So George Jones says stars like Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift don’t represent true, traditional country music.

“They had to use something that was established already, and that’s traditional country music. So what they need to do really, I think, is find their own title, because they’re definitely not traditional country music. And there’s quite a few of us that are going to hope that it comes back one of these days.”

Now I’m a big fan of Classic Country.  I’ve been listening to country music for a big part of my life and playing country music on the radio for 20 years.  That doesn’t make me an expert, but I think it qualifies me to have an informed opinion.  That opinion is: SHUT THE HELL UP!  Have you ever noticed that you rarely (if ever) hear artists past their prime in other formats complaining about the new generation?  It used to irritate the #### out of me when Waylon Jennings did it (God rest his soul) and it still bugs me now!  Every successful artist in every format goes through a career cycle of Introduction, Growth, Success, and Decline.  The exceptions in all of recorded music can probably be counted on one hand.

All current music formats evolve.  Even when George Jones began recording music in the late 50’s, Country music had come a long way from the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.  And a lot of his early singles crossed over to the Pop charts, too.  Hmmm… makes his current comments smack of hypocrisy, no?

By contrast, Carrie Underwood says, “I’ve had people tell me, ‘I never listened to country music until I saw you on “American Idol,” and now I’ve been to a Rascal Flatts concerts, and I went and saw so and so.’ And it’s wonderful that we all kind of have our place in country music and we all pull listeners in for different reasons, and because of that we can hear everything.”  Very classy lady.

I’ve got news for any “haters”: the music industry is just that, an industry.  One that continuously evolves to get new people interested and invested in their product.  As a professional in the Country format, I thank God for Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood every day.  Artists like George Jones definitely helped shape the Country music of today, and that is their legacy. 

Don’t taint it with sour grapes.

Scary prices make me feel wicked!  So my girls Halloween costume parties are coming up at their respective schools.  This means it’s time to take out the annual loan to go and purchase new costumes.  While Halloween in general in one of my favorite holidays of the year, this ritual is one of my least favorites.

First there is the cost.  Can you find a more cheaply made product in the entire world than a Halloween costume?  Polyester or that flimsy plastic crap fabric, every corner cut possible.  And all this shoddy workmanship can be yours for a mere… FIFTY BUCKS?  You can put $49.99 on the package, but it’s still Fifty bucks!  I spent an hour last night trying to convince my 12 year old daughter that the discounted $20 Batman costume was cool, to no avail.

And what perv designs these things?  My girls are 8 and 12.  The costumes for the 8 year old are ok, but for the tween?  Hello! or should I say Hell-no!  Every costume is slutty.  Low cut tops and micro-mini skirts.  Don’t get me wrong, at a bar costume party I’d be all about it… but not for my kid.  She’s 5′2″, so she fits into a junior medium or a ladies small.  Apparently you have to be a DD to fill out the tops, though.  Seriously? 

Well, $90 later the greek goddess and zombie prom queen are all set to go.  I’ll have to seek my reimbursement in trick or treat candy.

Every other weekend is my wife’s weekend “on”.  She works at Target, and usually pulls mid-day shifts on both Saturday and Sunday.  On these weekends, my kids never want to do anything with Dad, they just want to play with their friends.  This leads to every other weekend being “Honey-Do” weekends.

This weekend my list was simple enough: Clean the garage. However, that turned into $100 at Home Depot and an entire weekend of work.  My garage isn’t that cluttered or dirty, but there isn’t much room with a truck and van in there. Plus, there were a lot of things in there that didn’t belong.  The main job would be finding a place for all this stuff. 

The Shed!  Trouble is – that’s full of crap, too.  So I throw out a contractor bag full of crap and pile the rest in front of the shed.  Garage is done.  Now the shed needs to be cleaned out.  First trip to Home Depot: shelving for the shed.  Everything out into the yard, clean, everything back in.  This is when discover that the guy that owned my house before me left me a treasure trove of leftover building materials, everything from cement and grout to plywood and 2×4’s.  This is when I get my next bright idea… I’ll use some of this material to build a workbench in my garage.  Minus the wood I’ll use later, I clean out the shed and re-stock everything.  Thus ends Saturday.

