D's Notebook

Author: DB (Page 1 of 358)

Friday Playlist

February 21, 2025 /

A crazy week in our house, for a bunch of reasons, so my comments on this week’s batch of music will be even more half-assed than normal. Never fear, the songs are still good!

“Focus” – Preoccupations
This band’s sound never changes much, even though their name has changed over the years. They still have this great, timeless, post-punk sound.

“Champagne Taste” – Sunflower Bean
Maybe a little Veruca Salt…salt? in this latest SB track?

“Draggin’ On” – Pink Chameleons
This band reminds me of The Jesus and Mary Chain with the psychedelic slider cranked all the way up.

“This Town” – Brooke Combe
If I gave you a million chances, would you ever have guessed that this wonderful piece of neo-soul comes from Scotland? Doesn’t exactly fit the standard, Scottish sound, does it? And Combe isn’t even from Glasgow or Edinburgh proper, she’s from a tiny town on the far outskirts of Edinburgh.

“Pushing Daisies” – Star 99
If you took mid-90s J. Mascis, in his Dinosaur Jr. form, and added a heathy dose of classic R.E.M., it might sound like this San Jose band.

“Volume Control” – Swervedriver
This band doesn’t sound like anyone but themselves. Swervedriver making a comeback about 10 years ago and then sticking around to keep making more solid music was a very good thing.

“Damage” – Salim Nourallah
Two weeks in a row we have a song that features vocals that sound like Soul Asylum singer Dave Piner. That seems super random, no?

“If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Nest” – Manic Street Preachers
The Manics have new music out, which is ok. But it made me think of their greatest song and how it applies to the current state of the world.

Jayhawk Talk: Hopeless

February 20, 2025 /

I’m starting this post Wednesday as I sit in the waiting room while L gets her foot operated on. I thought about just skipping this topic, but since I have time to kill, I might as well share a some thoughts about the Jayhawks.

I don’t know of any way to label the last few weeks as anything other than the biggest on-court disaster this program has faced in over 40 years. It seems like the team lost whatever heart they had on those back-to-back Saturdays when they first blew the lead late against Houston – twice – and then coughed up a 21-point lead against Baylor. I’m not sure how much heart this team had to begin with, but whatever it did possess was crushed into meaningless dust after those two losses.

Last Saturday’s game against Utah was a perfect example. Utah is not a good team and has one good player. The Jayhawks let that one guy get open continually and drain 3’s so the Utes built up an immediate big lead. KU showed almost no effort on either end of the court, were routinely late with switches on defense (if they switched at all) and when they were aggressive on offense, it was reckless, not calculated and controlled.

They made a run just before halftime, let the Utes stretch it out again, came all the way back one more time, then absolutely fell on their faces in the closing minutes. They somehow kept Utah from scoring for nearly seven minutes and still trailed when they finally made a shot.

Rumor has it there was an intense “conversation” in the locker room after the game.

A lot of good that did.

As bad as Saturday was, Tuesday night against BYU was so much worse. Thank goodness I used needing to get up early to bring L to the hospital as an excuse to not watch the game. I expected bad news Wednesday morning but was utterly shocked when I saw KU lost by 34 points. Thirty four.

Yep, this team is toast. Even if the roster was ravaged by the combination of flu, Covid, and norovirus that seems to be waylaying most of the country, that would not be an excuse for how they have completely fallen apart. They just don’t play hard enough, or ever have five guys on the court who seem pissed off enough about the way things are going to change the team’s path.

There is plenty of blame to go around, and I’ve addressed some of those targets in previous posts.

It has reached the point, though, where everything lands on Bill Self and his coaching staff. They recruited the wrong players, or at least the wrong combination of players. They haven’t found a way to get the kids they have to work together. There are apparently accountability issues. Schisms because of how different players are treated differently. And so on. We’ve reached the point where there are 1000 rumors about what is wrong, so it’s hard to know which are accurate and which are just speculation by frustrated fans.

All that is 100% on the coaches.

I think they looked too much at the resumes of transfers and not enough at how those players would fit together, or into Self’s system. Worse, he has seemed at a loss at how to make adjustments to style of play and/or how he manages minutes/personalities to find a way to get these mis-matched pieces to work together.

Every Big 10 fan I talked to said AJ Storr would not be able to guard and would drive Self crazy. That’s been the case since before the first game.

Rylan Griffen was a solid defensive player at Alabama. But Nate Oates plays a completely different style of defense from Self. I’m not sure if Self should have been able to see that Griffen’s skill set did not fit his switch-heavy preference. I do think he saw a terrific shooter and figured the rest of it would work out. The problem being Griffen might be the worst defender of the Self era – he literally falls down for no reason multiple times each game – thus can’t stay on the court, thus can’t get in a shooting rhythm, and has become a wasted scholarship.

Zeke Mayo has done exactly what he was asked to do, come in and be a scoring guard. But because of Storr and Griffen’s failures and DaJuan Harris’ limitations, way more has been asked of Mayo than expected. When he’s good, he’s been very good, and arguably KU’s most consistent player. But too often he’s forced to handle the ball against pressure and commits terrible turnovers, or forces shots because no one else on his team can hit one.

Nick Timberlake was a disaster last year.

Bill Self struggled so much connecting with Remy Martin that it nearly ruined the 2022 National Championship team.

Joe Yesufu never found his role.

Cam Martin was a bizarre first signing of the portal era and a waste of a scholarship.

Kevin McCullar was great, until he got injured and disappeared last year.

