open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Heaven” - Late Bloomer. I’ve been meaning to share this song since July. It’s a big, crunchy, aggressive song that would have fit right into alternative rock radio in 1996. “Apocalypse Now (& Later)” - Laura Jane Grace & the Devouring Mothers. LJG’s announcement that she was transgendered and would be transitioning tore her previous band, Against Me!, apart. A few members of the band could not deal with her changes.
Righteous - Joe Ide I was a big fan of Ide’s debut novel, IQ, which I read earlier this year. I was very pleased to read an interview with Ide in which he confirmed he would continue writing about the lead character, Isaiah Quintabe, aka IQ, the Sherlock Holmes of south central Los Angeles. I did not know he had already published his second book in the series until I saw this on the shelf at the library.
To get the week rolling, I’ll knock out a variety of subjects in one post. First, apologies for the lack of a playlist or video last Friday. We added one, final task to phase one of our home improvement process and that was getting wrapped up on Friday. I have to say, our house looks pretty fantastic now. A week ago Friday our living room furniture arrived. It was nice to have that but after our designer “fluffed” everything Thursday and Saturday, it has transformed from nice to spectacular.
A couple links related to two of the greatest SNL talents of all time. Last week the Washington Post published this feature on Chevy Chase. There aren’t really any surprises in it for anyone who has followed his career. At age 74, you wonder how many more disappointing pieces about him are left to write. Chevy Chase Can’t Change After reading this, I noticed a link at the bottom to a feature on Eddie Murphy from about three years ago and immediately read it.
Another busy weekend with the kids. L had soccer both days - one win, one tie, four goals, two assists - M babysat for 8 hours Saturday and cheered on Sunday, and C ran on Sunday, getting 8th place with her strongest run of the year. Thus I missed a lot of what was broadcast on the teevee over those two days. I was able to catch a lot of Tiger getting his first PGA Tour win in over five years.
A couple of vids for this week. As promised, one is from the 1985 countdown that played on SiriusXM last week. youtu.be/F7xreT4mC… “Do You Want Crying” - Katrina and the Waves One of the areas of music esoterica I pride myself in mastering is knowing minor hits by bands that are widely considered One-Hit Wonders. “Well, actually they had another song that hit the top 20…” You know, that kind of bullshit about one in 50 people appreciate.
Chart Week: September 7, 1985 Songs: “We Don’t Need Another Hero” - Tina Turner “Power of Love” - Huey Lewis & The News “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)” - John Pass Chart Positions: Numbers three through one. This edition is a little meta. It’s not about the songs I’ve selected, or even the original countdown. Rather, it’s a celebration of my love of all things countdown and ‘80s music trivia related.
Our kickball seasons came to an official end last night. A season that began with back-to-back rainouts at the same school ended with back-to-back make-up games at that school in 90-degree heat. Not the best bookends. C’s season wrapped up Friday in pretty glorious fashion. Every girl was locked in and they cruised to a 44–5, run-ruled win. If we had played like that the previous Monday, we just might have had a chance against the team that won our division.
A couple NYC trip books. The Secret of Golf - Joe Posnanski Joe has moved to a Patreon model for his online writing. As much as I love him, I feel like I’m already subscribed to about a dozen content services that I’m paying for each month, so I have not become a supporter of his site. Yet. I was looking for a quick read for the trip, came across this, and figured I’d buy one of his books to support him.
Today is our 60 day warranty inspection, so I’ve got folks through the house. Thus, just a quick playlist for this week. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Missing U” - Robyn. It’s always good to have new Robyn jams. “Poison” - David Nance Group. Some good, old fashioned, dirty rock ’n’ roll from Omaha, NE. “Christmas Down Under” - Phosphorescent. Despite the title, this song is appropriate for play in mid-September. And the new Phosphorescent album is shaping up to be a hell of a disk.
Once again, that bitch Mother Nature has been playing havoc with our family sports schedule. I’ve lost track of how many practices, games, and other events have been wiped out over the past month. Seriously, it didn’t rain here for like six weeks, then, as soon as fall practices started, we began getting multiple downpours each week right around the time a kid was supposed to be doing something. Here’s where we stand now.
It was a full weekend of football for at least some parts of our family this weekend. Here’s a breakdown. Friday was a big local high school game. Cathedral, where our girls will go, was playing their biggest Catholic school rival, Bishop Chatard. BC has the most state titles in Indiana history. Cathedral is second. I believe Cathedral leads the stat in total wins and championship appearances, though. Or something like that.
A few very good music links to share. Apologies as a couple of these are slightly out-of-date with the change in seasons. Good reads regardless. First, investigative journalism at its finest. Taylor Swift and Bryan Adams’ Duet of “Summer of ’69” Reopens One of Music’s Great Historical Mysteries: Is This Song About the Sex Position? Next, isn’t it funny how if a song is good or great, it is easy to overlook logical inconsistencies within its lyrics?
Well, as I check this morning, it looks like Spotify and Wordpress are cooperating, so I’ll give the old Friday Playlist thing a shot. Which is good because I have a ton of great music that I need to make sure you’re paying attention to. Apologies if this (likely) breaks again by the time you get around to listening. open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Stay Down“ / “Me & My Dog" - boygenius. Off the EP by this indie rock super group that features Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus.
Ty! What’d you shoot today? Oh, I don’t keep score, Judge. Oh well, how do you measure yourself with other golfers? By height. Yep, first round of golf in something like 11 years, and only second round in 15 years. It went about as you would expect. I picked my ball up on three holes, so I did not finish with an official score. It would have been well above 100 had I completed my scorecard, though.
New York New York it’s a hell of a town The Bronx is up and I’m Brooklyn down “Hello Brooklyn” - Beastie Boys, 1989 We survived our first trip to New York City. I’ll admit, as a child of the Midwest in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I’m a little shocked we weren’t mugged ten times, weren’t dropped in a sketchy neighborhood by a dishonest cab driver, didn’t see wilding in Central Park or open drug deals in Times Square, and weren’t constantly run into by either impolite people or gigantic rats.
I’m posting this a little early as Friday is a big day for the Mrs. and I: We are flying to New York City, the first visit there for both of us, believe it or not. Officially this is our annual trip to one of her conferences. But we will be spending most of the weekend with her two college roommates and their husbands. One lives in Jersey, the other is flying in from Chicago.
Man, how did I get so behind on these? Well, part of it is that my reading pace has remained slow in recent weeks. It doesn’t help that I have a stack of golf instructional books that are stealing time away from my proper reading stack. I’ll quickly run through some recent books. Notes from a Public Typewriter - edited by Michael Gustafson and Oliver Uberti. Gustafson and his wife own a bookstore in Ann Arbor.
Finally a day of calm. After about two weeks of constant activity by contractors, we have wrapped up whatever phase of the Fill the House cycle we are in. The latest projects were building a work station for S and adding a large, built-in to our main office. That involved custom cabinetry, some serious painting, and a lot of me sitting around either waiting for people to show up or monitoring them while they are here.
I never voted for John McCain - I guess I had three chances if you count primaries, although I would not have voted in the primaries he ran in - but like a lot of folks who tend to vote Democratic, I long admired the man. For me it went back to reading Michael Lewis’ Trail Fever, his accounting of the 1996 presidential campaign. McCain did not run that year, but he was a finalist to be Bob Dole’s running mate, and thus bounced in and out of Lewis’ narrative.