Interesting Elections from American History

I’m almost as tired of hearing about this election as I am hearing about that dude's high wire walk the other day. Luckily, we’ve been spared the popular “This is the most important election of our lifetime” trope that we usually hear around Election Day. Still, it’s all rather tiresome.So instead I’ve been thinking about past elections. We have to wait four years between presidential elections, but we have congressional elections every couple of years in the United States, and those can also be quite entertaining. And since it’s likely you haven’t given much thought to these old elections, I’m here to remind you that we don’t have a lock on crazy politicians in the present day.The following election stories—some presidential, some not—all actually happened, and remind us again that we have a far-from-perfect system.1800: Any time someone spouts off about how perfect the Constitution is, you can remind them of this little gem. Before the Twelfth Amendment, Presidential electors cast two votes for president. The person who got the most votes was president. The person with the second most votes was vice president. In 1796, John Adams bested Thomas Jefferson, so Adams was president, Jefferson VP.Then, in 1800 the two men ran against each other again. This time, Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, each received the same number of votes. An electoral tie. It had always been understood that TJ was the main man, and Burr would play second fiddle, but Burr was a bit of a scoundrel, and refused to concede the presidency.Instead it went to the House of Representatives, where it took 36 votes for Jefferson to prevail. Burr became Vice President, where he went on to shoot and kill Alexander Hamilton in a duel, but that’s a story for another day.1824: You probably know that winning the popular vote in the United States doesn’t mean you’ll be president. (Just ask Al Gore.) What a candidate really needs to do is win the electoral vote, right? Not quite. In 1824, Andrew Jackson won the electoral vote and the popular vote, but he didn’t win the presidency. Four major candidates ran for president that year (imagine that!), and none of them won a majority of electoral votes, which is actually what’s required for the presidency.So under the Twelfth Amendment the election goes to the House of Representatives, where each representative votes for one of the top three candidates, and the candidate who receives the most representative votes in that state wins the state, and whoever wins the most states wins the presidency. John Quincy Adams won thirteen states, Andrew Jackson seven states, and William Crawford four states. John Quincy Adams is president.1836: Richard Johnson was elected to be Martin Van Buren’s vice president. However, some of Virginia’s presidential electors had heard rumors that Johnson had a relationship with a black slave. God forbid the vice president have a relationship with a black slave (the irony of Virginian Thomas Jefferson’s long-term relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings, is awesome). So the electors didn’t vote for Johnson, which left MVB without a VP. The Twelfth Amendment kicked in, and the vote went to the Senate and Johnson was chosen as VP.And somehow the country didn’t collapse.1874: Holy cow this was a bad mid-term election for the sitting president, Ulysses S. Grant! The country was in the middle of an economic depression, Grant’s administration was mired in scandal, and a good portion of the country was tired of Reconstruction, which was the effort to rebuild the defeated South after the Civil War. All of that meant bad news for President Grant’s party, the Republicans. How bad? The Republicans lost 93 seats in the House of Representatives. Before the election they had a 203-88 majority. After the election they were a 181-107 minority!1876: I mentioned the popular “This is the most important election of our lifetime” claim earlier. However, the presidential election in 1876 actually was important, and changed the history of the country.Democrat Samuel Tilden kicked Rutherford B. Hayes’s butt in the popular vote, and was one vote shy of winning the electoral vote, with twenty electoral votes in dispute. The two parties came together and devised the short-sighted Compromise of 1877. In the compromise, all twenty electoral votes, and thus the presidency, were given to Hayes, the Republican. In exchange, the Republicans agreed to end Reconstruction, which allowed the Southern Democrats to return the south to the political economy that existed prior to the Civil War, and helped subjugate and disenfranchise black Americans for decades.1894: American voters are extremely fickle, and often can’t remember any further back than the current election cycle. This time an even worse economic depression hit, but unlike 1874, the Democrats suffered. They lost 107 seats and went from a 220-126 majority, to a 246-104 minority.1946: First-time Congressman often don’t go on to do too much. They’re happy just to have been elected, and usually have a hard enough time just holding on to their own seats in the future. However, two freshman Congressman from the 1946 mid-term elections did rather well for themselves: John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.We’ll see if this year’s election is as interesting as any of these previous elections. At least in the elections above we didn’t have to watch any campaign ads!+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Vote for me and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes.

