Not Quite the Fortress of Solitude

The trend is definitely exacerbated in the summertime, but it seems to get harder every year to find a television program with actors and, you know, scripts and things. "Unscripted" television (the industry term for what you and I call reality TV) is all the rage these days, of course. If that troubles you, keep in mind it could be worse: we had a reality boom once before, and all we ended up with that time was "Real People".

I still remember when "Survivor" debuted. I don't think even CBS was expecting much -- after all, it was the dead of summer -- but I was hooked instantly and so was seemingly everyone else in America, and the trend has mushroomed from there.

While there is much to dislike about many reality efforts and the genre itself, especially the way the contestants have gotten increasingly self-aware/conscious/referential, on balance I am enough of a fan that I try to check out a lot of the new ones, and end up watching several on an ongoing basis. At some point I will probably gather my thoughts about the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Recently I got to watch the debut of another new one entitled, "Who Wants to Be a Superhero?" It's a competition show with a group of "ordinary"... no, "average"... wait, "normal"? Well, let's just say they're civilians. They say they want to be comic-book style superheroes; they show up with their own persona and corresponding costume, ranging from "Captain Victory" and "Creature" to "Monkey Woman" and "Cell-phone Girl".

After one episode I'm still trying to determine how serious everyone is, and what is strictly tongue-in-cheek, but I'm intrigued enough to stop in again. Part of my interest stems from the fact that superheroes are big business around here.

Our son is 6, and our daughter is 4, and they spend much of their waking time playing with a wide assortment of action figures. And the assortment gets wider every week -- they can't wait for Saturday to arrive so they can hit garage sales to recruit more new "guys" for the Task Force. Some of them are good guys, some of them are bad guys -- although this is extremely fluid -- and some of them seem to be the dad of some of the others. This is also fluid, but our superheroes at least seem to feel the need to form impromptu family groups.

As parents we applaud the exercise of creativity indicated by the constantly-changing storyline -- not to mention the idea that they can play together for a period of time (hopefully even without a great deal of Adult Intervention). It also made me, as a parent who naturally wants the absolute best for his children, visualize my own "guys" as superheroes. What might be their secret identities?

Possibilities for my son:

• The Human Alarm Clock -- We never set our alarm any more, for we know without doubt that Our Boy will be in our bedroom every day precisely at 7 a.m. And by "precisely", I mean after the clock hits 7:00 but before the second zero turns to a 1. Who knows, that might be a superpower that would come in handy at the Justice League clubhouse.
• Needle Man -- Not the kind that is used with thread, unfortunately. No one has, or could have, more skill at getting under his sister's skin. This would come in handy if she ever becomes an Archvillain, but I suppose it's possible that he could use it to frustrate other evildoers as well.

Options for my daughter:

• Siren -- I am, as you may have noted, a boy, and my sisters are enough older that I never really grasped a basic fact about girls: girls shriek. When she is angry, her voice can climb the scale... well, the cliche is that only dogs can hear it. I can tell you that I can hear it (not understand it, but hear it) but I'd just as soon not. The only thing more piercing than her angry shriek is... her happy shriek. I'm quite sure there's a way to use that skill to fight crime; maybe she could shatter the windshield of the getaway car.
• Monkey Girl -- Yeah, I know, that one's already taken (at least till that other chick gets bounced off the show). But I'd be foolish not to leverage her most outstanding skill: she loves to climb and clamber, and I can tell you from personal experience that she can use that talent to immobilize someone. Especially when you take into account the high-velocity impact she makes when she approaches her unsuspecting target.

If I'm dreaming big, I have to confess it's not just on behalf of the kids. I also figure that since superheroes seem to enjoy such a lavish lifestyle, in my old age I'm at least guaranteed the apartment over the Batcave.

The Perfect Storm

When I began my career, I was teaching – a pretty individualistic pursuit. I got to set my own agenda, and I was responsible for my own success. Then I became a programmer and joined a small company, which slowly grew into a larger company, and was eventually swallowed up by one of the largest corporations in the universe.

