Top 10 Favorite Songs of the 2010's

To be clear, the 2010's were not a decade in which I was super on top of popular music. It was the first decade of my life in which I was older than most of the musicians I paid to see in concert. (I haven't done a formal study, but I'm pretty sure anyway.) Although I find myself increasingly content to listen to the same old songs I know by heart, I still keep one eye out for new stuff that might interest me. And I still go to concerts once in a while. Like two a year, but that's gotta be better than some other fathers of two, right? And these aren't just 90's nostalgia shows either, though I like those too. True, I did pay to see The Verve Pipe in concert this year, though they haven't been relevant in twenty year (if they ever were). But I also saw Cage the Elephant - and loved it.

Anyway, if you're looking for a definitive Top Ten List, then check out Pitchfork or some other pretentious site. If you want to hear a 37-year-old suburban dad talk about his favorite songs of the decade - well, you've come to the right place.

10.) Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks - The National (2010)

I hate the name of this song, and I have no idea what it's about. It's beautiful and haunting, though. A perfect final track to High Violet, which is a gorgeous album. Maybe the best reason to like The National: their singer is a baritone, which means I can easily sing along to every track. Unfortunately, this was really the only album of theirs I liked.

9.) Pedestrian at Best - Courtney Barnett (2015)

When I listen to music, I tend to prioritize melody and harmony over lyrics. (Exhibit A: the song above, by The National) Courtney Barnett's lyrics are so freaking clever though: "Give me all your money, and I'll make some origami, honey. / I think you're a joke, but I don't find you very funny." How do you come up with that? Plus, I love her accent. This song is just a banger.

8.) "Beth/Rest" - Bon Iver (2011)

Even if we put the music aside, I have mixed feelings about Bon Iver. He's the absolute embodiment of white hipster culture. He and all of his fans look like they brew their own beer and brine their own pickles. And the music itself can be so pretentious. (All of 22, A Million, for example.) But at its best, his music can be so haunting. Sometimes, the thoughts and memories associated with the music can be as strong as the music itself. I associate his self-titled album with my summer in Asheville (2012), which was a pretty happy one, and this final song, with its Bruce Hornsby piano, is probably my favorite. (Note: Let the record show that my wife hates this song and groans whenever she hears the opening notes.)

7.) "This Life" - Vampire Weekend (2019)

I have a weird relationship with Vampire Weekend. I keep listening to their albums, enjoying them, and then completely disregarding the band until they put out another album. Really, I've never not enjoyed one of their albums, and yet I'd never call them one of my favorite bands. It might be time for to start taking them a little more seriously. "Father of the Bride," which came out earlier this year, is a fantastic album from beginning to end. Probably my album of the summer. It's a long album, full of solid songs, but I'll go with "This Life," by a nose. I've been cheating on cheating on you. / You've been cheating on cheating on me." Maybe the most danceable song about about (I assume) a dysfunctional relationship.

6.) "Ready to Let Go" - Cage the Elephant (2019)

I only just discovered Cage the Elephant this year. (I started listening to them when I found out they were the opener at the Beck concert, which I had tickets for.) They're a loud, old-school garage rock band. I described them as a mix between the Black Keys and Modest Mouse. Friends of mine have said the Pixies and Velvet Underground. On paper, it didn't sound like my thing. And even though I liked their album Melophobia well enough, I wasn't sure they were for me - until I saw their show. Damn if it didn't my whole perception of the band. Matt Shultz is one of the most dynamic performers I've ever seen in person. And this song, about a dissolving relationship, set against the backdrop of Pompeii, just rocks.

5.) "Helicopter" - Deerhunter (2010)

What a beautiful song. Every time I hear it, I feel like I'm standing in the middle of a fountain. If I only I liked this band more. Literally ever other song of theirs gets a big "Nope" from me. What a tease.

4.) "Proceed to Memory" - Pinback (2012)

There's a special pleasure in following an indy band that not a lot of other people follow. I've been listening to Pinback for almost twenty years. Constantly. Their low-fi music is comfort food for me. Needless to say, I was thrilled when they put out a new album in 2012, more than five years after the previous one. (Unfortunately, I've been waiting for another one to drop since then.) The first track on Information Retrieved, driving and earnest, is probably the high point.

3.) "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" - Tame Impala (2015)

Tame Impala easily wins the prize for "Best Band I Didn't Know Prior to This Decade." Pyschadelic Rock didn't sound like my thing, but once I heard InnerSpeaker, in late 2012, I latched onto it in a big way. Lonerism was even better. And Currents was even better than that. Hard to pick a favorite track, but I'll go with that hypnotic final cut, "New Person, Same Old Mistakes." And based on her cover, it seems like Beyonce agrees with me.

