Friday Playlist

This week’s playlist is dominated by the ladies.

“Pool Hopping” – illuminati hotties
Yeah, pool hopping sounds great and all, until every pool you jump into is 95°.

“Jealous Boy” – The Bug Club
A suggestion from brother-in-music E$. I’ve been trying to figure out who this group sounds like for a couple weeks but can’t quite pin it down. So I stopped worrying about it and focus on enjoying the song.

“davina mccall” – Wet Leg
I somehow completely missed their new album dropping last week. It has an 86 on Album of the Year, so I need to get on it.

“Wreck” – Neko Case
Neko never sits still, so you her output can vary. This is in line with her best work.

“Welcome To The End” – Maren Morris
This is on a benefit album for an organization that supports LGBTQ+ kids. Lord knows our government is going to do anything to help those kids anymore.

“Quitting” – Eliza Mclamb
A delightful power-pop jam produced by Sarah Tudzin of illuminati hotties.

“If She Was A Boy” – Gatlin
I was sure this was Katie Gavin of MUNA at first. It sounds a lot like her. Wild that their names are so close.

“Summer Girl” – HAIM
I recently saw someone describe HAIM as the “queens of the summer song.” If that is true, this was the song where that began.

“No Curse” – Waxahatchee
From 2017, when there was a little more of her punk origins in Katie Crutchfield’s sound.

Reader’s Notebook, 7/17/25

This week has gone a little off the rails. We are expecting a contractor at the house shortly, which was planned. Had another very much unplanned visit on Tuesday that ended up costing us the equivalent of a nice vacation. More about those next week, probably. I had planned on saving my latest RN post for after I finish my current book. I’ll go ahead and post what I have to get some content up for my loyal readers.


The Barn – Wright Thompson
One of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. Thompson dives deep into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago who was lynched by white men while visiting family in Mississippi. Not just about the murder or resulting acquittal of the men who killed him. But also about the environment in Mississippi at the time and how it got to be that way. Thompson went way back, to when the earliest Europeans made it to Mississippi and their interactions with the native people of those lands, through the age of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and into the Jim Crow era. Along the way he ties little moments of history together to explain how (some) Southern whites harbor grievances against their northern counterparts. He also jumps ahead to today, to examine how the truth of the Till murder has long been buried in Mississippi, at least amongst the white population.

This is important to Thompson because he grew up a few miles from the barn where Till was tortured and likely murdered before his body was weighed down and thrown into a river. Despite being the son of progressive Democrats who fought for civil rights, Thompson had no idea about the history of the barn. How on earth could that happen, he wonders? Well, turns out a lot of white folks thought it was better just to move on and never discuss it rather than honor Till’s memory and maybe teach their children to treat people who looked different than them a little better than their grandparents did.

Like I said, this was a difficult read. Each day, though, I think it becomes increasingly important to keep stories like Emmett Till’s alive as a minority of Americans who have taken over power think it’s better to hide the more disturbing parts of our history because it might make white people uncomfortable. Don’t get me started…


The Killing Of The Tinkers – Ken Bruen
Book two in Bruen’s Jack Taylor series. As with most book series, I don’t know that the bones of the story were much different from the first. That said, Bruen is such a good writer and the story is so tight and quick that I have no problems sticking with it.

Tuesday Links

Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks II set came out a few weeks ago. I’m not a big enough fan to wade through all the songs, but I did sample the ones highlighted in the various articles that dropped at the same time. Naturally, Steven Hyden had the best of the bunch.

Another Side of Bruce Springsteen


At some point I lost touch with Joe Posnanski, I believe it was when he took all his posts behind a paywall and stopped writing regularly for any commercial sites. Thankfully I was forwarded this piece and see that it looks like his site is free again. Or at least partially free?

For baseball fans my age, the 1979 All-Star Game was a keystone moment in our sports lives. The All-Star Game as an institution was awesome to us because of Dave Parker’s throw. That was the first All-Star Game I ever watched. While I don’t watch the game much anymore – tonight I’ll likely be watching Slow Horses on my iPad while I have the Fever game muted on the TV – I still get a little tingle when it comes around. Its roots are in that night I sat on my aunt and uncle’s horrible brown shag carpet and watched Parker unleash a missile from right field.

The 1979 All-Star Game drew a 45 share. Yes, it was a Tuesday night, and there was nothing else on television, but forty-five percent of all the televisions on in America were pointed to the Seattle Kingdome for that game. There were 115 million fewer people living in America in 1979 … and yet 24 million more people watched that All-Star Game than the one last year. It was just that big a deal.

“Bet” — On Dave Parker, and THAT Throw


Both a fascinating piece about how film works, and a reminder that George Lucas kind of sucks.

This is not the ‘Star Wars’ you thought you knew


A disturbing look at why the wildfires in Canada never seem to go away. Zombie fires? Seriously?

Why Canada is riddled with wildfires that burn year-round


Wait, I thought liberals were supposed to be the snowflakes.

Attorney general: ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ sign cannot be displayed in Idaho schools

Weekend Notes

We had a great weekend highlighted by some visitors, both local and from KC, and lots of basketball. But first we need to jump back and review C’s trip to Bloomington for orientation.


