Playing Cards

I collect stuff, always have. I come from a long line of lovers of stuff: pottery, cufflinks, Foo Dogs, Fiestaware—if it’s collectable, an ancestor of mine probably hoarded it. I most certainly have what Bob Ridgley & Terri Krantz referred to in their 2008 documentary American Collectors as “the collector’s gene”—an uncontrollable (or at least uncontrolled) urge to gather quantities of the same thing up in piles. Some collections are made to stack, like records or plates. Others—like tractors or cadavers—aren’t as easy.

Patti thinks I have a problem. Matchbooks, inkwells, KISS memorabilia and brass bug silent butlers are bad enough. But when I realized I was actually clipping the corrections out of the daily paper and putting them into an envelope labeled CORRECTION COLLECTION, I realized that maybe it was time I got some help.

The dark danger with most collections is that they’re open-ended: they can never be completed. You just keep on adding and adding– presumably until you die– at which point your kids have to come in and agonize over what to do with Dad’s prized collection autographed 8×10 black & white promotional photos of bald celebrities.

But I do have one collection that doesn’t take up much space, is easy to stack, and which has a definite end. Part of me hopes I never complete it…

Baseball On The Radio

It’s the same thing every season. This region prefers football to baseball, and I can’t say I don’t understand why. Most people don’t have the patience for baseball in our one-minute culture. And the fact that there were no professional sports of any kind in the PNW before the 1970s means collegiate sports (where there is no baseball) have a deep comparative history. But it’s frustrating that the most exciting part of a long baseball season (the stretch and post-season) coincides with the beginning of the football campaign, and that this preview and early-season period is given such clear preferential broadcast consideration on the local sports radio affiliate. I have this argument with them every October in some form. This was a FaceBook message from 2012

I Was There

Our poker games are frequently put on pause when someone starts talking about music—everyone sitting there with a handful of cards blabbing on all drunk about the first Dio album or some Day on the Green. Inevitably, someone says “you were at that show?! I was there, too!”

One of these times, I suggested to the publisher of the local music paper sitting next to me that his rag should have a column called I Was There about shows of historical significance that (older) readers might relate to. Brent Cole agreed—and he reminded me of my idea on Monday morning with an assignment of 500-700 words on the historically significant show of my choosing. I’d forgotten the conversation, of course– but suddenly I was a columnist.

This review appeared in the WhatsUp Magazine in 2002. I’ll make it clear in this italicized introduction that there are few bands of any genre that I despise more than Def Leppard. I don’t imagine they are all that much worse than any number of others, but my disdain for them lies in the fact that they were once my favorite band. The importance of High ‘N’ Dry to my musical development cannot be overstated. And the first time I heard the follow-up Pyromania my heart was broken. They’ve only gotten shittier since then.

Still, 1981 was a very good year. I was there…