Author: Matt Keough

The Riddle gets me every time

I never wanted my blog to be a fan blog just posting links to music or musicians I happen to like at the moment. I also never intended to abandon my blog, so I guess a fan boy post is better than no posts at all.

I cannot listen to Five for Fighting‘s “The Riddle” without getting verklempt. It talks about father/son love. It reminds us of our mortality. (We’re talking meaning of life stuff here.) There are subtle baseball references. It has emotive vocals with great guitar and a beautiful piano accompaniment. The young boy in the lyrics is both serious and playful. The video even has a cool muscle car.

I’ve a house full of intelligent and rambunctious boys. My own wonderful father passed away last year. I’d have to be a robot to not get a little weepy, right?

Well done, John Ondrasik.

 

Glad that is over with. LeBron gets his ring

The Miami Heat won the NBA Championship last night. This means all the true blue Heat fans are ecstatic. I hear they are having a big party in a phone booth with lots of room to spare.

Back in Cleveland all sorts of wailing and gnashing of teeth have occurred, first at the prospect that LeBron would get a ring and then that he did. In one respect I am pleased that this chapter is closed. Many of my Facebook friends and Twitter pals have really had a tough time with it. I get it. He was disloyal and left us in the lurch. It was their fondest desire his Decision would never produce joy in South Beach.

I never really had a problem with his decision. I feel that it is a free market and all of us should be free to take our talents to South Beach, South America or the South Pole if it meets our goals. I still think the ESPN very special after school special Decision was a product of a self absorbed immature and unwise man. But nobody cares about Jim Gray anymore.

Cavs fans, not to mention Dan Gilbert, have held on to the hope that the Heat would somehow blow it every year and LeBron would be made a fool. Deep in our hearts we must have known that was unlikely. All the suspense is over now.

Real joy can never be found in another person’s sorrow. Now we can hope for the real joy of our Cavs doing well.

Goodbye MatthewK.com – or a change of address

MatthewK.com has been my website for a long time. I first registered the domain name on August 4, 1999. I guess you could say that it has spanned decades, centuries, even millennia.  Back in Web 1.0 days I was reluctant to have my last name in the domain name. We were much more protective of our personally identifiable information then. Heck, my Compuserve email was a random string of numbers at cs.com.

That was then, this is now. I’ve decided to switch to Matt-Keough.com. This change will come soon. You may actually be reading this post at that name.

MatthewK.com is not going away entirely. Soon it will be the online home of a young gentleman who is a quite talented singer. I encourage you to check back after the switch. I’ve had a sneak preview and I think you will enjoy his music.

Here’s to new beginnings!

Top Shot Season 4 Finale: Who’s Going To Win?

On Tuesday nights for the last couple of months my tweets have been filled with the #TopShot hashtag. Not only is Top Shot (Tuesday night 10 Eastern) my favorite show, there are several key players live tweeting while it airs most weeks.

The host, Colby Donaldson (@Colby_Donaldson), is very active on Twitter with behind the scene insights. He jokes with fans and answers questions and this is an excellent addition to the viewing experience. He was missed a couple of weeks ago as he was forbidden by the show’s brass from live tweeting. This was in response to his tweets the previous week asking fans to make some grassroots noise to convince The History Channel to renew the show. Hey History Channel! Renew Top Shot!!

Contestants have also been very active and interacting with viewers in Top Shot Season 4.

Terry Vaughn (@Terry_Empowers) added a British angle on the proceedings and brought a real enthusiasm and level-headed approach the the sometimes dysfunctional blue team. He seemed to enjoy the cannon most of all.

Gabby Franco (@GabbyFrancoTS4) was the first female contestant to wear a green shirt. This isn’t a fashion statement. For those unfamiliar with the show, team competitions pitting blue and red teams thins the field by eliminating contestants until the individual competition begin. The teams are then disbanded and contestants wear the coveted green shirt. Gabby was a fan favorite and after elimination continued to cheer on the remaining contestants.

Now for the business at hand. Tuesday’s program is the season finale and it has come down to Chris Cheng, Gregory Littlejohn, Augie Malekovich and Gary Shank. Who will it be? All four finalists have proven themselves to be very capable of winning the whole thing, and they got there with diverse styles.

Augie Malekovich is a strong shooter and keeps his cool under almost all conditions. He served in the United States Marine Corps and his military background has helped.  He is not an active twitter use, but you can follow @malekovich to see what his wife Crystal has to say. I’d be happy to see Augie win because he is a father of four and seems like a real good guy and dad.

Gary Shank is kind of a sleeper candidate to win. He wasn’t involved in too much drama and is proficient in many types of weapons. His specialty is historic weapons. If a blunderbuss or trebuchet are involved he has to be your favorite. In all seriousness, he absolutely was flawless in the SWAT style elimination challenge which emulated what final challenges have been like in past seasons. I’d be OK with Gary winning because I was briefly in a Civil War reenactment group while in high school. It’s not easy being a history geek.

Chris Cheng (@TopShotChris) is an IT professional with no formal military or police training. He was a fan of earlier seasons of Top Shot, and became proficient with a diverse set of guns as an enthusiast. As you would expect from an IT guy, he brings an analytical approach to the game. This caused some friction with other contestants when team meetings determined who would go to elimination challenges. But those contestants are gone and he is in the final. I’ve had some interaction with Chris on Twitter and found him to be a real enthusiastic, nice guy. Because he is an underdog to a certain degree and I work in search engine marketing (kind of IT related), he is probably my favorite.

