Feel The Funk, Y'all

A few surprises in the 'favorite baseball teams' poll

2009-08-03T12:22:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago, Harris Interactive released the results of its annual poll on America's favorite baseball teams. It's almost a month old now, but anything that illuminates who roots for what team (even unscientifically, like Nike's United Countries of Baseball map) is still fascinating to me. A few things from the poll that struck me:

--I hadn't really pegged the Indians as a fanbase full of bandwagon jumpers, but they haven't shown themselves well this year. The team dropped from a nearly perennial top-half team in terms of numbers of fans all the way down to 25th, tied with the Florida Marlins(!). You'd think that if a franchise had gone a half-century without a World Series title, one awful year wouldn't be enough to cause fans to leave in droves, but that's apparently what happened to the Tribe.

--The Angels are even lower, at 27th. And they've always had no fans, never finishing higher than 16th. I guess I had always thought of them as a pretty strong fan base. It's tough to end up with the fourth-fewest U.S. fans in baseball while playing in the second-largest market, but the Angels' brass must have done something seriously wrong. And don't tell me it's the Dodgers' fault.

--I'm amazed the A's have hung tough, solidly occupying the 19-23 spots for nearly all of the past six years. That's certainly not great, but I always thought of the A's fans as sort of a ghetto of "Moneyball" enthusiasts or the unwanted stepchildren of Giants fans.

--The Tigers were much higher than I expected. I didn't think they had much appeal outside the state of Michigan--or even all that much within it, until they started winning again a couple of years ago. Turns out they apparently have more fans than the Mariners, who own the Pacific Northwest, or the Mets, who partly own the national media.

--I thought Braves fandom had dropped off since that dominant run during the 1990s, especially since TBS doesn't broadcast all their games anymore. But they're almost as strong as ever, even remaining in front of the Cubs. As Nike's map shows, if you're in the South and you like baseball, chances are you're a Braves fan.

Anything that struck you?

It's all RSS' fault.

2009-07-18T19:28:00.004-05:00

Instead of apologizing for not posting in way too long, I thought I'd take a closer look at why. It may actually be illuminating. (Well, that's the goal, anyway.)

I had planned to post once or twice a week on here, but other things--lack of a coherent focus on the blog, lack of motivation, lack of readers, a much busier life in general--have kept me from doing that for most of this blog's life. But now I haven't posted since June 14, the longest drought since I started this blog.

When I started thinking about why I haven't posted so long, I realized the reason went back to a change in the way I read blogs. Namely, I stopped posting because I started using RSS.

I actually started using RSS--through Google Reader--late this spring. For the uninitiated, RSS provides a simple way to get all of the new posts from the sites you regularly visit sent to one place. The idea is that instead of visiting bunches of blogs to see if they've posted since you were last there, you can open your RSS feed and get all of the new updates in one window.

RSS is incredibly convenient--it saves you a lot of browsing time, while you still get all the information you were looking for. But it's also an incredibly passive experience--instead of having to go to the web, the web comes to you. I don't have to have the presence of mind and curiosity to go, "Hmm, I wonder if my friend MattO has written anything lately," because as soon as MattO posts anything, my RSS feed will tell me. Again, it saves a lot of time, but I lose a lot of the serendipity of spontaneous discovery, too.

So once I started using RSS, I also started unconsciously assuming (stupidly) that everyone else must read my blog through RSS, too. In other words, they don't need to wander over here to find out if I've posted anything, because their feed will let them know. A long break between posts is no big deal for them, since they'll know when the break ends, and it won't cost them any effort. But for readers who don't have RSS, of course, my gap between posts is going to lead them to stop coming here, since they're not rewarded for their effort with any new content.

So consider this my apology to those without RSS (shoot, I ended up apologizing anyway), and my lament that though RSS has added quite a bit of convenience to my web experience, it's also taken away a lot of spontaneity in browsing and my urgency in posting. And those are qualities worth lamenting.

My top 10 board games.

2009-06-14T15:59:00.000-05:00

I got back from a vacation to Colorado with my family last week, and extended time with them means one thing: games. Lots and lots of them. We should just call our vacations what they are -- one big game tournament in an exotic location, interrupted by various other diversions (in this year's case, whitewater rafting, a baseball game and hiking).

So I was already in a gaming mood last week when I had a brief Twitter exchange with ESPN.com baseball analyst Keith Law about the board game Ticket to Ride. He referenced a December post on his personal blog with his top 10 favorite board games, and I decided to shamelessly steal the idea. The only difference is that mine includes card games. Enjoy, and add your own in the comments.

10. Carcassonne--You'll notice pretty soon that this list is heavy on German-style board games. My summary of Wikipedia's description of the characteristics of those games also serves as a pretty good rundown of why I like them: They downplay luck, they have mechanisms ensuring that they won't go on forever, they focus on economic rather than military strategy (I'm horrible at the latter), and no one gets eliminated before the end. Carcassonne is a relatively simple example of the genre: You're working to finish roads, cities, monasteries and farms as the game's map builds and builds. One downside: My brother always destroys me at this one. (That's a common theme among the games on this list, too.)

9. Power Grid--Another German-style game, but this one's much more complex. The goal is simple, though: Use plants, lines and raw materials to power as many cities as you can. What I love about this one is how richly it replicates real-world economic forces. A huge portion of the game is built on anticipating future supply and demand based on your competitors' past decisions and likely needs. The auction system through which power plants are bought heightens the interdependence of each player's decisions, too.

8. Dictionary--Most people know this game in its commercial form as Balderdash. I've never played Balderdash, but when I was growing up, my family played its own low-tech version, picking obscure words out of dictionary, then having everyone write their own ridiculous definitions and seeing if anyone could pick out the real one. We haven't played it in a decade or so, but I always enjoyed the excuse to make up stuff about poisonous shrubs in the remote highlands of northern Mongolia.

7. Boggle--My college roommate Mike turned me on to this one. Pretty simple word game--find short words in a small grid of letters. It's fast and fun, though. It's also one of only a few games here (maybe the only one) that works just as well with two players as with more--a big reason it's become popular among my wife and me. It just usually makes her angry when we play. Why? It's one of the few games on this list I regularly win.

6. Blokus--My wife got me into this one over the past six months or so. The rules of this game are about the simplest of any game on this list--you're just trying to fit all of your differently shaped pieces onto a grid by connecting them at corners. But it's the only game on this list that requires you to think spatially, and I really like that mental exercise. There's also zero luck involved, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

5. Settlers of Catan--If you've only played a little bit of German-style gaming, chances are this is the one you know. There's a reason it's the most popular: It's got a gameboard that constantly changes from game to game, and it hits that sweet spot of not-too-hard, not-too-simple difficulty. For my tastes, it still relies too much on luck, which keeps me (along with my mathematically minded sister and brother-in-law) from embracing it as much as everyone else does.

4. Scum--In my mind, it's still the classic party game. So easy a 5-year-old could do it, yet it always entertained. It goes by a heck of a lot of names, but in our family, it was called Scum. You're basically just trying to get rid of your cards, and the higher they are, the better. I was unaware until I read the Wikipedia article on it just now that it's primarily a drinking game, but as we were a teetotaling family playing with four kids, that wasn't going to happen in our house. This was the game my dad would bust out anytime we were entertaining friends, and I can't think of anything that fit that purpose better. Oh yeah, and don't ever, ever let anyone make you pay to play this game. Guh.

3. Puerto Rico--I played this German-style game for the first time less than two weeks ago, and it's already at number three. That's a pretty steep climb, but this is a pretty sweet game. You're a governor in colonial Puerto Rico, and you're trying to produce crops, refine them, then sell or ship those goods. It's got a really steep learning curve (it took us almost two hours to set up and read through the rules the first time), but once you play it, everything just falls into place, because the game just makes sense. I have a feeling we'll be playing this one quite a bit at the next few family gatherings.

2. Pounce--If you want to understand my family--scratch that, I don't think anyone will ever truly understand my family. If you want to try to understand my family, participating in a nine-person pounce game is a good place to start. The card game is most commonly known as nertz (that's how my wife knows it), but holy alternative names, Batman! It's more or less simple solitaire modified for a multiplayer environment, but when my family plays it, it's transformed into the most intense and just downright ridiculous card or board game experience of your life. I'm not even kidding. We've suffered pounce injuries. Usually from diving across the table.

1. Ticket to Ride--I have yet to meet anyone who's played this game and doesn't like it. It is, quite simply, the most universally likable game I've ever played. You're trying to build trains across Europe (or the U.S., or Switzerland, or Germany, or Scandinavia) to complete routes that you've chosen. It has a beautiful board, simple rules, a ton of options for strategy, and just the right level of interaction. Color me hopelessly addicted.

Of course I'm not racist. Now what's so bad about segregated proms?

2009-05-24T15:40:00.005-05:00

The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating (if way too short) article in today's edition on the segregated proms at a rural Georgia public school.

What amazes me about the story is the nonchalant dichotomy in the white students' attitudes toward their white-only prom. (How is a white-only prom legal, you ask? Well, both proms are organized privately by parents, not by the school.)

On the one hand, it seems the students aren't particularly enthusiastic about the idea of splitting their proms by race. Interracial friendships and even a few interracial dating relationships are common, and it sounds like the kids have engaged in a few half-hearted attempts to end the practice in the past. "I don't think anybody at our school is racist," says one white student who calls the practice "awkward."

But when asked why the school still has segregated proms, the student gets all meh on us. "It's a tradition," he says, echoing the rationale many of his classmates apparently also gave.

This response, of course, leads to the maddeningly obvious question: If you don't like your segregated prom, then why don't you just do anything about it? Tell your parents you refuse to go any prom at which your black friends aren't allowed, and things will change in hurry.

So here we have the paradox: These white students have black friends, significant others and claim not to be racist in any way. Yet they don't care enough about the fact that these friends and significant others can't go to their prom by virtue of the color of their skin to do anything to change it. Are they just liars, or are the social pressures of the status quo greater than we're led to believe?

My guess: They don't really think their segregated proms are racist. They also don't think their black friends are hurt by the fact that they can't come to same prom as them ("After all, they get their own prom, and some of them even come to our prom entrance to cheer us on!"). So they see it as a minor inconvenience, a bow to tradition, something they have to do to oblige their parents, but nothing more significant than that. If everything's hunky dory between black and white students for the other 363 days of the year, these two days can't mess much up, can they?

Dead wrong, of course. By the time the more enlightened students realize that holding segregated proms (anytime, really, but especially in the 21st century!) is ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable, they're off in college and well beyond the point of caring about what their high school does anymore. I don't know much about how issues of race play out in the modern-day South (I've read this eye-opening book, but that's about it), but my initial guess is that the values behind this segregation are rooted so deep in the local culture that students have a difficult time realizing that there's anything wrong with them, even as they fervently disavow racism by name.

Podcast #2: Get to know ... The Band

2009-05-14T23:51:00.003-05:00

Back by popular demand (umm ... I think my sister said she listened to it) comes my second podcast. Same format as the first, but the recording quality is much better, thanks to a new computer.

I had fun putting this one together. Hope you enjoy it too.

Get to know ... The Band

Maybe we should be a little more discriminating in choosing our subculture's leaders.

