September Books
I believe I’ve mentioned a time or two (or three) that I spent nearly a month wading through a beast of a book. Now I have to write about said beast. Cripes. The good news (for me at least) is that despite the time spent on that book, I remain at book-a-week pace for the year. The Woman Who Lost…
Seven, Again
Last weekend, for the first time since mid-August, we had no cross country meets, no soccer games, no out-of-town guests, no trips to the lake planned. It was nice to have an easy, early fall weekend to sit around and decompress a bit. Well, we did have one big thing on the calendar: L. turned seven on Saturday! Thanks to…
Friday Vid
“Laced” – DMA’s A rather goofy video, that really isn’t worth watching, for a pretty spectacular song. In fact, just hide this window while the song is playing and enjoy the sounds. DMA’s take a little Arctic Monkeys, some Oasis, and a heavy dose of classic Australian jangle-pop, and end up with some often gorgeous, if derivative, music.
1989 X 2
I’ve kicked this around for nearly two weeks, so I suppose it’s time to finally convert the thoughts into text. I would not call this an album review proper, but rather a few musings about Ryan Adams’ cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989. Ryan Adams is no stranger to covering other people’s music. His set lists are peppered with songs from…
R’s: Clinchin’
(As I prefer to focus on the many positives, I’ll save my thoughts on the Royals’ September and prospects for October until next week.) I had a bit of a rough weekend. Some stomach issues. A couple late nights and early mornings. Mid-day naps to counter those. Everything felt a bit off. And I guess it all started Thursday night,…
Kid Sports
In reverse order of age this time, your periodic Kid Sports Update. L., and her whole soccer team, rebounded nicely from their rough first week. Playing against teams that have not been full of second graders like their first opponent, they’ve won two-straight games in shutouts. She scored three goals last week and two yesterday. Most impressively, her team is…
⦿ Friday Links
Time to finish clearing out the Links To Share queue. Kicking things off, two posts about Kansas City. First, The Midwestival traveled to KC for an epic weekend of eating and seeing the sites. Kansas City has really evolved over the past 10–15 years. Kansas City: The Paris of the Plains As a bit of a counter-point, Robert Trussell wrote…
Friday Vid(s)
Two videos that have nothing to do with each other this week. “No Myth” – Michael Penn It’s National One Hit Wonder day! What actually constitutes a one-hit wonder can often be a little murky. Does it mean cracking the Billboard Top 40? Or does it mean songs that get into our pop culture memories regardless of chart position? Regardless,…
Reading Joe
So I’m obviously way behind on sharing interesting links with all ya’ll. Thus, I’m breaking them up a bit to clear out the queue. This edition focuses on the great Joe Posnanski. Boy did I love this one. In My Favorite Year (Redux), Joe went through the entire sports calendar of 1986 and broke down, month-by-month, why it is his…
Summer ’78
I’m loving a lot of things right now, pop culturally. I took a long bike ride this morning and mentally wrote at least 10,000 words about the new Ryan Adams album. We’ll see if I can make something coherent out of those thoughts to share here. I just finished an amazing, if flawed, book that took me nearly a month…