Thursday, February 28, 2008

(clever reference that only I get)


So, after I wrote the last entry, I became briefly obsessed with my throw-away joke about doing a musical set in late Victorian London and featuring nothing but Radiohead songs. I began thinking about what historical people would feature in the production (the Elephant Man, Oscar Wilde and Bosie, Jack the Ripper, the Fabians) and what I wanted to be sure to include (the Boer War, for example, if I could make the time line fit). I began thinking about what Radiohead songs I definitely wanted in (Exit Music [For A Film] and Idioteque and High and Dry). I thought about what songs had lyrics that were too anachronistic (Airbag, for example, the CIA reference in The Bends, Videotape off of the new album). I was actually going to begin writing things down when it really occurred to me just how insane the idea is. I realized that even if I had just swept the Oscars, no one was going to finance this movie. I remembered that the average moviegoer knows , at most, two or three Radiohead songs (and Karma Police was a little sketchy for the film- "she buzzes like a fridge" probably wouldn't work). I remember that this movie isn't an obvious box office success like my idea for an epic retelling of the life of Napoleon using only chimpanzees and monkeys and gorillas and other simian actors. This one is niche.

And I felt a little silly about the amount of thought I put into the whole thing. Besides, I couldn't make up my mind if it should have been animated or live-action anyway.

The Brand Nubian show was pretty good. Soup, from the Jurassic Five, was advertised for the show, but wasn't actually there. If the admission hadn't been free, I would probably have felt more put out by that. Keith pointed out that someone on stage could at least have said "No Soup For You!".

Nothing good can come of listening to as much Leonard Cohen as I've been listening to in the last 36 hours or so. Even now, I'm listening to "The Future" once again.

Oh, and Time Warner Cable is officially back on my shit list. It was bad enough when their parent company wouldn't give the Braves the $175 million payroll that the team needed, but now it seems that the Cartoon Network has vanished from non-digital cable. Adult Swim might be a shadow of what it used to be (seriously, how is Aqua Teen Hunger Force still on the air? The show had run out of ideas after about 15 episodes. And a lot of people would consider that generous), but Venture Bros. is coming back this year, and if I want to watch the show in bed, I have to watch it over the internet. Bullshit move, Time Warner. The least you could have done was brough ESPN Classic back down to my tier, especially since the channel is now showing pro wrestling from the 70s and early 80sin the early morning time slots.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Let The Beatles Be.

Okay. I wrote this in bits and pieces while I was watching the movie, so it might be a touch disjointed. But since there are only two or three people reading this (wow, I wish that was self-deprecating humor instead of a simple fact) I decided to just more or less leave it haphazardly constructed as it is.

So. I'm watching the movie Across The Universe. And here's the thing. They put the character named "Prudence" into a closet for no reason that makes sense from the plot thus far, but so the other characters could sing "Dear Prudence". I can only wait for when the character named "Sadie" does something so the other characters can ask her what she has done. Oh, and Martin Luther from The Roots is playing a character that comes as close as possible to being Hendrix. And he is good. And Bono plays a Timothy Leary type named "Dr. Robert" who sings "I am the Walrus". Which is weird, but not in the way that it was meant to be. Oh, and Eddie Izzard does a spoken word kind of thing from "For The Benefit of Mr. Kite" that's really very awesome. Because Eddie Izzard is awesome, and takes the Beatles song merely as a point of departure, instead of slavishly sticking to the material, He has the balls to riff on the lyrics, (rather than just changing the tempo or the arrangement) and that is fantastic. Honestly, the main reason I went ahead and moved the movie to the top of my Netflix queue. was to see the Eddie Izzard performance. that, and Michael Clayton is horribly backlogged. The only other performer I recognized was Evan Rachel Wood, who is from Raleigh and might or might not be dating Marilyn Manson. I read something about it in the paper once, but I don't care enough to invest any more time in finding out if they are still together, assuming they ever were.

