Unfinished Dad

Norwood Park

I love Norwood Park in Chevy Chase West.  It has fields to run and play in, no streets nearby, and a toddler playground that, other than the very dangerous spaceship, is safe for kids of all ages to run around on.

Fields

Rubberized (couldn't we just say rubber?) Surface

Said spaceship

Excitement

Sweet toddler rings

Halloween Jitters

My wife is busy making Halloween costumes for our entire family, dog included.  I won't ruin the surprise, but let's just say there is a really good chance that I could look as foolish, pervy, awesome as this.

Photo: Opening Ceremony Link: daddytypes

The National Zoo

Tilda is down to one nap a day, and while that means more aggregate time wrangling, it also means a more streamlined schedule for the fam.  Yesterday we took advantage of her extinct 10 A.M. nap and headed to The National Zoo.  I love the zoo, it's a safe place for the girls to walk around, and it's metro accessible.  In short, it's a perfect—free—way to spend a few hours.  But right now, finding an animal at The National Zoo is like going on safari with a stroller.  I realize the point of a zoo is no longer to pen in a bunch of animals in small cages so kids can poke them with sticks and feed them M&M's.  However, between the construction on the elephant habitat and the myriad other projects they have going on, you really have to work for it.  By the end of the day I had Annie pointing out all of the "wild" trucks we saw.

Editors Note: Apparently the children were as difficult to capture on film as the animals.

In Which I Try Not To Laugh While Reading Little Toot

In Which I Try Not To Laugh While Reading Little Toot, originally uploaded by unfinished dad.

Things have changed in America since Hardie Gramatky wrote Little Toot in 1939.  Dads stay home with their kids, tugboats rarely smile when they work, and the lexicon is all twisted around.  I'm sure he never dreamed that fathers all over the country would be stifling giggles while reading his book at bedtime...The only sound that came out of his whistle was a small toot-toot-toot.

Backspacer

Way back in 1994, when I was a young man with more hair and less belly, I had three loves that consumed me: a girl, tennis, and Pearl Jam in oft-changing order.  Like all 17 year-olds, my opinions on these passions were both myriad and definitive.  I soon discovered early in my 20’s that two of these loves were nothing more than childhood fantasies, but one has held on through multiple decades, cities, and children.

During that senior year of high school, Pearl Jam issued their third and greatest album, Vitalogy.  The first album that didn’t rely solely on the raw emotion of Eddie Vedder’s vocals, Vitalogy had a mature, more progressive sound that vaulted them beyond an already aging “grunge” scene.  By this time many bands had copied their sound from Ten era Pearl Jam—did you not think that Stone Temple Pilot’s Plush was a new PJ song?—and the lower-fi sound of Vitalogy combined with its zaniness permanently altered the band’s direction.

Fast forward to Pearl Jam’s ninth album, Backspacer, and you have a band in dire need of another sea change.  If Vitalogy launched them on their post “grunge” path, then two albums later, Yield—with the emotion of In Hiding and the whimsy of Wishlist—brought them to that path’s summit.  The four albums since have been a steady decline into prosaic rock with less and less of the brilliance that marked much of the 90’s.  Each successive album has seen the balance shift just a bit more to the former.

Pearl Jam albums usually begin with a bang.  Go, Last Exit, Brain of J, Breakerfall, and Life Wasted all ignited their albums with their own version of musical combustion.  When Pearl Jam albums don’t start with a bang, they seduce you with textured subtlety before kicking your ass with track two à la Sometimes into Hail, Hail.  On Backspacer we are given Gonna See My Friend, a mailed in rock song with archaic Axl Rose style doubling vocals and endless guitar riffs.

Track four, Johnny Guitar, is completely lost on me.  I notice the double entendre in the opening stanza and I’ve read that it’s Thin Lizzy-esque (that’s good?), but it may be the only Pearl Jam song that makes me angry.  Now Johnny He Be Havin Lots of Women/The Reason He Be Smiling Known To Him.  Ouch.  Later in the album we get four tracks to close it out that all evoke, well, nothing.  Past albums had one or two throw-away tracks like these (Sleight Of Hand, Help Help, Army Reserve) but like I said, the balance is shifting.

Backspacer has occupied my headphones for over a week now and I haven’t even touched on why.  If you take away Gonna See My Friend, the unexplainable Johnny G, and the four bland closing tracks, you are left with five songs that are all very good.  That’s five of eleven songs that I plan on listening to a lot.  In my head I pretend that they are an EP of a wholly different issue.

