A David Johnson, of many.
I’ve heard it said that the essence of music is to make people enjoy patterns without realizing it. As far as I can tell, this is true. I can’t grasp music, whether I hear it, see a sheet of notes or play Guitar Hero. It’s beyond me, but I like to listen.
As fans of ’80s sci-fi/comedies know, music can do something else: let you time travel. Not literally, I mean, but the effect can be just as real as if it were.
Continue reading “The reason why Bill & Ted’s adventure was excellent”
Actually, until my sister got a job selling cell phones (down in the Sam’s store), I was pretty ignorant about the whole idea.
“I don’t know how to put this, but it’s kind of a big deal.”
I’ve read about some of the Black Friday observants. These people are certifiably insane. I feel less safe to go out in public knowing one of them could be around the next corner, trying to get a good deal. If we were at the same shopping center, I might actually fear for my well-being, especially if we were reaching for the same item. These folks are stone-cold professionals and wouldn’t think twice about dropping me right there in the aisle. They would drop me, and they’d sleep well that night.
Continue reading “I experienced my first Black Friday last week”
I apologize in advance for my column this week. I had a very bad weekend, and the worst thing about it is nothing bad actually happened to me.
OHS’s playoff game slipped away from them, and Texas Tech got absolutely humiliated by Oklahoma. And none of you care, but Atlanta knocked Carolina out of first place in the NFC South.
Odessa and Tech weren’t alma maters. I graduated from Permian and never even sniffed Lubbock when college application season came around. Nor did I gamble on any of these games. I just invested myself emotionally to a degree that the losses have stayed with me, and I’ll feel a lingering sense of disappointment all week.
Clearly, I care too much about football, but sometimes it works out well. My giddiness about the Patriots’ Super Bowl loss lasted through most of the summer.
(“Hey bartender, who’s that guy sitting down next to the girl I bought a drink for?”
“Her husband.”
“Oh. Well at least the Patriots went 18-1.”)
I’m not alone in this – although to this extent, I may be – because there are some very valid reasons why sports are so compelling, and why the excitement and drama of football have made it the national obsession, to borrow Sal Paolantonio’s phrase.
That’s part of why an e-mail forwarded to me that pretended No Child Left Behind was being applied to high school football was a very effective comparison. The unfairness of it, nevermind federal government involvement, was plainly apparent. It’s a satire, not intended to be closely dissected, but at another level I take it at face value.
I once heard it said that if people followed their politicians half as well as they did baseball players, our democracy would become perfect. Well if people cared half as much about education as they did football, our nation would approach perfection.
This is a common complaint, I know, but when LBJ Elementary (which I actually did attend) lost to Reagan for the sixth-grade championship, I was sincerely disappointed. Certainly, many people were justifiably saddened by OHS’s playoff loss, as well. But how many outside the school system (how many inside the school system) were upset by the academic performance of any school in the district, not just on government standards but actual learning? How many parents who wouldn’t stand to see their child on second-string are content that their child isn’t taking AP classes, not earning – and I stress earning – all A’s, not studying hard enough for the next exam?
Because it is plainly ridiculous to mandate that every high school football team make the playoffs and win the championship, or that every kid have the same skills at all times, but no one would claim West Texans have any biological athleticism to succeed at sports, at yet for several decades, it seemed true. Or if not all sports, generally, then football specifically.
It’s amazing what a good program can consistently accomplish with average people who are driven to accomplish great things and supported materially and emotionally by a community who heaps rewards on their success.
It isn’t an either-or between academics and sports: the valedictorian of my graduating class was a first-string football player. And obviously, debates and midterms aren’t compelling spectator events. Even so, we should care as much about substantive things to push and enthrall our children into working hard at the things that will benefit them – and us – in the future. We should get a vicarious thrill out of what they do between the desks at least as much as between the sidelines.
And we don’t, because most of us don’t care.
I certainly don’t care. For all this, I can’t make myself care. But I do wish the matriculations of school children enraptured me as much as matriculations down the field.
And that field goal hadn’t gone wide left.
I once read that in a single year, California changed the nature of America more than any state ever has, maybe more than all the rest put together.
The other day I sat down to watch all of the old Disney films I have on VHS.
Some, I never liked, like “Aladdin.” Even as a kid I couldn’t stand Robin Williams playing Robin Williams. Some aren’t as good as I remembered; I couldn’t finish “The Rescuers” movies, and I love Bob Newhart.
But the Disney version of “Robin Hood” was surprisingly good to the point that I had to watch it several times over, and in fact it got better each time.
Continue reading “The story of Robin Hood and his merriment”
By the time Nov. 4 comes and goes, the 2008 election may prove to be the most popular in American history. Even in Texas where the national races should be safely checked off for the Republicans, there’s more excitement than usual.
I worry this isn’t for the best.
Continue reading “Everyone is permitted to vote, but it isn’t always beneficial”
My friend once told me a story of an ant farm of his. For a while they went around digging, eating and digging some more. You know, typical ant stuff. Then they started to die, one after another. Bacteria in the dirt of a closed container – or some such.
Finally there was one ant left. It carried the corpses of the others to a particular chamber they’d all dug previously and stacked them. Then it went back about its business until it too died and got no burial but the trash bin.
Continue reading “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise”
Because I didn’t know that until someone told me to look it up. It has nothing to do with anything, but some people only read headlines, and I wanted to share.
So I was talking to a friend the other day, and he was complaining about the lack of clarity of the current Iraq War compared to ’91’s Desert Storm. The point he brought up was that the footage we’re shown now is of such worse quality than the previous one, even though more than a decade has passed and technology has obviously improved.
“Everything I see now is this pixelated digital garbage from people’s cell phones,” he said. “What happened to people filming stuff of quality with quality instead of garbled nonsense?”
Continue reading “You know, ‘plethora’ actually means ‘too much,’ not ‘a lot’”
If you have a basic cable package, you probably have C-SPAN and C-SPAN2. And you probably watch them about as much as if you didn’t own TV. But you should watch them more (and by that I mean “some”) because when you complain that “nothing is on,” C-SPAN is, and you can learn a lot.
For example, you learn that government is mind-numbingly boring, stupid and inarticulate. Otto von Bismarck once said, “Laws are like sausage; it’s better not to see them made.” To some extent, C-SPAN is a window into that sausage factory. You can’t see everything, but what you do see makes your stomach turn. Congressman Mark Pryor of Arkansas has pointed out you don’t have to pass an IQ test to be in the Senate, and he was being honest. Sit down for just a few minutes to watch the nation’s most professional and powerful legislature and its proceedings, and wonder how some of these people were ever elected. Then wonder just how much you want these people’s decisions affecting your daily life.
It’s possible C-SPAN is actually the propaganda wing of the Libertarian party.
I’ve recently rediscovered bouncing. Tennis balls, rubber balls, golf balls, toy balls – whatever bounces and fits in my hand, I bounce it, oh how I do.
It’s one of the joys we take for granted because it’s commonly available to all, and since it’s so simple, we’re expected to outgrow it. Maybe there is a time to put away childish things, but not yet.
Continue reading “So much depends upon a balding tennis ball”
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