Month: December 2020 (Page 2 of 2)

A Hunch Proved Right

December 9, 2020 / DB

My Christmas spirit is at an all-time low. I don’t think I’m alone in that this year, nor do I need to explain why. I’ve only watched a couple Christmas movies, I’m not reveling in Christmas music every waking hour, and we’ve had a couple hard discussions about what our family Christmas gathering plans should be.

But one thing has made me happy this season, and that is the life of a local radio DJ.

The same station has been “Indy’s Christmas Station” for something like 15 years now. It is a generic “hits from all decades” station, the kind that you hear in countless waiting rooms and businesses over the course of the year. It is also the station that plays the old American Top 40s on the weekends, which is normally the only time I listen to it voluntarily.

But from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it is my default. I play it in the kitchen, it’s my first choice in the car, etc.

A few years ago I mentally wrote some imagined biographies of the various DJs I heard during the month I spent with them.

The mid-day lady was active in her church and approximately 800 different crafting groups. She worried about some of the songs her program director made her play, so she always tried to include an inspirational message before she spun “I Want Your Sex.” She was worried about her daughter going to college, and prayed every night that she didn’t make poor decisions that would sidetrack her life.

The younger guy who covered evenings was stuck in a format he hated, but it was a paycheck and he had no ambition to look at other stations/markets. Plus his girlfriend had missed her period so he might just be stuck in Indy permanently.

The afternoon shift was handled by an older guy who had a big, jolly voice. I decided he and his wife were former porn stars now living semi-anonymous lives in the Midwest. They lived pretty boring lives but every now and then he thought about those old days, and the wild shit they did in the 1970s.[1]

And for the morning drive DJ, I really filled in the details. He was single and enjoyed watching the Colts and Pacers with his buddies. But he also enjoyed hanging out with the ladies in his cul-de-sac and watching The Bachelor and the latest Hallmark movies while drinking fancy cocktails. And sometimes he caught himself staring through his windows at the neighbor’s private chef, an Argentinian named Raul…

I felt kind of bad about that last one – which is probably why I never posted it – but it made me laugh.

A year ago I was listening and the morning DJ mentioned something about getting engaged recently, and how he had a post about going ring shopping on his blog. As soon as I got home I pulled up the station’s website, found his blog, and looked for the post. I let out a triumphant shout: the pictures showed him shopping with another man! I was right!

Oh, and good for him, of course!

From what I’ve heard the past few weeks, they got married not too long ago. Which, again, good for him/them! Even in 2020 it can’t be super easy to live a public life in the Midwest and be open about being gay. I would imagine he/the station get emails and calls of annoyance and protest anytime he mentions his husband. And I bet some folks have switched to a different outlet. But fuck them.

As happy as I am for him, I’m also more that a little pleased that my imagined biography for him was kind of true. And I wonder how closely my others are to reality. It is little shit like this that has provided a spark this season.

This was obviously the one I’m most proud of. Later I found out he is a legendary DJ because he was one of the first blind DJ’s in the country. A blind porn star is a niche I didn’t know existed! ↩

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 51

December 8, 2020 / DB

Chart Week: December 3, 1983
Song: “Love Is A Battlefield” – Pat Benatar
Chart Position: #6, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #5 the week of December 10.

There’s no great story behind the song this week.

Nope, this entry is simply an excuse to share one of the iconic videos of the 1980s.

Pat Benatar enlisted director Bob Giraldi to help mold the images for her final single of 1983. That was a wise choice as Giraldi was just a few months removed from directing Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” video. Pat was no Michael, but there are some common elements, notably the little dance battle in the final third of “Battlefield.”

This video was also notable for being the first to ever include dialogue. That seems like a small note, but by the summer of 1984 sprinkling a few seconds of spoke word into your video was almost the norm.

Benatar had better songs, and one that most people think of first when they think of her. But with “Love Is a Battlefield,” she staked a claim for having one of the most important and memorable videos of the era.

An Univited Ghost

December 7, 2020 / DB

One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability to dive into your past, to try to clarify memories that have become hazy over time or reconnect with people who were once an integral part of your life.

I don’t do a whole lot of biographical scrolling these days. It’s been years since I’ve looked up an ex-girlfriend or classmate. The closest I’ve come is a couple years back when I spent a few winter nights in Google maps working to find the various houses of my youth.

