Right in the mean bean machine

(Right as I was about to post this entry, I happened to notice that Greg had noted the same thing in his blog. But Greg isn't a Cubs fan, so screw him.)

While I'm somewhat happy for the Cardinals' win in that it should get everyone off the National League's back for a while, I'm more than a trifle annoyed about it for two reasons:

1) The Cardinals just became, record-wise, the worst team in baseball history to win a World Series in a non-shortened season, passing the 1987 Twins and their 85-77 record (coincidentally, the Cardinals lost that Series). That's right, 83-78. 83 wins! That's 2.5 games over .500. Horrendous. As someone informed on the history of baseball, that really grates on me. Also, Jeff Weaver - with a career ERA of 4.58, cast off by the Angels in mid-season after going 3-10, 6.29 for them - became the winning pitcher in a World Series clincher. He won three games in this postseason, as many as he won with the Angels! Obviously it's idle speculation to say this, but there could well have been a reason Tony La Russa wasn't interested in pushing on the Kenny Rogers thing. I'm not saying there's no way a pitching staff built around one ace and a bunch of rookies and lousy journeymen can't win a World Series... but I am saying that that raises your eyebrow a bit, doesn't it? To be fair, the Tigers forgetting how to take pitches was as much to blame for their loss as anything.

2) This concludes three straight World Series that play like kicks in the pants for Cubs fans, with each one getting progressively kick-in-the-pantsier. First it was the Red Sox in 2004, our partners in famously "cursed" franchises. Then the White Sox in 2005, the obnoxious crosstown rivals who hadn't won in nearly as long. And now the Cardinals in 2006, only our biggest historical rival in league and division. And this is all on the heels of the 2003 NLCS, no less.

The one good thing is that it can't get any worse - even a Yankees "return to glory" in 2007, while annoying, wouldn't have the same meaning as these three did. Maybe the signs are pointing to the Cubs doing something good soon - after four years of misery in one form or another (piled on top of the 94 years before that), don't we think it's about time something happened?

Talks like a gentleman, like you imagined when you were young

There's more than a little of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in Sam's Town, the second and latest album from the Killers, and that's probably not unintentional. From the pomp-and-circumstance close to the title track that recalls Pepper's orchestral touches to the matching tracks that bookend the album's bulk (named, in somewhat effete fashion, "Enterlude" and "Exitlude") and recall Pepper's title tracks, Sam's Town seems to be trying hard to be important. Of course, it isn't really, and a Beatles comparison does a disservice to both bands, but that doesn't mean Sam's Town isn't a pretty strong album - it's just not great in any life-altering sense.

For what it's worth, Brandon Flowers and company do manage to shed most of the lackluster parts of Hot Fuss, an outstanding debut album with five great tracks and six decent ones. It had a bit too much of a rave-pop sentiment, though, spearheaded by "Somebody Told Me," a song that was fine but kind of silly on reflection. Sam's Town doesn't totally abandon the musical trappings of Hot Fuss, but they're less in evidence, thanks in large part to the first single. "When You Were Young" steps out of the club and into an arena rock concert, with blasting chords and a glistening main riff, and it's catchy as all hell. It's also in exactly the right place on the album - the titular opening track is fine, but fans can be excused for thinking they'd accidentally picked up the Killers' excuse for Sufjan Steven's The Avalanche. "Enterlude" hangs around just long enough to lull everyone into complacency, and "Young" swoops in like a thunderclap.

Regrettably, the promise exhibited by "Young" dissipates a little bit over the rest of the album. As with Hot Fuss, there isn't a bad track in the stable, but the remainder aren't as catchy for the most part. If "Young" is this album's "Mr. Brightside," it's hard to argue that there's anything measuring up to the stellar "All These Things That I've Done." The catchiness factor in the latter half of Sam's Town is generated mostly by "Why Do I Keep Counting?", which has a monster refrain but is hiding down at track eleven (though that's probably the best place for it; I think I might like it even better as an album closer), and the bridge of "Uncle Jonny," a stinging, moody song that bursts into major chords for a few lines before winding down again.

This isn't to say that the other tracks aren't very good - "Read My Mind" and "My List" are both quite strong, and none of the others have anything really wrong with them aside from the title of the stupidly-named "Bling (Confession of a King)," which is a much better song than its title would indicate. They're not particularly sticky, though, and where Fuss had five great songs, Town can probably only claim two, though its second-tier tracks are closer to the top than any on Fuss were.

Really, though, the Killers were in an untenable position from the start, as summed up by Bill Simmons in a recent mailbag column - "If they release another album that sounds like the last one, everyone kills them for not being original. If they go in another direction, everyone fumes that they didn't release another album like the last one. So successful bands have one of two choices -- keep shifting gears and taking chances, or convince the lead singer to shoot himself or accidentally drown so they will live on forever and everyone can talk about how great they were. I'm glad they chose the first option."

