football blogging returns

after a fast start, my Jets have gone 1-3 in their last four games, losing nose tackle kris jenkins and running back/return man/superman leon washington to injury, both for the whole season (i wonder if anyone ever tried just breaking superman's fibula). sanchez should probably be gearing up for a big pac-10 matchup with oregon, but alas, he's leading an NFL offense. our third-string wide receiver was an option quarterback at missouri, and our starting wide-receiver is under indictment for punching lebron james' friend, a crime which bears the death penalty in cleveland.
all in all, things look pretty good. one game back of the patriots, having taken the first head-to-head, the Jets need to beat Miami on sunday in order to stay contenders in the AFC east. look for sancez to have another decent game against the porous Miami secondary, and the Jets will take it home if they can just keep the wildcat to under 12 yards per snap. with this win, the Jets may finally start believing that this is finally their year to get out of the first round.



after two strong wins, the Saints (seen above in cheerleader form) are widely considered the class of the NFL, and it's difficult to disagree at this point in the season. Brees finally looks like he was always supposed to, reggie bush is one of the best north-south runners in the game, and safety darren sharper scores more touchdowns than the chiefs. this week they go up against Atlanta on monday night. take new orleans and the points, saints stay undefeated.


the ridiculously over-rated giants have a big game on sunday, going all the way to philadelphia. one gets the feeling that michael vick is due for a game where he actually sees some playing-time, and if that happens i expect the suddenly so-so giants defense to end up looking silly. eli, for all of his ability, still misses plexico, but ahmad bradshaw and brandon jacobs should be gearing up for big afternoons. eagles by 6, but if vick is limited to five or six snaps again, the giants win behind eli's two-minute drill.



finally, brett favre goes back to green bay. the vikings look very very good. they have one of the best running backs of all time, one of the best quarterbacks playing, and a very strong pass rush, not to mention the explosive precy harvin. wisconsin will continue to be a loser state, but this is hardly favre's fault.

seen

one of the greatest lines from one of the worst movies ever, Saw:

"stop acting!"

with Saw VI coming out this year, they've now been putting out one of these every year since 2004. what's sad is that perhaps two generations will have this series locked in as their "friday the 13th", "children of the corn", or even "leperachaun". but where those films spent most of their time killing off one main character at a time until one or two of them get away, the Saw series expends all of its creative energy coming up with truly pornographic methods of torture to be used against characters who die so quickly you never get a chance to figure out why they deserve to die.

twenty years down the line, when someone wants to know about the '00s (again, pronounced "oooohs"), i'd make them watch "the Wire", and then the Saw series; then i'd make them guess which one was more popular.

music as music criticism

in today's pitchfork review of Neon Indian's "Psycic Chasms", marc hogan lets something slip that i've been suspicious of for some time now:

"'Borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered 80s.' Those words, when James Murphy over-enunciated them on what's still arguably the decade's best piece of music-as-music-criticism-- LCD Soundsystem's 2002 debut single, 'Losing My Edge'-- had the decisive feel of a gauntlet being thrown down."

fantastic that it's only "arguably" the best piece of "music-as-music-criticism" of the decade. lots of princes vying for that crown, i guess. but let's get real folks. "music-as-music-criticism" is what passes for innovation these days. this is a problem to me.

at the end: "A new generation's borrowed nostalgia? High time."

high time indeed.

listen, if our decade is associated with music-as-music-criticism, and music-as-music-criticism for some reason necessarilly draws on 80's influences, then musically our decade has been an explicit, transparent effort to recreate the 80's. in today's example you can practically hear marc hogan ripping out whole fistfulls of his pubic hair when he writes about Duck Tales, or Weezer, or Reagan.

these critics, who give us these terrible bands that get famous so rapidly and inorganically, are people who are having trouble growing up. it's okay. we all are. but i really think it's about time to put this 80's thing to rest. with luck, we'll be around for forty, fifty more years, and i, for one, don't want to spend all that time thinking about my childhood. i'm actually kind of curious to see what comes next...

The Truth

wampire veekend

frontman ezra koenig shows signs of wear and tear in this interview. i can't quite put my finger on why i find it interesting. i guess it would be this (and i am as guilty of this as perhaps anyone on the planet): writing songs against elitism, constantly reiterating that you are not one of those "elitists", that people who think you are are wrong, these are essentially elitist activities. is it such a coincidence that a band so explicitly concerned with elitism would end up being called elitists themselves? the only people who seem to be bothered by "elitism" as a topic, or an accusation, are themselves wealthy and educated; but in their hatred of elitism they actually find a way to think themselves better than all the wealthy, educated people who don't bother to worry about such things. the elite among the elite. love this independent music.

"With the first album, I noticed some people would never give us the benefit of the doubt about any lyrics that referenced class or education. They would be so offended that a song would be called 'Oxford Comma' that they didn't understand how it's a song about anti-elitism."

and who are these people who refused you the benefit of the doubt? totally missing your "anti-elitism" streak?

"Essentially it's just a bunch of college-educated people trying to compete for who has it tougher, when the truth is none of us had it tough."

oh i see. it's not you who's the phony elitist, it's the people who called you a phony elitist. neat!

were you aware...

that nine of the ten best albums from the last decade came before 2004? this is a sign of a truly brilliant couple years of music, not at all a sign that compiling a list of the best albums of a decade that isn't even over yet is for retards.

seriously, the strokes, radiohead, modest mouse, avalanches... it's high school all over again! to be fair, though, those albums really were the best years of your life.