That changed this Sunday. I was reading an appreciation for the legendary Eric B and Rakim album Paid in Full. As I read, I was reminded of how I came to know and love that album.

It was in the late summer/early fall of 1987, during my family’s year in California. There was a Sunday afternoon hip hop show on the Stanford student radio station, which I could just barely pick up from our suburb near Oakland. In fact, in order to record the show for re-listening, I had to use my stepdad’s 1970s radio and run a patch cord to my old-school cassette tape recorder. Thus, for the next week I would listen to a very hissy, low volume, MONO tape to review these new songs and artists. At some point, I heard an Eric B and Rakim song on that show, which led me to buy their album, and it became one of my favorites ever.

Along with that was the story of how a classmate borrowed my tape to make a copy and then kept forgetting to return it. Finally, during my final week at San Leandro High School, my friend got a delivery from the office. Moments later he handed me my tape.[1]

It had been a long, long time since I thought of my year at SLHS. In some ways that time was incredibly influential on the next few years of my life. In others, it was just a year that was a quick pause from how the other 48 years have gone. After returning to Kansas City, I tried to write letters to a few of the people I had befriended out there, but I don’t think any ever wrote me back. Once, while on a business trip to the Bay Area in the early 2000s, I was staying a couple exits away from my old neighborhood. After a dinner with clients, I made a quick cruise down the street we lived on. But by the time things like Facebook came on the scene, it was far too late to attempt to track anyone from those days down.

Until yesterday. Reading the Paid in Full article and having those memories made me wonder what happened to the people I had struck brief friendships with. I did some searching for the one or two names I could definitively recall and eventually found a page dedicated to the SLHS graduating class of 1989. The site appears to have been put together at least 12 years ago, in preparation for the class’ 20th reunion. Three hundred and seventeen names were listed. I scrolled through them and was humbled by how few I could recall. I moved back to Missouri 33 years ago and was only at the school for 11 months, but it still felt like more names should jump out at me.

When I attempted to click on the profile of the few names I recognized, I was informed that I had to be a registered user to access profiles and contact information. For a moment I wondered if I could request access from the administrators, explaining that I had been a part of that class for a year, and see if they would allow me in. Although quite old, there are little signs that the site has been updated in recent years. I don’t know how many people still look at it, but might it be worth sending a message and saying, “Hey, I was with you from January through November 1987, anyone remember me?”

Beyond not recognizing very many names, what also jumped out at me was how 20 people in the class were listed as deceased. The class of 1989 is beginning to turn 50, so that number is probably right about where it should be. It still felt high to me. I checked with one of my friends from RHS and he said the latest total showed 17 of our 330-ish classmates have passed.

I clicked on the biographies of all the SLHS alums who were listed as deceased. For most there were recreations of obituaries, or at least comments that provided the cause of death. There were a lot of cancer victims. A couple car accidents, one just a few weeks after they had graduated. Two guys were stabbed to death. There were a lot of suicides, including one of the few people I remembered. It was a guy, Todd, who was in a couple of my classes. I remembered his name well because one day, in May of 1987, our teacher asked him why he looked so tired. He said a bunch of kids had quit at the golf course he worked at and he had to work late the previous night.

A lightbulb went off. We lived right around the corner from that golf course and my summer plan had been to get a job there. That afternoon, as soon as my parents were home, I ran over to the course, introduced myself at the pro shop, filled out some forms, and that night was helping to pick the range. That was my first job. I worked there until the week before we returned to the Midwest in November. Those six—ish months were filled with good times, eye opening experiences, and went a long way towards building my love of hip hop as my coworkers and I swapped tapes to listen to on our Walkmen while we cleared the range at night.

Todd killed himself in 1996. There were several comments under his name, but none gave any hint as to what he was going through that led him to take his own life. I tried not to think too much about that. Instead I recalled a night when we took two girls we worked with to the park that sat between the golf course and the San Francisco Bay. I was interested in one girl, and she flirted with me often. But she went off into the darkness of the park with Todd, and I was left with her friend who I had no particular attraction to and who seemed equally uninterested in me. If it had been 25 years later, we would have sat there staring at our phones. But it was 1987 so we sat on a park bench in awkward silence, wondering how long it would take our friends to go however far they were going to go in the trees.

