Month: January 2022 (Page 2 of 2)

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 66

January 13, 2022 / DB

Chart Week: January 10, 1981
Song: “More Than I Can Say” – Leo Sayer
Chart Position: #10, 16th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for five weeks.

(I will be adding an element to these posts moving forward. I’m going to copy my man Tom Breihan and rate each song using his 10-point scale.)

One of the only bummers for my holiday break was that the iHeart Radio Classic American Top 40 station did not air its annual marathon of year-end countdowns. That has, over the past three years, become a traditional for me. I could spend the last hours of the old year and the first hours of the new year taking down Christmas decorations, reading, and otherwise wasting time as Casey ticked off the biggest hits of my childhood in the background.

New Year’s weekend I kept feeling like I was missing something as I did those tasks in silence. Strangely, this song kept popping up in my head.

Last Sunday I turned on the KCMO weekly replay and caught part of the second half of the top hits of 1981 countdown. Second song I heard? “More Than I Can Say” by Leo Sayer at #28. Obviously the Music Gods meant for me to write about it!

This song has an interesting history. It was written by Sonny Curtis and Jerry Allison, both members of Buddy Holly’s band The Crickets, in 1959. They composed it a few weeks after Holly died in the infamous The Day The Music Died plane crash.

The Crickets carried on without Holly, putting out albums periodically until as recently as 2005. Their original version of “More Than I Can Say” was the band’s closest thing to a hit in the States in their post-Holly era, peaking at #42 on the R&B chart.[1]

Bobby Vee was one of several artists recruited to replace Holly, Richie Valens, and The Big Bopper on tour following their deaths. He recorded a cover of “More Than I Can Say” in 1961 that peaked at #61.

Surviving setlists show that the Beatles played this often in 1961 and 1962, mostly in their Hamburg days, although they never put their version onto wax.

In the mid 1970s, Leo Sayer went on an unlikely hot streak. Out of nowhere, he scored six Top 40 hits, including back-to-back Number Ones with “You Make Me Feel Like Dancing” and “When I Need You.” By 1980, though, he had failed to hit the US Top 40 with nine straight records.

As he prepared to record his Living in a Fantasy album, he sought an old song to cover. One day he saw a TV commercial for a Bobby Vee greatest hits collection. The ad included a snippet of “More Than I Can Say.” Sayer knew that was the song he was looking for. He ran out to buy the album, hit the studio, and immediately cut his own version. Smart decision. His recording raced up the charts and spent five weeks at number two, stuck behind Kenny Rogers’ “Lady” for four weeks and John Lennon’s “(Just Like) Starting Over” for one week as the calendar flipped from 1980 to 1981.

There isn’t much difference in the three recorded versions of this song. I do like how Sayer’s take is both immediately recognizable and still pulls in the sound of its time. There’s the slightest country tinge to the song, balanced by some solid, smooth-as-hell, Christopher Cross-esque Yacht Rock vibes. In fact, the music is the best part of the song. There’s a hint of disco funk in the bass. Not enough to make the song danceable, but enough to propel the song along. Sayer’s vocals aren’t remarkable in any way, and it feels like he’s gliding without investing any true emotion into his effort. In fact, the best vocal parts are the backing harmonies over the guitar break and the final section.

Still, there’s something about it that makes me feel warm when I hear it. That’s probably just the heat of nostalgia, taking me back to the holiday season of 1980. But I like it a lot more than his other songs.

The video is kind of great. The use of a green screen probably blew people’s minds back then. And Leo’s look of red shoes, yellow pants, pink blazer, and White Man Afro was truly aspirational.

D’s Grade: 7/10

They were more successful in Britain, with three Top 40 singles. With Holly, they had four-straight Top 40 tracks, including chart-topper “That’ll Be The Day.” ↩

Jayhawk Talk: Heart Burn Edition

January 12, 2022 / DB

A near disaster in the Fieldhouse last night should have most KU fans very concerned this morning.

Iowa State has proven that their 12–0 start was no fluke, and new coach TJ O (I refuse to learn how to spell his last name; this is a blog not a newspaper) deserves an enormous amount of credit for turning the program around so quickly. They guard your ass off, and not a single KU player handled the pressure well.

There are some caveats to the concern. The biggest was Remy Martin’s absence. His speed and ability to attack the ISU pressure would have freed everyone else up. He could have played 35 minutes without scoring a point and I think just being on the court means KU wins by 6–7.

There’s no shame in struggling on offense in the Big 12 this year. But KU has looked pretty bad in the last two games with the defense forcing them out of their comfort zone.

This team is not confident with the ball, and should expect an enormous amount of pressure in every game the rest of the season. I asked in one of my text threads last night if we had ever practiced against pressure, because we looked like fifth graders playing against a press for the first time.

Speaking of middle schoolers, KU showed little desire to go get tough rebounds the past two games. It reminded me of L’s game Monday when her team got out-rebounded approximately 87–2. Texas Tech and Iowa State were both the more physical, engaged, and determined teams in going after loose balls. I rarely saw a KU player get a body on a Cyclone as the ball was going up, content to chase the ball in the air without trying to get position.

It was ironic that last night was Roy Williams’ return to Allen Fieldhouse – and there really needs to be something more formal to honor him, maybe next year to celebrate the 2002 and 2003 Final Four teams? – with the former KU coach seated directly across from the KU bench. There were moments when we knew that, had Roy been the KU coach, he would have sent the last five, healthy guys on the bench into the game. That’s not Bill Self’s style; he will always default to the guy’s he trusts, whether they’re playing well or not. But maybe last night was a game that he could have stole a page from Ol’ Roy’s coaching book and lit a fire under his team.

The most interesting aspect of last night’s game was Self starting freshman KJ Adams and playing him a decent chunk of minutes at the 5 spot. Neither David McCormack nor Mitch Lightfoot were injured, so Self wasn’t forced to start Adams. I would have been less surprised if he slid Jalen Wilson to the 5 and started Jalen Coleman-Lands. Because Self never starts a player like Adams unless he has to.

I found that move encouraging. It means Self was, for once, coaching for the future instead of the moment. KJ had a few nice moments, but mostly looked like he was just trying to keep up and not mess things up too badly. Starting him in a conference game is all about trying to get him confidence so Self can trust him when we get to late February and early March and the games get bigger.

To be clear, I don’t think KJ is the answer at the 5. He’s only 6’7” and although he’s athletic, he’s not Andrew Wiggins athletic, so he won’t be jumping over everyone to grab rebounds. He’s also not like those super strong, 6’7” dudes who would bully people back in the ’90s. But if he can just set screens, make the right rolls, not get destroyed on D, and give effort on the boards, he can be a stop gap until Dave and Mitch figure out how to stay on the court.

(Remy makes this team go. But what is going to doom this team is not having an athletic big man. I’ve said it before, but it becomes more glaringly obvious every week. There weren’t many guys like that in the portal last summer, and Self whiffed on that kind of player in high school recruiting. He also probably thought McCormack would be an effective, 30 mpg player.)

It’s still early January. KU is fighting some injuries. The team should look different in a week or two if/when Remy gets healthy and Bobby Pettiford shakes the rust. They snatched a win in a game they did not deserve on the same night Baylor lost a home game. The Big 12 schedule is going to be an absolute monster for the next two months. There is plenty of reason for concern but no reason to give up on this year’s team quite yet.

Sports are Dumb

January 10, 2022 / DB

This weekend was another reminder that sports are dumb. At least they were to the people – well me – in our house.

KU

You all know that I’m superstitious. So I got a bad feeling as news broke that Tech’s two best players, Terrence Shannon Jr and Kevin McCullar, would miss Saturday’s game against KU. It just seems like anytime people get excited about an opponent missing key player(s) against KU, the Jayhawks decide to lay a big, fat egg that day.

Sure enough, that’s what happened in Lubbock.

The undermanned Red Raiders took it to KU the entire game. They were better on offense and defense. Tougher on the boards. Eventually figured out the junk defense Bill Self threw at them to try to give his team a chance to get back into the game.

Tech was good, yes, but KU was bad. Most of the team looked lethargic or two steps slower than Tech. Just about everyone on the team looked confused when they were actually being guarded tough. They simply refused to rebound and let the Tech players shove them away from every 50–50 ball, be it in the air or on the ground.

(That’s not a complaint. I thought there were a few pushes that should have been called. Tech just moved the KU guys without much resistance all damn day, and it’s on KU to be tougher, work harder, and not be, you know, soft.)

Even a B+ performance probably would have gotten the win for KU. Instead they offered a C-/D+ effort. A lot of teams are going to lose in Lubbock over the next two months. But KU had a chance to steal one against a Covid-reduced team and blew it. The effort is the concern, not the result.

Colts

I’ve been pretty lukewarm on the Colts all season. So their loss in Jacksonville Sunday didn’t really cause me any anguish. In fact, I found it pretty funny. Thank goodness I did not have a huge emotional investment in the game, because that was an absolutely inexcusable loss. The local media immediately dubbed the worst regular season loss since the Colts moved to Indy. Which is fair. The Colts were one of the hottest teams in the league, until a week ago. The Jags were just playing out the string, hoping to get to the offseason and hit the reset button for the latest time. A loss guaranteed them the number one pick in the draft. There was zero reason for that team to show up with any motivation Sunday.

Yet them hammered the Colts from the opening drive and never let up.

A lot has been made here in town about the Colts getting a league-high seven Pro Bowl players and pretty much all of those guys sucking Sunday.

It would be easy to blame Covid, as the virus ran rampant through the roster over the past couple weeks. Several players who were unvaccinated and got the virus played notably worse once they came back.

Carson Wentz sucked balls the last two weeks. I’ve said all year you can never trust that guy in key moments. I don’t know that it’s better or worse he turned into a pumpkin at the end of the regular season instead of waiting until the playoffs to go 6–13 for 70ish yards and a couple turnovers through three quarters.

Darius Leonard had zero impact yesterday, other than a needless late-hit penalty that gave the Jags 15 yards.

The offensive line was atrocious.

Johnathan Taylor couldn’t do a thing thanks to the o-line’s woes.

It was a total team effort at turning a gimme game into a total disaster.

Now what should they do moving forward? Do you clean out the front office? The coaching staff? Somehow try to solve the quarterback issues for the fourth-straight year?

I’m guessing there aren’t wholesale changes. That’s generally not how the Colts roll and I think ownership trusts Chris Ballard and Frank Reich to figure it out. And everyone is too invested in Wentz to not give him another chance. This team is close in a lot of ways and a good offseason could put them in great shape for 2022. But a repeat of last year’s offseason misses could mean the end for the current regime.

Friday Playlist

January 7, 2022 / DB

There is an unintentional theme to this week’s playlist.

“Tunnels” – Weakened Friends
A huge, crunchy very 90s song about getting your heart broken. It’s awesome.

“Lo Lo Lonely” – Young Guv
YG returns in March with a double album filled with his take on power pop. I know Matthew Sweet put out an album last year. I didn’t listen to it, but this reminds me of his work back in the 1990s.

“Don’t You Grow Up” – Kindsight
I don’t keep track where bands I share on Fridays hail from. I would imagine we’ve had a Danish band before, but I also figure Danes are few and far between in these posts. I’ve got a little Danish blood so I’m genetically inclined to like this. Hey, guess what? It has a ’90s vibe to it! Not sure how all these songs popped up this week.

“Lift” – Stutter Steps
Hell, why not one more song that sounds like it could have gotten some airplay on a mid-90s alt-rock radio station?

“Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” – The Rolling Stones
I finished season three of Narcos: Mexico last night. This was used in the opening scene of the last episode. Not sure it really lines up with the Mexican drug cartels of the 1990s, but it sure sounded good. Anyway, the timing of that show gives me the angle to include this track in a playlist that calls back to the Clinton era.

“In the Meantime” – Spacehog
A couple weeks back the Sunday Pitchfork retro review was of Spacehog’s debut album, Resident Alien. I bet I’m like most of my friends my age and this was the only song I ever listened to off that disk. But what a freaking song! The review led me to this listing of biggest one-hit wonders of the alt-rock era. There are some good songs in here.

You Have to Find Your Own Way: Cobra Kai, Season Four

January 6, 2022 / DB

I knocked out season four of Cobra Kai over the weekend. Six episodes Saturday, four Sunday. Solid work.

I liked it, although I thought it took a long time to find a good rhythm and flow. I hoped there would be a payoff for a rather slow start, and, thank goodness, there was. In fact, the last three episodes were as good as any in the total run of Cobra Kai.

We were all giddy coming into this season at the prospect of Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso joining forces to train their students to compete against John Kreese’s Cobra Kai at the All Valley Tournament.

Just typing All Valley Tournament gives me goosebumps!

As we meandered through the first seven episodes, I got the feeling that the writers were so stuck on trying to make that partnership shine, at least in TV terms, that they lost elements that had made past seasons work so well.

Or, perhaps, they just knew where they wanted to get to and couldn’t make the path to that finish work as well as the finish itself.

Also, maybe my expectations for how they would interact were too high. I wanted so badly for it to be all about them that I forgot what makes this show so good: how there is always a counter-balance for any plot line or relationship. The writers would have to fundamentally change the show if it become the Daniel and Johnny Karate Hour.

To my eyes, Johnny was a little neutered this season. The first three seasons every episode had moments with Johnny that made me laugh out loud. He still had his moments this season, but they felt more spaced out and sometimes less funny as in the past. The funniest Johnny moment of season four was his training montage, when he started kicking waves and yanking kids off of scooters. That was some funny shit. Searching for “how to tell my student I’m banging his mom” was pretty awesome, too. “Learning feminism,” and “Do I look like I sit to pee?” were other favorite lines of mine. I’m all for Johnny maturing but not at the expense of his sense of humor.

I never saw The Karate Kid Part III, so Terry Silver was new to me. Maybe that affected how I viewed this season, too, as the callbacks and references to that movie were lost on me.

Every time either Silver or Krees worked out or fought someone, I kept expecting one of them to drop dead of a heart attack. These guys were in Vietnam and we’re supposed to believe they can engage in rigorous martial arts ass kicking in the 2020’s? I’ll believe a lot of bullshit in this show, but that’s too much.

I also continue to refuse to believe that Yasmine is really into Demetri. It is nauseating and setting up a lot of real-life geeks for disappointment when the hottest girl at their schools don’t suddenly fall for them.

All the overt flashbacks to the original movies are getting old. It feels like by season four those should be appear much less often. I did like that pretty much everyone, including Samantha, called out Daniel for being so hung up on Mr. Miyagi. We get it, he changed your life. But, dude, can you give it a rest? Based on how little time Daniel spends at the dealership, I’m starting to think Amanda was the real force behind any business success Daniel had. Maybe we need to dive into her backstory more to find the real reason the LaRusso Auto Group is the valley’s first choice for fine vehicles and auto service.

The show continued to do a wonderful job pitting characters against each other in new and entertaining ways, with constantly shifting rivalries and hurt feelings. Best example this season was the connection between Daniel and Miguel, which threatened Johhny’s relationship with his student. It’s basic, soap opera shit. But this show is really good at it.

With that in mind, I think the writers could have pushed the Amanda-Tory storyline harder. It’s just a different version of the interactions between Daniel, Johnny, Robby, and Miguel, but it had opportunities to turn into something really interesting.

From doing some stalking, errrr, “research” on Instagram, it appears that Vanessa Rubio and Courtney Henggeler hang out a little bit outside of the show. I bet that’s a good time…

Kyler Park, with his “rich Asian kid who talks like he’s from the ‘hood” act kills me.

Robby and Tory were devastatingly attractive at prom. I think my windows fogged up a little bit. I still have some Dirty Old Man issues watching Peyton List as a woman. So I’m not going to say much else.

It did make me chuckle that Robby and Tory could do a flawless Tango without ever having danced together before. This is the fake shit I can buy into.

The All Valley Tournament episodes were awesome. And, let’s be honest, the best character of the year was the guy who was the announcer for the matches. Another example of how the show isn’t afraid to be cheesy and almost always finds the humor in those moments instead of turning the audience off.

“I know who I am now. The guy who’s gonna win this whole fucking thing.” Eli Mother Fucking Moskowitz, ladies and gentlemen, with the line of the entire series. I literally raised my fists and shouted when he said that. Homeboy called his shot and delivered on it.

That was the only downside to how the final matches were ordered. With the boys final first, and Cobra Kai only needing one win to clinch the team title, you knew that Eli would beat Robby. Still, they made that fight, and the girls final, hella interesting, as Cali kids would say. Terrific action, camerawork, and drama in all the matches of the tournament.

If Daniel LaRusso wasn’t already insufferable enough, he has the balls to walk over to Robby and try to tell him how to fight before the final. What a dick. He can fuck right off. Daniel is the worst. I was glad when Samantha asked him why his way had to be the right way and then went out and fought her fight on her terms.

Poor, confused, emo Miguel. Kid is trying to get through life and this season seemed like an endless series of progressively bigger disappointments to him. If a single noise summed up his season, it would be a long, sad sigh. When a drunken Johnny called him Robby after Miguel told him he loved him, it looked like he was going to crumble into a million pieces.

The aftermath of the finals was terrific: Tory having her moment of glory ruined by seeing Silver pay off the ref, Miguel heading to Mexico City to search for his dad, Johnny and Robby hugging, Chozen arriving to help Daniel counter Cobra Kai, Krees getting arrested, and Anthony getting his ass beat. Throw those together with all the normal drama and season five is set up to be an absolute monster.

I didn’t go back and re-watch the earlier seasons before season four, so I can’t make a good comparison or ranking of them. Overall, I would give season four a B+, with the qualifier that the last three episodes were an A+. There are way worse ways to spend ten hours of your life.

Jayhawk Talk: Unwatchable

January 5, 2022 / DB

What the hell was that?

In the building named for Henry Iba, KU and Oklahoma State took turns sending basketball back to the Stone Age Tuesday.

OSU was awful in the first 10 minutes. KU was even worse in the next 10, at one point missing 19 straight shots. And both teams looked like fifth graders in the closing minutes of the contest. In the final 2:24 there were seven turnovers, five fouls, four missed field goals, two missed free throws, and zero points scored by either team. It was a fucking mess.

Dave McCormack got benched and responded with one of the best games of his career, going for 17 and 15. Jalen Wilson still can’t hit a jump shot and seems to have the yips around the rim, but is just a rebounding monster, grabbing 15 rebounds of his own. Remy was hobbled and ineffective much of the night, but hit two-straight shots late that pretty much put the game on ice. Ochai and Christian weren’t nearly as effective as they have been. Anyone who had positive moments countered those with a few terrible plays. The entire team looked sped up and uncomfortable with OSU’s athleticism. Their end-game poise was awful.

Ah, but for KU, a road conference win is a road conference win, no matter how much angst it caused or how many pillows I flung across the room in anger. You are thankful for every Big 12 win that is banked away. And hope that the next game the team will play more like nearly grown men than middle schoolers.

December Media

January 4, 2022 / DB

Holiday Stuff

The Office, Christmas episodes
I wrote about them last year; they get a collective A
Christmas Vacation, A
Elf, A
Office Christmas Party, B+
Die Hard, A

Community, “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”
This was the Community entry on a list of best Christmas TV episodes I found. I hadn’t seen it since probably its initial airing. It should be a classic for everyone. It is to me now.

8 Bit Christmas
An adult remembrance of the childhood lust for a particular Christmas present. Sound familiar? Yes, there are a lot references/common elements to/with A Christmas Story. It works because that lust is universal, whether you’re talking about a Red Ryder BB gun or a Nintendo NES. This has an especially poignant and affecting ending.

B+

Movies and Shows

The Hunt for Red October
After watching Die Hard, I figured why not watch another John McTiernan masterpiece. First time watching this in a long time. Still great.

Three Days of the Condor
One of the all-time great spy movies, and since it takes place in December and there are Christmas songs in the background, I guess it can be called a Christmas movie if we use Die Hard rules.

First time watching. It was slow, like a lot of ‘70s movies are. And I did not buy Faye Dunaway suddenly falling for Robert Redford after he kidnapped her and tied her up to keep her captive. I know he’s RR, but have some respect for yourself, Faye. But the last 15 minutes are a pretty good mind-fuck and redeem the film. The relatively young Dunaway was pretty fetching!

Spider-Man: No Way Home
The girls and I hustled to the theater about two hours after L’s Christmas break began to catch the latest appearance by our friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man.

The multiverse thing worked in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Why not try it with Tom Holland and his crew? I never watched any of the Andrew Garfield movies, so his presence didn’t mean much to me. It was kind of cool to see Tobey McGuire on screen again, though.

I’m not big on the whole MCU thing, so lots of references are lost on me. Overall the story was decent. The lengthy denouement was surprisingly affecting. So I was entertained but I’m not sure I loved it. I liked the first two Holland movies more, though. L said it was her favorite of the three Holland movies, but she’s a sucker for recency bias.

B+

Spider-Man: Homecoming
Our New Year’s Eve movie of the year. Probably L’s fifth or sixth time watching it. I wish Spidey’s suit still talked to him.

A-

The Harder They Fall
Owes a lot to Tarantino, but another good entry into the crowded field of modern, revisionist Western movies.

B+

The Beatles: Get Back
Look here for my thoughts.

Holiday Baking Championship
A great field of competitors this year, probably the best final four ever. I figured Adam was going to win from the beginning. He has amazing skills, but he was a little smug for my tastes. I was pulling for Sabrina. And Jose really grew on me. He was so surly and bitchy at the beginning but morphed into one of the most interesting competitors.

By Dawn’s Early Light
This was one of the final movies made about a fictional, largely nuclear, World War III before the fall of the Soviet Union. Released in 1990 on HBO, it featured a stellar cast. It got good reviews at the time. Today, it feels pretty damn cheesy. The ending is just flat weird. But I do love a nuclear apocalypse story. Darren McGavin, A Christmas Story’s Old Man, as the momentary president with the fate of the world in his hands was a nice surprise.

C+

Seinfeld
I’ve been trying to catch a few episodes of Seinfeld each week on Comedy Central. Nothing systematic about it, so they are all out-of-order. I’ve often said that Seinfeld doesn’t hold up the same way shows like Cheers did because it had so many specific pop cultural references. I still wonder about that, at least as far as people who weren’t alive in the ‘90s watching the show and getting everything. I have to admit that those little moments very much worked for me, though, and the show remains a classic.

The Alpinist
Crazy documentary about climber Marc-Andre LeClerc, a young Canadian who took the free-soloing that Alex Honnold is famous for to another level. Insane views of insane climbs.

A-

T in the Park 2016- Frightened Rabbit (Full Set)
I’ve watched this several times before. YouTube offered it up again and it seemed like a good way to kill 75 minutes or so.

Talks at Google: Scott Hutchison
It led me to this, again something I’ve watched before, where Scott talked to Google employees about two months before his death.

A-

Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed
An accounting of Ross’ rise as an unlikely pop culture icon and the mess that his estate turned into after his death. Both inspiring and depressing. I had no idea he recorded his shows in Muncie, Indiana!