Which brings us to Gregory Littlejohn (@TopshotGregory). He is a Federal Police Officer and Air Force veteran. He is also one of the most derided contestants by fans online. He has gone to the elimination challenges more than anyone, but also has won enough Bass Pro Shops gift cards (by surviving the challenges) to outfit his outdoors activities in fine style.

He’s got a big personality that rubs some people the wrong way and brings out the critics. I really enjoy how he lets the criticism bounce right off of him on the show and in the twitterverse. He and I have had a couple of twitter exchanges, and his tweets reveal a very funny guy.  The show has been edited to give him the role of “they guy who lets the pressure get to him.” This is one of the reasons I suspect he may take the grand prize. The producers know who won before they edit the season. It is better entertainment if there is a story arc that has a surprise ending. If you wanted to have a twist at the end you would edit Greg to look like a guy who would choke in the big game. But in the last few episodes he has shown real skill.

If you asked my who I think will win, my money would be on Littlejohn for that reason. Of course I could be wrong. In short (too late, I know) anyone could win and I’d be happy for any of the finalists.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get back to the Top Shot Facebook game and clear Level 12. Boom go the exploding targets!

 

 

 

 

 

UPDATE:

I’m all up-to-date. I think?

When I first started this blog it was a nail-biting experience whenever I needed to upgrade versions or perform back end maintenance. I’d make certain all files were backed up, databases correct and I had my Wheaties. This was vital, because otherwise my words of wisdom and witty observations would be LOST FOREVER!

Eventually I realized that if my blog fell in the forest of cyberspace it wouldn’t make a sound because nobody would be there.

I performed an upgrade to WordPress 3.3.2 today and totally messed it up. No cursing, sweating or stress followed. I figured it would give me a fresh start. I eventually corrected the issues. Let me know if I missed anything if you happen to notice something amiss.

Ping me on Twitter @mattkeough

 

The hair will betray you

My workplace is very lively and we have fun activities in a nearly unbroken succession. The latest wackiness involves my pals delivering pictures of themselves in high school to a bulletin board. These photos are posted with no labels. We then guess who is who.

It is easy to spot the younger members of the team, of which there are many. Let’s admit that the rest of us have changed over time. Some of us have changed for the better, some for the worse.

The White Rain hung heavy in the air that dayI submitted my senior portrait. The consensus is that I look like a 70’s news anchor or a game show host. Not a game show host like Howie Mandel, more like John Davidson.

I’ve explained that young men did not wear their hair short in the 80’s. The only fellows that had their ears exposed in those days were convicts and service members. It was then that I had an epiphany. The reason so many 70’s and 80’s TV shows were easy to spot as cheesy was due to the guys all having contemporary hair styles.

Look at Happy Days, Fonzie had an almost pompadour, but it was feathered. Chachi  TOTALLY looked like he stepped off the disco floor.

Look at the cops in TV shows of the era. They all had a massive head of hair.  Their mustaches extended FAR beyond the corners of their lips. Don’t even get me started on the Village People.

Finally, look at STRIPES. Only John Candy and Sgt. Hulka had regulation haircuts. John Larroquette’s hair was just this site of Oscar Gamble.

So, here is my new law. If you are not committed enough to your character to get a haircut, you will be an object of ridicule when the current trend fades.

Someday the Browns will win the Super Bowl

Today is Super Bowl Sunday. I’m writing this at 9 o’clock in the morning and I’m sure there is pregame programming on right now making predictions. I predict that the Giant will win and it will be a close contest. But I really wouldn’t care if the Patriots win.

I am a Browns fan. I have no rooting interest. Some would say I should root against the This is what a Browns Super Bowl will look likePatriots because Bill Belichick was not well-loved when he was the Browns coach. I don’t live in the past when it comes to the Browns. As a matter of fact, I don’t live in the present. The only place a Browns fan can live is in the future. In the future the Browns will win the Super Bowl.

I will admit there is scant evidence that this will happen anytime soon. It does not matter. This is how we cope.  If we were to dwell on the last decade or so of Browns performances, we would only become bitter and cynical.

So on this day of great excitement or disappointment for Patriots and Giants fans, do not despair. ONE DAY THE BROWNS WILL WIN THE SUPER BOWL!

Searches related to Matt Keough

Matt Keough is not an extremely common name, but it only takes one other guy sharing your name to make Google related search suggestions interesting.  Don’t pretend you have not performed a vanity search of your name! When I type my name in Google, the top results all relate to the poor fellow who used to play MLB baseball.

You might think it odd that I refer to a guy who was formerly a professional baseball player as “poor guy”, but I would not trade my life for his. No way, no how.  Although we might think it was good luck to marry a former Playboy bunny, they are now divorced.  “Matt Keough Divorce” is a suggested search.

I’ve banged up my body via lack of athleticism and not minding which step of the ladder I was on. But I’ve never been drilled in the head by a ball hit off the bat of a MLB player, so another suggested search, “Matt Keough brain injury“, doesn’t apply to me either.

This humble blog does show up for “Matt Keough 2011“, which makes sense. I am Matt Keough and I did write at least a few posts in 2011.

I’m really glad nobody really cares about my “Matt Keough Stats“!

I feel fortunate that “Matt Keough arrested” is talking about the other guy as well. Behavior modification in later adulthood also gets credit for avoiding my true identity ranking well in Google for that one.

In short, while it may seem from the outside that the people in the spotlight are in a position to be envied, that really is not the case.  I wish the more famous Matt Keough nothing but better days ahead. I also wish us both less dramatic suggested search topics from Google.