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I don’t think TK’s going to be tough to spot.

Just about a month to go!

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It was a good one.

Set in 1987, the musical is built around three dozen or so arena and/or hair-metal rock songs from my formative years (with an occasional slight reach back or forward).  The plot is rudimentary and trivial in this show, serving mostly as scaffolding for the music.  It’s a witty script, demonstrating knowledge of and affection for the period.  That’s a high bar to get over with me.  There are ample jokes, including several that break the fourth wall, and there are a few obscurities to reward the savants in the audience.  (I dug the female lead getting into a bit of Judas Priest’s “Eat Me Alive.”)

And the music does work.  The live band is of varying importance in the plot, but they’re always visible.  Most of the selections are in the correct key.  A few are substantially remade, but many of them respect the details of the originals.  There are a few song combinations that aren’t quite mash-ups, but more tandem back-and-forths.  Most of them work, but squishing Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You” and Asia’s “Heat of the Moment” together sounded a little forced.

Perhaps it was characteristic of our attendance at a Sunday afternoon matinee in Huntsville, Alabama, but I was surprised by the crowd demographics.  I expected to be surrounded by fellow GenXers, and instead only about a third of the crowd fit that description.  (Among that third, however, was a fondly-remembered lady from two decades ago!  Great to see you, Graciela.)  The rest were not quite my dad’s age, but close.  What’s up with that?  I wonder how the dick jokes and the thigh-high vinyl boots went over for them?  Was this show mis-marketed?

The show’s run just ended here, so this isn’t much good to the locals, but to anyone Googling and looking for opinions:  go see it.  It’s a blast.

Don’t stop believin’.

8/10

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I said “no, I want to try just setting regular goals with you first.”  So then she jumped out there, smiling her big smile, and said “all right, there is absolutely no reason you can’t lose ten pounds your first month.”

(Yipes.  I thought she’d say five.)

She spent ten minutes with me at my lab follow-up this morning giving me guidelines for good nutrition, and outlined an exercise program for me.  I appreciated that, but of course, my problem’s never been that I just don’t know what to do.  I don’t need more knowledge.  I need discipline.  I need to step on her scary-ass scale once a month.  See, when the interval is just thirty days, there’s never any “oh, I’ve got plenty of time” mentality.  I’m always just about to go back to the doctor.

I think I resisted asking for this because there’s something about it that feels phony to me.  I need to get back to a healthy weight for me, not for my doctor.  Now my thinking is “dude, you’re quite literally dying here.  Whatever works.”  I’ve recently demonstrated that I can lose 32 pounds on my own, but I’ve also recently demonstrated that I can give almost half of it right back.  Let’s see what I can do with three or four monthly physician visits as Part One, and we’ll figure out Part Two on the other side of them.

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• Carol wrote of her passion for fashion—an intellectual and substantive one, she is careful to note.
• Amanda offered a passionate culinary window into how she and her husband fell in love.
• Harold took a sustained look at passion for online writing.
• Kristin waxed passionately on Disney addiction (and I’m about to pull the trigger on DisneyWorld plans, so I do appreciate it!).
• Heather wrote of things that sustain her passion for her husband.

I tend to equate passion with youth, and to some degree irrationality.  Couple such with my longstanding feelings on marital fidelity, and I had a hard time conceiving a post that didn’t get serious pretty quickly.  As usual, my blogging colleagues did very well.  Enjoy.

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For the first time, this afternoon, I heard about the Obama campaign’s efforts to combat misinformation by organizing a “Truth Team,” and via informational websites, one of which is called KeepingHisWord.com.   In the interest of investigating all channels of information available to me, I meandered over right away.  The first article at the top of the page (February 11, 2012) was titled: Reducing Our Dependence On Foreign Oil.  According to a quote in the banner section, then President-elect Barack Obama was committed to reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

To show that Obama has kept his promise, the short article references research published this week indicating that foreign oil imports have fallen by an average of 1.1 million barrels a day, and are now at their lowest levels in 16 years.  They even reference a site that has this cool graphic:

It just happens that this very lovely graph illustrating our President’s policies profound impact on the importation of crude oil can be found on the site: BarackObama.com.

