These kids nowadays

I was busy figuring out the area of office, lobby, and hallway space for Fuller's Office of Development and Alumni/ae and Church Relations this morning based on 1/96 scale plans (1 inch = 8 ft) for the purpose of estimating the expense of carpet replacement - which, incidentally, made me feel bad for all the horrible things I used to say about high school geometry, but that's something for another post - when I started thinking about Nine Inch Nails.

"Odd," one might think, and one would not be far from the truth. At any given moment in my mind multiple thoughts are engaged in an all-out, free-for-all, no-holds-barred struggle, battling and wrestling for the dominance necessary to earn the right to rise to the top and gain admittance into the realm of my consciousness. So anyway, I was thinking about NIN which just released an album on the new Radiohead model: independent from any label, internet exclusive, and free. And that got me thinking about heavier music and I realized it kind of sucks now.

When I was in high school and one wanted to rebel against authority of various kinds there was a whole slew of musical options: Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Pantera, The Deftones, even Metallica was coming out with new stuff, and that's not even counting all the imitators out there (I'm looking at you, Nickelback). Now those bands are broken up, on hiatus, or repackaging stale retreads of their once revolutionary sound to cash in one last time before obscurity descends and envelops them in a dark suffocating blanket of mediocrity. Even the once unassailable punk band has been co-opted by the man and transformed into some faux pop-punk crap.

What do the kids do these days when they need some good old fashioned angry music? I suppose they could turn to rap to piss of the parents, but even that genre has been tired and predictable for the better part of a decade. If anyone out there has a finger on the pulse of America's youth please clue me in so I don't feel quite so old and out of touch. Thanks a bunch.

It's officially summer

So Los Pistoleros (my new team - translation anyone?) had its first softball game last night down at the Rose Bowl fields. We lost (25 to 18) but we had fun and displayed good sportsmanship and that's what's really important, right? Right? Ok, I'll level with you: losing sucks, but it was our first game together and I'm optimistic about our future. On a personal note I was a little disappointed with myself at the plate (I scored a couple of runs, but I popped out to short with runners at 2nd and 3rd on a pitch I should have taken down the line to prolong a small rally), but my defense at SS was solid, which usually takes a couple of games to come around - at least for me. I'm looking forward to a good season.

Go Blue...

So we (Andrew, Justin, Matt and I) caught the Dodgers-Mets game on Monday night. All in all a very enjoyable experience - Dodgers won 5-1 starting with a lead off home run from Furcal. Blake DeWitt hit his first career home run (good for him), and then one of my favorite kids, Matt Kemp got in on the HR action too (that's Home Run, not Human Resources). And young Billingsley turned in a quality start for his second W of the year.

However, despite the baseball-related fun going on all around us, the topic of conversation kept returning to the Dodgers' inexplicable new practice of putting close-up pictures of players' eyes on screens mounted on the outfield fences. Here, check it out:

Tell me that's not more than a little creepy. That's Moises Alou in the foreground, who just got back following hernia surgery in the off-season. What if he were to get the odd sensation that someone was watching him from behind and turns around? He gets the sweet bejezus scared out of him and probably re-aggrevates his hernia, that's what.

Come to think of it, that may actually be what the Dodgers have in mind. A little psychological leverage for the home team - an attempt to get into the opponents' heads, if you will.

Let me tell you, the Dodgers are definitely inside my head right now. I've had nightmares the last two nights where angry giants are watching me try to do my job. Occasionally I'll wake up screaming "No! Don't hurt me, I'm so tiny!" It's really had a negative impact on the quality of my rest, leaving me somewhere in the borderlands between paranoid and delirious. I'm a little afraid that my own personal train to Insanityville just left Psychosis Station with scheduled stops in Delusionburg and Overextended-Metaphor-Junction. If I happen to go on a rampage of some sort and have to be taken out, I would like my widow to sue the Dodgers for sending me over the edge and use the money acquired to buy the naming rights to Dodger Stadium and rename it Adam Miller Is Awesome Park. Then I will have my revenge, even in death.