Greatest Song Evah 9/20/24

A Message To You, Rudy

Is there a musical subgenre that has been maligned more frequently than ska? For about the last 30 years it has been used as a euphemism for midlife crisis. “John chucked it all to join a ska band.” Fair enough, but let’s differentiate modern ska from the late 70’s British ska two-tone revival. That movement produced so many classic tracks and so many classic bands, many of which were multiracial. Like The Specials.

The Specials were arguably the best of all of those bands, and it helps that they were led by 2 charismatic frontmen - Terry Hall and Neville Staples - without giving off the vibe that they were constantly competing with each other for credit and glory. A Message To You, Rudy (which to be fair has a rock steady beat, not a ska one) was one of their first hits and it was magnificent.

A cover of a song originally recorded in 1967 by Dandy Livingstone it’s a fairly simple song. All 3 verses are almost identical to each other. It’s got that perfectly hypnotic beat and the horns add a lovely touch. The song serves as a warning to the rude boy culture (Jamaican slang for juvenile delinquent) to stay on the straight and narrow. “Better think of your future, else you’ll wind up in jail.”

The two-tone movement didn’t make a huge splash stateside (it arrived just before the debut of MTV; had the timing been a little more advantageous there would have been every reason to believe that these bands could have just as popular in the US as the synth bands became) but the major players have left large legacies. So my message to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame nominating committee, stop your messing around. At least consider The Specials next year. It’s well past time to straighten right out.

Reviewing Olympic Sports

Cycling - Track - This is a sport that has been gradually slipping down my favorites list. Track cycling has seen the loss of Olympic events with the additions of mountain bike & BMX. In Paris it was down to 6 events per gender. Of the 6, I probably like Keirin the best, as it is the simplest one to follow. In this event the field is led by an official on a motorbike for the first 3 laps. He sets the pace, gradually increasing the tempo with each lap. Then with 3 to go he pulls away and the field sprints to the finish.

Too many of the others can be a little confusing. There are 2 team events, the team pursuit & the team sprint. Rules are slightly different for the two, but the essence is the same in that two teams start on opposite ends of the track, so the screen has to split between two different finish lines to make sense of the action. The Madison is a marathon length race consisting of two person teams, taking turns in what is essentially a relay race. Every few laps they take turns by slapping hands and pushing the bike forward. It’s real organized chaos.

My other favorite is an event within an event. The Omnium is a multi-event race, culminating in a points race which can be confusing for both the spectator and the play-by-by man. Without going too heavily into the tall weeds, there is a sprint every 10 laps and the top 4 finishers in each sprint accumulate points. It’s imperative for the broadcast to stay on top of those point standings; that doesn’t always happen. What I enjoy is the 3rd of the 4 components of the Omnium - the elimination race. In that race, there is a sprint every third lap. Whichever rider crosses the finish line last is eliminated from the race. That last turn is very tense; the rider trailing at that point actually has an advantage because they can use the high banking on the turn to gain the momentum needed to safely make it through. It’s the riders caught near the inside line that are actually in the most peril. You should check that race out if you get the chance, it’s very entertaining.

Diving - For the longest time diving was a prominent part of the coverage for both ABC & NBC, not as high on the marquee as the track/swimming/gymnastics big 3 but at the top of the next level down. It’s lost a bit of its luster as far as TV coverage is concerned, admittedly largely due to the fact that American divers are not as successful as they had traditionally been along with the corresponding fact that Chinese divers have dominated the sport to such an extent that the only drama comes with the race to see who comes in third place.

Paris was the first time that China swept gold in all 8 events. Not only that, but they went gold/silver in 2 of the 4 individual events. (The synchronized events are limited to one duo per country; it’s safe to say that if China was allowed to enter 2 teams in those events as well they would have had a strong chance of picking up 4 additional silvers.) That dominance is so numbing that I have lost a lot of interest in diving. I realize I’m contradicting myself. I find the American women’s basketball dynasty to be thrilling. I hope that’s not simply due to nationalism; I chalk it up more to the fact that I love basketball to begin with. Diving, on the other hand, is a sport that I can simply check in on once every 4 years.

