→ September 3, 2023
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Music update, August 2023.

Back on schedule as I crawl out of my writing hole (by which I mean a place where I have not done much writing). August saw quite a few album releases of note, including Blur, Genesis Owusu, Burna Boy, Ratboys, Be Your Own Pet, Slowdive, Noname, and more, but I think it was a little lighter on singles. Friday saw another big batch of albums and singles, but since that was the first day of September I’ve pushed all of those songs to a new playlist for that month. As always, you can access the playlist here if you can’t see the widget below.

Speedy Ortiz – Ghostwriter. Sadie Dupuis & company released their fourth album, Rabbit Rabbit, on her own label on Friday, and the album seems to have a slightly harder edge to the music without losing the off-kilter melodies and perhaps even amping up some of the harmonies in the choruses across the record.

Cory Wong feat. Dodie – Call Me Wild. I’m pretty clearly a Cory Wong fan, although I’m very late to the party. He does funk guitar so effortlessly, unsurprising for someone who grew up in Minneapolis, and you can also hear a ton of Primus (one of his stated influences) on this new album, The Lucky One, which has more famous guest appearances than Asteroid City.

BLOXX – Modern Day. I think this is the best song of the smattering BLOXX has released since their one full-length LP, Lie Out Loud, came out three years ago, and really deserves a lot more attention than it’s received – this is the pinnacle of this sort of indie-pop, and why a song like this gets overlooked while garbage like Imagine Dragons gets played to death is just beyond my limited comprehension.

The Julies – My Heaven is a Dance Floor. So this is an interesting one – the Julies released two EPs in 1994 and 1996, and then … nothing for twenty-seven years, until they released two singles as well as an EP of lost mixes from their earlier work. That’s probably why this band sounds so good to me, as they’re still channeling that early ‘90s alternative vibe, with elements of shoegaze (Ride) and dream-pop (Cocteau Twins).

Slowdive – the slab. Speaking of shoegaze, Slowdive returned on Friday with their second album since they reunited in 2014, the follow-up to 2017’s self-titled LP, and it’s a mix of some classic shoegaze like this pulsating track, “kisses,” and “alife,” and some slower songs like “skin in the game.”

Seablite – Melancholy Molly. If you played this for me and told me it was a lost track from Lush’s 1992 album Spooky, I’d believe you. It’s a spot-on rendition of that strand of early shoegaze with female vocalists, going for airy or dreamy vocals over highly textured guitars and keyboards that made it hard to pick out individual instruments. Seablite’s second album, Lemon Lights, is due out on the 29th.

Jorja Smith – GO GO GO. Smith continues to carve out her own musical path, moving away from R&B and smooth jazz here with an acoustic guitar backing that wouldn’t be out of place on pop radio. She’ll release the long-overdue follow-up to Lost & Found, which made my top 18 albums of 2018, on September 29th with Falling or Flying.

Noname feat. Common & Ayoni – Noname retired from the music industry briefly in 2020, resurfaced last year, and then came back with this surprise sophomore album Sundial last month – and it’s one of the best albums of the year, easily, with strong beats and the kind of smart, well-delivered rhymes we heard on her first album. However, she chose to platform Jay Electronica, a rapper who has a history of antisemitic commentary, even within his songs, with frequent reference to the “Rothschilds,” a popular dogwhistle among antisemites. Even in his contribution here to “Balloon,” he says he needs to “saw the Roth’ family in half to get my clout back” and makes several references to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Noname’s response to the controversy was extremely disappointing, as she took no responsibility, threatened to scrap the album (after she scrapped a previous one, Factory Baby) and then deleted her Twitter account entirely rather than deal with the backlash she created. The real lesson is that you shouldn’t platform an antisemite, and if you do so unknowingly, be accountable for your actions.

Danger Mouse with Jemini the Gifted One – Brooklyn Bazquiat. These two artists worked together on Danger Mouse’s 2003 album Ghetto Pop Life, then recorded a second album Born Again the following year, but that latter LP never saw the light of day until last week. Nineteen years have seen the music scene evolve to the point where this record sounds like a throwback to the alternative hip-hop movement of the 1990s and early 2000s, and it holds up exceptionally well as an example of that style of music.

