The sweater must have unraveled

"Blankets are OK, but they can slip and slide. AND, when you need to reach for something, your hands are trapped inside!"

Here's the thing about Snuggies: At first glance it seems like a truly novel idea. "A blanket! With sleeves! Oh my! I never thought of doing that before!"

But wait. Are these people really saying they've never owned or even seen something known as a "sweatshirt"?

Dixon volleyball "Digs Pink"

Got some good photos, I think, but as always my photos always look better before I put them online. The whole gallery is on the Daily Guide website here, there's a partial game story here.

A feature

A new update, since I haven't for a while. I wrote a feature the other day. The photo kind of sucked, but I liked the story. This is it.

Cyclists invade Elbow biker bar

By Jack Hittinger

DEVILS ELBOW— On Wednesday night the Elbow Inn in Devil’s Elbow was a real biker bar. It was invaded by cyclists.

The Hostel International-Gateway Council, based in St. Louis, is sponsoring a “Cycle Route 66” bicycle ride, taking cyclists on Route 66 from Miami, Okla., to Eureka. And the Devil’s Elbow restaurant was one of their main stops.

“I’ve been involved with the Route 66 Association for four years,” Elbow Inn owner Terry Roberson said. “I’ve supported every event thats been down here including motorcycle rides and classic car runs.”

But this is the first bike tour that he’s seen in conjunction with Route 66. And on Wednesday night, the bar was hopping with cyclists eating bar-b-que, drinking beer and playing trivia games.

“This is a real biker bar now,” Roberson said, “‘cause we’ve got both bikers here.”

Read the whole thing here, if you please.

I caught the flu and away I flew.

Bought Wilco (The Album) used for 9 bucks this weekend. Of course, it never reaches the heights of any of the classics, but I listened to it twice in the car on the way back. It's thoroughly enjoyable. I even like "Wilco (The Song)" (click for Colbert show) more than maybe I should. The whole album does smack of complacency, but there are some gems. Nice harmonies all 'round, some Nels Cline shredding, and references to older albums (church bells! They return!) for the hardcore fans disappointed with later output.

I wouldn't buy it new, but used I think it's a pleasant steal.

Nervous Breakdown

The Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles is seriously going to drive me insane. Ahhh...bureaucracy...

I went ahead and hacked the sides away/ Without respect to age

Playlist for June 11, 2009:

Chavez - "Hack the Sides Away"
Afghan Whigs - "Be Sweet"
Sonic Youth - "Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso)"
Wilco - "Dreamer in My Dreams"
Bob Dylan - "Simple Twist of Fate"
Sleater-Kinney - "One Beat"
Flaming Lips - "Mountain Side"
Uncle Tupelo - "Train"

Trickster

I like the new Sonic Youth album, but why do they always have to start their albums with somewhat annoying Kim Gordon songs?

(PS, They're on Letterman tomorrow...competing with Conan, who has...wait for it...RANCID! What to watch, what to watch...)

Things I like right now

A broadened version of my "feel good hits." Because right now I am mainly interested in listening to three types of things:
•Classical music on NPR - Am I getting old? I don't even know most of these pieces but there's something enjoyable (refined?) about driving around in the summer with classical strings cranked to 11 (well, more like cranked to 3...my care stereo is loud)
•Alt country — I'm officially a sucker for all things that involve twangy guitars. Uncle Tupelo began me on this righteous path, and I have been smiting everything in its wake. Recent purchase Whiskeytown is perfect highway/ backwoods driving music (can you tell that's when I listen to a lot of my music?), and the Jayhawks are, well, what would happen if the Byrds were from the Midwest and rocked out a little more with Graham Parsons. A.k.a. awesome. There's a YouTube playlist of them doing a live set in Germany, I suggest you check it out. It has a lot of material from Blue Earth, the album I've been spinning.
•Power pop — Power pop, indie pop, call it what you will. I currently have a taste for lots of power chords and big hooks. Matthew Sweet satisfies this need nicely— that solo on "Girlfriend" kills. Also found an affection for the Fountains of Wayne (I never thought they were that good...but they actually kind of are) and another band I randomly found called the American Princes. Also, the New Pornographers and A.C. Newman...how did I ever get out of the habit of listening to them? (If Elliott Smith were happier, I might include him here too...he shows some hooky brilliance when he's got a full band...but that self-titled solo album, the only one of his I actually have and have been listening too, can be really fucking depressing).
•Then there's XTC, which doesn't really fit into the power-pop category but they're still notable as a weirdass post-pop (kind of a combination between power-pop and post-punk, I guess?) band I've also re-discovered. I always knew a song or two but never delved deeper. Good thing I did. I always heard lots of Kinks comparisons, which might be true if only the caveat: Kinks songs as covered drastically by the Talking Heads. Maybe a bit much. Thematically, though, English Settlement and Skylarking remind me a lot of Village Green Preservation Society.

