Month: May 2025 (Page 1 of 2)

Friday Playlist

This came together surprisingly well for it being a short, busy week. It helps that we are in Summer Music season.

“Constructive Summer” – The Hold Steady
Always good advice to build something in the summer.

“Andromeda” – Preoccupations
Not a bad song on the latest Preoccupations album.

“One Million” – Rocket
Other than “Cherub Rock,” I was never a Smashing Pumpkins fan, so it’s kind of weird I enjoy so many new bands, like this one, that mimic their sound. A lot of it has to do with the lead singer not being Billy Corgan. These kids will actually open up for the Pumpkins on their upcoming tour.

“Chemicals” – Split System
Good, old-fashioned, Aussie punk rock.

“Pacemaker” – Georgie & Joe
Am I hearing the early 90s in this jam?

“The Line” – Trace Mountains
As much as I like it when Trace Mountains leans into War on Drugs adjacent sounds, I also enjoy when they make music that sounds different and stands on its own.

“Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty” – Garbage
I liked Garbage’s first comeback a lot. This one lacks the energy and urgency of their best work. Still worth sharing.

“Summertime Is Coming” – Paul Banks
No lies told here.

“Fall Down” – Toad The Wet Sprocket
This week’s Alternative Number Ones entry. A nice change-of-pace by TTWS from the songs that first made them stars. Funny to read through their history and realize although they broke out right as the Alternative Music Revolution was beginning, their early, mellower singles were much bigger hits on the mainstream chart than the alternative one.

Weekend Notes, Part 2: Sports

Continuing our look back at last weekend (and slightly beyond), let’s get into the sports.


PACERS!!!!

Quite the swing of emotions, this Eastern Conference Finals series.

Game one was the Pacers’ legendary comeback and overtime win.

Game two Friday was a Big Brother game for them, getting another win in Madison Square Garden by controlling the game from start-to-finish and keeping the Knicks at an arm’s length every time they made a run.

Sunday’s game three seemed to be the perfect cap on one of the great sports days in Indianapolis history. Coming a few hours after the Indy 500, the Pacers were red-hot to start. Late in the second quarter Tyrese Haliburton flipped a wonderful pass backwards over a defender that Obi Toppin caught one-handed and threw down. On the next possession Haliburton hit a long 3. Then he got a steal and breakaway dunk to put the Pacers up by 20.

Gainbridge was deafening. The Knicks were reeling. The series was over.

Only the Pacers got sloppy, the Knicks found something with their bench unit, and slowly whittled the margin until they took the lead midway through the fourth quarter and never gave it up. Indiana went from being on the verge of the NBA Finals to facing some serious questions and pressure in the span of about 75 minutes.

Worse than the loss was the lower leg injury Aaron Nesmith suffered late in the first half. He came back and played some second half minutes, but for a guy who missed 35 games with a similar injury earlier this year and is the Pacers most effective defender on Jalen Brunson, it was super worrisome.

I think it’s a measure of how engaged I am with this team that I couldn’t sleep after Sunday’s collapse. Normally only KU basketball can have that effect on me.

Which took us to last night’s game four. It was playing out like a combination of games two and three, the Pacers again getting out early and controlling the game. Their leads weren’t quite as big as they had been Sunday and the Knicks runs sooner. New York tied the game just before halftime but a 14–0 Pacers run that bridged halftime gave them control that they never relinquished.

There were some dicey moments late. The Pacers seemed to go braindead a couple times on offense, by either being passive and one-dimensional or just plain sloppy and throwing the ball away. The Knicks never completely took advantage, though. It went down to the final minute until Toppin splashed a 3 as the shot clock expired with 46 seconds left to clinch it.

The Pacers are a game away from the NBA Finals.

Nesmith played and was again brilliant on defense. He really may be the most important player on the roster in this series, as no one else can guard Brunson as well as he can. Brunson was nearly perfect when matched with any other defender, hitting every shot and getting to the free throw line often. When matched with Nesmith, though, he was a mess. The dirty secret of this series is that the Knicks have played their best ball of the series when Brunson sits. I think it’s because the ball moves so much more and better when he’s not dominating it. Also he has been truly horrific on defense and whoever replaces him can at least pretend to guard someone.

Bennedict Mathurin finally had a positive game after looking overmatched and unplayable through the first three games. He scored 20 points in the fewest minutes played of any player in playoff game in NBA history. He still had some shaky moments and I worry that he’s going to get ejected because he thinks he needs to respond to every cheap shot Brunson and Josh Hart level on Haliburton. The Pacers wouldn’t have won without him Tuesday.

Pascal Siakam was, again, brilliant, hunting mismatches and punishing them when he found them.

And Hali, of course, was spectacular. In 38 minutes he scored 32 points, had 12 rebounds, 15 assists, 4 steals and ZERO turnovers. It’s one thing to have a line like that in the regular season, which he often does. But to do it against an intense, physical team like the Knicks in late May? That was one of the greatest playoff games in Pacers history.

