2013 in Music

When I started compiling this list earlier this month, I had some trouble because 2013 was such a hard year to focus on the good music. I mean, there was just so much bad. Bad music with a bad message (“Blurred Lines”), good music with bad connotations (“Wrecking Ball”), bad, bad music with a fair message ripping off about eight 80s songs (“Roar”). That’s not even addressing the Biebs.

                But New Years is about new beginnings, so let’s avoid the bad. I regret posting this the day after the Grammys because—unbelievably—they got it right at least once and it looks like I’m following along. But good was good this year.

Here they are, the best albums of 2013, according to me.

Best Album of 2013

Daft Punk—Random Access Memories

                Unavoidable. I could try to bump up one of my Honourable Mentions and write a long explanation for not doing the obvious but, aw screw it, I’m doing the obvious. These guys have always been game changers, but to come leaping out at dance expectation with  funk re-imagining is bold, surprising, and almost makes it easy to ignore their employment of Pharrell Williams—forever marred by his appearance in Robin Thicke’s dinosaur song no matter how many Despicable Mes he does—or of the actual lyrics of “Get Lucky.” It’s too good.

Choice track: Okay, well, ignoring Pharrell and the fact that this song is pretty much the summer anthem of 2013, “Get Lucky” is your choice track. But the rest of the album is solid gold, and I’m currently into “Contact.”

Honourable Mention 1

Sykamore—Petal

                If I chose simply on number of listens, this is my runaway winner. It was tough not choosing this as

Numero Uno, but I’ve already explained myself. This is a superb album, flirting at times with country (notable in the custom of that genre’s mentioning of US cities and states), but the back half achieves something much grander. This is a singer-songwriter with an unbeatable voice whose production team has taken her to the next level. Watch this young lady: she’s for real.

Choice track: “Slow Dancing”

Honourable Mention 2

Pearl Jam—Lightning Bolt

                I’m not going to defend my bias: I’m a huge PJ fan. This is a great PJ album, but for different reasons than their last few. There are about five magnificent songs on this, as good as any of their best in the past ten years. But “Mind Your Manners” and “Sirens” are two of the best songs in the entire Pearl Jam canon. Supreme, and that much greater because they’re so different. The album is good, great even, but these two tracks stand out so far that the rest of the album is in their shadow.

Choice track: Yeah, well, when you spend the whole thing talking about two songs . . . but looking past them, give yourself some time to indulge in a band that’s still better than most. Try out the title track.

Honourable Mention 3

The Civil Wars—The Civil Wars

                Apparently this is a very apt name for the band and the album. The two things I know about this duo are that they sound great (also flirting at times with that country sound, but it’s okay) and apparently they can’t stand each other. They’ve gone on hiatus—which long time fans are used to. But if you want to hear male and female leads and harmonies that complement each other perfectly, and both singers are capable (I’m looking at you Of Monsters and Men), this is your stop. Well, a stop. See below.

Choice Track: “The One that Got Away”—but don’t miss the cover of Smashing Pumpkins “Disarm.”

Honourable Mention 4

Nine Inch Nails—Hesitation Marks

                This album got a lot of great reviews, but many of them—like Rolling Stone’s for example—make the foolish claim that it’s good because it’s reminiscent of The Downward Spiral. That completely ignores Trent Reznor’s growth as an artist, how far he’s come in his song writing and arrangements. One need only listen to his other 2013 release with How to Destroy Angels or listen to one of his film soundtracks or see him preforming to a stadium full of confused 30+ year old stoners to understand that the teenage angst has been buried. It may not be better than that seminal work, but it’s richer. As involved a listen as Daft Punk, NIN has grown up with us.

Choice track: “Copy of A.”

Honourable Mention 5

Me & the Mrs. The Ghosts of What Became

                So, imagine if you took the good of Mumford and Sons and the Civil Wars, wrapped around themes of marriage, love, loss, and faith. What would you get? This. A great little indy release tucked away in Southern Alberta and available on bandcamp.com (meandthemrs), it’s worth more than a few listens to hear the tricks of timing changes, and two capable vocalists—this was the year of female/male vocal match-ups. But unlike the Civil Wars, these guys will be sticking around as they’re just getting started, and embarking on a major recording project in 2014.

Choice track: “I Lose Heart.” It’s like folk prog.