(S)Iberian Divide

This does it for my baseball coverage this year...most of my damn games were rained out. I got stuck with soccer.

Now I must live with endless pointless summer activities that no one cares about until I finally get some Friday Night Football in August.

Here's the baseball:

IBERIA—By his own admission, Eugene junior pitcher Damon Adrian is not the ace of the Eagle staff. His performance in Wednesday night’s Class 2 District 8 championship game against Iberia could have fooled anyone.

“It’s a pretty good feeling,” he said after his 6-1 complete game victory at Hooper Field in Iberia.

But he’s not the ace.

“No, our ace is going to pitch on Monday,” he said when asked if he’d go again in the Class 1 sectional. “Not me.”

Really? Adrian’s not the ace?

“Well, I guess we’re pretty even,” Adrian said. “But he’s number one.”

Adrian fanned eight in a complete seven innings of work, holding the top-seeded Iberia Rangers to two hits.

Rest of the story is here: Daily Guide

Feel good hits of May 13

Feeling very lo-fi today. Also, thanks to Tony, I've gone somewhat YouTube-playlist happy, like right now with similar songs. Find that here.

Wavves - "To The Dregs"
No Age - "Eraser"
Times New Viking - "Times New Viking vs. Yo La Tengo"
Pavement - "The Hexx"
Wilco - "I'm Always in Love"
Guided by Voices - "Game of Pricks"
!!! - "Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard"
Grinderman - "No Pussy Blues"

Summertime

Oh, hell yes:

Feel good hits

A shamelessly appropriated idea which I will use as my own from now on. From former Stylus writer Ian Mathers. My feel good hits of May 5th/ the early morning of May 6th, 2009:

Los Campesinos! - "You! Me! Dancing!"
Animal Collective - "Brother Sport"
Tokyo Police Club - "Your English is Good"
Thermals - "Liquid In, Liquid Out"
Belle and Sebastian - "I'm A Cuckoo"
Jens Lekman - "The Opposite of Hallelujah"
!!! - "Take Ecstasy With Me"
Beta Band - "Inner Meet Me (live)"
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "Tupelo"
Jayhawks - "Sioux City"

We can be heroes?

The Kansas City Star posted this on their crime blog, calling it "the dumbest thing you will see today." I might agree:



Thanks, KC Star. Here's part two.

David Bowie approves.

Meet me in the dollar bin

Went to St. Louis today, mostly to go to the Greater St. Louis Book Fair. It's not technically a "book fair," it's more of a "giant used book sale in the bottom of a mall parking garage."

Either way, I raked: Five books. Eleven dollars. Including:

-Roddy Doyle, A Star Called Henry
-Joseph Mitchell, Up In The Old Hotel (read the back of the book and it looks like a pretty badass collection of nonfiction journalism)
-Jonothan Franzen, The Corrections (hardback)
-David Halberstam, The Best American Sportswriting of the Century

The real gem, though, is this book called Oh, How They Played the Game!: The Early Days of Football and the Heroes Who Made it Great (hardcover, three dollars). I looked for a link on Amazon and it's out of print. I think it's from the 70s, or thereabouts, and basically consists of a bunch of old-time newspaper and magazine articles about football from the 1870s to the 1930s, all compiled by this crotchety old former New York Times sportswriter.

As you'd expect, it's nothing short of awesome. Among accounts of the first Princeton-Rutgers game and the whole Grantland Rice "Four Horsemen" article (neat, but obvious and everywhere), it has a bunch of random, interesting pieces on all sorts of things, from the first Army-Navy game to a bunch of old pieces on the U of M football team from the Michigan Daily.

The best of these, so far, is an article from Colliers from 1931, written by Pop Warner about his days coaching for the Carlisle Indian School, which closed in something like 1918 but had sweet teams in the late 1890s. The star player on this team was Jim fuckin' Thorpe.

