Don’t Know Much About History

For our various driving trips over the past few months I’ve been listening to the audio book version of Don’t Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis. It’s a vast overview of American history from pre-Colonial days until 2001. I found it to be oddly captivating, especially as it helped to fill in gaps in my knowledge of history, including the War of 1812, Reconstruction, the Korean War and more.

Any overview of history is sure to have its biases and make choices of content and coverage that someone is sure to disagree with. But some of those choices were especially interesting. For example, the Battle of the Bulge in World War II received more coverage than the Apollo moon landing. Alan Greenspan and his control over the boom economy of the 1990s received about as much coverage as the Kennedy assassination. Uncovered spies in the last decades of the 20th century were given thorough treatment in a chapter on the failures of the FBI, while the World Trade Center bombing was only mentioned in passing during the account of the Oklahoma City bombing.

I imagine it’s hard to put history in perspective, especially recent history. But how we make those choices is certainly fascinating.

Looking back on the entire book, it’s bizarre how much space is given to war. Each and every war was given a thorough overview, including the reasons for the war and the important milestones of each war, such as major battles. It seems odd to give so much space to each individual battle. Surely wars themselves and the reasons for each war were important to cover, but I don’t get the emphasis on each minute rise and fall. Wars shape our society, without a doubt, but I would think other social factors would have more importance than the Battle of Midway.

The other feeling I was left with was the incredible failure of mankind. Again and again we’re confronted with disgusting realities, whether it’s the Constitution declaring black men to be three-fifths of a person, the savage treatment of Native Americans justified by their supposed savageness or the national superiority that sees immigrants as lesser persons, despite the fact that we’re a nation of immigrants.

The Tulsa race riot of 1921 was one such incident, a racially motivated powder keg that saw an entire black neighborhood burned to the ground and several hundred people killed. It was such an ugly affair that it was expunged from local records and never acknowledged until recently.

History is full of this kind of sadness.

But as I was driving across the prairies of Kansas hearing about the civil rights movement, I found moments of hope. In the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case the Supreme Court finally overturned more than 50 years worth of racism that had been enshrined in U.S. court decisions. What’s perhaps most amazing about this is how Chief Justice Earl Warren convinced the other justices to issues a unanimous ruling, leaving no question as to the utter defeat of segregation. The back story is even more intriguing, that the court was actually re-hearing the case and that Warren was appointed chief justice before this final re-hearing. Ironically, President Dwight Eisenhower called his appointment of Warren the “the biggest damned-fool mistake I ever made.”

I was hearing this history while driving past exits for both the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site. You don’t always think about it, but Kansas has been a flashpoint for racial progress going back to the Bleeding Kansas days when the territory was at the middle of a slave vs. free state debate.

In spite of all our failures, weakness and stupidity—both then and today, for surely we have our own failures we’ll one day be explaining to our children—there is always room for hope.

Free Christmas Music 2011

I like Christmas music and I like free music, so I must double-like free Christmas music. And yes, I do. I’ve shared some free Christmas music in the past, but this year there are a few offerings worth mentioning:

  • Justin McRoberts: Right now you can get the Christmas Songs EPs from acoustic folk rocker Justin McRoberts for free from NoiseTrade. You do need to hand over your ZIP and an email, but otherwise it’s free. One of Justin’s songs made it on my top 5 list of Christmas songs, so it’s worth checking out.
  • Eisely: Over at Facebook you can download the Dupree Family Christmas Bundle, which is a collection of Christmas songs recorded over the years by members of the Texas-based band Eisley. How to describe Eisley? Hmmm… female-fronted, melodic-melancholy rock with a lot of harmonies?
  • Amazon’s Advent Calendar of Free Christmas Music: Every year Amazon gives away a song a day until Christmas for 25 days of free music. Some of it is worth a pass, but there are some gems here, including something for all tastes. We’re talking Bing Crosby to Twisted Sister, Leigh Nash (of Sixpence None the Richer) to the Flaming Lips, and Brian Wilson to Fitz and the Tantrums. Give it a try.
  • Five Iron Frenzy: OK, it’s not very Christmasy (at all), but I’d be remiss not to mention the new Five Iron Frenzy (they’re back) single you can get for free: “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night.” It’s free and it’s close to Christmas, so let’s call it a Christmas present. (OK, if you really want some Five Iron Christmas, you’ll have to shell out for “Gotta Get Up.”)

