Finally worked through my Instapaper account to find some things I’ve saved to share with you.

Dave Holmes Visits 1988 to Pay Respect to Casey Kasem’s Last True American Top 40 Countdown

Someone posted this piece to the AT40 Facebook group I’m a member of. It comes from right after Casey Kasem died back in 2014, but I still enjoyed reading it. Maybe some week I should do a commentary for all 40 tracks in a countdown. Actually, I’m shocked that I’ve never done that before.[1]

The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books
I try not to check out too many E-books from the library, defaulting to “normal” books as much as possible, because of articles like this.

How Do You Tell John Walker Lindh’s Story?
I didn’t read very many 9/11 retrospectives. I have a very long one saved that I never got around to, and because of that avoided a lot of shorter pieces.

This one was fascinating, though, detailing how filmmaker Greg Barker is attempting to tell the story of “American Taliban” member John Walker Lindh. What’s most fascinating is how pretty much everyone involved in his case has zero interest in talking about it. It’s almost as if his case was more complex than the media and government told us back in 2001.

Kenny Mayne’s Second Act
I don’t watch much SportsCenter or other non-event programming on ESPN these days. So while Kenny Mayne being forced out last summer was a bummer to the Gen Xer in me, I don’t think I had seen him on a show in years.

It was cool to read about how he carved out his own little niche at the network during a time when it was loaded with massive personalities. And very interesting to see how leaving ESPN has allowed him to speak more freely about things that are not directly related to sports. Of course, he and I have similar views. Not sure I would be as excited if he was calling for an overturn of election results or protesting against masks.

“This Is Going to Change the World”
9/11. Kenny Mayne. Let’s go for the New Millennium trifecta by looking back at the unveiling of the Segway. People old enough to remember will surely recall getting one of those emails forwarded to you about the mysterious new invention that was going to completely change our lives.

Journalist Dan Kois details that weird little moment in time. It seems like the project was destined to fail. But he wonders if a young, inexperienced book agent – himself – torpedoed any chance the Segway had to be truly revolutionary through a careless, administrative mistake.

If a 26-year-old dumbass hadn’t accidentally leaked the proposal, who knows what would have happened? Because after all this time, I do think the leak had a lot to do with how little I truly understood about book publishing … and how little we all understood about what the internet was about to become.

  1. I actually kind of did with the special Top New Artists of the Decade countdown from 1988. But I A) didn’t hear the entire countdown and B) didn’t really comment on every song included.  ↩