Show #165 May 26, 2018

For Good Time Sally and all Rock n' Roll Dads!


Good Time Sally- Rare Earth Good Time Sally 
Here Come the Good Times- A House Here Come The Good Times
Now Was the Future- Matthew Sweet Tomorrow's Daughter 
Boys Will Be Boys- The Fast Max's Kansas City 1976 and Beyond 
Leave- Regular Guys Jayhawk Pop: Lawrence, KS 1979-1981 
Who We Are- Descendents Who We Are 
Love In Your Eyes- Walter Clevenger and The Dairy Kings Love Songs To Myself 
Confidentially Renee- Radio Alarm Clocks Wake Me When It's Over 
^Good Times- Hoodoo Gurus Blow Your Cool!
*Good Times- Jack Lee Jack Lee's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 
*Good Times- Paul Collins' Beat To Beat Or Not To Beat/Long Time Gone 
Won't Let It Get Me Down- Linus Of Hollywood Cabin Life 
(My Girl's A) Hologram- The Rabies (My Girl's A) Hologram 
So What- Richard X. Heyman Incognito 
*Good Times- The Monkees Good Times! 
*Good Times- The Stone Roses Second Coming 
*Good Times- Rivals If Only... 
The Day Will Be Mine- Sloan 12 
All The Same- Parallax Project I Hate Girls 
Reason For Wanting You- The Laughing Dogs Meet Their Makers 
Sonar Deceit- The Damned Evil Spirits 
Time For Dinner?- De Cylinders De Cylinders 
Can't Hurry Love- The Kwyet Kings Been Where? Done What? 
>Good Times- The Easybeats The Definitive Anthology
>Good Times- The Rolling Stones Out Of Our Heads 
>Good Times- Eric Burdon and The Animals San Franciscan Nights 
I Like You Better- The Well Wishers A View From Above 
Foreign Fields- Smart Remarks Foreign Fields: 1982 - 1984 
All The Girls- The Secrets Success Without College 
Goodbye Goodtimes- Gary Charlson Titan: It's All Pop!  

^Power Pop Peak:

*SacroSet:  "Good Times" Songs

>Power Pop Prototype:  1968, 1965, 1967

My son Jack has had a hard time of it since the day he was born.  Now at age 22, he is doing better than ever and for that my wife Jaime and I are truly grateful.  It was very different with our second child.  In my experience having a daughter is a glorious thing.  It made me a better man having this small, kindhearted, patient, non-aggressive, deeply empathetic little girl in my life.  Everyone warns you that they grow up and "turn on you" and my situation is no different, yet Nica and I had great run.  From seven seasons of coaching her in softball to watching seven seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD with her on my laptop, the two of us wedged into the big red chair in our living room- we were close until she turned 14.  Three Hunger Games books and four Hunger Games films in two Hunger Games movie marathons further cemented our bond.  Jaime and I were also able to share our love of theater with Nica who has a beautiful singing voice.  Our theater collaborations have included several shows, the high point being Carrie:  The Musical in 2015.  Jaime was the Producer, Nica played Sue Snell (red sweater in foreground right) and I was Mr. Stephens (wearing tie in background right).

The Cast of Carrie:  The Musical

My wife Jaime worried that it was going to kill me when our daughter inevitably turned away from us, yet I'd seen it happen to friends with daughters as young as 12 so I truly appreciated getting two more years of quality time with Nica.  Now at age 19 I'm lucky if I can get her to text me back in a single 24 hour period and we haven't spent more than 24 hours under the same roof since evacuating during the wildfires last October.  Nevertheless, I remain hopeful- as I often tell Jaime, "life is long."  I know in my heart

Jack and Kayla at her gradation

that Nica and I will be close again one day.  Case in point, Jack now lives an hour away in Cloverdale but we talk or text a couple of times a week and he and his girlfriend Kayla drive down to Sonoma to see us at least once a month.  In fact as I write this, they are stuck in traffic in Petaluma on the way to join us for a Father's Day hike at Bartholomew Park followed by dinner at the Fremont Diner.

Since becoming a father myself, I've noticed that while there are many examples of strong, competent and loving mothers on TV and in the movies, most fathers fit one of two profiles:

 


Tired, angry and out of touch, exemplified by Jack Arnold on The Wonder Years (portrayed by Dan Lauria) 

Or juvenile ass clowns, exemplified by virtually every other father on TV, but I'll go with the one I personally find most annoying: the guy Jim Belushi played (also named "Jim") on According To Jim.


Truth be told, I do love some doofus dads in the latter category, Homer Simpson and Phil Dunphy from Modern Family are two that immediately come to mind, but for every one of those, you'll find ten bumbling Tim Taylors (Tim Allen's character on Home Improvement) or whiny Ray Barones (played by Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond- are you sensing a pattern here?)  And don't get me started on the Father of The Bride movies, I love Steve Martin but only made it through 25 minutes of that first film and even now I cringe thinking about it.


The funny thing is, the dads I remember most from TV reruns when I was a kid were almost godlike.  Ward Cleaver from Leave It To Beaver and, my personal favorite, Andy Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show- to quote AKG regular Greg Kihn- "they just don't write 'em like that anymore."  Even Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch was a huge step up from the lame dads we started seeing on TV in the 80's.

Which brings me to the point of this post- in the last year or so I've seen some beautiful, nuanced dad/daughter stories in a genre you wouldn't expect:  horror.  In retrospect, it started with 2016's Train To Busan.  As we hit "peak zombie" some time in the early 2010's, I was skeptical about the film but it is a great movie and the relationship between Seok-woo and his daughter Su-an amps up the tension.

Even better, this year's A Quiet Place is about a family, but at its core is the strained relationship between the father and daughter.  If you aren't moved by the last look shared between Lee and Regan Abbott then you might want to check and see if you still have a pulse.  Jaime even came to see A Quiet Place with me and she liked it- our first horror movie together since Army of Darkness in 1992.  (Hey, wait.  That was the year we got married... coincidence?  I think not!)  

While Su-an from Train To Busan is 6 or 7 years old and Regan from A Quiet Place is 11 or 12, the daughter in Australian zombie apocalypse movie Cargo raises the stakes even higher.  Daughter Rosie is only 12 months old; you think fighting off zombies is hard enough on your own, try doing it with a baby on board!  The final scenes in the movie are heartbreaking- what won't we dads do for our daughters!?! 

Tim from The Office UK. (top)
Jim from The Office US (bottom)

I can't be the only one to have noticed the interesting relationship between Cargo and A Quiet Place.  Cargo star Martin Freeman made his name playing Tim Canterbury on the original UK television series The Office.  John Krasinski, who wrote, directed and starred in A Quiet Place, made his name playing Jim Halpert on the US version of the The Office.  Perhaps that doesn't qualify as "interesting" in your book, but I saw the two movies within a week of each other and when I realized the connection it blew my mind.

Leave it to the oft derided horror genre to highlight brave, selfless fathers sacrificing everything for their kids- when was the last time you saw a dad like that on TV?  Of course my "life is long" philosophy doesn't really apply to horror movies but no matter how much time you've got left, where there's life (though not the undead kind of course) there's hope.  And look at that, Nica just texted me back she can join us for dinner! 

Father's Day 6/17/2018

Happy Father's Day to my fellow Rock and Roll Dads Everywhere!

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ALL KINDSA GIRLS SHOW #165