But He Weighs More Than The Guy Who Does...

Sorry for the delay - a rather hectic schedule of late. But trust that all kinds of gooey, nutritious content involving Regionals, San Antonio trips, and weddings is coming your way. You CAN'T WAIT!

What they are watching...Episode IV

Our weekly look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. We knew the 80's had made a big comeback. Seriously, who ever figured Journey, without Steve Perry, would be huge again? But we did not know it had gone this far.

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air? Really?



Apparently so. Kind of cool in a strangely twisted way.

Fan with no blades, what!?!

.....................Yup, this is a fan!

For those of you disappointed about the lack of flying cars there is, that's right, a fan with no blades. Apparently Dyson engineers spent four years in the lab working on brushless fluid dynamics (Laser Doppler Annometry) to come up with this bad boy. According to CNET the Dyson Air Multiplier works pretty well. And there is no way your little kid can stick his fingers into the whirling blades. There are none. Unfortunately, despite looking so cool and working like a charm, it is still a little costly. $330 for a 12 inch fan. Eeeeeek!

Mistakes: I've Made a Few

In the domain of UGH, here are my 2009 Southwest Regionals turnovers:

1. First point of our first game (against Sweet Roll); I burn a guy up the sideline on a fish / Homer cut and get a free forehand shot at the endzone. Justin D. is flying in from the weakside toward the back right corner; I catch him in my peripheral and go to put it up - only to notice at the last second that Rob has not cleared out from the sideline stack position and is standing (with his defender) directly in the lane in which I'm trying to throw it. I try to adjust midthrow - a recurring theme, you'll see - and arc it around Rob and defender, but the wind kicks it out of bounds. Bad start to the day.

2. We're working it upwind against Sweet Roll; I catch a sort of lateral pitch from someone on the left side of the field. I look up to see Rob moving to the left in front of me with his defender a good eight yards to the forced (forehand side). I go to throw an easy scoober over to Rob for the break just as he cuts deep for the endzone (maybe twenty yards away). Mid scoober, I try to adjust and lob it over the top to Rob; against the wind, this doesn't work out so well. Again, the mid throw adjustment is a bad bad idea.

3. Against Strike/Slip, catch another on the run disc for a free forehand shot. EBay is five yards behind his guy and there's plenty of room to put it out to space for him. So I do, perfectly executed throw ... only EBay wasn't actually cutting yet. Chalk another one up to miscommunication; he sprints after it but it's just about a foot out of reach.

4. Same game, we've worked it down to their endzone but are having to bounce it back and forth a lot. No one's getting open downfield. I catch a dump in the middle of the field, look up to see Nigel pointing to the back left corner with his guy playing five or so yards off him in front and to the forced (forehand) side. Nigel points to the back corner; this is Ultimate parlance for 1, I'm cutting there, 2, throw me the hammer. I do, only Nigel doesn't move until after I release it. Throw goes perfectly; upwind hammer, but it's sharp and headed right for a little five by five box at the back corner. Nigel ends up putting a ridiculous and possibly gratuitous layout bid on it - I think he maybe just could have kept running and caught it, but he slowed down noticeably to lay out (as he is wont to do; it works for him quite a lot and results in some spectacular grabs, normally). He got a hand on it but couldn't hold on. Another perfectly thrown turnover.

5. Condors, our third game - a rinse repeat situation, as I catch a disc in the flow with a free backhand shot and see EBay well behind his defender. I launch the upwind backhand, but once again, EBay was not actually cutting - another miscommunication. It's a good huck, but by the time he gets going, it sails past him. D'oh.

6. Condors, after we were quite out of the game - they bring down a big Z on us, only the deep deep comes way too far down. Someone (EBay?) was back there alone. So I go for a big backhand huck, and the mark murders my arm. The disc seriously sails thirty yards out of bounds after popping WAY up in the air. The mark contests the foul, as he claims it was already out of my hand. Which, especially given what the disc did, is kinda ridiculous. Ah, well, welcome to club Ultimate. I swing it, get it back, and try to pop a scoober over the middle middle to Trant, but either because I was tired by this point or because my arm was still in shock from the hack, I release it way too low and it gets D'ed. Bad throw on my part.

