What we find funny then and now

I just had to share this music clip. Mavis Staples, Wilco and Nick Lowe rehearsing the old Band song “The Weight.” I’ve been on a bit of The Band kick as of late and this is just an amazing cover of the song. Mavis Staples just sings the hell out of the song. You can even see the guys in Wilco just take a step back in wonder when she starts to sing.

I’ve been thinking recently about just where my sense of humor comes from. Meaning just what was I exposed to as a child that determined what I felt was funny and, more importantly, influenced my writing style and my brand of humor. Ok, at least I think that at times I can be a funny writer intentionally. But what I wanted to think about is what drove it.

If you made me list the TV shows that I watched as a kid (say before I turned 10) that influenced me the most I would say The Muppet Show, The Monkees and Monty Python. Yes, even as a 10 year old I was aware of Monty Python. Add in the Douglas Adams “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series and Dave Barry columns and you have the main components of what would make up my brand of humor and I would have to say that I am not alone in that regard. Now here is the interesting bit, not only were all those shows meant for adults but they instilled in myself and a lot of other people in Gen X a very specific brand of comedy.

Think about those shows. All three of the TV shows completely ignored the fourth wall and were full of self-referential, meta-humor. The idea of a running plot was only vaguely considered important and in many instance it was just gag upon gag upon gag. Now is it surprising that Seth MacFarlane, who created Family Guy, is a month younger than I am? We have the same influences and create what we have always found to be funny. Even a show like How I Met Your Mother is written to my generation due to the reliance on running jokes and constant gags while something like Two and a Half Men with its more classic sitcom format is geared to the aging Baby Boomers who grew up with more straightforward sitcoms.

You can see the same thing with music. When I was young I was first introduced to music with new wave and punk and when I grew older that combined itself into grunge. Add in country music and you have the entire alternative country scene. We take the influences that we have as children and meld them to what we want to create as we age.

Sadly this means that as I continue to age and move out of the target market what I find funny will no longer make the air. Music today is being made by those who grew up in the latest era of the boy bands and bubble gum pop. Someone who thought that Friends was the epitome of comedy is working on a new sitcom. That is just the way the cycle of culture works. Thank god for DVD collections.

Quick random thoughts

Note to self: when I finally decide that the career that I am destined for is mad scientist and embark on creating bizarre new creatures the first one I should make is a Bewilderbeast. That and my horse / zebra hybrid that I will call a Horbra. Also, I should remember to make it clear that I am not mad, I just get these headaches sometimes.

In other news, I am extremely intrigued by the murder mystery that has taken place on the royal estates in England. Is it bad that I am hoping that this means that Queen Elizabeth has gone on a killing spree? Could you actually arrest the Queen? I always like how in the Jack the Ripper case many people assume that it is a royal who was doing the killing so maybe this is just a replay of that classic case. At least it would be an interesting variation on the story.

Also, do we all have to buy a baby shower present for Beyonce? I mean, if you make the birth of your child a big deal in the media does that make us all liable for a shower gift? And I wonder just how many gifts that celebrities receive from random people when they have a child. I bet that it is way more than you would imagine. Though why anyone would name a child Blue Ivy is beyond me. Just once I would like to see celebrities give their child a normal name. How about Gertrude? It’s a Shakespeare reference. Paltrow could have named her daughter that instead of Apple.

For the Love of Tebow...

Before I get to the odds and ends of my books read in 2011 I need to make a comment on the Broncos game today and the media firestorm that is Tim Tebow. First of all, that was one hell of a game especially given that I thought that it was going to be the worst game of the weekend. I was glued to the screen and was amazed by how well the Broncos played. The Steelers were lucky to fight their way back into the game but Tebow’s killstrike in overtime was incredible.

It is incredible from a cultural perspective to watch the way people view Tebow. The best explanation that I have read is that no matter what your point of view you can use Tebow to prove your point. Want to talk about the gritty underdog winning with unconventional ways? Or how about the Heisman Trophy winner succeeding at the next level? Need to work an angle regarding how Christianity leads to success? Tebow is a media darling because he makes writing stories really, really easy. As a result he has become simultaneously the biggest hero and villain in sports, neither of which is earned.

Now I will be honest here, I kind of like the guy. He was drafted in the same year as Jimmy Claussen and I made the following claim. I could guarantee you that Claussen would be between the 20th and the 40th best quarterback in the NFL while Tebow would either win a Super Bowl or be a complete bust and I stand behind that claim. Claussen is either a bad starter or a decent backup while Tebow is either great or horrible depending on the day. To be honest he has already exceeded expectations. No one is ever going to consider him a draft bust. He is unorthodox and not a classic quarterback but he does get things done. I think a lot of the dislike for his football play is simply the fact that it is not the way we expect it to be done. We all believe that the quarterback position has to be played in the way that Peyton Manning does it so anything different must be wrong.

The biggest reason that a lot of people hate Tebow, beyond the media saturation, is that he is actually a really nice guy and we can’t stand it. The guy doesn’t have any big flaws to him. He is religious but I would never call him preachy or at least no more so than any other player who takes a knee after scoring a touchdown. He doesn’t screw around and leads a clean life and because he is open about that people hate him. The strange thing is you don’t see Tebow rallying against what others are doing. Not even in the way that the Straight Edge punk movement can be annoying in an “I am better than you” way. Tebow just is and people can’t stand it. Our cultural has become so cynical and jaded that the sheer fact that someone can just be famous and be a good guy drives us insane. That is a pretty sad statement.

Ok, last few books…

My Year of Flops by Nathan Rabin: An analysis of horrible movies by a writer for the Onion’s AV Club. Yes, I read a book of reviews of movies that you would never want to see. I can’t explain it either other than anyone who feels that Joe vs. the Volcano is a bad movie is someone I can never be friends with. I am sorry but that is one of my favorite movies ever.

Richard III by William Shakespeare: Yes, I met my yearly quota of Shakespeare by reading the one about the hunchback and a horse and various children being murdered offstage. What was interesting was that this was the first time that I have read Shakespeare on my Kindle and thus didn’t have all of the annotations and definitions that you traditionally have in one of the print editions of Shakespeare. On one hand I was proud of the fact that my vocabulary has improved to the point that I could follow everything without those definitions but I know that I missed some of the more obscure references and puns. I think that I will end up going back to print for Shakespeare. It just doesn’t read properly on a screen.

The Night Bookmobile by Audrey Niffenberger: A graphic novel by the author of the Time Traveler’s Wife about finding a bookmobile with every book that you have ever read inside, which would be both awesome and kind of boring. On one hand it would be wonderful to look about and see everything that you have ever read but on the other hand you would also look around and go, “But do you have anything else?”

Best of 120 Minutes: Ok, so maybe a few of you are aware that the new season of Portlandia debuted on IFC this weekend. I note this only for the fact that I have connections to both of the stars of the show. I met Carrie Browenstein before a Sleater-Kinney show in Lawrence a few years back and ages and ages ago I hit on Fred Armisen’s ex-wife at a bar once. If you need to wonder if I was successful at hitting on the ex-wife of a Saturday Night Live actor you really, really don’t know me. Especially if you envision the 24 year old version of me doing it. Actually, I’d rather you didn’t envision that. Anyway, this is all just an excuse to post a Sleater-Kinney video.

2011 Reading List: It's Nonfiction so it has to be true

Ok, time to make my way over to the non-fiction side of the aisle for the second part of my review of everything that I read last year. I have a few pieces of odds and ends that I will write about over the weekend but I run a pretty even split between fiction and non-fiction. Used to be almost all fiction so it is a rather interesting change. Anyway, here we go…

“The Childless Revolution” by Madelyn Cain: A very interesting analysis of the fact that women are having less and less children and are often choosing careers and education over motherhood. This is going to be a growing theory in the future especially as you see the conflict between career success and family size leading to the world predicted in Idiocracy. The other interesting bit about this analysis is that it is entirely focused on women. No one ever questions if a guy chooses his career over fatherhood but for women there is a cultural stigma attached to it.

“Gunn’s Golden Rules” by Tim Gunn: If you need to have a life coach you could do a lot worse than choosing Tim Gunn. At a minimum you could guarantee that you will be dressed immaculately. Sadly I can’t get excited for the new season of Project Runway: All Stars because Tim and Heidi are not going to be a part of it, which makes me wonder if I want to watch the show at all. It just isn’t the same without Tim saying “Make it work” and saying hello to Swatch the dog.

“Bait and Switch” by Barbara Ehrenreich: Back when I took the separation package from Sprint I was given access to a career development service, essentially a place that would help me build a resume, work on my interview skills and help in searching for a new job. Outside of having someone to proofread my resume and give a little bit of a refresher on my interview technique I don’t know if I received any benefit from it. Talking about networking with people who are also unemployed is not precisely the easiest way to find a job. This book covers the same subject as Barbara spends a year in the world of the job searchers: attending networking events and sending out resumes on Monster and CareerBuilder in an attempt to see if it is at all possible to find a job using those tools. For those of you who have ever been pissed at the job search process this book will let you know that you are not alone.

“Scorecasting” by Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim: This book was basically taking a look at sports from a Freakonomics perspective. I am sure that it interested me at the time but right now I am completely blanking on it. I read it before I got married so maybe I can use that as an excuse.

