It is a dreary, rainy Monday. A good day to just lie around and not do anything. Which is a good thing since about half the house is out of commission thanks to a stomach bug that is still working its way through the house. Not especially good timing for that as last weekend was a big family gathering for my mother-in-law’s 70th birthday celebration. Her official party was Saturday evening and we brought the immediate family to our place for a lunch and hanging out on Sunday.
Chart Week: July 10, 1982 Song: “Play the Game Tonight” - Kansas Chart Position: #17, 10th week on the chart. Peaked at #17 for three weeks. I would guess I heard this song approximately once in a quarter century before I heard it at, of all places, a high school football game a few years back. In the hour of pre-game, pump-up music that was heavy with AC/DC, Guns ‘n Roses, and Metallica, the dad who was playing the tunes threw this in.
It is another camp week for us, which means the house is a little quieter. M is spending her week at CYO camp an hour south. We dropped her off Sunday. Although we drove through rain on the way there, we did not have to walk through a deluge to get to her cabin as we did with C in June. M is very excited to be back for her third year there.
Chart Week: June 9, 1984 Song: “Eyes Without a Face” - Billy Idol Chart Position: #18, 6th week on the chart. Peaked at #4 for two weeks in July. As I said, I’ve been sitting on a couple of these posts. And since Spotify and WordPress appear to be fighting again, I’ll knock this one out in place of a Friday playlist. This entry is also less about the specific song than something broader.
This has been the summer of my baseball discontent. We’ll get into the reasons for that in a moment. Despite that, I still sat down for my annual viewing of the MLB All Star Game last night. Granted, because of errands, watering the grass, and kids controlling the TV, I wasn’t able to tune in until the 4th inning. Which seemed appropriate for this season. Hey, at least I turned it on!
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen I’m a Springsteen fan. But not a super fan. I like large swaths of his music, think four of his albums are pretty amazing, and appreciate his role in American rock music. But I’m not deeply aware of his story, can’t quote his lyrics beyond his biggest hits, and have never seen him live.[1] But I heard from several friends who were casual fans like me that this was a good book.
Now that we’ve been in the new house for three weeks, I think I owe my readers a tour. Not of the house; that would be weird and difficult to do via text. If you want to see it, you just need to schedule a visit! Rather a tour of our area, Nora, because it is quite different than the old digs. We have a YMCA that is literally within walking distance.
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “All We Got Is Time” - Eldoradio. I really can’t find much out about this band or song. It’s a good tune for the summer, which is enough to share it with you. “One Day Left” - Stars. If you’ve read my music writings over the years, you should know that I love songs and albums about breakups. This is a very specific breakup song: Stars say it is about the last 12 hours you spend with someone.
Our house is now filled with the sweet, fragrant glory of wireless internet. Comcast finally showed up yesterday to get everything hooked up. Just in time for the second half of the rather glorious England-Croatia match we had cable TV and internet. Those two-plus weeks without them seemed a lot longer. Only 33 days from initial request until completion of installation. Less than 24 hours into our Xfinity lives, we’re pleased with it so far.
I’m a bit behind on these. Mostly because of not having solid internet access (fuckers). But I have three of these posts mentally queued up from the past month that I’m going to try to crank out over the next week. Chart Week: July 5, 1980 Song: “Stomp!” - The Brothers Johnson Chart Position: #28, 17th week on the chart. Peaked at #7 the week of May 24. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this song, so this entry is less about the track than its time.
This was a good weekend. No, we didn’t quickly sell our house on try #2. Hell, we’re not even showing it yet as we’re waiting on painters to wrap up. We did get it down to just needing one more trip to cart stuff out of there, though. That’s progress. No, we didn’t get cable yet.(fn) After Thursday’s great leap forward of getting the line onto our property there’s been no further progress.
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “You Amaze Me” - La Force. I’m not sure how to describe this song. There are hints of neo-R&B, but I wouldn’t say it’s a modern R&B song. There’s a healthy amount of indie rock to it, but it also doesn’t sound like standard indie rock fare. Nor is it straight, modern pop. Regardless, this ode by Broken Social Scene member Ariel Engel to her husband, fellow BSS member Andrew Whiteman, is excellent.
Time for an end-of-the-week update, as it has been an interesting few days. I’ll share the good first: we actually have some movement in getting our house connected to the internet and world of cable television! Thursday morning L came and found me and asked, “Who is that creepy guy in the backyard?” I looked out and, sure enough, there was a creepy guy pushing one of those bicycle-wheel measuring things across our backyard.
Our internet-less summer continues. Joyous times. We checked in with the fine folks at the Comcast store on Saturday. Golly, they sure had no idea why our request was still just sitting there without anything being done to it. The guy who helped us was the guy who put our initial request in three weeks ago. When we asked him, “OK, who do we talk to to get it moving?” He responded, “My manager.
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Cuddly Toy” - Roachford. For years I couldn’t remember the artist that sang this song, which I listened to on an endless loop the week I graduated from high school. I had the cassette single of it - holy time warp, Batman - and someone swiped it from me when I got to college that fall. When the wonderful world of “file sharing” arrived, I kept trying to find it, but was always looking under the wrong name.
Dear readers, I apologize. Between all the craziness of week one in our new home, I’ve not been able to sit down and share some updates with you all. And I realized last night that given part of Monday’s post, some of you may be worried about C. I can happily report that she is back to normal, acting goofy, annoying us with her hyperactivity, and generally being herself. We never determined, with complete certainty, what caused her issues last week.
What a weekend. Thursday, we closed on the new house. Which I believe I mentioned. What I did not mention was we also got an offer on our old house that day. It was not a good offer, thus my failure to mention it. But, we had no other offers, we were moving in two days, so rather than just reject it, S and I decided to see how much the potential buyers wanted to dance.
Since Comcast can’t get their shit together and get us cable/internet, this is a test post to see if I can post from the iPad when using my iPhone’s hotspot. Cuz I gots to crank out the content, fools.
Hmmm, based on my test post, it looks like Spotify playlist embedding might be working again. Naturally I had a post based purely on videos lined up for today… Funny thing, all three times we’ve purchased a house, the third week of June has been involved in the transaction. Fifteen years ago we bought our current home in May, but moved into it the week of June 16–21. Six years ago we closed on the lake house on June 22 and headed down immediately after.
“Good arms vs. bad arms will win hands down, down…” Ten years ago today I was going through my normal morning routine of scrolling through my RSS Reader’s new article queue while the girls watched Disney shows when I came across a blog post that changed my life. The I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog, which was one of my favorite music blogs at the time, published an interview with the lead singer of a young band from Scotland[1].