly was this guy we went to high school with shows up in this really nice brand new navy blue Georgetown Hoyas Starter jacket.  Remember this was 1992 so Starter was relatively new and still pretty cool.  And the jacket had this big hood.  He was standing with his back to me and a buddy and every time he’d turn, his hood would sorta smack me in the face.  The spacing was less than optimal but this was your typical small townie bar that would get taken over by college kids during our various breaks.  Anyway, I’d finally kinda had it with the hood smacks and I said to him that he needed to either re-position himself or just move.  After all we were the first ones there and had staked out our spot and had no intention of giving it up.  I mean our waitress could come right over and hand us new pitchers without having to reach or yell over anybody.  Good spot and we were keeping it.

Turns out this guy really didn’t want to move either.  So through the night we slowly filled that big hood on his starter jacket with beer.  When he finally left the bar we were amazed he never noticed the added weight.  The jacket was water proof so it held the beer pretty well for awhile.  Still wonder if it kinda soaked him when he got in the car to leave.

And then we did the same thing on Saturday night only more of us showed up.  Because, if you drink it, they will come.  I honestly can’t remember if Georgetown Hoyas jacket guy showed up on Saturday or not.  If he did, there must not have been any hard feelings.  Or he just never really noticed his hood smelled like stale Miller Lite.

But then again, who didn’t smell like stale Miller Lite after an unplanned high school reunion at the local townie bar during Thanksgiving Break in college?

http://www.chroniclesofdad.wordpress.com

 

 

Things You Learn at Conferences

What is the easiest part of high school?  Seriously.  What is it?  For me it was probably developing an overabundance of unearned confidence.  But when you’re 17 and rocking the Reeboks and Levi’s jacket, its tough not to be cool.

Now I realize that high school was awesome for some people and horrible for others.  We all have our own story to tell…unless you’re Elizabeth Warren in which case you have a multitude of stories to tell depending upon which Democratic Primary voters on the intersectionality scale you hope to woo.  Weird how manufactured victimhood has become a lot like an exclusive country club in which only the most victimized are admitted.  But I’m just a simple midwestern Gen-X Dad who likes football and hair metal.  I’m sure I’m just not cultured enough to understand.  Anyway, easiest part of high school was what?

Senior year?  Good guess but my feeling is that it was more awesome than easy.  Lunch?  Maybe but then again I ate pizza every single day for 4 years.  Gym class?  Nope.  I had gym 1st hour freshman year and it sucked.  S-U-C-K-E-D…sucked!

Turning in your assignments.  That’s the easiest part.  You might be scoffing at that because you fought your way through geometry and Spanish and it was the opposite of easy.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.  I completely agree that some of those classes weren’t easy and doing the work was difficult.  But how hard is it to turn in your work after you’ve completed it?  I mean the actual act of turning it in.  Not doing the work.  The simple physical process of handing your teacher a piece of paper.  The simple process clicking on the attachment icon to place your already completed work into an email and then clicking the send button.

It is evidently harder for our sophomore to do that than it is for the NFL to figure out what in the hell constitutes pass interference.  C’mon Goodell, how in the hell do you keep getting worse at your job?  Recently, we had conferences at the high school.  Conferences consist of all the teachers sitting at tables located throughout the building in the hallways, cafeteria and library.  The parents drop by for 5 minute talks to get an update on what the hell their kids are actually doing in class.  I was initially skeptical of this process but it turns out it is really not so bad.  I mean aside from those parents who spend 20 minutes quizzing the teacher why their kid is getting an A- instead of an A.  Geez, people, just take the win…

But our kid seems to be honing a different and distinct skill.  The art of completing all your homework and other assignments on time but then just not turning them in.  It’s kinda like going 17-0 through the regular season and playoffs and losing the Super Bowl.  You gotta finish.  So when we went into the conferences last week, school had been going on for about 6 weeks.  As we moved from teacher to teacher a pattern developed.  The sophomore was doing well in all her classes.  All her teachers enjoyed having her in class.  But they were all a bit frustrated that she had so many missing assignments.  How many you ask?  She had 10 missing assignments.  Ten in six weeks.

Who in the hell does the work but doesn’t turn it in?  Who does the work but doesn’t care if they have anything to show for it?  I mean besides Adam Schiff.  I mean its not like she’s enjoying geometry.  If she’s going to do the work, she might as well get credit for it!  Nope.  Not the sophomore.

“Hey kiddo are you turning in your assignments at school?”

“Yes.  Why?”

