After months of having more than enough songs in the queue for these posts, the tide of new music might finally have slowed a bit. Have no worries, I still have plenty of songs for you. It is just taking a tad more work to put this week’s playlist together. Which I, of course, do not mind.
“Summer’s Over” – Jordana, TV Girl
One weekend left.
“Hallelujah” – Bad Moves
There is always a debate on whether rock music and politics go together, and then how much politics you can inject into a song before it puts people off. Of course there is never the same debate for country music and politics, but let’s not get into double standards at the moment.
At first listen this song would not seem to be political at all. As soon as you pay attention to the lyrics, though, you’ll find this is a scathing indictment of the various ways conservatives attempt to legislate rights away from fellow citizens they don’t like. And you can shake your ass to it, which is a bonus.
“Bitter Pill” – Queen of Jeans
I can’t imagine anyone not liking this song.
“Madeline” – Georgia Gets By
GGB is the solo project of Georgia Nott of the band Broods. Here she sings about the overwhelming feelings that come with meeting someone you know will change your life.
“In the Moonlight (Fade #3)” – The Tisburys
I forget the exact conversation, but some music writer was referring to Bruce Springsteen and recommended this band as one that picked up his mid-80s Heartland Rock sound and carried it into our times. I hear more direct lines to R.E.M.’s Eighties sound than Springsteen’s, but I get what that person was trying to say.
“Little While” – Wishy
Another track from local kids Wishy, who keep getting national love for their new album.
“The Feast Of St. John” – Glen Hansard
As I mentioned, I didn’t know much about Hansard’s music before seeing him open for Pearl Jam Monday night. He introduced this song as being about the “fuckers who try to drag you down.”
“Setting Sun” – Pearl Jam
One more song from Monday, and another great one from the latest album. PJ has always done a pretty good job sequencing tracks, opening and closing their albums with songs that fit the moment. This is the closer for Dark Matter, and has become an immediate, late-in-the-encore track at their concerts. I’ve grown to love it more-and-more over the past few months. Seeing it live Monday reinforced that love. When Eddie lets loose in the extended bridge/outro section it was truly amazing. Earlier this year they were using it as the final song of the night, which makes a ton of sense given its emotional weight and tone. Now, however, it serves as the last new song of the night with the traditional closers (“Baba O’Reilly,” “Rockin’ In The Free World,” and/or “Yellow Ledbetter”) to follow.
“Acquiese” – Oasis
The biggest music news of the week was the Gallagher brothers finally calling a truce and announcing a set of reunion shows later this year. I guess Liam needs to make back the money he lost in his divorce. We’ll see how all of that goes. I liked, but never loved, Oasis’ music. I’ve always been entertained by their dumb antics, though. This song has always been a banger.
“Panama” – Van Halen
Mixing it up a bit this week, sharing a song that was on its way down the charts instead of up the week of September 1, 1984. All of the new songs this week were kind of crap. Somehow this peaked at just #13. This was its final week in the Top 40, landing at #32.
College football is finally here! With it comes what is the most anticipated and also oddest season for the Kansas Jayhawks in my life.
Anticipated because a program that won nine games last year enters week one with 20 of 22 starters who are either seniors or redshirt juniors, a level of experience this program has probably never had before.
Biggest of all is the return of quarterback Jalon Daniels. When he’s been healthy at KU he’s been amazing. The only problem is he gets hurt every year. Sometimes badly. This year there is no Jason Bean backing him up.[1] Cole Ballard might be able to step in for a series or two, but it is difficult to see him doing what Bean did the last two years when Daniels was hurt. The single biggest factor in KU living up to this year’s hype is keeping JD6 on the field. If he plays 10+ games, the Jayhawks have the talent and schedule to win 10 games. If he gets hurt? 😱
I say oddest because KU will be playing two home games at Sporting KC’s Children’s Mercy Park, and the rest at Arrowhead because of the reconstruction of the stadium in Lawrence. It’s kind of classic KU football that this project hits in a rare year when the Jayhawks enter the season with legit expectations. How much of a home-field advantage will they have in those Big 12 games in Kansas City? Especially the Iowa State game? I know KU has made some moves to protect tickets for that game, but Clone fans live for coming to KC and taking over. If that game is a close loss and the crowd is mostly ISU fans, there’s going to be grumbling about timing and whatnot.
You know what, though? I don’t think it’s going to matter. I think this team will be really good. The defense still has holes, but will be opportunistic. While people were freaking out about OC Andy Kotelnicki leaving for Penn State, I think new OC Jeff Grimes might fit KU’s talent better. Kotelnicki was great. He was imaginative and made KU’s offense one that routinely got national praise. But maybe he got a little too cute at times? I’m not sure that’s fair criticism, but I also don’t think that Grimes getting dinged for his last year at Baylor is fair when he did amazing things at BYU before that.
Again, if Daniels is healthy, this team can cook. Devin Neal and Daniel Hishaw are as good of a running back combo as any in the country. None of the top three wide receivers seem like NFL talent, thus their returns. But they are all super solid, super experienced, and better than most people think.
The new Big 12 should be entertaining, at least. Utah is very good. Arizona looks legit as well. We get to see Coach Prime’s antics up close while welcoming old friends Colorado back.
My favorite thing about the new Big 12 is that it feels like a conference of equals. There is no Texas or Oklahoma that has way more money than everyone else and stadiums twice as big as the rest of the conference. Aside from TCU and Baylor, it’s a bunch of schools that are mostly similarly sized, with similar athletic budgets, and similar facilities.[2] No one is going to be signing a top ten recruiting class; most will be in the 20–50 range each year. There will be egos and rivalries based on stupid things like there always are in sports. It feels, at least for now though, like we’re starting with more programs on similar footing.
