• Music Reads for Rainy Weekend Days

    A few very good music links to share. Apologies as a couple of these are slightly out-of-date with the change in seasons. Good reads regardless. First, investigative journalism at its finest. Taylor Swift and Bryan Adams’ Duet of “Summer of ’69” Reopens One of Music’s Great Historical Mysteries: Is This Song About the Sex Position? Next, isn’t it funny how…

  • “Hell is Real”

    I’ve never checked out the infield portion of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway during the 500 mile race. I’m likely too old to do so. Or at least too old and with too low tolerances for drinking in the heat. But it’s good to know that even if tamer than in its glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, the Snake…

  • Some Links

    It’s been a weird week, trying to get back in the swing of things after our vacation. The weather hasn’t helped, with the cold mornings robbing me of motivation to do much of anything. I have a couple posts mentally prepared but just can’t sit down long enough to bash them out. So I guess I’ll share some links. My…

  • Some Catch Up

    I’ve finally made my way through my RSS reader, which collected over 1800 articles while we were gone. In that glut, I found a few items that can very loosely be connected, as all are about one kind of loss or another. First, Lindsey Buckingham announced he was leaving Fleetwood Mac again. I had to wonder why this was such…

  • TV Stuff

    I’m working on a couple longer, more personal writing pieces to share over the next couple days. Thus, rather than writing about the Olympics or college hoops, I’ll share another link from my Instapaper stash. I had planned on doing a What I’m Watching post before the holidays. That, obviously, kind of went to shit and is tough to recreate…

  • The Joys of Losing

    I tried writing several introductory paragraphs for this piece. But they all felt wrong, probably because this is such a wonderfully written essay. So just go read it and enjoy it like I did. Unpacking Forty Years of Fandom For a Losing Team

  • The Big Reveal

    I’ve watched my share of Fixer Upper over the years. My wife loves it. My kids all love it. If you’re between, say, 30 and 50, white, and live in the suburbs, odds are someone in your house is a fan. While I appreciate the show, it has worn on me over the years. Thus I enjoyed McSweeney’s poking a…

  • I Should Have Thought of This

    Stereogum writer Tom Breihan has started a series where he is writing about every song to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Obviously if I owned an alley, this would be right up it. Now he’s still very early in the series, so not all the songs are terribly relevant or interesting to most of us. But last…

  • Going Mobile

    Time for a link to a Joe Posnanski piece about life. This one hit me kind of hard because, although I’m a few years behind him in the dad business, I’m getting close to the stage he writes about. I’m already terrified of our girls learning to drive. I wonder how the hell my mom and step-dad turned me loose…

  • All Together Now

    My first book of the year was about the Beatles. So it was a nice coincidence that I was hipped to this website over the holidays. The author is ranking all the Beatles songs in order, roughly one per day. His commentary isn’t a rehash of all the commentary you’ve read a thousand times before about Beatles songs. Which makes…