Just Seven Days Can Make Your Kid Smarter and Your Vacations Better

My son Owen returns to school this week to begin 4th grade. It has been an amazing summer full of baseball, swimming and sleeping in. Alas, the clock has struck fall so it is time again to line up in rows and do as you are told.  Everybody says, "Summer went too fast" and while it certainly feels this way, the fact is, summer is actually a little too long. We would all be much better served to chop it down to size a bit. There are two reasons why this is the right call. One, it is better for the kids and two, it is better for the parents.

Let's start with the kids. I'm not going to go all Malcolm Gladwell on you, but the fact is that long breaks from school have an adverse effect on a student's ability to retain and build on previously learned information. This isn't an opinion open to discussion, it is a stone cold fact supported by all kinds of nerdy types wearing white lab coats. 

Or put another way, imagine school as a treadmill for your brain. Is it better to workout hard for nine months and then spend three months not breaking a sweat, or take more numerous, smaller breaks through out the year? Pretty simple answer huh? By taking such a long break, you basically have to start over instead of picking up closer to the progress when you left off. After such a long layoff, you hit the treadmill and run out of breathe very quickly. The first month is spent just getting back to where you were when you stopped. 

But enough about the educational benefits of a shorter summer, when was the last time anybody in America made decisions based on educational benefits anyway? That's like taking somebody out for a salad. Just doesn't happen. Let's get down to brass tacks..

A shorter summer would allow parents more flexibility when planning vacations throughout the rest of the year. Also, we wouldn't spent the last two weeks of August getting on each other's nerves waiting for school to start. Summer ends long before it "ends" if you know what I mean. Let's just get back after it sooner and save those days for later in the school year when  when they have more value.

I'm not about to propose some wacky, probably highly effective year round school schedule used by Sweden or somewhere like that. No sir. If i know one thing about us human types, it is that change scares the shit out of us. Remember how terrified we used to be of freed slaves, heavy metal lyrics and gay marriage? Turns out they were no big deal after all. But just to be on the safe side, let's start slow by only knocking seven days off the summer and see where that gets us? Just seven days. 

For starters we have a no brainer. Thanksgiving week the kids have three days off: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Let's throw two days down so now everybody has the full Thanksgiving week off. Want to visit family but find it stressful to jam all that traveling into a long weekend? Not anymore. Now you will have Nov23-Dec 1st free to make your plans. Why do we even bother to have school on Monday and Tuesday of that week anyway? Just concede nothing is getting done and make it a full week off.

Ok, that leaves us with 5 days to throw around. It seems to me that different schools having different spring breaks is a source of aggravation. Or it sounds that way at the coffee shop anyway. Maybe we put a week in around that time? People who work/study at Ohio State have different schedule than their kids/family so maybe we spend the five days there? Or.. I can tell you in our family, we like to take our niece with us somewhere over spring break but because she attends a Catholic School, our break time doesn't match up and it makes for a difficult situation. Maybe that would be a good spot? So to summarize:

Owen has spring break Mar31st-April4th. We could use our five days to add an extra week of spring break . We could choose to line-up with Ohio State's break which is Mar11-15th or with the Catholic school schedule which is the week of Easter April21-25th. Either is cool with me.

So by just knocking off seven days of summer, families can have a full week of Thanksgiving travel time and an extra week of spring break for travel flexibility. Wouldn't this be a better use of time than the wasted, lazy days of the summertime blues?

Oh, and it's better for the kids.  

Just a thought anyway. 

Colin Gawel plays in Watershed and writes things for Pencilstorm when business is slow at Colin's Coffee. His son Owen goes to Upper Arlington Schools and is damn lucky he does.  To learn more about Colin and other contributors to Pencilstorm please click here

Commercials, Rock & Roll and The Decline of Western Civilization

I watch a lot of television.  I have no problem admitting that.  As such, I wind up watching a lot of commercials (especially if I can’t reach the remote).  I will now proceed to complain about those commercials.

