theparkerfamily.org

Month: June 2010

  • tift merritt @ the birchmere

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    i hate trying to get to the birchmere on a week day.

    the traffic is awful, it’s a long way away, and if you don’t get there like an hour and a half before the show starts you are virtually guaranteed to be sitting at the back of the venue behind a post.

    today, for some crazy reason, we got there barely 45 minutes before the show, and the parking lot was so abandoned that we thought the show was canceled.

    we sailed through the lobby unmolested — except for the bouncer asking if he could check my “purse” — and sat down about 8 feet off the front of the stage.

    crazy.

    a couple months ago, around the time we were buying tickets to the show, we tripped across a tift merritt album we didn’t own (“another country”) and downloaded it from itunes. we figured we’d be okay at the concert anyway, since we knew her first two albums.

    turns out we were actually TWO albums behind, so knew just three of the 18 songs.

    we *still* did okay, which probably says something about tift and her band … i’m not sure i’ve ever been to a concert where i knew so few of the songs, yet still had such a great time.

    the show was actually stolen by her husband (the drummer) of all people, who during the encore did a solo / ukulele number called “Evel Knievel for My Girl”, which really has to be seen to be fully appreciated.

    SET LIST: The Things That Everybody Does · All The Reasons We Don’t Have To Fight · Engine To Turn · Six More Days Of Rain · Mixtape · I Know What I’m Looking For Now · After Today · Something To Me · Never Talk About It · Stray Paper · Papercut · Broken · Feel Of The World · See You On The Moon · Ain’t Looking Closely · Evel Knievel · Bramble Rose · Danny’s Song · Another Country

  • the beautiful game? hmmm.

    [Group A encounter, Uruguay vs. France at Cape Town Stadium.]
    the most telling social media clip from the world cup so far was a friend’s status update at the end of day one:

    Why is this the ‘beautiful game?’ Two ties. No score in the second. They ran around in circles for 90 minutes. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    as the dutiful, soccer-educated elite in the relationship, i jumped to the world cup’s defense.

    “they only call it the beautiful game if certain teams are playing it,” I said. “And France is decidedly not on that list.”

    but, then i watched the rest of the weekend, and you know what? she was right. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

    i watched most or all of seven matches this weekend (missed Ghana’s 1-0 win over Serbia) and while there was some great moments, by and large the matches were all ugly babies that only their mothers would love — with the possible exception of Argentina’s 1-0 win over Nigeria, whose scoreline sounded more boring than it actually was.

    the world cup. less than perfect. suddenly, my life was without meaning.

    i played soccer for most of two decades (keeper for all but a couple years in central defense) and have clear recollections of watching the last 6 or 7 world cups.

    if the world cup isn’t the greatest sporting event ever, how could i have invested so much effort learning the game? what am i going to talk about on monday with the rest of my over-educated urban elite friends? how am i going to demonstrate my complete personal superiority over the great unwashed masses in the fly-over-states?

    and so, in a vain attempt to deal with this loss of identity, i’ve come up with a couple theories about (a) why the opening weekend wasn’t the paragon of sport it could/should have been, and (b) why we all will have forgotten this crisis even happened by the time the cup is raised in four weeks time:

    • not every team has played their first match — and the teams who haven’t played yet (spain, brazil, holland, portugal, italy) reliably give us a much better-looking brand of footy than even the best of the teams we’ve already seen (england, usa, france).
    • no one wants to lose their first game — only 8% of world cup teams advance from the group stage after losing their first game, which means teams will do pretty much anything to avoid losing. fwiw, playing not to lose isn’t much fun to watch.
    • a rash of last minute injuries — last minute changes in personnel means lots of teams are shifting players and tactics, and new people (or old people playing out of position) means crappy football until the new ‘plan’ becomes as familiar as the old one once was.
    • top-shelf goal keeping — from what i can tell the goal keeping this far has been outstanding (from the usa and nigeria, in particular) and good goal keeping can turn potentially offense-laden showcases into nasty, defensive stalemates.
    • the new ball — it seems like addidas can’t stop screwing with the ball (this one was called ‘horrible’, ‘rotten’ and ‘erratic’ by starting keepers in the run up) and while players can (and should) adapt, rewriting the rules of physics for the ball is going to take some real world, high pressure game experience to sort out.
    • vuvuzelas — those #$%@ south african fog horns have got to be driving the players nuts, and there are plenty of complaints that the players can’t hear each other on the pitch. and while i never liked talking to *my* teammates, it seems (in hindsight) it might have been a good thing to do occasionally.

    hollow excuses? maybe. complete and total bunk? probably.

    am i going to bury my head in my pillow and pray for better games this week? most definitely.

