Never Too Much Of A Good Thing

Richard Shindell--"Hazel's House" (mp3)

Thanksgiving is one of those funny holidays. You have to accomplish it. You have no choice. Take me, for example. I'm going to Rome to see my daughter, but I had to have a Thanksgiving meal before I left, so we had one last night. We even had the nearly-as-essential Thanksgiving leftovers meal tonight.

When I first knew we would be in Italy over Thanksgiving, I started googling around to see if there was a place in Rome that would put on a respectable Thanksgiving spread. I got a couple of good leads and was feeling pretty good about it until I got whacked in the side of the head by someone who posted a response to the question. He said, "You're in Italy. They don't really cook turkey there. Do yourself a favor and celebrate Thanksgiving by finding a nice restaurant and having a delicious Italian meal." He was right, of course.

What is it all about? Why do we have to have that meal? And how many times do we have to have it?

Tomorrow, my wife's firm has their traditional Thanksgiving meal. Last Wednesday, my school had theirs. What is it?

I was talking to a student the other day and asking him about Thanksgiving break, especially what he would be doing.

"Nothing much," he said. "Mostly just staying here."

"Well, at least you'll get a good meal, right?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "You know," he said, "I don't really like Thanksgiving food all that much. I don't know what the big deal is. I mean, my mom cooks it okay. But Thanksgiving food just isn't that good. It's alright. It's more about getting together with your family."

I never eat turkey at any other time of the year, except in its deli form. I don't really like cranberries. Not a huge fan of sweet potatoes. And yet, here I am once again loading up a plate, and if someone told me that I had to load a similar plate of the same offerings at someone else's table tomorrow, I'd probably do it. Because there is something about Thanksgiving, its overwhelming sense of nostalgia and comfort, that is difficult to put into words.

Unless you are Richard Shindell. There isn't a whole lot of Thanksgiving music out there. Maybe none at all. Maybe there doesn't need to be, because this song captures the essence of it:

There’s a two-lane county road in northern Jersey
Winding up a hill beside a lake
Just before the road winds to an end
Is Hazel’s house

Long white picket fence around the front yard
A wagon wheel someone made into a gate
Flagstone steps will lead you to the front door
Of Hazel’s house

And Hazel will have seen you from the window
She’s waiting for you as you climb the steps
She says, “Thank God, we were starting to get worried.
Come on in.”

It’s New Year’s and the place is overflowing
Cousins, aunts and uncles gather round
“How long has it been? It’s great to see you.
How you’ve grown.”

And the uncles all have one eye on the Rose Bowl
One by one they slink back to the den
Everybody else heads for the kitchen
You go with them

She always has the crumbcake at the ready
Today is no exception - there it is
The order of the universe intact
At Hazel’s house

And no one seems to know that this is heaven
They say we only know it by and by
That one day all will be revealed
Well, here it is:

There’s a two-lane county road in northern Jersey
Winding up a hill beside a lake
Just before the road winds to an end
Hazel’s house

Yeah, yeah, I know the song is about New Year's Day, but I don't care. To me, it captures everything there is to say about Thanksgiving. I'd drive there tomorrow. If this one doesn't move you, I don't know what will.

MetaWomen and the Gawkers Who Love Them

Just - Radiohead (mp3)
The Fame - Lady GaGa (mp3)

[Super-Special Double-Length Thanksgiving Edition!]

As the father of two girls who seem to be approaching their pre-teens at a speed approximating Warp 4, I spend a lot of free time obsessing over girl issues. As I scour various news sites for interesting stories, my eyes are always drawn to stories about women, or about the feminist movement, or about women in the focus of the pop culture lens.

• A July 30 article in The New York Times Magazine shares one mother's fascination and relief that her daughter has found Wonder Woman, the iconic female superhero, as opposed to Hannah Montana or Lindsay Lohan.
• An AP story talked about the rising concern parents with "The Princess Pedestal," our cultural fascination with convincing our daughters that they're all that and a bag o' chips.
• I get the weekly email from The Frisky.com just to sneak a peek into life on the other side, the concerns and subject matter of often horny (mostly 20something) women. Yes, I've hit the age where I'm more concerned about being in touch with my daughters when they are horny and 20something than I am about being in touch with current horny 20somethings.
  

