Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 107

Chart Week: December 6, 1976
Song: “More Than A Feeling” – Boston
Chart Position: #9, 12th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of December 25.

A perfect song.

I could end this post there and it would be enough. Why waste your and my time cranking out a thousand or so words breaking down the how and why when that simple phrase sums it all up?

Because that’s not the point of this series, obviously. In a pinch, though, say if asked as an elevator door was closing why I love “More Than A Feeling,” those three words would suffice. I’m not alone; I came across the same statement more than once while reading up on this all-time classic.

We’ll get to the tune itself in a moment, but first I wanted to use this entry as a chance to dive into my history as a true music geek. Because Boston might have been the band that started me down that path.

I certainly knew of Boston as a kid, although unlike several other records on this week’s countdown, I don’t have clear memories of it from late 1976. I do recall visiting my grandparents a couple summers later and seeing my uncle’s Boston albums in his collection and thinking the spaceship motif on the covers were cool. I may have been around when he played their second album, Don’t Look Back, and surely I heard its title track on the radio. But, again, no concrete memories from the first era of the band.

Fast forward to the early Eighties, when I began to form my own musical preferences. There were constant rumors of a new Boston album. They came on Entertainment Tonight and in quick comments by radio DJs. I heard them often enough that I had this low-key excitement for an album that may or may not exist by a band I wasn’t actually sure if I liked or not.

In the fall of 1986 Boston finally returned from their eight-year sabbatical with the monster ballad “Amanda,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks. I quickly bought the Third Stage album and listened to it over-and-over. I also read band leader Tom Scholz’s super detailed liner notes over-and-over as I listened. In them he documented the arduous process that was the making of the album, including tales of tape so old it was nearly disintegrating and having to apply a restorative agent by hand in hopes of saving a song he had been working on for nearly a decade.

His notes piqued my interest. Soon I was digging through the Rolling Stone magazine archives at the library, pulling out articles about Boston from 1976, 1978, and any other year that they made news. I learned about Scholz’s unique background and the band’s incredible, out-of-nowhere rise to popularity ten years earlier. I bought and absorbed the first two Boston albums. Soon I was playing “More Than A Feeling,” “Peace Of Mind,” and “Don’t Look Back” along with the songs from Third Stage as often as current Top 40 tracks.

This was the first time I ever did this, discovering a band and working backwards through their history, both in consuming their music and exploring their biographical details. I would soon repeat the exercise with Van Halen, buying most of their back catalog later that same fall. Eventually I would do it with U2, The Clash, and others, falling in love with a band’s latest tunes and then exploring their older music while reading all I could about them.

In the Nineties, when I was both hearing bands as they burst onto the scene and logging onto the Internet for the first time, I was able to become an expert on groups that had only been releasing albums for a matter of months. Online music magazines, message boards, band websites, and weekly alternative papers kept me on the forefront of knowledge about the Gen X Alternative Rock Revolution.

This quirk has never faded, even as my music tastes changed.

Given my personality, surely I was destined to behave this way. But the credit, or blame depending how you look at it, for falling into my first musical rabbit hole goes to Boston.

Now, the music.

Tom Scholz was/is a legitimate musical genius. He has crafted almost every song Boston has ever made in home studios, spending hours meticulously assembling them by playing most of the instruments, sending those sounds through devices he invented to arrive at the tones he desired, and producing and mixing them to their final format. An engineer educated at MIT, music was a hobby to provide relief from his job at Polaroid. Beginning in the late Sixties, he spent nearly a decade toiling in his basement, shipping his demos to record labels, only to have each attempt ignored or rejected.

Finally, in 1976, his demo for “More Than A Feeling,” featuring vocalist Brad Delp, got a bite from Epic Records. Within a matter of months the duo had written, recorded, and released an album; formed a touring band; earned a slot as the opening act for Black Sabbath; and then headlined their own tour that featured a stop at Madison Square Garden. A crazy trajectory of success, especially in the pre-Internet age. For over 30 years, Boston was the biggest selling debut album of all-time, finally eclipsed by Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction in 2008.

Scholz is a studio master, recording and re-recording tracks endlessly and then spending hours layering and editing them in order to get the perfect sound. Again, in the pre-digital age. Lining up multiple tracks was not the simple act of cutting/pasting that it is today. It was an intensive, manual process that sometimes involved razor blades and tape – literal cutting and pasting! – to get multiple sections lined up properly.

That was one criticism of Boston and the other arena-oriented acts of their time: the music was overproduced, refined to sound great on radio, losing some of their soul in the process. Which is fair. If not careful, you can strip away some of a song’s energy and sense of spontaneity when refining them.

Boston’s answer to this was the presence of Delp. I’m going out on a limb here and proclaiming him as the greatest singer in rock history. Notice I say singer, not frontman. At worst, he is in a three-way tie with Freddy Mercury and Chris Cornell. But the man did things with his voice even those two legends could not match. Go watch some of the music theory breakdowns of Boston’s music and pay special attention to Delp’s isolated vocals. He hit notes that seem impossible, especially in the analog era when what you sang was what you recorded was what you released. Delp’s otherworldly voice added back any soul that had been eroded by Scholz’s hours of studio tinkering.

Put Scholz’s musical and engineering skills together with Delp’s unrivaled vocals and add Sib Hashian’s mammoth, caveman drumming, and the result was a sound that recalled those spaceships on the covers of Boston’s albums.[1] It was massive, irresistible, and brilliant. The instruments were the horsepower, Delp’s voice the torque that launched you into the heavens.

And this was their first ever single! Again, it is flawless, from the slow fade-in to Scholz’s guitar tone[2] (and pick slides) to Delp’s pitch-perfect high notes to its arrangement to its universal theme of wistfully looking back at a moment from your past.

“Amanda” might have been their biggest record on the pop chart, but this is the track that stands above everything else Boston has ever produced. It is one of the great songs of its era, of its genre, and of all time. Close your eyes and slip away. 10/10

I’m not sure why the official video is time edited, so I’ll throw the whole song on as well.


