The collected thoughts of sportswriter, bookworm, & food critic Keith Law
New first-round projection is up. As I noted in the comments there and on Twitter, I heard after it was posted that the Rockies are “heavy heavy” on Matt Hobgood for one of their two picks.
Radio hit on Baseball Tonight this evening.
UPDATE they just posted my NYC radio hit with Seth Everett.
Ticket to Ride is a very cool game, by the way. I need to update that boardgames post, once I survive the draft.
Live at 3:20 pm EDT.
Last mental_floss quiz should be posted at 5 pm today.
Today’s mental_floss quiz: Can you name the fifteen departments run by the Secretaries in the US Cabinet?
Anyway, this is kind of stupid but I’m going to mention it anyway because it annoys me. The University of New Mexico has a reliever named Cole White with a big arm and poor command, and he’ll be drafted somewhere in the top 5-6 rounds. When that happens, you will hear something, somewhere, about how he was nominated for a Grammy, because that’s what it says on his bio page on UNM’s athletics site.
It is also false. Cole White was never nominated for a Grammy, which is easy to prove since Grammy nominations are announced publicly every year. I contacted UNM’s media relations department in late April, asking them to clarify, and was told: “As we dug deeper into it, he ended up in the top 100 for Best Rock Song.”
So I called NARAS and asked them if they issue any sort of top 100 rankings for award categories, and was told no. As it turns out, Cole White wrote a song that his former band recorded, and their record label submitted it to NARAS so that it could be considered for the ballot, but it was not nominated or otherwise recognized for anything other than the fact that it was released commercially and met the general requirements for nomination. His song was one of 15,000 entries on the overall ballot from which the nominees are eventually chosen.
I notified UNM’s media relations department that this was all incorrect on April 29th, and did receive a reply, but they haven’t corrected it on the site, which means the inaccuracy will be repeated once White is drafted and/or signed. I was hoping UNM would just fix it and the story would go away, but a month is probably sufficient grace period for them to fix the error, and it annoys me tremendously that they haven’t. ESPN.com wasn’t interested in the story – and I agree with them, as it really is small potatoes – but I feel like a mistake like that, however innocent, should be corrected.
So today mental_floss is running the quiz that I suggested to them back in April, which led to the idea of a whole week of Klaw quizzes: Can you name the six #1 hits authored by Prince?
To celebrate this, here’s a countdown of my twenty favorite Prince songs, which I recommend you skip until you’ve tried the quiz. Prince completists out there will probably notice that all but one of these songs were released as singles; in part this is because I am generally a singles guy instead of a deep tracks guy, in part because I think deep tracks guys are usually pretentious boobs, and in part because my first introduction to early Prince came from The Hits
(EDIT: Why 21? Because somehow I deleted “Raspberry Beret” when reordering songs, didn’t notice it, and added a 20th song before posting. Of course, I wrote the whole thing two weeks ago, so I’m just guessing that that’s what I did.)
21. “Partyman.” Prince had a very long peak, but it wasn’t a steady one; the late ’80s were relatively fallow for him and he didn’t bounce back all the way until Diamonds and Pearls in 1991. The video for “Partyman” starred a relatively unknown Dutch sax player named Candy Dulfer, who then had a crossover pop hit called “Lily Was Here” a year later.
20. “Little Red Corvette.” I wonder what Prince song has actually received the most airplay over the years – it seems like “Corvette” is a staple of eighties stations the way that Visage’s “Fade to Grey” is de rigueur for ’80s new wave compilations. It’s a good enough song, with lyrics that walk the line between clever and all-right-we-get-it-everything-is-about-sex, which kind of sums up 64% of the songs Prince recorded, with the other 36% just about sex without any of the metaphors.
19. “Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” Prince was pretty big on the synth early in his career, before the New Wave crowd took it and played it directly into the ground. This was one of Prince’s catchier synth hooks; “When You Were Mine” has better lyrics (“You didn’t have the decency to change the sheets”), but he sounds like he recorded his vocals with a towel stuffed in his mouth.
18. “I Wanna Be Your Lover.” His first US top 40 pop hit, with 28 more to follow. I wonder how many programmers and listeners realized what exactly Prince was saying in the chorus.
17. “Black Sweat.” I think this is the only post-name-change song on the list; it sounds a lot like early Prince with better production values and a very catchy drum machine riff behind it. It’s less-is-more music.
16. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man.” Ten thirty-five on a lonely Friday night.
15. “Sign O’ the Times.” Hated this song when it came out, because it was so strange. Now I like it, because it’s so strange. Prince was never big on social commentary, at least not in songs he released as singles, but “Sign” is entirely about it, and one of the first mainstream songs to talk about AIDS.
14. “Thieves in the Temple.” Honestly, if it wasn’t for this song, I’m sure Prince could propose that we all forget that Graffiti Bridge ever happened and get a unanimous “amen” from the congregation.
13. “1999.” Might not have made my list at all on January 1, 2000, because I was so damn sick of it.