Hope you enjoy yourself some free Christmas music.

And if you’re up for spending a few bucks on your Christmas music, I strongly recommend the Sufjan Stevens’ Songs for Christmas. I could rock around the Christmas tree to that indie-rock wonder collection all night long.

Five Iron Frenzy Is Back

The Internet and the power of social media has breathed new life into the corpse of disbanded and broken bands, allowing reunions of the long lost music of your youth. When record company economics made it too difficult for those struggling bands, the Internet has found a way. Of all the recent reunions, none has excited me more than the rise of Five Iron Frenzy. And none has garnered the stories.

A ska-driven, nerd-core band of Christians, Five Iron Frenzy haunted the edges of the Christian music scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s, never quite finding full acceptance due to the two extremes of their off-beat humor and honest explorations of faith. But they had a rabid fan base.

That fan base proved itself by supporting Five Iron’s return, fully funding their Kickstarter goal of $30,000 in just 55 minutes. The band has since raised nearly $170,000 from more than 2,700 fans to fund their next album and tour. You have until Jan. 21 to support their effort.

Plus, you can get a new song, “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night,” for free.

In typical Five Iron fashion, it’s all a little weird. The headlining video on Kickstarter—usually a crucial marketing piece that should be well planned and produced—is a nearly 8 minutes of Five Iron lead singer Reese Roper wandering around in the desert pretending to be on a survivor show. It’s not until the final minutes that he actually talks about the reunion. Or there’s the second Kickstarter video from drummer Andy Verdecchio, a much shorter and—if possible—weirder video that tries to spoof pledge videos. (Though from the times I’ve interviewed both Roper and Verdecchio, I wouldn’t expect anything else. One time I was interviewing Verdecchio and two other band members and Verdecchio never said a serious thing in the entire interview.) There’s also the Relevant magazine interview with Roper made it sound like the band got back together because they had nothing better to do.

But it’s also Five Iron. Glad to have them back.

Benefits vs. Features

Abby and I have been cell phone shopping (for her, not me—I still can’t justify it), and surprise, surprise—it’s delivering great marketing lessons.

We’re comparing Android phones on Virgin Mobile’s no-contract plan, and the way they pitch the phones is pathetic. They’re talking about features instead of benefits. They tell you all the phones features, but they don’t talk about how those features actually benefit you. And most of the time in their rush to tell you features, they just keep telling you more and more features to the point that they’re completely useless.

  • A clock? Seriously? That’s the feature you’re going to brag about?
  • I can send email on the phone? Wow. Every smartphone you sell does that. And it’s not like we’re looking at smartphones and non-smartphones side by side where the ability to send email would be worth pointing out.
  • RAM: 512 MB. What does that mean? Later on we get “Internal Memory Size Limit: *ROM 512MB,” followed by the asterisk explanation: “* Usable ROM is less than usable RAM by 152MB” I’m a pretty tech savvy guy, but I’m still lost.
  • Access to the Android app store? No.

Those are all features the company keeps lining up like they’re aiming for bragging rights. What they don’t realize is that they’re making it harder and harder for a customer to choose a phone.

Instead, they should talk about benefits. A feature is that you can access the Android app store. A benefit is that I can find an app to do anything I want, whether it’s track my budget or calculate tip.

Wait, that sounds familiar. How does Apple advertise its app store? Oh yeah: “There’s an app for that.”

Give people benefits instead of features. Apple figured that out and it’s why the iPhone is everywhere.

Tony Stewart Kicking Ass

(I don’t blog about NASCAR often, so you’ll have to indulge me)

Last night the NASCAR season came to an end with the showdown of all showdowns. Going into the final race of the season, Carl Edwards held a three point advantage over Tony Stewart for the championship. Nobody else was in contention. And nothing else mattered—Carl and Tony would take the first two spots, they just had to fight over the order.

With all the different scenarios, Carl could spot Tony a few positions at the end of the race and still claim the championship, unless Tony won. If Tony won, there was nothing Carl could do. Even if Carl led the most laps (bonus points) and finished second, they’d still tie and the tie-breaker goes to the driver with most wins, which was Tony.

And that’s exactly what happend. Carl led the most laps and finished second, about 1.2 seconds behind winner—and now three-time champion—Tony Stewart.

