Friday Playlist

open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Keel Timing” - Manchester Orchestra Their new album drops today, and it is getting excellent reviews. I’ve really liked each of the advance singles. Perhaps an early contender for album of the year? I will give it my first listen as soon as I post this. “The Right Thing is Hard to Do” - Lightning Bug I was reading a little about this band this morning. They were poised to have a breakthrough year in 2020 and then, well, you know… This is a lovely, majestic song that has me looking forward to what else they have to offer.

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Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 4

We’ve made it! After three entries of background bullshit about my search for a new car, we’ve finally arrived at my first test drive! As previously noted, I am focusing on the luxury compact SUV class. While there are a ton of cars in this space, I have pretty much whittled it down to five I want to compare first hand: Acura RDX Audi Q5 BMW X3 Mercedes GLC300 Volvo XC60 Very imaginative names, no?

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Mid-Week Kid Sports Notes

I mentioned that this would be a very busy kid sports week. That has proven to be true. As there were a couple big developments, I’m going to go ahead and get you caught up on what’s gone down the past two days. Tennis Monday M played her second tennis match. We never heard why, but they mixed up the partners and she played with one of her best friends.

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Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 3

Crap. I realized in part two of this series, I left out one angle of my car search. It’s not terribly important to the big picture, but I figure if I’m writing about the process, and some of you are actually reading about it, I shouldn’t skip anything that happened along the way. At the end of my last entry, I revealed that I had settled on a specific category of cars to focus on: luxury compact SUVs.

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Weekend Kids Sports Notes

We are about to embark on our busiest week of the spring sports season: three tennis matches, four kickball games, one soccer game (two games missed because of kickball), and trying to squeeze in at least one track practice per girl before next weekend’s meet. Here’s how they did last week. Tennis No tennis matches for M last week. She gets to play today in the first JV home meet of the year.

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Friday Playlist

open.spotify.com/playlist/… “How the Race is Done” - Smile This feels straight out of some 1986 College Rock compilation tape. Mostly because of that Peter Buck-like jangly guitar, which recalls early R.E.M. (with a lot more energy than R.E.M., though.) It has nothing to do with ’80s college rock, but the bass sound and style reminds me of Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament. The real kicker: these kids are from Turin, Italy. Does that blow your mind?

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Mother Nature's Fury

It was some 24 hours we experienced from roughly 5:00 pm Tuesday to 5:00 pm Wednesday. On Tuesday we got hit by that freak, spring snowstorm that blew through the Midwest. Both C and L had kickball games scheduled, and both games were cancelled. C’s was actually cancelled on Monday night when their opponents all went into quarantine. With kickball out of the way, she decided to join her soccer team on Tuesday.

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Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 2

This is the second entry in my collection of observations as I search for a new car. In part one I listed every car I’ve owned. You can read it here. Today, I’m going to set up some parameters for my next purchase. If you look through that list of past cars, a trend is obvious: the last four were all selected based on the needs of our family. That’s not meant to be a complaint: two of those were pretty awesome rides that we were able to justify by saying “We need a big ass car to haul all our shit.

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Weekend Kid Sports Roundup

We have a very busy sports week ahead - weather permitting - and my plan was to hold off on another kid sports update. But it turned out to be a fairly significant sports weekend, so I’ll go ahead and share our girls’ latest accomplishments on the fields of athletic battle. Friday was M’s first-ever tennis match. I had not seen her hit a tennis ball since last September, when we went to a local court to hit together.

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Friday Playlist

Another Friday, another list of fine musical products for your ears. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Hot & Heavy” - Lucy Dacus Dacus was responsible for my favorite song of 2018. She may have released my favorite song of 2021 this week. This is just so freaking good, and she is a total treasure. “Complex” - Tristen Tristen also had one of my favorite songs of 2018. She’s right in that indie/Americana/folk pocket that I can really get into.

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Spring Sports, Pt. 1

We are about 10 days into the spring CYO sports schedules, which means we are at roughly the halfway point of those compact seasons. Here’s a quick look at how the family has done so far. Both C and L are two games into their kickball seasons, with a third game rained out for each team. L’s team is 2–0. They won their first game by 10 runs against a team that is usually pretty good.

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Fun With Lists

This piece is from last fall, but I came across a Tweet that linked to it over spring break and saved it for a moment like now, when I’m busy and can’t generate any original #Content for you. Although I am a lover of pop culture lists, I can appreciate how they are often ridiculous. This “list” is a fine skewering of those of us who obsess about such things. The context in which the things that we rank take place is often more important than the things we are ranking.

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Current Status: Vaccinated

I received my second Pfizer vaccine shot on Friday. WHOOOO-HOOOOO!!!!! No issues, other than a sore arm. I’ve heard wildly varying stories from others who have already been through both shots. S and several other friends got wiped out by shot #2. In her case, she felt achy and sore and lethargic for about 24 hours. Another friend was out for two days with similar symptoms. However several other folks have reported no issues.

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Friday Playlist

Let us continue our adventure through the flood of (mostly) new music that has arrived with spring. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Understand” - The Cry The Cry are one of those un-searchable bands. There are albums named The Cry. A TV show. A movie. Books. Enough noise that search engines find it very difficult to spit out information about the actual band, which is kind of obscure to begin with. From what I was finally able to dig up they were apparently big with skaters around 1990 then went away.

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Reader's Notebook, 4/8/21

Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year - Michaelangelo Matos My spring break read seems like it was written directly for me. Matos takes a deep look at all of the music of 1984. It begins with Thriller dominating the music world in late 1983 and carried through to mid–1985 and Live Aid. Along the way he spends nearly equal time digging into the biggest artists of the year - Michael Jackson, Prince, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper, and Tina Tuner - along with many, many other artists who cracked the Top 40 that year.

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College Hoops Thoughts

Well, we now live in a world where Scott Drew has a national championship and Kansas is facing probation. Just fucking great. If I could, I would light college basketball on fire and let it burn a slow, painful death. OK, that’s a little harsh. And, honestly, I can deal with whatever is going to happen to KU. It’s the Scott Drew shit that really pisses me off. Phony, shady m-fer.

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Car Shopping Chronicles, Part 1

Welcome to a new series here on Ye Olde Blog. It will focus on my process to pick my next vehicle. I know, exciting, right?!?! Feel free to skip if you’d rather read my normal bullshit about sports, music, and books. For about five months I’ve been spending A TON of time researching what I should get when the lease on my Chevy Tahoe expires in July. As you may recall we did a little car shopping in November, but that ended up being for S rather than me.

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Friday Playlist

After a week away, and a week before with no playlist before that, it might take a few extra large playlists to dig through the pile of new(ish) music I have. You, my loyal readers/listeners benefit! So let’s get after it. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “A Rat Without a Tail” - Daniel Romano A pretty dope song that recalls numerous influences, most notably scuzzy 1970s rock. “Not Dead Yet” - Lord Huron It’s been over three years since we’ve heard new music from Lord Huron.

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Roy, Roy, Roy

Wow, in a shocker that is apparently not an April Fool’s Day joke, Roy Williams is retiring after 33 years as a head coach. I am equally surprised and unsurprised. Both because of his age and his demeanor in recent years, it has been fashionable to wonder if each season would be Roy’s last. But I am honestly floored this is the year he pulled the plug. I did not think he would want to go out the way he did this season, with a mediocre (for Carolina) team filled with young guys that had the potential to get better over time.

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Stats

March 2021 Middle Kids - 47 The Pack A.D. - 42 Crowded House - 32 Hatchie - 18 Pearl Jam - 13 Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.

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