I assume he has come to bring toys and Spanish happiness to us all! What a glorious day this is!

What’s that, Francisco Pizarro? When you say, “the time of the JLP is over,” what do you mean? Do you mean that you have brought us all fake mustaches so we can prance about in a spirit of frivolity?

Why are you holding aloft a Bible, Francisco Pizarro? What do you mean by this? Are you requesting a brief moment of silent prayer before we hold hands around the mirthberry bush and sing songs of friendship and innocence?

Look, JLP friends, Mr. Francisco’s friends with the silver hats are gathering together in a line facing us! They want to play red rover!

Let’s send little Billy O’Houlihan on over!

NO! The Spanish men with beards cut little Billy O’Houlihan open with their steel blades and have thrown his severed, red-haired head back to us!

This is not fun at all! Why would the gods turn against the JLP like this? Our blogprophets who foretold apocalypse were right! I should have heeded their word instead of spitting half-chewed Cap’n Crunch in their faces!

My precious JLP friends are now scrambling for their lives from Pizarro and his men mounted atop their terrifying demon-steeds! The JLP’s hubris is collapsing down upon us all like a stone pyramid of whimsy!

I suddenly feel cold and feverish. My skin has grown sallow and is newly blemished with pustulous sores. I am about to die a pitiful death at the hands of Francisco Pizarro!

I will throw myself into the ravine instead!

Franciscooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

White socks are for living the good life. Whether worn with a favorite pair of jeans to watch football during the crisp weeks of fall or with my workout gear when I’m out on a run, I am most myself when I wear my white socks. My white socks are soft and thick, like Santa’s beard, while also being sensible and affordable, like a Chevy Malibu. When I pull those comfortable sons of bitches on in the morning, I know I’m about to have an awesome day, same as if Kent Hrbek gave me a gun.

Brown socks are no fun at all. My brown socks are worn exclusively for work to match my brown pants and brown shoes. Brown socks are for days when I park in an assigned spot and write lesson plans and eat a sensible sandwich for lunch. While I love working with young people, my brown socks create an austere distance between them and myself. I am ever the dapper, professional counterpoint to their slovenly shiftlessness. The dynamic seen by my brown socks is like in The Odd Couple, except that in my case Felix can give Jack an in-school suspension.

Black socks are for fancy occasions. I like putting on black socks with my trim suit and a snappy tie for a nice formal occasion. My black socks allow escalate my overall level of sophistication to impress my wife and my friends and my wife’s friends. Black socks help me slip words like ouvre and sui generis into casual cocktail conversation. Members of the educated elite, recognizing me as one of their own, then pass along a knowing smile. I respond to them with a cocked eyebrow and gesture toward my socks, to which they quickly break eye contact and wander away in confusion. The black socks have done their job.

Sometimes I don’t wear socks at all. This is often at the behest of my wife who prefers me in summertime flip-flops to the raggedy old tennis shoes I would otherwise prefer. The flip flops can chafe the skin between my toes, but it is worth it for the gentle times that follow. The other times that I don’t wear socks are when I’m going to the bathroom or kicking the cats barefoot style like NFL great Rich Karlis.

There you have it, my developmentally delayed readers – 400 words on socks, and four hours well spent by yours truly. Come back in a few days, when the JLP tackles the important issue of what kind of shampoo I like.

Though my inclination would be to greet each of my returning students with a friendly handshake and a playful hair-tousle, for litigious reasons I have chosen instead to welcome students with a faint nod as I vacantly stare off into the middle distance. This will help my school avoid damaging lawsuits and disabuse my students of the notion that I am a caring and reasonable person.

Now, as I listen to the teenaged babel of the hallways, I rock back in my chair and knowingly stroke my beard. I know what is to come over the next ten fateful months, for I am the bearer of the pacing charts. Better to ration my energies now for use in the dark days of February, when the days are short, the cafeteria food is gray, and the lesson plans about the legal and political systems of the Byzantine Empire are hopelessly dreary.

School is, after all, a largely miserable experience populated with terrible people. I accept this with stoic dispassion; if I should lose this equilibrium, I will have a faithful 8th grader take my sword and run me through. Better to be dead than plunged into unacceptable agitation. This is the life of a social studies teacher.

The book is a brisk, exciting tour through the life of Rome’s great re-founder, set against the incredible events in the empire from about 50 B.C. to 50 A.D. Facinating figures like Julius Caesar, Cicero, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Ovid, Tiberius and others come to life in Everitt’s prose while the shadow of Augustus towers over them all. This is no hagiography, however. Augustus was an intelligent, ambitious, hypocritical ruler who did terrible things to return peace to Rome and set it on a stable path to growth and prosperity. This is a warts-and-all look at a man who rose from young Gaius Octavian born of humble origins, to his years as the adopted heir of Julius Caesar, to his rule of Rome as the emperor Augustus where he changed history dramatically.

Here are a few noteworthy tidbits from the text:

-The ‘divine family’ of Augustus did not have a happy history under his thumb as princeps (his preferred title, translating roughly as “First Citizen”). Simply put, he demonstrated a bad habit of treating family members cruelly until they turned on him. Daughters, granddaughters and nieces were treated as pawns to be married off to political friends and rivals regardless of their wishes. His daughter Julia embarrassed him with her brazen sexual proclivities to the point where he banished her to a distant island (she would not be the only member of his clan to receive this treatment). His adopted sons and stepsons bore the heavy burden of his expectations while also being forced to delicately avoid being seen as a threat. In the end, his male heirs either met a premature end, broke down mentally, or in the case of his eventual successor Tiberius, carried out Augustus’s wishes competently, but in a sullen manner.

-If Augustus were an animal, he would be a huge, muscular lion that punched bears.

-Physically speaking, Octavian was not the most remarkable specimen. He was sickly, had terrible acne, and did not have to shave until he was 24. As a military commander, he had a bad habit of coming down with mysterious incapacitating ailments on the on the morning of battle, leaving his loyal (and more militarily capable) advisor Agrippa to do the dirty work.

-The princeps practiced oratorical sleight-of-hand that would be familiar to followers of modern presidential administrations. In addition, his proxies regularly appeared on Roman Sunday morning political talk shows where they forced opponents to commit suicide.

-Mark Antony comes across in the text about how one thinks he would – a popular, skilled military leader, true to his word and politically cunning. At the same time, Antony was prone to make mistakes out of impatience, while his weakness for booze and women hindered him even further. He did not anticipate how his alliance (both political and sexual) with Cleopatra of Egypt would hurt him in the Senate and with the Roman people (sentiments fanned by Octavian’s propaganda). The uneasy alliance and eventual war between the hot-blooded, disdainful Antony and his young, calculating rival make for a fun stretch in the text.

-Though Augustus enacted laws enforcing some traditional Roman norms concerning family life, his own extramarital dalliances were routine and well-known. His personal life made Bill Clinton look like Gandhi Billy Graham.