The First Batch Of Hosts

We recently learned who exactly will be in this year’s SNL cast, the next info dump was the revelation of the initial set of hosts/musical guests. The show rarely airs more than 3 consecutive new episodes - the production schedule is so brutal that everyone needs that time off - but in presidential election years they usually front load things with more shows early in the year than normal, so season #50 will premiere September 28 with the first of 4 consecutive shows, followed by a week off and then one more the Saturday before Election Day. All 5 hosts were announced, with 4 returning champs and one debutant.

The SNL rookie hosts the premiere. We are still impatiently awaiting the Jennifer Coolidge episode that we all deserve, but this will be the next best thing - Jean Smart! After that will be a second stint for Nate Bargatze - whose debut was one of the highlights of last season - and then a second go around for Ariana Grande. Michael Keaton (4th time) wraps up that first set of episodes and then after the week off SNL royalty John Mulaney hosts for the sixth time. The musical guests for these 5 episodes are, in order, Jelly Roll, Coldplay, Stevie Nicks, Billie Eilish, and Chappell Roan.

Talk About A Woj Bomb

In an announcement that shocked everyone, including his employers at ESPN, Adrian Wojnarowski announced his departure from sports writing to take the job of basketball GM at his alma mater St. Bonaventure. He of course has been the preeminent scoop reporter in the NBA; although his chief rival Shams Charania might have something to say about that.

In his announcement he alluded to the grind. The guy is clearly a workaholic of the first degree, but the time he has to put in is more than just exhausting, it sounds unhealthy; both physically and mentally. I’ve seen profiles on his NFL counterpart Adam Schefter, and his lifestyle is so bizarre that it seems fictional. His typical day consists of carrying around multiple cell phones at all times, keeping those phones within reach every waking hour, setting up a small TV studio in his basement so that he can throw on a suit and do a live shot at a moment’s notice. Even his days off aren’t really days off. Maybe if he’s attending a wedding or going out on a date night with his wife he’ll have one phone with him instead of three. He can’t risk losing out on a scoop. That’s no way to live.

So, good on Woj for knowing when it was the right time to call it quits, even though it meant walking away from a $20 million contract. I’ll always have my greatest Woj memory, when he would ignore ESPN’s mandate on draft night to not reveal picks before they were announced. He would get around it by tweeting something like “Orlando is showing interest in Paolo Banchero.” See, he didn’t exactly say they were drafting him, so he had plausible deniability.

Let’s also be honest, it’s no coincidence that the news came out the same week we learned that free agent Boban Marjanovic signed with a team in Turkey. Woj realized that a league without Boban is not a league worth covering. As far back as I can remember, going back to the days of Chuck Nevitt, fans have had an affinity for freakishly tall players who only play at the end of blowouts. Boban was more than just a fan favorite, however, there are a bunch of stories about how much his teammates love the guy. As for me, the NBA season is still more than a month away, so there is plenty of time for me to go through Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s 5 stages of grief. Right now I’m still in denial over the end of Boban’s NBA career; I’ll eventually reach acceptance but it will be a long road to get there.

And Down The Stretch They Come

Only 10 days left to go in the regular season. This is where many of the teams that had all but clinched postseason berths are beginning to make it mathematically official. The Brewers are NL Central champs, the Dodgers, Yankees & Guardians are assured of at least wild card spots, with sizable enough leads that make division titles likely but not certain. Expect at least a few other teams to celebrate their own champagne showers by the end of the weekend.

Conversely teams that have known for some time that they won’t be playing in October are starting to receive their official elimination notices as well. The Braves are the only NL team currently outside of playoff position with a realistic chance of making it into the field. The Padres seem to be solid, so that leaves the Diamondbacks, Mets, & Braves in a 3-team scrum for 2 spots. This is the agonizing part. 162 games is a long season, there are bound to be games that a team SHOULD win but don’t. Whichever team falls short is gonna spend a long winter looking at those games. If only. If only.