Got Some sounded strong on Conan’s first Tonight Show.  The album version is worthy of its esteemed number two position, with Eddie breathlessly hammering out quick verses about shitting or getting off the pot.  I touched on the album’s first single, The Fixer, in an earlier post.  I still can’t get enough of it.  So simple and uplifting, this is the only “pop” song on the album and Pearl Jam would do well to take a turn in this direction.

If The Fixer represents one possible solution to what ails Pearl Jam, then Just Breathe represents another.  It could easily nestle in alongside the songs from Eddie Vedder’s brilliant solo work for Into The Wild.  A folkier, softer sound has been a Pearl Jam dream of mine since hearing the perfect combination of I Am Mine and Down from the Riot Act Sessions.  That was seven years ago and Just Breathe is the band’s first return here.

My Backspacer EP closes with Unthought Known, Unfinished Dad’s song of the week and the strongest song on the album.  It takes nearly 20 minutes and seven tracks for us to get to a genuine “Eddie” moment.  When he you hear the vocals Feel the sky blanket you…with gems & rhinestones scraping off of his vocal chords, you get your first and only chills of the album.  Somehow it is worth it.

You may say that an album on which half of the material is memorable is a good one.  For most bands I would agree.  For the band that gave us Ten, Vs., Vitalogy, No Code, and Yield I just can’t.  So I find myself at the same crossroads the band occupies.  On my left is the road towards “indie” rock and new loves like Andrew Bird and Sufjan Stevens.  On my right is Pearl Jam’s road and they are the last “rock” band on it.  Sadly, in my heart I know I’m going left.

So You Think You Can Dance Season Six, Boston

Dear Emily,

Your folks just landed in Spain--hopefully carrying a pirated VHS tape containing SYTYCD Season Six--so provided that you have a VCR in your room and the requisite adapter for, what I'm sure is an eleven pronged outlet, you should be all caught up.

The judges went to Boston last night, land of bar fights, shoulders with chips on them, and girls with poofy bangs.  I didn't have much hope for them finding the next Neil or Kaytee amongst the masses and for the most part I was right.  All in all there were four people worth mentioning, but if any of them make it through to the top 20 it will be Channing Cooke, and this will be based almost solely on her looks.  In my notes (yes, I do) I wrote "very, very pretty/good not great."  However, you could see Nigel doing the Jeanine leer at her, so she has a shot.

A fella named Jean Lloret is worth mentioning if only for the fact that he had a whole routine constructed on his ability to balance on his head.  I don't think he can dance.

Russell Ferguson was my favorite contestant of the night.  He was a crumper who had serious moves and an attitude to match.  He went through to choreography and looked better performing Pasha's ballroom routine than most of the people up there.

Let's close it out with Teddy Tedholm.  Really?  Two things Emily, he's the cooky kid from the season six previews who looks like Whitey from Me Myself and Irene, and he's from Rockaway, NJ.  The judges loved him, but I thought the whole thing was a joke.  He's definitely crazy.  I think he fell at one point and covered it up by appearing  "whimsical."

Stop the presses, TT actually won some weird online competition called Show YouTube You Can Dance (why didn't we know about this?).  It looks like he used the same routine for his audition last night.  I can't wait for you to see this kid.  I hate him.

Disappointedly,

Joe

Top 20 Bound: Russell Ferguson (I changed my mind)

How Come Four Is Always Six?

Another four hour trip from New Jersey that quickly snowballed into six.  Consequently, you get cute, but old, pictures of Annie and Tilda.  

Ma Ma Shoogic

A few months ago Annie went though a particularly rough tantrum phase in which she would constantly ask for "shoogic."  It lasted for over a week and at its worst she would lay on the floor crying, screaming "shooooogic, shooooogic."  As often happens, one day she gave me the answer to this mystery purely by accident.  I was in the living room and turned on some Death Cab For Cutie and she happily looked up, smiled, and said "shoogic."  Somehow when her brain hears the word music her mouth processes the word "shoogic."  Annie is a relatively strong speaker, but to this day "shoogic" stands firmly in her lexicon.  Even when you try and coax the correct pronunciation out of her.

A Little Detour To New Jersey

We find ourselves in New Jersey this morning, sitting in the in-laws kitchen drinking coffee.  Strangely, things are the same.  Annie is screaming, Tilda is choking on her food, and I am ignoring them both so that I can talk to you.  We are here for two reasons: because my wife organized a girls weekend (that starts on Wednesday) in Surfside Beach, SC and because her parents are sitting on an empty nest and have been kind enough to donate their youngest's 2001 Mazda Tribute to us.  We now have a second car (is that freecycling?) and I won't have to use mass transit to get to the hospital when one of the kids decides that a whole Cheez-It will fit down their esophagus.

Still In Hiding

Still In Hiding, originally uploaded by unfinished dad.