What player rivalry is the most entertaining?

When you say most entertaining, I am going to have to pick the fun rivalry between Cincinnati wide receiver Chad Johnson and Atlanta cornerback DeAngelo Hall. I just love Chad Johnson, he is always talking trash in a non mean-spirited way like sending Cleveland’s defensive backs Pepto Bismol. How cute and clever! And I loved that DeAngelo Hall shaved “I OWN U 85” on his head. As a chick, I like that their rivalry didn’t end up in a UFC showcase at a Las Vegas casino, like the rivalry between Levi Jones and Joey Porter. I hate to see a little “on-the-field rivalry” turn into an off-the-field feud. Instead of taking the trash talk personally, Chad and DeAngelo shared laughs over a nice big hug, but only after a Cincinnati victory over Atlanta! I hope Ray Lewis and Adalius Thomas take notes from these two jokesters and hug it out! Hug it out boys hug it out!

Hugs ~Pilar

Aquavit, smoked herring--our crack intern Seth Fiegerman has been getting all Scandinavian lately. His report might explain why:

A few years ago, if someone asked me what I thought about Swedish music, I probably would have tried to think of some clever way to insult Abba to conceal the fact that I knew no other Swedish bands. But that’s no longer a problem. There has been a kind of Swedish invasion, thanks to indie bands like Peter Bjorn and John, Loney. Dear, and the deceptively named I’m From Barcelona. And to top this list off, last year, I discovered Jens Lekman and learned something important: Swedish people do have a sense of humor!

Lekman performed on Saturday at Webster Hall in New York.  He wore a plain white shirt with a large illustration of a rose crawling up his side.  He was backed by a group of good-looking Swedish women, all dressed in white scrubs (plus one man DJ-ing, also in white). Each of the women seemed to represent some stereotype of what a Swedish woman should look like. But wow, do they rock as a band!  [For his encore, he brought out a male a cappella group.  Apparently he’s comfortable performing with men and women.]

It's difficult to classify the music of Jens Lekman. He looks like Art Garfunkel and sings a bit like him too.  His songs, always romantic, and often humorous, sometimes have a delivery similar to Jermaine from Flight of the Conchords.  And yes, just because he's Swedish and backed by women (and a good beat), there's a trace of Abba in there.

After he finished the set, he told the audience he would come out and greet everyone.  15 minutes later he was standing 5 feet in front of me, taking pictures and hugging people.  But after a few minutes, the Webster Hall crew told us all we had to leave.  "Where should we meet up?" Jens asked the people gathered around him.  We shouted Union Square and he said OK.  My friends and I hovered around Union Square afterwards for the better part of an hour. No Jens.  Maybe next time he comes to America.

 

 

 

A headline in today’s New York Times reads: "Low Buzz May Give Mice Better Bones and Less Fat." Why would this concern the Playboy editor and reader? We can always use more good news about the health benefits of drinking. Hang on…. Wait. Sorry. It’s referring to a literal buzz, as in a humming vibration. So more good news about vibrating beds! Pass the bottle and fire up them Magic Fingers, baby. 

FRIGHT FLICKS

Halloween is almost here, and with it comes a load of frightful new DVD releases. Here are some movies that will satisfy your craving for celluloid carnage.

EVIL ALIENS: UNRATED
In the vein of Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, this splatterfest about evil E.T.s running amok in a desolate town is loaded with mutilations, human-alien sex, and yes, even cringe-worthy probing. Once you get past the hammy acting and the mediocre CGI effects, this guilty pleasure is loads of bloody fun.

POLTERGEIST: 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION DELUXE EDITION
Even after 20 years, this remains one of the best haunted-house movies of all time. The special effects hold up well, Jerry Goldsmith’s classic score is chilling, and there are great performances across the board.

HELLRAISER: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Clive Barker’s tale of pleasure, pain, demons and an ancient puzzle box remains one of the most imaginative and stylish horror classics of the ‘80s. Hell never looked better and now comes loaded with all new features in this new 20th anniversary edition.

