Stu's Weekly Updates

Live... from Chicago... Again

2012-01-24T22:41:00.000-08:00

About 18 months ago, I attempted to go see the SNL audition showcase at iO Chicago and failed. When I heard that another one would be held in mid-January, I made sure to prepare. Once again I had an inside track, but this time I was better prepared. To explain: when I didn't pass my Conservatory Level 3 audition in December (don't worry, I'll try again in February), I decided to take Level 5 over again at iO. Oddly enough, my assigned teacher is Charna Halpern, the last surviving founding business partner of iO as well as the unofficial matriarch of long-form Chicago improv. Charna promoted the showcase right before class, and she had final say on who would audition for the SNL producers. The first time around I found out through the grapevine; this time I was privy to some inside information (at least, for the moment). As a longtime fan of the show, I was calm and collected on the outside but squealing like a little girl on the inside.

My greatest concern about the audition was not whether I'd get in or not, but the timing. The SNL showcase is normally held in late July, in preparation for the coming TV season. Holding auditions in January threw two red flags in my mind: first, it meant that new featured players would likely be added towards the end of the season; second, it was fair to assume that the current cast, consistent since 2006 or so but clearly long in the tooth, was facing some overdue turnover. In other words, several longtime stars of the show --if you want names, your guess is as good as mine-- were likely leaving for greener pastures in the Spring.

After arriving too late last time, I planned on arriving in line around 6:30 or so (the showcase started at 8). When I found out that the crowd waiting outside iO was already fifty strong by 6 o'clock, I beelined to the theater. The Del Close (upstairs) Theater at iO seats about 150, so timing was crucial. Without having to explain myself... I finally got in! Knowing that the showcase normally draws a humongous crowd, the iO interns packed the DCT rafters, than used every folding chair they could find to seat the overflow. The situation screamed "fire hazard" but I was just happy to be there.

At the insistence of my fellow SNL fanatics, I made sure to take notes. I knew beforehand that Lorne Michaels did not fly out to Chicago, and though it was speculated that Steve Higgins and/or Seth Meyers would take his place, the auditors were comprised of two associate producers and three writers. I was under the impression that ten actors would give their all to the show's auditors; instead, 17 made Charna's cut. Of this talented group only a couple outright bombed, but everyone else came out with pistols blazing and the audience rolling in the aisles. Of that group here are my picks to click, the seven actors that have probably already stamped their ticket to 30 Rock, that I hope you'll remember in the near-future:

CHRISTINE TAWFIK: Reminds me a lot of Nasim Pedrad. Introduced two great characters, an old British lady and an Egyptian film critic. Does an outstanding impression of Penelope Cruz --looks like her, too-- though her Jodie Foster was merely okay.
GREG HESS: A member of famed Cook County Social Club, one of the top improv teams in Chicago. Looks like a nerdy Brad Hall. Does impressions and voices like a dynamo.
BRETT ELAM: Fun fact: his older sister Erica was my first improv teacher, and his kid brother Scott is also on the Chicago scene. Did great impressions of Eminem recording a car commercial and Dane Cook waiting for a bus. Versatile and clever in a Bill Hader kind of way.
ROSS KIMBALL: Another fun fact: Ross is from Naperville, IL, the same hometown as Paul Brittain. Tall, handsome glass of water. Really nice guy. Played Ben Roethlisberger, Clint Eastwood, a spazzy tour guide, and a clueless stepdad.
JET EVELETH: Fan favorite at iO. First auditioned for SNL in July 2010. Disappears into characters. Take Amy Poehler and Kristen Wiig's best qualities and put it in a 5'4" body, and that's Jet. Did one long scene involving an awkward little girl trying to grab/hug her pet cat.
KATE O'BRIEN: One of three members of The Katydids (another notable local group) to audition. Short, spunky, energetic blonde. Imitated Madonna and Gywneth Paltrow. Played a motormouth Louisiana native and a little girl drinking soda for the first time.
LYNDSAY HAILEY: Another fan favorite, and a former teacher of mine. Plays crazy in a good way. Imitated Sarah Palin imitating Tina Fey. The strongest outright "actress" in the audition. Opened with a hardcore rap and closed with a Ke$ha/Rihanna parody.

So what happens from here? Well, this is only the first stage; those that get summoned to New York audition again for Lorne and his inner circle, and of the hundred-odd improvisers, actors, and comedians that audition in Chicago, NYC, and LA at any given time only a handful either join the cast or are hired as writers. Also, this wasn't the only audition in Chicago; a group of twelve also put their best foot forward at the Annoyance Theatre one night later. However, the iO audition carries more weight, as Brittain and Vanessa Bayer (the two Chicagoans that made it last time) were both cherry-picked by Charna. The overall experience was thrilling, and even if no one from that magical night makes the cut the actors that auditioned have the stories of a lifetime. For two hours on a bitterly cold Chicago night, everyone was a star.

Other notes:

+ Did John King have a right to ask Newt Gingrich about his marital infidelities? Yes. Was it necessary to ask that as the leadoff question in the South Carolina debate last week? No. Though I rarely take the former Speaker's side on most issues, he had every right to give King an earful. Promoting yourself as a "family values" candidate yet proposing an open marriage to your cancer-stricken wife is certainly a matter of contention, but reversing unemployment and strengthening the economy are much more substantial concerns. The GOP is already distrustful of the mainstream media, and this did not help matters.

+ Merlin Media, the radio conglomerate that I've been ranting about since last summer, is at it again. "News FM," the news/talk format they launched in Chicago, makes no secret of their desire of the college-educated female demographic. "The Loop," the other station they own in the market, has staged a giveaway for free breast implants. Is it just me, or is that one heck of a double standard?

Next week: the year in music, 1967.

Puppy Loathe

2012-01-17T22:15:00.000-08:00

About three weeks ago, my younger sister did something incredibly foolish and impulsive: she bought a puppy. Considering that she has little money, growing credit card debt, and one semi-tangible job lead, my parents and I looked at my sister like she'd lost her mind. On top of that, our house is cluttered with old family photos, courtesy of the pending estate sale. Bridget's justification was that this was a college graduation present for herself. This is her $900 investment, a full-blooded dachshund that she named Henry Blue.

I've been writing this blog for about 6 1/2 years and I don't think I've ever discussed my younger sister at length until now. Physically, we have similar facial features but personality-wise we're almost opposites: where I tend to be fastidious and pragmatic, Bridget is laid-back and soft-hearted. She's an artist, I'm a writer. She scrapbooks as a hobby, I still collect baseball cards. She loves animals, though my interest in them is merely passing. Growing up, Bridget was the tomboy and the troublemaker; I was the quiet, pensive bookworm that avoided conflict at all costs. Obviously, not much has changed.

Arguably the puppy's greatest obstacle is the dog we already have. Back in 2004, for Bridget's Sweet 16 she received a maltipoo puppy that we named Duke. Though the little fella was intended to be my sister's pet first and a family mascot second, Duke slowly graviated towards my mother. That wasn't because the dog disliked my sister or anything, she was too busy with school and work to take care of him. As you can imagine, Duke is not giving the new guy an inch and in turn Henry has been hostile towards the old-timer.

My parents, slowly defeating themselves to the prospect of living with two small dogs, noted that Duke is stating his dominance after so many years of being the undisputed alpha dog (pun intended) in the household. When five-pound Henry sniffs him, 7 1/2 pound Duke growls at him. A short round of "bite tag" ensues before one of us has to seperate the dogs. It's like white lightning versus the black weasel. I can't blame the guy; it's an unfair situation for Duke but something he'll eventually get used to. Any canine harmony will be hard-fought.

Other notes:

+ Jon Huntsman is out of the race? Which means regardless of who wins, the GOP presidential nominee will be white, male, and crazy? And right now said to-be-determined crazy white guy has a 50/50 shot of beating Obama? Yikes.

+ Surprisingly, this is a concise and well-written article. Not surprisingly, the title doesn't do it justice, and the editors of Newsweek look like boneheads in their own right.

+ Finally, on a sad note I would like to acknowledge the passing of Mike Enriquez, a teacher and performer at iO Chicago that died late last week. Though I was only acquainted with Mike he was a local legend of sorts, a marvelous improviser and a genuinely nice guy. Vanessa Bayer, a former teammate of his at iO, paid tribute to him at the tail end of last weekend's SNL. Click here for more on a comedian's life cut too short.

Live Free or Die

2012-01-10T16:57:00.000-08:00

Upon watching the New Hampshire debate this past weekend, I honestly can't say my opinion of the remaining candidates has really wavered. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, a one-time frontrunner who now stands fourth in the polls, lost the LGBT vote once and for all by dodging questions about gay marriage and instead turned that segment of the debate into a mini-rant against the meddling liberal media. Quirky old Ron Paul, well-meaning but still very much a dark horse, put Newt in his place but pointing out his status as a silver spoon, Vietnam draft-dodger. The two moderates (Romney and Huntsman) played it safe and barely criticized their reactionary opponents. The two remaining social conservatives (Perry and Santorum) were loud and proud, but hardly did anything to sway potential voters.

As the primaries drag on --sometimes literally-- one thing is becoming increasingly apparent: the candidate that polarizes the fewest potential voters will likely become the GOP candidate, and therefore the right wing's best shot at taking down Obama. As much as Tea Partiers would hate to admit, the sword would best be thrown by either Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman. None of the remaining six candidates are perfect --an argument could even be made for Ron Paul-- but a moderate would swoon the independents and undecideds that the Republicans badly need. Michelle Bachmann's abysmal showing in the Iowa causus --and subsequent pullout-- after a decisive straw poll win barely six months ago was an indicator that the Tea Party's influence on the GOP has plateaued. The New Hampshire primary, first in the nation yet held in a state that nurtures independents, libertarians, and the moderate right, only further indicates the Tea Party's lack of appeal beyond the conservative core.

So what becomes of the incumbent? Even though President Obama's position at the moment is not unlike Jimmy Carter's in 1980, it's too soon to scream "lame duck." For all the attention that GOP circus has received in the media, defeating Obama is not an ace in a hole just yet. Retired network news anchor Dan Rather recently admitted his lack of confidence in the president, but keep in mind that the actual decision is still 10 months away. An Obama landslide is likely out of the question, but he could score reelection by a narrow margin depending upon who he runs against. For now, the focus is the six-way handball game between the remaining candidates; as the dodgeball bounces through the air, so does the fate of the nation.

Other notes:

+ Congratulations to Cincinnati Reds great Barry Larkin upon his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I thought he'd get inducted next year --a potential logjam of a ballot including first-timers Craig Biggio, Curt Schilling, and Mike Piazza, amongst others-- but I'll take it. For my case for Larkin, check out this blog entry from 2009.

+ Four years ago this week, the government reported that unemployment rose to 5% in the previous month, triggering speculation of a recession. On that same day, a not-yet-sober Britney Spears lost custody of her children to Kevin Federline. Guess which one of these two stories garnered more media attention that day?

+ If Jimmy Carter is to 1980 as Barack Obama is to 2012, does that make Ron Paul our generation's John Anderson?

Bunny Hop

2012-01-03T23:39:00.000-08:00

As I write this, my family and some hired hands are in the process of cleaning out my grandparents' house. Due to my grandmother's failing health, we put her in a nursing home back in September and now we're in the process of selling the property. My grandparents seldom threw anything away that could've been useful in the future (they were children of the Great Depression, go figure) so their melange now makes my parents' house even more cluttered. Whatever we don't want or can't take home will be sold at an estate sale sometime later this winter.

With family being family, I had to take my share as well. As some longtime readers may recall, my uncle passed away in 2008 and I was a primary benefactor in his will. The estate sale meant cleaning out his old bedroom, something I had procrastinated upon for three-plus years partially because it would be just so time-consuming. Uncle Jim never moved out of his folks' place, so this was his undisputed domain and it'd been kept semi-intact since his death. Regardless, whatever I inherited or wanted will have to go to storage.

My uncle's bedroom had two signifigant focal points. The first was his stereo system, which based on my rudimentary knowledge of archaeology was cutting edge for circa 1979. It was a record player attached to a cassette player and some type of receiver, plus a quadrophonic speaker system, all courtesy of the fine people at Zenith. I can't wait to play his old 33 1/3's just to see if that whole thing still works. The second bullet point, however is a little more personal and maybe a tad embarrassing.

From Jim's 16th birthday in July 1972 to March 2009 (when his subscription expired) he subscribed to a magazine called Playboy. To my blessing and bane, he kept nearly every issue. Including some older issues that we assume he bought at a garage sale or "borrowed" from my great-uncle, that's nearly 450 old magazines. It's a blessing because some issues overlap with my dad's decidedly smaller collection of old Playboys, thus I can sell them on eBay and alleviate some attic clutter. It's a bane because... well, 450 vintage magazines aren't the easiest thing to load out of a second-story bedroom in a short period of time.

At this point, you're probably a little alienated or laughing your butt off. I will admit now that in my early teens I used to sneak up to my uncle's bedroom and glance at his mags. Fifteen-plus years later packing all these magazines gave me a wistful, nostalgic feeling, an emotion that was awkward and a little discomforting but nevertheless bittersweet. I remembered certain issues as if they were yesterday, the short-lived fads and occasional morsels of historical irony. As a grown man I can now appreciate articles written by the likes of Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I suppose if I had to pick an all-time favorite Playmate, it would be Sherry Konopski, Miss August 1987. In hindsight I'm not sure why I chose Sherry; physical attraction aside, I suppose I found her more relatable than the other naked bombshells who claimed to be "the girl next door." I later learned that Ms. Konopski had a somewhat inspirational epilogue to her centerfold; a 1995 car accident left her crippled from the waist down, and two years later she became the first woman to pose nude in Playboy able-bodied and disabled. Judge her if you must, but Ms. Konopski is an inspiration to well-endowed paraplegics everywhere.

The process of moving all the magazines to my parents' basement took about a week; first to sort them, than to pack and carry all the plastic tubs. As for the ginormous stereo equipment, I managed to lift that all out in less than two hours. I can't really say this was a bonding moment for me and my uncle because that's kinda creepy, but in hindsight I kinda appreciate that he didn't care that I was reading his vast stash of girly mags. If my uncle's death marked the end of an era, belatedly packing his belongings symbolized my slowly fading youth.

My Last Post of 2011

2011-12-27T23:49:00.000-08:00

I must confess that I didn't watch too much drama this past year. "Mad Men" sat out the past year, episodes of "Breaking Bad" and "Boardwalk Empire" currently collect dust in my DVR, and I don't have Showtime, which ruled out critically praised fare like "Dexter" and "Homeland." By default, my viewing habits gravitated almost entirely towards comedy this year. With that said, here are my favorites from 2011, the year in TV:

BEST SHOWS

1. Parks & Recreation, NBC. This ensemble comedy, part workplace comedy and part small-scale political satire, was as consistently funny as anything on TV in recent memory. Amy Poehler is still the star, but Nick Offerman was the unquestioned breakout as stoic libertarian and manly-man Ron Swanson. Memorable Episodes: "Ron & Tammy: Part Two," "Fancy Party," "Lil' Sebastian," "Ron and Tammys," "Smallest Park"

2. Community, NBC. Boy, am I glad I stuck with this show. The genre-jumping and inherent weirdness may turn off new and/or casual viewers --so much so that the Greendale gang are on hiatus-- but where P&R hits for average, "Community" hits for power. If only it could get some Emmy lovin'. Memorable Episodes: "Intermediate Documentary Film-making," "Paradigms of Human Memory," "Remedial Chaos Theory"

3. Bob's Burgers, Fox. Arguably the funniest new show to air on network television in 2011, "Bob's" blends its absurdity and protagonist's constant slow burn with a big heart. H. Jon Benjamin is delightfully understated as the voice of Bob, but Kristen Schaal is a force as his sociopathic youngest daughter Louise. With Fox's aging "Animation Domination" lineup growing more erratic by the week, this proved to be a welcome source of fresh meat. Memorable Episodes: "Sacred Cow," "Art Crawl," "Spaghetti Western & Meatballs"

4. Childrens Hospital, Adult Swim. No less peculiar than "Community" but far less attached to reality, "Hospital" has transcended its initial parodying of medical dramas into something more bizarre and gut-bustingly silly. On top of that, each episode is 12 minutes long so you can watch an entire season in just over two hours. Memorable Episodes: "Ward 8," "Stryker Bites the Dust," "The Chet Episode"

5. Modern Family, ABC. Yes, this show has been a tad uneven since that stellar first season, but when "Family" meets it target the results can be quite entertaining. Memorable Episodes: "Someone To Watch Over Lily," "See You Next Fall," "Treehouse"

BEST EPISODES

30 Rock, "100." The fifth season of Tina Fey's sarcastic ode to all things NBC had a renaissance of sorts last year, but it peaked with an hour-long indicator of its syndication eligibility. The event was like a wedding: "100" had something old (Liz saving the show yet again), something new (Michael Keaton as a creepy janitor), something borrowed (Dean Winters from the Allstate commercials), and something blue (Rachel Dratch, no spoilers here).

Curb Your Enthusiasm, "Palestinian Chicken." The high point of CYE's New York season aired when the action was still in LA, with our anti-hero using ethnic cuisine as a bouncing ball for marital infidelity, Israel-Palestinian relations, and the loneliness of being a "social assassin."

Louie, "Duckling." I was torn between choosing this episode or the pitch-black suicide fable "Eddie," but I chose Louie's misadventures on a USO tour with a baby waterfowl as a stowaway. Delicately toeing the line between patriotism and discomfort humor, the ending of the episode is sweetly slapstick.

The Office, "Goodbye Michael." Considering how lazy and middling the Andy Bernard era of Dunder-Mufflin has been, I think most fans of the show will concur that this should've been the series finale. Instead, we'll have to settle for the series' last great episode. Why didn't Steve Carell win an Emmy for his troubles?

Onion News Network, "Real America." The fanboy in me had to give The Onion's basic cable offspring some TLC. Again, this was a tough pick but I went with the "episode" where the cable-news parody put a spotlight on a group of indigenous midwesterners hosting representatives of congress like they were foreign ambassadors. To host the summit in a bowling alley was just ingenious.

--+---+--

How can I sum up 2011 without being glib or vague? This was a year where we was said goodbye to heroes (Andy Whitfield, Cliff Robertson) and villains (Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi, Kim Jong Il). We bid adieu to well-endowed women (Jane Russell, Maria Schneider) and giant boobs (Silvio Berlusconi, Ozzie Guillen) alike. On a personal level, this was a year of triumph (improv) and struggle (financially justifying to Chicago), of success (losing 17 pounds) and failure (the never-ending job search). My resolution for 2012? To stop using parentheses for dramatic effect.

In Memoriam: Gerry Rafferty, Duke Snider, Dave Duerson, Suze Rotolo, Jack Lalanne, Len Lesser, Mike Starr, Joe Morello, Thomas Roeser, Warren Christopher, Geraldine Ferraro, Sidney Lumet, Michael Sarrazin, Elisabeth Sladen, Randy Savage, Elizabeth Taylor, Harmon Killebrew, Paul Splittorff, Jeff Conaway, Clarence Clemons, Seve Ballesteros, Dick Williams, Betty Ford, Sherwood Schwartz, Lee Roy Selmon, Bubba Smith, Amy Winehouse, Sen. Charles Percy, Al Davis, Steve Jobs, Norman Corwin, Heavy D, Dan Wheldon, Andy Rooney, Smokin' Joe Frazier, Bil Keane, Patrice O'Neal, Dobie Gray, Harry Morgan, Paul Motion, Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, Joe Bodolai, Leo Gardzielewski, and Jeanette Dickinson.

See you next year!

That Wonderful Year in Music... 2011

2011-12-21T23:19:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite years of music in recent memory was 2010, which obviously gave these past 12 months a tough act to follow. Indeed, the sounds of 2011 were especially kind to studio experimentation as well as musicians with more organic inclinations. "Good music" didn't come from a singular source or genre; the more eclectic your tastes were, the more you would probably enjoy. It also helped if you knew your history; some acts went retro and succeeded (Dawes, Fleet Foxes), others jumped back 25-odd years and bored me senseless (Destroyer, Bon Iver). In reality, there was no real motif or pattern to the sonic trends of the past year, unless that was the point all along.

For the first time I can think of, my top three albums were all recorded by women. These three highly disparate female artists --a British singer-songwriter, an art-rock hippie freak, and the Swedish heir apparent to Bjork-- made more compelling music than anyone with cajones could these past 12 months. Also, a disproportionate number of discs in my top five are second albums, so one can safely assume that the seeds of this list were first planted in 2008 or 2009, when most of these artists were still considered "promising" and "auspicious" but in reality were a short distance from fulfilling or exceeding anyone's expectations. Hindsight is also 20/20, so it's too soon to tell if any outright masterpieces dropped in '11; I'm merely ranking these selections by how I enjoyed them.

After some intense mental debating --which explains the two-day delay-- I have whittled down my list of best albums down to a "mere" twenty. Sorry, fans of Company of Thieves, Beirut, and The Strokes: maybe next year.

BEST ALBUMS

1. 21, Adele. The second full album I listened to this year --behind Cake's comeback disc Showroom of Compassion, which incidentally was merely okay-- ultimately proved to be the commercial and critical high-water point of the past 12 months. Don't get the idea that I'm just drinking the Kool-Aid; this is a collection of incredibly beautiful songs. The themes of heartbreak and yearning that dominated her 2008 debut 19 are extended here, but now the pain feels mature and fully formed. "Rolling in the Deep" was a monster hit in the US and her native Britain, and deservedly so; some of you are probably still annoyed from hearing it a thousand times, but the stark gospel blues of her first #1 smash will almost certainly hold up better than all the synth-heavy crap that populates CHR radio now.

2. Whokill, TuNe-YaRdS. Speaking of young artists coming into their own, anyone who openly challenges the wit and focus of experimental indie-rock needs to speak to Merrill Garbus immediately. Also known (or virtually unknown) for her work in Sister Suvi, Miss Garbus turned her second solo effort into a freaked-out, technicolor menagerie. Like a bull in a candy shop, Garbus is not only pushing the limits of her slapdash instrumentation --mostly a bass, a three-piece horn section, and her own vocal looping-- she's having a lot of fun and wants everybody to join in.

3. Wounded Rhymes, Lykke Li. Another sophomore effort that belies any youthful assumptions. Sounding less precocious and more confident, this promising young Swede may seem like a Scandinavian answer to Lady Gaga but she's far less inclined to write a hit single or mimic Madonna. Striking a rare balance between cathartic and atmospheric, Rhymes is carried by Burundi drums, creepy echos, and Li's forceful weapon of a voice.

4. Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes

5. James Blake, James Blake

6. El Camino, The Black Keys

7. Barton Hollow, The Civil Wars

8. Let England Shake, PJ Harvey

9. The King of Limbs, Radiohead

10. Nothing is Wrong, Dawes. Yes, another second album. Part of the same Laurel Canyon scene that begat Buffalo Springfield and Crazy Horse decades ago, Dawes is a rootsy, midtempo kind of band that emulates their forefathers so much that they could almost be mistaken for a forgotten '70s act. The emulation is not lost on their unwitting mentors, as Jackson Browne and Benmont Tench both lend a hand on the disc. Standout tracks like "If I Wanted Someone" and "A Little Bit of Everything" channel Browne, Joe Walsh, and Warren Zevon so effortlessly, to call this ersatz classic rock is to completely not understand what these kids are striving for.

11. Suck It and See, Arctic Monkeys

12. Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, Beastie Boys

13. Nine Types of Light, TV on the Radio

14. The Big Roar, The Joy Formidable

15. Mockingbird Time, The Jayhawks. Arguably the most pleasant surprise of 2011 was the reunion (and creative renaissance) of one of the great alt-country acts of the early '90s. Picking up where 1995's Tomorrow the Green Grass left off, the songwriting tandom of guitarists Gary Louris and Mark Olson sound and act as if they never broke up. It's circa-1992 Jayhawks all over again: evocative songs, striking vocals, and musicians playing with a big heart.

16. Yuck, Yuck

17. Goblin, Tyler, the Creator

18. Mirror Traffic, Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

19. Circuitual, My Morning Jacket

20. Only in Dreams, Dum Dum Girls. This past year proved quite prolific for this all-female noise-pop quartet. First there was the He Gets Me High covers EP, which frontwoman Kirsten "Dee Dee" Gundred more or less recorded by herself, than their enchanting second full-length disc. It's not a perfect album by any means, but Dreams has a certain honesty and consistentcy that has me looking forward to the Girls' next project.

Worst Album: Lulu, Lou Reed & Metallica. Apologists will call this two-disc set brave and challenging. Everyone else will deem this 87-minute effort as artless, chaotic, bloated, repetitive, and above all a complete mismatch of two aging talents.

BEST SINGLES

"Money Grabber," Fitz & The Tantrums

"Weekend," Smith Westerns

"Uberlin," R.E.M.

"Sydney (I'll Come Running)," Brett Dennen

"Pumped-Up Kicks," Foster The People

"Changing," The Airborne Toxic Event

"Second Chance," Peter, Bjorn & John

"Whirring," The Joy Formidable

"Down By The Water," The Decemberists

"Walk," Foo Fighters

Worst Single: "Miracle Worker," Superheavy. It's enough that Joss Stone is trying to sing reggae, but this slapdash super-group's leadoff song truly leaps from woebegone to outright godawful the moment Mick Jagger jumps in. What the heck?

BEST VIDEOS

Now that music videos as an art form have finally taken full advantage of YouTube et al. maybe it would be best to let all these wonderfully diverse clips speak for themselves.

1. "Crossed Wires," Superchunk. Bad kitty! Bad, bad kitty!

2. "Cruel," St. Vincent. It's a funny video in a sadistic, dry sort of way.

3. "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win," Beastie Boys feat. Santigold. "Each sold separately."

4. "Romance," Wild Flag

5. "Bizness," TuNeYaRdS

6. "Lonely Boy," The Black Keys

7. "Born This Way," Lady Gaga

8. "Conversation 16," The National

9. "She Smiles For Pictures," Big Troubles

10. "I Need a Doctor," Dr. Dre feat. Eminem

Worst Video: "Sexy and I Know It," LMFAO. Gaudy, insipid, and unintentionally homoerotic, this trust fund duo's follow-up to the annoying "Party Rock Anthem" doesn't quite know the difference between a Speedo and a Spee-don't.

Your thoughts?

2011: The Year in Jokes

2011-12-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are Facebook friends or follow me on Twitter (@heystu818), I've been known to write late night monologue-style jokes as status updates and/or tweets. I typically measure how a joke lands by how many people "like" or retweet my comment, than file it for my portfolio. If there's no "likes" I safely assume it bombed, one or two means it's tepid or merely okay, and anything above that in my eyes is a home run. For the first part of my 2011 in review I'm going to look back at the year in jokes, chosen indirectly by you: my friends, family, teammates, and co-workers.

