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WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE RADIO STATION?!
I listen to WFAN online a lot, because I enjoy being angry. WFAN's online feed has the same doom-and-gloom hosts like Joe Benigno ("Oh, the pain!") and the rapidly disintegrating alliance of Mike and the Mad Dog, but it also features commercials that are a million times worse than those you hear on their regular signal, repeated with ten times the frequency.
For instance, an ad for 1-877-KARS4KIDS. It would be impossible to truly describe how annoying the ditty in this commercial is in print form, so I won't even try. Suffice to say, even though this commercial is for a charity (whose aims are mysteriously unclear, other than to get you to give them your car), I hope everyone associated with it gets hit by a truck. All at the same time. And then fall into a vat of sulfuric acid. And then have that vat get hit by another, bigger truck.
But there's another ad I've been hearing a lot lately (a lot = 17 times every half hour) that I find just as disturbing for different reasons. It's for a new online radio station, Allnumberoneradio.com. They proudly proclaim that they play "only songs that were NUMBER ONE on the Billboard chart!"
There's a supremely flawed premise at work here, the same kind that gave us the Big Gulp and the Super Size. It's the very American principle that says, Why have one of something when you can have a thousand? Obviously, if a song hit number one, it must be a good song, right? So if you had a station that played ONLY number ones, then that station would be the bestest station ever!
The problem is, there are a lot of great songs that never hit number one. And I'm not just talking about obscure stuff that only appeals to music snobs like me. Most of what we now call classic rock never even sniffed the pop charts. Neither did most great soul and R&B songs from the 60s and 70s, with the exception of Motown (though not even all of their classics topped the charts). And by definition, it eliminates any song recorded before the advent of Billboard.
If you look at the recorded legacy of your Favorite Classic Group, chances are they don't have a number one song to their credit. And if they do, it's a good chance that big hit is one of their worst, most pandering late-period songs. Did you know Bob Dylan's best selling single was a disco version of "It Ain't Me Babe" he cut in 1978? True story!*
What kind of songs make it to number one? Sometimes they're undeniably great feats of pop craftsmanship. The Beatles had a bajillion number one hits, and most of them are unimpeachable as works of art. And then there's...well, I'm sure there are other examples.
But far more often, number one hits are the audio equivalent of cafeteria food, inoffensive but palatable to all. Meanwhile, great songwriters toil in relative obscurity for small cultish audiences and don't get recognized by the world at large until 10 years after they're dead. This is true in any medium. Look at the New York Times Best Seller list. James Patterson's got, like, 15 books on it. Does that mean he's a better writer than Jonathan Lethem?
Number one songs are often the result of inexplicable pop culture trends that emerge like tornados. Science has no idea why they happen, and they can't tell us when or where they'll appear. All we know is that, given certain atmospheric conditions, they tear up the landscape and leave a huge mess behind when they disappear.
Like, we're all minding our business when it suddenly becomes impossible to escape "Who Let the Dogs Out." Or how about 15 years ago, when an album of Gregorian chants stormed up the Billboard charts for absolutely no reason whatsoever. All of a sudden, monks were hot. Why? Before we could figure it out, they were gone, and we were all on to the next thing.
Here's a totally unfair, cherry-picked list of some number one songs from the past 20 years.
"Don't Worry, Be Happy", Bobby McFerrin
"I'm Too Sexy", Right Said Fred
"Wild Wild West", Will Smith
"London Bridge," Fergie
"I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That)", Meat Loaf
"Bad Day", Daniel Powter
"Jump", Kriss Kross (8 weeks at #1!)
"Smooth", Santana with Rob Thomas (12 weeks at #1!)
"Macarena", Los Del Rio (14 weeks! 14!)
And here's a list of some artists who have never had a number one hit on the Hot 100 chart:
Led Zeppelin
Nina Simone
Tom Waits
Black Sabbath
Wilson Pickett
The Who
Elvis Costello
Run DMC
The Kinks
So, by the self-imposed rules that this radio station operates under, you will never hear any songs by any of these people. But there's a significant statistical chance you will hear THE DADDY MAC'LL MAKE YOU JUMP JUMP!
