The Friday Night E-mail shutdown

The Clarion Content has observed a phenomenon at our offices and in the personal lives of our staff. We call it The "Friday night e-mail shutdown," though it goes on for the whole weekend. We want to ask you, dear readers, is it as pervasive for you as it is for us?

In our little corner of the world, the weekend nearly brings to a halt email communication. We are deluged all week. People expect responses to emails within hours, if not minutes. Then suddenly just after about 6pm Eastern, there is an abrupt and fairly complete drop off to our email traffic, from heavy to near nil. Even the folks who usually reply in five minutes all week, disappear.

Is this true for you, too?

There are probably a couple of phenomenons at work here. One is texting. Social planning of a rapid and semi-spontaneous nature is far easier via text than e-mail. Two is Facebook, a far more social milieu than e-mail (The Clarion Content does not Facebook, but so we hear.) Perhaps a third, is that people who spend so much time working in front of their computer all week are ready to get out from in front of a computer by the weekend, to leave it behind, like letting go the shackles of work itself. We have various friends of the Clarion Content who we know fall into that category. Email even more than computing in general seems to be associated with work and obligation. Many emails are requests for one to do something. Respond or react to something. Have an opinion on something. Sign a petition on something. Action and doing required. Effort.

What say you, dear readers? Are you reading this column on a Monday having spent the weekend away from your computer and email?

3BK-3

Beck and I were back for 3BK's 3rd game against J-Ro / Monika's Pasty Gangstas (we missed last week's matchup with Dhein & the Tighty Whities for Seattle / work, and 3BK got a little demolished in our absence, 15-7 or so). The 3BK squad came out fired up - our team name this week was "Bada Bing Boom Katch," and whatever that means, it's good. Energy abound on D and O, solid play from across the board, and this one was largely over before it began. (It certainly didn't hurt that the PGs were missing Brent and Trant, J-Ro has a broken left hand, etc. - not their best representation). The count went 1,2,3,4-0;4-1; 5,6-1; 6-2; 7,8-2; 8-3;9-3;9-4,5;10,11,12,13,14,15-5. Pretty much all 3BK all the time, even though we were without Tyler and Stefan (who is a little broken in the ankle department for the next week or so). Probably the best feature of the game was that there were numerous heckles of "BORING!," which essentially means we were playing good Ultimate.

I felt pretty great tonight - knee felt awesome during an extended warm-up, got a little, very very slightly sore on my first few throws and sudden cuts in warm-ups, but gave me zero trouble after that - I even jumped a few times without problem. SWEET! Got a couple of layout D's, one a just-make-sure on a poach on Paul, and one a legit run-down and D the first throw full high layout on a new guy (when it was 13-5... I'm a jerk). Otherwise on the personal game it was a lot of the usual - six goals thrown to Lindsey alone (3 hucks, 3 break mark endzone throws), plus one to Mike (after a caught huck from Mark), plus four goals caught (FH huck from Al X 2, hospitally throw from Lee, and upline FH from Lindsey to end it). Got a little silly with the disc at times - put up a high huck to Lee that he didn't track down, a huck to Al where Mike let his guy poach in, and an endzone throw to Beck that Paul poach-D'ed (BOO). Considering those were all "we're way ahead and I want to try this" throws, I'm pretty happy with the evening, especially the part where I was flopping around on D and jumping to catch the last goal without worrying too much about my knee*.

* - Don't get me wrong - still not 100%, and I'm still wearing extra brace-wear to keep it warm. And I don't feel great jumping. But I think the PT stuff is helping quite a bit, so that's cool. I am, on the wise advice of beck, going to skip a tourney this Friday so that I can play Saturday morning in SLUG - playing in both of those would be a mistake, methinks.

The rest of 3BK played great - just tons of hustle, smart decisions, and crispy Ultimate. It was over so quick that it's tough to remember a lot of specifics from the guys - Al played great with some key hucks and a hellacious handblock of Craig. Mark supplied a good dose of speed in Stefan's absence, giving us some solid handling as well. Nick, Mike, Lee and Dave give us a four-headed quite tall beast, and they all brought the D tonight (Jeff did too, he just did so from the under 6'2" school of D). And Matt / Chris handled great, too - just an all around effort. Ashley was a super speedy - just great incuts; she's going to be a very tough secondary matchup for teams. Beck played some good D, though she was feeling a bit gimpy with a leg that is still pulled from two weeks ago. And as mentioned, she made a great cut in the endzone - I stupidly called "iso vet," which just about everybody on the field knew. Ah, well. Pretty unbelievably stupid on my part, as I easily could have said "Iso Lovett" or "Iso Sparkle" or any number of things, but I was trying to pick something I knew no one else on the field was. Ugh. Soy idiota.

So anyways, good, quick, decidedly one-sided game. We have a lot of athleticism / talent and are capable of making some noise. Fun times ahead. 3BK is 2-1 with a +7 point differential.

Fear Not; Like Portal...

"I'm still alive." It'd be a helluvalot better if I were like Love & Rockets and "So Alive," but we'll take what we can get these days.

Spent last Wednesday through Friday in Seattle, doing a little bit of an anthropologist job with a research group in Bioethics at UW. Interesting "conference" of sorts (more like an extended lab meeting) - they were coordinating a grant-approved project on genomics, translation and health disparities, but trying to frame it using discourse analysis, a methodology developed by ASU grad (and communications PhD) Marianne DeGreco. My job was basically to get a grasp of the research going on (to some extent in fly-on-the-wall mode) and see if the methodology being employed would be of use to, say, me, and student-colleagues like me. Discourse analysis is essentially a qualitative method for tracking sometimes literal conversations but also "cultural dialogs;" the idea is to have a rigorous way of tracking ideas across people, locales, popular culture, within academic/political/whatever domains, etc. I'm not entirely convinced that the methodology will prove to be useful for me*, but it was certainly a fun week to spend hanging out with a bunch of very anthropologically and post-structurally-oriented academicians who are all kinds of successful.

* - The main problem, as I see it, is that I'm interested in popular cultural narratives, but if I want to be able to declare something to be something of a dominant narrative, I need some methodology for picking, say, text A over text B. The responses I got were largely of the "as long as you can justify it" variety, but given that I'm interested in having a rigorous take on exactly what counts as "justified," that advice was not entirely helpful. Oh, well.

Otherwise, it's just the usual school deluge that's keeping me off the streets / interwebs. I graded ~80 essays from the intro bioethics course over the weekend; they were largely not good, though I just calculated my average grade, and it was 78. And I've been doing a lot of reading. I'm still terrible at balancing school / TA / research work, but I'm certainly being kept busy. We've also been having candidates visit every week in February for a new bioethicist position in our department, each of whom has grabbed at minimum five hours out of our schedules (between lunch meeting, lab meetings, job talks, etc.). It's been an interesting experience - nothing like seeing a job talk bomb to motivate you away from the "what not to do" direction - but the missing time adds up quickly, as your grading time replaces your reading for class time, your reading for class time replaces your research reading time, and your pleasure reading gets shot to hell. Anyways, things were particularly busy the last week, which is why the Ballad rested.

My left knee is still bugging me, and I've been going to PT on a weekly basis for it, plus doing exercises constantly and getting a little more serious about my weight-lifting regimen. And doing a lot more non-Ultimate exercising lately, generally. I'm down to 179 as of this morning's weigh-in (WOOHOO!), though it's hard to tell how much of that is water-weight, blah blah blah etc. None of it is helping out with the knee thus far - I played Sprawl SLUG this weekend (AND WON!), and my jumping was still incredibly suspect (though I was able to cut pretty decently on O, and my D is still lagging). Anyways, the goal is still to get down to 170 by tryout time (May), which allows me to eat light but not drive myself insane by depriving myself all the time (note that MoJo is still in my diet). I think it's doable, and in combo with weight-lifting / ab-work, should leave me as a rather more-in-shape Sprawl captain. We'll see...

Have been utterly LOVING Olympic hockey - caught the USA - Canada game Sunday night, and am currently enjoying Canada-Germany. So much passion and skill on the ice simultaneously, and the games themselves have little tweaks that are quite nice - no-touch icing, a lack of fighting, few commercial breaks - just very fact-paced competition, and in some of the games, it's effectively All-Star squads battling it out, and everyone cares. Couldn't recommend it more if you've been missing it in favor of, say, ice-dancing (which is great in its own right).

3BK got crushed 15-7 in Beck's and my absence. JD just killed us, by all reports. We'll try to right the ship soon - we've got J-Ro and the "Pasty Gangstas" tomorrow, featuring Paul and Trant amongst others. Should be exciting.

Running out of gas here - I'll try to get the album reviews back on track*, but in all honesty, I'm gettign that crush of a feeling that every second should be spent on something else. I'm going to pass on fantasy baseball this year for this reason - GASP - and try to, as they say, GET SOME THINKING DONE. It's incredibly sad, but I need to re-orient my mind to how important I think the research is to get myself *really* going on it, and if that can be facilitated by not spending 40 hours reviewing draft magazines, then so be it.

* - Interlude - I throw down reviews on a couple of requested albums and reveal a desert island disc that was released in 2009 (!!!) and no one comments? Man. I was pretty sure we were all tragically alone before; now I am convinced.

Out of gas here. The beat is generally rolling on, with S / W / F doign just fine, and the day-to-day not getting us down too much. I really wish I could do more "pleasure" reading, but I find myself collapsing into sofas at day's end these past few. It's just way too tempting to watch the Olympics with my brain in a state of nothing. I can't even bring myself to comment on Tiger right now, other than to say that the very concept of "Billionaire Buddhist" is rife with absurdity. Anyways, big game tomorrow; I'll play and try to do something awesome so I can write about it. Wish us luck. This has been a boring life-review / diary entry kind of blog post that did not go into a level of detail adequate to render it interesting...

Zebra runs amok in the ATL

This is where and how circus zebra's live

"Zebra runs amok in the ATL"
We are by no means f*ing with you, dear readers, that was indeed the headline out of Atlanta this afternoon. Our pop culture editor, a radical Gaian, is always telling the rest of the staff that the zoo is animal jail. They think of it as the clink, the pokey, the cell block. In his view, the circus is an even lower form of routine, more akin to a chain gang. Today one of the zebras made a break from the Man. In its case, the man was Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The story is thus. The circus was in Atlanta. The zebra got loose from his handler and made a break for it. Cue wild goose chase scene now! And, bingo. The Atlanta Constitution Journal quotes Daniel Nance, "All of a sudden, a freaking zebra comes running down the street like a car. Five or six police cars were in hot pursuit. And a bunch of officers on foot."

