In Which a Tone Deaf Rock Fan Takes in the Worlds Best Orchestra

The offer came in this week -- get comp tickets to a Cleveland Orchestra performance and "blog about the experience." When our schedule cleared up for Friday night, I accepted the offer and took Kid Z along. I assume the offer came to me because I participated in a similar outreach by Opera Cleveland last summer, which in turn happened as a result of knowing that organizations communications director through her blog. These things can happen when you blog.

Despite being mostly a rock fan, I've seen quite a bit of the Cleveland Orchestra. In fact before we became parents Prof. W and I had a Severance Hall subscription. Not to say I can tell you why the orchestra is generally acknowledges as among the three or four best in the world. I just know they are and that they sound great.

Let's think a bit about Cleveland being home to one of the best orchestras in the world. Face it, one reason we are collectively gripping about the possibility of LeBron James leaving town is what it says about Northeast Ohio. He grew up here following the team and has been embraced as a hometown hero, and the team will be able to match whatever another team will pay him. And yet he might leave. If he does we are left with yet another bit of evidence that this is just not a place where people of excellence wish to live.

We're concerned that if he leave, the team will suck; we're really scared that if he leaves, it means we suck.

But we do have our pockets of excellence, and few if any are more excellent that the orchestra. It seems almost impossible that lowly, perennial joke-butt Cleveland could have anything, much less a highbrow cultural institution that ranks so highly.

Of course once you go you are reminded where you are. We have a world class cultural institution, a jewel of a venue in Severance, and perfectly abysmal parking. So the first part of the experience was getting there just in time, which meant that everything was parked up and we would be late.

Very Cleveland.

So we followed winding roads to, I think, Parma, laid in provisions for the trek back to Severance and set out. As a result we got there midway through the first movement of Dvořák's Cello Concerto in B Minor. Watching from the wings was nonetheless impressive. Again I know tiny bits about string playing (mostly from watching my kids take lessons) but soloist Alisa Weilerstein gets truly impressive sounds out of her instrument.

Once that piece was over, we were seated. The Orchestra apparently likes bloggers as they gave us seats on the floor three or four rows back. Viewing and listening from this distance is a whole new experience. First off you see things. Like everyone dresses in all black, but up close you see that some men wear tuxedo pants, some where regular dress slacks and one of the first violins wore ratty black cargoes. Who knew?

But more than that, the sound is stunning. Premium seats at the orchestra won't set you back much more than nosebleed seats at an aging rocker's Retirement Villa Tour at Quicken. But instead of muddy sound and dubiously tuned instruments you can hear what precision playing sounds like. I still listen to mostly rock and jazz at home, but increasingly classical is what I want to see live.

From that vantage we listened to Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra." You know the first section better as:


The piece starts with basses rumbling so low they set up vibrations in your diaphram before you hear them. And of course the piece has far more to it than the now-cliche opening.

After the orchestra's performance internationally renouned percussionist Jamey Haddad set up shop in the lobby with a band of his students from Cleveland Institute of Music and Oberlin Conservatory, playing polyrhythmic jazz pieces deep into the night. The real treat of that portion was Ms. Wallerstein sitting in.

Like everyone else, the orchestra is hurting economically. And as noted, it is a can't miss gig. They never show up half in the bag and play half a set. And they won't turn free agent at the end of the season. Check them out. And if you can get away tonight, they are playing the Dvořák, which you really want to see.

Linkage:

The orchestra has a blog with tons of pics from last night. The PeeDee's review of the concert is up.

(Image from the Cleveland Orchestra)

I've Got No Job, But I'm an Opera Fan*

This evening I will be a guest blogger/Twitterer at Opera Cleveland's rehearsal for their performance of "Falstaff." Their publicity manager -- and Opera Chicken blogger -- is a blogging veteran whom I got to know back when we were trying the GABB thing. (And BTW, all respect for anyone who can secure a paid gig that includes blogging.)

The idea is to let some social media types see behind the scenes and blogg/tweet the experience. Yes, it's more than a little off-topic, but I'm looking forward to it. I will certainly do some real-time tweeting under hashtag #operacleveland. The blogging may be live but more likely will be a retrospective once we get home.