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National Blog Posting Month is Dumb and So am I

In case you don’t know—and unless you have your own blog, you probably don’t know—this is National Blog Posting Month. I have a blog and I didn’t know what month it was until this afternoon. All this time I thought it was November, and it turns out that it’s not. It’s National Blog Posting Month.I like November better. Easier to say. Also, I don’t have to google November to remember what it’s called.Anyway, National Blog Posting Month is a challenge that someone (I’m guessing a blogger) devised in which bloggers try to post one post per day for the entire month of November. The math wizard in me has calculated that such an exercise works out to thirty posts during National Blog Posting Month. That’s a lot.To add some perspective, I posted my first Dry it in the Water post on July 13. That’s 114 days ago. This is my fifty-second post, which works out to a post every 2.19 days.In general I’m opposed to doing or creating things just because someone says you should. People shouldn’t make kids because they feel obligated, they shouldn’t give gifts because they feel obligated, and they shouldn’t write blog posts because they feel obligated.I realize that blog posting is a little less serious than making kids, but I have a whole mess of reasons why I shouldn’t participate in National Blog Posting Month.1. It’s known by the acronym NaBloPoMo. God, how I hate stupid acronyms, and that’s about the stupidest (yes it’s a word!) one I’ve ever seen. And when did the two-letter acronym become so popular? If two letters were common decades ago there would be no IBM, only InBuMa. It doesn’t have the same ring does it? Plus, it totally defeats the purpose of an acronym in the first place! If I have to think about the acronym more than I think about what it’s shortening, then it’s useless.2. November’s a long month. Thirty posts is a lot. Someone should have thought this through better and chosen February instead.3. I’m setting myself up for failure. What if I miss a day?4. It seems sort of self-indulgent. “Hey you, Mr. or Ms. Reader, I appreciate you reading my blog a few times a week, and since I’m sure you enjoy it so much, I’m going to give you an entry every single day until after Thanksgiving. Believe me, I have enough interesting thoughts to keep you engaged. So sit back and enjoy.” In reality I might just be wearing out the Delete key on my readers’ keyboards.5. It makes me focus on time and the passing of time. The last thing I need is something else to remind me how quickly time passes by. I’ve got four kids for that. I might as well install a ticking clock behind my ear so I can hear the seconds pass.6. It risks taking something that’s fun and making it into work. I like to write and I like to blog. I want that to remain a hobby and not a chore. Making myself do it every single day risks making it into a chore. I already don’t do half the chores I should do, so why add to that list?7. Thanksgiving weekend. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I think. Cooking, and baking, and eating, and parades, and family, and friends, and movies, and four days off, and not going shopping, and staying up late, and eating. Notice how blogging is nowhere in there?Okay, so maybe seven doesn’t qualify as a “whole mess” of reasons, but it’s enough to dissuade me from participating in NaBloPoMo.However, it might also be fun and challenging, which are two things that I try to experience as much as I can.So let it begin. I’m already two days behind, since I just found out about this idiocy today. That means not only do I have to write 30 posts in 30 days, but I have to write 30 posts in 28 days. And since you’re a math wizard you’ll deduce that I’m going to have to post two entries on two days. Sweet.Oh, and what happens if I fail at NaBloPoMo and miss a day or don’t make 30 posts or write posts that literally nobody reads?Nothing, except your ridicule. And I’m probably already subject to silent ridicule from some, so who cares?LeGeItGo. Let’s get it going!+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey you, Blog Reader Person, how 'bout you do something nice and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes?

