THE PUSHING PAPER TOP 100 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: Introduction
The list is almost finished. My main task has been to re-listen to albums I haven’t heard in a while and figure out how much I like them, or if I like them as much as I once did. Also, since the decade isn’t actually over yet, I’m still getting a feel for some new releases, most notably the new Baroness, Raekwon, Krallice, and Flaming Lips albums. In the meantime, here’s an introduction piece that spells out the list’s thorny issues, themes, structure, and easiest omissions.
Thorny Issues
The biggest issue I’ve struggled with while finalizing the list is what to do about compilations. Some of my favorite albums from this decade were either DJ mixes or artists’ collections of previously released material. The conclusion I arrived at was this: DJ mixes are eligible, single artist compilations are not.
The best DJ mixes — and only the absolute finest of DJ mixes could ever be considered for my list, naturally — eventually become their own entities. The sequencing of the songs, and the very selections of the songs, reflect the curator’s aesthetic at least as much as the original artists’. With that being said, any DJ mix had to be commercially released in some form to be considered for inclusion.
Including individual artist compilations, however, struck me as unfair. This means my list will not be containing The Upper Cuts by Alan Braxe, Oh You’re So Silent Jens by Jens Lekman, Inches by Les Savy Fav, or Dopesmoker by Sleep.
Themes
When my full list is published, it’s going to reek of tokenism, so be warned. This is usually a problem that lists culled from sort of consensus face, but not so often individual lists. I’m wary of seeming like my list seeming manufactured or manipulated; nothing’s worse than people who pretend to like certain types of music more than they actually do, or even worse, music that they don’t like. Hopefully if I lay out my criteria, it will seem more sincere.
My list truly is an albums list, so artists I generally like don’t score any points just for existing. (This statement will seem like a bald-faced lie when you see how a certain Smashing Pumpkins album fared.) Also, I place a high priority on how original an album or an artist sounds to me, so there is a fairly sizable contingent of selections that placed well just because when I listen to them I think, “Wow, I don’t know of anything that sounds quite like this.” (Obviously I still have to like said albums.)
Much of what is being written in retrospective decade music writings recently has revolved around “the death of the album.” This is understandable, since artists like Radiohead and Billy Corgan have flirted with giving up on albums completely. Supposedly youngsters now barely have any patience for albums, and only want individual songs. To me, this is a tragedy. No matter how music evolves commercially, I will always love the album — it will always be the primary medium through which I listen to music, and I will always value artists who treasure the album as much as I do more than those who don’t. Above all else, my list aims to be a celebration of the album.
Structure
The list is going to be released in eight separate posts, each one consisting of a different tier. I felt this was a more honest and accurate way of ranking my 100 favorite albums from the past ten years. While each album will have an individual number ranking, what tier each album falls in is what’s most important. All tiers will be explained in their respective posts. Also, I’m not going to force myself to write an entry about every album. If I don’t have anything interesting to say beyond “I like this album,” then I’m not going to say anything.
Easiest Omissions
I think it’s stupid when people or entities include crap alongside lists like “Hardest Omissions” or “Honorable Mention.” It devalues a list’s definitiveness to include some sort of charity subsection. If you define a list as consisting of the 100 best albums, then I don’t want to know what finished 101st. In other words, if you’re going to be indecisive, then why make a list?
So I’m not going to effectively expand my list by letting you know what just barely missed an obviously artificial cut line. I think there’s more value in listing what albums I had no problem excluding, because if you’re going to be a full on music geek, the stuff you hate is just as important as the stuff you love. So in that spirit, here are the six easiest omissions from THE PUSHING PAPER TOP 100 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE.
6. Arcade Fire — Funeral
Some people hate this album for how much some other people love it. I am most definitely not one of those people, because thinking that way, while it might have been something I used to do to a degree, is really stupid. In fact, when my list was in it’s earliest stages, Funeral was on the candidates list. But I hadn’t listened to it in a couple of years, so I needed to give it a fresh spin. It turns out this was a good move. I don’t know if my tastes have changed enough that Funeral no longer appeals to me that much, or if, in Funeral’s early days, I was so taken by my favorite tracks (I still think “Rebellion” is thebomb.com) that I glossed over the ones I was bored by. I’m almost certain it’s the latter case, because I can definitely see why Funeral is so beloved. It’s just not entirely for me.
5. Radiohead — Amnesiac
I like Radiohead as much as the next guy (so long as the next guy isn’t one of those people who thinks Radiohead is THE GREATEST BAND OF ALL TIME — I don’t like Radiohead as much as him), but I fail to see how anyone can think Amnesiac isn’t beneath them. A few great songs does not a great album make.
4. Pearl Jam’s self-titled return to rawk
Arguably (and I don’t think anyone is arguing about this, but still), no band has meant as much to my life in totality as Pearl Jam. As they say, you never forget your first true love. By the time I got to college, I was following Pearl Jam primarily out of a sense of loyalty. Deep down I knew I was lying to myself about how much I liked Binaural, and I also knew their ability to create exciting music had expired. However, I did find Riot Act to be enjoyable enough that I wasn’t anywhere close to completely writing them off. Then their self-titled album came out amidst joyous mainstream press echoes of “Pearl Jam is back!!!!!!!” (Bill Simmons even wrote an enormous NBA playoffs preview/Pearl Jam career retrospective at the time.) It’s not like I expected anything on the level of Vs., but I did allow myself to get roped in a little bit. I listened to Pearl Jam one time, and hated every second of it. I will never listen to it again, and yes, I’ve completely written Pearl Jam off.
3. Animal Collective
I don’t think there are nearly as many people who actually like Animal Collective as there are people who pretend they do. Like many people in the I Don’t Get Animal Collective Club, I’ve spent the better part of a decade listening to their albums way more than I should have, constantly wondering what I’m missing. I understand why people like Merriweather Post Pavillion and Sung Tongs; I cannot for the life of me see the appeal of Feels. And anyone who says they like Here Comes the Indian, but doesn’t normally listen to any noise at all, is a total liar. I just don’t buy that this band is universally loved.
2. M.I.A.
Of all the popular music artists who have come and gone over the last twenty years, none have befuddled me as much as M.I.A. Unlike Animal Collective, I have no idea why people like her. It honestly feels like I’m living in some sort of Truman Show alternate reality where everyone has agreed to like M.I.A., with the sole aim being to confuse me. In the summer of 2008, I kept hearing “Paper Planes” in bars, initially assuming that I happened to be occupying the same space as some M.I.A.-loving hipster, which seemed wholly feasible. Then I heard it every single time I went out, which really threw me for a loop. THEN, I heard it on B94, the whitest (they would play a version of Usher’s “Love in This Club” without Jeezy’s verse), most brainless pop radio station imaginable. It was then I knew that the whole world had turned upside-down.
1. Zwan — Mary Star of the Sea
In 2000, the almighty Pumpkins broke up, something I grew progressively sadder about for a while as it slowly dawned on me that they really were gone forever. (Of course, now I would give anything for Billy Corgan to stop bastardizing the Pumpkins’ good name. Life sure is mystifying.) But no worries, Billy and Jimmy Chamberlin, the only two members of the Pumpkins who mattered at all, had formed a new band! Called Zwan! I remembering downloading early live tracks and leaks like a maniac, with “Chrysanthemum” in particular standing out. And then, I heard “Honestly.” Hearing “Honestly” was one of my life’s JFK assassination moments; I will always remember sitting at my dorm room computer, receiving the file from my friend Adam, and having my mind completely blown by how shitty it was. The rest of the album sucked almost as much. Mary Star of the Sea is — by a wide margin — my least favorite album of the decade.
