The Queen of Trash Abdicates

Congratulations are due to my mother-in-law. She retired today from her job as the Superintendent of the Sanitation Division in the Public Works Department for the City of Harrisonburg, Virginia. Way to go, Meki! You're only 18 years ahead of me.

Not Worth It

At work this morning, several of us were in the break room waiting on the first pot of coffee to finish brewing. One of my co-workers, a project manager, was especially anxious. She said she had checked her email first and really needed to get back to her desk. I remarked, with humorous intent, that the only way that could have sounded worse would be if she checked it on her Blackberry. She agreed, said that her husband had given his back, and that it wasn't conducive to her personal life to have a boss that would email her at 10:30 on a Friday night and expect a nearly immediate response.

I recognize that I have a responsibility, indeed an obligation, to be available for application coverage. That's been part of my professional reality for over 20 years; being on-call is part of a programmer's job. Sometimes that requires, for a short period, 24/7 availability.

I reject the notion that a corporation has any more of a claim than that on me, not without a lot more loyalty and commitment than the workplace gives any employee these days.

Relay 2009

Has your life been touched by cancer, in any way? Have you taken care of someone stricken with this disease? Have you rejoiced with someone who has been cured of it? Have your mourned someone who died from it?

We understand, and we want to help. We're Team Investing in a Cure, with the 2009 Greensboro Relay For Life. Each of us has been touched in some way by cancer, and we're helping the American Cancer Society fight back.

On Friday night, May 15th, you can find us, with a bunch of other teams, around the track at Page High School in Greensboro. We're going to keep someone on the track all night. Why? Cancer doesn't sleep, so for one night we're not going to. We're going to play games, hold raffles, have a silent auction, listen to music, and eat good food. Why? To celebrate that we're alive and fighting back, and to raise money to expand the fight. We're going to line the track with luminaries that will be lit at 9:00 pm and shine the rest of the night. Why? To celebrate our survivors, honor our caregivers, and remember those we lost.

We want your support. Send us pictures of loved ones who have been stricken with cancer, and we will use them on our Relay campsite Wall of HOPE; after all, where are we against cancer without hope?

We want to support you. Are you yourself a cancer survivor? Register at the Greensboro Relay website, and come join us for a dinner in your honor on May 15th. Then, take part in the Survivors' Lap. This is the first lap of the 2009 Relay For Life, and there will be literally thousands of people cheering you on.

We want your support. Come out to Relay and see what it's all about. Cheer on the survivors. Purchase a chance in a raffle. Play a game. Bid on something at the silent auction. Get something to eat at a team's campsite. All the money you spend at Relay is donated to the American Cancer Society.

We want to support you. The American Cancer Society funds research for cancer cures, legislative advocacy, support programs for those afflicted with cancer, and cancer education.

We want your support. In the end, it takes money for any health-related issue, and cancer is one of the biggest. Any amount, no matter how little, helps.

If you'd like more information about Relay For Life in general, visit here. Visit our team Investing In A Cure to donate or to join the fight.

I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you to Meg Gardiner, who writes mighty fine thrillers, for mentioning us on her blog lying for a living. Buy her books!

The Forgotten

There are days that I purely hate the image that my beloved country presents not only to the world, but to me and my fellow Americans. Witness this.

I really don't care so much about the name "Freedom Tower" being lost. It was an insult to the lives lost on 9/11 that the site of the Twin Towers wasn't consecrated as a memorial to those people and left alone. No, it was dedicated as a temple to commerce, and now the sop of the first skyscraper name is being thrown aside as the temple is rededicated.

Contrast this to the Gettysburg National Military Park. Or to the Bayonne Teardrop, a memorial to the 9/11 victims by a Russian sculptor.

To New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was quoted thus in the CNN.com story I cited above: From a patriotic point of view, is it going to make any difference? Yes, Mr. Mayor, it is going to make a difference. We do not become any safer, nor do we become any more solid a people, when naked commerce wins at the expense of the memory of lives stolen by people who hate us.

RIP Dan Seals

The first headline I saw on CMT.com this morning announced the death of Dan Seals from lymphoma at age 61.

