the sticking point

Chin Music

I was reading the Jack Curry article in today's Times, about the owner of Barry Bonds's record-setting home run ball deciding to mark it with an asterisk before offering it to Cooperstown. That's sort of cool. I imagine the signage near the Hall of Fame's display will have language explaining why the "scarlet" ideogram is on there.

The article included a quote by a "baseball historian." I was surprised to see who it was. Pete Nash. Formerly known as Pete Nice. Formerly also known as Prime Minister Pete Nice of 3rd Bass. Did you know he was a baseball historian now? I didn't. He's written books about baseball. [1, 2]

Just stuff...
The Yankees are in the playoffs now. I'll be glad if they play the Indians in the first round, not only because they were 6-0 against Cleveland this season, but because it means the Red Sox and Angels get to bang each other's brains in. I hope that series goes the distance, and all five games are extra-inning ordeals. And I hope all that cross-country travel wears them out.

The Indians have a great pitching staff (and pitching rules October), but their lineup looks harmless.

* I watched the Yankees' postgame celebration last night, and couldn't help thinking how pointless and stupid the Champagne spraying is. It looks like the kind of thing you do because it's expected, but deep inside you feel silly.

* The National League doesn't have a team capable of beating the A.L. postseason contenders. The World Series could be a blowout.

* On the ballfield, Derek Jeter is unimpeachable. He's all hustle, and he consistently knows the right play to make. Last week, my brother-in-law asked if I'd rather have A-Rod or Jeter on Team Sticking Point. A-Rod's got more talent, strengths, and abilities, but Jeter's the guy to have. He's a hero and a future first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. But, off-the-field, Jeter's been annoying the shit out of me. He's become increasingly arrogant in post-game interviews, answering questions with snarky questions of his own. I just KNOW there are reporters wishing they could say, "Stop being a dick and just answer the question. Your night is over. I still have to write this piece. Two hours from now, while you're forking over cab fare for some model's ride home, I'll be raking over my second draft of this puffery." Not to mention that when he's not being a douche, Jeter's the most predictably boring interviewee in the clubhouse. For a while, this was good, as it helped the Yankees reshape their image from self-serving millionaires (1976-1994) to dutiful, blue-collar millionaires (1995-present). Now he's just a bore. (And for Christ's sake, stop beginning every other answer with, "Like I said..." Because you didn't. I don't know when you think you said it, but it wasn't in this interview!)

Secondly, Jeter's become a shill. Is there any endorsement deal he won't sign? Watch a Yankees game, and you'll see him on more commercials than the gecko and the cavemen combined. Colognes... deodorants... cars... trucks... credit cards, sneakers, colorful sports drinks, he hawks it all! It's obscene to watch him climb out of a $35,000 truck and brag that he just got one in red.
Thirdly... that hairstyle. Really? You're sticking with that, Jeet? It looks like someone glued a hairy rice cake to your head. (If such a thing doesn't exist, it should; if only to help make Derek Jeter halloween costumes more realistic.)

* A-Rod has become a boring and predictable interview, too. But I'll cut him some slack, because he must be shit scared that saying the wrong thing will bring the boo storms back to the Stadium. It was practically stop-the-presses earth-shattering to see him nod his head last night when a Yes reporter started a question with "With all this talk about you being the runaway MVP in the American League...".

Rodriguez is the first player to hit 50+ homers and drive in more than 150 runs in a single season since Sammy Sosa in 2001. And if you can barely see Sosa's numbers through the Stanozolol-stained glasses, you've got to look back to 1938, when the great Jimmie Foxx did it (50/175).

* Remember spring training, when Yankee fans and the New York media were sweating the How's Joe Torre Going To Get Melky Cabrera In The Lineup Dilemma? Now we look up and Melky's notched 147 games and 535 at bats so far. It's Lebowskian, how the baseball universe provides.

* I've been a Doug Mientkiewicz fan since '99, when he had a really hot week for my fantasy baseball team. He's a great fit on the Yankees, and exactly the kind of player that excels in the postseason: a smart situational hitter/great fielder. He's kind of a "discount" Paul O'Neill. (That's a compliment.)

