Growing older, not up: 4 decades, 101 favorite things

My friend Bethany over at Mommy Writer Blog today posted her 101 Favorite Things and kinda/sorta challenged others to come up with their own lists.

Being a sucker for lists and kinda/sorta challenges, I came up with my own 101 favorite things. But with a slight twist.

What I've done is compiled a list of 101 favorite things gathered over the span of four decades, beginning with the seventies and continuing through today. I've left out the first nine years of my life because those years an empty account in my memory bank. The same holds true for the year 1981, but that's another story altogether.

You'll notice that the list is heavily weighted on the seventies, which comprises ages 9 through 19, the adolescent years of my life. These years undoubtedly shaped who I am today and thus deserve the more extensive coverage. Not to mention that the seventies were just more fun. Or perhaps they just seemed more fun because I was a kid.

What my list demonstrates, I think, is that while I've certainly grown older, I really haven't grown up.

Oh, and after you've read mine, show me some of yours.

70s

1. Pop Rocks
2. Banana Splits
3. Land of the Lost
4. Ray Rayner & Friends
5. Bubble Yum Bubble Gum
6. Jose Cardenal's 1975 Topps baseball card
7. Summer vacations with my grandparents
8. Recess
9. My Cubs cap
10. My banana seat bicycle
11. Paper football
12. Lisa Hibbard (the "new girl" in 5th grade)
13. Nerf Basketball
14. Sears Toughskin Jeans
15. Debbie Dowsett (high school swim coach)
16. Drive-in movies
17. My 1973 Dodge Charger SE
18. Lowenbrau 7-ounce bottles
19. Steve Dahl
20. WLS MusicRadio -- The Big 89
21. Hank Aaron’s 715^th home run
22. Naugles' Macho Nacho
23. Off Broadway’s “On”
24. Charlie’s Angels
25. My Farrah Fawcett poster
26. Freshen Up Bubble Gum
27. Radio Mystery Theater
28. The DeFranco Family’s “Heartbeat…It’s a Lovebeat”
29. Concert T-shirts
30. 45s
31. 8-tracks
32. REO Speedwagon’s Keep Pushin’
33. Aurelio’s
34. Saturday Night Live
35. “Rapper’s Delight”
36. Basement parties
37. Chicago Stadium

80s

1. “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off”
2. Bright Lights, Big City
3. Thursday nights at the White Horse
4. ISU Basketball
5. Ted Drewes frozen custard
6. Avanti’s Gondola
7. Modern English’s “I Melt With You”
8. Spring Break
9. “Webster”
10. Nobody’s Business (my college air guitar band)
11. Break dancing
12. 610 Hester Street
13. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
14. Mix tapes
15. Jungle Juice
16. "Cheers"
17. U2's "Joshua Tree" tour
18. Tone-Loc’s “Wild Thing”
19. 1985 Bears
20. 1984 Cubs
21. Lassen's Tap
22. “The Sure Thing”
23. My study carrel
24. Answering machine messages

90s

1. Retro 80s Night at Amnesia
2. My study carrel
3. Wrigley bleachers
4. Seinfeld
5. Johnny B
6. Elbo Room
7. Chicago Reader Personals
8. Santorini sunsets
9. Nude beaches in Greece
10. Louie's Backyard
11. Jimmy Buffett concerts
12. Wrigleyville
13. The Gingerman Tavern
14. “Barcelona”
15. “High Fidelity”
16. Q101 Jamboree
17. The Metro
18. Goose Island Beer
19. 1998 Cubs
20. Repeat 3-Peat
21. Surfing the Internet
22. E-mail
23. Napster
24. The Raw Bar

00s

1. The tapa tango
2. Lost in the Ivy
3. ASC Meetings
4. Chicago Writers Association
5. 2003 Cubs
6. Jousting
7. Orbit bubblemint gum
8. Ralph’s World concerts
9. Blogging
10. Tazo black iced tea from Starbucks (shaken not stirred)
11. Walgreens malted milk balls and chocolate peanut clusters (a bargain at 99 cents/bag)
12. I-Pass
13. Disney Cruise
14. Stroller rides
15. “Step in Time”
16. Watching the son rise and sometimes fall

Update on Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 04:13PM by Randy Richardson

The problem with a list like this? You keep thinking of faves that you've left off the list and have to go back and amend it.

