From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XV

Introduction

This is the fifteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, and Volume XIV is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in numerical order, alphabetical order, in order of importance, or by court order.)

What are albertnet bits & bobs? They’re brief passages from letters, emails, essays, shopping lists, or other combinations of letters and words that I saw fit to type at some point. Read these silently to yourself while pointlessly mouthing the words, or read them aloud to your child or pet, or read them at top volume on a city bus. Or do all three! Mix-n-match!

[The below photo has nothing to do with this post, but hey ... happy Halloween!]

August 3, 2006

I have my PC media player set up to cycle through all my music, so I get everything from alternative rock to classical to rap. Right now I’m hearing a blast from the past: “Hunted Child” by the L.A. rapper Ice-T. My roommate C—, aka Dithers, used to sing along, “I’m the honey child!” I for my part liked to sing, “Death row . . . water buffalo.” [The real lyric was “what a brutha know.] Years later, at the bike shop in Berkeley, I continued in that vein, and for a brief time had the nickname “Water Buffalo.”

August 23, 2006

There used to be a sign on the Muni [i.e., local mass transit system] buses that read, “There is no limit to the number of seeing-eye dogs on Muni.” I always wanted to nudge a fellow passenger, glance toward the sign, and say, “No kidding—this bus is teeming with them!” Later the Muni folks changed it to “Any number of seeing-eye dogs are allowed on Muni, free and un-muzzled.” Scarcely better, but did it have to be so wordy? Why not just “Seeing-eye dogs are allowed on Muni,” or, because it’s really the point, “Only seeing-eye dogs are allowed on Muni”? Or perhaps best of all, how about, “If you can read this, get your dog off the bus”?

August 31, 2006

I finally got some Tour de France coverage on tape. It’s pretty cool. They show some dudes’ heart rates in real time! The commentators talked to Floyd Landis’s coach during stage 17, when Floyd made up all that time and put himself in striking range of the overall win. They were talking about stage 16, when Floyd cracked and lost like eight minutes on the last climb. He uses this Power Tap mech in the rear hub that tells him his power output and can be uploaded to the PC after the race. His coach said that during that ill-fated last climb on stage 16, Floyd was putting out 260 watts, which was quite low for him. Well, it so happens that it’s almost exactly what I averaged on the first two passes of La Marmotte this year! (I did 262 watts on the Col du Glandon and 264 on the Col du Télégraphe.) If you don’t factor in rider weight, you could conclude that I could hang with Floyd on his worst day! (Of course, rider weight is everything, and I’m sure my power-to-weight ratio isn’t even close to his.) Every night before bed both girls beg to watch some Tour de France footage. I limit them to five minutes (unless I get too caught up in the action and forget to curtail it).

September 8, 2006

I came across one of those questionnaires that help determine if you’re an alcoholic. Question five was, “Do you suffer from regular alcohol related accidents?” My completely honest and sincere answer is, “Not unless you count peeing on the rim.”

October 18, 2006

I’m so sorry to hear you got dragged to Kentucky Fried Chicken. I hate that “food.” E— and I went to KFC one cold, rainy day in Michigan during our cross-country bike tour, and immediately regretted it, from the first greasy bite onward. Which is weird. I mean, you’d think just about anything would taste good when you’re tired, cold, wet, and lost. I wonder if the ill-fated Donner party could have enjoyed KFC, right there at the end when they’d already eaten their boots and everything. Probably not. Man that stuff is gross.

November 11, 2006

I’m so frustrated with my work PC. The IT folks have locked down the browser to make sure the online experience is as annoying as possible. Every time a website runs a script (which means about half a dozen times per page) a window pops up saying, “Oh NO! Rush the children down to the cellar, put your tray table in the upright locked position, tuck and roll, Simon says cover your head! This website is running a SCRIPT! It’s possible that something TERRIBLE could happen! Do you really want to run this script, or should you just power off your PC and go home?” It’s systematically training you to automatically click “YES” to any dialog box that pops up, guaranteeing that if you ever got a useful dialog with a serious choice, you’d fail to recognize it. Somehow this makes the security people, who are evidently running the company, feel a bit better. Sadists. And whenever you click on a hyperlink or type in information and submit it, you get another dialog box: “You could not possibly have realized this, being an ignorant type with no concept of computer networks (the opposite extreme of us security types), but you are about to send information over the INTERNET! Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Don’t you know that OTHER PEOPLE could SEE this information? People you’ve never met, strangers, some of them psychotics, or the kind of people who don’t even put the toilet seat down? Are you SURE you want to do this? Wouldn’t it be better to go back to the IBM PC and DOS 3.1 and use WordStar? Are you really ready for this Brave New World that has such people in it? Is it really worth it?”

November 13, 2006

Not to worry, DSL [digital subscriber line, an early Internet broadband product] is pretty straightforward to have installed. After you place your order, a guy shows up at your house reeking of cigarette smoke. He might work for your actual provider, or not; he might actually work for the competitor of your actual provider, in which case another guy will come weeks later who will work for your provider, or at least a subcontractor of your provider whom you’ve never heard of. Each guy will come into the house, look in your crawl space, scratch himself a bit, then leave without appearing to have done anything. I guess one guy has one task and another guy who comes later has another task, but it never appears that anybody actually does anything. The first time through I expected to see the telco guy shimmy up the telephone pole across the street, but he must have done that in Ninja clothing the night before.

An any case it really is easy for the consumer, whose entire role is to keep an eye on the telco guy and make sure he’s not casing the house for valuables (see “Ninja clothing” comment above). Sometime before or after the telco guy’s visit, or between the telco guys’ visits, a box comes in the mail containing an install CD and a really cheap looking DSL modem. You follow some illustrated instructions and you plug a bunch of stuff in. Sometimes the DSL is provisioned on your existing phone line, so you have to put these weird filters on all your phone jacks, even ones with no phone plugged into them (if you believe the instructions, which I don’t). This is still pretty straightforward unless you’re also sharing those phone lines with your streaming digital audio system, in which case you have to draw a network diagram, scratch your head a lot, pay extra for a static IP address, and configure that. My current DSL, even though it’s a separate line from my voice line, came with a lot of filters anyway, with specific instructions to do nothing with them except save them in case you decide to switch to Voice Over IP (VOIP). So every so often I have to stop my wife from throwing out the filters, but that’s pretty easy.

I’ve had three different DSL providers, and only the first installation was difficult. My router was configured wrong and it didn’t do a darn thing. I was very distraught until I phoned a colleague and he helped me suss out the problem. The guy who installed it refused to help, and I had no recourse because I had no idea what company he even worked for, nor what he was even doing in my house.

November 29, 2006

At long last, per your previous inquiry, I’ve found a photo of the post-race meal served by the Marmotte race organizers. That shredded white stuff you see in the picture is raw jicama, I think. (Tasting it didn’t help with identification because it tasted like absolutely nothing, except aluminum, which everything tasted like, due to the physical abuse I’d just put my body through.) The dry, lifeless baguette must have been imported from the U.S. (from the Safeway deli, to be precise). I didn’t even know you could get a bad baguette in France. Maybe they have special crappy ones for the Americans. I’d really like to know why the race promoters thought anybody would be excited about this plate. (Full disclosure: there was also a second plate, of mealy penne with a bland tomato sauce, that didn’t warrant a photo. It was nominally edible.)