Which will last until the conference adds UConn and ACC schools to be determined, or the Big Ten decides they want to grab a couple Big 12 schools. Realignment never ends!
What’s important is that football is back and unlike so many years in my life, the Kansas Jayhawks are probably pretty good.
Rock Chalk, bitches!
Bean had a fantastic preseason for the Colts, granted usually in the second halves of games. So good our local columnist called for the Colts to keep him on the active roster. They did not do that, but did sign him to the practice squad. I don’t think he’s an NFL QB. But he is so fast and has a solid-enough arm and QBs get hurt so often, that you never know if/when someone might take a chance on him. ↩
Arizona State and Cincinnati are both massive schools, but without the athletic budgets of other schools their sizes. Also ASU is weird in that so much of its enrollment is online that I don’t think you can really put them in the same category as the other schools with over 40,000 students. ↩
As hinted at in yesterday’s post, I got to do something insanely awesome Monday night that I’ve been waiting a long time for. Even with a short night of sleep, I’m still a little keyed up from it this morning. If you choose to proceed, prepare yourself for an overly detailed accounting of my evening watching Pearl Jam play live rock ’n’ roll music.
One of the funny things about me is that for as big a fan of music as I am – and I think the archives of this blog are testament to that – I’ve not been to tons of concerts in my life.
There are lots of factors that go into that, but I believe the biggest was because in the years I was coming of age with music, I lived with a single mom who both couldn’t afford concert tickets and didn’t have the time to take me. You would think as I got older that would change, but it never did much. In the mid–90s I went to tons of shows at local clubs, but even then I never became one of those music fans who went to a show a week or whatever. And I rarely went to big stadium/arena shows.
I also blame the years in the early ‘90s when I was a poor college student. A big group of friends went to the U2 show at Arrowhead in 1992, one of the greatest tours ever. I was offered a ticket last minute, but the $50 or whatever seemed like soooo much money at the time.[1]
I also just had some bad luck over the years. I was supposed to see Prince in 1998, but came down with the worst case of the flu I’ve ever had and had to sell my ticket.[2]
Anyway, that is all needlessly long prelude to the point of this post: Monday was the best concert I’ve ever attended. My total shows seen might be small, but this beat them all.
It was Pearl Jam’s first visit to Indianapolis in 14 years.[3] It was my first time seeing them in over 20 years. It was worth every second of those collective waits.
It’s hard to review a Pearl Jam show, because they are almost always incredible. While I’ve not seen them in person since 2000 – more on that later – I’ve watched tons of their shows online, both officially and unofficially. There is no better live band in music. They are a well-oiled machine that combines the spontaneity of a setlist that changes every night with a structure that allows for almost seamless transitions between most songs. They famously play epically long shows that often veer in unexpected directions depending on where the night and crowd takes them. Shows become near religious events as thousands of devoted fans scream out every word and react to every element of the performance.
Everything about Monday’s show lived up to the band’s reputation.
It was a fire-cracker hot night here in Indy, in the mid–90s during the day, and the air at Ruoff Music Center was thick and heavy when opener Glen Hansard took stage at exactly 7:30. He had the line of the night when he introduced his band: “We’re from Ireland and we’re happy to be here. We’re going to play for 45 minutes and then we’re going to fuck off.” And then they only played for 30 minutes! Under-promise, over-deliver!
His set was terrific. I didn’t know much about his music, mostly the more soft/folksy songs he did for the movie Flag Day, including “My Father’s Daughter,” a song he made with Eddie Vedder and daughter Olivia Vedder. But from the go, his band absolutely kicked ass. Roaring guitars, screamed lyrics. It was a good start to the night.
Pearl Jam took the stage at 8:40, just as the sun was disappearing and a nice breeze was beginning to blow through the partially covered main seating section. My buddy SK and I had been trying to guess what the opening song would be, a pointless exercise since PJ opens with a different song every night and can literally go hundreds of directions when you account for covers. He guessed “Low Light.” I didn’t take a real stab at it, but “Hail, Hail” had been in my head all day.
We were pleasantly surprised when Stone Gossard started strumming the opening lines to *Ten*-era B-side “Wash.” A terrific omen, as many of theirs shows on this tour have begun with slower songs.
Twenty-three songs followed. The band was in fine form, although the sound was a little muddy. Eddie was in great voice. The crowd was frenzied. On the biggest songs, “Alive” for example, you could barely hear the band because the crowd sang along so loudly. You couldn’t ask for a better show.
It was interesting to look at the show from above, as a long-time PJ fan, and see how far this band has come. They’ve been an incredible live band since day one. Those early Nineties shows were intense affairs, Eddie a brooding, distant, sometimes scary frontman. The band went through their difficult mid–90s period, where the performance was generally great but the band was going through a lot and you never knew how much joy and personality they would put into each show. There were a few notable meltdowns in this era when the band’s future was in question. Around 2000, they realized that touring was their salvation, and they began to enjoy it more, stretching shows out to Springsteen-esque lengths. About 10 years ago it seemed like Eddie was losing some of the power in his voice. He made allowances, but sometimes those were jarring to see/hear.
In the last five years that has changed again. Eddie has become more theatrical on stage. It’s hard to put into words, because that sounds a little cheesy and he is not cheesy. He just does a lot more from the start of the show to the end to interact with the crowd, to entertain with his actions rather than just sing from the bottom of his soul. The once reluctant star happily embraces everything about being the director for where each night’s show is headed.
His political monologues haven’t disappeared, they’ve just morphed. Monday he encouraged everyone to get out and vote, and noted that 30 years ago he was imploring us to vote, where now he is asking us to get our kids to vote. His most pointed comment of the night was about women needing to reclaim their right to choose. He never said any candidate’s name, nor espoused a particular ideology.
