May Media

Movies, Shows, Etc. Your Friends & Neighbors, season two One episode left. There was a rather large cliffhanger at the end of episode nine that I was expecting to drop in #10,[1] so we’ll see what Friday’s finale has in store. Incomplete There’s Something About Mary A month or so ago I came across this on cable and watched for about 10 minutes. A couple weeks later it turned up on Netflix just when its Rewatchables episode dropped, which was the perfect excuse to watch it, front-to-back, in unedited form.

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Weekend Notes

A weekend with some big sporting events to discuss. Hibachi I did some Good Dad stuff to start the weekend. L’s favorite restaurant is a hibachi place near us. Since I got a Blackstone grill last year I’ve made a far-less-elaborate home version a couple times. She had bragged about my skills to her friends and requested that I cook up a meal for her crew. Not everyone was able to make it but I did cook for a total of 10 people Friday night.

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Friday Playlist

Unlike last week, I had almost too much music to pick from today. Let’s see how well I do editing. (One track, marked with ***, is not available in Spotify and I’m too lazy to adjust. Another vote for Apple Music…) [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5bAXlJdaqd9CNcs2z4mtot?si=502f487273e6430a) “Summer Begins” - The Proctors Let’s go! “The Weak” - Iceage This is what The Strokes wanted to sound like but never did. The Strokes were never cool enough to have a deranged flute solo, either.

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Reader's Notebook

Polostan - Neal Stephenson I’ve not read a Stephenson novel since 2010. The blurbs for this one got me interested enough to pick one up again. This book, which kicks off a new series, takes place primarily in the 1920s and 1930s, flipping between the Soviet Union and US. At the heart of it is Dawn/Aurora, a young woman born in St. Petersburg, primarily raised in Montana, but who eventually flees back to the USSR after her father is killed in an attack on World War I veterans by a fascist wing of the US Army.

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Weekend Notes

The first weekend of summer has passed. Based on the forecast for the next week or so, it looks like Monday Mother Nature finally decided to get her act together and push the cool, rainy weather away. I swam my first laps of the year Monday and we sat outside much of the day, enjoying the sun. L might have enjoyed it a little too much. It’s a good thing summer basketball does not start for a week as she’s sporting a sunburn that would not feel got to set screens with.

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Emergency Monday Video

It is a Monday holiday, which normally would mean no posts. But with the horrible news Friday that hip hop legend Rob Base had passed at the age of 59, it seemed rude not to share the video of his biggest hit. “It Takes Two” came out of nowhere in the fall of 1988 and became a timeless classic. I did some rough calculating last night and figured that the song has been played at 87% of wedding receptions since then.

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Friday Playlist

As you can guess by the lack of activity on this website, it was a busy week for me. In strange ways, which we may or may not get to next week. Because of that, my working playlist for today was half-formed, at best. Good thing it is Memorial Day weekend, though. That unlocks multiple fun tracks for us. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2cr7kkygbqwDEN78Z4s9cG?si=8103dce8ce38414d) “Constructive Summer” - The Hold Steady Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer, I’m seeing THS live in three weeks!

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Weekend Notes

Another relatively unexciting weekend for us, with one notable exception. Saturday was rainy and lazy, the kind of day when you look out the windows and think it is in the 50s and are surprised to step outside and find it is actually near 70. Sunday was much better, approaching hot in the afternoon with big, warm gusts of wind. We power washed the pool cover for the second time - it is always a two-step process to get the winter crap off and prevent a build up of spring pollen - and did some other outdoor work before having the in-laws over for dinner.

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Friday Playlist

Perhaps a bit of an edge to this week’s playlist thanks to the general theme of a few songs. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Bk62PyZlhdVd8BRiPVDDH?si=154a3e9b9e0c494c) “American Dream” - Alabama Shakes Brittany is letting people know! “Heatin Park” - DMA’S As if these Aussies haven’t already pushed the Manchester sound enough through their first four albums, now the lead single for LP5 is about a park in Manchester. I salute them for being completely committed to the bit!

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Wednesday Links

After a long dry spell, I finally have some good stories from around the Internet to share. This is an amazing piece of journalism that, so as to not provide spoilers, I will not attempt to describe. I think this passage at its close is the best summation: Some stories take on a life of their own because they show how things really are. Others spread because they tell us what we already believe.