Sunday starts with me heading off to Home Depot again for hinges, carriage bolts, wood screws, etc.  As I mentioned above, my garage is not very spacious, so my new workbench will have to fit accordingly.  I “designed” one that is 3×6 and will collapse… on purpose. It has removable legs on the front and hinges holding it on the wall.  When I’m not using it, I just remove the legs and fold it down.  Unbelievably, it actually worked!  It took me most of the day to build it Sunday.  Then, of course, I did a few projects on my new bench.  Re-wired an extension cord that I cut in half with my hedge trimmer and built a new screen for my back door.

Those are two of only possibly five “handy” things I’ve done in the past four years… so the workbench may end up collecting dust… or my wife may come up with many more things to repair in the future.

…my wife’s baking carrot cake.  OK, I should point out before I begin that my wife is a great chef and rarely has a cooking calamity.  This weekend, however, will live on in infamy in the Shannon household.  You see my lovely baking bride tried to burn our house down… twice!

Saturday started off as a normal enough day.  I was rescreening the windows that had been damaged in the summer’s hail storms, the girls had friends over, and my wife decided she wanted to bake a carrot cake.  Things progressed well until she put the cake in the oven to bake.  For reasons I cannot explain – the cake batter bubbled up and all over the inside of the oven, where it promptly began to burn.  Smoke everywhere.  We have a security system in our house, so when the smoke detectors started going off they started calling the house to see if we needed assistance.  We got all the windows and doors opened and got everything aired out.  Amy threw the cake away and I took everyone out to Village Inn for pie.  Crisis averted.

Sunday.  After breakfast, I noticed the kitchen still smelled a little smoky, so I peeked in the oven.  I saw that all the cake goop that had escaped was still “caked” all over the inside of the oven.  I asked Amy if cleaning the oven was in her pans for the day.  That was not met with enthusiasm; apparently it was still too soon.  Later that afternoon, once the house was again full of neighborhood kids, I walked in from outside to find my house completely filled with smoke again!  I rushed to find the source of the smoke and zeroed in on our smoking stove, which was set to “clean” mode!  As I’m trying to turn the damn thing off, one of my daughter’s friends says, “there a fire in there!”  Sure enough, there are two foot flames shooting up inside the oven!  Mass chaos ensues.  I’m trying to put out the fire, kids and pets are evacuating the building, the security company is calling every few minutes.  It took well over an hour to get all the smoke out of the house, which still smelled pretty smoky when I left this morning.

Once everything cooled down… I cleaned out the oven myself, the old fashioned way – with a wire brush and oven cleaner.  I even had to take the oven apart to get everything out from under the heating element.

Next time my wife is craving carrot cake, we’ll head to the bakery.

We’re Foodies at my house.  All four of us like watching the Food Network and eating at good restaurants.  We love trying new recipes and even cooking things together.  Up until now, this has seemed harmless enough.  Well, my wife and oldest daughter went to see “Julie & Julia” last week and it’s beginning to cost me a fortune.

The movie itself:
Movie Tickets – $18
Popcorn & Sodas – $25

Then my wife needed to have Julia Child’s book:
Mastering the Art of French Cooking – $40

The book says the most important thing is a set of excellent cutlery, so off to the store for that:
Chef knife set – $200

What’s next, Culinary School?
Culinary Arts tuition – $28,017
Pastry and Baking Arts tuition – $26,334
Culinary Management Diploma program – $12,900

So, that’ll run me around $70 grand! Trust me; I won’t need a whole table-full of chopped onions to make me cry.  In fact, my eyes are starting to sting right now.

I have the world’s only self-disciplining dog.  She is a ~4 year old Boston Terrier/Dachshund mix named Shadow and we’ve had her since about April.  We got her from a family that was giving her up because they had a baby on the way, and were afraid they wouldn’t give her the attention she needs.  They got her from the pound.  Her history before that is a little fuzzy, but we think she may have been mistreated.  She is a terrific little dog most of the time.  Lots of love and kisses for everyone, well trained, very happy little dog.

