Good Riddance
Welp, it’s almost over. The worst year ever has but a few hours left. And then everything will magically get better at midnight, right? If only… 2021 has to be better. Vaccines are being administered and research continues to find more ways to fight Covid–19. It may take months, but the tide is turning. While Covid is our biggest issue,…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 52
Chart Week: December 22, 1984 Song: “Bruce” – Rick Springfield Chart Position: #33, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #27 for a week in January. As artists move through their careers they often jump from one record company to another. This can lead to uncomfortable situations when the artists break through and their previous employers attempt to capitalize. Rick…
Beatles Songs, Ranked
“Favorite Songs by Artist X” lists are a dime a dozen when it comes to certain bands. They are click-baity and unnecessary, as they’ve been done and done and done again. Still, as a music fan I will almost always read them and listen to the songs they cover if it is a band I care about. I think that…
A Christmas Unlike Any Other
Christmas, 2020. Like most folks, we were trying to have a semi-normal Christmas in the safest manner possible. Most years we end up having several big family gatherings of varying sizes. Last year was a banner year: four get-togethers greatly aided by temperatures in the 60s most of the week. Two days we were in the front yard hitting golf…
Timeless
We’ve lost so much this year, but proving that there is some light in the world, Darlene Love is still with us. For years and years she appeared on David Letterman’s program to sing her signature song just before Christmas. I did not know she moved that over to The View after The Late Show ended. Even Covid couldn’t keep…
Revisiting Classic Gifts
I was digging through the blog archives last night and came across this post, from December 2004. It is an accounting of the best Christmas gifts I received as a kid, which was about as “typical 2004 personal blog post” as you could get. I had two thoughts as I read it: 1 – If I re-did the list today…
Friday Playlist
Christmas vacation, or what counts for it in 2020, is nigh. My in-laws have arrived, the girls have about four more hours of class, and by early afternoon we will be in the final countdown for Christmas. For this year’s Blog Christmas Playlist, I’ve chosen to focus on songs you probably won’t hear on your local Christmas music station. Use…
The Office Christmas Episodes, Ranked
My Wednesday activity, other than preparing for my in-laws to arrive tonight, was watching all of The Office Christmas episodes. As you can imagine, this was an extremely good way to spend time, especially on a very cold, snowy night. As I watched I thought, “I should put together some kind of rudimentary list, ranking them in order of my…
Reader’s Notebook, 12/16/20
Pretty good run of books. Lucky Supreme – Jeff Johnson The trick to writing a good crime novel, when approximately eight billion of them have been written, is to find a new angle and/or place the story in an unusual situation. Johnson did that quite well with this book. Darby Holland owns a tattoo parlor in Portland. He’s kind of…
Favorite Songs of 2020
My pre-list State of Music comments are pretty simple this year: 2020 felt like a weak musical year. I don’t know whether to blame that on Covid, me getting older and having to fight changing tastes harder, or that it was just a rough year for good tunes. There are some high quality tracks in this list, but I’m not…