Archive for category Homelife

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but the wee lad, who is roughly 5.5 years old, announced today that his favorite song is “Video Killed the Radio Star,” by the Buggles.

That song, which as it happens is also a favorite of mine, was the first video (and thus a subsequent all-time 80s classic) shown on MTV when I was, well, roughly 5.5 years old.

Amazing.

It testament, I present here the original video from the 80s, followed by a live, just-for-fun cover from Robbie Williams, a current favorite of mine:

Awesome trivia bit: Take note of the bass player in Robbie’s video, an older gentleman who is getting a decent amount of camera time. That’s actually Trevor Horn — the man who wrote, sang, and produced the original song with The Buggles. Yep, the same dude wearing the oversized glasses in the first video. He became one of the great music producers post-Buggles. One of his recent jobs was producing Robbie Williams’ excellent album, Reality Killed the Video Star. Crazy world!

The campus begins to fill with students once again, and the pleasant days of the Break are drawing to a close. As you can tell from the silence hereabouts, I’ve been busy with things: making it through the teaching wave of the Fall semester served only to bring me clear for a moment before I was struck by the writing wave of the Holidays. For almost a month now I’ve been nose-to-grindstone on several academic projects and two fiction projects. One of those fiction projects in particular is both quite significant and on a bit of a deadline, so that’s pretty much had me occupied around the clock in one way or another.

I did get the chance to get away, though: A quick couple of flights from Charleston meant that the Holidays were spent back home in Colorado. It was pretty sweet to see snow again, though the 28-inch dumping we got shortly after arrival was perhaps a bit more than was necessary.

Still, it was fun. And all the research and writing is fun, too. I’m damn lucky to enjoy what I do.

For that matter, I’m excited for classes to start in a couple of days. If I could just find my textbook for English 102, all would be right with the world…

Dear Sharp,

Many years ago when I was gearing up for high school (so more years ago than I like to think about), my parents bought me a graphing calculator. Birthday or Christmas, I think. I can’t really remember.

Almost everybody back then had a TI-85, as I recall. A few uber-geeks had an HP-something-or-other — which was confusing as heck to use but did have a nifty infrared emitter that could mimic a remote control (this came in handy for turning on and off TVs in classrooms during class as a prank) — but the masses were TIs and more TIs.

Except me. My parents had looked around the store, sifted through the labels, and bought me a Sharp EL-9300C, which looked basically like this:

Sharp EL-9300 (the 9300C looked the same).

I remain grateful for their choice to this day.

You see, there was something, well, inherently logical about how my calculator functioned. While fellow students would be click-clacking away trying to figure out how they should enter a formula — “Do you hit the parentheses key after the integral key or before it?” — I would be already on the next problem: unlike the silly TI, my Sharp allowed me to type equations onto the screen exactly like they looked in the book. It was, for the time, extraordinary.

Graphing was easier, cleaner, and often more exact. My buttons were more clearly marked. Heck, even getting help was easier since my manual was built into the calculator with a series of on-screen “windows.”

I loved that calculator.

It is for this reason that I write you now in sorrow, for my beloved calculator has at last gone to the embrace of the Great Robotic Arm in the sky. It rests now upon the silicon shores of digital Elysium.

It will be missed. It will be remembered.

So I want to thank you, Sharp. Thanks for making my math classes a little easier. Thanks for making my life’s calculations a little more enjoyable.

Thanks for making the EL-9300C, the best calculator I have ever owned.

Sincerely,
Mike

PS: Looking at your site today I see what appears to be an updated version of my beloved calculator, the EL-9900C. Though nothing could ever replace my trusty old friend, I wouldn’t mind if you sent me one. I think my 9300C would want to see me move on that way.

I have no idea how I missed this, but Loreena McKennitt — whose music I fell in love with in college — gave a concert at the Alhambra a few years ago. Her music is magical, and so is that place. Indeed, when I visited it for the first time I had the early tracks of her album The Mask and the Mirror moving like a whisper in my mind.

I’m deeply jealous of those who were fortunate enough to see her perform there (or anywhere, for that matter). Happily, the rest of us can get a glimpse of what it must have been like:

I find this extraordinary on many levels. Mostly, I think I’m just floored by the sonic magnificence of so many capable musicians playing so many different cultural artifacts all at once.

I’ve been trying to get a lot of work done in a rather short window of time, but there must be time for a good chuckle now and again, too.

Herewith, an interpretive dance of The Killers’ excellent song “Human,” from a BBC game show:

We went shopping for a new bike for the Young Master yesterday.

Up until now, he’s been blasting around the ‘hood on one of these little bad boys:

The Skuut.

Yessir, that’s a Skuut balance bike right there. He got one as a gift from his grandparents, and it didn’t take him long to scoot hither and yon on the thing, running and gliding and having a grand ol’ time.

The Young Master still loves his Skuut, but he’s older now — a “big boy,” as he is keen to remind us — and so it was time for a new bike. A real bike. Pedals and all.
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