DEMONS and DEMONS 2
These two Lamberto Bava-directed cult classics are finally available on DVD with brand new anamorphic widescreen transfers. Both flicks are about people being transformed into bloodthirsty demons and the chaos that ensues. There’s a slight tongue-in-cheek humor going on combined with some off-the-wall gore and Bava’s atmospheric style that make these a must see for any horror fan.

FROM BEYOND
Stuart Gordon’s [Re-animator/Dolls] adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic tales is now on DVD for the first time. While the effects are a bit dated and the performances a little hokey, it’s nice to experience an outlandish horror film that’s not plagued with CG effects. They don’t make them like they used to.

THE TRIPPER
Throw some blood, guts and political satire into a meat grinder and you get David Arquette’s thrill-filled throwback to the 80s slasher. A cool cast along with loads of wicked humor and severed limbs make this a gory good time.  

One of our favorite writers is Ben Cheever, a two-letter man who has published both fiction and non-fiction. His new book is called Strides: Running Through History With an Unlikely Athlete- an amiable, enlightening and perceptive account of his adventures and experiences running, with a healthy dose of the history of running thrown in for perspective. With the New York City Marathon scheduled for this Sunday, we thought it would be a god time to chat with Ben.

You charmingly convey the sense of pride you felt in your development as a runner. At this point in your life, you've run in approximately 50 marathons. You make it seem very easy. Here's your chance to come clean- can anybody do what you've done?

I've run dozens of marathons, but the race still scares me.  That's a long way to go.  The wall is not a figment of the imagination.  A first marathon--like  that first mile--can be a life-changing experience.   Someday one of these races is going to get me. And I'll be heartbroken until I run the next one.   Jim Fixx said that anyone who can walk can run.   I'm not certain he's right there, but most of us can run. And most of us don't. Which is fine.  Whatever gets you through the night.  Without running, though,  I don't think I'd make it until morning.    

You discuss the findings of some evolutionists who believe we developed as a species because of our aptitude for long distance running. Where do you come out on that?

The chimp doesn't have our arch or Achilles tendon. There's some feeling now that we evolved to be runners shortly after we evolved to stand. Dr. Dennis Bramble of the University of Utah and Dr. Daniel Lieberman of Harvard see distance running as a significant step in the development of man. The piece they ran in Nature Magazine in 2004 got an enormous amount of attention. Mostly from runners. Bramble and Lieberman are both runners.

Apparently runners kept running long distances and then dropping dead. How come this isn't so much a deterrent anymore?

This is a terrible secret. I hope you won't spread this about. And please don't attribute it to me. I'm already unpopular enough. But here's the deal: we're all going to drop dead. It just looks worse when you're running. Like banging all the secretaries looks worse when you're  the Pope. Or not being able to pronounce "nuclear" when you're the leader of the free world.

You mention that in the Middle Ages, several cities in Italy had foot races for prostitutes. What was the point of that? (Perhaps this was the start of the description `fast and loose.')

Prostitute races are reported on in an excellent book titled Running Through the Ages, by Edward S  Sears. A race, or Palio held outside the walls of a vanquished city was a way of underlining the victory, like pissing on the mailbox. And if you could get your whores to hold the race, well that was supposed to be even more humiliating. Pope Alexander is supposed to have had a race for prostitutes in Saint Peter's Square.  I'm not certain this is true although he seems to have used prostitutes a lot, even if he never asked them to race around and around inside of the Vatican.

Sort of an oddball question, but who's your favorite movie runner? I think I’m most impressed with the way Daniel Day Lewis ran in The Last of the Mohicans.

Daniel Day Lewis is great, of course, and Henry Fonda is slightly less compelling in the 1939 version of the movie. There are many legends of white men outrunning Indians. Even Johnny Appleseed is said to have warned settlers of an Indian attack. I  think the legends are so popular because it almost never happened.   The Indians were almost certainly faster. Ripley's Giant Book of Believe it or Not for 1976 reports that a Pawnee named Big Hawk ran the mile in three minutes and 58 seconds. That was in 1876. My favorite text description of a track race comes at the climax of John L. Parker, Jr.'s  Once a Runner: a race that would have taken less than four minutes to run takes over 17 minutes to read out loud.