+ A man in Omaha tried to rob a store armed only with a rock. Luckily for the store owner, he had some paper. (1/7/11)

+ Brandi Favre, the kid sister of Brett Favre, was arrested in a Mississippi crystal meth lab this afternoon. The charges were dropped, however when she agreed to text the cops a photo of her cooter. (1/12/11)

+ Yahoo has announced plans to release an app for iPad and Android. This app allows you to travel back in time to when people still used Yahoo. (2/11/11)

+ Today marks the end of the "Jeopardy!" IBM challenge, which pits the supercomputer Watson against two of the show's all-time champions. Unlike the contestants, Watson contains 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content consuming four terabytes of disk storage. Like the other contestants, it has never seen a vagina. (2/15/11)

+ A 9.0 earthquake has just struck the northern coast of Japan. CNN is blaming the quake on the faulting of a long-inactive tectonic plate. MSNBC is blaming the quake on an elastic rebound hundreds of miles below the earth's surface. Fox News is blaming the quake on socialized health care. (3/11/11)

+ Today marks the 30th anniversary of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. This dubious milestone has posed a series of questions, like "what would life in the US be like had Reagan not survived?" and "should we worry about an attempt on President Obama's life?" and "would John Hinckley Jr. and Jodie Foster have made a cute couple?" (3/30/11)

+ An "American Idol" fan was left shocked and in tears when she was forced to give up her front row seat because she was too fat. The producers also ordered Steven Tyler to move from his seat because he looks likes an 80-year-old woman. (4/12/11)

+ A recent survey suggests that Arkansas and Mississippi have the highest proportion of people that rely upon cell phones. This is a signifigant leap for both states, considering ten years ago they were still using two cans on a string. (4/20/11)

+ The Chesapeake Bay Candle company is recalling seven million candles due to a fire risk. In other news, 10 million fireworks are being recalled because they might fly into the air and explode when ignited. (4/21/11)

+ Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said Monday that any allegations that the country's leaders knew Osama bin Laden was hiding 2 1/2 hours away since 2005 are "disingenuous." While Gilani admits that bin Laden was close during that time, he mentioned that officials rarely drive out there, because gas prices are just plain ridiculous. (5/11/11)

+ A man in Willowbrook, IL returned from vacation to find $30,000 in movie memorabilia from "Lord of the Rings" and "Aliens" stolen from his home. In fact, the only thing the thief didn't take was the man's virginity. (5/17/11)

+ GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul has announced that he would support the legalization of prostitution and heroin. As a result, he earned the endorsement of every jazz musician that ever lived. (5/19/11)

+ It was announced today that Anthony Weiner has signed a multi-year contract to play quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings... (6/7/11)

+ Nintendo announced that its new gaming system console, the Wii U, at the E3 conference earlier this week. The system's new controller has a variety of new features that will render you even more useless in social situations. (6/20/11)

+ Today is the 83rd anniversary of the invention of sliced bread, which makes one wonder what was the greatest invention up to that point. (7/8/11)

+ Good news: the NFL lockout could be over as soon as this Friday. Bad news: my CFL fantasy league has completely disappeared. (7/19/11)

+ A recent survey has ranked Casey Anthony the most-hated person in America. Better luck next year, Congress. (8/11/11)

+ Paul Meier, the inventor of the randomized clinical trial, died this week at age 87. There will be two funerals held, and neither family nor clergy will know which coffin contains his body. (8/18/11)

+ A white rat approximately three feet in length was speared to death with a pitchfork in Brooklyn's Marcy Houses this week, which poses a question: who in Brooklyn would own a pitchfork? (8/26/11)

+ Lauren Bush, the niece of former President George W. Bush, got married in Colorado last weekend. The bride wore white, the mother of the bride wore lilac, and the uncle of the bride wore Captain America jammies. (9/6/11)

+ Arch West, the man who created Doritos, died today at age 97. Per his request, his ashes will be rubbed all over a pair of old sweatpants. (9/27/11)

+ A recent survey has ranked Chad as the worst place in the world for a woman to live. Another survey has ranked Chad's apartment as the worst place for a woman to wake up. (10/14/11)

+ A group of British scientists have unveiled "super broccoli," a new breed of the vegetable that helps ward off heart disease. The super broccoli has been praised by supernutritionists but avoided at all costs by superchildren. (10/26/11)

+ It has been reported that Coldplay's new album Mylo Zyloto is their most expensive ever. Apparently, $2 million went towards production and $3 million was spent to keep Gwyneth Paltrow from appearing on the disc. (11/1/11)

+ A recent report suggests that the McRib sandwich contains a flour-bleaching agent commonly used in gym mats and the soles of shoes. I'm quite relieved; for a moment there, I thought the McRib contained meat. (11/15/11)

+ A recent survey suggests that people that regularly watch Fox News Channel are less informed than people who don't watch news at all. The survey also determined that people who regularly watch the Food Network are disportionately more informed about creme fraiche. (11/26/11)

+ Reuters is reporting that President Obama will visit our troops in Afghanistan on December 25th while his wife and daughters attend various DC-area events. Fox News is reporting that another black man is leaving his family on Christmas. (12/9/11)

Next Week: the year in music, 2011.

Cain Unable

2011-12-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

With one fell swoop, the GOP presidential primary just got marginally less crazy. Self-made businessman Herman Cain dropped out of the race last weekend, mere weeks until the first primary. When allegations of sexual harassment and philandering snowballed and financial support plummeted, the ex-restauranteur painted himself into a corner. In a race where the status quo is still in comtempt and th unofficial title of frontrunner has been like musical chairs --Romney, Bachmann, Perry, now Gingrich-- the one true Washington outsider in the race was also its most meteoric fall.

So one must wonder: what torpedoed Cain that couldn't sink Bill Clinton 20 years ago? For starters, the mass media is far more relentless than it was in the early '90s, let alone before the WTC attacks. Secondly, nobody could prove Clinton committed adultery until well into his second term. Sadly, for all intents and purposes it seems like Cain brought this upon himself; he seemed like the type that thought he could do a better job than the current guy, not realizing there are strings attached. All in all, Cain's carnival of a campaign just couldn't walk the tightrope.

Other notes:

+ So what's my take on Ron Santo's "long-awaited" Hall of Fame induction? I posted my thoughts shortly after his passing last year. Considering that Santo only garnered 21% of the vote in his first year of elegibility (1982) and the rise was very slow and steady, one must wonder how many BBWAA scribes simply read up on sabermetrics --6th best third baseman ever my foot-- drank the Cubbie Kool-Aid, or both.

+ My old TV.com friend and blog pseudo-correspondent Mark a/k/a mp34mp caught wind of the NHL division realignment before I did. He asked for my two cents on Twitter, and frankly I found some flaws right away. Personally, I think it's a little pointless to have four mini-conferences of seven to eight teams when bring back the four-division format would've sufficed. If it were up to me, however I would've scratched out the old/new divisional rivalries and gone completely regional: put the seven Canadian teams in one division, then split the 23 American squads into west, central, and eastern divisions. For example:

Canadian: Calgary, Edmonton, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg
Eastern: Boston, Buffalo, Carolina, New Jersey, NY Islanders, NY Rangers, Philly, Washington
Central/South: Chicago, Columbus, Detroit, Florida, Nashville, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tampa Bay
Western: Anaheim, Colorado, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Phoenix, San Jose

Again, I'm partially disregarding some long-standing rivalries, but it might work. Just saying.

+ Improv Update: one week from Friday, I will be auditioning for Level 3 of the Second City Conservatory program. Considering that it took me over a year just to get into Level 1, I'm hoping to buck some unfortunate trends. It's ten days away, but wish me luck!

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1986

2011-11-29T21:08:00.000-08:00

Some music critics argue that 1985 was the year new wave died. If that's the case, than 1986 was the funeral; synthesizers were so prominent in the mainstream that the old guard were clearly followers, left to their wits alone in a pool of inorganic sound. If the pop music of the time didn't whet your appetite, '86 was also the year college rock truly flowered; memorable albums by The Smiths, R.E.M. and Sonic Youth preceded and indirectly mentored the '90s alternative scene. This was also a strong year for metal, with several headbanging acts releasing their career- and genre-defining masterworks; it was also the advent of their goofy kid brother "hair metal," as hairspray-and-bourbon acts like Poison and Motley Crue first came to prominence. If that wasn't your jam, free jazz, rap, and roots country all had a strong year as well. In short 1986 was thoroughly eclectic, a bigger cornucopia of sound than most years in the "Greed is good" decade.

BEST ALBUMS:

1. Graceland, Paul Simon. After the lackluster sales of 1983's underrated Hearts and Bones and a bitter divorce from Carrie Fisher, Rhymin' Simon yearned a fresh start. Finding inspiration in the little-heard mbaqanga music of South Africa, Simon not only got back on the saddle, he delivered an album that brought back old fans and introduced a new generation to his songcraft. Building upon a new lyrical approach first presaged on Bones, Simon's songs range from the satirical "I Know What I Know" to the highly poetic "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes." A well-deserved commercial success.

2. Master of Puppets, Metallica. The best, most influential heavy metal band of the '80s earned the accolades of critics and listeners far outside the metal spectrum with their third album. Everything about this disc comes from an epic mindset: longer songs, more thematic unity, and a greater sense of focus. The album is bookended by two of the finest thrash songs ever written ("Battery" and "Damage, Inc."), serving only to sandwich some beefy, juicy metal.

3. The Queen is Dead, The Smiths. Morrissey cemented his status as "the master of mope" on the British indie-rock stalwarts' third effort. If their previous album Meat is Murder was a holding pattern of sorts, than Queen is The Smiths' great leap forward; the backbeat is more pronounced, musical dimensions are explored, and of course the lyrics are just as morose yet introspective as ever. Narrowly avoiding his reputation as a big ol' sap, Morrissey sprinkles his words with wit and intelligence. And they say there is a light that never goes out...

4. Life's Rich Pageant, R.E.M.

5. Licensed to Ill, Beastie Boys

6. Raising Hell, Run-D.M.C.

7. Skylarking, XTC

8. King of America, Elvis Costello

9. EVOL, Sonic Youth

10. Guitar Town, Steve Earle. Arguably the most interesting debut of '86 was by a 31-year-old journeyman with a love of Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt and a big chip on his shoulder. A veteran sideman, Earle's first album as a leader was a long time coming; when Town was finally released his Nashville-meets-Mellencamp sound was almost perfectly honed.

Honorable Mentions: Crowded House, Crowded House; Black Celebration, Depeche Mode; So, Peter Gabriel; Kool Moe Dee, Kool Moe Dee; Song X, Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny; Brotherhood, New Order.

BEST SINGLES:

"Say You, Say Me," Lionel Richie

"Broken Wings," Mr. Mister

"Take My Breath Away," Berlin

"Rock Me Amadeus," Falco

"Papa Don't Preach," Madonna

"Desire (Come and Get It)," Gene Loves Jezebel

"Cattle Prod," Guadalcanal Diary

"The Future's So Bright (I Gotta Wear Shades)," Timbuk 3

"Keep Your Hands to Yourself," Georgia Satellites

"Eric B. is President" (original version), Eric B. & Rahim

BEST VIDEOS:

1. "Sledgehammer," Peter Gabriel. If you hadn't figured it out in the first 30 seconds of the clip, the title of the song is a euphemism for the male appendage. Regardless, this all-time classic video fuses claymation, pixilation, and stop-motion photography in a non-stop barrage of sexual innuendos.

2. "Walk This Way," RUN-DMC feat. Aerosmith. The parallel lines of rock and rap finally met in '86 when the Hollis-based trio covered a '70s hard-rock treasure and invited Steven Tyler to sing the chorus. Rest assured, this video broke down walls in more ways than one.

3. "Addicted to Love," Robert Palmer. Palmer transformed himself from a middle-of-the-pack British soul singer to full-blown superstar with this sexy, hypnotic clip. I wonder if any of those girls played their own instruments... ;)

4. "Cry," Godley and Creme. Another innovation was begat in late '85/early '86 with the concept of analog cross-fading, which this forgotten '80s nugget demonstrates to the hilt.

5. "You Can Call Me Al" (version 2), Paul Simon. The better-known of the two "Al" videos finds Simon's longtime friend Chevy Chase mugging and goofing around while Paul just minds his business.

Honorable Mentions: "Something About You," Level 42; "Shake You Down," Gregory Abbott.

PS: there is some overlap between this and my 1987 list from last year, so if it's not here, it's probably there.

Your thoughts?

Poetry in Motian

2011-11-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

Did anyone expect the bipartisan "supercommittee" to successfully lay out a budget plan? We already know DC is ridiculously polarized, but this was just the banana on the sundae, and it's clear that voters can't digest this for much longer. That is not to say, however that I personally wanted them to flounder; any sliver of progress would've been appreciated, and the supercommittee failed to accomplish even that. This is a crisis not only on the national level but globally; with Europe facing its own fiscal dilemma, our allies need the United States' investment more than ever. And yet, with the whole world watching no congressman or senator on either side of the fence could put aside their petty differences and compromise.

The problem with the federal budget crisis --and the toxic nature of Washington in general-- is that it cannot be pinpointed to one single person. The average conservative would blame President Obama or former Speaker Pelosi, but the seeds were planted long before either took their respective office. The common liberal would blame former President Bush if only because the economy tanked on his watch, but it's far more complicated than that. For drawing a divide between the left and right I would give a certain amount of credit to former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who infamously barred members of his party from associating with Democrats, even on a social level, with censure as punishment. Newt's successor Dennis Hastert didn't so much enforce the backdoor policy so much as let it pour over to both parties, and by the time Nancy Pelosi became speaker the damage was done.

For the economic stalemate, I have grown more exasperated with Grover Norquist with each passing day. If you'll excuse this HuffPo link, Andy Reinbach couldn't have said it better: Norquist has forced, bullied, and otherwise persuaded most of Republicans in Congress to swear they'll never raise taxes, hook, line or sinker. People tend to forget that the ongoing fiscal situation was brought upon by the defaults and bankruptcies of several major banks as well as irresponsible federal spending. Taxation was, if anything, a distant third in the blame game; lowering taxes is barely feasible at the moment, but eradicating them completely would only send us all further down the sinkhole. Norquist's theories on tax reform, while noble to a degree, are irrational and strident. If you want to cast stones, don't hurl them at the status quo so much as the people behind the status quo.

The 2012 election is less than a year away, and it's already sizing up to be the most important vote of our lifetimes. I would expect a greater purging of incumbents than in 2010; what is up for grabs is which party will suffer more casualties in Congress, and whether that will trickle up to the Oval Office. The Republican takeover last year was intended to clean up the Democrats; however, the GOP's chances in '12 have been hurt by their constant gridlock approach. At the moment I see no heroes, no knights in shining armor; just fools and puppets.

Other notes:

+ With minimal context, here is my seventh annual list of things I am thankful (and not quite as graceous) for:

Thanks: Groupon deals, Sudoku, my sudden turnaround in fantasy football (4-2 after an 0-5 start), the Chicago improv community, my patient roommate, and most importantly my friends and family.

No Thanks: Orly Taitz, "9-9-9," truly experiencing Chicago's infamous "lakefront effect" 2 1/2 miles west of Lake Michigan, the dearth of entry-level job postings online, corrupt college football programs, and forcing to budget myself to absurd extremes.

+ Finally, the jazz nerd in me has to acknowledge this. Earlier today the world lost drummer Paul Motian, the last surviving member of the "classic" Bill Evans Trio lineup of the late '50s/early '60s. Though he was a prolific leader and sideman for over half a century, he is best remembered for his percussion panache alongside Evans and bassist Scott LaFaro. Even more tragic is that he survived those bandmates by a solid three decades; LaFaro was killed in a car accident in 1961, Evans died of natural causes in 1980. Known for his work ethic, he was playing gigs at New York's Village Vanguard up to four weeks before his death. Motian painted colors on the drumset, and today the world feels a little more black and white without his presence.

Next week: the year in music, 1986. Happy Thanksgiving!

Real Big Fish

2011-11-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

Ten things that the new Miami Marlins logo reminds me of:

the opening credits to a forgotten "Saved by the Bell" spinoff.
a generic postcard that you send to a relative you can barely tolerate.
the design on a nightshirt that your grandma would wear... if she wears a nightie.
Gloria Estefan's tour bus, circa 1992.
the poor man's Red Lobster.
Prozac.
a new exhibit at Seaworld, just before PETA catches wind and protests outside the park.
a suburban white guy trying in vain to impress a Latino co-worker.
Jeffrey Loria's hubris (natch).
a misguided attempt at filling a void in Miami's heart since the Dolphins and Panthers suck and the Heat won't play again until 2012 at the earliest.

Other notes:

+ My roommate is from outside Pittsburgh --Latrobe, PA to be exact-- and he has three true loves in his life: the Steelers, Penguins, and Penn State football. As you might imagine the ol' roomie had a pretty rough go at it last week, and near as I can tell ESPN and ESPNews are still still banned in our household. All I can say on the matter is hate the school establishment, not the school itself; Jerry Sandusky, Joe Paterno, and the school board of trustees all have blood on their hands, but don't blame the players or the students. The riots were an act of denial, not stupidity; those PSU underclassmen were defending a man that betrayed them, and the chaos in State College was purely impulsive. Still, it'll take years for the school and the Nittany Lions football program to recover.

+ Was I the only person that thought Rick Perry would somehow survive his much-YouTubed blunder last week? T-Paw notwithstanding, these candidates are so fueled by their desire to topple President Obama that they can't read any indicator that their campaign is practically over. That now-infamous debate flub, paired with Herman Cain's harassment allegations inadvertantly gave Newt Gingrich a slice of the spotlight, though I still find the ex-Speaker difficult to take seriously. Also, Mitt Romney's growing lead in the polls doesn't surprise me in the faintest, though this could indicate a moderate-right resurgence in the coming months.

+ My link of the week is courtesy of Christine "Electra" Pawlak, former midday DJ at the late, lamented Q101 in Chicago. This wonderful essay provides insight on the death of rock radio from an insider perspective that I can't even touch, and her "no regrets" attitude is both jarring and refreshing.

Next week: my 7th annual "thanks/no thanks" list.

Girl, You'll Be a Woman... Eventually

2011-11-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I read a funny and very thought-provoking article by Mindy Kaling, the actress that plays Kelly on "The Office." It was an excerpt from her new book, and in this particular passage she disperses relationship advice in her familiar sing-song cadence. (Click here for the article.) The intent is satiricial, demonstrating the disparity between what constitutes a man as opposed to a overgrown child, but something about the article left me with a strange taste in my mouth.

Granted, I'm no relationship expert and I'm sorry if this sounds misogynist, but it really comes down to one thing: Girls date boys. Women date men. Kaling writes about the opposite sex as if dating "upward" of your maturity will bring you to their level via some type of osmosis. Regardless of looks, women don't date guys that can't hold down a job or live in their parents' basement, and in turn men seldom seek relationships with trixies that have made the pilgrimage to Bonnaroo six years running. Ultimately, the people you connect with best are usually on the same level of maturity as you are. I'm 27 and often find myself straddling that line, and I suppose I'm looking for a woman who seeks the same thing.

I've been taking improv classes for nearly 2 1/2 years now, and the female performers I have encountered and performed with have run the gamut between "girl" and "woman," and the disparity is not limited to age. The characters they play and the decisions they make onstage are greatly affected --almost to the point of transparency-- by their own personal goals and responsibilities. The 31-year-old married professional works well with the drifting 22-year-old college student, though they don't have much in common off-stage. The kids play kids, the grown-ups play grown-ups. Sometimes being the man or woman means being a complete ass, but it can also symbolize assertion and conduct. My advice relates to life and romance in unison: sometimes maturity is thrown upon but most often you grow into it, and that's nothing to freak out about.

Other TV-related notes:

+ Outside of SNL, I've barely had a chance to watch any new shows so far this season. Heck, I'm still catching up on episodes from last season, which is pathetic. Luckily, my roomie and I have similar tastes in TV shows, and he's been gracefully letting me borrow some of his DVDs. On a side note, I caught about five minutes of "Last Man Standing" last night and I wasn't that impressed.

+ As much as I like "Conan," for some odd reason Big Red and his cohorts have been missing something since they moved from New York to LA. Luckily, they spent a week of shows (that's all?) back in the Big Apple, and this nine-minute clip encompassed what somebody might call "classic Conan," right down to its usage of a beloved recurring character we once thought was lost to the ages.

+ Finally, belated congratulations to my former improv classmate Jason Andre Smith on his walk-on role as "the stupid new guy" in an episode of "Whitney" last month. Smitty moved to LA halfway through the iO program late last year, but I tip my hat for finding a TV gig so quickly.

Random Notes, November 2011

2011-11-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

This week seems like a better time than ever to catch up on various stories and tie up some loose ends:

+ Back in July I commented on the slow, painful death of Chicago radio as exemplified by the demise of the market's last modern-rock station. Since then, things have grown worse; as Chicago media gadfly Robert Feder blogged last week, a recent rash of layoffs marked the bloodiest week in local radio history. The mass media behemoth known as ClearChannel was the most egregious executioner, wiping out 11% of the entire company's payroll; nothing was safe from the big purge, from station managers all the way down to production assistants. This past Sunday marked 18 months since the unceremonious end of my last radio gig, and my heart goes out my brothers in the radio industry; it's beyond frustrating to watch a dream die like that, and in some ways I'm still recovering from the rejection.

+ Then in August, I blogged about the woebegone Lake County Fielders, an independent baseball team left for dead by its management and community. Two months after the fact, their painful story finally hit the mainstream media. When the Fielders' management couldn't financially justify air fare anymore, the Northern League was forced to rearrange the remaining schedule of the 2011 season, essentially excluding the boys in Zion. In turn, the Fielders spent a whole month playing home-and-home with a semi-pro club from central Wisconsin. No official word yet on whether the Fielders will live to see a third year, though it's looking quite doubtful.

+ With that said, how was my first week living in Chicago? Well, I arrived at the apartment that I'm subletting around 2:30 last Monday; I was able to carry all my belongings up two flights of stairs by myself in about two hours. (Moving into an apartment that was pre-furnished was very helpful, to say the least.) My roomie works odd hours and travels a lot, so at times it was kinda lonely around the place; however, I had a checklist of friends' shows that I wanted to see but wasn't able to until now.

The personal highlight of my first week was weirdly serendipitous. One of the most popular improv shows in Chicago is TJ & Dave, a two-man, one-hour spectacle of sorts that iO hosts every Wednesday night. (To those of you who might be visiting Chicago anytime soon, this is an excellent way to dip your toe into improv. Plus, tickets are only $5!) The bad news was that TJ wasn't there that night, supposedly because he was shooting a movie in LA. The good news is that he was filled in by Tracy Letts. It's one thing if it were another star of the Chicago comedy scene, but another to see Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts do improv, and quite well might I add. Suffice to say, I was blown away; I shook Letts' hand after the show, but he rushed out of the theater before I could ask for a photo or autograph.

+ Finally, the 7 billionth person in the world was born on Monday, and believe it or not, it wasn't a Duggar...

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1978

2011-10-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

Defining the music scene of the late 1970s as merely punk and disco does a great disservice to the bountiful variety and eclecticism of the era, and 1978 proves how narrowminded that opinion can be. Even though vapid American boogie and raw British nihilism captured most people's imaginations --and couldn't be more disparate in sound and philosophy-- the seeds of new wave and post-punk were being planted, while power pop hit a creative zenith. That is not to say, however that the punk movement was a tired novelty and disco flat-out sucked; there was just a lot more going on in '78 that most people recall. If there was a running pattern that year, 1978 was the year of the debut; five first albums and one sophomore effort cracked my top ten. If a notable act from the early '80s didn't bow in 1977, they rolled it out a year later.

I try to keep my lists as concise as possible, but yet again I was forced to expand my top album and song lists to an even twenty. 1978 was a bigger treasure trove of music than I initially assumed, so whittling down from twenty-five albums and ranking them took awhile. For anyone griping about why Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance, Brian Eno's Music for Airports or even a more populist pick like Bob Seger's Stranger in Town didn't make the cut, I just wanted to be as straight to the point as possible. I will attest that I left out a big chunk of disco and top-notch funk from '78 as well. The longer the list, the more out of control it feels.

ALBUMS

1. Darkness on the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen. Highly anticipated and exceeding even the highest expectations, The Boss' fourth album completes his transition from restless teen to defeated adult. The colorful cast of losers and misfits that Springsteen paints are unabashedly working class, more cowardly than heroic. It makes more than one listen to "get" Darkness, but you have to admire an artist that puts his principles ahead of his popularity.

2. This Year's Model, Elvis Costello. The spectacled Liverpudlian's most "punk" album marks the first appearance of his longtime backing band, The Attractions. Compared to his debut a year earlier, Model is tough and wild in both brain and heart, and every song careens along both sides of the street. Organist Steve Nieve almost steals the show, supplying reckless riffs on a variety of tracks including the hit "Pump It Up."

3. Parallel Lines, Blondie. Setting the template for every '80s tough gal from Pat Benetar to Madonna, Debbie Harry and the boys hit their creative zenith and cracked the mainstream on album #3. Everybody knows "Heart of Glass" and "One Way or Another," but what keeps the album so fresh 33 years later is its depth and consistency.

4. Van Halen, Van Halen

5. The Cars, The Cars

6. Dire Straits, Dire Straits

7. Outlandos D'Amour, The Police

8. The Kick Inside, Kate Bush

9. Some Girls, The Rolling Stones

10. Third/Sister Lovers, Big Star. Recorded in late 1975 and shelved almost three years --than repackaged in the early '90s-- the songs that comprise Big Star's unofficial third album depicts a band (and a songwriter) falling apart at the seams. Alex Chilton sabotages nearly every song on the disc, a tortured artist putting his depression and desperation to the forefront of every word he sings. Side A is mostly rockers, Side B is all ballads, but both sides are inherently beautiful in their shambling nature.

11. Easter, Patti Smith Group

12. More Songs About Buildings and Food, Talking Heads

13. Excitable Boy, Warren Zevon

14. Give 'Em Enough Rope, The Clash

15. Heaven Tonight, Cheap Trick. Balancing the arena-ready punch of their debut album and the shiny belligerence of In Color, Cheap Trick was another workhorse act that broke through in '78. "Surrender" is the no-brainer hit single and their defining song, while "On The Radio" and "Stiff Competition" are wonderful, albeit buried gems.

16. The Last Waltz soundtrack, The Band/Various Artists

17. Germ Free Adolescents, X-Ray Spex

18. Jesus of Cool (aka Pure Pop for Now People), Nick Lowe

19. Powerage, AC/DC

20. One Nation Under a Groove, Funkadelic. As danceable as it is political, George Clinton et al. hit a creative peak and found unexpected commercial success via Groove. Largely dismissed as merely funk (probably because of the name), Funkadelic was inherently about "black rock," fat beats under Hendrix-style guitars. The title track was a left-field #1 R&B hit, but tracks like the seven-minute "Groovealligence" give the album its soul and intellect.

SINGLES

"Thunder Island," Jay Ferguson

"Driver's Seat," Sniff n' The Tears

"I Need a Lover," Johnny Cougar

"Spirit in the Night," Manfred Mann's Earth Band

"Crazy Love," Poco

"Don't Look Back," Boston

"Don't Stop Me Now," Queen

"Baker Street," Gerry Rafferty

"I Feel Love," Donna Summer

"If I Can't Have You," Yvonne Elliman

"Ca Plane Pour Moi," Plastic Bertrand

"Brickfield Nights," The Boys

"Top of the Pops," The Rezillos

"Teenage Kicks," The Undertones

"Into The Valley," The Skids

"Yachting Types," The Yachts

"Down on the Boulevard," The Pop

"Pretty Please," The Quick

"Better Off Dead," La Peste

"Changing of the Guards," Bob Dylan

Your thoughts?

Uncage the Rage

2011-10-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

When I was down at ISU last weekend, I noticed that an "Occupy Normal" protest had been staged on the bridge connecting the quad and north campus. Compared to the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstration that clawed its way into the media spotlight in recent weeks, it was very modest; a dozen or so students sitting on the walkway, chilling on their sleeping bags and eating cold cereal. They were clearly visible during the homecoming parade but not distracting by any means. In a section of the state of Illinois where Republicans outnumber Democrats 3:2 most of the locals couldn't have cared less, but I'll give points to the protesters for their resilience and gumption. This year's ISU homecoming theme was "Uncage the Rage," a sentiment that not only applies to our avian school spirit but also the growing frustration at the state of our nation, and those proud underclassmen struck the parallel quite accurately.

