Purple Reign – Computer Blue

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July 15, 2013
Soccer, Sports
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Fall of the Rebel Angels Peter Paul Rubens

The weekend vacation thanks to July 4th provided a welcome respite to a young but already challenging season. We now know that this team is at least half-decent despite being complete strangers thrown together in an effort to create something. A win and a draw: that’s not a horrible way to start the summer, and we sat tied at the top of the league table going into the third game. Two weeks to think about the next fixture is an irritating period of time, and I spent a lot of it consuming the book Soccernomics, by Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski. Much of it comes from the Moneyball mentality of applying statistical analysis to athletic competition. I searched for some hidden answers, some key to achieving soccer glory, at least at an amateur level. Alas, no such answer was to be found, but I did manage to slowly build excitement for the next game.

And then, surprise.  Read More

Magna Carta… Holy Grail: The Rapper Versus the Businessman

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July 12, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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When I think about Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, there’s one lyric that won’t stop bouncing around my brain. It’s eight years old: “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man.” I mean, how else could Jay sell a million records before anyone even knew the album existed?

MCHG was announced in conjunction with a $5 million deal with Samsung that allowed one million of its smartphone users to download the album for free five days before its official release. It’s a testament to Jay-Z The Musician’s immense popularity that Jay-Z The Businessman (or Business, Man) could even make such a deal, but it’s also the epitome of “selling out.” And therein lies the problem with Jay-Z: I love him as a musician. I’m impressed by the way he has progressed from the gangster braggadocio of Reasonable Doubt to the King of the Rap Game braggadocio of Watch the Throne, and everything he’s done in between. I love how he proves you don’t need an MBA to be a brilliant business man. But can he continue play both roles?

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Hudson Riverside Blues

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July 12, 2013
Blues, Music
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BB KING

“Anytime you thinkin’ evil, you thinkin’ ’bout the blues.” – Chester Arthur Burnett, AKA Howlin’ Wolf

Slowly, timidly, the sun set over the Hudson River. Thousands of people had gathered in the World Financial Center, soon to be renamed Brookfield Place, to see an 87-year-old, diabetic black man play a six-stringed instrument he had named “Lucille.” When the backing band took the stage and played its way through a few instrumentals, stretching out seemingly in an effort to prove its worth to the audience, anticipation growing to a fever pitch. The band’s tight transitions and familiarity with the changes in direction one member would make in leading the others, all the while acknowledging the formidable vacancy at center stage.

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Diving Into the Black Metal Rabbit Hole

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July 9, 2013
Music
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Genres of music are being broken down into very specific, micro classifications due to the tags that taste makers, music bloggers, and critics fabricate to identify a certain styling that has yet to be labeled. At times, it can be difficult to keep up with but, at the same time, they are very fun to explore. Each week, I will explore a different sub-genre and try to explain the stains left on my shirt after climbing out of each tedious rabbit hole of musical stylings.

I was reading a review on Deafheaven’s Sunbather which I had assumed was either a dance record or an indie rock act based on its vibrant cover. I was shocked to find that what I was reading about had the surface packaging of a Los Angeles electro outfit. Instead, the review pointed out that there were no popping synth lines or pulsing bass. What was offered on the album was black metal. I pulled up the record on Spotify and started listening. Yup. Black metal. Machine gun drums, shrieking vocals, plodding bass lines and assaulting guitar chords. But there was a sort of shimmering softness to it. A kind of lush instrumentation on the downbeats. Is this the norm for a branch of metal most closely associated with Satanism, paganism, nihilism, I thought. What I found was when you hold Deafheaven’s music in contrast with the other acts it stands out as the brightest, most beautiful sounding thing there is. Everything else indicates that there is darkness ahead. Oh boy.

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On Spain, Barcelona and the “death” of Tiki-Taka

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July 8, 2013
Soccer, Sports
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Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum

Credit: Victoria and Albert Museum

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.

