Mountain Men's Three Wolf Moon Tees

Inspired artwork depicts the supremacy, mystery and allusiveness of wolves howling at the moon

Heads ups to Big Dave Cawley (King of Mod-Loving, Cilantro-Hating Men) for alerting me to this fashion necessity he spotted on Amazon.com: The Mountain Men's Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee.

At first glance it just looks like some intrinsically dumb nature t-shirt a fashion-challenged Napoleon Dynamite dork might wear. But as you read the customer comments about it's surprising appeal as a chick magnet, its sartorial "magic" soon becomes apparent. If I was still single, I'd place a bulk order to beef up my summer wardrobe. As it is, I can only wonder at how much "game" this irresistable mate-bait enables macho flesh-hunters to capture.

Satisfied fashionista B. Govern (New Jersey) gushes:

Dual function design
This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that's when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to 'howl at the moon' from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called meth. I told them no, because they didn't have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn't settle for the first thing that comes to him.

I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.

Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.

overlook1977 (Raleigh, NC) laments:

Great compliment for my skin art
Unfortunately I already had this exact picture tattooed on my chest, but this shirt is very useful in colder weather.

T. Guymon "SonOfSpam" (Anaheim, CA) raves:

Why can't Amazon have more stars? 5 ain't enough!
So I'm looking for threads that say, "Hey baby...I'm real boss!" when I stumble upon this epic creation. The wolves spoke to me in a language all their own; it was like German, Mongol, and Bitchin all mixed together. I mean, one wolf howlin at the moon is major...but three???

I ordered next-day air (if only there was same day!), and, of course, a size smaller than usual to ensure the closeness of the wolves to my chest hair. When the package arrived, I tore it open, and I SWEAR angels sang. I think it was Freebird. I immediately removed my "No Fat Chicks" shirt, and replaced it with this finery. Lemme tell you: AW YEAH.

I'll spare the details of my conquests since I started wearing this shirt; suffice to say, I'm swimming in a sea of babes the likes of which are usually found on those K-Tel infomercials. I'm also more confident at work, and expect to be promoted to cashier soon. I owe everything to this shirt (I should say "shirts", since I now own 23 of them).

YankeeShambles (St. Paul, MN) had an epiphany:

Three wolves, one moon, unlimited adventure
I'm a late-comer to the Three Wolf Moon shirt legend, but I was spellbound by the user reviews. I really liked the artwork and had a pair of jeans it would go perfectly with. With a little hesitation, I decided to buy one and see what would happen to me. When I received the Three Wolf Moon shirt things started changing. The paranormal became normal, the extraordinary became ordinary. Fifteen minutes after I put the shirt on, the sun went into a permanent solar eclipse and a new full moon grew out of it. The "face" people often see on the moon's surface now looked like a howling wolf.

I looked to the sky and howled. Native drums were pounding in the distance, rhythmic and steady. Behind these drums, there were faint, knowing whispers. With each bang of a drum, a solar flare could be seen belching forth from the eclipse/full moon blazing above in the darkened sky. Still howling, two wolves came forth and began howling with me. Thinking back to my Amazon.com shirt purchase, I remembered there were supposed to be three wolves. I looked down to notice that I was still wearing the wolf shirt, but instead of arms, hairy legs and paws protruded from my 100% cotton short sleeve shirt. The third wolf... was me.

Like a torrid electric downpour, lightning came down from the heavens with bolt after bolt striking a large, ancient bolder. Splitting the rock exactly down the middle, a glowing aura spilled out with apparitions from the spirit realm spiraling into the forest. Though it moved rather quickly, I swear I saw a unicorn.

Startled, I bit my shirt's collar and pulled it off. A bright flash overcame my wolven eyes and everything collapsed into pure silence. I opened my eyes and awoke, shirtless on my apartment floor. The world was again as it had been before I bought this terrifyingly terrific wolf shirt. I pulled myself up to my computer, logged into Amazon.com and began to type...

