I was going to being this post with a line something like “An incredibly important week for KU began with a disappointing - and avoidable - loss.” But then I realized pretty much every week is incredibly important in the Big 12 this season. A week ago KU went through K-State at home (fortunate to win), West Virginia on the road (a huge, potentially season-altering, win), and Baylor at home (another very fortunate win).
Time for a link to a Joe Posnanski piece about life. This one hit me kind of hard because, although I’m a few years behind him in the dad business, I’m getting close to the stage he writes about. I’m already terrified of our girls learning to drive. I wonder how the hell my mom and step-dad turned me loose in a car after I got my license. Were they insane?
open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Another Time” - Mimicking Birds. For some reason I have a hard time typing the word “mimicking.” I taught myself to type in middle school and never learned home rows and all that. I can type quite quickly, but my hands are constantly crossing over each other, violating all kinds of typing rules. For some reason that causes me to struggle with certain words. On mimicking my right index finger should hit the second M in the word.
Two more notches on my 2018 reading belt. Mrs Fletcher - Tom Perrotta Perrotta’s books all feel similar. They often center on sex, although none of them can be described as salacious, and the problems that sex causes in our lives. There is usually a strong element of nostalgia, where one or more major character wants desperately to turn back the clock to a time - days, weeks, months ago - in the past before they fucked up.
Another music legend dies requiring another one of these sad, memorial posts. Dolores O’Riordan was unmistakably one of the Voices of the Nineties. The Cranberries may not have been as big and important as Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but hearing her sing a single note will instantly take those of us who were alive in the 90s back to that time as easily as hearing Kurt scream or Eddie wail. Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?
Boy did we have a Sunday. Nine-plus hours of kid sports! Things started with L and I leaving the house just before noon for week three of basketball, once again playing about an hour from home. Game one was a barn-burner. We have exactly two plays on offense, variations on the same theme where the point guard either comes off a screen at the free throw line for a (hopefully) good look at the bucket, or passes off to a trailing teammate for a shot.
Apologies for the lack of rocking on Friday. We got the call at 5:45 that the girls would be having their first snow day in nearly four years. I never really got back to sleep after that, which wasn’t all bad as I had an eye exam at 9:00 and needed to get up anyway. The exam took entirely too long for some reason and I had to cancel another appointment I had lined up for after.
Two books down already for 2018. Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World - Rob Sheffield Oh no, another book about the Beatles?!?! That was my first thought when I saw that music critic Sheffield was releasing his take on the Beatles last year. My initial plan was to skip it even though I was a fan of his earlier books. But seeing this land on several Best Of lists made me reconsider.
Good gracious, what a CFP championship game Monday night. Like most folks who were unaffiliated, I was pulling for Georgia. Those downtrodden, underdog Dawgs from Athens. I found it funny that Georgia has this big reputation as a somewhat cursed program. Maybe my humor stems from when I first started paying a lot of attention to college football, and Georgia was one of the best programs in the country. I know they’ve had some rough patches, but I’ve never not thought of them as a top tier football program.
My first book of the year was about the Beatles. So it was a nice coincidence that I was hipped to this website over the holidays. The author is ranking all the Beatles songs in order, roughly one per day. His commentary isn’t a rehash of all the commentary you’ve read a thousand times before about Beatles songs. Which makes it a must read if you’re into music at all.
Last day of Christmas break. The girls go back to school tomorrow. I guess the teachers need an extra day to get grades processed, settled into their classrooms, etc before beginning the second semester. Meanwhile the temperature is finally above freezing for the first time in two weeks. It might hit 60 Thursday! We may be able to see our (dead) front yard by this time tomorrow. Seems like a good day to dive into Big 12 basketball!
Here is one of the greatest things I saw over the holidays. “Euverus” used the game Cities: Skylines to test how traffic would flow at a 4-way intersection using 30 different road configurations. I love the examples with no controls, especially the little software glitches that allow vehicles to pass through each other. And some of the higher-end examples are just mesmerizing to watch. I believe we can label this as Good, Clean Fun.
Back to the sharings of the musics! open.spotify.com/user/224a… “Man Uncouth” - Line & Circle. Holy 1983! These kids clearly listened to some early R.E.M. and Smiths albums. This is some good shit. “Cut Yr Teeth” - Kississippi. There are hints of shiny, jangle pop in this song, but it never really sheds its rougher exterior to reveal that brightness. Which seems appropriate for a morning when the temperature is well below zero.
Again I’ve fallen behind on my book sharing. Here are my final four books of 2017.[1] I’ve already polished off one book for 2018 and will get to it next week. Fantasyland - Kurt Andersean I’ve mostly avoided the quick, “How Did We Get Here?” assessments of our current political state. They tend to be too depressing and infuriating for me to read. But I decided to give in and tackle this one because of a couple blurbs I read about it.
Glory be! After roughly 36 hours without either cable or internet access, our house (and neighborhood it turns out) has been reconnected! So I can finally start unloading some of the accumulated content from the past week-plus. First, Happy New Year! I hope your celebrations, large and small, were fun and safe. Let’s go back to 2017 and review how our family rolled over Christmas. Christmas Day I believe I mentioned this in my annual Christmas Spirit post, but the myth of where gifts come from was finally burst in our house this year.
We are in the full-on holiday frenzy around here. Yesterday was the girls’ final day of school of 2017. St. P’s always dismisses early on the last day before Christmas break which adds even more excitement to the day. While sitting in the parking lot at dismissal, a friend said he was taking his kids to Dairy Queen and asked if we wanted to join them. Of course my girls did!
Twenty-seventeen was solid, in music terms. It won’t go down as an all-time great one in my book, as the year lacked a legendary album (or two) and the wave of solid tunes pretty much dried up in the final quarter. And, compared to last year, not nearly as many albums stuck with me. But, as always, there were plenty of songs that I listened to a lot over the past 12 months.
OK, a quick five-minute listing of thoughts on The Last Jedi, which I saw last night. Spoiler alert! Conclusion first: The Last Jedi was very good. I had a few problems with it, but overall it was very entertaining, very well shot, had a decent story, and was worth two-and-a-half hours of my time. What I liked most: Man, was the movie action packed. The natural comparison is going to be with The Empire Strikes Back.
For a guy who doesn’t have a job, I’m insanely busy this week. Monday I had to run down to the lake house to meet with some contractors who will, hopefully, be doing some upgrades to the place before next summer rolls around. That meeting, along with spending a couple hours blowing the last of our leaves down there, took up most of the day before I got the girls home and had to drive the sports practice taxi.
It’s a special week for the Friday playlist. As some of you know, I used to do a semi-private podcast on which I played music for friends. At the end of each year, I would share my favorite songs of the previous 12 months. As the years piled up, I thought a cool way to introduce those year-end lists would be to review what my favorite songs of the previous years were.