It has some interesting views on race, seeing as how all of the players were Native Americans. I guess Carlisle was one of those evil Indian boarding schools which attempted to "de-savege" Native Americans...which sucks. But Warner has some insight:

Like [the University of] Chicago, Carlisle had no traditions, but what the Indians did have was a real race pride and a fierce determination to show the palefaces what they could do when the odds were even. It was not that they felt any definite bitterment against the conquering white or against the government for unfair treatment, but contests between red men and white men had never been waged on even terms.

'You outnumbered us, and you also had press agents,' a young Sioux once said to me. 'When the white men won it was always a battle. When we won, it was a massacre.'

And so on. I somehow never realized that Jim Thorpe went to an Indian school like that, nor that they were a powerhouse for about four years in college football. Warner's entire article (about 10 and a half pages in the book) is a pretty in-depth retelling of his time there. At the end he says that the white players he coached were whiny bitches a lot of the time (I'm paraphrasing there, if you couldn't tell), but the players at Carlisle were some of the best men he had ever coached on or off the field.

Basically, this book is an essential for anyone interested in college football. And sports. And sports writing. Too bad the damn thing's out of print.

*Also, three albums bought tonight: new Super Furry Animals, new Thermals and old Les Savy Fav. Quickly, on each:

-SFA was vinyl only with a free HQ mp3 download. Why every record label doesn't just do this for every album is beyond me. It really is more of a rock record than Hey Venus. On first listen, I'm not sure it's technically "better," but Venus was way too short. It had 11 songs, but they were all under five minutes. This one has 12, but the songs are a bit longer and more meandering so it doesn't feel like they short-changed you on content. For that reason alone, I think it gets enough points to boost it above Venus.

-Les Savy Fav has weird songs and awesome track names. If you can find their performance on Conan you'll wonder who booked them, because they are NOT made for TV (not necessarily filthy, but bizarre as hell, on record and onstage).

-Thermals production values are high. So much so that it doesn't even sound like them. Compare this (from their first album) to this (from Now We Can See). I used to think that their lo-fi nature was the main reason why I liked them, but....damn, do they write some catchy guitar hooks. And choruses. (Although nothing on this album touches the hook on Pillar of Salt. Nothing.)

Misc.

I've already waxed about my obsession with the band Phoenix on other internet locales (we need to have some word to distinguish the regular "blogosphere" from the Sad Bear blogosphere...any suggestions?), so I won't do so again here. I just seriously can't get enough.

Some other new releases I'm interested in getting from bands I've never really heard: Art Brut, Doves and Junior Boys.

*Just wanted to give you a heads up: KC Star sportswriter Joe Posnanski's blog is one of the best around. One of the funniest things I've read in weeks was the post in which he detailed his three worst sports screw-ups. It hit close to home, especially that first one about Magic, since I imagine that to be me.

In general, he seems to "get" blogging. A lot of older sports guys don't. His tone is very conversational, and sometimes he'll write something serious and then offset something funny immediately after it in italics. Not novel, certainly, but it sort of reminds me of how a Jim Gaffigan routine might look if written down.

Just read his dissection of an ultra-dumb quote from Reds' second baseman Brandon Phillips.

He also hates Kyle Farnsworth, as does this guy.

The Boys (of summer) Are Back

No embedding (can't figure that out yet), but listen: The Boys are Back in Town (Belle and Sebastian Cover)



No story, but I went up to Iberia (aka Siberia due to its northerly and somewhat out-of-the-way location) to snap some baseball photos. (Click on that photo to see a few more spring sports photos I've taken thusfar.)

They've got a great team this year (ranked 10th in Class 2) and some great history. In fact, all the small schools in the area have a good passion for baseball: they're too small to have football teams, so they play fall baseball instead.

More baseball is always a great thing.

I'm excited for the season to begin. At all levels. Look here: The Tigers dumped Sheffield today. Hallelujah, now Thames can start and hit his 40 home runs!

Schoolhouse

I recently bought the Schoolhouse Rocks! Rocks compilation (and by "recently" I mean a few months ago). Mostly, the cover songs on the album are pretty faithful to the spirit of the original songs. For example, Pavement's version of "No More Kings" is straightforward (except maybe for some stuff at the end). As is Folk Implosion's of "I'm Just a Bill," despite being a bit more uptempo.

There's one song, though, that was weird even without a cover: "Little Twelvetoes".