2009-05-04T19:15:00.005-05:00

My fellow Wheaton grad Sarah Pulliam had an entertaining Q&A with America's favorite plumber, Samuel Wurzelbacher (who is neither Joe nor Plumber. Discuss.) for Christianity Today. Most of it was the standard "the Republican Party has deserted true conservatism--let's get even more conservative and take back this country!!!1!" that we've been hearing from the Limbaugh crowd since November 5. Move on, nothing to see here.

But it did contain a few nuggets that were genuinely entertaining in their absurdity. The first was this gem toward the end of Joe's answer to the question, "What do you think about same-sex marriage at a state level?"

"I've had some friends that are actually homosexual. And, I mean, they know where I stand, and they know that I wouldn't have them anywhere near my children. But at the same time, they're people, and they're going to do their thing."

Joe's definition of "friend" must be reeeeeaaaalllly broad. Let's try a thought experiment: Think of all the people you're in reasonably regular contact with. Friends, acquaintances, mild annoyances, serious annoyances, enemies. How many of those people would you not let anywhere near your children? We're not talking about baby-sitting or even being left alone with your children; we're just talking about going near your children. Can you think of anyone who would fit this criterion? I sure couldn't (if I had children, that is).

What kind of level of distrust and loathing would you have to have to be at that point with such a person? Yet Joe calls people with whom he has this type of relationship "friends."* I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if you won't let them anywhere near your children, they're not your friends. In fact, they're much closer to being your mortal enemy.

*Another question: Why exactly is Joe so afraid of letting his children even be in the vicinity of a gay person? Because they'll spread their gay germs? I'd love to hear Joe parse his reasoning out on this one.

Second, we have this question and response:

Who do you see as emerging Christian leaders?

James Dobson. I love Dobson. I love John Eldridge's [sic] Wild at Heart. The last book I read was The Five Love Languages [by Gary Chapman].

James Dobson?!? James Dobson is a lot of things (incendiary, influential, intelligent, old), but emerging is not even close to being one of them. The man's 73 years old, for crying out loud! It's been 32 years since broke into the Christian subculture with Dare to Discipline. He's already stepped down as president, CEO and chairman of the board of Focus on the Family. He's now essentially a figurehead who's preparing to retire. That's about as far from emerging as you can get.

Joe concludes by answering the question, "What are a couple of Christian books you like?" which, incidentally, was not any of the questions that were put to him. My guess: He really doesn't keep up with who's who among Christian leaders, so he named the only two he could think of off the top of his head, plus another Christian book he had read recently. And that's fine for a random plumber from Ohio, but if you're aiming to become a prominent Christian leader,* you sure as heck had better know whom you're inheriting that mantel from. This is what happens when we thrust uninformed Joe Blows into undeserved positions of prominence and influence, and when they insist, against their better judgment, on staying there.

*Guess why Joe was giving this interview in the first place? He's traveling the country on a book tour.

Adding value in a crowded media ecosystem

2009-04-25T13:09:00.008-05:00

Jeff Jarvis, a professor at the City University of New York's journalism school and prominent media critic, had a fantastic post yesterday asking journalists a crucial question about the way they do their jobs: "Where do you add value?"

Here's the meat of it:

Journalism can’t afford repetition and production anymore.

Every minute of a journalist’s time will need to go to adding unique value to the news ecosystem: reporting, curating, organizing. This efficiency is necessitated by the reduction of resources. But it is also a product of the link and search economy: The only way to stand out is to add unique value and quality. My advice in the past has been: If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it. And: Do what you do best and link to the rest. The link economy is ruthless in judging value.

The question every journalist must ask is: Am I adding value?

I've tried to let that question guide my reporting for the last three years (and I'm pretty sure I've asked some version of it in a newsroom meeting at some point), and I think Jarvis is spot-on: We have less time and fewer resources to do our jobs than ever before, so there's less leeway than ever for the mindless, repetitive fluff that has made up so much of the daily grind of journalism since time immemorial.

I've been troubled at times by how much of my time at work is spent on stories in which my added value is minimal at best. I mean the stories that the local weekly is going to cover just as well as we will; the ones where I'm just retracing another paper's steps because I've been beaten on a story; the quick-turnaround, one-or-two-source stories that are there literally to fill space over the weekend cycle.

There's a reason we do these kinds of stories. As a small daily newspaper with just five news reporters, we need these stories just to reach that critical mass of news that keeps readers from opening their papers and saying, "There's nothing in here." And many of these stories are news to our readers: Just because we aren't the first or only outlet to cover them doesn't mean they aren't still newsworthy. (This is a fallacy to which I'm especially prone; I regularly have to remind myself of the previous sentence when deciding whether to follow on a previously reported story that I know I still need to cover.)

Here's where I think Jarvis' flaw lies: He seems to be operating on the assumption that if a story is out there, people will find it. That makes sense for much big-issue national coverage. No one wants to read the AP's summary of the State of the Union; they want to watch the speech itself and then read some trenchant analysis of it. (And no one wants to read the Washington Post's summary of the New York Times' warrantless wiretapping scoops; they want to read the Times' original.)

But on the local news level, that's simply not the way things work. A local TV station might be the first ones to report a kidnapping arrest last night and I might not have much to add to their account, but that doesn't mean the story is at the level of "commodity knowledge," as Jarvis calls it. I can't assume that most of our readers are voracious news consumers who will find a story soon after it's reported, no matter where. People have lives; they don't watch the news every night, and they don't constantly check the websites of several area newspapers throughout the day to spot the first iteration of every news story. Isn't that part of what we're learning in this new media ecosystem--that the news now has to find consumers, rather than vice versa? I think that's exactly what we're doing with some of these less "value-intensive" stories.

That said, I wholeheartedly agree with Jarvis that we simply can't afford repetition and stenography anymore. The shift is going to take a lot of tough concessions and inspire quite a few "But that's the way we've always done it!" objections. But it absolutely must be done. If old media institutions (or any media outlets, for that matter) want to play a role in the new media ecosystem, every inch of type and every second of video needs to add some value to the consumer. Anything less is not only bad business; it's a dereliction of duty.

Way to represent, Larry.

2009-04-11T10:28:00.003-05:00

I love Slate as much the next guy, but let's be honest, their operative worldview--East Coast, liberal, urban, secular, upper-middle-class (at least), very culturally hip--is a couple thousand miles from mine.

So it's always a refreshing surprise to see a legitimately Christian viewpoint there, let alone an argument for orthodox Christianity. But that's what I found this morning with a short essay by Larry Hurtado, head of the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, called "Why Was Jesus crucified?"

It's just a good, simple, something-to-think-about essay outlining some of the historical context of Jesus' death. And Hurtado's right: "Crucifiability" needs to be made a big part of the "historical Jesus" discussion, stat.

A good-movie overload--not a bad problem to have.

2009-04-06T10:25:00.009-05:00

Dana and I have been busy watching Mad Men on our Netflix, so we've seen approximately two movies (Doubt and Benjamin Button) since Christmas. That changed last week, when Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino played at our town's wonderful historic, volunteer-run theater on consecutive weekends. (You'll have to excuse our town. It's a little slow when it comes to getting good movies.)*

*Of course, both movies were playing at the mall theater a month ago, but we're cheap. And we love seeing movies at a historic theater.

So when I've gone from seeing two movies in three months to watching the two best movies I've seen in at least a year within the span of a week, you know I've got to write about it. I'll avoid spoilers, so have no fear and read on.

Slumdog: I couldn't help but compare Slumdog with the 2002 Brazilian film City of God. Both chronicle life in the slums, both are coming-of-age films, and both follow two boys as they take morally diverging paths from their roots in a makeshift childhood gang ("The Tender Trio" in City of God, "The Three Musketeers" in Slumdog). Slumdog took off a ton of the harder edges of City of God--an absolutely brutal film--and with the "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" conceit and occasional humor, tinges the entire thing with a latent sunshiny glow. In doing so, I think Slumdog loses a little bit of City of God's epic scope, but it also makes the film much more accessible to mainstream audiences. Sure, it's comparatively whitewashed, but I had the strong impression that Slumdog is essentially City of God with some significantly redemptive qualities--a reward that's more than worth sitting through the brutality for. And that is most definitely a good thing.

The one thing that troubled me about this otherwise fantastic film--and it may be more my fault than the movie's--was the simplicity of its theme. I like to come away from movies that bill themselves as substantive thinking about difficult moral decisions, ambiguities and conundrums, and just generally pondering the meaning of life. I didn't really have anything like that to think about as I left Slumdog. I came away with an incredible affirmation of life itself, but I didn't see much more there thematically than "love conquers all" and the moral purity of Jamal. (The game show bathroom scene and the one that followed were an indelible illustration of the latter.) It was an epic love and rags-to-riches story--two of the classic themes in movie history--extremely well told. Is a familiar story told incredibly well enough to make a movie an elite one? Or are my expectations outrageous?

I talked about this with my friend Matt, and he suggested that the main theme was instead redemption--that out of the most horrible circumstances, Jamal's family, his love relationship, his place in life are redeemed through his honesty, loyalty and moral purity. Oh, right--that's probably the "redemptive element" City of God was missing. On second thought, I'll take that as a theme. Ain't nothing wrong with that.

Gran Torino: An absolute gem of a film. This may have been one of the most Christian movies I've ever seen. In fact, the Christ-imagery almost reaches the point of overkill at the end, but it still remains a profound, complex, fully alive example of just what atonement, grace and freedom truly mean.* The problem for most evangelicals is that this wonderful explanation comes wrapped up in an R-rated stream of f-bombs and racial slurs--"many of which, quite frankly, [Focus on the Family had] never heard before." (Spoiler alert on that link). It's a shame, really, that that will keep many Christians from seeing such a fantastic movie. A few friends of ours said folks from our church were arguing with them this week that Gran Torino was an awful, anti-Christian movie. They hadn't even seen it. I'm not saying the flood of racial epithets aren't disturbing--they're ridiculously offensive, and I'm not sure I'd recommend this movie to my mother--but let's look past the f-word count and focus on the more substantive values of this film, shall we? If we avoid it as typical Hollywood corruption, it's our loss.

*I'd love to go into a deeper examination of that imagery, but it's really tough to do without spoilers. And you should all go see it, so I'm not going to ruin it for you.

Podcast #1: Get to know ... Led Zeppelin

2009-04-01T21:59:00.003-05:00

The first-ever Feel The Funk, Y'all podcast is here! I had all but given up hope of ever finding someplace that would allow me to host a 23-minute podcast online for free, when, thanks to Twitter, Omaha wedding photographer Lane Hickenbottom came to the rescue with some leftover space he wasn't using. So I guess I was wrong: There's probably no way to host a 23-minute podcast online for free--unless you have an exceptionally generous former co-worker who's willing to bail you out. Thanks, Lane!

This first podcast is essentially a "Get to know..." post in audio form (where it belongs) on Led Zeppelin. As you listen, you may think to yourself, "Between the boring host, occasional background fuzz and sloppy editing, I would rate this podcast somewhere between mediocre and downright horrid." And you might be right. But remember these facts, dear listener, as you issue your silent judgment:

1. I'm just producing these as a way to learn a skill that I'll probably find necessary at some point over the next several years. Public consumption isn't a primary aim.

2. In fact, I realized while editing this podcast that it may not be legal by copyright law, so I finished it not expecting to make it public at all. But my paper's web editor assured me that I'm probably on the right side of the law on this one, so I decided to throw it up there, haphazard production quality and all.

3. I have bigger plans for a few future podcasts. I still like the idea of more "Get to know ..." podcasts, but I also want to have guests so you can listen to someone more interesting than me.

