Woody Harrelson Will Play Me In the Movie

Thanks to this inspired piece of brilliance from Athlists, I was reminded of my own nuclear fail while once attempting to dunk a basketball.

I was at my friend Nathan Sicko's house, probably around 1982. Yes, "Sicko" was his real last name. But he was still a decent kid. And his older sister Christy was cute despite being nominally challenged, so that added to the motivation to hang out with him sometimes.

He had a basketball hoop in his dirt driveway, and while we were outside shooting one day one of us got the brilliant idea to get a stepladder and see if we could dunk.

We put it right next to the hoop to start, and the initial results were quite good. We were rim-rocking like Dr. J himself.

But of course we couldn't just leave it at that. So we gradually moved the ladder farther and farther away so we could get more hang time. And this, too, went well...for a while.

I was the one who finally moved the ladder past its tipping point. Literally. The farther away we got, the more we had to jump forward to reach the hoop as opposed to just jumping up. We'd gotten it about three feet away, and as I pushed off instead of me flying towards the hoop the ladder went flying away from it.

This left me in a fairly vulnerable position, and I came crashing to the ground. I landed face-first and smashed the frame of my glasses. When I got up they were actually hanging from one of my cheeks.

Fortunately the lenses hadn't shattered and the frames weren't embedded too deeply. My pride was more gravely injured than anything else. I mumbled some sort of lame excuse and hastily pedaled back home. Sadly this was well before the current age of cheap and plentiful video recording equipment, so this escapade wasn't captured to be shared with the world like these.

Christy never did express any sort of interest in me either, so I wonder if she had watched the whole incident unfold and decided there was no way she could go out with someone with my obvious lack of both hops and brains.

Maybe I should have tried to impress her with my Dungeons & Dragons prowess instead. I never knew anyone who got a 20-sided die stuck in his face.

Sort Of Like Claiming The Dog Ate My Homework, College-Style

Saturday mornings are great. The work week is (typically) over, and you get to relax, have fun and do stuff with your friends and family.

First semester of freshman year of college my Saturday mornings almost weren't so great. I was scheduled to have biology lab then. That completely obliterated the excitement of learning that classes during the week didn't start until 8:00. I was used to getting to high school by 7:30 -- an extra half-hour of sleep sounded GREAT! Of course, I soon learned that getting up for an 8:00 class only provided extra rest if I went to sleep at the same time I did in high school. But I digress.

I was understandably pretty down about the whole Saturday morning bio lab thing. As I was complaining about it back in the dorm, an Orthodox Jewish kid named Paul laughed and said getting it switched would be a piece of cake -- I just needed to say I couldn't do it because I was "Shomer Shabbos."

Of course I had absolutely no idea what that meant, so he explained to me that it was Hebrew for someone who observes the Sabbath. That included not doing certain forms of work, in which dissecting frogs was most definitely included.

I was dubious, but I couldn't think of any other options. So I went to course exchange and despite undoubtedly butchering the pronunciation, it worked. My lab was switched to Tuesday afternoons.

Sure, it was dishonest. Looking back probably not one of my prouder moments. If you've never told a fib to get out of something you didn't want to do or made nothing but good decisions when you were 18, you may not even find it funny. It's a little strange that back then I felt the need to save my Saturday mornings for things like going to football games, and 20 years later I gave up going to football games to save my Sunday mornings for spending more time with my family.

At least in those 20 years, I grew up enough to be honest about it.

I'll Bet He's Had More Memorable Athletic Moments

So, I hear that the Gentlemen's Singles Final at Wimbledon yesterday was pretty good. Once upon a time I would absolutely have made sure to watch it. I was captain of my high school tennis team back in the day and a big fan of second-tier players like Yannick Noah and Pat Cash. I even had a picture of Cash on the dashboard of my car for some awkward man-crush reason. I used to have fairly long hair and wore a ridiculous checkered headband like him when I played, so maybe I thought we had some sort of bond.

My family used to spend a week in Lake Placid every summer. I remember all of us going to the public courts there together when I was younger and my parents would play each other while my sister and I just goofed around. When I got older I'd often just take my racket and a can of balls and go by myself to hit against the boards.

