Puddles of Myself

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "A Man With A Plan"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:58:22 PDT

Repetition, progress, doubles and encountering yourself.

It never fails. Each season, there’s always an episode of Mad Men that I have trouble really attaching my mind to. I’ll watch the episode (2-3 times), enjoy it (I mean, I enjoy basically every episode of Mad Men), understand the general themes and ideas going on, but I’ll still leave feeling a bit hollow or perplexed. Not necessarily because the episode was difficult or even bad, but just because perhaps something in the episode hasn’t completely resonated with my own life experiences—or my own crazy head ideas.

“A Man With a Plan” was about a variety of things. It was about doubles. It was about repeating yourself. It was about having a plan and having it backfire; it was about not having a plan and having it backfire. It was about how plans and not having plans both eventually don’t matter because sometimes when you wake up in the morning the only news that you receive is news that Robert Kennedy has been shot; or that the police were having a shoot out with two maniacs in Boston. And all of this happens while you’re lying in bed planning out your weekend or deciding you need to take better control of your finances; or it happens while you are drinking coffee and deciding that you really should just let things be and go with the flow a little more.

Let’s take an inventory of the plans that backfired:

-         Don’s plan to control Sylvia
-         Buzz Peterson’s plan to tell off Don and (especially) Roger.
-         Pete’s plan to prove his worth at the Mohawk meeting
-         Ted’s plan to work constructively with Don
-         Megan’s plan to go on another vacation with Don (he isn’t listening)
-         Don’s plan to assert his dominance over Ted

Let’s take an inventory of the freewheeling people that succeeded:

-         Bob Benson and his maybe-but-maybe-not contrived rescue of Joan that results in Joan standing up
           for his place at the company
-         Peggy telling Don to “move forward”
-         Pete telling his mother that it was St. Patrick’s Day so she wouldn’t leave the apartment

As last week’s episode exhibited, there is a fine line between having a plan for your life or your weekends and just freewheeling and ending up where your actions and intellect take you; riding a streak of luck into a job opportunity, a date, or a position of power. Just ask Augie March or young Don Draper. You can make all the plans you want, but nothing in your series of actions can completely determine what will occur in another person’s (very likely a stranger’s or, more painful and mysterious, a friend’s) series of actions. More often than not, you’ll have to cancel that reservation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you should have never made it in the first place. Nothing happens in life without some kind of plan—no matter how vague—behind it. However, it is when we become reliant on plans or our desire to plan things out that things become dangerous. That’s when you start to repeat yourself; and no one wants to do that.

By your senior year of high school and of college, you are usually ready to move on. That’s because after three or four years in the same place, seeing, talking to and avoiding the same people, you want new experiences. When I graduated college, I was relieved, because I felt I had already begun to repeat myself. There was only so much brooding I could do; only so many Stephen Dedalus poses I could strike along the walkways and corridors of my school. I knew that the only way I could continue to enjoy life; to avoid that feeling of repetition was to graduate and move forward out into the real world.

This is obviously an experience shared by most people. In fact, most anyone in my generation has a nagging sense of not wanting to repeat themselves. We get antsy after barely a year in any job because we feel that we aren’t growing, learning, or advancing. We don’t want to sit at our desk for another identical year with the same title and nametag attached to our name. We want new titles, new offices, new responsibilities and challenges—we want newer and better salaries.

Again, there is a fine line with wanting to move forward and with being comfortable with repetition. Very often, repetition breeds intimacy, while constant progress breeds loneliness and hides a fear of death. Repetition is what life is made of and we must embrace that repetition in order to embrace and accept death—because it is only through understanding our routines and our habits and what we have, that we will accept not having.

In the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus, while pontificating on Shakespeare says, “Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-law. But always meeting ourselves.” Repetition is inevitable and so is encountering yourself. We run into ghosts and alternate versions of ourselves all over the place. “Oh, she got married to him, huh? If only I had cared a little more…”

“A Man With a Plan” featured a litany of doubles and callbacks to earlier moments of the series. Let’s do another quick inventory:

-         Don and Ted
-         Roger and Jim Cutler
-         Peggy and Margie
-         Dawn and Don
-         Pete’s philandering and Pete’s father’s philandering
-         Joan showing Peggy her office just as she did in the pilot
-         Harry Crane moving offices again
-         Don exerting dominance by drinking Ted under the table just as he drank Roger under the table in
          “Red in the Face” from Season 1.
-         Joan and Bob have an intimate moment in the hospital like Don and Joan did in “Guy Walks into an
          Advertising Agency”
-         Don orders Sylvia around like he did with Bobbie Barrett in Season Two
-         Roger fires Burt Cooper for a second time
-         Robert Kennedy is assassinated like John Kennedy.
-         Peggy tells Don to “move forward”
-         Don and Ted try to pair margarine brands to their Gilligan Island counterparts.

Most of those examples are not stretches. This episode was all about doubles, alter egos and people repeating the same actions from years before, but just in a slightly different way. And, as we know, Don does not like to repetition; repetition is the same thing as a husband knocking on a front door rather than a sailor getting off a ship—it is not Eros. However, the irony is that this season Don is repeating himself more than ever.

We are always going to be faced with the prospect of repeating ourselves or with moving forward and leaving what we knew behind. However, if you continue to move forward without valuing anything, without taking a moment to repeat yourself and to understand what it is exactly that you are doing and why—and perhaps even appreciating the merits of a certain routine—then you are destined to feel a sense of emptiness and constant dissatisfaction.

The more you move forward, the more you move away from the origin, from the hearth, from where you came from. I’m not saying that in a merely geographical sense—I’m not calling for everyone to stay or move back to their hometowns. I suppose what I’m saying is that doing the next thing isn’t always the answer or the best thing. And neither is having date night every Friday or eating lunch at the same time every day. There is no right answer. There’s always going to be a Master and you’re always going to have to serve somebody. Routines become rituals and can very often be sacred. And variety is the spice of life.

You can do your best to avoid cliché, but you’re going to have a hard time communicating with most people. In order to survive, you’re going to have to get used to ghosts.

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "For Immediate Release"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 07 May 2013 07:19:18 PDT

Fate, opportunity and a Swedish twentysomething.

In a bar last week, a distressed guy was telling me his thoughts on life. He had just finished an affair with a 22-year old Swedish girl and he was distressed because the Swede had confessed to going to bars and making out with strangers; as well as to having a shadowy arrangement with a rich guy who gave her money and whom she may or may not have been sleeping with.

My new friend showed me an exchange of text messages where he had insinuated that the 22-year old Swede was a prostitute. The girl had fired back in frenzied, manic texts in an attempt to defend herself as well as to get some kind of reaction from the guy.

“I’m almost 30,” the guy said to me. “I don’t need to be getting crazy texts from a 22-year old.” He pulled out his phone, showed me a picture of his older brother’s kid, and then despaired over the fact that it was hard to find a good woman in New York, let alone have the chance to start a family.

Then, he told me a story about how last month, after working a week of double shifts at his bar as well as doing freelance illustration work, he had a day off. It was a sunny day so he decided to sit in the park. While he was sitting, a large branch from a tree fell on him, separating his shoulder. Luckily, he had ducked in time and, as he later learned from a doctor, the branch had fallen on the strongest part of his shoulder.

“You’re very lucky,” the doctor had told him. “There’s no ligament damage anywhere. The shoulder could have been separated much worse. You were very close to serious danger.”

The guy then explained how the event had made him think about his life. He said that he had friends that believed in fate and the mystic way of the world and others that just believed that things were a random series of events. The branch falling on his back made him think that he was meant to be on his feet for the next two months, rather than laid up in bed with a serious injury; but he wasn’t entirely sure. It could have just been freak accident.

“All I know is,” he said. “Is that I don’t want to be the guy who is eating dinner alone at forty.”

I told him that if he was this worried about it at twenty-nine, that he would probably be alright. We drank beers at the bar and then the music got loud, people started filing in and we went our separate ways.

****

“For Immediate Release” was the best episode of the sixth season of Mad Men thus far. To recount all of the action would be dizzying and pointless. The episode had all the trademarks of the show when it operates at its peak: the playful “caper”, the unexpected intimate conversation, a revealing speech, humor, adultery, selfishness and that vague ambiguousness that makes you have to watch it again.

Upon watching this episode multiple times, the parts I keep coming back to are the ones that have to do with fate, and whether or not it exists. There are two major mentions or allusions to fate. The first is when Pete says to Don—after he has yelled at Don for firing Jaguar and after Don then uses Roger’s news about Chevy to make it seem like everything worked out—in the SCDP conference room, “Don’t act like you had a plan. You’re Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine!”

The second, and more outright mention of fate, occurs when Don rides the elevator with Dr. Rosen who tells him that he quit his job as a surgeon because his hospital stopped him from giving a heart transplant to a little boy in Houston. “Fate hasn’t chosen me,” Dr Rosen says. “I don’t believe in fate,” Don answers. “You make your own opportunities.”

Despite the fact that Don is the main character of Mad Men, it seems interesting that these two opposite takes on fate, planning and opportunity are both taken in close relation to Don—and his ongoing professional success. Dick Whitman made himself into Don Draper by stealing a man’s identity after he accidentally blew him up in Korea. Then, after leaving his family behind, Dick/Don toiled as a car salesman in California, where Anna Draper found him using her husband’s name. She could have reported him to the police, but she didn’t. Later, in New York, while working at a fur company, Don meets Roger Sterling, forces his amateur advertising work on him, gets him drunk, then shows up to work at Sterling Cooper and lies about Roger offering him a job. And from there, the Don Draper we know was slowly formed—opportunity by opportunity.

However, the majority of those situations are easily and most likely based on luck. Did Don “make his own opportunity” by taking a job at the fur store that Roger Sterling happened to use as the place to buy his red-haired mistress a “getting to know you” gift? Was it “opportunity” that Dick enlisted in the Korean War, was clumsy and then accidentally blew up the real Don Draper?

Most of Don’s success is based on luck and Roger’s landing of the Chevy account as deus ex machina is just another example. Meanwhile, Don’s decisions affect the fates of those around him. Pete and Joan discuss the fact that Don doesn’t even care about money, but his decision to fire Jaguar costs the company the chance at the IPO and costs Joan the chance to have a stake in the company worth a little over one million dollars—a sum that (along with some alcohol) makes her blush. It also takes away whatever remaining dignity she had in the wake of her rendezvous with Herb from Jaguar in “The Other Woman.” And she certainly lets him know it in one of the episode’s best scenes and one of Joan’s most powerful moments in the entire run of the series.

Don’s decision also costs Pete a chance to make another claim in his ongoing quest to be MVP of the agency. However, Pete ends up costing himself when he celebrates at the whorehouse and runs into his father-in-law. I’m not trying to be a prude (to each his own), but that was an “opportunity” that Pete could have avoided. There’s no way he could have known that he would see his father-in-law, but that chance could have been taken away if Pete elected not to go to the whorehouse to celebrate—luck swung poorly for him. And, then, Pete compounds his bad luck with another bad decision when he tells Trudy about her father being in with the “Negro prostitute*.” As Trudy tells Pete, “You’ve made plenty of choices, Peter.” And she’s right. Pete has had his chances—he’s always wanted to be Don, but he just seems to make the more destructive decision (even moreso than Don) and, for the most part, he just doesn’t seem to have luck on his side.

(*Editor’s Note: You have to love Pete accusing Harry of being a racist just last week and then relishing the opportunity to rub the fact that Trudy’s father was using an African American prostitute in Trudy’s face.)

Meanwhile, Peggy may be the unluckiest character in the Mad Men universe. If anyone on the show has truly made her own opportunities, it’s been Peggy. She never slept with Don, she was loyal to Freddy Rumsen when he pissed himself and only begrudgingly accepted her promotion when he was put on leave. She endured hours of abuse and transcendent, subtle moments of drunken bonding with Don and even then had to be pushed by Freddy Rumsen to “make her own opportunity” in negotiating for a new position at CGC. And now, because of Don and Ted’s decision to merge in order to land the Chevy account, it’s as if all her progress has been wiped away. Though, Peggy subtly wishes for that when she tells Abe, in their newly-bought, run-down Upper West Side apartment: “I don’t like change. I want everything to stay the same.”

In the end, fate and opportunity come down to something approximating what Joan says about Don, “because we’re all just rooting you from the sidelines, hoping what you decide is best for our lives.” There are lots of times in life when it seems as though someone else is deciding what is best for us, that no matter how hard we try to “make our own opportunities” that, as Don says, “this game is rigged.” You can work as hard as you want and it can all come to nothing; you can go out with a crazy 22-year old Swede and find out that she is cheating on you and possibly for money; and then a tree branch can fall on your back, almost putting you in a hospital.

You can’t regret those decisions, those “opportunities” you made for yourself. All you can do is learn from them, and realize that most of the time things can be a whole lot worse. There’s always going to be someone else, someone far away, someone nearby, someone with less power than you or someone with more power than you making decisions as well—and there’s a chance that somewhere along the line those decisions can affect you too; change or destroy your own “opportunities,” the things you worked to make for yourself.

So, perhaps, its best to be like Abe and try to make the best of the crappy Upper West Side apartment you’ve just bought, instead of being like Peggy and fantasizing over your boss, wearing a smoking robe and reading Something by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "The Flood"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:30:40 PDT

Tragedy and race in real time.

Last week, Brian Phillips, a writer much better than I am, wrote a piece about the Boston Marathon Bombing. In his article, Phillips focused on our tendency as individuals and as a society to ceaselessly seek out “the facts” in the moments in the immediate wake of a tragedy. At the end of the article, Phillips explains why he feels the need to focus on how we experience a tragedy:

“It's because this is what we all are, at any given moment: threads of half-remembered images and fragments of ideas and intentions that we will or will not carry out, and if we come to a tragedy and are lucky enough not to be its victims, then this is how we come to it. And if we are unlucky and do become its victims, then this is what is most immediately taken away — feelings about horse fights and memories of electrocuted art teachers, angles of sunlight, whatever our experience comprises in that moment, whatever is uniquely in our heads…

“Our flight to fact following a disaster can sometimes feel, and can sometimes be, brave, but I think it can also be a way to sever the trauma from our own points of contact with it, to construct a world where real life encircles but does not quite touch the tragedy. But real life's tendrils go everywhere, and the disaster will never be separate from your experience of the disaster. And knowing that, being conscious of that, may be the key to the empathy without which it is impossible to imagine, much less to honor, the dead.”

The day of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I was at work just like almost everybody else in the world. During that afternoon and the rest of the week, I relentlessly followed the news. I followed every reporting gaffe, every bit of misinformation about the suspects, every story of bravery and courage. I also went running each day and cooked dinner and watched sports and listened to albums that I love and thanked God that I had not had the misfortune to lose a limb. And here we are over two weeks later and now the first active NBA player has announced he’s gay. I was at work when that happened too.

Whenever I see my parents now, I have a habit of picking their brains about current events and pieces of pop culture that they have lived through. I’ll ask my dad what his experience of living through Prince at his peak was like; or I’ll ask my mom about the Iranian hostage crisis or her early impressions of David Letterman. When I ask my mom about an album I love from the 80’s, she’ll think back on it and say, “I wasn’t really paying attention, I was too busy with you kids.” I’m not saying that an album by Prince is anything like living through a tragedy, but what I’m saying is that, as Phillips wrote, we only experience pop culture and current events by what is currently going on in our lives. “I remember when that happened. I was working at…”

We remember what our lives were like when something terrible happens because we were able to keep going—to see what happened next.

****

After the latest episode of Mad Men, “The Flood,” ended I tweeted that the episode was perfect fodder for people who do not like the show to make their case as to why, just as the episode was yet another example of the show’s excellence for those who love it.

I still love Mad Men, but I will admit that Season Six has been slower than usual and that I am still very uncertain where the narrative thrust of the show (no jokes about Don and his proclivity for fucking, alright?) currently lies. The show is no longer about what it once was about (Who is Don Draper?); and it is now about something much deeper, darker and brooding—dealing with time, death and happiness.

For me, this is perfect because those ideas are usually only things I usually ever want to watch a television show about or read a book about. However, for viewers that actually want to know where Don’s arc is going, or don’t want to go through another cycle of his bad decisions or behavior, I understand that this can be frustrating. McNulty constantly made mistakes and reverted to his old, bad habits on The Wire, but he wasn’t the main character on that show and, besides, there was always a Barksdale, a Stanfield, Sobotka or Greek to keep the plot riveting.

“The Flood” dealt with death, specifically in the case of Martin Luther King’s assassination. This is the second episode of Mad Men that has outrightly dealt with assassination—the first being Season Three’s “The Grown Ups,” which saw the Sterling Cooper (pre-SCDP!) universe reeling in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. That episode was generally received poorly, as many felt that the show spent too much time on characters watching TV, listening to the radio and generally just reacting to the news rather than continue the storyline of Season Three, which, the episode being the penultimate one of that season, was in a very important place.

This latest episode has received criticism because it exploited Mad Men’s tendency to avoid racial issues or add a truly prominent black character to its cast until Dawn became Don’s secretary last season. Sure, we had a certain 1960’s African American experience through Carla and though she was a great character in the time she received, Carla wasn’t fully written and was hastily fired by Betty at the end of Season Three anyway.

Arguments have been made supporting Matt Weiner’s decision not put more focus on African American characters (the Mad Men depiction of race is more realistic because integration didn’t happen overnight; Madison Avenue in the 1960’s was not a diverse place; you can’t just gratuitously add a minority character) and opposing it (those first two arguments are completely B.S.). I personally do not mind the way Mad Men handles the race issue. Of course, I’m not black, but Weiner seems to have made a firm decision as to his stance on how his version of this reality operates in relation to actual reality and has stuck with it. The African American characters that were featured in “The Flood” (Dawn, Phyllis, the movie theater usher) all had reactions that felt natural within the confines of the show and within the confines of everyday life: Don fatherly told Dawn to go home like he would with all of his secretaries, but Dawn wanted to stay, not only to avoid facing the tragedy, but also because she has become accustomed to the masochistic and martyrish way a person is supposed to work at a Madison Avenue office (or really any office nowadays); Joan tries to console Dawn, but awkwardly hugs her in the wake of their tense interaction from last week; Peggy is kind and unassuming towards Phyllis because she in some way doesn’t see color and only sees tragedy; Bobby Draper talks to the usher in the simple language of a child, but a phrase like “everybody likes to go to the movies when they’re sad” takes on an extra resonance to the usher (and to Don)—even though Bobby most likely wasn’t trying to console the usher or take some stance on race. It was just something a slightly melancholy rich kid said.

“The Flood” felt like real life in a tragedy. You continue on and you act selfish in your own ways. You get drunk and avoid your real problems. Sometimes, like Don, you prey on the emotions of those that love you by giving speeches about your deep-seated fears and shortcomings that you may or may not be able to change. And then that moment will pass and you’ll wake up and wish you hadn’t revealed that kernel of truth or pushed some kind of emotional brutality onto someone who loves you, because, Jesus, a peaceful man was murdered—or an 8-year old kid was killed by two reckless guys who knew how to build bombs. Or, maybe, a small argument between you and your loved one will turn into some kind of epiphany as to how intimate you and your significant other actually are; your entire relationship taking on a new depth that was perhaps under your nose the whole time.

I thought “The Flood” was great. I loved Don’s speech to Megan. I loved Peggy’s face on the couch behind Abe. I loved the woman that Ginsberg went out with and just Ginsberg himself. I enjoyed Roger’s brief allusion to being “talked off a ledge” on some kind of acid trip; I loved how beautiful Trudy looked when she spoke to Pete on the phone; I loved Betty’s scene with Henry. I love the depth and breadth of emotional interaction and currency that this show has built and continues to build and that can make your head dizzy sometimes as you try to wade through it all.

As an emotional crutch and a way to avoid true intimacy with others, I tend to bury myself in the cultural items I love: songs, albums, movies, novels and television shows. Maybe I’m doing that again here. Maybe I’m just a dumb white guy who isn’t critical enough of race relations on a TV show or is too sheltered and soft to truly understand a tragedy. Or maybe Pete Campbell would call me a racist.

But if you need me, tomorrow I’ll be at work by 9:30. And if it’s not raining, I’ll probably go for a run before I head to the office.

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "To Have and to Hold"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 07:37:46 PDT

On achievement, success and honoring your vows.

I went to Germany on vacation the other week to visit my friend and his wife. I’ve never been to Germany before and the last time I went to Europe was six years ago. Like most people, I tend to be a bit neurotic when it comes to taking stock of my accomplishments and to feeling validated in what I have achieved in life. While I was in Germany, I made a conscious effort to take a break from that: no updating traffic stats on this blog, no worrying over Twitter followers, no fretting over what editors had written back to me, no checking how many likes and Tweets my articles had gotten. Instead, I enjoyed my time with my friend and his wife (and had a lot of German food, drank a lot of German beer and ate too much German cake) because I value their company and their relationship as a married couple.

One day while I was staying with my friend and his wife, I went jogging alone. The town they were staying in sat right against the Rhine, and in the middle of the river there was a small island with a smaller town. Running through the center of the island were small, abutting plots of farmland. I jogged around the perimeter of the island on tight paved roads and along the plots of land looking at the river. Eventually, the road ended at the north end of the island, where it turned to a small path carrying on to the woods—more a glorified thicket than actual woods. I jogged through the woods until I came out onto a small point. The point was mixed with sand and shells and solid rock. The tide was rising and the river ran along the sharp end of the island at a rapid pace. The speed of the current frightened me and I thought about jumping into it. Instead, I sat down and watched the water flow and listened to the waves splash against the side of the island. I sat and thought about being in Germany. I was sitting in the middle of the Rhine and history receded behind me—terrifying and unreal—and proceeded ahead of me, terrifying and unreal. I decided then that when I returned to my regular life that I would try to worry a little less constantly about my achievements.

***

“To Have and To Hold” is the third episode of the Sixth Season of Mad Men. Obviously, that phrase is loaded in general due to the fact that it comes from the traditional marriage vows, but is especially so when it is used in relation to this particular show.

“…to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

Don is a divorcee, so, going strictly by the book, he has broken his vows once already in his life. However, as we all know, he has “broken” the vows of marriage many times over the course of his many affairs. Megan’s role on her soap opera is expanding and her character is going to have a love scene. When Megan gives Don the news, naturally he bristles. But he also somewhat concedes and tells Megan that he can “tolerate” the fact that she is going to “kiss and hug” on camera, but that he “can’t encourage it.” When he and Megan go out to dinner with Arlene and Mel, the older couple makes an overt attempt to invite Don and Megan to come back to their apartment and “smoke grass and see what happens.” Arlene and Mel want to swing, but both Don and Megan scoff at the idea and then joke about the scenario on their way home. However, when Don decides out of pride (or his running undercurrent of voyeurism) to watch Megan tape the sex scene, he antagonizes her for going through with it and being proud of it. He hastily infers that what she does is just like what a whore does. And then he goes back to their apartment building, to the floor below their apartment, and continues his affair with Sylvia Rosen.

Peggy, meanwhile, has already broken the “vows” of her professional marriage to SCDP when she left to join Ted Chaough. However, last week, when she tipped Ted off to the availability of the Heinz Ketchup account, she began the sundering of her professional/creative relationship with Don and her late-night-call friendship with Stan. After Peggy’s pitch (again, Don’s voyeurism rose its head as he listened to the pitch outside the door) wins the ketchup account, both Don and Stan don’t want to be near her. Marriage is different than friendship or a protégé-mentor relationship, but each of those connections contains a certain power and emotional resonance and tarnishing the loyalty—breaking the “vows”—can be painful and alienating.

Joan’s girlfriend* also breaks her vows when she decides that she wants to have a harmless make out session with the host/waiter at the restaurant. Joan goes along for the ride and does some downtown making out of her own. The two wake up in bed together and Joan’s friend regrets it, but tells Joan that she “just wanted to know what it felt like.”

(*Editor’s Note: The woman who played Joan’s friend, Marley Shelton, was one of my all-time favorite babes back when I was a teenager. Mostly because of her memorable performance as Wendy Peffercorn in The Sandlot. Though, I suppose she is still a current all-time babe [what?], because she looked great last night. )

However, if Mad Men focused solely on a single theme or idea, it wouldn’t be as great of a show as it is. “The Collaborators” was a weaker episode (though one with some masterful dialogue) because it seemed to just hover around only the theme of fidelity. “To Have and to Hold” was a better episode because it was also about power and achievement.

For once, we actually see Harry Crane do something very competent. Normally we just see Harry make a fool of himself by either bumbling in a meeting, saying something inappropriate or just having bad sideburns. However, his idea for the absurdly campy “Broadway Joe on Broadway” show suggested that he actually knows what he’s doing. And Harry knows that he can and should be able to use it for some kind of leverage.

That leverage comes when he clashes with Joan. Joan has been on unsteady ground no matter how much respect she has gained in the firm, since she can’t escape her role or identity as a sexual object—and instead of using a kind of masculine attempt at power as Peggy does in her new job, Joan continues to fall into shows of power that would be described as “bitchy” or “catty,” but which really come off more as being petty. Joan received her partnership by sleeping with a man, a disgusting man at that. Yet she is invaluable to the firm in many ways and wants to be seen and appreciated as such, especially by other women and especially by secretaries. However, she can’t escape the limits of the initial identity she set for herself.

Harry, likewise, knows that he brings a value to the firm and that he is not appreciated. When Joan fires his secretary without bringing the problem to his attention, Harry decides to use his Joe Namath leverage and demand a partnership. He’s “actually done work” to earn the title, while Joan merely had sex with someone—even though she was pressured to do so because it would be the best for the company.

In the end, Harry gets a bonus equal to his year’s worth of salary, but he still wants to be a partner. Joan receives the admiration of her old friend because she was a pioneer who came to New York without the safety net of a husband or anything else and is now a partner at an advertising firm. Joan brushes it off as “just a title,” but her friend insists that from where she sits its, “damn impressive.” Joan also receives Dawn’s respect after the time card incident. But Joan, hearing in Dawn’s request to have her own pay docked because it’s good for the company the echoes of her own decision to sleep with the Jaguar dealer, decides to finally relinquish some of her old identity as counter of staplers and keeper of time cards, even though it may be too late.

As an episode, the parts of “To Have and To Hold” that stuck with me were the ones that focused on achievement. The characters on Mad Men, just like those of us in real life, are always trying to achieve and gain more. Megan wants her role expanded; she wants more scenes, better acting opportunities. Peggy wants to be as good as or better than Don at advertising. Pete wants more accounts. Harry wants more money and a partnership. Joan wants respect. However, sometimes you get lost in wanting to achieve something. What does the title of partner mean? Harry’s children and wife most likely have more use for the extra $23,000 than his title as partner. Joan’s title means nothing to her without respect, but to her friend just the fact that Joan is a partner is “damn impressive.”

Achievement is all about perspective. I may think my achievements are nothing, but an old friend, a family member looking at my life from the perspective of the job changes, the links promoting my blog posts or unpaid articles and photos on my Facebook page would think differently.

And that’s what I learned sitting on the Rhine. Because I don’t want to think about anyone wearing a silver cross and praying that I find peace after I leave them at night.

Puddles of Myself 2012-2013 NBA Playoffs Preview, Part 2

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 07:17:36 PDT

Western Conference Playoffs predictions as well as who will win the 2013 NBA Finals.

I dissected the Eastern Conference Playoffs in yesterday’s post and today we are going to take a look at how the much more fascinating Western Conference Playoffs are going to shake out. There’s not going to be any prosaic preamble today—we’re jumping right in.

FIRST ROUND

1. Oklahoma City Thunder vs. 8. Houston Rockets

This was the First Round matchup every NBA fan wanted to see. James Harden returning to Oklahoma City to exact revenge on the franchise that drafted him, low-balled him in contract negotiations and then traded him away. I mean it doesn’t get any more dramatic than that. Harden has had a fantastic season (25.9 ppg, 4.9 rpg, 5.8 apg) and is certainly an MVP candidate—though he has slumped a little lately (in two of his past six games he has shot under 30% from the field).

