Categories
baseball the ancient past

SportsCenter catchphrases & their usage contexts

I watch so much Sports­Cen­ter that I fig­ured I'd try to chron­i­cle the non sequitors that they use to punc­tu­ate excel­lent sports moments.

  • Three beers apiece for my co-work­ers – While high-fives among team­mates are being exchanged. Deriva­tion: Shaw­shank Redemption
  • What's on the grill? — Punc­tu­ates the moment when some­one, usu­al­ly Dwayne Wade, dunks in some­one else's face, i.e. "Jason Collins, what's on the grill?"
  • Pay for my dry clean­ing! — Accen­tu­at­ed a Vince-Carter-admin­is­tered NBA play­off dunk. Deriva­tion: SNL
  • Bar­tender! John­ny Walk­er Red. — High­light involv­ing the Cincin­nati Reds.
  • _____ has pow­ers com­pa­ra­ble to Won­der­boy! — Fill in the blank with any play­er who is about to do some­thing amaz­ing in the high­light reel. Deriva­tion: Tena­cious D.
  • That's lev­i­ta­tion, homes. — Dunk that could oth­er­wise be described with the words "heli­copter," "wind­mill," or "tom­a­hawk," or any dunk by Vince Carter or Andre Igoudala in the month of Decem­ber 2005. Deriva­tion: Tena­cious D.
  • Bar­tender! Cana­di­an Club. — used in con­junc­tion with the Blue Jays, Rap­tors, or any Cana­di­an NHL team.
  • Get to the chop­per! — Var­i­ous­ly applied, e.g. Albert Pujols has just ham­mered the crap out of the ball and is begin­ning to trot around the bases; Ben Wal­lace has com­plete­ly plas­tered an opponent's dunk attempt and is sprint­ing back down­court, where he receives an alley-oop from Chauncey Billups and throws it down in some guy's face; Julius Pep­pers has just sprint­ed 20 yards in approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 sec­onds in order to light up a quar­ter­back. Deriva­tion: Predator
  • Bar­tender! Shot of Jack. — This, I think, was the orig­i­nal "Bar­tender" excla­ma­tion. Usu­al­ly used in con­nec­tion with a homerun.
  • Bar­tender! Cuba Libre — Intro­duc­ing any sto­ry involv­ing Cuba dur­ing the World Base­ball Classic.
  • Kill me, I'm here! — Gen­er­al excla­ma­tion. I've only heard this one once, and it accom­pa­nied a hock­ey high­light. Deriva­tion: Predator
  • That's it and that's all. — Usu­al­ly to punc­tu­ate a player's exe­cu­tion of a coup de grace, e.g. "Allen Iverson's three in the clos­ing sec­onds puts the Six­ers up for good. That's it and that's all." Deriva­tion: Lil Sis
  • (Always in progress)
Categories
inside art new york visual

Art / Jesus drives Satan from his toy room

A cou­ple of weeks ago, Mara and Jonathan and I went to the Frick, where we saw this paint­ing by Duc­cio. It's called "The Temp­ta­tion of Christ on the Moun­tain," but I vast­ly pre­fer Jonthan's title (hint: it's the sub­ject of this post). Inci­den­tal­ly, how great is the Frick? Ghost­ly Whistlers, mul­ti­ple Ver­meers, "St. Fran­cis in the Desert," an excel­lent sculp­ture of a dead bird (was it a bird?). One might say: Frickin awesome.

Categories
inside art san francisco visual

Art / Marcel Dzama, bats, root beer, Canada

The Roy­al Art Lodge snuck up on me. I wan­dered into a show of theirs at the Pow­er Plant, a gallery in Toron­to in 2003. In a fair­ly small space, they'd crammed a wall full of col­lab­o­ra­tive paint­ings, Polaroids, home­made musi­cal instru­ments, and many paint­ings by Mar­cel Dza­ma and Neil Far­ber. It was all very … hard to describe: thrown togeth­er, prim­i­tive, whim­si­cal, charm­ing, dark, strange, hilar­i­ous. A paint­ing of debu­tantes sit­ting in a row on the back of an alli­ga­tor, smok­ing cig­a­rettes. Bats. Root beer syrup. A grid of Polaroids, each of which was com­posed of a per­son in a strange, home­made mask pok­ing his/her head out of a win­dow of an insti­tu­tion­al building.I couldn't quite believe it and I loved it. It would be hard for any art show to rival serendip­i­tous dis­cov­ery like that, but last week, I checked out Yer­ba Buena's show of some new­er Roy­al Art Lodge stuff: Peer Plea­sures 1. Worth see­ing, like many recent YBCA shows. Not spec­tac­u­lar, but solid.See also:

