Monday, January 15, 2018
Apologies for the lack of rocking on Friday. We got the call at 5:45 that the girls would be having their first snow day in nearly four years. I never really got back to sleep after that, which wasn’t all bad as I had an eye exam at 9:00 and needed to get up anyway. The exam took entirely too long for some reason and I had to cancel another appointment I had lined up for after.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Two books down already for 2018. Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World - Rob Sheffield Oh no, another book about the Beatles?!?! That was my first thought when I saw that music critic Sheffield was releasing his take on the Beatles last year. My initial plan was to skip it even though I was a fan of his earlier books. But seeing this land on several Best Of lists made me reconsider.
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Good gracious, what a CFP championship game Monday night. Like most folks who were unaffiliated, I was pulling for Georgia. Those downtrodden, underdog Dawgs from Athens. I found it funny that Georgia has this big reputation as a somewhat cursed program. Maybe my humor stems from when I first started paying a lot of attention to college football, and Georgia was one of the best programs in the country. I know they’ve had some rough patches, but I’ve never not thought of them as a top tier football program.
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
My first book of the year was about the Beatles. So it was a nice coincidence that I was hipped to this website over the holidays. The author is ranking all the Beatles songs in order, roughly one per day. His commentary isn’t a rehash of all the commentary you’ve read a thousand times before about Beatles songs. Which makes it a must read if you’re into music at all.
Monday, January 8, 2018
Last day of Christmas break. The girls go back to school tomorrow. I guess the teachers need an extra day to get grades processed, settled into their classrooms, etc before beginning the second semester. Meanwhile the temperature is finally above freezing for the first time in two weeks. It might hit 60 Thursday! We may be able to see our (dead) front yard by this time tomorrow. Seems like a good day to dive into Big 12 basketball!
Friday, January 5, 2018
Here is one of the greatest things I saw over the holidays. “Euverus” used the game Cities: Skylines to test how traffic would flow at a 4-way intersection using 30 different road configurations. I love the examples with no controls, especially the little software glitches that allow vehicles to pass through each other. And some of the higher-end examples are just mesmerizing to watch. I believe we can label this as Good, Clean Fun.
Friday, January 5, 2018
Back to the sharings of the musics! open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Man Uncouth” - Line & Circle. Holy 1983! These kids clearly listened to some early R.E.M. and Smiths albums. This is some good shit. “Cut Yr Teeth” - Kississippi. There are hints of shiny, jangle pop in this song, but it never really sheds its rougher exterior to reveal that brightness. Which seems appropriate for a morning when the temperature is well below zero.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Again I’ve fallen behind on my book sharing. Here are my final four books of 2017.[1] I’ve already polished off one book for 2018 and will get to it next week. Fantasyland - Kurt Andersean I’ve mostly avoided the quick, “How Did We Get Here?” assessments of our current political state. They tend to be too depressing and infuriating for me to read. But I decided to give in and tackle this one because of a couple blurbs I read about it.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Glory be! After roughly 36 hours without either cable or internet access, our house (and neighborhood it turns out) has been reconnected! So I can finally start unloading some of the accumulated content from the past week-plus. First, Happy New Year! I hope your celebrations, large and small, were fun and safe. Let’s go back to 2017 and review how our family rolled over Christmas. Christmas Day I believe I mentioned this in my annual Christmas Spirit post, but the myth of where gifts come from was finally burst in our house this year.
Friday, December 22, 2017
We are in the full-on holiday frenzy around here. Yesterday was the girls’ final day of school of 2017. St. P’s always dismisses early on the last day before Christmas break which adds even more excitement to the day. While sitting in the parking lot at dismissal, a friend said he was taking his kids to Dairy Queen and asked if we wanted to join them. Of course my girls did!
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Twenty-seventeen was solid, in music terms. It won’t go down as an all-time great one in my book, as the year lacked a legendary album (or two) and the wave of solid tunes pretty much dried up in the final quarter. And, compared to last year, not nearly as many albums stuck with me. But, as always, there were plenty of songs that I listened to a lot over the past 12 months.
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
OK, a quick five-minute listing of thoughts on The Last Jedi, which I saw last night. Spoiler alert! Conclusion first: The Last Jedi was very good. I had a few problems with it, but overall it was very entertaining, very well shot, had a decent story, and was worth two-and-a-half hours of my time. What I liked most: Man, was the movie action packed. The natural comparison is going to be with The Empire Strikes Back.
Tuesday, December 19, 2017
For a guy who doesn’t have a job, I’m insanely busy this week. Monday I had to run down to the lake house to meet with some contractors who will, hopefully, be doing some upgrades to the place before next summer rolls around. That meeting, along with spending a couple hours blowing the last of our leaves down there, took up most of the day before I got the girls home and had to drive the sports practice taxi.