Only consumer Jay Bartholomew sounded a cautionary note about the howling wolves:

Noble Wolves May in Fact be Evil
After reading over a thousand reviews I made the informed decision to order this shirt. Shortly after clicking the "BUY" button I noticed that the shirt had not only already arrived, but that I was wearing it with gusto. All seemed well until I took it out for a test spin.

The awesome power of the wolves promptly drained me of my seed and clogged the kitchen sink. Any attempt I make to unclog the sink or contact a plumber causes the wolves to growl in such a way that I dare not continue. Although I was confident that I could control the power bestowed upon me, it was only a matter of days before I had shaved the tails of all the neighborhood cats and eaten all the first-born children in a ten mile radius.

The wolves do not respond to logic or reason. I tried to remove the shirt, but the alpha male bit me and my flesh has since healed to the garment itself. I now have magnificent chest hair and engage in involuntary chanting which causes acid rain.

I still feel that the pros outweigh the cons, but I now spend so much time carrying out the wishes of the Norse god king, Odin, that I cannot in good conscious recommend this product.

Microsoft Met the Walrus

Josh Raskin-Inspired Microsoft Ads

I recently saw a slew of Microsoft's “People Ready/It's Everybody's Business” commercials - which are aimed at the business community and mix audio interviews with executives of leading companies with collage-style animation to show how MS' technology solves business problems - on the Groove Tube. You know the ones I'm talking about, like the ad featuring Quiksilver President and CEO Bob McKnight talking about "the economic tsunami" and its impact on business (as shown below):



Then there's the spot with Katie Bayne, chief marketing officer at Coca Cola, talking about how important it is to get the right information rather than a lot of information (as shown below):



They're great ads, but they seemed too familiar to me. Slowly, it dawned on me that I had seen this animation style before - in an Oscar-nominated short film by Canadian animator Josh Raskin. Yuo see, in February of 2008, I blogged about "The 2007 Academy Award Nominated Animated Short Films" program at the Landmark Theatre, where I saw Josh Raskin's "I Am the Walrus," a short that so impressed me I contacted the director and asked if I could get a copy of his film (which, unfortunately, did not win the Oscar) so I could screen it as part of one of our monthly film programs at the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He obliged and I screened the imaginative short, which is shown below.

I MET THE WALRUS

(directed by Josh Raskin, Canada, 5 minutes, English, 2D Animation)
Official Web Site: www.imetthewalrus.com

As I said at the time:

Animators looking for ideas, take heart: this is a prime example of how to make something out of nothing. In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan (pictured left) snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto with his tape recorder and persuaded him to do an interview. This was during John and Yoko's "Bed-In" to promote world peace phase. Levitan got 5 minutes worth of conversation about various topics, including war and peace, music and, unfortunately, his dislike of George Harrison (what's his problem? George was my fave of the Fab Four!). It all wouldn't have amounted to much, except for Josh Raskin's imagination and skill as an animator and director 38 years later. He uses a stream-of-consciousness technique to illustrate basically every word that comes out of Lennon's mouth. More specifically, he employs James Braithwaite's pen sketches and Alex Kurina's digital illustrations to create what the film's official web site quite rightly calls "a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message."

The look of the animation reminded me of both Terry Gilliam's Monty Python work (which of course harkens back to the cut-up collage techniques of Stan Vanderbeek) and Frank and Caroline Mouris' FRANK FILM (1973), especially in regards to the latter's pacing and thematic synching of images with narration.


It may be Everybody's Business, but it's Josh Raskin's idea

Whatever my take on it, Raskin's film short clearly inspired and influenced Microsoft's "Everybody’s Business" campaign, which (according to online site theinspirationroom )was developed at New York's JWT ad agency by chief creative officer Ty Montague, executive creative director Walt Connelly, creative director/art director Tim Galles, creative director/copywriter Stuart Mickle, agency producers Holly Otto, Robin Feldman, Alex Lind-Spahr and Arrow Kruse. The animation was developed by director Michelle Dougherty via Imaginary Forces, with editing by Catherine Bull and Dahkil Hausif at Spotwelders, and sound design by Marshall Grupp of Sound Lounge.

Too bad there's no Josh Raskin acknowledgement. He didn't get the Oscar and he didn't get any of that sweet Microsoft money.

