A Colorful Record Night

A while back my vinyl buddies and I converged yet again amidst the picturesque lawns of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin to play music selections at Kevin's "Wall of Sound," this time with the theme of colors.  Love may be the most cited word in popular music titles, but the broader category of color may come in a close second.  Blue alone could fill up several weeks worth of music (and most of these would have love in the title as well).  In fact, I specifically tried (but failed) to avoid blue and black just to force me to listen to songs I hadn't heard before.  In a bit of a breach of etiquette, I started with a song by The Boomtown Rats called "Diamond Smiles," except that diamond isn't really a color, is it?  But the song is SOOO good.  

We will be meeting one last time at the end of August before changing venues entirely as Kevin moves into a new home.  The Wall of Sounds has been been good to us the past many years.  We shall see if the new abode does the old one justice.

So, without further a do, here's a list from a night of many colors (forgive any typos):

Blue Tip, The Cars, Aaron

Diamond Smiles, The Boomtown Rats, Paul (note: not really a color, but awfully good)

Man on the Silver Mountain, Rainbow, Kevin

Purple Haze, The Cure, Jonathan

Red, Sammy Hagar, Aaron

Put on Your Old Brown Shoes, Supertramp, Paul

Bluebeard, Cocteau Twins, Kevin

The Flurries Wide and White, Matt Beckler, Jonathan

Black Fathom 4, Kansas, Aaron

Cold Grey Morning, Kansas, Aaron

Union City Blue, Blondie, Paul

Blue Jay Way, Beatles, Kevin

Black and Blue, Van Halen, Jonathan

Not a Color, Billy Squire, Aaron

Silver Rainbow, Genesis, Paul

Red Balloon, Faces, Kevin

Black Star, Radiohead, Jonathan

Charlie Brown's Parents, Dishwalla, Aaron

White Lightning and Wine, Heart, Paul

Black Cars, Gino Vannelli, Kevin

Sound and Color, Alabama Shakes, Jonathan

Forever in Blue, Journey, Aaron

Blue Chair, Elvis Costello, Paul

Red Jesus, The Cult, Kevin

Blue Monday, New Order, Jonathan

White and Nerdy, Weird Al Yankovic, Aaron

On the Greener Side, Michelle Shocked, Paul

Pink World, Planet P, Kevin

Sky Blue Sky, Wilco, Jonathan

Red Neck Friend, Jackson Browne, Aaron

Love is a Wonderful Color, Icicle Works, Paul

Silver Tightrope, Amegeddon, Kevin

Bottle of Blues, Beck, John

Red Eye, Moondoggies, Jonathan

And…Somewhere I've never Traveled, Ambrosia, Aaron (note: also no color, but played just to piss off Jonathon, which is entirely within the stated rules of Record Night)

Blue Continental, Shaw Blades, Aaron

Red Fox, Big Country, Paul

Tangerine, Led Zeppelin, Kevin

Golden, My Morning Jacket, Jonathan

Red Light, U2, Kevin

Blue Light, David Gilmore, John

Love over Gold, Dire Straits, Paul

White China, Ultravox, Kevin

Jealous Again, Black Crowes, John

Midnight Blue, Lou Gramm, Aaron

Pink Thing, XTC, Paul

Red Skies At Night, The Fixx, Kevin

Black Diamond, Kiss, Aaron

Silvertown Blues, Mark Knopfler, Kevin

Blue Heart, Peter Murphy, Kevin

Blue Mask, Lou Reed, Kevin

Blue Jean, David Bowie, John

Red Red Sun, INXS, Paul

Crimson and Clover, Joan Jett, Kevin

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Elton John, Kevin

Bluebird, Paul McCartney, Kevin

Green Flower Street, Donald Fagen, Paul

Ruby, Donald Fagen, Paul

Midnight Blue, Styx, Kevin

To Read or not to Read

A friend of mine reads over 100 books a year.  That’s right.  A staggering feat of one book every 3.6 days with about a 40/60 non-fiction to fiction split. To put matters in perspective, he and I both happened to read Paul Auster’s novel, 4-3-2-1, an extremely dense 850-page book that took me three weeks to finish. That’s about 280 pages a week for me…not too bad, right? 

But at my friend’s rate, assuming an average of 300 pages per book, he must read at more than twice that rate, around 575 pages per week or 82 pages per day. And this doesn’t allow for any I-don’t-feel-like-reading breaks. You know, those days when you just want to open a bag of chips, turn on the baseball game and have a few beers? After reading 4-3-2-1 I needed to cleanse the pallet a little, so I took a few days off of reading altogether before diving into a comic book (Doonesbury: The Reagan Years – an excellent read, BTW) followed by the extremely short and entertaining Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, and now I’m nearly through yet another light read, Seinfeldia. Only after I complete this lightweight morsel will I finally take on a book with more substance. 

So how does my friend do it? His simple answer to me was “I don’t watch TV.  If I have downtime, I read.” Pretty simple, right? I don’t really watch TV either, except baseball and football, but I am an expert in finding other ways to pass time without actually accomplishing anything (I’m doing one right now!). But clearly the practice of turning off the TV or phone or computer to engage in some other pursuit – reading, practicing an instrument, taking a class, learning to dance – really can lead to amazing results.

Like my friend, I log all of the books I read. I’m up to fourteen in 2017 – a very good clip for me. Here are the tallies for years past:

2016 – 21

2015 – 19

2014 – 11

2013 – 13

2012 – 8

2011 – 12

2010 – 8

2009 – 12

2008 – 28 (I’m not sure what happened here, except to say it was my son’s first year in all-day school, so I must have taken advantage of it.)

