Playground Rules

I've been at the parenting thing a little over a year. This hardly qualifies me to get preachy about anything, however...

I took the wee nipper to Robbins Farm Park today. It's quite possibly the nicest park in Arlington. SoEM(Son of El Meezy)loves the place. He was playing in this wooden train engine and another child was also in there playing with the steering wheel. SoEM amused himself and when the other child left the wheel, SoEM went over and started to play with it, prompting the other child to come over and retake possession of the wheel by shoving my kid down. SoEM is not quite 14 months old.

This isn't an unusual situation. I don't even blame the other kid who I guessed was probably 2 years old. Kids are little savages and their tiny brains are pretty much focused on "me" and "mine". The problem is that I saw no sign of Captain Runny Nose's mom. Generally speaking, the parents at the park are pretty on point with watching their kids. When I've had similar situations occur, there's always been a parent right there to police their progeny. So why the hell did I have to be the one to tell this kid that pushing smaller kids down just doesn't play?

The mystery as to who claimed ownership over the brat was solved when I saw him walk over to a woman sitting on one of the benches 10 minutes later. She was with a friend and yakking on a cell phone. Priorities, right? If someone wanted to snatch her kid, he would've been easy pickings. I even saw the little dude trundling up a very steep set of stairs set into a hillside. If he had fallen, it would not have been pretty and I never even saw her look over.

I don't really know the rules of etiquette in situations like this. I was on the verge of rolling up and laying into her but I try to take the position that if you blow your cool and act in anger, you've already lost the battle. There was no way that I could be diplomatic in this situation, so I let it go.

Like I said, I don't want to get preachy but...damn. Wake up.

The Magic of Primal Music and More Sliding

If you've noticed, there's a theme running rampant through the music player embedded on this here blog. I love music and what's more, I love delving into genres that I haven't explored. I've had many conversations with people about the Nuggets box set(and garage rock in general) so when I found one used in Newbury Comics recently, I snapped it up pretty quickly.

A note - I can be obsessive about things that I dig. Call it compulsion. There's this thing in my brain that forces me to track down burgundy New Balance sneakers that have been discontinued, learn everything I can about certain surfboard shapers and go digging for albums that have long been out of print, vintage sunglasses, ten speed bikes... I think you get it.

So...I played the hell out of all four cds in the set and wanted....more. Specifically, I wanted more of that primal, driving, stomping stuff. If I can quote ODB, "Oh Baby, I like it rawwww." I'm just not an Incense and Peppermints guy. Cue the aforementioned compulsion and Nuggets is joined by (and taking a backseat to) Crypt Records's mighty Back From the Grave series.

Chock full of "Raw and Crude Mid-60's Garage Punk", the series is all killer with precious little filler...and NO psychedelic noodling. I'm bummed that Crypt Records no longer resides in Brooklyn because I'm headed there this weekend but at least I've got the tunes. Great stuff. If you can find these comps and this type of music is your cup o tea, then Back From the Grave is required listening. And since I'm a johnny-come-lately to the whole garage genre, if you've had these for yonks, then I'm preaching to the choir.

I'll save the treatise on the garage-punk stuff of later years(The Mummies, etc..) for another day.

I haven't been in the water lately, although over the past couple of weeks I had one Nantasket session that almost required Dramamine(just a bit choppy), yet another phenomenal(uncrowded) time at the not-so-secret beach break and an ok go-out at the aptly named Good Harbor(generally good, never great and sometimes lousy).

Until next time...this El Meezy saying....