You know what? We’re two weeks from Halloween. Get your costumes ready.
Also, we’re here for the 50th Straight Edition of The Saturday List. Wow. thanks for being along for the ride.
Let’ dive in — after the button, of course — and take a look at What I’m Watching, Reading, Listening to, and Rediscovering this week.
Watching: A Breakdown of the Manchester City Scandal with Ben Harris
Ben Harris is a UK political consultant and football (soccer) enthusiast who joined me on The Vandy Program to talk about one of the biggest scandals in sports/finance history: Manchester City and its financial malfeasance. The club was found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges, and Ben breaks that down for us in a pretty interesting conversation.
Note that we talked about when we’ll know the punishment, and Ben said it’s later this calendar year; however, one report online has guesstimated it might happen as early as Monday, October 19. Stay tuned.
Reading: Brainwaves and the Psychology of Buying a Car
A few weeks back, I reacted to what seems like a constant barrage of those “Here’s How to Win at Substack!” posts with a question: who has something interesting that’s under-the-radar and that we can recommend? Tomas Heligr-Pyke answered the call, and he’s in Australia and has a really good breakdown on buying a car.
AND he talks here about Australia’s AI-driven…supermarkets? (There’s… Kmart in Australia? WHAT?)
You can subscribe for free to the Sub. It’s good.
Listening to: Tokyo Police Club
While they broke up a couple years back, Tokyo Police Club remains one of those dynamite, fun, high-energy bands. Yes, they used an online band name generator to pick their name.
Here, the Canadian act makes its network television debut on The Late Show with David Letterman, in April 2007. (Get a load of fellow Canuck Paul Shafer leading the CBS Orchestra on the tambourine as TPC closes out the song.)
“Nature of the Experiment” was one single off the band’s debut, an EP called A Lesson in Crime. Here, off that disc, my favorite song of theirs, “Be Good.”
(Note: “Be Good” didn’t chart anywhere, not even in Canada, as a single.)
Off of their follow up, Elephant Shell, here’s “Tesselate.”
And a really inventive concept from the band was Ten Songs, Ten Years, Ten Days, where they covered…well, ten different songs, from ten different years, and they did one song per day over a span of…get this…TEN DAYS.
One of my all-time favorites, “Little Sister,” from Queens of the Stone Age, receives the Tokyo Police Club treatment, with an assist from guitar guru Orianthi.
Finally, here’s the band’s keyboardist, Graham Wright, with a solo tune called “Them’s the Rules.” (He can play the guitar, too.)
Rediscovering: Office Space
Stephen Root. The always underrated Ron Livingston. Jennifer Aniston. And written by Mike Judge.
The movie Office Space used to be a staple — SEE WHAT I DID THERE — on weekend television, back when you had channels that showed things at certain times, not when you could start shows whenever. Now? Get off my lawn.
Also I found the DVD of this around the house and…why not?
Finally: The Dennis Green Rant
Twenty years ago yesterday, October 16, 2006, Dennis Green was not happy after his Arizona Cardinals lost to the Chicago Bears.
May your weekend, and week ahead, be what you thought it would.
Dave