...Tiger and Moral Responsibility...

I am not alone in saying that I like things that are compelling. I like stories that get people interested and get people going on different levels. Take a few examples from last night’s news. The story of the man who tried to light a cigarette on a plane is pretty easy – everyone feels the same way about it (for the most part.)

“He is an idiot, he is a moron, smokers are gross, can’t believe the overreaction, can’t blame them for the overreaction, next story please.” That one is simple. Then you get a story like the Gov. of VA saying we should honor Confederacy, which also is, for the most part, a simple story with simple reactions, even if you fall on different sides, “we should honor them, but honoring them doesn’t recognize slavery, it is insensitive, no it isn’t, it’s a part of our history, etc.”

They can spend hours talking and debating stories like these, and we all do and will, but I find myself looking at the story, quickly forming an opinion, and moving on mentally.

Now the Tiger Woods Nike commercial, which you can find so easily anywhere on the internet at this point, is really fascinating to me.

I know Tiger is a worldwide figure and everyone knew him before the scandal, but being unemployed last year and looking forward to Tiger Thursday’s more than any other day of the week last year really got me fascinated with him as an athlete, and I feel like to a certain extent I locked into him and his mentality.

Throughout that process, I saw Tiger not as a human – Tiger is a marketing vehicle primarily, that is his identity, beyond being a golfer and a champion, I see Tiger as a commodity, and he unfortunately is valued by all in that same way. Second to his financial worth is his astounding accomplishment on the golf course. It is funny that yesterday he fittingly won his 2009 Player of the Year award, which he obviously deserved.

Coming off of injury, his athleticism was challenged to a point that non-golfers and naysayers won’t, and don’t want to, understand. Golf may not be an aerobic sport, but to generate the power and precision he does, his muscles and muscle memory have to be as sharp as any athletes, doing any activity. To lose that edge through and injury, refind it, fine tune it, and win championship tourneys, isn’t easy.

So now we are in a place where we are pretty much “okay” with the scandals – there is nothing about him that we are surprised by – no text messages that we read or voicemails we hear that surprise us anymore. And that is because we honestly see him as a marketing tool and as an extension of a brand. He isn’t a human figure who is incredibly damaged, he is purely a commodity whose value is back on the rise, and Nike is taking full advantage of it.

Do I fault Nike? Not in the least. What is their alternative? They have shareholders, they are beholden to making money, and everyone who is involved in this game knows it. The personal responsibility in reaction to Nike and their use of Tiger is something that consumers, for one reason or another, cannot understand.

You, person out there who may or may not wear Nike Golf products, hit Nike balls, use Tiger clubs, you are the only person who can make any difference in this Tiger Woods world of golf. I would watch the Masters this weekend with or without Tiger, that is something I cannot control. Ratings will be high, but I am not going to punish myself because I think Tiger is a completely remarkable jackass.

But you, who buys a Nike golf ball or purchases a new Nike hybrid to hit off the fairway, you’re the only one who can react to their use of Tiger in commercials, and this new commercial is a wonderful example of how nobody alive, including Tiger himself, really is willing to take Tiger to task for what he did.

What am I condoning in terms of Tiger-shunning? Well, first, I think that the only real way to punish him is not by booing him from afar, or bashing him in a blog. The real way to punish him is to stop buying Gatorade, stop buying Tiger related Nike products, find out what will hurt him the most in the wallet and go after it.

Then again, are you responsible for caring? Not really. You don’t have to care, but I swear to God if I hear you talk about the new Tiger commercial and say anything negative about it – then I see you drinking Gatorade with Tiger on the label, I’ll sock your nose.

Sports are a very enjoyable disease – they are the part of the Behind the Music shows where it looked like fun to be part of the band that was hopelessly devoted to Cocaine, Groupies and 100mph Lifestyle. That is what we love about sports, wild, reckless love and unconditional fervor about our favorite teams and players.

But we have a responsibility, and it isn’t a serious one, but as sports fans we have to hold athletes accountable, if we really want them to be accountable.

My opinion of this new commercial is really that it is an extension of Tiger’s egotistical world in which he will learn nothing, change nothing, be the same person, only this time he’ll do it more quietly. He is a maniac. He is a sex-driven psychopath who can do something in sports I admire to a point where it is irrational. I want to be able to hit a golf ball like him more than anything I can think of. But I think he is a horror to mankind in terms of personality. He is everything bad about athletes, ego, and the cult of celebrity.

His dead father, who would have been horrified and embarrassed by the 2009/2010 Tiger, is forced onto his TV advertisements to sell nothing in particular but Tiger the brand – think about doing that to someone you really love? Imagine taking the worst thing you have ever done in your life, making that thing public, and taking an out of context voice over of your deceased Grandmother who was a saint, and making it sound like she not only forgives you for what you did, but wants you to get rich from it.

