Notes

Josh Whitman Gets Contract Extension

Josh Whitman isn’t going anywhere. Not until 2036, anyway.

The Board of Trustees approved his extension Thursday. It raises his salary to $2.15 million for the 2026-27 season, then adds $100,000 every year after that. Over the full deal, that’s $26.1 million. It’s his fifth extension as athletic director.

You don’t lock someone up for ten years if you think they might walk. You do it when you can’t picture the place without them.

Whitman is 47. He’s run Illinois athletics since 2016, long enough now to be the fifth-longest-tenured AD in the Power Four. He also played football here, back before any of this. So the man in charge once wore its colors on a Saturday. That means something.

Then there’s the record.

The basketball team reached its first Final Four since 2006 this April. The women’s program has made the NCAA tournament in three of the last four years. Football has piled up marquee bowl wins. He hired Brad Underwood. He hired Bret Bielema. He hired Shauna Green. Three swings, three hits. Without question, he’s the best Athletic Director Illinois has had in decades.

Ten years in, the school asked him to do it all again. Same chair. Higher stakes.

I’d take that bet.

Home Run Derby

I didn’t watch any of it. I kind of forgot it was happening. Then I get a notice that Jordan Walker is in the finals of last night’s MLB Home Run Derby. I still didn’t turn it on. A few moments later, I take a peek at Twitter/X and there it is… Walker won the derby.

I then find out what happened. The hometown hero, Kyle Schwarber, hammered 11 home runs in 15 swings. I watched the clip and as Jordan’s 12th finals home run flew deep into the left field stands, the non-Philly fans cheered. What an ending to the finals.

It’s a reminder of the romance of baseball and I can only hope it is a harbinger of good things for Walker and the Cardinals in the future.

Digger

Digger is a new Tom Cruise movie that popped up on my radar so I had to see what this was all about. I went into this totally cold, so I was not mentally prepared for the trailer, in which we see Cruise playing a dipshit oligarch in what appears to be a Dr. Strangelove-style satire/thriller.

It’s so nice when Tom remembers he can really act when he wants to and this looks like he’s angling for an Oscar.

The logline ain’t bad either:

The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.

5K

On Sunday, Maria and I decided to walk to this nearby park in a neighborhood or so over. The park had wide sidewalks and nice grounds with wildflowers, alfalfa, and cornflowers. We ended up doing the park loop twice before heading back and we realized as we were approaching the house that we’d ending up walking 3.2 miles, effectively walking a 5K. It was unexpected and fun.

I am kinda tired though.

Overwhelmed

I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. I’m the problem. Me.

I have decided to tackle a bunch of projects that have, at one time or another, got me seriously excited. This is a bad thing.

I wrote a screenplay, Hello Stranger, and I’m pretty proud of it. I finished a pitch deck, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do next.

Also, I have my essays/fiction collection, Captured Ghosts, ready to go to Kindle Direct Publishing so it can show up on Amazon and be bought by, like, three people. I just need to pull the trigger on that one. Sooooo close.

Additionally, I started working on a YA/middle-grade book series that can be described, not quite accurately, as “Harry Potter meets Santa Claus.” I have a full five-book series outlined. It was fun to do. I probably just need to finish the first book.

I started another novel idea inspired by Daisy Jones and Six, but I’ve since abandoned that concept for now.

I had an interesting idea for a science fiction novel set in Door County, WI, and I have a great title for it, but it still needs a lot of work to get off the ground. I really like the concept, though.

Oh, and I also had a fun idea: taking three public-domain novels (The Great Gatsby, The Three Musketeers, and Frankenstein), turning them into modern retellings, each at novella length, and grouping them together in a book.

Plus, I got inspired to fix my website, and now I’ve just added a ton of edits and uploads to make it work.

Where is my mind?

Dune Part 3

Here’s the official trailer for Dune 3. I am so looking forward to this. It might be my most anticipated movie of the year. While I’ve only read Dune and haven’t touched the sequels, I generally know how this goes, and it’s not particularly good for Paul in the end. I bet I know the last frame of this movie already.

I probably need to make sure I’m in an IMAX theater to see this in December.

Platner Drops Out

I generally liked what Graham Platner, the politician, was saying and doing. Unfortunately, the non-politician parts were finally too much. Basically, Graham Platner is accused of rape, and that was a line voters in Maine could not cross.

Personally, I wasn’t following that closely to begin with, but I did see that he won the primary. I’m in Illinois, not Maine, and they really seemed to want the guy. For me, the Nazi tattoo was a red flag, but people make dumb decisions.

Well, they picked him, and now they have this alleged rape charge, which has blown the whole thing up. Platner has dropped out, and Maine’s Democrats will replace him in the general election. I’ll be interested to see what the decision is there, but mostly I just want Susan Collins defeated.

Starlog is Back

One of my all-time favorite things growing up is coming back. My Dad will also likely be interested.

Starlog, the science fiction magazine that ended its 33-year run in 2009, will return this fall with a new print edition, a weekly podcast, and a newsletter.

“Fifty years ago, STARLOG went behind the scenes of alternate worlds for the first time. Now it’s back, exploring the visionary sci-fi and cutting-edge science that inspire what comes next. The future will be wild. You’ll be ready for it because you read STARLOG.”

The magazine returns as Volume 2, Number 1, with the first print issue dated Nov. 13, 2026. It will be published annually and sold in stores. The podcast and newsletter are already up and running; magazine pre-orders begin soon.

The Odyssey

Watching the last trailer, I am oddly underwhelmed by this movie. It will probably be great. I have no idea.

Everything is shot so dark. Can we please have some light?

Also, the line, “My Dad is coming back,” immediately took me out of the story.

Fable 5

Anthropic put out a new AI model called Claude Fable 5, and the name is what stopped me. Fable. A company full of engineers built the most capable thinking machine it’s ever made, then reached back past the software vocabulary and named it after the oldest form we have. Talking animals and a lesson at the end.

I’ve got complicated feelings about these tools, same as every writer I know. But I keep noticing that when the people who build them want to signal that something matters, they borrow from storytelling. Not from math. That tells me the old craft still holds the high ground. The machines are getting better. The name admits what they’re chasing.