Roller Skate Key

NFL Preview Review

2011-01-12T03:44:00.005-05:00

AFC West

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Oaktown	6¹/₂	Under	8	Lose
San Diego	10¹/₂	Under	9	Win
Denver	7	Over	4	Lose
Kay Cee	6¹/₂	Over	10	Win

I correctly foresaw the decline of SD and the maturing of KC, but completely whiffed on Den, whom I thought would be a middle-of-the-pack team. Also, I failed to see that Tom Cable might actually be a decent coach for Oak. Al Davis also failed to see this, but in his case after the season was over.

AFC South

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Houston	8¹/₂	Under	6	Win
Tennessee	8¹/₂	Over	6	Lose
Indy	11	Over	10	Lose
J-ville	6¹/₂	Over	8	Win

Biggest whiff here was TN, whom I figured would be a playoff contender. I called Hou being disappointing and Jac being decent, but way overestimated Ind. Can you blame me?

AFC North

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Cincy	8¹/₂	Under	4	Win
Cleveland	5¹/₂	Over	5	Lose
'Sburgh	9	Over	12	Win
B-more	10	Over	12	Win

I knew Cin would never be good two years in a row. Believe it or not, I said Bal would go 12-4, which they did.

AFC East

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Miami	8¹/₂	Over	7	Lose
Buffalo	5¹/₂	Under	4	Win
NYC	9¹/₂	Under	11	Lose
Hell	9¹/₂	Under	14	Lose

Wow, wrong about a lot here, but nowhere more so than NE, whom I thought was in the twilight of the Brady-Belichick glory years. By the end of September I looked right, and a lot of people agreed with me. Now? Well... maybe next year.

NFC West

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Seattle	7	Over	7	Push
Frisco	9	Under	6	Win
'Zona	7¹/₂	Under	5	Win
Saint Lou	4¹/₂	Under	7	Lose

I was right about Sea being mediocre, but I was way off about StL. Also, I picked SF to win the division. I wasn't alone, mind you.

NFC North

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Minny	9¹/₂	Under	6	Win
Green Bay	10	Over	10	Push
Chi-town	7¹/₂	Under	11	Lose
Motown	5¹/₂	Over	6	Win

Totally nailed MN here. Quote: "8-8 at best, maybe worse... I don't even think they'll come in second." Of course I was wrong about Chi, whom I always pick to be bad. In my defense, many Bears fans still think that team isn't very good. Also, I called Det just right.

NFC South

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Nawlins	10¹/₂	Under	11	Lose
'Lanna	9¹/₂	Over	13	Win
Tampa	5¹/₂	Under	10	Lose
Carolina	7	Over	2	Lose

My wrongest pick of the entire preseason was definitely TB: "I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this team is not only terrible this year, I think they'll be terrible the following year as well." That's even worse than my Car pick. I had the right idea about NO, I was just off by a game.

NFC East

Team	Line	Pick	Actual	Result
Big D	10	Under	6	Win
D.C.	7¹/₂	Over	6	Lose
Philly	8¹/₂	Over	10	Win
Jersey	8¹/₂	Under	10	Lose

Right about Dal being a mess, nailed Phi at 10-6, woefully wrong about the Shanahan-McNabb combo in the capital. I actually picked them as my surprise division winner for the year. I don't think I'll take the over for that team again until Dan Snyder sells it.

Total: 15-15-2

A list of every movie I paid to see in a theatre this year and a few brief thoughts on each

2011-01-11T08:01:00.005-05:00

In chronological order, based on the wad of ticket stubs I just pulled out of the right pocket of the sweat pants I bike to work in every day. The designation "(R)" after the title stands for "repertory", as in not a new release. Some films are a couple years old but not designated thusly as this is their first domestic distribution.

Das weiße bande (The White Ribbon)
Michael Haneke, 2009; German
Haneke's most mature film by a pretty wide margin, largely by dint of the fact that it's the first one in which he longer seems to be consciously trying to torture the audience. A dark, subtle and excellent film.

The Hurt Locker
Kathryn Bigelow, 2009; English
Terrific movie. Great lead performance, great cinematography. Actually made me think it's be kinda neat to do that job, which is probably the worst job possible.

El Secreto de Sus Ojos (The Secret In Their Eyes)
Juan José Campanella, 2009; Spanish
An intriguing mystery, a well told story, and just the sort of "quality entertainment" that comes out a few times a year and gives critics an excuse to complain that there aren't more like it. It helps to understand a little about Argentinian politics in the 1970s (which I didn't), but still quite enjoyable even if you don't.

Un Prophète (A Prophete)
Jacques Audiard, 2009; French, Corsican, Arabic
Did you know that in French prisons the inmates get fresh bread every day? My favourite detail from the film. Good solid crime drama, classic story of the kid who starts at the bottom and winds up in charge.

Madeo (Mother)
Bong Joon-ho, 2009; Korean
Excellent, one of the best films I saw this year. Bong reminds me of the early Cohen brothers, when each of their films was like a weird genre exercise. This one's a noir movie; he's also got a crime procedural, a quirky indie comedy and a monster movie to his credit.

Kasi Az Gorbehaye Irani Khabar Nadareh (No One Knows About Persian Cats)
Bahman Ghobadi, 2009; Persian
A bit thin as far as the story goes, the film is essentially an excuse to show a bunch of actual bands from around Tehran. No complaints here. My favourites: the angular math-rock band, the rappers and the stoner metal band. Despite my lack of emotional investment in the plot, I still found the ending ruinously unsatisfying.

Cremaster 1 (R)
Matthew Barney, 1995
The one with the blimps and the Boise State football stadium. Not the first one filmed, but a good start as far as viewing them goes.

Cremaster 2 (R)
Matthew Barney, 1999; English
Shown together with the first one, and a big improvement. Here's where the series gets really interesting. Also the only one with any dialogue, at least that I can remember. Also the one with Dave Lombardo from Slayer on drums.

Cremaster 3 (R)
Matthew Barney, 2002
The longest and best of the series, this one is awesome. It's the one with the Chrysler Building and the Guggenheim Museum in it. The demolition derby in the lobby is one of the most audacious things I've ever seen filmed.

Micmacs à tire-larigot (Micmacs)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2009; French
Overlooked this year, probably because it's not quite as substantive as Amelie or City, but I loved it. I wish I could think of a better word than whimsical, but for Jeunet's films I'm not sure there is one. A delight.

Please Give
Nicole Holofcener, 2010; English
Great performances, great script, a terrifically scathing indictment of white liberal guilt. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I don't think I've ever seen Catherine Keener play a character this vulnerable. Nor Oliver Platt one this funny.

Cremaster 4 (R)
Matthew Barney, 1994
The one with the race cars. The whole enterprise starts getting a little old here, but still a lot of interesting imagery to keep one occupied.

Cremaster 5 (R)
Matthew Barney, 1997
I thought this one was pretty boring. But overall I'm glad I had a chance to see the whole series.

Breathless (R)
Jean-Luc Godard, 1960; French, English
I had never seen this one before. It's good, but I wasn't floored. I guess when soemthing's been so influential for so long it can't possibly seem so revolutionary anymore. I think my favourite moment was early on, when the main character suddenly break the fourth wall, saying something poetic and oh-so-French right to the camera before telling the audience, "You can go screw yourself."

Winter's Bone
Debra Granik, 2010; English
Again, good but not great. This is being hailed by many critics as the best film of the year. Maybe it is. I mean, it didn't blow me away, but I'm hard pressed to find any flaws with it. And the lead actress's performance really is as good as everyone's saying it is. Plus, hey, Laura Palmer.

Underground (R)
Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler, Mary Lampson, 1974; English
An obscure documentary about the Weather Underground, who were all fugitives being sought by the FBI when interviewed for the film. A bit meandering, but an important time capsule. It's hard to imagine this sort of extreme political activism happening today, schizophrenics in Arizona notwithstanding.

Cyrus
Jay and Mark Duplass, 2010; English
Hilarious. Jonah Hill's performance is staggeringly weird; I really hope he gets a Best Supporting nomination. A positive indicator of the possibilities when the mumblecore generation get real budgets and actors.

Mother and Child
Rodrigo García, 2009; English
A great movie trapped inside of an OK movie, struggling to get out. There's some good storylines, writing and acting here, but the whole thing is way too heavy-handed. Really, couldn't Garcia have just let Annette Bening's performance breathe a little?

Kynodontas (Dogtooth)
Giorgos Lanthimos, 2009; Greek
The most freakishly weird movie of the year. In a way, it's the kind of Michael Haneke movie that Haneke himself may have finally outgrown.

The Kids Are All Right
Lisa Cholodenko, 2010; English
Revolutionary because it's so middle of the road. It's about a gay couple, but their sexuality is never even addressed as any sort of political or social issue. With all that stripped away, we're left with a straightforward family comedy about a slightly non-traditional family.

Inception
Christopher Nolan, 2010; English
This is one of those movies that's really good until you start thinking about it later, at which point it all sort of falls apart. For one thing, they cross the streams one too many times, so to speak. First if you get shot in a dream you wake up, but in this dream you go into a coma. First you should never use actual locations as dream locations, but in this dream you have to. I'm willing to accept just about any premise in a sci-fi story as long as it's kept consistent. Also, the climactic action sequence was too long, the build-up not long enough. Seriously, I wanted more investigation, less action. The set-up felt a bit rushed, whereas the actual mission was just endless.

Life During Wartime
Todd Solondz, 2010; English
I watched Happiness for the first time just a few days before watching this sequel, so I was able to recognise all of the characters and references pretty easily. An enjoyable film, but without a character as singularly challenging to the audience as Dylan Baker's in Happiness. Still, the little kid was pretty intriguing.

Pauline à la Plage (Pauline At the Beach) (R)
Eric Rohmer, 1983; French
They showed a whole pile of Eric Rohmer movies at Lincoln Centre for like a month, but this was the only one I caught. I'd never seen any of his movies before, and was pleased with this one. It's pretty light as subject matter goes, but the way he draws relationships between characters is effortless and masterful.

Nadja (R)
Michael Almereyda, 1994; English
A New York 90s indie time capsule, from the cast to the music to the jokes about Brooklyn. Drags a bit in the third act, but worth seeing just for the use of Pixel Vision.

Mesrine: L'instinct De Mort (Mesrine: Killer Instinct)
Jean-François Richet, 2007; French, Spanish, English
A good solid crime drama with a fantastic performance at its centre. Vincent Cassel is at once terrifying and irresistable.

Mesrine: L'Énnemi Public No. 1 (Mesrine: Public Enemy No. 1)
Jean-François Richet, 2008; French
At some point here the story starts to drag a little, as it devolves into little more than one lurid crime setpiece after another. Worth seeing if only for the presence of Ludivine Sagnier, my favourite holy-shit-she's-hott actress of the year.

Catfish
Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman, 2010; English
I liked this movie, and for the most part I believe that it's true. The only part I think they might have fudged is when they sudfdenly discover all of her lies over the course of one night in Colorado. I'm guessing they knew some of that stuff already and decided to shoot a scene for the sake of the story. Other than that, I have no trouble believing it.
The problem I had with it was their decision, when editing the film, to focus on their own experience, rather than use the footage as an opportunity to paint a portrait of the film's true heart and soul, Angela. She strikes me as a genuine outsider artist in the most fascinating sense, as in like Henry Darger-level, and I don't mean her paintings. I think the community of characters she has created (and is probably still creating) online is an immersive installation piece in a medium we have yet to even name. The filmmakers were not her victims, as they seem to be trying to make themselves out to be; they were her audience.

Never Let Me Go
Mark Romanek, 2010; English
While the sci-fi elements of the story present an intriguing premise that could have been explored further, the film instead focused on a somewhat dreary love triangle. But the idea of making a sci-fi film with almost no visual effects is an interesting challenge. Beautifully shot, by the way, as anyone familiar with Romanek's music videos would expect.

Enter the Void
Gaspar Noé, 2009; English
One of the most self-indulgent films I've ever seen, and I mean that in the best possible way. After the seizure-inducing opening credits, the opening scene in which the protagonist smokes DMT and just trips out on spacey visuals for about ten minutes sets the pace of the film so well that I was actually a little disappointed when the story was finally introduced. Love it or hate it (and I don't think anyone was on the fence about this one), you can't tell me you've ever seen anything like it before.

demonlover (R)
Olivier Assayas, 2002; French, Japanese, English
I loved this movie, absurd premise and all. Complex plot, characters whose motives and allegiances keep shifting, everything you want in a smart thriller. I also liked the global aspects of the film, a common thread of Assayas's more recent work. Besides the location shoots in both Tokyo and Paris, the film contained enough spoken English and French that neither can really be called the film's primary language.

Punching the Clown
Gregori Viens, 2008; English
A no-budget comedy about a struggling novelty songwriter starring a struggling novelty songwriter playing himself. I don't care for the musical genre, and had a lukewarm response to the film for pretty much the same reason: like most novelty songs, it's good for a few chuckles but not funny enough.

Fin août, début septembre (Late August, Early September) (R)
Olivier Assayas, 1998; French
Earlier Assayas in a more conventional French mode. A circle of friends lives, loves and copes with one of the group's terminal illness. A well-written and well-acted drama that dragged just slightly.

Four Lions
Chris Morris, 2010; English
If you're not familiar with Morris's previous work, go to a bootleg website and find some torrents of his British TV shows, specifically Brass Eye and Nathan Barley. As a brilliant and fearless satirist, a quirky comedy about a group of bumbling, slapstick English Muslims looking for a way to become martyrs by blowing up some infidels seems like a natural fit for him. Works in a lot of ways you wouldn't have expected.

Fair Game
Doug Liman, 2010; English
What seems on the surface a good, solid Hollywood political drama is actually a rather angry film, with Joe Wilson painted as a crusading hero, Valerie Plame the unfortunate victim of his tireless efforts to expose the truth. Highlights the underlying tragedy of our ongoing war in Iraq, in case we'd forgotten.

Tiny Furniture
Lena Dunham, 2010; English
A charming debut in the quirky-indie-comedy genre. Dunham is certainly a talent to be watched, but what subject matter will she turn to when she's exhausted the possibilities of talking about herself?

Raging Bull (R)
Martin Scorsese, 1980; English
Bill Simmons, who's seen a lot of them, believes that rewatchability is one of the primary criteria for a great sports movie. For this reason he says that Raging Bull doesn't cut it: certainly it's an admirable cinematic achievement, but too painful an experience to watch over and over. I disagree. I went through a phase when I watched this movie several times a week. Granted, this was a particularly dark period of my life, when I was subsisting largely on White Castles and cheap Scotch, but Raging Bull was there for me, and that's what counts.

The Agony and the Ecstacy of Phil Spector
Vikram Jayanti, 2008; English
The fascinating subject matter overcomes the poor documentary construction and leaves a film that is riveting in spite of itself.

Love and Other Drugs
Edward Zwick, 2010; English
For some reason the reviews led me to believe this was a smart indie comedy, but it's really a pretty generic Hollywood rom-com. A few bonus points for some smart criticism of America's pharmaceutical-industrial complex, but neither that nor the repeated exposure of Anne Hathaway's breasts (not to mention Jake Gyllenhall's buttocks) is enough to save the film.

Waste Land
Lucy Walker, 2010; English, Portuguese
This documentary about an artist making portraits out of trash from the world's largest landfill is surprisingly heartwarming, but also a bit unchallenging. There's very little conflict here, which is certainly not the fault of the filmmakers. It's a documentary; some things in life go off without a hitch.

True Grit
Joel and Ethan Cohen, 2010; English
After the delightfully weird and sadistic A Serious Man, the Cohens have swung back to mainstream entertainment mode, and done a fine job of it. The real star of the film is the idiosyncratic language, rescued from the original novel after having been watered down by the earlier adaptation starrting John Wayne. The cast clearly relishes chewing on some of the more convoluted turns of phrase, and it imparts a unique tone to what might have otherwise been a fairtly straightforward Western.

Favourites (new releases only):
Top five of the year in no particular order
Mother, Please Give, Cyrus, Dogtooth, Enter the Void, Four Lions
(I know that's six, I couldn't choose one to leave out.)

Lead performances:
Kim Hye-ja in Mother, Catherine Keener in Please Give, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, Vincent Cassel in both Mesrine movies, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit

Supporting performances:
Niels Arestrup in A Prophet, Amanda Peet in Please Give, John Hawkes in Winter's Bone, Jonah Hill in Cyrus, Nigel Lindsay in Four Lions

Ensemble performances:
Everybody in The Kids Are Alright and Life During Wartime was really good.

Cinematography:
Micmacs, Never Let Me Go, Enter the Void

Editing:
Inception, Enter the Void
And by the way, regardless of whatever complaints I had about Inception overall, I had no trouble following the five simultaneous storylines, in which time itself is moving at a different pace in each, during the climactic sequence. If that doesn't win the Oscar for editing, then I have no idea what an editor does.

One more interesting note: six of the new releases listed above were directed by women. Other than one co-director on a documentary, none of the repertory films were. This could mean that the selection process for the canon is heavily phallocentric, but I doubt it; I think there are just far more female directors nowadays. A good trend.

Movie review: The Agony and the Ecstacy of Phil Spector

2010-12-13T23:47:00.002-05:00

Phil Spector is the most important record producer in the history of Western popular music. And he would be more than happy to elaborate on that importance for you. Spector agreed to be interviewed extensively for this documentary during his first trial for the murder of Lana Clarkson (the trial ended in a mistrial; Spector was tried two years later and convicted). During this time, he explains why Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson are overrated, why Martin Scorsece and Robert DeNiro owe him their careers, and compares himself to Miles Davis, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Johann Sebastian Bach. All while protesting the various injustices of his concurrent trial.

Director Vikram Jayanti has stitched together these and some archival interviews, footage from the trial and vintage perormances of Spector's best-known hits into an oddly directionless film that seems to be trying to be several different movies at once, but never tries very hard. He presents some of the details of the murder case and sort of explains most of them. He plays a bunch of Spector's songs while running quotes of critical praise on the screen.

So what is this movie? Is it the story of the trial? Yes and no. Jayanti shows lawyers and witnesses testifying about just enough contradictory evidence to sow doubt in the viewer's mind as to Spector's guilt or innocence, but never makes any attempt to build a story out of the footage. So, OK, no. There's an occasional subtle parallel between the trial footage and the song being discussed, like when John Lennon's "Woman Is the N----r Of the World" plays under testimony about Clarkson's flagging career and struggles with depression and substance abuse, but it hardly qualifies as a running theme. Likewise, the critical appraisal of Spector's music feels underdeveloped. The quotes shown on screen are all from the same critic, and no one other than Spector is interviewed.

Still, the film remains compelling and often riveting due to the presence of Spector himself, surely one of the 20th century's great weirdos. At one point the interviewer(s? I can't tell if there are one or two voices from offscreen) takes what seems like a pretty big risk by asking Spector if his notorious afro hairdo was intentionally funny. Spector, surprisingly, concurs, and explains that the coiffure was intended as a tribute to Ludwig van Beethover, Albert Einstein and Detroit Pistons power forward Ben Wallace. And that hardly stands out as the most ridiculous statement to leave his mouth.

Spector is currently in jail, serving a 19 year sentence for the murder of Lana Clarkson. We can't mourn the loss of his continued musical output, as the last album he produced was released in 1980; he has been little more than an eccentric recluse ever since. But as Hunter Thompson once defiantly assured himself before an impending arrest, "Many great books have been written in prison." Please, Phil, if you're reading this (and I know you're not), use this time to crank out your memoirs. I'd read 'em.

Movie review: Tiny Furniture

2010-12-09T16:24:00.002-05:00

If you met Lena Dunham for the first time without knowing who she is, you might be surprised to find that she's best known for her body. This is because a video Dunham posted of herself in a bikini, bathing and brushing her teeth in a fountain on the campus of Oberlin College, received well over a million hits on YouTube, and inspired a litany of somewhat mean-spirited comments questioning Dunham's qualifications for a career in lingerie modeling.

What's great about Dunham is that she doesn't seem to give a shit. In Tiny Furniture, which she wrote and directed, Dunham appears, at various points throughout the film, wearing only a shirt and underpants, wearing only a sheer body stocking, and even nude in the shower (from a tasteful distance). And yet it never seems as though she is rubbing her delightfully rotund ¹ and imperfect form in the viewer's face á la, say, Beth Ditto. Instead she seems not to even notice her own body. Whereas some women choose to proudly rebel against a society that teaches them to hate their bodies and to starve, wax, nip, tuck, bleach them to perfection, Dunham has chosen to simply ignore the whole thing and worry about something else.

Like what to do with life after college. Tiny Furniture may be one of the most openly autobiographical "fictional" films ever made, and Dunham lays out the excrutiating details of what I assume is her life with a verve that would make Ross McElwee blush. Dunham plays Aura, who, like Dunham herself, has recently graduated from Oberlin College and moved back in with her mother in Tribeca. Her mother, an artist of some renown best known for her photographs of miniature furniture, is played not by a professional actress but by Dunham's own mother, an artist of some renown best known for her photographs of miniature furniture. Aura's sister is similarly played by Dunham's sister.

Beyond the film's verisimilitude, it is essentially a straightforward coming-of-age indie comedy. Aura reunites with Charlotte, her New York party-girl best friend, becomes estranged from Frankie, her bookish college best friend, gets a shitty job, quits her shitty job, and romantically pursues shitty men.

And while no one goes out of their way to make things any easier, the men in Aura's life are particularly awful. Jed is a freeloading ingrate who stays at Aura's (mother's) apartment, eats her (mother's) food, drinks her (mother's) wine and complains of having no money, all while sharing Aura's own bed without a hint of sexual reimbursement. Keith, on the other hand, is a manipulative sleaze who tries to get Aura to get him Vicodin from Charlotte, talks constantly of his problems with his girlfriend, then finally screws Aura in an abandoned parking lot. And no, not in a car. The scene is very cruelly and deftly presented as rock bottom for the main character. All this while Aura pines for her college boyfirend, a shallow hippie who moved out west after graduation to find himself. One hopes that Dunham has had better luck in the time since making the film. Lord knows Aura deserves better.

In short, the film is enjoyable if not earth-shattering, and makes the most of its genre's conventions without ever transcending them. It's in many ways the very definition of a promising first film. Based on this, I'd probably go see her next one.

Tangents & Clarifications

Full disclosure: I'm a sucker for big thighs, and think Dunham's kinda hott.[Return]

AFC Preview

2010-09-09T22:44:00.001-04:00

Okay, kickoff tonight, done procrastinating, let's do this. From left to right:

AFC West

No idea what to make of this division. You'd think it's easy because the Chargers are the only good team, but I think they may be in for a down year. For some reason, of the other three teams, Denver has the best odds to win the SB but the worst to win the division. Care to comment, Vegas?

Al Davis's Very Own Los Angeles Raiders Of Oakland

Win total: 6¹/₂
Division: 5-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
For some reason these guys are being picked to be decent this year, and by decent I mean maybe 8-8 if they're lucky. Did Tom Cable suddenly become a legitimate head coach? No, they just finally jettisoned JaMarcus Russell. Amazing to think that this team could probably prop up a department store mannequin under centre and get better odds than if Russell was starting. And that's no knock on Campbell, I like him, just not enough to close my eyes and picture him leading the 2010 Raiders to eight wins. I'm thinking more like 6-10 for the under.

The Los Angeles Chargers Of San Diego

Win total: 10¹/₂
Division: 5-13
Super Bowl Exelvy: 12-1
They should win this division by default, but I still can't help but see them falling off a little. I mean, at this point any rookie RB is an upgrade over the washed-up LDT, right? Their D was clearly a weak point last year and they've done little upgrade it. They lost their number one wide out (although Gates is admittedly a 1A). Their kicker's a headcase, that's gotta cost them a close game or two. How long before the team stops buying into Norv Turner's philosophy of consistently underachieving? How long before everybody just wishes Rivers would shut the hell up? I'm thinking 10- for a slight under. And another first round playoff loss. And a new coach in 2011.

The Denver Broncos

Win total: 7
Division: 7-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 75-1
These guys are being viewed as doormats, and it's hard not to see why after last year's collapse. Plus, like SD, their top wideout is also gone. Who gets more catches this year, Malcolm Floyd or Eddie Royal? I think I'm going with Royal for this one, because I think SD will run more than they did last year and because the Broncos don't have Gates. Anyway, I like Orton, I think he's underrated as a middle-of-the-pack game manager. I think this team's good enough to go 8-8. Over.

The Dallas Texans Of Kansas City

Win total: 6¹/₂
Division: 6-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
Interesting dark horse pick in some circles. I've read some sources with little enough faith in SD to pick these guys to take the division. I'm not gonna go that far, but I see no reason they can't go 8-8. Over.

AFC South

Toughest division in football? This one or the NFC East? Some might say the AFC East, but neither of the other two have an equivalent to Buf; even Jac's a fairly competitive squad. Still, the kings remain the kings until someone proves otherwise. And yeah, I know TN took the division title two years ago, but Ind still won 12 games that year.

The Houston Texans

Win total: 8¹/₂
Division: 7-2
Super Bowl Exelvy: 25-1
Every year these guys get picked by one prognosticator after another to finally get over the playoff hump and make it in as a 9-7 six seed. And every year they fall just short. Not me. At this point it's like trying to pick the year the Colts finally fall off. Just pick them to match last year's performance until they do otherwise. That's how I feel about the Texans. Until they actually make the playoffs, I'm picking them to miss 'em. Having said that... 9-7? It's what they put up last year, missing the playoff cut by tiebreakers. This is one of the toughest over-unders of the year. The reason I'm picking under is because I don't think Schaub and Johnson will match the monster numbers they put up last year, and I don't see the team having improved enough in any other area to make up for it. 8-8.

The Houston Oilers Of Nashville

Win total: 8¹/₂
Division: 4-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 40-1
Don't sleep on these guys; when was the last time Jeff Fisher put together two losing seasons in a row? Granted, Johnson's coming back to Earth, but if anything the tendency of opposing defenses to key on him will be a big advantage for Vince Young early in the season. Oak, Pit (without Ben Roethcheeseburger), @NYG, Den looks like a recipe to open with a hot streak and build from there. Remember, they won 13 games just two years ago with Kerry Collins at QB, and he's older than me. 11-5, easy over.

The Baltimore Colts Of Indianapolis

Win total: 11
Division: 5-11
Super Bowl Exelvy: 7-1
Most SB losers miss the playoffs the following year, but I mean, come on. This is the Colts we're talking about. They had a down year and only won the conference. last time they won less than twelve games... shit, I can't even remember. 12-4, over.

The Jacksonville Jaguars

Win total: 6¹/₂
Division: 18-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
Poor Jacksonville. This really isn't a bad team, they just can't compete in this division. Garrard's pretty solid; he'll never be great, but he's good enough to win a playoff game or two if they could make it that far. MJD held up to the feature back demands last season and didn't get overused, so he should be fine by October. This team could probably win the NFC West outright, but I can't see them better than third here. Still, 7-9? 8-8? Seems reasonable, and that's over.

AFC North

The Cincinnati Bengals

Win total: 8¹/₂
Division: 3-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 20-1
When was the last time these clowns had two good seasons in a row? They're really gonna hold off Pit and Bal to take the division title two years running? Doubt it. I picked these guys to make have a hot year too many times since the first year they made the playoffs with Palmer (the year of the infamous Kyle Vanden Bosch game), and I got burned a lot. Now I'm s'posed to be on board again? Let me make a bold prediction here: Terrell Owens will not play in another playoff game. 7-9? 8-8? Under either way. Sorry M—, I know you're believin' and I support that, I just can't join you. They're just too inconsistent, and I still don't think Marvin Lewis is a particularly good coach.

The Cleveland Browns Of Cleveland, Again

Win total: 5¹/₂
Division: 20-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
First off, I like Mangini. I think he had a tough situation in New York, I think he's an underrated coach who will at some point put together a couple good years in a row. Secondly, I think Holmgren definitely knows how to build a contender. Thirdly, I think this team will definitely compete in 2011. This year they'll come in last. They will, however, go 6-10 for the over.

The Pittsburgh Steelers

Win total: 9
Division: 14-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 20-1
This is another really difficult line, because they look kind of like a 9-7 team to me. I see a lot of people picking them as a playoff team, they'll be fine with Dixon, 2-2 before Ben gets back, etc. He did almost beat Bal last year, after all. And yeah, Tomlin's a strong coach, and yeah, they're rarely bad two years in a row, and yeah... okay, fine: 10-6, over.

The Cleveland Browns Of Baltimore

Win total: 10
Division: 2-3
Super Bowl Exelvy: 8-1
Easy pick, these guys are gonna be great this year, I know they're a hot pick, but I'm all over that bandwagon. Flacco's only gonna get better, he's got better passing weapons now, Rice is in his prime. The secondary was the weak spot last year and they haven't done much to address it, but it seems like they just beefed up their pass rush instead. Whatever works. 12-4, easy over.

AFC East

Okay, saved my boys for last. I'd just like to say that as I'm typing this, kickoff for the MN@NO game is less than ten minutes away. So I was late. Sue me. I'd also like to say this: most prognosticators are picking the Jets to take this division. Some are picking the Pats. I'm gonna go out on a limb and take the Fins. Why play it safe?

The Miami Dolphins

Win total: 8¹/₂
Division: 3-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 25-1
Okay, halftime of the MN@NO game, let's finish this thing off. Henne's got a year under his belt, got Marshall to throw it to. Parcells knows what he's doing as far as putting a team together. 10-6, over.

The Buffalo Bills Of Toronto

Win total: 5¹/₂
Division: 25-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
Chan Gailey has to be the most uninspired coaching hire in the NFL since... Dick Jauron. What a mess. I caught a ride home from my fantasy draft with my buddy D—, a lifelong Bills fan, and we got to talking about the future of the team. So depressing. D— says he'll stay with them till the end, and that the end is coming soon. Ralph Wilson's kids have shown no interest in taking over the team, so at some point he'll die and the team will be sold and moved, maybe to Toronto, maybe somewhere else. Did you know Wilson's never even lived in Buffalo? Has no interest in the city. Anyway, once their gone D— says he'll just pick another team. The fact that he's already resigned to this is the saddest part. 2-14, way under.

Your New York Titans Of New Jersey

Win total: 9¹/₂
Division: 7-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 10-1
I told my dad this season holds the new record for the earliest I've ever given up on the Jets. I decided they weren't making the playoffs before the draft. Too much hype, too many aging former stars (Redskins, anyone?), too many HBO cameras. Sanchez is just not good enough yet. I think the Rex years are gonna be good in the long run, but something about this season just strikes me as too much, too soon. 8-8, under.

The Boston Patriots Of New England

Win total: 9¹/₂
Division: 6-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 14-1
I'm gonna go on record right now as saying that the magical Brady-Belichick combo doesn't win another title. 2007 was their last great year and they couldn't even finish that one out. Moss is getting older, the defense is weak, and they've produced very few effective players in the last three drafts. Chad Jackson? Laurence Maroney? They'll keep retooling for a couple years and making the playoffs most of the time, but it's all downhill from here. Great memories if you’re a fan, and still a tough out, but nothing more than that. Not their year this year, not their year next year. 9-7, under.

2010 NFL preview – NFC

2010-09-07T04:23:00.004-04:00

Well well well, another NFL season is upon us and the IT department at work still hasn't blocked Sportsbook.com. So that's our odds source. Just after midnight on a Tuesday morning, so that leaves us about two and a half days until kickoff. Since it's a MN-NO rematch, we'll do the NFC first. From left to right on the map:

NFC West

The most stable quarterback position in this division belongs to the 49ers, who are starting Alex Smith. Seriously, that's what we're looking at here. Basically, it comes down to this: you have three potential "step-up" guys at the position. Bradford, Whitehurst (after Hasselbeck gets hurt) and Max Hall (after Anderson gets benched). If you think any one of these three has a breakout year, you pick that team to take the division. If not, you pick the Niners to win it by default.
The other interesting note here is that this year the NFC West and AFC West play one another. That cuts down on really brutal travel dates and pads everybody's schedules with more mediocre teams. Basically, if any of these teams turns out to be halfway decent they could coast to ten or even eleven wins. Then lose at home in the first round to a feisty wild card team that gets hot down the stretch. Watch for it.

The Seattle Seahawks

Total wins: 7
Division: 9-2
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
You guys all remember the Pete Carroll reigns in Boston and Jersey, right? Three years, 24-24, fired. Done it before and he'll do it again. Already stocking up on ex-Trojans who couldn't quite cut it at the pro level elsewhere, like perennial attitude problem Mike Williams. Check your voicemail, Leinart. That strategy worked so well for Steve Spurrier, so why not?
Nothing about their schedule jumps out at me, other than the NFCS games being oddly backloaded; the first one is @NO on 21 Nov. Everything about this team looks 8-8, but I'm not even confident enough about that to really pick it. Over by default, but don't tell me later that I told you to bet that. Ixnay on the division, no way on the SB.

The Santa Clara Forty-Niners

Total wins: 9
Division: 5-9
Super Bowl Exelvy: 25-1
Heavy bandwagon team, favoured to win the division presumably by sole virtue of their aforementioned QB stability. I always liked Smith when he came out of Utah because his reputation held that he was he was really book-smart, but I guess that's not an especially useful trait in pro football.
Their toughest obstacle is their schedule. They play NO, @Atl and Phi within their first five games, then @GB, @SD and AZ twice in their final six. Too much potential to fall into a losing streak there. These guys also look 8-8 to me. Under. I wouldn't bet any team to win this division, let alone the SB. Still, I guess I'm picking these guys for the division by default.

The Chicago Cardinals of Phoenix

Total wins: 7¹/₂
Division: 13-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 75-1
Well, their starting QB retired and the QB-in-waiting got cut, so they’re going with a guy who couldn't hold on to the starting job in Cleveland. But hey, don't forget, they also lost their second wideout and their defense and running game were never strong points either. And yet somehow I, uh... no. If they had a nice easy stretch in the middle of the schedule I could see them getting hot, but they don't. 6-10. Under.

The Los Angeles Rams of Saint Louis

Total wins: 4¹/₂
Division: 16-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 200-1
Poor Steven Jackson. What the hell is still doing on this team? He's a terrific back whose prime is being completely squandered. By the time this franchise is competitive again, even by the most optimistic estimates, he'll be just about ready to hit the wall. So why haven't the Rams traded him? There must be trading partners out there who would pay dearly for a premium back, and Lord knows the Rams could use as many excess draft picks as they can get. There's really no reasonable explanation for this not happening. Anyway: 4-12. Under.

NFC North

Tough interdivisional draw here: these teams will all play the AFC and NFC Easts, which boast at least three playoff contenders each. In fact every team on that slate but Buffalo is a tough out. So take your expectations for each team and knock off one or two wins.

The Minnesota Vikings

Total wins: 9¹/₂
Division: 2-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 10-1
Sorry Pete, but I think these guys are screwed. I can't see Favre having another season like the last one, and I think it'll be too late by the time Rice gets back. Plus, and I think this bears mentioning, Favre was accused of being detached from his teammates in his final seasons with the Pack and one year with the Jets. Then last year he's one of the boys again. Well of course he was; the team was winning. Will he be everybody's favourite uncle when they lose three in a row? Supposedly Favre finally got dragged back up north from his farm by his three best friends on the team, one from each unit: Jared Allen (D), Steve Hutchinson (O) and Ryan Longwell (ST). What's the common thread there? Favre's best friends on the team are old white guys. The majority of NFL players are not. I just think that Favre's inability to connect with his teammates on any meaningful level off the field has the potential to become a glaring lack once the good times grind down, which they never did last year. Watch this one. 8-8 at best, maybe worse, definitely under. I don't even think they'll come in second.