That is what Tiger is doing here.

So now it gets back to personal responsibility – a “what can I do about it” kind of reaction.

Well, I don’t really know aside from boycotting his products and specifically Nike Golf. If you aren’t a golfer, just be conscious of what he is promoting and staying away from it. Honestly, that is all you can do, it’s your choice. Would you normally watch the Masters? If the answer is no, then don’t watch this weekend. Would you buy Sports Illustrated in an airport if Tiger wasn’t going to be on the cover after winning this upcoming Sunday? Then don’t buy it now.

The perception of Tiger in the public is the real measurement of how accountable we want to hold him for his actions. Think about where you want to fall on this matrix, the choice is yours, but make sure the way you talk about Tiger over the next week, 3 months, 6 months, and forever until we see genuine change (far from this ad) is consistent with where you plot yourself on this graph. That's where you have to pick up the slack in Moral Responsibility b/c God knows Tiger isn't going to pull his weight.

...top 3 movies of every decade since the 30's...

This list isn't what I think a film major or film history expert would say - it is more what I would take with me if I could only take 3 movies with me. However, I must be clear that the '00's were painful. I couldn't decide on anything. I just choked, really.

one thing I can say is that I think Apocalypto and United 93 were 2 of the best movies of the decade but I don't want to take those with me b/c Gibson is a doofus and United 93 was really tough.

Also, the 80's will probably drive some people nuts.

30’s
1. Duck Soup
2. King Kong
3. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs

40’s
1. It’s a Wonderful Life
2. Casablanca
3. Yankee Doodle Dandy

50’s
1. Bridge on the River Kwai
2. Rear Window
3. Shane/All About Eve (tied!)

60’s
1. The Graduate
2. To Kill A Mockingbird
3. Psycho

70’s
1. Chinatown
2. Star Wars
3. Annie Hall

80’s
1. Tootsie
2. Batman
3. Joe v. the Volcano

90’s
1. Shawshank Redemption
2. The Sixth Sense
3. Lion King

00’s
1. Almost Famous
2. Mystic River
3. The Royal Tenenbaums

...The Hyatt...

Today there is a story on Boston.com about laid off Hyatt workers who are struggling to find new work in the face of these tough economic times. This is a story that you can find in any paper, in any city, and it is a story we’ll continue to see for a long time. People are going to be out of work for good and bad reasons, but mostly bad, for a long long time.

The Hyatt blames these tough economic times for letting go of the hotel workers – there is also no question that the manner these employees were let go is unscrupulous, embarrassing, and altogether sad. There is something about this story, as it keeps bubbling up to the surface, that really irks me.

The Globe, as well as other media outlets, seem to be listless on stories like these. I don’t know if it is political pressure, I don’t know if it is editors that are afraid to say what they want to say, or if it is a situation where journalism has been driven to a point where they feel that their role is to simply take a story, skew it in a direction depending on which way their paper leans, and leave it up to the reader to decipher the real message.

The Globe clearly positions the Hotel workers as victims, which, I think is not an arguable point. The Hyatt, and those who wear the fancy clothes and sit in the cubicles like the one I sit in now, continue to make money. They look at tough economic times and say, “what can I cut in order to maintain my Country Club way of life?”, and immigrant slightly-above minimum wage jobs are their answer. Again, that’s stupid, morally wrong, and offensive.

But what the Globe refuses to do is really take it to the next step. They drive up controversy, rattle the cages of readers, get people excited, then leave us to our own devices. In this city, in this state, people are all too comfortable having a “feeling”. They want to say and feel the morally correct things, but are rarely asked to actually act on that feeling.

What is the action we should be taking? Well, if you really do care, you can actually go out and be vocally angry at the Hyatt. Picket, chant, write, call, whatever it may take. But in the end, you really need to do what you can to take business away from the Hyatt, that is the task. But we all know that’s not something most of us will take our time to do. We will read the Globe, complain about their situation, and if we want to stay downtown or are advising friends on a nice spot, we’d be likely to say, “The Hyatt has a good location.”

The Globe in this case is only partially reporting news. What they are really doing is a creating a mood or a feeling – but not asking us to do anything about that. Is it journalism’s role to make us activists? No, but if you get to the nuts and bolts, what is written here isn’t journalism, it’s purely heart-tugging melodrama, with no real ask of action and no responsibility to any solution.

You want to hurt the Hyatt in Boston? You want to actually follow through with your feelings that these women were wronged in the manner in which they were let go? Your tools are at hyatt.com. Boycott the hotel, their partners, write letters to them.

But, contrary to popular opinion and 2010 journalistic bylaws, reading an article and feeling upset about is not action.

...Most Anticipated Albums...