Orientation

We got up bright and early to make check-in at 9:00 AM last Monday. Thank goodness the I–69 extension is finally complete after a decade of work. Once you get out of the Indy construction it is a breeze to get to B-town. No more stoplights every two miles!

For the first 90 minutes we were together, but then separated for the rest of the day. I went to several parent sessions, most of which were informative. We were supposed to link back up for dinner before the parents were dismissed and the kids shuffled on to evening activities, but C decided to have dinner with her future roommate, who lives in Bloomington. I might have been a little annoyed she didn’t share this with me earlier in the day so I could have left before I had to return home in rush hour traffic. Alas…

I was back for an 11:00 session on Tuesday, which was also when she had her enrollment appointment. We finished about the same time then took a tour of the dorm she will live in. She’s in the biggest dorm on campus, it’s actually a complex that has three satellite buildings and one central one. She’s excited because there’s a Starbucks in the basement of the main building. There were a bunch of high school campers there so the cafeteria was bustling. For some reason they didn’t walk us through it but the food sure smelled good.

It seems like she had a good time. One of her best friends was in her group both days, so that helped. They stayed in single dorm rooms and her AC unit wasn’t working, so she had to battle a sweltering room to try to sleep. She had fun at dinner with her future roomie. She seems happy with her schedule, although she has an 8:00 AM class two days. We’ll see how that goes. We will move her in on August 20, so it’s coming up quick. Our bonus room is starting to fill up with our many Amazon and Target purchases for her.


Travel Hoops

This was a big AAU weekend, both open for recruiting and for teams that play on a “circuit,” it was the last weekend to lock in places for next week’s nationals.[1] Her team had games Thursday through today. We went to watch them play their Friday games. She didn’t tell me that her coach’s daughter asked if she could play. I would probably have let her if she had told me and her coach thought it wouldn’t get him in trouble. I guess it’s probably best, as I’m not sure her body is ready for the full-contact style that is travel ball.

Her team played great in their first game, coming from seven down to beat a solid team by one. Then they got absolutely run out of the gym by a team from Nebraska. This team was all skinny, scrappy white girls. But they could shoot the shit out of the ball and ran great offense. L was glad she wasn’t on the court for that one.

I missed most of that one because I walked down to the feature court to watch a U17 game that featured a team that had two girls over 6’3”. There were coaches from Texas, Duke, NC State, Auburn, Rutgers, IU, and plenty of smaller D1 schools sitting along the baseline, so I figured they must be big prospects. Turned out they weren’t. They were both kind of messes. But this girl on the other team was crazy good. She was only 5’10” or so but had a crazy handle, made great passes, and moved well without the ball. Oh, and she also hit four straight 3’s without touching the rim before the other team decided to stick one defender on her and never let her get open. I always get mad there aren’t rosters at these events so I can look up kids and see where they are ranked and track where they end up going.

I know L missed playing travel, but her team was kind of weird this year, and I think it would have really frustrated her had she played. There were several girls who seemed to have no interest in playing team ball. I’m guessing one girl was told by her high school coach to work on her shot, because she took at least 800 shots a game. And she’s not that good. Other girls just would not pass ever, and either take their own awful shots or pound the ball until they turned it over.

It was nice for L’s coach to tell me several times this season how much he missed her. Not because she would have been the best player or anything, that definitely was not true. But as I’ve said many times, she has a steadying presence and is a vocal leader who isn’t afraid to call out teammates. His team needed that, as his daughter is probably the best player but very quiet and always tries not to step on people’s toes since her dad is the coach. Another girl who has played for him for six years, and is L’s best friend on the team, is fiery and physical, but also isn’t good at bringing teammates together. Had L played that would have given them four girls who had been together four seasons, plus a true voice on the court, and perhaps that could have brought the entire roster together.

Or maybe L would have been pissed after every game because this player never passes and that player doesn’t know the sets etc.

Some of her friends were down in Louisville for the weekend. You may have heard on the news that the tournament was suspended Sunday because there were reports of shots being fired at the Expo Center. It turned out there was no shooter, but I’m sure that was awful to experience. We’ve been there the last three years and that place is jam packed. I can’t imagine what it would have been like had someone actually been firing bullets in a building filled with girls playing basketball.

One of her friends who was there texted, “Well, I guess someone went 0–4 and was DONE.” Sometimes you have to laugh not to cry?


Wimbledon

I did not watch much of the tournament over the past two weeks. The match I paid most attention to was Thursday’s women’s semifinal between Amanda Anisimova and Aryna Sabalenka. What a fun match! Anisimova rebounded from taking an extended break from tennis a little over a year ago to upset the #1 seed and make her first Slam final.

What struck me was Sabalenka. I’ve never been a huge fan, for a variety of reasons. But over the past year I’ve found myself admiring her more because she is such a compelling, yet tragic, figure. When she’s on, she seems like by far the best player in the game. But she has these hiccups in the biggest moments, and then often very honest, human reactions to them. You can see her losing faith in some aspect of her game, and the rest of it slowly unraveling. Maybe the reason I didn’t initially like her is because she came across as an old-school, Eastern European robot designed to destroy anything in her path. These meltdowns make her much more relatable. The fact that she seems to have grown as a person, and usually apologizes for her mistakes and mis-speaks makes me like her more.