4. Come on, it's my first try!

Enjoy.

Get to know ... Led Zeppelin

Seriously, I have an excuse.

2009-03-27T11:54:00.004-05:00

I know you're not supposed to do "sorry I haven't posted in a while" posts, but I feel like I need to.

I've been busy the last week or two trying to familiarize myself with the world of Audacity, server space and FTP clients so I can start posting podcasts up here.

Yes, that's right, podcasts. The first one is done, but I'm still trying to get it uploaded onto my own little free slice of server space. (Don't get too excited--I only decided after the fact that it was going to be for public consumption, so it's not very good.)

If you simply must have something decent to read, I present to you my Delicious page, which I've been working on this week to start building up a library of nifty ideas about newspapers, journalism, evangelicalism and all that fun stuff. Enjoy.

So what happens next? Fiery inferno or somewhat less fiery inferno?

2009-03-16T09:05:00.002-05:00

I've probably had/heard more conversations about the future of newspapers in the past two weeks than the previous six months combined, and surprising number of them have involved people who aren't in the industry themselves.

If you're so inclined and have plenty of time on your hands, here are three long big-picture pieces published in the last two weeks that are required reading for anyone trying to understand what's next for newspapers and journalism. I was pointed to all three by NYU media professor Jay Rosen, so hat-tip to him and to "mindcasting."

In order from most to least depressing:

--"Goodbye to the Age of Newspapers (Hello to a New Era of Corruption)" by Paul Starr, The New Republic. This is the traditional-media viewpoint, the classic "you'll miss us when we're gone" argument. The title says it all: Starr chronicles how newspapers are dying, then warns of the widespread government and big-business corruption that will result without an institutional watchdog. It's pretty scary stuff. He finishes by looking at a handful of economic models (like public and nonprofit funding) that could save newspapers.

Like many in the newspaper industry, Starr (a professor himself) is primarily concerned with the question, "What will happen to newspapers?" The next two have already moved on to the next question: "What will happen after newspapers?"

--"Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable" by Clay Shirky. Shirky, a pioneer of internet philosophy, argues that the correct answer to that question is essentially "No one has any idea, and that's OK. Information revolutions are, by nature, chaotic." He compares the current situation to the one soon after the invention of the printing press, when old institutions like the church and the Ancients were beginning to be viewed with distrust, but no new ones had yet sprung up to take their place. We're in the middle of that phase right now, says Shirky. The systems to take up the work to be left behind by dying newspapers haven't been developed, and they may not be for some time. But realizing this is far better than pretending everything will be OK just because we feel it has to be.

--"Old Growth Media and the Future of News" by Steven Johnson. Johnson's essay sychronizes well with Shirky's; both start with that same fundamental question, and both acknowledge that nothing sufficient is in place to succeed newspapers yet. But Johnson has a more optimistic slant, using the examples of technology news and political news to argue that the internet has already shown an ability to produce an information "ecosystem" on various subjects that is superior to the old newspapers-and-TV-dominated one. It's only a matter of time, he says, before that ecosystem develops for local and regional news and sports.

And one bonus, for those of you not as into the whole "reading" thing: This podcast (hopefully this link works--if not, you're looking for Part 2 of their podcast) is a fascinating discussion of why newspapers are failing from two rather unlikely sources: ESPN's Bill Simmons, the premier sports columnist of the internet generation, and Chuck Klosterman, one of the top pop-culture critics of that same era. It mostly takes the angle of sports news, but it's a fun listen anyway.

Welcome back to the real world, buddy.

2009-03-12T23:19:00.008-05:00

I drove through the night to Chicago last weekend for an energizing, encouraging, exhausting weekend with friends--then drove through the night back. (There were three of us, and we rotated driving. Don't worry, we were safe.)

It was one of those whirlwind retreat weekends where the "real world" seems a lot less "real" when you get back. But I had about 24 hours to catch up on sleep and generally veg before heading back to work Tuesday afternoon.

An hour after I arrived, I watched a coworker clean out her desk in tears in front of all of us after being laid off.

Layoffs suck. Period. They're demoralizing, depressing and humiliating.

I still have a job, but I think all of us at work feel a little bit less employed, a little less ownership in the place where we spend half our waking hours each weekday, after the events of this week. Layoffs are happening to a lot of people all over the country in far worse proportions than what we saw, and those people need our kindness and our prayers. It's times like these that I think the middle-class segments of American church (which among evangelicals sometimes feels redundant to say) could end up being infused with a fresh sense of urgency to apply Jesus' teachings to the hurting people around them. We try to shield ourselves from this type of physical need, but it's not--and shouldn't be--avoidable.

One step forward, 14 steps back

2009-03-02T19:15:00.007-06:00

So you may or may not have heard, but there's this thing called the "digital TV transition" that went down around here a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, the goal was to switch our signals over from analog to digital so our beloved boob tube experience could become that much more magical. And in my case, that process instead involved destroying said boob tube experience. Let me 'splain.

No, we're not morons who forgot to get a converter box and then decided to start complaining now about how "they never warned us." When my wife and I bought a TV two years ago, we decided to obey the Best Buy salesman when he told us to make sure we got one that receives both analog and digital signals. We don't get cable or satellite--just rabbit ears--so for one year and eleven months, that's exactly what we got. Five analog stations came in, along with two digital signals from stations (CBS and PBS affiliates) that had started high-powered digital transmission early. I could watch football and March Madness, and the better half had her Bachelor. Life was good.

The first station in our area to switch completely to digital was our NBC affiliate in December. That went fine--we just rescanned and got the new digital station with great reception. Then out of nowhere at the end of January, that channel went dark. OK, whatever--we watched The Office online, anyway. Then came Feb. 17, when our ABC, CBS and PBS were going to make their switch--no problem with the latter two, since we had been getting those digital signals for two years, right? Yeah, no. When we rescanned, the only digital channel that came in was ABC. No matter how many times we rescanned, CBS and PBS were gone, as was NBC. If you're keeping track at home, that means we're down to two channels--ABC (which is spotty) and our still-analog Fox. And in two weeks that also means three of the scariest words in the English language: No March Madness.

In conclusion, what the crap? The day after the transition, this AP article says, nearly half of the 25,320 calls into the FCC were about this one issue. TV stations responded to this flood of phone calls by frantically putting together stories telling viewers that "Oh, by the way, not only do you need a converter box, but you also need a new antenna." First off, why were we not told this during this $1.2 billion advertising campaign? How could we put such a ridiculous amount of resources into public education for this transition and not figure out that once people converted their TVs to digital signals, they still couldn't receive them? Oh wait, a research firm did figure this out--but they were shouted down and called scaremongers by the FCC and the broadcasting industry.

Second, I don't need a new antenna--or least I shouldn't. My situation is different--and arguably more frustrating-- than all the people in that AP article. I know my antenna is capable of receiving every single one of the digital signals in my area. Why? Because my antenna actually already got all these digital signals. That is, until the "transition." It took my perfect capable hardware and actually rendered it useless. So much for progress.

So, um, anybody want to let me over to their place to watch March Madness?

My Rocky was gone

2009-02-28T09:34:00.006-06:00

The first big domino in the newspaper industry's long, brutal tumble fell this week. The Rocky Mountain News, Colorado's oldest newspaper, published its final edition on Friday. And while this wasn't unexpected to the industry's observers, it's still no less a shock to the system.

If you're a Romenesko reader, you've been bombarded with awful news about the industry every weekday for the last several years--layoffs, buyouts, sales, bankruptcies, section closings, you name it. But despite all of it, the papers themselves have remained intact; they're probably the most consistent things in America this side of death, taxes and the Postal Service (and maybe not even that last one). The only exceptions were a couple of papers, like the Christian Science Monitor and the Detroit News and Free Press, dropping from daily to nondaily print circulation. But even those operations were still producing news, still updating their websites 'round the clock. That changed this week. The Rocky isn't just continuing in a different form; it's done. Like, forever.

This video is long, but well worth your time:

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Perhaps the video feels a bit too navel-gazing; after all, we don't do 20-minute videos every time an auto-parts plant in our town closes. But as someone who works at a paper that's been sold twice in the last 15 months, I'm still amazed at how many people in our area were not only aware of our sales, but seemed genuinely concerned. They asked me out of the blue at the end of interviews, "What does this mean for you guys? Is this a good thing or a bad thing?"

It's times like those when I'm reminded that maybe a newspaper does mean a bit more to a community than your standard auto-parts plant (unless you're in Detroit). Not only is it the hub, the lifeblood, and all those other cliches, but it's also something people feel an intangible yet strong ownership in. Like the woman on the video said, hundreds of thousands of Coloradans lost not just "the Rocky" but "my Rocky" this week.

Michael Lewis does it again.

2009-02-16T19:33:00.006-06:00

Holy cow. For one blissful hour or so (spread out over three days) Michael Lewis actually made me care about the NBA--or, as the Times would have me put it, the N.B.A.

You need to read this. Now. And then head to your local library and check out Moneyball.

A humbler road back

2009-02-09T10:15:00.007-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading Son of a Preacher Man by Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.* My brother-in-law had lent it to me, telling me that it was a pretty amazing expose of what really happened behind the PTL curtain. Nope, not really. Obviously, it's got a lot of inside anecdotes, but I found to be a self-serving apologetic for his parents. It should have been subtitled "How the World Has Always Been Out To Get My Parents and Especially Me."

*Actually, I started reading it a couple of weeks ago, too. It's a really quick read.

And that's understandable. Jay's obviously gone through a ridiculously crappy life, and it's pretty awesome that he's come through it to start a new ministry. And he wrote this book in 2000, when he was 24. I'm 24, and I know I'm not at the point where I can look back on my life with any sort of wisdom or maturity. I'm sure he's matured quite a bit since then. So Jay, if you're reading (and of course you aren't, unless you Google yourself and keep clicking on links through page 68), I totally understand why your book comes off that way. You seem like a cool enough guy.

But I've still got a problem with it. Jay spends much of the book bashing Christians for shunning his dad and his family, rather than forgiving him and restoring him to the ministry. Fair enough. But you know why people had a problem giving his ministry back to him? Because he had done some really bad stuff.

The classic example was when Jay got upset with Falwell and folks who took over PTL after Jim resigned because of his affair. Basically, he had had an affair seven years earlier and never told his wife. It only became public when the woman told the press. (PTL had actually earlier paid--or tried to pay, I don't remember if she took it--her to shut up about it, but Jay said his dad had no idea that happened.) So Jim resigned with the idea that he would take PTL back over when all this had blown over. When he did try come back, Falwell said no, and Jay called that "a corporate takeover, pure and simple. Where was the grace in that?" But Jay also says his dad came to Falwell "a few weeks" after he resigned. A few weeks? What pastor in his right mind has an affair, doesn't tell his wife and congregation until seven years later--and even then only because his hand is forced--then expects to have his ministry handed back to him within a few weeks? Rejecting that request isn't a lack of grace; it's called common sense.

Ted Haggard presents a similar situation, and this article by his former writer, Patton Dodd, offers the perfect remedy: He advises Haggard to "go away quietly, do the work of atonement, and let tales of his renewed life spring up naturally." A fallen actor can go back to acting, Dodd says, but a fallen pastor can't just waltz back into ministry because his ministry, unlike the actor's acting, is based on his integrity. And once his integrity is gone, his credibility to minister is gone, too. I think Dodd's last paragraph goes for anyone in public ministry who's fallen in a significant way:

"Haggard can't enter a pulpit, and he shouldn't seek to be a spiritual leader, at least not for eons. He can enter a congregation somewhere, and if he wants to do that, he should, as a fellow traveler with other seekers. And that congregation should embrace him. That's what his spiritual restoration would look like."

