10. Goodbye to Borders Books

Once upon a time I lived in Ann Arbor and shopped at this cool bookstore run by a couple of local guys, Tom and Louis Borders. It had one floor, no café, and a section of untranslated literature.  Even when the brothers sold out and the company expanded and moved across the street to a former department store location, it remained a haven for book lovers for a long time. Then sometime in the last decade or so, with the arrival of Legos, candy bars, and a hundred other things that were not books, Borders definitively lost track of its mission, after which it was just a matter of time. While I will miss my annual three hour power browse on my birthday, I have come to be philosophical about something I’d seen coming for a long time. So while I will miss Borders, I can live with the loss because I know just how lucky I was to be a part of its commercial life for over three decades. 

9.  Treat Receipt

Most mornings this summer I walked downtown with one of my three boys and grabbed a coffee at our local Starbucks. With every purchase I received a light blue “treat receipt” that granted me a huge discount on any iced drink after two that afternoon. And so it was that many a day found me picking up a grande iced mocha with an extra shot for the pittance of two bucks plus tax. This was cool because I loves me caffeine, and getting a great price made it all the better. 

8.  Pinocchio – Winshluss

Not the Pinocchio you grew up on, and not even an eye-openingly literal version of the Carlo Collodi classic, this very free adaptation by a French cartoonist/animator is definitely not for kids. Yet whatever its relationship to the original source material, its dark images and wicked sense of humor made it my comic of the summer. This was cool because, really, what could be cooler than a wordless French adaptation of an Italian folktale?

[Runners-up: Stigmata – Lorenzo Mattotti; Wally Gropius – Tim Hensley]

 

7.  YouTube Favorites

I know, I know, I need to spend less time going ticka ticka ticka on the iPhone and more time relating to my wife and kids. I get it, really. But ... have ya seen “Can’t Hug Every Cat” by the Gregory Brothers?  Or the best NASCAR prayer ever? Or Louis CK’s rant Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy or Drama Prairie Dog or the infernal masterpiece Nyah Cat or ... you get the idea. This was cool because I love to waste my life apparently, at least to judge from the hilariously sour-mouthed comments by a bunch of tired, old baby boomers on a recent New York Times piece on Internet memes by ace tech writer David Pogue.  

6.  The Information – James Gleick

I’m not going to lie to you: no way was I going to read every word of this monumental tome on the history of “information becoming aware of itself.” But the several hundred pages I did peruse accomplished a couple of things: 1) gave me the feeling I’d read something substantial over the summer, and 2) convinced me that we truly are living in one of the great bends in the road of history.  This was cool because it’s valuable to think deeply every once in a while, if only to see if it’s still possible after all those viewings of Nyah Cat.

5. Freaks and Geeks

In search of material for the new 21st Century Media Literature course here at FHS, I finally tried this bit of classic television this summer. The work of Paul (Bridesmaids) Feig and Judd (Knocked Up) Apatow bowled over the whole Hanley family as we got to know a group of typical-but-not-so-much teens from the early 80’s. This was cool because I rarely watch TV, and it helped to fill the void caused by the prolonged absence of my favorite show, Mad Men.

4.  Band Camp x 2

Every fall when teachers come back from vacation, they address each other with the same question: “How was your summer?” My answer this year, “Different,” was largely a result of two prolonged absences during August.  My oldest son, Walter, spent a good bit of August at Plymouth High School, playing the alto sax and taking a spot in one of the best marching bands in the nation; meanwhile, my middle boy, Jack, occupied the middle of the month with a stay at Blue Lake Music Camp where he played cello and worked at the radio station.  While I missed both of them terribly, this was cool because it was a sign that they’re both growing up to be really fine young men, and no father wants more out of life than that. 

3.  Manic Charlie

“We should ... “ Countless times over the summer my youngest son, Charlie, began a sentence with these words. The Many Plans of Charlie are one of the things I’ll remember best from this summer, even if I don’t remember even one of the plans themselves. Whether on our morning walks downtown or while playing with Legos in the afternoon or lying in bed falling asleep at night, Charlie had a million ideas, practical and otherwise, for how to make or lives more interesting. Little did he know that just voicing them made our lives as interesting, not to mention cool, as they could ever need to be.        

2.  Family Camping at Interlochen State Park

Most every summer for more than a half century, I have made the pilgrimage to Interlochen State Park for a week or two of camping. This year was particularly sweet as our trip last year had been abbreviated and without the Beloved Spousal Unit, Julie. We don’t do much on these trips: set up a couple of tents (man cave for the boys, Mom & Dad’s pad), maybe head out to Lake Michigan at Elk Rapids, up to Traverse City for breakfast at The Omelette Shoppe, but mostly just hang out in camp or head down to the beach to catch some rays. But these days are probably the best chance I have all year to remind me of how cool it is to be a family man.

[Runner-up: Maker Faire – The Henry Ford]

1.  Summer Luvin’

Sometime in mid-June the BW (Beautiful Wife) Julie decided this would be the season of Summer Luvin’, in which she and I would hang out, just the two of us, and rediscover our couplehood. While we are a model pair, a virtual Ward and June Cleaver, parents are not all we are, so it was a treat to have more “us” time now that our boys can be left alone without fear that they will tear each other limb from limb, burn down the house, or otherwise scandalize the neighborhood with their antics. Among all the many cool things this summer, the one that stands out best to me was our impromptu picnic at the beach – a couple of sweethearts sneaking off for a quick bite beside the lake. It can be work to keep in touch with your best friend, but I never feel that way with Julie, and least of all at those very cool moments when we get to play.