Monday, July 18, 2022
Some sports happenings over the past few days. Royals As if being shitty wasn’t bad enough, ten Royals players “did their own research” and decided not to get vaccinated against Covid, preventing them from traveling to Canada for the series with the Blue Jays over the weekend. Just an exhausting moment. As I am barely interested in the team or sport right now, this does not make me want to come back.
Friday, July 15, 2022
Normally my Spotify playlist where I stash songs for the Friday Playists has anywhere from three to eight songs in it. This week is different, though. First off, this has been a very good year for music already and it feels like a ton of solid tunes get released every week. So I have plenty of new tracks to share. Second, I dug into the playlists of my old music podcast this week and re-discovered a bunch of tracks I hadn’t heard in years.
Thursday, July 14, 2022
The Committed - Viet Thanh Nguyen I read, and loved, Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in 2015. His sequel did not quite meet the original’s standard. The Committed picks up a few years after The Sympathizer, with the main character living in Paris in the early 1980s, and attempting to start a new life in the Vietnamese ex-pat community. Once again he must play the different factions of the community off of each other to maintain his safety.
Tuesday, July 12, 2022
A few links I’ve come across in the past few days that are worth sharing. First, the New York Times wrote about one of M’s classmates. That’s right, THE NEW YORK TIMES! I never guessed Booker would rise as high in the national rankings as he has (#2 in one list, #4 in another) when I stood next to him at freshman orientation nearly three years ago. This piece is less about Booker the player than about the path he and his family have chosen.
Monday, July 11, 2022
A pretty boring weekend around our house. I wrapped up Stranger Things. M went to a concert. But other than that the weekend proper was pretty low key for our family. We had great weather so we spent a lot of time just hanging out around the pool or on the back porch. College Visits Thursday M and I took our second trip to Ohio to visit a college, this time going to Oxford, home of Miami University.
Friday, July 8, 2022
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “These Are The Days” - Inhaler I had not heard of this band until this week despite them having a #1 album in Ireland and the UK last year. They are a four-piece from Dublin that sound a little like the most famous band to ever come out of Dublin. That’s no coincidence: lead singer and guitarist Eli Hewson is Bono’s son. He isn’t exactly Julian Lennon, who sounded exactly like his dad, but there are certainly common traits between Hewson’s voice and his father’s.
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Movies, Series, Shows Tokyo Vice I heard mixed things about this, but when I realized Michael Mann was involved, I decided to give it a try. It’s classic Mann: visually stunning with some high highs and low lows. My favorite part about the show was Ansel Elgort, the actor who plays main character Jake Adelstein. The real Adelstein is from Missouri and attended Mizzou. Elgort has a slight resemblance to, and sounds a little like, Charlie Tahan, who played Wyatt Langmore on Ozark.
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
We’ve reached the midway point in academic summer, an occasional always highlighted by our family’s July 4th celebrations. This year’s was a little lower key than recent ones. We had no out-of-town visitors this time, so fewer cousins, aunts, and uncles running around. It was as hot as it’s been any recent year, so it was probably good we had at least 10 fewer people in the pool this year compared to the last three.
Friday, July 1, 2022
Some MASSIVE sports news dropped on Thursday. With Monday being a holiday, who knows what can happen between now and when I get around to sharing some thoughts. So a quick-ish, emergency post about… UCLA/USC Jumping To Big 10 WHAT?!?!!? Where the fuck did this come from? I have to say, I am utterly amazed that the UT/OU to SEC and UCLA/USC to Big 10 stories remained so quiet right up until they became done deals.
Friday, July 1, 2022
Over halfway through the year; that’s kind of nutty! Be looking for my annual bonus playlist on Monday. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Rubberneckers” - Christian Lee Hutson A perfect mid-summer song in tone, this is about how many people you run across in LA who have made messes of their lives. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate that to our entire country right now. Add this to Phoebe Bridgers' quiver of excellent music she has a hand in, too.
Friday, July 1, 2022
June 2022 The War on Drugs - 106 MUNA - 40 Dehd - 25 The Beatles - 25 Night Moves - 23 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Midnight in Siberia - David Greene Interesting timing on reading this. Greene is a former NPR reporter who was the network’s Moscow bureau chief in the early 2010s. Late in his tenure, he took the Trans-Siberian Railway 6000 miles across Russia. In 2014, he returned to take the same journey and write about it. It is a fascinating read because of where Russia was in 2014 and where it is now.
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
I loathe the NFL draft. It is the most over-hyped event in sports. Primarily because there are very few players picked in that draft that make an immediate and profound impact on their teams. For every Joe Burrow, there are dozens and dozens of players that take two, three, even five years to acclimate to the professional level, complete their physical maturation, and become difference makers in the NFL. And yet we hear about the next draft for roughly 11.
Monday, June 27, 2022
Travel basketball came to a disappointing end for L over the weekend. Her team lost in the semifinals to a squad they had beaten twice this year. That team went on to win the championship by four points. So it was right there for our girls and they blew it. Saturday’s pool games were two very different contests. In the first we played a team we beat by 10 two weeks ago.
Friday, June 24, 2022
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Birthdays” - Craig Finn Hey, I had a birthday this week! Coincidentally this is the best song from Craig Finn’s latest solo album. “I Was Neon” - Julia Jacklin The first single off JJ’s up-coming album was solid. This one cooks. “Wait ‘Til the Morning” - Frightened Rabbit Spotify suggested this, a bonus track from the final FR album, a few weeks back. When the disk came out I didn’t think much of the extras.
