Indianapolis Star Sends Purdue Packing with Style

It has always been observed though never overtly stated, the Indianapolis Star doesn't really give a shit about Purdue University athletics.

The Star has always given Purdue short shrift, more often focusing on Indiana University, a fact most Purdue fans understand and accept. IU is closer geographically to Indianapolis (by 10 miles!), there are more IU graduates in Indianapolis, and there are definitely more IU fans in Indianapolis (mainly because so many non-matriculating citizens fall in step with Bobby Knight U). The IU bias is a fact of life in central Indiana.

The Star has recently decided to no longer pay a beat writer to cover Purdue sports, instead pulling stories from the Lafayette Journal & Courier, a paper right on top of Purdue's campus and owned by the same parent company, Gannett. This makes solid business sense and most Purdue fans welcomed the better/hometown coverage we're supposed to get.

Until that coverage change takes over, the Star will go on treating Purdue as if it's some bastard step-child and get this, IU isn't even involved in the story. Take a look at today's front page.
Obviously, no story is bigger than two guys who have played together their entire lives being drafted 1st and 4th. Oden and Conley deserve the publicity. The third picture is of Duke's Josh McRoberts who somehow is now on par with Oden and Conley because he was born in an Indianapolis suburb.

Oh yeah, there's that tiny photo of Purdue's Carl Landry who was also drafted...six picks ahead of McRoberts. Talk about a slap in the face. "We'll run your photo, but only if it's one quarter the size of the other guys. You want respect, go get it from your own newspaper."

Sure, they're doing a story about Indianapolis owning this draft, right? Too bad McRoberts only gets mentioned once in the article and only to point out he played on the same travel team and in the same conference as Oden and Conley in high school.

Then we come to the two articles buried on page D-7 of the sports section.

Landry and McRoberts get equal ink when it comes to words, but McRoberts gets a huge Associated Press photo as well. Never mind that Landry was listed as the top power forward at the pre-draft camp. His presence in this edition must have been such a burden. He's an afterthought, who just happened to play in the state of Indiana. "I guess we've got to cover him till that damn new contract kicks in."

I know that ultimately this whining is just that, petty whining at its best. But do you have to run the miniature picture on the front page? Why even go through the trouble? He was drafted in the second round. That makes him irrelevant, right?

I just think Landry deserves better considering most of this season's coverage of Purdue centered around his All Big Ten play and leadership helping resurrect the team back into the NCAA tournament. Landry shouldn't feel too bad. Imagine going through life with the name Stanko Barac like the Pacers draftee.

This was just the Indianapolis Star's way of telling Purdue, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out."

Why I Love....

"Fox on the Run" by Sweet: the first installment in what may or may not be an ongoing series detailing things I enjoy for no reasonable reason.

Supposedly smell is the one sense tied most to memory. You catch a whiff of mustard and you're instantly whisked away to the time your dad scored bleacher seats at Wrigley and some drunk dork from Champaign puked all over your hotdog. Who cares? You caught an Andre Dawson homerun ball.

It's true, the smell of Tide detergent transports me to some bygone utopia, but more often than not my memories are tied to songs and sounds. This may be the underlying cause of my affinty for Wes Anderson movies, either way I'm constantly listening for the soundtrack to my daily existence.

Thereby, it would come as a shock to most folks akin to my musical tastes to discover that I can't get enough of Sweet's "Fox on the Run." The pop-ready, synth-heavy, glam anthem straight out of 1975 tries to masquerade as edgy and in-your-face but in fact is so sing-along-able I can see my Mom and toddler nephews bopping to the chorus of "Fox on the run/ you scream and everybody comes a'runnin'/ take a run and hide yourself away/ Fox-y ON THE RUN!"

My affection for this jilted rock-out is firmly rooted in the two years I spent working in the soul-crushing cul-de-sac of a bank lobby. I couldn't have lasted much longer than two weeks without my coworker Barb's insistance on listening to the oldies station that inevitably piped "Fox on the Run" at least once a day. It wasn't the only song I fell in love with - in fact, I would drop any customer like a sack of potatoes to crank Elvis' "Burning Love"- but "Fox on the Run" was antithetical to so many things (myself, good music, bank lobbies) that who couldn't help but love it?

I don't care who you are, you're gonna rock along to anything that touts, "You think you got a pretty face/ But the rest of you is out of place/ You looked alright before (oh - ORE!)" From that point, this three and a half minute opus is all gravy.

And I defy anyone to contradict my assertion that the "Fox on the run/ you scream and everybody runs" melody is the secondary music used on Comedy Central's The Daily Show. We all know the main title song is "Dog on Fire" by Bob Mould, but it seems the music used to carry the show into and out of commercial breaks in each episode bears a shocking resemblance to this post's focus.

It's a succulent auditory adventure, and I'm not a bit ashamed to admit I revel in its simplicity and rockability. And as if you needed any context to the packaged, pander to the masses land this emerged from, have a look below.

The googly-eyed shenanigans of that guitar player will no doubt insure "everybody comes a'runnin." Fuh-Foxy!

Here's Your Infinite Sadness

Apparently it wasn't enough for Billy Corgan to simply masquerade his new band as a reunited version of the Smashing Pumpkins. ("The Pumpkins are back! I mean, we don't have Iha or D'arcy, but we've got Billy and the drummer who came crawling back after Billy took the moral high ground and 'fired' him after that keyboardist OD'd!") But I digress. Here's a charming tale of how they plan to sell their "comeback" album.

Best Buy and Target each get a version with an exclusive bonus track. So does iTunes. Like, a different one for each. Everybody else gets the regular version with no bonus tracks. So if you want all of the bonus tracks, you have to buy an album at Best Buy, an album at Target, and an album at iTunes.