Meanwhile, Durant and Westbrook have been their usual fantastic selves, with Durant putting up an historic 50-40-90 season (51% FG, 41% 3PFG, 90% FT) and averaging 28.1 points, 7.9 rebounds and 4.6 assists*. Though, they seem to be carrying a heavier burden than usual. They know they need to get back to the Finals this year for the franchise to at least save face after the Harden trade; and I firmly believe that a second straight Finals loss might send Durant into some kind of tailspin. This guy just cares so much about the game. I mean, he was distraught, last year.

(*Editor’s Note: And yet, he’s not the MVP. THAT’S how good Lebron James is right now.)

I can see how this series plays out in my head already. Houston steals the first game at Oklahoma City when Harden explodes for 45 points. The Thunder bounce back in Game 2 with Durant going off for 41 and 16. In Game 3, both Durant and Westbrook score 35 points and the Thunder blow out the Rockets at home. In Game 4, Harden and Chandler Parsons both score over 30 points and Asik has a key block on a Westbrook drive late in the game and Houston ties the series 2-2. Back in Oklahoma City for Game 5, the Durant and Harden duel in the first half, but Ibaka gets hot in the fourth quarter and the Thunder win by ten. Game 6…Linsanity takes over. Jeremy Lin scores 36 points and the Rockets win in overtime. The series comes down to Game 7 in Oklahoma City—the crowd is electric. The teams come out sloppy and the game is tied at 42 at the half. No one can hit a shot. Westbrook gets hot in the third quarter, but so does Harden and the game is tied at 70 heading into the fourth quarter. With two minutes left, Houston is up by six points and the Thunder are on the ropes.

Suddenly, the LIGHTS GO OUT! When they come back on, Harden is at midcourt and holding a folding chair. He takes out Asik and Chandler with chair shots; a charging Thomas Robinson is met by a flying elbow from Westbrook. Jeremy Lin charges, but Harden lifts him up and Durant delivers a Dudley Death Drop, planting Linsanity right on the Thunder logo at midcourt. The refs don’t know what to do so they disqualify both teams as the Thunder skip off the court.

Just kidding. I think this series will be entertaining as all hell. Harden will have one huge game that Houston will steal, while Lin will have one big game that the Thunder stifle. Durant, Westbrook, Ibaka and company are just too good.

Prediction: Thunder win series 4-1.

2. San Antonio Spurs vs. 7. Los Angeles Lakers

I have to hand it to the Lakers. After the most overdramatic, overwrought, and all around crappy season, they finally delivered the goods in their game against Houston on Wednesday night. These Kobeless Lakers are compelling in an odd way. They of course still have Gasol (my God did he play great the other night) and Howard, but there is a certain vulnerability about the entire team now—the points have to come from somewhere without Kobe in the lineup—that is somehow appealing. Or, at the very least, makes their ongoing saga more bearable.

The Spurs, well, they have been very un-Spursian lately. They are heading into the Playoffs in a bit of a slump and they seem to be more dysfunctional than usual. If Parker can actually play at full speed, it’s a bonus. If Duncan can hold up under increased minutes, it will be incredible. If Ginobli can give them anything, it will be a Godsend. For God’s sake, they just signed TRACY MCGRADY!

Yet, I can’t count the Spurs out. They still have Kawhi Leonard, Tiago Splitter, Danny Green, Gary Neal and the rest of their “company men” role players. Plus, I think people are jumping on this Lakers bandwagon a little too quickly. Steve Blake played above his head for two games (and that’s not saying much) and Jamison turned back the clock slightly in the game against Houston. Nash is still hobbled, as is Metta World Peace. Howard looks healthier than he’s been all season, but it’s going to take him playing top-flight defense and Gasol notching near triple doubles in each game for the Lakers to even have a shot at pushing this series to seven games, let alone winning it.

Some of the games will be close, but I just don’t see it happening.

Prediction: Spurs win series 4-1

3. Denver Nuggets vs. 6. Golden State Warriors

I know many NBA writers (like the Lord and Master, Zach Lowe, whom I pray to approximately three times a day to thank him for his excellent observations) were hoping that the Nuggets would match up against the Rockets in the First Round and thus pair up perhaps the two most exciting offenses in the entire league. But, my question is: couldn’t this series be just as good?

Look, I’ve been sweet on Golden State since before the season started, and I know that they have cooled off considerably since their hot start. I know that the Bogut experiment has been somewhat of a disaster, that their defense has stalled and that Barnes has not been great as a rookie*. But, holy crap is Stephen Curry amazing. I mean some of the shots he made against the Spurs on Monday night were insane! Plus, he’s been doing that kind of thing on the reg for the past month or so. Throw in some sweet-shooting from Klay Thompson, David Lee’s automatic double doubles and questionable defense, plus all the great role players (Jack, Landry, Green) that the Warriors have and you have a great matchup for the Nuggets.

(*Editor’s Note: To be fair, Curry, Thompson and Lee each demand a lot of touches and shots and Barnes is a rookie who is looking to fit in. Besides, he’s been playing solid defense and guarding some top notch players (he was defending Kobe when Kobe tore his Achilles). If anything, he’s only brought things to the table (9.1 points per game and 4.0 rebounds, respectable defense for a rookie) rather than taken anything off. Mark him down for Most Improved Player next year.)

But, the Nuggets are the Nuggets and they are going to win this series. Lawson looked as fast as ever coming back from injury earlier this week and I know that Faried will play as hard as possible no matter what lingering pain he may have when the Playoffs start. Even without Gallinari, this team is going to be fine. They were constructed for this kind of scenario. Corey Brewer, Wilson Chandler and Evan Fournier (!) are all capable of filling in collectively—or getting scorching hot singularly (especially Chandler)—on a given night to match Gallinari’s numbers (16.2 ppg, 5.2 rpg and 2.5 apg). Plus…JAVALE MCGEE!

Lawson is going to run. Curry is going to run and shoot and do this. Iguodala will dunk. The defenses are going to be bad and it’s going to be fun.

Prediction: Nuggets win series 4-1

4. Los Angeles Clippers vs. Memphis Grizzlies

Part of me is sad that this series is just a repeat from last year. I don’t want Memphis or the Clippers to have to eliminate each other. I’d like to see each of them get beyond the first round. Both teams have a unique identity. Both teams have signature super stars and role players. Both teams have great fans and home courts. I want to see them each play longer.

That being said, last year’s seven game series was a war. Last year’s series featured one all-time classic (the Game 1 Clippers comeback), a bunch of memorable, tight games, and, unfortunately, a lame Game 7.

This year, there is still residual bad blood and the stakes are actually even higher. Each team won 55+ games, which means that their entire season will be deemed a failure if they lose in the first round. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that whichever team loses this series could face one or two significant personnel changes in the off-season. (If the Clippers lose, does Chris Paul stay in L.A.? Does Memphis think about trading Randolph if they are bounced?) Blake and Zach officially do not like each other and with the pressure this high, I would not be surprised if we saw an actual fight in one of the games.

We know all the players: Chris Paul is divine; Blake is a star and a freak athlete; Marc Gasol may now be the best center in the league (and is the best passing big man); Zach Randolph is a master on the boards; Mike Conley has taken his game to another level at point guard; Jamal Crawford has confidence for days and could catch fire at any moment; Tayshaun Prince is a smart veteran with championship experience; Matt Barnes is gritty; Caron Butler can hit a big shot when you need him too; plus, Grant Hill, Ed Davis, Willie Green, Jerryd Bayless…ERIC BLEDSOE!

There’s not much more you can say—I’ve already worked myself into a frenzy with excitement and anticipation. This series comes down to home court advantage. Each team can win on the road, but having that unruly crowd at your back for Game 7 can make a difference. Last year, the Grizzlies blew their advantage. Will the Clippers do the same this year? For some reason, I don’t think so. Oh, right, that reason’s name is Chris Paul.

Prediction: Clippers win series 4-3

WESTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS

1. Oklahoma City Thunder vs. 4. Los Angeles Clippers

The NBA really is a funny league. I think if the Spurs were the number one seed, and the Clippers had to play them in this spot instead of the Thunder, that they would probably get swept again. However, they seem to match up better against the Thunder and I think this will actually be a close series. Also, my God the dunks!

The Thunder won the season series 3-0 and by an average margin of seven points. But, as we know, the season series doesn’t mean everything. Both of these teams are deep and athletic. The Clippers’ bench has the edge with their variety of wing players and athletes (Crawford, Bledsoe, Barnes, Green, Hill). However, in the Playoffs you play your best players as much as you need to and either Durant or Westbrook will be on the court at all times.

The key to this series is Westbrook. The Clippers don’t really have an athlete that can match Westbrook on defense. Chris Paul is the Platonic ideal of the point guard, but he is not a freak athlete like Westbrook. Eric Bledsoe is a freak athlete, and they may use him for his speed and defense to try and hound Westbrook in spots, but I don’t know if that will be the answer. Barnes, Hill, Butler and even Blake can all take turns on Durant in an effort to slow him down and show him different defensive looks, but the Clippers just don’t have the same variety when it comes to Westbrook. The frontcourt edge (Griffin/Jordan vs. Ibaka/Perkins) goes to the Clippers, but it’s not a sizeable advantage in the series.

It won’t be easy for the Thunder (they’ll lose Game 2 and Game 4), but they’ll win the series.

Prediction: Thunder win series 4-2

2. San Antonio Spurs vs. 3. Denver Nuggets

This is where things get interesting.

Like many people, I’ve learned the hard way that you never count out the Spurs. However, the past two seasons (scaling last year’s shorted season to a full season) the Spurs have won over 55 games and fallen short of the Finals. In fact, the Spurs haven’t made the NBA Finals since their last championship in 2007. Obviously, it’s a difficult task to consistently reach the NBA Finals, but something about the Spurs just strikes the wrong chord with me this year. I mean last season they looked unbeatable up until Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals and then the entire thing just fell apart.

The Nuggets are banged up, but like I said earlier, I don’t think the Gallinari injury is going to affect them as much as people think, and I believe that Faried can gut out enough production using the extra rest between games as a “crutch.” This series will depend on how Ty Lawson’s health holds up and on how much Kosta Koufos and JaVale McGee can give the Nuggets. I think if McGee and Koufos (with help from Faried) can slow down Duncan and Splitter and Lawson can put enough pressure on the Parker (with Iguodala providing spot shut-down defense at the end of games), that the Nuggets can win this series.

For almost fifteen years, the Spurs have been a machine of intelligence and efficiency, but this Nuggets team was specially built to win in this current changing, sabermetrics driven NBA landscape. I think they are going to prevail.

And it’s going to be fun to watch Lawson and Parker go at it each game.

Prediction: Nuggets win series 4-3.

WESTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

1. Oklahoma City Thunder vs. 3. Denver Nuggets

Fast.

That’s the only word that you’re going to need to describe this series. Sure, there will be X’s and O’s and George Karl is going to help the Nuggets steal a few games by simply being a better coach than Scott Brooks*.

(*Editor’s Note: I haven’t watched a ton of Thunder games this season and I know Brooks’ coaching has been questionable in the past, but, man, it really seems like people [read: NBA nerds] have piled on him this year. However, I seem to remember many NBA fanatics disparaging George Karl as recently as last season, while this year he is seen as a genius. As far as I can tell, there are only four coaches that are consistently called “great” in the contemporary NBA universe: Popovich, Doc Rivers, Thibodeau and Phil Jackson [he still counts]. And four that are consistently called “good”: George Karl [despite any past disparaging remarks], Erik Spoelstra [he just got here], Stan Van Gundy, and Lionel Hollins. Everyone else’s reputation or standing waxes or wanes depending on a given year and a given analyst’s temperament.)

However, the rest of this series is just going to be about speed and athleticism; perhaps even more than last year’s Finals. We know that Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka are world-class athletes. However, the Thunder also have the emerging Reggie Jackson (a freak in his own right) coming off the bench to go along with Kevin Martin and Nick Collison (well, OK, those two aren’t really that athletic anymore). But, the Nuggets just have a “murder’s row” of athletes: Iguodala, Lawson, Faried (sprained ankle and all), McGee (goofiness and all), Anthony Randolph (randomness and all), Evan Fournier, Wilson Chandler, Corey Brewer, and Andre Miller (just kidding; that old man game, though).

When it comes down to it, I just think that the lingering injuries that the Nuggets have aren’t going to go away over the course of the Playoffs. Sure the days off between games and between series will help Denver, but the increased physicality of the games, combined with the speed this team plays at will take a toll after awhile. And when you play Oklahoma City, you need to be able to match them move for move; explosive play by explosive play; wave of energy after wave of energy.

In the end, I just think the Thunder have the edge in health and the extra urgency and pressure to win.

Prediction: Thunder win series 4-2.

NBA FINALS

1. Miami Heat vs. 1. Oklahoma City Thunder

With apologies to Knicks and Lakers (and I guess some fundamental basketball fans who just adore the Spurs and the people who love fun that wanted to see the Nuggets break through) fans, this is the Finals matchup that everyone wanted to see. Last year’s Finals were good, but somehow it seemed odd that the series ended in five. Though we were satisfied by a fistful of close games and satisfied to see Lebron win a title, there was a palpable aftertaste of robbery once all the confetti had been swept away.

I wish I could promise you a full-on, legendary seven game series for this year’s Finals, but I can’t. The fact is that Miami is better than they were last year and the Thunder…well, they aren’t. Durant and Westbrook are both having their best seasons (Westbrook’s numbers this season are almost identical to Derrick Rose’s numbers from his 2010-2011 MVP season), and, while Ibaka has been very good, he hasn’t really taken the leap you would expect from a guy who will be making $12.3 million next season.

Meanwhile, Miami’s offense is as dynamic and fluid as any in the league and far better than it was in last year’s series. Lebron is the best player in the world and possibly the best player since Michael Jordan. Wade is playing more efficiently than he ever has in his career. Bosh is solid (16.6 and 6.8) if slightly underwhelming. Chalmers is having his best all-around season and is shooting 40% from three-point range. Battier and Allen are capable of hitting big shots at any time. Haslem will hit the glass. Norris Cole has shown an increasingly steady hand at backup point guard. And the Birdman has been a revelation as a defensive stopper and an at-the-rim finisher. In fact, and the Heat are 39-3 since he joined their roster. Just think about that for a second. Plus, Mike Miller, Rashard Lewis, Joel Anthony and James Jones will be fighting for playing time and they were a key part of the Heat’s rotation last season. You might remember Mike Miller from such movies as…THE TIME HE TURNED INTO A WALKING PIECE OF PLASMA AND DESTROYED THE THUNDER’S CHAMPIONSHIP DREAMS.

I see this series being very similar to the ’86 Finals. That series featured a legendary Celtics squad that went 67-15 and a feisty Houston Rockets team that showcased Akeem (at the time) Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson. That Rockets team managed to steal two games off a historic juggernaut and I don’t think they were as good as this year’s Oklahoma City team.

So, what I am saying is that Miami will win the first two at home. The Thunder will win Game 3 in Oklahoma City. Game 4 will come down to the wire, but Lebron will hit a dagger three that pushes the game out of reach. Durant will explode in Game 5 and the Thunder will send the series back to Miami. Game 6 will be close (think Game 6 of the 1993 Finals) and the Thunder will have a chance to win, but—much like Jordan’s Bulls teams used to do—Miami will take the victory away from their very worthy foes and repeat as NBA Champions.

It’s going to happen for Kevin Durant, but just not this year. Not against a Miami team that was scary in last year’s Finals, but got even better as this season progressed. It’s not personal, it’s just history.

Prediction: Miami wins series 4-2.

Puddles of Myself 2012-2013 NBA Playoffs Preview, Part 1

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:41:49 PDT

All of a sudden it's spring, which means its time for the NBA Playoffs. First up are Eastern Conference predictions.

Even though I was born in September and my soul is inextricably tied to all things autumn, I think the stretch from Tax Day* through Labor Day might be my favorite time of the year.

(*Editor’s Note: Obviously, in light of the events in Boston this week, Tax Day will be forever tied to a greater tragedy than our self-deprecating jokes about paying the IRS. I was profoundly affected by the Boston Marathon bombing, just as I was affected by the Newtown shootings. I found myself able to write about Newtown, but I’m still at a loss for what happened in Boston. And, I just want to talk about basketball here anyway.)

I understand that using Tax Day as a starting point leaves out the Final Four and the NCAA National Championship Game, but once you hit mid-April, it really feels like spring. Pear and cherry blossoms bloom and it seems as though there are bits of lavender and yellow tulips everywhere; the squeal of children on their way to school sounds endearing and makes you smile; and the evening walk home from the subway is graced by mellow, near-damp twilight—everything blue and refreshing and pleasant.

And as you move toward Memorial Day things slowly start to get warmer, but nothing too unbearable; an open window is still just as good as an air conditioner to a blind horse. There are Saturday picnics and lengthening evenings and everything in the world—the dresses on girls, the emerging boat shoes, the action of humanity in the dusk—has the promise of becoming full and overripe, but isn’t quite there yet. Finally, it all explodes in a rush of barbeques and first swims and the a big summer blockbuster on that prolonged weekend at the end of May. Before you know it, it’s June and its just too hot!

Plus, my Ga-od the sports! I may be cutting out the Final Four and the like, but late April and May contain the first tangible storylines of the baseball season, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the NHL Playoffs…

Oh, and of course, my favorite sporting event, the first few rounds of the NBA Playoffs.

Sure, the Finals start in June and we usually only remember the NBA Finals matchup from a given year. However, for an NBA junkie, there is nothing quite like those multiple nights of the week in late April when there are triple-header playoff games—and of course those even more special cases when there is a weekend quadruple-header. It’s a time that you can forget tragedy, forget shortcomings and take solace in a day full of games; and maybe a little beer.

This year, the Playoffs are shaping up to be fantastic. Well, at least once conference is. Yes, it is no secret that this year’s Eastern Conference Playoffs may not define the word “drama.” No matter what any deluded Indiana, Chicago or New York fan tells you, it does look like Miami will once again represent the East in the NBA Finals.

Yet, there are some interesting subplots and potentially entertaining series that need to be discussed. So, I am going to walk you through the entirety of my Eastern Conference playoff predictions today, before following up with a Western Conference preview on Friday, which will include my NBA Finals prediction as well.

So, please sit back and soak what I think will hypothetically happen during the Eastern Conference Playoffs of the sporting league known as the National Basketball Alliance. Ah, shit…I meant Association. National Basketball Association.

FIRST ROUND

1. Miami Heat vs. 8. Milwaukee Bucks

When the Bucks traded for J.J. Redick at the February deadline, they regained a bit of their 2010 “Fear the Deer” potential. However, that has long gone. Though the Bucks have traditionally played Miami tough in the Big Three era, this Heat team is more mature, more professional an dmore focused than the teams of the past two years. Basically, here are the four things you need to know about this series:

Lebron James is the NBA MVP.
Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis have still not figured out how to play together.
The Bucks have lost five games in a row, and one of those losses was to the Bobcats.
Larry Sanders* (LARRY SANDERS!) is great.

Prediction: Heat win series 4-0.

(Editor’s Note: I really wanted to link to a Larry Sanders Show clip, but it’s been done to death already. Ah, what the hell!?)

2. New York Knicks vs. 7. Boston Celtics

This might be the most interesting series of the first round of the Eastern Conference Playoffs. Unfortunately, its going to take on an extra resonance with the Boston Marathon bombing, but nevertheless, the Knicks and Celtics should engage in a physical and emotional battle.

However, it’s hard to see any other outcome besides the Knicks defeating the Celtics. For all the talk over the past few years as to whether or not this matchup is even a rivalry, at this point I think the Knicks have a legit claim as being rivals to the Celtics. Honey Nut Cheerio-gate has long passed, but when you have Chandler and Garnett vying for defensive position; Pierce and Carmelo looking to make dagger three-pointers; Avery Bradley trying to make Jason Kidd and Raymond Felton cry; J.R. Smith playing out of his mind (and ditching the pipe); and Jeff Green trying to decide if he wants to be a great player or not, it’s going to be an intense series.

The Celtics are beat up, though, and this team has the feel of the 1992 or 1993 vintages of the Celtics, right when the Parish-McHale-Bird era reached its end. Meanwhile, the Knicks are rounding into playoff form at the right time.

And, as a side note, I miss Rondo.

Prediction: Knicks win series 4-2.

3. Indiana Pacers vs. 6. Atlanta Hawks

Oh, how the somewhat mighty have fallen! The gritty Pacers were once the trendy pick to push Miami to the limit in the Playoffs, but they have sputtered over the past month or so and finish the season under the radar once again. According to Zach Lowe, this is exactly where coach Frank Vogel wants them to be.

No matter what issues the Pacers are currently having, they should still be able to beat the Atlanta Hawks over a seven game series. These teams are fairly comparable, though. They both boast two physical front court players (Hibbert/West and Horford/Smith); they each have a feisty point guard (Hill vs. Teague) and they each have a bruising somewhat head case that comes off the bench (Tyler “Psycho T” Hansbrough vs. Ivan Johnson.

But the Pacers just play phenomenal defense (Indiana and Memphis are each the best defensive team in the league on any given night) even if they have trouble scoring. They also have Paul George. While Josh Smith can score at the same clip as Paul George—and is capable of playing high-caliber defense when he wants to—the Hawks just don’t have the same level of talent in their starting five and the same cohesiveness on defense that the Pacers do.

Look, this series is going to be ugly. The Hawks are most definitely going to win two games, but the Pacers will win the series because of their great defense, the fact that they have slightly more talent and their marginally deeper bench.

Exciting, right?!

Prediction: Pacers win series 4-2

4. Brooklyn Nets vs. 5. Chicago Bulls

Though I am baffled by P.J. Carlissimo’s decision to call out Andre “Key Reserve” Blatche on his fitness after 81 games, I like the Nets. And, no, it’s not just because I live right up the street from the Barclays Center and think the Atlantic Avenue Terminal is the pinacle of urban human achievement. I like the Nets for the same reasons I liked them at the beginning of the season: they have a starting five that can compete with anyone, they have a respectable bench, and they have a great home crowd.

Now that Deron Williams is back to playing like he did from 2006-2009 (back when many said he was a better point guard than Chris Paul), the Nets are a substantially more dangerous team than they were for much of the season. Lopez has been great all year long. Joe Johnson has been his ho-hum, up-and-down, overpaid self—capable of a transcendent all-around performance one night and then capable of making you forget that he was even playing in the game the next. Blatche, despite his conditioning or whatever, has actually had a very productive season and was one of the smartest pick-ups of the offseason. And, Gerald Wallace has just been bad. But, hey, he does hustle.

Meanwhile, after a solid start to the season, the Bulls have been plagued by the ghost of Derrick Rose (Will he return? Will he wait until next year? Maybe he’ll come back for the Playoffs? Maybe he won’t come back because his brother said that he didn’t think the Bulls did enough to build a contender?) as well as a series of injuries to various players. You know that Chicago will always play hard; Jimmy Butler, Luol Deng, Taj Gibson and Joakim Noah are going to hound the ball and push you around on the glass. Also, Tom Thibodeau will sound like a Depression-era gangster. And Nate Robinson is going to play out of his mind for at least one game and keep the Bulls in the series.

This one is going to go seven games. The Chicago crowds are always great, but the Brooklyn fans, watching a playoff Game Seven in their first year as an NBA franchise, are going to be historically rowdy. The home court advantage, along with the fact that the Bulls have no true answer for Williams (Hinrich is a solid player and I’ve always loved him, but he’s not stopping this version of Deron) will allows the Nets to prevail.

Prediction: Nets win series 4-3

EASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS

1. Miami Heat vs. 4. Brooklyn Nets

The Nets are most certainly a sleeper in this series and could give the Heat trouble. If Deron Williams continues to play as well as he has over the past two months, he will definitely be too much for Chalmers to handle. Reggie Evans eats glass and will be a pain in the ass for Battier and Haslem to box out. Joe Johnson has size and can give Wade problems. There is a chance that Brook Lopez might very well outplay Bosh in the entire series. Plus, the Brooklyn bench is both feisty and experienced.

However, Joe Johnson has a tendancy to disappear. Lopez has never been to the Playoffs before. The Heat are sound defensively and can even be stifling when they want to. The Heat bench is both experienced and feisty and also better than all of the Nets’ reserves. Plus, the Heat have Lebron.

Prediction: Heat win series 4-0

2. New York Knicks vs. 3 Indiana Pacers

The Knicks get to take on another old-school Eastern Conference rival and we viewers at home will get to remember plenty of Knicks/Pacers historical highlights (Spike Lee, Reggie’s choke sign, 8 points in 9 seconds, Starks/Miller, Ewing’s missed layup, LJ’s four point play, Rik Smits in general, the Davis Boys, and Charles Oakley).

This also may be the dark horse for the best series in the Playoffs. These two teams play very different styles, but are evenly matched overall. David West is not afraid of anybody and the Pacers will throw both his size and toughness and Paul George’s athleticism at Carmelo in equal doses. The backcourt matchups are a wash (Felton has maybe a slight edge on Hill and Shumpert and Stephenson are a draw); Hibbert vs. a recovering Chandler is a wash and might be a slight edge to the Pacers. But the Knicks have a more dangerous bench. Offensively, J.R. Smith, Prigioni and Novak can bring more to the table than Hansbrough, D.J. Augustin, Sam Young and Gerald Green.

The Pacers are going to try to make this series as physical as possible and unnerve the Knicks, just like they tried to do with Miami last year. If the Knicks can move the ball like they did at the beginning of the year—and as they have been doing over the past three weeks—as well as remain mentally resilient and not let a physical series knock them completely out of gear, they can beat the Pacers. However, if the Pacers draw blood and the Knicks get wary, then its going to be tough.

Yet, somehow I see Game 7 with a raucous Madison Square Garden, while the entire borough of Manhattan feels electric in the May evening. After withstanding a furious Pacers comeback, Carmelo stands at mid-court and encourages the crowd to cheer. His line of 33-14-7 fades from the big screen, replaced by a “BEAT THE HEAT” graphic.

Prediction: Knicks win series 4-3

EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

1. Miami Heat vs. 2. New York Knicks

“So, wait a second. You’re telling me that the Knicks are going to play three out of their four true historic rivals in one playoff run and that doesn’t qualify as an entertaining or ‘good’ Eastern Conference Playoffs?”

No, Whoever Just Asked That Question, I would never say that. In fact, you just helped me make my point. If the Eastern Conference Playoffs shake out this way, it will actually be more entertaining than it looks on paper.

Look, everyone knows that the Knicks won the season series against the Heat three games to one. However, two of those wins came in the first two months of the season when the Heat weren’t THE HEAT that they are right now. You know, the team that won 27 games in a row. The third Knicks victory game right after the Heat’s winning streak had ended, plus Lebron and Wade did not even play. Even then, the Knicks won by twelve only because Carmelo played out of his mind and scored 50 points.

Without a doubt, Carmelo will have one of those games in this series. He did it last year at the Garden and he’ll do it again. Here’s how the series will shake out:

The Heat will win the first game convincingly against a tired Knicks team.

In Game 2, the Knicks take a big lead, but the Heat come back and win. Melo and Lebron duel and both finish with around 35-40 points.

In Game 3, Carmelo explodes at the Garden for 49 points, 12 rebounds and 9 assists. The Knicks win by twelve as Lebron and Wade both score 22 points and Bosh is held to 10 points and 6 rebounds in one of those classic games where he just disappears.

In Game 4, a rabid MSG crowd is quieted as Carmelo starts cold and the Heat storm to an eleven point halftime lead. However, the Knicks come out on fire in the third quarter and take a five point lead into the fourth behind a hot shooting streak from both Jason Kidd and Steve Novak. Yet, in the final frame, the Heat come back and Wade steals a sloppy J.R. Smith pass to seal the five point victory. Carmelo finishes with 30 points on 9-30 shooting and the New York media is frothing.