Of course last week while in Jeff Ament’s home state of Montana, the entire band wore Jon Tester shirts, so I think they just pick their spots these days.
Eddie’s voice seems to have recovered from whatever ailed it, too. I remember watching concert films from early in last year’s tour and being floored by how good he sounded. I think he’s found ways to strengthen his voice but also to adjust how he hits certain notes so that he can mask the effects of age. Not that long ago I worried about how much longer he could tour. The past couple years, he’s sounded as good as he ever has and I can see the band touring forever. His energy level is also insane for a guy who will turn 60 in a few months. He doesn’t climb lighting rigs anymore, but he’s in constant motion around the stage.
His energy and strength and stage presence translate to the rest of the band. The greatness of their live act has always come from their collective abilities. Every member of the band absolutely still has their A-games. Mike McCready in particular has an apparent endless reservoir of energy. There wasn’t a song, or even part of a song, where the band behind Eddie seemed to be half-assing it.
As we were walking out I told SK beyond the spectacular performance, what makes PJ shows so great is how many terrific songs they have to choose from, and even the ones that might not be your favorites are played so well that there aren’t really any down moments in the show. Even if you don’t hear all your favorite songs, you walk away thoroughly satisfied.
That was the case with me. Of my seven favorite PJ songs I listed a year ago, they played just one, “Corduroy.” And, you know what? I was not disappointed at all that I didn’t hear “Release” or “Elderly Woman,” or “Given to Fly,” etc.
I thought it was interesting they basically cut out an entire era of their career from the setlist. There was exactly one song from their albums that were released between 2000 and 2020, and that, “Lightning Bolt,” was a request from a couple who were attending their 57th PJ show.[4] I think most fans are fine with that large chunk of the band’s studio career getting nudged aside. “Lightning Bolt” did sound great, though.
The per-album breakdown was:
Ten/Ten-era: 6
Vs. – 1
Vitalogy – 5
No Code – 1
Yield – 1
Lightning Bolt – 1
Dark Matter – 7
Covers – 2
The beauty of Pearl Jam is their next show in Chicago will likely have a completely different mix, aside from the Dark Matter tracks.
A note about our seats. When PJ announced they were coming to Indy in May 2023, both SK and I signed up for tickets. With the band not hitting here in so long, we knew it would be a tough ticket. He is in the band’s Ten Club and hoped that would get us in. I didn’t get selected in the public lottery, but he got a notification that he would be able to get Ten Club seats. Until a week later he got another saying he, in fact, did not make their cut.
Fortunately he has a neighbor that has some serious connections in the music industry. Thanks to her assistance, last July he got an email from someone within the Pearl Jam organization saying that we had two Friends and Family seats.[5] When the September 2023 show was postponed, his contact said we would remain on the list for whenever the show was rescheduled. Sure enough, when this year’s tour was announced he got another note asking for confirmation that he still wanted those seats. Two weeks ago he got official word that we were in.
We had no idea where our seats were until we picked up the tickets at Will Call Monday. Even then, Ruoff’s seating scheme is so odd we couldn’t figure it out by just looking at ticket. So we kept showing them to ushers and they kept waving us further forward. We ended up about ten rows behind the pit section, stage left. They were pretty fucking great seats.
Oh, and not to brag too much, but the tickets were somehow comped to us. SK thought he paid for them a year ago, but went back and looked and he never sent anyone money for them. My previous all time best show was U2 in Kemper Arena in 2001. We got free tickets to that show. Yep, I haven’t had to pay a dime for the two best concerts I’ve ever attended. The Music Gods must be rewarding me for all those concerts I did not go to.
This was just my third Pearl Jam show, which seems dumb. SK, in comparison, has now been to 14. I saw them in Kansas City in both 1998 and 2000. I famously missed their appearance in Lawrence in May 1992 because 1) they had not yet become huge and 2) I spent the day playing basketball with one of my best friends who was about to graduate and move to California. Oh, and 3) I’m an idiot. Less than two months later they were my favorite band, a belt they’ve held off-and-on for over three decades now.
In 2003 they were in Kansas City three days before S and I got married and moved to Indianapolis. Didn’t seem like the right time to sneak away for a concert. I missed their Indy stop on that tour because we were on our honeymoon. I think they’ve been in Indy just once or twice since then, during our “lots of little kids in the house” phase and I never even considered going to those shows.
Show number three was a long time coming. And totally worth it.
A few other notes:
SK and I got excited when songs four, five, and six of the night were the first three songs from Vitalogy, in order. Every now and then PJ will play an entire album in order. This was a tease, though, and they moved on to new songs.
“Black” was a song I got sick of in the Nineties because I thought it got super overplayed. It was truly fantastic Monday.
Gossard said before the Dark Matter tour began that they would begin to pare back their shows a bit, with Ament already 60 and Eddie right behind him. They still played nearly two-and-a-half hours Monday. The biggest bummer about not seeing them last year was they were still pushing three hours in those shows.
The audio-visual portion of the show was excellent. At most Ruoff shows there are a few cameras shooting video that show up on the auxiliary boards for fans up in the lawn. PJ shot this like a concert movie, with tons of cameras that were constantly switching feeds on the boards. I now see why so many of their shows end up with high quality movies on one site or another. They take that part of the presentation very seriously.
As we walked out there was a dad with a college-aged son in front of us. We overheard the dad tell the son, very seriously, “I hope you realize that was a fucking incredible concert!” We couldn’t hear what the kid’s response was. He better have recognized, though.
Eddie has been wearing a Walter Payton jersey at all their shows on this tour. It was Jeff Ament who made the local connection, wearing a shirt that had Larry Bird’s face on one side and his number on the other.
