Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Severian posted this Nerd Fight today: songs for grownups:

Or my other nominee, Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Yep, that’s what it feels like, all right, to be a normal teenage boy in a culture that isn’t quite yet terminal. It’s also what it’s like to be a normal adult looking back on that teenage boy. It’s not goopy nostalgia; Bob knows those days are gone. It’s not “Gosh, I wish I’d done this and that differently;” it’s “I’m glad it ended the way it did, because I am a sadder yet wiser person for it.”

In other words, it’s a song by an adult, for adults.

I mean, his first nominee is Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Auld Lang Syne” (::spit::). Heaven and the blog archives know what I think of that song.

Severian invites commenters to identify songs written for adults.

Gentle reader, I’m sure you would remember were you not still young that I posted Music: Not For Grown-Ups Any More in 2003, when I was less of a grownup than I am now, that music of the modern day was/is written for the young. We’ve covered the ground about why popular music tends to be geared to the young (I’m too lazy to find the links now–troll my Music category and see if you can find the posts about how country music was the last genre to fall to the call of the young and why I hate “Same Auld Lang Syne”).

One of his commenters posted about Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (as a co-worker in 1990 called them, “Three old men and a guitar”). However, that commenter missed the proper member of Pink Floyd for adults.

Roger Waters’ solo work was always a bit of youthful naval gazing. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking resonates when you’re young and your relationships are unstable. Radio K.A.O.S and Amused to Death were political statements. Apparently, he has released music since then, but who cares? I mean, I grokked The Wall because my parents divorced when I was young, but aside from touching that youthful wire, meh.

David Gilmour, on the other hand….

On his 1978 solo album David Gilmour, his song “So Far Away” describes being close to but being far away from a lover:

Sweet Christmas, when I got that tape (audiocassettes were the thing in 1990-1991, child), I was an awkward teenager with no experience with the ladies. And I could imagine how it might feel (more than I could from Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”). Now that I am, ahem, 25 years old and a little more experienced with the lady (my beautiful wife), I think he got it right.

His 1984 album About Face contains a couple of gems. The first is “Out of the Blue”:

Which is all about the passage of time. Not only his, but his children’s.

The last song on the album is “Near the End”:

Jeez, Louise, it’s a song about turning the record over and starting it again, renewal, and:

Thinking that we’re getting older and wiser
when we’re just getting old.

When he wrote that, he was far younger than I am now, albeit older than I was then. But it resonated.

Gilmour’s work has been a mix of mature, grownup songs, political/activist kinds of songs, and a lot of working with the music itself–the la(te)st Pink Floyd album The Endless River and his work with The Orb tend toward the techno and electronica….

But here’s a later work–“Yes, I Have Ghosts”:

You won’t find music for grownups in popular music–that’s all geared to kids. You can find it, even now, if you look for it.

If you want, old man. Me, I’m looking for new metal to exercise by, metal with youthful vigor as befits me when I exercise.

But then Gilmour.

We inherited a number of patio decorations and flowerpots from my mother-in-law when she downsized earlier in the year.

Now, when I sit outside at sunset, I’m reminded….

I borrowed Donnie Darko on DVD from my beautiful wife’s former roommate 20 years ago. I have watched it, but I did not want to return it until my wife and I watched it.

In those intervening years, we’ve fallen out of touch. And by “fallen out of touch,” I mean I scoffed when he said Bush was going to round up all the Jews and put them in camps when he and his wife came to our housewarming party in 2006. He unfriended us shortly thereafter on social media for differing political views which meant we were getting cut from social ties before it was cool. His wife has not, though, but she’s a Packers fan from Brown Deer, Wisconsin, so she’s clearly of a better stock.

At any rate, it’s getting to October, and Donnie Darko is kind of a Halloween movie, so perhaps I will watch it with my boys and maybe my beautiful wife. And then send the film back with a thank you note. Although they’re the kind of couple who might not have a DVD player any more.

Aw, c’mon, man, I have to explain?

It was a box office disappointment. And it never really became a cult hit. But I remember it mostly because I have this DVD on a 20-year-old loan.

Well, I broke my streak of weekends where I attended festivals at four. You can find other festivals and small town fall shindigs within an hour’s drive from Nogglestead, but other things were on the agenda this weekend.

Such as the famous, or at least capitalized on this blog, Weekend of the Three Stadia.

