My last two books both came from the same list, GQ’s The 31 Best Beach Reads, According to Your Favorite Writers. Both were solid recommendations. The Municipalists - Seth Fried Drew Magary suggested this novel, which he described as “…a sci-fi novel that reads like flawlessly researched nonfiction.” That’s a pretty good take. The book is set in the not-so-distant future, in a time when much of the rural world has been wiped out in favor of hyper-planned mega cities.
A belated and brief wrap up of my weekend in Kansas City. Thanks to Southwest’s always morphing flight schedule, I believe for the first time ever on one of these trips I flew over late in the afternoon, landing at 4:00. That certainly shortened the weekend up a bit. But, to be honest, often when I came over in the morning, after meeting people for lunch weariness would set in and I would seriously contemplate going to a library or bookstore and taking a quick nap.
Some new songs from groups that still seem like representatives of new music, but have actually been putting out songs for a long time. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Born and Razed” - The Raconteurs. Not a huge fan of the new album - it’s ok, should be better - but this is easily the stand-out track. “Can’t Stop You” - Pete Yorn. I shared his other new single a few weeks back. I find this one to be both stronger and more reminiscent of his classic sound.
I am a world famous procrastinator. I’ve been putting shit off my entire life. Sometimes, even when I’m all fired up about something, I’ll put off an important step in enjoying that thing because, well, that’s just what I do. I remind you of that because today, after something like 11 months of thinking about it, I finally took my first golf lesson. In my defense I’ve had a coach picked out for awhile and he’s been unavailable for three weeks because of family and travel plans.
Some sports takes from the long, holiday weekend. USWNT Oh hell yes, the ladies got it done! In a tournament that proved that the women’s game is as strong as it has ever been, and getting stronger each year, the US had the toughest possible path to the title and still managed to win with a fair amount of comfort. Sure, they were a bit fortunate against England, but they were the better team in that game.
Remember the Malaysian Airlines flight that mysteriously disappeared five years ago, never to be found? Like the airliner itself, the story kind of disappeared, replaced by about 1000 other things that the news networks could grind to a pulp and fill their schedules with. Veteran reporter William Langewiesche dove into the disappearance and the result was this fascinating article. He points out fatal flaws in the early investigation, aims blame at the corrupt Malaysian government and military, and separates wild guesses from reasonable theories to come up with a chilling explanation for what he believes actually happened on that fateful day.
I seem to recall making some July 4th centered playlists back in the day. I just searched through the blog archives and couldn’t find one, though. I think that’s probably because I scrubbed the site of a lot of old playlists and videos during one of my transitions to a new platform. Regardless, I think it’s been awhile. So here is a list of songs that mostly have nothing to do with the holiday other than a word in their titles.
My reading pace has slowed a bit in recent weeks. The two books below go back to our trip to San Diego, so it looks like I finished just three books in June. Time to get back on my usual pace, I guess… Paper Tiger: An Obsessed Golfer’s Quest to Play with the Pros - Tom Coyne A Course Called Scotland: Searching the Home of Golf for the Secret to Its Game - Tom Coyne With these two, I finished reading all of Coyne’s current golf writings.
I figure most of my readers are taking it easy on this holiday week. So I will slow the pace here a bit, get caught up on some things, and otherwise take advantage of the lazy week. Chart Week: June 29, 1985 Song: “19” - Paul Hardcastle Chart Position: #27, 5th week on the chart. Peaked at #15 for two weeks in July. Wow, it’s been awhile! My around the house music habits have changed a little and I haven’t been listening to as many countdowns as I did over the winter and early spring.
Just a video this week. youtu.be/xwdXi0I8v… “Stay With Me” - Hatchie. I still hate the move for new music to drop on Fridays instead of Tuesdays. It seems like I can never get through all the new albums I want to listen to on Friday, the weekend keeps me from spending much time with new albums, and then on Monday I’m trying to reset and catch up. On the weeks when there are multiple new albums I want to sample, it always seems like one slips through and I’m scrambling to review it the following week.
Here is a pretty fascinating article that has gotten a lot of attention over the past week or so. Jody Rosen writes about the massive fire in 2008 that wiped out a storage facility that housed thousands and thousands of original sound recordings. News just broke overnight that a huge swath of big artists not mentioned in the article also lost their original masters. There’s no doubting it is an immeasurable loss.
Not sure what I did, but somehow I messed up the site and new posts are not showing up. This was supposed to hit yesterday. Apologies, because it is big news! Well, I guess it is time to spill the big news of 2019: we put in a pool. It’s a real nice above-ground model that we think adds a lot to the first view you get when you drive onto our property…
It has been an unsettled time for Catholic schools in Indianapolis. Unfortunately rather than watching other schools deal with a church leadership that is hopelessly out of touch with the times, it is now affecting our family directly. Cathedral High School announced Sunday that after two years of working with the Archdiocese to resolve a personnel matter, they were caving[1] and choosing to “separate” from a teacher who is in a same-sex marriage.
Happy Summer Solstice! open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Cuddly Toy” - Roachford. I know I’ve written about this song at least a couple times over the past 16 years. How I bought the cassette single right before I graduated from high school 30 - THIRTY!!! - years ago and listened to it non-stop that week. And how when I got to college someone “borrowed” it and I never saw it again. Then, years later when file sharing and music downloading arrived I tried to find the song but could never remember the name of the artist until I heard it randomly sometime about 10 years ago.
I’m not usually big on complaining about what the younger generation is doing. As times change so do behaviors and accepted norms. I think everyone needs to be flexible and realize what was fine when we were 20 may have totally changed by the time we’re 40, 60, etc. But I heard this story on the local news this morning - while checking to see how many hours of today would be lost to rain - and had to shake my head.
Here we are on June 19 and I can already say it’s been the strangest summer in some time. Mostly because it really doesn’t feel like summer yet. The big issue has been the weather. It was a moderately wet spring to begin with, then Mother Nature lost her damn mind in the middle of May. It’s rained something like every 4.5 hours since then. Every time you think the sun is going to come out and things are going to begin to dry out, storm clouds begin piling up on the horizon and racing in.
A few books notes for you. Northland: A 4000-Mile Journey Along America’s Forgotten Border - Porter Fox Fox travels the border between the United States and Canada from east to west, beginning on the coast of Maine and ending on the beaches of Washington. Along the way he hitches rides with fishermen in Maine and on a cargo barge that travels the Great Lakes. He paddles a canoe through the St.
I think I firmly established my old man status by watching approximately 800 hours of golf this weekend. Now, it was the US Open, which is always big. Before we had a lake home and spent most of our June weekends there, I was still watching the Open for hours on Father’s Day weekend. And Topeka, Kansas’ own Gary Woodland leading for over half of the tournament, from his late Friday charge through his memorable back nine Sunday to win his first major, also helped.
Back at it after a week off. open.spotify.com/playlist/… “Call Me Snowflake” - Middle Kids. MK’s new EP came out a couple weeks back. I don’t know why I was surprised, but it is really, really good. I guess I figured since they had released a couple solid singles from it in advance, there wouldn’t be much more to it. But turns out that it is fantastic front-to-back. Proving they are as good as anyone making music at the moment.
It is mid-June.[1] What better time to talk some KU hoops? Especially after the weirdest season in decades turned into the weirdest offseason over the same span. In the wake of the boat-racing by Auburn that mercifully ended the 2018–19 season, what should have been an opportunity for relaxing and regrouping became one of the most dire stretches in the Bill Self era. Dedric Lawson, Quentin Grimes, and Devon Dotson all declared for the NBA draft.