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A Foray Into Pop Tunes

There was a time when I was a pop-music-fiend (rock band name).  I knew every song, every "artist" (air-quote emphasized), and tons of facts about what was going on in top-40 land.  I could tell you who was hot and who was a has-been, understanding that an act could move from one list to the other within 48 hours time.  Well, that was then, and now, . . . I'm . . . uh . . . ancient.  At least I feel that way sometimes.  So this weekend I couldn't sleep one night so I turned on the VH1, and to my complete shock there wasn't a celebrity reality show on at all, it was the Top-20 countdown.  Figuring that would teach me all I needed to know to get back into the loop.  Here were a few things I picked up:

- So I thought Brittney Spears was forever a punchline, and I was right about that part, but she has a new video and record.  In this particular video she's wearing absolutely nothing, which makes it remarkably similar to other appearances in her bizarre career.  There was no snake involved this time, and somehow she had hair.  Didn't she shave it all off a while ago? - I sure wish I knew her high speed hair growth secret.

- Beyonce had 2 videos in the countdown, but it felt like there were 6.  The best one was her and two other ladies doing a funky dance in leotards (now that is a hilarious word - doesn't that totally should like an 11-year old insult: "YOU'RE JUST A STUPID LEOTARD!!!") while telling single ladies to tell the guys that they should "put a ring on it."  Catchy tune, but I'm not sure how the guys will feel about being lectured like that on TV.  I am sure that the video got old fast.

- Katy Perry scares me . . . but she was on the countdown

- The biggest takeaway was that the American Idol People don't always just disappear.  I don't watch the show, but I pick up what's happening by osmosis through coworkers.  The Davids were #1 and #2 on the countdown.  Archuleta was #2 with what I think was the best pop song on the show.  Cook was #1 and the song was lame.  And this was one of those videos where the actors portraying the story keep getting interrupted by over-done, annoying images of the band pretending to play the song.  But hey, winning American Idol entitles you to a few bombs that will still be surprisingly popular.

So I walked away from the thing with the realization that not knowing everything about pop music is really just fine.  You may love it all, and that's ok.  As for me, I'll somehow survive not watching that again for a few years, by which time Ms. Spears will probably be making her 12th big comeback. 

In honor of my little adventure I've added a couple of tunes I heard to my playlist - take a listen . . .

Lucky

Today I heard this song ("The Luckiest" by Ben Folds).  It made me really miss the Mrs. HTF, who I'll get to see in a few days!  I've added it to my little playlist.  So in lieu of the usual cheeky satire, which will return soon, I give you the lyrics:

I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know

That I am
I am, I am
The luckiest

What if I'd been born fifty years before you
In a house on the street where you live?
Maybe I'd be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

And in a wide sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know

That I am
I am, I am
The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you
Next door there's an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
His wife, she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I'm sorry, I know that's a
strange way to tell you that I know
we belong
That I know
That I am
I am, I am
The luckiest

HTF and HSM

Yesterday I had the pleasure of taking the Mrs HTF and the four little tadpoles to a showing of the long-awaited, in our house at least, High School Musical 47. (I’m calling t HSM from here on out, cuz it takes up less space) You should know that my kids are extreme fans of the series including such vital memorabilia as HSM pajamas, underwear, and fruit snacks (I’m guessing on that last one, but it’s a darn good guess).

One Pope-Family-Tradition that you should all be lucky enough to observe from a safe distance at some point is our Dance-Parties. This is where I plug in the iPod to some speakers in the kitchen and the kids let loose doing moves that are a mix of break-dancing, aerobics, hip-hop (my girls can “shake in” if you know what I mean), and intense interpretive dancing, which often results in injury. In all seriousness, if I had 10 minutes left to live, the family Dance Party is how that time would be spent. Well, over the years, HSM music has been featured prominently on our wooden dance floor. I’m pretty sure our DVR defaults to HSM when you turn it on, regardless of where it was last set. Allison could say “Gabriella” before she could say “milk.”

Well the movie didn’t disappoint at all. My expectations were low, but it was great. At one point my girls were literally dancing in the aisle next to our seats – this is the sign of an effective pre-teen movie. The characters are way too good to be true. (Although I got kinda concerned when on the way home Traci made us stop at the store so she could get her own life-size Zach Efron poster to hang in our room while I’m living in Seattle. Not sure how I feel about that . . . (j/k). At this high-school there are no drugs, drinking, cheating, sex, or violence – even the food in the lunch room looked pretty good. Imagine if we’d have all had a high school experience like these kids. They’re not overly selfish (Sharp-Hey excluded as the not-so-evil villain), and heck, the theme song is “We’re All In This Together.”

I see high school kids, and they may make fun of the HSM gang, but they should be jealous. Teenagers do SOO much to make those years way harder than they need to be. A little more singing and dancing would help. I say this as a former participant in high school musicals myself. Oh I wasn’t much of a performer, but if you were male and could walk a few steps without falling over and also lip synch effectively you could make the show. (I have some stories that I’ll share in future posts) But there was a real power to being part of something like that. I remember those feelings and the closing moments of the show brought some of ‘em back. I hope my kids can do shows at some point. They’re certainly working on the dancing part!