2.) "Blue Moon" - Beck (2014)

Sea Change is my favorite Beck album, so when Morning Phase was billed as an unofficial sister album, I was all over it. Turns out I still like Sea Change more, but Morning Phase is lovely. And worthy of that Grammy, despite Kanye's protestations. This is my favorite cut - just sweet old-fashioned folk rock from a chameleon artist who is always reinventing himself. As Kanye said, more or less, you've got to respect the artistry.

1.) "Helplessness Blues" - Fleet Foxes (2011)

Far and away my favorite artist of the decade. If I weren't abiding by a "one song per artist" rule, I could probably fill an entire list with Fleet Foxes songs. The Helplessness Blues album is a masterpiece from beginning to end. (And so is 2017's Crack Up, for that matter.) Could have gone in a bunch of directions here - "The Shrine/An Argument," "Third of May/Odaigahara," "The Plains/Bitter Dancer" - but in the end, I figured anything other than this gorgeous song would just be overthinking it.

Honorable Mentions:

"Yet Again" - Grizzly Bear

"Midnight City" - M83

"White Fire" - Angel Olsen

"Helena Beat" - Foster the People

"Falling Short" - Lapsley

"Strangers" - White Lies

"Teenage Dream" - Katy Perry (Don't @ me.)

#Natitude

This is about a month overdue. My team won the World Series! And instead of writing about it, I’ve mostly been finishing college recommendation letters, and commenting on student papers. I have a lot to say about the Nats, though, and for the past month, I’ve been replaying key moments in my head. Key moments from this past October, and from the last fifteen years or so.

I've always felt a special connection to the Washington Nationals. I moved to DC in 2006, a year after the team relocated from Montreal. I had just turned 24, and in some ways, this year felt like the beginning of my adult life. It felt like a good time to adopt a new team, particularly this team, since both of us were new in town.

Outside Marlins Stadium, with my friend Tony, for a game in 2009. Long before Nationals gear was a common sight in opposing ballparks.

To this point, I had been a Red Sox fan. My Dad is from Boston and he brainwashed me when I was young. Plenty of people change religions when they reach their twenties, once they’re out from under their parents’ roof. I did the same thing with baseball allegiance: I hung on to the Red Sox, but the Nats quickly felt like my own team - the one I had chosen instead of being born into. After all, I had never actually lived in Boston, and in the days before the internet, it had been especially difficult to follow the Sox from New Jersey and then from Ohio. Once I was in D.C., it seemed like a luxury to be able to read about my team in the local paper, or to hear them discussed on sports talk radio.

Hayden and I pose before a 2014 game at beautiful PNC Park in Pittsburgh. Nats got the win that afternoon, behind Doug Fister.

Sadly, the team was so bad in those early days that hardly anyone talked about them on the radio or anywhere else. Chad Cordero, their two-time all-star closer, who was one of the few bright spots in those early days, could have walked the length of Connecticut Avenue without being recognized. During my first five years in DC, the Nats averaged 95.6 losses per season. They were worse than bad: they were utterly irrelevant - basically just fodder for the Braves and the Phillies to feast on. Because the team was so awful, tickets were dirt cheap (especially during the first three years at RFK Stadium), and being single, I had plenty of time of my hands. So as a result, I ended up going to a ton of games – as many as fifteen per year, many of them by myself.

Hayden and I won ten tickets to a luxury box, and invited a bunch of friends to see what turned out to be a pretty crappy game against the Marlins. Still, it was a beautiful day and Maya and I wandered the Mall afterward.

The Nats' reward for a terrible 2008 season was the first overall pick in the draft, which they spent on pitcher Stephen Strasburg, a super-prospect with the reputed ability to alter the fate of a franchise. (I actually went to his introductory press conference, held on the infield at Nationals Park, because what else did I have to do?) His debut in 2010 was the easily the most important date in the history of the franchise since it made its debut in Washington half a decade earlier. After Strasburg dominated a handful of starts at Harrisburg and Syracuse, the team announced that he would make his first major league start on a Tuesday night game against Pittsburgh at Nationals Park. I immediately snatched a pair of cheap tickets.

The game turned out to be one of my most satisfying experiences at the ballpark. Strasburg gave up a home run early, but grew stronger as the game went on. He struck out 14 Pirates and earned an impressive win. The team went nowhere in 2010, but I can't overstate the importance of that game for the franchise. In many ways, the prognosticators were right: his first start was the moment where the Nats became an actual baseball franchise, instead of an off-brand imitation. (Nine years later, he would be named World Series MVP. So indeed, a major turning point in several ways.)

