Tag: radio (Page 1 of 2)

Weekend Notes

September 16, 2024 / DB

As has become standard so far this fall, Friday night was jam-packed with sports action from the couch. Things were ratcheted up a notch this weekend, as KU was playing, meaning I couldn’t casually watch tennis, baseball, or basketball while listening to high school football. No, this week I would be yelling at the TV while listening to the radio. Sadly, more yelling than I expected. For the most part that worked out ok, although there were moments that big things were happening in each game at the same time and it was tough to keep track of what was going on where. It was also very confusing for S, who was facing away from the TV and didn’t always understand what was causing my outburst when the radio announcers were fairly quiet.

There was plenty of dumbness over the weekend, with some cool stuff sprinkled in. Let’s get to it.

HS Football

On the radio was Cathedral’s visit to arch rival Bishop Chatard, ranked either #1 or #2 in 4A, depending on the poll. CHS had won eight of the last ten in the series, but last year was one of those losses in the weird, split game that started on Friday (and CHS led 21–0 early) then ended with BC making a comeback Saturday morning after the game was halted because of a power outage Friday.

No worries this year. CHS jumped out 14–0 and never let up, winning 30–7. It could/should have been an even bigger win. The Irish had three touchdowns, including a 66-yard pass, called back because of penalties. Two of those turned into 10 points anyway. The kicker missed a makable field goal, then put what would have been a school-record 51-yard field goal off the crossbar at the halftime horn. Still, always satisfying to beat the rival, especially for the girls who have friends there. L went to the JV game on Saturday, another W for the Irish.

The CHS radio guys were hilarious. Both analysts played for the Irish, one graduating about 20 years ago, the other over 50 years ago. They were a little fired up for the rivalry game. They thought each penalty that wiped out a TD was garbage. They show more uncalled holds than usual. By the fourth quarter they were screaming at the refs from the press box. And this was in a game their team was winning! I was entertained.

KU

Welp, so much for all the big plans for this year.

I would have written a lot more about this game had I taken a crack at it Friday. Some seriously dumb coaching decisions. Any hopes that Jeff Grimes would step right in for Andy Kotelnicki have been dashed. I mean, how you don’t give Devin Neal, who averaged almost six yards a carry on the night and is averaging nine yards a carry for the season, the ball on second and two and instead throw a pass that has not worked all night when another touchdown likely wins the game is beyond me. The KU offense, which would get all kinds of run on football Twitter the past couple years for how innovative and fun it was, is now boring and can’t adjust. Hiring Grimes is the first big mistake of Lance Leipold’s time in Lawrence. I feel like he could have grabbed some OC from a Texas high school and got better results.

Aside from one exceptionally dumb play by the defense that could have ended the game – the fumble they kicked around for 30 seconds before UNLV fell on it – they were, mostly, amazing. Especially the front seven, which was not expected to be a strength. Two weeks in a row they’ve controlled the game and been let down by the offense/coaches.

Losing a contest that, after the game, the analytics gave the Jayhawks an 83% chance to win seems dumb even for a program with as much dumbness in its history as KU has. Something about the entire team seems off. The last two years it seemed more like a Mangino-era team that rarely did things to beat themselves. Through three games they seem sloppier and less disciplined than the past two years. That is true from the coaches through the players. Not what I expected from a head coach wound as tight as Leipold.

The headline has to be Jalon Daniels, though. Clearly he’s compromised. Whether it is physical, mental, a matter of meshing with Grimes, or some combination of those three, it’s not working. Bad throw after bad throw. Terrible decisions. Seeming confused rather than playing with the joy he used to take the field with. Maybe he can be fixed/salvaged/cajoled into better football, but it needs to happen quick if that is a genuine possibility.

There was a lot of call on Twitter to bring in Cole Ballard. Friday didn’t seem like the time to do that. If things go sideways in Morgantown this week, it might be time to give JD a break.

You would have thought it was a KU basketball loss for how long the angry, post-game texts flew around after this one.