The Pushing Paper Book Review: The Book of Basketball
In the summer of 2005, I was at the Philly airport, set to fly to Orlando. Shortly after we got to the runway, the pilot told us that a couple planes ahead of us were headed to an area of the country that was being hit by storms, and that they had to wait for the all clear before they could take off, so we’d be stuck for a little bit. But not to worry, he said, since we were only fourth or fifth in line behind the delayed planes.
After about forty-five minutes, the pilot announced that we had to head back to the terminal because one of the passengers on the flight had “a medical condition”. When we arrived at our gate, a middle-aged woman frantically scampered off the plane, and a man sitting a few rows behind me hissed, “She’s claustrophobic“. By the time we got back to the runway, just about every other plane in the airport had gotten in line. Seven hours after initially boarding the plane, we finally took off.
Why tell this story? Because, aside from the two little children who decided to kill time by crawling all over me, and despite the fact that I developed butt sores from which I still have not recovered, the whole ordeal wasn’t that bad. For that, I have the wonderful book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, by Jeff Chang, to thank. I read that damn book basically for nine hours straight.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop attempts to tell the tale of how hip-hop evolved from its most fundamental roots in Jamaica in the 60s and in the South Bronx in the 70s to become a global cultural force by the time the new millennium hit. Hip-hop’s story is the epitome of the butterfly effect — the book clearly and convincingly lays out how small groups of kids in the South Bronx who had nothing better to do than breakdance improbably led to scores of kids across literally the entire world wearing baggy pants and flat-brimmed hats a quarter century later.
The most crucial aspect to Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, aside from its sweet title, is that it never set out to be an authoritative history of hip-hop. Early on, Chang makes it clear that his book is merely one of the many, many stories of the Hip-Hop Generation. By doing so, he cleverly deflected the inevitable questions about why he chose to leave certain stories out of the book — questions like, Have you ever heard of Biggie? — resulting in a book with a remarkably fluid narrative. In the years-long build-up to the release of The Book of Basketball, I expected Bill Simmons to take a similar approach with the history of the NBA, assuming all along that he was setting out to write his history of the League, not the history of it. Boy, was I wrong.
Simmons has said in recent interviews that, when writing The Book of Basketball, he became overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material he had written, and that he feared he would be unable to tie everything together. Apparently, the solution he arrived at was to anthologize every single notable event and person in NBA history, tying everything together in a humongous list of the ninety-six greatest basketball players of all-time. The result is far from cohesive; The Book of Basketball is no less a book of columns than Now I Can Die In Peace, Simmons’ Red Sox book that actually is a collection of old columns. (To be fair, I think Simmons would say that he intended for things to turn out this way.)
Inconsistency follows. The parts of the book that have a personal bent, such as the passage where he recalls being terrified of Kermit Washington the season after Washington nearly killed Rudy Tomjanovich in a brawl gone horribly wrong, live up to the lofty standard of Simmons’ best ESPN columns, but the parts where he (somewhat admirably) attempts to exalt the historical achievements of forgotten stars like Paul Arizin and Bill Sharman are a tiresome slog. By the time I reached the chapter where Simmons constructs an all-time NBA team in order to defeat an imaginary group of aliens in a basketball game to save the universe, I was actively looking forward to the book’s end, something I’ve never said about one of his columns (expect for that interminable review of the Bad News Bears movies, the only Sports Guy column for ESPN I’ve never finished).
It’s as if Simmons imagined his primary audience to be basketball lifers like Peter Vescey or Marv Albert, not devoted mailbag readers whose flickering interest in the NBA didn’t keep them from pre-ordering The Book of Basketball on Amazon in an act of blind devotion to one of their favorite writers. It seems as though Simmons greatest fear in writing this book was that he might someday run into David Halberstam’s ghost and be scolded for writing an entire book about the history of the NBA without once mentioning Bailey Howell.
The shame of all this is that Simmons has been going around declaring that The Book of Basketball is the best book he’ll ever write. I can only hope this isn’t true. Every time I read something like the entry about Michael Jordan, or when I went back and reread the intro, where he explained how Dave Cowens meant more to Celtics fans than Bill Russell possibly could have (and why that wasn’t necessarily a good thing), I felt teased by the book’s unrealized potential. Whomever the intended audience for The Book of Basketball was, it clearly wasn’t me.
Top Three Reasons Why Decade Ending Albums Lists Are Stupid
The first decade of the 21st Century is now in its final two months. You know what that means: List upon list upon list upon list. Best Albums of the Decade. Worst Singles of the Decade. Longest Movies of the Decade (I’m torn between Zodiac and There Will Be Blood).
When the last decade ended, I couldn’t possibly have consumed Nineties albums lists more eagerly. From MC Hammer to The Fragile, the Nineties was the decade where my young self fell hopelessly in love with music, and I wanted to find out if the critical consensus revered the same albums I did. Ten years later, my excitement about decade ending albums lists, as well as, to a lesser degree, year ending albums lists, has waned considerably. At some point in the last five years, I reached the point where I’d listened to enough music that my tastes finally became fully my own. What I mean by this is that, at the beginning of this decade, if I saw an album ranking high on yearly lists that I disliked, I would wonder what I was missing, and how I needed to expand my tastes accordingly. When that happens now, I just think the critics are stupid. (In other words, it took me fifteen years of obsessively listening to music to arrive at the same level of confidence in my personal tastes as some idiot who becomes indignant over critical dismissal of KISS.) I no longer need critics to tell me how to think; it’s a wonderful place to be.
So without further ado, here are my Top Three Reasons Why Decade Ending Album Lists Are Stupid!
3. It Punishes Artists Who Don’t Have a Definitive “Best” Album In a Given Decade
This thought occurred to me when I realized that Deerhoof has exactly one album in Pitchfork’s Top 200 Albums of the 2000s lists, and it was number 199. How the hell did this happen, you ask? Here’s how: Deerhoof made the mistake of releasing seven albums this decade, and they were all good. So now, some well-meaning, baby-faced hipster-in-training is going to try to catch up on a decade’s worth of music that they were too young to fully digest at the time by examining the Pitchfork list, and determine that Deerhoof’s entire discography can be skipped over. Well, that sucks. What almost certainly happened is that everyone who voted listed a different Deerhoof album as their favorite, and the lack of consensus resulted in a really good band barely garnering any mention at all. This is not Deerhoof’s fault, it’s the fault of the very concept of the decade ending albums list.
2. Endpoint Sensitivity
Obviously, decade lists have to be determined at the end of said decade. This makes no sense. There’s a reason why films that studios hope will win Best Picture at the Oscars all come out in the fall. No one remembers movies that come out in January, and similarly, no one remembers albums that come out in 2000.
This problem doesn’t affect albums like Kid A, whose perceived importance — almost because they came out at the beginning of their decade — tends to be wildly exaggerated by writers who love to love to cram unrelated events together with the aim of forming a semi-coherent narrative. But it does affect the albums that are merely liked, as opposed to loved.
Thinking about the albums that I dug in, say, 2001, Stephen Malkmus’s solo debut fits this mold. Discovering Pavement in high school was somewhat revelatory for me, and that love transferred over to Malkmus’s first album, which I listened to a lot when it came out. While I don’t necessarily like it any less now, it’s been at least five years since I listened to it the whole way through. How is that supposed to be reflected on a decade albums list? Do I willingly ignore it because I never listen to it now, or do I value it highly because at one point during the decade in question I knew all the words to “Jenny and the Ess-Dog”? Personal tastes change with time, as do individual albums’ resonance, so any decade list should come with a disclaimer reminding the reader of just how prone it will inevitably be to revisionism.
