My Play List, Part 1

Sitting here on a UMD WAM lab computer studying for next weekend's LSAT, I decided to take a quick break to read a couple of sports columns. I pulled up the iTunes on the computer knowing that I didn't have any music loaded but hoping someone sitting nearby had some decent non-password protected songs I could listen to through iTunes' Shared function.

Digression: I love that Windows 7 commercial where the guy describes being able to listen to the same music on two different computers in his house as if it's a breakthrough technology of some kind. I bought my Mac Powerbook back in August, 2005, and have been able to do that ever since. One of the great parts of living in a several-hundred student dorm freshman year? TONS of good music available via the shared iTunes function for people who couldn't figure out how to pirate stuff.

Back to present day. I pull up iTunes, and one of the users listed in the shared function whom I know only as "Elana's Music" has essentially a "Jeff's Greatest Hits Collection." Tons of CCR, Jim Croce and Meat Loaf in the older section, supplemented by Sublime, Blink182,Weezer and Spoon (I don't have the greatest taste - I like what I like, and make no apologies.)

I can't remember where the idea comes from, but I remember watching a comedian on Comedy Central a while back do a bit about having a soundtrack for your life. As in, while you walk around and go about your daily tasks, music constantly plays, illustrating the given action, like dark, ominous tones filling the air as you push your bed away from the wall to vacuum the floor, only to discover an absolutely devastatingly huge pile of balled up gym socks you shucked off while asleep. Elana's Music insired me to create such an audio supplement for my life. What follows is my attempt to compose a sort of mix tape (I know play list is the proper terminology, but mix tape just sounds better) for my life. I've organized it by activity, with a brief explanation for each inclusion.

Beach Tracks
Santeria, by Sublime: My girlfriend (often) makes fun of me for my incredibly poor ability to divine the meaning of lyrics of songs. Part of this is because if the music beneath the lyrics is really good, I kinda tune out the lyrics. Hence this selection, about a guy wanting to track down and kill the sancho who stole his girl. Whatever. All I know is that the guitar solo midway through is stellar for summer walks on the beach.

Save Tonight, by Eagle Eye Cherry: Maybe it's because the first time I heard this, I was in the midst of spending a week at a church sleepaway camp in the hills of western Maryland. I had hit puberty a little early in terms of size, and thanks to soccer, I didn't have a massively awkward transition into my new body. What I'm trying to say is, my appeal to the opposite sex may have peaked between summer after 8th grade through Christmas break of 9th grade. Anywho, one of my counselors was REALLY into Eagle Eye Cherry, so the song became my cabin's anthem, and it sort of epitomizes summer for me.

Getting Ready Tracks
I Got a Feeling, by Black Eyed Peas: First, I feel like I've got to clarify "Getting Ready" tracks. Think GTL time. While annoying, repetitive and not exactly complex lyrically (even I understand it!), it's a solid option for getting amped up pre-getting sloppy.

Right Round, by Flo Rida: Same as above, but gets added points for its use in The Hangover. Speaking of which, The Hangover 2? Really? Even given the love Hollywood has for franchises, the decision to make this has to be the most one of the worst greenlights in the last ten years, right behind Meet Dave.

In Da Club Tracks
Yeah, by Usher, Ludacris and Dave Chappelle: This one came out my junior year and absolutely exploded, and stayed relevant through most of my senior year due to the massive success of Usher's Confessions. Also, Li'l Jon's rhythm making the booty go smack.

Ignition (Remix), by R. Kelly: Just a great club song. Good dance beat, encourages bad decisions and drinking. But more than that, it might mark Kelly's hig-point as this generation's Michael Jackson, albeit a poor man's version. The combination of the voice (just listen to "I Believe I can Fly"), chart-topping hits, and massively bad decisions (getting filmed with Sparkle's 14-year-old niece, pissing off Jay-Z, that whole "Trapped in the Closet" business.) On the other hand, bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce....

Part 2: Coming when I have some time.