It was very strange to jump into this little rabbit hole from my past. Strange not because of the memories it brought back, but because I felt like a stranger dropping in on someone else’s past. It’s not like I went to SLHS for several years, or grew up in middle school with this class and then left. I was there for less than a year, struggled to make friends, and the people I did know didn’t seem interested in staying in touch with me after I left. I was a blip in their high school years, buried by over 30 years of life. If I was able to connect with that group, I would feel like an outsider infringing on their private area. I had not earned the right, in my brief time there, to jump back into their community.

I wrote about this episode in the early days of the blog. I remembered a few more details about it back then. ↩

Friday Playlist

December 4, 2020 / DB

I’ve been a little slower than normal slapping together my Favorite Songs of the Year list. I can just #Blame2020 and leave it at that. I will also add that I’m having a devil of a time picking my favorite song of 2020, which I kind of need to do in order to complete the list.

But I’m working on it, and in hopes of ensuring I complete this year’s list over the next week, I’ll go ahead and share my standard prelude.

Here is my list of my favorite song of each year going back to 2004. I offer it with the standard disclaimer that I do not adjust these over time. If I were to re-do any of these annual lists, there would no doubt be adjustments. But I want this list to always be a snapshot of what I was thinking in each particular year.

Happy listening!

2004: “Float On” – Modest Mouse
2005: “Going Missing” – Maximo Park
2006: “Star Witness” – Neko Case
2007: “Intervention” – Arcade Fire
2008: “The Modern Leper” – Frightened Rabbit*
2009: “Whirring” – The Joy Formidable
2010: “FootShooter” – Frightened Rabbit
2011: “He Gets Me High” – Dum Dum Girls
2012: “The House That Heaven Built” – Japandroids
2013: “Holy” – Frightened Rabbit
2014: “Red Eyes” – The War on Drugs*
2015: “California Nights” – Best Coast
2016: “To Know You” – Wild Nothing
2017: “Pain” – The War on Drugs / “Strangest Thing” – The War on Drugs
2018: “Night Shift” – Lucy Dacus
2019: “Weird Ways” – Strand of Oaks

Asterisk indicates Favorite Song of the Decade

Blueblood Battle

December 2, 2020 / DB

Some things never change.

Those glamorous, early November college basketball matchups that ESPN creates to fill the air in the opening weeks of the season almost always disappoint. Oh, you might get a close game, but rarely are these games ones where, afterward, viewers say, “That might be the game of the year!”

The Champions Classic is the ultimate example. It has been college hoops’ de facto kickoff event the last several years, with Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and Michigan State assembling at a neutral site to play a double header and show off their shiny new toys. Looking back, I can’t think of a single game that KU was involved in that was played at a high level for 40 minutes. Some came down to tight finishes and were exciting. But I almost guarantee if I could pull up my iMessage history from all of those games, you would find texts where my KU friends and I complain about how ugly the game is.

Oh well, ESPN runs the world and no matter how much more sense it makes to push these games back a month, so every team has had a chance to get some competition under their belts and the touted freshmen have a chance to catch their breath, the World Wide Leader needs that immediate content.

This year we kind of got our wish: the Champions Classic is in December! Thanks to Covid, though, it was still in the season’s opening seven days. And the games last night reflected that, with only Michigan State looking very good. And they still almost blew their comfortable win.[1]

My attention was on the KU-UK game, obviously. My messaging fit right into that archetype I suggested above. Lots of grousing about how bad KU was, how dumb the players were, how awful-to-watch the entire game was. That didn’t stop me from getting fired up as KU got their acts together and erased a 12-point deficit then made some huge plays in the final two minutes to sneak out of Indy with a three-point win over the Cats. Certainly better than the last time these teams played here, a 32-point shellacking.

Well, kind of fired up. I’m having a hard time getting pumped up for college hoops this year. Usually come mid-October I start to get jittery when I begin seeing the preview magazines on the newsstands and knowing that the first practices are amping up. For 30-some years that transition into the college basketball season has been a core part of who I am.

But between Covid, the rollover in the KU roster, and the NCAA cloud hanging over the program, my enthusiasm is a bit low for this season.

I/we have no idea if this season will be normal in any way. Frankly it is unbelievable that KU and UK played last night, as KU’s first two opponents and UK’s last all had positive tests following their games, with St. Joseph’s and Richmond shutting activities down for the week. I really, really hope whatever has been ailing Marcus Garrett turns out to be something normal and benign, or last night’s game could be one of those tipping points as the season shuts down just as it begins.

It’s hard to get pumped about a KU roster that is filled with flaws and unknowns. I know, I know, I probably write the same thing every fall. But that emptiness from last season’s team not getting to play out their season remains, along with the memory of how freaking good Devon Dotson and Udoka Azubuike were. There’s no closure on the 2019–20 season, which makes it tough to shed its memories.

And let’s face it, as long as the NCAA shit keeps dragging out, it’s hard to get excited about games and recruiting not knowing if any of it is going to matter.

Oh, and the lack of crowds is just weird. Yeah, we’ve been watching sports with no/limited crowds for over four months now. But crowds are what makes college basketball different and great. The madness of Allen and Cameron. That cool sound that comes from the neutral courts that are divided between each team’s supporters. The tiny gym in Maui packed with sunburnt Midwesterners freaking out when their team goes on a run.

Hearing the coaches yelling at the refs, the benches shouting, and players barking at each other is kind of fun. Still, I would much rather have 15,000 people screaming and covering up all those sounds from inside the game.

So I sat on my couch watching last night relatively chill. I don’t think I yelled until Christian Braun got a dunk late in the first half, and drew a technical for saying “Yeah, bitch!” at the nearest Kentucky player. I let out a whoop then backed up the DVR to make sure I heard what he said. That moment was fun, but T worthy? I guarantee that, or worse, gets said on almost every dunk, but normally there is crowd noise to block it out. Now Braun gets a T and Bill Self later gets a T for saying “Oh God Almighty!” after a touch-foul on the perimeter on the first play of the second half.

The game went pretty true-to-form. A lot of sloppy-ass basketball. Kentucky dominated early with their size and athleticism. One of my buddies made a comment about how we just could not compete with UK’s size and speed. I responded, “Just like every other year.” Seriously, how does Kentucky ALWAYS get these guys? Granted, this year’s crop aren’t as good as those that John Calipari had in 2011–2014. But size and speed go a long way, and I bet he’ll get them playing together by the end of the season.

As KU made a mini-run before halftime, I had the thought I’ve had dozens of times over the past 17 years: “If we can just get it close, Bill can make some adjustments at half and we’re right back in it.”

Yep, a 10–3 run that spanned the half tied the game and the rest of the game was played in spurts until a couple Jalen Wilson threes and an Ochai Agbaji three and dunk gave KU control of the game.

How about Wilson?!?! I loved the idea of him last year, a long 6’8” kid who wasn’t super athletic but was a pure scorer with the potential to become a shooter. A broken ankle wiped out his first year, but who knows how many minutes he would have gotten on last year’s team. This year the perimeter is still crowded, and he is one of several guys who can go off any night. For all the great scorers KU has had in recent years, not many have put up 21 points in a half. He looked confident, efficient, and dangerous.

That’s the thing about this year’s team: there is no offensive super star. They are going to have to spread the scoring around. On nights when a guy or two get hot, they are going to look really good. But on nights when no one can be that go-to guy who gets them a bucket, they can struggle mightily. Fortunately it looks like they have at least four guys who can go out and get 20+ any night.

Dajuan Harris again impressed. When he came in for the first time in the opening half, KU looked lost, getting nothing on offense and playing equally bad on defense. If Kentucky could shoot they could have easily put the game away early. But Harris came in and forced two immediate turnovers and helped KU claw back into the game. While he was on the court in the second half, everything was again smoother on offense. He doesn’t look for his shot, so teams will learn to ignore him until he proves them wrong. But he has a real knack for making the right plays. And he is a menace on defense. A healthy Garrett and Harris together are going to give opposing guards absolute fits.

Poor David McCormack. He seems like a great kid. I saw an interview with him before he got to KU and was excited at how thoughtful his answers were. He didn’t seem nervous or just spout cliches. He seemed mature and like a guy you want to be the public face of your program. He’s taken a lead in the team’s social justice awareness campaign.