The Green Bay Packers

Total wins: 10
Division: 4-7
Super Bowl Exelvy: 7-1
Everybody expects these guys to waltz to a division title and I'm no exception. Given my expectations for a collapse in MN, that leaves them with exactly no competition. The aforementioned division pairings make the schedule a little tougher, but let's face it, this is an elite team that should have no trouble handling mid-level wild card contenders like Mia and NYG (both at Lambeau). 11-5, maybe even 12-4, over. Take those division odds, too. They'll win it by a resting-starters-in-December margin. I even like those SB odds.

The Chicago Bears

Total wins: 7¹/₂
Division: 6-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 40-1
Don't believe the hype. Yes, Mike Martz will install an up-tempo, pass-heavy attack, but that just means Cutler will have more chances to throw interceptions. Everything about this team says mediocrity, but I think a brutal stretch at the end of the schedule dooms them. I'm thinking 5-5 with playoff hopes alive after Thanksgiving, but Phi, @Det, NE, @MN, NYJ, @GB has serious 1-5 potential. Under.

The Detroit Lions

Total wins: 5¹/₂
Division: 18-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 100-1
I'm optimistic about this team. QB should be better, good rookie RB, top-tier number one WR, mid-level upgrades throughout the defense. They'll fall behind early just because they get all three divisional road games in the first four weeks, but if their coach can hold them together they could scratch out six wins. Maybe. Over.

NFC South

Every time I read about this division I am reminded that no team has ever won it two years in a row. I say Atlanta continues that trend this year. Not mentioned as often: all four teams have made the SB within the last twelve years. Probably meaningless.

The New Orleans Saints

Total wins: 10¹/₂
Division: 1-2
Super Bowl Exelvy: 7-1
When you get down to it, this team has a great QB, just-above- to just-below-average everything else, and no glaring weaknesses. Add to that a strong coaching staff and... well that's how far a great QB can take you. Everything else is just filling in the blanks. My point is that the Saints had a great season last year but they don't look dominant for the long haul. They didn't even look great at this time last year; they just had a great season. And I'm not trying to take an ounce of that away from them, I'm just saying this team is not a dynasty and will most likely regress to the mean this year. They might start hot, but I think their home game against Atl week 3 shows who's the stronger team this year. You can bet that game early, by the way. Falcs are getting 6¹/₂. Take it. Anyway, Saints: 10-6, under.

The Atlanta Falcons

Total wins: 9¹/₂
Division: 19-10
Super Bowl Exelvy: 20-1
Not a radically different team than the Saints, really. Everybody's decent, nobody's great. Saints have the edge at QB, obviously, and head coach. Falcs get the edge in O-line continuity, though, and that's a hidden factor that can make a huge difference. Bounce-back year for Ryan, off year for NO, division title at 11-5. Over.

The Tampa Buccaneers

Total wins: 5¹/₂
Division: 15-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 200-1
I'm gonna go ahead and call this team the biggest mess in the league. Buf's sort of reliably crappy, Det's finally putting some pieces together, StL at least seems to have a plan in place, Cle's got Holmgren in the driver's seat... what the hell is TB doing? Did you know Raheem Morris still hasn't hired a defensive coordinator? Think for a minute: how many players on this team were drafted in your fantasy league? Maybe Caddy Williams, maybe Kellen Winslow, definitely no wideouts. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this team is not only terrible this year, I think they'll be terrible the following year as well. Write it down. 3-13, under.

The Charlotte Panthers

Total wins: 7
Division: 10-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 75-1
This team went 8-8 last year. Their only major roster loss is Julius Peppers, who was overrated anyway. They lost a bunch of mid-level free agents on defense and added several more to replace them. They still have two solid running backs, one great wideout, a top-notch o-line and good coach. The one thing you can say for sure is that, with the departure of Jake Delhomme, they are almost certain to commit fewer turnovers this year. They won't be great, but I just can't see them being much worse than 8-8. Over.

NFC East

A monstrous division at first glance, in which all four teams could not only win it but even win a playoff game or two. But close inspection reveals potential cracks in each. I have no idea who will win it, but I think it won't be Dallas. That's just too easy. I'm gonna go out on a limb and pick the 'Skins, for three reasons: (a) McNabb bias; I've always liked the guy; (b) best odds, so if they do win it's a decent payoff; and (c) why not? Are the other teams that much better? Every year there's a surprise team or two. You can't tell me there's no chance it'll be DC this year.

The Dallas Cowboys of America

Total wins: 10
Division: 1-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 8-1
Because Wade Phillips isn't as bad as his rep, but just isn't good enough. Williams and Bryant makes two nutjobs at wideout. Because Jerry Jones has been announcing his own plan for the RB rotation in interviews. Because there's uncertainly at he kicker position, which is just asking for at least one close lost on a missed field goal. But for one reason more than any other: because Tony Romo has a terrific golf handicap. And if he spends that much time on the links, he doesn't spend enough in the film room. 9-7, under. Merry Christmas, Wade. Here's your pink slip.

The Redskins of Columbia

Total wins: 7¹/₂
Division: 6-1
Super Bowl Exelvy: 30-1
So much to like here. I just think all the new parts fit nicely. The two main backs (Fast Willie got cut) may be on the downside, but the coach is great at splitting carries, and that'll keep everybody healthy. The OLT's a rookie, but the QB still moves outside the pocket well. Plus he's well-suited to the coach's offense. Most of all I just think this is the one team in the division that doesn't look like they're about to take a step back. 10-6, over for my favourite bet of the preseason.

The Philadelphia Eagles

Total wins: 8¹/₂
Division: 14-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 30-1
It's hard to really bet against Andy Reid. Say what you will about his clock management (and many have), but his teams are always well-prepared and competitive. The guy seems to know what he's doing on a year to year basis. That's why I feel like giving him the benefit of the doubt on the QB switch. The Iggs finally have solid young skill guys on offense, which McNabb got by without for years. I have no trouble believing that Reid can go 10-6 with his new QB and the same old stalwart defense. Over.

The New Meadowlands Giants

Total wins: 8¹/₂
Division: 14-5
Super Bowl Exelvy: 20-1
When the going got rough last year these guys really started to look like a team that was tuning out the coach, which is a worrying sign going forward. They were pretty banged-up last year, especially on D-line, which has been the team's biggest strength in the Coughlin era. But most of the guys who got hurt are still under 30, so that was probably a fluke, not a sign of a veteran team in physical decline. It's more the O-line they need to worry about, at least as far as age goes. Other than that... good QB with solid wideouts, more reloading on the D-line in the draft, proven coach... why does this look like an 8-8 team? I can't explain it, but my gut says under and I see no reason not to trust it.

Brief Review Of Hideous Movie

2009-10-20T20:44:00.004-04:00

KIDDING! I just liked the way the joke worked. I just saw Jahn Krasinsky (main guy on American The Office)'s adaptation of David Foster Wallace's short story collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. Get it? My joke, I mean.

The flick's not bad. It's not great. It's OK. Only a few days left at the IFC on 6th so I figured I'd better see it.

The "plot" concerns a grad student interviewing men about relationships (and a few other topics) for a nebulous research project about feminism. There's a few scenes about her own relationship ending and a few more about an overzealous student of hers and his shocking paper, but there's really not much of a story per se.

You can kind of tell that it's a first-time film written and directed by an actor. It's got a great cast of indie film (and rock! Duder from Death Cab!) vets; they each take turns addressing a juicy monologue to someone just to the left of the camera; and there's some clumsy "arty" editing with a few heavy-handedly ironic cuts.

So overall it's a little insubstantial as a movie, and I probably wouldn't recommend it too highly to a non-Wallace fan. But as a fan letter-slash-loving tribute to Wallace I think it's worth seeing. Krasinsky certainly doesn't desecrate the man's work, and is reportedly a big fan. He shows up at all the conventions, and has spent several years making it his own pet project to get Wallace's work to the screen (big or small). The closing credits start with a great Wallace quote. There's a copy of Infinite Jest on a table behind the desk in Tim Hutton's office (look for it). Details a fan would insert for other fans to recognise. As a fan, it made me happy. Definitely puts Krasinsky in the upper tier of the list of people I'd like to see develop the Jest as a 30-hour HBO miniseries.

The NFL 2009 Previews: NFC Edition

2009-09-13T03:11:00.002-04:00

Cuttin' it kinda close this year! The games all kick off in less than twelve hours and here I am banging out a bunch of half-assed picks. But hey, what the hell, I've got the brand new Stone Roses reissue on the turntable and nothing better to do. The record, by the way, sounds terrific. The snare in "She Bangs the Drum" still sounds really dated and 80s-ish, but the mastering job on "This Is the One" reveal it as the no-longer-secretly best jam on the record. Maybe save the singles, but maybe not.
Oh, one more thing: I bragged in the last post about how little research I did this year, and lo and behold M— caught a royal fuck-up in the AFC picks: I referred to Romeo Crennel as the coach of the Browns. Not only is he gone, he was replaced by the Jets' own Eric Mangini! How could I forget that? Whatever, either way, I maintain that Mangini was an underrated coach who had Favre forced on him and it cost him his job. Would they have made the playoffs with Pennington? Who knows, but he's never missed them when healthy (i.e., every other year; seriously, look it up). Anyway, since I like Mangini, and since it was that surprise playoff run his first year in New York that triggered all that "Mangenius" bullshit, I'm gonna flip-flop and pick the Browns as a big shocking over. So there. On with the show.

NFC East

Dallas

Wins: 9 Div: 11-4 SB: 16-1
The Wade Phillips era is not scheduled to end well in Dallas, and this could be the year it finally grinds to an overdue halt. It's only partly his fault, though; the fact remains that Tony Romo has a really good golf handicap, which is precisely why he will never win a title. Not that their schedule is that tough, but I think a killer home stretch (@NYG, SD, @NO, @Was and Phi) brings 'em in under. You can ignore those other bets.

New York

Wins: 10 Div: 7-4 SB: 12-1
I have a feeling that Eli is going to regress to basically the same level as his brother: a regular season wonder who racks up twelve wins a year and usually can't get it done in the playoffs. If you squint at their schedule you can see ten wins: @TB, @KC, Oak, AZ, Atl, @Den, Car and @MN makes eight, meaning they just need to split their division games to hit the over. You can take that division bet, too; I can't believe their odds are greater than one. I don't see them winning it all this year, though. Can't explain why, I just don't.

Philadelphia

Wins: 9¹/₂ Div: 9-5 SB: 12-1
Another year, another let-down. How about they start slow, catch fire late, grab a wild card, pull off a playoff upset or two, then crap out just as everybody starts believing in them. Sound familiar? You can throw in a re-run of last season's QB controversy, too, but with a better guest star this year. Still, tough line, because I see them winning just about nine or ten. I'll say over because I've always liked McNabb and I'm a sucker for this team as a result, but I'm not too confident about it. Ixnay on the other two bets, by the way.

D.C.

Wins: 8 Div: 6-1 SB: 40-1
Another tough one to call for emotional reasons: it's just so fun to root against Dan Snyder and 'Skins fans in general, but will they actually be any good? They kind of look like and 8-8 team anyway, but I say the tough division outweighs some of the AFCW bottom-feeders on their schedule; under. And no on the others.

NFC North

Chi-Town

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 9-5 SB: 20-1
A popular pick due to their "massive" upgrade at QB. I have feeling Orton was better than people realise, but as much as I'd love to pick against that snivelling little turd Jay Cutler, their schedule's just too soft to deny them the over. I mean, seriously, Det, @Atl, @Cin, Cle, AZ and @SF all in a row? How do they not go at least 5-1 for that stretch? Here's hoping for a playoff stinker in the first round. And no on the division, by the way. How are their odds better than GB's?

Detroit

Wins: 4¹/₂ Div: 15-1 SB: 150-1
I've said it before, I'll say it again: I miss Matt Millen already. The crappy drafts, the ridiculous coaching hires, the bizarre public gaffes: the ride was worth the fall, paraphraseth Whitney. So I guess this is the year they start turning it around, but keep in mind that a 4-12 season would be considered a success here. Five wins? Already? I mean, how many days did that Rome job take? They only play four really shitty teams (StL, Cle, @Cin and @SF), and I think StL's a sleeper anyway. Under, no and no.

Green Bay

Wins: 9 Div: 9-4 SB: 22-1
Their win line is higher that Chi's but their odds to win the division are longer. I don't get it either. These guys might be the first 6-10 team to be routinely picked as a powerhouse the following preseason, and I'm not sure I buy it all the way. Lots of 8-8 teams put up good fantasy numbers. Not enough creampuffs on the schedule. I'm gonna take the under, though not without some trepidation. Pencil them in to cruise to the division title and a playoff bye in 2010.

Minny

Wins: 9¹/₂ Div: 3-2 SB: 16-1
Easiest pick of the preseason. As a Jets fan, let me assure you that Brett Favre will have no trouble leading this team to the under in both dramatic and predictable fashion. The league even scheduled them to fit the script: open hot with @Cle, @Det and SF; things get shaky in October after a 1-2 run against Bal, @Pit, @GB; it all falls apart with @Car, @Chi and NYG. Under. Bank on it. There you have it folks: the most disappointing division of 2009.

NFC South

Atlanta

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 11-5 SB: 25-1
Whether you call it "coming back down to Earth" or "regressing to the mean" or "the sophomore slump", it all means the same thing. At one point they play @NE, @SF, Chi, @Dal, @NO, Was, @Car, @NYG. Not all great teams, but that's six road games out of eight, and the two home opponents are no slouches. Under, he typed confidently.

Charlotte

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 23-10 SB: 25-1
Tough call. Their schedule doesn't really tell me much either way. This team looks 8-8-ish as well. Let's just say under and move on.

Nawlins

Wins: 9 Div: 8-5 SB: 18-1
Popular pick to win the division and more, and it's easy to see why: all they need is a mediocre defense to go with that offense and they're monsters. The schedule starts with Det, @Phi, @Buf, NYJ, NYG and @Mia which, barring those two NFCE games, is pretty light. If they can pull off on of those tough ones that's a 5-1 start, and they never have any really rough stretches; all of the hard opponents are pretty well staggered. Assuming their division opponents are as mediocre as they look, they should have no trouble hitting the over. I'd be a little wary of the other two bets, though: despite what I just said, this is still a pretty close division, and I wouldn't want to pick a winner.

Tampa

Wins: 6 Div: 11-2 SB: 50-1
I've gotten burned picking these guys to do well in the past, but I don't think I'll be making that mistake this time around. Their rookie coach seems confused already; playing the entire NFCE in the first five weeks should get them off on the wrong foot, and I don't see them recovering until it's too late. Under it is.

NFC West

Zona

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 7-5 SB: 28-1
Y'know how the Super Bowl loser always seems to have a letdown year the following season and misses the playoffs completely? Keep in mind that the Cards weren't even that good last year, they just won a shitty division and got hot for a couple weeks in the playoffs. I'm not even gonna look at their schedule. Do you really expect anything better than 8-8 out of these guys? Under and let's move on.

Saint Louie

Wins: 5¹/₂ Div: 11-1 SB: 150-1
This is another team I've accidentally overrated in the past, but this year Aaron Schatz says they're gonna surprise some people, and I have a lot of faith in that guy. If I squint just right can I see an 8-8 team? I think I can. They're offense will be decent enough if it's healthy, and I trust Spagnuolo to whip the defense into average-ness. Combine that with a generally crappy division and they could overcome a generally ball-busting schedule to hit that over. Stranger things have happened. I even like their division odds, believe it or not.

San Francisco

Wins: 7 Div: 12-5 SB: 50-1
No QB, their rookie number one WR is holding out, and their coach signals his displeasure with the team's performance by taking off his pants. This team would be going nowhere even if they weren't stuck playing the NFCN and the AFCS. Under.

Seattle

Wins: 8 Div: 21-10 SB: 50-1
People seem to be picking them to win their division almost by default, which seems feeble until you look at their division. I mean, sure they should hit that over, but it's just as easy to imagine them becoming the first 8-8 division winner since re-alignment. Or, good Lord, 7-9. Let the hair pulling begin. See why I like those odds for StL to take the division? How hard can it be? Let me just conclude by saying that no team from this bunch is winning the big one. Enjoy the games, see you in January for the post-mortem.

The NFL 2009 Previews: AFC Edition

2009-09-10T18:48:00.003-04:00

Last minute! Kickoff's in less than two hours! I actually banged these out at work last night but forgot to post them until M— was goodly enough to remind me of my annual obligations.
The comments are a lot shorter this year, which reflects lighter research. Plus there's no additional comments about city histories, etc. In fact, the whole thing's just a little half-assed all around. But that's OK, it's putting one's reputation on the line with a pick that counts.
This is the AFC only because they're the ones playing tonight. NFC goes up over the weekend. Swear. Pinky swear.

AFC East

Buffalo Bills

Wins: 7¹/₂ Div: 9-1 SB: 50-1
These clowns actually enough mediocre opponents early (TB, @Mia, Cle and @NYJ in the first six weeks) that they could fool a bunch of people with a strong start. Reality sets in just before and after the bye week (@Car, Hou, @TN, @Jac) and I don't think they recover from the slide. Their first relevant free agent signing in about a decade will probably start running his mouth about the need to upgrade the QB position (no shit, Sherlock) around Thanksgiving, and closing with NE, @Atl and Ind should be enough to wrap up a few employment tenures around Orchard Park. Shame, too; if nothing else, they may have the best top three WRs in the league. Seriously. I'm going with the under for wins, and the other two aren't worth discussing.

Miami

Wins: 7¹/₂ Div: 8-1 SB: 50-1
Welcome back to Earth, intrepid wildcats! An opening slate of @Atl, Ind and @SD ought to shatter any lingering illusions of repeating last year's surprise division title, but I have a weird faith in this team to hang tough. If anything, I don't see them quitting, and they may have enough tricks up their sleeves to scratch out an 8-8 finish. It really depends on how well Chad Henne plays from Hallowe'en onward, and who can predict that? Still, I'll take the over. Why not?

Boston

Wins: 11¹/₂ Div: 4-19 SB: 9-2
Weird schedule. Other than Atl and Bal at home early on, they never really have two strong opponents in a row, unless you rate Mia higher than I do. I guess they'll be a tough out, and they have a way of making the Pats work for it. Everyone seems ready to hand this year's title to these guys, though, and I'm not sure I buy it. Yes, Brady's back, but expecting them to just pick up and continue from the end of 2007 ignores the fact that they jettisoned half their defensive starters this off season. I'm going under (barely), but that division crown's a lock. Skip the SB pick, odds are way too short, especially for a popular favourite.

New York

Wins: 7 Div: 8-1 SB: 45-1
I want to believe this is the start of a brand new era, I really do. My buddy J— made the interesting suggestion that they ought to start Clemens at QB for the first four inevitable losses (@Hou, NE, TN, @NO), then put in Sanchez in response to the fan grumblings about making a change. This way the kid gets a little more valuable clipboard time while the lame duck gets thrown to the wolves in his stead. Alas, the Ryan regime will be making no such canny moves, preferring instead to simply let the rookie sink or swim. I'm guessing sink. Under. And forget the other two.

AFC North

Baltimore

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 3-1 SB: 22-1
I'm picking the Falcons to regress to the mean this year, and you'd think the Ravens would be playing out the same storyline, what with the rookie QB sensation drifting into the inevitable sophomore slump, but the difference is that I really don't think the Ravens were playing over their heads last year. They're more like the Steelers after Big Ben's first year: this was a good team with all the pieces in place but QB, and one lucky guy got to stroll in and grab the reins. NFCN's a tough draw, but they still get half their schedule against Cin, Cle and the AFCW. This is the safest over bet yet. And while you're at it, don't be afraid to take that division bet. I wouldn't even rule out the Super Bowl, especially at those odds.

Cincinnati

Wins: 7¹/₂ Div: 9-1 SB: 80-1
If nothing else, this team should be improved over the past few seasons. But yeah, nothing else. The Bengals aren't going anywhere until Marvin Lewis gets fired, and I'm through being fooled by them in my preseason picks (although I think I said that about Zona last year). Under, no and no.

Cleveland

Wins: 6¹/₂ Div: 12-1 SB: 80-1
That line seems weirdly high considering how many people are picking them to finish with the worst record in the league. Seems like easy money, even though you and I both know there's no such thing. Still, can you really see these guys winning seven games? Me neither. Best case for Romeo Crennel is they finish strong (@KC, Oak and Jac: 3-0?) and Quinn starts showing promise. Worst case is he never gets a chance to coach that number one pick. Under, no and no.

Pittsburgh

Wins: 10¹/₂ Div: 2-5 SB: 9-1
Hard to bet against the champs, but harder still to repeat. These guys have a weird schedule, too. They get TN, @Chi and SD out of the way in the first four games. They still have both Bal games after the bye, but other than that GB looks like their only tough opponent in that stretch, and they get them at home. If they come out of the gate 3-1 or better they should cruise to the over, but I still like Bal to take the division. And skip that SB bet.

AFC South

Houston

Wins: 8¹/₂ Div: 3-1 SB: 40-1
Once again, everyone's picking them to break out this year and make their first ever playoff trip. Sorry, but I'll believe it when I see it. First off, I can't see them winning the division outright, which means they'll need to take a wild card spot, and even though AFCE and NFCW sound like a cakewalk slate of opponents, their schedule is staggered so they never really get an easy stretch. I guess @Cin, SF and @Buf are all pretty winnable, but other than that it's too easy to see them hovering around .500 all year before notching another 8-8 finish. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm still taking the under on this one.

Indy

Wins: 10 Div: 7-5 SB: 14-1
I've heard a lot of picks for these guys to finally have an off-year, but I'm not buying it. If anything, losing Marvin Harrison and getting Gonzalez more snaps is an upgrade at receiver, they've got new blood in the RB committee, the defense is healthy... and they really can't win another twelve? You can just put me down for over every year until Manning misses a start. This division's too tight to pick, but those SB odds are pretty tempting for a team that's in the running every year.

Jacksonville

Wins: 8 Div: 4-1 SB: 35-1
Tough call. What happened here? After they beat Pit in the playoffs two years ago they looked like contenders, but then last year... not so hot. I'm thinking they bounce back, but it's a tough division and man, that schedule ain't doing anyone any favours. Their easiest opponent before the bye is StL, and I think they'll be tougher than you think. They could easily go into their bye week 2-4 or worse. Still, things get easier in the second half, including one relaxing stretch (KC, @NYJ, Buf and @SF) that should get them back over .500 no matter how bad they start. My main worry is that the coaching staff isn't good enough to hold them together through a tough start. I'd like to pick them to go 8-8, but where's the fun in that? Fine, over, but nothing else.

Nashville

Wins: 9 Div: 5-2 SB: 20-1
Their schedule is way too tough and their QB way too old to repeat last year's success, but they'll still be tough out. Considering that 10-6 would be considered a disappointment, nine wins seems too low, so for that reason alone I'm taking the under, but I can't give them the other two bets.

AFC West

Denver

Wins: 6¹/₂ Div: 9-2 SB: 60-1
Their entire season hinges on whether Kyle Orton was a decent QB stuck in a crappy offense or a crappy QB, period. They open with @Cin, Cle and @Oak, so they should start 3-0, anyway. But a lineup of NE, @SD, @Bal and Pit might be too much for any team to survive, even with a bye halfway in between. I count about eight winnable games on their schedule, and I do think they'll be better than a lot of people are guessing, so I guess I'll take the over.

Kansas

Wins: 6 Div: 8-1 SB: 70-1
They've got the exact opposite of the Orton dilemma on their hands: was Matt Cassel a shaky QB in a good system or a good QB? I have a bad feeling about this one. How about playing the entire NFCE in four straight weeks and following it up with SD? Definitely some winnable games out there, but then again, I count the Chiefs as a "winnable game" on the Browns' schedule as well. Under, no and no.

Oaktown

Wins: 5¹/₂ Div: 10-1 SB: 100-1
Sometimes shit gets so ridiculous it becomes entertaining. Like I was kinda bummed to see Matt Millen go, or to see the Knicks finally fire Isiah, because I'm not a fan of either team and was just enjoying the headlines. I really hope the Cable era ends just as embarrassingly as the Kiffin one, if only so I get to watch creepy YouTube clips of Al Davis press conferences. I just started looking at the schedule and caught myself: why bother? Under, no and no.

Sandy Ego

Wins: 10¹/₂ Div: 2-7 SB: 10-1
Aaron Schatz is picking these guys to be absolute monsters, like 2007 Pats monsters. If that team won sixteen games, can't this one win twelve? Seriously, that line seems weirdly low. Over, and take that division bet, too. Super Bowl? I'd do it for 15-1, but 10 seems a little light.

I will get the NFC up before Sunday. I already have the lines and odds all typed up, I just need to add pithy comments. How hard can that be?

Movie review: The Wrestler

2009-01-31T02:12:00.000-05:00

We all have great moments in our lives. You have your first kiss, you lose your virginity. You get married, you have your first kid. You get into the college you really want, you land your dream job. If you're an athlete, maybe you make the varsity team or maybe you hit a home run in the World Series. If you're an actor, maybe you get the lead in the school play or maybe you win an Oscar. They can even arise from bad things. You finally take that last drink, you reconcile with an estranged relative, you save a baby from a burning building. If you're lucky, you have a lot of them and they're not too front-loaded.

Robin Ramzinski, aka Randy "the Ram" Robinson, had all his great moments many years ago, and now he's just running out the clock. He used to wrestle in arenas, now he's stuck in VFW halls. I saw The Wrestler a week ago, and it's stuck with me since then, and I think I've finally figured out why.

A lot of what I've read cites the scene at the autograph signing as the saddest scene. Randy, surrounded by fellow washed up wrestlers, signs Polaroids for petty cash and hawks his videocassettes. He looks around at the guy in the wheelchair, the guy with the fluid bags taped to his ankles, the guy taking a nap because he doesn't have any fans, and realises where all that glory has left him. But to me the scene that follows is the saddest: Randy's love interest, an aging stripper, makes the rounds of the club, offering private dances to guys who turn her down without taking their eyes off the younger, firmer talent on the stage before them.

I liked all the parallels director Darren Aronofsky draws throughout the film between wrestlers and strippers. They sell their bodies for mind-blowing amounts when they're young, naively believing the good times will never end, then suddenly have nothing left when they wake up old one cruel day. And no one cares. I liked the contrast between the relationship each has to their name: Randy clings to his, complaining when the supermarket where he toils during the week issues him a name tag that says "Robin"; while stripper Cassidy yearns to have someone just know her as Pam.

If you haven't seen the movie yet and want to, stop reading now.

Later that day after we saw the movie, my wife asked me what I thought happened after the ambiguous ending. Does he mount a triumphant comeback? Does he die in the ring? I told her I thought nothing special happened. He gets hurt again, maybe suffers another minor heart attack, decides to hang it up for good, spends the next few years drifting in and out of wrestling, partly because he can't stay away and partly because he needs the money, tries a few more times to reconcile with his daughter and keeps screwing it up, tries to make a go of it with Pam but it doesn't work out, and dies anywhere from five to thirty years later, depending on how cruel the fates are, lonely and broke.

What happens after isn't the point. The point is that when he leaps off that turnbuckle, when he flies through the air, when he delivers his final Ram Jam to the hated Ayatollah in the climactic moment of their long-awaited rematch, that's the last great moment in Robin Ramzinski's life.

Video round-up

2009-01-28T03:52:00.005-05:00

Busta Rhymes – "Arab Money"

The expression apparently means "a shitload of money", as in really, really rich, like a middle eastern oil baron. Racially offensive? Meh.

This is bullshit. Busta's spent the past decade putting out another shitty album every other year or so and they've all got one single and who cares what else. The single's always got whatever sonic trend was fresh five years ago (in this case, way too much autotuner) and a pale attempt to come up with a new dance or catchphrase or whatever else. Here most of the video is spent drilling the "dance" into the viewer's head in hopes of igniting a new club trend. The brief live clip at the end makes it seem as though it worked. Busta used to be a pretty talented MC; it's a shame to see him now putting so much effort into a transparent bid to be disposable.

As for the video... why is there a director credit? I understand putting one on some special-effects-laden epic, but this one looks like the biggest line item in the budget was for catering. It leaves few if any lasting impressions, other than I notice Busta's waistline betrays few recent missed meals.

Morrissey – "I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris"

Morrissey's 2004 comeback turned out to be one of the decade's most surprising and most welcome. The eight-year hiatus seemed to imbue him with a renewed passion both as a vocalist ("I Like You") and a lyricist ("This World Is Full Of Crashing Bores"), and he turned in some of his finest work since his mid-nineties heyday. Two albums later he seems to have fallen back into a rut. I haven't heard the new album yet, but if the single's any indication it won't be one for the canon. The riff is cute but inconsequential, while the lyrics come off like a rough draft. Other than the title (again, cute but inconsequential), there's not a single memorable line. For a guy who's set the bar as high as the Mozzer, this just won't cut it.

Mozzer's videos are almost universally shitty, as though the man can't be bothered to book more than a two hour shoot and the editor is left to make do with the few takes he gets. Moz lip synching in front of his bored looking bandmates/employees can ocassionally make for a watchable four minutes ("I Have Forgiven Jesus", for instance); the man is, after all, a fairly compelling performer. But this one reeks of a lack of effort.

Jonas Brothers – "Tonight"

I have a real weakness for teenpop, which, now that I think about it, started around the time I stopped eating sugar: coincidence or compensation? Having outgrown my youthful and foolish yen for some nebulous concept of authenticity, I've grown to appreciate a facile hook, no matter how prefab the packaging. I especially like this decade's dominant trend of replacing plastic synth-pop with plastic guitar rock, so the Jonases are OK with me. The singer's kind of weak, but what can you do?

Someone once pointed out to me that part of the formula for teenybopper hits is to have the chorus kick in at the 40-second mark; this one hits it right on the nose.

The video makes their concerts look like a blast. They jump around looking cute, spray the crowd with confetti and perform what look to be some fairly accomplished gymnastic moves. Not to mention the standard assortment of pyrotechnics and floating platforms. I'd totally go if somebody hooked me up with a ticket.

Incidentally, that gigantic black guy who follows them around and appears to be some sort of bodyguard? They have another video where he raps. I can't find the link now, hut it's worth watching. It has Robert Davi in it too. And David Carradine. Seriously.

Ladytron – "Runaway"

I like Ladytron. I like their new album. It sounds like the last one. And the last one sounded like the one before it, and that's OK.

This is at least the second single (or at least the second video I've seen), and I'm not sure it would have been my choice for a single, but it's alright.

The video's cool. It's simple, but with just enough of a how'd-they-do-that factor to the visual effects. Simple and effective.

Know what I notice though? There's four of 'em, right? Two chicks and two dudes. So I always figured they were like this electro-futurist andro-ABBA where the dudes play everything and the chicks sing. But I've only ever seen one of 'em sing, in any of their videos. The other one doesn't even lip-synch. She just poses. How stylised.

Rise Against – "Audience Of One"

This band is a perfect example of how splintered popular music has become. I have no idea who they are, but they have a bunch of videos. I feel like ten or fifteen years ago I would have known who they were because music media was more centralised; stuff like MTV and SPIN just covered everything. Now there's tons of these muscular/sensitive acts out there that sound exactly like this, like Seether for instance, and I've never heard any of them. Seriously, grunge is alive and well; check Billboard's Modern Rock chart if you don't believe me. Look at it! Incubus! Offspring! They still exist!

I have no doubt that this band is completely sincere and means everything they say, and the singer's got a strong, clear voice, and the song is well constructed and has good lead guitar work, and the whole thing does nothing for me. What can I tell you?

The video looks really meaningful, too. The singer doesn't look completely comfortable being a just-singer, almost like he'd rather be playing guitar, too, but his band already has two guitarists, and he's too nice to kick one of them out, so he secretly wishes one of them would just quit, but then they'd probably just have to get another one because the label wants him to be a just-singer. Speaking of which, that beard makes him look kinda old, and I'll bet the label's not too happy about that. "Fuck the suits," he thinks; "I'm keepin' the damn beard." And he juts his bewhisker'd chin defiantly.

R.I.P.: David Foster Wallace

2008-09-21T05:24:00.000-04:00

For while there I had this weird thing with writers and death. Like I would read one of their books and they would die. The only one I can remember offhand right now is Burroughs. I read Queer or Junky, I can't remember which, and he died a couple weeks later. I can't remember any of the others right now, but i know it happened about three times in one year and I definitely noticed the pattern. And I know it's just coincidence, I'm absolutely certain of it, but it was eerie nonetheless.

Up until a week ago I hadn't read a novel in about ten years. It's crazy to think about this, but it's true. Well, maybe eight years. But still, a long time. Friends and family would sometimes recommend stuff to me, but I wouldn't bother. I just wasn't into fiction.

I talked to J— at work about this and he gave me a weird theory that made me think for a minute. He said you can't trust non-fiction because the writer invariably tells the story through his own perspective. Like, objectivity is impossible, therefore all non-fiction is inherently bullshit. With fiction, on the other hand, you always know where you stand: the writer made it up, no grey area about it. I don't necessarily agree with this, but it's worth contemplating. J—'s a lot smarter than he thinks he is.

Anyway, I used to read fiction and really enjoy some of it. I actually read Infinite Jest, all 1,000 pages of it, footnotes and all, and loved it. I've tried to read Pynchon but, other then Lot 49, found his work impenetrable. Infinite Jest was clearly in the same category of works like Gravity's Rainbow but was, as I've told countless people to whom I've recommended it, surprisingly accessible. It had just as many big, complicated ideas as the work of plenty of other postmodernists, but the prose, on a sentence by sentence basis, could actually be understood by the average reader. As an average reader myself, maybe that's why I liked it so much.

I loved Wallace's non-fiction work as well, just as much, maybe more. OK, not more, but just as much. I got Consider the Lobster about a year ago and loved it, except for the fact that I had already read a few of the pieces. You see, I was so into Wallace's work that when I found out he had a new one out I would make an effort to find it and read it. I can still remember when I found out about that piece he write pseudonymously for Premiere about the porn awards. I was so excited I called K— in Atlanta and told him to go buy it, pronto, don't miss it, don't be fooled by the name, etc. He was living with E— at the time and she's a big fan, so I know she read it too. I bought the e-book of Up, Simba, printed it out at work, and gave a nice bound copy to G— so he could read it too. He was a fan like me. And when you were a fan of Wallace, you couldn't wait to share his latest missive with other fans. He was that captivating.

So when people like the wife or my mother would recommend novels to me, my stock response for a while was that I would read fiction again when Wallace released another novel. I didn't care for fiction, but if there was ever a follow-up to Infinite Jest I'd be first in line. I said it like I was half-joking, but I really wasn't joking at all. I don't give a shit about fiction (right now), but I'll read absolutely anything that comes out under Wallace's byline, fiction or non-.

So a couple weeks ago I got to talking to the aforementioned J— at work and mentioned that I had moved Paul Schrader's Mishima to the top of my Netflix list, based primarily on the recommendation of the Norwegian guy that directed Reprise, in a Times profile. J— was familiar with Mishima's work (I had never heard of him), and offered to loan me one of his books. I hemmed, hawed and replied whatever, and the following Tuesday night J— handed me his copy of The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea.