Jungle – Us Against the World. Volcano dropped last month and I think it’s my least favorite Jungle album, with fewer standout singles than most of their LPs and some nods to more current trends in electronic music that my older ears find kind of annoying. “Candle Flame,” which was on my March playlist, is the best song on the album, and a huge reason why is the guest vocals from rapper Erick the Architect.

Girl Ray – Tell Me. Prestige, the third album from this London-based electropop trio, came out on August 4th, and it’s full of catchy, danceable tracks like this one.

San Cisco – Under the Light. A subtle but still very catchy single from this Australian band, whose first hit single “Awkward” came out eleven years ago. I’m thrilled they’ve still got it, but jesus does that make me feel old.

Genesis Owusu – Stay Blessed. Owusu’s second album, STRUGGLER, came out last month, and the Ghanaian-Australian singer has taken a short story he wrote about a character called the Roach, based on the same existential authors who inspired Chris Cornell thirty-plus years ago, and loosely turned it into a concept album that spans all sorts of genres, with an electronic bass line opening the album on “Leaving the Light,” some R&B/funk on “Tied Up!” and garage-rock inspirations on “Freak Boy.”

The Kills – New York. I assumed the Kills had hung it up, with no new music from the duo since 2016’s Ash & Ice, which had the single “Doing It to Death,” but they released this two-sided single in August and another track on Friday in advance of the October 27th release of their sixth album, God Games. This track is no “Sour Cherry” but otherwise fits in with their better stuff.

Kula Shaker – Waves. I didn’t realize these Britpop stars, who were either twenty years ahead of their time in incorporating Indian music into mainstream rock or guilty of some sort of cultural appropriation for the same thing, had put out a new album last year, which was itself their first album since 2016. This new track, ahead of an untitled seventh album, is full of the same peace and love and good happiness stuff lyrics as their other stuff but has one of the best hooks they’ve found since the 1990s.

English Teacher – The World’s Biggest Paving Slab. It takes some stones – pun intended – to write a song called “The World’s Biggest Paving Slab” and then have that phrase in the very first line, but English Teacher, who’ve gone from very credible post-punk to something harder to pin down, with lyrics that would fit on an Arctic Monkeys album, wry delivery, and elements of dream-pop and indie rock along with those post-punk leanings.

The Hives – Two Kinds of Trouble. The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons, the Hives’ first album in eleven years, dropped on August 11th, and to their great credit, they haven’t changed much of anything. This is good-time garage rock, and they’re not sorry.

The Linda Lindas – Resolution/Revolution. I know there was a big novelty factor around this quartet when they first showed up in the 2019 film Moxie, with all the band members at the time aged 15 or younger, but they’re just a good punk-pop band now and everyone, myself included, should probably just stop talking about how young they are except to say that it’s astonishing how good and how polished they are for their ages.

Public Image Ltd – End of the World. PiL released their eleventh album, End of World, in August, a very inconsistent affair highlighted by this track, which has Lu Edmonds (the guitarist from Happy and 9, perhaps their two best albums) delivering a searing guitar riff over which Lydon can caterwaul to his heart’s content.

Horrendous – Aurora Neoterica. An instrumental track off Ontological Mysterium that highlights a lot of what I like about this metal band, with ambitious and weird guitar riffs and some highly technical fretwork. The album as a whole is better than 2018’s Idol and probably on par with Ecdysis, although I still found it uneven and I don’t need to hear the death-metal screeching without the music to sort of drown it out. Anyway, this track feels more like something you might have heard from peak Rush, and it’s good to hear this band stretch out a little bit away from the trappings of their main genre.

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→ September 2, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 9/2/23.

Nothing new this week at the Athletic beyond contributing notes on the callups of Jasson Dominguez and Ceddanne Rafaela.

Over at Paste, I reviewed the board game Bamboo, a cute medium-box game that’s a pretty meaty game at heart.

I appeared on two podcasts this week, talking to Jim Margalus of Sox Machine about the White Sox’ front office turmoil and to Chris Crawford about eight prospects who’ve had surprising years, four positive and four negative.