Thursday, June 23, 2022
Chart Week: June 20, 1981 Song: “Angel of the Morning” - Juice Newton Chart Position: #38, 18th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for four weeks in May. Juice Newton was a classic Right Artist at the Right Time success. Although she came up in the world of folk music, by the early 1980s she had slid into a country-rock hybrid that was well suited to the moment. As we’ve discussed before, there was that little window in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when many country artists were able to have mainstream, pop success.
Wednesday, June 22, 2022
Following up on yesterday’s posts, here are a couple articles related to Top Gun. First, Michael Baumann dives into the details and comes up with his best guess for what county is the target of the movie’s main mission. This is important journalism here. But like Maverick, Rooster, Hangman, and their buddies, I was given a mission. My editors came to me, the idiot who six months ago wrote a long column about how Russia was no longer the technothriller enemy it used to be, confident that I could identify the anonymous villain in Top Gun: Maverick.
Tuesday, June 21, 2022
It’s damn hard to make a good sequel. Think of how many absolutely ass ones have polluted our cinema and entertainment room screens. So when one hits all the right notes, it feels like a triumph. And when you do it nearly 40 years after the original, you’ve really pulled off a miracle. I took C and L to see Top Gun: Maverick last week. We all loved it. I think C liked it the most, and it was her second time seeing it!
Monday, June 20, 2022
A long post about a long few days. Thirteen months into my Audi lease I was in great shape, milage-wise, about 1000 miles lower than where I should be. I pretty much wiped out that deficit over the past few days. Thursday M and I drove to Cincinnati to take her first college campus visits. We toured the University of Cincinnati and Xavier. UC is a popular spot for Indy-area students as it offers nearly in-state tuition to most Indiana grads.
Friday, June 17, 2022
A little different playlist this week, as about the time this posts, L and I will be on our way to Knoxville for a weekend of hoops. So here are a bunch of songs about the Volunteer State (and one summer song). open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Tennessee” - Arrested Development I think I shared this last fall when we went to Nashville. But as the greatest song ever about Tennessee, I must include it again.
Wednesday, June 15, 2022
Two concerts in a week! Both at new venues (to me)! Quite a run! Last night was a little extra special. Not only did we go see The Lumineers, one of S’s favorite bands, but we took all three girls with us. It was the first official show for C and L, although they had seen Blues Traveler at Symphony on the Prairie years ago. C barely remembers that and L doesn’t at all, plus they had no idea who Blues Traveler was, so I think this counts as their first real concert.
Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution - Elie Mystal “Our Constitution is not good.” Thus begins a book that should infuriate anyone who reads it. Conservatives brave enough to take it on will be enraged by Mystal’s destruction of our most sacred document. Liberals will be maddened by how our entire republic was built upon a system designed to exclude and exploit anyone who wasn’t a wealthy, white, male landowner, and how each time we’ve tried to restructure the Constitution so that it truly speaks for all Americans, those efforts have constantly been subverted, ignored, or reversed by conservatives.
Monday, June 13, 2022
I mentioned last week that L was finally looking healthy again. She had claimed her tailbone was healed from her recess injury last month, but I think she was still feeling some pain there. And her knees were a mess in May, but seemed better last weekend. This weekend she seemed as healthy as she’s been in months, and that showed in her play. Her team went 3–1, losing in the semifinals of their tournament to the best (going into) seventh grade team from their program, which was playing up a division.
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Last Wednesday night I went to my first concert in four-and-a-half years. Just as I did at that last show in December 2017, I went to see The War on Drugs. With S and the same friends we went to that Dec ’17 show with. This was a rather momentous night for me, though, as it was the first concert I’ve been to in Indy that was not in Broad Ripple.
Friday, June 10, 2022
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “You Gave Me the Key” - Julie Doiron A bright, sassy, fun song. Perfect for summer! “She Still Leads Me On” - The London Suede The London Suede had one great song in the ’90s (“The Drowners”), a lot of hype, and not much else. At least here in the US. So this brand new song from them floored me. I never would have expected them to make a song this good 30 years after their brief moment of international success.
Thursday, June 9, 2022
KU Hoops I still need to do an NIL post, and now that things finally seem to have calmed down a little on that front, I’ll move that up in the mental queue. KU’s roster appears to be locked in for next year, so a few thoughts on how that has shaken out. In general I think the transfer portal is a good thing, as it gives players more control of their careers.
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
Chart Week: May 24, 1980 Song: “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” - Pink Floyd Chart Position: #17, 19th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for four weeks in March/April. Each week Casey would read letters from his listeners, generally either Long Distance Dedications or general music questions that his crack staff of researchers would answer. Occasionally he would get a letter regarding a song that was in the countdown.
Monday, June 6, 2022
Nothing but hoops and parties for us this weekend. L’s basketball team was supposed to have the week off before their final push of the season. They got invited to play in a tournament at the last minute. Because of our schedules, she could only play in the Saturday games, which worked out just fine. In game one we were down by nine at halftime. The other team didn’t seem more talented than us.
Friday, June 3, 2022
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “When They Come For Me” - Spielbergs When this dropped a couple weeks back, one of my Brothers in Music sent me a message that said, “Shit is hot.” My response: “Shit is indeed hot.” Still laugh about when we coached soccer together and wanted our team to take the field to Spielbergs' “We Are All Going To Die." That would have been dope, if overkill for a bunch of third and fourth graders.
Thursday, June 2, 2022
Movies, Series, Shows Ozark, season four, part two Ozark found its groove in season three and maintained that into the first half of season four. S4, E8, which kicked off the last half of the final season, was one of the best hours in the series’ total run. And then things kind of fell apart. That tension I loved so much from the first half of the season drifted away. It seemed like there was a lot of killing the clock to get to the end.