Now I have a pile of stuff to do to justify this little excursion. See you then.


*Long inside story about the title. Years ago NPR did a story about the group rock Chumawumba -- remember "Tubthumping" with it's "I get knocked down, but I get up again" refrain? A listener mailed in a thanks for the profile and in particular in clarifying that refrain. "It sounded to me like "I've got no job, but I'm an opera fan." While that description meets a number of my friends, it didn't seem sufficiently universal to form the basis of an international pop hit. " That exchange has stuck with me. In fact, as I've been working all this out, the song has been going through my head, with the alternate lyric.
On the other hand, it's not entirely accurate. But "I don't have a full-time job, and while I appreciate opera, I don't actually seek it out generally," but it didn't have the ring, so . . .

Infinite Summer: Because at 1079 Pages, It's Still a Good Beach Read.

As longtime readers know, I'm a big David Foster Wallace guy. So I was thrilled to hear about Infinite Summer, an online challenge/discussion forum dedicated to reading, discussing and celebrating Wallace's sprawling, daunting and ground breaking Infinite Jest over the summer. The "official" reading period is June 21-Sept 22. The "Guides" of the effort have calculated this working out to 75 pages a week.¹

I'll be rereading along with the effort -- in fact I've gotten an early start. I'd love to blog the whole thing, but that seems unlikely given my summer schedule. But I will no doubt have something more to say.

If you are tempted, but not sure, consider the following both a pitch and caveat. The book for the most part is eminently readable, but the book as a whole is challenging. The narrative is written in a nonlinear, sometimes seemingly random timeline. To confuse things further, the years in the near future world Wallace imagines are not designated by numbers, but by corporate sponsors², increasing the degree of difficulty in following the action. That said, the individual "chapters"³ by and large are easy to read.

Second point, understand that the story is not the major point here. Wallace is exploring ideas without explicitly laying out what those ideas are. We're not supposed to include spoilers, but let me just say this: You know how in Pulp Fiction you never find out what's actually in the briefcase? There's a lot of that sort of thing in Infinite Jest. Wallace drops plentiful clues to explain the McGuffins, but speculating about what happened ultimately is beside the point.

If the above has enticed and/or failed to dissuade you, a few tips to get you started:

• Consider buying the book. Yes, libraries have copies, but trust me, this is a book you will want to go back to. It's also one of the few novels in which I've written margin notes.
• Use two book marks -- one for the text and one for the endnotes. A fair amount of action/explanation/McGuffin-clue-giving happens in the endnotes. I used a sticky note in the endnote section that I moved with each note read.
• Have a dictionary handy. Wallace drops a lot of fifty cent words in some sections.⁴
• Consider doing a little reading ahead of time. Various sources have their recommendations for DFW gateway readings. Mine are the story "Octet" from the collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and the essay "Joseph Frank's Dostoyevsky" from the collection Consider the Lobster. You will find embedded therein almost Jerry Maguire-style mission statements that will help understand what Wallace may be up to. If you really want to go geeky about it, consider some of the theses posted on The Howling Fantods.
  

All that said, I hope at least some of my readers take up the challenge. You will be rewarded.

¹Though the final 94 pages of that 1079 is endnotes which you really need to read in conjunction with the text -- no really, you need to -- making it difficult to calculate exactly how much you are reading.^a

¹Of course a post about DFW must have footnotes. Of course.

²The bulk of the action occurring in the Year of the Depends Adult Undergarment.

³The book isn't divided into chapters per se, but is more of a collection of vignettes and epistles, most of which are designated only by a date, but some of which have some sort of heading not a few of which (i.e. the headings, not the dates) are comically long. Said vignettes/epistles range from a paragraph to a score of pages or more.

⁴Particularly those concerning central character Hal Incandeza who is described as a "lexical prodigy."

Jim Rome Show Smack-Off Results

For the past three years I've posted the results of the Jim Rome Show Smack-Off. Given my anemic posting rate lately it would be wise to just let it go this year. But in really bugs some people I don't like very much which is a perfectly good reason for doing pretty much anything. Here goes the countdown to the King of Smack:

10. Jay Mohr
9. Terrence in Sierra Madre
8. Rachel in Houston
7. Josh in Grand Rapids
6. Trapper in Dana Point
5. Iafrate
4. Greg in Vegas
3. Vic in NoCal
2. Mike in Indy
1. Brad in Corona

This marks the first time a rookie caller won the event. I didn't care for Brad's call, but at least Jeff in Richmond can't boast about having the shortest time in the jungle prior to winning.

