The daily schedule

I saw this graph on one of the internets today and felt the need to repost it here:

I'm not sure how your daily schedule breaks down, dear reader, but I know that in the HillcrestBlogger household, we would kill for this breakdown. Maybe when our kids get into preschool range... ;)

My favorite show on the TeeVee

Really, this is just an excuse to post a video clip from Game of Thrones ;)

Overstating it a bit

It is one of the modern tenets of HillcrestBlog to refrain from politics for a variety of reasons.  This is not to say that I do not have political opinions; to the contrary, I am very opinionated.  But that's not the direction I want this blog to take.  If you want some good political bloggage, trust me, its out there, whatever your politics. That being said, I want to shortly discuss something that the current Speaker of the House of Representatives said yesterday in order to make a broader point. 

Specifically, John Boehner of Ohio said this, in relation to the possibility that Barack Obama may be reelected to the Presidency this November:

The president’s economic policies have failed. I would argue they actually have made things worse. And as a result, the president has turned to the politics of envy and division...

America can’t live for four more years with Barack Obama as president. His policies will turn America in a direction that we may never recover from...

It’s sending America down a path that will look a lot like what we see in Europe: A big social welfare state, high unemployment, slow economic growth and a government that is overly large.

If you have a government that can give you everything that you want, you have a government that can take everything that you have.

I excerpted the entire passage from this FOX News interview to give the quote some context, but the specific sentence I'm focusing on I've highlighted in bold print.

"That we may never recover from." 

Seriously?  I mean, does he really mean that? 

Not to get too bogged down in historical analysis, but this nation has recovered from some very trying times.  There's the whole dissolution of the Union thing, a couple of World Wars, a Great Depression, several Presidential assassinations, September 11, 2001 -- you know, really big freaking happenings that tore the fabric of our nation.  But after each one, the nation recovered and moved forward. 

Now, you might be of a mind that President Obama's economic policies are indeed quite destructive.  That is your opinion and you are absolutely entitled to it.  But does Speaker Boehner really believe the fallout from those economic policies would be worse than the Great Depression, where unemployment increased 607% from 1929 to 1932?  Or any worse than the United State's own death toll from World War Two -- 400,000 citizens?  Or the Civil War -- 620,000 military deaths?

I guess what bugs me the most is this use of extreme hyperbole in what should be real-world discussions about real-world issues.  Statements like Boehner's only serve to inflame and exaggerate for the benefit of one's own opinion to the point where you cannot even take it seriously.  And a Presidential Election should be taken seriously, especially when it is being commented on by the person third in the line of succession to the Presidency itself.  If Boehner had said something like "economic policies that will take us several years to recover from," well, OK.  Hell, even if he said "a generation," I would be OK with that.  Whether or not you believe that or not, at least that statement has some real-world tether, because although the United States did in fact emerge from the Great Depression, it did take several years, indeed over a decade. 

Ultimately, the United States is a strong, strong nation -- so strong that any one President's economic policies are not going to doom it, much less forever.  The nation has resisted schism and conquered foes and met challenges far greater than the ones Speaker Boehner portends would be so terrible from our current President.  I just think that, given his position in the government and the fact that he has to know that his statement is demonstrably false, that his comments should reflect that and should avoid the sky-is-falling rhetoric that seems so pervasive during the election season.

And Democrats, if one of you says something similarly over-the-top, shame on you as well.

The 20th Century Canon

A couple of years ago, Time magazine listed its 100 best books of the 20th Century (or, at least since 1923 I think it was -- the year Time first started publishing). I've decided to take each book down, one by one. I'm already well into the teens I think, which I'll post more specifically in a later blog post, but to kickstart this project, I went and checked out the following from the library yesterday:

Light in August by Faulkner
Tropic of Cancer by Miller
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway

I hope to complete the list in three years.