“Every day more people connect face to face on the iPhone than any other phone.” – quote from a currently running iPhone commercial.

NO, NO, NO, THAT’S NOT FUCKING TRUE.  IF YOU ARE TALKING ON AN iPHONE, THAT IS NOT CONNECTING FACE TO FACE.  YOU ARE TALKING INTO A MACHINE, AND THE PERSON YOU’RE TALKING TO IS TALKING INTO A DIFFERENT MACHINE. YOU ARE NOT CONNECTING FACE TO FACE! 

Look, it doesn’t matter how much soothing/tinkling/new-age piano music is oh-so-discreetly, dreamily playing behind the dialogue that is wholly attempting to tug at your heartstrings and get you to believe you’re actually COMMUNICATING FACE TO FACE with another human being on your iPhone, you’re not, YOU’RE TALKING ON A CELLPHONE, just like millions of people before you have.

Further, from another iPhone ad: “Every day more people get their music on the iPhone than any other phone.”  Yeah, congrats kids, you’re getting thin, incredibly compressed, bad-sounding Robin Thicke tunes in total isolation on your little earbuds, oblivious to the world around you while you bump into me walking down the street. 

Make no mistake, I am entirely aware that I’m in full anti-technology Grumpy Old Guy, Drunk-Uncle-From-Saturday-Night-Live mode here, but I don’t care, these commercials presenting iPhones as some kind of soulful, heartwarming means of communication are just the worst kind of patronizing, false advertising.  And that (ostensibly, it’s all subjective) adorable little boy who kisses his iPhone and then grins so big – I hope he gets brain cancer from that too-close contact with his machine.  (Author’s note: My lovely wife Debbie – who edits my Pencilstorm blogs as well as the large majority of my entries on   Growing Old With Rock & Roll – and my good friend Kyle both asked me to take out the “wishing brain cancer on an innocent child” reference, but in the end I found that, in all good faith, I just could not.  That kid’s parents put him in that video for a quick buck from their soulless Corporate Masters and they must now live with the consequences of that decision.  On second thought, I think I'll wish brain cancer on the parents, in the hopes that at some point they were stupid enough to kiss their iPhones.)

Other commercial comments: Jim Steinman – the songwriter responsible for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell records, among others, and the man instrumental (pun intended) for Colin getting signed to Epic Records in the 90’s (read all about it in Joe Oestreich’s excellent Watershed band bio Hitless Wonder) – seems to be conducting a fire sale of his material for commercial considerations.  He’s got “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” in an M&M’s ad and sold out Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” for some fiber bar.  (And he even let them change the lyrics to that tune, to include a fiber bar reference.  Weak.)

By my calculation, Mr. Steinman has sold approximately eleventeen million bazillion copies of Bat Out Of Hell and they play Mr. Loaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” and/or “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” on Classic Rock Radio approximately every 23 minutes, thus he shouldn’t be hurting for cash, so WHY, Jim, WHY?  When is enough money enough money?  (In my household this is known as The Pete Townshend Selling His Ass To The Highest Bidder Conundrum.)

Finally, I see that Jake Bugg, “alternative” artist who was recently extolled by (the now useless, irrelevant, antiquated) Rolling Stone magazine as a “New Dylan” is hawking Gatorade with his tune “Lightning Bolt,” apparently primarily because Gatorade sports (pun intended) a lightning bolt on its label.  Is it too much to ask for ANYONE to have a little integrity in this Commercial World?  And I fully realize that even Bob Dylan himself appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial in 2004, but only because he was provided, as compensation for that ad, with 72 virgin models by the lingerie manufacturer.  (And where did Victoria’s Secret even FIND 72 models who were virgins?) - Ricki C. / August 18th, 2013.  

Ricki C likes himself a good rant. Learn more about him and other Pencilstorm contributors by clicking here. 

A Prayer for Breaking Bad. Kill Skyler. by Tommy C.