But I was still rooting against her. Shame Anisimova had nothing left for Saturday’s final.

I didn’t watch the men’s final because I was busy. As you’ll read about in a moment.


Visitors

My old high school pal Stacey and her kids were in town over the weekend. They came by Saturday evening, along with our local friends the H’s, for dinner, drinks, games, and conversation. Some big storms passed right before dinner, but they cooled it off just enough that late in the evening the kids were able to get in the pool for a swim in the dark. I think the water was still around 95° so it wasn’t exactly refreshing…


Fever Game

Sunday L and I went to our first ever Indiana Fever game with our visitors. It was a big game, as Dallas was in town with Paige Bueckers. L is not shy about saying she’s really not a Caitlin Clark fan anymore,[2] and that she much prefers Bueckers. This was the first time the two phenoms were facing each other as pros – CC was out injured for the first Dallas-Indiana game of the year – so it became one of the most anticipated games of the season.

It was a great game…for about 15 minutes. The Fever were up 33–31 when they absolutely blew the game open with a 31–8 run. Soooo many breakout layups. I’m not sure Dallas has ever practiced transition defense. It reminded me of how KU ran all over Miami in the second half of their 2022 Elite Eight game.

The arena was packed, so that run was great. I don’t think it was quite as loud as it was last month in game six of the NBA Finals, but the place was rocking. Interestingly, there were also a lot of young ladies there who love Paige, too. When Dallas did something right, which wasn’t often, there was a smattering of applause. But when Paige did something, there were big roars. Not as big as when anyone on the Fever did something, but it was also very noticeable.

CC is obviously the big draw, but as this is Indiana the top six or seven in rotation have really been embraced by the crowd. Everyone loves the quiet determination and brilliant scoring of Kelsey Mitchell. Aliyah Boston is admired as much for being the public face of the team off the court as for her low post game. How can you not love Lexie Hull? But newcomer Sophie Cunningham is the clear #2 choice behind CC. I think the girls love her because she’s a badass, she’s Insta glamorous, and she plays with flair. And, of course, the dudes like her for all those reasons and a few more. We sat pretty high up but I heard several people yell “We love you Sophie!” A little kid got on the big screen with his sign that said “Marry Me Sophie C!” There was lots of laughter when they showed him, and comments about how he wasn’t the only one with that dream. Props to him; you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

The Fever won in a blowout. Clark hit a long 3 to start the game, had some amazing passes, but otherwise continued to look like she’s not 100%. Cunningham had a big game. And Bueckers had the best statistical line of anyone. Just about everyone went home happy. Well, other than the Dallas players, I guess.


  1. L’s team plays in the U–16 Rise level on the Under Armour circuit. The top 32 teams play in the platinum division next weekend. Coming into this weekend they were ranked 28th, and their coach thought they had a good schedule so could at worst defend that spot.  ↩
  2. It’s mostly because of the whining and complaining and taking plays off on defense.  ↩

Friday Playlist

Between the holiday weekend and me spending mornings watching the Tour de France, I’ve been a little slower on getting through the music this week. I think I can still come up with a few decent ones to share with y’all.

“Summertime” – The Sundays
Pure pop genius.

“Paint A Picture” – The Hives
Yes, it is those Hives, back for more nonsense.

“Stay Out Of Place” – Idlewild
Speaking of bands that first broke out in the early part of the new millennium, these Scots are also back with new music. No where near their best, but I will always give them music a chance.

“All The World” – Pale Fire
Holy crap, these guys sound like classic Idlewild! And they are Scottish, too! This is from their 2020 album Husbands.

“Bag of Bones” – Lord Huron
Steven Hyden has a great piece on Uproxx about how Lord Huron might be the best example of a “popular but not famous” band at the moment. They sure don’t drift from the sound that made them famous.

“Insulin” – Black Honey
In addition to the latest shoegaze revival, can we also admit there’s a strong ‘90s alt rock revival thing going on? It seems like I’m playing a song that could easily be from 1995 every couple of weeks.

“Lonely Town” – Steve Queralt & Emma Anderson
Queralt is in Ride. Anderson was in Lush. This track manages to sound like both bands, which isn’t that big of a stretch since both were among the giants of the original British shoegaze movement.

“Cropduster” – Pearl Jam
The old joke about Pearl Jam was that they couldn’t keep a drummer. Over their first eight years, they had four official drummers and two unofficial, temporary ones.[1] Then in 1998, when Soundgarden was on hiatus, Matt Cameron filled in on tour when Jack Irons was unable to play. When Irons decided he did not want to tour anymore, Cameron became a permanent member of Pearl Jam.

As I stood in line to get lunch at IU orientation on Monday, I received an email from the band saying that Cameron was leaving. Reasons were not given. There was speculation he had tired of the band’s touring cycle, or that he was just interested in working on his own projects while staying close to home. Chris Cornell’s widow finally reached an agreement with his former bandmates and there is expected to be a new album of leftover Soundgarden songs, so perhaps he is focused on that. He gave Pearl Jam 27 years. I think he’s earned the right to do what he wants. Like so many fans, I hope Cameron isn’t facing some kind of major health issue.