So I read it. After multiple years of saying I wouldn't read another novel until Wallace wrote one, I read it. It was OK. Not great, but pretty good. It was good but at the same time reminded me why I don't read fiction. A lot of delicate, austere prose without a lot of information. I like absorbing information. I guess that's why I prefer non-fiction.

A week later Wallace fucking killed himself. Less than a week. Less than a week after I finished the fucking book.

I finally read a novel and now the guy I was holding out for is gone. Who knows why? I'll bet when they go through his stuff they'll find a 5,000-page, woefully directionless, unfinished mess. And man, I'd love to read it.

I know it's just a coincidence, I know this has nothing to do with me, but I can't help thinking way in the back of my mind that he gave up because I quit holding out for him. I know it's bullshit, but it's my bullshit. I hadn't read a novel in years, I always said I was holding out for Wallace, then I finally read one and less that a week later he fucking killed himself. Let me wallow in my arrogant, self-centered misery a little, will you?

Life is shit. Enjoy it while you can.

Book review: Goodbye 20th Century

2008-08-30T19:37:00.001-04:00

I finished David Browne's new Sonic Youth bio a few weeks ago and tried to write up a quick review of it, but got blocked up for want of an angle. Two things jogged me today: first, the review of David Lebedoff's The Same Man in tomorrow's Times Book Review contained a single quote from George Orwell that crystallised what it is I liked most about Browne's book: "good prose is like a window pane".

What Browne does best is tell the band's story simply and directly, using language in a way that can best be described as transparent. Too many music writers nowadays (especially on the Internet, where editorial oversight is at a minimum at best; case in point: the run-on parenthetical you find yourself slogging through at this very moment) "learned" their trade worshiping at the twin altars of the inimitable Lester Bangs and the various apprentices of Robert Christgau's Village Voice music section, all of whom seem fascinated by their own ability to turn obscure cultural references into elaborate puns. Some of the latter are quite good at what they do, but their Pitchfork progeny are, to be blunt, not.

It occurred to me to contrast Browne's book with one of the most egregious examples of this tendency toward self-satisfied logorrhea writ large in book form: Jim Greer's unfortunate Guided By Voices biography. Whether his closeness to his subject doomed the book from the start isn't the point: his love of his own prose sinks the book before the end of the first chapter.

And the second thing that jogged me: as I was about to start writing, B— called to say he was at a bookstore in Boston where he had scored a cheap copy of Browne's book. He had also found a copy of Greer's Voices book and was asking whether it was worth picking up. Shit you not.

I think the biggest obstacle I had in coming up with something to say about the book was that Sonic Youth's story is... well, not boring, but hardly salacious. They're just not decadent rock stars, and never were. No one in either the band or its immediate circle of associates wound up strung out on drugs. Their are no illegitimate sonic youths of disputed parentage strewn across the tour map. The closest the band has come to a tragic death in the family was the murder of Black Flag roadie Joe Cole. Sure, he inspired a couple of songs on Dirty, but as far as the band's bio goes he's a marginal figure at best.

In fact, Sonic Youth may be the only band in rock history whose story is interesting solely for the enormous shadow they cast over basically all guitar-based music that developed in their wake. For any left-of-the-mainstream rock music from the early nineties onward, the band's influence is immeasurable. Guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo essentially dismantled rock guitar and built an entirely new vocabulary of playing and composing from the ground up. They are one of the only bands who ever truly started over from scratch. Which is not to say they didn't have influences, just that, from about their first full-length onward, they never sounded derivative of them. We may one day be saying the same thing about Radiohead in terms of compositional development, but I don't think their influence will be nearly as inescapable.

Browne doesn't really get into a technical or aesthetic analysis of the band's musical innovations, which is in some ways unfortunate because someone really needs to. It's an incredibly rich body of work that remains largely unexamined. Matthew Stearns similarly declined to attempt any sort of musical exposition in his 33¹/₃ volume on Daydream Nation. There's a great multi-volume dissertation out there waiting to be written, if anyone's up to it, something on the order of Tim Riley's peerless Beatles book or Ben Watson's exhaustive Zappa treatise.

What he does do is tell their story, plain and simple and with little flourish, in a way it deserves to be told. He does a terrific job of painting the scene of New York's overlapping downtown music and art scenes in the early eighties, when the ashes of punk gave way to the far more nihilistic sounds of the so-called "no wave" movement. Having lived in New York throughout the economic boom of the go-go nineties, it's hard for someone like myself to picture just how dangerous day-to-day living was in the East Village at the time, and how much this informed the sounds and styles of the time. In one particularly telling (and chilling) quote, artist Dan Graham notes of the androgynous fashions favoured by the scene's female contingent, "all the women back then were afraid of rape. These were sexually oriented women trying to look unsexual."

Browne also shines in detailing the band's often contentious relationship with Geffen Records after signing with the major label at the end of the eighties, just in time for the "alternative" music boom that followed. While the label tried mightily to break the band to wider audience through the first half of the decade, they remained (and still remain), for the most part, a cult band. Browne includes a few surprisingly dissatisfied quotes from Moore, who seems frustrated to this day at the band's failure to become bigger stars.

Nevertheless, the band re-upped their deal with Geffen in 1994, when their management team managed to score them a signing bonus well above that which their sales alone might have merited, based on the fact that the band had been a major factor in the decisions of cash cows Nirvana and Beck to sign with the label. So in a way, being the coolest kids in school did pay off to some extent.

The book comes to a close following the release of 2006's Rather Ripped, the final record in their renegotiated Geffen obligation, a turning point which leaves the band's future in question. Browne hints that it may be their final album, but that's probably wishful thinking on his part, hoping that his book will wind up being the band's complete story. As it happens, the band have announced plans to release a new album next spring on an as-yet-unnamed independent label.

And so the pattern into which they've settled in the last several years continues: new album every other spring or so, then touring in the summer, when the band members' kids are out of school. Hard to believe it's been over ten years now since the band's longevity and cult-hero status first began garnering them comparisons to the Grateful Dead.

Book review: Willie Nelson: An Epic Life

2008-07-23T02:53:00.002-04:00

Nobody's got a bad word to say about Willie Nelson. Not one of his numerous ex-wives, all of whom he has cheated on extensively. Not even the first couple, who knew him before he got really into smoking grass, back when he was a mean-ass drunk. That image you have of Willie as the nicest, coolest dude in the world? All true. Pretty much.

You'd think a guy that nice would make for a boring biographical subject, but Willie's been through a lot. Whereas most popular musicians are on the downside creatively when they pass thirty, Nelson achieved hardly any success before forty. The first few decades were filled with struggles to pay rent, struggles to hold his family together, struggles to sell songs, struggles to stay on the road. All of which makes the first half of Joe Nick Patoski's book a pretty strong read.

As for the second half? Depends on how much time you want to spend reading about a millionaire who just hangs out on his own private golf courses getting stoned all day. Nelson, who became renowned as a songwriter long before attaining any sort of recognition as a performer, has hardly written any songs in the past thirty years or so. Without any hardship, he says, he has little to write about.

Since signing with Columbia in 1975 and releasing the career-making Red-Headed Stranger album, he's recorded mostly other people's songs and reworked his own older material. Which is fine, because he's a terrific singer and brilliant performer with impeccable taste in material. He's also nothing if not prolific; in an appendix to the book, Patoski narrows down all his favourite Willie albums to a list of only the forty most essential.

It's also worth noting that, even in his heyday, Nelson did not write some of his best-known songs, including "Whiskey River", "If You've Got the Money, I've Got the Time" and "Poncho and Lefty". On the other hand, some of his best-known compositions were made famous by other performers, like "Crazy" and "Hello Walls". So he writes some, he sings some, they overlap here and there, and it's all part of the Willie canon.

The book's most irritating flaws are all a result of what feels like sloppy editing. There are factual errors minor (referring to rapper Ludacris as a "New York hip-hopper") and major (casually mentioning that 1985's Live Aid concerts benefitted AIDS research), none of which is particularly ruinous on its own, but which add up over the course of the book. Characters are often introduced, then introduced again, as if for the first time, just a few pages later. More frustrating still are inexplicable oversights that actually hinder the reader's understanding of the story. For example, Patoski spends a full page detailing how Nelson commissioned a song from songwriter Beth Neilsen Chapman, recorded it as a duet with her and scored his biggest hit in years, all while neglecting to mention the name of the song.

There also appear to be pieces of the story missing. The photo insert in the middle includes a picture of Willie and three others posing on what appears to be an airplane boarding staircase. According to the caption, it's Nelson's band the Offenders headed for England in 1968. But within the text of the book, the name the Offenders is mentioned only once in a single paragraph which notes that the name was briefly used by the band but didn't last; it doesn't even make the index. And there's nothing about Nelson travelling overseas in 1968 for what would have been, if I remember correctly (and, granted, I might not), his first ever European shows.

Having never written or edited a 500-page biography myself, I reserve judgment and don't wish to assign blame. But these flaws have the cumulative effect of distracting the reader from what Patoski does so well, which is to paint vivid portraits of Nelson and the major characters in his life. After finishing the book, I felt as though I had known for years not only Willie, but also sister Bobbie, drummer and best friend Paul English (as in "Me and...", for those of you who know the song), third wife Connie, and daughters Lana and Susie as well. These are what make the book worth reading, at least for the first 300 pages or so. If you lose interest after that, don't worry, you won't miss much.

His notorious run-in with the IRS is the last major incident of Nelson's career. Patoski covers this in a well-researched, journalistic style, then just sort of rambles. He spends the last seventy pages or so just describing Nelson's activities of the past ten years with little or no apparent organising principle; it's certainly far from chronological. He closes on a scene of Nelson re-opening a church in his hometown he has just purchased to save from bankruptcy. Nelson spends time with the adoring crowd then moves on to the next show. I guess it's hard to come up with an ending when you write a biography of a guy that's still alive.

Book review: Vinyl Junkies

2008-02-22T00:49:00.002-05:00

I recently did a quick, cursory estimate (counted the records in one of the cubicles pictured here, multiplied by blahblahblah) and figured that I own just over 1,000 vinyl LPs. I don't consider myself a hardcore collector (a river in Egypt?), but I'll admit that's probably significantly more than most people own. Does this make me a... vinyl junkie?

According to Brett Milano's book, not even close. For one thing, the average subject Milano profiles has over 10,000. For another, I've never really cared about first pressings vs. cheap-o reissues, one of the most common obsessions of even the average collector. So I guess I'm just a guy with a lot of records. Right?

Sort of. One of the main questions this book made me consider about my own collection is the total duration of music I own. If I round down to 1,000 (and believe me, it may be close but it's definitely more) and assume an average of 30 minutes per (a highly conservative estimate), that puts me at 500 hours of vinyl music. If I offset the rounding down by assuming 20 hours in a day, that's about 25 days of music. Milano met with collectors who own over 100,000 records, which comes out to about seven years of constant listening without sleep. These guys know they will never listen to all of their records. Although who knows, ten years with sleep breaks... ?

It's hard to figure out whom Milano imagined as the audience for his book, other than minor league collectors like myself. Is there a general audience for books about lunatics of all stripes? Perhaps. How many other people would have the same reaction upon first picking up the book that I did? The cover photo is a close-up of a bunch of record spines; naturally I immediately began checking out the guy's (or gal's; more on that) collection. The first Suede album! On vinyl! Next to the Byrne/Eno record? Poorly alphabetised.

The book is divided in to chapters about various aspects of collecting, all of which are given a once-over. There's a chapter on people who collect truly weird records (including the guy who used to be the force behind Letterman's "Dave's Record Collection" segments). There's a section on the lack of female record collectors, as well as the lack of girlfriends amongst collectors. There are several stories of collectors paying exorbitant four-figure sums for records they already own as CD or cassette dubs. And there are numerous profiles of celebrity musician collectors (Thurston Moore, Peter Buck, Mark Arm).

All of them are interesting, but none of them are particularly in-depth. On the other hand, what more can be said about these guys? Milano makes a valiant attempt to offer a psychological explanation for the collecting urge (seratonin deficiency), but for the most part the book is just a bunch of amusing anecdotes.

I was initially going to cite this as a major flaw in the book when I started writing this piece. But the more I think about it, I'm not sure what else I would have wanted from the book. Milano lives in Boston and is something of a fixture on the city's music scene. Many of his interview subjects are based in Boston, which initially made me think the book's scope was a bit narrow, but really, how many other collectors around the country would be so different from the subjects profiled here? My guess is not many.

The book is basically a quick read with a bunch of amusing stories and not much else, and maybe that's all an outsider can really appreciate about collecting. It won't change the world, but neither will its subjects. It's an ultimately meaningless little subculture, but aren't they all?

One more positive note: the book's design, featuring old records with the chapter titles Photoshopped in over vintage record labels at the start of each chapter, is terrific.

Book review: Double Nickels On the Dime (331/3)

2008-02-19T21:23:00.001-05:00

To me, the primary appeal of the Minutemen has always been their friendly, unassuming vibe. I love the high energy, the instrumental chops and the angry-young-prole-with-a-library-card lyrics. But it's the fact that they always come off like dudes hanging out and jamming, regardless of what they're singing about, that's always kept me coming back.

Double Nickels, as it turns out, is ideal fodder for the 33¹/₃ series. It's brimming with material, there's interesting stories behind many of the songs, the lyrics bear close listening, and it's the product of collaboration that includes contributions from more than just the band's principal members. Many of those involved were quite willing to talk, and Michael T. Fournier (who, by the way, teaches a class in the history of punk rock at Tufts; are you kidding me?) does a fine job of whittling those stories down to a concise and well-organised summary of the album's stories and meanings.

Fournier opens the book with a brief history of the band, follows with a brief history of the album, takes a quick detour to recount his own experiences listening to it as a teenager, and gets down to a track-by-track breakdown in less than twenty pages. He seems to feel that the point of the book is the music, so why waste time on the other stuff? I couldn't agree more.

One of the things I liked most about the book was that I learned things about Double Nickels I didn't know before. For instance, there are a few tracks I've never even heard; they were left off the CD in order to fit it on one disc. One of them is a Van Halen cover! Rest assured, this situation will soon be rectified; the vinyl is en route in the mail as I type.

I also didn't know that the running order was determined in a manner similar to a fantasy sports draft (Fournier's analogy): each member had one side, and they took turns picking songs for it. Anything unselected went on side four. I also didn't realise how many of the songs had lyrics written by some of the band's friends, including Black Flag's Chuck Dukowski and Henry Rollins. The idea was apparently, to keep the music fresh by incorporating outside ideas. The album never gets boring over the course of four sides and more than forty songs, so that seems to have worked out.

What works best of all here is Fournier's writing. Like the Minutemen's music, it's breezy and casual. Rather than coming off like the dry observations of a college professor (which...), Fournier's prose reads like the musings of your buddy who's really into this album, knows a bunch of neat stuff about it, and can't wait to tell you. Asides, interjections and unnecessary exclamation points abound, all of them adding up the a 100 page speil that perfectly fits its subject. Double Nickels greatest triumph may be that it is simultaneously dense and highly accessible. By packing his book with facts and insights while keeping it simple and readable, Fournier has followed the band's example and done the album proud.

Book review: OK Computer (331/3)

2008-02-12T22:23:00.008-05:00

How long does an album have to be around before it becomes "timeless"? As Dai Griffiths points out in his 33¹/₃ entry on Radiohead's OK Computer, the Beatles' music has lasted 50 years to Beethoven's 200, but the gap narrows proportionally as each year passes.

OK was probably admitted to the echelon of all-time-greats faster than any album I can remember, and it's still easy to see why. The performances are clearly those of a band at the peak of their creative powers. The lyrics are clear enough to convey an overarching theme, but still vague enough to allow for individual interpretation. The music is ambitious and complex, yet the band's reach never exceeds their grasp. There are no embarrassingly self-indulgent passages of prog pretentions; not a single note is wasted. The album is suffused with ideas and invention but, more than anything else, the band sounds confident. It sounds as though they knew they were crafting one for the canon even before they began recording.

This immediately-bestowed classic status is one of the primary themes of Griffiths's study of OK. The book was published in 2004, just seven years after the album's release; he probably wrote it in 2003. And yet its place in the pantheon was already firmly established, and hasn't evolved since. So what kind of classic album is it exactly?

Griffiths sets up this question, then tackles it by discussing different categories of classic albums (concept albums, double albums). He introduces the possibility of a CD album to be judged on its own merits, in terms of running time and continuity, in the post-vinyl era. He then discusses the ways in which long songs are used to pad out the times of CD albums, and lists the different categories of long songs (really slow songs, songs with a lot of verses). He concludes that OK is a great CD album, and that its songs have extended intros and outros in the fashion of the CD era. This is all the first chapter.

Look, Griffiths is my kind of guy. Anybody who mentions Dire Straits, Tori Amos, Pixies, Oasis, De La Soul, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Webb and disc 2 of British Bird Sounds on CD all in the space of a few pages, just to make a point about Radiohead, is weird enough for me. But too much of this book is just talking in circles. His grand point about OK being a CD album is undercut quite obviously by the placement of "Fitter, Happier" right in the middle, a track on which, by the way, Griffiths focuses as the album's key thematic song.

He spends the second third of the book breaking down each song by key(s), beats per minute, lengths of verses and choruses and other minutiae without ever really making much of a point. What makes this especially frustrating is that I've been saying for years that this is exactly what rock criticism needs.

Too many rock critics don't know an augmented seventh chord from a locrian scale, which is what separates their work from serious writing about jazz and classical. To write about non-pop genres, a writer is expected to understand at least the basics of music theory, and to recognise certain aspects of it in the music. This is why so much rock criticism focuses excessively on the lyrics, even when they're not especially important. And of course we have the great Lester Bangs to thank for the occasionally inspired, often insufferable school of rock critics who attempt to creatively reproduce the excitement of the performance itself, usually through onomatopoeia, run-on sentences and too many capital letters.

This is not to say that this sort of writing doesn't have it's place; some of it is terrific. But there remains a critical void awaiting someone to step in and fill it with technical, theory-based criticism of popular music. After all, if you think the musicians don't know this stuff you're kidding yourself.

And if any band's music cries out for this sort of analysis, it's Radiohead's. Their use of non-traditional modal structures and time signatures (even more so on the two albums that followed OK) makes their music ripe for fine-toothed dissection. Griffiths breaks down each song into obsessive charts showing lengths of intros, outros and instrumental breaks, and even maps out the key and tempo changes in "Paranoid Android", but fails to follow through with any substantive analysis. What could be a breakthrough study of an already much-pondered album instead collapses under the weight of its own unexamined raw data.

This makes the book all the more infuriating after one slogs through pages of fairly opaque, directionless ramblings only to find no real conclusion. Griffiths spends the third and final section speculating on OK's place in future history, its staying power, if you will. It's a decent enough read, but at this point I was exhausted. It's hard to imagine I would ever have said this about one of these little 100+ page tomelettes, but this one is actually too long.

Book review: All Over But the Shouting

2008-02-06T05:38:00.003-05:00

I always thought the Replacements would make a great biopic. Dead-end kids, hearts on their sleeves, fists fulla beer, death in the family. A hopelessly romantic and uniquely American tragedy.

But there's been no movie, no documentary and, until now, no book. Before this new tome, I'm pretty sure Replacements literature went no further than a chapter in Azerrad's indie rock book and Colin Meloy's 33¹/₃ book. Jim Walsh feels that he's just the guy to rectify this gap in the canon, and he's probably right. As a longtime friend of the band members, Walsh's credentials are impeccable: he claims to have attended their first ever show. He was also the eulogist at lead guitarist Bob Stinson's funeral. So far, so good

Walsh chooses to go the oral history route here, meaning that, apart from the introduction and a few other pages, the text in composed entirely of quotes from people who were there. I rather like this style of biography when it's done right. Clinton Heylin is a master of the form, but he uses the quotes to augment his own prose, rather than letting them carry the narrative alone. The latter form can be tricky, as certain threads of the story can become disjointed and key details can be omitted.

But I'll get to that in a minute. Walsh's first problem comes early on, when he tries to describe how great the Replacements were live. Not possible. He describes shows during which the band were too drunk to remember their own songs, so they played a bunch of covers but kept quitting them all after the first chorus, as life-affirming, classic performances. I don't doubt they were fun shows, particularly if you were as drunk as the band, but you probably had to be there. Walsh is so effusive about the band's greatness that skepticism and weariness have set in by the time the oral history part begins a few pages in.

Now for the real problem. Say you were writing an oral history of a band. Who would you interview? Who might be at the top of your list? If you were writing a book about, for instance, the Replacements, do you think you'd interview, say... frontman Paul f—king Westerberg?!? Well, Westerberg didn't want to be interviewed for the book, so Walsh figured he'd just go ahead without him. Ditto bassist Tommy Stinson. And drummer Chris Mars, who was polite enough to email Walsh a single paragraph for inclusion in the epilogue. And with Bob Stinson having settled in on a great barstool in the sky, that leaves exactly zero original members of the band who agreed to be interviewed. Zero.

Walsh gamely tries to include their voices by including quotes from old magazine articles and such (which makes the verb tenses shift awkwardly from quote to quote), but at this point the project is pretty much over before it starts. This leads to another problem: about a third of the text in the whole book is from old magazine articles, making me think Walsh didn't get nearly enough material even from the people whom he did manage to interview. This is borne out by the way certain oft-told tales about the band are skimmed over with frustratingly sparse detail. There are a few conflicting mentions of the time Westerberg allegedly told newly clean-and-sober Bob to drink or get off the stage, but no indication as to what Walsh knows (or whether he believes it). Given that Bob fell off the wagon soon after and eventually died of drug-related causes, it's kind of an important detail. The story of the band stealing their master tapes from the label's office and throwing them in the Mississippi River is barely mentioned; even if it's just a myth, it's well-known enough that it needs to be examined in some detail.

My theory as to what went wrong goes like this: Walsh is a fanatical believer who's been dying to write this book for years. He gets the go-ahead (and probably an advance) from a publisher before ensuring the band's cooperation. When they decline to participate he decides to go ahead with it anyway. The result is flimsy and half-assed; the large typeface and copious pictures don't help its credibility much.

Walsh is obviously passionate and, lack of journalistic objectivity aside, probably more qualified than anyone to write this book. It's a shame the band wouldn't help him out. The Replacements' story remains one of the great sagas in American rock n' roll and, unfortunately, has yet to be properly told.

Book review: Loveless (331/3)

2008-02-05T22:45:00.001-05:00

My Bloody Valentine's Loveless is one of rock's most frustratingly elusive records. The more one learns about it: the creative inspirations, the engineering processes, the lyrics, the secrets; the less, paradoxically, one understands it. This is largely because the biggest secret one might discover about it is that there really are no secrets. Unlike, say, the backward noises on "Tomorrow Never Knows" or the snare sounds on Low, the band employed few if any radical recording or mixing techniques. The guitar tracks, for the most part, don't really have any effects on them. There aren't even that many layers. The inscrutably complex whole is comprised of remarkably simple parts. Which makes it that much more intriguing.

So from that standpoint, there's not much for Mike McGonigal to reveal in his entry in the 33¹/₃ series. There are a few interesting tidbits, like the bit about guitarist Kevin Shields playing a guitar through two amps at once with independent tremolo effects running at slightly different rates with their speakers facing each other with a single mic in between. Cool. But most of the technical details (the tremolo effects are almost all done by hand; the drum tracks are mostly programmed from samples because drummer Colm O'Ciosoig was too sick to play; there's a lot of vocal tracks) are old news. If you've read anything else about Loveless, you know all this stuff.

So McGonigal goes for something of a grab-bag of 33¹/₃ styles. He begins with a bit of personal history (thankfully not dwelling on his briefly-mentioned youthful drug habit; yawn), throws in a bit of track-by-track commentary, then settles into a comprehensive making-of history assembled with the help of a bunch of new interviews with the principal players. It's this last element, the meat of the book, that make it worthwhile.

The recording of Loveless really was quite an ordeal. The band bounced from cheap studio to cheaper studio as their label's budget allowed putting in a few days at a time before moving on again. This meant a never-ending series of arguments with in-house engineers who just didn't get it, many of whom, claims Shields, were excluded from their own studios, strictly ordered not to do anything, and received a credit in the liner notes for their troubles. Details like this make it worth it.

The book itself, from what I've heard, went through a birthing nearly as arduous as that of Loveless itself. Apparently Shields agreed to the interviews, spoke quite openly, then changed his mind and refused to sign off on any quotes in the book. That's what I was told by a notoriously unreliable source, anyway. I guess he came around eventually, though, because the book's full of Shields speaking quite freely about what really happened and who's full of shit.

Still, the back story explains the somewhat haphazard narrative toward the books end, where the text is interrupted by asides along the lines of "When Kevin read the first draft, he said..." or "My editor asks me to change...". McGonigal was apparently asked to tack on a sort of epilogue to the story, and he chooses to describe another album by some other artist who was apparently a big My Bloody Valentine fan. Relevant? Not really. Interesting? Sure. At the very least it makes me want to hear this guy's album, and for me that's the universal measuring stick for any book about music: if it makes me excited to hear something new, thumbs up.

Book review: The Greatest Music Never Sold

2008-01-30T04:31:00.000-05:00

There are people who believe that, had Brian Wilson managed to complete the Beach Boys' SMiLE album back in 1967, it would have supplanted Sgt. Pepper's as the default Greatest Album Of All Time. Its re-recording and eventual release in 2004 could have been seen as fuel for these arguments, but instead it just laid them to rest once and for all. Absent the context of the 1960s, the album functions as something of an odd time capsule rather than an earth-shattering masterpiece. But more importantly, now that the album can actually be heard, Wilson's more devoted supporters are no longer free to imagine just how wonderful it might have been. With the veil of mystery lifted, most of its lustre is inevitably lost. No matter how good it is, it's a little bit disappointing simply by dint of being mere music.

Dan Leroy's book is a much a cooler idea than finished product. He's pieced together the complete behind-the-scenes stories of nine albums that were supposedly completed but never released. And, in a way, the list is a little disappointing. How many people are really clamouring for a chance to hear the thwarted magnum opi of, say, Chicago, or Adam Ant? Or that great lost Mick Jagger solo album from the 90s?

Having said that, some of the stories themselves are admittedly quite interesting, more so than the prospect of the actual album in question, which makes for a decent read. The Jagger chapter, for instance, is a trip. Leroy focuses on the history of an obscure LA bar band known as the Red Devils, who were called one day out of the blue to come into the studio and record with Jagger and producer Rick Rubin. Rubin's concept was that the band would have no advance knowledge of the session, come in and learn a bunch of old blues tunes from scratch, then record the whole thing in the same day. Apparently they pulled it off, but it's never been released.

Leroy's biggest shortcoming is that he constantly falls into the Smile trap of describing each album as the artist's best work ever or, in the case of older artists like Chicago, in many years. In the case of Juliana Hatfield's God's Foot, he goes so far as to speculate that it would have been considered one of the finest albums of the decade. But if all these albums are so good, wouldn't at least a few of them have eventually seen release? And are all lost albums good? Aren't there a few long-lost clunkers out there too?

Apparently not, or at the very least the book would have been longer. Which brings us to Leroy's other problem: there's really not a lot of material here. He stretches it past 300 pages, but that's with wide margins and a big fat font size. It seems as though, with most of the albums in question, the principal players in the drama at hand didn't really have a great deal to say about it. There are a few tasty bits of he-said-she-said, as in the tug of war between the writer and director of the Ray Davies musical that got lost on the way to Broadway, but not nearly enough. Most of the artists either refused to talk about their album or had come to accept that it was a lost cause, and expressed disappointingly little residual bitterness.

Leroy also explains right off the bat why he hasn't chosen to write about a few of the most famous lost albums in pop music history. Smile and The Black Album got released; Chinese Democracy is still not officially abandoned; and no one from Neil Young's camp would discuss Homegrown. All valid reasons, but they seem to leave the remaining selections wanting. Of the nine albums to get a full overview, Crazy Wisdom Masters was the only one I had ever heard of (or that I'm dying to hear). These albums may be lost, but they're hardly legendary.

In the final chapter Leroy gives a few pages each to several lost albums that, for whatever reason, warrant a mention but not a full chapter. Some never really existed (Kraftwerk's Techno Pop), or there's scant evidence that much recording ever actually took place (Buckethead Plays Disney). Or in the case of the Bubbleheads, an alleged rap-rock supergroup including Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa, Ice-T, Vernon Reid, Flea, Doug Wimbish, Bernie Worrell and several others, scant evidence that the actual band ever really existed. In that case, why not include the Masked Marauders?

But these tidbits, along with Leroy's statement in the book's introduction that he hopes to write a sequel, give the book something of an unfinished feel. Why not collect some more stories and flesh them all out, strive for something more definitive? Juliana Hatfield's A&R rep kept sending her back to the studio to come up with one more song, one more song. Perhaps Leroy's publisher should have done the same.

Book review: Use Your Illusion I and II (331/3)

2008-01-28T23:31:00.002-05:00

I've read a bunch of those 33¹/₃ books, but haven't got around to writing any up yet, so hopefully this'll get me in the habit. I suppose I really ought to respond to all of them. I just read Eric Weisbard's (No homepage, dude? No blog?) study of Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion albums and found it occasionally frustrating, but ultimately worth the read.

Weisbard starts out by offering up the album's historical moment as the twilight of the blockbuster "event" album release, one followed by an inevitable two years of stadium tours and expensive videos, an era ended more by the fragmenting of public tastes than the so-called "alternative rock" revolution. Using the trajectory of the Musicland chain as a paradigm, he shows the rise and fall of the dominance of a small group of individual artists (Springsteen, Madonna, Zeppelin, etc.) within the music industry as a whole. UYI, as he awkwardly abbreviates the twin behemoths, were the grand finale.

As an incurable Hegelian who loves revisionist narratives, I found this to be thrilling stuff. The first two dozen pages of the book are stuffed with ideas, examples, connections, allusions and compelling arguments. The rest of the book is decent, but none of it holds up to the opening. Not because it's bad, mind you, just because the first bit is really good. Weisbard talks about his own music writing career, and which artists loomed large at each stop. Fine, interesting stuff, he's certainly been around enough. Then he recounts the oft-told history of the Guns in their heyday, followed by Axl's tortuous vanishing act. The history is well-written and interspersed with in-depth musical analysis, though mostly of non-UYI tracks. Still, Weisbard's thoughts on "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "One in a Million" are interesting enough that I didn't mind if he wandered off from the point.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly until the last chapter, when he finally addresses the albums track-by-track. Earlier in the book, he made a point of explaining that he hadn't heard the album in years, was relying strictly on (remarkably vivid and quite believable) memories to write most of the book, and would listen to it once again at the end. The last chapter consists of a sketchy and unsatisfying paragraph or two about each song, which Weisbard brags was largely unedited. Cute idea, but a little lazy. There are a few terrific insights scattered throughout: he dismisses the first two tracks on UYI I as filler with the zinger, "Two throwaways in a row. In the notorious tradition of GN'R live, are they now even showing up late for their own album?" But there just isn't enough of this, and I can't help but thinking that a few more hours of work could have made an enormous difference in the content (to say nothing of the grammar).

Part of the problem may have been that I found myself disagreeing with many of his assessments, and surely this coloured my overall view of the chapter. Weisbard is clearly obsessed with Axl Rose, and views GN'R as Axl's band, UYI as his flawed masterpiece, and other band members' contributions as lesser tracks. Izzy Stradlin's songwriting contributions are dismissed as half-written Stones knockoffs (sort of true, but that doesn't make all of them bad), while Slash's guitar work is heard as an annoyance to be sat through while waiting for the auteur to sing again. Hasn't he noticed that the band is (literally, to judge by their studio output) nothing without those guys? That Axl is completely lost on his own, reduced to an infrequently touring nostalgia act? That "Bad Obsession" rocks, but "The Garden" is corny-ass bullshit? Well, everyone's got their own favourites, I suppose. Plenty of room for that when you've got two and a half hours to sift through.

NFL previews: A shameful look back

2008-01-23T00:10:00.001-05:00

Okay, first post in four months and it's time to face up to my awful preseason NFL picks. This was a year in which the league's biggest star got sent to prison for ritualistic animal sacrifice, my favourite team stunk, and millions of innocent American children learned the important life lesson that cheaters win, even when they get caught. Wahoo. And a year in which surprisingly strong showings by the likes of Cleveland, Houston and Minnesota were more than offset by the woeful underperformances of Miami, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Denver, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco... I can't remember another year with this many utterly crappy teams.

Which is not to take away from the accomplishments of the regular season's big four. I'm really just complaining about the quality of most of the games I sat through this fall. At least the playoffs kind of made up for that; the Jax@Pit and NYG@GB games were two of the best I've seen in a while. But overall this season was really just one big bummer from start to finish.

Enough stalling. Here's a look back on my embarrassing predictions from the preseason.

Win totals

Buffalo

The pick: over 6
The final tally: 7–9
The logic: "This team won seven games last year and should improve."
That was it, no deeper formula than that. Actually I thought they'd be even better, like barely miss a wild card spot, but the truth is they didn't really improve at all, their opponents just got worse.

Chicago

The pick: under 10
The final tally: 7–9
The logic: "Their QB's the same, running game's worse, and I think GB and Det will be improved."
Seriously, how could anyone not have seen this coming? Easiest money on the board. There's one of these every year.

Cincinnati

The pick: over 9
The final tally: 7–9
The logic: "I don't care how bad their defense is or how many of them are suspended, I think they can win a ton of games."
Yeah, well, you see where that kind of thinking gets you. What the hell happened here? And how does Marvin Lewis still have a job? I thought these guys were gonna be one of the best teams in the league.

Denver

The pick: over 9¹/₂
The final tally: 7–9
The logic: "Cutler the starter from day one of camp, upgraded running game, fresh meat on the d-line, what's not to like here?"
Well, Cutler, for one, whose development into an elite NFL quarterback seems... stunted. Classic case of a guy from a crappy NCAA program who did nothing to elevate his team but put up a bunch of individual stats. Also a classic case of "three scouts barking." Still, this one really surprised me because Denver's generally a pretty reliable franchise. They win 8 to 10 games every year, take the division or get a wild card, then lose in the playoffs. Year in year out. So what happened? Truth is... I didn't see them very much this year.

Detroit

The pick: over 6
The final tally: 7–9
The logic: "Seriously, the Lions may not make they playoffs, but I think they'll be competitive this year, even with a backfield composed entirely of glorified third-down backs."
Thank you, thank you very much. This was one of my weirdest picks and, paradoxically, one of my most confident. I have no idea why I had such a good feeling about this team, but I just had a clear vision of them as an 8–8 "spoiner" team. Which, in their case, is really good. Or would have been. Oh well, a win's a win.

Houston

The pick: over 6¹/₂
The final tally: 8–8
The logic: "Did I just talk myself into calling the Texans a .500 team?"
Ah yes, the sound of supreme confidence at work. I really think my overriding logic here was along the lines of "they can't suck forever." Just goes to show, flipping a coin is probably just as effective as careful analysis. Maybe more.

Mia

The pick: under 7
The final tally: 1–15
The logic: "Old defense, old QB, questionable receivers, competitive division. Oh, and one of their home games is in London."
Okay, ignore the "competitive division" bit. Who was their QB, anyway? I honestly can neither remember nor be bothered to look it up. Think they'll have an over-under line next year for how many weeks until Parcells pills a Riley and just takes over in the sidelines? I'm putting it at ten.

Boston

The pick: under 11¹/₂
The final tally: 16–0
The logic: "Buying up stars didn't work for the Redskins, either."
Yeah, I missed pretty good on that one. Can't win 'em all, I guess. Pun intended.