November 30, 2006

To be honest, I generally take a head-in-the-sand approach to the woes of ageing. I’m aware of a great many ways in which the body begins to wear out (though certainly not even a fraction of the total, nor of the myriad details of such), and I’m aware of many (but certainly not all, nor even most) of the ways in which a healthy lifestyle can delay the inevitable. That said, I’m also aware of the non-physical aspects of ageing: specifically, the emotional and psychological components, the most visible of which is the worry involved. As if the physical discomfort and reduced abilities weren’t bad enough, there’s the ever-growing concern that they’ll get worse, that they’re leading up to something dire. Toward the end of E—’s grandma’s life, I learned the hard way never to ask the open-ended question, “How are you?” This seemed to be an invitation for her to begin an endless litany of complaints and grave portents. I find that one of the great joys of (relative) youth is the illusion that it will last. To begin worrying now, to become vigilant of the pitfalls of this or that poor lifestyle choice, to start getting “Prevention” magazine, etc. would take much of the fun out of still being mostly intact. When I become a geezer one day and have to forego, with a sigh, that third piece of bacon, I want to at least have the pleasure of remembering my thirties, when the only memories I’ll have of limiting my bacon intake are considerations like “is it too hot to burn my fingers?” or “will that leave enough for E— and the kids?” Maybe one day I’ll wish I’d started the fiber and temperance a little earlier, but I’ll also, I’m sure, think back and say, “By god, I lived large as a young man, and I enjoyed it!”

As for whole-wheat pasta, I lump that into that category of foods you should either enjoy in their proper form or skip entirely. This substitutes-to-avoid group includes Hydrox cookies (imitation Oreos that taste bad), turkey bacon (inedible), soy cheese (culinary blasphemy), light beer (urine), grocery store pastries (a waste of fat and a carbuncle on the already ugly face of American food), margarine (proof that man is essentially evil), frozen yogurt (not yogurt, not ice cream, and not good), low-fat ice cream (the only noble justification for suicide I can think of), soy milk (tofu urine), and of course carob (the existence of which means the terrorists have already won). I mean, food ought to be pleasurable, life ought to be pleasurable, and if you’re not a total sloth and/or glutton you ought to be able to enjoy yourself somewhat. Those who do fake workouts (dangling by their wrists over a Stairmaster so their feet can paddle ineffectually around, while they read a frickin’ magazine, for crying out loud) can have their fake foods, and the rest of us—big strong creatures with appetites and a zest for living hard and well—can do whatever produces good results. That’s my take, anyway.

November 30, 2006

Congratulations on Baby M—! She is darling. I can’t tell which of you she looks like. In my experience babies seldom look like their parents, who are, after all, adults.

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From the Archives - Sting’s Lyrical Blunders

Introduction

About fifteen years ago, my brother emailed me a blog post by Charles Petzold about a fairly major goof in Sting’s lyrics to “Don’t Stand So Close to Me.”  The essay had to do with Sting’s allusion to the book Lolita, and the age of Vladimir Nakobov’s evil pedophile character, Humbert Humbert. Sting refers to Humbert as “the old man,” but he simply isn’t old. Petzold’s post also recounts a more widespread criticism of the song, which is Sting’s inane rhyming of “Nabokov” with “cough.”

What follows is my original response to my brother (which I’ve fleshed out a bit for this presumably larger audience). But first, some background.

Highlights of Petzold’s post

Petzold’s blog post begins by quickly recounting the botched rhyme in Sting’s lyrics:

The music magazine Blender recently cited Sting as the worst lyricist ever (story here), in part for the atrocious lyric [It’s no use, he sees her/ He starts to shake and cough/ Just like the old man in/ That book by Nabokov]. At the time the song first came out, much was made of Sting’s ridiculous pronunciation of Vladimir Nabokov’s last name, which should properly be accented on the second syllable.

Then Petzold takes Sting to task for suggesting that Nabokov’s antihero is old:

The “old man” — the narrator of [Lolita] who adopts the pseudonym Humbert Humbert — is hardly old! In May 1947, when Humbert Humbert first meets Dolores Haze, he is 36 or 37 and she is 12. He dies at the age of 42, and she dies at the age of 17. This is not a matter of “inside knowledge” or reading between the lines. Nabokov is extremely precise in the chronology of the novel, and only the most superficial reading (or, more likely in this case, none at all) could [miss] all the signposts.

My commentary, informed by my long study of Nabokov’s work and the two years of Russian I took in high school, elaborates on both gaffs.

Sting’s Lyrical Blunders – October 11, 2007

Petzold makes good points. I have long been bothered by that mispronunciation (made all the worse for its being the very last word of the song). For years, when I’d sing this (e.g., in the shower), I would change the lyrics to “just like the old man in that book by Vladimir.” This fixes the meter, in that the great writer’s name isn’t accentuated on the wrong syllable, but of course my substitution fouls up the rhyme. Not that Sting’s rhyme was exactly right to begin with; “Nabokov” is correctly pronounced “Na-BOH-kov,” with the final letter being basically a “v” sound, perhaps slightly closer to an “f” than the classic English “v” but in any event a poor match with the simple “f” sound in “cough.”

So, to fix both the meter and the rhyme, and the age while I’m at it, here’s how I will sing the last two lines from now on:

It’s no use, he sees her
He’s feeling really queer
Just like the gross man in
That book by Vladimir

I suppose I’m not on completely safe ground with “Vladimir,” since a very strict Russian pronunciation would accentuate the second syllable, which would have a bit more of an “e” sound, so the word would more properly rhyme with “redeemer.” But I think enough Americans say “VLAD-i-mere” that this is a significant improvement.

Now, in case you’re wondering if it’s fair to say Humbert Humbert felt “queer,” I think it certainly is. At one point late in the novel, when Lolita is starting to distance herself from Humbert, he describes how “I sat down on the grass with a quite monstrous pain in my chest and vomited up a torrent of browns and greens that I had never remembered eating.” That would be a pretty queer feeling indeed (and in any case I don’t remember Humbert shaking and coughing at any point in the book).

What’s arguably even lamer than the rhyme itself is Sting’s effort to defend himself. His website, sting.com, provides this quote (taken from an interview):

Okay, I can defend that. Sometimes rhymes can be so bad they can shock you into listening to them. Most good, full rhymes are just Hallmark card stuff. Moon, June, erm, balloon. But I’ve used that terrible, terrible rhyme technique a few times. Technically, it’s called a feminine rhyme—where it’s so appalling it’s almost humorous.

Okay, let me get this straight: Sting deliberately mispronounced “Nabokov,” to make it rhyme with “cough,” just to shock the listener into listening? What was the listener doing before? Zoning out? Listening to something else? Yeah, right. “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is actually a rather good song, and this is the very end of it; if there was any need to shock the reader into listening, that would more appropriately be done closer to the beginning.

Meanwhile, the bit about “feminine rhyme” further showcases Sting’s appalling willingness to shamelessly spout bullshit without regard to the possibility that he’ll be fact-checked. “Feminine rhyme” is not characterized by being appalling or shocking. As M.H. Abrams explains in his excellent Glossary of Literary Terms, a feminine rhyme “consists of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable” and, “since it involves the repetition of two syllables, is also known as a double rhyme.” Examples would be feather/heather and ending/bending. Does this type of rhyme get employed in pop music? Sure! Check out these lines from Eminem:

Yo! His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy
There’s vomit on his sweater already: Mom’s spaghetti

Feminine rhyme is what Sting should have employed, since “Nabokov” is a word whose final syllable is unstressed. What Sting actually made was a masculine rhyme, which “consists of a single stressed syllable” such as in bore/poor and louche/douche. If he wished to employ a feminine rhyme in order to achieve metrical accuracy, Sting should have rhymed Nabokov with “fuck off.”