So, I became curious.  Because the article the Obama camp gave me did not have many other facts or data, I hopped on over to the EIA website and found that I could retrieve a spreadsheet with the historical prices of U.S. gasoline.     Let’s plot that just for fun, okay?  I used the spreadsheet provided by EIA, and plotted the overall average gas price for the entire country for regular gasoline.

Some observations on this plot.  The red line shows when Obama took office.  Gas prices stayed below $2.00 per gallon for a decade leading up to mid 2005 (Katrina).  We all remember the pain as the gas prices rose dramatically, peaking over $4.00 per gallon (100%  rise) in late 2008.

That plummet in gas prices came at the same time the economy crashed.  Remember, the whole world economy was affected, not just ours.  When that bubble burst, world demand for oil crashed, thus causing a plummet in oil price and a corresponding plummet in gas prices here.   After the inauguration, the price again climbed steadily and as of this writing is projected to be over $4.00 again in the spring.

Now, bear with me as I superimpose the average monthly importation of oil over this gasoline price plot.

The green highlight shows that our demand for oil remained fairly steady from 2003 until a couple of months before our economy crashed in October 2008.  At that point, oil imports started falling off (when gas was peaking around $4).   THIS is the evidence our administration is touting as “lessening our imports.”   Yes, our imports fell by nearly 5% (yep, only 5%), which I argue is not due to GOOD policy.  No, I argue it is due to a BAD economy and high gas prices.

Again, just for funsies, I superimposed the unemployment rate (range 3.9% -10.1%) over the graph.  When our economy crashed, unemployment steadily climbed at the same time our importation of oil declined.  Not a coincidence.

So, did Obama keep his promise of reducing our dependence on foreign oil?   Yes, but not really in a good way, and only by accident.   The Democrat policies have kept the gas prices high, unemployment very high, and the combination equals less people able to buy as much gas as they used to, and therefore, we just don’t need quite as much oil.    Reduction in foreign imports, indeed.

So, remember this, when someone from the Truth Team starts telling you all about the promises Dear Leader has kept.

The raw data I use about gas and oil consumption is found on the U.S. Energy Information Administration website (www.eia.gov), also referenced in Obama’s graphs.  The unemployment figures come from the U.S. Department of Labor.

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Anyway, wherever it was, from the parking lot at the Y it was 15 or 20 minutes on the old, bumpy, loud white and green bus to get there.  I have a vivid memory of Bobby McDaniel at the wheel, singing “Before the Next Teardrop Falls” with a big smile on his face (and an occasional glance back at his charges to make sure all was well).

Bobby wasn’t a large part of my childhood, but every memory I have that includes him is a wonderful one.  You know the occasional person you meet who is just always easygoing, engaging, and happy to be there?  That’s Bobby.  He could show you a knot, or talk you through a swimming stroke, and you would think it was the most fun he’d had all year.  He’d know 200 kids’ first names by the end of the first day of camp.  He never raised his voice or berated anyone in trouble, but he’d still bring tears once in a while just because it hurt so much knowing you’d disappointed him.

He was simply exceptional with children, and it was a blessing to the world that he gave of himself in that way.

So I went to look Bobby up a month or so ago.  I wondered what he was doing now, and I thought I might drop him a couple of sentences and let him know what he’d meant to me.  Instead, I was crushed to discover he died in a kayaking accident spring before last.  He was 57.  That means he was only 27 when he was in my life.

Part of me wishes I didn’t know.  Part of me wishes I still just occasionally envisioned him out there, making a positive difference.

Wow.

You don’t have forever to tell people they matter, so do it.

RIP.

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I can’t say I was ever a huge Whitney Houston fan, but she definitely first hit during some very formative years of mine.  She was one of the first women I ever looked at and thought “how could anyone be that good-looking?”  (That was probably the video for “How Will I Know?”)  Nancy, my colleague at Taco Bell, loved “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”  “So Emotional” was part of the soundtrack I hold dear from my time at The Yogurt Shoppe, back when CDs were a novel technology and I was spending my Sunday mornings cleaning and maintaining the Taylor soft-serve machines at 181-8 Hughes Road with the stereo cranked.

She could have been legendary.  Some will say she was.  I will not.

I will instead say that she was cut down too late to be an icon of youthful genius, but too early to be a matron of the art.

I will as well assert, I believe inarguably, that she robbed herself of a great deal with her self-destructive behavior.

RIP.

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