The Rest of the Good

Ben Harper and Charlie Musselwhite—Get Up!

                Ben’s always been a guy to experiment. Forays into pop and gospel, slide guitar. But since he last recorded with the Innocent Criminals—his most commercial material—he’s been deeply entrenched in the blues. Introducing the wider world to virtuoso harmonica player Musselwhite was a fine move, but it does feel like Harper’s limiting himself a little.

Choice Track: “I Ride at Dawn”

Hayden—Us Alone

                I was in the demography of mopey late teens who sat girlfriendless in our rooms and listened to “Bad As They Seem” on repeat. I followed him for a while, saw him live once, but somewhere around the turn of the century I lost track of Hayden. Apparently I wasn’t alone. His reclusion is so chronic that for a while he was rumoured dead. Nope, all that died was his gravelly voice, but still give his Jack Johnson phase a chance.

Choice track: “Rainy Saturday”

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis—The Heist

                Perhaps you’ve heard of this one. Hey, is Ryan Lewis the most useless celebrity since the Kardashians? This album has some great songs, but really, that’s all I can listen to. The filler is just that, and hip-hop filler is worse than most. But, he’s (they’re?) to be forgiven for writing a song with a message as good as “Same Love” as satirical as “Thrift Shop” or as good as the choice track.

Choice track: “Ceiling Can’t Hold Us” is one of the best tunes of the year.

Biffy Clyro—Opposites

AND

Arcade Fire—Reflektor

                Here’s the thing about a double album: if you’re going to release one, you better make dang sure that you’ve got great material to justify your pomposity. Arcade Fire and the lesser-know Biffy Clyro both were coming off of superb previous releases of the all killer, no filler variety. But they’ve gone with the kiss of death. As good as these albums are—and they are good—they’re bloated, full of random extras and musical navel-gazing. Had they been trimmed to the length of their last releases, they’d be as good and maybe better.

Choice tracks:

Biffy—“Stingin’ Belle”

Arcade—“Normal Person”

Iron and Wine--Ghost on Ghost

               As good as this was when it first came out, it just didn't stick with me. He sort of has that one sound syndrome, and once you've had you're fill, there's no returning to it. However, enough growth between albums that I'm hopeful that he's on to something great.

Choice track: "Grace for Saints and Ramblers"

Dream Theater—Dream Theater

                I’ll eat some crow. If you read these every year (and I’m not narcissistic enough to think anyone—including my mom—does) you’ll know that two years ago I ragged pretty hard on this band’s first release after founding drummer Mike Portnoy jumped ship. It was weak, even though prog metal is kind of like pizza: even when it’s bad. . . . They sounded like they were covering themselves. No new ideas. Well, they wrote that before signing drummer Mike Mangini and on this self-titled album his contribution is wondrous. It’s like they’ve rediscovered time signatures.

Choice track: And yet, my favourite is the power-ballad “Along For the Ride”  

Apologies to Blue Rodeo, the Winery Dogs, and Atoms for Peace--I'm focused on the good. 

Booklist 2013

The books I read in 2013:

(Jan 1—March 19)

1.       Doppler by Erlend Loe

2.       Rhode in the Sea by Kortnee Paiha

3.       The Elements of Style  by Strunk and White

4.       Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young

5.       Tiassa by Steven Brust

6.       Wolf of the Plains by Conn Iggulden

7.       419 by Will Ferguson

(March 20-June 21)

8.       Anyway Anyhow Anywhere by Andy Neill and Matt Kent

9.       To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway

10.   Exploring the Hobbit by Corey Olsen

11.   Why Men Lie by Linden MacIntyre

12.   Tree and Leaf by J. R. R. Tolkien

13.   Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

14.   Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

15.   On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner

16.   Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

17.   The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

18.   The Silmarillion Seminars by Corey Olsen

19.   Dubliners by James Joyce

20.   The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje

(June 22-Sept 20)

21.   Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

22.   Under the Dome by Stephen King

23.   The Annotated Hobbit by Douglas A. Anderson

24.   J.R.R. Tolkien; A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter

25.   Ru by Kim Thuy

26.   Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

27.   The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King

28.   William Shakespeare’s Star Wars by Ian Doescher

29.   The Joy of Writing by Pierre Berton

30.   Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

31.   Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese

(Sept 20-Dec 31)

32.   The Four Loaves by C.S. Lewis

33.   The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

34.   Walking in This World by Julia Cameron

35.   The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien

On the Nature of Friendship

Friends. One wrote about what it meant, one wrote about it between elves and dwarves. 