Now it’s back to New York for game five. Logic would suggest that the Knicks get their shit together, ride the emotion of the home crowd, and grab that one, sending the series back to Indy. However, they seemed a little broken late Tuesday. Karl-Anthony Towns was grabbing his knee after every play. But he’s such a weird dude I don’t know what to make of that. We might hear today he’s out for the series or he may play with zero limp Thursday and continue to torch the Pacers D. Seriously, if one of your best players can barely walk and it’s a 10 point game in the final minute, how do you not sit him down? That makes me think he’s picked up the embellishment gene from his Villanova grad teammates.

Brunson is actually taking heat from Knicks fans he’s been so bad on D. Something tells me he’s going to be even more physical Thursday, and will get away with it since the game is in New York.

I think these teams are very close, but as I said a week ago, the Pacers are the more coherent team. They can plug their holes easier. When they get locked in their style is more punishing than the Knicks. They have three chances to win one game to end the series. I don’t think they are going to need all three.


Jacque?!?!?

I’ve been deep in the message board rumor mongering about how KU is filling out their roster for next year since the Jayhawks’ season came to an inglorious end back in March. Last week was a tough week, losing two big recruits that KU seemed to, at one point or another, have the inside track on. Recruiting in the NIL era is a different beast.

Along with those roster rumors was the bombshell that Bill Self was talking to KU legend Jacque Vaughn about joining his staff as an assistant. Rumors that were confirmed last week when Vaughn was officially hired.

That news brought all kinds of mixed emotions and thoughts. On the one hand JV is young (but not super young) and could sprinkle some life into a coaching staff that is filled with guys in their 60s who have been together for ages. He has been a head coach in the NBA twice, and while the results weren’t great, he comes from the San Antonio coaching tree which is the best in the pro game. He coached some difficult players in New Jersey and they always seemed to like playing for him even if the wins didn’t come often enough. With the college game getting more like the NBA every day, his addition could help update Self’s offense for the modern era. And, hell, he’s one of the most beloved KU players of all time. Both an on-the-court All American and an Academic All American, the engine that ran one of the great KU squads of all time. If you polled KU fans of what team that didn’t win a national title they loved the most, that 1997 team would almost certainly top the list.[1]

There was some weirdness to the rumors, though. There was chatter that Self was being forced to bring in a young assistant with KU ties by big money donors. I have no idea if this was true or not, but the talk was out there. I don’t love the thought of Self being told he won’t get the money he wants for his roster unless he hires an assistant donors approve of.

What I worried about more was how, if you’ve been an NBA coach twice, you settle in as an assistant at the college level? Even if you’re joining the staff of one of the greatest coaches of his era at your alma mater, there are some strange optics there.

There was immediate speculation that Vaughn would join as a dreaded “coach-in-waiting,” which would fit the persistent rumors that Self has told people close to him he will only coach one or two more seasons. If that’s the case, it makes sense to give JV the chance to come in, learn the college game, especially recruiting, with a buffer of being an assistant for a year or two before he formally takes over.

These coach-in-waiting deals can get messy, though, if not handled right. Especially if Self isn’t 100% sure of his plan. The last thing you want to do is have the greatest coach in program history leave on bad terms because you forced his successor into the mix too early. What if their styles, either basketball or personality, don’t mesh? Or what if Self has indeed told AD Travis Goff he will retire next spring, but is reinvigorated by a young, exciting team and changes his mind?

I also worry about deciding who your next coach is without a formal, open interview process. Maybe Vaughn is the best person to be the next KU coach. I hate not seeing if there’s someone better “outside the family” available when Self does retire, though.

As far as we know, there is no formal language in Vaughn’s contract stating he will be the next KU coach. Assuming he and Self are on the same page, I think this is a good opportunity for him to test the college game and see if that is where he wants to spend the next part of his career. Maybe he does it for a year and realizes he hates recruiting, or the difference in talent and commitment between college kids and NBA pros is too great, or in the NIL era it is too easy to get out-bid on a recruit you’ve spent two years cultivating and Vaughn decides he’d rather go work in an NBA front office. Better, I suppose, for him to figure that out while sitting to Bill Self’s left than bringing him in after after Self retires and realizing then that his heart and skills aren’t fit for the college game.

That said, come on, if Self retires in the next couple years, JV will absolutely get the job next if he wants it. You don’t bring someone with his background in and then hire someone else.

I have no idea if JV will be a good college coach or not. I kind of hate the coach-in-waiting concept. But if you’re going to take that path, I think he’s as good a candidate as anyone. He’s smart. He knows ball. Has had success and failure in life, so arrives humbled. He loves KU. My hope is that everyone involved has open minds, are clearly communicating, and if it doesn’t work it fails because he’s a bad fit, he decides the job isn’t for him, etc and not because of a power struggle or whatever between him and Self. I’m pretty sure they both want what is best for KU and the long-term health of the program. I would bet that’s the reason it took nearly two weeks to get the deal done as they hammered out those secondary details that may not get written into a contract.