And I am too. The worst thing you can say about Sam's Town - aside from taking a shot at its slightly inflated sense of self-importance - is that it's just not as great overall as Hot Fuss was, and since most bands would kill to have one album as enjoyable as Hot Fuss, I think that's pretty good. Frankly, the Killers could put out ten more albums that were two awesome tracks and ten listenable ones and I'd be there every two years.

So if you liked Hot Fuss at all, I suggest giving Sam's Town a shot. If you don't let a ton of hype get your expectations too high, I think you'll like what you hear just fine.

Grade: B+

What goes around

Horrible sports weekend. The Cardinals won Game One of the Series - handily! - and that was at most the third-worst thing that happened. #2: Man City getting buried at Wigan (number of goals scored by Man City the last two games: zero; number of own goals scored by Man City the last two games: one). #1: Northwestern blowing the biggest lead in DI-A history, leading Michigan State by no fewer than five touchdowns with about 24 minutes left in the game and allowing a touchdown every four minutes for the next 20, before finally losing 41-38 on a field goal in the last seconds. The biggest choke in major college history, and yet, if you ask me, it barely slips ahead of last year's Sun Bowl as the worst loss in program history (and you could certainly argue that, on a scale of relative importance, there have been worse - the loss to Iowa in 2000 was pretty tough to take). I'm not sure what that says about NU's overall crappiness, but probably nothing good.

One thing that Tyler pointed out: could NU's loss be karmic payback for the Bears pulling off one of the craziest comebacks in NFL history on Monday night? It's certainly true that you don't usually see the same group of fans get rewarded twice in succession by different teams. If the reward is a Bears Super Bowl victory, I suppose I would take pretty much any negative this year (except for anything related to the Cubs), and especially if the Bears put together an undefeated season. I had been avoiding mentioning the Bears in this space, but since they, by all rights, should have lost on Monday, I don't really feel like it matters (obviously it's impossible to really argue that it ever did, but you know how that works).

All the talk leapt to 16-0 after the Seahawks game, despite the fact that it was the first time the Bears had shown anything against a good team, the game was at home, and said good team did not have their leading rusher. As potent as the offense looked, and as good as the defense had been, I think the media trend for years now has been a desperate search to anoint whoever is currently going as the best there was. The constant comparisons to the '85 Bears got so thick that even some of the local drive-time hosts, who tend to thrive on that stuff, had to point out that it's pretty ridiculous to compare a 6-0 team to a team that went 18-1. Sure, the Bears' schedule looks pretty thin besides that East Coast road trip, but there are a couple things about that: first, that the Bears have not looked good on the road so far, squeaking out two of their three victories (and those games were hardly against the Giants and Patriots), and second, that facing a mediocre schedule in the regular season may not bode all that well for the playoffs. It doesn't do the Bears any good if they go 16-0 and then lose to Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, or Philadelphia, or whoever else might line up for a crack in January.

So: guarded optimism for right now. But I'll say this: if Grossman has another game even approaching Monday's at any point this season, the Bears will lose that game. And maybe if it happens again, Smith will consider bringing in Griese. I can understand the desire to show confidence in your first-stringer, but when you don't have it, you don't have it, and on Monday Grossman definitely did not have it. This was definitely the best possible time for a bye week.

Catching up is hard to do

The problem with getting behind on the blog is that I don't usually like making posts that are just big long lists of the last twenty things I did. But let's see.

Two weeks ago I went to Alma's sister's wedding, where Alma was the maid of honor. The ceremony was fine (it went by without being too draggy, which is mostly what I require), and the reception was pretty fun. I got to meet a lot of Alma's relatives, we did some dancing, and I did some drinking (first time I've been able to do that at a wedding since usually I have to drive somewhere afterwards). I guess I don't have that much to say about it, except that it sort of gave me "wedding envy," if that makes any sense. In related news, Alma and I are closing in on three years together.

I haven't been doing that much lately outside of work, which is unfortunate. I've accrued about three vacation days, though we're coming up on "a bad time to take vacation days," i.e. the holiday shopping season. Although I feel like I'm not allowed to accrue any more than 24 vacation hours at one time, so I should probably take some soon so that I don't waste them. The only problem is that I have to spend a day showing someone else how to do my job first.

The other problem is that I would probably just sleep through most of the vacation day anyway.

I've been hungry and tired a lot lately. I should probably go for a physical, since I don't think I've had one in over six years at this point.

I grew the beard back in. I don't know if this will last, though it's never a bad thing to have facial hair during a Chicago winter. Part of this will depend on how much Alma likes it. (Okay, all of it will, who am I kidding.)

We went for sushi again last night. I like sushi reasonably well but it never fails to leave me hungry later. I got a little adventurous and got the spider roll, plus two more exotic pieces from the nigiri menu. Masago was listed as "flying fish," but it turned out to be flying fish roe. It was fine though. The unagi (eel) was also surprisingly un-crazy; it really just tastes like any other piece of fish, and it was even cooked and doused in teriyaki sauce. I had tried to get the anago (sea eel, because it's always smart to order something by how fun you think the name sounds), but they were out.

