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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
youtu.be/Lt6r-k9Bk… “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover” - Sophie B. Hawkins A guilty pleasure of mine, this was released in 1991 but charted in the summer of 1992, one of the greatest music summers ever1. It’s long been in my iTunes library, but I can’t recall ever watching the video until recently. It’s really something else, isn’t it? Enjoy the last weekend of the summer. I was listening to Pearl Jam, TLC, Ice-T, Mary J.
I recently began following Chris Jaffe on Twitter. His claim to fame is that each day he tweets out a bunch of reasons why that date is significant. For example, here’s what his feed looked like this morning. Anyway, a couple weeks back I noticed he mentioned that the Rolling Stones album Steel Wheels had been released exactly 25 years earlier. I’m not a huge fan of the Stones, but I immediately thought about what the singles were from that album.
At last it was back out into the field Friday night as high school football season began here in Indiana. I caught a pretty nice assignment, following a top 10 5A team up north to Lafayette. The stadium was the nicest high school stadium I’ve ever been in. I had to take a damn elevator up to the press box! And it was completely enclosed. I don’t normally like that, because you can’t hear the crowd or the whistles of the refs.
The girls did fine without me Friday, coming back to beat a tough team 22-11. The coaches prepped them for the game by telling them it would be “like playing fifth graders.” Such is the reputation of the St. S’s kickball program. I was back on the scorebook tonight. Another win. Again the mercy rule came into effect. 41-15 this time, and they gave up seven of those runs in the first.
Before large capacity hard drives became relatively cheap and easy to obtain, lots of government agencies, corporations, and regular folks put important archival data onto CDs, thinking they would be safe forever because they were digital. Oops. Turns out CDs don’t hold their data in perpetuity. Worse, there’s no real way to predict how long it will take an individual CD to break down. CDs of the same age, and kept in the same conditions, can deteriorate at different rates depending on where and how they were manufactured.
youtu.be/vkLOg252K… “Under The Pressure” - The War On Drugs We’re approaching the final third of the year, and no album has yet challenged TWOD’s Lost In The Dream as my favorite of the year. This artsy, psychedelic video matches the mood of the nine minute album-opener nicely. As a bonus, here is TWOD performing another track from the album, “Burning,” live in Spain. Starting at about the 2:20 mark, when the band really begins to kick in, it is pretty spectacular.
Somewhat odd timing, but Grantland kicked off SNL At 40 week today.1 There are already a couple solid articles posted, and day one of the bracket to pick the greatest cast member ever is up. I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy the rest of the series. This, along with the passing of Don Pardo earlier this week, had me thinking of SNL this morning. I believe I’ve watched one full, current episode in the last 8-9 years.
I’ll preface this by reminding you I tend to get a little superstitious about sports. Despite being aware of the Colts’ epic comeback against the Chiefs in January, I refused to turn the game back on. My turning it off had something to do with the change, right? I watch KU games from the same seat until they lose, then switch to the opposite side of the couch. In March, I’ll often switch seats at halftime if things aren’t going well.
Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus give us 6:00 minutes of pure fun. youtu.be/ovqM72em1…
After that two day, mini-week to begin the school year, we’re diving right in this week. Five full days of school. An athletic event every afternoon or evening. In the next five days we have two kickball practices, two kickball games, and one soccer practice. We could add another event, too, as we’re still waiting to hear when L.’s soccer team will practice. And high school football begins this week.
Belated links this week. Friday was a beast. First up, a story that I imagine will strike different readers in a variety of ways. I find it funny and charming. Others may find it a little creepy. Or even inappropriate. Regardless, here is the story of the letters Texas Tech football coach Kliff Kingsbury and a woman in Arkansas exchanged recently. Arkansas fan ‘breaks up’ with Kliff Kingsbury, coach responds with letter of his own
“Gimme Something Good” - Ryan Adams Had a video been available for this song three weeks ago, when I highlighted two of my favorite songs of the summer, it would have been included as well. In fact, I’ve probably listened to no song more over the past two months. In a summer in which Tom Petty has got a lot of attention for his new release, and a year in which his sound has influenced current groups like the War On Drugs, Ryan Adams may well have out-Pettied Petty.
St. P’s kicked off the school year today. The alarm went off at 6:30, the girls were roused,1 uniforms were donned, bags were packed, and off we went. Drop off was easy. M., as is her custom, quickly dismissed me so she could start digging through the box of supplies sitting on her desk and chat with her friends. C. quickly found her seat and did the same.2 And then we were went to the end of the hall and L.
Robin Williams was a force of nature. That’s a cliché, often used in moments like this, but it was certainly appropriate for him. When he was on, and rolling, there was no getting in his way. Nothing was safe or sacred. Anything could, and likely would, serve as inspiration. He wasn’t the best comic of his generation, but he probably induced more stomach-splitting laughter than his contemporaries. After you watched Robin, your abdomen hurt.
Wow. It was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote about a weekend series in Kansas City between the Royals and Red Sox, wondering if we would look back on it as the high point of the season. The Royals drifted, then climbed back to the periphery of the Wild Card race, staying in it until the final week of the season. After this past weekend’s sweep of the Giants, I’m tempted to write a similar post.
Running a little late on everything today. A fine profile by a fine writer. Pat Jordan on the eternal kid, Johnny Damon. An Idiot In Exile These are crazy times for music. Tom Petty just nabbed the first #1 album of his career. Which seems kind of crazy. More crazy is who preceded him: “Weird Al” Yankovic. As my girls would say, I know, right? Anyway, in case you wondered how “Weird Al” manages to make parody versions, legally, of so many popular songs, this article should clear it up.
youtu.be/xnS4jX9sa… “Summer Nights” - Van Halen School starts next Thursday, so it’s the last, real Friday and weekend of the summer for us. One last time to go down to the ol' fishin' hole. Wait… I don’t think Sammy was really singing about fishing, was he? Oh well, a great summer song and Van Hagar at the finest.
A couple hoops thoughts for Thursday. Wiggins headed to Minnesota Damn. It’s been pretty obvious, aside from the brief period when Cleveland kidded themselves that they could trade for Kevin Love without giving up Andrew Wiggins, that the #1 pick would be headed to Minneapolis some time before the season began. Still, it sucks for it to, apparently, be going down officially. Cleveland with LeBron was the perfect spot for Wiggs.
You may have noticed there was a comment on the site yesterday. No joke. After many years of not having comments I have turned them back on. I’ve even added the little Latest Comments widget over on the right sidebar so you can quickly see if anyone has offered up their opinions. It’s appropriate that my pal Stace was the first person to comment in this new era. We had a really ugly scene last week while eating lunch together in Kansas City.
My life, like pretty much everyone’s, has been full of ups and downs. Triumphs and tragedies. Successes and sadness. The last week or so has been one of the toughest in my life. Yes, I’m off caffeine. Good lord is it difficult. Until yesterday I had been plagued by headaches when my body realized, mid-morning, that no caffeine would be flooding my system. I am at a loss at what to do in the mornings, as brewing and enjoying coffee has been part of my routine since I left the corporate world a decade ago.
Summerland- Michael Chabon As with The Fault In Our Stars, while Summerland is officially classified as a “young adult” book, it is really a book for all ages. Especially if you love baseball and have time to read in the summer. Summerland is a bit confusing at first. But that’s not unusual for a Chabon book. In this case, he quickly introduces characters from different races and different locations in parallel worlds that cross over and interact.