Oh my! A disgraced knight am I

I was anticipating this day with an equal measure of thrill and doom.

The thrill because my words would be in print and read by thousands of parents in Chicagoland.

The doom because there would be a photo accompanying my words that would embarrass and subject me to ridicule by my peers.

Well, folks, that day has come. I haven't seen it in print yet but the electronic version of my essay, "Kids and grown-ups: Different as knight and day," is out there for the world to see, posted on ChicagoParent.com. As is the dreaded photo, which depicts my son and I engaged in a jousting match using cardboard tubes left over from wrapping paper as lances.

As I'd written before when I suggested the concept of a Writer Protection Program, it's a heavy price we as writers pay to see our words in print.

Now feel free to give this disgraced knight your best shots.

Or if you'd rather hold off your attacks until you've seen it in print, here is a complete list of places, by zip code, where you can pick up a copy of Chicago Parent Magazine for free. See if you can beat me to them.

Update on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 08:18PM by Randy Richardson

Oops! I gave some bad linkage in my initial post. That, I guess, is why you need to go back and check these things before telling everyone you know about them. The link to the essay should be fixed now. Sorry about that. I am a bad, bad knight.

Update on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 04:07PM by Randy Richardson

My wife reports from daycare today that The Toddler was given the Hollywood treatment. He was 'signing' copies of the article.

A 1st for me ... times 3

A leap of faith is all it took for me to come home Saturday with not one, not two but three 1st place awards in the 2006 Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest, sponsored by the Illinois Woman's Press Association (IWPA). 

I can't say that I was surprised when the awards were officially handed out at the IWPA's Awards Luncheon at the Chicago Athletic Association in Chicago. But that's only because the 1st place winners had been tipped off by an email that was sent  earlier in the week.

Cecilia Green hands out Randy's awards at the IWPA Awards Banquet

The email came on Tuesday evening and let's just say that when you get these kinds of emails, if you're at all like me, your heart starts racing and your palms get all sweaty. You don't even want to read it because you tend to think that good things just don't happen to you. But you open it and then you see the names of the 1st place winners but they're in alphabetical order so you have to read almost all the way to the end to find out that you'd taken THREE 1sts.

This is way more than I ever expected when I took that leap and entered the contest a couple months back. Really I entered not expecting anything at all. But there was my name listed as the 1st place winner in three separate categories: web content for personal or hobby sites for my essay "Pickles and Hiccups"; website development/creation for lostintheivy.com; and fiction, novel for Lost in the Ivy. I also took 2nd place in the web content for personal or hobby sites for "A Cubs fan finds hope in Sox's success", an essay that I now realize seems rather foolish.

I should note that the competition is not over for the three 1st place entries. They've all gone on to the National Federation of Press Women's Communications Contest for judging at the national level. How cool is that? My work being judged in a national competition.

Randy's Awards

Winning isn't everything, but it sure makes you feel good. So good that your wife can convince you to pose for silly photos like the one to the left.

And my publisher liked the news, too. For the second time this year, my book is Up in Lights on their home page.

Update on Saturday, May 20, 2006 at 11:50PM by Randy Richardson

"Will you be attending the awards ceremony in drag, Mr. Dart?" a writer's group friend teased.

The reference was to a character in my book, Jimmie Dart, who is a drag queen.

This was a little friendly razzing for being a member of the Illinois Woman's Press Association when I am obviously not a woman.

I would note that the IWPA is not the the first woman's organization that I joined. That would be Sisters in Crime, a world-wide organization for women writing mysteries. I never hid the fact that I was a man but I didn't come right out and tell anyone that that is what I am. The reality is that there are a lot of men just like me who are Sisters. I wouldn't have joined the group if there weren't. Sure the group is primarily for women, but they don't exclude you or discriminate against you in any way because you're not one of them. So I'm proud to be a Sister.