He wasn’t my favorite drummer; I’ve said many times I found his style too clinical and precise, and I thought his best playing was on their last album when he seemed to let loose more. But if he was the big brother they needed to get out of the Nineties alive, it was worth it. I don’t think rest of the band are ready to stop touring, so it will be interesting to see who they bring in next.

Props to Matt. He had several writing credits, this is my favorite of them.

“Sunchaser” – Arc de Soleil
This cat is Swedish. His music is very reminiscent of Khruangbin’s.

“Atlas Drowned” – Gang of Youths
I was listening to some GoY this week and wondered what they were up to. My internet sleuthing suggests they may be taking a long sabbatical before they begin work on their next album. And then they are infamous for taking a long time once they get into the studio. That’s a bummer. To you bells in the curve, I will love you but love not the powers you serve.


  1. Matt Cameron played on some of the early demos that were sent to Eddie Vedder by Jack Irons before Eddie was invited to join the band. And Dave Grohl filled in temporarily during a set of dates in Australia in the ’96–97 range when Irons had some health issues and Foo Fighters were serving as the opening act. That would have been a hell of a show!  ↩

Greatest Songs Of The Century (So Far)

It’s been 12 years since I’ve updated my Favorite Songs of All Time list. Which seems like a crime for someone like me: a music freak with lots of free time and a blog. I’ve thought about it a lot, trust me. I’ve reached the point in my life, though, where the return on that process doesn’t seem to justify the effort that would go into it. Streaming has messed with my head too, and I just don’t listen to the old songs as often as I used to, so I think I’m worried I would need to scrap big parts of the 2013 list if I ever jumped back into it.

However, last week The Bridge, 90.9 FM in Kansas City, which I stream often, played their top 909 songs of the century (so far), based on listener voting. I streamed off-and-on all week, but really locked in Friday evening, somewhere around #50, after all our holiday guests had left. It’s amazing how fast you can go through a countdown when there aren’t commercials!

That experience inspired me to crank out my own Best of the 2000s list. Which, again, seemed daunting. I gave myself a couple rules to simplify the task. First, I would only select songs from my annual Best Of lists. Second, for the years I did not make a Favorites list, I would only do a quick glance at my Apple Music catalog, The Bridge’s list, and a brief search of the Internet to make sure I was including anything important for those years. I wasn’t going to spend hours on 2000–03. Finally, I would try to keep the descriptions of each song brief.

(Several of these appeared on The Bridge’s countdown, so I’ll put that number in parenthesis.)

25 – “Wreckage” – Pearl Jam
I’ll sneak this in at 25, as recency bias is still in play, but after spending most of this century making good but rarely great music, Pearl Jam found a new path in 2024 and it paid off with one of the best songs of their entire careers. I still listen to it often.

24 – “Can’t Do Much” – Waxahatchee
Katie Crutchfield is an American treasure.

23 – “The House That Heaven Built” – Japandroids (#294)
Straight ahead, roaring, beer drinking, gasoline burning, rock ’n’ roll.

22 – “American English” – Idlewild
True story: one of the first nights that S worked a 24-hour shift in the summer of 2003, after we had gotten married and moved to Indy, I listened to this over-and-over-and-over. I loved it so much I was sure there had to be some kind of hidden meaning in it. Turned out it was just a great song, and also my introduction to Scottish indie rock.

21 – “Bohemian Like You” – Dandy Warhols (#271)
Looking back this may have been the first, big indie rock song I ever loved.

20 – “Catch the Sun” – Doves
Then again, I heard this a few months earlier in 2000, so this would be first.

19 – “Pynk” – Janelle Monáe featuring Grimes (#669)
I’m not sure that any artist this century has been as successful making insanely ambitious music as Ms. Monáe.

18 – “Believe” – Amen Dunes
There were a couple better known and possibly more deserving songs that could have filled this spot. None of them have the hold on me this song has.

17 – “Anything But Me” – MUNA
The best indie song that is sneakily a straight pop song of the century.

16 – “For Nancy (’Cos It Already Is)” – Pete Yorn
Musicforthemorningafter was the first great album of the century, and maybe the first new album I ever downloaded in full from “file sharing” sites and then burned onto a CD-R. Ah, nostalgia! This absolute banger was the first thing I heard from that album, on the Music Choice channels on my cable TV package.

15 – “Motion Sickness” – Phoebe Bridgers (#93)
Phoebe is our Indie Rock Queen, and this is the song that will likely stand above everything else she does in her career.

14 – “Call Your Girlfriend” – Robyn (#199)
Any one of three Robyn songs could have been here, but this wins thanks to perhaps the greatest video of the century.

13 – “Stacking Chairs” – Middle Kids
Marriage is hard. This song is a reminder that sometimes the best way to tell your partner that you love them and will always be there for them is through a simple act of helping to clean up after a party.

12 – “Hey Ya!” – Outkast (#2)
The greatest crossover song of the 21st Century. You heard it on pop stations, Black stations, and rock stations, saw the video on MTV. It was everywhere. And, at least to me, it never got old. This was #2 on The Bridge’s countdown.

