Rashad McCants, and what promises to be an exciting Saturday

I can't wait for Saturday's UNC-Wake Forest matchup.

I watched most of last night's game, in which Carolina shelled #8 Georgia Tech . I left that game with a couple of impressions. First, about Tech. Georgia Tech is a good team, but without B.J. Elder, they really aren't. Their bench was awful last night. I think I read that they got only 11 points from the bench. You can't win in the ACC if you're only 5 deep. However, Jarrett Jack is proving to be one of the best guards in the nation. Although he didn't have a spectacular night against the Heels, he still managed to put up 24 quiet points.

Now, about the Heels. Although they pasted the Yellowjackets, they didn't play that well. They shot only 41.2% from the field, committed 19 turnovers, and only got 12 points out of the mercurial and mysterious Rashad McCants, who is arguably the best player in the nation. They didn't play well, and still destroyed the #8 team in the nation. The way they did it, though, is what makes this team so great, and what makes them a good candidate for national champions. They play as a team. Patient and focused. Fundamentally sound (most of the time). AND they like to run the ball. And run. And run. That mixture of talent, poise and stamina is deadly to opposing teams. I just hope they can keep it up.
But while I'm thinking about Rashad McCants, I'll add a little more. Most of the complaints about McCants are that he's emotional; that he frowns sometimes and sulks when he plays poorly, that he sometimes gets visibly upset. I don't really see what the problem is. He's a phenomenal ballplayer, and he happens to have emotions. On and off the court
The SI article back in November was really good, as is the article that is linked above, which both go into the depths of who Rashad McCants is as a man more so than who he is as a player. His growth as a person, and his much publicized "buying into Coach Williams' system" are certainly a big part of who he is as a ballplayer, but there is more to him than just a ballplayer.

Now playing:
Beach Boys Pet Sounds Sessions

you listen to rubbish i really despise

Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Badly Drawn Boy. More specifically, the album Have You Fed the Fish. I just got into this guy when my friend Amanda wouldn't stop talking about how wonderful he is. It's a really good record, and a lot of fun. There's a couple of things on this record that are really interesting to me. One is a lyric in the title song, which goes "You've got to give me two days and woman, I'll make you a girl. Sometimes you've got to rewind to go forward." Then there's this repeated line throughout the album about being the one who can "get her tickets to what she needs", suggesting that the way to a woman's heart is getting her into the Neutral Milk Hotel show or something like that. Along with that is in the song You Were Right, he says "I remember doing nothing the night Sinatra died, and the night Jeff Buckley died, and the night Kurt Cobain died, and the night John Lennon died ... And that was a lot of lives who lost the tickets to what they need." It makes me sad, but I like it. Another thing I think about when I'm listening to this record is how much he and Sondre Lerche sound alike vocally. I don't notice it so much on BDB's newer record, but I do on this one.
So I've been listening to that a lot lately. I've been listening to a lot of different stuff. But there's something weird going on. All the time that I'm listening to whatever it is, all I can think about is Anti-Western by Camera Obscura. It's living in my head. I can't help it. Not that it's a bad song to have stuck in your head, but I just cannot get it to leave.

Now Playing:
Juliana Hatfield -- "Hey Babe"

more hockey

I know. I know. I keep going on about this. I won't go too long this time, though.

So the league has cancelled the Board of Governors meeting that was scheduled for January 14. "No new developments", they say. Although many of us had already given up hope on rescuing this season, this was what many considered to be the "drop-dead" date, beyond which no deal could be made in the interest of playing any games this season.
I retrospect, and upon reading a comment to one of my previous posts, perhaps I was a little misleading about something. The deal the Hurricanes have offered to all of the season ticket holders is not that bad. If I chose to take my money back, I would indeed lose my season-ticket holder status, and all of the "priority" that I have accrued being on board for three seasons. This "priority" comes into play when the club allows you to select your exact seat for your season tickets. Those with more "priority" (read: longevity) get to go first. That's it. So I have to start all over. And here's where it isn't as bad as it sounds: We're not the Detroit Red Wings or the Toronto Maple Leafs -- season tickets can be had easily. If I wanted to start all over, I would be able to, and I would probably still be able to get tickets in the lower level, but they would have to be a few rows back from where I am now. All my "priority" got me this season was an improvement of three rows. To see games that aren't happening. So I'm just going to let my money silently earn about $50 in interest over a year's time. The option of taking your money back and starting all over when hockey resumes isn't that bad, but it isn't the road I'm taking.
Tonight would be a road game against Nashville; a game that I might have attended. I've been saying for some time now that I was going to start going to road games. Especially road games in cities where I have friends.
Something interesting that I was thinking about this morning is that this will be the first time that an major North American sports league has lost an entire season due to a labor stoppage. At some point in the very near future, the league will have to announce the cancellation of the 2005 entry draft, which will put some of those young players in a bad situation. They'll have to continue playing junior hockey, or play in Europe.
Still, though (and to me this is a really big deal), thousands of completely innocent people were put out of work because of this nonsense. Hotdog vendors and bartenders employed by the arenas had to be told that the arena lost 44 events, and some jobs had to be cut. Same applies for folks who usually work arena security. Same applies for hotels, bars and restaurants that rely on game night traffic for business.
I'm not going to turn my back on the game, but I'm really frustrated with the lack of effort in resolving this thing.