I do not like them odds.
* Completely not true
Posted 07.18.08 09:21am * Permalink
Win George Steinbrenner's Rep
I wasn't too upset about the Yankee Love Fest that was Fox's coverage of OMG THE LAST ALL STAR GAME AT YANKEE STADIUM. I mean, yeah, it was completely over the top and so full of fake, sepia-toned wistfulness it would make Ken Burns retch.
But the months and months of hype leading up to it meant you knew it was gonna be like that. If you insisted on watching the All Star Game, knowing full well it was going to be 4 hours of Joe Buck bending over and spreading for the Pinstripe Bullet, you really have no right to complain about it.
I did wish, however, that more attention had been paid to the two following details.
1) Yankee Stadium hasn't been condemned. It's not about to turn into dust. It's old and outdated, but the Yankees could continue to play there if they really wanted to. So essentially, this "celebration" of the last year at Yankee Stadium is really a celebration of the Yankees building a billion dollar monument to themselves--with more than half of that money coming from city bonds, while the team tries and hold New York over a barrel for even more public funds to complete it.
1a) Oh, and they destroyed one of the few public parks in their Bronx neighborhood in order to do it. The team insists that they'll pay to replace it with another public park, but that new park will be located on the other side of the Deegan. So go fuck yourselves, local residents, we need that space for a Hard Rock Café!
2) When the history of Yankee Stadium is rehashed by nostalgia junkie writers, they inevitably bring up Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle, and so on. They seldom mention the fact that the current Yankee Stadium shares almost nothing with the Yankee Stadium that those legends played in, except for the name. The Stadium received an enormous makeover in the early 70s (totally publicly funded, by the way), to add a few seats and completely drain it of all idiosyncracies and charm. If you see pictures of the original version, it looks more like Ebbets Field or the old Tiger Stadium, a classic pre-war ballpark. The redesigned version that opened in 1976 looks like Shea Stadium in navy blue (which even the most ardent Mets fan will tell you is a bad thing). So when people lament the impending loss of the House that Ruth Built, guess what? That place has already been gone for over 30 years.
But again, the full-press Yankee love was hardly surprising. What I did find surprising was the unbridled worship of George Steinbrenner that came along with it. During the broadcast, Joe Buck went out of his way to spend an entire inning talking about how great Steinbrenner was, and how he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Tim McCarver, who I think might now be legally retarded, agreed with him, as if Big Stein was as much a no-brainer HOF vote as Mariano Rivera.
Today's NY papers were all pretty much in line with this POV, praising Steinbrenner and his winning winningness, and his ability to have his team's stadium host an All Star Game. Midget Mike Lupica's column was typical of the lot, chronicling George's trip onto the Yankee Stadium field as if it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon.
At this point, I have to rub my eyes and blurt a Hanna Barbera-ish "ah-geda-ah-geda-HUH?" Because apparently I blinked some time in the last 15 years or so, and it must have been at the exact second someone switched the setting on George Steinbrenner's Public Opinion to Adoring Adulation. Because for as long as I've been alive, it was set at either Derision, Disgust, or Searing Hatred.
There's few things I hate more than historic revisionism. And I especially hate it when it's being performed on an event that I remember. I don't like someone trying to mindfuck me into thinking that my memories are the total opposite of what I vividly remember. The case of George Steinbrenner is a minor one in the grand scheme of things. But that doesn't mean I can't call bullshit on his image makeover.
Allow me to flash back to my childhood, when I religiously read and reread a series of books called The Baseball Hall of Shame. The first volume had a chapter called "Odious Owners," and its inaugural inductee was Big Stein himself. I quote from their intro:
"Revolutions have been won with less bloodshed, human rights violations, and atrocities than that which have been inflicted on the Yankees during George Steinbrenner's reign of terror."
This is from a book published in 1985, and reflects the general opinion regarding Steinbrenner's ownership at the time: He was not the driving force behind the team, but an impediment to any hope of success.