Three women under the magnifying glass of our culture have particularly caught my eye lately, and I've linked to fascinating features on all three of them, as I ponder where a society increasingly operated by empowered women who can turn assumptions and stereotypes on their sides begin to rake in cash for doing so.

Nadya Suleman

The only contributions Nadya Suleman can make to pushing our civilization forward is as a cautionary tale. She's mentally unstable and, if not a bad mother, a completely irresponsible one. If Jon and Kate should never have made eight, then one of them alone sure as shit shouldn't have 14. And although I've never watched a minute of any of these shows, I'm almost certain that Jon and Kate are both more intelligent and at least a hair's breadth more responsible than Nadya.

Nadya Suleman has 14 children.

Please. Sit and stew on that for just a second. She is that NASCAR wreck that kills a famous driver. She is the online execution of a hostage. She stands for everything we know to be wrong about celebrity, about maternity, and about humanity all lumped into a single doe-eyed idiot, yet she and some hungry producers know full well that enough people will watch her to make a profit out of exploiting the children.

Nadya's not being exploited. Exploitation, in my mind, requires an unwillingness to participate. Her kids, for example, have no say. The world gets to witness their own odd little version of hell and giggle at the pseudo-real life that the camera creates for them. They are being exploited. And the only question left worth asking -- and strangely, it IS worth asking: is their exploitation and its financial reward better than the alternative? Even Nadya says it quite well: "People are like, 'Oh why don't you go to work?'... OK, think about the reality of the situation: I leave, I go to work, I'm away from them all day, I make -- how much? $15,000 a year? OK, I need that at least every two months So, how on earth is that going to work? That's absurd. You live in my life one day and you'll see, you'll realize: it's ludicrous."

Yes, it is, Nadya. It's ludicrous to suggest most of us could ever, ever, be living in your life.

Megan Fox

To be sure, if Megan Fox looked like Susan Boyle, she wouldn't be the focus of my interest. And while she is certainly stunning, I have to stress that Ms. Fox isn't The Hottest Woman Ever. Not by a good stretch. She's very attractive, and she oozes a kind of dangerous sultry vibe that kicks her looks up a notch.

What fascinates me is how focused she is on playing the game of being a celebrity and doing it in a very "this is just a game" way. While it's a little much to suggest Ms. Fox is "highly intelligent," she must be given tremendous credit for understanding her game. With only minimal TV and movie credits to her name, she quickly rose to become one of the most desirable magazine pin-up girls of the 21st Century, and she did it by creating a fictional version of herself that makes out with women and loves wild wanton sexual encounters. (In reality, she's been dating one guy for five years, which is practically four lifetimes for a Hollywood relationship.)

What the NYT Magazine article suggests, however, is that Ms. Fox has been too successful in her effort to sell her body and an image rather than hone her craft. She might have shot to the top so quickly that people discover, to her detriment, that "there's no 'THERE' there." So she and her handlers are working to make her more human, less sex doll. Sadly, I fear they'll discover that once our society has embraced you for your body, we don't really care to embrace your soul.

We've already got Meryl Streep for that.

Lady GaGa
If Megan Fox is attempting to manipulate the Hollywood world in order to find success by milking and manipulating stereotypes, then Lady GaGa is doing a similar job on our preconceived notions of music bimbos. Before the Slate article linked above, I'd never even heard a song of hers all the way through. But the article intrigued me, and I watched her video of "Paparazzi" as well as her performance on MTV. The claim that she is taking the career track of Britney or Christina and turning the lens back on the artificial and superficial marketing machine is impossible to deny.

She's glam, yet so over-the-top glam that it requires she be NOT glamorous. You cannot be completely wrapped up in yourself if you are so careful to never expose what you really look like, if you so clearly cartoonize yourself to make a point. (NOTE: One of the most popular Lady GaGa searches on Google: "Lady GaGa without makeup.")

While the profit motive comes first, that she's attempting to make a statement, a serious and heavy statement, even if I'm not certain I know what it is quite yet, the effort alone is worth at least a little admiration. Will I buy her albums or go to her concerts? Hell naw. But I'll admire her nonetheless.