11 – “Wild” – Spoon (They had 10 songs on the list, but somehow this didn’t make it.)
The best song from the most consistent and enduring indie rock band of the last 30 years.

10 – Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand (#25)
What an amazingly awesomely arranged song.

9 – “Ball & A Biscuit” – The White Stripes
OK, allow me to brag for a moment. When The Bridge started their countdown, I thought ahead to what might possibly be the #1 song. Their playlist leans to the alt/indie rock side of the spectrum, although what makes them so great is how they play plenty of modern soul, thoughtful hip hop, a smattering of enlightened country, and plenty of classics that have influenced all those modern genres. I gave the subject about 30 seconds of consideration before landing on what I thought would be the top song.

When they got to #1 sometime around 10 PM eastern Friday, my guess was confirmed: “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes. It was so obvious! I told S and she was whatever the exact opposite of impressed was. Oh well…

Anyway, “SNA” is a GREAT song. But as my brother in music E$ put it, it would be better if we had all heard it 10,000 fewer times. And it’s not even the best song on the album it comes from. This is that song.

8 – “Phantom Limb” – The Shins (#160)
The most beautiful song of the century.

7- “Mistaken For Strangers” – The National (#213)
The most cinematic song of the century.

6- “Float On” – Modest Mouse (#6)
This was the song I was listening to when S’s water broke the night before M was born and we officially became parents. Good thing it is a jam!

5 – The Rat – The Walkmen (#206)
Anger kind of went out once Korn and bands of that ilk ruined it in the late 90s. This is the best angry song of this century, though, a lament of both a fractured relationship and what that relationship cost the narrator.

4 – The Gold – Manchester Orchestra (#530)
The moment MO figured out if they dialed everything back just a touch, their music worked better than when everything was pushed to 11.

3 – “Stuck Between Stations” – The Hold Steady (#164)
I had dabbled a bit in The Hold Steady’s music before they released Boys and Girls In America in 2006. Notably “You Little Hoodrat Friend,” one of the key songs that helped guide me into the indie rock world. But the first time I heard this? It blew me away with its literacy, its humor, and its pure, American, bar-band rock.

2 – “Red Eyes” – The War on Drugs (#170)
Another band I could throw a handful of songs into a hat and be happy with any I selected. This is the song that launched TWOD’s ascent from esoteric indie rock darlings into the mainstream of the indie rock world.

1 – “The Modern Leper” – Frightened Rabbit
A song, and an album, that really fucked me up. In the best possible way. And continued doing so for years. Until the pain that birthed them became too much for Scott Hutchison and they took on a whole other level of fucked up-ish-ness.

Two other of my annual #1’s made the Bridge’s list:
2009 #1 “Whirring” – Joy Formidable was #309
2016 #1 “Pain” – The War on Drugs was #153

Holiday Weekend Notes

C and I are off to Bloomington early Monday morning for her IU orientation, thus the Sunday evening post. Our holiday weekend was a little less chaotic than in recent years, so I’ll throw in some other stuff that happened over the past week as well.


Holiday Weekend

Our Fourth was fairly laid back, at least compared to recent years. We only had 15 relatives over, and just two of the young nephews were here so the pool was all theirs. I have a new Blackstone griddle and used it to cook burgers, brats, and hot dogs. I thought they all turned out pretty good, and it was much easier than past years when I tried to do the same meal on a combination of a pellet smoker and charcoal grill.

It was funny looking back at pictures of July 4’s past, and seeing how we had rather casual gatherings at other people’s houses, mostly S’s dad and stepmom’s, until 2012 when we bought our lake house. For the next six years holidays were always down there.[1] After a year’s break when we moved and had an unfinished backyard, starting in 2019 our pool became holiday central. Our girls don’t really remember the gatherings that didn’t involve water.

The girls were all out with friends in the evening and made it home safely.

Saturday evening S and I went to dinner with some friends.

Sunday the whole family got together with S’s group of best medical school friends for the first time in ages. We had a long ride on the hosts’ boat after dinner, which was cut a little short when we noticed storms were headed our way. We made it home before some nice, long, loud thunderstorms boomed for a couple hours. We needed the rain and it looks like the storms will knock the heat down for at least a couple days.


Pacers/Myles Turner

Wednesday I was sitting down to eat my lunch when I saw the shocking news that Myles Turner had signed with the Milwaukee Bucks. It was a shock because all indications were that he was close to re-signing with the Pacers, who were willing to pay the luxury tax to keep him. I was certainly surprised, even if I suggested a week earlier that keeping him wasn’t the sure thing it seemed to be before Tyrese Haliburton’s injury.

Also shocking was how the move was panned for both teams by most NBA analysts. Usually at least one side is the winner, but it didn’t seem so in this case.

In order to sign Turner, the Bucks waived and “stretched” Dame Lillard’s contact. Meaning they took the two years of money they still owed him and spread it across five years. So they will be paying Turner an average of $26 million over the next four years, and have a cap hit of $22.5 million over five years for Lillard’s contract. Which means they are effectively paying Myles $48.5 million over the life of his contract. Myles is a nice player, but he ain’t worth $48M. The deal also almost completely hamstrings the Bucks from making further moves, which is important because they don’t have a true point guard on the roster at the moment.

