Congrats, gentlemen. You’ve just claimed the “of the moment” spot* in the Top 10 List of Julie’s Favorite Bands/Musical Artists
“I Won’t Cry” / My Morning Jacket (2004)
*How does this list work? I have 8-9 bands/artists that just Don’t Change, and I reserve 1-2 spaces so that I can rotate in new discoveries. Sometimes, these newbies even go so far to earn a place on the rest of the list proper. It’s a complicated process.
Man! I was really on a roll for a while there: three posts in three days?! But then I got myself laid up with a cold. I know, I know, what a baby. More on that later, probably. Anyway, bear with me and I’ll be back to that regularly-posting groove in no time. Thanks for your patience.
I know this is real weird, but I have a head cold and it’s affecting my cognitive function.
Also, Mike Post is really a genius.
“Theme from Hill Street Blues” / Mike Post (1981)
In honor of the snowflakes that magically appeared on my page yesterday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuFI5KSPAt4
“Snow (Hey Oh)” / Red Hot Chili Peppers (2006)
image courtesy of Express.com
Something horrible has happened to this poor girl, and I think it involves some sort of radical surgery to remove half of her ribs. Seriously. Are they trying to sell the shirt or get someone to donate $9.95 a month to Feed the Children? Ugh.
I love springtime. As the thick blanket of depressively-soul-crushing bitter coldness begins to slightly lift, something Magical happens: the professional baseball and hockey seasons intersect, making it truly the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (Andy Williams tune notwithstanding).
I’ve written at length on why I love baseball, so this proclamation of hockey adoration might seem like it’s come out of nowhere. And in a way, it sort of does. I look forward to the start of each season, but not until it begins do I remember: Oh, man! I really like this!
I went to my first (and perhaps only) game of the season a few weeks ago (ticket prices be crazy, y’all). As I discussed the night with a friend, he summed up my feelings nicely: “I like hockey, but when I go to a game, it’s suddenly like ‘Oh! Fuck yeah, hockey!'”
I couldn’t have said it better myself, but I’ll try. Here are my Top Four Reasons* Why I Fucking Love This Game (the NBA really should have used that verbiage for their 2006-07 marketing campaign instead).
The trainer is probably realigning this dude's jaw, or maybe putting his eyeball back in.
4. The players.
They’re scrappy, they’re tough and they give each other the best nicknames. I imagine the wussies are weeded out of this game by about age 5. They take a hit, hop over the boards, and get stitched up right there on the bench! Overall, these are tough mofos. Yeah, you hear about some nasty injuries in other pro leagues, but other pro leagues don’t have razor-sharp blades as part of their equipment. Just ask Clint Malarchuk. Oh, and the nicknames? To find yours, just shorten your last name and add “ie” or “s” to the end. Simple and elegant.
3. The fans.
I don’t really get off on the fights like some other folks do, but I admit that I find the drunken antics of some NHL fans to be pretty amusing. I mean, some of these guys (sometimes gals) really really get into the game. 9 times out of 10, it’s not in an annoying, unruly kind of way (thanks, Canadians!) so it’s all in good fun: the yelling and the trash-talking is, in a lot of ways, just an extension of what’s going on down there on the ice. The folks up in the nosebleeds are the seventh man, indeed.
please note their teams of choice. All Canadian, of course. God Bless 'em.
2. The speed.
Watching a play unfold – the skating, the passing, the stick-and puck-handling – is like watching live art. High-speed live art, that is. Don’t blink now, you might lose the puck. Talk about an adrenaline rush! And when that horn sounds and the lights flash when a goal is scored? Sublime.
1. The Canadians.
I am fascinated by Canadians. Who isn’t?
* Why four? Why not four? I could have chosen seventeen, but I doubt you’d keep reading.
Stay tuned for part trois!
Am I the only one who didn’t know that she started out as a Christian artist? Interesting.
“Teenage Dream” / Katy Perry (2010)
You’re killin’ me, people. A three-way tie? Okay, fine.
For the past few years, passing by my elementary school has made me sad. I’m not longing for the days of carving dirty words into the pencil-lip of a 472-year-old schooldesk or yearning to relive ages 5 through 13 (though, man! What I know now!) – I’m disconsolate over the fact that the 7th- and 8th-graders being schooled inside that building are missing out on one of the Awesomest Adventures of Their Lives: Safety Patrol.
