Probably the biggest downside to bikes is how they have to be ridden outside, powered by only your own dumb "feet" and "legs." You have to ride them around other people, along streets and sidewalks, sometimes in the rain and sometimes when it is uncomfortably hot. I mean, sure, they don't use any gas or fossil fuels and are usually pretty easily stored and offer exercise and environmental benefits and let you feel smugly superior to everyone you see/judge in a car, but otherwise they're pretty much the worst things ever, and that's before the chains slip off, which of course happens all the time, because bikes are terrible.
So we're subjecting the second-grader to piano lessons. We're doing this because we began piano lessons in the second grade ourselves, and we were not especially talented at piano lessons, so we are subjecting the new generation to them because we figure … it will eventually water down the reasons he comes to resent us as a teenager?
It is still emotional for me to re-tell the events of April 26, 1991. I was a recent first-time mother. Tyler Richard Beck was only 4 days old--and barely 6 pounds! My only focus was on HIM--NOT the weather!
Despite growing up in a reasonably comfortable Indiana suburb, I never really got into the music of Tupac Shakur. This put me in direct conflict with my younger brother, Dave; while I would spend my formative Camelot Music-stalking time making important purchasing decisions about Tesla and the "Wayne's World" soundtrack and, God help me, that Styx album with "Show Me The Way" on it (I KNOW, I ALREADY KNOW), Dave was able to leverage his good grades and positive attitude, as well as our parents' divorce, into permission to buy pretty much anything with a parental advisory sticker and an Intro on it between the years 1991-94.
Anybody else have this problem where it's 9:45 p.m. and you're trying to write but your son keeps walking in and interrupting you because he's deeply worried about what will happen when the sun explodes in 3 billion years? Anybody? Rattled insomniac second-grader vs. immeasurably futuristic solar apocalypse? Science people? Neil deGrasse Tyson? MythBusters? Little help?
I hate shopping, mostly because I'm terrible at it. This past weekend — and I feel no small degree of pride in saying this — I went into a few stores and successfully obtained a series of T-shirts that were, in essence, perfect clones of T-shirts I already owned. I embarked on this particular miserable shopping trip toting with me a 6-month-old infant, because 1. I'm an incredible idiot and 2. I thought, oh, I know what will make slogging through Saturday afternoon traffic and fighting roving juntas of polos-tucked-into-shorts Shopping People to buy gray T-shirts more palatable: Let's bring the poop machine.
Former Wichita State basketball star Jason Perez and Pastor Leon Hiebert are contributing to www.andoveramerican.com.
So obviously everyone wishes that Batman was real, that both our valuable streets, as well as those in Detroit, could be kept safe by some crazy-pants vigilante with a black-metal baritone and a wellspring of dark psychological horrors he took out on Antarctic-themed umbrella-packing supervillains. For Real Amateur Batman Action you have to go to — wait for it — OH YES THIS SAYS SLOVAKIA.
A few things about the NCAA tournament, which this year is being attended (and handled nicely, thank you very much) by my Indiana Hoosiers, who have finally returned to the dance after a lengthy recruiting scandal in which the school hired a coach who was previously involved in a recruiting scandal and then came to Indiana and engaged in — this was weird — a recruiting scandal, a development which caused everybody in Indiana to gasp.
HEY, SOLAR FLARE. YEAH, I'M TALKING TO YOU, LOSER. THE FLARE-LOOKING THING, IN SPACE, THE ONE THAT'S SOLAR. You stink. Yeah, I said it. You are the worst solar flare ever. You are a pink fluffy unicorn of solar flares. You are a fragile porcelain mouse of solar flares.
Most people don't have a good nickname. Jim Larson had at least two. Andover American Editor Adam Knapp remembers the life of a wonderfully gifted photographer from his first newspaper job.
Occasionally, through no appreciable talent or skill of my own, I've been lucky enough to fly — at not very many moments' notice — to New York City to stalk Bruce Springsteen. I've done it twice now.
Andover residents are known for commuting to their jobs. How far is your drive to work?
Many years ago, I had a son. Well, OK, I still have a son, but "I still have a son" is a crazy-boring lead, and "MANY YEARS AGO," which I imagine to have been spoken aloud by a drunken Sean Connery, makes this column seem more akin to an epic clash of sky gods and dragon lancers instead of what it is, which is a belated attempt to pin months of my son's misbehavior on a 6-year-old named Brayden.
Went to see the new, 3-D-mafied version of "Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace" this weekend, and the weirdest thing happened: I didn't hate it. I should've hated it. Why didn't I hate it? I don't feel good about this.
If there is anyplace on Earth more bruisingly depressing than the Valentine's Day card rack at The Large Store on Feb. 12, I've yet to hear about it. OK, that's not entirely true, I can think of plenty more depressing places, such as the offices of whoever has to do promotion for the "Chipmunks" movies and wherever Newt Gingrich goes to apply his pre-stump speech neck-grease, but at least the people shopping at Target have their own non-billionaire provided money, now that I think about it, so I think Gingrich wins for most depressing? Winning! Aw, that'll be a weird feeling for him.
So I've got jury duty tomorrow (stupid inconvenient Constitution). More effective way to get out of it: Darth Maul costume, or answering every question by quoting Scientology text?
It's a chaotic, funny scene when young kids organize a ballgame. ...