Jim Irsay

Slightly lost in the Pacers fever was the death of Colts owner Jim Irsay last Wednesday. While his death was sudden and unexpected, with him you could never say it was a surprise. Irsay battled a lot of demons and had a couple public brushes with death in recent years.[2] He has genuinely looked awful when appearing in public for nearly a decade. I’ve not seen a formal cause of death released, but, honestly, nothing would surprise me.

To his credit, he was open about his issues with substance abuse and mental illness. He is given much of the credit for the NFL’s public campaign to de-stigmatize mental health issues. He kept the team in Indianapolis even when the LA market was wide open and begging for a new franchise. He did a lot of good things with his money.

He was also kind of a kook, in both the best and worst ways. We don’t need to get into any more of that. All humans are complex.

I had to roll my eyes at the stories of his career that were bandied about last week. “From ballboy to team owner!” His fucking dad owned the team when he was a “ballboy.” It’s not like he rode his bike to old Municipal Stadium in Baltimore and lined up with other kids from the area to help out on gamedays.

His kids will take the franchise over now. There are plenty of examples of that going sideways in other cities. But the Colts haven’t exactly been a model franchise for the past decade. Erratic is probably the kindest way to describe Irsay’s stewardship. Perhaps the team will be steadier now, whether his kids have the football knowledge he possessed or not.


Fever

Hey, guess what? There’s already an exhausting, manufactured controversy that involves Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and race. It only took two games into the new WNBA season for all the disingenuous commentators to crawl out from under their rocks and start lobbing takes. My favorites are all these anti-woke talking heads who whined when Colin Kaepernick took a knee to protest Black people being killed. “KEEP POLITICS OUT OF SPORTS!!!11!!!” they shouted. That “outrage” at their sports being polluted by “angry” Black men has been cultivated into a new branch of the media that is focused on exactly what they complained about: injecting politics into every aspect of sports. You know the people and the forums, and they never miss an opportunity to blame a loss or failure on wokeness, DEI, and all the familiar right wing hits instead of a player just sucking or a team not being good enough. According to them, Clark is now the most discriminated against player in professional sports. I try to avoid these fools, but their nonsense inevitably infects the rest of sports talk and I eventually read their idiocy.

Clark is now injured and will miss at least a couple weeks. That’s bad for the Fever but maybe it will calm down the rhetoric. At least until she comes back and a Black player has the nerve to foul her, which will get the dog whistlers whistling again.


  1. 1986 and 2003 would also get a lot of votes.  ↩
  2. Or at least became public. News only trickled out well after they happened.  ↩

Weekend Notes, Part 1

Another super busy weekend, not to mention some big news that lead in to the weekend. Because of that, I’ll probably split this into two posts, the second coming tomorrow.

Our school year officially ended on Friday with L’s last final. She just had one exam in her first period, so I called her out at 10:30. She had some girlfriends over in the afternoon and some young men joined them later on. They swam, ate pizza, hung out around the fire pit, and an encouragingly large number of them kept coming inside to check on the Pacers game. Good kids.

Most of our weekend was dominating by preparing for C’s graduation party, which we were hosting on Memorial Day. She was sharing the gathering with two of her friends, so S was doing a lot of coordination with the other moms to make sure all the food and drink was covered. My job was to clean the house and make sure the pool, which had been temperamental last week, was in good shape for L’s group to swim on Friday and then just to look pretty for Monday. Oh, and we squeezed in an afternoon of swimming for all the local nephews on Saturday. I’m pleased to say with a big assist from my pool guy, the water was clear and ready-to-go all weekend. Who knew a six ounce squirt of the right chemical could totally clear up 25,000 gallons of water?


Grad Party

As soon as the bridal shower we hosted a week ago wrapped, we started eyeing the forecast for Memorial Day. It was a roller coaster. One day it would say low 60s and rain, the next clear and 70. And so on. By Friday it had steadied to at least be dry, if cloudy, and in the upper 60s. Then we woke Monday morning to a perfect day. Not many clouds. It pushed into the low 70s. Other than some periodic breezes that played havoc with the picture boards and flower vases on each table, we had zero weather complaints. It could have been pouring like at M’s combined party two years ago. Or 90 and everyone fighting for shade. Today dawned much cooler with clouds and occasional sprinkles. We timed it right.

My sister-in-law the chef provided most of the food and it was incredible, as always.

As far as we know all the kids got along and there weren’t any hurt feelings, misunderstandings, etc. There was a rumor that a girl C does not get along with might show up, as she is friendly with one of the other graduates. When they heard this, both M and L said they were going to kick her ass if she showed up. Which is pretty funny because neither of them have ever been in a fight. It sure would have made for an interesting story! Fortunately this girl was smart enough to stay away. I think she knew the real person she needed to fear was S, who definitely holds grudges against people who cause her kids pain.

With two other grad families here, it was weird to see total strangers casually stroll into our backyard.

Anyway, it was a good day. C’s core group hung out and swam for a couple hours after the party before clearing out. S and I got most of the stuff outside broken down and the inside cleaned up before 9:00. It made for a long day. It was worth it.

With that our family is done, directly, with grad season activities. It started way back in March, prepping for spring break, the stress of that week in Florida, then prom, finals week, C’s last days on campus, graduation weekend, and now her party. We still have plenty of parties on our calendar for the next month, but those will be as guests dropping it to say hello, share a card, and then escape.


