Sign Of The Crossfade

I woke up this morning and my back seems to be getting better. It's not one hundred percent yet, but it's getting close. Remind me never to take being walk upright granted again. Anyway, I have a quick announcement or two. Or maybe five.

1. Six tracks into my first concentrated listen of the new Buck 65 album, and it already feels like the fifth contender for album of the year (if you're taking notes, the other four are El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead, Brother Ali's The Undisputed Truth, Radiohead's In Rainbows and Pharoahe Monch's Desire.) This album does seem much more hip-hop then his last stuff, which had more folk/blues/Tom Waits-ey stuff on it, but his writing is still on a completely different level than almost anyone else in music. Buck's ability to recast cliches and idioms into new meanings at times vaguely reminds of Dylan's stuff in the mid-60s. Which is not to say that I think Buck is as good a lyricist as Dylan (Obviously I'm not going to put anyone on the same plateau as Robert Allen Zimmerman) but I think there is a similarity there. If the world was a fair place, he would be the biggest name in underground/alternative music.

2. Extras is probably better than Curb Your Enthusiasm (and this season of Curb is pretty damn good, especially for a show that seemed to end last season). I just finished the first season through the Netflix, and I'm very disappointed with myself for waiting this long to watch the show. If you haven't heard Patrick Stewart's idea for a movie starring himself, you are missing out.

3. If the Dodgers think that Joe Torre is what that team was missing last year, then I don't know how to help them. This is a team that had no one hit more than 20 home runs last year, as far as I can tell. Their (excellent) closer is 37. Juan Pierre starts for the team. A manager is the least of their worries.

4. I like the Sarah Silverman Program, but last night's episode was something of a chore to get through. Actually, now that I think about it, Silverman is probably the one show that I genuinely like that is fairly consistently a chore. Unfortunately, when it is funny, it's brilliantly funny ("I believe the Holocaust was completely uncalled for", for example). But Sarah is probably not the best judge of her own material, at least as long as she thinks jokes about excrement are the height of comedy.

5. House was fine on Tuesday night. But please, please, please get rid of at least one of the unbearable women doctors/contestants. The new Foreman/House dynamic looks to be a good way to go. After about two more weeks I think I'll be done with the reality show/contest angle.

6. Slate has a good piece up about how bad Sports Illustrated become. I'm a subscriber, but it has become a shell of what it once was. For me, things really began going wrong when high school football got a regular section, and the fantasy football coverage began taking up more pages of space than most real sports.