Now that I’m a tiny cog in an enormous wheel – a guy with a 9-digit employee ID – I have to get used to the corporate way of thinking. One aspect of that is the reliance on buzzwords. Corporations are the folks who gave you task, purpose, and leverage as verbs, you know. One of our favorites, actually, is “synergy” – the concept of multiple factors working together in such a way that the whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

I will not try anyone’s patience by linking to my previous entries; but anyone who’s read this all along knows that I love music, and I love God, and I love kids. So you would think, in the name of synergy, that leading music at Vacation Bible School would be an absolute slam-dunk for me.

Over the years, however, I have come to the place where my least favorite sentence is, “Would you consider leading music at VBS?” Well, it probably runs a close second to, “Honey, did you do everything on the list I left this morning?” But that may be a discussion for another day.

Actually, VBS music is an excellent example of synergy, much like the recent bestseller and movie, The Perfect Storm… a confluence of an assortment of difficult circumstances. For example, I do love kids; I’m really excellent – with a few. Perhaps not so much with 60 or 80 eight-year-olds.

Now it appears to me that VBS publishing is a pretty big business, but in order to keep selling a new package every year, they have to keep coming up with new songs every year. And I mean new – it’s very rare that even the adults know any of the songs that come in the package; forget about the kids.

So we stick the words up on the wall, and we play a CD really loud, and we run through each one a few times, and we hope that somehow the kids can jump on a moving bus. And of course, it’s extremely helpful that probably half of them are actually under 8 and really can’t read the words anyway. Actually, that’s kind of a moot point: if you’ve ever had 80 or so kids in one room… you have my condolences. But I’ll bet my CD player and my overhead projector that if you did, they weren’t all attending to the same task, or for that matter all facing the same direction.

All of this is a little hard on my Musician side. When I do get… enlisted… to do the music, I tend to get a little over-focused on the idea of Leading Singing. I sometimes forget that the point isn’t really to get them singing, but rather:

• to let them hear the songs – maybe even get them stuck in their heads for a later date
• to get them focused on the theme of the evening or the week
• to get them excited about what we’re doing... or more accurately, to redirect the teeming mass of energy already in the room in the right direction.

Somehow it all works together, almost despite the music and certainly despite me. We just concluded our week, with someone else leading music, and the kids (and even the staff) had a great time. Looks like we have synergy working for us after all.

86 on the Chainsaws

There are a large number of web destinations called “Random Access”, but I chose the name anyway because it really is meant to be random – only appropriate since our minds are also (I thought of calling it “100% Brain Flakes”, but it's hard to make a URL out of that).

For example, I still remember the first time I heard Carole King sing “It’s Too Late” … I was in the back seat of a car driving through Troy, and I was about 10. My sister was in the front seat and our friend Lana was driving. I heard the song the other day while driving, and I had such a powerful flashback – even a sense of “10-ness” that I almost forgot how to drive. I was instantly back in that spot. Music is well known to induce that kind of reaction, but I think I got a double portion of that section of the brain; maybe it replaced some of those things I’m obviously missing.

In any case, there’s clearly no accounting for the things we remember. My wife asked me for a friend’s phone number the other day, and I rattled off … the number we last had in 1994 (in my defense, the first 4 digits were the same). I still remember watching a special, around 1990, starring the juggler Michael Davis. He’s as well-known for his comedy bits as for his technical skill, and I remember he did a bit with a bowling ball and a ping-pong ball that amazed me. It might have been him, or another juggler, who juggled revving chain saws – a bit of a step up from flaming torches.

In a way, I feel like I’ve made the same move. Normal life is a bit like juggling flaming torches for most of us, I think. And summer is supposed to be when the livin’ is easy, life takes on a slower pace, we relax a bit… but the more I live it, the more I think that’s only true in beer commercials. Since the beginning of summer, it seems as if I’ve graduated from torches to chain saws.

Everything goes up a notch, particularly the kid involvement. Now that they are out of school, they constitute a full-time job, to go with my part-time actual job (or paid job, if you prefer). Said employment is itself increasing the pressure, with a laundry-list of “first of September” deadlines.

Then there’s the carefree joy of planning and executing the Annual Family Vacation, including a visit to Disney, “The Hottest, Humidest, Most Crowded Place on Earth®”. In August, no less! Did I mention this has me filled with something falling short of breathless anticipation?

