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
youtu.be/m3a4OTh2Y… “New Moon On Monday” - Duran Duran You know, when you take a look at Duran Duran’s list of singles, it’s pretty solid. It was easy to hate on them, because they wore makeup and dressed fancy and made use of synthesizers as much as guitars. But you have to admit, they had a terrific run of songs from 1982-1986 (In the US) with a nice mini-comeback in 1993.
As has become custom, I settled down just a few minutes after first pitch to watch Tuesday’s MLB All Star Game. I was pretty sure it was on Fox and first pitch was in the 8:30 EDT range. Our program guide even said that the ASG was to air at that time. Instead, though, the MLB Tribute To Derek Jeter Starring New York Yankees Captain And World Champion Derek Jeter (with the 2014 National League And American League All Stars) was on.
Yeah, yeah, the site looks different. Normally when this happens I share a long, detailed accounting of the hows and whys that went into it. Not this time. A variety of user errors piled up over recent months and had things not working the way I wanted. After a week of tinkering I decided to scrap the system I’ve used for the last 11 months and go back to something less fiddley.
Back for part two. LeBron I figured there was a good chance that LeBron would flee Miami for Cleveland when he opted out of his contract. That didn’t mean it still wasn’t a shock when the news officially broke that he was heading home for the next phase of his career. I hated the first Decision and the premature celebration in Miami that came with it. I rooted against the Heat every step of the way the last four seasons.
A few topics of importance that must be addressed. Turns out I wrote more about the World Cup that I expected, so I’ll split it into two posts. The World Cup As tends to happen, the final was a bit frustrating for those of us who enjoy soccer. Another game that went deep into extra time before a brilliant goal saved it from being decided on penalty kicks. It was frustrating because, as the natural conservatism of most coaches/teams took over in the knockout rounds, the beauty of the group-stage of this Cup got sucked away.
OK, time to start something new. I’ve been having trouble sharing all the interesting things I come across each week. I’ll stash them somewhere, in Instapaper or Evernote mostly, then forget about them. So instead, following the lead of a couple other sites I read, I’m going to offer up a post most Fridays full of the interesting things I’ve gathered. As always, we’ll see how long this lasts. Onto the links!
Man, talk about going out with a bang. The girls wrapped up their swimming season Thursday at the annual invitational meet, which featured all six swimming teams that make up the conference they compete in. Fortunately, rather than being held in a four-lane, neighborhood pool, it was at a 10 lane high school pool. Still, we arrived at 9:00 in the morning and walked out right at 4:00 pm. Believe it or not, everyone at the meet who were not first timers like us raved about how well run the meet was this year and how quickly it moved along.
This is utterly astounding. Brother in music and lover of all things Prince Mike A. sent me the link below. If you were ever into Prince, I highly suggest clicking on it and chalking up the next 15 minutes to enjoying pure awesomeness. What will you see if you click? The 1983 performance of “Purple Rain,” from which most of the album version of the song was pulled. I always knew that the song was mostly live, but I had no idea that there was video of the actual performance.