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.
McSweeney’s is a humor site. But, often, their posts cut to the heart of everyday matters.
Perhaps none has been as relevant to this site’s readership (or most of it) as this post. You will laugh, but you will also find truths in it.
16 SURPRISING WAYS TO INJURE YOURSELF WHEN YOU’RE OVER 40
Well crap. When I posted RFTS Vol. 37 last week I did so not realizing I had yet to post Vol. 36. So they are out of order. I apologize for the error.
Chart Week: January 30, 1988
Songs: “Push It,” Salt-N-Pepa; “Pump Up the Volume,” M/A/R/R/S
Chart Positions: #26, 11th week on the chart. Peaked at #19 the week of February 20. #25, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #13 for three weeks in February/March.
What a couple of days! We had back-to-back record high temperatures here in Indy. Sunday was the overtly nicer of the two: the sun was out and it felt like spring. Monday was actually four or five degrees warmer, but other than a quick peak of sun mid-morning, it was a very cloudy day and didn’t seem as warm as it actually was. Alas, in the hour since I dropped the girls at school we’ve dropped from 60 to 45 with another 10 or so degrees expected to bleed away by late afternoon.
Something different this week.
A few days back I had a sudden memory of a song I had not heard in years. It was just a snippet, but it stuck with me throughout the day. It wasn’t a famous song. It was by an artist I hadn’t thought of in nearly 20 years. When I checked Spotify, the song was out there, though. I listened to it, added it to my Liked Songs list, and moved on.
Chart Week: January 30, 1982
Song: “Waiting for a Girl Like You” - Foreigner
Chart Position: #2, 17th week on the chart. Spent 10 weeks at #2.
Chart geeks like me love the little tidbits that give the history of the charts added context. Highest debut, most hits by one artist in the top ten, biggest drop from #1, etc. I love all that shit.
In late 1981 and early 1982, Foreigner became one of the unluckiest bands in the history of the chart.
Last week was a little out-of-the ordinary around our house. As I mentioned a couple times, we were on nephew duty all week.
One of my sisters-in-law was matched with another baby boy for adoption and had to go to Florida to pick him up. It was a last-minute deal, so while she hoped to only be down there a couple days, it took over a week to get all the paperwork in order so she could leave the state with her new son.
So where was I? I was enjoying a lazy Sunday afternoon after joining friends for a birthday lunch for my wife. I was watching golf - the Farmer’s Insurance Open was extra interesting this year since the hotel we stayed at in San Diego last summer bordered the course - and scrolling through Twitter when the Tweets began hitting. There was that half hour or so between the first Tweet and when someone other than TMZ confirmed that Kobe Bryant had, in fact, died in a helicopter crash when I hoped it was some horrible error.
open.spotify.com/playlist/…
“Dance of the Clairvoyants” - Pearl Jam It’s been seven years since we’ve had a new Pearl Jam album. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Their last couple albums were uneven at best, teetering toward mid-life mediocrity at worst. A new album is set for a spring release, and we got the first single this week.
It’s different, which I think is a good sign. Instantly there were dozens of David Byrne GIFs posted in response, as this track has a definite Talking Heads vibe.
I started 2020 off with two excellent reads.
Midnight in Chernobyl - Adam Higginbotham This is, quite simply, one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve ever read. It is a highly detailed, yet brisk, accounting of the 1986 meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then Soviet Union.
Higginbotham provides quick summaries of just about everything that led up to the disaster. A history of radiation and nuclear power.