I mentioned last week that L was finally looking healthy again. She had claimed her tailbone was healed from her recess injury last month, but I think she was still feeling some pain there. And her knees were a mess in May, but seemed better last weekend.
This weekend she seemed as healthy as she’s been in months, and that showed in her play.
Her team went 3–1, losing in the semifinals of their tournament to the best (going into) seventh grade team from their program, which was playing up a division.
Last Wednesday night I went to my first concert in four-and-a-half years. Just as I did at that last show in December 2017, I went to see The War on Drugs. With S and the same friends we went to that Dec ’17 show with. This was a rather momentous night for me, though, as it was the first concert I’ve been to in Indy that was not in Broad Ripple.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“You Gave Me the Key” - Julie Doiron A bright, sassy, fun song. Perfect for summer!
“She Still Leads Me On” - The London Suede The London Suede had one great song in the ’90s (“The Drowners”), a lot of hype, and not much else. At least here in the US. So this brand new song from them floored me. I never would have expected them to make a song this good 30 years after their brief moment of international success.
KU Hoops I still need to do an NIL post, and now that things finally seem to have calmed down a little on that front, I’ll move that up in the mental queue. KU’s roster appears to be locked in for next year, so a few thoughts on how that has shaken out.
In general I think the transfer portal is a good thing, as it gives players more control of their careers.
Chart Week: May 24, 1980
Song: “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” - Pink Floyd
Chart Position: #17, 19th week on the chart. Peaked at #1 for four weeks in March/April.
Each week Casey would read letters from his listeners, generally either Long Distance Dedications or general music questions that his crack staff of researchers would answer. Occasionally he would get a letter regarding a song that was in the countdown.
Nothing but hoops and parties for us this weekend.
L’s basketball team was supposed to have the week off before their final push of the season. They got invited to play in a tournament at the last minute. Because of our schedules, she could only play in the Saturday games, which worked out just fine.
In game one we were down by nine at halftime. The other team didn’t seem more talented than us.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“When They Come For Me” - Spielbergs When this dropped a couple weeks back, one of my Brothers in Music sent me a message that said, “Shit is hot.” My response: “Shit is indeed hot.” Still laugh about when we coached soccer together and wanted our team to take the field to Spielbergs' “We Are All Going To Die." That would have been dope, if overkill for a bunch of third and fourth graders.
Movies, Series, Shows Ozark, season four, part two Ozark found its groove in season three and maintained that into the first half of season four. S4, E8, which kicked off the last half of the final season, was one of the best hours in the series’ total run. And then things kind of fell apart. That tension I loved so much from the first half of the season drifted away. It seemed like there was a lot of killing the clock to get to the end.
:07 Seconds or Less - Jack McCallum The “season inside” schtick is one of the most satisfying sports book tropes available to writers. A reporter embeds with an athlete, team, or even entire sport for a year and relates the inside dope on their experiences after-the-fact. Unless the subject is super boring, the result is usually a compelling read. I’ve had this book on my list since it came out back in 2006.
The first weekend of the summer is in the books. We were busy.
M and C finished classes on Thursday. Unless there’s a surprise coming we don’t know about, they both had really good semesters with just one B between them and a handful of A+’s. And now M is a senior. Yikes!
I took C to finally get her driver’s permit on Friday. She wrapped up the written portion of driver’s ed over a month ago, but, for a variety of reasons, we never made it into the BMV.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Turn Up The Sunshine” - Diana Ross, Tame Impala Calling it right now: this is the cross-generational, cross-genre song of the summer. One of my nephews loved Pharell’s “Happy” when he was two. I predict his two-year-old brother is going to be crazy about this song.
“Summer Nights” - Hazel English And this should be the indie rock song of the summer.
“Turn Away” - Sea Lemon I’ve been hanging onto this song for weeks.
I really enjoyed this look at Pierce Brosnan’s career. Especially the section where the author discusses how despite, seeming to be the ideal James Bond, Brosnan’s run in the series always seemed lacking.
Mostly, the Brosnan Bonds feel like a franchise trying to figure out how to pivot back to relevance, casting a seemingly perfect Bond who, unfortunately, symbolized a bygone idea of the secret agent. Craig was given the latitude to shock us with his 007, whereas Brosnan was largely there to maintain a status quo — to uphold a musty vision of who the character used to be.
Good grief, I’ve gotten bad about these again. Didn’t I say I was going to start posting after I finished each book to keep from getting so far behind? Or did I just think it? Regardless, I clearly failed to follow up. I guess that will be my goal for the summer, when I expect my reading pace to quicken. Some blurbs on my most recent crop of books.
The Nineties - Chuck Klosterman I really liked this, which surprised me a bit.
L’s first true travel basketball tournament of her life is in the books. She had fun, but it was a mixed weekend results-wise.
Hoops first. Her team went 2–2 for the weekend. Friday night they got absolutely annihilated by a team from Canada. Whatever your mental image of how Canadian seventh grade girls should look and play, these girls were the opposite. Big, fast, strong, good hoops IQs, and the most athletic team we’ve played this year.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Rewind” - Whimsical Some very turn-of-the-millennium shoegaze from Northwest Indiana, of all places.
“Alive” - POLIÇA Oh, damn! This song absolutely slays.
“Bones” - Rosali After some shoegaze and electro-pop, let’s take things in a completely different direction. It sure seems like a whole lot of shreddy songs like this come out of Philly. I think Rosali has worked with The War on Drugs at some point.
“Saw You At The Eastern Beach” - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever RBCF’s new album took a little longer to connect than their last, which I thought was the best of the career.
Last week was the one year anniversary of me acquiring my Audi Q5. As my car search series was immensely popular - I believe at least 10 people read it - I feel like I owe those fans a one year update.
Aside from some minor quibbles, I am still deeply in love with my Audi. It isn’t perfect, but it is still a pretty fantastic ride. It is mostly an around town vehicle, and it handles that nicely.
You may have missed the news because of more important things, but Apple officially retired the iPod line of music players last week. That’s not exactly true, as the iPod Touches that were discontinued were more iPhones without a cellular radio than anything resembling the classic iPods. But, still, Apple no longer sells a dedicated portable music player.
There have been plenty of odes to the iPod in the tech media.
L finally got back in hoops action this weekend. The tournament her team was scheduled to play in in Indy got cancelled because of lack of teams. Our coach scrambled and got us into a tournament in Bloomington. Which is nice since they’ve been working on the main highway between Indy and B-town approximately since I moved to Indiana. There was a long stretch where there were barrels blocking one lane and the speed limit was 45.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Better Days” - Liam Gallagher I’ve never been a huge fan of the Gallagher brothers' post-Oasis solo/group efforts. But this song is solid. And I hope that Liam is right that the better days we’ve been waiting for eventually get here.
“Nowhere At All” - Young Guv Nobody is better right now at making hazy, summery, jangle pop like this than Ben Cook.
“Hearts Underground” - Tallies More fun, jangly sweetness.