So where do I stand on the "Occupy" movement? The fact that the richest 1% of the population controls 40% of the nation's money is certainly wrong, even though I'm not sure if copying the Tea Party's grass-roots rancor was the right way to go. Regardless, you don't have to tell me the system is broken. Capitalism has a right to exist but the chasm between the rich and poor grows by the day, and addressing the situation head-on is not (as some suggest) misguided "socialist" rhetoric. The so-called lazy hippies that are setting up pup tents nationwide are not unlike me, underemployed college graduates with nowhere to go and nothing to lose. The little guy is taking it in the gut these days, and both sides of our government are as polarized as they are incompetent in handling the situation. I may not join in on the protest, but I respect their right to assemble and have their voice heard.

Other notes:

+ And how was the reunion, you ask? I was everything I expected it to be. In the course of two days I spoke with my professor/mentor for all of twenty seconds as she made the rounds with fellow alums, never getting around to asking about my current job status. On the other hand, I ran into an ex-co-worker with connections, so I may have my foot in the door for a possible job. As you might expect the overall homecoming atmosphere was highly cordial and throughly communal; I was in town for four meals and technically only had to pay for two. I drank more Bud Light last weekend than I have in the last six months (not in excess, mind you). By and large, I'm glad I made the long drive down.

+ Fantasy Update: After a prolonged schneid, I finally won my first pigskin matchup of the year. I'm 1-5 for 2011 so far; there's still time for a turnaround, as insurmountable as my situation my seem. In a league where ten teams each have at least two quarterbacks, two kickers, and two team defenses --and the free agent pool is slim pickins'-- I'll have to rely on dark horse receivers and halfbacks to gain momentum.

Next week: the year in music, 1978.

Radio Dazed: Central Illinois Edition

2011-10-12T19:50:00.000-07:00

This coming weekend I'm driving down to Normal, IL for Illinois State University's homecoming festivites. Even though I booked my motel room months ago, I'm having mixed feelings about my annual trip. This is a special homecoming of sorts because not only is my old student radio station is celebrating its 30th anniversary (six months late, not that it matters) but earlier this month they marked a long-awaited transition from being online-only to having a full broadcast signal. Goodbye Windows Media Player, hello FM preset.

Of course, that's not why I'm feeling hestitent; it's not so much the station as it is my former co-workers and my standing amongst them. In the 18 months since my unceremonious dismissal from my reception/traffic job, I have yet to find my next radio gig and I'm nearly ready to give up and focus on something else. The student-run station I used to work for is an unofficial farm system for talent --both on-air and behind the scenes-- not only in the Bloomington-Normal market but Chicago, Rockford, Peoria, and St. Louis as well. If you listen to any radio station in those markets, you've probably heard the DNA of my old station and didn't even know it. In spite of my pursuits in other fields, I have reason to believe that my name has become shorthand for underachievement.

Worse yet, the big reunion Friday night will mean having to confront the station's faculty advisor, a woman whom I consider as a mentor and someone that I have more or less failed. Chances are she'll be swamped by all other former student employees of the station, the hundreds of other students she touched, so I'll probably just smile and nod politely when I get my five seconds of face time. Of course, there's also the glass-half-full aspect; I could run into an alum who's now a bigwig in the Chicago market, hobnob a little and potentially get a foot in the door. It's not like I have anything to lose.

As you can tell, I'm experiencing a whirlwind of emotions about the reunion and I'm essentially thinking as I'm writing. Wish me luck this weekend; I could sure use it.

Other notes:

+ Having watched part of the GOP debate the other night, it seemed like the discussion and endless reemphasis of bullet points mirrored the race itself: Herman Cain rose to the occasion, Rick Perry faded, Mitt Romney just chilled, and everybody else was simply happy to be there. As much as I love an underdog story, Cain's "9-9-9" tax overhaul plan worries me. It sounds simple enough, but most lower-class Americans pay less than 9% of their income in federal taxes; ditto for the minimum-wagers and the elderly. Even with a national sales tax and a supposedly leveled playing field, the rich come out with a narrow edge. How would that satisfy anyone on the left or right?

+ Has the death of Steve Jobs been overhyped by the media? Perhaps, but not by much. There's little denying that Jobs was a man of substance, a leader of industry first and a celebrity second. I don't own an iPod or an iPad, but I do have an iTunes account and an unused gift card from last Christmas, so even I was indirectly affected by his passing. I've never seen anybody shape or forecast the market for modern technology quite the way Jobs did, and I doubt we'll see anyone with his foresight and prowess again, at least in our lifetime. With all due respect to his widow and children, this might be a greater tragedy for good ol' American ingenuity than anything else.

+ Speaking of Normal, check out this two-minute thirty-second ad from Mitsubishi, who operate a factory on the west side of town. The editing on this mini-doc whitewashes the area a little bit, as it conviniently ignores not only ISU and its status as a party school but also the decrepit mess that the adjoining city of Bloomington has become. What suckered me into sharing this was that I used to buy CDs from North Street Records, which makes a cameo near the halfway point.

Random Notes, October 2011

2011-10-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

Last week's 1966 blog kinda beat the wind out of me, so enjoy these random notes:

+ 20 days until the move. I kinda lucked out in subletting a place that's pre-furnished, which really shaves a lot of time off the moving and packing process. Working 40 hours a week doesn't give me much time to gather my belongings, and since I'm also subletting the process has been very similar to moving into a dorm room. I fully acknowledge that what I'm doing is a risk of sorts, but I take solace in knowing that this has been almost four years in the making. Since mid-July I've been temping out in Aurora, IL; they expected me to stay until New Year's Eve, so obviously they were disappointed when they heard the word from my agency. The managers there are supportive of my decision, albeit with some reluctance. Nevertheless, I'm glad to see the wheels are turning.

+ Fitness Update: I've lost 15 pounds since May 1st, and I've been holding steady at my current weight since August 15th or so. It's amazing what happens when you overload on protein, replace skim with 1%, and avoid white bread. Money will be tight until I find a full-time job (temp or otherwise) in the city, so I hope I don't get flabby or relapse into old habits. Luckily, there's a gym right next to Second City, so the drive to exercise is right there.

+ Fantasy Update: another year, another title. This time around, I finally vanquished my TV.com peers in roto baseball. (My "other" team, champions two years running, finished 7th out of 10.) Like I normally do, I took advantage of under-the-radar guys piecing together productive seasons on mediocre teams; to unsung heroes like Michael Pineda, Edwin Encarnacion and Eric Hosmer I tip my hat.

+ Speaking of baseball... even though I'm an out and proud Kansas City Royals fan, if I had to choose a second favorite team, I'd go with the Milwaukee Brewers. The glass half-empty side of me would say I have a terrible in baseball teams; the glass half-full would brag that combined these two teams have made two playoff appearances since 1985. In all fairness I've always had a weak spot for the Brew Crew, but I've never truly committed to them. Plus, a fair percentage of my favorite non-Royals ballplayers have been Brewers: Robin Yount, Jim Gantner, Ryan Braun, the list goes on. When Zack Greinke was traded from KC to Milwaukee last winter, it was like a blessing in disguise; I can't blame him for getting fed up with David Class et al. but landing with a small-market quasi-contender was just icing on the cake. With that said, I raise my glass of Miller Lite to a long playoff run for my mistress behind the Cheddar Curtain.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1966

2011-09-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

After nearly 36 months, I have finally reached my favorite year of the '60s. Where '67, '68, and '69 were all top-heavy in great albums, 1966 balanced the long player's arrival as an art form with a cornucopia of all-time great singles. Without belaboring their impact 45 years on, any of the top three albums of my list could've been #1 in any other year, or any other decade for that matter. On the 45 RPM front, everything seemed to be firing on all cylinders: R&B, folk-pop, Motown, bubblegum, British Invasion, primative garage rock and early psychedelic. It was also a curious yet fascinating year in jazz, as the Blue Note post-bop stalwarts of the past decade or so finally conceided to liberal improvisation and the "free" movement. In all, there was a general sense of liberation and daring-do in the sounds of '66 that just couldn't be tamped down.

(Like past lists, my albums are ranked but my favorite songs are not.)

BEST ALBUMS

1. Revolver, The Beatles. If Rubber Soul was the appetizer and Sgt. Pepper's the dessert, than the Fab Four's seventh album was the main course. A crucial turning point in the band's philosophy, aesthetic, and sound, Revolver is the wedge between the band's straight-ahead earlier work and the sonic exploration and restless experimenting of their late '60s output. Even though Abbey Road was his true breakout, George Harrison nearly steals the show with his three writing contributions: the cynical "Taxman," the sitar durge "Love You To," and the dissonant "I Want To Tell You." With all the risks taken on this disc, it's almost a miracle that everything holds together, which makes Revolver an absolute must-own album.

2. Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys. Very few people understand the complexities of the human mind. Even fewer understand Brian Wilson's. When it comes to melodic melancholy, nothing compares nor ever will match the lush orchestration, inherent sense of loneliness, and yearning upper-register harmonizing of Pet Sounds. As the troubled songwriter aspired to be the next Phil Spector, Wilson not only cashed in all his chips, he rendered the "Wall of Sound" guru irrelevant overnight.

3. Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan. Its a testament to how deep the genius pool was in '66 that a genre-defining album would finish third on an annual list. The final act of Zimmerman's mid-decade triptych of masterpieces (see my '65 list for more details) draws the line in the sand between rock and pop; the sound is freewheeling and ramshackle, and the lyrics are so dense that you'll find a new meaning or subtext with every listen. The witty wordplay flows like water, whether it's on rockers such as "Stuck Inside of Memphis" or ballads like "Visions of Johanna." Dylan would continue to record great albums well after Blonde, but nothing has rocked as hard since.

4. Unit Structures, Cecil Taylor

5. Aftermath, The Rolling Stones

6. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Simon & Garfunkel

7. Freak Out!, The Mothers of Invention

8. Adam's Apple, Wayne Shorter

9. Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield

10. Black Monk Time, The Monks. One of the most bizarre backstories in rock history also begat the album that inadvertantly invented punk. (Click here for the whole skinny.) Slashing two chords a good decade before The Ramones and voicing their radical beliefs when Dead Kennedys were still in grammar school, these American ex-pats started a revolution they had no idea was even brewing. Plus, Dave Day plays a blistering banjo.

Honorable Mentions: Got a Good Thing Goin', Big John Patton; 5th Dimension, The Byrds; Fresh Cream, Cream; If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, The Mamas and the Papas; The Monkees, The Monkees; Sounds of Silence, Simon & Garfunkel.

Best Album I Haven't Heard Yet: The Psychedelic Sounds of..., The 13th Floor Elevators. I've heard so much about this album, yet I can't find a hard copy for my dear life. Once I score this disc, I'll make the proper adjustment to the list above.

BEST SINGLES

"What Becomes of the Brokenhearted," Jimmy Ruffin

"When a Man Loves a Woman," Percy Sledge

"Devil With a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly," Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels

"This Old Heart of Mine," The Isley Brothers

"Ain't Too Proud to Beg," The Temptations

"You Keep Me Hangin' On," The Supremes

"Reach Out (I'll Be There)," The Four Tops

"River Deep Mountain High," Ike & Tina Turner

"Sweet Talkin' Guy," The Chiffons

"Philly Dog," Herbie Mann

"Paperback Writer," The Beatles

"Five O'Clock World," The Vogues

"Psychotic Reaction," Count Five

"Wild Thing," The Troggs

"Good Lovin'," The Young Rascals

"Sunshine Superman," Donovan

"Black is Black," Los Bravos

"Red Rubber Ball," The Cyrkle

"Walk Away Renee," The Left Banke

"96 Tears," ? and the Mysterians

Your thoughts?

Who's That Girl?

2011-09-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week at the office, so I'll keep it short:

To anyone wondering if former Gov. Sarah Palin will enter the presidential race, I think you have your answer. The multitude of much-hyped "major speeches" that Palin has given have been little more than the same homespun anti-Obama rhetoric that she's been peddling since the '08 election. She gives her audience everything they want... except to announce her candidacy for president. The ultimate reason why Palin hasn't thrown her hat in the rang --and probably won't-- is because of Michele Bachmann. That's not to say two women can't vie for the same party's candidacy, it's just that their platforms are too similar. (The fact that Bachmann is starting to physically mimic Palin is purely coincidental.)

Sadly, this is not where the parallels end. Both women are sound-byte magnets, have love-it-or-leave-it personas, and both are wilting (wilted?) under the scrutiny of the media. Without beating a dead horse, I have always believed that a leftist media conspiracy is pure hooey; while it is highly difficult for a reporter to demonstrate complete objectivity, the perlustration flies both ways. The only difference is, conservatives complain about being treated unfairly in a louder, more strident fashion than liberals. In the right's eyes, the slightest aside is lethal, as evidenced by this recent "misquote." The recent dustup involving a seemingly unflattering photo on the cover of Newsweek begat a partisan optical illusion: some see Bachmann as the latest scapegoat by a secretive yet opaque clique bent on undermining her every move; others see a woman that just doesn't photograph well.

In a race as contested as the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, every candidate's worst enemy is themselves. On one hand, any false move can be an opponent's goldmine. On the other hand, you have to find a way to stand out in a crowded race. Rep. Bachmann's recent appearance on Jay Leno straddled that line, though the actual impact won't be felt until Iowa and/or New Hampshire. The X-factor is perspective; her supporters and defenders will say Bachmann did fine; the rest of the population saw a presidential contender bomb on network television. Either way, nothing happened on "The Tonight Show" that will alter anyone's opinion of the petite Minnesotan. She's already "convicted" in the public's eyes.

Next Week: the year in music, 1966.

Man with a Plan

2011-09-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

"Difficult things take a long time, impossible things a little longer." --André A. Jackson

I will attest that President Obama gave a stirring speech to Congress last Thursday night, but my confidence in his economic policies and aspirations for job growth were left largely unchanged. The jobs bill that he outlined is not without its flaws, as one blogger pointed out; it's not so much built on cooperation as it is slouching on faith. It shouldn't feel last-ditch but it does. Like so much in the economic debate, I am impartial yet exasperated at the same time, and the flawed jobs bill adds to my worries. I want to give the president the reason of a doubt, but defending him can be awfully tricky.

As for Obama himself-- for some odd reason I can't get myself to take a seat on the hater bandwagon. You take away President Obama's economic pussyfooting and overall he's been halfway decent as Commander in Chief; alas, the 2012 election will be a platform on the economy and little else. There is a fair percentage of the US population that never wanted anything to do with the guy and won't give him an inch on anything, and Obama keeps chugging along in spite of their nearsighted vitriol. On one hand, the left hates him for caving into the Tea Party GOP agenda last month; on the other hand, the right hates him because he didn't cave enough. Playing to the middle and emphasizing pragmatism is the only way Obama can gain traction in a hyper-partisan environment like Washington, because taking one side or the other would merely excaberate a bad situation. I don't envy the position President Obama is in right now, but it's hard to draw sympathy, either.

Other notes:

+ For those of you that missed my Facebook rant this morning, let me reiterate my outrage at the latest frivolous fast food lawsuit. (Click here for more info.) People are born with a certain color of skin, a specific gender, certain physical abilities. However, nobody on this planet is born weighing 300 pounds. I truly, sincerely wish we were a less self-involved society and took more accountability for our actions and our mistakes. Even then, if you can't fit in the booth, sit in a damn chair.

+ Fantasy Update: both of my roto baseball teams made the playoffs... kinda. My TV.com roster finished one game out of first, while my "other" team ended the regular season 8th out of 10. This is the polar opposite of how this usually works, as my TV.com team usually languishes in the second division. Hopefully I'll end the year on two high notes.

+ Finally, a major announcement: after spending two-plus years commuting from the suburbs to hone my love and passion for improv, I'm finally moving to the city of Chicago. A ex-classmate of mine will be out of the country for four months, and I'll be subletting his apartment starting in late October. I'm still temping out in the suburbs, but this is a sacrifice that I've been sitting on for too long and needed to make sooner than later. Wish me luck!

In Remembrance

2011-09-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

This week, most (if not all) major American news outlets will be dedicating a generous amount of airtime to the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Many will argue that this is my generation's Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination, that defining moment that tests --and forever changes-- the collective national psyche. It's that rare event where everybody remembers where they were when they first heard the news. I have my story and so do you. It didn't occur to me until recently that I was a junior in high school when the towers fell, my mom was a freshman in high school when JFK was slain, and my grandmother was a senior when the Japanese invaded Hawai'i. We all attended the same high school, so imagine what might happen if my children attend Downers Grove North.

A decade on, the greatest question of all is whether or not America is safer. A recent article in Slate suggests yes, our armed forces have adapted quite well to our new, terrorist-conscious mindset. Even though bin Laden is dead and al Qaida is becoming the Woolworth's of terrorist organizations, it would be highly arrogant to suggest that what happened ten years ago was an isolated incident. We have every right to stay on our toes. From a defense standpoint, Donald Rumsfeld's juggling act has become Robert Gates' semi-miraculous triumph. We may still be struggling in Afghanistan, but we're on better footing than five years ago. (That's not to say I'm not giving our troops a big chunk of the credit, though.)

Regardless, the face of extremism may be dead but the soul lives on. Whether the families and friends of the victims of the attacks have truly found closure, we'll never know. Conspiracy theories about the attacks still crawl around the internet, growing more tasteless and ridiculous with each passing day. No matter how you personally acknowledge this tragic milestone this coming Sunday will be a day of remembering, not forgetting. These horrible, selfish acts were perpetrated by a small cluster of people who vehemently hated anyone whose beliefs were not their own. Our best retaliation is to mourn together. We are more than our differences.

Meanwhile, on a far lighter note...

This year I was hoping write 32 haikus to match my baseball preview from five months ago, but my 40-hour-a-week temp job has whittled my free time down to a minimum. With that said, here are my 2011 NFL predictions in a nutshell:

NFC North: Green Bay (11-5)
NFC East: Philadelphia (12-4)
NFC South: New Orleans (11-5)
NFC West: St. Louis (9-7)

NFC Wild Cards: Atlanta (10-6), Detroit (9-7)

AFC North: Pittsburgh (12-4)
AFC East: New England (11-5)
AFC South: Indianapolis (10-6)
AFC West: San Diego (10-6)

AFC Wild Cards: NY Jets (11-5), Baltimore (10-6)

Most Improved Team: Detroit. A string of solid drafts has given the once-woeful Lions the stealthiest defense (at least, on paper) in the NFC. The ultimate X-factor is whether Matthew Stafford can stay healthy.
Most Likely to Freefall: Seattle. An otherwise solid O-line will come to realize that Tarvaris Jackson just isn't worth protecting. Plus, the pass defense can't cover on the blitz if they tried.
Owner of Next Year's First Overall Draft Pick: Cincinnati Bengals (2-14)

Super Bowl XLVI: Eagles 24, Steelers 17

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1991

2011-08-30T21:35:00.000-07:00

Next month, a documentary called "1991: The Year Punk Broke" will open in limited release in theaters across the country. This is not a new documentary by any means; in fact, it was first released in 1992 and is just now arriving on DVD. The movie itself is a crucial time capsule that inadvertantly caught a watershed moment in pop culture. What was originally supposed to spotlight Sonic Youth --an already well-established indie rock group-- performing live on tour gave equal attention to their various opening acts, including a young, fledging Seattle trio named Nirvana. Neither of these two bands nor did the director and producers of this movie know what was about to hit them.

People best remember 1991 as the year grunge (really a descendent of punk) hit the mainstream, but in reality the tidal change didn't really occur until the tail end of the year. Whatever musical trends were raging in 1989 and 1990 were still in vogue; there was a sense of complacency and sameness to Top 40 radio, at least until October or November of that year. One could even argue that nearly every #1 hit from that year was basically a variation on the same cheesy power ballad, regardless of the gender, race, or creed of the artist. Grunge was a game-changer, the new direction mainstream music needed at that time. Even though it's connection to straight up rock n' roll is fairly loose, it made a whole genre relevant again. Nirvana was the primary agitator of this new movement, and though they were the most infamous act in the bunch, bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, and Alice in Chains owe their careers to Kurt Cobain's unlikely watershed moment. After this point, alternative rock was rock.

Even though I turned seven years old in '91, one might wonder what I would have put on a mixtape that year. This should give you a hint:

BEST ALBUMS
1. Nevermind, Nirvana. Some artists capture the zeitgeist; others are ensnared against their will. Nirvana straddled that line, jumping to a major label for their second album while also honing and mastering the fuzzbox fire of their 1989 debut Bleach. Where their metal contemporaries howled with the depth of a birdbath --especially in an era where cheesy, halfhearted ballads guaranteed record sales-- Kurt Cobain's music and lyrics are raw, evocative, and above all honest. Twenty years ago Nevermind was life-changing, but now its life-affirming, and perhaps for the better.
2. Ten, Pearl Jam. Rising from the ashes of Mother Love Bone (see my 1990 list for more details) and almost named for a basketball player (see my Mookie blog from four months ago), Ten plays second fiddle to Kurt & Co. in many critics' minds but deserves acclaim as a masterpiece in its own right. If Nirvana cracked the windshield, than Eddie Vedder and the boys smashed the whole damn window. Where Nirvana looked inward, PJ saw the world as their oyster, fusing social commentary into Vedder's raspy growl and Mike McCready's Hendrix-style guitar riffs. Conceived in tragedy, Ten rises above and never looks back.
3. The Low End Theory, A Tribe Called Quest. Grunge gets all the press, but 1991 was also a watershed year for hip-hop. Taking a cue from De La Soul's jazzy beats and literate lyrics, ATCQ shies away from hardcore rap and the growing gangsta movement for something more cerebral and philosophical. Put together, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg are absolutely sublime; they don't battle each other with rhymes so much as they debate. The heart is in the groove, and on The Low End Theory, the heart could fill up a whole room.
4. Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
5. Badmotorfinger, Soundgarden

6. Blue Lines, Massive Attack
7. Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Red Hot Chili Peppers
8. Bandwagonesque, Teenage Fanclub
9. Achtung Baby, U2
10. Metallica (a/k/a The Black Album), Metallica. Leaping into the mainstream for their fifth album, The Black Album has a divisive place in the band's oeurve; either this is where you discovered Metallica or gave up on them. Following the production issues of ...And Justice For All, you can't blame the boys for trying a simpler approach, while at the same time giving death metal some mainstream credibility. It's hard to deny that this is a great disc, even if left turns like "The Unforgiven" and "Nothing Else Matters" foreshadow later indulgences.

Honorable Mentions: Use Your Illusion I, Guns n' Roses; My Brain Hurts, Screeching Weasel; Temple of the Dog, Temple of the Dog.

BEST SINGLES
"Siva," Smashing Pumpkins
"Shiny Happy People," R.E.M.
"Unbelievable," E.M.F.
"Right Here Right Now," Jesus Jones
"I Touch Myself," Divinyls
"Tom's Diner," DMA feat. Suzanne Vega
"Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)," C+C Music Factory
"Summertime," The Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff
"Bring The Noise," Anthrax feat. Chuck D
"Civil War," Guns n' Roses

BEST VIDEOS
1. "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Nirvana. The best song from the best album of the '90s also begat arguably the most compelling video of the grunge era. It's more than an anthem, "Teen Spirit" is a call to arms. Get lost, popular kids; the freaks have taken over.
2. "Losing My Religion," R.E.M. With a premise based on Gabriel Garcia Marquez' short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and a hook built upon a mandolin riff, this beautiful clip is another pleasant surprise in a year chock-full of unexpected delights. Somehow, this never screams "pretentious."
3. "Justify My Love," Madonna. Madge channels Fellini in this erotic, banned-from-MTV video. I think Wayne Campbell and Garth Alger put it best: "man, check out the package on THAT guy."
4. "Enter Sandman," Metallica. Finding that rare balance between critical acclaim and commercial success, this dreamlike escape perfectly matches Lars and James' nightmarish vision.
5. "Into The Great Wide Open," Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. One of first "all-star" videos with any semblance of plot, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, and a pre-"Friends" Matt LeBlanc overshadow a chameleon-like Petty in a story about the pitfalls of instant fame.

Honorable Mention: "Black or White," Michael Jackson; "Been Caught Stealing," Jane's Addiction.

Finally, this week I received a new laptop (a Toshiba Intel, to be exact) and to mark the occasion I finally made a great leap forward in the social networking world. You can now find me on Twitter at #heystu818 and on Skype at heystu17. (I assume most of you have already added me on Facebook or found this blog via Zuckerman's website, so that goes without saying.)

Your thoughts?

Right Hook, Everyone's Cross

2011-08-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to tell if the GOP presidential race has improved or worsened. On one hand, Tim Pawlenty’s campaign never gained momentum and his quitting the race only shifts more moderate conservatives towards Mitt Romney. On the other hand, the entry of Texas Governor Rick Perry gives the GOP another wacky wild card, another devisive, over the top personality for the media to leech on. I still have confidence that the United States is first and foremost a centrist nation, and that the median of the political spectrum is still right smack in the middle. If that’s the case, than whoever caters most to the moderates will win in 2012. In the unlikely event that Bachmann or Perry nab the GOP nomination, President Obama would win a second term in a landslide. Even if the president's approval rating is still hovering around 45% next November, low voter turnout could work in his favor. The candidate that does the best job of playing to the center usually succeeds, and it's hard to imagine the governor or the congresswoman toning down their message to impact moderates.

My previous statement may seem biased, but I have a hard time taking candidates seriously when they use their religious beliefs for political gain. I have just as much skepticism towards Perry's bible-toting and Bachmann's denial of gay rights as I do Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. The authors of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights sought to create a country where no faith trumped any other, and while it is noble to hold strong Christian values, their strictness applies only to a strident minority of Americans. This is not how the phrase "God above nation" is supposed to work. As it stands, I predict the GOP nomination will be a three-way race; Romney's mainstream conservatism will be pitted against Ron Paul's en vogue libertarianism and Bachmann's Tea Party traditionalism. For all his fervor, Perry entered the race too late to make a true difference; he's just shaking up the pot, telling angry conservatives what they want to hear, and feeding off the frontrunners. There's nothing to worry about... for now.

Other notes:

+ At long last, the 2011 Beloit College mindset list --which I blogged about two months ago-- has been released. When I wrote "my" list, I had totally forgotten that this year's incoming college freshmen have never ordered from the Sears catalog, and that Kim Jong Il has always been taunting the United States. Here's the link: http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2015/

+ Being an Illinoisan, I did not feel nor was I affected by the 5.8 earthquake in northeast Virginia, though I know a few people out here that did feel a faint tremor. Were any of you shaken by the quake?

+ Fielders Update: after a temporary panic, the troubled Lake County ballclub shut down for a week or so, than began a new, revised schedule that gives them more home games (thus, less money spent on airfare). Considering that the Fielders are the only team in the NABL that plays in this region of the continent --three teams play in Canada, one in Honolulu-- and their obvious money woes, the future of the organization beyond 2011 is still in doubt. More details as they arise.

Next week: the year in music, 1991.

Blowing the Candles, Passing the Torch

2011-08-16T21:34:00.000-07:00

This coming Thursday, I turn 27 years old. It’s not really an official milestone by any means, unless you consider that to be one’s unendorsed entry into your late 20s. (Longtime readers may have noticed that my attempts to be introspective can be quite stilted, so bear with me.)

As a classic rock nerd in high school, turning 27 means outliving a fair percentage of the artists I grew up listening to. In a weird sort of way, I looked up to Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, and Jimi Hendrix; in the next few months, I will surpass them one by one. Even artists I discovered in early adulthood have been affected by “The 27 Club”: blues legend Robert Johnson, Chris Bell of Big Star, Pigpen McKernen of The Grateful Dead, Mia Zapata of The Gits. The fact that Amy Winehouse died last month at the same age of the aforementioned rock legends temporarily put me on edge, if only because the troubled “Rehab” singer graduated from high school one year before I did. Until her sad yet foreseeable demise, my reference point was Kurt Cobain, 17 years my senior but a tormented guiding spirit to an entire generation.

