Jeff's Jukebox: A-7

A-7: "Forget Me Nots," Patrice Rushen. From what I call the great "Chuck's Steak House of Hawaii Era," that period of time in the early 1980s, post graduation from college, when I hadn't really figured out what I was going to do with my life, but was having a pretty good time being a waiter. I never bought any of her albums, but I do own this single - and it makes an appearance on many of my mix tapes.

Video Credit: Vinyl Morpher

Hat Tip: Undercover Black Man

Memo to David Stern

That self-satisfied smirk that you put on your face every time someone asks you a question suggesting that the NBA might have an integrity problem on its hands?

It isn't working.

Fact is, you come across as an arrogant jerk.

Clean up your own house, and then maybe...just maybe...the arrogance will be warranted.

But the smirk? It's got to go.

Why I Can't Seem To Let Game 6 Go

A friend and loyal reader took me to task a bit for my characterization of Phil Jackson as a "whiner." How could I call Jackson a whiner, when I obviously could still not get over Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals?

Well, maybe this will help explain why:

Was Kings' '02 series loss fixed?
Bee Sports staff - Published 4:27 pm PDT Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The former NBA referee facing prison time after admitting to gambling on games is indirectly claiming the controversial Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals was fixed to ensure the Los Angeles Lakers would beat the Kings.

In a letter sent to the sentencing court, Tim Donaghy alleges that two of the three referees in that game, known to be "company men," wanted to extend the series to a deciding seventh game. The team that lost Game 6 had two players ejected, the letter claims, and eventually lost the series.

The Lakers-Kings series was the only matchup of the 2002 playoffs that went seven games. No Kings were ejected, but two players - centers Vlade Divac and Scot Pollard - did foul out.

Now, I'm sure we can all agree that Tim Donaghy is far from an impeccable source when it comes to throwing around accusations as serious as this one. But I think it's telling that that particular game would be the subject of such accusations.

Really Quick Hits: Raveonettes, Counting Crows

Lust Lust Lust, The Raveonettes. I would say that this album is not for everyone. Imagine, if you will, surf music filtered through the Phil Spector Girl Groups of the early 1960s. Then, add a dash of Angelo Badalamenti's score for Twin Peaks. And then mix all of that together with The Jesus and Mary Chain. If this makes you think heck ya, that's for me, then by all means, go right out and buy this album. If this makes you think what the heck is this guy talking about, then you should probably take a pass.

Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, Counting Crows. I can't quite get my arms around this one, because there are parts of it I really like and parts of it that still are not quite engaging me. I may write about it more later, because I suspect that some of the more inscrutable songs may kick in at some point. I much prefer the "Saturday Nights side" - largely electric, produced by Gil Norton, and driving rock in the tradition of the best Crows. That's not to say that there aren't some good songs on the "Sunday Mornings side," but for now they haven't kicked in at the level of the former. One thing is for certain - "Hanging Tree" is one of the very best songs they've ever recorded. Another thing is for certain - "On A Tuesday In Amsterdam Long Ago" is one of the very worst songs they've ever recorded. Add it all together, and you've got a good album that will appeal to Crows fans, and one that won't matter to anyone else.

How People Find My Site

My favorite thing about Sitemeter is being able to see the kinds of things people are searching for when they land on my site. For instance, who knew so many people were still interested in Skittle-Bowl? I posted about that months ago, and the post still gets hits.

There's another category of search that is difficult to characterize, but essentially have to do with the name of the blog. Some examples of search terms which pointed someone here:

"they going round my head" - that doesn't sound good, but it's not likely that anything they found here was helpful.

"something in my head, in my head oh in my head, always in my head" - I'm thinking this must be a song lyric, but it's not one I'm familiar with. Or, it could be an unfortunate soul who suffers from chronic migraines.

"I always feel rounds in my head why so" - I wish I knew, but I'm afraid I don't even know what that means.

"my head feels like water is running in it" - Man, that really doesn't sound good. I'm sure the person who landed here after typing that left in a worse mood than they were in when they arrived.

"round round round my hair my love is" - In instances like these, a restraining order might be a useful tool.

I'll do this periodically, provided the unusual search terms keep rolling in. Which I suspect they will.

