Time Off From School

So my son is out of school today and tomorrow for Fall Break. Next month he's out for a week for Thanksgiving and then of course in December it's two weeks for Christmas and New Years. Man, kids today have got it made. I don't even remember if we got s Spring Break much less a Fall one.
So do kids have too little school, too much or just enough? Who knows? Who cares?

Ah well, at least it means I get to spend some time with him before I have to go to work. I need to squeeze some time in for the park or something else he'll like. Maybe some video games too, just for bonding though. Not because I like playing them or anything. It's just important for us to spend time together whatever we end up doing.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Please Don't Add Me To Your Group, Jerky

On Friday night while at work I decided to check my email from my work computer, something I am still able to do since they haven't blocked it yet. They've managed to block many things so far like Facebook, personal blogs and so forth so I don't doubt that it will happen soon. I noticed that I had seven new emails and my first thought was that perhaps one of my friends had read my message on Facebook about my series of blog posts that I am making concerning my college fraternity days and were giving me some asked for feedback. When I went into my inbox however I found that I wasn't even close. They were notifications about posts from a group on Facebook I didn't know and were from people that I do not know.

I started deleting them and the last one was from a friend of mine letting me know that he had signed me up for a group called Friday Night Video Fight. Now I had heard many months ago that Facebook was going to allow this but this was the first time that it had happened to me. Personally I hate that this egregious attack on common sense has been cleared by the powers that be at Facebook. To me it is arrogant for a person to decide that they know better than I do what groups I should be in. It smacks of the highest level of douchebaggery. It's one thing if a friend thinks I'll like a group or band or something like that and wants to recommend it to me but to take it upon themselves to add me without my prior knowledge is quite a different thing. It's just wrong.

Now before you start saying it's not that big of a deal and that I can easily unsubscribe from the group I feel that I must let you know when I checked my email about 2 hours later I had 159 of the same emails notifying me that people had posted to this group and that is just ridiculous. It's far too much. Why should I have to unsubscribe from a group that I NEVER subscribed to in the first place? Why should I have to deal with the problem of my inbox getting swamped with garbage emails from people I don't know, about music videos of bands that I don't care about? Just so you can do what you want?

Screw all that. How about holding people accountable for their actions and making them think about what they are doing to other people who are supposedly their friend? How about Facebook not allowing this kind of stupidity to go on? How about people using their brains and thinking of others instead of only themselves? How about I finish this rant and get over it?



Published by Don Leach

12 Inch Singles # 2 AND Night Tracks or Night Flight?

I can tell that I'm getting old. Earlier I was thinking about a certain video from the early 80s and how I remembered watching it on a particular channel before I had ever laid eyes on MTV. Somehow I remembered that it was on the WTBS show Night Tracks around my sophomore year in high school however as I decided to do some fact checking before posting (a rare thing) and I found that it cannot have happened that way. The above mentioned show didn't air until 1989 which was about 7 years too late. I knew I had seen this video (and many others) on a show that aired on Fridays and Saturdays in the evenings but couldn't figure out what it was. At first top 40 or top 40 aspiring mainstream videos would be shown and as it got later in the evening you would see edgier, more alternative videos from artists like Devo, Iggy Pop and so forth. This was my favorite time to watch. Forget all of the mainstream garbage that was being pushed my way, no I went in for the different, unique and well, just downright odd groups. You have to know, I lived in a small town (pop. roughly 12,000) named Ironton in southeastern Ohio and wasn't near a larger city where you could get exposed to different kinds of music. I graduated high school in 1983 (in a different state) but attended my 20th high school reunion in Ironton and most of the people wanted to listen to disco so that should be all the explanation you need about what living in that place was like. Still, it was better than the town that I ended up graduating from.

At any rate the band I was thinking about was The English Beat and the video was for the song "Save It For Later." It was so immensely different than the music on local radio or what I heard anybody else listening to that it made a distinct impression on me and to this day it stills brings a smile to my face when I hear it.



Now after doing some actual research I think the show was actually Night Flight on the USA network and since the name is so similar I'm sure you can understand my confusion. It started in 1982 (my sophomore year) a few months before MTV aired and from all accounts it seems like it should be the one. Of course I also used to hear groups on the tv show Fridays which got called a rip off of Saturday Night Live but it didn't matter to me. They featured artists playing in a live setting like The Jim Carroll Band, The Plasmatics, Devo and so on that Saturday Night Live would never touch. Of course, that's another story.

Fight Life: MMA Documentary by James Z. Feng

I've heard 2 interviews on podcasts that I listen to from James Feng who is the director of an upcoming documentary about mixed martial arts called Fight Life. His goal is to show the public what it's really like to be a fighter. Although a select few make a lot of money fighting MMA the truth is that the vast majority of fighters cannot support themselves from their earnings, instead they have to work regular jobs, usually in local events and hope that they can make it to the top. They do not have health insurance. So why do they do it?



I'm really looking forward to watching this film as I am an avid fan of MMA in general and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in particular. In an effort to help spread the word (even though nobody reads this blog) I wanted to have the preview available. From the looks of it this should be a very entertaining and serious look at what goes on in the MMA world. I'll be keeping an eye out for more information as it becomes available.