On one such day in the summer of 1987, there was another guy there doing the same thing. Sort of an awkward dude with a moustache and big glasses. Playing against someone else is always more fun, so we introduced ourselves. In a British accent he told me that his name was Eddie and that he was training for the Olympics.

I was less impressed by this than you might think. Lake Placid is home to a U.S. Olympic Training Center, and running into Olympic hopefuls there was sort of like running into actors in Los Angeles. So I just nodded. I didn't even ask what event he was training for. He looked more like a member of the A-V club than a jock, anyway.

We hit for a while and then decided to play an actual match, which I won pretty handily. Something like 6-2, 6-3. I thanked him for the match and he mentioned that there was a doubles tournament coming up in a few days at the local Holiday Inn, and asked if I would be interested in being his partner. I had nothing going on, so I said sure and gave him the number where I was staying.

He called that evening to say that the tournament was unfortunately full, and we couldn't work out another time to play again before I was headed back home. So that was the last I ever saw of Eddie. Or so I thought...

Jump ahead seven months to February and I did see Eddie again after all. On TV, competing in the ski-jumping event at the Winter Olympics in Calgary where he captured the hearts of the world. Yup, I had played tennis with Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards.

So in addition to winning a race against an NFL quarterback, I can add beating an Olympian in tennis to my lengthy list of proud athletic accomplishments. I'll take some comfort in those feats as I'm rehabbing from my upcoming wrist surgery.

Like a lot of people, tennis fell off my must-see sporting event list a while ago. From what I hear about yesterday's five-set epic between Nadal and Federer, I missed out on a doozy yesterday.

I'll say this much, though -- if Eddie ever jumps again, I'll be glued to the set.

Sadly, My Tolerance Never Really Got Much Better

Zak has one of his little friends over for a sleepover tonight. The basic agenda doesn't seem to have changed much from when I was a kid -- eat, play, eat, play, turn a movie on, eat, talk about how you're going to stay up all night, then promptly fall asleep.

I remember my last sleepover. It was sophomore year of high school, February break, Kevin Alvaro's house. We were probably too old for sleepovers in the same way we were too old for trick-or-treating, but that didn't stop us from ending up with bags full of candy on Halloween. Simpler times.

I had volleyball practice early the next morning but my dad agreed to pick me up and take me on his way to work, so I was in. It was the same quartet of us that had been hanging out together since third grade -- me, Kevin, Tommy Sand (of monster ball fame) and Jim Bourdeau.

We spent the night down in Kevin's basement, like we had for years. But this time there was one extra ingredient -- some of Kevin's dad's beer.

Yep, we were pretty cool. I think I polished off an entire half a can all by myself before passing out deciding to go to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning for practice I was NOT feeling well at ll. I somehow managed to get myself together, gave Kevin's mom a mumbled decline on breakfast and made it to my dad's car when he arrived.

He must have noticed the lovely shade of green I was wearing, because he asked if I was all right. I assured him I was fine -- just a little tired. He didn't press the issue, and we drove the remaining few minutes to the high school in silence. He had a pretty big grin on his face when I got out of the car, though.

I practically sprinted to the locker room, threw open the door to one of the stalls and emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet. As I knelt there clutching the bowl our coach came in. He put a hand on my shoulder and simply said, "Sucks, doesn't it?"

I spent the entire practice just lying on one of the locker room benches. I was supposed to see some movie called The Breakfast Club with a few friends after practice, but that was definitely out. So one of the other players gave me a ride home. But not before insisting I roll my window down and stick my head outside the whole way.

And thus ended my sleepover career, in less than glorious fashion. That was one of the last things the four of us did together, too. As we got older we made new friends, developed new interests and so on. But we had more than our share of good times before we drifted apart.

Zak may only be seven, but I still make sure he sleeps in the family room for these events. And I don't keep my beer in the basement, either.

I wonder if that Breakfast Club movie was any good...

It Was Probably A Lot Warmer In There, Too

Whenever my dad came to my high school soccer games, he wouldn't sit in the stands with the other parents. He'd stay in his car and do paperwork.

That used to really bug me. Being different wasn't cool in high school, and that included my folks being different. Why couldn't he just sit in the stands like everybody else?

It never occurred to me that if he didn't multitask by doing his paperwork at the game he wouldn't have had time to come at all. My dad started his own business selling and servicing industrial scales when I was in second grade. He HAD to make sure things like the paperwork got done.

