List Season ::: Reading Material

I don't finish reading a great many books; oh, I start reading probably a dozen or so books every year, but if I finish even 3 or 4 I'm pleasantly surprised, and this year I finished 6

So here are the books I started this year, with a * denoting something I actually finished or will fiinish by the end of 2006.
Everything here comes with a recommendation:
*The Stranger by Albert Camus
*Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
*The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo
*After the Quake by Haruki Murakami
*Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville
*The Iraq Study Group Report by The Iraq Study Group
Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Candide - Voltaire
A Personal Matter - Kenzaburo Oe
Just So Stories - Rudyard Kipling
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway


I also worked an internship at a film production company, and in the course of my work I read scripts for potential films-to-be. Here is a list of films you could/should see coming to a theater near you:

Autopsy: written by Jace Anderson, Adam Gierasch, and Evan Katz
Convoy: written by Art Marcum & Matt Holloway (currently in development with John Singleton) Writers also wrote Iron Man, slated for a 2008 release starring Robert Downey Jr and 2005 it-guy Terrence Howard.
Shoot 'Em Up: written by Michael Davis (In production, directed by Davis, starring Clive Owen and Paul Giamatti, due out next year)
Born to Kill: written by Richard Dana Smith
The Big Boss: written by Jason Burinescu

List Season ::: Music '06: Year in Review

Today we look back at music in the year that was. Bear in mind, once again, I don't listen to everything, so here is a sampling of what I listened to this year. I decided to forego the whole "10" list idea after only doing 8 yesterday, so I'll decide on a cutoff point as I'm making the list.

25 Favorite Songs of 2006
In alphabetical order:
Amos Lee - Southern Girl
Anthony David - On & On
Brooks & Dunn - Believe
Corinne Bailey Rae - Breathless
David Condos - Right Where It Belongs
Decemberists - The Perfect Crime 2
James Hunter - No Smoke Without Fire
John Legend - Coming Home
John Mayer Trio - Gravity
The Killers - Bones
Lupe Fiasco & Pharell - KickPush
Mindy Smith - Peace of Mind
O.K. Go - A Million Ways
Nelly Furtado - Maneater
The Raconteurs - Steady As She Goes
Radney Foster - Half My Mistakes
Ray Charles & Count Basie Orchestra - What A Beautiful Morning
Robert Randolph and the Family Band - Deliver Me
Robin Thicke ft. Lil Wayne - All Night Long
Snow Patrol - You Could Be Happy
Solomon Burke - Til I Get It Right
Sufjan Stevens - Henney Buggy Band
V - Picture This
Van Hunt - Daredevil
Weird Al - White and Nerdy


13 Favorite Albums of 2006
In order
Van Hunt - On The Jungle Floor
Robin Thicke - The Evolution of Robin Thicke
Amos Lee - Supply and Demand
John Legend - Once Again
Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae
Ray Charles & Count Basie Orchestra - Ray Sings, Basie Swings
Nelly Furtado - Loose
Anthony David - Red Clay Chronicles
Robert Randolph and The Family Band - Colorblind
The Killers - Sam's Town
James Hunter - People Gonna Talk
Solomon Burke - Nashville

End of the Year = List Season:: Top 10 Sports Moments of 2006

The end of the year is time to make lists, lists, and more lists of various media and news and sports goings-on of the outgoing year, and I will be joining in on the fun. Of course, not being a full-time member of the media, I don't get around to everything, so if I missed something, it's not for lack of effort. 10 seems to be the magic number, less than that is too restricting, more than that and your list seems diluted, so from today to the end of the year it will be top 10 lists every day (provided I remember).

Today's List:
Top Sports Moments of the Year:

Rose Bowl 2006
It was Vince Young, the Man-imal, against Reggie Bush and Co. playing for the college football national championship. Early game controversial calls aside, this was a well-played, well-coached effort all around between clearly the 2 best teams in the country, decided with 26 seconds left on a Vince Young 4th down scramble for a touchdown. VY did what he did best all season, put the entire state of Texas on back and carried the Longhorns to victory, just as he did the year before against Michigan, and now he's at it again in the NFL.