New York (NFC)

The pick: under 8
The final tally: 10–6
The logic: "By December the players will be polishing their golf clubs and openly speculating about who the new coach will be next year."
Wow. Comes up back to back with my Pats pick. I'm on a roll.

Pittsburgh

The pick: under 9
The final tally: 10–6
The logic: "People seem to like Mike Tomlin. Why does this team look all 6–10-ish to me?"
Because you're an idiot.

San Francisco

The pick: over 7¹/₂
The final tally: 5–11
The logic: "These guys are a hot pick this year and Vegas has them under .500? Seriously?"
Yup. Seriously. Looks like we can write off Alex Smith as yet another lost top draft pick. Small hands, I hear.

St. Louis

The pick: over 7¹/₂
The final tally: 3–13
The logic: "I always overrate them because I still think of them as the Warner/Faulk Rams, and because they still put up gaudy offensive numbers now and then. And I'm probably overrating them this year, but so be it."
So my justification for the pick included an explanation as to why the pick was wrong. Did I even proofread these things? Still, I don't think anyone expected them to be that bad.

La Zone de Colombie

The pick: over 7¹/₂
The final tally: 9–7
The logic: "Are you ready for the 'Skins, people? I think this team's gonna surprise a lot of people this year."
I said they could win ten, they won nine. I said they could win the division, they came in third. Tough division. At least they made the playoffs. They're screwed next year, by the way.

Final score

6–7. Hope you didn't take all those predictions as like... "advice". Or whatever. Could have been worse, I suppose.

Division races

Denver 3–2: I stand by my conviction that Denver is usually a pretty safe pick.

Green Bay 7–1: That's right, baby! Picked this one by default, really. I just didn't like any of the other teams in the division.

St. Louis 4–1: When was the last time these guys were good? Five, six years ago? Teams can turn around in two seasons in this league. Not making this mistake again. Although that's what I said at the beginning of the season about my Tampa pick the year before. Rams in ’08, I guess.

Washington 4-1: There were still better than anybody thought they'd be. How did I not see the Cowboys coming? Not sold on Romo, not sold on Wade Phillips...

Final score

1–3. Not very good, but the overall payoff comes to 7–4 with just that Green Bay pick. So there.

Super Bowl champs

Cincinnati 18–1, Denver 17–1, Philadelphia 20–1
Not much to say here. I took under-the-radar but believable teams with tasty odds. Not really a sound strategy. Probably why I'm not rich.

Surviving the Phils

2007-09-14T23:38:00.000-04:00

One of the (few) reasons I was looking forward to moving to Philadelphia this year was the potential for a true, honest-to-goodness, down-to-the-wire pennant race between the local nine and my erstwhile hometown Mets. Neither team is good very often, and I can't remember both being good in the same season like, ever. When the schedules came out, I marked the Mets' impending visits to the CBP ¹ on my calendar and eagerly anticipated boos and beer showers from the notoriously dyspeptic Philadelphia fans.

My plan was to go to all nine games; once factors like weather, work schedule, band practice and mortgage payment due-dates had their say, I made it to three. Which is still plenty.² And in hindsight, that was more than enough; the Mets lost all three.

The reputation of Philadelphia sports fans is based largely on observations of devotees of the Eagles, who have been known to engage in such sporting behavior as cheering gruesome injuries to opponents. The team's (and the Phillies') former home, crumbling Veterans Memorial Stadium, famously installed an ad hoc court in its lower level in order to deal with each game's inevitable slew of drunk-and-disorderly charges on site. Just the stuff of which legends ³ are made.

Based on the mania of the local media coverage and a highly unscientific survey of neon signs in bar windows and decals on cars, I came to the conclusion that the Eagles own the hearts of Philadelphians, and their claim is uncontested. The Flyers rank a distant second, with the Phillies and Sixers sharing the role of afterthought. Phillies "fans", I figured, would just be Eagles fans killing time until training camp opened.

I was quite wrong. Phillies fans are devoted, passionate, knowledgeable and undyingly loyal. And they all harbour a seething hatred for the Mets. They seem to hate the Mets significantly more than, say, fellow National League East Division rivals the Atlanta Braves.

As a Mets fan, I hate the fuckin' Braves. I find them soulless and mechanical, utterly devoid of charm. I have a strong personal dislike for Larry "Chipper" Jones, a man I've never even met (and hopefully never will). I have never used any service from America Online simply because they own the Braves.⁴ I don't care about the Phillies, because the Phillies traditionally suck just as hard as the Mets. Why waste one's hate on the battle for second-to-last place? Focus on the frontrunners, I say.

I have a feeling there may be a sense of civic resentment behind this alarmingly unilateral rivalry. I don't think Phillies fans hate the Mets as much as they hate New York.⁵ New York gets all the headlines, all the glamour, all the money, and Philadelphia is a post-industrial wasteland with an outdated infrastructure and a rapidly declining population.

There's also the matter of geographic proximity and fans' willingness to travel. While there have always been scattered Phillies fans when I've seen the team visit Shea, the Mets draw crowds of fans to Philadelphia. Not enough to overwhelm the home team's fans by a long shot, but enough to get a few of their owns chants going. And the management of the Phillies, no doubt drawing fans with their picturesque new stadium, complete with more comfortable seats, better food options and a location more convenient to the local downtown than dear old Shea, does nothing to make their guests feel welcome.

Most baseball stadiums all run the same crap on their Jumbotrons between innings. The Zen, like many other parks, has a feature called "Kiss-Cam". Several camera operators roam the park, aim their lenses from afar at an unsuspecting couple, and crowd encourages them to smooch for the amusement of all. Harmless and heart-warming.

At the first Mets game I went to there, the familiar gimmick was run. Only this time, every fifth or sixth shot was of two men wearing Mets jerseys. Most were good-natured about it and the crowd had a good laugh. The final shot was of two players in the Mets dugout. None of the fans kissed, by the way, but Mets catcher Ramon Castro leaned in on shortstop Jose Reyes, who pulled away and laughed. A harmless stunt on the surface, but in poor taste, and one that no doubt plays on the social intolerances of many crowd members.

At the next game I attended, several months later, one of the Jumbotron bits was a scene from Animal House in which members of Delta House are watching a slide show of prospective pledges. When one particularly homely pledge is shown, the members boo and throw beer at the screen. When the pledge's picture appeared on the Jumbotron, it was accompanied by the caption "Mets Fan". The crowd laughed and booed accordingly. Again, harmless but tacky.

Later in the same game, the redoubtable Phillie Phanatic introduced about a dozen of his mascot friends. For several minutes, men in giant animal costumes frolicked on the infield. Big Red and Lil' Red, together at last. Oh yes, and Mr. Met was there The reason apparently had something to do with upcoming inductions for the Mascot Hall of Fame, but that's not really important to the story; suffice to say it was even dumber than it sounds.

At one point the mascots all gathered atop the home team's dugout and held a dance contest or something. Suddenly the P.A. went silent; where had the music gone? The culprit, wily Mr. Met, produced a giant cardboard boombox, "pressed" "play", and the stadium was suddenly awash in the velvet tones of the late Frank Sinatra, crooning "New York, New York". Needless to say, much booing ensued, Mr. Met was escorted from the park by security, and the dance party continued as planned.

The third game I attended was the following night. At one point during the game, "New York, New York"⁶ was once again greeted by lusty boos. The Phanatic teased the crowd by throwing a Mets batting helmet to the ground and walking around it. The boos turned to bloodthirsty cheers as the Phanatic violently destroyed the defenseless piece of plastic with a garden tamper.

Now, I certainly don't mean to suggest that this stunt was the direct cause of the two separate fistfights ⁷ that broke out within spitting distance of our seats that night. Each of the above is, on its own, relatively harmless. Taken together, however, they represent part of a clear pattern.

I have been to about a half-dozen Major League Baseball parks in my life. I have been to Shea when the Yankees visited. I have also been to Fenway when the Yankees visited. I have been to Wrigley when the White Sox were, um, in town. And never, even while attending these rivalry games, have I seen between-inning entertainment encouraging the local fans to boo the visiting team. Except in Philadelphia. Not only that, but some of these skits at the Zen directed the fans to boo not the opposing team, but rather their fans, fans who had traveled to their city, bought tickets, beer and food, and perhaps spent money locally elsewhere as well (hotels, restaurants). All in good fun? Sort of. Obnoxious and uncalled for? I think so.

I don't want to overreact here. I attended all three games dressed in full Mets regalia expecting to be heckled, even looking forward to it. I'm not calling for an apology from the Phillies organisation, or a moratorium on this sort of behavior, or what have you. I'm simply saying that no other team I've gone to see has stooped to these sort of tactics to whip up energy from the crowd. In fact, other than professional wrestling, I've never been to a sporting event at which the hosts actively courted belligerence.

I certainly don't take it personally as a Mets fan; far from it. But as a resident of and home owner in Philadelphia, I think it reflects poorly on the community as a whole. I don't blame the management of the Phillies for their fans' history of ugly behavior; Philadelphia sports fans have earned their reputation on their own, through decades of drunken brawling. But does the team really need to encourage and perpetuate this behavior? Is it possible that the team's choice of between-innings entertainment actively contributes in some small way to the proliferation of unruly louts?

This has farther-reaching consequences for the city than may at first be apparent. For better or worse, the public in other parts of the country base their images of cities they have never visited mostly on what little of that city's culture seeps into the popular consciousness; images of its professional sports teams form a large part of that public image. This is why, fair or not (and it most assuredly is not), when people who don't live in the south think of, say, Atlanta, these days one of the first things that pops into their heads is dogfighting.

Before I ever set foot in Philadelphia, I had heard tell of its notorious sports fans. They are as much a part of the city's lore as kites and keys and the broken bell. But is this something of which to be proud? Is this something the teams themselves should be promoting?

The Phillies play in a beautiful new ballpark with a view of the city's growing skyline in the distance beyond the outfield. As with many sports stadiums, the cost was absorbed in no small part by the public. The (dubious) theory behind stadium deals like this one is that the team, while privately owned, is an intrinsic part of the fabric of local culture. In addition, the stadium is always predicted to contribute heavily to the local economy. I'm just not sure whether encouraging hostile behavior from fans, to be directed at visitors bringing outside money into into area, is really in the public interest.

Tangents & Clarifications

Which, by the way, needs a better nickname. The park's Wikipedia page cites "the Bank" and "the Vault"; iffy. Nearby Lincoln Financial Field is commonly referred to as "the Linc", which is nice. So... "the Cit"? Not quite. Look closer: Citizens Bank Park. I hereby nominate "the Zen". Carry on. [Return]

Think about it: did you go and see the same two teams play as many as three times this year? It's kind of a lot, really. But I'm still gonna go to even more next year. [Return]

Like the Governer of Pennsylvania openly admitting to throwing snowballs at the Dallas Cowboys. If you're interested in further reading, this history of the Vet is worth checking out. [Return]

That and because AOL sucks and I hated the interface the first time I ever used it. But the principle's still there, and it's why I've been trying to convince my wife to drop her AOL mail account (which she like, never uses) since we got married. [Return]

And I can't say I blame them. It's not worth getting into specifics here, but if you've lived in both you know that New York is vastly superior in almost all ways other than, off the top of my head, cheesesteaks, affordable real estate and number of public bike racks per capita. [Return]

What really bothers me about the song selection here is the obvious lack of research. "New York, New York" is the Yankees theme song, and very closely identified with them. If you played that song at Shea it would get booed even louder than it did at the Zen, believe me. [Return]

Hardly an uncommon occurence, by the way. Make sure you stick around and check out some of the related videos listed in the lower right after you watch this one. [Return]

NFL previews: wrap-up

2007-09-06T19:57:00.000-04:00

Saints at Colts kicks off in less than an hour! Totally stoked!

Quick review of my picks:

AFC Total Wins

Buf > 6, Cin > 9, Den > 9¹/₂, Hou > 6¹/₂, Mia < 7, NE < 11¹/₂, Pit < 9

NFC Total Wins

Chi < 10, Det > 6, NYG < 8, SF > 7¹/₂, StL > 7¹/₂, Was > 7¹/₂

Champs

Den ACFW 3–2, GB NFCN 7–1, StL NFCW 4–1, Was NFCE 4–1

Cin SB 18–1, Den SB 17–1, Phi SB 20–1

NFL previews: AFC South

2007-09-06T12:37:00.000-04:00

First game's tonight, so time to wrap these things up.

Houston Texans

Total wins: 6¹/₂
I think last year they were set at five, I said take the under, then they went on a monstrous two-game win streak to close out the season with six wins. Just to spite me. At least that's how I remember it. Could they improve on that this year? New QB, new RB; who knows?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they win three in the division. It's not that much of a stretch; they did the same last year. Did you remember they swept Jac last year? They also beat Ind in December when the latter were resting starters. They close the season with @Ind and TN this year, so who knows? How about two from the AFCW? They get KC at home, that's winnable, Den at home late, @Oak, which they won last year; the only one I can't see them winning is @SD, so I don't think two is out of the question. Then they get the NFCS, which is a pretty weak division; they could take two of those. Round it out with Mia and @Cle; surely they can win one of those, right?

That's eight. Did I just talk myself into calling the Texans a .500 team? I think I did. I'm seriously thinking over on this one. And I don't think they'll just beat fellow crappy teams either; this team has a pretty strong spoiler history. Remember when they beat Mia in week one a few years ago back when Mia was good? Or that Dal game their first year? I'm feelin' this, I really am.

Division champ: 8–1
But let's keep those high expectations realistic.

SB champ: 100–1
I haven't completely lost my mind.

Week one: –3 KC
How embarrassing for KC that they're underdogs in this one. I guess 'cause they're on the road. I think Hou can win this one, but I don't know by how much. Too early to start betting on this team till we've seen Schaub a few times.

Full disclosure: Are you serious? Where the hell would I have met a Texans fan? Actually, I remember chatting with a guy from Houston the year before the team's first season while waiting in an airport security line. He seemed pretty excited about the city getting a team. I'm sure he's a fan. I don't think I'm biased here, though.

Indianapolis Colts

Total wins: 10¹/₂
Barring a Super Bowl hangover this team should have no trouble putting up twelve. Four in the division is conservative. Three from the AFCW seems about right; they could lose to Den or @SD. I actually think they can sweep the NFCS, but I'll say three. That leaves NE and @Bal. They've been beating NE lately and I think that'll continue, but that December road game is exactly the kind they have a bad habit of losing. That makes eleven games. I know I was holding back on a couple of those numbers but still, that seems close. Can you close your eyes and picture this team going 10–6? I can. Skip it. But I think they'll win fifteen next year.

Division champ: 2–5
Easy pick, but ixnay on the sub-one odds.

SB champ: 8–1
I don't see this team repeating. Too many losses from an already-suspect defense.

Week one: –6 NO
I think they'll win this. They always open the season strong, and NO's in for a back-to-earth eye-opener before they really get rolling this year. On the other hand, the spread's a little too wide to bet on Ind's defense vs. Reggie Bush.

Full disclosure: I don't know any Colts fans. I don't think I know anyone from Indiana.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Total wins: 9
This team smells 8–8 to me, even with the QB question settled. Their receivers kind of suck, and I don't see Dennis Northcutt as the answer at the position. I'll say three division wins, splits across the board. Two from the AFCW; I think they'll win their home games (SD, Oak). I guess two from the NFCS, too.

This is a tough division, because I feel like there are a lot of uncertain teams here. Jac and TN could both be either a lot better or a lot worse than people think. Plus they play the NFCS, and I feel the same way about TB and Car. This whole thing could play out a bunch of different ways.

Anyway, that leaves Buf and @Pit. Um... split? That's nine. It's time to admit I have no idea what I'm talking about here. I don't know if this team'll be any good or not.

Division champ: 9–4
Seems like pretty short odds for a team in the same division as Ind, but I guess if the latter slip, these guys are the best bet to step in and take it. Still, no sense betting against Manning till he actually gets hurt.

SB champ: 30–1
Not really feelin' this one.

Week one: –6¹/₂ TN
That spread's way too big for a team that just switched QBs. Skip this.

Full disclosure: My buddy Kn— was living in Jacksonville for a while. He was working for Habitats for Humanity, and the Jags contribute to them, so the guys doing the work would get hooked up with free tickets. Kn— said they kind of had to go or it would look rude, but I don't think any of them were particularly interested in football. So anyway, no I don't know any fans.

Nashville Titans

Total wins: 7
Surprised this team isn't getting more love from Vegas, but what do I know? Based on the numbers I gave the other teams that leaves two division wins for these guys. Seems low at first glance but... lose to Ind and split Hou and Jac? I can see it. They seem like the kind of team that could struggle out of the gate before pulling it together. Since they don't play any AFCW teams till the second half of the season, I'll give 'em three there. On the other hand, they play all their NFCS games by the first week in November, so I'm gonna say one there. That leaves @Cin and NYJ. That could be an important late-December game for the Jets, who may be on the cusp of a wild card spot, which means of course they'll fuckin' lose it. I think Cin's the better team, though, so one there. That's seven. Moving on...

Division champ: 10–1
So these guys have a higher over-under than Hou, but longer odds to win the division, which begs what I think is a very important question: does Vegas take the Madden cover curse into account? It certainly looks that way, doesn't it? This is actually kind of a tempting bet with odds that long. I mean, why not, right? Ind, that's why.

SB champ: 60–1
Can we bet on this for like... 2009? Or ’10?

Week one: +6¹/₂ @Jac
Like I said above, pass.

Full disclosure: I know a couple guys in Nashville, but none of 'em grew up there. The brothers L— probably stayed true to the Bears, but I think R— adopted the Tights. Not sure though.

NFL previews: NFC South

2007-09-01T22:46:00.001-04:00

I've been doing these in random order and didn't realise I had left both of the South divisions till the end. Both have popular picks for their respective conferences' Super Bowl representatives. But enough about the Texans, let's start with the NFC.

Atlanta Falcons

Total wins: OFF
Off? Seriously? Why? What recent event could have created so much uncertainty about the teams immediate future and its prospects for the coming season? In the absence of any forthcoming explanation, let's try to break down the schedule anyway. Keep in mind, this was a team that was already picked by some to finish in last place before camp opened. Is there such thing as "even laster"?

I'm giving them one division win, either TB or Car. Picking NO to sweep them, by the way, is the easiest pick of the year. NO will win easily at home, and Atl has no significant home-field advantage here: NO is already a dome team, and in recent years half of Atl's season ticket holders don't even show up when Vick's hurt. I'll say one from the NFCW, probably @AZ, maybe an upset somewhere. I guess one from the AFCS as well, anybody but Ind. That leaves @MN and NYG. What the hell, I'll give 'em one, don't know which, don't care. That's a 4–12 team right there. Too bad there's no line.

Division champ: 8–1
And yet for some reason they're still listing odds for this one. Not that it's gonna happen.

SB champ: 100–1
How do they have the same odds as TN and Buf? I'd pick either of them over this team. Not that I'd pick either of them.

Week one: +3 @MN
If either team is going to pull off one of those surprising seasons that prove all the so-called experts wrong, and they're both strong candidates, it starts here. I have no idea who's gonna win this. Sorry, P—.

Full disclosure: Remember when they made their Super Bowl run in ’98 with Dan Reeves and Jamal Anderson and Chris something-or-other, that old QB that used to get hurt all the time? And Tony Martin? Tony Martin! I had a buddy living in Athens at the time, and I asked him at the time whether people were catching Falcs fever. "Hell no," he replied, "all anybody down here gives a shit about is NASCAR and the annual Georgia-Georgia Tech game." So there you have it. I don't know anybody who loves this team, and neither does my buddy who lived in Georgia for a few years.

Charlotte Panthers

Total wins: 9
So people are still way into this team? Even after last year? We all think last year was just a fluke for Delhomme, not the beginning of the long slide into ineffectiveness? I don't think I'm buying it. This team looks 8–8 to me.

Say we start with four division. Maybe they sweep Atl and TB, maybe they split TB and NO. I think I'm being charitable here. I'll say two from the NFCW. They get to host SF and Sea in December, which is a nice draw, so I'll give 'em one of those. Say two again from the AFCN, Hou and one of the road games (@TN, @Jac). @GB and Dal? I gotta think they could pretty easily drop both of those. That's eight. They could beat Dal. That's nine. I'm feeling under, but not strongly enough. Skip it.

Division champ: 2–1
See, why are these odds so short? Because thy're considered NO's only competition?

SB champ: 25–1
Strangely tempting pick, but no thanks.

Week one: –1 @StL
StL always plays well at home and always opens the season strong. Take the Rams.

Full disclosure: My buddy M— at work is a huge Panthers fan, as in goes to a bar to watch the game on satellite every week. He's also a big Mets fan. Who used to be an Orioles fan. And he's from Arkansas. Whatever, bottom line is this is one of those teams I'm happy to see win when they're not playing the Jets because it makes someone I like happy.

New Orleans Saints

Total wins: 9¹/₂
Whoda thunk the lowly Saints would be runaway division favourites one day? In a division with the Bucs, the Falcs and an expansion team. Not that much of a stretch, I guess. Hey, remember when Carolina was in the West and Arizona was in the East? Good times. Where was I?

This was a team I thought all offseason was destined to fall back to Earth, but on paper they look pretty strong, and their competition doesn't. They can probably win five in that division, but I'll play it conservative and say four. NFCW? @Sea and @SF is a tough draw, but how 'bout StL and AZ at home? Well, I think StL might be tough, and they're a dome team too. Let's say two. I can see them taking three from the AFCS, everybody but @Ind. They close with Phi and @Chi. You can write off a southern dome team winning at Soldier Field in December, but Phi's doable. Maybe. That's ten. Or maybe nine, depending on how strong Phi is. Too close.

Division champ: 2–3
Probably, but I don't like under-one odds.

SB champ: 8–1
Very possible. With Ind coming off a SB hangover (and losing half their D in free agency), NE too loaded to actually work and SD having hired Norv Turner, I can definitely see an NFC team sneaking in and winning this year. And why not the Saints? Because everybody's picking them to win it, that's why. Ask the Panthers how that goes.

Week one: +6 @Ind
I think Ind will probably win, but it could very easily be by a field goal. There's no over/under on the board yet, but when there is take the over no matter what the number is. I have a feeling Reggie Bush is gonna turn into one of those guys who always step it up for prime time games.

Full disclosure: Seriously? Nope. I knew a few people who lived in New Orleans for a while, but they all hated sports.

Tampa Buccaneers

Total wins: 7
My big dark-horse, against-the-grain, confound-the-experts pick from last year. Didn't really pan out. I heard someone say the other day he thought Gruden would be this year's first coach fired. We'll see. Three division? Doable. Say splits across the board. Man, @Sea's a shitty trip; write that one off. They get AZ at home, though. I'll say two from the NFCW, probably both home games. This may sound strange, but I think they can take three from the AFCS. I just think the matchups look pretty favourable. Say we start by giving 'em @Hou and writing off @Ind. They get TN and Jac at home, and I think they can take 'em. Plus they're both early enough in the season that these guys'll still be in contention. This defense used to give Vick a pretty hard time, they could do the same to Young. Jac looks shaky all around; it's starting to come out that the coach and GM really don't like each other. What the hell, I'm sticking with three. That leaves @Det and Was, two of my favourite teams to pull off a surprise improvement. Sorry guys. That's seven on the nose.

Division champ: 4–1
Not a terrible bet, but... nah. Not this year.

SB champ: 60–1
I'm not making this mistake twice.

Week one: +6 @Sea
The 'Hawks could win this one on jetlag alone. Throw in superior talent and that should be enough to cover. 'Hawks it is.

Full disclosure: I don't know anyone who likes this team. I don't think I've ever even met anyone from Tampa.

NFL previews: NFC East

2007-08-26T05:01:00.000-04:00

Dallas Cowboys

Total wins: 9
This team smells overrated to me, mostly because I'm not completely sold on this Romo character. Nor Wade Phillips, whom I'm convinced was hired merely to keep the head coach's office warm while offensive coordinator/long-time back-up QB/Jerry Jones favourite Jason Garrett is groomed as the head coach of the future. Let's say they take three in the division; obviously they'll split with Was as usual, but other than that I'm not sure. Split or sweep NYG? Split or be swept by Phi? Getting @Chi before the cold sets in is a nice break, as is GB at home. I'm thinking they could take three from the NFCN. The AFCE might be a little tougher; I'm gonne give 'em two there. They get @Buf early as well, by the way. They actually don't have any cold road games other than the finale @Was, and that's not that cold. They round out the schedule with StL and @Car. They'll win one of those. They could win both. That's nine or maybe ten right there. Maybe they'll be better than I thought. Too close to bet, though.

Division champ: 3–2
It's possible, I guess. I think anybody could take this division other than NYG. Those aren't good enough odds for a toss-up.

SB champ: 12–1
Doubt it, and those are seriously short odds.

Week one: –3¹/₂ NYG
I'm thinking they probably win this, although it's early enough in the season that the Giants won't be completely sick of Coughlin yet, so it's far from certain. I'll pass, thanks.

Full disclosure: J—'s a 'Boys fan by birth, of course, although he's hardly fanatical about them. In fact, I've met a lot of people during my extensive travels in the great state of Texas, and it seems like they were all casual Cowboys fans. It seems like everybody knows how they're doing that year, but nobody really freaks out about them. Those are just the fans I met, of course. I know there's a lot of die-hards out there.

New York Giants

Total wins: 8
Mark my words: this team will start out strong and collapse down the stretch. By December the players will be polishing their golf clubs and openly speculating about who the new coach will be next year. The schedule doesn't do them any favours either. They get @Dal and @Was in the first three weeks, @Chi and @Buf in December, one of their "home" games is in London and another is aginst the NYJ. I can't imagine them going .500.

Say they take two division games, splitting Was and Dal. The only NFCN game I'm sure they'll win is MN at home. They could actually win two from the AFCE, especially if NE is resting starters in the final week. That leaves @Atl and SF; they could split those. That's six. Take the under, these guys look grim.

Division champ: 7–2
As I said before, they're the only team I don't think can win it.

SB champ: 40–1
Hell no.

Week one: +3¹/₂ @Dal
I have no idea. None.

Full disclosure: I'm not sure I can name a hardcore Giants fan, and I lived in New York for over ten years. I went to game once and the fans seemed really mellow, completely the opposite of Jets fans. I should be biased because I grew up a Giants fan (I switched because of Parcells and have stuck with the Jets since), but I'm really not. I like the Giants okay, but I don't really care that much if they win or lose.

Philadelphia Eagles

Total wins: 9¹/₂
I'm pretty psyched that I called them last year; I think it was my only really bold prediction that turned out right. I think they'll be good this year, too. I think they can take four in their division. I think they can sweep the NFCN, but I'll play it cool and give 'em three. I'll say two from the AFCE; beat Mia, lose @NE, split the other two. That leaves Sea and @NO, which is pretty tough. I'll give 'em a split. That's ten. Close. I'd totally bet this if you could somehow guarantee me that McNabb would stay healthy all year. I know you can't. Neither can I. Skip it.

Division champ: 8–5
Possible, but they have the shortest odds of the four; not worth it.

SB champ: 20–1
I can see them pulling this off, and I like the odds. I firmly believe a healthy McNabb can do anything. What the hell, take it, let's add 'em to the list.

Week one: –3 @GB
I'd be all over this one if it was in Philly, but it's hard to bet against the Pack at Lambeau, especially before we've had a chance to see how good they are.

Full disclosure: M— loves the Eagles, and I like him so I want them to do well so he'll be happy. Plus I moved to Philly in the past year, where Eagles fandom is not only ubiquitous, but takes on a religious fervor unlike that of any New York team, even the Yankees.

But that's not why I'm always biased in favour of the Eags. I'm biased because I love McNabb. Seriously, he's gotta be my favourite non-Jet in the league.

Washington Warriors

Total wins: 7¹/₂
Are you ready for the 'Skins, people? I think this team's gonna surprise a lot of people this year. I think they can win four division contests. I think they can win three from the NFCN, but I'll be safe and say two. I think they can win two from the AFCE a well. That leaves AZ and @TB. They can take both of those. That's ten games. Grab that over.

Division champ: 4–1
Longest odds of the four and by golly, I think they can do it. Take it.

SB champ: 50–1
Let's stay realistic here.

Week one: –3 Mia
I think they'll win this, but I'd let Campbell get a few starts under his belt before you start betting on these guys.

Full disclosure: P— is a 'Skins freak, on of the biggest fans of any team in any sport I've ever known. He is also a dear friend. He also has a big mouth, likes to posit himslef as a heel and revels in the misfortunes of others' favourite teams. So I root against the 'Skins. I also tend to be biased against them because I root against Dan Snyder under all circumstances.

NFL previews: AFC North

2007-08-25T05:18:00.000-04:00

I just heard Jeremy Green call this the best division in the league because it has three strong teams. I disagree for two reasons: one, I don't think Pit's gonna be that hot; and two, can any division with such an utter patsy team like Cle really be the best? On the other hand, I can't think of any better division, so maybe he's right.

Baltimore Ravens

Total wins: 9
Actually seems low for a team that won thirteen games last year and made no significant changes other than seriously upgrading their running back. Oh, and they lost Adalius Thomas. That's big, I guess. But four games big? Say they win four in their division. They could sweep Pit, but I'll give 'em a split. They could easily take three from the AFCE; they always give NYJ trouble, but either @Buf or NE could prevent a sweep. I'll give 'em two from the NFCW; @SF and @Sea are tough road games, but they get StL at home. That leaves @SD and Ind. One if they're lucky, probably neither. That comes out to nine even. Granted I'm being pretty conservative here, but I don't think this one's worth it. Keep in mind their success depends on Steve McNair staying healthy, a dicey proposition at best.

Division champ: 8–5
Maybe, but I like Cin in this division, and those aren't underdog odds.

SB champ: 12–1
I don't see it, and those odds feel too short to me.

Week one: +3 @Cin
The two games between these teams (the second's in November) will probably determine the division champ. I like Cin to come roaring out of the gate here, but I don't feel safe betting against Bal early, i.e., before McNair gets hurt.

Full disclosure: I don't know any Ravens fans. If I did they wouldn't be my friends. I hate the fuckin' Ravens. And yes, it's because I'm still bitter about one time they beat the Jets about nine years ago. And yes, I always underrate them. Sometimes I'm right.

Cincinatti Bengals

Total wins: 9
I like this team. I don't care how bad their defense is or how many of them are suspended, I think they can win a ton of games. Or at least double digits. They can start with four division games (split with Bal and one of the other two). Then I'll say two AFCE; I think they can win three, but let's say NYJ or @Buf sneak up on 'em. Two more from the NFCW; @Sea and @SF is a tough draw, but they should be able to take one of 'em. They round out the schedule with @KC and TN, and can probably win both. That's ten, and could be twelve if they sweep Pit and take another from the AFCE, very doable. I'm gonna say over for this one.

Division champ: 7–5
I think they'll take it, but they have the shortest odds on the board. Not worth it, especially since Bal could win just as easily.

SB champ: 18–1
I'm high enough on this team that I think they could do this. Is that crazy? Tasty odds, too. Let's take it.

Week one: –3 Bal
We covered this already; no thanks.

Full disclosure: I spent a Sunday afternoon watching the games at this bar in Williamsburg called the Turkey's Nest one week last fall. The barkeep was a Bengals fanatic, to the point where he and his buddies pick a city for a road trip to a Bengs away game every year. He's the only serious fan I ever met. K— and M— are from Huntington, WV, which is nominally Bengals country (i.e., they're the "local" team for televisual purposes), but neither of them seemed too interested. M—'s kind of a Reds fan, for what it's worth.

Cleveland Browns

Total wins: 5¹/₂
The Browns rule because they have no logo. Unfortunately, they also stink. I'm gonna be nice and say they steal one each from Pit and Cin. That's two. I'll give 'em one each from the AFCE and NFCW, I have no idea who. They get Mia and Buf at home, and SF might be either out of it or resting starters by week 17. Which leaves @Oak and Hou. Woof. One, I guess. That's five. Don't bet this.

Division champ: 8–1
This should be 100–1. And I still wouldn't bet it.

SB champ: 200–1
Congratulations to the Cleveland Browns, who have been awarded the longest odds for Super Bowl XLII by Vegas's finest. The closest are about a half-dozen teams at 100–1. This is really depressing if you think about how devoted their fans are.

Week one: +4 Pit
I don't think Pit's that good this year. They're a very wait-and-see kind of team, like we really won't know if they're any good until October. They might win this, but y'know... they might not.

Full disclosure: Having said what I did above about their fans, I don't actually know any. I've just read about them.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Total wins: 9
So like, their defense is always good. Roethcheeseburger's due for a bounce-back year. Santonio Holmes could have a breakout season. People seem to like Mike Tomlin. Why does this team look all 6–10-ish to me?

I think they'll win like, two division games. Okay, three. Maybe they'll sweep Cle, maybe steal one from Bal. They should beat Buf and Mia at home, but @NYJ and @NE are tough outs. There's two. Even if they take one from SF or Sea, they're still screwed @StL, so that's two more. They round it out with @Den and Jac. The latter's a coin flip. Even if I give it to 'em that's eight, and I'm being nice here. This smells like a reputation line; take the under.

Division champ: 5–2
Not this year; I think they're gonna watch Bal and Cin duke it out.

SB champ: 25–1
These seems really short. No one really thinks they're gonna win it all, do they.

Week one: –4 @Cle
I just flat-out don't like this game.

Full disclosure: C— was born and raised a Steelers fan; we used to work together at Goldman's, my first WP job. We'd crack jokes about the morning paper, discuss sketch comedy and go over the weekly NFL lines. And occassionally work. Good times.

NFL previews: NCF West

2007-08-24T23:08:00.000-04:00

Okay, NFC West. Been pretty barren the last couple years with the Seahawks winning esentially by default, but this year could be very competitive. By NFC standards, anyway.

Phoenix Cardinals

Total wins: 7
I think these guys could be decent this year. Last year they were a trendy pick and I laughed at them, and I was right, but this year I think I'm ready to buy into them, primarily because I think Leinart's gonna step up. Unfortunately, this division isn't as easy this year, so seven wins might still wind up being a tall order. Say they take three in the division; gotta be splits, as I can't see them sweeping anyone. Two from the NFCS? Why not? They don't have a chance @NO, but they get Atl at home playing out the string, and they could take one of the other two as well. It's hard to see them taking mroe than one from the AFCN as they're on the road for @Bal and @Cin; tough break. Take the over on that @Cin game, by the way. Anyway, I'll give 'em one of the home games. That leaves @was and Det, two teams I think will improve this year. Without those it's six. But they could take one, or one of the AFCN home games, for a push. Too close.

Division champ: 5–2
This seems strangely short. Do people really like this team that much? It's also worth noting that no team's odds are less than one for this bet, so I guess it's just close all around. Anyway, don't bet this one.

SB champ: 40–1
Whatever. Look, I'm not saying they can't make it; they could be this year's big story. But can you really see them beating Ind, NE, SD, Cin, Den, whoever? No way.

Week one: +3¹/₂ @SF
Y'know, if I was starting a team, given the choice between Smith and Leinart I'd take Leinart. I'd probably take James over Gore given the same line. And I'd certainly take Boldin or Fitzgerald over any SF WR. But this isn't fantasy, and SF's at home. I don't have a pick here, I'm just rambling.

Full disclosure: I'm sure the Cards have fans, I just can't imagine them. Can you?