If I sound ghoulish, it’s only because the 27 Club marks the last vestiges of pure, unbridled youth and our surrender to adulthood… or so it seems. We’re now four or five years removed from college; nobody is holding our hand anymore. We never got see Janis Joplin with cellulite or Kurt Cobain with male pattern baldness, and for karmic reasons maybe we should happy that we didn’t. They lived their short lives in excess and paid dearly for it. Of the names I mentioned above, only Pigpen died of natural causes. The responsibilities of adulthood are not pretty, but they’re inevitable.

With my 27^th birthday this week, I am marking a second moment of transition. On Sunday night I had my last class performance at iO Chicago, the climax of a 16-month journey into the basic concepts and assumed structures of long-form improv. My seven-week run with Ladies & Lumberjacks (our chosen team name, long story) is something that I am immensely proud of, and I will miss working with my friends and peers very dearly. We worked exclusively together for four months —the duration of the last level is twice as long as the others— and we formed a very tight bond, not unlike brothers and sisters. Between losing my job and dealing with a terminally ill parent last summer, improv became my reason to wake up in the morning. To say the experience was fun is an understatement; iO was a liberating thrill ride and the most consistent morale booster I’ve ever had.

With that said, I am segueing myself into the next chapter of my improv career at the Second City Conservatory. As I mentioned last week, I have orientation on the 28^th and my first class is Labor Day weekend. Like iO and the Second City basic improv program before that, I will share a class with 15-odd complete strangers with similar interests and we will grow to become a cohesive unit, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to take the ride. Fittingly enough the conservatory program runs for exactly one year, and if all goes right my graduation will coincide with my 28^th birthday next August. My job situation is still in limbo, but my confidence overall is in resurgence. This will be my year, and for the first time in a long while I’ll be pulling the reins.

High and Inside

2011-08-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

For all you baseball fans out there, let me tell you about a bizarre situation that’s playing out in the north Chicago suburbs. In 2010, an independent league baseball team called the Lake County Fielders began play in Zion, IL. The team owners brought pro baseball to the north ‘burbs under the condition that Zion and the county would fund a stadium. The Fielders’ selling point is actor Kevin Costner, who holds minority ownership but doesn’t contribute to day-to-day operations. Construction on Fielders Stadium was supposed to begin in Fall 2009, but it stalled shortly after because of funding issues. As it stands, the Fielders play in a makeshift facility across the street with temporary bleachers and party decks.

After breaking even financially in its inaugural season, the Fielders’ second year of existence has been a comedy of errors. Team paychecks started bouncing and corporate credit cards were being rejected. The coaching staff had to pay for hotel accommodations and players’ meals on road trips out of their own pockets. In late June a revolt began; the Fielders’ radio play-by-play man quit on-air in mid-ballgame, citing money owed. Eventually the manager resigned, and 11 of the 23 players on the roster gave up and quit too. Nine of the 12 remaining players demanded trades and were shipped off for cash and cheap replacements. Chris Thompson, a failed top draft pick with the Diamondbacks and the Fielders’ closer, has stepped in as interim pitching coach.

If you think that’s bad, the Fielders’ saga gets even more bizarre. Last Friday, a home game against the divisional rival Calgary Vipers was suspended in the middle of the second inning because the balls used in play weren’t approved by the league. As it turned out, the balls were bought on clearance at Wilson Sporting Goods by the clubhouse manager mere hours before game time. In attempting to defend his organization, principal owner Richard Ehrenreich steered away from apologizing or justifying his actions by ranting about American patriotism in the wake of the helicopter crash in Afghanistan that killed 30 of our troops. Though his love of country is noble, it had nothing to do with the matter at hand.

As I write this, it has been speculated that the Fielders will suspend the remainder of their 2011 schedule, than cease operations and liquidate whatever assets they still have. The economic downturn has not been kind to professional sports, especially the lowest ranks of pro baseball, but the Fielders’ situation takes it to a new, absurd extreme. Ehrenreich has blamed Zion for the team’s myriad struggles, but the mayor and village council are unilaterally fed up; the owners owe $185,000 in back rent and won’t pay. In reality, their whole existence has been a miscarriage. Everything about the Fielders feels slapped together, right down to their web site. I don’t live in the north suburbs —Downers Grove is about 45 minutes west of the city— but I am compelled to drive up to Lake County to see a ballclub that gives fledging a capital F. I don’t want to watch the Fielders out of pity, but to observe a group of athletes not only playing for a dying dream, but for their own lives and well-being.

Other notes:

+ Everyone should’ve seen the ramifications of last week’s “compromise” from a mile away. Action had to be taken, but the consequences are decidedly worse. A lowered credit rating, mayhem on the stock market, and empty “woulda coulda shoulda” posturing have the greatest short-term effects of the passed legislation. In short, temporarily raising the debt ceiling merely exposed our partisan, ineffectual government to our most crucial global partners and investors. Our national exasperation is now the world’s problem, too. I will not pretend to be a financial expert, but you’d be surprised by the number of Americans that have claimed to be economic connoisseurs in the past couple of weeks (especially in Congress, hint hint). At any rate, every elected official in the last five years that has claimed to “clean up Washington,” regardless of where they lay on the political spectrum has been ousted as a phony. My doubts about the Tea Party Republicans that so many saw as saviors last year have been all but confirmed. I’m beyond speechless.

+ Improv Update: for those of you that aren’t on Facebook or haven’t added me yet, I had reason to celebrate last Wednesday. After seven tries, I was finally accepted into the Second City Conservatory. For the uninitiated, the conservatory is the unofficial grad school of improv; you have a short audition where you perform a series of short scenes, and usually the top 30% get in. Suffice to say, after six near-misses it feels good to no longer be part of the “other” 70%. My first session is September 4^th and I’m chomping at the bit.

Next week: thoughts on my 27^th birthday.

Dancing on the Ceiling

2011-08-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

I’m not one for jingoistic bluster, but… America, we dodged a bullet.

Not many people will be satisfied in the long run with Sunday’s compromise. The right end of the political spectrum is likely underwhelmed by the $2.4 trillion cut, the left side sitting shiva for such a major loss. The finer details of the cut are still dripping out, but for spectators like me it’ll be like how cows become beef: it delicious until you find out how it’s made. The president was faced with the highly unsavory option of having to raise taxes —confirming the worst fears of his conservative critics— but when that bullet point was grudgingly wiped off the table as reluctantly as it was initially suggested, the wheels were turning again. To be fair, this now-hypothetical taxation would’ve risen back to Clinton-era levels, a modest spike for some but a massive point of resistance for Tea Party Republicans.

I don’t want to kick Speaker John Boehner while he’s down, but in hindsight his proposal to raise the debt ceiling might’ve been too partisan. Boehner’s inability to muster enough GOP votes in Congress late last week not only inadvertently broke the budget gridlock, but gave President Obama the slightest morsel of a victory in a moment when he badly needed it. After that, the ball was in the president’s court; the new GOP strategy would’ve been too far-right to gain traction, and house Democrats had to woo that rarest and most endangered of species, moderate Republicans. Alas, I can’t call Obama the true winner, either; the plan that coasted through the House and Senate and signed by the president earlier today had to be approved no matter the flaws, or otherwise we’d suffer the consequences. This was a small triumph for the middle of the road; only the far right and extreme left opted not to follow the leader.

Alas, one crucial compromise will not inspire a renewal of faith in our government . Congress had to break up the loggerheads somehow or face dire consequences. One would argue that the budget crisis of 1979 provided some inspiration, but the true comparison point is Greece. The Mediterranean nation and cradle of Democracy hasn’t been a European power for centuries, and their defaulting was part of a sad slippery slope. As Faheed Zaharia pointed out in Time magazine back in July, the US has too many economic advantages —including controlling our own currency and a comparatively healthy trade system— to fail the same way Greece did. The Greek government deserved to fail, but the US government and its international investors alike had too much on the line. The domino effect would’ve been mythological, so to speak.

To reiterate my point: today America dodged a bullet.

Other notes:

+ Fantasy Update: both teams are still hovering around .500. Even though I’ve been bitten by the injury bug on repeat occasions —Brian McCann was my latest victim— so has everyone else, so I can’t really use that as an excuse.

+ Random question of the day: do the people that carry “Impeach Obama” signs on the edge of the highway realize that would make Joe Biden commander-in-chief? You’d think they would plan this type of thing out…

+ Finally, in early July a man in North Carolina recovered the class ring he lost 51 years ago when the girlfriend he gave it to accidentally flushed it down the toilet. No word yet on whether she said “yes” for prom.

Stu's List of Shame: Music Edition

2011-07-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

(Ed. note: sorry for my latest delay— I’ve been having issues with my laptop these last few weeks, and I’m on the brink of replacing the damn thing. Please excuse this and any future protractions.)

For nearly three years now, I've dedicated the last blog of the month to a particular year in music. As you've probably assumed by now, what had started off as a lark has turned into a time-consuming, long-term project. Though I have not officially said anything until this point, about two years ago I determined that I would cover every year of music from 1963 onwards, not in chronological order by any means but by jumping between years and eras in any given month. Since Autumn 2008, I have only taken one month off, and that was to write about Christmas music last November. Daunting as it might've been, I've had a lot of fun writing these monthly music blogs, and I will feel a weird emptiness when I wrap up the project sometime in late 2012. What I will do with these critical mini-analyses remains to be seen.

Now that I've explained my true motive, I'm taking one more breather before I gradually finish this project. When writing my "guilty pleasures" blog two weeks ago, it dawned on me that are a number of genuinely mediocre songs over the past five decades or so that I simply can't resist. If they play on the radio, I'll crank them up and sing along. Admitting to liking the songs below required a massive blow to my ego.

I have whittled down my musical guilty pleasures to nine songs:

"Surfin' Bird," The Trashmen. Like its contemporary "Louie Louie," this early-60s surf-rock hit is just as famous for its frenetic hook as its indecipherable, vaguely perverse lyrics. A quintet from the surf-friendly state of Minnesota, they cracked the Billboard Top Five in 1963 with “Surfin’ Bird,” also known in some circles “Bob the Bird.” It’s unfair to call them a one-hit wonder —they had several charting singles afterward, just nothing matching that song’s success— though their other work just hasn’t stood the test of time. To my generation, it’s hard to hear this song and not picture Peter Griffin dancing frenetically.

“You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away,” The Silkie. Another one-hit wonder in the US, this British quartet was arguably Devon’s answer to Peter, Paul, & Mary. It’s hard to make Beatles cover a your own, but The Silkie did it in the best AND worst way possible. Simply put, the falsetto on the second verse is supposed to be lilting and pleasant, it comes off as mildly disturbing. Strangely enough, three-quarters of the Fab Four helped out in the recording of this bizarre single: John produced, Paul played guitar, and George sat in on tambourine. Considering that both acts were managed by Brian Epstein, maybe they were obligated to chip in.

"The Night Chicago Died," Paper Lace. When I wrote my 1974 blog a while back, I singled out this one-hit wonder as a "so bad, it's good" selection. What I said nearly two years ago still applies.

“Fool for the City,” Foghat. I am by no means a Foghat fan, but for some inexplicable reason I love this song. I think it’s that opening guitar riff…

"Ca Plane Pour Moi," Plastic Bertrand. Just as much an influential early new-wave single as it was a novelty hit in the UK, “Ca Plane Pour Moi” (“The Life For Me”) is probably the only song sung in French to generate any attention stateside that wasn’t belted out by a group of nuns. When you translate the lyrics it makes absolutely no sense, but Bertrand’s voice and bravado makes that Gaulic twaddle oddly compelling.

"Thunder Island," Jay Ferguson. Nowadays he’s better known for composing the theme song to the American version of “The Office”; however, in the late ‘60s and throughout the ‘70s Ferguson was a respectable singer-songwriter. Better known for his work in the bands Spirit and Jo Jo Gunne than as a solo artist, Ferguson had a fluke top ten hit in 1978 with “Island.” It’s not hard to learn or memorize the lyrics, as 80% of the song is Ferguson and three female backup singers going “do do do do, do do do, do do do, do do do do dooooo…” Like the other selections here, it’s just too catchy to ignore.

"Your Love," The Outfield. The band itself is a conundrum: they're British and admittedly know little about baseball, yet their name is distinctly American. Alas, they were a trio so they went with a name that symbolized that number, and they probably found "outfield" in a dictionary. (In retrospect, “Triple Play” and/or “Triple Crown” might’ve also worked.) That would be like an American band calling itself “Yellowcard.” The song itself is pure ‘80s cheese, best devoured on a power-pop wheat cracker.

"Show Stopper," Danity Kane. I don't particularly care for Sean "Diddy" Combs. To me Puffy is a third-tier rapper, an unbelievely lazy and self-involved deliettante who rose to fame and forture riding the coattails of others. At his creative peak in the mid-90s, the former Puff Daddy was serviceable at best. To his credit, Combs was funny in the movie "Get Him To The Greek," a bravura performance if playing a minor variation of yourself is considered acting. Of all his vanity projects and money-making opportunities, nothing reaked of more ego than his hijacking of "Making The Band" in the mid-2000s. Gobbling up a mostly forgotten reality show that aired on ABC for two years, MTB went from middling docu-series about the formation of a boy band to a middling docu-series about the formation of a singing group starring Diddy.

The fourth series of the MTB franchise found Diddy looking to create an all-girl singing group that he could domineer and micromanage. After an exhausting “talent” search, a group of 12 finalists were whittled down to the quintet Danity Kane. As stunningly beautiful as they were devoid of any personality, DK released two albums before disintegrating in 2009. In their short lifespan they had three singles in the Top 40, including “Show Stopper,” a overproduced Frankenstein’s monster of an R&B song. In the first ten seconds of the song they lure you into the club, but once you enter you can never leave…

"Temperature," Sean Paul. I don’t really have a dance jam so to speak, but this song comes fairly close. The fifth single from Paul’s third album The Trinity was omnipresent on the Illinois State campus —or at Z106, anyway— during my final semester in Fall 2007. Never mind that the album was released in 2005 and the single in early 2006, it was just oddly inescapable during that particular four-month span. My theory is that the earworm essence of “Temperature” was a slow burn in this region of the country, that it found its audience in a slow series of waves. Either that, or I went to too many keggers.

So ladies and germs, this is my mix CD of the damned. Judge me if you want, but I will only come out of this bolder and stronger. Next month I’ll be covering the year in music that was 1991, a particular 12-month span I’ve looking forward to for quite a while. Near as I can tell, I shouldn’t be forced to defend any of those picks.

Radio Dazed

2011-07-19T21:11:00.000-07:00

Since I last unloaded my thoughts on current events, an already tense summer has boiled over into a tumbleweed of controversies. The acquital of Casey Anthony and the reduced charges on Dominique Strauss-Kahn have made observers ponder how the media determines and goads one's guilt before the accused faces a jury. In turn, the phone-tapping scandal that has rocked the Scotland Yard, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and nearly every level of the British government has stirred a debate about the right to privacy and the limits of gathering information. ("Vast left-wing conspiracy" my fanny.) However, there's a third prong to this communication pitchfork that pricks too close to my comfort.

On Thursday July 14th, the on-air personalities of WKQX 101.1 FM in Chicago signed off for the last time. WKQX, known more commonly as Q101, and its sister station WLUP 97.9 FM "The Loop" were sold by its parent company to Randy Michaels' upstart Merlin Media in early June. Michaels, a man celebrated by the Chicago media for his strides in female enpowerment, bought the two struggling stations with the intent to convert at least one signal into a news/talk format. Even though The Loop --a station whose once-stalwart '70s/'80s hard rock format has seen better days-- seemed far more vulnerable, Michaels' henchman dropped the ax on Q101.

The last alt-rock station in the market, Q101 was a brand that had annihilated every direct competitor it had faced in its 19-year existence. Alas, since the economic downturn three years ago ad revenue had plummeted and never quite recovered. My friends and peers here in Chicago grew up with Q101, the "cool" station that mixed '90s grunge with today's alternative rock; the whole format was a thumb at the nose at other CHR stations that played increasingly samey hip-hop and autotuned, overproduced pop songs. In the last five years of Q101's run, their on-air staff had neither overpaid local luminaries nor canned voiceovers from LA, but a group of dilligent, serviceable, locally bred DJs that knew how to connect with an audience. They were one of us.

Well before Randy Michaels (real name: Ben Homel) was creating overtime opportunities for his female underlings, he was a highly controversial and much-derided figure in Chicago radio. His first stint here in the early '90s is the stuff of legend. When billionaire Sam Zell saved the Tribune Company from bankrupcy in 2007, he appointed his golf buddy Michaels to run broadcast operations, which included flagship WGN 720 AM. In promising a "fun, nonlinear creative environment," Michaels proceeded to run a station of immense history, pride, and tradition into the ground. Like a South American revolutionary Michaels went from savior to totalitarian overnight, firing top personnel and longtime on-air talent at WGN with cronies, hacks, and brown-nosers. When he was finally axed late last year, it seemed like Michaels' days in the Windy City were at long last over. Now he's back for a third spin.

Upon making the switch official, the competition jumped into action. WBBM 780 AM, the longtime alpha dog of Chicago news/talk, announced that their struggling sister station, WCFS 105.9 "Fresh FM," would drop its lite-rock format to become a Newsradio 780 similcast effective August 1st. It was a chess-like strategic move first and a cutting of losses second. It also meant that two music-format FM stations were kaput and over a hundred people were out of jobs. Sadly, this trend is not limited to Chicago; in the advent of mp3 players and iPods, the younger demographic has grown bored with listening to music that they can't personalize; no matter how broad a programming director can cast that big net, the kids are tuning out. As a result, music radio formats are dying and talk formats --politically biased manna for middle-aged reactionaries-- are rising. The impact in which a radio determines a hit song is at an all-time low. At this rate, I almost feel like I'll be forced into buying an iPod just so I don't have to choose between Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, or Rachel Maddow during drive time.

Other notes:

+ The ongoing budget wars have been both compelling and difficult to watch at the same time. What happens now is more than just capping the national debt, it's a make-or-break moment not only for President Obama but the credibility of the "Tea Party" congress. Public opinion has a tendency to shift with mercurial abandon --hey, remember when Obama kinda-sorta killed bin Laden?-- and the budget breakdown could be either a watershed moment or the end of at least one young, promising political career. The partisan war on the economy will be the topic that tilts the 2012 elections, and the budget battle is Fort Sumter. Sadly, no compromise will satisfy everyone and more people will come out losing no matter what happens between now and next week.

+ This past weekend marked my completion of the iO writing program. I held a reading of the final draft of my sitcom pilot "Pushing Air" Sunday afternoon at the theater, and I thought it went pretty well. (Why yes, it is a satire about the radio industry-- how'd you guess?) On the improv side of things, my team Ladies & Lumberjacks has four shows down and three to go, and personally I think we've hit our stride. We have collectively grown so much over the past 15 months. Maybe I'm speaking too soon, but when all is said and done I will genuinely miss working with these people.

Next week: when bad songs happen to good people (i.e. yours truly).

Stu's List of Shame

2011-07-12T21:05:00.000-07:00

I like the idea of guilty pleasures. Not of a carnal kind, but the temptations of pop culture's bottom rungs: the unhip, the widely derided, the acquired tastes of the world. Everybody has something stashed in their mental closets that they won't share with anyone else, and I'm no exception. In the opinions that I've made in six-plus years of writing this blog, there may have been times where I might have come off as elitist or picky or snobby, but rest assured I don't ignore trash culture altogether.

What that said, here are five things I'm ashamed to admit I like:

The Police Academy movies. As odd as it sounds, in the mid-1980s Steve Guttenberg was deemed a bankable movie star, and ex-Colts defensive end Bubba Smith was considered an "actor." I caught onto the series fairly late in the game, when I rented the first movie from Blockbuster on a lark and discovered what I thought was a comedy goldmine. (To be fair, I was also seven years old.) Are these movies chock full of corny dialogue, dumb slapstick, and moments that most credited thespians would consider career lows? Yes. It is also a randomly sentimental memory of my childhood? Yes. Will I stop in my tracks if one of the sequels airs on basic cable? Sure, for a few minutes.

Funky Winkerbean. In a parallel world where Julius Dithers has been harassing Dagwood Bumstead for eight decades and the Apartment 3G girls shamelessly attempt to marry for money, Funky trumps both of those irrelevant relics as the most depressing comic strip currently in syndication. Originally a flyweight but amiable cartoon about high school life, the primary characters earned their diplomas in the late '80s. Since then, the gang has largely aged in real time, and the lighthearted laughs gave away to maudlin, will-it-ever-end storylines about suicide, alcoholism, post-traumatic stress disorder and most infamously, cancer. Funky was dropped by my local paper nearly 15 years ago, but I still read it online almost strictly out of habit. The only strip that comes close in matching Winkerbean's cold grasp on mortality is Crankshaft, an equally bipolar, dry as a soupbone, lighthearted/sobering look at the elderly's role in society... that was spun off from Batiuk's strip in 1986.

Billy Joel. The hipsters of my generation have given the musical dreck of years past a renewed relevance. After a 20-year lull Barry Manilow is packing houses coast-to-coast again, The Monkees are on yet another (likely profitable) reunion tour, and Parrothead Nation has never quite turned away from Jimmy Buffett. So where does the Piano Man play in all this? A respectable singer-songwriter in the '70s, Joel's musical output has been lambasted by critics and historical revisionists alike. Too cliche, too trend-hopping, too saccharine, the haters cry. Granted, a fair percentage of Joel's work is pure cheese, but his best songs --"She's Got a Way," "Goodnight Saigon," the entire Turnstiles and Stranger albums-- do have a certain emotional resonance.

The Drew Carey Show. I'm not sure if this counts as a guilty pleasure or not, though there is much for people to dislike. Once touted by TV Guide as "'Friends,' but with ugly people," the Cleveland-based sitcom's first five years were actually pretty decent. However, when the show traded script quality and character development for wacky stunts and unnecessary surrealism, fans tuned out in droves. ABC renewed the show through its ninth season, a long-term deal it quickly regretted, and the sorry corpse of a once-serviceable comedy was burned off as time filler during the summer. When you see a TDCS repeat nowadays, there's a 44% chance that episode will be awful. As a fan, this is a great example of when good shows should quit when they're ahead.

White Castle. It occured to me last weekend that since I started going to my trainer, I haven't devoured in Slyder in about 2 1/2 months. I've had fast food in that time, but in small morsels: a snack wrap at McDonald's here, a Burger King Tendercrisp there, but I'm practically on a first-name basis with Subway and Jamba Juice nowadays. I miss "The Crave" dearly, but what hasn't killed me has only made me stronger. WC might be the only restaurant on the planet that can make grade-B burger meat seem appetizing, and their fries are a last vestige for trans fats. Maybe it's the deceptively small portions, who knows? Personally, I have a weak spot for their chicken rings, which are just as questionable in nutritional value yet I could probably polish off a dozen of 'um in less than five minutes.

So those are my guilty pleasures. On a semi-related note, it appears that six-plus years of hard work has paid off. The Weekly Updates has finally made TV.com's list of blogs they love. Never mind that forum traffic is at a record low tide, this belated honor totally made my day. :)

The Education Enigma

2011-07-05T21:56:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I was skimming the headlines on Fark and encountered a peculiar story about college enrollment. I read it, found it bemusing, and moved on. Strangely, in the time since I've felt more compelled to do some further research on the topic and I arrived at some discomforting conclusions.

Many of you have probably noticed the uptick in undergraduates in the past few decades. Nowadays, you can't even find a decent job without a bachelor's degree; unless you've picked up a trade, even an associates doesn't cut it anymore. This is mostly attributed to a study suggesting that public universities are more accommodating than ever. As the United States has distanced itself from being an agricultural society with a rural-based economy to something more urban and sophisticated, so have skills and career choices. The problem is, college is so readily accessible that the meaning of a higher education has been undermined, almost trivialized.

Why has the credibility of a bachelor's degree has deteriorated in the last decade or so? Simple: just about anybody can get one. According to a June 2011 article in The New Yorker, public colleges enrolled fifteen million students in the past school year, private colleges just under six million. In 1950, there were 1.14 million undergrads in the US combined. Maybe I'm being elitist, but I'd like to think that a college education should be a consideration for the best and brightest high school students, not an obligation for the slow, the average, or the apathetic. Widening the pool doesn't catch the best fish. To imply that college is for everyone, regardless of whether it helps you land a better career, is a lie.

Let me use a personal example. When I was approaching high school graduation eight-plus years ago, I had my heart set on North Central College, a private university in Naperville, IL. My parents didn't have money to put me straight into a four-year school, so I went to community college first and my mass comm/broadcasting degree was put on hold. During my time at College of DuPage, I realized that Illinois State University offered the exact same program I was seeking but for less tuition than NCC. I applied at ISU in the summer of '05, and I was thrilled to be accepted by my "new" first choice of school. Looking back, that feeling may not have been as special as I once thought. A school not unlike Illinois State can have an acceptance rate hovering around 95%, which is absurd but in this day and age seems to be the status quo.

Back to the controversial article, which first found via SunTimes.com and was copied and quoted elsewhere. The article suggested that to boost admission, state schools are accepting students that may not have the skill set to handle higher learning. The mindset seems to be, who cares about your standardized math and reading results, we need headcount; a larger student body means more alumni donations. To some degree, four-year universities are accepting special-needs students when they don't have the time, energy, or resources to properly educate them. The handful of remedial programs set up for students on the left end of the bell curve have proven inadequate and useless. Basically, it waters down the process for everyone.

Luckily, this is not the case for all four-year universities. Ivy League schools like Yale and Harvard are just as exclusive as they've ever been, though they too have evolved. Between the two schools their admission rate is below 10%, and most of the incoming freshmen are from overseas. Schools of similar prestige like Northwestern or University of Chicago accept 25% or so and also mostly attract international hopefuls. In an era of widespread standardized testing, being the offspring of an alum or donor does not guarantee admission, which is fair. On the flip side, that child of pedigree will attend a second-choice school, where they will likely advance their education with students that don't merit being there. Yes, the margin of error is that high.

I cherish my bachelor's degree from Illinois State University more than anything, though it bothers me how it carries far less weight in the eyes of potential employers than a school like Northwestern or U of C. Earning a masters or a doctorate would work wonders if the average post-grad could actually afford a fifth or sixth year of school, and most of the scholarships offered are mere drops in the bucket. Because of this flawed, watered-down system a bachelor's is the new high school diploma and a masters is the new bachelor's. Economy notwithstanding, a large percentage of my contemporaries with similar educational backgrounds are making just over minimum wage, if employed at all. You don't need a diploma to see the pretzel logic behind collegiate over-accommodation.

Other notes:

Fitness Update: Since May 1st I've lost 11 pounds. I bottomed at a loss of 12 pounds, but if I stay below 155 I'm content. I'm starting yet another new temp job on Thursday, so my twice-weekly training schedule is up in the air for the time being.

Fantasy Update: Both teams are still hovering around .500; one is three over, the other is five under. Why it took me this long to realize Ryan Zimmerman has been the albatross around my neck, I'll never know.

Improv Update: Two shows down, five to go. My class/team "Ladies & Lumberjacks" is midway through their graduate performance run at iO, and I couldn't be prouder enough of how we've done. It has been a long, wonderful journey and I look forward to working with everyone for the next few weeks and again in the near future.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 2006

2011-06-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

Good evening everyone, and welcome to my first complete do-over of a "Wonderful Year" blog.