“Undisputed” by Chris Jericho and “The Road Warriors” by Joe Laurinaitis: I broke one of my internal rules this year. I typically limit myself to one biography by a pro wrestler in any given year but this time I had to read two from some of my favorites. Chris Jericho, who made his triumphant return on Monday night as the most loved person on the show and was then the most hated six minutes later, is probably my favorite wrestler around and one of the few guys who I respect in the business. This book is as much about his music career as anything else and isn’t as good as his first but it is interesting. The second book focuses on my favorite tag team of all time, The Road Warriors, and while not the best written book it definitely holds your interest. Plus, the story of Hawk wrestling on a scaffold with a broken leg is always a good one to read. Sadly, the number of people in both books who have died before the age of fifty is too much for me to comprehend.

“The War for Late Night” by Bill Carter: A study of the whole Jay Leno / Conan O’Brien controversy, which was the biggest story in the world for a few months and has since become a total afterthought. Leno is back hosting the Tonight Show and will be until the sun collapses into itself, Conan has a fringe audience on TBS and I still wish that I could stay up late enough to watch Craig Ferguson. If you are interested in the ins and outs of how the late night shows works and just how many political games take place in the background this is an incredible read.

“Unfamiliar Fishes” by Sarah Vowell: I am a big fan of Sarah Vowell’s writing and this book about how Hawaii became a state is at least a little bit of a return to form from her last book, which was about the Puritans and was one of the most boring things that I have read. This has a lot more of her trademark dry wit and is an interesting study as to just how did we end up deciding that a) the United States should possess a couple of random islands in the Pacific Ocean and b) that they should be considered just as much a part of the United States as say, Delaware. Ok, that is not a good example. I’m not sure anyone can think of a reason why Delaware should be considered a state other than it gives all the other states someone to look down upon. Delaware is the Barry Horrowitz of states.

“Spook” and “Bonk” by Mary Roach: One book is about ghosts and the other is about sex. Sadly, sex with ghosts does not come up at any time as a subject though it obviously should. I’ve now read everything that Mary Roach has written and she is a writer whose style I like. She takes a scientific look at subject but does it from a very personal perspective. It’s basically investigative journalism from someone who is just genuinely interested in a subject. You couldn’t use one of her books as the basis for a doctoral thesis but they make for wonderful reads on airplanes.

“Those Guys Have All the Fun” by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales: An oral history of ESPN. After reading this you might not have a positive image of any single person who was ever associated with the networks with the exception of Robin Roberts. I knew of a lot of the ESPN sex scandals ahead of time (the wonders of reading Deadspin everyday) but there was stuff in here that was just stunning. Apparently Bristol is the Sodom of Connecticut. The book does make it clear just how the network became an unbelievable success and also why it will never be as cool as it was in the early 90’s when I watched it for every moment. Essentially, once you are owned by Disney and are the mainstream source of news you can no longer be inventive and reckless. Sad but true.

“The To-Do List” by Mike Gayle: The story of one man who sits down late one night, starts writing a to do list for his life, ends up with over 500 items and then goes ahead and completes every single one of them. I am pretty sure that Kim slapped me when I told her what I was reading because she knew that I would immediately try to do the same thing since I love To Do lists. Especially given that the first item on every To Do list that I write is, and I’m not kidding here, “Write To Do List.”

“Moneyball” and “Boomerang” by Michael Lewis: Written by the lucky bastard who married Tabitha Soren you have the story of the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane, made into a movie about a team that never makes it to the World Series (which was already made and called Major League) and another on how various economies have collapsed in the credit crisis. Given that one of those failed economies was Iceland I was interested to see if I could at all understand how in the world a country like that could suddenly decide that it was a financial center. I still don’t think anyone understands. Apparently it involves fish and elves. Basically everything in Iceland involves fish and elves and smells slightly like rotten eggs.

“I’m a Stranger Here Myself” by Bill Bryson: More travelogues by Bill Bryson. For those who know my story I have spent most of the past year on planes, in airports and basically never spending more than four days in any one location. As a result my Kindle has become a steady companion and there are times when you just search for something to read that you know that you will enjoy but don’t want to put too much thought into it. Bill Bryson works really well for those moments.

“Popular Crime” by Bill James: I’ve never been a massive baseball stat guy, though I certainly have done more than my share of scorekeeping over the year, but I have always been impressed with how Bill James investigated the game and developed better methods to analyze player performance. Apparently as a sideline Bill has also been interested in true crime stories and this book is basically his examining of various cases over the centuries. It basically reads like a bar conversation with a friend who is brilliant, extremely dedicated and completely ignoring the fact that at many points he is either wrong or bringing up a point that is really irrelevant. Still, I go back to this book to read select chapters occasionally and it did bring up cases that even I was unaware of.

“I Want My MTV” by Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum: An oral history of MTV, which is basically the same as the one about ESPN but replace Robin Roberts with Martha Quinn. Also, Adam Curry’s hair is essentially its own character in this book. Seriously, I think it gives an interview at some point. Oh, and no one liked Downtown Julie Brown. Absolutely no one.

2011 Reading List: Fiction for all

Since it is a start of a new year (and an effective restart of the blog) I thought that I would go with an easy topic for the next couple of days: an examination of the books that I read over the course of 2011. I finished 38 books last year, which is about average for me. Yes, I’ve kept track of every book that I have read since 1998. In many instances I can tell you how many days it took me to read the book. Don’t ask me why this is the case. Kim asks me all the time and I have yet to come up with a good answer.

Anyway, I will start with the fiction and do the non-fiction and odds and ends tomorrow.

“The Power and the Glory” by Graham Greene: This was my challenge reading for the year, which just shows that I have really lapsed in terms of what constitutes a challenge for me anymore. Not like the good old days where in January I would decide to read Faust in its entirety despite the fact that once you read the definition of the term “Faustian Bargain” you can pretty much ignore the entire book. Anyway, I have always meant to read more of Graham Greene’s work and this is just an amazing story about Central America and the struggle of a failed priest trying to do one last good act. Really, really fascinating read about a time that we are not too far removed from.

“An Object of Beauty” by Steve Martin: I’ll state up front that I am a huge fan of Steve Martin’s writings and one of the first books that I ever gave Kim was his novel “The Pleasure of my Company.” But while I enjoyed this book you can tell that this was more of a novel written by someone who is really intrigued with a certain subject, in this case the New York art world, than by someone with a story to tell. You will learn more about auction houses and galleries and the denizens of the world than you could ever wish to know. A nice book but not a required read.

“Perforated Heart” by Eric Bogosian: Eric Bogosian falls into the category of one of those writers that I have always admired but had never actually read. Mainly because I tend to see movies of his work (Talk Radio being the biggest example) and just always hear praise about him. So I gave this novel a try because it focused on the 70’s punk rock scene in New York, which I have a passing interest in for some reason. Mainly because everyone considers it to be incredibly important artistically and musically but it all happened before I was aware of art and music outside of Sesame Street so I don’t know of CBGB’s outside of the t-shirts that you can buy at Urban Outfitters. Not sure if this book helped me to get a sense of the time, either. 70’s punk remains to me the story of a really good party attended by someone else a few years ago. Maybe you just had to be there.

“The Well of Lost Plots” by Jasper Fforde: Some books are written for certain audiences. Jasper Fforde writes for literature geeks. I have seen no author who is so inventive and dedicated to making as many literary references as possible via his Thursday Next series, which involves a world where characters in books are surprisingly real. If you can find references to Austen and the Charge of the Light Brigade entertaining than pick up his books. It is like someone decided to specifically invent crack for English majors.

“Midnight Mile” by Dennis Lehane: As you can probably already tell my taste in fiction runs to the more obscure but here is a book that everyone would enjoy. Lehane is an outstanding writer of tense thrillers and this book is in the realm as his earlier work with “Mystic River” and “Shutter Island” (along with his belief that book titles should only contain two words.) His books are page turners that do not fall into the Dan Brown trap of seeming to be formed out of a rejected Scooby Doo script. Definite one to check out.

“The Wee Free Men” and “Snuff” by Terry Pratchett: If I would hazard a guess I would estimate that I own / have read almost thirty books by Terry Pratchett over the past fifteen years. He is my fantasy writer of choice as his Discworld novels are brilliant satires of society and the nature of fantasy itself. What saddens me though is that he is reaching the end of his career as he has early onset Alzheimer’s and is now forced to dictate his books. You have to admire someone who sees the end of the road ahead of him and still plows on as he knows that he still has stories to tell the world.

“A Game of Thrones” by George R. R. Martin: I must admit I had not been very aware of this series until the HBO series and as a book it would typically scare me off for the same reason that I avoid most fantasy novels. At a certain age you decide that you can’t read a thousand pages about dragons and ancient rivalries without going completely numb. But my god is this a good book. He keeps you reading and the use of numerous viewpoint characters keeps you constantly engaged in all of the different threads that run through the book. I am going to continue to make my way through the series though I certainly will take pauses between the books. With something so dense you need to take breaks.

“A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan: I am not sure if I can call this the best book that I read all year (though it would certainly be in the top three) but it without a doubt has the best chapter that I have read in a very long time. It is a single chapter written as PowerPoint slides. It is a chapter about autism and the idea of pauses within music and what that implies and the different ways in which information is communicated and it is just fascinating to read. At first you think that it is just a gimmick but after reading it I could think of no other way to present such a story in so compelling of a manner. I’d read this book for that chapter alone.

“How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu: I read a lot of books because I hear good things about them online. Kim challenges me on why I use this method to choose books as I typically end up reading books that I am supposed to read rather than what I would actually like to read at any point in time. Sometimes my method works and I find a great book. Other times like this one I just don’t get it. It is the story of a time machine repairman with a cute dog who ends up somehow killing his future self and forming an infinite loop. Outside of the bits with the dog I still don’t know what it was about.