Here’s the perspective: in August a friend of mine died. Sadly, this was not the first, and the unique nature of this particular friendship—I was close to sixty years this man’s junior—meant that it wasn’t totally unexpected. But a friend had died, and as is the nature of such times, another friend did exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. He sent me a quote from C. S. Lewis’s The Four Loaves on the nature of friendship.

                It was what I needed and that friend knew because that friend knows me.

                Since that day in August, I’ve been struggling hard with the definition of friendship: what it means to me, how I need it, how it affects me. The loss of one friend and the celebration of another is a complex collection of emotions to unbundle.  

                I am blessed with some great friends. Not many, but enough. I can say that although I had friends growing up, I was nearly two decades old before I learned what friendship is in its purest form.

                To define friendship—that special and intimate bond that Lewis defines as strong as but different from the union with a spouse—is to fall unavoidably into cliché. A friend is someone who loves you for who you are, who you can be yourself with. A friend knows you better than you know yourself. A friend loves you in spite of and because of your faults.

                As I have aged, I have learned to appreciate these Hallmark qualities, because I have so few of these friendships, these of the true, pure variety.

                There’s a group of us, all from Southwest Saskatchewan though none of us still resides there, who manage to get together in some form about once per year. One of these sent me the message this August. Around these magnificent fellas I feel a lightness because we truly can and do say anything and it is accepted. Gently mocked, perhaps, but never judged. Better yet, heard. Even if it is disagreed with, each man is respected be the rest of the group. There is a kind of looking—really looking—at someone using both eyes that I love. With true friends, we listen—really listen—with both ears.

                That group is special because of its equality, its open love between several equals. It’s what each individual brings to the group that makes it the greater whole, and that is a beautiful thing.

                There are a few others of these best friendships, many that I see only once in a very long while as well. I’m lucky enough to even have a handful nearby.

                But I’ve noticed that I’ve started to have trouble making that type of friend. I don’t think I’ve changed much, but of course, marriage changes us, and parenthood. In the best marriages—and I’m in the best marriage—some of our friendship needs are fulfilled.

                Though not entirely. Here I have to agree with Lewis: a marriage will never completely provide what a friendship does. Lewis—in his 1950s, Old World academic, overly-Christian sorta way—said that love between men (he was from a time where you never quibbled about pronouns) is a different thing than the love between a man and a woman (he was also from a time where what I’ve been writing here would not have been read with overt homosexual double entendres to the dispassionate or cynical. Well, that may be a lie . . . ). Although I don’t agree with where he was coming from, I agree with where he went. Real friendship fulfils in way that nothing else can. No other relationship compares.

                It was not until I was nearly twenty that I understood this. Until then, I had never had friend tell me he loved me, or that I loved him, or her. I can’t imagine the void I would have now without such love, and I am saddened to know that there are many people whose greatest foundations are nothing but superficial.

                August has, for whatever reason, caused me to question and wonder about who my friends are, or better, why they are friends with me specifically. What special qualities in me and in them have created this unique thing that we live for? Some things are better left existing unexamined, yet some remain the cause for study and celebration.

                This, then, is the nature of true friendship: it causes us to celebrate the life of another and the life of our self, and to further over-joy in what is created by the bond.  

Why I Wear the Poppy

for Robbie

I wear a poppy over my heart because I have always worn a poppy over my heart. And as with anything good, it starts off as unquestioned habit, is reconsidered for its merits, and is reapplied with greater conviction.

                This year more than ever I remember it also as a symbol of many things that matter to me, one a late friendship with a veteran; it’s a symbol of what brought us to be friends, a symbol of a connection we shared.

                “Sacrifice” and “valour” and “heroes.” “For our country” and “liberty.” Words and phrases people use to justify the wearing of the poppy.

                It doesn’t need justification.

                I am a pacifist. War is atrocious. Like greed and hate, it is one of man’s simplest and greatest evils. Impossible to justify.

                There are men and there are souls that once were boys, and did what they felt was right or what they were told to do. They justified it how they could and how they had to.