For real. The boundaries of possible and real events are unimaginably large, and the number of events verges on the infinite, ergo things can and do happen.

The ATL-CJ continues, "Prapik Jani saw the animal jogging along Baker Street a half mile away next to Centennial Olympic Park. Jani...looked outside and saw an African creature running down the pavement. "It was wild," Jani said. "I thought I was seeing things."

Jani said there were "a bunch" of police on bicycles chasing after the zebra."

Reportedly the zebra was cornered in the parking area by the Richard B. Russell Federal Building, which is near the CNN Center and NBA Atlanta Hawks' Philips Arena.

Circus trainers were walking with the zebra when it started to charge again, dragging one of the trainers momentarily before it took off, in another bid for freedom, running across the railroad tracks and through a gate. One of the trainers was holding on to the zebra as it ran through the gate, but subsequently bounced loose as the zebra headed first for a nearby underground tunnel, and then up the block to a freeway entrance ramp. According to the Constitution Journal, "[he] was finally captured on the interstate near the Grady curve. According to witnesses, he was galloping between lanes of traffic on the Downtown Connector before his capture."

When a creature yearns to be free, say what, say what, anything can happen.

Read the Atlanta Constitution Journal's whole account here.

Spy Car, a toy?

Shopping for Junior?

The flying cars they promised us as children have yet to show up in reality. But dang if the toys haven't gotten better and more fascinating than we could possibly have imagined in our youth, case in point.

Wild Planet Entertainment Inc. is debuting this week the Spy Video Trakr, a remote controlled robotic car which includes a night-vision video camera, speakers and route-mapping feature. Oh yes, dear readers, you can cause a lot of trouble with toy like that. CEO Daniel Grossman knows it and relishes in it.

He told the Wall Street Journal,"A kid can program the Trakr to snap a picture of his sister talking on the phone when she is supposed to be doing homework, then drive the car to his parents and rat her out with a pre-recorded message." Wow! Not only is the remote controlled car pre-equipped as a spying device but it is programmable, so it can be adjusted to do even more. Does this thing have military applications or what? Or perhaps is it already borrowing technology from existing military applications, like the pilotless drones killing in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Real night vision binoculars are already available as a kid's toy, those with a range of fifty feet retail for $59. According to the Journal, Wild Planet has already made available for download a night-vision feature on the car's remote control LCD color screen to see the car as it maneuvers in the dark.

Wild Planet Entertainment is not the only toy company making available toys that ape the trend magnified by the i-Phone, reprogramming, building your own applications. The Wall Street Journal article cites, "Robonica Ltd., a South Africa-based toy robot company, recently debuted Roboni-i, a remote-controlled two-wheeled robot that has a Web site and comes with software that enables users to rewrite the robot's basic's instructions."

The future of toys is upon us.

Halo apa kabar?

Makassar, 17 Februari 2010

Halo apa kabar? Entah sudah berapa jam sejak sms terakhir kamu saya terima. Ada sesak yang sangat mengentak ketika kau menanyakan itu, “apakah kamu adalah orang yang tepat buat saya?”

Saya selalu berpendapat bahwa “percaya” adalah hal yang paling penting dalam hidup. Mau jadi apa kita kalau sudah tidak dipercayai lagi? Dari dulupun hal yang satu ini yang selalu saya jaga. Tapi untukmu rasanya percaya itu sudah tidak ada lagi untukku. Saya tidak menyalahkanmu, Karena memang apa yang dulu saya lakukan tidak benar. Saya beruntung masih diberi kesempatan kedua. Tapi sepertinya hal itu tidak bertahan lama, apa boleh buat.

Sekarang siapa yang naïf? Sepertinya pertanyaan itu sekarang ditujukan ke saya. Apakah saya pantas memiliki dirimu? Apakah memang kita ditakdirkan bersama? Ada 3 kali kau menanyakan hal itu kepadaku. Dan tampaknya saya pun mulai menanyakan hal yang sama. Apakah memang jalan ini sekarang masih milik kita?



Seorang teman pernah bertanya, “mengapa dia menjadi orang yang sepertinya sangat spesial?”, saya hanya bisa tersenyum kepadanya tanpa dia pernah tahu apa yang membuatmu begitu spesial. Tapi khusus untukmu, saya akan mengatakannya. Mengapa kau sangat berarti.

Apakah kau masih ingat hari itu? Jumat di penghujung November? Berbekal sms dan chat yang terus menerus. Kau yang hendak pulang dan kehujanan. Siapa sih dirimu sampai saya mau care begitu penting? Tapi itulah kau. Segala hukum dasar yang berlaku padaku, langsung luluh lantak. Saya yang tidak terlalu peduli dengan orang-orang disekitarku, berubah menjadi sosok yang berbeda. Hanya kau dan kau yang saya pikirkan.

Bisa saja kau mengatakannya gombal. Ingatkah kau pada malam malam kita bercerita? Tentang kamu, tentang saya, tentang apa saja. Tidak pernah saya seterbuka itu dengan orang lain. Hanya dengan kamu. Tapi sepertinya itu hanyalah cerita di masa lalu saja.

Satu yang tidak pernah bisa aku lupakan adalah kau yang menemaniku di titik terlemahku. Ketika saya bukan siapa siapa dan tidak mempunyai apa apa. Tidak ada yang bisa kujanjikan selain cerita cinta dan bahagia seperti di novel novel itu. Tapi sayangnya hidup ini tidak seperti cerita yang sering kit a baca. Yang selalu berakhir bahagia. Tapi rasanya saya sudah bisa menebak dan mencoba melihat kemana kita akan melangkah. Kau yang menemaniku melalui pengumuman tes, salah satu titik penting dalam hidupku. Kau yang mau menerimaku apa adanya. Bagaimana caranya saya akan melupakanmu?

Dengan segala rindu yang masih tersimpan aku hanya ingin berkata, aku sangat rindu kepadamu. Apakah kau merasa hal yang sama? Entahlah. Karena saat ini aku tak bisa lagi meraba hatimu. Sosokmu menjadi asing. Ketika kau terus bertanya, “apakah kita bisa terus bersama”.

Pada akhirnya kita memang harus mengambil keputusan. Tidak mengambang tanpa ada status hubungan yang jelas. Agar kita sama sama merasa lagi. Mendefenisikan kembali bagaimana bentuk hubungan kita. Apakah kau memang ingin pergi dariku? Apakah memang hadirku sudah tidak bisa lagi menenangkanmu? Apakah memang kita hanya bisa menjadi adik dan kakak. Terikat hanya dengan perhatian tanpa embel embel cinta.

Setidaknya jangan sampai kita menyiksa hidup kita sendiri. Setelah ini saya memberikan keputusan kepada kamu. Apakah memang saya tidak usah menghubungimu lagi. Apakah memang saya tidak bisa berada dalam hidupmu lagi. Entah hanya sebagai kakak atau hanya sebagai sahabat untuk saat ini. Karena kalau bertanya kepada saya, “apakah saya masih mau berada dalam kehidupan kamu?” hanya satu jawaban saya. IYA.

Berarti sampai disinilah saya berdiri. Sambil terus melihatmu meraih mimpi. Mungkin saya hanya bisa menjadi seorang kakak. Menjadi seorang sahabat. Entahlah. Itupun kalau memang kamu masih menginginkan saya ada di dalam kehidupan kamu. Baik baik yah! Saya hanya bisa menulis ini karena tidak sanggup berbicara denganmu di telepon. Inilah perasaanku yang sekarang.

Love you always,
Your lovely bear.
iQko.

Worth Not(h)ing

I got incredibly antsy / stir crazy yesterday from hanging around the house all weekend and working, so i caved and went to pickup (against my perhaps better plan of giving my leg more time off). Fun times, though my knee still feels terrible on sharp cuts - it loosened up again and I was able to make a go of it, no bad pain on throwing or running generally, I just can't jump or make hard cuts without stabbing pains, and I'm moving pretty slow out there. Ugh (more PT this week). But I got my workout in before coming home to a shwank Valentine's dinner of cheese and flatbread and king crabs' legs which were super delicious.

The thing that is "worth noting" though is that we had a running joke about hitting a field goal on the pull, i.e. putting it through the uprights at the other end of the field (we play on a local middle school football field for Sunday pickup). Only yesterday, admittedly with a tailwind, I did it, sailed it over the crossbar ... with about 20 yards to spare. No joke - three points. That's 70 yards of field plus 25 yards of endzone plus another 20 yards (30 yards from the exaggerators!) for a roughly 115 yard throw. Of course, that is of pretty much zero Ultimate value, as the other team gets the disc at the 20 yard mark outside of their endzone. But nice for a novelty acty, and now I can always write "Dear Diary, today I threw a frisbee over 100 yards!" and know for sure it's the TRUTH.

Yay!

AR: Embryonic

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic (2009)

"We wanted to make a double album in the spirit of Bitches Brew," or something like that, was the quote from Wayne Coyne that grabbed my attention. The Flaming Lips, godfathers of weird, were returning from a decade of pop-psychedelic beauty to their freakout roots; finally, the offbeat-but-recently-radio-friendly rockers were taking acid ... again. It was incredibly difficult to imagine what '70s fusion funk-jazz rock inspiration might sound like filtered through neo-psychedelic space-love-optimism rock, but given that the band was coming off a previous LP of ambient-desolate mood music - the soundtrack for their self-produced B-movie Christmas on Mars - the possibilities weren't exactly limited. The forthcoming double LP was to be almost entirely the product of studio jams, and a certain free spirit aka disregard for conventions of what-constitutes-ear-pleasing music was rumored to rear its head in a way that hadn't been heard since their pre-In a Priest-Driven Ambulance days. That's like, 1989, people! You can imagine my excitement when I made the Best Buy pilgrimage to purchase the FLips' first new album in three plus years. My heart veritably glowed with appreciation for this band, the real life instantiation of my vague hopes that somehow, somewhere, some artists were not content with the reality in front of them and were willing, even after a 20+ year career, to drop it all in effort to expand the limits. And expand they did - it's a strange case, indeed, when a band's first double LP comes well after their first experimental quadruple LP, and the former successfully out-weirds the latter by a country mile.

