Belated notes after a morning of driver’s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip.
Kid Hoops Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L’s team went 2–2, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend. Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska.
Another long-ish collection this week. I doubt any of you mind that much.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Summer Nights” - Hazel English Nothing better.
“Chicago” - Japandroids Tuesday I listened to Japandroids' classic Celebration Rock all-the-way-through for the first time this summer. So, so good. For the first time, I realized at least one of my kids is right at the age that album’s songs are all about, which was a little strange for me.
The Dog Days of Summer are supposed to come later, say very late July into the early weeks of August. That gap when the heat really kicks in, the newness of summer activities has faded, and boredom starts to kick in.
But, I realized this week, they really should arrive sooner since kids go back to school a lot earlier than our generation did. Which might explain why things seem kind of dead around our house and I’m lacking in blogging material.
What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, plus a ton of teams that didn’t have a location in their name so we couldn’t identify them.
After taking a break for the holiday, I’m offering you an extra jam-packed playlist at no extra cost.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Rain In The Summertime” - The Alarm After the remnants of Hurricane Beryl rolled through this past week, there’s a chance of rain every day for the next week. I won’t complain, though, as the showers will be scattered each day and will help moderate our temps just a little bit. By the way, did you hear that Beryl closely followed the path of April’s eclipse?
Holiday Weekend Not a bad Independence Day weekend at all. S’s sister who lives in Denver and her family came to stay with us from Wednesday through Sunday. We had a couple cornhole tournaments (L beat her cousin in one, and she and I beat the cousin and his dad in the other).The kids went and played mini-golf in the midst of a downpour. We hit a hibachi place one night.
C and I are off to Bloomington for a campus visit today, so weekend notes will have to wait. To tide you over, a slew of links, including three oral histories.
I’m rarely at the beginning of any trends. But I did get my first Livestrong bracelet right around this time 20 years ago. I was wearing it when M was born, as my first pictures as a father can confirm.
No true playlist this week. Instead I’ll share two fun videos I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks.
First, clips of classic Peanuts cartoons edited to somewhat match the classic Boston songs “Foreplay/Long Time.”
youtu.be/qxtgJIQk1…
Next, someone recreates New Order’s “Blue Monday” using a staggering variety of Casio instruments.
youtu.be/h9mm0YlMa…
Movies, Shows, etc The Americans, seasons one and two I’m finally doing it: devoting this summer to re-watching one of my very favorite TV shows. My original plan was to try to knock all five seasons out in June. But as I can’t watch more than a couple shows a night, even if I love something, and there were a lot of basketball nights in the month, I only got through the first two.
Here we go! One of my favorite music days of the year!
Two new songs for 2024. We’ll see if any of you can pick them out. No fair peeking back to last year’s post: it’s the same Spotify playlist so the posts for the last five years all update to show the new additions. Happy Fourth of July to all!
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
We knocked out season three of The Bear over the weekend, binging six episodes Friday and four Saturday.
Before I dive in, a couple preliminary notes. First, I had not heard official word that there will be a season four until after we finished. I believe I heard there might be another season, but not that it had been confirmed. Thus, when we paused things Friday night, I was a little concerned about how things were going to wrap up in the final four episodes.
Originally I planned on taking this week off. We have family coming in on Wednesday, holiday activities the rest of the week, and a busy two days before all that. But plenty happened over the weekend and I have a couple other posts nearly ready to go, so looks like we’ll slide into the holiday on a nearly normal schedule.
NBA Draft What a weird-ass year. L had a workout Wednesday night so I wasn’t able to watch much of the first round live.
I’m putting this list together late Thursday, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment, so it could take some weird turns.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Summer Girl” - HAIM Yep.
“Save It For Later” - Eddie Vedder We were busy with the last night of summer league ball Thursday, so I couldn’t give any attention to the biggest event on TV: season three of The Bear. There’s been a lot of Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder through the show’s first two seasons.
Chain Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah I almost stopped reading this book twice, despite the critical acclaim it has received. The opening chapters seemed repetitive as Adjei-Brenyah slowly introduced a series of characters through similar sets of events. They are all convicted felons working to earn their freedom by participating in the Chain Gang All-Stars, a competition where inmates fought each other in a gruesome, ramped-up, American Gladiators-style competition. Survive long enough and your record gets expunged and you go free.
Chart Week: June 20, 1987 Song: “I Want Your Sex” - George Michael Chart Position: #36, 3rd week on the chart. Peaked at #2 the week of August 8.
Hey, a countdown that landed on my birthday! How did I celebrate turning 16? Well, we lived in San Leandro, CA at the time, and had dinner the night before at a seafood restaurant I loved in San Francisco. Being the Bay Area, it was like 50 and dreary.
We had a very boring weekend.
S worked both days, filling in for a hospitalist who is on maternity leave.
The girls all spent time with friends.
I read, watched some shows, swam.
It was our first weekend in quite awhile where there weren’t multiple things on the calendar that we had to rush around to. It was a nice change-of-pace, as next weekend and the holiday week following will both be very busy.
We are almost halfway through the calendar year and something weird has happened: I have zero albums on my running list of new music slated for release. Usually I have at least five entries in thre, stretching out months in advance. I’m sure I’ve missed a few albums, and there are ones I have no idea about at the moment I will be excited about when they drop. Right now, though?
Time to knock out some sports notes while I avoid going outside and facing Heat Dome ’24.
Say Hey The incomparable Willie Mays died Tuesday night. I never saw him play live as the tail end of his career just barely overlapped with my life. I did hear the stories and saw the grainy highlight reels. And I remember how those fat, softcover, sports trivia books popular in the late Seventies and early Eighties were always filled with amazing facts about his career.
The Charm School - Nelson DeMille I had never heard of this 1988 book before. I was pleasantly surprised that despite its age, it held up pretty well. In fact, its age was one of the best things about it. The book is split into two halves. In the first, an American student traveling through the Soviet Union in the late ‘80s stumbles upon a secret that could take the Cold War to a new, more intense level: a secret camp holds hundreds of American POWs from the Vietnam war, and they are being forced to teach Russians how to “act American” before deployment to the US.
Father’s Day came at the right moment. After three very busy days preceding it, Sunday was a nice day to relax and not have to be anywhere. S got us donuts for breakfast. We had my in-laws over for dinner, eating some carry-out barbecue. I received a Solo fire pit as a combo Father’s Day/birthday gift. Based on the forecast, I might get to use it sometime in 2025. L and I played two rounds of Cornhole; we started a summer-long competition last week and I currently lead 3–0.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Summer Breeze” - Seals & Croft Yes, yes, yes.
“Disconnect” - Fanning Dempsey National Park I doubt many of you know the names Paul Dempsey and Bernard Fanning. Dempsey was the lead singer for the band Something For Kate, while Fanning led Powderfinger, both of which have appeared in these playlists over the years. The two Aussie veterans joined forces and this is the first product of their work. I quite like it.
Let’s talk basketball for a few minutes.
Kid Hoops L has been busy with her high school teammates. They have activities on the calendar four days a week for most of June. Three weight training sessions, one two-hour open gym, then two different nights with two games. She’s also volunteering at the boys camp this week and will work the girls camp in two weeks. And she has three lessons scheduled with a private trainer with four of her travel teammates.
Chart Week: June 4, 1983 Song: “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” - Michael Jackson Chart Position: #22, 2nd week on the chart. Peaked at #5 for two weeks in July.
High Fidelity was one of my favorite movies of the early 2000s. I loved the record store culture it celebrated. Hanging around with fellow music geeks, arguing about insanely obscure bits of trivia, opening each other’s minds to new sounds, and mocking people who did not listen to the right kind of music (according to us) seemed like a great way to earn a living.
A busy weekend back in the Motherland.
KC Trip Lots of fun on my first Kansas City visit in two years, first solo one in five. As always, it was too brief but I packed plenty in. I flew in Friday morning and got to experience the new KCI for the first time. Soooo much better than the old airport. I enjoyed how the old terminals are still standing, so if you were ever in them you have a reminder of how weird they were.
Posting this a little early as I have a busy Friday morning.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Sabotage” - Beastie Boys Thirty years and one week ago the Beasties released Ill Communication. I’ve always been a Paul’s Boutique guy, but there are plenty of people who think IC was their best album. And, of course, this song was the basis for one of the greatest videos ever made.
“No Surrender” - Bruce Springsteen I know I just shared the video for “Dancing in the Dark” two weeks ago, but we needed an official acknowledgement of the 40th anniversary of the release of Born in the USA.
With 100 Reaching for the Stars entries under my belt, it is time to break down where we’ve been, AT40 style.
It should be no shock that there have been more entries from 1984 than any other year, a healthy 18 posts from the greatest year in pop music history. I was mildly surprised that 1982 was second with 16. Not sure if that’s a function of more 1982 countdowns being rebroadcast than other years, or more 1982 songs grabbing my attention.
My goal for May was to adjust away from so much YouTube back towards more traditional shows and movies. I didn’t do a great job of that. I have started a summer viewing project, so while the hours may adjust in June, I don’t know if the number of entries in each section will change much for awhile.
Movies, Shows, etc The Gentlemen Highly entertaining. You can’t go wrong with a collection of fun British accents.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Bored In The Summer” - Bad Bad Hats Too soon?
“Dotted Line” - Why Bonnie Blair Howerton wrote this in a moment when she “felt the weight of capitalism” pressing down upon her. I love shit like that. Also a nice warning to prospective artists about being aware of what they are giving up when they sign that record deal.
“Strawberry Moon” - Fancy Gap with Sharon Van Etten I read a description of this song that described it as sounding like Fleetwood Mac.
A few more random notes that didn’t fit into the weekend wrap-up.
Number Three Behind The Wheel L finally got her learner’s permit today. She had been gung-ho about driving since she was 13, and dove into the driver’s ed self-teaching program when we signed her up back in December. We’ve been taking her across the street to drive around the high school parking lot since last fall. Then a couple friends, who are smart cookies like her, failed their learner’s permit written test on their first tries.
A long holiday weekend filled with guests, rain, and fun.
L had a group of girl friends over Friday night. Storms curtailed their pool time but otherwise they kicked off their summer well. Since she spends so much time with basketball girls, it’s always good to get a confirmation that she hangs out with other freshman girls sometimes. Sorry, sophomore girls!
She took me to the gym Monday morning for a shooting workout.