Wednesday night music - Mudhoney

I recently read a book called Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge, which, aside from being very long (500+ pages...for an oral history!), also helped me take a closer look at some of the bands of that scene and that era that for whatever reason evaded the huge spotlight that eventually shone on Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and...ahem...Candlebox.

Mudhoney was one of those bands.  Of course I was familiar with them on the surface, as they had some minor success, but nothing compared to what their contemporaries believed they should have had.  The following songs are evidence that I agree...

See your goal

For the next month, it is finishing this:

Yes, a 5K. 

This overweight almost-39 year old is all-in.  I've paid my money and I'm signed up.  I've been training using what is cutely (and accurately) called a couch-to-5K program and I'm up to week 4, day 2, which involves sixteen minutes of running intermittent with five minutes of walking (bookended by two five-minute warmup/cooldown walks).  By my very loose math and given that I ran about a 12-minute mile last week, I'm up to running 1 and 1/3 miles in about twenty minutes.

Can I triple that number in a month?  The 5K is in slightly more than one month (32 days).  Well, I'm going to give it my best shot. 

Here's some Tuesday music for you - Bon Iver

Just recently I discovered Bon Iver, a band (well, a guy named Justin Vernon with his supporting musicians) that has been around for several years and two albums.  Also, too, a Grammy win for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Album in 2012.  Well deserved.

These songs are off that same Grammy winner, the self-titled Bon Iver.  Not exactly your hard rockin' stuff, but fantastic nonetheless.  Like a little Shins crossed with Sigur Rós, if you ask me. 

Thoughts on the new Razorback coach

The uniquely named John Smith, new head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.

Good hire, I guess?  Really, when push comes to shove, I suppose I really don't care about who heads the team with the same kind of gusto several of my good friends and family do (also, the chuckleheads and callers on local sports talk radio...thank you, I'll hang up and listen).  There was a time that this was decidedly not the case, where I very much cared about the Head Hog and our sports teams' records and how much respect! we were getting at the national level.  But in recent years, that interest has ceded to the more enjoyable and relaxing position of supporting the teams on game day, hoisting a cold beer when they score a touchdown or sink a three-pointer, but being able to sleep soundly after a win or a loss -- especially after a loss -- and not letting the result affect me one way or the other for the rest of the week, season, or year.

I'm not sure when the change came, whether it is the effect of simply getting older and further and further away from the relative ages of the players themselves (making college sports look in my eyes like more and more of a game that kids play -- Big Business, sure, but still a game), or whether having children just makes everything else so tangential and inconsequential, or for some other reason.  I do know that when I canceled my subscription to the Democrat-Gazette and stopped reading daily dispatches from the practice fields and (thank goodness) Wally Hall's perfectly and pointedly stupid daily Hog Yes-Man/Apologist sports-page column, my compulsive interest almost immediately waned.  Likewise, tuning out sports talk radio was a godsend for disconnecting myself from the rabidity displayed by the overwhelming majority of Hogoholics.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I was well attuned to the circumstances and almost-daily breaking news of Bob Petrino's shocking downfall, as well as the who's-it-gonna be drama surrounding the search for his successor.  I exchanged bits of news I came across with several good friends and enjoyed the speculation and internet rumor-mongering.  How could I not?!  It was an Arkansas Soap Opera of the highest order!  Even the relatively disengaged such as myself could not help but be drawn into the fray of discussion.  But now that the music's over and John L. Smith Has Signed a Ten-Month Contract Only (trademarked phrase), I have no real feelings about it one way or the other.  It could have been him or Jon Gruden or Garrick McGehee or Bud Foster or Bill Freaking Belechick.  Doesn't really matter - I just want the team to do well and play an enjoyable (from my perspective) style of football.