Nadya is a moron with screwed-up values who caught lightning in a bottle in having eight babies at a time when our popular culture makes heroes out of morons. Megan is a hot crafty dame in a business that rewards hot crafty dames. She played her cards carefully and well and has been rewarded for it. Lady GaGa has done them both one better. She has taken a formula for pop fame -- flash, glitz, shock -- and turned into some kind of threeway between Madonna, Andy Warhol and Andy Kaufman.

All three, ultimately, are women who find tremendous profit in playing the game of fame. I hope the rise of the MetaWoman is a good thing. One day my daughters are going to look at these women -- or the next generation of them -- while Wonder Woman remains imprisoned in cheesy cartoons and undervalued comic book forms. Diana might have a magic lasso, but these women have the magic box. No Amazonian princess with all her skills and cunning can easily defeat such a power as that.

Billy will be taking Thursday off for turkey and giblets, but he wishes you and yours a gleeful holiday and looks forward to begging for more of your attention next week! He also figures the odds that this post survives the entire weekend are slim, because one of these people will have some lawyer who contacts my host or Blogger and yanks this thing down faster than the Hunchback of Notre Dame tugs those damn bells.

New Music Monday

I'm sorry, Billy. I been remiss, kid, I see that now. Consider this my public apology. Leavin' you to pages and pages of Gmail submissions from artists, friends, A/R people, DJs, and anyone else who is desperate enough to get heard that they're willing to give our lil' ole blog a shot left you with quite a chore. I found that out when I started going through some of that stuff last week.

Don't get me wrong, all you fledgling bands and artists. We appreciate being considered as an outlet for releasing and supporting new music. I think Billy has made that point more than once. But it is a fair amount of work keeping up with the emails. But we like getting them. It gives us a bit of street cred for those readers who go beyond our friends and families. I'd wager we get about 10 emails a day (I don't check it very often, so that is a guess) from people who would like us to consider their music. The guys at saidthegramophone.com say that they get between 150-200 submissions a day, so all things are relative. But it is work.

Much of what we get, I don't really like. Like most everybody else, I'm looking for a hook, a sound, a distinctive something that makes me think I would listen to the song again. But, most new artists don't quite have that. Paul Westerberg once said in a song, "You were my first glimmer of light." It's that glimmer that I'm looking for, too, just the tiniest crack of the light of the future for the musicians involved.

By the way, if I were trying to get heard, here's what I'd do: skip the press kit, the who said what about the band, the hard-to-hear comparisons with better known musicians, the statements of joy or coolness from the artist himself or herself. I'd just make it as easy as I possibly could. That would mean I would send my best mp3 (just one), the one I think kicks as (because if I don't think it, who will?) with the shortest note, something like, "Dear Bottom of the Glass, I hope you will post my song. I think it's best one. I'm sending it to you with no strings attached so you can help to spread the word. Thanks."

Notice a couple of things. We appreciate the personal touch that suggests you are sending it to us personally, and not mass-blanketing every blog you can find, even if you are. Notice also that you don't have to kiss our asses about how much you like the blog and all of that. Most of the blog ass-kissers will say something in their email that reveals they really didn't read the blog in the first place.

So, with no further ado, here are some songs that came our way that caught my interest:

Bullet and SnowFox--"Bad Days" (mp3)

"Bad Days" is a quality pop song that straddles the generations. I can hear Shirley Manson singing it on a Garbage cd; I can hear one of today's singing starlets getting ahold of it and using it to pump up a live concert. The song's simple, insistent, guitar-and-drum driven beat leads into a catchy chorus with (I'm guessing) intentionally-cheesy background vocals. It's a well-produced track that keeps guitars and vocals prominent, with only occasional keyboard touches. Even though the song follows the basic verse/chorus structure, it adds little twists and flourishes to that structure. By coincidence, Butch Walker's "Maybe It's Just Me," from the OC soundtrack cd (my daughter owns it, I swear) came on right after "Bad Day" on Itunes, and it seemed like a logical progression. Very professional, confident song.

