Sports!

It’s taken me awhile to get into them, but sports are back! Kind of, sort of, that is. As I type this fall college sports are looking nervously at the drain, aware that a hand is lingering near the handle to flush them away to 2021. But the pros have been keeping us entertained for a few weeks now. And it has been surprisingly good. Golf Golf was the first major American sport back, and had a glorious weekend with the first major championship of the year, the PGA Championship played at Harding Park in San Francisco.

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Friday Playlist

With our situation constantly in flux, a lot can change in a week. But as it stands this morning, all three of our girls are scheduled to be back in a school classroom this time next week. Which makes this the final playlist of a rather long summer. Nothing specific to celebrate that, but this will be a mega playlist this week as I do some housecleaning. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Jeannine” - Pete Yorn A lovely song that sounds like saying goodbye to those summer romances as you head back to the real world.

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Reader's Notebook, 8/5/20

I’ve accumulated five books that require discussion. I’ll try to make this quick, but you know me, so strap in. The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever - Mark Frost I knew nothing about this book or the event it covered until I heard a discussion of it on a podcast. The focus is the 1956 match between professional golf legends Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and young amateurs Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward.

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This Is What I'm Dealing With

Please examine this picture. One the left you see an open box of Multi Grain Cheerios. It is nearly empty, but there is still a half-serving, give or take, left inside. Enough to start a bowl, fill a coffee cup,[^1] or be the perfect portion if you’re slicing a banana to go with. On the right you see the brand new box of Multi Grain Cheerios that I purchased yesterday.

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A Week Away

Well, we spent a week in Florida. Whether that was a good idea or not, I suppose we’ll figure out in the next 10-14 days. But it was definitely fun to get away from home for a bit. There were enough mixed feelings hanging over this trip thanks to Covid-19. Then some other shit happened. We were scheduled to leave early Saturday, July 25. Our flight was at 7:30 so my alarm was set for 4:45.

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Friday Vid

[youtu.be/2RHTiXvEL...](https://youtu.be/2RHTiXvELNg) “Vacation” - The Go-Go’s As we enjoy our final day of vacation, please enjoy this classic video on the subject.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5BNb2b5g7I6bFSYG7tlMt3?si=3XXdHA0_Rqa8KzE7sy2diw) "Mariana Trench" - Bright Eyes I've never listened to Bright Eyes, but I enjoyed Conor Oberst's collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers last year as part of Better Oblivion Community Center. As if for people like me, Bright Eyes is about to put out their first album in over a decade. Based on this track, I'll at least give it a courtesy listen. "Country Church" - Holy Motors If Mazzy Star made a song that had some swing to it, and it landed on the soundtrack of a mid-90s noir film, it would sound like this.

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July Media

July is not over. But as we will be out-of-town next week, and I haven’t found much to write about this week, I thought I’d go ahead and share my media post for the month. Brooklyn Nine-Nine Always reliable, but never quite as great as Michael Schur’s other creations. What was strange was watching a show that was recorded before and during the Coronavirus outbreak. It was weird seeing commercials and promos from back when life was normal and then suddenly seeing them change in tone when April rolled around.

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Weekend Notes

Some notes from the past few days. Nephews We watched two of our nephews overnight Saturday. Number one just turned four, is very strong willed and stubborn, but generally a good kid. He loves to swim at our house, and spent a lot of time in the pool Saturday evening and Sunday morning. I tell you what, there’s nothing better for wiping a kid out than letting them swim for a couple hours.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6ry5uT5xwwkEaixaHMnbNz?si=gBLHEzJUQ0WORZxNClIGKg) "Divine Accidents" - 5 Billion in Diamonds This band features Butch Vig, the drummer for Garbage and producer for dozens of big 1990s alt acts, and Ebbot Lundberg of Soundtrack of Our Lives. It sounds like a mashsup of SOOL and ELO, which is not unpleasant at all. "Destroyer" - Lala Lala Phoebe Bridgers recently recommended Lala Lala's new album. I have only listened to this song so far, but I really like its vibe.