San Francisco Forty-Niners

Total wins: 7¹/₂
These guys are a hot pick this year and Vegas has them under .500? Seriously? Note that they're also 15–1 to win the Super Bowl. That's the same as the Bears. And better than the Bengals and the Eagles. It's also intersting that they have longer odds than Sea to win the division, but shorter for the SB. I don't get it either.

Start with three division wins. Just so you know, I'm giving every team in this division three. They all look about the same to me, so whatever. If they really are so improved then I think they can take three from the NFCS: the two home games and one of @NO or @TB. Then let's say two from the AFCN, as they get Bal and Cin at home. That leaves @NYG and MN; they should take the latter, but the @NYG game is too early (i.e., pre-coughlin-fatigue-induced collapse). That makes nine. Can they really win nine? Maybe. I definitely think they look like a better than .500 team, so let's take the over.

Division champ: 2–1
Possible, but not likely enough to take those odds.

SB champ: 15–1
Not this year.

Week one: –3¹/₂ AZ
I covered this one above, not worth it.

Full disclosure: Pretty sure I don't know any Niners fans, which is weird considering all the success they've had in the past. I'm suer there are plenty of bandwagon fans my age on the west coast, but not so much around these parts.

Seattle Seahawks

Total wins: 9
They appear to be the prohibitive NFCW favourite by default, which has become the norm in this division in the past few years. I can see why: they look solid though unspectacular in an overall uninspiring division. We'll start 'em off with three in the division, I don't care how that breaks down. No reason they can't take three from the NFCS as well; NO is the only wild card here; @Car and @Atl are late enough that those two might be playing out the string. They could take three from the AFCN as well, as they get Bal and Cin at home. That leaves Chi and @Phi. The latter is late enough that McNabb could be out by then, but these are still tough outs. I'll say one. That's ten, but not a very confident ten. I'm not betting this.

Division champ: 8–5
Shortest odds in the division, and it's hardly a cakewalk. No thanks.

SB champ: 25–1
Eh. Probably not. I think that one against Pit was the closest this group's gonna get.

Week one: –6 TB
The Bucs look to be dealing with a spot of turmoil early on this year, and the 'Hawks should be primed to capitalise on that. Throw in the jetlag factor and this one's an easy pick: Bucs.

Full disclosure: I know one guy wholives in Seattle and he's a Sonics die-hard, but I don't think he really cares abotu the 'Hawks. Come to think of it, I heard the other day he'd moved to Portland.

St. Louis Rams

Total wins: 7¹/₂
I like the Rams. I always overrate them because I still think of them as the Warner/Faulk Rams, and because they still put up gaudy offensive numbers now and then. And I'm probably overrating them this year, but so be it. Three in the division, we already agreed on that. I think they'll take three from the NFCS; they get two of them in the first three weeks, and the Rams always come out of the gate strong. Even @NO is a good match since they're a dome team as well. I think they'll win their home games with the AFCN, but @Bal and @Cin's a killer (take the over on the latter, by the way). As for @Dal and GB, that looks like a split to me. So that's nine right there, and they could win ten. Take the over.

Division champ: 4–1
This is the longest of the four, and I think I'd pick these guys first. Take it.

SB champ: 30–1
But let's not go overboard.

Week one: 0 Car
Tough to bet against the Rams at home, especially early in the season. Plus there's no spread. Rams.

Full disclosure: J— grew up a Rams fan in the O.C., but stopped watching them when they went to Saint Loo. He didn't even jumped back on the wagon when they won a title with Vermeil. So I don't know any Rams fans.

NFL previews: AFC West

2007-08-19T02:29:00.001-04:00

Denver Broncos

Total wins: 9¹/₂
They won nine last year and look like a lock to improve this year, right? Cutler the starter from day one of camp, upgraded running game, fresh meat on the d-line, what's not to like here?

Let's say four division: sweep Oak, split the other two. Then they play the AFCS: @Ind's a tough break, but they get TN and Jac at home; let's say three there. They should sweep the NFCN, but I'll play it cool and give them three, somebody might pull an upset. That leaves Pit and @Buf, both of which they should win, but again I'll play it close and give them one. That's eleven being conservative; I think they'll really win at least twelve. Over.

Division champ: 3–2
I wish these odds were a little better, but let's face it, their only real competition for this is SD, and they've got Norv Turner this year. What the hell, take it.

SB champ: 17–1
Not at all unrealistic; I can't believe they're getting double-digit odds. SD has Norv, NE has Moss, Ind's defense is gonna be even worse... I think their only real threat in the AFC is Cin, whom I like a lot. And it's worth noting that there's already a generic SB line in Vegas: AFC –7. Take this one, too.

Week one: –4 @Buf
I think they'll win this, but I could see it happening by a field goal. No thanks. Besides, that's enough money on Den.

Full disclosure: I've got family in Denver: my dad's sister lives there. Her whole family are hockey freaks. Avs and DU. I've never even heard them mention football.

Kansas City Chiefs

Total wins: 7¹/₂
Classic middle of the road team, this looks about right. I really liked Herm when he was with NYJ, but without my fan-goggles his flaws are a lot more glaring. When he ran Curtis Martin into the ground you could chalk it up as like, well, the guy's old. When LJ's knees implode the first week in October it'll become a pattern.

I'll give 'em splits across the board in the division. SD could've swept them if the schedule fell right, but they play in Arrowhead in December. I'll say two from the AFCS: lose @Ind, win @Hou, split the other two. I'm stumped as to how they'll match up with the NFCN. They don't have to go to Lambeau, but the do go to Soldier Field. But it's in September. Split those, beat MN, lose @Det, that's two, let's move on. I think they'll lose to Cin and @NYJ, which makes seven. But they could win one of those, that makes eight. Don't bet this line.

Division champ: 10–1
I'm not ruling them out for a wild card, but Den or SD's taking this.

SB champ: 60–1
Only if they get home field throughout the playoffs. Which they won't. So no.

Week one: +1 @Hou
Why on earth are they getting a point? I understand this is basically a pick-'em line, but shouldn't Hou always be the underdog, even at home? Whatever, Johnson'll still be healthy week one, take the Chiefs.

Full disclosure: My brother-in-law loves him some Chiefs, being born and raised in KC n' all. And I like him, so I always kinda root for these guys if they're not playing anybody I care about. But I don't think I'm being biased here; do I seem biased? Is this a 5–11 team waiting to happen? I don't think so.

Oakland Raiders

Total wins: 5
Last year I picked these guys to cover a line of like, six, and have no idea why. Even re-reading my explanation I am no closer to understanding what I was thinking. I do, however, think they'll be better this year. But not by much. It's just hard to lose fourteen games two years in a row.

Tough division; I'll be nice and give 'em one. They could beat KC at home. AFCS? One. Anybody but Ind. They could take two from the NFCN, any two except @GB in December. That leaves Cle and @Mia. Back-to-back. They gotta win ona those. That's five. Don't bother.

Division champ: 10–1
Gimme a break.

SB champ: 75–1
How is this not triple digits?

Week one: –2¹/₂ vDet
I've said before I think Det's gonna win this and I stand by that despite what I wrote above about their chances against the NFCN.

Full disclosure: The Raiders are every headbanger's team by default, so I probably know a bunch of their fans. I hate them because they beat the Jets a few times in the Rich Gannon era.

San Diego Chargers

Total wins: 10¹/₂
It's even harder to win fourteen games in back-to-back years than it is to lose them, but they should still break ten pretty easily. I think. Say they win five division games, splitting with KC or Den. I could see them dropping Ind and @Jac or @TN in a fluke upset, so that's two. They should sweep the NFCN, but I'll say three there. That leaves Bal and @NE. Again, capable of taking both, but I'll say one. That's... eleven. Tight. Skip this.

Division champ: 5–7
Wouldn't surprise me, but don't bother with sub-one odds unless it's a complete no-brainer.

SB champ: 6–1
Why the fuck did this team hire Norv Turner? What a yellow-bellied move. This is a team that's ready to win right now, with an all-time talent at the position with the shortest career life-expectancy in football, and they hire a guy whose only function as a coach is to be a warm body during rebuilding years. Why recycle? Why not take a chance on somebody new? Why didn't these guys get Whisenhunt instead of AZ? Surely he would have gone for this situation over that one. That's the only reason this team isn't winning the Super Bowl.

Week one: –6¹/₂ vChi
I think they're gonna fuck the Bears up two times. Chargers.

Full disclosure: I don't think I've ever met a Chargers fan.

NFL previews: NFC North

2007-08-18T03:40:00.000-04:00

I'll do the NFCN next in honour of P—, who called me at work tonight just to brag that the Vikes were spanking the Jets in a game we were supposed to be at. (It was me who bailed.) Actually I have a lot of personal ties here, as my dad's from Wisconsin and my wife's from Chicago.

But I'm not biased: these teams all rot. This division has been the biggest joke in the NFL for the past few years and yet still managed to send a team to the Super Bowl last year because the whole conference is weak. Actually I take back that first part, the NFCN's not significantly worse than the NFCS.

Chicago Bears

Total wins: 10
Welcome back to earth, boys. Hope the ride was fun, 'cause the hangover's gonna hurt. Super Bowl losers finishing under .500 the following season is becoming something of a tradition in the NFL, and the Bears don't look to buck that trend. Their QB's the same, running game's worse, and I think GB and Det will be improved. We're looking at a textbook example of the saying, "Defense wins championships, but offense wins games."

I'm givin' 'em three in the division. Splits across the board. They get to play the NFCE, which is actually pretty good, so I'm giving them one of the home games there, either NYG or Dal. Ditto the AFCW, they get KC and Den at home. Actually, their defense is gonna stomp @Oak, so let's make that two. And they round it off with @Sea and NO, which like, yeah, good luck with that. Although the NO game's at home in late December against a southern dome team, so I'll give 'em that one too. That makes seven. Under. Way under.

Division champ: 4–13
Is that the odds or their record? Ha! Oh, man. Where was I?

Seriously, that's a weird number, isn't it? Who cares, the Bears aren't winning the division.

SB champ: 15–1
Whatever.

Week one: +6¹/₂ @SD
SD wins this by at least a touchdown, probably more. Chargers.

Full disclosure: Like I said, my wife's from Chicago, but only her brother's really into the Bears; her father just likes the Cubs. And she hates the Bears. She remains unwilling to forgive the franchise for "The Super Bowl Shuffle", which she considers a source of lasting civic shame.

Detroit Lions

Total wins: 6
This is the year that all the peices of the Millen plan finally fit together. No, I still think Millen's incompetent, but you know what they say about broken clocks. Seriously, the Lions may not make they playoffs, but I think they'll be competitive this year, even with a backfield composed entirely of glorified third-down backs. Okay maybe not glorified.

Division? Let's say three, all splits. Actually, they could sweep MN. Not if the Vikes still played at Metropolitan Stadium, of course, but it's not really a road game if it's in a dome. I'm gonna say four. Playing @Phi and @Was in the first five weeks is a raw deal, so I can't give 'em more than one from the NFCE, either Dal or NYG at home. They can split their AFCW games, that's two. They round it out with TB and @AZ, both very winnable games. I'll be conservative and give 'em one, bringing the total to eight. Over.

Division champ: 11–2
Very possible, but the odds are a little too short for my taste.

SB champ: 75–1
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Week one: +2¹/₂ @Oak
Like I said, I think it's a breakout year for them, and what better way to kick it off than by waxing the Raiders on the road? Lions.

Full disclosure: I'm not sure this team has fans. I was watching them lose a home game on TV a few years ago and the crowd were all chanting "Here we go Red Wings." I'm not making this up. The only time I ever met any Lions fans was when I went to see them play the Giants. I talked to a bunch of friendly dudes in Lions jerseys and found out they were all road-tripping to see Michigan play, like, Syracuse or something. So my impression of Lions fans is that they're just Wolverines fans with nothing better to do on Sunday.

Anyway, point is: I don't know any Lions fans.

Green Bay Packers

Total wins: 7¹/₂
My feelings regarding Monsieur Favre are well-documented. Nonetheless, I think they'll be decent this year. It kind of depensd on the running game. If they can get solid committe production out of Morency and Jackson, the passing game and defense should be adequate to get them to the playoffs.

Say they take three in the division. What the hell, splits all around. I know that's becoming a common theme here, but I think these teams are all pretty close. They get Phi and Was at home, which is a nice break, so let's say they take one there and one more on the road from the NFCE. Oak at home in December's a gift, but they play SD too early to benefit. Plus they get @Den and @KC back-to-back, and I can't them taking both. Let's say two from the AFCW. Which brings us to Car and @StL. Split, I guess. That's eight. Too close for my refined tastes.

Division champ: 7–1
Honestly, I think they have the best shot to win it and Vegas is giving them the longest odds. This is a great bet, take it.

SB champ: 40–1
I think it's weird that they have longer odds than MN to win the division, but shorter to win the Super Bowl. I think they'll make the playoffs, but I can't imagine them making it all the way through the playoffs without Favre doing something stupid to blow a close game.

Week one: +3 vPhi
Having home field is nice, but it won't be cold yet and McNabb'll still be healthy in week one. Eagles.

Full disclosure: My grandmother loves the Packers. Loves Brett Favre. Please don't tell her about that link above.

Minneapolis Vikings

Total wins: 6¹/₂
I think this team'll be good next year. I think Childress has 'em on the right track, he's getting rid of troublemakers, they're building the offense from the line back which is totally the way to go, they'll know where they stand with their QB and RB after this season. Plus coaches with moustaches always know what they're doing.

This season not so much. I'm thinking two division wins, and either GB or Det sweeps them. I could see them losing all their NFCE games, but I'll give them one. Same with the AFCW; I can't see them winning @Den or @KC, or stopping LDT, but at least they get Oak at home. That leaves Atl and @SF; another one. Bringing us to five. Which seems like a comfortable margin, but I'm not betting this one. They're defense is pretty good, and if the offense starts coming togther there's too much of a chance they could start pulling off late-season upsets. They get Was at home in December; what if the Skins are out of it and everybody knows Gibbs is leaving? Shit like that. Despite everything I said above, this team could just as easily open 1–6 and then suddenly bust off a big streak. I'm not saying it's gonna happen, I'm just not betting against it.

Division champ: 6–1
Not even this division.

SB champ: 50–1
Not even next year.

Week one: NL vAtl
Presumably this one's off the board because of all the Vick shit. Last year you couldn't bet on anything involving Pit after Roethcheeseburger's motorcycle accident. I think the Vikes to win this one, though.

Full disclosure: P—'s been acting pretty fanatical lately and it's hard not to get swept up in his tragic optimism, so maybe I am biased when I say they could win a bunch late. G—'s wife is a Vikes fan too, but only 'cause she grew up there. I don't think she realy cares about football all that much.

NFL Previews: AFC East

2007-08-18T01:53:00.001-04:00

Time to try my hand at predicting the outcome of the upcoming football season. Last year I made picks on the win totals for sixteen teams and went 7–9. I also picked the Colts (along with a few others) as a decent bet to win the Super Bowl and said the odds on the Eagles taking the NFCE looked worth a wager. I also picked Tampa as a surprise sleeper team, so what you read below is probably mostly crap. Enjoy!

All the numbers, by the way, are from Sportsbook.com. Not that I endorse gambling, mind you. Don't do it, it's terrible. And if you do, let me know, because get a referral bonus if you sign up there.

Boston Patriots

Total wins: 11¹/₂
I'm not buying into this one. Buying up stars didn't work for the Redskins, either. This feels like a ten-win team. I think they'll split with NYJ and drop one more to either Buf or Mia; that's four in the division. Tough break in their AFCN schedule: they get Bal and Cin on the road. If they drop one of those and win the two home games that's three. Their NFCE games are the opposite: they get the two tough ones (Phi, Was) at home, but I think one of those two finds a way to beat them. Same with @Dal and @NYG, giving them two. And I think they'll beat SD at home and lose @Ind, bringing the total to ten. Not a popular call, I'm sure, but I'm making it: under.

Division champ: 1–6
Easily. By default. Lame odds, though, so skip it.

SB champ: 5–2
I just don't see it this year. Even with Thomas the LBs are still old, I'm not sure about Maroney as a feature back, abd I can't imagine Moss making it through a whole year without pissing off half the team. They'll make the playoffs, and maybe even win a game, but I just can't see them winning it all this year.

Week one: –6 @NYJ
I think they'll open strong, though, and the Jets look pretty shaky in the preseason. Pats.

Full disclosure: I grew up outside Boston and my mom's family's all from there. But there's no bias here, I'm a Jets fan for God's sake.

Buffalo Bills

Total wins: 6
This team won seven games last year and should improve. I'm thinkin' 8–8. Say they take three in the division, either they split everybody or sweep Mia and lose two to NE; that's three. They get Cin and Bal at home, I'll give 'em one of those, plus @Cle makes two. Drawing @Was and @Phi in the NFCE sucks, but at least they get NYG at home late in the season when the Giants are out of the playoffs and hating Coughlin; should be a gimme, that's one. Can't see 'em beating Den, but @Jac's winnable, there's another, that's seven. Okay, so not improved, maybe. Still, that's more than six: over.

Division champ: 12–1
Stranger things've happened, but I doubt it.

SB champ: 100–1
Three-digit odds are so tempting, aren't they? A hundred times twenty bucks, that's like... still not worth it.

Week one: +4 vDen
I could see them losing a heartbreaker by a field goal here, so they could definitely cover. But I can't see betting on this one.

Full disclosure: My buddy D—'s a Bills fan. He died a thousand deaths in the early 90s. Not literally. That was before I knew him.

Miami Dolphins

Total wins: 7
More than Buf? Seriously? Old defense, old QB, questionable receivers, competitive division. Oh, and one of their home games is in London. Sorry, guys. I'll give 'em two in the division, and that's charitable. Say they split Buf and take one from either NYJ or NE. They could pick up a road win @Pit or @Cle, but they get Bal and Cin at home late in the season when they'll be out of it and those two should be fighting for playoff spots. They could beat Dal or NYG. Hell, maybe both. Oak and @Hou suck, too, so let's give 'em a split. That's six, and I'm being nice. Under.

Division champ: 11–1
I still can't figure out why their odds are better than Buf's in all these categories.

SB champ: 55–1
Hell no.

Week one: +3 @Was
I think Was open the season by shellacking these poor guys. Skins, and I think that's one of the best bets for week one.

Full disclosure: Fuck the Dolphins. I don't know anybody that likes this team.

New York Jets

Total wins: 8
Last season was a nice surprise and terrific fun, but I think they played over their heads all season. Time for a market correction. I think they're bound for the middle of the pack. I'll give 'em four in the division: split with NE, sweep either Buf or Mia but probably not both. AFCN? Maybe two. They get Cle at home late, which is a treat, but @Cin and @Bal hurts. Maybe they'll take one of those and lose to Pit. They could split Phi and Was at home, split @Dal and @NYG. They close out the season with @TN and KC, both of which I think might be on a downward slide late in the season, so they could win ten, but I doubt it. A split there gives them nine, and not a very confident nine. I think eight is about right. Don't bet this one.

Division champ: 5–1
I think they have the best shot to take out NE but I don't think they're ready yet. Can we bet on the 2008 season? I think they'll win the AFCE next year. Seriously, write it down, y'heard it here first.

SB champ: 40–1
A guy can dream, can't he?

Week one: +6 vNE
I have not changed my mind since writing what I wrote above. NE's winning this by two touchdowns. I can't wait to hear Joe Beningo the next day.

Full disclosure: I love the Jets very dearly, more than any other team in any other sport. I am very biased. Ten years of this shit has taught me to expect disappointment at all times.

The Bollywood Drinking Game

2007-08-05T03:13:00.002-04:00

Crack a brewski and fire up the DVD, yaar!

This is version 1.0. When I think of anything else I'll revise it. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments.

Preliminary
Navigate to the subtitles menu. Take one drink for each language the disc offers.

Boy Meets Girl
Drink if she's engaged. Twice if it's arranged.

Drink if he's got some hyper-masculine life-threatening job, like helicopter pilot or racecar driver.

Drink if she puts him in his place via unexpected athletic superiority. Twice if both actors visibly suck at the sport in question.

Drink if he pulls a bafflingly insensitive practical joke. Do a shot if it involves faked death.

The Musical Numbers
Drink for each costume change. All of them.

Drink for each gratuitous panoramic shot of the beautiful Indian countryside. Twice if they were nowhere near this mysterious lush valley when the song started.

Drink if someone picks up an instrument and pretends to play it. Twice if they're not even close to being in synch. Thrice if they look like they're not even sure how to hold it. Jäger shot if the instrument in question isn't audible on the soundtrack.

The Language Barrier
Drink whenever there's a grammatical error in the subtitles.

Drink if you hear an English phrase amidst the dialogue, like "How's it going" or "Excuse me" (doesn't count if the whole scene's in English).

Waterfall (see def. 2; def. 1 might come in handy as well)
Start drinking when the comic relief character's one joke gets really old. Stop drinking when the scene ends or you finish your beer, whichever comes first.

Group Activities
If anyone laughs during a serious scene, they have to drink.

Drink if you recognise an actor from another movie. Everyone else drinks if you can remember the title. (NOTE: This counts for the stars, too, so as soon as someone shouts out the name of another Shahrukh Khan movie the first time he appears on screen, everyone else has to drink.)

And Finally...
Chug one at the intermission.

And do a shot when you break the three-hour mark.

The Used CD Rack of History

2007-06-06T19:02:00.000-04:00

C— sent me a pretty funny list of albums you need to throw out, basically a bunch of "this is considered a classic but it's really crap" rants. It's always fun (if easy) to throw stones at sacred cows.

What I find most interesting about it is the fact that this list was written over five years ago; it's amazing to be reminded of how quickly popular culture evolves. By early 2002 the 90s had only just ended (don't let the number fool you; the 90s ended the previous September). The selections at the top of the list are all pretty obvious timeless overrated classics, but the more recent entries toward the end are particularly revealing.

The Prodigy, for instance, have already become so forgotten that people too young to remember the hype could be forgiven for having trouble believing that the band ("band") was once touted as pop music's next big thing. Seriously, electronica was going to replace rock completely in the popular consciousness and the Prodigy were going to be the Beatles of rave.

Sublime? Do people still listen to them? How about the Wallflowers? The Gin Blossoms? Ben Folds Five? It's doubtful many of today's college students know who they are. (My favourite one in this category? Paula Cole.) And while I can certainly remember its ubiquity from my dorm room days, I would be surprised if very many people under 30 know that Pulp Fiction even had a soundtrack album, let alone what was on it.

I also find the inclusion of Dinosaur Jr curious since they were a thing of the past when the list was written. But they've reunited and released a new album in the meantime, and the album named here has been reissued with attendant hoopla. Would they still make the list today?

My missing nominees: London Calling, Some Girls, Moondance, Imagine, Brighten the Corners, Metallica, Desire, Darkness on the Edge of Town, several of which I own, by the way. And some of them I even like.

By the way, if you enjoy wallowing in the detritus of 90s pop culture, this list is pretty amusing too.

Book review: Money For Nothing

2007-05-11T12:56:00.000-04:00

Twenty years ago people watched music videos on television. The majority of MTV's schedule was filled out by music video programming, as was VH1's. Since then, the two have all but stopped showing videos altogether, MTV in favour of inane reality shows, VH1 to wallow in instant nostalgia.

The video has been driven to the Internet, where it is available on-demand, any time. But quality, of both sound and picture, is the price of accessibility. In the past few years, televisions have become exponentially larger and broadcasts clearer. Videos, conversely, have become smaller and blurrier.

Given the medium's decreased visibility and influence as a promotional tool, it seems fair to say that its peak era has ended. Which means the time is ripe for a history. I've written previously that it's too early to assess any all-time great videos as they continue to evolve technically and aesthetically. But I've read biographies of people in their twenties, so there's always room for a story-so-far.

Saul Austerlitz's Money For Nothing looked like just the book for the job but fell well short of my expectations. The subtitle is a bit of a misnomer: "A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes." History? Not quite.

The first chapter contains a brief overview of the medium's antecedents (the work of Oskar Fischinger and George Snader, Scopitones, Walt Disney's Fantasia) and pre-MTV development (A Hard Day's Night, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", the Residents). It's slight, but informative and interesting. So far so good.

The coverage of thirty years of music video as we now understand it, however, is limited strictly to Austerlitz's musings on meaning and symbolism. There are no interviews and seemingly very little research, just page after page of one- or two-paragraph synopses and analyses of every video that happened to catch Austerlitz's eye.

Which is not to say his observations aren't interesting; he seems like he'd be a fun guy with whom to sit around, watching videos and arguing about them. But for a book purporting to be a history of the medium, a few interviews could have gone a long way. Did Austerlitz even try to set up a session with, say, Mike Nesmith? Dave Kendall? Kevin Godley and/or Lol Creme? David Mallet? Tim Pope? Matt Pinfield? Fab 5 Freddy? I have a hard time believing that none of these people would have been willing to be interviewed for the book, and all of them have important stories to tell.

So instead of asking Sam Bayer how the video for Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" came about and what the ideas were behind it, Austerlitz simply explains that it "maintains the structure of existing institutions in order to twist them, pretzel-like, into a new, more accomodating shape." Anyone who's listened to the commentaries on Mark Romanek's Director's Label DVD knows he has plenty of insightful things to say about his own work. But when discussing Romanek's video for Johnny Cash's "Hurt", Austerlitz takes it upon himself to explain that "Cash's face is a punctuation mark to this series of images, its time-ravaged quality a synecdoche for the pocket career summary that follows."

Again, it's not that I find Austerlitz's observations especially lacking. Sure, the book drags a little in this format, but most of his commentary is interesting enough. It's just that without a single primary source, this isn't a history; it's a term paper.

Welcome to the Shelf

2007-04-16T14:30:00.000-04:00

So I've started a new blog called Shelf Life. I'll be posting mp3's of tracks I've taped off my record collection, with all the crackles and pops intact. The plan is to put up a new track three times a week, with a running theme for each week, then leave them up for about two weeks.

Doesn't mean I won't be posting here anymore, but I haven't been writing much for the Key lately, and I'm just trying to stimulate the process.

This week on the Shelf: Elvis week. Enjoy.

Are the funny pages funny?

2007-04-07T02:05:00.000-04:00

I always liked comic strips when I was a kid. Not enough to make a point of reading them every day, but I usually scanned them whenever I picked up a paper. I preferred to read anthologies, particularly of strips whose writers tended to develop storylines over the course of a few weeks. Bloom County remains my all-time favourite. I still pull out my old books and re-read the entire series start to finish every few years, and I still get choked up over the final installment.

When I moved to New York, if I read the paper at all I read the Times, which has no funny pages. At first I found this wearyingly pretentious, as though they were somehow too good for comics. But in time I came to respect the Times for their snobbish air, particularly when I traveled the country and spent a few months reading a different sorry excuse for a local paper every morning.¹

I would read the comics occasionally when I picked up the Daily News, but by then the best ones from my youth (Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side) had been retired and nothing new had sprung up to replace them.

Since relocating to Philadelphia, I now have the Inquirer delivered on Sundays, which means I get six pages of full-colour comics. On Saturday, no less. So every week I get to sit back and further debunk my youthful memories of the funny pages being remotely funny.

Granted, the daily strip is a restrictive format, so it doesn't really bother me that the comics page during the week is so God-awful. But given that the Sunday format is where cartoonists have an opportunity to stretch out and shine, it's depressing to see how utterly mediocre most of the Sunday section is. Really, if you can't even raise a smile once a week given so much space with which to work, have you chosen the right career? This is the lineup to which I'm treated once a week:

Page One

For Better or for Worse, Lynn Johnston
Let me preface this complaint by saying that I have a certain respect for For Better. Johnston consistently justifies her decision not to incorporate cartoonish exaggerations into her strip by producing, year after year, what amounts to the comics page equivalent of a quality prime-time drama. Like, I don't know, thirtysomething or The Gilmore Girls.² It's one of the only strips in which the characters age in real time, and they face realistic decisions and problems with which most of us can readily identify. It's usually not laugh-out-loud funny, but tends to strike a steady balance between a good chuckle and a warm, knowing sigh.
Having said that, I think its position in the lead-off spot says more bad than good about the current state of newspaper comics. When I was a kid, the top spot was reserved for heavy-hitters like Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes. Having For Better up front is like having Jay Fiedler as your quarterback: he's supposed the be a veteran stopgap while you train the hotshot first rounder on the bench, not the long-term answer at the position. Due respect to For Better, but its prominent spot really tells me that there's just no other strip worthy of the honour these days.
Opus, Berkeley Breathed
After retiring Bloom County to focus on a Sunday-only strip, Breathed brought back many of Bloom's characters in the short-lived Outland. After seemingly retiring again, this time for good, he apparently found himself unable to shake the urge to revisit his most beloved creation, the overly-sensitive Oedipal penguin Opus. While Breathed certainly isn't the same acid-tongued social observer he was in his prime, we're still lucky to have him in the comics pages, as even his recent, lesser efforts manage to outshine that of two-thirds of today's younger cartoonists.
Breathed's also one of the only cartoonists working today who can really be called an artist first. He's one of the few who bothers to explore the possibilities of the Sunday format, particularly in terms of its layout. Whereas most others simply fill their allotted slot with identical panels, Breathed considers the space as a whole, filling it with uneven panels, silent between-panel motion and nonlinear story construction. Despite whatever misgivings I may have voiced about his current work in comparison with his catalog, as far as I'm concerned he can keep going as long as he pleases.
Get Fuzzy, Darby Conley
Easily the most popular new strip of this decade, Get Fuzzy already has at least half-a-dozen anthologies, oodles of merch, a movie in the works... and, bafflingly, no official website. At least that I can find. Presumably it's being groomed as the most likely candidate to replace For Better above the fold.
While I've never been especially enamoured of the strip, I can understand its appeal beyond just the woeful state of its competition. It's a fairly typical pets-do-the-darnedest-things premise, with a cat in the role of the runaway id, a dog as his hapless ego, and their human owner the exasperated superego.
What gives Get Fuzzy an extra edge over the rest of the funny pages is Conley's acerbic wit, which he seems to be still figuring out how to deploy most effectively. The main complaint I have about the strip is that the narrative is often haphazardly constructed, with a few funny (and occasionally hilarious, a rarity for the comics these days) one-liners leading up to a too-often limp punchline. It's as though, rather than working towards a closing zinger, Conley just writes goofy ramblings for his characters until he runs out of space.
But I'm willing to write off these flaws as the awkward adolescence of a larger body of work. In the best-case scenario, Conley's comic sensibility has the potential to develop into a highly influential style, one derived from the slacker-comedy indie film boom of the 90s, in which the classic set-up/delivery structure of comedy is replaced by steadily funny but ultimately aimless dialogue.
Worst case: the success goes to his head, he gets lazy and complacent, runs out of ideas and starts mailing it in ³ every day. But while that's happened to almost every successful cartoonist who's ever come before him, I'm optimistic about Conley. Rather than settling into a comfortable routine by repeatedly revisiting each characters' stable of quirks, he continues to have new ideas. Considering how much the strip has evolved since its inception ⁴, he seems to care about his craft more than most.⁵

Page Two

Baby Blues, Rick Kirkman & Jerry Scott
Apparently rather successful, though I can't imagine why. It's been around since 1990, has dozens of anthologies and was even made into a short-lived sitcom by the WB ⁶.
This is presumably one of those strips in which the entertainment value is dramatically increased through demographic similarity to its characters. Think grizzled ex-army dudes chuckling into their coffee over Beetle Bailey every morning. If I was the parent of an infant or toddler I'd probably think Baby Blues was a lot funnier. The best comics transcend this (i.e., you don't need to work in a soul-sucking cubicle to appreciate Dilbert); Baby Blues does not. It's not terrible, but never rises above the middle of the pack.
The Family Circus, Bil Keane
Ah yes, the ageless melon-headed cherubs and perpetually unsmiling parents of the Circus. Even as a kid, I understood how lame this strip was. Who made a mess in the kitchen? Not Me and Ida Know! Get it?
Having said that, it's kind of surprising how much vitriol the bland, inoffensive aren't-kids-cute-isms have inspired in popular culture: a lengthy monologue in the film Go; a series of jabs in David Cross's electric scissors routine; and others I can't remember offhand. Other than the vaguely Christian overtones (guardian angels, smiling ghosts of deceased grandparents), there's really very little to distinguish it.
Dilbert, Scott Adams
Dilbert may be the only strip ever to achieve major success while featuring artwork so bad it frequently detracts from the humour. It was a genuinely funny strip for a while, but it's way past its expiration date. The whole thing's based in 90s IT-boom culture, so the sensibility's pretty dated. Even beyond that, Adams has been repeating himself for years now. Next.
Sally Forth, Franciso Marciuliano and Craig Macintosh
Man, talk about completely undistinguished. Greg Howard ⁷, who created this strip, doesn't even write it anymore. Did you notice the subtle shift in the characterisations? Did anyone? I have no idea who reads this strip (according to its sydicator's website: "working mothers"). It occurs to me that there could only be 365 Sally Forth strips and they keep recycling each one year after year. I can't imagine anyone would call them on it.
Classic Peanuts, Charles M. Schultz
You can never go wrong with a little dose of Charlie Brown and the gang. Still, this functions as the same aforementioned warning sign thrown up by For Better's Sunday pole position: if this is the best they've got, comics are in trouble. You can't find any strip better than a bunch of re-runs from forty years ago? Worrisome. Remember that joke on The Simpsons where the ACE award for best new show on cable goes to "old Starsky & Hutches"? That kind of worrisome.
Speaking of The Simpsons, Schultz holds the distinction of being the first daily cartoonist to ruinously water-down his brand with excessive merchandising, making him a proto-Krusty of sorts.
Having said all that, the strips themselves are timeless, and will always be better than half the strips on any funny page.
Rhymes with Orange, Hilary B. Price
Often single-paneled, and without any recurring characters (that I've noticed), Rhymes seems to be a second-rate imitation of not so much The Far Side as Mr. Boffo. Price musters up a quirky laugh now and then, but the strip's hackneyed structure and amateurish artwork make it seem like the kind of nice-try-but-not-quite strip you might see in some campus paper, and serves mostly as an example of the low standards of comic syndication these days.
Bizarro, Dan Piraro
An object lesson in trying too hard. Another strip with no recurring characters, Bizarro seems hell-bent on being the new Far Side, but its forced zaniness completely misses mark. The droll tone that made The Far Side such a consistent success seems to elude Piraro.

