Periodic losses of power, some pool gatherings, and three weeks of travel basketball cut my list a little short last month. Movies, Shows, etc They Shall Not Grow Old I’ve been waiting for this to hit a streaming service for a couple years. Peter Jackson took footage from World War I, colorized it, and overlaid it with interviews given by British veterans of that war to offer a limited view of what that conflict was like.
I’ve stacked up a lot of sports thoughts over the past several weeks. Let’s dive in and see how long it takes to get through them. Tour de France After watching the Netflix show Tour de France: Unchained in June, I was all-in for this year’s tour, even ponying up for Peacock for the month to watch.[1] It was like the good (bad) old days watching Lance Armstrong as I turned the race on first thing every morning and tracked the day’s progress.
No major events from the weekend to share. We were busy, though. The weekend was all about preparing to be social then actually being social around the pool. Saturday night we had L’s basketball team over for a final get together to celebrate the season. Eight of the nine girls came and most of the parents hung out. The girls had a good time and enjoyed their final night together as a single team.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave” - Martha Reeves & The Vandellas We have been very lucky and this has been one of the best spring/summers I can recall, other than the Canadian smoke. Until this week. The heat that has been plaguing the rest of the country finally hit us, although its worst has held off until today and will clear out Saturday night when some storms pass through.
When Irish women with distinctive voices who were successful in the 90s die, I’m required to write about them. The terrible news came Wednesday of Sinéad O’Connor’s death. It’s an understatement to suggest she did not have an easy life, so while a shock, this is also one of those deaths that can seem like a relief from all the pain she dealt with in her 56 years. Tom Breihan wrote a nice obituary on Stereogum.
Three-fifths of our family spent the weekend in Ohio. You want details? I got details! Kid Hoops L and I went to Cincinnati for the final travel tournament of the year. We’ve never done well in these events but were looking forward to one last shot to prove ourselves on the national stage. We had six games, so I’ll keep the breakdowns brief. We played Friday and Saturday at the event’s main gym, a building in Hamilton, OH that had 30-ish courts.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Midnight Sunburn” - Dog Ears Big, crunchy, power pop for mid-summer. “I Need Ya” - Somebody’s Child If the Strokes were from Ireland, they would probably sound like this. “Forgiving Ties” - Deer Tick I had to triple check this wasn’t a lost Tom Petty demo that someone else had finished. “The Spiral” - Body Maintenance This is some proper-ass post punk from Down Under. Like all great post punk, it could be from 1983 or 2003 just as easily as be the brand new song it actually is.
Chart Week: July 15, 1989 Song: “Buffalo Stance” - Neneh Cherry Chart Position: #20, 16th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 the week of June 24. I have always been fascinated by the details of how songs are made. There’s the initial inspiration. The writing and recording process. How a song is mixed and produced. Whether it goes on an album or not, and if it does, how it is sequenced.
A few notes about the state of social media. About three weeks ago I was struck by how Twitter seemed to have settled down. While there were still plenty of minor issues, the major blowups that had been endemic since the Tech Toddler’s arrived had decreased. That’s not to say I was a happy user. The elimination of third party applications meant I was still spending lots of time dodging promoted Tweets and ads I had no interest in.
Kid Hoops A weird weekend for L and her teammates. We were in Bloomington for this week’s games. While that seems close it also involves navigating a shit-ton of construction and means we’re in the car for nearly three hours each day. Saturday we opened with an easy win. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever have an easier win. At halftime we were ahead 39–0. We added 16 more points before these poor girls finally got their first bucker.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “The Window” - Ratboys Every time I type this band’s name, my devices autocorrect it to “Batboys.” You would think I’ve typed their name enough over the years that my various Apple OSes understand that, yes, I really mean Ratboys. Given that their up-coming album seems like it is going to be excellent and I will be writing about them plenty more this year, maybe the OSes will finally figure it out once the fall updates land and Apple’s new auto correct, machine learning algorithms take over.
Small Mercies - Dennis Lehane According to my master reading list, it’s been eight years since I had read a Lehane novel. Which doesn’t seem possible, until I realized he’s only released one new novel in that span. This story takes place in the summer of 1974, just before the city explodes when forced busing to desegregate Boston’s public schools takes effect. Mary Pat Fennessy’s teenage daughter disappears after a night out with friends, and no one wants to tell her what may have happened.
It was an extra-long weekend featuring many hours in the car. Hoops in the Lou L and I drove west to St. Louis for her first out-of-town tournament of the year. The hoops were good. We went 3–1, winning the championship game by nine thanks to a 9–2 run in the final minute to put away a game we were trying to lose. We led by nine with 8:00 left, five with 5:00 left, but by just two as the clock ticked under a minute.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Police On My Back” - The Clash I watched like my 60th documentary about The Clash this week and dove into their music for a bit after. I maintain they are the greatest cover band of all time, taking songs by other acts that were already great and elevating them as they made them their own. Here’s a perfect example, originally written and sung by Eddie Grant with his band The Equals in 1967.
Good news for those of you with video game collections: you will soon be able to buy an actual new game for your Atari 2600! ’Mr. Run and Jump’ will be the first official cartridge for the Atari 2600 since 1990 Not sure I buy this writer’s argument, but it is an interesting counter to the conventional wisdom about season three of Ted Lasso. Kindly allow this brief dissenting opinion: Perhaps Ted Lasso isn’t broken—we are.
A lot to get caught up on after a long holiday weekend. July 4th Our standard family pool party for the Fourth of July. Almost all the locals were over for a daytime gathering. I smoked rather than grilled burgers for the first time and they turned out pretty good. All the young ones were well behaved, and it seems like both generations of sisters got along for the day, too.
It is my fifth year offering a playlist to celebrate the day in my own, unique, musical way. There are two new songs this year, one of which I can’t believe took me five years to add. open.spotify.com/playlist/…
Movies, Shows, etc Severance OK, this was the strangest, most messed up show I can recall watching. The way the finale ended - SPOILER ALERT - without resolving anything and instead setting up the next season was maddening. As a lover of the color blue, I did enjoy how many different gorgeous shades were integral to the show’s aesthetic. B The Hateful Eight I didn’t like this as much as Tarantino’s other Western, Django Unchained, mostly because it felt a little long (and I did NOT watch the extended version).
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - Arcade Fire As I write this our power has been out for about 15 hours, our home just one of over 45,000 in Indianapolis that remain powerless after major storms hit us yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately for us, it seems like just one wire affecting 4-5 houses in our neighborhood is causing our outage. So we could be waiting awhile. I will not let that deter me from using some of the remaining power in my electronics from getting a playlist out to you!
As promised, a look back at the very first post I ever published to this site. Perhaps you’ve already gone back and re-read it. I thought it would be fun for me to annotate it with some thoughts. I have edited out sections of the original that did not inspire me to add something new. With apologies to the Sports Guy… Ah, back when I read and loved everything Bill Simmons wrote.