And finally …

… Hooper, Victoria and their Aunt Kay with Breanna Ange, Kay’s first grandchild and the kids’ new first cousin once removed.

And while I’m at it …

… I’ve been remiss in not celebrating Hooper’s receiving his Bobcat Cub Scout badge during the 12/13 pack meeting.

Because we haven’t had enough photos of cute kids lately

Hooper, Victoria, Abigail and Camille before their Halloween excursion. V. is an FBI agent to complement Abby’s convict. Sorry I’m just now getting this up; I’ve been remiss in my photoblogging.

Much more entertaining than “a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out”

For the non-rock ‘n’ roll among you, contract riders for touring rock bands list all the equipment, backstage facilities and miscellaneous other stuff the band members require — everything from amplifiers to foodstuffs. They can make for severe headaches for concert promoters but entertaining reading for civilians. Perhaps the most famous example, possibly apocryphal, is the Van Halen requirement that there be a bowl of M&Ms in the band’s dressing room with all the brown M&Ms picked out of the bowl.

Via Mostly Modern Media, here’s a copy of the contract rider for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. It’s 18 pages long, and whoever wrote it appears to have written it with entertainment for the reader uppermost in his mind. Good for him/her. I read a bunch of these things back in my music-bidness days, and this is easily the most entertaining I’ve ever come across.

He got that right

Hooper: Daddy, I’m mad.

Me: Why?

Hooper: I want to be more like you!

Me: What do you mean?

Hooper (as if to a particularly slow-witted father): I want to be more like you!

Me: Well, what is it about me that you like that you would like to be like?

Hooper (after thinking a bit): I want to work on the computer like you do. (It should be noted here that I’ve barely worked on the computer at all in months except when he was in bed or I was home with him when he was sick.)

Me: Well, when you get older, I’m sure you’ll work on the computer more. Right now, you get to play on the computer a lot.

Hooper: Daddy! It’s not the same!

“We are stardust …”

Nick ponders two artifacts of prehistoric time and finds a connection.

9-0

More than a month ago, I said that after losses to UNC, UCLA, State, Duke and Western Michigan, the Wildcats’ early promise had been erased and it would now be a tough slog to an NCAA bid.

So far, the Wildcats are slogging just fine, currently standing atop the SoCon at 9-0 after a win last night against Western Carolina. Playing in their first game after defeating previously undefeated (in SoCon) Chattanooga, the ‘Cats were ripe for a letdown, and it came in the second half. But they still were able to win by a respectable margin.

Yet this team has a lot still to prove. Let’s hope they continue playing that way.

Blues

Mr. Sun! has invoked the blues, which means it’s as good a time as any to revisit Rules for the Blues.

Psst. Pass it on.

My friend and former co-worker Blair Pethel has tagged me with an Internet meme. I’m not going to pass it on to anyone via e-mail as he asks because I know some people get annoyed at that, but I will answer the questions here.

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Fry cook
2. Lawn-care guy
3. Disc jockey
4. Journalist

B) Four movies I would watch over and over (or have):
Better Off Dead
The Princess Bride
Blazing Saddles
Young Frankenstein

C) Four places I have lived:
1. Charlotte, N.C.
2. New York
3. Gastonia, N.C.
4. Greensboro, N.C.

D) Four TV Shows that I watch:
1. Carolina Panthers football games. Other than the odd Carolina basketball game, that’s really it; I otherwise gave up the TV habit a few years ago.

E) Four places I have been:
1. Italy
2. Mexico
3. St. Thomas
4. The Bahamas

F) People who e-mail me (regularly):

1. Fred
2. David
3. Tony
4. Blair

G) Four of my favorite foods:
1. Grilled salmon
2. Chocolate ice cream
3. Stamey’s BBQ
4. Nacho Cheese Doritos

H) Four places I would rather be right now:

1. In bed
2. Tuscany
3. St. Thomas
4. Sonoma County

J) Four things I am looking forward to in 2008:
1. Rain
2. Watching my kids grow
3. Keeping off the weight I’ve lost
4. Vacation

Feel free to swipe this for your own blog.