The typical account of Embryonic, though, strikes me as inaccurate. It pretends that the very natural path from Clouds Taste Metallic to The Soft Bulletin to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots to At War With the Mystics was swimming along, and Embryonic represents some severe left turn back to roots. For one, that account ignores the aforementioned space station soundtrack - though associated with that specific project, the soundtrack to Christmas on Mars is a much more jarring departure of style from the likes of AWWtM, so if you're going to point at the locus of a left turn, them's the coordinates. That soundtrack, in stark contrast to the upfront melodicism and advertisement-readiness of the FLips' last studio album, is downright bleak - its mechanical rumblings and atmospheric wails reveal a band very much willing to break with whatever Yoshimi-pop momentum had been established. The stripped down experimentalism of Embryonic is much more logical when the actual recent history is not forgotten.

For two, it's a misnomer to label this a return to form. I'll maybe grant you a "return to spirit," but the pre-Priest FLips were an exercise in rough, unbound edges, punk rock played by hallucinogenic weirdos. As I'll recount below, Embryonic is a product of the harmonic experiences of the band, not a drop everything and become wacky punks again. It's absurd to claim that Embryonic could possibly have come to light without the intervening style-development; indeed, much of the album echoes the FLips' history in fascinating ways. This is a brand new sound in some sense; sure, a departure, but timbres and techniques from the past five FLips albums are all over this supposedly brand new music, too.

So, that clarified, what is going on with Embryonic? For one, the rumors are true. No radio-friendly singles here, and nary a sing-along life-affirming chorus to be found. From the first few notes of "Convinced of the Hex" - an opener that combines strident, trebly guitar barbs with synth bell tones, a thumping bass and an offhand anxious vocal - it's apparent that the rainbows have receded. The frightening, sparking guitar solo that dribbles throughout is enough to indicate the factory sprawl of this event. Raw, sinister, dreadful - these are the adjectives that cover the land/sky/universe-scape here, and the FLips absolutely crush it across both discs. What is violently apparent on Embryonic is a far-less hippie-ish outlook on things - the hex is a curse, and there are aspects of our situation that a beaming anthem and a thousand strumming acoustics just can't fix. That's not to say that this is a strict concept album, just that there is a theme here - constant embryonic status in trying to grow into something when meaning doesn't seem forthcoming. As you can imagine, this is a topic right up my alley*.

*- Um, there's your warning that you're about to get a track-by-track review of a double album. Hope your bladder's empty.

If there is a consistent feature of the album, it is that thumping bass and, yes, "Bonham" drums - the insistent boom of both drive a lot of the tracks with a ne'erending variety of rhythmic patterns. The next song, "The Sparrow Looks at the Machine" buzzes to life and combines this drive with echoes of sentiments covered in Yoshimi; one half expects the vocals to declare again that "all we have is now," but this time around things seem more deeply concerned with how we deal with what, what does it mean? Two tracks in, and the familiar tendencies of the band seem to be eaten away by this meandering new force, the stark realization that things are darkly well beyond our control and we have to accept that.

"Evil"'s repeated desire, the wish to "go back in time," invokes the optimistic tones of the past few albums while admitting the defeat that one "will never understand" why some people are evil *and* prevail. They're the same dreamy tones, but now they're black-and-white fractured. It's a lament, a new outlook for the band, and an embrace of darker realizations that no one actually can go back in time. Crackles and mechanical effects refuse to permit this track to round out; it's a space-industrial ballad that moves extraordinarily slowly through its bleak-beauty. (Also note that there's a watch-beep audible on the track, a cheeky allusion to The Soft Bulletin's "What is the Light?" where this happened accidentally).

"Aquarius Sabotage" is the first of several pure freak out jam snippets that explode off this album. It's cacophonic juxtaposition, with ethereal harp strums greeted by a rumbling bass, screeching guitars and shattering glass sound effects. This is, arguably, busier and more disorienting than even the ultra-high / ultra-low frequency combos on Zaireeka, but it fleets in and out quickly, collapsing into a dream symphonic passage that echoes with sewer drips. It's certainly not a single, but it's one of the more impressive sound collages I've heard in quite some time. "Scorpio Sword" covers similar territory later in the album with a bit more of a sparse, free jazz approach; both of these pieces serve their interlude functions quite well, and the FLips smartly cut them off before they become onerous.

The first excellent avalanche groove is "See the Leaves," a foreboding meditation on the inevitability of death, with no "realizations" to save you this time. Just when the crescendo seems to have broken all limits, things fly off the cliff into a free-time, slow down rumbling cello recount of the chorus. It's an unbearably sad moment as the terrifying march turns to despair. The album isn't all lost hope, though - the next track "If" warbles into the alternative "But on the other side..." It's a sparse falsetto, shuffle sound response to "Evil" that we still have the power to choose ... though it begrudgingly admits that we don't often succeed.

"Gemini Syringes" is a slow dirge of a repetitive simple bass riff with both the spoken word recordings of a mathematician and the vocal click effects of Karen O. Both performers crop up in other places on the album; the vibe of "space transmissions" is undeniable. This tune slowly builds from its quiet beginnings to a layered effects ballad; it's *highly* reminiscent of the Miles Davis ballads from this era, though of course the spoken word bits make it quite a bit odder. One of the less formed (ha!) tunes "Your Bats" follows; the bass is turned into a huge bullhorn as stumbling drums and a falsetto wall meander about. It's admittedly an unfinished piece and more about atmospherics than tune, but it's another one that sits in a nice spot for a reprieve from the aural assault.

Speaking of ... "Powerless" is a big work in the middle of the album, settling on a slow, foreboding bass groove that refuses to quit. Coyne's vocals speak to some form of acceptance, but the music behind him evokes gathering storm clouds of the "Something Wicked This Way Comes" variety. The tune then treads on Doors / BB territory with a spastic yet slow guitar solo that is allowed to gyrate all over the map as the bass cooly continues to plod. This instrumental passage occupies the middle three minutes of this seven minute song, the guitar eventually exchanging the warbling lines for crashing guitar chords over a reprise of the song's intro combos. A wind howls across this track; "ominous" rarely describes things so aptly.

Side two begins with "The Ego's Last Stand," another death meditation that involves a bass / guitar dialog underneath wailing vocals and more mid-'70s Jarret/Hancock keyboard splashes. At roughly the 2:20 mark, the vocals admit that there's "no way out," and the battle commences - perhaps my favorite moment of kitchen-sink on the record as horns, guitars, drums, and everything else start to riot. The only relief for the tune's end is to migrate to a near a cappella section with the instruments still emitting death croaks. A riveting tune. Because levity is in order, the sublimely frivolous "I Can Be a Frog" follows - simpleton lyrics that sound like the proceedings from a preschool pre-nap reading session are called-and-answered by Karen-O who supplies animal-and-otherwise sound effects. It is been noted here that even this song is in a minor key, and here that these animal noises are a bit too scary for kindergarten audiences. I still find the tune charming, though those reviews are right; the off-kilter nature of the happiest song on the discs keeps it in the appropriate register.

"Sagitarius Silver Announcement" is a quick ballad touched with harps and reverberating choir effects; its tension is maintained by the vocal chant of "We can be like they are / We can be free / Free to be evil / Free to believe." The tune was born of a jam but the studio effects render it surprisingly tight - it serves as a nice melodic precursor to "Worm Mountain," the second of the three avalanche grooves. The bass is, unbelievably, turned up for this one; the power of "The Gash" is unleashed in chaotic form as the room rattles to what feels like a blitzkrieg. It's a bit overwhelming, really, though fantastic, and the explosion into typically FLipsy string cascades at the song's end is yet another effective relief.

The aforementioned jam "Scorpio Sword" and "The Impulse" come next; the latter is an instrumental / augmented (vocoder?) vocal piece that helps recovery from the chaos tha twent before. It's pretty enough but is probably the least standout piece on the album. "Silver Trembling Hands" is a grand work; it alternates a near-punkish drive-ahead rant with breakdown half-time choruses that balance the tune smartly. This song serves as the best example of this not being a sort of retread over old FLips' territory - the neo-psychedelic, synthesizer passages over the top of the acid freakout never would have appeared in the old days; this excellent combo appears to be every bit a product of their ongoing, storied evolution.

"Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast" brings back the mathematician for a sparse spoken word affirmation of post-acceptance possibility over more strident guitar hits. These crashes sound like the fade-out of humanity's last space transmission and would have ended the album on an incomplete note. ... but, thankfully, there's a coda. And que coda!

The last of the avalanche grooves, "Watching the Planets," brilliantly closes the album; its pounding apocalyptic sense makes it my favorite sendoff in this spirit since Led Zep's "When the Levee Breaks." After an entire album of dark-room meditations and terror experimentation, questions of how to deal with evil and acceptance of the idiosyncrasies of being and being around humans, this cathartic monster is enough to make me absolutely DANCE. And what sentiment could possibly be better than the one that occurs in the brief keyboard laden drum-silence: "Oh Oh Oh - Finding the Answer! - Oh Oh Oh - Finding that there ain't no answer to find!" Talk about your classic existential responses to one's small place in the universe! "Watching the Planets" is gorgeous in its hypnosis and the perfect response to the confusion dripping across the album. I absolutely love that the same band that gave the sort of "LOVE!" answer in prior meditations on death and evil here give the defiant, transcendent response; the cheese is dropped in favor of a courageous staredown of all these ominous strands. I can wax on about this indefinitely, so I'll stop here; trust that this strikes me as a dead-on, perfect album closer.

I've now spent about thirty seconds internally debating where this album stands for me; I don't really like rushing to judgment and packing 2009 discs for the Island. But dammit, Embryonic is brilliant. I'm certainly a FLips fanboy, and you should take this rec with that in mind - I am admittedly inclined to love most of what this band churns out. Sure, some of the passages are raw and underdeveloped ... but check the title, fool, that's the point. And yeah, you need to be in the appropriate wide-open mind mood for it, one where you're ready to embrace a large amount of conceptual and musical unease ... but you should always be in that mood! Alright, I'll agree that it's maybe not the best driving album. :) Otherwise, though, this is one of those "has it all" albums - consistent theme, good openers and closers, no real low points, a number of standout songs, a vibe that makes you feel like you're in the room while it's being recorded, and props props props to ambition. The FLips could have easily continued their sunbeam ride and continued to sell albums; I am continuously blown away by their fearless approach to a business they still maintain as an art form. I don't even care what "direction" this means for them - this stylistic shift is itself an endpoint, and Embryonic is the sort of masterpiece that makes other 21st century music forays look silly by comparison. A big thanks to The Flaming Lips for this freeing work; it's the type of thing I find myself living for. Get it.