Two years later, in 2012, the Nationals became a truly great team. I remember watching incredulously as they rose in the standings and then stayed there. It was like watching my high school garage band take the stage with Pearl Jam. By then, I was in Baltimore, so I never got to experience D.C. in the full throes of play-off fever. Still, I wasn’t too far away – close enough, in fact, to view all Nats games on local cable – and I still followed attentively.

Having no kids yet, and thus no major expenses, I picked up tickets to Game 5 of the NLDS against the Cardinals. Of course, they had to make it to Game 5 first, which they did courtesy of Jayson Werth’s walk-off home run in Game 4, which until this year was the biggest hit in team history. I remember the sheer joy of a hit that both a) won us the game, and b) guaranteed I would attend another game the following night.

Of course, they lost. And it was heartbreaking. They were up 6-0 after three innings. They had knocked out the Cardinals’ star pitcher, Adam Wainwright. But the bullpen blew it and they lost.

I was in attendance again two years later when they lost in eighteen innings to the Giants. (Everyone would ask why Matt Williams pulled Jordan Zimmermann in the ninth. I was more upset by the team’s inability to score a run over the final fifteen innings of the game.)

Two years after that (2016), I was there for a play-off win against the Dodgers. Less than a week later, the Dodgers would eliminate them, courtesy of Clayton Kershaw.

I didn’t drop money on play-off tickets the following year (2017). A good thing, because I spared myself from watching the Nats lose another heartbreaking Game 5, this time to the Cubs.

I had spent the first half of my life rooting for a snake-bitten franchise. (People forget how painful it was to be a Red Sox fan pre-2004. Especially during the Yankee’s great run in the late 90’s.) The Nats had been in D.C. for less than fifteen years at this point – a far cry from the Red Sox’ 86 years of futility. Still, it seemed I had unwittingly joined the fan base of another cursed team.

In 2019, I felt myself starting to pull away. The team had under-performed in 2018 and the departure of Bryce Harper felt like the end of an era. Plus, fatherhood duties made it tough to get down to D.C. for games, and ultimately compelled us to get rid of cable.

On May 21^st, I went to a ballgame in Detroit with some college friends. I remember glancing up at the out-of-town scoreboard to see that the Nats game had gone final: Mets 6, Nationals 5. The season was over. Two days later, when the Mets had completed the four-game sweep, it was even more over.

Of course, we know now that it wasn’t. After what turned out to be a two-month false start, the Nats played as well as anybody. They were viewed as an underdog once they entered the play-offs. I admit I didn’t have much hope. In each previous play-off appearance, they had been the division winner. What reason did I have to hope for better in a year where they ended the regular season in second place, four games behind the Braves?

I was thrilled when they beat the Brewers in the first game: at last they had won a play-off series (or, “series,” since it was only one game). At least now, the inevitable loss to the Dodgers, owners of the NL’s best record, might feel less disappointing.

And then they beat the Dodgers – with two big home runs off Kershaw, no less. And after that, they buzzed right through the Cardinals. Dominated them, in fact. In an odd twist, I found myself at the St. Louis Airport for the first few innings of Game 3. While I have nothing against Cardinals fans, I can’t say I minded seeing them shake their heads in despair when their team fell behind big in the early going. They’ve won plenty of championships, after all.

I didn’t have $1000 to drop on a standing room only ticket to the World Series. (To be fair, prices did drop to the $700 range in the days leading up to the three games in D.C., but still.) As a consolation, I journeyed to Nationals Park for Game 4, determined to at least be present for what promised to be a huge party. The game turned out to be a bust (Astros 8, Nats 1), but I was glad I went. (I wound up watching from a far a few blocks away from the stadium.) Only twice before had I witnessed such a state of excitement in D.C.: the All-Star Game during the previous summer, and the inauguration of Obama.

Because I no longer live in D.C., and because I have more responsibilities than I did in my twenties, I wasn’t as present for the play-off run as I would have liked. For God’s sake, I fell asleep while watching a number of the games. The low point was undoubtedly Game 2 of the Dodgers series, in which I tapped out before the end of the top of the first inning. (Really though, who decides a play-off game must start at 9:30 PM?)

But no matter. When I started rooting for the Nats, I liked feeling that if the team one day got to be good, I could say I had gotten in on the ground floor. Well, now they’ve gotten good. My Nats: a team so amateurish that they once took the field in jerseys emblazoned with a misspelled version of their name. (The Natinals.) Now I get to say I knew them when.