From a music standpoint, 2006 seems like an eternity; a different world, even. Some shameless opportunist gave Kevin Federline and Paris Hilton record deals, emo-pop was still in vogue, and people were anticipating rapper Lil' Jon's first solo album (which was released to minimal fanfare four years later). Justin Bieber was in sixth grade, Lady Gaga was still a struggling cabaret pianist in New York City, and Adele --the unlikeliest woman to ever have a #1 hit for five straight weeks in the US-- was just an average British high school student with a good singing voice and zero stage presence. Looking back, 2006 was also a challenging year to be a music critic. The splintering of subgenres in the early 2000s resulted in a year (not unlike 2005) where there was no consensus "best album." Debates were raging and endless. With that said, I have posted the list below fully confident in knowing it looks like no one else's top twenty.

So why the mulligan? When I first posted my list 4 1/2 years ago, I whipped it out almost as an afterthought; several notable albums were excluded because I hadn't listened to them. Of course, there's also the sentimental factor: the rock albums on this list more or less comprise the unofficial soundtrack to my junior year at Illinois State University. I'll listen to any given disc and find myself waxing nostalgic about college. Most of the hip-hop and R&B selections, however hit my radar later on. Plus, I thought it'd be fun to see what's held up since '06; oddly enough, most of the albums that made my list the first time around made the new cut (sorry, Hotel Lights) though their positions vary.

BEST ALBUMS
(note: parentheses note previous ranking)

1. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, Arctic Monkeys. After the Britpop movement of Oasis, Blur, and Pulp collapsed upon its own weight in the early 2000s, the British rock scene didn't make much of an American dent for awhile. Hey hey, along came the Monkeys, four Yorkshire lads who were in their early teens when Damon Albarn and the Gallagher brothers fought for world control. One of the first rising bands to take advantage of internet word-of-mouth, the Monkeys played raucous dance-punk and made the entire English-speaking world eat out of their hand. More than five years later, Whatever is a musical statement they have yet to compliment, much less replicate.
2. Black Holes and Revelations, Muse. After flirting with epic bombast on 2003's Absolution, Muse goes all in on the theatrics with Revelations. Sounding and acting like the missing link between Freddie Mercury and Thom Yorke, frontman Matthew Bellamy is the little fella with the big voice, the British rock deity for a generation that badly needs one. For those of you listening to this CD for the first time, I'd go with the expensive headphones.
3. Yellow House, Grizzly Bear. The honor of most improved band of '06 goes to this New York City art-rock quartet. Humongous and intimate at the same time, Yellow House has better songs, stronger production values, and more heart than GB's somewhat forgettable debut two years earlier. The guitars have a
chugging cool that will remind one of The Velvet Underground, but the meat is in the harmonizing, which evokes The Beach Boys by way of The Mamas & The Papas.
4. St. Elsewhere, Gnarls Barkley (2)
5. Return to Cookie Mountain, TV on the Radio (3)

6. Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Neko Case (4)
7. Jay Dee Donuts, J Dilla
8. Modern Times, Bob Dylan (6)
9. Futuresex Lovesounds, Justin Timberlake
10. The Information, Beck (1). I'm not embarassed to admit I like this album, but looking back this was not a worthy numero uno. As I stated back in '06, the best tracks are upfront; the more experimental second half of the disc is alternately trippy, meandering, and maybe a tad pretentious. Regardless, I can't give an album that contains "Cellphone's Dead," "Nausea," and "Think I'm In Love" any bad press; if this were an EP, though The Information would be a masterpiece.

11. Sam's Town, The Killers
12. The Black Parade, My Chemical Romance
13. Robbers & Cowards, Cold War Kids (10)
14. First Impressions of Earth, The Strokes
15. Carnavas, Silversun Pickups. This intriguing debut long-player shares a few things in common with Grizzly Bear: striking harmonies, lush dream-pop cravings, fuzzy guitars. The greatest difference is SP's debt to Smashing Pumpkins and their varying allusions to the '90s grunge sound; the songs are less twee and more brooding. Regardless, there's something new to discover with each listen.

16. Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor
17. Springtime Can Kill You, Jolie Holland (11)
18. Rabbit Fur Coat, Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins
19. Show Your Bones, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
20. Broken Boy Soldiers, The Raconteurs. Long before Jack White had a gazillion side projects, in 2006 he had only one distraction from the White Stripes, this short-lived collaboration with fellow Detroit native Brendan Benson. "Steady As She Goes" is the no-brainer hit single, a catchy lark of a tune that was intended to be a one-off effort and proved to be so much more. The '70s rock stylings of cuts like "Hands," "Intimate Secretary," and "Yellow Sun" otherwise carry a fun though imperfect offering.

BEST SINGLES

"Crooked Teeth," Death Cab For Cutie
"Dani California," Red Hot Chili Peppers
"How We Operate," Gomez
"World Wide Suicide," Pearl Jam
"Tear You Apart," She Wants Revenge
"Breathe Me," Sia
"Satellite," Guster
"Ain't No Other Man," Christina Aguilera
"Ain't Nothin' Wrong With That," Robert Randolph & The Family Band
"Punkrocker," Teddy Bears feat. Iggy Pop

BEST VIDEOS
(note: due to site HTML limits, I could not post links to all the clips. They are, however all readily available on YouTube.)

1. "Knights of Cydonia," Muse. A solid contender for video of the decade, "Cydonia" is several masculine fantasies thrown in a six-minute salad bowl: a kung fu shoot-um-up spaghetti western... in space?
2. "Hung Me Out to Dry," Cold War Kids. The oeurve of early indie-flick director John Cassavetes is homaged in this gritty, eye-catching B&W beauty.
3. "Nausea" (Version 1), Beck. Everything is better with marionettes... right?
4. "Here It Goes Again," OK Go. The first of several memorable "concept" videos by the Chicago-based quarter, it's a telltale sign that '06 was a strong year for clips if something this wonderful could only muster fourth place.
5. "Knife," Grizzly Bear. Speaking of outer space...
6. "Fidelity," Regina Spektor. A certain petite Russian-Jewish pianist/songwriter first gained notoriety with this MTV2 and MTV-U favorite, which proves that a little color makes a big difference.
7. "Rise Up With Fists," Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins. A tongue-in-cheek recreation of "Hee Haw," complete with a Junior Samples lookalike and a wacky cameo from Sarah Silverman.
8. "Read My Mind," The Killers. The stars of the popular Japanese kids' show "Hirake! Ponkikki" interact with Brandon Flowers et al. on a catawampus, whirlwind trip to Tokyo.
9. "Crazy," Gnarls Barkley. How no one thought of doing a trippy, Rorschach ink blot-inspired video until the mid-2000s is beyond me.
10. "Move Along," The All-American Rejects. The song is pop piffle, the lyrics border on cliché, but this clip is cleverly edited.

Before I ask for your thoughts, I'd like to touch upon some of the breaking news that has occured in the past 36 hours. As you might expect, I am relieved to know that my corrupt laughingstock of a former governor is facing a minimum of ten years' jail time. The verdict was not only long-anticipated by my fellow Illinoisans, but also a highly damnening (potential) death knell for the Land of Lincoln's incubator of greasy palms and coffer-filling. I feel sorry for his wife and two young daughters, but I have absolutely no pity upon Rod Blagojevich. Without question, justice has been served.

Mama Said There'd Be Weeks Like This...

2011-06-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

As you've already noticed, my blog entry is quite late this week. In fact, this is the latest I've ever posted my weekly entry. In my defense, it has been a week of overscheduling and unexpected obstacles. On top of temping 40 hours a week, I've been taking the long train ride to Chicago several times to rehearse with my improv classmates. I gave myself just enough time to write something... and than a Category 1 tornado hit Downers Grove on Tuesday night and my neighborhood was without power for over 24 hours. I even had a specific topic in mind, one that required a bit of research, but it can wait a few weeks. I was very tempted to the call this week a wash and sit it out --the first time I would've done so in 5 1/2 years-- but at heart I didn't want to let you all down. I had to type out something.

Between improv and data entry, I've also been working out. In late April I bought a gym membership, and once or twice a week I meet with a trainer. I'd been looking to lose some weight, and though I've been careful about meal portions and my sugar intake, progress had stalled. You see, I was pretty skinny in high school --about 5'8" and 130 lbs.-- but I had a high metabolism and paid minimal attention to dietary needs. Nearly five years later, I was a half-inch taller and 45 pounds heavier. That's not obese by any means, but I was increasingly lethargic and feeling more self-conscious. Rather than buy a new wardrobe to accommodate my weight gain, I made a series of changes to my diet: no large extra value meals (smalls and mediums were my breaking point), more water, and less snacking. By late 2008 I was down to 165 pounds, and that's where I hovered around until two months ago. Now I'm just over 155, which was my approximate weight in mid-2005. Once I clear that hurdle, the question now is how I'll keep that weight off in the long run.

One last thing: upon hearing of the passing of Clarence Clemons, I took a breather from my "Wonderful Year" research and listened to Greetings From Asbury Park, The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, and Born To Run back-to-back-to-back. I arrived at two conclusions that had been lodged somewhere in my subconscious for years. First of all, Clarence was the heart of the E Street Band; it makes perfect sense that he was the first official member of Bruce's backing band (nearly 43 years!) and The Boss' unofficial lieutanant. Secondly, he was one helluva saxophonist. I sincerely regret that I never got to see the E Street Band play live when I had the opportunity, if only to see and hear Clemons' immaculate solo on "Jungleland." You will be dearly missed, Big Man.

Next week: the year in music, 2006.

Though a Freshman's Eyes

2011-06-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

Unless there's been a major breakthrough in the Governator and "Weinergate" scandals that I don't know about, this has been a slow week in the news. Given that, I'd like to do something different this week. Every year, Beloit College in Wisconsin releases what they call "The Mindset List." It's intent is not to make Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, or children of the '90s (*cough*) feel old, but to demonstrate the world view of a just-graduated high school senior. Maybe it's schadenfreude, but the Mindset List is also endlessly fascinating to read (Google it right now if you have some time to kill). The list for the fresh-faced Class of 2015 --i.e. children born in late 1992 and early 1993-- won't be released for a few more weeks, but out of curiousity I'd like to speculate as to what might make the cut.

With that said, if you are an incoming college freshman...

...there have always been cell phones, e-mail and the internet.

...Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. have always agreed to trade freely.

...you have never had to worry about getting nuked by the Russians.

...there has never been a Czechoslovakia or a Yugoslavia.

...there has never been a Branch Davidian Compound.

...the Pittsburgh Pirates have always sucked.

...a Canadian hockey team has never won the Stanley Cup, and a Canadian baseball team has never won the World Series. (In turn, there have always been MLB and NHL teams in the state of Florida.)

...you never saw Joe Montana play for the San Francisco 49ers or Mike Ditka coach for the Chicago Bears.

...Audrey Hepburn, Frank Zappa, Julio Gallo, and the guy who played Herman Munster have always been dead.

...there has never been a living member of the Three Stooges.

...Tom Hanks has always had the phrase "Academy Award Winner" precede his name in movie trailers.

...nobody in Palatine, IL ever dines at Brown's Chicken.

...however, there has always been a McDonald's, a Subway, and/or a Starbucks within walking distance from your house.

...you have never heard --or heard of-- the song "Cop Killer."

...Jay Leno has always been on NBC and David Letterman has always been on CBS.

..."Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" and its various incarnations have always been on the air.

...People magazine and The New Yorker has always been published in color.

...the United States Post Office has always been losing money.

...you have only known one President Bush.

Scary stuff, eh? Kinda makes you think. Don't worry though; next week I'll try to post something a little less cerebral.

Weiner's Weiner, Chicken Dinner

2011-06-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

If I've been a bit elusive lately, it's only because I'm a busy guy. The month of May marked an uptick in substitute teaching assignments, and last week I began a temp job doing data entry over in Naperville, IL, two towns west of Downers. It's 40 hours a week on top of spending all weekend in the city for improv, so I haven't had much time to write. Where I spent much of the last month sharing personal anecdotes for an imaginary autobiography I am nowhere near piecing together, I will acknowledge the unofficial sixth anniversary of this blog (!) by catching up on current events.

+ "It's the economy, stupid." Some of you will remember this blunt phrase from it's frequent refrains during the presidential elections in the 1980s and 90s. In 2012, President Obama's fiscal policies --his most apparent weakness-- will be the X factor for his Republican challenger, whoever that may be. With the birther controversy put to rest and Osama bin Laden captured and executed, the GOP can no longer play the citizenship and defense cards. As it stands, only Mitt Romney and Mitch Daniels have made any strides in prodding the perceived flaws of "Obamanomics," while the other candidates in the field are still flirting with Iowans and figuring out their platforms. Even though President Obama was on a roll in May, goodwill can be fleeting. Fifteen months before the 1980 vote, Jimmy Carter broked peace between Israel and Egypt. A year and a half before Decision '92, George H.W. Bush defeated Saddam Hussein and liberated Kuwait. Alas, neither man could create jobs nor handle a recession, and both became one-term presidents. I still consider Obama the odds-on favorite for 2012, but he's still quite vulnerable.

+ Monday night on Facebook, a conservative friend of mine openly wondered where was the "liberal rage" aimed at U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY). A mutual friend of ours commented that compared to what former Sen. John Edwards has been indicted for, "Weinergate" is small potatoes. Though his, um, "self-portrait" was a sizable lapse in judgment, Rep. Weiner's actions are more embarassing than enraging. Three months ago, a Republican congressman posted beefcake photos of himself online to impress a woman that obviously wasn't his wife; he resigned and people forgot about it shortly after. Odds are, the same thing will happen to Rep. Weiner. Where Weiner is a mostly harmless, narcissistic moron, Edwards is a flat-out monster. There couldn't be a greater difference.

+ I'm a realist, but I try to balance that with a dash of optimism. Widespread acceptance and legalization of same-sex marriage won't happen in this generation, but the number of states that now permit civil unions --including Illinois, ahem-- is encouraging. With that said, I offer congratulations and the best of wishes to all the couples --both gay and straight-- that have shared vows in the Land of Lincoln since the middle of last week.

+ Fantasy Update: I've made one change after another to my rosters, but I'm still in the middle of the pack in both leagues. I finally gave up on Bronson Arroyo, but his replacement Kyle McClellan only lasted one start before going on the DL for a unspecified period. Meanwhile on the same team, after I lost Jorge de la Rosa for the year I nabbed Bartolo Colon, who quickly became my de facto ace. It was my intention to also dump Joakim Soria after he lost the Royals' closer gig, but I'm stashing him at the moment to eat innings. With my arms in flux, my position players are doing most of the talking. My TV.com team went 7-4-1 against the guy in first place, while my "other" roster finished 12-3-0 and jumped from eighth place to a tie for third.

+ Improv Update: I can't believe it's almost over. Next weekend marks my last Level 5B class, ending my 14-month run in the basic improv program at iO. After that, my class will have student demonstration performances every Sunday at 7pm, starting June 26th and running through mid-August. Meanwhile, I'm also in the last stages of my writing course at iO; as I type this, I'm working on the first draft of a spec script for an original sitcom pilot. After the term ends, I will be taking a temporary breather from improv to take an acting course --yes, acting-- at Second City.

+ Finally, a Heystu exclusive! Thanks to some old connections in the radio industry, I am in possession of the infamous photo that nearly derailed Rep. Weiner's career. This photo was posted on Twitter and deleted shortly thereafter, and now this incriminating cell phone pic is saved on my hard drive. I dare you to look.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1998

2011-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

From a rock perspective, 1998 was a time of transition. The majority of the artists that made the '90s "alt" scene what it was were either breaking up, past their prime, or entering the woods for an extended period of time. Perhaps it seems fitting that the two best rock albums of that year didn't belong to that scene; one was a spacey magnum opus by a pair of French kids with a love for Pink Floyd and Brian Eno, the other a delightfully weird indie-rock sound project that wasn't "discovered" or appreciated until midway through the next decade.

On the flip side of the music spectrum, '98 was a watershed year for hip-hop, with several core rappers and rhymers of the late '90s/early '00s delivering their strongest efforts to date. It was at this point 13 years ago that hip-hop started to blur with CHR and pop radio, and the likes of Lauryn Hill, Big Pun, and Jay-Z were inexplicably being played alongside harmless bubble-gum acts such as Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls. Rock radio, on the other hand was a smorgasbord of post-grunge acts of varying quality (Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Goo Goo Dolls), the aforementioned aging early '90s acts (Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam), blatant one-hit wonders (Eagle Eye Cherry, Natalie Imbruglia), and dilligent punk-pop (Green Day, The Offspring).

As a middle-schooler in 1998 I was more interested in classic rock, and I do not regret disliking what was on Top 40 around that time. One of my most vivid memories from that year was my nine-year-old sister blasting SpiceWorld from her bedroom while I was struggling with math and science homework. On the other hand, this was the year that I first heard Revolver and Sgt. Peppers' and went on an extended Beatles kick. This is not the greatest year of music in the '90s --I'll be covering that 12-month span later in 2011-- but it's certainly far from uninteresting.

BEST ALBUMS
1. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Neutral Milk Hotel. Is Jeff Magnum an absolute genius or borderline schizoid? His decision to give up music after recording Aeroplane and his reputation as a sullen recluse would suggest the latter, but maybe in his heart Magnum knew he couldn't top this effort. Fittingly described by AllMusic.com as the sound of a marching band on acid, Aeroplane is a ramshackle mess of spiritual epiphany ("King of Carrot Flowers"), sexual anxiety ("Two-Headed Boy"), and tragedy ("Holland, 1945"). The only question here is what Magnum is trying to express, and whatever your theory might be it's totally correct.
2. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill. Equally adept at R&B and hip-hop, the prettiest Fugee's first solo album --and not counting an unfocused session on "MTV Unplugged," only solo album-- is the smoothest fusion of these two disparate genres anyone's ever heard. Sexual without being ribald or carnal, Lauryn teases on tracks like "Nothing Else Matters" and "I Used To Love Him." At the same time, Hill battles her spirituality on "Final Hour" and "Forgive Them, Father." Like Jeff Magnum, Hill was (is?) a one-of-a-kind talent that laid out all her chips upfront, knew when to fold, than walked away from the table.
3. Moon Safari, Air. Not to be confused with the avant-garde jazz trio of the same name, this electronica duo is one of the few non-Anglophone rock artists to ever make a dent in American pop culture. Fusing the songcraft of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson with the mood and textures of Can and early-70s Pink Floyd, Moon Safari is exactly what you'd expect: the most laid-back exploration of the cosmos this side of Carl Sagan.
4. Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
5. Aquemini, OutKast
6. Mezzanine, Massive Attack
7. Hello Nasty, Beastie Boys
8. Volume 2... Hard Knock Life, Jay-Z
9. The Boy With The Arab Strap, Belle & Sebastian
10. Extinction Level Event: The Final World Front, Busta Rhymes. After two commercially successful and critically adored solo albums, Busta dropped ELE as a newly minted superstar. Luckily, fame didn't go to his head; building upon his yen for apocalyptic imagery, beefy beats, weird samples, and brilliant rhymping, the Brooklyn-born rapper is stealthly planting earwigs all over middle America. The only hiccup here is "This Means War!!!", a pointless rewrite of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" with a half-hearted cameo by Ozzy himself.

Honorable Mentions: Mutations, Beck; Moment of Truth, Gang Starr; XO, Elliott Smith; Up, R.E.M.

BEST SINGLES
"Flagpole Sitta," Harvey Danger
"The Way," Fastball
"Ava Adore," Smashing Pumpkins
"Push It," Garbage
"Inside Out," Eve 6
"One Week," Barenaked Ladies
"Sex and Candy," Marcy Playground
"Torn," Natalie Imbruglia
"Ray of Light," Madonna
"Rockafeller Skank," Fatboy Slim

BEST VIDEOS
1. "Closing Time," Semisonic. Split-screens were all the rage in '98, and nobody took advantage of the fad like these two-hit wonders from Minneapolis. Talk about running on parallel lines...
2. "Doo Wop (That Thing)," Lauryn Hill. Split-screen madness, part 2: Hill channels '60s soul and late '90s funk similtaneously in this "Total Request Live" favorite.
3. "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See," Busta Rhymes. Culled from Busta's previous album, 1997's When Disaster Strikes..., Busta takes a cue from Missy Elliot and embraces the magic of fish-eye lens.
4. "My Hero," Foo Fighters. Ever the renaissance man, Foo frontman Dave Grohl made his directorial debut in this "long take" clip about the solitude of heroism.
5. "Gone Till November," Wyclef Jean. Speaking of Fugees, Wyclef's first solo disc included this airbourne MTV hit, featuring the most unlikely of musical cameos.

Honorable Mentions: "Intergalactic," Beastie Boys; "Bitter Sweet Symphony," The Verve.

Your thoughts?

Sonic Blast

2011-05-24T22:57:00.000-07:00

Earlier tonight was Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, pitting the star-studded, narcissistic Miami Heat against the gritty, well-rounded Chicago Bulls. This is the Bulls' first conference final appearance since 1998, when Michael Jordan willed the oldest team in the NBA to a sixth and final title. Admittedly, if you're a sports fan and came of age in Chicago in the 1990s, chances are you were spoiled by the Bulls' dynasty. Admittedly, I almost completely missed out.

You see, by the time the Bulls were on the road to their third three-peat, I had actually grown tired of their constant winning. The 1995-96 season, in which the Bulls set the single-season record for wins, was both an exciting and tedious experience. On one hand, the level of talent on their roster was incomparable, and they'd run laps against the most of their opponents. However, nearly every win was a blowout, and half the time there was no point in watching beyond the second quarter.

Between Jordan's first retirement and comeback, I had grown a soft spot for the Seattle Supersonics. The roster they had at the time --Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, and so forth-- was a tad topheavy but had all the qualities of a contender. I owned a Sonics cap with the classic green and yellow skyline logo and a T-shirt with the slightly less memorable red-and-green icon they wore in the second half of the '90s.

With my noted fanship of the Sonics, imagine the conflict of interest that arose when the Bulls faced Seattle in the 1996 NBA Finals. On the day after the Western Conference Finals ended, I wore my Kemp jersey to school with all the pride and hubris an 11-year-old could muster. At lunchtime, a girl in my fifth-grade class* sat across from me, and without ever taking her eyes off my jersey she started talking smack about "my" Sonics. I was a fairly sensitive kid, and I already had a reputation for outbursts that irked most of my peers, but that didn't really hinder them from teasing or making passive-aggressive comments.

So naturally, I had to defend my honor the only way I knew how: by screaming at the girl to knock it off, than go on a crying jag. One of the volunteer "lunch moms" had to walk me out of the gymnasium/assembly hall/cafeteria so I could cool off. Alas, the damage had been done: word of the incident spread throughout the school, and as the Bulls manhandled the Sonics en route to their fourth title, my last two weeks of fifth grade bordered on excrusiating. The teasing was almost constant.

As the 1996-97 school year began, the tension between me and my classmates was down to a simmer, but now I was known for being "anti-Bulls." I still wasn't rooting for them, but I never hated them per se, yet my shame kept me from discussing hoops at length. There were brief perks of derision when Chicago faced the Utah Jazz in the '97 and '98 Finals, but nothing at the level of what happened when the Bulls faced Seattle. Even though John Stockton had been one of my favorite players for the longest time, I made sure to keep my mouth shut.

Even after Jordan retired for the second time and Bulls GM Jerry Krause gutted the roster for salary cap space, the resentment lingered. The stigma of anti-fanship didn't really die out until 2000 or so, when Krause finally traded away Toni Kukoc and Dickey Simpkins, the last remnants of those championship teams. I shifted my focus to baseball and hockey, and whatever taunting I went through during the '96 Finals was either forgotten or dismissed as juvenilia. I went from a small, close-knit grammar school where I finished 6th grade with 29 other kids, to a high school where I graduated with 499 of my peers, and maybe a handful were semi-aware of my odd fanship. When the Sonics closed up shop and moved nearly 1,600 miles in 2008, I barely batted an eyelash.

So do I support the Bulls now? Yes, though not with the same passion I display for the Royals or Blackhawks. Watching this potential new dynasty blossom has been both a relief after years of losing, but also an opportunity to look back at my awkward childhood and the mistakes I might've made. In the wake of "The Decision," LeBron James and company have become the supposed villains of the NBA, which only makes this Bulls team all the easier to root for. As such, I'm also disappointed that Miami has now taken a near-insurmountable 3 games to 1 lead. If Miami wins Game 5, I'll shift my fairweather support to whoever wins the west, whether that'd be the Dallas Mavericks or the OKC Thunder... formerly known, of course as the Seattle Supersonics.

Next Week: the year in music, 1998.

*This girl came from a family of athletes, so she knew her stuff. She was later the captain of the varsity volleyball team in high school, and her older brother was a low-level draft pick by the Milwaukee Brewers in 2001.

My Sixth Annual Fantasy Emmy Ballot

2011-05-17T21:57:00.000-07:00

With the 2010-11 TV season winding down, speculation is already simmering for the 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards, even though the ceremony is 3 1/2 months from now. Therefore, it must be time for my sixth annual fantasy ballot. Originally conceived in June 2006 as a ripoff of Michael Ausiello's annual feature at tvguide.com, my imaginary Emmy ballot mixes should-be nominees with likely nods and other deserving stars and shows. With "Lost," "24," and "Damages" no longer of the running, it should be a wide-open year for drama nominees; the comedy and variety categories should have fewer surprises.

Writing in a Variety/Comedy/Music Series: (name listed is head writer) Barry Julien, The Colbert Report; Mike Sweeney, Conan; Steve Bodow, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher; and Seth Meyers, Saturday Night Live.
Outstanding Variety/Comedy/Music Series: "The Colbert Report," Comedy Central; "Conan," TBS; "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central; "Late Show with David Letterman," CBS; and "Saturday Night Live," NBC.

Supporting Actress in a Drama: Christine Baranski, The Good Wife; Sarah Wayne Callies, The Walking Dead; Sharon Gless, Burn Notice; Christina Hendricks, Mad Men; Archie Punjabi, The Good Wife; Chandra Wilson, Grey's Anatomy.
Supporting Actor in a Drama: Alan Cumming, The Good Wife; Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones; Jack Huston, Boardwalk Empire; Aaron Paul, Breaking Bad; Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire; John Slattery, Mad Men.
Supporting Actress in a Comedy: Julie Bowen, Modern Family; Yvette Nicole Brown, Community; Jane Krakowski, 30 Rock; Jane Lynch, Glee; Holland Taylor, Two and a Half Men; Sofia Vergara, Modern Family.
Supporting Actor in a Comedy: Ty Burrell, Modern Family; Chris Coifer, Glee; Jon Cryer, Two and a Half Men; Neil Patrick Harris, How I Met Your Mother; Nick Offerman, Parks & Recreation; Danny Pudi, Community.

Lead Actress in a Drama: Connie Britton, Friday Night Lights; Mariska Hargitay, Law & Order: SVU; Julianna Margulies, The Good Wife; Kelly Macdonald, Boardwalk Empire; Elizabeth Moss, Mad Men; and Kyra Sedgwick, The Closer.
Lead Actor in a Drama: Sean Bean, Game of Thrones; Kyle Chandler, Fright Night Lights; Bryan Cranston, Breaking Bad; Michael C. Hall, Dexter; Jon Hamm, Mad Men; and Hugh Laurie, House.
Lead Actress in a Comedy: Toni Collette, United States of Tara; Courtney Cox, Cougar Town; Edie Falco, Nurse Jackie; Tina Fey, 30 Rock; Lea Michele, Glee; and Amy Poehler, Parks & Recreation.
Lead Actor in a Comedy: Alec Baldwin, 30 Rock; Steve Carell, The Office; Joel McHale, Community; Matthew Morrison, Glee; Ed O'Neill, Modern Family; and Jim Parsons, The Big Bang Theory.

