Movies, Shows, etc NBA Playoffs A+, until Hali blew out his achilles. Your Friends and Neighbors I think I have this complaint about all but the best modern, streaming dramedies: there were the wrong number of episodes. Some shows go on two episodes too long, others have two too few. It’s a tough needle to thread. I felt like this show had, maybe, 1.5 too many entires. So close but the middle part became a little too trashy, modern soap-ish and could have been trimmed.
We had a very slow, uneventful weekend, which leaves this space open to discuss how S and I spent Thursday and Friday evenings: binging season four of The Bear.
If you want the TLDR version: I liked it. Although it had some flaws and inconsistencies and did not match the first two seasons, it was a nice rebound from the uneven and divisive season three.
Most importantly, it felt like there was momentum throughout the season, augmented visually by Uncle Jimmy’s countdown clock, reminding the restaurant’s crew when he would pull financial support and begin exploring options to unload the property.
Several new songs by old artists this week. And some new songs by new artists. In other words, a normal week.
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“In The Sun” - Blondie We’ve had a little too much sun this week. It’s been miserable. This song makes me feel a little better about it.
“Breakaway” - Been Stellar These kids keep cranking out good tracks.
“Modern Man” - MORN Kick ass music from Wales!
“Move Now” - Marshall Crenshaw One of my all-time favorite writers of pop songs is back with a new album of old tracks.
Chart Week: June 23, 1984 Song: “I’ll Wait” - Van Halen Chart Position: #32, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #13 for two weeks.
I made my three-hour drive to Lexington, KY last Saturday morning solo. As it was also my birthday weekend, I thought the best way to celebrate would be to listen to an American Top 40 from June, 1984. Believe it or not, I could recall exactly what I was doing 41 years ago!
I’ve started following Denny Carter in recent weeks and enjoy his perspective on politics and the general state of the world. The sub-head of this piece is perfect: Being an asshole is a choice.
Free speech was meant to empower the powerless against the powerful, not to provide protection for society’s privileged members to hurl invective at the unprivileged and marginalized. The American right – and parts of the left – have twisted the idea of actual free speech into an unrecognizable mess that tells Americans they should have the right to say any insulting thing any time they want to anyone online or in real life.
A day later I still have a lot of Pacers thoughts. And I still need to catch you up on a very busy weekend. So this may turn into two posts, depending on how long I yap about the first topic.
Pacers Followup I became a Pacers fan when we moved to Indy in 2003, but they have never been at the top of my sports fandom rankings.[1] Although they have climbed a lot over the past year!
Sports can be unbelievably cruel sometimes. They can step up and make the worst possible thing happen in the worst possible time.
That’s how the Indiana Pacers’ dream run through the postseason ended last night. Not because the favored Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the third quarter to turn a close game into a comfortable win, clinching their first NBA title. That was just normal sports, not an unexpected result at all.
OMG OMG OMG!!!!
The Indiana Pacers are playing for the NBA championship Sunday night!
Thursday was a wonderful night of professional basketball. At least if you are a Pacers fan. They started out slow, missing like their first 100 shots, and trailed 10–2. From then on it really wasn’t much of a game. The Pacers destroyed the Thunder in pretty much every way. Their defense was suffocating. They were ferocious rebounders.
Summer is here (officially)! The time is right…
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“Dancing In The Street” - Van Halen A lot of people shit on it, but this is one of my all-time favorite summer songs. “This Summer” - Sleigh Bells This track comes from an album called Bunky Becky Birthday Boy. Hint, hint.
“Waawooweewaa” - OK Cool We need more songs titled after things Borat said.
“Big Empty Heart” - Cardinals NOT Ryan Adams former backing band, but rather another excellent group from Ireland.
I’ve been busy trying to finish an amazing book and get some work outside done before storms roll through later. For today’s post I dug into my list of ideas and found this one, which has been sitting there since George Wendt died last month and news broke that there will be a Scrubs revival.