  • It’s the first time NASCAR has determined a champion with a tie breaker.
  • It’s also the first time an owner-driver has won the championship since Alan Kulwicki in 1992.
  • It’s also the first time a driver has come from behind to win a championship by winning the race.
  • It’s also the first time a champion has won the final race since 1998 when Jeff Gordon did it.
  • It’s also the first time a driver has won five races in the season-ending Chase.
  • Tony also came from 9th place when the Chase started, the farthest back a champion has ever started (since the Chase format started in 2004).
  • It’s also the first time a driver has entered the Chase winless and went on to claim the championship.

And Tony did all that while passing 76 cars in Sunday’s race. Debris punched a hole in his car’s grill and the team fell back to 40th place while making repairs. They pitted again during another caution for more repairs and fell back again, only to climb back to the top, going three and four wide on multiple restarts to pick up positions.

“They’re going to feel like [expletive], after we kick their ass after this,” Tony said over the radio.

I’m not a big fan of Tony Stewart. I was rooting for Carl Edwards, who was robotically consistent over the Chase, with an average finish of 4.9 and finishing no worse than 11th in any of the 10 races. But winning is what matters and Carl’s consistency wasn’t enough. And I don’t think anything was enough for hard-charging Tony Stewart. I’m not a fan, but what he did to win this championship was incredible.

And in the end, I’ve been rooting for anyone but Jimmie Johnson for the last six years.

Sidebar 1: People complain all the time about NASCAR. Non-fans don’t get why it’s exciting. Those folks need to watch Tony Stewart pass 76 cars to win a race and a championship. Fans complain about everything, but you couldn’t ask for something better than a history-making finale like this one.

Sidebar 2: Ricky Stenhouse Jr. won NASCAR’s Nationwide series championship on Saturday (it’s kind of like the minor leagues), running most of the season without sponsorship. He literally ran a blank, white race car throughout most of the year. There’s been a lot of economic fallout in NASCAR the past few years with major teams closing up shop or merging with other teams. This is just proof that it’s not getting better. And maybe proof for interested advertisers that there should be some deals available. Anybody want to sponsor a stock car?

M83 Backup Singer Audition

So the other day I watched this video of a guy trying out to be a backup singer for M83. I don’t know anything about M83, but it was kind of a funny video. The best part is that Lexi and Milo were watching it with me and started singing along.

A few days later, the song, “Midnight City,” came on the Current and Lexi and Milo both started singing the backup part. Hilarous.

New in Nov: M83 Vocal Audition (Nov 3rd) from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

Kim Kardashian & Gay Marriage

Next year Minnesota will be voting on a constitutional amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman (and if you can’t guess, we’re deeply divided).

Sigh.

That means in addition to the typical presidential year politics, Minnesota will be having a knock down, drag out fight over gay marriage. I’m not looking forward to this one.

It means we’ll be hearing all sorts of arguments that seem to have nothing to do with one another. Gay marriage advocates will argue for civil rights. Traditional marriage proponents will argue to preserve marriage and the family. And you’re left scratching your head, wondering what civil rights has to do with the sanctity of marriage. Both sides will the think the other is crazy and our already polarized society will get even further apart.

Which brings us to Kim Kardashian and her 72-day marriage (Sidebar: I love it when Kardashian appears on How I Met Your Mother and Marshall makes a comment about how his wife keeps telling him why Kardashian is famous, but he can’t remember). Perhaps part of why the gay marriage debate depresses me is because we sit around and argue about whether or not gay people who love each other and are committed can get married, how that act is somehow going to ruin other peoples’ marriage, how marriage is supposedly all about children—and in the midst of all that half of marriages end in divorce and the celebrity spectacle machine celebrates a sham of a marriage that couldn’t even last three months.

Marriage is certainly under fire. But it has little to do with homosexuality.

Whatever side of this debate you’re on you probably value the idea of marriage. Maybe instead of clubbing each other for the next year, we should support that idea of marriage. Maybe we should help couples figure out if they’re really ready for marriage. Maybe we should help married couples in trouble navigate the relational rocks that lead to divorce. I have no delusions that divorce isn’t necessary, but I think most people would agree that fewer divorces would be better.

Turned on the Heat

Thanks to a warm fall, we made it pretty far this year before having to turn on the heat. This morning I finally caved. I was hoping to make it through the weekend (it’s supposed to warm up), but no such luck.

We did endure the lowest inside temperature we have in five years, so that’s something.

Here’s how this year stacked up: