Paul Shirley is still an idiot...

Back in mid-September, I blogged about a "writer" for ESPN's website named Paul Shirley who had written, at the time, an article which very dubiously criticized the most sacred of all my cows: The Beatles...

Well now, it appears the esteemed Mr. Shirley is no longer in the employ of ESPN, which just fired him in light of some rather heinous commentary he made recently on the tragic situation in Haiti.

As always, I was right.

(BYAH!)

Paul Shirley is an Idiot.

I may have missed the memo on this one, but since when are career journeyman pro basketball players--who have played for thirteen different teams, mind you--entitled to share their dubious opinions about music with millions of impressionable sports fans?!

Get a load of the crap that Paul Shirley just passed off as journalism in a guest piece he just wrote for ESPN.com. In it, the venerable Mr. Shirley makes his case that--drumroll, please...The Beatles are over-rated. A few of his talking points:

1. The Beatles are not better, by any measure, than The Guess Who, Fleetwood Mac, The Rolling Stones, or Creedence Clearwater Revival.
   
   
2. U2's album, "Achtung Baby" is superior to The Beatles' "Abbey Road". Which, by not too strechy an extension on my part, would seem to mean, to me at least, that "The Joshua Tree" ranks, somehow, somewhere below "Achtung Baby" as well.
   
   
3. Dean Koontz is a better writer than Bram Stoker because he's less boring.
   
   
4. The song "Eleanor Rigby", which Shirley labels as--and I quote--'primitive hackings,' is an inferior piece of music to Guns N' Roses' "November Rain" because the latter was released during the writer's lifetime and the former was not.
   
   
5. All Beatles fans born after the band's breakup are simply poseurs using the band's music (and mystique) as social currency to seem cool. [Ed. note: this is Shirley's least retarded point and I would only disagree with the "all" part.]
   
   
6. Oasis is better than the Beatles.

I mean, really...this asshole GOT PAID to write that shit. Just click the link and read the story...Shirley's retardation is on full display, courtesy of ESPN.com.

As for me, I'm off to find Ike Austin to see what he thinks about Radiohead's oeuvre. I'm sure you're all dying to know.

On facebook ad-targeting...

Rachel Beckman's hilariously kvetchy article about finding personally offensive ads on facebook in this morning's Washington Post, Facebook Ads Target You Where It Hurts, was very much on point:

My Facebook page called me fat.

Maybe it's my age, my sex or the fact that it knew I was engaged, but the site decided I was a gal who needed to drop a few pounds. And it wasn't shy about its tactics.

This was not a close friend taking me aside, telling me in gentle tones that she'd noticed I'd put on some weight and was there anything going on in my personal life that I needed to talk about?

Oh, no. Every time I logged in to my home page, Facebook's ads screamed at me with all the subtlety of a drill sergeant: "MUFFIN TOP."

...Beckman goes on for about another page and a half or so, while maintaining her funny throughout, so be sure to read the rest of it. The article even includes a screen-grab of the ridiculous "MUFFIN TOP" ad in question (which is thankfully no longer shown to facebook users, btw.)

But seriously, though: why does facebook continue to insist on sending these ads my way?!?!?!




What part of "very liberal," "book-reading," "beard-grower" didn't they understand?!?!

I already never shave again!

99+55=30

The above picture is a screengrab of the actual chat-room from my fantasy football live-draft that we just finished a couple hours ago; Yale, who is the league commissioner, made at least 2 funnies...

Man, my fantasy roster is STACKED this year. Obviously, it's gonna change a whole lot between now and the end of fantasy playoff time,--and with an L.T./Randy Moss deal between myself and Jake potentially in the works right now, it may change rather soon... Basically, Jake's the biggest Randy Moss devotee I've ever known; he'd walk barefoot through hot coals for #84 #18 #81. Jake luckily [for me] drew the #1 overall pick, and since he was busy out in Portland, conveniently [for me], had LaDainian auto-picked to his team. I took a few gambles, I know: Cotchery was a bit of a reach, but he had 1100 yds. last season--and now has Brett Favre throwing him the ball. Chester Taylor and Ricky Williams are both backups in real life, but play behind a couple guys who have reputations for injuries, so both of them could, great players in their own rights, have great fantasy upside if they ever have to take over for their respective teams. Even though I accidentally drafted Kevin Curtis, whom I didn't know was currently injured, I feel pretty good about my squad's chances right now:

My starters:
QB Donovan McNabb (Eagles)
WR Randy Moss (Patriots)
WR T.J. Houshmandzadeh (Bengals)
RB Frank Gore (49ers)
RB Laurence Maroney (Patriots)
TE Chris Cooley (SKINS)
W/R Edgerrin James (Cardinals)
K Shaun Suisham (SKINS)
DEF Jacksonville

My bench:
QB Jason Campbell (SKINS)
WR Santana Moss (SKINS)
WR Jerricho Cotchery (Jets)
WR Kevin Curtis (Eagles)
RB Chester Taylor (Vikings)
RB Ricky Williams (Dolphins)

Now obviously, everyone else in the league feels pretty good about their chances too, right now...except for Body and Dubs. Their teams will suck on purpose because they actually made joke selections instead of good ones, which may have had to do with the fact that they were bojanglin' drunk and in Korea, where for them it was precisely 1:15 a.m. tomorrow at the time the draft started.

For example, Body (huge Longhorn fan) started out the comedy right with a massive sucker punch to conventional wisdom with his first (#3 overall) pick: Titans quarterback Vince Young, a former Texas player worth, at best, a 3rd rounder. Body then went on to take Redskins rookie tight end Fred Davis with his third round pick simply because that's when Davis went in the real draft last April, but despite the fact I was able to select the Pro Bowl TE who starts over him in real life, Captain Chaos himself, in the fifth round. Body's other gems, besides basing a pick on a guy's sharing a name with the Wendy's guy: using his 5th rounder on Steelers rookie WR Limas Sweed, his 7th rounder on Chiefs rookie RB Jamaal Charles, his 10th rounder on Broncos scrub RB Selvin Young, and his 15th rounder on Buccaneers backup QB Chris Simms. They all played college ball for Texas...

The blind--or in this case, drunk--must have been leading the blind because Dubs, a UVA grad and die-hard fan, followed Body's example and made a few insane, college-team-preference-based draft decisions of his own: Texans QB Matt Schaub in the 2nd, Jets RB Thomas Jones in the 3rd, Steelers TE Heath Miller in the 4th--when Cooley, inarguably a better option at TE, was still available--and Raiders WR Ronald Curry in the 13th round. All were UVA players except Curry, who almost signed a letter of intent there, as a star high school QB 11 years ago, before stiffing them to go to UNC instead. Wahoos hold grudges, apparently.

I continued the trend of blind homer-ism, although I, unlike Dubs and Body, got good value out of mine, as I now have Santana Moss at WR (poised to have a better year than last, still dangerous though he's often over-looked, better offense for his style than Gibbs used) Chris Cooley at TE (what can I say? he's a super-hero), Shuan Suisham as my kicker (starting kicker's stats are usually around the same 100-130 or so in fantasy points terms, so why not go local?) and Jason Campbell at QB (Coach Zorn will prove his mettle as a molder of young QBs and turn this guy into a pro-bowler, mark my words.) I have more Redskins than any other team in the league, but I take my Redskins love seriously; my only real joke of a pick was Ricky Williams...

Speaking of jokes, I think I'm gonna re-name my team "The Campbell Brothers" because of my two quarterbacks: Jason Campbell and Donovan "Soup Ad" McNabb, both of whom happen to also be black.

Anyway, I'm out. It's gorgeous outside right now, in that magically golden time of year when anything, like Andre Carter and Jason Taylor combining for 30 sacks, the Redskins having more pro-bowlers than a hand's worth of fingers, or me not losing in the first round of the fantasy playoffs after dominating my league with an 11-2 record, is possible.

Cheers, gents.

New And Improved!