With minimal commentary, here are my favorite TV comedies of all time.
Cheers A few years I went back and watched the early years and was amazed by how well they hold up.
After a nearly two-month dream ride, the Pacers run might be over. It wasn’t just that they lost game five in Oklahoma City last night by 11, after trimming an 18-point deficit to two midway through the fourth quarter. It wasn’t just that they routinely threw the ball away. It wasn’t just that they missed open shots when they could hang on to the ball.
It was more that Tyrese Haliburton played most of the game hobbled by whatever lower leg injury he has been dealing with the past couple weeks.
A full, fun weekend that had healthy doses of sadness and even a little fear.
KC Trip As mentioned Friday, I headed back to Kansas City for the weekend to attend the memorial service for Jack N, the father of one of my closest friends. We’re at the age where these are happening more frequently, but no matter the circumstances they are never easy. It was a fine service and honored the deceased in a way I think he would have appreciated.
Well this has turned into quite a significant playlist. We lost two absolute musical giants over the past week. I found an incredible live performance from an artist we lost nearly 30 years ago. I am also headed back to Kansas City for the weekend, so I have to throw something from the (old) KC scene in there. And then I still continue to have tons of new music that’s worth sharing.
A full evening of basketball with some big moments worth sharing.
Pacers WOW! Up 2–1 on the massive favorites thanks to two amazing quarters. Oklahoma City was the better team for two periods Wednesday, the first and third. Sadly for them, the Pacers were even better in the second and fourth and now lead the NBA Finals.
I only saw the second half - more on that momentarily - but that was a fantastic game.
Chart Week: June 5, 1976 Song: “Love Really Hurts Without You” - Billy Ocean Chart Position: #36, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #22 for two weeks in May.
It’s always fun to be surprised when listening to old American Top 40’s. As I worked my way through this countdown, and glanced ahead at the list of songs on Top 40 Weekly, I did a double take when I saw Billy Ocean’s name.
Pacers Well, the Thunder showed up Sunday evening. As has been routine in these playoffs, the Pacers missed a ton of open looks early as they fell behind. The difference in game two was that I don’t think it would have mattered. OKC was absolutely locked in from the beginning and once they took the lead on a 10–0 run the result was never in doubt. The 42–21 run in the second quarter was too much for the Pacers Devil Magic to overcome.
I have a very busy day, but still want to squeeze in some quick words about game one of the NBA Finals.
It started about how I expected: the Pacers were sped up and nervous and when they could get shots, were missing thoroughly makable ones. The Thunder were also nervy at the beginning, but their defense found its footing and began shutting down everything the Pacers wanted to do. At times it looked like a mismatched college game, where the Pacers had three guys standing 40 feet from the basket trying to figure out how to even begin the offense, let alone get decent looks.
After a slight lull, the music has really started to pile up again, so we are back to the thick and juicy playlists. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4sZDasp5hTKSaJdCR3kVSf?si=5942c3fa06f045d8)
“Celebrated Summer” - Hüsker Dü (Nods head.) Yeah, this is the good shit.
“Did I Say Too Much” - The Beaches Serious Song Of The Summer vibes here.
“Inland Ocean” - Matt Berninger With the NBA Finals featuring two teams from the middle part of the county, it seems like a no brainer to include this song.
The NBA Finals have arrived. I’ve been listening to podcasts previewing the series all week, and reading everything The Ringer has posted on the topic. Since I know most of you are 1) far busier than me and 2) don’t care as much about the result as I do, allow me to offer a summarization of all that content: the Pacers are a very good, super entertaining, resilient team that plays a style that is tough defend and absolutely deserves the full respect of every basketball fan and analyst.
John Siracusa is one of the most respected members of the Apple blogosphere. In these two pieces he lays the smack down on Tim Cook.