  1. Delp and Hashian also had two of the all-time greatest white man Afros. Truly aspirational stuff.  ↩
  2. I would argue Scholz’s guitar sounds are the most perfect guitar sounds ever recorded. So pure and representative of all that rock guitar should be.  ↩

Jayhawk Talk

A few thoughts about how the Jayhawks fared Thanksgiving week.


Hoops

A good week. A very good week. With one exception.

First, taking care of Duke in Las Vegas was a nice way to wrap up the first part of the season. KJ Adams basically shut down super phenom Cooper Flag for three-quarters of the night. I loved how the KU coaches made sure to stress it would be a group effort rather than KJ vs Cooper so KJ didn’t get in his own head about the matchup before the game. I was worried he would get called for three touch fouls before halftime and that would ruin KU’s strategy. Happily he was just tagged with one touch foul and was able to stay on the court.

Even happier, KU came out red hot and built a big lead. Duke made a run, KU matched it.

And then came the big negative of the night. After being undercut while making a rebound, Hunter Dickinson was tagged with a flagrant 2 foul and ejection for kicking Maliq Brown in the face.

He definitely kicked with intent. So, by the letter of the law the flagrant 2 was deserved.

But, he was just undercut and nearly flipped while falling, and the Duke player’s feet were in his face when he landed. Seems like a flagrant 1 because of circumstance. But he is Hunter Dickinson, the opponent was Duke, so of course it was a flagrant 2. Really looking forward to Fran Fraschilla referencing this play 87 times the rest of the year.

KU was up by two, I believe, at the time of the ejection. Flory Bidunga had not played well earlier in the game, and a friend of mine had texted about three minutes earlier that we wouldn’t see him again after he made a huge defensive error.

So it was not looking good.

Duke immediately took the lead and it felt like an L was coming.

But Flory played well. The rest of the team buckled down. Adams, DaJuan Harris, and Rylan Griffen made some huge shots and defensive stops, and the Jayhawks escaped with a nice win.

I think Bill Self loved all of this. He got a reason to scream at Dickinson and point out how his stupidity nearly cost KU the game. The rest of the team stepped up when everything seemed to be stacked against them. That was a tough win, even if Duke isn’t playing at nearly the level they will be later in the season.

Same can be said, hopefully, for the Jayhawks.

Saturday they added a nice win against a solid Furman team. I missed all of this game while watching high school ball.

Also a bummer that Shakeel Moore is continuing to struggle with his recovery from foot surgery. He’s played maybe 10 combined minutes in two games and seems to be out indefinitely once again. I’m not sure he’s a true difference maker, but he was the only pure point guard who can backup Harris and he’s a plus defender. There is some question about whether a medical redshirt is an option, so it seems like the plan is to let him sit until his foot heals and then attempt to work him in. Not sure if we should expect anything from him at this point.


Football

Well, I called it.

After three straight wins over ranked teams that put KU on the verge of bowl eligibility after a terrible start, they laid a big, fat egg against Baylor. This L was mostly on the defense. They had a couple nice plays early then seemed to make no effort, giving up big play after big play. Baylor definitely found some things to pick on, but once KU fell behind the effort went to shit.

The offense moved the ball, but Jalon Daniels tossed a couple bad interceptions after seeming to fix that issue. The Jayhawks also had a brutal fumble after a long completion.

It seemed like KU had exhausted their reservoir of good play against Colorado.

A disappointing end to a disappointing season. Change a couple plays here-and-there and the season could look very different. It is crazy to see how perspective changes over the course of a season. Back in August, KU had some of the best betting odds to make the Big 12 championship game and CFP, largely because of their schedule, which was perceived to be weak. They ended up playing the toughest conference schedule in the league. That should mitigate some of the frustration from this year: Arizona State and BYU were the good teams from their respective states, not Arizona and Utah.

Now KU loses a ton of players going into the 2025 season. The best running back in school history will be gone. Daniels could return, but is expected to leave. Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson will be in the NFL next year. The three top receivers have exhausted their eligibility.

Next year will be a real test for Lance Leipold, as all of Les Miles’ recruits are gone. At first glance next year’s schedule seems to be tougher than this year’s. Leipold has done a decent job bringing in transfers to plug holes, but next year will be the first real test of how well his staff has recruited. Pretty much every skill position, as of now, will be filled by someone they recruited out of high school, most of them underclassmen. We’ll see if they’re ready.

It also seems like OC Jeff Grimes is safe. Maybe he’ll mesh better/earlier with Isaiah Marshall, Cole Ballard, or whoever starts for KU at quarterback next year than he did with Daniels. There are already rumors that there will be a change at defensive coordinator. KU’s D certainly took a step back this year. I’m not smart enough to know if it was because of scheme, depth, or just the lack of pass rush that put everyone else in a hole as soon as the ball was snapped. I know DC is a brutal job these days. It just didn’t seem like the KU defense made adjustments, or of they did they were almost always the wrong ones. Time for a new voice on that side of the ball.

November Media

Movies, Shows, etc

The Americans, season 6
Why re-watch something I’ve seen before when I have so many unwatched shows on my list that I need to get to? Because this is my favorite TV drama ever made, it never had a subpar season, and its final 10 episodes were as good as any concluding season ever filmed. Each season got progressively bleaker and more stressful. In season six, you could almost feel the weight crashing down on each charater, like a strong arm in the middle of your back forcing you to the ground.

And the finale? Holy shit. Even knowing what was coming, the middle 40 minutes were an emotional A-bomb. The 11-minute garage scene was a masterclass of television, somehow wrapping up almost every loose thread from the 74 previous episodes without seeming tedious or overdone. Then STAN LETS THE JENNINGS GO!!!! THE CALL TO HENRY! PAIGE GETS OFF THE TRAIN!!!!! I urge any of you who have never watched this series’ 75 brilliant episodes to give it a shot.

