Thursday, February 9, 2017
Catching up on three recent reads. On Bullshit - Harry G. Frankfurt. “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” Thus begins what is, really, an extended essay in book form on the meaning of bullshit. I read a blurb about this somewhere over the holidays and thought it sounded like a hilarious and quick read. In fact, Frankfurt was a professor of philosophy at Yale and Princeton, among other places.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
I really should be flogged for not sharing this earlier. It took me several nights back in December to get through it. And it was worth every second. Prince’s Closest Friends Share Their Best Prince Stories The saddest thing about Prince dying is that we lost the chance that he would ever really open up about his life and career. He was slated to put out an autobiography, but I’ve not heard how deep into that project he was.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Sometimes sports are the worst. Sometimes they’re the best. There’s been a lot of both lately. Super Bowl Had I been fully neutral, that would have been an awesome Super Bowl. The league heavies get blasted early and look thoroughly overmatched by their young, brash, high-powered opponents. Then an epic comeback, featuring an all-time play, and the first overtime game in Super Bowl history that ends with the Patriots staking claim to greatest franchise in league history and Tom Brady officially passing Joe Montana as the greatest quarterback ever.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Sports are funny. As much as the location where you grew up or live, style of play, or favorite athlete, narrative is a huge part of how we choose the teams we root for. If you’re an uncommitted fan, or just a fan with no strong ties to a particular team to begin with, the story that surrounds a team can often be as big of an attraction as anything.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Australia was in the news a little this week. I had some Aussie (and one New Zealand) tunes gathered. Seemed like a good time to put them together with a classic from Down Under to form a very pleasing playlist. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Never Start” - Middle Kids. I discovered their “Edge of Town” way back in the spring of last year. It was good enough to land in my year end favorites list.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Some matchup last night, arguably the biggest of the year. When you get the best spellers from eight schools in the same room, you know there’s going to be some terrific performances. Uh huh, last night was the local Spell Bowl! After serving as an alternate last year, M was selected to represent the St. P’s sixth graders this year. The weird thing is, she refused to talk about it with us beforehand.
Monday, January 30, 2017
When we first became parents, we set some limits on ourselves that we thought would benefit our kids. These rules were based on observations of other parents, both adopting elements of parenting we admired and rejecting those we thought were inappropriate. One rule was that we would never take our kids out of school for an extended period to take a family vacation. We violated that rule four years ago when we went to Disney.
Monday, January 23, 2017
Sunday sucked. Not because of the weather. For the second-straight day it was in the 60s here, although it was a more dreary day than Saturday. No complaints there. Not because anyone in the family was sick. We are all reasonably healthy. Not because of L’s basketball game. Although we lost by 2, it was a good game and the girls played really well. Sunday sucked because of a text I got late in the morning from a friend back in KC with the news about Yordano Ventura.
Friday, January 20, 2017
Everything is different today. Things that had been in place for years are suddenly changed, awkward, and troublesome. Yep, you guessed it: M got braces put on yesterday. Or at least her top brackets. She was alternately excited and anxious. I think it’s weird that kids these days often look forward to getting braces. I guess it has to do with how you can personalize them with different colors, and how they are much less bulky than they were when our generation was growing up.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Well, here we are in the middle of January, and once again the Kansas Jayhawks are putting together an excellent season of college basketball play. Some things just never seem to change. Except something is different this year. No, not Bill Self’s four-guard offense he’s had to install due to a lack of quality big men. No, not that (Bitch I’m) Frank Mason III is averaging over 20 points a game, putting him on track to be only the second player of the Self era to do so.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
An early winter sports update, starting with L’s second year of basketball. She is playing in the pre-CYO league run at her future high school by the girls coach there. I’m coaching her team again this year. This time around I have eight girls - four second graders, four first graders - all from St. P’s. In fact, of the four teams in the league, three are from St. P’s.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
A nice, long weekend was exactly what we needed just four days after the girls went back to school. That was an intense four days! I kid. I’m fully supportive of the MLK Day holiday. It just feels oddly timed after our late holiday break. And our girls are going to miss a few days of school next week[1] so January is going to be a very quick month. Academically at least.
Friday, January 13, 2017
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Emotions and Math” - Margaret Glaspy. I really enjoyed Glaspy’s album this song serves as the title track for. But I lost it in the haze of the end of last year. I was reminded of this track, and then the album, when my brother in music Erick$ included this song in a playlist of his favorite songs of last year. I love the swagger that Glaspy sings with.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
First two books of the new year. The Association of Small Bombs - Karan Mahajan This is a complicated, if very good, novel. Beginning with a fictional terrorist bomb that explodes in a Delhi market in 1996, it follows the explosion’s effects on those it touched. That includes the men responsible for the attack, the parents of young brothers who died in the blast, their friend who survived and his family, and how the ripples of the attack eventually changed modern Indian society.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
The girls did just fine. There was some grumpiness, but nothing unusual. The kitchen did seem quiet, as I was pouring bowls of cereal and warming toaster waffles for the first time without Christmas music since November. I need to find some good morning music. I think the quiet kitchen puts everyone on edge. The morning was a little tougher for me. Not because I was sad that the holiday was over, or because I was dreading my eye doc visit.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
I wouldn’t be half-assing it correctly if I failed to offer up some half-assed NFL playoff predictions. But, first, a few words about the Colts. WTF?!?! How on earth do you bring back the GM and head coach who have produced an uninspired, incomplete team that misses the playoffs in the weakest division in football and is somehow ruining what should be the next great NFL superstar in the process?