Mario Williams? WTF?
There were 4, 5, maybe 6 guys who could've, no should've, gone #1 in the NFL Draft back in April: Reggie Bush, Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jay Cutler, D'Brickishaw Ferguson, AJ Hawk, etc. So imagine then-NFL Comissioner Paul Tagliabue's surprise when he strode to the podium to announce the 1st pick in the 2006 NFL Draft is....Mario Williams, DE from NC State.
In what may go down as the single best rookie class in NFL history, Williams may go down as one of the worst #1 picks ever. So many rookies have had such a huge impact, that taking just about any other playing drafted in the 1st round probably would have turned out better. The good news is, if the Raiders blow it with the #1 pick this year, they can always say "It could be worse, we could've taken Mario Williams in '06" and feel better about themselves.

Shani Davis vs. Team USA
It wouldn't be the Winter Olympics without a little controversy, but this time it didn't come from figure skating; no, this time it was speed skating. Shani Davis became the story as he elected to not participate in the team relay, to concentrate on his individual events, reducing the chances that Chad Hedrick could set an Olympic record with 5 speed skating golds.
The media took sides in the argument, calling him the selfish American, lacking perspective, others siding with Davis, saying he had no obligation to the relay team, especially since he told them last year he wouldn't do it and that to call him out now is cowardice and that he shouldn't be asked to sacrifice his own goals for those of another man.
Through it all Davis kept his head about him and did well in his individual events and appeared to maintain a reasonable relationship with Hedrick. It came out that two US skating officials had put Shani's name on the roster for the relay, "just in case", with full knowledge that he had no intention of doing it, irresponsibly yet inadvertently creating much ado about nothing, but it certain what quite the ado.

'roid Landis wins the Tour de Lance
Everyone (except the French) love Lance Armstrong and when he retired from competing in the Tour de France after winning it last year, we in America expected our days of caring about the event to be over. And they were. Until it came to our attention, about 10 stages in, that American and former Armstrong teammate Floyd Landis was in the lead and had a shot at winning. We all got behind him. Then he had a disastrous stage in the final week, falling off the pace and, presumably, out of contention. Then one night something magical happened, and he woke up with superhuman pedaling ability and he went on to be the first one down the Champs-Elysee on that fateful Sunday morning in July. Then, just when it seemed we were unbeatable, America emerging as the world cycling juggernaut, the drug test came back positive. Landis had apparently cheated. The night before his comeback ride Floyd, or as sports radio host Jim Rome dubbed him, 'Roid Landis" had ingested something illegal. The French finally had the upper-hand on an American that they never could get on Lance Armstrong, the Teflon Don of cycling. Landis blamed it on everything from whiskey, to poppy seeds, to naturally high levels of testosterone, but none of it seemed true, they just seemed like desperation, grasping at straws. Ultimately, I believe he was allowed to keep the title after accusations of sloppy handling of lab samples and what not, but the accusations of cheating are just as strong as being guilty, and such has been the fate of Floyd Landis.

George Mason to the Final 4
We all print out those brackets and fill them out, guessing at games for teams we've never seen play, with players we've never heard of, in hopes that we will get more right than the next person, seeking praise for our prescience. But as soon as the games start, we all root for the underdog. The brackets get tossed aside after that #4 seed that you had going all the way loses to an upstart WAC team in the first round. This year we got to see George Mason, a #10 seed, go all the way to the final four. Led by their 6-7 center they beat pre-season favorite UConn in the Elite 8 and before losing to champ-to-be Florida in the Final 4. One thing we learned from this "Cinderella" story of GMU is that the networks really hate the "Cinderella" story. They want the big names. People tune in to watch Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, and UCLA because they've heard of them in basketball. No one cares to watch George Mason or Wichita State, even if they are a feel-good story. In the end, we got Florida and UCLA in a forgettable championship game, unless you're Les Moonves running CBS, then it was great. And I'd tell him to get ready for rematch the upcoming tournament the way those 2 teams are playing right now.