Game 5 in Miami is a back and forth affair. J.R. Smith comes out scorching hot and the Knicks lead by four at halftime. After Miami takes a seven point lead to start the third quarter, the Knicks even the game heading into the fourth. The game is tied at 90 with two minutes left, but Bosh pump fakes Chandler, who was drawn out away from the basket, and makes a three pointer. On the ensuing possession, J.R. Smith, who had been driving through the Miami defense all night, misses a three pointer. At the other end, Miami finds Battier for a corner three and go up by six points with 57 seconds left. The Knicks score a quick two to cut the lead to four with 48 seconds left, but Lebron answers with a fadeaway jumper with two seconds left on the shot clock, pushing the score to 98-92 with 26 sconds remaining in the game. Carmelo misses a desperation three and, after the obligatory foul game tactics, the Heat prevail and head to the NBA Finals once again.

Though, despite the team’s shortcoming, Carmelo is not flayed by the New York press. In fact, his heart and high level of play in the series are applauded with many—even Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith on ESPN—declaring Carmelo a changed man and “finally a true super star.” Rumors of an SNL hosting gig in the fall run amok.

Prediction: Miami Heat win series 4-1.

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "The Collaborators"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:32:55 PDT

A recap of the Mad Men episode "The Collaborators."

Growing up, my friends and I were interested in girls. And being friends, we were loyal to each other. We were loyal not out of some greater purpose or high sense of morals, but because it just seemed like the natural thing to do. Some of us had girlfriends and some of us didn’t—and everyone was always together. Girls and girlfriends would pass and one of my great friends had a habit of repeating part of Al Pacino’s speech from Devil’s Advocate. If you don’t know the speech, don’t worry, but there is a point where Pacino says, “Look but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste but don’t swallow.” And then Pacino laughs and overacts.

“The Collaborators,” the second installment of the sixth season of Mad Men is a fairly straightforward—for Mad Men—episode that meditates on loyalty and fidelity and the cost of maintaining those two seemingly lofty ideals. And, by focusing on these two abstract ideas, calls into question whether those values are even real and, if so, what they might mean.

Like many previous Mad Men episodes, “The Collaborators” creates its structure by using Don and Pete as foils. However, as we know, Don and Pete are just as similar as they are different, so whenever we are meant to take them as opposites, the results are interesting. On the surface, Don is the experienced adulterer who has managed to carry on multiple long-term affairs while also maintaining the appearance of a perfectly married man with a cookie cutter wife and children, while Pete is the inexperienced adulterer who has only carried out a few hasty mismanaged infidelities. However, by the end of the episode, both are dissatisfied and wearied with the results of their respective endeavors and levels of competency.

The episode starts with a foreboding and very seedy look into the unsatisfied marriages of Pete’s suburban existence. The husbands at the dinner party flirt with Trudy while the wives make overtures at Pete. Pete has sex with his neighbor’s wife at his Upper East Side pied-a-terre, but he doesn’t know what he wants. Even though he had his heart broken last season by Beth Dawes (aka Rory Gilmore), the mentally unstable wife of his neighbor, he doesn’t fully understand the stakes of a full-fledged affair. So, naturally the whole incident blows up in his face when his neighbors fight, his fling (who is clearly more game for the stakes of the romance and the infidelity) winds up bruised and bloody at his home. After further mismanagement, Pete lets the situation fall out of his grasp and the woman ends up divulging her transgressions to Trudy, who then kicks Pete out in a masterful show of power and knowing, at least on the surface, what she wants out of Pete. They will be a show couple in every sense of the word and Pete will play along because, while he may be driven and decisive (albeit impulsive) at work, he has proven himself incapable of the same qualities in his personal life.

Meanwhile, Don, the experienced adulterer, is entering far more difficult and murky territory with his downstairs neighbor Sylvia. After a daring morning sex-session, Don lays out his modus operandi to his latest mistress. “This didn’t happen,” he says, while they are lying in bed. Then, tapping his temple, he flatly states, “Only in here.” For Don, reality is only what you make of it in your head. If take action, and it is “wrong” or “dishonorable,” that is something that can be forgotten, that can be relegated to the farthest reaches of your mind. Because, once you do that, just as he told Peggy after she gave away her baby, “it will shock you how much [it] never happened.”

However, Don is getting older and the moral stakes he is playing with are becoming far higher. Megan—our ambitious and well-meaning Megan—has had a miscarriage while Don is carrying out an affair with the Italian Catholic wife of his virtuous surgeon neighbor; a man who Don has even termed his “friend.” In “The Doorway,” when Dr. Rosen visits Don’s office to pick up his camera, the surgeon takes a glimpse at the backside of a passing secretary as she walks off-screen—Dr. Rosen “looks but doesn’t touch.” Don is not capable of looking and not touching; he’s tried in brief stints, but he always falls victim to what he wants—even if that lasts for only a short time.

The high point of Don’s story comes in two contrasting scenes of dialogue with the two women in his life. The first comes when he and Sylvia are forced by circumstance to have dinner alone. While they sit, the two exchange a masterful bit of dialogue that exemplifies the way that power can shift in a conversation. Sylvia accuses Don of not knowing what he wants and thus in turn can have no idea what he wants or expects. Don then tells Sylvia exactly what she wants and how she is feeling about their affair. “You want to feel shitty,” he says, “right until I take your dress off. And I’m going to do that.”

When Don returns from dinner and his dalliance with Sylvia, he sits with Megan while she tells him about her miscarriage. As soon as the transcript of this scene becomes available, I would recommend reading it because I am going to pore over it. The way he and Megan use the word “want” to push power, acceptance and marital goodwill and innocence back and forth is astonishing. By telling Megan that he “wants” her to “want” to have the conversation about having a baby with him if that’s what she “wants” is a shocking show of manipulation. By doing this, Don becomes “infallible” in this decision within their relationship, while still maintaining the “reality” of their marriage in the midst of his latest affair.

And if all of that reads as exhausting, it’s because it is, which explains why Don can do nothing but sit in front of his door at the end of the episode, spent from all the emotional, mental and moral energy he is spending just to feel some modicum of satisfaction or control—if he even feels that.

Then, of course there is Peggy and Heinz and her “loyalty” to the trade of advertising while somewhat selling out Stan and by extension Don. Peggy’s mentor chose to be loyal to Heinz when he was presented with a chance to dance with a younger mistress. “Sometimes you gotta dance with the date that brung ya,” he says to Ken. The one instance where Don decided to be moral may end up coming back to haunt him and the firm.

Late in the episode, Roger and Don reference “Munich” in relation to Herb, the Jaguar dealer that slept with Joan. Don had to implode his pitch in order to shut down the greedy and manipulative Jaguar guy and effectively say, “No.” At their dinner, Don tells Sylvia, “I want you. I want you all the time.” Sylvia was unable to say, “No” to Don and now, like the Germans, he’s going to want more.

But as we know, more doesn’t even mean anything—even if you think you know what you want.

Puddles of My Mad Men Season Six: "The Doorway"

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:31:56 PDT

Matt Domino's Mad Men recaps return.

I was on vacation last week, so its time to set a few things in order.

First of all, the best show currently on television (and the second best TV show of all-time), Mad Men, is back. Let’s all take another moment to breathe deeply, acknowledge this fact and give thanks to the god of Life of Pi (sorry, watched it on the airplane).

Second, I will not be writing episode reviews for The Montreal Review during this season of Mad Men. There are a variety of reasons for this happening, but regardless, I will not be doing those recaps. However, a new short story of mine will appear in The Montreal Review next month.

Third, I will be doing Mad Men recaps on this blog.

Fourth, since I missed last week’s episode, “The Doorway,” I’m going to just provide a few bullet point observations and thoughts in this post and then publish a recap of Episode 2 later on today. In case you don’t religiously read TV recaps each week like I do, you can read the excellent work by great writers such as Matt Zoller Seitz, Alan Sepinwall, Todd VanDerWerff, and Molly Lambert. I’m going to avoid repeating the points touched on in their columns wherever possible.

- As a fan of Sergio Leone films like Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America, I loved the fact that Don did not speak in “The Doorway” until about the eight-minute mark. Granted, Don's silence is slightly less epic than the openings to both of those Leone films, but it was still effective as an attention grabber and mood setter for both the episode and for perhaps the season as a whole. Those first eight minutes featured a lot of Don watching Megan—taking in her shape, her beauty, her ebullience—and the fact that others are now watching Megan as well, as evidenced by his wife’s impromptu autograph session.

- “The Doorway” continued the streak of excellence that occurs whenever Don speaks to a stranger or has a prolonged interaction with a new acquaintance or acquaintances. This streak stretches back to Midge’s bohemian friends and the hobo in “The Hobo Code” and was further exemplified with Joy from “The Jet Set,” the hitchhikers in “Seven Twenty-Three” as well as Mrs. Farrell’s brother in “The Color Blue.”

- As in past examples, this interaction left Don with something to think about, as the soldier says to Don, “One day I’ll be the man in paradise who can’t sleep and talks to strangers.” Add in the fact that this soldier very much resembles what a young Roger Sterling (or John Slattery) might look like, as well as the fact that Don is reading The Inferno and that Paradise is the final book in Dante’s Divine Comedy, there is a lot to interpret from that kind of loaded statement—that is, if you are into that kind of thing.

- The time cuts didn’t completely work for me. I understand using the jarring image of a doctor resuscitating someone as a way to open an episode, but I thought the slow, silent use of Don drifting through the resort for eight minutes was just as effective—and I enjoy jumps in time as much as the next modernism loving reader and writer. This just didn’t feel right. When Mad Men is at its most experimental, it feels natural and it achieves the effect of leaving a viewer without the ability to even scratch their head and say, “Wait, what did that mean?” In this case, I just didn’t see why it was needed.

- I enjoyed the scene of Betty getting pulled over and laughing at the droll delivery of Sally’s friend Sandy saying, “My mom’s dead,” thus making Grandma Pauline Francis’ rant about the fact that things “couldn’t possibly get darker than this” seem as absurd as it actually was. Betty’s scene alone with Sandy was also well done. Though that motherly instinct that Betty showed throughout the episode when backed with her very odd, “rape fantasy” remarks to Henry Francis just made her even more confusing as a character. Hopefully that confusion turns back to “complicated” and makes Betty an interesting character again, which she was through most of the first two seasons.

- Peggy’s entire storyline was solid and may have featured some of the funniest Mad Men lines ever. A quick rundown: “I hate vegetarian food, it reminds me of Lent.”; “Burt it’s late and you sound…under the weather.”; “Fuck the Tonight Show.”; “Now, Peggy, I think the Army is at fault here.”; the entire scene where the guy with the thick Brooklyn accent re-tells the jokes from Carson; Ted Chaough’s reaction to the guy in the headphone ad: “This guy. What a pain in the ass.”; and the fact that the guy in the headphone ad looked exactly like Andy Milonakis.

- As many have mentioned, having Roger in therapy is an amazing addition to the show’s level of humor. I mean, this is where Weiner and the writers decided to introduce Roger in his first session of the episode: “…probably part of a deeper question—none of them are really blonde anyway.” There were more flashy lines for sure, but I found that decision by the writing team to be truly genius.

- And then there is Roger’s speech about doorways. You can unpack it thematically as much as you want, but when read as text, it is actually an extremely well written and speech:

"What are the events in life? Like, you see a door. The first time you come to it, you say, ‘Oh, what’s on the other side of the door?’ Then you open a few doors and then you say, ‘I think I want to go over a bridge this time. I’m tired of doors.’ Finally you go through one of these things, and you come out the other side, and you realize that’s all there are: doors! And windows and bridges and gates. And they all open the same way. And they all close behind you. Look, life is supposed to be a path, and you go along, and these things happen to you, and they’re supposed to change your direction, but it turns out that’s not true. Turns out the experiences are nothing. They’re just pennies you pick up off the floor, stick in your pocket, and you’re just going in a straight line to you-know-where.”

- The photographer’s declaration of, “I just want you to be yourself,” to Don is more interesting at the beginning of this sixth season than perhaps at any time in the series’ history. All of the Don Draper/Dick Whitman stuff is gone. Don had to confess to Betty and thus he opened up and was able to tell Megan right off the bat. Anna Draper died, Peggy was allowed to see Don at his weakest and that effective split was done away with. Now, Don’s conflict, like the rest of us, is simply about how we are "ourself"—how we find satisfaction and the fringes of “happiness.” The show has always been about that, but now that fact is even more evident.

- What record do you think Abe is listening to when Peggy gets the idea for the new headphone ad? Zappa would be too easy. It’s late 1967, so—based on Abe’s head sways— I feel like it’s either Anthem of the Sun by the Grateful Dead, Axis: Bold as Love by Jimi Hendrix or Disraeli Gears by Cream. He and Peggy already played out Sgt. Pepper’s during the summer. Some sleeper picks: Moby Grape, Something Else by the Kinks, and Buffalo Springfield Again.

- Don’s failed pitch to the hotel reps was a strong scene overall. However, Roger’s traditional post-pitch “moral of the story”/one-liner was the most interesting part of all. “You know, we sold actual death for twenty-five years with Lucky Strike. You know how we did it? We ignored it.” How much will these characters ignore death? How much do we ignore death? What happens when you embrace it? What happens when you understand dwelling?

- Aren’t you glad we have Facebook now so that you can have your own private slideshow viewings of other people’s vacations and memories instead of having to watch them in your neighbor’s apartment?

- This probably flew under the radar for everyone except me, but there was an Audi commercial during the last twenty minutes of the episode that featured the best Mad Men woman of all-time. Yes, that’s right, it was Mrs. Farrell!

I’ll be back later on today with a recap of the second episode of Season Six. It really is great to have Mad Men back in the Sunday routine.

Boats

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 07:02:08 PDT

Matt Domino dusts off an old short story.

Tires were always fun to burn in the night. Ray and I would sneak behind the auto shop and roll a few of them out. We’d push them through the reeds to the little dry field that stuck out along the harbor. On the green and sand-colored grass, we would stack them and look at the water. To the right, you could see the backside of Shore Deli and the little cove with the ducks that sat next to it. To the left were the boats in the harbor. Those boats sitting so ignorantly in the water while the tide shifted around them. I hated those boats for some reason. Seeing them with their blue hulls—the bold writing on the stern, the brown paneling on the sail boats, and the bulky, black powerful looking engines on the motor boats—made me nauseous. So as the red flames lapped, climbed, and melted the tires in the darkness, I would stare at the boats, as firelight illuminated their shapes on the black salt water.

It was the end of August. The wind was swaying the trees from side to side, leaves were falling, and some of them were even starting to change colors. I was wearing pants and the air smelled like the beginning of school, which smells like hot chicken cutlet, wet grass, and hot pavement. Ray and I were both slurping on the bottoms of our half and halfs from Shore Deli while we poked at our tire rubbish. Dark circles marked the tan grass; they looked like a giant stamp had come from God’s hand and marked our little patch. A motorcycle revved its engine in the distance behind us on Main Street.

“That was one of our best, huh?” I said to Ray. “I bet they could see that up on the bluffs. Over by the Gregors.”

“I always wished I was older for her.”

“Who? Anne Gregors?”

Ray nodded and licked his lips. I spit onto the sand.

“You’d have no shot.”

Ray passed a slick piece of scorched tire between his hands, dropped it, shrugged and picked up a rock. A crow cawed and Ray skimmed the rock across the water. I followed its splash and saw Mr. Robinson in the distance walking onto the floating metal dock by the harbor house. You could recognize him by the tilted navy cap he wore on his longish grey hair. The hat made him look like an old sea captain on a schooner; like he was going to catch Moby Dick when all he was going to catch was a sandwich at Shore Deli.

He walked over to his boat. I knew his boat so well and hated it the most. Thirty-two feet long. Old Poquott written in simple black letters on the stern. The symmetrical diagonal blue stripes that reached up and met at the bow’s point. The boat was sharp white and clean like printer paper. So white that the orange life preserver on the starboard side stood out like a mosquito bite. And then there was the cabin. You could barely make it out through the shade of the tinted glass, but two summers ago I was walking by the docks, trying to flip an old flattened Busch can with my foot, when I saw it open a crack. I saw the wood paneling, a flash of gold from somewhere within and then it was closed off to me, the sun, and the dirty smushed aluminum.

Ray slapped my pant leg with the scorched strip of tire. It left a black slash on the knee of my jeans.

“What the hell?”

Ray lit a cigarette. “What’re you doing? Staring at old Robinson?”

I nodded and took a cigarette from him. The wind blew the reeds and our puffs of smoke.

“Why do you sit and look at these stupid boats,” Ray said, his voice muffled by exhaled smoke.

I stood there for a moment watching the grey ash fall to the grass. The sun felt good on the back of my neck and the sky was a perfect blue. I couldn’t believe that school was starting the next day. That I’d be stuck in the dank hallways with the smell of fried food, body odor, and old books. I took another drag and watched as Mr. Robinson pulled up his anchor, the rope passing from water to boat so easily in the distance. Something inside of me was warm.

“I want to try and steal one.”

Ray didn’t say anything. He just took a pull of his cigarette.

“We have to do it tonight. Before school starts, before this whole new year starts.”

“Which boat are we going to steal?”

I pointed my hand and cigarette towards the harbor house and dock. I liked the feeling of my outstretched arm.

“Robinson’s?” Ray asked.

I nodded.

“You’re crazy, man.”

Mr. Robinson’s boat passed through the harbor towards the distance, the wake from the propellers bubbling and churning up a salty froth. Past the bluffs the sound would open up, then it would be the Atlantic once he was there, it was only up to Mr. Robinson to decide when to stop—him and no one else as he drank wine or champagne on the open sea.

“That’s the one to steal.”

We both ashed our cigarettes and slurped at our half and halfs next to the reeds.

That night the moon was almost full. It shone on the water, which was smooth and looked like silver. Ray and I walked down Manor Road towards the bend where the little beach looked out across the harbor. Underneath the lone streetlight I could make out Mr. Robinson’s boat sitting away from the docks.

We moved silently from the pavement onto the sand. It was a moist, cool night and my sneakers moved easily on the compact sand. There’d be no one out on the water.

“Are you sure these kayaks aren’t locked up?” Ray asked from behind me.

“Positive. Costello told me that he uses them all the time. He lives right up Birch over there.”

I continued walking towards the kayak rack. We were going to use the kayaks to get out to Robinson’s boat and then try to either wire it or, most likely, unanchor it and drag it out to one of the small sandbars where we could smash it. I hoped that Ray’s story about how he and his brother had hotwired a car in the parking lot of Wendy’s was true.

At the rack, I rolled up the sleeves of my sweater. I felt the rust on the rack. I tried to lift a kayak up—it was locked. Ray grabbed a red one. It didn’t move. I pulled at another yellow one. It stubbornly moved from side to side making a chafing plastic sound. I could feel sweat on my forehead and in my armpits. Maybe Costello had been wrong. A goose honked somewhere out on the water.

“They’re all locked.” Ray said. He pulled out a cigarette. “Let’s just go home. Maybe we can get some vodka to drink tomorrow. These tools keep pulling my pants down anyway.”
“Don’t smoke. We don’t want anyone to see the cherry.”

“I don’t think that scraping the kayaks on the rack helped.”

I frowned and looked next to the rack. There were a few kayaks strung together by a black rope-lock up against some low reeds. I yanked at the first—locked; the second—locked. The third and the fourth were locked too, but the fifth—a blue double kayak—slid right out with a smooth zip across the sand. It wasn’t really strung on the lock but placed there to look like it. It was almost too good to be true.

“See, Costello wouldn’t lead me wrong,” I said. “Let’s get this to the water.”

We each lifted an end and took it down the beach. The water lapped on the sand. We slid the kayak in and Ray got on first; I would do the steering.

“Remember,” I said. “We stay quiet from this point on. We get there, get on and make a quick move. If you can’t wire it, I’ll get the anchor and then we’ll just drag it. And if there’s an alarm…”

“We get the hell off and make it to the tire spot.”

I nodded.

“What if we can’t drag it?”

“Then we take our paddles to it.”

He looked at me for a moment. The light from the moon filled the boat. It was so bright that I thought someone from shore might be able to see us. We’d be screwed. There was another goose honk from the water. I remembered all the open space beyond the bluffs. I shook off my insecurity. Ray smiled.

“Or we could burn it.”

I shrugged but was a little startled by the sound of his voice and I could picture him with the scorched tire in his hand. There was something strange about the way he suddenly said things.

“If it comes to it,” I said.

We set the boat off quietly through the water. I was impressed at how easily we passed across the harbor. Little drops of water fell from the paddle onto the thigh of my jeans. It wasn’t a bad kayak at all. The support on my back was fine and I felt comfortable and was surprised by my lack of nervousness as we approached Old Poquott.

As we edged towards the boat, there were swans drifting along. They looked odd to me for some reason. They were so natural in their movement, everything slender and simple black and white. With their orange legs concealed by the water it was if they were pulled or moved by an invisible force, something only they could feel. I wanted to get near to them, but I didn’t want to get so close that they’d attack. Besides drawing attention with noise, they could kill us; stamp us out with the beating of their wings.

“Slow down a little so we keep quiet,” I whispered to Ray.

Ray listened and our glide slowed. We moved past most of the swans and steered our way through the first boats. I felt warmth from my stomach again. Their white sides had a brighter shine in the dark. Their railings seemed enchanted, but the hulls seemed bulkier, more imposing. We passed one with Daddy’s Girl written in maroon. It had to be about forty feet. The writing seemed too bold, as if it and the entire ship itself were announcing their importance to the night and to the swans as if either cared. I certainly didn’t care. Another drop of water hit my pants and the hair on my legs stood up.

“There it is,” Ray muttered. “Old Robinson’s.”

And it was right in front of us. Old Poquott and its bow with the blue stripes on the edge. We slowed our pace so that we barely made a sound or ripple. Against the silver water, the boat was tremendous. Even though it wasn’t the biggest, it seemed to say the most into the night. Its immaculate sides shouting its presence and some kind of history. It was a proud ship, not bulky or showy. Within all that white and gleaming pride was some sparkle of gold, and I wanted to see it for myself.

I took deep breaths to control the burn inside of me.

Ray turned back. “You ready?”

I nodded and dipped the paddle in deep to give us a sharp turn towards the boat. Ray amazed me with his skill in manipulating the kayak close to the side but without brushing the hull. We came to the stern and I took out the thin rope I’d been carrying in my pocket and gave it to Ray. I watched anxiously as Ray moved soundlessly from the kayak and began to tie it to Old Poquott. His agility made me wonder if he’d ever robbed someone before. I realized that I didn’t know him that well, so I wouldn’t have doubted it. Once the kayak was tied, he pulled it in close. I balanced myself and managed to get off quietly.
We both stood tall and admired our perch above the water. I inhaled the salty night air. I had a quick vision of driving the boat out into the sound on a hot bright day. I’d steer out into the mist, to the open, where I and the boat would disappear from sight. The vision passed and I focused and tapped Ray’s shoulder. He moved to the front of the boat where the steering and ignition were.

I kept to the back near the anchor in case Ray couldn’t hotwire it. I heard the clinking of the tools he’d brought. An alarm hadn’t gone off yet and I as I stood, I grew curious. I stared at the dark glass of the cabin door. I approached it and saw my reflection in the glass: my balled green sweater and jeans, my scruffy longish hair, even the stubble above and below my lips. Something told me that I had to open the door and for some reason I knew it would be unlocked. I pulled, and it was.

The inside of the cabin was dark. A little of the moonglow slanted in along the floor underneath my legs. I was tempted to turn on a light. I wanted to see the inside perfectly, but I didn’t want to scare Ray before we had taken the boat. I stepped forward and felt a bump beneath my sneaker. Then, I slipped and hit my back on the wood floor.

“Fuck,” I said and saw the dark bottle beside me.

I heard Ray’s footsteps outside along the side and then saw his shadow. As I moved to get up a light came on. I looked up and it was Mr. Robinson in a big tan sweater and shorts, his cap pushed up on his head.

“Shit,” Ray said from behind me and ran. I heard the sound of the kayak against the water, the splashes of paddling, which was followed by a plastic thud. He’d thrown my paddle on the boat. What a considerate friend.

Mr. Robinson held a large brown bottle in his right hand and didn’t get up from his seat. He just watched me as I slowly stood up. He crossed his feet, which were in worn brown dock shoes. His calves looked bulky and unnatural. I didn’t know what to do. The cabin was silent. Finally, I decided to look around. There was a green beer bottle at my feet and my head had just barely missed the ledge of a small kitchen counter. The cabin had upholstered seats running all along the sides, but Mr. Robinson was sitting in a brown recliner chair that seemed to have been dragged onto the boat. His feet rested on a table that had gold corners. He snorted and took a drink from the bottle. All of the walls were glossy wood. Their sheen was exactly as I’d imagined it.

“I’m not gonna call the cops,” Mr. Robinson said finally.

I stood up slowly. He must’ve seen my hesitance because he jumped out of his chair. I flinched and he laughed at me. I felt my cheeks grow red as he reached over onto the wall and ripped out a black radio box from its wiring. Then he threw it past me. It hit the sink and the box landed with the sound of breaking plastic.

“See,” he said. Then he collapsed in his chair with a sigh. He readjusted his cap. “So what did you want coming on my boat? Were you going to steal it?”

I didn’t know what to say. His voice sounded tired.

“Or were you just looking for booze?”

I shook my head.

“Not a talker? Maybe you want a drink?” He held out the bottle and little bit of liquid swished out of the top. It smelled like whiskey. Mr. Robinson smiled and urged the bottle towards me. “Take it.”

I moved towards him and grabbed the bottle. It was wet around the neck and felt heavy in my shaking hand. I turned to the sink and looked for a glass. I wanted to pour it quick to please him. I wasn’t sure what he would do in the exhausted state he seemed to be in. There was a ledge across from the sink with some glasses. There was a beautiful golden vase on the ledge too. It looked very old but well kept. I quickly groped at one of the glasses and placed it next to the sink. I began to pour. All of a sudden, I felt all of Mr. Robinson’s tired weight rise up from behind me.

“No! Not that one! Who told you to use that glass?” Mr. Robinson shouted and ran towards me.

As he ran, his left leg seemed to give out and he fell against my side pushing me into the sink. The glass fell out of my hand and crashed to the floor, the brown whiskey seeping under and around the clear shards. I looked down at Mr. Robinson and he was crying. His hat had fallen off and I noticed that the spot where the band had rested on his head was marked with red. A little spot of blood trickled over the lines on his forehead.

I looked above him and at the rest of the cabin. Behind the recliner there was a small hallway with an open door at the end. There was a bed with papers all over. I looked back at the recliner. It was very worn and on the seat was a picture frame. Mr. Robinson had been sitting on it. I looked back down at him, he didn’t seem to care that I was there anymore. He clutched a large piece of the glass. On it, there was part of an inscription written in gold.

“I’m sorry.” I said. It was all I could mumble.

I stepped over him and out into the moist night. I walked along the starboard side and grabbed the orange life preserver. I took it and stood on the edge. The swans were in the distance, floating white beyond the boats. I leaped off and into the water. My clothes were heavy but I held onto the preserver and started paddling.

I looked back once more at the light from the cabin. The faint sounds of Mr. Robinson’s moans followed me. As I moved towards the shore and away from the great open space beyond the bluffs, I was scared, scared in a way that Ray would never know. I whimpered and wondered for the first time what my mother would think of me as I swam in the darkness amid the boats.

The Alternate Life of Jimi Hendrix, Part 2

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 06:58:45 PDT

In Part 2 of this now apparently ongoing series, we continue the story of what would have happened had Jimi Hendrix lived.

Editor’s Note: A week ago, due to the release of the latest Jimi Hendrix posthumous release, we decided to take a look at what might have happened if Hendrix had lived past the age of 27. You can read the details of the first part of the timeline right here.

Today, we resume The Alternate Life of Jimi Hendrix where we last left off—it’s 1977 and Jimi, living in self-imposed exile in Washington State, has just listened to Television’s debut album, Marquee Moon, and decided that it might be time for him to return to the music business after about a four year absence.

Since this has become a bigger project than I originally envisioned we’ll run a third installment next week or the week following.

March 31, 1977 — After spending a few months deliberating over his decision to return to recording, Jimi decides to make the commitment. He calls Chas Chandler to see if he’d be interested in going to New York with him to record. Chandler, in the midst of an Animals reunion, tells him that he can’t. Instead, Hendrix asks if he can put him in contact with the members of Television. “You’re still on that, are you? Pretty fantastic stuff, innit?”