Almost immediately after Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1972, he was banned from the game for 15 months because of illegal contributions to Richard Nixon's CREEP fund. He got around the ban by berating his least favorite players via tape recorded, obscenity-filled tirades. He also probably orchestrated the extremely unpopular swap of Bobby Murcer for Bobby Bonds in absentia, the first of many really horrible trades he would insist on during his career.
Joe Torre managed for 12 years, so it's easy to forget that Steinbrenner used to run through managers like tissue paper. From 1972 to 1996, the Yankees had 20 managerial changes, all of them instigated by Big Stein himself. This includes five different tours of duty for Billy Martin. Their love-hate relationship was the stuff of Sophoclean tragedy.
He also fired Yogi Berra a mere 17 games into the 1985 season. And rather than tell the Yankee legend himself, Steinbrenner dispatched coach Clyde King to deliver the bad news. Class.
Steinbrenner didn't just shitcan managers on a whim. He was also fond of meaningless firings of various coaches as warning shots to whoever happened to be in the manager's seat at the time. The tales are legion of him firing low-level employees who offended him in some way. And he loved to banish players who'd had a bad outing or two to Columbus as punishment.
Barring that, he would publicly question the heart and integrity of his players. Whether it was doubting the "guts" of pitcher Jim Beattie or calling Hideki Irabu "a fat pussy toad", Steinbrenner was always willing to destroy a player's reputation and confidence just to grab himself a few headlines.
By the late 1980s, fed up fans started bringing signs to the park saying things like STEINBRENNER MUST GO. This prompted the owner to kick out the offending protestors, which in turn prompted free speech lawsuits from the ACLU.
Oh, and he secretly paid a professional gambler $40,000 to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield, a move that resulted in his second suspension. So, to reiterate: classy.
I still remember when Steinbrenner was suspended in 1990. I remember it because I was at my grandparents' house, and so was one of my uncles, an absolutely insane Yankees fanatic. He was literally jumping up and down. YES, HE'S GONE! FINALLY, THEY GOT RID OF THAT SON OF A BITCH!
My uncle's reaction was the prevailing feeling among fans, who gave a standing ovation at Yankee Stadium when the news was announced: with Steinbrenner gone, maybe the team could finally get back on the right track.
So what happened in the intervening years to cause a total 180 in reputation? The fact that he's sick and frail helps. Nothing makes a person's reputation bulletproof more than a debilitating disease. When Ronald Reagan left office, his reputation was at its lowest ebb. But once he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, suddenly his legacy was unassailable. Now, Republicans want his face on everything from the penny to Mount Rushmore.
More importantly, the Yankees have made the playoffs every year since1995. During that time, they won six AL pennants and four World Series titles. The Yankees are amid a dominant streak unseen since the Bronx Bomber dynasty that began in the late 1940s and lasted into the early 1960s. You can gloss over a lot of past indiscretions when you win.
Here's the problem, though: George Steinbrenner has had virtually nothing to do with this success on the field. Unless you want to give him credit for not being as much of a meddling douchebag as he used to be.
You can directly trace the team's rise back to the top to his suspension in the early 1990s. While Big Stein was away from the game, the Yankees farm system was nurturing prospects like Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, and Andy Pettitte. Considering Steinbrenner's track record of trading away minor leaguers for beaten-up vets, it is highly likely that most of these future franchise cornerstones would never have worn pinstripes if he was running the team while they were minor leaguers.
In The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty, Buster Olney ascribes the success of the 1990s Yankees to a new hands-off approach by Steinbrenner. And you would agree after looking at what free agents were acquired under his watch. He did go hard after Reggie Jackson, which resulted in two World Series titles. But after that, his record is pretty checkered, particularly when it came to pitchers. Thanks to Steinbrenner's whims, the Yanks were stuck with such stiffs as Tim Leary, Andy Hawkins, Doyle Alexander, and Steve Trout.
Of course, the Yankees became a multibillion dollar juggernaut under Steinbrenner's watch. But seriously, who cares? That's great for his bank account, and it should keep Hank in gold diapers for another few years, but it's not relevant to baseball as it's played on the field. It makes me think of how many people praise Madonna for being such a great "businesswoman". Good for her, but does that make her last album any less shitty?
