open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Snowflakes” - Dropkick Some beautiful, hazy, power pop to start this week’s list. Is it asking too much that our days of snowflakes on the ground be done for this year? “Hardly” - Free Range This week’s Alternative Number One was Juliana Hatfield’s “My Sister.” Thus I listened to a lot of other ’90s alt rock by women and women-fronted groups. This song is new, but it would fit right in with those acts.
Alias Emma - Ava Glass To start, a crackling British spy caper. Emma, a young agent in a secret department within the British secret service, is tasked with guiding the adult son of a former Russian agent to safety before a Russian death squad can liquidate him. The catch is the Russians have tapped into London’s security network and are able to track many of Emma’s movements. And they may have placed an agent at the top of the security service, preventing her from calling for help.
As I mentioned in Friday’s Playlist, last week was a very odd one in our house. Monday was a school holiday. Tuesday the girls got up and went to school, then C called me as soon as they arrived saying she had thrown up in the parking lot. So back home she came. She puked again that night, so she was home again on Wednesday. Wednesday was also L’s surgery day.
A crazy week in our house, for a bunch of reasons, so my comments on this week’s batch of music will be even more half-assed than normal. Never fear, the songs are still good! open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Focus” - Preoccupations This band’s sound never changes much, even though their name has changed over the years. They still have this great, timeless, post-punk sound. “Champagne Taste” - Sunflower Bean Maybe a little Veruca Salt…salt?
I’m starting this post Wednesday as I sit in the waiting room while L gets her foot operated on. I thought about just skipping this topic, but since I have time to kill, I might as well share a some thoughts about the Jayhawks. I don’t know of any way to label the last few weeks as anything other than the biggest on-court disaster this program has faced in over 40 years.
A quick note to share that L had her surgery this morning. Everything seemed to go well, no surprises, and she did great. She’s upstairs in bed, still groggy from the anesthesia and waiting for the pain meds to kick in. She’ll be home for a few days but hopefully back to school next week and on the path to healing.
Saturday Night Live is one of the core pop cultural tentpoles that helped mold the person I am. From when I was first able to watch its prime time specials in the late Seventies, to when I started watching the show live in the early Eighties (along with the Seventies re-runs that played after midnight in Kansas City) it help establish my sense of humor and gave me a base to form friendships with like-minded classmates and neighbors.
I would wish you all a happy Presidents’ Day but, well, you know. Speaking of bullshit, I’m splitting what would normally be in the Weekend Notes post into two entries this week to separate the fun from the bullshit. Although there will still be some bullshit in this post. Regional Champs! Saturday we drove about an hour west of the city to Greencastle for the regional round of the Indiana State basketball tournament.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Eden” - Baths A little world music influence to this buoyant, fun track. “Ankles” - Lucy Dacus We are officially on the clock for a new Lucy Dacus album. No surprise it seems like it’s going to be wonderful, as usual. “Take Your Aim” - Rocket Some serious Smashing Pumpkin vibes on this track. Fortunately their singer is better than Billy C so I can happily listen to it.
A terrific feature about SNL’s Lorne Michaels as the show celebrates its 50th anniversary. Many writers have sat beside him watching their sketches die, only to have him turn and say, with stony sarcasm, “You must be very proud.” If the host’s monologue is flat, he’ll moan, “Can we get any charm out of him?” If a piece is too erudite, he might tell its writer, “Can they take the Emmy away?
Once again I am behind on these, so let’s get caught up with my last four reads. The Miracle of St. Anthony - Adrian Wojnarowski What a book! Future NBA scoops guru Woj spent the 2004–04 season embedded with the basketball team at St. Anthony High School of Jersey City. The program was famously coached by Bob Hurley for 45 years. For much of that time Hurley also worked tirelessly to keep the school open, spending countless hours fundraising and donating the money he made from speaking engagements and clinics to the school.
Well, one big topic to get to, and not the one most of the rest of the world is discussing today, so I’ll blow through the first two subjects quickly. Jayhawk Talk More stupidity. This team seemed to quit in the second half against K-State. Afterward, Bill Self said his players showed poor effort in practice Friday. This entire team is too old to not figure out the effort thing.
We stay knee-deep in the new music another week. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Prisoner of Beauty” - The Limiñanas, Bobby Gillespie I can find almost no information about this song or band, which is from the far south of France. So all I can say about it is that it 100% sounds like it should have been in some gritty film during the mid-90s indie movie craze. “All My Freaks” - Divorce Kind of funny that a brand new band is writing a song about all the troubles that come with being famous.
Me, in Monday’s post: I’m not sure if I have a worse feeling about tonight’s KU game or Tuesday’s CHS one. Shows what I know about ball. Jayhawk Talk Well, that was much, much better. Arguably KU’s best, wire-to-wire, performance of the year, jumping on Iowa State early and never letting up. The offense was humming, moving the ball quickly and finding the open man. Aside from a few ill-advised drives by guys who couldn’t shoot and Rylan Griffen missing four wide-ass-open 3’s, you couldn’t ask for much more on that end of the court.
Yeesh. Quite a weekend for basketball stuff, so I guess that will be my focus today. Let’s get the worst of it out of the way first. Feel free to skip; it ain’t brief. Jayhawk Talk I’ll begin by saying I’ve never been happier to have missed watching a KU game live than I was Saturday. Yet I was still angry and frustrated later that evening because I had checked the score just as KU took a 21-point lead on Baylor late in the first half and felt pretty good about how things would turn out.
Movies, Shows, etc Rebel Ridge Movies like this are hard for me to watch these days. The moments of injustice seem far too real and common in the real world. That said, this was a good, old fashioned action flick. Not too complicated. Amazingly, despite a lot of gunplay, there’s not a ton of bloodshed nor are there any deaths as far as I could tell. There are some BIG leaps in logic in the final 20 minutes, but that goes along with the old school, action movie vibe.
No sign that the current pace of new music will slacken any time soon, which means I will continue to have the pleasure of providing music to soundtrack a good chunk of your Fridays for the foreseeable future. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “People Of Substance” - Craig Finn DAD ROCK ALERT!!!!! Craig Finn has new music out! And it is produced by Adam Granduciel! And the other members of The War On Drugs are playing on it!
More basketball stupidity, at both the high school and college levels, yesterday that I prefer to avoid for now. So, I’m launching a new series that promises to be randomly occasional: a few words about some of the favorite things in my life at the moment. Olukai Kekaha Boots It is a little weird that a Hawaiian company, famous for making casual shoes designed to be kicked off at a moment’s notice, has made some very nice cold weather boots.
A lot of hoops to get through. Not looking forward to some of it, though… HS Hoops Two games for CHS last week. Wednesday we traveled south to take on Center Grove, ranked #7 in 4A. After our city championship, we had snuck back into the media rankings at #11 in 3A. Varsity lost by 17. We were down seven at halftime then scored the first seven points of the second half to tie.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Giving Up” - Michigander This sounds super happy, which was how I wanted to start this week’s playlist. Then you evaluate the lyrics and see it’s not happy after all. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere. “Jealousy” - Phantogram While we need happy songs at the moment, I’m also down with ones that sound good and pissed off. “Wants Needs” - Bartees Strange Strange is like a 50-50 artist for me.