“Hunger Games”, “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins: Now these are books that I can understand! 24 teenagers put into an arena to battle to the death for the entertainment of the super wealthy. I have to say of all of the young adult novels that have gained mainstream attention in the post Harry Potter world these are easily the best. I highly recommend reading Hunger Games before the movie comes out because it really is a book that you will not be able to put down. You will find yourself rooting for Katniss and Peeta and wondering just how would you do in such a situation. The other two books aren’t quite as good though that is due mainly to the nature of the story. There would have to be a bit of a letdown after the first one. Huge recommendation on this one to be on board before the movie comes out and possibly ruins it for everyone.

“The Visible Man” by Chuck Klosterman: There is an old question that I have heard that you can use whenever you are at a lull in a conversation. You can have one superpower: flight or invisibility, which do you choose and you must answer immediately. It is a test of extroversion versus introversion and I have to admit that my first choice is invisibility and I then regret it. This is a novel about what it would be like to truly be invisible and then be able to watch peole as they truly are. It asks the question of who are we really: the person that we show the world or the person that we are when we are home alone. What is your true self? As with most of Chuck’s writing it is more of an examination of an idea than a good novel (you tend to find yourself searching for a plot at times) but man is it a good idea. The story will stick with you for a while.

“The Post-Mortal” by Drew Magary: For those who are unaware, Drew is one of the writers on Deadspin, a blog that I have been reading forever that was founded by a fellow Illini so I am a little biased on this one. The novel is built around a brilliant premise: What would happen if someone created a cure for aging. You take an injection and then you never age. Now you can still die by being shot or by smoking until you get lung cancer but you would never die of old age. You would just stay the same age as you were when you took the injection. Would you take it? What if everyone else did and you ended up being the only old person on the planet? What would the world be like if everyone was a twentysomething with no maturity in sight? Have to admit this book was a lot better than I initially expected.

“The Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes: I wrote about this book a few weeks ago so I’ll be brief. Plus it won the Booker Prize so it really doesn’t need my endorsement. It is about memory and how we view things as we age and that amazing way you think when you are in your late teens and find yourself fascinated with intellectual pursuits. Ok, maybe not everyone gets that but there is part of me that wonders how I would have done if I had been in a school like one of the Ivies or Oxford or Cambridge and got to live one of those experiences that I have only read about. I probably would be an even bigger arrogant prick than I already am. Guess I should be happy that I went to a school that features a cornfield as one of its campus landmarks.

“Plan B” by Johnathan Tropper: I was surprised that I hadn’t read this book already. Tropper is pretty much an American version of Nick Hornby with a focus on stories revolving around New York. This was his first novel and it shows flashes of brilliance. A story of turning thirty and what that entails. Ah, the good old days…

Wednesday Night Music Club: Some days I would love to be able to stand on a stage with just a guitar, move away from the microphone and sing to an entirely silent crowd. Pretty amazing to see Josh Ritter pull it off with one of my favorite songs ever. “My wings are made of hay and cornhusks”

Life in bits and bytes

I could point out a thousand reasons as to why I have suddenly started to feel old. Just the simple fact that I started this blog when I was 31 and I am now 38 is reason enough. Hell, blogging has gone from a fringe activity to the mainstream to now a relic of the ancient past over the seven years that I have been doing this. Technically I am supposed to just be tweeting this and posting tidbits on my wall or whatever it is that kids do today. But today I feel old and proud of it because we are celebrating the 30th birthday of the greatest machine ever developed: the Commodore 64.



This is the first computer that I ever had. I still have it, stored at my parent’s house and I am extremely confident that if I could figure out a way to hook it to a modern television set that I could get it to work. I can barely get a laptop to survive a year or two but the Commodore put in a good decade of service to myself and my brothers and taught me ninety percent of what I would end up knowing about computers. I learned how to program on a Commodore, I figured out how to do word processing and spreadsheets on the machine, and I figured out how to determine the best football team ever using Super Bowl Sunday (in which I took the 20 teams provided, created two 10 team leagues with each team playing ten games (9 in conference and 1 out of conference) culminating in an 8 team playoff, simulated every game, printed out the statistics for each game and computed season statistics for all 20 teams. I still remember the 1984 San Francisco 49ers losing to the 1981 Bengals in a playoff game with Dwight Clark being tackled on the one as time expired. Somewhere in my parent’s basement I still have stored all of the printouts. Yeah, I was an indoor child.)

What is incredible is that all of this was done on a machine that could only actively store 64 kB of data. Put it this way, the size of all of the text I have written for the blog this year is more than that. There is basically nothing that you can do with 64K of data yet the machine and a disk drive that was roughly the size of a beige Playstation with a fan that made it sound like an airplane engine I played more inventive games on this than I have on any other system since. And I truly would program my own games. I used to pick up computer magazines that had programs in the back that you could type up and enter into the system and play. That is how I learned the basics of programming by typing in code found in the back of magazines.

It is rather amazing to think that I have been around for nearly all of the personal computer revolution. I missed out on the whole homebrew era of the 70s what with my being an infant and all but for the last 30 years I have had iterations of every machine imaginable. I moved on from the Commodore to a Packard Bell in the days when they were referred to as IBM clones. I learned how to create boot disks because it was nearly impossible to run anything from Windows. I remember scoffing at the launch of Windows 95 because I couldn’t imagine having to run something outside of a DOS environment. I was on the web using Mosaic and at once point has both a CompuServe and an AOL account. I still use AOL email, which is rather depressing once you think about it. I’m at over 16 years on that email address. I am not as savvy as I used to be and I have kind of given up on my programming days but I really have seen computers grow in ways I never expected.

If I am feeling extremely grumpy I can talk about how kids today don’t understand how good they have it. That they will never understand what the world was like before everything was online and we were constantly connected. Except that I feel more sorry for them than anything else. Not only did they not get to enjoy the journey but they missed out on a simpler time. I know part of this is that time speeds up as you age but I really feel that time is much more scarce now than it was in the past. There is no such thing as free time. I’ve received six emails while writing this and a dozen posts have gone up to Facebook. I can contact anyone I need to instantly without worry that I would tie up a phone line or need to wait several days for them to get a letter. But that speed means you are always instantly accountable. There is no way to just sit back and relax.

I miss the days of just sitting at my Commodore 64 and enjoying the moment. Playing a game and not caring about anything else. Living a life where you are not constantly on call in a world where it is as though everyone is carrying a pager and must respond 24/7. There is something to be said for nostalgia. It reminds us to slow down.

Today's Special (not the Nickelodeon show)

Because there is only so many times that one can watch a Big Ten team lose in a given day Kim and I spent much of this afternoon watching old episodes of Kitchen Nightmares. Now, I was originally a huge fan of the UK version of the show where Gordon Ramsay seemed to actually care about the restaurants that he visited and gave more advice than profanity. When I watched the first few episodes of the US version it was so horribly edited by Fox that I could barely consider it a reality show. But apparently we caught a patch of later episodes today that also featured restaurants in South Bend and LaGrange meaning that these were places that I could conceivably eat.

Given that we are in the internet age we immediately googled the restaurants. Four episodes, four restaurants, all now out of business. If this tells you anything it is that you should never, ever open a restaurant.

Now you could probably make the argument that given these restaurants were on Kitchen Nightmares, which implies that they were already really, really crappy restaurants that this isn’t a really representative sample. But having a top chef, a television crew and a hour long commercial that you can promote is the best chance that any restaurant can have of bringing people in the door. From what I can gather most of the restaurants failed from a combination of location and the economy. Given how much of a pounding the Midwest has taken over the past few years I could see struggling restaurants failing by dozen.

What amazes me though is that so many of these stories are exactly the same. You have a lovely couple or friends who decide that it is their lifelong dream to open a restaurant. So they take everything they have, sell the house, empty their IRAs and finance a business that is almost certainly going to fail. All I’ve ever heard about the restaurant business is that it is a wonderful way to go broke and I have a lot of friends who have been successful at it. I’ve known people who have run restaurants for generations but even they would recommend against it. Going into it because you like food is effectively like setting your money on fire except without the warmth.

Though I have to say watching this does make me hungry. And trust me, when I open up my bar I won’t have any of these issues.

Bowl Preview: Part Three

It is New Year’s Day and that can only mean one thing: that there is absolutely no college football on television today. I can’t believe that is the case. I know that it is Sunday and that the NFL is playing but the fact that they can’t put a single bowl game on today is ludicrous. You are telling me that one of the lesser bowls featuring two teams at or below .500 (say Illinois vs. UCLA) couldn’t play today? So that maybe I could watch Illinois win a game in 2012 instead of 2011? Is that too much to ask.

Anyway, here is the conclusion of the bowl preview for the rest of the year and yes, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to return to a five day a week blogging schedule.

January 2nd
TicketCity Bowl: Houston vs. Penn State (Noon, ESPNU): Oh, where to start. Let’s put the Penn State season in perspective by this one fact: this is the only bowl game that is not on a network that is included in the average cable package. In fact, odds are 95% of the population could not tell you whether they receive this channel or not. The game is also being played in the Cotton Bowl but is not the Cotton Bowl because that game is played in the new Cowboys Stadium, which seems to be a violation of the space – time continuum or something.

