Thanks to the NCAA tournament, spring break, and general laziness, I’m behind on a couple sports stories. When a huge one broke Wednesday night, that jogged my memory that I should probably get to them. Jayhawk Talk Hey, did you know the Kansas Jayhawks won the national championship two weeks ago? It was pretty cool! We’ve had a steady run of packages dropped off with national title gear over the pat week.
Chart Week: April 19, 1986 Song: “A Little Bit of Love (Is All It Takes)” - New Edition Chart Position: #38, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #38 for two weeks. Every teen pop group faces a dilemma as they get older: how do they maintain their audience as they, their fans, and their music matures? New Edition was bumping into that issue when they recorded their third album, All For Love.
I’ve been on a good reading stretch lately. Here are some blurbs. The Mercenary - Paul Vidich Vidich gets a lot of critical acclaim for his espionage novels. I wasn’t crazy about his first book I read, The Good Assassin. It was so noir-y that I felt no warmth towards or connection with any of the characters. Despite that, I decided to give this one a shot. Taking place late in the Soviet era, just before Mikhail Gorbachev took over and began opening the country up, it focuses on the attempts by the CIA to exfiltrate a KGB contact, something they had never successfully done.
Sometimes the Midwest really sucks. We had a decent Easter weekend, weather-wise. Not perfect - if it was 5–10 degrees warmer it would have been ideal - but at least it was warm enough to do little kid activities outside. Then this morning it was snowing when I woke up. And it’s going to be 80 by Friday. Sheesh. We had our family Easter celebration on Saturday. Just about all the locals were there, including all the nephews under six.
I promised an extra-thick playlist last week. To be honest, I really didn’t deliver. Since it’s a holiday weekend, I’ll recommit myself to dropping a heaping helping of high quality tunes on your ears. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Don’t Turn Around” - Crystal Eyes I know it’s dumb when I say things like “This band sounds like they are/are not from this place.” Because unless a band exclusively plays instruments that are native to their homes, all groups share some level of DNA.
I thinned out my Instapaper queue quite a bit over spring break. Which means I’m way past due in sharing some of my favorites (along with a few I’ve added in the past week). First, a couple pieces about the situation in Ukraine. As with any fast-moving current event, these are already a little out-of-date. I think they are still compelling reads. 20 Days in Mariupol: The Team That Documented City’s Agony The Last Cell Tower in Mariupol
That was a weird weekend. No big sports of any kind. No basketball or football on the TV for the first time since Labor Day. No kid sports. Sure, I watched some of the Master’s, but we were often busy during the peak watch times so I wasn’t able to give it a ton of attention. Plus it wasn’t a super interesting tournament this year, so when I did sit down to watch, I did not feel compelled to remain seated for hours.
We'll go a little long this week as I attempt to clean out the queue a bit after missing a week. [open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0kNTguupxFGGSKkuqvElAy?si=f32dd0515a834d4d) "The Lightning I/II" - Arcade Fire Damn, I really should have included these two weeks ago when they first came out, but I forgot to drop them into my working list for the Friday PLs. The good thing is in the two weeks since, I'm move convinced these are great and a sign that those of us that loved early Arcade Fire but not so much their more recent stuff are going to dig their next album.
You might have heard that the Kansas Jayhawks won the NCAA men’s basketball championship on Monday. I didn’t want to let the occasion pass without sharing some, well a lot, of thoughts. These should be super disjointed as they were assembled in various moments and in different stages of sobriety. I will the answer the question I got from several people first: no, I did not turn the game off.
Fewer entries this month as college basketball and spring break sucked up a lot of my time. Shows and Movies Don’t Look Up Reviews for this were so mixed, with some people loving it and others straight-up hating it. I was finally encouraged to watch by two different friends who told me they really enjoyed it. It’s certainly not high cinema, and there is nothing subtle about it. But overall I think it was well done, and we, honestly, aren’t too many steps away from it actually happening.
Once again…WHAT A GOD DAMN GAME!!! So many mood swings. So much frustration at halftime. So much yelling in the second half. So much happiness when that last North Carolina shot grazed the front of the rim and fell short. I honestly don’t know how my family didn’t come check on me after I nearly blew the roof off our house yelling during that sequence, with about ten minutes left, when Remy Martin hit a corner three to give KU it’s first lead of the second half, DaJuan Harris forced a turnover, and then Jalen Wilson converted an and-one to put KU up six.
Events have lined up so that it makes the most sense to combine what should have been two posts into one today. I’ll try to be as brief as I can to both get it out and make it readable. Spring Break ’22 Spring Break in Siesta Key, FL was largely a success. The weather was mostly good-to-great. We had the pleasure of spending time with a few sets of good friends.
March 2022 Gang of Youths - 76 R.E.M. - 51 Eddie Vedder - 31 Bartees Strange - 19 Beach House - 18 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
What a god damn game! (Excuse the blasphemy.) KU never makes it easy in the Elite 8. It’s a hard-ass game in a killer tournament where one bad performance can wreck a season of excellence. For every Kansas-Duke in 2018 and KU-UNC in 2012 - wide-open, flowing games where the teams exchange big shot after big shot until one finally flinches - you have way more games like Kansas-Villanova 2016, which was a disgusting rock fight that was physically draining to watch.
A slightly larger playlist this week, as my pool of songs to share has grown and there will likely be no list next week as I enjoy my spring break. Bad weather in Siesta Key could always change that. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Heavy Heart” - Bartees Strange Strange’s debut album was terrific and showed great promise. This first peek at what most assume will be his second album shows incredible growth. Strange is officially one of the most exciting voices in modern music.
Ahhhh, Sweet 16 week. I’ve always said this is the best week of the tournament for the real hoops fan. Provided your team is in it, of course. The frenzy of the first weekend has been thinned out and we can get down to some real, serious hoops. There’s always an interesting story or three for the national media to latch onto. And there are usually a couple “I HAVE to watch that game!
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a run-in with a local freak, for lack of a better term. You know them: the random, semi-crazy appearing/acting people who engage you in conversation without an invitation. My favorite such encounter was sometime in the mid–90s at a Dillons in Lawrence, KS with one of that city’s most notable weirdos. I was attempting to buy some anti-perspirant and this man sidled up to me, grabbed a container of Speed Stick or whatever, and started mumbling some nonsense that had to do with being a pawn in the desires of big business, or something along those lines.
Damascus Station - David McCloskey I believe this is my third espionage novel written by a former CIA employee in recent months. And it was, by far, the best of that bunch. Set in, wait for it, Damascus, Syria, it is the story of an American CIA officer who recruits a member of the Syrian intelligence service and gets pulled into the truly bizarre world of the Syrian government. Oh, he’s an attractive man, she’s an attractive woman, and they become far more than agent and handler.
Jayhawk Talk It happened! It finally happened! A highly seeded KU team played a less talented team in the round of 32, saw that team go nuts from behind the 3-point line, and still managed to gut out a win and advance to the Sweet 16. The Creighton game was not a lot of fun to watch, at least as a KU fan. Ochai Agbaji suddenly can’t shoot, seems to be forcing bad shots, and plays soft/lazy on defense.
A playlist filled with, mostly, heavier tracks this week. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Angelica” - Wet Leg A little change in sound on this latest track from Buzz Band Wet Leg. There’s some Missing Persons in the DNA of this song. And some grungy guitars that aren’t quite Shoegaze but certainly owe something to that movement. “Rockstar” - Momma Speaking of crunchy, ’90s guitars, this track is overflowing with them. These ladies are opening for Wet Leg on part of their upcoming US tour.