Some links as you waste time waiting for the weekend to begin.
First, this terrific find. Jim Henson produced a series of brief TV commercials for the Wilkins Coffee company in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were designed to run in 10-second windows for station IDs. The primaries are two creatures that resemble others we would become more familiar with 15–20 years down the road. The big difference between these commercials and the Muppets of the future is that these commercials are very dark. But they’re also laugh-out-loud funny.
https://youtu.be/HIhPKgXeFuk
https://youtu.be/ZxLyuw5bdyk
More background for the commercials here:
Jim Henson’s Violent Wilkins Coffee Commercials
Big 12 basketball fans know referee John Higgins’ face quite well. Seems like the guy does every huge Big 12 game, plus other televised games around the country. Seth Davis profiles Higgins and looks into the suggestion that he works too much.
Craig Calcaterra, one of NBC’s primary baseball writers, is one of my favorite follows on Twitter. He has good baseball insights, has a sense of humor that matches mine, and looks at the world from a similar political perspective as me. He’s also a very good writer and, having escaped a career in law to become a baseball blogger, I enjoy his thought process.
Occasionally he goes long-form on non-baseball topics on his personal site. I really enjoyed his take on how politicians talk to us, and what that means for our society.
We live in the most technologically advanced times in human history. We live in a time when our populace is better-educated than it has ever been. But we also live in a time when actual information and ideas matter less than they ever have. When anecdote and feeling trump information when it comes to determining matters of societal direction and understanding, all of that technology is rather beside the point.
Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and The New Dark Age
Prince, for the first time in his long career, is doing a series of solo performances. Here is a look at his first two performances in Minneapolis last week. It sounds pretty incredible.
Prince gets personal in his first-ever solo show
Jenny Lewis has become one of my favorite artists over the past few years. I first discovered her 10 years ago, when she released her first solo album, Rabbit Fur Coat. I remember hearing many of the songs on the sadly defunct woxy.com. Many of the songs were twangy and country-tinged, and I admit at first I didn’t know how to feel about them. But Lewis, along with Neko Case who also had a huge album out in 2006,[1] helped open a new door in the alternative music world to me.
Here is a lengthy essay on Rabbit Fur Coat, what it meant for Lewis’ career, and how it affected one fan.
Baseball writer Stacey Gotsulias on how her dad taught her to love baseball. It might get a little dusty in the room while you read this.
Finally, a couple schools who have a little bit of basketball history associated with them play a game tomorrow night in Lawrence, KS. Kind of amazingly, it’s only the second time that Kansas and Kentucky have played at Allen Fieldhouse in the last 25 years.[2]
The Lexington paper offered up a nice primer on Allen Fieldhouse for UK fans today. One of these days I really need to get back to a game.
Kentucky must beware ‘The Phog’ in visit to Kansas’ basketball shrine
- The amazing Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. ↩
- Along with two games on campus in Lexington, over that span they’ve also played in Chicago twice, New Orleans twice, New York, and Indianapolis. ↩