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Why Maps Are Better Than GPS

I like maps. Weather maps, zoo maps, amusement park maps, campus maps, maps that show where Major League Baseball fans live, maps that show how states have voted in Presidential elections, and the best hand-drawn American wall map.However, I have a special fondness for road maps. As a kid I’d spend hours looking at the atlas my grandparents kept in their backseat, and I vividly remember looking at a map spread out on the hood of a car at a rest area somewhere out west with my dad, plotting the next turn on our trip to California.When I was a little kid—probably only six or seven years old—with my mom’s help, I wrote a letter to every state and Canadian province and asked them to send me a road map. I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Alabama, the first state to respond to my request. Most states sent me a map, some included other tourist information or a nice letter. I still have the maps, but anything else that came with them is long gone.I’ve written before about how I don’t have a cell phone, so it’s probably not too much of a surprise that I don’t own a GPS, either. Perhaps this makes me a Luddite. (I had to look up that word the first time I heard it: “One who opposes the introduction of new technology.”) However, I don’t oppose new technology. I understand why people like cell phones and GPS. I can imagine a GPS really comes in handy when traveling in a city where detailed maps are hard to follow, or when traveling at night and signs are hard to read. It’s convenient, for sure.But to someone who likes maps a GPS ruins all the fun!Last year my wife and I took our family on a 5,400 mile road trip to California. We didn’t bring a GPS with us. Instead, tucked between my seat and the center console was the 2009 Rand McNally road atlas. Although I’d memorized the route we wanted to take thanks to hundreds of hours on Google Maps (more about that in a minute), whenever I had a question I consulted the atlas.The advantage a paper map has over a GPS—besides actually holding the map in your hand, and the challenge of refolding a standard map—is that it allows you to see the area in context. If I want to look at a map of Illinois, I can unfold it and see the entire state at once. And then not only will I see whatever I’m looking for, but inevitably I’ll find some other interesting tidbit. Finding such things on a GPS is much more difficult.Google Maps sort of provides the best of both worlds. Its ease of scrolling, zooming, switching from map to satellite view, and the incredible street view feature is a map lover’s fantasy. I’ve planned numerous vacations using Google Maps, and I’ve dreamed about dozens of others.However, when I’m actually traveling I much prefer a paper map.My love for maps has rubbed off on my kids, as well. We can’t go to any zoo, museum or park without them requesting a map of their own to study. On a long trip they still prefer to look at their electronics instead of a road atlas though.Part of the reason that I love road maps in particular is because they’re completely logical, yet can lead to something magical.If I want to drive from here to Tularosa, New Mexico, I’d have no idea how to get there. But with a map I can find Tularosa and all I have to do is follow the lines. Simple enough. Yet along the way I might encounter an old section of Route 66 in Illinois, dozens of flattened armadillos along the road in Missouri, an old gas station featured in the Pixar film Cars in Texas, or an old roadside motel in New Mexico.Without maps we wouldn’t know how to get there from here, but we also wouldn’t know that there’s more than one way to go.Hey you, Blog Reader Person, how 'bout you do something nice and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes?

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Somewhere Among Millions of Options, Perfection