Very strange.

Then the Pacers took heat for seemingly letting Turner walk simply to avoid paying the luxury tax. It’s hard enough to get free agents to come to Indianapolis in the first place, a task made harder as the team has a reputation for being frugal. Letting Turner go seemed to reinforce that view. One analyst suggested letting Myles walk would cause a mutiny amongst the rest of the team, which I thought was a little extreme.

Our idiot local sports columnist, who doesn’t know much about how NBA contracts work, suggested that Turner and his agent were the bad guys here, and that they lied about the Pacers not being willing to pay the tax. He also claimed the Pacers had offered a lot more than Turner was saying.

Which misses the point that the Bucks still offered more than whatever the Pacers’ final offer was. For some reason us Midwesterners always think our best players should take hometown discounts to stay with our teams[2] Yes, Myles Turner has made a ridiculous amount of money in his life. But why should he, or any other player, not take the biggest contract offered them?

Anyway, whatever the Pacers’ motivations, I totally get the move. Myles is on the back end of his career, turning 30 this year, and has shown some minor decline. This past season he was a nearly 40% 3-point shooter when Haliburton was on the court. In contrast, he wasn’t even a 30% shooter when Hali was sitting. Maybe those stabilize over the course of a season, but with Hali out all of next year, the argument to let Myles walk makes more sense.

This also means the Pacers don’t have to make a decision on Bennedict Mathurin this summer. They can let him play, likely as a starter, next season, see if his game improves/messes better with the Pacers system, and then extend or trade him next summer.

Biggest of all, next year’s draft is supposed to be very deep, with at least three franchise building block players at the top. With the new flattened lottery odds, you don’t have to be terrible to sneak into the top three. See Dallas this year. So let your center walk, play without your best player all season, and then hope the first round pick you re-acquired a month ago turns into a mega lottery ticket in the 2026 draft.

I get why some Pacers fans are pissed. But this is a completely defensible move from both Myles Turner’s and the Pacers’ perspectives. There are no true bad guys here.

I also laughed when I turned on the local news Saturday and they said there was big, breaking Pacers news! Yep, Indiana traded for Memphis backup center Jay Huff. Maybe they were just being puny, since Huff is 7’1”. But this is not a franchise altering trade. Hell, I didn’t even know Huff was in the NBA.


M’s Adventures

M was home for the weekend – and is actually working from our house Monday because she had a dentist appointment in the morning – but her real fun was the weekend before the holiday. She flew to the Bay Area to visit her sorority “little,” who lives in San Jose. It seems like they had a great time and she got to see almost everything she wanted to see, although the marine layer was thick so the Golden Gate Bridge was totally socked in and their trip to the beach in Santa Cruz wasn’t filled with sunshine.

It was a bit of a hassle to get there, though. Her first flight out of Cincinnati was delayed because of both storms near the airport, and storms between Cincy and Denver, where her first leg ended. Before she had taken off she got a message from Southwest saying she would not make her connection and that they had re-booked her on a new flight…the next morning. Keep in mind she was traveling alone, and for the first time no less!

Luckily she has an aunt that lives in Denver. S made a call and Aunt K was thrilled for M to come spend the night.

However, I was tracking M’s flight and noticed the arrival time in Denver kept moving up. And the flight to SFO kept getting delayed. There was a chance she would make it. Sure enough rather than fly nearly to Texas to get around storms, the pilots found a gap in the storms over Kansas, and they landed nearly on time.

I had already texted M that she would probably have to Uber to her aunt’s house. When she was on the ground and responded I told her that there was a chance she might make her second flight. She got very excited. And then they sat on the tarmac for at least 30 minutes before they pulled to the gate…just as the SFO flight was pulling away from its gate.

Oh well.

Turns out they were sitting on the tarmac so the ground crew could pull bags for people who were booked on other flights, including M even though she had been rebooked. Sometimes the right hand doesn’t talk to the left at Southwest. So she stood around for another half hour waiting for her bag and then had to go ask for assistance and was told her bag was on its way to California. Egad. She was a little flustered.

By now it was close to midnight in Denver, close to 2:00 AM to her body. Once she was in her Uber I went to bed and S woke up to track her progress. M made it safely to her aunt’s house just after 3:00 AM Eastern. She was thoroughly wiped out, but at least she didn’t have to sleep in the airport. We had no idea if she could have checked into a hotel if we found her a room since she’s only 20.

She got a decent night’s sleep and then her uncle and cousin drove her back to DEN the next morning for her delayed trip into SFO. She was excited that her bag was waiting at the Southwest office for her and she didn’t have to wait for it to come out on the carousel.[3]

A bummer that cut half a day off her time in Cali, but she has a story! And the rest of the weekend was great.


TdF

The Tour de France started Saturday. I doubt any of you care about that. Just in case anyone does have any interest in this year’s race, this is a hilarious and thorough accounting of each team and the primary contenders.