Howdy folks, just wanted to chime in real quick with a list of things new and improved 'round this way:

• One, obviously, is my beard. Now, even though I might be tooting my own horn, I still don't want to count any unhatched chickens yet, but--I shit you not--I got a short email reply last week from Chris Cooley's blog regarding his beard contest, and I quote:

  This is fantastic growth. We are still giving away some tickets. I will let you know but you are definitely int the running. Thanks

• The right sidebar (it's a little farther this way------> )
  has a few new improvements as well:
  
  
• In the "I didn't even know you could do that until just now" department of A Lonely Ghost, I have finally added post-labels to all my old posts. Now stuff I write here is searchable by category or topic, a few of which I'll translate here:
  
  
• Youtube = net video from sites that aren't necessarily youtube.com, but often are. Saturday mix series = any music mix I post, which sometimes happens on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays too. FSE = any song I deem to be a "favorite song ever" of mine, usually accompanied by its lyrics, but not always. PPP = Points, Lines & Polygons and the rest is self-explanatory.
  
  
• Wanted to give a few shout outs to some of the newest members of the ALG blogroll, the first of which is Appetite For Equal Rights, a blog for the modern feminist. As a human being who doesn't believe people deserve to be treated better or worse than others based on factors outside of their control, like whether or not they have an X chromosome or a Y chromosome, I found a lot to like on this website. Further, as someone who enjoys bashing Rush Limbaugh's assholery whenever possible, which is often, their post on his reaction to the Edwards scandal a couple days ago was particularly enraging. Right on...
  
  
• Keep It On The B-Side is, yes, you guessed it, a music blog. It's run by a fellow South Lakes High grad and current resident of the city of angels, Ethan Z. He's writes insightful stuff and you can tell he's got a real, deep love for music. Especially liked his take on Okkervil River's last album, and not simply because I adore the band myself.
  
  
• The Stone's Colossal Dream is a blog I found randomly while searching for Robley Wilson's "I Wish In The City Of Your Heart" so I could re-post it about a month back. So obviously, the lady--her name's Tania Rochelle--likes poetry, so I kept going back. Tania's interested in a wide variety of topics, turns out, so that's a bonus too. Couple weeks ago she had a running couple of fascinating posts about the nature and origins of the yellow ribbon symbol and what else, besides war of course, it means or has meant in our American lexicon of symbols.

Check out the links, lemme know what ya thinks.

Assorted Odds N Ends

Been having trouble sleeping tonight/this morning--partly on my own account, partly on others', and partly on the internet's account:

1.) LeRoi Moore (the mostly baritone saxophone player) of the Dave Matthews band died at the age of 46. Even though I sort of hate Dave's schtick, as a former (tenor--it's true!) saxophonist I gotta give love to the guy who was, for basically my entire life, the biggest public face of the fourth instrument I ever played to the point of love. I'll miss you, LeRoi.

2.) The RIAA-Matrix appears to have taken muxtape.com down indefinitely. Non-non-heinous!

3.) Andrew W. directed me towards a self-dubbed Texas "progressive bluegrass" group called Cadillac Sky, about whom yesterday's WaPo's Style section had some nice things to say.

3b.) You can stream their new album "Gravity's Our Enemy" in its entirety right here on CMT's website. My personal favorite songs of the bunch are, in complete agreement with the Post, "Baby Don't Cry," which is pretty titularly self-explanatory, and "Bible By The Bed," a dark story-song about domestic violence and its revenge. Most of the rest of the tunes, disappointingly, I found a little too clean and over-produced for my taste, but hey--that's Nashville for ya.

4.) Gosh...only 3 items so far and I've already mentioned the Dave Matthews Band, "progressive bluegrass," and hot-linked to the Country Music Channel. 18 year-old me would definitely kick my ass if he was around to see this outrageous guff; but, then again, 25 year-old me would probably just give him a joint and tell myself to chill.

4b.) Speaking of chilling, damn I miss someone...I fear I am becoming my blog's title.

5.) Umm, hey Kaiser Chiefs, I don't think Noel Gallagher really needed your help to drum up publicity for Oasis' first new album in, like, 3 years. Besides, I've heard the new KC album anyhow, and it certifiably blows trite, repetitious donkey dicks. Oh, and Nick: Noel's 41--not 50. Wanker.

6.) I have a random youtube-friend from Spain who does a really swell cover of Cat Power's "Good Woman," which I had actually posted the original of in my ALG Devastation mix last April:



7.) Only two more videos for this post, I swear! If you know me, you know that I love this song, which I'm posting not for redundancy's sake, but for comparative purposes which you'll understand after you see the promised third video. As far as I know, "Rocky Top" is the only state song about moonshine:




8.) These little Korean English-immersion students singing "Rocky Top" in their classroom is one of the cutest things I've seen online since that smiley-faced baby who did that serious face thing on command:




And with that, I'm out. Happy hump-day, folks!