My entry into the world of the Sisters I think made it a little easier for me to join the IWPA, a group that first came to my attention when I took part in a book fair that they hosted back in November at the Chicago Cultural Center. Now I didn't immediately join because, well, I felt just a little bit uncomfortable about the fact that I was, you know, a man.

Back at the time of the book fair I broached the question whether the group was strictly for the opposite sex. I was told in no uncertain terms that they are open to both kinds. But I didn't join.

Not until a few months later when I got the invite to take part in their Communications Contest. Even then I still wasn't sure. The debate in my head went back and forth but I kept looking at the contest entry form until I finally decided that I really had nothing to lose, other than the cost of membership and the entry fee.

So I took that leap of faith. And it paid off in a big way. Still, I must confess that there was a part of me that felt just a little bit uncomfortable about accepting awards from a woman's organization when I am not a woman but the exact opposite of a woman. The easy thing to do would have been to just take the awards but not go to the awards banquet and show my face as a man. Randy is a kind of adrogynous name and those in attendance that hadn't met me before would probably just assume that I was a woman. But that would be the chickenhearted way to do it and, quite frankly, the unmanly way to do it.

I went to the awards banquet secretly hoping that there would be other men there, and there were. But most of them weren't there to pick up awards. Besides me, there was only one other man that came to pick up an award and he was there with his wife. The two of them had coauthored a book, I believe. There was one other man who won an award (honorable mention) in the non-fiction book category but he didn't make an appearance. That's too bad, because I'd seen him before at the book fair and he was quite entertaining. I wondered if he, like me, felt a little bit awkward about the award. Or if he just wasn't able to make it for some reason or other.

By the time the awards were over, I was glad that I'd come. Everyone that I met there was friendly and supportive and didn't at all make me feel out of place. Except for another award-winning author, Gen LaGreca, whose first question to me was something like, "Men aren't supposed to win these, are they?"

She was teasing. I think.

Update on Wednesday, May 24, 2006 at 08:21PM by Randy Richardson

Just today I received the judge's comments on my book. The judge was Amanda Freymann, who began her publishing career in 1978 at Houghton-Mifflin Company, followed by Little Brown and Co., the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Stewart, Tabori & Chang. At the Art Institute of Chicago where she was Associate Director of Publications-Production, she produced many exhibition catalogues and a number of popular books, including revised editions of The Essential Guide and Miniature Rooms: The Thorne Rooms, and oversaw the first four children's books to be produced by the Art Institute. This is what she wrote in her comments about Lost in the Ivy:

"A good plot, well written and edited. Great characters. A real Chicago hook!"

Writing with kids

Writing with kids. It may not be perilous like running with scissors. But it's a much more formidable task.

I still haven't figured out how to do it. Stephen King has three children, all grown now but he somehow managed to write prodigiously all through the time that they were being raised. John Grisham? Two children. John Irving? Three children. How, I wonder, do they do it?

The Toddler has become both my greatest inspiration for writing as well as my biggest obstruction. Each year I tell myself it's got to get easier. But The Toddler is about to enter year No. 3 and I'm still not finding it any easier to make time for writing my next novel.

This evening I started pecking away on the keyboard around 8:30. I was in a bit of a groove. The muse was working. I was feeling good. Then, about fifteen minutes later, Mommy and The Toddler walk into the office. The Toddler wants Daddy to go potty with him and to put him to sleep.

We used to have this agreement worked out in our family wherein Mommy and Daddy took turns each night putting The Toddler to sleep. This gave the parental units every other night off. The Toddler, however, has found a way to breach this agreement. He now wants one of us to read and the other to put him to sleep, so he gets the best of both worlds while there's no rest for Mommy and Daddy.

So I lead The Toddler into the loo and he begins to sing our nighttime song, "Hush Little Baby." It's been our lullaby since the time he was old enough to be cradled in my arms, though he still stumbles on the lyrics. He makes a halfhearted attempt at going pee. "I did it," he says heroically.

"That was it?" I say.

"Uh-huh."