He wanted to name the company Yankee Scale, but someone advised him that you wanted to show up early in the Yellow Pages listings so Action Scale it was. My mom worked with him, too. That provided flexibility for her to be home when we finished school each day and over summer vacation -- something else I just sort of took for granted.

He'd sometimes take me along with him on business trips. Not glamorous golf outings in warm locales -- 4 1/2-hour drives to places like Ogdensburg and Massena in the dead of winter for repair calls. But it was a chance for us to spend time together.

He never pressured me to take over the family business, but there was always work I could do if I needed to earn some extra money. From cleaning the bathrooms to organizing the parts lab to crawling around cleaning truck scale pits. Action Scale put food on our table and a roof over our heads, not to mention putting Dawn and I both through college.

Like I've written before, my dad passed away back in 1998. My mom eventually sold the business. All that's probably left of Action Scale now is a polo shirt and a couple of screwdrivers she sent me when she moved away from Albany a few years later.

I don't believe he enjoyed trying to do paperwork on a clipboard propped up on his steering wheel while he watched us get pummeled by Shenendahowa. And I don't believe I ever thanked him enough for doing it.

Happy Father's Day, dad. And thanks for being there.

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...

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!

Out of the Mouths of Babes

That AMAZINGLY stylish young lad in the picture is me, circa 1986. I thought I had it all going on back then -- the spikey hair, the flipped-up collar, the docksiders with no socks. I really felt like I belonged on the set of a John Hughes movie.

I also happened to work at a clothing store at the time called Directions. One day it was just me and my district manager in the store, and I wore those exact coral (not pink) suspender pants with a short-sleeved black button shirt that had a haphazard pattern of white squares on it. If you can picture this in your head, you undoubtedly realize that I was clearly at the height of my fashiontastic powers.

A mother came in with her young son, a kid about three or four years old. I went over to ask if she needed help with anything, and she replied that she was just looking. So I went back to folding jeans or lacing sneakers or some other busy work while they walked around.

They eventually started to head out of the store and I could hear that the little boy was crying, so I went to see what was wrong. As I got within earshot I heard him howl, "But mommy -- I wanna go see the clown again!"

Needless to say, I don't think I ever wore that particular outfit again. I think my district manager might still be laughing.

Exploring Strange New Worlds

I saw a trailer recently for a new Star Trek film that's scheduled to come out in 2009. I was always more into Star Wars as a kid, but I do have a special memory of the second Star Trek movie, The Wrath of Khan.

I was 12 when the movie came out in the summer of 1982, and my buddies and I REALLY wanted to see it. So on a rainy Saturday somebody's mom dropped four of us off at the Cine 1-2-3-4-5-6 (yes, that's really what it said on the sign outside) behind Northway Mall to do just that.

We weren't the only ones who thought going to the movies was a good idea that day. There was a long line that stretched all the way outside the theater. But we didn't mind waiting in the rain for a while; getting to see a movie by ourselves was kind of a big deal at that age.

Eventually we got to the ticket window, visions of starships and phasers dancing in our heads. Velcro wallets were ripped open and allowance money was pulled out when suddenly tragedy struck.

That's right -- the movie was sold out.

We had to make a decision and make it fast. Finding a pay phone and calling someone to come pick us up wasn't an option. We came to see a movie, and that's what we were going to do. Quickly we scanned the other shows that were playing and made our choice.

Victor/Victoria.

I really have no idea what inspired us to pick that. Maybe it was the only thing that was starting soon. What I DO remember is four fairly traumatized 12-year-old boys walking out a couple of hours later, really not entirely sure what they'd just seen.

We eventually did get to see Khan, and it was everything we'd hoped it would be. But I don't think any of us were ever able to look at Julie Andrews the same way again.

Sadly, Halle Berry Is Not Involved In This Version

One of my kids' favorite outdoor games is something I played as a kid that we called monster ball. Basically it's sort of a cross between baseball and kickball. You play it with a wiffle bat and one of those really lightweight inflated balls that you see tons of in huge containers in the front of toy stores this time of year. The kind that you can't throw very far or very hard because they're just not heavy enough. I searched all over the web trying to find an actual name for those types of balls without any success, so I hope I've been clear enough as to what I'm talking about.