Indy 500

Sunday was, of course, race day here in Indy. We did what all Indy residents who don’t go to the race do: watched the local news all morning to follow the goings-on at the track, the traffic trying to get to the Speedway, and the radar to make sure any rain stayed away. All morning the weather people noted that while there was a lot of rain in Illinois, they expected it to fade by the time it reached Indy. Ooops.

For some reason they put the drivers in their cars and then had them sit in them doing nothing for nearly 45 minutes because light showers had passed over part of the track and they wanted to make sure the surface was dry before starting. Somehow with 350,000 people crammed into the facility they couldn’t tell it was raining and let the drivers chill somewhere other than their cramped cockpits while it passed.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the race sold out early, so for only the sixth time ever IMS waived the local TV blackout. It happened last year thanks to severe storms that delayed the race for hours, but this was the first time the race had been shown live, at its traditional time, in nearly a decade. I do kind of miss the Indy tradition of listening to the radio broadcast, but it is fun to watch live and not have to wait for the evening replay.

This was also the first time Fox showed the race. As you would expected, they thoroughly Fox-ed it up. At C’s party I talked to our neighbor, who went to the race for 67 straight years before finally calling it quits last year. I was glad as someone who watches exactly one race a year that my complaints matched his.

We couldn’t understand why they were talking to pace car driver Michael Strahan live while he was trying to lead the cars out to begin the race. It was clearly a distraction as the guy in the passenger seat kept giving him hand motions encouraging Strahan to go faster. Never mind that the pace car’s whole job is to, you know, get the cars up to race speed. Talking to him was more important in Fox’s eyes.

OK, they’re paying Tom Brady a bazillion dollars to be an announcer. So I get why they had to shoehorn him into coverage. But people here HATE Tom Brady. Tone deaf much? And while they had Peyton Manning do a voice over for a feature, he never appeared. What a stupid miss.

Noted race fans and Indianapolis legends Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriquez called the drivers to their cars. Utterly baffling.

Worse were the misses during the race. Multiple times something big would happen and Fox would completely miss it. Ryan Hunter-Reay was leading the race when he pitted. The cameras cut away to show action on the track, as you do, and like a minute later they showed Hunter-Reay still in the pits, apparently stalled out. As soon as his pitstop lasted more than 10 seconds they should have been back on him.

The biggest miss of the day, though, was missing the fucking end of the race. As Alex Palou and Marcus Ericsson came out of turn four and raced to the finish, the cameras cut away to show a car half a lap back crashed into the wall. Now, this was important as it forced the yellow caution flag to come out, freezing the cars in position. But while showing this crumpled car in the back stretch, Palou crossed the line for the biggest win of his career. And Fox didn’t show it. As the cherry on top, once they switched back to live and showed Palou in his victory lap and celebration, they never went back and showed what caused the wreck that forced the race to end under caution or explained why a wreck on the opposite side of the track forced the lead cars to finish under yellow.

Fox has covered Nascar for years, so they understand how to broadcast auto racing. But if a dummy like me, who again watches one race a year, can pick out all these errors, I would imagine most real race fans were like my neighbor and disgusted with how the race was presented to them.

Fox is always going to Fox.

Friday Playlist

It’s the Friday before Memorial Day. That means it’s both time to break out the summer music and to play a song I always play this weekend. Two songs, actually.

“Jack & Diane” – John Mellencamp
Years ago, when we were still lake people, one of my better Facebook posts was something along the lines of “It’s not Memorial Day weekend until you’re drunk at the lake and you hear ‘Jack And Diane.’” We don’t have a lake house anymore. I don’t really get drunk, either. But we can still listen to Mellencamp to kick off the biggest weekend of the year in Indy.

“Sober” – Elbow
Speaking of not drinking…I’ve been hot and cold on Elbow over the years, but have been enjoying their most recent music.

“What’s Fair” – Blondshell
When Sabrina Teitelbaum first hit the scene she took a lot of heat for capitalizing on her father’s status and wealth to establish her career. With album #2 out, there’s no doubt she’s a legit talent.

“Radio Armageddon/What Rock Is” – Chuck D
Mistachuck is back! I listened to his new album last week. It’s solid, especially when considering that he is 64 years old. But so much of it, from his voice to the production to the arrangement of the songs, comes off as a B-minus version of his classic work in Public Enemy. These are the first two tracks on the album. They give you an idea of what most of the rest of the album sounds like.

“Metal” – The Beths
The Beths’ music almost always makes me happy.

“Bird On A Swing” – Cory Hanson
A dramatic shift in tone and sound from his last project, which was jammed full of Eighties-esque shredded solos.

“My Friend Dario” – Vitalic
It’s race weekend. Vroom vroom.

“My City Of Ruins” – Bruce Springsteen Live in Manchester, May 14, 2025

I attempted to include this in the playlist above, but for some reason it’s not showing up. Seems fishy to me. If you’ve been following the news this week, you know why this is here.

