Anonymous Communist

Happy Saturday, all, and welcome to the Something Awesome Happened on this Date edition of the Cool Band Names list. As always, feel free to peruse earlier editions. Enjoy!

Awkward Hole
Capital Douchebag
Dead Homeless People
Electronic Cricket
The Go-To Chicks
Itchy Behind
Melodic Sneeze
No. 1 Flan
Porno Barbie
Self-Castrated
The Spicy Chunks
Unnecessary Comma (Dan’s favorite band)

(Click photo to enlarge)

In my family, baseball is a way of life. You played growing up — both organized ball and unorganized with the other kids in the neighborhood — and you followed Major League Baseball religiously. Period. While my time with the former ended relatively early, the latter is still very much a part of my life and is something I subject my kids to like to share with my kids.

So it’s not as if The Girl had any choice but to play ball when she was old enough.

Last night, after three straight rainouts last week, was The Girl’s lidlifter to her baseball career. She gets to play on a team with her cousin and is coached by her uncle (did I mention baseball runs in our blood?).

While I’m happy that she’s playing, I’m also realistic about her talent level, particularly because this is her first time stepping on a ballfield in anger. So imagine my surprise to see her strolling up to the plate to take her team’s first plate appearance of the season.

After a few swinging strikes (coach-pitch has liberal interpretations of the rules), she managed to get a hold of one, and I was lucky enough to capture the moment:

A legitimate single in her first-ever official at-bat. Bursting with pride, I momentarily considered calling time and asking for the ball. I didn’t want to be That Parent™, so I settled for the photo.

Today we bring you the Passage of the 1918 Sedition Act edition of the Cool Band Names list. For more band names, check out Enjoy Your Haircut, written by a former colleague of mine. Enjoy.

Asstraffic
Butter Wang
Crucified Santa
Driving Drunks
Goatchop
Ironic Frog
Lovin’ Cousins
Napalm Coffee
Polite Anarchist
Scandalous Doodads
Streak of Awesomeness
Two-Tubed Kidney

“Brick is Red,” the Pixies

Above photo taken on the east side of Fourth Street at Jackson, Springfield, Ill.

The Purington Paving Brick Co. was located in East Galesburg, Ill., and apparently was the largest brick maker in the world at one point.

May is our favorite month of the year here at AC.com world headquarters. You just can’t beat temperatures in the low 70s with low humidity. Flowers also are busting out all over, further enhancing the mood.

So to celebrate, it’s time for another thematic playlist, this time featuring songs with the names of flowers in the title, all taken from my iTunes library. As always, hit the play button to listen and right-click on the link to download. Enjoy.

“Tigerlily,” Luna — Let’s start things off with one that has special meaning for me, as this is the song that The Girl was middle-named for.

“Marigold,” Nirvana — Released in 1993 as the B-side to the “Heart Shaped Box” single, this song is said to be the only official Nirvana release with no contribution from Kurt Cobain. Dave Grohl wrote the song and played all the instruments, save for the bass.

“Blue Flowers,” Dr. Octagon — A time-traveling gynecologist from Jupiter in the year 3000, Dr. Octagon is one of the many personas of hip-hop genius Kool Keith. “Blue Flowers” is off the 1996 classic “Dr. Octagonecologyst” album, which features Keith’s non-sequitur rapping, DJ Q-Bert’s wicked scratches and trippy production by Dan the Automator. It’s a must-have for any hip-hop fan.

“Roses are Free,” Ween — While it’s one of the weaker tunes from 1994’s “Chocolate and Cheese” album, it’s still pretty good. Sorta like the pizza/sex thing.

“The Hop,” A Tribe Called Quest — The hop, of course, is the flower from the Humulus lupulus plant used to make beer delicious. The song, while not about beer, nonetheless features some of the illest Phife lyrics ever put to wax: “I’m representin’ with my crew / Mess around bite my rhyme / I’ll beat that ass with my shoe.” Sweet.

“Soul Flower,” Brand New Heavies and the Pharcyde — This version is from BNH’s 1991 album “Heavy Rhyme Experience,” which featured rappers, uh… rapping over the Heavies’ live instrumentation. “Soul Flower” later was remixed as a more straight-ahead hip-hop for the Pharcyde’s debut LP in 1992.

“Big,” New Fast Automatic Daffodils — Okay… I don’t have a lot of songs with flowers in the title, but since it’s my blog I can use bands with flowers in their names if I want, dammit. NewFADS came out of Manchester in the late 1980s and are thus associated with such acts as Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, although none really sound like the others. “Big” is probably their most well-known song (and probably my favorite of theirs, too), and it’s combination of an uptempo dance beat, a funky bass line and waka-waka guitar make it easy to shake one’s arse to.