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Weekend Notes

Not much went on this weekend in our house, so we’ll focus on a few basketball stories. NBA Draft Lottery So much for the Hoops Gods rewarding the Pacers for the heartbreaking loss of Tyrese Haliburton at the worst possible moment in the NBA Finals a year ago. After a season of tanking, which only came about because basically the entire Pacers roster was legitimately injured for long stretches of the season,[1] the Pacers lost their first round draft pick to the LA Clippers thanks to the trade the teams made that brought Ivica Zubac to Indy in February.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2qXzUcQOdaiVAhbIYD5vSw?si=d2d865fe274e4e89) “Chance Encounters” - The Menzingers These guys almost always hit. I heard this for the first time about four minutes after I posted last week’s playlist. “Like A Chump” - Mute Swan This presents as a mid-point between shoegaze and early Madchester music. “I Want To Remember Everything” - knitting This also might have a hint of shoegaze to it, but also sounds very much like turn-of-the-millennium, MusicChoice-type rock.

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Reader's Notebook, 5/6/26

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter - Stephen Graham Jones My second Tournament of Books read of the year, I enjoyed this one more than the first. It falls into a genre I don’t usually have much interest in. However, its presentation was so unique that I really enjoyed it. The novel is built around a diary found when a Montana building is being torn down in 2012. It was written by a Lutheran pastor in 1912, and in it he documents the “confession” of a Native American man, Good Stab.

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April Media

Movies, Shows, Etc. Shrinking, season three Well God damn, they absolutely nailed the landing here. This season was very good, but I was a little annoyed throughout as it didn’t seem to be moving forward much. Or at least Jimmy wasn’t. And as the main character, it seemed like he should be doing more than treading water, even if that meant sinking. I was worried they were falling into the dreaded Season Three Problem of falling in love with the show’s cuteness and cozying up to that rather than taking chances.

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Weekend Notes

Finally a weekend with a few more activities. Crowded House Saturday morning S and I drove down to Bloomington to move C home for the summer. She had brought some stuff when she came home for L’s prom, and was confident we could get everything into S’s Telluride. Man, it was close. We had pretty much every inch of space crammed full but we got everything in. It was in the high 40s/low 50s when we got to her dorm making it a near-perfect day to move.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4QWhz7iaOteJt4JvXALj1V?si=fd9ef1fe6bee4b5d) “First Of May” - Jonathan Coulton USE CAUTION WHEN LISTENING TO THIS AT WORK. Unfortunate that we are sliding into a cooler-than-normal spring as we flip the calendar to May. I did some searching for songs about May last night and this popped up. I had never heard it before, but I am familiar with some of Coulton’s other work. This made me laugh out loud. Especially the third verse.

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Reaching For The Stars, Vol. 126

Chart Week: April 22, 1978 Song: “More Than A Woman” - Tavares Chart Position: #34, 17th week on the chart. Peaked at #32 the week of May 6. When I was a young music fan, any statement Casey Kasem made on American Top 40 was accepted as an absolute fact. What Walter Cronkite was to adults, Casey was to me. Today when I listen to an old show, I often hear the publicist-crafted bullshit for what it was.

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Jayhawk Talk: The Big Commit and A Spring of Swings

Warning: long, meandering college hoops recruiting talk ahead. Just skip if that’s not your thing. I haven’t looked back to track this exactly, but it feels like there have been a lot of springs in the last 10 years or so where KU basketball seemed hopeless, the up-coming season a disaster waiting to happen, and that’s all been salvaged by a spate of spring recruiting. Sometimes, as in the case of Andrew Wiggins committing in May 2013, it was more about how the previous season ended than what the actual prospects for the next season were.

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Weekend Notes

It has been weird getting to Monday mornings lately and, more often than not, struggling to find things to write about. No kid sports. The sports I write about most are out-of-season. I’m waiting for a couple players to make their final decisions on where they play next year before diving into the KU basketball situation. I doubt you want to hear about our dinner with friends Saturday, or how S and I watched five episodes of The Pitt over the weekend.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0eWS0WFktT04UpqmcPCG7v?si=1442bca6432c4848) “Radio” - Junior Varsity Back in my music podcast days, I liked to begin each transmission with a song that referenced either radio or political struggle, to represent my fight against corporate radio. This song would obviously be a track one if I was still podcasting. “The World Is Fucked And I Love You” - Spencer Thomas Sometimes songs come along and sum up the moment perfectly.

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