After the aforementioned noon games, Tennessee visits Vanderbilt for a 7:00 pm (eastern) game in which the Vols will try to get their first SEC win of the year. UT is 0-6 in conference, while Vandy is 4-3 and already bowl-eligible.
For the Commodores, a win over their in-state rival always would be sweet. A win tonight also would guarantee Vanderbilt winning overall and conference records. (It also probably would result in the firing of yet another SEC coach predicated on a loss to Vanderbilt.) A good thing for a program that really looks like it’s on a legitimate upward climb even within one of the deepest conference divisions in the country.
As announced, Brendan will be attending and (has already begun) live-tweeting The Game. If you want to follow along, make sure you’re following ALDLAND on Twitter (@ALDLANDia), something you probably should be doing anyway.
Although I am indeed in the midst of a relocation project, I’m taking a break to attend senior day in Ann Arbor, where the Wolverines will be hosting the Iowa Hawkeyes. Key questions include: 1) Will Michigan senior QB Denard Robinson play a meaningful snap, and if so, at what position? 2) Will the mobile reception situation be as bad as it was last time? and 3) Without my charger, will my phone battery even last long enough to make the answer to question (2) relevant? Strategic packing during a move is difficult.
For live coverage of both games, follow @ALDLANDia on Twitter.
Last night I had the good fortune of finding myself with a ticket for the latest stop on the Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan tour. Today, these are my thoughts about what I heard: Continue reading →
What I miss most about hockey are the different ways things look, and the different ways things sound. There is nothing in sports like walking out into an arena in which everything is dark except for the gleaming sheet of ice below. Nothing sounds quite like the hiss of the blades, and the different sounds of the different tiny detonations — a puck onto a stick, a puck onto the glass, a puck onto the boards, a body into the boards — that make up the action. They are all sharp and varied, like the argumentative calls of exotic crows. What I miss most about hockey are the many ways it is so different from everything else. Everything is so damned vivid. This is, of course, only part of the reason that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman needs to be rendered naked, smeared with honey and jam, and dragged behind a Zamboni across an endless field of anthills.
Or something.
I am not even the greatest of hockey fans, but I know this one thing: Outside of NASCAR fans — who are outliers in so many ways, including, alas, which way many of them would have been rooting at Gettysburg — hockey fans have a more intimate relationship with their sport than do any other fans. Their devotion to the game as a game is more enduring than that of most football fans, and it is far less insufferable than that of most baseball fans, the latter of which, I believe, would be content if the games were contested on spreadsheets by columns of inhuman figures. (A large percentage of football fans also prefers to look on the games as columns of figures, most of which end, oddly enough, with “-10,” or “O/U 65.”) In certain parts of the country, like, say, the Boston area, in which I grew up and I live right now, hockey fans follow the collegiate and professional levels with equal fervor — as opposed to basketball fans with their endless, stupid arguments about whether or not the college game is superior to the NBA version — because, in both cases, you’re simply watching hockey, which is all that matters. … Read More
The Chicago Bears are off to a great start this season with a 7-1 record, good enough for first place atop the difficult NFC North division. Their offensive attack has become much more balanced, and some younger players are rising up to keep their stalwart defense sharp. Players like Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Charles Tillman rightly are receiving lots of attention and credit for success.
There’s one name I haven’t heard or seen mentioned even once across the media spectrum, though, and it belongs to the Bears’ head coach, Lovie Smith. I don’t know whether Smith deserves any credit for the Bears success this season, but as the head coach, it would seem like he does. As far as I can tell, though, no one is talking about him at all.
People sure were talking about Smith when things went south for the Bears during the last couple seasons, though, and the image we were given of him was that of a quiet coach who maybe didn’t have that strong a grasp of the game or that much control over his team. Someone had to be blamed for the losses, though, and after everybody was done ripping Cutler and his perceived attitude, they turned the spotlight on Smith.
I don’t have WGN on 24/7, but I have heard more in the national media about all of the former Vanderbilt Commodores who now play for the Bears than I have about Smith, which, again, is nothing. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this. I’m just making a note of it.
Over the weekend, I decided it was time to start transitioning my music listening into the autumnal mode, and rather than go straight to Harvest on the vinyl, I decided to ease into things with Jerry Garcia’s second solo album, a 1974 release known as Garcia (Compliments). The version I have comes from a Garcia boxed set, which means it has a number of bonus tracks appended to those songs that comprised the original release. Like a lot of Garcia’s solo work, there are plenty of cover tunes on this album, and while I generally like the release more than the two-star rating it received from AllMusic, there’s one song in particular that’s stuck out to me since my first listen.
The tune is one of the bonus tracks, an R&B-type cover entitled “(I’m a) Road Runner,” written by the hit-making Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown songwriting team, and first recorded by Junior Walker and the All-Stars in 1965. Of the versions I’ve heard, I like Garcia’s the best– it’s the most complete, to my ear– but Bo Diddley got ahold of it too, and it’s his version that prompted this post.