He's a lot of fun to watch, but the ball-signing incident took the some of the polish off Shelly Duncan's shine. Mainly because he was signing for a kid. If that were an adult member of Red Sox Nation (or, best of all, that decrepit Robert Redford-clone season ticket holder behind the plate at Fenway), I'd be laughing my ass off.

* The Division Series starts Wednesday. If the Yankees remain the wild card team my tickets will be for Game 4, the following Monday.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Mystery Achievement from the album Pretenders by Pretenders, The

Vout For Voutoreenees

I've been listening to a lot of good music this week, mostly stuff that I've just gotten. To share the wealth, I plucked select songs out of the bunch, and bundled them into a free download sampler for you. Let me know what you think.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DOWNLOAD.

THURSTON MOORE
Trees Outside The Academy: I wonder if anyone expected this record to be so user-friendly. I'm sure the expectations were for 79 minutes and thirty seconds of experimental meanderings. Mine were. Instead, Thurston matches pop song structures with textured, easy-to-digest, idiophonic guitar. It is so good.
Sampler track: "Fri/End"

*

PUBLIC ENEMY
How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???: Public Enemy are first-ballot inductees in the Bad-Album-Title Hall of Fame. They've sure had some shitty ones. (Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age resides in its very own category of ridiculous.) But here's the good news: How You Sell... is PE's best record in 15 years. The bad news, of course, is that its not as impressive a feat as you'd think. There are a lot of tracks worth hearing on this, and I'm really glad Chuck is back with a credible record after all this time.
Sampler track: "Black is Back"

*

WEEDEATER
God Luck and Good Speed: I just discovered this band last week. I was watching an online video of Jim Wendler, a powerlifter I admire. He had this CD in his bag. From what I've heard on various weight-training videos, gym phreaks listen to an awful lot of horseshit, but I figured I'd track the Weedeater down and give them a shot. Lucky me. I've been listening to it plenty. Finding good music this way is like making a new friend. I should have already been aware of Weedeater, via their connection with Billy Anderson, who's worked on High on Fire, Melvins, and Swans records I love. Their web address is weedeatertheband.com.
Sampler track: "God Luck and Good Speed"

*

FLOGGING MOLLY
Alive Behind The Green Door
Swagger
Drunken Lullabies
Within a Mile of Home
Whiskey on a Sunday
The only FM song I had heard was from a season-1 episode of Weeds, "If I Ever Leave This World Alive." I got curious about the group, and tracked down the five records above. (My curiosity manifests itself in obsession.) In reading up on the band, I discovered what you all probably already knew: the lead singer is Dave King, who was the voice of Fastway in the 80s. I'm not sure if any more than a few Flogging Molly tracks will end up on my iPod; there's a lot of music to sift through and it's all starting to blend together. (But I can dig a band who's first release is a live record.)
Sampler tracks: "Salty Dog" from Swagger and "If I Ever Leave This World Alive" from Drunken Lullabies.

*

DEERHOOF
Untitled: I'm crazy about this band, so I was happy when I checked out their website the other day and found a web-only offering of free mp3s. It's a collection of oddities and rarities. Interesting stuff.
Sampler track: "Holy Night Fever"

*

TINARIWEN
Amassakoul and Aman Iman: I have loved one of their tracks ("Tasskiwet") for a while, and reckoned it was time to find more. These two records were a good place for me to continue my education in Tinariwen music. The musicians are Malinese Tuareg rebels. I'm still tracking down as much web material as I can to learn more about them. The music is extraordinary.
Sampler tracks: "Assoul" from Amassakoul and "Awa Didjen" from Aman Iman

*

PEEPING TOM
Peeping Tom: Maybe I saved the best for last. I'd been jonesing the Peeping Tom stuff for awhile. I finally got hold of it last week and I can't let go. I put two tracks on the sampler, because you may already have heard "Mojo," which was the single/video. Peeping Tom is Mike Patton (of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Tomahawk, etc.) and a varied gang of contributors. The participants assembled these songs by mail.
Sampler track: "Caipirinha" (feat. Bebel Gilberto) and "Mojo" (feat. Rahzel & Dan The Automator)

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Fuck Was I from the album Batten The Hatches by Youngs, Jenny Owen

Small Figures on a Vast Expanse

Last night was Rilo Kiley at Webster Hall. As RK shows go, this one was pretty damn disappointing. I thought they were sleepwalking through it for a while. The band was passionless until the seventh song, “The Moneymaker,” which seemed like the first song they actually wanted to play. It was followed by four more exciting ones in a row. I thought they'd hit the pocket and would stay there, but there’s something about their new music, I think, that bogged them down onstage. The band seemed to still be working out the deeper arrangements, and couldn’t get loose at all.

