“Lafaye” - School Of Seven Bells
(Administrative note: the countdown will continue over the weekend, so check back Saturday and Sunday for songs #15 and #14.)
I’ve always enjoyed sub-genres like Dream Pop and Shoegaze. Noisy, atmospheric realms where lyrics are often difficult to discern, but where you can close your eyes and completely disappear inside the soundscape.
School Of Seven Bells' Ghostory was my favorite Dream Pop album of the year.
Many of my regular readers are on our Christmas card list. Thus, they know that we generally go with the obvious option and just slap a picture of the girls on it. Over the years, that process has become problematic. I have no idea why, but there’s something about lining up for a picture in Christmas pajamas or other holiday outfit that makes our girls lose their minds. And thus we lose ours.
“Groundhog Day” - Corin Tucker Band
The second 1990s indie rock hero to make the list, Tucker was one of the founding women of the Riot Grrrl movement. With Carrie Brownstein she formed Sleater-Kinney, a band that helped to set the standard for women who wanted to make intelligent, socially-conscious music that also rocked hard.
She hits all those points here. Smart? Check. Socially conscious? She doesn’t know how not to be.
“Peacemaker” - Jesca Hoop
Massive.
That’s the word that pops into my head each time I listen to this song. It is huge, punching you in the mouth and demanding your attention. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t turn it off or skip to the next track. But why would you? It’s freaking brilliant.
Hoop’s genius is combing vaguely Siouxsie & The Banshees-esque music with those killer, tribal drums and then putting her modern spin on an ancient Greek tale of women withholding sex from their men in order to end war.
“October” - The Helio Sequence
Echoing early U2, this Portland duo offered a gorgeous set of atmospheric pop on their Negotiations album. This track fits the month it is named after perfectly. Warm, with a hint of a chill in the background. A reminder that no matter how perfect things may seem, there is always something just below the surface that can upset them.
Lots of sports, and sports-related things, from the weekend.
Friday I had my first boys basketball game of the season. It was a 20-point loss, which is about what I expected. My team actually got as close as seven in the second half, which was not expected. Thanks to a double overtime JV game, I only had time to file a brief story, which was just fine with me.
The news from the evening was my attempt at local food.
“Star Machine” - Bob Mould
Last summer was was the summer of Mould. In July, all three Sugar albums got the remaster/rerelease treatment and I spent a couple weeks wallowing in Mould’s epic, mid-90s pop. It came as a surprise six weeks later when he dropped a new solo album, a nifty recreation of the classic Sugar sound. Like another 50-something artist from Minneapolis, he can still crank out peerless pop when he sets his mind to it.
I wonder how many songs I listened to this year. Thing is, despite using multiple tools to track what I listen to and how often I do so, I purge so many tracks after sampling them a time or two, that I would imagine the majority of the songs I screen are buried deep in a virtual pit of 1s and 0s. So there’s no real way of knowing exactly how many individual tracks I listened to over the past 12 months.
M. took another step in her religious life last night when she had her First Reconciliation. I’m told this is a big deal if you’re Catholic.
In the van after school yesterday, C. asked her what it was that she would be doing later in the evening. As best as I can remember it, here is M.’s response:
Well, later, next spring, there's this big thing called First Communion. And it's about getting closer to Jesus or whatever.
It was a fine Thanksgiving weekend for the B’s.
As I mentioned last week, we hosted the family get-together this year. We had 16, which for our family is small, but still takes some work to prepare for. I did the bird and stuffing. I narrowly avoided disaster with the bird. My thermometer wasn’t working correctly so I guessed on when to take it out of the oven. Turns out I left it in a little too long.
I might be slipping.
You’ll probably recall how I’ve generally been militant about Christmas preparations not starting until after Thanksgiving. That meant no trees up, no holiday music, no exterior decorations, and profound head shaking each time I saw a Christmas commercial before we’ve carved the first turkey of the season. This year, though, I’ve been looking forward to the Christmas season since September.
In early October I found myself spending far too much time examining the holiday lighting section at Lowe’s.
How I Became a Famous Novelist - Steve Hely I knew when I picked this up that it was a novel, a satire of our current pop culture where anyone can become famous regardless of how much (or little) talent they possess. But I’ll admit, I just might have been hoping to find the secret to getting published while making my way through it.
If only it was as easy as the title suggests.
An oddly busy Monday, with a couple appointments in the morning and the need to squeeze some leaf collection activities in before St. P’s lets out for the day. So I’ll try to crank out some notes here.
A mixed bag of football action for me over the weekend. The two teams I care about, the Jayhawks and the Colts, got thrashed. But the games I didn’t have a vested interest in, particularly the K-State-Baylor and Stanford-Oregon games, were terrific to watch.
I am sooo reluctant to write this, but I can’t put it off any longer: the Kansas State Wildcats are the best story in sports right now.
Blech.
Who, even among the most optimistic of K-Staters, saw this coming? With two winnable games left, the Wildcats are almost certainly going to play in the BCS title game. If they luck out, it will be against a good, but not ready for prime time, Notre Dame team.
I planned on posting some pre/early season thoughts on KU basketball yesterday, but got distracted by one thing after another, and decided to watch last night’s game against Michigan State first.
The game confirmed everything I was thinking about this year’s squad: they are immensely talented with some glaring weaknesses and are certainly overrated now, but have the benefit of everyone being in love with KU/Bill Self after last March’s run and people ranking them based on where they think they’ll be next March.