A+

Starting 5
I liked this far more than I thought I would. I know the players, especially LeBron, had a lot of control over the final project (much like his control of his team). But all five subjects were anywhere from pretty to extremely interesting. The insider look at their lives seemed pretty honest, if anodyne. How can you not love Ant or Jimmy Butler? Or admire Jason Tatum? Domas Sabonis was probably the least interesting of the bunch, but it was fascinating to see that maybe his wife controls his entire life? Joe Mazzulla? Crazy genius. And LeBron and his family are amazing. I know he’s not perfect, but he really is the prototype for how you want a modern superstar to behave, at least off the court.

A-

Shrinking, season two
In progress.

Bad Monkey
Looks like I read this book back in 2013. Fortunately I didn’t remember much of it, so this series was all new to me. Didn’t reach the level of the other Bill Lawrence shows (see Shrinking above). Probably could have been tightened up a bit rather than a 10-episode season. But in general, it was entertaining and fun. I always wonder how much of Vince Vaughn’s dialog is written just for his style, and how much he riffs on his own. Natalie Martinez isn’t terrible to look at.

B

The Diplomat, season two
For the first half, this was not as good as season one. It seemed like the slider for gossipy romance had been cranked up a couple notches. Fortunately the last two episodes yanked it right back to where it belonged. That ending!!!

A-

Sixteen Candles
AMC had an 80s movie marathon on Black Friday. This was the only one we watched, and we watched the entire thing. Interesting they add a disclaimer now that it contains cultural stereotypes that may be offensive to some viewers. Which, fair. They also cut out a couple of my favorite lines. Again, for fair reasons. Still holds up. Am I bad person for still finding the parts that are offensive to 2020 ears funny?

A

Cheers, Thanksgiving Orphans
38th consecutive year watching this classic.

Holiday Baking Championship
Our cable package changed this fall. Part of the deal was a reduction in our DVR space. So I had to start watching these earlier than usual rather than letting them stack up until December. I’m four episodes in. I have a favorite, but she nearly went home in week four, so what do I know?

Incomplete

St. Denis Medical
The latest entry in the lineage of shows that somehow are conneted to The Office. (There’s another new one I may try to get to in December.) It’s always tough to judge new shows as the characters are finding their places, the writers are settling in to find what works, and so on. Plenty of funny moments. I’ll keep watching to see where it goes.

B so far


Shorts, YouTubes, etc

Beau Miles builds a raft for Amy Shark
Glenn McGrath Attempts to Build a Beach Bar with Beau Miles
I approve of Beau’s sponsored bullshit, even if they are very Australian and I have no idea who these people are.

I made a picnic table from someone’s rubbish
I made a fort on the Mississippi River
And here is some of his regular bullshit.

Getting a Crash Course in Tex-Mex Cuisine, Bull Riding & the Spirit of Texas | DIRT Texas
Not sure how I missed this when it first came out.

Brooklyn 99 moments that were NOT scripted
Always fun to catch up with the 99 crew.

Dr. J at Harlem’s famed Rucker Park
Nothing about this sucks.

iPhone 16 Pro: In-Depth Camera Review
Not strictly photo-related, so I’ll drop this gorgeous piece into this section. Looking forward to upgrading my phone next spring.

Our Top Holiday Gifts For Men | 2024 Huckberry Holiday Gift Guide
How To Elevate Your Cold-Weather Wardrobe | Men’s Fall Style Guide | Ask Huckberry
Watching these videos always sends me straight to Huckberry. Which I think is the point, right?

An Overlanding Pilgrimage for Wildlife | Australia Part I
Not What We Expected | Australia Part II
Again, it would be cool to be sponsored to take trips like this.

Golf, Food, Magic | Neil and Randy Explore Brooklyn
Even when the NLU guys do a single episode travel vid it is great.

200 Earth Impact Craters Mapped by Size and Age
My big takeaway is that Canada seems targetted.

How Copperfield Vanished the Statue of Liberty
Fascinatingly low tech! This event played a major role in one of the best episodes of The Americans, and seeing it now it seemed super cheesy. I kind of remember watching it live as a kid, but don’t remember being dazzled by it, just thinking that there was some simple explanation. Who knew it was so simple?

Johanna Under The Ice: Freediver Johanna Nordblad on the accident that led her to a world record
This is beautiful, but no fucking thank you!

The Big Wait
What a charming piece about an odd and amazing place. Only in Australia can you find these modern throwbacks to the frontier days.

Very Good Chili Crisp Recipe
I had never tried chili crisp before last summer, when I bought some for a spicy noodle recipe. Man, how did I miss this for 53 years?!?! Not sure I’ll make my own, as I’m the only one in the house who will eat it. But it’s in the back of my mind for the next time I make those noodles.

Why Americans Love Iced Coffee
Enjoying iced coffee is the most millennial thing about this Gen Xer.

A Real Diplomat Reviews Netflix’s “The Diplomat”
Not a true review, more of a set of observations.

Top Dunks in Kansas Jayhawks Basketball History
Kansas Jayhawks Basketball Coach Bill Self On His Role As The Caretaker Of Allen Fieldhouse
Inside Kansas Jayhawks Coach Bill Self’s Office: Memorable Stories And Hidden Gems
Other than watching Cheers, this is how I spent my night before Thanksgiving.


Car Content

Why American Cars Are So Expensive
Some surprising explanations in here, the biggest being simple greed.

The Polestar 3 is Amazing
Sure would be cool if Polestar could stay in business and drop a ~$50K car on the market.