Friday, January 6, 2017
My collection of new music dwindled over the past six weeks, as I both devoted most of my time to either holiday tunes or reviewing my favorite songs of 2016, and as the music industry dialed the spigot back a bit on new releases. I’m looking forward to the flow increasing again soon. For our first playlist of the new year, a mix of old and new. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Drive That Fast” - Kitchens of Distinction.
Thursday, January 5, 2017
“Lord, honey, it’s gonna be excitin’!” Our family is pretty addicted to the various Food Network baking and cooking competition shows. We are especially fond of the Holiday Baking Championship. The quote above came from this year’s winner, Jason Smith, a folksy, down-home baker from Kentucky who was full of oddball yet hilarious comments. That one was used, over-and-over, in promos for the show’s six-week run. It’s become a common saying in our house.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
The holiday portion of our Christmas vacation is over and the new year is off to a decent start. Things ramped up another notch last week. Our family from Denver flew in late Wednesday night for a brief visit. We picked them up at the airport after 11:00 pm. By the time the luggage was collected, we got home, and gave all the kids a snack, it was 1:00 am. And the kids all whined about having to go to bed.
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Time for my monthly/annual recounting of what I’ve been listening to. The December numbers are always an aberration, as I go all-in with the holiday music. I think the 2016 totals are rather interesting, though. I don’t believe I’ve ever had my #1 artist so far out in front of my #2 artist. Remember, these only reflect what I’ve listened to on Spotify. Throw in the months that one Frightened Rabbit disk or another was in my vehicle’s CD player, and I think they’re pushing a thousand virtual and physical spins.
Friday, December 30, 2016
For my final entry of 2016, I’ll make my first attempt at my promised adjustment in how I share the books I’ve been reading. No more monthly entries, where I can barely remember the details of the book I read five weeks ago. Back to individual posts for each book. Or occasionally a small group of books. I began 2016 reading Richard Price’s The White’s, which he wrote under his pen name of Harry Brandt.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Yesterday was one of those weird afternoons where you take a brief nap and, after waking, nothing seems quite right for an hour or so. The cobwebs seem too thick to push through and you’re left feeling like you’ve taken a bunch of cold medicine. As I was sitting there, trying to find solid ground again, I picked up my phone and began scrolling through Twitter, soon finding the news that Carrie Fisher had died.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
A very busy and fun first quarter of our Christmas break is in the books. As is required of anyone who still runs a personal blog, here is a rundown of the past few days. The girls were not released from their academic responsibilities until 1:00 Thursday. By comparison, the neighborhood kids all finished the previous Friday, so our girls felt like they got a late start. They do go back a week later than the neighbors, so it all evens out.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
I didn’t read, or really pay any attention to, the Harry Potter books or watch movies when they were first coming out. Sure, I was aware of the phenomenon. I knew what Hogwarts was. I knew that adults seemed to enjoy the stories as much as young adults. But they came along at a point in my life where I really had no interest in digesting them. However, I loved how Joe Posnanski wrote about reading the stories with his daughters.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Over the past year or so, Drew Magary has become one of my favorite writers. Whether in his novels and collections of anecdotes about being a parent, his writings for GQ and Deadspin, or just on Twitter, he never fails to amuse me. I might have first discovered him through his holiday-themed posts on Deadspin. You might recall when he shared his daughter’s ridiculous Christmas list and broke it all down for us.
Monday, December 19, 2016
I usually offer some State of the Music Union thoughts when I share my favorite songs of the year lists. 2016 got off to a great start and then kind of cruised to the finish. Most of my favorite albums of the year came out during its first six months. There were some albums I was greatly looking forward to that I never connected with. To me, 2016 was a better year for singles than albums.
Friday, December 16, 2016
A special playlist this week. I think I finally got my Favorite Songs of the Year list hammered out yesterday. I’ll finish my write up over the weekend and share it early next week. When I used to do a semi-private podcast, each year before I shared my favorite songs, I would do a review show counting down the #1 songs of all the previous years. Seems like a good way for me to share some good tunes with you.
Friday, December 16, 2016
My counting may be off - I did make a chart to double-check my numbers - but I’m pretty sure that last night was the 15th, and next-to-last, Christmas program of our girls’ school lives. Every year since 2007 we’ve had at least one school program. 2013 was the sweetest spot in that stretch, with M performing in the St. P’s 3rd grade play, C in the first grade living nativity, and L in her St.
Monday, December 12, 2016
We had a nice weekend up in Chicago, the Mrs. and me. The occasion was for her to attend a conference for work, something we did for the first time a year ago when we went to Arizona. Amazingly, this was the first time I’ve been to Chicago in 15 years, since I ran the marathon in 2001. We’re three hours away! What’s wrong with us? This time around we road-tripped it, dropping the girls off at school right at 7:30 Friday then getting on I–65 for the trip north.
Friday, December 9, 2016
open.spotify.com/user/224a… A few weeks back, we got a new Japandroids single plus a 2017 release date for their next album. Over the past week, two more artists I’ve spent a lot of time listening to in recent years did the same thing. “Radio Kids” - Strand of Oaks. Someone said this sounded like Ryan Adams doing a Dinosaur Jr. song. I approve of that assessment. SoO’s last album, Heal, was a brutally honest account of both his and his wife’s failures in their marriage.