Even if nobody asked……
1. I have given a fair number of speeches in my life and even once delivered a commencement address. Let me tell you something: when you know you’ve got the goods, you become a jittery little kid on Christmas Eve. You rehearse in the shower, in the car, while ordering breakfast. So I cannot even fathom what life was like for Eric Church between writing and delivering that UNC-Chapel Hill commencement address. The thing was part sermon, part concert, part poetry revival. The man probably didn’t sleep for a week and honestly, neither should his audience now that they’ve seen it.
2. My daughter moves from Chicago to Dallas this weekend. Before a 1,000-mile drive, I did what responsible fathers do: suggested she pay a mechanic to inspect her car like it was preparing for Le Mans. Then right before she leaves, she sends me a picture of the U-Haul. The car isn’t driving to Dallas. It’s being TOWED behind the truck like decorative luggage. Apparently she spent $1,500 to make sure four tires would successfully avoid touching pavement. Dad didn't ask the right questions.
3. The secret to great travel is this: head toward an interest instead of a destination. Paris without curiosity is just expensive coffee and croissants. Scotland without history is just wet. Vegas without gambling is essentially Phoenix with emotional problems.
4. Over the last twenty years I’ve had fewer sunburns by reducing carbs and wearing sunglasses less often outside. That’s right. While America’s finest institutions were spending billions sequencing genomes and inventing gender-neutral park benches, I was out here conducting unauthorized dermatological research beside my Weber.
5. Is there any worse commercial actor alive right now than Red Sox second baseman Marcelo Mayer in those CarShield ads? Watching him read lines is like watching a hostage video filmed by interns. If you told me a rival windshield company hired him as a sabotage operation, I’d believe you.
6. As you might expect, I’m an Axl Rose fan 😎, so Tyler Braden’s “God & Guns N’ Roses” immediately shot to the top of my playlist. Big hair rejoices.
7. Help people remember your name by giving them a clue. Mine is: “I’m Dean, like the dean of a college, but with much lower SAT scores.” Works every time. Human beings are starving for mental shorthand so give them one to remember you by.
8. Liberals desperately want to be perceived as smart. Conservatives desperately want to be perceived as right. Social media then locks both groups into a digital steel cage match sponsored by pharmaceutical companies and anxiety medication. Satan didn’t create the internet, but if he had, it probably would look a lot like X right now.
9. Two groups of people walk through life under the banner of FEAR. One says it means “Frig Everything And Run.” The other says “False Evidence Appearing Real.” Personally, I think most Americans now define fear as “reading the comments section.”
10. Best moment of the week: I took my grandsons to Walmart with my wife Trish. She checks out. I go get the car. The exit-door guardian stops her because she accidentally paid for only one of the two basketballs in the cart. This occurred twenty minutes after somebody lightly rear-ended us on the drive over. We get home and their mother asks how the trip went. “We got in a car crash and Mimi almost got arrested.” That’s childhood, tiny humans converting minor inconveniences into crime documentaries.
This was a long one! 584 words. Congratulate yourself, you just read a book. Comments are encouraged but not required.