1. The Genre Problem
Albums lists that attempt to be comprehensive across all genres are inherently stupid. If you’re a white guy from the suburbs who’s looked at hundreds of albums lists like me — women want us, men want to be us — then you’ve seen countless lists full of rock albums with something like Enter the Wu-Tang or Ready to Die tossed in almost at random. Obviously, this is moronic, and not because esteemed albums like those ones are allowed to occupy the same sacred ground as white critical darlings like Yo La Tengo, but because it makes no sense whatsoever to cross-pollinate genres that have nothing to do with each other. Genre-specific lists are 100 times more useful than unwieldly messes like the Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums of All Time. There has never been, and never will be, an instance where someone is standing in a record store debating whether they should buy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back or the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, so what in God’s name is the point of ranking them next to each other on the same list?
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Having said all this, in the coming weeks and months, you can droolingly anticipate the official PUSHING PAPER TOP 100 ALBUMS OF THE DECADE list. I’ve spent no small amount of time recently trying to recall which albums from the past ten years I liked best, as well as re-listening to ones I knew I liked, but couldn’t remember how much. Why am I doing this? Because I have to, that’s why. Get ready, decade, Pushing Paper is about to send you out in style.
The Police State of Champions
If Pittsburgh’s hosting of the G20 has taught me anything, it’s a lesson I learned long ago but willingly forgot in the run-up to (as the Los Angeles Times so cleverly put it) Pittsburgh’s 15 minutes of fame: The higher you get your hopes up for something, the more you’re bound to be disappointed.
I couldn’t help but get excited for the G20 meetings this week, which was set to be the glorious climax to what has seemed like the Year of Pittsburgh. After all, 2009 is all but guaranteed to be the last year downtown Pittsburgh hosts a Super Bowl parade, a Stanley Cup parade, and a major global political conference, all in an eight-month span. Well, the Steelers and Penguins parades were awesome, but so far, on Thursday evening, the G20 has been a colossal letdown.
I’m not talking about mass protests or major pieces of global economic legislation. That there would be protests was a given, but the odds were and are overwhelmingly against Pittsburgh suddenly turning into Seattle circa 1999. Of course the protest groups’ leaders have been making big noise about their plans for this week. To do otherwise would be akin to Mike Tomlin saying that he expected the Steelers to lose to the Bengals this weekend. And it says everything about the usefulness of these meetings from a political standpoint that typical anticipatory headlines this week have read something like “No One Expects G20 to Accomplish Anything at Pittsburgh Summit Except Maybe to Bang On About Bankers’ Pay.”
No, my excitement this week revolved solely around Pittsburgh’s role in this whole thing. My view going into the G20 was that, unless someone got assassinated or something, everything would be worth it, since just about every newspaper on the planet this week featured lovely puff pieces about how Pittsburgh has transformed itself from “Hell with the lid off” (which, when originally said, was meant as a compliment) into Paradise with cripplingly underfunded pension obligations. It’s not like I expected Pittsburgh to suddenly become a global tourist destination or anything, but I did harbor hopes that it would prove charming enough to finally put an end to the widespread belief, held by morons who’ve never been here, that nothing about this town has changed since 1950. (If you have spent some time here and dislike it, then I’ve got no problem with you; Pittsburgh definitely isn’t for everyone.)
Maybe that will still happen, but it certainly isn’t helping that, by virtue of the insanely overwhelming police force, downtown today was turned into the world’s biggest Former Second String High School Offensive Linemen Reunion. I should have known something was off when things seemed eerily quiet Monday morning — three days before the meetings kicked off, thousands of workers already had opted to stay home. Still, having been told for months and months that the G20 promises to be the biggest effing deal ever, I was pretty stunned this morning when I realized that the policeman to general citizen ratio was approximately 100:1.
I covered a lot of ground on my lunch break today, and everywhere I went I saw three things: dozens of cops sitting around with nothing to do, boarded up storefronts, and a few people like me walking around thinking, Where the hell is everybody? While I realize that just about anything beats mass rioting, there must have been a better alternative than a city that is terrified so thoroughly of the prospect of violent outbreaks that it’s turned into a deserted police state. For weeks now, I’ve heard people say over and over that they’ll be getting as far away from downtown as possible once the G20 starts. Well, they did, and the terrified masses apparently included local business owners as well, as the parts of downtown that aren’t surrounded by eight-foot-high metal fences have been covered in plywood (including business districts located miles from the convention center).
As I write this from my condo in Friendship, helicopters are flying around outside and the Drudge Report has a screaming red headline along with a picture of riot police detaining a G20 protester. Pittsburgh and the rest of the world have been waiting desperately for these protesters to make some sort of scene so we all can freak out about it, and as of late this afternoon, we finally got our wish, even though the protesters so far have caused significantly less damage to our city than Steelers fans did after Super Bowl XLIII.
I realize I’m probably over-reacting to this utter failure to plan appropriately for the G20 on the part of our civic and national leaders. Starting Saturday, the world will almost certainly go back to ignoring Pittsburgh just as it did during the previous several decades, as Chris Potter so shrewdly pointed out in his column in this week’s City Paper. [For my money that column is the best thing that's been written about Pittsburgh all week, and I've read a lot about Pittsburgh this week.] If anything, the desertion of downtown and the intimidation of Pittsburgh’s residents has been so over-the-top that any visitor with a brain would have to know that this city is infinitely more entertaining than the incarnation currently in place.
As for the other disappointing aspect of Pittsburgh today — the dreary weather — well, what you see is what you get.
2009 NHL Eastern Conference Preview: Live from Pens Mansion West
On February 14, after the Pittsburgh Penguins surrendered five third period goals to the exceedingly mediocre Toronto Maple Leafs in a demoralizing 6-2 loss when the Penguins were near-desperate for every possible point, few people would have predicted that in three short months they would open the 2009 Eastern Conference Finals with home ice advantage.
But, as anyone who follows the team will tell you, the Penguins team that will take the ice Monday night is very different from its mid-winter incarnation. The organizational changes made by general manager Ray Shero since that loss to Toronto have been well documented to this point. Head coach Michel Therrien was fired and replaced by Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins head coach Dan Bylsma, initially on an interim but now permanent basis. Shero traded defenseman Ryan Whitney to Anaheim for winger Chris Kunitz and prospect Eric Tangradi. Shero was also able to pluck gritty winger Craig Adams off the the waiver wire and acquire winger Bill Guerin from the New York Islanders in return for a conditional draft pick. And the Toronto game also marked the return of elite defenseman Sergei Gonchar from an extended absence caused by a shoulder injury suffered in a preseason game against the Tampa Lightning. It would be impossible to isolate just one of these changes as the catalyst for the Penguins’ latest trip deep into the playoffs, but their aggregate effect has been transformative, salvaging the season of a struggling team that prior to the season was thought to be a leading contender for the Stanley Cup.
However, amidst all of these changes was a solitary real estate transaction that, while seemingly innocuous on the surface, the Penguins themselves credit every bit as much as the moves outlined above with forever altering the course of their 2008-09 campaign: The players as a team chipped in together and bought an eight-bedroom, four-bathroom mansion outside of Los Angeles, California, with a goal in mind of fostering a comfortable, communal atmosphere to where the Penguins could escape for some rest and relaxation when life in the hockey hotspot that is Pittsburgh becomes a bit too stressful.
In a Pushing Paper exclusive, we made the trip out to California to check in on the players as they prepare for their conference finals showdown against the Carolina Hurricanes.
