5 Things on a Friday: Skiing the Super Bowl

Happy Friday, friends.  Let’s get to it.

5 Things on a Friday: Acoustic Metallica!

Friday!  Let’s get it on!!!

5 Things on a Friday: Last Look at Liberty

Hey, ho.  Let’s go.

5 Things on a Friday: Football Season is Coming!

The New York Giants reported to training camp this week along with the rest of the NFL.  With that, my buddy Joe and I scheduled the new season of our now annual four-week NFL divisional previews.   The NFC will be here again during the week while Joe covers the AFC over at A Hoosier on the Potomac on weekends.  I think Joe said he was going to run his columns on Sundays, but don’t hold me to that.  Mine will run on Thursdays.

Live shot of Eli Manning and the NY Giants in training camp.

More to the point, I’ve personally got a lot of football scheduled for the next few weeks.  It starts Tuesday with the return of weekly Army Football Preview posts, and then we’re off.

Let’s do it!

5 Things on a Friday: We Need More Instagram

I went back and forth this week on how many serious articles I should run.  The news has been so grim, though, no matter where you turn, so I decided to keep it light.  I mean, I don’t know that I’m any more optimistic than you are, but I will say that I don’t want to dive any deeper into the garbage pail than I have to through my writing.  

No one wants that, do they?

5 Things on a Friday: You Really Should Be Following Me on Twitter

Facebook instituted a new News Feed algorithm recently, and I hate it.  Ostensibly intended to cut down on the site’s 3rd party media manipulation and endless political arguments, what’s happened instead is that I’m now seeing the same posts over and over again.  Stuff that I would have glossed over in months past is now literally inescapable.  If anything, I’ve actually muted more people in the last month than I had in the previous twelve.

Usually just for 30 days, mind you.  I use the “Take a break from this poster” option because I still like my friends.  I just don’t need to read their political thoughts on repeat.  

Meanwhile, the algorithm’s effect on me has been to cut this blog’s traffic in half.

5 Things on a Friday: Black Friday

Happy Black Friday, folks!  I assume you’ve got the day off, and I do, too.

Are we shopping yet?

5 Things on a Friday: What Is Clutch?

That’s the age-old question, right?

The excitement is real. #GoArmy #BEATairforce pic.twitter.com/Rx8erD6rjr

— Army WP Football (@ArmyWP_Football) October 30, 2017

Let’s get it on!

5 Things on a Friday: I Already Miss Joe Girardi

Happy Friday, folks.  It’s gonna be a quick one today.

5 Things on a Friday: Not Going Back to Korea

Happy Friday, folks!

5 Things on a Friday: Friday Hair Metal Returns!

Happy Friday, folks.  Let’s get to it!

I read in the Times that the kids are all really
into unicorns.  I don't really get it, but whatever...

Def Leppard, Poison, & Tesla: Pics & Thoughts from the Show

Sally and I saw Def Leppard, Poison, and Tesla last night at the Mohegan Sun Arena, and it was a blast.  This week has already been something of a blast from the past, and last night was a bit like being transported back in time, save that we're adults now and can pretty much do what we want.  That's no small change.

Rockin' out!

Still, we hemmed and hawed about going to last night's show.  I can remember when concert tickets didn't feel particularly expensive.  You could get decent seats for $25 or $30 when I was a kid, and it didn't necessarily feel like an investment.  One time in particular, I literally broke open my piggy bank to scrounge $25 worth of quarters, so my buddy and I could see Styx on the Edge of the Century tour.  Going was a last-minute decision, but that was a great show.  Last night was a great show, too, but why did they put Poison and Def Leppard on the bill when either could have filled an arena on their own?

Because our tickets were more than $150 apiece, and at that price point, just one of those bands might struggle.  Put both together, though, and it gives the event a much more epic, experiential feel.

5 Things on a Friday: In Search of Happiness

We took a couple of weeks off, but now we’re back.  I hope you missed us.

Happy Friday!

5 Things on a Friday: My Personal Hypocrisy

It’s been a tough two weeks.  

I’m a relatively liberal guy, but I have a lot of conservative friends and a few super-conservative friends, and we live in an age where things are not going as I would personally prefer.  It’s not just that my side lost.  As a Bloomberg fan, the truth is more that my side opted not to run, only to have the nightmare scenario play out regardless.  I hit a personal nadir just this past weekend, however, when a friend asked if I was still in favor of gun control now that we have a guy in the White House with whom I so violently disagree.  This struck me as a strange question.  
What am I supposed to do, start a bloody revolution?  Against whom?  

I know the mayor of my town and many of the police.  I support my local politicians, agree with a wide plurality of our state and local laws, and generally like living where I live.

