“Rain” – The Beatles
Ridiculously rainy week here in Indy. We’ve had close to 4″ of rain in our area since Tuesday. And it is still raining as I type. Lots of areas had serious flooding yesterday. It’s kind of a miracle that Eclipse Day was nearly perfect.
“Docket” – Blondshell featuring Bully
There are millions of songs by male rockers about being on the road and all that entails. I’m sure there must be some by women but this seems pretty unique. Two of the best ladies from the indie rock world come together to sing about the perils of being a traveling musician while balancing a relationship back home.
“Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts” – The Gaslight Anthem
A re-worked version of a 2008 TGA original, included on their new EP. Minor tweaks go a long way.
“Spiraling Out” – Softcult
Nice dream pop with just a hint of crunch to it.
“If It’s Gone” – Good Looks
More fine music from these Austin, Texas dudes. It was written about the singer ending a long-term relationship on the first day of the pandemic. Bad timing for sure.
“Borderline” – Madonna
Quite a week on the pop chart, April 14, 1984. At number one was Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.” In the bottom ten of the countdown were three other songs from the Footloose soundtrack, all on their way up (“Holding Out For A Hero,” “Let’s Hear It For The Boy,” and “Dancing In The Sheets”). I was about to go with one of those songs but then I heard “Borderline” while taking L to school this morning and it seemed like a sign.
I thought this was Madonna’s first big hit, reaching #10 eventually. But “Lucky Star” had already gone to #3. Maybe it’s because I like this more that I remember it better. Still one of my favorite Madonna tracks, it has a sweetness and innocence that wasn’t often present in her music. And the backing vocals on the chorus are terrific.
Things have quieted down a lot on the car buying front. Which is weird because I will likely have a new car before the end of April. How is that possible? It’s not as interesting to share what I’m learning when it is all centered on one car rather than a comparison of several. Or at least it seems that way to me.
There was a moment of drama while we were on spring break. I had several price alerts set and got a message that the Volkswagen dealer in Lafayette marked down their 2023 ID.4s over $15,000. One that fit most of what I was looking for was marked down nearly $18,000. Crazy!
I spent a few hours back in the research rabbit hole, reviewing my numbers and lists, but eventually realized that even for that much off MSRP, I would be unhappy leasing a car that was about to be replaced with a version that fixed most of its flaws. Factoring in the Federal tax credit, even with the dealer markdowns the ID.4 was barely cheaper than a Tesla Model Y. Even less so on a lease.
So no ID.4 unless the nicer 2024s show up in April.
Last week I test drove a Model Y for a second time. The first drive in February I was just trying to get a general feel for the car, and comparing it to the Kia EV6 I had driven the previous day. This time, after nearly two months of reading and watching videos about the car, I wanted to pay more attention to the little things. I wouldn’t say I did a highly technical test drive. I just wanted to remind myself how it felt, how easily I could access settings on the screen, etc. I even kicked it into Full Self Driving mode for a moment, although I’m not sure I did it correctly so I wouldn’t say I actually turned the car loose. I wasn’t brave enough to let it change lanes on its own so took over after traveling less than half a mile with it on.
When I was finished, I was confident I had my next car. Now it’s just a matter of deciding what exterior and interior colors I want.
Unless something crazy happens in the market in the next two weeks, of course. There’s still time for one more frenzied period of comparing cars against each other.
It has been fascinating to watch the Tesla market over the past couple of months. The company had been in a cycle of steep price cuts to solidify its market lead. But on both March 1 and April 1, Tesla raised prices by $1000. I figured these were ploys to drive end-of-month and end-of-quarter sales. That proved to be true as the price increases only applied to buyers who were ordering custom builds. Cars that were in transit or on lots still get fat price cuts.
And the crazy thing about Tesla is that the longer a car sits on the dealer lot, the more they get discounted. It seems to be $400–500 per day. But sometimes it’s less, sometimes it doesn’t change at all. There’s a science to letting a car sit on the lot long enough to drop another $1000 or so before someone else snatches it up. In a period when Tesla sales have slowed significantly, I’m not sure there’s been a better time to buy one. I will likely bring home my new car at a sales price close to $30,000 less than what a friend of mine paid for his Model Y just over two years ago.[1]
One thing I’ve tried to keep in mind as I’ve gotten deeper into this process is that, as great a tool as the Internet is for researching any purchase, it also tends to focus on and magnify negatives. In my many hours of research, I’ve often slipped into worrying about which set of flaws I was choosing to take on rather than concentrating on each car’s strong points. That’s always part of the process. You don’t want to buy a car that does ten things great but one thing horribly, and that flaw counter-balances all the good. See why I stopped shopping the Kia/Hyundai EVs because of their electrical issues.