The movie is a mess, not unlike Idlewild and Moulin Rouge, which are the two films this one most reminds me of. (Oh, and Pennies From Heaven, which I always think is a sort of unrecognized precursor to Moulin Rouge, and contains one of my favorite Steve Martin performances, but no one seems to remember. That movie is awesome). The concept is lifted from the Broadway shows that formed narratives built around the songs of Billy Joel (successfully) and Bob Dylan (unsuccessfully, but it's more troubling is to try and contemplate the kind of mind that sees a coherent narrative in Dylan lyrics. This is the kind of brain that sees connections between FEMA and the Freemasons.) The Beatles have more songs that resonate with more people than either Dylan (a lot of Dylan's most popular songs are not his best songs) or Joel (who is probably underrated by the musical intelligentsia), but the whole thing feels like a gimmick through a lot of the film. And actors performing Beatles songs is not more interesting than the actual Beatles songs. For a Beatles nerd like me, the movie quickly became a kind of guessing game of what song would come next. (I never would have guessed that "Oh Darling" would make an appearance.) It also occurs to me that if one wanted to make a movie built around Beatles songs, it really ought to be better than than the movies the Beatles made. And it is very hard to make a movie about rock music that even compares to A Hard Day's Night.

The movie desperately wants to be about the sixties, but doesn't seem to have anything new or interesting to say about what might be the most over analyzed bit of recent history. So it really feels like it's about nothing much at all. Has there been a really good movie looking back at the 1960s as "The Sixties"? Hair was good, but not great. Forrest Gump comes to mind, but that doesn't help because I really hated Forrest Gump. There are plenty of great movies that address major parts of the sixties (Mississippi Burning, JFK, Full Metal Jacket, The Right Stuff are all obvious examples). But I can't think of a good film about the hippie part of the sixties. Which might prove the point that hippies are incredibly annoying. The attempts to equate the Vietnam war with the war in Iraq are obvious and heavy-handed, and have all been made before.

The movie is not terrible. But it's not particularly good either. But I can't help but thinking the larger concept of the film could be interesting if it went farther. The trick might be to divorce the era depicted from the songs chosen. Like doing a musical set in late Victorian London to Radiohead songs (is "Knives Out" too obvious for the Jack The Ripper sequence?) or Tom Waits songs in a movie about the Depression.

For the record, my three favorite pieces of art that play with the Beatles considerable iconography are the book Paperback Writer, the B-Sharps episode of the Simpsons and the Danger Mouse mash up of the Beatles with Jay-Z's Black Album. Tomorrow night is the free Brand Nubian show at the Cradle, so I'll probably write a little something about that.

(You have no idea how proud I am of that "Knives Out" idea. I'm now trying to think of what song to have Oscar Wilde sing.)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Wow

I'm almost impressed by the Oscars. No Country For Old Men was the best movie I saw from last year, and it actually managed to win. Ratatouille was the best animated film I saw (although I haven't seen Perseopolis yet) and it won. Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem gave my favorite performances by any actors I saw, and they both won. I thought Juno had the best screenplay, and it won too. There Will Be Blood was the prettiest movie I saw, and the Bourne movie had the best editing, and even they won. There's no chance I'll ever see the Edith Piaf movie, so I'll never know if the actress was actually better than Ellen Page in Juno, but on the whole, this was one of the best list of Oscars I've ever seen. I almost wish I had watched any part of the ceremony outside of Stewart's decent-but-not-great opening monologue. Almost.

I'm sure that this will be corrected for next year's awards, and the ceremony can get back to recognizing mediocrity.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Idiots of Mensa


So, Mensa put together their list of the smartest tv shows of all time. Nevermind that this is a stupid idea. Pay attention to how stupid some of their selections are. The list is:




Frasier
House
The West Wing
Boston Legal
Jeopardy!
Cosmos
CSI
All In The Family
Mad About You
M*A*S*H

Does anyone (outside of the idiots at Mensa) really believe that CSI is a "smarter" show than The Simpsons or Futurama? Or that Mad About You is smarter than The Sopranos or The Wire? Is Boston Legal really smarter than The Office, Arrested Development or Twin Peaks? And as much as I love House, is it really "smart" just because the writers ransack med school textbooks for the dialogue?

I can't wait for their list of smartest books that includes "The Da Vinci Code" and "The Hunt For The Red October".

