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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Travel basketball came to a disappointing end for L over the weekend. Her team lost in the semifinals to a squad they had beaten twice this year. That team went on to win the championship by four points. So it was right there for our girls and they blew it. Saturday’s pool games were two very different contests. In the first we played a team we beat by 10 two weeks ago.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Birthdays” - Craig Finn Hey, I had a birthday this week! Coincidentally this is the best song from Craig Finn’s latest solo album. “I Was Neon” - Julia Jacklin The first single off JJ’s up-coming album was solid. This one cooks. “Wait ‘Til the Morning” - Frightened Rabbit Spotify suggested this, a bonus track from the final FR album, a few weeks back. When the disk came out I didn’t think much of the extras.
Chart Week: June 20, 1981 Song: “Angel of the Morning” - Juice Newton Chart Position: #38, 18th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for four weeks in May. Juice Newton was a classic Right Artist at the Right Time success. Although she came up in the world of folk music, by the early 1980s she had slid into a country-rock hybrid that was well suited to the moment. As we’ve discussed before, there was that little window in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when many country artists were able to have mainstream, pop success.
Following up on yesterday’s posts, here are a couple articles related to Top Gun. First, Michael Baumann dives into the details and comes up with his best guess for what county is the target of the movie’s main mission. This is important journalism here. But like Maverick, Rooster, Hangman, and their buddies, I was given a mission. My editors came to me, the idiot who six months ago wrote a long column about how Russia was no longer the technothriller enemy it used to be, confident that I could identify the anonymous villain in Top Gun: Maverick.
It’s damn hard to make a good sequel. Think of how many absolutely ass ones have polluted our cinema and entertainment room screens. So when one hits all the right notes, it feels like a triumph. And when you do it nearly 40 years after the original, you’ve really pulled off a miracle. I took C and L to see Top Gun: Maverick last week. We all loved it. I think C liked it the most, and it was her second time seeing it!
A long post about a long few days. Thirteen months into my Audi lease I was in great shape, milage-wise, about 1000 miles lower than where I should be. I pretty much wiped out that deficit over the past few days. Thursday M and I drove to Cincinnati to take her first college campus visits. We toured the University of Cincinnati and Xavier. UC is a popular spot for Indy-area students as it offers nearly in-state tuition to most Indiana grads.
A little different playlist this week, as about the time this posts, L and I will be on our way to Knoxville for a weekend of hoops. So here are a bunch of songs about the Volunteer State (and one summer song). open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Tennessee” - Arrested Development I think I shared this last fall when we went to Nashville. But as the greatest song ever about Tennessee, I must include it again.
Two concerts in a week! Both at new venues (to me)! Quite a run! Last night was a little extra special. Not only did we go see The Lumineers, one of S’s favorite bands, but we took all three girls with us. It was the first official show for C and L, although they had seen Blues Traveler at Symphony on the Prairie years ago. C barely remembers that and L doesn’t at all, plus they had no idea who Blues Traveler was, so I think this counts as their first real concert.
Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution - Elie Mystal “Our Constitution is not good.” Thus begins a book that should infuriate anyone who reads it. Conservatives brave enough to take it on will be enraged by Mystal’s destruction of our most sacred document. Liberals will be maddened by how our entire republic was built upon a system designed to exclude and exploit anyone who wasn’t a wealthy, white, male landowner, and how each time we’ve tried to restructure the Constitution so that it truly speaks for all Americans, those efforts have constantly been subverted, ignored, or reversed by conservatives.