The Great "Greatest" Debate

OK, so Roger Federer won his 15th major, eliciting the great debate over who's the greatest all-time men's tennis player. Like my brother says, it's a pointless debate because you can't really compare different eras, with different levels of competition (look at Sampras' era with Agassi, Courier, Lendl, Becker, etc. versus Federer's with basically one guy who pushes him - Nadal), different surfaces, different equipment, different rules (i.e., the advent of the tie-breaker, the Hawkeye challenge system, etc.). For number of majors, sure Federer has won the most. But I think this video of Mats Wilander weighing in on the matter says it best.

Mats Wilander/Experts Weigh In on Federer's 15th

True Grit

Roger Federer Toughs It Out for a Record-breaking 15th Slam
5-6, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14


When the going gets tough, the tough get trophies

I few weeks back I blogged about Jon L. Wertheim's book Strokes of Genius, which rightly lauded last year's five-set, four-hour and 48-minute Wimbledon Gentlemen's Final between Roger Federer and Raphael Nadal as the greatest tennis match ever played (at least in my lifetime), and took the author - an unabashed Federer fan - to task for questioning Federer's grit:

Everyone assumes Roger wins by virtue of his genius, artistry or genetically-gifted skill. Hey, you don't win 14 majors on every surface, 10 consecutive Grand Slam finals (2005 Wimbledon - 2007 U.S. Open), reach 20 consecutive semifinals, 19 total Grand Slam finals, and be World No. 1 for 5 years without having the grit to match your talent.

After watching Sunday's five-set, four-hour and 16-minute, 77-game final (the longest-ever Wimbledon final in terms of games) between would-be King-killer Andy Roddick and Roger Federer, I rest my case. Roger came through to win his 15th major (surpassing the record 14 he shared with Pete Sampras, who was on hand to see history being made) and 6th overall Wimbledon crown on a day when, by all rights, he probably shouldn't have; because, push come to shove, Federer has that very grit others lack and critics too often miss because (against anyone not named "Rafa") he makes it look so easy.

The point certainly wasn't lost on A-Rod. "He gets a lot of credit for a lot of things, but not for how many matches he kind of digs deep and toughs out," Roddick said afterwards. "He doesn't get a lot of credit for that because it looks easy to him a lot of the times. But he definitely stuck in there today."

• Grit Point #1: Second set tie-break, Federer is already down a set and facing a 2-0 set deficit as Roddick serves with quadruple set-point, at 6-2. Roddick needs one more point to win the breaker. But Federer faces the Roddick serve and doesn't flinch, breaking back a point to make it 3-6 and then taking the next two points on his own serve to narrow the gap to 5-6. With his final set point, Roddick faults on his first serve, and on his second serve Roger gets it back and watches as Roddick bashes a backhand volley at the net wildly across court, to draw level at 6-all. Then another error from Roddick allows Federer to take the lead for the first time, 7-6. Now serving for the set, Federer serves it out, with Roddick to fluffing a return to give Roger the tie-break at 8-6 and even the match at 5-6, 7-6.


• Grit Point #2: With everything to play for and still no sign of fatigue in his opponents supersonic (and still unbroken) serve, Federer hangs tough through the longest final frame in Wimbledon, a 95-minute, 30-game fifth set that's the game-tallying equivalent of playing seven sets, knowing that if he loses his serve against his unbreakable opponent, it's all over. With Roddick serving at 14-15, Federer takes the first two points to put Andy in the hole at 0-30. But Roddick rebounds to to take the next three and it looks like a another hold from the Unbreakable One. Then an errant return brings the game to deuce. Roddick goes ad up, then it's back to deuce again, then ad Federer. But as the London Times describes it, "...it's not just an advantage; this is championship point." Roddick serves and Federer holds firm, sending a return back over the net that Roddick hits wildly at; As the Times concludes, "...he's powerful with that forehand but not accurate and it's Federer's title." Yes, in the 30th game Federer got a sniff, worked his way to the finish line, and pounced the moment Roddick gave him the opportunity to string together two points in a row against The Serve. He persevered.
  

