Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

These stories, let me tell you …

I dropped my car off at the mechanic this evening, but let me back up. A weekend or two ago, on a day when it was actually, you know, warm in April like Mother Nature was paying attention to the calendar, the A/C in my car was not … what’s the word I want here … conditioning the air. Oh, it’d blow and blow, but it could not cool and cool.

So, freon, I figured. Then the weather turned wimpy again and I promptly forgot about the problem. But this week I remembered! Not because it was warm, I just remembered. So I googled. The place I get my oil changed does air recharging. I drove there Tuesday morning, to inquire about their services. The guy told me, in some detail, that they don’t do that anymore. Which is odd because it is right there, on the website.

I drove to our local mechanic. They’re about two miles away, but the trip takes forever because of the bad drivers and the guy who had clearly never towed a boat before. And also the geese and their goslings that were waddling about. You put a roundabout near a pond and they just think they run the place. And the guy with the boat trailer doesn’t know how to make a gentle curve to his left.

Finally I made it to the mechanic. Having diagnosed the problem myself, professional that I am, I simply asked the guy when we could get the car into their rotation. Let’s make this convenient for everyone, I said. He was more than happy to make that happen, but only after he mentally rebuilt an air conditioning system aloud there at the desk.

We’re gonna drain it. And then fill it. And then we’ll inject it with dye. And then see if there are leaks. It went on like this for some time.

Great. Here’s the thing: when I can I drop it off? I just want to get it in and out as quickly as possible, so as to not inconvenience my wife.

So we resolved to drop it off Wednesday night. And now I have no car until tomorrow, probably.

And I told you that because it was either the car story, or the apple story. My lovely bride is thoughtful enough to pick up apples for me at the grocery store. Last year I decided the Cosmic Crisp was the best offering in the produce section, and now they are always in the fruit crisper.

She gets them every week. Five a week. I have one for each day at the office. Peanut butter sandwich and an apple, that’s me.

Except, this week — and believe me, this is the short version of the story — I didn’t pack a lunch yesterday, so I did not eat an apple. (Sometimes a guy just wants Chipotle.) That means I had an extra apple.

And today I ate two apples.

Neither of these stories are good, I am aware.

Hey! Look! A new banner! Now I just have to go back in time and update a lot of graphics.

Anyway, after we dropped off the car, I went on a bike ride on Zwift. It was just warm enough to go outside, but I’m still on this self-imposed Zwift mission.

Today it was Muir and the Mountain, a 24 mile ride in Watopia. There are … gulp … dinosaurs.

I wonder how programmed or how free formed these things are. I’m sure there are better industry terms. Maybe I should ask one of the game designers at work. All of these background creatures are moving, but does everyone see the same pterodactyl in the same curve? Does that big plant eater always sit right there, or can it choose another tree?

At one point, there’s a tyrannosaurus rex, or something of that sort, striding alongside the road. But what if he veered to the right, leaned over and took a snap at me?

This route has the Epic KOM, no longer the biggest mountain in the game, but plenty stiff. It’s 5.9 miles of climbing, where you gain 1,364 feet. When you get to the top, there’s an ibex. On some routes that feature the Epic KOM, you are immediately gifted an extra climb. They call it a “bonus climb,” but this is a horrible name. I’d been going slowly enough, but after a half hour pointed upward, now I have to go uphill for another three-quarters of a mile? And the gradient pitches up to average 14 percent?

That’s pretty steep, and it’s a horrible little climb.

Strava tells me I’ve gone up the bonus climb four times. I was slow today everywhere, this was my third slowest time.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker 101 routes down, 28 to go.

Back to the Re-Listening project, where we can now catch up … until we are behind again. If you’ve forgotten: I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order that I acquired them. These aren’t reviews, but a glance back and a happy glimpse of memory. This is an excuse to fill the page with words and drop in some YouTube embeds. It’s about whimsy, as most music should be.

It is guilty pleasure time. Even at the time it seemed like a guilty pleasure. And it does now, too. But I still like it. Today we’re discussing Train’s debut album. (They’d released it independently in 1996, but that doesn’t count here.) We’re in 1998 here, I bought this in the late spring, probably. I saw them at a small venue that summer. They were still something of a California act at the time, so most of the people at that particular show didn’t know them yet, but that changed soon enough. They produced this record for pennies, but it went platinum on the strength of the three singles that you’re currently trying to banish from your head.

This is was always one of my favorite songs on the disc.

I saw them in concert several other times. And I caught a recorded show on TV early during the stay-at-home part of Covid. They never grew out of the live party band vibe. Never needed to. They were always fun in the nineties and in the oughts. I wonder if they’ll ever change that up as they, and their devoted fans, age.