First off, I'm not quite sure why they even included this song on the album. Does anyone remember this song? If you were to look back at your days of watching Saturday morning cartoons (when they resurrected the Cartoons on ABC in the mid-late 90s), which ones stand out? For me, the top three are probabaly the aforementioned "I'm Just a Bill," "Conjunction Junction," and maybe "Electricity," among others.

But it sure as shit isn't "Little Twelvetoes." I mean, I forgot all about the song until I started listening to Chavez and their cover of it.

Maybe it's because I'm still not quite sure what this song is about. I'm still not convinced it's an educational song. I think technically the purpose it to teach multiplication tables, especially (duh!) 12.

Except it doesn't do that. All it really does, in fact, is set up some imaginary system where some hillbilly finds an alien (I think) and says, "Well, if someone DID have 12 fingers, it WOULD be easier to multiply by 12, because they PROBABLY MIGHT have invented two other digits besides the ones we have already to stand for the other two numbers."

Confused already? Me too. I guess that might make for some freaky kind of science fiction scenario on an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But how are kids supposed to learn anything from that?

The song doesn't really do anything beyond that. It's telling kids that they might as well stick to 10s instead of 12s because it will never get any easier, they will never have 12 toes.

Looking at the lyrics, the only time the song actually attempts to teach anything is at the very end, when it goes through the 12s:

One times 12 is twelve, two times 12 is 24.
Three times 12 is 36, four times 12 is 48, five times 12 is 60.
Six times 12 is 72, seven times 12 is 84.
Eight times 12 is 96, nine times 12 is 108, ten times 12 is 120.
Eleven times 12 is 132, and 12 times 12 is 144. WOW!

The problem is, it only goes through the numbers once. And there's a pinball machine in space. And the guy singing in the original song doesn't have a melody attached to this part, he just kinda says it.

If any one part of the song should have a better hook, it's this one. It's not really catchy, which it should be is to get kids to memorize it.

Which brings me to my point: Chavez and their outstanding version of the song, which is anything but.

I'm not sure if they picked the song or if whoever was organizing the comp told them to do "Little Twelvetoes," but either way it's an appropriate song for them, simply because they, like the song, were much forgotten about as a band.

And the more I listen to this song compared to the original version, I'm amazed at how they can get it to sound so different while keeping essentially the same structure. For example, the chorus is almost exactly the same.

It's the subtle differences, though, that make the song stand out from all the others in the compilation: The creepy backing vocals in said chorus. The main guitar riff. The part right after the chorus where they sing "Please come back again" and return from a piano riff to guitars.

Most important is the breakdown interlude in the middle where they go over the multiples of 12. It sounds like the alien being is actually transmitting the times tables down from his spacecraft, whereas in the original version it is all too obvious that its actually the voice of the narrator (mild-mannered jazz/folk musician Bob Dorough).

Like I said earlier, the other cover songs on the album don't sound too much different in tone from the originals (meaning, they're all pretty happy-sounding). This Chavez song, though, just obliterates any good-natured feel that I might get from watching the little hillbilly boy romp around in the original.

Instead, I get the same feeling I get when I'm listening to Coast-to-Coast A.M.-a little mysterious, a little wonderment and a little bit of incredulity.

Not that that's a bad thing-in fact, it's the very reason why its the best cover on the album. Few other things (on the covers album or off) do such things to your state of mind.

Problems?

This morning I saw this strange message on a church marquee that I passed on my way to get coffee:

"Don't tell God about your problems. Tell your problems about God!"

I've tossed this around all day and I don't think it makes a lick of sense. If this "First Christian Church (of God, in Christ, or Whatever)" is trying to mess with the heads of passers-by with stupid logic and senseless wordplay, then they've succeeded.

Ten Second News

Maybe this will take longer than 10 seconds to read, but I got some front page treatment last week:


That's my photo, too. You can read that full story here.

There's more:

-Some recaps of district basketball action from last week can be found here, here, here and here.
-Posted some of my highlights from basketball season on the Collegian Writers' Blog.
-An entertaining (if I do say so myself) preview of the Dutch baseball team for our World Baseball Classic coverage over at Bugs and Cranks.
-Finally, been helping out a bit on the news side. One kinda shitty story about the census, and another fairly okay story about the digital TV transition.

Fight for your right (to play basketball?)

I seriously hope that someday, somewhere, I will be covering a high school basketball playoff game where something like this happens:



More info on the game/ brawl from the Montgomery Advertiser.

15 albums - how much has changed...

