Harder Than It Seems

Not that you would know it by checking the frequency with which I post new entries, but I swear that I think of at least five new things to write about every week. Really, all that's keeping me from making it big as a world-famous blogger is my full-time job, planning a wedding, doing housework to pay rent, sister's softball games, and golf. Oh yeah, and sleeping and dinnertimes.

Round 1

I played my first round of golf of the season yesterday. I was able to play quasi-hooky from work and Greg snuck away from seminary long enough to get in 18 holes on a beautiful spring day in Philly. We played at Twining Valley (Greg's interim home course), which turned out to be the most challenging course I have played to date.

I broke my previous personal best (by one stroke) for any 9 holes by shooting a 55 on the front, and then shot a 56 on the back for a 111 18-hole score. I've only played a full 18 two other times and I don't remember how I fared.

My front score could have been much lower, but I hacked two 8's on two different par 4's, and scored a 10 on the par-4 4th hole. My lie on the green started out well below the hole and the greens were pool table fast. I think Greg and I both 6-putted, and it was almost reaching the point of comical tragedy with how many times we putted up the hill only to have it roll right back down to our feet. My final put actually went past the hole and rolled back down in.

I tallied two pars, on holes 2 and 6, and the highlight of my golf career so far was scoring a birdie on the par-4 9th hole. I had put my tee shot on the green with my driver, and then left a 35-foot eagle putt short. I tapped in for birdie and got a handshake from Greg.

My goals for the year are to break 50, not ever score over 60, and go a whole round without a 3-putt.

Scott and Becca's Wedding - The Complete Soundtrack

(last updated 24 Feb 2005)

Becca and I are to be wed in the holiest of matrimonies on June 25 of this year. The reception will be outside in the backyard of the ever-generous Keith and Deanna Cuomo's house. We will not be having a DJ, per se, but are instead loading Joel's mp3 player with several million of our favourite songs (listed below).

Consider this an open invitation to suggest songs that we might have overlooked in compiling this soundtrack. We are looking for dancing songs, dinner songs, or any other appropriate tune. As you can see, our list is anything but your run-of-the-mill "Electric Slide," "Time of My Life," and "Cotton-Eyed Joe."

Feel free to go obscure, go mainstream, old or new. I can tell you right now that there will be no Celine Dion, so don't even bother.


The List (as of 24 Feb 2005)

Aerosmith - "Sweet Emotion"
Allman Brothers Band - "Melissa"
Allman Brothers Band - "Jessica"
Allman Brothers Band - "Blue Sky"
Aretha Franklin - "RESPECT"
Aretha Franklin - "Son of a Preacher Man"
AWK - "She Is Beautiful"
B52s - "Love Shack"
Bad Company - "Feel Like Makin Love"
Barry White - Can't Get Enough of Your Love Babe (thanks! Daryl)
Barry White - "You're the First"
Beastie Boys - "Sure Shot"
Beegees - "Stayin Alive"
Ben Folds - "The Luckiest" (thanks JoelandLizzz)
Billy Idol - "Mony Mony"
Billy Joel - "She's Got a Way"
Boston - "Rock 'N' Roll Band"
Boston - "Peace of Mind"
Brian Adams - "Heaven"
Bruce Springsteen - "Dancing in the Dark"
Cars - "Good Times Roll"
Cars - "Bye Bye Love"
Cars - "Shake it Up"
Cindi Lauper - "Girls Wanna Have Fun"
Coldplay - "Sparks"
Coldplay - "Green Eyes"
David Bowie - "Suffer Jet City"
David Bowie - "Golden Years"
DC Talk - "That Kinda Girl"
Dire Straits - "Romeo and Juliet"
Doobies - "Rockin Down the Highway"
Eddie Money - "Two Tickets to Paradise"
Ella Fitzgerald - "I Could Write a Book"
Eric Clapton - "Wonderful Tonight"
Flaming Lips - "Do You Realize"
Fleetwood Mac - "Say You Love Me"
Foo Fighters - "Everlong"
Foundations - "(Why Do You) Build Me Up Buttercup"
Four Seasons - "Oh What a Night"
Frank Sinatra - "Dancing Cheek to Cheek"
Frank Sinatra - "Fly Me to the Moon"
Frank Sinatra - "The Way You Look Tonight"
Frank Sinatra - "I Won't Dance"
Frank Sinatra - "Let's Fall in Love"
Frank Sinatra - "I Get a Kick Out of You"
Frank Sinatra - "The Last Dance"
Frank Sinatra - "The Best is Yet to Come"
George Thoroughgood (sp?) - "Who Do You Love"
Grand Funk Railroad - "Some Kind of Wonderful"
Incubus - "Echo"
James Taylor - "Something in the Way She Moves"
James Taylor - "How Sweet It Is"
James Taylor & Carly Simon - "Devoted to You"
Jay and the Americans - "This Magic Moment"
Jim Croce - "Time in a Bottle"
Jimi Hendrix - "Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire"
Jimmy Eat World - "Jukebox" (thanks, Greg)
Jimmy Eat World - "Sweetness" (thanks, Greg)
Jimmy Eat World - "Praise Chorus" (thanks, Greg)
Joe Cocker - "Feelin' Alright"
The Kinks - "All Day and All of the Night"
The Knack - "My Sheronah"
Kool & the Gang - "Jungle Boogie" (thanks, Daryl)
Led Zeppelin - "Houses of the Holy"
Led Zeppelin - "The Ocean"
Led Zeppelin - "Trampled Underfoot"
Louis Armstrong - "Sugar"
Maroon 5 - "Sunday Morning"
Marshall Tucker Band - "Can't You See"
Natalie Cole - This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)
Norah Jones - "Come Away With Me"
Norah Jones - "Nearness of You"
Outkast - "Hey Ya" (thanks, Daryl)
Queen - "Best Friend"
Righteous Brothers - "Unchained Melody"
Rolling Stones - "Satisfaction (I Can't Get No)"
Rolling Stones - "Hey, You, Get Off of My Cloud"
Romantics - "What I Like About You"
Roy Orbison - "Pretty Woman"
Sara Groves - "Fly"
Sara Groves - "Cannot Lose My Love"
Sarah McLachlan - "Ice Cream"
Sixpence None the Richer - "Kiss Me"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Take Me Down" (thanks, Dan Sack)
Spiral Staircase - "More Today Than Yesterday" (thanks, Nanx and Dan Sack)
Steely Dan - "Reeling in the Years"
Steppenwolf - "Magic Carpet Ride"
Stevie Ray Vaughn - "The House Is Rockin"
Stevie Wonder - "Signed, Sealed, Delivered"
Styx - "Renegade"
Thin Lizzy - "The Boys Are Back in Town"
Tim McGraw & Faith Hill - "It's Your Love"
Temptations - "My Girl" (thanks, Daryl)
Temptations - "The Way You Do the Things You Do" (thanks, Daryl)
Turtles - "Happy Together"
Van Halen - "Dance the Night Away"
Van Halen - "Panama"
Van Halen - "Right Now"
Van Halen - "Jump"
Van Morrison - "Have I Told You Lately"
Van Morrison - "Moondance"
Van Morrison - "Crazy Love"
Van Morrison - "Gloria"
ZZ Top - "Cheap Sunglasses"
ZZ Top - "Legs"
ZZ Top - "Gimme All Your Lovin"
ZZ Top - "Sharp Dressed Man"