Technically, a lot of the big goals for this season are still possible. They could still make the Big 12 championship game if the offense gets fixed in the next, gulp, five days. At this point I’m more worried about finding five more wins and going to another crappy bowl than any of that. After blowing two winnable games, I don’t have a lot of confidence those W’s are on the remaining schedule. Playing the Big 12 home games at Arrowhead always had a measure of risk. If this team falls apart and no one is there – aside from the entire state of Iowa when the Clones come to town – it will make this season seem even worse. Remember, with Kansas football, things can always get worse.

We all know timeouts in college are too long. But KU called a timeout with under 2:00 to play in the game Friday just to stop the clock. It was a standard, FOUR MINUTE time out. Just fucking terrible. Even in the NFL, which will cram as many ads into a game as they can, they limit those late game TOs to 30 seconds or a minute.

College Football

I didn’t watch much ball on Saturday as I found few of the games compelling. The game I watched most was Cincinnati-Miami. M made the 45 minute trip to Oxford to hang out with friends but did not have a ticket. She did get to go to a party with one of her best friends and said she had a great time and enjoyed all Oxford has to offer. Nice win for her Bearcats.

The Victory Bell rivalry is tied for the oldest non-conference rivalry in the country, but this was the last game scheduled to be played on campus, and the 2026 game at the Bengals’ stadium is the last one currently scheduled. When I talked to M on Sunday I tried to explain why – UC wants the games at the Bengals’ field instead of having to go to Oxford, Miami wanted to hang onto those home games, joining the Big 12 changed UC’s scheduling priorities, etc – but she thought most of those reasons were dumb. I’m with her.

S and I went out for an early dinner and got to see part of Notre Dame’s destruction of Purdue. I guess the Irish got re-focused after the Northern Illinois loss.

Colts

So the Colts might be a bad team. A really bad team. GM Chris Ballard insisted the defense would be solid this year, especially against the run. Then the Colts gave up over 250 yards rushing in the first half against a team starting a backup QB that was only going to pass if he had to. Seems dumb not to load up the box and force him to pass. And that was before two defensive linemen got hurt. I refuse to hold Anthony Richardson’s dumbness against him until next year. But something about his passes seems hard to catch, because his receivers dropped a ton of balls that hit their hands. Weird. Those drops make his poor decision making on other passes hurt even worse. And still the Colts had a chance until the final gun. They were fortunate the final score wasn’t more indicative how big a beat down this was.

The Cowboys, Lions, and Ravens all lost at home. The Niners lost. Aside from the Chiefs, who nearly lost at home, do you trust a single team in this league? I’m starting to think the uneven play is a function of teams barely playing starters in the preseason and the added week to the regular season making teams/players more cautious in how they handle injuries. But that’s crazy talk, right?

Twitter During Games

It is funny to look back on your feed at how people react to specific plays. When KU ran that stupid screen pass on second and two in the fourth quarter? People were pissed. And remained pissed well after the game ended. Same in the Colts game. There was a rather curious play call on a third down – something that happened several times during the game – and Colts Twitter, to the extent I follow it, blew up. My favorite was one of our young, local weather ladies getting involved. “What was that play call????” It shows how far we’ve come as a society where it’s not a surprise at all when a young woman has a football take, and it’s 100% legit.

Royals

The R’s took two of three in Pittsburgh, and really should have swept the woeful Pirates. Five games up for the final Wild Card spot with 12 games left. A better record over the last 10 games than both the team ahead of them and behind them in the WC race. 97% playoff odds. A clinched winning season. All summer I’ve been waiting for them to fall apart. It would really suck if they finally did it during this closing stretch.

Fever

Another Friday-Sunday weekend for the Fever. Friday they lost their second game in three nights to Las Vegas, this one much more competitive than the first. I checked on that game periodically but there was too much else going on for me to really follow it.

Sunday they closed their home schedule against Dallas. For some reason the game was only on locally on some third-tier station. One that, even on cable, looked piped in on some terrible, over-the-air antenna. The picture was all fuzzy and blurry. It was like trying to watch European soccer in the 1980s. Pretty sure this wouldn’t happen to the Pacers.