And all the people said...amen.

If it's too loud, turn it down.

2009-02-02T20:47:00.004-06:00

From Christianity Today comes one of the best (and most constructive) rants I've heard on worship music in a while.

This guy just wants some piece and quiet while worshiping ... and for those darn kids to get off his lawn!

Actually, though, I totally agree with him.

My favorite line:

"Do not compensate for mediocrity by amping it up to MEDIOCRITY."

And yes, I yoinked this post's title from Weezer.

Because whining about it makes it all better.

2009-01-31T09:14:00.005-06:00

I have a somewhat thoughtful post on Ted Haggard and meth-fueled trysts coming sometime soon, but before I write that, you'll have to excuse me, 'cause I've got some complaining to do.

The last five months have been some of the worst in recent Wisconsin sports history. It's one thing when your teams are just plain horrible, so you can quit caring about them. It's quite another when they tease you in every single game by losing at the last second. And I can't remember another year when that's happened to my teams as much as this one.

The Packers were the worst offenders, with an epically heartbreaking season. They had nine games that went down to the final two minutes or overtime, and they lost eight of them, including a streak of four straight games in which they blew a late fourth-quarter lead. They had an eight-game stretch this season in which they were outscored by just six points total, but somehow ended up with a record of 1-7. The NFL stat gurus Football Outsiders did an analysis just before the last week of the season showing that the Packers were the unluckiest NFL team in the last 27 years. I've never followed a season like that, where every time your team got a lead, you were so resigned to the fact that they'd eventually lose it--and they proved you right every single time. It's just not fun to have your pessimism backed up so consistently.

(Badger football, of course, was awful, too, though not quite in as gut-wrenching fashion as the Packers. They lost six times, with three of those losses coming on last-minute scores. But they also won three close ones, too. All in all, they weren't an unlucky team--just a horrible one.)

Then came winter, and with it, Badger basketball. This was supposed to be a down year for the Badgers, but nowhere near this painful. Back while football season was going on and no one was paying attention, they split a couple of close games, winning by a basket against two teams (Iona and Idaho State) that shouldn't have been able to hang with them and losing two tight ones against top teams (Marquette and Texas). Then came the conference season, and specifically the last four games. The Badgers lost two straight in overtime, then two more in the last minute to bring their losing streak to five, their longest in more than a decade. This quite thoughtful Badger fan's response after the most recent of those losses sums up my thoughts on Tuesday perfectly.

Oh, and Nebraska basketball? They've led big-time programs throughout most of their last three games, only to fall short in the final two minutes. Tom Osborne had to give them a pep talk this week to tell them, basically, that things can't possibly get any worse.

But enough of my whining. At least we still have Husker football, right? Those lucky dogs.

I ain't done can write no more.

2009-01-26T18:49:00.004-06:00

Today a reader pointed out to me probably the worst stylistic error I've ever made as a reporter. But it wasn't as bad as it looked, I promise. Allow me to explain.

I was writing an article on the state beekeeper of the year, and I started a sentence planning to write "... he still hadn't done anything." I stopped midsentence and decided instead to write, " ... he still hadn't gotten started." But I forgot to remove the word "done" from my first start. Thus I was left with this doozy:

But a year later, he still hadn't done gotten started.

Ohhhhhhhhh no. Wow. Just wow. We'll just call it a "Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel" moment, and then we'll move on and pretend it didn't happen. Right? Right?

Yup, Ricki Lake made something more respectable than Ben Stein did.

2009-01-19T18:52:00.009-06:00

I saw two documentaries on consecutive nights last week--Expelled and The Business of Being Born. Expelled is Ben Stein's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Intelligent Design?" The Business of Being Born is Ricki Lake's pet project and could have been subtitled, "What's So Wrong With Home Birth?"

I could write a post or two (or ten) about each of these movies*, but I'll focus on one thing that I think distinguishes the latter film as a much better one: Authenticity.

*Five-second reviews: Expelled is pretty meh, though you'd probably like it if you're part of the choir it's preaching to; Business isn't perfect, either, but it's much more compelling, as long as you're OK with seeing a few no-holds-barred live births. If that assessment is all you cared about, you can quit reading now. (As if you needed me to tell you that.)

During our discussion of Expelled at church, Matt noted that movies like these are really not documentaries at all--they're feature-film-length essays. He's right: whereas a documentary is ostensibly someone just turning on a camera and filming reality by depicting a story or illuminating some aspect of culture (Hoop Dreams and Spellbound are great modern examples of what I'd consider true documentaries), these films are meant to make a point. That doesn't mean documenting reality; it means documenting reality as far as it fits the point you're trying to make.

There's nothing wrong with making a movie like this, but Expelled runs into trouble when it spends most of its time pretending that it's just an honest, old-fashioned documentary. Stein frames the film as his globe-trotting quest to determine whether Intelligent Design is as horrible as the evolutionists say. All the transitions went something like this: "I couldn't believe it--could the ID scientists' stories of being booted out by the science establishment really be true? I decided to go Seattle to find out." Do you honestly think we're that stupid, Ben? Of course you think one side is right and the other is just pompous and arrogant--that's why you're making this movie in the first place. Don't try to play it off like this movie is an honest depiction of your search for truth that just so happened to lead to Intelligent Design. It just leads the viewer to wonder, 'What else is being misleading about?'

Lake's approach with Business was the complete opposite of Stein's. Her film is a video essay, too--but it's pretty upfront in acknowledging that that's exactly what it is. She has all the talking heads explain why hospital births are often manipulative and not as safe as they're made out to be, and why home births are a completely safe and reasonable alternative. But then she does something that's almost jarringly honest: She follows five couples through their home-birth process (including her own and her director's).

She doesn't just edit to only show the relative calm between contractions and then cut to the post-birth euphoria. She shows it all: Women in pain; women grunting, groaning and pushing; husbands and midwives trying to talk them through the experience. (Then she shows the euphoria, too.) When an urgent problem develops during the director's own home birth, the scene doesn't get cut. Instead, she's shown hurriedly gathering her things, collapsing in pain in her apartment building's lobby, piling into a taxi and being rushed into the hospital for a C-section. It's not pretty, but it's what happened. And even though it's not the ideal home-birth experience, it makes for a more compelling argument: She lays her cards on the table, tells you what side she's on, then makes it very clear that she hasn't stacked the deck. Despite the chaos on screen, it's quite a reassuring effect. Strange as it feels to say, Ben could learn a thing or two from Ricki.

The guys on TV don't hate your team. Get over it.

2009-01-10T11:14:00.012-06:00

We've just completed college football's bowl season, the time of the year when Americans engage in two time-honored traditions: 1) watching mostly meaningless bowl games and 2) whining about how We've just completed college football's bowl season, the time of the year when Americans engage in two time-honored traditions: 1) watching mostly meaningless bowl games and 2) whining about how much the media hates our favorite team/conference.

I've heard more of it this year than any other I can remember. It's the vicious circle of the victim complex: Big 12 fans complain about the media pushing the SEC's "speed" agenda, while the SEC kvetches about having some combination of schools in Texas and Oklahoma being foisted on them by ESPN every Saturday night. Meanwhile, USC picks up its annual grievance about being left out of the national championship game by the media who forget the Pac-10 exists, while the rest of the country complains about how the media is once again calling a USC team who's played exactly no one since September the best team in the country. And the Big Ten realizes (rightly) that everyone hates them right now, and that certainly doesn't stop everyone else from whining that "biased" ESPN keeps pushing mediocre Big Ten football on them.*

*I think much of this collective pity party stems from our culture's obsession with victimhood in general, but that's a sociological discussion, not a sports one.

The problem is, pretty much all of it is complete crap. First of all, the national sports media (and by this I mostly mean ESPN) can't possibly hate everyone. (Well, I suppose that's possible, but I'm not that cynical...yet.) More importantly, that media has no deep-seated love or hatred for any of those conferences or teams within them. They're biased toward one thing: money. They're in favor of anything insofar as it can bring in more viewers, clicks or advertisers. That means their coverage will be heavy on teams that more people care about. That's most obvious in baseball, where the disparity in size of fan bases is greatest, and much less of an issue in the NFL, where so much of the fan interest is spread league-wide (you can thank fantasy football for at least part of that).

But as regional as college football is, it doesn't make any business sense for ESPN to hold any systemic grudge against any conference, thereby alienating an entire section of the country.* And ESPN controls enough of the sports universe that it has a tentacle--and therefore a business interest--in every corner of the sport.

*Of course, it makes complete business sense for them to favor major conferences over minor ones, so if your favorite team is in a non-BCS conference, then, um, disregard this post's title.

As for the individual announcers/analysts/reporters, I can tell you as a journalist (though many of them are far from journalists) that their only real bias is in favor of good stories. For them, covering games is like when I cover a meeting: I really don't care which side wins; I just want the end product to make for a compelling story. And I'd imagine that the feeling is even greater when your audience has to watch the thing with you. So when Thom Brennaman made his rather ridiculous ode to Tim Tebow on Thursday, it didn't mean he or Fox is in the tank for Florida and the SEC; it just meant he's in love with the story of Tim Tebow.

A final note: Just because an announcer says something negative about your team, it doesn't mean he hates them. (Exception: Billy Packer and mid-majors.) Think about it: You make negative comments about your team or the people on it all the time, and you're a fan of them. So, for the last time, the fact that Kirk Herbstreit said this once does not mean in any way, shape or form that he hates Nebraska. It just means that, like any sane college football fan, he doesn't believe Nebraska has both of the top two teams of all time. Say it with me: There's no cheering in the press box.

Yes, that's right. A year-end list.

2009-01-07T21:52:00.001-06:00

You thought I'd let a year's end go by without a list? No way, man. Well, yeah, I guess I did, since it's January 8 and all. Consider this my one-week-late, end-of-the-year (and-as-many-hyphens-as-possible) list of the top five sports events I saw this year.

5. NCAA basketball: Kansas State 80, USC 67.
This game really can't match the drama of the others on this list, but it gets a big boost because it's the only one here that I actually watched in person. Actually, Dana and I watched only the second half after being scalped for tickets, but that was plenty. Beasley vs. Mayo may have been the biggest freshman/freshman matchup in NCAA history, and they (mostly) lived up to it. Beasley was an absolute beast throughout the second half, and Mayo, well, shot a lot. Bonus: we sat with the K-State fans, so we were happy by osmosis.

4. NCAA basketball: Davidson 74, Georgetown 70.
I could have picked any of Davidson's games from this year's tournament for this one--though, let's be honest, I wasn't going to pick Davidson-Wisconsin--but this one really was Stephen Curry's coming-out party, when we all learned how to pronounce his name (rhymes with, um, effin'). Just based on his wispy, almost-fragile-looking body alone, he was possibly the most unlikely athlete I've ever seen dominate a game.

3. NCAA football: Texas Tech 39, Texas 33.
I watched this game all sped-up on Ben Reis' DVR, switching back and forth with the Wisconsin-Penn State game (possibly the best way to watch college football--two full games in three hours). By the time we got to the last two drives, we had given up on the UW game and were focused solely on Texas-Texas Tech. I remember feeling very confident that Tech would win with a field goal as they crept into Texas territory, but it's been a long time since I was as blown away while watching a play as Crabtree's touchdown. This is the first play that comes to mind, and that was a loooong time ago.