-Everitt details the so-called proscriptions decreed by Octavian and Antony during the years of their co-rule of Rome. This basically amounted to a list of people who were to be killed for having aided or sympathized with the killers of Julius Caesar. Thousands of names were on the list, including many of Rome’s wealthiest and most prominent citizens. They no longer had any protection under the law, their property was forfeit, and soldiers and mobs went on the hunt for their heads to claim their prize. It’s hard to imagine how horrifying this must have been, even by the incredibly violent standards of the ancient world. The wonderful HBO miniseries Rome depicted the death of Rome’s most famous statesman, the orator Cicero, which was called for by Augustus. It hauntingly details the Roman matter-of-fact attitude toward death as well as their philosophy of stoicism. It’s the scene that has stuck with me after the series ended – watch it here

-Augustus was able to proactively build brand equity using best practices and sustainably achieve value-added enrichment for the Roman empire.

-Augustus hated fat people.

-Much mystery surrounds Augustus’s death in 14 A.D. The Roman historian Suetonius describes rumors that he was poisoned by his wife Livia (a crafty political mind in her own right, but unpopular with other political figures). Everitt argues that there was little in Livia’s past to suggest such a betrayal. She had always been a loyal confidante and advisor to Augustus. Undaunted by a general lack of evidence one way or the other, Everitt posits that perhaps she poisoned his snack (of figs – no thanks) acting in accordance with her husband’s unspoken wishes. We know that Augustus had been in declining health, and plans for the transfer of power had already been set in motion, so perhaps she reasoned (not unreasonably) that the process would be much more smooth and less prone to factional civil war if the princeps was, in fact, dead.

-If Augustus were alive today, he would be Toby Keith.

There is something so pert and refreshing about the sight of a new bulletin board. Their vibrant colors and crisp corners are a reflection of the energized hopes of the teachers who summoned them into existence. They brightly convey welcoming messages of optimism and achievement through the whimsical personification of textbooks and googly-eyed owls.

Yes, these new bulletin boards assembled during teacher’s workshops are are as unblemished as the milky white skin of my upper thighs.

Of course, by late September, these same bulletin boards will be frayed and fractured by the unbridled energies of 14-year old boys on a sugar rush. Words that once embraced the new year with glad reception will feel like a cruel curse amidst a gray season of ceaseless tedium. While the notion of ripping apart the aforementioned googly-eyed owl might be fantasized over in a moment of despair, the notion of having to whip up an entirely new bulletin board will have become too painful to even consider.

In a painful twist of irony, the very googly-eyed owl that once welcomed us with fresh enthusiasm now crushes our defeated spirits with the oppressive weight of its happiness.

This is the circle of life that Elton John once sang of so eloquently. It is the grim, inexorable attrition of the school year. Today, I played my part by assembling my new bulletin boards. In only a few short months, I will hate them. I have accepted all this with stoic calm.

Welcome back to school, America!

I’ve eaten a lot of apples in my day – probably about 200 – but I don’t know if I’ve ever tasted one this crisp, tangy, and handsome. It’s a Honeycrisp, grown by the hot-blooded migrant laborers working the fertile fields of Chile. Chile, if you don’t know, is man’s country. For instance, if you pull out a container of yogurt for a snack in Chile, you’re liable to get your neck snapped by a cross-eyed pitfighter. If don’t go 110% every day in Chile, you might as well just mutilate your own genitals and cut your losses.

But back to my topic, this apple. I’m seriously loving this apple. Each bite is a flavor explosion all over my oily face. Other apples, if you haven’t noticed, are terrible. I don’t what type they are – Red Delicious, Granny Smith, or Satan’s Knuckle – my experiences with apples are usually dread-ridden, Kubrickian nightmares ending with cold sweats and me hugging the toilet.

Until this apple. This apple made me a believer in apples.

Now I understand why people love apples so much. They’re all crunchy and sweet and silent. They’re obviously so much better than pears. Apples make pears taste like gross apples. Each time I blast this apple into my mouth, I love it more. Then I chew it up a bunch and swallow it, just like I do for other foods, but it’s better with this apple because it is mighty and pure, like America.

Whenever I used to hear people mention apples, I would get so mad inside that blood vessels in my eyes would burst. Not anymore though. Now I only get mad at cops.

Thanks for being so awesome, apple. Hope you didn’t mind getting torn apart by my teeth until flecks of apple spittle cover my beard, because it happened. It is probably immoral what I just did to you. I’m like R. Kelly, but with apples.

The JLP’s Spectrum of Beards

The Rasputin

Rasputin’s beard was undeniably the greatest of all time. The man was a mentally unstable, mind-controlling nympomaniac who was seemingly impervious to death. These powers can only be attributed to his beard – a virile, tangled, oily testament for human beauty.

The ‘That Dude from the Oak Ridge Boys’

Otherwise known as ‘The Gandalf’, this beard is the pointless end result of years of patience and grooming. This is possible when you have a really low voice and can collect royalties from ‘Elvira’. An ill-advised novelty.

The Rutherford B. Hayes

I have already commented at length about our our 19th president’s beard, but I will add that it combines the power of Rasputin with the grooming of That Dude from the Oak Ridge Boys into one statesmanlike package. A fondly-remembered relic of the Gilded Age.

The Dan Haggerty

Perhaps the most famous beard of the 1970s, a decade notable for for its beardery. The look that made Grizzly Adams so distinctive is notable for its dramatic, swooping coif outward and sun-bleached tones. It exudes a rugged tenderness toward nature, bears, and you. Highly recommended.

The Ringo

Though neatly-trimmed in recent years, Ringo Starr sported an infamously scuzzy neckbeard for most of the 70s and 80s. While his face remained milky clean, his neck was obscured by a unkempt thatch of coarse unpleasantness. Sometimes fame has its downsides – few people are willing to pull an ex-Beatle aside and tell them they look like a hairy imbecile. On an unrelated note, he was cast as the lead in the 1981 flop Caveman.

The Ron Burgundy

At his unemployed nadir, legendary anchorman Ron Burgundy sported perhaps my personal favorite look – a wiry, bedraggled beard bourne of depression and surrender. Not advised for a first date, but a solid option if seriously considering suicide.

The Late-Era Beach Boys

This underrated look initially appears to be your standard mellow 1970s stylings, but beneath the obscured half-smiles lie an ocean of familial tension and mental illness. More subtle than the Ron Burgundy, but equally troubled.

The Rick Aguilera

In the early 1990s, all-star Twins closer Rick Aguilera sported a trimmed, tidy beard that distracted hitters with its respectability while he was blasting his upper-90s heat past their face. A timeless classic, I have sought to approximate it in recent years to great approval from my wife. It frames my otherwise common face with professorial refinement. Recommended for beard beginners.

Closely related to the Rick Aguilera is The Bert Blyleven

The Blyleven is an auxiliary model for the red-bearded man. It shares many of the characteristics of the Aguilera, although with distinctively rural, plebian undertones.

The Fatone

This flaccid excuse for a beard combines high maintenance times with a heavy douchebag factor. It is sure to be studied centuries from now by puzzled anthropologists. To be avoided.

