UTEP in the sweet 16? BYU in the elite 8? Baylor in the final four? fortune favors the bold … but does it favor the clueless?

i hate picking brackets because of what my brother and i call the UNC problem … North Carolina is always going to win (tho, not this year!) and it sucks to have to pick them.

so about five years ago i stopped.

this year, i’m back in … but taking a new tactic. i’m picking what i WANT to have happen, instead of what i THINK will happen.

georgetown goes to the elite 8 (civic pride). old dominion makes it out of the first round (loyalty to CAA basketball). pitt loses in the third round (living in DC/maryland, one develops a hatred of all things pittsburgh). villanova spontaneously combusts in the round of 32 (still bitter about the 1985 ncca final). duke doesn’t make the final four (sorry, collin).

there are limits, however.

obviously, i WANT kentucky to lose to texas (hook’em horns), but they won’t … and i WANT maryland to win the whole thing (grandfather born in college park, i lived in MD for a decade and never more than 12 miles off campus) but that’s just not going to happen (part of being a maryland fan is expecting them to choke).

so we’ll see how it goes. hopefully fortune favors the hopeful.

dear sparklet,

recently, the most important battle in your life-so-far has broken out … the battle for your taste in music.

for the record, daddy is feeding you a steady diet from indie pop types (the kind who wear witty, ironic t-shirts) or girl rockers … such as Band of Horses, A Fine Frenzy, your partial-namesakes Kate Earl and Kate Nash, Regina Spektor, and The Killers.

mommy, however, keeps slipping you music from country and christian artists — George Strait and Jars of Clay, to name a few — when she thinks daddy’s not paying attention. even nanny thompson has gotten involved, though her choices seem to be much more age appropriate (which unfortunately removes her from the pettiness of this conversation).

but this battle for the scrobbler betrays two sad little facts … your daddy has horrid taste in music, and mommy isn’t much better.

for my part, I don’t exactly know what happened … the first album I ever owned was Sychronicity by The Police. my second, however, was the early-80s equivalent of Now That’s What I Call Music.

I suppose some of it is your uncle Popcollin’s fault — he went through a Debbie Gibson/Euro-pop phase during my most impressionable, formative music years — and I obviously never recovered from his influence.

i have, though, learned how to cover up my horrid taste somewhat. for example, the title of this post, for instance, the is *not* the Led Zepplin allusion a music aficionado would expect … i would have never known “The Battle for Evermore” if it weren’t for the HeartLovemongers’ cover on the (shudder) Singles motion picture soundtrack.

anyway, all this got me thinking about music from when your mother and i were younger:

• my earliest memories of mommy is her belting out songs during road trips, without any sort of notion that she was horrifically off-key.
• road trips only got better when mommy realized that kelly clarkson’s one-octave “range” was just as limited as her own, and was much more suitable for mommy’s irrepressible sing-a-longs.
• right before we got engaged, mommy announced that her favorite song was “Foundations” by Kate Nash … a song about a woman holding on to an dysfunctional relationship.
• right before we got *married*, mommy announced that her *new* favorite song was “Still Sweet” by Benjy Davis Project … a song about the joy that follows the end of an empty relationship.
• and, of course, one of the very first things we did with you (before you were born) was take you to a U2 concert.

so, even if i’m ultimately proven wrong about what you should be listening to as a toddler (and i am sure i will be) … i’m going to keep feeding you a steady diet of Ida Marie, if only so that i can film you running around when you are three, singing the chorus to “I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked.”

you won’t have an older sibling to corrupt your taste in music … so mommy and daddy will have to do the best we can.

love,
daddy