A final note on the botched rhyme and Sting’s lame defense of it: twice on one page of sting.com, Nabokov is spelled “Nabakov.” This further suggests that Sting simply didn’t know how to pronounce the name; obviously, flubbing the penultimate syllable wasn’t necessary in order to achieve the single (masculine) rhyme with “cough.”

Getting to Petzold’s main point, the inaccuracy of “old man” in the final verse of that song: this hadn’t previously dawned on me, and it’s a very good observation. I suppose I’ve allowed the casting in the two Lolita movies to distort my perception of Humbert’s age (and shame on me, because I’ve read that book at least three or four times). Of course, Sting was pretty young when he wrote that song, but was he young enough to think of 36 as old? Well, we can do some rudimentary math here based on the line “this girl is half his age.” If we assume this is high school, the girl is between 14 and 18. (On his website, Sting recalls how “I’d done teaching practice at secondary schools and been through the business of having 15-year-old girls fancying me—and me really fancying them!” Eww.) So the narrator of the song is presumably around 30. Perhaps a little kid would think 36 is old, but not a 30-year-old.

I suppose Sting could try to argue that he meant “old man” as in “father,” as Humbert was in fact Lolita’s legal stepfather for most of the book. But would he really expect all his listeners to have read the book to know that? Besides, it’d be “her old man,” not “that old man.” No dice.

As a final Hail Mary, Sting could always deny that he was talking about the book Lolita at all—after all, there are plenty of shaking and coughing old men in Nabokov’s books. This would be a weak defense, of course, given the subject matter of the song, but there’s still hope: Sting could claim that he was alluding to The Enchanter, a Nabokov novella that’s also about a pedophile (and was an early precursor to Lolita). I can’t recall the age of its awful protagonist, but at least he is described as “balding.” But from the perspective of that hypothetical defense, Sting nullified it when he recorded a new version of the song in 1986 and changed “that book by Nabokov” to “that famous book by Nabokov.” I doubt anybody would call The Enchanter a famous book. And in interviews Sting has mentioned his admiration of Lolita.

I think it’s appropriate that Sting topped the list of awful lyricists. I saw a documentary about him from 1985, and he just came off as a pompous ass. In one scene, Sting asks his drummer or somebody whether “chasm” is pronounced with a “k” sound or a “ch” sound. This makes me wonder if he really writes his own lyrics to begin with. I mean, who would use a word he doesn’t even know how to pronounce? Oh, wait ... Sting, obviously.

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Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part VI: Recent Updates (continued)

Hear my playlist!

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

As you may have seen last week, I’ve appended my original workout music playlist (from years ago) to include a bunch of new songs. Well, not actually new, and not always even newer, but stuff I more recently realized is just perfect for exercising to indoors. I got to half of these tracks last time, and here are the rest. It’s not just a list, but also the liner notes: not the ones from the musical artists, which would of course be plagiarism, but my notes on why I like a song and/or anything else interesting about it.

I’m also including, as an appendix, the complete list of all my favorite workout songs since I originally started this project. Enjoy please enjoy.

Liner Notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part VI

Icky Thump - The White Stripes

              The first few White Stripes albums were amazing, but then their fifth album pretty much sucked. Critics seemed to like it, but screw them. I almost gave up on this band but then went ahead and checked out “Icky Thump,” their sixth (and alas, final) album. Daaaaaamn! The whole collection is kickass! Pretty much any of the songs on it would be a solid addition to your megamix, but this track, along with 300 MPH Torrential Outpour Blues and Martyr for my Love for You, are particularly good.

Loot My Body - Man Man

              This song has it all: it’s fast, it’s funny, it rocks, and it somehow puts me in touch with my inner hipster while mocking hipsters and making me relieved I don’t seem to have an outer hipster. I think it takes a pretty special song to do all that.

Move Your Body - Sia

              Okay, so Sia is one of those acts I decided to check out because of an Eminem song. I liked her background vocals in Beautiful Pain so I checked out a Sia disc. (Yes, an actual disc, as I’m a Spotify newb.) My first impression was wow, she really needs a better songwriter (e.g., someone like Eminem). Her lyrics are so repetitive and uninspired. At the same time, her songs do have a good energy, and half the time riding indoors I’m cross-eyed and brain-dead anyway, and upon reflection I have concluded that this song, and others on her “This Is Acting” album, are perfect for indoor workouts. Also, one of her concert tours was called “Nostalgic for the Present,” which I think is clever (in an albeit cynical way).

Non-State Actor - Soundgarden

              For many years, I thought “Down on the Upside” was Soundgarden’s final album. They’d been releasing an album every couple years during their heyday, and then they broke up, and I thought that was that. Well, while I wasn’t looking, they quietly got back together and recorded “King Animal,” after a sixteen-year hiatus. This album almost passed me by completely, but a couple years ago I came to wonder (for reasons I can’t recall) if the novel Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov might have been an influence on the band. I researched this a bit and though I never found anything to support my theory, I did come across this last album and discovered it’s fricking great. If Non-State Actor doesn’t get you amped up during your workout, nothing will. Also check out By Crooked Steps, Bones of Birds, Black Saturday, and A Thousand Days Before.

Not the Same Anymore - The Strokes

              Okay, so this is another band I lost track of, and then suddenly there was this new album, “The New Abnormal,” which dropped at almost exactly the same time the U.S. went into shelter-in-place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In that regard, the title of this album seems incredibly prescient. And it’s a kickass collection, definitely one of their finest. Not the Same Anymore starts off kind of mellow but builds nicely until it’s rocking plenty hard, and then it goes out like a lamb. Very cool indeed. Other good workout tracks from this album are Why Are Sundays So Depressing, The Adults are Talking, and Bad Decisions.

Pony - Ginuwine

              This is a workout megamix recommendation from my daughter Alexa. It’s amusing right off the bat with background vocals from some guy with an impossibly low voice. Then the proper singing kicks in, of course, or the song would be nothing but a gag. This is kind of an R&B style song, I think, so it’s kind of a departure from the general feel of my playlist, which never hurts. Very solid beat here without causing the kind of head-thrashing that eventually makes your neck sore.

Safe From Harm - Massive Attack

              This is a band I started listening to all the way back in 1991 when I was still in college. I rediscovered Massive Attack because my daughter wandered into their oeuvre and put a lot of their music on a playlist she made for me. Safe From Harm is a bit different from the rest of my megamix it that it’s trip hop instead of rock or rap. But don’t worry, it’s fast and rhythmic enough to keep your pedals turning.

Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers

              This is one of those anthem-like exuberant songs that just go well with exercise. Heck, if I were one of those people who can dance, I would surely dance to this. It’s probably not one for your everyday mix because it’s a bit repetitive and simple, but gosh, it’s great for working out. Another good Killers song is Mr. Brightside.