(7a). Crazy windy Sunday morning first game against Monster from L.A. I'm guessing gusts in the 20-30 mph range. Josiah swings a disc to me from maybe ten yards away; I've got my hands alligator-ready and everything when the disc hits a wind pocket and takes a sudden hop. Hits the top of my upper hand and goes flying off into the ether. I'm gonna go ahead and excuse myself for that one and blame the universe.

7. Easily my worst turn on the weekend, I caught a disc on the right sideline about ten yards away from the upwind endzone. Nigel is standing alone in the middle of the field, but someone else's guy is standing between us. I get a little bit of tunnel vision on Nigel, who never moves to facilitate the throw. Trant flashes across the dump as I go to activate, so I look at him for a second but can't get it off. Stoli flies to the back corner of the endzone, but Trant's guy poached off on him. I'm at stall 8 by now, and should've stuck with my dump. Trant's alone on the break side, but there's a big wind gusting in my face so I don't want to try the hammer. Stall 9... I try a IO flick that the wind just eats alive; it pops up and sails way out bounds across the field. This got me a "Come the eff on" from one of our captains later. Fortunately, Stoli got a huge poach D on their goal line; Nigel picked it up and hit me for a very relieved score. So no harm done, but it was definitely a choke moment for me.

(8). In our second Condors game, Justin D. got tangled up with the mark and tried to get off a dump but couldn't; I ended up having to bail and cut up the line, and Justin put up a desperation stall 9 lob. It was a bad throw, but in my youth I would've skyed for it (maybe). Those days are gone; I couldn't get high enough, and my 23 year old antelope of a defender D'ed it. Not really my turn, but another one I was directly involved in, and one on which I blame the sad inevitability of my aging.

8. Late in the Condors game, got another strike throw with a free forehand shot; I put a huge ~70 yard forehand up to Justin D. He had been running to much that day and maybe didn't take the best angle on the disc; he barely missed it with a layout bid. Another trun that went where I wanted. Ah, well.

And that's it. So 8 turns for which I'll accept responsibility in a five game weekend, which is not terrible (given how much I handle the disc, how much I hucked, etc.) but not particularly good. More practice / tacit communication between teammates would've helped, and I really regret starting our weekend off with an O-point turn. But otherwise I'm at home with it. I'll give a more complete, full team performance / highlights / personal highlights review down soon, I just wanted to be sure I got these down before things got even fuzzier. The other "negative nelly" news that is not as negative as I would've thought is that my D was not atrocious this weekend - I didn't play D points, but the times we turned it over, I was not incompetent - I actually got a couple Ds, only got burned deep once or twice. Helped out others, etc. So that was really surprising - I figured with my knee in its sorry state I'd be toast. I do have a lot of trouble catching up with the silly fast guys, though ... only two years 'til Masters eligibility ...

More on 2009 Southwest Regionals later. And possibly a review of what it feels like to play 1 on 7 (okay, 3 on 7) VOTS Ultimate. All in good time.

AR: Quadrophenia

The Who - Quadrophenia (1973)

The second of The Who's rock operas, Quadrophenia is more psychological, more autobiographical, more thematically complex, and more of an opera (at least musical-structure-wise) than Tommy. It's also always struck me - and this doesn't seem to be historically accurate, as both albums were huge hits when released - as vastly less well known than the deaf-dumb-blind tale. This is probably because Q lacks a huge single. "5.15" saw some chart success, and there are plenty of stand-alone numbers on the album, but there's nothing like an iconic tale of pinball wizardry to be found here. Many Top 500 album-type lists consistently put this work in the pantheon, so perhaps it's just "My Generation" that hasn't embraced this album quite as much as some of The Who's other work. While I would argue that the complexity of Quadrophenia makes it a little less accessible than other classic albums or The Who's litany of hit singles, my peers need to get with the program: this is a fantastic, rich album / composition that deserves your investment.