Speaking of devoted fans. I don’t remember who all the people were, but I was in a car with a college buddy and we were driving two girls he knew from here to there and Widespread Panic came on the radio and she scoffed at that. Widespread — she pronounced with the air of haughtiness that can only be mustered by someone who clearly knows what they’re talking about — had sold out. They were not, she said, like Train.

I thought my buddy, a proper musical snob, was going to crash the car. I was driving the car.

For a debut album, this always struck me as well produced, and rich with deep cuts.

And here’s their end-of-the-night ballad.

One of the best things about listening to the old CDs are the hidden tracks. Do I remember which discs have them? (Usually.) Do I remember how many? (Mostly.) Do I remember what the songs will be? (Almost always.) What will I do to fill the time before they begin playing? I usually fast forward. And I wonder what brought about this little element of music. I wonder how long they pondered over the circumstances and the timing. And I wonder if anyone, back then, actually overlooked the hidden tracks. Surely someone did.

Egg on their face, no?

There are two hidden tracks on this CD. I don’t know why this didn’t get put right up front.

A few years after this CD came out I ran into these guys in a pancake shop one morning. They were playing a set of weekend gigs in town and they were … almost running on their own power that morning. For some reason I have forever associated how they looked that day with how they might have recorded this second hidden track.

Train has become one of those bands with a rotating set of players. Pat Monahan, the lead singer, remains the only constant. But, the band has 11 studio albums (I do not have them all — should I?) and three Grammy awards. And they’re touring right now, they have 50 more dates in the United States this year.

Next in the Re-Listening project, we’ll go from a California pop-rock band to a Georgia singer-songwriter.

It all makes sense if you were listening to the radio in 1998

IU / journalism / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
25
Apr 23

One final night with the news team

Tonight we had the last newscasts of the year, which means we’re really sneaking up on the last IUSTV programs of the year, and we’re saying goodbye to a few more talented seniors.

That’s Anna Black, on the right. She’s been doing more job interviews than I can count. She’s interned at CNN and at WRDB in Louisville. On campus, she’s produced shows, directed, reported and, at IUSTV, has hosted What’s Up Weekly for the last two years.

She’s a member of two or three different honors programs on campus. I wasn’t previously aware you could find that much time in a day, or that anyone could even be eligible for more than one. She has the most kind and generous disposition, and makes friends quickly and everywhere. Whatever station ultimately is lucky enough to hire her will be getting a great asset.

Which leads me to Ella Rhoades. Ella has been passionate about the news and broadcasting from the beginning. She’s been at IUSTV for four years and she was news director for her junior and senior year. She helped produced some impressive collaborative journalism with the other student media outlets here, streaming an all-night election results newscast. She also held down an incredible day of breaking news on campus, reporting live with some of her reporters in the warm sun when we were on lockdown.

Whenever she’s doing these things, no matter what role she is playing, her eagerness to to do great work is palpable. She leans into the news with a great gusto.

Ella is a team player and all of those positive personal attributes are right there on her sleeve, for everyone to see. This year, in addition to her quality news work, she’s done a masterful job working with younger students, helping us get the freshmen started on the right foot, and pushed the sophomores and juniors to up their respective games. Their individual and collective successes show in the finished product, and how they’re talking about next year.

My friend Ella is taking her energy — and her enthusiasm to learn, to share and to report the news — to WFTX FOX 4 in Fort Myers, Florida. That Scripps shop is getting a great, talented, young reporter. She’s going to grow and grow and do some great things in Florida. I’m incredibly excited — almost as excited as she is! — to see what she does next.

The other woman, in both of those photos, is a rising senior. Carly Rasmussen has served as assistant news director, and she will take over a growing news division next year. She’ll run a young unit, there are a lot of rising sophomores who have been developing some great experience this year, and they’ll have great momentum. In a year, there will be a huge applause essay for her, I’ve no doubt.

After we left the studio, when I made it back to my office, this was the view.

Seemed fitting. Three more productions to go for the year.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
24
Apr 23

Just get to the cat pics

I’ve bored the — smart, beautiful, talented — readers of this space aplenty with my hypothesis about how spring in Bloomington doesn’t actually begin until the bike races take place. The women raced Friday in the rain. The men raced Saturday in a drizzle and under overcast skies. This photo, I figured, would be the punchline: this was as blue as it got this weekend.

But later, late on Sunday afternoon, the skies actually improved.

That was as spring-like as it got this weekend, the first weekend of IU’s spring.

But enough about that, because we must quickly pivot to the site’s most popular weekly feature. And, dear friends? Dear — smart, beautiful, talented — friends, today I get to share with you the most absolutely adorable photo ever captured in any context.

Phoebe was sleeping on her paws. She doesn’t normally do this, but it was so cute I had to resist the urge to wake her up with a bunch of big pets.

Do you ever wonder what animals are thinking? I wonder that all of the time.

