Saturday, October 7th, 2006

Oh I Want To Be There In My City

I’m homesick.

Here’s everything you ever needed to know about the Bay Area.

1) We mix business with pleasure.
Eric Chavez waited for this day for so long that he refused to be interrupted while answering questions, even as Nick Swisher and Bobby Kielty emptied a beer down his baseball pants.

2) We respect generosity.
In the introduction of the starting lineups, the crowd loudly booed every player until Torii Hunter was announced and then the fans erupted in cheers.

3) We sometimes lack confidence.
“When I heard everyone screaming my name, I just said to myself: ‘Do not strike out. Please, just make some contact,’ ” Marco Scutaro said.

4) We love being underdogs.
As Marco Scutaro hit a three-run double in the seventh that essentially put the game out of reach for the Minnesota Twins, ecstatic fans in the left field bleachers began chanting ‘What curse?’ and ‘No more curse.’ After a couple minutes, many began to chant ‘Yankees suck!’

posted by @ 5:40 am | 3 Comments

Friday, October 6th, 2006

Kings Back!


Number one on the list while you clowns are climbing
Wishing to be in positions that you found that I’m in

ESPN mfs are all at home early tonight studying names they shoulda been known.

5 of 19. Only A-Fraud’s numbers are worse.

Could be the Tigers! It is the Tigers! Thank you to the great city of New York. You deserve a team with more heart…luckily you can find them in Queens.

All of you are welcome on the Underdog Love bandwagon. We don’t discriminate.

posted by @ 6:15 pm | 3 Comments

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

14 Of 19 ESPN "Experts" Are Complete Idiots

Check this page on Sunday and you’ll see what I mean.

On the other hand, I’ve been proudly sporting green and gold all around NYC for the past 2 days and have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of respect I’ve gotten.

I didn’t expect to be beaten down in the street, but I did expect folks to be like “Are you kidding?” especially with the city at full fever pitch over a Subway series that will never happen. (Two names: El Disastro and A-Fraud.)

Instead folks have explaining how they are in real fear of the A’s. Now that’s something you’d never get on ESPN or out of the media capital of the world. Watched ESPN News again tonight and the A’s gutsy win was reduced to two questions:

1) Johan Santana lost?

2) Huh?

No wonder they say Zito wants to go to LA (great food, great music and arts underground, great sunsets, bacterial beaches, lousy entertainment industry, way over-rated baseball teams) or NY (great town, great people, greatest closer in my lifetime, great team in Queens, swarms of lazy sports pundits, and the most hateable sports team owner in the history of mankind). In good old American media groupthink, who wouldn’t want to go to a town where all the media live?

Personally I never believe the hype and I hold out hope like the true underdog.

Same thing happened to the White Sox last year, when the media turned on a dime in the World Series and decided to make them America’s team after steady ignoring ’em for most of the year.

Maybe Ozzie Guillen can replace Vern “Mumble More Dumb Stuff” Wells. (The Jays are a lot poorer but they still suck.) Or maybe I should just get used to it.

posted by @ 8:32 pm | 11 Comments

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Takk! Tack!!





Text and linkage and lots of thank yous on the way. Stay tuned.

posted by @ 7:09 pm | 2 Comments

Thursday, September 28th, 2006

Guess Who’s Back: Benzino and Mays

After the rumors, it’s finally become official. Benzino and Mays are back in the rap magazing game. Mimi Valdes is in as the editor:

Hip Hop Weekly breaks new ground as the world’s first entertainment news & celebrity lifestyle publication targeting the market of almost 40 million U.S. consumers under the age of 40 who identify with hip-hop culture. Hip Hop Weekly will report on all the news, events and issues surrounding the hip-hop community, right as they happen. The magazine will cover film, TV, music, fashion, sports and celebrity news with an authoritative voice, and will serve a 50/50 male/female readership from 15 to 40 years old.

posted by @ 5:48 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, September 26th, 2006

"The chemistry on this team is unbelievable"-Lew Wolff


posted by @ 9:43 pm | 4 Comments

Monday, September 25th, 2006

I Enjoy Dubstep

And the dog next door does not. Which counts as a big bonus in my book. When I dropped the needle on this, he was yapping like he was offended. I won that battle like Radio Raheem.

I am off to the hospital for some outpatient runnings. When I return this afternoon under much painkillers, I will enjoy dubstep even more.

Anyway, check this and my man.

Updates on the wonders of Sweden when I return to earth.

posted by @ 12:00 pm | 2 Comments

Monday, September 25th, 2006

Words From The General


Please Hurt, Hammer ‘Em!

I return from Sweden not to gloat about the Ded Sux’ long winter or to pop champagne bottles prematurely. Instead I look forward to a wonderful week of baseball and offer this piece of wisdom from the man who has already thrown out that Little Red Book that Joe Morgan never read:

“‘The best generals are newspaper editors. The worst generals are running armies.’ It also applies to baseball teams.”

posted by @ 5:42 am | 0 Comments

Friday, September 15th, 2006

Is Monopoly Radio Dead?

This New York Times article notes that terrestrial radio listening continues to plummet, especially amongst the coveted 18-34 demographic.

In some real ways, this confirms what folks like my friends at the Future of Music Coalition have been talking about for years.

Younger listeners want that mix of surprise and certainty, but monopoly radio has been mistreating them. So they’re heading for the satellite radio, internet radio, and MP3 blogs. If you know what you’re gonna get when you turn on the radio, and you’re not gonna get what you want, why turn it on in the first place? Let a billion programmers bloom.

Slightly older hip-hop gen listeners, meanwhile, are incredibly underserved. There are rock and country and jazz formats that cater to a 35-44 demo, but none in so-called urban music. Contrast this with satellite radio from XM or Sirius, which offers multiple hip-hop formats based on age group. But when we want to hear old-school stuff, we have to deal with listening to our older cousins’ music–lots of Rick James, no Too Short. If you heard me complaining on that new Public Enemy album–yeah, they sampled me! It’s been a good year for me getting sampled, but that’s another post coming soon–this is what I was ranting incoherently about.

So the only terrestrial radio I’m checking for these days are the evening-drive hyphyfied mixshows (itself a concession to local activists and artists that succeeded brilliantly–to no one’s surprise except the Clear Channel execs), new music showcases, and the hip-hop flashback shows on commercial radio, in addition to my longtime community, public, and college radio standbys. I’ve also been loving Pandora (Last.fm has lots of cool buttons but is not user-friendly), satellite when I can get it, and belatedly building my monster mp3 collection.

What all this means is that no one is buying (quite literally) the years of b.s. from the conservatives at the FCC about how media consolidation would build more diversity and localism. They’re leaving the media monopoly model of content providing on their own.

And so Emmis’s Jeff Smutley, I think that’s his name, the famed purveyor of urban reactionary radio at Hot 97, has failed to take his company private after a 40% plunge in stock value and all but concedes failure: “As an industry, we’ve lost the hipness battle.” Clear Channel, whose stocks have been battered, considers dismantling its 27% market share. CBS, Disney, Susquehanna are all, to a greater or lesser extent, throwing in the towel.

Is monopoly radio dead? Are localism and audience-friendly programming coming back? We can only hope.

In the meantime, it’s worth considering–for those of us who write about culture and are feeling moody, angry, and under siege–that this could be the future of New Times as well.

posted by @ 9:49 am | 3 Comments

Friday, September 15th, 2006

FCC Buried Study On Effects of Media Consolidation

News reports surfaced yesterday stating that the FCC ordered an important study on localism to be covered up. The report confirmed that greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage.

The report was produced at the request of former FCC Chair Michael Powell, a staunch deregulator under whose watch media consolidation expanded greatly. Powell then buried the report when it produced results that worked against his pro-big business agenda.

In other words, the FCC–a governmental body which is supposed to be working in the interests of the public to expand the information you receive, because it creates things like, oh, better democracy–knows that consolidation suppresses the diversity and local flavor of the news you get. Isn’t it ironic they don’t want you to know that?

posted by @ 8:37 am | 0 Comments



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