Your account of running the Medoc Marathon in the wine country of France is very funny. (For those who don't know, wine is made available to the runners, not water.) You waited until the 10 mile mark to drink some wine. How much more did you drink? Did you get tipsy (or, for that matter, drunk?) If so, how was it to run that way?

I was uneasy about taking that first drink, but then this is also often true in civilian life. Once I'd started drinking wine, I felt that I was running quite well. Race organizers sat me down at the finish and served me beef and more wine. I'm not sure exactly when I got drunk, but I got drunk.

You've run marathons in all these interesting places- France, Greece, Kenya, Baghdad, White Plains. If someone had to pick one, which would you recommend?

Pick your favorite city and they probably have a marathon.  Paris has a marathon, Dublin has one, and so does Venice.  They vary dramatically, of course, but you can get a lot of solid information on the web.  Start at the Runner's World website, or go to MarathonTours.com.

At one point someone pokes fun at runners by saying, `you're all high as kites.' How does the runner's high stack up to others you may have experienced?

It's natural to confuse one high with another, but they're different. One is earned, the other bought. One is almost certainly good for the the brain and heart, the other is almost certainly bad for the brain and heart. Both are habits, but then tithing is one sort of habit, and child abuse is another.

One of your subjects makes an interesting point, that those whose talent at running shows at a young age seldom achieve at the highest levels, because they have trouble adjusting to adversity. True in general?

It was Damon Runyon who wrote, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet." And yet those who can overcome adversity often go on to extraordinary achievement. Take--just for instance--Helen Keller and Stephen Hawking. Motivation seems often to originate with the disadvantaged. I suspect that the successes of African runners are not entirely attributable to genetic advantages. They run as if they'd rather die than lose.

 

 

Normally when I sip on blended whisky it is in an Irish Coffee. While purists argue that an Irish Coffee should include either Powers or Jameson whiskey, I prefer honey-blended sauces like Celtic Crossing and Drambuie, because you needn’t add sugar.

Last week at a Drambuie party at Level V, I was introduced to a delicious blended whisky cocktail, the Drambuie Fizz. This concoction is a bit like a mojito but has the smokiness from the scotch whisky and derives its sweetness from the honey rather than sugar or simple syrup.

Here’s the recipe from the bartender:

Muddle 5 lime wedges in a rocks glass, then fill with crushed ice.  Add a shot and a half of Drambuie and top up with a splash of club soda.

The party was to announce the Drambuie Pursuit contest that is open to us across the pond for the first time. Think of it as a two-day Amazing Race through the Scottish Highlands with sweet, sweet Drambuie at the finish line. Kind of like dangling a carrot in front of a donkey for us whisky drinkers, no?

When we noticed that jim-dandy intern Ben Conniff needed help with smooth talking we handed him a dictionary of euphemisms. Here is his book report:

I have a dangerous tendency towards blunt speech. I mean physically dangerous. I can still feel the stings and bruises I’ve received for my loose tongue, and even carry a scar on my neck from my angry ex-girlfriend’s nails (she’ll probably beat me again when she reads this).

But guys like me are in luck. This week, R.W. Holder releases the newest edition of his book, How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms. Holder has made a truly exhaustive search to catalogue our evasive speech, and his findings are a testament to human creativity. When I first got my hands on Holder’s dictionary, I thought of it as a funny book to flip through while I was bored. Now I realize it has much greater value as a resource.

Perhaps if I’d told the women I met this past summer that I was “at liberty,” rather than “an unemployed deadbeat,” they would at least have taken the time to make an excuse before running in the opposite direction. If only I’d had the sense to tell my friend that I “bestowed my enthusiasm on [to copulate promiscuously with]” his sister (who happens to be quite a “bit of crumpet” [a woman viewed sexually by men]), maybe I wouldn’t have forfeited his extra Yankees tickets. 

No matter what your minor faults are, Holder probably offers a way to gloss over them. Even President Bush could benefit. Instead of telling Condoleezza Rice “I may need a bathroom break” in the middle of a meeting with the UN General Assembly, he might have said “I need to visit the House of Commons.” A bit more professional sounding, though perhaps a slight to our steadfast allies across the pond.

