Tag: links (Page 5 of 24)

A few links to kick off your weekend.

‘Wrong team won both days’: Flashback to epic finale of KU-Mizzou basketball in 2012
Kansas and Missouri renew their basketball rivalry in Lawrence tomorrow. This is a good summary of how they ended their time as conference rivals almost ten years ago.

For the record: Thomas Robinson’s block was 100% clean. Now the foul that put Tyshawn Taylor at the line to hit the winning free throws? Even I can admit that was pretty soft.

The 50 Best Movie Soundtracks of the Past 50 Years
Hmmm. I have some issues with this. Where is Footloose, for example? Or New Jack City? Frozen? That’s just off the top of my head.

This list does bring up an issue that goes along with rating soundtracks. How do you compare Purple Rain, an album filled with original songs all written specifically for a movie, with the soundtracks for movies like Pulp Fiction or Dazed and Confused that take a bunch of known songs and throw them together to either create or reinforce a specific vibe? They seem like two completely different types of albums to me.

I guess that’s the fun of making music rankings: you can argue about all kind of administrative details before you even get to arguing about the actual music.

The 50 Greatest Minivan Rock Songs
Speaking of music lists, this one is well over a year old, but I just found it while reading another article this morning. I’ve never heard of the concept of “Minivan Rock.” Kind of a weird combination of music. As I read the list, though, it brought back a lot of memories from an era when I still listened to a ton of music, but perhaps not as obsessively as I had done earlier in the ‘90s.

Sports parents are horrible and referees are finally doing something about it — quitting
I sent this to my friend who is the athletic director at St P’s and suggested she send it out to every parent who has a kid playing CYO sports. Stop ruining the games for your kids!

Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult to Understand (And Three Ways to Fix It)
And I thought it was just because I was getting older…

How This All Happened
A brief history of the US economy since World War II. I found this idea fascinating, and it can apply to so many things plaguing our society today:

Expectations always move slower than facts.

Finally, a very important link for the season.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN DIE HARD CHRISTMAS TREE ORNAMENT

I’m not sure how I had never heard this story before. Nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, the American military ran a series of war games in which an attacking force wiped out the forces sheltered at Pearl by launching a sneak attack from the north on a Sunday morning. Which is exactly what the Japanese would do nine years later.

Only the Navy decided the attack wasn’t fair and rather than learning from their failure, nullified the results. One of the reasons for reversing the result? Well…

Most importantly, the Navy argued, low level precision bombing of battleships at anchor was unrealistic since “everyone knew that Asians lacked sufficient hand-eye coordination to engage in that kind of precision bombing.”

Yep, good old American racism prevented us from learning a lesson that could have saved thousands of lives and completely altered, if not prevented, the eventual war in the Pacific.

The First Attack: Pearl Harbor, February 7, 1932

Every Sunday Pitchfork does a retrospective review of an album from the past. In August they tackled The Cranberries’ debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? That was an album I think you were required to own if you were white and were in college in the early 90’s.

The band’s story is kind of amazing, going from new group to putting out one of the defining albums of the decade in an incredibly short time span. I always listen to The Cranberries this time of year, as I find their music perfectly fits the part of fall when the warmth disappears and the days get longer and darker.

The Cranberries, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?

I enjoyed this discussion between actress Keri Russell and Adam Ganduciel about The War on Drugs’ new album, his process, parenthood, and other stuff.

Adam Granduciel and Keri Russell Mark The War On Drugs’ New Chapter

Steven Hyden recently shared his top 30 TWOD songs. I have a huge quibble with him not including “In Reverse,” which is one of the best final-tracks of any album I’ve ever listened to. Granduciel has said it is his song he was most proud of, too. My list would also be ordered a little differently than his. But still a fun read.

The Best Songs By The War On Drugs, Ranked

This is pretty cool. Plug in your favorite TV show and see how its individual episodes were reviewed. The graphs for The Simpsons are amazing.

SeriesHeat

I’m old enough to remember when stories on The Onion were hilarious exaggerations of political annoyances. Sadly they seem pretty spot-on these days.

Poll Finds Most Americans Would Swap Democracy For $100 Best Buy Gift Card

A couple links to share as I continue my rebound from fall break and attempt to ease back into a routine.

One last Bond link, this one about how John F. Kennedy both helped the Bond series become popular and used that popularity to further his fame.

John F. Kennedy was a vocal Bond fan, and the media loved to draw parallels between the fictional spy and the real-life president—so much so that their personas became intertwined in America’s cultural subconscious. This was no accident: Kennedy deliberately used Bond to project an image as a heroic leader who could meet any challenge in the most perilous years of the Cold War.