Speaking of shirts, I’ve never bought a concert shirt before. Again, I’m a man full of contradictions and surprises. I bought one last night, though, because they were perfect.
Shout out to the merch arm of the PJ empire. That thing is as well-oiled as the band’s performances. They opened up at noon for people who wanted to get there early and get the limited edition items. Inside the venue there were multiple spots to purchase items with crazy long lines before the show. We stopped at one after the show and despite the line, had to wait less than five minutes to purchase my shirt. There was another still open outside the gates that had no wait. And although they were short a few sizes, you could still buy just about anything you wanted almost 12 hours after they sold their first shirt of the day.
Also cool was the special stand that printed up setlist shirts. SK told me the band hands off their final setlist when the show begins and by the time they are done, there are stacks of shirts with that night’s unique collection of songs listed. Genius way to make fans eager to fork over another $40 for a unique memento of the night.
PJ still does the “official bootlegs” of every show. I think I still have all the early 2000s ones I bought somewhere in the basement. I believe I will be buying this one when it is released in a few weeks.
Both times I saw PJ in KC, they closed with “Rockin’ In The Free World.” Which was great. But I was going to be disappointed if I heard it again. Fortunately they closed with a spectacular “Baba O’Reilly” – “Yellow Ledbetter” double. Finally hearing “Baba” live was a big checkmark on my all-time PJ must hear list.
An online inflation calculator suggests that translates to $112 dollars today, which seems reasonable for a U2 show, but understandable for a poor college student to decide he’d rather eat/drink off that for two weeks than blow it in one night. Still wish I had gone to that show, though. ↩
I also missed a KU basketball game that week, so you know I was sick! ↩
And, of course, this concert was delayed from a year ago when Matt Cameron got Covid. ↩
Eddie: “You attend 57 shows, you get a request.” ↩
Not sure if it was accidental or intentional, but his contact sent him the link for F&F tickets for the entire tour. We had a phone call last spring where we seriously debated whether to get tickets for one of the Wrigley shows later this week, or going to another big city to see them. We decided the smart move, and affordable one since we both have kids in college and at Catholic high schools, was to stick to just the Indy show. ↩
This weekend seemed pretty chill to me. There were enough things going on to justify a blog post, though. Let’s see how many words I can stretch this alleged slow weekend into.
Friday Night Lights
High school football started in Indiana last week. In a shocking upset, it was a perfectly pleasant night. That will change this week, though.
That wasn’t the only upset of the night. Number 10 Cathedral pounded #1 and defending 6A state champs Ben Davis 24–6.
I did not have high hopes for CHS coming into the season. They remain in class 6A, two up from their natural class. While they have some really good skill players – mostly the starting running back and a couple receivers – along with a much improved offensive line and solid defense, they have one glaring hole: quarterback. For the first time in seven years they do not have a kid who is one of the best QBs in the city behind center. This year’s starter is a junior from St. P’s who was listed as 5’7”, 150 on last year’s roster. I think both of those measurements might have been stretches, too. When he got in for mop-up duty as a sophomore, he mostly handed off.
Throw that kid against a schedule that features the pre-season #1, #2, #3, and #4 teams in 6A, along with #2 and #10 in 4A, plus a top 15 team overall in Ohio, and you understand why I had some reservations.
Naturally the Irish were up 24–0 before the Giants ran a tipped pass back 100 yards for their only score of the game.
I was only able to listen to the second half, when CHS was already up 17–0, but they sounded pretty solid, controlling the game on both sides of the ball.
Both of our girls went. They both left early.
The Irish’s reward for breaking a 15-game losing streak to Ben Davis?[1] A game against Brownsburg, the likely new #1 team after both Ben Davis and Center Grove lost in week one. BHS beat CHS convincingly the past two regular seasons on very hot nights, so we’ll see.
Greek Fest
Why wasn’t I either at the game or listening during the first half? S and I went to Indy Greek Fest for the first time in 15 years or so. It was an annual outing the first few years we lived here, but once we had more than two kids, we decided it was too much of a hassle.
Good food and people watching. One of S’s partners is Greek and was working the dessert hall, so we got to harass him a bit.
Other highlights were watching some dude in front of us get fed up with the slow traffic to get to the parking lot and literally drive through someone’s yard to turn around. I’m not talking about a couple wheels up on the curb that kind of slipped into the grass. I’m talking about driving his entire car through the middle of this yard to get to their driveway and spin around. Ass.
Also, when we were leaving we noticed the car next to us had a club on their steering wheel. You remember The Club, right?
To be clear, Greek Fest was at a huge, fancy, relatively new church in one of the highest income zip codes of the entire area. After we left we drove through one of the neighborhoods where many of the homes go for high seven and even eight figures. But this person was worried someone was going to steal their car. And it wasn’t like a nice car, it was some ‘90s Oldsmo-buick.
I probably just answered the mystery: this was clearly some super old Greek lady who has been locking her car up for 40 years and doesn’t see any reason to stop because her friend Nikki’s car got stolen once at a church event and you never know…
Girls Nights Out
C and L had big weekends, at least on the social tip. They each had sleepovers both nights, C hosting one and going out for the other, while L slept away from home both nights.
Astute readers might recall that L had a long period where the only two things that caused anxiety in her were thunderstorms and sleepovers. So she didn’t successfully sleepover anywhere, not even with family, for like seven years or something. She made a conscious effort to host a couple in 8th grade, and finally worked up the courage to try a few at other friends’ homes. And now she did two in two nights! Of course she was totally wrecked when she got home Sunday, so I don’t know if she actually sleeps or not. She doesn’t call home at 2:00 AM asking to get picked up, which is the key to S and me.