Clarence Bucaro--"Let Me Let Go Of You" (mp3)

Clarence Bucaro has cut a cd called New Orleans, and this track certainly captures that vibe with its fairly-straightforward rhythm and blues approach. Everything works here. The instrumentation--guitar, bass, drums, and, especially organ--provides a tight, sympathetic background to Bucaro's strong vocals. As a singer, Bucaro travels in the land somewhere between Van Morrison and Macy Gray. When he double-tracks his voice on the second verse, he increases the emotional power quite effectively. Only slight complaint, after an engaging organ solo, the song fades out. It sounds more like an edit than a complete track.




Kuba Oms--"Beautiful Uncertainty" (mp3)

Kuba Oms has that who-does-he-sound-like quality to his voice, at least until he hits the falsetto chorus. You can tell he's listened to what's on the radio from "Meet Virginia" to Matchbox Twenty, and it makes his music immediately catchy. I like the the guitar sound--not too produced, right up front. The lyrics probably wander a little too much--in the first few lines he's "thinking" about the government and the war, but quickly shifts to a hot girl and to asking for a handout. The lyrics never really justify the title. The instrumental break in the middle, with its Genesis-style guitar and synthesizer and chant "This is not my world" seems a little out of place to these ears because they kill the beat of the song. But the song sticks in my head.


Peter Squires--"Witch" (mp3)

This little ditty simply amuses me. I'm a big fan of vindictive songs, and this one is a clumsily-endearing take on that genre. The woman who has done him wrong has literally turned into a witch, and so the narrator finds himself with no choice to to shoot her with flaming arrows or burn her at the stake. Though he claims to hope that the "human inside" will one day return, this is an empty hope, since he can only tolerate her if he never sees her again. The high-pitched backing vocals which only exclaim "Witch!" are a nice touch.

The Deja Vu Double Album

Until Morning - Dashboard Confessional (mp3)
Until Morning (Acoustic) - Dashboard Confessional (mp3)

The Deja Vu Double Album: (pr.n.) A single collection of songs by an artist that are recorded different ways on separate CDs but packaged together, thus providing the customer with multiple renditions of each song.

The first time I ever encountered the Deja Vu Double Album concept was when, while heavily intoxicated and searching for a stocking stuffer for my wife, I stumbled across Shania Twain's Up! at the local Wal-Mart. The packaging bragged that it was a double CD but was on sale for a scant $9.99. And, because I always found Ms. Twain adorable, and because her general sound wasn't too unpleasant to my wife's delicate musical ears, I bought the damn thing.

(Yes yes, I know. So shoot me already. The excuses are a pathetic attempt to distract from the fact that I enjoy some cheesy shit. Especially when that cheese fits this nicely into those jeans.)

Lately, the Deja Vu Double Album concept seems to be growing viral. In the past 14 months, I've bought three more of these: The Bravery's Between Sun and Moon (Complete), the Indigo Girls' Poseidon and the Bitter Bug, and Dashboard Confessional's latest, Alter the Ending.

As an economic decision, I don't quite see what's in it for the record companies or the bands. More work, more CDs to press, at practically no additional charge to the consumer.

Shania Twain wanted versions that attempted to keep her country music fans happy while hoping to expand her presence on Top 40 radio. Maybe it worked, but what I found more fascinating was that both versions sounded so tame and processed that it was like trying to figure out whether you were eating Vanilla or French Vanilla. Seriously, 90% of it sounded exactly the same. The only difference is that once in a while you heard a slide guitar or a few banjo licks on the country versions, and a little more synth and bass on the pop ones. So mostly her album(s) just felt gimmicky. Which was appropriate for a woman who began her rise on the gimmick of being able to fill out some worn-down blue jeans like few decent-voiced women before her. [Confession: Everytime I see people oohing over Sarah Palin's looks, I can't help but think she looks like a downgraded and dumber version of Shania.]

The Bravery's Deja Vu Double Album was even more odd. The "Sun" versions were more traditional rock, while the "Moon" versions were more synth and dance. Maybe they thought clubs would play those secondary versions while folks were tripping on X or something. Personally, I found that every single version on the "Moon" version was not only of lower quality, but knowing that those versions existed pulled down my appreciation for both versions. What I'm saying is, that they put out two versions just made me like both versions less.