I must state up front that I am a Penn State alumni via marriage. I am not sure if school allegiance is officially transferred via marriage (hoisting Illini fandom on Kim would just seem to be cruel and unusual punishment) but I have a much greater connection to the school than I used to and as a result the news of the past few months has been of huge interest. Here are a few of my thoughts on the entire case: 1) Jerry Sandusky has the worst lawyer on the face of the planet, 2) when you are on national television trying to proclaim your innocence and are asked “Are you sexually attracted to young boys?” there are two proper answers “No” or “Hell no”, a fifteen second pause is not the right answer, 3) Penn State president Graham Spanier should be ashamed of himself for not just ignoring the reports to him but in not giving a single press conference over the course of the scandal, 4) flipping over a news van in State College does not constitute a riot given that the same thing happens when they beat Minnesota in football, 5) the Board of Directors at Second Mile should be grilled more than anyone because they had all the reports of abuse but still stayed associated with Sandusky and 6) I honestly feel that Paterno was made out to be more of a fall guy than was necessary. Reading the Grand Jury report, which is disturbing beyond belief, it is still not clear what he knew and what actions he should have taken beyond what he immediately did. Yes, you could question whether he should have pushed for more follow up but I really dislike the fact that some people seem to view his actions as worse than Sandusky’s. Paterno is not the villain in this story.

Here is the last thing and the point that relates to this game: the players on the team had absolutely nothing to do with this. There were calls to kill the football program, cancel the season or forfeit their bowl berth all of which would punish the people who had no connection with the scandal at all. I am really impressed with how the players have handled the situation given that they are 20 year olds who have just had their entire world change without any say in the matter. So if you can find the game on channel 347 of your cable system feel free to cheer for Penn State for the athletes who are continuing to compete despite being faced with a challenge that should never have happened.

Outback Bowl: Michigan State vs. Georgia (1 PM, ABC): Is there anyone else surprised by the rather long ranging success of the Outback Steakhouse franchise? I mean, reasonably priced steakhouses seem to come and go as we have long since surpassed the days of Ponderosa and the Sizzler. And you have the whole Australian gimmick that tends to gain the nation’s attention once a decade and then fades away. Yet you still have these restaurants all over the place and when faced with a decision on where to have dinner when you are out of town it is a pretty good option. Have to say that I am rather impressed.

This is one of the classic Big Ten vs. SEC showdowns in which we get to see just how incredibly slow people are in the Midwest. It is just uncanny. It is like we bring a higher degree of gravity with us wherever we travel, which given the average size of a Big Ten fan may possibly be true. I think Wisconsin fans have their own gravitational field. You have to go with Georgia in this game for three reasons: 1) their football stadium is famous for having hedges thus being the only football team that is tremendously proud of their shrubbery, 2) they have a cute dog as a mascot and 3) even Notre Dame beat Michigan State this year.

Capital One Bowl: Nebraska vs. South Carolina (1 PM, ESPN): Now this is the most famous Big Ten vs. SEC matchup and I must admit that when I first saw the two teams playing I wondered why they weren’t including teams from either conference this year. Then I remembered that Nebraska was now in the Big Ten and that South Carolina has been in the SEC for years but always seems to be forgotten. I still can’t quite get my head around Nebraska being in the Big Ten. The Big Ten having 12 teams is fine, that the conferences are called Leaders and Legends is incomprehensible but acceptable at the same time, but exactly why I now have to consider Nebraska a rival is extremely confusing. I have nothing against corn though in terms of political correctness I guess we should refer to them as the Maizehuskers now, which would at least allow a rivalry with Michigan to arise. I also fully anticipate Steve Spurrier to utilize the Capital One Vikings in his offensive gameplan at one point in the game. I am still not clear how connecting your company with raping and pillaging is a good thing but given the way most people view the banking industry at the moment that is probably considered good PR.

Taxslayer.com Gator Bowl: Ohio State vs. Florida (1 PM, ESPN2): We have a new winner for the best bowl game sponsor ever! Yes, the only thing that can match the legendary Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl is the mother f-ing Slayer Bowl. No marching bands, just Slayer. Screw playing Charge after first downs: I want to hear Raining Blood!



(I am not kidding here. I would pay so much money to go to a college football game where all of the music of the game consisted of just Slayer playing in one end zone. Player injured? Time to hear “Perversions of Pain.” I am telling you if there is one thing that amateur athletics needs now more than ever it is thrash metal.)

This would be a title game in most years except now it is just a game being played in Jacksonville between a team that you thought wasn’t allowed to be in a bowl game due to sanctions against a team that just was not very good. This is the game you flip to and watch for a while because you really think that it should turn out to be a great game but then you realize that you are watching two pretty mediocre teams with the biggest story being that Urban Meyer will be Ohio State’s coach next year. So watch for a few minutes to hear the announcers talk about that and then just search online for old episodes of Headbanger’s Ball.

Rose Bowl Game Presented by Vizio: Wisconsin vs. Oregon (5 PM, ESPN): This is a really good matchup of sponsor and team as you would need a brand new, top of the line, Vizio television to fully grasp the grandeur of the Oregon uniform. I believe that they are now incorporating colors that are outside the human visual spectrum. It is the granddaddy of them all and should be a pretty good game. Both of these teams could arguably beat anyone on their best day and one year when we get an eight team playoff they will get their chance. Until then this is probably the best matchup of the day and it is always fun to watch the Rose Bowl. Or, as a kid growing up in the Midwest always understood it, “That game that we watch for the first quarter and then turn off in disgust as our school is down by 21 points already.”

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl: Stanford vs. Oklahoma State (8:30 PM, ESPN): I am sorry but I still don’t see what the big deal is about Andrew Luck. People are acting like he is going to be the greatest quarterback of all time but I just don’t see it. I can see him being a fine NFL quarterback and he has all of the tools but there is nothing about his game that screams all-time best to me. Plus, he went to Stanford and you just have to hate the guy on general principle for that. Stanford is a school where most of the student body is participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement even though the only reason that they are at Stanford is because they are part of the 1%. That said, Oklahoma State could very well rename itself T. Boone Pickens University next year and no one would bat an eyelash. I will be rooting for Oklahoma State here because it is always good to have one of these schools that are more outside the mainstream be at the top at the end of the year. Again, anything to give me a goddamn playoff system in college football.

January 3rd
Allstate Sugar Bowl: Michigan vs. Virginia Tech (8:30 P.M. ESPN): Come for the game but stay for the Mayhem commercials. Seriously, that is one of the best ad campaigns of recent memory. I am amazed at how competitive advertising is for insurance. You have Mayhem, the Geico lizards and cavemen and whatever the hell Flo is for Progressive. It is the modern day equivalent of the cola wars except without celebrities and the inability to do blind taste tests. As for the game itself, Virginia Tech has already had one player suspended for missing curfew and the game is still a few days away. It is kind of unfair to have a curfew in New Orleans given that time doesn’t technically exist in the city. It is more of a “I’ll meet you sometime this evening, whenever we both end up in the same location, or maybe not. It all depends on how the wandering goes.” Michigan is a fun team to watch but they have played so above expectations that they have to come down to Earth at some point. I guess I am just not a big supporter of Big Ten teams in bowl games this year which is usually how you are instructed to bet in Vegas. Still, this should be a rather fun game.

January 4th
Discover Orange Bowl: West Virginia vs. Clemson (8:30 PM, ESPN): I’m not sure we really need to discover the color orange. In fact, Clemson will be wearing orange so it really should not come as a surprise to much of the viewing audience just what the entire concept of orange details. I have to admit that I have been a Clemson fan for a long time for no reason other than they were really good when I was seven years old and they seemed to have cool uniforms. Also, college football always seems to be a lot more fun when a school like Clemson is at the top. Any time there is a team in title contention who a vast majority of the country could not tell you what state they are in just makes for a fun season. West Virginia is this year’s representative of the Big East, which was founded as a basketball conference, became a football conference to the point where they gained entry into the BCS, and will soon consist of every school in the country that can declare itself east of a geographic landmark. Except for West Virginia of course, which should be in the Big West by definition.

January 6th
AT&T Cotton Bowl: Kansas State vs. Arkansas (8 P.M., Fox): I have no idea how Kansas State ended up with a good team this year. Five years in Kansas City has made me more aware of Kansas State than I ever wanted to be in my entire life. That was five years listening to people talking about Manhattan and not referring to either the Woody Allen movie or New York City. I thought I could free myself of the team in silver and purple with the Thundercats logo on their helmet but here they are challenging another school with Kansas in their name. It is inescapable. Everything in life ties back to this rather flat state. Again, I am boycotting the Cotton Bowl until they start playing it in the Cotton Bowl again. We must follow truth in advertising laws in at least some areas in life.

January 7th
BBVA Compass Bowl: SMU vs. Pittsburgh (1 PM, ESPN): Last year when I wrote my bowl preview I made two major points about this game. 1) That I had no idea what BBVA was and they were so lazy in marketing that I wasn’t going to bother to google them and 2) that their CEO had an intense, almost sexual, attraction to compasses and navigational devices of all kinds. You would not want to see him in the same room with an astrolabe. This resulted in my receiving actual hate mail in the comments from a BBVA employee who told me that they were one of the largest banks in Spain. A year later and I still couldn’t tell you how that could in any way be considered a good thing.

Look, this is the point in the bowl season where absolutely no one cares any more. I couldn’t tell you much about SMU or Pitt other than they both probably finished with winning records and that A) SMU used to be really cool back in the days of Eric Dickerson and Craig James when they were openly paying their players and B) Pitt hired Dave Waanstadt to be their head coach at one point in time, which had roughly the same effect on the program as when SMU was given the death penalty. You don’t have to watch this game. Read a book or something.

