Last one in is me

I'm probably the last person on the planet who listens regularly to independent music and had not really heard Sufjan Steven's Illinois album until today. Obviously I had investigated it a couple times, but in every case I had decided that it didn't seem to appeal enough to me. Then I just downloaded the whole thing from eMusic (gotta kill those 90 downloads somehow). Put it this way: I've already listened to the whole thing three times today. And I don't generally do that.

I'm sure if you know who Sufjan Stevens is I don't have to tell you this, but on the off chance that there's someone out there who might be even more woeful than I was, you've gotta give this thing a shot. It is, I must stress, almost surreally good. You'd think that an entire album themed around a state would be a total clusterfuck, but in fact it holds together like crazy. It begs to be listened through all the way - and while I have to say the first half is better (it's certainly where the best full-length songs lie), it's all excellent.

Stevens cheats a little bit on the theme; tiny instrumental bits that are really just codas to full-length songs get their own names (such as "Let's Hear That String Part Again, Because I Don't Think They Heard It All the Way Out in Bushnell") just so he can work in another reference, but that's obviously a minimal complaint at best (except when it comes to eMusic, where 22 tracks does kind of chew up the old download count). The full songs are uniformly great, with a handful being, in all seriousness, instant classics. This has to be considered a top five album of the decade so far for everything it accomplishes. And yes, I know everyone else in the world already realized this (the album was #1 on Metacritic for 2005).

Top five songs:

1. Casimir Pulaski Day
2. Chicago
3. Jacksonville
4. Come On! Feel the Illinoise!
5. Decatur, or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is actually a good song too, but it creeps me out too much to be top five.

Pic

I mentioned pictures of Alma's gifts. Here's #1, the US Soccer sweatshirt, as seen on me today.


I'll get a picture of me in the jacket later, perhaps once I've shaved and stop looking so much like a mental patient wandering the grounds.

Study: America Ready for Football

NEW YORK (AP): A landmark research study conducted by the sports network ESPN has finally confirmed what previously was only suspected: America is, unquestionably, ready for some football.

The study, a survey of more than 80,000 visitors to the ESPN.com website, found that not only is America ready for some football, but that we are overwhelmingly ready as a nation. Fully 87% of voters polled described themselves as "ready for some football," compared to just 13% who said they were not ready, a ratio of nearly seven to one.

The poll was conducted in conjunction with ESPN's launch of their new Monday Night Football telecast, taken over from ABC after the end of last season. Operating under the assumption that Americans were ready for some football, ESPN and the NFL decided to broadcast two games back-to-back on the opening Monday, a rare occurrence.

"We suspected all along that the people of this country were ready for some football," said Mike Tirico, the play-by-play announcer for ESPN's coverage. "We were, however, surprised and delighted at just how ready they were."

Not a single state in the union was not ready for football, though some were better prepared than others. Leading all states in football readiness were North and South Dakota, each with 92% of their voting populations declaring that they were adequately prepared for football. Lagging behind the pack was Wyoming, whose voters were a pathetic 80% ready. Reached for comment, Wyoming senator Craig Thomas said that the results were "in no way representative of our great state's readiness for football." Thomas pointed to the low voter turnout and speculated that a large percentage of people in the state who were, in fact, ready for football were simply not signed on to the internet at the time of the poll. "[They were] probably outside, getting ready for football by doing other manly things like barbecuing or playing football themselves," Thomas added.

In order to accurately measure the true readiness for football, ESPN plans a postgame poll with the question, "Were you ready for some football?" Analysts say they expect the number to drop slightly in the wake of a lackluster Redskins-Vikings tilt.

(Multimedia: View America's football readiness prior to Monday night's games.)

Is "FirePatFitzgerald.com" taken yet?

I'm kidding, of course. But rough loss for Northwestern today. I know New Hampshire is a very good I-AA team, but they are still a I-AA team, and this was a home game, and it's not like the final was 21-20. Ugh. Doesn't bode all that well for the Big Ten slate, does it?

I promised you a fall movie preview and here, just a couple days later than I would have liked, is the BigFlax.com Fall Movie Preview. I'm linking it here because it's pretty long and I didn't want to squeeze it onto the blog page.

Because I hadn't made a post in a while, I hadn't gotten around to mentioning the two great presents that Alma got me for my birthday. One is a US Soccer hooded sweatshirt with Claudio Reyna's number on it; the other is a Manchester City warmup-type jacket, which is totally awesome. I can go as Stuart Pearce for Halloween now! Perfect gifts from the perfect girlfriend. I will eventually get the pictures that delayed this entry and post them here, but I still haven't gotten a chance to take them yet. Maybe tomorrow/later today.