Apple Turnover Apple Turnaround
Another bonkers and amazing addition to the legacy of the Voyager project: thrusters that had been assumed unusable for over 20 years have been revived. I keep waiting to hear that the minuscule budget line that keeps this project has been X-ed out by you -know-who.
Taste: My Life Through Food - Stanley Tucci Coincidentally my hold on this came in just as his latest travel/food show premiered. It is equal parts autobiography and food diary of his entire life. He writes exactly as he speaks on his travel shows, which is either a good, comforting thing or annoying based on what you think of those shows. I read a review of his new show that complained about how into himself he is.
Holy shit, it happened! The Pacers are in the NBA Finals!
I gotta be honest, I was angry Friday morning. And worried. After the Pacers played like ass in New York Thursday it meant little to me that the series was coming back to Indy for game six. It seemed like the Knicks had figured out how to contain the Pacers offense with backcourt pressure, they were gaining confidence on offense, they were defying all the odds by staying healthy, and most infuriatingly the Knicks bench played better than the Pacers reserves on Thursday.
Movies, Shows, etc Confess, Fletch There’s a reason it took over 30 years to make the next Fletch film. No matter who filled the title role, no matter how talented they were, they would be compared to Chevy Chase at the absolute apex of his comedic powers. After years of rumors and starts and stops and so many rumored actors as Fletch, it finally happened. And somehow I totally missed it?
This came together surprisingly well for it being a short, busy week. It helps that we are in Summer Music season.
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“Constructive Summer” - The Hold Steady Always good advice to build something in the summer.
“Andromeda” - Preoccupations Not a bad song on the latest Preoccupations album.
“One Million” - Rocket Other than “Cherub Rock,” I was never a Smashing Pumpkins fan, so it’s kind of weird I enjoy so many new bands, like this one, that mimic their sound.
Continuing our look back at last weekend (and slightly beyond), let’s get into the sports.
PACERS!!!! Quite the swing of emotions, this Eastern Conference Finals series. Game one was the Pacers’ legendary comeback and overtime win.
Game two Friday was a Big Brother game for them, getting another win in Madison Square Garden by controlling the game from start-to-finish and keeping the Knicks at an arm’s length every time they made a run.
Another super busy weekend, not to mention some big news that lead in to the weekend. Because of that, I’ll probably split this into two posts, the second coming tomorrow.
Our school year officially ended on Friday with L’s last final. She just had one exam in her first period, so I called her out at 10:30. She had some girlfriends over in the afternoon and some young men joined them later on.
It’s the Friday before Memorial Day. That means it’s both time to break out the summer music and to play a song I always play this weekend. Two songs, actually.
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“Jack & Diane” - John Mellencamp Years ago, when we were still lake people, one of my better Facebook posts was something along the lines of “It’s not Memorial Day weekend until you’re drunk at the lake and you hear ‘Jack And Diane.
Normally on a day like this, after what happened at Madison Square Garden last night, I would have hopped out of bed early and banged out 25,000 words about the latest inexplicable Pacers, come-from-behind win.
Funny thing happened last night, though. If funny is a proper synonym for infuriating.
At 7:59 I set aside my small screen where I was watching YouTube vids and hit the power button on the remote to fire up the big screen for the game.
The long wait is over: the NBA Eastern Conference finals begin tonight. The Pacers have been sitting around for more than week as the Knicks closed out the Celtics and then the stupid NBA calendar got situated. Somehow the Western Conference finals started before the Eastern, even though the Thunder just finished their series against Denver on Sunday. Dumb.
Anyway, it’s finally here. This is a truly fascinating series and it’s been fun to hear the NBA podcasters I pay attention to twist themselves around trying to pick a winner.
We are in it.
Grad season has arrived. That and some other activities kept us very busy over the past few days. Let’s go day-by-day.
Friday We lucked out and just missed the bad storms that rolled through our area Friday evening. We had our fingers crossed a little extra harder than normal because we had two fridges full of catered food for our Saturday activities. We did get heavy rain and high winds.