Oh Me, Oh My

The New York Times has seen fit to weigh in on the mayoral race in Sacramento.

And how do we fare at the hands of the journalistic elite? We're a "cowtown" with a "lackluster image." Gosh, I would expect that sort of thing from the Los Angeles Times, but New York? I may just head for home right now to begin my recovery.

An excerpt:

Overshadowed by state politics and a high-profile governor, Sacramento cannot seem to shake its reputation as a cow town, despite being the capital of California.

And it is the city’s lackluster image — as much as taxes or budgets or crime — that has been a recurring theme in the bitter and still unresolved race for mayor between Kevin Johnson, the former professional basketball star, native son and local businessman, and Heather Fargo, a career public servant seeking her third term as mayor.

Well, no. That's not quite right. But who am I, lonely blogger, to stand up to the mighty New York Times?

The Ultimate Phil Jackson Whine

OMG, you have got to be f*cking kidding me. Phil Jackson, whose team benefited from the worst refereed game in the history of the National Basketball Association (that was Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals, and don't take my word for it, read what the L.A. Times Columnists say about it today) has the audacity to blame his team's loss tonight on the REFEREES? Wa wa wa...my team got fewer foul shots than Leon Powe in 14 minutes...

This is Phil Jackson at his conniving best. What it really demonstrates is that his character is at the level of his current team...which is to say, lacking. Nice comeback in the last seven minutes, sure. But Phil knows, even if he won't admit it in public, that if this Lakers team has to rely on three-point shots to win this series, then they might as well cancel the rest of the games right now. Meanwhile, Red Auerbach is smiling to himself, somewhere.

Oh, great. Wilbon is backing Phil up on the refereeing issue. Hey, tough sh*t. What goes around, comes around.

A Great Olympic Moment, A Great Jim McKay Moment

Lest anyone think that Jim McKay was just a studio host, listen to him here, at his absolute best, covering Dave Wottle's improbable gold medal victory in the 800 meter race at the 1972 Munich Olympics.



This post also doubles as a new feature, "Great Olympic Moments," in preparation for the Summer Games later this year from China. And this was certainly one of the greatest. Wottle had set the World Record at the Olympic trials, but was far from the favorite in this race. Russian Yevgeny Arzhanov had not lost an 800-meter race in four years, and the Kenyans - Boit and Ouko - were seasoned veterans of the legendary Kenyan distance running machine. Wottle's trademark was the golf cap, which he forgot - to his immense embarrassment - to remove as the National Anthem played after he was awarded his medal.

I'm A Triple Crown Jinx

Fans of Big Brown, you can blame me.

Like thousands of others across the country, I was glued to my television yesterday afternoon, hoping at long last to watch another horse win the coveted Triple Crown. But those hopes were dashed in a fashion even more cruel than normal, as Big Brown had nothing left for the long stretch drive and was pulled up, almost in "no mas, no mas" fashion by jockey Kent Desormeaux.

So why was it my fault? Well, I'm definitely a Triple Crown jinx. Despite having grown up in the seventies, which in retrospect was one of the two golden ages of Triple Crown racing (the other being the 1940s), I've never seen a horse close out the Triple Crown.

In 1973, when Secretariat ran the greatest race in the history of horse racing, I was in Ensenada, Mexico on a YMCA Caravan.



It's impossible for me to watch this without getting goose bumps. Chic Anderson's call was magnificent, particularly that moment as Secretariat entered the turn for home, and Anderson bellowed in amazement - having tracked the times - "He is moving like a tremendous machine!" It was, without question, one of the most amazing performances in the history of any sport. 35 years later, not only has no horse beaten Secratariat's Belmont record of 2:24, no horse has come even close to it. The horses that came in second and third behind Big Red, 31 lengths behind, would have won many Belmonts with their times. Such was Secretariat's dominance.

And then in 1977, when Seattle Slew pulled off the feat, I was working at McDonalds, as I did every Saturday from 7 until 3, and again missed the Belmont.



For some reason, I was not a big fan of Seattle Slew, for reasons that mostly escape me now. I think it had something to do with the arrogance of his trainer, and something dumb he'd been quoted as saying in Sports Illustrated.

