Get to know ... James Brown

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

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

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

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

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

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.