If You've Even Heard of This Band, I'll Be Shocked

Ann Marie Don Vito introduced me to Marillion during my junior year of high school. The progressive rock band's Misplaced Childhood album featuring the ballad "Kayleigh" had recently come out and apparently it resonated with her. I mean REALLY resonated. She wrote down all the lyrics to the song -- yes, by hand -- and then made copies for all her friends on the school's ditto machine.

That was actually a pretty significant investment of time and effort back in those days. Much more involved than just sharing a link with your Facebook friends in a status update. Or posting on your blog, for that matter.

I was pretty much a mainstream pop/rock guy at the time, but the lyrics were pretty cool so I gave the song a listen and liked it. I picked up the album (on cassette, of course), then got Clutching at Straws the next year and I was officially a fan.

Even when I went on to college and got very into new wave music, I continued to listen to Marillion. I didn't meet too many other folks who knew them, but the ones who had were always fans. The very definition of a cult following, I suppose.

A huge concert poster from one of their tours of France adorned the wall of my dorm room, which I couldn't read but thought looked really cool. Sophomore year I met Mirek Bobek, who got me into the band's older stuff (and would eventually go on to be my fraternity brother, roommate and a groomsman at my wedding). I made a tape of his copy of B'Sides Themselves which I wore out on a bus ride back home to Albany for fall break.

Then lead singer and songwriter Fish left the band. Their next album, Season's End, came out in the spring of 1989 with new singer Steve Hogarth and I eagerly bought it. It was all right, but Fish was such a big reason why I liked Marillion in the first place (literally -- I think he's 6'6" tall) that the music just wasn't the same without him.

I never bought another Marillion album again, even though the band has continued to have a very successful career to this day. Fish has since released a bunch of solo stuff and I never bought any of that, either. There was just something special for me about what they did together that neither could pull off separately.

I found out years later that the band's original name was Silmarillion after the J.R.R. Tolkien book of the same name, and they shortened it to avoid copyright issues. Tolkien fans?!?! No wonder I liked them!

I always thought if I ever had a daughter I'd name her Kayleigh. It's a beautiful name and I have some Gaelic in me on my mom's side. But when we actually did have our daughter in 2003 Danelle correctly pointed out that there were already way too many Kaylies, Kylies, Kylas, Kaylees and so on running around, so Taryn it was.

The Aes Sedai I played in the Wheel of Time MUD got the name as a consolation prize, and I do believe it struck some fear in young Novices and Accepteds. There was one other player who immediately got the reference -- his own name, Llewlyn, was similarly inspired.

Somehow I found out a couple of weeks ago that Fish was on his first solo tour of the States in 11 years and was going to be at the Fox Theatre in Boulder last night. Having never seen Marillion in concert I figured I'd go, and I was glad I did.

He's 50 now and never had the most powerful voice to begin with. But in a small venue like the Fox with a small crowd (200 people would be a generous estimate), his presence definitely filled the place.

His solo stuff was better than I expected, but I most enjoyed the old Marillion stuff he did. For some reason he stuck exclusively to songs from Clutching at Straws, doing seven of them during his set. He stopped every few songs to chat with the crowd, usually for several minutes and always well received. I'm sure it wasn't the same as if I'd gotten to see the full band during their heyday 22 years ago, but getting to experience some of their music in person filled a little hole in my personal concert history.

I heard at my 20th high school reunion last summer that Ann Marie was living somewhere in Colorado, but she was nowhere in sight. Since he didn't play "Kayleigh" she probably would have been disappointed anyway.

But I wasn't. :)

Maybe John Hughes Should Have Been a Stripper for a Year

Let me try to pre-empt the inevitable backlash this post is likely to create by saying I LIKED Juno. I thought it was cute, clever and entertaining. But I've never understood the amount of critical acclaim it's gotten.

I heard rave reviews for the film from two fairly opposing ends of the taste spectrum -- Oprah Winfrey and the guy who performs in a horse costume as Miles, the Denver Broncos mascot. With that sort of support, I figured it was something I needed to see. But for the first half an hour or so I was really struggling to figure out what exactly I was watching. Maybe I was too caught up in the overall social and pop culture context, but the movie I was seeing wasn't the one I had expected.

Then it hit me. I was watching Pretty in Pink. And once I realized and accepted that I was able to really enjoy the rest of the movie.

Hear me out a minute -- that comparison is in no way intended as a slight. John Hughes wrote the script for how many of us growing up in the '80s either thought or wished our lives were, or both. It just took him a bunch of films to cover it all. Maybe the Academy was rewarding Diablo Cody's ability to squeeze all the good stuff into one story when it gave her the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. That presumes that her version of Some Kind of Wonderful doesn't come out next year.