“Summertime” – DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
DRUMS PLEASE!!!!

OMG In MSG

Normally on a day like this, after what happened at Madison Square Garden last night, I would have hopped out of bed early and banged out 25,000 words about the latest inexplicable Pacers, come-from-behind win.

Funny thing happened last night, though. If funny is a proper synonym for infuriating.

At 7:59 I set aside my small screen where I was watching YouTube vids and hit the power button on the remote to fire up the big screen for the game. The TV began it’s warmup process and just as the screen came to life, our power went out.

There were no storms at the time. We didn’t hear the sound of a transformer blowing somewhere near us. Nor someone using a chainsaw that had possibly sent a tree towards a power line as happened last month two houses down the block.[1]

So I waited a few minutes in case it was one of the temporary outages that we sometimes experience.

No dice.

By the time I dug out my little radio, the Pacers were up by six early.

I checked our power company’s website but it did not show any outages in our area. I refreshed it a couple times without any updates, so went to the page where you report outages. Naturally it was not working. Our power company is truly the worst when it comes to customer relations. If there’s one page on a utility’s website that should never go down, it is their Report An Outage page!

So I called. The nice lady who eventually answered said there had been reports from 15 others in our area, they couldn’t identify what the cause was yet, but that a crew was on the way to investigate. By the time we got off the phone the outage map showed 48 people in our little area were without power. There weren’t any other large outages in the city, so I hoped that meant a quick resolution. By halftime, at least.

All I could do was wait and listen to the game on the radio. Which was what I did for the next three-and-a-half hours. Thus I missed much of the experience.

The Pacers hung with the Knicks until the fourth quarter, when they decided to stop playing defense and gave up a huge run despite Jalen Brunson sitting on the bench with five fouls. I was about to turn the radio off and go to bed late in the fourth quarter with the Pacers down 14. Time to get ready for game two.

Then Aaron Nesmith hit a 3. And another. And another. And another. Meanwhile the Knicks were missing shots, both from the field and the free throw line, and turning the ball over. When Nesmith hit his fifth 3 of the quarter it was suddenly a two-point game. The teams exchanged some free throws as the Pacers slowly ran out f time.

As I said last month, though, never count the Pacers out.

This was not nearly as cool on the radio, as I didn’t see Tyrese Haliburton’s frantic retreat to the arc, the insanely high carom of his shot off the rim, the ball falling through the net, nor the wild celebration. The Pacers radio guys went momentarily crazy but quickly saw that Haliburton’s toe was on the line and that the game would be going to overtime.

As tends to happen in these situations, the team that ended regulation on the run and had the miracle finish kept the momentum and the Pacers stole game one. Thank goodness for Haliburton, as it would have been tough to come back from giving the Reggie Miller choke sign to the crowd and then losing the game.

This is the third time the Pacers have done this in this year’s playoffs, coming from at least seven points down in the final 50 seconds of regulation.

I tried to tell you people about how this team never gets rattled or gives up. Maybe you’ll start listening to me now.

(Edit: It was terribly fun to follow Pacers bloggers and listen to the radio announcers as they tried to talk themselves into the comeback after Nesmith’s third 3. So many variations of “Is this really going to happen again?” which got progressively louder as the deficit got smaller.)

Three wins to the Finals.

Oh, and the power came back on just after 4:00 AM. First I noticed that our bathroom light was on. Then I heard our TV downstairs, blasting whatever TNT shows at that ungodly hour. Now I have a fun morning ahead of clearing our two fridges of all the perishables and making a trip to the grocery store to replace them.[2] In the midst of the outage I was doing research on whole-home generators. If we assume L is going to get a fat academic scholarship in two years, we might be able to make it work…


  1. During game one of the Milwaukee series. Maybe I should want the power to go off when the Pacers play.  ↩
  2. I got a text from our cable company while typing this, at 8:06 AM, that our service had been restored at 4:26 AM. Gee, thanks for that.  ↩

Pacers-Knicks

The long wait is over: the NBA Eastern Conference finals begin tonight. The Pacers have been sitting around for more than week as the Knicks closed out the Celtics and then the stupid NBA calendar got situated. Somehow the Western Conference finals started before the Eastern, even though the Thunder just finished their series against Denver on Sunday. Dumb.

Anyway, it’s finally here. This is a truly fascinating series and it’s been fun to hear the NBA podcasters I pay attention to twist themselves around trying to pick a winner. While most seem to land on Knicks in seven, they still have a hard time getting there.

For most reasons you have to throw out last year’s Pacers triumph in seven games in the semifinals. The Knicks were mega-banged up in that series and were literally falling apart by that final blowout. They’ve added Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges, and Mitchell Robinson is finally healthy. Meanwhile the Pacers are basically the same team, with Pascal Siakam having an entire season in Indy and Andrew Nembhard turning into a starter in his second NBA season. Bennedict Mathurin was out last year because of injury and is the only big change in Indiana’s main rotation.

Despite the roster changes I think the Pacers did take away a lot from winning last year. They won a game seven on the road, at the time the most anticipated basketball game in New York City in a generation. Although they were swept by the Celtics in the conference finals, they easily could have won three of those games. In the NBA there is often a stair-stepped process for teams to win a championship. The Pacers took a couple of those steps last year.