“Because we just got back from conferences and you’re missing ten assignments.”

“Wait, what?  I’ve done all of them.  Everything.  I’m not behind in any of my classes.”

“Fair enough, but have you actually turned in the assignments?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you transferred physical ownership of the assignments from yourself to your teachers?”

“Ah, I see where your going here.”

Turns out she really is doing just fine in all her classes but she evidently wants to keep that a secret from her teachers.  Bold strategy.  We’ll see how it works out for her…

 

More Thoughts On California

Here’s a few more details on our trip to the left coast.

On Wednesday, after deciding that I really didn’t need to see Once Upon A Time In Hollywood for a second time in two days – despite it’s obvious awesomeness –  I decided to head back to Erik’s Deli for lunch before driving the 10ish minutes down the highway to Santa Cruz.  Never been to Santa Cruz so I thought I’d take a look around.  As I mentioned in my previous post,  I didn’t have a lot to do while Mom was at her conference.

So here’s the thing about Erik’s Deli.  They evidently only serve one sandwich.  Oh, they have an entire menu of sandwiches.  Cold ones, warm ones.  Veggie sandwiches and various wraps.  But regardless of what you order, you get one sandwich.  Here’s the deal, Tuesday I ordered a sandwich called the Farmer’s Market.  It’s a veggie extravaganza.  It’s ingredients include 9-grain bread piled high with avocado, sunflower seeds, sliced pickles, mushrooms, grated carrots, red bell pepper, onions, tomato, clover sprouts, lettuce and Erik’s sweet hot mustard.  What I actually ate was a sandwich on 9-grain bread with avocado, turkey breast, Swiss cheese, red bell pepper, onions, tomato, clover sprouts and Erik’s sweet hot mustard.

But it was so good I didn’t complain.  Plus I don’t know the rules about complaining in California and I was afraid there was some state law about offending the sandwich artist’s sensibilities which would get me sent to Progressive Re-Education Camp.

Since I’m a staunch supporter of consistency, I went back on Wednesday.  This time I ordered a sandwich called the Sweet Liberty.  It consists of turkey breast, Swiss cheese, red bell pepper, onions, tomato, clover sprouts and Erik’s sweet hot mustard on hearty 9-grain bread.  Eerily similar to what I ate on Tuesday except it didn’t included the added Tuesday bonus of avocados.

What I ate was exactly the same sandwich I ate Tuesday.

So next time you’re in Scott’s Valley, remember, it doesn’t matter what you order at Erik’s, you’re getting turkey and avocados on everything.

With my new addiction to avocados taking hold, I drove down to Santa Cruz and sorta tooled around downtown a bit before stopping at a Patagonia Outlet and then at the local library to write a blog post and read my book about how Gen X needs to save America from millennials.  Because, well, we do.

Anyway, here’s what I noticed – downtown Santa Cruz is kinda crappy.  They clearly are in the midst of revitalizing parts of it but I’m not sure that’s gonna matter.  Why?  Homeless.  I don’t know how or why Californians put up with this.  As I was in the library at least three dudes wandered around loudly talking jibberish or some kind previously unheard language.  One dude, who wasn’t talking at all, but looked like an out of work extra from a surfer movie, sat down at the table next to me.  Put both hands flat on the table in front of him and sat there nearly motionless for the 30-40 minutes.  Wasn’t weird at all.

When I left to go pick up Mom back in Scott’s Valley – which, by the way, didn’t have any homeless people that I noticed – I had to walk out the front door and into a loosely congregated group of about 20-30 homeless people.  I was happy my car was parked in a lot off to the side so I was able to take a quick left turn and avoid the panhandling.  Don’t really have any thoughts on this other than most of these people don’t appear to be playing with a full deck.  Either they have some mental health issues and/or they’re really into amateur self-administered chemistry.

Geez, California, get your sh*t together.

I grabbed Mom and we headed over to Capitola, which after experiencing downtown Santa Cruz, is evidently the nice half of the town.  We ate dinner and walked around a little before heading to Monterey down Highway 1 to check into our hotel.

The hotel Mom booked?  Well, if you wanted to travel back in time to 1981 it was perfect.  Had it’s own wood burning fireplace, stocked with firewood and newspaper folded into a decorative fan shape and to top it off, we had a complimentary hot air popcorn popper.  Also they leave the door not only unlocked for you when you arrive, they leave it wide freaking open.  Which is pretty awesome for a unit located on the ground floor.  Plus, as a bonus, the windows didn’t lock.  So we unloaded the car and spent the next hour and a-half looking for another hotel.  We reloaded the car and politely checked out.  Ended up with a room a the Holiday Inn Express for nearly the same price and helluva lot closer to all the stuff we wanted to see.  In fact, it was within walking distance of the whale watching cruise we were schedule to do Thursday morning.