And now, the links…

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→ August 26, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 8/26/23.

Three new pieces this week for subscribers to the Athletic: Some thoughts on Shohei Ohtani’s free agency in the wake of his torn UCL; a post mortem after the White Sox fired Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn; and why college conference realignment is probably bad for college baseball.

At Paste, I reviewed the board game Hickory Dickory, which has a very cute theme and some clever mechanics but I think might just be overdesigned in the end. I do like it, just with reservations.

On the Keith Law Show, I spoke with Joe Posnanski about his upcoming book Why We Love Baseball: A History in 50 Moments, which comes out on September 5th. You can listen & subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links…

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→ August 21, 2023
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Trust.

Hernan Diaz shared this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his second novel, Trust, after his debut novel In the Distance was one of the runners-up for the same honor in 2018. In the Distance was a surprise honoree, as Diaz was an unknown author at the time and the book was published by a minor house. Trust comes from a Penguin imprint and had much higher expectations coming in, and while it did win the big honor, it reads far more as a literary exercise than a compelling narrative or a coherent novel.

Trust comprises four parts, each of which tells part of the story of a very wealthy New York City couple between the two wars, the husband a financial wizard who profits handsomely from the 1929 crash, the wife a woman of taste who gets them involved in the arts and philanthropic works until illness overtakes her. Part one is a 1937 novella about the couple called Bonds, a metafictional account of their lives that depicts her illness as a mental one and his demeanor as unfeeling and robotic. Part two is the half-finished memoir of the actual financier, his intended rebuttal to the best-selling novel that upended his life. Part three tells the story of Ida Partenza, the writer he hires to ghost-write that memoir. Part four is the diary of the wife, all fragments and contradictions. In each succeeding section, Diaz undoes what he did in the previous one(s), so that by the end it’s unclear what’s actually true, and the whole work feels like that aforementioned exercise, a way of undermining the reader by demonstrating the imprecision of memory.

Part of the problem here is that the main character is the financier, and he’s unsympathetic but also boring. He’s not an anti-hero. He’s not misunderstood, or tragic (even his widowhood fails to rise to that level). He’s just kind of a jerk, and his wife’s attempts to make him more of a human don’t really pan out. Even finding out how much the novel may have wronged him doesn’t make him a more interesting central character, and certainly the descriptions of the story from the ghostwriter’s point of view paint him in a worse, if different, light. (I was all set to rip Diaz’s bombastic insufferable prose when I reached the second section and realized that that was the prose of his fictional novelist.)

It was hard not to think of the similarly titled book Trust Exercise, by Susan Choi, which explored similar thematic ground in a much more straightforward and readable fashion. (I was also reminded of it when I went to save this file on my laptop and the review for the earlier book popped up.) Choi’s book delved into the unreliability of memory and the way other people can remember the same event in different ways because of memory discrepancies, perspectives, and prior lived experiences, and it did so in a way that also made you care about or at least invested in some of the characters. I haven’t even named the main characters in Trust because they don’t matter enough. I didn’t give a hoot about the husband, the wife, or really even the ghostwriter, because Diaz didn’t give me reason to care.

The Pulitzer committee never reveals much about its thinking, but its one sentence on Trust referred toits “linked narratives rendered in different literary styles,” and that tells me this was writers responding to a feat of writing craft – which is, to be clear, a good reason to give a book a literary award. They likely weighed that more than the novel’s lack of direction or what I at least found to be kind of a boring plot with poorly drawn characters. It’s nowhere near the novel that its co-winner, Demon Copperhead, is, perhaps choosing a higher level of difficulty – although Barbara Kingsolver didn’t go easy on herself – without that other novel’s compelling lead character or well-paced, intriguing plot. I’d put it more towards the middle of the Pulitzer pack, certainly ahead of 2022’s awful choice The Netanyahus or a good chunk of early winners that haven’t aged well, but nowhere near the best that the Pulitzers have honored in recent years.

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→ August 19, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 8/19/23.

I’ve got a piece filed to run on Monday or Tuesday at The Athletic, and another review coming up this week at Paste, but had nothing new up this week. My podcast will be back this week with an episode I recorded on Friday. So … sorry? But I’ll have a lot of content up in the next few days.