  • Lists of inter­est­ing stuff that Neil Far­ber and Michael Duomon­tier will swap paint­ings for (Neil: Micro­nauts from the 70's. Michael: self-released Joan­na New­som albums).
  • Mar­cel Dza­ma inter­view with Sarah Vow­ell: "If there is a Cana­di­an fac­tor in our togeth­er­ness, per­haps it is borne out of the iso­la­tion of liv­ing in a small city like Win­nipeg, and the cold weath­er. We are not able to go out­side too often because right now your skin will freeze with­in minutes."
Categories
kansas basketball the ancient past

Kansas basketball / The basics

I have irra­tional feel­ings about Kansas bas­ket­ball, and this entry is a sim­ple effort to con­tex­tu­al­ize and pro­vide foun­da­tion for com­ments I will make as the 2005–6 sea­son unfolds.I grew up in Kansas. My grand­fa­ther, great-grand­fa­ther, dad, uncle, and aunt all attend­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas. My fam­i­ly had sea­son tick­ets for both foot­ball and bas­ket­ball games, and I spent a size­able chunk of my child­hood run­ning around those sta­di­ums. At foot­ball games, we sat on the 50-yard line, about 30 rows up from the field. For bas­ket­ball, we sat court­side — sec­ond row, actu­al­ly — behind the Kansas bench, Jack Nicholson-style.Any fan of col­lege sports will tell you that sea­son tick­ets to Kansas foot­ball have nev­er been in high demand, at least not in my life­time. The last glo­ry year for Kansas foot­ball was 1969, when they were edged 15–14 by Penn State in the Orange Bowl. My dad trav­eled to Mia­mi for that game, and the sto­ry of pro­found heart­break still stings, even though I wasn't there. The bas­ket­ball Jay­hawks had hay days in the fifties, again, well before my time, win­ning a nation­al cham­pi­onship in 1952 and com­ing up one point short of anoth­er in a clas­sic 1957 duel with North Car­oli­na.All of this began to change in 1984, when jour­ney­man genius Lar­ry Brown was hired as head bas­ket­ball coach. He had not yet attained the sta­tus of wiz­ard as he seems to have today, but Brown con­vert­ed a team that had been run into the ground in the ear­ly 80's into a nation­al title win­ner in the span of five years. The after­math of his tenure wasn't pret­ty: he took a job with the LA Clip­pers after the title game and left KU to deal with the grad­u­a­tion of one a Jay­hawk great (Dan­ny Man­ning), and, umm, some NCAA sanc­tions that result­ed in a year-long sus­pen­sion from the NCAA tour­na­ment. The future looked bleak in 1989, even more so when the ath­let­ic depart­ment hired a rel­a­tive­ly unknown North Car­oli­na assis­tant named Roy Williams.As it turned out, 1989 was mere­ly the begin­ning of a 15-year run of bas­ket­ball excel­lence. Sal­ad years. Coach Williams proved to be an unques­tion­able mas­ter of the col­lege game (an ency­clo­pe­dic account of his achieve­ments), patch­ing togeth­er the team that remained after Brown's exit and lead­ing them into the Final Four with­in two years and in the process cre­at­ing a new style of offense that proud­ly bears the name, The Kansas Break. Acco­lades accu­mu­lat­ed: Final Fours in 1991 and 1993. A nation­al­ly-tele­vised 150–95 drub­bing of Ken­tucky in 1989. One of the all-time great col­lege bas­ket­ball teams in 1996. More Final Fours in 2002 and 2003.When Coach Williams returned home to North Car­oli­na after the 2003 sea­son, the ques­tion on everyone's mind was: Will 2003 be looked at as anoth­er 1989, or as anoth­er 1969? The begin­ning of a new era of great­ness, or the begin­ning of a long decline?

Categories
travel

2005 / The cities

Inspired by the list-mak­ers here and here.