January 8th
GoDaddy.com Bowl: Arkansas State vs. Northern Illinois (9 P.M., ESPN): One of the saddest events in sports last year was the death of Indy Car driver Dan Wheldon. I turned on the race after the accident had occurred and I knew just from the tone of the announcers and the fact that they would not show a replay that he had to have been killed in the crash. When I finally saw it, it was one of the worst that I have ever seen in my roughly 30 years of watching auto racing. The coverage that ABC provided was excellent in tone with only one slight problem. When they went to commercial it was invariably to a GoDaddy spot featuring Danica Patrick. It wasn’t their fault, the spots were pre-planned but if there was one point in time when you did not want to have the sexy commercials that was it. Plus, at what point in time do they get to change their brand image? Will they always be known for the slightly but not really risqué ads? The biggest thing to know about this game is that there is an actual school called Arkansas State, which is great to know if you are asked if there are more than one institutions of higher learning in the state of Arkansas. Cheer for NIU because they are the Huskies and at some point having a lovable dog as your mascot should be reason enough.

January 9th
Allstate BCS National Championship Game: LSU vs. Alabama (8:30 P.M. ESPN): It all comes down to this. The bowl season ends with a game that doesn’t even have the word Bowl anywhere in its title. I mention this every year but it pisses me off more than everything. The reason we don’t have a playoff is because of “the sanctity of the bowl system.” You don’t even end with a bowl game! Assholes.

I watched the first LSU – Alabama game and what I remember most vividly was the wide array of houndstooth clothing worn by the Alabama faithful. That was more impressive than anything I saw on the field that day. Not that it was a bad game, more like it was two dominant defenses going up against two average offenses so it seemed like nothing ever happened. For one of those Game of the Century matchups it really was anti-climactic. The fact that one can say that about a game that went to overtime is astounding.

I am expecting this game to be different. You have LSU playing in the Superdome. They are the better team on both sides of the ball and they know it. I can see them beating up Alabama early and then coasting to victory. That will bring the college football season to a welcome end. We could all use a break.

Best of 120 Minutes: Let’s start the New Year’s off with some old school Veruca Salt, shall we? Not like there is any new school Veruca Salt to choose from anyway.

2011 Bowl Preview: Part Two

Let’s take on the next set of bowl games as we make our way through the New Year’s Eve.

December 28th
Military Bowl Presented by Northrop Grumman: Toledo vs. Air Force (4:30 PM, ESPN): Somehow I can never imagine Northrop Grumman as a bowl sponsor. I am not even sure what a Northrop Grumman commercial would look like. Maybe it is just “We’d like to tell you just how awesome we are as a company but that is classified information. So instead let’s just look at puppies frolicking in the grass for 30 seconds. Northrop Grumman: Any company that loves puppies couldn’t possibly be evil.” Look, it is the Military Bowl so you have to cheer for Air Force though Toledo gets points for being the Rockets.

Bridgepoint Education Holiday Bowl: California vs. Texas (8 PM, ESPN): A less than quality matchup in the Holiday Bowl, which usually features two teams that eschew defense and encourage brining Jim Brown out of retirement for one last game. Though there is the possibility of Colt McCoy could return because, well, it’s not like he has much else to do right now and could use to get away from Cleveland for a week. Texas is having a poor year and Cal is one of those schools that are annoying in every aspect. Athletically, academically, hell, even their mascot is annoying. Their main rival is Stanford for crying out loud. I have to cheer for Texas simply so that I won’t have to feel the need to immediately take a shower after the game.

December 29th
Champs Sports Bowl: Florida State vs. Notre Dame (5:30 PM, ESPN): Here is the highlight for Notre Dame this year: we went an entire regular season without anyone dying. That is how bad I still feel about last season. Hell, I lost hope for this season five minutes into our first game when our opening drive results in a fumble that is returned 95 yards for a touchdown, followed by the game suspended by a massive thunderstorm and concluded with a loss to South Florida. At worst, we should be 10-2 with losses to USC and Stanford, resulting in maybe a BCS bowl or at least a nice game in January. Instead it is a bowl game between two teams that totally underachieved sponsored by that really crappy shoe store at the mall. I know that I could talk about the legendary rivalry between the two teams but that would imply that both teams are worthy of a rivalry. On the plus side, we do get one more game of Brian Kelly screaming at 19 year olds and that is always a good thing.

Valero Alamo Bowl: Washington vs. Baylor (9 PM, ESPN): For the record, San Antonio is an incredibly underrated city. The Riverwalk is a blast and it is a really fun place to spend a few days. The Alamodome is an odd stadium though; it seems to have been designed for every sport other than football. Anyway, this is your Heisman Trophy winner game featuring the only Heisman Trophy winner that no one actually watched over the course of a season. Traditionally this results in the winner playing so horribly that we wish we could retroactively announce the results. Washington is a state in the Pacific Northwest. Sorry, I don’t have anything witty to say besides that. Well, that and I assume that the halftime show is just a bunch of people singing “Valero”.

December 30th
Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl: BYU vs. Tulsa (Noon, ESPN): This game is being played at Gerald J. Ford Stadium so expect a lot of stumbles, fumbles, interceptions and references to ending a national nightmare. Surprisingly though this game is in Dallas given that Gerald Ford a) represented Michigan, b) played for the University of Michigan and c) Michigan plays in Lyndon B. Johnson Memorial Stadium. Also, this game suffers from only having Air Force make the bowls from the service academies. You can’t have a Military Bowl and an Armed Forces Bowl and only allow one military school to play. They should just let Air Force play in both games. Also, if someone could explain to me why a school in Oklahoma is nicknamed the “Golden Hurricane” when a) they don’t have a coastline and b) that nickname seems to be just asking for a double entendre.

New Era Pinstripe Bowl: Rutgers vs. Iowa State (3:20 PM, ESPN): No, I have no idea why the game is scheduled to start at 3:20. Maybe they want to be careful not to have any overlap with the exciting conclusion of the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl. This is the game played in Yankee Stadium for those who like their football played the old fashioned way: in a baseball stadium that wasn’t in any way designed for football featuring a crowd made up of guido and guidettes complaining about how they can’t show off their tans under all of their layers. Has Snooki officially become the mascot of Rutgers yet? The fact that Rutgers is the state college of New Jersey but in no way associates itself with the state in its own name tells you an awful lot about the state. I almost went to grad school at Iowa State because I realized that the only places one should study for master’s degrees in electrical engineering is in cities where when you look out your window all you see is corn. That is the only thing that can make looking at circuit diagrams sound like an exciting alternative,

(Bonus Jersey Shore rant: So Kim and I watch Jersey Shore because there is no greater comedy on the air right now. The best way to watch the show is to realize the each of the people on the show is trying to get airtime to further their own careers while simultaneously trying to cash in what little fame they have. Thus you have Vinnie acting nice because he is trying to make his way into an acting career and J-Woww acts like a mom half the time because she is this close to a guest host gig on the View (or at least becoming an Access Hollywood correspondent). On the other hand, Situation is just trying to get as much airtime as possible to up his appearance fees because the second the show goes off the air he is going to drop off the face of the earth. Ron and Sammie are forced to realize that as long as the show is on the air they are going to have to alternately act like a couple or fight because otherwise they have nothing to do. And Snookie and Deena have reached the point where random strangers are about to stage an intervention for them. Seriously MTV, at some point watching people get blackout drunk in the afternoon stops being funny. Pauly D is cool, though.)

Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl: Mississippi State vs. Wake Forest (6:40 PM, ESPN): For crying out loud ESPN, you have multiple networks. Use them so that we have start times that make at least some sense. Besides, I’d recommend starting this game earlier due to the high probability that the stadium will file for foreclosure at some point in the second quarter. Ah, real estate lending humor, nothing better in the world. Anyway, Mississippi State is coached by the guy who I have heard mentioned the most often as the new Penn State coach so that might give you a reason to watch the game as well. Wake Forest is the alma mater of the legendary Brian Picolo so if you watch Brian’s Song you technically get credit for watching this game as well. It will also encourage you to dust more often as I always get something caught in my eye at the end of the film.

Insight Bowl: Iowa vs. Oklahoma (10 PM, ESPN): I always love bowl games named after general concepts. We’ve lost the Humanitarian Bowl but we still have the Insight Bowl. A Revelation Bowl would also be pretty cool though a Polite Dismissal of a Poorly Developed Theorem Bowl would probably have a hard time getting sponsorship. As an Illini I cannot in good conscience cheer for Iowa in everything including the production of corn. It really is the most hated rival for those of us who went to the school in the early 90’s and had to deal with four years of crappy basketball teams because of Bruce Pearl’s secret recording sessions. I still hate that bastard. I can’t recall the last time that Oklahoma was forced to play a bowl game in December. I don’t know if anyone has informed them that even though the game is in Arizona that it is not the Fiesta Bowl. Maybe we should all just act as if it is the Fiesta Bowl to make them feel better.

December 31st
Meineke Car Care of Texas Bowl: Texas A&M vs. Northwestern (Noon, ESPN): I understand the independence movement is strong in Texas but I don’t think that they have to go so far as declare their own sovereign version of Meineke Car Care. If the union of Meineke Car Care dealerships cannot be preserved then we are all doomed. Texas A&M is headed off to the SEC and is actually a worse fit for the conference than Missouri. Hell, they are a worse fit than Vanderbilt. At least Vanderbilt has the southern genteel style and the belief that wearing a sport coat to a football game makes it much easier to sneak in alcohol. Texas A&M games seem to always resemble one large ROTC meeting and I can’t see that meshing with schools where people hold up rolls of toilet paper and boxes of Tide at regular intervals. This is also another one of those games where the bowl decided to take a Big Ten school not named Penn State because they didn’t want to be associated with the controversy, which is just stunning if you know how bowl games work. All bowl games care about is getting people to travel to the game and how the city of Houston could think that they will get more Northwestern alums to travel to a game then Penn State is insane. And that is not even getting into the difference in ratings. Plus, given that Illinois beat Northwestern this year for the trophy formerly referred to as the Sweet Sioux Tomahawk they should be in this game anyway.