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Upon entering “The Pens Mansion West,” as the players call it, I was welcomed by Gonchar, the venerable veteran whose extensive experience and calm demeanor have helped set the emotional tone for the team during its most critical moments. Gonchar, who is certainly well known but does not receive nearly as much attention as fellow stars Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin, affably greeted every one of his teammates with playful high fives and hugs as we entered the house’s second-floor foyer, often repeating the players’ nicknames twice in a playful sign of affection. “Superstar, Superstar,” he said to forward Max Tablot before proceeding to “Sid the Kid, Sid the Kid.” Gonchar invited me to come bug out with the team before inadvertantly illustrating his position of command with the team by admonishing young defenseman Kris Letang to “get your fuckin’ feet off the glass table.” Gonchar immediately diffused what could have been a tense moment with a warm chuckle.
While introducing myself to the players, I could hear, far off in the house somewhere, the sound of a delicately beautiful piano piece, so I decided to follow it. The music led me to the bedroom of none other than Gonchar, whose modesty prevents him from revealing to fans just how talented of a musician and composer he is. In fact, I initially startled him as I made my way into the room, unaware that I had been watching him. As he led me on a tour of his expansive bedroom, Gonchar gave me some background information on the purchase of the home.
“This house was actually my choice. I don’t know if everybody agreed with it when they got here, but I checked out a few houses in L.A., you know, I seen some nice mansions, some big places. And some places was, like, too glamorous for us, but this house had more of a sportacious feeling. I knew that brothers would be like, ‘Yo, this is a phat crib.’”
As we made our way through the bedroom, it became clear how much Gonchar has come to value this home away from home, and how it helps him ease his mind from the stresses of life as a prominent professional athlete.
“I be in here watching, you know, kung fu flicks and pornos. I got my desk right here, my shit here — I’m also an executive. They call me the Abbot of the Pittsburgh Penguins,” Gonchar noted with pride as he showed me his necklace, which featured an exquistiely jewelled compass symbol. “The Abbot meaning, like, the one that gives the most advice or the one that guides guys.” Careful not to overstate his influence on the Penguins’ young stars, including team captain Sidney Crosby, he added, “I’m not the leader. I mean, we all lead our own selves, we all individual leaders, but I’m the Abbot.”
From there we made our way to Gonchar’s bathroom, from which he derived obvious delight.
“I’ma show you how they got the bathrooms when you start making money, I guess. You get a phone in your bathroom first of all, right? You get the normal toilet stool, and then you get this one we call the, the bootywetter [a marble bidet]. You got the two showerheads in here, chillin’ in here, you know, me and my wife or whatever, you know, we can both have our own temperature sets, then we can switch up and share. We got the jacuzzi so I be in here chillin’.
“We keep a lot of flowers and plants; I love life being around me. I recently lost my moms and everythings, so I became real appreciative of flowers and life, you know, because you never know when that life ceases, you know what I mean?” It was a moment of touching vulnerability from the normally reserved star.
I then made my way to Gonchar’s countryman and 2009 NHL Art Ross Trophy winner Evgeni Malkin’s room. Malkin’s shyness with the press has become famous, and his broken English in televised interviews belies his fluency with the language he displays in settings where he is more comfortable. “Geno” enthusiastically gave me a tour of his bedroom.
“This is my room right here, this is where I lay my head,” Malkin explained as he led me to the closet. Malkin is something of a clotheshorse, always making sure to be seen styling the latest fashions. His wardrobe is no small passion for him.
“I got, you know, sneakers for days. I got to have my blowy shirts” – Malkin’s term of choice for his loose-fitting clothing — “all day long, see what I’m saying? I got to have, like, about twelve blowy shirts, all, just, varieties and flavors. Got to have your Guccis and shit. And I must have my jackets. Got to have the Fubu in there, the Pure Playaz, the Pelle Pelle, the Wu Wear. Everything got to be assorted flavors, so I can be versatile.”
Then Malkin showed me a possession that was of obvious significance to him.
“This is my autograph – signed – of Little Richard, that I met out here. Little Richard, know what I’m saying? My mother used to love this guy, so he gave me a little autograph, bing bing bing!”
Then we made our way out to Malkin’s balcony, where the native of the Russian steel center Magnitogorsk reflected on his rapid rise from humble roots to a newfound position of wealth and success.
“This neighborhood is real [bourgeoisie]. Everybody over here has two million dollar homes and better. Over there, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Neal Long, everybody, everybody is in all these vicinities over here,” he observed as he looked over an expansive vista primarily featuring both lush, rolling hills and gargantuan estates. “This is the duku. This is the beauty of all this. After all our hard work, this is where it supposedly pays off at, you know what I’m saying?” Then Malkin stepped up to the balcony’s ledge and spread his arms wide as he took a moment to fully absorb the privileges that the game of hockey has suddenly afforded him. “We out here in the hills, just gliding like condors.”
I then granted Malkin’s request for some private introspection and made my way to the house’s game room, a veritable hive of laughter and mirth featuring equal doses video games, billiards, and push-ups. Here, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury served as my tour guide. He explained to me just how vital it is for this young team to be able to occasionally escape the hype and media scrutiny that constantly follow them and, if only for a day or two, act like the kids that many of them really are.
“This where we get a little mack on, you know what I’m saying? Pool table action, this is where we just be loungin’. Today was a big dice game goin’ on, you know, six G’s was up in the air . . . This is how we live, you know?
“We watch stuff like the Discovery Channel, you know what I’m saying, check out the news sometimes. A lotta flicks goin’ on, you know what I’m sayin’, like, a lotta black flicks, karate flicks. When we together, it’s like a family reunion, so it feels good to be amongst your brothers.”
Then Sidney Crosby, arguably the NHL’s best player and biggest star, implored me to walk with him. Crosby also was quick to emphasize the unsung role that the new house has played in the Penguins’ remarkable turnaround.
“When we back in Pittsburgh, we with our family or whatever, whatever, and we want to get away, we slide out here, you know what I mean, and just get the thoughts together.”
We made our way into a finely decorated living space, one notably devoid of any sort of electronic entertainment. But even beyond its obvious tranquility, Crosby explained just how much thought had gone into creating this oasis of relaxtion for the team.
“If you do the knowledge to this room right here, and just the color contrast right here, it’s like a thinking room.”
The room’s centerpiece was a beautiful baby grand piano. Crosby explained its function thusly:
“Got the little piano just in case my man Lionel Ritchie wanna come through and come holla at me, you know?”
We then made our way to the mansion’s weight room. Given Crosby’s reputation for being perhaps the hardest-working player in the NHL, it was no surprise that it was he who led me here.
“Brothers come up in here and get tight and all that, you know what I mean? Me, personally, I don’t even really like dealing with all that. I like to do calisthenics, you know what I mean? I like to get on this little running thing here [a treadmill], you know? I ain’t do my thing thing in a minute with this, though.” Unfortunately for Crosby, however, his increased minutes and superior stamina throughout this postseason betray his modesty.
We entered Crosby’s bedroom, which was certainly nice but seemed rather small for the team’s biggest star.
“It’s comfortable. A brother can come up in here and relax. I’m happy with this right here.” But Crosby’s satisfaction ends once he turns on his television. “Putting a cat in the crib without cable, that’s hurtin’ him.” He eventually finds a program that suits him. “You see what’s on, right? Cartoons, baby!”
Sid the Kid, indeed.
Unlike his fellow superstar Malkin, Crosby isn’t particular about his clothes.
