The Sweetness of Pop.

I remember hearing about a guy who spent and entire summer with his son traveling from city to city trying to catch every major league baseball game they could in as many stadiums as possible. When the summer came to a close, a co-worker tried to get to the bottom of the whirl-wind adventure. "You must love baseball," questioned the friend. "Not so much," replied the father. "But I love my son."

Or so the story goes.

Since blogs often double as confession time, I've got to come clean. Over the past several months I've listened to a lot of pop music. Rihanna to David Archuletta and a lot more stops along ailing Casey Kasem's list of what's-hot-right-this-very-second. And to be honest, I'm sort of getting the hang of it. Anyone who knows me can tell you I'm a sucker for a good musical hook.

But that's not the real deal. Not even close. You see, you haven't lived until you've seen your daughter smile and melt into the magic she feels when Chris Brown sings, "forever." Or watch with delight when another daughter flitters across the floor when Enrique Iglesias starts belting out, "Do you know."

It seems like every time I turn around, we're making another memory that I swear I won't be able to live without as my own years start piling up. Maybe that's why it's so easy for me to crank up the music and watch my little world become pure magic.

The Great Thing About Cutoffs.

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm from the generation where it was altogether proper to use scissors on a pair of pants - any pair of pants. As a kid, we couldn't wait to wear out our jeans in the spring so we could grab some scissors and make our first pair of shorts for the summer.

Believe me, if you could turn back the clock about 30 or 40 years and walk into a mall, you'd be completely surprised by what would be missing from every single men's store - short pants. What is now a staple of year round attire would not be found, unless you wanted the ultra short tennis variety or maybe a pair of short white things for gym class. But believe me, there's not a chance you would wear those in public.

In about 1978, Ocean Pacific began populating the world with shorts. And a novel thing it was to wear them. I remember wearing a pair to school for the first time and wondering if I would be laughed at or sent home or both. Turned out that OP shorts started a fad that continues to this day. And who would imagined wearing a pair would have made you the king of cool?

For all those years before shorts, we'd spend the summer months in cutoff jeans. Boxers hanging out the bottom, frayed-to-all-get-out. The tricky part was making sure both legs were cut off at the same length and making sure they weren't too short. (If I let my mom do the job, they were too long and that was even worse.)

So, it's no surprise that I still love to wear cutoffs. But for the past 20 years, I've stayed with the ultra ugly version of cutoff sweats. But to tell you the truth, for around the house wear, you can't beat em. People say you've finally hit rock bottom when you wear sweats. I'm still wondering if that applies to a pair that have been shortened with scissors. I think I know the answer.