Much of what luminary trumpeter Wynton Marsalis does, including his work as musical director of New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center, is aimed at keeping jazz music relevant. Last month, Marsalis came out with an impossible-to-ignore new project: a concept album composed of quick poetry readings and accompanying musical pieces performed by his jazz quintet. Gimmicky? Sure. Fun? Absolutely.
I can't begin to count the number of times I have had to put on the O face knowing that the sounds and expressions I would make were completely fake. All too often, men believe they are the gift that keeps on giving and that their tongue and penis have the magical powers to make us come on contact. Sorry to burst your mythological bubble, but 70 to 80 percent of women do not have orgasms during sexual intercourse.
It's hard to explain how Dan Deacon became the poster child of today's electronic music avant-garde. But at some point between his graduation from the conservatory at SUNY Purchase and now, the quirky singer/songwriter/sampler/celebrator found himself perched at the fore of a coterie that includes Panda Bear, Girl Talk and the Black Dice.
It is with zero regrets that I am making my retirement official." Those were Curt Schilling's words upon announcing early Monday morning that he was retiring from professional baseball after 23 years. After 436 starts, four World Series appearances, three rings and finally two years battling injuries as his time ran out, the former Red Sox righthander finally called it quits at 42. As always, he was graceful and articulate in retirement. "I am, and always will be, more grateful than any of you could ever possibly know," he wrote. Wait a minute. Wrote? Yes. Curt Schilling, one of the great October heroes of our generation, announced his retirement via blog post. At 9:37 on Monday morning, the post "Calling it quits" appeared on his infamous 38Pitches.com, and that was that. No TV appearance, no conference call, no nothing. No media at all. I have a problem with this. When Schilling first launched his blog prior to the 2007 season, he joked that if it went well, he'd never have to talk to the media again. The fans wanted to get his take, so he'd just write for them. Cut out the middleman. At least I took it as a joke. I never thought I'd see this. I think Curt Schilling is failing to grasp the idea that journalists are more than conduits for athletes' sound bites. They're also there to ask the difficult questions when it matters most — times such as, for instance, the retirement of a possible Hall of Famer. Questions such as: What about those rumors last month about you coming back from the Cubs? How are things in Boston — are you still cool with Theo Epstein and Terry Francona after how the last couple years have gone? Are you quitting because you're hurt, or you're washed up, or you miss your family, or you need more time to play World of Warcraft? But instead, we get no answers. We just get those good old sound bites — he reflects on his memories, he says he's been blessed, he thanks his wife and kids, he thanks Jesus, he thanks his fans. And then 890 of those fans dart off to the comments section to post their own personalized "No, Curt, thank you!" messages. How touching. Francona, Schilling's manager for four years (five if you count 2008, when he spent more time in operating rooms than dugouts), once remarked that "For a guy that doesn't talk much to the media," Schilling "sure does talk to the media." Throughout his 23 years, he was always trying to have it both ways — he wanted his voice to be heard, but he didn't want it heard by the professionals. As a result, Monday's announcement came off as boring and uninformative. We already knew he wasn't much of a pitcher anymore — we figured that out when he fell off the face of the earth two years ago. But Schilling was always a competitor, even after he became too old and fragile to be a good one, so the question is just dying to be asked: Why face the facts now? Why finally give in and admit that you're no longer able to pitch in the major leagues? We don't get an answer. We deserve one, though, and so do the writers, in Boston and elsewhere, who have spent two decades helping us get to know Curt Schilling, the baseball player and the man. In five years, Schilling's name will appear on a ballot and he'll be considered for a plaque in Cooperstown. If he's considered a borderline candidate in 2013 (and I think he should be), he's going to wish he'd let the writers do their jobs and ask him why he left the game the way he did. You think you have no regrets now, Curt? That may be true. But a few years from now, we'll see.
My cousin Tom used to lecture a younger, more impressionable me on the folly of interpreting Bob Dylan songs. Dylan lived his songs; he was in them. They weren't just great poems or pieces of music; they were his blood coming through the speakers. Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower" was garbage, and Guns N' Roses' take on Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" was treason. If all professional musicians' renditions were blasphemous, I asked, why was Tom always playing Dylan's tunes on the acoustic guitar? "I'm not covering them," he answered. "I'm channeling."
Last week, two NFL players were shipwrecked on a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico, and after days of the Coast Guard combing the waters, the search was abandoned and hope lost. Following this incident, the world barely stirred, dismissing these men as dead. My question is: Why?