What Are You Like - Indigo Girls (mp3)
What Are You Like (Acoustic) - Indigo Girls (mp3)

The Indigo Girls' effort was the first move in an encouraging direction. Their first versions included a full band and sometimes some orchestration. Higher production qualities. More layered. Their second version was just the two of them and a couple of guitars. Stripped down and simple. Old school Indigo, if you will. As a lifelong fan of the ladies, I appreciated both versions. It spoke of where they were and where they'd been, and I found myself preferring certain songs more in one version than the other, and often enjoying both in different ways.

Finally comes Dashboard Confessional, the screamy emo boy who could yank tears out of angsty teen girls almost as quickly as Edward Cullen.

Please trust that this is not my Persuasive Essay on Why You Should Buy a Dashboard Confessional album. The dude is a pinot grigiot, and not everyone has a nose for it. He makes some whiny adolescent music fit for 90210 and Dawson's Creek soundtracks. That said, the double-album version of Alter the Ending is the most entertaining album I've bought in a while. Having only owned one other DC album (the most-popular The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most), I have the good fortune of not overindulging a sound that probably wears out with too many listens. The idea of listening to five Dashboard Confessional albums non-stop is enough to make me contemplate driving into a brick wall, so I doubt I'll buy another.

But here's what's fun about this particular collection. The first versions are the full-on heavily produced, mightily orchestrated, reach for the pop charts variety. It's got that Daughtry and Lifehouse kind of feel to it. Radio-friendly rock with a whiny lead singer. There's no denying that they feel a little bit sold out... but it's also kinda good. I mean, for what it is.

The other album, though, is the same collection of music done in Carabba's "older," more emo-attuned style. Him, his guitar, occasionally a few more less-electric instruments, and minimal percussion. What makes this collection so much fun is to hear how much more alive and sincere the stripped-down version feels. The songs have more power when some of the noise is stripped away.

But strangely, and amusingly, I find myself injecting the missing instruments in my head, mixing them up the way I imagine them. I mentally add the electric guitars and orchestrations. I can almost hear the drums. It's very surreal. It's the kind of thing that, when I'm describing it, I want to ask myself that famous question from Judge Halloran to Vinny Gambini: "Are you on drugs?"

I can't say whether Alter the Ending is a "great" album. I can't say whether you, dear random listener, will like it. I can only say it's the most enjoyable Deja Vu Double Album I've ever heard.*

* -- Unless you, dear random listener, can name some others that I have possibly neglected or forgotten.

She Was a Fast Machine

The Audit - Harper Simon (mp3)
Fill My Little World - The Feeling (mp3)

I was a senior in high school in 1990 and visiting a friend at Boston College. We were headed to Boston Garden for a Celtics game in one of Larry Bird's last years in the league and his dramatic return after being injured the previous year. On the way, at an intersection, we found ourselves staring at this stunning woman in her late 20s. She looked like a supermodel shoved into a hot business executive's outfit. (Or, at least, that's how she looked to an 18-year-old from an all-boys' high school.)

When we crossed the street towards her, she called out to us. What she said hardly mattered. Would we like to take a survey or something like that. We both agreed we'd do pretty much anything this woman asked short of streaking the parquet floor of The Garden, and we had a couple of hours to kill before the game, so we dumbly and droolingly nodded. When she said "Follow me," we had no problem obliging. We remained two paces behind her, looking at each other and communicating solely with gestures and eyebrows, each of us fantasizing about what possible wild sexual adventures could await us whenever we arrived wherever she was taking us.

We must've walked two miles. We walked long enough that we had begun to shed the sexual fantasies and wonder if she was going to leave our naked bodies in bathtubs packed with ice with notes about how our livers had been removed. Little did I realize how close those fears were to what would happen.

She leads us up the stairs of this gorgeous brick building with wizard-esque pointy tops, and she smiles and holds her binder close to her eye-magnetizing chest, and she asks us to take a seat at one of two long tables on a side of the room. We would never see this woman again.

A professor-looking dude walks over to us a few minutes later with these questionnaires. They're personality tests. Long, long personality tests.

Maybe it's because we were sheep. Maybe it's because I'd been groomed to take tests my entire schooling life, and this one was kinda easy and meaningless. Maybe it's because we thought completing these tests would result in the woman coming back. Maybe even without clothes. Who knows why exactly, but we took them.

Some 30-40 minutes later we turned them in and were asked to wait while they were graded. I'm sure I sat there secretly wondering if I'd done better on my test than my friend Andy.

