RIP BMG

As I was perusing the internet this morning, I stumbled across a sad bit of news. BMG Music Service ceased operations earlier this year. Truly this signifies the end of an era. For the uninitiated, BMG was a mail order club where you could purchase CDs at great discounts. They were most famous for their "12 CDs For the Price of 1" subscription deal. The only real catch was the shipping charges, but the cost breakdown was still something like $3 or $4 per CD.

During its mid-90s heyday, BMG was the key to building my CD collection. Not only did I sign up a few times myself, but I was also one of their greatest spokesmen. You see, when you got others to sign up, you were given more free CDs. At one point, all of my siblings and several friends became members thanks to my efforts.

But things changed with the advent of CD burners. No longer did you and all your friends each have to buy separate copies of the same CD. Then iPods came along and it was all over. I actually clung to my BMG membership well after my CD purchasing prime—I only closed my account a few years ago.

I haven't totally outgrown media clubs though. These days I am a member of the Columbia House DVD Club. My purchasing doesn't come close to rivaling the BMG days, but the quantity discounts do come in handy during the holidays when we are stocking up on Christmas gifts. You know, I get two free DVDs for getting people to sign up. Who's interested?

Let There Be Light

Since we won't be able to sell our house for what we bought it for until roughly 2017, Kristen and I have been thinking a lot about home improvement lately. On the top of the list is our kitchen.

The default lighting in there wasn't really cutting it, so we headed over to IKEA a few weeks ago to explore options. Eddie nearly blew a fuse pointing at all the lights, but in a way he helped us forgo our usual indecision in matters such as this (it took us two years to pick out a ceiling fan for our bedroom). As he ran around the aisles in a frenzy, we hastily made up our minds and came home with new light fixtures. I even managed to install them myself without anyone getting electrocuted.

Pendant over the kitchen table

Track over the cooking area

The new lights don't make the kitchen any brighter, but now it is better lit, if that makes sense. Next to go is the linoleum floor. We are tentatively planning to install laminate flooring over Thanksgiving weekend.

Tie Time

I've never liked wearing neckties. As an adolescent, the only redeeming thing about having to wear them was that I could get away with all sorts of crazy novelty ties, like Looney Tunes characters playing baseball. Another personal favorite from this era was the fish tie worn by my junior high band teacher. And I don't just mean the tie had fish on it. The tie was literally a fish body and the knot was the caudal fin.

However, there comes a point in the maturation process when a boy must put away his novelty ties and become a man. For me, this transition came on my mission. When you have to wear a tie every day, you form certain stylistic preferences. Novelty ties weren't permitted anyway, but all of a sudden they just seemed kind of tacky. I didn't want to be that middle-aged dad you see at church wearing a tie with flaming Tabasco Sauce bottles.

All of my old novelty ties eventually made their way to the D.I., but for Christmas 2004 I received a New York Yankees tie as a gift. I wasn't sure if I would ever actually wear it, but kept it on my tie rack anyway. I eventually decided that it would be my championship tie. The next time the Yankees won the World Series I would wear it to church the following Sunday.

My championship tie has remained in the closet, virtually untouched since then, but 2009 turned out to be its year of destiny. As I put it on this morning for the first (and hopefully not last) time, I thanked my lucky stars I'm not a Cubs fan. Or an Indians fan. Or... well, you get the idea.

(MAJOR Nerd Alert)

Ten Things...

...I Love About Watching MLB on Fox

Before meeting Dave, I had very little interest in baseball, but in the past 6 years, I have been subjected to enough of it that I have started to actually enjoy watching some games. Since this was the first World Series that I felt compelled to really care about, I decided to dedicate a post to my favorite things about watching baseball on TV. And here they are:

10. Mocking Players' Faces
Dave and I have a new face we make at each other. It's called the "John Lackey."

9. Players' Spit-Takes
Or farmer blows. Lucky for us, we happened to watch the first few innings of Game 3 on my brother's HDTV. Thanks, A-Rod.

8. Constant Cup Adjustments
This postseason has inspired me to develop a line of custom made protective cups for professional athletes. I have no personal experience with this sort of equipment, but it seems to me that if you're wearing one every day, you ought to be able to get one that fits well enough that you don't have to adjust it after every movement.

7. Commentators
Since watching the MLB postseason, I have a new person to add to my Facebook list of "people I would punch in the face if I had the chance": Tim McCarver. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough with my note-taking to get some of his really great quotes. However, I did like it when he predicted a "standing O" for Matsui during Game 6.

6. Close-Ups of Fans
Sure, some fans go to a game decked out in such a way that they are obviously hoping to get on TV. But most fans have no idea they are on TV and get caught looking really dumb. And then there are the ever popular shots of fans looking suicidal when their team is about to lose.

5. The Crotch Cam
Not only is the camera angle that I have dubbed "the crotch cam" useful in helping Tim McCarver incorrectly predict which pitches are coming, but it is also a very flattering shot of the catcher. You just don't get to see angles like that when you're at a live game.

4. Post-Game Interviews
I have to give the reporters a bit of a break because they rush out onto the field moments after a game has been decided, snag a player, and conduct their spontaneous interview live on TV. However, they could think of better questions than, "How do you think this makes some of the other players on your team feel?" or "You haven't had a good postseason. Aren't you glad you won anyways?" I also enjoy the players' generic answers, such as "It was a team effort and we really pulled through" or "We're going to have to step it up tomorrow night because they [the opponent] are a really great team."

3. Mocking Players' (or Coaches') Names
My new favorite name is Rich Dubee, the pitching coach for the Phillies. Every time his name was mentioned, I couldn't suppress my giggles.

2. Slow Motion Replays
Not even professional athletes—no matter how well conditioned—look good with of all their parts jiggling in extreme slow-mo.

1. In-Game Widgets Named for Sponsors
I got so distracted by the constant sponsor plugs during Game 1 that I started taking notes. Here are some of the sponsor-named widgets of the World Series:

• Home Depot Tools to Victory
• Auto Trader Ultimate Pitching Comparison
• Fox Business Network In-Game Box Score
• Wal-Mart Saving Moment of the Game
• American Express Take Charge Player of the Game

Finally, I'd like to take a moment to mention that aerial coverage of this post is provided by DIRECTV.

It Doesn't Get Any Better Than THIS

A few months ago Kristen and I took notice of an unfamiliar channel in our modest cable package—This TV Network—thanks to the strange and obscure movie titles featured on its program schedule (i.e. What's the Matter With Helen?). Soon we started reading the program summaries too, and that turned out to be just as entertaining as watching the actual movies, if not moreso. Since we are always on the look out for new blog content, we have been compiling the best summaries ever since. Let me stress that we have not modified these in any way.

Android
Klaus Kinski, Don Opper (1982) Escaped convicts break into the space station of hip android Max 404 and his creator.

What's the Matter With Helen?
Debbie Reynolds, Shelley Winters (1971) The weird mothers of two thrill-killers move to 1930s Hollywood and open a talent school for children.

K-9000
Chris Mulkey, Catherine Oxenberg (1991) A reckless police detective teams up with a computer scientist and her high-tech dog, Niner.

C.H.O.M.P.S.
Wesley Eure, Valerie Bertinelli (1979) A teenage genius invents a robot watchdog to bail out his girlfriend's father's home-security business.

Kid Colter
Jim Stafford, Jeremy Shamos (1985) A Boston boy escapes from spies and survives in the wild with tricks from his mountain man father.

California Casanova
Jerry Orbach, Audrey Landers (1991) A clumsy stagehand tries to woo a nightclub singer on his own and with lessons from a gigolo.

Tentacles
John Huston, Shelley Winters (1977) A marine biologist's trained killer whales rid the California coast of a giant octopus.

Puss In Boots
Christopher Walken, Jason Connery (1988) A miller's son leaves home with a cat who can change into a man of the world.

The Coca-Cola Kid
Eric Roberts, Greta Scacchi (1985) A corporate soft drink sales ace finds an Australian valley where everyone buys a local eccentric's brand.

Spellbinder
Timothy Daly, Kelly Preston (1988) Two lawyers rescue a young woman from a supposed satanist with otherworldly powers.

Return of the Rebels
Barbara Eden, Don Murray (1981) A widow and a mechanic regroup their motorcycle gang 25 years later to teach an upstart gang a lesson.

The Three Wishes of Billy Grier
Ralph Macchio, Betty Buckley (1984) A rapidly aging teenager wants to find his father, play in a jazz band, and love a woman before he dies.

Hungry Like the Wolf

Dave has a lot more confidence in my sewing skills than I do. When we were contemplating our options for Eddie's Halloween costume, he kept suggesting that I make the costume. My opinion was that if we could buy a costume, it would look much better and save me a lot of frustration. Then, we chose a costume that wasn't widely available (Max from Where the Wild Things Are). So, I decided to give it a whirl.

I found a great beige fur fabric at Fabric Center in West Jordan. Following the measurements on the pattern (a Winnie the Pooh costume pattern borrowed from Cheryl), I bought the amount of fabric indicated. I remarked to the fabric cutter lady, "that looks like an awful lot of fabric for a toddler costume."

It was quite the chore to cut the costume out because the fabric was so thick and furry. Plus, as I cut, it shed. By the time I finished, I was completely covered in fur, as was our carpet. Soon, our entire house was covered in fur. I decided not to even attempt cleaning it up until the costume was finished. After cutting out all the pieces I needed, I realized that I was right: it was an awful lot of fabric for a toddler costume. I ended up with way more than I needed -- even after having to cut out some sections twice after messing up.

So I started sewing. The suit was fairly easy, despite the fact that I made a few freestyle modifications to the pattern. I sewed most of the suit in a little over an hour. I am very proud of the neat job I did on the zipper. We found some buttons on clearance at Hobby Lobby and sewed them along the center seam on the front of the suit. The easy part was done. The only things left to do were the hat and the tail, which I imagined to be terribly complicated. So I put it off for a while.