Browns Officially in Rebuilding Year #10

The Cleveland Browns announced today that they are trading tight end Kellen Winslow to Tampa Bay for "undisclosed draft picks." Coupled that with the news that Pro-Bowl D-lineman Shaun Rodgers wants out and it's safe to say that the team will be contending for nothing other than high draft picks in 2010.

In a terrible offensive year, Winslow was arguably the Browns' most important offensive weapon. He had his public spat with team management about the pr over his staph infection, but with Savage gone the impetus to trade him didn't seem so sharp. Given Braylon Edwards' penchant for dropping passes, Winslow was at least reliable when he could get free without drawing an offensive flag.

Anyway, it's a new regime and they are not going to finish what Romeo and Phil started. They apparently are going to set of bombs in the locker room and building from the ground up.

Again.

Meanwhile, an off-the-beaten incident today illustrates just how much rebuilding there is to do. Today o-lineman Rex Hadnot was a guest on the Jim Rome show. (He is Rex #12 in the show's current "Rex streak" -- consecutive days interviewing someone named Rex. Yeah, well the period between the Superbowl and March Madness is a tough one for sports chatters.) Hadnot learned of the trade from Rome in the course of the interview. That is to say, a Browns player was scheduled to appear on a national sports talk show and team PR didn't prep him regarding huge team news. Sloppy, sloppy work.

Remembering Buddy Holly

Fifty years ago rock pioneer Buddy Holly died when his plane crashed in an Iowa cornfield. The media retrospectives have reprised Don McLean's "Day the Music Died." I for one am not a fan of McLean's allegorical whine against Sixties rock, so it's just the day Buddy Holly (and Richie Valens and The Big Bopper) died.

Most noteworthy about this sad day is the remarkable extent to which Holly's music didn't die. By his death at 22 he had created a body of work that changed rock forever -- mostly thanks to legions of reverential Brits who started Invading five years later. Everything from early Beatles to todays alt.country would sound much different -- and probably poorer -- if he had never picked up a guitar.

The iconic Holly video is the Crickets performing "Peggy Sue" on Ed Sullivan. I found this video of the band on Arthur Murray Dance Party on YouTube. The video and sound is better than the Sullivan kinescope and the intro is hilarious.

Rest in peace, Buddy.

And thanks.

I'm Sure It's Just a Coincidence

That controversy erupts over a donation to McCain from a board member of a gay pickup site the same week that Blender reports that McCain's favorite song is The Gayest Song in Pop Music History:

Wingnut, But Not Moonbat, Added to the Dictionary.

From the PD via Plunderbund we learn that "wing nut" meaning "one who advocates extreme measures or changes : radical" will be added to the next edition of the Merriam Webster dictionary, and already appears online. No such entry, as of this year, for "moonbat."

This is sorta kinda fitting and sorta kinda not, given that Merriam-Webster is the leading liberal redoubt in the usage wars.

The what? You ask.

The language usage wars. In this age of hyper-politicization of everything, there are opposing camps even in an activity as dry and academic as writing dictionaries. In a review of Bryan Garner's¹ A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, David Foster Wallace² ledes:

Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of US lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a near-Lewinskian scale?
For instance, did you know that some modern dictionaries are notoriously liberal and others notoriously conservative, and that certain conservative dictionaries were actually conceived and designed as corrective responses to the "corruption" and "permissiveness" of certain liberal dictionaries?

* * *
Did you know that US lexicography even had a seamy underbelly?

So Merriam Webster, being the most liberal, subscribes to a "descriptionist" methodology. Their mission is (supposedly) to catalog all the words people use and all the meanings they attach to those words. The conservative dictionaries -- the very conservatively named American Heritage Dictionary being something of the, well Heritage Foundation to Webster's Brookings in this field -- is prescriptivist. That is, they tell the rest of us what the language is, no arguments, and how anything outside the hard covers of AHD is simply wrong.