JFK’s secret weapon in the Cold War: James Bond

One of my most favorite books ever is Paul Theroux’s The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific. I’ve read it at least five times, always entranced by his stories of paddling a collapsable kayak around the islands of the Pacific. That trip is about 30 years old now, so it would be interesting to go back and read it again, paying attention the the changes in technology and the effects that had on his trip.

I use that as introduction to this piece, about a man who made a far more daunting trip than Theroux. Oskar Speck spent most of the 1930s paddling a kayak from Central Europe to Australia. The trip itself is incredible. While reading I kept wondering about the technological challenges he faced. He didn’t have modern, waterproof bags for his clothes, food, journals, etc. How the hell did he keep them from getting ruined? There was obviously no way of communicating with anyone outside the sound of his voice. He could only have a vague idea of what kind of weather conditions he was paddling into. And so on.

There was another amazing tidbit in this piece that showed how, in one way at least, the world was better nearly a century ago than it is now.

The postal system was remarkable in those days. With fast mailboats and, most important, persistent bureaucrats, mail chased travelers from port to isolated port with uncanny success. Speck even received German pastries by mail.

Sure, today you send emails, can video chat, or electronically send funds to nearly any point in the world instantly. But shit gets lost in the mail all the time when people have your correct address. One hundred years ago you could take a trip, tell folks you would eventually reach Point X, and the mail would find you. Amazing.

From Nazi Germany to Australia: The Incredible True Story of History’s Longest Kayak Journey

A few items to add to your reading queue for the weekend.

I’ve always bought into the myth that minor league baseball was somehow purer than big league ball, and the connection between minor league clubs and their communities was deeper than that between big cities and MLB clubs. That’s probably all Bull Durham-fueled garbage, but baseball is largely built on myths anyway

MLB is doing its best to fuck all that up by squeezing out much of what was local and unique about the minors.

Will Bardenwerper set out to document what was supposed to be the final year of the old Appalachian League. Until Covid canceled the season and his book deal. Fortunately we get this great Harper’s piece from his efforts.

What is baseball? Our national pastime, an enduring slice of Americana? Or just a business? Does an enterprise that purports to be part of the fabric of America—and one that for the past hundred years has enjoyed a unique federal antitrust exemption—have a responsibility to prevent that fabric from fraying? Or should the league simply maximize value for its owners, as most corporations do?

Minor Threat

I had no idea that the pumpkin spice latte backlash was rooted in economic anxiety and contempt for women. I thought it was just because people were sick of Pumpkin Spice Everything dropping a little earlier each year.

This piece is over a year old, but still a very good read.

Pumpkin spice lattes — and the backlash, and the backlash to the backlash — explained

For the record, pumpkin spice remains completely delicious when used properly.

Ranking the Seinfeld Fake Movies
Shocking that it took 23 years for someone to do this. Or at least for someone’s effort to get broad attention.

I know it can be difficult to keep your cool in the midst of a stressful game. A good rule of thumb, though, is that players and coaches should never interact directly with opposing fans.

Northern Colorado offensive coordinator Max McCaffrey threw a clipboard into the stands last week. What makes this story great is that the comment that pushed him over the edge was someone making a crack about his pants being too small.

That’s some funny, funny shit.

UNC’s Max McCaffrey ‘reprimanded’ for throwing clipboard into Montana State stands

Finally, a few Bond links. I’m seeing No Time To Die on Wednesday. I have no idea when I last saw a movie in a theater.

Shaken, and Stirred: How Daniel Craig Gave James Bond a Soul

Sixty Years of James Bonds Complaining About Their Jobs

Everything You Need to Know About James Bond’s Watches

Every James Bond Movie, Ranked

Finally worked through my Instapaper account to find some things I’ve saved to share with you.

Dave Holmes Visits 1988 to Pay Respect to Casey Kasem’s Last True American Top 40 Countdown

Someone posted this piece to the AT40 Facebook group I’m a member of. It comes from right after Casey Kasem died back in 2014, but I still enjoyed reading it. Maybe some week I should do a commentary for all 40 tracks in a countdown. Actually, I’m shocked that I’ve never done that before.[1]

The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books
I try not to check out too many E-books from the library, defaulting to “normal” books as much as possible, because of articles like this.

How Do You Tell John Walker Lindh’s Story?
I didn’t read very many 9/11 retrospectives. I have a very long one saved that I never got around to, and because of that avoided a lot of shorter pieces.

This one was fascinating, though, detailing how filmmaker Greg Barker is attempting to tell the story of “American Taliban” member John Walker Lindh. What’s most fascinating is how pretty much everyone involved in his case has zero interest in talking about it. It’s almost as if his case was more complex than the media and government told us back in 2001.