                They faced the awful in the world and in themselves. They lay their lives and their innocence on a cold iron slab knowing that they were guaranteed the loss of one or the other. No retaining both.

                For those that survived that insanity, they returned to the world and they lived lives. They went on. They justified and they compensated because they had to find a way to be human again. They never forgot and they never let it go because they couldn’t. Who could? To let that go would be to forfeit their humanity.

                Where I live, there’s a man who was amongst the first to hit Juno beach on D-Day. He had signed up, trained, shipped out, and finally attacked with a group of friends from home. He was the only one of that group who returned after the war. For the next sixty years, he established himself as essential to his community. He was involved in everything. He coached, he volunteered, he was a cheerleader and an organizer. Tireless. Just to make his town better. Because he felt an obligation. Because he felt like he was living more lives than his own.

                That is why I wear the poppy.

                It is the symbol of my friend, a man who grew to be the best man in my life, an essential bond, even though it was in his own twilight years. We first bonded when he told me tales of the bloodbath of Ortona. Of depravity and horror and what he had to do to come through it, both alive and as a man. He changed my life, and every Remembrance Day for ten years I called him to tell him I loved him and to hear about the life he had made after he had put his innocence on that slab. Heard of the normal he had made after that brief, altering horror.

                That is why I wear the poppy.

                This year I can’t call him. This year is the first that Remembrance has a double meaning.

                It’s not about death, it’s not about victory, it’s not about intangibles like liberty and way of life. These are the things that those that came after must tell ourselves. In our selfishness to justify why we do it we make it grander, we talk about our way of life saved.

                To me, it’s not about our way of life. It’s about lives: those that were ended, and those that continued, changed.

                That is why I wear the poppy. 

Teaching to the Touch Screens

I came into teaching at a pretty exciting time. The century had just turned, we were comfortably into a full

Who teaches who here?

assimilation of the Internet into daily life, and students were readily using Google and Yahoo to conduct research online. But early Internet nannies weren’t allowing them to view Mars Explorer because the domain name spelled “SEX” in the middle. Still some figuring.

Teachers were seeing that the kids already knew as much or more than they did, and many were resisting all of this “technology”—the term we still use for anything that, y’know, beeps and boops and crashes and freezes and we aren’t quite sure we fully understand and threatens EVERY ASPECT OF DECENT HUMAN EXISTENCE!

                At the time, us fresh-faced educators were being strongly encouraged to embrace these new tools, to learn them because they had awesome potential. The kids were adapting anyway, so may as well stay ahead of the curve. Most of us did. By the late 90s, being tech-savvy was a sure-fire way to get hired in everything from garbage collection to piano tuning.

                Flash forward a bit more than a decade and I’m an educator in the age of smartphones and tablets. High speed this, miniature that. Apps that unlock your car and set the seat warmer to “I just want to have a bottle of wine and cry.” The devices are small and powerful, they stun us with how quickly—daily it feels—the rules change, and there’s no longer a little paperclip to tell you how to do what it looks like you’re doing. Just a cold, greedy, soulless once-bitten apple, and a robot who looks scarily like a psychopathic extra from The Black Hole.

                We the teachers are still being encouraged to embrace, and we try. We are shown methods of bringing every form of device and application into the learning process. Much of this is wonderful and often useful rather than just trendy. Learning and its delivery are changing. I can text my students a reminder of their homework, I can create a website or blog of my lessons, I can chat in online rooms that are dedicated to me communicating with my kids and their parents all day and all night and all week and all year.

                We do it, we do it. We’re such great teachers because we’re teaching on the kids’ terms.

                BUT.

                There are cameras everywhere. In the locker-rooms, in the hallways. Kids are Snapchatting every time I turn my back to refresh my Activeboard. Altercations between staff and students are filmed and posted, out of context and out of control. Two kids can bait a teacher into losing her cool in class and a third can film, edit, and post the ensuing rant to the delight of millions. Zoiks! I didn’t sign up for this. How do we monitor every way we can be viewed and assessed and especially judged?

                Worse, the teachers who are the least savvy of social networks tend to suffer its backlash the most.