Example: While Merriam-Webster is adding a number of internet-derived words like malware and webinar, American Heritage has yet to include "blog." Gotta be painful for the Pajamas Media crowd.

As for the definition itself, I dissent. If Merriam-Webster really wants to be the descriptionists bible, they should pay closer attention to how people use the words. "Wing nut" is used consistently to denote an extreme conservative, not simply a radical of either wing. The counterpart for conservative derision of fringe lefties is "moonbat."³ Including⁴ a definition for wing nut without the fringe dweller across the aisle is simply wrong, descriptively speaking.<sup>5

1</sup>Yes, this Bryan Garner. It's somewhat ironic he apparently so opposes substantive footnotes given that one of the truly abject raves of his book -- and one worthy of a jacket quote, at least according to the publishers -- includes 80 footnotes over 56 pages of text as reproduced in the collection Consider the Lobster.

²My favorite living writer of both fiction and non-fiction and an enduring influence upon my own writing. For instance, I won't say that the blog would never include footnotes were it not for DFW, but his use of the device both as a writing tool and as a means for making meta points about language has certainly pushed me in an influence/homage/cheap imitation (depending on how you want to look at it) sort of way.

³Or if you are Matt Naugle and are describing anyone to the left of, say, Newt Gingrich, the term is "socialist." But whaddya expect from a wing nut?

⁴More accurately, expanding the existing definition vis-a-vis wing nut since the word already existed as denoting a piece of hardware.

⁵Which is a problem with the whole descriptivists project -- it's simply impossible to capture every construct and change of nuance, meaning at some point you choose and with that make the sorts of value judgments that descriptivists supposedly oppose. For more, see Foster's essay.

George Carlin Leaves His Stuff Behind.

The man who reminded us that there are seven words you can't say on television died yesterday at 71. Unlike most counterculture, envelope-pushing comedians, George Carlin managed to live long and remain relevant. While Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor succumbed (quickly and gradually, respectively) to their demons and Bill Hics' and Sam Kinison suffered early deaths that may or may not have been related to their dissolute lifestyles, Carlin lived and performed on.

One of my favorite Carlin stories was told by Garry Shandling, who managed to get backstage as an aspiring writer and hand Carlin a sheaf of skits and stories he had written. Carlin called back the next day and said, "I read it all and found something funny on every page. If you are thinking of pursuing this, I think you should." Imagine an eminence like Carlin taking the time to read the work of some anonymous kid. As much as he liked occasionally to play the misanthrope, he was personally generous, especially toward young comedians.

While he's most famous for the Seven Dirty words sketch, I think "Stuff" is the most happily subversive of his classic pieces, slyly mocking American materialism without strongarming the audience. It's somehow fitting that Stuff isn't available for embed, but you can find it here. If you want a routine without clicking through a link, here's "Baseball and Football."

Good Morning

We are in the mountains now, and to my surprise the cabin complex has wifi. That's good. And bad.

Anyway, while working on the McCain post below, I hear Prof. W, who had gone out walking calling me through the window to come and bring my camera.

Not thirty feet from out cabin, an elk was grazing:


It was hard to get a decent picture until a magpie's screeching got his attention:



It turns out, the magpie was harassing a fox, who was slinking around and bolted once he spotted us.

R.I.P. Bo Diddley

You can have your Presleys and your Berrys. On my personal Rock Rushmore Bo Diddley gazes down, between Buddy Holly and Little Richard.

AP has a good remembrance. And here's his profile from the Rock Hall if you are just tuning in.

As Dr. Johnny Fever once said. "Here's Bo Diddley singing Bo Diddley. And why not? I don't know who could sing it better."

Jay-Z Has LeBron's Back

Via TNR's The Spine, we learn from Vulture that uber-mogul Jay-Z has cut a quick diss about the LeBron James/DeShawn Stevenson spat:

It all started when Stevenson started talking jive about Jay-Z’s main man LeBron James, whose Cavaliers are currently taking on the Wizards in a first-round playoff series. LeBron responded that such a move was like Soulja Boy taking on Jay-Z, which prompted Stevenson to invite Mr. Boy himself to game three of the series in D.C. Jay then responded with the track, which was played Friday in a D.C. club and hit the Internet yesterday.