Anyway, for the third time this season the Fever and Wings played a tremendously exciting game, with the Fever winning by one, although Dallas hit an unguarded 3 at the buzzer. These teams tend to not play defense against each other, so it is back-and-forth, up-and-down the entire game. That win clinched sixth place for the Fever, and also guaranteed them at least a .500 season. Twenty wins two years after winning five. Not bad. Caitlin had a career-high 35 points Sunday, and broke the WNBA single season assist record Friday.[1] She also collected her sixth technical foul of the year Friday. Her teammates were keeping her away from the refs Sunday so she doesn’t get magic #7, which brings a one-game suspension with it. Maybe just stop complaining.

Weather

Still hot and dry here. I’ve been watering the grass a couple times a week for about a month. Despite that, our lawn got pretty crunchy over the past few days. We were hoping the hurricane remnants would bring us some rain last week, but that fizzled out in southern Indiana. No rain in the forecast, every day in the upper 80s. At least the pool is still open, and staying warm on its own.

The WNBA schedule expanded to 40 games last year, so a lot of season records have been falling. They may add another four games next year, so throw out your record books. ↩

A Hunch Proved Right

December 9, 2020 / DB

My Christmas spirit is at an all-time low. I don’t think I’m alone in that this year, nor do I need to explain why. I’ve only watched a couple Christmas movies, I’m not reveling in Christmas music every waking hour, and we’ve had a couple hard discussions about what our family Christmas gathering plans should be.

But one thing has made me happy this season, and that is the life of a local radio DJ.

The same station has been “Indy’s Christmas Station” for something like 15 years now. It is a generic “hits from all decades” station, the kind that you hear in countless waiting rooms and businesses over the course of the year. It is also the station that plays the old American Top 40s on the weekends, which is normally the only time I listen to it voluntarily.

But from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it is my default. I play it in the kitchen, it’s my first choice in the car, etc.

A few years ago I mentally wrote some imagined biographies of the various DJs I heard during the month I spent with them.

The mid-day lady was active in her church and approximately 800 different crafting groups. She worried about some of the songs her program director made her play, so she always tried to include an inspirational message before she spun “I Want Your Sex.” She was worried about her daughter going to college, and prayed every night that she didn’t make poor decisions that would sidetrack her life.

The younger guy who covered evenings was stuck in a format he hated, but it was a paycheck and he had no ambition to look at other stations/markets. Plus his girlfriend had missed her period so he might just be stuck in Indy permanently.

The afternoon shift was handled by an older guy who had a big, jolly voice. I decided he and his wife were former porn stars now living semi-anonymous lives in the Midwest. They lived pretty boring lives but every now and then he thought about those old days, and the wild shit they did in the 1970s.[1]

And for the morning drive DJ, I really filled in the details. He was single and enjoyed watching the Colts and Pacers with his buddies. But he also enjoyed hanging out with the ladies in his cul-de-sac and watching The Bachelor and the latest Hallmark movies while drinking fancy cocktails. And sometimes he caught himself staring through his windows at the neighbor’s private chef, an Argentinian named Raul…

I felt kind of bad about that last one – which is probably why I never posted it – but it made me laugh.

A year ago I was listening and the morning DJ mentioned something about getting engaged recently, and how he had a post about going ring shopping on his blog. As soon as I got home I pulled up the station’s website, found his blog, and looked for the post. I let out a triumphant shout: the pictures showed him shopping with another man! I was right!

Oh, and good for him, of course!

From what I’ve heard the past few weeks, they got married not too long ago. Which, again, good for him/them! Even in 2020 it can’t be super easy to live a public life in the Midwest and be open about being gay. I would imagine he/the station get emails and calls of annoyance and protest anytime he mentions his husband. And I bet some folks have switched to a different outlet. But fuck them.

As happy as I am for him, I’m also more that a little pleased that my imagined biography for him was kind of true. And I wonder how closely my others are to reality. It is little shit like this that has provided a spark this season.

This was obviously the one I’m most proud of. Later I found out he is a legendary DJ because he was one of the first blind DJ’s in the country. A blind porn star is a niche I didn’t know existed! ↩

40 at 50

July 10, 2020 / DB

I missed an absolutely huge anniversary over the holiday weekend and have been grievously late in finally getting to it.

