Thursday, October 9, 2014
Unloading some things I’ve scribbled down in the notebook over the last few weeks. I’ve always wondered why there are so many hand-made signs selling mattresses at most major intersections. This isn’t just an Indiana thing, is it? I know mattresses cost a bundle, but a mattress is at the top of the list of things I would never buy based on an ad posted to a utility pole.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Hawkeye: My Life As A Weapon - Matt Fraction, David Aja, Javier Pulido As you know, if you follow along with these posts faithfully, I like to give graphic novels a try a couple times each year. In this case, I went with the trade paperback of a comic series I’ve heard praised in many places. Hawkeye was supposed to be the comic book for people who don’t read comic books.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Lost in the rush of the weekend and baseball is the obligatory birthday post for L., who turned six on Friday. She had a nice birthday. I’m not sure if it was a coincidence or if the teacher rigged the drawing[1] but she was also the star student in class last week, which meant it was all about her all week and she got to bring treats in on Friday.
Monday, October 6, 2014
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t happen. The team that wasted opportunities, that was full of guys who failed to fulfill their potential, that maddeningly clung to out-dated ways of playing the game, that team was not supposed to do this. Maybe win a game, perhaps two, sure. But not sweep out the Best Team In Baseball. Not by winning two-straight in Anaheim, both on the strength of outstanding pitching, fine defense, and extra inning home runs from the two guys who most symbolized the recent failures of the Royals, Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer[1].
Saturday, October 4, 2014
I did not forget about sharing some links for the week. I found this site, Emergent, which is kind of a Snopes or Urban Legends for news events. It looks at news stories that have been reported around the Internet and shows whether the claims have been verified or not. A useful site since I think we all see a headline or repost of something several times each week that later turns out to be not true.
Friday, October 3, 2014
youtu.be/nCBASt507… “Run To You” - Bryan Adams I was thinking about the music I was listening to back in the fall of 1985, the last time the Royals were in the playoffs. I know most days that fall the first thing I did after getting home from school was put on the Miami Vice soundtrack. I was listening to a lot of Tears for Fears, too. This song came a bit later in the fall, as winter approached.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Man, where to begin? How do you write about a game like that? Do you write about all the ups and downs, all the twists and turns, the nearly five hours of mood swings first? Or do you try to put it into context, attempting to compare it to other games over the years, across different sports, to figure out where it stands in your personal pantheon of greatest games ever?
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
We’ve been waiting on this day since October 28, 1985, the day after the last Kansas City Royals post-season game. On that morning, I went off to school, two months into my freshman year of high school. There was a buzz in the air from the Royals winning the World Series the night before. We were putting the final touches on packing up the duplex my mom and I had lived in for five years, along with all of my step-dad’s items he had moved in over the summer, preparing to move into a brand new house the following weekend.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Twenty years ago I developed a theory about sports. This theory stated that sports teams, or the coaches and administrators that lead them, can sell their souls to the devil in exchange for short-term success. I came up with this theory after Missouri went 14-0 in Big 8 play in 1994. While they had some fine talent, Melvin Booker and Jevon Crudup most notably, no one expected them to run away with the conference title that year.
Friday, September 26, 2014
First up, an important announcement. This Saturday NBC will begin showing old Saturday Night Lives at 10:00 PM Eastern, 90 minutes before the regular broadcast. This week’s episode will be the legendary show when Richard Pryor hosted in 1975. The episodes will be edited down to fit the one-hour time block before your late local news. It will be fascinating to see if and how NBC edits some of the skits from these old shows.
Friday, September 26, 2014
youtu.be/b0DTBOQOd… “Duel” - Swervedriver I spent 30 minutes or so yesterday watching a bunch of bad videos from the early-to-mid 1990s. And I mean bad in every way. They were poorly produced in their original form and had been uploaded to Youtube in terrible quality. Good songs, horrible videos. This popped up as I was working through that list. Fortunately it’s not of terrible quality, because this is one of the great semi-lost tracks of the decade.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
It goes back to 1978, I believe. Football was the first sport I discovered, but baseball followed soon after. We lived in southeast Missouri at the time, in the heart of Cardinals country. But on a trip to Kansas City that summer, my uncles and the boyfriend of one of my cousins introduced me to the Royals. I still remember repeating the name “George Brett” over-and-over to myself so I wouldn’t forget it after the boyfriend explained to me that Brett was not only the Royals best player, but one of the best players in all of baseball.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
My favorite dumb sports controversy of the weekend was Kansas State football coach Bill Snyder whining about Auburn allegedly stealing K-State’s offensive signals during their game on Thursday. What an ass. (K-State fans, please note, I think any coach in any sport whining about their opponent stealing signs is stupid. If it was Charlie Weis I would be writing the same thing. Then again, I think most of what Charlie Weis says is stupid, so that might be a bad example.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Our girls have a stupid new game that is driving us crazy. It all began back in late July, early August. We went to the mall one Sunday to try on new shoes for the school year. With all the local schools set to begin, the mall was packed. I spent most of the time making sure our girls stayed together, didn’t get in anyone’s way, and were ready to try shoes on when the harried salespeople brought their stack of options out.
Friday, September 19, 2014
A bevy of links this week. Rolling Stone gets it wrong a lot. But it’s good to see that there are enough Gen Xers on the staff these days to proclaim 1984 as the best year for pop music ever. Have fun reading through their top 100 singles for the year. Man, was Prince on fire back then. 100 Best Singles of 1984: Pop’s Greatest Year While on the topic of music, Matt Gemmell writes about all kinds of topics, but mostly technology related issues.