12. “Let’s Go Crazy.” Dearly beloved … Purple Rain was Prince’s breakthrough, and I’d like to think the main reason is that he veered so much farther into rock territory than he ever had before. He was already working his own wide-ranging style of fusion, and by assimilating a big chunk of not just rock but distorted guitar-driven rock, he created something pretty amazing that no one has been able to match since then. Oh, and this wasn’t even the best song on the album.
11. “Delirious.” Great song that sounds kind of dated now. It’s begging for a remake that replaces the little Casiotone synthesizer he used on the original track with some guitar.
10. “U Got the Look.” Prince invents text messaging, with the help of the hey-she-got-kinda-hot Sheena Easton.
9. “Alphabet St.” Perhaps better in the version released as a single, without the embarrassing rap from “Kat,” although for embarrassing it’s tough to top “Dead on It” from The Black Album. Also, getting “Alphabet St.” as a single meant that you didn’t have to buy Lovesexy and end up with one of the more ill-advised album covers in music history. (This was the most ill-advised cover in music history. I warned you, but you’re going to click anyway.)
8. “Pope.” I think this is the only B-side on the list – it was unreleased before The Hits came out. Very catchy, with humorous lyrics and that same less-is-more feel that a lot of Prince’s best songs have. It’s poppy by Prince standards.
7. “Raspberry Beret.” My wife was floored when I told her this wasn’t one of Prince’s #1 songs. I’ve often wondered if this song gave Ian Broudie the idea to call his side project the Lightning Seeds (a mondegreen from the line “thunder drowns out what the lightning sees”). And no, I don’t think the urban legend about “in through the out door” is true.
6. “Sexy MF.” Not one you’re going to hear on the radio any time soon. Sort of a funky NPG jam session with plenty of sexual innuendo and a syncopated beat that feels like an odd time signature or a record that keeps jumping ahead. I could argue for any song from here on for #1.
5. “When Doves Cry.” Hell of a guitar intro, brilliant lyrics, and no bass line whatsoever.
4. “Soft & Wet.” This was actually Prince’s first single, according to Wikipedia, but I’ve never heard it on the radio. The title gives you a fairly clear indication of what the song is about, and what almost every song Prince recorded in the first four or five years of his career was about. It’s dated with the heavy synth use – almost funk meets new wave – but the hook is sharp. Great first line, too, although that might be the reason I’ve never heard it on the radio.
3. “7.” No one seems to know to what seven people the song refers, but the mystical lyrics and catchy chorus made it kind of a surprise hit. Of course, in the U.S., it peaked at #7.
2. “Gett Off.” One of the best opening stanzas to any song, ever: “How can I put this in a way so as not to offend or unnerve/But there’s a rumor going around that you ain’t been gettin’ served/They say that you ain’t you know what in baby who knows how long/It’s hard for me to say what’s right when all I wanna do is wrong.” The song was sort of a return to Prince’s glory days of sex-driven funk, but despite serving as the first single off the Diamonds and Pearls album, it didn’t make a dent in the singles charts until the album’s second single, “Cream,” went to #1.
1. “Kiss.” Iconic? Anthemic? Timeless. There may be no better exemplar of less is more in music.
Tuesday night’s hit on AllNight.
Today’s hit on The Herd. That was a really fun bit, at least for me.
Today’s chat transcript.
I’m waiting to hear from mental_floss about today’s quiz – might have been pushed back to tomorrow.
Sorry for the lack of action over here – I’m tied up writing reports and making phone calls. I’ve even ground to a halt in Gone With the Wind.
Klawchat tomorrow will be at 1:30 pm EDT and I’ll probably have to stop at 2:30.
Today’s quiz on mental_floss is on The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Interesting piece on why more roads may not reduce traffic.
My updated top 100 ranking for this year’s draft is up. My first-round projection will be up later tonight is up now as well.
And I’m on mental_floss as a guest quizmaster for the week. After I sent them a suggestion for a “Name X in Y” quiz, they actually asked me to write four more and make a big thing of it. I’m not sure if this represents slumming for me or for them, but the first quiz, on geography is up now: Can you name the ten countries in ASEAN? There will also be quizzes on baseball, books, and music, but I couldn’t come up with a viable one for food (at least not in the “Name X in Y” format), so the fifth one is on politics.
I’ll also be on AllNight tonight with Jason Smith, although we tape it before the show so I don’t know exactly when it’ll air.
Before I get to the eats:
* ESPNEWS hit coming up in a few minutes here at 3:40 pm EDT. It’s via phone.
* I filed a revised top 100 last week but it was never posted. A revised revised top 100 will go up on the draft blog tomorrow.
* Erik over at FutureRedbirds has a long and well-researched post on drafting prep pitchers in the first round. I don’t agree with his conclusions – among other reasons, I think his dataset is too old – but it is well worth your time.
* Liza Minnelli might be the next lead singer of Queen.
I only hit two new spots this trip, in part because I wanted to go back to two places where I ate last year (Jim n Nick’s and Bogues), and in part because I only ate one meal after breakfast on each of the two days of the tournament. There’s a Publix right up the road from Regions Park where I could grab yogurt and fruit to tide me over, and really, a pulled pork sandwich at Jim n Nick’s with a side of collard greens was enough to keep me full for hours.
