• There were several football games, the loss of one I acknowledged with the video of my, ahem, old friend Brutus. The final home game, though, was the really odd one — Penn State with no Paterno was easily the weirdest game of the weirdest season I’ve ever experienced.
• And then Ohio State hired a new coach. I’m happy that Urban is already making Michigan fans twitchy, but I’m not totally sold yet.
• We had a lovely Thanksgiving, thank you. Dinner was with Mrs. Crappy’s family in Washington; we then traveled to Columbus to prepare for the Beat Michigan weekend, the results of which you already know. But my favorite part might have been my Thanksgiving night snack of White Castles and Mad Elf at my parents’ kitchen table.
• And if that wasn’t the best part, it would have been listening to my niece on the phone that evening telling me that her hair had been crumpled.
• I hadn’t made the family spaghetti in years; in the last month, I’ve made it twice, once for the annual Beat Michigan dinner in Columbus and once for friends just a couple days ago. The good news: I still remember how.
• Football travel is over. I love going to Columbus for games but the endless driving back and forth gets really old by the end of the season.
• I saw Yonder Mountain String Band at the beginning of November because I was twitchy for a show; we saw the String Cheese Incident last night because that’s what Mrs. Crappy wanted to do for her birthday. Good stuff, too, although SCI can be a little too noodle-y, even for me.
• I got to miracle Boo and Butter for last night’s show, thanks to Pam, who won tickets through WYEP but couldn’t go. Teresa gets bonus points for the assist.
• Remember the nice English lady who helped me through Couch to 5K? We broke up. It wasn’t her; it was me. I finished C25K last weekend, just in time to be ready for my first 5K on Saturday morning. I’ll tell you more about that later today.
• HOW COME IT’S NOT SNOWING YET?
• I totally changed our outdoor Christmas lights, and they’re still not quite right.
• I’m still not really feeling Christmas yet. But that’ll come.
• And I apparently need to add a picture to the banner; if I don’t you can’t really see the snow that WordPress gives us every December.

So. How’ve you guys been?

Thanks to Yonder Mountain String Band and Stage AE, I get to fix that in a few hours.

My relationship with MTV was always a little different.

Once I got past the initial thrill of just seeing the network, which turns 30 today, I was a little dismissive of MTV. There was some remarkable stuff there, sure, but between the endless stream of Top 40 stuff that I never found all that interesting and the fact that MTV largely ignored the music I was interested in — with the exception of 1987, otherwise known as the Summer of Touch — I generally didn’t find much there for me.

As I think about it now — more than a decade after MTV traded in music for crappy reality programming — I wish I had paid a little more attention. There was more good stuff there than I gave it credit for, and some of my favorite musical moments — and some sort of non-musical ones– were a direct result of watching.

I got to watch portions of the revived Woodstock festival — the fun one, not the ugly one a few years later — and seeing the Nine Inch Nails set — remember the mud flinging? — was one of the most amazing things I’ve seen on television anywhere; also, seeing the Allman Brothers set on that Sunday mornings was priceless.

But this is about video, right? I liked Nirvana, but I didn’t love them until I saw this:

The chilling Leadbelly song was the perfect way to wrap up their Unplugged set.

The 1993 VMAs did two things for me: I got the perfect version of “Rockin’ in the Free World” with Pearl Jam backing Neil Young, but that was preceded by something even better:

Stunning.

I can’t find the clip of my favorite REM appearance on MTV, even though I know it used to be available on YouTube. The band did a live set on the network not long after Bill Berry left the band. Before the launched into “Radio Free Europe,” Stipe urged the audience to shout FUCK throughout the song in hopes that MTV couldn’t use it on air. And then the band roared through a sloppy, garage-y and joyful version of the song. This is similar , especially in that Stipe can’t remember the words, but I have to find that clip again someday:

And yeah, the Summer of Touch:

I still love it. Happy birthday, MTV — turns out you weren’t so bad after all.

And, as I told you before, we ate pretty well.

In fact, our breakfast on Monday makes this whole post worthwhile. We spent Sunday night in Mason, which I had previously known as the town closest to Kings Island, the giant amusement park where I spent many teenaged days being amused. The town itself is a little odd; it’s the home of Procter and Gamble, and the tax revenue provided by the company has to be off the charts. City-maintained landscaping dotted every corner of every boulevard, and the strip malls — including the one where we were headed — were nicely tucked out of view.