Soul of a Man - Beck

             I cannot keep up with Beck. He has just put out so much stuff, and nobody ever tells me. It’s like I ought to subscribe to a music magazine or something, but to my earlier point, music critics are morons, and Rolling Stone has tobacco ads (which for me is an automatic boycott). But I digress. I stumbled across Beck’s eleventh studio album, “Modern Guilt,” more than a decade after its release, and although great music often has to grow on you gradually, Soul of a Man grabbed me instantly—I was like, “Holy shit, this song is awesome!” It’s also pretty short (about 2-½ minutes) which can feel like a relief during a workout if, like me, you often rest for just a bit between tracks.

Stop - Jane’s Addiction

              For me, this song is all about nostalgia. It brings me back to my UC Santa Barbara days. Jane’s Addiction played live on the UCSB campus as part of Extravaganza1989 and I’ll never forget it. Not the concert itself, mind you, since I didn’t attend, but the fact of it. A friend said the show sucked because the band members were totally drunk. But this song—that is, the recording they made when sober—is a great fit for indoor workouts. “Stop—now go!”

Thrift Shop - Macklemore

              This is a fun, funny song with a nice bouncy beat that’s great to ride along to. I absolutely love thrift shopping, and because my daughter turned me on to this song, it always reminds me of thrifting with her, and/or with her sister, and since I’m now an empty nester this song only gets more poignant over time. “This is fucking awesome.”

What’s Up Danger - Black Caviar & Blackway

              Look, let me make one thing clear: I’m not a giant fan of comic book movies (though I did like the first Wonder Woman). I’m trying to be a fricking adult, okay? According to Wikipedia, “Black Caviar claimed that ‘when the opportunity to write a song for the new Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse film came up, [their] 10-year-old selves were freaking out.’” Yeah, ten is about the perfect age for Spider-Man. But hey, the ticking-clock background effect in this song makes a nice metronome to pedal to, and being able to enjoy lowbrow pop songs is one of the great things about working out indoors.

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part V
• Entire playlist on Spotify

Appendix – the complete Megamix list

For your convenience, here’s the complete list of Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix tracks (208 songs, 54 artists, about 14 hours of music). Enjoy please enjoy.

‘Till I Collapse - Eminem
16 Shots -  Stefflon Don
20 Dollar - M.I.A.
212 - Azelia Banks
8 Miles & Runnin’ - Freeway/Jay-Z
911 Is a Joke - Public Enemy
A Punchup at a Wedding - Radiohead
A Thousand Days Before - Soundgarden
A.K.A. I-D-I-O-T - The Hives
Adrenaline Rush - Obie Trice
Airbag - Radiohead
Alive - Sia
Ass Like That - Eminem
Average Man - Obie Trice
Bad Girls - M.I.A.
Bad Guy - Eminem
Be Somebody - Kings of Leon
Beautiful - Eminem
Beautiful Pain - Eminem w/ Sia
Best Rapper Alive - Lil Wayne
Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
Black Saturday - Soundgarden
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos - Public Enemy
Blow Up the Outside World - Soundgarden
Bones of Birds - Soundgarden
Borders - M.I.A.
Born Free - M.I.A.
Brain Stew - Green Day
Broke as Fuck -  YBN Cordae
Bucky Done Gun - M.I.A.
Burden in My Hand - Soundgarden
Cash Money Millionaires - Lil Wayne
Celebrity Skin - Doja Cat
Cha Ching (Cheq 1-2 Remix) - Lady Sovereign
Charmer - Kings of Leon
Cheers - Obie Trice
Closer - Kings of Leon
Come As You Are - Nirvana
Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd
Cool Cats - Obie Trice
Cops Shot the Kid - Nas
Creep - Radiohead
Cry Now - Obie Trice
Deja Vu - Eminem
Desperation - Eminem
Discombobulated - Eminem
Don’t Shoot (I’m a Man) - Devo
Down In It - Nine Inch Nails
Easy to Crash - Cake
Enter Sandman - Metallica
Everlong - Foo Fighters
Eyelid’s Mouth - Soundgarden
Fell In Love With a Girl - The White Stripes
Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden
Fight the Power - Public Enemy
Follow My Life - Obie Trice
Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd
Fresh - Devo
Galang - M.I.A.
Get Free - Lana Del Rey
Girls LGBNAF - Ice-T
Give It Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Gnat - Eminem
Godzilla - Eminem
Got Hungry - Obie Trice
Hands On You - Eminem/Obie Trice
Happiness is a Warm Gun - The Breeders
Heart In a Cage - The Strokes
Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana
Heartbeat - Ice-T
Hustlers - Nas
Hypnotize - The White Stripes
I Am Not a Human Being - Lil Wayne
I Could Have Lied - Red Hot Chili Peppers
I Go To Work - Kool Moe Dee
I Will - Eminem
Icky Thump - The White Stripes
If I Had - Eminem
I’m Back - Eminem
I’m Your Pusher - Ice-T
It Takes a Muscle - M.I.A.
Jack My Dick - Obie Trice
Jesus Christ Pose - Soundgarden
Just Lose It - Eminem
Killing Lies - The Strokes
Knives Out - Radiohead
Know It Ain’t Right - M.I.A.
Last Nite - The Strokes
Legacy - Eminem
Like Suicide - Soundgarden
Little Acorns - The White Stripes
Loco-Motive - Nas
Lollipop - Lil Wayne
Longview - Green Day
Look In My Eyes - Obie Trice
Loot My Body - Man Man
Lose Yourself - Eminem
Love Me - 50 Cent
Love Me or Hate Me - Lady Sovereign
Love the Way You Lie - Eminem
Matangi - M.I.A.
Mockingbird - Eminem
Money Over Bullsh*t - Nas
Mother - Pink Floyd
Move Your Body - Sia
Mr. Brightside - The Killers
Mr. Carter - Lil Wayne
Mrs. Officer - Bobby Valentino/Lil Wayne
My Dad’s Gone Crazy - Eminem
My England - Lady Sovereign
My Mom - Eminem
My Name Is - Eminem
My Wave - Soundgarden
No Love - Lil Wayne/Eminem
No Regrets - Eminem
Non-State Actor - Soundgarden
Not Going Back - Nas
Not the Same Anymore - The Strokes
Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
Offend In Every Way - The White Stripes
On the Other Side - The Strokes
One Mic - Nas
One Time 4 Your Mind - Nas
Outshined - Soundgarden
Overfloater - Soundgarden
Paint It Black - The Rolling Stones
Paper Planes - M.I.A.
Personal - Ice-T
Pony - Ginuwine
Pump Your Fist - Kool Moe Dee
R.A.K.I.M. - Rakim
Rabbit Run - Eminem
Radio Suckers - Ice-T
Rap God - Eminem
Rewind - Nas
Rhinosaur - Soundgarden
Richard - Obie Trice
Roughnecks - Obie Trice
Safe From Harm - Massive Attack
Santeria - Sublime
Searching With My Good Eye Closed - Soundgarden
Seduction - Eminem
Seven Nation Army - The White Stripes
Sexodus - M.I.A.
Shoot Me Down -Lil Wayne
Shooter - Lil Wayne
Sick Of You - Cake
Sing For the Moment - Eminem
Smack That - Eminem
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Smile Like You Mean It - The Killers
So Human - Lady Sovereign
Soul of a Man - Beck
Spoonman - Soundgarden
Stan - Eminem
Stop - Jane’s Addiction
Suck My Kiss - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Sunshowers - M.I.A.
Superunknown - Soundgarden
Survival - Eminem
Sympathy For the Devil - The Rolling Stones
Take It or Leave It - The Strokes
Take, Take, Take - The White Stripes
Takeover - Jay-Z
Tango - Lady Sovereign
Tarantula - Bob Schneider
Tell Me Why - M.I.A.
That Was Just Your Life - Metallica
The Adults Are Talking - The Strokes
The Air Near My Fingers - The White Stripes
The Day I Tried To Live - Soundgarden
The Day That Never Comes - Metallica
The Girl Tried To Kill Me - Ice-T
The God That Failed - Metallica
The Hardest Button to Button - The White Stripes
The Man Who Sold the World - Nirvana
The Monster - Eminem with Rihanna
The Real Slim Shady - Eminem
The Righteous & The Wicked - Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Unforgiven - Metallica
The Unforgiven III - Metallica
Thrift Shop - Macklemore
Through Being Cool - Devo
Time To Get Ill - Beastie Boys
Truckdrivin’ Neighbors Downstairs - Beck
Trunk - Kings of Leon
U Wanna Be Me - Nas
Ultraviolence - Lana Del Rey
Unorthadox Daughter - No Lay
Untutored Youth - The Hives
Use Somebody - Kings of Leon
W.T.P. - Eminem
What I Got - Sublime
What’s Up Danger - Black Caviar & Blackway
What’s Wrong With Them - Lil Wayne
When I Come Around – Green Day
Where Did You Sleep Last Night - Nirvana
Where Is My Mind? - The Pixies
Wherever I May Roam - Metallica
Whip It - Devo
Why Are Sundays So Depressing - The Strokes
Worse Dreams - Soundgarden
Wrong Way - Sublime
XR2 - M.I.A.
Yah Yah - Eminem
You Ain’t Got Nuthin - Lil Wayne
Young Lust - Pink Floyd
Zero Chance - Soundgarden