After that we went to a party at Alma's gym, where they had karaoke. The selection was decent - the one at the redneck dive in Austin was better, but that crowd was significantly shadier. I did "Addicted to Love," during which a surely-drunk woman from the audience came up on stage to play inflatable guitar like one of the women in the video, and "Your Song," and Alma and I did a duet on "Hey Jude." I usually don't really like getting up in front of people, but at least with karaoke it's basically impossible to make an ass out of yourself (certainly not compared to the drunk older guy who stumbled his way through "Rock Around the Clock"), and at least I was never off key. Alma did two solo songs as well, with "Killing Me Softly" and "We've Only Just Begun," and was, as usual, congratulated heavily after each song, because she is awesome. Though I was told I had a good voice after "Your Song," which I can't say I was expecting, and the guy saying it wasn't even drunk. I was happy with how I sounded, but that was surprising.

Anything else? I think this will do for now.

Oh. Quick question: most of you, like me, were probably watching TV aimed at kids/teens in the late 80s and early 90s. Do you remember the Corn Pops and Apple Jacks ad campaigns? These were, even at the time, two of my least favorite things ever. The Corn Pops ones, clearly metaphors for drug addiction, feature kids going through sweaty withdrawal symptoms as Jaws-like music plays when they can't find any Corn Pops. Here's one example. The Apple Jacks ones were also horrible, for various reasons. Here's one, which is by far not the worst of the genre. Maybe the most annoying thing about those was that Kellogg's had spent the past 30 years suggesting that Apple Jacks did, in fact, taste like apples. And now they were throwing that under the bus just to make eating Apple Jacks seem non-conformist somehow. At any rate, the ads would have been much more honest if "they just do!" had been replaced with "they're full of sugar!"

So, if you remember both those ads, which did you hate more? I originally thought I hated the Apple Jacks ones more, but after reacquainting myself with the Corn Pops ads, I'm no longer sure.

Eat it, Yankees!

Think we can get rid of all that "best lineup since the Big Red Machine" talk? We're not playing fantasy baseball. Yankees suck.

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.

Avocado's number

I suppose I should be thankful that Chicago isn't Washington, where the price to pay for what has to be the nation's cleanest subway is a set of ridiculously overbearing transit cops who treat 12-year-olds and pregnant women like threats to national security for, respectively, eating a french fry on a station platform and talking too loudly on a cell phone. But sometimes I see people on the CTA and wish a cop would just bust in and take them down. I thought the guy eating a Corner Bakery salad on the train the other day was going to be my champion for the year, but that was before yesterday on the bus.

I was sitting in the back row of seats. This woman is sitting "across" from me (in the back right sideways-facing group of seats). She pulls out - and I swear to you that I am not making any of the following up - a plastic knife, a plastic spoon, and an avocado.

Yeah.

First she uses the knife to cut the avocado into sections around the pit. Then she starts scraping pieces out with the spoon and eating them. And by eating, I mean "flinging at her mouth with a motion that made it look like she was trying to hack out her own uvula." I may never see anyone with an uglier eating style.

Eventually, she eats the top half of the avocado. But before she can go to town on the bottom part, she pulls out a packet of thousand island dressing. For real. And proceeds to pour it gingerly over the remaining avocado half, and then spooning out and eating that part.

I guarantee you this woman thinks she was eating healthy.

At some point, the pit - which she left in place even though you can't eat it - went flying and rolled down the aisle. She gave chase and changed seats in the process, dropping the knife on the floor where she had been sitting. Shortly after taking up residence in her new seat just shy of the stairs, a piece of avocado made its way to the floor of the aisle as well.

A little while later she moved up a bit further, to a forward-facing pair of seats just shy of the middle of the bus (this was a double-long bus with the accordion middle). When the bus eventually got to her stop, she stumbled to her feet, spilling something on the floor in the process. As she got off the bus, I saw - she was drinking from an open beer.

This probably explains the whole thing. Considering that a single Michelob (this woman's beverage of choice) is nowhere near enough to get anyone stumbling-from-your-seat drunk, she was probably half in the bag by the time she boarded in the first place, which no doubt led her to think that her little avocado shenanigans actually made perfect sense.

So, let's recap. By the time this woman got off the bus, she had left reminders of her presence in three separate spots in the aisle - the plastic knife at the back, the avocado piece just short of the stairs, and the beer spill up near the middle. I wouldn't want to be handcuffed for eating a candy bar, but if anyone deserved to spend a few hours in jail over eating on public transportation, it was our drunken, avocado-loving friend here. I suppose it could have been worse - she could have been eating durian - but among produce readily available in this country I can think of few things more ridiculous or annoying, save perhaps a grapefruit.