Still, it wasn’t hard to find the Mason location of Blue Ash Chili, a 40-year-old local chain of chili parlors which specialize in Cincinnati’s local delicacy. Forgive me if I’ve explained this to you in person, but Cincinnati chili is different. The spices are Mediterranean and not Mexican; yes, that’s cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and maybe even a little cocoa powder. The beef is finely chopped, so the chili has an almost-smooth consistency.

And it’s served over spaghetti. This is not negotiable.

The base is the three-way, which is usually chili, spaghetti and a mound of finely grated cheddar. Four-way? Add kidney beans. Five-way? Add onions. Oyster crackers aren’t a “way” in and of themselves, but they are practically required as well. Add some shakes of hot sauce, and you’re ready to go.

Mrs. Crappy thought it was a little too early in the morning for something that didn’t resemble breakfast; besides, she had had her heart set on a chili omelette since before we left for the trip.

Yeah, I know I posted this pic already. It was good enough to be worth it.

I have no such hang-ups, so 10:30 a.m. seemed like the perfect time for a five way and a side of fries. Mrs. Crappy’s breakfast looked delicious, but I made the right choice.

Here’s the funny thing. When I first looked at the menu online, I couldn’t help but notice that there were Food Network logos everywhere. This was thanks to a visit by Guy Fieri and his Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives show. I’ve always found Guy to be a little cheesy, but I’ve never had a huge problem with his show (unlike some friends of mine, who seem to react violently to the very mention of his name).

However.

Remember a few paragraphs ago when I said spaghetti was one of the things that makes Cincinnati chili Cincinnati chili? Seeing this on the menu made me snicker:

So let’s recap: Three-way. Four-way. Five-way.

And Guy’s Way? The Wrong-way.

And that’s when the day got weird.

Mrs. Crappy found a place in Fairlawn called the Sweet Pea Cafe that had a fabulous-looking breakfast menu and sparkling reviews on Urbanspoon and Yelp. I had taken a cursory glance at the menu the week before and hadn’t noticed the corn-and-bacon pancakes — please allow me to repeat that: CORN-AND-BACON-PANCAKES — and I was stoked when we placed our order. The wait certainly would be worth the payoff, right?

Waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

Um.

Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question. We arrived in time to spend about 45 minutes on breakfast before we headed southwest towards Cincy, and while I didn’t expect breakfast to hit our table Pamela’s fast, I also didn’t think waiting for our meal would eat up that entire 45 minutes. When we finally gave in, we were met with a shrug from the owner, who made us wait to ask him about the wait for our order.

No food. Indifferent owner. Sweet Pea Cafe outside of Akron? Avoid.

And while we gamely made do with our day-old Giant Eagle subs for breakfast, we got lost in Akron. We found the nastiest rest rooms we’ve seen for years in a gas station-Subway combo south of Columbus. We had to switch hotel rooms in Mason — our Cincy-area stop — because the bathroom in our first room hadn’t been cleaned. We encountered horrid traffic outside of Riverbend. We even had to move once we got parked because the kids who were directing traffic weren’t bothering to direct traffic.

But once we finally kicked back in the lot with a beer or two, the crap of the day started to melt away. It wasn’t as hot in Cincinnati has it had been at Blossom. We met an excellent dude from Louisville who works as a brewer for New Albanian in southern Indiana, who was happy to give us a taste of his excellent APA before we went inside.

And then there was the show.

I loved the set list from the start, but I have to admit that I was still feeling a little clenched from everything else that happened that day — so the band sort of snuck up on me a bit. I hadn’t heard a Punch You In The Eye before; I hadn’t seen a Twist in a couple years. But when Mound started up, I finally started paying attention. A smooth Jibboo, a Fee that Mrs. Crappy almost missed and Backwards — still my favorite song from Joy and one that’s turning into a monster live — wrapped up the first set, with a cool breeze and a stunning sunset to top it off.

The second set started with an indication that the band wasn’t fucking around: Carini. Bam. My first Tweezer, a Crosseyed that rivaled the one we saw at Star Lake in 2003, a Boogie On that might not have been in the ideal place in the set — I was awfully happy to hear it nonetheless — and the capper: a raging Julius into a perfect YEM. Encore? Loving Cup and a thunderous Tweezer Reprise.

Maybe with the exception of Steam, this show had a different feel than the one the night before — a little darker, a little more intense. Blossom was an explosion of energy; Riverbend was about plumbing the depths. Different shows, yes, but the band was near its best both nights.