So, there's this facebook thing. "25 Random Things," where a person writes 25 random things about themselves, and then tags 25 people to write 25 things about themselves and tag 25 more people, who do the same ad infinitum.

I hate that thing. It's annoying and I don't have time to sit there for two hours and think of 25 interesting thing about myself. Probably because there aren't 25 interesting things about myself that people don't already know that are even worth reading. Sill. (Popmatters has a nice little essay about the phenomenon that you should read).

So I think that's stupid. On the other hand, one of my former professors tagged me in another sort of note that I found more intriguing: 15 albums in 15 minutes. The premise:

"Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world. When you finish, tag 15 others, including me. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it!"

I did this one, because music actually means something, unlike "random facts" about a person.

The interesting this is, I did this kinda thing once before, freshman year. On my old (more embarrassing, and defunct) blog. Thing is, my tastes have changed so much since then that this new list bears little resemblance to that old one. So for fun I decided to post them on here side-by-side. The old list is first, then the new. No particular order on any of them.

2004 list
Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Take it from the Man!
The Clash - The Clash [UK]
Fugazi - The Argument
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Minutemen - Double Nickels On The DIme
Modest Mouse - Lonesome Crowded West
Pavement - Slanted & Enchanted
Pavement - Brighten The Corners
Pixies - Doolittle
Sonic Youth - Dirty
Spoon - Gimme Fiction
The Strokes - Room On Fire
Talking Heads - Remain In Light
Violent Femmes - Violent Femmes

2009 list
Pavement - "Brighten The Corners" - My first Pavement record. Not my favorite now (it comes in second behind "Wowee Zowee") but still important to me falling down the slipperly slope of music-nerddom (of the indie variety).

Sonic Youth - "Dirty" - Like "Brighten the Corners:" not my favorite album of theirs, but the first I heard. My introduction to noise music (sorta).

Spoon - "Kill the Moonlight" - Finally! My introduction to a favorite band that, to this day, holds up as a favorite. I ordered this online freshman year having never heard them before. Glad I did.

The Strokes - "Room On Fire - I remember looking at my iTunes play count at the end of freshman year and "Reptilia" had like 70 plays, with the rest of the album somewhere around 50. And that's just on the computer.

Joy Division - "Unknown Pleasures" - My introduction to post-punk. Vital in my music development.

Talking Heads - "Remain In Light" - Gleaned from my early days of reading Pitchfork; specifically, their "best of the 70s" list.

Rolling Stones - "Let It Bleed" - Hooked me on the Stones, and got me to realize they've come a long way (to sucking) since their glory days.

Uncle Tupelo - "89/93: An Anthology" - I listened to this for about three years straight before I finally bought an album proper ("No Depression"). Now I own all their albums and consider them a favorite band.

Beastie Boys - "Paul's Boutique" - First found at the West Bloomfield Public Library circa 2002. Seven years and about a thousand spins later, I'll never get tired of this record. Psychedelic rap glory.

A Tribe Called Quest - "The Low End Theory" - Wherein I finally realized that not all non-Beastie Boys rap is gangsta rap.

Wu-Tang Clan - "Enter the 36 Chambers" - Wherein I finally realized that not all gangsta rap was mindless and about killing people.

Daft Punk - "Homework" - Wherein I finally realized that not all dance music was about idiots dancing at raves with glowsticks and Dr. Seuss hats.

Fugazi - "13 Songs" - I realize that most of these are significant as introductions to genres. Well, this one's my introduction to hardcore and post-hardcore.

R.E.M. - "Murmur" - I grew up seeing R.E.M. as 'the band that did What's the Frequency Kenneth' and 'Losing My Religion.' Great songs, obviously, but when I came of age their new material was confined to adult alternative stations. I found this used at FYE or something for 5 dollars. Oh, I'm so glad I bought this on impulse.

My Bloody Valentine - "Loveless" - Shoegaze is a stupid term.

Neil Young - "On The Beach" - Doing 16, cause I couldn't decide. This album got me into...ah, screw it.

Who are these guys?

Glory days, of which wish I was a part:

Note to self

Note to (future) self: despite how good they look on the box, do not ever again buy the "budget" 90-calorie blueberry cereal bars at Price Cutter. They taste like baking soda. Thanks, future self.

My back pages

The inch-thick sheet of ice that caked the entire sidewalk block of my apartment melted today, thanks to the 66-degree weather this afternoon. That's right, 66. It will go from 66 to below zero in a matter of days. I used to think that Michigan had messed-up weather, but now I know Missouri takes the cake.

