#30- The Crowd Sounds Happy by Nicholas Dawidoff

This book was a memoir about a boy growing up with an insane father and a love of baseball. Frankly, it sounded like a great book. I was excited to read it. The early chapters were poignant and impressive.

And it all fell apart. Sorry about the old man, Nick, but seriously, you were one whiny kid. Maybe my perspective was ruined by the birth of my daughter just before I started the book, but I came away mostly feeling sorry for Dawidoff’s Mom. She kept his less than financially prosperous family taken care of, and appears only to have been rewarded with a pissy attitude and a recitation of her foibles. Seriously, if Dawidoff had griped one more time about (more or less) not having designer clothes in season, I’d have sold back the book, invested in plane fare, gone and smacked him in his overly-sensitive head.

I haven’t learned much in life, but here are two things I’m sure of: 1) Parenting is hard work, 2) Growing up is hard work. Cut the ‘rents some slack. They’re not perfect, you’re not perfect, I’m not perfect. At some point, life is less about the crappy hand that we’re dealt than it is what we can do with it. Dawidoff’s Dad was crazy. His Mom was overworked. I understand his attitude toward the first, but cut the Mom a break. I would.

Joe

Book #29- Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

This is the first A.B. book I’ve read (after birth). Fortunately, Chuck Klosterman is basically an irrepressable smart ass who writes about pop culture in a funny, entertaining way. The book is a collection of essays. Some get a little ponderous (like his essay on Vanilla Sky), some are more than a little absurd (Saved by the Bell), and some are so dead on that you can’t help but agree (country music).

Klosterman is probably not for everybody. That said, if you’re between 25-40, have a strong interest in the pop culture of the ’70s and ’80s, and/or have strong opinions about things, you’d probably dig it. I think there’s something in here to offend the sensibilities of everybody, but also something that we can all remember and agree with. Plus, it does have a fun title.

Joe

An update from the land of parenting

So, I haven’t posted so much. Having a newborn baby and going back to work have taken up lots of time. We also just traded vehicles, callously abandoning Julie’s old Civic despite its 130 or so thousand miles of efficiency. Somewhat bizarrely, the new vehicle has a cassette deck. Yes, it’s a 2006, and I know I hadn’t bought a tape for many years before that. But oh well… I’ll be breaking my Hammer cassettes back out soon.

I have realized that the 50 new books is likely not happening, but I am still reading, and am not totally abandoning the project. I have finished one and have another in close proxymity to completion. Who knows- 40-45 might still happen.

Parenting is very intense and challenging, and very rewarding. I would say so far the hardest part is dealing with a crying baby who you know has no legitimate (i.e. hungry, dirty, sleepy) reason to cry. Chuck Berry and Springsteen seem to generally help my little girl. Which is good. God knows they’ve helped me too.

The best parts? I guess you really have to experience them. I am partial to when she nuzzles her head into my neck and tickles the crap out of me. Or her funny faces and smiles, which are becoming more regular these days.

I’ll post a little more… hope everybody out there hasn’t forgotten me and is getting along well.

Joe

She’s here.

On Friday morning at 6:19 AM, I became a Dad. She is a wonderful, healthy amazing little girl, and I am humbled and amazed by her. My wife went through pain that I can’t fathom and generally kept an astoundingly good attitude. I definitely married up, and am very much glad I did.

And I’m really sleepy and a complete emotional train wreck. Is there some kind of postpartum father’s thing? If not, some day sleep deprived, confused, weepy Dads everywhere may have Cox Disease.

It’s been great to experience the support and love of friends and family. It takes a village, and it probably takes a country when I’m the Dad, but know it is appreciated, folks. If you’re a facebook friend, I will have pictures up shortly. Crying baby has pretty much occupied the 26 or so hours since we’ve been home. Just wanted to pass the news along for those who might not have known. Thanks for your support, friendship, readership, and prayers. Don’t stop any of them; particularly the last.