Status: Recommended (Desert Island)
Nyet's Faves: "See the Leaves" and "Watching the Planets"

AR: The Grey Album

Danger Mouse - The Grey Album (2004)

There are three things to note about The Grey Album, Danger Mouse's year-later underground mash-up of Jay-Z's The Black Album and The Beatles' eponymous (and legendary) White Album. The first is that it's, um, an extraordinarily dark version of "grey," maybe 85% Black and 15% White. This is nothing resembling an even blend of the albums; it's Jay-Z's album with different backing beats. What Danger Mouse has primarily done is taken prominent snippets of Beatles tunes, isolated some Beatles hand-claps, other sound effects and Ringo drumbeats and used them in place of the various samples and drum-sounds from Jay-Z's disc. The tracks are appropriately titled after the Jay-Z songs as these are essentially "alternate mixes" of the Jay-Z originals. This is all well and good and makes sense; doing the reverse hardly would have worked. But it is decidedly not the marriage that is is sometimes made out to be, and it is not even a case of the Beatles playing back-up band to Jay-Z's lead; it's really Beatles sounds cut and resequenced into a very idiosyncratic drum machine for the HOVA.

The second thing to note is that it's 85% The Black Album in a different sense - strangely, the entire disc is not represented. Jay-Z's "The Threat" is cut from the proceedings, and "Lucifer" doesn't really get the full treatment but is instead sliced to bits right along with the Beatles music in an homage to "Revolution 9." The order of tracks is also rearranged. None of these decisions is a death blow to the project, but they are collectively odd - there's a sense that the omitted tunes were "too tough" or that Danger Mouse was in a hurry to get the mashup out there. I definitely feel a little cheated by the proceedings, and wonder if another couple goes with the PC Tools would have given a more complete experience.

The third thing is that there are two general mashing tendencies on this album - the first is to use a very recognizable riff from The White Album and loop it underneath Jay-Z's raps. The following songs primarily feature this technique:

"PSA" uses "Long, Long, Long"
"What More Can I Say" uses "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"
"Encore" uses first "Glass Onion" and then "Savoy Truffle"
"December 4th" uses "Mother Nature's Son"
"99 Problems" uses "Helter Skelter"
"Change Clothes" uses "Piggies"
"Justify My Thug" uses "Rocky Raccoon"
"My First Song" uses the "Can you take me back where I came from" outro of "Cry Baby Cry" before falling into a "Savoy Truffle" breakdown

Like I said, "primarily;" these tunes certainly feature other crafty touches. But because a "riff" (for lack of a better term) is used so prominently, these songs more lend themselves to making me wish I was listening to either the Jay-Z or the Beatles tune individually (with a couple of exceptions). The second technique, imho, is more successful. On these tunes, Danger Mouse took the original Beatles' sounds and so rearranged them that the timbre is definitely of Fab Four lineage, but the song itself is not:

"Dirt Off Your Shoulder" uses a frenetic obliteration of "Julia"
"Moment of Clarity" uses an equally chopped to pieces sampling of "Happiness is a Warm Gun"

The effect is to give a dream-like sense of the Beatles without that explicit quote of a particular line. It's a step more interesting than the former technique both in sound and in the fact that it presents a stronger challenge to the EMI copyright claims - it's one thing to say that a riff is intellectual property, but rearranged samples of what are essentially frequencies? That sounds like a stronger "fair use" case to me, though I can't pretend to be expert in the proceedings.

With those three "things" on the table, I ask two questions: 1, what, if any, of these songs are improved by this treatment, and 2, is The Grey Album really listenable (in whole or in part) , or just interesting as an experiment? Well, let's address the blasphemous question first - are any of the Beatles songs improved?

"NO!" you reply in genetic reflex!

Not so fast. I put forth for your consideration that "Piggies" has found its appropriate place in the universe as a rap sample. It's one of the stranger and painfully unsubtle tunes of the White Album, and the work it does on "Change Clothes" is tremendous. The baroque runs fit great as a "huh?" loop, and the absence of cannibalistic pig lyrics suits me just fine. [Pause]. Okay, okay, I won't go so far as to say it's better, just that it is doing just fine in this role. Cool? The only other thing that stands close is the conversion of "Savoy Truffle" into a looped boogie at the end of "My First Song;" it's not so much an improvement as an impressive use of such a short sample. Otherwise, fear not Beatles fans; the sacred is still sacred.

The more on point q is whether any of these Jay-Z alternatives are superior to their originals. As stated, "Change Clothes" is cool in its new skin and stands exceptionally well next to its BA counterpoint. It was already a good song, and this take might make it that much catchier. "Encore" works really well with the rock riffs, though doesn't necessarily improve on its original. The big work was done on "Moment of Clarity," which is just plain better in its Beatles take, and "Dirt Off Your Shoulder," a song whose offbeat sliced-and-diced Julia sample sounds so different than the Timbaland laserbeams that the song is reborn. The mashup as a whole is generally successful in that each song lined up on its new beats works, but these tunes in particular are head-turners and a solid defense of the form.

The latter q, though, is trickier. While this album is easy to appreciate for its technical precision and ambition, I'd humbly submit that the fat majority of the songs are WAY better on The Black Album. That is perhaps to be expected, but with so much of the Grey consisting of Jay-Z's raps stripped straight off, it's hard for me to conceptualize listening to this Danger Mouse work as something other than a novelty act. The tunes, especially the strongest ones, were great on Jay-Z's cut, and hearing them here gives me that nagging feeling of listening to a live album where everything is *just* off the studio version, not enough to make it better but enough to make it distracting. Like I stated, that's strongly qualified - there are a handful of songs that breathe well here, and the project as a whole is an undoubted success. But I like to think of The Grey Album as evidence of the skills that Danger Mouse will utilize in albums to come. So for now, I will keep my darks and lights separate while remembering that Grey is worth hearing a couple of times just to admire the bridge of highly disparate artists.

Status: Recommended (solid)
Nyet's Fave: "Change Clothes"

AR: The Black Album

Jay-Z - The Black Album (2003)

Having reviewed the White and with the Grey in the queue (by Frankian request), the necessary step is to review the Black to get my palette in order. The Black Album is Jay-Z's 2003 "farewell" album, a closing act that turned out to be a few shades shy of Brett Favre on the dishonest retirement scale. Jay-Z would go on to do more solo work (DUH, unless you haven't been around a television or a radio or a gym or any of the bajillion places that have blared "Empire State of Mind" the past few months), but his magnanimous legacy had already been well sealed in 2003. Had this indeed been his curtain call, it would have been an epic exit - not only did he bring out ten producers to supply his varied anthemic beats, he churned out a biopic that retread the ground of his "rags to riches" story in gigantic, quasi-presidential-memoirs fashion. It's the rare case of braggadocio backed up by performance - Jay-Z is certainly not one lacking ego or an overdeveloped sense of scale, but the flow/rhythm/witticisms here are in top form. It's just a great rap record, one of his best with or without the years that followed, and a grandiose performance to match the mythic figure behind it. While it (intentionally) is not dripping with the singles of some of his other efforts, it is top to bottom solid with few weak moments, and a quartet of lead songs that stand up with the canon of hip-hop classics.

One thing that's exceedingly nice about this hip-hop album is what it lacks: skits. Far be it from me to criticize a genre convention, but even some of the pinnacle achievements of rap are littered with minute and a half comedy fillers that miss way more often than they hit (and even when they hit are good for a laugh only the first few listens). Jay-Z doesn't waste time there at all, just hits the beats and songs, a great move imho. The album does stick to other epic hip-hop event conventions: it begins with a minute and a half fade-in intro and ends on the obligatory name-checking extended outro. But neither of these feels tacked on. The former is a smooth electronic piece that introduces the themes of finality via spoken word sentiment. The latter works as a kiss-goodbye song in its own stead, serving less as film credits than closure. I struggle to review hip-hop albums because it's not really my home musical territory*, but this album scores points with me from the get-go for dodging some of the more cumbersome traits of the form.

* - For the obvious reasons - see "white suburbanite Texan," etc. - but also because I really didn't get into hip-hop at all until about 2002 or so, and constantly feel like I'm missing things or being over susceptible to hooks. I mean, sure, in the '90s I heard the singles, and I was familiar with youthful masters of ceremony and knew whom the ladies love, but sitting down with whole hip-hop albums didn't really happen until post Tuftsmen years.

The first song proper, "December 4th," is one of the more preposterous songs out there. It's all the more impressive for being pulled off in spite of its ridiculousness. "12.4" starts with Jay-Z's mom talking about his birth, including how much he weighed (10 pounds 8 oz.) and that he "was the only one of [her] five children who did not cause [her] pain at birth." Right ... unclear whether he rode his blue ox to kindergarten, too. These biographical snippets are interspersed with Jay-Z's own account of his drug-dealing early years and move to the rap industry - all of this is delivered over a lush strings and girl group Specter-ish backing that is hilariously big in scope. It's hard to know what to say about this - the whole endeavor is Mt. Olympus over-the-top, but it somehow works. Apparently bad-assness transcends cheese - who knew? The song is followed by "What More Can I Say," another Motown-Soul-backed "I'm the best" diatribe that winds down to the retirement threat. The track opens with lines from friggin' Gladiator, as though the "larger than life" label needed even more emphasis. The track kills, and the two together serve as a huge opening to the disc.

There are two other giant numbers on the disc. At track 6, "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" uses a Timbaland futuristic synthesized club beat to drive a pulsing ego-number with a sick chorus. This song would be memorable enough on its own, but the fact that its signature "move" was referenced by arguably somebody bigger than the HOVA himself during the primaries:

has pretty much entrenched this as a hip-hop classic. Try to leave those analytic thoughts about the President "feelin' like a pimp" aside; the defiant sense of rolling with punches is the meat here.