I guess it doesn't matter how cold it is, though, since it's winter sports season and I'm inside all the damn time. This week, I went to three different sporting events at Waynesville High School. I have pep-band renditions of popular music permanently stuck in my head. Mostly classic rock fare - the band's rendition of "Carry On, Wayward Son" is the main offender here, along with the team's fight song, which I'm pretty sure really is "Eye of the Tiger," seeing as how they play it every timeout. The third-most-played song, though? Green Day. "Holiday." Damn if it isn't really catchy when played by a pep band...now that I think about it, brass makes it a better song.

Anyway, enough horseplay: tomorrow marks my very first sports "section." I got one-and-a-half pages instead of one because there's never anything for the "outdoors" page and no one actually wants to write anything. So I was able to write two long features. Both are about wrestling. Go to the SadBear blog for more info on the Minnesota wrestler, it's a weird story...) No electronic link yet, but you can see the layout. Here you are:

Ballin' it up

There's something I really like about this photo, and I'm not sure what it is (it goes with this story, which isn't that good...I should have written better). Maybe it's that their poses are so creepy-looking and seem unnatural - almost like something you'd find in a wax museum or on a mannequin. Especially Mariah Wilder's (21) face and where she has her hands in relation to the ball. But it's real game action. I like the color, too. I got lucky, I think.

(I also like this photo of the boys team, just for the action of the guy in front.)

Ed. Note: A slight tweaking. Content has not changed. I wanted two sidebars. There you have them. Carry on.

Snowblind

Down here, where we're at
The weather changes, that's the way it goes
Sometimes it snows, when everything's wrong
Sometimes it snows, but when it does, it doesn't last long
-Uncle Tupelo, "Screen Door"

Lots of Uncle Tupelo for me lately, and this song feels especially poignant with this massive storm we're having, coming after weeks of unseasonably warm weather (two weeks ago it was about 65). Except this snow seems like it will last forever - it began at about 4 p.m. and shows no signs of letting up. It's thick, mixed with ice and sleet. Good snowball fight snow, if I had anyone to exchange volleys with.

***

Lots of Tupelo, to be sure (they're St. Louis' greatest musical export after Chuck Berry, and even though they're from the Illinois side of the river I can now identify the places they mention in their songs), but also lots of Animal Collective. The new album has songs titled "In The Flowers" and "Summertime Clothes," but to my ears there's no better wintertime album.

It's positively ethereal, haunting and comforting at the same time. I listened to it as I spent 15 minutes attempting to drive out of the parking lot of the newspaper office. See, everything in these Ozark towns is built on hills. Either that, or the roads are on the hills and the homes and businesses are sort of sunken in around them. Makes for scenic driving in peak conditions, but that also means that its nigh impossible to go anywhere when it snows. I had a bear of a time getting up one of those steep inclines, as our office in St. Robert is thusly sunken in. I got out, but it took me forever because I could only really turn left.

***

I gave a woman a ride home. She was walking, as she usually does, but she said "It's kind of stupid to do it in the winter, I guess."

Ya think?

When I saw her she was in the middle of Old Route 66 in St. Robert, bundled up in sweats, a hoodie and a parka. I almost hesitated but she looked harmless enough. She was. We talked about how people don't know how to drive in the snow around here because all the soldiers come from Texas and Georgia. Then some guy in front of us, with Florida plates (naturally), fishtailed as he was going around the giant hill that divides Waynesville and St. Bob (the same one where the frog resides). We chuckled.

She told me that before I got her the police stopped her once and told her to get off the road and walk on the sidewalk to be safe.

"I told them that I thought I was still on the sidewalk. You couldn't tell what was what."

While they were talking, a snowplow whizzed passed them. She got blasted. The officer, still in the car, did not. They didn't offer her a ride.