As a heterosexual, I often take for granted the accessibility of hookups and matchmaking. I have a high regard for constituents of the queer community who live as minorities in our college hookup atmosphere. The Tufts social scene is a montage of frat parties and bars that encompass heterosexual norms. As I commonly joke with a gay friend that we should "man hunt" on Saturday nights, I have come to realize just how complicated that process can be. A queer in search of a relationship or sexual advice is often left with minimal resources.
This week, I've been invited to appear on Full Moon Fever (Thursday at 10 a.m. on WMFO) to talk about movies and address the hosts' disagreements with my picks for overrated movies. In honor of this appearance, and because I like throwing more fuel onto the fire, I give you a second installment of overrated movies! This time, however, they're all united by a theme: movies that think they're a lot smarter than they are. (Insert joke about a certain pop culture columnist here.)
In this age of rampant drug use throughout baseball, I'm going to go Barack Obama all over Bud Selig and demand change. I vote for the opening of a new Hall of Fame, one that enshrines those Major League Baseball players not associated with the Steroids Era, the best of the non-tainted. In accordance with this completely random solo founding, I would like to introduce my first inductee: Jamie Moyer. Currently a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Moyer is at 46 the oldest active player in the major leagues. Yet throughout a career that began in 1986, the same year in which three players on the Phillies' active roster were born, Moyer has remained a model of cleanliness, especially in recent years amidst the cream, the clear and the cheaters. Consider him a beacon of hope for baseball, a pitcher on whom younger children can model themselves, needle-free. With a fastball slower than a suburban speed limit, it's highly likely that Moyer does not do steroids. Even though the only juice in his body is of the Tropicana label, his 246-185 career record paints the picture of a hurler who has somehow managed to remain among the ranks of baseball's most respected and most consistent, a telltale sign of a player whose body has not deteriorated due to the harmful effects of using. Moyer's stint in the major leagues opened with the Chicago Cubs 23 years ago, but since then he has gotten around more than Paris Hilton. His journeyman status has landed him in Texas, St. Louis, Baltimore, Boston, Seattle and most recently, Philadelphia, and all the while he has been racking up wins with his fluttering fastball and devastating changeup. Moyer has won at least 10 games 14 times, including two seasons with the Mariners in which he reached the 20-win plateau. To that end, he has lost 10 games just six times, posting a modest career ERA of 4.19, 23 points lower than the league average during his career. But that is what Moyer is: completely modest. You'll never see him pumping his arms after a big strikeout or pointing to the heavens, but rather calmly strutting off after another hitter is left baffled by his pitches. At the age of 45 last season, Moyer led the world champion Phillies with 16 wins, culminating in his first World Series championship, after which he nonchalantly walked around Citizens Bank Park with a pitching rubber on his shoulder, soaking up the moment. And who said people slow down with age? What I like about Moyer is that he's not the sexy superstar, as he strikes out barely over 100 batters per year, yet his strikeout-to-walk ratio for his career is better than 2:1, and he boasts an extremely high infield-fly rate even into his forties. It's clear that movement and deception keep Moyer going through the years and make him baseball's proverbial Houdini. Recently, Moyer signed a two-year extension with Philadelphia, allowing him to stay in the City of Brotherly Love. But it is his love for the game that provides a constant inspiration for those fans seeking another hero when the home run-bashing stars of the past will eternally don an asterisk. Not only is Moyer a world-class pitcher, but he is a world-class human being. Together with his wife, Karen, he founded The Moyer Foundation in 2000, established to aid children in severe distress. In nine years, they have raised over $16 million to support organizations helping children, the same amount of money that would buy A-Rod roughly 7 million tablets of Primobolan. Imagine how much good one player could do by donating a couple million to provide assistance in dire times. Moyer has transformed the token charity golf tournament donation eightfold. Regardless of how the Alex Rodriguez situation turns out and regardless of whether known-steroid users like Barry Bonds are inducted into the real Hall of Fame, this age in baseball will forever be linked to the syringe. Thank goodness we still have players like Jamie Moyer to help us forget.
We have all been informed of our options for sexual protection, whether "the talk" came from parents, health professionals or active groups on campus. We've heard of contraceptive methods like the pill, the NuvaRing, the condom and the patch. Yet as frequently as we are reminded to protect ourselves from disease and the creation of Baby Jumbo, many of us remain woefully uninformed about the best protective products out there.
One of my favorite literary works is being cannibalized. Next week, "Watchmen" (2009) will hit theaters, but, for me, the terror has already begun.