In 1978, I was determined to see Affirmed try and close the deal, even though I was in Hawaii to celebrate my graduation from high school. But alas, I thought the race was going to be shown on tape delay, and they showed it live. 0-for-3, and in this case I only missed one of the most exciting stretch duels in history.



And as for the 1970s, it wasn't just about those three great horses. There were others that had a stab at greatness, and fell just short:

1971 - Canonero II went into the Belmont after dominating Derby and Preakness wins, but came down with an infection between the Preakness and Belmont, and had yet to fully recover. He finished fourth.

1972 - Riva Ridge won the Derby and Belmont, but couldn't handle the slop at Pimlico, and finished out of the money in the Preakness.

1974 - Little Current got caught in traffic in the Derby and came in fifth, but won resoundingly in both the Preakness and the Belmont.

1976 - Bold Forbes won the Derby and Belmont.

1979 - Spectacular Bid looked to become the third consecutive Triple Crown winner, but fell short in the Belmont. Naturally, I was watching that one.

Since then, I think I've been watching every single Belmont when a horse had a chance to become the 12th winner of the elusive Triple Crown. And every single time, failure. So yes, you can blame me. Next time a horse has a chance, I think I'll just go running.

Jim McKay 1921-2008

Legend is a word that gets thrown around a lot these days. People and events become legendary at the drop of a hat; without any consideration of context or importance.

Jim McKay was a legend in the sportscasting world. Simply put, he was the best ever at what he did. The fact that he made what he did look so easy is a testament to his ability and his talent. Where there were once a handful of people who played his role, with the proliferation of cable outlets in this media-savvy world, there are now hundreds - if not thousands. None has ever approached the brilliance of Jim McKay. And that brilliance was rooted in McKay's ability to come across as the everyman. McKay knew that viewers were not tuning in to see Jim McKay. They were tuning in to see the Olympics, or golf, or little league baseball, or dog sled racing in Alaska, or whatever (and wherever) the producers of ABC's Wide World of Sports chose to send him that particular week. McKay was all of us, marveling at the wonder, as he put it at the beginning of Wide World of Sports each week, of the "human drama of athletic competition."

McKay was a great newsman and journalist, as he proved during the moment that pushed his fame well beyond the sporting world - the tragedy in Munich at the 1972 Olympics, and the deaths at the hands of terrorists of the Israeli team. At that moment, he showed that his true peers were not Chris Schenkel or Howard Cosell, but Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley.

R.I.P.

Update: A tribute from Awful Announcing.

All Hail Iron Man

I’ve never read an Iron Man comic book in my life, so I can’t portray myself as an authority on whether the movie is true to the story or spirit of the book. But the movie is so good, it’s hard to imagine that it takes many liberties with the original vision behind the book.

So many things have already been written about the performances of Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Terrence Howard that it seems silly to add to what others have said. Suffice to say, they’re all terrific, and treat the source material with respect and dignity, which is always key to the success of a “comic book movie.”

For me, the most engaging and gripping scenes in the movie occurred near the beginning, when Tony Stark is captured in Afghanistan and begins his journey towards becoming a super-hero, out of necessity if nothing else. In those scenes, it is the performance of Shaun Toub as Yinsen, who under duress becomes Stark’s assistant and accomplice in creating the Iron Man, which lends the film its moral weight. Yinsen knows that for him there can be no escape, and though Stark has yet to understand the ramifications of what he does for a living (building weapons), Yinsen understands all too well. It is from Yinsen’s strength of character that Stark begins his moral awakening.

All of which seems like pretty heavy stuff for a comic book movie, and it probably is. Because unlike most of even the best comic book movies, Iron Man is rooted in the reality of our times. Which is not to say that there aren’t some preposterous moments, or some preposterously funny moments – there are. After all, this is a comic book – and not one for really young kids (and there were plenty at the showing we attended today).

Among comic books movies I hesitate to rank it right now, except to say that it's definitely one of the best.

One other note – one of the Executive Producers of the film, Peter Billingsley, got his Hollywood start by playing Ralphie in the immortal A Christmas Story.

Hillary as Victim

Interesting reader commentary from Talking Points Memo on the Hillary Clinton "I need time to get over my disappointment" phenomenon.