This Month's eMusic Downloads (February)


Thom Yorke- Eraser. I've been meaning to pick this up since it came out, but never got around to it.
Radiohead- "I Want None of This"off of a charity compilation
The Mojo Filters- "Come Together". Off of a similar charity compilation. The Mojo Filters included Paul McCartney, Paul Weller from The Jam and Noel Gallagher.
Nick Lowe- Jesus of Cool. Lowe's first album, finally reissued. I also picked up a couple of live tracks by Lowe.
Jeff Mangum- Live at Jittery Joe's. I already had a few of the tracks from this solo set by the lead singer of Neutral Milk Hotel, so I picked up the rest of it.
Del The Funky Homosapien- The first two singles off of his forthcoming album
Badly Drawn Boy- About A Boy Soundtrack
Daniel Johnston- A cover of "Live and Let Die". I can't begin to imagine what this will sound like.
Josh Martinez- Buck Up Princess
The Moldy Peaches- "No One Else But You" Blame Juno for this.
Sonic Sum- Films. I pick up pretty much anything put out on the Def Jux label.

I think that's it.

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Dirty Water

So I just watched Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. It's surprisingly good, especially since most everything that Affleck has touched since 1998 or so has been shit. Casting his brother as the lead instead of himself was a good call. But the one thing that I really took away from the film was that Boston is not a nice place. Granted, I had already begun to get this impression from films like The Departed, Mystic River and- perhaps most of all- Fever Pitch (the one with Jimmy Fallon that managed to transform a Nick Hornby book about soccer into a moist love letter to the Red Sox.)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

I Only Consider You Scum Compared To Krusty

Hey, the writers' strike looks to be over. Now they can get back to working at House. Hopefully the first episode back begins with all of the new staff contracting lupus. Or they can just pretend that none of the story archs of the third season happened. I'm willing to go either way on this.

My favorite part of next season of television is going to be when the studios keep the same number of reality and game shows on the air that they had a few weeks ago. I predict that the studios will actively try to convince most of the public that the strike is still on-going, and they just happened to find a suitcase full of scripts for the handful of regular shows that are profitable.

Oh, and I'm developing a theory that David Mirkin is the secret genius of the Simpsons that no one seems to notice. I just don't think anyone cares about this breakthrough.

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I just died a little inside.


On the television, there was an ad for "Beaches" resort (which is just foolishness. We all know that Sandals is the only resort approved by Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin) that used a cover of Weezer's "Island in the Sun". Now, "Island in the Sun" isn't my favorite Weezer song (That would be "Across The Sea"), but that doesn't mean that I want Rivers and company to whore it out. I mean, if they needed money that badly, I would have bought the overpriced 2 disc version of the Blue Album, or a third copy of Pinkerton. (I bought one regular version of the album, and then a twenty dollar copy at their concert that had been signed by the band. I think I've bought the Green album twice too, actually- one American version, and one import version with an extra track.) This is not as bad as when "London Calling" was used by a British car company (Jaguar, maybe?) or when Dylan makes a bizarre appearance in an ad. And it's not as bad as I'll feel when Courtney Love goes ahead and sells the rights to "Lithium" to Pfizer (or whoever makes the drug lithium.) But still. I've put up with three straight albums from Weezer that were ultimately disappointing. I put up with two of the shittiest opening acts I've ever seen when I saw them tour (Ozma and Saves The Day, but James was subjected to the Get Up Kids when he saw them, so maybe I'm ahead on that count.) When Rivers publishes the book of largely terrible short stories that I think we all secretly know is coming, I'll probably buy it and pretend I care about stories set in Japan as much as he does. But I think I'm reaching the point that most Weezer fans probably reached six or seven years ago.

Oh, and this game is as addictive as Dane Cook is annoying:

Learn exactly how little you know about African geography, then feel slightly racist.

Monday, February 11, 2008

There Will Be Something or Other


Okay. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but I did see There Will Be Blood last week. And honestly, I was a little disappointed. The movie looks fantastic, and Daniel Day-Lewis gives an incredible performance, but the movie seems a little lost, especially in the second half. I liked it better than Punch Drunk Love, but not as much as Magnolia and Boogie Nights. The Filthy Critic's review of the movie consists entirely of saying "Rosebud". I hadn't really thought of that, but he's kind of really right. The progression of Day-Lewis's character is not dissimilar from Charles Foster Kane. No Country For Old Men is still my pick for the best film of 2007, narrowly beating out Juno and King of Kong.

