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Even if you don’t care much for basketball, this article by the inimitable Malcolm Gladwell is worth a read. The basic gist of the story is: even if you aren’t particularly good at something, you will be more successful than those who are by simple effort. This is something we tell our kids but tend not to believe ourselves; it’s nice to see it examined and proved.
Great job, “fans.”
Here’s the rule I propose: if you’re at a home game, don’t mess with the opposing fans. They’re the insurgents; you’re the US Army. Screwing with them is just like torture. It just pisses them off.
Let’s face it: Mets fans aren’t that bright. If they were, they wouldn’t be Mets fans. (Ha ha! Just kidding, Mets fan who might be reading this! Please don’t torch my car!) Now we’ll have thousands of them showing up at the Vault all season, rolling 15-20 deep, just itching to beat the crap out of someone. And some poor guy in a Cole Hamels jersey who’s taking his daughter to her first baseball game, and asked an idiot in a cheap David Wright knockoff jersey to stop dropping F-bombs, is gonna end up in the hospital. That’s gonna be so…great.
Some schmuck “fan” just created a baseball environment in which somebody’s going to get maimed. Thanks, douchenozzle.
It really was, I tell you. We reorganized our pantry, people. Reorganized our pantry. Because that is how we roll.
Friday night I managed to fit in my last organ lesson for a few weeks, since we’re having a baby in four days and everything. Then I went home and entertained my existing offspring so my wife wouldn’t go all My Lai on the neighborhood (too soon?).
Saturday we spent the day, and I mean the entirety of the daylight hours, cleaning and organizing. Sarah’s homey Jeanmarie brought her daughter over, so she and Charles played while we cleaned up the nursery, ate donuts, did some yardwork, buried a hobo, and cleaned out my car. Major productivity, people.
Saturday night I sang in one of the better concerts I’ve ever done, with the Mastersingers of Wilmington. We performed a few old “chestnuts,” such as three selections from Randall Thompson’s Frostiana, along with some classic renaissance and baroque motets. We also did a lot of modern works, particularly some Italian madrigals by William Hawley (I hope and pray he owns a pet of some kind named “Smoot“), some fun anthems by Craig Phillips, and the pièce de résistance, “Cloth’d In Holy Robes” by Judith Bingham, one of the hardest pieces of music I’ve ever put in a folder. I actually had to bang out intervals at the piano to learn the piece, something I haven’t had to do in years due to my awesomeness (note: I am also the picture of modesty).
Sunday I had church per usual, followed by a trip to Infants Be We to pick up some little clips to make the infant carseat base fit in my whip. Then home for naps, more cleaning, and a complete and utter rebuild of our pantry, which, I swear to The Deity Of Your Choice, contained an item with an expiration date in the Clinton administration, which you may recall preceded the Eight Years Of Darkness covering most of this decade.
It was a box of rice, or something, and it had been moved, by us, from house to house, at least twice. Given the shelf-life of rice, it’s entirely possible I bought it when I lived in an apartment prior to our marriage. We hoped that just simply reorganizing things would make everything fit better, but you know what really did the job was throwing away two-thirds of the food on the shelves. The rice, or whatever it was, was not an isolated instance: the average expiration date of the stuff we threw out was mid-2007.
Just another wild and woolly weekend at Hearndom II. Keep on rockin’, Amurica.
Since we’re having a baby, HW and I get a lot of people asking us “Hey, have you picked a name? What is it?” To which we have to reply, “Yes, we’ve picked a name, and no, we’re not sharing it.”
(Sarah is getting extra saucy about it; someone apparently asked her, “Have you picked any names for the baby?” and she replied “Yes, the last one.”)
In the spirit of sharing, here is a list of names for our daughter that we will not be using:
- Sophia – One of my favorite names. Sadly, it is also one of America’s current favorite names; it’s more popular right now than “Madeleine,” another name I’m fond that is highly ranked at babynames.com. (Some people spell it Madelynn; those people have a special place in hell reserved for them.)
- Sadie – Can’t not think of the Maharishi.
- Millicent – Sadly, Sarah thinks this name is dorky. I love it so much I’d give it to two daughters and have to number them like George Foreman did his sons.
- Charlotte – Sarah pushed for this one, but the thought of having two kids named “Charles” and “Charlotte” made me cough stomach acid.
- Victoria – Another favorite of mine that’s sadly in use by a close friend’s daughter. Things would just get confusing.
- Brooklyn – I would pour boiling mercury into my empty eye sockets first. Also: why “Brooklyn?” Why not “Staten Island” or “The Bronx?”
- Clara – Another personal favorite that’s kind of on an uptick. Unacceptable.
- Deborah – I like the name, but not the diminutive form.
- MacKenzie – One of a father’s primary tasks, as we all know, is “keep her off the pole.” (Stripper pole. Keep up, America.) Not using a name like “MacKenzie” reduces her pole-riding odds from 90% to about 8%. See also: Madison.
In the interest of full disclosure: the above may or may not be true.
I’m not really a poetry guy; I’d much prefer listening to one set to music. (And if it hasn’t been set to music by anyone, it’s probably not very good.) Still, this poem, by Robert Frost, I find very appealing, particularly as Spring turns to May:
I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.
I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long. You come too.
(It has, of course, been set to music, most famously by Randall Thompson.)
Been a busy day, so no significant updates, but here’s a few amusements for ye:
- I went to high school here. Fire! Awesome.
- One for the baseball fans; this killed me.
- You don’t have to be scared of vegetarians.
- Oh crap. Apparently this is real. Why won’t she just go away?
Sorry for the light day; I’ve been busy every night this week, which is when I write most of my posts and schedule them to pop up during the day. One more night of rehearsals and then I’m off until, you know, we have a baby next week. And whatnot.
The internet being what it is, my recent website alterations have led to a lot of spam comments. Even more than regular comments! This shouldn’t be surprising, since I have two readers.
So, I’ve added a plug-in that does some kind of magic involving hash strings and other crap I don’t understand, the end result being that humans should be able to leave comments, and spambots should not.
Here’s where I need you, my two readers, to help out: leave a comment on this post, if you would be so kind, so that I know that humans can still, you know, do so. Leave anything you want. “Hi, I’m a comment!” would be a good one, or “Ew, I found a pube in my taco.”
Your assistance is greatly appreciated. I will start the testing myself with an amusing comment.
Here is why I don’t normally watch American Idol: because of hacks like Allison Whatsherbutt, who deafened me for a while last night. She sang “Someone To Watch Over Me,” one of the best songs ever put to lined paper, like a pig in an abattoir. Good job, Allison: you can song really frickin’ loud. Is that all you have to offer? Really?
Here’s the thing that, if you’re lucky, you’ll learn somewhere down the line: singing is often about subtlety. Loud is merely the first step in learning how to sing. I know literally dozens of people who can sing loud. I know a very limited number who can sing softly, and more importantly, know which to do at any given time.
“Someone To Watch Over Me” is wistful, almost a bedtime prayer. Belting it out at the top of your lungs is like playing a lullabye on a piccolo trumpet directly into your baby’s ear. It’s like a Frost poem through a megaphone. It’s like waking up your sleeping spouse by kneeing him in the testes.
Sadly, <SPOILER ALERT>you’ll be there after tonight</SPOILER ALERT>, so next week perhaps you can commit voice rape on a Norah Jones song, or something. Color me “not watching.”
Chris Hardwick over at nerdist.com has an interesting post on confidence. The gist: know how to do something that you love, really well. Even if you’re in a situation where that expertise doesn’t really apply, the simple fact that you’re really good at something can be a subconscious morale booster.
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