Rush
As for daughter #1, last week was rush at UC. M was very busy all week long, as this was a huge class of prospective new members, or whatever they call them these days. She told us mid-week there were two girls she was “obsessed with,” which made us both laugh and roll our eyes. She is such a sorority girl sometimes…
Anyway, we talked Saturday and she said both of those girls made the house’s final cut, and she was hoping they would both end up being her Littles.
She ended up going one-for-two. One girl picked another sorority, but the other committed/signed/pledged to M’s house. Her new little is from California, at UC to study interior design, which seems pretty interesting.
The best part of all of this was reading captions on M’s various posts and watching S’s reactions. If you know S, you know that despite being in a sorority when she was in college, she is kind of the opposite of a sorority girl. I think it horrifies her a little how into it M is. There’s been talk of screenshotting some of these posts to mock M with later.
All in good fun, of course. We are thrilled that M has found a community that she loves being a part of so much, and that fits her personality so well.
Classes at UC start today.
Weather
I mocked people last week who were already talking about fall. It was indeed truly gorgeous here. We had the air turned off and the windows open all week. A few nights it was so chilly we had to close the windows. The pool never got below 87, so on a few of my swims the water was 20 degrees warmer than the air temp.
As I knew would happen, summer is roaring back. It got above 90 both days this weekend. We already have heat warnings in place for Tuesday, with the heat index expected to approach 110°. Yowsa.
Better Tuesday than Monday. Fingers crossed, candles lit, rabbit feet rubbed, doing everything I can to avoid jinxing it, I will hopefully be spending tonight doing something very cool that I can share tomorrow.
Tied for longest consecutive loss streak to a team in school history. The last CHS win against BD was in 1987. ↩
A little smaller selection this week, as I’ve had two music projects that have been sucking up my listening time this week.
“London Calling” – The Clash
Joe Strummer was born 72 years ago this week. At first, I accidentally added the entire London Calling album to this playlist. For a second I thought about making that the entire PL for the week. There are worse ways to spend an hour.
“Skydiver” – Briston Maroney
Maroney hasn’t been around very long. I’m not sure he’s put out a bad song yet.
“Old Tape” – Lucius featuring Adam Granduciel
Lucius provided backup vocals for The War on Drugs’ “I Don’t Live Here Anymore” three years ago. Adam Granduciel returns the favor, along with some guitar work, here.
“Sprinter Brain” – Wild Pink
Two-for-two on terrific singles from the next album.
“Taxi” – Onsloow
“No Good” – Christopher Owens
These two songs both made Stereogum’s Best New Songs list last week. Fully deserved, very important honors.
“Torture” – The Jacksons
After a long stretch of classic/very good songs to pick from for our 1984 video, this week was suddenly pretty barren. Plenty of solid songs in the bottom 10, but nothing that really jumped out and screamed “I’M 1984!!!!” to me. This is about as close to a memorable song in that group as I could find. At the time, it was huge. Still, it wasn’t nearly as big of a hit as the first Jacksons’ single of 1984, “State of Shock.” That was basically a Michael Jackson/Mick Jagger duet, so it was bound to be huge. I bet a lot of people who were around in the summer of ’84 have totally forgotten about this track. The video is always hilarious, mostly because Michael and Jermaine refused to appear in it (and all the wild family issues that prompted those decisions) and how their absences were handled. It is extra funny that they decided to make a video that was over six minutes long without the two most popular members of the group being present. I bet the remaining brothers felt like jackasses singing the chorus by themselves. Number 35 this week, on its way to #17.
I am now four months and over 5000 miles into Telsa ownership, err, leasership? Blog rules dictate that an update is in order.
I don’t think I have anything super profound to say. For the most part, I love the car and EV life. I would say it has been a 90–95% positive experience, with mostly small things annoying me. At the same point in my Audi lease, I bet I would have said the same thing.
Driving an EV has ruined driving a traditional, gas car for me. S’s Telluride has a decent amount of power. I was endlessly frustrated driving it to Florida when, while merging onto a highway for example, I punched it and the pickup wasn’t instant. One-pedal driving is still a little odd, but odder is getting back in a traditional car and not getting the expected response when you back off the gas.
I rarely drive very fast or floor it. Yet there is still a thrill in going from a full stop at a red light to 40 or so in the blink of an eye, all in relative silence.
I’m not a mechanical expert, nor a professional car reviewer, so it is hard for me to articulate this next point. Perhaps my favorite thing about the Tesla is how the power and steering are so closely tied to each other. I love the feeling of total control when I’m in a turn. I don’t know if that is just how the steering wheel provides feedback or if it is something else that I don’t understand. In comparison, when I drive the Telluride, I get a little freaked out because the steering is so loose and disconnected from the transmission that I feel like I’m going to miss the first couple turns until I get used to its feel.
To balance that, I have a point for Kia and against Tesla. I drove a lot on our trip to Florida, and Kia’s Highway Driving Assist 2 system seemed to work way better than Tesla’s driving aids. When traffic was manageable I would let it steer and it remained in the middle of the lane, comfortably followed smooth turns on the highway, and never felt like it was being too aggressive. I kept my hands on the steering wheel and it honestly felt like I was turning even when I made no effort to move the wheel. We even let it change lanes a few times and although quirky, that seemed to work when there was plenty of space to do so.
On the other hand, Tesla’s Full Self Driving freaked me out and I only used it a handful of times in the months I had a free trial subscription. Instead I’ve tried to use Auto Steer on highway trips, but it seems super wonky and often disengages for reasons I don’t understand. When I can get it to work, it feels to me like it incorrectly measures big, sweeping highway turns where you can keep your speed pegged at 75–80 without any fear. It feels late rather than early when steering, making me think it is going through the turn then correcting rather late to stay in the proper lane. Tesla also seems to explore the space of the lane you are in a little more than the Kia. It doesn’t exactly ping-pong, but neither does it stay anchored to the center. Maybe I just need to use it a little more. I tried to turn it on once on my trip to Cincinnati over the weekend and it immediately yelled at me and disengaged, so I stuck to adaptive cruise the rest of the trip.