Whatever the case, here are six comparisons between the two films that I hope help illustrate my point:

1. Just when you want to willingly suspend your disbelief and think you're watching real people dealing with real problems, the dialogue gets a little TOO snappy and you're jarringly reminded that somebody wrote this.

At the risk of sounding too disconnected from modern youth, I'm willing to bet that most conversations haven't evolved beyond the, "What do you want to do? I don't know -- what do you want to do?" level of the discourse I had with my friends. As much as we may have wished we could address the question of what we wanted to drink with something as glib as Duckie's, "Oh you know, beer, scotch, juice box... whatever," response, we didn't really. Nor do I guess there are many (any) current teenagers who, when their friends ask if it's them on the phone, reply, "No, it's Morgan Freeman. Do you have any bones that need collecting?"

2. High school kids are the most advanced beings in both universes. Fathers have three functions -- generate revenue (however meager), provide transportation and dispense salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar wisdom. Other adults are mostly shallow and flawed, or appear for the sole purpose of uttering pithy lines like, "That ain't no Etch-A-Sketch. This is one doodle that can't be un-did, Homeskillet," or "If you give off signals that you don't want to belong, people will make sure that you don't." Cinematic equivalents of those flies that have a 24-hour life span, they live briefly on the screen, shine brightly and then are gone.

The teen protagonists, on the other hand, are generally grounded and perceptive -- aware of their own shortcomings and willing to accept or overlook those of others. It's often said that teenagers think they know everything, so I suppose if you want to appeal to that demographic you have to pander to it to some degree.

3. Both soundtracks are comprised almost exclusively of "alternative" music. Pretty In Pink delivers a Who's Who? of '80s new wave with artists like Echo & the Bunnymen, New Order, The Smiths and The Pyschedelic Furs. Juno features minimalist indie pop from Belle and Sebastian, Cat Power and three different flavors of Kimya Dawson, solo and with her bands Antsy Pants and The Moldy Peaches.

In both cases not the music most of the films' targets audiences actually listened to, or else the soundtracks wouldn't have far outsold anything the individual artists put out. But the choice was critical to each film's credibility. Andie and Juno wouldn't be believable as outsiders if they listened to Madonna or, well, Madonna.

For the life of me, though, I have no idea why Pretty in Pink went with a cover of Nik Kershaw's Wouldn't It Be Good by someone called the Danny Hutton Hitters instead of the original. Neither does Kershaw, apparently.

4. Jason Bateman's Mark Loring character has some striking parallels to Annie Potts' Iona. Bateman, like Potts, is stuck in his past and struggling to move forward with the next phase of his life. Both characters are the adults that the main characters feel most comfortable relating to, finding common ground around music. Both also use their teen friends as catalysts to break out of their unhappy relationship status, although Bateman's feels much more like selfish regression than Potts'. Those transformations then serve to inspire both Juno and Andie to make their own "big decisions," though giving up your baby is inarguably a little weightier than going solo to your prom.

5. Speaking of prom, that cherished high school event brings the romantic issues of both films to their respective heads. Juno gets upset when she finds out Paulie asked another girl, while Andie is hurt when Blane uses that as an excuse to back out of taking her. Both lead to confrontations that pave the way for true love to win out in the end. Wow, I can't believe I just typed that with a straight face.

6. Both Juno and Andie are "have nots" who help the "haves" -- Jennifer Garner's Vanessa and Andrew McCarthy's Blane -- discover what truly matters in life. Substance over style, inner beauty over outer, etc. The tried and true message that money isn't the measure of a person. All right, that's two straight maudlin platitudes, which is two more than this blog should ever have. Time to wrap this puppy up.

There are other similarities that are more cosmetic, like the absence of both main characters' birth mothers, Paulie and Duckie both using bicycles as their main mode of transportation and so on. As comparable as these two movies seem to me, I can't figure out for the life of me why Juno has been made out to be so much more.

It reminds me of the huge groundswell of support Babe got back in 1995 when it, too, was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Picture. At the end of day, it was a cute movie about a talking pig. Ellen Page is no pig, but for whatever reason her nice little picture was able to strike a similar chord in people.

Tough luck, Molly Ringwald. Only time will tell if that Page kid is able to follow this up with something as powerful as The Pick-up Artist, though. I wonder whatever happened to your co-star in that epic...

Devil's Head Lookout Trail (2008)

Wednesday was once again hike day! Here's your visual walkthrough of my journey along Devil's Head Lookout Trail this morning, which sounds like it should be the setting for either a Hardy Boys book or an episode of Scooby-Doo, but I'm pretty sure is neither.

The last nine miles of the drive to the trailhead are on Rampart Range Road, which is all dirt and pretty washboardy. I was afraid my teeth and/or transmission would shake loose at some point, but escaped with both dentiture and automobile intact.

Very green and lush at the start of the trail, but fairly steep. You gain almost 1,000 feet in elevation over just 1.4 miles to the lookout tower.

