An early weekend roundup, as M and I are headed to Cincinnati early Monday for an admitted students orientation. We will likely do the same at IU in March as she continues to gather information before she makes a final decision. Kid Hoops L’s team played a sixth grade squad Saturday. That always worries me because if a sixth grade team is playing up they are usually pretty good. Checking scores, they had beat a team that beat us by 20 by 32, so it seemed a little bleak.
More older music than new this week. And, sadly, another rather important In Memoriam entry. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “It’s Just A Bit of Blood” - bdrmm Normally by now I’ve already dropped several songs into my running Favorites list that will be the basis of my year end list in December. I had only added one through the first seven weeks of 2023. This is #2. It’s a ripper. “A Nocturnal Heresy” - Ondara I had never heard of this cat until last week, when this song dropped into my Discovery Weekly playlist.
I had the pleasure of driving a loaner car for the past week. All the excuse I need to dust off the Car Chronicles series! My Audi Q5 has been great. I’m nearly two years into my lease and other than a few annoyances, I have been extremely happy with it. Late last year I received a notice for a recall on the backup camera. When I called to schedule an appointment in early January, the dealer told me the repair would take at least a day, they were only scheduling two per day and the next opening was in February, and I would get a loaner while they had my car.
A few brief-ish notes about the Jayhawks, who are suddenly in a three-way tie for first place in the Big 12 after a very good week. Tuesday’s win at Oklahoma State was terrific in many ways. It capped a week in which KU got better over the three-game stretch, beating two very good teams relatively comfortably. It was a fantastic team performance, with the offense looking as good as it has looked all year.
Chart Week: February 9, 1980 Song: “I Wanna Be Your Lover” - Prince Chart Position: #20, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #11 for two weeks in January and February. It started here. This was the very first Prince single to crack the Top 40. It took a few years, but eventually just about everyone around the world who owned a radio knew the name Prince. But in 1980, even the great Casey Kasem got his name wrong.
HS Hoops I ended up going to the Cathedral game Friday night after C and a friend decided at the last minute that they wanted to go. Amazingly this is the first boys game I’ve attended in my four years as a CHS parent. We only stayed for three quarters, as C’s back started acting up around halftime. We saw a very tense game in front of a packed gym. The #8 Irish were playing Fishers, who aren’t ranked but seem to have some good, young talent and gave Cathedral fits on defense all night.
I have a couple appointments in the morning, so posting this late Thursday night. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Anyway I Find You” - The Men A pretty solid song on its own. But the vocals remind me of an old-school classic… “Old White Church” - Arthur Dodge & The Horsefeathers One of the most distinctive, if not necessarily famous, voices that came out of the Lawrence, KS music scene in the ’90s. “Crisis” - Elizabeth M.
I have a couple posts in various states of readiness that I figured I would focus on for today. Until I turned on the local news at 7:00 AM this morning to catch the weather - storms were blowing through at the time - and saw a blurb on the crawl at the bottom of the screen saying Kevin Durant had been traded to the Phoenix Suns. WHAT?!?! I jumped over to ESPN and got the details.
I admit I was dreading Monday’s KU-Texas game. Normally, coming off a terrible loss like Iowa State’s destruction of the Jayhawks Saturday, I would be fired up for a Big Monday home game. It would be a chance to wash away the bad taste of the loss with a big, loud crowd and a W. But I also watched a big chunk of the second half of the Longhorns’ come-from-behind win at Kansas State over the weekend.
We had a pretty boring weekend and I’m saving the Jayhawk Talk for tomorrow, so a good day so share the latest stack of links I’ve accumulated. Simply the best accounting of what Tech Karen has done to Twitter. Extremely Hardcore It’s pretty amazing how many of the people who came out of Toronto’s Second City are still culturally relevant. This is a terrific history of how they came together and built the group.
Generally my focus in these weekly playlists is on sharing new music, the stuff I have time to dig up that I know most of you are unable to. I’m going to tweak that recipe going forward. There will still be plenty of new music. In addition, though, I’m going to start throwing in more classic tracks. I don’t know that I’ll ever get these up to the size of my old podcast playlists, but that does mean as my schedule allows, I’ll be sharing a little more music each week than I traditionally have.
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story - Bono One of my sisters-in-law received this book from her employer awhile back and passed it along to me. I wasn’t super excited to read it, since I’m not much into U2 anymore. But when brother-in-music E$ told me he was reading and liking it, I pulled it from the shelf. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Bono is a very good writer.
Movies, Shows, etc Wednesday This was on constantly in our house over the holidays. I think the girls and S all watched it on their own, then we had several episodes on the main TV while we had guests. I sat and partially watched a few of them. I thought it was funny, clever, and generally good. Doubt I’ll check out the entire series on my own, though. B+ The White Lotus, seasons one and two I probably should have taken some time between these seasons, and then written down my thoughts separately for each.
Ugh. I had battled a cold for a week or two, with this weird congestion passing back-and-forth between my head and chest. I never had a sore throat, never felt bad. Just constant plug of yuck in part of my body. In the midst of that, I took NyQuil for several nights so I could breath and sleep peacefully. I slept like a baby all of those nights. Since I got off the meds, though, my periodic insomnia has returned.
A lot of sports this weekend. Kid Hoops L’s team played one game Saturday night. They were matched up with a team that we think were all soccer players in a hoops league for winter conditioning. We play at least one of these teams a season. Sometimes these teams are really good. This one was not. It took awhile for our girls - only eight this week - to find their groove but eventually they got it going.
It seems like embedding Spotify playlists has been funky for the past week. I’ve checked old posts a couple times and received error messages where the playlist should be, only to find them available again a few hours later. So just a note to check back later if it is being a bitch when you first read this post. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “True Blue” - boygenius Music fans rejoiced last Friday when the supergroup boygenius released three new songs, one featuring each of its members on lead.
Snow Day We had the first snow day of the year yesterday. It was kind of a dud. The storm that was supposed to drop 5–8” of snow here could only muster about 2.5 inches. As the storm was expected to hit right at the morning rush, most area schools had either cancelled classes or jumped to e-learning well before bedtime Tuesday. M and C found out they would be home Wednesday while they were still in class Tuesday.
Chart Week: January 23, 1988 Song: “Don’t Shed A Tear” - Paul Carrack Chart Position: #21, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 for three weeks in February. It feels like I’ve lost the momentum for this series lately. After reviewing the numbers, I did add 15 entries in 2022, which was three more than 2021. Perhaps it seems like I’ve slacked off because I have a bunch of drafts where I’ve jotted down ideas, but, for one reason or another, haven’t been able to turn them into completed posts.
Perhaps THE thing that has set Kansas apart and made their Big 12 success so consistent in the Bill Self era is their ability to avoid losing streaks. Lose one? They almost always win the next. On the rare occasions they lose back-to-back games, a win in the third is about as easy money as you can find. There might be momentary panic among the fanbase after a loss. But normally that is quickly quashed.
This was the week when I tried to figure out what my new normal listening habits are. The Bridge went back to playing their regular rotation of music, so while I still listened to their stream often, I wasn’t quite as obsessive as during their Z to A countdown. But I also didn’t completely fall back into listening to mostly newer music on Spotify. Throw in a lot of appointments and my listening time, in general, was reduced.