A few weeks ago, I appeared on the video podcast Shelf Stories to discuss ethics in board game media and questions of integrity and professionalism among folks who review games or otherwise cover the space, along with former Kotaku writer Luke Plunkett. It’s a long discussion but I greatly enjoyed it.

And now, the links…

  • The Times also had a piece about three weeks ago looking into the continuing mystery over the origins of COVID-19, arguing that the public’s greater belief in the lab-leak conspiracy theory – any hypothesis of a lab leak remains stubbornly unsupported by evidence – is a function of distrust of authorities and the competition between narratives, not a question of facts.
  • A Montana judge ruled in favor of young climate-change activists who sued the state, arguing that Montana’s policy preventing state agencies from considering greenhouse gas emission potential when evaluating permits for fossil fuel development is unconstitutional. It’s largely symbolic, but could present a path for similar suits elsewhere.
  • A new state tax in Massachusetts that levies an extra 4% on incomes over a million dollars will raise $1 billion for FY2024, and the proceeds will pay for free school lunches for all kids in the state, among other things (I assume). Unfortunately, this article’s author confuses wealth with income, referring to “the state’s wealthiest residents.” Income and wealth are not the same thing, and taxing each is a very different process.
  • From last month, Katherine Miller wrote in the New York Times about the farcical No Labels party, which won’t reveal its funding sources and seems more interested in re-electing Donald Trump than pushing an actual new “centrist” platform (as if Democrats weren’t closer to the center than the progressive left anyway).
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→ August 18, 2023
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Music update, July 2023.

So this playlist has been done for two weeks, but I took PTO right after the deadline to go to Gen Con, rest and recharge, and do some family stuff, and I barely wrote a word while I was off other than my huge Gen Con wrapup. I’m pushing this one out because my August playlist is already at 19 songs and we have two Fridays left. Therefore, enjoy this list of songs released between 18 and roughly 50 days ago. As always, you can click here if you can’t see the Spotify widget below.

The Dinner Party – Sinner. This indie-rock quintet from London seems like they should be based in L.A. in the early 1980s, or maybe Brooklyn in the early aughts, like a blend of Sparks and Lucius.

Charly Bliss – You Don’t Even Know Me Anymore. CB’s first new track in three years, with their sophomore album Young Enough already four years old, is welcome news. I haven’t seen word yet of a new LP from this grunge-pop quartet.

Miles Kane – Wonder. Kane is half of the Last Shadow Puppets (with Alex Turner) and was the lead singer of the Rascals, but he’s recorded under his own name since the latter group broke up in 2009. There’s some Stone Roses to the guitar work here on this new single, released ahead of his latest album One Man Band, out August 4th.

Brad – Hey Now What’s the Problem. A funkier track from Brad’s final album, In the Moment that You’re Born, which features the last vocals from Shawn Smith. Smith died in April of 2019, and you know his work – he was also the lead singer for the band Pigeonhead, whose “Battle Flag” earned one of the great all-time remixes from the Lo-Fidelity All Stars.

Sampha – Spirit 2.0. Mercury Prize winner Sampha has one of the most distinctive voices in music right now – in a good way – and often elevates otherwise uninteresting material, but here he’s got a quick, frenetic track with vocals seem off-balance in a way that keeps your ear tuned in.

Metric – Just the Once. Not their best, far from their worst. I’m okay with Metric dialing it back just to write a fun dance-pop song every now and then.

Courting – Flex. Wikipedia calls them “art punk,” maybe because they have proper British accents. This is definitely poppier than that, but smarter than pop-punk. They feel like a band on the come, maybe one full album away from the big leagues. Also, I think that’s a “Mr. Brightside” reference.

The Front Bottoms – Emotional. Maybe the best call-and-response of the year, although the peculiar nasal thing they do near the chorus is offputting.

Yard Act – The Trench Coat Museum. Yard Act’s debut LP The Overload was my #3 album of 2022, although since it came out early in the year it’s been more like seventeen months since we last had new music from this extremely English art-punk band.