The sky was pretty clear at the start, and the light through the trees made for some striking settings.

Heartleaf arnica with some globeflowers? Wildflowers may make for some good pictures, but I really know nothing about them.

Nice view to the east about halfway up the trail. The skies were still pretty clear at this point.

What the North Ten Mile Trail lacked in vistas this made up for in spades. It seemed a view like this greeted me around nearly every bend.

I decided to take the descending trail to the Zinn Overlook before heading up to the tower.

I've often found dead wood to be really visually interesting.

Going to the overlook turned out to be a great decision, as this view of Pikes Peak was waiting at the end.

There was also a really intriguing crevasse at the overlook that I had to check out. It couldn't have been more than three feet wide and it didn't lead anywhere of note, but it sure did bring out the claustrophobe in me.

Wildlife sighting! There's apparently plenty of stuff for chipmunks to eat up here. This guy didn't appear to have missed too many meals.

Fire Service volunteers who man the overlook have their own accommodations near the summit.

A 143-step metal staircase covers the final leg to the lookout tower.

Calling the tower at the summit "exposed" is a bit of an understatement. From claustrophobia to acrophobia all in one hike!

Great views from the summit to the west...

...and to the east. Notice how much it had clouded over since the view in the same direction about an hour earlier.

The frayed edge of the American flag at the summit made it clear that this wasn't the first windy day it had seen.
Another solid hike. Two hours up and down, and despite the threatening skies I didn't get rained on. I'm not sure if Zak would be ready for it this summer or not, but I'd like to come back with him sometime. I may make him study wildflowers first, though, so he can be useful.

Memorable Concert Experiences: Depeche Mode/Nitzer Ebb 1990

I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of college on campus in Ithaca instead of coming home. The weather was terrific, and to make some spending money I was a teaching assistant for a couple of classes and I did office work for the university's Vice President (now Vice Provost) of Research.

A few of my fraternity brothers and I decided we'd make the four-hour drive to Saratoga to catch Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb in early June. I had already promised one of my co-workers at the VP's office that I'd watch her cats the week of the concert while she was on vacation, but this didn't seem like it would interfere with that at all. We were planning to drive back right after the show, so I wouldn't even miss a day of checking on them.

I fed and watered the cats the morning of the show, then we were off. Since Saratoga was close to home we stopped in Albany to say hello to my family. Turned out my parents were away taking a little vacation themselves that week but my younger sister, Dawn, was there. So we chatted a bit and then headed up to Saratoga for the concert.

The concert really wasn't anything special. I guess it shouldn't have been too surprising that an outdoor amphitheater wasn't necessarily the best venue to catch a couple of synth bands. The ride home wasn't even too bad, considering we left Saratoga about midnight and drove straight through. I remember it being foggy in stretches, but fortunately nobody fell asleep at the wheel.

Needless to say I crashed immediately on getting back to my apartment. The memorable part of this concert came when I finally woke up later that day and couldn't find my co-worker's keys. I looked everywhere -- no keys. So I called home on the remote chance that I had not only brought them with me the day before but left them at my parent's house for some reason. My sister checked, and sure enough I had.

The complete and utter inexplicability of bringing them with me in the first place aside, at least they had been found. My sister agreed to overnight me the keys and I breathed a sigh of relief. I figured the cats could last a day without personal attention, and everything would be fine.

So the next day came and I anxiously awaited the arrival of the Federal Express truck. But it never came. So I called my sister again to ask if she sent them, and she confirmed that she had. By Express Mail.

Today Express Mail guarantees overnight delivery. Back in 1990, it didn't. I asked my sister why she used Express Mail instead of Federal Express, and she told me she thought it would be faster. I'm not sure how it could have been faster than a service that advertised its use when something "absolutely, positively has to be there overnight," but whatever. Let's just say that neither of the Harbula kids earned admission into Mensa that week.

Now I was nervous. It was still going to be another four days before my co-worker came back, and I didn't have any way to get a hold of her. Not that I really wanted to, but I wanted to her to come back to a couple of dead cats even less. But there was nothing to be done but wait for the package with the keys to arrive. And two days later it finally did.

By now it had been three-and-a-half days since I'd checked on the poor cats. I raced to the apartment not really knowing what I'd find.

Turns out the cats were much more resourceful than I expected, not to mention more than me and my sister. They'd ripped open their bag of food so they had plenty to eat, but it was water I'd been more concerned about. Their solution to that was knocking over every vase in the place and drinking the plant water.

I'd never been happier to sweep up broken glass in my life. When my co-worker got back I sheepishly told her about the vases, but before I could explain why it had happened she commented that it must have been because her kitties had missed her so much.

I didn't bother to correct her. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but at least I hadn't. No harm, no foul, right?

And I've never used Express Mail since, either.