The Naptime Sessions was recorded in my sunroom with various friends over the past 5 months, usually during stolen moments while Oliver was sleeping (hence the title). It’s a mellow run through 8 songs, mostly centered around my family. There’s layered acoustic guitars, harmonies, strings, piano, and handclaps galore – it’s homemade, but not cheap (and maybe a bit more full-sounding than my last album)

CDs are available through CD Baby here. The cds aren’t free, but they’re cheap (the price is enough to cover my manufacturing and shipping costs once CD Baby gets their cut)

If you’re not a snob about needing a CD in your hands, you can download the album for free through Noisetrade:

I’ve written a few thoughts on each of the tunes, and embedded a player so you can listen at your leisure before you download.

Wearing Weeks Away:

I wrote this tune when Bridgette was about 7 months pregnant. We were waiting for the big day to arrive with the usual mix of excitement and anxiousness. I tried to capture some of that buzz while also keeping a bit more of my conversational voice in the lyrics – very little revising went into this song. It’s pretty much as it came out that day. I tried to make this song as poppy as I could given the ethic of the album, and I’m really happy with how it came out (and with how Oliver came out).

Grace Appears:

This is a total emotional reversal from “Weeks”, but I kinda like moments like that on an album. It was written about a miscarriage that we suffered in 2008. The balance here was trying to maintain the gravity of that pain while offering in just the right amount of light in at the end. It was a hell of a thing to go through; this song represents the end result of the grieving process.

The Cedars and the Shade:

This is a tender song that comments on the experiences from “Grace Appears”, but from a more universal perspective. While the previous song is distinctly about our experience, “Cedars” asks the question so many of us wrestle with at some point: where is God in these painful moments? Oddly, I have almost no memory of writing this one – it seems to have just floated to me. Getting to record with my sister (who added piano and backing vocals) was a genuine treat for me. Her overdubs were the final additions to the album, and definitely among my favorites. Probably my favorite recording I’ve ever done.

Exposed:

This is a song about suddenly finding myself a grown-up but secretly feeling like a fraud. In the end, after a lot of reflection, I realized that exposing myself as such is precisely what I needed to do to generate the spiritual intimacy I was desiring. Musically, this song went through a ton of mutations. I changed time signatures, added and removed drum parts, and added and removed piano parts in an attempt to find the right mix. Though it doesn’t rock, it sits in the rock aesthetic. I had to make it rock politely in a back porch kind of way. For what it’s worth, this is my favorite song to sing on the album.

In a Hurry:

I wrote this song 4 years ago, but the questions it asks grow more and more true each summer. What am I doing with my time? Where did my year go? I wrote a new bridge after Oliver was born to help it fit thematically with the album. This song features the least overdubs of any of the songs here – just a couple guitars banging it out and Todd Luker’s sweet harmonica. My comment to him at the end was out of relief – I felt like he had hit the sweet spot, and nothing more was needed.

At the Time:

This is the story falling in love with Bridgette. I made no attempt to make this a universal love song – this is about me and her and how it felt to fall for her after everything I’d been through in my early 20s. The long instrumental outtro is one of my favorite stretches of the album. When I listen to it, images flash through my head of the last 5 or 6 years with her and I feel very happy.

Drivin’ on 35:

My friend Jon Smith helped a lot on this album, and in a sense I returned the favor by recording this song of his. The pleasure was all mine, however – I’ve always loved the song, having long been a fan of taking long drives by myself to think and reflect. For years, this was a tune that I would play for fun around the house. At one point I played it for my brother Brian, and he responded really strongly to it, which placed the idea in my head that maybe I could use what Jon wrote to say something myself. Whereas his recording was sparse and the mood was more shattered, I tried to create nostalgic heartland ballad. It was a fun one to sing and record.

Campfire:

I wrote this song back in college, and like a lot of my songs from back then, it’s laden with nostalgia and simple sentiments. Unlike a lot of the stuff I wrote back then, however, I feel like this one has aged well. I loved returning to this old song and recording it with my friend Paul Carolan, who I was close buddies with in those years. We recorded the backing tracks together, sitting facing each other in my sunroom like we used to back in the dorms. I barely touched the tracks to preserve the ambiance of the room and those moments. Todd came in later on to record a few perfect harmonica lines and the song was done. I love simple songs like these.

This marks the official end of a long hiatus for Rock. The break began when Oliver was born, then earlier this year we started up again haltingly with a video that didn’t really work out. We then took a detour and made a promo video for our church’s Unite Conference. All the while, we’ve been revamping some of our technical gear and getting our new leadership up to speed. Add it all up, and you have a 10 month gap between videos. Not optimal at all, but it’s fun to return with such a crazy project.

I confess that I don’t have a good track record of pitching videos. The concepts I think of have a bad habit of getting made and then underperforming (i.e. Texas Weightloss Massacre, the ‘Perfect Boyfriend’ videos, the Rock TV Christmas Special). This is a very old idea of mine that Todd Luker and I have been riffing on for 8 or 9 years, and I think it avoided the ignoble fate of some of those other projects.

Our new co-leader Will Hines has done animated projects in the past, and I mentioned to him offhandedly at one point that I’d long had an idea that involved characters from He-Man in a banal suburban setting. Bizarrely, had been mulling over some He-Man themed projects as well. We started working on a script together with the intention of producing it independantly (the thinking being that it was probably too strange for ministry use). We got enough positive feedback from other Rock TV members however, that the decision was eventually made for Rock TV to ‘adopt’ the project as one of its own. This was a huge bonus, because it allowed us to employ the voice talents of our actors.

In the end, though, Will should get most of the credit on this project. He was passionate about doing it, and he painstakingly did all the animation himself. Tremendous work, my friend.

Favorite bits:

-Todd delivery as Mer-Man: “But I can still taste the pickles!”

-The haughty grunts between Skeletor and Evil Lyn, which were ad libbed by Christine and I.

-The line “The world is moving too fast for me!” That basically sums up the entire concept.

Stay tuned. We’re shooting another new video very soon that should be completed by September. More craziness is on the way!

It is a time of great change for my blog. WordPress turmoil created the need for a site overhaul and spelled the end for the JLP’s high period marked by a header combining my love for patriotism and dead cats.

In response to these dark developments, we have returned with a new look. The site’s new design gives readers easier access to the deepest depths of the JLP archives. The new header celebrates my obsessions with the American presidency and animal hoarding. As an added treat, Ryan designed a ’37′ into the text of the header as a nod to Rock TV, the video ministry that has provided occasional pleasure and regular marital strain to our lives.

Lastly, the JLP has adopted an official motto: Et nunc, mea porcella, moriar, which translates roughly as “and now, my pig, you die.” This is a reference to Demon Wind, my favorite B-movie of all time (watch this clip at about the 5:00 mark for highly-edifying context). But more than that, this new motto reflects the general attitude of the JLP towards its readers.

The Great JLP Redesign is now complete! This new look will no doubt mark this blog’s ignoble decline into fallow disuse! Join with me, feeble readers, and lift your glasses to mark this dark new chapter. Let the chocolate milk drip down our beards as we drink deeply and flail our free arm at imagined wasps!

