Miscellany

Soooo... that has been the earliest and nicest Spring I can remember....EVER! Of course my memory is not really that it good, it has never been good, it seems in fact to be getting worse but I digress. What a Spring. Everything is just busting out and it is April. I love it. We sat on the back porch last night and worked in the yard yesterday and there is a fine sheen of green pollen on everything each morning like a light dusting of snow. Lets enjoy this run as much as we can because if it were like this all year long here all our houses would be worth a million bucks. In celebration of it a favorite of mine.

Spring and All by Greg Brown:

Spring and what's left of the hippies return from old rooming houses and
Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn; Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.

My friend Jim just broke up his band, the guys all have jobs and the nights
got too long.
He's selling the amps, one guitar, and the van.
I'm sure you could have it all for a song.

Snow on the north side, trash in the yard, love like a newspaper tattered
and stained.
A two bourbon twilight, fog from God's cigar.
the neighbor's retarded dog chasing the train.

Don't see any good in just hanging around, take a tip from the birds and
change the scene.
Find some long river and follow it down to where our old sins have washed
up in New Orleans.

Spring and what's left of the songbirds return, to fight about loving and
nesting and such.
Thanks for the letters you sent back to burn.
Their smoke is as light, and as dark, as your touch.

***

END OF THE WORLD UPDATE! It has been about 19 days since health care (OBAMA CARE!) passed and was signed. The sun still cam up this morning. Additionally all those companies that took those HUGE write downs for their increased costs. Still in business. I am not saying that this will not further bankrupt our country but keep in mind we have been funding a several hundred billion dollar war off the books for 10 years now, eight of it under the fiscal conservatism of the republican Party. I think they are going to win the mid term elections pretty big and you what? The sun is going to come up the day after that too.

***

Tiger is back. I had no idea that they had been playing golf for the last several months. Imagine my surprise. I watched all this without comment. What is there really to say and other for the prurient interests all of the life lessons that this story entails are trite cliche's and they are also true which is what makes them so hard to pay attention to. here are couple:
1. People are sinners
2. Absolute power corrupts pretty absolutely
3. Once you set yourself on a pedestal in the information age you are well and truly screwed.
4. Even when you have it all it is never enough.
So lets forget about Tiger. Feet of clay and all that. he is an extraordinary athlete and person and is proving in the Masters that he is going to be back providing excitement and inspiration for the golfing public, but lets remember and have a serious pause before we hold these athletes out as role models for ourselves...or our kids. And that includes the already sainted child Tim Tebow and maybe even...gasp...Kurt Warner (though in both cases I hope they hold up). I am not cheering against these guys, I just do not understand why we as a society never recognize that although extremely talented in their niche, these guys are just people. That should make them even more interesting for us, but with the media, we want icons and Gods. Silliness. I hope he makes a run today. Golf is more interesting when everyone is there not just to win the contest but to beat him. And i like watching him win, even now.

***

Michael Steele. Seriously?

***

Mine disasters. They happen. We need the coal. it is really dangerous. People do dangerous things to make money and we cannot protect everyone all the time. Are we done wringing our hands over this? I sympathize with the families but deaths in coal mines are an example about how our news sources warp our common sense. Are we going to stop coal mining? No. Should we? No. Is it tragic that there are whole regions of people where this is their only employment option? Yes. Is THAT something we should be wringing our national hands about? Absolutely.

***

While I am being an insensitive lout I am sick and tired of New Orleans angst. HBO has a new series that finally does the disaster justice. Seriously, why do we as a country feel this tremendous need to allow our entertainers to feed us these tragic human interest stories over and over again to fuel our national shame and angst and even worse our national need to blame. Was it a tragedy? Absolutely. Did the Bush administration woefully under respond? Without a question. The "great Job Brownie" quote from W. was one of the great examples of Presidential detatchment and tone deafness but really it was a natural disaster.

Also, I guess no one there knew that the town resided below sea level. Fortunately a lot of it is now being built below sea level. Brilliant. It reminds me of all that development in Chesterfield Valley in reliance on the the new levees put out there. I remember what it all looked like under water. It reminds me also of the late (great) Sam Kinnison when talking about one of the frequent famines in the deserts of Africa suggesting we should not send them food, we should send them luggage.

"You live in a desert!
You know what it's going to a be
a hundred years from now?
It's going to be a ------- desert!
We have deserts in America
we just don't live in them!"

The same can be said for living on the gulf coast below sea level.

***

Upcoming events...."The Daddy's" House Concert Review, "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" book and movie review and wait for it...Becker goes to Istanbul, will he be able to come back?

February Wrap Up

Sooooo....we made it through another February. How cool is that? We not have March and with march we have the promise of Spring and with march and the Promise of Spring we have the NCAA Conference Tournaments and the NCAA Tournament and with all of those things we of course have the most important rite of Spring.....THE KUBE KLASSIK! An email blast will be going out from KUBE central as our fearless leader "The Donald" seeks to get us on Pay Pal so that I can no longer mis-handle (embezzle) peoples tournament fees. This is the type of "nanny state" government regulation that we tea party capitalists have been railing against. If people are stupid enough to give Mike Becker money they must want him to either lose it or blow it on booze, drugs and loose women. Right? I do not know what the picture of these three buildings is here for. Sometimes when I am driving around I take pics of things I like. I think these buildings are on the northwest corner of Jefferson and Washington. Very Presidential address. They caught my eye. I like the pic.

