D's Notebook

Month: July 2023 (Page 1 of 2)

Weekend Notes

July 31, 2023 /

No major events from the weekend to share. We were busy, though. The weekend was all about preparing to be social then actually being social around the pool.

Saturday night we had L’s basketball team over for a final get together to celebrate the season. Eight of the nine girls came and most of the parents hung out. The girls had a good time and enjoyed their final night together as a single team.

Sunday afternoon we repeated the gathering, this time with our three closest neighbors. It was the first time we have had these families over together despite the newest of them living by us for two years now. That’s what happens when you have big lots and aren’t right next to each other, I guess.

Anyway it was a fun evening. That newest family moved here from Kansas City, and a few of my readers even know them. The husband of that couple went to Missouri for law school while the wife went to KU for two years before transferring elsewhere to graduate. We don’t know the couple that lives between our houses nearly as well, as they are almost never outside to say hello to. But we did know that the wife of the couple is originally from Kansas and moved to Indiana to go to Purdue. So I was both shocked and thrilled when, after getting their baby up from his nap, he came over wearing a onesie with a big, beautiful Jayhawk on it. Apparently momma did not lose her love for KU when she became a Boilermaker.

So in our little three-house line in Indianapolis we have one full Jayhawk, one partial Jayhawk, and one Jayhawk lover. Even the MU guy told M, when she mentioned how we visited Lawrence last year, “Oh, you would have 100% gone to KU if your dad had taken you to a basketball game.”

The only other big moment of the weekend was M getting her move-in time at UC. Our 15 minute window to access the drop-off area is at 10:00 AM, August 12. Fortunately since she is rushing she gets into the early window, three days before general move-in begins. I’m sure it will still be busy. And either 98° or pouring rain.

Friday Playlist

July 28, 2023 /

“(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave” – Martha Reeves & The Vandellas
We have been very lucky and this has been one of the best spring/summers I can recall, other than the Canadian smoke. Until this week. The heat that has been plaguing the rest of the country finally hit us, although its worst has held off until today and will clear out Saturday night when some storms pass through. Still, several days with the heat index above 100 really make me appreciate how nice the past four months have been.

“Chum” – Moreish Idols
This is some good shit, right here.

“All We’ve Ever Wanted” – Palace
This sounds like the midway point between early Coldplay and early Doves. I was fine with early Coldplay. I loved early Doves, or all Doves for that matter.

“One Time Villain” – Coco
Coco are an anonymous collective that refuse to give any details about their makeup, so that the music does the talking. Or something along those lines. Bands love to say this, “We’re going to let the music do the talking.” I guess when you remain anonymous you actually mean it.

“All That Money Wants” – The Psychedelic Furs
Last week’s entry in the Alternative Number Ones. I don’t think I had ever heard this track before. It’s pretty good.

“Mountain Song” – Jane’s Addiction
The greatest Jane’s Addiction song. I will accept no arguments otherwise. It’s crazy that this came out in 1988. Want to know something crazier? They wrote it in 1985! Mind blown. Nothing about this sounds of the Eighties.

“Summer” – Steady Holiday, Jim James
A mellow, summertime jam for the hottest day of the year.


“Highlands” – Middle Kids
Now we’re talking! There’s that Middle Kids magic we all know and love! Something about this song made me think of Frightened Rabbit. Then I read that Hannah Joy said the song is very much influenced by her Scottish heritage, something her grandmother insisted she learn about as a kid. There have been a couple other minor Frightened Rabbit references in her songs, so I don’t think those Painting of a Panic Attack-like elements are an accident. Or maybe they’re all just in my imagination, a mental passing of the torch from one of my favorite bands to another.

Sinéad

July 27, 2023 /

When Irish women with distinctive voices who were successful in the 90s die, I’m required to write about them.

The terrible news came Wednesday of Sinéad O’Connor’s death. It’s an understatement to suggest she did not have an easy life, so while a shock, this is also one of those deaths that can seem like a relief from all the pain she dealt with in her 56 years. Tom Breihan wrote a nice obituary on Stereogum.

Much of that torment stemmed from her personal life, but there was also the public, career-based agony she endured. You can make an argument that no artist faced more abuse and vitriol for doing less to earn it than Sinéad did, at least since the Civil Rights Era ended.

Maybe it wasn’t the best move to ask that the national anthem not be played when the US was amping up to fight a war. Although I would ask why the national anthem needs to be played before a rock concert. Also a reminder to kids today that the national anthem was used as a political prop long before people got mad about Colin Kaepernick.

Somehow she was the one at fault when she called out the Catholic Church for its years of covering up the abuse of children by its priests. Not the hierarchy that protected the criminals and perpetuated the violence.

She also decried racism and censorship in the music business, which combined with the two strikes above, basically ended any major label’s interest in publishing and promoting her work.

Which is a damn shame, because she made great music.

Sadly I did not know much about her catalog until Wednesday. I had heard a song or two of hers – other than THE SONG, of course – over the years, but never more than a few times each. I played her first two albums, Lion and the Cobra and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, front-to-back, Wednesday afternoon. I was floored. They are both terrific. Not every song is a hit, but each album is heavier on good songs than filler.

Her voice was amazing, of course. Her lyrics evocative, strident, and powerful. Often the music was very good, although in some cases it is pretty low-budget and typical of the era. I’m so disappointed in myself for waiting until her death to dive in and listen to it.

If I’m writing about Sinéad, I have to mention about the elephant in the room. It is, frankly, unbelievable that an artist like her, with so many quirks, controversial stances, and desire to veer away from what was popular, sang one of the greatest songs ever recorded. “Nothing Compares 2 U” is a stunning work. Yes, Prince wrote an incredible song for her to interpret. That record’s success all comes down to Sinéad’s performance, though. Few moments in the history of pop music can match it. It will get deep into your bones and shake you every time you listen to it. It doesn’t matter that it is a bald, female, Irish revolutionary singing. Every listener can connect to the pain and loss in her voice.

I don’t want to turn Sinéad into a saint or a martyr. She was full of flaws, and occasionally too righteous for her own good. Most of those flaws stemmed from a horrible childhood, and her righteousness was always well-intended, and often proven to be the correct stance once the controversy around it settled down.

As Breihan wrote in his “Nothing Compares 2 U” Number Ones entry, Sinéad was never destined to be a pop star.[1] Having a song become that big and enduring was a fluke of the pop charts. She should have been one of those underground artists that bigger, more famous singers referenced with wonder. I doubt that would have changed the things she fought for and against in her music and public statements. I get the feeling that she was fine with the intense responses she provoked if they made even a few people question stances they had accepted without argument before. Maybe that does make her a martyr.

OK, a few of the songs I fell in love with while listening to those first two albums (now twice each, as I write this).

“Mandinka,” 1987
This did not chart in the US, but got some limited MTV airplay, so I remember seeing it a few times. Probably her poppiest track.

“I Want Your Hands On Me”, 1987
This one is a jam. It isn’t too far from what the Sugarcubes and a young Bjork were doing around the same time.

“The Emperor’s New Clothes”, 1990
The follow-up to “Nothing Compares 2 U,” it cracked the Top 25 on every major chart except here in the US. It was released before any of her controversies, so I do not understand why it peaked at #60 here. Well, I guess singing about the bitterness of being pregnant without being married in a retrograde, Catholic society may not turn on your average American Top 40 listener. But the music is as close to a standard rocker as she ever got.

“Black Boys on Mopeds”, 1990
Finally, a song that was well ahead of its time and, heartbreakingly, still relevant. I had never heard this one before, and it leveled me yesterday. I’ve listened to it at least 10 times since that first virtual spin.

  1. I highly recommend reading that entry if you have time. Especially the parts about those years when she was most in the public eye. And watch, if you can, her performance at the Bob Dylan tribute. As Breihan writes, imagine standing there and taking that much abuse from that many people for that long, then reacting as she did. It’s a little ironic that a crowd full of aging hippies, who wanted to stick it to the man and change the world in the ’60s, were intolerant of someone who was trying to do the exact same thing 20 years later.  ↩

Weekend Notes: Living That Buckeye Lifestyle

July 25, 2023 /

Three-fifths of our family spent the weekend in Ohio. You want details? I got details!

Kid Hoops

L and I went to Cincinnati for the final travel tournament of the year. We’ve never done well in these events but were looking forward to one last shot to prove ourselves on the national stage. We had six games, so I’ll keep the breakdowns brief.

We played Friday and Saturday at the event’s main gym, a building in Hamilton, OH that had 30-ish courts. It was big and nice and as the final stop on Under Armour’s summer circuit, there were some elite high school teams and lots of college coaches around. We peaked into the side where most of the high schoolers were and a few courts were packed with coaches watching. More on that in a bit.

Luckily our first game was Friday afternoon so we got up at a normal time, packed, and drove two hours straight to the gym.

Game One, Friday

Lost to a team from New York by 11. We were down 16 at halftime, trailed by as many as 20, but cut it to seven with about 5:00 to play. They pushed it back up to 15 then we went on another run that included two 3’s by L, the second cutting the deficit to six with 1:00 left. We couldn’t get any closer. This team ended up winning our age group, beating a team from Indy that features one of L’s friends in overtime.

Game Two, Friday

We played a team from Cincinnati and, again, fell behind early. This time it was something like 11–3 before we went on a 20–4 run and were never threatened. We led by 15 with about a minute to play but got sloppy and won by just nine.

Game Three, Saturday

To wrap up pool play we took on a squad from Nashville. Hey, once again we started slow, down 9–0 to start. But we battled back and were up by three at the half. We led by five midway through the second half, had two good looks to stretch it further that missed, and then went cold. Thanks to 3–4 free throws after a personal and technical foul, we tied it at 44. But they smoked us from there and we lost by nine.

Game Four, Sunday

Into bracket play. We were feeling good as the other three teams from our division had already won their opening games, all by double figures. After finishing third in our division we took on the #4 team from another division. They were from Canada. They were awkward and not very good. But they were so awkward that they kept getting in the way and our girls could not shake them. It was a 2–5 point game for the first 26 minutes until we finally put some baskets together and won by 15.

Game Five, Sunday

Semifinal time, against a team from Dayton. These girls were absolute bruisers who took us out of everything we wanted to do. We played solid D, too, so it was a brutal slog of a game. We were down four at halftime, went on an 8–0 run to open the second half, then gave it right back and played from behind the rest of the half. It was just a two-point game in the final minute but we never had the ball with a chance to tie or take the lead. We had to foul and ended up losing by five.

I said it was physical. One of our girls took an elbow in the face that drew blood…and she was called for a foul. The next play the same Dayton girl threw her to the ground…and again we got called for a foul. Not these refs’ best day. Also one of them apparently had to drop a deuce at halftime, as the girls stood around waiting for 10 minutes until he slowly walked back to the court. Then apparently he got into it with the other ref, telling him that he “fucking sucks.” They both sucked but I give this guy extra umbrage. He called L for a travel that was not a travel, wiping out her only basket of the game, so it was personal for me.

Game Six, Monday.

Third-place game, against those Cincinnati girls we beat Friday. As a bonus, in addition to our tallest, most athletic girl who we were missing all week, we lost two other girls for this game. One had to leave for a funeral, the other got strep and went home early. That left us with one sub against a team with 10 players.

They pounded us pretty good, and from the jump. The lead got up to 20 once, we cut it to 10 twice in the second half, but generally played terrible and could never match their effort or physicality. The final was 50–35 but it didn’t feel that close.

As for L, she scored 32 points for the weekend. Which sounds decent until you consider she had 15 of those in our first game again the New York team. That might have been her best game of the summer, as she scored 11 during our comeback attempt. She could never get it going in the other games, although she scored six against the Canadians. She was ok on D but was often limited by more physical guards shoving her on offense. Like playing in the varsity games in June showed, as much as working on shooting and ball handling, she needs to get stronger to compete at the high school level. She slept all the way home and was super sore when she got up this morning.

My favorite moments of hers from the weekend? When she hit the 3 to cut the NY game to six she was right in front of us and she screamed when it went in. She played her ass off in this game, and it was cool to see it pay off with good results. In the Nashville game she had an awesome blow-by hoop and earned a foul to give us the lead, although she missed the free throw. And in the Dayton game, she fouled a girl pretty hard, knocking her over. She immediately helped the girl up and checked on her. After the game they hugged. I asked what that was all about and she after the foul they talked the entire game, the girl starting it by saying no one had ever asked if she was ok after a hard foul before.

I’m proud of L for being a good teammate and hard worker, and especially proud when she has really good games. But I love that she usually handles herself really well and does things like that. There are a lot of shitty, immature, insecure players in these games, and it would be easy to follow their lead.

That was a sad way to end our travel season. It was a pretty good year. We won three tournaments and lost two championship games by one point, once in double overtime. This weekend was the only time we didn’t either play for the championship or lose to the eventual champ.

It was also this group’s last time all playing together as one team. In Indiana (and I assume in some other states), once you start high school you can only play travel ball with two teammates from your high school program. Although we have six different schools represented on our squad, we have four players from one school. So, at a minimum, we have to drop one of them before next March. That’s been a subject of whispered conversations all season. There’s no great answer to it. Even if we can keep eight of these girls together, a good player – and more importantly a nice kid/family – is going to be forced out.

There are other changes as we move forward to high school that add uncertainty, but I think the majority of this team – players and parents – would prefer to stay together at least one more year if the rules allowed it.

Tryouts for next year start in August, so we need to begin thinking about if we want to explore other programs as a hedge. The good news for L is that the varsity coach at CHS also coaches in her travel program. So we think L will have clearance to stay there. She doesn’t want to lose this good group of friends she’s made over the past two years, especially her closest friend who is going to a rival high school anyway.

Lodging

Once again we had a hotel fiasco. Despite its size, this was not a Play to Stay tournament, where registering automatically gets you access to blocks of rooms set aside for participants. Our coach also waited until three weeks ago to start looking into rooms. We all booked at a place together but a mom on our team, who is from Cincinnati, suggested we not stay there as it wasn’t in a great part of town. So another mom spent hours on the phone calling around, not finding any good alternatives that could take nine families.

Eventually our coach found an extended stay place in Mason, getting approval from Cincy mom that it was a nice area.

Then we arrived.

Yes, it was a nice area. Until we turned down the street where this place was. It seemed more aimed at folks having rough times than business travelers spending weeks in town. When we checked-in Friday night there were a series of pretty rough looking, but very friendly, people outside smoking weed. The pool looked murky. The inside of the hotel had seen better days. Fortunately the room L and I had was very clean, if reeking of a combination of Indian food and weed. A few of us parents sat by the pool and drank a couple beers while we watching the Friday evening traffic. It was interesting.

Saturday when we got back from our game, there were two fire trucks and an ambulance outside. Turned out they were there for one of the other buildings, and it was a false alarm. The firefighters acted pretty nonchalant, like they had been there many times.

Two of our families were staying at other places, one at a Marriott. We had all tried to stay there initially but it was booked full. A parent called Saturday afternoon and enough people were checking out Sunday that we could slide over there for our last night. Plus the parent already there had a code that got us a greatly reduced rate. Still, we had one more night in the dump.

We ordered pizza for dinner and the dad who took the boxes to the dumpster said he was 90% sure a bunch of dudes were smoking crack behind it. We noticed a lot of very down on their luck looking folks hanging around before the sun went down. Apparently the parking lot turned into a party after we retired for the night.

Whatever, we survived two nights there and happily checked in to the Marriott before our first game Sunday. That new place seemed like one of the hubs for the tournament. We ran into three of L’s friends from CHS, a couple girls we know that she played against in middle school, and another friend from St. P’s. L rode the elevator with an assistant coach from UCLA. And a few parents saw Kim Mulkey in all her bedazzled glory Monday morning.

Other activities

With two early games Saturday we had the afternoon and evening to kill. There was talk of going downtown – we were about 25 minutes outside the city – and going to the Reds game or wandering through the Over the Rhine area. Some people wanted to go to King’s Island. Not everyone wanted to do any of these things so we settled on spending time at Top Golf and Main Event. The girls had fun, the parents had a few drinks, and it worked out fine.

It’s always interesting traveling with a big group. Friday night we went to a restaurant right in the middle of the dinner rush. When we asked if they could seat a group of 18 – divided up however worked easiest for them – the poor girl working the hostess stand seemed overwhelmed. We only had to wait an hour, enough time to run to the hotel and back, and then she realized to ask us if we wanted to sit outside and be seated immediately. Which was fine as it was a gorgeous night. Then she seated us at tables with 15 seats so three of us had to find our own table, which confused the waiters for a moment. At least we got to eat.

M in Toledo

Thursday night M drove up to Toledo to spend the weekend with her future roommate at UC. They’ve met once before and have been talking a lot, but this was their first time spending entire days and nights together. A trial run for the next 9 ½ months. It went great.

M had a fantastic time and really got along with G and her family.[1] There isn’t a ton to do in Toledo, but she met a lot of G’s high school friends and saw her local hangouts. They went to a Mudhens game, sat in the front row, and got a picture with the mascot.[2] They saw the Barbie movie and loved it. All-in-all, they had a great time.

It was also her first extended car trip on her own. That made us a little nervous, especially since there were huge storms between here and Toledo Thursday. But she waited an extra 45 minutes to leave and managed to dodge them. She made it there and back safely.

They will move into their dorm room in 18 days. Oh, and M turns 19 today.

Double audible gulp.

  1. Her name actually starts with an S, but since we already have an S in these posts, I’ll go with her last initial.  ↩
  2. M was amazed that I knew the baseball team was called the Mudhens.  ↩

Friday Playlist

July 21, 2023 /

“Midnight Sunburn” – Dog Ears
Big, crunchy, power pop for mid-summer.

“I Need Ya” – Somebody’s Child
If the Strokes were from Ireland, they would probably sound like this.

“Forgiving Ties” – Deer Tick
I had to triple check this wasn’t a lost Tom Petty demo that someone else had finished.

“The Spiral” – Body Maintenance
This is some proper-ass post punk from Down Under. Like all great post punk, it could be from 1983 or 2003 just as easily as be the brand new song it actually is.

“Crank” – Catherine Wheel
One of the music sites I follow posted this week about the 30th anniversary of the release of Catherine Wheel’s Chrome album. While I’m partial to Ferment, “Crank” is an awesome song, and likely how most people my age discovered the band.

“Seasons” – Chris Cornell
I just listened to the Temple of the Dog/Grunge episode of 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s. The guest was professor and music critic Eric Harvey, who it turns out is from Indianapolis and went to Franklin College just south of the city. I looked up what he has written and came across his retrospective review of the Singles soundtrack for Pitchfork. It’s a great read about that entire era. Naturally I put on the soundtrack (I’m going to re-watch the movie at some point) and I remembered how this song totally blew me away the first time I heard it. I wasn’t a big Soundgarden fan yet, but I knew what their general aesthetic was. And this seemed to be the exact opposite. Such a great song by such a great artist. RIP.

“Little Bit of Sun” – Semisonic
It always makes me happy when Semisonic puts out another great, nearly perfect pop tune.

Two videos this week!


“Four Simple Words” – Frank Turner
I just bought tickets to see Frank in September, four days after I see Pearl Jam. That’s got to be some kind of record. This is a weird video as the audio morphs from live to album version to live to album again.


Next a total goofball track. I believe I shared this at some point before, but it doesn’t look like that original post survived one website move or another. So technically it is new to the blog archives.

Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 87

July 20, 2023 /

Chart Week: July 15, 1989
Song: “Buffalo Stance” – Neneh Cherry
Chart Position: #20, 16th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 the week of June 24.

I have always been fascinated by the details of how songs are made. There’s the initial inspiration. The writing and recording process. How a song is mixed and produced. Whether it goes on an album or not, and if it does, how it is sequenced. And then whether it is released as a single. Dozens of steps that can make or break a track’s commercial success.

A subset of that fascination is how small ideas can transfer from song-to-song and artist-to-artist. It might take a few years, but an innocent nugget from an obscure, forgotten tune can be the building block for something legendary.

In 1986 the British act Morgan McVey recorded a single called “Looking Good Diving.” It’s not a great song. It’s not a good song. It might be awful. To my ears it is cartoony, silly in a bad way, and does nothing to hold my attention. The duo released a truly terrible video to promote the track.

Legend has it that Cameron McVey was so embarrassed by the video that he abandoned performing and transitioned to producing, eventually working with UK giants Massive Attack and Portishead.

You should not be shocked that “Looking Good Diving” did not chart in either the UK or US.

Did you notice two familiar faces in the video? That is soon-to-become supermodel Naomi Campbell “playing” the keyboards. And on guitar, McVey’s then girlfriend and future wife, Neneh Cherry.[1]

Neneh Cherry was born in Stockholm in 1964. Her mother was Swedish, her father a Sierra Leonian studying in Sweden. Their relationship did not last. Shortly after Neneh was born, her mother met and quickly married American jazz musician Don Cherry, who raised Neneh as his own daughter. The family remained in Stockholm until the early 1970s, when they moved to New York. Just after she turned 15 Neneh dropped out of school and departed for London, where she immersed herself in the growing punk scene.

There should be something else familiar in the video. Surely your ears picked up on that ascending synthesizer line. That, my friends, is the point of inspiration that takes us from trash to gold.

Almost no one bought the “Looking Good Diving” single. Those few who did and bothered to flip it over found something very different. That B-side was called “Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch.” It had promise.

There’s that same synth line as on the A-side. Cherry jumps on the mic, rapping with a decent flow for 1986. Her delivery was fresh and exciting, if slightly stilted. Obviously the lyrics almost completely match those for “Buffalo Stance.” The track has a twitchy, 80s dance pop vibe. There is some light scratching and sampling, hinting at hip hop. It does seem clunky, though, as if the group wasn’t sure how to make all the different parts work together. It reminded me of the live mixes I listened to on Bay Area radio when I lived there, the transitions rough and awkward. In short, it very much sounds like a demo rather than a fully formed song.

When Cherry began working on her debut solo album two years later, she brought in outside talent to assist in making those disparate parts fit together better. DJ Tim Simenon provided samples, scratches, and a final mix that took the track from the dance clubs to the streets. Producer Mark Saunders made several contributions, including a keyboard line that mimicked the guitar sound of The Smith’s Johnny Marr. He also elevated the chorus into something glorious and unforgettable. Cherry sharpened her own attack, bringing a sense of urgency not present in the original version. She is as hard as Chuck D or KRS-ONE when she raps, and as sweet and light as Janet Jackson on the chorus. She sounds more Brooklyn than London in those rapped verses. And that synth line? It is now played on a Roland Super JX–10, adjusting its tone to give it more of an edge than it had on “Looking Good Diving.”

Cherry, Saunders, and Simenon took elements of various genres and morphed them together into something that was totally new, unique, and forward looking. “Buffalo Stance” is fierce yet sleek. Defiant yet tender. It is irresistible; I challenge you to not sing along when you hear it. Most of all, there is some undefinable magic deep in its core. Who knows how many hundreds of times I’ve heard it over the years. Yet every single time it completely delights me.

Those years of effort and incremental progress were totally worth it. “Buffalo Stance” is an all-time classic. A first ballot Hall of Famer. An electoral landslide. It is incredible that it grew from a tiny keyboard run in a cheeseball song that no one was interested in.

It’s looking good today, looking good in every way. And has been for 34 years. 10/10

By the way, the two songs that kept this from topping the US pop chart? Richard Marx’s “Satisfied” and New Kids on the Block’s “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever).” Sometimes America really sucks.

  1. As far as I can tell, they are still married. Good for them!  ↩

The Social Media Landscape

July 19, 2023 /

A few notes about the state of social media.

About three weeks ago I was struck by how Twitter seemed to have settled down. While there were still plenty of minor issues, the major blowups that had been endemic since the Tech Toddler’s arrived had decreased.

That’s not to say I was a happy user. The elimination of third party applications meant I was still spending lots of time dodging promoted Tweets and ads I had no interest in. While that was annoying, the fact that Twitter’s algorithm doesn’t seem to be all that intelligent is especially maddening. You would think after blocking/muting entire swaths of promoted political Tweets, they would stop showing up in my timeline. Yet each day I’m confronted by a new batch of them.

At least the platform seemed stable-ish. I doubted it would last, but still, you accept any positives you can find.

Then TT decided to make his latest in a series of baffling decisions, announcing several moves designed to make it harder to use the app.

So he buys a company that is struggling to make money, cuts the staff to the bone endangering its ability to remain online; pisses off tons of advertisers and users, wiping out any budget gains earned by his mass layoffs; and then decides to make it even more difficult for the remaining advertisers to get their campaigns in front of people. All the while making “Chess vs. checkers”-like comments without realizing he is the one playing checkers.

Why do we think this guy is smart, again?

Coincidentally just when the latest round of headaches arrived, I got my invitation to Bluesky, one of the more promising new Twitter competitors. I signed up, logged in, and worked to find people I followed over on Twitter. There weren’t many. I liked the interface and the controls. There just isn’t the volume of users, yet, to make it a viable alternative. I’m not sure many folks know about Bluesky, let alone have requested an invite to a service that is greatly limiting how many new users can join.

A few days later Meta dropped Threads on the world. I immediately activated my account. A lot more people from Twitter were there, although I was still way short of my entire list of Twitter follows. There were several who flat-out said they would not join until Twitter took its last, sad breath.

A few things jumped out at me right away, though. First, it also looked nice and seemed to function well. Meta knows how to run a service on a massive scale, so I figured at a minimum we don’t have to worry about it crashing as millions of people joined each hour.

However, I did not like the lack of a chronological timeline based solely on people I follow. I don’t want an algorithmic feed that is out-of-order and features people I have not chosen to follow. Meta claims this will change over time, but after two days checking it regularly, it did nothing to make me want to open it before Twitter.

Next, I hated how smug so many of the early, promoted Threads were. Tons of “This is so much better than Twitter!” type entries. Maybe Threads is way better than Twitter. But there’s no way to know that for sure less than a week in. Especially since a lot of those posts were making broad assessments about the future of the app that are not consistent with Meta’s history. It smacked of marketing run amok, an effort to convince users this was where we belonged rather than letting us determine that on our own.

Finally, there’s the whole Meta/Zuck factor. Of all the evil tech companies in the world, none is more evil than Meta.[1] Facebook has, time and again, ignored any privacy protections that get in the way of them making a buck. They’ve lied about what they do with user data. They’ve been fined for breaking laws, then continued to violate them. The company is shameless in their desire to sell out their users. And, of course, they are largely responsible for turning our political/electoral culture into an even more toxic wasteland than it already was.

If anyone thinks that Threads won’t, eventually, head down the same path that Facebook took, they are mistaken. Instagram is kind of an island in the midst of Meta’s evilness, and apparently folks from Instagram leadership are currently stewarding Threads. They claim they’re going to take steps to keep the new platform from becoming toxic. I don’t have very high confidence that will be true over time. And, inevitably, Threads will be overrun with ads. And more ads. And even more ads.

I have no problem being required to navigate ads in exchange for access to a social networking platform. What I do object to is the flood of ads that have zero relevance to my interests, something I know that Meta/Twitter/etc have tons of information on based on my follows, likes, etc. Instagram, again, is the one service that seems to have figured it out a little. If I flag a few ads as not being of interest to me, I generally don’t see them or ones like them again for a few weeks. That said, these days Instagram often feels like you see an ad for every 2–3 actual posts. So best case, Threads follows a similar pattern. Worst case, it becomes like Facebook and because a friend of a friend of a friend likes the My Patriotic Pillow guy, I will constantly see that garbage as well.

So what are we to do? I haven’t checked Bluesky or Threads for two weeks and, for the time being, I’m going to let them sit idle and stick with Twitter. I’ve been a user for a long, long time. It is generally my initial source for information on everything from sports to the news to pop culture.

It takes a lot of work on my part, muting/blocking people constantly, but at least I generally still see the posts and people I want to see there. As long as it keeps running and those people stay on the app, that will be my first choice.

I have real concerns, though, that it will survive as we know it much longer. I hope we can put that off as long as possible, to the point where either Bluesky or Threads are usable alternatives. Or maybe the TT gets fed up and dumps it to someone else and they do their best to repair all the damage he’s done.

I’ve read several pieces about the state of the social media world over the past week. This was, by far, my favorite.

Mark F***king Zuckerberg Is Not Your Friend

I generally agree with her high-level point: the normalization of Mark Zuckerberg needs to end. Make him earn goodwill, don’t just give it to him because we’re all sick of TT. He’s a bad fucking dude. Just because he keeps his mouth shut compared to Elon doesn’t mean he’s some champion for all that is right and just.

More than her point, I greatly admire her ability to just GO OFF for so freaking long. I can rant for a paragraph or two. Homegirl does it for pages and pages. Respect.

Musk let them run wild on Twitter. But Zuckerberg made them. He nurtured them. He gave them a place to safely yes, and each other into January 6th and whatever comes next. He’s resisted doing anything but helping them to greater heights of lunacy over and over again. What Musk wants to make of this world is our new best friend Zuck’s greatest hits album.

  1. Non-China/Russia division, obviously.  ↩

Weekend Notes

July 17, 2023 /

Kid Hoops

A weird weekend for L and her teammates.

We were in Bloomington for this week’s games. While that seems close it also involves navigating a shit-ton of construction and means we’re in the car for nearly three hours each day.

Saturday we opened with an easy win. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have an easier win. At halftime we were ahead 39–0. We added 16 more points before these poor girls finally got their first bucker. That’s a 55–0 run. FIFTY. FIVE. TO. ZERO. Sadly that was the only basket they could muster, and the final was 65–2. Our girls really didn’t try to score too hard in the second half and, thankfully, the clock ran the entire time.

Obviously there was a big talent disparity here. Our girls were also hitting just about everything they threw up – we hit 3’s on four of six possessions at one point in the first half – and were dominating on defense as well. The other team took only six shots for the entire game because they were either turning it over or we were just flat stealing it before they had a chance to shoot.

We learned afterward that two of the girls were sixth graders, and most of the rest were going into 8th grade. I’m honestly not sure they could have competed against six graders. There was some real strangeness in the bracketing this weekend.

I will give those girls this credit: they never got frustrated or angry. They kept trying, as best as they could, and were smiling after the game. Props to their coach and parents for teaching them to stay positive.

After dispensing with them we watched our program’s C team win a tight contest that was physical and a little nasty. We walked over to warm up for our second game, but no one was warming up on the other side. Things were ahead of schedule but as we got closer to tip there still wasn’t anyone on the other bench. The tournament director called his contact for that team and got some long, sob story about how a bunch of girls quit on the coach this week so they couldn’t field a team. Sure would have been nice if they had shared that information ahead of time to either adjust the schedule or just let us leave early.

The tournament director offered to let us play the first team again, the team we beat 65–2, but our coach politely declined.

So we “earned” a 20–0 win by forfeit and headed to downtown Bloomington for an earlier-than=expected dinner.

Sunday we went back down for the semis/finals. Our first opponents had gone 1–1 Saturday, losing to our C team. So we didn’t expect much. But these girls were tough, guarded the hell out of people, and had a big girl who could move her feet and block shots anywhere in the paint. Six minutes into the game we were down 3–0. Not exactly getting blown out but also not looking anywhere near as good as we had a week earlier. We went on a run after calling a time out and led by 14 at half, stretched it close to 20 a couple times, and ended up winning by 12.

On to the title game against our C team, who we beat handily the one time we’ve played them this year. They had a couple different girls this time, though, including one who was on our team last year and one of L’s CHS friends/classmates. Still, we knew they weren’t as good as us if we focused and played hard. Which is what we did. We got an early lead and never let up, winning by 19.

So, good team weekend.

L did not have such a great weekend. Her jump shot was not working at all. She hit nothing outside the lane in our three games. She also missed a couple easy layups. She had a few bad turnovers. In short, she didn’t play nearly as well as she did in St. Louis. She had six points and three assists in the blowout Saturday, but only two points in each game Sunday. She did not want to be in the team picture after, and made sure she was as far from the championship plaque as possible. She pouted most of the way home. I let her stew in the backseat with her headphones on while I listened to my own music. As always, I respect the bitterness.

Next weekend is our final week as a travel team. We go to Cincinnati for a four-day event. I’m guessing the competition will be a little tougher. We know our first three games are against teams from New York, Nashville, and Cincinnati.

Weather

As we drove back to Indy I noticed it was hard to see buildings downtown. Yes, that good, ol’ Canadian wildfire smoke we have been missing returned!

And there was the added bonus of a line of heavy storms blowing in. We drove through two squalls once we got within 15 minutes of home. Then, just as we pulled onto our street, the skies really let loose.

For the next two hours it absolutely dumped. I don’t have a rain gauge but the weather stations in our area I can pull up all had between 2–3” of rain for the night. When I put our pool cover pump out once the storms had passed, it sunk completely below the water level and was still completely submerged after it had been running for an hour.

During the storm, it would pour for 10 minutes, then stop for five. Then the winds would kick back up and rain would start blasting again, occasionally with small hail. This pattern repeated for two hours. We had three different severe thunderstorm warnings in this stretch. At one point the winds got up around 60 MPH. We ran outside to move some of our patio cushions and the rain was literally blowing sideways, soaking us even though we were well back under the patio roof.

Our power flickered off-and-on at least five times during the first 20 minutes of the storm before it went off for good at 6:45. It stayed off until nearly 10:00. We are just getting our fridge fully stocked again after our extended power outage two weeks back. I was not enthused about starting all over again again. I think we dodged the bullet there.

Friday Playlist

July 14, 2023 /

“The Window” – Ratboys
Every time I type this band’s name, my devices autocorrect it to “Batboys.” You would think I’ve typed their name enough over the years that my various Apple OSes understand that, yes, I really mean Ratboys. Given that their up-coming album seems like it is going to be excellent and I will be writing about them plenty more this year, maybe the OSes will finally figure it out once the fall updates land and Apple’s new auto correct, machine learning algorithms take over. Three-for-three on great songs from said up-coming album.

“Cellar” – Sea Lemon
This song has been banging around in my running playlist of new music for nearly two months. I’m not sure why it has taken me so long to share it. Perhaps because its haziness seems ideal for the warmest part of the year? Sea Lemon is on tour with Hatchie right now. That’s probably quite a show if you’re into this kind of sound.

“Paper Machete” – Queens of the Stone Age
I was never a huge QOTSA fan. I loved their 2002 single “No One Knows,” which launched them into the mainstream. But not much else. This track rocks and rolls properly.

“Tooth Ache” – Lydia Loveless
Now we’re talking! Lydia sounding like the Lydia I love most again.

“Pit Viper” – Guardian Singles
Some fine, twitchy, post-punk from New Zealand.

“Come Back” – Pearl Jam, live in Chicago, 5/16/06
We are less than two months from Pearl Jam’s visit to Indy. I’ve always thought this was a highly underrated song, from the 2006 “Avocado” album. This live version was used in season two of *The Bear*, and miraculously popped up as a single on Spotify shortly after. I’m sure that was just a happy coincidence.

“Summer In The Park Pt 1” – East Coast Connection
I’ve been getting the free posts from Dan Epstein’s Jagged Time Lapse newsletter for some time. I came to know Epstein through his baseball books, but his newsletter is more about the music he grew up on that goes along with those classic baseball eras his books cover. This week he had an entry about his favorite 1970s funk and soul songs about/for summer time. This will likely not be the last song you hear from that list before this summer ends.

“Dear Prudence” – Siouxsie and the Banshees
I’ve long called this one of the greatest covers ever. The Beatles’ original was terrific. This, though? Utterly amazing. Tom Breihan just started a new column at Stereogum about the number one songs on the alternative chart. Siouxsie’s “Peek-A-Boo” was the first track to top that chart, in September 1988. In his first column, Briehan dropped some serious knowledge on me. I had no idea that the Cure’s Robert Smith played guitar on this song. In fact, he played guitar and sang on the entire *Hyaena* album as the Banshees guitarist John McGeoch was in the hospital because of complications caused by his alcoholism. Mind blown.

Reader’s Notebook, 7/12/23

July 12, 2023 /


Small Mercies – Dennis Lehane
According to my master reading list, it’s been eight years since I had read a Lehane novel. Which doesn’t seem possible, until I realized he’s only released one new novel in that span.

This story takes place in the summer of 1974, just before the city explodes when forced busing to desegregate Boston’s public schools takes effect. Mary Pat Fennessy’s teenage daughter disappears after a night out with friends, and no one wants to tell her what may have happened. Her daughter’s disappearance coincides with the death of the son of a Black co-worker. Fennessy has to go up against the biggest powers in Southie to determine what happened to both kids.

Lehane’s story is a pretty stark representation of racism in Boston (or any other city) where poor whites and Blacks were often pitted against each other for jobs and resources. To his credit he includes several characters who are pretty racist, but realize the hypocrisy in their racism.


Red Widow – Alma Katsu
It’s kind of crazy how many spy novels I read that are written by former CIA employees. This one is the latest addition to that list. It’s pretty spicy.

Katsu’s story is about an agent, placed on leave for having an affair with a British intelligence officer, who is brought in to help identify a possible Russian mole inside the CIA.

The spy’s identity is revealed pretty early before Katsu takes the reader on twist after twist after twist about the spy’s motivation, who knew about their deceit, who covered for whom, who is turning on whom, and so on.

Those twists are the story’s strengths. While they may be a bit over-the-top, they combine to result in a pretty engaging tale.


The Apple II Age: How the Computer Became Personal – Laine Nooney
In this book I was expecting something more focused on the general coolness of the Apple II and other computers of that era.

Instead, after going through a quick history of the computer industry up to the 1977 Trinity of the Apple II, the TRS–80, and the Commodore PET 2001, Nooney explores how the market for software specifically built for the Apple II changed the entire computer industry. People were struggling to understand how these cool, but very expensive, new objects could be used to improve their lives. It was the development of software made for specific purposes that began to make the personal computer integral to people’s homes.

Nooney’s account is more academic than I expected. It reads a little dry. At times it veers too far into critique of consumer capitalism. It’s not my favorite book written about that era, but I added some new knowledge along the way.


City of Dreams – Don Winslow
Book two of Winslow’s Danny Ryan trilogy. He sticks with the style of the first: short, choppy sentences and limited descriptions. I have to say I enjoy reading that style, as I can knock out a book in about two nights.

However the story is not as good as in his longer, more expressive books about the Mexican drug cartels. There’s plenty of material to mine in the conflict between the Italian and Irish mafias of Providence, RI. But perhaps the brevity of his writing here takes away from its impact. It reads as rushed and unfinished, as more of an exercise to get away from his traditional style than an effort to crank out a well formulated story.


Reptile Memoirs – Silje Ulstein
Whoooo, this book! It begins a little slow, bouncing back-and-forth across a 15 year period among a small group of characters in Norway, one of which is a tiger python. Eventually it becomes clear that two of those characters are actually the same person, appearing under two different names in two parts of her life. Shortly after that reveal things go crazy. And keep getting crazier. There was a moment, roughly two-thirds of the way through the book, when I let out a gasp followed by an appreciative laugh. There are several shocking, “Holy Shit!” moments throughout the back half of the story.

This book is dark and disturbing. There will be some people who probably can’t or shouldn’t read it (Semi-spoiler alert: if you can’t read about violence against children you should skip). But if you can deal with the extreme darkness, it is a hell of a story, one of the more unique and memorable ones I’ve come across recently.

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