The stylistic matchup is terrific. Both teams try to wear down their opponents, but in very different ways. The Pacers are always forcing tempo, running on offense and pressing on defense. The Knicks are trying to batter you on both ends, the fouling-est team that never gets called for it on defense and then Jalen Brunson punishing people at the end of the shot clock on offense. Both teams’ strengths line up exactly with their opponents’ weaknesses. The Pacers are deep, athletic, and can really shoot it, but are small and basically don’t worry about offensive rebounding. The Knicks are thin, injury-prone, but have an ideal, modern, non-scoring big in Robinson, who is a shot-blocking fool and rebounding machine. To me he might be the key to the entire series, as the Pacers don’t have anyone who can match him. Both teams are built around point guards who are end-of-game wizards.

I think the Knicks are too reliant on Brunson. So I probably just jinxed them into Towns and Bridges having huge series. I think the Pacers do a much better job of always having another player step up, not just game-to-game but moment-to-moment. So now Siakam and Myles Turner are going to be dominated by Mitchell, Towns, and OG Anunoby.

The Pacers might shoot and run the Knicks out of the series. Josh Hart might get away with 1000 fouls on defense (then bitch on every dead ball about the calls he’s not getting) and take Tyrese Haliburton, Nembhard, and/or Aaron Nesmith out of what they want to do. We know Brunson is going to fall down 100 times a game, then lie there like he got shot, and draw fouls when he didn’t get touched.[1]

Yes, I’m already getting worked up about the refs and the Knicks. Just like last year when Turner is going to get called for two absolute garbage illegal screens in crunch time while Hart never comes close to fouling out.

This is a tough one.

If the Pacers can steal a win in one of the first games in New York, I say they win in six. If not, Knicks in seven. It’s going to be nerve wracking no matter who wins and in how many games.


  1. There currently is not a more infuriating star in the league than Brunson. By all accounts a very good guy. Gets soooo much out of his body and skills. You have to admire him. But there is not a better player in the league right now at drawing phantom fouls, acting like he just had a season-ending injury then hitting a step-back 3 moments later, and all the sly stuff he does on offense like grabbing defender’s arms or jerseys then pushing off that he NEVER gets called for.  ↩

Long Weekend Notes

We are in it.

Grad season has arrived. That and some other activities kept us very busy over the past few days. Let’s go day-by-day.


Friday

We lucked out and just missed the bad storms that rolled through our area Friday evening. We had our fingers crossed a little extra harder than normal because we had two fridges full of catered food for our Saturday activities. We did get heavy rain and high winds. But the power stayed on, thankfully.

The worst storms in Indiana passed about an hour south of us, including a tornado that was on the ground for about an hour. It was the first time in a while I’ve spent several hours watching severe storm coverage on TV, something that always gets the Kansan in me fired up. Foreshadowing!

We actually had two rounds of storms so I was able to pump the water off our pool between them. We have so much pollen in the air right now that the water after round one looked more like pea soup than rain water. Disgusting.

I was about to head to bed a little after 11:00 when I noticed the sky to the east lighting up. I checked the radar but there was nothing on it. The lightning kept getting more intense and, five minutes later, there was a massive red blob on the radar. Thankfully it was moving away from us. The storms were supposed to be over but there was so much energy left in the environment that this one blew up out of nowhere. Spring in the Midwest.


Saturday

Big day. First off, it was C’s 19th birthday. In classic middle child fashion, it fell on a day when we had to focus on something else. She celebrated by getting up pretty early (for her) to hustle down to the Southside of Indy for the grad party of one of her best friends.

The something else was hosting a bridal shower for our old neighbors, whose oldest daughter is getting married in August. Their youngest daughter leaves for six weeks in England next week and mom and dad will both left the country for a week on Monday, so this was the one weekend that worked. C was a good sport about it, plus they brought her a special cake.

M had “moved” into her new Cincinnati apartment for the summer on Thursday. I put “moved” in quotes because she just took a few things as the girl she’s subleasing from left all her furniture. She drove home Saturday morning as she is a bridesmaid in the wedding and was going to help run the game portion of the shower.

We had about 50 people over and spent all morning and early afternoon prepping for them. While the storms passing took the heat and humidity with them – it was downright nasty Thursday and Friday afternoons – they did leave strong winds in their wake. We had a big canopy over the tables and had to ratchet it down with six buckets full of water to keep it from blowing away. The entire day was a challenge to secure items so they wouldn’t get tossed, flipped, or otherwise ejected from their proper spot.

The shower itself went well, at least from our perspective. It was also a nice practice run for us since we are hosting a graduation party for C and two friends on Memorial Day. We now know we need to make a sign for the driveway so people don’t try to park in our yard or block our narrow street and instead use the parking lot at the YMCA next door. Like the invitation clearly stated but which no one seemed to read.