Another Tesla complaint: some of the sight lines are really bad. You can’t see the hood of the car at all because of the angle it sweeps away, so it is difficult to know where your nose is. And, of course, the car doesn’t have a front camera so when pulling into garages, parking spots, etc you have to rely on the parking assist radar image, which I find way too conservative in telling you where you are. I get a little nervous when pulling through a parking spot as sometimes it will insist there is something there when I know there isn’t.
Same goes for looking backwards. The tailgate window view is small – which is more because of the interior than the window itself – as is the rearview mirror. I really struggle to get a good view of what is behind me. I think Tesla should project the image from the rear-facing camera on the rearview mirror. Polestar is doing something a little like this on their upcoming Polestar 4, but that car doesn’t even have a back window so they kind of had to go that route.
I got used to having everything on the main screen pretty quickly. I still wish there were dedicated, physical buttons for some controls. But that just ain’t the Tesla way. And more and more automakers are going away from that model so we all need to get used to navigating screens to control our vehicles.
Every few weeks there seems to be another online debate about the necessity of Apple CarPlay. I can say I survive ok without it. If I can’t have CarPlay, I much prefer a new EV company like Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, etc to design the software I am being forced to use. Pretty much every legacy car manufacturer makes crap software and it makes no sense to me why they don’t include CarPlay and Android Auto.
I would much prefer the ability to use Apple Maps on my car display, because I think Google Maps sucks for navigation. So many times Google tries to send me on crazy routes. Even to places where I go routinely. It doesn’t seem to learn based on my past actions, which I thought was a core part of Google’s overall mission. It is also terrible when it comes to regular traffic conditions. If I want, I can run Apple Maps on my phone and mount it off the car display to view it (I generally do this with Waze when I’m on a trip), but full integration into the car’s display would be better.
Where I miss CarPlay is in dealing with text messages. The Tesla will notify me that I’ve received a text, and if I react quick enough, will read it to me. But I can’t get it to send a response via dictation correctly. Maybe it’s me and not the software. If I ignore the initial notification, because I’m, you know, driving, I can’t go back and find it without touching my phone. I like how CarPlay will show a list of all your texts, you can select one that Siri will read to you, then respond via voice easily.
Seems like there should be some kind of middle ground where Apple and Tesla work together, but I doubt that will ever happen.
Charging continues to be fine. The Tesla app claims I’ve saved over $500 compared to a gas car in four months. I think that number is a little conservative, but I’d rather it underestimate than overestimate. I believe my driving will slow down for the next couple months until high school basketball begins, but I’ll remain on track to meet the estimated annual gas savings I used as part of my budgeting process.
You may recall I was having some issues with getting comfortable in the driver’s seat. After several weeks of that, I decided it was more an issue of my body than the car. My back would hurt in whichever of our cars I drove. I mixed in some new back exercises and that seemed to help, although Tesla could make their seats more luxurious and less harsh.
Obviously there is one big annoyance with owning a Tesla, related to someone who thinks they need to be in the news often to prove how smart they are. If that person would just go away I think not only would driving a Tesla be more satisfying, but the world would be a better place, too.
I would continue to recommend getting into the EV space to anyone who has the ability to charge at home and doesn’t need to make frequent, lengthy trips. When I drive to Cincinnati or Louisville, I always need to make a 10–12 minute charging stop on the way home. I can make the same round trip without stopping for gas in the Telluride. Driving to Kansas City, for example, would require at least three stops, compared to one stop for gas. Making our trip to Florida in the Tesla would have required five stops totaling roughly 75 total minutes. As I get older I find I need to stretch my legs more often, but I’m not super excited about adding a full hour to a 12-hour trip. Unless you love to stop or have over $100,000 to drop on a Lucid, long trips in an EV remain problematic.
I am looking forward to seeing how my experience changes when we get to the winter. Gas cars see a drop in mileage in very cold weather, but EVs suffer much more in the same conditions. It takes longer to charge and you lose the charge quicker because of both the ambient temperature and the battery drain to heat the car. I’ve already been studying tips to make that drop in efficiency less noticeable but won’t really know until I have to drive around for a week when the temperature doesn’t get about freezing.
As I said, no real deep thoughts. After the initial rush of switching to an EV, it quickly turned into a normal experience for me. Knock on wood it stays that way.
As I continue my re-watch of The Americans, I was horrified by an ad shown within a season three episode, which took place in 1983, for Love’s Baby Soft. It was borderline child porn. I did some digging and they had a problematic ad campaign for a long time. Those ads are long gone, but the product line is still around. That ad is included in this piece.
While I remember watching The Gods Must Be Crazy over-and-over again when I first discovered it, sometime in 1986 or 1987 on cable, I don’t remember much about the actual movie. I recall some slapstick comedy, odd acting performances, and even some moments where the film was sped up to make it seem funnier. Not much else.
Thinking about it now, my first reaction is similar to that of the friend of the author in this pull quote.
When I told a friend I was revisiting The Gods Must Be Crazy 40 years later, he said, “Oh, I remember that movie! It must be totally racist.” It really is. It’s also a fascinating artifact, and one that spread myths that persist even today.
This article is a look at how the movie came to be and the impact it had in both the US and South Africa.
What started as a boring, uneventful weekend ending up being surprisingly fun.
