it's gotta be the part of me that likes the university of michigan that is giving me such glee over the shit storm parked over ohio state.
seriously, i've disliked them since before bo schembechler retired back in the late '80s.
i can only guess that some combination of my uncle having received a graduate degree there and osu's record of futility against the wolverines prior to the ascent of head coach jim tressel were enough for me to hold the buckeyes in such disdain.
well, there's that and the insufferable smugness of ohio state fans and the amazingly pretentious "the" before the school's name.
(today's news tops one of my favorite opinion pieces which came following the buckeyes' second straight ass-whipping at the hands of a southeastern conference foe in the national title game.)
so seeing their comeuppance today in jettisoning their football coach to save the program was immensely gratifying.
knowing that west virginia university is now facing its own embarrassment with an out-of-control coach, i recognize i am the pot calling the kettle black.
odd as it sounds, though, having the indiscretion happen so publicly is that it merely reveals a weakness of the flesh. it's one man having an openly bad night out, not an institution covering up its impropriety.
tressel, as much as it galls me to say it, assembled and led teams with excellence. that he did so with an apparent moral rectitude made it even more unbearable -- yet admirable.
that he didn't reveals a weakness in character. that the university served as his apologist and enabler smells like hypocrisy.
while i'm sorry for the man -- and it's wrong and unadvisedly judgmental of me to say so -- i'm taking a perverse pleasure in watching high-and-mighty buckeye nation laid low as a result.
summer festival time is upon us in the capital city.
what used to be an occasion for socializing for me and the missus has now become an opportunity to burn off some of our toddler's seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy.
it was a smaller crowd than i anticipated, given the event was free. but it was also the first weekend of clear weather we'd had in some time, so maybe people were doing yard work. that, and it's the first time the concerts have been held on the river. folks probably aren't used to it yet.
i looked forward to a combination of live blues, street vendor food and beer.
(here i will say i was disappointed with my philly cheese steak sandwich. i think mine wound up with lots of the burned meat scrapings from the griddle.)
the acts, on the other hand, were first-rate. strong performances and enthusiastic sets. give this music festival a couple of more years at this location and i bet this thing's going to blow up.
this weekend, i attended my first vandalia gathering out on the grounds of the capitol complex.
i looked forward to this because i thought the boy would enjoy watching players and dancers up close.
given that he was melting down a bit from the lack of a mid-morning nap and his vantage point perched on my shoulders, i couldn't tell how much he was actually watching.
he seemed to derive his greatest pleasure in clambering up the capitol steps, followed by picking up sticks, then grabbing fistfuls of mulch and putting it in his shoes.
(for what it's worth, i enjoyed watching regional talent performing traditional appalachian music and exposing the boy to the culture of his home state.)
we spent about an hour there as i walked, then carried him, before finally putting him back in his backpack carrier for the 2-mile trek back to the car.
he fell asleep about two blocks away from the cn papers parking garage.
at the moment, kris and i are thinking we've ruined our child by exposing him to television and online video.
he does seem to like it. if he's tired, he'll watch until his eyes glaze over. if he's rambunctious, he'll watch until he's ready to get out of his exer-saucer.
last year, when i was killing time with the boy, i'd break out the laptop and watch sesame street's youtube channel to see what would make him react.
once he fell asleep, i'd surf the web with the babe on one arm.
the first thing i can remember him smiling at was a sequence featuring actor jonah hill teaching elmo about mustaches.
until he got bored with it, the boy would grin at the sight gag punchline. he was about 7 months old.
earlier this year, kris said studies recommend not exposing children to screens of any sort until they're at least 2 -- adverse effects on learning development and all that.
oops.
on the other hand, we haven't stopped.
we are concerned, however, that watching video has become part of his pre-sleep routine. we're working on that.
my earliest recollections of video are mostly of cartoons.
we lived in new brunswick, n.j., and miami, fla., at this time, so that puts me between 1- and 5-years-old.
(weird thing was, i never saw them on the tube once we moved to west virginia.)
i have no recollection of plots, but the sounds and pictures are fairly well burned into my brain.
while i have memories of cool action cartoons like "space ghost" and "the herculoids," the ones i remember best had good theme music.
for some reason, the ones i can more or less still hum today are from japan.
the most familiar is probably "speed racer." (which unfortunately doesn't allow embedding.)
my recollection of "gigantor" is its signature chorus, but watching its opening now, i didn't remember it having a calypso beat.
"kimba the white lion" had a happy little tune. i don't recall much about the show other than it was about a brave lion cub.
to this day, the theme to "marine boy" still pops into my head more than 40 years after i first watched the adventures of the very special undersea hero. (mom even made me a few cardboard boomerangs which i'd tuck into a rubber band on my arm. darned things never did fly back to me, though.)
it was either this show's theme or the next one that even got me started hunting up these intros on the youtube.
this one i definitely remember from living in florida because i had my mom help me make a super medallion like the one "prince planet" wore.
i never forgot the melody to this tune, but once i found the videos, i was surprised that the opening credits were sung by a children's chorus.