My perfect day. Is there a word for that overwhelming feeling you get sometimes when you have so many damn choices you don’t know what the hell to pick? Like when you go to Baskin-Robbins and you think “Ahh, 31 flavors, I can’t wait!” And then you get there and your brain almost explodes because there’s so much variety.Anyway, if there’s a word for that then I’d use it right now, because trying to write about my perfect day is like going to Baskin-Robbins and discovering that now there are seventeen million flavors.But that ice cream would still taste good!My perfect day begins around dawn in a cabin in the western United States, after I’ve slept for nine hours. I’m the first one up and I go outside for a run. It’s fifty-eight degrees outside, no wind, and the moon is about an hour away from setting. I watch it on its way down as I run west. Cool animals like buffalo or elk (let’s not worry about geography) roam in fields on either side. My run is fast and long, difficult and easy at the same time.When I get back to the cabin, everyone’s still asleep. I shower and begin making breakfast. My wife and kids wake up, and we sit around the table and eat for close to an hour because we’ve got an active day ahead of us.We hike some trails, all of which are rocky, some of which are in the desert, some in the plains. One of them ends at a giant waterfall. Another ends in a cave. A third crosses a mountain peak.We have a picnic lunch under a sky with cottony fair-weather clouds. As we sit in the middle of a broad expanse, with no people, buildings or cars within sight, a light breeze cools the eighty-five degree day. There are no bugs and plenty of sunscreen. The water is cold, the air is fresh, the smiles are genuine, the excitement palpable.After lunch we go back to the cabin, have soft serve twist ice cream cones dipped in chocolate or butterscotch, and then pile in the van. For almost two hours we drive to the coast. The kids relax, nap, play with their electronics. My wife and I drink fountain Diet Cokes and listen to Fresh Air, WTF and then some music.We park near the beach, spread our blanket on the sand and explore the tide pools. Crabs scurry about, pelicans fly overhead, sea lions sun offshore. The waves are rippling, but safe, just big enough for the kids to ride on their boogie boards. My wife is clicking away on her camera, then joins us in the water. Sand castles and sand chairs are built.Eventually it’s time to leave and we pile back into the van. Time for another ice cream cone, this time at a small ice cream shack on the two-lane road running along the shore. We sit at picnic tables under umbrellas and eat. A seagull hovers above my head and tries to steal my ice cream cone.Back at the cabin a chef we hired has prepared a feast. All of our family and friends are there. We gather around large tables and eat. The kids barely touch their food and then run off to the basement to play. The adults drink good beer that’s cold, hoppy and plentiful. Conversation is lively, jovial.At sunset my wife and I leave the party, go to the roof top deck and sit, just the two of us. We aren’t missed inside the cabin.When we return, the party moves outside. Everyone sits around a large fire, s’mores are eaten, ghost stories are told, more beer is consumed.The kids tire so we bring them inside and tuck them in. They’re off to sleep within seconds.The party outside is breaking up. Eventually it’s just me and my wife. With the sun gone we watch billions of stars and a late evening meteor shower. The night is still warm. Animals howl in the distance.Eventually we go inside to a quiet house, just the two of us.I might have forgotten to mention that my perfect day has more than 24 hours. In fact, it has however much time I need.And sometime during the day, the Cubs win the World Series.This post was written as a part of ChicagoNow's monthly writing exercise, Blogapalooz-Hour. We were tasked to write what our perfect day would be like, either in fantasy or reality.Hey you, Blog Reader Person, how 'bout you do something nice and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes?

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A Dad's Review of Taylor Swift's '1989'