So, on Friday night, the marching band performed at the home football game, so of course we were present.

You might ask, “Did they replace #2, the 5’5″ player who has since graduated?” Indeed they did: they have two kids about 5 and a half feet tall this year returning kicks and acting as running back at times.

Friday night’s game was well over three hours, as the score was 68-43 with a lot of penalties. Also, someone was very bad with the clock. The clock stopped in tackles in bounds and for a variety of reasons. Through most of the game, I blamed inexperienced clock keepers, but at one point, I looked down and saw the official signaling time out after a tackle in bounds. So it might have been inexperienced officials. The Missouri State High School Activities Association has a mercy rule that says when the score gets to such a differential in the second half to keep the clock running regardless of the situation–but the home team did not get that far out ahead. They stayed only two or three scores ahead, and their opponent could throw the ball, which led to a number of one down touchdowns. So it went on.

Which was bothersome, because I had not eaten. I had planned to get a burger at the concession stand, but I did not want to surrender my seat in a crowded stadium. So I thought I would get something when I got home a little after 9pm. And with each passing minute of game time, I thought I was closer to it, but I didn’t want to spend the money if I didn’t have to. But I did want to have something because I was supposed to be carb loading, or at least not undernourished when I got to Saturday morning.

Because I had the NFFF Memorial Stair Climb at Plaster Stadium on the MSU campus.

As my boys had a marching band thing that day, they could not join me, so I did it alone.

The Memorial Stair Climb raises funds for the families of the first responders who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and hopefully others as well.

But when I’m sitting alone, I envy the camaraderie and the bonds that the first responders share. I feel the same sort of envy at the Ruck and Run, which benefits veterans’ organizations. It’s been a long time since I’ve had shared bonds and experiences with people. My family when I was young. Places where I’ve worked a bit, but not something that lasts a lifetime. Instead of sitting alone on the bleachers feeling sorry for myself, I tried to focus on their honor, and I knew I was not the only non-first responder or affiliated family there. I also felt a little guilty that my first thought, and the reason I did it, was not so much to honor them or raise money for them but rather because I wanted to prove to myself that I could climb 110 stories (78 flights according to my fitness tracker) in an hour and ten minutes. How bad of a person does that make me?

Worse than William McGovern, Battalion 2.

So I finished that, went home for a shower and a nap, and then I was off to watch my boys in their marching band.

It was a clinic and not an exhibition. The school took the field at 3:00 sharp (on schedule), performed the show, and then broke into groups (color guard, percussion, everyone else) to get some advice for improvement, and then at 3:40, they reassembled and did the show again, hopefully better.

So we were in and out in under two hours, which is good, because my legs began to stiffen the moment I stopped moving. In the event of an actual exhibition, I could expect to spend eight hours or more in bleachers.

Which is coming next weekend. After the triathlon.

At any rate, I did not visit any stadium on Sunday (or since), although the church sanctuary is kind of like a stadium–pews that rise from the altar in a semi-circle. But I’m not going to count that. It makes it like I’m reaching for blog content or something. Which I am.

Wow, gentle reader, it seems as though I have left you out on the biggest adventure of my summer/autumn. Well, adventures, and they’re not very big at all, but I am not 20 years old any more, so my adventures are a little more narrow in scope.

At any rate, for about four weeks, I lived a bit like a Milwaukeean.

I am sure that I’ve gone on and on, if not on this blog then certainly in person, about how many festivals Milwaukee has in the summer. Aside from Summerfest, the ten day (or however they do it now) music festival with multiple national headlining acts every day, the Henry Maier festival park on the lakefront also hosts a variety of ethnic festivals throughout the summer. And Milwaukee’s myriad churches also have festivals of their own. So on a weekend in Milwaukee, one can choose one or more festivals. And one can fill a summer’s full of weekends just so. Assuming, perhaps, that one is high school or college age and has no other real responsibilities.

So in mid-August, we lived like Milwaukeeans.

It started, really, with the Ernst-Fest in Freistatt, Missouri. When the boys were at the Lutheran school, they played basketball against the Trinity Lutheran School Knights from Freistatt, so we visited four or five times, and we’ve sent the school a little money now and then. The Lions Club fairgrounds are a mile north of the school on the one road through town that runs between Mount Vernon and Monett. It was a small affair—a polka band playing in the biergarten, brats and sauerkraut served at a concession stand, and a series of games mostly for kids run by Trinity Lutheran—the principal recognized us and greeted us by name (Springfield Lutheran). We also ran into a family from our church who was originally from Freistatt but live just a couple miles west of us for now. The oldest son went to SLS with my oldest until fifth grade, where the exodus of serious athletes occurred–their parents wanted them to play in public schools with real athletic programs. I guess it worked–the boy had an onside kick recovery on Friday night at the high school.

