While reading Coach Wooden and Me (affiliate link), by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, I ran across the story of Swen Nater, who was a first round NBA/ABA draft pick even though he never started, and only play 2 minutes on average per game while at UCLA. Deliberate Practice. Apparently, Swen tried out for the high school team, but didn’t make the cut. Ouch – not a promising start.  Met a great coach in community college.

Quick Note: Last week, I put out a call for a potential “reader mailbag” series. The response has been... Muted. Shout to the handful of heads who wrote in. I’ll put out one more call: Send your question, if you have one, to jchiaverina@gmail.com and put READER MAILBAG in the subject. It was the fall of 1998 and I was in my room. It was the middle of the night; maybe a lava lamp was on.

Yesterday the official account of the Republican National Committee tweeted Independence Day greetings with a graphic of the Liberian flag, which has one star, rather than that of the United States, which has fifty. Even more troubling was the tweet from Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) attributing to founder Patrick Henry a false quotation saying that “this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This month the award-winning, Japanese-American bar Katana Kitten rings in its fifth anniversary on July 24. And to celebrate the occasion, tonight they’re hosting an open-to-all celebration from 5 p.m. - 2 a.m. Along with cocktails, bar snacks, and limited-edition merch for sale, there will be a rotating cast of bartenders joining the Katana Kitten team, including Kenta Goto (Bar Goto), Naren Young (Sweet Liberty), and Takuma Watanabe (Martiny’s) among others.

i spent this weekend cataloging my analog music collection — mainly alphabetizing my CDs and cassettes. i had already been planning to share parts of my cassette collection and my beloved Walkman. but upon listening to the Love Deluxe tape, i was reminded of Sade’s birthday (1/16). some of my favorite artists are stunning, ethereal oft-reclusive iconoclasts whose sounds define a generation (think Solange, Frank Ocean, D’Angelo). Sade is no exception.