Top 10 albums in my lifetime that I anticipated the release of:
10 and 9 are tied…and not that monumental:

Nine Lives by Aerosmith. I was excited about this one, a lot, but I didn’t think it’d be awesome. It wasn’t awesome, but I did go out and buy it almost as soon as it came out to be honest. And the other is Bed by Juliana Hatfield. The first album I could get access to after Only Everything. However, by this time, I had no illusions that Bed would be better than Only Everything, it just wasn’t possible. So I was excited, but not as excited as my top 8:

8. New Adventures in Hi-Fi (Fall, 1996) – REM
Monster was the biggest turnaround album in my life – I didn’t like it at first in the fall of ’94 and it grew, by the summer of ’95, to be a powerful force in my summer. I still listen to it a lot, it has to be in my top 10 all time album rotations outside of Oasis & The Beatles. I am pretty pumped about the place it ended up having in my music memory. There wait felt like forever between Monster and Hi-Fi, and that was partially because I had a lot of stuff going on in my life from 94 to 95 – powerful moments and memories on both ends of the happy/sad spectrum.

But when Hi-Fi was released, the choice of the Patti Smith collaboration as the single made me very curious what the album was going to be all about. Heading out to the Holyoke Mall with Trav in his Pathfinder is my most memorable anecdote from grabbing this album, and listening it to a few times immediately got me way, way into it. The fact that it was recorded live, around the country in various stadiums and sound checks, is one of the more unique aspects and certainly helped it stand out in my own mind.

This album, with the exception of #1 on my list, is the only one I think could rival or beat its predecessor. Hi-Fi is aging very well, much better than almost all of REM’s albums, with the possible exception of Monster, but even Out of Time and Automatic have some odd appearances. Bottom line, I was pumped for Hi-Fi.

7. OK Computer (Summer, 1997) – Radiohead
I didn’t really listen to The Bends a ton – at least not before OK Computer came out. But in terms of advancement from Album 2 to Album 3, I don’t think anyone can argue that this was a monumental leap. Paranoid Android came out and it was a great song, and it def. got me excited to look into buying the album…I have a hard time remembering what else jarred me into complete “I NEED THIS” status, but maybe it was friends who heard it and told me it would change the way I think about music and musicians – and it did.

If this was a list of “Top 5 albums that I discussed more than any other albums in my life” it would be #1, with pretty much zero discussion, aside from #1 on this list as a possible close runner up.

6. Fairweather Johnson (Spring, 1996) – Hootie & The Blowfish
Wow. I remember painting my house with my dad in 1994, looking him in the eye and saying this, with 100% certitude: “Hootie’s Cracked Rear View is the best album of all time.” I thought I actually knew that. I thought I had that perspective. No question it was a big one more for me. Song after song was a hit.

Soundtrack of a summer or two – an album that is interwoven into memories of my friendships and good times in high school and even college.

I bought Fairweather Johnson, their follow up album to Cracked Rear View, through BMG Music Service, so it took a while for it to get to me. I listened so gosh darned much, and I wrote a lot of emails to Marc about what it may have meant to us in terms of its place in our musical historical context. I saw Hootie that spring in Columbia, SC, their hometown in a big free concert with my college friend Kirk. I was underwhelmed by the album over time, but that doesn’t diminish how much I couldn’t wait to hear it. Honeyscrew was one of those “always repeat when it’s finished” songs.

5. Beatles Anthology V. 2 (Fall, 1996)
As someone who got into the Beatles in December of 1992, the Winter of 1995 was the first time I was brought into the realm of “something new by the Beatles is coming out, and you can be a part of it” fever. By 1995 I had gone through buying as much Beatles vinyl I could, purchasing cassettes of Beatles albums, then moving on to gathering the entire catalogue on CD.

The miniseries that aired in November and December of 1995 was something I remember sitting in my dorm room at Coker College watching, on my little white TV (which was such a fixture in my entire life from the first days I have memory until about 1996). The miniseries was released in conjunction with CD’s that came out as well. I purchased the 2 disc Volume 1 I think through a CD Columbia House type CD club, and it was good, but nothing earth shattering.

However, the version of “Real Love” that I first heard in the Anthology Volume 2 miniseries was something that I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. This was pre napster, pre lala, pre itunes, pre anything. This was a time in our lives when we had to actually want to hear something, wait for it, hope to hear it on a radio, and buy the album. It was pretty legendary, and honestly could be a big reason why music doesn’t excite me anymore – there is no more anticipation.

When this album was finally released in the Spring of 1996, I wanted it immediately but couldn’t afford it and that pissed me off. Early in the 1996 school year, I remember vividly walking down to the UMass bus stop to take the PVTA to the Hampshire Mall to buy the album at Media Play. It was that important to me. The trip probably took 2.5-3 hours total, but I wouldn’t be denied. “Real Love” is one of those songs that always drives me back to this memory, but also really makes me feel like I have an honest to goodness connection to what it must have felt like to be waiting for Sgt. Pepper, post Revolver.