***
I do like to take pics sometimes. I was admiring my daughters Converse (she made pains to tell me that she had two more pairs but she was too lazy to get them out of her car) and I thought it would make a cool picture. Now I think, perhaps, but it struck me then what am oddly (stupidly) brand loyal family we are. Becker's in no particular order:
Wear Converse often but not exclusively
Drink Coke products when drinking cola
Drive Japanese cars that do not suddenly accelerate
Compute on MACs
Eat Lays Potato Chips
Like Carl's Hamburgers
Eat Edmund's Chili almost exclusively
Favor The Courtesy Diner
If you have to eat something like fast food....Steak n' Shake
Are Missouri Synod Lutherans (for at least a little while more)
It goes on and on and while to us it might seem quirky or interesting it is probably just a matter of being influenced by advertising and lacking any real creativity or imagination and the enjoyment that we get by condescendingly commenting on other people' choices which are clearly inferior to ours. How annoying is that?

Let's stick with calling it quirky.


***

One of my larger embarrassments in life (and those of you who know me really need to think about that statement) is the detritus of my once highly above average wine collection. I have no idea how many bottles I have left down there. For a while I was getting cases of Duckhorn Merlot every year. I know....I know....but if your going to drink merlot it was the way to go and it was new then. That still does not make it right. Anyway, we moved here a dozen years ago, I put the wine in the basement and pretty much forgot about it. Occasionally I would pull a bottle up on a lark to find it corked or at best well past it's prime. So we were out with some old friends from the wine consuming days and got home early and for memories sake headed back to the basement. I pulled out a couple of bolles but saw I had a 1991 Duckhorn Cabernet Sauvignon. Surprisingly it was not corked. Almost but not quite and well...it was pretty good. Big and fruity and plenty of tannin but on the back end the alcohol kind of overpowered the fruit. It was good and interesting and I need to get after that wine. Perhaps a weekly event as we open taste and dump until we find a good one. Could be a hoot.

***

Laura had backwards dance and she did the whole spa thing with Sandy prior to it. She is on student counsel and had been working all week getting ready for the dance. We have the feeling that in two years our house will be empty with out here. Her fingernails were painted the same color blue as her dress. What is up with that?

***
The Olympics is over I will not be watching the closing ceremonies. The Swedes stole the Gold in women's curling from Canada in the only sport I really followed. Those Swede's are tough. I am now watching the U.S. try and upend Canada for the Gold in men's hockey. YEEEEEEW-ESSSSSSSSSSS-EH?

Spring And The Derby And Such

Quoting the bard (Greg Brown not Bob Dylan):

“Spring and what's left of the hippies return from old rooming houses and
Mexico.
More letters, more journals, more poems to burn; Real heat at last.
At last my words glow.”

Hard to argue with. My wife has me busting my ass in our mud pit of a front yard. Planting new grass. Planting some flowers. The grass grows by several inches an hour but not so fast that the dogs cannot run it into the mud. Part lush, part dirt path because of the dogs I have fenced it off and re-seeded. Lawn furniture getting power washed and the covered to keep the pollen off. That same pollen blowing off the trees and turning our driveway green.
Spring seems full of possibilities even in our mired down economy.

***

The NFL draft is done. The Cardinals lost a game. The Blues are out but Hockey will roll on for another several months it seems. Now I hunker down and wait for the Tour De France about which only I, and every other person outside the U.S. cares about. So other then the Cardinals...not much. The only thing we know at this time of year is that (despite last years aberation where the Cubs hung on till late in the season) the Cgicago Cubs have been mathematically eliminated from playoff competition. Once again...everything is right with the world.

***

Physical activity seems to suggest itself but... any exertion seems to kill me. I played Ultimate with the church kids. As far as I can remember I did not even run but I ache...So I abandon physical activity and will start thinking about The Kentucky Derby. In the past two years I have been going to little bar down on Lemay Ferry and having a bottle of Busch with breakfast on Derby Day. I am going to have to break that tradition to go up to Arlington Park in Chicago with venerable handicapper Keith Dierberg to bet the races. Early odds are as follows:

ADVICE 27/1  
CHARITABLE MAN  35/1  
CHOCOLATE CANDY 12/1  
DESERT PARTY 20/1  
DUNKIRK 11/2  
FLYING PRIVATE 75/1  
FRIESAN FIRE 6/1  
GENERAL QUARTERS 30/1  
HOLD ME BACK 22/1  
I WANT REVENGE 11/4  
MINE THAT BIRD 90/1  
MR. HOT STUFF 40/1  
MUSKET MAN 22/1  
PAPA CLEM 14/1  
PIONEEROF THE NIL 7/1   
REGAL RANSOM 19/1  
SQUARE EDDIE 25/1  
SUMMER BIRD 30/1  
WEST SIDE BERNIE 30/1  
WIN WILLY 30/1 

Now...in my last act of Charity for the month of April I will tell you that I will be betting on I Want Revenge and Chocolate Candy. You heard it here first. See you at the races and heresto Spring, when anything is possible.