Monday, March 14, 2011
We are a filthy nation. Three songs currently in the Billboard Top 10 feature the most vile of vile words. That’s right, the F dash dash dash word! Cee Lo’s song is a big hit in this house. Dad prefers the original version, not because it’s dirty but because it’s a hell of a soul song. Mom enjoys the original, the radio version, and the Glee version, which featured Gwyneth Paltrow on vocals.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
A lot of rambling thoughts about last weekend and the NCAA tournament. If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you know I only saw a few minutes of the Big 12 tournament. M. had a school event Thursday, keeping me away from most of the KU-Oklahoma State game. Based on the quality of play, that was probably a good thing. Friday’s KU-Colorado game was, for some odd reason, blacked out in many areas on ESPN3.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
M. made her on-stage debut Thursday. The two kindergarten classes at her school offered a performance of The Bear Went Over the Mountain for family, friends, and classmates. M. nabbed the plum part of Owl, who was the opening narrator of the program and had several lines in the dramatic closing act. She had been practicing diligently for weeks, both at school and at home. She continues to suffer from fatigue-induced moodiness when she gets home from school each day, so her home practice was often a challenge.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Another year, another conference championship. Rather than wait a week, when we’re through the Big 12 tournament and have our NCAA brackets to pick through, I thought I’d do my KU season wrap-up today. It wasn’t that long ago when I was looking at the schedules, evaluating opponents, and assumed that Texas would go 16-0 in the Big 12 and KU, only a game behind at that point, was hopelessly out of the conference title race.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The girls are about done and the boys start playoffs next week. More notes from the gyms of Indiana. Last week I saw the most impressive individual performance in four years of working for my paper. A kid knocked down 9 of 12 three-pointers and scored 34 on the night. It was damn near effortless. This kid is just a junior and is getting some looks from D1 schools. I can see him going to a mid-major level school.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
A terrific essay about a legendary night and how things have changed. Twenty-five years ago was another world. The game was over and I was by myself—my parents and brother presumably asleep—alone in the late night with the incredible fact that had just come into being. Len Bias beat Carolina. There was no one to shout it to, nothing to do with the joy but wrap it up and hold it, reverberating, inside the ribcage.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
With the beginning of spring training, baseball is slowly working its way back into the main sports news feed. The big story this week was the deadline for contract extension negotiations between Albert Pujols and the St. Louis Cardinals. Pujols said months ago that he would not continue to discuss a new contract with the Cardinals once spring training started. If the sides could not come to an agreement by Wednesday, the Cardinals would have to wait until the off-season to attempt to resign their star.
Monday, February 14, 2011
This is it. I officially begin my training for May’s Indianapolis Mini Marathon today. Technically I began yesterday, with a strength and stretch day.1 And I’ve been on the treadmill consistently for three months now, although never pushing the distance since running on treadmills sucks. But today is my first official run. A modest three-miler, but the first three miles of many that will make up my training for the 13.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The first concrete sign of spring has arrived. Pitchers and catchers are reporting to Florida and Arizona! This long, bitter, bitch of a winter is on her last legs! Spring training always brings a burst of excitement. This year I’m a little extra excited because this could finally be the beginning of the end of the Royals long spell of sucking. This season should be ugly and hard and full of frustration.
Friday, February 11, 2011
As promised, some thoughts on whether should buy an iPad or perhaps something else. To quickly recap my initial thoughts about the iPad from a year ago, I thought the iPad was super cool and immediately set aside some money to get one when they were announced. After that initial interest waned, though, I reconsidered and evaluated the tech products I already owned and what I couldn’t already do with them.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
More blurbs from the notebook of a roving sports correspondent. Wednesday I got my second crack at a college basketball game. It’s been two years since I’ve been to a game of the small college we cover, FC. The experience was similar to my last visit. Enjoyed seeing a Division 3 game. Marveled at the size of the gym, which was smaller than only a couple high schools gyms I’ve visited this year.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A few tidbits from the road. I don’t recall if I shared this story in a previous notebook, but late last month I had back-to-back games that were completely awful. In the first, one of our best girls teams, WCHS, won easily but in very ugly fashion. They should have won by about 70 but apparently decided to play down to the level of their competition that night. After the game, one of the assistant coaches, who used to be the boys coach at WCHS and who I’ve known for a few years, walked by me and said, “Whew!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
More thoughts on the Coolest Athlete thread on Twitter. This isn’t an original observation - I even think I’ve written about it before - but something else struck me about how we view athletes while reading through the Coolest Kansas City Athletes meme on Twitter over the weekend: athletes are a lot cooler when we’re kids. The reasons are pretty obvious. We don’t see the flaws as clearly when we’re little.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
There was a thread on Twitter Sunday soliciting suggestions as to who the coolest Kansas City athletes of all time were. While I was never a true Chiefs fan, I did spend 23 years in the city and have some thoughts on the subject. First, let’s go ahead and admit this covers the 30-35 years that I’ve been aware of Kansas City athletes. So there won’t be any members of the Scouts or A’s included.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
I forgot to mention this amazing use of technology I first experienced at the Colts-Jets game a week ago. Trust me, when you’ve already had a few, it’s even more amazing. And when you go to a traditional beer stand later, it’s kind of a let-down. It “pours” a draft beer nine times faster than traditional methods and dramatically reduces spillage. It's so cool to see, it’s generated viral YouTube videos and dragged fans away from the actual events to stand around and watch suds get served.