The next Saturday, we went down to Crane, Missouri, for its annual Broiler Fest (the broiler being broiler chickens—I guess historically Crane has been associated with the poultry industry, although the Tyson plants are down in Monett). I had read about this festival in the Branson and the Stone County papers for years, but in the past, our September weekends were consumed with cross country meets until they were consumed with marching band competitions. This year, I made an effort to attend, and I dragged my boys down to it. The Crane Boiler Fest is a more full-featured festival than Ernst-Fest, with two band stages (gospel and bluegrass), a midway with rides (the boys turned up their noses at the rides now that they’re used to full-sized amusement parks), craft and information booths (where I entered a couple of gun raffles, as is my wont—gun raffles are popular fundraisers in the Ozarks), and, of course, a chicken dinner. Which was delicious.

On Labor Day weekend, as I mentioned, we went to the Kansas City Renaissance Faire. Which I am counting as a festival for blogging purposes and for keeping the streak going.

Last weekend, I went to four different festivals. LIKE A MILWAUKEEAN!

A bit of a note: The second weekend of September is apparently Springfield’s festival weekend, as the only two annual festivals I know of occur on the same weekend and are a mile or two apart.

On Friday night, we went to the St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton Catholic church’s Harvest Home festival. Now this is the festival that most closely tracks with my experience in Milwaukee: Food, some little games, some small rides, and a live band playing old time rock and roll. We only had one boy with us–the oldest was off to Cole Camp with a friend to attend the annual Cole Camp town fair–and my youngest was as interested in the games has he had been oh, five years ago, and not at all interested in the kiddie rides. But we had something to eat, and we listened to the band which featured three guitars, a bass, a drum, a saxophone, and a trombone. I asked my company, both trumpet players, whether the band would be better with a trumpet. The boy said no, my beautiful wife said yes. The answer is, of course, yes.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to the festival at St. Thomas the Apostle Greek Orthodox Church. It’s a small, one-day affair which has a silent auction/Greek Orthodox gift shop tent, tours of the church, a tent serving Greek food, and canned Greek music with some live dancers at times and, presumably, some live Greek music at some time. Most people just come for the food, which is why the line snaked to the parking area and it took me almost an hour to eat–some people also placed To Go orders and carried away large bags of the food. So I ate and left.

On Saturday evening, the remote campus of our church had its second Faith and Friends Festival, also a small affair (so far), Free food, free ice cream, and some small games. We went and ate and socialized a little.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Japanese Heritage Festival at the Japanese stroll garden at Nathaniel Greene park. As my wife is a member of the park board, she attends a lot of dedications and events at the parks, and the youngest and I came along. It, too, is a pretty small affair–a stage with different demonstrations and shows, a number of retail booths lumped together, and various business booths. The actual split between Japanese things and American companies was about 50/50. One of the booths was for K-Pop music for some reasons (historical spoiler alert: The Koreans and the Japanese have not been friends through the millenia), and another was for a Springfield cosplay group–and a large number of attendees were in costume as anime characters. One wonders what traditional Japanese people–I understand visitors from Springfield’s Japanese sister city Isesaki attended–thought of that. Although I guess young people in Japan can also be a little, erm, youthful as well.

So that was seven festivals in four weeks. Like a Milwaukeean!

If anyone needs me, I will be at the gym, trying to work of this festival food.

Instapundit is rife with headlines like this: Starlink Provides Service To Antarctic Research Station, Now Accessed On All 7 Continents

Ukraine, cruise ships, now Antarctica.

Meanwhile, I paid a deposit and have been waiting a year for service in my area.

The expected date I see when I log in is still late 2022 (we’re here!), but the date on the map if you type my address is sometime in 2023.

I could really use that now.

From this date in 2012:

Brian J. Noggle lost a bundle in bucket futures. A couple of years ago, who would have thought the demand on the Internet to haz a bucket would completely disappear?

Geez, to think the I can haz bucket? thing was old ten years ago.