Some of the songs, like “Dreamworld,” actually bored me. (But it bores me on the new record, too.) "Paint's Peeling" is one of my favorites; unfortunately, last night it got lacklustered it into a Scheib job. They performed one of Jenny’s solo songs from Rabbit Fur Coat, but why did they choose “Rise Up with Fists,” a song with such smart and funny lyrical interplay between the lead and background vocals, only to neglect the support vocals altogether? It was half-assed.

With each successive time I've seen them, Rilo Kiley has become more technically sound and less... fun.

The highlights surely included the acoustic version of “With Arms Outstretched” and (as always) “I Never.” "Wires and Waves," was nice to hear; I have it on a bunch of RK boots, but couldn't remember ever personally hearing them do it live.

Here's the setlist: It's a Hit, Close Call, Portions for Foxes, Paint’s Peeling, Breaking Up, Dreamworld, The Moneymaker, Wires and Waves, Ripchord, With Arms Outstretched, A Man/Me/Then Jim, "Blacklight Loop">Silver Lining, I Never, Smoke Detector, Rise Up w/ Fists!!, Greetings in Braille, Spectacular Views. [Encore: Give a Little Love, Does He Love You?].

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Twin killers by Deerhoof

Friday Test

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: I'm Not Satisfied from the album Cerebral Caustic by Fall, The

School Tase

We've all seen video of 21-year old Andrew Meyer getting Tasered by campus police at a John Kerry event in Florida this week. Everyone's got an opinion on this one, obviously. To be fair, Meyer cut the line then refused to get off the mic. He's possessed of a damn annoying voice and comes off more cheeky than serious. Really, he seems the kind of irritating asscock we all avoided in college. He did have a legitimate question, though, even if it was delivered in a manner more reminiscent of Gus, the unhinged vagrant living under the FDR Drive.

Then the police on that campus did what panicked, angry, poorly trained cops do all the time: they violently overreacted.

(Does anyone else find it ironic that he demanded to know why Kerry didn't stand up and question the results of the 2004 election, only to painfully learn what happens when you stand up and ask uncomfortable questions?)

As I watch the video, which is on YouTube in a variety of angles and running lengths, the most appalling thing of all is the audience of college students which does nothing to stop the cops or help Meyer in any way. In all the versions I’ve seen, I've heard only one voice of dissent: that of an off-camera woman asking, “Hey, what did he do?” A few audience members actually laugh at what they’re watching and, of course, there's the obligatory handful of ignorant fuckmonkeys who get out of their seats to get a better shot on their camera phones.

This is unbelievable to me. What was wrong with those kids down there? Have they been so brainwashed, so mind-fucked by the slow erosion of their rights in the last six years that they’ve got no sense when they’re being abused? Probably.

College students are pathetic. Apathetic. They're feeding like suckbirds on cynicism's bloated carcass. What does it take for a little righteous indignation to stir their Myspace-deadened hearts into action? Maybe their wireless connectivity needs to be embargoed first. Tom Hayden was quoted somewhere saying that if this had happened in his SDS days, it would have sparked an all-out riot. My own college days weren’t nearly as incendiary as his, but I sincerely believe -- even in the Reagan 80s -- there'd have been an angry scrum in my lecture hall if a fellow student took 300kV to the central nervous system just for being an outspoken douchebag.

Stupid fucking kids. I saw that the next day they held a “protest” on campus. Ah, good... lip service. Protests are so fucking easy. You can yell a little, stand around a lot, and then shoot a lot of video of each other yelling and standing around. Protests even fit conveniently into your already frantic collegiate schedule. You can fit one in between cramming for the Sociology exam and updating your blog. You might even leave early to beat the lines for custom Wiimote faceplates. Protesting is easy. Getting off your ass to intercede is hard. It requires getting… off… your… ass.

[posted with ecto]

On iTunes right now: Shake a Leg from the album Back In Black by AC/DC