It was a good couple of weeks to be a nostalgic sports fan. You had Brett Favre quitting like it was 2007, Tiger Woods playing like it was 2006, Shaq and Kobe winning like it was 2002, and Roger Federer looking mortal like it was -- good Lord. I can't even remember when. It's been a while.
I am one of many in our voyeuristic society that thrives off of the misery and complicated problems of others. I am infatuated with the Web site Fmylife.com, where anonymous bloggers post humiliating stories for cathartic laughter. I suggest logging on to the Web site in times of desperation when nothing seems to be playing out right. The stories people are willing to share will not only satisfy your need to reap the benefits of others' misery, but they will also make your worst day seem like a walk in the park. So, I dedicate this column to the existence of Fmylife.com. As fun as it is to read the blogs online, you tend to wonder if some of those stories could possibly contain even an ounce of truth. Thanks to the sexual failures of friends, I have included the worst hook-up stories that I have personally heard, and they make a little queef seem like a hiccup. Here's the first one. It was the wee hours of the morning and she had snuck into the gentleman's room to awaken him with kisses below the belt. As she pulled the covers down and took his package out of the peephole, she noticed a pungent smell. Before I go any further I must make it known he was uncircumcised, and most of us are aware of sanitation issues with the hood. Despite the note-worthy stench, she went down for the kill. As she went down she noticed a flakey film forming on her tongue. When she pulled up, she opened her mouth and peeled off white fuzzy flakes that she had collected from the foreskin. A token FML moment. Another story: This boy and girl were recurring hookup buddies and everything seemed to be going smoothly. After getting back from a party together, they started making out. He noticed that something didn't taste right but kept going figuring it was a mixture of Natty Light and Popov vodka. But the taste became more and more intense to the point that it made him heave in her mouth. They flipped on the lights to find out she had gotten a bloody nose. She stood there with a mouth full of vomit and blood streaming down her cheeks. After a forties Friday, a girl had bumped into her latest crush at a party at the DU frat. She and the unidentified male made an appearance on the dance floor before exiting the party for some late night fun. Although she was beginning to feel queasy, she knew this was her chance for a successful hook up. Clothes came off and soon enough she was down on her knees. After the second dip she felt nauseous, and being that she was drunk she lacked the reaction time and rationale to remove herself from the situation. She was gagged by and accidently vomited on his penis. The guy had been drinking so he didn't notice. She slurped it up and continued until he finished. Party foul. We all have encountered scarring moments that we may never be able to erase from our memories. They seem to replay in our minds, and we can either embed them in our brains and hope that they never occur again, or we can make a mockery of the situation by retelling the story to friends. Falling victim to an FML moment is never fair or fun, but I guarantee that describing your misery to friends will lighten the situation, and you might find that a little laughter is the best cure.
As the holiday season quickly came and went and birthdays were interspersed throughout the year, we here at the Mattel Company recently released what was named the worst toy of 2008: the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader Barbie doll. Even though we rated this appropriate for children ages six and up, the doll comes with short shorts shorter than Spud Webb, boots skankier than Courtney Love and a halter top that leaves little to the imagination. While the media backlash over this particular toy has been extraordinary, we have decided to continue with our strategy of churning out toys that make parents convulse and kids shriek.