In the AL the Tigers have somehow managed to pull even with the Twins for the last wild card spot. This comes after they acted as sellers at the trade deadline, shipping Jack Flaherty over to the Dodgers. They clearly had no idea that they would surge, but boy would they love to still have Flaherty. The team that’s really gotta be metaphorically smacking themselves in the head is Seattle. Despite a deep and talented rotation, they just cannot score runs and with their playoff hopes dwindling they shot themselves in the foot in successive games against the Yankees. On Tuesday Victor Robles inexplicably attempted a steal of home and was easily thrown out, killing a potential rally. On Wednesday Julio Rodriguez suffered a massive brain freeze. He represented the tying run on third base in the bottom of the tenth. Batter Randy Arozarena struck out & while doing so he lost his grip on the bat & it flew in Rodriguez’s direction. Rodriguez got out of the way but forget the play was still alive and neglected to go back to touch third. Catcher Austin Wells noticed Rodriguez straying from the bag & threw the ball to third, easily throwing Rodriguez out. Ouch.

Other quick notes for the final 10 days: The Orioles have got to regret acting so passively at the trade deadline. They are in a deep funk at the worst time of the year. There is enough data to show that end of the season momentum - both positive and negative - has little correlation as to what happens in the postseason. Still, this looks like a team that is staggering towards the finish. They had to make the drastic move and DFA’d Craig Kimbrel… Um, Shohei Ohtani had a game last night. 6 hits, 10 RBI, 3 home runs, 2 stolen bases. As part of that barrage, he got the SB’s & HR’s he needed to make history with the first 50/50 season… The White Sox are only 3 losses away from matching the 1962 Mets. They have a weekend series in San Diego. The Padres are not only in the thick of the wild card race, but they still have an outside shot at catching the Dodgers for the division title. In other words, the Pads will not show any mercy; breaking the loss record feels inevitable… Finally, this news slipped through the cracks a bit. When Joey Votto retired that meant that 2024 would have been the first season in generations in which not a single player above the age of 40 took a major league at bat. Not to worry. At the end of August the Royals signed Yuli Gurriel, so he has been able to proudly fly the flag for the over-40 crowd.

The Oscar Mulligan - 1993

Best Picture - Schindler’s List

Other Nominees - The Fugitive, In the Name Of the Father, The Piano, The Remains Of the Day

This is probably the easiest decision to make in this segment; Schindler’s List has got to rank near the top of any greatest movies list. It stood out from the pack in 1993, and still does to this day. The only box it doesn’t fully check is the rewatchable one, but that comes with an asterisk. It’s not a movie that people rewatch over and over, but not because it’s one of those emotionally empty epics. Schindler’s List is such a gut wrencher that it’s not one you’re likely to fire up for a repeat viewing the way you would for a comedy or an action thriller. But that’s not a penalizing trait, it’s a reflection of how effective it is in telling an important story.

Steven Spielberg has spoken about how he would not have been able to direct this movie earlier than he did, and he has a point. As a young man he was already a master storyteller with a strong visual flair, by 1993 he also had accumulated the necessary gravitas to properly tell this story. One of the great things is the way that he followed the “show, don’t tell” method. Oskar Schindler was not an admirable man in the opening act; he didn’t initially use Jewish workers in his factory to keep them out of the camps, to him they were merely a source of cheap labor. As time went on, he saw the humanity of these people, especially in the contrast to Goeth’s monstrosity. There was no “oh yeah” revelatory moment for Schindler, instead we could see through Liam Neeson’s facial expressions that he needed to do everything he could to save these people. It wasn’t until his final “I didn’t do enough” breakdown that he & the audience had the full catharsis.

Nothing topped the film’s closing sequence. Spielberg can be emotionally manipulative at times, but it was perfect here. The film transitions to color with a sequence shot at the cemetery where the real life Schindler & his wife are buried. Then, each of the actual survivors from the list who were alive at the time walked to the grave alongside the actors who had portrayed them to place a rock on the tombstone. That was an incredibly powerful moment; it put into perspective how one man can make a difference. Because of Schindler, these dozens of people survived. They were able to have lives after the war. They were able to raise families after the war. They were able to keep the memories alive and pass them down to future generations. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how recent history can be. Less than a couple of weeks ago Ruby Bridges, who in one of the most famous photos of the civil rights era integrated a school in Louisiana when she was 6, turned 70 years old. An observer put that into perspective by pointing out that still makes her younger than 17 sitting US Senators.

There have been almost 100 movies that have won the Best Picture. If Schindler’s List is not the single best out of all of them, it’s close to it. It remains a remarkable achievement and a movie that everyone needs to see at least once.

Closing Laughs

Well, I covered a lot today so it’s time to call it a day. Have a great weekend everyone, and let’s do this again on Monday. Peace!