Anyway, I recommend the movie. And, if you’re too embarrassed to go see it, you can borrow several of my kids so you’ll look more like a compliant parent than a groupie. But it's a package deal - I get to go too.

Kenny Rogers Look Alikes . . .

Here's a question from a new reader who I will call M&M (in spite of what he calls himself):

Dear HTF,

This morning I was browsing the web and visited my favorite site, you know the one... www.menwholooklikekennyrogers.com, and I couldn't help but think Kenny Rogers doesn't even look like Kenny Rogers. Would it be culturally unacceptable to create a site called www.menwholooklikekennyrogersafterplasticsurgery.com?

-The Real Henry the Frog

First off, impersonating "seasoned" singer/songwriters is one thing, but impersonating me (in amphibian form) - not cool. I'll let that pass though. So your favorite website is a little troubling. Perhaps you could spend some time on www.shrinkswhohelppeopleobessedwithkennyrogers.com. Your point about Kenny not looking like Kenny anymore is fair. For instance I think Will Ferrel is a way better George Bush than George Bush. I'd like to see the Kenny Rogers Look Alike conference . . . on second thought I'd rather not. As far as the plastic surgery question - I think that's terribly wrong. (and you'd have to decide which of Kenny's facial decades to target) Anyone who has surgery to look like someone else should definitely not have their own website. Wait a minute, that means 87.6% of celebrity web sites have to come down now . . . hm, if that were to happen we'd have a sudden dearth of keen political insights (and self promotion). I'm good with that.

Thanks for the question, WannaBeHTF. Remember, "you never count your money when you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done."

Best Commencement Speech Ever from a Cruise Director

I stumbled across this a few weeks ago and it made be me pretty late for work one morning. Totally worth your time - I was on the floor laughing for significant portions of it. I'll put the first part of the speech here, but can click here to get the other four parts. May it make you late for whatever you need to go do now.

The Invasion of Lake Texoma

Monday was my first day back at the office in like 10 days. So I got to answer the "how was your vacation" questions a dozen times or so. That's a good thing, because we had a great time. Wow, was it hard getting back into work mode (I say that like it's a thing that's already happened, but it hasn't really...) So here are a few highlights:

• First and foremost- didn't see a single snake. But we did see a bunch of very non-scary armadillos. I don't recall seeing these up close before. They looked like a cross between my parent's wiener dogs and a rolly-polly.
• On Thursday I saw that we were under a "Severe Wind Advisory." Part of the notice said that anyone on a lake should "use extreme caution." So naturally we decided boating needed to be part of our day. A few of us spent some kinda scary moments on a pontoon boat rolling around "waves" that were strong enough to ensure that we were thoroughly soaked. At one point we took on so much water that the front end of the boat (remember this is one of those pontoon boats that are kinda like a raft welded to a couple of massive 2-liters) was actually submerged so the water was above my knees while I was seated. It was like our very own "3-hour tour." In hindsight, not a huge deal, but I was glad we didn't have any kiddos with us.
• The adults were out-numbered 15 to 12, so that always makes for good entertainment. One of my kid's greatest discoveries was, well, mud. They called it "clay" and "sculpted" odd shapes with it. My first statement to them, said with some foresight, was "you're not bringing that home." Their answer, "ok, daddy."...................... The mud is now on our front porch greeting all who come to our house if you'd like to see it. But the kids were amazingly self-entertaining and just kinda became roving mobs that went in small, but feisty, groups from place to place doing important things like gathering rocks, dumping cups of water on each other, riding inflatable dolphins, and looking for bugs. I'm glad they never realized that if they'd have combined their might they may have overthrown the adults.
• In another embarrassing sign of, well, lots of things . . . I pulled a muscle in my chest just as I was getting up on the water skiis and that was the end of that. Maybe if I wait another 14 years until I ski again I'll be better at it.
• Not too long after we arrived I started hearing the phrase "talent show." To which I snickered a bit, and assumed this was just talk and would never happen. Well, it did happen and it was marvelous. Here were some of the acts on display:
• Traci and I threw water balloons at each other
• An elephant named "Nuts" relieved himself on some unsuspecting kids
• Braeden tore up an entire field dancing emphatically to High School Musical . . . by himself
• Jake (a cousin) did a river-dance thing that was mind boggling. If I moved my feet that fast, I'm certain they'd fly off or at least I'd not be walking for a while.
• The older boys poured water on the daddies
• The older boys poured water on the girls
• The older girls poured water on the boys
  
• And who can forget this, which was pretty much the cultural highlight of the trip for my boys:
• We all sang a song led by Grandma & Grandpa Morrow - a good warm, fuzzy moment.

Anyway, this post is far too long already, so I'll close with this. I usually set low expectations for things, especially when there are multiple kids involved, but to answer the question in my first paragraph, this was an awesome vacation. Everyone got along so well, and we deeply appreciated being invited along. Anything that keeps the kids smiling and me reasonably safe is a good thing by me! Thanks, Mike & Kathy!!