First of all, I know that I’m probably not Taylor Swift’s target demographic. She can’t possibly sell too many albums to married thirty-six-year-old dudes. Not counting those dudes who are buying the albums for their daughters, of course. So Taytay probably isn’t going to shed too many tears or pump too many fists over what I have to say.Also, I don’t think it’s fair to judge her music from my point-of-view. Every work has an audience, and I’m not her audience. So for me to listen with my ears is missing the point. Instead I’ll pretend I’m one of the roughly sixty trillion girls who go crazy for her and her music. (I’m not really going to pretend that I’m a teenage girl. That’s just creepy.)T-Swizzle’s latest release is called 1989. She should send an apology to the year 1989, and anything else that happened in 1989, because she’ll automatically dominate any Google search containing that number for the rest of eternity.And even though 1989 the year was a quarter of a century ago, 1989 the album brings a brand new Taylor Swift. Gone is the girl strumming along on her guitar and belting out songs that she wrote by herself. Her full-on transition to pop music is aided by two of the most prolific music producers in the business, and their influence is irrefutable. The New Taylor sounds more pop princess than young musician.Still, there’s plenty here that Taylorites will enjoy. And when an artist has been as deft in creating a relationship with her fans as Taylor has been, those fans will probably go anywhere she takes them.Now just a few general observations:She’s got some sort of red lips fetish or something. In one song she talks about “the red lip classic thing” that some boys like, and then in another song she’s talking about “cherry lips, crystal skies” and in yet another she sings about “red lips and rosy cheeks.” Looks like Chuck Berry’s not the only musician who owes a debt of gratitude to Maybelline.She’s a skank. No, not really. I’m kidding, pipe down. But checkout some of her lyrics. “Got a long list of ex lovers,” “I got that good girl faith and a tight little skirt,” “we were lying on your couch,” “his hands are in my hair, his clothes are in my room.” And it goes on from there. Damn, Taylor, you’re not a teeny-bopper anymore, we get it!She’s worldly. The first song is called "Welcome to New York" and she talks about “searching for a sound we hadn’t heard before” and “you can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls” and maybe my favorite line on the entire record: “everybody here was someone else before.”On one of her previous albums she told mean people that one day she was going to be living in a big old city, and now she is. Don’t worry though, she can handle it: “The lights are so bright, but they never blind me.”There’s no virtue in criticizing Ms. Swift. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but she’s also not trying to be. She knows her audience, she knows they trust her, and she’s betting that they’ll like the new side of her and her music.If not for my seventeen-year-old daughter, I’d probably never listen to Taylor Swift, and probably never miss her either.But my daughter likes her. And last night we got 1989 and went to the basement and listened to it together. My daughter’s excitement over that album reminded me of my own excitement over a new Pearl Jam album. She swore she’d listen to it a dozen times this week. She declared it awesome. She slept with it next to her in bed.As part of the deluxe version of the CD, Swift included some mock Polaroids with hand-written lyrics at the bottom as a little bonus for her fans. I showed my daughter Pearl Jam’s 1996 album No Code, which also came with an assortment of Polaroids. We shared enthusiasm.So in the end, 1989 actually reminds me of an old Pearl Jam song called "Not For You" in a couple of ways. First, the title of the song, since 1989 obviously isn’t for me. And second, in one of the lines of the song: “All that’s sacred, comes from youth.”I told my daughter I wanted to listen to the album so I could write a blog post about it. But really I just thought it’d be fun to spend some time with her, just the two of us, enjoying something she was excited about.I was right.Hey you, Blog Reader Person, how 'bout you do something nice and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes?

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Apparently I Have Resting Bitch Face

I suffer from an affliction that I didn’t even know existed. My lovely wife happened to mention it to me over the weekend, and while we laughed about it at first, the more I pondered it, the more I realized that she might be right.Resting Bitch Face, or RBF as it’s commonly known, (I’m using the word common very loosely here; I’m not certain just how many people actually know what RBF is) refers to people, mostly women from what I’ve gathered, whose natural, expressionless face makes them look bitchy.What does bitchy look like?Your guess is as good as mine, I suppose, but a quick Google image search of RBF will provide examples like Reese Witherspoon, Kate Hudson and Anna Paquin. I’d say Nicole Kidman probably fits the bill as well.My wife’s probably right about my RBF. People are always confusing me for glamorous people like Reese Witherspoon and Nicole Kidman.Actually, I suffer from the male version of RBF. I haven’t yet settled on a name for it, but something like SMF, (Scary Mean Face), or MHAPKWBSAFHF, (Maybe He’s a Psychotic Killer, We Better Stay Away From Him Face) would probably work, although that last one might be a tad too long, so maybe SMF wins by default.I don’t have to do anything to turn on the SMF. It’s just always there, unless I’m talking or smiling. But if I’m doing nothing, like just waiting in line at the grocery store, someone who doesn’t know me might think that I’m mean.My wife undoubtedly is the person most familiar with my SMF. On our first-ever mini-date—just before our first real date, and just after I friendly-stalked her a couple of times—she thought I was angry and didn’t want to see her. Yet, in a nod to my on-the-phone charm, she still decided to go out with me. As soon as we began talking she discovered that I wasn’t angry at all.Now that I know that I have SMF, maybe it’s time for me to start using it to my advantage. Chances are I won’t go on to win any Best Actress Academy Awards since I’m not an actor or a woman, but perhaps I can still have some fun.Some people need to dress up as a maniacal clown or a crazy scarecrow to horrify kids on Halloween. Maybe all I have to do is open my front door and not say a word. My silence would be creepy enough. My SMF might just send those cute little princesses and superheroes running away screaming.And the next time I’m at a crowded restaurant I’ll put my name on the waiting list and then just stand in the corner and say nothing. I’ll look around the room, try to make eye contact with all the other people waiting for a table, and see what happens.I’ll bet it’ll be one of two things: either I’ll get my table a little sooner because all of the other customers are scared of me, or I’ll have to convince the police I’m not a madman because all of the other customers are scared of me.I’m missing out on a golden opportunity to employ the SMF when talking to my kids. Yelling is for amateurs. The thing to do is just to stare. Next time they do something enraging I’ll call them over, make them stand right in front of me, and just stare at them. Even if they’re not scared by my SMF, it’s possible they’ll think dad’s gone mad. That’ll work.Hey you, Blog Reader Person, how 'bout you do something nice and like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes?