Photography

Some of the many, many photo vids I watched.
A Week in Peru on Film // Leica M6 + Ultramax 400
2 Days in Florence / [#35mm]() Film
Mark Ruwedel: Seventy-Two and One Half Miles Across Los Angeles
Backpacking the Coast Mountains on 35mm film
Exploring Pubs & Shooting Film in Ireland
Fuji Recipes and 27mm in the Streets of Oslo | Street Photography
30 Days Photographing Italy With My Little Fujifilm XT5
A Road Trip in Finland with the Plaubel Makina 670
The North Cascades Highway, Pre-Closure
Photographing Washington’s Larch Trees on Slide Film
Everyday Photography EP.1
Matt Day
Fall Photography, Camping, Mamiya 645, 35mm, Fuji x100f
James Popsys
Is 40mm the new 50mm?
In Search of my Everyday Carry Camera
7 Days in Puglia, Italy / 35mm Film

Weekend Notes

A long, extra-stuffed Thanksgiving weekend is in the books. Let’s run through the highlights.


Thanksgiving

For the first time in ages that we’ve been home for the holiday,[1] we did not host the local gathering on Turkey Day. One of S’s sisters and her husband opened up their house to the family. It was nice to not have to clean before and after, run around wildly the morning of, and hope that we hadn’t forgotten anything as we started serving the food. We provided mashed potatoes, Giada’s dressing, a meat and cheese tray, and pumpkin pie. That took a couple hours of prep, and I had a moment of panic when I wasn’t sure if the potatoes were going to be ready in time. In general, though, a much lower stress Thanksgiving than we’ve had in a long time. And we got to come home, get into comfy clothes, and crash on the couch instead of the hours of dishes afterward. Thumbs up all around.


College Girl

M came home Monday afternoon and was here in time for dinner. She went back mid-day Sunday. It was nice to have her home. She had only visited once this fall, so S and her sisters had barely seen her since summer. She has one week of regular classes before finals begin next week. She’s still not sure of her exam/project schedule, but should be home for Christmas break a week from Friday. Classes are going well. She’s eager to be done with financial accounting and never think about it again. No CPA accreditation in her future.

One of her friends who goes to the College of Charleston begins finals today. That just seems cruel.


College Football

Was this the wildest week of college football ever? Some huge upsets. Some great games. Most importantly, it seemed like there were about 50 games that included some kind of brawl. Fighting in sports is generally stupid, but in this case I approve. Nothing like some good, old fashioned hate to wrap up the holiday weekend.

Regarding the planting of flags on the opponent’s field, I’m 100,000% for it. Rub that shit in. Pettiness is always good. If you don’t like it, don’t lose the game. Take your L like a man instead of starting some punk-ass fight about it. Then go plant your flag on your rival’s field next year.

Of course now we’re going to get all kinds of dumb rules that ban flags on the field, postgame interactions, etc, etc, etc. Sports are dumb. The people that run them are dumber.


KU

I have three games to cover in this section, so I’ll pull them out for their own Jayhawk Talk post.


Colts

I missed most of the Colts game as we were watching a couple of our nephews yesterday. S and I helped the boys with their homework. I had the four-year-old and his pre-K stuff, which involved identifying letters and coloring them a certain way and coloring, cutting, and pasting a series of pictures of puppies so the matching ones went together. S assisted the second grader with his reading and answering questions related to his stories. Some of that was in Spanish, which she does not speak. The rest of us may or may not have laughed at her behind her back.

I was finally able to flip on the Colts game late in the fourth quarter. I saw Anthony Richardson throw three-straight balls that sailed into an area where no one could catch them. It looked like the Colts were going to lose to the lowly Patriots.

Then AR threw three-straight amazing balls. Of course, two were dropped by his receivers. One buried itself into the receiver’s chest so he couldn’t drop it. The Colts tried to screw it up, but converted three different fourth downs on a 19-play drive, including scoring on fourth-and-goal, and then converted the two-point conversion to eek out the win. Although the Pats came up just short on a 68-yard field goal that would have won the game. Not sure if winning is good or bad at this point. Somehow the Colts are still in the playoff picture. I still think getting a top 10 draft pick would be better than chasing the postseason.


SNF

I don’t know what we’ve done to deserve it, but for the second time in a couple weeks we got a prime time NFL game played in snow. Last night’s snow in Buffalo was a proper snow, too, although it looked like it had really dumped earlier in the day. When the Colts played up there in a foot of snow a decade or so ago, that may have been the greatest NFL snow game ever. I didn’t have a ton of interest in the game and was tired after a late night Saturday. But I stayed up deep into the fourth quarter to watch the majesty of football in a driving snowstorm.


Pacers

They might, officially, stink. Losses to Detroit and Memphis, after leading by 19, this weekend.


High School Hoops

Three nights of CHS basketball over the last week.

Tuesday the JV beat WC by seven. This was a wild game full of swings and runs. Lots of horrible calls. One ref was so preoccupied with a WC dad in the stands that he kept screaming at people sitting at the scorer’s table to get him out of the gym. I have no idea what that was about. I hadn’t seen the guy he was yelling about do a thing, and our athletic director didn’t seem super motivated to remove him.

Wednesday was varsity night. For the first three quarters, our girls played the best they had played all season. As the lead jumped up to 23 I leaned over to the dad next to me and said we seemed to have turned a corner, getting tougher and playing smarter since that respectable loss to 4A #2 a week earlier.

Guess what happened next?

That’s right, I jinxed those poor girls.

They lost their minds and blew 17 points of that 23-point lead. Mindless turnovers. Passivity on offense. Missed free throws. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. To top it off, late in the quarter, when our coach really should have been clearing her bench because we were up 15+, there was a loose ball that our freshman starter dove for. Her head cracked against another player’s knee and she went down, not getting up for several minutes. When she was able to walk she looked dazed and had a huge goose egg on her temple. Based on her injury history, we are worried she’s going to miss an extended period.

We held on and won by six but ruined all the good feelings in the process. At practice Friday the girls got to watch film for 90 minutes. All of that film was from the fourth quarter. Which is kind of funny when you’re not the one watching it.

Saturday we drove down to the Louisville area for another boy-girl, JV-varsity doubleheader. These are usually cool, but I was bummed the games were scheduled that way. While I was being a good dad watching the JV girls in the auxiliary gym, there was a terrific boys game in the main gym. In the all-class, coaches poll, JHS was #2, CHS #4. Which would make JHS #2 in 4A, CHS #1 in 3A. We peeked in a couple times and JHS was always up by 6–8, but the Irish made a run and ended up losing by two.