The picture I stole from Deadspin. Apparently, it's not photoshopped. The Chinese have decided to race lions on horses. I realize that this explanation raises way more questions than it answers. I'm not sure which animal one should feel more sorry for. I do know that I've never seen an animal more clearly screaming the words "Oh Shit!" I'm also remembering Seth Rogen's remarks about donkey shows at the beginning of The Forty Year Old Virgin. "You think it's going to be awesome, but then you get there and it's a lion riding a horse. I felt bad for the lion. I felt bad for the horse."

I spent a lot of time this weekend making mix cds for people I haven't seen in five years or more. The movie Juno is partially to blame for this, somehow. Also to blame- my dislike of the music played on the radio, the fact that I'm significantly better at driving when I'm listening to music, Rob Sheffield's book Love Is A Mix-Tape and, in ways I can't begin to understand, the fifth season of Six Feet Under, which I was watching from the Netflix. There's a lot of Big Star on the cds I made. If the world was fair, there would be statues of Alex Chilton in at least three (3) American cities, and possibly cities named for him throughout the Mid-West.

I did not watch the Grammys last night (as you might guess). Actually, I did catch part of the Beatles tribute (which seemed to feature both the Cirque de Soleiel, which I misspelled) and the cast of Across the Universe (which I haven't seen) and I was pretty underwhelmed. I then saw Jason Bateman talking about the Foo Fighters (I wonder if their last album was any good. I don't wonder enough to actually buy the album though. There first three albums were pretty good.) I guess Kanye West and Amy Winehouse dominated the awards. (Although I don't understand how Amy Winehouse won "best new artist" for her SECOND album. I don't care if the first album wasn't released in the US. It still exists.) I like Kanye, although his last album didn't impress me (except for "Stronger" and "Can't Tell Me Nothing"). Amy Winehouse doesn't do a lot for me. I managed to avoid hearing the "Rehab" song until last month, and I don't really see why people are so interested in it. If I wanted to hear someone who sounds like Shirley Bassey, I would watch the opening credits of Goldfinger, or listen to that Propellerheads CD I'm not sure why I have. Springsteen won something for "Radio Nowhere", which is a song I really like. Barack Obama won a Grammy, which puts the score at:
Obama 1, Hendrix 0.

Make sense of that one.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Familiar Quotations

For the life of me, I can't remember how the subject came up. I was having a conversation, and somehow the topic became the AFI's list of the hundred greatest lines in the history of American cinema. The list itself is ridiculous (Dead Poets Society never belongs on any list of the greatest anythings. You can like that film, or you can like film as an artform. It is impossible to do both.) But that got me to thinking about the nature of quotes.

Like anyone who is utterly obsessed with art and culture, my conversations are often sprinkled with quotes from movies and songs and tv shows and books. (I blame Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino for this). But what makes a quote great? Is it something intrinsic to the quote? My favorite quote from the entire run of the Sopranos is simply "I thought black meant death". By itself, it is not profound, or even interesting. But within the context of the episode, it blows me away. It's from the episode in the third season when Tony's mom dies. (The episode title is the Russian saying that Livia's nurse offers as a toast when she drinks vodka with Tony and Carmela). A.J. is trying to do a close reading of the Robert Frost poem "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" ("I have promises to keep..."). Meadow tries to help her brother, and offers the interpretation the white snow represents death. A.J. responds by saying "I thought black meant death" (or maybe, "I thought black means death." it's not really important). Earlier in the episode, Tony had one of his panic attacks, apparently brought on by Meadow bringing a boy who is half African-American to the house to watch an old mob movie for a class. Within that context, the line is my favorite thing any Soprano ever said, but I'm not sure if anyone else felt the same way about it, or even noticed it.

Or, take the line from the Venture Bros. that I quote the most. "I met her on the Live Journal". The use of the word "the" before "Live Journal" is kind of funny, I guess, but that doesn't explain why it always makes me smile. The line is only great because of the way that Christopher McCulloch as the Monarch delivers it.

There's a Bob Dylan line I see quoted with a certain frequency (Nick Hornby's novel A Long Way Down is one example that immediately comes to mind) is "To live outside the law you must be honest". It's an interesting line, and one that seems to take on a greater life than the song it comes from- "Absolutely Sweet Marie", off of the Blonde on Blonde album. It's actually a line that is more powerful on its own than it is in the song itself-
"Well, six white horses that you did promise
Were fin'lly delivered down to the penitentiary
But to live outside the law, you must be honest
I know you always say that you agree"

I'm not actually going anywhere further with this. Just something stuck in my head.

