Tennis - Mean Streets & Game of Thrones (nospoilersinsideipromise!)

The Final Four starts today, and my school, the University of Florida, is playing. Very exciting! Another exciting event this weekend is the premier of season four of Game of Thrones. I did my best to avoid the clutches of the show, because I have no interest in the genre(s). However, the writing, characters, and acting are just too good to ignore. The show is brilliant.

Everyone has their favorite character, and I'm no different. I love Cersei for being the damaged, ruthless ice queen, I love Tywin for being even more ruthless and calculating, and I love Arya for just being the pint-sized badass she is. There are plenty of other great ones, such as Bronn, Daenaryus, Lady Olenna Tyrell, etc. However, it's Final Four weekend, so let's focus on characters that truly embody the personalities of our Final Four teams.

Tyrion Lannister = The University of Florida: While Tyrion is underestimated and disrespected for being knee-high to a grasshopper, UF is also underestimated for not having any huge one-and-done, overhyped stars. However, both display intelligence and determination that make them powerful and dangerous. Hopefully no Florida players are dating prostitutes with anger issues, cause Donovan will come down on them like an exasperated Tywin Lannister digging out deer guts. 

Jamie Lannister = The University of Kentucky: Like Jamie, UK started out with more talent than anyone, but also hampered by arrogance and a false sense of invincibility. However, they have since been taken down a notch or two, which has seemed to force them to mature a bit. Will this be enough to allow them to finally live up to their vaunted family name? Who knows, but one things for sure. Cersei and Callipari have both made some pretty horrified looking faces watching them this year.

Bran Stark = University of Connecticut: They both had a pretty, uh, challenging start to the year, and not many people gave them much of a chance of competing for the Iron Throne. However, as the year went on, Shabazz Napier started playing like a pissed off dire wolf, and other teams started dropping like Stannis' soldiers dipped in wildfire. They've seemingly got less to work with than the other teams, but will their secret weapon roll his eyes into the back of his head and get busy this weekend? Only time will tell.

Hodor = University of Wisconsin: I don't know, every dude on that team just kinda looks like Hodor. When Bo Ryan calls a play for Frank Kaminsky in the huddle, does Kaminsky just laugh goofily and breath out "KAMINSKY!" My guess is yes. 

Tennis was pretty much my favorite band of 2013. Something about their sound-half Belle and Sebastian and half 50's girl group-just gets to me. I finally saw them live for the first time in a club recently, and they were great. So much fun.

HAIM - Days Are Gone

This is my favorite song from 2013. I keep waiting to come to my senses and realize that this is just a corny throwaway pop song, but it's just not happening. This is the ultimate "happy place" song, and it never stops working. I could be in any of the following situations and still smile when this came on: 

- stuck in the DMV all day long with flesh-eating zombies slowing chewing on my ankles, unable to move due to temporary paralysis caused by eating a poisoned Reuben sandwich.

- taking a thirty- five hour long Improv Comedy Traffic School course, surrounded by eighty-three cantankerous octogenarians on trial for vehicular manslaughter for having barreled through a farmer's market yelling, "PESTICIDES FOREEEEVEEEEERRRR!"

- working a double shift at the zoo, assigned to elephant dung clean-up after someone switched out all the elephant food with Taco Bell's new Taco Waffles.

- riding the NYC subway 24 hours straight during a record heat wave with mandatory breaks every three hours during which my only task is to crawl on empty tracks and catch as many rats as possible. 

- working as Toby Keith's personal assistant, my main duty being to point out any males that don't appear to be "Ford Tough," so they can be summarily executed via strangulation by American flags woven out of moldy bread left over from Guy Fieri's last cookout.

I was morbidly curious about Haim after hearing this song the first time, and despite looking like they flew straight from an American Apparel shoot, it turns out they're sisters who have been playing music together since they were small kids. The psychotic bassfaces the one sister makes cements them as the real deal. They apparently co-wrote "Days Are Gone" with Jessie Ware, which makes sense, cause she also rules. 

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan - Whalesong

I've gotten my hair cut the last couple of times at a place a couple of blocks from where I live. The lady is very meticulous, almost to a fault. A haircut with her seems to take about forty-five minutes, an eternity in my world.

I never take out my phone while someone's cutting my hair. It just seems wrong, like if I tilt my head a bit I might throw off the cutter's angle and end up with a Kid N' Play fade. But after she's taken ten hours working on my hair like it's the Sistine Chapel, my mind really starts to wander.

Both times I've gone she's placed the same GQ magazine on the ledge between me and the mirror. At first I thought she was bringing it over for me to point out haircuts, because she did it just as she was asking, in a very serious tone, how I wanted my hair done. She even asked me to show her a picture of the ideal cut on my phone! It was all very stressful, but intriguing in a strange way. I was tempted to show her this picture I took of a chihuahua on MUNI. "Here! Make me look like him!"

Anyway, both times it's a GQ with Michael Fassbender on the cover dressed like an extra from Gunsmoke. Ok, cool, she's obviously got a limited selection to draw from. I don't even think twice about it the first visit, but forty-two minutes into the second cut everything begins to change.

I'm not big on gazing at myself in the mirror, but when I get a haircut I'm a captive audience. Where else is there to look?! So as a haircut goes along, I usually start to feel pretty good about myself. "Here's looking at you, kid!" You know, that kind of stuff. But today, I feel a whole new set of eyes staring me down. FASSBENDER.