But he’s just not a good basketball player. He suffers greatly in taking over the starting 5 spot right after Azubuike, the best true big man Self has ever had. McCormack isn’t nearly as big, as athletic, as confident, and doesn’t have very good hands. He plays shorter than he is. He gets off-balance constantly. He’s just a mess. I’m hoping some of that is just him trying too hard and that he can calm down and be a Landon Lucas-type player. The team sure seems better when he sits down, though.

Anyway, it’s hard to get too pumped about a win over Kentucky – which even though they are super flawed, too, is always a good thing – or who is playing well or poorly when we have no idea if KU will play their next game Thursday, or their game Saturday, or their game next week against Creighton. Everything is on edge again, and as much as I want to sit back and enjoy the games and the distraction they bring for a couple hours, it’s hard not to let reality knock that down.

But, for now, Rock Chalk, bitches.

(I’ve just been assessed a technical foul by last night’s referees.)

BTW, total bullshit that Michigan State had to go play at Duke. Crowd or no crowd, that game should have been at a neutral site. If you don’t want to play it at Banker’s Life with the KU-UK game, play it at Hinkle here in Indy. Or in Chicago or Atlanta or some other neutral site. ↩

November Media

December 1, 2020 / DB

A pretty light month. I guess that happens when the election wipes out roughly a week of normal TV viewing. Plus I read a lot in November.

Here’s what I did watch.

Archer, season 11

The world’s greatest spy returns for another year. Archer seasons fall into one of two camps. There are the ones that make you laugh so hard that you are constantly rewinding/rewatching to catch the jokes you missed. And there are the ones that feel flat and never really get going.

Until this year.

This season started out as a snoozer but gained traction midway through the run and finished very strongly. The last three episodes kept this from falling into C territory.

B-

Tehran

I spent the week after the election watching this Israeli thriller. Tamar Rabinyan is an Israeli agent who sneaks into Iran in an effort to cripple the Iranian air defenses before an Israeli attack on several nuclear sites. Her initial effort gets stymied and she spends the next several days attempting to come up with a backup plan so the attacks can proceed.

Her efforts are further complicated when an Israeli tourist recognizes her in the Tehran airport just before she is detained by Iranian security authorities. During the interrogation of the tourist, the security team learns of their contact and begins searching Tehran for Rabinyan.

This was a pretty solid, modern espionage story. There are lots of very tense moments, a big double-cross near the end, but all of the work of the series is undermined by a poor ending.

A couple interesting things (at least to me) about the show:
As it was made in Israel for an Israeli audience, it is almost entirely in Middle Eastern languages. Mostly Hebrew and Farsi, but also doses of Arabic. There are moments of English sprinkled throughout, and even a shot of French.

Rabinyan’s family, and some of the other Israeli agents she works with, are Jews who came from Iran. I did not know there was such a thing. You usually think of modern immigrants to Israel coming from Eastern Europe. Glad to have my ignorance corrected.

Finally, this is an AppeTV+ show, presented as an Apple exclusive. So it made me laugh that no one was using Apple devices. Obviously Apple bought it for US distribution without being involved in its production.

The Other Guys

For all the Will Ferrell movies I can quote extensively, there are some I’ve never seen. Like this one. I don’t remember it coming out back in 2010, but saw an online discussion that included it and decided I should watch it.

It had the risk of being one of those movies that throws a terrific scene right at the beginning and can never again match that. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was funny throughout. Not an all-timer, but a decent way to spend 90 minutes or so.

B+

The Departed

Speaking of movies I missed, I’ve been meaning to watch this one for a long, long time. I chalk up missing it to having kids.

Man, this was a good way to end the month. Certainly not in the same league as Goodfellas, but it’s a fine entry in Martin Scorsese’s mob chronicles. Even better that he used some new faces and locales.

Scorsese’s movies are always dazzling and entertaining and magnificent, but rarely leave you feeling good after. This might have the most bleak ending of any of his movies, though. Those last ten minutes are just brutal.

Holiday Baking Championship

I’m through the first four episodes of this year’s season. I miss Lorraine Pascale.

B+