Chart Week: September 4, 1982 Song: “Valley Girl” - Frank Zappa Chart Position: #34, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #32 for two weeks. Frank Zappa was not a pop artist. Nothing about his music was aimed at earning airplay on mainstream pop stations. If you heard his songs on the radio, it was almost certainly after midnight on shows like Dr. Demento. Over his long, prolific career, he released 40 official singles.
The NFL season begins tonight, the latest blow in the war of dumb against all that is decent in sports. It’s been bad enough that the season has started on Thursday for years. But adding a Wednesday game so they can play a game in Australia on Thursday, US time, is taking things to a whole other level. Of course, we know that Roger Goodell and the owners are intent on squeezing every dollar possible out of fans.
Going to try to blow through this rather quickly, taking a day-by-day approach. Also, I’ll note up top where it, hopefully, does not get overlooked, that this site may be a bit wonky for the next week or so. I’ll explain once things are locked down but if you get errors at any point, please be patient and try again later. Friday This was nearly a classic, early fall Friday.
Fewer songs this week, but I make up for that by including two songs that are a combined 13 minutes long. “Insignificant Other” - Queens Of The Stone Age QOTSA does the Atlanta Rhythm Section? And Josh Homme sounding more like Chris Cornell than he ever has. I definitely dig! “Sweet Devotion” - Queen of Jeans This song isn’t nearly as good, but I almost felt obligated to slot it in as track #2 this week.
After completing nine books in July I totally slacked off and read just seven in August. Embarrassing. Adding insult to injury, my last two books of the month were both strange and unsatisfying. The Unveiling - Quan Barry This was included in the 2026 Tournament of Books, which is generally a harbinger of a good read. The book focuses on Striker, a site scout for TV shows and movies. Her latest job finds her on an Antarctic trip with a bunch of regular folks, or I should say “regular” folks.
Movies, Shows, Etc. Margo’s Got Money Troubles This got a more lengthy breakdown here. A- Hard Knocks I don’t think I’ve ever watched a Hard Knocks season in real time. Mostly because I’m not sure we’ve ever had HBO in the summer before this year. As always, I’m aware everything we are shown is heavily edited, in terms of both what we see and how we see it. It was still interesting to get this peak inside the Seahawks’ culture.
HS Football Week two of the season started better for CHS, but ended with another loss. Up 13-7 on Loyola Academy at the half, the defense fell apart in the second half and the Irish lost 33-19. It could have been worse. Loyola had a long touchdown pass called back on their first offensive play of the game because of a penalty. And one of CHS’ scores came after Loyola fumbled a punt inside their own 5 yard line and the Irish turned it into a one-play scoring drive.
For obvious reasons making an adjustment to our format this week. [youtu.be/6xSEStRIs...](https://youtu.be/6xSEStRIs88?si=0foQfWMxaAln2KMR) “Jolene” - The White Stripes covering Dolly Parton I once read a fine summation of the greatness of the White Stripes’ take on Dolly’s classic. Paraphrasing, Dolly’s original was filled with the fear of a theoretical infidelity that had yet to take place, the narrator begging to keep it from happening. Jack White, however, sang it as though the affair had already been consummated, and his narrator was both filled with heartache that it happened and desperate to get her man back.
It’s been a little over 10 years since I admitted that I finally understood people who cried when a famous person died. Two years later the death of a much lesser known singer completely floored me. Since then? No celeb death has had more than a momentary effect on me. As I began getting the texts from all directions Tuesday about Dolly Parton’s passing, though, something definitely moved within me.
Icarus 17 - Charles Cumming The latest entry in Cumming’s usually enjoyable BOX 88 series. In this one, his master spy Lachlan Kite has been asked by his former co-worker and one-time lover Martha to help find her son, Max, who has disappeared in Athens, Greece. Max is on the run with his girlfriend, who is fleeing multiple sets of hunters who they think to want to punish her for possessing a tape of Saudi hit men killing a dissident.