You know, Breaking Bad, it's kind of  like I’m Conan and you’re his Barbarian God Crom – I've never prayed to you, and you don’t mind because you wouldn’t like it anyway.

It's awkward for both of us, I'm sure. And why would you need prayers in the first place? You’re already kicking ass. Absolutely nobody's questioning that.

No, I come to you with full faith in your writing, and your actors. I know they won’t fail us, and humanity knows it, too. You’re the Greatest Show Ever, and your ending will make us all grab our faces and scream, and then run out into the street still screaming about how awesome it was.

I know that you won’t abuse yourself with normal Big Series Endings, that you’ll avoid the Newhart Ending, where Walt wakes up on the couch with the cast of Malcom in the Middle running around him banging pots and pans together. And I know you’ll avoid the LOST ending, where all the characters go and have pizza in a parallel universe and agree that the show was never about crime or meth or tightly-woven plotlines, but was instead about several hundred classic works of literature.

And I know that the characters won’t just go out to dinner someplace and then you turn the camera off.

No, I come to you with respect, Breaking Bad, like the dude came to the Godfather and yes, I have a favor, something I need from you that only you can provide. Something the whole world needs at this exact time in television history.

Something I beg of you, sir, as your humble and faithful follower.

I want you to kill Skyler, Breaking Bad.

I hate her so much that I frequently find myself screaming obscenities at her image on the screen. I have to rewind it a lot when she’s poking around for stuff to do. Please kill her.

Pretty, pretty please, Breaking Bad?

I mean, I don’t want to micromanage. I understand that you probably have to have Hank nearly get Walt but then get killed in a very tricky way by Walt, who then appears to get away but then Jesse shows up and shoots him, ironically using all the amoral cunning and criminal experience he gained teaming up with Walt in the first place. And I understand that at the end, Walt’s annoying son gets a stack of cash – sure.

But kill Skyler. And I mean like, kill her when she’s in the act of being an irritating moron, that would be the most satisfying thing, like she walks into some deadly trap Walt set up for say, Hank. Explodes or maybe gets her head cut off by some sheet metal, or she’s eaten alive by pigs or insects. You're a very original show - go nuts.

That’d be great. Hallowed be thy name. Don’t forget to kill Skyler. See you Sunday.

Tommy C. is a man of mystery who writes the acclaimed blog "The Curse of Future Tom". You can learn more about him and others on our contributors page. 

Shark Attack Obsession! by Johnny DiLoretto

I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Let me rephrase. For a guy who lives in the middle of Ohio, doesn’t travel much, and never goes into the ocean, I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Yes, it’s all because of Jaws, but, more than fear, Jaws inspired in me a lifelong fascination with sharks. Can’t get enough of ‘em. Love to learn about claspers and the ampullae of Lorenzini and all that.  Look those up and thank me later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clasper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

Photos like this are hypnotizing. You know, you could be in there...

I should also clarify that in addition to thinking about sharks, I think a lot about being eaten by a shark. Now, the Washington Post just published an article about this and here are the latest numbers: “Last year, 80 unprovoked shark strikes took place worldwide: Seven resulted in deaths, including one in California. Fifty-three strikes took place in U.S. waters, nearly half of them off Florida.”

That’s more than enough to justify my anti-frolicking-in-the-surf stance. By the way, this is also a guy who loves to fish from the shore when we vacation in the Outer Banks. And while I’m safely fishing from the beach, I intently follow all the swimmers just waiting for one of them to do that horrible jerking thing right before they’re tugged under in a gush of froth and blood.  

I know I have a better chance of being felled by a wheat penny dropped from the Empire State Building than I do of being attacked by a shark, but I’m not interested in the numbers really. Shark attacks are inevitable. They are inevitable because people go into the ocean, and there are sharks in the ocean. If sharks were found in Crate and Barrel, people would be attacked while they were shopping for sofas and flatware.