Before the match, the experts agreed that Roddick - who entered the match with a lifetime 2-19 record, including two Wimbledon final losses, against Federer (no one has played more matches on tour against Roger than Andy) - needed to play the match of his life in order to have any chance of beating Roger. And he did just that. Firing rocket serves clocking in as high as 143 mph that no other human being on the planet should be able to return. In a serving groove that saw him hold serve until the final, 30th game, of the final, fifth set. And he still - inexplicably, unbelievably - lost. 7-5, 6-7 (6-8), 6-7 (5-7), 6-3, 14-16.

I'm no Roddick fan - I've always considered him a hot-headed one-trick pony with a serve but no verve, though I've always appreciated his work ethic (he's in my Never Say Quit Club along with Federer, Nadal, Leyton Hewitt, and, on the ladies' side, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova) - but he earned my respect on this crushing day in which he must surely be asking himself: What exactly do I have to do to beat this guy?

Maybe last year's Federer-Nadal final had greater, more dramatic volleys and shot-making, while this was more a boom-and-loom affair of big serves (Federer had a career-best 50 aces, Roddick surprisingly only 27), but the tension was just as great, if not greater. After all, in last year's final Federer was unable to break Nadal's serve the entire match - he had to win two tie-breaks to force that dramatic fifth set against his Spanish nemesis after falling behind two sets to nil. This time around, he was broken twice - in the final game of the first set to lose it 7-5, and in the fourth game of the fourth set which he dropped 6-3 - in a match against a guy who never loses his serve. It soon became apparent that the only way Federer could win would be to break Roddick because Wimbledon does not have a fifth set tie-breaker format; to win, you have to win by two games. It was a question of who would blink first as the pressure to hold and the fading sunlight made the tension palpable. And Roger hung in there, doing his part to hold serve - until "the moment" arrived.

And, believe it or not on a day in which there were only three breaks of serve (Roddick's two and Federer's in the final game) over the course of 77 games, Federer's loss of serve in that fourth set may have been a blessing in disguise. You see, in a tight match in which both servers are likely to hold their serves, it really matters who serves first. That person is always going to be ahead if, holding true to form, the two opponents are headed toward the inevitable tie-breaker. It puts pressure on the guy serving second to stay in the match. Roddick won the initial coin toss and served first in three of the first four sets. In the first set, Federer caved when he served at 5-6 to stay in the set and was broken the first time. In the second set he again had to serve to stay in the set at 5-6, but held to force the tie-break he eventually won. Because Federer only used one of his two allotted serves to serve out the second set tie-break, he got to serve first in the third set and it was Roddick who had to serve to stay in the set at 5-6 and force the third-set tie-break, which Roger won on his serve at 7-5. In the fourth set, it was once again Roddick serving first, but with Roger serving at 1-2, Roddick broke through for the second time to go up 3-1 then held his serve to go up 4-1. The pair traded holds after that with Roddick serving out the fourth set to take it 6-3. But it meant that finally Federer would serve first in the final set. Hence that 15-14 edge heading into the final game and the "moment."

Like Wimbledon 2007 and 2008, this Gentlemen's Final is yet another classic five-setter and yet again Roger Federer is right there in it until the last swing. No one except the critics said it would be easy.

Point by Point Recap:
Times Online: How It Happened
Guardian Online: Roger Federer v Andy Roddick - as it happened

Ed, This Bud's for You!

Ed McMahon: March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009


Yes! You are correct sir.

Ed McMahon, best known as Johnny Carson's chuckling sidekick sycophant, Budweiser beer pitchman, Publisher's Clearing House sweepstakes spokesman, and latter-day host of Star Search and Bloopers & Practical Jokes, died this week at age 86. With his passing, I'm gonna pay my respects by opening a can of Bud and toasting Big Ed.


"Budweiser's the best reason to drink beer!"

Hey-Yo!
If you feel like reflecting on Ed's contributions to the pop cultural landcape, try these essential artifacts of the McMahon Canon:

The Incident (1967)

Ed is pretty good as a overbearing salaryman who bullies his wife but is helpless when his little girl is threatened in this stark melodrama about two thrill-seeking thugs (Martin Sheen and Tony Musante in their big screen debuts) who terrorize late-night passengers on a New York City train.

