August Media
Funny what happens when sports come back. My media consumption was waaaay down in August. Or at least compared to the previous five months. Here is what I did knock out. Jayhawkers I remember when this movie was made. Justin Wesley, a recent KU basketball player and brother of former KU great Keith Langford, was cast in the main role…
Reader’s Notebook, 9/1/20
Three highly lauded books have kept me busy the past couple weeks. Disappearing Earth – Julia Phillips The last part of a book is so important to how readers feel about the entire story. This is an example of a book that was elevated by a nearly perfect ending. It begins with the disappearance of two young sisters from Petropavlosk,…
Of Classes and Sports
Two full weeks into the school year and we’ve had our first major change. Beginning today, and for the foreseeable future, M will be home on Mondays. In Thursday’s normal parent newsletter, the CHS principal announced that the entire student population would be virtual and on a fixed schedule on Mondays. Several reasons were offered, but the one that seems…
Friday Vid
I didn’t work on a playlist this week, so only a video today. “Release” – Pearl Jam I couldn’t settle on something to watch last Saturday so started scrolling through YouTube and came across Pearl Jam’s 2018 performance at Lallapalooza in Brazil. Two and a half hours later I had watched the entire thing and knocked out a couple bourbons…
Everything is Bullshit
I’m having a hard time with what is happening around this country right now. What frustrates me most is that I no longer have the patience to sit down and hammer out a couple thousand words about what is going on. I’ve tried, but the longer I type, the madder I get. So in place of a post I would…
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 47
Chart Week: August 14, 1982 Song: “Someday, Someway” – Marshall Crenshaw Chart Position: #40, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #36 for two weeks in August/September. Some one-hit wonders are easy to explain. There are the accidental hits, songs by unknown artists that get tied to popular movies or TV shows. There are novelty hits that piggyback on some…
Racin’
I swore that I had written a detailed breakdown back in 2004 of my first Indianapolis 500 weekend living here, which until this year was the strangest Indy 500 day of that era. Alas, after checking the archives, I found I wrote way more about the crazy weather that day than about my experience on my first race day as…
Friday Playlist
A delayed but very special playlist for this week. Today would have been Joe Strummer’s 68th birthday. To celebrate, a group of musicians is doing [a virtual tribute concert](https://www.joestrummer.com) for Joe later today. Sadly I’ll be running around getting the girls then heading to kickball, but I will certainly be watching a replay over the weekend. As Strummer is on…
School Daze
Three days into everyone being back in school. I wouldn’t say it’s been a smooth transition, as both schools continue to adjust on the fly as conditions warrant. At CHS, they have had to make multiple changes to students’ schedules. We heard that the first change was because they had a higher students-per-class ratio than the county health department wanted.…
Friday Playlist
All about the ladies this week. Well, kind of. There is a male artist in the PL, but as you’ll learn, he was “in a phase,” as my mom would have said. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0qnJThjEn3irKQDbqIwjNu?si=uQNjlCdESFyn7EOxNKP4UQ “the 1” – Taylor Swift I give Taylor all the credit: show knows how to write a fucking song. I keep getting drawn back to her folklore…