So, a couple times a year I will see the inevitable news story about someone being bitten and/or killed by a shark. I then eagerly post the story on Facebook and Twitter with an added, and I’m paraphrasing, “I told you so.” Whenever I post these shark-attack stories, beach-lovers and saltwater-swimming enthusiasts everywhere comment to the effect that I’m an idiot; that these attacks are so rare I have nothing to worry about; that more people die in car accidents every year than they do by shark attacks, and so on and so forth.

But this is the reasoning of people who, if they were fictional, would end up dead first in a horror movie.

Yes, it's Photoshopped, but you get the idea. It could happen to you..

First of all, their argument doesn’t hold up. Let me see if I have this right: More people are killed by cars than sharks, so why aren’t I afraid of cars? That's their reasoning? Well, for one, a car won't fucking eat you. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. OK, it’s unlikely, I get it, but why play that particular lottery? We play the good lottery, the big cash payout, change-your-life lottery, because despite the astronomical odds we just might win millions of dollars. But why play the bad, possibly decapitated, lose-your-life lottery? The odds are equally astronomical but if you win this one --- you get eaten by a shark. Congrats. You're a torso. 

That’s ridiculous. If you absolutely insist, by some misguided logic, on playing some variation of lethal lottery,  why not play the golf-club-in-a-thunderstorm lottery. At least you're in one piece when that one's over. 

This is the shark equivalent of having a rain cloud over you.

But, just for kicks, let’s examine this car-shark argument a bit closer. First of all, as I've mentioned, a car won’t eat you. It’s not like you’re walking down the street and suddenly a car swerves off the road, grabs you in its grill and starts thrashing back and forth, tearing off a huge piece of you before casually pulling back onto the road and driving away.

Furthermore, for this shark-car analogy to actually make any sense, we’d have to be driving sharks. And, well, now that’s just Crazy Talk.

This is not Photoshopped. This is really a man being eaten by a car. 

The bottom line is that because automobiles are manmade and because they're one of the most common things we see on a daily basis, they just don't inspire terror. We spend a lot more time in the presence of cars than sharks, so of course we're more likely to be killed by a car. In any event, I would rather die in a car accident than by shark attack. In other words, I’d rather die by blunt force trauma than by being crushed and torn apart in the gaping maw of a ruthless carnivore.

Here’s another, different way of looking at the problem. Why risk it because we may just have it coming... Humans kill more than 100 million sharks a year for no good reason, so maybe shark attacks, which are on the rise globally, are just the animals’ way of trying to even the score. I may be scared shitless of them, but I’m definitely on the sharks' side. I'm with them. Absolutely, I would attack someone if I was a shark too. With pleasure. I’d be like – “look at this guy - dicking around in my territory, swimming, splashing, flailing around like an idiot with his dopey limbs and tacky board shorts. What balls on this guy – killing 100 million of us every year for soup and he comes into my ocean? Screw this guy.” Then wham, I’d clamp down on his ribs.

Just a little food for thought. And, now, for your reading pleasure - a brief history of shark attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/6984067/Worlds-10-worst-shark-attacks.html

Johnny DiLoretto thinks a lot about sharks. You can read his top notch story about the  the movie JAWS by clicking here. Also check out our contributors page to learn more by  clicking here.

Superchunk in 45 Minutes or Less

No, it's been about a month since you posted something.

Speaking of a month, in less than a month Superchunk will release a new album called I Hate Music.

I learned of Superchunk from listening to fIREHOSE. They covered "Slack Motherfucker" live ("It's about working for an ass-hole," Mike Watt would bellow.), but it wasn't until the song was included on their Live Totem Pole EP that I knew what and who I was looking for.

I liked what I heard on Superchunk's debut, "Slack Motherfucker"'s home.  After a few listens, I came away with some favorite songs but nothing to send me racing for more.

A couple years went by.  Superchunk released Here's Where the Strings Come In.  I gave them another try, with similar, yet slighter, results.  I came away with some songs I thought were decent, but the rest, I didn't care for at all.