Most sportswriters nowadays barely acknowledge Steinbrenner's past at all. And if they do, they dismiss it by saying, "everything he does, it's because he wants to win so bad." Who the fuck doesn't want to win? Yeah, George Steinbrenner totally revolutionized the game. For decades, owners tried to succeed by losing, until Steinbrenner came along and said, "Screw you guys, I'm going to try to win by winning!"
And what kind of message does this send? It's okay to treat people like toilet paper as long as you're doing it in the service of winning! In fact, as long as you really, really want to win badly, anything you do is completely excusable! A country based on those values is totally the kind of country I want to live in!
I'm not saying you can't make an argument for putting George Steinbrenner in the Hall of Fame. And if being a bad human being were a disqualification, there would be a lot less plaques in Cooperstown. But you have to consider the several decades of mismanagement and douchebaggery outlined above.
If you think he's still a HOFer after all that, fine. But you can't ignore some really shitty history. Unless you're 99 percent of the media, apparently.
Posted 07.16.08 11:03pm * Permalink
Down with Dope, Up with Hype!
During Monday night's Home Run Derby, Josh Hamilton hit some of the most impressive moon shots ever clubbed within the confines of the House that Ruth Built. And as we all know, anything accomplished at Yankee Stadium is at least 10 times more important than anything accomplished anywhere else.
The only things bigger than the home runs Hamilton hit were the lengths to which the ESPN talking heads went to praise him. You see, Josh Hamilton's a recovering heroin addict--perhaps you heard about it when you weren't too busy not living under a rock for the last year.
Granted, Derek Jeter wasn't taking part in the Derby, so ESPN had to find someone else to verbally fellate. But their unblinking love of Hamilton--a man they couldn't pick out of a lineup before the night began--was so embarrassing, it was approaching near Favre-ian levels.
Rick Reilly, the finest sports commentator 1987 had to offer, was particularly cringe-worthy in what I believe was his first on-air ESPN gig. He kept credulously repeating a dream Hamilton said he had, in which he was interviewed at Yankee Stadium after a home run derby. How amazing that he had that dream! How prescient! How [consults thesaurus] portentous, even!
To Reilly, this dream--which Hamilton totally undeniably had, and couldn't have made up on the spot, and couldn't have been the product of a drug-addled memory--was evidence of FATE! Reilly loves tales of fate and redemption almost as much as he loves cocktail napkin-level jokes about golf and 20-year-old pop culture references.
Hamilton credits his new-found Christian faith with saving his life. So Reilly was moved to say, "It's a bad night to be an atheist!" Pack it up, secular humanists, you're finished! Sure, God could concentrate on ending war, disease, and human suffering, but He decided to save one drug addict and made him hit baseballs really far.
(And as Fire Joe Morgan pointed out, I guess God would also be responsible for Hamilton hitting only 3 homers in the last round and losing out to Justin Morneau, wouldn't He? ESPN will have to take it up with God for ruining one of the best sports stories of the last week or so.)
Reilly also commented on the lack of non-white participants in the Derby, which surprised me. I'll admit, bringing up the topic was almost brave, since race matters are almost never broached on a sports telecast (unless it's a sport patting itself on the back for how un-racist it is).
This would have been a salient point to consider, had it come out of virtually anyone else's mouth. Reilly's clumsy punchline--"It's like a Kiwanis Club out there!"--was more suited for the Catskills than the NAACP. Deep down, Reilly might actually care about racial representation in sport, but everything else takes a back seat to him trying to make yet another outdated, unfunny joke.
The collected commentators--Reilly, professional hair helmet Steve Phillips, professional Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, and professional bullhorn/jackoff Chris Berman--marveled at Josh Hamilton's ability to hit baseballs after spending so many years away from the game vein-mining. More than one of them said that this was the hardest part of coming back from addiction.
Sure, there's the gut-wrenching junk sickness. There's the agonizing, days-long pain of withdrawal. There's the eerie difficulty of relearning how to do ordinary, everyday tasks. But that can't compare to hitting a batting practice fastball!
And oh, Joe Morgan. We can always count on your to bring the crazy. Did you actually compare Josh Hamilton missing time due to drug addiction to Ted Williams missing time in the prime of his career? Ted Williams missed playing time because of military service. In two different wars. As a fighter pilot. A FIGHTER PILOT.
