Dave’s Midlife Blog

Well, actually, my first baseball junk mail of the year is what arrived in my mailbox today. A sporting-goods chain sent me their baseball catalog. I guess because I bought a bunch of Nationals clothes and stuff there last summer, I’m probably qualified on their mailing list as, maybe, a youth baseball coach or something.

Or maybe it’s because as an aging boomer, I’m supposed to stay forever young. Who knows? I was a terrible baseball player as a kid, so I’d be no better as a 53-year-old guy.

Ryan Zimmerman has reached the stage of budding stardom where a recognizable picture of him is the background of the first inside page. No team logo on his cap, though. So he’s not a generic National, but rather Ryan of all baseball. (I think I can also recognize the Orioles’ Miguel Tejada behind some text, but Zim’s the one who is recognizable and looking right into the camera.)

An adult-sized Louisville Slugger bat sells for $90.00. Next time I see six or seven bats broken during a big-league game, I’ll bear that in mind.

So talking about Big Media, I found myself watching large portions of the Oscars show on TV on Sunday, by accident. It was on in the kitchen while I was surfing, hacking, and blogging. Wow, what a long program! Hollywood people really, REALLY like themselves, don’t they?

The reaction of Tom Shales of the WaPo was to put down the whole event as a “bore and a horror” (a proper response for the TV maven of a major East-Coast paper, I guess). Tom didn’t particularly like Ellen DeGeneres as the host. The Boston Globe was even more curmudgeonly, suggesting that Ellen put everybody to sleep. I don’t know what Matthew Gilbert at the Globe is thinking. It wasn’t Ellen who put us to sleep. It was the whole pompous affair. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking more about this “Bum Rush the Charts” thing. Just trying to figure out why I should spend my 99¢ on a band whose music doesn’t do much for me.

Who stands to benefit? Well, Podshow, certainly, to the extent there’s any publicity wash from this campaign. Black Lab, no doubt: lots of people who really don’t know or like them buying their track. But “amateur media”? Come on, give me a break!

Black Lab is a band whose music I don’t really love; it’s just not my style. Even Podshow’s number one satellite repairman P.W. Fenton said the same thing on his most recent Digital Flotsam podcast. I’d never listen to them on my own.

So my participating in this campaign is like putting 99¢ into some Salvation Army kettle somewhere, Read the rest of this entry »

A group of (Podshow-affiliated) podcasters have mounted a campaign to “Bum Rush the Charts” on March 22. In the spirit of “bringing the Media Man to his knees,” these podcasters want to show the Big Media how powerful we “little” podcasters are, by pushing an independent-label band, Black Lab, to the top of the iTunes charts for one day, March 22.

Thinking back to the rah-rah spirit with which I undertook podcasting in 2005, I’m inclined to shout “Yeah!” and hold my right fist in the air, thumb and pinky finger extended in a “rock-on” posture. We’ll show them who the powerful people are in the music biz. This is the quaint world-view I held about 9-12 months ago.

Then I reflect on it, and start to wonder: just exactly who is going to be impressed by this? Read the rest of this entry »

In this morning’s Washington Post, Frank Ahrens reviewed a new book by Eric Klinenberg, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. Ahrens points to the conventional wisdom of a year ago, that held that the ownership of the major media (meaning radio, television, and music) was overly consolidated. Ahrens avers that the media world has turned upside-down in the past year. Clear Channel is selling media properties, as are the New York Times, Knight Ridder, Walt Disney and others.

And to anybody who listens to or looks at media on the Internet, it’s obvious that there is no more media hegemony. When I was 10 years old, 73 million people saw the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, the first day I went back to the classroom after the great Washington Ice of 2007, I almost busted my butt taking out the garbage in the morning. A relatively warm rain had fallen through the night, landing on the solid ice in which our neighborhood is encrusted. It, of course, refroze instantly, causing a slick glaze onto which my shoes could not hold. Read the rest of this entry »

“Our family tree can be cut down and used to build our coffins.”

Bill’s cousin Gilbert, when he informs Bill that they are the lone survivors of the family line. (This episode aired February 18, 2007.)

Mike Judge is a clever guy, in my humble opinion.

Today is a third day off from school. All the sleety snow that fell on Tuesday night is now frozen hard. My own street still has a sheet of ice on it.

I’ve had about enough of the house. I was concerned on Tuesday that we might lose electricity, but that didn’t happen so much in Northern Virginia. (Maryland is a different story, however.) Since we had power, I had Internet. I am now one with my computer, and I’ve almost made a complete migration of three websites to one new server.

About midday yesterday I had to leave the house. So what did I do? Like all good Americans, I went to the mall.

But as you can see, not a lot of other people made it to the shopping cathedral. It’s still quite cold, and after a warm January, folks may be in shock.

So I haven’t really been all that political in this blog, but I was home yesterday and had President Bush’s press conference on the television for a bit. Wow, what an inarticulate human being.

Geezer that I am, I’ve lived through ten U.S. presidents. Every one of them, plus the two prior to my birth (FDR and Truman) spoke in front of radio and television microphones. They represented a lot of speaking styles, several different areas of the country, and a wide spectrum of political views.

In my entire life, there has never been a president who came across as a bigger babbling idiot than George W. Bush. When he speaks, he just seems to have trouble thinking up things to say. Read the rest of this entry »

Those images you see in the header are all taken by me, from my mid-life. Most of them have to do with the schools at which I teach. The rest are, I think, from my home or car. They should load randomly whenever you hit a new page or refresh your browser. As I write this, I have nine header images installed. (Rock on, WordPress and K2!)