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?
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
February 2022 Eddie Vedder - 124 Gang of Youths - 93 Something for Kate - 40 Phantastic Ferniture - 27 The Beatles - 26 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
Jayhawk Talk A large game in Waco Saturday. KU looked fantastic for the first 15 minutes against Baylor, then, other than a brief spurt in the second half, pretty pedestrian. I was as low-key about this game as any late-season, Big 12 contender matchup in years. I listen to three different KU-focused podcasts and all of them insisted last week that Baylor was a great matchup for KU. I think that was putting too much into the teams’ first matchup, which was as dominant as KU has looked all year.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “A Real Thing” - The Beths This lovely track from New Zealand sets up a run of poppier tracks that make up the bulk of this week’s PL. “Bad Love” - Dehd In the write-ups for this song, I saw it compared to the blog rock of the ’00s. I certainly hear that, but I also hear a nice dollop of ’60s-influenced pop. “Kissing Lessons” - Lucy Dacus More good shit from Ms.
One last breather before the biggest and toughest stretch of the year, via a good, old-fashioned thumping of Kansas State. I’m not sure why K-State decided to force the tempo Tuesday night. They damn near beat KU a month ago playing their normal style of ball. Why they thought they could come to Lawrence and win a track meet is baffling, and perhaps the final nail in Bruce Webber’s coaching coffin.
Chart Week: February 16, 1980 Song: “We Don’t Talk Anymore” - Cliff Richard Chart Position: #32, 18th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 for two weeks in January. I’m guessing most, if not all, of my readers have no memory of Cliff Richard. That’s kind of crazy, because he was one of the most popular singers in the world for a long, long time. He’s sold over 250 million records around the world in his prolific career.
Jayhawk Talk Ah, the trip to Morgantown, where so many good/great KU teams have gone and dropped total turds. It didn’t matter that this year’s WVU team is kind of bad and sitting in 10th place in the Big 12: this game should have frightened KU fans because of our past experiences there. (You could tell this West Virginia team kind of sucks by the way Bob Huggins coached. That was as docile as I’ve ever seen him.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Invincible” - Eddie Vedder I included EV’s “Brother the Cloud” in last week’s playlist. That was also the release day of Ed’s solo album Earthing. Shortly after posting that PL, I virtually spun the album for the first time. And I almost haven’t stopped since. As with the first two singles, I was blown away by how unexpectedly great the album is. There are a few Pearl Jam-y tracks, but it is more indebted to Ed’s childhood love of pop and is filled with references to his musical heroes.
Jayhawk Talk Two more wins, one entirely too stressful, the other had too much sloppiness but 15 of the better minutes of the year to balance. Saturday against Oklahoma, KU looked slow and uninterested for much of the game. Like they saw the line was KU –10.5 and figured they would just walk onto the court and the game would be over. They got their shit together in time to turn it into a comfortable win…until they started missing free throws and turning the ball over.
A pretty decent game, unless you live in Cincinnati. And even then, it was solid until the last five minutes or so. It had a game-winning score in the final 2:00, which always elevates a game. Only one traditionally spectacular play - Tee Higgins’ 75-yard touchdown catch to open the second half - and that came because of a pretty egregious officiating error. I think my generation still expects Super Bowls to be terrible because so many of them in the 80s and 90s were, so any time a game is close still feels like a win even if it wasn’t a classic game.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Brother Cloud” - Eddie Vedder I wasn’t sure about this whole “EdVed solo album” thing. And then “Long Way” was one of my favorite songs of last year. Still, I held off listening to any of the other advance singles, figuring I would wait until today when the album finally dropped to check them out. Then I heard this last week on Sirius and was, again, pleasantly surprised. This track was inspired both by Ed’s friendship with Chris Cornell and the death of his biological brother.
Chart Week: February 5, 1977 Song: “Carry On Wayward Son” - Kansas Chart Position: #36, 7th week on the chart, debut week on Top 40. Peaked at #11 for two weeks in April. The world is a much smaller place today than when my generation was growing up. Thanks to cable/satellite TV, the Internet, and social media networks, trends spread to the hinterlands almost as soon as they pop up in the cultural centers of the world.