There was snow on the ground, briefly, here in Indianapolis today. Which means its time for what the Hoosier state does best: high school basketball. The girls season kicked off last week, and I had two games.
I lukced out and got to see both the teams that are probably our best and which are coached by my favorite coaches.
Thursday I had our biggest school, CGHS. This is a school that is very good in almost every sport.
Despite my moratorium on political postings, it is a bit of a tradition for me to wrap up the general election. So here are some observations, thoughts, musings, and what-have-yous.
In 2004 I watched the results in our basement, scribbling down thoughts in a notebook and occasionally running upstairs to check things on the computer or send IMs to friend of the blog Dale S. as we tried to figure out how the hell the numbers weren’t breaking our way.
Normally when I vote, I head to the polls, wait my turn, and then cast my ballot. This year, though, I’m going to mix things up. I keep hearing about voter intimidation in some states, and it sounds like something I’d like to learn more about. So today I plan on the following forms of intimidation:
Standing extremely close to the person in front of me in line. While doing so I will alternate between ignoring their annoyed looks and moving closer each time they attempt to create more space, and glowering at them with my meanest look possible.
Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power - Rachel Maddow.
I love Rachel Maddow, at least as much as a straight man can love a gay woman. She speaks from a similar political point of view as mine. And I really like her spin on how to run a news/politics TV show: less yelling and screaming and demonizing and more reasonable discussion of the issues of the day.
So I was looking forward to her book, in which she advances the argument that we’ve drifted far from how the Founding Fathers intended for our nation to handle its military affairs.
OK, I take it back. One more political post, although I think this one isn’t likely to annoy anyone.
We’ve got a ton of political mailings this year, more than any year I can remember. That’s been fueled by a tight race for Dick Lugar’s US Senate seat and a battle for our state senate seat that is very tough thanks to redistricting. In these final days before Election Day the mailers are flooding in.
We had a very successful Halloween here in Casa de B. The sisters hooked up with the neighbors and had matching costumes. The eight year olds went as fairies, the six year olds as princesses, and L. was the knight to protect them all. So she wouldn’t be alone, the neighbors put a little knight shirt on their dog.
We loaded up a wagon with supplies1 and hit the streets. It was quite chilly, so we tackled the neighborhood in two shifts.
What follows is, I hope, my only political post of the season.
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat. Will Rogers I’ve always thought Republicans were better at coming together as a single party than Democrats. Sure, Republicans have plenty of problems within their party, but come Election Day, the anti-tax millionaires from the big cities and the Bible thumping farmers from the county have a much easier time voting for the same candidates than the various wings of the Democratic party.
Taking a few minutes off from tracking Sandy to catch up on the weekend.
With a deep sigh after a couple very busy weeks, things can start getting back to normal around here.
Last week was parent-teacher conferences/Fall Break at St. P’s. S. attended the sessions with M.’s and C.’s teachers and learned both are doing very well and are delights to have in class but tend to talk too much and not listen when they are instructed to rein in the verbal offerings.
I am a horrible parent. Last night, as the Indiana Fever closed out the WNBA championship series, I let my girls sleep. Years from now, when classmates ask them where they were on that glorious night, they’ll dip their heads and mumble, “My dad didn’t wake me up to watch the game or celebrate.”
A terrific weekend, other than that notable failure. One of my 86 sisters-in-law got married, so we had the entire extended clan in town.
Shall we kick off the week by catching up on odds and ends that have accumulated? I think we shall.
M. took another step towards big-girlhood a week ago when she got her ears pierced. Our rule has always been there will be no piercings until the girls can take care of them themselves. M. seemed ready for that and after a month of earning them through good behavior, she finally got them.
I finished my latest book over a week ago but hadn’t found the time to write about it yet. I sat down to do it this morning, not yet looking at the calendar. When I was at the bank later at saw the date, I realized there was some part of me that had intentionally held off on writing this entry until today. My mom was born on October 10, 1951.
Some game at Lucas Oil Stadium on Sunday. First there was the result, a fantastic Colts comeback - they trailed 21-3 at halftime and looked awful in the first half - that ended on a missed Green Bay field goal that secured the 30-27 win. There was Reggie Wayne’s epic performance, catching every ball that was anywhere near him. There was Andrew Luck engineering a fantastic drive for the winning touchdown.
I’ve always loved the final day of the baseball season.1 Anyone can go to Opening Day, but it takes a real fan to go to Closing Day when your team is 25 games out and has been since Father’s Day.
When the end of the season rolls around, I often think of a year in the late 90s, probably 1998, when a group of us planned to go to the Royals' final home game.
Birthday time in our home again. Today L. leaves the easy ways of three-year-oldom behind for the hard-knocks world that is being four.
She’s pretty excited.
So who is little L. today? She’s a piece of work, I tell you. She has always had a spark about her that delights pretty much everyone she runs into. There’s a glimmer in her eye, an ease with adults, a desire to report on what’s happening around her, and her ever-present grin that seem to endear her to everyone.
Sometimes the most important questions do not get asked. Or at least they’re asked by the wrong people, never get answered, and fade away.
Yesterday, as I knocked out dishes and laundry, I listened to the American Top 40 rerun of the week. It was from September 1985. Good times for me, back then. In my first month of high school, the Royals had just caught and passed the Angels and were on their way to two more comebacks in October.