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Hey, You're too Old to Trick or Treat

In the catalog of practically meaningless phrases, “How are you?” and “Trick-or-treat?” are roughly equivalent. If you answer “How are you?” with anything other than “Fine” or “Good” you risk suffering the wrath of the person who asked the question.And these days “Trick or Treat?” is similarly meaningless. When little ghouls and goblins come to our door on October 31 it’s understood that despite giving us an either/or option, they actually want the treat. This is partly because we’ve given the fun-hating, anti-Halloween crowd (or whackos as they might be appropriately deemed) the easy way out. Don’t want to hand out any treats? Fine, just leave your porch light off.The trick is now completely off the Halloween table.I think we need to put the trick back back onto the table though.One of the most annoying things I see every year is the ridiculous number of teenagers, and sometimes even adults, who go trick-or-treating. I don’t know if there’s a specific age at which kids should be forced to give up the tradition, but I think it’s safe to say that if you can drive yourself from house to house then you shouldn’t go begging for candy.Oh, and by the way, an old pair of sweat pants and a torn up T-shirt doesn’t count as a costume.My wife and I both take our kids trick-or-treating every year, but we also arrange for someone to sit at the house and hand out candy.(One year I counted on the children of my neighborhood to act in good faith and left a bowl of candy on the front porch with a sign that said “Take one.” We returned some time later to discover that not only had some jerk taken all the candy, but they took the snazzy cauldron holding the candy. Thieving jerks.)We need to get back to making these kids work for their candy, especially the kids who are too old to be out there in the first place. Let’s take the older kids at their word.“Trick-or-treat?”“Hey there, young man. Don’t you think you’re a little too old to go trick-or-treating?”“No!”“Of course you don’t. Well I think you’re too old. I mean if you can grow the beard for your pirate costume, then you’re too old.”“Hey man, just give me some candy.”“I choose trick.”“What?” The kid/teen/adult would be dumbfounded. He’s probably been so mindlessly repeating the phrase that he never even stopped to think about it.“You said ‘trick-or-treat.’ I choose trick. You’re too old to be begging for candy, and I’m not giving you any.”Chances are the kid wouldn’t have anything to say. He’d be so shocked that someone stood up for the traditionalist interpretation of trick-or-treat that he’d probably cower away and get the hell out of there.Although it could go the other way, too. Failure to negotiate with these candy terrorists probably only results in things too frightening to think about, but I’d bet that they involve some combination of toilet paper, tomatoes and eggs.So that’s why I’m writing about this in my blog, instead of actually telling those overgrown candy fiends that the jig is up. Chances are you don’t know where I live, so you’re not going to come throw eggs at my house.Instead I’ve come up with a genius solution. There have been years in the past where we’ve given out full size candy bars. (Yes, we really are that damn cool!) Maybe we’ll do that again this year, but we’ll have another bowl next to it. When someone knocks on the door we’ll answer it and give the little kids a full size bar and the older kids one of those “fun” size bars, or even better, a dime or a toothbrush or some other worst-house-on-the-block item.We may end up with a situation where the too-old trick-or-treater breaks out the legendary trick-AND-treat, but I’m willing to take my chances. It’ll be my own silent objection to Halloween madness.And if I catch any of those older kids trying to make good on the trick portion of the phrase, maybe I’ll remind them of the old urban legend about razor blades in Halloween candy!

