Impactful Screens

A friend shared this article on Facebook. I think it is a great read if you've ever been curious about the impact of screens on yourself or your kids. 

Money Quote:

“Adults use screens the same way kids do -- to avoid interaction and to avoid relying on our own inner resources," says Steiner-Adair. Increasingly when parents have a few minutes to recharge they are using that time to browse Facebook, send texts, etc. “It’s so much easier than picking up a magazine or putting your feet up on the couch and having a mini moment of relaxation -- or going for a walk and getting some fresh air-- all these things that we know actually make us feel better.” Some parents may feel that browsing Instagram or scanning the news is actually a calming way to take a break, but Steiner-Adair is skeptical. “Checking your email is not relaxing,” she says. ”Holding a tiny little hand held screen is not visually relaxing.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Must Watch

Maybe in the last week or two you saw the video of the girl who is "twerking" and falls over and catches on fire. TV stations (local and nationwide) shared the video as a viral YouTube clip and news anchors said there were implications for twerking, meaning that this video showed it was a dangerous form of dance. Well, Jimmy Kimmel featured the now famous dancer on his show last night. Watch.

Parenthood

Kate and I have been watching NBC's Parenthood pretty much from the start (it just finished its fourth season) and it is easily one of the best written shows on basic cable. 

Turn on the TV at any moment of the day and it is particularly hard to find a decent man or woman on television. Typically, they are cheating, lying bastards who can't remain faithful to their family and, if they do, they are secretly brewing meth and killing lots of people on the side...see Breaking Bad. No doubt, those shows are entertaining to an extent, but Parenthood deals with a side of life that only the most patient and talented writer can tease out, reality. 

The writers of Parenthood haven't forgotten that we all have our weaknesses and flaws but they have wisely avoided the temptation to magnify those flaws by giving every character an egregious downfall. Too many writers fall victim to this temptation and they do so because they think, ironically so, that they are being creative. But let's face it, most people don't decide to cook meth when they face a financial emergency. Most people get two jobs or make a crazy, but legal, decision to invest in a recording studio with their younger brother, to take an example from a real Parenthood episode. This thinking is at the heart of Parenthood and it is what has produced, at least for me, a reserve of genuine characters and conflicts that give me feelings of hope, despair, joy, anger, laughter, and, most importantly, what I see as a pretty accurate cross-section of life for a mixed middle-class, upper middle-class family experiencing the growing pains of life. 

Best of 2012

Best Vacation: Kauai was amazing, but Scotland and my favorite city in all the world with my wife…nothing can compete.

My favorite blog I wrote: This one, about Michael Phelps after the London 2012 games.

Best Meal: There were two and they happened at the same restaurant two nights in a row, The Lovat Brasserie in Fort Augustus, Scotland. Seriously, everything we bit into was mouth-rockingly wonderful. This place should not be missed if you’re in the Highlands.

Best Live Sporting Event: Front row at the Broncos vs. Browns game on December 23.

Best Televised Sporting Event: Michael Phelps' last show at this summer's Olympic games in London.

Best Bachelor Party: Sir Travis’ party in Boulder. Whiskey. Bikes. Mountain Sun. Pearl St. 3am bike ride back to north Boulder up some pretty steep hills.

Best Graduate Class: Tie….Great Books of the Middle East and Modern Islamic Political Thought. If it’s any consolation, the same professor taught them.

Best Photograph We Took: Kate probably disagrees, but I really love this one from Kauai. It's imperfect, but that's sort of what I like about it in addition to the stunning beauty of that wave and the memory I have of standing in ankle deep, frothy sea water while watching these waves roll in.

Best Drive: From Ft Augustus, Scotland to Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland. I wanted to pull over every half mile to take more pictures.

Best Picture of Kate and I: This one taken by Jarrod Renaud.

Best Gift: One I gave.

Best Pet: Monte, my parents’ 16-yr-old cat, for being a trooper while she lived with us for 2.5 weeks when my parents were in Italy.

Best Thing To Do When The Wife Is Out Of Town: Invite over all your video-gaming friends for an all-day gaming bonanza with beers and bloody Marys.

Best Beer: Nothing new, but a beer I grew to love throughout this year, a beer that has easily become one of my favorites. Odell’s IPA.

Best Concert: Bon Iver at Red Rocks. This is easily the best concert I’ve seen since I was in high school and saw MxPx for the first time at the Ogden. The free Lumineers concert at DU was a very close second.

Best Laugh: With Guy Ferber in Las Vegas.

Best Sunset from 4550, our home: This October beauty.

Best Musical Discovery: M83 and the Lumineers.

Best Social Platform: Instagram.

