One of the greatest things about the Internet is the ability to dive into your past, to try to clarify memories that have become hazy over time or reconnect with people who were once an integral part of your life.
I don’t do a whole lot of biographical scrolling these days. It’s been years since I’ve looked up an ex-girlfriend or classmate. The closest I’ve come is a couple years back when I spent a few winter nights in Google maps working to find the various houses of my youth.
I’ve been a little slower than normal slapping together my Favorite Songs of the Year list. I can just #Blame2020 and leave it at that. I will also add that I’m having a devil of a time picking my favorite song of 2020, which I kind of need to do in order to complete the list.
But I’m working on it, and in hopes of ensuring I complete this year’s list over the next week, I’ll go ahead and share my standard prelude.
Some things never change.
Those glamorous, early November college basketball matchups that ESPN creates to fill the air in the opening weeks of the season almost always disappoint. Oh, you might get a close game, but rarely are these games ones where, afterward, viewers say, “That might be the game of the year!”
The Champions Classic is the ultimate example. It has been college hoops’ de facto kickoff event the last several years, with Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, and Michigan State assembling at a neutral site to play a double header and show off their shiny new toys.
A pretty light month. I guess that happens when the election wipes out roughly a week of normal TV viewing. Plus I read a lot in November.
Here’s what I did watch.
Archer, season 11
The world’s greatest spy returns for another year. Archer seasons fall into one of two camps. There are the ones that make you laugh so hard that you are constantly rewinding/rewatching to catch the jokes you missed.
Well, today begins a new phase in our home’s daily rhythms. C and L are now eLearning through at least mid-January, joining M who has been home for two weeks. Hopefully the expensive Internet access we pay for holds up; our signal likes to drop in the middle of the day which should make for interesting moments when three girls are all in virtual classes.
When I picked C and L up from their final day of classes last Tuesday, L said it felt like the beginning of Christmas vacation.
The Wolf Wants In - Laura McHugh I saw this book described as being for fans of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects and/or season three of True Detective. I loved Sharp Objects; I’ve never watched True Detective but have always heard good things. That was enough to get me to pick this up. It also help that someone I used to be friends with blurbed the book and served as a mentor to McHugh.
Usually I’m giddy right about now. Thanksgiving is a few days away. We’ll bust out the holiday decorations, crank up the Christmas music, and put the tree up Friday. The most wonderful time of year has arrived!
But it’s fucking 2020, which means we can’t have nice things. Yes, we’ll be eating turkey Thursday and the tree will go up on Friday, but so many other things that make this time of year the best are either being cancelled or greatly modified.
A slow music week for me, so this week’s list will be more oldies than…uh, newies?
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“let down” - Paris Jackson When I first heard this I had no idea who Paris Jackson was. Or, more correctly, I did not remember. Then I heard it again and the DJ on SiriusXM noted she was Michael’s daughter. Mind blown. Not what I would have expected from The King of Pop’s kid.
The Masters Like most golf fans I was realllllly looking forward to the fall Masters. Seeing Augusta National under different conditions than we’ve ever seen it before and without any fans was a dazzling concept. And in practice it turned out to be pretty damn cool. I was surprised, though, that I didn’t get fully immersed in the tournament. Sure, I had it on a lot, but I wasn’t glued to the screen the way I would have been in April.
This is just incredible. Not just the story, but also how it was reported. This is A+++ journalism of a style that, sadly, just doesn’t exist anymore.
youtu.be/V6CLumsir…
I have no memory of this, but apparently this story was a bit of a sensation in the 1990s, one of the first viral events on the Internet. It must not have trickled down to those of us who relied on AOL to be our gateway to the World Wide Web back then.
Several significant events in our house over the past few days. Let’s get caught up.
School When I picked M up from school last Wednesday she had a weird look on her face. “Everyone says school is shutting down after this week,” she exclaimed. Apparently each day a few more kids were not showing up to class either because they were Covid positive or were quarantining because of close contact with a positive person.
I will warn you the first song in today’s playlist is filled with NOT SAFE FOR WORK language. Play cautiously. That’s appropriate for today as yesterday came word that schools in Indianapolis will be required to go virtual again by the end of the month. More about that next week, though. On to the music…
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“JU$T” - Run the Jewels with Zach De La Rocha and Pharrell Williams LOOK AT ALL THESE SLAVE MASTERS POSIN' ON YOUR DOLLARS
Yesterday we got our updated car insurance policy, listing M as an insured driver. The addition to our premium was a nice way to start the holiday season.
She’s been hassling us about a car for weeks. I believe I already shared that CHS only gives parking passes to sophomores if there are exceptional reasons that require one. She’s told us several times that we need to come up with something and send the email.
Chart Week: October 27, 1984 Song: “Purple Rain” - Prince & The Revolution Chart Position: #4, 4th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for two weeks in November. (This ended up being a big coincidence, but not a bad choice for the 50th entry in this series!)
One of my favorite things about listening to old AT40’s is when they cause me to pour through old charts to examine the movement of various songs.
Sunday night I sat down to bang out some election thoughts. After about an hour and a couple beers I had over 2500 semi-coherent words. Younger me would have pushed on, getting everything out of my system, working until well after midnight to finish and then post the piece.
2020 me, though? He was ready for bed. And as morning dawns I feel like I want to take another, sober, stab at my 2020 election post.
I had a regular list put together to share like any other Friday.
But given the news of the morning, I’m scraping it and throwing this ad hoc list at you. You should be able to figure out which songs are directed at which candidates.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
Baseball took up a lot of time last month. But I still squeezed in some quality television programming.
The Spy
This brief series tells the story of Eli Cohen, a Mossad agent who infiltrated Syrian society in the 1960s and became a deputy minister of defense before being discovered and executed.
It is a compelling, interesting story that is very well acted and paced, and beautifully photographed. I also enjoyed the old school spy tale angle.
Nothing much going on today. Might as well share my most recent reads.
A Short History of Nearly Everything - Bill Bryson
My master reading list isn’t complete; I didn’t really start digitizing it until the mid-to-late 2000s, so a lot of books I read in the first decade of this century aren’t accounted for.[1] So I know I’ve read a few of Bill Bryson’s travel books, I’m just not certain how many.
Here we are, the week many of us - a plurality of those who voted four years ago - have been looking forward to for an entire election cycle. And it dawns dominated by a sense of dread. Regardless of the results of tomorrow’s election, I think the US is on a horrible course, one where democracy is constantly subverted by a vocal minority. Where intimidation and voter suppression has become a normal part of one party’s methods for hanging on to political power.