Welcome home, Cpl. Ange

Kevin is being allowed to rotate home early from Iraq after his dad’s death so that he can keep the family businesses — a commercial waste-hauling business and a sign-and-graphics business — operational until his mom decides whether she wants to keep them or sell them. He’ll remain in the reserves, but it would be at least a year before he might have to rotate back over. The family now has some breathing room in which to decide what to do. The Corps really does look after its own.

From electrons to dead trees, deservedly

Jessica Hagy, whose brilliant Indexed cartoon blog has inspired a very few poor homages on my part, has a book of her work coming out Feb. 28. Yay, Jessica!

Public service

Mr. Sun!: Finding all the good stuff so you don’t have to.

Good fishermen increasingly hard to come by

I’m in the middle of a six-week session of teaching elementary-age kids at our church about Jesus’ calling of disciples. We’re working primarily from Mark 1:14-20, wherein Jesus invites four fishermen to join him and, without apparent hesitation, they do, walking away from homes and livelihoods. This is the “I will make you fishers of men” passage. (UPDATE: Previous post on the perils of translating this passage into modern English here.)

What, I’ve been asking the kids, would it take for you to agree to follow some perfect stranger? And they’ve been responding along the lines of, “No way! I’d yell for the police!” or, at the least, “I’d have to check with my parents.”

Yet more evidence that we’re not living in biblical times, on a number of levels.

That’s my girl

Victoria: Daddy, can I watch football tonight?

Me: No, sweetie, there aren’t any games on tonight.

Victoria: But the Giants won and the — who was it? — the Chargers won. Don’t they get to keep playing?

Me: Yeah, but they don’t play until Sunday.

Victoria: ‘Til Sunday? Aw, man. Who do I talk to about that?

Road trip

Back today from accompanying Victoria’s fourth grade on an overnight field trip to Raleigh. Yesterday was a full day: the legislative building, the Capitol, the N.C. History Museum, the science museum and a brisk walk to take in the exterior of the governor’s mansion before hopping the buses back to Marble Kids Museum. After dinner there (pizza!), the kids had some programs (and a vigorous session on the karaoke machine) before trooping over to the adjacent Imax theater to see “The Polar Express” in 3-D. That was some seriously good 3-D, too, the best I’ve ever seen.

We spent the night in the museum, which, between a headache, a backache from all the walking, the hard floor and the lack of my sleep machine, was not the most comfortable night I’ve ever spent. Then this morning we had a quick snack at the museum before hopping the buses. We stopped in Haw River for breakfast before returning to school just in time to sign Victoria out for the day without penalty. Then it was home for some real sleep — at least a couple of hours’ worth.

Ann accompanied V’s class on a 3-day trip several months ago. I sympathized with her at the time. I really sympathize with her now — and am blown away yet again by the dedication of the teachers who concoct and lead these trips. I enjoyed the sights and the time with Victoria, and she really wants to go back to Marbles again, this time with her cousins. I think that’s a great idea. But the next time I accompany a child on an overnight class trip, then by hook or crook I’m bringing an air mattress.

Friday Random 10

David Bowie — John, I’m Only Dancing
Flat Duo Jets — Hey Boss Man
Sex Pistols — Anarchy in the UK
Nirvana — On a Plain
Rolling Stones — Stop  Breaking Down
Counting Crows — Mr. Jones
Chris Mars — City Lights on Mars
Sam & Dave — Soul Man
Offspring — All I Want
Barenaked Ladies — Brian Wilson

lagniappe: Roy Orbison — Only the Lonely

Two non-changes

It’s official: Panthers head coach John Fox and general manager Marty Hurney will return in 2008. I’d thought so, but after the team went 7-9 in a year it was expected to reach the Super Bowl, you never know.

Remembrance of things past

Yesterday — coincidentally, my 48th birthday — I said goodbye to a huge chunk of my past.

I gathered up all my vinyl LPs from their various resting places in closets, and I took them all to Edward McKay to sell them — from AC/DC and the Accelerators to Warren Zevon. I also took the stereo I’d had since college — receiver, turntable, cassette deck, bookshelf speakers and a latterly-added CD player, plus all the cables except for speaker wire — and donated them to the Salvation Army.