Thank you, R.W. Holder, for allowing the verbally uninhibited among us to tap into the centuries-old tradition of deceit that the English language has to offer.

When we sat down with director/writer/producer/actor Sam Raimi in his office on the Sony lot in Culver City, California, the talented filmmaker had just seen both the DVD and Blu-ray final product for Spider-man 3 and was eager to sing their praises. We talked candidly about all things Spidey as well as the future of his Evil Dead series, if critics’ remarks sting, and how he feels about possibly directing The Hobbit.

Spider-man 3 comes out on DVD on October 30 alongside the Blu-ray version, which is also available packaged with the first two films in a high-def boxed set. How involved were you in the process of bringing them to home video?

I was deeply involved in the process of supervising every aspect of bringing the feature film to the DVD and Blu-ray, such as individually timing each and every shot with my editor. And when it wasn’t in its original widescreen presentation I supervised the reframing of the shots along with my director of photography, Bill Pope. Then I specifically supervised the mix, and I approved its final representation on the Blu-ray disc format. A movie is a living thing that needs to be adapted based on how the new technology enables you to hear or see it.

Did seeing your Spider-man 3 in high definition blow you away?

In some theaters I’ve been in I could not see the picture as clearly as I saw it on Blu-ray nor could I hear the range of sound with the fidelity that I’ve received on the Blu-ray. So I’m incredibly impressed with it. All I can say is the Blu-ray compared to the original DVD that I’m familiar with has six times the resolution and it looked like it. It looked like I put on my glasses for the first time. It was incredible. So I’m very excited. I could read things like little notes that were on Aunt May’s refrigerator that I couldn’t read in the theater. So it was startling.

Spider-man 3 was the highest-grossing film of the year, yet it didn’t get as many high marks from critics as the previous two. Did that bother you?

The second one got so much love, but the critics’ reactions were fairly negative I thought to this picture. I wanted the critics to like it more than they did, to put it simply. I make these films for the entertainment of people. They’re not supposed to be standalone interpretable artistic statements that are incomprehensible to most. When people and critics slam them as they did this last one—the critics are always right, of course, and I’m not saying this sarcastically—it hurts because I want them to like it. I feel like I let them down and I wanted them to enjoy themselves watching the picture. I hope that the fans liked it more.

Your three Evil Dead movies are cult favorites. Are there any plans for another sequel?

My partners Robert Tapert and Bruce Campbell and myself really love making those Evil Dead movies. One day, I really want to make a fourth one because I love working with Bruce and Rob, and I really like that character [Ash]. I just haven’t had time to really work on the script yet, and the other idea that’s been out there is that Robert and I were exploring having a young filmmaker re-imagine the first Evil Dead movie. Very few people have seen it on the big screen and it was made in 16 millimeter at the time, and I’m sure a young filmmaker could come in now and really do a simple ghost story much more justice than we did at the time.

You transitioned from shoestring-budget flicks like Evil Dead to mega-budget movies like Spider-man. Do you ever get tired of big-budget films and the corresponding pressure?

No. It’s a great honor and privilege to be able to be part of that elite club for this short time that I’ve been allowed in, and I know very quickly I’ll also be ushered out of this elite club of those few people that are allowed to make these big-budget pictures. It offers you tremendous opportunities to work with talent, to have schedules that allow you the option of great tools at your disposal—the camera cranes, visual-effects teams that are the best in the world, great-sized orchestras. At the same time, it’s like conducting the world’s finest symphony orchestra when in actuality I really just started out as a guy who loved to play guitar. And there’s a personal connection with a smaller project when you don’t have all the tools. So honestly I’d like to do both.

There was a rumor circling around on the Internet about you possibly directing The Hobbit instead of Peter Jackson. Care to comment?

Right now I think New Line is talking to Peter Jackson, and I think they’re probably going to offer him The Hobbit. I’m not really in touch with him. I think Peter Jackson is the right guy to do it because he’s so brilliant. We all love his Lord of the Rings trilogy so much. But if he decided he didn’t want to do it, and it ever came to where he thought that it would be appropriate for me to do it and New Line wanted me, under those conditions it’d be a great project to consider.

What would it take to get you back in the director’s chair for another Spidey sequel?

Well, Sony is planning to make many more Spider-man films, which I think is great because the character is very rich and can be interpreted so many different ways as it has been for the last 45 years. I’m going to be one of the producers for Spider-Man 4, and I’m going to help select a writer to come up with a fresh new take for the film, and I’ll be supporting him in his writing of the screenplay. After that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Like any picture I just have to see if that was something I was passionate about. I mean, I love the character but unless I know what the story is, what his personal journey is, and feel that his growth in that particular tale is meaningful then it wouldn’t be right for me. You need to see if you fall in love with what it becomes.

This week sees the release on DVD of the Warner Home Video Director's Series: Stanley Kubrick, which collects newly remastered editions of 2001, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and the U.S. premiere of the uncensored version of Eyes Wide Shut.  All are two-disc special editions loaded with copious new bonus features (except for Full Metal Jacket, which keeps all the extras on one disc), such as feature length commentaries from the actors and/or technicians involved, and extensive behind the scenes documentaries. Jan Harlan, Kubrick’s longtime Executive Producer (and brother-in-law) graciously answered some questions via e-mail about this most exacting, enigmatic, and profoundly influential director.

With this box set, the films are being released in their theatrical aspect ratios. The big differences this time around are the widescreen presentations of The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut, which had previously only been released on video and DVD in the full-frame (TV square) format.  Did Stanley have a preference as to what aspect ratio these films should be viewed in for home video?

His preference would naturally have been the ratio used in the cinema. But he adjusted his framing over the years to the tendency to smaller and wider cinema screens, which is also reflected in the wider TV sets. 16:9 is now the standard and we all considered the topic of ratio very carefully asking ourselves always “how would Stanley have decided?” in the light of a changing and fast growing home movie market.

Why has it taken so long for the uncensored cut of Eyes Wide Shut to appear in the US?

A more appropriate question would be: Why was it censored at all? The censors and Stanley Kubrick looked at the scene to be censored from very difficult angles. The censor follows self-imposed rules based only on what can be seen and not what it means, and therefore judges the form and not the substance. Kubrick was interested in the substance first and then gave it a visual form as a subjective, artistic expression. The so-called “orgy” in Eyes Wide Shut is a stylized look into a reality of modern society.

Given his penchant for carefully managing the release of info about his pictures, would Stanley be comfortable with the new running commentaries and making of documentaries that are included in this box set?

Probably not. Stanley did not like explanations and interpretations and ambiguous scenes or endings were so for good reason. The viewer should find the answers alone and these might well vary, but no fixed explanation should be given. To illustrate the point I would suggest comparing the ending of Paths of Glory to the ending of Full Metal Jacket, and detect the same attempt to express a fundamental desire of any man in his longing for his loved ones. No explanation is needed, and different viewers, different age groups and audiences with different backgrounds will take different impressions away from these endings. Stanley’s films were always stimulating for a listening audience that did not insist on orderly answers to complex and sometimes philosophical questions. On the other hand: If people are helped by these commentaries and a new audience is won over, as may be the case sometimes, then these commentaries serve a purpose. After all, nobody has to listen to it.

Are there any future plans to remaster Barry Lyndon for HD with extras? It was a great success when Leon Vitali showed a restored print at Film Society of Lincoln Center (NYC) this past summer.

I don’t know. I hope so. The film is a great masterpiece and was recognized as such in France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, for example. From a technical point of view the film forms a milestone in the history of cinematography. One day, I am sure, Warner Home Video will re-master Barry Lyndon for HD.

On the great, unfinished projects, Napoleon and Aryan Papers, there were plans at one time to release the script of Napoleon as a book illustrated with a selection of Stanley’s archive material. Is that still in the works? Are there plans to release any of the Aryan Papers material?

The Napoleon Project will be very comprehensively published by TASCHEN in 2008. I have seen the design and it is dazzling. It will be as great a book as the large TASCHEN book The Stanley Kubrick Archives. The same brilliant woman from upstate New York, Alison Castle, has also edited Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon. A facsimile copy of the script will be one of many items in this richly illustrated publication.

There are no plans to publish the pre-production material for Aryan Papers yet – I highly recommend your readers to get a copy of Louis Begley’s book Wartime Lies on which this film would have been based.  However, there is a plan for a book with the amazing and most revealing drawings by Chris Baker for A.I. Artificial Intelligence. The book is designed and ready for print with a wonderful foreword by Steven Spielberg, but we don’t have a publisher yet.

You’ve had great success in Europe with the traveling Stanley Kubrick Exhibition, which presents material from Stanley’s extensive archives.  Are there plans to bring this to the States?

We would be most happy to bring this to the USA, but “It needs Two- to-Tango”. As far as the Kubrick family is concerned the exhibition should have first opened in New York, Stanley’s hometown. But so far no organizer from America has been interested enough or managed to get a venue. The exhibition has been hugely successful in four major cities in Europe and in Melbourne, Australia. In October this year The Stanley Kubrick Exhibition will re-open the old exhibition palace at the centre of Rome, Italy. Other major cities are interested; one of these is Haifa in Israel, which would be most exiting.

Having been his Executive Producer for many years, what was he like to work with?  You were also his brother-in-law. Did he cut you any slack on the job?

I had known him for a decade before I started working with him in 1970 because he was my brother-in-law. I joined him on Napoleon, thinking this might be for a year or so. Little did I know how this would change my life. It was a great challenge working with him, not easy at times, but great fun nevertheless, otherwise I would not have lasted. No, no slack. But he didn’t cut any slack for himself either.

Given the serious subject matter of Stanley’s films, the humor found in his movies, and in Stanley himself (based on interviews), is sometimes obscured. Is it true he was a big fan of The Jerk with Steve Martin? If so, did he have any special “Kubrickian” take on it, or did he just find it silly and funny like everybody else?

He loved good films made by others. He did not look for “similar” films – he loved Woody Allen – I remember he saw Radio Days twice within a week. He loved Steven Spielberg, because he is so different, or Carlos Saura, or Edgar Reitz, or Martin Scorsese, or Sydney Pollack or Ingmar Bergman, or, or, or – he was a cineaste, he truly loved movies and was not as critical about other director’s films as he was about his own work. I remember The Jerk– Stanley laughed his head off – isn’t this enough?

Did Stanley have an opinion on why his films provoked so much debate?

Not really. He got used to the fact that he split audiences and critics alike. He had no choice. An artist paints as good a picture as he is able to do, he can’t work “to order”, he can’t try to please and seek approval while he is working. Afterwards, yes, Stanley was very happy when people responded positively to his films and he was not indifferent to criticism, but there was nothing he could do to influence this, let alone consider this while making the film. If someone didn’t understand the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he could not help it. It was clear to him, but this not to be expressed in words. Or he might escape into a funny line like “I never try to explain something that I don’t understand myself.”

What would have surprised Stanley about the world in 2007 (if anything)?

That predictions come true…..that paranoia meant you figured out what’s going on…..and still hoping that he hadn’t inadvertently made a documentary with Dr. Strangelove.

There are so many things Sasha Frere-Jones gets wrong in his recent New Yorker piece, "A Paler Shade of White", on, as the sub-headline would have it, “how indie rock lost its soul.” Leaving aside for a moment the gaping holes he must leave in of the arc of indie music over the last few decades in order to advance his argument, the argument itself is based on retrograde ideas of race and sex, and how race is encapsulated in music.

Frere-Jones’ argument is predicated on two bullshit dichotomies. Early in his essay he describes how “Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone and moved popular music from the head to the hips.” There are two glaring problems with this assessment. First it subscribes to the age-old notion that mind and body represent opposing forces, the idea that intellectual urges and sexual urges are mutually contradictory and thus forever locked in a Manichean battle for the souls of teenage pop music listeners. It should go without saying in this day and age that this notion is rubbish: The desire to read and the desire to fuck live comfortably side by side in many well-adjusted teens of both sexes.

