Month: May 2021 (Page 2 of 2)

Time for some book chat.

The Marsh King’s Daughter – Karen Dionne
I hate it when books that come highly recommended don’t hit me with the same impact they hit others. I found this book on some “best new thrillers” list, and its jacket featured some positive blurbs from other authors I’ve enjoyed. But the story just didn’t work for me.

It tells the story of Helena, a woman in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan who was raised in captivity. Her father kidnapped her mother when she was 14 and kept her and Helena hidden in a swamp from the world until Helena herself was 14 and the women managed to escape.

One half of the story takes place in the present, with Helena’s father escaped from prison and setting a trail for her to follow. The other half tells the story of her childhood, when she worshipped her father as he taught her his Native American ways and how to live on what the land gave her.

All of that was interesting and well-done. It all hit a little harder because there are some moments of stark violence, and Dionne’s author pic in the back jacket shows her to be a friendly, gray-haired (likely) grandmother. Not the author I expected to write this story!

However, Dionne uses a literary trick to help explain how Helena solves the problem of escaping in her childhood and surviving in her adulthood that I simply did not buy. It drug down what was otherwise a pretty solid story.

The Grind: Inside Baseball’s Endless Season – Barry Svrluga
There’s maybe no better trick if you want to write about sports than using an entire season to dive into all the little details of a sport/team/athlete. John Feinstein has made a career out of this. Daniel Okrent’s Nine Innings is one of my absolute favorite sports books ever. Michael Lewis’ Money Ball is another terrific example.

Here Svrluga writes about the 2014 Washington Nationals, for which he was the beat writer for The Washington Post. Rather than a deep dive into all the nitty gritty of a baseball season, this is more of a high-level view. Svrluga selects a few topics and uses them to illuminate how the length and intensity of a baseball season affects those involved. He looks at a veteran player, a scout, the GM, a starting pitcher, a player’s wife, and so on.

The book suffers some in comparison to the classics from Okrent and Lewis as Svrluga is more concerned with painting these brief sketches than digging into all the ebbs and flows of a baseball season. I’ve read both Nine Innings and Money Ball multiple times because, even though they are now dated, they are so good at showing you these deep details of baseball in the moments they were written.

The Grind feels more like a series of Sunday profiles for the paper. Which makes sense since Svrluga was still a beat writer at the time and not on hiatus to do an authoritative accounting of the 2014 season. The result is a nice, quick read for any baseball fan, but not one that reaches the level of the classics.

The Cold Millions – Jess Walter
I did not realize the labor wars of the West Coast mining industry in the early 1920s would make for such a compelling story. This was a terrific read.

Gig and Rye Dolan are orphaned brothers who have landed in Spokane after searching throughout the west for work. Gig is the older, wiser, and more charismatic brother. When he is arrested at a labor rally, 16-year-old Rye immediately jumps into the fray and is quickly arrested as well. As a minor, his cause gets taken up by labor attorneys who have come in from the Midwest and East coast to fight for the miners’ rights. Rye soon becomes an integral part of their strategy, traveling around the west with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a (real) firebrand of the labor movement through much of the 20th century.

There are double-crosses, unfortunate alliances, and in the end a tragic event that separates the brothers permanently. There is also a large swath of tremendous supporting characters.

The idea of a labor war seems quant in 2021. But a century ago they were common, often violent, efforts to somewhat lessen the difference between the haves and have-nots. While all of that is interesting, what truly carries the book is the love between the Dolan brothers, Rye’s innocent desire to follow anyone he trusts, and the final steps the brothers take to protect each other.

The Last Days of John Lennon – James Patterson with Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge
The title is a lie: this is not just about John Lennon’s final days in 1980 before he was murdered by Mark David Chapman. Although there is plenty about that, especially Chapman’s activities leading up to the murder.

But the bulk of the book is a breezy history of both the Beatles and Lennon’s life between the band’s breakup and his death.

I’ve read at least three books about the Beatles and/or Lennon, but it’s been awhile. This book was a good refresher for someone with my reading history. If you’ve never read a Beatles book, this can be an excellent jumping-in point.

When I began this process last fall, Audi was at the top of my list. It didn’t matter which Audi. The Q3 if I went with a subcompact. The Q5 if I went compact. The Q7 if I wanted to blow out the budget.

Once upon a time, say in the early ‘00s, Audis were my ultimate car, specifically a well-appointed S4. For years I’ve loved the looks of the Q series. We have friends who currently have three Audis in their family and zero complaints. A sister-in-law stored her A4 in our garage when she went overseas 15 or so years ago. I drove it once a week to keep the battery charged and really liked it. While Audis are fancy, I feel like they are at least 28% less pretentious than a BMW or Mercedes.

Three things changed my thinking, though.

First, Audi tweaked their body styling for the 2021 model year. To my eyes, the Q’s lost some of their grace and elegance in the process.

Second, most car magazines/review sites seem to prefer BMW and Mercedes when ranking German SUVs.

Third, the website of my local Audi dealer is atrocious. There are constant nuisance pop-ups, pop-ons, and pop-overs. The basic design of the site is not user friendly. They also recently stopped posting pictures of every new car on their lot, instead using the same stock photo of an ugly green Q5 to represent the bulk of their inventory.

This is not the color I am interested in.

Why would you choose the worst color you offer to promote your car? Are you trying to scare customers away. “We only have ugly cars. There’s a Volvo dealership to the right and a Lexus dealer to the left if you want something beautiful.”

For much of the winter, I removed Audi from my list.

I eventually came to terms with the physical changes and realized that even though the Q5 often gets rated just behind the X3 and GLC, it was still near the top of the class and deserved a look.

Last Friday I took one for a spin. I figured it would just reinforce that the Mercedes GLC was the car for me. Funny how things work out…

My first two test drives covered the same route, a 10–15 minute jaunt through Carmel. I use a highway entrance ramp to accelerate quickly, whip through some roundabouts into neighborhoods to test cornering and the residential drive experience, then onto another ramp to return to the dealership via the highway.

At the end of my loop Friday my sales guy suggested we take one more loop so we could play with the car’s driving mode options.

Nice!

These different driving modes certainly make the ride feel different. But in a 10–20 minute test drive, I can’t tell if they make the ride better. While cool to have, I don’t know that I would swap through the different settings very often.

My next observation may not make much sense. The Q5 is almost the exact same size as the Mercedes GLC. They weigh roughly the same. They have very similar engines, although with different transmissions (9-speed GLC vs 7-speed Q5). Yet the Q5 felt a lot more like a car than the GLC.

I know nothing about the mechanical side of cars. But my best guess is differences in the cars’ drivetrains account for this. Both are all-wheel-drive. But the Audi handles torque much differently than the Mercedes and has more freedom in how it allots the power across the wheels. Maybe this makes it feel a little more nimble, especially in turns, and thus car-like? Or maybe my vertigo was acting up more during one test drive than the other and I literally have no idea what I’m talking about.

In this class, where the vehicles are all so close to each other, I think what I’m really searching for are the little variances that fit my needs best. The Q5 has several that jumped out at me.

The blind-spot indicators on my Tahoe are small lights built into the side mirrors. Lots of times I don’t even notice that they are activated. On the Audi, they are large lights on the inside of the mirror frames. It is much more noticeable and, thus, useful.

The entertainment system is way more intuitive than Acura’s. It isn’t as attractive or filled with features as Mercedes’, but it is dead simple to use. In fact, my sales guy challenged me to figure out how to do a few simple tasks while I drove. I was able to do them all immediately. While the Mercedes user interface may be prettier, the Audi gets things done quicker.

Audi has wireless Apple CarPlay and a wireless charging bank. No need to always keep a USB cord jammed into the center console, tangling with other things.

The Q5 allows you to open the back liftgate by swinging your leg beneath a sensor. Neither the Acura nor Mercedes I drove offered that option.

The Q5 has traditional tires rather than run-flats, and is equipped with a spare.

So where did the Q5 slot in after three test drives? Better than the Acura, obviously. In a bit of a surprise, it was right there with the Mercedes. I don’t know why that was unexpected. Perhaps a lifetime of hearing that Mercedes makes some of the nicest cars you can buy, but rarely hearing Audi’s name mentioned? Maybe Audi is a little more niche where Mercedes is more universally aspirational?

If you made a checklist of all the important aspects of the GLC and Q5 and rated them against each other, I think it would be very close to even.

When the comparison is that tight, it can come down to those small details I mentioned. As I went through my notes and watched some video reviews Friday night, it became apparent that Audi checked a few more boxes than Mercedes.

By the end of the evening, there was a new number one car on my list.

Track

The City track championship qualifying races were held Saturday.

L ran the 50, 100, and 200. C ran the 100 and 200.

L was a little annoyed with her assignments. Each athlete has a three event limit, and she was hoping to run a relay. Her coaches are smart, though. They know we will win the medley relay as long as we don’t drop the baton thanks to our 400 runner. So they are chasing the team points by having L run three individual sprints. When she complained I told her she had a shot to win three City championships plus the team title, so stop whining.

The Saturday heats were not organized at all. You just lined up wherever. A lot of the faster girls lined up in the first heat. But L kept hanging back. I don’t know if she wanted to see the fast girls run or if she was interested in keeping her heat winning streak alive. It worked out ok whatever her motivation was.

She won her heats in all three races. In the 50, she qualified second, 0.10 behind the top girl. In the 100 she did race a fast girl. They were neck-and-neck for the first 75 meters but L pulled away late. She was again second overall, this time 0.02 behind the fastest girl, the same girl who was first in the 50. She ran slower in the 200, but still qualified fifth, about 0.5 behind the fastest girl. In an upset the girl who is first in the 50 and 100 was only third in the 200. Apparently this girl, E, won all three sprints two years ago.

I think it was good L didn’t run against E Saturday. She knows how fast E is, but E has no idea how fast L is. From C’s experience two years ago, we know everyone runs faster in the finals. Hopefully L has enough speed Wednesday night to catch E in at least one race.

C ran poorly – for her – in the 200, and was fourth in her heat. The top eight go through to the finals and she was 20th.

She rocked her 100, though. She won her heat by two seconds and qualified sixth for the finals. She beat both a girl who had edged her in her 200 heat and one of her teammates who had beaten her three times this year. It was a great run and we were thrilled for her, although she seemed a little embarrassed by our enthusiasm.

That sets up a fun night of finals Wednesday. L has a legit shot at winning all three races. She thinks the 200 is her best chance, which made me laugh since she qualified worst for it. We had a talk Saturday night about race strategy. I told her how in the 50 and 100 she and E will have the two middle lanes, so she will always know exactly where she stands. She is excited and confident to go head-to-head with her.

C ran soooo much faster in her two City finals in sixth grade than she did in qualifying. She chopped over a second off her 200 time when she finished third. It’s unlikely she can win the 100, but I’d love to see her blow it out and improve on her qualifying place in her last individual race of middle school.

C will also run in at least one relay.

L and her classmates are set up great to win the girls 5th–6th team title. In Friday’s field events they nabbed two second and one third place finish. The mile final was run on Saturday and our distance girl won by 16 seconds. That was after throwing up three times at the start because she was so nervous. Those points put them in first by 7.5 points going into Wednesday.

Our distance girl should win the 800 and bring the medley relay team home. L’s buddy will run with her in both the 50 and 100, giving us five chances to grab points in the sprints. And we have enough sprinters left to likely place in the 4×100.

Tennis

M played across the street Wednesday for the second time in a five days. We’re not sure how that worked out, exactly, but did not complain about the easy commute. This time she and her partner got moved up to JV #1 singles, and had to play girls who normally play varsity #2 doubles. They got smoked 6–0, 6–0. But M actually played pretty well. Her serve looked decent, her opponents just returned it way faster than she sent it to them. It was a good learning experience.

She was set to play Thursday but it started pouring 20 minutes into the varsity matches and everything got cancelled.

Kickball

C played her final CYO kickball game Monday. It was on that stupid field L’s team had played on a week ago. This time they made the ground rule that kicking onto the sidewalk in left was a double instead of a triple. Which is just stupid for an 8th grade team. Our girls had their best kicking game of the year and sent ball after ball over the sidewalk. One girl hit the church on the fly. We were way ahead and when the umpire called the game after four innings instead of five, no one really cared.

We were supposed to play the first place team on Tuesday, but it rained all afternoon and we cancelled. Because of the softball tournament, track practice, and 8th grade Mother’s Day mass events, we chose not to reschedule the game and call it a season. That was our best coaching decision of the year. It meant we ended the season on a two-game winning streak and with a winning record at 3–2. First winning streak and first winning record since fifth grade, so it was a great way to wrap up this class’ kickball careers.

L’s team plays in the City semifinal tomorrow. We still don’t know who they play, as the division playoff game made it to the fifth inning Thursday and then it started raining. They are completing that game this afternoon.

L’s coaches are bringing boys in to practice against them to get ready for the the playoffs. We can kick with anybody. I worry our defense is a little too loose to keep us in a game against the beasts from the Southside, though.

I have no set order or reasoning to how I am scheduling my test drives. I guess some of it is stock dependent: if a dealer does not have the car I’m interested in on their lot, I’m not going to drive something else just for grins. In general, though, I head to whatever dealership my car muse sends me to.

Last week I randomly picked my local Acura dealer – right across the street from the Mercedes dealer! – to test drive the most interesting vehicle in my search: the RDX.

I say the RDX is most interesting because it doesn’t fit into the neat slots the other cars I’m looking at fit into. Or at least according to the car press. And I can’t figure out why.

Based on size, features, and price, the RDX should absolutely be rated against the GLC300, etc. However, car sites generally place it with cars the next rung up the size ladder. I guess Acura has some say in this, but it makes no sense to me.

I only mention this because it makes it tough to, on paper at least, compare the RDX to the rest of my list. Ultimately my purchase will come down to my preferences. But if the RDX is ranked as the eighth-best mid-sized SUV, does that make it the best compact SUV? Or third? Or 10th?

(I wrote the previous section based on my research earlier this year. As I was prepping for my next test drive, I noticed several sites now list the RDX in the luxury compact space. But not all of them. Strange. I guess I need to update my spreadsheet!)

Anyways…I drove an RDX that features the A-Spec package. This is a largely cosmetic set of options that makes the RDX look a lot more sporty. Reviewers are mixed on the package. Some find it a required upgrade. Others think it adds little to the vehicle and the smarter buy is one step of options down: all-wheel drive plus the Technology package.

The more standard RDXes do not fit my eye, so I figured go with the sporty one.

It had been nearly a month since I test drove the Mercedes, so it was tough to make direct comparisons. The RDX drove nice enough, although the transmission did feel a little jerkier than the GLC. Some of that difference could have been because of the differences in the various driving modes that the sale guy was flipping through as I drove. Those changes are certainly less subtle than corresponding moves in the Mercedes. You KNOW when you go from Comfort to Sport to Sport 2 in the RDX.

You flip through these modes via a large dial just below the climate controls. It looks like a giant volume button, and I guarantee both drivers and passengers have changed the drive mode accidentally, thinking they were cranking the volume up when “Freebird” came on.

Like many current cars, the RDX dispenses with the traditional gear shifter. Instead, you push buttons to shift from park to reverse to drive and back, as if you were changing the mode of the ventilation system. This seems very strange to me. I guess it makes sense once you’ve used it awhile.

The RDX rode nice, accelerated well, and cornered confidently. But it still seemed slightly less refined in each area than the GLC.

One of the biggest issues professional car reviewers have with modern autos is with the entertainment systems. Or at least the user interactions with the systems. They never seem entirely happy with any of the setups. Acura’s tends to get banged especially hard. My sales guy walked me though the basics of it, but even he said it can be complicated. “You’ll get used to it in a week,” he insisted.

That may be the case, but it was so difficult to grasp the basics that I couldn’t safely test it out while driving. The big negative is the central screen does not have a touch interface. I know that saves some money, but it seems insane not to offer one. Touch screens are an integral part of most people’s lives today. Not allowing the driver to tap the screen to make selections seems terribly outdated, and/or cheap.

Like most other cars in the class, there is a small touch pad located in the center console that is the main way to control the entertainment system. It was kind of janky. My first attempt to select something often missed. The controls on the steering wheel were also way less intuitive in how and what they controlled than on the GLC.

The RDX did have two things the Mercedes lacked. First were ventilated seats. These are standard on the RDX while they require an upgrade on the GLC. It was a cool day when I drove, but the sun was shining brightly so it was nice to get a shot of cool air from below. I bet those are really nice on Indiana summer days.

The second difference will sound strange, but it was the presence of a spare tire. A lot of cars in this class come standard with run-flat tires. Rather than a jack and spare under the cargo area floor, you get additional cargo space and a number to call if your tire fails before you can replace it. I’ve struggled with this concept since I began my research. This will still be a family car. Is it the safest option, should a pothole destroy my tire, to pull over, call roadside assistance, and wait for help rather than be able to throw on even a donut spare and get home? Run flats often have to be replaced in pairs, too, which doubles the price of repairing the inevitable flat.

Overall the RDX is a nice car. While it is fairly well appointed on the inside, it did feel a little plasticy, and thus a step down, compared to the more luxurious GLC. That makes sense: the RDX checks in several thousand dollars cheaper. That still feels like too much to spend on a car and not get the highest quality interior materials throughout the cabin.

My research has also popped up a lot of complaints about the reliability of the RDX. You have to be careful with how you read user reviews these days. The most negative seem to get the most attention. But when there seem to be a lot of scathing indictments that indicate the RDX will constantly be in the shop, I have to factor them in. Of course plenty of people say never to buy a German car for the same reason.

The sales guy was fine. I did detect a whiff of BS on him. I told him up front that I had three months to figure out what my next car will be, and this was the beginning of the process. I suppose because it was the end of the month, he kept gently pushing me to learn more about their incentives that were about to disappear, talk about Acura buying out my current lease, and made some other comments that suggested he wanted to get me in an RDX today.

As carefree as I’m being about this process, I still don’t like it when sales people don’t pick up on the clear parameters I give them. I’ll dance your dance when it’s time, but for now we’re going to dance my dance, dude. He also took two lengthy calls from other clients while we were together, which annoyed me.

The RDX was always a bit of a wildcard. It ticks some very important boxes, notably price, but falls short in some others. With the adjustment in how it is being classified by some review sites, it has changed how I can measure it against others in the luxury subcompact class.

Based on this test drive I don’t know that it will make my final list. But that’s mostly because I have at least three more initial test drives to make and it feels like there is plenty of room to beat it. Should some of those fall short of my expectations, the RDX could absolutely sneak into my final group to take another look at.

Chart Week: May 1, 1982
Song: “867–5309/Jenny” – Tommy Tutone
Chart Position: #8, 15th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for three weeks in May and June.

Quick show of hands: if you were alive and old enough in 1982, how many of you dialed 867–5309 to see if Jenny would answer? I know I did. I believe in Kansas City the response was an AT&T recording that there was no such number in my area code (816 represent!).

Unintentionally, the band Tommy Tutone set off a brief fad with their ode to looking for a good time by calling a number scribbled onto a wall.

According to Casey Kasem, dozens of people around the country had the number 867–5309 when the song was released. As the song climbed the chart, and volume of callers looking for Jenny multiplied, it created great annoyance and forced many of those poor folks to change their phone numbers.

A couple businesses tried to take advantage.

A talent agency in Los Angeles adopted the number and connected it to an answering machine, where a woman named Jenny asked callers to leave a message.

Chicago radio station WLS went a step further. The AM radio giant also claimed the number. In a matter of weeks they got over 18,000 calls. The phone company told the station they needed to add more lines to handle the flood of callers. WLS did, and enlisted Tommy Tutone lead singer Tommy Heath to record a message that answered the calls, thanking fans for their interest in the song.

If only I knew the Chicago area code in 1982! Then again, long distance calling was an expensive luxury back then. My mom probably would have killed me when the phone bill arrived listing a bunch of calls to 312–867–5309.

As I listened to this week’s countdown I couldn’t help but compare this little bit of harmless marketing fun to how brand managers would handle a similar song today. Can you imagine? There would be coordinated social media pushes. There would be ads on YouTube. There would be carefully crafted GIFs, Tik Toks, and Instagram filters. Jimmy Fallon would do a super dumb parody. And since the charts are so different now, the song would hang around for nearly a year, to the point where we would all be sick of it and never want to hear it again.

Thank goodness the ‘80s were different times! Instead of being overexposed and forgotten, “867–5309/Jenny” become one of the most beloved, iconic, and unforgettable songs of its era.

Shows and Movies

Pearl Jam Live On 6/25/2010, Hyde Park, London, England
To celebrate Easter weekend, I guess, online streaming service nugs.net put this show up for free from Good Friday evening through Easter Monday. An outstanding show with terrific sound and a stellar setlist. It was unnerving to see how tightly the crowd was packed in, though. Not because of Covid but more because of the sheer amount of people in a small space. Eddie was rightly concerned.

A+

The Wolf’s Call
Basically a French The Hunt for Red October. This thriller sees Europe on the verge of nuclear war as a presumed Russian missile streaks from the Bearing Sea towards France. A French nuclear sub is given orders to launch a counterstrike and goes into its stealth mode leading up to launch. But a genius French sonar operator discovers that the missile is not armed with a warhead and is likely not from the Russians, setting off a mad scramble to prevent the counterstrike.

This movie was cheesy as hell and had numerous glaring logical flaws. They were made worse by Netflix dubbing the audio rather than presenting it with subtitles. The American actors who added their voices sounded like people with no experience acting. Being a French film, though, the ending isn’t nearly as clean and happy as a corresponding American film would be.

C+

F1: Drive to Survive, season three
L and I ripped through this in about a week. Same old formula, with the same old success.
(L never watched season one so we went back and watched it to get her caught up. Interesting to look back two years and see how much had changed. That’s the weird thing about sports media: it’s so time exclusive. The exciting phenom of one year is the flamed-out, cautionary tale of two years later.)

B+

Tourist Sauce: Oregon
The first Tourist Sauce season of the Covid era. Like the first Strapped season of these times, it also suffers a bit by not adding as much local color as in past seasons. However, sticking mostly to Oregon’s Bandon resort alleviated some of those issues. As with every TS season, watching these 12 episodes should make any golfer want to get their game and bank account in good enough condition to book a trip to Bandon

B+

Burn After Reading
Exactly what you would expect when the Coen brothers take on the espionage genre. Silly, hilarious, and often uncomfortable. An expected wacky and excellent performance from Frances McDormand. Totally unexpected oddball efforts from George Clooney and Brad Pitt.

A-

Greater
About the life of Brandon Burlsworth, who went from out-of-shape walk-on to starter and first team All-American at right guard for Arkansas in 1998. Weeks after he was drafted in the third round by the Colts, he died in a car accident.

His rise as an individual is primarily driven by his faith. The movie is very low-budget Christian, and because of that comes off as lazy and cheesy at times. Some of the acting is super amateur. Some of the characters are painted with very broad strokes, and there is little-to-no subtlety in many of the religious moments.

No matter what the focus is, you can’t help but get sucked into a story about an underdog athlete turning into a star. Even if the focus on his faith rather than his obvious talent is over-the-top. The movie suggests the team’s success in 1998 – they started 9–0 and had #1 and eventual national champs Tennessee beat until a fumble in the closing minutes gave the Vols the win – was a result of the team’s Bible study sessions going from only Burlsworth and his coach to a room crowded with teammates.

Again, if you’re into that kind of stuff, this movie will work. I am not, and it did not.

But…as much as I wanted to cynically dislike this movie, it pulls all the right strings in getting you to admire Burlsworth’s rise and his positivity. And while his death is only alluded to, the fact he died in a car accident pretty much destroyed me. That doesn’t happen very often; I’ve seen plenty of movies with deaths caused by car accidents in the 23 years since my mom died and been ok with them. Something about this one reduced me to a teary mess.

B

A Week in the Life: Madelene Sagström
No Laying Up’s newest feature shows great promise. The premise is to follow someone in golf through an entire tournament week. They could not have picked a better first subject. Sagström is delightful. She’s open, honest, insightful, funny, and charming.

The week they followed her was significant, too. She was the defending champion of that week’s tournament. She was stuck in London for two days trying to get her visa worked out. And on Monday of that week she had, in coordination with the LPGA, released a video in which she, for the first time, publicly acknowledged the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. It made for compelling TV. Or YouTube, I guess.

The only downside is there was too much golf. I think they could have shown her progression through the tournament – she made the cut on the number and finished deep in the pack – without spending 30–40 minutes showing shots. I wanted to see more of what the life of a touring pro is. But perhaps some of that additional color wasn’t possible while we are still living with Covid.

B+

Zero Dark Thirty
I had profoundly mixed feelings while watching this. From a purely cinematic perspective, it is excellent. Tense, taut, and full of the nitty-gritty of what intelligence services really do: dig through massive amounts of data hoping to catch a break to find the information they seek to justify operations.

However, it also felt a little manipulative, bordering on revenge porn at times. Throughout the movie I was recalling the anger I felt in the 2000s because of many aspects of our response to the 9/11 attacks. I was having mental debates about the use of torture. As much as people of all perspectives wanted us to catch Osama Bin Laden, and as fine as I was with his ultimate fate, I felt a little wrong about rooting for it so hard. I think that’s a reflection of the age of politics we live in where everything is white or black, there is never room for gray. Where there’s only room for debating yes or no on a policy, never an opportunity to decide if there are other policy options.

A-

Shorts

Africa by Kayak: 2000km around the southern tip of Africa
My man Beau Miles attempts to kayak from Mozambique to Namibia. He runs into problems.

B

18 Days, 5 Minutes – Volcanic Eruptions in Geldingadalir and Fagradalsfjall Iceland
Mesmerizing.

A

But how does bitcoin actually work?
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin do not make sense to me. This video helps explain the theory and process behind them. I’m still not sure I get it.

B

How slow jams took over the radio
Awwwww yeah! I think they undersell that Quiet Storm programs were mostly about being a soundtrack for hooking up, though.

A

The Ultimate Guide to Black Holes
Ultimate guide might be an exaggeration.

B+

The pace is winding down but still kid sports notes to share from the past few days.

Track

Yesterday was CYO track meet #3. This one was a little different: kids were free to make their own schedules. They picked a race, show up when it was called, and then scanned their wristband at the finish line to “register” themselves for that event.

L kept bouncing around on what to run. The 50 and 100? The 100 and 200? All three? She settled on the shorter sprints. Despite running into a pretty fierce headwind she dropped 0.11 off her 50 time, winning the race in 7.57, nearly 0.3 faster than the second-place runner. That wind slowed her down in the 100, but it slowed her opponents more. She beat her St P’s buddy by over 0.7 and the third place runner by a full second. Her time would also have been fast enough to win the 7th/8th grade girls race.

She was again taking names. After the 100 she was excited about beating “all the fast girls.” I’m not sure how she gets this information, since we didn’t have previous times for any of the new girls she ran against. I wonder if she asks when they are lining up, or if girls are just always bragging. I need to make sure some girls are talking smack to her before the city events!

She ran the first 100 of the medley relay, got a big lead, her buddy stretched it out in the second 100, but our 200 and 400 girls had issues with the baton pass and gave all the margin away. No worries, our 400 runner is the fastest in the state and won easily.

C had a good day, too. She decided to only run the 100. She got put in the second heat, which she won by about five yards. Her time was good enough to take third overall, 0.02 behind a teammate who ran the faster heat. I like to think C would have caught her if they ran the same heat.

She ran the second 100 of the medley relay. She got the baton in second, passed it off in second. Mission accomplished. Her team got destroyed in the anchor leg, though. Still, she had two good runs for the day.

Next Saturday are the preliminary rounds for the City championships.

Tennis

M played a match Friday right across the street from our house. Unfortunately she played at the same time L and I were at kickball and before S could get there. They actually played multiple sets this time, playing to four games rather than six. She and her partner lost two sets to none, but did win a couple games in one of the sets. She’s hoping to get to play tomorrow, assuming the rain passes by then.

She’s also asked about continuing lessons through the summer with the plan to play next year.

Soccer

You may recall that last Tuesday C scored a goal, earning her an ear cartilage piercing. That happened without either S or I there to see it.

Wednesday she played again and I was able to attend. I was sitting right at midfield. Late in the second half there was a loose ball near the goal, she pounced on it, and it looked like she made terrific contact, sending the ball towards the corner of the goal. The goalie did a full-out stretch and, from my perspective, seemed to knock the ball wide.