4. X&Y (Summer, 2005)
My brain goes directly to a memory of a new cell phone I had purchased which could utilize songs as ringtones – something new, remarkable, and exciting. A Rush of Blood to the Head was such an awesome album, and Coldplay had knocked its first 2 albums out of the park. In retrospect, I don’t think X&Y is as good as either of the first 2 albums, but Speed of Sound is as good as any song Coldplay has written.

I found Speed of Sound in the available catalogue of ringtones I could purchase, and I did. I remember loving when my phone rang, b/c it gave me a taste of what the whole song would sound like, and when the single was released, I was able to download it. I don’t remember where I purchased X&Y, it may have been digitally by that point, but I do remember very vividly wanting that album more than any album since the next two I’ll talk about.

As a side note, Coldplay is the band that comes to mind for me as the most painful and sad reminder that I don’t enjoy new music. They were the last “new” band that I connected with, felt moved by their music, and after listening to an album felt like they had more to offer. X&Y was the end of that road, and I hope not forever for me.

3. Be Here Now (Summer, 1997)
Without question, Oasis’ What’s The Story Morning Glory was THE album for me, in my life. THE album. I will always connect this album with a very specific January of ’96 night – home from Coker College, enjoying my time in the house on Green Street, in our room we called the Parlor, and playing this album over & over again. Every single song on Morning Glory connected to me – it was like the album was one of those monsters in Avatar that you jam your ponytail into. Once I was locked in, I was locked in.

I got a full 1.5 years out of this album before any hint of “maybe I’ve heard that song enough” started to pour in. D’You Know What I Mean was the first single, and it was a pretty big anthem for Oasis, and it led nicely into my anticipation of this album. I purchased this either 1 day or 2 days before a trip to Seattle with Trav, and this album was completely my soundtrack. I listened to it on my discman on the plane, and a few times in my parents house in Seattle.

The album itself was something I put on a very high pedestal, and a few of the songs like All Around the World, and Stand By Me are really terrific Oasis songs. They are songs my kids won’t understand or like, and I don’t really care. But the anticipation for this album was really overpowering. They clearly went downhill during and after this album, and the band wasn’t the same in my head or my heart – or on the charts – but they were & are the most important band to me in my lifetime.

2. HIStory (Summer, 1995) – Michael Jackson
I liked Black & White a lot. A LOT. I listened to that album A LOT. A LOT. I listened to it when it got too dark to play basketball with Neil Lansing, and we totally jammed out to it, as much as a few dorks could.

But as HIStory approached, I started to get monumentally fired up. I knew it would be an album that really mattered to me and it was. I wanted this album so badly that during my 40 minute lunch break I sprinted out of my job at MIJA working on an assembly line, drove the 10 minutes to the mall to pick up the CDs, then another 10 minutes back to work, during which I had no time or ability to actually listen to. I just wanted to hold the thing in my hands and know it was my own.

There were 3 or 4 songs on this that completely and totally were sealed into my “this is awesome” vault when I hear them on the radio or when they come up on my iPod’s shuffle setting. This album led to amazing things like Dance Parties and the enhancement of Michael as a larger than life figure, but for the purpose of this list, the single-day dedication I had to going out and getting this album as soon as possible really vaults it into my pantheon of most anticipated.

1. Mellon Collie & The Inifinite Sadness (Fall, 1995) – The Smashing Pumpkins
This appropriately titled album was a behemoth. A fixture for myself and Greg during our years at UMass together, and beyond. Every once in a while we still exchange notes about some of these songs, and how big they were. If you were friends with me during this time, it was a given that you had this album. This album is noteworthy in terms of anticipation in 3 parts:
a) Siamese Dream, the predecessor to Mellon Collie, set the bar so unreasonably high for SP, that I couldn’t even imagine an album living up to that potential.
b) I was living in Hartsville, SC the day this album came out, and I was missing all of my friends a lot. A huge amount. No band tied me together with my best friends like The Smashing Pumpkins did. I went with 2 of my friends, one of which was kicked out of school for too much drug use, the other is someone I still keep in touch with, but we drove to the Florence Mall and I bought this double disc set at BYE or one of those chains, maybe Strawberries. On the ride home, it was immediately a huge, huge pleasant surprise.
c) Going back to point (a), this album can easily be argued was better than the one before it. The anticipation I felt for it really was overwhelmed by the actual enjoyment I had listening to it. It is a remarkable album and a remarkable achievement, I think.

Something has to click for me in order for me to be excited about any album release, I don’t know what it will be, but I literally cannot imagine this happening again my life. I know it was a function of my age, and most of these albums fall within the same few year span, but this is just how it is.