Friday, September 19, 2014
youtu.be/5stvvnDbC… “Public Enemy No. 1” - Public Enemy Holy crap! Always the best live act in hip hop, Public Enemy can still throw down nearly thirty years after releasing their first album. As I watched this, especially the closing moments when Jimmy Fallon comes on stage, I thought back to where the music and TV worlds were when Yo! Bum Rush The Show came out in 1987. Public Enemy was not, nor was any other hip hop act, getting invited onto The Tonight Show.
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
And now for some girls sporting notes. M. ended her kickball season last night. Her team got another big win (45-11 after trailing 9-4 to begin the second inning) to end their season at 6-1. Unfortunately, that was not enough to make the championship tournament. Only the four division winners go into the tournament. And their one loss came to a team that went 7-0. That single loss was a bummer.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Mannnn do I have a fun story to share. I just hope I can do it justice. To set things up, I’m two-thirds of the way through a three-week run with our 3A school, IC, who is currently 4-0 and ranked #7 in the state. Two weeks ago I had them against last year’s runners-up from class A, and IC manhandled them by 30 points. Last week, against an 0-3 team, IC won by nearly 50.
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
I have a whole mess of sports thoughts piled up, so let’s kick it off by running through probably the craziest 10-15 minutes of sports I’ve lived through in awhile. Last night I had to multitask for my sports. I had the Colts-Eagles game on TV. And because the Royals were playing the White Sox, which are blacked out in Indy, I had MLB Gameday on my laptop with the game also on my phone so I could punch up the audio any time the game got interesting.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Not as many things to share this week. Who do you think the greatest American athlete of the current age is? LeBron? Peyton? Tiger, before his fall? Ian Crouch argues it’s the perpetually underrated and unfairly maligned Serena Williams. I’m not sure I agree, but I’ve always liked Serena and I think she’s in the conversation. For fifteen years, over two generations of tennis, Williams has been a spectacular and constant yet oddly uncherished national treasure.
Friday, September 12, 2014
youtu.be/gZi-dw03f… “Alex Chilton” - The Replacements Nearly 30 years after being banned from NBC for their notorious drunken performance on Saturday Night Live, The Replacements returned this week and performed on The Tonight Show. Sure, it’s only two of the original members. And they’re clean and sober and that sense of danger that was key to their early performances is gone. But it’s still a great song. And, in case you don’t know who Paul Westerberg is singing about, one of the finest power pop songs ever, written and sung by the late Alex Chilton.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
As you may have heard, U2 performed following Apple’s iPhone and Watch event on Tuesday. Along with their performance, their new album Songs Of Innocence hit the iTunes Music Store for free until October. I was immediately faced with a dilemma: do I listen to the album, since there’s no cost to me for doing so, or do I ignore it, since nothing U2 has done in roughly a decade has sounded good to me?
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
We started off strong with a few fantastic albums in the first 3 1/2 months of the year. Things slowed a bit, with some fine but not great albums, as we moved into summer. So let’s run through some of my favorite albums since April. Teeth Dreams - The Hold Steady Beauty & Ruin - Bob Mould They Want My Soul - Spoon Brill Busters - The New Pornographers Each of these albums are exactly what you want from each band.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Sadly I didn’t get to this before Monday afternoon’s disaster in Comerica Park in Detroit. But still, the Royals are one game into their biggest regular season series since that epic series with the (then) California Angels in September 1985. The big differences are that Angels series was in KC and during the final week of the season. When the Royals caught the Angels that week, they needed just two more wins to clinch the division.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
I figured three posts on Friday would be one too many, thus I’m finally posting these during halftime of the Broncos’ beat-down of the Colts. You know, the last time I turned off a Colts game at halftime it worked out ok… First off, these pictures showing the effects the drought is in California are incredible. Dramatic Photos of California’s Historic Drought I miss the glory days of The Office and Jim’s best pranks on Dwight.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Whoo, what a busy week. I’m on library duty for all three girls this year, and I decided to stack those assignments in the same week. That makes them easier to remember, but also sucked up a lot of time this week. In addition to that, I have a small work project I’ve been hammering away on. I’ll share more about it later. So here we are and it’s Friday already.
Friday, September 5, 2014
youtu.be/rPRLbjGE6… “English Girls Approximately” - Ryan Adams An absolutely amazing live performance. No studio tricks here. The guy can just write great songs and sing them well. It can be daunting to attempt to tackle Adams' massive output. He’s released no fewer than 20 albums in his career, whether with his first band, Whiskytown, with his accompanying band The Cardinals, or solo efforts. I might be about to tackle it, though.
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Indian Summer - Aaron Mahnke This was an impulse purchase for the Kindle before my Kansas City trip in late July. I’ve read another of Mahnke’s books, but it was a guide to being a freelancer rather than a novel. Between that and the cheap price, my expectations were low. It ended up being pretty solid. It begins with a piece set in the 1980s. A group of pre-teen friends sneak into an abandoned factory in New England that was originally built over 100 years earlier.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
This quick, odd summer of 2014 is officially closed. After a fine start, in which most days were pleasant but not oppressive, things turned cool and rainy right about the time our swim season ended. So there were a lot fewer trips to the pool this July and August as compared to last year. Since Mother Nature is a bitch, it’s felt like late June/early July ever since school started. We didn’t touch 90 degrees until two weeks ago.
Monday, September 1, 2014
Friday was busy, busy, busy. The girls were out of school, S. was working a half day, and we had a big group headed to the LVS for the weekend. So the links got pushed back. My apologies, because one of these might have been quite useful for some of you over the weekend. So let’s start with that one. Here is one butcher’s guide to making the perfect burger.