Note: I’ll kick off my look back at the music of 2013 later this week. Here’s an appetizer about music in, but not of, 2013. I forget what the motivation was, but for some reason last night I decided to check and see when season two of The Americans was supposed to start. Unofficially, I found early February. Which is kind of a bummer. Mid-January would be much nicer. I guess I can go stream all of season one after the holidays to refresh my memory before the new ones air.
A full month of books, but also one in which I got obsessed by a specific topic late. So I’ll chop this into two entries: one for the non-obsession books then a second, tomorrow, for the books that haunted my dreams for a couple weeks. The Things They Carried - Tim O’Brien The Quiet American - Graham Green I began the month in a bit of a Vietnam jag. I read an article about Pham Xuan An, “the perfect spy” of the Vietnam War, which got me interested in reading more about the war years.
Mondays are for catching up. After a long holiday weekend there’s even more to share, so here we go. The girls had a long, five-day weekend. We could have used warmer weather as we really needed to shove them outside more. I’m not sure where they get all their energy. Or why they refuse to listen to us. Wednesday M. got a replacement for her fish, Sparkle, which died two weeks ago.
It’s assassination season, amped up 10,000% by this being the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death. I’ve watched bits and pieces of several shows about the assassination over the past week, and plan on settling down with the History Channel later and watching some more. This is nothing new. It’s long gone now, but in high school I taped a rebroadcast of the original NBC coverage on Nov. 22, 1963 and watched it over-and-over again, fascinated by history unfolding on live TV.
Time, and technology, march forward. The first widely popular desktop application that played MP3 files, Winamp, is being shut down in December. AOL Shuts Down Winamp For Good I first downloaded Winamp in December 1997. Pearl Jam had a new single, “Given To Fly,” that was getting airplay in advance of its official release. I kept reading on Pearl Jam discussion lists how you could listen to “radio rips” of the song if you had the right software1.
Forgive me as I link to one thing and then take it in a completely different direction. Esquire has a terrific profile of George Clooney in the December issue. I’ve always been a big fan; he seems like the kind of guy you would almost be happy stole your girlfriend from you. “So what happened with you and Jane?” “Oh, she’s dating Clooney now. But I’m totally cool with it. He’s really much better for her.
The belated weekend wrap up. Man, was it a crazy weekend. First off, we were lucky that the awful storms that blew through Indiana split before they made it to our house. We had some heavy winds, but nothing like the 80 MPH gusts they had downtown, or the tornadoes that were just to the north of us. The sirens did go off, and we hustled the girls to the basement for a bit.
It’s a double sick day. C. came home early yesterday with a fever and L., who was already on medication for a bad cough, was burning up this morning. Good times. We’re deep into a Netflix binge that will likely last all day. I got called to come pick C. up about 2:20 yesterday. When I got to school, M. was sitting in the office with a big, proud grin on her face.
I love it when the Onion says things that are both funny and true. Example: their take on a new (fictitious) ESPN show. “We’re looking for three, maybe four absolutely reprehensible, know-it-all fucks to sit around a table and share their idiotic opinions about the day’s biggest sports stories,” said ESPN’s vice president of original programming Jamie Horowitz, adding that ideally, the obnoxious, pig-headed pieces of shit will be a mix of annoying national sports columnists, repulsive former athletes, and one prick from Boston.
Wow, that was worth staying up late, and feeling kind of miserable this morning, for. All the pre-game chatter amongst KU fans, at least the ones I interacted with, was, “Well, I just hope we make a game of it and the kids get some experience that will pay off later.” Funny what a sloppy season opener can do to expectations. Some of that pessimism was because unlike KU, Duke returned several players from last year, and added a transfer with D1 experience.
Ominous skies here in Indy today. We’ve had a couple of small snow events already, nothing that accumulated, but tonight we may get as much as an inch. And then the temperatures are expected to to tumble for most of the week. I guess Mother Nature still has some bitchiness left after the (seemingly) endless winter of 2012-13. We have a clear view of those skies, too, now that most of our leaves have fallen.
Finally, the games begin. It’s been a long run since that sad Friday night in Dallas last March when Elijah missed, Trey hit, and Michigan knocked off the #1 seeded Jayhawks out of the NCAA tournament in overtime. Given how last season ended, this has been a surprisingly un-angsty off-season. Well, there was angst plenty of angst until May, but then for some reason a lot of that went away.
It’s been a nice, relaxing week. With the exception of C.’s Daisy Scouts meeting yesterday, we’ve not had a single event outside of school. Which has been nice after two-plus months of soccer practice and games. M. and C. wrapped up their seasons on Sunday. M.’s team had a great game against an opponent that had not lost all season. It was a tense affair, as the coaches for the other team were being very aggressive, throwing all their defenders forward the entire game, in an effort to clinch the undefeated season.
A Spy By Nature - Charles Cumming. I read Cumming’s Trinity Six earlier this year. After a slow start, I really liked it. I keep hearing Cumming’s name listed as one of the best young espionage writers going, so dove back in for another. Here, he focuses on a young British man, Alec Milius, who is drifting through his early 20s in the early 90s without any direction while his friends from school find success and fortune.
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.
A very busy few days. So let’s catch up quickly. Halloween was postponed a night in most of central Indiana thanks to some heavy rain and dangerous winds that rolled through Thursday. It actually wasn’t bad until most kids would have been inside, but I doubt walking through the rain would have been very much fun for anyone. Friday was a gorgeous, mid-fall evening. We had a peacock (M.), cat (C.
The girls are on high alert, as the holiday season officially begins this week. There is extra tension in the air this year, as the Indy area is expected to get hit with big storms tomorrow night, likely to include heavy rain, damaging winds, and lots of lightning. Several cities have already postponed trick-or-treating until Friday. Our city has not done so yet, but it would not surprise me if that changes in the next 24 hours.
It’s time. The Pacers kick off their regular season and KU plays their first exhibition game tonight. Two teams with huge expectations begin their journeys to hopefully joyful spring endings. More about the Jayhawks next week, when their real season begins. For now, the focus is on the Pacers. I heard one national radio blowhard1 say he expected the Pacers to, far and away, have the best regular season record in the league this year.
Wrapping up our break of fall while watching Game Four of the World Series. Lots of fun crammed into the past four days. We headed down to the LVS Thursday afternoon. It was cold, rainy1, and the LVS lacks cable and internet. This was our first time trying such an outing. I’ll admit, I was a little worried. But everything worked out pretty well. The girls played and read and watched movies and, yes, fought and annoyed us on occasion.
M. and C. begin fall break today. Well, actually it began at 1:00 yesterday thanks to early dismissal. Now they get today, tomorrow, and Monday off. Catholic schools know how to do it! So naturally we’re off to Florida again… Kidding! Two trips to Florida is enough for one year. We are getting out of town, though. We’re heading downtown, first, and making our annual trip to the Children’s Museum’s haunted house.