Now playing:
Blonde Redhead "Misery is a Butterfly"

something about the stone roses

oh dear god

After I read Reid's post , I decided to wander around the blogs, clicking the "next blog" button. I came across a slew of blogs that were in Spanish, my own blog, a pretty cute one by a middle school girl talking about the difference between "like" and "love", and I settled in on Mikey Guitar , a lad from Manchester who writes mainly about music.
Most of his posts are really short. Two or three sentences. There was, though, a sizable post singing the praises of The Stone Roses "Second Coming" . He says that the record was "an underrated masterpiece" and that because the record was universally reviewed as a disappointment, that "NME is nothing more than a chip paper" and that "it sits in millions of people's top ten album selections".

Help me out here. Maybe I just can't see it, but I thought that "Second Coming" was shite. Barely even listenable. We all remember how much we adored "The Stone Roses", and we eagerly and patiently waited five years for that second record. Maybe we were all were (at least I was) expecting another record full of songs that sounded like "I Wanna Be Adored" and "Shoot You Down" . This wasn't it.
Of course this guy may be taking it a bit too personally that the Manchester darlings of 1989 weren't so hot in 1995. But what does he have to complain about? He's got the New Fast Automatic Daffodils! Okay. Seriously, he's got The Verve, Oasis, New Order, the freakin Smiths, the Charlatans UK, and one of my new favorites, Badly Drawn Boy.
Seriously. I want someone to show me the error of my ways. Show me what's so great and underappreciated about "Second Coming".

Now Playing:

Jeff Buckley "Live at Sin-e" deluxe edition

more 9/11 stuff

Here's a couple more records released close to the 9/11 thing that have some relevance.

1. Ryan Adams -- "Gold"




This album was released exactly two weeks after 9/11, and to be frank, I don't know that much about it. I've heard it a number of times in friends cars and at bars, but I haven't really listened that closely. Worth mentioning is the opening song, entitled "New York, New York". The video to this song featured shots of the WTC Also, worth mentioning is the cover art showing the American flag displayed upside-down. Contrary to popular belief, flying the flag upside-down is not the appropriate way to show dissent. Flying the flag upside down is, in flag etiquette, the proper way to symbolize "dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property."
It would be safe to say that NYC,, Washington DC, and America as a whole was in such a situation. I don't remember hearing that the artwork was changed at the last second, so all we can say is that it was prophetic.

2. I am the World Trade Center -- "Out of the Loop"



I didn't really want to bring them into it. It's too obvious. The cd was released eight weeks prior to 9/11. The only odd connection I can find is that the 11th track is entitled "September". I don't know anything about this band other than that they are "sort of electronic", in a St. Etienne kind of way and that the girl is "sort of cute". I recall hearing that they were gonna change their name, dropping the "the", but I don't think that it ever happened. I just did a bit of research, and it turns out that IATWTC's singer, Amy Dykes has had a horrible year. First, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma , and was later bitten by a rabid cat. As if the radiation treatment and chemotherapy wasn't enough, she had to also endure the series of rabies shots. Ouch! This is probably the saddest thing I've heard in a long time.

more later

My own little conspiracy theory

I've decided that I need to start my own conspiracy theory.

I think that indie rockers were in the know about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. They tried to warn us, but we didn't wanna hear it. I provide the following albums as examples:

1. Explosions in the Sky -- "Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die/Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever"



Now, the thing about this, aside from the name of the band, is that the album was released on September 4, 2001. So what? The inside liner notes are really sparse, but the back page has nothing but a drawing of an airplane, and the caption "This plane will crash tomorrow". There is a rumor that this record was actually released on September 10, which would make that caption even more eerie, but September 10 was a Monday. New release day is always Tuesday.