We didn’t make the same mistake at Riverbend that we had at Blossom — this time, we found food in the lot before we left. Mrs. Crappy found a guy selling the ubiquitous veggie burritos: still warm, beans, zucchini, carrots, peppers, rice and cheese. It couldn’t possibly be more cliché; it also couldn’t have been any better at that moment.

We had a 30-minute drive from Riverbend back to the hotel, and we kept passing exits along Cincinnati’s outerbelt that teased with gleaming White Castle signs. I drove past them all, full, tired and happy.

We left with plenty of time on Saturday to make a stop at Vintage Estates to supplement the cases of Oberon and Route 113 that would get us through the weekend. Our hotel was just a 15-minute, back-road drive away from Blossom, which is still my favorite music venue anywhere. We scored a couple of nice lot shirts for each other (see mine, above; thanks, Mrs Crappy) and marched the 18 miles from the front lots inside in time to get water and beer for the first set.

One of the best things about the weekend was hanging out with Hilary, a friend from home I've known since we were in grade school, in both Cleveland and Cincinnati.

The start of the show was solid, if maybe a little unfocused. I loved the song selection — A Kill Devil Falls to match my new shirt, hearing Fuck Your Face was a treat (no, really), the Little Feat cover gave me — and all 19,000 of my closest friends — a good boost and I’ll never not be excited to hear an Antelope.

But we turned the corner at the start of the second set. Birds is kind of rare these days, and I hadn’t seen them play it before. We all roared through Possum and then, what? Seven Below? Nope, a new song (second time played?) called Steam, a dark, slow shuffle enveloped eight minutes of night before exploding into Piper, always a favorite of mine (even after its transition from a jamming song prior to the last hiatus to a rolling, tumbling energy kick these days).

Sally came up next; a great choice, but what caught my ear happened after the song dissolved, first into a song-based jam with Page riffing on harmonies and then into something a little more sinister: a 2004-style instrumental, shorter than but similar to the one that ended Scents and Subtle Sounds at Camden that year. This one was about six minutes but it felt the same, a chilling, downward spiral, creepy and exhilarating at the same time.

And just as the jam reached its full depth, Fish pops the intro for Hood (random guy, in my ear just then: “We can feel good about this.”), and we’re off, thanks to Mister Minor. But just a little bit into the final instrumental section of the song, there’s a sudden left turn, into Have Mercy — not the ZZ Top one, kids, but the Mighty Diamonds reggae song that Phish has occasionally covered since they got started. After that short respite, we veer back into Hood, which builds to the kind of climax you’d expect at the end of the second set.

Except that we started into Character Zero instead. They hit the first chorus, and Blossom is launched. Bedlam. We had worked our way up to the rail by that point, and got pelted with glowsticks in return, both during CZ and the encore, a luscious version of Slave.

We are happy, exhausted … and hungry. And that’s when we remembered that there’s a Donatos Pizza on the way back to the hotel. We had to wait only 15 minutes for the pizza, and we didn’t even bother taking it back into our room — we ate the whole thing while still sitting in Mrs. Crappy’s car in the parking lot. Sleep came pretty easily, and we had plenty of time for it before what promised to be a killer breakfast in the morning before set headed south to Cincinnati.

I say this thinking specifically of music and what my brain chooses to hear when I come across a snippet of a song. My ears lock in on the melody, often to the detriment of whatever might be happening with the song’s lyrics. Mrs. Crappy is the opposite. After two or three plays, she’ll know the lyrics all the way through — but she might not be able to hum a bar of the melody.

The best example I can offer is Wilco’s Via Chicago. I hear a soaring country song, interspersed with sharp dissonant interludes, something that never fails to thrill. Mrs. Crappy hears the lyrics — “I dreamed about killing you again last night/and it felt all right to me” — and, at least the first time she heard the song, was sort of horrified.

This quirk of my synapses nearly drove me nuts earlier this week. While watching Dancing With the Stars — strictly for work, I swear — I noticed a newish Target commercial. There’s a kid, trying to drag one of those giant plastic balls out of one of those giant bins; he knocks several balls out on the floor of the store … and then Target erupts into a swirl of summertime activity: grilling, setting up tents, sliding on Slip ‘n Slides and other general merriment involving products you can purchase at a Target store near you.

And of course, I am paying attention to the music. It’s a Sixties song, with a pretty distinctive fuzzy electric guitar riff. I know the song. But something in my brain locks up, and before I can hear even just a snippet of the words — which is more than enough to find a song title these days — the commercial is over.