Last weekend was the 50th anniversary of the first American Top 40 broadcast.

If you follow here closely you know that there has likely been no bigger pop culture influence on my life than AT40.

I remember my parents and their friends listening to the show in the late 1970s. Once I got my own radio, AT40 became an integral part of my weekends. Often I would listen to both the morning broadcast and the evening repeat. I would also watch Solid Gold or America’s Top 10 to catch their countdowns. When we got cable, watching MTV’s weekly Top 20 video countdown was required viewing.

By the late-80s my tastes were changing and adult contemporary music was taking over the top 40, so I listened to the countdown less-and-less. Like most people my age, my tastes drifted to hip hop and grunge and alt rock, genres that (at the time) had almost no chance to make the charts. Occasionally I would come across AT40 while driving, and I might listen for a few minutes before moving on to another station, or popping a CD into the player. By then Casey was gone, anyway, replaced by Shadoe Stevens, so there was no real nostalgic reason to listen.

Even as AT40 got further in the rearview mirror of my pop culture life, it still had an impact. I was a dedicated list maker of my own, for sure having a year-end favorites list and occasionally making ad hoc lists of my favorite songs of the moment. Friends were annoyed by me saying things like “This is my third-favorite song,” or something dumb like that. That all came from Casey and AT40.

And AT40 became a part of my life again as I passed into adulthood. There was that weekend in Iowa when I heard an old countdown and thrilled my then fiancé with my ability to guess the top four songs of the week.¹ A few years later, living in Indianapolis, I came across a station that played those old countdowns and would listen occasionally. That was a temporary arrangement and the countdowns disappeared again, until right about the time L was born, when the station that currently broadcasts the classic AT40s picked them up. For nearly 12 years now listening to pop music countdowns from my childhood has again became a Sunday ritual. A couple years back I found the iHeart radio channel that broadcasts countdowns from the 1970s and 1980s constantly and made it a favorite that I listen to while in the kitchen the way others listen to NPR or talk radio.

And, of course, all that modern listening helped create my Reaching for the Stars series, which I hope you enjoy.

Since AT40 arrived a year before I did, I don’t know if music lovers were already obsessed with making lists or if we can credit Casey for warping our minds. I think there’s something about being a music freak that makes you want to rank and order songs and albums, whether it is to rate them by quality or simply to physically organize them. But Casey and AT40 certainly pushed my generation toward being neurotic about those lists.

I’ve been obsessive about a lot of things in my life. That’s how my mind works. But no obsession has been longer, or more consistent, than my obsession with ranking songs. I owe it all to Casey’s dream of sharing the top songs in the country with America every weekend.

1. She was not thrilled.

Covid Chronicles, 3/30

March 30, 2020 / DB

Happy spring break, everyone! So excited to leave dreary, cold Indiana behind for a week in sunny, warm…

Well shit. We weren’t even supposed to go someplace warm, but it is still crappy to remain stuck at home rather than on day two of skiing in Colorado. Who knows, maybe staying home means one of us didn’t break a leg or blow out an ACL on the slopes. Regardless of what is going on here, we are glad the resorts shut down as the Keystone-Vail corridor is apparently a hotspot thanks to at least one person who traveled from Italy to that area in early March.

The past week has been very boring. The stress and excitement of the first week of being stuck at home wore off. The girls got into a routine, but that routine was not ideal. If she didn’t have an early class meeting, M was sleeping until 10 or so before she woke to get started on her assignments for the day. She was generally busy all day, each day. C and L again got most of their work done early in the week and spent the rest of the week on screens large and small. L got outside quite a bit, as the weather was decent most of the week. We played a lot of HORSE and took a few bike rides.

I did have to re-teach myself some fifth grade math – dividing fractions – as L got a little stuck and her online resources weren’t clear in what she was supposed to be doing. I had to break down and call a friend who used to be a math teacher to make sure I was on the right track. Math is my biggest worry for the two younger girls. I hate for them to get behind or I teach them something wrong and it affects how they perform in the future. I imagine teachers all over the country are trying to figure out how to avoid this, and lesson plans next fall will be adjusted to make sure kids aren’t too far behind.