Hunter Dickinson was also great last year, also until he got injured. While he’s had some good games this year, he’s been far less consistent and missed way too many close shots for a guy who is 7’2”. He wrecks KU’s defense, which a lot of anonymous coaches suggested would be the case before he arrived in Lawrence. And while we don’t know for sure if he has been a problem in the locker room, there is plenty of smoke to suggest that his personality and effort is part of the problem. He also seems to have lost that edge he used played with.

Then there’s the whole long list of high school recruits that have either not shown up in Lawrence, have gotten hurt, who have transferred away after one year, or just have been duds.

Seriously, over the past four high school recruiting classes, only Gradey Dick and Flory Bidunga have come close to reaching their potential. To be fair, KJ Adams over-achieved, but he was seen as a career role player. The fact he’s a three-year starter shows another issue with KU’s recruiting. Someone, Ernest Udeh and/or Zuby Ejiofor most notably who both fled when Dickinson signed, should have taken KJ’s minutes three years ago. That never happened.

The staff gets bonus points for grabbing Johnny Furphy at the last minute in the summer of 2023, but he developed so much faster than expected that he only lasted a year on campus. Perhaps if he had stayed he would have fixed some of this year’s issues, and kept one of this year’s transfer disasters from getting his scholarship.

Beyond that group, the high school recruits are a bunch of guys who washed out at KU, and often at their second and third schools as well. Now a couple of these classes were put together under the cloud of the NCAA investigation. Still, the lack of success over four classes doesn’t bode well for identifying players and developing them the way the staff used to.

Add a bunch of transfers on top of those failures, and you have an old roster that didn’t come of age at KU. They didn’t pick up the cultural DNA from the guys in front of them. They didn’t go to Ames and Waco and Morgantown and Manhattan and steal games that seemed lost with 2:00 left because some guy who had been on the roster for four years made a couple of big plays late.

That’s a recipe for disaster in modern basketball.

There is zero hope for this year’s team. This was supposed to be the easiest six game stretch of the season, and they are 1–3 so far, with the one win coming against a then winless in the Big 12 Colorado team that we had to sweat out until the final minutes. Dickinson isn’t going to suddenly start shooting 70% from the field and moving quickly on defense. Harris isn’t going to suddenly stop taking terrible shots and start guarding the way he used to. Griffen and Storr aren’t suddenly going to start playing at the level they did a year ago at their previous schools. Mayo won’t suddenly stop turning the ball over and start scoring 30 points a night to carry the team. And so on.

We Jayhawks fans have always had the hope of next year when we lost to some stupid team in March. There were always new, highly ranked recruits coming in to join with young guys on the roster who would improve. There was always the certainty that Bill Self would find a way to mold a team that was greater than the sum of its individual parts.

For the first time in the Self era, I’m worried about what’s ahead. Even if Bidunga returns (Please, Lord, let Flory stay!) and Darryn Peterson and Bryson Tiller are as good as advertised. Because I’m not sure I trust Self to pick the right transfers to slot in with that group. And there won’t be those old heads on the roster to guide these young bucks. And I’m worried that between going all-in with transfers to chase a third title, his health scare, and the utter depression of back-to-back preseason number one teams falling apart, Self might have lost his mojo.

I hate to be defeatist, but I guess I should appreciate that we had a pretty good 40 year run and hope that this era of relative shittiness will pass quickly.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my YouTube feed suddenly got flooded with highlights from classic KU games over the past week. I mean, once you watch one you’re going to get more, right? But there were several from the tournament runs in ’22, ’18, and ’12 that popped up before I watched any of them. Algorithm always knows.

Success

February 19, 2025 /

A quick note to share that L had her surgery this morning. Everything seemed to go well, no surprises, and she did great. She’s upstairs in bed, still groggy from the anesthesia and waiting for the pain meds to kick in. She’ll be home for a few days but hopefully back to school next week and on the path to healing.

SNL 50

February 18, 2025 /

 

Saturday Night Live is one of the core pop cultural tentpoles that helped mold the person I am. From when I was first able to watch its prime time specials in the late Seventies, to when I started watching the show live in the early Eighties (along with the Seventies re-runs that played after midnight in Kansas City) it help establish my sense of humor and gave me a base to form friendships with like-minded classmates and neighbors.[1]

One of the SNL moments that had the biggest impact and stuck with me the longest was the 15th anniversary show, which aired on September 24, 1989. This was about a month into my freshman year of college, and several of us crowded around the small TV in my dorm room to watch. As we laughed, we could hear the laughs of other fools echoing up-and-down our hallway. We were not alone.

The key, though, was that I had my mom record the special for me. Eventually that show became one of the most watched tapes in my collection. And the same for so many other young SNL fans. Soon we were quoting not just Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey from the current cast, or Eddie Murphy who had the biggest impact on our part of our generation, but Dan Aykroyd saying “His name is spelled T-I-T, I-A-N, Titian, honest to God!” and Steve Martin’s, “Hey, who’s the barber here?” and countless other SNL cast members and hosts that our parents had watched live but we had just discovered. Those references almost became passwords to enter certain friend groups. You’d be hanging out with kids from another town or school and someone would mention how the Pope just waived – he just waived it – the fourth miracle for Mother Seton and it would be on.

That 15th anniversary was primarily a clip show, because there was a lot less material to work through. Sunday’s 50th anniversary show was basically a riff on the standard format of the show, with live sketches, musical acts, and pre-recorded bits with only a few classic clips sprinkled into the 200 or so minutes the show ran.

I thought it was very good. But fitting for SNL, every high point had an almost immediate downer to balance it. I think that was mostly because they were trying to squeeze so much in. There were awkward transitions in almost each live piece where one comedian, or set of them, would be hustled off the stage and replaced with others.