April 1, 1977 — The next day, Chandler calls Hendrix back and gives him the phone number of Richard Lloyd, one of the guitarists in Television. Jimi manages to get a hold of Lloyd in New York. When Jimi tells him who is calling, Lloyd, noticing the date, gets angry and yells, “What the fuck do you think you are asshole!?” at Jimi. In order to prove his identity, Jimi begins playing the Television song “Venus” on his guitar on the other end of the line. Lloyd finally takes Hendrix at his word. Lloyd reminds Jimi that the two had actually met in 1968 via their mutual friend, Velvert Turner, and that Jimi had actually punched him in the face at a gig in 1969. Hendrix apologizes and says that he doesn’t remember that period well but asks if it would be all right for him to come to New York and spend some time with the band. Lloyd is uncertain about how Hendrix might fit in with the new wave and punk scene in New York, but can’t say no.

April 14, 1977 — Jimi Hendrix arrives in New York, staying in Bob Dylan’s MacDougal Street apartment, which has been left largely vacant with Bob spending extended periods of time on tour and in Malibu. Hendrix wanders the streets in his first trip to New York in four years and sees how much it’s changed. Restless, he heads to Electric Lady studios where he finds old friend Eddie Kramer listening to some mixes that Jimmy Page gave him of new Led Zeppelin tracks that he—Page—had been working on. “It’s not bad, you know,” Jimi says. “I’ve always liked that thing Page did, you know. Those real riffs. Maybe he even did it better than me. But I’m not into that kind of heavy thing anymore. I’ve been kind of restless.” Kramer explains that he is restless as well even though he is preparing to team up once more with Kiss to record the follow up to their very successful album Alive!. Jimi and Kramer have an impromptu recording session where Jimi runs through a few of his new tracks. When they finish, it is past 2:00 AM.

April 15, 1977 — Hendrix and Lloyd meet for lunch. Lloyd asks Jimi if he is going to make an album while he’s in New York. “I’d like to, you know. I feel like I can. If I can just find a band. I played in Electric Lady last night. It felt good to be there. I guess it should, you know? I built it.” Lloyd tells Hendrix to come to Television’s show the following night. They’re playing with the Talking Heads, another band Lloyd thinks Hendrix will “really get into.”

April 16, 1977 — Hendrix shows up to CBGB’s in dark sunglasses, a beat up black sombrero he bought earlier that day and a trench coat. He is blown away by the energy of the scene in the bar and he quickly has his hat stolen. When he sees Lloyd, he asks that he keep his cover for as long as he can. The Talking Heads play and Richard Lloyd passes Hendrix bottles of Miller High Life, which is the only beer he can truly stomach. Jimi is impressed at David Byrne’s delivery and the almost elastic quality of the music. When the Talking Heads are finished, Jimi uses the bathroom and encounters a belligerent Dee Dee Ramone first berating a woman and then passionately and explicitly groping her. Richard Lloyd introduces Jimi to the Talking Heads as his buddy, “James,” and Television begins to play their set. During the set, Tina Weymouth and Jimi make small talk and she eventually convinces him to take off his sunglasses. She immediately recognizes him as does a gawking David Byrne. They try to contain their excitement, but soon the buzz gets around.

Television finish playing “Marquee Moon” and the crowd is in a frenzy. Tom Verlaine manages to calm them and addresses the rumor of Jimi Hendrix being in the audience by saying its true. He then invites a begrudging Jimi onstage. The crowd is confused; someone throws a can of beer that spills on Jimi’s trench coat. Verlaine gives Jimi his guitar and then he starts talking to Richard and they launch into a version of “Hey Joe” with dual guitars and a sped up-tempo. Verlaine sings the vocals and then has Jimi join in on the chorus in the end. They finish the song and the crowd is stunned. They go absolutely nuts before Verlaine has the band count off and go into “Venus,” with Jimi and Richard Lloyd still of guitar. CBGB's is in pandemonium and Dee Dee Ramone walks out during the melee and asks, “What’d I miss?

May 1, 1977 — Television aren’t set to record their follow up album until the fall, so with the permission of Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine, Jimi borrows bassist Fred Smith to start sessions on his new album. Joining them in the studio is Mitch Mitchell, who was eager to spring from his semi-retirement back into the studio. Eddie Kramer agrees to help produce and engineer under the table until he has to prepare for Kiss’ sessions in late July.

When asked if he needs a second guitarist to follow in the steps of Television and Richard Hell & the Voidoids, Hendrix says, “No, I’ll be fine, you know. I’ll just do both parts.”

September 13, 1977 — Jimi Hendrix’s first album in four years is released. Entitled, Ten, the album fits seamlessly into the punk and new wave movements. More Television than Talking Heads, the record sees Jimi at perhaps his most playful and creative since Axis: Bold as Love. Vocally, Hendrix uses his soft, round voice to great effect when countered with the rhythms of new wave. The album is ten songs long with the title track closing the album as an extended, bluesier ten minute jam, calling to mind Television’s “Torn Curtain,” where Jimi shouts at one point “Ten years is a lot of thinking/And the people come and go!” The highlights include the dancey, bordering on disco “Winterland” and the opening, six minute track, “Puget”, which opens with a wall of feedback, followed by two fluid guitar lines that build into a somewhat hypnotic melody where Jimi sings, “Puget and the morning gave to me/Cross country and the will to see/It’s 1977 and I’m all out of enemies.”

The album is well received by critics and audiences alike. Ten reaches #11 in the U.S. and goes to #3 in the UK. The night the record is released, Jimi plays CBGB's with Patti Smith and Blondie. It is the only time he ever plays CBGB's live.

October 1, 1977 — Jimi buys a townhouse apartment on Grove Street and Bedford and moves his family back to New York.

October 14, 1977 — Hendrix attends a London record release party for David Bowie’s album “Heroes” where he is convinced by Bowie to undertake a European tour where the record has been very well received. Hendrix considers it.

December 4, 1977 — With Chas Chandler as his manager once again, Hendrix decides to undertake a European tour with Mitch Mitchell as his drummer. However, they need to find a touring drummer. Chandler, through the pipeline, finds out that Jeff Beck’s most recent bassist, Fernando Saunders, is now available. Jimi meets with Fernando Saunders in New York to jam at Electric Lady. He offers him the position.

January 13, 1978 – April 5, 1978 — Jimi and his group embark on their European tour. The tour starts in West Germany and moves through Austria, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, and Portugal before concluding in the United Kingdom with five nights in London.

June – August 1978 — Jimi spends the summer back in Washington with his family, writing new songs and preparing for a mini U.S. Tour in the fall. During his time in Washington, Jimi takes in numerous guests. A depressed Bill Walton stays with Jimi for two weeks after his foot injuries ended his season, cost the Trailblazers from repeating as NBA Champions, and effectively ruined one of the best teams of all time. Jimi plays some of his new material for Walton, giving him hope that he can recover from his injuries. After the first leg of his 1978 World Tour, Dylan stays for a week in August, giving Jimi notes on some of his new songs. One night, while both are drunk on red wine, Dylan says to Jimi, “I don’t know. All this livin’, Jimi. I been running a long time. Not sure what exactly it is I’m looking for anyway.”

September 1, 1978 – October 31, 1978 — Jimi embarks on a North American tour with Mitch Mitchell and Fernando Saunders. They play songs from Ten, Era’s End, Electric Ladyland, a punked up version of “Subway Shine” and a new wavy rendition of “Are You Experienced?” The tour ends with a Halloween show in New York City at the Beacon Theatre. Afterwards, Jimi hosts a party at his New York home. A drugged up Richard Lloyd attends the party and tells Jimi that Television has broken up. He offers Jimi some heroin, which Hendrix begrudgingly takes.

November 15, 1978 – January 4, 1979 — Jimi and his band re-enter the studio to record the songs Jimi had been working on in Washington. The songs are more meandering and fluid in nature, closer to a track like “Puget” from Ten. There is even a spoken word song that Jimi wants to include as the album’s centerpiece. For the album closer, Jimi, inspired by the Talking Heads’ “Big Country”, wants to do something even grander: “I really dug that track, but I want something bigger, man. Bigger, you know. I want to make something more country than country or new wave as country—I want people to forget what music they’re even listening to.”

Richard Lloyd’s presence is felt in the studio. Not only providing instrumental help, but also drugs. Jimi and Richard digress on guitar and take heroin. However, Jimi remains focused. He can operate in his new state. Though tensions begin arising at home with Anne Hathaway, especially when she begins to suspect him of an affair with an artist by the name of Jennifer Lawrence.

March 20, 1979 — The follow up album to Ten is released. Entitled Season’s Ghost, a reference to Bill Walton and the 1977-1978 Blazers’ lost title year, the album is ecstatically received and marked as Hendrix’s best work since Electric Ladyland or Era’s End. The album closer “Living Home,” is as Jimi had described it: something more than country. Though similar in nature to “Big Country”, “Living Home” is bigger sonically, with both Richard Lloyd and Hendrix playing guitar parts in addition to a pedal steel guitar covered in reverb. At one point on the track, Jimi moans, “Art isn’t anything/When you don’t know what you’re looking for.” Even the spoken word track, “Glasgow”, is well received. Lester Bangs wrote, “It’s what ‘Murder Mystery’ could’ve been if it had taken its head out of its ass. I’d written off Hendrix long ago as a holier than thou con artist; a failed actor disguised as some kind of false guitar god. However, I’ve been proven wrong before, and it looks like Hendrix may actually be made of that energy, that intangible noise of the firmament that he and his amplifier first arrived with in 1967.”

The album reaches #1 in the U.S. and #3 in the UK. Jimi’s marriage is in danger though, as many believe that the lyrics in “Glasgow” are directly about the artist Jennifer Lawrence and her Scottish descent.

April 7, 1979 — Jimi is the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, though he appears visibly under the influence of heroin. He and the band play the title track from Season’s Ghost, which is the most “punkish” song on the record, as well as “If 6 Was 9”. Bill Murray and Jimi hit it off backstage and Jimi attends the after party at Dan Akroyd’s Blues Bar by the Holland Tunnel. Richard Lloyd shows up as well and he and Jimi play an impromptu blues set with Akroyd and some of the SNL band members. Paparazzi photos are taken of Jimi with Jennifer Lawrence.

May 15, 1979 — Jimi embarks on the first leg of a World Tour with his band and Richard Lloyd. Before leaving, though, his wife Anne informs him that she will be taking the girls back to Washington for the summer and that he should stay in New York when the tour breaks. She tells him that he needs to “quit heroin, quit that girlfriend of yours and figure out what kind of life you can survive.”

June 15, 1979 — Jennifer Lawrence meets the band in Japan. However, after a long night of drinking, she, Richard Lloyd and Jimi are all arrested for their public drunkenness. They are bailed out, but Richard Lloyd decides to leave the tour. Jimi and the group continue on as a trio.

July 30, 1979 — During the tour’s London shows. Jimi spends time with the Clash who are working on London Calling. The band plays him some of the tapes and Jimi is impressed with how they have managed to expand and tighten their musical vision simultaneously.

August 8, 1979 — Returning to New York in between legs of the tour, Jimi is served with divorce papers from Anne Hathaway Hendrix. Jimi pleads with Anne and tells her that he will clean up; that he will go cold turkey off heroin. Anne says that it’s too late. She knows how much he loves music and what he feels he needs to do when he’s in “that world” and that she isn’t going to be a “guilt inducing presence” that prods him into getting better. Jimi accepts her decision and decides to quit heroin cold turkey anyway.

October 1, 1979 — Jimi cancels the second leg of the World Tour citing health reasons.

November 14, 1979 — A package from London arrives for Jimi. It’s an advance copy of London Calling. Inside there’s a note from Mick Jones, “Enjoyed having you, Jimi. Hope you like the record.”

December 24, 1979 — Clean from heroin, Jimi spends Christmas with Anne Hathaway’s family in Baltimore, Maryland. He calls Anne and the girls the next morning. He lies to the girls and tells them he’s on tour. He apologizes to Anne for his mistakes and he tells her that he’ll keep trying to make it all up to her.

February 4, 1980 — Rolling Stone runs a feature on Jimi with the title “Rock n’ Roll’s Ambassador.” In it are accounts from various musicians all over the spectrum (Dee Dee Ramone next to born-again Bob Dylan) of how they believe Jimi might be the most beloved figure in rock n’ roll.

March 1980 – June 1980 — Fueled by his improved health and his love of London Calling, Jimi, Mitch Mitchell and Fernando make up the North American dates of their World Tour. Fernando especially is impressed by the new energy Jimi brings to the live show.

July 1980 – September 1980 — Jimi spends the summer in New York and begins living with Jennifer Lawrence. He spends time with Bill Murray and Robert de Niro more than any other musicians. Still inspired by London Calling, Jimi begins work on his next album. Whenever he’s out with friends, its hard to get him off the subject of the Clash. “I need to be writing things like that, you know. Things about New York and love and problems with fidelity and marriage. I need to make big statements but I need to start using smaller things to make them. Just rock n’ roll, soul, something pure that means a lot.”

October 9, 1980 — Jimi Hendrix attends John Lennon’s 40^th birthday party with Jennifer Lawrence. Upon entering the party, Lennon quips to Hendrix, “Jim, so glad you made it. Ida thought that Michaels fella would’ve had you playing in his house band by now.” Both Jimi and Jennifer have a good time at the party, with both actually spending most of their time with the Lennons. Jimi remembers when he played “Sgt. Pepper’s” at the Savile Row theatre a few days after the record was released. “You played it for, Paul,” John says quickly. “I wasn’t there.” They laugh over that and the fact that they’ve known each other for thirteen years. John plays Jimi the advanced pressing of Double Fantasy.

October 11, 1980 — Anne Hathaway Hendrix is married to Seattle Times editor Timothy Hendricks. Jimi cries when he finds out.

November 22, 1980 — Jimi and Anne speak for the first time since her wedding. “I know it’s in poor taste,” she says. “I just couldn’t help the name.”

December 2, 1980 — Determined to put Anne’s remarriage behind him and make a record as good as London Calling, Jimi, Fernando and Mitch Mitchell begin recording at Electric Ladyland. Jimi wants to put out a double album. “I’m not going to hide the fact that I love London Calling, you know. I’m not going to hide what’s happened to me this past year.”

December 8, 1980 — Jimi hears about the shooting and death of John Lennon he rushes to Roosevelt Hospital to be with Yoko and the rest of John’s New York friends.

December 10, 1980 — A grieving Hendrix proposes to Jennifer Lawrence, telling her that when something like this happens, you realize that there is no time to waste.

January 1, 1981 — Recording for the double album is going well. However, while in bed on the morning of the New Year, Jimi reveals to Jennifer that in light of John Lennon’s death, he believes this will be his final record. “I don’t think I want to be around, you know, be public enough, make music long enough for my music to drive someone else insane.”

The Big East Semi-Final(e)

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 08:12:12 PDT

Matt Domino was at the final meeting between Georgetown and Syracuse in the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Madison Square Garden was aglow in Syracuse orange and the man from Cazenovia, New York sitting next to me was smiling, looking slightly like a younger Jim Boeheim, and holding up his hand for a high five. Behind me, a frowning middle aged man with the voice of Stan Valchek and a navy and grey Georgetown sweater was being forced to wear a furry Syracuse hat, which a drunken middle aged woman was holding.

“Say goodbye to the Big East,” a disembodied male voice said from somewhere behind me.

Jim Boeheim and John Thompson III shook hands on-court and slowly left the Garden’s stage, while Louisville and Notre Dame players shuffled onto it in order to begin their pre-game warm-ups. The disembodied voice was right.

I have no ties to any school from the Big East and I didn’t grow up in the 1980’s—the decade long considered the conference’s true hey day. The only connections I have to the Big East are that I love sports; have lived in or outside of New York for seventy-five percent of my life; and the fact that my dad let me skip school when I was nine so that we could go to the Garden and buy scalped tickets to the semifinals of the 1994 Tournament. That year I got to see the likes of Ray Allen, Donyell Marshall and Othella Harrington take center stage and reveled in the chance to watch two live basketball games back-to-back.

Memory can be overrated. I say that as someone who is prone to constant bouts of nostalgia, melancholy and a tendency to wax poetic. However, on Friday night, after the Syracuse/Georgetown semifinal in the Big East Tournament—after I watched Jim Boeheim once again shake the hand of his greatest rival’s son—I felt palpable sense of having lost something important.

Everyone was at the Garden to watch Georgetown and Syracuse; including my dad and me, almost 20 years after our first Big East semifinals excursion. In an ideal world, as the main event, it would have been the second game of the night; but it was the first game and so the entire stadium was filled. Georgetown led early and it cannot be overstated how much more Otto Porter Jr. appeared like a professional basketball player than anyone else on the court. He moves fluidly—his disproportionately long arms swishing and gliding, looking like ayoung Tayshaun Prince—and is much quicker and smarter with his decisions than the other players. When Syracuse stormed back to lead for most of the game, the only way Georgetown could generate offense was using entry passes to Porter Jr. to break the zone at the foul line, where he could make a quick interior pass or kick the ball out for a guard to either penetrate or shoot a three. I haven’t watched a ton of Georgetown basketball this season, so this may be obvious to others, but I was shocked that Georgetown was even considered to be close to a number one seed in the tournament.

Eventually, the game became close. Syracuse got tight and wanted the clock to just run out—but it didn’t and the Georgetown fans behind me were making bets on overtime. When regulation expired with the score tied at 51 (after two clutch Porter Jr. free throws evened the game), both Georgetown and Syracuse fans alike breathed a sigh of relief.

“It’s only fitting that we get OT,” a Syracuse tutor sitting next to my dad said.

“Yeah,” nodded another nearby Orange fan. “51-51. This is Big East basketball. You always take the under.”

Overtime resumed and points were at a premium. Both teams couldn’t get out of their own way. Michael Carter-Williams missed free throws and threw the ball away; Georgetown couldn’t get Porter Jr. the ball in any kind of decent position.

“Let’s go for five overtimes,” a Georgetown fan said. “I could watch this all night!”

Eventually, with Syracuse leading, the Orange trapped Porter Jr. on the wing and he turned the ball over, effectively ending the game. I slapped hands with the middle aged Jim Boeheim from Cazenovia—who had been skeptical of my father and I for not having any real rooting interest in the game—and all the Georgetown and Syracuse fans began to file out.

My dad and I stayed for Louisville/Notre Dame. During that game, I took a trip to the bathroom where I heard the ESPN broadcast piped in above the urinals. Jay Bilas and Bill Raftery were discussing how Peyton Siva had tied Ray Allen’s Big East Tournament record for steals. They then went on to wax poetic about Allen, Mourning, Mullin, Iverson, Ewing, Jackson and deep-cut players from the 80s that I hadn’t even heard of or experienced first hand in any way. Players and rosters I couldn’t even begin to draw or assemble in my mind. Yeah, who the hell was the shooting guard for Syracusein 1983?

I walked back to my seat. The Garden was basically empty; the Syracuse and Georgetown were long gone. I thought aboutthe Big East and how history can be so much bigger than you. I thought about memory and how we tend to exaggerate the past. The Big East as we've known it is gone, but these teams and schools will continue to exist. They’ll make new rivalries (like Duke/Syracuse isn’t going to be fun?) and keep bringing in millions for their institutions. I understand the sentimentality—I wasn’t there for the wars in 1985—but time always marches on.

However, I guess where I am stuck is that place where history and memory allow you to measure yourself. These Big East teams all measured themselves against each other for decades; how they performed in front of their exuberant and bloodthirsty home crowds; against vicious and vengeful away crowds; and on the Garden’s bright, backslapping stage. The Big East’s Manhattan gauntlet was the only conference tournament that felt even close in importance to the NCAA Tournament. Once time moves forward, and those old ways of measuring yourself are gone, it is very easy to feel lost. And even more, to feel an actual gaping sense of loss.

So, sure, the chance at more great Big East memories and montages is gone—but so are those measurements of success and failure. And I have a feeling all the people from Cazenovia and Baldwinsville and the greater D.C. area are going to miss that most of all.

The Alternate Life of Jimi Hendrix, Part 1

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 07:01:44 PDT

To celebrate the release of People, Hell and Angels, Matt Domino takes a look at what might have happened had Jimi Hendrix lived.

Last week, the new posthumous Jimi Hendrix album, People, Hell and Angels, was released worldwide. This album is not a revelation; at this point, through the variety of unreleased material that has surfaced over the years, we know more or less what Jimi Hendrix was up to at the time of his demise.

Though we know that Jimi Hendrix died on September 18, 1970, what we are going to do in this piece is, to paraphrase Eli Cash, presuppose that he didn’t. Yes, that’s right—we are going to look at an alternate timeline of Jimi Hendrix’s music career to see what would have happened had he made it past twenty-seven. We’ll do Part 1 today and then Part 2 next week.

A few disclaimers:

1. I am going to try to stick to the “Doc Brown Rule” of not altering the past too much. Obviously if Jimi Hendrix had lived, he would have altered certain parts of music history in dramatic ways, but we can’t get into all kinds of “rock god fan fiction” here, alright? I’m just trying to make an easy to read timeline.

2. We are going to skip over some years and periods of time. Look, this isn’t the World’s Coolest Dude list, we can’t go into endless detail of what happened in each specific year and why.

3. I think those are all the disclaimers I have actually. Yeah, that’s it.

Now that those are out of the way, let’s take a look at what would have happened had Jimi Hendrix not died on that fateful September day in 1970.

September 18, 1970 — Instead of going home with his, accordingly, abusive girlfriend Monika Dannemann while high on speed, Jimi Hendrix stays at party he was attending with Angie Burdon (wife of former Animals and War lead singer Eric Burdon) and other London socialites. Instead of overdosing on Monika Dannemann’s sleeping pills in addition to the speed he had taken, Hendrix has a bad and depressing experience on too much speed and alcohol, the latter of which he could never handle well. After several hours of feeling deathly ill, Angie Burdon reluctantly calls her estranged husband, Eric, one of Jimi’s best friends and they take Jimi to a hospital, where he vows to never mix uppers and downers again saying, “It’s just a really bad trip, you know. I saw that white light…that’s not the color I’m looking for right now.”

October 4, 1970 — After breaking up with Dannemann and staying with Eric Burdon for the time being, Hendrix and Burdon are stunned, along with the rest of the rock royalty, by the news of Janis Joplin’s tragic death. “Such a beautiful person,” Jimi says, “Something, you know, something about her was looking to go down that road. Like that’s how close I was.”

December 2, 1970 – January 29, 1971 — After traveling to Nashville to talk Billy Cox back into playing with him, a rejuvenated Hendrix, a tentative Cox and a game Mitch Mitchell enter Electric Ladyland studios to record an album. When asked about the approach for the album, Hendrix answers, “Forget whatever I was saying about a double album, you know, triple album or whatever. I’m just going to try and make some songs with these guys, keep it real simple and put out something good.”

Hendrix’s new energy is infectious and Cox and Mitchell are able to conjure some of the chemistry the group had started to develop during their short-lived European Tour at the end of the previous summer. Drawing on the sounds from the Band of Gypsys live album and some of the working tracks from First Rays of the New Rising Sun the band record through the holidays and into the New Year.
Recording and arranging at a rapid pace, the band finish their album at the end of January of the new year. With Hendrix implementing a “lock-in” policy for the last week in order to “make sure we set things right.” At the end of the week, the press greeting Hendrix upon his leaving the studio, ask, “Was it worth locking the band in the studio, Jimi? Are we going to be happy with your first real album in three years?”

Hendrix, laughing, says, “I think you’re gonna like it, man.”

March 15, 1971 — Jimi Hendrix releases Era’s End, his first studio album since Electric Ladyland in 1968. Ever the mystic, Hendrix decides to release it on the Ides of March. The album is attributed to Jimi Hendrix and the Horizon and entered the Billboard Charts at number 3 before eventually making its way to number 1, where it stayed for eight weeks. The album was critically acclaimed. It was simultaneously called a return to Hendrix’s “peak psychedelic form,” while also compared to “The Band operating at their loosest” as well as being “like Sly Stone in his most honest and confident moments.”

At thirteen tracks, the album just missed being a double album. It opens with the psychedelic and druggy “Room Full of Mirrors” before segueing into “The Burdons” (a pun on "burdens"), which features Jimi alone on guitar, singing his most directly confessional song to date. Those two diametrically opposed tracks set the range for the rest of the album, which included re-recorded versions of “Freedom” and “Night Bird Flying.” During the middle of the album Hendrix, clearly influenced by the Band and the English Folk scene, veers into a more laid back stretch featuring songs like “Hudson Sunset,” “First Rays of the New Rising Sun,” “Islands of the Earth,” and a re-recorded cover of “Angel.” The album’s resonance came from the last two songs, a studio version of “Machine Gun” and the title track. “Machine Gun” in studio was a vastly different than its live incarnation with much of the fury turned inward. It presaged the tone and guitar work that Neil Young would do during his “Ditch Trilogy” and on Zuma. It was a song that contained the power and pain of the incendiary live version, but honed it into a more mature expression.

The title track opens with Hendrix counting off, followed by a piano and Hendrix’s vocal refrain of:

Era’s end,
Lights off and on again,
You my friend,
I hope to see you in the end.

From there, the guitar enters and the lyrics slowly fade out as the guitar rises and leads the band in a triumphant march. The guitar soars and quotes from “Axis: Bold as Love” and “Are You Experienced?” before turning into distortion that slowly fades away.

September 1971: After a summer of touring behind the new record, Hendrix holds a small party in London to celebrate his growth since he bottomed out the previous year. David Bowie attends the party and he and Hendrix go from being rock royalty acquaintances to close friends after that night.

November 27, 1971: On Hendrix’s 29^th birthday, he marries British journalist Anne Hathaway. Their relationship had begun during the recording of Era’s End when Hathaway was covering Hendrix for a London tabloid. During the party after the ceremony, Hendrix is overheard saying to his wife, “Now you’ll just write books. I’ll help, you know. We’ll write about that great blankness.”

January 4, 1972: Hendrix enters the studio once more with Billy Cox and Mitch Mitchell. Recording starts without a hitch with Jimi interested in the glam-rock movement. “Let’s try to put a little of the blues into this glam stuff. Like, Billy, let’s make it black, you know, really put something into it.” Bowie drops by the studio frequently, bringing Lou Reed around as well. Lou is using speed while Bowie tastefully snorts cocaine. No matter how spun Lou gets, he’s always on his best behavior for Jimi because he respects him “so damn much, just like so damn much.”

May 5, 1972: After recording stalls, the record is finally released. Entitled, Cities of the Future, the album is sprawling and more unfocused than Era’s End. It is much more steeped in blues than it is glam—and the blues tracks are stronger. In between those two poles are short song fragments featuring Jimi singing over piano. The album sells based on the strength of the glam single “Subway Shine,” but overall it is agreed that it’s Hendrix’s first “less than stellar” release.

July 1972: After a short, erratic summer tour, Billy Cox says that he is leaving the group. A week later, Mitchell decides he wants to leave as well. Jimi places an ad in Rolling Stone stating that he’s “looking for a band to play a few songs.”

September 21, 1972 — Hendrix makes his second appearance on the Dick Cavett Show. He plays solo electric versions of “Subway Shine” and “Spanish Castle Magic.” Dick asks him about what his next move is, to which Hendrix responds, “I’m not really quite sure, you know. I know that last album wasn’t as good as I’d have wanted it to be and that’s hard, you know. Because I’ve always got the music that I want to make in my head but just other things get in the way sometimes. I don’t know—life, influences.”

Dick also asks him about his health. “I’m strong, Dick. Exercising every day, you know. Lifting weights.”

October 31, 1972 — At Bowie’s Halloween party in San Francisco, Hendrix jams with the house band. The performance becomes the stuff of legend. An exhausted, but still “wired”, Bowie, puts his arm around Hendrix’s shoulder at the end of the night saying, “Just let me get you in the studio with a real band. You, sax, piano, drums. Not just rock. We’ll do something more than that. I don’t even want to say art.”