Sunday

To start the day, I went over to the Y with L to rebound for her first true shooting session in over three months. She’s been shooting a little, mostly form shooting, but was just cleared to shoot jump shots last week. Her form was crap and she got winded quickly, but I liked that when she made shots, they were ripping through the net. This was a nice milestone almost exactly 90 days after her surgery.

Our big event of this day came in the evening: C’s baccalaureate mass. Parking was a mess, as always. The CHS gym was crowded, muggy, and uncomfortable. Also as always. And the mass was too long. Again, as always.

One of the speakers noted that this class arrived on campus during the second year of Covid. At their orientation mass, they sat on the football field, socially distanced from each other, with masks on. Sunday we were crowded into a gym together again.

After Mass we took the girls to Portillo’s – C’s choice for her belated birthday dinner – then came home for delayed birthday cake.

I was about to go to bed when I saw a blurb about a tornado near where one of my college buddies lives in Texas. I fired up the YouTube weather geek network and found instead of the Texas storm – he was fine – they were focused on a massive, angry storm that was barreling towards the part of Kansas where I was born and my grandparents lived. So I spent the next hour watching storm trackers and storm chasers as a big tornado roared across fields and, eventually, a small, unincorporated town.


Monday

Graduation day!

L and I kicked it off by going to an early PT session. She was officially cleared to begin some light jogging, working up to actual running next week. Still a couple more milestones to pass but getting back on the court is a little closer every day.

Graduation was, for the first time I believe, held at a new suburban events center. M’s two years ago was outdoors on the CHS baseball field, on a sunny, warm day. Weather didn’t matter Monday since we were indoors. But it was a perfectly pleasant evening. And the venue was nice, with ample parking and plenty of room inside for families.

The ceremony was pretty much like every graduation ceremony. A little long but still checking in just under two hours. So glad we sent our girls to a school where classes are under 300 kids.[1] The big suburban districts around us often have classes of 1000 kids or more. Even chopping them into two graduation nights makes for a long evening of listening to names.

Afterwards we had C’s grandparents over for cake. She opened her first grade time capsule that was sealed up 11 years ago. The highlight was finding her Daisy Scout vest in it. A picture of her and her friends in their vests from first grade had just hit my Time Hop yesterday.

M had to jump in her car and make a late drive back to Cincy as she starts her summer internship this morning.

On top of all that, over the weekend I watched a decent amount of Indy 500 qualifying – which had some real drama this year[2] – a little of the PGA, plenty of the NBA playoffs and the Royals-Cardinals series. Also in there I managed to let the pool chemistry get bad and I’m fighting to get the water clear again in time for L to have friends over Friday and so it looks decent for our grad party next week. I hate the first couple weeks of each pool season. It seems like something always goes wrong and I’m in a battle with something in the water.


  1. M’s class was 250-ish, C’s 275, L’s started right at 300, which is as big as CHS will let them get.  ↩
  2. As a bonus news dropped Friday that the race will be sold out and, in a rare occurrence, will be shown live on TV in Indiana.  ↩

Reader’s Notebook, 5/19/25

I’m going to delay the weekend notes until tomorrow since we have a rather important event tonight. Fortunately I have two books that I need to share some thoughts about.


Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! – David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker
Truly one of the most fun books I’ve read in a long time. The three men behind the movie Airplane! come together for an oral history of both how their partnership started and the lengthy, arduous process to get their classic comedy made. There are plenty of insights from other people, both from the cast and within the entertainment industry. I laughed almost as much reading this as I would had I been watching the movie, something I’m about to do again for the first time in ages.

My favorite piece of trivia that was new to me: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s part was originally written for Pete Rose. But as the film was being shot during the baseball season, Rose was unavailable and they had to scramble for a replacement. I can’t imagine Rose would have been anywhere near as shocking and funny as Kareem.

Also, fuck Pete Rose. For many, many reasons.


Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live – Susan Morrison
After waiting for months my hold on the newest Lorne Michaels biography finally came in. I’m not sure if this was essential, especially since I just read one of the great Saturday Night Live accountings earlier this year. But I heard Morrison on Bill Simmons’ podcast around the time her book came out and the access she got made it seem essential to an old SNL-head like me.

As a biography of a person rather than show, it obviously has a different focus. We learn all about Michaels’ upbringing in Toronto and the early days of his career in Canada and the US before he began SNL. We see how he developed his comedic point of view, both from absorbing the works of others and through his various failures early in his career.

In the SNL years, like so many other books that follow the show’s history, the earlier years get more attention than the later ones. Many anecdotes I’ve read multiple times before appear here. It was interesting, though, to see what ones Morrison highlighted or put into different contexts than past writers have done. There are plenty of quotes from many of the most famous performers in the show’s history. Big surprise that Chevy Chase’s reputation as an ass is confirmed for the millionth time.

We’ve always heard of Michaels’ various personality traits that have a profound effect on the show and its cast members. He can be cold and distant, cruel and direct, inscrutable and maddening. He encourages and supports people in their weakest moments and then ignores them when they triumph. He is a name dropper of the first order, and casually mentions his friendships with some of the most famous people in the world and vacations at some of the most exclusive parts of the world like everyone else, including new cast members with a couple hundred dollars to their names, has the same experiences. He’s kind of a weird dude.