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Workout Megamix Liner Notes - Part V: Recent Updates

Hear my playlist!

Hear my entire Megamix (200+ songs) on Spotify - click here!

Introduction

“Don’t smile until February.” These are words of wisdom I heard recently from a third-grade teacher, on how to maintain order in the classroom. But these words could just as easily apply to a winter workout regimen. Staying fit just isn’t as much fun when the cold, dark, and rain send us inside.

Almost seven years ago in these pages, I started a series on what music I recommend for indoor workouts. The tedium of riding rollers or a trainer requires a meticulously curated collection, or “megamix,” of fast-paced, hard driving rock or rap songs. (Do you also need a great playlist for brisk walking or running on that treadmill you bought during the pandemic? Of course.)

I don’t discover new music as quickly as Gen-Z does, but I have added a lot to my collection over the years, and now have many more tracks to recommend. (This makes even more sense now than it did seven years ago, because now everyone has Spotify and doesn’t have to buy or borrow CDs. Click here for my Spotify playlist.) And so, here are my current recommendations, along with “liner notes” (a more metaphorical concept than ever, since so many young listeners have never seen a record jacket liner). 

Liner Notes – Dana’s Ultimate Superfly Workout Megamix Part V

212 - Azelia Banks

              I discovered this song, and this artist, through one of those YouTube algorithms. It figured since I like M.I.A. videos, I’d like this video too, and put it into my feed. Well, the algorithm wasn’t wrong. The video is fun and funny, and I dig the song too. It’s perfect for riding rollers. (But I’m still not a big fan of these algorithms.)

16 Shots -  Stefflon Don

              My daughter turned me on to this one. As with “212” above, I cannot figure out what the singer is even talking about. The song seems political and probably relates to current events, which it’d be easy enough to google, but none of that matters to me. As has been observed by the philosopher Rakim, “It’s just the beat, the beat, the beat.”

Borders - M.I.A.

              I really like M.I.A. and lots of her songs have made my workout megamix, but I have to admit, I like each album a little less than the one before it. This is my favorite song from her fifth album, AIM, from 2016. And if you have a giant plasma TV in your home gym, be sure to check out the video too. It’s pretty awesome … possibly more extras than I’ve even seen in a music video.

Broke as Fuck -  YBN Cordae

              YBN Cordae, according to Wikipedia, is “known mononymously as Cordae.” What? You don’t know this word, “mononymous”? I didn’t either. It means having only one name. But of course that’s not the case with this musician, unless you decide to call him Cordae. I mean, you could as easily say I’m known mononymously as Dana, except that I’m not known. Now, I don’t know much about Cordae except he got his start doing a remix of “My Name Is” by Eminem. How does a rapper whose name isn’t Slim Shady or Eminem make a name for himself doing a remix of “My Name Is”? Are you as confused as I am? Well, who cares. This is another song my daughter turned me on to, and you can totally pedal to it.

Celebrity Skin - Doja Cat

              This is a cover of the Hole song. If you’re reading this post out loud to somebody, you’re going to have to pause here and explain it’s H-O-L-E, not W-H-O-L-E. Anyhow, I was never crazy about the original version of this song, but the vocals in this cover take it up a notch. Solid.

Cops Shot the Kid - Nas

              This one starts off with a dude telling a story, and he does a pretty funny imitation of a white cop saying sternly, “All right you kids, stop having so much fun. Move along.” This monologue goes on for about twenty seconds, which gives you a nice respite from all that hammering, as you just soft-pedal and listen, but then the song suddenly gets hard and fast and disturbing and dark. If you sync up your pedaling, you’ll start to really suffer, but you’ll go ahead and pour on the pace because you know the song is fairly short. Man. It’s a good one.

Down In It - Nine Inch Nails

              You’re thinking “What? I thought this was new music albertnet is recommending!” No, just new to my workout megamix. This song is definitely old school. I can’t hear it without thinking of my old college roommate who, as described here, listened to this song constantly to the exclusion of all others. Nevertheless, it’s a good one and easy to dance—er, to work out—to.

Everlong - Foo Fighters

               I fricking love this song. It’s old-school at this point too, being from 1997, and though I was aware of it then, I only came to love it recently. (I was like that with avocados too … just really late learning to appreciate them.) The drumming on this in particular song is so good, I not only wish it were louder, but I wish I could be inside the drum while the song is being played. Alas, the Foo Fighters’ drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died this year, very suddenly. So it’s kind of sad to hear this song now, but mostly it’s just awesome.

Free Bird - Lynyrd Skynyrd

              Okay, this song is almost as old as I am. What’s it doing on this list? Well, I asked my older daughter to give me her top 10 workout songs, and this was one of them. I think it’s adorable how these youngsters somehow discover music this old, totally on their own somehow. I also tend to associate this song with El Freebird’s, the taqueria in Isla Vista where I won the Burrito World Championships, so it brings back good memories. And the song, though it picks up gradually and is super long, does freakin’ rock out eventually so it does totally belong in my megamix.

Get Free - Lana Del Rey

              I read somewhere that Lana Del Rey was sued by Radiohead over this song, their claim being that it ripped off “Creep.” I couldn’t make out any resemblance at all and thought this seemed crazy. So with no preamble I played the song for my daughter and asked if it reminded her of anything. She replied, “I’m getting a pretty strong ‘Creep’ vibe from it.” OMG. I obviously know nothing about music. Clearly the ripoff (or tribute, if you want to prevaricate) was clear enough to my kid, and as described here, “The Guardian found that the chords used in ‘Creep’ were rare in pop music and that the melodies bore an ‘uncanny resemblance.’” But ignorant as I may be, I do know what I like, and this song is great. I was going to say something about the pacing of it, along with that of other songs, but I can’t remember my point. Suffice to say, virtually all the songs in this megamix can be synced with your pedaling, at one cadence or another, and the variety helps since sometimes ya wanna spin, and sometimes ya wanna get out of the saddle and mosh.