About a week before Halloween and I suddenly realized that I was running out of time and needed to stop procrastinating. I had to design the ears and figure out how to sew them onto the hat so that they stood up straight. With Dave's help and a lot of talking to myself, we finally figured out how to sew them on. I hope you'll agree that they turned out pretty well, all things considered. Even the designer wolf suit we could have purchased online for $60 didn't get the ears quite right. I modified the hat from the pattern to try to more closely match Max's suit from the Where the Wild Things Are movie. It ended up too big for Eddie's tiny head, but wasn't bad enough to warrant a do-over.

The tail was a cinch. I bought a strip of black fur, sewed it into a tube, flipped it right side out, and filled it with batting. Then I hooked it onto the suit using safety pins so that it would be easily removed. The fabric and batting are stiff enough that it doesn't hang straight down and drag, but sticks out just enough that it doesn't get in between Ed's legs when he tries to walk.

All in all, it turned out pretty well. Of course, after buying the expensive fabric, a zipper, buttons, thread, needles, and safety pins, and taking all the time to sew it, it might have been worth it to just buy one online. However, if nothing else, it has given me a little more confidence in my sewing skills.

The Great Pumpkin

It's that time of year again. Monday night we braved the Family Home Evening crowds at the local pumpkin patch, then headed over to my sister's house for some carving action.

After Eddie "carved" Jack Skellington last year, Zero seemed like the next logical step. He recently watched The Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time and was on top of his game, pointing out the ghost pup in every scene.

I chose to do the Yankee logo and facade in honor of the team's trip to the World Series in the inaugural season of the new stadium. Kristen sorted through a large collection of Disney villains before settling on Maleficent, the evil queen from Sleeping Beauty.

The Pumpkin Walk

The North Logan Pumpkin Walk has become a fall tradition for my family. Every October, Cache Valley residents create themed displays out of pumpkins. It's really kind of lame, but the kids enjoy it, so I guess it's not a bad event to plan a family get-together around. Plus, it's a good excuse to visit Logan in the fall to see the changing leaves. Man, I miss living in a place with lots of big trees.

Eddie started out wearing his pup leash, but it only took him approximately 9 seconds to trip and fall in a pile of muddy leaves. Luckily my sister had a spare stroller since we forgot to bring ours. Not that he was content to just sit and ride, mind you.

Before walking through the pumpkin displays, there are a bunch of character cut-outs for kids to pose in. You gotta capture these moments of future embarrassment when the opportunity presents itself, right?

This one's a little more like it, I suppose.

A pair of wild things roll their terrible eyes and gnash their terrible teeth.

Things got a little R-rated along the way.

Eddie's hands down favorite was the animated Rice Krispies display. A vintage "snap crackle pop" jingle from the '50s was playing on a loop, so Eddie stood next to it bopping his head and thrusting his pelvis for a good 10 minutes. He eventually left, but soon returned to continue boogying.

________________________________________________________________

It was December of 1989. The Berlin Wall was coming down. The first full-length episode of The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire," premiered on Fox. Bono was still wearing pirate pants. And the Barton family, adorned in their finest sweaters and turtlenecks, headed down to the local Sears Portrait Studio to show off their pasty complexions and glazed smiles. I give you... The Monstrosity.

Here Comes the Sun

As I have mentioned before, I manage the Park City Sundancers as part of the WFBL, a not-so-ordinary fantasy basketball league. Next week I will start my fourth season.

League founder Ben Barnes, also a graphic designer, originally started the league more or less as a creative outlet to design a bunch of sports logos. But when he invited me to join the league in 2006, I told him I would design my own logo. Since I am a born procrastinator, I dilly-dallied for several months before finally throwing something together just a few short weeks before the season started. And I was never totally happy with the end result.

Each subsequent season since then I have considered revising my identity, or even changing my team name (the Sleepy Hollow Horsemen has a nice ring), but haven't got around to it. A graphic designer cannot live by candles alone, so this offseason I finally got crackin'.

Since my team name was originally inspired by the Sundance Film Festival, I wanted my new identity to be sufficiently cinematic. As I researched, I found my graphic solution in the movie theater marquees of yesteryear. The sun, doubling as a basketball, emerged as a centerpiece of the new identity along the way (particularly in the secondary mark).

Primary Mark

Secondary Mark

Ligature

So, after having contemplated a new and improved Sundancers identity for the better part of three years, the end result is everything I hoped it would be. Now, if you will excuse me, I have my first league championship to win.

Family Photos '09

A few weeks ago the Barton family had photos done at Wheeler Farm. My sister-in-law's sister, Mary Anne Miner, was the photographer. Be sure to check out her photo blog. She did a great job.

You're lookin' at the next James Dean.

Would you believe Eddie was shrieking in dissent just prior to this shot? Kids can turn it on and off so easily.

Another classic Ed face.

I tried to convince Kristen that we should do a Sears Portrait Studio spoof for our family photo this year, but she wasn't biting. You know, something like this? Or maybe this?

A very nice portrait of my family. It certainly beats our infamous Sears Portrait Studio shot we had done in the late '80s that was affectionately dubbed "The Monstrosity."