Friday, March 31, 2017
Busy week so low on posts. Still time to share some music, though. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Please, Let’s Go Away” - Trementina. Today is the first day of our spring break. As we’ve already taken a trip this year, we’ll be staying close to home for the next week. Doesn’t mean we can’t wish we were going somewhere warm, especially since the forecast is cool and rainy for most of the next 10 days.
Monday, March 27, 2017
Saturday I had a feeling I can’t ever remember having during a KU loss, especially a season-ending loss. Peace. Oh, I had my moments of yelling, cursing the TV, and throwing things, no doubt about that. But as Oregon’s cold-blooded assassins dropped in ridiculous shot after ridiculous shot, as Jordan Bell kept rejecting every shot KU took near the rim, and as KU could never find anything on offense beyond BIFM, it was obvious this was not KU’s night.
Friday, March 24, 2017
A quick playlist since I’m well behind schedule today. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Dundee Man” - Spiral Stairs. I was sure this band was Scottish. Turns out it is actually Pavement co-founder Scott Kannberg. I still like the song. “Hope The High Road” - Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Drifting more toward the rock side of his alt-country sound, I really like this song. “Living In The City” - Hurray for the Riff Raff.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Holy shit! What a goddamn game. It’s taken me until noon Friday to calm down a little bit after a thoroughly satisfying Thursday night of hoops. I went to bed after 1:00, and slept only fitfully between the lingering adrenaline and the trips to the bathroom caused by that last beer at 12:30. This morning my pulse was still a wee bit fast, so I threw my camera over my shoulder, drove to a couple nearby nature parks, and spent two hours walking and snapping pics.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
I need distractions today. 9:40 pm tips for Sweet 16 games are complete garbage. Too much waiting. I’ll catch you up on my books to kill a little time. Finders Keepers - Stephen King. Book two in his Bill Hodges trilogy moves a little differently than the first. This one spends nearly 150 pages setting up two back stories - one in the 1970s, the other contemporary to book one - before King finally pulls the returning characters in.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
I realized over the weekend that I never closed out our winter sports season. I think part of the delay was because of how winter sports ended for our two oldest girls. Let’s start with M, whose volleyball team had a fine regular season, going 5–2. By the end of the season they had a number of girls who could consistently rip off a long stretch of serves in a row, including M.
Monday, March 20, 2017
And now for the mighty Jayhawks. Sunday was everything this year’s team is about, compressed into 40 minutes. Moments where they looked completely brilliant. Moments where they faced a serious personnel issue and eased past it with no problem. Moments where they looked totally dominant on the glass. Moments where they could get, and make, any shot they wanted. And then the moments where they played entirely too fast without any poise.
Monday, March 20, 2017
A much, much better weekend of hoops after a ho-hum first two days of the tournament. Quick catch up for Saturday. Although I lost my runner-up, I was just fine with Villanova going out. I’m in a weird place with ‘Nova. I’ve watched them quite a bit since Butler joined the Big East, and I’ve always been impressed with the Wildcats’ incredible toughness. They just hang in, wear down, and wear out their opponents.
Saturday, March 18, 2017
The least entertaining first round of the NCAA tournament in recent memory is in the books.[1] There were some solid games, but a shockingly low number of upsets. And only a handful of “text all your friends and tell them to turn game X on immediately” moments. KU rolled. Which was good. They did exactly what I expected them to do: look sloppy early then settle down and lay the wood.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Day three, and the first marathon of the tournament. I hung in there pretty valiantly, but must admit I packed things in about 11:15 eastern when none of the games were particularly close. Fortunately I didn’t miss any amazing comebacks or crazy last-second shots. All-in-all, it was a kind of boring day. There were a couple close games, a couple other that had moments of entertainment. But for the first time in three years, I did not lose a Final Four or Elite 8 team in the opening hours of the tourney.
Friday, March 17, 2017
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Darling” - WOMPS. Some fine, Frightened Rabbit-approved Scottish rock. “Sentimental and Monday” - Holy Holy. Apparently this song has been around for a couple years, but I just found it thanks to one of my Spotify Discovery playlists. It’s cold, rainy, and bleak in Indy today. This song is perfect for this morning. “Why We Fight” - Fast Romantics. There’s something about the Canadian national identity that makes them prone to forming musical collectives.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Hate to admit it, but I did not pay as much attention to day two of the tournament. Once again, I had the games on for roughly three-quarters of the evening. But this time instead of missing the first half of the first game, I skipped the second half of the second game because I was tired and knew the next few days would be long. That seemed like the smart choice with Providence pounding USC at halftime.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
I got to watch three-quarters of the first night of the tournament last night. A few quick thoughts. The Mt. St. Mary’s - New Orleans game was fun. A couple teams flat going at each other for 40 minutes. New Orleans got some local run because their head coach and one assistant coach are from Bloomington. I thought head coach Mark Slessinger blew it by playing the last defensive possession of the game straight-up.
Monday, March 13, 2017
A few weeks back, in the midst of a particularly satisfying KU game, I told the group of friends I text with during the game that if KU won the Big 12 again this season, they should refuse to play in the NCAA tournament and hang a banner for being regular season national champions. You may laugh, but there is precedent for that. At least the banner part. In 1975 Indiana went undefeated through the regular season, but lost star Kent Benson late in the year to a broken arm.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the release of U2’s The Joshua Tree. I remember buying the cassette shortly after it came out, but I either got a bad copy or let it sit in the sun or my tape player mangled it, because within a couple plays it began sounding terrible. As I was five months from getting my drivers license, I couldn’t just run back to Musicland - or whatever relic of the 80s I purchased it at - and swap it out for a new copy.