Safety Patrol was, basically, the shit. At approximately 7:30 each morning and 2:50 each afternoon a group of rowdy 13-year-olds wearing nasty old orange “safety belts” and wielding traffic cones and hand-held stop signs were unleashed onto the parking lot and roadways surrounding the school. We were bad ass, y’all, not to mention the Greatest Crossing Guards That Ever Lived.
Whistles and vests are for pussies. This joker has nothin' on us.
We were casual about it, of course. “Oh, I have ‘Patrol tonight,” I’d say to the teacher, who’d excuse me to the cafeteria where I’d meet up with the others at one of those giant metal cabinets full of our ‘gear.’ This was our locker room. Casually exchanging jokes, the boys smacking each other with the belts – but we took our responsibilities seriously. Like some tactical response team suiting up in body armor and methodically checking their weapons, we carefully donned our belts and carried our cones and signs with a sort of nonchalant reverence.
While I served a few tours in the back parking lot – carefully guiding the youth of St. So-and-So through a traffic cone-lined path to their waiting minivans – the real action was on the main road. The very small handful of kids who walked to school had to cross not one but two intersections, and I’d be damned if they did it unsafely. I risked my life and limbs (literally! – more on that in a sec) for those children.
One bitter cold morning, I took my post down at the corner (that sounds like the beginning of another kind of story, doesn’t it?). Step One was to tend to the stop signs. This involved removing the padlock holding them in place and turning them so that oncoming traffic would, theoretically, stop.
On days like this, we were also supplied with a 398 year old can of de-icer to facilitate the process, but on that fateful morning, the de-icer was gone. Struggling with all my might to turn the sign, cars zipping past me at 70, 80, 90 miles per hour, I was faced with one of the most difficult decisions of my life. The cheap cotton stretchy gloves I was wearing allowed no grip on that cold, metal pole and the only choice that my 13-year-old brain gave me was to remove them and go barehanded.
Using my teeth, I removed one turquoise atrocity from my right hand with expert skill. Whipping my head around and tersely spitting said glove onto the frozen ground, I turned to face my metal nemesis. Gritting my teeth, eyes steely with determination, I reached out to grab that pole (that’s what she said! that’s what she said!). Much to my surprise, it gave way immediately, forcing an 18-wheel tractor trailer to come to a screeching, skidding halt just inches from my toes.
Plucking my glove from the ground, I resumed my duties. No big. All in a day’s work.
But something was wrong. My hand burned. Why did it hurt so bad? Why was I losing feeling in my fingertips? Once inside, I removed my gloves to find that all of the fingers on my right hand had turned black with necrosis! *
We were warriors of the Safety Patrol, martyrs for our cause, but this – all of this – has been gone for a long time. If Safety Patrol exists at that school anymore, it’s probably just some hosers aimlessly milling around the parking lot making sure the kindergartners don’t run under someone’s Expedition. It’s just not the same; the main road that runs along the west side of the school (a road which, in my memory, was crumbling and incredibly narrow and filled with vehicles travelling at rates of speed nearing 400 kilometers per hour) has since been re-paved. A wide, welcoming sidewalk’s been installed. And – this is the part that really gets me – the rusty stop signs on each side of the road are gone, having been replaced by an actual stoplight.
It’s horrible.
*No, stupid. Are you really believing this? I mean, I did take off my glove, and I think the technically term for what I experienced was “frostnip” (frost-teeny-weeny-bite?), but really?
How is this creatively-fictionized?** you are now asking yourself.
This story is junk. If you were once part of The Patrol, you know better: We were schmucks, dumb ones at that, who signed up for Safety Patrol not out of a sense of duty but because everyone who did it for a full year got a free ticket for a Cardinals game. We acted under exact orders of our teachers, rarely making any kind of decision on our own.
**And why make up words, Julie? Is “fictionalized” too difficult for you to type? Yes. Yes it is.
Stay tuned for Poll results, part deux!
“Gotta give to the poor, no time for lovin’…”
First heard this one on many a trip around the ‘dale with Jenn. In case you were wondering, Aqua has more than one song. Or album!
“My Oh My” / Aqua (1997)
the sloppy copy 