Federer-Nadal
A new men's tennis rivalry is born. It took nearly a decade for 2 men's tennis players to emerge as legit contenders at the same time, but Roger Federer, the 25-year old Swiss wizard, is virtually unbeatable....except against the capri-wearing Spaniard Rafael Nadal. Nadal beat Federer in 4 tournament finals, inculding the French Open, Federer beat Nadal for Wimbeldon. With the resurgence of Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt, and the rise of James Blake, men's tennis could be on it's way back to competing with the sliding women's side.


Zinedine Zidane and the Headbutt Heard Round the World
I remember two things about this year's World Cup and neither of them is which country won. I remember the USA scoring 0 goals and I remember one of the all-time classic sports moments, Zinedine Zidane unleashing pure, unadulterated hatred on Materazzi.



End of the Line
Andre Agassi ended his illustrious tennis career at the US Open, falling in the 3rd round to fellow old-schooler Boris Becker. He won his first Grand Slam title 14 years ago, and the fact that he was in the US Open Final last year, 20 years in to his pro career, is a testament to his abilities. Professional sports careers rarely last 20 years, and when they do, they certainly don't contain so many productive years as Agassi's. He is indeed one of the best ever, and gave us countless classic matches with "Pistol" Pete Sampras, the best tennis player I've ever seen. And he made it possible for white guys to shave their heads and not be considered members of the Klan.

Jerome Bettis also called it a career after his Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl in Detroit back in February. Retiring at #4 on the all-time rushing list in a career that split time between the LA Rams and Steelers, Bettis was popular because he a beastly 260 pound bruising runner who still had the same foot speed and agility of any other back. Nicknamed The Bus, Bettis became a fan favorite and all-around role model for the league and can now be seen Sunday nights as part of NBC's football coverage, alongside another legend, Bob Costas.


That's only 8, because I don't care to right out any more. The other 2 that made the list before I decided to pare it down were Raja Bell attempting to decapitate Kobe Bryant in Game 5 of the first round of the NBA playoffs, and Team USA losing to CANA-freaking-DA at the World BASEBALL Classic. Classic indeed.

A Less Than Merry Take on Christmas

I was thinking last night about the notion "gift cards" and how much I generally dislike them. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it when people give gifts, but there is something very impersonal about it. It says "I don't know you or what you might like, so here is some cash." Obviously, you can't know everyone well enough to find the "perfect present", but since when did anyone need a perfect present? Andy Rooney had an interesting take on the difference between "presents" and "gifts" in his Christmas column, writing:
"The word "gift" is used frequently at this time of year and I don't care much for it. I'm suspicious of anything called "a gift." What I like at Christmas is a present. A "Christmas present" is the real thing. "A Christmas gift" is something you give to someone you don't know very well. And please don't give me anything from a "gift shop." Anything designed specifically to be a "gift" is usually useless. You give presents to friends. "

I think that says it pretty well. Between gift cards and the phenomenon of "re-gifting", one can foresee a Christmas in the not-too-distant future in which people buy gift cards to stores they like themselves, and give them to people who they know won't shop there, in hopes that the recipient with "re-gift" them in their direction. After all, according to the media this is the "me" generation, and what better way is there to love yourself at Christmas than to buy your Christmas presents for other people to give them to you.