Royal Blood – Pull Me Through. Don’t let the piano intro fool you, there’s some crunchy bass-through-an-octave pedal work coming not too long after.

Tame Impala – Journey to the Real World. I mean, there are catchier songs on the Barbie soundtrack, but the mere fact that they picked Tame Impala to join a roster of explicitly pop acts is itself a reason to recommend the album. (Also, that stupid “Pink” song is still in my head.)

Bob Vylan – Dream Big. Grime rap combined with punk? I definitely hear a lot of Bad Brains in here, although I’m not very familiar with grime as a genre.

beabadoobee – the way things go. It’s a little twee, but it’s pretty catchy, and beabadoobee’s voice does lend itself well to this sort of light chamber-pop. I just don’t want to encourage too much of this.

Baby Queen – We Can Be Anything. Baby Queen is a 25-year-old singer from South Africa whose debut album, Quarter Life Crisis (get it? ugh), comes out on October 6th. It’s sort of avant-pop, with some clear Grimes influence in here.

BLOXX – Weight in Gold. So events have overtaken my playlist as BLOXX’s EP Modern Day is out, and its title track is on my in-progress August list. It’s upbeat, punk-tinged indie rock, kind of if Neon Trees were less overtly poppy with better lyrics, especially with a little more new wave influence on the EP’s five tracks.

Jungle – Back on 74. Volcano, the fifth LP from this British neo-soul duo, came out last Friday, and so far everything I’ve heard is … just fine. I haven’t caught a breakout single like “Busy Earnin,” “Happy Man,” or “The Truth,” just some very 70s sounds without the big hooks I’m used to from these guys.

Slowdive – Skin in the Game. The second single released ahead of next month’s Everything Is Alive, Slowdive’s second album since they returned from a 19-year hiatus in 2014. I also feel obligated to mention that I was in Commissary, a barbershop and café in Indianapolis, and the barista was playing Souvlaki in its entirety.

Romy – The Sea. Mid Air, the first solo album from the xx’s Romy Madley Croft, is due out September 8th, and I think it’s more pop-adjacent than her main band’s music or that of bandmate Jamie xx, whose debut album featured some guest vocals from Romy on “Loud Places.”

Lathe of Heaven – Ekpyrosis. You’d think this was some sort of extreme metal track from its name, which refers to the Greek Stoics’ belief that the universe would be destroyed and reborn every 36,000 years, but this is a NYC post-punk band that sounds like Killing Joke or early Ceremony, named after an Ursula K. Le Guin novel.

Horrendous – Preterition Hymn. I almost feel like I have to apologize when I include tracks with death growls, but man that big, swirling guitar riff that opens this song is something else. Horrendous’s first album in five years, Ontological Mysterium, is out today, August 18th, and the songs released ahead of it show a return to the musical ambition of their first two albums, even with some flourishes like the acoustic passage at the close of this song.

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→ August 17, 2023
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Barbie.

Barbie had already crossed the billion-dollar mark before I got to see it on Saturday, on top of weeks of positive reviews, hype, and discourse, which combined to both set a very high bar in terms of expectations while also likely predisposing me towards the movie a little bit because everyone seemed to like it – especially film critics and fans I know and respect. So bear all of that in mind when I tell you I pretty much loved this movie from start to superb-last-line finish.

Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach’s script takes existing IP but does something wildly ambitious with it, turning a kids’ doll with very little lore or mythology other than the series of toys in the line’s history into a wide-ranging social commentary and satire on patriarchy, feminism, toxic masculinity, and consumerism, among other things. It’s also a visual feast, at least when the movie is in Barbie’s world, and packed with allusions, references, and entendres that appear to be double. (I was most partial to the Zack Snyder reference, although the Proust and Stephen Malkmus ones were close.) Aside from a slight slowing near the end of the film as the script grapples with how best to get the main characters to the finish line, it maintained its pace with quick wit and snappy dialogue that never talked down to the adults in the audience and provided plenty to keep the kids interested as well.