December 6, 1972 — In between legs of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust Tour, Hendrix and Bowie take up residency in London’s Trident Studios where Bowie begins work on Aladdin Sane, the follow up to Ziggy Stardust, while also helping to “engineer” Hendrix’s next album. Sharing personnel, the studio sessions begin to take on the air of a party with cocaine and alcohol use running rampant. Bowie begins the sessions being very generous with his attention and time towards Hendrix, but with the pressing demands placed on him with recording a follow up to the wildly successful Ziggy Stardust, he begins to turn inwards and away from the Hendrix project.

Late one night, after a disorganized session, Hendrix, high on cocaine, sits alone strumming in the booth. He is overheard saying, “Maybe this was all a mistake.”

January 13, 1973 — With Bowie gone on the second leg of the Ziggy Stardust tour, Hendrix’s sessions trudge on. Jimi is now deep into cocaine use. Hendrix records and re-records tracks over and over with no real goal in site. Saxophone arrangements are recorded and never used. Without his own “band,” Hendrix seems lost and listless. He frequently asks if someone can get a hold of Miles Davis. “I don’t know. I want something that sounds that good, you know. That does something like that. I need to ask him some questions.”

February 20, 1973 — After a two week break in sessions, Hendrix returns to the studio determined to finish recording the album. George Harrison, in London finishing Living in the Material World, comes by the studio to help with production, applying some of the techniques he had been using in his work with Phil Spector. George is a calming influence on Jimi and in a few late night sessions (fueled by cocaine) helps Hendrix edit down some of the material. They decide the album will have two sides: Side A will be funk and jazz with the recorded brass arrangements, while Side B will be re-recorded versions of some of the more traditional “Hendrix” songs Jimi had been working through.

March 2, 1973 — Hendrix listens to Todd Rundgren’s new album, A Wizard, a True Star. Enjoying the record, Hendrix says to a friend, “It’s a great record, even that one track with the dogs barking. I think I can finish this thing.”

March 24, 1973 — Bowie returns from America before going to Asia to start another leg of the Ziggy Stardust tour. He is aloof towards Hendrix while at the studio and the two don’t interact very frequently. However, his return brings back many of the distractions from the earlier sessions. Hendrix, who had curbed down his cocaine use over the past few weeks, begins using the drug once more with vigor in an attempt to focus and finish the album.

April 21, 1973 — With Bowie finishing up the Asian leg of his tour and scheduled to come back to London in the next few days, Hendrix makes a push to finish the album. He obsesses over his guitar sound and becomes especially fixated on the drums. After bringing in a variety of drummers, he finally convinces Mitch Mitchell to come and finish the sessions with him. The studio staff, frustrated by the long hours and Jimi’s general disorganization and lack of decision making, threaten to abandon the project. Hendrix takes the reigns and he and Mitchell are able to “complete” recording.

June 21, 1973 — After painful mixing and mastering sessions where Hendrix threatens to re-record the drums for the entire album, the record is finally released. Entitled, Beginning of the Bar, the album is received to mixed reviews. Many claim that while the instrumentation on the first side is excellent, that the production sounds muddy and that overall the tracks lack any true focus and don’t ever find an actual groove. Rolling Stone write, “It falls in some no man’s land between War and Miles Davis’ On the Corner. The title track grooves and entices, but after that the album zigs when it should zag—and not in the meaningful way.” The second side is better received. “The closer Hendrix gets to the blues the better,” says MOJO. This side features the album’s single, “Agent Orange,” which is a part ode and part Dylanesque character assanination on David Bowie. The single makes the Top 10, but the album barely makes the Top 40.

June 22, 1973 — After a fight with his wife, Hendrix goes out partying. He overdoses on cocaine and is taken to a hosptial and survives.

August 1, 1973 — With his marriage on the rocks and feeling completely jaded with the music industry as a whole, Hendrix and his wife decide to retreat to Washington State in order get back in touch with his roots. When questioned by The London Telegraph, who caught Hendrix right before his departure, about his decision, Hendrix replies, “I need to feel better about things, you know. Like, I’m just burnt out on it all. Maybe I should have died back in 1970. I don’t know. I just need to figure out how to do things my way again and I need to live a simpler life. I know Dylan already did this whole thing, but it seems like it’s worked out for him.”

March 28, 1974 — Anne Hathaway Hendrix gives birth to Jimi Hendrix’s first child, a daughter named Marguerite Annabelle Hendrix.

September 11, 1974 — Spending a week with his wife and his newborn daughter at La Jolla beach, Hendrix is invited by David Bowie to his show in San Diego that night. Bowie, in the middle of the Diamond Dogs World Tour seems weary and strange. However, the two reconcile. Later that night, a pensive Hendrix tells his wife that for the first time in his life he can, “sort of remember what happiness is like.”

January 31, 1975 — Jimi Hendrix attends a Seattle Supersonics game. The Sonics are hosting the Portland Trailblazers and their young, superstar center, as well as known Grateful Dead and music fan, Bill Walton. The Sonics defeat the Blazers 106-103 with Walton scoring 21 points. After the game Walton and Hendrix are introduced. Walton is enthusiastic and bashful at the same time. At one point he giddily asks Hendrix, “Are you coming back to music?” Hendrix asks Walton if he thinks he should, to which Walton replies. “You’re the best. It’d be like this league with out Kareem!” Hendrix laughs and responds, “You’re a cool kid. I’ll think about it.” Before Hendrix leaves, Walton has him sign his sneaker.

September 1975 — Rolling Stone reports that Jimi Hendrix has been seen playing club gigs around Seattle. Sometimes Hendrix plays by himself while other times he plays with modest house bands. When approached for a quote by the magazine, Hendrix says, “I’m doing fine up here in the great Northwest. It’s a nice place to live. You should try it sometime.”

May 1, 1976 — Anne Hathaway Hendrix gives birth to Jimi Hendrix’s second daughter, Lily Zenora Hendrix.

September 25, 1976 — Traveling with his family after the Rolling Thunder Revue Tour, Bob Dylan visits Hendrix at his home in Washington. The two drink wine and talk about the music business, their lives and watch Saturday Night Live, which Dylan admits he didn’t care for at first but was warming up to. Hendrix plays Dylan a few songs he has been working on and Dylan gives him a few notes. Before leaving the Hendrix home, Dylan tells Jimi about, “this thing the Band are doing for a farewell. I’ll talk to Robbie, but I think you should come.”

November 25, 1976 — The Band hold the Last Waltz concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. The concert is to serve as the band’s farewell. Dylan is scheduled to join the Band for a set. During the set, after the Band and Dylan run through “Forever Young” into the “Baby Let Me Follow You Down” reprise, Dylan and Robbie Robertson welcome Jimi Hendrix onstage to join them. Jimi plays “All Along the Watchtower” with Dylan and the Band. The band cover Dylan’s version of the song, with Dylan singing the vocals, but they encourage Jimi to solo and he obliges. After the song, the crowd won’t settle down until Jimi says something. He goes to the microphone and says only, “Thank you,” before waving and then walking off.

February 8, 1977 — Hendrix’s longtime friend Chas Chandler visits Jimi in Washington. As a gift, he gives Jimi the debut album by a new band called Television. Chandler and Hendrix listen to Marquee Moon and Jimi is enthralled by the sound of the record as well as the guitar playing. Once Chandler leaves, Jimi continues to listen to the record obsessively. One evening, after staying up late, listening to Marquee Moon and practicing guitar, Jimi goes to bed and lays down next to Anne. After a few minutes of lying in bed, he turns on the bedlamp and gently rubs Anne’s shoulder, waking her. She turns, brushing her straw-colored hair from her eyes. Hendrix puts his hand to her cheek. He looks at her, looks past her, looks back to her eyes.

“You know, Anne,” Hendrix says, “I think it might be time for me to go back to work.”

Barbers and Bullet Holes

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 07:17:15 PST

An anecdote from Matt Domino

Good, inexpensive haircuts are hard to find in New York. When you are lucky enough to stumble upon a reliable barbershop that costs $12 for a trim, you stick with it.

I live in Boerum Hill, but I get my haircut in Williamsburg by an old Italian barber. He’s a nice man, kind with redheaded grandkids. He serves free liquor to his customers at the holidays. When I lived in Williamsburg, I used to jog by the shop every morning and wave to the barber; and every time I’d get my haircut he’d tell me he was going to join me on my jogs one day. He’s been cutting my hair for three years and we still haven’t run together.

The other weekend when I went in to get my haircut, there were two clients in the shop; each one had a very Sopranos vibe about him—complete with navy Fila sweat suits and snow-white Reeboks—which is not unusual for the general clientele. I sat down on the couch and waited for my turn.

Next to me, Customer One (who looked like a younger version of Paulie Walnuts) said. “I can’t believe that bird.”

Confused, I looked to where he was pointing. Sure enough, in the window there was a little blue bird in a cage. This was new.

“It’s my grand-kid,” the barber said. “He likes it.”

“What do you do with this thing at night?” Customer One asked.

“I bring it upstairs,” the barber said.

Customer Two (a bloated John Cazale) piped up. “Why? It gets too cold?”

“What is it? A parakeet?” Customer One said.

“Yeah, that’s a parakeet,” Customer Two said.

“I let it out sometimes,” the barber said. “You know to fly around and whatever.”

“Oh sure,” Customer Two nodded, resting his newspaper on his knee. “You gotta let it spread out a little bit.”

Customer One laughed. “Yeah but watch out no one shoots at it like those windows.”

Again, confused, I looked towards the window where the man was pointing. I hadn’t noticed earlier, but the storefront windows had two clean bullet holes. Each hole was taped and covered over.

The conversation halted and everyone listened to the news on TV. I sat and grew paranoid. Suddenly I started imagining scenarios where I would wind up as an innocent victim in a mafia hit. The poor guy who’s body lies in the background of a front-page murder shot.

The barber continued cutting hair. Each time he and one of the Customers mumbled a bit of conversation at the barber’s chair, it seemed to me that they were talking in some old neighborhood mob code. “That freakin’ guy…” “No, the other thing…” “You know why that happened…”

Finally, mind racing with visions of my own demise, I took my turn in the chair. I smiled at the barber and we exchanged pleasantries. As he started the buzzer to neaten the back of my head, I pointed to the bullet holes in the window.

“So, what happened there?” I asked.

“Rocks,” said the barber. “Rocks from the storm, you know?”

I could do nothing but believe him as he began to trim my hair. It was another exceptional haircut.

He Was On That Team?: The 1996-1997 Detroit Pistons

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 07:04:17 PST

The third installment of He Was On That Team? looks back at the NBA in the time of 1996-1997 Detroit Pistons and the greatness of Grant Hill.

In this ongoing series, Matt Domino looks at an NBA roster from a specific season and tries to put the team's story into context with the larger NBA landscape at the given time period. Of course, he will always throw in a personal anecdote where applicable as well.

The 1996-1997 Detroit Pistons won 54 games and lost 28, which would have been a fantastic record during any other season in the league. Unfortunately, the 1996-1997 season was when the NBA began it’s watered-down, downward trend in talent that would become much more noticeable once Michael Jordan retired after the 1997-1998 season*. Because of this fact, the Chicago Bulls finished with 69 wins, the Utah Jazz with 64 wins, the Miami Heat with 61, and the Knicks and Hawks with 57 and 56. So, for historical context, a Pistons team that would most likely have the second or third seed in the upcoming 2013 Playoffs, entered the 1997 Playoffs as the fifth seed.

(*Editor’s Note: This trend truly started in 1988 and 1989 when the NBA added four new franchises—Miami Heat, Charlotte Hornets, Minnesota Timberwolves and Orlando Magic—in successive years due to the league’s explosion in popularity. The trickle down effect of talent being spread thin around the league became magnified when the NBA added the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies before the 1995-1996 season.)

The league was in a strange place in 1996-1997. The Bulls resumed their decade of dominance as Jordan watched most of his early rivals begin fade and grow old, while simultaneously welcoming a score of new up-and-comers that had developed their games in his looming, Jumpman shadow. In the 1996 Draft alone the NBA added the following players into the league: (in order of when they were drafted) Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim (deep cut!), Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen, Antoine Walker, Kerry Kittles, Erick Dampier, Kobe Bryant, Peja Stojakovic, Steve Nash, Tony Delk, John Wallace (where my Knicks fans at?), Derek Fisher, Othella Harrington, Jeff McInnis, Shandon Anderson, Chucky Atkins, and Ben Wallace*. That’s a pretty decent haul for one draft. However, not every year’s draft was that overflowing with talent.

(*Editor’s Note: Take a look at that list again. One draft alone was responsible for 19 memorable players. 10 of those players played in the NBA Finals and 6 of them won a championship (Kobe, Allen, Peja, Fisher, Ben Wallace and Antoine Walker). 10 of those players were named to the All-Star team at least one time in their career and at least four of them will definitely make the Hall of Fame—Kobe, Iverson, Allen and Nash—while you could make a terrible, but listenable case for another one—Ben Wallace.)

Well, we know that Jordan retired, the league had a lock-out and the watered down talent level allowed teams like the Lakers and Spurs to run roughshod over a weak league from 1999-2007 (with a few breaks in between).

However, we didn’t know any of that in 1996-1997 and in many ways the Detroit Pistons of that year were the perfect representation of where the NBA was and where it was heading.

Obviously, the team was centered around Grant Hill—who was 24 years old, entering his third season, already a two-time All-Star and who had led the league in All-Star voting (beating even Michael Jordan) the season before—as well as third year point guard Lindsey Hunter who the Pistons front office hoped would continue the backcourt glory days of Joe Dumars and Isiah Thomas. In fact, the actual Joe Dumars was on the team as well, fading gracefully into the twilight of his Hall of Fame career. To start the season, Dumars was joined by fellow veterans, and former NBA champions with the Houston Rockets, Kenny Smith (yes, TNT’s Kenny Smith), and Otis Thorpe. Finally, the Pistons were banking on young and promising big man, Theo Ratliff, who was not yet a salary cap joke.

Just looking at that roster, you can see the divide that was spreading across the NBA as a whole. A generation of late-80’s and early 90’s stars was on their way out of the league, while a whole new crop of young players were looking to make good on their talent and the league’s (and the entire nation’s) widespread affluence. However, besides Grant Hill, there wasn’t a true, marketable super-star on the entire team. The Pistons were crossing their fingers on players like Hunter and Ratliff, while preparing to say farewell to one of the most popular players in the franchise’s history in Dumars.

And make no mistake, Grant Hill was a superstar. As Hill struggles to find minutes off the bench on the 2012-2013 Clippers as a 40 year old defensive stopper looking for one more chance at an NBA Title, it’s easy to forget just how transcendent of a player he was before he suffered a series ankle injuries that eventually lead to major surgery. From 2000-2007, Hill played in 200 out of a possible 574 games, essentially robbing him, the league and the fans of nearly the entirety of his basketball peak.

Before Hill’s injuries, though, he was nothing short of phenomenal. Looking back at Hill’s body type and game, he was some kind of cross between Scottie Pippen and a prototype for Lebron James. Hill was 6’8 and played at an average weight of 220-225 pounds. Athletically, he was explosive and as a player, he was generous. He could score with anyone and could pass the ball like a point guard (he played “point forward” much like Pippen did on the Bulls and how Lebron does now), and was an above average defender. During the mid-90’s perhaps behind only Jordan and Pippen, Grant Hill was the best “all around” player in the entire NBA.

In 1994-1995, his rookie season, Hill averaged 19.9 points, 6.4 rebounds, 5.0 assists, and 1.8 steals. The following year, he averaged 20.2 points, 9.8 rebounds, 6.9 assists and 1.3 steals, raising his numbers in almost every category. The 1996-1997 season, was perhaps his best all-around season, as he averaged 21.4 points, 9.0 rebounds, 7.3 assists and 1.8 steals—the scoring is a little lower, but those numbers are very similar to the kind of game Lebron is playing night in and night out this season.

During the 1996-1997 season, the Pistons got off to a blistering 20-4 start with Hill routinely doing things like this and this to opposing teams. However, they only went 34-24 over the rest of the season. A variety of factors played into this fact, the main one being that the team was fairly mediocre and were playing over their heads in the beginning of the season. The second had to do with roster change-ups as Kenny Smith was traded after nine games and the Pistons added pieces such as veteran Stacey Augmon, another promising young player in Aaron McKie, and old (at this point, very old) ex-Bad Boy Rick Mahorn mid-way through the season. Finally, Doug Collins was the coach and has a track record of wearing on his teams. This was his second season in charge and he was probably starting to grate on the players as the year went along.

The Pistons made the Playoffs as the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference and were matched up against the fourth-seeded Atlanta Hawks, who fielded their own fairly mediocre team that season with Steve Smith, Christian Laettner, Mookie Blaylock and Dikembe Mutombo as their only notable players. Detroit lost the series in five games, though Hill raised his scoring (21.4 to 23.6 points per game) throughout the entire series, as did Lindsey Hunter (14.2 to 15.0).

Though the Pistons appeared to be a team to reckon with in the late-90’s—that didn’t happen. The next season, the Pistons added the talented Jerry Stackhouse to the team, but the roster never truly meshed. The team finished 37-45 and fired Doug Collins after 45 games. Long term, though Stackhouse would provide a viable second scoring option to Hill, Hunter never truly proved to be the answer at point guard and the team could not find a true low post presence to balance out the lineup. During Hill’s final season with the team in 1999-2000, he increased his scoring to 25.8 points per game—though his rebounding was down to 6.6 per game and assists down to 5.2—while Stackhouse put in 23.6 points per game. Despite having dual 20ppg scorers, the Pistons finished as the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference and were swept by the Miami Heat in the first round of the Playoffs.

During the off-season, Hill signed with the Magic and his battle with ankle injuries started*. After Hill nearly died due to a fever following one of his surgeries, he slowly made his way back to health. He played in 67 games during the 2004-2005 season for Orlando and averaged 20.3 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.4 assists. However, the following year he was injured again and played in only 21 games. After the 2006-2007 season, Hill contemplated retiring, but instead decided to sign with Phoenix to play with Steve Nash and the legendary Phoenix Suns training staff.

(*Editor’s Note: Many have speculated that Hill’s decision to use and endorse Fila sneakers actually led to his chronic ankle problems.)

In Phoenix, Hill re-invented himself as a defensive stopper. He became a poor man’s Scottie Pippen, which for him, at that stage of his career and after all of the physical trauma he had gone through over the years, was pretty remarkable. In his five years in Phoenix, Hill averaged 14.3 points, 5.4 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game. Hill always seemed to find a way to contribute, especially during Phoenix’s remarkable run to the 2010 Western Conference Finals where they lost in an epic six game series against the Lakers. A series that Phoenix could have won if Kobe didn’t play out of his mind (he averaged 33.6 points that series!) and if Ron Artest didn’t make his miraculous put-back in Game 5.

The Clippers probably won’t win the NBA Title this year and I am guessing that Grant Hill will retire without a championship—no matter how much I hope I’m wrong about that fact. However, I’m glad that I can still look back at a roster from the mid-90’s Detroit Pistons and remember just how great Grant Hill was; and how despite his injuries, he has still found ways to channel that greatness into new roles for whatever team he is currently on. How he has remained one of the league’s most revered spokespeople. That former athletic greatness may have faded and been taken away from Hill, but his overall excellence never was.

Previously in "He Was On That Team?":

The 2006-2007 Golden State Warriors

The 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets

The Philly Accent

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:00:22 PST

The only Oscar-nominated movie Matt Domino saw was Silver Linings Playbook, and he had one big issue with it.

Did you know that the Oscars are this Sunday Night? Oh, you read the Internet and watch TV. Right, I should have remembered.

Well, in that case, you probably know that Silver Linings Playbook is nominated for awards in all of the major categories: Best Picture (25/1 odds), Best Director (David O. Russell at 14/1). Best Actor (Bradley Cooper at 40/1), Best Actress (Jennifer Lawrence at 4/7), Best Supporting Actor (Robert DeNiro at 13/2) and Best Supporting Actress (Jacki Weaver at 50/1 odds).

It’s always difficult to tell which direction the Academy will vote (or how they will be bribed or swayed by the threat of violence) in a given year. Despite the fact that Jennifer Lawrence is an overwhelming favorite to win Best Actress, she may be undermined by even youngster Quvenzhane Wallis at the last minute. However, regardless of how the Academy votes, I know one award that Silver Linings Playbook will win—and that is my Academy Award for Lack of Philly Accents in a Motion Picture.

I grew up outside of Philadelphia and even though my mother and father moved our family back to Long Island when I was ten years old, my soul and my sporting allegiances have always been strongly tied to the City of Brotherly Love. Like Pat Solitano Jr. and his father Patrick Solitano, most of the heartbreak and joy in my life have been inextricably bound to the fates of the Philadelphia Eagles, Phillies, Flyers and Sixers. One of my first true memories of deep sadness was watching the Eagles lose to the Cowboys in the 1993 Divisional Playoffs.

Each year, my father and I try to take a break from our busy lives and attend some Philadelphia sporting event. I still love every Philly franchise, but my father doesn’t care about sports; he just wants to bring me a modicum of happiness. However, what we both revel in no matter our level of interest in the outcome of a given game, is the Philadelphia accent.

In recent years, with the evergreen popularity of the Wire, the Philly accent has taken a backseat to the much more glorified and “street poetic” Baltimore accent. Whereas the Bawl-mur accent is filled with a kind of Southern twang and down-home warmth, the Philly accent perfectly encapsulates that city and region’s endearing (some would say “abrasive”) passion and fire. Any word with a long “o” (coke, smoke, hoagie, doing, etc.) can become the stuff of insult or jeer—or war cry.

Now, Silver Linings Playbook is full of powerful and realistic performances. And that film does justice to the high level of fanaticism surrounding the Philadelphia sports franchises (as well as real sports fans in general). As Grantland’s Zach Baron put it, Silver Linings Playbook is the best sports movie in years because its about “how we live with sports in the context of our daily lives, how they organize all kinds of other life experiences that have nothing to do with sports, how the teams we like make us who we are in small but specific ways.” Pat Solitano’s rage, his father’s superstitious and quietly violent demeanor, and Tiffany Maxwell’s bruised soul are all infiltrated and haunted by the ghosts of decades of the struggling sports psyche of Philadelphia. All of that, in my opinion, is there in the film.

What isn’t there in the film? The accent! Even when Pat Solitano tailgates with his brother, his best friend and his therapist outside of Lincoln Financial Field there is not a single example of the Philadelphia accent! When said tailgating experience turns into an all-out brawl, none of the participants even utters one curse word with the spitfire that only the Philly faithful can truly conjure up. Sure, New York has an iconic hostile accent, but no one truly delivers the phrase “Fuckin’ asshole” like an angry Eagles fan. In a movie that has performances that are terrific in many other levels, this lack of attention to realism is noticeable.

This all may seem like the picking of nits by one guy who’s weak heart seems to hold a strong nostalgia for the city of Philadelphia, warts and all. And that assessment wouldn’t be too far off. However, all I know is that a few years ago, my father and I went to the then Wachovia Center to watch the first rounds of the NCAA Tournament. We sat in the stands and watched high seeds beat up on lower seeds. There were no upsets. In front of us, though, we listened as two men watching the games—two real Philadelphians—pointed up at the rafters and said, with the thickest of Philly accents, “All the banners are gone, the Flyers banners, the Sixers banners, hell, even the Billy Joel concert banners are gone.”

Amid all of those long “o’s” and drawn out, yet hard syllables, my father and I smiled. The smile was an acknowledgment that we’d always love Philadelphia, whether or not the teams were doing well because there was something so much more to it; something lying deep in that accent. And all I’m saying is that Silver Linings Playbook—a film that captures, through its performances and its atmosphere, what its like to struggle in and around Philadelphia—should sound the part as well.

But, again, perhaps that’s just picking nits. It was a good movie and Argo is probably going to win Best Picture anyway.

How James Joyce Invented Twitter

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:49:01 PST

In honor of Valentine's Day (and because no one else would publish it), Matt Domino takes a look at his two loves: Joyce and Twitter.

This February, while most people are celebrating (and rightfully so) Black History Month, and while others are celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the movie Groundhog’s Day (respectable as well), we should also take a moment to pay tribute to James Joyce’s Ulysses and how it impacts our daily lives. Namely, our daily use of that hallowed social media instrument known as Twitter.

James Augusta Aloysius Joyce was born on February 2, 1882. So, though Ulysses takes place on June 16, 1904—and Bloomsday is celebrated on that day each year—I truly think of February as “Joyce Month.” Besides, the month of February, in most parts of the world, is a dark and depressing winter month, which is a perfect time for modernism-loving book readers, like myself, to hail their hero and how his work presaged the coming of the current “Age of the Tweet.”

While many people believe, or have been led to believe, that James Joyce invented the technique of stream-of-consciousness writing, this is simply not true—Flaubert and Tolstoy both touched on the style before Joyce; Edouard Dujadin’s We’ll to the Woods No More influences Joyce immensely; and Proust was publishing installments of In Search of Lost Time while Joyce was writing Ulysses. However, in Ulysses, Joyce did innovate and master the technique of stream-of-consciousness writing; so much so that we are constantly quoting Joyce’s cadences each time we use Twitter.

Ulysses is famous for its array of literary styles, but there is a basic “Ulysses style” in which a majority of the book is narrated. We follow our main protagonists, Stephen Dedalus and Mr. Leopold Bloom, throughout their day and are privy to their inner thoughts. Stephen is an intellectual, a poet, and his thoughts at their simplest appear like this:

“In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood…”

And at their most difficult:

“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.”

Meanwhile, Bloom is the everyman and he has a tendancy to think about everyday things such as a woman’s butt, his wife and his daughter, going to the bathroom, and his cat:

“They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them”

Each of those examples adds up to less than the 140 characters of a tweet. In each case, you can see the unique mix of economy and poetry in the language that we can often find in some of our favorite and most articulate Twitter feeds. In his novel, Joyce was trying to capture the rhythms of the human mind, which, as it turns out, might be at its most nimble when kept in a specific character range.

One of the most amusing aspects of Twitter is when an inanimate object becomes the focal point of public interest, which is then followed by that object taking on an obligatory Twitter handle. The most notable examples, in my opinion, being Angelina’s Leg, Kanye’s Skirt, and The Wimbledon Roof.

In the “Circe” episode of Ulysses, a tired Mr. Bloom follows a very drunk on absinthe Stephen Dedalus to an area of Dublin called Night Town. While in Night Town, Stephen visits a brothel while Mr. Bloom tries to save him from losing his money and getting beat up. However, throughout the episode both Bloom and Stephen experience a variety of hallucinations that are funny and triumphant, but mainly upsetting. In these hallucinations, when an inanimate object is referenced, very often it comes to life. For example, when the Madame of the brothel approaches Mr. Bloom with an oriental fan, the fan says:

The Fan: (Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.

Or, later, when a drunk Stephen attempts to explain his aesthetic/philosophic theories to his friend Lynch and the prostitutes, he points to Lynch’s cap and asks, “Which side is your knowledge bump?” The cap responds as follows:

The Cap: (With saturnine spleen.) Bah! It is because it is. Woman’s reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!

No offense to the clever minds behind those excellent object-based Twitter handles, but Joyce was already putting words in the mouths of inanimate things almost 100 years ago—and in many cases doing it in under 140 characters.

Despite the moments of articulation and the clever account names, the majority of Twitter is comprised of written nonsense. And Joyce predicted that as well. In the “Oxen of The Sun” episode of Ulysses, Mr. Bloom and Stephen sit with their fellow Dubliners at a bar in a maternity ward (yes, things were different back then) and discuss philosophies of birth, life, death and art among other things. The style of the chapter is presented in the evolving phases of the English language, starting from chanting, moving through Latin, Old English, Shakespearean English, Modern English and forward to a pidgin English of the future. (There’s a lot more nuance to it than that, but bear with me.)

This “future English” is hard to follow or discern. For narrative purposes, it is meant to convey the increasing drunkenness of the men at the bar; but for thematic purposes, it reads as Joyce’s prediction or belief as to where the English language is going. A few examples presented in the Twitter parameters:

“Query. Who’s astanding this here do?”

“You move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More bluggy drunkables?”

“Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables.”

