youtu.be/MTrKkqE9p… “Coming Home” - Leon Bridges If you haven’t heard Leon Bridges yet, you’re just in time. His singles have been thrilling the music world the last couple months and his debut album just dropped on Tuesday. I’m fascinated by how artists make choices in what aesthetics they will adopt. I assume Bridges grew up listening to old Sam Cooke and Otis Redding albums. Any kind of pre-Beatles, pre-Motown soul music for that matter.
For years I’ve been a Back Up Nazi. I let people know how important it is not just to back up the data that is valuable to you - photos, videos, music, important text documents - but to have more than one backup copy. One copy around the house. Then an extra hard drive at a neighbor’s home or bank safe deposit box and collect it every few months to update it.
Some sporting notes. US Open I rarely watch golf anymore. Mostly because I haven’t swung a club in over eight years.1 And when Tiger flamed out I suddenly had no real rooting interest. The wave of new, young players all seemed like only slightly different versions of the same guy. Which, to be fair, is always kind of the case in golf. But I did watch healthy doses of Sunday’s final round of the U.
Happy Fathers Day to all the other dads out there! Chuck Klosterman’s Billboard cover story on Eddie Van Halen made some waves this week. Especially when Sammy Hagar put a pointed rebuttal/response on YouTube. I think we can all agree that Michael Anthony is the only guy of the first five to be in Van Halen that doesn’t seem like a total jerk. Eddie Speaks With the release of Inside Out Friday, ranking all the Pixar movies was a popular activity.
youtu.be/D-xcbL-Ca… “Gates Of Dawn” - Heartless Bastards HB has been kicking around for a lot of years now. Each time they put out an album, I think, “That’s pretty good.” But they’ve never made my Top 10 album or songs lists to end a year. That might change this year, though.
Long-time readers of this site will recall, likely with great pleasure, my periodic updates on the wildlife around our home from years past. We’re in a bit of a boon in that area, so lets revisit that genre of post. One night last week I was walking through the living room right at dusk and noticed movement between our deck and trashcans. Like so many times over the past 12 years,1 there was a big, fat raccoon slinking into our woods for an evening patrol.
The Stanley Cup playoffs ended Monday night and the NBA Finals wrapped up last night.1 Winter sports are finally over! Our family’s sports are in transition, too. Softball finally came to an end last week, albeit an earlier-than-expected one. C.’s team dropped their opening game of the tournament by four runs. They were down by 10 runs early, cut it to one in the 5th, but had the wrong part of the lineup up in the 6th and couldn’t get over the hump.
Wide awake I rearrange the way I listen in the dark Dreaming of starting up again Perhaps because I go to so few concerts, I approach them with a sense of trepidation. Will the singer be in good vocal form tonight? Will a mercurial band member be in a bad place and bring the whole group’s energy down? Will the sound be bad? Will the crowd suck, and the band not push forward because of the lack of energy and love coming toward them?
Only three articles worth sharing this weekend. It’s kind of a tradition that there be a Joe Posnanski story included. So here’s his take on the LeBron vs. Jordan comparison. Such Great Heights As much as I hate to admit it, I’m beginning to be swayed that this is both a legit question and there are reasonable arguments for LBJ. The biggest thing that makes it difficult is how much the game has changed since Jordan retired.
youtu.be/SmFVauPAv… “Eyes To The Wind” - The War on Drugs “I’m just a bit run down here at the moment…” Falling in the second half of their lovely Lost In The Dream album, perhaps no line sums up the disk better than this one. A weary proclamation of a man beaten up by the wallowing and self-flagellation that comes with romantic loss, it sets up all the glorious “moving on” tracks the dot the rest of the album.
I’ve been thinking about my next Royals post for a couple weeks. In the interim, they had a slow and steady descent into their first extended cold spell of the season. It began with concerns about pitching, as each member of the starting rotation had at least one terrible start and both Jason Vargas and Danny Duffy landed on the Disabled List. Soon, though, the Same Old Royals appeared at the plate.
Like many parents, we bought a camcorder around the time our first child was born.[1] Like many parents, we recorded dozens of moments during our early years of parenting, sometimes letting the tape run long past the point when it should have been shut off because we were so utterly delighted with everything our child did. Like many parents the camcorder slowly got used less-and-less as we added more offspring to the family.
The first full weekend of summer is in the books. Let’s go back a couple days to our first two days of summer vacation, last Thursday and Friday. Nothing too exciting on the agenda either day. Some bike rides, softball hitting practice in the street, hanging out with a visiting aunt, a trip to the library. And the girls first two full swim practices of the summer. Recall that we switched to a different swim team this year.
Links Figured I should start the summer off right by getting the links out on the normal day. Tomorrow is the Champions League final. After a lengthy absence from the elite, Juventus is back in the title game after a surprise run through the knock-out stages. They were my first favorite European team; I adopted them after the 1994 World Cup because so many of Italy’s best players were on the Bionconeri.
youtu.be/IoBJ0CfdS… “Inside Out” - Spoon I have one rule when making general music lists: each artist/band gets only one entry. So whether it is a year-end list or a favorites-of-all-time list, I have to decide which song best represents a particular act. For my favorite songs of 2014 list, Spoon’s “Rent I Pay” checked in at #11. But it took me much mental back-and-forth to decide which Spoon song to include.
Day one of summer! It’s right at 8:00 as I start this. Two of the girls beat me out of bed, despite letting them stay up late and being told to sleep in, but one is still zonked out. Of course, we could still hear noise from that one’s room after 10:00 last night. I, happily, slept in until the time we would normally be walking out the door for the trip to St.
At first glance, it was a light month. Two books?!?! What the hell? Ahhh, but the truth is more complex. One book took nearly three weeks to read. And in spare moments I was also reading books about photography. So, fear not. I knocked out my obligatory five books in May. I just won’t bore you with the details of the photography guides. The Sympathizer - Viet Thanh Nguyen Man, what a book.
Jeez. Another month that just flew by. Games, practices, birthdays, the first couple lake weekends of the year. And the winding down of the school year. Cram it all into a 31-day stretch and we’re turning the calendar seemingly moments after we last did so. L. wrapped up soccer yesterday. She enjoyed this season, but also developed some bad habits that were inevitable when she was, at times, playing against four-year-olds.
youtu.be/WgUAvzP-q… “She’s Not Me” - Jenny Lewis How many of you remember the 1989 movie Troop Beverly Hills? I’m 99% sure I never saw it, although I do remember the name. It was a Shelly Long vehicle, which right there should be enough to let you know it was terrible. It also was the feature film debut of the wonderful Carla Gugino. And it was the second big-screen appearance by a youngster named Jenny Lewis, who had done TV for several years, and would continue to act into the 1990s before forming the band Rilo Kiley with her then-boyfriend Blake Sennett.
It’s a tent-pole requirement of parenting to always be comparing the lives of your kids to your own childhood. We point out the ways our children are more fortunate than us: “I didn’t get to go to Florida until I was 31. You’ve been there three times before you turned 9. Stop complaining!” We observe the changes in how parents monitor their children today. For example, it seems like most of my generation had free reign to play wherever they wanted for as long as they wanted.