Here's Tony Musante trying to play house with Ed's daughter before soldier boy Beau Bridges intervenes:



Daughter of Horror (1957)

Ed provided the heavy-handed Ghost Host-y voiceover in this recut version of Dementia, a Beatnik Noir oddity originally released as a silent film in 1955.

Here's the original trailer:

If the midget newsboy looks familiar, it's because it's Angelo Rossitto, star of Todd Browning's Freaks (1932), in which he leads the "We accept you, one of us, gooba gabba" chant that later became associated with the Gabba-Gabba Hey punk rockers, The Ramones.

And, of course Ed's classic vocal stylings album - with liner notes by Johnny Carson!

Me, I'm Ed McMahon (Cameo-Parkway Records, 1960s)


I always liked that Ed, whose wife Pam was 33 years his junior, sang "Oh Thank Heaven for Little Girls" on this LP. Hey-yo, you dawg!

Ed also kept up with the times, trying his hand at rapping in this pitch for FreeCreditReport.com:

What's Always True on TV

We hold these truths to be self-evident



I originally saw Mike Steiner's list of trusty television trueisms in HITCH Magazine and immediately cut it out and placed it atop my idiot box, right next to my St. Clare "Patron Saint of Television" statue. Since I can't find it anywhere else on the Internet, I decided to post it here. As I reread it today, I realized that the more things change, the more they stay the same - on TV!

I particularly like:

• Rule #6 - "Teenagers who have sex are destined to die in grotesque ways," which is a basic tenet of all American horror films,


• Rule #21 - "Street vendors' carts are magnetically attracted to high-speed car chases," which happens in every urban cop show in history, and


• Rule #28 - "Somewhere in everybody's house or yard is a hidden gateway to hell or some other extra-dimensional space or parallel universe." I'm still looking for that space, because I think that's where the mice are getting in!

Blackoystercatcher

Rick Prelinger's Blog


Rick Prelinger

Rick Prelinger is the man - the moving image archivist's archivist. Once again Scott Huffines has turned me onto an outstanding blog, Prelinger's Blackoystercatcher. Prelinger is also on Twitter (http://twitter.com/footage).

Here's Prelinger's great post about the predominance of the "narrative arc" in contemporary documentary filmmaking: Taking history back from the "storytellers"

Strokes of Genius

Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match of All Time

As the tennis world awaits the 2009 edition of "The Championships at Wimbledon," the Tennis Channel has been replaying - in its 4-hour and 48-minute entirety - last year's five-set final between Raphael Nadal and Roger Federer that has been called "The Greatest Match of All Time." (The Silver Medal in this category may well go to last year's five-set Australian Open semifinal between Nadal and his buddy Fernando Verdasco.) Though I know the stroke-by-stroke result by heart, I found myself compelled to watch this match over and over again - it never got boring to me. I was so inspired by this match that ended Federer's streak of 40 consecutive wins at Wimbledon and 65 consecutive wins on grass courts, I even purchased L. Jon Wertheim's book about it, Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played (2009), which I just finished reading last night (after once again watching parts of the 2008 final on the Tennis Channel!). It's not the greatest tennis book ever written - for my money that plaudit goes to John Feinstein's (shamefully/inexplicably out-of-print) Hard Courts (1991) and David Foster Wallace's brilliant tennis essays (especially "Federer As Religious Experience") - but it's pretty damned good and a fairly brisk read at 211 pages.

Reading about and rewatching Nadal's 6-4, 6-4, 6-7, 6-7, 9-7 triumph in the 2008 Gentlemen's Final at the All England Club also reminded me, and no doubt tennis fans everywhere, of what an anti-climax this year's Wimbledon almost surely will be. Rafael Nadal's withdrawal from the championships due to tendinitis in his well-worn knees means he won't be able to defend his grass court crown - only the second time that's happened in the last 35 years at Wimbeldon. Perhaps he's resting up to see if, in a year in which Federer finally won the French Open - the one major that's eluded him (or rather, been denied him by Nadal) - he can win the U.S. Open and equal his rival in achieving, like Agassi, the "Career Grand Slam" of all four majors: Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open.

