Wow. It was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote about a weekend series in Kansas City between the Royals and Red Sox, wondering if we would look back on it as the high point of the season. The Royals drifted, then climbed back to the periphery of the Wild Card race, staying in it until the final week of the season. After this past weekend’s sweep of the Giants, I’m tempted to write a similar post.
Running a little late on everything today. A fine profile by a fine writer. Pat Jordan on the eternal kid, Johnny Damon. An Idiot In Exile These are crazy times for music. Tom Petty just nabbed the first #1 album of his career. Which seems kind of crazy. More crazy is who preceded him: “Weird Al” Yankovic. As my girls would say, I know, right? Anyway, in case you wondered how “Weird Al” manages to make parody versions, legally, of so many popular songs, this article should clear it up.
youtu.be/xnS4jX9sa… “Summer Nights” - Van Halen School starts next Thursday, so it’s the last, real Friday and weekend of the summer for us. One last time to go down to the ol' fishin' hole. Wait… I don’t think Sammy was really singing about fishing, was he? Oh well, a great summer song and Van Hagar at the finest.
A couple hoops thoughts for Thursday. Wiggins headed to Minnesota Damn. It’s been pretty obvious, aside from the brief period when Cleveland kidded themselves that they could trade for Kevin Love without giving up Andrew Wiggins, that the #1 pick would be headed to Minneapolis some time before the season began. Still, it sucks for it to, apparently, be going down officially. Cleveland with LeBron was the perfect spot for Wiggs.
You may have noticed there was a comment on the site yesterday. No joke. After many years of not having comments I have turned them back on. I’ve even added the little Latest Comments widget over on the right sidebar so you can quickly see if anyone has offered up their opinions. It’s appropriate that my pal Stace was the first person to comment in this new era. We had a really ugly scene last week while eating lunch together in Kansas City.
My life, like pretty much everyone’s, has been full of ups and downs. Triumphs and tragedies. Successes and sadness. The last week or so has been one of the toughest in my life. Yes, I’m off caffeine. Good lord is it difficult. Until yesterday I had been plagued by headaches when my body realized, mid-morning, that no caffeine would be flooding my system. I am at a loss at what to do in the mornings, as brewing and enjoying coffee has been part of my routine since I left the corporate world a decade ago.
Summerland- Michael Chabon As with The Fault In Our Stars, while Summerland is officially classified as a “young adult” book, it is really a book for all ages. Especially if you love baseball and have time to read in the summer. Summerland is a bit confusing at first. But that’s not unusual for a Chabon book. In this case, he quickly introduces characters from different races and different locations in parallel worlds that cross over and interact.
File this under “Greatest Internet Finds.” It’s spectacular. In 1977, NBC gave Richard Pryor a prime time show. It last four episodes. Well, three and then an unaired final episode. That unaired episode is on YouTube. Find 45 minutes to watch it. It’s not a standard sitcom or variety show episode. Rather, it is a full-on roast of Pryor by the writers and performers of the show. Tim Reid, who went on to play Venus Flytrap on WKRP In Cincinnati.
youtu.be/g7_1R_b4x… “Refugee” - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (Forgive me if I shared this one recently. I thought I had, but my running lists of Friday Vids does not show it. I occasionally miss writing one down, though.) In general, I’m not a huge Petty fan. That said, I really enjoy his early work, let’s say ‘77-82. And a ton of music I’ve been listening to this year1 is directly influenced by his sound.
It was an incredibly long week, but also an incredibly fast week. Thanks to all of those in Kansas City who helped me out in some way over the past week. Whether you offered me lodging, legal advice, companionship at lunch, a beer and room on your couch to watch the Royals, or just moral support, it was much appreciated. There were parts of the week that were very good. I saw several relatives I had not seen in a long time.
I’ll be gone for a couple days. As many of you know, my dad died last week. I’m off to attend his memorial service and begin the process of dealing with his estate. I’ve debated whether to write much about this. It’s no secret my dad and I were not close, and had not been for many, many years. Other than my wife, few know the details of why that was the case.
We’ve hit double figures. Friday, M. left the world of single digits behind and entered the realm of the big kids, the drama of the pre-teen years, the marketing target of the Tweens. That’s right, she’s now ten years old. As is our family custom, this was the year for a big party for her. And she was the first girl to break the monopoly Monkey Joe’s had on our family’s birthday parties.
Time for our (now) usual roundup of things I read over the past week. First up, a rather interesting history of Autocorrect. It focuses more on the early development of the tool rather than our current, constant need for it in the age of touch screens. The Fasinatng … Frustrating … Fascinating History of Autocorrect Next, an interview with Hall and Oates, who are still performing and making new music.
Following up on the article I linked to last week, debating whether the concept of a “song of the summer” was out-dated, here are my two picks for the song of the summer of 2014. youtu.be/5GBT37_yy… “Girls Chase Boys” - Ingrid Michaelson Unlike Iggy Azalea, this song is being played everywhere from Radio Disney to pop stations to our local, “cool music for middle-aged hipsters” station. So I’ve been hearing it a lot.
As promised, the second of two nostalgia-focused entries. Last week I spent some time cleaning out our attic and some boxes in a basement closet. I don’t have a ton of old stuff left around. I purged much of it when I moved away from Kansas City 11 years ago. But there were still a few boxes with fun memories of my youth in them. The biggest box contained all my old Star Wars and GI Joe toys.
OK, I’m no fan of NASCAR. But this is kind of incredible. youtu.be/xnqjTWUuz…
The first of two nostalgia-laden posts. My apologies; I’m a writer in my 40s. I can’t help myself. This morning I finally wrapped up my review of the old posts here on the site. I won’t promise everything is completely cleaned up. But the number of posts with unreadable HTML segments smack in the middle of a sentence should be fairly low. I didn’t read the posts closely while going through this exercise.
I suppose I owe you a few notes from Monday’s trip to the 4H fair. That’s why we’re here, after all, right? I looked back and, unfortunately, our last trip to the fair two years ago fell in that missing gap in the site’s history. So I’ll apologize if I’m repeating details. If I can’t remember them, I doubt any of you will, either. Luckily it was about 20 degrees cooler than two years ago.
Three-and-a-half weeks of summer left. What an odd week this past one was. Monday and Tuesday it barely reached 70, with the lows at night touching the upper 40s. When it did warm up, it stayed below 80 until Saturday. Needless to say, there was no pool time last week. It looks like it’s going to be more normal this week. We may even have our first 90 degree day of the year tomorrow!
Back for another week of links. I’m digging deeper into the Instapaper archives to pull out some articles I wanted to share earlier in the summer but never got around to doing. Do you like The Smiths? How about a list of their 30 best songs with notes about each from other artists and celebrities? The Smiths’ 30 greatest songs – as chosen by the band and their famous fans