(Also, I should admit before I break things down that I had to leave the house to pick up L when Weekend Update started.[2] I was gone for about an hour and decided to finish the show Monday. So I may have ruined some of the momentum of the program.)

That was most notable, and damaging, in the Black Jeopardy sketch. This should have been the absolute high point of the night. Eddie Murphy doing a spot-on Tracy Morgan impersonation with the real Morgan standing right next to him was unbelievable! “I REFUSE TO INGEST THREE CHEESES!” is one of the funniest things ever said on the program.

Then Eddie snuck off and was replaced by Tom Hanks, repeating his outrageous MAGA voter from 2016. Only the transition was rough, the joke written for the moment fell completely flat, and a wonderful moment collapsed. If they had let Eddie riff for another three minutes, we’re talking about one of the great sketches ever, in a live anniversary show that had no dress rehearsal, no less!

But, again, I get it. There was a lot to cram in even with over three hours allotted to the program. There was no good way to pull this show off, and had they not done this in-sketch replacements, a lot of classic performers wouldn’t have been on air.

Many elements of the show were predictable. Paul Simon as the opening act was a no brainer. Pairing him with Sabrina Carpenter was a wonderful way to tie the shows roots to its most current version. Her line about not being born – nor were her parents – when Simon first hosted the show was fantastic. She’s a gem.

Like a later performer, Simon clearly doesn’t have his vocal fastball anymore, but he had to be there and Carpenter’s voice is nice enough to compliment his yet not so big she overpowered him. Plus she’s one of the few singers shorter than him, so it made for a nice visual.

Miley Cyrus and Brittany Howard covering “Nothing Compares 2 U” did not work for me at all. Both are incredibly powerful singers, but there was zero magic in their performance. And it was, again, a sign of Lorne Michaels the politician. Where he turned his back on Sínead O’Connor after she tore the photo of the Pope on the show in 1992, he has in recent years acted like he supported her. I thought the selection of this song, no matter who sang it, was a bit cynical.

Lil Wayne? I fast forwarded through that. It seemed like he was rapping over a recorded vocal track in the few seconds I watched. That, more than the song, put me off. Especially after watching what Kendrick did a week ago.

And, finally, Paul McCartney comes out to close the show with the medley from Abbey Road. Paul is one of those dudes who never seemed to age. And, at first glance, he still looks remarkably young. Then you look at him longer and he genuinely looks creepy. His face reminds me of one of those zonked out kids in The Wall, with their eyes and mouths wide O’s of shock. And I hate to speak ill of one of the greatest singers ever, but there was zero power in his voice. It was a melancholy ending to the night. But maybe that’s what Lorne wanted.

Steve Martin was perfect as the monologist.

Combining Lawrence Welk/Dooneese with Robert Goulet was another odd pairing. Dooneese is one of those characters you either get or really don’t get. Kristen Wiig usually makes me laugh until I cry, and that was the case Sunday, but that whole skit was a bit strange to me.

The Scared Straight sketch that featured both Murphy and Will Ferrell might have summed up the night best. On the one hand, you had the two greatest performers in the show’s history in a scene together. That alone delighted a lot of us SNL heads. While there were some great lines in the sketch, though, there were also a lot of moments that were rough. Ferrell seemed to mess up a whole series of lines, and not in a funny way. That scene needed better writing and a lot of tightening.

I enjoyed Bronx Beat. Debbie Downer recycled too many lines from THE classic DD sketch. As did the Miss Refferty alien abduction sketch, although that one worked just because Kate McKinnon never gives less than full effort.

I honestly expected more from Weekend Update, perhaps a cycling-though of all the living hosts. No matter how awkward and cumbersome that would have been, they all needed to be at least behind the desk even if they didn’t all get a line. However, Dan Aykroyd did not attend, so perhaps that alone blew it up.

Bill Murray’s ranking of the WU hosts, though, was fantastic. His timing and side eye looks are so great. He managed to both extend an olive branch to Chevy Chase and skewer him at the same time. And his payoff at #1 was super funny.

Where was Chevy, by the way? I only saw him in the closing credits as cast members waved from the stage. There was chatter on Simmons’ pod that Chevy was poorly received at Friday’s concert, and hints that he remains difficult to deal with. Not shocking, but disappointing.

Dana Carvey and Bill Hader also being MIA was equally as disappointing.

I am not a huge Adam Sandler fan, but his song was one of the best moments of the night. Normal callbacks, some insider stuff, and then the emotional shout outs to several deceased cast members. That was good stuff.

I loved how the In Memoriam segment was not for cast members who have passed, but for sketches that, for one reason or another, became problematic over the years. Listen, it’s ok to laugh at stuff that we thought was funny 20, 30, 40, and now 50 years ago but which you can’t say today. Well, most of it. There’s some shit you should never say. I thought this segment was a good way of showing how tastes change as the times do.

In the end, the show was about perfect. Not because every joke hit, but because it reflected the flaws that have always been present in the show. On even the best episodes, there was a clunker of a sketch somewhere along the way, or a musical guest who did not deliver. Or an ambitious sketch that should have run for 2:30 that stretched out over 5:00 and you just wanted it to end. Despite the weaknesses in Sunday’s show, I still mostly laughed through the entire thing.

I don’t watch SNL anymore. I tried to get into it a few years back but it just didn’t stick. I’ll still check out sketches that people talk about the next week when they hit YouTube, which seems like the way a lot of people consume the show these days. I’m glad it’s still around, though. It’s not really aimed at me any more, which is fine. Whether I get what they are doing these days doesn’t matter. Because, like the music of your teen years you can never escape, I’ll always have the connection to the Eddie years and the late 80s/early 90s cast.