I tried two new restaurants for breakfast. The better of the two is Edgar’s, a bakery that I guess only recently added a full breakfast menu, with everything made to order. I went with the usual EMPT, and oddly enough, the T wasn’t so hot but the EMP parts were excellent; the breakfast potatoes were small red potatoes, parboiled, then sauteed with onions and herbs (rosemary and thyme, I think), and, for once, they actually had enough salt on them. The biscuit was inedible; it was more of a biscuit-cake than a soft, Southern-style biscuit, so I bought a blueberry scone for the road. The scone was solid-average, which is weird given how bad the biscuit was, since the difference between a biscuit and a scone is minimal. They had a wide selection of cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and muffins, with two or three varieties of scones and a few other baked goods, while the breakfast menu includes breadier fare like French toast. They get bonus points for some seriously high-end bagged tea.
Klingler’s is a German bakery with a breakfast menu that is heavier on the, um, heavier fare. I went with the pecan waffle, because I find waffles very hard to resist; it tasted of pecans and a little bit of butter, but it was still on the heavy side for a Belgian-style waffle. (Belgian waffles should be light and airy with a crisp exterior and usually contain whipped egg whites to provide that lift.) The side sausage was a smoked bratwurst, split in half and grilled, kind of spicy and savory for a breakfast sausage. It was adequate but unremarkable, and I’d rather drive the extra five minutes or so each way to eat at Edgar’s.
There will be a Klawchat today at 1 pm EDT … as far as I know, it’s the first in-flight ESPN chat, as I am currently somewhere over South Carolina.
Sorry for the lack of posts this week, but I’ve been slammed with draft content and travel. I do have some fun stuff coming up next week, but I’ll hold off on announcing any of it till later.
You’re probably not familiar with the name Edna Ferber – I wasn’t until I saw it on the list of winners of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel – but you’ve probably heard of her work by way of the movies. She wrote the novels behind the films Showboat, Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, and Giant, the last perhaps more notorious for being James Dean’s last work than for anything else. So Big
So Big is the story of a mother and a son, starting from the mother’s sudden thrusting into the world after her father’s sudden (and somewhat comical) death and running into the son’s late twenties and early thirties. The mother, Selina Peake, is admonished by her father that life is an adventure if you get after it, but lets life lead her along until she’s forced to take the reins, after which she shows herself as a woman of spirit and initiative:
Youth was gone, but she had health, courage; a boy of nine; twenty-five acres of wornout farm land; dwelling and out-houses in a bad state of repair; and a gay adventuresome spirit that was never to die, though it led her into curious places and she often found, at the end, only a trackless waste from which she had to retrace her steps painfully. But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.*
*I’m about 90% certain I read a passage similar to this one that used almost identical wording at the end in Lonesome Dove, used to describe Clara, but of course, I didn’t write down the page number and I’m not likely to find it by skimming through a 900-page book. If any of you choose to tackle that tome in the future, keep an eye out a phrase like “Life has no weapons against a woman like that.”
Selina, widowed with her young son Dirk (nicknamed “Sobig” after the “How big is baby?” game played with him as an infant), takes over the family farm and, with the help of the novel’s one substantial coincidence, carves out a living and eventually a life for the two of them, making Dirk’s well-being her driving force, ensuring that he receives an education and can start life with the advantages she lacked. It is, along those lines, a bit of a love story in the way that Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is – a parent, alone, who will do anything for his/her son.
Somewhere past the novel’s midpoint, the focus shifts from Selina to the adult Dirk, first in college, then in his aimless early adulthood both in work and in his personal life. He starts out in a career he likes but finds no success, then in a career in which he finds success but no pleasure. He is good-looking and inadvertently charming, but almost apathetic towards women, with no interest in the type of woman he “should” be seeing:
The Farnham girl was a nice girl. She was the kind of girl one should fall in love with and doesn’t. The Farnham girl was one of the many well-bred Chicago girls of her day and class. Fine, honest, clear-headed, frank, capable, good-looking in an indefinite and unarresting sort of way. Hair-coloured hair, good teeth, good enough eyes, clear skin; sensible medium hands and feet … Her hand met yours firmly – and it was just a hand. At the contact no current darted through you, sending its shaft with a little zing to your heart.
It’s a pleasant read with dry wit like that of the passage about (I found “hair-coloured hair” rather clever) and an incredibly compelling and well-drawn character in Selina, for whom one must root as she faces adversity, although her one big low moment ends prematurely with the aforementioned coincidence (you could even call it a deus ex machina). Dirk is less compelling, by design, although it slows the book’s final third considerably until he meets someone who, more than anything, is spirited like his mother. The book also slowed a bit for me for the unclear theme – what are we looking at here: Selina’s trials? The rise of an independent woman? Her dedication to her son? Her son’s lack of lust for life? The rural/urban divide of Chicago in the early years of the 20th century? I couldn’t tell you; all of the above are present, none is dominant. I like my novels to be about something; this was about many things, but perhaps it was about too many things for a novel so short.
Next up: From the seventh winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel to the second-most recent winner of its successor award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao