Greatest Song Evah 3/14/25

Intergalactic

The electronic beats in this song make it absolutely infectious. The big single from the Beastie Boys’ 5th album Hello Nasty, Intergalactic is the type of song that you just can’t help bopping your head to from the very first note. The production touches are wonderful as well, the echo effects are a nice touch.

The Beastie Boys have always been clever wordsmiths, even in the days when they were a tad too sophomoric. I mean, how great is “I got more suits than Jacoby & Meyers?” This song has a bundle of great lines, and as always Adam Yauch was the MVP here. “I’ll stir fry you in my wok. Your knees’ll start shaking and your fingers pop. Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock.” Genius.

This song was co-written and co-produced by Mario Caldato Jr., and Mario C likes to keep it clean. Hello Nasty was the culmination of a quintet of albums that are all-time classics, all of which showed creative and emotional growth with each step. Who would have imagined that the obnoxious frat boys from Licensed To Ill would become what they did? The subsequent albums they made after this showed a gradual decline before Yauch’s death from cancer at a tragically young age brought their story to a premature end. Man oh man, at their best they couldn’t be topped. Case in point:

Meet the Nominees - Cyndi Lauper

Much like the previously discussed Billy Idol, Cyndi Lauper was one of the iconic voices and faces on the early MTV era. With the release of her debut solo album she arrived as a fully formed performer, with a distinctive sense of fashion and a glorious New Yawk accent. At times the whole she’s so unusual persona could get exhausting, but in the end it all came back to the songs and the voice. There was only one Cyndi Lauper.

That run of singles dominated radio, and deservedly so. She was versatile enough that she could convey joy, heartache, and pure unfettered vocal power depending on what each particular song required. She’s So Unusual ranks up there with any of the best debut albums ever made. Admittedly with the exception of a few stray songs she never quite matched that, but she still has a hell of a discography. True Colors alone is enough to cement her place in history. Her fame has also extended well past her salad days; it’s been more than 3 decades since her most recent hit yet she has always held a presence in pop culture. She’s only the Oscar shy of EGOT status.

A major reason why she has remained in the public eye is that she has accumulated so much goodwill throughout her career. She established the True Colors Fund years ago and that organization has raised a tremendous amount of money to combat teen homelessness. She is an objectively good person; that in and of itself is not enough to warrant a spot in the Hall, but all things being equal it’s never a bad idea to reward someone who has tirelessly worked to help make the world a better place.

Biggest Billboard Hot 100 hit: Time After Time

My personal favorite: She Bop

If elected, would she perform at the ceremony? : No doubt, and she is so beloved that there would be no shortage of fellow artists eager to join her on stage. Her segment would be likely to be one of the highlights of the evening.

Mo Vaughn

This week in The Athletic Ken Rosenthal posted a pair of articles on former American League MVP Mo Vaughn, in one of which Vaughn confirmed that he had used HGH as was indicated in the Mitchell Report. I’m only partially interested in that admission, he says that he used it to help him return to the field more quickly from an injury. Standard stuff.

This is why his confession matters. I have gotten into disagreements with some of my friends on this matter, but I choose not to do a blanket condemnation of players who used PED’s in the Wild West era. It was technically against the rules, but MLB all but actively encouraged players to use. The attitude of the league was “here’s the speed limit, but we’re not going to enforce it” coupled with “hey, have you noticed how much money we’re all making with these big home run totals? Impressive, huh? Now, we’ll just step out of the room and leave this big bowl of steroids on the table. Don’t do anything funny, wink wink.”

The era is what it was. Of course, players should not have cheated, but can you blame them? The impulse to try anything to return from injury is a strong one, as is the reality that if you’re looking at the opposing dugout and can see obvious steroid users, it would make sense that a guy would do what he can to keep up. Baseball has always had a fluid determination of what is cheating and what is mere gamesmanship. PED usage was cheating, but so is scuffing a baseball, which has always been laughed at or brushed aside as part of the game. It’s also cheating to water down basepaths in an attempt to slow down opposing base runners, and it was an open secret that in the Koufax era the mound at Dodger Stadium was higher than the legal limit. And if you want to make the argument that taking illegal substances is different than bending the rules, my counterpoint is that for generations amphetamine usage among MLB players was near universal.

This circles back to the Hall of Fame argument. The Hall is clearly trying to do all that it can to keep Bonds & Clemens and friends out. But there is also this. Most people assume that it’s likely that at least one player who has used PED’s is already in. I’m not accusing anyone, I’m simply using common sense. What happens if/when such a player is named? And would the circumstances of the revelation affect the reaction? It would be one thing if an investigation reveals that Player X was a user. But what if instead Player X calls a press conference and makes the admission himself while fully explaining his reasoning for using? And what if that Player X is not someone who had been accused of using in the past?

Would that change the equation? Would that lead to a significant number of voters saying that they have no way of knowing who did and who did not use so it’s senseless to act as judge and jury? Or would that cause voters to double down even further? “I don’t want to be embarrassed again, so I will never vote for someone whom I have even the slightest suspicion about.” My take is that I would include Bonds & Clemens if it were up to me. It is dubious to gloss over an entire era; the era might be tainted, but one could say the same about the segregation era as well.

I admit it’s an apples & oranges thing to compare the policies between different sports, but I could not help but notice that last month Antonio Gates was elected to the Pro Football Hall Of Fame despite a PED suspension on his record. Somehow the sun still rose the following morning. I differentiate Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez because they used, and were caught, when the league cracked down and instituted serious penalties. In their cases none of the standard excuses hold water. They were seriously jeopardizing their team’s chances of winning by placing themselves at risk for lengthy suspensions. That’s much different.

I went off on a lengthy tangent there, so back to Mo Vaughn. The reason that Rosenthal wrote about him in the first place was as part of a profile in which he has gotten back into the game through an academy he opened when his 12 year old son began to play baseball. Good for him. It’s nice to see that his love for the sport has been rekindled.

Olympic News

Comcast re-upped its deal with the IOC, insuring that the Olympics will continue to air on NBC/Peacock/whichever cable networks will remain under the NBC Universal banner through the 2036 games. (Fun fact, two of those games are scheduled to be held in the US; let’s hope we’re not an international pariah when they take place.) This will mean that with the exception of 3 Winter Olympics that CBS hosted in the 1990’s, NBC will have been the exclusive television home of the Olympics going all the way back to the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Rest up, Mike Tirico. You’re gonna be busy for a while.

50 Years Ago - Assorted Game Shows

In 1975 game shows really hit the sweet spot for me. They generally aired in time slots when I was allowed to watch TV; after school and in the pre-prime time hour. A network TV show might be past my bedtime, but 7PM wasn’t too late for me. In addition, in those days schedules were not set up so that the likes of Jeopardy! aired 5 times a week. Instead, syndicated shows often aired only once per week. So, for much of the 1970’s on Monday you would have the nighttime version of one show. On Tuesday night there would be an oddity such as the $1.98 Beauty Show. Not just game shows either. Perhaps In Search Of would pop up on Wednesday. In short, there was much more real estate available for a larger quantity of shows to air.

Also, because I was a fan of game shows I also got to know a specific type of celebrity. Under normal circumstances I would have no reason to know the name of someone who was the fifth lead on a sitcom that had been cancelled five years prior, but if he or she would regularly show up on Pyramid I sure as heck knew who they were. There are celebs for whom I could not begin to tell you how or why they were famous in the first place, but if they were in the regular rotation for Match Game? You bet.

Now, specifically looking at 1975, I earlier discussed Wheel Of Fortune. There were several other shows premiering that year that, let’s such say were not as successful. The list of 1975 shows includes many that I had completely forgotten even existed. Remember any of these?

The Magnificent Marble Machine capitalized on the resurgence of popularity for pinball. It was a two-part game. In the first the contestants and their celebrity partners had to answer a series of trivia questions. The winner would then move on to the next stage from which the big money prize would come. The contestant played a round of pinball on a ginormous machine. The show lasted less than a year.

Similarly short lived was Musical Chairs. It was a strange twist on Name That Tune, the host and a special musical guest would sing a few lines from a song and follow it up with a few options for what could be the next line. The contestant would need to correctly guess which of those options was the correct lyric. The only memory I have from this show is that Adam Wade was the host. He was a pop singer who had a few hits in the pre-Beatles era, but more significantly he was the first African-American to host a game show. Pretty pathetic that it took until 1975 for that to happen.

Not every 1975 game show was a one-season obscurity. The Cross-Wits premiered that year as well. As the title implies, the game play was similar to filling out a crossword puzzle. It ran for 5 years, and would later be briefly revived as well. Plus it also inspired a great SCTV parody - The Half-Wits. Like any 1970’s game show worth its salt, it was garish and flashy. So much neon!

Closing with another bit of obscurity, here’s a show that I had completely forgotten about - Don Adams’ Screen Test. In this one the contestants were aspiring actors. They, along with that week’s celebrity guests, would compete by recreating classic film scenes such as the beach scene in From Here To Eternity or the discovery of Mrs. Bates’s corpse in Psycho. I hadn’t seen or thought of this show since it ran, but when I rediscovered it Adams’ catch phrase “Cut! And print!” immediately popped into my head.

Closing Laughs

Time for the weekend. I wish I could offer assurances that things are going to get better, but the best I can offer is to encourage everyone to try your best to find your happy place. Find something that brings you joy, spend time with people who uplift you. See you all again on Monday.