To Blog or Not to Blog, That is the Question

After Time Magazine named "You" as 2006 Person of the Year, several members of the mainstream media, including Brian Williams and George Will, were quick to jump all over Time, decrying the amount of worthless content being posted in many blogs and Youtube videos, while extolling the professionalism of their own media outlets. On the other side, bloggers declare themselves the last true bastion of truly free press, without the need to appease advertisers or gain wide circulations/readerships and breaking down the old maxim "The press is free, as long as you can afford one"

In a level-headed, measured defense of "You" on Time.com, recognizing there is indeed a place for all of us in the world of publication, Steven Johnson writes:
"...there's no avoiding the reality that the shift from pro to am comes at some cost. There is undeniably a vast increase in the sheer quantity and accessibility of pure crap, even when measured against the dregs of the newsstand and the cable spectrum...The problem with spending so much time hashing out these issues is that it overstates the importance of amateur journalism and encyclopedia authoring in the vast marketplace of ideas that the Web has opened up. The fact is that most user-created content on the Web is not challenging the authority of a traditional expert. It's working in a zone where there are no experts or where the users themselves are the experts.

It may very well be that, as George Will wrote, that you won't find any Ben Franklin's or Thomas Paine's online blogging today, but by giving everyone a forum to potentially be discovered, maybe you will. Brian Williams splits the difference, "The larger dynamic at work is the celebration of self. The implied message is that if it has to do with you, or your life, it's important enough to tell someone. Publish it, record it ... but for goodness' sake, share it— get it out there...The assumption is that an audience of strangers will be somehow interested, or at the very worst not offended...The danger just might be that we miss the next great book or the next great idea, or that we fail to meet the next great challenge ... because we are too busy celebrating ourselves."

Are you, in fact, the new e-Benjamin Franklin? Is your blog the next "On Liberty"? If so, send your link to George Will to shut him up...and send it to me, so I can crib material from your site for posting here.

In Case You Didn't Know, tha Hood Is A Dangerous Place

For the last week we've all been kept abreast of the search (or inability thereof) for 3 missing hikers on Oregon's Mt. Hood....and I can't help but ask why it is such a big story.

For the first 4-5 days it was in the news, the story was "3 men missing on Mt. Hood, search crews can't go up due to weather" There was nothing to report, there was nothing anyone could do, and yet it was given plenty of air-time. It's not like the Natalee Holloway bonanza from last year when it may have been possible that someone had been in Aruba and seen something and keeping it in the media kept pressure on law enforcement to try to find her (although why and how we decided to focus on her particular case is another question altogether). In this situation, there was nothing we could do but wait for the weather to clear up.

When it did, the rangers found the first body. And the Sheriff held a press conference and said "We failed them."

What?

You failed them? You didn't tell them to go up on that mountain in the middle of December, you didn't create a winter snowstorm, the likes of which crop up every winter, you didn't do anything but get prepared to try to help them as soon as you could. You, sir, didn't fail anyone; they failed themselves. They failed their families. They are to blame, not you, Sheriff. These guys were not James Kim, braving the elements in attempt to save his family. That guy proudly went to his death, and is deserving of the hero label applied to him. They knew the risks of the task they were undertaking and they chose to go anyway. Not out necessity, it was for fun, for recreation. These guys were selfish.

It is selfish to take a trip up to one of the more dangerous peaks in the Western US in the middle of December with a storm on the horizon. It's not like it came out of nowhere, the northwest has been pounded by storm after storm all fall; Washington and Oregon are reporting record rainfall, and as temperatures drop, rain becomes snow, which makes traversing a mountain particularly difficult. To not consider that you could get stranded and leave your families alone, and force rescue workers to give up their Christmas and put themselves in harm's way to try to find you is incredibly myopic.

These guys should have had some restraint and common sense and climbed the mountain in the summer. Leaving behind families, wives, children, etc is just unacceptable. Oh, but they wanted to climb it in winter. Big deal, you don't always get to do what you want to do. That's part of being a grown up. You have to be responsible.

Don't get me wrong, I was hoping they would come out of it alive somehow, I wish death on no person, but I don't think what they chose to do was responsible and whatever befell/befalls them, it is of their own doing.

Should We Cut The NBA Some Slack?