Federer called Nadal's exit from this year's Wimbledon "very disappointing for the tournament, and also for myself. It's unfortunate. I'm sad for him, because it must have been a very difficult decision to make. I'd love to play him. He's my main rival. We've had some wonderful matches over the years, and especially the one here last year was the one that obviously stands out."

Federer said he knew something was up when, after Nadal congratulated him for winning the French Open, Federer asked him how he knees were. "He was, like, 'It's OK.' So I kind of knew it wasn't great, because he's very honest to me. So I knew something could be coming up."

Nadal: A Spain the Neck for Federer


Nadal is Roger's pounding headache that won't go away

Nadal and Federer represent the greateast rivalry in sports. Only Ivan Lendl and John McEnroe have met in more finals (20), with the pair having so far played 16 finals, with Nadal winning 11 titles and leading their overall matchup 13-7. So for Rafa to withdrawal he surely must be hurting. Likewise, I think Roger needs to battle his nemesis for these majors to have real meaning to him in his heart of hearts. These guys bring out the best in each other, like McEnroe vs. Borg or Ali vs. Frazier. Sure, Roger finally won the French Open, but he didn't beat Nadal to do it - he got help from the upstart Swede Robin Soderling. Thus, he didn't really avenge his 2008 straight-set thrashing at the hands of the mighty Majorcan - Federer's worst loss since he became No. 1 six years ago. And, for those keeping track, Roger's still "0-for" in his three most recent finals against Nadal (losing the 2008 finals at Roland Garros and Wimbledon and the 2009 Australian Open final in Melbourne - the one that drove him to tears). You see, Nadal is in Federer's head, whether Roger admits it or not. And, like Macbeth seeing Banquo's ghost, it must surely torment him. How else to explain blowing a 4-1 lead and losing 5 straight games in the second set of last year's Wimbledon finals?


Federer-Nadal: Making eye contact

Wertheim, to his credit, gets this aspect of the two champions' rivalry exactly right in Strokes of Genius, observing:

Vic Braden, the prominent tennis coach and psychologist, had recently attended a seminar given by Dr. Gerard Medioni, a University of Southern California computer science professor. Medioni spoke about the intelligence experts who use facial expressions to finger terrorists. Braden decided to apply similar techniques to tennis. After watching DVDs of Federer’s matches frame by frame, Braden noticed something unusual. Against all other opponents, Federer played with his eyes wide open, focused straight ahead, and his mouth turned upward. But when he faced Nadal—and only Nadal—he tended to frown and look downward. And it wasn’t just when he was losing. Braden saw that Federer assumed this facial expression even in warm-ups, before the match had started. Never mind the well-lubricated sports cliché that Nadal was “in Federer’s head.” He was in his face, too.

Heavy Mettle

But I have to take issue with one assertion in Strokes of Genius that I think Wertheim got dead wrong: that Roger someone lacks the warrior's love of battle. "The back alley is not Federer's choice milieu," Wertheim opines. "He'd rather soar than rumble." It's a softball variation on the same assertion that Mats Willander made years ago when he said something to the effect that Federer lacked Nadal's "balls." In Wertheim's words:

This is in no way a knock on Federer, but most athletes of his stature - Woods, Jordan, Tom Brady, Roger Clemens, Sampras, the Williams sisters - manage to supplement their physical gifts with the highest levels of competitive resolve. They are "killers" and "assassins" and "snipers" when they play...He wins not because of any "samurai mindset" or "killer mentality." He wins because of his genius.

Bullshit.