The varsity girls lost by 10. They were down just one at halftime but foul trouble and lack of depth because of the injury killed them in the second half.

The JV girls played really well for three quarters, but like their varsity sisters three nights earlier, fell apart in the fourth quarter and let a 15-point lead get down to two a couple times. We ended up winning by six but it was way too nervy. You know what would have helped? A point guard who takes decent care of the ball. Hopefully we get one of those back in about a month.


Travel

Louisville is two hours away, so we did end up traveling for the weekend. This was my first trip in the Tesla in cold weather. Sub-freezing temps make the battery less efficient and cause charging to take longer. Which meant my brain had been spinning for a couple days on the best way to handle the logistics for this trip.

My plan was to leave home with a 100% charge and then stop at the Supercharger in Columbus, IN, a little over an hour away, on the way down to get back up to 80%. That would give me several options for the return trip.

However, the Supercharger in Columbus was not working. So I drove straight through, arriving at my destination with about 45% charge left. While we ate dinner I explored different options on the Tesla app. It kept trying to send me to Shelbyville, IN, which would involve taking a big right turn on the way back to Indy. It would also have me arrive at the Supercharger with about 5% charge remaining, which was way too low for my tastes with the temps dropping and snow falling. As much as I hated to go the wrong way, it made the most sense to cross the river into Louisville proper and go to a charging station about 10 minutes from where the games were. By the time the game ended, even the Telsa app was sending me that way. I think it was too cold to make it to Shelbyville.

So when the game was over I got L some Chick-Fil-A and we went to Kentucky to grab some electrons. Earlier in the evening the estimate was about a 10 minute charge to get home. By the time we got there, it was cold enough that it took us about 25 minutes. This was a 250 KW charger. Because seven of the eight chargers were being used and the falling temperature, mine maxed out at 85 KW, and was usually much lower than that.[2]

We left the charging station at 10 PM, arrived home just after midnight with about 13% of the charge left. If it had been warmer I would have been comfortable going under 10%, but being new to cold weather EV driving, I wanted as much buffer as I could have.

L didn’t mind. She had her iPad and watched shows both while we charged and on the way home. I was able to pull up the Texas-Texas A&M game on Hulu while we charged. And we lucked out with the snow. Early forecasts had called for 2–3” of snow in Southern Indiana right when we were driving. It was definitely snowing hard while we charged, but still mostly melting. And we drove out of it pretty quickly once we headed back north.


We got the Christmas decorations up across Friday-Saturday-Sunday. The calendar says December. Ten days after pushing 70 we are stuck in the 20s and 30s for most of this week. The holiday season is officially here!


  1. We missed 2021 and 2022 while traveling to Hawaii and Italy.  ↩
  2. Not to get too deep into the details, but you will rarely get the full listed power from a charger. Many elements go into what your car can pull, including how many other cars are charging at that location, weather, the temperature of your battery, and how charged your battery is. In general, you will pull more power early in your charge, and as the battery fills the rate will slow dramatically. The analogy I heard when I was car shopping was a theater filling for a movie. When the seats are all empty, people flow in easily. But as it fills and it’s harder to find an open seat, the people searching for one have to take more time to select one. Same pouring energy into your battery.  ↩

Friday Vid

No playlist this week, as the days have passed too quickly and I’ve been too busy to cobble together a few songs. Doesn’t mean I will skip sharing a video from the Billboard Hot 100 chart of December 1, 1984.

“(Pride) In The Name Of Love” – U2
Last week was Madonna, which launched us towards 1985 and her ascension to pop music royalty. This week we get the first U2 song to crack the Top 40 in the US. It would take a couple more years, but soon U2 would be the biggest band in the world. It took me a few months to get into the band, as well. I bought The Unforgettable Fire sometime in the spring of 1985. That March I hung out with my uncle, who was into music, one evening. As we drove around, I played this song over-and-over, using his car stereo’s super-cool auto-reverse feature to quickly jump back to the beginning each time it ended. A few years later I noticed he had a vinyl copy of the album in his collection. My gift to him after years of him teaching me about bands.

It took six weeks, but this track nosed into the Top 40 at #39 on this countdown. It would rise to #33 before falling off the chart. About 30 months later the band would earn back-to-back #1 songs.

Kind of crazy that of all the bands I’ve included in this 1984 retrospective, U2 is still, in some ways, bigger than they were 40 years ago. Their singles aren’t as big as back then, but when they tour, they are pretty much guaranteed to sell out football stadiums. I think Springsteen is the only other artist from this series who is still alive and still touring who can make that claim.

Reader’s Notebook, 11/27/24

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Hope your travels and gatherings are safe and enjoyable.


The Right Stuff – Tom Wolfe
Somewhere I ran across an author/poster I follow who mentioned that they had recently read this book. In their blurb, they said something about not loving Wolfe’s writing style but still enjoying the book.

I’ve never read any of Wolfe’s work before. At least for this piece, I loved his writing and the book.

I have seen the 1983 movie based on The Right Stuff many, many times. Or at least parts of it, back when it used to run on cable often. So I knew the basic story, the tale of the seven astronauts selected for the United States’ Mercury project designed to put a man in orbit. The movie is fun.

The book is more fun.

Wolfe writes in a breezy style that you are never quite sure if he’s totally into the mythology of the astronauts or making fun of it. That gets applied to everyone involved in the story, from the astronauts’ wives to politicians to NASA administrators to the media of the era. He often adopts the perspective of his subjects, and does so in a very 1950s, gee-whiz manner. This is a serious subject, but he never takes it too seriously. He’s not looking to explain the science behind putting a man into space, but rather exploring the personalities involved and the public reaction to them.