Why did we sit there? Why did we wait for 10... 20... 30 minutes?

Finally, a guy comes out and calls out my name. He asks me to follow him. I am led into a darkly-lit office that looks like some rich guy's small reading room, with a couple of table lamps providing the only light. Another guy is there. These two gentlemen commence explaining to me just how fucked up I am. Apparently, my personality test revealed a human being in tremendous crisis. They explained all of my problems -- it felt like it took a long time, but that's because I was getting scared and my Spider-Sense was tingling that these dudes were shysters -- and then they explained how I could better myself and emerge from the tarpit of my misery.

It involved a machine that would measure my midi-chloreans or whatever they were calling it. The machine would determine whether my spirit or my chi or some such was in a good place. Kind of like a high-priced mood ring. At this point, they actually used the words "L. Ron Hubbard" and "Scientology" for the first time. Sometimes having icky and uncomfortable feelings is what helped humanity survive and advance for thousands of years. Our instincts are pretty amazing most of the time, so it's a shame we didn't heed ours at any point in our journey into L.Ron Hell.

If it takes someone two hours of your time before they reveal their motives to you... if they have to lure you in with women in sexy miniskirts and words like "survey"... if they isolate you and outnumber you with two of their own...  these are the signs of very gifted and organized salespeople, and what they're selling is snake oil.

No, they didn't steal our livers or kidneys, but they aimed to pray on vulnerable and naive high school kids, and they used every sneaky and dirty trick in the book to do it.

I might have my own internal struggles with Christianity, but the churches I love don't fool anybody, and what they're selling is plastered all over the place. Crosses and commandments and pictures of Jesus. Churches rarely sneak up on anyone because the better ones keep few secrets and use none of these fucked up tactics. There are no rogue or renegade Scientology churches because they are kept under the very disciplined and controlling thumb of their chain of command. In fact, the reason Germany is so off-the-wall berzerk in their intense opposition to Scientology is because it probably looks a terrible lot like Nazism to them.

Fortunately, Tom Cruise is only one person. Sure, he's a very, very, very wealthy one person, as are numerous others involved in this crap. But estimates of US membership in this "religion" vary between 3.5 million (from Them) and 55,000 (from normal people). Worldwide they claim 8 million, so it's probably more like 1-2 million.

Whatever the number, it's too many. Know how I know? I asked my Magic 8 Ball.

Harper Simon's song is from his debut album, and if you like this song, I kind of think you'll enjoy most of the other songs on that album. The Feeling's album Twelve Stops and Home is a fun and cheesy little Supertramp wannabe creation that makes for some fun moments.

Unfriend

Band of Skulls--"Friends" (mp3)
Bree Sharp--"We're Going To Be Friends" (mp3)


From Reuters: "Unfriend" has been named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, chosen from a list of finalists with a tech-savvy bent.

Unfriend was defined as a verb that means to remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook.

"It has both currency and potential longevity," said Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for Oxford's U.S. dictionary program, in a statement.

"In the online social networking context, its meaning is understood, so its adoption as a modern verb form makes this an interesting choice for Word of the Year."

Upon reflection, I don't think I have unfriended anyone this year. That isn't really how adults work, is it? I mean, when is the last time you told someone that he or she was not your friend?

That doesn't mean, however, that the word "unfriend" does not have its usefulness. On the contrary, I fully celebrate the choice, even though I have read several criticisms about its selection today, ranging from those who think that "defriend" is a more exact term to those who think that their parents will have no idea what the word means if they have no understanding of Facebook.

I beg to differ. Those critics are missing out on the broader meanings of the term, which I'm guessing is what the dictionary had in mind when they chose this word. We all know what it means to unfriend someone. We've all done it. If you're like me, you've done it in some pretty graceless ways over the years.

But, like I said, it isn't something that happens in adulthood too often. Something fairly egregious would have to happen. After all, we may spend a fair portion of every day with people who we don't necessarily like, who we tolerate, who annoy us, who interrupt us and take our time, who don't have anything to say that we particularly want to hear, who get our scorn when they aren't around, and at the end of the day, we don't really mind all that much, we don't always mind seeing those people again the next day, depending on the circumstances.