Everyone assumes Roger wins by virtue of his genius, artistry or genetically-gifted skill. Hey, you don't win 14 majors on every surface, 10 consecutive Grand Slam finals (2005 Wimbledon - 2007 U.S. Open), reach 20 consecutive semifinals, 19 total Grand Slam finals, and be World No. 1 for 5 years without having the grit to match your talent. Of course, Werthiam didn't have the benefit of traveling to the future to see Federer come from two sets down against veteran Tommy Haas to reach the semi-finals of the 2009 French Open. I think Wertheim was a little too heavily influenced in his "fight-or-flight" analysis of the Federer mindset in the aftermath of last year's French Open final, when Nadal's complete dominance of Federer over three sets was assumed to be an indication of Roger throwing in the towel.


Federer: True Grit

I think he got it wrong, assuming somehow that just because few players outside of Nadal could press him (up until his "off" year of seeming "mere mortality" in 2008), he was somehow not up for a scrap. It's not his fault that most of his matches during the halcycon days of his 2003-2008 reign as World No. 1 looked so effortless. Listen, Rafa and Roger are the preeminent warriors of the game. As the Roddicks, Monfils, Gasquets, Djokovics, and Davydenkos retire from matches or drop out of tournaments, Roger Federer has never retired from a match in his career - ever - and Rafa has never retired from a Grand Slam match (though he did retire in the quarterfinal of the Paris Masters Series in 2008 against Davydenko, from the Cincinnati Masters Series 2nd round against Juan Monaco, and the quarterfinal of the Stella Artois Queens Club tournament against Leyton Hewitt in 2006). Basically, two men enter, two men leave. You have to drag them off the court and onto a stretcher for them to quit. That's balls for you, 'nuff said. Federer showed he had grit when he came back from two sets down at Wimbledon 2008 to force a dramatic fifth set and this year when he beat the unbelievable pressure of expectations at Roland Garros when everyone basically said, with Nadal out of the way, the title is yours. Easier said than done! Federer (like Nadal with his battered knees) has more than paid the cost to be the boss, and just because he doesn't have the obvious battle scars of long-term injuries or outbursts of emotion/temper should not be misconstrued to be a sign of reticence to fight for tennis glories. It's not a matter of mind over mettle - it's just another sign of his quality and pedigree.

Album Covers Referencing Big Star's "Radio City"

Is it just me, or are Tommy Keene and Vampire Weekend paying homage to Big Star's second album Radio City? Or are Vampire Weekend referencing Tommy Keene's 1998 album Isolation Party? Or are Vampire Weekend referencing Tommy Keene referencing Big Star? Or is it mere serendipity, like a godless universe in which everything that happens is random and meaningless? Or do these bands just like ceiling shots of lights? The mind boggles. Mine at least.


Radio City, 1974


Isolation Party, 1998

Vampire Weekend, 2008

By the way, the Radio City album cover was taken from a photo by William Eggleston, who's had his work shown at the Whitney Museum ("Democratic Camera and Photograph and Video 1961-2008") and is widely credited with securing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries. So remember Big Star fans, that record you hold in your hands is not just a great album, it's a legitimate piece of gallery art as well. And controversial art to boot (for the sexually-explicit poster silohettes appearing in the lower right-hand corner of the image.) Oh, Eggleston photos also provided album covers for Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbet, Primal Scream's Give Out But Don't Give Up, and albums by Jimmy Eat World, Silver Jews, Chuck Prophet, and Joanna Newsom.

And, for the record: Trevor O'Shana shot the Isolation Party cover while Annie Reeds shot the chandelier cover for Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut album (allegedly taken somewhere on the Columbia University campus).

C'mon Get Herpes!

C'mon Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus



A recent conversation with a friend about David Cassidy made me rummage through my clutter to dig out my copy of his sex- and dirt-filled 1994 autobiography C'mon Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus which, unbelievably, is out of print. I had to fact-check to make sure Keith Partridge did in fact commit TV incest by sleeping with his Partridge Family sis Laurie (Susan Dey) - he did, though it was after the show's run ended. I also came across my lone review for Baltimore's long-lamented Shockwave magazine, whose star writer was the legendary local rock and roll legend Todd Stachowski. I miss Shockwave, especially its "Letters from Assholes" column! Anyway, below is all the dirt you need to know about the former teen idol. Click on the scans below to enlarge.


"C'mon Get Herpes," Shockwave, page 1


"C'mon Get Herpes," Shockwave, page 2