Clearly, this kind of narrative is difficult to follow (well, once you get to know the story it becomes easier, but I won’t brag about that). At points during this section of “Oxen of the Sun” it is hard to know what character is speaking what small outburst of language, what actions are occurring, or if you are even supposed to be enjoying or following the written words at all. Yet, Joyce clearly revels in the freedom that this specific style affords him to make jokes with the English language and its vast array of rhymes, slangs and sounds. And, you can’t deny its uncanny resemblance to the majority of the Tweets that appear under any random trending topic.

Understandably, there was no way that Joyce could have predicted that the entire human race would spend their days on computers (he was a genius, though, so he might have), and that our language would evolve along with the capacities those computers had to simplify and prop up our language with videos, pictures and symbols. However, he was absolutely a student of history, of the evolving nature of the English language and the beauty that could be found within each passing age of that language. In my opinion, more than perhaps any other author I’ve read, James Joyce understood that we never truly own a language, that it is constantly evolving and slipping away from us, but that didn’t stop him for looking for “that word known to all men.”

So, for the rest of this month, as you browse your Twitter timelines and try to come up with your next witty tweet, take a moment to remember old Jimmy Joyce and the artistic vision he had almost 100 years ago. Take a moment to remember and appreciate the influence and history of the English language.

Or, as Stephen Dedalus might have tweeted were he living today, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

ZEPPELIN WEEK: Physical Graffiti and Mid-Life Crises

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:44:07 PST

Zeppelin Week comes to a close as Matt Domino tries to make sense of the moment Led Zeppelin started their decline.

There is a startling moment in every Led Zeppelin fan’s journey through the band’s catalogue when they realize that Robert Plant’s voice is never coming back. No longer will he shriek the choruses to “Communication Breakdown” or “Immigrant Song.” No longer will he be capable of clear, swooning verses that variously explode and shimmer like “Your Time is Gonna Come” or “Thank You.” This moment is the mark when Early Led Zeppelin turns into Late Led Zeppelin, and I imagine in 1975 it was truly terrifying for some followers of the band.

Now, there is plenty of merit to the songs of Late Led Zeppelin. “Achilles Last Stand” is an overdramatic song, but it is cinematic and unyielding and one of the first examples of its kind on record. “All of My Love” is perhaps Zeppelin at its most mature. “In The Evening” seems endlessly meaningful in some vague way, mainly due to the fact that Plant leaves every bit of vocal strength he has left on the track. Plus, “Carouselambra” is as weird and progressive as anything the band ever recorded. However, there is never the same electricity, the same dynamics, the same pure unbridled force that were once possible on a song like “How Many More Times”—quite possibly the thesis statement for what Early Led Zeppelin meant in toto*.

(*Editor’s Note: If we are talking about the “best” song of Early Led Zeppelin, that award has to go to “When the Levee Breaks.”)

Which is what makes Physical Graffiti such an interesting album. Some people consider it Zeppelin’s finest work, some consider it, like most double albums, to be overlong and a bit sloppy. It is my favorite record for a variety of reasons, but it was only recently that I realized a perspective on the album that I had never taken into account before.

When I first listened to Led Zeppelin’s entire catalogue, my heart grieved when I realized that Plant had permanently lost his upper register. There was a genuine nostalgia for the days when I could listen to “Thank You” and the rest of the early tracks without a care. It was as if something in my stomach wanted to cry out, “Ah, those were younger days!”

However, Physical Graffiti is that moment when you realize that the band will never be the same ever again and that, in fact, they are changing right before your eyes. You can hear Plant losing control over the upper register, his voice covered in reverb and other studio tricks. Page still has plenty of riffs purchased straight from the spirits of the Dark Forest, but he seems to be receding from the gut-dropping guitar of “Moby Dick” and “Bring It On Home” into something more generically “rock.” And, as it was in the beginning, so it was in the end—Bonham and John Paul Jones remain the same.

****

In the March 13, 1975 issue of Rolling Stone, Cameron Crowe manages to get a great interview with Led Zeppelin. The band had been the “white whale” of his journalism career and he finally has a chance at a long interview with Page and Plant. If you have time, I recommend you read the entire thing.

At the time, Led Zeppelin were beginning their tour behind Physical Graffiti and there is something entirely odd about the postures that Page and Plant take throughout the entire conversation. They are simultaneously nostalgic for the past and confident about the future. At times, they both seem completely exhausted and weary of their lives as rock stars, while at others it seems like they couldn’t imagine living any other way; in fact, while thinking about their stardom, they then become nostalgic again for the way things were when they first started touring.

During the interview, Plant, who was twenty-six at the time, when asked if he remembers Zeppelin’s first American tour responds:

“Nineteen years old and never been kissed, I remember it well. It's been a long time. Nowadays we're more into staying in our rooms and reading Nietzsche.”

The first time I read that, I have to admit I was a bit floored. Not because I thought it was profound for Robert Plant to be reading Nietzsche, but because I couldn’t help but think, “What a bunch of bull shit!” Especially as Plant continues on to say:

“It was just the first steps of learning how to be crazy. We met a lot of people who we still know and a lot of people who have faded away. Some ODed. Some of them just grew up. I don't see the point in growing up.”

Meanwhile, Page has his own memorable quotes such as:

“I think it's time to travel, start gathering some real right-in-there experiences with street musicians around the world…. you know what you can gain when you sit down with the Moroccans. As a person and as a musician. That's how you grow. Not by living like this. Ordering up room service in hotels.”

A statement that is followed by:

“I like change and I like contrast. I don't like being stuck in one situation, day to day. Domesticity and all that isn't really for me. Sitting in this hotel for a week is no picnic. That's when the road fever starts and that's when the breakages start, but I haven't gotten to that stage yet. I've been pretty mellow so far. Mind you, we're only into the tour a week.”

Or you can play the guessing game as to which one, Plant or Page, gave each of the following quotes:

“It typifies the days when we used to chug around the countryside in Jeeps.”

“I don't know whether I'll reach 40. I don't know whether I'll reach 35. I can't be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn't think I'd make 30.”

“Just good-time boys, loved by their fans and hated by their critics.”

“I always find myself wistful and enveloped in a feeling I can't really get out of my system.”

It’s not ground breaking news that rock stars—especially rock stars on the scale of Led Zeppelin and Page and Plant—are prone to contradictions and waxing poetic, but it is enlightening, to me at least, to just see how varied their thinking is. Plant talks about staying in his room and reading Nietzsche, but says he misses the band when he’s away from them. Page warns of the possibilty of damaging a hotel room when he is cramped up on tour too long, while elsewhere Plant downplays their image as monsters and hotel trashers. Page outrightly dismisses domesticity and imagines himself as a guitar-playing gypsy touring Morocco.

So, then, it only makes sense that they would be giving this interview while on tour to support their most varied and expansive album; they were both (and the band as a whole) stretched to the limit. They had one foot in the past, in the early days of arriving in Los Angeles and touring America or of writing songs in the country for Led Zeppelin III, while simultaneously thinking about how to grow as musicians, thinking about whether or not they will make it to forty, wondering what Led Zeppelin can actually do next.

And despite all the pompousity and the myth-perpetuating, you kind of like them. Maybe I’m biased since I have always loved their music and can’t resist a good interview, but it’s true—they do seem like “just good-time boys.”

Good-time boys who can’t help but name drop Nietzsche.

****

The majority of Physical Graffiti was recorded in 1974. Sure, there was a stalled session in late 1973—and some of the tracks were leftover from sessions done in 1970 and 1972—but for all intents and purposes, the album was created in 1974.

I mention this fact because the Physical Graffiti sessions fall right in the middle of Zeppelin’s lifespan as a band. Formed in 1968. Disbanded in 1980. Despite the fact that their catalogue is front-loaded, Physical Graffiti is the work of a band in middle-age, and middle age does funny things to people.

Obviously, there’s no way Zeppelin knew that they were going to break up in 1980. None of us know when we are going to die; likewise, Page, Plant and Jones didn’t know that Bonham was going to choke to death. Even so, there’s trademark signs of middle age: the wistful looking back in “Bron-Yr-Aur” (leftover from 1970) and “Night Flight” (leftover from 1971); the moving ahead into maturity of “Kashmir” and “In The Light”; the actual preparation for death in “In My Time of Dying"; and the acceptance of who you are in “Custard Pie,” “The Wanton Song,” and “Trampled Under Foot.” There is some bloat, but you’ve made it this far with this band and this music and you love it for what it is. And, yes, it’s starting to show some grey, the ears are starting to sprout hair and the sex isn’t as frequent as it once was, but it still rocks and is, in many ways, superior to the younger band. Plus, the sex is different and more interesting than it was in the beginning.

Metaphors aside, this is an album; a rock n’ roll double album. One of the five best double albums of all-time and easily one of the best fifty albums ever made. You can listen to Physical Graffiti a million times and still be surprised. And if you really love it, like me, you’ll just listen to “In The Light” on repeat.

You’ll listen to that song and the entire album over and over again even if you hear Plant’s voice dying on “Boogie With Stu” even back in 1971; or hear him straining on “Sick Again” and know that the end is near and it will never be like the early days.

****

I want to posit one more theory about Physical Graffiti.

At one point in that same Rolling Stone interview, Cameron Crowe asks Page and Plant what gambles they have taken. Plant’s response is the following:

“Let me tell you a little story behind the song ‘Ten Years Gone’ on our new album. I was working my ass off before joining Zeppelin. A lady I really dearly loved said, ‘Right. It's me or your fans.’ Not that I had fans, but I said, ‘I can't stop, I've got to keep going.’ She's quite content these days, I imagine. She's got a washing machine that works by itself and a little sports-car. We wouldn't have anything to say anymore. I could probably relate to her, but she couldn't relate to me. I'd be smiling too much. Ten years gone, I'm afraid.”

On the surface, that may just seem like Plant taking enjoyment in the fact that he made the “right” decision and became one of the biggest rock stars in the world instead of staying with his teenage sweetheart. Yet, there is that great moment where he says “we wouldn’t have anything to say anymore…I could probably relate to her, but she couldn’t relate to me.” Regardless of Plant’s narcissism, that feeling is valid.

We all have those moments where we think about what we could have done, who we could have been with. Those strange moments when we think of our alternate selves and can swear that we have seen our own ghost in someone else’s life. The part of Plant that wants to stay in and read Nietzsche is the same part of him that could be a country boy with his lady and have a “washing machine that works by itself.” But in 1975, he was not a country boy. He was Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and only a handful of people on earth could relate to that.

In high school, “Ten Years Gone” used to make me cry just because it sounded sad. I never really knew what it meant or cared to find out why. Now, even if the lyrics don’t state it, I understand why. The melody and the title say it all (if a bit dramatically) and Facebook has more than enough photos to show me the ghosts of possible lives I could have lived.

And I imagine that’s what was happening to Led Zeppelin in 1975. They were starting to look around and decide if this was the rest of their life. However, they were probably afraid; afraid that if they changed, took that other road, that perhaps in ten years they wouldn’t be able to relate to one another again—which kind of happened for awhile anyway.

****

Even though I know Zeppelin’s catalogue front and back, I still get a little sad when I hear Plant start to lose it on Physical Graffiti (and then even moreso on Presence). Like I said, I love almost all of the Late Led Zeppelin songs, so I don’t dread a dimished quality to the music. It’s just that no one wants to think about the story coming to the end. No one wants to long for the early days.

More specifically, no one wants to think about listening to “Achilles Last Stand” or “Ten Years Gone” on headphones in their high school cafeteria and wonder, “what if.”

ZEPPELIN WEEK: The Politics of J.R.R. Tolkien

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 07:07:54 PST

Mark Jack (@RealDarkMark) looks at J.R.R. Tolkien's influence on Led Zeppelin and what that says about the band's relationship to the world at large.

I work in a used bookstore and, as such, I am asked about my reading habits almost daily. Usually it’s a question posed with some amount of well-meant condescension. I often get the feeling that I’m being viewed as some rare, adorable creature; a nocturnal mammal with large eyes perhaps. My interlocutor, their voice raised in mock seriousness, as if speaking to a child, asks, “You must read a lot, huh?” I answer with something like “I do, I suppose.” Then I get the second question, “Did you read when you were a kid?”

“Yes,” I’ll inevitably answer, and they’ll walk away satisfied that they learned something, though I’m not sure what.

I did read when I was a child, and yet if pressed for those books’ titles, I could only name a handful. Almost every single one of the titles I can name was authored by J.R.R. Tolkien, and I read those books again and again. So when I was around twelve, and beginning to get into the really dorky stuff like The Silmarillion while simultaneously beginning to feel the pressures of coolness, I found the ultimate, or so I thought, justification for my fantasy obsession, Led Zeppelin.

The first clue that Led Zeppelin consisted of Tolkien fans was the song “Misty Mountain Hop,” from the enigmatic, rune covered fourth album with which I predictably started my Led Zeppelin love affair. This connection then lead to an exploration of the band’s various references to Tolkien's fantasy world from lyrics—”The Battle of Evermore”, “Ramble On”—to Robert Plant’s dog’s name (Strider), which then lead to Aleister Crowley and all the attendant mythology of Magick with which Jimmy Page specifically seems to have (had?) a love.

Led Zeppelin was the Tolkien obsessed teenager’s dream. I was a little too aware of the dorkiness of being a fan of fantasy, but the heavy blues-based riffs and amazing, heavy groove of Led Zeppelin were perfectly cool. The fact that I grew up in an area of the country dominated by competing classic rock stations and little else made it even easier for me to embrace them completely.

****

Zeppelin's contribution to some of the more imaginative metal groups in their wake is not so much musical as it is mythological (Zeppelin had more of an almost funk groove than almost any other band of similar heaviness)—their interest in not only fantasy books but also the lore upon which Tolkien based his books, and was bequeathed to the subsequent forms of metal. I do not intend to go into the manner or extent of this component of Led Zeppelin’s influence. I mark it only to suggest that the mythological/fantasy aspect of the band is not only an important aspect of it’s own image but is also important as a legacy. Perhaps my idea in pursuing this point may be viewed as somewhat strange, maybe even a stretch. However, I feel that Led Zeppelin’s choice of imagery reflected a general disillusionment both with progressive/utopian political movements of the sixties (with which many bands were closely allied at the time of Zeppelin’s nascence), and with a turn towards self and a certain brand of conservatism, which became the hallmark of the seventies.

It seems that the band’s reputation for hedonism often stands in for some notion of a liberal politics. I’m not sure that this notion is ever explicitly stated anywhere and honestly, I’m not terribly interested in any of the professed political stances of the band. I know that Tolkien identified with conservative politics, but that rests slightly to the side of my argument as well, not that it hurts it. What I see in Led Zeppelin’s embrace of Tolkien, and Aleister Crowley and all the rest, is a rejection of the arts as social mover or even reflector. There are fantasy and sci-fi works concerned with the way we do, will, and have lived together, but other entries in this genre—like any other genre really—reject the idea of communicating community.

The guiding principle of this type of fantasy/sci-fi is the self as an individual will; and that “individual will” often veers into mere entertainment. I’d like to think that’s fine, but I’m beginning to think its not. Led Zeppelin hews too close to being merely a part of panem et circenses regime. Each day, we are screwed too often and too unjustly to be OK with that. Granted, Led Zeppelin is not a contemporary band, but I don't believe that makes the manner in which the band operated politically as a reaction to the utopian impulses of the sixties any more acceptable.

Regardless of my argument’s ultimate validity, I find it interesting to recognize that Led Zeppelin, as connected as it is with the seventies, is very much a product of a particular British music/culture scene of the late sixties. Jimmy Page was involved with it all, including skiffle (a clip of which you can easily see on YouTube with everything else in the world of British music in sixties), playing, like John Paul Jones, on records by Donovan, The Who, and countless others as a session musician. While Led Zeppelin rose from the prominent ashes of the Yardbirds, relatively unknown, though definitely established, English rock musicians from the late-60's London "scene" filled out the final lineup.

The debut album reads like any other English blues album, but it sounds different, heavier. In an exhilarating, and yet problematic way, Led Zeppelin owns the blues they play. It is not homage to some feverishly collected, and otherwise neglected, American bluesmen by skinny, pale English youth. It is something less concerned with optimistic identification with the down and out. The course of rock music in the very early sixties—wherein a particularly American music influenced a subsequently influential English group of musicians—by the late sixties had begun to be a western music and even in some cases a global music.

However, even as liberation and social awareness as a component of rock music reached an apotheosis in the sixties, this internationalization of rock coincided conspicuously with commodification. Led Zeppelin’s particular trouble with copyright and general attribution problems similarly takes on these two aspects. The free flow and access to information as a particular attribute of capitalism takes on an early form with Led Zeppelin. In fact it continues with Page’s troubles over “Dazed and Confused,” a song originally written by Jake Holmes two years before Led Zeppelin’s version. The trouble with attribution is the trouble with determining who gets what money. Led Zeppelin undoubtedly got most of it. Their music, even from the beginning had the swagger of knowing they’d get the money.

They had very good reason to believe this way. Tolkien’s universe was about heroics, glory, and all that bullshit. Despite the stories often being centered around the actions of some humble little hobbits, the little guys are completely imbued with classic adventure spirit, though maybe toned down with a bit of British reserve. The mythology of Tolkien, the elves and kings and god-like beings and false profundity, collapses in Led Zeppelin; onto a band which, rising out of the “Summer of Love,” realizes that with the right swagger they can do anything, not because they can change the world, but because they can rule it. Tolkien’s world doesn’t change anymore than Crowley’s world does. The people or elements that are the power behind it all remain the power behind it all. It’s merely a matter of having a few kick-ass songs and a good/terrifying manager.

****

Led Zeppelin recorded their first album in the autumn of 1968. Earlier in the year, during May, protests erupted across Europe and the United States. It was the angry, hopeful culmination of the political counterculture. In France, the protests reached stirring proportions with students and workers striking, occupying factories, and generally making their voices heard. It was simultaneously the exasperated reaction of a hopeful generation meeting the continued dominance of a racist, classist, cultural elite with the only means open to the young and the poor; rocks, chants, and fire.

Even as Led Zeppelin is born, ostensibly, out of the youth culture that gave rise to all the radical social movements of the sixties, the band takes on an almost reactionary character. The blues of Zeppelin are not about any amount of identification with oppressed peoples. It is merely the exploitation of a musical genre and set of lyrics and melodic tropes. Likewise, the borrowing from English folk, most evident on Led Zeppelin III, no longer refers to some sense of Englishness and the reinscribing of peasant narratives into that Englishness—as the case could be argued for other English bands like Fairport Convention, Shirley Collins, etc. Rather, it is again an exploitation of forms and tropes.

What then is the guiding principle behind Led Zeppelin? Is it merely a pure expression of a mixed musical heritage—with some art for art sake mentality attached to it—in both disregard for the utopian and radical politics of the band’s immediate heritage and in opposition to that heritage and it’s failings? The uprisings of ‘68 translated into almost nothing. The social movements of the U.S were infiltrated by the FBI and it’s members were arrested and generally broken. The heady spirit of Woodstock turned into the horrible sense of profound alienation and separation between marginal, oppressed and otherwise oppositional groups as became evident in the violence of Altamont. The reforms of LBJ’s Great Society lead to piecemeal civil rights reforms. What was really in the air, after the promises of political upheaval in the spring of ‘68, was a turn towards the self, towards imagination. In music, the thunderous arrival of Led Zeppelin offered a reasonable alternative to the other offshoot of sixties music—the confessional singer songwriter. Both the heavy rock of Zeppelin and the confessional posturing of the singer-songwriter represent moves away from commentary about society to commentary about the self.

Led Zeppelin’s embrace of the occult and Tolkien's fantasy provide a key to the exact nature of the turn in music away from the politics of social upheaval. The disillusionment over the utopian potential of music and the arts generally leads seamlessly into the illusion of fantasy and the occult. It is a somewhat adolescent reaction, and perhaps this accounts for the “I loved Zeppelin in high shool” trope we see so much and have already encountered on this blog. I fucking loved Led Zeppelin when I was younger, and to some extent I still do. It wasn’t just because they made references to my own dorky interest in the Lord of The Rings, but because they made incredible music, and had one of the greatest bass players of all-time. John Paul Jones was a hero for me. I started off as a bass player and a shy one at that. The musical heroics of JPJ as he locked in perfectly with Bonzo, while simultaneously maintaining his cool, were perfect. In addition he took his name—he was born John Baldwin—in a sly and shy rebellious move from America’s first Naval hero. A sort of "fuck you" to Britain from a young Brit maybe; or he may have just liked the sound of the name.

****

While I still love Led Zeppelin, I do not love them like I once did. Similarly, while I still have a place in my heart for Tolkien, it is not the same love I had when I was younger. I’ll probably never read his books again.

There is something adolescent about both Zeppelin and Tolkien, and, while I may not be an adult like I probably should be at my age, I am more of one than when I was sixteen. But Zeppelin wasn’t only for sixteen year olds. Those years in the seventies, when Zep traveled the skies in their wildly painted plane, packed the biggest venues, and possibly made it all happen with strange black magic rituals, were an adolescent time. Our more optimistic leaders had been assassinated, our protests were ignored, our cities were left to rot and we had long beautiful hair but no one cared anymore. We couldn’t wear our protest and we couldn’t sing it either. The elemental forces in Led Zeppelin, the power of their performance is this adolescent feeling of being caught between the innocent stupidity of children and the perceived, staid maturity of the adult.

The high school self is often solipsistic and its characteristic rebellion is easily pushed into the realm of individualism. A fantasy obsession merely serves, in many cases, to siphon off the last vestiges of identification with others by turning that identification to fantastic fictions. Zeppelin is one of the greatest bands to perform this adolescent play. The myths of wild hotel room debaucheries, the onstage swagger, would all point to the defiant rejection and skepticism of punk if it weren’t for the strange references to Tolkien and Crowley—and maybe the impressive musicianship. I suppose I merely mean to suggest that Zeppelin is best understood in the context of the sixties, of the decade they rose from, rather than that of the seventies, the decade during which they reigned.

ZEPPELIN WEEK: Advanced Riff Rock with Erik Gundel

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:02:56 PST

Zeppelin Week continues as our resident guitar hero, Erik Gundel (@EPGundel), analyzes Led Zeppelin's mastery of the Riff.

Editor's Note: As those of you who read the blog know, Erik Gundel has been a frequent contributor over the years. He writes a semi-regular column called "On the Jukebox with Erik Gundel" and participated in the Puddles of Myself reading this past fall. When it came time to discussing Led Zeppelin, I just knew we had to have Gundel weigh in on the obvious influence that the band had on the way anyone plays the guitar. After all, Erik is one of the best living guitar players and he knows that of which he speaks. This summer, he released an EP, A Home to Keep You, full of guitar tricks and other beautiful melodies and has released a series of sophisticated and sonically layered singles this past fall. All of which you can listen to or buy.

First thing’s first: Led Zeppelin are one of my all-time favorite bands. They caught my ear in that second phase of music fandom in which you survey the evergreen classics that you hear on the radio while driving around with your parents (the first phase of fandom, for me, being cassette tapes of Disney soundtracks and MC Hammer. It was 1990, after all.)

Zeppelin have such a rich catalogue that I have not grown fatigued by them the way that I have by a band like Pink Floyd, who I haven’t voluntarily listened to since eighth grade. I may not be ecstatic to hear IV for the millionth time, but I have a lot of listening to Physical Graffiti to go before I get sick of it. Perhaps the main reason they have never grown tiresome is that they are fucking heavy as shit. If you’ve ever heard their live album How the West Was Won, you wouldn’t be able to argue that, as a group of people playing different instruments and singing as a unit, they don’t eat the Beatles’ lunches (mustardy crumpets with tea and pie for dessert, probably.) They are not merely “more than a sum of their individual parts”; they seem to say, rather, “Hey math, how about you take a hike, we’re going to rock with the impossible power of an imploding star and then slap your girlfriend on the rear with a big fish.”

But what was the key to their ability to rock so hard? To my ears, that would be the musical device known only as The Riff. There are probably a lot of ways to define a riff, but I have a set of guidelines that I think make a good one. The first speaks to the notion of unity that Zeppelin displays so fiercely: everyone plays the riff. The guitar and bass are locked together, and the drummer is reinforcing the rhythmic aspects of the riff while maintaining the underlying beat of the song. The second guideline is that the riff should display a sense of monolithic power and simplicity, meaning it is usually one note at a time. If the bass player is going to be playing the riff, it can’t have a lot of chords or musical accoutrements (I, the riff judge, will allow for guitar harmony, or guitarmony, in which a second guitar player will play the riff in a melodically complementary way—think Boston or Thin Lizzy—because usually this rocks. The fundamental riff will remain beneath.)

The final guideline is more subjective, and it is that a good riff will make you at least nod your head. This is the first step towards the logical endpoint of listening to riffs, the head bang. There is a sweet spot for the tempo, or speed, of the riff: too fast and it loses any sense of a groove, too slow and it can become easily tiresome. There is a lot of wiggle room there, as I am a big fan of slower riffs, but most great ones fall around 80-100 beats per minute. The last thing I’ll mention is that a lot of riffs gain power from their context in a song, i.e. buildup and release. Some need no context to rock, others are the payoff for minutes of non-riffage. It does not count as a riff guideline though, F.Y.I.! So, let’s take a listen to some riffs, Zeppelin and otherwise, and see how they fit into the discussion I just had with myself.

“Bring it on Home”- Led Zeppelin from Led Zeppelin II

This has not always been one of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs. In truth, to speak about context, the nearly two-minute introductory section of Robert Plant singing in an affected way over a simple blues progression turned me off to the point that I didn’t listen to the full song until a friend of mine cited it as his favorite in high school. Whoops! Now I see that intro as the build-up to one of the all-time greatest riffs. It hits all the guidelines, nay, smushes them. After Jimmy Page plays that thing once through alone (one note at a time, mind you) John Paul Jones doubles it up perfectly on bass, and John Bonham lays it down on drums as only he could; accenting the upbeats of the riff while maintaining a locked groove underneath. Once you get the picture the first time around, Page overdubs a guitar harmony the second time through, scoring amazing bonus riffage points! There may be a lot of quick notes going on, but the underlying rhythm slots right into the T.S.S. (tempo sweet spot) at about 100 bpm. Textbook riff work right here.

“In the Light”- Led Zeppelin from Physical Graffiti

As a point of contrast, here is a song from a later stage in Zeppelin’s career, demonstrating that they never veered too far from the riff, they just appropriated it to suit their mystical needs. The intro to this song is some heady stuff, man. But then we get an embarrassment of riff riches (A.K.A. riffches.) There’s the punctuated, descending riff that comes out of nowhere, snapping you out of your opium haze. There’s the stabilizing riff of the verses that you can really bob to, this time a slower, juicy 60 beats per minute. Then there’s the riff in the choruses, which fractures the unity of the bass and guitar, but features an ascending Page line that seems to lift you up into the eponymous “Light.” This is a good deal more complex than their early bluesy material; this song would be in a riff textbook for an advanced class, like Riffs 301 with that tough professor you had last semester who gave your final paper a C. What a dick that guy is.

“Black Sabbath”- Black Sabbath from Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath are probably the only heavy band that can rival Led Zeppelin for influence, and it could be argued that they are the more important band for today’s metal scene. Whereas Led Zeppelin’s interest in the occult was a thing of legend, and you had to play “Stairway” backwards to hear Plant sing about Satan, Ozzy calls out the name of the beast in their very first song on record. They have endless good riffs, but you can’t deny the simple power of “Black Sabbath,” the titular riff as it were. This riff has three notes to it, played nice and slowly, and it garners its power from emphasizing the tri-tone interval. Without getting technical, if you played every possible combination of two notes on a guitar to Satan, the combination he would like the most would be the tri-tone. Also, if you can convincingly add church bells to your riff, you’ve got yourself a classic.