Although we finally broke down & bought a power mower for camp, the fact remains that I have two lawns to keep un-savanna-like. So when I arrive at our retreat, the first thing I do is retreat to the shed & haul out the mower. If I stay home, we have a wealth of beautiful new landscaping… but since the weather has been days of either downpours or oven-like heat, there are maintenance duties as well.

I’m trying desperately to do all of that and still attend to things like my fantasy baseball league (although I think divine intervention might be the best bet for my team), and the blog, and piano practice, and miscellaneous household chores. My wife has also reminded me that it’s poor form to squeeze one’s spouse in at the end of such a list – or even “in the middle”, for that matter.

The unfortunate reality is that most of those things are by no means optional, with the exception of the things I do for enjoyment. So I am constantly seeking ways to make all the pieces fit (which, by the way, accounts at least in part for the sparse nature of my posts – but I promise I’m writing them in my head all the time!); I know for sure that one more chainsaw will lead me to drop the whole group.

Liner Notes

Back when music used to come on large vinyl discs called record albums -- kids, ask your grandparents about those (and phones with long curly cords that plug into the wall) -- I enjoyed reading the sleeve inside the album cover. Not all of that material always survived the transition to cassettes (kids, ask your parents about those), but I'm happy to say that the tradition has revived pretty handsomely for the most part with the advent of CDs.

In addition to the photos of the band, and the complete lyrics of the songs, there are often a few paragraphs written by the musicians. Sometimes there are some insights as to the origins of some of the songs, but almost inevitably it's mostly thank yous (and I have written previously about that phenomenon!).

Tucked in amongst thanks to the producer, the family, and so on, are often acknowledgements of the backing musicians or guest artists on the album. And for some reason -- probably the human tendency/mania to create insiders & outsiders -- these often seem to be inside jokes, nicknames, and obscure references that will only be understood by those in the studio that day ("To Punky -- thanks for helping me make bail!").

Today it's my turn for my own Liner Notes. I have been much less active on the blog in recent weeks, and one of the principal reasons for that has been the preparations for my wife's 40th birthday party, which we held yesterday. By the way, I can say "40" with impunity -- she is facing it cheerfully, since as she says her frequent presiding at funerals has left her all too aware of the alternative.

The event was, as far as we could tell at least, a raging success, and for that we owe a debt of thanks to a lot of people. Our credit card debt is paid automatically each month by transfer from our bank account, but I don't want to let my thanks become automated (though skeptics will note that I'm still managing to get the computer involved).

So although I strive mightily to make this blog connection-neutral -- that is, my objective is to be just as interesting (or boring) to the random passer-by as I am to those who know me -- today is directed at those involved with the party. I have reason to believe several of them stop by this space from time to time! So, thanks:

• to Bill & Laurie, who came up with a few things I needed at the last minute
• to Faith, who carried tables and chairs back and forth, and helped set up
• to Bob, who helped me set up the PowerPoint show, and then (quite characteristically) gave up his spot so more people could crowd in to see it
• to Randy & Connie, who stayed after to help clean up the carnage
• to Phred & Natalie and Gary & Jolly, who made a 200-mile round trip for a 3-hour party
• to over 50 of our friends, both longstanding and recent (I make it a policy never to refer to "old" friends), who came and brought food and laughed and talked, and honored us by their presence
• to God, who in the midst of a spell of oppressive weather and frequent storms gave us a beautiful day -- more a necessity than a pleasure when you give a party for 50+ people at a 1000-sq ft camp!

One of the guests remarked to me at one point what a nice party it was -- although objectively it wasn't that much, just some tables and chairs on the lawn, some snacks to share, and the kids playing games -- and I replied that it was easy: if good people come, you've got a good party. Maybe that's why Mary Richards always gave such lousy parties; who wants to hang out with Ted and Sue Ann? For some reason it reminded me of an underrated Jackson Browne song, "The Load-Out":

Tonight the people were so fine
They waited there in line
And when they got up on their feet
They made the show

I hasten to say we didn't make anyone wait in line, and there were adequate chairs so no one had to be on their feet... but it was the people who made the show, and we say thanks to all. Let's see... only 6 more years till Mark turns 50; write that in your calendars now!