S worked full time all weekend, filling in for a hospitalist who is on maternity leave. She had like 1000 babies to see,[1] so was at the hospital until 5:00 Saturday, nearly as long Sunday. Because of that and the girls being tired after their first full week of school, we just sat around and did nothing on Saturday. I read. I swam. I watched some TV. I napped. And repeat.
Saturday evening I was monitoring the Royals-Reds game while doing some other stuff around the house. I knew my buddy O-Dawg, who I lived with for a year after college and now lives in Cincinnati, was at the game. When Dairon Blanco hit his second home run of the game, I texted O. His response:
“i got a ticket 4 u 4 tmrw”
Um, ok.
Totally out of the blue, at 7:30 the night before the game. Classic O-Dawg.
I had a couple things on the calendar for Sunday, but quickly made some adjustments, cleared it with S, and told him I would be down.
So Sunday morning I hopped on I–74 to see the Royals in person for the second time this season.
It rained off-and-on during the drive, which was an omen. I made very good time and had to wait about 30 minutes for O, his daughter, and her boyfriend to meet me at Great American Ball Park. Twice in that half hour it lightly rained.
O arrived, we got to our seats, which were terrific – section 129, row T, even the pitcher’s mound behind the Reds’ dugout – and started catching up.
We tailgated together at last fall’s Iowa State – UC game, but hadn’t really caught up in over a decade. My readers who know O won’t be surprised to learn he hasn’t changed much. It was tough to truly have a conversation because he was constantly spilling stories out. So you just sit back and listen and laugh and try to have something to say when he takes a breath.
For the first inning or so it was exactly what you would expect from an afternoon game in Cincinnati. We were wiping the sweat from our heads as our necks got crispy. Then the rain moved in, escalating from sprinkles to a decent downpour in the bottom of the second inning. That burst turned into a 45 minute delay. Once the game re-started, it felt more like football weather, cool and blustery. It rained again in the 7th, complete with some thunder and a warning that we should leave our seats, but the umpires never stopped the game. That was nearly disastrous as, with the Royals up 4–0, Sam Long loaded the bases and gave up a run when he clearly had no grip on the ball, but Lucas Erceg came in and shut the door to preserve the lead.
Then the clouds moved out, the sun reappeared, and it turned into a nearly perfect day. The Royals scoring four in the ninth to stretch the lead to 8–1, and 28–3 for the series, was the cherry on top.
There was one more cherry on top for the day, though. M’s rush prep activities wrapped up at 3:00 so I was able to go pick her up for dinner together. We went to a very tasty pizza place right off campus. Her “work week” went well. She is already losing her voice. “We yelled so much this week!” I’m not sure why they were yelling so much when they were just getting trained and practicing for rush, which starts tomorrow. Anyway, work week went well, she and her suitemates get along great, all the girls on their floor are getting along, and it’s been a good first week on campus.
Great seats. Great time with a guy I lived with for a year but haven’t seen much on a consistent basis in over 20 years. Great win/weekend for the Royals. Great dinner with my daughter. Great that the driver that had just passed me got pulled over by the state police officer who is always lurking near Batesville. Always slow down around Batesville, folks.
Fall Feelings
I think it’s funny how as soon as the kids go back to school you start thinking of fall. When we still have half of August left, plus summer weather these days seem to stretch deep into October.
I’ve already been thinking about fall wardrobe choices. Octoberfest beers have started replacing summer ones. Pumpkin Spice is emerging from its slumber to take over store shelves. People are spending too much time talking about preseason football.
I even heard a local weatherman talking about how fall weather was just around the corner. He was kind of right as we’ve had a few very cool mornings and will have a couple more this week. But we also just came off a stretch of days where if it wasn’t close to 90, the heat index was. And, again, astronomical summer has over a month left.
I know the end of summer kind of sucks, as we get beaten down by the heat, our lawns get crispy, and we are looking forward to the relief of fall and all the fun things that come with that time of year. I try to hold on to summer, though. Sure, fall is great. But right after fall there will be long months when we are stuck inside by the cold and we will long for days when we complained about it being hot and humid.
“Archbishop Harold Holmes” – Jack White
What an idiot I am! White dropped his No Name album on streaming services two weeks ago, and I listened to it a ton after we got home from vacation. Then, somehow, I forgot to include a track in last week’s playlist. Again, idiot. This track is soooo White Stripes-y, with his spitfire vocals straddling a line between dark & menacing and hilarious & nonsensical. And, of course, riffs on top of riffs on top of riffs.
“Takes One To Know One” – The Beaches
I’m not sure I believe that a song this marvelously sunny and poppy comes from a band that calls Toronto home. “God, you’re a piece of work. Takes one to know one.” That seems like that could apply to most couples.
“Monster” – Best Bets
There are some serious The Lemonheads vibes in this track. A nearly impossible band to do an internet search on, about all I can find about them is that they are from New Zealand.
“This Room” – Lotte Gallagher
Not a daughter of either Liam or Noel, but rather a very talented young lady from Melbourne.
“Koalas” – Tess Parks
Let’s combine elements from earlier songs. Another artist from Canada singing about one of Australia’s most famous residents.
“Glass” – Glom
And now another band that is impossible to search for, for some reason. Maybe it’s more because search is broken thanks to ads and AI and other nonsense than bands coming up with stupid names that search engines think are related to everything but the actual band.
“Room at the Top” – Eddie Vedder covering Tom Petty
The second EdVed cover of the summer. This one is pretty straight forward, but it really fits Eddie’s voice. It is from the new Apple TV show Bad Monkey. Apparently the entire soundtrack is a Petty tribute album. The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile, and many other folks you know will be on it.
“Cruel Summer” – Bananarama
I struggled with what to pick for this week’s 1984 video. There were a couple songs I would love to write about in RFTS at some point, so I skipped them. There was a terrific ballad that had already snuck inside the top 30 in just its third week. Instead I chose this, which seemed to fit since I didn’t include a summer song in my Spotify playlist this week. It first hit in the UK in 1983, then in the US in ’84 after landing on the Karate Kid soundtrack. This week it was #32 in its fifth week in the Hot 100, on its way to a peak of #9 in September. I gotta admit, I was never really into Bananarama. They were just too goofy for me, even at age 13. Especially this video.
Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic – Jason Turbow My brother in books David V handed me a copy of this on my visit to Kansas City in June. It took me some time to work through my stack of virtual books to crack it open, and once I did, I realized I had read it before, back in 2017. Looking back, I loved it so much then that I read it in two days. It’s not like this was Infinite Jest and I would be taking weeks and months away from books I had not read. So I continued, finishing it in three days this time.
Again, it was terrific. It covers the Oakland A’s dynasty of the early 1970s, how they were built, how they won three consecutive World Series, and then how free agency tore them apart. Owner Charles O. Finley, who many adults I grew up around hated because he moved the A’s from Kansas City, was the center of the storm. Turbow never gets into Finley’s politics, but he had a lot of personality traits similar to a certain old man currently running for president.
Other observations: – It was interesting how during the Vietnam War a lot of MLB players would leave their teams in the middle of the season to do their two weeks of military reserve obligations. – The A’s are considered one of the greatest dynasties ever. However, they were far from dominant. They easily could have lost any of the three league championship series they won, same for their three World Series. A few hits here, a few outs made there, and they are closer to the Buffalo Bills of the ‘90s as annual losers on the biggest stage, or even the Royals of the late ‘70s who couldn’t get out of the ALCS. – Oakland couldn’t draw fans in the Seventies when they were the best team in baseball. I wondered what if they had built a better stadium in a better location. Would they have had better crowds and then been more consistently successful? Would they not be about to move to Las Vegas? Would the Giants have fled San Francisco in the 70s for Denver if the A’s were drawing 40,000 fans a night across the Bay/ – Reggie Jackson is one of the most fascinating players of all time. There’s never been anyone quite like him. He also might be one of the most overrated players ever? Maybe? – I miss the days when teams were full of characters that didn’t speak in carefully managed sound bites and fought with each other as often as their opponents.
Then We Take Berlin – John Lawton My vacation book, the first in a series that is generally well received that I’ve been meaning to get to for ages. Those good reviews were deserved.
What better way to start a spy series than by straddling World War II, the beginning of the Cold War, and deep in the heart of the Cold War via two different story tracks? We are introduced to Joe Wilderness, an English teen who learns the art of breaking and entering thanks to his uncle during the darkest days of World War II in London. Eventually he joins the military just as the war is ending, is funneled to intelligence, and sent to Berlin to handle some special missions. In the process he comes into contact with other Brits, Americans, and Russians who are focused not on post-war power, but on supplying goods in demand on the black market. Here’s where Wilderness’ b&e expertise comes in handy, as he discovers ways around the many physical and political impediments to moving product.
Jump to the 1960s and that knowledge becomes useful as Wilderness is recruited to help smuggle a person of importance from East Berlin to the West.
It is never a standard spy novel, as it is focused more on Wilderness’ illegal acts than his official ones. The writing is excellent, though, which made this a fine change of pace to someone like me who reads a lot of espionage novels.
The Neon Rain – James Lee Burke I didn’t know much about Burke until recently, when I read an interview with him in which he discussed the state of our political process and society. I was intrigued when his interviewer asked about how Burke has rolled social issues into his novels, specifically discussions of race and injustice. So I figured I would give his most famous series, based on detective Dave Robicheaux, a shot. The result wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.
This book turned out to be much more of a hardboiled, classic detective novel than that interview suggested. Written and taking place in the Eighties in the south, it had a lot of cringey elements that made me wonder if Burke really was a champion for progressive causes. Then I realized that was 40 years ago, the way we talk about and to people has changed a lot, and he was reflecting the time and place his story was set in.
To be fair, Robicheaux, despite being a Vietnam veteran and a New Orleans detective who is comfortable blowing bad guys away, does seem deeper and more thoughtful than your stereotypical novel detective. My guess is that Burke slowly rolled those broader social critiques into Robicheaux.
All that said, the book was perfectly fine if formulaic. I’ll keep the series in the back of my mind for the next time I have a reading lull, but doubt I’ll rush back into it.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store – James McBride McBride wrote the wonderful Deacon King Kong about a particular moment of life in the projects of 1960s New York. This had a very different setting, but was equally as charming.
This time he writes of a Depression-era Pennsylvania town where Jewish immigrants and Black families that have moved from the south form an uneasy alliance against locals that don’t want either of them there. The connecting point between those communities is Chona, a physically impaired Jewish woman who runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store frequented mostly by Black folks. She extends credit and doesn’t ask for payment. She slips children treats and presents. She writes strongly worded letters to the local papers demanding equality for all and calling out white residents who march with the Klan. In short, she looks out for all the people of her town that she thinks are getting the shaft.
Chona’s health takes a turn, there is an incident that makes it worse, an innocent Black boy is held accountable rather than the white doctor who was assaulting Chona, and both the Jews and Blacks join forces to avenge her.
That’s not a very good summation, but without going into great detail and ruining the story, it’s hard to share much about it.
Once again McBride has written a charming, hilarious, touching, and at times troubling story. It is filled with characters who have tremendous dignity and resilience in the face of a world that refuses to see them as complete humans worthy of respect and the same rights as their neighbors. And McBride wraps the story’s various threads in a completely satisfactory ending.