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Banning Lorde's 'Royals' Not Enough Help for Giants

The World Series starts tonight. In a town where each of our baseball teams finished seventeen games out of first place, that doesn’t mean too much. But to Kansas City, whose Royals are in the World Series for the first time since 1985, it’s a big deal.And in San Francisco, whose Giants are making their third World Series appearance in five years, it’s a big deal as well. In fact, it’s such a big deal that radio stations have reinstituted that time-honored idiocy: the song ban.Usually song bans are reserved for very “serious” situations. You’ll remember that the Dixie Chicks were banned from some country stations for saying bad things about George W. Bush, and Pearl Jam also felt the banning fire after a concert in which the lead singer “impaled” a Bush mask on a microphone stand.This liberal would think that in a city of fellow liberals like San Francisco, any sort of censorship would be frowned upon. But there’s only one thing more important than freedom of expression, and that’s the World Series.So in solidarity with the Giants, a couple of radio stations have banned the song Royals by Lorde from being played for the duration of the Series.If I was the Giants, I’d be mighty worried about this. Apparently their fans think that the team is so fragile that even the mere mention of the opponent’s name will tank the chances for the Giants to prevail.No word on whether San Franciscans hope to ban other Royal references like the Royal Family, Crown Royal, Royal Crown, or Wes Anderson’s film The Royal Tenenbaums. The NBA’s Sacramento Kings are doubly deserving of a ban, despite their proximity to the Bay Area. Not only does their current name contain the stench of royalty, they used to be known as the Royals when they played in Cincinnati back in the sixties. Call it the six degrees of royalness.These bans are unlikely though. Apparently Lorde’s song has a stronger connection with the Kansas City baseball team than just the title. If you believe Lorde—and who wouldn’t because it’s not like musicians would lie about something just because it makes a good story—the seed for the song was planted when she saw a picture of former Royals player George Brett signing autographs. He was still in uniform and the word Royals, written in blue cursive script across his chest, just looked “really cool.”Sometimes that’s all it takes for a writer or a musician to create something, and Lorde—who won’t turn eighteen until next month!—created a solid, mega-hit song.For a baseball fan it’s incredibly exciting that the Royals, who have royally sucked for most of the previous twenty-nine years, are having a miraculous reemergence this year. And I’m sure Lorde doesn’t mind the extra publicity for her song because of it. She even got to meet George Brett earlier this year.However, there’s one thing we shouldn’t forget about that old photo. Sure the word Royals on the front might have inspired a musician and helped to create a memorable song, but let’s not forget the name on the back of the jersey.Yep, Brett!Now I’ll give you a minute to scroll to the top of the page and see the name of the person who’s writing this post.Coincidence?So look out, because now I’m feeling inspired!In retrospect, I should be happy that the photographer chose that angle from which to shoot his picture that day. Had he chosen a different angle he might have caught the back of the jersey, and Lorde might have seen it and been inspired to write a song called Brett, and people would be banned from reading anything I wrote.Maybe not, too.Anyway, I doubt Royals the song will have much of an influence on Royals the team. And San Francisco’s stupid radio ban won’t have an impact either. In fact, I think San Francisco’s worry is entirely misplaced. They’re focusing on the title, when they should be focusing on the artist.I mean if the Lord is for the Royals, what hope do the Giants have?I’m picking the Royals in a sweep.But if they fall behind, then the band They Might Be Giants better not expect any airplay in KC.

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