–Robert Harrick, “To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time”

For the better part of the last five years, at least since Euro 2008 signaled the dawn of a Spanish renaissance in the sport, the Spanish men’s national football team has ridden a possession-heavy, triangular passing-based game to great success and historic heights, and not only by Spanish standards. The style they have made their own, affectionately dubbed tiki-taka for its quick passing, had its roots in the Ajax/Netherlands “total football” system of the 1970s. When the greatest Dutch player ever, Johann Cruyff, became FC Barcelona’s manager in 1988, he brought the total football mentality with him and placed the greatest burden in the field on his most talented midfielder, Josep Guardiola. Guardiola ascended to the throne at Barcelona in June 2008 and left it four years later having put together perhaps the greatest list of accomplishments in any four-year span in the history of club soccer.

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Jay-Z Nervously Surveys His Empire: A Review of “Magna Carta… Holy Grail”

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July 7, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture
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A lot has changed for Jay-Z since 2011’s Watch the Throne, which serves as social commentary from the top wrapped in a luxury item inventory. His empire has grown tentacles, his influence growing almost on a daily basis. The Brooklyn Nets opened their home at the Barclays Center. Then, he sold his share of the team so he could represent athletes with Roc Nation. Even Magna Carta Holy Grail is a record that is more business than personal. The marketing scheme surrounding the album was based on an app which only Samsung Galaxy owners could download on Independence Day – all others had to wait until July 9th. This is Jay-Z cementing his brand while increasing his bottom line. But, all is not golden at the top of the world.

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The Sandlot, Ray Charles and America

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July 4, 2013
Pop Culture
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The intermittent drum roll kicks in. Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez is hurrying Smalls out of his house as the sun sets over Smalltown, USA (or some neighborhood in Los Angeles County). Smalls runs out of the house; Benny follows. The crew is waiting for them in the cul-de-sac: Yeah Yeah, Hamilton Porter, Kenny, Bertram, Tommy and Timmy. They all rush past a block party (with the exception of Porter, who makes himself a hot dog) and head straight for their favorite haunt and the movie’s namesake, The Sandlot.

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A Story I Never Expected To Write

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July 3, 2013
Soccer, Sports
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I played football for 12 years. From third grade all the way through high school, my autumns were filled with football. Practice during the week, games on the weekends. When I wasn’t playing it, I watched it. Saturdays and Sundays in the fall still are my favorite days in the year. I can’t get enough of football.

I couldn’t help but be that way. My father worked at the Meadowlands in sports public relations before I was born, and he had an avid Giants fandom that naturally was handed down to my brother and me. I learned two traits revolving around sports in the fall season: a love for football and a hate for soccer.

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The Carlos Marmol Era Mercifully Ends

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July 2, 2013
Baseball
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Since Alfonso Soriano’s strike out to end the Cubs playoff run in 2008, there haven’t been many happy day for Chicago fans. Since then, the Cubs have not been back to the playoffs and have continued a steady decline, losing 101 games last season. Still, there have been some silver linings along the way, including the growth of Starlin Castro and the debut of Anthony Rizzo. But today might be the best day the Cubs have in the past five seasons. Today, July 2, 2013, will always be remembered as the day the Carlos Marmol Era ended.

 This is how I feel. 

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Purple Reign – Baby I’m a Star

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July 1, 2013
Soccer, Sports
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soggy-soccer-field

It wasn’t quite a wet, windy Tuesday night in Stoke, but it was a hazy, overcast Sunday afternoon in New York that eventually, mercifully brought rain and tremendous heartbreak to Purple Reign’s second match. On the same day as another, slightly less important game of futbol, the commute to Riverside Park was far less stressful (mostly because I left my apartment with more than enough time), though I am still not convinced I have found the most efficient way of crossing from the Bronx to upper east side of Manhattan; this time, I traversed the entire island laterally, itself a full workout and showed up to the field drenched in sweat. Fortunately I had remembered to put on sunscreen prior to departing, not that it ended up mattering at all given the clouds. Walking up to the field, I ran into two teammates, and we discussed how perfect it would be if the skies opened, only slightly, allowing a few precious, cool drops of rain to fall.

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