Best Timing for a Photograph: This one by Kate. I didn't even say try to get one of me in the air and then she goes and snaps this perfectly framed and timed shot. Okay.

Best Coffee: Boxcar Coffee in Boulder. This place got me to like a cappuccino.

The Royal Crush

I was watching the NBC Nightly News last night and the time NBC devoted to each of its stories in the first thirteen minutes of the broadcast caught my attention. First of all, all the news that is worth reporting is typically included in the first 10-12 minutes of a nightly news broadcast. The latter half of the broadcast is typically saved for feel-good stories, the weekend box-office report, minor weather-related disasters, etc. The shows are naturally front-loaded and one can typically tune out after the first or second commercial break. 

After watching six minutes of last night's broadcast, NBC had covered the impending flu season, Syria, and the approaching fiscal cliff. The fourth story of the night was about William and Kate expecting a baby. NBC devoted 4 minutes to this story. They even had an expert on to talk about the symptoms Kate would be dealing with in this case of acute morning sickness (inability to keep down any food/fluids, throwing up, etc.)

Let's just break down last night's newscast:

Story 1: The flu season is going to be bad. This story airs every year. Spare us next year, will you? - 2 minutes

Story 2: There are human rights atrocities constantly taking place in Syria right now. To be honest, it's genocide. Bashar Assad continues to oversee the destruction of huge swaths of the country and people he is responsible for. Thousands of children have died. There is no distinction made between combatant and non-combatant. When Assad's forces are on the hunt all are in the crosshairs - 1 minute

Story 3: Politicians on both sides of the aisle continue to be stubborn and selfish as the fiscal cliff nears. But let's just say it, the Republicans need to do a little pride-swallowing. The majority of the country clearly favors increasing tax revenue by raising tax rates on the top 2% income earners. In this sense, Obama's reelection did give him a mandate to do just that, raise the rate on the super-rich. The negotiations, or lack thereof, continue with little or no progress. - 3 minutes

Story 4: Duchess Kate is pregnant. She went to hospital, where she remains to this day. She has acute morning sickness, the same exact acute morning sickness thousands of women get every day, just in this country. So, what's the story here? - 4 MINUTES

Story 5: Dangerous carbon monoxide levels at a school threatens hundreds of children and staff. - 1 minute

Story 6: More proof that America's favorite sport is increasingly more dangerous and harmful to the body, particularly the brain, of football players, leading to very early diagnoses of degenerative brain diseases. - 3 minutes

Boiled down even more:

Flu season - 2 minutes

Genocide - 1 minute

We are all screwed if this fiscal cliff thing isn't resolved - 3 minutes

Girl who was born and married rich dude who was also born gets a bad case of morning sickness - 4 minutes

Potentially lethal carbon monoxide levels at school. - 1 minute

Nation's pastime making football players die early. - 3 minutes

Bad case of morning sickness trumps flu season, genocide, fiscal cliff, carbon monoxide levels, and pretty conclusive research on degenerative brain diseases. Excuse me, I'm going to go throw up.

2008 and 2012

2008

2012

The major changes so far, my TV is much, much larger and I've added an iPad. I'm drinking wine, beer, and margarita. And in the 2008 picture, my MacBook Pro was just weeks old.

Shameless Liar

Watch this now infamous Nike commercial Lance Armstrong appeared in years ago. 

MSNBC, The Lumineers, and Mr. Potato...head?

Here are a few DU Debate Fest pictures from yesterday.

I'm not enforcing stereotypes here, but she was wearing an NRA hat.

Next door to the Romney table.

Mr. Potato Head....wait a minute.

Readying for Obama's arrival.

Secret Service and security taking some pictures before the Debate Fest gates open.

Martin Bashir broadcasting from DU, right in front of the Mary Reed Building.

Chris Matthews

More talking to cameras. I can't be the only one that always thinks of Bashir's interview with Michael Jackson when I see him. It's a classic. Here's the interview.

Let's play hardball!

The Lumineers put on an excellent show. 

A bass drum like the sun.

Mark Koebrich of 9News recording a segment during the Lumineers' concert.

America!

The Dictator on The Daily Show

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Admiral General Aladeen
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

And The UK, Including England

Ron Burgundy is back. Even the announcement of the movie is freaking hilarious.

Doing the Impossible

The FINA World Championships are on TV every day this week (NBC Universal Sports). In between sessions in Shanghai, Universal Sports has been playing a lot of highlights from the Beijing Games. Last night, exactly one year before the London Games begin, the channel showed a two-hour long special on Michael Phelps, which included all eight of his gold medal-winning performances at the Water Cube.