Barbie starts out with its titular character (Margot Robbie) in Barbieland, driving her tiny car, saying hi to all of the other Barbies, while an obnoxiously catchy song (“Pink”) by Lizzo plays. We also meet several Kens, including Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling), and discover that in Barbieland, girls run everything, and the guys are just various flavors of eye candy, competing for the Barbies’ attention. Beach Ken is obviously in love with Robbie’s Barbie, who we find out later is Stereotypical Barbie, but she doesn’t really need him – he needs her far more. Everything is perfect, every day, in every way, until Barbie is plagued by a sudden existential dread and things suddenly aren’t so perfect any more, which leads to the actual plot of the story, where she ends up going to the Real World to find the kid who’s playing with her and putting all of these thoughts and problems into Barbieland. This leads to a rather rude awakening for Barbie; a massive epiphany for Ken, who sneaks into her car as she’s leaving Barbieland and then discovers the glories of patriarchy; and a problem for the executives at Mattel, who would really rather not have a repeat of the time Skipper showed up in Key West.

I cannot praise this script enough; other than the set design, it’s the strongest part of a very strong movie. Gerwig and Baumbach had to satisfy so many stakeholders and, I presume, mandates: make it funny, make it smart, make it appeal to kids and adults, make it look great, make it authentic to the limited source material, don’t denigrate the doll or the line or its history, and so on. It is often laugh-out-loud funny, with Gosling actually delivering many of the better lines, and when it’s not, it’s mining humor from satire, or just from wry observations.

The pace is also superb, as we’re barely into the movie, with about ten minutes of worldbuilding in Barbieland, before Barbie utters the out-of-character line that kicks the plot in motion. So many movies, whether prestige films or films built off outside IP, are 150 minutes or more; Barbie didn’t need to be, and it isn’t, coming in at about 114 including the credits. The result is a movie that’s packed without feeling dense, and that only slackens a little towards the end as the movie has to focus entirely on resolving the main storyline.

Gosling does kind of steal Robbie’s thunder, though, which is a little ironic for a movie that’s not just about her character but about feminism and the absurdity of patriarchy. He’s just so good as Himbo Ken – well, it seems like all of the Kens are himbos, but he’s especially dim – and the script provides him with more chances to flex. Barbie is dismayed and annoyed in the real world, but Ken thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever seen, and his reactions to little things like someone asking him for the time are priceless. The remainder of the cast is probably more impressive on paper than in the movie because there’s barely enough for anyone else to do. About half of the cast of the Netflix series Sex Education is in this movie, including Emma Mackey (Physicist Barbie), who is the best actor on that series and seems destined for superstardom, and Ncuti Gatwa (Artist Ken), who’s taking over as the Doctor in the next season of Doctor Who. Both stand out when they’re on screen here, but neither gets much definition. Simu Liu is very, very funny as Tourist Ken, Beach Ken’s main rival, playing an obnoxious dudebro version of the character, although it’s also a pretty two-dimensional role. Michael Cera might have the best supporting performance here as Allan, Ken’s best friend, whom Cera plays as every character Michael Cera has ever played on TV or in film – and it’s hilarious. If it’s not him, it’s Rhea Perlman, who is also quite wonderful but in a character that gives the film its most saccharine moments. Bonus points if you spot Lucy Boynton’s cameo; I missed it until the credits, and jumped when I saw the Sing Street actress’s name – and that of her character, which completes a great joke from within the movie.

Given the critical acclaim and commercial performance, Barbie seems likely to earn a slew of awards nominations this cycle … and win very few of them. It might be the best lock for any set or production design awards, followed by costume design, but this could be the sort of movie that has to be happy with the honor of being nominated. The dark horse category here would be the screenplay, where Gerwig – who I really, really hope gets a director nomination now after she was snubbed for Lady Bird and especially for Little Women – and Baumbach get points both for technical merit and artistic integrity. They chose a high level of difficulty and still succeeded, while also slipping in plenty of inside-Hollywood jokes to please that crowd. I’ll go on a limb and predict it gets eight Oscar nods: Picture, Director, Song, Original Screenplay, Production Design, Film Editing, Makeup/Hairstyling, and Costume Design. That’s not what I’m saying it will deserve – I haven’t seen any other contenders yet, with most of them still unreleased to the public – but a wild guess on what it will end up getting. I wouldn’t be the least bit upset to see Robbie or Gosling get a nod, although my gut says that enough voters will decide that the movie isn’t serious enough, the same way actors in genre films have had a hard time breaking through for nominations. Barbie totally captured me once the 2001 homage ended, and I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t end up among my ten favorite movies of the year.