We’ve been pretty hands off with their eLearning, though. We let them know we are available to help, remind them to check in with their teachers if they run into issues, and make sure assignments are being completed. They all seem to be getting everything turned in and getting full credit, so we will continue to let them operate independently when they jump back in next week.

Last Wednesday was an absolutely glorious day. It was in the upper 60s, the skies were clear, the winds were calm. Our street was a constant stream of dog walkers, runners, and bikers. We adjusted our meal plan for the week to throw some burgers on the grill, as it was the perfect grilling day. While we were outside we could smell other people’s grills and hear folks playing music outside. In the evening there were fireworks scattered about. It was an impromptu celebration of the beautiful weather and an opportunity it get outside after just over a week of most of the world staying inside.[1]

In these strange times people are doing strange things. For example, over the weekend the Indy radio station that plays Christmas music between Thanksgiving and Christmas pulled out all those tunes from Friday evening through last night. Even I, the “Christmas Music Must Only Be Played During the Holidays” zealot tuned in for a bit. I felt weird doing it, not because it was out of season, but because I didn’t know how it made me feel. Was this a momentary adjustment to bring some joy to a grim time? Or was it a sign that the end of the world was nigh and we might as well enjoy things we may never get a chance to enjoy again?

It felt especially weird to listen to the station Saturday. We had the windows open to enjoy the near–80 degree weather, there were thunderstorm watches and warnings, and late in the evening we had a torrential downpour that flooded our yard. It didn’t exactly look a lot like Christmas.

I made a grocery run early Sunday. It was designed to be a small, quick trip so I went to the grocery store around the corner. I had been there two weeks earlier and found it was very much picked over. Things seem to have stabilized, though, as I was able to get just about everything on my list plus a number of additions I made on the fly.

It is a sign of the times that you leave a grocery store with an immense feeling of relief if you get 90% of what you needed.

Normally we run our pantry and fridge/freezer pretty tight. I will shop early each week and plan on 3–4 dinner ideas, knowing we’ll squeeze in a leftover night, likely a dinner out, maybe a “cereal for dinner” night, and then figure out a plan for the weekend when Friday rolls around.

Now I keep a very detailed list of how many dinner options we have. Where we are normally good for a few nights, and I often have to run out to grab a few things multiple times during the week, I currently have us set up to get through at least a week, likely closer to two. Our freezer is jam-packed and I’m making plans to have some electrical work done to add a freezer to the basement once this is over. I’m constantly checking the list to assure myself that I don’t need to venture out to a store again for a few days.

It is these little obsessions that give you an anchor in these uncertain times.

Test note ↩

Some Notes

February 14, 2019 / DB

A couple smaller things smashed into one post today.

First, there’s just too much information out there. I know this is, like, a devastatingly deep and original opinion, but that’s why I have a blog, people.

Wait, I’m not talking about the general flood of information we swim through each day. I’m talking about the maddening process of trying to buy pretty much anything.

Example: our printer is dying. So I go on the webzzz to do some research on what garbage printer we should buy for the next 18–24 months.[1] I find a couple articles, on reputable sites, that lay out various options. I hone in on a couple and head over to Amazon to check the user reviews. And here’s where we run into issues.

Try to buy anything, especially an electronic device, and you have to wade through a sea of terrible reviews. You think you’ve found a winning printer, camera, whatever, and then you see five people give it one-star reviews based on some terrible flaw. “Printer literally ate my child. WOULD NOT BUY AGAIN!!!111!!!” Are these five people out of a million, or five out of 200? What is worth the gamble?

This problem really came to a head this week as the first new printer we ordered did not work. I unpacked it, plugged it in, followed the instructions, and it got stuck in an error code loop I could not get out of. I tried everything I could find online, but nothing fixed the issue. And this error kept me from doing anything. I couldn’t connect to a computer to try to override it. I couldn’t just cancel out and try to make it work around it. Nuthin’.