Like I hadn’t seen them before, I glued myself to the television for all eight races, reliving the moment when I watched them live in Milwaukee three summers ago. I sat at the edge of the couch. I jumped, clapped, and cheered like I didn’t know the outcome. But I did reflect more this time around on the impact of Phelps’ accomplishment and the difficulty of it, no, the impossibility of it. It just doesn’t seem possible. There were too many close calls from the 400 free relay in which Lezak swam the fastest 100m free in relay history to run down the trash-talking French in the last 10m to the 200 butterfly in which Phelps’ goggles filled up with water and then, to the ultimate, .01 victory over Milorad Cavic in the 100 fly. The 7^th gold was the most impossible. Cavic and Phelps could have tied and they would have both received gold, but that wasn’t good enough. Fate had other plans and Phelps just had to win by .01.

Being as unbiased as possible, Phelps’ accomplishment is the greatest in all of sports history. The only thing in my mind that comes relatively close is Lance Armstrong’s string of seven Tour de France victories. And one thing Phelps certainly has going for him that a lot of great accomplishments in sport suffer from, is that his accomplishment isn’t covered in a shroud of doubt. Whether you think Armstrong doped or not, enough people have come forward saying he has that it gets you thinking and, if you are like me, it gets you worrying because you hate to see any great victory in sports be called into questions because it was achieved by unnatural means. Phelps’ eight gold medals aren’t spoiled by that.

Never again will Phelps or any other swimmer attempt 17 races in one Olympic games. Never mind the schedule being too grueling, there just aren’t swimmers out there as diverse as Phelps. The only one that could come close now is Ryan Lochte, but for him to win the 100 and 200 lengths of backstroke, the 200 and 400 IMs, the 200 free, and all three relays it would take some incredible turnaround swims in London and that is just not going to happen. I don’t think Phelps’ record will ever be broken or tied.

Can you think of anything more impressive? I am trying to view Phelps’ victories through an objective lens and I still just shake my head in disbelief every time I see one of those swims. Everything aligned in 2008. It’s not going to be the same in 2012. Phelps will get more gold, but Lochte is going to be closer, having now defeated Phelps at Worlds this week in the 200 free and 200 IM. But I’m ready. One year from today, it begins again.

Freelance Whales

Okay, so I am probably discovering the band Freelance Whales very, very late, but I don’t care, it’s a new band to me and I really like their sound. I had the TV on for a few minutes this morning and I heard a song that sounded so great I quickly wrote down the first line so I could look it up later and find out who was responsible for it.

I did the Google search and found Freelance Whales and all their quirky sounds. I watched a video of them performing at SXSW 2010 for NPR Music. They were performing Generator (First Floor), which at this infant stage of my appreciation for them, I can tell this must be one of their more popular songs, or their most popular song. After all, it was playing during a Starbucks commercial.

While watching them jam away I was reminded of Arcade Fire (although Freelance Whales is a smaller group), but in their performance they had this awesome connection like they were all sharing the same brain to tell them when to start into the song or when to pick it up or slow it down. Arcade Fire is extremely good at this. I know this comes from a ton of practice and memorizing all the songs and reading each other’s signals, but not all groups do this very well. So, Freelance Whales definitely caught my eye because of this.

And there was one more thing, they looked very Portlandish. A couple flannel shirts, a couple glasses leaving you to wonder if the people wearing them actually need them, some tight jeans, and one pair of pink leggings. It appeared to be a carefully crafted image that is no longer unique and now the fodder for jokes in Portlandia. And then I read that they weren’t from Portland. They’re from New York. All of a sudden I liked what they were wearing and I liked them a heck of a lot more.

On The Red Carpet

I like watching the Oscars, but damn, all the ass-kissing and sucking up on the red carpet is almost enough to turn the whole damn thing off.

Not Offended by Ricky Gervais

By the end of The Golden Globes Sunday night, you had a good sense of the animosity being directed at Ricky Gervais for his barbs and witty commentary that made fun of nearly all the stars there. Celebrities were attempting to make sly comebacks to Gervais’ one-liners, but they were failing miserably. A couple examples: 1) Gervais mocked Philip Berk, President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, by saying, “I just had to help him off the toilet and pop his teeth in.” Berk came out and fired back, “Next time you want me to help you qualify your movie, go to another guy.” 2) Before introducing Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, Gervais ran down a lengthy list of award-winning movies Hanks has starred in and then continued, “the other presenter is Tim Allen.” Hanks and Allen fired back.

Hanks: We can recall back when Ricky Gervais was a slightly chubby but very kind comedian.

Allen: Neither of which he is now.

