Monday, January 4, 2021
I watched a shit-load of TV in December and have an extra-heavy post coming up soon to cover all of that. First, however, something that would normally go into my January list requires immediate attention. Netflix did the world a solid by releasing season three of Cobra Kai on Friday. I watched the first two episodes in the gap between the CFP semifinals games that night. Then I crammed the remaining eight into my Saturday.
Monday, January 4, 2021
Families in Indianapolis got an early Christmas present about two weeks ago when the county health commissioner said that schools could return to in-person classes beginning today, rather than waiting until Jan. 19. St P’s normally starts the Tuesday after New Year’s Day, so today is a mini-virtual day with the kids having a few light assignments but no actual classes. Then they will be back the classroom tomorrow. CHS will begin virtual classes tomorrow and return in person next Tuesday.
Friday, January 1, 2021
It’s not every year that Jan. 1 falls on a Friday. I better commemorate the day properly. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “The New Year” - Death Cab for Cutie “New Years Morning” - JarJarBeatz “New Year’s Day” - U2 “New Year” - Beach House “Happy New Year” - ABBA “This Year” - The Mountain Goats
Friday, January 1, 2021
I’ll dispense with the monthly stats, since December is dominated by Bing and Frank and other seasonal fare. Instead here are my totals for the year. I believe they reflect the oddness of 2020 appropriately. I would not have guessed Pearl Jam, Springsteen, the Beatles, or Prince would be in my top ten one year ago. Pearl Jam - 347 Bruce Springsteen - 301 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever - 228 The Beatles - 205 Phoebe Bridgers - 165 Doves - 156 Prince - 134 Ratboy - 126 Waxahatchee - 125 cartalk - 123 And an annual refresh of my total Last.
Thursday, December 31, 2020
Welp, it’s almost over. The worst year ever has but a few hours left. And then everything will magically get better at midnight, right? If only… 2021 has to be better. Vaccines are being administered and research continues to find more ways to fight Covid–19. It may take months, but the tide is turning. While Covid is our biggest issue, there are plenty of other issues for which there are no vaccines.
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Chart Week: December 22, 1984 Song: “Bruce” - Rick Springfield Chart Position: #33, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #27 for a week in January. As artists move through their careers they often jump from one record company to another. This can lead to uncomfortable situations when the artists break through and their previous employers attempt to capitalize. Rick Springfield was about as big of a second-tier pop star as there was in the early 1980s.
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
“Favorite Songs by Artist X” lists are a dime a dozen when it comes to certain bands. They are click-baity and unnecessary, as they’ve been done and done and done again. Still, as a music fan I will almost always read them and listen to the songs they cover if it is a band I care about. I think that is why it took Steven Hyden so long to get to the Beatles.
Monday, December 28, 2020
Christmas, 2020. Like most folks, we were trying to have a semi-normal Christmas in the safest manner possible. Most years we end up having several big family gatherings of varying sizes. Last year was a banner year: four get-togethers greatly aided by temperatures in the 60s most of the week. Two days we were in the front yard hitting golf balls. We could have used that weather this year. Christmas Eve, the windchill was down in the low teens.
Wednesday, December 23, 2020
We’ve lost so much this year, but proving that there is some light in the world, Darlene Love is still with us. For years and years she appeared on David Letterman’s program to sing her signature song just before Christmas. I did not know she moved that over to The View after The Late Show ended. Even Covid couldn’t keep Ms. Love from sharing a little Christmas cheer with the world.
Monday, December 21, 2020
I was digging through the blog archives last night and came across this post, from December 2004. It is an accounting of the best Christmas gifts I received as a kid, which was about as “typical 2004 personal blog post” as you could get. I had two thoughts as I read it: 1 - If I re-did the list today I would add one adult gift: when S got me the first iPhone in 2007.
Friday, December 18, 2020
Christmas vacation, or what counts for it in 2020, is nigh. My in-laws have arrived, the girls have about four more hours of class, and by early afternoon we will be in the final countdown for Christmas. For this year’s Blog Christmas Playlist, I’ve chosen to focus on songs you probably won’t hear on your local Christmas music station. Use them as a break from the normal holiday fare. open.spotify.com/playlist/…
Thursday, December 17, 2020
My Wednesday activity, other than preparing for my in-laws to arrive tonight, was watching all of The Office Christmas episodes. As you can imagine, this was an extremely good way to spend time, especially on a very cold, snowy night. As I watched I thought, “I should put together some kind of rudimentary list, ranking them in order of my preference.” Then I looked and saw there are approximately 8000 of these lists.
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Pretty good run of books. Lucky Supreme - Jeff Johnson The trick to writing a good crime novel, when approximately eight billion of them have been written, is to find a new angle and/or place the story in an unusual situation. Johnson did that quite well with this book. Darby Holland owns a tattoo parlor in Portland. He’s kind of the CEO of his little neighborhood, a grimy street in the old industrial part of town that is filled with clubs, ethnic restaurants, and prostitutes.
Friday, December 11, 2020
My pre-list State of Music comments are pretty simple this year: 2020 felt like a weak musical year. I don’t know whether to blame that on Covid, me getting older and having to fight changing tastes harder, or that it was just a rough year for good tunes. There are some high quality tracks in this list, but I’m not sure there are many that I will go back to over-and-over in the future.
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
My Christmas spirit is at an all-time low. I don’t think I’m alone in that this year, nor do I need to explain why. I’ve only watched a couple Christmas movies, I’m not reveling in Christmas music every waking hour, and we’ve had a couple hard discussions about what our family Christmas gathering plans should be. But one thing has made me happy this season, and that is the life of a local radio DJ.