2. Superchunk -- "Here's to Shutting Up"


Okay... this one is kind of a stretch. The album was released on September 18, 2001. One week after the attacks. However, while the images were still being constantly shown on tv, tha chunk had to chime in. Track 3, entitled "Phone Sex" features the lyric "Plane crash footage on tv. I know, I know that could be me." Obviously the song was written well in advance. Mac must have known something.


Alright, alright. I can't go through with it. I can't extrapolate these terrible coincidences into some crazy theory. They're just that. Crazy coincidences. Obviously, these bands couldn't have know about or had anything to do with the attacks. It's just wild that their albums have plane crash imagery in them, and they happened to be released in such proximity to that horrible day.

I tried to do a search of the albums that were actually released that day, as it was a new release day. Nothing of note. Well, Slayer did put out a record, and I'm sure it was full of lyrics about death and dismemberment. They usually are.

In all seriousness, the above mentioned albums are both fantastic. I highly recommend them to anyone. Especially to strangers on the street. I've ranted before on this blog about Explosions in the Sky. I'm sure at some point in the near future, I'll rant about tha chunk.

If you do nothing else today, go somewhere where you can listen to that Explosions in the Sky record. It's truly phenomenal. If you have the patience for it. It's instrumental, heavily effected, mostly very intense, and the tempo constantly fluctuates from dead still to frenetic. I can't listen to it enough. You may have listened to them before whether you know it or not. If you saw the movie Friday Night Lights, that was their music you heard throughout the film.
I'll shut up now.

silly conspiracy theories, plus a good charity

I read in the New York Times yesterday about some really silly stuff concerning the recent earthquake and resultant tsunami in Asia. Now, granted some of this stuff could have been meant as satire, but we've all heard this type of uninformed comment before about how things that we do cause the earth to react in a certain way. To say that our bombs caused this tectonic activity is just dumb. And insensitive. Millions of people are homeless, more that 110,000 dead, and the only thing these people can think to say is "it's America's fault". What do these people think caused the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius? The evil Roman Empire? Was the Krakatau volcanic eruption and ensuing tsunami caused by some evil man-made force. No. That was an extremely active tectonic region, and it continues to be today. You can read all about tectonic activity here, and about the geologic reasons for tsunamis here.

They say, in the interest of comparing explosions, that the explosion from Krakatau was TEN TIMES GREATER than that of the atomic bomb the US detonated at Bikini Atoll.

I didn't mean to start going off like that, but I did want to mention that I donated a small sum of money to one of the relief organizations for the tsunami victims. There are a number of fine, better known organizations, but I chose to go with The American Friends Service Committee, which is run by the quakers. Now, admittedly, some of their mission statement is a bit too hippie for my taste, but I like that they aren't out there to change anyone's religious beliefs. I like that this relief campaign is committed to helping those in remote areas that might get ignored by the bigger, more visible organizations. To be frank, I also like that you can make a donation from a secure page. Some of the others have contribution pages that, for whatever reason, are not secure.
Anyway, that's that.

no miracle on ice this time

Wow! So much for playing well against the Russians. To be fair, although the scoreboard said 7-2, there were two empty netters and a garbage time goal at the buzzer, so it wasn't quite that bad.
Actually, team USA looked pretty good. After giving up the first two goals, we played really well defensively despite being on the penalty kill most of the night. Not a complaint about the officiating, mind you. They really only blew one call, when they should have awarded USA a penalty shot when Russia deliberately took the net off the moorings while the puck was in play in their own zone. We just took way too many penalties and found other ways to put ourselves in harm's way. Offensively, we played okay, but we couldn't finish some key plays. In the net, Montoya did way more than could have been expected.

Hats off to the Russians for playing a really solid defensive game and to their stellar goalkeeping. However, they really demonstrated some incredibly poor sportsmanship by taunting the USA players and fans. Thankfully it didn't get ugly, but it easily could have.

As much as I hate Barry Melrose, I liked the amount of optimism he has for saving the NHL season. I'm not that optimistic, but he's got a finger closer to the pulse of the game than I do.