(in what's likely a mixed blessing, since mgm is forward-thinking enough to post entire episodes of the show on its youtube site, you can actually watch the show -- and see how ridiculous the storylines were. if you have any memories of the shows, you might just want to keep them pristine and stop after the theme music.)
there is a quaintness to these anime themes, such as the punctuating xylophone in the "prince planet" intro.
unlike modern children's fare, which as often as not has a rock influence in its music, these little ditties capture a historical and cultural moment.
first of all, coming from japan, these shows had to translated to english.
additionally, at the time of their importation, in the early to mid-60s, the songs reflect the music of the era in its most inoffensive way. there was no "edge" from the times -- kind of easy listening, if you will.
of course, with little "astro boy," it's nice to hear the old-fashioned echoes of "mighty mouse" in its strains.
(actually, i don't really remember the theme music, as it made its first run in this country before i was even born, but i do remember the character. i even had an astroboy halloween costume, mask and all.)
while i won't say all that screen time stunted my development, i did wind up in cobbling together a shameful career in journalism.
i hope it's not too late to save our own astro boy.
i suppose you can sort of blame the rapture for my disappearance from the facebook.
i deactivated my account some time sunday morning and have been going social network free ever since.
after the prophesy of a mass disappearance of christians went unfulfilled saturday evening, a friend from south carolina posted an image of Jesus Christ about to receive an atomic elbow from late wrestling superstar macho man randy savage.
savage had died in a car crash the day before. the artist cobbled together the image suggesting that the wwf legend, now in heaven, saved the planet from the Lord's hand by, well, taking Him down.
it was as ludicrous and laughable an illustration as it was likely blasphemous. still, it struck me as funny.
i posted it on a friend's facebook page, since i figured he'd appreciate it better than a number of my friends in the clergy would if they'd seen it on my page.
by morning, catholic guilt had given me second thoughts and i removed the post. then i took the extra step of deactivating my account entirely.
why?
i think it was my constant toggling back to the site in my free moments for reaction on an otherwise productive weekend of housework, child rearing and reading sports.
the frequency was mildly disconcerting. i think i needed a break.
three days in, i do find myself thinking of things i'd like to have posted on my page to share with my online friends.
of course, i did that even while my account was active, but rarely followed through.
the empty minutes after finishing tasks on the computer remain empty. i feel a gentle tug to fill them with peeks over the online fence at my friends' doings.
i'm not off the site for good. i'm just trying to see how long i can go without -- and wondering what will finally drive me over to reactivate.
for posterity's sake, yesterday, mother's day, marked another first for me and the boy.
he'd skipped the only chance at a nap before joining his cousins and grandparents for brunch at the embassy suites downtown.
once there, he was focused on not eating (threw a piece of waffle at lola -- "grandma" in tagalog) and all about staying awake and walking and keeping up with his mobile cousins.
lucky for him, my nieces were all about keeping an eye on their little cousin, so he was in good hands.
at the end of the outing, i was pretty sure all the hugs and kisses and chasing had worn his little ass out.
how much so was not evident until the drive home by way of kroger to get some milk.
i opened the back door to find the boy passed out in his car seat.
he never stirred. not even with the sunlight hitting him, nor the unbuckling of his harnesses, not even my careful lifting him from his seat.
i gingerly put his head on my shoulder and pressed him against me and walked him to the house.
kris waited at the door and i tilted my head as i closed my eyes to indicate he was asleep.
she was astounded.
she directed me to his room, where the final hurdle awaited.
so sleepy was this boy that he didn't even stir when i laid him in the crib. he was knocked out. (for the next three hours, i learned later.)
this was my first carrying of a sleeping child to bed.
the boy has really begun walking; enough so that it's now become his chosen mode of transportation.
(if he really needs to get someplace in a hurry, though, he still hunkers down and skitters on all fours.)
when kris left last week to spend a few days with her folks, i predicted, despite my hopes otherwise, that he'd start walking there.
i was headed home from the grocery store the day of their return friday when i got a call from kris.
"where are you?"
after i told her i was driving home, she told me to hurry. i knew something was up.
sure enough, i got to the door to see the boy standing with his mama. not an unusual sight, given that he'd been standing with some support and on his own for the past few months.
then she said, "walk to daddy."
tentatively, unsteadily, frankenstein-like, he tottered in my direction before i caught him in my arms.
my heart rose and sank at the same time.
i was so pleased and proud to see our child taking meaningful steps.
by the same token, seeing him at mama's knee, standing at his wee, full height, then turning and ambulating toward me signified the end of his being a baby and the start of his becoming a little boy.
say what you will about changing diapers and feeding and crying and refusing to sleep.
these days of tiny bodies with tiny bones infused with simple affection and trusting innocence will vanish in a flash.
we've reached that point in the sports year where you really have to look hard for stuff to read if you're a fan of college sports.
even one of my favorite blogs, the smoking musket, has gone on summer hiatus, posting weekly, rather than daily aggregations.
ergo, i offer kudos to those folks doing it for a living who manage to write every day, especially now and especially about my beloved west virginia university mountaineers:
the pre-snap read: n.y. times writer covers college football and is days into the 120-team countdown leading to the first fall kickoff.
inside wvu: a new blog, by pittsburgh tribune review wvu beat reporter tony dobies. looking forward to the lad feeding the beast on a daily basis.
normally, i'd say the next few months can't go by fast enough.
but as i'm watching my son grow up before my very eyes, i'm loathe these days to wish for time to pass any faster than it does. (that's us at mountaineer field, about this time last year. he's outgrown the car seat and has begun to really walk.)
it's gotta be the part of me that likes the university of michigan that is giving me such glee over the shit storm parked over ohio state.
knowing that west virginia university is now facing its own embarrassment with an out-of-control coach, i recognize i am the pot calling the kettle black.