And Hell Yeah I'm excited about the prospects of the team this year, with Tyler Wilson! and Knile Davis! going for the Heisman! and BAMA AND LSU AT HOME! and all that, but I'm perfectly happy not worrying or thinking about it one whit until, oh, I don't know, August the 10th or something like that?  Two weeks prior to the season sounds about right.  It'll be lots of fun for those four months.  But to everything there is a (football) season, and my fan-sense is perfectly happy with enjoying those twelve Saturday afternoons in the fall and leaving it at that.

So, go Hogs and Woo Piggie!  Now, I'll redirect my attention to almost anything else.  Let me know when the first game is.

Six months

That's how long this blog has been dormant.  Almost to the day.  How do I know this?  Well, today I took my son in for his six-month checkup and my last post was the day he was born last October.  Not exactly High Math, that.

During this last six months I've often thought about posting something to the blog but, for whatever reason, just either didn't get around to doing it or got sidetracked by something else (if you have ever lived in 1,350 square feet of house with a wife, a two year old and a newborn, you know this is a very easy thing to have happen to you!).  Or maybe the post I thought about writing was interesting but just not *that interesting* to the point where I felt the urge to get the laptop, try to remember my password, and then opine on it.  The moment by then would surely have passed, I'd tell myself.  Or there are any other number of reasons...but probably just one main one: inertia.  Because the further you get from regularly blogging the harder it gets to return to the fold, exponentially.  It literally requires sitting down and just freaking *making* yourself write something.  And once you do...the blockage has been removed and you remember just how painless it is -- indeed, enjoyable even! :) -- to throw something up on your blog.  Which is what I am experiencing literally while I write this sentence.

And then you think of a hundred things to write about.  And you cannot wait to get started.

See, self?  That was easy.  Welcome back, HillcrestBlogger.

Monday night at the hospital

I'm tired, but for a very good -- GREAT -- reason!  My son was born this afternoon and both he and my wife are doing very well.  But everyone is very tired and I'm missing my little girl, who is over at her grandparent's house for her first non-parent overnight since she was born.  So, as you can expect, blogging will be a little light this week as we'll be at the hospital until mom recovers in a couple of days.

Thursday video - Bob Dylan

A VERY quick one.  Busy day/evening at the HillcrestBlogger abode.

Dylan.  His best.

Tuesday video - The White Stripes

Seems like not-so-long ago that The White Stripes were one of my favorite "new" bands.  That they've been on my radar now for over ten years is more than a little shocking.  This was one of my favorites from White Blood Cells:

I think my favorite White Stripes album was Elephant, when their monster sound really came together with some exceptionally tight songwriting.

And then there's this one, which I like so much because it just sounds like some sort of frenetic sludge (in a very good way):

An ode to this awesome weather

Not very often are you going to hear a person get excited about 53 degrees with wind and rain, but you are going to hear exactly that from me today.

After months of humid*, oppressive heat, AUTUMN** is finally here. So, bring on the rain and let the leaves drop from the trees, just in time for Halloween season.  Here here!  THIS is truly what is known as "football" weather, as opposed to the mid- to upper-80's we've been seeing.  And, when it eventually gets here, like it did during the overnight hours last night, Arkansas does "football weather" about as good as anywhere.


*  But hardly any rain.
**  My favorite season, by far.  And, I've decided to start using the term "autumn" instead of "fall."  It sounds more...refined ;)

Monday video - Weezer

Let's hit up a little Weezer this Monday evening why don't we?  And, like the Nirvana "Teen Spirit" video, I am going to slightly deviate from my live-music-only aim for music postings and have Weezer's first offering be the fantastic early 90's, Spike Jonze-directed vid for "Buddy Holly" in all of its Fonzie-ness glory:

The Blue Album is so very much my senior year at the UA.  While "Buddy Holly" was likely Weezer's biggest hit off the album, this song was my favorite:

After the Blue Album, Weezer released Pinkerton, which I liked, but it didn't get near the attention it deserved until years later when the emo generation offered it as a prime influence.  Then, the band took a long hiatus before releasing the Green Album, which was fantastic and featured this song:

For the last clip, I'm going to offer up a song the band recorded in honor of and in support of the United States Men's National Team as it prepared for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.  This song was reportedly playing in the locker room after Landon Donovan's stunning extra-time goal that propelled the team to the Round of 16.  Still thinking about that moment and watching this video still gives me chills.