“This my little wears right here while I’m out in Cali right now,” Crosby explains as we enter his walk-in closet, which has conspicuously few actual clothes in it. His main clothing item of choice this season is a fresh t-shirt adorned with the logo of a professional or major college sports team. (I did not spy any Philadelphia Flyers t-shirts.) As Crosby himself notes, “It ain’t nothin’ basic . . . One thing about Cali that’s different from Pittsburgh is that the climate is always off the hook out here, so you ain’t really got time to get fly, because if you get fly, it’s gonna be too hot.”
As with Crosby’s gritty, close-range goals in the Washington series, function over fashion suits Crosby just fine these days.
My visit ended with an impromptu pool party, where Fleury tried his best to summarize the Mansion’s importance to the team.
“Pool parties, jumpin’ off, piece of mind. But then we just stare off right over there into the green, you know what I mean, into the leaves and the trees.” Fleury pointed to the same landscape that had earlier captured Malkin’s awe. “For some reason, for some reason green brings a lot of thoughts.”
I was beginning to understand how the relaxation provided by Pens Mansion West had influenced the team’s approach to the game, in addition to providing the Penguins with a proper perspective that, in an age with so many pressing geopolitical problems, such as a global recession and runaway climate change, losing a hockey game probably isn’t the end of the world. Further still, the players know they are fortunate to have each other and play for such a successful franchise with an entire city of adoring fans. (Gonchar made sure to mention their friend and former teammate Colby Armstrong, who, in Gonchar’s words, is on “an iron vacation” — street slang for serving a jail sentence, or, in the NHL’s case, playing for the Atlanta Thrashers.)
Right as I was leaving, fourth line winger Miroslav Satan made a running leap across the pool, clearing it by the slimmest of margins and prompting guffaws from his teammates. Before the laughter had even subsided, Crosby ran toward the pool as if he were going to attempt a leap of his own. Just as some of the players began to hold their breath, Crosby backed off, a sly smirk on his face. It is this balance between relaxation and discipline that should serve the Penguins well as they continue their run towards the Stanley Cup.
Thin Line Between Hell and Here: Steelers 27, Cardinals 23
A full four days later, and I’m still going through the process of convincing myself that the Steelers actually won Super Bowl XLIII. When Larry Fitzgerald scored his insane, 64-yard touchdown with under three minutes left, the rational side of my brain furiously started preparing me for life in a world where the Steelers somehow lost a Super Bowl to a team that only outscored its opponents by one point this season, all while falling prey to the biggest come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl history. I kept repeating two things to myself: “This is only a football game,” and “At least they won Super Bowl XL,” neither of which made me feel the slightest bit better. There’s no such thing as perspective when your team is blowing the Super Bowl.
And even though I was joyfully hopping around just like everyone else when the game ended, it wasn’t until I emerged from the apartment in Oakland where I watched the game and found myself surrounded by screaming lunatics and honking car horns that I started to accept that the Steelers truly had pulled it out. I didn’t smash any windows or light any couches on fire (unfortunately), but I did run around screaming a lot, and even did some freestyle walking. With all this gloriousness in mind, here’s Pushing Paper’s Official Super Bowl XLIII Recap, in Q&A form.
Q: How long did it take to clean up the mess left by your head exploding after James Harrison’s touchdown?
A: I know this will sound like a revised account of what happened, but I honestly wasn’t that shocked by that play. With any other defense (including the gang of impostors who masqueraded as Steelers in the fourth quarter), the opposing team having the ball on the one is cause for overwhelming dread. But if there’s one lesson that the 2008 Steelers’ D taught us, it’s that they never had any shortage of miracles up their sleeves. Remember, this was the same defense that forced an 11-5 New England team into committing twenty-five turnovers at home in week 13. This was the same defense that called a timeout when Dallas had the ball in a tie game with almost two minutes left, because they knew they would shut the Cowboys down and wanted to leave enough time for the offense to score — only Deshea Townshend picked off a Tony Romo pass and scored the winning TD himself. This was the same defense that slammed the AFC Championship’s door shut as emphatically as possible with Troy Polamalu’s unreal pick-six as Baltimore tried to put together a game-winning drive. So yes, even though I never in my wildest dreams expected a 100-yard touchdown return, I really did hold out hope for an interception when a 14-10 halftime deficit seemed inevitable to many.
(Side note: I hate to admit it, but I don’t see how this play was better than the Helmet Catch. Although highly unlikely, there’s every chance that next year a team could score on a 100-yard pick-six, even one that completely alters the game’s final outcome. But a play like the Helmet Catch will never, ever, ever, EVER happen again. Long live David Tyree and the Patriots-slaying Giants.)
Q: Was Super Bowl XLIII the greatest ever?
A: Much as I’d like to say it was, it wasn’t. (Full disclosure: My Super Bowl viewing experience begins at XXV.) I’ve heard some people out there claim that it was a terrible game until the fourth quarter — which just isn’t true — but, aside from Harrison’s TD, it was an average game until the fourth, and by my criteria, a game’s got to be good the whole way through to be considered the greatest ever. (I’m looking at you, Super Bowl XXXIV.)
Two things I’ll never understand: Why Super Bowls XIII and XXXII are barely mentioned in greatest ever debates. Super Bowl XIII, in which the NFL’s two most popular franchises essentially fought for Team of the Seventies status, was thrilling from start to finish, with Terry Bradshaw reversing his first half attempt to single-handedly throw the game away by having such a stupendous second half that he was named MVP. And Super Bowl XXXII was, on paper, one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, and had the great storyline of John Elway finally winning his first Super Bowl. What’s more, all but two of the nine scores were touchdowns, and it was unclear what team would triumph until the game actually ended. I suppose XIII was long enough ago that everyone has pretty much forgotten about it, but how XXXII goes unmentioned in these debates is beyond me.
Q: Should anyone who came away from such a fantastic game whining about the refs be shot?
A: Yes.
Q: Would you like to elaborate?
A: The refs obviously weren’t perfect, but I do think they got almost every call right, and above all, they called the game evenly. What infuriates me about the ref-related backlash is that, thanks to ESPN’s unending desire to create artificial controversy after every single sporting event (witness the non-debate about whether or not Ryan Clark’s AFC Championship game hit on Willis McGahee was clean), many sports fans out there are now incapable of accepting something like Super Bowl XLIII for what it was: a game that everyone but Cardinals fans should be rejoicing. The worst offenders of all are the people who bitched about how Santonio Holmes should have been flagged for a personal foul after using the ball as a prop during his celebration of the Super Bowl winning touchdown. Honestly, just imagine if the Cardinals had come back and scored the winning touchdown thanks partially to a field shortened by such a pointless penalty. If that’s the call you’re complaining about after the game, here’s some heartfelt advice: Stop watching football. Seriously, if you’re so uppity about strict adherance to stupid rules, quit whatever job you have and become a meter maid.
That said, the review system detracted measurably from my enjoyment of the game. Aside from the controversial fumble at the end, there wasn’t a single big play the Steelers made that wasn’t reviewed extensively afterward. One of the best things about watching sports are the moments of spontaneous elation that arise from epic plays. Super Bowl XLIII had plenty of epic plays, but, thanks to instant replay, only muted moments of spontaneous elation. What a shame.
Q: In what ways was Super Bowl XLIII superior to Super Bowl XL?
A: By almost any objective measure, XLIII blew XL away. What pleased me most about XLIII was that it was a very well played game, where both teams could walk off the field with their heads held high. Winning Super Bowl XL was sweet as hell, but it was slightly dampened by the fact that the Steelers won primarily because they were less horrible than the Seahawks that day.
