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I was watching This Old House last year when they were rebuilding a stunning home in Carlisle, Massachusetts. I was surprised to see that they did not lay tile on the walls of the bathtub/shower. Instead, Tom Silva installed large panels of synthetic board that were etched to look like tile. It seemed like a lazy shortcut that you don’t ever see on This Old House. The host asked why he chose that material, and Tom explained, “People get tired of cleaning grout in the shower.”

A year ago, I disagreed with Tom’s decision because I am a purist. Why use fake tile when you can use real tile? But I am a different today, not because I prefer fake tile, but because I recognize that you can’t keep  stacking chores on your home maintenance to-do list because you eventually become an employee of your house. After working all day at your real job, you’ll come every evening and do more work. It’s no way to live the decades of your life.

This revelation about unending maintenance has changed the way I judge the landscape that wraps my home. A beautiful yard is unlike a beautiful mural: you can paint a mural and it will look good without any more work. But a yard needs continuous attention to be beautiful, especially if the landscape was poorly planned to begin with. Let me explain:

1. Plants need harmony with one another. Oleander bushes do not belong beneath pine trees. I imagine the dozen Oleanders looked cute when he planted them, but as the years passed by, they’ve each grown into a dozen one-trunk jungles. The spindly branches caught every dead pine needle that falls from the tree branches above. So when I looked out my window in the living room, all I see is a tangled mess.
2. Plants need room to grow. It takes a lot of discipline to design your landscape with room for each plant and tree to grow. This is a big problem around the perimeter of your yard where it is really tempting to load in the shrubs so it looks perfect right after you take off your gloves. Your satisfaction will be short lived because plants GROW GROW GROW. Within months, your plants will be choking one another. To break up the fight, you’ll be out there every Saturday with pruning sheers. After two years of this nonsense, you’ll tear out half of the plants…realizing that the guy at the nursery warned you and you ignored him. Lesson learned.

After two years of keep up with my landscape, I decided it would be wise to thin out my yard to make it beautiful and manageable. So for the past eight weeks, I’ve been busy:

1. Climbed trees with my chainsaw to cut out dead branches.
2. Cut down 10 trees that were once bushes.
3. Pulled five big fat bushes out of the ground, root and all.
4. Raked enough pine needles to fill a dump truck.

Although I am physically exhausted from all the labor, I feel a tremendous relief because now I have a yard that is both beautiful and low maintenance. Victory!

(Sometime I’d like to talk about my distaste for high maintenance relationships. Most high maintenance people aren’t that way by birth, but it’s a lifestyle/personality they’ve chosen because it makes them the center of the universe. They take advantage of generous and sensitive people around them, usually family. Think about it: who would put up with a high maintenance person but family? That discussion is for another day.)

After discovering Hummer was going to make an H3 Truck, I found that Hummer was hoping to move in on the Jeep Wrangler with a small convertible SUV. I can’t imagine a cooler way to get to the beach…

Tougher than nails. Notice that the door panels bevel out; most Hummer body panels are deliberately flat. I love the exposed hinges on the doors and bolt heads on the fenders.

With the roof panels removed, there’s enough room for a surf board. My guess is the slotted vent near the windshield base is an air intake for the engine. This allows the SUV to drive in deep water without the engine inhaling water.

Don’t miss the rugged details of the hood.

A loaded gun.

If I would’ve stuck with Industrial Design as a career, this is the type of drawing I would be doing for a living. I’m kinda jealous.

Halo? Anyone? I think Hummer knows who their demographic will be for the HX.

You are looking at an *all new* supafly.com launched on February 19, 2008. I have some work to do to make sure the embedded photos in the journals actually show up. There are other items that will take time to fix…so it will take a couple weeks to get the site running smoothly. Thanks for your patience!

Last night Candyce and I went to see the Phoenix Symphony with conductor Lawrence Golan at the Mesa Arts Center. They performed “A Musical Love Story”, which narrates the progression of a romantic relationship. If you want a good afternoon of music, make the playlist:

1. Prelude, from Holberg Suite, Opus 40 by Edvard Grieg
2. Largo, from Concerto in D major for Two Violins, BWV1043 by Johann Sebastian Bach
3. Allegretto, from Palladio by Karl Jenkins
4. Adagietto, from Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler
5. Canon by Johann Pachelbel
6. Serenade for Strings, Opus 1 by Samuel Barber
7. Serenade for Strings in C major, Opus 48 by Tchaikovsky

I don’t think you find anything more inspiring and enriching than tickets for two to the symphony. Which affirms my belief that….