"Who?", you may be asking. In the 1970s, he was half of the duo England Dan and John Ford Coley; their biggest hit was I'd Really Love To See You Tonight. It was a nice piece of pop fluff, but I was partial to the title cut of the album that song came from, Nights Are Forever. I have a very fond memory of listening to this song on the radio at my grandparents' house; that would've been 1976. Grandmama was still alive, and Granddaddy's mind was not yet lost to dementia. Both of these things had changed by the next summer.

The pop duo lasted into the early 1980s. After they broke up, Dan Seals moved to country music. According to the CMT.com story, he had eleven #1 songs during his country career, including Bop, Meet Me In Montana (a duet with Marie Osmond), and Everything That Glitters (Is Not Gold). He won CMA awards for the first two.

The Dan Seals song that made the biggest impression on me was They Rage On. It's got a gorgeous melody that Seals' voice simply fits, the instrumental arrangement is a perfect accompaniment to the melody, and the lyrics have a melancholy-yet-not-quite-despairing feel. It's the kind of country song that I easily fall in love with. Here, courtesy of Youtube, is the video.



Thank you, Mr. Seals, for some especially poignant recollections.

Knowing

Just got back from the latest Nicholas Cage flick, and all in all, this one's a loser. It simply can't make up it's mind what kind of story it wants to tell. Is it an end-of-the world disaster movie? Is it about numerology? Is it about faith vs rationality? Is it a low budget horror film? Is it trying to rip off Childhood's End or Inconstant Moon?

There are a lot of ambitious stories that hit almost all of these themes. The successful ones are grounded in their characters. In Knowing, the actors are neither powerful enough in their performances nor generous enough in their characterizations to rise above the flaws in the story. Don't bother, even with Netflix.

Further Reflections On The Battlestar Galactica Finale

Can't help myself, it's not often that a television show engages the mind as well as the emotions.

Here be spoilers.

• I was not surprised that the resolution of the series would bring the survivors of the Twelve Colonies here. That's a common trope in both science fiction and New Age pseudo-science (remember von Daniken's "Chariots of the Gods" from the 1970s). The unexpected part was that the BSG survivors got here so far back in our past: 150,000 years!



• The time capsule approach to time travel was pretty cool. No deus ex machina here, as long as you discount the FTL jump technology.



• It felt like an appropriate and proportionate response that Boomer and Tory received rough justice at the hands of Athena and Tyrol, respectively.



• It comes as no surprise that a show that demands you take faith seriously would demand you do the same with angels. The identity of the angels, though? That, my friends, requires a bit more pondering.



• For a show with such an Old Testament feel, the redemption of Gaius Baltar was a nice touch.



• Lee Adama, Luddite! It's rare to see a story deal with a society that uses high technology to survive long enough to reach a point that they can recognize how their use of that technology is damaging them spiritually, that decides to discard their technology so that they can start anew, and that actually follows through on the decision. That's moral courage, people.



• If my count is correct, the role of Moses in this drama took four parts: Adama, Roslin, Starbuck, and "Galactica" herself. And they all got to see the Promised Land, even though none of them got to dwell there.



• Our last image before the fade to the ending credits was of Six and Baltar, arm-in-arm walking away from us, becoming lost in the Manhattan crowd. With the strong notion of cycles throughout not only this episode but the entire series, I'm trying to remember if the miniseries began with them arm-in-arm walking toward us? I'm thinking no, that it began with Six alone, in her sexy red dress, on her way to meet Baltar. If that's not a false memory, then I'll leave BSG taking away the message that cycles of destruction can be broken, and that we certainly, no matter who we are and what we've done, do not have to end up alone.

They Have A Plan...

The series finale of BSG had its share, and more, of holy frak moments tonight. I found it very satisfying, from the frantic moments of combat to the awe inspiring sight of ships deliberately flying into the sun to the Return of the King-like multiple goodbyes at the end. I'm a sucker for a good redemption story, and there were several redemptive threads here.

It's refreshing to see a very SFnal story that not only doesn't ridicule faith, but embraces it as essential to life.