Like all pets, she misbehaves occasionally.  She has an addiction to lip gloss like crack cocaine.  If the girls leave a tube on the floor of their bedroom, she’s on it like white on rice.  She also attempts to beg from the dinner table and sniff at the garbage.  This is usually easily deterred with a stern command (much like my kids-LOL).

Yesterday, after dinner we went out for ice cream.  Normally, we would either kennel the dog, or take her with us.  For whatever reason, we forgot about her.  We came back 1/2 hour later to a mess.  She had knocked the lid off the garbage can and strewn some trash around the kitchen.  The dog was nowhere in sight.  I called her name – not angry – just making sure she wasn’t puking somewhere. No response.  My wife calls, my daughter… nothing.  So I went to look for her throughout the house, and guess where she was.

She had shut herself in her kennel as punishment.

Funny, but we sadly won’t be able to leave her alone in the house unkenneled ever again.

I have two daughters.  One is 12 (going on 16) and the other is 8.  My youngest is Gillian, who loves to come up with money making schemes.  The trouble is she doesn’t quite grasp the concept.

The first time she decided to start her own business, she set up a lemonade stand in our driveway.  Of course, she decided to do it in the early afternoon… on a weekday.  There wasn’t a soul in our neighborhood.  I think only one car even drove by in the hour she was out there.  I was out there washing my truck and luckily I had recently taken the Light Rail and had a pocket full of dollar coins.  So, I drank the whole gallon of lemonade myself and paid her a $1 for each glass.

I came home a few weeks ago and she was outside with the neighbor girls behind a card table selling “ice cold” water and snacks.  I found out they were doing pretty brisk business – selling the water for a dime and full snack bags of Nutter Butters or Ritz Bitz for a quarter.  The neighbor girls supplied the products.  Her “share” of the profits was about $1.30.  I figured that my neighbor’s had NOT given their daughters permission to sell their snacks – so I made Gillian give the money back.  I tried to explain that selling snack bags that cost 60 cents each for 25 was bad business.  Boy was she pissed!

To somewhat make amends and to teach her a lesson in economics, I took her to the grocery store to bankroll the next sale.  First, we bought some frosted cupcake cookies.  20 cookies for $3.50.  I told her these were a premium item and that she should charge a quarter a piece, thus netting a nice $1.50 profit.  We also bought a package of 3 dozen Double Stuff Oreos for $2.99.  This is the item to get people coming to the stand… and at a dime each; they’d still make a little profit.  Where they make the pure profit is on the water/lemonade at ten cents a glass.  Honestly, who can eat cookies without washing it down?  Confident I had instilled some economic knowledge into my young daughter, we went home with our purchases.

The next day I came home from work to find all the neighborhood kids congregated in my yard.  My chest puffed out with pride as I thought of the life lessons and money making savvy I had passed on to my daughter.  When she came in the house a few hours later I asked how much money she had made.  NOTHING!  She and the other girls gave everything away to their friends or pigged out on the cookies themselves!  So all they got for their labor was a stomach ache.

…and I’m out six bucks.

This was my role yesterday afternoon after work. I came home from vacation to find someone had broken one of my driveway lights and stolen another. Then I let the dog out and saw that my backyard fence had literally separated and was falling down. Nice.

The lights were only a small problem. The problem being that I had bought them as a set and had no spares. I bought a new set of four, installed them, and put the remaining two (from the old set – that worked) somewhere else in the yard.

The fence was a bit more of a dilemma. I live on a corner lot, so one side of my fence borders the road. That one is all mine. The one on the north side borders my next door neighbor, who is awesome. The back fence borders some dude who owns a bunch of rentals (that house included). He obviously doesn’t screen his renters because they always end up getting evicted after about six months and trashing the place. The neighbors and I have had to call the city on him may times between renters because he does nothing to take care of the property. So… this fence is going to be “my” problem. He won’t fix it and won’t contribute any money to the project either. The fence is probably 12 years old and although made with treated lumber, it runs north/south and gets buffeted by the gale force Colorado winds year round. What to do? I called my dad for advice.