2. NFL football: Giants 17, Patriots 14.
One of the biggest upsets of all time. And it couldn't have been perpetrated on a better (and by that I mean worse) team. This just never gets old.

1. NCAA volleyball: Penn State 3, Nebraska 2.
If you're not from Nebraska, I know what you're thinking. "Seriously? Volleyball? What has Dana done to you?!?" If you are from the Cornhusker State, you know exactly why this match is here: When it comes to grit, will to win, gutsiness, teamwork, competitive fire, David vs. Goliath, all those wonderful cliches, I don't think I've ever seen a sporting event that tops this one. The Huskers were down 2-0 to a team that hadn't dropped a set all season. They then stormed back to take not one, but two sets in front of an insane crowd--the largest crowd ever to watch an indoor volleyball match in this country. Finally, the greatest college team in the history of the sport finished off the match and showed why they deserved that title. Couple that with the Huskers' incredible three-set comeback win the previous weekend at Washington, and I have to ask: Could you make a better case for No. 1? Could anyone?

Someone I don't agree with is given a national podium? Scandal!

2008-12-20T12:45:00.002-06:00

I've pretty much been working, watching amazing volleyball or attending Christmas parties for the last 48 hours, so I was blissfully unaware of a number of happenings around the world during that time. (But you say, 'Wait a second ... isn't knowing what's going on in the world exactly what your work is?' To which I respond, 'Yup. I could tell you most everything important that's happened in Nebraska during that time. Which is, well, not much.')

So I fired up the ol' computer this morning to find out Deep Throat had died ... two days ago. (And Paul Weyrich, too. If there was ever a most underrated 20th-century conservative, it would be him.)

I also found out that Rick Warren has been chosen to give the prayer at Barack Obama's inauguration next month. It's prompted the standard roll-your-eyes responses, as well as an interesting discussion at Slate's XX Factor. (To start at the beginning of their discussion, scroll to the bottom and read your way up.)

It's fascinating to see views I find completely normal, like anti-abortionism and the idea that there's eternal importance in sharing one's religious views with the rest of the world, elicit such panic and repulsion from people who've rarely encountered them beyond a ideological-bogeyman level. Ummmm ... you do realize that about a third of Americans hold each of those views? They can't possibly be as extreme and ultra-ultra-conservative as you make them out to be.

I think the Warren pick was a fine one politically on both sides. (Though I do agree with several of the XX bloggers that Jim Wallis would have done just as well for Obama while avoiding the ire from the left.) But I know, as one of those bloggers notes, that there are many conservative Christians who have long seen Warren as a sellout for taking the kind of stands on things like creation care that made him even plausible as an Obama choice. It reminds me of a classic Calvin and Hobbes quote: A good compromise leaves everybody mad.

So what do you think?

Get ready to get pensive

2008-12-15T21:03:00.000-06:00

A few weeks ago at our "college/young adult church group"--what an awkward name to say every time I'm trying to explain it to people--Matt asked us what were our favorite songs for rainy days--those songs that just put us in thoughtful, pensive, wistful moods. Ideas were pouring out, and I exposed myself as a shameless nerd when I told him (and the group) that I had so many songs I'd just have to make a blog post it.

Well, I couldn't go out and look that nerdy with at least following through with it, so here's my treat of a pensive playlist. If, by the end of this playlist, you find yourself staring into space and pondering the meaning of life, don't blame me. OK, yes, blame me.

--Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now." Of course, we have to start with Joni Mitchell, the mother of the moody masterpiece. There's a few other versions of this song, but nothing's as perfect as the good ol' acoustic guitar. (You'll notice it shows up a lot on this list.)

--Paul Simon, "Graceland." Paul has kind of overdone the whole pensive thing throughout his career, but here I think he nails it. There's something about the line "They say losing love is like a window in your heart/Everybody sees you're blown apart/Everybody sees the wind blow." That gets me every time, even though I've never lost love. Unless eighth-grade girlfriends count.

--Sufjan Stevens, "Chicago." Ditto for Sufjan on the whole overdoing it thing--his ponderousness can get pretty cloying at times. But wow--I've been stopped in my tracks quite a few times by this song's chorus and its steady build to the end. It's also great to run to, so it's got that going for it, which is nice.

--U2, "40." These fellas, on the other hand, do that whole thoughtful thing really well. They kind of created that wide-open, epic-sounding feel that pretty much all modern worship music is trying to capture. And why are they doing that? Because to a whole generation, that sound defines profundity. It's the only way they know how to communicate, "Hey, this is really important music." (I'm sure James has written papers on this.) This song was chosen over others like "Where the Streets Have No Name," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Bad," and "Grace" mostly because, well, it's short, and we have some longer songs coming later.

--Coldplay, "Careful Where You Stand." Since Coldplay's post-"Parachutes" stuff is trying reeaally hard to sound moving now that they've decided to become The Greatest Band in the World™, I really prefer their earlier stuff in that department. Like this song from 2000--beautiful melody, sung well, and aside from a stupid chorus, the coziest lyrics you could imagine.

--Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely." I'm not sure if it's the paternal instinct or what, but this song always makes me feel so warm and happy inside. Maybe that's because it's one of the most unabashedly joyful songs I've ever heard. I especially love the full version, with audio of his baby daughter at bathtime.

--Rufus Wainwright, "The Art Teacher." We're quite a bit less happy now. This song's story is so-so (interesting, at least), but the melody, the mesmerizingly simple piano accompaniment and the French horn solo are all just gorgeous.

--Van Morrison, "Into the Mystic." This was on our wedding CD and played a prominent role in the DVD of our wedding, so it always makes me think of my wonderful wife. (Awwwwwww.) Also, I don't think anyone else but Van Morrison could write a song called "Into the Mystic" and pull it off without sounding a little ridiculous.

--The Beach Boys, "God Only Knows." Speaking of love songs, this one has to be included on any personal poignancy list, if only just for the section from 2:00 through the fadeout. You just wish it would never stop. Or at least go on for a couple more minutes.

--Delirious, "You Split the Earth." I'm pretty ambivalent about them now, but Delirious pretty much had the monopoly on pensive songs for me from ages 14 to 19. Maybe I'm a little too jaded to see the same thing in them now, but they still hold a special place deep down in my heart (*sniff*). The one I really wanted to include was "When All Around Has Fallen," but this was the one I could find online, so this is what you're getting.

--Led Zeppelin, "That's the Way." Didn't think Led Zeppelin had it in 'em to make this list, did you? Well, I'm not going to kid myself--the lyrics to this song are pretty stupid. But hey, it's probably a lot prettier than you thought Led Zep was capable of being.

--Jars of Clay, "Liquid." One of the few songs that's actually on this list mainly for its lyrical content. I'm not generally a lyrics guy, but this is good stuff to ponder on.

--Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." This is actually a brutal breakup song ("You just kind of wasted my precious time, but don't think twice, it's all right.") But I think it's one of the best melodies of Dylan's acoustic work. I don't know anything about guitar playing, but he sounds pretty impressive on that, too.

--Indelible Grace, "Jesus Cast a Look on Me." I've spent more time meditating on the lyrics to this song than any other in the past year. This version is different from the one I have (a quick Google search tells me it's from Red Mountain Church in Birmingham, Ala.) and is incomplete, but it's better than nothing.

--David Gray, "Say Hello, Wave Goodbye." Another meh breakup song lyrically, but one of my favorite singalong songs ever. For some reason, this song's ridiculously long runtime (9:03) makes it so much more meaningful-sounding than if it were three minutes long. I've never really figured out why.

--Lots of choirs, "O Magnum Mysterium." A classic Nativity text set to a stunning melody. I sang this song for three days at All-State Choir camp (yes, I know--we've already established my nerdiness) in 2000, and I was hooked. I've never sung it since then, but then again, I don't think I've sung anything quite like it since then, either.

Down the road and across the street

2008-11-28T16:25:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, the Omaha World-Herald's website had a photo gallery on the infamous grain elevator/boot shop in--where else?--Burress! I don't know if he reads this blog, but Benjamin would remember taking a few pictures there, too. Burress is about 10 miles from where I grew up and has a population of oh, about 6. We used to bike and run there every year for cross-country, when we'd buy candy bars and pop at the boot shop.

Burress is mostly known for nothing having happened there...ever. So it's good to see it get some love from the state's largest paper. The sports section also had a feature on two Husker football players (Tyler Wortman and Todd Peterson) who went to high school together at Grand Island Central Catholic, which happens to be right across the street from our duplex. These are the kind of things that happen when you live in Nebraska.

Teaching through song

2008-11-23T13:48:00.004-06:00

On Tuesday night, Dana and I had what might be the highlight of at least our month--a concert by Matthew Smith and Indelible Grace. That's the group from Nashville who are taking the words from old (mostly forgotten) hymns and putting them to new lyrics. Dana's church in Lincoln, Grace Chapel, sang a lot of Indelible Grace songs during Sunday worship, and Dana got us hooked on them from there.

While we were disappointed with the size of the crowd--less than 100, though it was in a small sanctuary, so it didn't feel quite as embarrassingly small--the concert was everything we expected from an Indelible Grace concert, which is to say, everything that a typical CCM "worship concert" isn't. It was simple and honest, with no showmanship or manipulation--just four guys playing good music and explaining a little bit of what it means to them.

Like every other modern worship concert, it also included the songs' words on a screen at the front of the sanctuary. I remember the first time I saw the words projected at a concert--it was a Sonicflood show in Lincoln back when I was in high school, when the modern worship movement was just picking up steam. At the time, I thought it was a revolutionary idea, a great way to make it explicit that the crowd is here to participate in worship, not just watch others do it. (For the record, I still think that.)

Now the words are on the screens at every single worship concert, but Tuesday night's concert seemed different. At most concerts, the purpose of the words on the screens is to assist the audience in singing along. At this show, the audience was encouraged at the outset to do just that, but the purpose of the screens seemed to be just as much to let the audience silently meditate on the lyrics. That'd be a pretty futile idea at most worship concerts--there's not much to ponder in "we're gonna dance in the river" or "yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord." But there was so much depth and richness to be mined from these lyrics that the screens were necessary to process it all.

What a refreshing change: Worship lyrics that are so potent that they challenge and even teach all by themselves, without the emotional attachment of singing them. We're used to using our sermons to teach and our worship songs to reaffirm and encourage, but couldn't we also use our songs to teach and challenge, too?

The ultimate color line is crossed.

2008-11-05T21:55:00.006-06:00

Regardless of which guy you voted for, yesterday was a milestone in American social history. Skip Gates, one of America's leading cultural critics, has a beautifully written, moving essay on what Obama's election means for Black America. You should take a look. I'll never truly understand what yesterday meant for Gates, but I think that his piece has given me a pretty good taste.

Say what you will of Obama's politics (and let's be honest, I know that just about all the readers of this blog voted for McCain), but I'm proud to be an American today.

Cue the bellyaching on Fox News.

2008-10-31T09:46:00.004-05:00

I don't believe in any sort of institutional liberal media bias. If one existed, I and just about everyone I know in this profession would have to be in on it, and we're all just way too stubborn and mule-headed to be herded together for any sort of ideological conspiracy. (Actually, that's not really my reason for not believing in the whole "liberal media" idea. That would take a lot longer to explain, but this is a blog, and I'm lazy.)

