Parental Shame

Most parents, at least at some point, have to admit that they are sometimes ashamed of their children (or often ashamed; for instance, my parents from the time I was about 11 until I got married).

But smart parents keep that shame/embarrassment threshold pretty high.  That's why I'm trying to play it cool with my recent twin - and silly - shames from Ariadne and Evan.

ARIADNE 

As the half-dozen readers of this blog know (my market research says it may be a dozen, depending if you count hits from inside of prisons), I am a punk rocker and conversely very anti-hippie.  But two weeks ago Ariadne announced that she is a hippie.  Not the drug-taking kind, she quickly added.  Nor has she stopped bathing, making things out of macrame, nor is she sitting around the house lazily complaining about how bad things are but getting high instead of working to solve those problems (the latter is my true definition of a hippie).  

I'm not reacting, similar to my non-reactions to claims of being an atheist - followed contradictory claims of being a Buddhist.   

And luckily she is not listening to old hippies or new jam bands.  One of my patented anti-hippie screeds is a complaint against the Beatles song 'Let It Be.'  Did Rosa Park let things be?  Did Abe Lincoln? Did Dean Smith? Did Paul Wellstone?  Did John Lewis?  No.  You can NOT let things be.

Not only does that song and sentiment stink, but it's not ever the best 'Let It Be' in music.  This morning I'm listening to The Replacements album of the same name, simply one of the best albums of all time, an album that shows a punk band using that attitude and energy to guide their often sloppy - which is so punk rock! - musical evolution into one of the best rock bands of all time.  You want sloppy brilliance?  'LIB' includes 'I Will Dare' a classic piece of songwriting that features a mandoline solo courtesy of  REM's Peter Buck, and ranging from 'Unsatisfied' to 'Gary's Got a Boner.' It sounds like a compilation album for an era, not a young punk band making their second full-length album.  The last best band on the planet.

The Mats' version "LIB" proves something that does not even need to be said, but I will to continue to keep the record straight - punk rock is better than non-punk rock (and the civil rights movement had better music than the anti-war movement, too).

EVAN

So I'm proud of playing it cool over my hippie daughter.  We'll see how I do with Evan, who last weekend timidly asked 'Is it okay if I become a Redskins fan?'

I haven't followed the NFL closely for years, since the year the players went on strike and he owners fielded replacement teams full of strike breakers at line backer.  Fans actually showed up and tuned in to watch the scabs play - hey, violence is violence, right?  The union quickly caved in the face of public support for the owners, and as a result football players - with the exception of uber-protected quarterbacks - have been treated like meat ever since: few guaranteed contracts, pretty limp pension and health benefits, longer seasons that turn a players body to pulp, etc.   

Anyway, during the baseball strike of 1994 I realized how much I missed baseball; I didn't and haven't missed the NFL since their strike and the owners' defeat of the union.

But one consequence of living in DC is you live in a Redskins town.  And all of Evan's friends, at least the guys he plays baseball with, are Skins fans. And I started the slippery slop by watching the Heels play on Saturdays, and taking him to Chapel Hill four out of the last five seasons to watch a game.

So even though they have the most offensive nickname is sports, are owned by a guy who makes George Steinbrenner look like Dean Smith, and the entire NFL is nothing more than 'right wing theater' we've got a Redskins fan in the house.

His room is next door to the hippies'.

September

The 1st of September gives me an excuse to blog about time, or at least this time of year.

I miss the passing of August. Congress is gone, we spend a week in the Outer Banks, the kids are still out of school and generally much less scheduled, and football season has not yet started.

All that ends in September. Congress will be slammed trying to pass health care and get an energy and climate bill through the Senate in the next two months - where I get to redebate off shore drilling for the umpteenth time since 1985 - and Ariadne will start a new school, Burke, on September 8th.

Those are significant.

One insignificant thing that bothers me is how the Post's sports page goes from being a section devoted to all sports to one that exclusively belongs to our local, offensively-named football team. I've never liked the 'redskins' and like them even less having moved here. And the Post makes that worse but devoted articles to Daniel Snyder's temper tantrums, Clinton Portis' costumes, and every other mundane detail in between.

But this is a 'redskins' town, something even Obama can't change.

A few more sports notes

• Perhaps undercutting my previous rant, the Post also devoted a substantial column to a wrap up of the English Premier (football) League in Sunday's paper. That same space only had three paragraphs devoted to Major League Soccer, our domestic league. I wonder how much that kind of coverage hurts the development of the MLS. It's easy to catch their games on basic cable, a situation that will get worse - at least from MLS' perspective - now that ESPN as opposed to the Fox Soccer Channel has the US broadcast rights to the EPL. I imagine quite a few serious soccer fans eschew the MLS since it's easy to follow the world's best soccer league via cable, the web and now papers like the Post.
• One other note from Sunday's papers. The front page of the NY Times carried a story on Florida losing population for the first time since World War II. The mortgage and housing crisis is cited, but I also wonder if Florida is finally choking on it's own vomit. That crisis was simply the cherry on top of a state full of sprawl, crowded schools, and way too many t-shirt shops. And as Jon Stewart has noted - and Carl Hiassen has made a living chronicling - thanks to Terry Chiavo, Burmese python attacks, etc. Florida has surpassed California as the state most full of crazy people and bizarre stories. FInally, the politics there have gotten terrible, with evangelicals and suburbanites dominating state-level politics, slashing services and trying to carry out a gun-centric, anti-gays/women/choice/environmental agenda from Tallahassee. All those chickens seem to be coming home to roost (though in fairness I doubt many have moved out due to the politics, though I bet a few did in the wake of the Chiavo thing).