Your City is Not Boring. You are boring.

I am tired of meeting young adults who complain about their city. I can understand why teenagers whine that there’s “nothing to do here” because a lot of them don’t have a car or enough money to explore their city. But once you’ve graduated from the dramas of high school, there’s nothing keeping your from enjoying your city but your own laziness. There are a thousand things to do today, you just have to get off your ass and get out there.

I am beginning to see that these “young adult whiners” do not age very well. Soon they’ll be just an “adult whiner” sliding to the Middle. Tomorrow, they’ll be the adults that the new young people come to ignore.

Thoughts on Popular Music

Let’s talk about pop music. This is a difficult subject to bring up, because it’s hard to say only a few words and be done with it. That’s why there are dozens of music magazines that have something new to write about every month of every year. In the interest of time, I will write two paragraphs:

The problem we have today is that the overwhelming majority of new music is created for and marketed exclusively to young people. That’s why the most successful bands, rappers, and entertainers come pre-packaged with an image–or even better–a lifestyle. Teens grab onto these lifestyles because gives them an identity in a time in their life where they don’t know how to be cool.

Can anything so shallow be of any lasting worth? Last night we enjoyed music that was written over the course of the last three centuries. Will any music be written in my generation that is worth passing onto the next generation?

This was first published on my blog on Suns.com:

Last night I watched the Miami play Chicago to get an idea of Shawn Marion’s new reality in the Heat’s lineup. It was a little sad to see a career player of the Phoenix Suns in a new uniform surrounded by new players.

He’s still the same dominant player on the both defense and offense, tipping the ball in his team’s favor with every tick of the game clock. But after watching four quarters, it became clear that Shawn is unequipped for victory without his Band of Brothers in Phoenix. Until Miami can find more talent, it’s Marion and Wade against the world.

On the other side of the country, Shaq inherits Marion’s old reality: sellout games, all-star teammates, and a city of Suns fanatics. I know this because everywhere I go, people are talking at the big trade. When my plane first touched down at Sky Harbor shortly after the trade news broke, I overheard 3 cell phone conversations about the Suns before I even got to the baggage claim.

You expect sports fans to run their mouths at the bars and at the water cooler, but a move this big invites everyone into the conversation. The baristas at my favorite coffee shop are excited to have something new to talk about with the espresso sippers. The UPS people have something in common with the FedEx people. And the Realtors are speculating where the big man will buy a house. (For the record, most Realtors agree he’ll buy a house on my street. I broke the news to my neighbor Bill, and we agreed to campaign for Shaq to be HOA president.)

I knew that Shaq Fever had taken over the city yesterday when I was at the library reading the New York Times. The trademark tranquility of the reading room was disrupted by a rowdy discussion about what Shaq will bring to the Suns. Listen, I like the Suns as much as anyone else, but you don’t yell about it in the library. I lowered the paper to see who was disturbing the peace. Who was it? Two librarians.

In the Arizona Republic this morning, Bob Young wrote that the Suns going into the All-Star break are “like kids on Christmas who have a present under the Christmas tree that they can’t open…a 7-foot-1, 321 present.” This is a loaded analogy because we all know what it’s like to get a Christmas present that’s not as cool as we thought it would be. Only time will tell. This was a trade to make help the Suns bring home an NBA Championship. I just hope I can be patient through February, March, and April.

It’s just good to have a shot of energy on the team and around town. Now, the real question is this: What are we going to call Shaq? Marion was the Matrix. Diaw is 3D. Barbosa is the Brazilian Blur. Stoudamire is STAT (or Hellboy if you ask Barkley.) And Steve Nash is, um, Steve Nash.

What will be the nickname for the new-and-improved Shaquille O’Neal? Someone mentioned Shaqtus (like cactus) but I thought that was too Sun City West. A friend of min came up with Bio-Diesel, which is slightly clever, but says nothing about the epic story of Shaq in Phoenix. I prefer Shaq2.0 but I don’t know if it will stick. Any ideas?