Outstanding Drama Series: "Breaking Bad," AMC; "Dexter," Showtime; "The Good Wife," CBS; "In Treatment," HBO; "Mad Men," AMC; "The Walking Dead," AMC.
Outstanding Comedy Series: "30 Rock," NBC; "The Big Bang Theory," CBS; "Community," NBC; "How I Met Your Mother," CBS; "Modern Family," ABC; "Parks & Recreation," NBC.

Let the debate begin!

My Promotion Commotion

2011-05-10T21:10:00.000-07:00

April 30th marked one year of unemployment (or underemployment, depending on how you look at it) for yours truly. It has been a year of perpetual struggle, of peaks and valleys, and above all pondering the direction of my life and whether I've made the right career choice. Typically when I write my blog, I try to shy away from my personal problems. I focus upon current events, sports, and music not only as a pleasant distraction, but also to keep my skills sharp. It was my intent to share my story after I had found steady employment again, but my anxiety and frustration could no longer let me supress my viewpoint for much longer.

It all started in mid-January, 2010. I had been the traffic assistant at the station for nearly two years, and as the result of budget cuts, I had also been the receptionist for about 14 months. I was initially hired to be part-time, five hours a day, 25 hours a week. It was on this average January weekday that my boss and our business manager/HR director sat me down to explain that my position was finally being expanded to full-time. However, because the company was an equal-opportunity employer, I had to reapply for my own job. A job listing was posted on a prominent industry web site for anyone to apply.

When I was first hired by Salem in May 2008, I sighed with relief. Upon graduating from college, I had submitted my resume and audio samples (both DJ airchecks and production) to nearly forty radio clusters --few stations are by themselves nowadays, it all depends on who owns them-- and they were only my second interview. After two wonderfully informative sitdowns, I was hired. Though traffic wasn't my first choice and my prior credentials were minimal, I was glad to be back in the radio industry. My first two weeks at the office were predominately spent training; though I felt like got off to a slow start, by the first month I had found my rhythm and developed a great rapport with my direct superior, the traffic manager. Every day was a new challenge, and even though it was tricky meeting daily deadlines I always made a conscious effort. The workload was heavy, but manageable. I was convinced that I had a future with this company... or so I thought.

In my first six months there was a signifigant regime change in our branch. The HR director that was partially responsible for bringing me aboard retired on account of her near-crippling arthritis. Her chosen replacement was for all intents and purposes her complete opposite; where the previous director was a self-deprecating mother figure, the new one was a deadly serious, business-oriented pragmatist. On top of that, where I was on friendly terms with HR director #1, her replacement made absolutely no attempt to get acquainted with anyone besides her boss and the other station management. Worse yet, director #2 had repeatedly called me out for mistakes at the front desk that were relatively minor and easily rectified. With time, it became quite clear that she didn't particularly like me, and that I would have to make an exorbatant effort to save my job.

As requested, I e-mailed my updated resume and references to the HR director, and we arranged to have my interview on the morning of Monday, February 8th. I spent the night before mentally preparing myself for the sitdown, partially out of determination but also out of shear nerve. As the sitting traffic assistant/receptionist, I was the first of six or seven candidates to walk into the conference room. Human resources asked the questions and my boss sat sliently, taking notes. The interview itself went okay; though I felt like I was stumped by a question or two, I felt confident regardless. After the interview, the HR director stated that she'd make a decision within two weeks. And two weeks later... nothing happened.

In my extended time of waiting, I wasn't sure what to assume. Was the decision taking longer than usual, or was I a dead man walking? After the 14-day "deadline" had passed, I reluctantly started glancing at radio jobs online. To my astonishment, our HR director had reposted the same job opening from the month before. I came to work pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and though I put on a brave face and a focused effort on my work, on the inside I was panicking. Even though I trusted my boss, I was too nervous to ask about the re-posting or the second round of interviews. Knowing of my duress, my co-workers would walk past the front desk and ask how I was doing; their moral support was fleeting, but noble in the attempt.

By late April, my worst fears were all but confirmed. Rumors were beginning to swirl around the office, and I gave my best non-answer to their prying questions. During the third and fourth cattle calls, the HR director conducted the conferences herself, without my boss' input. One candidate that walked in had garnered a second interview, a sit-in with the general manager that I'd never had. My boss would occasionally go into the HR director's office to vent, and one day during that week she was in the business manager's office for a longer period of time than usual. Glancing past the window, I could tell my boss was tearing up and that the HR director was being her usual hardheaded self.

On April 30th, I was asked to step into the HR office. As I sat next to the traffic director, I learned my fate: the search had come down to two candidates, the aforementioned ringer and myself, and they went with the new guy. Her words were polite, but her eyes had a certain resignation, a strangely gleeful glimmer. The director even tried to smirk, but my boss' repressed tears came from a more honest emotion. There was so much I wanted to say; I had an irresistable urge to call this cipher out for being secretive, elusive, and above all dishonest. Instead I clenched my teeth, cleaned out my desk, and tried to look professional and graceful in my departure.

In my HR director's eyes I was a borderline-incompetant milquetoast, and her cold smile and sudden, abrupt attempt at compassion couldn't hide the fact that she had been gunning after me. Altogether, this HR director made me sit on my hands for 3 1/2 months, Was I fired, forced out, or replaced? I'd like to think I was a combination of the three. As I drove home, I was overwhelmed by a singular emptiness. Even though this was the first time I'd ever been sacked --an experience that everyone will eventually go through-- I still felt screwed over. Part of me is still convinced that human resources overrode any feedback that my boss would've had in this whole process, and that she'd further consolidated her power in the office. In short, I had no leverage, and all my energies were for naught.

In the meantime, I've been trying to give myself a clean slate, not out of willingness but because of necessity. Attempts to reconnect with former co-workers at Salem have been ignored or rebuffed. As such, I don't think anyone in my old office is aware of the existence of this blog. I've had text conversations with my ex-boss, but they've been short and stilted. I'd also found out through the grapevine that my position was redefined in that the receptionist reported to the HR director and not the traffic director. Apparently, he also assumed a different set of responsibilites, which meant my former boss was (is?) now doing the work of two people. Concurrently, I've been intermittently temping and substitute teaching, but mostly I've been ekeing out a living on unemployment benefits.

I have written this blog entry for the sake of catharsis, and not to attack, vilify, or exact revenge. I was very tempted to call out the offending party by name, but that would be industry suicide. For the last 12 1/2 months, I've been penting up my rage and alienation to the extent that I had release my demons the only way I can. Counting high school, I had played the radio game for eleven years, and now I'm further away from my dream job than I've ever been. I've had one radio-related interview in the past year, but nothing came out of it. On one hand, I've been thinking outside the box and pooling my skills into a variety of other possibilities; on the other hand, I don't want to give up on a dream I've been building on for so long. Blind optimism is what keeps me going. Inexorably, I feel like a burden has been lifted off my back, and that I'm ready to clear whatever future hurdles come my way.

A Birther, A Death Wish, A Wedding? That's Nice

2011-05-03T20:59:00.000-07:00

This has been such a crazy week in the news, I'm not sure where to start:

With the release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate last week, one must hope that the conspiracy theorists will shut the hell up once and for all. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the "birthers" continued to nag to the media, derailing common sense in some hairbrained attempt to defame the president or remove him from office. There is no doubt in my mind that the birthers' intent was drenched in prejudice and light on patriotic duty, and that Obama was essentially bullied to prove his citizenship. I'm ready to move beyond all this silliness as soon as everyone else is.

In my mind, this non-controversy plays out like a standard episode of "South Park." For the uninitiated, two of the main characters are Stan, a sensible everyman and Cartman, an overweight, blustery bigot. One of the standard story arcs involves Cartman tinkering with some asinine conspiracy or scam that he's dreamed up in his head, and Stan has to play the voice of reason. Cartman calls Stan a pussy and a coward until Stan lets himself get dragged into his obese friend's latest mess. Ultimately, Stan uses reverse psychology to make Cartman look like an idiot, pretending to play along with Cartman's stupid little game until the conspiracy or scam collapses on its own weight. As you might've guessed, the birthers in my parable are Cartman and Obama is Stan.

So naturally, this brings me to the other major news story of the past week. I was watching an episode of "The Simpsons" on the DVR in my bedroom when I heard my parents raise the volume on the living room set. When I saw the caption on CBS News read "Osama bin Laden Dead," I could barely form a sentence. Like any American, I was absolutely ecstatic; this is a signifigant moment for our lifetimes, I thought, an event that many of us never expected to happen. Like President Obama said, justice will always and inevitably be served, and bin Laden's death --the apparent result of a rain of bullets in a Navy SEAL commando strike-- was well worth the wait. (If I may ask, where were you guys when you first heard the news?)

Nearly 48 hours later, I have mixed emotions. When I first saw news coverage of the various riots and celebrations across the country --including one outside my old dorm at Illinois State University-- I smiled and wished I was there high-fiving and fist-pumping. When I woke up Monday morning, it occured to me that this was the exact same way our nation's enemies reacted on September 11th. This momentous occasion also had a sad feeling of irony; did America finally find closure, or did bin Laden nab the martyrdom he desperately craved? What is more important to us as a nation, seeking unity or pausing to reflect? Plus, there's also the big picture to look at: Osama's death does not automatically end the War on Terror. The head is chopped off, but the snake continues to aimlessly slither. We are now fighting a war with no face, no borders, and fewer tangibles. We need the protection of our military now more than ever, because retaliation seems to be a perpetual option.

Given that, I tip my hat and owe an immense debt to everyone involved in the operation, from President Obama (who greenlit the mission) and Gen. David Petraeus (the soon-to-be head of the CIA), all the way down to the intricately assembled "Team 6" and their seemingly superhuman feats. Long- or short-term, this was the morale booster our country needed.

Other notes:

+ Yes, the media coverage of the royal wedding was a tad over the top. You could even argue that it bordered on obsessive. However, with all the crap going on in the world, maybe we needed that pleasant distraction. Alas, Time magazine rushed out their May 16th issue to present up-to-the-minute coverage of the ceremony. Does that mean the inevitable "bin Laden caricature under a red painted X" cover will have to wait another two weeks?

+ Fantasy Update: one month into the season, both of my teams are just barely over .500. In the wake of several crippling injuries (Ryan Zimmerman, Josh Hamilton, Pablo "Panda" Sandoval) I overhauled the roster of my TV.com team. I suppose it could be worse; though I have Juan Pierre in platoon, at least I'm not the guy that drafted Adam Dunn or Edwin Jackson.

+ Improv Update: last week I began Level 5B at iO, and this week I start Writing 4 with Nate Herman. This is the last class for both programs, so by mid-June I'm practically done. With the last level of improv, our class is split up in two and performs as teams of ten for an eight-week run Sunday nights beginning June 19th. As for writing, this particular level covers scripting an original pilot, and without being too toward I'm already dreaming up ideas.

+ Finally, to appease several comments made on last week's 1976 blog, here is my official honorable mention for the best music video of that particular year. Bismillah, they will not let this go... ;)

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1976

2011-04-26T20:38:00.000-07:00

Is it too late to wish you all a happy bicentennial?

If the sound of 1975 found that right balance between art and impulse, then '76 titled slightly toward the excess. Fittingly, the year of America's 200th birthday was also the first big year for disco, but more on that later. The organic singer-songwriter stylings from earlier in the decade was being phased out for music that was safe, slickly produced and oddly corporate. The Eagles, the biggest rock band of the decade up to that point, was swaying from earthy country-rock to the arena-ready guitar licks of new recruit Joe Walsh. In turn, The Doobie Brothers (the '70s second-most successful pop/rock act) overhauled its lineup to accommodate the blue-eyed soul of veteran sideman Michael McDonald. The most important major act to change personnel was the Rolling Stones, who welcomed Ron Wood of The Faces after the departure of guitarist Mick Taylor.

For all those tonal shifts, no one was ready for the advent of punk rock, a sound, an attitude, and a lifestyle whose seeds were first planted that year. Ditching the sonic excesses and growing studio majesty of their more mainstream peers, punk brought rock n' roll back to its basics and made it louder, meaner, and anti-establishment. This was a huge contrast to disco, which first climbed the pop charts in '75, demonstrated they still had legs in '76, and set the tone for top 40 radio for the rest of the decade. Heavy grooves, infectuous beats, and a core of simple songcraft eventually forced the entire music industry to wade their toes in the disco waters.

As for the year itself: I had always assumed 1976 was the weakest year of the decade in terms of music. Instead, I found a treasure trove of great albums and snappy singles --yes, I expanded the lists to 20 again-- including a few that I didn't realize were released this particular year. Now that I've been doing annual music blogs every month for the last 2 1/2 years, I'm kind of tilting towards '73 or '74 as the weakest of the decade, though I have yet to find a year that was outright bad.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Ramones, The Ramones. Gabba gabba hey! Even though 1977 will be remembered as the year punk broke out, the debut album by the first true punk band is a '76 vintage. As such, this album sets the blueprint for the whole punk aesthetic: three or four chords; a simple, catchy melody; irresistibly asinine lyrics; and blistering speed. The roots of the Ramones' sound can be found in '50s rock n' roll; though the band is faithful to the structure and intent of their heroes and influences, they simply play that music louder and faster. Long story short, this album is a true essential.
2. Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder. The hard-to-fathom winning streak that Wonder carried through the early and mid-1970s hit a cresendo with this ambitious double-LP magnum opus. The arrangements are wide-ranging (even for the versatile Stevie), from the pretty, subdued "Have a Talk With God" to the political "All Day Sucker." If you want hits, they show up in spades: "Sir Duke," "I Wish," "Pastime Paradise," "As," and "Isn't She Lovely" were all radio staples. Nothing that Wonder has released since Key of Life has come close to matching the magic of this album or the rest of his '70s output, but it's not like he had anything left to prove.
3. Boston, Boston. Did Tom Scholz save FM radio? Not by himself, no, but the Toledo-by-way-of-Massachusetts studio whiz definitely played his part. Recorded in his basement on a state-of-the-art 12-track recording device, Scholz, partner in crime Brad Delp, and three other local musicians more or less invented arena rock. If the magic of the best-selling debut album of its time could be culled down to two tracks, they would be the soaring "More Than a Feeling" and the epic "Foreplay/Long Time." With disco and punk demonstrating opposite ends of the pop music spectrum in 1976-77, Boston was the middle-of-the-road band of choice, unlikely saviors and unexpected superstars.
4. Hotel California, The Eagles
5. The Modern Lovers, The Modern Lovers

6. 2112, Rush
7. Desire, Bob Dylan
8. Rocks, Aerosmith
9. A Day at the Races, Queen
10. A New World Record, Electric Light Orchestra. Many acts in the '70s wore their Beatles influence on their sleaves (Big Star, Badfinger, Todd Rundgren) and went off into their own little tangents, but nobody took their admiration of the Fab Four to new dimensions quite like Jeff Lynne and ELO. Imagine Sgt. Peppers' reconstructed by lovelorn alien robots and that describes A New World Record in a nutshell. In fairness, however "Telephone Line" is like the greatest Lennon-McCartney ballad never written, and the clever "Rockaria!" bridges the missing link between Chuck Berry and Richard Wagner nobody knew existed.

11. Frampton Comes Alive!, Peter Frampton
12. Destroyer, KISS
13. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, AC/DC
14. Black Market, Weather Report
15. Warren Zevon, Warren Zevon. Zevon's major label debut --his 1969 bow on the Imperial label is a muddled, deadly serious mess-- was a watershed moment for the veteran songwriter and session musician. Where his comtemporaries on the mid-70s L.A. scene (the so-called "Mellow Mafia") were writing brainy pop songs, Zevon took the motif one step further and added violence, bile, and cynicism. When he didn't wear his black heart on his sleeve, Zevon also wrote beautiful, understand ballads like "Mohammed's Radio" and "Desperados Under the Eaves."

16. The Royal Scam, Steely Dan
17. Black and Blue, The Rolling Stones
18. Night Moves, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
19. Takin' It To The Streets, The Doobie Brothers
20. Arrival, ABBA. One further debut of importance in '76 came from a Swedish pop act with three albums already under their belt. A curio of sorts when their singles "S.O.S." and "Waterloo" found radio play in the US in late 1975, ABBA proved their mettle on their fittingly-titled breakthrough Arrival. "Dancing Queen" is far and away the best-known track, an international #1 hit and the earwig that almost single-handedly built their American fan club, but the other nine tracks are equally delicious ear-candy.

BEST SINGLES

"Saturday Night," Bay City Rollers
"Rubberband Man," The Spinners
"You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine," Lou Rawls
"All By Myself," Eric Carmen
"She's Gone," Hall & Oates
"Fooled Around and Fell In Love," Elvin Bishop
"Dream Weaver," Gary Wright
"Right Back Where We Started From," Maxine Nightingale
"Turn The Beat Around," Vicki Sue Robinson
"Year of the Cat," Al Stewart

"Achilles' Last Stand," Led Zeppelin
"It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock n' Roll)," AC/DC
"Jailbreak," Thin Lizzy
"Crazy on You," Heart
"Space Intro/Fly Like an Eagle," Steve Miller Band
"The Pretender," Jackson Browne
"Strangered in the Night," Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
"Don't Fear the Reaper," Blue Oyster Cult
"Younger Point of View," Dogs
"Cherry Bomb," The Runaways

BEST VIDEO

"Crackerbox Palace," George Harrison. Notice the singular, not the plural. The concept of a short promotional film to promote an artist's new song was pretty staid until the late '70s. The vast majority of the videos made then were short clips of the artist perfoming; the song spoke for itself, and there was no other art involved. Half the time, they were culled from "American Bandstand," Britain's "Top of the Pops," or their German cousin "Musik Laden," then inchangably recycled. This clip, primitive by today's standards but aggressively oddball for its time, is more historical curio than masterpiece for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, it marked a rare collaboration between a Beatle and a member of Monty Python; Eric Idle directed the clip during a breather from Rutland Weekend Television, and his former collaborator Neil Innes has an extended cameo.

Your thoughts?

Wilson vs. Blaylock: History's Greatest Mookie?

2011-04-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

"Winner" of the 2011 Red Smith Award for Contributions to Sports Journalism

It was a cool February morning in Bamberg, South Carolina. The year is 1956, and a healthy baby boy named William Hayward Wilson is born at a nearby hospital. By the time the boy became a teenager he was one of the top-rated prep baseball players in the Palmetto State, and a few years later he was a standout center fielder at the University of South Carolina. Impressing scouts with his speed and switch-hitting, though not necessarily for his size (5'10", 170 lbs.) or power, he was drafted in the second round of the 1977 draft by the New York Mets.

Fast forward eleven years to another hospital, the Baylor Medical Center in Garland, Texas. It was at this hospital that Daron Oshay Blaylock was brought into the world. A natural push-and-pass point guard and a strong defensive stopper, the young Blaylock was the captain of the Garland High School basketball team. After earning NCJAA All-American honors at Midland College in 1987 he transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where he and Stacey King carried the Sooners to the 1988 NCAA Championship game. This impressed the New Jersey Nets' scouts to the extent that they chose him as the 12th overall pick in the 1989 NBA draft.

So what do these two highly disparate professional athletes have in common? As a young child, William had great difficultly saying "milk," often emphasizing a "moo" sound when he asked for a glass of two percent. When Daron was about ten years old, his grandmother went to see Star Wars and commented that her taller-than-average grandson "looked like the mookie," misremembering the actual name of Chewbacca's species. Oddly enough, both nicknames stuck.

Granted, if there was a Mookie Copernicus or a Mookie Descartes or even a Mookie Hitler, there'd be no point in arguing this. Alas, this curious nickname is shared by exactly two public figures, both respected ex-athletes in the highest professional level of their respective sports. A title such as Mookie does not befit an astronomer, a mathematician, or a Nazi. So the question lingers: who is history's greatest Mookie?

I begin this highly intestinal debate by contrasting the Mookies. Where Wilson played in the major leagues predominately in the 1980s, Blaylock was an NBA fixture in the '90s and early 2000s. Their professional careers overlapped by a little over two years, thus ensuring dozens upon dozens of sports fans to be confused if anyone were to ask "hey, did you see Mookie play last night?" On top of that, Blaylock was the more dominant athlete; chosen to play in the 1994 NBA All-Star Game, he was a defensive workhorse and who ranks 12th on the all-time steals list. Wilson proved to be an average talent but a fan favorite, a fearless stolen base threat to compensate for only hitting 67 home runs and 438 RBI in his twelve years in the majors. Plus, Blaylock is three inches taller and ten pounds heavier than his fellow Mookie, so guess who'd clearly win in a fistfight.

If you were to debate the purpose and necessity of a nickname like Mookie, than Wilson would have the edge. There already was a Willie Wilson playing for the Kansas City Royals in the same time period, two southerners with the same baptismal name at the same position, so the alternate moniker wiped out any and all potential confusion. On the other hand, there are no other players in NBA history by the surname of Blaylock, so at least that Mookie had a distinct edge.

Another point to consider is the collective cultural impact of the Mookies. It is well-known trivia that in the early '90s, a five-piece grunge-rock band based in Seattle, Washington had considered naming themselves Mookie Blaylock, even though he never suited up for the Supersonics. When the band couldn't get clearance from the NBA, they settled upon their second choice, Pearl Jam. (In turn, PJ's debut album Ten is reference to Blaylock's jersey number with the Nets.)

Wilson's contribution to pop culture, however is an actual achievement that had far-reaching ramifications. His ground ball in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series --the easy out that infamously slipped through Bill Buckner's legs-- led the Mets to a shocking rally and the second title in team history. On the flip side, the gaffe ultimately cost the Red Sox their first championship in seven decades and extended their drought by almost a generation. Both Wilson and Buckner became pariahs in the city of Boston.

Upon analyzing and breaking down the qualities of both Mookies, I cannot convince myself to choose just one. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Blaylock have too many intangibles to make this a sure-shot decision. In the end, maybe this historical debate has not seen its conclusion written yet. A third Mookie of consequence, Mookie Jones is a standout forward for the Syracuse Orange who might be a high pick in the 2012 or 2013 NBA Draft. Unlike the other two, Mookie is his birth name. It must've been fate that his parents are both Mets fans.

Next week: the year in music, 1976.

Random Notes, April 2011

2011-04-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

As you probably guessed, this week's missive is a tad late. In fact, in nearly six years this is the latest I've ever posted a Weekly Update. Long story short, I was spending long hours training for a sales/marketing position that ultimately didn't work out. Regardless, I remain optimistic and will continue my job search with my head held high. With that said, let me drop off some random notes:

+ In some ways, President Obama dodged a bullet last weekend. In other ways, he shot himself in the foot. I'm relieved that we won't be facing a government shutdown, but the compromise that party leaders agreed upon late Friday night won't satisfy too many Americans. Some cuts, like education and elderly care were sadly inevitable, but others clearly demonstrated the seemingly impenitrible stranglehold of lobbyists and special interest groups. If the majority of our elected officials had actual jobs --or possessed any real-world skill besides governing-- they would've been fired now. The partisan cease fire in the wake of Gabby Giffords' shooting was fleeting; the ideological dagger eyes are just as pointed as they were before the election. The bipartisan period of mourning, one of mutual yet begrudging respect, was just that-- a period.

+ On that note, whatever became of the Tea Party radicals that took a battering ram to the status quo last year? Chances are, the mavericks that were elected to the House in November are too preoccupied trying to stay in office; it's fairly common for rookie representatives to spend nearly their entire two-year term fighting off challengers for a congressional seat they won mere months ago. However, the two or three that were present and vocal during the debates griped that there weren't enough cuts on government spending (naturally). As literal and pure as they may be, the Tea Partiers will eventually come to the same conclusion that Newt Gingrich arrived at in 1996: a government that spends no money whatever can neither govern nor function.

+ Another spring, another fantasy baseball rollout. So far, my results are no different than the past three years: my TV.com team is middling while my other team thrives. I drafted Mike Aviles on both teams; after a sizzing opening day he's been batting .060, so I dropped him for Hideki Kuroda and Alberto Callapso. Now I need to figure out what to do with an injured Ryan Zimmerman...

+ Finally, I'd like to address a bizarre incident that occured on Facebook last week. For those of you that are friends with me outside of this site, I'm somewhat notorious for writing witty, facetious status updates. Sometimes my original material clicks, sometimes it doesn't, it's all trial and error. On Tuesday the 5th, I jokingly announced that I had won the prestigious Red Smith Sports Journalism Award for an article I wrote titled "Wilson vs. Blaylock: History's Greatest Mookie?" Instead of getting the usual "John Smith likes this" or "LOL" comment, I received several notes congratulating me on the honor. Apparently, my wit was too dry for its own good; my friends and acquaintances didn't realize that a) the Red Smith is like the Pulitizer for sportswriting and almost as lucrative, and b) I'm just your average free-lance writer/blogger, not a scribe for Sports Illustrated or anything of the such. Eventually I had to clarify my failed joke, and no one felt betrayed, but for my own personal amusement I actually will write a blog spot next week comparing and contrasting the two Mookies. This article will be either my creative pinnacle or a stunning failure, and anyone that's interested will have a front row seat.

GO ROYALS!!!

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah: Another Topical Rant

2011-04-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Can we officially call Operation Odyssey Dawn a war? I'm not sure. Did the US have to intervene? Yes. President Obama's address to the nation two weeks ago was both articulate and somewhat befuddling, but supporting and arming the Libyan rebels was the right thing to do. The man I recently dubbed "bizarro Reagan" has an opportunity to pounce on what ol' Dutch could never do: topple Moammar Ghadafi. With American armed forces slowly passing the baton to NATO, I hope this joint effort brings down a tyrant that should've been removed from power decades ago. My only concern mirrors the recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia: will the end of totalitarian rule bring democracy to a torn nation, or create a radicalized, Al Qaida-type power vacuum?

This is where one might ask when I turned into a war liberal. I assure you that I have tried to be as objective as possible about post-WTC American combat operations. I believe invading Afghanistan was more than justified and sending troops to Libya equally so. As happy as the Iraq people were to be liberated from the Hussein regime eight years ago, Operation Enduring Freedom was organized in haste, without strategy, and largely under false pretense. The only mutual thread between Libya and Iraq is the theme of unfinished business.

Of course, I say this just as President Obama's reelection bid has officially launched. It's an understatement to point out what a difference four years make: the optimistic outsider that announced his candidacy on the Illinois state capital steps in February 2007 is now the embattled center of the American political spectrum. I won't ignore or downplay Obama's vulnerability at this moment in time, though his chances at a second term ultimately falls upon who runs against him. As Ronald Reagan proved in 1984 and Bill Clinton reinforced in 1996, a challenger that trips upon himself proves quite beneficial to the incumbent.

Of the small army of Republican hopefuls, no potential candidate has garnered as much attention --both deliberately and unintentional-- than former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Lest we forget that this is man who orchestrated the infamous 1995-96 government shutdowns and handed divorce papers to his cuckholded wife in the middle of a chemo session. For Gingrich's lack of leadership skills and questionable moral aptitude, it's scary to think he's still a serious contender. The Tea Party boosters that rocked the 2010 midterms have more say in the GOP's direction than ever, and they seem willing to overlook Gingrich's spotty track record and bet all their chips on the retired, erratic Georgia congressman. In spite of a complete lack of similar interests, I will gladly take Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty over Newt. If the Republican Party's power circle still has a sliver of sanity, they will nominate someone --and I mean anyone-- over Gingrich.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 2001

2011-03-29T09:49:00.000-07:00

2001 was ten years ago? What the hell?

