A Great Weekend To Be A Jayhawk Saturday, specifically. First, just before noon Eastern, Bryson Tiller, the #20 recruit in the current senior class, signed to play at KU next year. This was unexpected. KU had chased him hard, but earlier in the week his Overtime Elite teammate Samis Calderon had signed with KU. They are not exactly the same player, but have some overlapping skills and attributes. Most recruiting nerds thought this was an either/or situation.
Let the Right One In - John Ajvide Lindqvist I put several scary books on hold in late September and hoped one or two would come in before Halloween. This one actually came through after the holiday, but that was perfect as it takes place in the week before and after Halloween, 1981. In Sweden. So it’s a little weird.
Not sure I realized when I added this to my holds that it was a vampire book.
Chart Week: November 4, 1978 Song: “Alive Again” - Chicago Chart Position: #21, 3rd week on the chart. Peaked at #14 for two weeks in December.
In the Seventies and Eighties the band Chicago was like air: they were always around. In over 21 years of hitting the pop chart, they had 34 Top 40 singles, 20 Top 10s, and three number ones.[1] Hits on top of hits on top of hits.
A busy weekend with more driving than normal, some big events I was not able to watch live, and the standard wide range of topics to discuss.
High School Hoops L’s sophomore season kicked off Friday with a trip 90 minutes north to play Norwell, class 3A runners up last year. We played their varsity over the summer in a close, fun game we closed with a big run to win.
My routines have been a little out of whack this week, so an abbreviated playlist for today.
[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ggsOVibMQrKin407AZovx?si=b74e7dbd4dd44b48) “Cult of Personality” - Living Colour
Sigh…
“Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” - Michael Jackson
RIP to Quincy Jones, the greatest, most influential producer of all time. There are about a million songs of his that could fill this spot. Also props to Q for getting out before the world fell apart.
It is finally here, the day we’ve all been waiting for.
That’s right, it’s time to start talking KU hoops again!
After another wild offseason filled with recruiting twists and turns,[1] the Jayhawks crushed poor Howard University by 30 Monday night. Howard is a good program and is picked to win their conference, although they have a roster full of grad-transfers and looked like a group of players who don’t know each other well yet.
This was a fairly quiet weekend thanks to a KU bye week and the girls being busy on their own.
Halloween Our Halloween was relaxed. We decided to go hang with our old neighbors. It sure brought back memories to sit in their driveway and watch kids scamper through the cul-de-sac. That was where our girls did almost all of their trick-or-treating. As we at chili we reminisced about the various holidays we shared with our friends, including the one when it was sleeting sideways and our girls insisted on going out.
Kind of an odd media month. There was some baseball early, but not much after the Royals were eliminated. A lot of reading The Lord of the Rings. A fall break vacation. But not much long-form stuff. That should shift in November. And there was a changing of the hobbies, a switch that is reflected below with a new section.
Movies, Shows, etc Halloween Baking Championship The winner was a bit of a surprise, as Manny rallied in the final three episodes to take the competition.
A few sports thoughts, mostly about basketball.
KU Hoops Much better performance Tuesday in the second exhibition contest against Washburn. Of course, they better have looked better against a D2 team. Hitting shots is always a good thing, and KU actually seems to have multiple shooters this year. They ran a little more of what you expect to see on the offensive end than they did against Arkansas. My man Flory Bidunga is going to really good, maybe as soon as next year.
Sometimes it is hard to articulate why you believe the things you believe, especially long held views. They become a part of who you are and the inflection points that led you to adopt those stances can be difficult to recall.
Take politics, for example. People our age have likely held the same views, or some version of a core set of opinions, for over 30 years now. Do we remember what it was that triggered our beliefs on how government should or should not behave?
The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ve thought about re-reading The Lord of the Rings for several years and finally pulled the trigger. Which was dumb. Given how focused I am on nostalgia, memories, and anniversaries, I really should have tackled it last year, the 40th anniversary of the first time I read it. In fact, that’s how I spent the fall of 1983, working through these four books as a couple friends did the same.
These summaries are usually heavy on the sports. After a weekend like the one just passed, that is problematic. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, good happened for teams I follow over the past three days. Just a reminder that sports are terrible and I’m dumb for letting them hold such large sway over my life and mood. You people who waltz blissfully through your days without being affected by the result of a game have it right.
The new NBA season kicked off last night and the Pacers begin play tonight. When we last saw them, the Pacers were making a surprise, fun-as-hell run to the Eastern Conference finals. They could have easily won three of the first four games against the eventual champion Celtics, but were instead swept aside. Their run was fueled as much by injuries to key players on Milwaukee and New York as by the play of the Pacers themselves.
A few other notes from last week/the weekend plus life in general.
Health I’ve had a couple longer spells of irregular heart beats lately, so the week before we went to Denver I wore an event monitor again. Just like the first two times I wore one, I had zero issues, so it wasn’t really helpful. Plus it made it hard for me to sleep since I’m a stomach sleeper.
To celebrate the glories of CHS fall break, we took the girls (well, C and L) to Denver to stay with S’s sister and her family for a few days.[1] We hadn’t been to Colorado since Christmas 2017, although we were scheduled to spend spring break there in 2020 until, well, you know…
We flew out Wednesday evening, returned Sunday morning/afternoon. Other than heavy fog causing us to sit at the gate for an extra 40 minutes before leaving Denver, we had no travel issues.
Going to fire off three quick summaries of recent books before we head to the airport.