State of the Union Preview; Other Stuff

Obama Set to Reveal Island was Figment of Locke's Imagination
After much consternation and angry message-boarding by Lost fans, the White House decided not to preempt the final season's first episode. As a complete non-fan (saw and hated the first five episodes), I've never been more proud of our country. After a year in which we dynamically shifted tracks politically, continued dealing with a Great Depressionish financial crisis, tried to figure out how to keep people healthy, disagreed on fundamental civil rights and followed a balloon in the Midwest like a modern Hindenburg, we effectively told the most powerful world leader, "Look buddy, enough is enough. We don't care. Just put Matthew Fox on the screen and let J.J. Abrams decide why Jacob had to die." And we wonder why the world laughs at us.

The Rise of Fascism in America
Am I the only one watching the rise of Tea Party politics with a healthy dose of fear? Apparently not. In this great piece in The New Yorker, Ben McGrath analyzes the rise of the right-wing crazies during the past year. What I find uniquely scary about this movement is that the goal at times seems to be to find ways to circumvent basic democratic processes. The logic process noted at times in the article (Let's have everyone vote in an internet poll as to whether the government should pay off the mortgages of homeowners who've defaulted!) seems to favor an Oliver Wendell Holmes-esque slavish dedication to majoritarian rule, even in the face of information (the broad positive impact single-payer health care would have on many of the tea party acolytes) that contradicts that same devotion. Then again, it lets journalists show off how many times they've read Hofstadter. So that's good.

What happened to Rex Ryan?

I watched almost the entire Jets game last night (missed the first six minutes of Q3), and had seen all of the Cincy-Jets and Chargers-Jets games the past couple weeks. Most of the focus for the loss last night (Full disclosure: I'm a huge Giants fan. No horse in this race) seemed to be on:

A.) Peyton playing out of his mind;
B.) Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon looking like Holt/Bruce circa 2000ish;
C.) the Jets' defense getting exposed.

The last point is the one that I couldn't get over after the game. Darrelle Revis, Kerry Rhodes and Co. didn't seem to play with less effort or focus, and the tackling seemed pretty similar in both halves - the Jets didn't seem like they were falling apart all of a sudden.

What did seem to happen was a change in strategy. After getting burned long a couple of times by Manning, Rex Ryan made a decision to drop his corners off the line and drop his safeties deeper, essentially giving Manning the pass underneath in an attempt to stop Garcon and Collie downfield. While watching the game this seemed like a weird idea, and in retrospect a horrible one.

The Colts don't really have a running game. When the offense is performing at its peak, they want Brown/Addai to carry the ball 15-20 times combined, and let Manning air it out the rest of the way. They make up for the lack of running production with Manning's absurd efficiency throwing underneath - anyone who saw the Ravens game knows exactly what I'm talking about. Dallas Clark creates lots of matchup issues, and the Colts have three WRs in Wayne, Collie and Garcon who are all strong route runners, a key component of Manning's success in throwing passes in the 5 to 15 yard range.

Dropping the safeties and corners off a little also changed the complexion of the Jets' blitzing packages, which had been extremely successful this postseason. Even when they don't get a sack, Ryan's schemes utilizing unique talents like Rhodes in the pass rush causes the opposing o-line all kinds of problems. And the corners, Revis in particular, play absolutely fearless tight coverage off the line, even if it occasionally results in a deep completion.

The biggest problem with this strategy change, though, came on the other side of the ball. By allowing Peyton to mask the lack of an effective running game with his short passing, Ryan and the Jets' ceded their biggest advantage against the Colts - the ability to control the pace of the game by pounding the ball behind an offensive line that sent three player (Ferguson, Faneca and Mangold) to the Pro Bowl this year. While the Jets capitalized on a few big plays (the Sanchez pass to Braylon Edwards, Smith's Wildcat bomb) to take a halftime lead, they hadn't been a "big play" team all year. The Jets won this year by minimizing offensive mistakes while holding the ball as long as possible, reducing the amount of time opponents with better offenses had to comeback against that suffocating defense.

While this is probably longer and less link-driven than I'd like, I thought I'd put it out there to see if anyone else picked up on this vibe. Especially since if I read another piece on Favre as some Oedipal tragic-hero, I'll chuck my mouse across this office.

Book Report: Week of January 18

Books I've recently finished:
Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Created, by David Halberstam
Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream, by H.G. Buzz Bissinger

Books I'm currently reading:
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street, by Michael Lewis
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy

The On-Deck Circle:
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann

Not being in school for a prolonged period for the first time in my life, I've tried to keep up on my reading as much as possible, since my job occasionally feels less-than-intellectually challenging. As a result, I recently started setting aside at least an hour a day to read, with a specific focus on books, since even a series of magazine pieces from New Yorker, Vanity Fair and The Atlantic can't be considered a substitute for a few good books. Feel free to give me tips or feedback on suggestions for The On-Deck Circle in the comments below.