B+

Shorts

NPR’s Delicious Dish: Schweddy Balls
I actually skipped the SNL Christmas special, if it was even on, this year. I’ve been annoyed for ages about how it is pretty much the same show every year. So I spent a few nights watching some classic Christmas skits on YouTube. This one remains my favorite.

A+

A Tree a Minute: planting 1440 trees in a day
Big Gums: Sleeping in my 100 year old Gum tree
Beau Miles and trees.

A-, A-

The Driver is Red
An animated, mini-doc about the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

A-

How A NY Times Reporter Collects Royalties From Hundreds of Musicians
Obviously you have to be careful with one-sided accounts like this, but it still seems like some shady shit.

A-

Madeira Island – A Destination for all Surf Lovers
One of the waves that William Finnegan wrote about in Barbarian Days.

Paul Rudd’s Best Saturday Night Live Sketches (So Far)
Good stuff.

Podcasts

The Story Behind Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over”
One of my all-time favorite artists discussing my all-time favorite song, along with the rest of his career? Hell yes I’m listening to this!

So This Is The New Year…

January 3, 2022 / DB

Happy New Year, everybody! Let’s kick off another calendar year of discussing random shit, shall we?

Our New Year’s Eve was rather quiet, as usual. M went to a party, which was a first. That meant we had to stay up until we were sure she was safely at the home of the friend she was spending the night with. What did our parents do before the Find My app? Just worry until we showed up the next day? Fortunately she had a good and safe time.

Our neighbors invited S and I out for an early New Year’s toast at 10 PM. We met at the end of their driveway, shared a drink, and caught up about how our respective holidays went. It was a humid 55, so we all had light jackets on. Those were the final hours of both 2021 and our balmy stretch of weather. It got cold New Year’s Day, snowed a bit overnight Sunday, and the windchills are down below 20 now. 2022, January, and winter are all here.

L had a couple games yesterday, her final of the early winter session. They won the first game by 34 and she had her highest scoring game of the year, dropping in eight. She also had a half-court shot rim in-and-out at the final buzzer. They played the team of a St P’s classmate in the second game. This team was tall and athletic and play together year-round. We hung close for about 10 minutes then gave up a 12–0 run that we could not come back from. We were down 20 in the fourth quarter before a little run turned it into a respectable 10-point loss. L didn’t score but played solid D and probably had her best rebounding day of the year despite facing the big girls.

Her team will now transition to a different league for the winter. Those games will be closer to home and usually just one per weekend. She will also start playing in an occasional single-day tournament with the travel team she’ll be a part of in the spring and summer.

After her games we got all the Christmas decorations taken down and stored for the year. As always the house feels a little emptier and colder this morning without the tree up.

I also watched a certain 10-episode Netflix show over the weekend. More about that later this week.

M and C went back to school today. Cathedral is doing a two-week elective thing; they call it J-term, I know there are other schools that do a similar thing. M is taking an art appreciation class, which includes a day in Chicago going to museums. Hopefully Covid doesn’t wipe the out. C and all the other freshmen have to go through the same set of courses that are a mix of leadership/mentorship/future planning stuff and some fun sessions. Neither of them is super excited about any of this even though this means no homework for two more works. They both said they’d rather be in their regular classes with their friends. L has two more days of playing Xbox before she goes back.

So now I guess we start counting down for spring break. Only 82 days…

Stats

January 1, 2022 / DB

My listening stats for 2021:

The War on Drugs – 417
Middle Kids – 303
Pearl Jam – 199
Manchester Orchestra – 115
Wild Pink – 112
Sam Fender – 110
Crowded House – 102
Hatchie – 102
Julien Baker – 98
Eliza Shaddad – 88

And since I began using Last.fm in February, 2005:

Frightened Rabbit – 3532
Pearl Jam – 3494
The War on Drugs – 2850
The Beatles – 2286
Ryan Adams – 2268
The Clash – 1904
Radiohead – 1613
Crowded House – 1557
Bruce Springsteen – 1367
The White Stripes – 1272

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.