Grace got an award for “Outstanding Achievement” yesterday at an assembly at her school. It was for going “above and beyond” on all her assignments. She asks for more homework, writes unassigned stories that the teacher has her read to the class, tacks poems onto assignments and goes out and finds math problems for practice. She pretty much taught herself to read on the websites FunBrain and Starfall when she was 5.

So my taste in music magazines has evolved. From the late 80s to late 90s I subscribed to Rolling Stone, I even saved every issue. This always bugged Shannon: stacks of magazines in the bedroom, in the office and boxes of magazines in the attic. I figured they were collectors items that I could sell some day. With the move I ran out of time. A local “Sell It on Ebay” shop wouldn’t take them so I ended up RECYCLING ~200 issues. I liked the music reviews and LOVED the occasional PJ O’Rourke (Happy 60th today!) articles. I let my subscription lapse because they took themselves too seriously, were too corporate, too focused on the past and too politically liberal. I moved on to BLENDER after RS. It had fun features: 25 songs to download now, ask the artist, a mythbuster type column that examined urban myths about various songs, artist life expectations: how long a given artist should live based on assorted risk factors, etc. They have fun lists: 100 worst songs, 100 greatest moments in rock, etc. It’s a little too pop-culturey. I picked one up before a flight a couple months ago, flipped through it in 5 minutes and didn’t see anything I wanted to read, so I recycled it on the spot. I’ve moved on to Paste magazine (proudly embracing middle age). It’s tag-line is “Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture”. They focus on indie rock, folk and country. Each issue includes a CD of artists you’ve never heard off. For a few more days you can name your price for a subscription (ala Radiohead’s latest album) here. Don’t tell Shannon, but after buying it at the airport for about a year now, I finally subscribed. I was hooked after the 800 word essay on the merits of GNR’s “Sweet Child of Mine”. They have good music reviews, but I don’t trust their take on movies. Fun occasional feature: Rock Lexicon: “BLOGNOGG: Albums, artists or serendipitous onstage collaborations that are welcomed like booze at Christmastime by the blogging community…, BIRD NERD: The attention-starved, liquor-whipped troglodyte in every audience who hollers multiple requests for ‘Free Bird’ all the way through the set. At a Daft Punk show”. Check it out.

Here are my Top 10 songs right now, in no particular order:

“Who Knew” by P!NK

“Society” by Eddie Vedder on “Into the Wild” soundtrack. Beautiful, haunting song.

“Grey in LA” by Loudon Wainwright III

“Ordinary People” by Neil Young. 18 minutes long!! Best NY album in years. Saw him at the new Nokia theater last month. Amazing show!! Mulitple “Bird Nerds” on hand. Neil said “Yeah, I’ll be breaking into that in a minute”.

“North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem. Loud, fast, funny.

“Rockstar” by Nickelback

“Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue. Gavin has a piano song this week that has a similar melody.

“I’m Still A Guy” by Brad Paisley. Clever diatribe against metrosexuals. Whole album is GREAT!

“Tell Me What We’re Gonna Do Now” by Joss Stone featuring Common.

“California Dreamin’” by Queen Latifah. Beautiful voice, great album.

Everyone but Dylan has been sick over the last couple weeks. Grace was first: strep throat, missed a couple days of school then me, then Shannon, and now Gavin is missing his second day of school this week. Dylan’s team won their playoff game last night. The championship game is Saturday.

Saturday was the last week of the regular season for our fall sports. That means we can do something else on Saturdays!!!(after playoffs) Grace’s team lost. A kid from Dylan’s class brought a bearded dragon to the park. Dylan misses his pet ball python Drake. Gavin’s team won and ended regular season in 2nd place. He got to play against one of his buddies from church. Going into the playoffs they are getting some coaching help from an MLS player. Dylan’s rollerhockey team won and ended up in first place. He was extremely frustrtated that he didn’t score and for the first time all season he actually practiced his wrist shot OUTSIDE of team practice.

We went to Vegas for the weekend to get together with family and take in the “Best of the West” college lacrosse tournament. My nephew Jake is on BYU’s lacrosse team. They crushed every team they played 14-0, 14-0, 14-5. The closest game was the championship game against Colorado State: 7-1. Lacrosse has been a club sport at BYU, but should become a division 1, officially sanctioned team sport next year. They did a road trip to Virginia last month where the competition is tougher. They lost to Villanova and Washington College, but beat Virginia Tech and Virginia Military Institute on that trip. Jake is a strong player: he is on the #2 line as a freshman. He scored a goal in the championship game. It was great to see BT, a family friend from Portland, as well. He (also a freshman) scored a few goals and had several assists. I’ve heard that towns hosting college sport events don’t get too excited when BYU comes to town because the fans “have a $20 bill in one hand and a copy of the 10 commandment in the other and don’t break either one”. It’s shocking to see how much Vegas has grown. We drove in at night and the city lights go on forever in all directions. The weather was perfect: high 70s, light breeze.

All my parents grandchildren were there, except for JT, who is on a mission in Japan. The cousins, as usual, had a great time together. Karli taught Grace a cheer routine while the boys drew and made paper airplanes. After 8 exciting hours of lacrosse I watched a great football game on TV: #5 Oregon vs. #4 Arizona State. The Ducks WON!! and moved up to #3 in the rankings. They beat USC last week, so that’s two top 10 teams in a row!! Their only loss this year was to Cal when they literally came up 1 foot short. Dixon for Heisman!! We are going to watch them play UCLA at the Rose Bowl at the end of the month. Sunday morning we drove to Mesquite to meet the Varleys for brunch. They were in St George for a softball tournament.

All three kids missed games Saturday. Gavin’s coach was lobbying for Gavin to stay and play since they were playing the toughest team in their league and he needed Gavin on defense. The “Bone Crushers” won without him and now are in 1st place. Dylan missed an all star game and a game against their toughest competitor. They also prevailed. No report from Gracie’s team, yet.