Playing For Keeps: B+
I'll admit, I went to the library looking for The Breaks of the Game, but came away pleasantly surprised with this after my local library didn't have the former in stock. The first three-quarters of this one are fantastic. Halberstam does an incredible job making Jordan an accessible subject from his early days up through his first championship, through interviews with Jordan's friends and family as well as former basketball associates. The book, written during and just after Jordan's final season with Chicago, alternates by chapter between Jordan's past and the 1997-98 Bulls season. The depth, style and development of tension throughout are fantastic, right up until Halberstam gets to Jordan's baseball foray, at which point it seems to lose a little steam, perhaps because by that point in his life, Jordan had successfully sequestered himself so thoroughly that few people who knew him well would talk on record with Halberstam. As a child and a Knicks fan during the 1990s, my exposure with Jordan came mostly from the annual ass-kicking the Bulls always seemed to put on the Knicks in the playoffs, and through Space Jam. Needless to say, I learned A LOT from this book, enough to realize that the Monstars may or may not have been based on a certain other NBA team.

Friday Night Lights: A+
One of the most complete works of extended journalism I've ever read. Before he became a crazy person, Buzz Bissinger was an incredibly talented journalist and author, probably best-known for this book, which later pulled off a rare trifecta by becoming the basis for a good movie and an even better TV show. The book details the 1988 iteration of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, TX. I won't get into the details, since most of the planet has probably consumed them in some media in the past twenty years. I'll leave my critique to this - for anyone looking for a good read on the way sports, politics, race, economics and society all intertwine, read this book, especially if you're not a sports fan per se. It's fantastic.

John Edwards and other stuff

OK, it's been a few months since I decided to start this blog, but I guess I've gotta get back on the horse somewhere, right? Here goes.

John Edwards: No Longer Such a Great Guy
As you've probably heard, John Edwards is a father, again, in a story that probably shocked nobody. Tiger's gotta be happy, since this gets him and his "rehab" trip out of the limelight for a little while. It also begins the official divorce countdown for Edwards and his maybe-n0t-so-nice wife, Elizabeth. Might be hard to get that ball rolling for a few days, though, since John's apparently in Haiti, vacationing. OK, he's actually doing charity work in Haiti and El Salvador. But if you read right now that he was vacationing on a Royal Caribbean ship in Labadee right now, you'd probably go, "Sounds about right."

Pelosi, House Dems Drop the Ball on Health Care
I tweeted about this yesterday after the Brown win in Massachusetts, but I'm starting to lose my faith in Democrats to get things done (shocking, I know.) Nancy Pelosi said earlier today that the Senate health care bill wouldn't pass the House as is. I find the Democrats quaking-in-their-boots attitude absolutely fascinating, especially in light of the MASSIVE majorities they hold in both houses. Through most of George W. Bush's tenure, the GOP didn't have a significant majority in the Senate - in fact, they only held 55 seats at their high-water mark, four fewer than the Democrats hold now, even after yesterday's results. But they stilll managed to get some pretty awful stuff passed, like the PATRIOT Act, the Homeland Security Act, as well as one of the most expensive pieces of health care overhaul to date, the infamous Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act.

The Democrats' national mindset, however, seems to be that they can't pass any legislation without having 60 seats, because the Republicans might filibuster! Obviously, this ignores the fact that the Republicans can't constantly filibuster (since it would make them wretchedly unpopular - "That's right, the party of rich, fat, old white guys doesn'y want to get stuff done!"), as well as the fact that, throughout our history, if the majority party always needed 60 votes, very little legislation would have EVER passed. If the Democrats ignored the constant polling for a month or so and just got an actual legislative agenda pushed through both houses by old-school, Tip O'Neill-style, they'd probably increase that Holy Grail of polls, their favorability rating, by a significant margin just by being the party that got stuff done.

In Case You're Reading this in China, ...
Thank Hillary Clinton for a great speech today on the importance of information access and internet exposure in countries that can best be described as "mildly secretive."