Let us together recline into oblivion!

That’s right, I turned 32 today! Now I’m old enough to rent a car and drive it through a window at a bank! Take that, G-8 bastards! How do you like me now that I’m 32?

As you can infer from my crazed non-sequiturs, I’ve had a wonderful day. My wife took us out to Key’s Cafe for breakfast where I feasted on toast (French style) and jellied sourdough muffins while loudly announcing the various thoughts that entered my head. After consuming four times my recommended daily caloric intake, we went out to a children’s swimming area to teach Oliver about the miracle of chlorine. Chlorine takes the germs and our sadness away, I told him. Specifically, it takes them to the hinterlands of Manitoba, Canada to be stored deep underground for future generations to study.

After the sunshine splashes, we returned to our warm cottage in north Minneapolis where neighbors greet each other by eyeing one another warily and littering on each other’s yards. I sat back in my sunroom, strummed my guitar, and sang a song of thanks for my beautiful wife, my adorable son, and my sensible Hyundai Sonata. Later my brother Brian visited, and we celebrated my birthday as well as his recent acceptance into law school. I thanked him for also agreeing to financially support me and my family in perpetuity upon becoming a lawyer, to which he offered a strained, silent smile. The bonds of brotherhood are strong, probably!

All in all, I’d say it was probably the best birthday experienced by humankind since the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Bald celebrated his 50th birthday in 873 by personally beheading a dozen Saracens as nubile maidens writhed to the rhythms of a frenzied lyre.

Also, I scored some BOGO DQ Blizzard action.

The new version of WordPress doesn’t mix with the JLP’s most glorious, inerrent programming, and now nobody can read the comments! Could this be the end for your favorite website?

As I see it, I’m left with three options:

1) Hire some dumb idiot to redesign the site for me, perhaps with fewer alcoholic beverages and dead cats prominently displayed, as there is some question as to how well such images play with potential employers.

2) Continue on half-heartedly with the broken design where nobody can comment until this blog finally dies an ignoble death with one last post promising to get back in the blogging habit. I would thus bumble my way into oblivion, like Gerald Ford.

3) Kill myself with bees.

I’m not sure yet as to the logistics of #3, but I assume that it is possible, swift, and not traumatic at all for child onlookers.

I would ask for reader input, but that’s now impossible. Perhaps if you, dear reader, were to speak your preference aloud in a calm, clear voice your wishes might somehow reach me telepathically and influence my decision-making.

I think it’s working! Did somebody just say something about going to Wendy’s? Man, Wendy’s suddenly sounds so good to me. I’d get a Double Stack and a Frosty and three more Double Stacks. Is Wendy’s open at 8:30am? Do you think the shift manager might be cool and let me in early? He probably would, Craig’s cool that way.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand – my broken blog. I don’t know what I’ll do. Frankly, if I lose this blog, I won’t have anything left. I’ll only have my wife, my son, my house, my career, and my extended network of friends and family. That’s it. Without this blog, my life would be an endless loop of muted smiles and wary chuckles and disgusting Double Stack binges. Death by bees is looking better and better all the time.

Have a great day, everyone! Everything is terrible now!

Sorry to my six readers. I may still write the occasional entry as time permits, but otherwise I’ll return to blogging as usual in mid-August.

Enjoy your summer, fools!

Let’s see what we can find in the children’s section, shall we?

Uh…

Sure, Sosa and McGwire roided up and damaged the integrity of some of sport’s most hallowed numbers, but they did it with class. They showed our children the way with smiles on their faces and needle holes in their asses. As for Griffey, he showed our children the dignified way to go on the disabled list. Heroes all.

Hey kids, check out the fun in the new issue of Mesopotamia magazine! On page 14, you’ll find fun facts about the barbaric slaughter of the Phoenicians by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III in 740 B.C.! Also, the back page features a Zoroastrianism-themed word find! Mesopotamia: catch the violent, hierarchical fever!

A side question: is this a monthly periodical? How long could it’s run possibly be?

It’s Harry Potter in Chinese! And look, it’s been retitled Harry Potter and the Glorious Proletarian Protectorship! The corrected plot involves Harry learning to use his “thought reform” wand to protect the people from insidious foreign influence! Let’s hope Harry can succeed with the help of Dumbledore’s surveillance cameras!

Libraries: catch the scarlet fever!

But wait! Halt the proceedings! Silence the infernal bleatings of the Pleasure-Goat!

I have decided to take two college courses this summer to complete a second Bachelor’s degree. Turns out my summer will be spent reading yellowed periodicals in the musty coves of my university library. Instead of doing daredevil double-decker deeds on a blazing-fast waverunner, I will be hunched bleary-eyed over my laptop writing twenty page papers.

Let it be proclaimed across the land that this summer shall suck at the chafed bosoms of Ursula the Sea Witch. All is lost. The handsome Prince Eric must now be shot in a ditch alongside Lee Greenwood as a grotesque, disproportionate symbol of my summertime inconveniences.

When school commences again, I shall officially be a highly-credentialed educator with an gleaming résumé and increasingly sizeable debt. I will be fully versed on the powers of the executive branch and theories on women and politics, which as you all know, are completely relevant to everyday life. The only price I must pay for this professional upgrade will be a disturbing level of physical deterioration.

Seriously, by the time summer is over, I will make Tommy Lee Jones look like Justin Bieber.

And I said silence the Pleasure-Goat, not muffle him! I mean for you to shut him up permanently, using the most slow, violent means possible! If I’m going to be unhappy this summer, at least let me take a damn goat with me!

Noonan worked as a speechwriter for portions of Reagan’s presidency, and the book is a warm, leisurely accounting of a man she deeply and openly admires, but is not afraid to criticize. It is not a scholarly biography by any means, but a loose collection of anecdotes and reflections written in the wise, informal manner that reader familiar with Noonan’s excellent op-eds in the Wall Street Journal will recognize.

Written in the summer of 2001, the book already feels a bit out of date. She spends portions of the text fighting Clinton-era battles over the Reagan legacy that have felt settled since the nation took stock of the man when he died in 2004. I recall the spontaneous weeklong outpouring of grief that seemed to erupt across the country. Since then, even many of the most strident Democrats will acknowledge that Reagan’s presidency was successful and transformative. Most Americans today (including myself) remember him as a man who made us feel proud of our nation and what we stood for, and who enunciated a value system in a way that few other politicians have ever been able to manage. The thesis of Noonan’s book is that the depth of Reagan’s character – his steadfast convictions, his gentle generosity, and his grounded optimism – allowed him to flourish as a great president who used the office to its full potential. In addition, she suggests that those who dismissed him as simple and aloof were correct in a sense, but they missed the larger picture Reagan was busy painting to his audience, the American people.