I have not watched the other stuff that popped up over the weekend on Peacock. I’m currently boycotting Peacock and, as much as I wanted to see these pieces, decided I would put them off until my war with Peacock ends.[3]

Here are a bunch of pieces I worked through over the weekend, though.

THE 50 BEST ‘SNL’ COMMERCIAL PARODIES OF ALL TIME

The Best Saturday Night Live Sketches According To The People Who Made Them

After 50 years, Ars staffers pick their favorite Saturday Night Live sketches

The Lorne Michaels Book-Event Thread Is the Reply-All Disaster We Need

  1. A few of them are in this site’s audience. What up?  ↩
  2. She went to birthday party about 30 minutes away and the roads were slick, so I thought it best that we drive her rather than turn her loose in snow for the first time.  ↩
  3. Long story short, we are supposed to get Peacock for free after our last cable package upgrade, but it has never worked properly. One day I spent literally two hours working with the support chat feature and eventually I was told they couldn’t help me and I needed to use Google to find someone who could. THEY LITERALLY TOLD ME TO GOOGLE FOR AN ANSWER! I’m done with those fools for a while.  ↩

Weekend High School Hoops Notes

February 17, 2025 /

I would wish you all a happy Presidents’ Day but, well, you know.

Speaking of bullshit, I’m splitting what would normally be in the Weekend Notes post into two entries this week to separate the fun from the bullshit. Although there will still be some bullshit in this post.

Regional Champs!

Saturday we drove about an hour west of the city to Greencastle for the regional round of the Indiana State basketball tournament.[1] Indiana high school sports are full of oddness. One of the oddest aspects of the basketball tournament is that each regional site hosts two games but those games aren’t necessarily related. In Greencastle, the early game was a 2A contest followed by our 3A matchup. We had no need to show up early to scout a possible semi-state opponent. It has something to do with geography and trying to keep teams from having to travel too far. I’m sure there’s some formula involved that makes sense, but there are always some weird assignments.

I was a little worried that our opponent, Northview, would pack the gym since they had an easy 30 minute drive down a state highway where we had to drive halfway around the 465 loop then halfway to Terre Haute. NV did bring a decent group of fans, but since the Greencastle gym holds nearly 5000 people, they didn’t seem super intimidating.

As big as this gym was, it was one of the quietest games I’ve ever attended. I think it was because our two sections on opposite sides of the court probably didn’t fill close to half the total seats, leaving lots of empty space, and because the building has a domed roof that all the noise seemed to disappear into. I heard our coach better than I’ve heard her at our home games when we have maybe 200 folks in attendance.[2]

The team got to bus over Thursday afternoon to practice there once before the actual games which was cool. That gave the event a more big time feel than sectionals.

Anyway, the game is what you care about, right?

NV came in at 20–6 on the season, but hadn’t played a very impressive schedule. I looked at the scouting report L brought home and it seemed like their offense revolved around a quick point guard and a big wing who worked out of the high post. I was confident but still super nervous when the game started.

Like most things in life, this was needless anxiety.

Our senior point guard, who is a D1 soccer recruit and rarely shoots, hit her first 3 of the season on our opening possession. On the next two possessions we worked carefully against NV’s sagging zone and got multiple shots in close that we could not get to drop. Eventually we hit another and that was, kind of, the game.

We led 9–0 after one quarter. Our trapping press destroyed their offense. We were doubling their big and daring their guard to shoot. We got nearly every rebound.

They finally hit two free throws to start the second quarter and basically played us even that period, leading 18–7 at the break.

After halftime we lost our composure. NV swapped their sagging 2–3 zone for a trapping 1–3–1 one and we turned the ball over on our first four possessions. And each turnover was more because of dumbness on our part than good D on theirs. We threw the same entry pass three times and each one got knocked away easily because the pass was horrible and our girl posting didn’t seal her defender. Midway through the quarter NV hit a 3 and suddenly it was a six-point game. We called a timeout. Their fans were fired up. Their players jumping on each other on the way to the bench.

That was a good time out. Moments later we got three straight steals out of our press. We kept threatening to completely blow them out but were just careless enough with the ball that we never got the lead over 15 points. The game was basically over with three minutes left as we casually tossed the ball around to kill time. Eventually they would foul us, we’d hit a free throw or two, they’d go down and hit a quick shot, then we’d start killing time again.

That point guard who hit the opening 3 for us? We learned during the game that she had been home with 103° fever two days earlier. She looked absolutely beat the entire second half. If the NV coach was smarter he would have attacked her when she brought the ball up. She looked like she might fall over if anyone pressured her very hard. In fact, both teams looked utterly wiped out for the entire fourth quarter. You’d think it was a 70–65 game, not one where both teams struggled to combine for 60 points. I wonder how many players would have tested positive for flu, Covid, or something else had we lined them up for nasal swabs after the game. Good thing it wasn’t a close game because I’m not sure either team had the energy to make winning plays.

Our coach cleared the bench with 55 seconds left and the reserves dribbled out the clock.

38–23, first regional title in 24 years. An impressive win that would have really raised some eyebrows if we could have hit our easiest shots. We missed 10–12–14? shots right at the rim, including multiple layups on breaks. We had at least three possessions where we grabbed two offensive rebounds but couldn’t do anything with them. We were very careless with the ball, something that needs to improve next week. Which, I guess, gives the coach something to focus on in film today.

It was also one of those games where even when we screwed up, things still went our way. There were several times when we turned it over, only to steal it right back or force NV to throw it away. One of our players turned the ball over on three straight possessions, then she drilled a 3 on the fourth possession.

Our defense continues to be fantastic, going back to our sectional opener against Chatard. I’m not sure why it took us so long to start pressing and trapping, but it has been working.