The story is of Jimmy, a teenage mod in 1964-65 UK. He's psychologically-disturbed - the "quadrophenia" of the title refers (not in accordance with DSM-IV standards, natch) to a "schizophrenia" comprised of four personalities. They represent the four band members as well. There's the tough guy/helpless dancer (lead singer Daltry), the romantic (bassist Entwistle), the lunatic (appropriately, drummer Keith Moon), and the beggar/hypocrite (guitarist/songwriter Townsend). The four personalities have corresponding songs on the album ("Helpless Dancer," "Is It Me?," "Bell Boy," and "Love Reign O'er Me," respectively) each of which has a distinct theme featured prominently in its own track but that also pops up throughout the album. The opening track, "I Am the Sea," opens with sounds of shore and rain with these themes quickly punctuating through the ambiance. It's an overt thematic establishment, very much a nod to a traditional operatic introduction of characters/themes. Two other tracks, the title track (3rd on the album) and the penultimate track ("The Rock") weave all of these "leitmotifs" together in long, complex instrumentals. The echoing melodies serve to make this one of the rare concept albums that sticks to the concept all the way through - Sgt. Pepper's Band doesn't mysteriously leave the stage. The variety of the themes / the varying instrumentation utilized also manage to present a multiple personality from with the consistent album frame; quite a neat trick.

Jimmy's tale against this backdrop of questionable pathology is one of frustration and repeated let-downs from all avenues of his life. He starts with a angst-ridden scream at his confusing psychology in "The Real Me," one of the loudest rockers on vinyl that features an insane acrobatic bassline, ever-spastic drumming, and a roaring horns. It's an amazingly sparse track that erupts out of the ocean sounds that introduce the album. This is the album opener proper, the first song you get after the initial theme introduction, and I humbly submit that no album opener surpasses this one in terms of energy. Jimmy is seeking answers from all avenues - preachers, doctors, mothers - but no one can give him an answer to his question, "Can you see the real me?" He's going to spend the remainder of a double album trying to answer that question or, more exactly, trying to see the real him, but it's a quest which his four-faced personality and the difficulties of his world will greatly hinder.

I don't want to run through the story track by track or event by event; the website quadrophenia.net does an excellent job of providing the original liner notes, quotes from Townsend on the import of songs, overviews and interpretive essays of the story, as well as rich accounts of the concert, film, etc. history of the piece. The main point I'd like to emphasize about the story as narrative is that it's an impressively grounded, from-within dark tale that maybe doesn't entirely wrap itself up well - or maybe, does so over-cathartically - but the realism and cohesion is starkly different from the seeming dark-secret grab bag that peppers Tommy. It's a different game from that work, and one that works in that while hearing it, you feel enveloped in a story, not just witnessing passing vignettes from a fantastic life.

That said, I have to comment on some of my favorite tracks. "Cut My Hair" overflows with references to mod life while lamenting both his parents and his compulsion to match the styles of his peers. The track also contains the first of many self-referential moments in the line "I'm dressed right for a beach-fight but I [just] can't explain." And the multiple, disparate sections of the song evoke a profound sense of adolescent frustration. It ends with an ambient, radio broadcast (of a beachfight, no less) and tea kettle whistle that is rudely interrupted by the chung-a-chung-a-chung of a serious riff rocker in "The Punk and the Godfather," a song that inserts the Who into their own story: NB "I'm the punk with the stutter," a frank reference to "M-m-m-m-my Generation." It's an invigorating romp that (dare I say) ironically points out the inauthenticity of the rock n' roll life, sadly admitting the absurdity of a life spent "pounding stages like a clown." Another complex rocker with crowd sound effects, it's another classic.

"I'm One" is just a gorgeously feisty rock ballad of self-assertion. There are songs that I love, and there are moments within those songs, lines that just force a smile every time I hear them. This one has two: "Where do you get those blue blue jeans / faded, packed secret so tight?" and "I've got a Gibson without a case / But I just can't get that even-tanned look on my face" are seriously un-cool lines that give a sad glimpse of a loner-yearning-for-inclusion's vulnerability. "Is It In My Head" and "I've Had Enough," in the midst of the penetrating motif riffs, both let vulnerable frustration shine through; the acoustic, banjo-driven middle section of "IHE" in particular just lets loose a severe apathy-at-it-all, delivered not just in lyric but in vocal sentiment.