Page Three

Garfield

Considering that Davis openly admits to creating the slothful feline primarily as a marketing concept, Garfield was actually kind of funny for a while. A long time ago. Today, having thoroughly exhausted the comic possibilities of lasagna fetishism and dog-torture, Davis (or, presumably, his staff; it's hard to imagine that Davis has penned a single gag in the past ten years at least) soldiers on humourlessly like a comic mercenary, recycling the same tired gags and repackaging them ad nauseum. The strip's 43rd anthology is due out this summer, but that figure doesn't include countless omnibuses of repeats.
Garfield may be boring, but its appeal is transparent, so it's hard to hate. It's still the most popular strip in the world so... good for Davis. Can't knock the hustle.
Hägar the Horrible, Dik Browne
Baffling. This is one of those strips that's been around since before I was born whose appeal is utterly lost on me. I mean, I understand that WWII vets read Beetle Bailey every day, but who the fuck reads Hägar? Vikings? I guess it's just been around long enough that it's reached that familiar status where nobody reads it but everyone assumes that someone else does. Not that it's entirely unfunny; the idea of a fearless warrior who goes off to rape and pillage, then comes home to be a henpecked husband is sort of amusing. Plus you gotta respect a guy with an umlaut in his name. But really, my whole reaction to Hägar can be summed up in two words: so what?
Interesting trivia note, by the way: Hägar had his own soda pop in the early 80s. It was a complete flop, and apparently no one who bought it actually drank it, they just stashed away the unopened cans and sat around waiting for someone to invent eBay.
Pickles, Brian Crane
Without competition the most forgettable strip in the paper. I don't even know what it's about. Old people, I guess. According to this, it won an award for the best comic strip of the year a few years back. I'm not sure if this is confusing or depressing. Am I missing something? Moving on...
Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey, Mort, Greg & Brian Walker
Yes, that's really how it's billed in the Inquirer, a sure sign that this enterprise is strictly about propping up the dying cash cow; remember when the much-loved Pogo became Walt Kelly's Pogo? Maybe not.
Based on the writing credits, I'm going to assume that Greg and Brian are Mort's faithful sons, who sit around all day listening to the old man mumble the same old war stories into his oatmeal, looking for some detail whence they can squeeze one more tired gag about sneaking naps in the trunk of a Jeep. I've already mentioned my theory as to the strip's enduring popularity.
What's truly disorienting, and even depressing, about Beetle is the strip's utter detachment from current events. It's one thing to laugh about soldiers lounging around the base during peace time, but our country is at war right now; the Walkers never even hint at this, let alone acknowledge it outright. It's more than a little discomforting to read a story about soldiers dying halfway around the world on one page, then flip to another in the same paper and see gags about Beetle trying to weasel his way out of kitchen duty again. It's as though ol' Mort got his discharge, went off to draw cartoons in a cave and never picked up a paper again.
Overboard, Chip Dunham
Incomprehensible. This is another one of those strips in which potential humour might be getting sunk by shitty artwork. What the hell is that thing on main character's head? It took me a while to figure out he's some sort of sailor; there are occasionally boats involved. But most of the strips revolve around the main character's relationship with his unfunny dog. I can't even figure out the main guy's name.
Yet another strip without any official homepage, which makes me think: if this guy doesn't give a shit, why should I? Also yet another mediocre strip that won some best-comic-strip type award years ago. Did this used to be good before I ever heard of it?
Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau
Doonesbury's one of those institutions that's become so established that people who ought to appreciate it take it for granted. As a result, it becomes an easy target for derision in the same way that The New York Times does. It's easy to overlook that fact that the strip remains consistently funny and insightful, and has been for 35 years. Mort Walker's sons should try reading it.
Trust me, if you haven't read it lately, it's still good, and easily the most intelligent mainstream comic strip in any paper. If you're still not satisfied, or if you're one of those types who just loves to bitch about how great things used to be, pick one of the 70s anthologies for a taste of the glory years.

Page Four

Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, Gianni and Schultz
Fuck yeah. Valiant owns. If this needs to be explained to you then you are not worthy of his awesomeness. I read Prince Valiant every week and can't follow a word of it. Look at those outfits! Those haircuts! Of course it's no Alley Oop, but what is?
Jump Start, Robb Armstrong
The token African-American offering, Jump Start is the only ethnic comic not relegated to the back page by the Inquirer. Armstrong forgoes both the hardcore social commentary of The Boondocks and even the urban youth culture satire of Curtis, choosing instead to present a generically wholesome family strip whose characters just happen to be black, à la The Cosby Show. Boring. I'm not saying black cartoonists have to be angry or "black enough", I'm just judging it by the same criteria as all the others, and Jump Start is bland and unfunny.
Dennis the Menace, Hank Ketcham
Appeals primarily to those who hate old people and enjoy seeing them tormented, I suppose. Or old people who hate kids. Mildly amusing, but Ketcham's basically just been repeating the same gags for about forty years now.
Ziggy, Tom Wilson
It's kind of weird that the page linked above, as well as a lot of Ziggy merchandise, depict Ziggy as happy and carefree.⁸ Everyone knows the whole premise of the strip is that Ziggy's always miserable. No matter how he tries, he always gets screwed. That's the point: Ziggy's life sucks, and reading about it makes you feel better about yours.
To Wilson's (or, by this point, his staff's) eternal credit, he maintains a remarkably high batting average as far as laughs go. The fact that he can still think of so many amusing ways for the world to shit on poor old Ziggy is a testament to just how many different ways one little thing can ruin someone's entire day. Not the sunniest premise, I suppose, but it still works.
Fred Bassett, Tom Graham
Fred Bassett is almost bizarrely unfunny, to the point where it almost seems to be intentionally mundane at times. This is the strip that I most often find myself trying to figure out exactly what the joke's supposed to be. It's one of the few foreign strips in the paper, so maybe something just doesn't translate, but generally speaking I love British humour. What is it about Fred Bassett that's so consistently lost on me? Maybe it just stinks. It's not always my fault.

Page Five

Heart of the City, Mark Tatulli
Yawn. Kids are so cute aren't they? Completely undistinguished.
Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis
Another cute-animals entry, but devoid of any especially memorable characters save a peculiarly bug-eyed crocodile ⁹. Characterised by a palpable envy of the success of Get Fuzzy, which Pastis addressed directly in last Sunday's installment. Not bad, funnier than most for whatever that's worth, but Pastis is right about one thing: not as good as Fuzzy.
Mutts, Patrick McDonnell
Cute animals again, this one with an odd hippie-ish earth-child vibe underscoring it. Most of the jokes aren't funny, but I kind of like the ones where McDonnell doesn't try to be funny and instead just muses on the zen of the inner lives of animals.
I've noticed my blurbs are getting shorter; is this because I'm running out of things to say or because the strips grow progressively less interesting towards the back of the supplement?
Foxtrot, Bill Amend
I remember liking this one when it debuted, and it still holds up. The characters are pretty clichéd and they don't age, so it wouldn't have been surprising to see the strip stagnate early on, but somehow Amend manages to consistently squeeze laughs out of the same old material.
Cathy, Cathy Guisewite
I never found Cathy particularly funny, but then I never was a single woman. This one used to be a classic standby, but I think we can all agree that it jumped the shark when Cathy got married.
Guisewite was the original Candace Bushnell and Cathy was her Carrie Bradshaw, a single everywoman with whom every single woman could identify. I suppose Guisewite made the decision to get her hitched because she ran out of gags about single life, in which case her decision to move on is admirable in a way.
So she milked the engagement for all the Bridezilla material it was worth; fine. But now that Cathy's married, who cares? She still acts like a neurotic single woman, worrying incessantly about her weight, her mother's approval, etc., only now she just takes it all out on her poor husband. Maybe the strip'll be revitalised when Cathy gets divorced.
The Lockhorns, Bunny Hoest & John Reiner
Haha, Leroy's hitting on some tart at the cocktail party again! Loretta's cooking still sucks! There's something comforting about Mr. & Mrs. Lockhorn going through the motions of their empty, loveless marriage. They seem to stay together because each one is simply too lazy to leave the other.
The Lockhorns arguably recycles material more shamelessly than any other comic strip, but hey, if it ain't broke...

Page Six

Edge City, Terry & Patty LaBan
Having never seen Edge City before reading it in the Inquirer, I didn't realise it was another ethnic strip until Passover rolled around. Lo and behold, we have ourselves a bland, unoriginal Jewish family comic strip. It's not awful, but considering prevailing stereotypes, you can forgive me for expecting it to be a little funnier. I thought all the Jews who aren't accountants were stand-up comedians. Everyday I am further enlightened...
Non Sequitur, Wiley Miller
Wildly inconsistent, but the good days are strong. This one revolves around a precocious little girl who's best described as a female Calvin ¹⁰, but sometimes it's just random gags without any of the regular characters, à la Mr. Boffo. The girl's usually good for a solid laugh, but the strips without her tend to fall flat.
Baldo, Cantú and Castellanos
Which brings us to the Latino entry on the ethnic page. Mostly a generic family strip, but with a large extended family who all live together. Not to perpetuate stereotypes or anything.
Most of the gags are middle of the road and not very funny, but last Sunday one of the main characters (Tia Carmen) was dragged away in tears by gun-toting INS agents and the strip ended without any semblance of a punchline. If this strip suddenly starts tackling immigration issues head-on, it could become one of my favourites quickly.
Zits, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman
A strip about today's tech-obsessed teenagers: the main character is often seen using his cellphone, laptop and iPod all at once. And the strip has no homepage on-line. Way to know your subject.
On the other hand, the focus is more on the generation gap, and the gags tend to be set up from a viewpoint sympathetic to the parents. Perhaps it's really aimed at the parents of surly teenagers everywhere; why bother with a website when most of the strip's reader don't even understand how to use this crazy Interweb thing all the kids keep talking about?
As for the strip itself, it displays a knowing take on its source material and is usually good for a decent punchline. Approved.
Blondie, Dean Young and John Marshall
75 years. Did you know that? 75 years. You probably could have figured it out, as the artwork still looks pre-war. I've always felt like I was missing some vital piece of the premise of Blondie, like if I knew the original joke about how this slovenly geek scored the hot blonde I would get all the subsequent jokes.
Nowadays Blondie hardly ever appears, so we're treated to day after day of Dagwood's dog silently watching him build sixteen-inch-high sandwiches. Given that the strip's been around as long as it has, it's reasonable to assume that it was funny at one point, but I think it's safe to say that time has long since passed.
Piranha Club, Bo Grace
I'm honestly not sure if this one's an ethnic strip or not. It mostly revolves around a group of indistinguishable older men who all appear to be of some sort of Mediterranean stock: Italian? Greek? They all wear cheap suits, slouch, hang out and play cards at the Piranha Club, apparently a sort of Elks' lodge for men with pencil moustaches. I suppose this is sort of the Beetle Bailey analogue for greasy dudes from Queens who hang out at the neighborhood mens' club and compare pinky rings.

So I guess I have a positive view of about a third of the strips in the Inquirer, more than I expected. The problem is that I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to a lot of hit-or-miss strips that are unfunny more often than not. In a single week I'll be lucky to get two laughs out of the whole Sunday supplement. Next week I'll probably get one chuckle out of the lot. And I'll read every last one of them.

Tangents & Clarifications

The Times is too good for the funnies, and anyone who lives in New York and bitches about the Times (as I've done many times) should read the reprinted wire feeds that pass for reporting in any number of local dailies around the country once in a while to remind themselves of just how good they have it. An intellectual paper has its place, and the Times fills that place quite well. [Return]

Neither of which, I must confess, I've ever actually watched a full episode. But you get the idea. Not that I'm so above television, mind you, I just don't watch quality dramas, I watch(ed) The O.C. [Return]

Figuratively speaking, of course. I would assume all cartoonists submit their daily strips via email nowadays. [Return]

Obvious example: Rob (the human) used to wear large opaque glasses. Conley got rid of the glasses and has developed a far more expressive range in his renderings of Rob's face. [Return]

Conley also gets extra props for stirring up a bit of controversy. He received a shocking volume of hate mail from the Pittsburgh area after implying in one strip that the city smells bad. His response was a back-handed apology in which he insulted the city further. He later made a crack about Boston television sportscaster Bob Lobel being intoxicated on air. Most of the Boston-area papers that carry the strip censored it, and Lobel filed a libel suit which was reportedly settled out of court. Anyone who pisses people off in public gets a modicum of respect from me. [Return]

Trivia note: one (or more) of the baby characters on the show was voiced by the guy from The Drew Carey Show who was in Office Space. He also played the Rex Kwan Do guy in Napoleon Dynamite. Step to that. [Return]

Unfortunately not this guy, which would have made Sally Forth my favourite strip ever. [Return]

Check out, for instance, this utterly incongruous image of Ziggy in b-boy gear. [Return]

Alligator? [Return]

(as in and Hobbes) [Return]

I Want My MTV: The promo spot as short film in the DVD age

2007-04-04T02:44:00.000-04:00

I think every American my age (early 30s) can remember a specific period in their lives when MTV mattered. Even if we weren't particularly fond of the more mainstream fare, there were always specialty shows (120 Minutes, Yo! MTV Raps, Alternative Nation/Postmodern MTV) that showed the videos we wanted to see, plus the occasional treat of an unexpected breakout success. Personally, I've never even had cable television, but whether it was getting tapes of last Sunday's 120M from J— every week or staking out the dormitory's TV lounge before the Star Trek geeks got there to make sure we'd get to watch 120M, MTV was always a part of my pop cultural consciousness from about 1989 to, say, 1994.

The secret to MTV's enduring cultural relevance was its blunt refusal to age with its audience. The channel continuously moved on to the latest flavour of the month while its audience replenished itself with a never-ending supply of teenagers. You don't grow up with MTV; you outgrow it. I haven't actually seen the channel in several years, but that's okay; I have little interest in it. As far as I know, they no longer even show videos, having long since relegated those to their satellite-only offshoots in order to make room in the schedule for Road Rules marathons and the like.¹

What's interesting about MTV's cultural hegemony is that my memories of it are just as much of the channel's branding as they are of the content. Other than ESPN, I can't think of any other specialty cable channel that's achieved that. And the secret to that lasting impression was, more than anything else, the ubiquitous promo spots that ran at the front and back of almost every commercial break. They'd come in groups of about a half-dozen or so, saturate the channel for a few months at a time, then vanish into the ether.

I recently picked up a used VHS tape called I Want My MTV. It's a 40-minute compilation of the aforementioned 30-second promo spots that ran during the channel's maddeningly frequent ad breaks. While it satiated my appetite for vintage MTV footage, it's also something of a cruel tease: it's non-chronological, woefully incomplete and devoid of annotation.² The DVD age has spoiled me.

What jumps out about the program more than anything is just how edgy MTV was. The spots are like the channel's main programming on fast-forward: a blur of disconnected images and broad cultural references. They weren't even ads so much as disorientingly brief experimental films with a corporate logo tacked on to the end. Do you remember the one where the little animatronic skeleton cuts that dude's high-top fade into an "M"? How 'bout the one where all the little doll-people get sucked out the window? The one where the butler keeps twisting his head into all manner of vague cultural artifacts, eventually settling on a sardine tin that rolls open to reveal the familiar logo?

The biggest disappointment was the paucity of spots I most wanted to see, and the reason I bought the tape in the first place. Do you remember Jimmy McBride, the Boston cabbie who regales his nonplussed fares with rambling descriptions of current videos? Four spots, not too bad. How 'bout the Sinatra impersonator crooning loungy versions of the latest pop hits? Two spots. Randee of the motherfucking Redwoods, people? Two spots. The video box even promises clips of Randee's quixotic (1988?) presidential campaign, but the tape delivers none of these. Could it really have been that much of a struggle to secure the rights to campaign theme song "Just Say Whoa!"?³

Who's gonna move into the White House?
Who's gonna have to mow the big green lawn?
Randee! Randee! He's the man we need!

Come on.

All of this leads me to my main point here: stuff that needs to be compiled on DVD, pronto. What follows is a partial list, stuff I thought of in the last hour or so.

A complete collection of MTV promos
Watching these on VHS is a painful reminder of what a perfect fit stuff like this is for DVD. You could organise it into groups (all the Jimmy the cab driver bits, stand-alone short films, Rock the Vote spots, etc.), include interviews and commentaries with the stars, directors, etc. These promos were an important stage in the evolution of visual branding into an pop-art form of its own, a shift from product awareness to simple brand reinforcement, and deserve to be properly documented.
The complete Norm McDonald SNL Weekend Updates
Due respect to Dennis Miller and Tina Fey, but Norm was the greatest Update anchor of all time, hands down. The fact that he baffled half the audience was part of what made him so great. I can remember countless moments spent in a dorm room full of drunk/stoned kids laughing our asses off while the awkward silence of the studio audience emanated from the television. Who can forget the episode after the OJ verdict was handed down?
Ladies and gentlemen, the verdict is in. Murder...
...is legal in the state of California!
Lorne Michaels, if you're reading this ⁴, put this set out and I'll personally buy ten copies. I'm sure I can think of nine people for whom this would make a treasured gift.
Get a Life
Inexcusable. There are two four-episode DVDs out now, but the whole show needs, needs, to be reissued. One of the most bizarre shows ever broadcast on "network"⁵ television, Get a Life was a short-lived showcase for the self-humiliating talents of Letterman-alum/future SNL-other-guy Chris Elliott, one of the great comedy idiot-savants of his era. The second volume of the available DVDs, to its credit, does contain three crucial episodes ("Zoo Animals on Wheels", the one where he goes to the big city, the one with the model submarine), but for God's sake, where the fuck is the one where he hits his head on a disco ball and becomes psychic?
Besides Elliott's persona, the show was notable for the fact that the main character dies at the end of at least a third of the episodes, possibly more. In the four episodes mentioned in the previous paragraph, he dies at the end of three of them.
Shadow Chasers
This short-lived 80s flop is just the kind of forgotten treasure that tends to find a second life on DVD. Think of it as a kind of proto-Firefly, although in terms of premise it was really a precursor to The X-Files. It's about these two dudes who investigate paranormal occurrences. One of them is the wacky, carefree American guy who always thinks it's the supernatural at work, the other is the uptight British guy who always thinks there's a rational explanation for everything. I think it lasted about a dozen episodes, and I'm pretty sure I watched all of them.
A collection of presidential campaign television commercials
Several years ago I saw a 30-minute-or-so program of these at the Museum of Television and Radio, and it was riveting. They had the Goldwater one where the camera zooms in on that kid's pupil and you see a mushroom cloud.⁶ They had several Gerald Ford ones, in none of which he was allowed to actually speak to the camera, a telling sign if I've ever seen one. A collection like this would be crucial for so many groups of viewers (political science students, advertising students, journalism students), it just has to come out sometime, right?

Tangents & Clarifications

It's worth wondering whether today's youth see MTV as anything more than a lifestyle channel. I haven't asked any. I can remember being in college when I heard that Curt Cobain had died. We didn't turn on CNN, we turned on MTV and got the news from Kurdt Loder. I wonder if any analogous cultural event would cause people to turn on MTV today. [Return]

The reason DVDs are so perfect for material like music videos and commercials (redundancy?) is the non-linear possibilty of its format. This is why I get so pissed off when artists release DVDs that are either (a) non-comprehensive or (b) non-chronological, and two of the biggest musical acts of the video age have done it. R.E.M.'s video collection doesn't include "Drive" or "Star*69", and U2's collection is in some random order. If the viewers want to re-order the videos or skip certain ones, they can! It's a DVD! These things shouldn't be artistic statements, they should be first and foremost archival. [Return]

Currently the great void of the YouTube era, by the way. [Return]

And I know you aren't. [Return]

This was Fox in the 80s, after all. [Return]

Memorably parodied on The Simpsons in the episode where Sideshow Bob tries to blackmail the people of Springfield into giving up television. If you've seen the episode I'm talking about, believe me, the campaign ad looks exactly like that. [Return]

Movie review: Gone in 60 Seconds

2007-03-02T14:19:00.000-05:00

So did you know that shitty Nicolas Cage movie from a few years back was a re-make? Me neither till P— told me about the original. As I was logging on to Netflix without taking the time to blink, he backpedalled a little: "Dude, I mean, it's not a good movie. I don't want you to rent it and get pissed at me. It sucks."

He's right. Sort of. The first hour is bad, and not so-bad-it's-good bad, just flat-out bad. It's a 70s B-movie and an self-produced vanity film. Now imagine the problems of both compounded. The last forty minutes are good, and not just so-bad-it's-good good, but fucking awesome. It's just one long car chase, but it flies by. The driving is terrific and the editing is well-paced.

H.B. "Toby" Halicki ¹ was an outsider auteur of the best kind. After making his fortune in the tow yard business, he decided he needed – needed – to make a movie in which to crash a few of his 400 cars. This is what separates the few Toby Halickis of the world from ordinary folks like you and me.

Halicki wrote, produced, directed and starred in Gone, did all the stunt driving himself and distributed the film himself once it was complete. Tragically, this proto-Jackie Chan self-reliance eventually cost him his life. After making two more films of a similar ilk, Halicki was killed in a stunt accident on the set of Gone in 60 Seconds 2.² The sequel was never finished.

For a movie made explicitly as an excuse to wreck shit, there is surprisingly little action in Gone's first hour. Maindrian Pace (Halicki) and his cronies are established as bounty-hunter-type car theives who steal specific models to replace wrecks.³ They go out "disguised" in bad wigs and ridiculous fake moustaches that make them look sort of like the Beastie Boys in that "Sabotage" video.⁴ Early in the film Pace makes a deal with some South American gangsters to steal 48 high-end cars in a week for $200,000. The rest of the films revolves around the gang trying to fill this seemingly-impossible contract.

The acting is painful, the script worse. The cast are all non-actors essentially portraying themselves, presumably so that the roles wouldn't seem too challenging. Pace's brother is played by Halicki's brother, most of the cops are played by local poice officers.⁵ A cute idea, but it doesn't help. Unlike, say, Clerks, in which the amateurism is buoyed by a clever, precocious script, Gone features a solid hour of non-actors woodenly reading dialogue penned by a non-writer.

The turning point occurs when Pace must steal one last car (Eleanor, q.v. note 5 sub) only to be spotted by the cops, who were tipped off for reasons not worth explaining. He leads them on a high-speed orgy of destruction through seven counties of southern California.

There are several elements that make the chase great:

The driving is excellent. Halicki really could have made a living as a professional stunt driver (as opposed to say, writer or actor), and his skills are clearly on display in some of the wider shots. Some of the wrecks are pretty spectacular too.
The pacing varies quite a bit, which keeps it interesting. Rather than barrelling forward for forty straight minutes, the cars come to a full stop a few times as the drivers stare one another down for a few moments of who-blinks-first tension.
As the action drags on, the film cuts away to a few shots of the chase's aftermath: innocent by-drivers being bandaged up and hoisted on stretchers by paramedics. It's rare that a filmmaker makes a point of showing the human cost of an extended action sequence, and the shots somehow work as a counterpoint to the thrills and spills on display further up the road.
A shitload of cop cars get wrecked, always a welcome sight in any film. Apparently Halicki bought a bunch of them at an auction for $200 a pop for the express purpose of destroying them in his movie.⁶ Looks like he picked up a firetruck or two as well.

The ending, which I won't spoil, is a bit of a letdown. It's clever, but feels anticlimactic after what led up to it. But who cares? You don't watch a movie like this for the ending.

Tangents & Clarifications

For a more in-depth biography, check-out Halicki's Wikipedia page, but consider yourself warned: the text, a painful object lesson in the downside of Wikipedia's by-the-people-for-the-people ethos, reads like a desperate plea for the benevolent intervention of a sympathetic copy editor. [Return]

The re-make, directed by the DP on Halicki's second film (The Junkman, 150 cars destroyed) and produced by the inimitable Jerry Bruckheimer, is referred to in all of Halicki's promotional materials as Gone in 60 Seconds 2000, though I don't recall it being marketed as such during its theatrical run. [Return]

It doesn't make much sense in the movie either. [Return]

Odds that this is merely a coincidence, and the Beasties have in fact never seen Gone: 13.2 million to 1. It took me a little while to figure out the whole disguise gimmick, by the way, because sometimes the thieves wear their wigs and appear to have awful 70s haircuts, whereas other times they remove their wigs and reveal awful 70s haircuts. [Return]

It's telling that the only acting credit in the film's opening sequence is "Starring: Eleanor"; Eleanor is the nickname of the yellow Ford Mustang Halicki drives in the climactic chase sequence. And lemme tell you somethin', next to the rest of the cast, that car can act. [Return]

Who knew you could just go buy old cop cars? Do they let just anybody do this or do you need to cook up a story as to why you need them? I want one. [Return]

Movie review: American Hardcore

2007-02-24T19:43:00.000-05:00

I read Steven Blush's American Hardcore a few years back and loved it. It's comprehensive, stuffed with great quotes and stories, a little bit disorganised and bluntly opinionated. Just a terrific object lesson in writing an entertaining and enlightening oral history by a guy who was there for a lot of it. On top of that, I'm always biased in favour of books about American independent music in the 80s. I find the stories of these bands more inspiring than any others in rock history. It's partly a personal thing; I toured in a van with my own unknown band for a few years, so I know how hard it is.

But I think what I admire most about these bands is that, prior to 1984, none of them ever caught a break. The biographies and histories of all worthy artists, scenes, genres in rock all have a "big break" moment that functions as an early turning point in the story. Sam Philips discovered Elvis. Brian Epstein found the Beatles. All the San Francisco bands were signed by major labels. Same with the British class-of-'77 punks and the CBGB denizens just before them. Same again with Seattle's finest in the early '90s. Let the glory years begin. A few years later comes a second turning point and the glory years come to close. A key member dies, a key member quits in a huff, the drugs result in shitty records, the fans lose interest.

Hardcore never had that first turning point. The second one, the end of the line, came in 1984. Blush posits the disillusion resulting from Reagan's re-election as the death blow, but ignores the equally damning effects of success. Following the critical success of R.E.M.'s Murmur, indie rock was suddenly a viable commodity in all its forms. This led to 1984's critical landslide (q.v. #'s 4, 6, 8, 14, 20) and within two years Husker Du and the Replacements had deals with majors.¹ What made hardcore unique for the first few years was the complete lack of commercial expectations. None of those bands, in their wildest dreams, ever believed they could wind up on MTV someday. No one thought they'd ever make a dime. Once the very possibility of success was introduced, the scene was never the same.

But back to the big break, or lack thereof. For the bands whose greatest years passed before 1984, there is no moment in their story when their popularity suddenly began snowballing, took on a life of its own. All of these bands, particularly the big four (Bad Brains, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat) slogged it out on the road month after month, built their fanbases one kid at a time, built their legacies one show at a time. Oftentimes interviews with has-been bands for rock retrospectives are suffused with a sense of loss. We had it all, man. When I look back? We thought it would never end. But hardcore bands? They never had anything to lose.

So last night I watched Paul Rachman's companion film and... not the same. For one thing, the movie suffers from the same shortcoming as any narrative film adapted from a novel: you can fit more detail in a book. In the case of a documentary history, this detail can be crucial.

Biggest problem, right off the bat: the Dead Kennedys are barely mentioned.² It's a glaring enough omission to make me think there must be a reason behind it, most likely a refusal of the band members to be interviewed for the project.³ But Blush's book has pages of quotes from Jello Biafra, so why sit out the film? Because Feral House is an independent press but Sony is a big corporate film studio? Who knows?

Other than that, the raw material is there. There's some decent stuff in the interviews once you wade through the usual we were just like fuck you man and fuck your rules man nonsense that always pervades in conversations with aging punks. The archival footage is terrific, the kind of stuff that makes you say, "Thank God someone actually thought to film this." It's not that surprising to see good footage of, say, Bad Brains or Minor Threat, but the onstage brawl at an SS Decontrol show is an absolute treasure. It's one thing to hear grizzled dudes bragging about just how violent the scene was back then, it's quite another to confront the indisputable photographic evidence.

The film's biggest problem isn't the gaps in the source material, though, it's the editing. There's almost no attempt to really tell a story. Most of the interviews and live clips seem thrown together. There's an intro (Reagan-disco-yuppies-arena rock-blahblahblah) and an outro (the scene petering out in the wake of Reagan's re-election). About two-thirds of the way through, there's a half-assed attempt to cover each of the major scenes from a geographical standpoint (like the book's chapters). But other than that there's no narrative thread, just one visceral impression after another. This may have been an artistic choice by Rachman, but if it is it doesn't work. It comes off looking too haphazard, like an editor's early draft. For an audience already enamoured of the music and well-versed in its history, this isn't such a big deal. But if you're looking for a coherent introduction to the story of hardcore, you won't find it here.

The most surprising impression I took from the film, one I had never really read about or heard discussed before, isn't even mentioned explicitly in the film. Being straight, I don't have much of a gaydar, but as I watched one interview after another, it occurred to me that more than a few of the subjects seemed gay. It may have been the way they talked, the way they dressed, even the way some of their apartments were decorated. There were a few scattered bands with out members at the time (Husker Du, MDC, Big Boys), but nothing that's ever been addressed as a dominant theme of the era's history. I'd be curious to hear a gay man's take on the film, particularly one who doesn't know much about hardcore.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Here was a subculture that attracted kids who felt like outcasts from a surburban world that offered little quarter to its non-conformists: a conservative environment in a conservative era. Both the bands and the crowds were composed of teenagers, the quintessential age of sexual confusion. There was male bonding all around, immediate emotional release in the music and (intense, shirtless) physical contact in the pit. There were very few females involved with the scene and even fewer songs written about them. The whole scene was a tailor-made refuge for the emotionally confused and disenfranchised seeking some sort of social connection. I wonder how many kids in those bands and in those pits grew up and came out. I really think this could be the great untold story of the hardcore scene.

Tangents & Clarifications

R.E.M. would take longer to follow, but keep in mind their records were already going gold on IRS; they didn't need a major yet. [Return]

The Misfits also go unmentioned in the film, despite getting an entire chapter of Blush's book. But while Danzig and the boys may have built one of the most resilient and bafflingly rabid followings of any of the era's bands, in a way they aren't really part of this story. Certainly their own story deserves to be told, but in the context of the national hardcore scene being discussed here they're really only a footnote. So here you are. [Return]

Blush, incidentally, is also not interviewed. He's credited as the film's screenwriter, but there's no voiceover narration either. I suppose he gets points for not wanting to stroke his own ego by preening before the camera, rattling aff a string of I-was-there tales, but considering how much of the book is told in first person, it seems a bit odd. [Return]

Book review: Next Man Up

2007-01-18T08:53:00.000-05:00

Finally finished slogging my way through John Feinstein's latest opus and man, what a grind. Anyone who's ever thought it might be fun to play in the NFL ought to read this in order to disabuse themselves of that woefully misguided notion. In addition, anyone who thinks sports books are are lightweight beach-reading should read this to see just how even a sports book can be made to seem like a dreadful, interminable reading assignment for some required course you can't stand. More accurately, no one should read this.

I always find books about life in the NFL fascinating because it seems like such an unfathomably foreign world, even more so than other sports. No matter how much I read about it, I know that there are things about it I'll never grasp, things that can only be experienced first hand. Feinstein attempts to paint a vivid and detailed landscape of that world, but it winds up coming off as an exhaustive catalogue of individual observations. It's as though he were unable to tease out a real story from his time spent with the team (a full season of unlimited access, apparently), so he just dumps all his notes onto the page and lets the reader sort it out. Every step of the season, from training camp to the start of the off-season, is carefully explained. Every game, from preparation to aftermath, is described, none given any greater importance or extensive coverage than another. By the end of its nearly 500-page length (making it easily the longest sports book I've ever read) I was glad it was over.

What does come across through pages and pages of aimless observation is that life in the NFL is tedious, painful, tenuous and just as brutally taxing mentally and emotionally as it is physically. Players can be cut in training camp or at any time throughout the season. Other than a few established stars, no one's future is secure. Money drives a lot of the misery; pro football is a business, and no one seems able to forget this for a minute. Young or marginal players yearn for a long-term contract; when one player is rewarded, it immediately creates tension and even resentment that poisons friendships with teammates nervously awaiting their own payday. Everything is about money. Imagine working in an environment in which your company has a clearly defined limit for employee compensation (the salary cap), and in which your and all all of your co-worker's salaries are published in the local paper.

Feinstien is an experienced and respected sports writer with a few established classics to his credit in the area of college hoops as well as countless tomes on other subjects. I've never read any of his prior work, but this book certainly won't steer me away from it. To his credit, he presents plenty of fascinating detail in perfectly readable prose, he just never seems to build a bigger picture throughout the book as a whole. Want a good picture of life in the NFL? Go back to when it was still fun. Go read Paper Lion. Nobody tells it like dear old George.

We'll always have Newport

2007-01-05T06:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it's official: The OC, which finally got good again this season, is getting cancelled. While there is some wild speculation that the show will get picked up by the CW, I don't see it happening. Not only would way too many pieces need to fall into place, but it would probably not be nearly as good; considering his busy schedule ¹ these days, it's doubtful that creator Josh Schwartz would stay on with the show, at least in his current capacity.

What I find most amazing about the immediate reaction to the news is the general assumption that the show simply couldn't survive the loss of star Mischa Barton, whose character was killed off following a rumoured financial dispute with the producers. This theory conveniently ignores the fact that the show's ratings had been in a slow and steady decline almost since the first episode, and that this season it had been moved to the single most brutal slot in prime time, competing with the ratings onslaught of Grey's Anatomy, CSI and NBC's lineup of "smart"² comedies.

The video linked above posits Marissa's death as the obvious jump-the-shark moment that doomed the show, an assumption which betrays both a misreading of the show's appeal and a broader misunderstanding of the term itself. "Jumping the shark" does not refer to the event that made people stop watching, it represents a tipping point of creative decline, when the writers began repeating themselves or turned to hackneyed gimmicks for plot twists. It's not where the show ran out of viewers, it's where it ran out of ideas.

If anything, the death of Marissa is the opposite: a creative renaissance that seems to have brought the show out of its melodramatic doldrums and turned it back into the frivolous teen soap a few million of us fell in love with three years ago. In fact, you'll notice that at the bottom of the page linked above, one true believer even voted that the show had "jumped back" in the current season. If there was a jump-the-shark moment, it was the introduction ³ of one of two characters. You can debate which one was the real nadir, the true Cousin Oliver of Newport, but I won't hear any arguments for moments or characters aside from these two. In reverse order:

Johnny
The moody surfer from season three was introduced when Marissa was expelled from Harbor and exiled to the soul-sucking horrors of public school. He becomes a sort of alternate love interest for Marissa, who strings him along obliviously, creating a dismal pair of love trianges ⁴, one between the two of them and Ryan, the other including Johnny's girlfriend. It's possible to mark the exact moment of shark-jumping to the second that Johnny's limp and inebriated body hit the rocks below after he fell off a cliff, but Johnny brought so much more awful baggage with him that his ripple effect must be considered to fully appreciate his overall lameness. Remember, it was through Johnny that the excreble Volchuk, simultaneously the lamest character and the worst actor in the show's already-ignominious history, was introduced. And, lest we forget: Chili.
Oliver
It could also be argued that the show was finished following the introduction of the ironically-named Oliver in the middle of the first(!) season. Following essentially the same character arc as Johnny, he develops an unrequited crush on Marissa, she strings him along with the same like-you-as-a-friend bullshit, Ryan gets moody and justifiably jealous. His singular moment, like Johnny's, comes at the end, when he declares his undying love for Marissa while brandishing a firearm and a mouthful of sleeping pills.

They're both abysmal moments in the show's brief history, but was either really the end? On one hand, the Oliver story was the first time the show resorted to a ludicrous plotline, and established a dismal precedent in the process. On the other, Oliver was gone without a trace the moment the carted his sorry ass off to the magical land of padded walls; Johnny's story had repurcussions that stretched well into the following season.⁵ Vigilante payback roadtrip to Mexico, anyone? For this reason I'll take Johnny as the show's true nadir.

Which makes its recovery all the more miraculous, and its cancellation all the more tragic. Notice a common element in the events listed above? That's right: Marissa. Would getting rid of her solve all of the shows problems? Hell no. Would it solve most of the biggest problems? Absolutely. The question, then becomes this: would the show still be worth watching without her? I say even more so. One need look no further than this season.