And then they do something that perfectly encapsulates our understanding of what it means to be insert animal here and I realize I might be over-anthropomorphizing. Anyway, Poseidon remains happily curious about everything, and in-trouble with everything. It’s a good thing, we tell him, that he’s charming. We only wonder why he doesn’t choose to behave that way more often.

The cats are doing just fine.

Three or four or five times a year I have to re-learn the same lesson about taking too many days off my bike. I have now learned it twice this year so far: the first ride back after a too-long break is a little stiff. And so it was, today, when I put my feet on the pedals for the first time in five days. But, I got in the London Pretzel on Zwift, and 35 miles before dinner.

I like how the Union Jack is rippling on that lamp post. This route spends a lot of time in the game’s version of London, but sends you into the Surrey Hills twice. They aren’t the biggest or the hardest climbs in the game, but sometimes they feel like it. The part in the city was pretty fast, but I gave all that speed back on the hills. But once I (finally) got to the top of one of those hills, I got a nice view of the moon. The moon is always full on Zwift, never mind the issues of physical oceanography that would present.

But! I finished sixth in one sprint. I am not a sprinter. And I clocked in a time that was 16th in one of the two climbs. I am also, most definitely, not a climber.

The 2023 Zwift route tracker: 100 routes down, 29 to go.

Bloomington / Friday / music / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
21
Apr 23

The officially recognized beginning of spring

It has been cold and damp all day. Mid-fifties and wet socks are no way to live, but that’s how we’ll approach the last week of April. The rest of the weekend’s forecast doesn’t look much better. At least next week the sun returns which, hey, April.

It might have hit 55 degrees this morning, in the pre-dawn hours. So, this year, my seven-year-long hypothesis, the Little-500-marks-the-beginning-of-spring hypothesis, has not held.

The long-range forecast suggests we’ll maybe hit 70 degrees … sometime before the first week of May is over. Maybe.

This is our chance to catch up with the Re-Listening project. Catch up, that is, until the next CD is over. Which means we might be behind again by Tuesday. Such is the pace of things, when you’re listening to old CDs in the car. I’m not sure how I run through whole albums so quickly, I will probably run out of music before I figure that out, but 40-or-so minutes goes fast, considering the small amount of road I cover.

Anyway. We’re cruising down memory lane. It is the summer of 1998, the summer of Natalie Merchant. “Ophelia” was her second studio album, her only one to crack the top 10 on the Billboard 200, where it settled in at number eight. It went platinum in the U.S., largely on the strength of “Kind & Generous” which broke into the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay Chart.

That’s the one you remember. The first track, the title track, is a total mood setter.

For some reason it is easy to remember the talent that Natalie Merchant put into all of her work. She left the regular artist route to do other things, but this record is full of examples of a quality of work that her fans appreciate.

And, in the interests of time, I’m skipping over the great wah wah guitars of “Frozen Charlotte” and the piano ballads like “My Skin.” Mostly just to get to the last song, a cover of “When They Ring Those Golden Bells.” It’s a popular and important gospel and bluegrass song from 1887, written by a French immigrant, a man who fought in the Civil War, the American-Mexican War and, for something even more intense, was a clown and a circus leader.

Dolly Parton has covered it. Jerry Lee Lewis has covered it. But this duet between Natalie Merchant and Karen Peris is something to behold.

Like so many things that take place when you’re the age I was when this CD came out, I didn’t have the ability or insight or patience to fully appreciate this album. But what I missed out for in 1998 I enjoy more today. Ophelia is always a fine listen.

(Natalie Merchant has released a new album this year, her first in six long years. (Update: I had no idea she’d gone through this terrifying surgery that almost robbed her of her voice.) And she’s touring this summer in support of that album — 37 dates in the U.S. and Europe between now and November.)

Back then, though, I wanted something more like what came out that fall, when Pearl Jam released “Live on Two Legs.” It’s a series of live recordings from their summer tour. It debuted at number 15, and went platinum. It’s a quality of recordings far superior to most any bootleg you might capture. But the band was a bit more restrained by this point — Eddie Vedder was 34, after all, and the rest of the band was right there, too. One review called it a “thank you” to fans. To me, today, it feels more like a valentine to Pearl Jam’s part of grunge. But in 1998, no one thought in that way just yet.

There’s more to the timing in retrospect. This was three years after the band revolted, almost alone, against the Ticketmaster monopoly. That stand effectively clipped their wings in the United States from 1995 to 1998. It’s also two years before the tragedy at the Roskilde Festival. Less important than all of that, the musical landscape changed underfoot.

It is technically proficient for the genre, and a good ride for fans. And, clearly, they don’t want this embedded.