I hate Bud Selig. I do. I simply hate the man. And while I know he's done a lot of good for baseball -- instituting the wild card and interleague play, expanding the league and consolidating the AL and NL offices into the office of the commissioner -- I think that many times he's put his own public image ahead of what's good for the game. Remember the 2002 All-Star Game? Both teams essentially ran out of players and were down to their last pitchers. Because nobody wanted to jeopardize the health of those pitchers and the playoff chances of their respective teams, Selig ended the game in a tie. This, in my mind, was the right thing to do. But Selig drew heavy public criticism from fans and analysts for allowing such an anti-climactic ending that an MVP was not even named. So what was his solution? He decided to make the All-Star Game "more competitive" by giving the winning team home-field advantage in the World Series. This is a typical Selig solution: do something that on the surface looks like it will make a difference, but underneath really doesn't address the problem at all. The All-Star Game's always been competitive, even when it meant nothing. The only issue was that managers would scorch through their lineups and bullpens in an effort to get everybody in the game. And guess what? That still happens! If the All-Star Game were to go into extra innings again, there's no doubt that Selig would be confronted with the same dilemma of how to end it -- the only difference is that this time, his decision would affect home-field advantage in the World Series (which should just go to the team with the best record. Baseball has a 162 game schedule -- that should mean something). Selig pulled the same type of move when he oversaw the Mitchell Report. Severe penalties had already been instituted for steroid users, and Barry Bonds' run had finally ended. Baseball, it seemed, would finally move past the whole steroid era. But no. Selig wanted to make sure that nobody thought that he was part of the steroid problem (even though, like everyone else at that time -- from managers to executives to the union to the media and even to the fans -- he most certainly was). So he hired George Mitchell to research and rehash the entire steroid situation, just leading to more controversy and more focus on the very issue that baseball was trying to forget. And do you know what the worst part is? Yes, some players were genuinely outed, but others were named for absolutely nothing. Larry Bigbie told Mitchell that Brian Roberts once said he used steroids "once or twice." So Brian Roberts was in the Mitchell Report. There was no standard of evidence or corroboration. If you were rumored to have done steroids, you were in the Mitchell Report. It wasn't meant to serve any justice; it was just meant to clear Selig's guilty conscience. So what's my point? The other day, Selig said, "I don't want to hear 'The commissioner turned a blind eye to this' or 'He didn't care about [steroids].' That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I'm sensitive to the criticism." And yet he went on to say that if he could go back, he wouldn't do anything differently. How could anyone involved with baseball possibly say this? How could the commissioner, of all people, say it? Because Selig didn't actually care about the problem. Everything he's done has been motivated not by fairness or morality, but by his own standing in history. That's why he even mused over the possibility of re-writing the record books this week -- an idea that's clearly absurd. Looking back, there's only one thing that should be erased from the history books: the contention that Selig is one of baseball's best commissioners. He may have done more to promote the game than anyone before him, but he also did much more to hurt it.
My Advanced Placement Psychology teacher was one of those cool high school teachers that everybody loved. He was young, he coached a sports team and he frequently discussed his addiction to Xbox and his obsession with "Lost." Barb (an abbreviation of his last name) liked doing experiments with us in class, like one we did that showed the link between your senses of smell and taste. We were asked to taste different foods in three ways -- I remember the strawberry taste test best. First, we ate a strawberry while wearing nose plugs. Next, we ate a strawberry normally. Finally, we ate a strawberry after smelling a "related scent," which in this case was vanilla. The class almost unanimously agreed that the strawberry-ness we tasted increased with each round.
Lately we have been reminiscing and recalling our respective childhoods in the early '90s. We characterize our younger years as a time when a kid could collect Pokémon cards, read "Goosebumps" books and, most importantly, watch Nickelodeon. Do you remember the shows like "Doug," "Hey Arnold!," "Rugrats" and "Rocko's Modern Life?" Those were the shows that revved our engines back in the elementary school.
"You know, the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies. It diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time. Whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot."
Dear Mr. Micah Grimes of Dallas, Texas, It is with great pride that I write to inform you that you have been selected for one of the most prestigious awards in all of sports. Your presence is requested immediately at the 2009 Abominably Horrendous Idiots of America Award Ceremony, where you will be receiving the Chad Johnson Honorable Mention for Excellence in Stupidity thanks to your recent actions surrounding Covenant Academy's 100-0 high school girls' basketball win over Dallas Academy. Step right up to the podium please, and allow me to tell everyone why you won. Mr. Grimes, you are more stupid than a concussed Britney Spears. After coaching Covenant to an utterly humiliating victory, one of the most lopsided scores in the history of basketball, you refused to apologize, saying instead, "I do not believe that the team should feel embarrassed and ashamed. We played the game as it was meant to be played." Kobe Bryant plays the game right, and even he cedes a basket once in a while. You, on the other hand, allowed your team to jack up three-pointers well through the fourth quarter and ordered your players not to let up on the full-court pressure defense until midway through the final period. Run up the score in a video game, but under no circumstances should you have transferred this win-and-humiliate-at-all-costs sentiment onto the floor that night. Following the