The show flirted with (further) disaster with the introduction of Ryan's father, who appeared at first to have sinister and mysterious motives ⁶, but he was quickly revealed to be interested in little more than a family reunion and acceptance for his surprisingly sincere I'm-a-changed-man routine. Now he's either vanishing again or taking on a new role as Julie Cooper's latest unlikely love interest. Either way, I'm fine with it. Other than that, the only plotlines going are the suddenly cold-footed Seth and Summer's ongoing attempts to make one another blink before the wedding and Caitlin's new romantic interest ⁷ Perfect. Just the sort of fluff one wants from a show about rich teenagers. Pity it has too end so soon, but perhaps better it happen now than before the writers kill the momentum with yet another grievously ill-advised suicide/insanity/felony/hard drugs/space aliens/covert assassins what-have-you plot twist. Word is that the final episodes have yet to be shot, so the show will have a chance to present a finale with real closure, rather than just ending abruptly, and I suppose I'm looking forward to that. It was, for the most part, fun while it lasted.

Tangents & Clarifications

And by the way, if you've clicked that link, let me just say that I for one am completely psyched for this Gossip Girl show. I've never even heard of the books, but the premise sounds terrific. [Return]

(i.e., the ones without laugh tracks) [Return]

(or, more accurately, dismissal) [Return]

A "love rhombus"? [Return]

Interestingly, after all the traces of his many plot/character derivatives had finally been completely expunged from the show, Johnny managed to make one last appearance as one of my favourite inconspicuous details of the recent Christmukkah coma episode. Johnny had been surfing prodigy who, just before his death, had an opportunity to turn pro and embark on a tour, sponsorships and all. In one of the first scenes to take place in the "alternate universe", there is a brief glimpse of a poster advertising a pro surfing tour featuring Johnny as its star. Since Marissa died even younger, she never went to Newport High, never stole the young surfer's heart, etc, so he never died. Cool. Probably my second-favourite detail of the whole episode. The first? Tate motherfucking Donovan. [Return]

Seriously, am I the only one who thought this was going to turn into a six-episode-long snoozer in which the guy slowly gains everyone's trust, then is revealed to be jst some con artist with a stolen identity looking to swindle the Cohens out of their money? And Sandy's the only one who smells a rat, while everybody else is like, "No, really, he's changed, just give him a chance," until he finally finds the evidence he needs to thwart his dastardly scheme just before it's too late? I mean, it was almost too obvious. Just take that Jerri Ryan character from a couple seasons back (speaking of wretched plotlines) and turn her into a guy. Bingo. [Return]

Potrayed by some up-and-coming pop star I'd never heard of. He's cute enough, but my inital reaction to his acting talents is that he may want to stick with music. Oh and by the way, how funny is it that the writers seem to be going out of their way to make the show's only black character anything but some ghetto jock on scholarship? He aces English class! He's a band geek! He wears sweaters! Really, he's so much more than just a rehash of that CU basketball player Donna Martin used to tutor. In fact, he's the one tutoring Caitlin. [Return]

End-of-the-season blues

2007-01-04T07:14:00.000-05:00

Back before the NFL season started I posted a whole mess of predictions and some dubious gambling advice. Let's review. First up: over/unders on win totals.

Phoenix
my pick: under 8; actual: 5
Kinda proud of myself for not buying into the hype on these guys. Same thing's gonna happen next year, by the way: new coach, Leinart should improve, they'll be everybody's "surprise" pick to win that shitty division. And guess what? Their o-line'll still suck and they'll be lousy again.

Buffalo
my pick: under 6¹/₂; actual: 7
Well that hot streak didn't last long. Losses this close are frustrating, because one finds oneself looking back at specific games going, "Man, if the Jets had just stepped up for that one," or, "If the Dolphins hadn't been so crappy..." Best not to linger on these.

Charlotte
my pick: over 10; actual: 8
Man, what the hell happened here? Injuries on both sides, overall underperformance; they gotta bounce back, right? I mean there's just too many positives here to stay down. On the other hand, I hear they're thinking about trading up in the draft and getting a long-term replacement for Delhomme, which means an inevitable rebuilding year.

Chicago
my pick: over 9; actual: 13
Considering that you could basically start by spotting 'em at least five in the division alone, I don't see how anyone could've taken the under here. But what do I know?

Detroit
my pick: under 7; actual: 3
Seven wins? Are you kidding me? This team'll be lucky to win seven games over the next two years! You know Millen's coming back for another year, right? Remember the plot of that baseball movie Major League? It's about this evil lady that owns the Cleveland Indians, and she tries to put together the worst team possible because if she loses enough games she can break her stadium lease and move the team. Do you see where I'm goign with this, conspiracy theorists? Can there be any other explanation for the duration of the Millen era?

Houston
my pick: under 5¹/₂; actual: 6
Can't believe I got done in by a two-game winning streak to close the season. Do you think Kubiak mentioned the win line in his pre-game speech before the last game? To like, inspire them?

Indianapolis
my pick: over 11¹/₂; actual: 12
Another year, another division title. Yawn. They beat a double-digit number even with a bad losing streak near the end.

Minneapolis
my pick: over 8; actual: 6
I think I underestimated the Packers. I think a lot of us did. I mean, that's two losses right there. Man, does this look like a going-nowhere team or what? Pencil them in for under eight again next year.

N'awlins
my pick: under 7; actual: 10
Go ahead, laugh. Like you called this one. The start of the Haslett-Brooks era looked promising too, remember? I think this one's got more staying power, though.

Oaktown
my pick: over 6¹/₂; actual: 2
This pick honestly baffles me. Even after re-reading my summary, I have no idea what I was thinking. I guess they just happened to play a whole bunch of teams that I had seriously underestimated (Bal, SD, SF, NYJ), and I figured they'd take a few of those. But still, seven wins? How did I talk myself into this? Easily my most embarrassing pick.

Psychedelphia
my pick: over 8¹/₂; actual: 10
Who's the man? I think I'm the only person that predicted a major return to form for the Eags. The rest of their division wound up being pretty overrated.

Pittsburgh
my pick: over 10; actual: 8
Whatever. I made this pick after the motorcycle accident, too, which lends it a real air of what-was-I-thinking, although it's not nearly as awful as that Raiders pick. What can I say, I figured the champs would stay strong. Blinded by the rings, y'know?

Seattle
my pick: over 10¹/₂; actual: 9
This one was just begging for trouble. Double-digit wins coming off a Super Bowl loss is always a tall order, for some reason. I even correctly predicted that Shaun Alexander would get hurt, and still called them winning a whole bunch. Weak-lookin' schedule, I guess.

Tampa
my pick: over 8; actual: 4
Ha-ha, WOOPS! These guys were like my big surprise pick that nobody else was calling. I still don't see why they were so bad. They returned most of the same team that won the division the previous year, and it's not like losing Simms was such a huge deal. I also didn't even see them play once this year, so I can't offer any hindsight wisdom now.

Nashville
my pick: over 5¹/₂; actual: 8
I told you Fisher's teams never stay down too long. And they're winning ten next year, assuming Chow doesn't wind up in Phoenix.

The District of Columbia
my pick: under 9; actual: 5
HA-HA, fuck the Redskins. I can't think of a more fun guy to root against in all of sports than Dan Snyder. Time to face the music, Dan-O: Gibbs is washed up.

Final record: 7-9
Better luck next year, I guess. I never even realised until just now that I picked win lines for exactly 16 teams, so my record looks like an NFL record. And one that's not even good enough for the playoffs, to boot. Even in the NFC (barely).

But that's nothing compared to how I did on my division champ picks:

Philly 14-5
Minny 5-2
Tampy 3-1
Miamy 5-2

Not only did I only hit one out of four (and the one with the shortest odds, at that), but half of them finished last. Who's a winner? That's right, baby.

Oh but we're not done yet. Take a look at my Super Bowl picks:

Indy 6-1
Denvy 12-1
Charly 12-1
Tampy 30-1

As you can see, three out of four didn't even make the playoffs. I sincerely hope no one actually took those picks as gambling advice. I am not a professional. I'm not really worried, mind you; no one reads this thing anyway.

Playoff preview tomorrow. Maybe.

The other singles

2007-01-02T08:51:00.000-05:00

Rejoice! Everybody's year-end best-of lists have graced us at last, and of course some gems were inevitably overlooked. What follows is a list of my ten favourite singles that didn't turn up on any of the following lists:

Cokemachineglow published an unordered list of favourite tracks unified by a quaint storyline imagining the songs as the soundtrack to a fictional holiday party attended by the site's writing staff. Cute, but the joke gets old quickly, particularly if you don't know the writers personally. Interesting bunch of tracks though, and that's what really counts.
Paper Thin Walls asked 31 writers to pick one track each and discuss. Predictably, theirs contained some of the oddest selections, but a few usual-suspect-types turned up as well.
Pitchfork made an ordered countdown, but theirs included any songs they liked, singles be damned. Album tracks, bootlegs, remixes, whatever. To incorporate this newfound embarrassment of riches, they expanded the list to 100 tracks. Killer.
PopMatters didn't make a singles list, but they embedded a video to accompany the blurb for 42 of the 60 selections on their best albums list; going by the logic that any song that has a video is a single, I counted those tracks as PM's singles list. Definitely the safest choices out of all the lists I've seen; they seem to aim for the oldest/least-hip audience. No shame in that, mind you, but the distinctly NPR vibe to many of their selections makes the whole thing seem a bit out of touch.
And of course Stylus were the only ones to do a traditional singles-only countdown. Bless them. I've got a soft spot for the classics as far as format goes, plus my tastes usually skew closest to theirs.

All in all 273 (non-unique) selections, and still the tracks below didn't make one of these lists. I stuck with singles ¹, criteria being any song that can be reasonably argued a single, like has a video or is available on iTunes without a parent album or whatever. No sense getting too picky here.

Incidentally, when I went back and re-read some of these I noticed a pattern of overwhelming negativity in some of these blurbs. Rest assured, this is not a piss-take; these really are terrific songs. I just sometimes get a little down on myself for falling for the facile siren wails of unabashed pop. I was young once, you know. Young and way too cool for these sorts of confections. Thank God I've outgrown that foolish notion.

In no particular order (well, okay, alphabetically):

"Doctor Blind", Emily Haines
Pitchfork actually put the accompanying clip on its year's best videos list, but where's the love for the song itself? Haines's moody ode to an overmedicated loved one is a marvelous example of that rare pop song in which the music perfectly complements the lyrics. The unsettling shifts in the time signature keep the listener off-balance while the woozy strings perfectly evoke the soft, fuzzy intoxication of chemical depressants. There have been countless attempts through the years, but rarely does a listening experience actually feel like a drug.

"Here (In Your Arms)", Hellogoodbye
Let's see. If you've never heard the band, this is a tough one to explain. Hellogoodbye are sort of like this typically lame southern California emo band, with all of the whiny vocals and nauseatingly precious lyrics that implies. But then last Christmas the singer got a vocoder and the drummer got a cheap-ass drum machine, and they all got way into shitty Euro-club pop. So now they write the same cloying songs, but they slather them with obnoxious four-on-the-floor disco beats and gobs of woefully unecessary autotuner effects. And the results... are awesome. Trust me, this cut is infectious.

"Hey You", Basement Jaxx
I am baffled as to how this little slice of excess got ignored, especially since Internet music dorks have always celebrated Basement Jaxx because, not in spite, of their utter ridiculousness. This might be their most ludicrous track yet, a towering carnival of blaring brass, tribal chants and all the (literal) bells and whistles they could stuff in there. I mean really, would you take "Oh My Gosh" over this over-the-top circus of excess? Turn it way up on some good speakers and listen to the way the tympanies(!) carry the chorus away to some magical cotton candy world and back again.

"Hit the Floor", Twista ft. Pitbull
Twista's world's-fastest-rapper gimmick gets pretty tiresome over the course of a full-length album, particularly the 70-minute endurance tests of the CD age. In small doses though, he's never less than a welcome delight on any track, and this one is no exception. The relentless mindfuck of a beat obscures the generic party-hearty lyrics; bob your head in lieu of singing along.

"I Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Is In", Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
I'm not sure if this was released in 2006 or late 2005, but I spun it enough times this year that respect is due. Available as a mail order only ² 45 (presumably for copyright reasons), Jones and her Dap-Tones take a corny old Kenny Rogers chestnut and, rather than make a joke out of it, transform it into a tight, mean funk workout, key changes and all. The year's hottest old-school track, the magnificent Amy Winehouse be damned.

"Keep Holding On", Avril Lavigne
Remember when her whole "anti-Britney" (her own term, by the way) gimmick seemed so fresh? The whole punky skater-chick thing (wifebeaters and neckties: Whoa! Somebody stop her!) was a breath of freah air for teen-pop back when squeaky-clean Disney alums ruled the adolescent airwaves, and her slick, radio-ready guitar kick-ins stood out sonically from the shiny plastic dance-pop being force-fed our nation's youth just a few short years ago. Naturally, she inspired career makeovers across the board, as girls from all walks, from the prefab TV princess to the aging indie queen, recast themselves as modern-day grrrls with loud guitars and engineers like the Matrix got paid big bucks to water those very guitars down for the impressionable youth of TRL Nation. Which raises the most vexing question of young Avril's career: what does the revolutionary do when she's won?
In Avril's case, she grows up fast and reinvents herself as the Diane Warren of the teen set. Already learning to rake it in as a songwriter-for-hire (check the credits atop Kelly's last one), here she steps back behind the mic for a movie soundtrack one-off. The song is essentially "How Do I Live" rewritten with a bunch of yearbook slogans; the guitars are turned down, the strings are turned up, every note is obvious, every word a cliché. The song essentially functions as a publicly-posted resumé for anyone who can't afford Linda Perry's services.
Having said all that, it probably sounds as though I don't actually like the song, but I do, a lot. I'm a sucker for this sort of overblown sentimentalism, and this track is textbook. What places it slightly above other songs of its ilk is little more than a personal predilection toward Avril's voice, especially the way she pronounces all of her "s"es with a slight "sh", as in "We were meant to be, shupposhed to be/But we losht it". It's the little things, you know?

"Like U Crazy", Mates of State
I heard a music writer say in an interview earlier this year that he adores the Mates of State, that "they don't have a bad track in them." When the skeptical interviewer asked him to elaborate, the writer explained that he loves the idea of couple bands, in which the boy is no longer yearning for the girl, he's already won her, and the two simply write beautiful music together to celebrate the love they share. Like Yo La Tengo, like Viva Voce, like Mitch & Mickey, etc. I, for one, second that emotion.
"Like U Crazy" has it all: weepy, dominant chord progression, simple waltz time, two voices declaiming their love in unison. When they get to the chorus their voices rise as they pour their hearts into the song. From a conventional standpoint they sound awful: there are no pretty, intricate harmonies here, just two amateurish singers belting away at a sloppy duet. It's confusing, messy and somewhat out of tune. Just like real love.

"Mon Coeur, Mon Amour", Anais
What I love most about this song, besides the fact that it's a delightfuly fizzy piece of underproduced indie-guitar candy, is that, since I don't speak French, the lyrics are whatever I want them to be. I know the title means "My Heart, My Love", which gives a basic idea but not much beyond that. If the song were a weepy ballad, there wouldn't be much left to the imagination. As it stands, it could be anything: a joyous declaration, an unrequited plea, a defiant break-up, you name it.

"Setting Sun", Howling Bells
British people wearing cowboy hats, western shirts and other basic signifiers of Americana are generally a dicey proposition, and for the most part the Howling Bells' bland roots rock ably lives up to the dubious promise of their wardrobes. "Setting Sun", however, is a marvelous exception with the unmistakeable power to inspire all manner of overwrought metaphors, a haunting slice of twilight that sneaks around behind you and taps you on the opposite shoulder. The singer's sleepy voice and vague lyrics are pleasant enough, but it's the spooky lead guitar lines that carry the whole the tune across the good/great divide, dripping a trail of voodoo magic along the path behind them as they go.

"Vans", The Pack
I love the way hiphop is finally embracing skateboarding, and can't believe it took this long to come to full fruition. Both are urban youth cultures that place a premium on the absolute latest in anything, embrace any defiance of authority, develop elaborate and constantly-evolving codes of fashion and language inscrutable to outsiders, and have a strong and lucrative appeal to a suburban demographic. What was the hold-up?
"Vans" is the oddball flipside to Lupe Fiasco's widely praised "Kick, Push", a hiphop skater's anthem tailor-made for wider acceptance what with the lush samples and easily-parsed storytelling. "Vans", by contrast, features a group of average rhymers mumbling about their shoes. They praise them for their "punk-rock" qualities, list a few of the designs available, brag on how little they cost, even drop a bit of well-researched company history into a verse. All over a track consisting of little more than a few fingersnaps, some high-hats and a dizzyingly deep synth line, just the sort of disorienting minimal weirdness that makes one scrutinise the spaces between the sounds to see if there's anything else there.

"Way I Be Leanin'", Juvenile ft. Mike Jones, Paul Wall, Wacko and Skip
"Get Ya Hustle On" seems to be the consensus pick from Reality Check, but I'll take this relentless ensemble number over the album's opening statement of purpose as a standalone single. The screwed-n-chopped Jay-Z sample in the hook would be the best part if it weren't for the irrepressible Mike Jones, who hops all over the mic like a kid at recess. Praise for "Hustle" tends to focus on its uncompromising sociopolitical message in the wake of the Katrina disaster, but if you can't see the relevance in a New Orleans rapper cutting a posse track with an all-star lineup of Houston MCs, you weren't paying attention when it all went down.

And while we're at it, some other observations of all these lists:

Most appearances, song: Clipse's "Mr. Me Too" made four lists, all but the Paper Thin Walls mix; presumably the one-track-per-writer format made that one much tougher to crack. Incidentally, Gnarls Barkley's ubiquitous "Crazy" would have made the same four lists, but Pitchfork proudly pointed out in their introduction that since they were cool enough to hear the white label of the song in 2005, it wasn't eligible for 2006's list. Whoopee, dorks.
Most total appearances, artist: Clipse had one more appearance with a different song, bringing their total to five. This tied tham with Nelly Furtado, who spread three different songs across three lists, and Hot Chip, who placed two songs on three lists, for a total of five each.
Most unique songs, artist: Over the space of three lists, Ghostface managed to rack up a whopping four different songs.

Aaaaand how about my favourite cuts that only made one list:

Cokemachineglow: I'm stumped here. Every song I've heard and liked is on another list as well. Which is not to say that CMG didn't come up with their share of unique entries, just that I haven't heard too many of them. But I will. And perhaps I'll update this line in the future.
Pitchfork: "Ain't No Other Man", Christina Aguilera
How on earth did this miss Stylus's list? Those guys are the biggest pop suckers going. Hands down one of the best singles of the year in my view. Terrific vocal performance, urgent and unstoppable rhythm track. This is quite honestly one of my favourite singles of the decade.
PopMatters: "Here I Come", The Roots
Arguably ?uestlove's finest three minutes to date on the ol' trap kit. Listen to him work that ride cymbal. Black Thought is frequently criticised for his mediocre lyrics, but I don't even notice the lyrics on this cut; too wrapped up in that beat.
Paper This Walls: "Apple Tree Victim", Prurient
Just the latest in a long line of examples of how an excruciatingly distorted recording of a simple, elegant melody can be one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful sounds imaginable.
Stylus: "Rehab", Amy Winehouse
I don't care if this is fake-ass British neo-soul. The groove is funky, the voice is smoky, the lyrics are a hoot. She pulls this schtick off in a way Jamiroquai's never even approached.

Tangents & Clarifications

Best-album only tracks of the year: "A Method", TV on the Radio; "1,000 Seconds", Secret Machines [Return]

You can pick it up here. And I highly recommend that you do. By the way, full disclosure: I knew the bass player in college. But I haven't seen him in years. [Return]

On the importance of good ladder safety

2006-12-19T04:04:00.000-05:00

Good solid episode of The OC this week, but not a great one, and I think it could have been. I liked the corny It's a Wonderful Life conceit and felt like they could have made a real classic out of it. But I think what ultimately held it back was a reluctance to fully immerse the episode in the fantasy, and a hesitation to ask the audience to follow.

The set-up was fine, with the ladder accident and all, and Ryan's first few encounters with the other characters not recognising him were fun. But why keep jumping back to the real world? All of the interludes occuring back in reality were unnecessary, hindered the flow of the fantasy story and seemed like little more than a concession to an audience the writers imagined would be confused by the whole parallel universe thing.¹ If you're that worried, why do the story at all? Come on, Schwartz: taking risks is what makes for great television. Sometimes.

Two moments made the reality interludes worthwhile:

Seth, of course, has the whole thing figured out correctly. Why? Because he reads comic books, that's why. And comic books have the answers to all of life's mysteries.²
When Julie threatened Taylor's mom by telling her that if she didn't delay her vacation to visit her comatose daughter in the hospital, she'd tell airport security that Veronica was carrying a bomb, to the shock (and, no doubt, admiration) of even Caitlin. Absolute classic Julie Cooper moment, the stuff of which legends are made.

Other than that, totally extraneous, and only distracted from the story at hand.

As for the main story, Ryan and Taylor's dual coma-dream? It was cute, it was fun. Not much to say about it really, other than it worked. Overall the episode was really one big interlude in the series, as no one's plotlines were advanced in any way. A throwaway, but an enjoyable one nonetheless. A few other observations:

Did it really need to be raining back in the real world while Ryan and Taylor were out cold? They say it never rains in southern California, you know..³ Theory: the whole thing was an extended riff on side 3 of Electric Ladyland, where Jimi Hendrix stares out the window on a rainy day and dreams about turning into a mermaid. I know it's a stretch, and Schwartz certainly doesn't seem like much of a classic rocker but hey, it works for me.
Taylor's gift for Ryan? The deluxe Foreman grill. Yes, of course. Has Ryan ever cooked anything in his life? Classic Taylor: so misguided you could just give her a big hug.
Couple more moments of Ryan–Kirsten sexual tension to file away for future study:
1. Kirsten quizzing Ryan about inviting Taylor to Christmukkah dinner, then thinking she has his reluctance all figured out. Actually, Kiki, it's because someone else will be there for whom Ryan's got the hots. And she's bringin' the ham, if you know what I mean.
2. Taylor speculating on dream-Kirsten's unfulfilling sex life, and Ryan becoming very uncomfortable not at the thought of his adoptive mother having sex, but rather at the thought of the object of his desires with another man.
Absolutely classic line, destined for the annals of Sethdom:
Ryan: I'm from an alternate universe where your parents are still married and you and Summer are in love.
Seth[utterly unfazed]: I always knew this would happen.
Tate motherfucking Donovan: back on the set like it's the oh-four all over again. Plus he finally scored Kirsten, even if it is for just one dream sequence. Seems like, unlike everybody else in the dream, the Coopers were actually better off in the Ryan-never-showed-up scenario. I mean, they're still divorced and Marissa's still dead, but Caitlin's a child prodigy and Jimmy never went broke (repeatedly). Which, as we all know, back in the real world, Ryan prevented... how exactly?

Tangents & Clarifications

Which, judging by a few of the comments on the boards, some of them were. Still, can't always aim for the lowest common denominator. Even in television. [Return]

Except, like, how to score chicks. [Return]

Although it did once before that I can remember, when Sandy got stuck in a storm with his fugitive ex-girlfriend and had to spend the night in a motel with her but nothing happened, honey! [Return]

Um, OMG, Caitlin like, rocks!

2006-12-12T08:40:00.000-05:00

I think the last time The O.C. enjoyed two good episodes in a row was during the first season. But last week's episode, like that of the week before, was fantastic. No one got arrested, no one fell grievously ill, no one fucking died for sobbing out loud, just one hour of good old-fashioned puppy love and debauched partying. Okay, so Summer got kicked out of school, that's pretty major, but important to the show for larger purposes. Now she's stuck in Newport till next fall, and Seth says he'll defer RISD an extra semester in order to stay with her. This gives Schwartz & Co. about six months to dream up that one last kooky plot twist that finally leads to the whole gang's inevitable enrollment at California University at Orange County.

Except of course for Ryan, who just has to do his own thing, so he enrolls at cross-town rival Chino State. Graduation rate: just like those incredible prices in a high-end consumer electronics catalogue... too low to print. Also known as "where the wild things are." Like as in, "welcome to the jungle, kid." Good opportunity to re-introduce all the kids from Newport Public who aren't dead or in jail (bad Heather, Johnny's girlfriend, that insufferable "Bizarro Seth" kid) yet. 'Cause you just know they'll all wind up in the same place. And of course this socioeconomic cross-pollination can only lead to one thing: showdown between the haves and the have-nots at the annual CUOC–CSU gridiron tilt in late November (nickname: the Lemon Bowl). Naturally the two schools are long-standing rivals in all sports, but the near-brawl has to take place at a football game, because there's really only three sports not historically dominated by one school or the other, and CSU's basketball program is under NCAA-mandated suspension following last year's point-shaving scandal.¹ I'm telling you, you take your eyes off those public school kids for one minute...

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. A few other observations on the current State of the County:

Gordon "The" Bullet: a questionable addition whose novelty is wearing thin fast, but has too many good points to just write off. For one thing, it's always good to have Julie dating yet another rich guy, and the idea of him aggressively pursuing her and her resisting his "charms" is a nice change of pace. But I think it was his sudden and unexpected display of vulnerability after their disastrous dinner with the Cohens that ultimately tipped the scales in his favour: after all that alpha-male bluster, he's really just a poor little puppy dog, eager to please and starved for attention.²
Having Julie and Kirsten's dating service accidentally morph into a call-guy service stocked with hot young gigolos is exactly the kind of overwrought nonsense I generally find unnecessary and bothersome about this show. Are we even going to find out how this misunderstanding occurred? Did that sexpot client just offer the kid money at the end of the night? And if so, what made him think to call Julie and offer her a share of it? I'm willing to give this one a chance simply because it smacks of Julie's secret porn-tape subplot from a couple seasons ago, which was both a hilarious idea and a well-written storyline, right up to its surprisingly affecting conclusion. But Schwartz & Co. are skating on pretty thin narrative ice when they turn to ideas this inherently ridiculous. Colour me open-minded but highly skeptical.
Nice to see Che get exposed as a whiney rich kid, but I didn't like the way the writers portrayed him as a sympathetic galoot (in a pitiful sort of way), rather than a scheming little weasel. The good: I like that "Che" is short for "Manchester"; clever detail there. The bad: Seth should have punched him in the face instead of shoving him into the pool. Che still could have fallen into the water and dragged Summer with him, but that way he would have at least emerged with a bloody nose. Also, Summer would have scolded Seth for resorting to violence but secretly been really turned on by seeing her man throw a punch.
Caitlin just took an immeasurable leap forward in terms of character respectability with that party, and may in fact be my new hero. At this point I'm having trouble accepting that she was actually related to that walking wet blanket Marissa. Could Marissa have pulled off these moves? More importantly, would it even have occurred to her to bother trying? Let's recap the high points:
1. invites all the kids who aren't invited to the mean ol' popular girl's party, no matter who they are; totally choice move, because she immediately becomes the savior of not only all of Harbour High's social outcasts, but pretty much everybody outside the highest social echelon, while at the same time guaranteeing herself a big enough crowd that she won't get stuck hanging out with the same half-a-dozen boring losers all night;
2. openly smokes marijuana and offers it to others with no repercussions, which puts her way ahead of Seth ³, that's for damn sure;
3. continues the show's by-now long-standing tradition of alarmingly casual underage drinking, again with no repercussions; and most deliciously
4. tries to hook up with her main rival's boyfriend, and when that doesn't work? Oh, just gets him to come out of the closet instead! I mean, she gets rebuffed on her initial advance, so she goes for the even more devastating move? PWNED!
At that point it's game, set and match, Caitlin Cooper. And when the mean girl shows up in tears, having just arrived from her own sparsely attended soirée, to concede defeat and offer school-ruling privileges? Caitlin can't even be bothered. "Just be nice to your friends," she scoffs. Coolest move ever! Seriously, at this point I don't think she can be stopped. I'm completely prepared to believe that by the end of the season she'll successfully broker a bilateral disarmament agreement between India and Pakistan, and look jailbait-fabulous doing it. Oh yeah, and when she finishes teaching her rival a crucial life lesson and leaving all of Harbour High a palpably better place for it, what does she do? Turns around and goes back to cleaning the graffiti from one of the unconscious twins' faces, thanklessly looking out for her friends as the rest of the party fades into yesterday. She's almost too cool to be believed in this episode, but I think I like her that way.
And of course the Taylor-Ryan saga continues, which makes for some good moments (Sandy and Kirsten vying for the role of "the new Seth" in Ryan's life ⁴; Taylor hiring some gay dude to pretend to be her boyfriend and paying him in rare Japanese action figures), some not so good (Ryan's lame infatuation fantasies ⁵, which require "actor" Ben MacKenzie to reveal his painfully inadequate range). All in all I like where they left it: the two of them are kind of back to where they started, with plenty of room left for several more episodes of the same endlessly endearing mating dance. Bring it.

By the way, watch for some awkward scenes between Seth and Summer in the coming weeks, as US Weekly reports the real-life couple have called it quits. On one hand, I'm like, totally bummed. I mean, they're both like, so hot. On the other hand, that same article places Brody at some party flirting with none other than Ashlee Simpson! Pinch me! I mean, hello? Like, oh my god, is my head about to explode? I don't think I could even handle it if those two were to start dating. That would just be like... oh my god!

Tangents & Clarifications

CUOC, not surprisingly, can beat CSU handily at most of the country club-type sports (golf, tennis, equestrian), while CSU tends to dominate the "grittier" sports in the collegiate pantheon (stickball, kick the can, auto theft). Interesting trivia tidbit: the third sport at which both schools traditionally excel is none other than water polo, a sport most people would understandably expect to be dominated by the rich kids. Instead, CSU plays the role of perennial scrappy underdog and invariably makes the conference finals year in and year out, due in no small part to their unique home field advantage. Whereas the CSU players are used to the conditions of their campus's pool, CUOC and other visiting squads are thoroughly unaccustomed to swimming in what is essentially a chlorinated vat of medical waste and animal remains; their play suffers accordingly. [Return]

Big bonus points for the Bullet who, when discussing widespread Jewish media ownership, addresses Sandy affectionately as "Hebro". A few left-field laughs like that per episode and the big guy can stick around as long as he pleases. [Return]

Who you'll no doubt recall missed his interview with Brown, blowing his shot at acceptance, and later went on to burn down his father's office. All during his "experimenting" phase. Way to go, lightweight. [Return]

The winner? Tossup, really. Kirsten gives the better advice, but Sandy does the better Seth impression (mentions comic books and indie rock) and has a more relaxed overall demeanor. Of course this latter advantage is partly due to the undeniable sexual tension between Kirsten and Ryan. Mark my words. [Return]

Interesting side note: in its first couple of seasons the show was known for, among other things, a tendency to try to "have it both ways", in that the writers seemed to feel that, by acknowledging and poking fun at the inherent cheesiness of the show through either self-referential comments or witty discussions of thinly-veiled fictional show-within-the-show The Valley, said cheesiness became automatically excused. It worked the first couple of times, but they drove the idea into the ground and eventually abandoned it, as though tacitly admitting that the show had become so ludicrous that no amount of half-assed postmodern-lite one-liners could excuse it. At the same time the tone of the show had become so suffocatingly melodramatic that such japery would have seemed jarringly incongruous anyway.
When Ryan describes his woefully unimaginative Tayl-lucinations (pole dancing, excessive soap suds)^a to Seth, Seth responds with a joke about how cheesy his fantasies are, echoing the thoughts of the viewing audience. On one hand, it's indicative of the overall return to form the show is undergoing these days that the writers aren't afraid to reach back and pull out some of the old gags; on one level they're winking at the cheesiness of the scenes, but the self-referentialism also works on another level as they seem to be pointing out that the lighter tone of the recent storylines recalls the show's carefree early days, before teen death, parental alcoholism and corrupt local politics became the order of the day.
On the other hand, nice try. Why not just give Ryan some really kinky fantasies? Why can't Ryan harbour some surprising fetishes deep down beneath that hardened exterior? [Return]

which, by the way, I'd wager Autumn Reeser had a blast shooting

Bjorn's video diaries: 02

2006-12-07T07:59:00.000-05:00

A second-by-second account of the hottest videos of yesterday, today and occasionally tomorrow. In depth analysis of inconsequential details that even the director didn't give a shit about. Minutia writ large.

Today, we'll be putting My Chemical Romance's "Helena" under the microscope.

00:00

We open on a guy wearing black clothing and a lot of black eye make-up. Where shall we put him? Somewhere no one would be expecting. Oh, I know: a church. Really, is the whole thing going to be this obvious? I'm looking for subtle details here. The band aren't really renowned for their subtlety but still, this is too much.

00:03

Programs? For a performance of some sort?

00:04

No, for a funeral. Do funerals have playbills? I guess they must. I haven't been to one in a while, touch wood.

00:06

The guy swinging the incense looks really mall-punk. I mean they all do, but this guy's not above going the extra mile here. In what era was that haircut cool?

00:08

It's open-casket of course, so they can cast a tarted-up young goth nymph as the corpse. Not complaining, mind you.

00:14

The all-black-with-red-ties look is way over. We're talking baggy-shorts-with-long-johns over. I'm not here to argue about who got there first, it's just time to move on.

00:17

Excuse me? Dost mine eyes deceive me? Are those dancers I see? This video just went from boring and silly to delightful and silly. It's a fine line, you know.

00:21

The lead vocalist, who I believe is named Gerald something, appears to be simultaneously fronting the band (with a mic) as they thrash away before the altar and preaching from the pulpit (no mic) as the dancers take the place of the band. Worth noting: he's got a Shure SM-57 in the band shots, the sine qua non of shitty sound systems from bar to bar all across this great land. I thought gothy dudes were all way into bullet mics. Kind of a cool move I guess, like "Hey man, we have fat video budgets now, but we used to hit the road in a beat-up Econoline." Of course, to really complete the effect the guitarists would Peavey Bandit 112s, right? Or is that too pre-hitting-the-road, still-stuck-in-the-garage? This shit matters, people.

00:26

I've said it before, I'll say it now and at some point I will inevitably say it again: no video with choreography is completely without merit. I mean you just can't go wrong, no matter what kind of music they're dancing to.

00:30

I think Gerald uses a smaller mic so it won't get in the way of his face, which is remarkably pretty, gothy make-up be damned. The bullet mic would just get in the way of that adorable teddy-bear sneer. Of course, this theory begs the further question as to why he doesn't use one of Bob Barker's Price Is Right mics.

00:42

Too many quick cuts here. For God's sake, just let them dance!

00:45

I mean really pretty, and he knows it too. Just look at those eyes.

00:48

The whole congregation rises for the chorus: love it! They lip-synch along, too, as if their hymnals were suffused with all manner of charmingly disposable punk-pop ditties.

00:53

This Gerald character is one hell of an over-emoter, but every once in a while he gives the act a rest for a split second and you get to see just how pretty he is. You can't tell me that's not conscious. This guy just knows he's born to be a teen pin-up idol and has no qualms about using those looks to shift units. The make-up and the angry yelping are fooling no one, I promise you, least of all the band's nubile young audience.

01:15

It looks like, while none of the other band members get much face time in the video, the guitarist with the bushy red hair gets noticeably more close-ups than the other three anonymous schlubs. Funny, because he's easily the least gothy-looking of the bunch. It could be because he's the only other one singing, but I'm more inclined to think he's probably the primary songwriter, the Johnny Marr to Gerald's yelping Morrissey, the driving musical force in the band. One imagines him hunkered down in the studio with just the producer and engineer, fine-tuning guitar overdubs hour after hour till dawn and beyond, while his bands mates are off cavorting about in the manner of all such young rock stars, hanging around some swanky, exclusive after-hours lounge somewhere and sipping little white lines from the firm, ample bosoms of aspiring lingerie models. Ah, youth. Youth, fame and money.