The other stellar track on The Black Album is the fantastic (if misogynist*) "99 Problems." Perhaps the only rap song that meets Bruce Dickinson's cowbell requirements, this is a booming rap-rock tune that throws impressive wordcraft over Billy Squier's thunderous power chord samples. The first verse starts the insanity: "I got the rap patrol on the gat patrol / Foes that wanna make sure my casket's closed / Rap critics they say he's "Money Cash Hoes" / I'm from the hood, stupid, what type of facts are those? / If you grew up with holes in your zapatos / You'd be celebrating the minute you was havin' dough." Tight! The second verse gives an account of a DWB incident; it's brilliant and worth citing in its entirety:

The year's '94 and my trunk is raw / In my rear view mirror is the mother fuckin' law / I got two choices y'all pull over the car or (hmmm) / Bounce on the double put the pedal to the floor / Now I ain't tryin' to see no highway chase with Jay / Plus I got a few dollars i can fight the case / So I...pull over to the side of the road / I heard "Son do you know why I'm stoppin' you for?" / 'Cause I'm young and I'm black and my hat's real low? / Do I look like a mind reader sir, I don't know / Am I under arrest or should I guess some mo'? / "Well you was doin fifty-five in a fifty-fo'/ License and registration and step out of the car / Are you carryin' a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are" / I ain't steppin out of shit, all my paper's legit / "Well, do you mind if I look round the car a little bit?" / Well my glove compartment is locked so is the trunk in the back / And I know my rights, so you gon' need a warrant for that / "Aren't you sharp as a tack, you some type of lawyer or somethin'? / Or somebody important or somethin'?" / Nah, I ain't pass the bar but i know a little bit / Enough that you won't illegally search my shit / "We'll see how smart you are when the K9 come" / I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one.

He does seem to be assuming that the K9 will be male, but we'll let it slide; it's a smoking dialog and one of my favorite rap verses ever. "99 Problems" is buried on side two but is the cream of the album, imho.

* - Of course, this would be instance number 137529 of the term "bitch" being thrown about to refer to women generally, a questionable trend in the rap vernacular and one that will always make me cringe on some level. The "misogynist vocabulary as term of endearment" oddly gets a little clarification in this tune, as Jay-Z later refers to another "'ho" but then clarifies crudely "not a 'ho in the sense of having a pussy / but a pussy having no goddamn sense." It turns out he's not talking about a woman at all, but a all-bark-no-bite gangster (whom he later refers to as "he.") Still, clearly no feminist ground is being broken here, and you'd be justified if you wanted to dismiss the whole work on the basis of those lines alone. Jay-Z appeared with Phish in Brooklyn a few years back, and there was quite a buzz about the hippies from Vermont bringing a lyrical misogynist up to share the love and fun stage. I'm still not entirely sure where the right place to stand is - as I have mentioned with e.g. G'n'R, it seems that one can divorce condoning the attitude while appreciating the artistic depiction of that very attitude. That's pretty slippery ground to tread on, though. So maybe the real point of bring this up is buyer-beware: Jay-Z engages in a lot of the unpleasantries of hip-hop, though not as much as some, and if that will perturb you then you should steer clear.

There are plenty of other highlights - the Kanye-produced "Encore" is an invigorating live-sounding horn-backed number that includes the claim that Jay-Z is "rap's Grateful Dead" as well as a mention of "when I come back like Jordan, wearing 45" which sort of contradicts the whole "closing act" claim (and is an awesome in-the-know reference to MJ's 1996 jersey number). "Public Service Announcement" is shwank effrontery, and as mentioned, the closing track "My 1st Song" is a rhythmically intricate sly-off over a reverbing guitar line. "Justify My Thug" samples Madonna (!!!) as Jay invokes his former imposing persona, and "Lucifer" dances all over a Jamaican sample that evokes steel drums without even using them. I'll refrain from writing a sentence about every track, but really, what I'm leaving off as "non-highlights" are all solid work with rich beats, too.

That's really an apt phrase - The Black Album is "rich." Lots of varied styles going on, all serving the same general "I'm the best ever, goodbye" narrative, all immediate and memorable. The variety of stars producing for Jay-Z here definitely enforce the "this is royalty" atmosphere. And there's a reason Jay-Z's king: he raps with a voice that is very upfront, easily understood and adorned with all kinds of clever quips and turns of phrase. He was (and certainly thought he was) the best in this era, and at least part of his power sits neatly in this ability to be accessible to even non-hip-hop fans. With the thorough qualification that I probably *am* one of those non-hip-hop fans, this is a great, thoroughly enjoyable hip-hop album, an appropriate send-off for one of the genre's artistic giants, even if it didn't turn out to be the real last verse. Definitely worth your time.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "99 Problems"

Oh, and I can't help myself - this joke was suggested by Nyet as a slogan for the ASU Center for Biology and Society. It was, natch, rejected:

3BK-1

3BK kicked things off in style Wednesday, beating Fall League finalist "Huck My Life" captains Cole / Kaetlynn's new team "In Tent City" 15-10 in a game that we should have won by more (we were up 13-6 when we to some degree called off the dogs). We contained Cole just enough, Lindsey did a number on Kaetlynn, and our balanced roster utilized a surprisingly effective huck game (given that Cole was patrolling the skies). I'm VERY happy with our speed and hustle; our field organization was a little wacky as is to be expected in a first league game. With the inexperience that we're featuring, though, we're going to have to work hard to resemble something well-oiled. Here's how the scores went down:

1,2-0; 2-1; 3-1; 3-2,3; 4,5,6,7-3; 7-4; 8-4; 9,10-4; 10-5; 11-5; 11-6; 12,13-6; 13-7,8,9; 14-9, 14-10, 15-10.

I showed up to the field wondering if I was going to hold together. I've been getting PT for my ailing left knee (aka knee-2000, as opposed to knee-2004) this week, and it hasn't exactly cured me yet. The lateral knee (roughly in the tibia and across but importantly not IN the joint) flared up a little on a short run the Friday before NYF (two weeks ago), got gradually worse over the weekend until turning into a stabbing pain by the end of play Sunday the 31st. I saw the sports doctor on the 4th who assured me that it was just IT Band syndrome (she actually yelled at me for being inflexible, which is neither nice nor accurate), and she sent me to PT which started this past Tuesday the 9th. I did some stretching, ran through some core and hamstring exercises, and received A-STYM over my entire left leg.

What's that, you ask? It's Augmented Soft T(Y)ssue Mobilization, which involves lathering up the leg with "frictionless" cream and massaging all the muscles with some plastic dimpled devices that look for all the world like medieval torture sex toys. Yikes! It actually didn't hurt too badly and did the trick, at least temporarily - I ran on the elliptical after the treatment essentially pain-free, though by Wednesday things had tightened back up. These are all good signs, as ligaments and cartilage generally don't loosen and tighten back up, but that was little comfort while warming up Wednesday before the game. Every pivot, jump and change of direction was like stabbing myself with a steak knife, despite the layers of braces I had wrapped around the knee to keep it warm. I'd say at first pull I was kicking it around 50% speed which natch made my prospects for being able to cover Cole or Kid very poor (as if they weren't poor anyways). Fortunately we've got some speed, so I could ease off and guard DH when we were on D, an arrangement that worked out just fine.

And somewhere in the 3-3 range, my knee got past whatever threshold, and I was up around 75% instead. The knee still hurt, and I couldn't quite accelerate as much as I wanted, but I wasn't running around afraid of keeling over at any moment. So I got accordingly active on O and played some good poachy D. I ended up playing a good game, with only one bad throw*, and about 8 thrown goals (including several hucks) and four goals scored**, plus a pair of handblocks, a layout endzone D, and a couple of poach off on hucks help D's. Good times, and maybe a bit too much, but our O was goofed enough that I felt compelled to make a lot of plays***.

*(an IO backhand huck I *just* overthrew to Lindsey - that was the only turn, save a couple of stall 9 punts)

** - Endzone scoober to Nick, Endzone forehand to Lee, 2 x Backhand Huck to Stefan, Forehand Huck to Stefan, breakmark BH to Mike, High Release BH to Lindsey, Down the Line Forehand to Linds, blade FH from Linds, Huck from Stefan, Layout on Mark's forehand, toe in from Chris. A full 80%, if you will. :)

*** - It'll be interesting to see what 3BK pulls off sans Joneses this week, as both Beck and I are indisposed next Wednesday and won't be able to make it. It's against Dheintime squad "Tighty Whiteys", no less, so that could be bad. Oh, well, that's what I get for being too much of our offense. Lesson for the future - I have faith that 3BK will bring it regardless.

In terms of non-Nyet play (I know, I know, so self-centered), Lindsey predictably tore it up and DEFINITELY won the L-K battle. Ashley played pretty well, making some good cuts and running hard on D (though she dropped a huck from me, d'oh), and Beck did a great job on O, bailing out a turn and hooking up with me on an incut. She did pull her hammies a little, unfortunately, so we'll have to get her back into sprinting shape before the next match. On the guys' side, Lee is a beast and very competitive; he guarded Cole and held his own a lot of the night. Read that again, because it's cool - a newbie stepped on the field and immediately hung okay with Cole. Lee's a little too physical right now, but looks great and is picking things up quickly. Stefan and Mark did a great job running; Stefan in particular owned Kid a few times - nice when your second round draft pick tools on someone's first. Speaking of first-rounders, Al was a little rusty with some hucks, but did a great job handling and anchoring the offense, particularly on the points in which I was not in - he ended up catching about every other throw on one sequence. Chris handled well; Matt went down to the earth and made some plays, and Mike got a couple of Ds. All in all a great teamwide, hard-running performance, and a great tone for the season was set.

Beck and I will miss next week's matchup, unfortunately, but suffice it to say I'm 100x happier with this team than the last. We'll see how things roll out - there are lots of tough teams in the league this year, but at the very least we're running with a fun, capable squad.

Oh! And the discs came out! I'll leave you with a shot of the real live thing. Pretty nice if you ask me. :)

AR: Sailing the Seas of Cheese

Primus - Sailing the Seas of Cheese (1991)

Ah, Les Claypool and the eccentricities of Primus! Reeun Shtaleens, my Rice roommate, and I used to feature this in the freshman year Lovett 314 rotation on occasion back in the day. It's a classic early '90s "alternative metal" rock album that broke Primus into the mainstream on the strength of a couple of MTV hits ("Jerry Was a Racecar Driver" and "Tommy the Cat"). It's unclear why certain weird, offbeat-bands managed to poke their heads out of the abyss in those days, and Primus's prominent nasally spoke-sung vocals, odd rhythms and dissonant vibe would probably have put them low on the odds list. But the catchiness of those two singles, a very unique musical approach, a little funk and just enough of the muscle of proto-metal did the trick enough, and Primus albums managed to worm their way into quite a few suburban CD Logic cases. This one, unfortunately, will worm its way into your sense of calm, too, and I'll admit upfront that it's not one I generally reach for in the collection.

Les Claypool is the bassist / lead singer of Primus, and everything starts and stops with the main man. His slap-bass style utilizes weird rhythms, double-stops and all sorts of technical wizardry in achieving an utterly distinct sound. Because he's covering most if not all of the melodies here, the guitarist can throw left-field wackiness all over the top of thunder-slap riffs - it's a thin but exciting guitar sound, and one that adds a paranoid edge to the affair. Toss in Claypool's inimitable high-pitched speech and some 5/4 or otherwise highly syncopated rhythms, and you've got a generally frantic musical landscape to traverse. It's exciting, dense music, expertly executed with a flair of offbeat humor taboot. Unfortunately, its thundering darkness and repeated dwelling on unease grow a little old, and after a few listens this afternoon, I'm reminded why this doesn't make it back into the player too often these days - it's abrasive and outside of the singles has a tendency to drone / drag.

Claypool is quite obviously a Zappa-descendant and so carries the same sorts of baggage that the Z man does: you either dig him or you don't. I think it may go a step beyond that as StSoC is a particularly *moody* album, one that is just too much dark dissonance in too tight a space - i.e., Zappa seems to vary the game enough to keep from spiralling into something (should you happen not to match its necessary mood) that could give you a skull-crushing headache. So while I appreciate Claypool and Primus's brilliance and occasionally find myself itching for "Jerry," sitting down with this album invariably puts me in a foul state. Too much weird for the sake of weird and, perhaps, that loud, prominent bass is on the wrong resonant frequency for me. (And this is allegedly their most accessible album, too!). With all apologies to the diehard Claypool / Primus fans out there - I am in utter awe of the musical ability here, for sure, so you're perfectly sane in my book - I just can't recommend this album as I don't like to listen to it. Seek out the singles; if that grate sings to you, then more power to you. But Nyet is really glad to put this one away for a while.

Status: Not Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Jerry Was a Racecar Driver"

AR: LCD Soundsystem

LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2005)

He didn't explicitly ask for it, but this one is coming straight from the Dheintime request line. We've been riffing jokes* off of the wry quips from "Losing My Edge," the spoken word post-punk single from LCD Soundsystem that lists all of the band's hipster influences and betrays the paranoia that cooler youths are chasing them down. It appears on the second disc of this impossibly hip post-disco-dance-punk album by James Murphy and crew, and it put the band out nerd foot first - we just don't talk about influences, we overtly mock that pretense (while admitting it in ourselves) right there in our debut single. All over a borderline krautrock beat that gets layered to perfection through the song's course, all while insisting the indie-cred of "I was there!" at all kinds of seminal events, from CBGB's to Captain Beefheart rehearsals, before collapsing into a blitz of name-dropping. It's a great move, a fantastic and funny song, and a representative treasure from this critics' / dancefloors' darling.

*- We particularly laugh about "I heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody" and "I'm losing my edge ... to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties," and "I heard everybody you know is more relevant than everybody I know." It is not particularly hard to turn these into frisbee jokes - "I heard you have a throw for every good stall count, from 7 ... to 9." Anyways, it was funny that the first time Justin mentioned that I came to mind when he heard this song about listing all of these rock influences, it took me exactly negative three seconds to know the song to which he was referring. LCD Soundsystem is not exactly obscure, but being familiar with them is worthy of certain club membership. One *could* note the irony of two people using an ironic song about pretentiously name-checking music influences to feel cool about knowing the same "hip" band who performs said song, but that might cause my metahead to explode.

"Losing My Edge" actually reflects a lot that's going on in this album, even though it was written / released a few years before the eponymous debut full length made it to the stores. LCD Soundsystem is all about knowing influences and catching the injokes - the attitude is overtly one of the quick-witted hipster, and record clerk sarcasm penetrates throughout. In its unabashed drive to be ironically cool, though, the music manages to pull off an endearing sincerity - somewhere in there it's no longer disco-riffing because it's funny, but disco-riffing because this is what disco could have been. The marriage of bassy dance beats and real rock buzz, synths and snarling punk attitude, drum-sets and 808s all give off an above-it-all but down-in-it air, all the while being very, very overt about the musical lineages that got them here. There's something upfront and great about this dizzyingly intention-masked disc, and one can't help but get the feeling that all they really want to do is the black-clad cool kids on the dance floor. LCD Soundsystem was a long-anticipated debut based on the strength of the band's singles from 2002-05, and the freshman effort from the band pulled off the trick - the new material is great, and the backup disc of those very singles saves the bin-divers a lot of trouble. This album is a must if you're interested in knowing the state of the early 2000s hipster, and hey - it's got a nice beat and you can dance to it, too.

The opening track "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" is a driver based on the stupidest but most grin-inducing riff you will hear. I'll even transcribe it: A-D-C-A, A, A-A, A-D-C-A ad infinitum. Simple but rousingly effective, this is the first of two "Daft Punk" references on the album (and just in case that has no significance for you, Daft Punk is a French electronica band that wouldn't necessarily be the first thing indie-punks would be into ... unless they were second level indie-punks). That simple riff and snarl are combined over an ever-varying timbre of drum-fills, hand-claps and drum machine hi-hat fills. An amazing display of the punk-disco aesthetic, this is a fantastic opener.

Much of the rest of the disc of new material shares this energy but also walks the fine line of overtly sound-checking influences and maintaining originality / non-derivative status. "Too Much Love" is a straight up Remain in Light era Talking Heads groove; "Movement" is a sort of play on The Fall (check "Repetition" for something in the general ballpark); the closer "Great Release" is a lovely and thoroughly obvious homage to Brian Eno's ambient Another Green World sound; and "Never as Tired When I'm Waking Up" is the most obvious Beatles "Dear Prudence" nod, um, ever. The record collection is out in full force and, imho, is used effectively - it's easy to catch the references while never getting the impression that a cover band has stolen the stage. LCD Soundsystem is a unique-enough sounding band to be able to step on other material and render it unredundant, which is a great thing, if not necessarily a groundbreaking one.

The only thing resembling a low point on disc 1 is the buzzed-out drum rattler "Thrills" which is just a hair too much out of the MIA school for my tastes. It's not bad, just less present than the rest of the cuts. And speaking of present, the new dance / house tunes included throughout disc 1 - "Tribulations," "On Repeat," and "Disco Infiltrator" - all absolutely bring it. I hate to keep running to the genre name to describe it, but this is just disco punk groove - trance rendered through loops and grooves and a rougher edge than you typically hear from electronic house music. The tunes stay interesting across multiple repeats of patterns and varied elements; it's dope stuff, right in the LCD wheelhouse.

And all of that is before you get to the aforementioned second disc, the previously-released collection of DFA singles. "Losing My Edge," referenced above, sounds like an easy idea, but it's pulled off impeccably and is extraordinarily entertaining in music alone - definitely one of the best singles from the aughts. The twice taken ride of "Yeah (Crass Version)" and "Yeah (Pretentious Version)" is phenomenal - the former is blistering, blurred edges fuzzed out ecstacy on a classic disco beat, the latter the best nine minute electronic instrumental intro of any song I've heard. "Beat Connection" finds LCD S in pulsing chill rave mode before accelerating to emphatic declarations of the "saddest night out in the USA." "Yr. City's a Sucker" also resides somewhere near Talking Heads-land but veers slightly with both its fluttering electro-elements and a residual hand-clap beat that makes it sound like a bizarre line dance, too. "Give it Up" is the counterpart to "Daft Punk..." with a little more of a booty-shake insistence; its rhythmic chant "These are the parts of a terrible past / These are the things we can live without" is an earworm. Again, there's really only one thing on the disc that isn't stellar - "Tired" is a little too much psychedelic garage and/or Hüsker Dü freakout to mesh well with the rest of this disc. It's not bad, just kinda left field, and it's 3.5 minutes are a small price to pay for the brilliance collected here. Basically, if you have any affinity for punk, disco and dance hall trance music, this disc alone is worth the price of admission; it won't just make your toe tap but will actively shake your ass.

Should be clear - this is a great album with just a couple of blips keeping it out of the pantheon. I also highly recommend it for a running mix, as those 808-kit combos will get you pulling your knees up and through with ferocious intentions. Great pair of discs, great debut, and an excellent window into the indie-dance marriage that occurred in the early 2000s and split into factions very quickly. Don't miss it.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Faves: "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" and "Losing My Edge"

Super Bowl ratings

The last time the Nielsen's were updated this was a cutting edge color TV

A savvy, local, Durham painter made an interesting comment to the Clarion Content's editor the other day. He said that he thought this might be the highest rated Super Bowl ever. The analysis behind his argument was tight. The mid-Atlantic Snowmageddon snowstorm guaranteed a huge chunk of the country is a captive audience. It also means that in that region far fewer folks will be watching collectively at sports bars and other peoples' houses.

Long time readers of the Clarion Content know that we have been highly critical of the Nielsen ratings for ages for just this reason. The Nielsen's are a monopoly and have not been pressed to get better. This flaw has existed for ages and they have ignored it. The biggest television spectacles and especially sporting events tend to be watched collectively, the Oscars and the Super Bowl are the classic examples. The Nielsen's in no way account for this. They continually underrate the viewing audiences for these events by counting television sets, not eyeballs. They do not account for sports bars. The Nielsen's are wildly wrong during the NCAA tournament and every Sunday of the NFL season.

We agree with our local painter, this Super Bowl could be the highest rated Super Bowl ever by Nielsen. But will that really mean more people watched it?

AR: Tales From Topographic Oceans

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans (1973)

Oh, what the hell. Surely an album this EPIC deserves the full LP cover, no?

Ah, that's more like it. When I read that Avatar's iconic fluorescent fern-world reminded reviewers of "some weird Yes album cover," this is the image that instantly came to mind. Because if you're talking overblown, extravagant productions with lots of flash and spectacle, loads of technical genius but a thoroughly questionable if not idiotic storyline, you are clearly talking about ... wait, lost my train of thought there. Tales From Topographic Oceans was, despite SA radio station KZEP's best attempts to get me to satisfiedly turn my head each day, my first introduction to Yes, one of the Nyet-Dad's favorite '70s rock bands. I clearly remember the worn psychedelic album cover sitting in our living room; I even better remember the one-song-per-twenty-minute-album-side double LP format and the liner notes that contained all kinds of Eastern mystic / nature-worship weirdness, incomprehensible to me then and no better after undergraduate courses in the exact topic. Oh, and natch, I remember "What happened / to the song / we once knew so well?" and "We must have waited all our lives for this...," because, well, how could you not. It was a prominent album from the collection, one of which at least side one made it into the rotation quite often, and the memories of mysterious music* certainly line up well with that album cover.

* - The music also reminds me of Beluga Whales, which I suspect has something to do with childhood season passes to San Antonio Sea World and the general spaced out soundtrack to the nighttime cetacean performances. Proust had his madeleines, I've got Beluga Whales. One point, Nyet.

TfTO is, arguably, THE prog album, because while it most certainly contains moments of brilliance, its meandering noodly tunes with obtuse lyrics scream of an indulgence that even hardcore Yes fans tend to acknowledge. Its expanse, technicality and detached intellectualism are about as far from punk on the rock spectrum as one can get, so it's an extreme example of that general charge at '70s progressive rock. I.e. it's everything the haters hate. The instrumentation is all shimmery guitars, organs, slide-wheel-excess synthesizers, falsetto voices and big echoing chambers; I've always thought the general vibe while evoking the bizarre space fantasy world that adorns the cover, is something like futuristic laser baroque of the distant past. (You'll note that listening will tend to cause your writing to be riddled with equally obtuse constructions). There's a crushing sense that the band and the album can't figure out what the hey they're up to - even with a backbone of a concept about some Eastern mystic scriptures regarding Truth, Culture, Knowledge and Freedom - and the result is some wowser over-the-top-colossal noodling. And that, friends, is an indictment coming from a Phish guy. What makes the album suffer is the pretense that the clinical improv has some kind of actual message to deliver that amounts to more than its ever-shifting, disconnected runs and textures. Were it just improv that stuck to its own confines, that would be one thing, but that it claims to spit nirvana from between the notes makes the enterprise feel a tad gratuitous.

On the first five listens, anyways. What is sort of endearing and infuriating about the double-discer is that the fleeting engaging moments that are peppered throughout the disc - if you let them sink in enough, the rest of the wandering works in service of these anchor-points. Most reviews stop at my above paragraph with a sort of "WTF is this?" take, but if you forgive the excess and can be patient for the rare moments - or if you, say, heard this album several times during your formative years and can't help it now - there are some rewards peppered about the disc. I suppose what I'm getting at is that while I would fully forgive anyone who balked at this album, I almost can't help but leave it playing. Is the third track, "The Ancient (Giants Under the Sun)," a good one? No! But it has that lovely folk melody acoustic section at the end. And so I will generally sit there for 20 minutes just to hear it. Huh?

And that goes about two thousand fold for the opening track / side, the 20 minute "The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn)." That has gotten to the point where as ridiculous as the chanting intro is, I actually do get excited by the bombastic synth riffs. It's become a great song, in my head anyways - there's no use to trying to describe it, as again, these tunes are shifty beasts that refuse to occupy any particular space (other than perhaps, as mentioned, a large salt water aquarium). But trust that there are tons of interesting passages in here, and the atmospherics are like Boston weather - if you don't like it, just wait thirty seconds. (That won't change the lyrics, though; they're still going to be about not raping trees. Try to ignore that). This one also has two serious earworm lyrical moments I mentioned above.

So I'm going to make an odd rec here - if you are into prog at all, this is probably an important document to own as it clearly demonstrates what happens when Yes takes things way too far - it mayhaps should have been titled Well Past the Edge*. Ha, a Yes joke. The opening track is a superb Yes gem, despite its awful lyrics, and the rest is listenable enough, particularly for the few good runs. Make no mistake, though - the second disc of this album should not be described as "good," and there are way better Yes albums to get into first. So this is sort of a qualified qualified rec, mainly because I just can't honestly not recommend TfTO - for all its preposterous qualities, I like it too much for its childhood associations; its grandiosity is encoded in me and surely has shaped a lot of my musical inclinations. I gotta admit when I like a bad album (if I still had it, I would probably have to rec (solid) Milli Vanilli), so here I am, doing so. Seriously, though, Fragile, Close to the Edge, or The Yes Album are all better places to start.

* - It's like when Joey walked really far away from the U2 stage. The Edge was a dot to him. Wokka wokka.

Status: Recommended (solid) (sorta)
Nyet's Fave: "The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn)"*

* - No, I will not put two songs even if it is a double LP. One twenty minute behemoth is enough.

NOW That's What I Decidedly DO NOT Call Club Ultimate, Vol. 1: VOTS Spring League MMX

Just when you thought I was done talking about frisbee... we had our VOTS Spring League draft on Monday night. After a one league moratorium on captaining in honor of left-for-D.C. Genevieve (and partially because my knee was hurt and I didn't want to crush some team's chances), this league I am captaining with Lindsey, Dhein's roommate and frisbee speedster extraordinaire. She played with us at Hoasis (see here and here), was on Justin's May Cause Dizziness Fall Championship Team, and is an ex-collegiate pole vaulter. I.e. she's money and a sweet gal taboot. Here's a pic of her skying for the disc at Lei-Out recently:

And as long as I'm adding pics... did you know I designed the disc AND league jersey for this season? In one fell swoop. Here they are (the left is the original design, the middle what ended up getting approved by discraft for the discs, and the right as it will appear on jerseys):

Sweetness. Anyhoo, Monday night all the league captains gathered for the draft. The powers that be determined that I would have the 13th of 16 picks for the men and Lindsey the 14th of the 16 for the women n a straight draft (don't even get me started about why we don't snake this and make it FAIR). There was seemingly a little less talent this time around - some guys aren't playing league, and Keith points out that the last few leagues I've played in have been unbalanced with more talent appearing in the pool from which I was drafting. This league everybody was up for grabs unless they indicated a conflict for one of the nights, so game was on, but we were in a spot with quite a drop-off, which made our drafting a wee bit challenging. Here's what we ended up doing:

• R1: Al - older handler, but best available hucker at the spot without many true A grade players left for us. In retrospect, we maybe should have rolled the dice with Paul - he went early second round, and his baggage (i.e. the "new" player he brought with him to league whom automatically gets placed on his team) turns out to be quite a hoss.
• R2: Stefan, a speedset from Lindsey's MCD team who was begging to play with us. Great pickup at this spot.
• R3: Mark, a short athletic guy from Keith's last team who was another great one to nab at this point
• R4: Dave, another teammate of Lindsey's from fall who she says has a ton of promise. As an added bonus, his wife is the 6' tall Tyler, and they were baggaged so we got her as an automatic second round draft pick.
• R5: Nick - solid player, good tall, young athlete to pick up this late.
  
• R6: Mike - 6'4" athletic guy
• R7-9: Chris, Jeff, Matt. At this point we were just grabbing young athletic dudes.
• R10: Lee - sneakily enough, Lee was Lindsey's baggage. Lee has never played Ultimate before, so this is somewhat legit ... except that he's an ex-ASU football player. So an incredible athlete who doesn't yet know what's going on but I am sure will pick it up quickly.
  

On the women's side:

• R1: Ashley - Short, quick, the best speed available at this point in round one.
• R2: Tyler - Tall girl with good hands who is still learning the game. this was a bit of a steal on our part.
• R3: Beck - my lovely baggage will be joining us again! And not having to deal with some of the silliness that went on last league, hopefully.

So a good combo of youth, speed and experience. A lot of the teams look pretty good this year, imho. We start things off against Cole in week one and roll on from there. WE shall see, but I am excited to be captaining again for sure. The draft itself was a load of fun - we all gathered at Boulders on Broadway and drafted over, um, drafts. Our table had EBay, Rebecca, Tom, Angel, Lisa, Kevin Hatch, Lindsey and me, and I humbly put forth that not only did we have the fastest drafters in the room, we also had the best heckles. My personal favorites were "Hope you like turfed forehands," "But who's going to score the other full two thirds of your points," and "With our 8th round pick, we select Vince Noe." They all make hilarious sense in context, I assure you.

Wednesday night we followed in the league spirit with a new players' clinic (Ebay and a bunch of vets taught people forehands, how to cut, etc.) and had a quick exhibition game between the two nights' captains that the Wednesday crew eeked out ( we had given them Cole to make it fairer, bu tthe whole thing turned into shenanigans anyways). My knee was still hurting pretty badly, so I went out in the dreaded double braced knee costume and hobbled around (this was before my sports doc appt. and before I started stretching out the IT band). Couldn't jump at all, but had fun, and the season is off to a good start. I'm psyched in all departments - about the job EBay's doing comissioning, the way the designs turned out, our team, etc. Should be good times.

Oh, and I almost forgot - our team is called "3BK," which is a dynamic acronym that this week stands for "Three Bad Knees" (which is what Lindsey and I have between the two of us). It will later stand for things such as "Bodacious Bidding Blood-sucking Koalas," so yeah, just you watch out.

Alright, no more frisbee talk until at least ... I'll give it til Monday, as I have pickup tomorrow. I am already feeling a lot better in the knee department just after a couple of days of concentrated stretching, so hopefully this spring will be a marked improvement over the fall. We, as ever, shall see.

NOW That's What I Call Club Ultimate, Vol. 3: Sprawl NYF 2010

Back to the review: the game was taped from TWO ANGLES!!! The NYF tournament director had an actual filming group on hand that shot the finals from a high angle and caught a lot of the action. The video is broken up by point and can be view HERE. Seriously, if you get a chance, view the whole game point by point; it really is about as thrilling of an affair as you're going to get from a mid-winter tourney. Kevin Hatch also shot the finals from the sideline; that is the copy I watched and from which I recorded highlights, but it shouldn't be too hard to figure out the point of the game and watch from the other angle, too. Here's Kevin's video - I'll list some highlights, and the numbers in parentheses indicate the corresponding photo below:

2:50 - My second "turn." Could BP have gotten that? A little too 50-50, or maybe 60-40 disc on my part, but it is always the receiver's fault. I'll take half a turn.
3:32 - Cole swat D.
7:08 - Garret layout D!
9:34 - Scoober by Nyet to break the junk zone. Notice the slight forehand/blade fake to move the defender. (2)
10:12 - Rob sky D!
10:20 - Cole GACK.
10:32 - Cole SKY D!!! (1)
11:45 - Damon throw into the poach. Killer turn to have in this close of a game.
12:55 - Captain combo can't stop the big man. I'm pretty sure we knocked one another off it, actually. (3)
13:24 - 50 yard flick needed a coupe more yards to get me in the stat sheet (4)
14:20 - Dixon GACK. The D-man had three turns and a couple of other errant plays in finals, yikes. I'm sure he'll return to his normal steady self pronto.
15:00 - catch-hitch-man-buddy as designed. That's a GORGEOUS huck by BP to Dhein.
16:00 - Rob layout D!
16:30 - Cole's gotta grab that (4.5)
16:52 - BP layout D!
17:38 - Turn number three for the tourney, ugh. Dhein was WIDE OPEN, too, to go up 9-7. Dude made a nice leaping D. I suck. But the question is ... why is there a poach in my lane, Dixon? Ah, I should have seen it. To repeat: I suck.
18:03 - Sick breakmark throw. At least I fouled him. (5)
18:56 - Dixon with a bad lookoff x 2 then a terrible dump.
21:20 - Nice huck from Garret to Griesy (6)
22:15 - layout D by Joe ... almost (7)
23:00 - nice flowy O point
24:35 - I get skyed - but on the breakside on a travel call. Doesn't count! (8)
24:58 - Garret gets beat up the line, but Nyet with the bailout flying D! (9)
27:00 - Another nice flow O point (including a break at 27:06)
28:09 - The dreaded stutter step. T-R-A-V-L-E, travel.
30:35 - Terrible turn by Luke (after he bailed out Dixon, too)
31:00 - Nyet: "Hard cap is almost on. Garret, we need to score fast." This is one of the more ridiculous flat-footed full field flick hucks you're likely to see.