Middle of the Night - Riley Sager The Only One Left - Riley Sager
I was not at all familiar with Sager’s work, but when I saw Middle of the Night pop up on multiple lists of must read new books over the summer, I jumped on it. Wise choice.
It is an excellent, spooky, freaky, fun mystery revolving around the disappearance and presumed death of a young boy in 1994 and his best friend’s efforts to cope with that loss as an adult, and then deal with weird coincidences that pop up 30 years after the disappearance.
A special, early playlist this week, as we are headed to Denver later today to visit family over the CHS fall break.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Tell Me Why U Do That” - Grace Bowers & The Hodge Podge So Grace Bowers is some kind of prodigy. She’s still in her teens, has had an endorsement contract with Gibson guitars for four years, and is already putting out music that sounds like this.
Kind of a quiet weekend for us on the personal tip. Plenty of other shit to review on this gloomy, chilly Monday morning.
Northern Lights Since we live inside the city’s light dome, we weren’t able to just walk out and see Thursday’s northern lights. I was able to get a couple shots, using a long exposure, that showed a bit of the colors. There were tons of amazing pictures from not too far from us.
Chart Week: October 4, 1980 Song: “I’m Alright” - Kenny Loggins Chart Position: #8, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the next two weeks.
Every successful career has a turning point, a moment that elevates it from being run-of-the-mill into something special and lasting. This song, for example, recorded as a favor to a friend for a movie that initially was a bit of a flop, helped turned Kenny Loggins into one of the best known artists of the Eighties.
A busy, warm, disappointing, and significant weekend.
FNL + Party Friday was a big night for a couple reasons. First, L was having friends over to celebrate her birthday. Seven girls, including her middle school buddy who goes to the rival high school, gathered at our house after school. They are a good group and fun to be around. They are mostly sassy and confident and silly, and while they usually congregate away from us, when we have to interact with them they always make me laugh.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“October” - The Helio Sequence It is here, people. Decorative gourd season. Motherfuckers.
“Perfect Me” - Blossoms First off, these dudes don’t sound like your typical Manchester band. I would have guessed Southern California first. Then, they said this song is a homage to their love of Abba, Bruce Springsteen, and The Killers. I hear some Killers, the other two? Not so much.
“Drop Me Out” - High Vis If it doesn’t work because I’m not smart enough to make it work, there should be a GIF of Beavis and Butthead headbanging and yelling “YES!
What a glorious October morning today was. Made all the more glorious by the mighty Kansas City Royals sweeping Baltimore to advance to the ALDS against the evil New York Yankees. It’s like the late 70s up in here!
Two tense games in gloomy, Baltimore weather, which made the Wild Card series feel so much like the 2014 ALCS between these two teams. Poor Baltimore. That’s six-straight losses to the Royals in the postseason, a healthy chunk of their 10 straight postseason losses.
Another dive into the notebook for a selection of random notes.
College NIL Shockwaves went through college sports last week when UNLV quarterback Matt Sluka, who tore up KU in week three, announced he was sitting out the remainder of the season so he could transfer and retain a year of eligibility. He claimed that UNLV had not lived up to their NIL agreement. UNLV fired back that they had provided everything promised and he was looking for a better deal elsewhere because of his hot start.
A few changes prompted a new sub-section.
Movies, Shows, etc US Open, week two The non-stop action of week one is more fun, but week two still dominated our TV. A-
The Americans, season four In general The Americans is a bleak show. I forgot how beyond-bleak season four was. Thirteen episodes of crushing negativity, applied a little heavier each week. Important characters are killed or deported or exfiltrated or question everything about themselves.
Another weekend in the books. This one had some familiar elements, yet was still quite different than other recent weekends.
Helene The biggest event of the weekend was the remnants of Hurricane Helene kind of ruining our weekend. That’s overstating things. Other people had far worse weekends than we did because of the weather. But it was cloudy, breezy, and muggy at best all weekend. Off-and-on drizzle all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The first year of the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark era came to an end Wednesday night in an 87–81 loss to Connecticut in the first round of the WNBA playoffs. The Fever had an early lead then fell behind by double-digits multiple times, the last time midway through the fourth quarter, before mounting a furious rally and taking the lead with two minutes to play. Three consecutive Sun 3’s ended the hopes of getting the series back to Indianapolis for a decisive third game.
A year ago Will Ferrell made an unannounced and odd appearance at a Wal-Mart on the southside of Indy. Word came that it was part of a project he was working on. That project hits Netflix this week, and tells the story of a road trip he took with his fellow SNL alum Harper Steele after Steele’s transition. This is an interview with them about that project.
Also, just to paint the picture, you were dressed as Sherlock Holmes.
Another full-ish weekend, with most of our attention focused on the corrupt and disgraceful arena of sports. Sports suck.
Family Let’s flip our normal order, though, and kick it off with family chat. M came home for the weekend. It was her first visit of the semester and nice to have her in the house for about 48 hours. She had no plans and mostly chilled on our couch while doing homework or taking naps.
Trust Her - Flynn Berry
Three years ago I read Berry’s A Northern Spy, about an unaffiliated Northern Irish woman, Tessa, who gets pulled into the conflict between the IRA and British authorities because of her sister.
In this follow up, set a few years later, the siblings are settled in Dublin where they have carved out new lives with new identities. Until the IRA finds Tessa and threatens her family unless she attempts to turn the British agent she worked for when she was still in the North.