Do you know what the life expectancy of a fighter pilot was in World War II? Catch-22 should give you a good idea. Once you set foot in those planes, you might as well get your tombstone chiseled right then to save time. But Ted Williams served as a fighter pilot in World War II and Korea and lived to tell about it and came back to the majors and still hit 500 home runs.
But yeah, that's totally the same as missing time because you were strung out on smack.
It's great that Josh Hamilton kicked drugs--for Josh Hamilton and his family. That doesn't make him a hero to you, me, or anyone else in America who's not related to him. Are we supposed to hand out medals for everyone who stops self-destructive behavior? Hey, here's your trophy for not drinking bleach!
I don't want to diminish how difficult it is to kick a chemical dependency (even if ESPN's over-the-top man-love makes me want to punch holes in Hamilton's story). But as hard as that is, it's the absolute least you can do as a functioning member of society. It reminds me Chris Rock's joke about men who brag that they take care of their family: you're supposed to take care of your family. You might as well brag about remembering to eat.
But worst of all, the ESPN personalities kept talking about how this event was "historic" and would be remembered forever. Now, Hamilton hit himself some majestic taters, but remembered forever? Not even ESPN will remember them next week, when they're on to the latest chapter of the Bret Favre Saga, or A-Rod Hearts Madonna, or whichever NFL star gets arrested next.
And as if this wasn't enough, now tonight, during the actual game, we get to hear Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. *shudder*
Posted 07.15.08 07:07pm * Permalink
The Warp and Woof of Ruining Your Child's Life
You will warp your children. It's an inevitable byproduct of the parenting process, just like how you can't make a hot dog without two or three rat turds finding their way into the mix.
Some warping is a good thing, in the long run. A completely unwarped, innocent child would grow up to be one of those scary, infantile grown ups who's way too into Harry Potter. If you're lucky, you warp your child so that they have a healthy skepticism about The Ways of the World. If you're unlucky, they grow up to collect other people's skin. But in all likelihood, you won't know how you've warped your child for good.
I can trace my own warping--positive and negative--to a lot of things. But I know that parental TV viewing played a major part. Particularly, my dad's fondness for Monty Python. He never forced me to watch it, but it was on in the house often, back in the days when Python was a PBS staple.
I remember liking it a lot when I was way too young to know what I was watching. I had to ask my dad to translate certain Britishisms like pram and lorry and explain allusions to historic events I hadn't learned about yet. But I liked the really weird cartoons, and the fact that in any given episode you'd probably see some boobs (PBS was the best friend to a kid without cable in the 80s).
Was I destined to be a nerd anyway, and annoy the shit out of my friends by repeating sketches they'd never see? Yeah, probably. But the fact that I could recite "The Lumberjack Song" at age 7 definitely sped up the process. Was it my father's intention to bruise my fragile psyche with anagrams and cross dressing? I doubt it. Still, it happened.
I mention this because I regularly watch a couple of shows that I'm sure are warping my infant daughter on a daily basis. And no, they're not Mets games, though those often cause me to spout language unfit for children's ears.
The shows are Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke, two similar programs from Japan. In case you've never seen them, they both consist of a series of obstacle courses of increasingly ludicrous difficulty, with a liberal helping of that uniquely Japanese flavor of Crazy.
Ninja Warrior is the more accessible of the two. It's almost like watching the Winter Olympics, and seeing guys do the luge or the bobsled. You think to yourself "I could totally do that!", even though you know you'd crack your head open if you tried.
Ninja Warrior's first stage inevitably features people who have no business partaking in any kind of physical activity, let alone a hardcore test of endurance. If this show is any indication, Japanese audiences love watching comedians and 19 year old girls face-planting on gym mats and falling into filthy water. There are also many insane street performers and LARPers in full costume, because in Japan these things are considered actual professions rather than desperate cries for help.
