July Books
Up, Up, & Away – Jonah Keri Keri’s first book, The Extra 2%, was destined to disappoint. Its focus was the small market, small budget Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays and their rise to become perennial contenders in the American League East. That was a problem, because it was impossible not to compare it to Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, his look at…
R’s: Some Week
Some week for Your Kansas City Royals! Let’s review. Last Sunday they acquired Johnny Cueto from Cincinnati then went out and beat Houston ace Dallas Keuchel to get a series win against a possible playoff opponent. Monday they flew to Cleveland and pounded the Indians in game one. Tuesday they made another trade, grabbing Ben Zobrist from the A’s. That…
Monday Links
Finally getting the backlog cleared out. Some more tidbits about the rather excellent summer movie lineup of 1985. 14 Blockbuster Facts About the Summer Movies of 1985 I’m not sure why, but I’ve enjoyed Tiger Woods’ fall. I don’t get it because I absolutely loved him in his prime. It’s not like he was Lance Armstrong and cheating and lying…
Friday Vid
“False Hope” – Laura Marling If the year ended today, this would be in my top 10 for songs of the year. Possibly top 5.
⦿ Mid-Week Links
A week or so behind, and a lot of long reads to share. Thus I’m going to split the offerings into two posts. The longer articles will be listed below. The rest will be shared tomorrow or Friday. First, Maciej Ceglowski wraps up his tales of traveling through the New Madrid earthquake zone. Confronting New Madrid (Part 2) Keeping it…
Johnny Friggin’ Cueto!
Holy shit! Normally this time of year, Royals fans are begging general manager Dayton Moore to sell off the team’s most valuable free-agent-to-be to bring in more prospects for the future. Two years ago, it was Ervin Santana. The Royals kept him and went on a tear through August and September that saw them fall just short of making the…
Eleven
Eleven years ago Saturday, we welcomed our first daughter into our family. Which is totally an amazeballs thing to say. Eleven freaking years. Seriously? How in the hell did that happen? M. celebrated in a very M. way: stretching it out and keeping as much attention on herself as possible. Now that’s not exactly fair. She didn’t ask to have…
Friday Vid
“Cuts You Up” – Peter Murphy When seminal Goth band Bauhaus broke up in the early 80s, its members went two ways. Daniel Ash, David J, and Keith Haskins went mainstream with their new band Love and Rockets. But former lead singer Peter Murphy continued to make darker music that, while not pure Goth, certainly was aimed more at the…
Summer Notes
Some catch up on general summer notes. Monday was our annual trip to the 4H fair where the girls’ cousin shows pigs every year. As usual, they had fun walking through the buildings and viewing the pigs, cows, goats, sheep, and rabbits. No poultry this year because of the avian flu thing and the horses were not shown on Monday,…
Storm Follow Up
Turns out we did have some storm damage after all. We arrived at the LVS Saturday, ready to greet 12 friends for 26-ish hours of fun, and our power was still performing erratically. Some circuits worked, some did not. Those that worked seemed to be humming along at half-voltage. The fridge was running, but not cooling at all. I plugged…