Another fairly boring weekend for most of our family, so today’s entry will focus on sports. Senior Pics OK, one big family event over the weekend. L had her senior picture session on Sunday. C came home for a couple hours to help her with her makeup. I was allowed to help carry things to the car but otherwise was kept out of the way. All seemed to go well, although apparently one of the groundskeepers at the location they were using tried to balk at them being on the grounds after they had closed for the day.
Going back-and-forth to Bloomington twice this week cut into my new music time. As I begin this, I anticipate it being a little lighter than usual, but we’ll see where the music takes us. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0NCsqo5Grrh3oz2UJ4D8Kx?si=b0d98e03eb6b4a0f) “Marianne” - Fontaines D.C. New music from Fontaines D.C.? Hell yeah! It continues on the subtler and more melodic path their last album took them down. “Things Take Time” - Gang of Youths
Yesterday was moving day for C, thus the flip of the blog schedule and your Weekend Notes dropping on a Tuesday. The Flood of ’26 Well, things certainly got interesting here over the weekend on the weather tip. Our week of torrential downpours culminated with the White River flooding through Carmel and northern Indianapolis Saturday morning. All the water that had overwhelmed the White to our northeast was headed our way.
Chart Week: August 4, 1984 Song: “The Warrior” - Scandal featuring Patty Smyth Chart Position: #33, sixth week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for two weeks in September. Who were the biggest songwriters of the Eighties? I’m not talking about Prince, Lionel Richie, etc, multi-platinum artists who wrote their own music. No, I’m talking about the songwriters for hire who cranked out hit after hit for other acts. Unless you subscribed to American Songwriter back in the day, I doubt most of you could rattle off anyone who got their names in parenthesis next to record titles when they didn’t actually sing the song.
Songs about rain, three local/regional tracks, and despite Pumpkin Spice items beginning to show up in the grocery store this week, we keep the summer songs rolling. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5VWF8PMGYRSlYo3x8fw6OU?si=33a7d67615744890) “Rain” - The Beatles What a week! We’ve been lucky that the truly Biblical rains have been well to the east of us: one area got 17” of rain in about 48 hours! Our sump pump has been working pretty much non-stop, I’ve pumped off the pool cover more times than I can count, and it is raining again as I type this, with more rain expected through the weekend.
I’m spending my morning in a dentist’s waiting room while C gets the first of two crowns. What a way to wrap up her summer! With time to kill I figured I’d go ahead and do my next RN entry based on a single book. Fortunately it gave me a lot to think about and then share with you. Wearing The Lion - John Wiswell This has been on my To Read list for several months.
Our boring weekends got a little more boring over the one just completed. No college visits. Thick humidity rolling in contributed to that quite a bit. I bet I can still crank out 1000+ words about the last three days. We had friends over during the day Saturday for a pool gathering. These are two families we spent a lot of time with in our grade/middle school days, but have seen less-and-less in recent years.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EKTR0p52YxDs03Bprnh7W?si=72423cb62d8a4760) “All The Beauty” - Pete Yorn I like it better when Yorn makes B+ versions of his best songs than when he goes off on odd tangents. This is one of those good ones. “MMA” Hannah Cole When I read that Cole was based in Nashville, I was expecting something that was softer and gentler, closer to indie folk. I was NOT expecting a chugging, mid-90s-esque rocker like this.
I’ve been sitting on several leftover notes from our European vacation. At this point I doubt I’m going to remember anything interesting or important so seems like time to finally purge them from the notebook. Good grief, Europe is expensive! I know this isn’t a news flash or anything. It didn’t help that we were staying in bougie places, in touristy areas, where prices are automatically jacked up. But the baseline certainly is higher than home as well.
Well, July was quite the reading month. I knocked out nine books. NINE BOOKS!!! Three were rather slight things I loaded onto the Kindle for our trip that I won’t bother to include here. This entry includes five of those July books and then the first book of August. Headstone, Purgatory, Green Hell - Ken Bruen Three more gritty, grimy crime novels from Bruen before our time in Ireland. Even though we did not visit Galway, where all his books take place, I was still on the alert for some of his most notable characters to cross our path while in Dublin.