But the show also attracts people who literally train for months to compete. Grown men have quit their jobs and built mock courses in their backyards so they can practice full time. And 999 times out of a thousand, these men will fall short of completing the course in the most agonizing way possible. Like getting past the finish line but failing to touch the buzzer that "officially" ends the course. Or landing on the last platform, only to fall off the side and be disqualified.
Unbeatable Banzuke does not look like anyone could do it. It's so mind-meltingly impossible that I can't imagine anyone wanting to do it. Every episode features at least two different obstacle courses that must be mastered while performing some esoteric skill--riding a unicycle, walking on stilts, walking on your hands, etc. Each obstacle is more ridiculous than the last, and the set-ups so torturous that it looks less like a game show and more like an S&M ritual.
The craziest thing about these shows, at least from an American standpoint: there is not a single mention of any kind of jackpot. If you win Ninja Warrior, you're a Ninja Warrior. If you complete a course on Unbeatable Banzuke, you are placed on the Wall of Champions (which is apparently CGI). That's it.
Oh, and there usually is no winner at all. I have never seen anyone complete Ninja Warrior, and you could watch 20 episodes of Unbeatable Banzuke before you see anyone make it to the end of an obstacle course.
Compare that to the US, where every game/reality show ends with somebody winning some huge cash prize just for being on the show, even if they deserve nothing. Because we have this kindergarten mentality in this country that Everybody Should Win and Nobody Should Feel Bad! Hooray! Gimme my gold star 'cause it's Tuesday!
I like these shows, but my baby daughter loves them. She doesn't just watch them, she is entranced by them. You can't tear her from the screen. She claps when the audience claps. When the audience gasps at someone's failure, she yells "oh no!" And she delights at the announcers for both shows, who are incapable of speaking at anything lower than jet engine decibels.
I don't know what this means, exactly. But I feel like one day, when my daughter is trying to explain her own warped view of the universe, she's gonna start with her insane father making her watch Japanese people punish themselves while a crazed announcer screamed at the top of his lungs.
Posted 07.11.08 12:07pm * Permalink
A New Role Model for Reyes
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Jose, we can't have you throwing tantrums out on the field. You're a grown man and you can't act that way anymore. |
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I know, coach, I just get so emotional about this game. |
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Emotion is good, but you can't let it get the best of you. That's why I brought in a New York baseball legend to set you straight. He's an expert in learning how to control your emotional impulses. |
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Wow, four-time world champion Paul O'Neill! |
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That's FIVE time world champion, you ASSHOLE! |
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Oh yeah, I forget you won one with the Reds. |
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How could you forget that?! We swept the A's!! I mean, C'MONNN!! |
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I'm sorry, I was just a little kid when that happened. |
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And it woulda been SIX if stupid Mariano could've shut the door on the fucking DIAMONDBACKS!! JESUS!! |
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Whoah, that's not fair. Mariano Rivera is, like, the best closer in the history of time. |
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You don't know what you're TALKING ABOUT! That ball was nowhere NEAR the plate! |
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Ball? What ball? |
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Yeah, exactly--it was a BALL!! I don't take strikes, okay? I CRUSH THEM! If I don't swing, that means IT'S NOT A STRIKE! |
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You see, Jose? This is the way a professional athlete acts. |
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It looks more like the way a whiny crybaby acts to me. |
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WHAT?! |
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No, you don't understand. He's showing passion! |
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Does "showing passion" include kicking his cleats off and eating them? |
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/gnaws on Nikes |
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Yes, it shows he's fiery! That's how he led the Yankees to four World Series titles! |
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I thought it was because he was a good hitter in a lineup full of other good hitters. Plus all their pitchers were on steroids. |
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Well, yeah, that too. |
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When you put on the pinstripes, you have a duty to uphold the legacy of Ruth and Mantle and...OH, YOU GOTTA BE SHITTING ME WITH THIS STRIKE ZONE, UMP!! |
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You see, Jose, you have a long way to go before you can be the kind of inspirational leader that Paul was in his prime. |
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So if I wanna act like a spoiled brat, I have to be old, white, and on a winning team that's not full of broken down veterans. |
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Pretty much, yeah. |
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GOD, I will EAT your CHILDREN!! |
Posted 07.03.08 12:05pm * Permalink
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