Here are a few bits from the text I’ll take away with me:

-Noonan points out that Reagan rose from as dire a situation as any American president since the 1800s. He was born in Illinois in 1911 and raised across parts of the Midwest as the son of an alcoholic, embittered shoe salesman. His family was quite poor and forced to move from town to town as his father struggled to hold down a job. Though he rarely spoke of his father and only fleetingly of the troubles his family faced (he wasn’t one to dwell on the negative) he did inherit from his father a profound sense of the injustice of prejudice and from his mother a sunny optimism. In addition, Reagan’s love for his country came in large part from the fact that a man of his humble upbringings could, on his own merits, rise to become governor, and even president.

-Of all the American presidents, Reagan had the saggiest, most disgusting neck.

-I loved an early portion of the book describing the Reagans’ ranch and modest lifelong home in Santa Barbara, California. With its linoleum floors, wicker furniture, and stuffed jackalopes, it’s a place of simple, earnest charm and rugged appeal – like the man himself. Reagan made it a point to bring Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev there, because he believed it spoke volumes about America that this was the home of their president. Gorbachev in particular was flabbergasted, as a veteran of the Soviet system of hypocritical oligarchical spoils.

-Listening to conservative talk radio today, one hears the name Ronald Reagan dropped approximately four times a minute. These sources have confirmed that Ronald Reagan had a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. And he’ll be back again someday!

-Noonan’s complaints about Reagan: he repeated anecdotes ad nauseum, he had little patience for intellectuals (I can’t bring myself blame him for that one), and he was generally uninterested in details. Also, she spends time painting the complex picture of Reagan as a parent – engaged and imaginative when his children were young, aloof and perplexed as they matured. Though he is to be admired for his clear-eyed political courage and decency , Reagan was no role model as a father.

-When Ronald Reagan woke up in the morning and sat down on the executive toilet, he crapped American flags.

-The most compelling chunk of the book to me was probably Noonan’s account of when Reagan was shot in spring, 1981. He had only been in office a couple months when the assassination attempt occurred, and many of the most troubling details were shielded from the public at the time. He came frighteningly close to death, with the bullet from Hinkley lodging an inch from his heart. The public, which thus far had liked Reagan as far as they knew him, learned a lot about his good spirits and optimism when stories began to leak out of how he had been responding. Famously, when his tearful wife first saw him, he replied, “Honey, I forgot to duck”, and immediately before surgery to remove the bullet he quipped to the doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans.” Less famous were the notes he wrote after surgery, when he was weak and under doctor’s orders not to speak. Some of my favorites: “I left something out, I do have an allergy”; “”If I had this much attention in Hollywood I would have stayed there”; “What happened to the guy with the gun – was anyone hurt?”; “Will I still be able to do ranch work, ride horse, etc.?”

-Reagan was known to be absentminded. On one occasion, he accidentally swapped his copies of the START nuclear reduction negotiation papers with a bunch of Heathcliff comics. This explains the peculiar treaty provision that reads: “We must keep that cat from stealing the shopkeeper’s fish.”

-The Iran-Contra Scandal from Reagan’s second term is treated with circumspect fairness. The scandal itself was a Byzantine affair of Israelis illegally selling American-made arms to a moderate faction of Iranians with the permission of the U.S. State Department in hopes of securing the release of American hostages from Iran with the funds being diverted by the state department to fund anti-communist contra forces in Nicaragua. (Everybody got that?) Noonan treats it as an example of Reagan following his worst romantic inclinations and listening to the advice of those of his cabinet urging a daring, unconventional approach to advancing American interests. Instead, he should have sided with his savvy, shrewd Secretary of State George Shultz and seen the inevitable pitfalls. Regardless, in the broad scope of history, the scandal never amounted to much. Reagan recovered politically within the year, and at the end of his term he was still terrifically popular.

-Reagan and Gorbachev managed to share a remarkably warm relationship, given the frosty tensions between their two nations. One night in 1987, they built a fort in the Oval Office out of couch cushions and nuclear suitcases. According to sources, they shared whispered secrets and exchanged nurturing backrubs and dared each other to prank call the East German chancellor.

-The text became most emotionally affecting for me toward the end, when Noonan describes Reagan’s later years when his mind was afflicted by Alzheimer’s. She writes of visiting him in 1998 with her 11 year old son; the president now older, smaller, and often confused. At that moment, she does away with the questions she wanted to ask about his legacy and advice for the young people of today – it was clear that he would stumble through such talk. Instead, she tells him that she once worked with him and that she loves him. He is heartened to hear this and smiles. Not long after that, he can no longer recall that he was once president, or that he once dared Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall. The only job he can remember is having once being a lifeguard in Iowa.

-Famously, Reagan loved football and jellybeans. Less famously, he loved mixed martial arts fighting and bouncing checks. These shocking revelations can be found in my forthcoming book, Things That I Thought Of And Are Probably True.

-A favorite anecdote from the book that illustrates Reagan’s humor and grace: a 1981 formal state dinner featured a performance by Robert Goulet, he of the schmaltzy-Vegas variety. So Goulet was doing his act – perhaps a bit more colorful than the usual state dinner fare, but reasonably classy. At one point during his banter, however, he started talking about a recent Lake Tahoe performance where he spent the show flirting with a gorgeous gal only to find out later that she was “the biggest transvestite in Tahoe.” Amidst the tuxedoed ambassadors and various conservative supporters of the president, the joke was met with stoney silence before the show mercifully went on. At the end of the evening, Reagan stood to give his formal thanks and sendoff. Before finishing he added, “And thank you, Bob Goulet, not only for entertaining us with your wonderful voice but for remembering our night in Lake Tahoe.”

-If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he would be Mitt Romney.

It’s a Japanese paste-wich! Now featuring real onion flavor!

Japanese onion bread loaf has the tasty paste you crave! Slam it in your face and feel the onion rush!

With the flavor of the Orient and the texture of your toothpaste, you’ll cry seppuku tears! The very act of opening the package dishonors yourself!

Now in Cool Ranch and XTREME Cherry Blossom flavors!

As you are no doubt unaware, mint is otherwise known around these parts as “what God’s tongue tastes like.”

I take my hat off to the inventor of mint. Whoever it was that decided to put a few drops of oil from the mentha piperita herb into a Dairy Queen Blizzard deserves a rugged slap on the back and an Applebees gift card from us all. That man has given the world its greatest gift since Alexander Graham Bell invented the fart rag.

Sometimes when I am eating mint things I have to just slow down, take a deep breath and barf into a drinking fountain. I barf because the mint tastes so good and because I’ve eaten too much of it too quickly. As you have gathered, I am, in most respects, like an overeager dog. Sometimes a nice lady will put her hand on my back and ask me if I’m okay. I will goodnaturedly clutch her face and scream, “MINT!” with my minty, vomity breath.

What can I say? I’m a nut for mint!

I also like Girl Scout Thin Mints, mint juleps, and loudly offering Girl Scouts a mint julep as they pass outside my house.

Sometimes I overdo it on the mint, and I have to take a break from it. I’ll try other flavors for a while like grape and whatever’s in Werther’s Originals, but I always come back to mint. Mint is like my first love, except it never dumped me the week before Homecoming. Also, mint would never defriend me on Facebook.