                I try to stay current. I Facebook, I Instagram, I blog. I’ve got like three clouds going, two sets of online documents, and a good half-dozen online personas. I don’t Snapchat, I don’t Vine, I don’t tweet. A student told me recently that she was tweeting about my classes—she sort of overblew how much it was all “trending”—and even though she meant it as a compliment to my teaching, I got a little uneasy. When you put it out there, it’s out there, and open to the world.  One of the biggest generational differences is how we view the Internet. I see it as the ocean: huge, sprawling, endlessly flowing. Awesome but potentially dangerous. The kids see it as a glass of water: sure there’s more out there, but I’m only worried about this little bit I have here.  

                We have entered an age where Millennials are now teachers. They are pretty darn good at keeping up with the kids, but they also appear to have the greatest issues with seeing the lines of the public and the personal. That’s the double-edged sword. The person who uses all these advancements in how we can interact with our learners appears to be the most susceptible to having issues removing the public from the private.

                Take Facebook. Let us just for a moment ignore the fact that this website has the most porous security system in the world, subject to retroactive and inane changes at the drop of a hat. Most teachers I know have a Facebook identity. Some of them are friends with students: former, current or both. Perhaps you can see the issues.

                -Make friends with a kid, you are communicating with a minor on a website where that kid will post and say anything, no matter how inappropriate. Even if you’re not being inappropriate, you’re still linked to that.

                -If you have a policy of only adding kids as friends once they’re adults, they are friends with minors still, and you’re connected to those minors via that newly-minted adult.

                -You don’t add any kids or their parents or their family dog as friends, but then a friend of yours takes a photo of you sucking the hose from a keg, tags you, and because you are—forgivably—unaware of the latest change of Facebook’s infamous opt-out security re-do (the one from five minutes ago), everyone with a pair of fingers and a search engine can see that friendship-ending Instagram share.

                Many teachers avoid Facebook, and then are told by tech-loving administration that it’s good to keep up with the kids. Others (guilty) create two Facebook profiles: public and private, but that doesn’t allow you to break the law, nor does it give you complete anonymity. Especially if you have the same friend on both.

                Point: we, your kids’ educators, are trying really hard to keep up with the world Steve Jobs put in fast forward. Our bosses and professional counsellors encourage us to learn about the newest website or networking site or whatever that sounds like it’s been named by a two year old. I’m really keen on it.

                BUT #2. A teacher has to be extremely careful about keeping private and public separate. This is difficult when you are “out there” in so many rapidly-changing ways. It’s worse when you’re being drawn, blinking and scared, from your deep, dark cave in which you have sworn you will remain forever oblivious, forever lost in a time when Christian Slater was a bankable actor.       

                Who we are and what we do are becoming one, and there are few professions where that may have as resounding an effect. 

Five Rules to Help You Keep Your Soul in November

1. Candy is not breakfast. 

Hand-picked for the Senate by the PM

2. If you're growing a moustache but doing nothing for charity, you're a Grade 11 hockey player. Congrats, A-hole.

3. Christmas is in late December. You're not Wal-Mart. Have some class and shaddup about it for at LEAST a month. You're making it impossible for those of us trying to find a reason not to hate it.

4. Of the major holidays/events of October through December, Remembrance Day is the most important. (Then Grey Cup, this year only). Show some respect for the only one of these not whored-over by capitalism, wouldja?

5. Winter is going to happen now. Go outside and enjoy it because it's awesome. 

In Texas drawl, "Saskatchewan" takes two minutes to say . . .

Minute Maid Stadium and the Damn Yankees

The best reason to go to South Texas when your home is starting the dry, windy spiral into fall and then winter is the heat. Sure. But as Dad and I made our transfer in Dallas Fort/Worth International and started looking for a place to eat as we awaited our connecting flight to Houston, what struck me was the humidity.     

                Ah yes, that. I’ve lived in the tropics and beside the ocean, but I’m still reminded about how I can’t really remember it until I feel it again when my skin does a little happy dance.

                Dad and I were flying to Houston today, t

o meet Adam and indulge ourselves in a man weekend entirely dedicated to the excesses that are the celebration of American sports. Two ball games, one football game. Texas. Big, loud, unapologetic.