Several years went by.  Superchunk released Here's to Shutting Up.   My love for albums titles beginning with the contraction "Here's" was at it's pinnacle.  I couldn't resist giving Superchunk one last shot.  The album was much more mellow than their debut, but the songs were a lot better than Strings.  I was satisfied.  However, I wasn't inspired to dig any further into their catalogue.

Many years went by, and the music scene began to see acts from the early 90's reunite and tour and sometimes release new material.  While Superchunk never broke up, they hadn't toured or released an album since Here's to Shutting Up.  

Enter: Majesty Shredding.  Fifteen seconds into the first track, I was questioning everything I felt about Superchunk.  That song, that album.  Great and great.  I was hooked.  To their back catalogue!  

Oh, the years I wasted not listening to Superchunk.  This whole time I was playing a losing game of Battleship, missing the albums that would have made me an fan: On the Mouth, Foolish, Come Pick Me Up, Indoor Living.  I just didn't know it.

Well, everything is good with me now.  I'm worried about you, though.  So, I've put together a Superchunk sampler that you can listen to here though Spotify. It's just the tip of the Superchunk iceberg, but it should get you ready for I Hate Music when it's released on August 20th.

Rob Braithwaite writes stuff for Pencilstorm. Learn more about him and our other contributors by clicking here.

The live cover that started it all... 

And the song that got my mind right...

The Wet Darlings and Nick Tolford & Company at the Columbus Commons and Why Columbus Will Never Have a Thriving Downtown District by Ricki C.

I don't live in the suburbs, but I might as well.  I live by Cleveland Avenue & 161, right on the edge of Westerville and don't get downtown very much.  But on Thursday night July 25th my lovely wife Debbie set off for the Ohio Theater Summer Movie Series to see The Thin Man  and I went to check out The Wet Darlings and Nick Tolford & Company at The Columbus Commons.

Here's the thing about going Downtown for people like me; Columbus city leaders are always paying lip service to revitalizing our City Center (pun intended, that's the failed urban mall they tore down that BECAME The Columbus Commons) but then immediately start throwing up obstacles to that goal, i.e. making people feed the parking meters until 10 pm adjacent to Columbus Commons (as well as The Brewery District and much of the rest of downtown).  I just got home from a series of gigs with Watershed in Raleigh, North Carolina where downtown parking is TOTALLY FREE after 5 pm. Seriously, are people from the suburbs - who NEVER have to pay for parking ANYWHERE - really going to make the effort to load up the family, make the drive downtown (which they perceive as scary anyway) and then get soaked for parking meter or garage parking fees?  And it's not even the actual COST of parking, which is nominal compared to a Big City prices, it's the IDEA of paying to park.  

Secondly, Columbus urban planning geniuses, whose bright idea was it to shoehorn in a row of apartments/condos between High Street and the Columbus Commons, thereby cutting off any kind of connection between THE MOST HIGHLY-TRAVELED STREET IN THE CITY and The Commons?  Heaven forbid that people might be driving or walking past The Commons and say to themselves, "Hey, there's a show going on here, in the heart of my city, maybe I should stop and check it out."  At my most cynical I wonder if those buildings were placed there to cut off free viewing access to the Commons, so that homeless people or mere moocher-passersby can't set up a lawn chair on the sidewalk outside the fence and watch Picnic With The Pops without paying 25 to 50 bucks .  Or even more cynically, so Picnic With The Pops patrons wouldn't have to look at the homeless while sipping chablis stage-side with their families.  Regardless, are there really enough highly-paid downtown-sector workers to FILL those buildings?  How'd that Jeffrey Place condo development go over on 4th Street?

Anyway, enough anti-capitalist rich people grousing, let's talk about music....... 

