Below is the eulogy I gave on Thursday, March 23, 2017 for my dad, Paul O'Toole.
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​​My dad disliked a lot of things. One of the things he disliked most were eulogies that turned a common sinner into the holiest of saints. In honor of his preference for a realistic portrait, I will now list all the annoying things he said and did throughout his life. I’ll try to keep it under an hour.

If you ever asked my dad "What does the clock say," he'd respond, "It doesn't say anything, it's a clock."

ERRGGH!  Just tell me the time!

Whenever the phone rang, he facetiously announced, “If it’s for me, I’m not here.” Every. Single. Time.

My dad loved sports. He knew football, baseball, and golf well, but he did not really get basketball. So rather than enjoy, say, any of the six Bulls Championships, he preferred to loudly announce to his sons that, “The fix is in,” whenever Jordan pulled off some fourth quarter heroics. 
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Upon the anniversary of the 3/9/87 release of Joshua Tree...

Last week, while stuck in a Lyft on the way to the airport, I heard a U2 album that I had never heard before. By definition a U2 album that I have not heard is anything after 1993's Zooropa. For all I know it could have come out last week or 20 years ago. Though I would not say the music was in any way excellent--or even that I will look it up on Spotify--I was pleasantly surprised to find I liked it. It was probably like how a lapsed Catholic feels who attends a Christmas mass, enjoys it, and thinks, “Maybe… maybe I will come back to this familiar, comforting thing and… well, maybe.”

Everything Zooropa and before I know, or once knew, extremely well. (Everything, that is, except for October, which no one alive knows well.) Between 1987 and 1996, at least five U2 albums were in my regular rotation.* Then, at some point before Pop came out in 1997, I stopped listening.
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