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→ August 12, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 8/12/23.

I’m back, in more ways than one – I took some PTO right after the deadline to go to Gen Con, get some downtime, and just generally focus on myself for once. I’ll be back at work on Monday, although my next article probably won’t run until later in the week.

I was quite busy leading up to the trade deadline. I started with my midseason re-ranking of the top 60 prospects in the minors. Then I started breaking down trades as they happened:

Plus a brief look at some of the teams that did the best and the worst at the deadline.

Meanwhile, I wrapped up everything I saw and played at Gen Con, including my top ten games of the convention (which saw a record 70,000 unique attendees), and reviewed the family cooperative game Miller Zoo.

I’ve had two great guests on the Keith Law Show from the music world – Susanna Hoffs, talking about her debut novel This Bird Has Flown and her new album The Deep End; and Joe Casey of Protomartyr, talking about their new album Formal Growth in the Desert and his beloved Tigers. You can listen & subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And now, the links, gathered over the last four weeks…

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→ July 16, 2023
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Stick to baseball, 7/16/23.

For subscribers to the Athletic, here’s an index to my draft coverage from this past week:

I also recapped the Futures Game and wrote a brief note on the call-up of Pirates’ right-hander Quinn Priester.

I had Joe Sheehan back on the podcast last week, before the draft, and then skipped this week to write all that stuff above. You can listen & subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I’m a little pressed for time so let’s get to the links:

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→ July 15, 2023
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Seattle eats.

I hadn’t been to Seattle in 22 years before this past weekend, and it was 25 years since I lived there for a summer. Other than a swing through Pike Place Market, I didn’t hit any old haunts like Caffe Ladro or Gelatiamo or Zeke’s Pizza on this trip, between wanting to try new places, skipping a rental car, and staying in a hotel near the convention center that wasn’t near where I lived in 1998 (the northern side of Queen Anne).

I didn’t plan to do a brief pizza tour of Seattle, but that’s how things worked out. The first stop was Delancey, a wood-fired pizzeria in Essex that does an especially thin crust, more so than traditional Neapolitan pizzas have. I had the crimini, a white pizza with that type of mushroom, thyme, fresh mozzarella, and olive oil. The flavors were spot on – I happen to love mushrooms with thyme in any dish or form – but unfortunately the pizza was slightly overcooked, and I say that as someone who likes a little char on the edges of any pizza cooked at these temperatures. They do make an excellent Manhattan, though.

The next night, I went to Café Lago on Capitol Hill because they’re renowned for handmade pastas … but on Mondays it’s $10 for their wood-fired pizzas, and who am I to argue with that? I ordered a half portion of their Caesar salad, which was solid-average, and then the salsiccia pizza, with sausage, red peppers, fontina, and mozzarella. The cuisine here is Tuscan, so the pizza isn’t Neapolitan but it’s similar, just with less dough around the edges, and the dough was about as light as I’ve ever had – I can’t believe I ate the whole thing, but I did, because the dough felt so light and the ratio of toppings to dough was perfect. The sausage was the predominant flavor on the pizza, in a good way; it wasn’t excessively salty or flavored with fennel, which I find can overwhelm a pizza. Delancey’s style is closer to my personal favorite, but Café Lago’s pizza was better. (I also had the interesting experience of hearing the song that’s been my ring tone for at least 15 years now, “Love Spreads” by the Stone Roses, on the sound system in the restaurant – the bartender told me he makes his own playlists for when he’s on duty – which led to some serious cognitive confusion.)