The celebs’ comebacks weren’t funny, it’s the fact that they were seriously offended which made it funny. Why was Allen offended? Next to Hanks, Allen may as well do commercials. The celebs didn’t get the irony in attempting to send a barb back. News flash: you are paid actors, not paid comedians and Ricky Gervais is a paid comedian. What do you expect? For him to be kind? These shows need a comedian to make the night entertaining, to lighten the mood, to mock the one of many shows Hollywood puts on for themselves to celebrate their achievements and greatness.

This just in: Celebs, you aren’t funny. Gervais is. You’re easy to make fun of, especially when you make crappy movies. Get over it.

Airing Out 2010

I want to sit down and churn something out about 2010. I want you to read it and be astonished at what you’ve read, be in dismay about the year I had because maybe it was boring, but I made it sound like so much more than that.

2010 was anything but boring, but I don’t know if I can convey that anymore. As it did like the year before, 2010 started off with a trip to Florida, but through January, February, the birth of my nephew, and a conference championship my mind was with my MFA applications to ten schools. I had labored over them for almost a year and I felt like I applied to the entire spectrum of writing programs out there. Starting in late February, or was it early March, the rejections started to trickle in. First, was Wyoming. Then I can’t remember who came next. But I do remember there were nine more and the agony of going to the mailbox every day was sustained until the last letter arrived in April. I took it—the last letter—up to the apartment with me. The blinds were drawn. It was dark. I lied on the couch. I didn’t weep. I didn’t tear up. I yelled. I fucking yelled.

March is a blur. I had the whole month off. I don’t even know what I did. I wrote about the rejections. I did an annual spiel on the Oscars, self-published of course. There was a power outage and I wrote about, writing, what I believe to be, some of my best words in 2010. On the way to work one day I pulled over and threw the key to the Longmont house into Lake Michigan, cursing it in the air and hoping some feelings would sink to the bottom of the lake with it. And then Kate and I went to Wyoming and Colorado. It was cold and snowy and being in Laramie was tough knowing I wouldn’t be going to school there in the fall.

I wandered aimlessly through April, wallowing in failure (a little like I am now, but hey, that was a huge chunk of 2010). I not only coached practices, I did practices. I threw myself into them, destroying my body and finding out that I can still be fast in the pool. When I do my best in sports I tap a vein of aggression and I get lost in it. I had plenty of fuel.

The venting continued in May, one of the most stressful times of my 20s. We had made our plans for the next two years and they were denied from us. In the middle of it all we went to Mexico to escape it. We were successful in that, but the stress was waiting for us the day we got back. What next? What now? Then I went to Colorado and spent a few nights with good friends looking for our new home. Then, a wedding in May for two people in love. But it was tough and weird at times, stages of the healing process. Getting everyone together again felt right and wrong, stages of the aging and living process. Instead of a strong bond among all of us I was acutely aware of an aging history held together with feeble attempts to reestablish community. Honestly, I thought the shit was going to hit the fan this week. It didn’t so much. Some things went better than expected and for the other things, well, words went unsaid and feelings unshared, traits once rare among this group.

Like Milwaukee knew we were leaving, it threw us thunderstorm after thunderstorm in June, ephemeral, but breathtaking and humbling exhibitions of power. I searched everyday for jobs. I didn’t land one and started to doubt the wisdom in moving back to Colorado. My Mom visited us one last time in Milwaukee. Kate and I started watching Lost this month on Hulu and we never looked back. Concerning movies and TV, Lost was easily the highlight of 2010 for us. It was outstanding and our devotion to it was respectable.

July started with another vacation. This time we were off to California to see friends married, to see family, and to breath in some salty air. And then we were back in the Midwest for a few more weeks of packing and thunderstorms, one of them giving us seven inches of rain in three hours. Imagine if California got that? In our final days in Milwaukee we shed tears, took a lot of pictures of our apartment, and welcomed my Dad to Wisconsin so that he would help us move to Colorado.

I blogged twice in August. We settled into our new home, not the home we thought we would be settling into, but we thank God every day it wasn’t. We drove up our first fourteener. We went to Wyoming. The West opened its arms for us and we basked in its warm, dry, sunny climate. The proximity of friends and family helped ease the joblessness on my part. And after working for a week, Kate was offered a full-time job.

I wrote a love letter to Milwaukee in September. I witnessed Boise St. give Wyoming an ass-kicking. We finished Lost, with a blitz of 3 episodes, plus a two-hour finale, in one day. And then I got a job and we started P90X.

October: I worked some. Spent some time catching up with friends in Colorado. We had visitors. Colorado proved to be as beautiful as ever. Life went on.