“I Wanna Be Adored,” Stone Roses — Speaking of the Stone Roses…

It’s time once again to dust off the ol’ Cool Band Names list. I didn’t have an opportunity yesterday to post the May Day version, so today I bring you the Fall of Berlin edition. Enjoy!

Apple Nerds
Bursting with Botulism
Contagious Fat
Democracy of Socks
Federal Johnson
Hyphenated Bastards
Kid Charlemagne
Mexican Death Chips
Nuclear Mistake
Pork Store
Secret Asian Man
Street Sorority

The other day, during one of my many sojourns on the Internets, I came across a site that instantly transported me back a quarter-century and restored my faith in humankind all at once. First, some background…

Back many many years ago, my dad used to take us out to the Illinois Bell building on Hazel Dell Road, where us kids dipped our toes in the pool of computing using machines that ran PLATO. I have limited memories of this, as I was a mere 4 or 5 years old at the time, but I do recall the banks of machines with monochromatic orange screens.

Our PLATO sojourns came to an immediate halt once we got our first home computer. For Christmas 1980, I believe (Johann, back me up on this), our dad sprung for a newfangled Apple ][+, which came with an astounding 128K of RAM. It was here that the seed of nerditude was planted in me.

My dad was part of Capitol Apples, a local Apple Users Group, where members would freely and enthusiastically trade pirated software, which would proudly carry such marks as "Pirated by X" or "Cracked by Y." And thanks their efforts, we were waist-deep in all manner of computer games.

So by age 6, I was addicted. Mine was a misspent youth, playing titles such as Eliza, Phantoms Five, Eamon adventures, Dung Beetles and Dino Eggs, among easily hundreds more.

And now, you and I can play them all over again thanks to the wonderful humans at Virtual Apple 2, whose Web-based emulators allow users to play several hundred games from the old Apple ][ machines. You just pick a title out of the alphabetical listing, and an authentic Apple //e boots up in the next screen. You can also download the ROMs of the individual games.

I've found that I'm not as good as I used to be at many of these games. Keyboard control also can be awkward if you remember using the joystick for some titles.

Some of the highlights include:

• Cannonball Blitz: This Donkey Kong clone featured what appeared to be an Evil Royal Soldier instead of an enormous gorilla who rolled cannonball rather than barrels.
• Erving and Bird Go One-on-One: This pioneering game was one of the first Electronic Arts titles and one of the first endorsed by professional athletes. The graphics were a little crude, but the controls were good. The best part is that you could occasionally shatter the backboard. A janitor would then come out and curse you as he swept up the shards.
• Olympic Decathlon: Back in third grade, my friend Chris and I were obsessed with the Olympics, so this early Microsoft title was right in our collective wheelhouse. Up to four players could compete in the contests comprising the decathlon.
• Oregon Trail: Of course. One of the most beloved games of all time deserves a mention. A bug I noticed with the game back then was that the No. 2 person in your party always died first, so we used to put names of kids we didn’t like in the 2 slot.

Aren’t computers awesome?!

If there is one thing that can raise my hackles, it’s when people/governments intrude into my personal business.

In the latest bit of legislation that is neither necessary nor chock full o’ common sense, the Illinois House has approved a bill that would ban text messaging (and other forms of non-voice mobile communication) while driving.

It’s bad enough being told that you can’t pursue an otherwise entirely legal activity within the confines of your personal property, but the bill, as it’s written, allows police to stop you if it merely appears that you are just looking down:

Under this proposal, police officers can stop you just because they think you’re texting or surfing the Internet [...] If they see you constantly looking down at your phone and you never put it up to your ear, they’ll assume you’re probably not making a phone call.

Talk about your slippery slopes. If you happen to shift your gaze downward for a couple of seconds, it automatically means that you’re sending your BFF a txt? OMG! And how can a cop accurately make that determination at speed while driving? It’s a decision that would have to be made in a split-second.

And if you are pulled over, the burden of proof shifts to the driver:

Bring your cell phone records to court, and the judge will see if you were texting or surfing around the time police pulled you over.

Most people don’t text while they drive. But if you happen to be seen looking downward in your car — even for a split-second — by a cop, you can be pulled over. And then you have to spend your own time and money defending yourself from busybodies who can’t seem to stay out of other people’s business.

And really, that what this boils down to. If people would spend more time taking care of their own responsibilities and less time worrying about what other people are doing, our lawmakers wouldn’t be wasting their time with such ridiculous legislation.