I did so not to make any sort of grand gesture of severance from my past. I did it because I had come to realize that, realistically, I don’t listen to the music or use the stereo and that it has been more than a decade since I did. Much as I might like to digitize all the old vinyl, I know I will never have the time to do so. And the house is too full of stuff in general; it’s past time for a lot of it to go.
The vinyl accumulated between 1971, before I owned anything of my own on which to play it, and about 1989, when we got our first CD player. It totaled a couple of hundred albums (I had many more before my time in New York, whence many of my albums did not return, or did not return in playable condition.), mostly rock but some jazz and classical as well. Many were in excellent condition. When I got a new album, I typically recorded it to cassette so as to be able to listen to it in the car, and frequently I never touched the vinyl again. I’m sure the folks at Ed McKay were salivating; they get $7 for used single vinyl albums in good condition, in nominal terms about what they cost when I bought them all those years ago.

So I said goodbye to it all. And I walked away from Ed McKay’s with $130 to spend on dinner and a movie with the family.

Ronald Keith Ange, 1953-2008

Our brother-in-law, the kids’ Uncle Ronnie, taken from us far too soon.

Moving in March

If the Panthers want to improve in 2008, they’ve got a lot of work to do.

But as Peter King of Sports Illustrated points out, they’ve got huge constraints (scroll down to “stat of the week”) on what they can do.

As of early December, only three teams — Washington, Baltimore and Atlanta — had less room under the salary cap than the Panthers’ $6.05 million. And if Atlanta can get back some of the bonus money it paid or owes Michael “Inmate” Vick, it will be in even better shape. On top of that, the Panthers have only 35 players under contract for next year, meaning they’ll need to do a lot of deals. Only Arizona, with 34, is in worse shape.

I’ve talked in other posts about what the team’s needs are. Now the question is how to fill them, and what to fill them with. That will take money, and to make that money available, some Panthers, including some fairly expensive ones, are going to get gone.

I don’t have any particular insight into who they might be, but I think two obvious ones are David Carr and Dan Morgan. Carr — and I’ll admit this surprised me — was a disaster as a backup quarterback. It’s hard to imagine any future in football for Morgan after his long record of injuries. (No one remembers this, but he was drafted in part because he had been so durable during his college years.)

While this might strike some as sacrilege, I would also think hard about letting Julius Peppers go. He has a year left on his contract if I recall correctly, but after the year he has just had, I honestly wonder whether he is worth keeping. He clearly hasn’t responded to team owner Jerry Richardson’s call to step up and become a team leader, and for all his natural gifts, I’ve long wondered whether he has the desire to become the player his gifts could make him.

DE Mike Rucker might retire. FB Brad Hoover may well be gone. But however it shakes out, a year after attempting to stand pat personnel-wise, the Panthers are headed toward a major housecleaning.

Housing for minorities really isn’t to blame

One of the more widely spread canards of the current subprime-mortgage crisis is the notion that the Community Reinvestment Act, enacted in 1977 to address decades of redlining by lenders, was to blame, or even significantly to blame, for the current mess in which we find ourselves.

Not so much, says the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, as reported on the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog:

Among the specific findings in “Lending in Low- and Moderate-Income Neighborhoods in California: The Performance of CRA Lending During the Subprime Meltdown”:

Overall, lending to low and moderate income communities comprised only a small share of toal lending by CRA lenders, even during the height of the California subprime lending boom.

Loans originated by lenders regulated under CRA in general were “significantly less likely to be in foreclosure” than those originated by independent mortgage companies that weren’t covered by CRA.

Loans made by CRA lenders within their geographic assessment areas covered by the law were “half as likely to go into foreclosure” as those made by the independent mortgage companies.

28% of loans made by CRA lenders in low income areas within their geographic assessment areas were fixed-rate loans, compared with 18.2% of loans made by independent mortgage companies in low income areas.

12% of the loans made by CRA lenders in these areas were high-priced loans, a technical definition of subprime, compared with 29% of the loans made by those lenders outside their assessment areas and 52.4% of loans made by independent mortgage companies in low-income areas.

There’s plenty of blame to go around for this mess without assigning any to the blameless.

(h/t: Brad DeLong)