Really?

What Would You Say?

Who was the most important band of the 90's? Go!

You probably said Nirvana, doubtless one of the best and most influential groups. But can you really say that a

decade's most important band was active for less than half of that decade? Pearl Jam's not a bad answer, but everyone but the diehards will tell you they really only produced two and a half good albums during that span. (Vitology is the half, of course.)

Smashing Pumpkins was big, but clearly occupied a slot below Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Radiohead consistently released innovative rock music, and were surprisingly popular given how odd and edgy they could be, but they always had sort of a niche following, albeit a large niche. Metallica's heyday was the late 80's. Green Day might be a contender, but they went through a period of irrelevancy in the late half of the decade before experiencing a resurgence  in the early aughts.

Here's my hot take: Dave Matthews Band.

Stay with me here. I'm not saying they were my favorite band of the 90's (although I did like both the self-titled album and Crash quite a bit). I'm not saying they were the most musically innovative band of the decade (although they were incredibly talented musicians who weren't afraid to mess around with weird time signatures and unconventional instrumentation). I'm not saying they were the most influential band of the decade either (although they spawned a ton of imitators. String Cheese, O.A.R., Dispatch, etc.). But for several reasons, they were the most important:

1 - Buzz Factor

I think I can say, purely on the basis on anecdotal evidence from when I was in high school, that DMB was the most popular band of the 90's in terms of albums and concert tickets sold. During high school, I was one of very few people I knew who had never been to a DMB concert. It wasn't that I actively avoided going. I wouldn't have minded seeing them, but their shows were always so expensive and there were always others I wanted to see just a little bit more. Fans from the New York area still recall the show they played on June 11, 2001 (the summer after I graduated high school) at Giants Stadium, when the cymbal crash at the beginning of "Two Step" coincided with a huge bolt of lightning. I am not exagerrating when I say that literally everyone in my graduating class at Chatham High School claims to have been at that show - except for me. The point is that their concerts were major social events that everyone at school talked about for weeks leading up, and then weeks following. Billy Joel and Elton John may have sold more concert tickets at around the same time, but neither one was in his musical prime, and for "buzz factor," they didn't touch DMB.

2 - Cultural Influence

For better or worse, DMB launched an entire cultural movement that they almost certainly didn't intend to. I'm not sure what to call this movement - it doeesn't have a catchy name like "hippies," or "goths," or "punks" - but it was even more ubiquitous. If you came of age during the 90s, I'm sure you remember it: preppy clothing (maybe a collared shirt, or cargo pants, or the ever-popular ringed t-shirt), "bar hat" from your college of choice, worn backwards (extra points for wrapping the adjustable band in duct tape), hemp necklace, perhaps a lacrosse stick or a hackey sack as an accessory. If you wore this uniform, you might as well have been wearing sandwich board proclaiming your love for Grateful Dead, Phish, and of course, DMB. To be clear, I'm not saying I embraced this movement. In high school, I generally steered clear of neo-hippies. (Is that what we should call them?) But like it or not, it was a major cultural stylistic trend. And DMB was at its center.

3 - Musical Significance

I have a theory that 90's rock can be divided broadly into three categories.

Category 1: Grunge and All of its Descendants (also known as Alternative). The Mount Rushmore of grunge is Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice and Chains, but the category includes all hard rock bands from later in the decade, even if no one thought of them as grunge. I'll put Weezer here, for example.

Category 2: California Punk/Ska/Funk

Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sublime are at the forefront. I didn't like any of the bands in this category (except maybe No Doubt I guess...), but a lot of people apparently did. Blink-182 and other mainstream punk and ska bands go here, even if they aren't strictly from California.

Category 3: Bonaroo Rock

These are the hippy-ish rock bands in the spirit of the Grateful Dead. These are mostly jam bands, many better known for their live concerts than their studio albums. Among fans of this group, Phish might have actually been the most popular band, but they didn't have anything close to the crossover appeal of DMB.

DMB was the pillar of one of these three big divisions of rock. And by the late 90's, that was the division that all the cool kids were listening to.

4 - Actual Quality

In high school, I was alternative all the way - and yet, I still liked DMB. I owned three CD's by bands who weren't in Category 1: "One Hot Minute" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, which I didn't like and don't actually remember purchasing, and the first three Dave Matthews albums. I don't know if I would have called myself a fan exactly, but I really liked their music. It could be big and heavily orchestrated ("Ants Marching," "Tripping Billies") or surprisingly intimate ("Pay for What You Get," "Cry Freedom"). Occasionally, it could be really strange and haunting. My favorite song by DMB is "Warehouse," which begins with spooky reverberating guitars and moaning vocals, but ends in a party, complete with steel drums, and finally fades away into this ominous sounding coda. It's such an audaciously weird song. My other favorite is "Don't Drink the Water," which just sounds so menacing for a full five minutes, while being so darn catchy at the same time.