All the Best,

Joe

A goodbye

I generally keep this blog very light. I like to tell funny stories, or talk about books or movies, or share restaurant tips or memories. Unfortunately, sometimes the real world interferes.

Lindsey McCoy passed away on Saturday. Lindsey was 25 years old. She was the sister of Dustin McCoy, a good friend of mine over the years. She was beautiful and vibrant and funny and so alive. I feel very much unequal to the task of trying to paint any kind of picture for anybody who didn’t know her. She was a very special young woman, and she beat cystic fibrosis for 25 years. I never even knew she had it.

It has been a very bittersweet last few days. My daughter is actually due today, and should be born anytime. I suppose it is only natural that the circle of human life takes away when it gives. I believe that God has a plan for all of us, and that when that plan seems uncertain or incomprehensible, we have to believe even more. I think of the worlds of a near death Johnny Cash, who when asked if he entertained religious doubt after his beloved wife’s death, said simply, “My arms are too short to box with God.” I think of the little girl I haven’t met yet, and how I hope and pray for her health and safety and happiness, and how I have to acknowledge that I can’t assure her of any of those things.

Life can be perilous and short. I hope that I, and you, and my unborn daughter, can find the strength and the faith to live our own lives in the shadow of our weaknesses and frailties as well as Lindsey McCoy did. It’s a great task, but I hope we can do it.

Joe

Book #28- The Only Game in Town

The Only Game in Town is an oral history of 1930s-1940s baseball, edited by former commissioner Fay Vincent. The book talks with around a dozen players– some great, the other good, about their reminiscences of major league baseball. The high point of the book is unquestionably the chapter about Buck O’Neil. O’Neil, who sadly passed away recently, was a great American. An African-American, deprived of the chance to ever play major league baseball, Buck O’Neil instead spent his life as the great ambassador of the Negro Leagues. He was, as they say, strong enough not to hate. Instead, he was a delight– funny, poignant, always worth listening to, whether on Ken Burns’s excellent “Baseball” series or in this book.

The other players have some good stories as well. Bob Feller talks about his World War II experiences, Dom DiMaggio speaks about living in the shadow of his brother, Joe, and generally, everybody has a Ted Williams story or three.

If you’re a baseball fan, it’s a nice read. If you’re not, search of Buck O’Neil’s autobiography or Joe Posnanski’s “The Soul of Baseball”, a story of his year traveling with and chronicling an aging O’Neil. Those are worth reading for anybody and everybody. It’s beecause they are stories about adversity and life, and baseball sometimes just happens to pop up. On the other hand, this book is mostly about baseball.

Book 27 and the life of an expecting father

27. Land of Lincoln by Andrew Ferguson

Hands down, Ferguson’s book is one of the best I’ve read yet in my quest for 50 new books in 2009. He writes, not about the nuts and bolts facts of Lincoln, but more about what Lincoln means to people, and more specifically, what he is redefined into by people.

Ferguson goes to a conference of skeptics tearing down Lincoln as well as a convention of Lincoln impersonators. He talks with memorabilia collectors who have searched out pieces of hair and bits of blood from the assination of honest Abe and historians who build museums around Lincoln. He even goes on a vacation along the Lincoln Trail with his own family. His results are searching, insightful, funny and honest.

Surprise, surprise. Everybody has an agenda. Men who hate their wives (including Carnegie, the original self-help king) see him as a saint for dealing with that shrew Mary Todd, southern sympathizers think Abe was a closet racist and a nincompoop, historians see him in the bland politically correct terms of their modern historical movement, Ferguson’s children apparently think he was pretty boring. Ferguson tells us more about ourselves and our age than he does about Lincoln; history, he seems to say, is transfigured into a mirror, and whoever looks inside sees something that looks a lot like them.