"5.15" -> "Sea and Sand" -> "Drowned" is probably the best sequence of an already great album. 5.15 is just a ridiculous, let's give them their own adjective, Who'ed-Out sort of call-and-response tune featuring horns and preposterous energy. "Sea and Sand" is almost the perfect mid-70s, Frampton- or Skynyrd-style ballad that alternates with frank aggression fraught with mod-style. "Drowned" is, and of course you know this, a Phish cover staple, and the rollicking piano rocker serves Page quite well and leads to some monstrous rock workouts. The Who's original version, natch, amps severely, and even allows the "5.15" horn theme back in to complete the triptych. Just a great run on the back of the album; side 3 of 4 for those of you in the old school.

Unfortunately, side 4 is a bit of a letdown after the mayhem of the rest of the disc(s). There's just too much synthesizer, too much Broadway-esque character involvement for my tastes, and the self-indulgence of this Double LP rock opera goes just a bit too far. It's just a tad too EPIC, in other words. And sure, "Love Reign O'er Me" is a plenty good closer for an album - it's the fifteen minutes that precede it that weigh the whole experience down. "LROM" does what it can to bring Jimmy some catharsis, though in a little bit of a cliched "AYNiL" mode. It is one of the more memorable, happy resolutions to a sad, frustrated tale, even if by some accounts Jimmy's salvation is only found as he drowns alone.

So Quadrophenia carries on *just* a bit too long, and since the downer part of the album occurs at the end, it unfortunately gets knocked down a few pegs in my book. This by no means negates the remainder of the brilliance of the album - it really is an engrossing narrative full of fantastic music that does not back down from its self-imposed requirement to interweave everything on every inch of the album. Easy to see how such a work could inspire the genre of "rock opera" for decades to come - I'm assuming it's no coincidence that the protagonist of American Idiot is a "Jimmy," too. So give this one a few spins, let it sink in, and admire the interplay of The Who at a peak; it's definitely some of the best of a great band's work.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave(s)*: "The Real Me," "Drowned"

* - I may have failed to mention this - double albums get two faves. Phew, glad we cleared that up.

Beyond wow in the clouds

Wow simply does not cover it. Holy blank, might begin to get there, but not if you were one of the passengers on Air India Flight IC-844. We have to say this is the first time anyone on the Clarion Content staff can remember a fight on airplane between the cabin crew and the flight attendants!

The multi-person brawl spilled out into business class in front of mortified passengers. It allegedly began with an incident of sexual harassment by the pilots. The fisticuffs occurred in flight with the plane at approximately 30,000 feet in the air over Pakistan. The LA Times says that reportedly, "both pilots were well out of their seats during the melee." One of them was left with a bloody lip. Fortunately the flight landed safely leaving the passengers with nothing more than a horrifying tale to tell.

Read the whole story here. The list of recent Air India mishaps at the end of the LA Times article is scary. We would have to question the sanity of hopping aboard one of their planes.

Fashion Trends

Lindsay Lohan's debut as a fashion designer for Parisian fashion house Emanuel Ungaro was not a hit with the critics. It may not matter. Lohan is part of trend that has Hollywood mega-stars crossing over to clothing, some with huge results.

The biggest success is two young ladies who are right in Lohan's age and fashion demographic, the Olsen twins. The Los Angeles Times estimates that Mary Kate and Ashley have seen total sales of their clothing and shoe line reach into the 8 digit range. They have been a big hit with the teens and tweens. The Times attributes that in part to the omni-present media culture, "the whole world is a red carpet." Celebrity fashion is a growth industry whether the Paris fashion snobs like it or not. The ability to constantly see what one's favorite celebrities are wearing and immediately run to the store to imitate it strikes a chord with today's vapid, culture starved youth.

The Times notes that the Olsens were recently admitted into the prestigious industry trade group, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and that this fall they are expanding their brand to include menswear. Other stars including Miley Cyrus, Gweneth Paltrow, Gwen Stefani, and Justin Timberlake have clothing and apparel lines that are succeeding. Sounds like a trend.