There is a single NFL team that has 8, count them, 8, arrests in the last 12 months, a Chicago Bears lineman was arrested for having 6 unregistered guns in his home, one player stomped on another's head with his cleats, and countless other incidents, and yet...it is the NBA that has the public image of being a league of thugs and goons. This past weekend, there was an on-court brawl involving half a dozen players from the New York Knicks and the Denver Nuggets, resulting in over 50 combined games in suspensions and $1,000,000 in fines betwixt the two teams.

This should be a golden age for the league; last season's NBA playoffs were the best and had the highest ratings in nearly a decade, almost all of the major stars in the leauge are under 30 and on winning teams, and they instituted a dress code and a "no-whining" rule in attempt to tighten up appearances. David Stern, the commisioner, should be on top of the world, and yet, once again he's gotta do damage control to try to clean up the inexplicably negative image of his league.

I say it is inexplicable because the conduct really is nothing egregious, relatively speaking. Granted, in most lines of work, fighting on the job would get you fired (and probably sued/arrested), but this sports, and in sports this is nothing to write home about. There are on-field fights in baseball every week, with a batter charging the pitchers mound followed by the dugouts clearing. In hockey, the officials allow the players to fight, they will literally stand back and watch, then penalize them a whopping 5 minutes off the ice. But somehow, when there is a fight on the court in basketball, it merits overblown media coverage across all networks and news programs, as if it were the most newsworthy item of the day.

Am I saying we should just let is pass? No, I don't think fighting should be tolerated in any professional sports, save boxing and billiards; but if we are going to let every other sport get a free pass for miscreancy, then I see no reason to hold the NBA to a higher standard, as if basketball had some hard earned reputation as the sport of the moral paragon.

Maybe it's because the league decided earlier this decade to become the "hip-hop" league, and now it's reaping what it's sown as the media have conflated basketball players and rappers, or if it's because we can see the players with their tatoos and corn rows and baggy pants and assume they are all "gangsters", while the NFL gets away because we can't see it's players underneath helmets and pads and such. It can't simply be a race issue because the NFL and MLB consist of a majority of black players, but somehow or other the NBA is denigrated with a mishap like this, even if it only happens once or twice out of nearly 2500 games in a season, while every other sport sees it happen with much higher frequency and no one seems to notice or care. Why?

And now, a little NBA humor, courtesy of Argus Hamilton:
"NBA Commissioner David Stern agreed Monday to replace the synthetic basketball he forced on the league. He had vowed to stay the course but finally saw he was wrong. It looks like James Baker got better results with his Basketball Study Group."

PETA Don't Play That

I had to come back early just to post this. PETA is enraged that the NBA is going back to using a leather ball after trying out a new synthetic-composite ball the first 2 months of the season. Players complained that it was too slippery and somehow caused cuts and scrapes, presumably by picking up and holding on to dirt/debris off the floors.

Whatever the case, PETA responded by sending the NBA a brilliantly scathing memo, excerpted below:

"As excruciating as these 'injuries' must be for a world-class athlete, thousands of cows stand to suffer far worse if the NBA goes back to a leather basketball — so we'd like to suggest a compromise.

PETA would like to offer a lifetime supply of cruelty-free hand cream to any NBA siss … excuse me, superstar who'd be willing to give the composite ball another shot. Recreational players and NCAA athletes have been using composite balls for years without experiencing scratches or scrapes — but we understand that the delicate hands of pampered NBA superstars are far more sensitive than those of your average Joe who actually has to work for a living.

The hand cream comes in a variety of scents, including "Filthy Rich Organic" (perfect for any overpaid millionaire) and "Peaceful Patchouli" — Nash, we have a whole case of that set aside for you. Maybe by taking care of your own skin a bit better, you can allow cows who would otherwise meet their end in the slaughterhouse to keep theirs."

To Shaq: "as one of the players who has been most critical of the composite ball, you could volunteer to be our test case — since you've only played four games all season, surely you have time to work a moisturizing routine into your schedule."

To Lebron James: "the NCAA has used the composite ball for years — so it's not only an education you missed out on. Maybe you just need some more time to adjust."