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Chart Week: December 3, 1983 Song: “Love Is A Battlefield” - Pat Benatar Chart Position: #6, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of December 10. There’s no great story behind the song this week. Nope, this entry is simply an excuse to share one of the iconic videos of the 1980s. Pat Benatar enlisted director Bob Giraldi to help mold the images for her final single of 1983.
Monday, December 7, 2020
One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability to dive into your past, to try to clarify memories that have become hazy over time or reconnect with people who were once an integral part of your life. I don’t do a whole lot of biographical scrolling these days. It’s been years since I’ve looked up an ex-girlfriend or classmate. The closest I’ve come is a couple years back when I spent a few winter nights in Google maps working to find the various houses of my youth.
Friday, December 4, 2020
I’ve been a little slower than normal slapping together my Favorite Songs of the Year list. I can just #Blame2020 and leave it at that. I will also add that I’m having a devil of a time picking my favorite song of 2020, which I kind of need to do in order to complete the list. But I’m working on it, and in hopes of ensuring I complete this year’s list over the next week, I’ll go ahead and share my standard prelude.
Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Some things never change. Those glamorous, early November college basketball matchups that ESPN creates to fill the air in the opening weeks of the season almost always disappoint. Oh, you might get a close game, but rarely are these games ones where, afterward, viewers say, “That might be the game of the year!” The Champions Classic is the ultimate example. It has been college hoops’ de facto kickoff event the last several years, with Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and Michigan State assembling at a neutral site to play a double header and show off their shiny new toys.
Tuesday, December 1, 2020
A pretty light month. I guess that happens when the election wipes out roughly a week of normal TV viewing. Plus I read a lot in November. Here’s what I did watch. Archer, season 11 The world’s greatest spy returns for another year. Archer seasons fall into one of two camps. There are the ones that make you laugh so hard that you are constantly rewinding/rewatching to catch the jokes you missed.
Monday, November 30, 2020
Well, today begins a new phase in our home’s daily rhythms. C and L are now eLearning through at least mid-January, joining M who has been home for two weeks. Hopefully the expensive Internet access we pay for holds up; our signal likes to drop in the middle of the day which should make for interesting moments when three girls are all in virtual classes. When I picked C and L up from their final day of classes last Tuesday, L said it felt like the beginning of Christmas vacation.
Tuesday, November 24, 2020
The Wolf Wants In - Laura McHugh I saw this book described as being for fans of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and/or season three of True Detective. I loved Sharp Objects; I’ve never watched True Detective but have always heard good things. That was enough to get me to pick this up. It also help that someone I used to be friends with blurbed the book and served as a mentor to McHugh.
Monday, November 23, 2020
Usually I’m giddy right about now. Thanksgiving is a few days away. We’ll bust out the holiday decorations, crank up the Christmas music, and put the tree up Friday. The most wonderful time of year has arrived! But it’s fucking 2020, which means we can’t have nice things. Yes, we’ll be eating turkey Thursday and the tree will go up on Friday, but so many other things that make this time of year the best are either being cancelled or greatly modified.
Friday, November 20, 2020
A slow music week for me, so this week’s list will be more oldies than…uh, newies? open.spotify.com/playlist/… “let down” - Paris Jackson When I first heard this I had no idea who Paris Jackson was. Or, more correctly, I did not remember. Then I heard it again and the DJ on SiriusXM noted she was Michael’s daughter. Mind blown. Not what I would have expected from The King of Pop’s kid.
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
The Masters Like most golf fans I was realllllly looking forward to the fall Masters. Seeing Augusta National under different conditions than we’ve ever seen it before and without any fans was a dazzling concept. And in practice it turned out to be pretty damn cool. I was surprised, though, that I didn’t get fully immersed in the tournament. Sure, I had it on a lot, but I wasn’t glued to the screen the way I would have been in April.
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
This is just incredible. Not just the story, but also how it was reported. This is A+++ journalism of a style that, sadly, just doesn’t exist anymore. youtu.be/V6CLumsir… I have no memory of this, but apparently this story was a bit of a sensation in the 1990s, one of the first viral events on the Internet. It must not have trickled down to those of us who relied on AOL to be our gateway to the World Wide Web back then.
Monday, November 16, 2020
Several significant events in our house over the past few days. Let’s get caught up. School When I picked M up from school last Wednesday she had a weird look on her face. “Everyone says school is shutting down after this week,” she exclaimed. Apparently each day a few more kids were not showing up to class either because they were Covid positive or were quarantining because of close contact with a positive person.
Friday, November 13, 2020
I will warn you the first song in today’s playlist is filled with NOT SAFE FOR WORK language. Play cautiously. That’s appropriate for today as yesterday came word that schools in Indianapolis will be required to go virtual again by the end of the month. More about that next week, though. On to the music… open.spotify.com/playlist/… “JU$T” - Run the Jewels with Zach De La Rocha and Pharrell Williams LOOK AT ALL THESE SLAVE MASTERS POSIN' ON YOUR DOLLARS
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
Yesterday we got our updated car insurance policy, listing M as an insured driver. The addition to our premium was a nice way to start the holiday season. She’s been hassling us about a car for weeks. I believe I already shared that CHS only gives parking passes to sophomores if there are exceptional reasons that require one. She’s told us several times that we need to come up with something and send the email.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Chart Week: October 27, 1984 Song: “Purple Rain” - Prince & The Revolution Chart Position: #4, 4th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for two weeks in November. (This ended up being a big coincidence, but not a bad choice for the 50th entry in this series!) One of my favorite things about listening to old AT40’s is when they cause me to pour through old charts to examine the movement of various songs.