SportsTime

Despite the terrible header (which we're getting rid of, thank God), I like today's sports page. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I wrote 80 inches of copy tonight. What can I say? I'm proud of the fruits of my labor. And my game story (on the Waynesville-Lebanon game) is probably the best I've done since I got here. Check it (full story online here):



Here's a bit of that game story - the beginning, anyway:

Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide
WAYNESVILLE--Going into Friday night’s tussle with Ozark Conference and district foe Lebanon, Waynesville head basketball coach Tim Bildner knew his team would have to be ready to defend the three. His team prepared accordingly.
He didn’t, however, prepare for this: a 68-66 “barn burner” that saw the Waynesville Tigers (13-3, 2-0 Ozark Conference) come back from an eight-point deficit, lead by nine, and then win by two. All of this, mind you, took place in a span of eight minutes in the third and fourth quarters.
“I’m glad to survive that one,” Bildner said while sitting on the bleachers after the game.
He needed the rest. The visiting Yellowjackets (8-7, 0-3) made 13 three-pointers out of 26 attempts–a 50 percent clip.
“We can’t even get that on two-pointers,” Bildner said, shaking his head.

The rest of the story, as I said, will be online Monday. So you'll have to wait. But here are some pictures, if you are so inclined: BJ Ray dunking; Kendall Lewis (this one would be sweet if he wasn't blurry); Donald Perry (need to figure out how to edit so the flash from another camera doesn't look so obvious); Brandyn Preston; Preston dunking.

Sure Shot

Don't know how long this will be up, so watch it now (and never mnd the fact that the video is too large for my damn blog): Marshall's Markel Humphrey drains a 75-foot three to beat SMU.

Watch more ESPN videos on AOL Video

Mostly I like the interview; he seems like a nice kid and he's honest about it:

Interviewer: If we give you 100 tries to make that shot in that same situation, how many times do you make that shot?
Humphrey: Out of a hundred, I'd probably have to say...zero. That's just a lucky shot, man, I just threw it up there.

I love my job because I can watch this video, at full volume on full screen if I so desired, and nobody would bat an eye. Yes, that's right. Just one of the many perks of being a sportswriter (which also include working from 11 a.m. to about 12 p.m. every night and driving to obscure little high school gymnasiums in small towns to watch a wrestling meet. Awesome).

Best albums in 2008

Not of, mind you. IN. Because I didn't exactly listen to every new album this year. Or even all of the ones I was "supposed" to listen to. So it's a mix: new albums from this year that I liked, but also albums that are actually old but are new to me. No particular order on any of these, except Portishead and the Walkmen are probabaly 1 and 2. Album name links to review, song name to YouTube sample.

Superlatives:
Portishead, Third ("The Rip")
Walkmen, You & Me ("In The New Year")
Q-Tip, The Renaissance ("Move" / "Renaissance Rap", this is one track on the album but I think they work better as separate songs)
Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours ("Feel The Love")
Times New Viking, Rip It Off ("The End of All Things")
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (listen to MP3 in review)
Spiritualized, Songs in A&E ("You Lie You Cheat")
Black Mountain, In the Future ("Angels", "Tyrants")
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (scroll down for Christgau's take)
Wale, The Mixtape About Nothing (listen to MP3)

Darn good:
Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea ("Aloyisius, Bluegrass Drummer")
R.E.M., Accelerate ("Man Sized Wreath")
Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster ("Death to Los Campesinos!", but their Pavement cover is the best thing they've ever recorded, unfortunately it's only on the EP)
Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell ("Tessellate")
Dungen, 4
Black Milk, Tronic ("Give the Drummer Sum")
Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords ("Ladies of the World"...the only reason why this album isn't great is because they fucked up some of the songs from their stand up and overproduced them...except this one...seriously, I want a whole album of nothing but songs like this and I'd enjoy it...even if they weren't being ironic, I think I'd love it...that fadeout thing at the end is brilliant, I could chill out for hours to stuff like this)
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Real Emotional Trash
Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark ("The Man I Shot")
Black Keys, Attack and Release ("Psychotic Girl")

Older albums I got into/ back into (only a smattering, these are the notable ones):
Chavez, Better Days Will Haunt You
A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Maradurs
Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne, Still Feel Gone, No Depression
Wilco, Summerteeth, Being There
Son Volt, Trace
At The Drive-In, The Relationship of Command
Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera
Nas, Illmatic
Galaxie 500, The Peel Sessions
Superchunk, Here's Where the Strings Come In
Guided By Voices, Do the Collapse

I didn't listen to:
Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
The Dirtbombs, We Have You Surrounded
The Kills, Midnight Boom
Presidents of the USA, These are the Good Times, People
Local H, Twelve Angry Months
Tapes 'n Tapes, Walk It Off
Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (and not sure I want to in this case)

Anything else I forgot about. Which means that I didn't care enough to listen to it or didn't remember enough about it to remember it came out this year. Or I'm just retarded and forgot something good. Damnit.