The other thing that really stood out about this game for me was how exceptionally classy both teams were all week, especially after the game ended. Santonio, who in my mind still isn’t completely absolved from his past transgressions, has carried himself with nothing but humility since winning the game’s MVP award, and it’s felt sincere. The Cardinals have been even more impressive. No one had to worry about Ken Whisenhunt pissing and moaning about the refs afterward like that fat mess Mike Holmgren, even though losing to the Steelers like that must have been incredibly tough for him to stomach. Unsurprisingly, Larry Fitzgerald was all class, and Kurt Warner was such a gracious loser that it was uncanny. If the Steelers don’t win the Super Bowl next year, then I am 100% pulling for the Cardinals. They are a credit to the NFL.
And lastly, it’s never a bad thing when the Steelers become the first franchise ever to win six Super Bowls.
Q: In what ways was Super Bowl XL superior to Super Bowl XLIII?
A: Just one, but it’s why I will always hold XL most dearly. There really is nothing like your first time. When the Steelers won this weekend, I was extremely happy for all the obvious reasons. A Super Bowl victory is truly something to be cherished. But when the Steelers won Super Bowl XL, I honestly felt like anything in the world was possible. I know that’s stupid, but I was pretty damn happy that night.
Q: So, how many years did Super Bowl XLIII shave off of your life expectancy?
A: At least ten, but it was probably worth it.
No One On Tha Corner Got Steelers Like Us: Pushing Paper’s Super Bowl XLIII Preview
Look, I could write 10,000 words breaking down what I expect to happen in Super Bowl XLIII, and act like all I’ve done this week is hole up in my apartment and watch game tape, with everything building toward a hotly anticipated final prediction, but let’s not kid ourselves here. I’m a major Steelers fan, and, believe it or not, I don’t have an overwhelming desire to be the malaria-infested fly in the Pittsburgh punchbowl. So I’ll be damned if I’m going to come out and pick the Cardinals to win this weekend. Steelers 27, Cardinals 17.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, there are some aspects of this matchup that I do want to comment on, so I’m going to go at this baby in a wholly incoherent, point by point style. My goal for this post is to say something that ten million people haven’t already said this week. Now let’s get after it.
* Going into conference championship weekend, I vowed that, were the Steelers to play the Cardinals in the Super Bowl, as I expected to happen, I would spend the next two weeks repeatedly waking up in cold sweats after Larry Fitzgerald ran rampant through my nightmares. Thankfully that hasn’t happened yet, but I am obviously worried about him, for all the reasons that everyone else on the planet has already listed. However, one thing I’ve found to be odd is that people are so hyped up about Fitzgerald that many of the pundits who are picking the Cardinals are looking at the Super Bowl as if it were the NBA Finals. Fitzgerald is fantastic, but he’s not Michael Jordan. Nor is he Jim Brown playing against a bunch of slow, white guys in the fifties. Somehow it seems like a lot of people have forgotten this.
* Considering that this is a matchup between a 12-4 team that played the toughest regular season schedule that just about anyone alive can recall, and a team that only went 9-7 despite playing in the most pathetic division in world history, there seems to be an unusually large groundswell of support for the Cards this week. Of course, while there are some very legitimate reason to pick the Cards to win, the blame for this mass irrationality lies at the feet of the 2001 Patriots and the valorous 2007 Giants. In the age of NFL parity, it’s become apparent that no outcome is certain in the Super Bowl. (That last sentence clearly will not be the one to fulfill this post’s stated goal.) Almost everyone I’ve read who’s picked the Steelers has started out their column with some inane preamble explaining how they haven’t slept for six days while trying to arrive at their final prediction and blah, blah, blah, only to close by assuming a near-apologetic tone when picking the Steelers. Even more annoying, I’ve already read about ten columns where the writer will predict the Cardinals to win, and then say something stupid like, “Someone’s got to pick them, right?” Sorry, unoriginal sports columnists, if you really wanted to go out on a limb, you should have picked against the Rams in ‘01 and the Pats in ‘07.
* For all the talk of how much of a factor Whisenhunt’s knowledge of the Steelers will be on Sunday (and I am legitimately worried about this), I find it odd that no one’s really talked about how the Steelers faced an extremely similar situation in Super Bowl XIV against the Los Angeles Rams. Bud Carson had been the Steelers’ defensive coordinator during their first two Super Bowl wins before leaving to fill the same position for the Rams prior to the 1977 season. Like the Cardinals, the ‘79 Rams finished 9-7 and barely outscored their regular season opponents (323-309 for the Rams, and a positively sterling 427-426 for the Cards). Super Bowl XIV was much closer than many expected, no doubt thanks partly to Carson’s knowledge of the Steelers’ personnel, but in the end the better team pulled it out. Super Bowls are won and lost by players, not coaches, so let’s not get too carried away with Whiz angle.
* It took a week, but the world has finally realized that this is going to be a home game for the Steelers. I knew the Super Bowl XL crowd was going to be lopsided, but I also knew that the Seahawks had actual fans who might be willing to travel to Detroit to watch their team play in its first ever Super Bowl. You could probably watch the Super Bowl and play a game where you drink every time you spot a Cardinal fan in the crowd and not even get drunk. Thanks to the Cardinals pounding on the Panthers in what will be forever remembered as the most senseless NFL result ever, people are completely ignoring the fact that all year the Cardinals were a truly abysmal road team. While I think there’s something to be said for largely disregarding the regular season when evaluating this game, I’m not willing to pretend like it never happened.
* Getting back to the Grand Canyon-sized disparity between the difficulty of these respective teams’ schedules, I can say with full confidence that the Cards have not played a defense approaching the quality of the Steelers’. This year the NFL had three defenses that on a weekly basis pummeled the hell out of their opponents, regardless of the end result: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Tennessee. This is why being the second seed ending up being such a huge advantage for the Steelers in the playoffs. The Ravens and the Titans were going to beat each other so senselessly that no matter who won, they would limp their way into the AFC Championship game, which is exactly what happened to the Ravens. The worst thing that could possibly happen to the Steelers is for the Cards to score on their opening drive in a similar fashion to the Chargers in the divisional round. (That point is so glaringly obvious that it just might accomplish the post’s stated goal!) Even if the Cards get points on their first possession, what’s key is that it last long enough for the Steelers’ D to lay some shots on the likes of Kurt Warner, Fitzgerald, Anquan Boldin, and Steve Breaston. The Steelers won’t have to sack Warner seven times to win if he has happy feet in the pocket the entire game, or if his receivers are afraid to cross the middle of the field. If I had my druthers, the Cardinals wouldn’t be wearing their home reds on Sunday, but Ravens purple. I don’t think the Cards can win if the Steelers find a way to work up a Baltimore-level of hatred for this one.
* One thing that gives me the shivers is the fact that there is absolutely no evidence to date that the 2008 Steelers can get that critical yard when they absolutely need it. Earlier in the season, I would throw a hissy fit whenever Bruce Arians sent the team out in the shotgun on 3rd and 2. But when the Steelers lined up in an empty set on 3rd and 1 in the AFC Championship game, I couldn’t even muster a single word of protest. In other words, if ever the Steelers have an important 4th and 1 in the game, I’ll probably pass out long before the ball is snapped.
* Two players I don’t really think are keys for a potential Steelers victory: Hines Ward and Willie Parker. I suppose with this one that you could accuse me of going against the grain to an almost foolish degree, but here’s my reasoning. With Willie, he’s barely been a factor in the Steelers’ offense all year, and they’ve been just fine. Yes, they cut some of those regular season wins a little close for my liking, but it gave the team valuable practice under pressure situations, and if it’s a close game, I like the Steelers’ chances. All I want from Willie is a competent performance. He doesn’t need to get 100 yards for the Steelers to win, he just needs to be enough of a threat that it keeps the Cardinals’ defense guessing, enabling the Steelers to successfully implement the play action, because Ben’s accuracy with the deep throws has returned with a vengeance. Regarding Hines, I think that all the Steelers need from him is a convincing enough decoy act. I think if Hines makes a nice catch for a first down early (preferably more, of course), then it will be enough. As long as the Cards feel somewhat threatened by his presence on the field, then I think it will open things up for Santonio Holmes and Heath Miller, and maybe even Nate Washington. (If Hines spends the majority of the game on the sidelines, resulting in Limas Sweed becoming a regular part of the Steelers offense? Then all bets are off.) The Steelers went 12-4 and got to the Super Bowl with one of the best defenses of the past twenty years and a passable offense. I don’t necessarily think they need much more to beat the Cardinals.
* I am one of those people who thinks — and this is my final point — that the number one key to a Steelers win is Big Ben not turning the ball over. Of the Steelers’ four losses, one happened because Bruce Arians called a neverending sequence of seven-step drops for Ben even though the Eagles were sending eleven men on the blitz on every play, one happened because the long snapper blew out his knee and the NFL Defensive Player of the Year had to replace him, and then put a snap through the back of the Steelers’ own end zone, and the other two happened because Ben became a turnover machine. Well, I suspect that the three week stretch where the Steelers beat Dallas, beat Baltimore, and lost to Tennessee caused a light to turn on in Ben’s head. Against Dallas and Baltimore, the Steelers’ offense, except for clutch TD drives late in each game, was practically nonexistent, while the defense played its two best games of the year. Then in Tennessee, Ben tried to do too much, and pretty much cost the Steelers the game. (Admittedly, it was an almost meaningless one.) At this point, I think that either Ben realized on his own, or the coaching staff forced him to realize, that, for as good as he can be, all the team really needs him to do this year is make a few big plays each game and generally not screw things up for the defense. And, to my eyes, this has how he’s played in the playoffs. For all the crazy scrambling plays he made against Baltimore, the risks he took were measured ones (for him), and he deliberately threw the ball away more than he usually does. While I grudgingly stand by my declaration that I will never again fully trust Ben in a big game after his truly horrific first half against Jacksonville in last year’s playoffs, I do think he knows his role going into this game — a large reason why I think the Steelers will be coming home to Pittsburgh with a sixth Lombardi.
The Pushing Paper Book Review: The Trophy Kids Grow Up
Apparently if you were born in between 1980 and 2001, you’re a member of the “millenial” generation. Well, I was born in 1983, and I don’t see how I have anything remotely in common with some little, seven-year-old wiener outside of the fact that we both probably love Nintendo Wii. (And I bet I could pwn them in Guitar Hero.) But when I read the excerpt of The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millenial Generation Is Shaking Up the Workplace in the Wall Street Journal a couple months ago, I became pretty anxious to read the book in its entirety. Just check out this golden quote from “a teenage blogger named Olivia”:
[Crusty-ass old people in the workplace] are finding that they have to adjust work around our lives instead of us adjusting our lives around work. What other option do they have? We are hard working and utilize tools to get the job done. But we don’t want to work more than 40 hours a week, and we want to wear clothes that are comfortable. We want to be able to spice up the dull workday by listening to our iPods. If corporate America doesn’t like that, too bad. They don’t have much of a choice because there are other jobs out there that will take us.
If you don’t feel the urge to hum “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” to yourself while reading that, then you aren’t a true millenial.
A large reason why I was so eager to read The Trophy Kids Grow Up was that I wanted to see how I stacked up against existing stereotypes of my fellow millenials. Aside from the vitriol — I must confess, I do behave myself at work — Olivia’s quote succinctly summarized many of my views of the professional world, so I anticipated that the book would have me pretty well pegged. However, that turned out to be only half true, because while there are many ways in which I am a typical millenial, there seem to be just as many ways in which I am not. (There are some common traits of my generation that, if this book is to be believed, are so incredibly ridiculous that it’s no wonder all those crusty-ass old people in the workplace hate us.)
Make no mistake, despite the fact that Alsop is a self-admitted baby boomer, his book is a clear-eyed portrayal of millenials. While he dutifully lists his interview subjects’ complaints, deep down I think he likes us. He notes that he has a millenial-aged son, and in an important passage points out the blatant hypocrisy of baby boomers who go out of their way to complain about the very generation that they raised. So while it would have been wildly entertaining to read a book full of nothing more than sour grapes cranks whining about how they’re slowly losing their grip of the world, Alsop is to be credited for his even-handedness.
The Trophy Kids Grow Up touches upon all major traits of the millenial generation, and I suspect that my fellow twenty-somethings might read the book exactly as I did: Rapt with attention when reading chapters that describe an aspect of their personalities, eyes glazed over when reading chapters that don’t. For example, I lapped up the chapter titled “Free To Be Me,” which illustrated millenials’ desire for a less structured professional world, be it in the form of less formal dress codes, more freedom for inexperienced workers to bounce from job to job, or the ability to work from home more often. But I cruised through the chapter titled “Take Your Parents to Work” as quickly as possible — I’ve never brought one of my parents with me to a job interview, and I never intend to. (Seriously, kids who do that should be shot, and I say that as someone who moved back home for a year after graduating from college, so I’m not exactly Mr. Independent.) Having said all this, I can think of people I knew in college who would feel perfectly comfortable slicking back their hair and spending a significant chunk of their income on business clothes, but also consult with their parents before making every decision in their lives, no matter how insignificant.
In the end, I think The Trophy Kids Grow Up would be most interesting to and beneficial for the generations who are currently running the show, particularly the baby boomers (or as they’re now known, the generation that pretty much ruined the entire world last year). For all the debate about whether or not millenials are unprofessional or lazy or entitled, it’s pretty much a moot point. The one thing that is absolutely certain about the conflicts between millenials and the generations above them is that the millenials will be the last ones standing, and The Trophy Kids Grow Up understands this. Its main point is that, although millenials will inevitably have to compromise on some fronts, companies who hope to be viable in the future had better adjust to millenials now, because eventually they will need us. That a teenage blogger named Olivia can grasp this concept better than many of this country’s presumably brilliant business leaders is pretty mind-blowing.
Get HGH or Die Trying
I just finished reading this gargantuan ESPN.com piece about former Steelers team doctor Richard Rydze. The lead on ESPN’s front page, at the time it was posted, read: “Richard Rydze was a member of the Steelers’ medical staff for more than 20 years. Then he was gone, only months after his name surfaced as a big-time buyer of HGH. Coincidence?”
Talk about your juicy leads. While Rydze’s story isn’t new — it broke in February of 2007 — I had hoped that perhaps a new investigative piece of such depth would reveal something new about whether or not Rydze’s connections to both the Steelers and HGH were, in fact, a coincidence. On that front, I was disappointed. The story ends up veering into an examination of the legality of using HGH for off-label purposes, an issue over which Rydze and the FDA disagree vehemently. If I read the piece correctly, it’s basically illegal to use HGH for anything other than its FDA approved purposes (I guess for other drugs you can pretty much do whatever you want with them so long as you’re a doctor, which seems insane to my medically uninclined mind), but throughout the piece Rydze freely discusses using it for whatever he damn well pleases — and he clearly believes that HGH has the potential to be beneficial for any number of ailments.
Well one segment of the population that would clearly benefit from expanded usage of HGH would be professional football players. (I know, crazy.) Reading that Rydze admitted to administering HGH to elderly patients who were suffering from tendon and ligament damage immediately brings to mind every NFL player not named Tom Brady who blew out their knee in the last decade, facing a full year on the sidelines, yet somehow having their rehab continually be described as “well ahead of schedule.” Not to mention the fact that your average NFL position player is both significantly larger and faster than almost all of his predecessors.
If all these “coincidences” leave you feeling skeptical, just know that the NFL is on top of the Rydze case. As the article informs us: “NFL and UPMC officials have already been to [Rydze's] office . . . and ‘looked through every record and chart.’” In case you were wondering, this is the same NFL that exhaustively investigated Bill Belichick’s illegal filming of opposing teams’ sidelines by destroying all of his secret tapes the second they arrived at league offices. And if that isn’t enough to win you over, it’s also the same NFL that’s banned HGH, but doesn’t test for it.
I’m in no position to speculate on whether or not Rydze was illegally supplying HGH to the Steelers during the years he was affiliated with the team (and no, not just because I own home and away Hines Ward jerseys). But, if there were a preponderance of NFL players who were using HGH, there wouldn’t be much incentive for the league to do anything about it. I can’t imagine there are many fans out there, be they die hard or casual, saying things like, “you know, the NFL is great and all, but I just wish the players were smaller and slower.” And it goes without saying that it’s to the league’s overwhelming benefit if injured star players get back on the field as quickly as possible.
Of all these seeming coincidences that connect HGH and other performance enhancing drugs to the NFL, the most glaring one is the fact that, as PEDs have become increasingly prevalent in the world of professional sports, the NFL has become far and away America’s most popular sports league. There are many reasons for this that go beyond performance enhancement, chief among them being the simple fact that professional football is wildly entertaining to watch, but if you’re commissioner Roger Goodell, you know that your job description amounts to little more than “Don’t Kill the Golden Goose.” If that goose just so happens to be regularly injecting itself with HGH, then your best move isn’t to actually crack down on this transgression, but to make it seem as though you are.
***
As dreadful as the Pens’ season has become, it’s worth remembering that less than two years ago there was a significant chance that the team could move away from Pittsburgh. Maybe they’ve completely lost their way on the ice, but, as of this post, they’ve still sold out 87 games in a row, and, as far as I can tell, the new arena is progressing nicely. With all this in mind, I enthusiastically recommend Stu Hackel’s examination of the Phoenix Coyotes’ current financial woes in the New York Times‘ Slap Shot blog. Definitely one of my favorite sports pieces I’ve read in a while.
2008 Music Year In Review: Falling Out Of Love With Indie Rock
Hate it or love it (I side much more with the latter), it’s still a big deal for music nerds when Pitchfork releases its year-end best-of lists. Maybe Pitchfork no longer has the monopoly on internet tastemaking that it did five years ago — before mp3 blogs allowed everyone to bypass the entire concept of criticism and just figure out what they liked for themselves — but the annual albums list remains the go-to destination for those of us who yearn for a critical consensus that isn’t perpetually undermined by old geezers who continue to drool over every Dylan or Springsteen release like it’s 1975.
Looking back at Pitchfork’s past lists reveals how the site has evolved over the years. 2002, the year I started reading on a daily basis, was one of Pitchfork’s last years as a little-known indie paradise, and their albums list reflects this. The bottom half is pretty interesting, but the top of the list tells all. Indie gods Interpol, Wilco, The Flaming Lips, Spoon, and Sonic Youth all placed in the top ten. The highest placing rap album was by a white guy on Def Jux. Hot Hot Heat cracked the top twenty, for crying out loud. (Not to be forgotten: That year Pitchfork bestowed perfect 10.0s upon Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Source Tags & Codes, which, it seems, they’ve never forgiven themselves for.)
As the years went by, Pitchfork’s increasing popularity demanded that the editors pay more attention to non-indie genres. 2005 was probably when this movement hit its apogee, as the “singles” list was littered with random rap mixtape songs. (Not coincidentally, this was by far my favorite of Pitchfork’s tracks lists, even if the number one song is completely depressing and lame. Honestly, who in 2005 actually sat around playing “Hope There’s Someone” on repeat all day?)
Now, in 2008, Pitchfork and, to a larger degree, the tastes of its audience have come full circle — it’s a full fledged indie rock site again. To be fair, with selections like Portishead and DJ/Rupture, the top ten artists from this year’s list aren’t exactly a bunch of Pavement knock-offs, but it’s not like a nation of hipsters is now being forced to go out and act like they’re obsessed with The Knife. In the wake of mainstream rock’s last, nümetal gasp at the turn of the century, casual music listeners who want to hear contemporary rock music that’s actually worth hearing have no choice but to go indie. And a lot of those people are probably going to stumble across Pitchfork at some point. The thing is, these newcomers aren’t going to have the same appetite for wild new sounds as the longtime readers who reside in a world where the Pixies are as big as the Beatles. After all, when David Brooks begins name-checking your site, you’ve probably lost at least a shred of your cutting edge cred.
That doesn’t mean that Pitchfork is worse than it was before it blew up. It’s just different. Thankfully, unless you’re one of the Black Kids, Pitchfork’s writers won’t go out of their way to destroy your career anymore. But, at the same time, Pitchfork isn’t single-handedly pulling bands as unusual as The Books out of eternal obscurity anymore, either. It’s a given that straightforward indie rock will always be Pitchfork’s bread and butter, but with bands like Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire bringing the masses down to Pitchfork’s level, it feels like the site, from a consensus building standpoint, has become less adventurous.
At least that’s one way I look at it. The other, more likely, scenario is that, although I’m still a loyal reader, I’m no longer a part of Pitchfork’s core constituency. Not to sound dismissive, but bands like, say, No Age just don’t do it for me anymore. What’s more, I no longer feel obligated to listen to all the hot new indie albums, if only so I can say I’m up on things. It may be true that I haven’t bothered to sit down and actually listen to Nouns, but I also know somehow that I don’t want to. (I apologize for that last sentence basically reading as the definition of the word dismissive.) That this statement comes from a man who was in a good mood one day last week because he had “Harnessed In Slums” stuck in his head is as compelling a piece of evidence as any that Pitchfork and I have gone our separate ways. That and the fact that “Put On” only finished 67th on their tracks list. What the hell.
For some reason, this bums me out. I suppose in one sense it’s nice to finally be freed from the shackles of those nefarious tastemakers who will one day praise an artist you hold dear and then drag them through the mud on the next. But I was completely floored by how emphatically out of touch I was when filling out Pitchfork’s year-end poll/survey. (I had hoped to win one of those sweet New Order reissues, as well as complain somewhere about how in the news section you have to click a new link to view a band’s tour dates, but are forced to scroll through 500 stupid pictures of Marnie Stern every time she plays in Chicago.) When I struggled to choose my five favorite albums from their list of fifty or so, it was as if a chapter of my life had closed, and unless you’re getting out of prison or something, that’s never any fun.
So, five to ten years from now, when I look back on the music of 2008, I most likely will struggle to remember it at all. 2008 was the year of metal for me. The majority of the albums I listened to most this year — some brand new but most older — were metal albums, and some of the best shows I went to this year were metal shows. Frankly, I enjoyed it all so much that I hope 2009 is a metal year, too. As for indie, well, if ever there should come a time when “Zurich Is Stained” or “Gyroscope” unexpectedly comes on the radio and you see a lonely tear run down my cheek, don’t think I’m weird.