So here’s to you, mint. You taste awesome and you are green, like lettuce on crack.

A fully grown, Chipotle burrito man.

It all happened so fast. It was literally just yesterday that he was unable to sit up on his own power, and now he’s drowning himself in a fat wad of rice, pico de gallo, and seasoned meat like an a hyena ripping apart a common housecat.

Cherish the days with your young children, my faithful readers. Before you know it, they’re eating enormous burritos and taking online courses to become veterinary technicians.

The world is moving too fast for me. Guards, remove these readers from my presence! I wish to retire to my sun porch and be fanned by one of my faithful domestic servants.

I’m so hot! Guards, come over here and unsnap my shirt!

I, Chester Alan Arthur, have spoken!

Over the years, I’ve grown from a casual Sinatra fan into a serious one (as my wife can wearily attest). What started as enjoyment of The Voice, the style, and the general vibe has developed into a deeper appreciation of his gift of expressive interpretation and for the Great American Songbook. At least for somebody of my generation (born when Sinatra released “New York, New York”) I’m a fairly big fan.

Having said that, his catalogue (300-some CDs in print) is so large that it was sometimes difficult to know where to find quality material. I had learned long ago that some of his bigger hits of the modern era (i.e.“Strangers in the Night”, “Summer Wind”) were also songs that quickly wore thin for me. I was looking for a book that could help me find the best material away from the various single-disk retrospectives on the market. Friedwald’s book is a marvelous stroll through his career, plotting the many high points and occasional missteps (see: most stuff he recorded from 1968 on). His ear for the nuances of Sinatra’s vocal performances is especially illuminating – this is a great book to have on hand when listening to his albums, as he points out many subtleties that add depth and resonance to the experience.

There were some complaints. In the interests of painting a broad picture, Friedwald occasionally gets lost on detours when describing the professional backgrounds of various musicians who played a big role in the backing bands. While an explanation about what made that particular trombonist or drummer essential to Sinatra is welcomed, multiple pages devoted to tracing the other bands he played in usually is not. There were also about 100 tedious pages devoted to Sinatra’s 1940s output that, given the low fidelity and the overly-saccharine performances, don’t do much for me. Finally, Friedwald betrays himself as an insufferable jazz snob pretty regularly. He drops sideways digs at the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Bono, and other talented, respected artists from the rock world, alluding to their poor singing and the paper-thin nature of their material. To me, this came across as smug and obnoxious (though, in his defense, Bono’s performance on his 1994 duet with Sinatra on “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” was eye-rollingly obnoxious itself).

Here are a few bits from the book I’ll take with me.

-Friedwald mades a pretty good argument that “My Way” represents a masterful performance of a really lousy song. He critiques the banal melody and the brusque, monosyllabic lyrics, but notes that Sinatra is such an expressive interpreter that he singlehandedly lifts the material into something operatic. Friedwald writes, “It’s conceivable that one could be critical of ‘My Way’ from a distance…however, it’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by it in person: how can you not stand up and cheer at the sight of a man who can, at will, grow to be ten stories tall?” (p. 447)

-Ever the man of fashion, Sinatra recorded much of his peak 1950s material in his trademark hat and trademark t-shirt with an airbrushed wolf on it.

-Friedwald does a nice job of characterizing the notable arrangers that Sinatra returned to over the years. The job of the arranger was to take an existing song and write an orchestration to it to support the singer. Thus, they fashioned the sound and the feel of a recording in much the way a modern producer does. The celebrated genius Nelson Riddle comes across as brittle and difficult, the swinging Billy May seems upbeat and easygoing, the strings-loving Gordon Jenkins as patient and sanguine. Friedwald also resurrects the reputation the sometimes-scorned Don Costa (who worked with Sinatra on a lot of his weaker late albums) as a man caught doing admirable work on projects that were woefully misbegotten (“Let’s make Sinatra relevant to the flower people!”). The details on the working relationships between Sinatra and these talented arrangers adds a lot of depth to the listening experience.

-In an attempt to maintain sales, Sinatra lost his way by the late 1960s by turning toward soft rock and away from his usual palette of standards and swing. This resulted in the embarrassing spectacle of him scatting amidst the cheeseball nonsense of “Sweet Caroline”. If Sinatra were alive today, we would all have to put up with him doing Sister Hazel’s “All For You” and pretending we didn’t hear it.

–When Sinatra recorded, he liked to set the ambiance by burning incense and lighting a single candle. He also would relax by loudly indulging himself face-first in a smorgasbord of booze and women while listening to Enya.

-Sinatra’s longtime pianist Bill Miller comes across in the text as a sort of zen saint. Friedwald celebrates the way Miller is able to effortlessly support the emotional tone of the songs while giving Sinatra both the structure and nuance he needed to shine. Listen to any live recording of “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” and this becomes immediately evident. Miller’s quiet, graceful demeanor also comes across as a counterpoint to many of the highly-strung musicians, and to Sinatra himself, who while capable of being generous and gracious, could also hold an ugly grudge with the best of them.

-In concert, if Sinatra ever forgot the words to a song, he later would have the songwriter beaten to a bloody pulp by his goons.

-Above everything else, what made Sinatra such a tremendous artist was his ability to make the audience feel the song. Be it exuberant or sardonic, boastful or broken, Sinatra could embody a lyric and express it like no other singer I’ve ever heard. I was watching some clips on YouTube of vintage live performances and I was struck by how much he seemed to be processing and thinking about every word he sang. There were only rarely moments of rote singing. He famously once said, “When I sing, I believe.” Ultimately, that’s what makes his music worth returning to.

-I bet when Sinatra sang love songs, he thought about me.

This isn’t technically a Rock TV – it’s a promotional video for our church put together by the Rock TV team. The project was a bit of a challenge for us, in no small part because the ministry just recently started up again with an expanded leadership team after a 6-month pause precipated by the birth of a local boy named Oliver Welle. In addition, this project was assembled hastily and with more creative input by our incredible pastors, so there were a number of factors that made this different from other videos we’ve done. In the end, I think the restrictions were good for us, and forced us to work in a streamlined, spartan fashion. It certainly isn’t the funniest thing we’ve done, but it sells the message in a memorable way.

As far as my thoughts on the video, I enjoyed reprising a few elements from our old Revelation 9:11 video (most notably, Kevin’s droning pastor character who we referred to as “Rev. Leatherbound”). Also, I have to confess that I love getting the chance to pull out my “1940s announcer voice”. It’s one of those things that I enjoy and find funny, but don’t expect anyone else to (like Rock TV in general).

Anyway, here’s the video. We’re working up something dramatically different for our next video, so stay tuned!

Somebody has written the names of my body parts all over me, and I cannot get up until someone completes this child’s worksheet. Oh, won’t somebody please help me? Pleeeease?

Don’t look at me too long though, children, or you will begin to have inappropriate thoughts! Do you see how my sturdy thighs lay sensuously open? Do you appreciate the way my makeup and gloves make me resemble a Parisian woman of the night? Have you noted my crudely-drawn tail and wings, which are not a part of my copyrighted image?

