Stats
July 2022 The War on Drugs - 31 Jack White - 23 Maggie Rogers - 20 The Beatles - 19 MUNA - 18 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
Friday Playlist
Just a little more cleanup from my podcast archives research, a whole heck of a lot of new music, and no playlist next week due to travel means (at least) one more mega playlist for your listening pleasure. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “In the Right” - The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness Some jim-dandy power pop here, my friends. “Overcome” - Young Guv Let’s keep it on the power pop tip for one more track.
Wednesday Links
M and I are off to visit Purdue so it seems like a great day to share some more interesting reads. I don’t know a thing about cricket, and I’m guessing most of you don’t, either. That doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate the ridiculousness of this story. “I have never seen a scam like this. These guys just cleared a patch of land deep inside a village and began playing a match and beaming it on YouTube to make money through gambling.
Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 76
Chart Week: July 22, 1978 Song: “Baker Street” - Gerry Rafferty Chart Position: #2, 14th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for six weeks. I’ve been wanting to write about this song for ages, and everything finally lined up thanks to an AT40 I caught last week. “Baker Street” is one of the greatest songs of its time. Or any time for that matter. It is an unforgettable, undeniable, unassailable piece of rock ’n’ roll art.
Family Notes
It has been a lazy few days around our house. M spent last week in Michigan with one of her best friend’s families. She seemed to have a great time. Boy was the house quiet without the most talkative sister around. Kind of a preview of what awaits us next fall. I had big plans to do something fun with her sisters while she was away, but every day one of them had something pop up that prevented that from happening.
Friday Playlist
I continue to clean out the holding pen of music that is overflowing with both new tracks and classics I rediscovered while trolling the archives of my old music podcast. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Alright” - Sam Fender The life cycle of albums can be strange. These days many bands will drop multiple singles well before releasing the full album. Streaming messes up how singles are handled once the public has their hands on the LP so you might as well trickle them out slowly when you have the chance.
Weekend Sports Notes
Some sports happenings over the past few days. Royals As if being shitty wasn’t bad enough, ten Royals players “did their own research” and decided not to get vaccinated against Covid, preventing them from traveling to Canada for the series with the Blue Jays over the weekend. Just an exhausting moment. As I am barely interested in the team or sport right now, this does not make me want to come back.
Friday Playlist
Normally my Spotify playlist where I stash songs for the Friday Playists has anywhere from three to eight songs in it. This week is different, though. First off, this has been a very good year for music already and it feels like a ton of solid tunes get released every week. So I have plenty of new tracks to share. Second, I dug into the playlists of my old music podcast this week and re-discovered a bunch of tracks I hadn’t heard in years.
Reader's Notebook, 7/14/22
The Committed - Viet Thanh Nguyen I read, and loved, Nguyen’s The Sympathizer in 2015. His sequel did not quite meet the original’s standard. The Committed picks up a few years after The Sympathizer, with the main character living in Paris in the early 1980s, and attempting to start a new life in the Vietnamese ex-pat community. Once again he must play the different factions of the community off of each other to maintain his safety.
Tuesday Links
A few links I’ve come across in the past few days that are worth sharing. First, the New York Times wrote about one of M’s classmates. That’s right, THE NEW YORK TIMES! I never guessed Booker would rise as high in the national rankings as he has (#2 in one list, #4 in another) when I stood next to him at freshman orientation nearly three years ago. This piece is less about Booker the player than about the path he and his family have chosen.
Weekend Notes: School Visits and Tennis
A pretty boring weekend around our house. I wrapped up Stranger Things. M went to a concert. But other than that the weekend proper was pretty low key for our family. We had great weather so we spent a lot of time just hanging out around the pool or on the back porch. College Visits Thursday M and I took our second trip to Ohio to visit a college, this time going to Oxford, home of Miami University.
Friday Playlist
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “These Are The Days” - Inhaler I had not heard of this band until this week despite them having a #1 album in Ireland and the UK last year. They are a four-piece from Dublin that sound a little like the most famous band to ever come out of Dublin. That’s no coincidence: lead singer and guitarist Eli Hewson is Bono’s son. He isn’t exactly Julian Lennon, who sounded exactly like his dad, but there are certainly common traits between Hewson’s voice and his father’s.
June Media
Movies, Series, Shows Tokyo Vice I heard mixed things about this, but when I realized Michael Mann was involved, I decided to give it a try. It’s classic Mann: visually stunning with some high highs and low lows. My favorite part about the show was Ansel Elgort, the actor who plays main character Jake Adelstein. The real Adelstein is from Missouri and attended Mizzou. Elgort has a slight resemblance to, and sounds a little like, Charlie Tahan, who played Wyatt Langmore on Ozark.
Holiday Weekend Notes (Heavy With Cooking Content)
We’ve reached the midway point in academic summer, an occasional always highlighted by our family’s July 4th celebrations. This year’s was a little lower key than recent ones. We had no out-of-town visitors this time, so fewer cousins, aunts, and uncles running around. It was as hot as it’s been any recent year, so it was probably good we had at least 10 fewer people in the pool this year compared to the last three.
Independence Day Playlist
Only one change to the playlist for this year, which is now four years old. The dark tone that carries through many of these songs seems more appropriate this year. I hope you all have happy and safe gatherings. open.spotify.com/playlist/…
Emergency Sports Post
Some MASSIVE sports news dropped on Thursday. With Monday being a holiday, who knows what can happen between now and when I get around to sharing some thoughts. So a quick-ish, emergency post about… UCLA/USC Jumping To Big 10 WHAT?!?!!? Where the fuck did this come from? I have to say, I am utterly amazed that the UT/OU to SEC and UCLA/USC to Big 10 stories remained so quiet right up until they became done deals.
Friday Playlist
Over halfway through the year; that’s kind of nutty! Be looking for my annual bonus playlist on Monday. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Rubberneckers” - Christian Lee Hutson A perfect mid-summer song in tone, this is about how many people you run across in LA who have made messes of their lives. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate that to our entire country right now. Add this to Phoebe Bridgers' quiver of excellent music she has a hand in, too.
Stats
June 2022 The War on Drugs - 106 MUNA - 40 Dehd - 25 The Beatles - 25 Night Moves - 23 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
Reader's Notebook, 6/29/22
Midnight in Siberia - David Greene Interesting timing on reading this. Greene is a former NPR reporter who was the network’s Moscow bureau chief in the early 2010s. Late in his tenure, he took the Trans-Siberian Railway 6000 miles across Russia. In 2014, he returned to take the same journey and write about it. It is a fascinating read because of where Russia was in 2014 and where it is now.
NBA Draft Notes
I loathe the NFL draft. It is the most over-hyped event in sports. Primarily because there are very few players picked in that draft that make an immediate and profound impact on their teams. For every Joe Burrow, there are dozens and dozens of players that take two, three, even five years to acclimate to the professional level, complete their physical maturation, and become difference makers in the NFL. And yet we hear about the next draft for roughly 11.