And so, I would like to suggest that instead of the "unfriending" that is happening on these Internet sites, we are more likely take one of the following adult approaches (fully acknowledging that none of these terms will ever be named the word of the year):

underfriend--to "underfriend" someone is to give them less of a role in your life than they used to have because you've gotten tired of them. But you would never unfriend them. You might want something from them, but you only invite them to one of your social occasions when you used to invite them to everything.

tempfriend--also known as a contextual friend (see also, drinkfriend), the person who can be your best bud in the right situation, but in no other. Sporting events are great for "tempfriending," when the safe, neutral topic of two people rooting for the same team (possibly with alcohol--see drinkfriend) makes for bosom buddies with plenty of like-minded high fives.

farfriend--let's face it, the close friend who moves away gets treated differently. There is so much nearfriending going on most days that it can be tough to work in farfriending. To be farfriended means to be put on hold, phone not answered, phone tag, phone call responded to with text message, return call delayed several days, then finally, the "oops I forgot." It's a sad fact of life. Luckily, part of farfriending involves telling plenty of (derisive) stories and naming things after the person, maybe turning the person into his or her own (derisive) verb or metaphor to keep his or her memory alive.

pseudofriend--this is much of adulthood in a nutshell, when you pretend that you are friends with someone whom you don't like. Good news, though: real friendships can develop from this. Proof that God is love.

drunkfriend--nothing like a few beers to make someone you don't especially care for seem a bit more palatable. Not a situation to be dissed or dismissed, I'd say. If a drink or two makes the world a friendlier place, who am I to complain? Problems can ensue, however, if you drunkfriend across gender lines.

trifriend--in a group with a good friend, the person who is being "trifriended" will often discover himself talked about by one person to the other person as a way of somewhat including him. For example, your good friend walks in while you're talking to someone else and you trifriend that person: "Man, I'm tryin' to get some work done here, but Barry keeps talking about his sex life. Har, har, har." Great for insulting someone who is slow to figure out they're being insulted.

workfriend--tough one to figure out, because when you "workfriend" someone, you hang out with this person all the time while on the job, but you never do anything together on the weekend. Maybe your wives (or husbands) don't like each other.

And, finally:

shitfriend--which you can only apply to yourself, and not as a noun. It's when you come to the realization that you're a real manipulative SOB who is putting everyone you know into levels and categories that best fit your purposes. Could get you unfriended.

Bree Sharp's cover of the White Stripes comes from the blog Cover Lay Down; the Band of Skulls song is on the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack available at Itunes.

Vince Lombardi Can Kiss My Pasty White A$$

The Secret of My Success - Night Ranger (mp3)
Everybody's a VIP to Someone - The Go! Team (mp3)

It's all because of me and my old man. God, I fucking hate him. He's like, he's like this mindless machine I can't even relate to anymore. "Andrew, you've got to be number one. I won't tolerate any losers in this family. Your intensity is for shit." You son of a bitch. You know, sometimes I wish my knee would give and I wouldn't be able to wrestle anymore. He could forget all about me. -- Andrew Clarke (Emilio Estevez), The Breakfast Club

My daughters' U10 soccer team won three games in a row on Saturday to take home the league championship. No one on their team had ever played select soccer. Only three of the eight girls had ever played together before, and two of the three were my girls.

Oh yeah. And I was their coach.

The Vampires -- yeah, that was our team name -- weren't superbly talented, and their coach had never played in or coached a game of actual soccer in his whole life. The only reason I was the coach was because our original coach backed out, and the only way the five girls who wanted to play together could was if I were willing to do it. My first email to parents included something to this effect: "If your goal is to win, or if you expect your girls to dramatically improve, this is a bad idea. I can only promise you that we will try to have fun and teach what we can." Trust me that I'm not being humble when I say we barely met our meager goals.

Very rarely does having a philosophy that values other things above winning actually get rewarded with winning. If victory isn't the priority, it's not fair to expect to be rewarded with victory, right? So please allow me this rare opportunity to bask in it.