Godzilla - Eminem

              There seems to be a tendency among music critics to be hard on Eminem and suggest he’s washed up. This is the clearest example of incompetence I have ever seen. Not to sound like a troll or anything , but anyone who bags on Eminem is just an idiot, and the critics need to evaluate how far they’ve drifted from actual listeners, considering Eminem’s last eleven albums have hit number one on the US charts. This guy is amazing—he just gets better and better. If I gave him his due on this list of killer workout tracks, his songs would dominate and the whole post would look like an ad.  Godzilla is a lot of fun, has perfect energy for hammering your ass off, and even set a new record for speed: 10.65 syllables per second. The video is a hoot as well. You should definitely add the following tracks to your mix, too: No Regrets, Yah Yah, I Will, Gnat, No Regrets, The Ringer, and Darkness. Oh, and just about all his other songs, too.

To be continued

I thought I could cram all my new recommendations into a single post, but you lucked out: I’ve run out of space (or more to the point, you’ve run out of patience). Next week I’ll cover the rest of my modern megamix. I’ll also include, as an appendix, my entire workout song list, comprising over 200 tracks. Watch for it!

More reading

Here are links to the rest of my series of Workout Megamix liner notes:

• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Part VI
• Entire playlist on Spotify

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ask a Sinead O’Connor Fan

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Let’s get down to brass tacks: what is the best Sinead song of all time?

Bill P, Columbus, OH

Dear Bill,

In terms of popularity, “Nothing Compares 2 U” is her highest ranked song on Spotify (almost 218 million listens), which is way higher than #2, “All Apologies” (at 22.7 million). My personal favorite is “Troy” (#3 at 10.6 million), even though (and perhaps partly because) it gets kind of maudlin and overwrought at times. I also like that its lyrics allude to a William Butler Yeats poem.

Of course, it would be silly not to emphasize the brilliance of “Nothing Compares 2 U,” Sinead’s biggest hit. Even though she didn’t write it, it’s totally her song.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Sinead was in the news recently, around some kind of tragedy. Can you fill me in?

Jack H, Buffalo, NY

Dear Jack,

Well, albertnet is not a news site, and while there is tragic news—her son died—it seems like that should be a private family thing, and really has nothing to do with her fans. I like her music, and her voice, but I really don’t know her as a person whatsoever and her non-music life has nothing to do with me (nor, I suspect, with you). Perhaps we should all just enjoy her gift to us—that is, the music—and leave the rest of her life out of it. I hope that makes sense.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

“Nothing Compares 2 U” is pretty obviously a breakup type song, as she laments her lover moving out. And yet toward the end, she sings, “All the flowers that you planted mama, in the backyard/ All died when you went away.” What’s with the “mama” bit? Someone said this song was really about her mother moving out … is that right?

Lisa F, Seattle, WA

Dear Lisa,

The “mama” thing is perplexing. It’s tempting to think Sinead added that to the original lyrics, because there is a connection to her mother: when recording the video for the song, she thought about her mother, who had died in a car crash, and this is what caused her to shed tears. But the instance of “mama” is in the original song as written by Prince five years earlier. (As you may know, he wrote the song for this weird offshoot band called The Family, and you can hear their version here, though I don’t recommend it … it’s appallingly bad.)

It does seem as though the song could be written to one’s mother, though. The line “I can see whomever I choose” could be to make a former lover jealous, sure—but it could also be to taunt her mom had she discouraged the singer from this or that poor choice of mate and now isn’t around to complain. Meanwhile, the line “I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant” really makes more sense when sung to one’s (presumably frugal) mother; after all, why would a former lover care?

On the other hand, the word “baby” appears twice; calling one’s mom “baby” wouldn’t make a lot of sense. And what seems particularly incompatible with the mother concept are the lines, “I could put my arms around every boy I see/ But they’d only remind me of you.” What boy would remind Sinead of her mother? Probably not the kind she’d want to put her arms around. Suffice to say, the lyrics are ambiguous. Of the song, Sinead said (as reported here), “I think I’m probably similar to millions of people who loved the song, and we’re all people who associated the song with a loss of some kind.” Pretty general, eh?

But wait, there’s more. Prince’s recording engineer is quoted here as saying the song might have been about Prince’s housekeeper, Sandy Scipioni, who “made sure he had his favorite beverage, which was Five Alive, and she made sure the house was clean and that there were fresh flowers on the piano and that the socks and underwear were washed. That might have been the inspiration.” I’m glad there weren’t any lines about the crummy new housekeeper stocking Bubble Up instead of Five Alive and rolling up his socks instead of folding them.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

I’ve been reading your column for years, and you’ve never mentioned a single concert, obscure B-side, little known biographical detail, or forgotten track, and as far as I can tell you’ve never even met Sinead O’Connor. What makes you think you deserve to write this column at all?

Scott B, Jersey City, NJ

Dear Scott,

Sorry to disappoint you. I never said I was some kind of maven or aficionado … just a run-of-the-mill fan. To be honest, I don’t know why I have a column either. I just kind of fell into it. Maybe I should hand you the reins.

Oh, but wait … I did see Sinead in concert once, at the WOMAD (World of Music and Dance) concert in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco in 1993, performing with Peter Gabriel (you can see a terrible bootleg video of it here). So there’s that.

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

Remember that whole flap about O’Connor ripping up a photo of the pope on “Saturday Night Live”? What do you make of that? Obviously you’re still a fan…

Sandra M, Tempe, AZ

Dear Sandra,

That caused quite the scandal, eh? Even in my (non-Catholic) community everyone was acting like she was some horrible, insensitive person. It’s interesting to point out that, per this article here, there was absolutely no flap over Frank Sinatra’s response, when he commented during a concert not long after, “This must be one stupid broad. I’d kick her ass if she were a guy.” And Joe Pesci said, on “SNL,” that if she’d done that on his show, “I would have gave her such a smack.” Somehow these statements didn’t appear to offend anybody.

As for my reaction at the time, I figured she was just trying to get attention. But this wasn’t a very nuanced position; after all, she was already getting plenty of attention. She was on “SNL,” after all, and had a number-one hit song and album. I didn’t grasp that she was simply using her moment in the limelight to advance a legit social cause, that of exposing sexual abuse of children in the Catholic church. Not that I was alone in being ignorant of this; as reported here, the “SNL” episode was nine years before Pope Jean Paul II acknowledged the abuse. Looking back, O’Connor seemed prescient. Who would excoriate her now?

Madonna, probably. (And you thought that was a rhetorical question!) Like Sinatra, Madonna got all hot and bothered about the “SNL” affair and was very public about it. As described by the New York Times, she complained in the press, “I think there is a better way to present her ideas rather than ripping up an image that means a lot to other people.” The New York Times concluded, “Madonna’s reaction may have been professional jealousy. After Madonna had herself gowned, harnessed, strapped down and fully stripped to promote her album ‘Erotica’ and her book ‘Sex,’ O’Connor stole the spotlight with one photograph of a fully-clothed man.”