Hyundai Sun Bowl: Georgia Tech vs. Utah (2 PM, CBS): Finally a bowl game that is not on the ESPN family of networks. Utah joined the PAC 12 this year and I don’t think that anyone noticed. To be honest, Urban Meyer may have still been secretly coaching there for all I know. Georgia Tech runs the triple option offense which is always fun if you like running, pitches, a quick game and believe that Knute Rockne was completely wrong when he decided to implement the forward pass. If I remember correctly the Sun Bowl is one of the oldest bowl games in existence, which probably is nice to know if you ever find yourself in El Paso and need to start a conversation with something other than, “Hello, can you please help me find a way to get out of El Paso?”

AutoZone Liberty Bowl: Cincinnati vs. Vanderbilt (3:30 PM, ABC): Crap, I’ve already used my Vanderbilt jokes. I mean, who could anticipate Vanderbilt making a bowl game (and not Tennessee, which says something about how far that program has fallen.) Cincinnati is a) a city that I have never been able to properly spell my entire life and b) really proud of its chili in much the same way that Kansas City is of its barbecue except that Cincinnati chili is unlike any kind of chili known to man. (By the way, I’ve always preferred Memphis barbecue, which is probably why I never really fit in well in KC.) At least this game is no longer the St. Jude’s Hospital Liberty Bowl where the halftime show would often feature sick children. I am not kidding. The only thing that could compare to it would be the Rescue Shelter Bowl featuring Sarah McLachlan as the halftime entertainment. I swear to you if I ever win the lottery I am going to donate a portion to the ASPCA on the sole condition that they never use a Sarah McLachlan song in a commercial again.

Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl: Illinois vs. UCLA (3:30 PM, ESPN): I know I said this last year but I have to say it again. Hey Kraft! You want to fight hunger? How about you, I don’t know, donate food? Or instead of celebrating record profit margins on Macaroni and Cheese why not lower the price by a nickel? Though I will support a Kraft Fight Hunger Games where the food options in the cornucopia are solely Kraft products. I am so psyched to see that movie as any book that as you read it makes you wonder just how many people you could kill if forced to fight to the death is precisely what I feel we need to use to inspire the next generation. How else are they supposed to prosper if we do not raise them to anticipate an apocalyptic hellscape where you may be called upon to murder the person you just met three days ago as a means of entertaining others?

Anyway, Illinois football… Sigh. At one point this year we were 6 – 0 and I could legitimately make a case for us to play in the Big 10 championship game or at least be 9 – 3 and playing in a nice bowl game in January. Instead we lose six straight in more and more humiliating fashion and end up firing Ron Zook who gets added to the list of coaches who couldn’t figure out how to make the Illini even a consistent squad despite having the best talent that we have had in ages. I’m not even sure where they will go for a coach now. I would like for once in my life to have the Illini be consistently decent. I’m not even talking good, just decent. UCLA actually is in a bowl game despite having a losing record which makes this possibly the most depressing matchup ever. Well, at least it is a rematch of that legendary 1984 Rose Bowl where, yeah, Illinois got slaughtered but at least the Chief got to dance at halftime. Oh wait, we don’t even have the Chief anymore. Yeah, I’m still bitter.

Chick-fil-A Bowl: Virginia vs. Auburn: (7:30 PM, ESPN): I still think they should call this the Peach Bowl just because Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl is such a confusing combination that it makes one wonder if affordable chicken sandwiches and produce could make a pleasurable combination. I’ll have to admit that pretty much anything would go well with Chick-fil-A. The only benefit of having had to spend numerous hours at the Philadelphia airport is the fact that the Concourse B/C food court has a Chick-fil-A. Though those bastards closed on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend because for some reason God doesn’t want me to have waffle fries on a Sunday. It’s enough to question your faith.

This is the game that you have on as you face that dilemma of whether or not you actually want to go out on New Year’s Eve. Now that I am married this is a slightly easier decision as I actually have someone to be with at midnight but back in the KC days this was always the point of no return. There you are, watching an over-achieving ACC team taking on an under-achieving SEC team while cows take over the screen every five minutes and you have to decide whether to go out, face a bunch of idiot drunks to only be alone at midnight or stay at home, conclude that Cam Newton and Bo Jackson are the only two people who could make you care about Auburn football and spend the rest of the evening drinking whiskey straight from the bottle in a darkened apartment while listening to Morrissey cds. Not that I have any experience in that matter. Though I recommend Viva Hate if you are in the mood to do so.

Next time, all of the January games. Title games, Arkansas State and the best metal band in history. Stay tuned.

Bowl Preview Part One

It is that time of year again. Time to continue my annual tradition of previewing all 35 college bowl games. This will take a few days so sit back, relax, and enjoy the wonder that is modern college football.

(In chronological order, all times Eastern, all jokes intentional)

December 17th:
Gildan New Mexico Bowl: Temple vs. Wyoming (2 PM, ESPN): Fennis Dembo will be coaching Wyoming I assume. This is because Fennis Dembo is the only person I know who has ever been associated with the University of Wyoming. In fact, for males of a certain age Fennis Dembo may be all we know about the state of Wyoming. Who the hell is Fennis Dembo you may ask? Fennis Dembo was a basketball player who was put on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the late 80’s in a college basketball preview issue where SI ranked Wyoming 3rd and called Dembo the best player in the nation. The team didn’t even make the tournament and Dembo went on to be the last guy off the bench on one of the Pistons championship teams. Still, fame is fame and everyone has always enjoyed saying the name Fennis Dembo over and over again. Temple has a football team, which is always shocking to me, and I expect that most of the residents of Philadelphia are referring to this game as the God Damn New Mexico Bowl. Not out of spite as to where the team ended up; it’s just that Philadelphians typically use God Damn as an adjective for every noun to the fact that children are taught in grade school that “God Damn Dick and God Damn Jane ran up the God Damn hill.”

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl: Ohio vs. Utah State (5:30 PM, ESPN): This should not be confused with the Infamous Idaho Potato, who murdered eight in a cross-country crime spree back in 1977 in what is often referred to as the “Summer of Spud.” This is traditionally my favorite bowl game of the year as two teams, after an incredible amount of effort and toil, are forced to travel to Boise, Idaho to play on blue turf for no apparent reason. It is quite possibly the only bowl game where you feel sorry for the players. Also, this game would be much more interesting if you move the State from one to the other. This game reads like a straight to DVD knockoff of a better bowl game.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: San Diego State vs. Louisiana – Lafayette (9 PM, ESPN): It is now the Mercedes-Benz Superdome, which just sounds all sorts of wrong. When a stadium hasn’t had corporate sponsorship for decades it just seems bizarre to change the name like that. San Diego State will soon be joining the Big East in that San Diego is east of….the Pacific Ocean I guess. Conference realignment is going to really screw up kids sense of geography. As always, take Louisiana – Lafayette in this game as they have home field advantage as San Diego is probably one of the few cities that people wouldn’t leave for a weekend in New Orleans. I assume that R+L Carries is either a) a moving company or b) an air condition company with a slight possibility that the R refers to one and the L refers to the other.

December 20th
Beef ‘O’ Brady’s St. Petersburg Bowl: Florida International vs. Marshall (8 PM, ESPN): This is the Florida version of St. Petersburg and not the Russian version though a December game in Russia would actually be super cool. Or cold, one of the two. Certainly a game in Russia would allow the announcers to say, “Boy, I bet a bowl of Beef ‘O’ Brady’s” would taste good right now. Anyway, we have the fifth best team in Florida playing the other team from West Virginia in a contest to determine who will get to say that they won a bowl game this year. I will go with Florida International because of the legend of Ned (long story). By the way, I’m proud of myself for not writing a single Brady Quinn joke this entire time. Figure he doesn’t need the attention given that he is sitting on the depth chart behind a guy who everyone states cannot throw a football.

December 21st
San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl: TCU vs. Louisiana Tech (8 PM, ESPN): I have never understood the sponsorship behind this bowl game. Beyond the fact that it makes for the longest bowl game name and must drive the announcers crazy (and this is before we get into the whole how do you pronounce poinsettia debate) the only people who could care about the sponsorship are residents of San Diego, which is why you have teams from Texas and Louisiana involved. Maybe this will turn into a whole Occupy Wall Street game where they push people to go to credit unions, kind of like the Anti-Capital One Bowl. I’m not sure if even TCU knows what conference it is currently in but after the Rose Bowl last year I don’t think they even care. I guarantee that at one point the announcers will say “Remember folks that poinsettias are poisonous, just like the TCU defense.”

December 22nd
MAACO Las Vegas Bowl: Arizona State vs. Boise State (8 PM, ESPN): Some people would complain that due to a loss to TCU that Boise State is kept from playing in a BCS bowl and how unfair that makes the BCS system. I do not believe you will hear that from Boise State though as a trip to Las Vegas has to be more exciting than spending more time in Idaho. Though you have to wonder how the team adjusts to playing on fields that are actually green. You have to expect that Boise will win this game as a) Arizona State lost to Illinois this year and b) Arizona State represents the PAC-12 conference whose official motto is “Eleven fine academic institutions and Arizona State.” As for me, I’ll be at the blackjack tables for this one.