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Two things you might think would happen in this space are not going to happen. First, this being the continuation of our Silent Film Series, you might expect discussion of a video clip best viewed without sound, since that’s the premise of the Series. Second, this being a post about Halloween, videos, and music, you might expect me to go with this, which, if this was a Friday, is what I would’ve done.
Instead and in light of the above, I’m appealing to the common notion that, on Halloween, things that were dead take on an impressively lifelike quality (e.g., ghosts, mummies, zombies, vampires, etc.), and applying that concept to the notion of “silent” films as I’ve conceived it here. In other words, when a “silent” film takes on lifelike qualities on Halloween, you can hear it as well as see it. In other words, I was watching the selection, below, with the sound on, quickly reached the definite conclusion were the visuals of the sort that would make the clip a good feature in this spot, and then reached the probable conclusion that everyone would like watching it better with the music playing too. In still other words, turn up your volume, and enjoy a minor spectacle of live-action sight and sound:
Detroit does not appreciate being patronized any more than any other city. It’s thoughtful of you to have cheered for the Tigers because ‘it would be good for the city’ or whatever but a World Series victory was never going to renovate abandoned buildings or convince consumers to buy Volts. It would have been cool, though.
If Detroit has an abundance of anything at this point in its history, it’s a defiant civic pride. Shirts, buttons and sticker proclaiming love for the city are their own thriving cottage industry. And the Tigers’ old English D has become the de facto emblem of all things sturdy about the city. Arrive as a passenger at the Detroit Metro Airport and you are greeted by a sign welcoming you to “The D.” All cities have bonds to their sports franchises, but Detroit is uniquely and thoroughly synthesized, by choice, with the Tigers’ logo. … Keep Reading
Nothing is weather until it’s New York City weather, which means that, as of sometime today, we have ourselves some weather. Somehow unsurprisingly, the indomitable Clay Travis has himself a man on the scene, reporting live from the south shore of Long Island. Somewhat surprisingly, there has been a dearth of Point Break references being made, so that’s something we collectively need to work on. And while the Frankenstorm/Hurricane Sandy caused the main presidential candidates to take a break from the campaign trail, it didn’t stop sports this weekend.
Saturday was a tumultuous day in college football’s top 25, with undefeateds Ohio and Mississippi State taking their first losses of the season, Wisconsin losing to Michigan State in overtime, Oregon State losing to Washington, Florida losing to Georgia, USC losing to Arizona, Rutgers losing to Kent State, and Michigan losing to Nebraska. Although not technically an upset, Notre Dame surprised most people outside of South Bend by beating Oklahoma in convincing fashion. The Georgia win is significant because it dashes the order that was starting to distill in the highly competitive SEC East. The Arizona win is significant because 1) aren’t they really bad??, and 2) it weakens Oregon’s strength of schedule, because the Ducks were relying on a win against USC to buoy their BCS ranking that continues to fall despite an unbroken series of mathematically mind-boggling wins.
In the NFL, the Lions beat the Seahawks by scoring touchdowns in both halves of the game, and even daring to take a lead in the first half. The Falcons preserved their position as the NFL’s only undefeated team by beating the Eagles, a team where the only constant now seems to be the walrusness of Andy Reid’s mustache. (Reid fired his good friend and defensive coordinator Juan Castillo during Philadelphia’s bye week last week, and after yesterday’s game, Michael Vick said that Reid was contemplating a change at quarterback.) In a real accordion-style game, the Giants went up 23-0 on the Cowboys, then went down 24-23, before coming from behind in some technical sense to beat Dallas, 29-24. Andrew Luck led the Colts to an overtime victory against the Titans, the Broncos beat the listless Saints by twenty, and the Bears survived a scare from the visiting Panthers, beating Carolina by one.
Finally, the sad World Series came to an end last night when the Giants beat the Tigers 4-3 in the tenth inning of game four. It’s San Francisco’s second championship in three years. More on that later in the week.
Michigan’s last-second victory over Michigan State last Saturday afternoon was a historic one for the Wolverines, marking the program’s 900th overall win and their first win over Sparty in five tries.
Despite nasty weather forecasts, the day remained dry and not too chilly, which made for a comfortable setting in which to watch one of the most competitive games I’ve seen in the Big House in recent memory.
While local radio callers and personalities, in the days leading up to the game, were predicting multi-touchdown margins of victory for Michigan, Saturday’s contest featured only one touchdown, and it belonged to the Spartans.
Although Michigan led for much of the game, this one really was the Spartans’ to lose, which they did, chiefly as a result of a missed field goal early and an inability to manage the final 5:48 of the game, eventually giving up a game-winning field goal with five seconds remaining.
College football rivalry losses on the road always are going to be rough, and that’s especially true when your team gave the game away, but as I said in our tailgate full of Michigan fans afterwards, there’s no MSU fan on earth in 2008 who, if offered a 4-1 record in the next five meetings with Michigan, would decline. And while these programs look, for the moment, to be trending in the opposite direction– Michigan on the upswing and MSU on the decline– that 4-1 record is good enough for me right now. At least until November 2, 2013.
ALDLAND 