  • San Fran­cis­co
  • Kailua, Hawaii
  • Hilo, Hawaii
  • Ham­burg, Germany
  • Ams­ter­dam, Netherlands
  • Eind­hoven, Netherlands
  • Munich, Ger­many*
  • Lon­don, England*
  • Cardiff, Wales
  • Wash­ing­ton DC
  • (A small town in the Ital­ian Alps)
  • Ali­cante, Spain
  • Hong Kong
  • Syd­ney, Australia
  • Ade­laide, Australia
  • Mel­bourne, Australia
  • Tokyo, Japan
  • War­saw, Indiana
  • Chica­go, Illinois
  • Kansas City, Missouri*
  • Lea­wood, Kansas
  • Asheville, North Carolina
  • Pitts­burgh, Pennsylvania
  • McK­eesport, Pennsylvania
  • Buf­fa­lo, New York
  • Nia­gara Falls
  • Toron­to, Canada
  • Detroit, Michi­gan
  • Ann Arbor, Michigan
  • Kala­ma­zoo, Michigan
  • Port­land, Oregon*
  • Seat­tle, Washington
  • Austin, Texas
  • Puer­to Val­lar­ta, Mexico
  • Sayuli­ta, Mexico
  • Peo­ria, Illinois
  • Gainesville, Flori­da
  • Atlanta, Geor­gia
  • Min­neapo­lis, Minnesota*
  • Newark, New Jersey*
  • Bask­ing Ridge, NJ
  • Spring­field, Missouri
  • Las Vegas, NV

Holy crap. I had no idea that there were so many. Qual­i­fy­ing cities had at least one overnight stay, except Hong Kong, Pitts­burgh and Detroit, where I spent most of a day and then escaped before night fell. Actu­al­ly, I'm kid­ding; I real­ly loved both of those cities, which is why I want­ed to put them on the list. * indi­cates that I vis­it­ed the city mul­ti­ple times, usu­al­ly in total­ly unre­lat­ed contexts.

Categories
street art visual

Missour-ah signage

Flickr photo


I was in Spring­field, Mis­souri for work last week, and I was real­ly sur­prised and impressed with the num­ber of old, unique signs. Over on Flickr, you'll be amazed by two shots of some amaz­ing Glo Laun­dro­mats signs, and a strip mall called "Coun­try Club Plaza" that has an old orange sign with an ana­log clock on it. Good stuff.

Categories
law & order

On the trail of the Meth Capital

Meth is known by many names — speed, ice, crank, crys­tal, glass — and, by many accounts, it con­tin­ues to spread through­out the US. When­ev­er a con­ver­sa­tion turns to the sub­ject of meth, some­one inevitably iden­ti­fies some Amer­i­can city as Our Meth Cap­i­tal. Oth­ers in the con­ver­sa­tion usu­al­ly dis­agree — "Des Moines? I thought Fres­no was the meth cap­i­tal," "No, it's Gainesville, Flori­da," "I thought it was some­where out­side Phoenix," and so on. Judg­ing from the cities that are thrown around in these con­ver­sa­tions, the meth cap­i­tal should be (a) poor, (b) white, © some­what small, but not unheard of, and (d) known for heavy indus­try, agri­cul­ture, or tourism. Of course, the Inter­net has some­thing to say about the loca­tion of our meth cap­i­tal. Most seem to agree that it's in Cal­i­for­nia, prob­a­bly some­where in the Cen­tral Val­ley now that the tweak­ers have been run out of River­side and San Diego coun­ties. Nom­i­na­tions for our nation's meth cap­i­tal include:

  • The LA Week­ly, California's Cen­tral Val­ley: "What Colom­bia is to cocaine, the Cen­tral Val­ley of Cal­i­for­nia is to meth labs."
  • Sier­ra Mag­a­zine, Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, Mis­souri: "Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, and Mis­souri vie for the dubi­ous hon­or of meth cap­i­tal of Amer­i­ca … in terms of sheer vol­ume, Cal­i­for­nia has always been and remains Numero Uno."
  • Austin Amer­i­can-States­man, Not Texas: "Should the bill not pass, Estes warned, 'we can count on Texas becom­ing the meth cap­i­tal of the Unit­ed States.'"
  • Mis­souri Sen­a­tor Kit Bond: Mis­souri: "Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Mis­souri is the metham­phet­a­mine cap­i­tal of the Unit­ed States."
  • The South­ern Illi­nois Dai­ly Egypt­ian, Mis­souri: "The con­cept is com­ing over from Mis­souri and is spread­ing across the area."
  • Slate, Every­one needs to chill: "Sub­mit the search terms "metham­phet­a­mine cap­i­tal of the world" or "meth cap­i­tal of the world" into Nex­is, and it spits back almost 70 cita­tions between 1983 and 2005, with many writ­ers and sources dis­put­ing the capital's pre­cise GPS coordinates."
Categories
visual

Art / Say it isn't so, Gocco.

