The Blogenberg nation must go see Blind Side. Maybe it’s because we’re an interracial family, maybe it’s because I’ve got a son who might end up being recruited for a college sport, or maybe it’s just that Sandra Bullock looks really good, but this movie is great. If I wasn’t such a man’s man I would have had tears in my eyes, which, of course, I did not — for the record, it was allergies.
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Last week, Blogenberg posted about asking the head of an all-star lacrosse program to consider my son for a roster spot at a big college-recruiting tournament. He did, but he made it clear that my son better play well and represent the program very well. My son felt the pressure but he played so well, he literally put on a show.

I can be a real pain in the butt to my kids — I know that. But when one of them steps up and faces pressure head on, which all three of my kids continue to do, it’s the proudest I get.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• Ad Week: “Is Facebook Getting Uncool for 18-24s?“
• Bill Taylor suggests that the key to continuing to develop as a learning organization is to become a teaching organization.
• Via Mashable: Why social media is vital to corporate social responsibility.
• New York Times blogger David Pogue brings us an example of unintended hilarity when reviews are crowdsourced.
• John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing gives 5 tips you can use to get bloggers to write about you.
• Jason Fried of 37Signals talks to Inc. about the way he works.

Everything any girl said to me in high school was a lie. Any excuse any girl gave me was nonsense. I am stunned. But I know this because I listen, as I work my second job as taxi driver for my children, to my daughter and her friends discuss what excuses to give boys about why they won’t call them, won’t hang out with them, won’t see them at a party, etc. etc.

Oh the darkness.
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The day the irony died at ESPN: The entire opening weekend of the college football season on ESPN was sponsored by a movie in which college girls get butchered one-by-one.

First of all, my teenage daughter told me the father of one of her friends is cooler than me. That’s impossible. I’m the coolest dad. I can mumble along with Eminem. I have to do something. I’m going to start spreading a rumor among my daughter’s friends that this other dad wears thong underwear.
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I spent two days in west Texas. San Angelo, to be exact. A few things I learned there include, one, that Friday Night Lights is true. In west Texas the women know more about football than me. Second, the people are very nice and, this is the very weird thing, they don’t speed. Everybody goes the speed limit.

And I learned that at Leddy Boots, well over a thousand bucks and a yearlong wait gets you an amazingly beautiful pair of hand-made cowboy boots.

As I get very close to 50, a few things are becoming clear. For one, imagining one’s self as John Wayne, able to protect all loved ones from all bad, is ludicrous. Aspiring to be Robert Young in Father Knows Best is much more realistic.

Second, the rarest pleasure is nothing. Those moments of absolute clarity, where all that is in your head is only what’s right in front of you, are intoxicating and are to be savored, for they are infrequent.

And third — and this one I’ve known for a long time — no matter how hot you think you are, women 30 and below look at you as a nice old guy.

In the county where I live, they keep putting up more and more of those cameras that catch you speeding. From my perspective, it just makes speeding less safe. Instead of keeping my eyes on the road, now I also have to be looking at the side of the road for cameras.
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My 15-year-old daughter doesn’t appreciate all my teachable moments. Her and a friend of hers were in the backseat of the car. I was driving. They were talking about a girl who got an infection that could be transmitted sexually, as well as through other means. (Knowing the girl in question it’s was almost surely via other means.)

“That’s why you have to realize that condoms don’t protect against all diseases,” I said. “They make it less likely you’d get a sexually transmitted disease, but for some diseases, it’s still possible to get them.”

In the mirror I could see that my daughter’s friend was actually paying attention.

In the mirror I could also see that my daughter wanted to jump out of the moving car.

My teenage daughter is home sick today. I get very upset when my girl is sick. My boys — whatever.

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To understand where the economy is going, there is only one person you should read: James C. Cooper, who writes the Business Outlook column for Business Week. He has consistently reported where the economy is going. He has consistently been right.

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A CNN anchor actually said, on the air yesterday, that she doesn’t want to unnecessarily raise concern. I am not saying the name of the anchor because, clearly, her job will be in jeopardy if this gets out.

From a business perspective, God has blessed me these past several years. Nowadays the street corners are filled with people not so blessed, begging for money. They are more plentiful than just a year ago. They are younger, healthier. They make me sad.

Once, or twice, a week, I give a corner-beggar a ten or twenty-dollar-bill. If I were blessed enough to give more I would. Every time, the recipient’s reaction is so gratifyingly sad. How he or she lights up when I hand them the money, it leaves me, rather than feeling as if I’ve done some good, terribly sad.

The other day, one guy I gave to started talking to me. I’m not sure I wanted that. He simply said, “Thank you. Because man, this s—t is getting old.”

Yeah.

It was this past Sunday morning, rainy, damp, depressing. I was driving, once more taxiing my 15-year-old twins. The exhaustion of the past week hadn’t worn off — the high speed rush through a week of pushing the business, pulling kids out of a teen haze to focus on something, anything important, and pausing to help my mother deal with cancer still felt heavy. And then I heard American Fiction on the radio.

That’s what a young vocalist named Ethan Cook calls his one-man, one-guitar band. It reminded me how beautiful the world is and why I love the world. It’s why, to the extent I can, I collect art, like this piece I just bought for the office from a local artist named Pamela Green. I can’t own beauty. But I can hear it on the radio and see it on my walls. It’s why I secretly love being in the office early in the morning to see the sun rise out my window.

It keeps me from feeling sorry about myself on rainy, damp Sunday mornings when I am once again an underpaid taxi driver.

Popeye’s Chicken Selects
A pork chop dinner prepared by my wife (very good, by the way)
A bowl of dry roasted peanuts
Two thin mint Girl Scout cookies
The ears off a chocolate Easter bunny.

This is what I ate last night. I’m sometimes guilty of stress eating. I do not respect myself in the morning.