My Kermit has gone away, and now I am all by myself and very lonely. Will you be my friend, little boy? Will you be my special friend? Come lay down with Muppet Baby-version of Miss Piggy and label my body parts for me! It will be oh so fun!

This leotard is chafing me! I could use a hand from a helpful little boy. Please put down your crayons and help a helpless little Piggy!

Jonah Musto, a man of unparalleled wit and reasoned insight, read this post and went berzerk. Read it for yourself. There’s 4 or 5 death threats, but what’s even more troubling is that Jonah Musto continues to return to the site to threaten me. I can’t even tell what the offense was, other than the lack of response to his nonsensical prompts.

Either way, his response is certainly merited and appropriate.

A quick Google search showed me that Jonah Musto is a man of peculiar passions and inerrant grammar. He has posted several comments on webpages devoted to ceiling fan installation, as well as sites devoted to Harry Potter.

So basically, some Hogwarts-obsessed handiman is going to kill me because of this blog.

Here’s to you, Jonah Musto. Your deranged nonsense is an unsettling amusement to us all. Thank you for being such a stupid, stupid person.

By the way, it looks like you left your Nissan Pathfinder parked illegally in Times Square over the weekend.

Brookdale Mall, located just minutes from my gentle neighborhood, has followed countless Hardees franchises into the shallow unmarked grave of retail death, shot in the back of the head by consumer indifference.

What will the tender youth of my community do without the Brookdale Mall? The mall offered wide concourses filled with echoed vulgarities, as well as multiple hat shops, dollar stores, and a Taco John’s. Locals whisper about a time when Brookdale offered an American Eagle, Barnes & Noble, Macy’s, and other signals of actual retail activity. In recent years, however, the mall has been overtaken by crotch-grabbing goons aimlessly patrolling the hallways. Shocking that consumers with actual money found the experience to be unpleasant…

Like the Roman Empire, the once-mighty Brookdale Mall has fallen into disrepair and illiteracy. Today’s equivalent of visigoth barbarians now chant their rhymed foolishness outside the walls of Brookdale, demanding entrance and gumballs. Where are our centurions to keep safety and order? Where is our Sheriff Andy Taylor? Where is the America we once knew?

Goodbye, Brookdale Mall. Technically, you have served us, though not particularly well. You shall remain standing as a concrete, rectangular reminder of how stupid everything is.

This week marks the release of Shade of the Trees, their 8th studio album by my count (read my reviews of all their albums here). Recorded live in studio by producer Dan Wilson (Semisonic, Dixie Chicks), it’s a somber, beautiful collection.

Being part of a duo as spare as Storyhill requires a remarkable level of self-surrender. For two musicians as passionate and opinionated as Cunningham & Hermanson, this must be no easy feat. Shade of the Trees is the sound of these two men fully sublimating their music into the identity of Storyhill. In the past, their albums (while often wonderful) had the feel of alternating between a “Chris song” and a “Johnny song”. This release instead sees the two regularly singing in unison, swapping vocal lines, and trading guitar figures. Individual fingerprints are few and far between – this is a disciplined, restrained approach that pays off.

Several songs on the album use potent historical allegories, most notably “Better Angels”, a hymn about America built around a collection of poetic quotes from the Civil War era (the album’s title comes from the dying words of Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson). This all might sound heavy, and it is. The thoughtfulness and weight of the album are immediately evident.

A favorite track of mine is “Caught in a Mess”, a breakup song etched in the language of American tragedies. Chris and Johnny trade off vocals and team up for some truly heartbreaking harmonies. Another standout is “Well of Sorrows”, with its snappy fingerpicking and catchy hooks.

“Avalon”, the haunting opening track starts the album on a sober note. To me, what’s most striking about this song are Cunningham’s careful harmonies. I’m a serious lover of harmony (having grown up on the Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel) and I’ve long admired his ability to support a song with his backing vocals. There’s nothing typical about his performance on this song, the way he switches from thirds to fifths to jumping an octave below the melody to amplify that verse’s emotional content. It’s a beautiful recording. (Enjoy a free download: Storyhill: Avalon)

I have only minor criticisms. To my ears, “Town Talks” is a dopey, stupid song. The spare, live aesthetic causes the album to sag a bit in the middle, but this is leavened by the short overall running time (just over 30 minutes). The heavy tone of the songs, especially through the first 6 or 7 tracks is unrelenting, but even that serves to make the warm closer “Pieces of Love” all the more rewarding.

Highly recommended.

Storyhill performing “Dangerous Weapon” and sweating live in studio:

When this morning’s gray gloom finally dissipated, our worst fears were realized.

The violence had touched home.

Yesterday, this was just another teddy bear, careless and free. He probably loved playing stickball and being hugged by overzealous toddlers. Now he’s dead on our sidewalk in a pool of his own stuffing. Who knows what unspeakable acts this teddy bear had to endure before he was finally put out of his misery?

North Minneapolis is a hard place to live, my friends. You learn to distrust the people on your street. You learn to keep vigil on your front step and coldy polish your shotgun in plain view of the neighborhood teens. You learn to shutter your bathroom windows after receiving multiple complaints about people having to see you naked.

I suppose seeing a dead teddy bear on my sidewalk shouldn’t have been a shock. But it was. I’m afraid I’ll remember that image for the rest of my life.

I blame Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak for this. I stuffed the dead bear in a shoebox and mailed it to his office along with an irrationally belligerent and vaguely threatening note. Hopefully that will help.

So long, dead teddy bear. Perhaps from your death, a renewal will sprout in North Minneapolis and we will see a revival of this once-proud neighborhood. Perhaps teen truancy and gang activity will diminish while property values and retail activity will rise. Perhaps we will have fewer burglaries and more firm, friendly handshakes.

Until that happens, it’s time for some Ron Gardenhire-style vigilante justice. Nobody murders a teddy bear on my sidewalk and gets away with it.

Now enjoy these photographs, kindly provided by my friend Mike, a local bald photographer.

We gathered together outside the ballpark at noontime for jovial back-slapping and jocular harassment of passersby. Smiles were abundant and gum was chewed with open-mouthed vigor.

The food offerings at Target Field were wonderful. Here, Adam blasted a fat hot dog into his face in an aggressive manner that will likely earn him a public chastisement once he is married. Enjoy the singleness while you can, Adam. Have another!

The stadium is absolutely beautiful. It’s hard to come up with a complaint (the only inconveniences were from idiots like us slowing up traffic by wandering around with cameras like tourists). My friend Brent commented that it felt like he was on vacation as soon as he stepped inside, and I’d say that pretty much sums it up.

Here’s a shot from my favorite moment of the afternoon. Down 10-5, the game was out of hand when Twins manager Ron Gardenhire came out of the dugout to argue that Michael Cuddyer should have been awarded a base for being hit by a pitch. There really wasn’t a point, but he was going at it and the crowd started cheering and chanting “GAR-DY! GAR-DY!” I screamed, “HE IS CRIMSON WITH RAGE!”

Fun, pointless times.