I actually like The Wet Darlings a lot.  (It's not going to sound like it, but I do.)  I was looking forward to seeing the band in a non-club setting, but I've gotta admit being a little disappointed with them.  The Columbus Commons set-up really couldn't GET any more pro: good sound, GREAT lighting (though most of the Darlings' set took place in full daylight) and a HUGE expanse of stage to work with, which was part of the problem. Lead vocalist Jenny Lute is a great singer, is really pretty and possesses genuine onstage charisma but the band seemed a little bit lost on the Big Stage.  The songs are good but not really great and it seems a little like the band wouldn't know a hook if it fucked 'em in a closet.  Plus songwriter Bill Patterson might wanna work on FINISHING the songs, some of which don't so much end as just subside.

Also, Lute seemed to be having trouble connecting with the kinda-distant (geographically and temperamentally) audience.  She wound up talking to the crowd about the weather THREE TIMES during the 90-minute set, which is at least two times too many.  If the band wants to make the jump from clubs to bigger shows it really might not be a bad idea to work on a little stage banter.  It doesn't have to be prepared or forced, but SOME idea of how to draw in an unfamiliar audience of regular (non-clubbing, non-hipster) people might be in order.  All that being said, I really enjoyed The Wet Darlings set.  It was a good solid set of rock & roll on a truly gorgeous summer night.

The Wet Darlings might want to take some onstage lessons from Nick Tolford & Company.  Tolford is instantly ON and communicative with the crowd, opens the show with a song about how great summertime is (obvious in this setting, but still great) and completely engages the crowd from the very first moments of the set.  There's a lot of things I could say about Tolford & Co. but the main thing I always have to start with is how simultaneously TIGHT and LOOSE the band is.  This brand of gospel-infused rock SEEMS easy to play but it isn't.  Staying strong on the beat and swinging at the same time is a tightrope walk Tolford & Co. have mastered.

Also, I should be put off by the band's LOOK, but I'm not.  I'm 61 years old, I started off my rock & roll journey with The Beatles and The Dave Clark 5 in matching suits, progressed through Paul Revere & The Raiders, etc. to wind up back at The White Stripes and The Hives, sartorially.  The fact that the whiplash-great pretty-boy blonde guitar player sporting a cardigan sweater is immediately adjacent to a Z.Z. Top-bearded, ballcap-wearing bass-player straight out of Leon Russell's band in 1972 SHOULD bother me, but somehow the Tolford band pulls it off.  (By the way, for those of you scoring at home I saw Joe Cocker and Leon Russell's Mad Dogs & Englishmen tour at the Ohio Theater in 1970 and it's always the first thing I'm transported back to when I see Tolford & Company.  And you KNOW that can't be bad.)  

So yeah, Tolford has a KILLER yowl of a white-soul voice, is a great bandleader, plays a mean electric piano (with the mike placed firmly between his knees, Jerry Lee Lewis-style) but really it's the SONGS he writes that truly set him apart from the rest of the Columbus rock & roll pack.  Unlike most local acts you never really know WHERE a Nick Tolford song is gonna go next: is there gonna be a funky out-of-time bridge, is there gonna be a stop-time section that wasn't there the last time they came out of the chorus, is there gonna be a drums & bass breakdown where you least expect it?  Where ARE we in this tune?  It's great.  It's genius.  Plus, my ultimate compliment: I always find myself wishing the songs in Tolford's set were three minutes LONGER than they are rather than the two minutes SHORTER I hope for in lesser bands' hands.  And that soul-gospel chorus enacting choreographed dance-steps and synchronized tambourine-shaking?  Man, that guy and those girls are FINE. 

Nick Tolford & Company, thank you for a consummate night of summertime rock & roll.  

(sidenote; I got hungry around the time of the bands' set change, so I wandered over to Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream at the Commons for a snack , but was in for a rude awakening: two scoops of Jeni's Splendid would have set me back $118.  That seems pricey for an ice cream cone, doesn't it?)    - Ricki C. / July 26th, 2013

Ricki C contributes to Pencilstorm and has his own fabulous blog, "Growing Old With Rock n Roll" . You can learn more about him and our other contributors by clicking here.