Kenny Mayne’s Second Act
I don’t watch much SportsCenter or other non-event programming on ESPN these days. So while Kenny Mayne being forced out last summer was a bummer to the Gen Xer in me, I don’t think I had seen him on a show in years.

It was cool to read about how he carved out his own little niche at the network during a time when it was loaded with massive personalities. And very interesting to see how leaving ESPN has allowed him to speak more freely about things that are not directly related to sports. Of course, he and I have similar views. Not sure I would be as excited if he was calling for an overturn of election results or protesting against masks.

“This Is Going to Change the World”
9/11. Kenny Mayne. Let’s go for the New Millennium trifecta by looking back at the unveiling of the Segway. People old enough to remember will surely recall getting one of those emails forwarded to you about the mysterious new invention that was going to completely change our lives.

Journalist Dan Kois details that weird little moment in time. It seems like the project was destined to fail. But he wonders if a young, inexperienced book agent – himself – torpedoed any chance the Segway had to be truly revolutionary through a careless, administrative mistake.

If a 26-year-old dumbass hadn’t accidentally leaked the proposal, who knows what would have happened? Because after all this time, I do think the leak had a lot to do with how little I truly understood about book publishing … and how little we all understood about what the internet was about to become.

I need to run through my Instapaper account and collect some more good reads to share. To tide you over, here is one that made me laugh out loud from McSweeney’s.

Wake Up Sailors, Scurvy is a Hoax

We’ll do some links today since I can’t seem to get my latest Reader’s Notebook entry finished, nor come to any thoughts worth sharing on other subjects.

Guess I haven’t posted any links in a few weeks because the first is a few weeks old. Hell, it was old when I talked about it with friends in KC two weeks ago. My bad.

The intro to this piece made me laugh out loud, because it is very true. For many, many years each time I flew I would have some kind of KU/Lawrence/KC shirt on. I figured I should always be representing.

There’s almost an unwritten law of civic pride if you grew up or spent any significant time in metro Kansas City (which straddles Kansas and Missouri): “If one is traveling away from Kansas City, one must wear a T-shirt or other piece of clothing identifying oneself as a Kansas Citian.”

’Ted Lasso’ makes me homesick for Kansas City. I called his mom to ask why

I must admit I didn’t know much about Charlie Watts, other than how he looked, before his death. These are some fine little anecdotes that will shed some light on who he was.

14 Charlie Watts Stories That Prove He Was the Rolling Stones’ Rock

I missed Sunday’s six-hole playoff between Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay, but apparently it was must-see TV. A tense affair that seemed to feature some real bad blood between the two. When I first started paying attention to golf again three years ago, I was fascinated by DeChambeau. He seemed to be what I begged golfers to be for years: bring a different perspective to the game. Like many, though, I was eventually turned off by his needy behavior, by his total lack of self-awareness, and his whole “I’m the smartest guy in the room” act. An act that regularly was proven to not be so smart. It’s kind of amazing how quickly he has morphed into the most hated golfer in the game.

Nothing about the Bryson DeChambeau experience is easy these days

I was floored when I heard how much Amazon was spending both to acquire the rights to and make a new series based on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Especially since they would be mining material that was far less known that his Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings stories. And then I read this piece, which makes it seem crazier.

What the Tolkien estate sold was the rights to the Second Age, but reportedly not the parts of those stories told in the books primarily about the First Age (the Silmarillion, etc.) At the same time, Amazon cannot contradict those stories either. Amazon’s series will have to be consistent with the Tolkien canon, while at the same time drawing on the vaguest, least detailed portion of it: genealogies, a few outlines of stories, and not much more.

I guess there’s an audience out there for this, especially given how huge Game of Thrones was. But seems like if you’re going to, likely, eventually, spend over a billion dollars on a project you should have more leeway in how you create the final product.

Tolkien and Amazon’s Fight for a Franchise

Speaking of Amazon…our home is as guilty as anyone for being sucked into making it our first, and often only, stop when shopping. Reading this piece, which details how difficult it can be to sell your good on Amazon and how equally tough it can be to not sell your stuff there, makes me want to use it as more of a starting point from which I branch out and eventually click buy on the site of the actual producer of whatever I’m buying.

As Demand For Bikes Surged, Amazon Got In The Way: A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shops instead

What’s going on in Afghanistan is obviously an absolute mess, one that President Biden will pay the political price for despite his three predecessors being the ones who created it.

Phil Klay, who has written a lot about the wars we’ve been fighting for the past 20 years, provides some perspective.

9/11 unified America. It overcame partisan divides, bound us together, and gave us the sense of common purpose so lacking in today’s poisonous politics. And nothing that we have done as a nation since has been so catastrophically destructive as what we did when we were enraptured by the warm glow of victimization and felt like we could do anything, together.