game, you created a rift with the school officials, who stepped up and apologized and went so far as to forfeit the win because of the embarrassment caused. In this fight, you figuratively spit in the administrators' faces, "respectfully disagreeing" with their decision to say sorry. So you were sacked from the job. Serves you right. I hope you never coach again. But let's give you the benefit of the doubt here; maybe you didn't know it was going to be that bad. Dallas Academy, a school specifically for kids with learning disabilities, had not won a girls' basketball game in over four years. Sign number one that this game was going to be out of hand. Your team then went up by 35 points at the end of the first quarter, 59 at halftime and 88 at the end of the third period — scores some Dallas Academy kids might have a hard time even counting to. Signs number two through 6 billion. What was going through that single-celled noggin of yours? A coach with even the slightest bit of cojones would have directed his team to stop pressing, instructed his players to pass five times before shooting and spread the wealth around before launching bombs of embarrassment. But you had to affirm your superiority so drastically that you did none of those things, and look what it got you: a pink slip and a stupidity award. The home page of Dallas Academy posts the following as one of its mission statements: "Confidence is restored. Frustration is lessened. Barriers are overcome." Well, you certainly dismantled their confidence and heightened their frustration, all while posing a barrier roughly the size of the Great Wall. Congratulations, Coach, you have successfully managed to bring down the indomitable spirit of a school populated with kids who surpass learning barriers every day just because you felt that Covenant Academy needed to reach the century mark. In a later post on a Web site, you said that "if I lose my job over these statements, I will walk away with my integrity." No, you will walk away with nothing but shame. This win is squarely on your shoulders, Mr. Grimes, as is having to answer to the 20 students at Dallas Academy who may have a hard enough time spelling basketball, let alone playing it. At the high-school level, competition is fierce, and it is understood that winning is a priority, but winning with class should be an even bigger one. Class and sportsmanship are absent from your curriculum. In a perfect world, Coach, a Dallas Academy graduate would become your boss and promptly fire you. And congratulations on your award! Should I send it to your current employer? Oh, wait…
I am sitting down to write these words somewhere in the very wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, Feb. 3. "The Yankee Years," a 512-page hardcover bombshell of a book co-authored by Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci and former Yankees manager Joe Torre, has been available in bookstores worldwide for a matter of minutes. Needless to say, I haven't read it yet. Neither have you. That probably hasn't stopped you from forming an opinion on it. Right? I mean, we all know Torre's story. Came to the Bronx in 1996 inheriting a wild card-winning Yankees team. Immediately won the World Series. Stayed for 12 seasons, made the postseason all 12 times, piled up six American League pennants and four World Series titles along the way. Left after the 2007 season when the front office insulted him with an incentive-laden one-year contract offer. Moved out West and took over the Dodgers. When you're talking about a man who spent 12 years juggling the egos of Alex Rodriguez, David Wells, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi, Carl Pavano, Paul O'Neill, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens — just to name a few — you're inevitably going to have a bias in one direction or the other. Pavano already released a statement, saying he is "extremely disappointed that someone I had a lot of respect for would make these types of comments." Wells scoffed at a reporter and said "I'd knock him out" when asked about Torre. Rodriguez dismissed the book's references to him — a friend told the New York Daily News that "he laughed at the stuff because he is so beyond all of that." But none of these people have read the book either. They're basing their opinions off of conjecture, off of hearsay, off of little bits of short excerpts that have all been taken out of context. We know that the book contains a quote about how Wells can "make your life miserable" and that Rodriguez is at some point nicknamed "A-Fraud." We know very little, however, about how these quotes come up, why they are relevant or even when they are said. This is the New York sports media at its worst. The cheap tabloids that spend 12 months a year scavenging for Yankees controversy hit the jackpot when "The Yankee Years" hit bookshelves, and they'd be foolish not to market the Torre/Wells/A-Rod clashing the way that they have. This is an industry where shock value, not actual substance, is what sells, so why bother waiting for the whole story? The New York Daily News, when it ran an article on Sunday about the Torre fiasco, had a poll running alongside the online edition of its story. The question read simply, "Do you think this book tarnishes Joe Torre's Yankee legacy?" Fifty-one percent of readers checked off the "Yes, he should have kept quiet" option; 19 percent opted for the neutral, reasonable choice of "I'll have to read the book." This, to me, is a problem. But then again, when has anyone ever cared about substance? After all, this is a book about baseball. There are plenty of precedents. "Moneyball" (2003) is a book about on-base percentage. Like it? Hate it? Just sound off. "Ball Four" (1970) is about drugs. Everyone has an opinion on drugs. Let's hear it. When did this happen? When did sports media devolve to the point that everything can, and must, be reduced to a two-second sound bite? Is anyone else worried about this? In an interview with SI.com, Verducci told the magazine that the book "frames the 1996-2007 Yankees around the macro issues and seismic changes in the game … the Steroid Era, expansion, contraction plans, competitive balance issues, the rise of information and statistical analysis, the change in ownership of the Boston Red Sox, biomechanics as the next possible market inefficiency ... Those and other issues all provide important context to the book. It's an historical account." Now that sounds like a good book. Probably about 512 pages worth. I wouldn't want any less.
