• 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…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • NBA Notes

    Another wild few days in the NBA, on the court and off. Pacers They did it again! Going back to Cleveland for game five Tuesday felt like a sure loss, even with all the Cavs’ injury woes. Take the L on the road, the final punch of the year from the proud-yet-battered #1 seed, and then close out the series…

  • Weekend Notes

    Well that was a fantastic weekend! Belated Happy Mothers Days to all the moms out there. I hope you had as good of weekends as we did. Visitors Our good friends Dave and Maureen visited from KC over the weekend. The reason for their trip, other than hanging out at blog headquarters, was so Dave and I could watch Bob…

  • Friday Playlist

    I feel like I’m settling into my new groove after the switch to Apple Music, finding a better balance between the old and new music. I think you’re going to like this week’s choices, which includes a couple special tracks. “Black Confetti” – Bob Mould Hey, I’m seeing Bob Mould tomorrow night! And my brother-in-music Dave V. is coming to…