“Spanish Castle Magic”- Jimi Hendrix from Axis Bold As Love

I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t include a Jimi Hendrix song in my riff article, yet his playing is so expansive that not many songs fit the Zeppelin-oriented guidelines I have imposed. Vermont classic rock stations never touched this song, perhaps because it is too heavy for those wookies. Go “feed her with a tweezer,” or whatever it is you guys want to do with your time. (Sorry, just kidding VT. )

Anyways, the Experience plays this song as a very tight unit throughout, extra credit given to Mitch Mitchell’s tasteful yet explosive drumming. Really, though, it’s all about that riff that opens the song, probably the heaviest thing in Jimi’s discography. Except for “Machine Gun.” I should have written about that song now that I think about it. I’ll say that song doesn’t count because it sounds like an alien must have played it, which is immediate disqualification in the riff guidelines. No aliens, sorry.

“Asteroid” — Kyuss from Welcome to Sky Valley

Based on my research, there were no decent riffs from 1975 to 1991. Sorry. Chalk it up to the stylistic or production choices of the time, but it was a dry age for solid riffage. There arose a revival of heavy, Zeppelin and Sabbath-influenced rock in the 90s, attributed in no small part to Kyuss. Featuring two future members of Queens of the Stone Age, these dudes played some pretty mean riffs. They tuned their guitars way lower than other bands. So low, in fact, that their early demos were completely inaudible. This song is simple to the point of being stupid, but in the best way possible. “Ok, so we do that quiet part for a little while, and then we play the riff really loud like eight times, then we do it all again, sort of.” The rest of the album has some fairly dated singing on it, so give these guys credit for knowing when to get outta the way of a riff.

“Bullet in Your Head” — Rage Against the Machine from Rage Against the Machine

Ah yes, Rage Against the Machine. This band is, for me, so closely associated with adolescence that I have a hard time believing that anyone over twenty-five was ever into them. The lyrics were made up of endless slogans, almost completely devoid of a single personal thought or feeling. But I’ll be damned if they weren’t the most successful riff-smiths of the last twenty years. You could pick a song at random and it would feature a riff that fits the guidelines I have set forth. Everyone plays the riff together? Every time. Guitar and bass united? Glued together. T.S.S.? These guys wouldn’t leave the T.S.S. if you lured them away with a piping hot cheese pizza from Sal’s. In addition, the formula for building to the riff was there from the start: Zach of the Rocha raps about injustice over a tight bass/drum groove with weird guitar sounds over it, then he screams about injustice over a hard rocking riff. R.O.T.M. SONG RANDOMIZER HAS SELECTED: “Bullet in Your Head.”

No joke, this song was selected using a random number generator.

“Oblivion” — Mastodon from Crack the Skye

Mastodon is a band that seems to aspire, more than any other heavy band around these days, to the levels of cosmic grandeur that Led Zeppelin mastered. Their albums have over-the-top concepts that variously revolve around evil Czars, sleeping giants, and the white whale itself, Moby Dick*. The acoustic guitar wanders in and out like a faint whiff of some really heady nuggage. As they are equally indebted to proggier acts like Genesis and Rush, they don’t always make their riffs easy to grasp. The introduction to “Oblivion” is a rare slab of simple Sabbath-ness, building and expanding as it goes on. On a personal note, my former band Motel Motel covered this song a bunch of times on our final tour together, and it was perhaps the most fun I’ve had performing. There is a real joy to playing the same exact thing as your compatriots that not a lot in music can match; good riffs have a primal force and directness that will probably never get old. How many riffs can there be? Who will be the next riff master? I was trying to write the word “riff” 400 times in this article, did I make it?

(*Editor’s Note: Not to be confused with the Led Zeppelin song “Moby Dick,” which, if I may be so bold, would certainly fit within the very stringent riff guidelines set up by Mr. Gundel.)

Note on omissions:

I only have so much space to write about riffs, so I apologize if I missed your favorite. A lot of people cite “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” as the best riff of all time. Sure, nice riff, but it’s about as light as my wallet after eating dinner at Sal’s Pizza (light because I get a lot of food, not because it’s expensive. Sal’s is good value.) The bass player should have doubled it if you ask me. “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple was immediately and forever disqualified when the fifth kid I taught guitar lessons to in Vermont asked to learn it. Do you really like that song, kid? Do you even want to learn the next part? Good, I don’t know it either. “Tom Sawyer” by Rush was omitted for length. I wrote a very long piece about it, had to cut it. The main riff in “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins is on the drums, not generally considered in the riff conversation, and thus omitted. Anything I missed? I look forward to your comments, and thanks for reading.

Yours in eternal riffdom,
Erik P. Gundel

ZEPPELIN WEEK: The Portable John Bonham

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:59:55 PST

David Stern (@sanctuariesnyc) provides his five favorite John "Bonzo" Bonham moments.

Editor's Note: David Stern has been making special contributions to Puddles of Myself for a few years now, including various Puddles of My Podcast appearances and a pivotal part in Nilsson Week back in September of 2012. He is also the primary songwriter and lead singer of the Sanctuaries, who released their first album Annette in 2012 and are in the process of mixing their still untitled second album, which will be released later this year. You can listen to and buy Sanctuaries music here. Though David primarily plays guitar in the Sanctuaries, he started off as a drummer and will always be a drummer at heart.

INT. HIGHSCHOOL HALLWAY – MORNING

LINDSAY
Hey, Nick!

NICK
Oh, hey, what’s up?

LINDSAY
What’s the matter?

NICK
Um, John Bonham died.

LINDSAY
Yeah, I know. Last week.

(beat)

NICK
He’s dead. You know, it’s like he’s dead and that-as a result there’s no more Led Zeppelin.

LINDSAY
Well, why don’t they just get a new drummer?

NICK
What, are you- let’s just forget it.

He walks away.

****

The above scene from the second episode of Freaks and Geeks, “Beers and Weirs”, hilariously and succinctly depicts the despondency that a young person feels in reaction to the passing of a member of one of their favorite bands. But the joke hits home so much harder if you—like Nick Andopolis—are a drummer. Only a drummer can truly understand the emotional complexity in the scene. Is Nick mourning the loss of an amazing band or is he more hung up on Bonzo? Would he have had the same reaction if another member of Led Zeppelin had died? Would an equally irreplaceable drummer from another band, say, Keith Moon, be mourned in the same way*?

(*Writer’s Note: Yes, I know, Moon died two years before Bonham and both drummers have been filled in for… but never replaced, since that would be impossible.)

See, John Bonham holds a special place in every drummer’s heart. He looks down on practice rooms in either an idol-like wall-mounted poster, and exerts his influence through the reverence of drum instructors everywhere; he is a welcomed god, a benevolent force of drumming goodness. To people behind a kit he was not merely a member of Led Zeppelin, but rather a symbol and an ideal. As with any mythic figure, the intangibles are impossible to convey, but listening makes it clear that his style represents perfection in three major areas of rock drumming:

1. Technical ability/Inventiveness – “This motherfucker must be double-jointed or something”, my drum teacher once casually remarked.

2. Taste/Feel – Knowing when and how to use his chops; he is impressive to listen to but never overly flashy or getting in the way of the groove.

3. Fun – This is his hook in young drummers. “This guy is bashing the hell out of his set. I guess I want to practice.”

As a drummer, it seemed only fitting for me to write about Bonzo, rock drumming’s Orpheus, during Led Zeppelin week. It is also somewhat cathartic: Bonham died in 1980, five years before I was born, and—like Nick Andopolis—I’m still not over it.

Here are my five favorite John Bonham moments:

5. Squeaky “Since I’ve Been Loving You.”

You can have all the chops in the world, but you’re not a great drummer if you can’t handle the basics; and this bluesy slow burner is just one of many examples of Bonham laying down something simple while tastefully incorporating his trademark bombast. Specifically, I chose this track due to the following piece of drumming trivia: if you listen closely you can hear Bonham’s kick pedal squeaking throughout the whole track.

4. Double hits in “Over the Hills And Far Away.”

This song, in my book, is one of the ultimate examples of a rhythm section being locked in. Bonham and Jones (Zeppelin’s true and often-overlooked secret weapon) are especially tight as illustrated by the punctuating sixteenth notes that bookend the first lines of each verse. My favorite moment comes in the fourth verse (the one after the solo) when Bonham plays two thirty-second notes on his snare before the big crash; instead of the usual “bop-BUM bop-BUM,” you get “bubba-BUM budda-BUM.” Listen closely—Bonham's playfulness occurs at only this specific moment on the track.

3. The introduction to “Rock and Roll”

Why did I include the song from the Cadillac commercials? The short answer: it has probably the coolest drum introduction to any rock song ever. So it’s not surprising that this song kicked off every show between ’72 and ’75. The long answer: Bonham pays homage to the jump-intros of the 50s and cops the beginning of Little Richard’s “Keep a Knockin’” to create something that at first sounds perplexing. The secret: he starts on the ‘and’of 3'.

2. “Fool in the Rain” and the evolution of the shuffle.

Like the introduction to “Rock and Roll” this is an example of Bonham learning from his peers and adding his own flare. His beat in the verse of the song is very similar to Bernard Purdie’s career-defining beat from Steely Dan’s “Home at Last," which came out two years before In Through the Out Door on their album Aja. The coolest part is that twenty years later Steven Drozd—Bonzo disciple and drummer for the Flaming Lips—used nearly the exact beat for “The Gash” off of The Soft Bulletin. Evident by his drumming, Drozd idolizes Bonham and his choice here works perfectly

By the way, if you’re into Steely Dan the beat is known as the Purdie Shuffle but if you were cool in high school you’re more likely to call it the Bonzo Shuffle.

1. The first beat in “The Crunge.”

I dare you to even try to find a song that starts out in 9/8 that grooves as well as this. This beat is so badass that De La Soul sampled it but changed it to 4/4 for “The Magic Number” off of the classic 3 Feet High and Rising (this was definitely more work intensive in the late 80s than it is now).

This is my personal favorite because it is the best example of Bonzo playing something utterly bonkers that only he could dream up that still grooves, still makes you want to dance, and still works in the context of a song. When I started playing drums, this was a beat that I was inspired by but could not play or even figure out for quite a while. The first time I ever felt talented or knew that I was a good drummer—at least good enough for my own happiness—was when I conquered it.

ZEPPELIN WEEK: Your Father's Led Zeppelin

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 07:23:45 PST

Day Two of Zeppelin Week kicks off with a trademark Erik Lilleby (@ErikLittleBee) rant on trying to remember Zeppelin as they were in 1968.

There is a Led Zeppelin we know and a Led Zeppelin created by our fathers. There is a Led Zeppelin we’ve absorbed and a Led Zeppelin created by radio. If you’ve never heard who Led Zeppelin is, go away. You’re a crazy person. However, these days many people my age hate Led Zeppelin because they’ve been played on the radio constantly since the 70’s; oh, and also because Plant is repeatedly saying, “baby.”

I’ve always had a great love for Led Zeppelin, but recently I haven’t been able to listen to them when their songs are played on the radio—or by the cover band that plays in Babylon, Syosset, Hempstead or some other Long Island town every night of the week. The same eight Led Zeppelin songs have been on repeat for thirty years; or at least since someone invented “classic rock” radio.

When does something become classic? Ten years of constant play? Regardless, Led Zeppelin is the archetype of “classic rock.” More specifically, they helped create the genre “hard rock.” More people are listening to satellite radio now and Zeppelin has an entire station there. The Cadillac car commercials are a good reference of the prolificacy of the music; 15 seconds of one of their songs is worth millions. They are an American institution.

So, as many people will tell you, for the most part I’m tired of hearing Led Zeppelin. The music doesn’t hold the same excitement for me because of some kind of musical inoculation— the music is over-played and I feel jaded.

However, that wasn’t always the case.

****

I grew up on Led Zeppelin. My mother was constantly disturbed when my dad played their records too loud in order to properly to appreciate their music on his new amp and speakers. There was a divide between “dad’s albums” and “your mother’s music.” Led Zep v. Carly Simon. I think we know who won.

If you were lucky enough to have a Dad who loved Led Zeppelin I, you know what this means: Hard drums, wailing vocals and screaming guitar telling you about good times and bad times; watching a speaker thump along to the bass and feeling dazed and confused for so long it’s not true; sitting back among a swelling organ while listening to Plant tell a lying woman that her time is gonna come; and begging for mercy during the earthquake of a song that is “How Many More Times.” You know, the kind of thing that made you jealous of your dad because he was driving across the country, through the Rocky Mountains when he first heard “Communication Breakdown” and had to pull over because he thought he would just drive right off a cliff he felt so invincible.

And I suppose I can relate to that kind of visceral feeling in my own way. When I was a bit older, and I recognized the band on my own terms of adolescence, Led Zeppelin became “The Best Band Ever!” For me, that happened somewhere around sixth or seventh grade; that time when you’re just getting old enough to think more deeply, and a band like Led Zeppelin could change your world. Everything’s new when you’re young and that band, for me, filled up a good deal of my new, empty brain. If you were lucky enough to have a portable listening device, a Walkman or Discman, you could keep your hormones at bay by listening to powerful “dick rock”; or maybe a tender ballad or two. Either way, school was more fun with your eyes closed, listening to Led Zeppelin. With a Walkman, you could listen between classes and on the bus, in the cafeteria, homeroom—not in class of course…but maybe sometimes.

Still, there is our Dad’s understanding of Led Zeppelin and our understanding. Our fathers saw the phenomenon first hand and have been exposed to forty plus years of this music being played ad infinitum, so they are actually entitled to hate it more. Except it seems everyone either really likes them or really hates them. Each person is entitled to hate whatever they want, but Led Zeppelin is still a band that existed as one of the greatest bands of their time. Go look up their tour dates. From 1968 to about 1973, they were touring nearly nonstop. They earned their spot.

****

Recently, in order to write this piece, I decided to watch video and listen to audio of Led Zeppelin playing live in Spokane, Washington in 1968. It was their fourth concert in the states and they skipped over the East coast to play Denver as the first gig. Then Seattle, Vancouver, Portland and finally…Gonzaga University? Why? I don’t know. They had just gotten a deal with Atlantic earlier that year that rivaled any in history. Plant and Bonham were country guys who joined established session musicians and Londoners, Jones and Page. Though Page and Jones had already been in the rock n’ roll scene for a few years and had seen Jeff Beck, the Stones, Eric Clapton and the Beatles firsthand, I bet their balls dropped when they first heard Bonham play.

At the Spokane show, they play “Dazed and Confused,” and the opening snare drum hits sound nothing short of terrifying. The microphones were not ready for that kind of sonic bombardment. Everything is buzzed and lo-fi, but the performance is there. It’s some of the best loud, experimental blues I’ve ever heard. A FUCKING BOW ON THE GUITAR? Come on! The distortion is like an acid trip. I wish I could have seen the faces of the audience when Zeppelin double-up the tempo after Page’s improv. Fucking great! Listening again, it still gets me. Right in the sweet spot…my dick. (My “ear dick” maybe.)

If we can just take a second to appreciate what it was like to hear Led Zeppelin for the first time—in a small gymnasium in Spokane, Washington in 1968—it might be better for us. That first time seeing them play was most likely the coolest thing ever. That’s because they were young, pure, powerful and more or less unprecedented. (Although, to be fair, I bet there were a few guys after the Spokane show who didn’t like Plant’s voice or his dick-prominent crotch thrusts.)

And I suppose maybe I’ll choose to remember them like that, like they were in their primitive and furious days of late ‘60’s; instead of in the “Getting the Led Out!” on 99.1 WPLR sort of way that they were force fed to me.

ZEPPELIN WEEK: The Led Zeppelin Phase

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:39:00 PST

Zeppelin Week starts off with an introduction from Matt Domino as well as a brief description of the "Zeppelin Phase."

As Chuck Klosterman once said, "every straight man born after the year 1958 has at least one transitory phase in his life when he believes Led Zeppelin is the only good band that ever existed." This is the Led Zeppelin phase, and it is true and it is inevitable. For most of us, it happens right in that 14-16 year old range. As a right of passage, older siblings have left behind their vinyls, tapes, and CDs (or, hell, I guess playlists now) for the younger brother to find so that he may continue the cycle. If we don’t have older siblings, perhaps we have had our first beer or our first joint or bowl hit and have found the music that matches the feeling—young, high, languid, but restless. Or maybe there is that unceasing desire to wear headphones in your high school hallway, turn the volume on your Sony Discman all the way up and let the music transform your surroundings into a movie; make high school seem more cinematic, more orderly than it was ever meant to be.

Most likely, no piece in this Zeppelin week will be able to fully explain the universal Zeppelin phenomenon as well as Chuck Klosterman did in Killing Yourself to Live. Yet, the hope is that with each piece and each personal experience with the band, that we can try to attack their legacy through the different ways they effected us during our transitory Zeppelin years, whether they were in high school, college or mid-20’s.

We’ll look at the guitar riffs, the drumbeats, the black magic and the pure relentlessness of the music from the very beginning. There will be times of cogent analysis and then there will be times of meandering personal anecdotes. For instance, the background I am going to give you on my history with the band. I swear I’ll keep this brief.

I started actively smoking pot and drinking beer when I was fourteen. I was heading into high school, which was the tenth grade for our school district. I’d spent a fun summer pool hopping, listening to Phish and sneaking weed. That fall, my fifteenth birthday coincided with the start of school. So, one early morning my mom gave me a present at breakfast—the double disc set of Led Zeppelin Early Days and Led Zeppelin Latter Days.

I hadn’t listened to much Led Zeppelin. Up to that point, my music tastes had jumped around from Phish, to Billy Joel, to Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, to Stone Temple Pilots, to WWF entrance music and to Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam and whatever else I was downloading on Napster.

That morning, while my friends bull-shitted or slept at the back of the bus, I sat in my seat with my headphones on, listening to Led Zeppelin. With the first guitar riff and drum kick of “Good Times, Bad Times” I knew that something had chemically changed in me forever. There was just so much sound. There was just so much that had happened before.

Needless to say, the rest of that tenth grade year was devoted to Led Zeppelin. I fell in love with field hockey players and nice blonde girls from my substance free gym class, all while enveloping myself in a thick cloud of pot smoke in the woods during football games, which is all that I really wanted to do. Well, that and write bad love poetry that always came out in the exact rhythm of “No Quarter.”

I let all the strange people I went to school with float by to the tune of “Whole Lotta Love” or “What is and What Should Never Be”; I ate brown bag lunches to “Achilles’ Last Stand” and rushed out of math class to “Nobody’s Fault But Mine”; I pumped myself up for soccer games by listening to “When the Levee Breaks” and the end of “Stairway to Heaven” on repeat; and, for reasons I didn’t understand, I thought about privately weeping to “Ten Years Gone.” I was a fifteen year old who had discovered Led Zeppelin. I went to Sweet Sixteens and wore Birkenstocks with socks in the snow.

However, the most formative listening experience came during basketball season (naturally). I got home from one of our night practices and warmed up dinner. When I was done, exhausted, I sat down to read East of Eden for my honors English class. It was a long book and I was dreading the work, but I sat down in the dim light of my den—the way I used to when my house looked the way it did then—put “Rain Song” on repeat in my Discman and resumed the novel.

And I read Steinbeck’s simple and even prose while John Paul Jones played the mellotron and Jimmy Page strummed those pleasant and easy guitars, that, at that time and maybe even still today, so closely approximated the feeling of listening to rain that it shocked me. And in the novel, Lee explained the concept of timshel and how “thou mayest” and Adam struggled and Charles slowly died alone and “good” and “bad” seemed to make so much sense in all of the sepia tones that Steinbeck wrote in. All the while, “Rain Song” shimmered through its ten minutes, rising and falling, rising and finally subsiding with Page’s fluid guitars. Then the track started again, and I listened to Robert Plant sing about the springtime of his loving and I felt terribly romantic. But I realized that it was something about East of Eden that was truly striking a chord in me, that there was something far larger than this music that I had to figure out, something about the way seeing timshel written on the page made me feel; the way that the Trask family and their sadness filled me with some kind of energy that I couldn’t explain.

That was the middle of my “Zeppelin phase,” but even then I had an inkling that this music, music that I loved so much and thought was the best ever, wouldn’t save me or give me any kind of answer. That eventually, my intense love for the band would pass to make room for something else, something that would help me better understand what it was that truly made the world so simultaneously immediate and strange to me.

However, there were still plenty of stoned mornings, musical walks to and from girls’ houses and the time when my friend Jeff and I rode our bikes in the dark, each listening to “Night Flight” on our respective Discmans. But those are all my memories and I don’t need to bore you with reverie. Instead, you just need to read our pieces, listen to the songs and try to remember how the band fits into your life.

Whether it was the heaviness, the sex, the stoned quality, or just the pure youthful quality of the music, in the strangest way, Led Zeppelin is part of every American adolescence; and I don’t think that will ever change.

The Top 15 Fictional Musicians and Bands of All-Time

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 20:52:57 PST

Matt Domino gives you yet another one of his masterful lists. This time, it's the Top 15 Fictional Musicians and Bands of All-Time.

Foxygen will release their first LP, We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic, tomorrow. Who are Foxygen you ask? They are a songwriting duo based out of Los Angeles who already have one EP under their belts. Don’t worry, I didn’t know who they were until about two weeks ago when my friend asked me what I thought about their single, “Shuggie.” Since I hadn’t heard it, I got the album and listened to the entire thing repeatedly.

I have a complicated relationship with the album—nothing profound, but complicated—that I will delve into in another piece in a few weeks, once I have properly let my thoughts on the band and their work settle. However, what is most striking about Foxygen and their first album is how it sounds like a missing album from another time, or perhaps the album by some fictional band from some long lost movie.

Now, that may be a stretch, but it got me thinking about the best fictional bands and songwriters of all-time. Of course, I need no prompting or inspiration to make up some kind of crazy list full of of long-shot entries with questionable justifications, but for some reason this felt like the right time to dissect this particular area of pop-culture; or maybe it had something to do with the approaching Oscars?

Regardless, here is yet another Domino list. These are the Top 15 Movie Bands/Musicians of All-Time.

Honorable Mention: Marvin Berry and the Starlighters – Back to the Future (1985)

We can’t do a list of fictional bands without mentioning the band featured in perhaps one of the most famous scenes in cinema history. Marvin Berry and the Starlighters played the 1955 Enchantment Under the Sea dance at Hill Valley High. However, thanks to Calvin Klein/Marty McFly being inadvertantly locked into the trunk of Marvin’s car by Biff Tannen’s gang while Marvin and the band were smoking marijuana during a set break, Marvin ended up slicing his hand, leaving him unable to play guitar. So, Marty stepped in, played “Earth Angel,” almost ceased to exist, bounced back and introduced the world to “Johnny B. Goode,” as well as a very Van Halen-esque style of guitar-playing. Since Marty McFly was just a special guest lightning rod and not technically in the band (and actually ended up tipping off Chuck Berry to the song “Johnny B. Goode” due to his 1985 rock n’ roll knowledge) the band doesn’t make the list, no matter how iconic the scene.

Or, as Futurepedia says, “Marvin was somewhat bewildered as Marty handed back the guitar.” I hope that makes sense.

15. Lovebürger – Can’t Hardly Wait (1998)

The actual list starts with a criminally underrated and underrepresented fictional band, Lovebürger. The band were supposed to be the musical entertainment at the big after-graduation party, but instead infighting led to a premature demise before they could even play one of their signature tracks that everyone at Huntington Hills High School loved. The band argued over their t-shirt merch, the wearing of cowboy hats and the placement of the umlaut above the “u” in their name while Preston Meyers tusseled with fate and tried to confess his undying love for Amanda Beckett. However, their sundering was short lived, as the guys in the band decided that a huge end-of-the-year party might just be the best place for a “reunion” show with “some of the old stuff” and a few new tunes thrown in. Just as the partygoers were ready for the Lovebürger reunion, well-known nerd, William Lichter, who was heavily under the influence of beer in his first foray into alcohol, took the stage and did a rousing karoke rendition of “Paradise City” that had everyone in attendence revved up into an adolescent (despite whatever actual cast birth certificates might have said) frenzy. Yes, Lovebürger will always live on in our hearts, even if there is no film or audio evidence of one of their songs or performances.

14. Crucial Taunt – Wayne’s World (1992)

Sure, Wayne’s World was a great movie and the most successful Saturday Night Live character spin-off of all time, but there really isn’t any story without Cassandra Wong and her band Crucial Taunt. Wayne and Garth were happily plodding away with their cable access television show in Wayne’s parents’ basement when they signed a contract with Benjamin Kane who bought the rights to their show for a staggering $10,000 (what indie comedians, entertainers or musicians wouldn’t leap at that figure even today?). That same night Wayne meets Cassandra at a Crucial Taunt concert at some hip Aurora 90’s DIY venue and they hit it off over Chinese dialect. Well, we all know the rest of the story: Crucial Taunt is coveted by producer Frankie “Mr. Big” Sharp, Wayne foils Benjamin’s plans to steal Cassandra away and there are a variety of proposed possible endings to the story, but we eventually settle on the “happy” one. What people forget is that Crucial Taunt rocked. Their single “Why You Want To Break My Heart?” was a bona fide early 90’s hit, they did a deep cut cover of Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” and their track “The Way That I Feel About You” presaged much of Lenny Kravitz’s 1990’s catalog. With a beautiful lead singer like Cassandra, they are a criminally overlooked fictional rock band.

13. Bunny Rabbit – 8 Mile (2002)

It takes a certain amount of achievement for a fictional character to have a statue erected in their honor. In fact, Rocky Balboa’s statue in Philadelphia may be the only example of such a feat. However, the people of Detroit ought to think about erecting their own memorial in honor of one, B-Rabbit. Over the course of this film, Jimmy “B-Rabbit” Smith battles his own insecurities, day job, life decisions, choices in women and friends (hmm..sounds like a new article about “BEING IN YOUR 20’S!”) and manages to secure a modicum of MC fame. Yes, at the beginning of the movie he consistently chokes in his freestyle battles, but over time he learns how to harness the world around him into an inner confidence and self-awareness that he unleashes in his final freestyle battle against Papa Doc. Said freestyle battle is not only a clinic in inducing goosebumps, but it is also perhaps the archetypal lesson in using self-deprecating humor to win in any sort of altercation. When B-Rabbit makes fun of himself and then Cheddar Bob for shooting himself in the leg, it’s…well, it’s just magic.

12. Drive Shaft – Lost (2004-2010)

I don’t care who you are, what country you're from or what God you believe in, the one thing that unites all of us living right here, right now, is that we all lived through Lost. Some of us loved it more than others. I mean, how could you not get enough of the Dharma Initiative, a huge statue of a four-toed foot, the character Walt, and numbers that didn’t really mean anything. If you watched the show, there were two things that you will undoubtedly agree with: 1. Desmond was the best character; and 2. “You All Everybody” by Drive Shaft was one of the best fictional singles of all time. I mean let’s not kid ourselves here, when watching Lost, you cherished the moments when Charlie’s storyline incorporated the Drive Shaft mythology. Hell, I know I stood around many a water cooler making “You All Everybody” jokes to pass the time, even when Lost was off the air and even when I was at the water cooler alone!

11. Alex Fisher/Pop! – Music and Lyrics (2008)

This entry on the list is a fictional band that sits near and dear to my heart because Music and Lyrics is not only one of the best movies about songwriting of all-time, but one hungover viewing of this movie (along with the drinking of multiple Mountain Dews) inspired myself and two of my friends to write a classic birthday track for my friend Emily Schenkein back in 2008. Pop! were a fictional 80’s band much in the mold of Wham! and Duran Duran and rode the popularity of the huge hit single “Pop Goes My Heart.” However, after the band broke up, one of the founders, Alex Fletcher found himself floundering while playing county fairs and theme parks. See, he could handle the spotlight and had a deep musical knowledge, but could never find words to put to a melody by himself. Then, when he was commissioned to write a song for pop star Cora, he had to enlist the help of aspiring poet/plant waterer, Sophie Fisher. They had some romantic misunderstandings while writing the pop hit, “Way Back Into Love,” but eventually, after almost losing Sophie forever, Alex dug deep and wrote “Don’t Write Me Off,” which he played solo on piano for some reason at Cora’s big Madison Square Garden concert. The tune won Sophie back and the two of them formed a formidable songwriting duo according to the closing credits.