Worse still, Frere-Jones ascribes racial attributes to the two sides of this outmoded dichotomy: Mind is white, body black. Thus, to Frere-Jones, the Arcade Fire (“the drummer and the bassist rarely played syncopated patterns or lingered in the low registers”) is pedantic, sexless and indicative of whiteness, while Mick Jagger (“He sang with weird menace and charm”) is lusty, soulful and indicative of blackness—or rather, in his parlance, miscegenation. Frere-Jones even discusses Jagger’s dancing!

These racial and sexual dichotomies were the basis for white fears of rock in the 1950s—keep those race records, and thus the base urges, out of my lily-white daughter’s hands. And whether framed as a negative, as in the condemnation of black music in the racist South from which Elvis emerged, or as a positive, as in Frere-Jones’ lauding of black music’s rhythms and “heat” (he actually uses this descriptor), the source is the same—a hyper-sensitivity to race in which black and white stand as juxtaposed monoliths (the black one no doubt taller and bigger around).

Much of the appeal of the blues to the musicians Frere-Jones lionizes fits squarely within this context, too. British rock bands’ obsession with African-American music often betrays a supremely offensive noble savage view of race. Brian Jones, the blues-obsessed co-founder of the Rolling Stones, complained about the way the band moved away from the primal purity of the blues. (Eric Clapton had similar misgivings about his first band, the Yardbirds, leading to the foundation of another group mentioned by Frere-Jones, Cream.) A quick look at early blues covers by the Stones offers a good idea of the dodgy conflation of sexuality and race among English R&B fans: the Stones’ first UK number one was “Little Red Rooster,” a song, narrated in the first person, about a cock. Another early cover, “I’m a King Bee,” talks about “buzzing around your hive” while ostensibly lascivious slide guitar licks offer the blues equivalent of the “boing” noise you might expect to announce a boner in a low-budget Italian teensploitation flick. The Stones, of course, were not the worst offenders on this count, and their lingering reputation in hipster music circles—along with that of another band mentioned by Frere-Jones for its appropriation of black music, the Beatles—probably has something to do with their seemingly enlightened evolution away from throwing these sorts of race cards. After all, as the Stones began to write more and more of their own material, the combo’s greatness rested not on the nudge-nudge, wink-wink shuffle of songs like “Parachute Woman” but rather on the sorts of things Brian Jones (and perhaps Frere-Jones, as well) would object to, such as the use of a French horn on the epic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” 

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What position would you build a franchise around?

If I was a GM, I would pick a tight end to build my franchise around. I know, right about now you are thinking “WHAT!??” And probably thinking I am nuts! Yes, defense is what wins games, and I know most people believe a franchise should be built around a quarterback. But unless you have talented receiver and running back, your quarterback can really only do so much. However, if you have a great tight end, he can play his position or can also benefit the team as a safety or a wide receiver (and if you have Antonio Gates he can even play basketball)! I just feel there are a few more back-up uses for a tight end position. And come on guys, who wouldn't agree with me on how great a tight end can be!!!

Hugs ~Pilar

Bryan Abrams, our crack researcher and Special Baked Goods Editor, contributes this report about his most special favorite bakery:

New York City thrives on abnormality. You can find it in the pure waves of volcanic heat rising on the subway platforms during summer. You can feel it as your write your rent check every month, which is astronomical; especially considering your shower is in your kitchen. You can try not to stare at it when it’s coming at you in droves on the streets in the mind-boggling array of pretty women who call this place home (which makes up for everything else, of course). So it’s not surprising that even our bakeries are out there. One bakery in particular caught my attention a few weeks back, when I stumbled in after a particularly wet brunch.
 
This wasn’t a flour-drenched mom & pop on Main Street. In fact, there’s no flour to be found.  Nor is it on any Main Street, but rather tucked away on Broome Street in NYC’s Lower East Side. An adorable, doddering old woman does not run this bakery. Nor does a mustachioed old-timer in a baker’s hat. Nope, BabyCakes NYC is owned and operated by an attractive young woman named Erin McKenna, who has a staff filled with attractive young women (including her sister Elizabeth), all of whom appear (when in their pink BabyCakes dr