Come and do the iPod Shuffle with me

It has been a couple of years since we last did the iPod Shuffle, the game in which you put your iPod (or equivalent digital music player) into shuffle mode and let everyone know the results, along with any commentary you would like to add.

No cheating on this, by the way. You have to report the first five songs that come up when you hit shuffle no matter how embarrassing they may be. Feel free to respond in the comments section of the blog itself with your results. Or, if you're someone who comes to us through Facebook, you can do it there, too.

Here's what my iPod just spit out when I let it go all random on me:

(1) "Seasons of Love" – Donny Osmond
Wow, that got really bad really fast, didn't it? There's no way I can justify having this song. It's from the musical "Rent," which of course is the manliest of all musicals. And it's sung by Donny Osmond who is, um, the manliest of all singers. I just really like the tune, OK? And plus I've seen Donny Osmond perform live twice, which is in no way something I should have just typed. Let's move on...

(2) "Going Somewhere" – Colin Hay
I have a lot of Colin Hay in my library. You'll remember him as the lead singer of the Australian band Men at Work back in the early and mid-80's. I've been keeping up with his solo career ever since and even got to meet him 10 years ago. Good guy.

(3) "In Your Eyes" – Peter Gabriel
This is a hard song to escape if you listen to radio stations that play 80s music, as I do. It was probably the prom theme at a few schools back then, and it actually holds up well over time. Also, it includes some vocal work by Youssou N'Dour, a Senegalese musician who has never gotten the credit he deserves.

(4) "Message in a Bottle" – The Police (Live in Boston - 1979)
I have 11 different versions of this song in my iTunes library. Some are live, some are recorded. Some are by The Police, some are by Sting as a solo artist. And one is by a band called The Swingers, who recorded an entire album of Sting covers as cheesy, horn-based instrumentals. This is probably my second favorite Sting-composed song behind "The Lazarus Heart."

(5) "Grim Cathedral" – David Francey
Chances are you don't know who David Francey is, though his name might ring a bell if you're Canadian. Or if you're into folk music. If you're a Canadian AND a folk music fan, then you darn well better know who he is. David is an outstanding musician from the Toronto area who has won multiple Juno Awards, which is like the Canadian Grammy. He's also a Facebook friend of mine who might see this, so if you could pretend that you're as big a David Francey fan as I am, I would appreciate it.

When I was a paper boy...

The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently announced that it is going to cut home delivery of the newspaper back to three days a week beginning this summer. The paper will still publish every day, but you'll only be able to get it delivered to your front door three times a week.

Actually, "delivered to your front door" is a phrase that probably dates me. Of the relatively few people who still receive a newspaper at home, even fewer actually get it placed in or even near their front door. Most of the time, it's thrown into your driveway or placed in a newspaper tube in front of your house.

Another highly visible change is in the people who still deliver newspapers. When I was growing up, those people were almost always kids with paper bags slung over their shoulders. Nowadays, they're almost always adults driving cars.

I understand the economics of this. Newspapers, which are running on razor-thin profit margins, are better served giving larger routes (i.e., hundreds of customers) to adults than smaller routes (i.e., dozens of customers) to kids.

But that doesn't mean I don't miss the prototypical paper boy/girl. I was one myself.

Back in the early 80s, I delivered The Lake County News-Herald to 40 or so customers in my Wickliffe neighborhood. I had the brown and orange News-Herald paper bag, and every day I would make sure those customers received the news of the world.

This is back when people actually got their news from print newspapers, of course, and not from phones, tablets, iPods, etc.

I never minded delivering the papers. That part was actually kind of fun. It was the collecting I hated. Every two weeks you had to walk around to your customers' houses and hound them to pay you. And for some people, you really did have to hound them.

The good part about collecting, though, was that was obviously how you made your money. The lady from the newspaper would come around every two weeks to take the money and leave me with $30 or $40 profit, which I would use at arcades and to buy video game cartridges for my Atari 2600 system. In retrospect, I probably should have saved some of that cash...

I gave up my paper route in 7th grade once I started getting into more extracurricular activities at school. But I returned to the delivery business several years later as a 24-year-old adult.

By that point in my life, I was a full-time sports writer for The News-Herald. We didn't have any kids yet and we needed the extra money, so I took on a paper route. Again, didn't mind the delivering, but the collecting was less than fun.

I only kept that route for about six months, then dropped it once Elissa was born. But two memories stand out in my mind from the experience:

(1) It was fun doing full-service journalism. I would write articles for the paper, edit copy, help lay it out, etc., then get up the next day to actually deliver it, too. How often do you see that in anything other than a really small town?

(2) Mrs. Piacente, one of my customers, would always wait for me to show up with the paper on Saturday mornings. When I got to her house, she would ask what page my weekly Bowling Notes column was on so she could read it (she was a big bowler, that Mrs. Piacente). She would also occasionally ask me to do little odd jobs for her, including knocking the icicles off her house and changing the batteries in her kitchen clock. These were clearly tasks that fell under the "other duties as assigned" section of the paper boy job description.

And now the slow, painful death of newspapers is upon us. The three-day-a-week-home-delivery model, or other scenarios like it, will become increasingly prevalent. And eventually the print newspaper will die out in favor of e-news.

Which I'm actually fine with. But I'll always miss the feel and smell of newsprint. Newspapers have been a part of my life for decades, and they never really go out of your blood.

As long as we're being nostalgic here, may I suggest you watch the following video of a song written by a favorite artist of mine named David Francey? It documents his experiences as a paper boy back in his native Scotland. It's a tune I almost could have written myself. Enjoy:

Bringing back the iPod shuffle

On two previous occasions, we played the iPod shuffle game on this blog (here and here). The idea, as you may recall, is to put your iPod or other MP3 device − we're not Apple-specific here at They Still Call Me Daddy − on "shuffle" mode and post the first five songs that pop up, no matter what they are.

I'll give you my list here, and you're welcome to offer up yours in the comments below. Here goes:

Scott's iPod shuffle results - 3/20/13

(1) David Francey - "Red-Winged Blackbird"
I love me some David Francey. He's a Canadian folk singer-songwriter who looks like he should be the guy who comes over and remodels your kitchen. And in fact he DID used to be a carpenter/laborer. I highly recommend his stuff.

(2) Sting - "St. Augustine in Hell"
Have I told you guys about the time I met Sting? I can't remember if I've relayed that story here. I probably have. Two or three times. I forget these things. Anyway, Sting is my all-time favorite. I've seen him play live nine times in 25 years. This song isn't among my top Sting tunes, but it's enjoyable.

(3) The Police - "Can't Stand Losing You"
Speaking of Sting...One of his better songs with The Police. I think the BBC once banned it because it dealt with the topic of suicide. But that was more than 30 years ago. No one would even think twice about the subject today.

(4) Sheila E. - "The Glamorous Life"
Yay, a woman! Sheila E. is extremely talented. And she's still out there making music. She was in Cleveland a few months ago with Dave Koz's band, and I'm sure she sang this, her signature tune.

(5) Quarterflash - "Harden My Heart"
Yay, another woman! Well, the lead singer/sax player in Quarterflash, Rindy Ross, is a woman. Always liked the tenor sax part she plays in this song. As I understand it, Quarterflash is still going strong, but they'll forever be filed under "One-Hit Wonders" on the strength of this little ditty, which hit #3 on the Billboard charts back in 1982.