Anyway, it's a great game because the balls are big enough that they're pretty easy to hit even for the really little kids. One of the ways to get people out is throwing the ball at them as they run between bases like in kickball, and it doesn't really hurt when you get hit by one. And since the balls don't travel very far you don't need a lot of space to play.

We usually play on our driveway and in the street in front of our house. Home plate is up by our garage and second base is in the middle of the road. I don't think a kid has hit a ball all the way across the street in the air yet.

I still remember when we realized as kids that we were too old to play monster ball any more. I'm not sure exactly what age we were, but since we were pretty big we felt the need to raise the stakes. A wiffle bat wouldn't do -- we needed an aluminum bat. And for a ball we decided to upgrade to one of those red rubber dodgeballs.

With tools like this we needed a little more room, so it was on our bikes and off to the baseball field behind Our Savior's Lutheran Church. We picked our teams and got started.

Eric Ruff was the first one up. He stepped up to the plate, the pitch came in and he swung for the fences, just crushing the ball.

I doubt there are too many physics majors reading this, but let's pause here just the same and think for a moment about something none of us young geniuses thought of back then. Namely, what happens when an aluminum bat makes contact with a large rubber ball. I'll give you one guess, and it rhymes with "recoil."

The bat snapped back and caught poor Eric right in the face. Split his eyelid open pretty good. And thus ended what was very likely the shortest game in monster ball history, and all of our monster ball careers at the same time.

Or so I thought. Didn't really cross my mind back then that I might play the game again 25 years later. I think I'm enjoying it even more now than I did then -- listening to Zak protest that he touched the base before he was hit by the ball, trying to talk Taryn out of wanting to pitch, explaining that you can't carry the bat with you when you run the bases.

And we haven't had to call any games on account of split eyelids, either.

CORRECTION: Childhood friend and participant in this very game Tom Sand e-mailed to remind me that he was actually the first victim of self-mutilation by aluminum bat in this game. Ended up going to the emergency room for stitches. Then, apparently unconvinced that this sort of thing could possibly happen AGAIN, we brilliantly kept playing and Eric sustained his injury.

Sorry for the omission, Tom! I hope after 25 years I can be forgiven for being a little fuzzy on the details, and that you're fully healed. :)

Memorable Concert Experiences: Newport Jazz Festival 1989

I really enjoy going to concerts. Big venues or small venues, indoors or outdoors, alone or with others it doesn't much matter.

I've had some pretty neat experiences at shows, so from time to time I'll share some of those stories (read: when I can't think of anything else to write about). Here's the first:

I went to the Newport Jazz Festival (now known as the JVC Jazz Festival) at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center back in the summer of 1989 with my friend Bill Bichteman. We were pretty much only friends for that one summer. He and I were both performing in a community theater production of 42nd Street. Bill played the lead, Julian Marsh, and I played Andy the choreographer. But my musical theater "career" is a subject for another time.

Back to the jazz festival -- the lineup that year for the two-day event was tremendous. Ray Charles, David Sanborn, Wynton Marsalis, Illinois Jacquet and the Yellowjackets highlighted the first day. Grover Washington Jr., Spyro Gyra, Diane Schuur, Dave Brubeck and Branford Marsalis were some of the big names on day two. But the act Bill was most interested in was B.B. King. Not what you might expect from a skinny, pale musical theater kid, but Bill was a HUGE B.B. King fan. So even though we had lawn seats, when King's set began we had somehow clawed our way right up to the front of the stage.

I enjoyed the set, but Bill REALLY enjoyed the set. The guy knew the words to every song and sang right along. King must have noticed this, because when his set was done he came right over and handed Bill his guitar pick.

Needless to say, Bill was ecstatic. And if the story ended there it would be cool enough. But there's more.

King came back on for an encore. And when it was over Bill was waving something in the air trying to get his attention. King looked over with a puzzled expression on his face. Then he broke into a smile almost as big as Bill's, came over and took what Bill was waving and left the stage again.

You see, Bill was also a guitar player himself. And either thanks to dumb luck or because it's just something guitar players do, he had one of his own picks in his wallet. So he didn't just get B.B. King's guitar pick, he TRADED picks with him.

I don't remember much else about the show, and I doubt Bill does either. But I'll never forget the smile on Bill's face, or the moment he shared with a legend.