You can find it here on Kanye West's blog.

By the way, the fact that New York-based Jay Z is boys with LeBron and cut the track and included the lines:

[censored] he's overrated?
If anything they underpaid him

Constitutes Exhibit 537438 proving that LeBron will be gone when his contract is up.

The Pretentious Books Meme

A meme going around has bloggers offering personal report cards on the "pretentious books" list The list is the 106 books most frequently listed at "unread" by people who catalog their books at LibraryThing. I first found this on Pharyngula. You can trace his links back if you wish.

The books I've finished are in green. Those I started and put down/was only assigned parts of/read the Cliff's Notes are in red.

* Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
* Anna Karenina
* Crime and Punishment
* Catch-22
* One Hundred Years of Solitude
* Wuthering Heights
* The Silmarillion (in a lifetime of Tolkien fandom, I've met exactly one person who has made it all the way through this one.)
* Life of Pi : a novel
* The Name of the Rose
* Don Quixote
* Moby Dick
* Ulysses
* Madame Bovary
* The Odyssey
* Pride and Prejudice
* Jane Eyre
* The Tale of Two Cities
* The Brothers Karamazov
* Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
* War and Peace
* Vanity Fair
* The Time Traveler’s Wife
* The Iliad
* Emma
* The Blind Assassin
* The Kite Runner
* Mrs. Dalloway (I wonder how many other people started it after reading The Hours, then said, "Nah."
* Great Expectations
* American Gods
* A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (This is one I'm genuinely proud of giving up on. A Grating Work of Facile Foster Wallace Imitation)
* Atlas Shrugged
* Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
* Memoirs of a Geisha
* Middlesex
* Quicksilver
* Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
* The Canterbury tales
* The Historian : a novel
* A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
* Love in the Time of Cholera
* Brave New world
* The Fountainhead
* Foucault’s Pendulum (If you are intrigued by some of the history mined by The DaVinci Code but cannot abide Dan Brown's hackery, this is the book for you)
* Middlemarch
* Frankenstein
* The Count of Monte Cristo
* Dracula
* A Clockwork Orange
* Anansi Boys
* The Once and Future King
* The Grapes of Wrath
* The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
* 1984
* Angels & Demons
* The Inferno
* The Satanic Verses
* Sense and Sensibility
* The Picture of Dorian Gray
* Mansfield Park
* One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
* To the Lighthouse
* Tess of the D’Urbervilles
* Oliver Twist
* Gulliver’s Travels
* Les Misérables
* The Corrections
* The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
* The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
* Dune
* The Prince
* The Sound and the Fury
* Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
* The God of Small Things
* A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
* Cryptonomicon
* Neverwhere
* A Confederacy of Dunces
* A Short History of Nearly Everything
* Dubliners
* The Unbearable Lightness of Being
* Beloved
* Slaughterhouse-five
* The Scarlet Letter (Every 11th grade in my high school was assigned it. Maybe ten finished it.)
* Eats, Shoots & Leaves
* The Mists of Avalon
* Oryx and Crake : a novel
* Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
* Cloud Atlas
* The Confusion
* Lolita
* Persuasion
* Northanger Abbey
* The Catcher in the Rye
* On the Road
* The Hunchback of Notre Dame
* Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
* The Aeneid
* Watership Down
* Gravity’s Rainbow
* The Hobbit
* In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
* White Teeth
* Treasure Island
* David Copperfield
* The Three Musketeers

Surprise number one is what's not here. I expected to see Infinite Jest, but no. Also no Don DiLillo or Leon Uris. And if this list was compiled twenty years ago, now doubt A Brief History of Time would rank high.

Personally, it's amazing how little red is on my personal list, given that I excel at starting but not finishing books.

This is being billed as a meme, but without tagging. I'll do the same.

Jim Rome Show Smack-Off 2008 Results

Once a year Jim Rome gives his sports talk show over to the best callers of the year, plus a few legends. Once a year the callers trade barbs on each other, sports, entertainment and XR4TI Crew. Once a year, we are treated to the Smack-Off.