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
A slightly different format for this edition. But first, a note about my first abandoned book of the year. Boris Fishman’s Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo was on several Best Of lists for 2016, and thus was added to my To Read list. Somewhere along the line, I think I got the wrong idea what it was about. I starting reading it expecting a funny view on life in America from the perspective of Russian immigrants.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
I’ve had two weeks to soak up the sadness that is Ryan Adams’ new album, Prisoner. Time to share some thoughts. I wasn’t sure how much I would like this album. It wasn’t that I doubted Adams’ ability to write about the end of his marriage to Mandy Moore: he’s been crafting amazing songs about heartbreak his entire career. No, what worried me was this was an album he had been working on, in one form or another, for nearly two years.
Friday, March 3, 2017
youtu.be/bvjsAIpNy… “French Press” - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. I know, this was in a playlist exactly one month ago today. But it’s been an odd music week for me,[1] and this video just dropped. It makes me want to be in my 20s and go to a casual wedding hosted at a pool in Australia. Until it gets a little melancholy at the end. Long story short, my vehicle has been with the dealer all week awaiting a replacement part, so I’ve not had SiriusXM to listen to, nor the Ryan Adams CD I left in the player.
Thursday, March 2, 2017
I’ve been pimping Mark Titus’ work for several years, first when he was with Grantland and now that he and many Grantlanders have resurfaced at The Ringer. Even on the rare day when I’m not super interested in the subject of his articles, I’ll at least skim them. That was the case with his piece last week about the woeful state of Big 10 basketball. And I’m glad I skimmed it, because there were two fantastic nuggets in it.
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
The college basketball season always seems to fly by. Despite covering five full months - and bumping into the first week of a sixth - it feels like a much quicker run. Wasn’t just a week or so ago that KU was losing to Indiana in overtime in Hawaii, then beating Duke in New York four nights later? Yet here we are, in the final week of the regular season, when the uneasy part of the year begins.
Friday, February 24, 2017
It was an all Ryan Adams and Middle Kids week, so no Spotify playlist of mostly new stuff this week. Instead, just this delightful video from Band of Horses youtu.be/j7H1T1KQe… “In a Drawer”
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Time for another Kid Winter Sports Roundup. L finished her basketball season last week. Our team went 3–4, losing to the eventual champions in the tournament. We started the season 1–3 so obviously finished strong. Our best game of the year was our final regular season game, when we played the team we were tied with for second place at the time. They jumped on us early - leading 8–0 and 11–2 - and I was feeling a little helpless on the bench.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
As the bulk of my regular readers are in the Midwest, I don’t have to expound too much on the gorgeous weather we are enjoying. It feels more like April than February. And although next weekend looks like a return to more seasonable weather, you sure can’t help but think spring is closer than it really is when you can wear shorts and t-shirts in the middle of February. As I took the girls to school this morning after their three-day weekend, I realized that Presidents’ Day weekend was traditionally when St.
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Friday was beautiful so I got distracted and forgot to share my final music post of the day. So here it is. It’s a great crossing of pop culture lines, but will make even more sense if you watch The Americans. youtu.be/QqBxUgqe8…
Friday, February 17, 2017
OK, for music post #2, I wanted to celebrate Ryan Adams’ new album, Prisoner. Rather than setting the stage myself, I thought I would share this excellent view of the State of Ryan Adams that Steven Hyden published earlier this week. It’s a good primer on where Adams has been over the past few years. And it has a little extra weight since Adams confirmed on Twitter than Hyden’s theory about Ryan Adams is correct.
Friday, February 17, 2017
It’s the first really big new music Friday of 2017! Which means bonus musical content for you! Strand of Oaks and Son Volt have new albums out today. Middle Kids released their long-awaited debut EP. And the crown jewel of the day is Ryan Adams’ Prisoner, which is already making me happy/sad. Oh, and there’s a bonus cherry on top: Prince’s music hit all the streaming services again last weekend, which is also worthy of celebration.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Nix - Nathan Hill. My brother-in-reading Dave V. received two copies of this book over the holidays. He was generous enough to pass one of them my way. Quite the gesture, which I appreciate immensely! This is a great book. It’s also one of those books that makes me mad, as it is Hill’s first full-length novel. How can people write something this brilliant on their first effort? I’ve tried a couple half-assed attempts to write lengthy stories over the past 10 years and the results have been thoroughly embarrassing.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
You all laugh at me for my stupid sports superstitions. But today I’m laughing at all of you. Because today I have proof that these “stupid” superstitions work! Let’s jump back almost two years to West Virginia’s visit to Lawrence in the final week of the 2015 season. For the full recap you can read here, but basically, Perry Ellis got hurt before halftime, West Virginia was kicking KU’s ass and led by 18 in the second half, I got pissed and started watching other things.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Once upon a time, not that long ago, I was known as the trivia guy. Where other people mastered law or medicine or sales, my mind was best suited to accumulating a nearly endless parade of useless if somewhat interesting facts about old pop culture, sports, and history. Some might say I had a gift. My reputation reached its zenith when I ran a daily trivia email list for something like three years.
Friday, February 10, 2017
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “The Punisher” - Lucius. I don’t know anything about this group, but this song is awesome. “Thick as Thieves” - The Menzingers. This band has always leaned a little too emo for my tastes. But they shifted ever-so-slightly on their latest album and I’m finding a handful of the tracks very nice to listen to. Good to hear some guitars in the indie rock world! “The Distance” - Emma Ruth Rundle.