The Sun Down Motel – Simone St. James
Another one of the “scary” books I put on hold back in early October that also came through after the spooky season had ended. And, again, it worked out perfectly, as this book is split into two overlapping sections, one in November 1982, the other in November 2017. You know how I am about reading books in their proper moment in the calendar.

In the 1982 portion, Viv is on her way to a new life in New York City from Illinois before she gets stranded in a strange little town in rural New York. To earn some cash to complete her trip to the city, she begins working the overnight shift at a small motel. A motel where weird shit happens. She eventually learns of a series of strange deaths and disappearances, and begins investigating them. This leads to trouble.

In the more modern section, Viv’s niece Carly moves to that same small town to look into the disappearance and presumed death of her aunt 35 years early. She stays in the same apartment, gets the same job, and runs into some of the same creepy stuff her aunt ran into. And she begins finding connections between her aunt’s disappearance and the ones Aunt Viv was looking into.

This is one of those books where the resolution isn’t super surprising. How St. James get there is what makes the book fun. There is some truly creepy stuff and a highly satisfying and deserved end for one character. A good page turner as we drift into the dark months.

Weekend Notes

The last weekend update before we dive neck-deep into the holiday season.


KU Football

How ‘bout them Jayhawks?!?!?! Taking the Colorado Buffaloes out to the woodshed on the sturdy legs of Devin Neal. There could not have been a more appropriate day for #4 to go off than the 33rd anniversary of Tony Sands’ record-breaking performance. It was even sweeter after Buffaloes “senior quality control analyst” Warren Sapp trashed pretty much everything about KU in a video he posted last week. Zero respect for Neal or Jalon Daniels or any other Jayhawk. Yet, aside from a couple big plays by Travis Hunter, which will happen no matter what you do, the Jayhawks completely dominated that game.

As was trumpeted often during and after the game, KU became the first school in the entire history of college football to beat three consecutive ranked teams while having a losing record. That’s kind of an odd piece of trivia, since it suggests that you likely either had a hugely disappointing start to the season, had a series of injuries to important players who eventually returned, a lot of bad luck, or a combination of all that. I think option D applies to KU. Regardless, crazy that they are a win away from becoming bowl eligible. Just little, ol’ Baylor stands in the way, which should be easy after going to Provo and beating BYU a week ago, right?

For the record, after the BYU win I told two KU buddies – who both have kids at Baylor – that we were going to beat Colorado then likely blow it in Waco. Going to hate it if I nailed both sides of that prediction.

Once again, major props to the KU coaches and players for hanging in there through all the heartbreak and negatives of the first half of the season and rebounding to become the team we expected back in August. If only they had jumped on that fumble against UNLV, or got one stop against West Virginia or Arizona State, or hung on to the touchdown against K-State…

Oh, and what an amazing day from Devin Neal! I was at that Tony Sands game and remember how KU basically ran the same play over-and-over in the second half and Missouri couldn’t do a thing about it. That’s what happened to Colorado Saturday. Devin put the game on his shoulders and made sure there was no way the Jayhawks were going to lose it. A great final home game for a great, great Jayhawk. Truly one of the greatest ever.


IU

Welp, saw that coming a mile away.

I was kind of in the middle on IU. Yes, they hadn’t played anyone good. Or, better said, they hadn’t played a team that was playing well this year. Michigan and Washington both look like great wins in the media guide. But both teams are also thoroughly mediocre this year. However, IU had also 100% been killing everyone they played other than Michigan. Most notably, they crushed Nebraska a week after the Huskers almost won on the road at Ohio State.

They reminded me a little of the 2007 Jayhawks, who had some great media guide wins (at KSU, at CU, at A&M, at Oklahoma State) but had the immense bad luck of all those teams being down that season. When the Jayhawks got to 11–0 before the Mizzou game, there was a lot of national debate about how good KU truly was.

So I sympathized with IU fans this past week, as so many national writers wrote them off before they had the chance to prove themselves against OSU.

I was always pro-big playoff. As we approach the first 12-team football bracket, I’m re-thinking that stance. It sure seems like it’s going to be the SEC Invitational with Special Guest the Big Ten. Create these giant conferences where only a truly elite team can get through with one or zero losses, then tout the strength of your league as defense for teams losing three games but still deserving a crack at the national title. The politicking is already exhausting.

Is IU one of the eight best teams in the country after the four bye teams? I think so. They might be 11th or 12th, but they’re in there. With one exception they’ve beaten everyone on their schedule, which is all you can ask for.

I think there needs to be room in this expanded system for teams like IU, or ’07 KU, traditional doormats who come out of nowhere with a miracle season. I keep hearing analysts give Alabama, etc. credit for the history of their program. Which is asinine. All that should matter is this year. But if we’re going to the history books to determine this year’s playoff, the teams that have never been there before deserve a boost. Curt Cignetti has done wonders in Bloomington. Honestly, though, this might be the Hoosiers only shot to ever make the playoff. Reward that over a team that is always in the playoffs.

That said, Alabama would probably kill IU. That’s not the point, though.

Determining a division one college football champion has always been an imperfect system. Expanding to a 12-team playoff doesn’t really fix anything the issues that have been there for over 100 years. It will turn the game into more of a mirror of college hoops, where the best team usually does not win the title but rather the team that gets hot for three weeks. And the ultimate benefactors will be the powers that have dominated the game in the modern era, the Bamas, the Georgias, the Ohio States rather than even the second-tier teams in their own conferences.


Colts

Sunday was, maybe, the last nice day of the year here, so S and I did a lot of stuff in and around the house while we had a chance. Thus I only kept a partial eye on the Colts. Losing to the Lions was expected. Anthony Richardson seemed to regress a bit, with several wild-ass throws that had no chance to be caught. But, again, his receivers gave him little help and the offensive line was truly offensive.

Even if Richardson, miraculously, figures some things out between now and next season, this team feels a long way from being a legit contender in the AFC. Too many holes on both sides of the ball, holes that a franchise that doesn’t traditionally go crazy in the free agent market will struggle to fill. Unless Crazy Jim Irsay thinks the end is near and starts spending like a fool.


