Back in the saddle

This week I took a big step. I successfully convinced the editors of the Las Vegas Weekly to accept the idea of a semi-regular sports column, penned by yours truly. This reminds me of the heyday of Channel 4000, when I wrote a weekly column -- unpaid -- for a full year before the parent company finally decided to bring me on-board full-time.

I won't have as much leeway with this column -- my topics will have to have some sort of local hook, which could entail just about anything since Las Vegas is such a national-interest city, so I'm not complaining, I'm just saying. Anyway, here's the debut:

"Las Vegas has a long and complicated history with the National Football League. In the realm of mutually beneficial yet often dysfunctional relationships of the last half-century, you have Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Batman and the Joker, Terrell Owens and his ego and Las Vegas and the NFL."

Read more of "The NFL's Secret Lover" ...

Top Ten of 2008

So many music pundits offer up their annual Top Ten lists in early December, but to me, that's cheating the process. Do Oscar nominations come out before Christmas? Hell no! The Academy waits until its members have had a chance to fully digest all releases from a given year.

Here at WHIH, the same concept holds true with our annual Top Ten list of my favorite music. I need most of January to pore over late releases and records that I received as holiday gifts. So, without further delay, here are the fruits of my labor and the soundtrack of my life, circa 2008.

10. Duffy – Rockferry. More blue-eyed soul from across the pond from a blonde Amy Winehouse minus the tattoos and drug problems. Download it: Mercy, Warwick Avenue

9. Kings of Leon – Only by the Night. Former hillbilly rockers move into soaring arena-rock anthems that echo former tourmates U2 and The Strokes. Download it: Sex on Fire, Use Somebody

8. Jenny Lewis – Acid Tongue. Rilo Kiley lead singer's second solo effort is edgier, more challenging, but ultimately more rewarding. Download it: Carpetbaggers, The Next Messiah


7. Tift Merritt – Another Country. Diminutive chanteuse finds her voice with a stirring, soulful, emotionally raw effort. Download it: Broken, Something to Me

6. REM – Accelerate. I loved the return to angry, bouncy, show-oriented rock after too much studio doodling for my taste. Download it: Horse to Water, Man-Sized Wreath

5. Old 97's – Blame it on Gravity. Another return to form, as twang-and-bang formula rises again after too many years in the pop wilderness. Download it: The Easy Way, The One

4. Marah – Angels of Destruction! Dylanesque vocals (in a good way) coupled with bluesy, bar-band boogie. Download it: Wilderness, title cut


3. The Baseball Project – Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails. You don't have to be a baseball nerd to love these 13 songs about the great American pastime – warts and all – from Peter Buck and three alt-rockers. Download it: Past Time, Ted F***ing Williams

2. Drive-By Truckers – Brighter than Creation's Dark. Wide-ranging country-rock album from two of the greatest songwriters working today. Download it: The Righteous Path, Self-Destructive Zones

1. The Hold Steady – Stay Positive. Fewer Twin Cities references, even more fun-loving, head-bobbing, fist-pumping singalong songs. Download it: Sequestered in Memphis, title cut


Honorable Mention
Calexico – Carried to Dust, The Decemberists – Always the Bridesmaid (singles), Murry Hammond – I Don't Know Where I'm Going But I'm on My Way, Bon Iver -- For Emma, Forever Ago

New Review -- Andrew Bird

Andrew Bird -- Noble Beast

Genre: Quirk-rock

For fans of: Violins, loops, gentleman farmers, whistling, guys in vests, thought-provoking lyrics, complicated arrangements, Martin Dosh.

Download it: Effigy, Fitz and the Dizzyspells

It could, indeed, happen to you

To: The Arizona Cardinals

From: Fans of the Detroit Lions, Pittsburgh Pirates, Kansas City Royals, Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Clippers, and the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher football team

Re: Your upcoming Super Bowl appearance

Thank you! That's change we can believe in. You're selling hope, and we're buying! Because if you can get to the championship game of your sport, there might be hope for our teams after all. And you didn't even need to rely on Nic Cage's hairpiece to get you to the promised land.

The end of ignorance?

With one week remaining in the Bush presidency, the time has come for a look back at the administration's many failings. But lost amid all the talk of 9-11, the response to Katrina, the economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, our crumbling infrastructure, etc., is the faux cowboy's greatest achievement -- the triumph of anti-intellectualism. Or, to put it in terms he'd probably prefer, the dumb guys won.

Simply put, in the Bush years, being smart was no longer a good thing. If you went to a good college -- or any college -- you were branded "elitist." God help you if you were a patron of the arts ... you elitist creep. If you believed in global warming or evolution or if you drove one of those sissified hybrid ve-hicles ... that's right ... elitist!

So it thrills me to no end to see the walking, talking embodiment of this attitude ambling his way out of the White House. But of course, this doesn't mean the end of the line for the Know-Nothing crowd, so it never hurts to remain vigilant.

Which brings me to Population 485 by Michael Perry. He's a pretty intriguing guy who straddles both worlds -- a writer who also owns a rusty pickup and fights fires as a hobby. Yesterday, I reached a passage in the book that just floored me, the best summary of the brain wars I've read to this date. He'd just attended a lecture by noted feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum and he was contemplating the intellectual divide on the drive back to his small-town oasis of New Auburn, Wisc. He writes:

Part of the blame lies with intellectuals who are unable or unwilling to convey their ideas in terms that will play down to the cafe. But anyone who sits in that cafe and dismisses complexity by reveling in their own simplicity is no less pretentious. Civilization itself depends on complication. As a dyed-in-the-slop farm boy, I find I have an almost atavistic urge to poor-mouth anyting more theoretical than a bag of feed. I have come to realize this is not always attractive.

For the last eight years, this country has been run by the kind of people who booed the principal at every school assembly. Now, under President Obama, this country has a chance to bounce back. Let's declare a War on Ignorance. Actually, let's not -- you can't eliminate ignorance, just as you can't eliminate terror, although if we'd had a president who was less ignorant, most of the country would have figured that out by now.