Finally, enjoy this video I put together that captures the vivid sights, friendly sounds, and remorseful emotions of Target Field. I apologize for the shaky camerawork, but I was working without a tripod and I had few sodapops in me and I was being chased.

Benefits: cash.
Costs: reader annoyance and irritation.
Analysis: proceed recklessly.

The way I looked at it, this website is annoying and irritating by its very nature. Why shouldn’t I profit? Over 6+ years and 1,100-some posts, it is estimated that I’ve devoted 4 million hours to this blog. Frankly, it’s about time somebody ante up.

The specifics of the particular ad they wanted to run were a bit odd. They wanted me to add a link and two lines of text to one of my book review posts (those tends to get a lot of hits from Google searches). The text itself doesn’t make any sense – you can read it for yourself here. The post now starts with a few lines of confusing nonsense, then delves into my review for Collapse.

Whatever. They paid me decent money to foul up an old post. Why would I not do this? If the price was right, I’d let them embed a snuff film.

So don’t be suprised if you happen to drop by the JLP at some date in the future and come across an inexplicable link to an obnoxious site situated awkwardly in my post. When that happens, you can lean back, unbutton your short, and smile to yourself knowing that I’m off laughing my way to the ATM so I can blow the money on marshmallows or some other bit of nonsense that will exasperate my wife.

This post has been brought to you by Newport Cigarettes.

Newport pleasure!

McCullough is a tremendous historian and writer, and this volume doesn’t disappoint. Given McCullough’s insight and the endlessly interesting subject matter, how could it? Theodore Roosevelt was one of a kind. He was a forceful politician who would remake the presidency. He was a deeply intelligent thinker fascinated with natural science, literature, and history. He was a driven, hyperactive savant dedicated to living as robust a life as possible. McCullough’s account of his upbringing brings the riveting (and often puzzling) Theodore Roosevelt to life with empathy and wonder, while also painting a vivid picture of Gilded Age politics and aristocratic culture.

Here are a few interesting notes from the book:

-For those overfamiliar with the man Roosevelt would become, the text reminds us what a peculiar person TR was, especially so as a young man. From his time at Harvard, we read one account after another comment on his bizarre mannerisms – endless sentences tumbling out of his mouth, flashing his teeth and seeming to bite the words out of the air, manic gesticulations. The general impression of him was that he was undeniably bright, but a little strange, and more than a little self-righteous.

-As a young man, Roosevelt experimented with various looks before settling on the bushy mustache we all know and love. In college, he grew out his “English-style” mutton chops, and while living in Dakota he grew hockey hair and spit tobacco juice into an empty Mountain Dew bottle.

-The single most significant dynamic in the creation of Theodore Roosevelt was his extraordinarily close family. They were a clan who remained intensely devoted and loyal to each other their entire lives. Theodore Sr., the patriarch, was idolized by all as the ideal father and moral anchor of the family. The children Bamie, Theodore Jr. (Teedie), Bamie, Corinne, and Elliot were best friends for their entire lives (though Elliot suffered an early demise brought on by alcoholism). Daughters Bamie and Corinne each eventually married, but their husbands could never take the central place that their father and brother Theodore had in their lives. Bamie, in particular, served TR as a close advisor and confidante his entire life.

-Roosevelt was a passionate hunter and outdoorsman from a young age. He loved nothing more than strangling wolverines to death and then eating their raw entrails. (This is only barely an exaggeration.)

-Famously, young Teedie was cursed by terrible asthma attacks. McCullough strongly suggests that these were psychosomatic, brought on by the anxiety of the Roosevelt Sunday routine of lengthy church services and an observed Sabbath of inactivity. It says something about the fabulous wealth of their family (from established family businesses in trade and glass) that to address these frightening attacks, they took him on rides through New York in a luxurious carriage drawn by majestic white horses, and even lived on an opulent Egyptian houseboat on the Nile for a year. Must be nice.

-Do you remember a couple years back when they made a third Crocodile Dundee movie for some reason? I bet Theodore Roosevelt would have done something about that.

-TR was undeniably a blueblood. He spoke with a haughty accent (think of his younger relative FDR), dressed in extravagant fashions, and wrote home during his time at Harvard to reassure his parents that he was investigating the “antecedents” of potential friends. Yet, he was not one to luxuriate in his circumstances. Whether researching, politicking, hunting, or reading, he was an incredibly hard worker, tiring out everyone around him. During his famous “Badlands Years”, working as a rancher in Dakota territory, he totally immersed himself in Western life and won the approval of skeptical cowboys with dogged industriousness (though he did raise eyebrows by with his peculiar highfalutin language – “You! Hasten forward quickly there!”)

-A formidable boxer in his own right, TR once knocked a loudmouth cowboy unconscious after he had mocked Roosevelt’s gold glasses one too many times. Later, the chief forced them to become partners and they solved the case, but not before they nearly killed each other in the process!

-Theodore Roosevelt suffered an incomprehensible tragedy when both his dear mother and beloved wife Alice each died unexpectedly, just hours apart on February 14th, 1884 (Valentine’s Day – bummer). McCullough’s prose in this stretch of the book is beautifully understated; I was moved to tears (it probably didn’t help that Bridgette was out of state at the time). The normally loquacious Roosevelt could only manage to ‘X’ out that date in his diary and note “Today, the light of my life has gone out”. He declined to keep a diary for the rest of the year, and couldn’t bring himself to speak of Alice again for the rest of his life, pledging instead to forge ahead at full speed.

-Roosevelt quickly developed into a powerful, dynamic force in Republican politics as a voice for civil reform. To compare him to contemporary figures, he combined the erudite depth of Barack Obama and the spirited independence of John McCain with the frenzied, pile-driving heroics of Hulk Hogan.

It’s good to see you again, my old friend! You look as stout and rosy-cheeked as ever. Let me take hold of your shoulders and size you up properly…

Yes. Yes, you look lovely. You look very good indeed. Your skin is comely, your eyes are beguiling and your Adam’s Apple is firm and ample. Your dignified, wellborn handsomeness makes my loins quiver and my lips part.

How I wish it had not been so long since our last encounter! Since then, my face has grown gaunt and my forearms feeble. You would not even recognize my upper thighs anymore. I look like Willem Dafoe with leukemia.

Do you remember our travels through the dark lands of the Orient? Can you recall the hours we spent on horseback laden with prized spices? We were so young and fresh with vigor in those days! We straddled the world and wrung life from it like the common Irishman treats his wife. Those were heady days of conquest and passion, my old companion. They are now long since gone.

It is good to be in your presence and look back with you, my dear friend. You are perhaps the one person in this world who truly understands me. You don’t mind, do you, if I let my hands fall where they may across your body? Let us take flight of reason together!

Don’t resist me! Tousle my hair and count my freckles as you once did! We can be young again!

No? You’d rather not, in the presence of your wife and children? Very well then. As I said earlier, our moment has passed. It was foolish and impetuous of me to think otherwise. It’s just that these years have been so cruel to me, and I am so lonely. I beg forgiveness.

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