A Fool and His Money Play Video Games and Buy Comic Books

We finally put a real plan in place for the kids to start earning allowances tonight. They've done little things to earn money from time to time in the past, like getting things for Danelle when she tore her ACL skiing earlier this year. But we've now got a list of chores for them to do -- making their beds, putting their clean clothes away and the like -- and they'll both get a dollar every week for their trouble.

Taryn was overjoyed. A dollar is apparently still a lot of money to a four-year-old. Zak, however, may be a little more familiar with child labor laws. "A dollar?!? I'll need to get my allowance 60 times before I can buy the Indiana Jones video game!" He's always been pretty good at math.

A dollar happens to be the same amount I got back when I was 13 for doing things like poop scooping, taking out the trash and mowing the lawn. And I'd usually take my dollar and head to the drugstore at the end of the street to pick out a comic book. Titles like X-Men and Avengers were among my favorites. But of course, I'd have to carefully peruse most of the available selections before making such an important purchase decision.

Comics were 65 cents back then, so I'd still have enough left to go next door to Grandma's Pie Shop. Not for pie, but to play one of the two video games they had in their entryway -- Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga.

Video games cost a quarter so this was always another tough choice. I was better at Galaga which meant I typically went that way so I could play longer and really get my money's worth.

My electronic entertainment appetite sated for another week, it was back home to read my newly acquired literary masterpiece. Or re-read it, depending how long I'd taken at the drugstore.

I actually still have my entire comic book collection, put together not only from those weekly purchases but also flea market trips and subscriptions. With X-Men, Iron Man, Fantastic Four and other superheroes still popular I'm looking forward to Zak enjoying them one day.

I also got a Namco Museum collection for my PlayStation 2 a few years ago that had a bunch of classic arcade games, including my beloved Galaga. I can still get a perfect score on Galaga's first challenging stage by waiting until the last shot of the previous stage to get my double fighter, then leaving it right in the default position and firing away from there. Always been proud of myself for figuring that out.

I'm not sure what my kids will do with the dollars they start earning. Obviously they won't go as far now as they did 25 years ago, but that's not really the point. I'll be happy if they just take their chores seriously, take pride in their work and start to learn the connection between putting in effort and getting things they want.

Who am I kidding? I'll be happy when Zak finally has enough cash to buy that Indiana Jones game. It looks cool!

I Hope This Doesn't Adversely Affect Their Geography Skills

The inevitable finally happened sometime in the past couple of weeks. I'm not even sure exactly when. One day its existence wasn't even acknowledged in our house, and now my kids can't get enough of it.

Sadly, I'm not talking about eating brussels sprouts or making their own beds, but the phenomenon that is Hannah Montana.

Taryn's completely obsessed. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, The Backyardigans and the like have been all but forgotten. Any TV time is now taken up by Hannah.

Zak says that he only likes the music (which sounds eerily like claiming to only get a certain publication for the articles), but he watches every time Taryn does and even sometimes when she doesn't. He'll even stop playing his video games to watch, which is pretty much unprecedented.

I met this turn of events with a little trepidation. I'd gotten comfortable with all the animated fare they typically watched, but I didn't really know much about the live-action shows Disney Channel has on in the evenings. They all seemed to be targeted at older kids, not my uncorrupted little babes. So I decided to watch a few episodes to make sure they were appropriate.

I'll have to admit I was pleasantly surprised. The plots are simple and don't really dive into any controversial subject matter, at least not any of the ones I've seen so far. My only issue is that the characters sometimes say things to each other that we've taught our kids aren't nice, like "stupid" and "shut up." Taryn's always very quick to point out when someone says one of these "bad words."

Miley Cyrus doesn't seem like any amazing dramatic talent. Danelle commented that overacting must be appropriate at this age. Her singing doesn't seem all that great either, frankly. The tunes are catchy pop fluff that the kids seem to enjoy. She just has a harmless, comfortable charm to her. And as Danelle also pointed out, she wears clothes that actually cover her.

The show really doesn't seem like any sort of breakthrough at all. Just the latest variation on a theme that worked for The Brady Bunch, Saved By the Bell, Blossom, Lizzie McGuire and many others. Even though Miley and her friends are all in high school the show probably appeals more to younger kids who look up to them and feel older themselves for watching. And we parents can enjoy the show's innocence and reminisce about when we were younger and our biggest concerns were weighty issues like being grounded and bickering with our siblings. Brooke Shields playing Miley's deceased mother in flashbacks and references to things like Billy Ray Cyrus' (Miley's real-life father who also plays her father on the show) turn on Dancing With the Stars also resonate with adults without weighing down the show for the kids in classic Disney style. Sort of the Best of Both Worlds, as the show's theme song refers to.

My kids aren't old enough to care about Vanity Fair pictorials or tawdry stories about who Miss Cyrus is dating. If watching Hannah Montana is what they choose to do to feel more "grown up," I think we could do a lot worse.