The point: If you were strictly into alternative, there was still a decent chance you liked DMB. They made a lot of people change lanes.

And yet, you probably didn't call them to mind as the decade's most important band.

At some point, the culture surrounding DMB became bigger than the band's actual music - a phenomenom that should not be blamed on the band. And since a lot of people (like me) were turned off by the kind of people who wore the bar hats and hemp necklaces, and went to a lot of Dave Matthews shows, people dismissed them. But the thing is, the music was pretty consistently good for about a decade. I kind of stopped paying attention after Everyday (2001), but even if they had retired immediately afterward, that's five solid studio albums, more than every other 90's band I can think of.

There was a time when I thought DMB was massively overrated. Now, it seems like in an effort to overcompensate, popular opinion has swung way too far in the opposite direction.

This is a bar hat. Do kids still wear these?

I'd Bet on Your Future

I'm at a resort with my family. (The Nevele, in the Catskills. Formerly a Jewish oasis. Now defunct.) I'm probably eleven or twelve. I'm obsessed with baseball. There are no smart phones or devices, because they haven't been invented yet. All I've brought to the family week is my Gameboy with Tetris and Mario Brothers, and five books about baseball.

I guess I don't have room in my backpack, because I am carrying the stack of books inside. An old man sees me in the lobby, lagging slightly behind my parents, and he scans my pile up and down.

"Are you planning to read all of those books?" he asks me.

One of the books is the 1994 Baseball Abstract, a massive encyclopedia of statistics and trivia. (Wikipedia is not yet a thing.) So honestly, I'm not sure if I'm going to read all of the books. At least not cover to cover. But it seems easier just to say yes.

"Yes."

He shakes his head in amazement. "That's wonderful," he says, "I'd bet on your future, my young friend."

I'm not really sure what to say. I'm in middle school, which means I never know what to say. So I just thank him and we go our separate ways.

What an epic pronouncement, though: "I'd bet on your future." I still think about that old guy, sometimes, wherever he is. Probably he's no longer with us. And I wonder if he would have made anything off that bet.

Revised Impressions

As both a dad and a teacher, I often have the chance to revisit books that were important to me at other times in my life. I've found that some of my favorites still stand up well. I find that I almost never tire of reading One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish to my kids. (The words are just so fun to say.) Last year, I taught Brave New World to my A.P. Lang guys, and was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed the book more than I had when I first read it my sophomore year of high school. I understood more now than I did twenty years ago, no doubt, and Huxley's ideas seemed incredibly prescient. (Smart phones are just our version of soma, amirite?)

Not all books hold up so well, though. This week I had to revise my impressions of two books that I used to enjoy, but was surprised to now find pretty cringe-worthy.

Tikki Tikki Tembo is a book I remember having read to me in third grade. It wasn't one of my favorites really, but I liked it well enough, and I remember every kid in class chanting the entire long name (Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo... etc.) TTT is an old Chinese folk tale (or so it wants you have you think) about two brothers. The elder has a long, elaborate name to signify that he is the more valued of the two. The younger's name is Chang, which the book claims to mean "little or nothing." (It doesn't.) One of them falls in a well. He gets rescued. Then the other one falls in the same well. He gets rescued, too. That's the whole plot. But the dumb plot is very low on the list of things about this book that are objectionable.

The main problem is the racism. Really, this book is the equivalent of a black-face minstrel show. Characters wearing the most stereotypical Chinese peasant get-ups go around saying things like "Oh, most honorable mother," and "Ah, so." The story casually conflates elements of Chinese and Japanese culture, as if to say, "Whatever. Same diff." The long and ridiculous name sounds more Japanese than Chinese, but either way, it's total gibberish. The kid's name might as well be Ching-chong Bing-bong. Needless to say, the author is a white lady.

The artwork is fine: the illustrations resemble those old silk paintings of scenes from rural China. But the book in general is hopelessly out of date. It is to children's literature what Song of the South is to Disney movies. That's the one that apparently takes place in some sort of plantation utopia, in which happy slaves spend all day singing to white children. And that movie fell out of favor years ago. Although I'm sure it was written without conscious malice, it's basically the definition of cultural appropriation.