American Purpose After the Fall of Kabul

Finally, Steven Hyden adds to his series of Best XX Songs by Group Y with a look at The Who. I’ve long said their top 5–10 songs stack up next to any other band’s. Especially when you hear them live. But they just don’t have the depth that other bands have. That’s probably why Hyden has gone through The Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Pearl Jam, and Led Zeppelin before getting to The Who.

Unlike other lists, I’m not sure there can be any debate about what their best song is.

The Best Songs By The Who, Ranked

Time to share some more things I’ve been reading on screens of various sizes.

The Vaccine Cards Are the Wrong Size

In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal, as author Amanda Mull admits. But it sure is annoying. And signs of a bigger issue.

The inconvenient paper vestige that vaccinated Americans now carry of that experience is an exasperating reminder not of the shots themselves, but of all the other missed opportunities our government has had to ease the pandemic’s many predictable problems.

Those Were the Days of Our Lives

A hilarious and lovely book excerpt about the glories of being allowed to roam free during the summer as a kid of the ‘70s and ‘80s.

My internal clock was never keener. Without arranging to meet, all the kids in a two-mile radius managed to wander out to the yards and streets of our neighborhoods around the same time each morning like Raisin Bran–fueled zombies. Sometimes you would hear a kid outside playing before anyone else, and that would be the clarion call to the rest of us to hustle. A cacophony of banging screen doors signaled our mass exodus. We were wild. We were free.

His Name Was Emmett Till

Wright Thompson is such a great storyteller. That said, sometimes I find his work to be a little, well, much I guess. But this piece is damn close to perfect.

Indiana attorney general investigating whether Valpo institute is front for Communist Party

Glad that Indiana elected officials are getting in on the contest to see who can say the dumbest thing.

I’m Highly Skeptical That You Can Find More Than 16 Out Of 50 States On The Map

50 for 50, bitches.

This week’s round up of some cool shit I’ve read and think you might also enjoy.

‘You’ve never seen The Beatles like this before’: Peter Jackson on his epic Get Back docuseries

This feature/interview sure makes the upcoming Peter Jackson Beatles series sound phenomenal. I found this line interesting:

For any self-respecting Beatles nut, this must surely count as one of the final mop-top Holy Grails…

I suppose Paul and Ringo could still write exhaustive tell-alls of the 1960s. (Or perhaps they’ve already written them and are just waiting for the proper moment to release them.) But that statement is both correct and sobering: this could be the final piece of original work from the Beatles we ever receive. Which is amazing since they broke up 51 years ago.

Life never lived up to what Anthony Bourdain wanted it to be
Drew Magary on the new Anthony Bourdain movie? Yes, please.

The Great American Reboot
This is a couple weeks old. It is already beginning to feel outdated. After a month or two of admittedly cautious loosening of Covid protection measures, it’s beginning to feel – at least to those of us who take this pandemic seriously – like we may have jumped the gun. Or rather than we’ve been let down by a huge chunk of our country who are idiots.

T.M. Shine visited Las Vegas on Memorial Day. I thought this observation was especially brilliant.

One thing I think we have all realized as the debates have raged over the pandemic — mask or no mask, to be vaccinated or not — is that we value our opinions more than both our lives and the lives of others.

A-fucking-men.

How America Fractured Into Four Parts
Finally, there may be no better documenter of modern America’s politics than George Packer. In this long essay, an excerpt from his latest book, he suggests that we have been split into four different perspectives. There are flaws in his arguments, but I think he’s pretty close to the truth.

In Free America, the winners are the makers, and the losers are the takers who want to drag the rest down in perpetual dependency on a smothering government. In Smart America, the winners are the credentialed meritocrats, and the losers are the poorly educated who want to resist inevitable progress. In Real America, the winners are the hardworking folk of the white Christian heartland, and the losers are treacherous elites and contaminating others who want to destroy the country. In Just America, the winners are the marginalized groups, and the losers are the dominant groups that want to go on dominating.

I’m going to resurrect an old feature of the blog: sharing some of my favorite things I’ve read over the past week on Fridays. This will be an occasion feature, so don’t count on entry every week. And some weeks it might be loaded with cool stuff and others, like this week, only have one or two items in it.

Don’t Piss Off Bradley, the Parts Seller Keeping Atari Machines Alive
For most folks my age, this will tickle a special part of your memory banks. One man is the gatekeeper to helping fans of classic Atari consoles and computers keep their machines running. But he’s a little like the Soup Nazi.

Jason Sudeikis Is Having One Hell of a Year
IT’S ALMOST TED LASSO WEEK!!!! I’m going to read this profile of Jason Sudeikis at least three more times before season two debuts next week.