After a brief assessment of the situation, dad had the perfect solution and I put it into action yesterday. I went Lowe’s and picked up about $15 worth of hardware. After propping the fence up with a brace, I used some new “bigger” wood screws to reattach the fence sections to the post. I knew this would only be a temporary fix though, so I bought a 4′ length of flat metal, carriage bolts, washers, nuts, etc. Dad suggested that if I braced the horizontal brace boards with metal – they wouldn’t be able to bend and break again. Worked like a charm.

The funny thing is I did all the work while the new neighbors (who just moved in over the weekend) were away from home. They’ll probably think their worthless landlord fixed it. LOL.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating… “I LOVE being a Dad.” No matter what kind of day I have at the office or what’s going on in the adult world, my kids can brighten my day with a smile, a giggle, or a hug. I am constantly amazed by how smart, funny, and beautiful they are, especially with my genes.

As I reflect on Father’s Day coming this weekend, I realize I’ve learned a lot from my kids:

• Anything that begins with, “(Child’s name) has something to tell you” is NEVER good news.
• You can yell your child’s name at the top of your lungs and they won’t hear you, but they can hear a text message on their phone anywhere in the house.
• Home Depot makes you have to pee.
• Siblings get along famously, until the phone rings and you’re on an important call. Then all hell will promptly break loose.
• If you give your children a choice between two things (i.e. where to go for dinner) they will always have opposite choices… ALWAYS!
• If your child volunteers to go with you to run errands, they always have an ulterior motive.
• For some reason, parental absence is considered permission.
• You can explain how you want a chore done in detail, and you’ll still end up redoing it yourself.
• If you plan an activity with your child, five minutes into it… one of their friends will knock on the door wanting to play.
• Kids have an uncanny way of knowing they’ll hate any food item without testing it.
• No matter how late your children are up the night before, they will be awake at the crack of dawn.
• Ketchup makes everything taste better.
• Lowes makes you have to pee.
• No matter how much money Dad & Mom pay for a vacation, kids would always rather swim in the hotel pool.
• There is some sort of magical transformation that occurs when your kid becomes a teen that turns you from funniest guy alive to biggest embarrassment.
• How bad your child “has to go” is directly proportionate to how far way the nearest restroom is.
• People that call them the “Terrible Twos” don’t let their kids live to be three.
• The volume level of your children in the morning is directly proportionate to how badly you want to sleep in.
• “Going before you leave the house” makes no difference.
• The same kids that have to be dragged out of bed at 7am to go to school, wake up on their own at 5am on the weekends.
• Kids love to share. If they’re eating potato chips, and take a swig of your soda… they’ll always leave some for you.
• There’s always room for ice cream.
• You can never have too many bouncy balls.
• If you fall down where no one sees you, wait until you have an audience before you start to cry.
• If Dad says no, ask Mom. If Mom says no, ask the grandparents.

Feel free to chime in with your own… I could go on all day. Go hug your kids and if you don’t have kids… call your folks.

My neighborhood block party was held over the weekend. As usual, no matter how long we attempt to wait, we end up being some of the first people there. As I finished setting up my cooler and lawn chairs, my neighbor asked if I wanted to play “corn-hole”. What does that word conjure up for you? While it may make you chuckle like a 12 year old (I did), it’s actually a real game with rules, regulations, and even its own association.

Cornhole is a lawn game where players take turns tossing bean bags at a raised platform with a hole in the far end. My understanding is the game originated in the Midwest where the platforms are usually made of plywood and the bags are stuffed with feed corn – thus the name.

A corn bag in the hole scores 3 points, while one on the platform scores 1 point. The way we played, bags cancel each other out. For example, if Player A has three bags on the platform and Player B has two on… Player A gets 1 point. First to 21 wins.

My 8 year old and I decided that it would be fun to build a set, so we trekked out to Home Depot and bought the plywood, 2×4s, etc. and built a set together in the garage. Then we painted it. The hardest part was finding the bean bags. You can order them online rather inexpensively, but we wanted to play right away. I found a set at Sports Authority for $25! All in all, it ended up costing me around $75 for supplies.

Now if it would just stop hailing long enough for us to be able to play. LOL.