This fear of the bad gets reinforced by how negative message boards and YouTube videos can be.[2] As I get closer to pulling the trigger, I’ve had to remind myself that even with its shortcomings, whatever car I bring home will be an amazing piece of technology that makes what I was driving just a few years ago look woefully primitive in comparison.
He bought, I’m leasing, so you can’t exactly compare our outlays. And he also got his factory wrapped. But, still, I’m getting a much better deal than his. ↩
Or more correctly, YouTube video descriptions. So many will say something like “I Bought A Tesla. Did I Make A Terrible Mistake????” or something like that. Then you watch the video and there’s literally nothing negative in it. The titles are designed to generate outrage/clicks. ↩
I’ve been making fun of all the preparations and build-up for the eclipse since 2024 began. I laughed out loud when I saw t-shirts on racks in grocery stores and in pop-up stands at busy traffic corners. I shook my head when I heard that roughly a million people were expected to visit Central Indiana to watch the event.
And then I saw it.
I don’t take it all back. I still think the t-shirts are kind of dumb if you’re over the age of 12. And I’m still annoyed by all the out-of-towners who messed up our traffic over the weekend.
But the three minutes of totality? That was truly amazing.
All the videos you’ve ever seen about a total eclipse? They don’t come close to capturing what it is really like. I was truly floored when I removed my safety glasses and saw the black moon with this amazing, indescribable glow from the sun’s corona behind it. It didn’t look real, more like some cool computer animation because the light was more white than yellow. I understood why ancient people freaked out during eclipses. Adding to that was the twilight glow from every direction. For some reason I expected it to get a lot darker. It was also very cool to see full sunlight slowly approaching from the west as totality was ending. It was like watching a sheet of rain approach during a storm.
Cathedral was off and S’s office closed for the day, so we all sat and watched the three minutes, thirty seconds of totality together. That was the best part of it.[1]
This was the best I could do with my iPhone, which does not do it justice in any way.
Sunday at C’s National Honor Society induction ceremony, one of her teachers told me that traveling to see the 2017 total eclipse was one of the coolest things she’s ever done. I get that now. I’m glad I didn’t have to leave my house to see it, I could watch with three quarters of my family, and that the weather cooperated giving us a perfect day to watch it.
Middle Kid Academics
This deserves its own section. C got inducted into NHS on Sunday. Funny how your different kids’ personalities manifest themselves. When M got inducted she wanted to hang around for at least half an hour, getting pictures with all her friends and mingling. C wanted to get one pic with her best friend then was ready to leave. Which was fine with us. We aren’t as tight with parents in her class as we were with those in M’s grade.
C also got her SAT scores last week. She got a good score, up slightly from her two Pre-SAT results. Apparently most of her friends bombed it, which makes her score look even better. She’s going to take the ACT in June and then decide whether to take the SAT again. M only took each test once and I don’t think C is super interested in doing more than that.
I’ve been watching for summer college tour dates to open to get C signed up, but none of the schools she’s interested in have posted any yet. She wants to visit IU, Cincinnati, Purdue, and Ball State, with IU being her top choice at the moment.
Kid Hoops
L had her first tournament with her re-vamped team over the weekend. They played while we were gone on spring break and won that tournament. This week didn’t go as well.
We won both of our Saturday games. We were down four at halftime in the first and won by eight. We really played well in that second half. Then we trailed 15–7 in our first game before going on a 10–0 run and never looked back from there, winning by 19.
Sunday we played a team that we lost two twice a year ago. They have one of the best freshmen in the city and some nice players around her. They jumped on us 10–2 and that was pretty much the game. We were down 24 at halftime and lost by 23. We won the second half! Only first-place teams went through to bracket play so we were done early.
We did not have our full team for any of the games. Saturday we had seven of ten players. Sunday we were supposed to have nine, but one of our girls rolled her ankle badly Saturday and had to sit out Sunday.
L did not have a great weekend. She scored six in the first game, four in the second, and two in the third. She shot horribly. She air-balled every 3 she took (0–5 in total), missed every free throw (also 0–5), and Sunday she was getting to the rim but could not finish (1–6 from the field). She literally hasn’t hit a 3 in a real game since before Christmas. She’s been practicing three nights a week so she’s used to being on the court even if these were her first games in two months. At least her defense was good.
Hopefully she’ll shoot better this weekend.
NCAA Women
Funny how our various weekend plans interfered with pretty much all the college hoops but I was more bummed about missing the women’s games than the men’s.
