A week off means we stick with the extra-stuffed playlists. I don’t hear any complaints. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Summer In The Park Pt. 1” - East Coast Connection Early August used to mean you got focused on how to maximize the last few weeks of summer. Not these days, when most of the country goes back to school well before Labor Day. There are still a few folks enjoying summer in the park, though.
City in Ruins - Don Winslow The final entry in Winslow’s Dan Ryan trilogy. Like the first two, it moves briskly. Also like the first two, that briskness makes it feel only partially formed. It was an interesting writing exercise, especially when compared to his Mexican cartel trilogy, cutting the story to the bone and eliminating anything that didn’t swiftly move the plot forward. It probably took me six or seven combined days to read this trilogy, about the same effort to read one of his cartel books.
Tradition requires me to share some Olympic thoughts. I debated waiting until the games ended and publishing one, extra-stuffed post. But the games move so fast that things that struck me in week one are bound to get over-written by events of week two. Hell, the notes I’m about to share may already be fuzzy in everyone’s memories. Guarantee I’ve said this before, but Rugby sevens is awesome. I still have no idea what the rules are, but when a game last less than 30 minutes, do you really need to know the rules?
Our week in Florida wasn’t perfect, Mother Nature saw to that. But it was pretty good. For the first time in eight or nine years, we drove for a vacation in the south. It was 11.5 hours, door-to-door, and traffic was not terrible on either trip. A lot of travelers, to be sure, but nothing like spring break volume. We stayed in Inlet Beach, one of the 30A communities, with our old neighbors.
No playlist next week, so I’ll see if I can cram a few extra songs into this one. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Florida” - Modest Mouse We will depart early Sunday for a week in the Florida panhandle. This is the only song overtly about Florida in my collection, thus its inclusion. Thursday was also M’s birthday. Famously, I was listening to “Float On” when S’s water broke, so I always think of Modest Mouse this time of year.
Posting this early as we head off to Florida for vacation this weekend. Movies, Shows, etc Tour de France A good first two weeks became a rather boring final week as Tadej Pogacar destroyed the field for an easy win. Luckily, that last week was when I barely watched, between travel basketball and the British Open. As always, the Peacock production of the French images was laughably bad at times.
Belated notes after a morning of driver’s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip. Kid Hoops Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L’s team went 2–2, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend. Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska.
Another long-ish collection this week. I doubt any of you mind that much. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Summer Nights” - Hazel English Nothing better. “Chicago” - Japandroids Tuesday I listened to Japandroids' classic Celebration Rock all-the-way-through for the first time this summer. So, so good. For the first time, I realized at least one of my kids is right at the age that album’s songs are all about, which was a little strange for me.
The Dog Days of Summer are supposed to come later, say very late July into the early weeks of August. That gap when the heat really kicks in, the newness of summer activities has faded, and boredom starts to kick in. But, I realized this week, they really should arrive sooner since kids go back to school a lot earlier than our generation did. Which might explain why things seem kind of dead around our house and I’m lacking in blogging material.
What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, plus a ton of teams that didn’t have a location in their name so we couldn’t identify them.
After taking a break for the holiday, I’m offering you an extra jam-packed playlist at no extra cost. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Rain In The Summertime” - The Alarm After the remnants of Hurricane Beryl rolled through this past week, there’s a chance of rain every day for the next week. I won’t complain, though, as the showers will be scattered each day and will help moderate our temps just a little bit. By the way, did you hear that Beryl closely followed the path of April’s eclipse?
Holiday Weekend Not a bad Independence Day weekend at all. S’s sister who lives in Denver and her family came to stay with us from Wednesday through Sunday. We had a couple cornhole tournaments (L beat her cousin in one, and she and I beat the cousin and his dad in the other).The kids went and played mini-golf in the midst of a downpour. We hit a hibachi place one night.
C and I are off to Bloomington for a campus visit today, so weekend notes will have to wait. To tide you over, a slew of links, including three oral histories. I’m rarely at the beginning of any trends. But I did get my first Livestrong bracelet right around this time 20 years ago. I was wearing it when M was born, as my first pictures as a father can confirm.
No true playlist this week. Instead I’ll share two fun videos I’ve been sitting on for a few weeks. First, clips of classic Peanuts cartoons edited to somewhat match the classic Boston songs “Foreplay/Long Time.” youtu.be/qxtgJIQk1… Next, someone recreates New Order’s “Blue Monday” using a staggering variety of Casio instruments. youtu.be/h9mm0YlMa…
Movies, Shows, etc The Americans, seasons one and two I’m finally doing it: devoting this summer to re-watching one of my very favorite TV shows. My original plan was to try to knock all five seasons out in June. But as I can’t watch more than a couple shows a night, even if I love something, and there were a lot of basketball nights in the month, I only got through the first two.
Here we go! One of my favorite music days of the year! Two new songs for 2024. We’ll see if any of you can pick them out. No fair peeking back to last year’s post: it’s the same Spotify playlist so the posts for the last five years all update to show the new additions. Happy Fourth of July to all! open.spotify.com/playlist/…
We knocked out season three of The Bear over the weekend, binging six episodes Friday and four Saturday. Before I dive in, a couple preliminary notes. First, I had not heard official word that there will be a season four until after we finished. I believe I heard there might be another season, but not that it had been confirmed. Thus, when we paused things Friday night, I was a little concerned about how things were going to wrap up in the final four episodes.
Originally I planned on taking this week off. We have family coming in on Wednesday, holiday activities the rest of the week, and a busy two days before all that. But plenty happened over the weekend and I have a couple other posts nearly ready to go, so looks like we’ll slide into the holiday on a nearly normal schedule. NBA Draft What a weird-ass year. L had a workout Wednesday night so I wasn’t able to watch much of the first round live.
I’m putting this list together late Thursday, for reasons I’ll get to in a moment, so it could take some weird turns. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Summer Girl” - HAIM Yep. “Save It For Later” - Eddie Vedder We were busy with the last night of summer league ball Thursday, so I couldn’t give any attention to the biggest event on TV: season three of The Bear. There’s been a lot of Pearl Jam/Eddie Vedder through the show’s first two seasons.
Chain Gang All-Stars - Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah I almost stopped reading this book twice, despite the critical acclaim it has received. The opening chapters seemed repetitive as Adjei-Brenyah slowly introduced a series of characters through similar sets of events. They are all convicted felons working to earn their freedom by participating in the Chain Gang All-Stars, a competition where inmates fought each other in a gruesome, ramped-up, American Gladiators-style competition. Survive long enough and your record gets expunged and you go free.