If you play that on YouTube, though, you can hear the full album. It’s worth hearing, even if you’re familiar with the catalog, though there’s not a lot new there. The last time I saw them was a few months after Roskilde. Grown men were crying; it was a bit much. It was in that period of the official bootlegs, and I have a copy of that 2000 show somewhere in this collection.

Pearl Jam, as a band, are still on tour. They have a mini schedule for late this summer. Eddie Vedder is doing a few solo shows, too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shiver some more.

Bloomington / memories / music / Re-Listening / Thursday / video — Comments Off
20
Apr 23

Spring begins here tomorrow

I visited Chick-fil-A drive-through for lunch yesterday. The local Chick-fil-A now has multiple touch points along the drive-through path. It eats up half of their small parking lot, but they are incentivizing drive-through customers if you’re using their app. We use the app for our regular Saturday lunch run.

It’s hopping at noon on Saturdays, of course, so you roll down the window and talk to three people along the way. First there’s the person getting the order. Then there’s the first merge point, three lanes to two, and the a second person who is controlling the order of traffic. Someone else confirms the order, usually after the second merge point which pulls the two lanes into one line, just before you reach the window. Three or four crew members in that little space, and then two people outside of the window that actually hand you your food. On Saturdays, we briefly interact with four people to get our sandwiches; who knows how many people are in the back doing the actual food work.

The point of having all of those people isn’t to speed up the process, but to control the flow. Your wait isn’t at the window, but in the line, with the slow illusion of progress via motion. The other virtue of the setup is that they can put people outside, or pull them in, based on customer rush.

Take yesterday, which is the point of mentioning this anyway. The early lunch crowd on a Wednesday isn’t particularly busy, so I only talked with two people between entering the parking lot, and making the window.

At the window, a guy was leaning out, waiting for me. Big smile on his face. Gregarious, ready to have a chat. (It stands out here.) My food wasn’t ready he said, so he leaned into the little easy chitchat. He loved this, and he leaned in by leaning out of the window. He asked me how my day was and complimented my pocket square.

He wasn’t prepared for what happened next. Instead of having to ask me two or four easy throwaway questions, I started asking questions of him. You could tell this doesn’t happen to him a lot in that job. We talked about the weather and naps and his other job. He works for DoorDash, and I wanted to know if he got to meet a lot of people that way. I asked him if they took care of him there, and how far he drove. And then my food was ready, in my car and I was on my way.

I’d like to think that he somehow took the exchange forward, and was even more enthusiastic with the next several guests.

I once again find myself behind in the Re-Listening project. Somehow a few days go by, and a few more CDs get played and now you have to power through whatever I write about it all here. The point of the exercise being to listen to all of my old CDs, in the order that I acquired them. The secondary point being to write about them here. They aren’t reviews, or the dreaded re-reviews, just an excuse to go down memory lane, and to post a few videos for you.

Which brings us to the only reason most people bought this particular album in the mid 90s.

New Zealand’s OMC released this, their only record, in 1996. I got it as a freebie in 1998. It made it to number 40 on the Billboard 200. On the strength of this song, and three other singles you probably don’t recall, it was certified gold.

How do things catch on half a world away, I wonder. It’d be easier today, sure, but getting airplay from around the globe … it had to be MTV. Whatever it was, the critics liked it.

There is a certain infectiousness to the songs. This was the second single.

This is the third single, and the track that sticks with me whenever I listen to this CD, which is admittedly rare. This is also the first track you hear if you play the whole album and, I like to think, this is why critics struggled to label the record. In 1996, this was a unique collection of sounds.

I bet you never thought of New Zealand hip hop, Urban Pasifika is is called, as influencing the global sound — and that’s OK, I hadn’t put that together before now, either — but here we are, hearing the strains of OMC in other people’s work, and OMC itself enjoying a resurgence on TikTok of all places.

OMC only produced the one record, mostly because of record label disputes. Pauly Fuemana was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder and died in 2010, just 40 years old.

Which brings us to New American Shame. This was released in March of 1999. Didn’t like it then, and I never, ever listened to it. I am so unfamiliar with it that when the first song began in my CD player — it’s always a question of what comes next in the Re-Listening project — I wasn’t sure what AC/DC ripoff I had picked up somewhere. Kiss without the appeal. Buckcherry without the adhesive backing removed. (There’s nothing to stick to here, is what I’m saying.) It’s a power slop dirty rock ‘n’ roll sound that doesn’t appeal to me, with rote mixing and mastering on the production side. This is the first track, which was remixed when the band signed a major label deal, and released as a single. It hit 35 on the Mainstream Rock Chart and, unless this was your genre, I’d be surprised if you’ve ever heard it.

The rest of the record sounds a lot like that. It has its place, I guess. It’s all the sort of thing you’d heard from the annoying pontoon boat just upstream that ruins your day.

I don’t want to play any more of it here, for fear of that very thing.