But the book is a lot more fun than I’m letting on. He tells stories like that of a Lincoln historian and his wife in the 1930s or 1940s, trying to visit Mary Todd’s old Lexington, KY home. Now, it’s a nice museum. Then, it was a working whorehouse. I also could have laughed for hours at his depictions of the “humor” within the Lincoln impersonators convention– samples included an Abe plopping down in a booth for lunch and exclaiming, “Normally, I would try to avoid a Booth.” and tales of looking for a particular Abe at the convention and having another impersonator describe him as “the tall fellow, with the beard and the top hat.”

I really, really liked this book. There are a million books about that “What?” of Lincoln’s life. This is one about the “Why?” of his legacy. I recommend it.

T minus six days on the baby expected date. Starting to look like a late arrival could well be a possibility.

Also, I made my own hot chicken tenders yesterday. I nearly lit my internal organs ablaze. I’ll try to take pictures next time (of the chicken, not of my organs. Not another colonoscopy post!)

Joe

There’s nothing medium about either pregnancy or hot chicken

The dueling threads of my life– domesticity/parenthood and the raving idiot’s love of hot chicken were battling last night. First, the legendary David Vance and I went for some medium Prince’s Hot Chicken. I’m generally a mild hot chicken guy, but I wanted David to have the full experience. As we sat there with tears streaming down our cheeks and snot steadily threatening to pour out, I realized I had definitely reached that goal. I wondered if I was killing David for awhile, but then he hit his second wind and had every last bite of that incredibly tasty and ridiculously hot chicken. And it is ridiculous. I eat Insane wings at Zaxby’s to try to stay in training, but there’s no comparison. It was all it should be. I also credit David for the best insight yet into the hot chicken, as he said basically that if I approached it as others might approach a good bender– every once in a while, but not all the time– it might not kill me. Hopefully.

After this, it was on to shopping at Babies R Us for a bunch of stuff we needed. The highlight of that was that I found a mirror that you can stick in your car so you can watch your rear-facing baby in its carseat without wrecking. This was a particular thrill, as I managed to allay one of my wife and my 472,637 fears of parenting. Next week, I’ll be removing all electricity from the house and setting fire to all our books so that the baby can’t papercut herself on one.

Anyway, that’s the news from here on Walton Mountain where John Boy is battling explosive stomach cramps and trying to stockpile baby goods at the same time. T minus 13 days to the due date.

Joe

Book 26- Bragging Rights by Richard Ernsberger

Who would read a nine year old book chronicling a season of SEC football? Well, I would.

Ernsberger, who wrote for Newsweek, decided to chronicle the 1999 SEC football season. He has good stories of gameday atmosphere, recruiting chicanery, boosters manipulating whole universities to try to win another football game or two, and coaches eating, sleeping and drinking football.

Ernsberger’s book does a nice job of chronicling the energy that goes in to making SEC football the best college football in the nation, year in and year out. The 1999 season ended with Alabama winning the SEC championship. After the next season, Mike Dubose, their coach, was fired. It’s up and down and back up again, and it’s a game played by serious players, coaches, and boosters.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to find this book, but if you stumble on it for a couple dollars like I did, you might get some cheap entertainment.

One last blast of baby wisdom

As the baby experience approaches, we went in for one last dose of baby knowledge. An infant safety class was the attraction, and I’m pleased to say there was some very useful information shared. That said, it’s always kind of odd and scary. Let me give you a for instance…

Baby is coughing as if slightly choked. If you’re like me, you think, “Hey, it’s a baby, it’s small, it’s helpless, it’s coughing, you need to help it.” Apparently, not so much. The strategy is to basically let them cough until they just run out of energy, then to worry about them. It sounds like child abuse, but hey, it was in the class, it must be true.

I was also amazed at Martha, our teacher, demonstrating her baby dexterity. We were given lifesize dolls to practice various holds with. I look around and Martha is just whipping that doll from cradlehold to football hold to shoulder hold and so on. Honestly, somebody needed to play “Sweet Georgia Brown” and let her twirl the doll on her finger while they were doused in confetti.

My wife’s pregnancy is full term today. This means we have three weeks until the due date, but that the baby is essentially ready to be born when the urge strikes her. It is both very daunting and very exciting.