Pacers

Oh yeah, the Pacers are definitely a mess, too. Fortunately the Sixers are a bigger mess so Indiana is not getting as much national attention for how far they’ve fallen from last spring’s playoff form.

I listen to a bunch of NBA podcasts. I laugh at how, each time the Pacers come up, attention turns to Tyrese Haliburton and how his game has fallen apart. Then, as almost an afterthought, the hosts will close the segment by muttering, “Maybe he’s hurt…”

I legit don’t get why this is in question. He doesn’t move or shoot the way he did last year. Every time he checks out of the game, trainers strap a huge pad to his back and then he sits on one of those giant seat pads like what Joel Embiid sits on. Whether it’s a strain, a pull, a disk issue, or something else, the Pacers and Hali won’t share. But unless/until his back heals, the Pacers have no chance. Even in the weak-as-hell Eastern Conference.


High School Hoops

One week down in L’s stress fracture absence. A couple of good games, both JV and varsity going 1–1.

Tuesday we played the #2 4A team in the state, HSE, a team that has three top 60 recruits. One is the senior who is going to IU next year that L got switched onto twice in summer ball to my great amusement, plus two juniors who have lots of D1 offers. Last year HSE beat us by 35 and returned basically their entire team.

Varsity played their asses off. They held the IU recruit, who was averaging over 30 points a game, to just 19. Which is huge since she’s 6’4” and our tallest girl is 5’11”. Fortunately she prefers to shoot 3’s and didn’t hit one. We trailed by about 15 in the third quarter before making a strong run. We cut the deficit down to four a couple times but just didn’t have the offensive game to make it closer. We ended up losing by 11 but our girls played really well. Our coach usually isn’t into moral victories but was super pleased.

JV lost a very sloppy game. L was convinced had she played the Irish would have won. I like her confidence but that might be stretching it.

Then Friday we played the #9 3A team in the state, JC, who beat us by 17 last year. Their best player from that team is now a freshman at Michigan State, but they return a junior who dropped 28 on us last year and almost single-handedly turned a tie game with 2:00 left into a JC win during a summer tournament game.

We rallied just before halftime to cut a nine-point deficit to six before blowing the game open in the second half. We out-scored them 20–2 in the third quarter, got the lead up to as much as 13 before holding off a few runs and eventually winning by 12. A great, great win for our girls. They have to be scrappy to beat people this year and were definitely that in the second half. The freshman who is the future star of the program had 18 points, five rebounds, and five steals. She runs hot and cold, in pretty much every way, and was the right combo of that most of the night.

JV had no real issues, other than a rough five minute stretch in the third quarter. They are 3–2, varsity 2–3.

This is a tough week, with games against two 4A schools that are both 3–1. However, we are ranked ahead of both of them in the all-class computer rankings, likely thanks to our strength of schedule. Our girls need to stay scrappy.

Friday Playlist

“Drive” – R.E.M.
This playlist took a long time to come together, so I had to call in a couple ringers to bookend the new music. To open, this week’s The Alternative Number Ones over at Stereogum (subscription required). A little shocked Tom only gave it a 9.

“People Watching” – Sam Fender
Everyone’s favorite Americana-loving Brit is back! For Fender’s upcoming album, The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel offered some production help, including on this track. Fender already had a toe in the shadow of the TWOD sound, so nothing is tweaked too much here.

“Ohio All The Time” – Momma
A lot of folks in Indiana have been thinking about Ohio all the time this week.

“Zelda” – TOLEDO
Let’s keep it in Ohio. This song sounds like it could have been an out-take from a Sufjian Stevens album in the early 2000s, from the vocals to the banjo to the horns pretty much everything else about it.

“Supermum!” – Adore
Speaking of throwbacks, this Irish trio sounds like one of those mid-90s bands like Elastica or Republica.

“As Good As It Gets” – Katie Gavin with Mitski
Another stellar track from Gavin’s new solo album. I’m overdue in checking it out.

“Listen, The Snow Is Falling” – Galaxie 500 covering Yoko Ono
Not today, but it was yesterday. A new record for November snow in Indy, the airport checking in at 3″. It was a perfect snow day: it snowed pretty much all day, but because it had been almost 70 two days earlier, the roads never got covered or even slick. By midnight most of it had melted. It was still stupidly cold thanks to the windchill. All the long-rang forecasts say we should get less snow than normal this year. Hopefully this was a blip and not an indicator those looks ahead are way off.

“Like A Virgin” – Madonna
Depending how I handle the holiday weekends, we have anywhere from three-to-five of these video looks back to 1984 left. Today we have the last monster hit of 1984, capping off the greatest year in pop music history while setting the stage for 1985 when Madonna would ascend to Michael-Prince-Lionel status. It was at #38 in only its second week in the Hot 100, and would become the final #1 song of 1984 four weeks later. It continued to top the chart for the first five weeks of 1986. Madge had arrived.

Also, we were in Venice two years ago this week and didn’t see any lions walking around. Or hot girls dancing in the canals. I feel gipped.

Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 106

Chart Week: November 9, 1985
Song: “You Belong To The City” – Glenn Frey
Chart Position: #4, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for two weeks.

The fall of 1985 was one of those proverbial Big Times in my life.

I was a freshman in high school, which brought all kinds of new excitement and perils each day.

The Royals got hot late in the season, came back from two 3–1 post-season deficits, and won the World Series for the first time ever.

My mom and stepdad, who got married that August, bought a house that we moved into over the first weekend of November. After over 14 years in apartments, townhomes, and duplexes, this was the first detached home I lived in.

Big stuff.

Bigger than all of that, though, might have been my obsession with Miami Vice, which reached its peak as the second season of the show debuted and its soundtrack became the best selling album in the country. I believe I bought the cassette the week it came out and faithfully listened to it multiple times each day after school. I know I’ve shared this before, but there was a moment when I thought I would never need to buy another album again. I would just listen to the music from Miami Vice over-and-over until the end of time. Where would this site be if I had stuck to that plan?