Luckily since it was an Amazon purchase, I flagged it as defective, sent it back, and began the process again. We have a new printer coming tomorrow. It was highly recommended by several websites. It also got slammed in the Amazon reviews. So we’ll see…

Next, a follow-up note to yesterday’s Reaching for the Stars post. My Top 40 listening habits have changed a little and, thus, I’m adjusting my writing related to those shows.

You may recall on New Years Eve day I rediscovered the iHeart Radio station that plays old AT40’s continuously. I really enjoyed hearing their replays of the Top 100s of each year in the 80s that week. And I’ve continued to listen to that station. It’s kind of become my default background music. In the morning I have our Sonos speaker in the kitchen tune to that station and keep it on until the girls get home. When I pass through the kitchen throughout the day, it’s fun to hear a few minutes of whatever countdown is on. I swear the station is trolling me though, as they are constantly playing shows from 1984. I’m almost disappointed when I hear an ‘84 show I’ve heard so many lately.

As you would expect, my brain is always spinning and highlighting little Casey tidbits in these countdowns. Since these countdowns are random, they don’t always match up with the calendar week the way the ones on my local FM station or SiriusXM do. But, since I’m listening to them, it seems like I should go ahead and write about them.

So, going forward, there will likely be some Reaching for the Stars posts that are from the iHeart Radio station and from different parts of the year. The bonus is I might get more sweet, 1970s action going on in those posts!

Seriously, all home printers are trash. ↩

Starting Off Strong (In Theory)

January 2, 2019 / DB

Happy New Year! Hope your celebrations were safe, happy, and the headaches/stomaches that resulted have passed.

Our New Year’s Eve went well. The Pacers game was good. Well, other than spending 15 minutes to travel three blocks right before our parking garage. Not sure what the hell was going on but traffic was a nightmare. The Pacers won by 8, the girls seemed to enjoy it, and our seats were decent. We were actually in the same section I sat for the KU-Michigan State game in November, just 17 rows higher and slightly to the side. Still low enough to clearly see the game.

New Year’s Day was our standard, put away the Christmas decorations while watching football day. Always weird to see your home after six weeks of having a tree and decorations fill the open spaces. Our house feels much bigger today.

Ah, but the highlight – to me at least – of the week has been a musical discovery. Or rediscovery, rather.

I had forgotten there is a station on iHeart Radio that plays nothing but old American Top 40s. I haven’t checked it in months, maybe over a year. I don’t listen to it often because the countdowns are random. Unlike the ones on local radio or SiriusXM, they do not correspond with the same week back in the day as the current calendar shows.

For some reason I decided to check it Monday afternoon before we left for the game. The song playing was something not immediately familiar, but likely from the late ‘70s. So I decided to listen until the end of the song to place it properly. That’s when I heard Casey say he was counting down the top 50 songs of 1979. Nice! I enjoyed the next 90 minutes or so of listening to the end of that countdown. There were some great songs in there.

Anyway, the 1979 countdown ends and they roll straight into the 1980 countdown.[1] You might see where this is going…

I listened to a little of 1980 before we left. I caught a little of 1981 later in the evening. And we listened to a big chunk of 1983 while taking the decorations down. With 1984 coming up, you might think I would huddle up for six hours and listen to the entire thing. Somehow I resisted that urge, and only listened to a couple bits here-and-there, along with a longer stretch when I went to the gym. And I listened to a long chunk of the ’85 countdown while reading before bed. As I write this I’m in the middle of the 1987 countdown, which was right when my listening preferences were beginning to separate from what was on AT40 each week.

As you will expect, I’ve really enjoyed listening to these countdowns. Lots of fun trivia. Several songs I’ve mentally flagged to write about if I hear them later this year. Plenty of notes I’ve texted several of my brothers in music about. And tons of great songs. To be fair a lot fo really shitty songs, too.

I was going a little crazy when I couldn’t matchup the songs Casey was playing with the lists I found online of the Billboard Hot 100 from each year. It took some digging, both online and into my memory as I think I’ve battled this issue before, but turns out the radio show’s top 100 was based on a December 1 – November 30 year, while the official top 100 was based on January 1 – December 31. I was going crazy especially in 1984, when Casey insisted “Say, Say, Say” was the top song while every list I’ve ever seen lists “When Doves Cry” as the #1 song of that year. Knowing the radio show cut back into 1983 made that make perfect sense, as “Say, Say, Say” was huge at the end of ’83.

