Only about six weeks behind on these, no big deal. If you got a gift card for Christmas maybe you’ll find something in here to use it on. The Last Tourist - Olen Steinhauer My latest entry from a recent list of best espionage novels. I knew this came from a series, but it got tremendous reviews so I figured it could stand on its own. It was only after I finished it that I saw I had read the first book in the series nine years ago.
It is days like this you can’t help but wonder if climate change is a good thing. I’m sitting on our back porch, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, at 10:39 AM on December 27 and feeling completely comfortable. It feels like a May morning. Hell, it wasn’t that much warmer than this around sunrise in Hawaii. We will obviously pay for this at some point. Tomorrow we are supposed to have heavy rain all day and a slow decline until a low in the teens Monday morning.
KU Hoops Well, I was hoping to post another Jayhawk Talk entry this week. I was looking forward to seeing how KU played three days after struggling to put away a Stephen F. Austin team that exposed some of their deficiencies. Alas, Colorado had some players test positive, the game got wiped from the schedule, and the Christmas break begins early for the Jayhawks. Which leaves the big KU hoops news of the week the announcement that KU will play Indiana the next two years.
Today is a strange day in our house. M and C wrapped up finals on Friday, so (as I begin this in the morning) both are still in a deep sleep. Hell, C probably finally went to bed somewhere in the 2–3 AM range. L, on the other hand, has class through Wednesday. So the two of us were up at the normal time. That feels weird because it’s the first time we’ve had a schedule like this.
We’ve made it to another year-end list of my favorite songs of the past twelve (-ish) months. Usually I start working on these rankings in early October. This year I didn’t put any real work into it until after we returned from Hawaii on December 1. Some of that was because my working list was about as tight as it has ever been. I don’t know that it ever got over 40–42 songs, and I was able to trim many songs before I began giving it serious consideration.
Over the weekend I knocked out all of The Beatles: Get Back. A few observations and thoughts about Peter Jackson’s nearly eight-hour documentary of the January 1969 Beatles studio sessions. I’m pretty sure I saw the original movie that was made from the film shot at those sessions, Let It Be, years ago. When I first saw the trailer for Get Back last fall, I was incredibly excited as it seemed to upend the narrative Let It Be had created: that the Beatles constantly bickered and battled through those sessions.
After a week of fun buildup, Kansas and Missouri finally took the floor against each other Saturday for the first time in nearly a decade. The result felt a bit empty, although the process was a lot of fun for us Kansas fans. The Jayhawks’ 102–65 win was the third-largest margin of victory in series history. That wasn’t a surprise. From the Vegas gambling line (starting at KU minus–25!!!) to every article I read, podcast I listened to, and discussion I was in last week, universal opinion was that KU would win easily.
A few links to kick off your weekend. ‘Wrong team won both days’: Flashback to epic finale of KU-Mizzou basketball in 2012 Kansas and Missouri renew their basketball rivalry in Lawrence tomorrow. This is a good summary of how they ended their time as conference rivals almost ten years ago. For the record: Thomas Robinson’s block was 100% clean. Now the foul that put Tyshawn Taylor at the line to hit the winning free throws?
Like the good little elf that I am, I’ve been hard at work on my Favorite Songs of the Year list since we returned from Hawaii. My goal is to publish it the middle of next week. As has become tradition, I will offer this prelude: my favorite songs for each year since 2004. These are in chronological order, so Modest Mouse represents 2004, Waxahatchee represents 2020. Songs 14 and 15 in this list were co-songs of the year for 2017.
Chart Week: December 10, 1977 Song: “Here You Come Again” - Dolly Parton Chart Position: #12, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 for two weeks in January, 1978. This edition features another musician origin story.[1] I really like this one; hope you do, too. It is a tiny miracle that anyone becomes a recording star. There are, what, thousands of people out there with the same dream? Tens of thousands?
A couple flawed yet fairly easy wins after the Thanksgiving tournament for the Jayhawks. Now everyone can look ahead to Saturday’s game. Not me, though. Or at least not yet. The last three games have brought a very nice and surprising development: Christian Braun is good. Really good. He struggled so much in the opener against Michigan State that I think a lot of us kind of wrote him off as just being a role player again this year.
Movies and Shows Blondie - Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, 1979 This is AMAZING! Debbie Harry in her white-hot prime. The freaking drummer is insane, doing his best Keith Moon impression in his gold lamé suit. A The Bourne Identity The Bourne Supremacy The Bourne Ultimatum I hadn’t watched any of these since the third installment came out in 2007, when I watched all three in three days. I repeated that over three nights last month.
It seems like most of the family has re-acclimated to being in the eastern time zone, but our days are still all messed up. A full, five-day school week this week will surely get us back on track. Our holiday schedule is all out-of-whack from normal, though. The day after Thanksgiving is normally our decorating day. Since we were hiking through Waimea Canyon ten days ago, that wasn’t possible. L and I got a bunch of the decorations out on the Friday before we left, placing them around the house as we listened to the Cathedral semi-state game on the radio.
It will take me another week to get back into the swing of things musically, so a couple videos to share today. youtu.be/YAbYsxd3A… “Hero Takes a Fall” - The Bangles I read this wonderful interview with Susanna Hoffs this week. In it she said this was the song through which Prince first came to know their music. Which, of course, led to “Manic Monday,” the song that thrust The Bangles into the mainstream.
Strap yourselves in for my mega-account of our trip to Hawaii! At around 3000 words, it might take you awhile to get through it. After a long day of travel and another of recovery, I’m hoping today (Thursday, Dec. 2) feels a little normal. Weird things happen when you travel nearly 9000 miles in less than a week. Our Thanksgiving trip to Kauai was, quite simply, amazing. S and I have been super fortunate to have taken some pretty great trips in our lives together.
November 2021 A new album by my favorite band, a vacation, and Spotify and Last.fm maybe not syncing up properly at the moment makes for a pretty boring list. The War on Drugs - 142 Sam Fender - 20 Bruce Springsteen - 15 Trace Mountains - 13 U2 - 13 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.
Our house smells different this morning. Some of that is a real change in the aromatics that are spread around, some of it is the smell of anticipation. As we begin a Thanksgiving week unlike any other in our family’s history, some notes from the weekend. Friday was semi state for high school football in Indiana. Cathedral played a school from down near Louisville that only advanced because their regionals opponent, who had beaten them by 30 in the regular season, was missing their starting quarterback and running back.
There was no time for a full Friday Playlist, but there is time for some words about the Jayhawks. Thursday’s game against Stony Brook was about what you expect this time of year. KU - especially David McCormack - was sloppy early; they struggled to guard a smaller, faster team; and generally muddled through the first 20–25 minutes. Then Ochai Agbaji caught fire and scored 10 straight points, the rest of the team relaxed, and a 20+ point run put the game away.
youtu.be/L65NNh6vJ… “Plowed” - Sponge No time for a full playlist this week, so I did the thing where I randomly scroll through my library and pick something that pops up. This was the third song I landed on, and it seemed appropriate since I heard an unplugged version of it on Sirius yesterday. This is not a song that sounds super cool when done acoustically. Probably because the original was so good.
With L done with hoops for the time being, I figured I should still get out and watch some live basketball. Tuesday I went to my first high school game in a long time. C has a classmate that made the varsity team (girl also made varsity soccer as a freshman, so obviously she’s a stud). A few of the freshmen girls wanted to go and support her so I took C.