Band: Europe
Album: The Final Countdown
Best song: Title track. Come ON.
Worst song: The rest of the record is pretty bad.

I’ve already mentioned my lack of early “happy” memories in my bit about 1984, but my absolute earliest memory is that quite simple: Hockey. The earliest clear memory in my head is going to see a Blackhawks game with my dad as a young boy. I’d probably peg it in the 1985 or 1986 calendar year.

I don’t remember who the ‘Hawks played that day, nor do I really care. But, so much of those first few games is tattooed on my brain mor ethan anything else. I barely remember my first few years of school, but I can absolutely describe the smell of the Chicago Stadium bathrooms the first time I went: stale beer, cigarrette butts and old urine. It is, though disgusting, as comforting a smell as anything.

The ‘Hawks fans have a tradition of screaming over the national anthem that I assumed every stadium did until I went to my first baseball game a few years later; it was even louder in the old stadium when Wayne Messmer got toward the end.

Fans of the ‘Hawks in the mid 1980s were a rougher bunch — I’ll never forget the guy next to us yelling “Hey, Smith, hit him with your purse” over and over at Steve Smith — and I cannot get the “Detroit sucks” and “Dino sucks” (three, elongated syllables on each chant).

Those are the things that made me fall in love with hockey, for better or for worse. They are also my earliest clear memories.

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I remember talking to a friend recently about the nature of sports as “the language of men.” She has an older brother who is not into sports — their dad isn’t into sports — and she took some umbrage in this. But, I stand by this fact; talking about sports is teh easiest way to talk to a stranger. I can meet a new American man and almost automatically chat this fellow up. Solely because I know sports.

I have my dad to thank for that.

Not only did my dad have season tickets to the local hockey team from before I was born, but he also had Bears tickets for much of my youth. Several of his friends tailgated before the Bear games. Cold or warm. Rain or shine. I’m not even much of a football fan, but I learned a lot from those times and the way human American males interact. My dad taught me to throw, how to shoot a basketball, how to bat, etc. We played catch.

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Because of the circumstances around my relationship with my family — especially during the past 10 years — and the general nature of my relationship with my emotions, I don’t tend to emote a lot to my parents. Being male, especially, doesn’t make for easy conversations with my father about my feelings.

Which is why, when my dad and I speak on the phone, the general conversation is about sports. There’s, sometimes, a sentence or two about our jobs or health or if something happened in either of our lives (when my car died, when he had surgery, etc.), but it almost always goes back to sports. I talk to my dad for far longer than I do nearly anyone else, but the vast majority of it is about men we’ve never met. Men wearing silly costumes that have the word “Chicago” on it, somewhere. Men chasing after a ball.

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The Final Countdown isn’t much of a record, of course. Europe isn’t much of a band. The title track is completely ridiculous, but quite emblematic of the times. The middle of that decade was awash in excess. It pushed “absurd” to the point of strain.

The song’s famous largely because it was used on Arrested Development — the greatest television comedy series — as the theme song of the show’s best character. It toed the line of loving and mocking the song. Which is how “The Final Countdown” should be featured.

(It fits here because it was cast as a sports song in the 1990s. Back in the Jock Jams era.)

(It should also be noted that nearly every band named after a place totally sucks. Exceptions are: Boston [but only their first record] and Earth.)

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On some level, it’s sad, I guess. My dad and I aren’t super close, despite the fact that we look very alike and that we share so much dna. When he’s not well, my sister is the one who alerts me to this fact, generally. I call him on holidays and he sends me a check for my birthday, but circumstance has made it such that neither of us reaches out a lot. It’s a very male thing, of course, that both of us hasn’t made the effort. But, it’s also pretty OK by me.

And I hope, it’s OK by him.

Though we’re not close, those formative years are priceless. Playing catch. Watching ‘Hawk games from the first balcony. Booing Dino Ciccarelli. The smell of the bathroom at the old stadium.

It’s probably fitting that I don’t have a photo of my dad — or my sister or my mom or any family, really — posted anywhere in my house, but I do have a framed photo of old Chicago Stadium. He has one in his office, too.