Nooooo! Print Goc­co, the inge­nious, addic­tive Japan­ese home screen-print­ing press, is (appar­ent­ly) being dis­con­tin­ued. Goc­co sup­plies have been scarce late­ly (at Pearl Paints on Mar­ket, any­way), so I called Welsh Prod­ucts. As I was order­ing some bulbs and screens, I com­ment­ed about the scarci­ty, and the woman on the oth­er end said, "Well, they have dis­con­tin­ued it, you know."[Sound of phone hit­ting floor]She said that Riso would con­tin­ue to man­u­fac­ture ink, bulbs and screens for three years, but that they're ceas­ing pro­duc­tion of the B6 press (the clas­sic) very soon.Immediately after I hung up, I ver­i­fied the news on the Inter­net — because it is so trust­wor­thy in news of this nature — and quick­ly found a site ded­i­cat­ed to the preser­va­tion of Goc­co: Save Goc­co. I couldn't find any offi­cial ref­er­ence, but MAKE mag­a­zine seems to believe the hype as well. Gocco's US site doesn't men­tion any­thing about it.

Categories
music tip

Dust it off / XTC, Skylarking

Skylarking

Here's my ques­tion: How did this become the "Dear God" album, con­sid­er­ing at least half the songs on it are as good or bet­ter? Damn you, Sarah McLach­lan. I hadn't lis­tened to it since maybe 1995, when Ted and I played the shit out of it. We both loved the Bea­t­les, and I had a fond­ness for the syn­thy 80's style. This album com­bines these qual­i­ties, and adds a lit­tle indie rock sen­si­bil­i­ty as well.Now that the Cars and Hall & Oates have been on heavy hip­ster rota­tion for the past year or so, I'm sur­prised that XTC haven't seen some props, espe­cial­ly for this album. Com­pared to oth­er XTC albums, the vocals are more blend­ed with the rest of the sound, rather than held above it, which reduces the sac­cha­rine edge of lat­er albums (Oranges & Lemons, for instance). Maybe XTC just doesn't have the kitschy cache of oth­er 80's bands, who knows?Incidentally, you can read more about the most well-known song on the album. Here's a fan of Sarah, explain­ing why it's okay to love Sarah even if she ques­tions the exis­tence of God: "I do not believe that you should rule out a whole singer or album just because of one song that you do not care for."

Categories
music tip

Dust it off / Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One

All Hands on the Bad One, baby

Most of my records, CDs and tapes sit idly in crates and on shelves, so here's what I'm going to do: Every so often, I'm going to dust one off and see what it sounds like. Dredge the archive, and take a good long lis­ten to some­thing I haven't heard in 2+ years. 

Tonight, I begin the exper­i­ment with a ran­dom­ly select­ed record: Sleater-Kinney's All Hands on the Bad One, which I'll admit I haven't lis­ten to in three years. Maybe four.

Here's the thing about Sleater-Kin­ney and me. I'm prob­a­bly one of the very few San Fran­cis­cans (of a cer­tain age and neigh­bor­hood) who *likes* them but doesn't *love* them and some­times wish­es they would cool it with the too-often shrill vocals. But of course every­one knows they're polit­i­cal­ly-active fem­i­nists who play punk rock, so what's my problem?

Let's talk about Bad One. It's got great moments: the title track and "The Pro­fes­sion­al" are rockin and fun — even after five years, they're a cou­ple of the all-time great songs to lis­ten to while rid­ing a bike. The prob­lem is that, for the most part, this album is huge step away from their ear­ly, raw sound, which had a lot less Heart-esque pow­er bal­lad voice. Songs like "Milk­shake n Hon­ey," and "Bal­lad of a Lady­man" fea­ture this voice, which for me is the ele­ment of their sound that rocks the least. (It comes down to this: If Car­rie Brown­stein har­mo­nizes with Corin Tuck­er on a song, chances are that I'll like it).

I'll say some­thing nice about them: I saw them move the crowd in a seri­ous way at Dolores Park one sum­mer. Their fans were freak­ing out, and the band itself was hav­ing fun and sound­ing good — even songs I didn't like were pret­ty great. I real­ly wish their albums cap­tured this bet­ter. But like any­thing, their sound can't be all things for all peo­ple, and they seem to please some group of peo­ple every­time they put out an album, so more pow­er to them.