One Sunny Mornin' We'll Rise I Know

After finishing up Jeff Pearlman's excellent Boys Will Be Boys on Sunday, I was thankful for at least one thing: the obliviousness that is part and parcel of being a child.
As I discussed the book with numerous friends over the past few weeks, we all came to a collective agreement that we were glad that we didn't fully understand just how loathsome our childhood "heroes" could be off the gridiron while playing so well on it. I'm not sure if it's possible to retroactively lose your childhood innocence, but I came awfully close.
For kids growing up in Texas in the mid-90's, there was nothing bigger, or better, than the Dallas Cowboys of Aikman, Smith, and Irvin, and like all of those kids, I fell for America's Team hook, line, and sinker. I got an Aikman jersey for Christmas in 1993, I wept at halftime of Super Bowl XXVIII when the Boys were trailing the Bills 13-6, and I had the Cowboys-themed birthday cake when I turned 11.

Little did I know that almost all of those players that I cheered for on Sundays were womanizing, drug-abusing, self-aggrandizing blowhards. I would call them hypocrites, but they probably never held themselves out to be anything other than what they truly were.

P.S. Besides the fact that he associates himself with Joe Buck, Troy Aikman is still #1 in my book, whatever that's worth.

But I Have No Doubt, One Day the Sun Will Come Out

As always, it was great to see so many friends this past weekend and to celebrate the beginning of Cody and Bethany's life together. I'm not sure why Lance is trying to hog the spotlight in the following picture, but his sister-in-law cannot be pleased.

Quote of the Weekend courtesy of Mr. Demetrius R. Collins: "If the parents of the bride and groom are okay with the music at the reception, you probably need new music."

Current Reading

Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty by Jeff Pearlman

Maybe Things Won't Be Better Than They Have Been

Despite what you might have learned in English III or Freshman Lit., George Orwell was not the creator of the "Big Brother" concept.

What's that, you say?

No, no, no. It was not the programming execs at the Columbia Broadcasting System either, you reality tv-addled junkies.

Instead, the creators of "Big Brother" were none other than the parents of noted sportswriter Jeff Pearlman. For those of you who do not yet know where babies come from, I'm going to spare you the details on how exactly that came to pass, but it suffices to say that Jeff Pearlman is the personification of the much desired quality of ubiquity.

It seems each time that I, or the genius behind The Jig and Twig, write a glowing review of a Pearlman book, he instantaneously appears from the ether of the interwebs to bestow blessings and kind words all around.

Now, you can tell me all about Google and other things that makes that type of appearing and vanishing act possible in the blink of an eye, but I believe Pearlman's the one that Orwell warned us about. The great all-seeing eye of the internet. Well, at this point it's either Pearlman or Al Gore, but I reserve the right to change my mind on that matter and many others.

I say all that to say this: Mr. Pearlman, if you happen to read this, I, along with my friends, would love to conduct a rudimentary interview with you to discern the basics of the writing business/process, establish the initial interview segment in the long, illustrious history of Running Down a Dream, and do a service to blog readers everywhere.

Jeff, the ball is, as they say, in your court.

I Wish I Was the Pedal Brake That You Depended On

Just when my level of amazement for technology begins to wane, things like this happen. After my post last Saturday about the book Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of An Antihero, I received an interesting email from someone who knows a little something about that book.

Barry Bonds?

Not likely. This family -friendly blog is a steroid-free zone, my friends.

No, it was Jeff Pearlman. Yes, he of the infamous John Rocker interview in Sports Illustrated. Yes, the same guy who wrote The Bad Guys Won, the upcoming Boys Will Be Boys on the 90's Cowboys dynasty, and the aforementioned Love Me, Hate Me, and yes, the same guy who could pass for a brother of Radiohead's Thom Yorke. That Jeff Pearlman.

It was just a quick note thanking me for blogging about Love Me, Hate Me, but after that, I'm sold on Pearlman. He didn't have to send me that kind of message, even if it only took him a few seconds to type. That's not to say that he's automatically gained entrance to the Running Down a Dream author-writer-columnist Hall-of-Fame, but with gestures like that, he's making a very strong case for himself.