Right off the bat, I will acknowledge that no political or cultural event that year holds a candle to the events of September 11th, and as much as I'd hate to downplay its signifigance, this is not what this blog entry is about. Like the American psyche, however the music scene faced startling changes in 2001. This was the year that rock turned to pebbles, when an entire genre stopped focusing on one or two forms and broke off into what seemed like a million little niches. Every evolutionary milestone of the previous 40 to 50 years was being reviewed, recycled, or homaged, and bands were becoming subgenres onto themselves. No niche stood out in 2001-02 quite like garage rock, a raw, do-it-yourself approach that contrasted signifigantly to the slick, overproduced pop piffle that dominated CHR radio at the time. Also in 2001, the underground scene suddenly shifted from "college rock" to "indie"; college stations were giving up the free-spirit, "anything goes, support the little guy" approach for what commerical radio already had in heavy rotation. As a result, unknown bands on small labels were forced to promote their music by word of mouth, pray for positive reviews, or if they were lucky, nab a short-term deal with a big-name distributor. In short, they were independent in every sense of the word.

From a personal perspective, 2001 was also the year I finally embraced modern rock. Okay, maybe embraced is too strong a word, but this was definitely the year it finally garnered my respect. I can pinpoint this sea change to one song: "Last Nite," the leadoff single from the album ranked #1 on my list below. For me, contemporary music offered little promise: on the rock end, you had an endless sea of samey nu-metal, rap-rock, and watered-down industrial; on the pop end, you had N*SYNC, Britney Spears, and Lil' Kim in all their glittery creampuff glory. Compared to those two options, The Strokes were a revelation; if you were a 17-year-old boy self-taught in the vitrues of classic rock and new wave, they were saviors. Though the singles and videos below do a fair job of capturing the soundtrack of my junior year in high school, I didn't discover the most of these albums until I was in college.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Is This It, The Strokes. Considering the direction of popular music --a theme that I shall continue to beat to death-- recording a full-length with such a simple rock sound was either absolute genius or commercial poison. The end result was a disc that was more joyful, rhythmic, and intense than anything else released that year. To the haters that complain The Strokes will always be defined by their debut: who cares?

2. White Blood Cells, The White Stripes. After noodling around with minimalist, stripped-down punk-blues on their first two discs, "siblings" Jack and Meg White hit creative paydirt on their third effort. This is how a breakthrough album should sound: take the band's strongest elements and make it bigger and tighter. The pop teases of De Stijl are expanded and accented, from the honky-tonk of "Hotel Yorba" to the frustrated debauchery of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground."

3. The Blueprint, Jay-Z. After declaring his ascention to the throne of the East Coast rap scene after Biggie Smalls' murder in 1997, it took four years for Jason Carter to silence any and all critics. The Blueprint was not only a statement, but confirmed that Jay-Z would reign for years, if not decades to come. This is the rare rap album that plays like a critic's highlights collection, from "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" to "Takeover," from "Hola Hovito" to "Jigga That Nigga." Better yet, the cameos are kept to minimum (Eminem and a young Kanye West appear on one track apiece), maintaining the focus on the king himself.

4. Oh, Inverted World, The Shins

5. Amnesiac, Radiohead

6. Things We Lost in the Fire, Low

7. "Love and Theft", Bob Dylan

8. Discovery, Daft Punk

9. Toxicity, System of a Down

10. Gorillaz, Gorillaz. Cartoon bands are a tiny, deservedly derogated novelty in the annals of rock; after this funky "quartet," the best group in this little alcove are probably The Archies. A side project of Blur frontman Damon Albarn --which eventually became his #1 gig after the band's 2003 fadeout-- is 80% hip-hop, 20% Brit-pop, 100% earcandy. The band's cartoon alter egos (a Japanese child prodigy, a mop-topped cretin, a 280-pound black dude, and a fab frontman) is just as eclectic and fascinating.

Honorable Mentions: B.R.M.C., Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; Hybrid Theory, Linkin Park; Get Ready, New Order; We Love Life, Pulp; Tenacious D, Tenacious D.

BEST SINGLES

"Schism," Tool

"Where's Your Head At," Basement Jaxx

"Hash Pipe," Weezer

"Short Skirt Long Jacket," Cake

"Fallin'," Alicia Keys

"Get Ur Freak On," Missy Elliot

"I Did It," Dave Matthews Band

"God Gave Me Everything," Mick Jagger

"New York, New York," Ryan Adams

"All The Way To Reno," R.E.M.

BEST VIDEOS

1. "Weapon of Choice," Fatboy Slim. To the two or three people that read this blog that have seen "Pennies From Heaven," you'd know that Christopher Walken is an excellent hoofer. This much-paroded clip exposed Walken's "hidden" talent with limber, gravity-defying zeal.

2. "Clint Eastwood," Gorillaz. Speaking of dancing, an army of zombie gorillas pay homage to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and terrorize our misfit heroes in this highly animated clip.

3. "Let Forever Be," The Chemical Brothers. Shot and released as a single in 1999, this trippy Michel Gondry-directed effort didn't find an American audience for two years, and even then it aired on MTV2 in the wee hours of the night, when they normally played techno and electronic music. That's a damn shame.

4. "Last Nite," The Strokes. Sometimes a great single doesn't need a big, flashy production, as this clip proves. Also, it's live in-studio, no overdubs or lip-syncing, which makes the low-fi earnestness all the more hip.

5. "Tribute," Tenacious D. Dave Grohl cameos as Satan in an ode to the greatest song ever written, which is... what, exactly?

Honorable Mention: "Everyday," Dave Matthews Band; "Island in the Sun," Weezer.

Your thoughts?

30 Teams, 30 Haiku: My 2011 Baseball Preview

2011-03-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

This week's blog entry is a milestone, but personally I'd rather be practical than self-congratulatory. With spring training in its last throes and the regular season a mere ten days away, what better time than now to post my baseball predictions for 2011? After all, there is a certain symbolism to the number 300 in baseball: a strong batting average, the unofficial minimum number of career wins to enter Cooperstown, a ridiculous amount of strikeouts in any given season. Granted, 300 home runs won't get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame --not in this day and age-- but it'll grab people's attention.

As such, my annual baseball preview typically has some type of quirk. In 2009, I explained why your team won't win the World Series, regardless of whether they were serious contenders or playing for pride. Last year, I posed a serious question about each team. This year, I'm exchanging short-order cynicism for the most simplistic yet elegant form of poetry: the haiku. That's right folks: I broke down all 30 MLB teams, seventeen syllables at a time. (Okay, sorry, moras.) Some of my prognostications are informative, others are witty, though a few are bordering on abstruse. Below my metrical compositions are my usual, concrete individual predictions for the year to come.

(playoff teams in bold)

AMERICAN LEAGUE

EAST

1. Red Sox: Behold, Great Gonzo!/the power hitter they need/to repeat glory.

2. Rays: No dismantling yet/youth and vigor in Tampa/means a Wild Card.

3. Yankees: One starting pitcher/is all the pinstripes have now/Lee screwed them over.

4. Orioles: Youth movement's growing/gives you one early warning/watch out for Wieters!

5. Blue Jays: Unhappy Canucks/woeful in the Great White North/is hope on the way?

CENTRAL

1. Twins: Only 83 wins/might conquer this division/ho-hum, but sturdy.

2. White Sox: If pitching's healthy/might ignite a pennant race/if not... Big Country?

3. Tigers: Miguel, stop boozing/Motor City needs Sheen blood/and less Foster Brooks.

4. Indians: Panic in the Cleve/remember Pronk and Grady?/they used to produce.

5. Royals: Young and unproven/95 losses seems fair/can't wait until '12.

WEST

1. Rangers: No Lee or Vlady/makes for an uphill battle/but the bench is deep.

2. Angels: Proven veterans/the pitching is heavenly/tread lightly, Texas!

3. Athletics: Contenders? Hardly!/their grit wears opponents down/so I'll give them that.

4. Mariners: All-defense fizzled/so back to the drawing board/long year at Safeco.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

EAST

1. Phillies: Halladay, Hamels/Oswalt and Lee, beastly arms/assured destiny.

2. Braves: Without Cox, are Braves/now Indian princesses?/surely critics jest.

3. Mets: So many questions/Beltran's glove, K-Rod's temper/this soap opera drags!

4. Marlins: Raw and unfocused/fish won't bite in '11/insert sushi joke.

5. Nationals: Strasburg and Harper/are mere glimmers in the eye/same old crap this year.

CENTRAL

1. Reds: Impressive bats, but/a matter of time before/Baker wrecks Chapman.

2. Brewers: All hail Zach Greinke/the hero has run support/repeat of '08?

3. Cardinals: Pujols' wanderlust/and all those injured starters/birds go south early.

4. Cubs: Are you kidding me?/first baseman hits .200/simply staggering.

5. Pirates: Andrew McCutchen/and 24 other guys/all you need to know.

6. Astros: The least improved team/so-so arms and good speed/will not be enough.

WEST

1. Giants. They are dwarves no more/the kids have proven themselves/a dynasty looms?

2. Dodgers. High payroll, high hopes/the divorcing boys in blue/men on the rebound.

3. Rockies. Ubaldo's first half/was quite beastly in '10, but/can he pace himself?

4. Padres. Oh dear, that offense/won't help mighty rotation/80 low-score wins.

5. D-Backs. Expecting progress/with no power, weak bullpen/quite a tall order.

AL Rookie of the Year: Mike Moustakas, Royals

NL Rookie of the Year: Domonic Brown, Phillies

AL Cy Young: Jon Lester, Red Sox

NL Cy Young: Tim Lincecum, Giants

AL MVP: Joe Mauer, Twins

NL MVP: Albert Pujols, Cardinals

AL Manager of the Year: Terry Francona, Red Sox

NL Manager of the Year: Fredi Gonzalez, Braves

First Manager Fired: Edwin Rodriguez, Marlins

2011 World Series: Phillies over Red Sox in 6

Next Week: the year in music, 2001.

Random Notes, March 2011

2011-03-15T21:44:00.000-07:00

+ I apologize for the delay (again), but I had some internet connection issues Tuesday night. Plus, it's been a dry week of sorts. I can assure that I will more than make up for it with my next two dispatches.

+ Like many of you, I'm quite concerned about the fallout (pun not intended) of last Friday's earthquake in Japan. The series of unfortunate events that have struck an island nation --it was followed by a ripple-effect tsunami, a near-nuclear meltdown, and a mild snowstorm-- could be perceived as the wrath of nature, karmic retribution for an unknown sin, or both. I won't even get started on Glenn Beck's inevitably offensive opinion on the matter. Scientifically, the earthquake was the result of a long-dormant fault in a nearly tectonic plate, and disasters of this proportion are almost impossible to predict. While the loss of life and property so far roughly matches the chaos in Haiti 14 months ago, comparing this catastrophic domino effect to the island nation or the almost forgotten Peruvian quake last year is like analyzing apples, oranges, and grapes. Financially I have my hands tied, but if you can donate a small monetary amount to the Red Cross to help the survivors, bless your heart.

+ The second week of my internship was relatively stable compared to the first. On one hand, nothing of incident occured during either of the Saturday night shows in the upstairs theater. On the other hand, the theater is right smack in the middle of the Wrigleyville bar district, and it was difficult for employees and ticketholders alike to manuever through the neighborhood during unofficial St. Pat's. At times it felt like I was a supporting character in a George Romero movie, fighting off the zombies in the only place I knew was safe. The irony, however is that after my shift ended I walked four blocks to a raucous birthday party. Before you judge me, however I had one mixed drink before crashing at another friend's apartment nearby.

+ Finally, if anyone's interested, IndianaMom has launched a Final Four Pick 'Um pool just for us TV.com folk. There's no money involved, it's just for bragging rights. Let me know if you're interested ASAP if you want to fill out a bracket, because tipoff is Thursday morning.

Next Week: WU #300, and my 2011 baseball forecast.

Chronicles of an Intern

2011-03-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

About six months ago, I applied to be an intern at the theater where I'm taking improv classes. Last month, I was finally put into consideration and last weekend I worked my first shift. An internship is not a real job but this certainly feels like one; for one night out of the week, I'm essentially part of the theater crew. My responsibilities include fetching beer from the stock room, cleaning off chairs and tables between and after shows, handling tickets and seating paying customers. Being a type-A personality, I felt an unusual sense of arousal by the intern program's motto: "ruthless efficiency."

Supposedly, my first night was a pretty rough one. A group of 16 or 17 had come to see an 8pm show in the upstairs theater, and several members of said group snuck in flasks. By intermission, they were having a weird little whisper fight in the audience and at least one member of the group vomited. We didn't eject the entire group from the theater, just the three or four offenders. Shortly after the show, I learned that a similar incident had occured at about the same time in the downstairs theater. The assistant manager who was in charge that night apologized for the "trial by fire" --four other interns were being trained that night-- and that what happened was an isolated incident. Being an intern at the theater is not glamorous by any means and I knew that when I first applied, but I'm happy for the opportunity and hope it'll be smoother sailing from this point onward.

Other notes:

+ What should we do about Libya? Whether or not the United States intervenes, it's hard to imagine Moammar Khadafi coming out of this alive and unscathed. I think American intervention is all but necessary at this point, though I'd rather go the diplomatic route rather than excaberate what is unofficially a civil war. One can argue that this would be another vaguely defined interloping in a Middle Eastern country where American interests aren't particularly vital --cough, Iraq, cough-- but the need to wipe out a highly vulnerable, long-standing nemesis is an itch that's hard not to scratch.

+ Hey, does anyone remember my diatribes against former Cook County President Todd Stroger? Well, now we have something in common: we're both getting an unemployment check from the state of Illinois.

+ Finally, a wonderful, pinpoint article about the most miserable sports cities in the US. Memo to hard-to-please Chicago sports fans: quit your bitchin', it could be a lot worse.

Rahm Like the Wind?

2011-03-01T10:21:00.000-08:00

After months of buildup, it's finally over. With 55% of the vote, Rahm Emanuel not only trounced his competitors for Chicago mayor but rejected the need for a run-off vote in March. Whoever expected this to be a close four-way race --cough cough, the local media-- must've been humbled when Gery Chico, Miguel Del Valle, and former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun combined for 43% of all ballots counted. On the other hand, it's not like people were voting in droves to put Rahm in the mayor's chair; less than half of all registered voters in the city turned out on Election Day. If you think Emanuel bought the election, I'd suggest having a conversation with Michael Bloomberg first.

Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who is notorious for turning every news story into a racial issue, declared the election a death call for the black voting bloc. What she seems to ignore was how weak Carol Moseley-Braun was as a candidate; the "crack addict" remark I mentioned a few weeks ago was only the tip of her malapropism iceberg. Granted, Braun wasn't the only African-American woman on the ballot, but she fumbled whatever momentum she had from the very get-go. CMB was the only other nationally-known name on the ballot and she never used that recognition to her benefit.

As for the future of Chicago, my outsider, suburban hiney will watch with baited breath. Maybe Emanuel will trigger a city renaissance, or maybe he'll do nothing and get spanked in 2015. Either way, we're stuck with the little fella.

Other notes:

+ An old Illinois State buddy of mine works for the CBS affiliate in Madison, WI, and over the weekend I texted him to ask for his take on the fracas up there. He's a libertarian and a social moderate, and chances are he voted for Scott Walker last November, but he shared the setiments that several of us bloggers and editorists have arrived upon: the media is totally playing the conflict wrong. It's easy to say that between the teachers' unions and Gov. Walker, no winners will come out of the protests and partisan hubris, but it's more complicated than that. In the end, the negative publicity will create some Democratic gains in the state senate come 2012, and collective bargaining will be restored while nobody's paying attention. In the long run, nothing will change.

+ A new term has begun at IO, and therefore a new schedule. For the first time in almost two years I'll have Sundays off; I'm taking Improv Level 5 on Saturday afternoons, and a Scenic Improv elective at Second City on Tuesdays. To compensate financially I'm taking a breather from the IO writing program, though I intend to finish that later this year.

+ Finally, I'm so relieved to know that CBS has figured out a way to write out Charlie Sheen from "Two and a Half Men." I don't think there could've been a more fitting ending.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1981

2011-02-22T23:42:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying 1981 might've been one of the weakest years ever for rock music. It makes perfect sense, though; from 1977 to 1980, the sound and feel of the genre had changed so dramatically, spawning varieties and subgenres that still are still referenced to this day, that after such a long renaissance period all parties involved needed a breather. The creative vacuum of 1981 was probably intentional, and for most music critics this is where the '70s truly ended the '80s began. That's not to say the sounds of '81 are completely worth overlooking, as implied by the albums, singles, and videos below. Disco was finally dead, punk was heading back underground, new wave was slowly gaining mainstream acceptence, and Top 40 radio was a wasteland of cheesy power ballads, insipid country-pop, and commercial rock.

That aesthetic hangover was felt for much of the first half of the year, but in the wee hours of August 1st, everything changed. It wasn't a sudden shock to the system, as the number of people that watched its debut were estimated in the low thousands, but its aftereffects changed the music industry forever. Long before it became a spawning ground for attention-hungry teen moms and mentally disabled Italian stereotypes, MTV was all about music; this fledging, low-budget cable channel was the greatest marketing tool the music industry never knew they had. We wanted our MTV, we just didn't know it yet.

Typically when I listen to albums for my monthly list, I mentally rate them by letter grade. The majority of the discs that make the final cut earned an "A," with a few scattered "B+" and "B's" toward the bottom. On this particular list of albums, the B's outrated the A's by a 2-to-1 margin. To drive my point home: there were plenty of good, memorable albums of 1981, just not that many great ones.

BEST ALBUMS

1. Damaged, Black Flag. Of all the gritty, visceral bands that came from the California hardcore-punk scene, Black Flag shined the brightest, and their full-length debut Damaged was their definite statement. After going through the parade of frontmen in their early days, the band settled on Henry Rollins, whose furious growl belied his odd charisma and startling intellect. One of many punk and metal albums that fell into Tipper Gore's family-friendly crosshairs in the mid-80s, Damaged has become an enduring document of a particular place, time, and mood.
2. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, David Byrne and Brian Eno. Continuing the brooding high art of Remain in Light --at least, in spirit-- Byrne's kinda-sorta solo debut is a collage of audio samples and demented rhythms. Similtaneously worldly, anxious, and insular, Ghosts preceded the development of cut-and-paste production methods that would dominate the music industry from the late 1980s onward.
3. Dare!, The Human League. Synth-pop's first international superstars set a blueprint of sorts with their third and far away best effort. Known mostly for the infectious single "Don't You Want Me," this record is heavy on pop hooks and what was then state-of-the-art production values. The beats are cold yet danceable, and the band is more concerned with form than content. The sound of Dare! may reek of Reagan-era indulgences, yet this album is a Polaroid snapshot of New Wave's ascent and conquering of FM radio.

4. Tattoo You, The Rolling Stones

5. Talk Talk Talk, The Psychedelic Furs

6. Ghost in the Machine, The Police

7. Wild Gift, X

8. Juju, Siouxsie and the Banshees

9. Hard Promises, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

10. Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club. With the Heads on hiatus (see album #2), the husband-and-wife rhythm section of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth found light tropical breezes as partner-in-crime David Byrne uncovered dark, disturbing sonic patterns. On that opposite end of the spectrum, TTC's initial release was probably just as fun to listen to as it was to produce. Tossed off on a lark during a two-month jam session in Barbados, TTC seemlessly fuses New York alternative with the growing hip-hop scene just down the street at a time when both genres were cribbing each other's notes.

Honorable Mentions: Face Value, Phil Collins; Beauty and the Beat, The Go-Go's; As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays; Signals, Calls, and Marches (EP), Mission of Burma; Moving Pictures, Rush; Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Soft Cell.

BEST SINGLES

"Don't Stop Believin'," Journey
"Sirius/Eye in the Sky," The Alan Parsons Project

"Hold On Tight," Electric Light Orchestra

"Crazy Train," Ozzy Osbourne

"Switching To Glide/This Beat Goes On," The Kings

"Bette Davis Eyes," Kim Carnes

"Edge of Seventeen," Stevie Nicks

"Stand and Deliver," Adam & The Ants

"Ghost Town," The Specials

"6," Neats

"For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)," AC/DC

"Dancing with Myself," Billy Idol

"Bad Reputation," Joan Jett

"You Better You Bet," The Who

"Young Turks," Rod Stewart

BEST VIDEOS

1. "Whip It," Devo. No context necessary-- just crack that whip!

2. "Genius of Love," Tom Tom Club. Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" was probably the first animated music video, but this bright, energetic, and unforgettable clip proved that cartoons can make or break a hit song if the beat's just right.

3. "O Superman (For Massenet)," Laurie Anderson. If "Genius of Love" made animation a viable form, why not avant-garde installation pieces? This video was probably way too weird even for MTV, though it gave Anderson come college-rock notoriety.

4. "Rapture," Blondie. It would probably be unfair to dub Debbie Harry the Pat Boone of hip-hop, but this was the first rap-influenced song to #1 on the Billboard charts, and the video itself was not without its somniferous charm.

5. "When Things Go Wrong," Robin Lane & The Chartbusters. Apparently inspired by "The French Lieutanant's Woman," the LA-based singer-songwriter scored her biggest (i.e. only) hit with an Anglo-centric visual for her doleful girl-power anthem.

Honorable Mention: "Big Brown Eyes," The dB's.

Your thoughts?

Squawk Like an Egyptian

2011-02-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

First it was Tunisia, then Egypt, and now Bahrain and possibly Yemen. What's most remarkable is that these revolutions were largely non-violent; the cradle of civilization has a long, brutal history of mutilation and bloodshed, so what has happened in the last three weeks has been a remarkable leap in progress not just for Egypt but the Mediterranean and Middle East in general. Hosni Mubarak had to go, no question, but what happens now? Stability is absolutely crucial, but temporary military control is seldom truly temporary. The influence of Islam extremists could be potentially troubling.

I'll concede that passive resistance won't work everywhere. One of my peacenik pals on Facebook commented that a violent overthrow of North Korea, beginning or concluding with the assassination of Kim Jong-Il, would be the only such act of bloodshed that she would ever endorse. Some semblance of reform will come to Iran someday, though it won't happen overnight and will likely need American intervention. On our end, combat in Iraq is more or less over, but Afghanistan still teeter-totters between building a democracy and eating itself whole. For all we know, 2011 in the Middle East could be a repeat of the European uprisings of 1968, and the chaos in Cairo is their Prague Spring. All that matters right now is finding a system that works, represents the people in the fairest way possible, and rejects the trend of extremism for something civil and just.

Other notes:

+ Mom Update: it's been more than six months since my mother's stroke, and she's still doing pretty well. In fact, we found out yesterday that in spite of her treatment last year, her hepatitis has now been completely eradicated. Earlier this week she began babysitting some neighbors' kids for a little side income, so I guess it's just business as usual.

+ Improv Update: for anyone in or around Chicago on February 28th, I'll be having my Level 4B class performance at IO. We'll be performing during the 7pm that night in the Cabaret (downstairs) Theater and admission is free to the general public. Drop me a line if you'd like more details.

+ Pitchers and catchers reported to the Kansas City Royals' training camp today. Oh well, there's always 2012. ;)

Next week: the year in music, 1981.

Dutch Rub

2011-02-08T22:39:00.000-08:00

I'm a little bit of a history buff, with a specific focus on U.S. Presidents. In my mind, my all-time top five is set in stone: Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt. The commanders-in-chief that round out my top ten tend to vary: James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson have clinched a spot without question, but I've always believed that William McKinley and James K. Polk are far too underappreciated and that JFK would've been a lock had he finished his first term. So where does Ronald Reagan fit?

Last week marked what would've been Dutch's 100th birthday, and the milestone has not been lost on fawning conservative commentators or the "left-leaning" mainstream media. Life magazine --they still exist, kinda-- published a photo album chronicling Reagan's life and times, and Time magazine raised eyebrows last week with a cover story comparing our 40th president to our 44th. (The contrast between the two men is surprisingly minimal, though the irony was lost on some people.) Where the modern conservative movement treats Reagan like an immortal, there's so much about the man that feels skewed or exaggerated on both ends of the political spectrum. This blog, while somewhat biased, is a solid place to start.

As the blog alludes to, there are two things about Reagan's legacy that I believe are horrifically overlooked: his role in the demise of the Soviet Union and his natural sense of pragmatism. Let's begin with Ronnie's utilitarian side. Reagan was first and foremost a champion of American values, as would be any elected official in this country, but I doubt he ever declared himself a true conservative. With inflation spiraling out of control in his first six months in office, Reagan enacted a sweeping national tax cut; when that backfired in the form of record unemployment, Reagan retreated and raised taxes again... and again... and again. Eleven times between 1981 and 1989 to be exact, usually hitting the poor and lower middle class the hardest. In the long run, the government fell further into debt, and even though inflation faded the national deficit spiraled out of control. Had the Tea Party existed three decades ago, they would've vilified Dutch the same way they tar and feather Obama now (or did, before his recent shift to the middle).

Secondly, there's detente. Reagan was a man of words before action, and had very little use for nuclear weaponry. The famed "Star Wars" defense system was just that, not a specific thumb at a nose to the USSR but a means of protecting America via the space race. Unlike today's more hawkish and xenophobic conservative brand, Reagan wanted to communicate and negotiate with enemy states, and his famed friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev never would've happened if they haven't found a common need for peace and effective arms control. Russia's transition from communism to a pseudo-democracy in the early '90s might've been far bloodier had the US not intervened and become a crucial trade ally.

What I'm saying here can be disputed; after all, I'm comparing the state of American politics circa 25-30 years ago to now, and hypothetical distance feels even longer. Regardless, it feels like conservative activists have dumbed down the Reagan legacy, adding their own embellishments to suit their views, or ignored crucial elements altogether. He was not anti-taxation, he was not a champion of small government, nor was he playing to a strict partisan agenda. Seven years after his passing, Dutch has become an unlikely false idol, and in reality he would've eaten blowhards like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for lunch. Reagan's apathy towards liberal '80s issues like abortion and apartheid didn't necessarily make him a conservative, but a leader whose drive and determination was focused elsewhere. After a rocky first two years in office, Reagan finally found that right formula of job growth and prosperity, but only after a tremendous amount of trial and error.

In conclusion, Ronald Reagan was a successful president for never compromising or catering to anyone's whims, making only minor adjustments to his general platform. He set the template for the "cowboy president" George W. Bush wanted to be but never was, and the maverick that John McCain built his reputation upon but later rebuked for party puppetry. This is why so many Baby Boomer Democrats brag that he was the only Republican they ever voted for. Simply put, Ronald Reagan was an imperfect president, but he made things work.

Thunderbuck Rahm?

2011-02-01T20:17:00.000-08:00

With 3 1/2 weeks to go, I couldn't be more apathetic about the Chicago mayoral elections. It's more lethergy than political bias; there's just nothing about any of the candidates that inspire me. As it stands the title of hizzoner is a two-man race between Rahm Emanuel, who was nearly kicked off the ballot last week for not meeting residency standards, and Gery Chico, who lacks his opponent's flash and name recognition but has demonstrated far more substance. Former U.S. Senator and onetime presidential hopeful Carol Moseley Braun was an early contender, but this incident involving a more obscure mayoral opponent basically killed her candidacy just as it was gaining momentum. I'm in full support of honesty in politics, but wow...

Regardless of who wins later this month, Rich Daley's successor has a tall order to follow: money woes, unemployment, a growing crime rate and a soaring murder rate. The mayor of Chicago is the landowner of a urban serfdom; you would think he was the de facto ruler of northeast Illinois from the attention he receives on the 10 o'clock news. The urban legend that Daley the Elder swayed the 1960 election from Nixon to Kennedy is mostly a right-wing conspiracy --JFK won Illinois in a landslide that year, so it wouldn't have mattered-- but the mayor's impact as a Democratic persuader and negotiator on the state and (to a degree) national scene is equally unheralded and indispensable. Where Emanuel would fit that role to a tee, Chico seems more like a pragmatic, transparent type of mayor. And yet, it would mean absolutely nothing to me if either man won.