                It was my Dad’s sixtieth birthday present from us boys, though I’m embarrassed to tell you that we were only making good on it five days before his sixty-first. See, the problem was the NFL season, which takes so damn long to release its schedule. The other problem is very few US cities host an MLB game and an NFL game the same weekend. S’pose that makes sense. We came close to having it figured in Minneapolis, but then I discovered that that little Viking “home game” was actually taking place in Wimbley Stadium.

                So, Houston, Texas, then. No worries. My wife simply told me I was not allowed to discuss politics with the locals under any circumstances. I nearly kept that promise, too.

                The Houston Astros play at the gorgeous downtown Minute Maid Park. They are one of baseball’s truly terrible teams, so we got impressive lower-tier seats for the two games (12 and 21 rows from right field, respectively) for a good price. Would’ve been a great price but they were playing the dastardly New York Yankees, they of the bloated payroll who have fans in every city they go to. Like the Toronto Maple Leafs of baseball only with, like, the odd championship every decade or two.

                Anyway, I love baseball. My brother had made this an NFL trip—and there’s nothing like an NFL game—but I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of a ballpark. It was my best sport as a kid, so I can sit back in a live setting and watch nine innings. I can do this on a steady stream of ballpark nachos, popcorn, hotdogs, and of course clichéd Texas beer in two-pint cans. Texas. . .

                The second game, Saturday night, was Hispanic Appreciation Night (the football game would do the same on Sunday), so there were many families of Hispanic descent at the game. It was cool to see the power this old sport still has over people.

                Sadly, the Yankees won both games, and the cheers to support them showed that Minute Maid Stadium was about fifty/fifty on its allegiances that night, sort of like McMahon when the Riders are in town. Seriously, though, it took me from apathetic to emphatic anti-Yankee. Not that I’m an Astros fan, mind; I’ll stick to the Jays.

               

                I’m a culture-hunter, but I was on a sports trip with sports nuts. I wouldn’t say we experienced much of Houston aside from its food, sports, and people associated with same. I enjoyed all three. I search my mind for a memory of one Texan who was not ridiculously friendly and helpful and I can’t think of one.

                Near our hotel, though, was a convention floor hosting an immense guns and ammunition show. This in the wake of another mass shooting last week in Washington, at a place where everyone was armed even though the NRA tells us that more guns would keep people safer. Watching a ninety pound mullet-wearing man with a mustache and a rat face and a wild look in his eyes exit the convention centre with a long cardboard box and an expression of righteous indignation reminded me of where I was.

                Oh, that and the Impeach Obama booth outside the Gun Show. Friendly Texans there too.

                “Hey, sir, will you sign our petition to impeach Obama?”

                “I’m Canadian.”

                “So be a good neighbor.”

                “I’d rather impeach our guy.”

                See, just the one time I broke that promise to my wife.

                Sunday was the Houston Texans game at Reliant Stadium, a half hour train ride south of our hotel.

The game was at noon. We got there at nine. Not because of lines, not because of tickets, but because of that most celebrated American football pastime: the tailgate party.

                Lordy, them Texans.

                It’s an institution, and to hear the locals brag over churning cast iron briquette flame, Houston hosts one of the NFL’s finest. How do you get inside a tailgate party? You say hello.

                Soon, you’re being handed beer, a plate with four shades of brown food, and you’re making new friends with anyone and everyone. One of the things the three of us had done to get involved in discussions was wear our Roughriders hats to each of the games, and the locals loved to hear about our own passion for our own team.

                These were fun people celebrating the South’s true religion: football and fried meat.

               

                As for the game (oh, yeah, there’s football today!) after the two baseball games, the intensity of domed Reliant Stadium and its rabid fans was over-stimulation. It was as deafening and as manic as a rock show, and after the Texans started to blow things in the second half, the fans quickly turned on quarterback Matt Shaub. The Seattle Seahawks went to 4-0 with the overtime win and them nice Texans were calling for their pivot’s blood. At least they had the post-game tailgate to drown their sorrows and a Sunday evening in Houston’s sports bars to watch the remaining evening games on TV.

                I climbed the Chase building to the observation deck. I saw the historic part of Houston’s downtown. I was in the tunnels. I walked past where the Symphony Orchestra plays. I did not get much culture in Houston. I got sports, I got my Dad and brother. I got to worship at the true temples of American faith.

They play "Bulls on Parade" on offensive drives in this military-mad town. Anyone even read the lyrics?