Multiple updates from the HillcrestBlogger

Sorry the blog has been largely content-free for the last week (aside from the abbreviated music video postings).  My wife ended up not delivering last week, but was instead put on bed rest and is scheduled to deliver next Monday.  Which means that I get to not only be excited about the prospect of my soon-to-be-newborn son for another week but I also get to shoulder double the chores- and kid-load for another week since my wife cannot physically exert herself.  Now, before you think I'm whining -- I'm not!  I understand its part of the job and know that my wife will be assuming a much greater job in giving birth and being mommy to another cute kid.  But man...It. Is.  Exhausting.

Update #2 is that, after reverting back to an all-protein diet one week ago, I finally moved off the weight-loss plateau I've been on for the last several weeks and now have a new weight-loss low since June 20, when I decided to lose the weight.  I'm now down 21.8 pounds!  Hit the twenty mark!  Now, I'd like to hit the thirty mark by Thanksgiving.  I think that's a doable goal.

Update #3 is that I continue to kick ass in my fantasy football leagues.  I'm in four of them.  In two of them I'm 5-1.  In another I'm 4-2.  The other I am only 3-3, but have won three straight.  I think it is a very real possibility that I'll be in the playoffs for all of my leagues.  Sure, that's a super-dork thing to be excited about, but I'm excited nonetheless.

Update #4 is that my soccer team finally put together a good, solid half of play yesterday.  We still lost, but we were a discombobulated mess for the first half yesterday, which was par for the course so far this season (which, it should be said, has been highlighted more for injuries sustained to top players than anything else).  However, a couple of minor halftime tweaks and we outscored our opponents in the second half yesterday, 3-2.  Like I said, we still lost the match, as we have all season long, but maybe we finally will have turned the corner.

How about a little switch-up?

Do you like the new layout?  I thought I'd give it a whirl.  There are several interesting templates offered up by Blogger so I figure I'll go through a couple over the next couple of weeks to see which one I want to stick with for a while.  Feel free to let me know if you have a preference.

Friday video - Jimi Hendrix

Dude caught his guitar on fire.  The greatest guitarist of our generation.  Is there really anything else left to say?

Thursday video - The Who

Let's keep with the British Invasion (especially since I'm writing this last Tuesday evening, post-dating some music posts in the event my son has-been-already or soon-will-be-born).

Love, love, love the Who.  While I really like their stuff around the Tommy- and Who's Next-era, what I consider the pantheon of their catalog, the band's stuff before and after is also great.  And, their live performances are beyond reproach: 

Wednesday video - The Beatles

Here's one that's quick and easy.

There are literally 50 Beatles songs that are mathematically quantifiable as Freaking Awesome, so I can't really go wrong here.  The only drawback about Beatles songs is that the band effectively stopped touring after 1966, so there's really not much out there in the public domain of them playing anything from Revolver, St. Pepper, the White Album, Let It Be, or Abbey Road live.  Which is probably 75% of their original catalog.  Still, what is out there is so great.  But you knew that.  Enjoy.

Blogging will be sporadic for the forseeable future...

...as my wife might deliver our son any day now.  We spent all day yesterday at the hospital for a false alarm, but the doctor said that delivery would likely take place this week.  My wife is fine and the baby is fine so no worries there (and, in fact, the baby will be full term this coming Friday).  It is just that he'll be coming 3-4 weeks prior to when we were expecting, so we'll be doing some last-minute scrambling to get everything in order before the birth.

Long story short, if I get some time to breathe, I'll try to post some stuff (and maybe try to post-date some music posts tonight to pop up later in the week), but don't be surprised if a week goes by without a current post.