It's also fitting that the Sci Fi channel is bidding farewell to its most critically and popularly lauded show in the same week that it has announced that it is changing its name to "SyFy". The network's press release said that the new name is more of an "extensible brand", one that will be free of connotations of -- and I paraphrase here -- video game loving geeks who live in their parents' basements, and will appeal more to females. Talk about dissing your core audience...

Given the pure dreck that "SyFy" usually broadcasts, it's also fitting that some marketing genius missed, as has been pointed out widely on the Net this week, that "syfy" idiomatically translates as a venereal disease in Polish, and as excrement in at least one Nordic language.

It's rather fascinating to watch a whole cable network jump the shark.

Think about it...

This is a pregnant sentence

24 and the Shark

How, in this post-modern metaworld where everything is a reference to and a comment upon itself, does a television show jump the shark twice? I ask because, last night, 24 did it again.

There's never been another show to compare to 24. Each season, one day, 24 episodes, each occurring in real-time, a massive conspiracy, and America survives because of one man. Jack Bauer. It shouldn't have worked the first time, not when the big event in the debut episode was a terrorist blowing an airliner with several hundred passengers aboard out of the sky. And she escaped. Not when that episode was delayed in the aftermath of 9/11.

As a reader primarily of science fiction, fantasy, and suspense thrillers, I long ago learned to bring a willing suspension of disbelief to my reading. It's a required tool, more so in these genres than in fiction at large, and it transfers to the medium of television quite well. Without it, I could never be a fan of such a show as 24, as I was for its first five seasons.

You see, 24 has always had large credibility gaps in its story lines. It also had the uncanny ability to take its lead character, put him in the most outrageously stressed situations, lead him up to the very edge of a gaping hole in credibility, and have him successfully cross it on a tightrope made from the tautest razor's edge of suspense. It worked, not only because of the always unbearably heightening tension, but because of the character of Jack Bauer.

Take a fundamentally decent man, one with a seemingly endless ability to love (especially something larger than himself), with a driving need to protect that which he loves, and with self-discipline to shame a centurion. Train him in the myriad uses of deadly force. You then have a warrior, whose one and only priority is his mission.

You have Jack Bauer.

That is why the first five seasons of 24 worked, because Jack Bauer was always a soldier, fighting to protect something worthy of his devotion. It helped that for the first four seasons, as well as his country and her people, he had a leader, in first Senator and then President David Palmer, who was worthy of the mission. And, of course, season five was about avenging the death of David Palmer, among other fallen comrades.

In season six, there was no tighter focus than the amorphous threat to the country. And, lacking that tighter focus, there was no way to anchor that tightrope of suspense, no way to make it over the widening craters of the plot holes. After five seasons in which missing an episode of 24 was a reason for a week-long depressive funk, I quit watching the show with a half dozen episodes left. I still don't know what happened in the season six finale, and I really don't care.

I had no intention of watching season seven, but a week before the season premier, Fox rebroadcast 24: Redemption, the movie from last November that set up a reboot of the series. It was a dead night for television otherwise, and it piqued my interest. So, I started season seven the next week. And was caught up in the old 24 fashion.

Until last night.

An attack on the White House by commandos under the personal leadership of an African warlord? A Secret Service force that doesn't at the first sign of a threat move the President to a completely secure location? A Secret Service force, where every man is a deadly marksman, that knows it's facing armed men, manages to set up a somewhat protected position, and doesn't take down at least as many men from the opposing force as it loses? The evil warlord finds a White House staffer alone in an office on the phone, tells her to hang up, she complies, he guns her down, and then takes as a hostage the first armed man his force compels to put down his pistol? The commandos have complete electronic control of the White House, including the combination to the armored door of the panic room? The commandos manage to capture the President's daughter, who refused to listen to the advice of a seasoned and trusted security agent, which might have kept her safe? The President, upon seeing her daughter in the warlord's power, telling the one person in the panic room with her -- Jack Bauer!!! -- to open the door so she can keep her daughter from being killed? Jack Bauer complying, without reminding the President of how many men have already died this night to keep her safe?

It doesn't work, not for me. 24 requires a complicated balancing act, dancing as it always does on the edge of a precipice. It's a tribute to a large number of creative people that it pulled it off for most of five seasons and that it succeeded in a series reboot after jumping the shark in season six. Last night, however, was a profound disappointment that has, once again, shattered my willingness to suspend disbelief.