Other notes:

+ As many of you have heard by now, the Illinois government voted to raise state taxes by 66%. The only good thing that came of this was that it was lower than the original proposed hike, which was 75%. The spike was justified by the crippling debt that faces our state, and 66% was the bare-bones minimum to keep everything running. To put this into context: a year ago, the average Illinoisan forked over 3% of their annual wages to the state. Now it's 5%. Considering that Pat Quinn won a full term in office by the slimmest of margins, I wouldn't say this tax hike endeared him to any of his political opponents.

+ Good news: after a four-week layover, I'm back on a temp job. Bad news: that means driving three towns over in a winter storm that the local media has alternately dubbed "Snowmageddon," "The Snowpocalyse," and "Point of Snow Return." More bad news: I also have to work Super Bowl Sunday, which means missing improv class for the very first time I began nearly two years ago. Sort of good news: there are four other Level 4B sessions during the week, so I can make it up then.

+ Speaking of the Super Bowl, this might be the first time in years that I couldn't care less about either team. As a Bears fan, you couldn't persuade me to root for Green Bay if you tried, and between Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger I can't decide which Pennsylvania NFL team has the more disgusting human being for a quarterback. I concluded after watching the AFC Championship last week that I'll probably root for the commercials.

That Wonderful Year in Music... 1996

2011-01-25T20:27:00.000-08:00

As many rock historians will argue, 1996 was grunge's final stand; the genre was fully immersed in the alternative movement and the punk revival, but that revitalizing Seattle aesthetic had run its course. In retrospect, the rock sound was haunted by the ghosts of alt-nation past (Kurt Cobain), present (Bradley Nowell), and future (Layne Staley), and we the fans were Ebenezer Scrooge. 1996 was also a commercially successful year for female singer-songwriters with alternative inclinations; the popularity of Tori Amos, Alanis Morrissette, Sarah McLachlan, Fiona Apple and others --while not necessarily enduring-- was enough to launch the Lilith Fair music and arts festival, i.e. "the women's Woodstock," a year later.

From a personal perspective, 1996 was the year I turned 12 years old, and it was probably the first year I demonstrated any interest in politics. I spent a big chunk of the year parroting my dad's political beliefs (social moderate, fiscal conservative, pro-Flat Tax), demonizing President Clinton with the luddite bluster of a radio pundit, and alienating some of my sixth-grade cla.ssmates in the process. The Democratic National Convention was in Chicago that year, and I avoided news coverage of the proceedings like the plague. A decade and a half later, my underinformed and transparent dabbles with conservatism feel like juvenilia, a phase of my life that I don't look back upon fondly. On a more positive and less polarizing note, 1996 was the year I attended my first Kansas City Royals game (at New Comiskey), my first Blackhawks game (versus Anaheim), and moved into the attic bedroom that I spent the majority of my teenage years.

BEST ALBUMS:

1. Pinkerton, Weezer. Rivers Cuomo set the blueprint for the band's 1994 debut: sunny, heavy guitar-pop with proto-emo and punk flourishes. Their sophomore effort was also heavily manuevered by Cuomo, eschewing playful power chords for raging, squealing guitars. Initially lambasted for taking such a starting left turn --Pinkerton made many critics' worst albums lists that year-- this album now stands as a singular artistic achievement bolstered by Cuomo's growth as an anxious, witty songwriter. Time heals all wounds, it seems.

2. Odelay!, Beck. In 1993, wispy anti-folk singer Beck Hansen released "Loser," a surrealistic blues-meets-rap lark that spoke to millions of jaded Gen-Xers. Three years later Beck, with crucial assistance from uber-producers The Dust Brothers, cut Odelay!, an album that fleshed out his unique voice, eclectic sound, and constant stylistic shifts. The album scored three Top 40 hits, but Odelay! is best enjoyed as one singular recording, a sonic mosaic whose overall image is greater than the sum of its parts.

3. The Score, The Fugees. An oasis from the increasingly monotonous and repetitive Gangsta Rap sub-genre, Lauryn Hill, Pras, and Wyclef Jean gave hip-hop a badly needed transfusion of intelligensia and social consciousness with their masterpiece The Score. It's hard to find a track that tops the clever "Fu-Gee-La," but the two standouts here are both covers: a funky rendition of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With Her Song" that turned Hill into an MC to be reckoned with, and an interpretation of Bob Marley's "No Woman No Cry" that makes you wonder why it wasn't a rap song to begin with.

4. Being There, Wilco

5. If You're Feeling Sinister, Belle and Sebastian

6. Evil Empire, Rage Against The Machine

7. Tidal, Fiona Apple

8. Sublime, Sublime

9. Everything Must Go, Manic Street Preachers

10. No Code, Pearl Jam. An underappreciated entry in the PJ canon, their fourth album might pale to their first three efforts yet rocks hard all the same. What might alienate you upon first listen is Eddie Vedder's sudden interest in Eastern religion and philosophy; each track delineates or alludes to some type of moral dilemma. Acoustic tracks like "In My Tree" and "Off He Goes" provide free range for Vedder's soul-searching, diamonds in the rough of a flawed yet utterly fascinating recording.

Honorable Mentions: Tigermilk, Belle and Sebastian; Maniacal Laughter, Bouncing Souls; Fashion Nugget, Cake; Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z; Murder Ballads, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds; Millions Now Living Will Never Die, Tortoise.

BEST SINGLES:

"Santa Monica," Everclear

"Here in Your Bedroom," Goldfinger

"Swallowed," Bush

"Popular," Nada Surf

"Sucked Out," Superdrag

"Pretty Noose," Soundgarden

"Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart," Stone Temple Pilots

"Too Much," The Dave Matthews Band

"Pepper," Butthole Surfers

"Setting Sun," The Chemical Brothers

BEST VIDEOS:

1. "1979," The Smashing Pumpkins. One day in the life of a group of disaffected teenagers wandering nomadically in a late-70s model Dodge Charger. Billy Corgan once said this was his favorite Pumpkins video, though quite a few fans would argue for...

2. "Tonight Tonight," The Smashing Pumpkins. ...this, a faithful homage to the early 20th century silent film A Trip to the Moon starring Tom Kenny and Jill Talley of "Mr. Show" fame.

3. "Drop," The Pharcyde. After big years in 1994 and 1995, video director par excellence Spike Jonze had a relatively quiet '96. During his breather, however he still managed to create one great forwards-going-backwards clip featuring one of the '90s most memorable one-hit wonders and a litany of special guests.

4. "The Distance," Cake. A corporate drone runs away from his life and responsibilities --literally-- and encounters Fellini-esque oddballs in a colorful visualization of one of the year's best left-field hits.

5. "Big Me," Foo Fighters. Hey, remember those old Mentos "Freshmakers" commercials?

Honorable Mentions: "Sunday Morning," No Doubt; "Heaven Beside You," Alice in Chains.

Your thoughts?

Bearing Down

2011-01-18T22:38:00.000-08:00

A great portion of my life lately has revolved around my adventures in the city of Chicago, so I apologize in advance if I seem regionally biased today:

As a Bears fan, this Sunday's matchup against the Packers is just icing on the cake. Considering what a divisive rivalry Chicago and Green Bay have, it's a marvel to think we've only met in the NFL playoffs once before, nearly 70 years ago. It goes without saying that this is the most meaningful Monsters/Cheddarheads showdown of my lifetime. I still worry about "good Cutler" and "bad Cutler," but the fact that we've made it this far is either a testament to our defense and special teams or how underwhelming the NFC was this year. Either way, I'm quite placated.

When you think about it, the Chicago sports teams in their current incarnation are a lot like the original cast of "M*A*S*H." The Blackhawks are Hawkeye (natch), the Bears are Trapper, the Bulls are Col. Blake, the Cubs and White Sox are Ferret Face and Hot Lips --you know, the comic relief-- and the Sky is Radar. Each team possesses traces of that character's quirks: the Hawks are boozy and freewheeling, Da Bears are bumbling but affable, the Cubs are borderline incompetent and constantly blaming others for their shortcomings, and the Pale Hose are shrill and overly defensive. I vaguely remember Trapper wearing a basketball jersey in one episode, and if you can make a decent Radar/Sky analogy, let me know.

Meanwhile, two weeks ago I started Writing 3 at IO. After taking on late night monologue jokes and sketch comedy, the focus has shifted to perfecting a spec script. My weekly "homework" is slightly weightier and time-consuming --hence this short entry-- but I'm still enjoying the challenge the class provides. My original idea for an episode of "American Dad!" didn't seem to impress my colleagues, but now I'm running with something I'm far more satisfied with. Concurrently, I'm in improv Level 4B across the hallway, where we're finally approaching performance level. By my best estimate, my class will be performing sometime in late February. In the meantime, I'm still jamming for 12-15 minutes every late Saturday night as Lyndsay Hailey's opening act. For you locals out there, I hope you check it out sometime.

Next Week: the year in music, 1996.

One Day in Tucson

2011-01-11T19:55:00.000-08:00

What happened Saturday morning in Tucson, AZ is exactly what I've feared in today's political spectrum. Granted, there is no implication that Jared Lee Loughner was motivated by anything in the media, but you wouldn't assume that from MSNBC and Fox News' coverage of the shooting. A Democratic congresswoman in a predomantly Republican state is wounded --almost declared dead, even-- and instead of joining together to mourn and reflect the partisan sniping is just as loud as its ever been.

In the wake of the shooting, Andrew Sullivan posted this blog entry. The implication of violence is blunt, though former Gov. Palin announced a day later that the crosshair metaphor weren't intended to provoke harm upon her political rivals. I may not agree with Palin's views, and she seemed as geniunely appalled by the shootings as anyone else, but I hope she uses less incediary language in the future. I'm sure Sully and Grizzly Mama would agree: acts of violence against elected political figures destroy democracy itself, regardless of affiliation.

As for my original point: naturally, partisan pundits and other assorted talking heads are saying the massacre was politically motivated. Simply put, what I declared in regard to the Holocaust Museum shooting two years ago still applies now: hatred has no political affiliation. The man (boy?) that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and cruelly gunned down six others was a deranged loner, an anti-Semetic wannabe demagogue intent on wiping out "the Jew problem." This is not conservatives picking off liberals or the left playing crybaby on the right; it was one man with one gun and a vague, wholly demented understanding of how the world really works.

On top of that, crazy begats more insanity; it was only a matter of time before the hate-mongerers at Westboro Baptist "Church" announced that they will picket the funeral of the shootings' youngest victim. Their relentlessness is confounding, as is the tasteless attitude of nearly every attention whore scrambling to get their five minutes' time on the cable news outlets. Jon Stewart put it best: I wish we could pin the blame on something tangential, but we can't, so we finger whoever and whatever we normally would oppose. That might be the biggest tragedy of all.

Other notes:

+ It didn't occur to me until after I posted my blog last week that 289 is 17 squared. For more on my "obsession" with the prime number, click here for a "memorable" blog from September 2008.

+ In early December, I was discussing literature with an IO classmate and she chided me for reading mostly magazines. It dawned on me that I hadn't read a novel cover-to-cover all year, and she was right to point out this hiccup. Over the summer, I had tried to read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, but I couldn't get into it and gave up by page 75. Shortly after that conversation, I stopped at my local library and checked out The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, which I read at my temp job during breaks or whenever the phones died down. I finished the book by December 30th, and after a quick breather I'm now in the early stages of reading The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow.

+ We took advantage of a division that was weaker than the experts projected, our offensive line is still pretty shaky, we're playing a losing team that spanked our asses three months ago, and I'm still convinced that Lovie Smith isn't all that, but... GO BEARS!!!

House of Cards

2011-01-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

Some thoughts on the "new" 112th U.S. Congress:

Last month, The New Yorker ran a fascinating profile about incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner. It was a surprisingly impartial, intermittently flattering portrayal of the Ohio congressman, though one point in the article resonated with me. His rise to power in the last two or three years, a steady climb that began in the early '90s and was almost derailed when he answered a lobbyist's siren song, has been a remarkable story of political strategy not only on his part but his allies and opponents as well. Boehner positoned himself as a Tea Party sympathizer when he agreed with maybe 50% of their platform, and his prominence in the house made him a willing target of sorts for both Democratic bigwigs and left-leaning pundits. The icing on the cake came just before the election, when President Obama himself called Boehner out during a speech, a moment that evoked the one-on-one, partisan deus ex machina between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich 15-plus years ago. The parallels are quite striking, though you can draw the similarities on your own.

Now that we're halfway through President Obama's first term in office --yes, I'm looking at the glass as half full-- I confess that I don't regret voting for him in 2008. Rest assured, this is not liberal bluster. If I had to choose between the candidate that responded immediately when the economy collapsed against a candidate that temporarily suspended his campaign to figure out what he was going to do, I'd go with the guy that already had a plan. I'm not saying that the Obama economic agenda is perfect, but at least his team had a strategy in place. It's not that the government shouldn't be spending our tax dollars on rebuilding America's physical, sociopolitical, and economic infrastructure so much as it's the little frivolities that grinds my gears. A government cannot function without some type of financial redistribution; it's just a matter of how that money is spent.

As I alluded to in my midterm election blog two months ago, the GOP's takeover of the House of Representatives has short-term consequences, but what happens in 2012 is still anyone's guess. The Democratic blowout of the 1982 midterms was a response to President Reagan's wobbly first two years in office, but he won reelection two years later in a landslide. The "Republican Revolution" of 1994 was a rebuke of President Clinton and his failed attempt at health care reform, but he was elected to a second term in 1996 by a clear margin. Then again, the GOP gobbled up the house in the 1978 midterms when President Carter's economic and foreign policies were non-starters, and look what happened there. The number of X-factors that will pop up between now and November 2012 are infinite and endless at this point.

I know I've railed against the GOP establishment many times over the years, and I'm still hesitant to give credit to the Tea Party candidates, but all this fresh blood will help our government in the short term. The passings of Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and (indirectly) Ted Stevens in the past 18 months gave way to young, unproven but determined voices in our nation's highest legislature, fresh points of view that were badly needed. The question is, will these conservative young guns provide new ideas, or merely serve as resistance and vocal dissention to President Obama? Will the two or three new Democrats go in lockstep with the President, or find their own voice? Will they push or shove?

My Last Blog of 2010

2010-12-28T21:07:00.000-08:00

When you think about it, 2010 went by like a blur. I guess time flies by when you're fruitlessly mailing and e-mailing resumes to prospective employers. In all seriousness though, with the exorbitant amount of free time I had during the Summer and Fall of 2010, it doesn't seem like the year is almost over. From a media perspective, it was a year of buzzwords: from Eyjafjallajökull to "refudiate," from vuvuzela to WikiLeaks, it was a solid 12-month span for gibberish and foreign proper names. It was a great year for pop culture --especially TV and music-- and a terrible year for almost everything else. (Forgive me if this blog seems a little slipshod; there's so much to reminisce about and too little time to express it.)

THE BEST TV SHOWS OF 2010

1. "Mad Men," AMC. Jon Hamm was runner-up for EW's Entertainer of the Year, and for good reason. Besides two strong outings on SNL and a dilligent performance in The Town, his portrayal of enigmatic '60s ad exec Don Draper has nearly made him a TV icon for our time. The show itself has also benefitted with Hamm at its center, turning out a somewhat polarizing season of bravura performances and clever writing. Notable Episodes: "The Rejected," "The Suitcase," "The Beautiful Girls."
2. "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Comedy Central. As inherently political as TDS might be, the show is first and foremost a parody and skewering of a mass media that can't bother to be objective anymore. People have caught on, too: on any given night, Jon and his "correspondents" are pummeling Leno and Letterman in the ratings. Notable Episodes: TDS doesn't really have episode titles --it's a talk show, mind you-- but there's plenty of clips on Hulu, YouTube et al. that prove my point.
3. "Parks & Recreation," NBC. With "The Office" slowly fading into the sunset, P&R has become Thursday night's best and most underappreciated comedy. Amy Poehler earned a well-deserved Emmy nomination as eager small-town bureaucrat Leslie Knope, but Nick Offerman and Aziz Ansari were snubbed outright. If only more people would catch on... Notable Episodes: "Sweetums," "Telethon," "The Master Plan."
4. "Modern Family," ABC. No show balances laughs with low-key charm quite like the blended Pritchett clan. It's a family sitcom at heart, though not always family-friendly, but honest and grounded enough to keep you tuned in. Few shows have ever captured the complicated dynamic of a strong, lasting marriage quite like Mod-Fam. Notable Episodes: "Airport 2010," "Strangers on a Treadmill," "Halloween."
5. "Community," NBC. Talk about patience and perseverance: I put this show on my best of 2009 list on the heels of two strong episodes following an uneven start. I'm relieved to know that my praise was a sign of things to come, as "Community" has really come into its own in the past calendar year. "Modern Family" notwithstanding, this show has quite possibly the best comedy ensemble on television. Notable Episodes: "Modern Warfare," "The Psychology of Letting Go," "Epidemiology."

Honorable Mentions: "Boardwalk Empire," HBO; "In Treatment," HBO.

Best Show That I Need to Start Watching on a Regular Basis: "Breaking Bad," AMC.

Best Random Guest Appearance: Norman Lloyd on "Modern Family." Forget about Betty White for a moment-- it's a marvel that the 96-year-old thespian still manages to nab steady work. Best known as the last surviving member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater players and as Dr. Auschlander on "St. Elsewhere," Lloyd is a living legend that 90% of the populace knows nothing about. I almost didn't notice him when I saw the "Manny Get Your Gun" episode, which either says something about Lloyd's advanced age or his workman-like ability to disappear into a role.

Worst Random Guest Appearance: Justin Bieber on "CSI." Do I really need to explain this?

Worst Show of 2010: "Bridalplasty," E! Aspiring brides-to-be compete for boob jobs and facelifts in a narcissistic, disturbing, and altogether sad mash-up of "The Swan" and "Say Yes to the Dress." Case evidence of reality television and their obsession with the lowest common denominator.
Runner-Up: "Outsourced," NBC. If this were halfway decent, I would've forgave NBC for handing Park & Rec's time slot to this culture-clash single-camera comedy. Instead, "Outsourced" is more or less the Indian "Amos n' Andy," playing to stereotypes about spicy food, funny accents, and polytheism like a New Dehli minstrel show. Saying this show is an accurate depiction of an Indian workplace is like saying Sbarro is the cutting edge of Italian cuisine.

THE YEAR IN NEWS
　
My Favorite Political Cartoon of 2010: This.

In Memoriam: Miep Gies, J.D. Salinger, Eric Rohmer, Doug Fieger, T-Bone Wolk, Merlin Olsen, Lynn Redgrave, Dennis Hopper, Sen. Robert Byrd, Lena Horne, Ronnie James Dio, Rue McClanahan, Alex Chilton, Andy Hummel, John Wooden, Gloria Stuart, Greg Giraldo, Robert Schimmel, Tony Curtis, Jill Clayburgh, Barbara Billingsley, Tom Bosley, Leslie Nielsen, Dino DeLaurentiis, Elizabeth Edwards, Ted Sorensen, Maurice Lucas, Pat Burns, George "Sparky" Anderson, Bob Feller, "Dandy Don" Meredith, Roy Neuberger, Richard Holbrooke, Steve Landesberg, Blake Edwards, Teena Marie, Gardner Kissick, and "Still Bill" Johnson.

Finally, because I haven't posted any in awhile, here's a couple of Top 5 lists to wrap up the year.

Five Obscure Monty Python References That Might Work as Names for Bands:
1. Hovercraft of Eels
2. Whicker's World
3. The Machine That Goes Bing
4. Kamikaze Highlander
5. Toad the Wet Sprocket*

Five Tips for Aspiring Grad School Students:
1. You have at least six bodily fluids you can donate to pay for tuition
2. If the school crest has a bottle of trucker pills on it, you're in good hands
3. Don't be afraid to consider moving far away to earn your masters or doctorate, as you will never see your friends and family anyway
4. As impressive as the publication of your epic research paper might be, it won't score you a free Whopper at Burger King
5. There is a growing perception in American culture that baccalaureate degrees are "the new high school diploma" since in the last 25 years, job growth has stagnated for Americans that stopped their education with a bachelor's, so imagine how far that masters will get you in the long run

SEE YOU IN 2011!

That Wonderful Year in Music... 2010

2010-12-22T04:58:00.000-08:00

To be honest, I was blindsided by what a strong year this was for music. The number of new albums I listened to this year didn't vary much, but there was more to enjoy than I did in 2008 or 2009. I typically check out new sounds concurrently with whatever year I'm analyzing for my monthly music blog, and it got to a point about three or four months ago that I putting more energy in my year-end list than whatever else I listening to. There's a running theme to this year's list: established artists releasing career-defining albums, familiar faces with seemingly nothing left to prove but plenty of ways to prove that assumption wrong, newer acts challenging themselves in unexpected ways, a weird sense of fearlessness and a general lack of inhibition. Of course, you never would've heard any of this brilliance on CHR radio, but that's a discussion for another time.

On that note, I defeated myself somewhat and expanded this list to 20 albums. Like I said before, there was too much in 2010 that I enjoyed that had to merit some type of mention. I tried to make this list as complete as possible, though there are a few discs I still need to check out (sorry, Janelle Monae).

ALBUMS

1. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire. I'm probably one of the few people on the planet that thought the Fire's 2007 album Neon Bible was better than their 2004 debut Funeral. It wasn't a mere extension of ideas, I argued, but the next logical step. Their third effort, The Suburbs, raises the bar even higher. Inspired mostly by the Butler brothers' Houston upbringing, this is a concept album about a world of nostalgia that may not really exist. The Suburbs is whimsical without being too quirky, cynical but not too apathetic, and the right amount of sentimental.

2. Brothers, The Black Keys. What if the White Stripes had a more pure blues-rock sound, and was a real band rather than a vehicle for Jack White's guitar noodling? Enter The Black Keys, a visceral, Ohio-based guitar-drums duo with a yen for '60s soul and psychedlic-period Howlin' Wolf. Their third proper album is 15 tracks of scruffy, growling blues-punk whose appeal never wears out. This is by far the best music produced in Muscle Shoals, AL in decades.

3. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West. Kanye might very well be the most enigmatic superstar in the world. When he doesn't keep his ego in check, he's an annoying, attention-hungry jerk. When he shuts his mouth and gets to business, he's an indisputable genius. His fifth album is paid as advertised; no album in any genre has been so sonically sparwling yet so singular in its madness anywhere in recent memory. It's as if Kanye set a Thomas Pynchon novel to music...

4. Congratulations, MGMT

5. This is Happening, LCD Soundsystem

6. Contra, Vampire Weekend

7. Treats, Sleigh Bells

8. King of the Beach, Wavves

9. High Violet, The National

10. Together, The New Pornographers. After four albums of fascinating power-pop/indie-rock workshopping by a confederacy of similar-minded musicians, Neko Case, AC Newman, et al. finally begin to sound like a real band on the fittingly named Together. A supergroup in concept only, the Pornographers' sound is now less of a buffet and more of a potluck dinner, a scrappy feast of catchy songs and whimsical songcraft.

11. Broken Bells, Broken Bells

12. Odd Blood, Yeasayer

13. Beat the Devil's Tattoo, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

14. Teen Dream, Beach House

15. The Monitor, Titus Andronicus. The unofficial award for most improved band goes to this New Jersey-based quartet, whose nondescript garage-rock debut in 2008 bears precious little resemblance to their stunning second effort. An entire album of songs about the Civil War, played by what sounds like the best Pogues cover band on the planet, should've been too weird to work yet it demolishes what low expectations such a far-fetched idea might garner. I guess all you need is a little ambition.

16. Plastic Beach, Gorillaz

17. One Life Stand, Hot Chip

18. Infinite Arms, Band of Horses

19. The Orchard, Ra Ra Riot

20. /\/\/\Y/\ (a/k/a Maya), M.I.A. One of the most undeservedly maligned albums of the past year, the Sri Lankan alt-dance star reinforces her knack for lyrical tongue-twisters, and that motherhood and marriage hasn't quashed her desire for a challenge. The percussion work on this disc is raw and often relentless, perhaps too sonically brutal for certain tastes. Beneath all the chaos, however are some instantly satisfying yet intentionally imperfect tracks.

Coolest Gimmick: The compact disc of The Black Keys' "Brothers" changes colors while the disc is playing.

Worst Album of 2010: Rebirth, Lil' Wayne. There is little denying Weezy's gifts as a rapper, but when it comes to dabbles in other genres --especially this somewhat anticipated, mostly embarassing foray into rap-rock-- even a genius should stick to what he knows best. Worse yet, amidst piles of insipid guitar solos and gaudy overproduction, the wit and wacky wordplay of his previous work is nowhere to be found on Rebirth. Young Tune declares himself a "funky monkey" on the track "Da Da Da," and had that track found a greater audience, that alone probably would've set rock, hip-hop, and race relations back 50 years.

SINGLES

"Symphonies," Dan Black feat. Kid Cudi
"Fuck You," Cee-Lo

"One Way Road," The John Butler Trio

"When My Time Comes," Dawes

"You And Your Heart," Jack Johnson

"In The Sun," She & Him

"Swim Until You Can't See Land," Frightened Rabbit

"Bushwick Blues," Delta Spirit

"Early Morning Wake-Up Call," The Hives

"National Ransom," Elvis Costello

Worst Song of 2010: "Hey Soul Sister," Train. If I have to hear this song one more time, so help me God...

VIDEOS

After a weak 2009, music videos enjoyed a minor renaissance in 2010. Though second-hand VHS downloads of old MTV videos have been a staple on YouTube et al. since the site's inception, it wasn't until the last year or so that video directors really took advantage of the medium. Better late than never, I guess.

1. "This Too Shall Pass," OK Go. When I was in eighth grade, I was assigned a Rube Goldberg-type project in science class. My final assignment was a complete mess, and I earned one of the few F's of my academic career. It was not until after I saw this video that I finally got over that humiliation.

2. "Tightrope," Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi. '60s soul meets 21st-century hip-hop in this well-choreographed clip.

3. "Love The Way You Lie," Eminem feat. Rihanna. A big part of Marshall Mathers' renaissance in 2010 was this VH1/Fuse staple, starring Megan Fox and the guy who played Charlie on "Lost" as lovers that shouldn't be together yet can't stay apart.

4. "Drunk Girls," LCD Soundsystem. Word to the wise: this is what happens when you piss off a bunch of guys in panda costumes.

5. "Madder Red," Yeasayer. A shot-for-shot remake of "Old Yeller," except its four minutes long, shot in modern-day Los Angeles, and stars Kristen Bell and a one-eyed alien blob.

6. "Dog Days Are Over" (Version 2), Florence + The Machine. The British singer-songwriter jumps around in Kabuki garb in this strange yet alluring clip.

7. "Tighten Up" (Version 1), The Black Keys. Rawr! Funky puppet dinosaurs!

8. "Giving Up The Gun," Vampire Weekend. Tennis, anyone?

9. "White Knuckles," OK Go. It's not uncommon for an artist to have multiple clips in one year, but two outright great clips in less than 12 months is quite a feat.

10. "Laughing With a Mouth of Blood," St. Vincent. An early preview of the upcoming IFC comedy series "Portlandia" finds Fred Armisen and Sleater-Kinney frontwoman Carrie Brownstein as prickly lesbian bookstore owners and the singer-songwriter as their unwitting foil.

Next Week: the year in TV, and my final thoughts on 2010.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!