Crap. I know the song. And for the life of me, I can’t recall what it is.

I took to Twitter; Gina saw the commercial too, but with her family and 18 dogs and cats running around, she didn’t hear the music. The spot is apparently new enough that it hasn’t yet shown up on any of the sites I usually hit to find out the name of that song in that damn commercial I just saw.

If my brain were wired differently — if I heard the words first — I would have been able to look up the song title before the commercial break was done. And while most of the time this arrangement between my brain and me works out pretty well, this time my brain definitely left me hanging.

As soon as Dancing was over — Did I mention that I was watching strictly for work? I did? Allow me to stress that once again — I marched upstairs and fired up iTunes, thinking that Apple’s Essentials mixes would lead me to the promised land.

After an hour of searching, I came up empty. And I would have searched longer, but Mrs. Crappy arrived home from the school board meeting she had to cover and she needed the iMac to write up her story and email it to her newsroom.

I went to bed, defeated.

I was saved the next morning, though. I woke to find a tweet from @LeeDrever, a dude from Vancouver, who had the song title and the artist all ready for me. I don’t follow Lee and he doesn’t follow me; I have no idea how he came across my tweets about the Target commercial, but if I ever meet him, my brain and I are going to buy him a beer.

The song?

How’s that for a bit of obscure Sixties bubblegum psychedelia?

My brain is filled with this kind of stuff; my fear is that it will only become harder and harder to retrieve as the years pass. But my brain and I will be OK. As long as it continues to help me out once in a while.

Even though it’ll be another weekend before we start awarding points in the Sixth Annual Uncle Crappy NCAA Final Four Challenge, I’ll post an update tomorrow night so we all can get an idea of where we stand.

And in the meantime, I’ll be dancing my ass off to this guy tonight instead of worrying about my decimated brackets.

If I had to pick one guy, outside of the immediate circle of musicians or lyricists, who was responsible for the success of the Grateful Dead, it would be Augustus Owsley Stanley III.

If you were a member of the GD circle, you knew him as Bear. If you bought LSD anywhere on the west coast in the late 1960s or early 1970s, you knew him simply as Owsley, the guy who cooked millions of doses, before and after the drug was deemed to be illegal in 1966.

Bear was killed on Sunday, in a car accident near his home in Australia.

Bear’s underground industry helped him finance the band, which he first saw at one of the Bay Area Acid Test shows. He bought gear, he paid for their living expenses and allowed them the time to develop from something of a novelty to the biggest band in the San Francisco area. He even took them in while he lived in Los Angeles for a spell, feeding the band’s members only steak — he thought vegetables were toxic and carbohydrates caused diabetes — kept them stoned nearly all the time, because they all lived in the lab where he was cooking the substance that paid for the band’s expenses.

He observed early on that the band’s live harmonies were horrible; he actually went as far as to suggest that they play only songs that didn’t require background vocals. The guys didn’t go for that, so Bear did the next best thing — he upgraded their monitors and sound system, a process that continued with him until he designed the Wall of Sound, a monstrous system that could produce crystal-clear sound at a staggering decibel level. For those two-and-a-half years, the band had to use two Walls of Sound, so one could jump ahead to the next venue while the band used the other for the current show. It was a sonic success but a business nightmare — the expenses associated with hauling two of those things around the country nearly bankrupted the band and was a big factor in the hiatus that started in 1974.

Bear was a notorious pain in the ass, and he pushed the band through the years about matters both artistic and acoustic. That had an impact, back then and today, as Weir said in a statement posted at Jambands.com:

He taught me to take myself and my interests out of the picture and work with the subject under consideration so that the best deductions or conclusions are made. I guess this means working from the point of view of the higher self, though that term never came up; it was always just assumed…Most important was the approach he taught me: Always be open and engaging – always critical and questioning, but not negatively so much as playfully.

There are pictures of Bear available through the magic of Google, and I’m not going to post any of them here. Bear preferred to be a behind-the-scenes guy, and that’s something I’ll respect here.

Instead, you get a Stealie, which Bear helped design as a stencil to easily identify the band’s gear. It’s a pretty good symbol of the impact he had on the band. He needed something to make his job and that of the crew a little easier; what he came up with because the best-recognized icon for an iconic band.

Thanks, Bear, for that and everything else.

Phish.

June 4, 2011, Blossom Music Center.

June 5, 2011, Riverbend Music Center.