It’s been really fun to watch the girls enjoy this run. Each time they started to build momentum this season, they would have an all-around bad game to ruin it. But they’ve now won five in a row, six of seven, and nine of 11. It’s not always pretty, but they’ve been getting it done. Their work has been paying off and all the smiles and hugs after the games the past two weeks will be my lasting memory of this run.

Other than L cheering from the bench and getting to hold the trophies and cut the nets, my favorite memory (so far) came after Saturday’s game. I saw our senior who had carried us in sectionals but struggled Saturday being hugged by her dad. This dude and his wife are very tough on T. Like ridiculously tough. But I caught him hugging her, whispering to her with a smile on his face, then giving her a kiss. I don’t think much of this dad because of the stories I’ve heard about how he treats her. This moment, though? Fantastic.

A new feature to the Indiana state tournament is keeping the semi-state bracket empty until after the regional round. Unlike the NCAA tournament, where you can plot out every team you might play on your path to the Final Four, in Indiana you only know your sectional and regional brackets. The tournament is split north-south from the beginning, and Sunday the four remaining teams in each half of each class were drawn in a live broadcast to determine who plays each other next week.

We knew we were in the tougher half of the draw, which featured us (#9) plus numbers 3, 4, and 10. The North side of 3A has numbers 1, 2, 22, and 70.[3] And even though it is a blind draw, we knew exactly what would happen. Sure enough, our ping pong ball popped up first, immediately followed by Roncalli, a Catholic school on the southside of Indy. For some reason the schools stopped playing each other two years ago, but before that it was an annual game that while not as intense as our rivalry with Chatard, was still a highlighted one on the schedule.[4]

We are 18–9. They are 17–8. They’ve won eight straight. They lost to several teams we beat, but I also am pretty sure they were missing a starter for much of December. They seem healthy and locked in. They also have a sophomore who is their best player, and was largely responsible for L’s kickball team losing both of the City championship games they played in. So we need to beat her.

Now, the real peach of this whole deal is where we play them. While the matchups for semi-state were selected Sunday, the host sites were already locked in. The IHSAA allegedly looks at each semi-state quad of teams and tries to send them to the host site that makes the most sense for travel, how many fans each school will bring, and so on.

Our quad features the two Indy teams, one from halfway between Indy and Cincinnati, and one from Evansville. So, naturally, we’ve been sent to play in New Albany, which is two hours south, just across the river from Louisville. Like so much about Indiana high school sports, it makes no sense. Although I guess if you draw a triangle between Indy and the two other schools, New Albany falls on the base of that line.[5]

As an extra bonus we have the first game, which tips at 10:00 AM. So we’ll be leaving our house by 7:30. Earlier if the weather is bad. The team will bus down the night before because otherwise that makes for potentially a super long day.

Why a super long day, you ask? Because the teams that win the early games (the second is at noon) get to hang around for the semi-state championship game. Which is scheduled for 8:00 PM.

For years I’ve heard stories about happy fans from small towns taking over other cities as they burn time Saturday afternoon before the semi-state championship game. Now we have a chance to live that experience.

I mean, I want our girls to win. But I’m not going to be mad if we come home after the first game. L isn’t even playing, for crying out loud. We may have to pack sleeping bags so we can put the seats down and nap in the car if we do have to stay. I guess we can drive over to Louisville and kill time there, although, as you’ll see in a moment, L will not be in walking around mode that day.

The important part, though, is the Irish added another trophy and set of nets to their collection, the program’s first regional title in 24 years. Might as well get the first semi-state one in 25 years since we’re making the drive.

Under the Knife

L was again on the bench in street clothes Saturday. They have a light workout today and a full practice Tuesday, and then she will be done as an active basketball player for several months.

At our follow-up with the specialist last Tuesday we scheduled her for surgery this Wednesday. We were hoping that the timing would work to get her in right away, but were worried that spring break in six weeks would complicate things and we’d have to wait, thus pushing recovery and rehab out further. The doc said that because of L’s age and fitness, he was comfortable taking her cast off a little bit early which would allow her to get on the plane and go to Florida on March 28.

So, surgery Wednesday to remove an accessory navicular bone then re-size/re-attach a tendon. She’ll be in a splint for three weeks, then a cast for three more. After the cast comes off she’ll stay in a boot and on crutches until she’s cleared to begin PT. He is confident that, again, because of her age and fitness, she will recover quicker than most. But we’re still looking at four months minimum to be fully cleared. Which means, officially, no travel ball this year. She is very bummed about that, and the whole process. She’s had a few bad days over the past couple weeks, as this all became real and consequences realer. But hopeful this means junior year will be better, personally, than her sophomore year has been.

  1. Biggest thing to ever happen in Greencastle? John Dillinger’s biggest bank robbery took place there in 1933.  ↩
  2. In this big gym that felt more like one a small college would use, there were exactly three banners hanging from the rafters. All for boys basketball. One for 1931, when they were State runners up, one for 1932 when they reached the Final Four, and one for 1933, when they again were runners up. I wonder if they had some 6’9” kid who seemed like a giant back then, or just a class of great players who weren’t quite good enough to get over the hump in Indy.  ↩
  3. All rankings based on the Sagarin computer ratings that can be found here.  ↩
  4. To be consistent, if the bracket was fair we would be playing #4 while Roncalli would be playing #3.  ↩
  5. The Apple Maps directions from each school to the New Albany gym shows 94 mile, 109 mile, 109 mile, and 125 mile trips, with CHS being the most distant.  ↩

Friday Playlist

February 14, 2025 /

“Eden” – Baths
A little world music influence to this buoyant, fun track.

“Ankles” – Lucy Dacus
We are officially on the clock for a new Lucy Dacus album. No surprise it seems like it’s going to be wonderful, as usual.

“Take Your Aim” – Rocket
Some serious Smashing Pumpkin vibes on this track. Fortunately their singer is better than Billy C so I can happily listen to it.

“Let Me Go” – Deep Sea Diver featuring Madison Cunningham
Sharon Van Etten is having a moment with the release of her new album. You could easily slide this track onto that LP.

“Everything You Want” – The Disappearing Act
Wrapping up three straight songs that sound like other bands, I had to quadruple check that Dave Pirner of Soul Asylum wasn’t singing lead here. He was not.

“Fourth Street” – Dutch Interior
I don’t think this band sounds specifically like another, but there are sure little threads of other artists winding through their sound. None distinct enough to pin down, but present enough to make this song sound very familiar.

“Speed Freak” – Youth Lagoon
YL leader Trevor Powers had this to say about this song:

“We spend our whole lives running from this thing we can’t outrun. This body is temporary, but there is no death. Only transformation. A door opens when you learn to let go of the identity you’ve been building your whole life. Someone told me a couple years ago, ‘I have good news for you and I have bad news. The bad news is Trevor is doomed. There’s no hope for Trevor. The good news is — you’re not Trevor.’ When I heard that, it clicked.”

Ooooooookay. Good song, though.

“High Beams” – The Laughing Chimes
Something lighter to break up what has become kind of a heavy playlist. Mid-February sucks.

“Story of the Egg” – Cloackroom
Stereogum’s Tom Breihan described this band, which comes from the industrial wastelands of northwest Indiana, as “sick ass.” Highest praise!

“Valentine’s Day” – Bruce Springsteen
It was 8° when I woke up this morning. Next week looks brutally cold. Not exactly the kind of weather that makes you think of romance, so a dreary song about today’s holiday seemed in order.

“Rockin’ In The Free World” – Jack White
Pearl Jam has been using this as one of their show closers for years. Jack Mutherfucking White OPENED a show in Toronto with it last week.

If you go to YouTube you can watch Jack and PJ play this song together at a 2018 show in Portugal.

Wednesday Links

February 12, 2025 /

A terrific feature about SNL’s Lorne Michaels as the show celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Many writers have sat beside him watching their sketches die, only to have him turn and say, with stony sarcasm, “You must be very proud.” If the host’s monologue is flat, he’ll moan, “Can we get any charm out of him?” If a piece is too erudite, he might tell its writer, “Can they take the Emmy away?” John Mulaney said, “May the cast members go to their graves never knowing the things I heard under the bleachers.”

Lorne Michaels Is The Real Star of Saturday Night Live

More good SNL stuff.

Who was the single funniest cast member in Saturday Night Live’s history?
Kevin Nealon, cast member, 1986–95: Besides me?

50 Saturday Night Live Cast Members Reveal Their Favorite Saturday Night Live Cast Members

There’s the old saying about not wrestling with a pig because you both get muddy and the pig likes it. Well, author Jon Krakauer decided to take on a YouTuber who, for some unknown reason, has been obsessed with ripping apart Krakauer’s best setting book Into Thin Air, apparently mostly by lying, misrepresenting actual events, and fabricating others. I’m only part way through this series. I recommend having some popcorn handy if you choose to read it.

The YouTuber on a Mission to Trash My Book: Chapter One

As the world gets more absurd each day, sites like McSweeney’s become more important.

Fluoride in the office water has been replaced with a compound of Red Bull and beef jerky.

Mark Zuckerberg Makes Meta More Masculine

I sent this next post to my buddy who works for Apple. He had no comment.

So, how did Siri do? With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.

Not So Super, Apple

DEPLOY THIS IN INDIANAPOLIS IMMEDIATELY!!!!!

When micro-cracks begin to appear inside the asphalt, it becomes deformed which leads to the oils being released from the spores to fill the cracks. This prevents the oxidation that would otherwise cause the bitumen to become brittle, which would allow larger cracks to form and ultimately result in a pothole.

Self-healing roads could end plague of potholes

Reader’s Notebook, 2/11/25

February 11, 2025 /

Once again I am behind on these, so let’s get caught up with my last four reads.

The Miracle of St. Anthony – Adrian Wojnarowski
What a book! Future NBA scoops guru Woj spent the 2004–04 season embedded with the basketball team at St. Anthony High School of Jersey City. The program was famously coached by Bob Hurley for 45 years. For much of that time Hurley also worked tirelessly to keep the school open, spending countless hours fundraising and donating the money he made from speaking engagements and clinics to the school. He, and others, kept it afloat until 2017.

That 2003–04 squad was one of his 26 state title teams, finishing the season undefeated and ranked #2 in the country. Unlike his four national championship teams, this one didn’t have a single D1 senior recruit on the roster.

The book is about more than basketball, though. Woj gets to know the kids on the team, the circumstances they came from, the daily challenges they face, and so on. He tracks the Sisters who run the school as they also fight to keep the facility from being closed and kids from dropping out.

Hurley had a lot in common with Bobby Knight, someone he was friendly with. He was fiery. He held players to a high standard. He expected as much from them in class as on the court. You can see where his sons got their (over) intensity. Unlike Knight, though, Hurley seemed like someone you could have a genuine conversation with that wouldn’t involve him spending most of the time proving that he was smarter than you and everything you believed was wrong.

Like any sports book, it was fun to see how much things have changed in the 20 years since this came out, and how players who seemed like can’t miss prospects at the time faded away.

Lazarus Man – Richard Price
I’ve read a couple of Price’s books in the past, and watched movies and TV shows he’s written for. He never disappoints.

Here he writes of the aftermath of a building collapse in New York, and how several people are affected by it, including a man pulled from the rubble alive three days after the collapse. As these folks navigate the days after the collapse, they give us a view of what everyday life is like for people in Harlem in the late 2000s. These glimpses into their lives pull the story along, but there’s never any great conflict or common ending that their stories are leading us towards. There is a rather notable reveal/twist late in the book, but it is hinted at throughout and doesn’t really shock the reader or flip the story in a dramatic way.

Price is such a good writer, especially of dialogue, that this thinness in plot is fine. Not every novel needs to have a great, deeper meaning or statement on life. That lack does keep this from standing next to his earlier, better works, though.

The Gray Man – Mark Greaney
A decent, mindless, assassin kills a bunch of bad guys novel. There’s a whole series of these. I’m not sure I’m going to work through them all – Lord knows I have plenty of other spy series I could jump back into – but Greaney’s 2024 entry landed on a couple Best Of lists so I may selectively pick some that got good reviews and/or focus on topics that interest me.

Notes On A Foreign Country: An American Abroad In A Post-American World – Suzy Hansen
I forget where I heard about this book, but I also read an article Hansen published in a magazine within recent weeks, so something got her into my feed.

I knew that this was all about her observations as an American living overseas over the past decade, but I did not realize it was almost pure analysis. I was hoping for a book that was as much travelogue as extended piece for Foreign Affairs.

That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it. Hansen spends the entire book explaining how pretty much everything about her world view was challenged and changed by the decade she spent living in Turkey. She dove into how little history Americans know and understand about other countries. How even our overseas reporters, who are supposed to learn about and explain other cultures to us, are often woefully ignorant about the lands they are reporting from. She gets deeply into how Americans don’t understand the ramifications of our foreign policy and the direct effects it has on people in other countries. How what is “good for America” is often purely about economics for us and has no regard for anyone crushed along the way. And so on.

I tend to agree with much of her perspective, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Pretty woke, right? Where this is important for all Americans is in explaining the “why do (insert ethnic/religious/cultural/racial group identifier here) hate us?” questions we face all too often. It’s because we’ve routinely crushed, or helped to crush, popular, effective governments in other countries because their interests didn’t align with ours (or more specifically with our biggest corporations who have operations in these countries). It’s because we have a long history of supporting very bad people because we didn’t understand local interests or assumed because their opponents might lean to the left, that meant they were deeply indebted to the Soviets. We would never let another world power come into the US and tell us what we could and could not do inside our own borders. But we’ve been doing that to people all around the world for nearly 150 years now, since we first started building our own empire by taking Cuba and the Philippines from Spain.

Even if you disagree with her contentions, Hansen’s perspective is important, especially in an age when we are equally threatened by small, non-governmental actors as we are by China and Russia. Like so much of the bullshit we face these days, a little interest in and empathy towards others could go a long way towards making the world a safer place.

Weekend Notes

February 10, 2025 /

Well, one big topic to get to, and not the one most of the rest of the world is discussing today, so I’ll blow through the first two subjects quickly.

Jayhawk Talk

More stupidity. This team seemed to quit in the second half against K-State. Afterward, Bill Self said his players showed poor effort in practice Friday. This entire team is too old to not figure out the effort thing. And they get paid too much. But we’ll probably crush Colorado tomorrow and fool people into thinking they are close to figuring it out. I feel another blowout loss to a more athletic, engaged team in the round of 32 coming.

Meanwhile top recruit Darryn Peterson, ranked #2 in his class, played the #1 recruit’s team Friday and scored 58 points, including a game-winning 3. Next year can’t get here fast enough.

Super Bowl

I don’t like either team, rooting against the Chiefs has brought me more aggravation than joy in recent years, and I had zero interest in some of the peripheral aspects of the game involving famous people watching from the stands, so I kept the game on mute and worked through my YouTube queue most of the night. Obviously I should have done this a few Super Bowls ago. That was a total ass kicking. Crazy that Nick Sirianni was probably one game away from getting fired back in October, and now he’s a Super Bowl champion coach.

I didn’t watch a single commercial, either, so no opinions or comments about that part of the evening.

I did watch the halftime show. I like the idea of Kendrick Lamar, and am 100% on his side in the whole Drake beef. But my old man ears can’t decipher what young guys with his style are saying, so I can only give his performance a solid B. C was disappointed he didn’t choose a few other songs and bring in more guests than SZA. Apparently old conservatives were annoyed with the entire thing, which is a true bonus.

L went to a party at a friend’s house. She gave another friend a ride back to our house so his mom could pick him up, since we live about halfway between his home and the party. They arrived when there were still about three minutes left in the game. I explained to the friend how I was from Kansas City but not a Chiefs fan. Which probably really confused him as I was wearing a Royals World Series champs shirt.

Sectional Champs!

OK, time for the topic of the day.

Cathedral won their first sectional championship in 20 years with a dominant performance Saturday night.

The girls took on the Polytechnical school from downtown that has a few nice players and was picked as a “darkhorse” to win the sectional in the paper last week. There was never much doubt. We jumped out by double digits early, pushed it to 20 early in the second quarter, and other than a couple lulls around halftime never let up.

The only real drama came when Poly’s coach got ejected in the third quarter. We’re not sure what happened. I saw her get warned in the first half but hadn’t noticed her doing anything too crazy. I did hear their fans going nuts when they thought one of our girls should have been whistled for a five-second call (they were probably right). Seconds later the coach got a T. She was seated on the bench, but I guess she kept jawing because she quickly got T number two.

We hit three of four free throws then Poly hit a 3 and got two free throws to pump up their fans, but that burst was short-lived.