December 24th
Sheraton Hawaii Bowl: Nevada vs. Southern Mississippi (8 PM, ESPN): The annual Christmas Eve tradition. Some people go to church, some hang stockings by the fireplace while others spend the holidays by watching a game in a place they wish they could visit featuring two teams that they have never cared about in their entire lives. It is like the opposite of the Idaho bowl in that two teams underperform all year just so they can end up lounging on the beach on Christmas Day. So screw these two teams. Hope the game goes into like thirty five overtimes and they end up eating some bad poi and get food poisoning. Serves them right for getting to enjoy the holidays.

December 26th
AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl: Missouri vs. North Carolina (5 PM, ESPN2): Back in the old days you knew what bowls were about. The Orange Bowl was about oranges, the Bluebonnet Bowl was about whatever a Bluebonnet is and the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl was about how the Poulan Weed Eater played a pivotal role in the Revolutionary War. As George Washington wrote in his memoirs “We shall not be able to cross the Delaware unless our shipment of Poulan Weed Eaters arrive and allow us to clear a path to the shoreline. Without the economically priced Poulan Weed Eaters are cause would most certainly be lost.” Now the Independence Bowl is either about a car engine or a type of medication that you should see your doctor about a prescription for. Anyway, as I still keep up on Kansas City news for some reason I know that there is a great uproar about Missouri leaving the Big 12 for the SEC and I have to say that I agree. Missouri is just not an SEC team. When Arkansas joined I could kind of understand it but Missouri just doesn’t make sense. It does screw over Kansas City as well as they will lose all the Big 12 championship games and there is no way in the world that the SEC would ever send a tournament their way. So go Carolina I guess.

December 27th
Little Caesars Bowl: Western Michigan vs. Purdue (4:30 PM, ESPN): I have to at least give them credit for not calling this the Pizza Bowl as a Little Caesars Pizza Bowl sounds like one of the most sickening food items that could ever be imagined by the minds at KFC, who I believe are now encouraged to think up the most mind boggling items for their menu. Heck, I always felt that Little Caesars was always a little underrated in the mass produced pizza department so kudos for them for some solid marketing. Sadly, this bowl game might be the least interesting one of the year as it features a game that you would expect to see in the middle of September. In all honesty these teams may have already played this year and no one would notice. Tune in to see the world’s largest bass drum that plays a major role in Purdue’s band. Or spend the game drinking boilermakers whenever Purdue touches the ball and listening to MC5 songs whenever Western Michigan does. It will certainly make the game go faster.

Belk Bowl: Louisville vs. North Carolina State (8 PM, ESPN): Ok, new rule. Bowl games are no longer allowed to be named after sound effects from the old Batman television show. I swear that once Robin hit one of Penguin’s henchmen and “Belk” came up on screen. (By the way, I really want a story surrounding the temp agency that hires out henchmen to super-villains. Obviously someone has filled that market niche as I find it difficult to think that the Joker has his own HR department.) For those wondering Wikipedia informed me that Belk is the name of a department store as opposed to the electrical supply company that I originally imagined it to be. This will be a perfectly acceptable football game featuring two teams that you haven’t watched all year but who you know have football teams. That is the essence of bowl season, the time of year where you are so frazzled from having to spend time with family that watching a North Carolina State football game seems like a welcome respite from real life. Also, feel free to use Belk as your new all-purpose profanity. “What a Belky thing to say”, “She is such a Belk”, “What the Belk?” Works great.

Tomorrow I will go through the New Year’s Eve games and will feature rants on Notre Dame, Illinois, Jersey Shore and reasonably priced chicken sandwiches.

Best of 120 Minutes: I still have to write up something about R.E.M.’s official retirement but this will have to do for now.

Paying for noise

As always, I swear I am not making any of this up.

Kim has introduced me to the wonders of using a sound machine to fall asleep. It is something that took a little while to get used to as the first few nights resulted in my lying awake in bed trying to find the pattern in white noise. I mean, it couldn’t all be random static, could it? Anyway, after a while it just became a part of my routine to use a sound machine.

This led to several years of buying sound machines and then having them come to rather unfortunate ends. One blew up when I plugged it into an outlet in Iceland where, despite the fact that the converter I purchased specifically stated that it could be used worldwide, apparently has an electric grid developed by magical elves. Another was destroyed on a cruise shi[ when I mistakenly set the ourlet to European voltage instead of American. Yes, that does cause Kim to question just how I earned a degree in electrical engineering. On other occasions I have been forced to purchase a sound machine for an infant’s room as it was the only one that I could find. In that case I recommend not using the heartbeat or womb noises because they are incredibly freaky and will give you nightmares. It might explain why we are all so screwed up.

In any case I always end up buying sound machines, which typically meant a trip to Brookstone to be the only person who isn’t there just to sit in the massaging chair. Then a few weeks ago Kim was out of town and had forgotten her sound machine. I thought, “Hey, we have free mobile to mobile minutes, why don’t I just put my phone next to my sound machine and she can put her phone on speaker all night.” That didn’t work well and she spent the night sans white noise. In the middle of the night I wake up and go, “Hey, I bêt there is an iPhone app for a sound machine. She should download that.” I then immediately had three thoughts come to mind.

1) It would have been really useful if I had thought of that four hours ago so I could have helped out my wife.
2) It would have been really useful if I had thought of that a year or two ago so I wouldn’t have spent several hundred dollars on machines that have since broken.
3) It would have been even better if I had written the code for this app a few years ago when I, you know, happened to be making a living by promoting apps on cell phones.
I am still not sure which one of these three pissed me off the most, though I am most upset about the first one. But I couldn’t believe that I had missed such a simple market opportunity. All a sound machine is a speaker with a recorded sound loop on it. It probably takes five seconds to write the code for the app and someone did it and made a ton of money and I could have done it if I recognized the opportunity. It’s really upsetting to realize that you were dumb as a rock in your past (even though I realize that I am done in the present every day.)

The interesting thing about this, and why I am telling the story, is that when people talk about taking advantage of opportunities the challenge is less having the courage to take advantage but being aware that the opportunities exist. I’ve been on the cutting edge of two of the major technical revolutions in my lifetime: I was one of the first people on the web using Mosaic at Illinois and then I worked in mobile data just as cell phones were taking off. In both instances I recognized what was happening but didn’t really figure out how to take advantage of it. The web was just a neat toy and even I didn’t quite grasp the ubiquitousness of cell phones (though I think my argument that no one will ever watch TV on a phone has taken hold.) Sometimes you need the ability to take a step back and see the bigger picture and realize where the gaps are.

By the way, anyone need a sound machine suitable for an infant? It has two settings: soothing lullabye or gurgling hellbeast.

Forgotten MTV Personalities: Volume One

Inspired by the book “I Want my MTV” I am starting a new recurring feature in which we examine some of the legendary characters of the Golden Era of MTV…

VJ’s always came in different shapes and styles. There were always the cute girl next door types or the comedian or the guy who is best known for his hair (few people know that widescreen TVs were invented solely to fully capture the glory of Adam Curry’s mane.) But only one WV existed solely to be the grunge DJ and that is our old friend, Steve Isaacs.

Featuring a look that screamed either “Seattle” or “That guy who sits in the fourth row of your English 103 class” Steve Isaacs ushered MTV into an era of Pearl Jam and Nirvana and left once we reached the era of Bush and Silverchair and completely disavowed all knowledge of the network by the time of Limp Bizkit. He was an example of 120 Minutes becoming mainstream as we no longer require a British accent to denote what was cool or not. Even if that was by having a kind of goofy, skinny guy with long hair act as the representative for an entire generation.

I have to be completely honest here, before reading I Want My MTV I could not for the life of me remember this guy and certainly not his name. But I guarantee that once people my age look at his picture we all immediately remember him. That was one of the wonders of MTV where even the minor celebrities became an integral part of our lives because they were always there. But more accurately, Steve Isaacs was probably the first VJ that I can remember who I legitimately thought that I could know in real life.

Because that really was the way a group of us were in the early 90’s. Ok, maybe I did not have the long hair and I wore less flannel but the idea of being young and really into this new type of music and having an almost childlike enthusiasm about it. We hung out at record stores at 11:55 on Monday nights just so we could get the new releases at midnight because we just had to have that new Breeders CD immediately. We made mixtapes and spent our free time rummaging through used CD racks trying to find some hidden gem. We thought we were unique but really we were just enjoying the thrill of youth and experiencing life on our own terms.

So cheers to you, Steve Isaacs. Once Pearl Jam no longer required MTV neither did you or any other member of Generation X. And who could sit through a Bush video anyway.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I’ve been listening to a lot of Jason Isbell recently. He is a former member of the Drive-By Truckers and might be one of the best songwriters around today. Give him a listen.

Cursive! Foiled again

It was in the news last week that Indiana lawmakers were looking to pass legislation to require that the Indiana Department of Education require the teaching of cursive in schools. This raises numerous questions like “Are these the same legislators that decided that daylight savings time did not exist until three years ago?” or “Didn’t they once almost pass a bill that stated that the value of Pi was three?” or “Wow, I didn’t even think Indiana had a department of education?” But mainly it makes you wonder about writing in cursive and what skills from my youth are no longer necessary.

(By the way, I am not kidding about the whole Pi being equal to three thing. There literally was a bill that nearly passed the Indiana legislature which would have made that true. One of my favorite pieces of math trivia ever. Also, I must be the only person who not only has a favorite piece of math trivia but also has numerous lesser quality pieces of math trivia in his repertoire. Sigh.)