10. Dewey Cox – Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

I’m going to be blatantly honest about this entry. I have only seen bits and pieces of this movie and, while they have been funny and I do love the great John C. Reilly, I don’t have a thorough knowledge of Dewey Cox’s catalogue. However, any fictional artist that moves through various musical eras and has a face-to-face with an Elvis played by a very inspired Jack White deserves my respect and admiration.

9. Conrad Birdie – Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

A lot of people are—rightly—dazzled by Anne Margaret and her rendition of the memorable, titular track, “Bye Bye Birdie”; however, Conrad Birdie was an Elvisesque sensation for a reason. A single like “Honestly Sincere” is a crazy mixture of country, salsa and big band that might be unmatched in actual music history. I mean, listen to that song again. I don’t blame the whole town going into a frenzy due to an impromptu live musical performance with no discernable PA system. Also, now that we live in a post-Girls culture filled with full recognition of the desire that twenty-somethings have to do anything, a song like “Lot of Livin’” takes on an extra level of resonance. The bottom line: you don’t wear a full, gold jump suit during the peak/ending-peak of first-era Elvis unless you’ve got the fictional tracks to back it up.

Am I right?

8. Otis Day and the Knights – Animal House (1979)

College! Where do I start with Otis Day and the Knights? This R&B outfit is perhaps the definitive soundtrack for any reasonable guy’s idea of what college life and attitude should feel like. Yes, part of it has to do with the fact that the band was black and cool and played in the basement of a white, party animal fraternity house and thus lent the white guys an extra aura of coolness; but, it also has to do with the fact that Otis Day and the Knights pumped out some truly inspired and memorable R&B. Their version of “Shout” is definitive and Otis’ vocal performance is as iconic as anything that Otis Redding or Sam Cooke laid down in the same era. Plus, “Shama Lama Ding Dong” is a classic slow dance song and led to the memorable scene at the Dexter Lake Club where Otis pretended not to know Otter and Boone and the rest of the gang even after being the house band for the toga party where Boone smashed the acoustic guitar over the folkie’s head. And of course, any band that can soundtrack the line, “Mind if we with dance with your dates?” in a textbook example of racial tension is inevitably going to go down as one of the top ten fictional bands of all-time.

7. The Blues Brothers – The Blues Brothers (1980)

This section of the list is known as the “Belushi Duo,” namely because John Belushi was in both Animal House and Blues Brothers. The making of this film was recently chronicled in the outstanding “comedy” issue of Vanity Fair that was guest-edited by Judd Apatow, and really the driving forces behind the band were Akroyd’s deep knowledge and passion for the blues and Belushi’s deep passion and knowledge for living life—and doing cocaine. But that’s the real stuff, the fictional band was far more interesting. Elwood and Jake “Joliet” Blues met at an Illinois Catholic school, learned the blues from the school janitor and became “blood brothers” by slicing their fingers with a string taken from the guitar of Elmore James. Needless to say, these guys were troublemakers, with Jake getting the nickname “Joliet” from the time he spent in Joliet Prison in Illinois. Once Jake is out of prison, the two brothers get the band (filled with epically named and tight-as-shit musicians) and start wreaking havoc and playing gigs all over Illinois. The spree ends with both getting arrested, but landing a record deal in the process. They put out A Briefcase Full of Blues, which was full of fantastic covers of artists ranging from Otis Redding, to Floyd Dixon and Sam and Dave. There’s not too much cooler than the Blues Brothers dressed in their black suits with the black Ray-Bans belting out “I Can’t Turn You Loose.”

6. Scäb – Home Movies (1999-2004)

Possibly my favorite entry on this list, Scäb were without a doubt the most creative fictional band of all-time. For those unfamiliar with the fantastic TV show Home Movies, Scäb were the garage band who soundtracked nearly all of the music featured in main character Brendan Small’s “home movies.” The leader of the band was a Slash-looking teenager named Duane who was a fifteen year old guitar virtuoso. Scäb, in my opinion, successfully pulled of a rock-opera version of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, which included one of Erik Gundel’s five favorite songs ever, “Living Like a Bug Ain’t Easy,” and not to mention the operatic title track, “Franz Kafka!” In fact, The Metamorphosis wasn’t their only rock opera, they also performed all the music (though, not all the vocals) for The Wizard’s Baker, which was one of Brendan’s later works. Scäb mastered a variety of styles ranging from prog-rock to the hardcore punk of “Don’t Kill Children” and “Don’t Put Marbles In Your Nose,” which were as concise as they were informative, and also to the uncreditied vaudeville of “Compliment Song,” which would have made Harry Nilsson smile.

And to think, these guys were teenagers just trying to win the Battle of the Bands!

5. The Wonders (Oneders) – That Thing You Do! (1996)

When it comes to fictional songs, “That Thing You Do” might top everyone’s list, but the band’s rise to fame was so fast and their dissolution even faster that it is hard to make them any higher than number five. However, it is very tough to debate the merits of their hit single; the song has a classic, mid-period Beatles backbeat; textbook 1965 jangly guitars; it features warm harmonies as well as a wonderful high vocal hook in the chorus; and for all the aspiring songwriters out there, the B-section in this song is how you do it. And, like any truly great single, it clocks in at a shade under three minutes, leaving the listener with the involuntary urge to turn the song on again. Unfortunately for the band, they couldn’t duplicate its success, as lead singer Jimmy Mattingly had greater ambitions than just writing pop singles and marrying his high school sweetheart, Faye Dolan. The Bass Player went to Vietnam while the second guitar player, Lenny Haise, went to Las Vegas and got married to some woman. That left “nonchalant bro,” and talented drummer, Guy “Shades” Patterson to find work as a high-quality session musician and profess his love* for Faye once Jimmy cast her aside. Despite the band’s messy and rapid break-up, the highs of that one single are extremely hard to overlook.

(*Editor's Note: And rightly so. Man, Liv Tyler was beautiful in this movie.)

4. Spinal Tap – This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

SHOCKER ALERT!

I’m sure many of you reading this expected that Spinal Tap would top this list since they might be the most well known of all the fictional bands. However, I find the movie This is Spinal Tap to be a bit overrated, which definitely drops the band out of the top three. What can’t be denied is the quality of the music and Spinal Tap's influence on the fictional band genre as a whole. A track like “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” is possibly better than most of Kiss’s entire catalog, and with better backing vocals and more virtuosic guitar would fit right at home on a Van Halen record. “Stonehenge” is pure Black Sabbath with a slight dash of Led Zeppelin (though, I mean, these guys weren’t even close to that real-life league). And of course the triumverate of “Hell Hole,” “Big Bottom,” and “Sex Farm” set the bar extraordinarily high for any fictional band that followed. Even early, lesser tracks such as “Gimme Some Money” stand up with the best work of most of the previously mentioned bands on this list. I know it may be disappointing for some of you true Spinal Tap lovers to see the band and their songs this low on the list, but please take solace in the fact that I truly do appreciate their music. I mean, it doesn’t get much better than:

“The bigger the cushion, the sweeter the pushin'
That's what I said
The looser the waistband, the deeper the quicksand
Or so I have read.”

So, you can at least take that with you.

3. Wyld Stallyns – Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)

There are a few crucial distinctions to make when discussing Wyld Stallyns, the heavy metal band formed by Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan. The first incarnation of the band, in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, was just a garage band and not much of one at that. Even in the fictional realm of the film, the band was a fiction; a dream conjured up in both Bill and Ted's minds even though they didn’t have other band members or any musical abilities. Now, today that wouldn’t stop them from making a bedroom-metal band and releasing a record on some DIY label or on Bandcamp. However, back in the late-80’s that was a big roadblock. By the time we get to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey the band still isn’t anything of substance, but at least Bill and Ted have been able to fill out their lineup with the two princesses they picked up as girlfriends in medieval England. And, even by the end of the movie when Bill and Ted have to face-off against former gym teacher, Chuck De Nomolos, at the San Dimas Battle of the Bands, they still don’t have any musical talent. After defeating De Nomolos, they use their mastery of time travel to quickly acquire masterful guitar skills through "an intense sixteen months of guitar training plus a two week honeymoon." What follows is perhaps the best ending to any movie in the history of cinema. Wyld Stallyns take the stage at the Battle of the Bands and perform “God Gave Rock n’ Roll To You” to the audience as well as a satellite feed (originally intended for De Nomolos to broadcast their execution) that is beamed all over the planet.

Bill and Ted's music leads to the achievement of world peace as well as the following milestones*: the Stallyns playing the Grand Canyon; Bill and Ted conver nuclear weapons to power the world; air guitar is used to eliminate air pollution; the Grim Reaper wins the Indy 500; Bill and Ted win Sportsman of the Year; a rumored Wyld Stallyn split causes the markets to crash; the split is revealed as a hoax, which causes the Dow to reach record highs; Wyld Stallyns play a concert on the moon; and the Wyld Stallyns tour Mars.

If that isn’t inspiring, then I don’t know what is.

(*Editor's Note: For your reference, all of these milestones are presented in the form of newspaper front pages and magazine covers. They aren't actual scenes.)

2. The Rutles – All You Need Is Cash (1978)

I love anything Beatles related, so you had to figure that the Beatles parody band, the Rutles, had to be up here. Whereas Spinal Tap parodied a musical style and the bands that played within that style, the Rutles were a straight up parody of the Beatles and their rise and fall as a band as well as their worldwide cultural significance. In that light, its harder to take album names like Sgt. Rutters Only Darts Club and Tragical History Tour as purely fictional. That being said, as is the case with Spinal Tap, the music here is just too good as are the jokes. For example, in 1966, when Ron Nasty says that the Beatles are “bigger than Rod” he is referring to club singer Rod Stewart who didn’t really break out until 1968-1969 as a member of the Jeff Beck Band, so no one really knew what he was talking about. That’s a top-notch stupid joke! Songs with easy to read parody titles like “Cheese and Onions,” “Ouch!,” “Can’t Buy Me Lunch,” and “Get Up and Go” all have a real musical craftsmanship to them and are all created in a loving tribute to the kind of pop music the Beatles mastered. “Cheese and Onions” could easily be a lost John Lennon song from 1968-1973. Considering that the Rutles preceded Spinal Tap, they are the ones who really set the bar for how good a fictional band could actually be. Just listen to The Rutles and then listen to any Beatles album and see how close they came to matching that very hard to master sound. Like the Beatles’ music, it’s still impressive after all these years.

1. Stillwater – Almost Famous (2001)

Though I love modernist literature, I am a realist at heart (though, modernism technically is realism and well, what is realism anyway?). And Stillwater is the most realist fictional band that has ever been created (there was an actual band named Stillwater, but this band was not inspired by those guys). There are elements of parody in the makeup of the band, but those elements are especially self-aware. For example, when the band are having some backstage squabble, Jeff Bebe says to Russell Hammond, “we agreed that I’m the lead singer and you’re the guitarist with mystique,” which was obviously the overarching dynamic of the early-70’s with Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones sitting at the top of rock’s royalty. That self-awareness of the time and place only adds to the fact that the band just seemed completely real. Even their names—Jeff Bebe (vocals), Russell Hammond (guitar), Larry Fellows (bass) and Ed Vallencourt (drums)—seemed accurate and perfectly in line for their respective roles in the band. Then there are the songs. A track like “Love Thing” seems like a lost Deep Purple song from 1973; “Love Comes and Goes” and “You Had To Be There” both sound like outtakes from a Bad Company record; finally, “Fever Dog” is one of the most accurate Led Zeppelin IV rip-offs, right down to the “When the Levee Breaks” drums. Now, I’m not saying that the songs are better than the songs of some of the other bands on this list (I’d take “Livin’ Like a Bug Ain’t Easy” any day), nor am I am saying that a comparison to Bad Company is a good thing (dear lord, no!). What I am saying is that you have to admire the attention to detail, to the “everyday” quality the band takes on as being just another hard rock band touring America in the early-to-mid 1970’s. The sheer realism of Stillwater without the use of parody, is what sets them apart and above the other band on this list. When you watch Almost Famous you feel like Stillwater are real, which makes you want to make jokes about “Fever Dog” and singing along to “Tiny Dancer”; its what make you want to fully import them into the overriding pop culture and the culture of your life.

In any event, they hold up, the movie holds up and they are the best fictional band of all-time.

Friday at Barclays

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:51:57 PST

On a Friday last month, Matt Domino took in a Nets game at Barclays Center.

My mother is an extremely social person. Though I am by nature introverted, because of this fact I have found myself trying to be as outgoing and as sociable as I am capable. I make plans, throw parties and try to organize weekends with friends so that we can drink and make new jokes to take with us into the most mundane moments of our everyday lives. However, you can’t always be with friends, no matter how hard you try, and very often I find myself alone—most of the time by choice, as Ron Swanson would say, but other times just by circumstance.

On a Friday last month, because I try to be a social person, I sent out messages on a variety social media that I wanted to see the Brooklyn Nets play the Golden State Warriors at the Barclays Center. It was short notice for even the closest of friends, so I had no takers. In defense of everyone I know, you would have to be a true diehard NBA fan to want to go see the (at the time) formidable Brooklyn Nets play a likeable, young but fairly (at the time) unheralded Golden State team on a mild, drizzling Friday in New York City.

But I had the idea that I was going to see a live basketball game stuck in my head. Barclays Center had been sitting down the street from me for the first two months of the basketball season and I had not yet seen a Nets game, so when the Warriors, a team I had endorsed back in the summer as promising, came into town I knew that I had to go. I had to go because I had some artificial version of old-school Boston in my head; a vision of a twenty-something guy walking to the Boston Garden from his apartment on a whim to see basketball played at the highest level, drinking beer, stomping his feet with the rest of the crowd as some hardwood hero made the night memorable and then ambling out into the promise of a Friday night in an American city. I get these impalpable visions in my head and can’t let them go, so I have to make them happen, have to make them concrete, even if it is at the expense of company.

So, I got myself out of work early and entered into the damp December night. Though I had plenty of time to get to the game, I was filled with the post-work rush of a Friday. I urged myself down along Sixth Avenue, passing old women shuffling by Christmas tree stands and weaving in and out of pedestrian traffic. While stopped at street corners, I debonairly adjusted my peacoat flaps, flexed my jaw, cocked my eyebrow and did my best impression of a shadowy movie star because, well, this is New York after all.

I got on a downtown M train and transferred to the B at West 4^th Street. The B was poorly lit and filled with the after work crowd. I stood in front of a smelly man with a beard who wore dirty jeans and a beat up Rangers Starter jacket. At Grand Street, the main contingent of the train’s occupants got off and proceeded on into their own, smoldering Chinatown evenings. The smelly man grumbled something and I nodded in agreement—we were both probably beat up in the same ways, even if we didn’t look the same. The B rode on until it exited Manhattan and rose above the East River on the trestle of the Manhattan Bridge. My phone came back to life and I had a voice message from one of my best friends who lives and works in a mill town in remote, rural Vermont and hates using his phone. I listened to the message and smiled, the smelly man watching me the whole time. When I was done listening, I shrugged my shoulders at him and before long the train had arrived at Atlantic Avenue.

I walked along with groups of people who I presumed were also going to the game. There was a woman who looked slightly like Uma Thurman walking with a man who was either her boyfriend or a guy trying to sleep with her and I couldn’t help but admire her. I ascended the stairs to face the Barclays center. People idled outside in pre-game meet-ups and I made my way to the will call and waited on line.

“The Stones play tomorrow night!” The line attendant yelled to no one in particular. “Tonight, you vote for your favorite NBA players.” He paused. “Carmelo! MVP!”

“Of what?” A guy behind me asked.

The line attendant laughed.

“The Knicks haven’t done anything yet,” the guy behind me said.

“What are you a Nets fan? Ride or die?”

The two of them got into the particulars of the young basketball season and I made my way inside and got a ticket at Will Call.

Barclays was just as shiny and friendly as it had been when I went to one of the first Jay-Z concerts there back in September. I found my seat in a nice, secluded corner section of the arena, got two large beers and a popcorn, which I carried with a delicate balance and grace, and settled in to watch a basketball game on a Friday with Jay-Z sitting firmly in his courtside seat across the arena from me.

I have a holistic love for the NBA. I follow the moves, personnel decisions and player stats of every team in the league, so I found it hard to muster up genuine enthusiasm for the Nets. In fact, I attended the game more due to my investment in the fortunes of the young Warriors, especially their rookie small forward Harrison Barnes. I’ve been a UNC fan since I was a child and Barnes has been an enticing prospect. He seems to have all the necessary athleticism and surface appearance to be an NBA star, they just hasn’t fully manifested as of yet, though there have been signs so far this season. Plus, the Warriors trot out a roster filled with likeable and talented players like Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, David Lee, Jarret Jack, Draymond Green and Festus Ezeli. Yet, I am a Brooklynite and I know how much their team, with established players like Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Gerald Wallace and Brooke Lopez, means to the borough and to the city at large.

The game started and it was clear that Joe Johnson, who had and has been under-performing this season, was ready to play. He scored fifteen points in the first quarter, but it seemed like he had more than that. He made three-pointers, mid-range fadeaways, and expertly used his body to gain post position for flip shots in the lane. The pace of the game was fast and exciting and the crowd was into it.

One of the main things I have read about Barclays is that they play music too loudly on the PA during game action. Maybe the staff had read the press, but I didn’t notice the problem. Sure there was an abundance of well chosen hip-hop, but it didn’t strike me as being louder than any other arena I’ve been in. The mood in the arena was light, people were chatting and drinking their expensive beers, and beautiful girls were passing up and down my aisle. Everyone laughed and cheered at the Kiss Cam and all the foolish dancers that were caught on the big screen. The action on-court was at a high level and my heart was filled with all kinds of longing, both romantic and restless.

I was sitting near some Golden State fans—there seemed to be a lot of transplants at the game—and I enjoyed listening to their insights on the game. In fact, everyone I was sitting near seemed to be smart and informed about the game of basketball, which was good, because the whole time I watched the game I was thinking about all of Zach Lowe’s expert work at Grantland where he breaks down facets of each and every team’s tendencies in such an educational way that it is startling. I was watching for the Golden State defense, which creates pockets of space around the elbow outside the paint so that they can force teams into longer two point shots (the least efficient shot in basketball) and provide better help. As I eased into the buzz of my high-priced Miller Lites, I decided that life was good because basketball fandom had entered into some golden period of knowledge and study that made the game that much richer and enthralling.

The game went back and forth. Joe Johnson continued to be unconscious as he approached thirty points. Steph Curry dazzled with his crossovers, absurd fallaways and pull up three pointers. David Lee was inspiring with his low post footwork, touch around the basket and his mid-range shot. And, the formerly much-maligned Andray Blatche (until this past week), continued to prove that he is a real basketball player and that the Nets’ move to sign him this past summer was perhaps the savviest personnel move in the entire league. He made emphatic dunks; smart passes to cutters and often finished with finesse around the basket. He finished with 21 points and 13 rebounds.

Finally, much to the enjoyment of my neighbors, the Warriors pulled away for a hard fought and well-earned road win. I grabbed my coat and messenger bag and filed out of Barclays with the rest of the Brooklynites and NBA fans. Outside, Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues continued with steady traffic in the slow rain. Fluorescent lights from Atlantic Terminal shone across the slick, dark roads and people scurried this way and that. I heard one guy and girl say that they “had to go uptown.”

I made my way to the quiet of Pacific Street and headed east to my apartment. While I walked in the drizzle, I heard two kids talking behind.

“Just let me look at that homework.”

“Yo, but that’s like copying.”

“No, its not. I’m gonna look at it and then write my shit in my own way.”

“That’s the same as copying.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Yes it is and I hate when kids be fucking doing that.”

I laughed to myself, smoke coming out of my mouth, and walked briskly on as they continued to argue behind me.

As I proceeded down Pacific Street, there were homes lit up with Christmas trees and lights. The street grew quieter and quieter and the brownstones, with their stoops and artwork hanging prominently in each window, became increasingly pronounced in the night. Rain hung in the nearly empty trees and dropped slowly to the slate sidewalks. Dim window and streetlight fell in front of me as I made my way closer and closer to my apartment. It was Friday, but those two kids were arguing about schoolwork that would be settled on Monday. I was glad that I didn’t have to worry about that, because it was Friday and I was happy that I could just take a train, go see a basketball game and then walk home.

Even though I was alone, it didn’t seem to matter much. I wanted to watch basketball and I did it. In a city filled with social life and sex and obligations, something that simple makes things a lot less messy.

He Was On That Team?: The 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets

mattdomino@gmail.com (Matt Domino) — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 06:47:14 PST

In this installment of "He Was On That Team?" we look back at the influential 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets.

With the recent development of the New Orleans Hornets changing their name to the Pelicans, it seemed like the right time to take a look back at a vintage year in the “Hornets” franchise as part of the series “He Was On That Team?”

The Charlotte Hornets became an NBA franchise before the 1988-1989 season and played their first ever game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on November 4, 1988. On that night, the Hornets trotted out a starting lineup of Kelly Tripucka (who was an explosive—17.2 ppg for his career and 5 seasons averaging 20.0 points or more—backcourt mate for Isiah Thomas on the run n’ gun early 80’s Pistons teams before they became the “Bad Boy” Pistons), Kurt Rambis (the former Lakers glue-guy, goggles wearer and and receiver of the infamous McHale clothesline), Dave Hoppen and Rickey Green. Meanwhile, their bench consisted of first round draft pick, and former Kentucky Wildcat sharpshooter Rex Chapman, the soon to be beloved Muggsy Bogues, Mike Holton, Brian Rowsom, Tim Kempton, Earl Cureton and Tom Tolbert (not be confused with “Tolbert” from the first Major League movie.). Needless to say they lost that game to a good Cleveland Cavaliers team led by Mark Price, Ron Harper, Brad Daugherty and Larry Nance who eventually were all (especially bench player Craig Ehlo) made immortal later that year by “The Shot.”

Four years later, after selecting Alonzo Mourning with the second pick in the 1992 Draft, the Hornets entered the 1992-1993 NBA season as perhaps the NBA’s most exciting young team. On the season’s opening night of November 6, 1992, the Hornets defeated the Washington Bullets 126-119. Their starting five consisted of talented second year power forward and general freak of nature Larry Johnson, third year utility-man shooting guard Kendall Gill, pesky defender and floor general Muggsy Bogues, journeyman small forward Johnny Newman and forgettable center Kenny Gattison. They also brought sharpshooter Dell Curry and sometime dynamic scorer J.R. Reid off the bench.

It wasn’t until rookie Alonzo Mourning joined the lineup that the 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets truly took off. Mourning first started for the Charlotte Hornets in their fifth game of the season, tallying a respectable 12 points, 3 rebounds and 1 block. However, in Mourning’s fourth game he exploded for 34 points, 14 rebounds, four blocks and a true shooting percentage of 73%! (Though, to be fair, that was against the Hardaway/Mullin warriors, which even if they didn’t have the same thrills as the full-on TMC Warriors, were still pretty potent offensively and awful defensively.)

As the season progressed, Mourning steadily improved into one of the best centers in league and, when added to the equally electric Johnson, the very useful Gill and the seasoned Bogues, Curry and Newman, helped to create a team that was able to hold its own with a very competitive NBA field. Take a look at the contenders from the 1992-1993 Season: Jordan’s Bulls, Barkley’s Suns, the Ewing/Starks Knicks, Miller’s Pacers, the end-of-the line Celtics, the Daugherty/Price Cavaliers, the underrated Petrovic/Coleman/Anderson Nets, Olajuwon’s Rockets (they won the title the following season), the Kemp/Payton Sonics, Robinson’s Spurs, Drexler’s Trailblazers, and the the Malone/Stockton Jazz. I mean, that might be the most difficult field in NBA History.

Mourning finished the season averaging 21.0 points, 10.3 rebounds and 3.5 blocks and was the runner-up to Shaq in the Rookie of the Year voting.* Meanwhile, Larry Johnson put up averages of 22.1 points, 10.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, countless furious dunks and played in the All-Star game. The Hornets upset the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs that season before losing to the far superior Ewing/Starks Knicks in the Easter Conference Semifinals.

(*Editor’s Note: Can we just sit and reflect on the fact that Alonzo Mourning was selected second in the NBA 1992 NBA Draft, right behind, yes, Shaq. That’s two franchise centers going back to back as the first two picks in an NBA Draft! Not only is it astounding because Shaq ended up as one of the ten best players of all-time while Mourning would be a definitely Hall of Famer if he didn’t suffer from kidney disease and other injuries later in his career, but it’s also amazing because two centers would NEVER be taken back-to-back like that in the NBA today. The center is basically irrelevant in the modern game and twenty years ago we had two great ones go back to back. Amazing.)

With Johnson and Mourning as their superstar front court anchors and Bogues, Gill and Curry in solid complimentary roles, the Hornets were poised to be the next big team of the 1990’s along with the Orlando Magic and the Seattle Supersonics. They had one of the best home crowds in the entire NBA and their arena, the Charlotte Coliseum, was called “The Hive,” possibly one of the greatest stadium nicknames of all-time. The Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket is perhaps the most iconic piece of American sports apparel and Larry Johnson’s “Grandmama” commericals were the leading example of sports advertising (along with the Lil’ Penny commercials) during the great sports media boom of the early to mid-90’s.

So, what happened? Well, Johnson and Mourning actually never got along. Similar to Shaq and Penny in Orlando, they were both young, talented superstars on the same team in an era where popularity, money and notoriety were becoming increasingly important after the Bird/Magic/Detroit Pistons golden era of team basketball. Looking back from our current epoch of Big Threes and Super-teams, the 1990’s were a landscape of young, headstrong stars, with outlandish contracts they could never live up to on teams that weren’t actually very good. So, a superstar had to stand out, whether through the size of their contract or through their endorsements. Alonzo and Larry clashed, Larry sprained his back and was never quite as explosive as he once was and each of them left Charlotte after the 1995-1996 season. Johnson to the New York Knicks and Mourning to the Miami Heat where they both took part in memorable (and sometimes difficult to watch) playoff battles for the rest of the decade.

Muggsy Bogues remained on the Hornets until the 1997-1998 season when he was traded to the Golden State Warriors. He played another season for the Warriors before finishing out his career on the Toronto Raptors. Bogues retired in 2001 with career averages of 7.7 points, 7.6 assists and 1.5 steals. He also retired as the most beloved figure in the history of the Charlotte Hornets franchise as well as an iconic athlete for anyone who grew up in the early 90’s.

Kendall Gill left the Hornets after the 1992-1993 season and was a big contributor on the Payton/Kemp Supersonics teams from 1993-1996, most notably the #1 seed Sonics team that was upset by the Dikembe Mutombo-led Denver Nuggets in the first round of the 1994 Playoffs. During the 1995-1996 season, he was traded back to the Hornets for thirty-six games. After that, he was a key rotation player for the competitive Stephon Marbuy New Jersey Nets teams and actually led the NBA in steals during the lockout shortened 1998-1999 season. He also made a cameo on the pilot episode of a little watched Nickelodeon sitcom called “My Brother and Me.” One of my favorite under-the-radar players from the 1990’s.

Dell Curry played for the Hornets until the 1997-1998 season and was a solid role player during the Glenn Rice era. After that, he spent a year in Milwaukee before finishing his career in Toronto where he was reunited with Muggsy Bogues. He retired as the Hornets’ all-time scoring leader and currently ranks 35th in three pointers made and 29th in career field goal percentage. He is perhaps know most famously known for being Steph Curry’s father and for standing smugly in the stands with his beautiful wife at all of Seth Curry’s games at Duke.

For anyone who grew up in the 1990’s, the 1992-1993 Charlotte Hornets hold a special place in your heart. Players like Mourning and Johnson were so prominent in advertising and the fading “monoculture” that they will be embedded in our minds. Those of us who were aspiring NBA stars saw Muggsy Bogues as some kind of beacon light that told us it was possible to make it even if we weren’t the tallest guy on our travel teams. All of us wore a Hornets Starter jacket at one point from third grade through sixth grade. We loved and were baffled by Grandmama.

The 1992-1993 Hornets showed us everything that was great and precarious about the trends of the NBA in early 1990’s. Maybe the players didn’t end turn out to be as legendary as we initially thought, but the impressionable, giddy memories of the first Clinton term still remain.