Pluggin' Away

I'm late this week (which has been a theme the past few weeks, and will probably continue) and don't have new material to write to you with, so I have to cheat. I take you back to December 31st, 2007, less than three months after funksauce opened up online. My wife's brother, Mike Renick, who appropriately heads the Mike Renick Band, was to be playing a show in Cape Girardeau, MO on New Year's Eve. In my lack of advertising experience, I dreamed up what I thought to be a brilliant plan to dress the band in 1970's vintage clothing in exchange for a plug or two on stage. I had a limited stock by then and had to do my best with sizes, so the outfits were not the funkiest they could have been and were relatively baggy on the boys. The music was fantastic (I was in sensory heaven when they played their cover of Dave Matthew's All Along the Watchtower, my favorite by MRB), and I thought the clothes were pretty cool too, but the crowd worried me. Heckling? A PBR beer bottle over the head? The party-goers were a sea of tee-shirts and cowboy boots. I jest, slightly, but there was definitely not a person there who stood out in any vintage. I didn't hear any positive comments from the crowd, but the band seemed to enjoy the clothes. Mike did give me a couple of plugs on-stage, but in looking back he wasted his singing voice. It's ok though. It was about listening to music that I enjoyed on the cusp of a new and would-be exciting and adventurous 2008. And as I look back, the kick I got out of watching them in my clothes then, and the pictures I can look back on now, make it more meaningful than any amount of sales I could have gotten.

(From left to right: Mike--lead vocals, acoustic guitar; Blake--back-up vocals, electric guitar; Brian--drums; Kenny--bass guitar; Wes--saxaphone; and Nick, the sound guy, is in the picture to your right and in my favorite outfit .)

Post-Pre

Steve Prefontaine is considered to be one of the most influential people in the history of track and one of the greatest runners of all time. He set numerous records, and was known for giving it his all and never quitting. This 3 minute video does a great job summarizing his feats and fantastic quotes. And Prefontaine, or Pre as he was called, achieved this place in history even though he was killed in a car accident at the young age of 24.
When I was 14 years old, I decided to follow my friends into the realm of high school cross country. This consisted of long lake runs, power line runs, never-ending sprints, and stressful 5k meets. I wish I could say that my inspiration was Pre. I wish I could say that I ran until I puked my guts out like Pre would have. In my very first practice, I hitched a ride. Unfortunately, I had never heard of Pre then. Through those four years I was one of the slowest on my team. But after that first ride, I never quit in the middle of a run again. The shoes I ran in were basic running shoes that my parents bought for me from Payless Shoe Source. A gray pair lasted me my first two years, and a black pair lasted me my last two years. We couldn't afford the fancy, colorful, top of the line shoes that some of my competitors were running in. By the end of my senior season my second pair of shoes were dirty, full of burrs, and split open from the heel to the mid-foot. After running for four years and not earning one single medal, I hung those shoes from a shelf in my bedroom as my own kind of trophy, and a sense of accomplishment. I think I finally threw them out some years later, and now I wish I hadn't. Recently, more than 20 years later, I stumbled across Nike's rebirth of of their running shoes from the 1970's. (Here's a fun retro ad campaign by Nike.) The looks of these shoes transported me to before my time, and I wanted to have a piece of my running past back. By the time I had discovered them online, most were gone. The only ones left in my size, anywhere on the web, were a pair of bright blue and red Nike Zoom Hayward III's. Honestly, they weren't my first choice, I liked the throw-back waffle shoes better, but what could I do? I had to have them. The Hayward III's were presumably modeled after Steve Prefontaine's blueprint of the perfect running shoe, and Hayward was his hometown track he ran on. I like to run in a few charity races every year, but have not been in one since I got these. However, I did wear them on the Great Rivers Century bike ride. I was one of the few who stood out not by a brightly colored biking shirt, but instead by my new Hayward's. (You can read more about my bike ride with my brother here.) This is us looking a little disheveled at mile 40. I guess what I found was this: The shoes didn't change me. I'm still the same guy who plugs along at a slow pace but eventually finishes. But did they give me a little inspiration and drive mixed in with my effort? You betcha. If only I could go back to high school cross country, to maybe at least hurl on the trails once. Pre, I wish I had known you.

Broadway's Lights Are Out

I'm one of those Fantasy Football dorks. Now, I don't pay very much money to do it, and I don't peruse through statistics for countless hours trying to chalk up a win. But I do look forward to it every week when it's here, and I watch a little more football on television than I otherwise would. I think my group does it right--We pay $10 apiece towards the champ's winnings, $5 barbecue money for our draft party, and we have a dinner at Outback Steakhouse with our own pocket money to celebrate the winner and another fun season. It's camaraderie at a low cost. I thought at this year's dinner I would pay tribute to a very good quarterback named Joe Namath. Joe was a guy who not only was known as a good quarterback, but also as a single, handsome, fashionable, famous sex symbol. He wore fantastic clothes (I love the pics here, especially the men's vintage pants in #4 & #7 and shirt in #8). He did several commercials, including a controversial one where he wore pantyhose.

He was on the front of numerous magazine covers. He starred in a movie. He owned several nightclubs. He dated famous and beautiful women. Broadway Joe was also known for wearing a fur coat on the sidelines during games, which later become popular among other players. So then, in tribute, I wore a fur coat to our dinner. Patched muskrat, mind you. My friends were a little weirded out by it, and I was a little afraid someone would dump their Aussie Cheese Fries on me in protest, but we were in a place that serves thick cuts of cow, so I figured I'd be safe from harm. Our waitress, Heather, said "eeew" when she got close to me. This would not have happened to the Joe Namath. I forgot my camera, something that Joe probably never had to worry about because everyone wanted his picture. Heather took our picture with her friend's camera and was supposed to email it to me so that I could put it on this blog. Three weeks later I still have not been emailed the picture. I can't get a girl to email a picture of myself to me, yet Joe would probably have been married to Heather by now. So all I have to show you is a lame picture of me in the fur (Curse you Heather at Outback!). Another favorite quarterback of mine played in the Super Bowl this past Sunday: Kurt Warner. Kurt won a Super Bowl here in St. Louis, and many St. Louisans miss him. We felt that this nice man, who had not only won a Super Bowl for us but was also very giving in the community, had gotten the shaft. There are questions surrounding whether or not Kurt at this point should be inducted into the Hall of Fame (Joe Namath was inducted in 1985), so the following is my official argument to the NFL by comparing these two quarterbacks. Kurt soundly beats Joe in almost every category there is, has played in two less seasons, and isn't even finished. I'm done. Okay, so Kurt's the better quarterback, but Joe's the better dresser. I mean, was the better dresser. After last Sunday's Super Bowl Joe stepped out to present the Vince Lombardi trophy. He was in a regular, plain old suit. I'm not saying he wasn't dressed nice, he was. But it wasn't the kind of dress that made the once hip Joe...well, Joe. It was disappointing frankly.
After a drunken debacle at a Monday Night Football game in September of 2007 tarnished his image, and made him look pathetic really, you might have thought he would have come out reinvented as the old Joe, in the fantastic clothes he once wore, to make up for lost luster. "Let's start over," he could have said. But I guess Broadway's lights burned out long ago. I leave you then with a hall of fame commercial of a time forgotten. Man, this guy was good.