Below are some collected thoughts on what is going on with COVID–19. I’m not going to promise they are coherent or all that intelligent. I’m trying to get them into text and online quickly, so I may contradict myself or miss some glaring flaws in logic. My apologies if it goes off the rails anywhere.
Wednesday was the craziest damn day I can remember since, perhaps, September 11, 2001. While the causes and immediate effects of each day were dramatically different, both are ones that will be seared into my memory.
An Honorable Man - Paul Vidich I’m on a bit of a Cold War kick right now; I believe reading about Chernobyl kicked it off. This is the first of several Cold War espionage thrillers I’m working my way through.
It takes place in Washington 1953, in the midst of the Korean War and as the McCarthy hearings are getting ramped up. George Mueller is a CIA agent who is thoroughly burnt out.
March is the time to relive both the glories and horrors of NCAA tournaments past. This excellent piece of speculative sports history brought back some bad memories. But it was also a very enjoyable read.
What If Ben Affleck Had Stayed on the Kansas Basketball Team in ‘The Way Back’?
About a month ago, my KU buddies I text with daily and I had a lengthy exchange fearing what was ahead of us. The conversation went something like, “I’m not sure if we can win the Big 12, but we need Baylor to lose to someone so they don’t go 18–0.”
At that point the Bears were rolling. They had waxed Tech in Lubbock and KU in Lawrence and, a close game here or there excepted, seemed like no one was going to touch them.
It’s another one of those all-Aussie weeks. With KU basketball about to get hammered by the NCAA and our country as toxic as it has ever been, I’m thinking about talking S into scrapping our lives here and moving to Australia so I can sit on the beach, listen to great music, and wait for COVID–19 to wipe out the world.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Sandwiches” - Gordi. A gorgeous song, an ode to Sophie Payten’s late grandmother.
I’m a failure as a blogger. Somehow I let the 40th anniversary of The Miracle on Ice pass without writing or sharing anything about it. Seriously, the biggest sports moment in the first 10–15 years of my life, and the event against which I have compared all other sports, and I don’t share a word? Weak.
Here are two pieces I consumed the weekend of the anniversary.
First is E.M. Swift’s Sports Illustrated piece for the 1980 Sportsmen of the Year issue.
Media In the bleak mid-winter, I watched quite a bit of televised entertainment products. Here are a lot of words about those movies and shows.
The Two Popes This movie made me understand why some people get so frustrated with Hollywood. While it is a charming and hopeful look at the relationship between the current pope and his predecessor, as I was watching it I knew it was playing fast and loose with some of the history between those men.
We made it! The worst two months of the year are in the books!
I think it’s funny that that is still my mentality. This is my 17th winter in Indiana and my internal clock still thinks that spring begins when the calendar turns to March. You would think those 17 years would have beaten that Great Plains state mentality out of me. Spring doesn’t come to Indiana until well into April.
Still a lot of new music to share. I’m also developing a glut of older songs to include when time allows. With that in mind, I’m going to expand these a little, sharing more like 5–7 songs each week instead of 4–5.
Let’s hope Spotify/Wordpress cooperate this week.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Do You Understand?” - En Attendant Ana I had been really digging this track for a couple weeks when I finally decided to look up the band.
We’ve gone through a series of firsts in recent days.
Sunday M and I knocked out two firsts together.
She recently told us that she would like to try playing tennis. As in for her high school, not just for fun or as part of some open rec league. At first S and I were concerned: M took some lessons five or six years ago, but they were very basic, she did not show any particular aptitude for the sport, and other than wacking balls with her sisters in the driveway, she has never actually played tennis.
It’s been awhile since KU played a huge Big 12 game. The game at Texas Tech two years ago, when the Jayhawks clinched their 14th straight conference title was a big game. ESPN Gameday was in town, Tech had beaten KU in Lawrence a month earlier. But that game didn’t feel massive because A) KU was in first place coming into the game B) a loss would only drop them into a tie for first and C) there were still two games to play and KU had a scheduling advantage over that stretch.
A sudden backup of good, new songs means an extra-full playlist this week. (Spotify is being a bitch today, so just a link rather than embed.)
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1EX994vPAnfwchd6GKVQ4f?si=NvBVzSZ5S5ONAJ5HzpkVBg
“What It Is” - Angel Olsen
Olsen’s All Mirrors album got tremendous critical praise last year, but never resonated with me. I heard this song a couple weeks ago and kicked myself for not giving the album more listens so I could take in this track’s brilliance.
Chart Week: February 11, 1984
Song: “I Still Can’t Get Over Loving You” - Ray Parker, Jr.
Chart Position: #16, 14th week on the chart. Peaked at #12 the week of February 4.
Ray Parker Jr. had a hell of a career. Before he formed his first band, he was in the touring bands for the Spinners, Stevie Wonder, and Barry White. Later he worked with The Carpenters, Rufus and Chaka Khan, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, Deniece Williams, Bill Withers, The Temptations, Boz Skaggs, Tina Turner, Diana Ross, LaToya Jackson, and New Edition.
Time for some of my famous half-assed sports thoughts!
NBA ASG Man, I am mad at myself for not paying more attention to Sunday’s All Star Game. I blame L. I told her the game was on and she wasn’t interested, so we watched other things. I turned it on for the last 30 seconds of the first half then switched away, got distracted by a book and emptying the dishwasher, and forgot about it until it was over.
youtu.be/1YlSa1wJK… “Love Is In The Air” - Stella Donnelly covering John Paul Young. OH. MY. GOODNESS. I just ran across this, which is about the most delightful thing I’ve come across in ages. A thoroughly wonderful cover of John Paul Young’s 1978 AM pop radio hit “Love Is In The Air” by Australian artist Stella Donnelly. She looks like she’s having so much fun in this performance, which is what sells it for me.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…–2kWaPLJEHfQ
A strange weekend in our house. St. P’s always has a four-day weekend surrounding President’s Day. This year is no different. However, CHS does not take any days off. So while C and L get to sleep in today and Monday, M has a normal schedule. It is messing with my head a little for some reason.
It being Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share songs about love. Some about the good side of love, some about the dark side.
Because no two sports seasons are alike, every season seems weird.
This Big 12 basketball season is no different. The weirdness this year comes from Baylor winning in Lubbock and Lawrence the first week of the season, not stumbling elsewhere, and the league race seeming to be locked up early.
The math changed a little last night when KU was absolutely dominant in the final eight minutes to steal a win in Morgantown, a long-time house of horrors for the Jayhawks.
It’s been awhile since I wrote way too many words about something relatively personal. So strap yourselves in - or just skip this post if you’re not interested - for some old man news.
For the past few months I’ve been undergoing a series of tests to try to determine why I had two lengthy episodes of irregular heartbeat late last year.
The first episode was in October, the week that I was taking steroids and not sleeping because of my poison ivy.
While reading one of these books, I had a memory of a similar book I had read recently. I looked into my Books Read list and could not find a match. I went back to reading, but the memory stuck with me. Soon I was checking again, and then looking through my Reader’s Notebook entries for the past few months, but still could not find it. Sadly my library does not offer a history of books that I have checked out to reference.
youtu.be/5X-Mrc2l1…
“Rock With You” - Michael Jackson Today was a late start day for CHS, and I have an appointment this morning, so no time for a full playlist.
Instead I share this wonderful video and a link to a new site fellow music junkies should absolutely bookmark.
Richard Challen is a music journalist who is a regular commentor on Tom Breihan’s The Number Ones series at Stereogum. Inspired by that series moving towards the 1980s - the latest entry was from June 1979 - Challen has started his own site, Spandex & Synths, where he will break down every song that charted in the 1980s.