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Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 45

Chart Week: July 3, 1982 Song: “Hurts So Good” - John Cougar Chart Position: #5, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #2 for four weeks in August. This entry is about how the biological information Casey Kasem shared on American Top 40 was not always accurate. John Cougar (Mellencamp) is the perfect artist to demonstrate this point, as he charted under three different versions of his last name. For simplicity, I will refer to him by the name this song charted under.

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On Lost TV Shows

Since I’m struggling to write about current affairs at the moment, I decided I am going to try to get back to doing something I used to do a lot more often: link to interesting articles. I can’t think of a better way to start than this piece. The Strange Disappearance of Ed, the Great Show That Time Forgot Old school friends will remember how much I loved Ed. Every few years something will remind me of it and I’ll sniff around a little to see if there has been any resolution to the music rights issues which have prevented it from ending up on cable or a streaming service.

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Reader's Notebook, 7/13/20

Death in Her Hands - Otessa Moshfegh I read Moshfegh’s Eileen a few years back. After I started this one I had to go back and read my summary of it to recall that it was an odd little book. This one was odd, too. It is the story of a Vesta Gul, a widowed, 80-something woman who lives in an old Girl Scout cabin with her dog. One morning on their daily walk through the woods she stumbles across a note that claims that the body of a dead woman named Magda is nearby.

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40 at 50

I missed an absolutely huge anniversary over the holiday weekend and have been grievously late in finally getting to it. Last weekend was the 50th anniversary of the first American Top 40 broadcast. If you follow here closely you know that there has likely been no bigger pop culture influence on my life than AT40. I remember my parents and their friends listening to the show in the late 1970s.

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Friday Playlist

[open.spotify.com/playlist/...](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/390x9jvTMq1fxdXLtvPNCj?si=0qjDxbMyRrK7v3uJT098Ng) “Light in the Heart of Our Town” - Joensuu 1685 This Finnish band created some buzz about 10 years ago then splintered into side projects. They are back after that long fallow period and arrive with this absolutely gorgeous song “same mistakes” - We Were Promised Jetpacks Along with label mates The Twilight Sad, WWPJ practice a wonderfully miserable brand of Scottish indie rock. Their songs are dark and brooding and match the weather of their homeland.

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The Fourth

I never served up a summary of the holiday weekend. Our family from Denver were in town and stayed with us: S’s sister, her husband, and their two kids. It was weird picking them up and dropping them off at the airport, which seemed mostly deserted, at least from the curb-view. Not that IND is often a super-busy airport, but a holiday weekend usually means you have to double- or triple-park when doing curbside drop-off/pickup.

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June Media

Mystify: Michael Hutchence What a beautiful man Michael Hutchence was. Not just physically, he had a beautiful soul, too. He wasn’t a voice of a generation - well, maybe he was in Australia - but if you came up in the late ‘80s and listened to pop music, he sang a lot of songs that were in high rotation. INXS was never my favorite group, but they were often one of my 5-10 favorites, and I owned a surprising number of their albums.

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Reaching for the Stars, Vol. 44

Chart Week: June 23, 1984 Song: “Obscene Phone Caller” - Rockwell Chart Position: #39, 8th week on the chart. Peaked at #35 the week of June 30. I have always prided myself for knowing minor hits by artists who have been labeled as One Hit Wonders by the general public. Others find this trait annoying, but it’s kind of too late to change now. Not that I’m in-your-face about it.

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Friday Playlist

As promised, a playlist for the holiday weekend. This is the same PL I shared last year on July 4. I listened to it again this week and still thought it was pretty good. I hope you enjoy it, and have a happy and safe Independence Day weekend.

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New Jams for Your Head

I’m about to check out for the holiday weekend. I’ll post a special playlist for the weekend on Friday. Before I step back for a few days, I thought I’d provide some more music recommendations. So here are a few good albums from the first six months of 2020. If you have free time over the next few days, open up your music streaming app and try something new! Ratboys - Printer’s Devil

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