I finally went through and pruned my Facebook feed.  I didn’t unfriend anyone, but I did unfollow more than two dozen, and it’s made me a better person.  If those folks want to message me, that’s fine.  We can grab a beer and talk shop, or whatever.  I’m not saying that I hate anyone or that I never want to see them again.  Actually, it’s quite the opposite.  These past two weeks have made me angry all too often, and that’s not good for anyone.  I will agree that all politics are personal, but they are also always local as well.  I therefore want to live my own life in my own way, and I humbly suggest that this is a good way forward in an otherwise divided nation.  I am in hopes that my own home State of Connecticut can opt out of as much National Level Fascist Bullshit (NLFB) as possible.  I guess we’ll see how that goes.  David Frum was not too keen on this idea in his piece in the Atlantic this week.

I talk politics on this blog quite a bit, but more and more, I’m realizing that it’s a mistake to engage on the open platforms of broadband social media.  Granted, sometimes I can’t help it.  If you come HERE, however... This is my blog, and you’re going to get my opinions.  You don’t have to trust me or my sources, but please, take your distrust as an invitation to go elsewhere.  

I'm not on a crusade, and I'm not looking to convince you.  Read at your own risk.

5 Things on a Friday: Mad Science is Back!

Crazy week.  The world recoiled in horror, and then the Internet tore itself apart.  I lost my patience pretty quickly, and honestly, if it weren’t for my responsibilities as Information Systems Officer for my class from West Point, I probably would have deactivated my Facebook account.  I can handle the lunatic ramblings of the Twitteratti because for the most part I don’t know those people.  Who cares what a bunch of sports writers and comic book artists and writers think about the news of the day?  No one, really, and that’s fine.  However, I do know the folks on Facebook, and as a result their “arguments” get to me.  Because no one ever learns anything, and also because…  

Who wants to watch their friends argue?

I certainly don’t.

Now, you may say that keeping a column like this is exactly like posting an argument on Facebook, and maybe it is.  The difference, at least in my mind, is that this site is mine, that folks who come here have done so voluntarily to hear what I think.  I’m not twisting anybody’s arm, and--truly--my feelings aren’t hurt if you like me but not my writing.  In the same way that we can be friends but don’t have to work out together in the weight room, we can also be friends, and you can ignore my blog.  It’s okay.  I get that it can be political.  For what it’s worth, I’ve been trying to do less politics of late, but readership has gone down as a result.  So I’m going to need to find a balance in there somewhere--hopefully without coming off too hypocritical.

6 Things on a Sunday: On Reaching “Peak Sequel”

I had a draft of this post ready for Friday, but I hated it.  After taking out several of the political articles and adding some other, hopefully lighter fare, I like it better.  

But I still wouldn’t say that I like it.

It seems like all the news is depressing, and sharing depressing news doesn’t do much for me.  However, it’s also true that the stuff that I like is rarely what speaks to others, so who knows?  Maybe you guys will think this is a masterpiece.  That's life sometimes.

5 Things on a Friday: Trouble on Rogue One

Happy Friday, everyone!

It was a short week at our house, and yet it still felt incredibly full.  How the Hell does that happen?

G'n'R Reunion: Patience

This looks like it was fun.

5 Things on a Friday: On Knowing Evil When You See It

It’s been a disturbing week in American political life.  Normally, I really enjoy politics--and especially this year’s presidential primary race--but this week it became clear that Donald Trump is not only going to win the Republican nomination, he’s going to do it using a Fascist, neo-White Supremacist platform, and there’s not a damned thing that anyone can do about it.

It’s disturbing.  I’m not a Trump supporter, but I am a Republican, and I don’t know what the Hell has happened to the party that I grew up in.  

The party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt--heck, of Dwight Eisenhower and more recently, of arch-pragmatist George H.W. Bush--has abandoned compromise and the essential forms of democratic government so completely that its own core supporters no longer understand the difference between reasoned discourse and hate-speech.  Republicans have vilified the President, who is a good man regardless of his being on the wrong side of a number of important policy issues, to the point where we can’t now look at an actual villain and see him for what he is.

This is not the way our government is supposed to work.  Honestly, I keep wondering if this is what conservative, patriotic Germans thought in the 1930s as they watched a demagogue rise up, take over their country, and turn it into a dictatorship.

Hitler did not represent the natural course of German historic evolution, but he sure as shit convinced people that he did, and look what that got us.  Or, to put it another way, what the fuck is wrong with people?

5 Things on a Friday: Dealing with the Dark Side

Happy Friday, folks.  Let's get it on!