A lot of people voted Republican in November. I didn’t. Are you kidding me? We spent our first Thanksgiving as a married couple with my parents and grandparents. Kate worked through the holiday and it didn’t seem relaxing for her at times, but my busy holiday schedule started at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving. November was warm.

In December I’ll tell you now, publicly, that I celebrated a private accomplishment. The month flew by with busy work schedules and the time to relax and celebrate our Creator was upon us in a matter of hours. We had a new camera to document it and the years ahead. The wounds sustained earlier in the year have partially healed, yet I still sometimes find in me a crushing doubt, chanting, “Failure, failure,” at me every time my hands rest on this keyboard. In the waning days of 2010, Kate’s family joined us as we welcomed 2011 into our lives, a year that can’t possibly contain in its 365 days what I want it to contain, but I will greet its every sunrise and toast its every sunset in search of it.

Don't Forget

Conan O'Brien returns to television tonight on TBS. Locally, he's on at 9pm. I'm looking forward to it. Follow TeamCoco here.

Cool Show Watch

Tonight, Bill Bryson (one of, or perhaps tied for, my favorite author/s) will be on The Colbert Report. Easily two of my favorite guys ever on one episode. Check it out.

Other TV

I have mentioned on this blog before that I dabble in other TV shows, mostly of the medical variety because of Kate. Those shows: ER (now off the air), House and, on occasion Grey’s Anatomy. So, it was with a little excitement that Kate sat down to watch the season premiere of Grey’s last week. I joined her sans excitement and with book in hand.

I was reminded of how sappy the show is. Slo-mo. Voiceovers by Grey that bookend each episode. Love triangles. Dusty, old relationships, which are constantly in limbo. It is sentimental porn.

At the end of the hour, as the music died down and Grey’s voiceover came in to tell us how we should feel and what we should draw from the episode, Kate and I sighed, looked at each other and said, “I miss Lost.”

Old, White Books

I freaking love Costco. Not everything on the shelves is a steal, but their books always are. Actually, the books are priced so low I feel guilty buying them. What, Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory for $9.84?!? I couldn't pass that up. I felt like I was stealing it for that price. Thanks, Jon. If you leave me your address I will send you a few more bucks in the mail. The guilt I feel from buying a book for that cheap does do its job. I have only bought three books at Costco since I became a lifelong member a couple of years ago.

It doesn’t matter whether I am going to Costco for two two-liter jugs of olive oil or for an 8 lb. bag of frozen strawberries, I will always peruse through the limited and seemingly illegally priced books. Today, I noticed with glee that Jon Stewart’s Earth (currently #1 on Amazon.com) was prominently featured at the end of the book display. I didn’t buy it, not for $15.94, or something like that. All I know is that it was marked at least ten dollars below the MSRP. Anyway, I walk over to the display and lay my hands on Earth. I stand there and flip through the book for a good ten minutes, reading paragraphs here and there and even eyeing a picture of a three-breasted woman (as seen in Total Recall) and deciding, once and for all, I much prefer two.

While I am looking through the book, I notice the two other books placed at the end of the table, Bill O’Reilly’s Pinheads and Patriots (currently #40 on Amazon.com) and David Limbaugh’s (yes, that Limbaugh’s brother) laughably titled Crimes Against Liberty (currently #35 on Amazon.com). Seriously, all I can do when seeing a book like Crimes Against Liberty is laugh. I can’t even open it up. That would be giving it an honor it doesn’t deserve.

When I first ventured into Costco as a member, I noticed right away, without surprise, that the majority of their political books are from conservative authors. So, it was, also without surprise, that when I stood there, looking at Earth, only one other person picked up the book to look at it while a number of Pinheads and Patriots were thrown into shopping carts and one copy of Crimes Against Liberty was toted off. As I watched pinhead, err shopper after shopper step up to the mountain of right-wing books I couldn’t help but notice a stereotype being strongly reinforced. The buyers were all older, white males who looked grumpy and gazed upon O’Reilly’s latest like it was the Bible…every single one of them. Were they also looking at me and feeling like a stereotype was being strongly reinforced? Young, white male in shorts and flip-flops who is jobless and who is probably going to go smoke a bowl after this and then maybe come back a couple hours from now for some free samples because he has got the munchies.

Will I become like them? I hope not. And as O’Reilly’s book continued to find its way into the shopping carts of octogenarians, I walked out of Costco empty-handed, went home, made lunch and special brownies…I kid, I kid…and readied for work tomorrow.

Colbert in D.C.

Stephen Colbert Speaks at a Congressional Hearing...in character. Worth the watch. VIA TPM.