I can happily live without Tikki Tikki Tembo in my life. My reread of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a lot more upsetting. This was a book I absolutely loved. When I read it in high school - on my own, not for a class - it spoke to me. On the basis of these fond memories, I gave it the highest possible rating on Goodreads. Last spring, I selected it as a summer reading book for a group of students. I assumed they would enjoy it as much as I did.

And I hope they did enjoy it. (I guess I'll find out on Thursday.) Sadly, it just didn't hold up for me.

To be fair, there are parts I still enjoy. The constant machine imagery still resonates, even if it's a little overwrought. Some of the minor characters (Harding, Billy Bibbit) are well drawn. And of course, McMurphy is an excellent character, deeply flawed, but deeply charismatic. His dialogue feels inspired, and his interactions with Nurse Ratched are some of the novel's highlights. The novel does gloss over his sexual misconduct, though. Dude is a statutory rapist, but the narration seems to endorse his sketchy defense that "she wanted it." I'm not arguing that he needs to be a moral paragon. In fact, I think the book would suffer if he were. But we are encouraged to think of McMurphy is an unambiguous hero, and Ratched as an insufferable villain. And indeed she is awful. But she also didn't rape anyone.

The book's casual, "boys will be boys" attitude towards rape points to its biggest problem: clear and unabashed misogyny. Every woman in this novel is either a frigid "ball-cutter" like Ratched, or a whore like Harding's wife, as well as the literal whores on the fishing trip near the end. Women seem to exist for the purpose of tormenting men, and the only way for them to reclaim their masculinity is to put them in their place. Often through sexual domination. McMurphy's victory over Ratched is marked by his symbolically raping her. (He rips her shirt open to reveal the huge breasts, which all of the patients have obsessed over for the duration of the novel.) And this is a moment we are encouraged to cheer for.

All of these elements are somewhat muted in the movie, by the way, which is one of the reasons I think the movie holds up better. For one thing, they took out the symbolic rape, which is certainly a good thing (although I think the stage version retains it).

Anyway, I'm not ready to throw this novel out entirely. I still like McMurphy in spite of myself. But it does make me uncomfortable. In the past I've entertained the idea of teaching it, but that's a hard no now - especially at a boys' school. There still might be a place for this book in the canon, but teachers shouldn't ignore its more abhorrent elements. I'll put it on the same shelf as The Taming of the Shrew, which obviously has its literary merits, but also has some social underpinnings we just as soon ignore.

My thoughts about the novel aside, nothing will ever take away from one of my favorite Simpsons' jokes. (From one of the later season, no less.)

Most Valuable Third Baseman

I started playing tee ball in the Maplewood rec league when I was six years old. My team was the Maplewood Tree Experts and our jerseys were bright red.

I can't remember whether or not we wore helmets. I can't imagine why we would have, but that doesn't necessarily mean we didn't.

Tee ball was essentially the same as baseball, but with a much softer, plastic ball, an abundance of players on defense (as many as had shown up for the game), and the presence of a tee, a plastic stand for the ball, instead of a pitcher. I had never seen a baseball or a tee ball game, and I don’t believe I knew the rules of either one yet. (I think I was, for some reason, under the impression that the defense had two shortstops on the diamond.) I knew I wanted to play third base though, despite not knowing what a third baseman actually did, because the Red Sox’ best player at the time was their third baseman Wade Boggs. At least that's what my dad told had told me. Having no way to verify this at the time, I took his word for it. When I told grown-ups that I was a third baseman, they told me I must have a good arm and sharp reflexes. A third baseman needed to have both. But in tee ball, such skills certainly weren't necessary, and probably weren't expected. As far as I remember, my main responsibilities included standing near a rubber base marker for an hour or so, and occasionally touching the ball.

For my ability to remain standing in one spot for the duration of the season, I was awarded a certificate at the end of the season bearing the words: Most Valuable Third Baseman. This despite not successfully helping my team to record a single out. My tee ball career coincided with the heyday of the much-maligned participation trophy. Even then, I felt my award was a little contrived, but it was my first athletic award I had ever received, and I certainly wasn't going to complain about it.

Otherwise, I don’t remember much of the actual games themselves, except for two specific memories. In the first of these, my team was batting and I had made it to third base, which was not a particularly notable achievement in itself, since the defense almost never recorded outs in these games. The ball was tapped softly back to the pitcher (whose job wasn’t actually to pitch but merely to cover his position), and with no consideration for the situation, how many outs there were, who was on base, etc., I blindly broke for home. The pitcher’s understanding of the rules was thankfully as limited as my own: he fielded the ball cleanly and ran to tag me out before I could touch the plate. He beat me there, but he tagged me with his left hand, and the ball was in his right. I was called safe, though I didn’t understand why until my dad explained it to me after the game.