Five True Things About The Parks

#1 - The Parks are a very young, very raw-in-a-very-good-way band from Dublin.

#2 - Their myspace page has a good earful of their rock tunes on it.

#3 - Sometime between September 12-14, they're gonna be playing a festival of so-called "indie" Irish bands called "Hard Working Class Heroes" in Dublin along with 86 of their fellow Irish-icians/bands.

#4 - The HWCH website has a free MP3 of The Parks' song "Nothing Comes From Nothing," but it's hidden under a couple clicks and frames so, for everyone's convenience, I'm hot-linking the track here.

#5 - Assuming they don't lose their mojo somehow or clean up their sound too much or just go off to University, pencil The Parks in for a top-25 album-of-the-year in...let's say...2010.


Anybody unbusy the second week of September??

As promised, time to whine about Hillary('s supporters)

Let me first preface the following rant: I am actually fond of Hillary Clinton; it's her supporters who scare me.

This quote, from a CNN.com article, sums up why:

"I love her and will vote for her in 2012, but it's McCain all the way now," wrote one [of Clinton's supporters] within moments of the New York senator's [farewell] address.

Polls are showing, in Ohio, for example, that over 25% of Clinton's supporters plan on voting for McCain instead of Obama; in Florida, that figure is more than 33%.

Which completely baffles me because... Hillary. agrees. with. Barack. on. (almost) every. single. issue.

Health care, ending the Iraq war, gay rights, women's reproductive rights, repealing Bush's tax cuts, etc: the differences between the two Democratic campaigns' respective platforms are negligible at worst. The differences between the Democratic platforms and Senator McCain's platform are MONUMENTAL. As Senator Clinton expressed in her brilliant final campaign speech:

"Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president, and I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort."

Alas, huge groups of Hillary's supporters would seemingly rather help elect John McCain to the White House--likely handing an unbreakable 20+ year Supreme Court majority to the conservatives, possibly overturning Roe v. Wade, unnecessarily prolonging the senseless death and destruction in Iraq, greatly increasing the likelihood of an attack on Iran, and essentially preserving (not erasing) the worst of Bush's legacies--than ensure we install a similar progressive candidate to their own, whose only fault in their eyes is that he lacks a vagina. (Or is black?)

Get real people, this shit is serious.

Streeter Seidel Wants You To Comment On My Blog!

After 2 iPhone-related whine rejections, I finally made it onto whitewhine:



I'm very pleased with myself at the moment, but I'd be even more pleased if you--yes, you--would try to remedy your non-comment-leaving ways. Then I could move on to more important things, like whining about Hillary Clinton...

It feels like a family member

From Mike Wise's write-up in the Post: "Yet on the day Sean Taylor was shot, there was nothing wrong with believing in a kid's will to live. A few minutes past 7 p.m., that's all that mattered."

From some guy who posts on the single most most visited webpage of my last 7 years, extremeskins.com, the above picture (enlarge to read...) quoted for truth:

What.The.Fuck.

Sean Taylor, probably my favorite Redskin, one of the baddest-ass players in the NFL, has just been shot.

What.The.Fuck.

This shiz is awesome

emusic had an advance (officially out next week) of the new album, Escondido Dreams, by the Vancouver Jazz trio Wilson/Lee/Bentley.

panpot said it was good so just now I downloaded it.

And it's fucking brilliant so far.

"Well fuck you, too."

Viewer Voices: Where We Respond To The Opinions Of Our Uninformed Viewers

oh yea, before I forget...

A paragraph ripped from an excellent months-old post on my friend Andrew's blog (emboldened by me):

"Here's some hardcore, factual proof that being gay is not a choice: under no circumstance, ever, would I have decided to alienate myself from a huge chunk of the population. I would never have chosen to live this alternative lifestyle (god I hate that word). As much as I am now fully comfortable in my own skin, at least for the most part, I still think that if I could I would go back in time, talk to myself and say, "You're facing a big decision. Do you really want to be gay?" I would’ve talked myself out of it. After all, it’s not exactly an impulse buy..."