And once a year (well last year and this, anyway) I post the results and get a bushel of cheap hits. Since Clones have been burning up my SiteMeter already, I'll continue the tradition. And by the way, I love the Clones who were Googling "Jim Rome Smack-Off Winner" at 2:40. The show ends at 3:00, geniuses. Dig through the cushions of the old couch you sleep on in your mother's basement for a few coins and by yourself a clock.

To reset the backstory. Five-time winner Sean "The Cablinasian" Pendergast parlayed his wins into a sports talk gig in Houston with a station that rivals Rome's affiliate there. So he was declared ineligible, opening up the field.

Meanwhile, last year hot rookie Vic in NoCal called his shot, but failed to show the day of (earning him the gloss Vic in No Call.) This past Wednesday he called his shot again, this time promising to win as a rookie participant and call first and go wire-to-wire for the first time in the history of the event. Professional comedian Jay Mohr heard the call and promised to go second and pile of Vic.

As if that wasn't enough, JD in Nashville broke off a legendary song parody last year in the midst of the feud between Chad in Portland and Mike in Witchita. JD wasn't heard from for months after that, but got an invite based on the one call. Then he made one disastrous follow up call, but still retained his invite. Chad and Mike were also invited.

So high drama going in. We ended up hearing a strong competition, but the pre-game drama
played little part in the final results.

With all that said, here are the final results:

10. Casey in Vegas
9. Jeff in Richmond (Yes, the same call as always, but JIIIM is a sucker for it)
8. Silk in Huntington Beach
7. Greg in Vegas (surprisingly little amputee smack)
6. Jay Mohr
5. Terrence in Sierra Madre (still the third or fourth or fifth bridesmaid down the receiving line)
4. Stevie from LMU (on the tenth anniversary of his winning calal)
3. Joe in the O.C.
2. Doc Mike Ditolla (First time in for several years. Totally blew up Vic)
1. Iafrate (Second win. Totally blew up Doc Mike)

So there you have it. Vic did call in first, but didn't figure in the standings. The other rookie caller to do well was Cory in Ann Arbor. Rachel in Houston, Irae Craig and Brandon in Wilmington all got run. JD offered a pretty nothing call; Mike and Chad didn't show.

Maybe next year I'll get my act together and secure a little pirate audio. As it is, you need to pay money to stream the show. Rome likes his bank.

We now rejoin our regularly scheduled public policy blog, already in progress.

William Shatner to Release Dramatic Reading of Exodus

Yes, William Shatner/Captain James T. Kirk/TJ Hooker/Priceline Negotiator Guy. That guy did a dramatic reading of the book of Exodus. With a full symphony and symphony chorus. And is releasing it on CD.

And get this, everyone is taking it seriously. The hammiest overactor of his generation is reciting a sacred text and people apparently think it's a good idea. JTA ran a straight up story about it, the angle being that Shatner denies it's about returning to his Jewish roots. (BTW, news to me. Knew that Leonard Nimoy is Jewish, but not Shatner.)

Because this is Exodus, it can't be funny,no matter how overwrought Shatner's dramaturgy. So instead, let's consider that other famous Shatner dramatic interpretation. Let's go back to 1978 . . .



That's funny no matter how many times I see it. There's not one syllable he doesn't get exactly wrong.

By the way, I was there at the creation. I both proud and embarrassed to say that in 1978 I was a SciFi geeked out middle schooler and watched every minute of the Science Fiction Film Awards. When it came to Shatner's performance, my reaction was, "What the heck is that?!?!?!??"

Now it has past into pop culture lore -- so much so that Beck incorporated the imagery into his video for "Where It's At." Shatner's Priceline commercials suggested that is at piece with his fundamental ridiculousness. But this latest venture indicates that he is still capable of taking himself entirely too seriously.

Jacobs Field to Be Renamed Progressive Field

The Tribe announced fairly quietly last summer that Dick Jacobs' naming rights to the stadium had expired and that they were shopping it around. Cleveland dot com reports that Progressive Insurance inked the deal. The stadium will henceforth (for at least fifteen years anyway) be Progressive Field.

I'm OK with it. Given the grim reality that a big company was going to buy the rights, this is probably about the best we could hope for. It's a solid company, firmly rooted in the area. More importantly, the name shortens into a memorable nickname.

"The Prog."

Get used to it.

Hang On, Sloopy

There is but one reason for optimism about the Buckeye's chances in tonight's BCS title game against LSU: The fact that they have no business winning it.

First, let's establish that last statement. This was supposed to be the year that the Buckeyes settled for a second-tier bowl and were happy about it. College football teams don't have "rebuilding years" per se like the pros do, but certainly there are expected down years when the core of a great team heads off campus to play Sunday football. Such was supposed to be the case this year after losing Smith, Gonzalez, Pittman and Ginn, Jr. OSU contending for, not to mention winning, the Big 10 championship was in itself far better than rational observers expected.

Second, they got into the title game by winning in arguably the weakest BCS conference. Certainly the conference bowl records have borne out that season-long impression. Meanwhile, both the SEC and Big 12 were so talent-soaked that no one team could emerge from their fratricidal conference schedules with fewer than two losses. .

Add to that the special circumstances. LSU is playing at home. Having been to New Orleans the last time LSU played in the Sugar Bowl I can tell you, it's as crazy as you would expect. Moreover, OSU had their customary epic, spirit-killing break while LSU played more recently by two weeks.

As a result of all of the above, an overwhelming majority of non-Ohioans have declared LSU the clear, if not prohibitive, favorite.

All of which may be just what Jim Tressel needs. When OSU swapped out the John Cooper for Tressel, they traded the consummate big game underperformer for the consummate big game coach. Time and again Tressel has pulled out improbable wins in pressure situations. The last time OSU was declared an underdog this definitively was 2002 when they were supposedly overmatched by Miami. We all have happy memories of how that turned out.

If Tressel has one Achilles heel, it may be letting up when the odds are in his favor. The last game Ohio State lost was to an inconsistent Illinois team that clearly caught them looking ahead to Michigan. Last year's BCS embarrassment was to an equally talented team, but the magnitude of the ass-whoopin' suggested a team that read too many of its press clippings.

Which is why the odds against OSU improve the odds for OSU. Tressel seems to work best when the hour is darkest. He has the talent to beat LSU which is a better team, but not overwhelmingly so. If the big game, backs-against-the-wall, the-tough-get-going version of Jim Tressel shows up, we have a real chance.

So everyone in the blogosphere has been saying versions of "Go Bucs!" I say "There is no chance! All hope is lost!" It seems to work better.

Congratulations Zippy

Ohio dot com reports this afternoon that Zippy, mascot of the University of Akron, won Capital One National Mascot of the Year. Zippy defeated Goldy Gopher from the University of Minnesota in the final round.

The U. Akron community voted early and often, but no doubt the Minnesota faithful did as well. Clearly Zippy has garnered broader appeal.

Now if only the basketball team could get into the post season.

UPDATE: PsychoBilly puts it all in perspective.

10-6, But No Postseason

Wow. That has to be the least satisfying end of a season ever. Bad enough that the Browns end up as the first team in two years to fall short with ten wins. The Titans/Colts game scrimmage tonight was agonizing.

The one point of solace, if you could call it that, is that the Coltscrubs lost the game exactly the same way the Browns would have: no pressure on the quarterback and porous secondary play. I recall one Tennessee pass play being broken up by a defender -- the one that gorked off the corner's helmet and was caught by a Titan's receiver. It was a real God Hates Cleveland Sports moment.

A special shout-out to Tony Dungy for not taking the last time out. Nice to have confirmation that you were never interested in winning the game.

R.I.P. Ike Turner

Ike Turner died today at 76. Greg Kot at the Chi Trib has a good appreciation. He offers a thorough review of Turner's non-DV contributions to rock history, a balanced assessment of the ugly stuff and the happy news that Ike had gotten his life together for his final years.

Among other things, Ike Turner was responsible for one of the three best cover songs in rock history. Ike and Tina's version of "Proud Mary" and Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" fight for 2 and 3 on my personal list. Number one is indisputable if you know it's a cover: Aretha Franklin's version of Otis Redding's "Respect."

Back to the Turners, here they are. I love covers that completely rework the original.



Godspeed, Ike.