I’ve tried not to get sucked in too much to the Beatles Arrive In America nostalgia wave. Mostly because I feel like I’ve read plenty about them already and it’s enough for me just to spin some of their tunes.
This piece, though, is fantastic. In it, Billboard takes an in-depth look at the process of getting the Beatles on American radio in 1963. I don’t think I realized how much work it took to get them on the cultural radar here, and then how quickly they became the biggest thing in the country.
A week ago Saturday was a big day in our house. After eight years and fourteen days, we cleaned out the minivan, drove it to a local car dealer and left it as we drove away in a new Jeep Grand Cherokee.
That’s right: our days as minivan owners are over!
I must admit, that minivan served us well. We drove it to Michigan, Florida, all over Indiana, and to Kansas City several times.
There are plenty of notes stocked up from the last month of high school basketball and swimming. But coming home Tuesday night, I had a bizarre encounter that warrants sharing on its own.
I had just left an especially scintillating girls basketball sectional game1 and pulled onto the main drag of a small town about half-an-hour east of Indianapolis. About a quarter of a mile in front of me, I saw an Indiana State Trooper pull on to the road and head the same direction I was traveling.
Feeling better today, although it was a busy Tuesday and Wednesday morning has me at St. P’s for my library duty. Thus, I’m going to try to breeze through some stuff before I get too far behind.
Marcus Smart A buddy of mine has said all year that he found Smart scary. Not in a threatening way, but rather, well, I’ll paraphrase, “That guy is just such a competitor, I’m afraid he’s going to snap at some point.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the living room, looking out the front window, waiting for the next snowstorm to hit. The first flurries are expected to start falling in the next hour, and by morning we’ll have 8-10” of new snow. Yeah, I’m about done with this winter bullshit.
What a waste of a month January was. St. P’s and St. E’s follow different schedules, so the girls had slightly different delay/cancellation experiences last month.
I’ve come up with a phrase or two over my ten years of publishing my thoughts online that I particularly enjoy. One of those is “comprehensive ass-kicking,” used to describe, well, comprehensive ass-kickings.
I’m pretty sure the Super Bowl is the classic example of one.
Man, that was ugly. I missed the opening 12 seconds, as we were hosting friends and there were kids running around and we lost track of time.
Four books in four weeks to kick off the year. But one of those was a children’s book I knocked out in an afternoon, so I’m feeling like I didn’t take advantage of January the way I should have. Also, I’m skipping one book, just because I’m still thinking about how to write about it. It’s the first time I’ve read a book written by someone I know, and while I liked it, for some weird reason I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts on it into words.
If Super Bowl week is all about absurdity, it gets no more absurd than this: SB Nation’s Breaking Madden creates a Super Bowl of giants vs. tiny people. Even if you don’t read it all, scroll through for the GIFs, which made me laugh until I cried.
With just under two minutes left in the first quarter, I was winning 366 to zero. I realized that I was on pace to score 1,500 points in a single game.
This all probably means nothing, and I can’t find a clever way to tie them all together, but there are four rather interesting anniversaries/birthdays that each end in zero, in close proximity to each other.
In reverse order, youngest to oldest…
Hoop Dreams just turned 20. I remember watching it in a little arty theater in Westport, in Kansas City, where you sat on folding chairs and the film was projected on a small screen.
Sad news from the radio world.
Faced with growing competition from digital alternatives, traditional broadcasters have managed to expand their listenership with an unlikely tactic: offering less variety than ever. The strategy is based on a growing amount of research that shows in increasingly granular detail what radio programmers have long believed—listeners tend to stay tuned when they hear a familiar song, and tune out when they hear music they don't recognize.
Overheard on the way home from school yesterday.
C.: M.! Did you hear Justin Beaver got arrested?! (She still has a few words where she replaces B’s with V’s. I love that Bieber is one of them.) M. (bored): Yes. L.: Why’d he get arrested? C.: He egged his neighbor’s house. And he snuck out of a club. L.: Oh. He left a club? What’s that? C.: It’s like a place people go at night.
Sadly, all this cold has sapped my brain of writing inspirations. So yet another link for you. This is a good one, though.
Grantland offers up the oral history of all oral histories: an insiders’ tale of the making of the movie Swingers. It’s great, although not nearly long enough for extreme devotees of the flick. Still, plenty of great tidbits, including this story about the inspiration for the closing scene of the movie.
I saw this article linked to from a couple sites last week. Both pointed out that, on its surface, it seemed like a silly story about a silly fad. Apparently artisanal toast - at $3, or more, a slice - is the new big thing in San Francisco and beginning to spread to other major cities. But both sites said the story went deeper than over-priced toast and was worth diving into.
I’m pretty sure at some point in the past ten years I’ve written about my mini-fascination with soldiers, mostly Japanese, who disappeared into the jungles of the Pacific during the closing days of World War II and lived for years thinking that the war was still being fought only to eventually learn that peace had been declared long ago. I suppose it’s just an extreme take on the marooned in the wilderness fantasy.
This will cause some of you to shake your heads, perhaps in disbelief, perhaps in disgust, perhaps in resignation. But I must share it anyway, because it’s just so excellent to those of us who follow the Kansas Jayhawks.
Grantland’s college basketball guru, former Ohio State player Greg Titus, produces a weekly column in which he ranks his top 12 teams of the moment. It’s an often hilarious look at what happened over the previous week of college hoops.
It’s been awhile since I’ve shared any news from the road. Of course, there haven’t been a ton of really interesting stories from the winter sports season so far. But here are some tidbits to keep you updated on what I’ve been doing.
I forget if I shared my experience writing a preview on one of the boys teams we cover. So allow me to repeat myself if I did.
From January 25-27, 1978, the Indianapolis area got over 15” of snow, which came on top of 5” of snow from a few days previous. The winds howled at over 50 mph. Snow drifted to between 10 and 20 feet. The wind chills were below -50. People were trapped in cars on the highways. Amtrak trains were stranded on their tracks. The entire city shut down for three days. The pictures of that time, extra grainy as they came in the low-res, black and white newspaper photo era, are incredibly eerie.
Tonight the Kansas Jayhawks officially begin pursuit of their 10th straight Big 12 conference championship. Despite an immensely talented roster, that quest seems rife with concern at the moment.
There’s no denying it: the season has been disappointing so far. Disappointing, not a disappointment. While it’s been far from worst-case - the Duke and Georgetown games were fun - I think this season has been a textbook example of the perils of running a team full of freshmen and limited experience sophomores out against tough competition.
I read 55 books in 2013. Not bad. Not bad at all. Here’s the last of the bunch.
A Christmas Story - Jean Shepherd You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas - Augusten Burroughs Shepherd’s work is an annual tradition for me. Before I can watch the movie, I have to go back and read the original essays it was based on. And, each Christmas season, I try to include at least one new holiday book.
There’s no two ways about it: this sucks.
Over a foot of snow. Windchills are currently -40. There are travel bans all over the area, meaning unless you have an emergency or you’re on your way to a shelter, you can be arrested for taking your car onto a road. And worst of all, M. and C.’s holiday break was extended a day. It’s too cold to send them outside, we can’t drive to a mall or the library, and we’re all sick of each other.