  • 18?

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    in all the once-every-four-year world cup craziness, i’ve been struggling to keep up with the second-final-in-three-years boston celtics, even though admitting this publicly probably gives my father heart palpitations.

    in the interest of full disclosure, while i sucked every last drop of enjoyment out of the celtic’s championship run in 2008, i didn’t give them much chance to win *any* of their playoffs series this year (vs. miami, cleveland and orlando) and am still not sure they’ve got an advantage in the finals (even though they only need to win one of their next two in L.A. to claim their 18th championship banner).

    And so, I’ve tacked on 6 hours of daily world cup coverage to my after hours NBA responsibillities, not to mention I’ve still got tape of the winter olympics left on my tivo from February.

    somebody’s gotta win something, because i need my life back.

  • found: philly phanatic

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  • travel: please touch museum

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    this is quite possibly the greatest museum on the planet.

    they have (in no particular order) the “walking piano” from big, a huge basement devoted to recreating wonderland (as in alice, not val-kilmer-as-porn-star), and an entire wing dedicated to kids versions of big people places (grocery store, kitchen, gas station, etc).

    seriously, this museum alone made philly worth the trip.

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    slideshow: please touch museum, philadelphia, pa

  • eight months

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    photo of the week // week thirty-five

  • more swimming

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    another slogan to add to the list:

    • philly: our hotels have swimming pools, too!
    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    swimming, courtyard marriott downtown, philadelphia, pa

  • travel: philadelphia, pa

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    with only a couple days before the lady sparkler starts her new gig, we decided to slip out of town for the weekend. (being at a non-profit, my vacation policy is always much more “robust” than hers, it seemed crazy not to take some time off when it wouldn’t count against mommy’s vacation balance.)

    and with that, i bring you my suggestions for philly’s next ad campaign based on our experience:

    • philly: it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to book something in the mountains or the beach on six days’ notice.
    • philly: it’s less hot than both (a) texas, and (b) the face of the sun.
    • philly: it’s not the hell hole you remember from your junior high school field trip.
    • philly: we have margaritas.

    seriously, tho. we’re pretty excited.

    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    travel: philadelphia, pa

  • transitions

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    like the crazy, measures driven parents we are, we’ve been so focused lately on young sparklet’s developmental milestones (almost crawling! she knows her name!) that we’ve totally neglected some of the “other” news in our lives.

    namely, we have a new nanny, a new nanny share family … and the lady sparkler got a new job.

    i’m not drunk enough to publicly explore the reasons behind the nanny transition — if you’d like to contribute to the drinking fund, i’m happy to talk in person — but the important things are that (a) sparklet’s still great, (b) we still love the talimo’s (bff!), and (c) during the transition, the bff’s got an offer of free familial child care that they just couldn’t refuse.

    the new nanny share is working out great. the nanny is über comfortable with a kid on each hip, and the share has been going on for more than a decade (tho, obviously, different families have rotated through).

    the new share baby is a boy, is exactly sparklet’s age (have i mentioned that i strongly support arranged marriages?!?) and lives within walking distance (over by auntie melissa).

    as if that wasn’t enough excitement for sparklet’s first summer, the lady sparkler went and got herself a new job.

    she wasn’t looking (decidedly not, actually) but got contacted by a head hunter and took the interview for reasons somewhere between being polite and making new contacts in the industry. but, four interviews later, the company made the proverbial offer-she-couldn’t-refuse (salary, seniority, benefits) and as of June 14th, the lady sparkler has a new job.

    still doing mostly the same thing, just a couple of blocks farther away — which pretty well sums up the nanny situation, too.