"Uh-huh." I lead him into the bedroom and he crawls into bed and I situate myself in my spot next to the bed and commence to rubbing his back while serenading him with "Hush Little Baby."

"Again", he demands after my first rendition.

Three encores later he has finally settled down so that I can stop singing and lay my body down on the floor. Another fifteen minutes pass before he is in full snooze mode.

I exit his room at 9:45 p.m. Mommy is crashed. The muse I had for my novel is gone, replaced with the inspiration The Toddler has given me to write all that you have just read.

It is now 10:30 and time for me to go to bed. Tomorrow perhaps I'll find time to write that next novel. There's always tomorrow.

Cubs only hope? It's in the Stone age

Back in October, after the Chicago White Sox swept aside 88 years of futility to win the World Series, I wrote of how I found hope for my team, the Chicago Cubs, in the Sox's success. My how foolish I was.

Hope, it turns out, was nothing more than wishful thinking.

After the 9-0 drubbing the Cubbies got at the hands of the San Diego Padres on Sunday, their 12th loss in 13 games, it is clear now that there is no hope for this team. It turns out that this blogger had it right after all. The Cubs season was over before it even began.

Now the same Cubs fans who just three years ago revered Dusty Baker, the Cubs manager, can't wait to see him shipped out of town. The Fabulous Baker Boys came within five outs of the World Series in 2003 but have been flops in 2004, 2005 and now 2006. Turns out that they were a one-act show.  

The Cubs faithful is right: Baker needs to go. As Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti writes, that's "the biggest duhhh in baseball." 

Mariotti is absolutely right that the problem lies with the Cubs' owners, the Tribune Co., who have always put the bottom line over winning, which explains why the team looks more like it belongs in a hospital ward than on a baseball field. And why more time, money and energy has gone into rehabbing the baseball field instead of the baseball team. 

Let's face it, the only reason to go to a Cubs game is Wrigley Field, the historic and majestic ballpark at the corner of Clark and Addison streets. It's a cash cow for the Tribsters, who have milked it for all it's worth, including renaming (desecrating) the fabled bleachers the Bud Light Bleachers.  

The Tribune Co. bought the Cubs from William Wrigley in 1981 for $20.5 million. I'm guessing that they've more than recouped their investment. They've now had 25 years to turn things around. Their record in that stretch is 0-25. The Cubs haven't won a World Series or even been in a World Series. The closest they came was five outs away, in 2003. That's just not close enough.

The Cubs' futility has gone on long enough. There is no losing record anywhere in professional sports that I can think of that can match the lowly Cubs. Only the Washington Generals, the helpless opposition of the Harlem Globetrotters, comes to mind and they were playing fixed exhibition games.

The Cubs haven't won the World Series since 1908. The century doomsday mark is fast approaching. If they are to reverse the course, they need to turn back the clocks and go back to the turn of the century, and not the 21st but the 20th, a time when they were known for winning. (Between 1906-1908, the Cubs played in three World Series. They lost in '06 to the South Side White Sox but then won the Series in both '07 and '08 and have not returned since.)

It's time that the Tribsters do the right thing and let go. They've had a quarter century now. It's time to give someone else a chance.

The Tribsters bank on Wrigley Field and hope. Wrigley Field obviously doesn't win games. And it seems now that hope is gone.

For hope to return, the Cubs must start over. They need to go back to the Stone age. By that I mean Steve Stone, the ex-big league pitcher and ex-Cubs broadcaster now working for ESPN and WSCR-AM.

The Tribsters gave him the heave-ho from the broadcast booth and would never admit they were wrong. They were. Stoney called it like it was and his reward was a swift kick out the door. 

Here's the deal: No one else out there knows the Cubs inside and out like the Cubs. No one else understands Cubdom better than Stoney. He is the man for the job. There have been rumors before that he has had interest in buying a big-league ballclub. Why not sell the Cubs to him? It would be the perfect fit. Let him do whatever he wants with them. He just may be the Cubs only hope.

Either that, or we keep listening to the Cleaning Lady's singing this song?