I don’t know about anyone else but I was taught how to write in cursive in third grade on that weird three line paper with the light line to show how high to make the smaller letters. I will say that I was taught cursive but I don’t think I can say that I ever mastered it. My handwriting was always atrocious. I knew what all the letters looked like (including the fact that a capital Q looked way to much like a 2 than it should) but I could never write them in any manner that anyone else could read. I’m pretty sure teachers never read anything that I wrote, they just assumed that I was smart and graded appropriately. Throughout grade school I was forced to write in cursive and once I was given some more flexibility in high school I started printing everything. My handwriting still sucks but it is at least vaguely legible now. The only thing I write in cursive is my signature.

In fact, I am probably old fashioned in the way that I still write down anything. At least at work I have my daily notes for the day written in a notebook and I will always write my to do lists on paper. Most people would just use their laptops to keep notes and text or email messages. I know that I am the last person to have actually written a letter and I bet most students would rather take notes electronically than in a battered notebook. Cursive seems like a completely foreign skill.

I’m not sure where I fall in the debate, though. You certainly do not need cursive in order to survive in modern society. I honestly can’t remember the last time that I have needed to read cursive in real life. From a practical matter it is a completely useless skill that does not provide you with any measurable advantage. But there is a part of me that still remembers learning cursive as being a major portion of growing up for one reason…

As a kid I would go to the library and check out collections of Peanuts cartoons. I would read them and always be upset when I got to a series of strips with Charlie Brown writing to his pencil pal. Since he wrote in cursive I could never understand the strips. Learning cursive in third grade allowed me to get the jokes. In some way that made me feel like I was growing up. I think kids need to have those little victories. Makes life a little easier to handle.

A return of sorts...

On the plane tonight I finished Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending.” In and of itself that probably is not reason enough to restart the blog. If what I read is the inspiration for posting again then my devouring “I Want my MTV”, the oral history of the first decade of MTV, would be the top choice. But the book has put some thoughts in my mind that tie into what I’ve been thinking about recently and why I wanted to start writing again.

The novel, which is a very good read, focuses upon perception and memory and how we interpret our own past. We each consider ourselves to be the hero of our own story and we have created a mythology of our own legend. These memories define who we are but as we get older the question as to whether those memories are real or not become more and more in doubt. As Barnes writes, “History can be viewed as the lies of the winners or the self-delusions of the defeated.”

This made me think about how we document our lives, whether through pictures or videos or words. One of the reasons that I write is that I find it therapeutic to keep a record of my thoughts. Not that I feel that there is any historic value to them. In fact, for years I kept all of my writings to myself. It is not really what I write that is important as the pure act of writing and getting my thoughts out. For some reason I best express myself by looking at a screen and letting words flow from my fingers. I am more thoughtful and eloquent in this form and when I stop writing it effects who I am as a person. And I’ve spent too long of a time not writing and it is really becoming noticeable.

Battling the Current really is a record of who I am, or more accurately who I was. I wrote constantly from November 2004 until March 2011, which would just happen to correspond to when I got married. Now there are a lot of reasons as to why I stopped writing (mainly getting married, moving and switching jobs in the same week made my life so stressful that I can’t really describe it) but one major point is that the story behind the blog had come to an end. I started the blog to document my journey of being on my own, going out and trying to find the woman of my dreams. Once that story was completed I had no idea what the new story would be, which is a fancy way of saying that I was really wondering where my life was headed next.

I think I have it now. I still have a lot of growing to do and striving to become the man that I want to be. For years that was about creating that image as I sat at the end of a bar and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Now it is about more being than image and to stop paying lip service. The stories of our own histories that we tell ourselves are not always true. Sometimes you have to face some harsh lights. But that is how we grow. And that journey is what the next phase of my writing is going to be about.

So yes, I am back to writing every day. And yes, it will be the usual mix of pop culture and discussions of a bizarre world and the occasional derogatory reference to the state of Kansas. Some things never change. But the story has changed directions.

Hitting the gym

Sorry for the break between posts but as you obviously know it was The Gathering of the Juggalos this weekend so I had to make my way to Cave-In-Rock to hang out with my fellow ninjas. Dude, they had a ferris wheel there this year…

(I’m scared for the people who will actually get the reference. For a while there whenever anyone asked me about where we were going on our honeymoon I would answer “Gathering of the Juggalos, best honeymoon ever.” It would result in either a) blank stares or b) people backing away very slowly. The things I do to enjoy myself….

By the way, honeymoon was in Alaska.)

So, since I took my break from posting I have gotten on a huge workout kick. (Kim has as well and she is just doing amazing.) As I’ve written about before I’ve been trying to get my weight under control and I am proud to say that I am now at 185 pounds, basically 30 pounds lighter than I was at my heaviest last year. This is the lightest I have been for at least five years and maybe closer to ten. It is nice to have clothes that no longer fit because they are too big.

I am working with a trainer. Well, more like trainers. I’m on to my third different trainer in Chicago as the first two both left the gym under mysterious circumstances. I am not making this up. I’d go to the gym for my usual appointment only to be told that my trainer no longer works there. Given that I’ve only been using the gym for less than four months this is a pretty big degree of turnover. It sucks in that I have to get used to a new trainer and start over again but I have learned a few things in the process.

Basically I am working on building muscle and improving my flexibility and balance. I am pretty bad at all three at the present moment. I have no flexibility in my legs at all and I am embarrassed to say that simply standing on one leg without tipping over can be a challenge at times. I’ve never really carried much muscle and because of my injury history I’ve been more than a little frightened about lifting weights. I have been surprised at how well the weight lifting is going though. My shoulder and hip aren’t bothering me too badly and I’ve been making progress.

Cardio is still where I am best. Not that I am particularly fast on a treadmill or the elliptical. I can just go for a long time. Not sure if this is because of my training or the fact that I have a high tolerance for boredom. It takes a certain type of person to go for an hour on a treadmill and being an athlete is not really one of the requirements.

What has been so good about this is that it hasn’t really been about losing weight. I am happy that I am and especially that I am no longer, medically speaking, overweight but I am really focused on how I feel and what I can now do. I’ve been making huge progress and really look forward to my workouts (even my 7 AM sessions with my trainer.) It is a great stress release and I just feel so much better. It is pretty amazing that I am going to be turning 38 and might possibly be in the best shape of my life. Not a bad time to get in shape.

MTV: The First 30 Years (Part Two)

The second half of the top ten icons / shows / events in the 30 year history of MTV. Well, actually just the next three so there is a third half coming tomorrow.

Tabitha Soren: Since MTV is one of those constants in the life of every teenager / twentysomething over the past thirty years the network has an interesting commonality: every member of Gen X and Y had a young crush on one of the personalities. If I was a little older it would be Martha Quinn but know, Tabitha Soren is the one that stole my heart. From the moment she first appeared (as one of the girls in the party in the Beastie Boys video “You’ve got to fight for your right”) to her place at the side of Kurt Loder (making him even more of a creepy old man) she was smart, cool, hip and everything that college me wanted in a girlfriend. Yes, I fell for a news reporter who ended up marrying the guy who wrote “The Blind Side”. I was a rather troubled youth in retrospect.

MTV Animation (Liquid Television / Aeon Flux / Beavis and Butthead / Daria / The Head / The Maxx and maybe Clone High): I hate the fact that MTV now has nothing to do with music. Here are the shows that I can name that are on MTV right now: Real World, Real World / Road Rules Challenge, Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant. None of those shows screams Music Television to me. Yet some of my favorite MTV shows of all time had absolutely nothing to do music. They were just really good cartoons.

It all started with Liquid Television, which was a rather bizarre show when you think about it. Airing on Sunday night it was just 30 minutes of short animated sketches some of which were pretty avant garde. They didn’t relate to music or much of anything. They existed just to be cool. The show gave us Aeon Flux, an anime type show with no dialogue and the heroine seeming to die at the end of every single statement with no explanation of what the hell was going on. It was just people being shot over and over again. Needless to say it was super cool.

It also gave us Beavis and Butthead, a show I should not even need to discuss. Even better, Beavis and Butthead gave us Daria, which was probably the smartest show on television in the late 90’s. Add in the one offs of The Head (a guilty pleasure of mine) and The Maxx (closest thing I’ve ever seen to a graphic novel on screen) and you have something that it would take Cartoon Network a decade to figure out how to do it with Adult Swim. It may have set the network on the wrong path in terms of getting away from music but it hit the mark in terms of quality entertainment.

(Oh, and bonus points for showing old Speed Racer episodes at one point in the early 90’s.)

120 Minutes / Alternative Nation: Over the past few years I’ve continually written about Gen X and alternative music, whatever that means. In reality what I am mainly focusing on is that the music that I wanted to hear in high school and what I could actually find on MTV were two completely different things. If you watched the wonderful show Dial MTV (which was Total Request Live with Adam Curry playing Carson Daly and wasn’t live) all you would see is Bon Jovi and Def Leppard and Poison and Motley Crue and maybe even New Kids on the Block. I know that people have all of this nostalgic love for these bands and post on Facebook how thrilled they are to see them in concert but let’s face it: they sucked then and they suck now. That music just meant nothing to me.

But for two hours on Sunday night MTV played music that did mean something to me. Or at least I thought it should mean something to me as British guys with bad hair who were also wearing makeup for some unknown reason must have something important to say. As someone who wasn’t the popular kid in school and was never going to be I turned to music that was unique, was different, was something else. That is what drew a crowd to 120 Minutes and its genre of music.

Then Nirvana broke and the entire scene became popular and suddenly Kennedy was hosting Alternative Nation and we were forced to listen to Bush videos and I had to become a fan of old timey country music to keep my uniqueness. Sigh. Here is an old R.E.M. video, which is probably the high point of the idea of 120 Minutes and also the epitome of a band where you were pissed that the guys who beat you up in the hallways liked the same band that you did.