Our Old Dad
Family life, slow travel, playlists, and advice from an old dad.
Latest posts
- Straight Greats No. 6: Pink Floyd Had Four Perfect Albums in a Row
Pink Floyd made four perfect albums in a row from The Dark Side of the Moon through The Wall. Of those four monsters, Animals is still the one I pick.
- I Hate Everything but I Need the Money
Forty years after cheering for overtime at Andersen Consulting, I’m staring at the same old bargain: I hate what success seems to require, but I still need the money.
- Don’t Shoot Me. These Handcuffs Keep Falling Off.
Toy manufacturers spent nearly a century making handcuffs safe for children. The NBI apparently went one step further.
- The Five Years Before I Was Born
A five-year musical constraint turned into 150 songs, a classroom math idea, and proof that old music was never one genre.
- Straight Greats No. 5: The Rolling Stones Had Six — and the Weird One Counts
The Rolling Stones made six straight great albums from Their Satanic Majesties Request through Goats Head Soup: five Certified, one On the Edge, and the weird one counts.
- How the Straight Greats Scorecard Works
The rules behind Straight Greats: what counts as a skip, how the three badges work, where a streak begins and ends, and why the argument belongs at track level.
- Straight Greats No. 4: The Cult — Three Great Reincarnations Before They Fucked It Up
The Cult made three nearly perfect albums by becoming a different band each time—then Kurt slept through their peak from the front row.
- Straight Greats No. 3: R.E.M. and the Years I Was Lost
Three R.E.M. albums arrived at three moments when I was lost. Two clear the line clean; one survives a single strange, irritating detour.
- Straight Greats No. 2: Aerosmith Had Six
Aerosmith's first six albums all clear the line. The last two only felt like letdowns because the first four had made the band an eleven-year-old's main connection to rock and roll.
- One Senior, One Child, and a Two-Year-Old
At sixty-one, taking a four-year-old and a two-year-old to the pool gives strangers a small social problem to solve.
- Straight Greats No. 1: Radiohead
Radiohead opens Straight Greats with The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A: three consecutive albums, three different versions of the band, and three Certified skulls.
- We Weren't Going to Tell Her So Soon
Raven recognized me in an old classroom photo. Then she pointed at the twelve-year-old Korean boy beside me and asked if that was her.