An entirely vibes-based guide to the 2025 Tour de France


  1. Or at least the closest weekend was. A few years, when the Fourth was mid-week, we stayed home and went to a local pool on the 4th and saved the family lake gathering for the weekend.  ↩
  2. Of course Myles is staying in the Midwest, so it’s not like he’s going to LA or New York.  ↩
  3. As a good dad I told her she probably should have reduced her toiletries since she was just going for a weekend and not checked a bag. This is why we are here.  ↩

Independence Day Playlist

It’s one of my favorite music days of the year! For the seventh time, I present my Independence Day playlist!

As a reminder, these aren’t necessarily patriotic songs, nor ones that have anything to do with this holiday, other than their titles. The first edition back in 2019 included 11 songs. With one addition this year – can you find it? – we are up to 22 songs. It’s not really made for backyard parties, but more for the getting ready before the crowd comes moments, when things are a little quieter and you are more reflective.

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Reader’s Notebook, 7/2/25

My Documents – Kevin Nguyen
Books like this can be unsettling. It is about a fictional moment in modern America, but through the worst kind of serendipity, lines up with real events we are seeing on the news these days.

The book follows an extended Vietnamese-American family that crosses several generations, specifically a set of cousins. One set of the cousins have a Vietnamese mother and appear Asian. The other have a white mother and have a less pronounced, more racially ambiguous appearance.

After a series of terrorist attacks in the US are discovered to be the coordinated acts by middle aged, Vietnamese-American men, the government rounds up nearly all Vietnamese-Americans and sends them to camps. Those that can pass as American are often overlooked. Thus the story splits, with most of the overtly Asian cousins being sent to camps and those who can “pass” being left among the general population. Via a secret network that gets goods and information in and out of the camps, two of the cousins work together to get the real story of what is happening inside the camps into the mainstream media.

Good thing the idea of our government setting up prison camps inside our own borders that are used to house specific ethnic groups is something that can only happen in a novel, right?


The Guards – Ken Bruen
Years ago I read a couple Ken Bruen novels. I keep seeing his name pop up on various crime novel lists, especially his Jack Taylor series. However, the early books in that series are not available at the Indy library so I never got into it.

Until I decided to order a few of the books from a used book store. This is where it all starts, and it is gritty, terse, and very Irish. I’ll be sticking with it. Also rip to Bruen, who died earlier this year.


Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino
I LOVED this book. Despite that, it’s a bit hard to explain.

Adina is born in Philadelphia at the same moment Voyager 1 is launched in 1977. It’s soon apparent she is not a normal kid. When she is given an old fax machine as a toy a few years later, she sends a message to her own phone number. Surprisingly, she gets a response, telling her to send more. In that moment she realizes she is an alien assigned to send observations of life on earth back to her home planet, via that fax machine.

We follow Adina through her life. It is an interesting journey, to understate things. She doesn’t always fit in with the people around her, but that never really bothers her. She just keeps sending her faxes. And occasionally probing for information on who she really is, where she comes from, and when the people on her home planet will come to retrieve her.

When I already like a book and it has a satisfying ending, that is like an extra large cherry on top for me. Bertino absolutely nails the ending here. I went back and read the closing paragraphs several times.

One reason I think I really connected with this so much is that there were some similarities between Adina’s childhood and mine. My parents split up later than hers did, and with less trauma, but some of the stuff she went through mirrored the years just after my parents’ divorce. She is younger than me, but there were plenty of common cultural touch points in her childhood and mine. And I also sympathized with being smart and a little socially awkward and digging holes for yourself because of that combination of traits. Although Adina is way smarter than I ever was.


Nöthin’ But A Good Time – Tom Beaujour & Richard Bienstock
I wasn’t super into heavy metal in the 1980s. I liked plenty of metal singles, the ones that cracked the Top 40, from bands like Ratt and Scorpions and Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe and so on. I certainly enjoyed their videos, which often featured scantily clad women. I even owned a few albums by those bands. But I was never all into the scene.

So why would I read a book about that era? Because it was the most outrageous, unhinged, sin-laden part of the music world at the time, and all those bands had some SERIOUS stories. Which made this a highly entertaining, if sometimes off-color, read.

One takeaway that had nothing to do with the actual music or bands was how little music scenes pop up all the time, and get geographic centers where like minded kids gravitate to, and then if the scene takes off the whole thing get quickly overexposed. Name a sub-genre that started selling singles and albums and this always happens. It certainly did with the hair metal scene in LA.

It was also interesting what bands got pulled into this book. It was mostly LA bands, but also included east coasters like Twisted Sister and Cinderella. But Van Halen were only viewed as big brothers, never actually part of the scene. Bon Jovi gets a lot of coverage for shepherding bands like Cinderella and Skid Row into the mainstream, but there’s not a page about that band’s success despite them being the biggest band of that era. Although then the argument becomes was Bon Jovi hair metal, and what bands do and don’t fit that category. Maybe it came down to what bands the authors had relationships with, and which ones would talk to them.

June Media

Movies, Shows, etc

NBA Playoffs
A+, until Hali blew out his achilles.