Still, I was a little taken aback at Slate's voluntary internal poll of its staff. Of the 57 people who chose to respond, 55 are voting for Obama. (McCain ties with Bob Barr--yes, Bob Barr--for second.) Granted, Slate is not part of the mainstream media, but...wow.

Slate's editor, David Plotz, tries to explain why. Its media critic, lone Barr voter Jack Shafer, tries to offer some better explanations. Both of them have some good thoughts, too, on the reality of what's often perceived as the "liberal media" (though Plotz's thoughts are actually Michael Kinsley's).

Though it's absurd for any publication--liberal-leaning or not--to have this kind of political uniformity among its staffers, I have to give Slate some credit: as Shafer notes, it has been a remarkably open forum for conservative, libertarian and utilitarian thought in addition to liberal ideas. Anything counterintuitive but worth consideration has a place in the marketplace of ideas, and Slate seems to be the internet's headquarters for those kinds of ideas, regardless of their political stripe.

Not sure I've ever seen that dateline in the Times before.

2008-10-16T19:04:00.004-05:00

So I got a couple of phone calls and an e-mail today from an assistant with a national NPR show who wanted to talk to me about the relationship between Somalis and Latinos in the workplace.

First, I thought, why the heck would they want to talk to me, who had written exactly zero articles on the subject? (It was because I had once written a story on conflict between Somalis and Sudanese.)

Second, I thought, that seemed like a really random topic. I know we had our prayer dispute, but a national discussion on the relationship between Somalis and Latinos. Why those two groups?

Then I came home and saw that this was on the front page of today's New York Times. Ohhhhhh. That explains a lot.

Nebraska-VT tidbits

2008-09-30T10:48:00.006-05:00

As promised, thoughts from the Nebraska-Virginia Tech game:

--There really is nothing in sports (that I've seen, anyway) like the atmosphere at a big-time college football game. The sheer volume of noise, the band, the student section, the red, everything. I've never been to an NFL game, but they all look so sterile in comparison. (Except for games at Lambeau, of course--I've heard that's the closest place to a college environment in an NFL stadium.)

--We sat on the floor, about 10 or 12 feet behind the Virginia Tech bench, with the other Red Cross Day volunteers. Let me just say I was not impressed with the Virginia Tech defensive players. During Tech's nail-in-the-coffin drive on offense (the one with the three personal-foul penalties), they were standing on the bench and would turn around to the crowd and pose or yell at us. There were state troopers standing between us and them to make sure we didn't taunt them or otherwise interfere with them. That job becomes a little bit tougher when the players you're protecting are the ones initiating the taunting.

--Nate Swift's punt return in the fourth quarter--wow. I had to watch it on Huskervision (we couldn't see over the VT sideline), but that was still the coolest play I've ever seen live.

--Before the game, Erin Andrews set up shop a few feet away from us. She's ESPN's top sideline reporter and the hottie du jour in the sports Internet world. (I would tell you to Google her, but you will feel violated if you do. And for the record, she seems pretty cool--takes her job seriously, hasn't posed for Playboy or anything--though Dana and I agreed her pants at the game were almost comically too tight.) At first I was annoyed because bunches of guys my age and pervy middle-aged guys were crowding around her (which also meant crowding around us) with their camera phones at the ready. But she spent the whole game on the actual sidelines, so that turned out not to be a problem. But it was funny to watch as she walked behind the line of guys leaning over the sideline fence to watch warmups, and one by one they snapped their necks around after she passed as you could see them going, "Whoa, wait--that was Erin Andrews!" It cracked me up.

--That was the fifth Husker game I've seen live, and the fourth that they've lost. Still, as far as the overall experience went, it was more fun than any of the first four. (The one win, Iowa State last year, wasn't too hard to top.) Just think how much more fun it'll be when this team actually starts playing well.

I wonder what this would have looked like in graph form...

2008-09-29T17:34:00.004-05:00

A brief summary of my weekend in sports (all times approximate, and by approximate, I mean nudged around for maximum dramatic effect):

Saturday:
3 p.m.: Mets win, forcing the Brewers to win in order to maintain their one-game wild card lead.

5:30 p.m.: Brewers lose. They've just blown their wild card lead with one game to go.

6:15 p.m.: Badgers lose. They've just blown a 19-0 second-half lead against possibly the worst Michigan team in decades.

10:45 p.m.: Huskers lose. They've just been beaten at home in the first meaningful game in the Bo Pelini era.

Sunday:
2 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers, the Packers' quarterback, gets injured during a game against the Buccaneers. The quarterback the Packers turned Brett Favre down for has just gone down.

2:30 p.m.: Aaron Rodgers returns. And throws his third interception of the day.

2:45 p.m.: Mets tie their game, 2-2. If they win, the Brewers have to win in order to avoid missing the playoffs in the biggest collapse in franchise history.

2:50 p.m.: The Brewers are losing, 1-0, in the seventh inning after being one-hit by a bunch of relievers through six. They have the bases loaded with Corey Hart up. He strikes out.

2:51 p.m.: Packers lose.

At this point, we have what could be the worst sports weekend of my life. Badgers, Huskers and Packers lose, and the Brewers are about to blow the best chance they'll have at the playoffs for years. But all is not lost: If the Brewers can clinch the playoffs, I'll consider the weekend salvaged. This is what I tell Dana, anyway. She seems skeptical.

2:52 p.m.: Craig Counsell (AKA 12-year-old looking, goofy-stance-man) draws a game-tying RBI walk for the Brewers. (This is where the links get fun.)

3:30 p.m.: The Mets fall behind, 4-2, in the eighth inning on back-to-back home runs.

3:35 p.m.: Ryan Braun hits a two-run home run to put the Brewers in the lead, 3-1.

3:45 p.m.: Brewers win.

4:00 p.m.: Mets lose. Brewers make the playoffs for the first time since Dad used to swear at Brewers games. (Yes, it's tough for me to believe, too.)

I call it a pretty good weekend.

I hate to post yet another sports post, but Dana and I went to the Husker game, and I'll have some thoughts on that up tomorrow.

A little bit of perspective.

2008-09-19T11:28:00.005-05:00

This post is about sports, but I promise it has substance. Hang in there.

Losses in baseball don't get much worse than the Brewers' loss yesterday. They were up by 4 with two outs and nobody on in the Cubs' bottom of the ninth ... and somehow found a way to lose.

Fortunately for my own sanity and that of everyone who would've been around me, I was working while all this happened. But as soon as the boxscore came across the wire, my head was firmly implanted in my hands. A coworker who's a big Cubs fan walked into work 15 minutes later, stopped at my desk, gave me a look as if one of my family members had died and just said, "Mark ... I'm sorry."

I tried to vent to Dana, but with 13 Brewers losses in the last 17 games, I long ago used up all my empathy points with her. So I did the only thing I could think to do to get myself out of my funk: I called my grandma.

My grandma is the diehardest Cubs fan I know--she's been following the team for 70 years. She started listening to the team on the radio with her dad as a little girl in Wisconsin, long before Milwaukee had its own major league team. Now she watches every single Cubs game on TV while she knits at home down in Texas.

Now, calling my grandma was a major violation of the unwritten rules of sports fandom--if your team gets beat in gutwrenching fashion by your rival, your buddy who's a fan of that team calls you--you never call them. To do that would be asking for punishment, voluntarily subjecting yourself to gloating during your worst hour.

But I needed to remind myself that someone--and not just someone, my grandma--was made happy by yesterday's game. And it was so good to hear her laughing about the game, talking about how she was thisclose to turning it off, marveling at one of the Cubs' ejection in extra innings, asking about the Brewers' starting rotation.

I'm usually driven nuts by the Cubs fans' bellyaching about 100 years since a championship. I mean, how many of those years have most of those fans lived through, let alone been a fan through? 20? 30? 5? But my grandma is the real deal--she's gone almost three-quarters of a century as a dedicated Cubs fan without a World Series title. As much as I get upset about one September collapse, that's misery. And she takes it all in stride, just a laugh and a sigh when they blow it yet again, and a genuine joy when they do well. I could stand to learn a lot from that.

So if--or, let's be honest, when--the Brewers don't make the playoffs, I'll be rooting for the Cubs to win it all. It's heresy for a Brewers fan, but it's just the right thing to do by Grandma.

Get to know ... the Beach Boys

2008-09-09T21:16:00.003-05:00

What you know: Surfing, fun, summer, sun, surfing, cars, girls, surfing. Really high, intricate, poppy harmonies. I couldn't stand the Beach Boys growing up--those voices just grated on me, and every song seemed so simple and syrupy, like the '60s equivalent of Radio Disney. But then as I got into college, I was shocked to find out that the Beach Boys were actually critical darlings, and Brian Wilson was regarded as a musical genius. You're probably familiar with that work, too--Pet Sounds, "Good Vibrations," "God Only Knows."

After that, it's standard "Behind the Music" material: Way too much LSD, band falling apart, getting involved with a hippie murder commune, untimely deaths, lawsuits, reunions, a return to the charts, a few decades doing the Boomer nostalgia circuit. But there's more...oh yes, there's more.

Get to know: The Beach Boys' psycho, trippy, drugged-out, falling apart period. Yes, they actually tried to make music during this period, and some of it was actually pretty good. "Darlin,'" with its soulful Carl Wilson vocal, hardly sounds like them at all on first listen, but still retains their trademark flair for hooks. You hear a little more of that soulful, quasi-shouter style on "Wild Honey," along with some of that synthesizer trippiness Brian was playing with at the time. But the strangest and most compelling hit of that era is "Heroes and Villains." It's like "Good Vibrations" from some parallel, darker universe. The structure is similar, the production is similar, except where "Good Vibrations" pieces together perfectly, "Heroes and Villains" feels disjointed. Don't get me wrong--it's still an amazing song and a fascinating listen. But it feels like a brilliant idea Brian had in his head that he just couldn't quite communicate to the rest of us. And it feels like a perfect example of what the post-"Good Vibrations" Beach Boys could have been. Friends don't let friends do mountains of acid.

Ugh.

2008-09-05T10:32:00.006-05:00

It's been a brutal week to be a Brewers fan.

Stat of the year: The Brewers have come up to bat this year 113 times with the bases loaded. They have a grand total of 19 hits. They have 7 extra-base hits. They have yet to hit a grand slam. Their batting average is .202. Their OPS (for all you stats nerds) is .557. 557!

By comparison, the Cubs (the team the Brewers are chasing) are batting .321 with the bases loaded. They have 21 extra-base hits, including 6 grand slams. Their OPS is .928. 928!

How the heck is the least clutch team in the National League 20 games over .500 again?

2008-08-24T18:28:00.003-05:00

According to a front-page story in the Outlook section of today's Washington Post, the guilty parties in our generation's aversion to reading for pleasure are ... their high school English teachers.

It's an interesting premise, especially coming from a high school English teacher. Her idea is that teachers are turning beautiful literature into a rote science by making students clinically dissect novels that are works of art and then write essays about books they couldn't care less about.

I'm not sure whether I entirely buy into it, but I think she's got a good point. Reading fiction was something to be dreaded for most people in my high school English classes--Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry was particularly dreaded. No one liked that book. Being a bona fide word nerd, I was bound to be reading for pleasure anyway, but I wouldn't be surprised if having to plow through some of those books killed the idea for some of my classmates.

What about you? Did you like the books you read in high school? How about the way they were taught? Did they make you want to read more or less?

A couple more stray observations:
--Catcher in the Rye for eighth- and ninth-graders? Are you serious? Not is it (in my apparently prudish mind) completely in appropriate for that age in terms of language, but it's essentially a psychological portrait of a 17-year-old that's far too nuanced and complex for 13- and 14-year-olds to understand.
--Read the student's summer email to the teacher about halfway through. Ho-ly cow. I don't think I've ever met a high schooler who would right something like that to his teacher over the summer, and this teacher at The McLean School gets this from a student who's not even an interested participant in class. That's got to be one of the best signs I've seen in a while that suburban D.C. and Grand Island aren't even on the same planet.

It's all Sir Denis Eton-Hogg's fault.

2008-08-19T22:00:00.006-05:00

So I was all ready to go with this sweet List of the Fortnight on substantive songs by Christian artists (let's ignore for the moment the fact that it's been a month since the last list--blame it on the Olympics), and Muxtape decides to be unavailable.

Why? Stupid RIAA. Seems the suits aren't too keen on letting you listen--not download, mind you, just listen--to the songs I own. So now I'm limited to the songs I can find on Mixwit, which is to say, the songs that are already pretty easy to find. That means no Indelible Grace, that's for dang sure.

So I'll figure out something else. And if you got the headline--without Google--you are officially awesome in my book.

I'm pretty sure that the last time I was that unproductive, I was wearing diapers.

2008-08-12T22:57:00.006-05:00

As you may (or--let's not kid ourselves--may not) have noticed, it's been a long time since I posted. I'm blaming it on Brett Favre. According to ESPN, everything in the world that's happened in the last three weeks has revolved around Brett Favre, so I'm assuming my failure to update my blog must be part of that.

No, really, I was actually on vacation last week in a rental home in southwest Missouri with my wife, my parents, two sisters and brother-in-law and nephew. Here's what you don't need to know, but are going to find out anyway:

--As the title more than implies, very, very little was accomplished by anyone. I did almost finish a book ... but it was the baseball book I wanted to read, while the dense theology book I had to read never left my backpack.

--A ridiculous number of Ticket To Ride games were played, and way too many of them were won by my brother-in-law. On an unrelated note, two cities I never want to visit ... ever: Stockholm and Petrograd. Thanks, Kyle.

--We stayed less than 5 miles from Branson, yet we managed to not see a single show. That's right--we ventured into the land of Yakov, Shoji and the Baldknobbers and missed all of them. Make no mistake: I am very proud of this.

--I'm pretty sure I drove my family nuts with my incessant checking of Brewers (and Cardinals, and Cubs) scores. But the Brewers did not lose the entire time we were on vacation. Yes, the second sentence of this paragraph has rendered the first completely irrelevant.

--On Monday, my first day back, I worked almost 13 hours straight, with no lunch or supper breaks. Welcome back to the real world.

"So what do you think about the whole Brett Favre thing?"

2008-07-28T19:43:00.010-05:00

People who have asked me this question in the last two weeks:

--My co-workers
--My ex-co-workers
--My pastor's wife
--My father-in-law
--My uncle-in-law
--My dog-in-law

The last time I was being asked the same question by so many people, I was a senior in high school and was telling everyone that "Wheaton is a Christian liberal arts school in the suburbs of Chicago ... no, it's not affiliated with a specific denomination ... yeah, my dad went there, and I really thought it was the best Christian education I could get."

So, since you're probably asking right now, "So what DO you think about the whole Brett Favre thing," here's my short answer:

Brett Favre needs to find a hobby. Or leave the country. Or, better yet, take up around-the-world hot-air ballooning. There's a hobby that would take him out of the country for a long, long time.

The point is, unretiring was a bad idea. Strike that--unretiring now was a bad idea. Had Favre unretired back this spring when the Packers hadn't planned its entire offseason strategy around someone else, that would've been fine. (Actually, he almost did that, and the Packers told him they'd take him back, but then he re-retired at the last minute.)

But no, he decided to un-retire less than a month before training camp, and he decided to do it in the most drama queeny fashion imaginable. Here's why the Packers aren't taking him back as starter, and I totally understand it.

Basically, the standards for Favre had been in a different universe from the rest of the team, and Favre was asking for more of the same. So the Pack's front office decided whether their ultimate loyalty was to Favre or to the rest of the team. And at some point, Packers fans have to make the same choice. It's easy to pick the face of the franchise for the past 16 years. But it makes a lot more sense to choose the franchise itself.

List of the Fortnight: A-1 Cleaning to Zymanski. Go.

2008-07-20T22:01:00.014-05:00

When it comes to music, everybody's got one aspect that draws them in more than anything. Lyrics, bass, horns, whatever. For me, I think, it's probably the vocals. A band could have an album full of perfectly penned songs, but without a decent lead singer, I probably won't give it much of a listen. Likewise, I'll forgive a multitude of musical sins if the vocalist has a truly compelling voice.

There's only a handful that meet that threshold, where I'll listen with (mostly) rapt attention to pretty much anything they do, just because the voice sucks me in. I call 'em my "phone book" singers, after the old cliche about being able to enjoy listening to someone sing through the phone book.

So here's mine. Listen to the tape I so lovingly put together so you can find out for yourself how wrong-headed my tastes are.

Richard Manuel. I thought about including his fellow singers from the Band--Levon Helm and Rick Danko--because together, with all their overlapping and trading, they concocted an incredible triple threat of awesomeness. But Manuel took most of the burden, and his voice topped just about any other I've heard in its ability to convey pure, genuine wistfulness and anguish. It obviously came from deep inside, as his suicide painfully underscored. Have a listen to "The Unfaithful Servant," and see if by "Goodbye to that country home," you aren't feeling every ounce of his pain.

Rufus Wainwright. When I was introduced to the goodness that is Rufus Wainwright in college, I thought he had one of the most obnoxious voices I had ever heard. Nasally. Scooping. Preening. But slowly--and with the help of my roommate Mike--I warmed up to him, and I'm so glad I did. Rufus (we're on a first-name basis) fits best that idea of a phone book singer: Some of his songs are a bit dull in musical structure, but he makes them not only listenable, but a true pleasure. (Don't worry, I tried not to pick too dull a song here.)

Mavis Staples. My History of Rock Music professor once said that "the only person who might be able to out-Aretha Aretha is Mavis Staples." He was right. You know the Staple Singers from "I'll Take You There," and Mavis is in fine form there. But it doesn't take as good of a song for her to show off a bit.

John Fogerty. The voice of Creedence Clearwater Revival sang with all the soul a white boy could conjure up. And then he went and toned it down for junk like "Centerfield."

Dr. John. You may not know the name (no, he has nothing to do with sex shops), but you probably know the voice. So sleazy. So fun. So New Orleans.

Van Morrison. Another soulful, instantly recognizable voice. I love it especially when he scats. It always sounds to me like he has too much joy inside that needs to get out too quickly to find time for real words.

There's my list--what's yours?

(There's two mixtapes on this one: One here for Richard Manuel and Rufus Wainwright since I had to upload those songs, and the other below for the ones I could find online.)

Yes! Arbitrary competitions involving brackets!

2008-07-17T16:17:00.007-05:00

So the Grand Island Independent has officially begun Music Madness, its rather quixotic search for Central Nebraska's favorite song. This first group is open for voting until Friday noon, and the first round runs through next week.

You should do your civic duty and vote.

No fervor-bots allowed

2008-07-16T11:32:00.005-05:00

"I'm more likely to listen to someone's opinions about global warming or the epistles of Paul if I also know a little something about what kind of food they crave, which is their favorite baseball team, and how much trouble they had getting their first marriage to work."

From an interesting take on Christian music at the Onion's A.V. Club. The essay is part of a feature called Popless, a weekly feature in which one of the site's music critics is taking inventory of his entire music collection (which is larger than any human being's should be) and writing about its significance to him, his thoughts on it, etc.

He's taking it alphabetically, and each week has an opening essay--this week's is on Christian music. Some really interesting thoughts on CCM from someone firmly outside the bubble, and some surprisingly substantive discussion in the comment section.

So what Christian artists fit Murray's wish list of what he'd like Christian rock to be? Of the ones I know well, only a few come to mind:
Five Iron Frenzy (there's some discussion on them in the comments, if you do a Control-F)
Derek Webb (he gets name-checked in the comments, too)
Steve Taylor (responsible not only for his own music, but pretty much anything of substance the Newsboys ever sang)

You know what--I should break this brainstorming session into another post, complete with a mixtape for your listening pleasure. I'll get to work on that.

Someone tell me how to feel.

2008-07-07T19:14:00.005-05:00

It's a glorious day to be a Brewers fan.

It's a horrible day to be a Packers fan.

I think I'll run down the street cheering. Or crying. Or both. That might scare the neighbors.

List of the Fortnight: Favorite Films

2008-07-06T13:41:00.011-05:00

It's been a fortnight already, so it's time for another list. This one comes from a tag Ben gave me a month and a half ago. I must obey what he tells me to do, so here goes.

My 10 favorite movies (mostly in the order I thought of them)

Lord Of The Rings trilogy--Taken together, it's a pretty incredible 10 hours or so of film. At least for our generation, it's the gold standard of what an epic film should be.

Saving Private Ryan--This was the first "grown-up" movie I saw (at least once I got to the age where I could somewhat appreciate them), and I remember it blowing me away. I don't know that I've seen it all the way through in almost a decade, but it still holds that place for me.

The Blues Brothers--This movie is as much a part of our house as loud arguments over games at holidays. It's also my favorite musical.

This Is Spinal Tap--I guess this counts as my second-favorite musical. (Wow...Spinal Tap a musical? I think my brain just exploded.) I haven't seen many comedies in the past few years that are just as funny the 10th time you watch them, but this is one.

Disney's Robin Hood--Maybe not the best Disney movie ever made--OK, yes, the best Disney movie ever made--but for some reason it just resonated with us kids more than any other. I still remember when I was in second grade, when all four of us had chicken pox and we lined up our sleeping bags on the living room floor, watching, rewinding and re-watching it about four times a day for an entire week. And we never got sick of it. I bet Mom did, though.

Magnolia--Ever since Mike introduced me to this movie, it's been my favorite pondering-the-meaning-of-life film. I can't say I'd recommend it to just anyone--I almost walked out the first time I watched it because of the language--but it's one of the richest movies in thought and themes that I've ever seen.

All The President's Men--A love of this movie is a requirement for entrance into the Secret Society of Journalists, but it's actually a thrilling, entertaining movie, even if you have no idea who Woodward and Bernstein are. (In which case, shame on you!)

Austin Powers--Only the first one. No redeeming value whatsoever, but it's just so dang quotable, and it still makes me laugh.

School Of Rock--The movie Jack Black was born to star in. I'm not so sure I like him much anymore, but he gave that movie more life and joy than I've seen an almost any other.

Cool Runnings--John Candy and Jamaicans. How could you not love this movie? Oh wait ...

Don't worry, I won't tag anyone. Your suffering ends here.

Read and learn--it might come in handy someday.

2008-07-03T22:51:00.012-05:00

And now it's time for another edition of Aesop's Unfortunately True Fables.

Here's the initial article by the New York Times.

Here's Fox News' response.

Moral of the story: Don't write anything (factual or not--doesn't matter) that puts Fox News in an unflattering light. Your face will be uglified and superimposed onto a dog.

Here's another initial article by the Washington Post.

Here's the Findlay Courier's response.

Moral of the story: Don't write that some people in Findlay, Ohio, think that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim. The local paper will blast you for doing a hit job on their town while saying in so many words that they aren't too sure themselves that he's not secretly paying homage to Allah.

Get to know ... James Brown

2008-06-28T18:32:00.008-05:00

As most of you know, I love a lot of music that was made a long time before I was born. But the best songs by most of those artists are not the ones that get played every hour on "classic hits radio."

Well, I want you to experience the gloriousness of this music, too. So I'll try to introduce you to a little bit of the music by the artists we all know that's outside the realm of the songs we all know. I'm not talking about the really obscure "second outtake of the fifth song on Bob Dylan's most overlooked album," mostly because I don't know that stuff, either. You may know a few of these songs, too. But the point is that you probably won't know it too well.

So we'll take this artist by artist in some sort of occasional feature. We'll call it "Get to know ... " And we'll start with James Brown because, after all, this blog is called "Feel The Funk, Y'all."

What you know: The Godfather of Soul, Soul Brother Number One, The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business; pretty much invented funk in 1965 with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)"; the on-stage theatrics--capes, screams, dance moves and all; an icon of black pride, especially for his famous Boston concert after MLK's assassination and the anthem, "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."

Get to know: James Brown's pre-funk period. It's true--Brown was around long before he started laying everything "on the one," and he was making pretty interesting music then, too. You can best hear the beginnings of his move toward funk on 1961's "Night Train." Compared with the smooth soul Sam Cooke and Ray Charles were doing, this was positively quirky stuff--especially the tight, staccato horns and the emphasis on the downbeat. The same qualities were on display pretty clearly a year earlier, too, on "Think." And while musically, 1956's "Please, Please, Please" sticks to the standard '50s doo-wop/soul stuff, you can still hear the deep, primal feeling that characterized everything the Godfather recorded.

The tape comes from Mixwit. You should be able to click on it and listen to it go.

I feel pretty safe guessing this man has never actually seen a blog

2008-06-26T23:37:00.010-05:00

I can't find a linkable (or copyable) image of this cartoon, so you'll have to follow this link to the June 24 cartoon.

I don't even know where to start with this one. Oh wait, yes I do--one character actually tells another to delete something he doesn't like on a blog he's reading. Are you kidding? Does this guy actually believe you're able to do this? It's someone else's blog. You can no more delete what's on my blog than I can erase your inane cartoon.

OK, now that that's taken care of, let's address the main point. Have you ever seen a blog that read like anything within two area codes of that? I haven't, and I've seen a lot of blogs. If you wrote like that, you'd be out of readers in a hurry. In fact, most of the blogs I've read are superbly written--many in the ballpark of the quality of a lot of the newspaper writing I read.

I'm guessing from the word "kitty" that he's trying to refer to the phenomenon of Lolcats--but, really, that meme has nothing to do with an inability to form a proper sentence, and next to nothing to do with blogs as a whole.

I believe the tide of illiteracy you're trying to address, Mr. Man, is coming largely from text-messaging, not blogging. So until you figure that out, you're just making the rest of us newspaper folks who don't think blogs were invented by Beelzebub look bad.

A deep commitment from a church lacking depth

2008-06-24T21:35:00.017-05:00

As of this morning (maybe it happened yesterday--Ben probably knows), our church officially has a new senior pastor. I, for one, am pretty excited.

After just one weekend, very few in the church know much about him, but we all know this: He's going to be a 180-degree difference from our previous pastor. That pastor was the gentle, shepherding type who knew just about everyone's name--a significant achievement in a church of at least 1,000--visited everyone in the hospital and told neat little parables in mellow sermons. Our new pastor is a fireball--preaches sermons like he's been sneaking swigs of Red Bull beforehand, mentioned hell at least three times Sunday morning, pounds on exegesis and systematic, churchwide discipleship.

The rationale for the change in direction was repeated often at our congregational meeting Sunday--we need to go deeper. Many at that meeting acknowledged that they were afraid to do just that, that they were so comfortable with our previous pastor and so intimidated by the new one.

But nearly all of them said they'd trust the wisdom of the church's leaders. If depth was our weak spot, and this was the best way to correct it, they were willing to submit their desires to the will of God's people for the sake of the church.

I was amazed by that show of selflessness--I'm not sure I'd be capable of it if I was in their situation. I know the transition is probably not going to be pretty, but I'm confident God has guided this decision. Interestingly enough, it takes a lot of depth and maturity for a church to recognize that it lacks depth and maturity--and to have the guts to be obedient about working toward it.

List of the Fortnight: Inside my ESPN ambivalence

2008-06-21T13:53:00.021-05:00

One other thing I love to write: Lists. They're so much easier than forming coherent sentences and paragraphs. So I thought I'd make it a regular feature on this blog -- we'll call it List of the Fortnight. Why the fortnight? I'm so glad you asked. It all comes down to three simple factors:

1. Every week is too often.
2. Every month is not often enough.
3. It's a lot of fun to use the word "fortnight."

We'll start with ESPN--a company I'm pretty sure every sports fan in America has a love-hate relationship with. So here's the roots beneath mine.

4 Reasons To Love ESPN
1. Sports--lots and lots of it. I don't get ESPN, so whenever I'm visiting someone who does, I get sucked in--kind of like when we'd play Nintendo for hours at our friends' houses because we didn't have it. As Bill Simmons has written a few times, it's mind-blowing to realize that we're the first generation that has had instant access to footage or highlights of almost any game we want to see. We pretty much have ESPN, in all its ubiquity, to thank for that.

2. Tirico & Van Pelt. I consider them something like the NPR of ESPN Radio. I'm always excited when I get to be on the road for work between noon and 2, because I know I'll get reasonable, sensical commentary and interviews on issues in sports that actually matter. Too bad that's so rare.

3. Serious reporting. ESPN has been showing they're serious about sports journalism over the past few years, hiring top reporters to cover just about everything. Of course, that means they're poaching them from newspapers, but that's not really ESPN's problem--it's my dying medium's.

4. Bill Simmons. Every once in a while, he nails a concept, moment or trend in a way I'd never seen anyone understand it before. He's worth reading about every time, if only because it just might be one of those columns.

5 Reasons To Loathe ESPN
1. Jim Rome. His radio show is everything that's wrong with sports talk: a three-hour barrage of inane smack-talk and poorly reasoned arguments on meaningless topics (today's topic: "Dunn vs. Canada!"). It's the total triumph of style--and poor style at that--over substance. And since he's alone in the booth, with no one there to bounce ideas off of (like another ESPN Radio guy I know), he feels the need to make the same point 14 times in a row throughout a segment, wording it 14 different ways. And I just can't stand his voice, either. Whew ... I feel better now. (I know he's syndicated, but he's on my ESPN Radio station, and his TV show is on ESPN, so I'm lumping him in.)

2. Relentless cross-promotion. I'm never sure whether ESPN Radio's Sportscenter updates fall under "news" or "advertising," since every one, for some strange reason, contains the words "tonight on ESPN and ESPN-HD!" at least three times.

3. Large-market obsession. It's not East Coast bias, just large-market bias. Want to get onto Sunday Night Baseball? If you're not playing the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers or Mets (or sometimes Phillies), good luck.

4. Contrived debates. My (least) favorite is "who would you rather build a franchise around?" What GM would ever get the decision between signing LeBron or Chris Paul? Are you kidding? And there's always someone who decides, just for the sake of conflict, to say something like "I'd go with Pau Gasol."

5. Bill Simmons. Just Google him, and a torrent of hatred will be unleashed on your computer screen. Some of it might even be justified. He's kind of like that guy who tells the same story over and over again at parties: you still laugh every time--it is a funny story, after all--but honestly, after 27 times, you're more annoyed at him than anything.

The (soulless, computerized) boys of summer

2008-06-16T19:44:00.007-05:00

As any of you I've talked to in the past two months or so has undoubtedly learned, I've fallen hard for baseball again this summer. Baseball was my first love, starting at about age 5, a good three years before I tried two-timing with football. About the time I moved to Nebraska (1997), baseball and I took a break while I saw other sports.

Well, I've gotten back together with baseball this summer. Let me count the ways:

--I've become a genuine Brewers fan again, for the first time since the glory days of Yount and Molitor. There are good days ... and there are bad days.

--I'm reading Moneyball, the bible of 21st-century baseball. And remembering why I always loved Bill James.

--Dana and I bought baseball gloves to play catch with.

--I'm going to the College World Series in Omaha on Friday. And I actually know who the Brewers' draft picks in the CWS are. And whether they plan to sign.

--And I'm playing Strat-O-Matic baseball. No clue what it is? Good--one box on the nerd checklist you don't have to check. Basically, Strat-O-Matic is Dungeons and Dragons meets baseball. I've never played D&D, but I believe both involve 20-sided dice, so, um, that makes them the same.

Basically, SOM is a way of re-simulating baseball games using players' past stats to create really complex probabilities for a bunch of dice rolls. It's been around since the '60s using real dice, but the online version lets the computer do all the dice-rolling for you--which is great, because computers are way faster than us at rolling dice.

It requires a lot of managerial skills in tweaking lineups, maximizing matchups, setting strategy, getting the most for your money. You play a whole season in a couple of months, so every day you have your box scores from your team. It's good times.

I'm a cheapskate, so I first discovered SOM this spring--coincidentally enough, when they offered their first free trial season. And last week, I completed an epic three-game comeback sweep to make the playoffs in my league. My computer-generated probability-grid 1986 "players" demonstrated so much heart and chemistry ... sniff ... The playoffs begin tonight, so I hope they behaved themselves this weekend.

What this blog's about

2008-06-13T22:15:00.000-05:00

Let's get one thing out of the way: Yeah, I know "Feel The Funk, Y'all" is a ridiculous name for a blog written by a short, bespectacled, just barely prematurely balding white guy. But hey, it's the name I've always used, and ... um ... the funk is metaphorical. Yeah, that's it.

Anyway, I'm hoping this blog will give me an outlet for the thoughts pushing hardest to get out of my head and onto the page, and I'm hoping it'll be interesting for you to read, too. Anyway, I plan to post fairly regularly (as in, a few times a week). I wish I could give you a neat little topic or theme that this blog fits into, but I'll probably be posting about a hodgepodge of subjects, including a few most often:

--Sports. I like sports. A lot. So I'll be posting periodically about sports, which I'm sure some of you will enjoy. The others? Wulp, you can skip those posts.

--Media. Being a journalist, it's naturally something I'm interested in. I really won't post about my job, but I am a news junkie, and I can't not post about the stuff I read.

--Music. I'm really not an indie snob or hardcore music aficionado, but I do enjoy writing about the music I do like. I'm going to try to figure out how to embed mp3's (help, anyone?), which should make the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

--Faith. I don't journal, and I'm hoping this will serve a bit as a somewhat censored, more thought-out version of that--a way to try out ideas and maybe get a little bit of feedback.

--Personal news. My last blog had basically turned into a substitute for mass email, and that's not what I want to do here. But I realize that at least right now, I know all of you, and you'll forgive a little personal storytelling now and then. I promise I'll try not to be too self-absorbed, though it seems I've gotten off to a dubious start on that front.

Anyway, future posts are sure to be more interesting than this one. I hope you'll stick with me long enough to read them.