The oddest thing to me in looking at those four tracklists is the Best Buy version - where the bonus track isn't just tacked onto the end (which is an increasingly common iTunes stunt that I don't have a particular problem with, because you can still listen to the album in any order you choose.) The Best Buy bonus song is track 9 of 13, which just seems very odd to me in the course of actually sequencing an album to make it flow. It's completely different from tacking something on to the end of the album, and it puzzles me for reasons I can't fully articulate.

So it looks like they're putting out four different versions of the album, right? Oh if only. I did a little snooping and discovered that there will actually be twelve different versions of the album worldwide. TWELVE!

In actuality, you can put out 50 different versions for all I care. If your fans are stupid enough to swallow the nonsense of buying multiple copies of an album in each cover with each bonus track, then more power to you. And the fact is that the bonus tracks will float around online, so if people really want to hear them, they can do it. But the distribution method of screwing over independent record stores is complete bullshit. You could at least ship the different bonus track versions around, instead of going out of your way to force people to buy the album at Best Buy or Target instead of an actual record store.

It makes you wonder if Billy Corgan ever received the age old advice of "Don't shit where you eat." Dinner is served!

Modern Life

I was driving to SuperTarget this afternoon in search of spiral appetizers for a soiree my wife was hosting when a sad realization crept cross my cerebrum.

As I was playing a mix-CD in the Survival Car, "Ana Ng" by They Might Be Giants was waning with what is really an excessive amount of choruses.

I knew full well what song was next on the playlist - I made the damn CD - but after reaching out to advance to the next song, my hand recoiled to hear the fading moments of "Ana Ng." Did I really want to here the chorus yet another time? No. Was I expecting to run across some audio nugget heretofore unheard? Not at all. I was padding my numbers.

In the past year or so, I've fully given myself to iTunes, though I'm still not the owner of an iPod. I've had most of my musical library digitally ensconsend as mp3's and I hardly ever juggle CD's in my home but rather plug away at the laptop with iTunes humming on shuffle.

I've recently gone for the jukebox layout that allows me to trapse through the myriad of album covers when choosing my songs, but mostly I let shuffle run until I have a hankerin' for Jim Reeves' "He'll Have to Go" or Ozma's "Gameover." Either way, each track gets its full length of playtime, not for the purity of songs as the artist intended but rather my own posterity. One wouldn't want to keel over tomorrow and leave the world thinking you loved Meatloaf's "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad."

You see, iTunes tracks the Top 25 Most Played and I have been very reticent in any attempt to skew the statistics. However, the glitch in the system is that iTunes only counts songs that reach the final second of their recording. Sure you can fast forward - how VHS of me - and fool iTunes into thinking you really listened to all 6:51 of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah," but eventually the truth comes out. Therefore, once a song starts I must see it through to fruition or forever let it be lost in the statistical ether.

One obvious victim of this practice is the end of CD "hidden track." Case in point, "Slide Show" by Travis. The actual song - which may or may not have been recorded in the back of a car - is actually a 18:31 track featuring 3 unreleased songs. Who really has time for four minutes of silence when playing blackjack online? The other victims are those bands stringing together multiple narratives Pink Floyd style. Say maybe, the Decemberists. "The Crane Wife 1 & 2" is the most depressing victim of these number crunches. I absolutely love part 1, yet iTunes thinks I've only listened to the song 6 times since its release (the actual plays near 4,000).

I guess I'll be struck impotent and uable to jump to the next song unless I want to unseat my current top played laureate, The La's with "There She Goes."

Until then, I'll be wondering how long until I download a CD in lieu of buying its jewel-cased bastard cousin.

The Jester Will No Longer Need To Borrow Your Coat

We live in a "What have you done for me lately?" world. Present-day mediocrity or failure can often obscure past glories. Just ask Kelly Clarkson.

Last night, this reality hit me once again when I was watching the AFI's special on the 100 Greatest Films of All Time. The list originally came out 10 years ago, so last night's unveiling was designed to account not only for movies released in the last decade, but also adjust for shifting opinions on the original 100 films since the initial list was unveiled.

As the updated list was revealed, one fact became clear to me. James Dean has clearly dropped the ball over the last decade.

In 1996, two of Dean's three films were on the list. "Rebel Without a Cause" was firmly planted at #59, and "Giant" was respectably at #82. On this year's list, both films were nowhere to be seen. The message seems to be clear - James Dean has slacked off the past decade and his films have been hurt as a result. The same can apparently be said for Mozart, as "Amadeus" was also left off the list, despite coming in at #53 in 1996. Quit resting on your laurels, Wolfie. It's like you haven't done anything worthwhile since the Requiem.

Naturally, to balance out the free fallers, there were some quick risers on the list as well. "Vertigo" flew from #61 to #9 in the past decade, and "Raging Bull" skyrocketed from #24 all the way to #4 with a bullet last night. Eat that, Schindler's List! How's that right hook taste, Lawrence of Arabia? You pansy.

Among new entries, the most baffling addition to the list had to be "The Sixth Sense," or as I like to call it, "The movie everyone in America saw in 1999, raved about, and then after thinking about it for a few minutes, realized it was actually kinda cheesy and probably not worth watching again." It inexplicably appeared at #89, ahead of "The French Connection," "Pulp Fiction," and "Goodfellas." It even beat out "Do the Right Thing." As if Spike Lee needed anything else to be pissed about.

On a related note, kudos to George Lopez for using his clout to make sure "Porky's" gets it's due in the litany of American cinema. However, if Lopez had done his homework, he would know that "Porky's" is a Canadian film, and therefore ineligible to appear on the list. Were it not for that technicality, I think it's safe to assume "Ben-Hur" would definitely have been bumped from it's spot at #100.