RIP Paul Harvey

And now, he knows...the rest of the story.

RIP Howard Zieff

It's the rare 1 minute TV ad that's truly memorable almost 40 years later. Howard Zieff starred -- yes, starred -- in the Alka-Selzter "Spicy Meatball" commercial, which is right up there with the Mean Joe Green Coke spot, as far as I'm concerned.



After this, he went on to direct movies, including Private Benjamin. I got more enjoyment from Mr. Zieff than I ever knew.

A Sig Line

Back in the days when I was a regular poster on Usenet forums, I used to read and write posts with pithy or humorous signatures, "sig lines." Lisa and I first became friends through the alt.books.dean-koontz forum, a couple of years before we ever met in person, and it's a joke between us to take some absurd statement and say, "I feel a sig line coming on."

This morning, Lisa was cleaning out a closet in one of the spare bedrooms, and our cat Blazer snuck in when I opened the bedroom door to ask her something. If he were allowed free run of the room, Blazer would end up in closed into some nook or cranny at the back of the closet and mewling pitifully in the dark for hours, until we finally managed to figure where he was and let him out. It's happened before.

I picked him up and carried him out into the hall. Lisa followed and handed me a nice pair of scissors to put in a utility drawer. I hugged her, and out of my mouth popped, "I have a cat, a pair of scissors, and a hot woman." She said, "The hot woman's leaving the room before you figure out what you're going to do with them." I replied, "I feel a sig line coming on."

It's probably a good thing the thought went no farther.

When Song Titles Collide

One morning a while back, as Lisa and I were talking before getting out of bed, two country song titles collided in my mind, and this is what crawled out of the wreckage:

If I Said You had a Beautiful Body, Would You Dropkick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life?

Ya think?

Courtesy of xkcd:

The Songs Transcendant

Have you ever heard a song that, on your first listen, left you rapt, somewhere else, lost in a moment where time itself halted? Where a conduit opened between you and Truth? I have, twice.

Both times have happened in the last decade, after I turned 40. The number itself is not, I believe, significant; what is meaningful is that I finally had enough experience at life to realize what I was hearing. This probably means that there were other times that I missed such an experience, but what of that? It's the times I was aware of that are of consequence, not the ones I wasn't.

Each song was marked by an uncommon richness of compassion, imagery, and melody; they're each a draught of fine vintage, not to be cavalierly decanted.

The first one was Alan Jackson's stunning composition Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning). I saw his first public performance of the song at the 2001 CMA Awards, and I knew that we had begun healing from our national trauma of 9/11. Yes, that's a lot to pile on a five minute song, but it's sturdy enough to bear up under the load.

The second one was Live Like You Were Dying. Tim McGraw didn't write this story of how precious life becomes when it's at risk of slipping away, but he owns it. This song has a special resonance with Lisa and I, as both of our mothers are cancer survivors. It also has a dangerous side; that first time I heard it and was whisked away for an infinite moment, I was driving on Battleground Avenue here in Greensboro. My automatic pilot must've been in a state of grace, as I and the drivers I passed all survived my musical fugue.

Both AJ and Tim are consistent entertainers, have been for 20 and 15 years respectively. With these songs, they became artists of enduring stature, and we have been uplifted along with them.

Thoughts on the Grammies

• I find Robert Plant and Alison Krauss' Album of the Year win most pleasing.


• Their other wins were equally gratifying. I had my doubts that they would beat Coldplay in the categories where they went head-to-head.


• Sugarland's win for Best Country Performance for a Group or Duo for Stay is vexing to me. The song has a beautiful melody, and Jennifer Nettles always delivers it with exquisite emotion. My problem with it is the subject matter, despite country's tradition of cheating songs; I was cheated on, and I absolutely do not give a shit about the other man/woman's feelings.


• Paul McCartney and B.B. King had fantastic energy in their performances. Let's hear it for the old guys!


• Who let the president of NARAS out of the asylum? He did not seriously propose a "Secretary of the Arts" for President Obama's cabinet, did he? Government oversight of the arts, anyone? Anyone?

This is a Surprise, and not a Good One

Sports Illustrated has reported today on their website that Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids during 2003, the year he won his first American League MVP award. He's a supremely talented baseball player who plays a truly bush league game that deserves a lot of contempt, but I would've bet good money that he wasn't chemically enhanced.

Crap.

Taken

Taken stars Liam Neeson as retired CIA "preventer" Brian Mills, one who kept bad things from happening. He was a dedicated operative who lost his marriage and poisoned his relationship with his 17 year old daughter Kim (Maggie Grace, who played Shannon on Lost). He has retired and moved to Los Angeles to try to have a relationship with her, but it's really rocky.

Since Kim is legally a minor, she has to get Brian's signed permission on a legal document to leave the country when she wants to take month-long Parisian vacation with her 19 year old best friend Amanda. Because of his background, he's reluctant to say yes, but he finally does. With conditions - that she takes an international cell phone programmed with his number. That she calls when her flight lands at Orly Airport. That she call him every night. And that he take her to LAX. Of course, she agrees.

At the airport, Kim rushes in to find Amanda while Brian unloads and trundles her luggage. As he's doing this, he finds a map of Europe in her wide-open humongous purse; there are multiple cities circled throughout the continent, with a date beside the city. His ex arrives in a limo at this point, and when he asks her if she knew what this is, she tells him that Kim and Amanda are following U2 on several dates of a European tour.

And why wasn't he told? Because Kim can't live with his restrictions and feels she has to lie to get a measure of freedom to do a normal teen "thing", which her mother agrees with, so that Kim can begin to get a measure of the "real world". The retirement thing is really hitting a rocky patch.

Kim and Amanda meet Peter when they arrive in Paris and are waiting on a taxi to take them to a condo owned by some on Amanda's cousins. Unfortunately for the girls, Peter is a spotter for a gang of expatriate Albanian who kidnap such young women and sells them into the sex trade.

Kim and Brian are talking on the phone, after she forgot to call on the agreed schedule, when the kidnappers break into the condo and grab Amanda. Brian coaches Kim into a taking a momentary hiding place, dropping the phone on the floor, and yelling out everything she sees as she is dragged away.

One of the kidnappers picks up the phone; we hear only his breathing. Brian tells him that he has no money for a ransom, but he does have "a particular set of skills...that make me a nightmare for a man like you." If the kidnappers leave Kim, it's over; otherwise, Brian will track them down and kill them. The kidnapper says "Good luck" and hangs up.

The movie has, to this point, had a rather leisurely pace, building slowly to this confrontation. Now, the pace rockets faster and faster, with no let up from the building tension and suspense.

Brian Mills is hypercompetent, and he is willing to do anything necessary to recover his daughter, which has fatal consequences for everyone who gets in his way.

This story has a feel a lot like that of The Day of the Jackal, one of the true classics of the suspense thriller genre. Make sure that you are well rested before seeing Taken, as the sustained adrenaline rush will leave you well and truly wrung out.

RIP James Whitmore

James Whitmore passed away today at age 87. He appeared in many a TV western and had a memorable turn in The Shawshank Redemption, but will probably be remembered the longest for his one man portrayals of Will Rogers and, in one of the most accomplished bits of acting it has been my privilege to see, of Harry S. Truman in Give 'em Hell, Harry. Enjoy.

Harken Back to the Days of Old...

...back in January, when I last posted on TV. Last night's Battlestar Galactica did not disappoint. I'd say RIP for a couple of characters, but it doesn't fit. Even though they were fictional, they were evil, one by design, the other by character drift. So, burn in Hell Tom Zarek and Felix Gaetta, and good riddance.

RIP Billy Powell

Lynyrd Skynyrd's keyboard player is with Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and company again. Another Freebird remembered.

Super Bowl Thoughts

• Sloppy, sloppy play, with all the penalties.
• Low class of the Steelers to get hit with so many unsportsmanlike conduct penalties.
• Al Michaels may be very knowledgeable about football, but he really sucks as an announcer. Really, what was that comment concerning Somalian pirates?
• James Harrison, that was a lovely, lovely pick to end the first half. I don't think you ran the ball back 100 yards much faster than I could have.
• The Pittsburgh defense played the 4th quarter like they wanted Arizona to win.
• Both offenses played the last five minutes to win. That is what I want to see in my sports.
• I was not at all disappointed with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at halftime.
• Bottom line: Steelers 27, Cardinals 23.

Where TV Has Shone This Week, With Quibbles

This has, in my estimation, been one of the best weeks of television in quite a while. Here's why.

1. The Big Bang Theory gets funnier with every episode. If Sheldon had any more neuroses, they could get group rates. Now, if only the show would lose the patently phony laugh track...
2. 24 is back on track, both in the sharp, tension filled storytelling and in the gaping plot holes. The former speaks for itself; the latter: well, how are we supposed to believe that the villains would kill the president's son, leave his girlfriend alive and bribed, and then kill her when the president's husband gets the least bit of evidence of their plot? Just how ruthless are these conspirators supposed to be?!
3. Lost was constantly mind-boggling this week. There is almost no telling exactly when each story strand is taking place, and yet I feel like I'm getting answers. And when we learned that Desmond and Penny name their son Charlie...ah, that's how poignancy should be handled.
4. Battlestar Galactica has finally thrown off the despondency! I loved Adama and Tigh's Last Stand, and I am greatly anticipating Mr. Gaetta's demise; this is what I've been expecting from the last episodes of this excellent series.

Marley & Me

I've been wanting to see Marley & Me ever since it was released at Christmas. We usually attend weekend matinees, but the last several weeks, we've either had family commitments out of town, or I've had to work. After I had to put in 8 hours last Sunday to back out a database runtime client upgrade that didn't work, instead of the one I was expecting to, I asked Lisa to go to an evening show this week. You can't count on a movie to still be showing in a first run theater much longer than a month these days.

So, what about another family comedy featuring a dumb mutt? Well, if that's what you're expecting of this movie, I'm sorry to disappoint you. Sure, you've got Owen Wilson playing another sad sack looking guy -- as if he could play anything else, with his face. As John Grogan, he's a believable reporter turned columnist, and he's got the inspiration of "the worst dog in the world" in yellow lab Marley.

Marley was a present to his wife Jenny, the runt of his litter, the one that the dog breeder will let go to 2/3 the price of his brothers and sisters. That leads Jenny, who is gorgeously played by Jennifer Anniston, to dub him "Clearance Puppy". The present was suggested by John's friend and professional colleague Sebastian, as a way to shut down her biological clock for a few years, to distract her from wanting a child. And it works, long enough for John to reach the point he's ready to start a family.

In the meantime, Marley is a force of nature. A destructive force. And he remains so through the Grogan family changes: kids, old jobs ended, new homes, new jobs begun. Whatever happens, Marley is a constant.

Until old age catches up to him. Until the vet can't make him better anymore. Until John can tell this well-loved mutt that he is indeed "the greatest dog in the world", and say good bye.

This movie deals with laughter, with high and low points in a marriage, with career triumphs, with regrets that come with choices that cut off other options in life, with bringing new life into the world, with postpartum depression, with loving well and deeply, and with loss. Marley's passing is not quite Old Yeller tragic, but it is heart-rending.

We are left with the final scene of the Grogan family burying Marley in their front yard, with the final words in voiceover from one of the John Grogan's columns: A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.

Marley & Me touches genuine emotions, genuine family issues. It's a movie with a soul.

Best Line From Last Night's Lost Premier

It was when Hurley told Sayid, "You know, maybe if you ate more comfort food you wouldn't have to go around shooting people."

On This Inauguration Day...

...no shot rang out on the National Mall.

...there were no arrests among the 2 million visitors to Washington, DC.

...a lot of people set our new president up to fail. No one can deliver on all the expectations of being a rock star and messiah rolled into one, and he will be blamed for not delivering everything to everyone.

...Barack Obama gave an inaugural speech to all Americans.

...America proved, once again, that the world's oldest social and political revolution still works.

The Evolution Of A Playlist

Several months ago, I posted a long piece about my Palm PDA which included my Favorite Songs playlist. Well, while I do truly like every song on that playlist, I've been pondering it seriously. And, a few of the songs just had to be swapped out for others.