I got to see the second half of the Iowa-UConn, then just the first 15 minutes or so of the championship game.
South Carolina were certainly deserving champs. Especially after Iowa opened up the title game with a 10–0 run, and Caitlin Clark dropped 18 in that first period alone. It’s pretty incredible to go undefeated all the way to the Final Four before losing, lose your entire starting five, then come back and be undefeated champs the next year.
Dawn Staley is a great coach. I’ll take her over Kim Mulkey every day. For a lot of reasons.
NCAA Men
I missed most of the Final Four games watching L play. It was interesting seeing how Purdue fans handled the day. The building we were in had very bad cell reception. But they had a big TV with the games on in the lobby. Some folks were out there watching. Others were trying to follow on their phones. I asked a Purdue dad on L’s team what his plan was and it was to try to avoid spoilers and watch when he got home. But he kept going out and checking the score. That’s the only good thing about KU not being in Phoenix: me not having to worry about kid vs school.
I figured it was either a very good or very bad omen that Purdue was finally playing in the national championship game again after 55 years on the same day that a total eclipse passed over Indiana. I guess it was the latter.
UConn are obviously insanely impressive. Two straight years of just destroying the tournament. And repeating when they replaced three starters and changed their offense. Danny Hurley is an obnoxious ass, but he’s also a hell of a coach. I was so impressed with how UConn methodically destroyed Purdue. They played fast. They played slow. Regardless, they always got a good shot out of it. When Purdue pressured them late, they casually picked it apart.
As for Purdue…their guards were why they lost to a 16 seed last year. Those guys worked their asses off to get better, and that work paid off as they were the perfect compliments to Zach Edey all year. And then they decided to play terrible in the national title game. Or I guess UConn forced them into it. Either way the loss was on Purdue’s inability to do anything to help Edey. Depending on your perspective it was either hilarious or sad that Purdue kept throwing the ball to Edey even when they were down 15+ because the entire backcourt lost its nerve to take 3s.
I like Matt Painter a lot and think he takes too much grief because he’s been extraordinarily unlucky in the tournament. But Hurley schooled him in the second half Monday.
Hats off to Edey, who turned himself into the best player in the country a year ago and then got even better this year. One of the greatest college players not only of the modern era, but of all time. 37 and 10 in the national championship game is legendary.
UConn winning six titles in 25 years is just insane. If Hurley stays there, no telling what that number will turn into.
John Calipari
Holy shit! When news first started to break Sunday night that John Calipari might leave Kentucky to go to Arkansas, I was sure it was some lame April Fools’ Day joke that had gotten stuck in the queue.
I guess he was genuinely pissed off by Cats fans getting annoyed about his teams full of the best freshmen consistently getting beat by low seeds in the tournament. Which, you know, seems like a fair gripe. You can hype up how many NBA players go through your program, but if you don’t go to a Final Four for nearly 10 years at a school like Kentucky, folks are going to be upset.
Still, it seems crazy to go to Arkansas. Not that it’s a bad program. Especially since Cal has apparently motivated the many big money people who support the program to start pouring cash into NIL. It just seems weird to take a clear step down in the hoops hierarchy and go to a conference rival unless you are as motivated by getting back at UK/UK fans as you are about recharging your career.
Also weird because Eric Musselman largely left Arkansas because he was disappointed at the booster support for NIL. If the chicken and discount store families had stepped up a month ago, none of this would have ever happened.
Cincinnati was just outside the path of totality, so M and some of her friends went to Dayton, staying at one of the friend’s homes Sunday night, to watch. ↩
“The Rain That Falls” – Cast
I don’t know a thing about this band, but apparently they’ve been around since the early 1990’s and were stalwarts of the Britpop scene. They were also big influences on the Gallagher brothers. This song, off their brand-new album, sounds like a mature Oasis and better than anything the Gallaghers have done in their various post-Oasis groups.
“Stray” – The Mysterines
Like Cast, this band is from Liverpool. And they never disappoint.
“Oil” – Gorillaz featuring Stevie Nicks
What an unexpected collab! And it is unexpectedly good, too!
“Red Light” – Basement Revolver
We’re getting to the time of year where gauzey, dreamy pop like this matches the light and temperature perfectly.
“April Skies” – The Jesus and Mary Chain
Torrential rains from severe storms. Snow. Hard freezes. Highs in the 70s. An eclipse. That’s what our April skies are bringing us through the first week of the month. Seems like a little much. Dial it back, Mother Nature.
“Take A Walk” – Neil Finn & Friends
Twenty three years ago right now the first 7 Worlds Collide concerts were happening.
“No More Words” – Berlin
Berlin is mostly remembered for one song. Unfortunately it is not this one. Debuting in the Top 40 at #39 this week in 1984, it peaked at #23 for a couple weeks in May. Travesty, this is a terrific tune. And the video? A+++ for mid-Eighties cheese and nonsense.
My reading pace has slackened a bit. I’m actually taking a day or two off between books, which is likely a good thing. Because of that I only finished three books in March.
Nettle and Bone – T. Kingfisher
I famously don’t read much Fantasy fiction, yet something about the genre always holds an allure. I occasionally search for something that can reignite the magic of reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time when I was 12, only to be disappointed by another impenetrable story.
This book isn’t strictly Fantasy. It does take place in a mythological world that is both more primitive than ours and where magic plays a large role in daily life. There are parallel worlds people with certain powers can visit, kings and queens, and weird creatures. But no dragons or dwarves or wizards.
Inevitably this story becomes a quest. A quest for a third sister to save a second sister, who took the place of a first sister who died in an arranged marriage to save their home kingdom. The third sister makes unlikely friends along the way. She discovers she has strength and abilities she was unaware of. Her quest is successful despite some tricky moments near the end.
It’s all pretty standard stuff. But Kingfisher is a terrific writer, and they sprinkle their story with little moments of dialogue that tie their fictional world to our modern one. There is sarcasm and ironic detachment in the characters that you don’t expect in strict Fantasy writing. Those modern touches combined with Kingfisher not trying too hard to build an elaborate world helped me to really enjoy this book.
Brooklyn Crime Novel – Jonathan Lethem
My spring break book. The trip, with its many distractions, combined with the style Lethem wrote with made it a little tough to stay engaged with the story.
The book slowly builds to describe a specific act of violence. But the lead up to it stretches across decades, both setting up the characters and what life in Brooklyn was like in each moment.
Where the book excels is in Lethem’s scene setting within his Brooklyn. All the little details that help paint the picture of what life was like in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, or later. I’ve been in Brooklyn for the couple minutes it took my tour bus to cross the bridge then turn around and head back to Manhattan. Lethem’s details fit right in with what I expect the Brooklyn of my youth to be.
The title is designed to throw the reader off. This isn’t a book about crime, as in a detective novel, or one about a spectacular caper, or whatever. It’s about regular life in Brooklyn. How that life, in ages gone by, was often about avoiding and surviving the little crimes that were a part of daily life. It’s about how the borough has changed over the years, with the racial and financial status of the people who dominated it changing over time. Pre-gentrification Brooklyn was one type of city. Post-gentrification Brooklyn was completely different. Lethem’s story mostly falls into the long years of transition between ages. And while the book leads up to that specific moment of violence, that is really secondary to setting up what it was like for Lethem’s generation to come of age in the borough.
Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude is one of my all-time favorite books. This doesn’t reach that level, but I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. I believe I also failed to connect ever so slightly with this book because I was reading it on planes and at the pool when there were other things going on, and it never had my total concentration. Not an all-timer, but still pretty solid.
The Future – Naomi Alderman
A really fun speculative fiction story set in the near future. The three biggest tech leaders in the world have come together to find a way to save themselves should a catastrophic event put modern society’s survival in jeopardy. When an event with that potential does appear on the horizon, they follow the correct protocols to protect themselves and their interests. Until things begin to go sideways.
There is a very large twist in the final third of the book that I don’t want to give any hints about as they would affect how you would read the first two-thirds. That twist is terrific, one that took intricate planning by many of the book’s characters to pull off. While wildly unrealistic, it gives some hope that we can adjust the direction of the world. Maybe not on the scale as in the book, but enough to avoid some of the catastrophes that could be in our future.
I really enjoyed this book. It fits our moment in time, both in terms of how we interact with technology and how it dominates our lives, and how a handful of unelected business leaders likely have too much sway on the direction of society.
Having kids in Catholic school means it was a four-day weekend, stretching from Good Friday through Easter Monday. Not that we took much advantage of it by doing anything special.
M had a high school friend visit her at UC on Friday, so she didn’t come home until Saturday morning, with her pal giving her a ride to Indy. Then she spent Saturday evening with friends. Most of the rest of her weekend revolved around napping, homework, and laundry. Normal home from college stuff.
I ran her back Monday morning. Her first class isn’t until 11:15 so we didn’t have to leave super early. She only has three more weeks of class and her last final is April 25. Her summer is right around the corner.