Your Friends and Neighbors
I think I have this complaint about all but the best modern, streaming dramedies: there were the wrong number of episodes. Some shows go on two episodes too long, others have two too few. It’s a tough needle to thread. I felt like this show had, maybe, 1.5 too many entires. So close but the middle part became a little too trashy, modern soap-ish and could have been trimmed. And as a show where almost every person in it is terrible, those sections where it was not as compelling really stuck out. I also wondered if this show really knew what it wanted to be. It pin-balled between noir-ish drama, schlocky soap, standard murder mystery, and comedy. I think you can do all that successfully if the writing is a little more dialed in and the overall direction of the show more confident. Both those aspects get like an 80 so it came across as unfocused.

All that makes it sound like I didn’t like this. I did. It was funny when it tried. A solid cast around the always good Jon Hamm. We watched it over three nights and I was never reluctant to watch the next one.

B

Oceans 11
Black Bag
Soderbergh weekend! A re-watch of Ocean’s on S’s suggesting, then followed it up with his latest movie the next night. Ocean’s never disappoints. I had heard great things about Black Bag but it was a little disappointing to me, although perhaps my expectations were wrong. Too restrained and subtle even if it did build to an exciting climactic scene. No action and some of the drama-building felt navel gazey in the early stages. I wonder if I hadn’t seen it listed as the best action movie of the year I would have approached it differently.

A, B

The Accountant
I had heard at some point this was decent, and with the sequel out figured it was worth checking out. I couldn’t get past the fact a boy with autism and anger issues was turned into a killing machine by his dad, and that’s supposed to be cool?

B-

Heart of Pearl
Wow, what a story. Former Jayhawk and Pacer Scot Pollard received a new heart just over a year ago. I knew a lot of that story. Seeing him go through the process and learning more about his background was pretty impactful. But seeing him meet his donor’s family…whoo. S and I watched together and that scene hit us both pretty hard. Sign up to be an organ donor.

A

The Bear, season four
See here.

A-

Van Halen – Live at the Capitol Centre 1982 First Night
I didn’t watch this whole thing. A combination of dodgy video and bad sound made it difficult to watch. Plus, come on, Dave is doing the minimum here. Wait, let me re-state: he’s doing the bare minimum as a vocalist. Plus his monologues were strange and cringey. But I guess if I was under the influence and in 1982, this would have made more sense.

B+

Titan: The OceanGate Disaster
The latest addition to the list of filthy rich white guy who ignores people who tell him his ideas are going to get people killed.

B+


Shorts, YouTubes, etc

Eddie Murphy Does The Greatest Tracy Morgan Impression
I never skip Eddie doing Tracy.

Joshua Jackson Shares a Great George Clooney ‘Ocean’s 11’ Story | The Rich Eisen Show
Great Clooney story with a bonus incredible Soderbergh story.

Picking up bottles and cans to pay for a lift
Possibly the silliest Beau Miles bullshit ever.

It took me 5 years and $92 to finish this cabin
Whereas this is classic Beau Miles bullshit.

DRIVING AROUND THE WORLD | Japan to Hawaii
All I could think while watching this was that those kids probably aren’t vaccinated against anything. I could be wrong, but that was my thought.

Island Hopping Around Canada in our Camper
A Few Nights in an Off Grid Floating Cabin
I continue to be jealous of this couple.

Prince Finally Revealed The 6 Bands He Hated The Most!
Musical geniuses pissing on other artists is always fresh.

John C. Reilly Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters
Not sure what is better, Reilly’s comments or his outfit.

No Laying Up: Las Vegas
I’m not playing golf but I’ll still watch these guys’ travel series.

Why doesn’t France own the Channel Islands?
Very good question.

Alessandro Del Piero – Best Goals EVER
I love when the algorithm spits out stuff like this. Del Piero was my favorite Italian soccer player during the years I followed that closely. It’s cool how his career spanned the range from when you relied on grainy video to perfect HD.

15 Times Will Ferrell Broke Other Actors On Set
Only 15 times?

EXPERIMENT : HIGH PRESSURE WASHER 10000 PSI VS FRUITS
David Letterman would be proud.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere | Official Trailer
This is me, sitting up in my seat, showing interest.

Oreo CEO: Stop Making New Oreos
Have you seen the Selena Gomez Oreos? What the hell is that? We have an Oreo freak in the house and she agrees any variations other than the original are stupid.

Living Colour: Tiny Desk Concert
Fantastic.

Johnny Brunet
Last week I added a Blackstone griddle to my outdoor cooking setup. Since its arrival I’ve watched a lot of videos on how to season it, how to care for it, recipes, etc. This guy’s site is the best of the bunch.

Which Corvette is Best Corvette?
I watched this thinking it would be something my stepdad liked. I’m not sure if he would have liked this or not, but the whole weird bit made me laugh.


Car Content

First time in 17 months I didn’t watch a car review video.


Photography

Fujifilm X-E5 Review: The Series Just Got a MAJOR Up-Lift
Fujifilm X-E5 REVIEW: X100 killer?
Using the Fujifilm X-E5 as my daily camera for a week
The new Fujifilm X series camera that is certainly intriguing, but thanks to the state of the world economy and the popularity of Fuji cameras, it seems way overpriced for what it offers.

15 Years of Photography Lessons in 18 Minutes.
I brought my Leica M11P on a family trip to the Dolomites.
Postcards from Juneau, Alaska // Fuji X-T5
The Camera you told me I’d love…

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