With that said, I must also tell you that the ol' interwebs are really starting to freak me out.

Seven For a Secret Never to Be Told

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew Tuegel for correctly naming "Is It Any Wonder?" by Keane as the Friday Song of the Day.

I'm only 71 pages into Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of Antihero, but the aforementioned Mr. Bonds has already denied his former membership in the Cub Scouts, denied knowing an Arizona State teammate whose wedding he was in, and openly disrespected former Texas Ranger Oddibe McDowell. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but that looks like the "un-holy trinity" to me.

Current Reading

Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero by Jeff Pearlman

If I Bring a Little Music I Can Fit Right In

Congratulations to Mr. Jeffrey McCain for correctly naming "Gone for Good" by the Shins as the 2nd Monday Song of the Day. Jeff, I'm afraid the Running Down a Dream Song of the Day scoring system does not award style points for the manner in which answers are delivered, but if style points were available, your response would have received a perfect 10. Well, at least from the Russian judge.

Future Reading

• The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back by Andrew Sullivan

In this bold and powerful book, Andrew Sullivan criticizes our government for acting too often, too quickly, and too expensively. He champions a political philosophy based on skepticism and reason, rather than certainty and fundamentalism. He defends a Christianity that is sincere but not intolerant; and a politics that respects religion by keeping its distance. And he makes a provocative, heartfelt case for a revived conservatism at peace with the modern world, dedicated to restraining government and empowering individuals to live rich and fulfilling lives.

Synopsis from Barnes and Noble.

• Blood of the Liberals by George Packer (I know, it sounds like a horror movie directed by Karl Rove)

An acclaimed journalist and novelist explores the legacy and future of American liberalism through the history of his family's politically active history

George Packer's maternal grandfather, George Huddleston, was a populist congressman from Alabama in the early part of the century--an agrarian liberal in the Jacksonian mold who opposed the New Deal. Packer's father was a Kennedy-era liberal, a law professor and dean at Stanford whose convictions were sorely--and ultimately fatally--tested in the campus upheavals of the 1960s.

The inheritor of two sometimes conflicting strains of the great American liberal tradition, Packer discusses the testing of ideals in the lives of his father and grandfather and his own struggle to understand the place of the progressive tradition in our currently polarized political climate. Searching, engrossing, and persuasive, this is an original, intimate examination of the meaning of politics in American lives.

Synopsis from Barnes and Noble

• Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero by Jeff Pearlman

Pearlman, former staff writer with Sports Illustrated and Newsday, delivers a fully realized, if hardly appealing, portrait of baseball slugger Barry Bonds, who has perplexed teammates, fans, and the press for years with sometimes-indifferent play, an almost-joyful cruelty toward seemingly everyone (except kids), and a near-total disregard for the rules of the game, if allegations of his use of performance-enhancing drugs are true.

At the same time, Pearlman's Barry Bonds is a man of astonishing talent and, on occasion, humanity. Bonds' career is fully traced here--from his pampered boyhood as the son of another gifted but troubled player (Bobby Bonds) through his successes at Arizona State, through his years as a superstar with the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, including his pursuit of Hank Aaron's home-run record.

Drug-use allegations aside, it's hard not to boo Barry Bonds for the teammate and man he appears to be, so damning is Pearlman's profile. Yet the reader is always reminded of Bonds' supreme talent. A highly readable companion to Fainaru-Wada and Williams' recent Game of Shadows, which relates in greater detail Bonds' alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Review from Amazon.com

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

It's hard to think of a work that has so influenced our understanding of the United States as this—still the most authoritative, reflective set of observations about American institutions and the American character ever written. That its author was a Frenchman, and an aristocrat at that, and that he was balanced and penetrating has often occasioned rueful surprise.

However, de Tocqueville's distance from his subject is precisely what lends his observations such continuing currency. A few decades ago, for instance, we read Tocqueville for his prediction that Russia and the United States would one day contest for pre-eminence. Now, we ought to read him (Iraqis and Afghans should, too) for his classic analyses of the link between political parties and free associations and for his reflections on such matters as religion and public life, and "self-interest properly understood."

Review from Amazon.com