01:26

The dancers are laying on the floor, contorting their bodies this way and that, while a bird's-eye camera captures them in the midst of what looks something like a preliminary training session for a synchronised swimming team.

01:27

Hey, there's the other guitarist! Man, I know it's normal to just feature the singer (and, in this case, one other guy), but this is ridiculous. Even the bass player got his little incense-swinging scene in the beginning; this guy might as well be a p.a. on the video shoot for all the face time he gets. I could watch this video a dozen times in slow motion and still not be able to pick that guy out of a lineup. Go ahead, fella, rob yourself a liquor store, no one's gonna find you.

01:46

See, even when the camera accidentally catches one of these guys they still probably have trouble convincing their friends that's actually them in the video. "Seriously dude, I'm in this band, I wear make-up and stuff. Look, that's— no, hold on... Okay there! That was me! Behind the really cute guy!" That's the third shot of the drummer in the space of about ten seconds and still for all I know they guy could be in witness protection with absolutely no fear of having his cover blown.

02:05

Gaaah! The corpse awakens! Should have seen that one coming I suppose. Seems like as good a time as any, too; I think we were running out of angles from which to show the other stuff. I mean it's just been band, dancers, singer, band, dancers, singer for a while now.

02:09

And what would you do if you suddenly woke up in a coffin at your own funeral? You would dance, of course. Particularly if there was a punk-pop band thrashing away nearby.

02:23

Okay, here's something I don't get. Since we're cutting between shots of Corpsetta from the waist up only and shots of her feet, and never getting a full body shot, I think it's safe to assume we're looking at two different people. They hired one rock video girl to be the face of death and the other to be the twinkle-toes of death. But why? I mean, if the face girl wasn't much of a dancer, why cast her? She's attractive enough, I suppose, but hardly one in a million. Someone in the band's girlfriend, perhaps? The Tawny Kitaen of punk-pop?

Same goes for the the feet girl: her face didn't look gothy enough? Find another dancer. I'm no expert on dance, but to these untrained eyes her skills don't really look irreplaceable. Which brings me to the weirdest part of this whole thing: feet girl can't even get up on her toes! Regardless of what she looks like above the waist, she's not even a good enough dancer to fulfill the role! I don't get this part at all.

02:21

Gerald's praying now; eyes closed, hands together, utterly adorable. These Catholic kids make the best goths. So much drama to absorb, so much heavy-handed symbolism to rebel against. I don't even know for a fact that he's Catholic, but I mean come on: look at this video. Do these guys look like Methodists to you?

02:30

Corpsetta's grabbed hold of the camera now, apparently believing herself to be in a Beastie Boys video.

02:37

Wait a minute, where did the flowers come from? Didn't she throw those away at the beginning of her little dance number?

02:38

And, finally, after running all the way down the aisle, she suddenly "re-dies", so to speak, then falls down and lands right back in the coffin whence she initially emerged. This makes no earthly sense whatsoever. I mean, she must have been at least fifty feet from the coffin. Why, oh why do I continue to look for logic and reason in rock videos? It's like factoring future scratch ticket winnings into one's grocery budget.

02:40

Right then, time to make our way to the cemetary. It's raining out, naturally. Would you have it any other way?

02:41

Well well well, looks like the dancers are coming along and they've got a little something worked out with their brollies. Suppose this is a clever tribute to Singin' in the Rain? Suppose anyone involved in making this video has ever seen Singin' in the Rain? Better yet, heard of it?

02:46

Hold on a minute: the band are acting as pallbearers. Fine, all well and good, but there's only five of them, and clearly six pallbearers. Who's the extra guy? A roadie? More to the point, which one's the extra guy? I'm thinking he must be one of the guys wearing hats on the right-hand side of the coffin behind the lead guitarist, but I can't say for sure. For all I know they may all be extra guys except the front two, and the other band members are off prancing about with umbrellas.

02:56

Look at Gerald emote! Screaming and grimacing! With all that rain messing up his hair and streaming down his face! And he still looks so hot! O—M—G!

03:04

When you really get down to it, the umbrella choreography's pretty half-assed. I mean, the stuff in the church was terrific, but now they're just coasting on past glories. No one's in synch and there doesn't seem to be any direction. They're all just waving their umbrellas around randomly, seemingly oblivious to one another. Suppose the choreographer got fired midway through the shoot? For being cuter than Gerald, perhaps?

03:22

And after they load the casket into the back of the hearse, Gerald peers through the little window dramatically for one last glamour shot. And really, can there ever be too many of those? Fade out.

Random thought...

2006-12-06T12:23:00.000-05:00

Has there been any precedent set yet as to how royalties are divided up for a mash-up? Say the Grey Album version of "Encore" was used in a scene of The O.C. Think about it, it's not that far out of the realm of possibility: it's a well-known enough track; anybody with more than just a pasing interest in popular music has heard it, most others have heard of it, and anyone with access to a computer and a file-sharing network can find it. The show's music supervisor clearly has a jones for covers, and this would be a pretty hip move in that department.

Obviously Jay-Z and the Beatles are both owed performers' and composers' royalties, but there isn't enough to give everyone a full share under the traditional arrangement. It seems like there would have to be a long, drawn out court case to decide how to divide it up, and I haven't heard of one happening yet. But most importantly: would Danger Mouse get a slice of the pie? Seems to me like this would be a major step in legitimsing the mash-up as an art form.

Don't call it a comeback!

2006-12-06T08:49:00.001-05:00

Hell yes. Hell yes! What did I say at the end of last season about Taylor Townsend? Far and away the best part of the show. I'm not saying she's my favourite character per se, I'm saying that all the best storylines on the show seem to revolve around her.¹ The best stuff last season was her ill-fated pursuit of Seth, and now she's head over heels for Ryan. Last Thursday's episode was better than any single show from all of season 3, and reminded me why I started liking this show in the first place: teenage drama.

The thing about teeagers that makes them so compelling (fictional ones, anyway) is that every situation in their lives is stop-the-presses, edge-of-your-seat, life-or-death drama. Given their unique cocktail of self-absorbtion and hormonal imbalance, teenagers have an inherent inability to distinguish between big problems and little ones. Which is why getting dumped, not making the team, failing geometry, etc, can be just as traumatic as, say, terminal illness in the family. I think Schwartz and co. have a tendency to lose sight of this fact, which is why last season they resorted to peer death as a plot device not once but twice. In the same season. On a dramatic show with adult characters, you need these kinds of events to imbue the show with any sort of gravitas, as (most) adults are quite aware of of the ultimate triviality of most of their problems (mortgage, car troubles, etc.). To get teenagers worked up, you shouldn't need any more traumatic an event than, say, a car accident in which no one is seriously hurt, but the car is totalled and somebody gets grounded. Anything more serious than that and you're wasting drama, 'cause these kids just don't know the difference.

You'll notice, by the way, that the writers left Taylor's star-cross'd schoolgirl crush both unrequited and unresolved at the end of last week's stellar hour. Ryan isn't hooked yet, but he can't help but be intrigued by her dogged persistence and perceptive nature, leaving the door ajar for more awkward hijinx as she tries vainly to melt the ice in Ryan's veins and he repeatedly cocks his head thoughtfully and mumbles to himself, "Am I really falling for Taylor?" Let the good times roll.

One can only hope the writers have the sense to drag this out for at least a few more episodes. After that, who knows? Perhaps they can have her sneeze in front of Sandy, he'll say "God bless you" in Yiddish and start spinning some yarn about "the Nana", she'll go all doe-eyed, and we're off to the races again.

Other thoughts on the unlikely renaissance:

And just as we finally get all that Volchok (sp?²) manhunt rubbish out of the way, the show may not even last now that it's got its groove again: the ratings are reportedly in the toilet. The wife, who knows from such things believe you me, tells me it's in one of the toughest time slots in prime time which, if so, I mean why? Just stick it somewhere less competitive. The audience may not be big, but judging by the message boards it's pretty damn loyal.³ The old fans will follow and new ones will be made. What's the hold-up? Mental note: must ask the wife what she thinks the best slot would be.
As much as I find Caitlin (sp?⁴) somewhat annoying, she's an immeasurable upgrade over Marissa. Whereas Marissa was just blandly self-centered deadweight, Caitlin is shaping up to be a scheming little siren just like her mother. And Julie seems to be in top form, going from bloodthirsty murderess-by-proxy to self-made MILF at the drop of a hedge-trimmer. Having the two of them compete over the same mimbo tennis instructor was a terrific subplot, just the sort of goofy romantic triangle of which the show could always use plenty more.
This "Che" fucker's a lowlife piece of shit, and needs to get his hippie ass beat down. First he talks the eternally susceptible Summer into accompanying him on some asinine lab-animal rescue mission to free some bunnies from an experiment he knows nothing about (it turns out to be a pretty benign social study), then he turns her in for all these other bullshit stunts he pulled with which Summer had nothing to do! Are you kidding me? On top of all that, he calls himself "Che", which is grounds enough for a slap or two. The whole thing's a necessary plot device, of course, as this will presumably be the catalyst that gets Summer kicked out of Brown so she can return to the sunny paradise by the Great Salt Lake and attend CU ⁵ with the rest of the gang just like we always knew she would. But man, this guy better get his comeuppance before this whole affair's over, or I might just go out and kick some random crust-bucket's ass on principle.
Isn't it funny how Seth's become "the grounded one", the voice of sanity in everybody else's crazy life? He's got a steady job, a steady girlfriend and steady prospects for the new year ⁶. He talks Ryan out of killing Volchok, talks Volchok into turning himself in, talks Summer through her tough times adjusting to both Brown and Marissa's death, and now he's the stable one Taylor turns to for advice in her quest to breach the fortress walls around Ryan's heart. We all know this is how guys like him are destined to turn out, but usually it takes them till like their mid-20s to really settle into the role.
Still waiting for my dream OC romance to spring to life: Ryan and Kirsten, the ultimate forbidden love affair that you can actually talk yourself into seeing as kind of acceptable. They're not really related after all, and she's never really functioned as much of a mother figure to him, blahblahblah. Maybe if Schwartz gets really desperate for ratings.
Aren't we about due for a Tate Donovan sighting? Make it happen, Schwartz. Make it happen. He's still got immediate family members in the cast of characters, so you don't even need to make up some cockamamie plot twist, he's allowed to just show up.

Tangents & Clarifications

Great casting too, by the way. At any random party Autumn Reeser's one of the hottest girls in the room, crazy cute but not supermodel-knockout level^a, but when matched up against all-pro talent like Rachel Bilson and Kelly Rowan she comes off as average-to-mildly-cute. [Return]

This is key, because her hotness gets multiplied by the perception-of-scorability factor; guys know what I'm talking about.

I honestly can't even be bothered to look up the correct spelling of this nitwit's name. Neither the character nor the actor who portrayed him was ever remotely interesting. [Return]

Yes, I check the message boards. Occasionally. Fuck off. [Return]

Probably "Khaetleynn" or some such nonsense. Whatever. Again, can't be bothered to look this one up, even though it would probably have taken me less time than it did to type this very footnote. That's how little I care. [Return]

California U! Alma mater of the 90210 gang! If you already knew this before checking the footnote, pat yourself on the back. In shame. [Return]

That is, until Summer's untimely dismissal from the ivory towers of Brown throw a wrench in his little RISD plans. [Return]

Book review: Body Piercing Saved My Life

2006-12-05T08:19:00.000-05:00

Just finished Andrew Beaujon's Body Piercing Saved My Life¹, a book about Christian rock. A quick, solid read, nothing too heavy but just substantial enough to keep it interesting. Beaujon writes for SPIN, and it shows; Body Piercing reads less like a book than an extended SPIN article, with all the good and bad that implies. On one hand, there's a breezy, conversational tone on the surface, as well as plenty of witty digressions and a sharp eye for ironic observations. On the other hand, way too much personal stuff about the author's own "journey" in gathering material for the book and developing an understanding of his subject,² and both the theses and conclusions are pretty indistinct.

Still, while those may seem like tough criticisms, they're really just minor quibbles. The main thing I came away with, and this is the highest praise I can offer up to any book about music, was an eagerness to listen to several of the bands described therein. MuteMath ³ and mewithoutYou seem like the most obviously enticing candidates, both of which Beaujon describes as mildly art-damaged indie rock with only vaguely Christian-themed lyrics. But he even manages to make the David Crowder Band, described as one of the better examples of an altogether odious strain of Christian music ("worship music"), sound intriguing. I've never cared for Christian rock, mostly because what little has crossed over to the "general market" (DC Talk, Creed, Evanescence ⁴, etc.) has been universally rubbish. But there's obviously quite a lot of it out there (it's the only segment of the music industry currently experiencing growth in CD sales), and Beaujon is happy to report plenty of worthy acts to be heard.

After laying out the history of the genre in one early chapter, Beaujon tries to cover all aspects of the business and culture surrounding the music, from meeting with an indie label impresario and several different artists to attending a conference, and awards show and an outdoor festival. For the most part he finds people eager to show him around and help him out ⁵ and is almost never hassled about getting saved (he's an athiest, though he hardly goes around announcing this). This makes the chapter in which he describes hanging out with some pro-life activists on the protest scene in Washington stick out like a sore thumb for two reasons: one, it has little, if anything, to do with music and two, try as he may, Beaujon is unable to conceal his dislike for the views of his subjects, never a problem elsewhere in the book. And every few chapters he transcribes an interview with what he calls a "Christian Rock Lifer," (musicians, magazine editors) and each of them is engaging and passionate.

I think the most important thing I got out of this book is the idea that you don't have to be Christian to dig some of this music. Plenty of Sufjan Stevens fans already realise that (or don't, and that's the point). Remember when Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was all the rage with the kids? How many of his American fans were Muslim?

Tangents & Clarifications

I was amazed at how many people didn't get the joke in the title, which appears on the cover below a cartoony doodle of two hands with holes poked through the palms. People would ask me what I was reading, look at the cover and say "What does that mean?" Seems pretty obvious to me, and I'm hardly an evangelical. [Return]
Stuff like "When I got back to my hotel that night I thought about..." and "I was starting to realise that this might not be what I was really looking for..." These aren't quotes, by the way, just generalisations off the top of my head. But you know what I mean. I guess you could take the whole thing as a metaphor for a spiritual journey to parallel those experienced by many of his subjects, but if that's his intent it doesn't quite work. [Return]
The clip on their homepage, by the way, is worth watching strictly for the fact that the lead singer is playing a key-tar. [Return]
Whom, by the way, I never even knew were Christian until I read this book. There were a few others like that in there as well. [Return]
Curious exception: label publicists, who seem inexplicably reluctant to allow their artists to be interviewed. [Return]

Mix Musings: Fabuteck in the tete, part 2

2006-11-02T09:04:00.001-05:00

Part two of S—'s play mix. For part one and an explanation of the track headers, click here. Things got a lot worse before they got better as far as the trivia-test aspect went, but she charitably threw me a few bones toward the end, so I made out alright.

M. Ward, "To Go Home"
Johnston
2006

Clearly included for the benefit of our fearless leader, a big Johnston fan.

This whole exercise is beginning to highlight for me the fact that I simply don't listen to enough music. Ward falls into the crowded category of artists on this mix I've read about and never actually heard. I was about to write something along the lines of "maybe I spend too much time listening to processed-sugar-teen-pop," but we all know that's like, not possible. The answer is clearly "more", not "different". Maybe I ought to get me one of them iPod thingies all the kids are running around with these days. Get the hell off my lawn.

Heard it? No.
Own it? No.
Like it? It's fine, I guess. I think there was a time I used to dig on this sort of stuff, but now I lean more towards bigger or weirder sounds. This is just an average folk-rock combo chugging along averagely. They're good enough at it I suppose, but generally speaking if something doesn't get my butt shakin', my head bangin' or my brain melting, I get easily distracted. There are exceptions, of course. There always are.

Django Reinhardt [Les Paul], "Georgia On My Mind"
ca. 1936

ALRIGHT! Now this is more my speed. I think this came out when I was in high school, or like... the war. The Good War.

My first guess was Les Paul when I hear the opening guitar solo but no, it's Reinhardt. Man, he really shreds, and it goes on for over a minute.

I've always hated the idea that older music is automatically better, but I think I'm turning into one of those old curmudgeons. It's not that I don't like music today, I like a lot of it. There was plenty of mediocre tripe clogging record stores fifty years ago as well, but most of it's gone now, washed away by time, and what's left are the classics. Time is a brutally effective aesthetic filter, n'est-ce pas?

Heard it? No.
Own it? Do not.
Like it? Oh mais oui. The guitar solo alone makes this one of my favourites on the mix.

Absolutely stumped. No idea who or what this is. They sound British, recent vintage, that's all I can tell.

Rhythm section's pretty strong, but the guitarist really needs to step it up a bit more. Needs to listen to Parklife a few times, really. Coxon could always paint all manner of elaborate riffs across the backdrop without ever threatening to take over the song.

Heard it? No.
Own it? No.
Like it? Pleasant, though not especially distinguished.

Again, stumped. Twice in a row. This is getting pathetic. I don't know any of these songs. Which, in a way is good, because I'm hearing all this new music, which is the whole point of a mixtape, right? But for God's sake I have a great deal of pride at stake here, and this is turning into quite an eye-opener.

Anyway, this sounds like a relic from about 1965 which, given the contents of the rest of this mix, means it was probably recorded some time last week. Actually, this one may be authentically old, a guess based entirely on the brevity of the intro; generally speaking, a newer retro act would have dragged it out for a few bars, but back in the day they used to get right down to business. Other than that I have nothing to guess.

Oh, and I think they're British. But I could be wrong.

Heard it? No sir.
Own it? No ma'am.
Like it? I do, rather. Nice little first-wave British Invasion vibe going on here. I like the "bababum-bum-bum"s especially. They're kind of silly in a Herman's Hermits sort of way, but the song doesn't last long enough for them to get cloying.

Pas/Cal, "I Wanna Take You Out in Your Holiday Sweater"
2003

I figured it out, but I still have no idea who these guys are. I've never been a fan of the whole twee-pop thing, and this is no exception.

Heard it? No.
Own it? And no.
Like it? Cute enough if that's your thing I suppose, but I'm just into stuff that's a little more obnoxious.

Electric Light Orchestra, "Livin' Thing"
Lynne; p: Lynne/Clark [Lynne]
A New World Record [Olé ELO], Jet [Columbia ¹], 1976

Ah, ELO. Due for a critical reappraisal, methinks, and perhaps they'll get it in the wake of Stylus's head-scratching choice of them as the inaugural inductees into their rather confusing Hall of Fame pantheon ². I've always thought of ELO as a band with a great sound and not many great songs, but on the other hand I've never given them much time. I tried when that Stylus article posted and just wasn't that into it.

Still, of the few songs by them I've always liked this one's certainly up there. I've always had a soft spot for massive overproduction, particularly when it involves gobs of wildly unnecessary string sections, and this tracks got 'em in spades.

Heard it? Yes.
Own it? On a best-of cassette, I think.
Like it? You betcha.

Brian Jonestown Massacre
Newcombe

The funniest thing about that movie DiG! is all the testimonials from people talking about what an unheralded genius Anton Newcombe is, but if he's ever written a single above-average, let alone great (or even good), song, I have yet to hear it. He strikes me as little more than a remarkably prolific hack with an ego the size of Oklahoma. This sounds like all of his half-assed output: tossed off and half-baked.

I was unable to confirm that this actually is the BJM, and have no interest in sifting through their monstrous catalogue to find out, but suffice to say that if it's not then it's some BJM knockoff, in which case they're even worse.

Heard it? It sounds familiar; if it's in DiG!, then yes. On the other hand, if you've heard one of BJM's "songs", you've heard most of them.
Own it? Pass.
Like it? Guess.

Monty Python, "Sit On My Face"
Idle/Parr-Davies [Monty Python]
Monty Pyton's Contractual Obligation Album [The Monty Python Matching Tie & Handkerchief], 1980 ³

Fuck YEAH! My inner nerd is dancing with joy right now. Dancing with joy, reciting entire scenes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and emphatically not getting laid. All while laughing his ass off.

This one falls into the category of mixtape classics, those ninety-second-or-less kneeslappers you'd always throw at the end of a side when there's no room for a full song. Good for a laugh every time the tape plays.⁴ Top ten mixtape classics, in no particular order:

Bad Brains, "Pay to Cum"

imaginable

The Minutemen, "Ack Ack Ack"

The Art of Noise, "Snapshot"

Bikini Kill, "In Accordance to Natural Law"

at half speed

They Might Be Giants, "Minimum Wage"

God Is My Co-Pilot, "Su Vot² Esta Su Voz"

know someone

De La Soul, "A Little Bit of Soap", "Can U Keep a Secret", "Take it Off"

3 Feet High and Rising

Any song from the Dwarves' Blood Guts & Pussy album

album covers

What ever happened to the Dwarves, anyway? They may still be around, but they were never the same after Sub Pop dropped them for faking the lead guitarist's death. Ah well.

Napalm Death, "You Suffer"

actual song

You suffer!
But why?

⁵

Monty Python, "Sit On My Face"

Heard it? Oh yeah.
Own it? On more than one cassette, I think. Store-bought cassettes, not mixtapes. Nerd power!
Like it? You better believe it baby.

Elvis Presley, "Don't Be Cruel"
Blackwell [Axton]; p: Sholes [Phillips]
(single, b/w "Hound Dog"), RCA [Sun], 1956

Seeing as I just finished Guralnick's biography, I'm a little embarrassed that I mistook this for a Sun cut, but had I known it was RCA I totally would have got Steve Sholes as the producer. And hey, I got the b-side (or, in this case aa-side) right, so that's worth half a bonus point, right?

What else can one say about this number? The King didn't record a single less-than-terrific song in '56, and this one holds up as one of the best of an unstoppable bunch. Thank God it's not the Cheap Trick cover.⁶

Heard it? Hell yeah.
Own it? Believe it or not, I may not have the original version anywhere, but I know I've got several live versions.
Like it? And how.

Madness, "House of Fun"
Stiff [Two-Tone], 1982

The nutty boys! Love 'em! I'm also a bit embarrassed for getting the label wrong on this one, as I just read that Simon Reynolds book earlier this year, but hey, I've gotta save a few brain cells for school.

Worth noting that the boys' rendition of "One Step Beyond" barely missed the cut for my own mix. Can't go wrong with any of the old singles, really. Great video, too. I love the goofy choreography in all those old Madness videos.

Heard it? Hell yeah.
Own it? No, but it's on Rhapsody.
Like it? If you don't like it check y'pulse.

In conclusion...

Solid mix. Holds together pretty well from one song to the next for the most part, at least until the end, when there's a palpable sense of "running out of space, gotta get this one on somewhere!". Like all the best mixtapes. More than half the songs I'd never heard before, and several of those were by acts I'd been meaning to check out, so bonus points there.

As for the no-tracklist challenge, I think I did pretty well, considering my advanced age and all. I don't think I got a single one from this decade, which should tell you something right there. Oh wait, I got the Art Brut one. And I think I counted three absolute stumps. But it's the game that counts, not the results.

When my wife and I were first dating I made her a mixtape without a tracklist, the idea being that if she really liked a song she could ask me what it was and we'd, like, talk about music. Yeah, I was lame, so what, she married me, so who's laughing now? Anyway, she was pissed, thought it was a dumb idea and just wanted to know what the songs were, not talk about them.⁷ We still talk about music sometimes, though. Or at least I do. She just smiles politely and pretends to listen.

Tangents & Clarifications

I'm pretty sure Columbia was distributing Jet in those days, so I should get partial credit for this. [Return]

The pedestal has since been expanded to include Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and the Boredoms, to give you an idea of the aesthetic at work here. Or lack thereof. [Return]

The song probably dates from an earlier year, but that's the year of the first album to include it, so I'm counting my guess as correct, even though I got the album wrong. [Return]

It just occured to me that there's a whole generation of kids now who've neither heard nor made a mixtape. Hell, the really young ones probably don't even bother burning CDs anymore, they just email each other iTunes playlists or something. Lost charms of the tape: two side-openers/-closers, difficulty of skipping a track, gradual sonic deterioration... Those were the days... [Return]

Irrelevant trivia note: I dated Flipper bassist Will Shatter's cousin in college. So there. [Return]

Of course, S— may not have been born yet during during that insufferable video's run of MTV ubiquity, but anyone my age will certainly groan at the memory of that stupid remote control gimmick before the last chorus. See? [Return]

Interesting little I-should-have-known-even-then note: I put Yo La Tengo's "Sugarcube" near the beginning of the tape, a surefire winning move. I mean, you could never go wrong putting Yo La Tengo on a mixtape for a girl. To my shock and disappointment, she thought it was kind of cheesy(?!?). A few cuts later was the Fall's "Free Range", a risky move for a girl mix^a, but she recognised it right away and said she loved the Fall. I mean, should there have been any question after that? [Return]

Not that that ever stopped me; I always believed, and still believe, that the best mixtapes are the ones you make for yourself first and foremost, and anyone else can take it or leave it. This may be a small step toward explaining my long run of lousy luck with girls, but why dwell on the past?

Mix Musings: Fabuteck in the tete, part 1

2006-10-30T19:31:00.000-05:00

You know that bit in the Bible about throwing bread in the water? I made a mix for the cast of the show and received three mixes in the space of 48 hours. Which gives me plenty to listen to and an excuse to write on this thing again. I'll go through them one by one over the next I don't know how long, starting with the one I got first (and, I suspect, the most carefully thought-out).

So S— made a mix for the show as well but didn't give me a track list with my copy, daring me to figure it out for myself. I love a good challenge, so here's my take on the first ten tracks; second half to follow later this week. The format of the headers is as follows:

[track#]. [artist], "[title]"
[songwriter]; p: [producer]
[album title], [label], [year]

Anything in bold is stuff I knew without having to look it up; if I guessed wrong, my original guess is in brackets following the correct information. I didn't bother looking up everything on every track, mind you, just checked my answers and threw in a few more relevant data. And yes, I am showing off. Or thought I was, until I got past the first few tracks and S— began schooling me.

Oh, and there are no tracks, excepts or links posted; I don't have the storage space for mp3s and besides, if anyone really wants to hear one of these I'm sure they'll be resourceful enough to find them.

And no, I have no idea what the title means. On with the show...

Talking Heads, "Heaven"
Byrne; p: ? [Eno]
? [Fear of Music, Sire, 1979]

When I was in high school I rented a copy of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense from the local video store. After watching it, I hooked the VCR up to the stereo and taped the movie, so that I could walk around and listen to it on my Walkman. My favourite number was always the second one, a version of "Heaven" sung as a duet by David Byrne and Tina Weymouth. At the time, I didn't really appreciate the alarmingly bleak subtext of the lyrics, I just thought the voices sounded pretty on the chorus. I've always been a sucker for sappy ballads, I guess.

This is not the version from Stop Making Sense. Nor is it the version from Fear of Music. I have no idea whence this comes. Based on the sound of the recording, the tone of Byrne's voice, the hurried tempo and the half-time arrangement in the chorus, my guess is that it's an early demo, a snapshot of what the song sounded like before Brian Eno got ahold of it. But as for the source, I'm stumped. It's not on the Heads' 2003 box set, it's not on Rhino's 2006 Bonus Rarities & Outtakes, and I don't know where else to look. There's an outside shot that this could be a cover version by a band that sounds a lot like the Heads, but I doubt it.

Heard it? Not this version, but I know the song well enough.
Own it? I have Fear of Music, if that counts.
Like it? Not as much as the album and acoustic versions at first, but it's grown on me with a few listens, especially the coda. Bonus points to the compiler for the rare alternate version, always a winning mixtape move.

Sam Cooke, "I'll Come Running Back to You"
Cooke
Specialty, 1958

I've never heard this song in my life, but I knew after the first few lines it was Cooke. What a voice. Apparently something of a hit for Specialty in '58, but doesn't make the cut for the majority of Cooke's multitude of best-ofs. Can't see why; it's delightfully breezy, with just the right hint of melancholy to carry the down-but-not-out tone of the lyrics.

Heard it? Never.
Own it? Nope.
Like it? Indeed.

The Magnetic Fields, "Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits"
Merritt; p: Merritt
69 Love Songs, Merge

Hmmm, I don't know this song, but why is my hand instinctively balling up into a fist of its own accord? Why, it must be Stephen Merritt with yet another musical dare to punch him in the face. While I find much to admire in Merritt's work (prolificacy, individualism, omnivorous genre-sampling, literary pretention), and don't buy for a second the ridiculous charges of racism that have been leveled against him for his musical tastes, I have little interest in listening to his music. I can't explain why other than to say that he simply annoys the shit out of me. He seems to write songs about fucking exclusively for an audience of nerdy white people who don't fuck. Yuck. I mean really, can you picture anyone actually having sex to this music? Well, I dunno, people get into all kinds of nutty stuff, so whom am I to judge?

Heard it? Probably not, though I have seen him live a couple times, so I may just not remember it.
Own it? No thank you.
Like it? While I admire the raunchy lyrics, I've never cared much for the cheap Casio aesthetic of this particular strain of indie rock.

Art Brut, "My Little Brother"
? [Argos/Art Brut]; p: ?
Bang Bang Rock &[n'] Roll, Fierce Panda, 2005

Ah yes, the mighty Art Brut, and yes, I really did know their UK label without having to look it up.¹

I think most of my feelings about the Brut have been adequately covered, but this particular song brings to mind a rumour I heard recently that Brut frontman Eddie Argos is in fact the elder brother of noted rock n' roll trainwreck Pete Doherty, late of the notorious Libertines and arguably England's most famous crack addict, and that this song is about Doherty. I'd like to take this opportunity to go on record as saying that I'm not buying it, any more than I buy Drummond and Cauty's claim that they "created" Doherty.

Heard it? Hell yeah.
Own it? Actually, no; it's on Rhapsody, so no need.
Like it? Love it. I might've gone with "Formed a Band" if it were my mix, but it's not, is it?

Sondre Lerche, "Two Way Monologue"
2004

Never heard the song, no idea who this guy is. How did I figure it out, you ask? I have my ways.

My first guess at the accent was Scottish, but lo and behold he's Norwegian; shows what I know. So he's this singer-songwriter guy, and quite a wordy little chap indeed. Five winding minutes of jumbled non sequiturs, some of them no doubt elaborate metaphors, others perhaps just an English-as-a-second-language thing. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt most of the time as he seems to know what he's doing, but he lost me well before the bit about Michael Landon. The overarching theme appears to be the difficulty of communicating effectively with one's parents which, combined with the arcane wordplay, makes it a natural for dorm-room dissection.

Heard it? Never.
Own it? Nope.
Like it? Not bad. The production is strong enough to keep things interesting without getting in the way of the lyrics. Not something I'd go out of my way to listen to, but I can appreciate its strengths. Curious to see whether I find myself drawn back to this one in the coming weeks.

"Balinese"
Beard/Gibbons/Hill [Gibbons]

Okay, I'm officially stumped. I know the song, of course, and love that there's a little vintage ZZTop in the mix, but can find no record of anyone having released a cover of it. It's got sort of a white-album-era Beatles sound to the production and to the singer's Lennon-esque voice, but I'm assuming it's of a far more recent vintage. I graciously concede.

Heard it? Not this version.
Own it? Ditto.
Like it? Like it? It's a ZZTop tune! What's not to like?

The Black Keys, "Midnight in Her Eyes"
Thickfreakness, 2003

I heard the Black Keys for the first time ever like two weeks ago and was surprised to find that I liked it. Based on what I'd read I expected a minstrel show along the lines of John Spencer, but instead found something far more... I hate to use the word "authentic" because (a) I find the notion of authenticity in music repellent ², and (b) that would imply that they sound like John Lee Hooker or something, and they don't, they sound rather like an actual American blues-based arena rock band from the 1970s.

Ditto this track. When I first heard it I just assumed it was some long-forgotten 70s hairbags like Black Oak Arkansas or some such. Actually, that's not true. After the first few chords I thought it was Donovan's "Season of the Witch," a notion which was quickly dispelled as the rest of the song kicked in and I moved on to trying to figure out whether it was Grand Funk Railroad or Gentle Giant. But no, it's the Black Keys, sounding quite authentically like some inauthentic 70s blooze rawk. Bang on.

Heard it? Nope.
Own it? Nope.
Like it? I rather do, as a matter of fact, backhanded though the comments above may seem. I mean, I kind of like Foghat. Tight groove, solid riff, low-key vibe; the vocalist overdoes the mumbly-mumbly routine a bit, but his voice is pleasantly warm and growly enough.

The Walkmen [Bob Dylan], "Louisiana"
Walkmen [Dylan]; p: ?
A Hundred Miles Off [The Basement Tapes], Record Collection [Columbia], 2006 [1967]

For the first time since starting to work my way through this thing, I am thoroughly embarrassed. I was completely fooled into thinking this was an old Dylan track, most likely from the Big Pink tapes with the Band. Maybe not on the official album (what can I say, it was an educated guess), but at least buried somewhere in the complete sessions. The real giveaway should have been the vocal reaches in the chorus, the only place the singer really diverges from sounding so much like Bob.

These last three tracks seem to be pointing towards an interesting trend within the mix as a whole: newer bands going to great trouble to sound old. Or, if you must, to sound "authentic". Mind you, this is all curated by someone who slagged me off for putting the Pipettes on a mix.

Heard it? Nada.
Own it? Nolo.
Like it? Cute, but ultimately disposable. A track like this can't help but raise the obvious question, why not just listen to Blonde on Blonde?

Lions in the Street, "Mine Ain't Yours"
2006 [2005]

Not wishing to be fooled yet again, I heard the sound of 70s AOR, immediately assumed it to be yet another recent retro act, and guess what? It's still not as old as I thought it was.

This sounds exactly like a lot of other bands from both yesterday and today. Which is not to say bad, mind you, just fairly undistinguished; nothing really sets this particular act apart from their hordes of sweaty, bellbottomed peers. Next.

Heard it? No.
Own it? Uh-uh.
Like it? I wouldn't change the station if it came on the radio, but I doubt I'd notice if I never heard it again. Draw your own conclusions.

The Unicorns, "Sea Ghost"
2003

I read about the Unicorns a while back and gave Who Will Cut Our Hair a listen but couldn't get into it. In hindsight I have no recollection why; too cute, perhaps. Anyway, I didn't recognise the track. After digging on the initial flute solo, I was immediately turned off when the band kicked in with yet another variation on that same old retro-garagey guitar rock sound, but was immediately drawn back in by a whole mess of left turns throughout the arrangement. It's always nice (and sadly rare) to hear a band that's figured out how to write songs that are simultaneously adventurous and compact. Like, say, the Futureheads. Or Swell Maps. The Unicorns are a bit more accessible than that, but their restless spirit still shines through.

Heard it? Apparently.
Own it? Nope.
Like it? Quite a bit, actually, and I plan on going back and giving the album a few more listens.

Tangents & Clarifications

How did I know it? Because I sent them a demo. Seriously. [Return]

In more ways than one, i.e., the idea that older automatically equals better, as well as the notion that ripping off old styles must be done with any degree of reverence. Sure there are times when I can do without the irony, but just as many if not many more when a snicker-at-your-idols sort of irreverence is both welcome and warranted. [Return]