Five songs that I'm obsessed with at the moment:
Radiohead- Lucky
Big Star- The Ballad of el Goodo
Tom Waits- Downtown Train
Bruce Springsteen- Magic
Buck 65- Pants on Fire

Thursday, February 7, 2008

My New Theory


Johnny Cash and Cal Ripken Jr. are the only two major figures of my lifetime who inspired near-universal respect.

I was having an argument with my step-father about whether or not the media has an agenda to portray conservatives as being inherently stupid. (It all began with his explanation as to why the Colbert Report isn't funny, but that's not the point.) And he argued that the media has intentionally presented conservatives as being stupid or ridiculous- he argued that Dan Quayle was unfairly humiliated for the potato thing, that Gerald Ford was unfairly presented as being overly clumsy, etc. I argued that the media often chooses to turn all people into caricatures, because it's much easier to do this, and that nearly every public figure can be easily reduced to one or two characteristics. To prove my point, here are the official jokes/references for several different public figures, starting with the presidents:

George W. Bush- Stupid, ill-spoken, "strategery", "Brownie", cocaine
Bill Clinton- didn't inhale, McDonald's, cigars and blue dresses, southern bumpkin
George Bush- broccoli, vomiting, "read my lips", "prudent", bar code scanners
Ronald Reagan- jelly beans, Bedtime For Bonzo, Ollie North, "he did say 'well' a lot"
Jimmy Carter- Billy Beer, sweaters, attacked by rabbit, "lust in my heart"
Gerald Ford- bumbling, W.I.N., pardoned Nixon,
Richard Nixon- Checkers, "not a crook', sweaty, paranoid, expletive deleted
Lyndon Johnson- holding the dog by its ears, (actually, LBJ is relatively difficult for this)
John F. Kennedy- Marilyn Monroe, father bought the election, mafia, ich bin ein jelly donut

You see what I mean? It works in other fields too. Like sports:
Michael Jordan- drafted Kwame Brown, gambling, Space Jam, refused to take stand on anything
Babe Ruth- fat, drunk, liked whores, man-child
O.J. Simpson- kills people, golfs instead of looking for real killer
Wayne Gretzky- engineered selfish trade to LA, wife likes gambling
Charles Barkley- fat, spat on little girl, never won ring, threw man through window at bar
Barry Bonds- asshole, used steroids, also never won ring, really big asshole
Mickey Mantle- raging alcoholic, always injured
Mike Tyson- funny voice, bit off ear, rapist, defeated by both Buster Douglas and Little Mac
Jeff Gordon- pretty boy, rich kid, one time a fundamentalist Christian girl told me that despite the fact that he cheated on his supermodel wife with another supermodel he was gay (although I don't really believe he is.)
Roger Clemens- steroids, threw piece of bat at Piazza, self-centered mercenary,
Tiger Woods- Calabanasian (or whatever the hell word Tiger made up to describe his ethnic background), um...always wins?, Fuzzy Zoeller said racist shit about him, not political enough,
Chipper Jones- Sermon on mount, born in manger, threw money-changers out of temple, died for mankind's sins,

Or Music:
Elvis Presley- pills, fat, Chuck D thinks he was a racist, jumpsuits, died on toilet
John Lennon- married Yoko Ono and thereby broke up Beatles, "bigger than Jesus"
Michael Jackson- plastic surgery, head on fire, has sex with children, elephant man skeleton
Jim Morrison- drugs, leather pants, pulling out his cock in Miami, lizard king, shitty poetry
Mike Watt- no one in the media has any idea who Mike Watt is.
Kurt Cobain- heroin, suicide, flannel, married Courtney Love, mumbling, gen-x spokesman
Keith Richards- heroin, pretty much every drug ever, how come he isn't dead yet, impossible to understand nearly anything he says,
Jimmy Page- Hobbits, alleged deals with satan, something involving groupies and some sort of fish, actually, pretty much anything in 'Hammer of the Gods'
Bono- thinks he's Jesus, massive ego, stupid sunglasses always being worn, too political
Liberace- gay, homosexual, the kind of man who has sex with men,
Frank Sinatra- mafia, Johnny Fontane in the Godfather, maybe nailed Nancy Sinatra, thug who could sing,
Britney Spears- stupid, doesn't wear underwear, married Kevin Federline, shaved head, walking cry for help,
Elton John- see "Liberace", ruined Candle in the Wind when Diana died (although it wasn't that great a song before),
Bob Dylan- mumbles lyrics,can't actually sing, looks like Vincent Price on good days now, terrible Christian music
Brian Wilson- completely insane, stayed in bed for a year, had giant sandbox installed in living room, never actually surfed
Prince- changed name to symbol, music became irritating to listen to and self-indulgent, reclusive, sex-obsessed, did Batman soundtrack
Bruce Springsteen- "Rambo of rock"/Born in the USA, rich man pretending to be poor at this point, dancing with Courtney Cox in that terrible video
Snoop Dogg- smokes weed constantly, everyone seems to have forgotten was tried for murder in the 1990s, hasn't put out a good album since his first one

