The Border - Don Winslow For an author, finishing a trilogy has to be difficult. Especially when you didn’t set out to write a three-book series to begin with.
This is the final entry in Winslow’s excellent Power of the Dog series, in which he unfurls the epic story of the rise and fall of a Mexican drug empire and the forces that were aligned against it.
I think authors have two choices when writing a series: you can either tie each book closely together, make it necessary to read the previous entries to understand the latest one; or you can fill later editions with plenty of hooks back to the history laid down by earlier books, while still making them readable on their own.
Before I get to some more notes on what’s been going down around here, a quick warning that I’m going to be doing some of my patented “jacking around with the blog” over the next few days. I’m hoping I can do it in a way that doesn’t prevent you from finding the site when you look for it. If not, my apologies and it should return soon.
Pool Troubles After a year of pretty pain-free pool ownership, we finally ran into a hiccup.
It’s been a few days. A couple of you checked in - which I appreciate - and all is well. The girls and I spent a few days out in the wilderness. OK, that might be overstating it a bit, but here’s a breakdown.
We went with our old neighbors to Turkey Run state park, about two hours east of Indy, Wednesday afternoon through Friday morning for camping, hiking, and tubing.
Just a couple weeks in and we’ve already entered the lazy days of summer. Swim most days. Have some family or small group of friends over on the weekends. Hope it doesn’t rain yet complain when it’s too hot.
That happens quick when there’s no place else to go. S popped into the nearest mall one day last week to return a few things and said maybe half the stores were open.
I think I’m done with Facebook for awhile. I’m not a huge user to begin with. But over the past week I’ve been disappointed at both Mark Zuckerberg’s continued stance that FB has no role to play in reining in posts that are meant to deliberately mislead people and spread lies and with a few friends who have posted/shared things I’ve found troubling following the George Floyd murder. I’ll check in to see who has a birthday and send them a message, but I don’t see myself scrolling through my feed or posting much again for some time.
Another week in the books that was a little worse than the week before. I don’t know what the end point is, when things will start getting better, but I fear where the next worst week will take us.
For this week’s playlist, some songs that both sum up what’s happening and how I feel about it. Not the most uplifting playlist, I admit, but there are some damn good songs in here.
My goal for May was to knock a bunch of movies off my To Watch list. At first glance it will look like I did exactly that. But I must admit I watched eight of these movies in that last nine days of the month. That was solid work!
The Last Dance
Well, shit, I never got around to writing about this. I guess it’s because I’ve talked about it so much to so many people I never felt the need to share more here.
It is hard to know what to write today. We are in day four of an absolutely glorious run of weather. We got to see a few friends this weekend. The SpaceX launch was very cool. There’s a new wave of openings here in Indianapolis today which is making life feel a little more normal.
But all that is offset by what is going on in our country right now.
It’s been a slow music week for me, so I’ll stick to some older tunes for today’s offerings.
“Great Expectations” - The Gaslight Anthem One of the great Side One, Track Ones of the digital era. The kids today don’t even know what a Side One, Track One is.
“Test Transmission” - Kasabian Kasabian had their moment right when I was transitioning to actually buying digital tracks instead of finding them on some “sharing” service.
Say Nothing - Patrick Radden Keefe My brother-in-books Sir David and I often share recommendations with each other. I don’t know that he’s ever pushed a book as hard as he did this one. I think he got a little nervous he had oversold it, but this turned out to be a great recommendation.
Keefe provides a thorough but quick history of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and its key members during the Troubles, the period in Northern Ireland from the mid–1960s through the 1990s when the country was torn by violence between primarily Catholic Republicans looking to unify with the Republic of Ireland and mostly Protestant Loyalists who wanted to remain a part of the United Kingdom.
Chart Week: May 10, 1986
Song: “Be Good To Yourself” - Journey
Chart Positions: #20, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #9 the week of May 31.
Remember when it used to be a surprise when new music arrived? At least for kids. Before the internet, before I had cable TV, and before I could read music magazines regularly, new albums by my favorite artists often appeared seemingly out of the blue.
Holiday number two of the Coronavirus era has come and gone. Memorial Day weekend was especially strange here in Indianapolis since there was no 500 mile race to dominate local events. The race has been pushed back to August, for now. But the month of May is the biggest month of the year in Indy, and the last three weeks have felt extra empty without all the race prep and coverage.
Happy Memorial Day weekend! Some songs to fuel your holiday.
"Peaceful Ambassador" - The Dead Tongues
Hiss Golden Messenger has been a connecting point for me to that sub-genre of music that balances indie rock, folk, and alt country. Ryan Gustafson has played with HGM over the years, but The Dead Tongues is his personal project. He works in that same space, but this track has a dirty, early 1970s feel to it.
I’m struggling to find the motivation to write this week. I have a couple things started but can’t seem to get them wrapped up.
Instead of working on either of those, I thought I would share this insane video instead. I hate heights so this make my stomach churn but I still find it amazing.
youtu.be/RG9TMn1FJ…
Via TMN
(Apologies to Rex Chapman for stealing his “Dogs, bruh,” for the title.)
I’m not sure if it is time to transition the title of these assorted notes posts back to how I labelled them before March. Not everything in these is about what is going on with Covid anymore. At the same time, our lives are going to continue to be pretty boring for some time and much of what I share here will be affected, at least indirectly, by the state of the world.
youtu.be/KRa8ZH_iO… Prince and the Revolution, live, 3/30/85 This is my weekend assignment, so I’ll make it yours, too. For this weekend only this concert is streaming for free. Superfans insist it is one of the greatest Prince performances ever, and it came at the absolute height of his popularity. Find a way to spend two hours with it.
I’ve seen the article I’m linking to below passed around a lot this week, so many of you have probably at least seen it. I highly recommend reading through it. Erin Bromage is a biology professor who explains how things could go over the next few months, as we being to reopen while still navigating the back side of the curve.
As states reopen, and we give the virus more fuel, all bets are off.
I’ve felt a lack of enthusiasm and motivation the past few days. School is winding down. M is done Friday. C and L are done next week. Assignments have already dried up and they’re just running out the clock. A few teachers seem to have checked out, too, which makes it tough to motivate the girls.
The news has devolved further, making me less and less interested in paying attention to what’s going on, and making my blood pressure rise when I do check in.
Point B - Drew Magary God damnit, Magary has done it again!
(I feel like he would like that opening line.)
If you can’t immediately place the name, Magary is the all-around excellent writer responsible for things like his annual take down of the Williams Sonoma Christmas catalog, the best mailbag on the internet (once on Deadspin now on Vice), his weekly NFL columns, his political/culture/food writings on various outlets, and his long form profiles for GQ.
Happy Friday, y’all.
It’s a Wordpress/Spotify Fuck Up Week so here’s a link to the playlist.
“Melancholy, MA” - The Sheila Divine I just discovered this week that TSD, a band I loved almost 20 years ago, put out a new album last year. I listened to it and was impressed with the first 4–5 songs before it lost steam and meandered to the end. Those good songs don’t match their classic ones, but they’re good enough to throw into the rotation for awhile.