Granted, a lot of serendipitous factors played into our ultimate victory and were much more important than anything I did or any philosophy I espoused:

1. It rained all fucking season. More than half our games were postponed or cancelled, as were more than half our practices. This didn't hurt our team as much as it did teams who actually have great and beneficial practices.
2. In the tournament, we were given a Christmas gift of a blind draw. Three of the four debatably better teams all played in the other half of the bracket.
3. Because all teams started the season with small rosters -- 7 or 8 players for teams that play six to a side -- injuries and absences made it tough to field a team. Several coaches used "pick-ups" all year to beef up their team, and those pick-ups were frequently U10 and U8 select players. (And trust me, a select U8 is regularly better than an average U10 player.) These coaches asked that this tournament make exception to standard rules and allow pick-ups. I opposed and said that we should play 5 v 5 when necessary rather than allow for what I lovingly call "assassins."
   
4. All seven of our girls showed up for the tourney. We played the last two games 5 v 5, and the other team had no subs.

In short, we had a bench, we hadn't been padding our team, and superior coaches didn't have as much time to improve their players. Add up those factors and my scrub team of very decent soccer girls, playing under a philosophy of "have fun and work together," won a title.

One of our girls hurt her knee the weekend before. She could hardly run, and when she did, she resembled Forrest Gump when he was on those leg braces. But I played her anyway. I called her "SuperSub," because her job was to go in when any of the other girls were tired. And she gave it her all even though she had no business being out there if winning was our goal.

When those three whistles blew, and those girls knew they'd won, each of them could know confidently that they had played a part in winning. From the injured sub to our stud goalie to my daughters. It wasn't just Self-Esteem-Boosting Lefty Dad talking. Each girl on our team contributed an invaluable part of the victories. To be able to say that, and mean it, and see in their eyes that they believed it... that was far better than the mere victories. (Unfortunately, it's soooo much easier to believe that shit when you also win.)

To say coaching is taken a little too seriously in the 21st Century is like saying that walking on water is kinda neat. Nerds like me believe coaches are given far too much power, influence and credit.

The way some people at our school talk, you'd think coaches invented the light bulb and helped ensure world peace. Too often, we hire teachers based more on what coaching vacancies they can fill rather than whether they teach well. We'll take a B- teacher who coaches the right thing over an A+ teacher who's willing to learn how to coach. (And it's not just our school. I dare you to find a handful of male principals in any public system who weren't coaches before they got promoted.)

Meanwhile, our school's history is chock full of smart teachers who didn't know jack shit about their sport somehow leading teams to state titles. But we ignore that and instead hire "professional" coaches; that is, people who find a sport more important than all the other stuff involved in the process of education. And we apparently live with this decision by saying that what kids learn on athletic fields carries with them the rest of their lives. (As opposed to, you know, geometry and The Scarlet Letter, which don't have nearly the staying power as lessons learned from wrestling. In math terms, that's Cross-Body Ride > x.)

Ever read the infamous email from the man I call the Green Death Soccer Coach? It's quite the work of art. Even though I think there's a chance the dude was totally kidding, I can say quite confidently that had he been in the South, he would never have faced the kinds of negativity and consequences he saw up in Massachusetts. Down here, we promote these coaches. These dudes are now principals. Or Nick Saban.

Competition and competitiveness in their proper places, in the proper perspective, are wonderful and powerful things. But our society of parents and adults looks and sounds more and more like Andrew Clarke's dad every day. And either too many of us seem to think it's OK, or we don't care enough to change it.

In the finals, the other coach took a girl out in the final six minutes because she wouldn't get back on defense when we scored our final goal. The girl was big. She'd been playing non-stop the whole game. What's the big shock here? But he basically conceded defeat when we played five of the last eight minutes in a 5v4 game. To teach her a lesson, I guess. That being 10 and utterly exhausted is no excuse.

I'm a little competitive. Otherwise I wouldn't be celebrating the fact that my girls kicked the collective asses of all those serious coaches obsessed with winning. At this very moment, I feel very much like Bud Adams in the Buffalo luxury box. That's what a few beers can do to someone who knows it's not easy to keep the value of victory in perspective. So you'll have to forgive me if, for this one brief moment, the forces of Fun and Perspective won out over The League of Winning Is Everything Jocks and I cheer a little harder than the moment deserved.

God bless Night Ranger, but it's a miracle there's any cliches left after they used so many of them on this one song. And God bless The Go! Team for making songs that sound both sooo so '70s yet soooo so kewl.