(An interesting aside: twenty years later, in 2012, as reported here, Madonna lambasted another rising pop star, calling out M.I.A. for flipping the bird during a Super Bowl halftime show: “It’s such a teenager ... irrelevant thing to do … there was such a feeling of love and unity there what was the point? It was just out of place.” The columnist declared, “It’s no secret that Madonna hasn’t exactly been a great role model over the years. In fact, what M.I.A. did is precisely something Madonna would have done back when she was relevant.” I point all this out simply to highlight the contrast with how well Sinead O’Connor has held up over the years. Does anybody listen to old Madonna songs now? I hope not … they were lame all along.)

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

I bought my mother-in-law a glass storage container with a plastic lid. My sister-in-law set the lid down on a hot stove and it melted. I think my sister-in-law should replace the lid because she ruined it, but she says I should replace it because I’d bought it originally. What do you think?

Bette M, Boise, ID

Dear Bette,

I’m sorry, but this isn’t actually a general advice column. I’m really only here to weigh in on the musical artist Sinead O’Connor, so you should check in with Abby or something. 

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

 “Nothing Compares 2 U” is hands-down the best song I’ve ever heard about one’s lover moving out. That’s a very intense kind of abandonment, I think. So my question is, can you think of any other great songs on that topic I should be aware of? Bonus points if you can find one from the perspective of a man.

Kathleen Templeton, NYC, NY

Dear Kathleen,

I suppose I should mention “You Were Meant for Me” by Jewel, simply because it’s so popular, with 84.3 million listens on Spotify. And, okay, I confess, from time to time this song is a guilty pleasure for me as well. I especially like the bit about how she gets to make her breakfast exactly as she likes it: “I got my eggs, I got my pancakes too/ I got my maple syrup, everything but you.” (What pop singer uses the word “pancakes,” ever?) And when she gets to the part about “I break the yolks and make a smiley face,” I always think of a McDonald’s commercial for some reason. Suffice to say this song is not nearly as good “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The video, in fact, is totally lame … Jewel is wearing so much face lotion she’s practically dripping, and speaking of drips, the supposedly gone boyfriend keeps popping up, incongruously, like they’re still together, and he is extremely douche-y besides.

If you want a really satisfying my-baby-moved-out song from the male perspective, I highly recommend “2002” by Bob Schneider, from his first studio album, “Lonelyland.” Perhaps he even pays tribute to “Nothing Compares 2 U” because this song starts out in a very similar way: “The year’s 2002/ I do exactly what I wanna do.” He goes on to lament how badly he crashed and burned after his girl moved out. He’s not as specific about the duration (only saying, “It’s been a long, long time since you walked out my door”) but it must be years. All kinds of things have happened: he’s moved cross-country, he’s gotten hooked on heroin, he’s moved to Germany, he’s found a new girlfriend and gotten her pregnant, he’s been arrested … but he keeps coming back to how much he misses this original girlfriend, like he never got over her (which in a way is sadder than being heartbroken after only seven hours and fifteen days). “2002” is not as moving as “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but when Bob Schneider sang it live at the Independent in San Francisco in 2010, I was pretty blown away. (I’d never even heard the song, nor indeed this singer, before.)

Dear Sinead O’Connor fan,

It’s pretty obvious this isn’t a real column. Did you just contrive this to bring traffic to your blog, based on Sinead O’Connor being in the news?

Dana A, Albany, CA

Dear Dana,

In all honesty, I came up with this blog topic about a week before that news hit. I almost considered not writing it at all, since googling “Sinead O’Connor” and getting that sad news is not in my readers’ best interest, in my opinion. I have actually been thinking about “Nothing Compares 2 U” simply because, some months ago, I was casting about for a relatively mellow song to have in my head at bedtime (or more to the point, to replace the raucous one that was already there, because there always is one). For some reason, “Nothing Compares 2 U” really works for this … the rhyme scheme has a nice, calming logic to it, as does the structure, and the song can be slowed waaaaaaay down in your mind. Next time you can’t sleep, give it a try.

A Sinead O’Connor fan is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a Sinead O’Connor fan,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ask a College Dad

Dear College Dad,

When my wife and I dropped off our daughter at college, everyone in the family had been wagering on who would cry the most. Oddly, nobody cried, not even my daughter. I thought her eyes would at least get shiny, but she was utterly emotionless. I think her exact words were, “Shouldn’t you and Dad be getting on the road?” Is this in the realm of normal, or have I raised an ice princess?

Shannon M, Hilliard, OH

Dear Shannon,

Not to worry, her behavior is completely normal. Don’t take this wrong, but your kid has probably all but forgotten about you by now. She’s rushing off into her exciting future and doesn’t have the mental space to get all wistful like you. That would be like doing 80 on the freeway while gazing at the rearview mirror.

Of course, as with all child development realms, the range of normal is very broad. Many kids cry their eyes out. This is usually because they’re totally unprepared to be college students. (Kidding!)

Dear College Dad,

I live in a college town and have been haunted for weeks by something I saw during Welcome Week: a very young looking girl barfing in a nightclub parking lot after being ejected by the bouncer. She was so drunk she could barely stand! Ever since then I’ve been on pins and needles because my son started college last month at Chico State, a notorious party school. How on earth will I stay sane for the next four years?

Dave R, Carmichael, CA

Dear Dave,

Don’t you remember your trip to Mexico with the YMCA when you were 15, with scant adult supervision, when you got sick on $8-a-liter vodka and woke up on the beach at noon with a terrible sunburn? Okay, maybe you didn’t do all that, but lots of now-adults did such things. The fact is, parents have a tendency to worry about the kinds of trouble their kids could get in without comparing it to what they themselves did. (Or maybe it’s only good parents who do this.) Your sensibilities suggest that your son didn’t grow up with oblivious parents. He will probably survive.

Dear College Dad,

When I was down at Parents’ Week at my son’s school this past weekend, I saw an elderly couple with his-and-hers sweatshirts: “UCSD Grandpa” and “UCSD Grandma.” It didn’t even occur to me to invite my parents along to participate in this milestone. Did I totally drop the ball on that?

Michael B, Fresno, CA

Dear Michael,

Having his or her grandparents there for the drop-off was probably a huge embarrassment for that grandkid, which is a really good thing. Still, it’s not always that practical to involve the elderly like that so it’s certainly not standard practice. Here’s an economical idea: next time you visit your kid on campus, show up wearing a “UCSD Grandma” sweatshirt yourself, if you can find it in a unisex size.

Dear College Dad,

My daughter came home to do her laundry last weekend, and I overheard her talking on the phone about “Yes Means Yes.” I have no idea what it means other than it’s almost certainly related to “No Means No.” Can you help?

Nadine Roberts, Fremont, CA

Dear Nadine,

First off, if your daughter doesn’t mind talking about this when she knows you could be eavesdropping, she may well be receptive to a useful dialogue that could begin with you asking her this question. Myself, I don’t have any special knowledge of this concept, and its associated laws, that you couldn’t easily Google. You might check out this link and this one.

Dear College Dad,

My son just started his sophomore year of college. He never called me when he was a freshman, but I chalked this up to his being overly busy and wanting to really hit his stride as a student. We got along great when he was home for the summer, but since he’s been back at school he hasn’t called me once! What do you think is going on here?