I suppose, when much of the countdown was put together without the use of computers, it was a huge effort to count the songs, gather interesting tidbits about the list, and then record the show in-between the regular December shows in time for its late December release. Makes sense that they had to start several weeks early to meet that deadline.

The more you know…

Finally, I was reminded yesterday about how I’m getting older.

I consistently go to the gym 3–5 times each week. I’ve been on that schedule since the girls went back to school in August. I’m on ok shape, although I haven’t switched my routine up for awhile. I have been on a medium weight, high repetition program since mid-October.

I mixed things up yesterday, moving to a plan for men over 40 I found online. I would be using lighter weights, almost exclusively dumbbells, and focus on form. For example, rather than doing leg presses on a machine, I would do squats with dumbbells. Easy enough, I thought. Those had been part of my routine until October, when I went to pressing more weight on the machine.

I decided to throw in shoulder presses at the top of the squat, something I used to do in every strength session. It’s a great movement that hits your whole body. After the first set, my legs felt a little weird. After the second I thought all the supporting muscles in my upper legs were going to tear. On the third, my back seized up. Terrific.

This morning my back is still crazy tight, the legs are sore. All this just from doing different exercises with 15 pound dumbbells, much lighter than what I had been lifting last week.

Getting old sucks.

1980 seems to be the year that the year-end countdown went to 100 songs. ↩

For The Love Of Baseball And Radio

November 4, 2013 / DB

OK, cramming three things together that aren’t each related to the others, but I can link them enough to justify the single post. And, I know, all of these would have been much more timely a week ago. You were busy, too. Let’s get caught up together.

First, radio. Last week was the 75th anniversary of the War of the Worlds broadcast. I’ve always been fascinated by it for a variety of reasons. And I had heard many times before that the “panic” wasn’t nearly as widespread as legend insisted.

But this piece does the math, checks the historical record, and then delves into why there was a “panic” in the first place. The answer is awfully interesting.

How did the story of panicked listeners begin? Blame America’s newspapers. Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted.

Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Did Not Touch Off a Nationwide Hysteria. Few Americans Listened. Even Fewer Panicked.

Now, radio and baseball.

A wonderful look at the tremendous reach of St. Louis station KMOX, and how its power and the geography of baseball before expansion made the Cardinals, arguably, the most popular team in America, even at the height of the Yankees dynasties.

Supposedly, it still is, despite the proliferation of televisions and Internet access. But can it really still be heard clearly in other states, without the harsh accompaniment of static and interference from other stations trying to muscle in on the signal? Surely there must be some exaggeration.
To put it to the test, I set out in my rental car Sunday, the day of Game 4 of the World Series, between the Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox, and headed south, the radio tuned to 1120 AM, to see if I could I outdrive the signal before the end of the game.

Trying to Outrun The Cardinals’ Long Reach

And, finally, just baseball.

I love the site Flip Flop Flyball. Artist Craig Robinson uses his mastery of Photoshop and his new-found love of baseball (He’s a native of England), to create kickass, 8-bit-style graphics of famous players and historical moments. He also makes cool infographics that are not necessarily 8-bit.

He currently resides in Mexico and using the Mexican sculpture style known as Árbol de Vida (Tree of Life), he created an Árbol de Béisbol: the history of baseball in one, cool, 8-bit graphic. Here is the image, but he sure to go to the page and read up on all the elements. It’s really fantastic.

arbol

Árbol de Béisbol

And while you’re over there, look at some of his other work.

Run Lindsey!

October 17, 2013 / DB

Posnanski revisited his 32 Best Calls In Sports History to honor the 25th anniversary of Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1988 World Series. Checking in at #10 is Larry Munson’s epic call of Lindsey Scott’s 92-yard catch-and-run that helped Georgia beat Florida in 1980. I remember watching the game live, and probably hearing some network announcer call it, and I’ve heard the central part of Munson’s call many times. But I had never heard the aftermath, which is absolutely incredible.

“Man is there going to be some property destroyed tonight!”