My 3-Week Vacation

Well my little blog hiatus is coming up on 3 weeks in a couple days. No real reason for the absence, just found other things to do. And for the first time in a really long time I'm sitting here with no idea at all about what to blog about. So here are just a few quick hits from stuff that's happened since I last blogged:

- We had our 10th Wedding Anniversary - This is an impressive feat of endurance on Traci's part. I'm awfully glad she's hung in there. I'm like her eternal service project. Someday she'll get me just the way she wants. This event also helped make it clear to me that I'm getting older way faster than I'd like. 10 years ago doesn't even seem like that long ago. But it was pre-kids, so that makes it feel like it was in the 1800s.
- As a way to celebrate the aforementioned anniversary we seriously splurged and bought 6th row tickets to Wicked on eBay. It was better than I'd even imagined. Go see it if you haven't already, and invite me to go with you. I promise not to sing along too much.
- Braeden has started baseball games. This provides hours of non-baseball-related entertainment as we watch little boys pretend they know what they're doing, or even care that much. They're far more interested in doing creative things with, well, dirt. More to come on this topic . . .
- I'm playing the piano in primary. Need I really say more. (snicker, snicker)
- Work is really busy. With the recent layoffs my job effectively doubled in scope a few weeks ago. Ah, the joys of working at a struggling company. For now I'm calling it an opportunity.
- Lost (the TV show) just had the first hour of its 3 hour season finale. I LOVE the show, so don't get me wrong. But do we really need a 3 hour finale spread out over 3 weeks?! Why don't we call it a 16-hour finale and have it start in January and wrap up in May?! Sheesh.

I could go on, but if I do it might be 3 more weeks until I blog. To the few of you who have urged me on to get writing again, thanks, . . . I think. Traci just kinda ridiculed me into it. (she does that to get me to do other things too).

Life is grand.

Bands, Beards and Brothers

On Wednesday I was lucky enough to go see the Counting Crows with my brother, Ryan. He knows the promoter here locally and got us into the sold out show. This is a band I've been wanting to see for over a decade, but it never quite worked out. When we got to the show I realized that you don't exactly have assigned seats at a place like this. See, usually when we go see my brothers' bands we have a roped-off section with seats in the balcony where we can watch the show. It became pretty clear how spoiled I am. We aren't the tallest guys in the world, so as we tried to find our spots on the floor I was looking directly at some guy's back instead of at Adam Duritz. Not cool. And that guy in front of me tended to be a quite drunk college guy who really liked himself and had a vocabulary consisting of 50% R-rated words that really didn't make sense as he yelled incoherent phrases at the people around him. He also had a girl with him who seemed somehow impressed by Mr. Haughty. As he kept drinking heavily he started moving around a lot more and shared his beer with my shirt and shoes. Awesome.
But Ryan knows people. As we walked around the venue he strangely kept greeting and hugging shaggy-haired guys with huge beards. After three or four of these encounters I was wondering what the deal was with my brother's bearded friends. I figured if my lack of bushy facial hair was somehow making me even less cool. One of these guys happened to be the "bouncer guy" for the balcony section. Ryan chatted with him (and he chatted back extensively), and got us a spot standing behind the balcony seats where the ceiling is really low. (no problem for the vertically-challenged folks) It was marvelous! I could see everything I wanted to and I didn't even have to stand on my tip-toes. After we left the show and after I had pointed out that all his friends seemed to have foliage on their faces, Ryan ran into another one on the sidewalk. We both laughed as they shook hands. Hilarious.
The band was great and everything, but I'll tell ya, what I'll remember most from the night was joking around with Ryan.

And I haven't shaved since.


j/k

The girl I married . . . I think . . .

The 25th of April is our 10th wedding anniversary. I remember before we were married how well I thought I knew the future Mrs. HTF. I was sure that our 16 months or so of dating/engagement made me the definitive expert on Traci. Now a decade later I'm realizing more and more that I have a lot to learn and I continue to be surprised, almost exclusively in a great way. The girl I married thought that music stopped being created in 1979 (and should be played at a low volume) and that getting dressed up meant wearing your nicest flannel shirt and hiking shoes. (yes, she's quite Alaskan) I was good with all that - didn't matter much to me. I was lovin' her for other reasons. But last week I sat next to her at a rock concert as she rhythmically bobbed her head and belted out a few songs. She would occasionally smile at me with that grin that says, "surprise, I'll bet you didn't know I was secretly this cool." And her clothes were stylin'. (not that I'm any sort of expert on clothing style . . . as any of you know who me would attest) The girl I married also knew so little about current events that she couldn't tell me which two countries fought in the Iran/Iraq War. Now she zings me often with the "breaking news" of the day gleamed from significant reading of the big news web sites.

So I haven't been cool in many, many years (actually never), but I'm realizing that in addition to all the amazing things my wife is, that she's, . . . well . . . way cooler than me.

And I'm good with that.

Over the past six months or so especially, I've had to stop and stare as she downloaded amazing alt rock songs from iTunes or told me what was what in the presidential election. The way her coolness is increasing and mine is declining below zero . . . I'm just left to wonder . . . what'll this girl be like by the time we move into the nursing home?!