In my other memory, I was playing my usual third base position, (although why the third baseman was apparently supposed to stand a few feet to the left of the bag instead right on top of it was beyond me). A ball was hit a few feet to my left and came to rest on the grass just past the infield dirt, a few feet away from where I had been standing. I nearly stepped over to pick up the ball, but then the gears inside my six-year-old brain started turning. Wasn’t someone else supposed to relay the ball to me from the outfield? If I went to retrieve it myself, wouldn’t third base be vacant? And wasn’t it my duty to guard the base at all costs? In the end, I did nothing but look at the ball, paralyzed, while two opposing runners scored. It was a decision that I'm sure baffled my coaches, my parents watching from the bleachers, and any of my teammates who happened to be paying attention.

This was my initiation into the world of sports, a place governed by a byzantine set of rules that demanded to be mastered. I was already learning that the price for ignorance of the rules, or for failure to adhere to them, was a palpable sense of confusion or even shame. I’m sure this wasn’t actually true – in fact, my memory of the pitcher failing to tag me out at home basically proves that there were other kids as ignorant as I was  – but to my mind, I was the only person in the world who didn’t understand the rules of the game I was playing. And more than any specific moment from any tee ball game, I remember the feeling that I was being left out of a group that I desperately wanted to join. I would recall this feeling years later during a trip to Costa Rica, as I tried to communicate using my high school Spanish.

My parents had to remind me of a third memory from my tee ball career. Apparently, I would race over to them after each game and ask, breathlessly, “Did we win?” There was no scoreboard in kickball, and the numerous runs scored in each game meant that I soon lost track of who was winning and who was losing. The advantage was that the confusion over scoring made it easier for my parents to lie to me. “It was a tie,” they would tell me every time. This answer was enough for me, and a postgame stop at Baskin Robbins would quickly divert my attention to other matters. But after one game, in which the Tree Experts had been thoroughly outscored by the opposition, my parents figured they couldn't get away with lying once again. “You lost,” they told me, after I asked my usual question, “The other team was just better this time.” I immediately burst into tears – and I didn’t stop crying until a mint chocolate chip cone was in my hand.

Baltimore Coffee

I've vowed to use my summer break to some serious writing. (Haven't made a ton of progress yet, but hey, it's still June.) It's a task that will require lots of coffee.

I've found I'm pretty much the opposite of a creature of habit: if I try to work in the same location every day, I burn out quickly. I'll bounce between home and my office at school (where the maintenance staff looks at me quizzically, because I'm sometimes the only teacher on the grounds), but I tend to focus best at coffee houses, in part because it's harder to take a siesta in the middle of my work.

So my other plan for the summer is to check out a different Baltimore-area coffee spot every day. I feel strongly about the elements that make a good coffee spot. Coffee itself is one of several considerations. Location, atmosphere, food, and service are all factors. For a limited time, my blog (which generally has no theme, other than the disparate topics that appeal to me) will become a quasi-coffee review blog. I'll write quick blurbs about each spot I visit, and rate them in five categories, each worth five points. I should also stipulate that I'm doing this on my own dime, which means that I won't be exhaustively sampling menus. I'll order coffee and maybe a baked good or a sandwich, I'll sit for a half hour or maybe more, I'll soak in the atmosphere, and that will be that.

The writing didn't get off to the greatest start last week, but the coffee-hunting wasn't bad. Here were the stops I made:

ROGGENART
5722-5724 Falls Rd
Baltimore, MD 21209

Location - It's a convenient spot for me, because it's close to work, but man, the location does this place no favors. Falls Road can get super busy, and there's only parallel parking available, which can be kind of a pain. Also, it's a pretty easy spot to miss. (Accidentally drove by it yesterday.) 3/5

Atmosphere - Gives off a pleasant European vibe, although I'm sure part of that is the presence of a European family (Dutch, maybe?) on the day I visited. The owner is a Serbian who grew up in Austria, I'm told, so I'm sure that's part of it, too. Main floor is pleasant enough, with big windows overlooking Falls. Upstairs (which I almost missed because it's well hidden) was marginally more crowded, with some hipsters writing in spiral notebooks, and reading Kant or something. 5/5

Coffee - A smooth, pleasant cup. 5/5

Food - Roggenart is a bakery with an impressive range of flavored croissants. I just had a plain. Other snacks looked good too, although they looked kind of small in relation to their price. 4/5