A couple of S’s siblings were traveling for the holiday, so we decided to scrap the big family gathering this year. Instead we had her dad and stepmom over for dinner with the girls Saturday, then went out for an early breakfast Sunday before the church crowds hit our favorite spot. We walked in to only a few other folks being seated. By the time we left it was starting to fill up quickly.
We pulled some of the patio furniture and cushions out and used them Saturday and Sunday, which were warm and breezy. But we had to put all the cushions back into storage as soon as we were done with storms in the forecast.
Our lawn service has already been around, both treating and mowing the yard last week. It looks pretty great, lush and green. Most of our blooming plants and trees are starting to pop. It sure feels like spring. It makes sense that it might snow Wednesday.
College Hoops
I popped in and out of basketball coverage all weekend. I probably watched more women’s ball than men’s.
With that in mind, allow me to first blast the NCAA for allowing the situation in Portland to occur where one of the three-point lines for the women’s games was improperly drawn. They didn’t figure this out until after four Sweet Sixteen games had been played, and then Texas and North Carolina State agreed to play their Elite 8 game on the non-regulation court so they could, you know, actually play when they were supposed to.
They even had extra games to figure it out, with the women’s regionals being staged at two sites instead of four. This combined with a handful of other “incidents” so far in the tournament show how the NCAA still doesn’t give the women’s game nearly enough respect despite the massive increase in ratings and interest.
Oh, and don’t get me started on how bad the refs are in women’s games. You can make a long list of objectively incorrect calls in every game. There was the Oregon State girl who had position for a rebound, an LSU player crashed into her sending both to the floor, and the Oregon State girl was called for the foul. Or a jump ball that was called in the Iowa-LSU game by a ref who could not see the ball, which was clearly in the left arm of an Iowa player while two LSU players were latched onto her right arm. If I thought about it longer I could come up with a lot more.
The women’s Final Four is kind of perfect. You have undefeated South Carolina, looking for redemption for last year’s loss to Iowa. I’m not sure America felt super strongly about the North Carolina State – Texas regional final, but with the NCSU men making the Final Four, having their women make it as well is a nice story. Then you have Iowa-UConn, Caitlin vs Paige, in the matchup America wanted.
On the men’s side, man, UConn! I thought Illinois was a damn good team and then the Huskies laid a 30–0 run on them. Thirty to nothing, in an Elite 8 game! Outrageous.
Good luck to Alabama stopping that absolute wagon of a team. I’m no UConn fan but you have to admire their squad. It is a near perfect college team. There are pros on it, but I’m not sure there are any All NBA guys amongst them. They remind me a little of the 2008 Kansas team. Coincidentally, they now rank just behind the 2008 champs as the fourth-best team in the KenPom era. Two more convincing wins could push them up higher on that list.
What a weekend for my Purdue friends. They finally got the Final Four monkey off their back. After Big Dog losing to Duke in the Elite 8, Carson Edwards going off but not being enough against Virginia, those great late Eighties teams flaming out every year, and then losing to double-digit seeds over-and-over, capped by last year’s loss to a 16 seed, getting over that hump against Tennessee had to feel amazing.
Who is waiting for the Boilermakers in the Final Four? An 11 seed in NC State. The Hoops Gods are funny sometimes.
There’s been a lot of discourse about how Zach Edey is officiated. To me it’s a near impossible task. He is pulled and grabbed and shoved on every play. And he also pushes off, shoves, and otherwise manhandles whoever is guarding him on every play. I will say he gets a great whistle. It seems like refs are so afraid to call him for anything because they don’t want to punish the big man that they sometimes let obvious fouls go unpunished. I saw a couple that were particularly notable over the weekend. If KU had played Purdue I probably would have seen a lot more, and been a lot more worked up about them.
Officiating Edey is an impossible task. I get that. What I don’t understand is why refs let Braden Smith travel pretty much every time he has the ball. It’s uncanny how he clearly moves his pivot foot without ever getting called for it.
How about North Carolina State! After Jamal Shead’s incredible bad luck Friday, it looked like Duke would waltz into the Final Four. Instead DJ Burns and his buddies dominated the Blue Devils in the last 10 minutes and kept their improbable run going to Glendale.
Duke still fouling with 1.9 seconds left was some funny shit.
I’ll get to my thoughts about KU’s future in another day or two. I do think the transfer portal should not open until the day after the Final Four, though. It’s super annoying to be blasted with messages about players entering the portal or rumors about guys who may come to KU when there are still games being played. A couple teams that were still alive in the Sweet 16 had already received commitments from guys in the portal.
Shut all this nonsense down until the day after the championship game to create a little free agent frenzy that can extend media attention on college hoops a little deeper into the spring.