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No-Shave-Off-Season

Pale-skinned hockey fans of Scandenavia and Canadia grow 'playoff beards' during the Stanley Cup playoffs to show their devotion to their team. The prescense of whiskers on a fan's face also serves as a means of unspoken bragging rights, being that the team that eventually hoists the Cup will be the only team with bearded fans by the end of the playoffs. It is at worst an amusing tradition of the Great White North and is something of which I have spun off in an attempt to bring more order and even more regularity to my life.

I have grown a winter beard each of the past two winters. Both beards were spurred by JP$ and his dorm's "No Shave November" bonding scam (of which I was secretly jealous). Beard 1 was the first time I had ever grown more than just chin hair and eventually phased into an Amish-looking growth that I am not fond of recalling. Beard 2 lasted most of this winter past and, I feel, gave me some subliminal higher-standing with Becca's [bearded] father. Beard 3, this year's latest and greatest, started in late October and has only recently fallen into the bathroom sink, victim of the guillotine that is the Mach3.

[For inclusion into the Scott Pearce biography: "It was after a few weeks of struggling with trying to decide when to return to the ranks of naked-faced (which coincidentally coincided with a few weeks of Rebecca Rose hinting that it would be nice to kiss a naked top lip again) that Scott Pearce made an official decision..."]

I have officially decided to grow a beard annually during the exact length of the baseball offseason. I will shave for the last time the morning after the last World Series game (regardless of which team wins the game) and will resume shaving again on the first day that the Yankees' pitchers and catchers report to spring training.

The press conference will be tomorrow at 3pm. Stupid questions will be rejected with Bill Parcellsian bluntness.

Licence to be Royally Pissed

So the other day I saw a Hummer H2 in local parking lot with a car-top carrier strapped to the roof.

I'll re-type that sentence for effect: The other day I saw a Hummer H2 with a car-top carrier strapped to the roof.

I have never so sincerely cursed out someone under my breath. How can this guy justify adding more cargo space atop what is arguably the largest four-wheeled beast on the roads today? Is it possible that he really couldn't contrive a means of packing into his hugeass tank-on-wheels whatever of his worldly possessions needed transport?

I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, hoping that maybe his lot was such that he had recently realized the gross lapse in judgement under which he was subject when he penned the lease for his Frigate of the Freeway and had adopted the policy of merely living out of his H2 as a make-shift RV. Maybe his monthly budget session brought him to the ultimatum of paying rent or paying for gas at 3 miles a gallon, after which he rationalized that an apartment does a far inferior job of announcing to the world, "Hey, look at me and deduce that my genitalia must be as grand in scale as my vehicle is excessive and wasteful!"


In related thoughts, I had an idea for a documentary. I would pay the Friday nite admission fee to the local cinema to watch even a half hour film of the following content. I would like to see a camera crew and a moderately-polite interview man/woman track the drivers of Hummers on the road and try to interview them when they get out of their H2s. I would like these drivers to be asked--objectively and without an air of pretense or bias--things like what made them buy their H2, if they are happy with their purchase, what their monthly gas expenses are, and how their H2 meets their particular transportation needs. I would like the interviewer to be equipped with facts informing the driver how much the gas expenses of the average economy-car-commuter match up with the typical H2 commuter, and do a quick calculation to let the H2 driver know how many children he or she could feed, clothe, and educate through Compassion International with the difference in monthly gas money alone.

I wouldn't care if this crew tracked down solo drivers of the other giant SUVs. I have nothing unique against Hummers except the added "status symbol" tag they supposedly carry. I would pay to watch a documentary like the one described above because I want to hear the H2 owner voice. I want this misinterpreted people group to be able to rationalize their very large decisions to the world; I want them to be able to plead their case to the average cynic like Scott Pearce who does nothing but assume the worst and secretly curse them out as they hum by. Really, I want to be able to secondarily look these people in the eye and hear them say that they can justify the money and gas and lifestyle they expend for the sake of [fill in the blank].

I obviously don't believe that I would hear one convincing argument/justification and would really only be looking for my own sense of justification for cursing at people I have never met.