BTW, the rest of Posnanski’s piece is great, too. I spent about half an hour last night watching all the clips, then expanding to look up some of my other favorites. Good freaking times!

For Those About To Rock

October 8, 2013 / DB

I recently came across a new classic rock station¹ that has a “Twelve O’Clock Double Shot” lunch show. Which is great, because I pick up L. at 1:00 so while I’m sitting in line waiting for the kids to come out, I get to listen to the last few minutes of the program.

One day last week I lucked into a Motley Crüe block. It was a gorgeous day, so the windows were down. I may have turned the radio up just a hair louder than appropriate for a preschool pick-up line. And I may have been playing air drums a little too demonstrably. But it was “Girls, Girls, Girls,” what the hell was I supposed to do? Just sit there? I think not.

I was snapped out of my reverie when I noticed Father T. walking by. I casually reached up, reduced the volume, and gave him a friendly nod. Fortunately, he was engaged in conversation with someone, so if he heard the Crüe, he did not give me any looks about it. Later I remembered that this was the same priest who quoted the Rolling Stones at L’s baptism,² so while the Crüe might be a little heavy for his tastes, he has an appreciation for good music. I bet he not only heard the music, but he was also playing a little mental air guitar, too.

Well, it’s new to me. It’s a Muncie station, so perhaps it’s always been there but they just upped their power and now they reach Indy. ↩
As usual for me at church, I tuned out his homily. Until I heard him say, “…but as the Rolling Stones said, ‘You can’t always get what you want.’” That I liked. ↩

My Musical Youth

September 4, 2012 / DB

On occasion a memory from the past will trigger something in my brain and I’ll fall into a deeper hole of nostalgia. That’s been the case recently concerning summer music from the 1980s.

The trigger, this time, was two separate American Top 40s I listened to on recent Sundays.¹ One was from 1984, and was loaded with Prince, Bruce, Tina, Cyndi and the Footloose soundtrack. That was one of the truly great summers ever, between some epic pop artists and the LA Olympics.

Two weeks later I heard one from 1982, this time an interesting mix of the Go-Gos, Men at Work, John Cougar and other artists I was listening to back then with others like Air Supply, America, and Elton John, all music that my mom was listening to at the time.

After much over-analysis of those songs and the memories they stirred, I decided 1982 was a hugely important musical year in my life. That was the year I officially transitioned away from most of my music being influenced by my mom and her friends to picking my own music. We still listened to a lot of the same music – another bonus of having a mother only 19 years older than me – but she was drifting away from the music of the 70s and into “lite rock” while I was discovering New Wave and harder rock. There was still a swath of mainstream pop music we both enjoyed: Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie were the most obvious examples. But ’82 was the year that common ground began to shrink rapidly and soon there would be almost no overlap in our tastes.

Which led to more over-analysis about the changes in radio over the past 30 years, most of which I’m sure I’ve written about before. While much of the music of the 1980s was pretty awful, historically speaking, it was still a golden age for pop radio. There just isn’t the variety of music represented in mainstream pop today that there was back then. Now it’s all dance/hip-hop derived music. In the 80s there was dance music, rock, all the New Wave artists, a dose of pop-country, and then the massive artists like Prince that defied easy labeling.

Was it better then? I think most people will argue the music of their pre-teen and teenage years was the best of their lives. I do think that common culture, represented by what Casey Kasim played on AT40, was better. You could go anywhere and people your age would have that common base to work from.

That said kids today have far more access to music than my generation did. They aren’t reliant on Casey or MTV to tell them what to listen to. They can go out and sample 1000 different bands from 100 different sub-genres and decide what they like on their own. They don’t have to sit and wait for the songs they like, they can get them whenever they want them.

What does it all mean? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is I’ve had these songs, and all the memories and feelings associated with them, bouncing in my head for the past few weeks. As much as I tried to find some meaning in them, I could not. So I figured maybe if I shared this experience, and overdose on 80s summer pop over the holiday weekend, I’ll be ready to start anew on Tuesday.

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone.

One of the local retro stations spins old AT40s every Sunday. I try to listen in a little each week. ↩