C started jumping up and down, shaking her arms, clearly yelling because she was upset. The St P’s parents around me and I started laughing, thinking C was pissed that this kid made a phenomenal save on her shot.

And then the referee blew her whistle and pointed at midfield, indicating it was a goal.

She had scored again!

Immediately I got the questions, “So does this mean two piercings?!?!” That night one of her coaches, who wasn’t at the game, texted me, “I hear the belly button piercing got approved.”

I texted S, who was at a meeting, with the news. “I only signed off on one piercing!”

After the game C said that the goalie did get his hands on the ball, but pushed it into the corner of the net where there was a big tear and the ball sailed through, making it look to those of use 50 yards away like it had missed. She was jumping up and down thinking the referee didn’t see it and she wouldn’t get her goal.

She was very pumped to have scored again.

Thursday she did something totally unprecedented: she skipped a kickball game for her team’s final soccer game. I wasn’t sure about this. We agreed at the beginning of the year that kickball would always come first. I’m a coach, for crying out loud! What kind of message does it send that I let my kid skip for another sport? But she’s having so much fun with soccer that I said it was fine with me if my kickball coaching partner agreed. Luckily her daughter plays soccer, too, and she saw the happiness on C’s face. She gave us her blessing.

In the finale Thursday C had a couple scoring chances that she couldn’t take advantage of. In the dying minutes of the game, she looked to have a breakaway with a kid in goal who did not want to be there. But one of her teammates came over and knocked her off the ball. As soon as he did that, the referee blew the whistle ending the game. I stood up and yelled, “Thanks a lot, Stephen!” All the parents around me thought I was thanking him for keeping C from scoring. In fact I was being sarcastic: I wanted her to score again!

Oh well, she had a ton of fun this past week, and that’s the most important thing.

Kickball

Turns out the game C and I missed was kind of a big deal. Just as the soccer game ended, I got a text from my coaching partner. “We won, 31–30, in 9 innings!”

Extra innings in kickball?!?! That happened to M’s team in 7th grade – they had a ten inning game – but that was the only time I had experienced it.

The next day I got the scoop. We were missing five players total, so had just enough for a team of 10. We were down seven going into the bottom of the 7th, with the bottom of the order up. They all got on base – which NEVER happens for those girls – then we scored seven to send it to extras. Neither team scored in the 8th, then we scored three in the bottom of the 9th to pull out the win.

Her team is supposed to play tonight and tomorrow, but we’ll see if weather allows that to happen.

L’s team played their final regular season game of the year Friday. They faced a team that was mixed 5th/6th graders and had been getting killed all year. So we were a little nervous when we were only up 5–4 after two innings.

Our girls scored 14 in the third, 13 in the fourth, and seven in the fifth to win by mercy rule.

L was not happy, though. The field we were playing on was weird. There was a sidewalk in left field that meant balls she normally kicks that way would be ground rule triples instead of home runs. She started the game trying to kick to center. That produced a double and a fly out. She started shifting her aim to right field, where the ball could roll. One of those kicks turned into a single and she was tagged out going to second, although she insists the tag didn’t touch her. She got another double. Then she came up in the top of the fifth with the bases loaded. She aimed toward right and absolutely smoked the ball. This was a no-doubter, everyone can walk because the defense isn’t getting it, kick.

And then the umpire raised his fist and called her out for stepping over the three foot kicking line. Which is bullshit; she was at least four inches short of it. Short enough to see clear asphalt between her shoe and the line.

This was her first game of the season in which she didn’t kick any home runs. She was not happy. After the game she wouldn’t talk for two hours. I told her to knock it off: they won by 32 on a day she didn’t kick well, and that was a good thing. Plus I had been warning her about getting close to the kicking line for a week and she kept blowing me off. Maybe this will make her adjust her technique.

Her team went 7–0 in the regular season. There are three divisions in her age group, and her team will play in a City semifinal next week. The division they matchup with has a three-way tie for first place, so it requires two playoff games this week to determine who we play. At track yesterday the coaches were trying to convince me to go scout the second playoff game. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t do it…

April 2021

• Middle Kids – 61
• Manchester Orchestra – 39
• The Natvral – 26
• Dumptruck – 24
• The Pack A.D. – 23

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.