The only down side to the night was that had L been healthy, she definitely would have played. Our coach cleared the bench with 3:00 left, which is very early for her. And I bet a healthy L would have got some minutes well before that.

She did get to help cut the net down though, which she was excited about. She wasn’t on the court, but she is in the trophy picture of a team that made a little school history. Amazing it had been two decades since the last sectional champion, but until this year we were slotted into one of the toughest 4A sectionals in the state. Moving down to 3A had an immediate benefit.

It was fun to see how happy the girls were, especially for our four seniors. Girls basketball at CHS isn’t a glamour sport. There are often more visiting fans than Irish ones at our home games. The boys team gets better warmups and gear. CHS teams play difficult schedules in every sport but that seems to hit our girls a little harder. They earned all that happiness they got to display this weekend.

Our Friday semifinal was more interesting than the championship game, even it if was less competitive.

We played CA, the school that won a game 115–5 last month. Well, their coach was suspended for the game by the state athletic association because of that. Which seemed weird on a couple levels, but whatever. CA is led by his two junior daughters, who have attended four different schools in the past four years.[1] The better of the two sisters is a ranked recruit that lots of Big 10 schools are looking at. But the team is basically the sisters playing off each other, while their three teammates are expected to screen, rebound, and play D.

Although they were ranked well behind us, they still had the most talented player on the court and we were coming off an emotional win over our arch rival. So, you never know, right?

No doubt Friday. We opened on a 22–0 run and that was pretty much that. TWENTY TWO STRAIGHT POINTS!!! Final score: 65–27. We shut down their star and other than letting her sister hit three 3’s, contained the rest of the team. Dominant.

The best thing to come out of these games was that one of our seniors, T, has finally shaken off the bad luck that plagued her all year. I swear this poor kid is shooting 20% because she has shots rim out in the cruelest possible ways. Wide open shots will bounce around the rim 3–4 times before falling off. Layups will spin out or catch the wrong side of the rim. It’s impossible to accurately explain but if you just watch her work to get open and shoot, you would guess she scores 15 points a night. In reality she averages less than 10 ppg.

L and T became good friends last summer, with T often coming over to hang out at our place. I know she has a tough home life. Her parents are very hard on her. She has four older brothers who all played D1 football and the parents expect the same from her. You can see the weight on her shoulders getting heavier each time she misses a shot.

Tuesday against BC she was very good on both ends of the court, keying our pressure and hitting a couple big shots early. Friday she got the defensive assignment of the better CA sister and completely shut her down. Saturday she was on fire, scoring 19 points before halftime. Most of all, you could see her playing free and easy. She hit a 3 in every game, the first time this season she’s hit one in consecutive games, let alone three-straight.

Saturday, as the team was celebrating, I found T and told her whatever she’s been eating, DO NOT change it. She laughed and said she agreed that she wouldn’t change a thing.

The Irish advance to the Regional round of the state tournament.[2] We will play a team that is 20–6, but against a schedule ranked 194. They are #26 in 3A to our #9. According to the computer rankings, we are a 13-point favorite with a 78% chance to win. We just need to keep everyone focused and get any illnesses out of the way early in the week (L is home sick today) and we should be fine. The computer says we have pretty good odds.

  1. That’s as far as I know. They were in 8th grade on the southeast side of town, freshmen in a different district on the southwest side, spent sophomore year in Florida, and this year came back to an inner city school. Who knows if they were somewhere else for 7th grade, or will move out-of-state again for senior year.  ↩
  2. I could get real geeky about the structure of the Indiana playoff bracket, but I’m guessing no one wants to read about that. Long story short, Regionals were two games in one day for a long time, but a year or two back reverted to the old school style of Regionals being a single game, then the Semistate round consisting of two games. If we are lucky enough to win this week, I’ll share more about that.  ↩

Friday Playlist

February 7, 2025 /

We stay knee-deep in the new music another week.

“Prisoner of Beauty” – The Limiñanas, Bobby Gillespie
I can find almost no information about this song or band, which is from the far south of France. So all I can say about it is that it 100% sounds like it should have been in some gritty film during the mid-90s indie movie craze.

“All My Freaks” – Divorce
Kind of funny that a brand new band is writing a song about all the troubles that come with being famous. Like, how do they know anything about that yet?

“Never Said Goodbye” – Jake Bugg
Favorite song of the week alert. This absolutely majestic track draws a straight line back to DMAs and then to Oasis. Apparently Bugg’s latest album came out in September but I just discovered it in the past couple weeks. So, yes, I’ve been hating myself about that even since.

“I Want You (Fever)” – Momma
There’s some serious Nineties alt rock queen DNA in here, touching up against Garbage territory.

“Blackstar” – Fanning Dempsey National Park
Not a Radiohead cover – that would be “Black Star” anyway – but another fine song from this newish, Aussie, super-duo.

“Loving You” – Jorja Smith featuring Maverick Sabre
This week’s neo-soul track.

“Nice Clean Shirt” – Beeef
I’ve reached the point in the year where I start exploring options for new t-shirts for warm weather months. Mmmmmm, nice, clean shirts…

“Holding Pattern” – Prism Shores
Speaking of spring, this jangly tune is full of springtime vibes.

“Give It Time” – Goose
A perfect combination of Goose’s mainstream and jam band sides.

“Santa Monica” – Everclear
I had to make a quick run to the grocery store around the corner for a couple things last night. It should have been a minute in-and-out type deal. But suddenly I heard a familiar guitar riff over the in-store music – one of the greatest riffs of the Nineties – and had to walk around for a few minutes to enjoy “Santa Monica” is all its glory. If you muted this and just watched the visuals, there would still be no doubt what decade this video was from.

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