I could walk from the hotel to the Taylor Shellfish Oyster Bar on Capitol Hill in less than ten minutes, so I had lunch there to take a break from writing on Monday, ordering their shrimp roll and three (raw) oysters, which I asked the server to choose for me because I don’t know a damn thing about oysters. They were much larger than what I’m used to as an east coaster and the server did a hell of a job, giving me three different flavor profiles from briny to sweet. The shrimp roll has local bay shrimp, celery, shallots, pickled Fresno chiles, tossed in a light herb aioli and served on a brioche bun. The bun was the best part, which is no knock on the filling, but my god, I could eat that bread every day until I die and be happy. Shrimp salad is so hit or miss, mostly miss in my experience, but in this case the dressing was so light that I could still taste the shrimp and the chiles.

Taurus Ox also shows up on best-of lists and was another reader recommendation. It’s a Laotian restaurant with a small but fascinating menu – they’re apparently known for their burger, among other things – and I went with what seemed like a traditional choice, the Laotian pork sausage with sticky rice, chilled vegetables and jaew bong. I could tell this was expertly made and included very high-quality ingredients … but I didn’t like any of it. The predominant flavor was capsaicin, not just for its spice but for its strongly bitter flavor, couple with the bitter heat of galangal, so all I got was bitter and hot. The texture of the sausage was fantastic, but it was hard to enjoy it with all the bitter notes. I think this just wasn’t for me.

Oriental Mart is a stand in Pike Place Market, across the street from the main hall, and you can order food at the front (street-side) to eat at one of the handful of stools in the back. They only offer a handful of dishes but you can watch the chef, Ate Lila, making them if you sit in the right spot. I split my order between salmon sinigang and chicken adobo, and my only complaint was that I wanted more of both. The chicken was fall-off-the-bone tender with the deep gingery flavor of the braising liquid, while the salmon was perfectly medium when I got it, although sitting in the hot liquid of the soup it was probably going to end up overcooked if I hadn’t eaten it quickly. The broth itself was only a little tangy – I don’t know Filipino cuisine well, but I know sinigang is supposed to be sour – and I wished there were a few more vegetables in it. Okay, that’s a modest complaint.

Portage Bay Café is kind of the Seattle version of the southwest chain Snooze; they do oversized breakfast plates and big combinations. I had the mushroom benedict, which had some very fresh and maybe undercooked mushrooms, while the breakfast potatoes were well-cooked but way too salty.

Hello Robin is a cookie shop on Capitol Hill that also sells Molly Moon’s ice cream and, if you are a little bit creatively inclined, you can get them … together. I did the “open-faced” version, because I am but one small man with a tiny stomach, getting one chocolate chip cookie with “melted chocolate” ice cream, the latter of which reminded me a ton of Toscanini’s Belgian chocolate ice cream from my Massachusetts days. The cookie was really outstanding even though I probably would call it overcooked, given how browned the edges were, but it was bursting with brown sugar and butter flavor. This was my post-Taurus Ox dessert and it made up for it.

Frankie & Jo’s, right next door to Delancey, does vegan ice creams, and some of the flavors are, to be kind, batshit. Not in the sense of containing batshit, but nobody needs chaga mushrooms or maca root in their frozen non-dairy dessert product. However, if you navigate the menu carefully, there are some more sensible flavor combinations. I went with mint brownie, because I’m not a savage; it’s peppermint ice cream with dark chocolate brownie pieces and cacao nibs. They use a coconut milk base, and the texture is as good as I’ve ever had in non-dairy ice cream. There was no point where I wished I was eating the real thing, which is impressive because I love real ice cream from cow’s milk, with all the butterfat and, unfortunately, the lactose. After eating an entire pizza at Delancey, this was the dessert I needed.

I tried two coffee spots while in Seattle, both fairly old school, Victrola and Espresso Vivace. Victrola was the easier walk, so I went there twice and came home with a bag of Rwandan beans from there. They don’t do pour-over but seem to always have a single-origin on drip, as well as the usual array of espresso drinks. Vivace runs like a machine, with two lines and a barista dedicated to each, and their espresso struck a perfect balance of acidity and natural sweetness.

Finally, two people recommended Stateside, which I walked by a half-dozen times … but they’re only open Wednesday through Saturday, so I wasn’t able to try it. They do upscale Vietnamese-influenced food and I’m sorry I missed them and their partner cocktail bar Foreign National.

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