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.
Cloud Cuckoo Land - Anthony Doerr When you win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as Doerr did for his wonderful All The Light That We Cannot See, it can be a bitch to follow it up. So why not build a story around five main characters who occupy 700 years of time? If nothing else, the sheer scope of the book will make it stand out. There is no good way to summarize this book.
Holy shit! There aren’t a lot of big, important, communal memories surrounding Kansas football. For those of us who were in school in the early 90’s, there was the Monte Cozzens game, when KU beat Oklahoma. For the few of us who stuck it out through the cold, there was the Tony Sands game. The Mangino era brought an epic win over Nebraska, an Orange Bowl victory, and a game-winning, fourth down play against Missouri in the snow.
I’m not sure how I had never heard this story before. Nearly a decade before Pearl Harbor, the American military ran a series of war games in which an attacking force wiped out the forces sheltered at Pearl by launching a sneak attack from the north on a Sunday morning. Which is exactly what the Japanese would do nine years later. Only the Navy decided the attack wasn’t fair and rather than learning from their failure, nullified the results.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Luna Moth” - Lola in Slacks Kind of a terrible band name. But this song cooks, so I’ll allow it. “When This Gets Out” - The Persian Leaps Rock ‘n’ roll, bitches! These guys sound like an updated version of The Smithereens… “A Girl Like You” - The Smithereens …this song to be specific. “Oh My God” - Lula Wiles I’m currently reading a book about the effects that Amazon has had on our society.
Chart Week: November 6, 1976 Song: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” - Gordon Lightfoot Chart Position: #3, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for two weeks. This entry is cheating a little bit, as I’ve written about this song before. However, I heard not one but two countdowns last weekend that included it, so I take that as a sign from the Music Gods that they want me to share it again.
Another CYO basketball season is in the books. Thanks to a big win last week, with a guest coach on the bench, L’s team solidified itself as the solid middle of her league: they lost to each of the top three teams and beat each of the bottom three teams. Fourth place, bitches! Last Wednesday we played St J. This was my first game handling all of the coaching responsibilities with both of the usual coaches out-of-town.
Today I begin a new series. After most KU basketball games, I will do a brief collection of thoughts.[1] My goal is to keep these in the 500-word range, although exceptional performances may require more than that. The season opener went from concerning to a snoozer. KU could not shake Michigan State early, but a 9–1 run to end the first half and Ochai Agbaji taking over in the second half made the last 10 minutes of the game kind of boring.
KU fans have put in their time suffering through the bulk of another football season. College basketball has finally arrived! The Jayhawks will take on Michigan State at Madison Square Garden tonight to kick off the hoops season. I think this is going to be a very interesting and important year for KU. Like most of the college hoops world, the Jayhawks took advantage of the relaxed transfer/eligibility rules and plugged a number of holes on their roster.
Chart Week: November 2, 1985 Song: “And We Danced” - The Hooters Chart Position: #23, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #21 the week of October 26. (Fear not, music trivia fans! After a long dry spell, I’ve got three, maybe four, of these posts queued up for the next couple weeks.) “Who the fuck are The Hooters?” Those were Bob Geldof’s comments in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine after promoter Bill Graham forced him to include the band on the Philadelphia stage of Live Aid.
open.spotify.com/playlist/… “I Don’t Wanna Wait” - The War on Drugs Not that there was much doubt, but pretty sure based on the past week alone The War on Drugs will be my most listened to artist of the year. The new album, I Don’t Live Here Anymore, is fantastic. I’ll post a review next week where I will share more thoughts, but the band has entered hallowed territory by releasing four-straight absolute bangers of albums.
A fast start slowed by baseball playoffs and the beginning of the NBA season. Movies and Shows Halloween Wars Halloween Baking Championship It’s holiday baking season, bitches!!!! L and I only made it through a couple episodes of Halloween Wars, so it gets an incomplete. But S and I wrapped up HBC on Halloween night. Renee was a shocking winner. Adina had been the best baker the entire competition, Guillermo came on strong late, and I was sure they were ahead of Renee in the final bake.