The biggest single from the album was Jan Hammer’s “The Original Miami Vice Theme,” which spent a week at #1. It is still a banger, even if it became an Eighties, Yuppie cliché. I’ll crank that shit all the way up any time I hear it.

Glenn Frey placed two tracks on the soundtrack. “Smuggler’s Blues,” a song that first appeared on his 1984 solo album The Allnighter, served as the basis for MV episode 16 of season one. Frey even appeared in that show as the titular smuggler. Made sense to drop that tune onto the soundtrack.

He also wrote an original song for the program, “You Belong To The City,” which was used as the centerpiece musical moment within season two’s premiere episode. In that two-hour “movie event,” Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs traveled to Tubbs’ old stomping grounds of New York City to help the DEA track Colombian drug dealers who had murdered several undercover cops in Miami. The gritty, dark visuals of NYC were a stark contrast to the bright, tropical pastels of Miami that made the show stand out. Frey’s music was supposed to add to that shift in aesthetic.

At age 14, I ate this shit up. I freaking loved this song, from its smoky sax to Frey’s depiction of how the big city can dominate a person’s life.[1] It made me want to put on a linen jacket, smoke cigarettes, and have complicated relationships with women who spent hours teasing their hair into gravity-defying styles.

And probably drink a Michelob. This may have been the launching point for that mini-genre of late Eighties music that seemed crafted explicitly to be used in beer commercials.

Anyway, I was INTO this shit in the fall of ’85. I listened to it while I helped pack up the duplex my mom and I had lived in for five years and then as we settled into our new home. I listened to it while reading summaries of the Royals’ playoff run. I listened to it while shooting hoops. I listened to it while doing homework. My life had nothing in common with what Frey was singing about. That didn’t stop me from forming a tight bond with his music.

I decided to write about this song both to do a quick review of that fun fall and to introduce a new sub-category for songs in this series: Songs I Used To Love But Think Fucking Suck Today.

Probably too long a description, right? I’ll workshop it and tighten it up before I use it again.

That smoky sax comes across as cheesy now. The lyrics are nearly as clichéd. It feels like Frey (RIP, by the way) was trying to reach for something big when he wrote this. However, he came up woefully short and ended up with a bunch of words that seem hopelessly basic compared to what he was trying to conjure up. Go read the lyrics. They just look dumb.[2] I will admit, the chorus isn’t terrible. There’s some drama and emotion in those sections. But otherwise I always think of it being more a tool to sell me some lifestyle than a truly interesting song.

OK, maybe saying it fucking sucks is a little harsh. It is certainly of its era, for better and worse. Today I can hear it and chuckle, shaking my head at memories of my high school freshman self trying desperately to carve out some kind of cool identity just as I was going through my most awkward phases. It is truly shocking that I could not approach a fraction of the hipness of Crockett or Tubbs. Their Florida style just did not translate to a skinny kid with glasses in Missouri who preferred to not be the center of attention.

Frey was trying to translate their coolness, too. He did succeed in delivering a memorable track that fit the vapidness of Miami Vice. That meant it aged poorly, though, and those of us who loved the record as it climbed the Hot 100 quickly relegated it to the recesses of our music collections. Much like we soon hung those linen jackets in deepest corners of our closets. 4/10

It was soooo Eighties to have two different videos for “You Belong To The City.” One featured shots from the show, mostly Don Johnson walking around and smoking, cut with shots from around New York City. The other basically substitutes Frey for Johnson, and throws in a mystery lady for added drama.


  1. Kind of a poor man’s version of Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.”  ↩

  2. Yes, I know, sometimes even brilliant lyrics look dumb when you read them on paper (or a screen). But there’s no hidden genius in this song.  ↩

Wednesday Links

As noted a couple weeks ago in my Friday Playlist, the legendary Quincy Jones died recently. He had many epic interviews over the years. I had these two saved and re-read them over the past few days. What a storyteller!

Quincy Jones Has a Story About That
In Conversation: Quincy Jones


I had no real interest in reading Alex Van Halen’s new memoir, Brothers. He was always just the huge presence behind the drum kit in Van Halen, not nearly as interesting as either his brother or David Lee Roth in the band’s glory days. Then I read this piece in the New York Times. He seems far more complex and interesting than I ever knew him to be. And this passage, where he talks about why he wrote about he and his brother’s lives, and what he chose to share, made me put in a library hold immediately.

But “Brothers” is not a story of regret. It’s a tale of understanding, of acceptance, of love. Mostly, of humanness. “If you’re going to tell the story, you should give equal space to the good and the bad,” Alex said. “Because the good doesn’t make any sense without having the bad.”

Eddie Van Halen Changed Rock History. Now His Brother Is Telling Their Story.


It took me some time, but I finally got to Netflix’s Starting 5 earlier this month. So finally time to read/share this overview piece that has a similar perspective to mine on the series.

10 Takeaways From ‘Starting 5,’ Netflix’s Sweaty, Nosy New NBA Docuseries


I LOVED Richard Scarry books when I was a kid, and loved sharing them with my girls when they were young. So, of course, I loved this look at Scarry’s life and career.

Richard Scarry and the art of children’s literature

This line has more to do with the piece’s author than Scarry, but it screamed to be the pull quote.

I must have been a real pain in the ass as a kid. But Richard Scarry somehow made me feel safe and settled.


This piece by Chris Arnade was a suggestion from one long form newsletter or another that I’m subsribed to. I enjoyed learning about the fascinating little country of the Faroe Islands. It was also interesting to read about Arnade, who has carved out a controversial space among traveling photographers (despite being a self-described socialist who clearly is in favor of big government intervention in the economy and social safety nets, a couple prominent Republicans offered jacket blurbs for his book).

Walking Faroe Islands (part two)

Best of all was this photo he referenced, which is on the official Faroe Islands tourism site. That’s some public transit system!

« Older posts

© 2024 D's Notebook

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