Here's the new list. I'm noting which ones are holdovers and sketching why the new ones have been added.

1. Enya's Watermark is a lovely and restful interlude, which I believe is exactly what she was aiming for.
2. Bridge Over Troubled Water is a holdover. It's one of my beacons of hope.
3. The Eagles were always at their best when the song was downbeat, both lyrically and in tempo. After the Thrill is Gone fits the bill on both those counts. Glenn Frey and Don Henley share lead vocals, and the instrumental arrangement, especially the steel guitar, heightens the lonely emotional affect. This is a seriously melancholy song, which really fit me when I was a teenager, and it's now a reminder of who I was, of where my life has taken me.
4. John Fogerty's Centerfield is a celebration of playing for love of the game.
5. Tattoos and Scars is about the difference between choosing to mark yourself and accepting that life is going to leave its mark on you, between acting like you have experience and actually having it. Listening to Montgomery Gentry singing "You've been around but you're still green" is an act of grace in and of itself.
6. When You Come Back Down is a holdover. I'd like to think I'm someone's solid ground.
7. The Lucky One is an ode to a happy-go-lucky guy, and Alison Krauss' wistful vocal captures the character of the song perfectly...To you, the next best thing to playing and winning is playing and losing...
8. Anything But Mine is a holdover. I never tire of its Hillbilly Rockstar vibe.
9. Waitin' On A Woman has been my favorite Brad Paisley song for quite a while, because it captures a lot of my relationship with my wife Lisa. Sorry, honey, but remember how the song ends: When it finally comes my time, and I get to the other side, I'll find myself a bench, if they have any. I hope she takes her time, cause I don't mind, waitin' on a woman. Honey, take your time, cause I don't mind, waitin' on a woman. I waited on you, my woman, most of my life, and it's been the most worthwhile thing in the world.
   The video, with Andy Griffith as the old man, is just rich, creamy icing on the cake.
10. Nothing characterizes the human spirit better than sheer cussed persistence. I know of no other song that captures this like Sugarland's Stand Back Up. It's a gorgeous number, and it means all the more because it's a quiet, simple declaration that the singer will be pushed only so far and not one bit further.
11. Faint of Heart is a holdover, and it's a master class from Vince Gill and Diana Krall on just how intensely passion can be expressed through restraint.
12. All of the songs in this list so far are supremely melodic, mid or slow tempo, and while often musically virtuosic, definitely on the quiet side. It seemed appropriate to end a bit more raucously with 38 Special's Wild Eyed Southern Boys.

I Made A 2008 Year-End List!

I follow thriller writer Meg Gardiner's blog regularly, and when she listed her favorite comments of 2008, I made the list twice. And now, she's been nominated for an Edgar award by the Mystery Writers of America, for the US paperback publication of her first novel China Lake.

For you logicians in the audience, I do realize that there is no causal relationship between the two items in the preceding paragraph. Now, please excuse me, as I have to go make sure my rooster crows so, you know, the sun will come up in the morning.

A Sad Day For The Braves

The Red Sox made the official announcement today. They've signed John Smoltz away from the Braves.

It's ridiculous to feel much concern for someone who will make $5 million from Boston this year (at least) instead of $3 million from Atlanta; after all, it was about respect, not money.

Guess what? I believe Smoltz. Not all that long tradition did mean more in baseball than in other sports. Now, the business rules. Player salaries are such that a $10 million contract is reasonable, maybe even a bargain. I can't really comprehend it being a bargain, when a man is going to make more in one year playing a game than I'll make at programming in my entire life, but that's the state of the sport, and I'm a fan.

I'm also a bit of a historian, and my team has let a significant piece of history slip away. The only pitcher in the history of the game who was an elite starter, then an elite closer, and finally an elite starter again. Over 200 wins. More than 150 saves. 3000+ strikeouts. The best postseason record in the game.

More injuries and surgeries than an over 40 pitcher should be able to overcome.

I'm still a Braves partisan, which isn't going to change. I hope, though, that John Smoltz has a phenomenally successful tenure with the Red Sox.