Service - Perfectly adequate. Ordering is easy and quick. 5/5

22/25

DOVECOTE CAFE
2501 Madison Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21217

Location - On a lovely residential block near Druid Hill Park. Didn't hurt that I went there on a perfect, 74-degree day. It's the only business on the block. Parking is easy, though I feel that most customers are locals who walked there. 5/5

Atmosphere - Feels like all the folks in the neighborhood gather at this one neighbor's house every morning. Decor inside is funky and mismatched. There are a bunch of Adirondack chairs and tables outside. Funk music soundtrack. (Maybe a touch too loud, or I'm just old.) Interesting, diverse crowd. Maybe 60-40 black-white? 5/5

Coffee - Yum. 5/5

Food - I didn't try anything, but there are a bunch of baked goods underneath glass covers in front. (On my visit, an employee knocked over a platter with a bunch of muffins. So that was messy.) I also noticed they have a pretty large menu, including a "crabby patty." Based on not much, the food gets a 4/5.

Service - Quick and efficient. The staff gets extra points for just looking cool. I think some of them are artists, or at least artsy types. Lots of local art on the walls, much of it African of Black-themed. 5/5

24/25

CUPs
1301 North Broadway
Baltimore, MD 21213

It's really hard to rate this place without some context. Aside from serving coffee, its mission is "creating opportunities for local youth and to building community," which is obviously commendable and almost makes me feel bad about offering criticism. But...

Location - Ok, this isn't an great area, which I know is sort of the point. Still... it's one storefront on a block that is otherwise a ghost town. I love that they're trying, but I'm not sure they can single-handedly make this a desirable location. On the plus side, parking is easy. 2/5

Atmosphere - As far as interior design is concerned, these guys have done a really impressive job. The place is pleasant and homey, and I love the Baltimore mural/sculpture thing on the wall. But both times I've been there, it's been empty. Empty of patrons, and very overstaffed. (I counted seven employees ready to bring me a cup of coffee and a wrap.) Again, God love the staff for putting this place together (the woman who founded the place seems particularly amazing). But the atmosphere reminded me of sitting in a mostly-empty school cafeteria (albeit a nicely decorated one). A bunch of kids were joking around with each other and I just sort of felt out of place. 3/5

Coffee - They serve Zeke's. 5/5

Food - I had a decent curry chicken wrap. Generic, but no complaints. 4/5

Service - Again, hard to judge. The girl behind the counter was charming and clueless. ("Don't forget to ask him XYZ..." her manager had to prompt her at least three times during our 60-second interaction.) The kids are learning. It seems mean to dock them points. But... 3/5

17/25

BALTIMORE COFFEE & TEA
9 West Aylesbury Rd.
Lutherville-Timonium, MD 21093

Location - This place has a bunch of locations, but Timonium is the flagship as well as the location of their coffee roasting plant. BC&T has a lot going for it, but the location does it no favors. It's in a weird, industrial part of Timonium, between York Rd. and light rail tracks. I drove around looking for it for a while, because I assumed I was in the wrong place. The actual store is ugly from the outside; it looks like a warehouse. It's part store-part factory, so I guess the look makes sense. Still, if you happened to walk by (which you almost certainly wouldn't anyway, because who would stroll around here?) it would never occur to you that there's a pleasant cafe inside. 2/5

Atmosphere - There is a pleasant cafe inside, though. On a random Monday afternoon, it was full of happy coffee-drinkers, most of them on the older side. The space doesn't have anything particularly interesting or idiosyncratic to offer, but it's clean and well put together, and as you might expect, it smells fantastic. 4/5

Coffee - Ultimately, the variety of coffee (and tea, if you like that sort of thing) is what sets this place apart from almost any other. There are a million varieties, include weird ones like "s'mores," and "cinnamon sticky bun." I bought a pound of beans, and I'm sure I'll do it again. This is cheating, but: 6/5

Food - I didn't try it, but for a place where food clearly isn't the focus, it has a pretty full menu. Based on nothing in particular: 3/5

Service - A small army of young baristas in BC&T shirts was very capable and attentive. 5/5

20/25 (I doubt I'll be stopping by with papers to grade, but chances are I'll be back when my pound of coffee runs out.)

** Note: This week, I also had a cup of coffee at Grand Grounds, inside Johns Hopkins Hospital. It should by no means be considered a proper coffee house. The place is half Hopkins souvenir shop, and you'd never go there unless you had reason to visit the hospital. Just wanted to let the record show that I went there. And incidentally, the coffee is pretty good. **