Okay. So now we get to play in a meaningless bronze medal game on Tuesday. I only hope that our pension for brinksmanship doesn't do us in. It would be a real shame for the defending champs to fail to take a medal.

happy new year, and more hockey stuff

This is the first year in three that I didn't spend my New Year's Eve in Raleigh. Every year, the Hurricanes have a Dec. 31 home game, but obviously not this year. In the absence of the NHL, I've been watching the World Junior Hockey Championships , and I've been enjoying it.
Actually, I was disgusted with the first game that I actually got to watch all of. USA v Belarus. The Belarus team had played horribly throughout the round-robin, and team USA had been playing well. Not on that night. We failed to capitalize on power plays, including at least one five-on-three. We had sloppy passing in the neutral zone, we had way too many careless off-sides calls. Turnovers deep in our own zone, bad goaltending. Just bad. Although the score was 5-3, it wasn't even that close. One of our goals came on a shot that wasn't even a shot, so much as a dump-in from the blue line. Actually, though, we did get pretty decent goaltending out of Al Montoya .
Losing that game was kinda bothersome, but losing to the Czechs was not. They're a really talented team. I think the Florida Panthers will be really happy with their top pick from the 2004 draft, Rostislav Olesz , who has played really well. So has the overall top pick, Russia's Alexander Ovechkin , who will have a great career with the Caps.
The Canadians are probably the team to look out for, and the talk of the tournament has probably been the stellar play of young Sidney Crosby , who is only 16 (!), but is gaining comparisons to Gretzky, even by The Great One himself. He, Patrice Bergeron, and the Hurricanes top pick, Andrew Ladd have been lighting the lamp with ease. They should have no trouble making it to the finals.
I'll eagerly anticipate being able to watch the USA v Russia semifinal on Sunday night. We should be able to put up a good fight, if we get good goaltending, and if we can play the way we did against Sweden . I've been impressed with the play of the Sabres' top pick, Drew Stafford and Phil Kessel , who is just 17, and is supposed to be the USA's answer to Crosby.
The more I think about it, the more excited I get, but come Tuesday, it's all over. This is the only hockey worth watching until the NCAA frozen four. After that, nothing for a long time.
Anyway, ... Happy New Year!

a RBNBR primer

Some of you may be curious about the way things work at red and black is the new black and red, so I've decided to do a FAQ page. Even though few (or none) of you have actually asked these questions.

1. What's the deal with those post titles?

There isn't really a "deal" with those. About 99.68% of the time, these are song lyrics.

2. Yeah, but it seems like they don't have anything to do with the post itself. What gives?

They're just song lyrics. That's all. Sometimes it'll be a song that's actually in my head, sometimes it'll be a lyric that I admire. Sometimes it'll be there for no reason.

3. So they're not even related to the "now playing" feature? I don't get it.

No. they're not related to that feature. There will almost never be any relation between the music that is playing on my speakers and the song referenced in the post title.

4. Why?

Just because.

5. Pretend I care for a second. How will I know where the song lyrics come from?

You won't. If you do a google search of those exact words, you'll probably get an answer. If you really, really need to know and google won't tell you, you can ask me.

6. So... What about this "now playing" feature? What's the deal? Is it like a "what's in heavy rotation at the moment, or is it what you're literally listening to as you write?

The album linked at the end of the post is what's actually playing as I write the post. I'm an "album" kind of guy, so I'll let the whole album play from start to finish.

7. Linked?!?

Yeah. The little picture of the album cover has a link to a listening station for that album. just mouse-over the picture for details and click on it to go to the listening station. More often than not, it's linked to amazon.com, where you can also purchase the album if you want to. I would recommend buying your records from independent stores, but they don't usually have on-line listening posts.

8. Some of these fancier blogs have their own on-board jukeboxes. Why don't you do something like that so I don't have to leave the comfort of red-new-black?

I'm not smart enough to figure out the code required for something like that. Besides, it's too hard for me to pick out individual songs.

9. You don't get out much, do you?

No.

10. What's with all the talk about Scrabble?

It's one of my passions. I play a lot of competitive Scrabble.

11. Competitive?

Yeah. I play in a club and I go to tournaments and stuff like that. There's a whole competitive side to the game that most people don't know about. We take it quite seriously.

12. What? Like you get really pissed when you lose? Is that what you mean?

No. Not like that. But I study word lists and strategies. It's mainly about memorization and learning mnemonic devices. There's a lot of work involved with being a "good" Scrabble player.

13. Are you "good"?

I'm better than most people, but within the world of competitive play, I'm sort of average. Like a baseball player stuck at the "A" level. Better than amateur ballplayers, but not among the elite professional players.

14. You don't get out much, do you?

I just told you. No.