So I'm in the narcissistic phase of the haircut, thinking that I look pretty sharp, and all of a sudden I notice Fassbender staring up at me from that damn GQ cover. "Oh, you think you look pretty good up there, huh? Well think again, chump. The only place you'd find yourself in this magazine is the before picture for a Bowflex ad. I'm Michael Freaking Fassbender, and don't you ever forget it. There's Fassbender, and there's not-Fassbender. You, my friend, are decidedly not-Fassbender. If you starred in a movie, it'd be called '12 Years A Non-Fassbender.' Enjoy your seventeen day reprieve from staring in the mirror and thinking there's a mushroom on your head, but know this: you will always look in the mirror and know that You. Are. Not. A Fassbender."

So yeah. I'm feeling pretty good about my haircut.


I posted a song from Yamantaka//Sonic Titan's first album a while back, and their new album is just as effective in capturing the elusive prog-rock Kabuki market. I love the drama of it all. I pretty much have no idea what the hell the lead singer is singing, but I know it's EPIC. 

Courtney Barnett - Avant Gardener

So it turns out the ole iPad makes me post YouTube links at the top of posts, thus destroying the aesthetic format I have adhered to all these years. I'll try to recover, somehow. TECHNOLOGY IS SUCH A FICKLE MISTRESS.

Anyway, there's hipsters playing tennis poorly in this music video. I think I like the video, but I'm not really sure. I've completely lost all frame of reference for music videos at this point. When I was a kid, a song and its video were inextricably intertwined. "Welcome to the Jungle" was a badass song, but every time I heard it, I also saw innocent little Axl getting off the bus in Manhattan, ready to get swallowed whole by the city. Sure, "Mr. Brownstone" was a great track without a video, but if there had been one to elucidate the rather thinly veiled omgthebrownstoneisheroin metaphor, then that song would have ceased to be just a solitary song.

Nowadays, I only see videos when I make blog posts. Otherwise, I stick to Spotify or mp3s, because MTV isn't MTV anymore, and nobody really seems to care that much about videos. On the other hand, though, I guess some might argue that a video having thirty- three gazillion hits on YouTube is akin to it being in heavy rotation on MTV. Wait, did I just shoot down my own argument?

So, err, WHAT ABOUT ALBUM ART? WHAT'S UP WITH THAT???!!!


This punny Courtney Barnett song, "Avant Gardner," is pretty great. It's got clever stream-of-consciousness lyrics and Highway 61-ish instrumentation (guess it makes sense that the quasi-chair umpire dude in this video is a Dylan impersonator). I like how the song gains momentum as it goes on.

AMC, I'm here for you.

As the beginning of Mad Men's final season draws near, I can't help but think back to the end of another great AMC drama, Breaking Bad. While I personally thought they did a fairly solid job wrapping up the show, of course many people had complaints. So, as a public service of sorts, I'm going to provide a few alternate endings to give the folks over at AMC an idea of what the public might have preferred. It might help them wrap up Mad Men in a more acceptable manner for the masses.

Breaking Fad: In the last episode, Todd forces Walt to cook one last batch with him at gunpoint. But he's heard through the grapevine that people are getting tired of the blue stuff, so he forces Walt to devise a new marketing ploy. Walt comes up with meth that makes a sound like Pop Rocks when you smoke it. It becomes all the rage, but Todd offs him anyway.

Breaking Plaid: Walt uses his eleven million dollars to quit the meth game, start a line of grunge clothing, and move to Seattle. When he gets there, everyone tells him that grunge ended twenty years ago, his car stopped being cool thirty years ago, and his goatee reeks of overage wanna-be hipster desperation. Walt gets depressed and becomes a meth addict himself.

Breaking Brad: As Walter's megalomania continues to spiral out of control, his bewildered family desperately brainstorms ways to reign him in. They decide that the only way to show Walter the fate that will inevitably befall him is to find someone with an even huger ego. One day, Walter comes home to see his entire house wallpapered with 12 Years a Slave movie posters inexplicably featuring Brad Pitt. Pitt's executive producer-turned-bit actor-turned-star's (?!) eyes seem to stare straight into Walt's soul. Walt realizes the error of his ways and Breaks Good (good meaning fair meaning white meaning Brad Pitt oops back to Brad Pitt damn!).

Breaking Sad: Walt goes to his local salon to get his mid-life crisis goatee touched up and hears "All By Myself" playing on the easy listening Muzak channel. He immediately has an epiphany and realizes how he has completely isolated himself from the people who love him most, specifically his wife Skylar. He dramatically rips off the cape thingie they put on people while they're trimming mid-life crisis goatees and races home to his beloved. He bursts through the front door, only to see Skylar and Jesse making out to Eric Carmen's other classic, "Hungry Eyes."

Breaking U MAD?: Skylar begins to show signs of being pregnant yet again. Although they have only been together once in the past year due to all the meth drama, Skylar nonetheless insists that the child is Walt's. Walt and Skylar decide to settle their beef once and for all, with an objective, wise, and respected mediator present. Once they're booked on the Maury Povich Show for a paternity episode, the stage is finally set for the truth to come out. They sit on opposite sides of the stage, shooting ice cold stares at one another. The studio audience tenses as Maury prepares to read the results: "Walter White, you are... NOT THE FATHER!" Walter jumps up and starts breakdancing in front of Skylar, yelling "Ooooooooh!!!!!!" in her face the entire time. Skylar collapses in a heap on stage as the camera slowly fades to black.