I might be losing the thread a little at this point. And I also might be slightly wrong, but I feel like my general point about the media being more lazy than politically motivated remains solid. And yes, there is probably someone else besides Cash and Ripken. (Actually, you can do Cash too, but I don't know anyone who doesn't like Cash, so they don't.)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

A Few Quick Things



1- I saw Juno the other day. I really liked it. Best movie set (in part) in a high school since Rushmore. (Although Rushmore is better. But, of course, Rushmore is better than like 90 percent of all the other movies).

2- The Maharshi who the Beatles were briefly fascinated by died the other day. The best story I've heard about him was when John Lennon decided to leave the ashram, and the maharshi asked Lennon why. Lennon replied, "If you're so mystical, why don't you tell me" (or words to that effect.) Proof that Ringo was the secret smartest Beatle: he was the first to leave India and return to England.

3- I'm not surprised that Duke beat UNC. I'm just upset that what I was rooting for (the roof collapsing) once again failed to happen. But there's still the chance that when the teams play again Cameron Indoor Stadium's structural integrity is overestimated. (I'm only slightly kidding.)

4- I've begun reading Johnny Cash's second autobiography, and it's a much more interesting read than his first autobiography, which was written more as a testimonial tract than an honest life story (I mean, he mentioned God on nearly every page, but never bothered to tell one anecdote about Bob Dylan. This is an example of messed up priorities if I ever saw one.)

5- Which family would you rather be a part of- The Sopranos, or the Fisher family from Six Feet Under?

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Last Thoughts on Bob Knight (maybe)


I was listening to the podcast of Tony Kornheiser's radio show, something I do five times a week because it's generally really interesting and worthwhile. Kornheiser was talking to John Feinstein, who wrote A Season On The Brink. A Season on the Brink is a very good book about one season of Indiana basketball under the Knight regime (the 1985-86 season, if I recall correctly, which I'm pretty sure I do.). It is the starting point for any reasoned conversation about Knight, both his good qualities (brilliant mind for basketball, scrupulous honesty, high graduation rates) and his disgusting qualities (assaulting Puerto Rican police officers, hurling chairs onto the court during games against Purdue, making insensitive remarks about rape, a pattern of bullying that occasionally passed from merely verbally humiliating anyone who he didn't like the look of and became actual physical violence, particularly when asked "What's Up Knight?", being responsible for the inhuman presence currently coaching in Durham). During the conversation, Feinstein mentions, almost in passing, that Jim Valvano did not like Bob Knight. And at the moment, I felt that all of my negative feelings toward Knight were and are completely justified. And I wonder if I hadn't spent the entire Superbowl (with the exception of a pretty good Tom Petty show) reading Tim Peeler's very interesting, if poorly written, book about the 1983 National Championship team, would I have decided that Jim Valvano's opinion was basically gospel in this case.

More to the point- does anyone think that Memphis has a chance to be the first team to copy the success of Knight's 1975-76 Indiana team (the one that had Sean May's dad) and go completely undefeated? If so, would the novelty of this accomplishment balance the disparity between achieving a perfect season in the Big 10 (albeit with an easier NCAA tournament- less parity, fewer teams invited) as opposed to doing it in a Conference USA ranked 11th in conference RPI by Ken Pom's computers?

I know the picture isn't really appropriate. But wikipedia only had two pictures on the page about Knight, and I'm feeling far too lazy to even type "Bobby Knight" into google images.