Leap of Dave

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

If Sitcom Songs Were About Quarantine

Comedian By Steve Taylor

I lived in Russia between the end of 1992 and the end of 1994. During those 2 years abroad, I missed many things. By missed I don't mean longed for, although I certainly did miss Mountain Dew and Lou Malnatis's pizza by that definition and was glad when my brother brought those along when he visited me. I also don't mean by miss that I wasn't there for it, yet heard about. While I want there for the Bronco chase , Nolan Ryan's pummeling of Robin Ventura, Michael Jordan's retirement announcement , or the birth of my first niece, I was acutely aware of all 4.

No, what I mean by missed is there were some events that I did not hear about until I was back in the states, sometimes for several years. Some of these were deaths of famous people, others were books, movies, or music that came out during that time. It wasn't uncommon to hear someone talk about a movie I had never heard of, only for me to ask if it came out in 1993 or 1994 and quite often it had. Finally, I had to come to grips that due to my decision to leave the U.S. and plant a church in Russia in the early 1990's that there would be indeed certain things that I left behind and missed entirely. I never regretted that decision and certainly experienced many more things that I would have never experienced in the states had I stayed put.

Over the past few years I have realized that I have experienced another gap without leaving the U.S. for more than a fortnight every 10 years or so. I experienced it today when I was playing with my Spotify account in between classes. There was a recommended song by Steve Taylor and some band he was in and I had never heard of the song or the band. Now not to be confusing Steve Taylor uses to front for a band called Some Band. So, I am not referring to them. The name of the band is The Perfect foil, and according to Wikipedia it is an alt. rock supergroup featuring artists from 2 more of my favorite groups (Peter Furler from Newsboys & Jimmy Abegg from (A Ragamuffin Band). What was odd is this super group was formed in 2010, and I was only just hearing about it 11 years later. Not really odd when you think that in 2010 I was homeschooling my 3 children all under the age of 11. Listening to old music on c.d.s is something I did when I had the occasional spare time. Keeping up with music was not something I invested much time in. Again, I would not trade that time in my life for anything but it does explain how a song like Comedian stayed off my radar for so long.

A nice thing about discovering something you missed from long ago is that when you do eventually discover it, you also discover many other things alongside it. In finding out more information in this missing chapter of Steve Taylors musical journey I discovered a blog that writes an awful lot about Christian Music and other topics that interest me. It is a blog by Keith Shields called Thirst and he does an entire post about this song. I encourage you to do what he suggests in his post which is listen to this song (I have put the Spotify link below at the same time you read the lyrics to the song and then read how the song affected him. (The link to his post is here.)

I enjoyed his interpretation of a song from 11 years ago that I only just discovered this morning. Still in all I'm glad I didn't miss it.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Taking 2020 from 1677 and Staying Positive.

Penultimate is one of my favorite words. It means second to last. I use the word so often it drives my family a little crazy. So, when I woke up this morning on the day before New Years Eve, 2020, penultimate popped into my head pretty quickly.

I turned to the Merriam Webster website for the last word on penultimate. It seems the word was first used in print all the way back in 1677. Thanks to the time traveler feature at the MW site, I discovered many words that came into print in 1677 still had special significance in 2020. To illustrate I will jot a few words about 2020 as it draws nigh and embolden the words from 1677. I have also put links on each word to their definition as some of these 1677 words were new to me.

I always like to be veracious so as I look back at the year 2020 I must say that after some introspection I am somewhat glad that this is the penultimate day of a year that was as oppressive as it was implausible; as riveting as it was slatternly.

I don't like to sound huffy, but it upset me when I found out this March that both my jobs were inessential. I would turn on the television to watch the splutter of unsustainable overpromise. Never-mind the tug-of-war between the ballot box and the electoral college that tried to make the courtroom function as a middleman.

I'm sure that years from now when we unpack a yearbook from a duffel ,2020 will still be considered a difficult year; with some exertion and by being intentional we were able to configure a new normal. I'm sorry I hope you didn't doze off while I went on like someone giving a keynote at a quarterly meeting.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Remembering Dick Allen

Dick Allen died earlier this month on December 7,2020 at the age of 78. Allen was the NL rookie of the year for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1964, the year I was born. He played for the White Sox form 1972 to 1974 and was a big part of the reason why I switched allegiances from the Chicago Cubs to their south side counterpart White Sox.

It transpired something like this. My sister was the grade ahead of me at school and achieved straight A's at school one year. Our school had a promotion with the White Sox that if you had straight A's or perfect attendance you would receive 2 vouchers for tickets to a White Sox game. My Dad took my sister to a game and I decided that the next year I would get perfect attendance and he could take me

Sure enough, the next year I had perfect attendance for the first and only time in my academic life. My Dad took me to a game in 1972 or out the roof shots and it was1973 against the Baltimore Orioles. He taught me how to keep score and Dick Allen hit a home run.

From that day on I was a White Sox fan. I watched games on T.V. and listened to the rest on the radio. I even became a country music fan as the White Sox games were broadcast on the local country station. The rest of the family remained Cubs fans (I still like the Cubs because no one told me other wise, ) but my exuberance was for the White Sox. Each year our family took a pilgrimage to Wrigley to watch a game. Each year my Dad found away usually near my birthday to take me to a White Sox game as well.

I liked all the players, Bucky Dent. Wilbur Wood, Jorge Orta, Bill Melton but Allen was by far my favorite. Over the years the players changed but my passion for the White Sox never ebbed. I have had many favorite White Sox players over the years Kessinger, Fisk, Thomas, Buehrle, and Konerko just to name a few, but those fond memories of watching Allen at first base or at the plate never did fully dissipate.

Click here to watch footage of Allen with commentary from teammate Bill Melton. I also have put some video and audio clips of Allen at my vlog, Dave Out Loud.