After leaving the Burglary Motel, we thought whale watching was going to be pretty fun.

We showed up on time and the crew gave us the mandatory pre-cruise talk before departing for the 4 hour trip.  The boat’s crew included a couple naturalists and a marine biologist.  Pretty handy in case we see some marine wildlife.  Their talk included some key points of information.  First, most people will get a least a little seasick.  Second, some of those people will throw up.  Third, if you haven’t taken any seasickness medicine, take some.  Fourth, people are going to launch off the back of the boat.  And finally, when you are blowing chow don’t do it from the upper deck or the side of the boat.  Nobody wants to wear whatever you happened to eat for breakfast.  So do it from the back of the boat.

Turns out if you go to school to be a naturalist or a marine biologist and you work on a whale watching boat, part of your daily duties is to clean up barf.  Money well spent on that degree I guess.

So when you go whale watching off the coast of California, you’re on the open ocean.  The ocean is big.  The swells were big enough that when the boat was the bottom of the swell, the water at the top of swell was physically higher than us.  That was, um, disconcerting.  Especially the time the whale was at the top of the swell.  I took a pretty firm position near the back of the boat put my full faith in the anti-seasickness medicine.  I asked one of the naturalists how people normally shoot for distance off the back of the boat.  She said at least 2-3 every trip.  We evidently got lucky because I counted at least 7.

We drove down to Carmel to top off the trip before flying home on Friday.  Carmel is beautiful.  I’m not exaggerating.  It is literally beautiful.  Also expensive.  1,500 square foot houses going for $1.5 million too.  But you get these views.

So after much thought, I’ve decided to just look at these pics instead of dropping the $1.5 mil.  But that’s just me…

Crazy Nights and Hamburgers

So I went to see Kiss on Tuesday night.  It is, afterall, the Final Tour Ever.  First thing is Paul Stanley still sings everything.  No backup singers.  When I saw Motley Crue in 2012, Vince Neal barely sang anything.  He had two backup singers and I’m pretty damn sure those two ladies carried him through that entire concert.  Paul singing all the songs was almost as impressive as him wearing a vest throughout the show without a shirt underneath.  A 67 year-old dude in all his hairy chested glory.  Go Paul!

Second, Crazy Nights is a great song.  Never really realized it before but it kinda has the same message as We’re Not Gonna Take It.  And nobody likes a good solid rock song that gives the middle finger to the elite know-it-alls more than me.  The music snobs like to rip hair metal for its lack of sophistication, its lack of social messaging and its embrace of over the top cheesiness.  Well, screw you.  Go listen to Green Day and hang out with Pete Buttigieg and scold us for being part of the problem because we like to eat hamburgers.  And by the way, what the hell is the deal with the left and it’s war on tailgating?  AOC wants to ban cows, Mayor Pete says if you eat hamburgers you’re part of the problem.  Cows/hamburgers are the backbone of the American Tailgating Experience.  But again, I’m just a simple 49 year-old Midwestern Dad who likes football, hamburgers and hair metal.  If that means I’m part of the problem, well, like Paul sings in Crazy Nights – “And they try to tell us that we don’t belong, But that’s alright, we’re millions strong, You are my people, you are my crowd, this is our music, we love it loud.”

Third, you don’t see it much anymore but Kiss is just 3 guitars and drums.  And explosions.  And flamethrowers.  And Gene spitting blood.  And Paul suspended from a rope flying over the crowd.  It was pretty cool.

Last, nobody knows how to finish a show like Kiss.  Last song was I Wanna Rock And Roll All Night.  Complete with beach balls falling from the arena ceiling and about 15 confetti cannons going off during the song.  Add in the whole arena screaming at high volume and you have a recipe for pandemonium.  It was eerily reminiscent of my senior prom when one guy, a huge Kiss fan, got up on a table in white tux with tails and used his white cane as a microphone and belted out I Wanna Rock And Roll All Night when the DJ played it.  And that was also awesome.

I’m patiently waiting for the next hair metal band to stop in Des Moines.  Because I’m gonna be there.  And I’m gonna have a cheeseburger.  And a crappy non-craft beer.  And its gonna be freaking awesome.