Key graf:

I really believe that the underlying message, which is being pushed hardest by Hillary herself, is that she is a victim, her supporters are victims, and they will need to be coddled until they can pull themselves together. Now, I'm not saying there weren't sexist elements working against her in this campaign (although, in my opinion, not as many as some others may think), but being a passive victim, in my opinion, is not feminism. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Throughout the campaign, I've found the "if Hillary is losing, it must be due to sexism" arguments intensely aggravating. It's as if this was the first time in the history of presidential elections that an early favorite had been defeated by an opponent who, over time, proved to have a better staff, a better strategy, and a more effective message.

Don't count me among the coddlers. I think Hillary Clinton's actions earlier this week did more damage to her reputation than anything she's done in her entire public career. The sooner she is officially out of the race, the better.

Jeff's Jukebox: A-6

The greatest “school is out” song, “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper. Every year, right on schedule, the song would be played – full blast – on the campus intercom system at my alma mater, Del Campo High School.

And school is indeed out, for both sons now. This morning we attended son #2’s 8th grade promotion ceremony, and it was nice, although “8th Grade Promotion” is a tradition that I’m not certain is really necessary. If you celebrate everything, after a while I think you begin to lose sight of the things that are really important.

But next year at this time, son #1 will be graduating from high school. Now that, even in this day and age, qualifies as a milestone.

Losing Without Style or Grace

After the appalling and shameful events of last night, it's becoming more and more difficult to escape the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is determined to destroy the Democratic party. If she can't win the nomination, then no one can. Don't take my word for it - when people like Hugh Hewitt start posting Clinton clips as a means to boost McCain, you know you've got a real problem on your hands.

It's all very pathetic, not to mention frustrating. There's plenty of vitriol directed at her this morning on "the Internets," all of it deserved.

I'm not a huge fan of Maureen Dowd, but when she's on, she's on. Key graf:

For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist anger by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit. She did not bat her eyelashes at him and proclaim him Rhett Butler instead of Ashley Wilkes.

And Brendan Loy is definitely in fine form this morning.

Hillary's claim that she wants the party to be united is, at this point, an utter and obvious lie. Her speech last night was sheer demagoguery, deliberately using rhetoric -- about the "popular vote," about Michigan and Florida, about electability, and so forth -- that will keep her supporters in a frenzy of anger and/or denial about the outcome of the election.

I said beforehand that it would be unforgivable if she made these sorts of arguments last night, and she made them, and it is indeed unforgivable. Absolutely unforgivable. On the very night when the party should have begun coalescing once and for all around its presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton continued to stoke the fires of intraparty civil war, instead of beginning of the process of standing down and backing off.

I'm not saying she needed to concede last night, but she needed to be gracious and conciliatory and valedictory, not combative and defiant and demagogic. She needed to explicitly attack McCain's candidacy, not implicitly attack Obama's legitimacy. She needed to speak the language of unity, not merely pay lip-service to it. She failed -- she deliberately chose to fail -- on all counts.

This notion out there that we should "respect" Hillary by not acknowledging the repugnance of last night's speech, and of her recent campaign tactics generally, is completely back-asswards. It's disrespectful to be anything other than repulsed, because such a reaction requires a belief that Hillary doesn't know perfectly well what she is doing. To give Hillary a pass is to assume she's a witless child, which she most certainly is not. She knows precisely what she's doing -- and it is the exact opposite of "uniting the party." She is willfully undermining her party's nominee.

There's a lot more out there, but if I read any more right now I may start breaking something. But if anyone is listening, if anyone cares, you can add my voice to those who just want Clinton to go away, quietly into the night.

I'm not holding my breath.

History

Think what you want. But if you don't think today represents a watershed day in American history, then...well, you must be Hillary Clinton.

Jeff's Jukebox: A-5

Continuing the "School Is Out" theme, today the Jukebox proudly presents Mr. Gary "US" Bonds, and his classic hit "School Is Out."



No more books and studies
And I can stay out late with my buddies
I can do the things that I want to do
'Cause all my exams are through
I can root for the Yankees from the bleachers
And don't have to worry 'bout teachers
I'm so glad that school is out
I could sing and shout!