Friday, December 15, 2017
It’s a special week for the Friday playlist. As some of you know, I used to do a semi-private podcast on which I played music for friends. At the end of each year, I would share my favorite songs of the previous 12 months. As the years piled up, I thought a cool way to introduce those year-end lists would be to review what my favorite songs of the previous years were.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Tonight’s the night. Last school Christmas program ever for our family. After fifteen total performances between preschool and 1st–3rd grades, L will close it out this evening when she stars as Ms. Jingle, the mayor of Jingle Bell Hills.[1] She has one of the three biggest roles and has taken to it in classic L form. She had all her lines memorized before Thanksgiving weekend was over. She’s added a little bit of flair to them over the past week.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
News is hitting the Pat DiNizio, lead singer of the most excellent band The Smithereens, has died. He was 62. To me, The Smithereens were always a super cool band that bridged various gaps. They didn’t fit into standard 80s rock or pop radio, yet they weren’t a truly college rock band like R.E.M. Their music had strong elements of 60s pop (thanks to DiNizio’s obsession with The Beatles), and gritty, blue-collar, bar-band rock.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
YES! Drew Magary has posted his annual holiday treat, The 2017 Hater’s Guide to the Williams-Sonoma Catalog. As always, read with care in the office, lest you alert all your coworkers that you’re slacking off with your laughter.
Tuesday, December 12, 2017
A weird start to the week. I had planned on going into hermit mode for a couple days, as I had a large library book that is due Wednesday and I still had to plow through about 200 more pages of it. I tried to renew, but there’s a waiting list for it, so I endeavored to dive in and finish it up, avoiding online time as much as possible.
Friday, December 8, 2017
A quick burst of high quality new tunes over the past week. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Entitlement Crew” - The Hold Steady. The band just completed a four-night stretch at the Brooklyn Bowl and recorded this track, along with a B side, in advance of those shows. Franz Nicolay is back with the band, which is great news! And the song is pretty good! “Passing Out” - Strand of Oaks. Tim Showalter scrapped an entire album of material before hunkering down to bang out this year’s Hard Love.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
One more piece of the weekend that requires its own entry. L began her basketball season on Sunday with two games. We missed the first game, but we we landed I had a couple texts from the head coach and another parent letting me know that we lost by six and did not play well. We rolled into the gym a few minutes after the tip of their second game. Maybe we should have skipped it.
Monday, December 4, 2017
We had ourselves a good ass weekend in San Antonio! Here’s a rundown of what all we packed in. We flew down Thursday, getting in late afternoon. We went down with one of S’s partners and her husband, and met a friend of theirs who was in from Colorado for the conference. After checking into our hotel - the Grand Hyatt on the River Walk - we changed and hustled out to grab an early dinner.
Friday, December 1, 2017
Crap. I had an awfully nice playlist put together and then realized I can’t figure out how to share Spotify playlists using the WordPress mobile app. You see, the Mrs. and I flew down San Antone way yesterday so she can further her medical education over the next couple days. Expect details from the tip on Monday. Without Spotify music, these two vids seemed appropriate. youtu.be/ZJEwrw4VE… youtu.be/VGF4ibgcH… I’m off to check on the basement at the Alamo…
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Dang it. Once again my slowness in writing has caused someone with a lot more readership than I have to hit the same topic. Will Leitch has a piece in New York Magazine about whether the NFL is on a downward spiral. He hits a lot of the same notes I wanted to hit in a more personal post. His piece is really good, so I do recommend reading it. But I won’t let it stop me from sharing my own thoughts.
Monday, November 27, 2017
An action-packed Thanksgiving break in our house. We kicked things off Wednesday by heading to the post office to submit passport applications for all three girls. We are going to Mexico next spring break and wanted to give their applications plenty of time to percolate through the system. We double, triple, quadruple checked that everything was in order, talked to a couple friends who had gone through the process recently, and arrived thoroughly prepared…only to discover the post office now takes reservations for the passport window and they were booked solid for the day.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
Busy, busy day around here getting ready for tomorrow. All the errands have been run and (hopefully) the final trip to the grocery store completed. The girls and I are midway through our house cleaning regimen. I’m about to head outside and do some leaf blowing and grass mowing in the 90 minutes or so the thermometer might reach 40 today. With that in mind, I thought I’d just share this most excellent link with you all.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
So much for my little lull. I raced through two books over the past week. So as I don’t forget about them over the holiday weekend, here they are. The Lock Artist - Steve Hamilton This book arrived with loads of praise from many different sources. And it ended up being a magnificent read. Our narrator is Michael, a man who is writing down his memoirs while serving a prison sentence.
Friday, November 17, 2017
The flow of new music has slowed recently, as it always does this time of year. Thus, I’ve spent more time reviewing and whittling my Favorite Songs of the Year list lately, getting it ready for unveiling in about a month. So for today’s playlist, I decided just to open up Spotify, select my Songs, hit shuffle, and share the first five songs that popped out. Enjoy! open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Shark Fin Blues” - The Drones.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Funny thing. After reading that Van Halen book in one day, I then didn’t read a thing for an entire week. And then took roughly a week to really get into my next book. Obviously my body was self-regulating and making sure I didn’t get too far ahead of my book-a-week pace. The Sellout - Paul Beatty Here we have An Important Book. So important, in fact, that Beatty became the first American to win the Man Booker Prize.
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
As I do every year, I’ve bookmarked this site and check it every day to see what holiday shows are on that evening. We’ve already recorded Home Alone and L has watched about half of it. This Saturday looks like the first big TV night of the season. Christmas TV Schedule
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Here we go. Too early for sure, but the first big night of the college hoops year is tonight. These games would likely be much better if played a month from now but, whatever, we have to live with all these marquee matchups before Thanksgiving. This year’s Champions Classic is perfectly arranged. Duke and Michigan State, #1 vs. #2, two complete and mature teams, will open the night. Then Kansas and Kentucky, #3 vs.