Things get a little shaky after this from a record keeping perspective, but you get the idea. Except for the outlier of 2008, I’ve been around a book a month guy, though it looks like I might be inching closer to a book every two weeks guy. Not a bad clip, and it might be a good goal to finish around 24 books a year.

I’m also someone who looks up words when I’m reading and logs the ones I think are worth remembering (I have an Excel spreadsheet of about 420 words I’m trying to master), and that slows me down considerably.  One would hope that over time I would become more knowledgeable and not have research so many words, thereby increasing the number of books I read each year. 

One would hope…and yet, last night I once again had to look up the word feckless, despite its inclusion on my spreadsheet for the past eight years. 

How’s that for feckless?

Bet on the Brewers? Um...no.

It’s been one long writing hiatus (my longest since starting this website),  but in my defense I was extremely busy watching baseball.  When I invested yet again in MLB.TV at the beginning of the season, I had assumed that by mid-May my lowly Brewers would be bringing up the rear and I’d be onto other summertime activities like tending the garden and exercising (oh yeah, and writing). Fortunately, the Milwaukee Brewers have saved me from that fate, and while my tomatoes are suffering from dry rot and my waste line is enjoying recent growth, my Brewers are in first place by 51/2 games at the All-Star Break.

Surprised?  Well, yeah, but perhaps less by the Brewers and more by the other teams in the NL Central.

I had predicted a win total of perhaps 77-83 wins this year, an improvement over last year’s 73, but not enough to make a shot at the playoffs, especially with the Cubs and Cardinals in the division.  And that’s the real surprise, that to date these two teams haven’t been able to get it together.  As for the Crew, well...there’s still time to meet my prediction.  Yes, I’m cautiously optimistic, but I also have a memory, albeit one that regularly forgets where I placed my phone.

As the Doonesbury character Duke discovered back in 1982, it’s never wise to bet your last ten dollars on the Brewers.

Brewer fans don’t need long memories to remember two disastrous second half collapses.  We need go no further back that 2014, the year the Brewers enjoyed the best record in baseball and a 6 ½ game lead at the end of June, only to go 31-47 the rest of the way to finish third with an 82-80 record (which ordinarily would have been a pretty good season for the Crew).

And let’s not forget a decade earlier, when the Brewer suffered the worst second half ever for a team that entered the All-Star Break with a winning record, going 22-53, scoring two or fewer runs 33 times, and finishing last in the division.

And even in 2008 when the Brewers managed to make the playoffs for the first time in 26 years, the Crew had a terrible September, going 4-15 before winning six of their final seven to squeeze into the post-season with a 90-72 record.  It got so bad that final month of the season that Ned Yost was fired as manager with just 12 games to play.

Will the 2017 Crew suffer a similar fate?  Hard to say, but there are a few reasons to remain optimistic.  First, this year’s team has suffered some enormous blows without folding, two of them the result of National League rules.  Opening day starter Junior Guerra lasted just three innings before going on the DL after injuring his leg leaving the batter’s box.  Similarly, Chase Anderson - the best Brewers starting pitcher this season - suffered an oblique injury while taking a swing and will be out likely until the end of August.  Add to that the continued injuries of Ryan Braun (no steroids equals no playing time, apparently), and you might expect this team to struggle.  Not so.  The bench on this team as constructed by general manager David Stearns is deep, so much so that manager Craig Counsell claims his team doesn’t have a bench.  Rather, they have interchangeable parts, all of them formidable, from waiver acquisitions Eric Sogard and Stephen Vogt and trade acquisitions Travis Shaw and Manny Pina,  to utility men Hernan Perez and Jesus Aguilar to recent signee Eric Thames, every day seems to highlight a new hero.  If there’s cause for concern, it’s the alarming number of strikeouts (the Crew one again leads the league in this category) and I have to wonder how the lineup is going to fair against the elite pitchers on the Dodgers and Diamondbacks.  The weakest link in the chain so far is center fielder Keon Broxton, who - despite moments of brilliance and solid defense - can’t seem to find any consistency behind the plate, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he isn’t a Brewer next year.

But if the Brewer position players generally lead one to feel optimistic, the pitching staff may cause a few fans to squirm in their seats.  When Matt Garza is your third most reliable starter, you might concede that the second half could be rough, yet somehow through it all - through injuries to two starters and a bullpen that struggled mightily early in the season, Milwaukee has the 8th best ERA in the Major Leagues.  And recently the starting staff, bolstered by Anderson’s replacement Brent Suter and a reinvigorated Jimmy Nelson, has finally given the bullpen some rest after it was overused for the first two months of the season.  Will the young pitching staff be able to stay strong throughout a long second half?  This is the biggest question mark the Brewers face, and no doubt one that David Stearns is eying carefully.  

If I’m allowed to alter my prediction of the 2017 Milwaukee Brewers, it would be to add 4 games to the total.  Instead of 77-83 wins, I think they have a chance to finish with 81-87 wins.  Enough to win the National League Central?  Possibly, but I doubt it, as I keep thinking the Cardinals and Cubs will eventually find their way and turn the 2017 Brewer season into a pleasant surprise, but not one that includes games come October.

Either way, I’ll be watching baseball and procrastinating on my hope to one day write the Great American Novel.  But will I bet my last ten dollars on the Crew?  Not a chance.  

But next year?  Quite likely.