March Media

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.

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Jayhawk Talk: CHAMPIONS!

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.

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Planes, Marbles, and Automobiles

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.

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Stats

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.

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Rock Chalking to NOLA

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.

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Friday Playlist

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.

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Sweetness

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!

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Freak of the Week

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.

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Reader's Notebook, 3/22/22

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.

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So Much Hoops

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.

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Friday Playlist

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.

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EN-CEE-TWO-AY Picks

It’s finally here: the first normal NCAA tournament in three years! It’s also supposed to be well into the 70s here in Indy today, so it might be the most perfect day ever. I did not do a ton of research in preparation for making NCAA picks. I listened to a couple podcasts that had sections on picks, and I skimmed a few articles. But no deep-dives. So I guess picks first followed by some KU talk?

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Weekend Hoops Notes: Tourney Time

I watched a ton of hoops this weekend. The most in ages. Especially on Saturday, when I barely left the couch. Two of our nephews stopped by and one of them, the nearly six-year-old, asked C, “Why is Uncle D always watching basketballsports?” Basketballsports. One word. Made me laugh. You picked the wrong weekend to get any attention from Uncle D, buddy. Some notes on what I watched. Jayhawk Talk WHOOOOOHOOOOOO!

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Friday Playlist

Haven’t been as deep into the new music the last couple weeks, so this didn’t come together as quickly or smoothly as usual. I’ll adjust my listening habits for next week. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Something” - Hater Some solid, noir-ish indie rock from Sweden. I keep wanting to say this has a mid-90s feeling to it, but I’m not sure that’s right or not. I realized the other day that my ability to distinguish between musical eras isn’t as sharp as it used to be.

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Tuesday Links

As we come out of the age of Omicron and brace for whatever is next, this is a good reminder of how far we’ve come, and how quickly, in combating Covid–19. If Covid vaccines had taken as long as the mumps vaccine to develop, the world would have had to face the Delta and Omicron waves with the vast majority of people on the planet armor-less against the virus that causes Covid.

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Weekend Notes

Spring? That first weekend each year when the weather turns warm is always a delight. Living in the Midwest you know there will be plenty of wild weather swings before spring completely arrives. Yet even in a year like this when winter wasn’t all that bad, these weekends are welcome. Saturday it was in the mid–70s here, breaking a daily high temperature record. I did some yard work to prep for the growing season and sat in the sun reading a book for about an hour.

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Jayhawk Talk: TC-Whew!

March is here! The days are getting a little longer, brighter, and warmer. Spring break is three weeks away. We’ve had a few geese in our yard already, the onslaught to come. The City of Indianapolis is fixing potholes! Baseball is about to start. And KU fans are freaking out. My experience with the Jayhawks this week was tempered by not being able to see much of Tuesday’s TCU game in Ft.

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Friday Playlist (With Bonus Album Review)

Flipping the script this week, putting the video up top so my album review can land at the bottom of the post. youtu.be/u2dVuzzTW… “Seventeen Going Under” - Camp Cope covering Sam Fender I love everything about this. Including lead singer Georgia Maq’s Frightened Rabbit tattoo on her left bicep. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Old White Church” - Arthur Dodge & The Horsefeathers Most of this week’s Spotify playlist will be old songs. This one is from 1997, by a forgotten band from Lawrence, KS.

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February Media

Shows and Movies Ozark, season four, part one Throughout Ozark’s run, I’ve been unable to keep from comparing it to Breaking Bad. I know I’m not the only one. And I’ve often felt that Ozark did not quite reach the same level as BB. Partially because BB came first, partially because there isn’t a single character in Ozark that you are rooting for. In the first seven episodes of season four, the show finally bridges much of that gap.

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Reader's Notebook: 3/1/22

Anthem - Noah Hawley Hawley can spin a story. Here he takes a little bit of everything going on in the world today and mixes it together: Covid, our former president, climate change, toxic discourse on social media, the Insurrection, and even Joe Rogan. He whips that up into the biggest possible mess. There is a total breakdown of society and what amounts to a second American Civil War. Then he throws in a very Stephen King angle: sending a bunch of kids on a quest in the midst of this.

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