Monday, January 17, 2011
ESPN columnist Jim Caple kicked off his book blog this week. Coincidentally, I just finished the first book he highlights, George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out, a terrific, numbing look inside the world of “grassroots” basketball, the name now used for what used to be called the AAU circuit. Dohrmann focuses on one coach, Joe Keller, and his prodigy, Demetrius Walker, following their relationship from their meeting when Walker was just ten until the end of Walker’s high school career.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
KU begins the final Big 12 season tonight at Iowa State.1 They enter the game #3 in the country, 15-0 against a solid schedule (#31 according to collegerpi.com, which also has them ranked #1 overall). Seems like just another good season in Lawrence, right? Maybe. Fact is this team remains a mystery halfway through the season. Do they still have room for growth, are they playing about as well as they are capable, or do they have glaring weaknesses that can’t be addressed by the current roster?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Some good stories never go away. A few of you may recall that two years ago, there was a boy in C.’s preschool class that she constantly insisted had hit her. She talked about it every day. “DJ hit me.”1 The way she made it sound, DJ beat her up every Monday. We never heard a thing about it from the teachers, so we figured it was probably a benign, one-time event.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Some weekend. Friday night I was on the road, covering one of our better teams, FHS (11-3 entering the game), against the #10 team in the state, MHS. MHS had just lost their first game of the year, one they played without their best player, who is the #2 scorer in the state at nearly 30 ppg. They are also very tall, starting three girls over 5’10". It seemed like a tough matchup for my girls at FHS.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Well, this is it. The final post of 2010. Everything will be different the next time I post. Or nothing, really, other than the date stamp. It’s been a solid break here at the B. house. The girls have driven us a little crazy, but we’ve survived. An experiment to finally get all the girls sleeping normally - putting them all in one room - showed promise early, but has gone off the rails a bit the last few nights.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
I imagine some of you have gift cards for the iTunes Music Store, Amazon, or other entertainment/book stores burning holes in your pockets. Since I’ve burned through a lot of music and books over the past year, here are some recommendations for some ways to spend that virtual cash one some real gifts to yourself. Albums Really you can just look at my Favorite Songs of 2010 list and pick up the albums those songs are on.
Monday, December 27, 2010
The always entertaining, much anticipated B. family Christmas review. So the girls were wound up last week. Actually, they were about ten steps beyond wound up. A long week of no school with sub-freezing temperatures meant they had been cramped up in the house. Threats about Santa skipping the home of girls who didn’t listen to their parents didn’t work anymore. They were getting too many sweets each day, there were too many guests, and there just wasn’t enough running room in the house to get all that energy out.
Monday, December 20, 2010
I don’t remember when I figured the whole Santa thing out. I’m guessing it was in the first-second grade range, which seems about right for most kids who are either only children or the oldest kid in their family. I do know that outwardly I was sure to keep believing for at least a year or two after the shades were lifted. In my family, we had both family presents and Santa presents.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Finally, it happened. And again I went to bed about 20 minutes too early and missed the immediate buzz. The Royals sent Zack Greinke (and Yuniesky Betancourt) to Milwaukee for a package of four young players. When I worked through my Twitter feed Sunday morning, I was flooded with news of the trade. First were the rumors, which began just after I went to bed Saturday night. As I caught up to real time, the news was getting locked in.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
As the numbers get smaller, the hits get bigger! Here we are. The end of another year. I’ve listened to a lot of music over the past 11 1/2 months. iTunes tells me I’ve added over 700 songs over that period. I would guess that I’ve sampled well over twice that number, often giving songs a listen or two and if they didn’t meet my stringent standards, I chucked them aside.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
And now for part two of my year-end list of favorite songs. 20 - “Twice If You’re Lucky” - Crowded House. Anytime Neil Finn releases an album, he gets a spot in my year-end countdown. This track claims his spot for 2010, another in his long line of perfect pop pieces. I think he can roll out of bed and write two of these without any effort. 19 - “Sleep Forever” - Crocodiles.
Monday, December 13, 2010
’Tis the season for year end lists. I’ve been blogging for seven years now, and each December I’ve posted a list of my favorite songs of the previous year. Why mess with a good thing? Here are my 20 favorite songs of 2010 . Not necessarily the best or the most played in my iTunes library,1 but the ones from which I squeezed the most enjoyment. I don’t know what it says about my selections this year, but few of these songs have official videos.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
For some reason, I get crazy about baseball in the off-season. Perhaps it is because in baseball, an active off-season can transform a franchise. There is always that hope that perhaps the Royals might make an interesting, intelligent signing or trade that could put the post-season within reach. Or maybe it’s the drama of how the rich teams will divide up all the free agent talent, wondering who will find the right mix of performance for dollars and actually benefit from all their spending.
Monday, December 6, 2010
High school basketball is in full swing in Indiana now. The girls have been playing for almost a month and all the boys teams across the state now have games under their belts. Friday night I covered my first boys game of the year. It was a lot of fun and was another first in my career. The game started with the visitors, who were not my team, jumping to an 11-2 lead.
Friday, December 3, 2010
A bit of a light month, between my pseudo-novel writing and basketball season beginning. I’ll probably match my November total by Monday. Badasses: The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden’s Oakland Raiders - Peter Richmond. This is a terrific look back at the legendary Oakland Raiders teams of the 1970s. It explores their entire history up until 1980 or so, with a focus on the pains of three-straight AFC championship losses before the Raiders finally got over the hump and won Super Bowl XI.