  • i’m watching the world cup, and you can too

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    despite all the salivating about you’ve probably heard from soccer geeks recently about “tables” and “group stages”, watching the world cup over the next four weeks is a pretty simple affair.

    teams start by playing each of three teams, with the two best teams from each group advancing into a simple bracket tourney, not unlike the ncaa’s march madness.

    all you need is a team to follow, and here is a quick primer:

    who to follow

    if you are new to the non-american brand of football, you want to pick one that you can watch deep into the world cup. as much fun as it would be to root for some of these tiny up-start countries (new zealand springs to mind), you’ll be pretty bored once they get eliminated in the second week. so, you probably want to pick from the main contenders.

    Spain — currently the best team in europe, spain balances a beautiful brand of football with some physicality that is missing from other “pretty” teams. this team has a fanatical fan base, and some of the best attacking players in the game. they are also the bookie’s best bet to win the whole enchilada, so (hopefully) you’ll have a team to follow in weeks three and four.

    Argentina — has the best player on the planet (lionel messi), plan on starting three attacking forwards (most teams use two, some only one) and a coach who is desperately trying to translate his own brilliance as a player (see his goal of the century) into brilliance as a coach (and failing pretty miserably). but who knows … they could just as easily flame out in the group stages (they barely qualified) as they could win the whole thing, but either way the fireworks should be pretty spectacular.

    Brazil — normally, you’d never catch me pushing brazil (it’s the equivalent a new immigrant to the U.S. announcing they’re going to root for either the yankees or the patriots) but this team isn’t the same purvayors of “the beautiful game” that’s won the world cup five times. this brazil is much more blue collar, physical, jump-in-the-trenches then their predecessors, while still keeping the incredible individual skill for which they’re known. should be fun to watch.

    honorable mentions — everybody wants an african team to do well this world cup, but all six of them are facing a pretty steep up-hill battle. while hosts south africa will have ridiculously fun, pro-bafana bafana (their team’s nickname) crowds, they are the lowest ranked team ever to host the world cup and aren’t figured to make it out of the first round. côte d’ivoire had a great shot, but lost their star goal-scorer to injury. i have no idea which, if any, of the african nations will advance, but many people (myself included) will be rooting for the whole lot of them.

    teams you may think you want to follow, but really probably don’t

    United States — sure, there are dozens of reason to root for them. civic pride. names that you (might) have heard of. dozens of blogs saying “this is their year.” it’s not. i’m not sure it ever will be. expect one good game out of them, one mediocre game (where the result is closer than it should have been), and one shameful game (where they vomit on themselves). they’ll likely get to the sweet sixteen, but it almost certainly won’t be pretty, and they’ll break your heart eventually … they always do.

    England — see above, “united states”.

    Italy — while a fun, attacking team when they have to be, italy regularly lapses into putting all 11 men behind the ball when they are ahead (“parking a bus in front of goal” as it’s called) which makes them prone to stunningly dull results. that, coupled with the fact that the current coach seems to be infatuated with coupling “old” with “slow” and calling it a day, means italy isn’t a great team for newbies.

    Germany — about as fun to watch as a team of german accountants competing in the actuarial olympics. see also, “holland”.

    France — where to begin. they (a) cheated their way into the world cup with a dirty, dirty goal from a blatant hand ball, without which they would be back home underachieving, (b) the team they cheated out of the tournament was Ireland — who are much more fun to drink with — and (c) because of the way the group stage works out, rooting for france means rooting against south africa. oh, and if that’s not enough, remember that they’re french.

    kickoff on friday

    it all starts tomorrow morning at 9:30 am EST on ESPN. if you want to do some light reading before then, steven goff’s soccer insider blog is surprisingly readable for the lay people, and ESPN is desperately trying to hook the generic american sport fan on the Cup with their coverage at ESPN.com.

    as for me? i’ve followed the england national team for the last couple of decades, and am not going to stop just because that the united states is finally fielding teams that might actually win a game or two. it also doesn’t hurt that my club team (tottenham hotspur) has five players in the england squad, and it’s more fun to root for people you know.

    appalling, i know, but i’m okay with it … i have a feeling my ancestors were on the wrong side of the revolutionary way, anyway.

    PHOTO: Soccer-City-Stadium-outside-view by Shine 2010 – 2010 World Cup good news.