Morrison gets at where all that comes from. The final portrait isn’t necessarily all that flattering. You can admire the institution he created while thinking he could have done some things differently over the past 50 years. I feel like that’s something that has taken me over 50 years to figure out for myself: you can like someone’s work while also thinking that they are kind of a dick.

Friday Playlist

We’ve reached what may be the busiest 10–12 days of the year for our family. Thus I’m putting this together Thursday evening, which could lead us in some surprising directions.

“Friday On My Mind” – Brògeal
This seems like a good way to start. When writing about this band, Tom Breihan said, “They look and sound like the most Scottish motherfuckers you ever saw in your entire life…” which might be the greatest description of a band ever.

“Better Than You” – Briston Maroney
A standard, solid Maroney jam.

“My Love Will Bring You Home” – Allo Darlin’
This band was responsible for the wonderful “Capricornia,” my 13th favorite song of 2012. Their last album was 11 years ago. They broke up nine years ago. But they are back together, and seem to have locked right back into that joyful yet also melancholy sound of their first go-round.

“I Broke My World” – Alien Boy
I dig this band’s fuzzy, garagey sound. While putting together their latest album they said they listened to a lot of 90s music, including Smashing Pumpkins and Third Eye Blind. I can hear both of those bands in this track.

“Come Alive” – Phantogram
I’m not sure if I ever listened to Phantogram’s latest album, which came out seven months ago. But each time a hear a song from it, I like it.

“Sports Gun” – Lawn
I was almost positive this band featured the lead singer of Parquet Courts. It is not him. I think I like this band’s sound better than PC’s. They seem less snotty and more fun. Better guitars, too.

“Bitch Heart” – Frankie Cosmos
A fun song about how we are in a constant battle between comfort and cutting loose.

“Solid” – Cut Copy
I feel like I used to like this band, but even digging through the old iTunes library on my network drive doesn’t show that I had any of their songs. Memory is weird sometimes.

“Sister Jack” – Spoon
This week’s anniversary album is Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, released 20 years ago. I have vivid memories of listening to it on my iPod in the basement of our old house while trying to nap while S would do things with Baby M upstairs. Here’s Stereogum’s anniversary writeup. One of my top 5 Spoon songs.

“Go Your Own Way” – Fleetwood Mac
Nope, not including this because Will Ferrell sings it in his current commercial. Rather, it is here because of a delightful development in our house. L has been getting into vinyl recently. She has albums from a few of her favorite current artists like Frank Ocean, SZA, and Leon Bridges. A few weeks ago she came home with Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which made me raise my eyebrows. A few days ago she said they are now her favorite band. I told her she should go find one of several documentaries about the making of that album so she could learn about what a mess the group was at the time. “I’ve watched a couple of them already,” was her response. I told her the Seventies were a wild time. I think she wants to read and/or watch Daisy Jones & the Six now, knowing it was loosely based on Mac. Surprising all around!

Thursday Links

A few more links to pieces some of you may be interested in.


I love thinking about how this will delight some Star Wars geeks, and make others super angry.

The Phony Physics of Star Wars Are a Blast


Sadly I didn’t find this recent interview with Bob Mould until after I saw him last week.

What are your feelings right now about the state of the country?
It’s the end of an era, this great experiment we put together. I don’t know how we get out of this. I’m 64. I’ve seen a lot. Nothing like this. I don’t even know where to start. Every single person, whether you stand up against the MAGA movement or whether you’re part of it, you’re going to feel it, unless you’re in the very tippity, tippity top of the one percent or maybe the top two percent of income earners in America.

‘THIS IS WAR’: BOB MOULD ON AGING INDIE, HIS MUSIC’S LEGACY, AND WHERE THE U.S. GOES FROM HERE


The headline for this piece is hardly an original thought – I’ve had it many times over the past nine-ish years – but there’s never a bad time for giving Carl Hiaasen some attention and props. So many of his books are similar – if still enjoyable – that I haven’t read a new one in years. I’ve added his most recent to my list.

Yet even the most detestable characters are more complicated than they appear at first glance: Hiaasen aims to create, as he once put it, villains whom “people don’t want to shoot right away.”

We’re All Living In A Carl Hiaasen Novel


Perhaps this should be a launching point for a longer piece by me, but I figured it’s better just to link to the article and share a couple thoughts about Myles Turner. It’s hard to believe he’s been in Indy so long. His career has been odd, as mentioned in the piece. But a funny thing happens when a player hangs around long enough: they become beloved. That he’s in the center of the success of the current edition of the Pacers is as satisfying as it is surprising.

Myles Turner made me cry: On his decade-long journey with the Indiana Pacers


Fantastic news! Although this begs the question as to why NBC even exists anymore if they are going to hide this on Peacock.

Amy Poehler, Mike Schur Reunite for Peacock Comedy ‘Dig’


I feel seen.

THIS FIVE-HUNDRED-WORD BUMPER STICKER ON MY TESLA EXPLAINS WHY I’M NOT A BAD PERSON

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