Rebecca M, Southfield, MI

Dear Rebecca,

The answer is utterly simple: sons don’t call their moms. They just don’t. Never have, never will. You might find a few counterexamples, but those are just outliers, like that tiny minority of cats who are willing to be put on a leash. (Don’t read too much into my metaphor.)

Dear College Dad,

My son left behind a couple of MP3 players when he went off to college. He obviously doesn’t want them anymore since they became obsolete the day he got his smartphone. Would it be ridiculously sentimental of me to start listening to these, to get to know my son better through the music he likes? Kind of like a virtual meet-up in the musical realm?

Andrew B, Hillsboro, OR

Dear Andrew,

That wouldn’t be ridiculously sentimental, but would probably be ridiculous. Just because you latched on to “Dark Side of the Moon” as a teen and identified strongly with it doesn’t mean modern teens relate to music this way. Through platforms like Spotify, they’re omnivorously moving through countless songs and artists, sampling and discarding at an astonishing rate. Whatever tracks are still on your kid’s MP3 players are ancient relics of a time so fleeting it wouldn’t register in any historical sense. But if you think you might enjoy a crash course in obscure bands like Because It’s Tuesday, why not take a listen?

Here’s an idea: email your kid to tell him you’re enjoying the tracks on his old MP3 player, and he might well react in a favorable way, such as expressing exasperation that you’re wasting your time with music that is so 2014. This might set you up to ask for a “mix tape,” sparking a robust dialogue about what the hell a mix tape is. Your kid might even style you out with a current playlist.

Dear College Dad,

My daughter started college this term, and my husband and I never hear from her! I mean, when I was in college all we had was a landline that we shared with our roommates, so it was a little more difficult logistically, but I still managed to call my folks. Now these kids have their smartphones on them at all times and can so easily shoot off a quick text … but I still get nothing! I’d happily settle for “All is well – luv ya mom!” (though a call would be even nicer). Am I being crazy? Have I somehow offended my daughter (meaning I should reach out and make up, as if she’d even answer her phone or my texts)?

Megan S, Topeka, KS

Dear Megan,

Now you know how these teens feel, when their friends don’t respond to their digital overtures! The sad fact is, the ease of all this technology has unrealistically raised everyone’s expectations of what a reasonable response interval should be. The relative inconvenience of traditional landline phones probably prevented a lot of hurt feelings … it was possible to go long periods without contact without inferring that total neglect was the culprit. Just be patient, as the passage of time is surely experienced differently by your kid.

Now, if you get really desperate, it couldn’t hurt to occasionally employ the texting equivalent of click-bait. For example, if your daughter used to share a bedroom with her little sister, you could text, “Wow, Fiona has really torn your old room apart! It looks like a hurricane went through there.” What college kid could resist responding to that? Not mine, I’ll tell you that much…

Dear College Dad,

My daughter shared with me this shocking tale: her roommate’s mom showed up at a frat party (during parents’ week) with a bottle of tequila and ended up riding the mechanical bull while delighted freshman looked on. This happens every year apparently as certain moms try to relive their own college experience. Has everybody gone mad?! Should I be worried about the effect this college scene is having on my daughter?

John H, Albany, CA

Dear John,

That really is shocking. I hope that a) the mom wasn’t injured, and b) that “mechanical bull” still means what it used to and isn’t a euphemism for something unthinkable I’m too naïve to even know about.

As for the impression on the other partygoers, I’m sure this woman’s daughter was mortified (at least, I hope so) but all the other college kids are probably the better for it. This parental behavior might temper the allure of drinking … maybe parents will make alcohol abuse seem lame, like they did with Facebook.

Dear College Dad,

If my child leaves NYC on a train headed for Stanford University at 7 am on Sunday morning, traveling at 100 mph (as if!), and Stanford is 3,246 miles away, how long will it take before I have exactly $0 in my retirement account?

John L, Ithaca, NY

Dear John,

I was really starting to sweat about having to do math, and then I realized this is a trick question. Of course the answer is, if you have a retirement account, then you are in the subset of Americans who have too much money to get financial aid from Stanford, thus you wouldn’t be sending your kid there to begin with. Any functional adult living as close as you do to Cornell, a legitimate university, would see through the thin façade of Stanford’s inflated reputation, acknowledge that it’s more of an incubator for tech than an actual university, and refuse to spend a red cent there.

Dear College Dad,

My daughter keeps texting me asking for photos of our cat. It’s starting to get ridiculous … this is practically the only contact we have: me obliging her with cat pix. Is my kid’s brain going soft or something? Any hints on how I might try to elevate the conversation?

Irma T, Dallas, TX

Dear Irma,

I suppose this could be a “safe” way for your daughter to reach out … it’s possibly easier to admit you miss your cat than to admit you miss your family. (Or, it could be that your cat is just much, much more attractive than you are—no offense.) One way to promote a more robust discourse would be to reply and say, “Given the number of cat photo requests you have made, I need you to prove to me that you’re not a bot before I send any more.” Or, better yet, insist on a photo for a photo: “You can send me a photo of whatever you feel like photographing, and I will reward you with a cat photo.” It’s even better than being on Instagram (or “Insta” as the kids are evidently calling it).

Dear College Dad,

My child seems like a good kid and is pretty well adjusted and happy, though not exactly a valedictorian. Is there any hope for him?

Samantha W, Cary, NC

Dear Samantha,

No. No hope for him at all.

Just kidding! Doom-and-gloom rumors of colleges being impossible to get into have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, with marijuana being legalized in state after state, and addictive video games on the rise, any well-adjusted, non-addicted, and happy kid will soon find the world his oyster, through the attrition of his would-be rivals.

Dear College Dad,

My daughter is a sophomore now, and every time I ask her what she ate for dinner she says either Kraft macaroni and cheese or quesadillas. I’d been so relieved she made it through her freshman year without gaining the infamous “freshman five” (or fifteen or whatever it’s up to), but now she’s developing such bad habits! I feel guilty because I never taught her how to cook. Is there a tactful way to warn her about gaining weight with her reckless diet-of-convenience?

Jennifer P, Stamford, CT

Dear Jennifer,

I’m no expert on females, but every cell in my brain tells me there’s no tactful way to broach this topic, and almost zero chance your advice would be appreciated. That said, you can at least get her off the Kraft crackaroni & cheese with a pair of non-weight-related rationale. First, since all Gen-Z kids care passionately about the environment, remind her the cheese powder packets aren’t recyclable. Next, point out that these same packets introduce potentially harmful phthalates into the cheese sauce. Homemade mac ‘n’ cheese is much yummier—and won’t feed your kid’s addiction to convenience). Send her this link.

Dear College Dad,

You were sure harsh about Stanford in your response to John of Ithaca. Is that really appropriate, given Stanford’s widespread reputation as a top school?

Laura S, San Francisco, CA

Dear Laura,

First of all, Stanford really is pretty lame. Second, I’m a Berkeley grad … what would you expect me to say?

Dear College Dad,

I can’t help but notice the majority of your letters are from moms, not dads. What’s up with that?

Beth A, Arvada, CO

Dear Beth,

It’s simple: dads never worry about anything. They’re too busy watching the game.

A College Dad is a syndicated journalist whose advice column, “Ask a College Dad,” appears in over 0 blogs worldwide.

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