(1) Cole skyes a mountain (Photo by Stephen So)



(2) I kinda doubt this is the actual moment, but it's still a cool shot (Joanne)



(3) D'oh (Joanne)



(4) Too easy (Stephen So)



(4.5) Yeah, Cole's gotta have that. Didn't matter as we scored later, though.



(5) As Griesy taunted - at least I got a good look at it (Stephen So)



(6) Nice sky by Griesy (Stephen So)



(7) Would have been a big turning point ... unfortunately, it bounced right back to him (Stephen So)



(8) As bad as this looks, it was way on the break side. I never really had a shot at this, though it felt pretty horrible when it happened - thought I could get there, and bam, he was already in front of me. Yep, Air Alert is on the docket. (Stephen So)



(9) This is barely caught by Hatch's video (and it's completely blocked by a light pole in the high angle video), but this was one of the better D's I've made in a big game - just flew in no fear style and beat the guy to the disc on his up the line cut, saving the goal (though they scored later on this point, boo). Came right after the previous shot, too - it was the very next throw - so I was glad I could do something to help us out. Given that my feet are off the ground here, though, I'm reasonably certain this was photoshopped. (Stephen So)

So a great finals, and plenty of moments that we all had that could have turned things around in the last game. We are definitely heads up about it, and as Griesy noted, hopefully this loss will keep us hungry. Great weekend, great disc, and now we take a two month break before starting our season in earnest. Very excited for the Sprawl MMX prospects. I can't emphasize enough how much our O came together, how occasionally swarming we looked on D. It's the best quality Ultimate that I've seen since coming to Phoenix, and I am amped to be whatever small part of it. Lots to work on, sure, but we pushed the base up a little higher at NYF, and there are good places to head from here.

Re: personal play - my left knee (yay!) was feeling sore Thursday and Friday, so I went into the tournament thinking about taking it easy and playing primarily O points. Thanks to the big wins on Saturday and Sunday, this meant not a ton of PT, which was fine by me. I saved it for the finals, where the knee unfortunately flared up to the point of being debilitating by the end of the game*. I'm feeling pretty old out there, and I definitely lack the fifth gear necessary to play D on nationals guys (though see below, hopefully I can work that out). On the flip side, I had three turns total this weekend, all on hucks, and I otherwise ran the offense smoothly and made my share of cuts and big, defense breaking throws. I think that's my job - that and captaining - so I'm pretty psyched to know my role and fill it. Any athleticism I can add in the next few months will be gravy, but I'm definitely going to get on it as soon as things feel better kneewise (see below). So I give myself something in the A- range for the tourney - I really would like that 8-7 turn in the finals back, but otherwise think I was super solid. With a greatest, don't forget. :)

* - I'm still a little gimpy and actually went to see the sports doc on Thursday. Great news - she thinks it's just IT Band issues, so I'm going to do some PT to stretch things out and do something called ASTYM which basically sounds like a painful attempt to break up scar tissue and re-initiate the healing process. We'll see how that works. I've already started doing some stretching on my own, and things feel monumentally better, so I'm optimistic that this could even be an a big turn around late in the career. I just need a hair more speed to feel completely back - and in other news, I'm down to 185 lbs. these days and trying to get to the 170-75 range so the poundage (so to speak) on my knees will be that much less. People have been telling me I look skinny on the Ultimate field, so if nothing else I've got that going for me...

So, good weekend, another one for the Ultimate pantheon. Here are the total stats if you care about such things; the coolest thing is the 73% O-efficiency which is almost where we need to be to be an elite team. Admittedly a lot of it was against non-elite competition, but it's still good to see that we have it in us.

O = Offense points; OP = Perfect O points (no turns); O+ = Offense scores; D = Defense points; DP = Perfect D-points (score with no turn); D+ = Defense scores; SC = Total scores; Turn = Turnovers; O-efficiency = OP/O; O-overall = O+/O; D-efficiency = DP/D; D-overall = D+/D; Score% = scores per possession

Opponent		O	OP	O+	D	DP	D+	SC	Turn	O-efficiency	O-overall	D-efficiency	D-overall	Score%
Sbrawl		7	4	5	16	7	12	17	18	57%	71%	44%	75%	49%
Flagstaff		5	5	5	16	11	12	17	8	100%	100%	69%	75%	68%
Notre Dame		5	5	5	16	9	12	17	6	100%	100%	56%	75%	74%
Arson/Monsoon		4	2	4	12	8	9	13	7	50%	100%	67%	75%	65%
Le Tigre		5	5	5	12	4	8	13	5	100%	100%	33%	67%	72%
Street Gang		14	8	10	12	0	2	12	14	57%	71%	0%	17%	46%
Saturday		17	14	15	48	27	36	51	32	82%	88%	56%	75%	61%
Sunday		23	15	19	36	12	19	38	26	65%	83%	33%	53%	59%
Total		40	29	34	84	39	55	89	58	73%	85%	46%	65%	61%

Key: T = Total points played; PT = playing time (percentage); D = D points; DS = D-scores; O = O-points; OS = O_scores; D+ = D point plus minus; O+ = O point plus minus; T+ = total plus minus; ppD = plus minus per d point; ppO = plus minus per D point; ppT = plus-minus per total

Player		Saturday													Sunday													Player		Total
		T	PT	D	DS	O	OS	D+	O+	T+	ppD	ppO	ppT		T	PT	D	DS	O	OS	D+	O+	T+	ppD	ppO	ppT				T	PT	D	DS	O	OS	D+	O+	T+	ppD	ppO	ppT
Nyet		21	32%	4	4	17	15	4	13	17	1.00	.76	.81		25	42%	4	0	21	18	-4	15	11	-1.00	.71	.44		Nyet		46	37%	8	4	38	33	0	28	28	.00	.74	.61
Damon		29	45%	22	14	7	7	6	7	13	.27	1.00	.45		30	51%	17	10	13	10	3	7	10	.18	.54	.33		Damon		59	48%	39	24	20	17	9	14	23	.23	.70	.39
Garret		31	48%	23	16	8	7	9	6	15	.39	.75	.48		32	54%	15	9	17	13	3	9	12	.20	.53	.38		Garret		63	51%	38	25	25	20	12	15	27	.32	.60	.43
Ian		29	45%	21	15	8	7	9	6	15	.43	.75	.52		33	56%	26	13	7	5	0	3	3	.00	.43	.09		Ian		62	50%	47	28	15	12	9	9	18	.19	.60	.29
Joe		28	43%	23	19	5	4	15	3	18	.65	.60	.64		29	49%	19	9	10	9	-1	8	7	-.05	.80	.24		Joe		57	46%	42	28	15	13	14	11	25	.33	.73	.44
Jim		26	40%	17	12	9	7	7	5	12	.41	.56	.46		8	14%	7	4	1	1	1	1	2	.14	1.00	.25		Jim		34	27%	24	16	10	8	8	6	14	.33	.60	.41
BP		28	43%	20	16	8	8	12	8	20	.60	1.00	.71		37	63%	19	10	18	15	1	12	13	.05	.67	.35		BP		65	52%	39	26	26	23	13	20	33	.33	.77	.51
Dhein		30	46%	23	19	7	7	15	7	22	.65	1.00	.73		41	69%	21	11	20	17	1	14	15	.05	.70	.37		Dhein		71	57%	44	30	27	24	16	21	37	.36	.78	.52
Dixon		31	48%	26	22	5	4	18	3	21	.69	.60	.68		37	63%	24	13	13	10	2	7	9	.08	.54	.24		Dixon		68	55%	50	35	18	14	20	10	30	.40	.56	.44
Rob		26	40%	22	17	4	4	12	4	16	.55	1.00	.62		30	51%	22	12	8	7	2	6	8	.09	.75	.27		Rob		56	45%	44	29	12	11	14	10	24	.32	.83	.43
Luke		29	45%	24	16	5	4	8	3	11	.33	.60	.38		16	27%	16	10	0	0	4	0	4	.25	#DIV/0!	.25		Luke		45	36%	40	26	5	4	12	3	15	.30	.60	.33
Kid		26	40%	21	14	5	4	7	3	10	.33	.60	.38		0	0%	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	#DIV/0!	#DIV/0!	#DIV/0!		Kid		26	21%	21	14	5	4	7	3	10	.33	.60	.38
Cisco		23	35%	16	13	7	5	10	3	13	.63	.43	.57		10	17%	9	4	1	1	-1	1	0	-.11	1.00	.00		Cisco		33	27%	25	17	8	6	9	4	13	.36	.50	.39
Griesy		28	43%	21	17	7	7	13	7	20	.62	1.00	.71		38	64%	20	9	18	15	-2	12	10	-.10	.67	.26		Griesy		66	53%	41	26	25	22	11	19	30	.27	.76	.45
Cole		25	38%	16	14	9	8	12	7	19	.75	.78	.76		28	47%	16	7	12	10	-2	8	6	-.13	.67	.21		Cole		53	43%	32	21	21	18	10	15	25	.31	.71	.47
Nardi		26	40%	21	15	5	4	9	3	12	.43	.60	.46		14	24%	12	8	2	2	4	2	6	.33	1.00	.43		Nardi		40	32%	33	23	7	6	13	5	18	.39	.71	.45
Will		19	29%	16	9	3	3	2	3	5	.13	1.00	.26		5	8%	5	4	0	0	3	0	3	.60	#DIV/0!	.60		Will		24	19%	21	13	3	3	5	3	8	.24	1.00	.33