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Illadelph Halflife

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June 28, 2013
Music, Pop Culture
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Questlove

…well Tariq?

So begins the mid-life memoir of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. Thompson, whose drumming with neo-soul outfit The Roots and, consequently, on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon has catapulted him to fringes of the American musical conscience, a place which seems hard-earned and well-deserved, yet perhaps not entirely desired. The dedication, directed toward Roots co-founder Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, sets the tone for an exploration of Thompson’s ego, which rides a strange line between pretension, generally about the history of the music he loves, and modesty, generally about his own career and the experiences which have made him who he is.

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In a World Gone Mad, There’s a Glimmer of Hope

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June 24, 2013
Pop Culture
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Don Draper looks up at the dilapidated, Victorian home that Bobby describes as being in a “bad neighborhood” to which Don replies, “This is where I grew up.” It’s a glimpse of Don coming clean with the demons of his past and letting his children know who he really is. Sally turns to her father, but, unbeknownst to her, it’s Dick Whitman staring back, not the man she caught with his pants down.

Season 5 of Mad Men ended with a shot of Don, in a bar alone, much like how the pilot episode, “Smoke In Your Eyes,” started. But instead of a bartender approaching him, it’s a young blonde woman who asks, “Are you alone?” The scene cut to black as Nancy Sinatra crooned in the background. For some, this served as fodder for “DRAPER BACK,” and people were salivating about an upcoming season where Don went back to being, well, Don. They wanted the man who was responsible for “The Carousel” without the addiction to alcohol. Or the guy who auditioned to Hilton while sleeping around behind his wife’s back. Instead, viewers were treated to the same man’s problems without any charm that served as sort of a justification for the band aids of drink and women which temporarily covered up the hatchet wound left by his upbringing. During Season Six, it seemed like the floor at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Sterling Cooper & Partners had finally disappeared beneath Don’s feet, letting him fall until he ended up, not in an armoire, but a drunk tank. It was a sulking, bloated and disgusting Don Draper.

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Why You Should Pay Attention to the Finals Now that ‘Yeezus’ Has Dropped

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June 20, 2013
Music, Pop Culture, Sports
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These past few weeks I have been scanning the Internet looking for any new scoop or fresh insight. I checked Flipboard; looking at the different perspectives each passing hour. It was allegedly one of the most exciting things the masses would bear witness to in recent years. And sorry, Gregg Popovich, it wasn’t your team’s stunning grasp of fundamental basketball and how they would fare against Miami’s White Hot Heat. It was Kanye West’s new album, Yeezus, and the rumors of a more experimental sound from the master technician of awesomeness.

A CD, a sticker – Yeezus

Like many others, I have wondered for weeks what this effort would bring to the table. Would this change pop music as we know it? What would the landscape of hip-hop be like after seeing his performance of “Black Skinhead” on SNL? Weeks went by and there was no single. No video. No damn album cover. It was a minimalist’s dream that included, of all things, a Corbusier lamp. Yet, Mr. West’s album was fulfilling considering all the empty space Rick Rubin created. But, I missed something in the process.

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Tuesdays With Horry, a Prologue

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June 20, 2013
Music, Pop Culture, Sports
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Robert Horry, San Antonio Spurs vs. Los Angele...

Robert Horry, 7-time NBA champion and demigod of the crunch time DNA strand.

From a world where perspective blogs from anyone with a computer and a drive to create a WordPress account are a dime a dozen, Tuesdays With Horry has risen. As another voice in an already bombastic journalistic front, we look to provide views and opinions on sports and pop culture ranging from the supreme moral worth of March Madness to the low-brow insidiousness of hot Top 40 singles, and everything in between. We do not necessarily expect to shoot higher than others; rather, our aim is merely in a different direction, to capture the essence of what fans may feel about a given performer, athlete, team or album, and so on.

The name Tuesdays With Horry is, of course, derived from two sources: the first, Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays With Morrie, an examination of the relationship between student and teacher, and the second, seven-time NBA champion Robert Horry, whose exploits in crunch time situations  from the forward positions (and remarkable tendency to be on the right teams at the right times) have solidified him a place in NBA lore as the man with the most rings who did not play on the Boston Celtics with Bill Russell. He’s got more rings than Michael Jordan, for goodness’ sake. The name works on a number of levels, as we look to learn from our predecessors (namely, Run of Play, FreeDarko, The Classical and, most prominently, Grantland) and perhaps build on their success with achievements of our own. Basically, this group of writers does not mind being the sixth man who can consistently hit a clutch 3-pointer.

As the brainchild of a few students, past and present, we expect to open dialogues on a variety of subjects both popular and under-the-radar, and our geographic web is wide enough at present to be able to comfortably gauge the reactions of people in a given moment, the most important of which may help to define our limited time here. At the same time, we hope to engage you, the reader, in a way which invites thoughtful commentary and discussion on the topics at the forefront of popular society, for better or for worse.