You autograph photos of yourself using Robin Ventura’s head as a speedbag. And, they sell for $100 each on ebay.
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Jim James of My Morning Jacket has recorded some pared-down, reverbed-up covers of George Harrison songs under the name Yim Yames. I’ve included one here: “Long, Long, Long” from the White Album, and I appreciate the quiet, deferential treatment that Jim James gives his songs. Good stuff, “Yim.”
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Here’s a good story in the engineer’s notes from the original recording of “Long, Long, Long” on Monday, October 6, 1968:
There’s a sound near the end of the song [best heard on the right channel] which is a bottle of Blue Nun wine rattling away on the top of a Leslie speaker cabinet. It just happened. Paul hit a certain organ note and the bottle started vibrating. We thought it was so good that we set the mikes up and did it again. The Beatles always took advantage of accidents.
From the indispensable Beatles Recording Sessions by Mark Lewisohn.
Ever since I heard about Battle Royale, I’ve wanted to see the film ... Quentin Tarantino has called it “the best movie since 1992,” so it’s probably not surprising that it’s both extremely bloody and very darkly funny. The premise: Adults fear the rise of youth, and each year they put the most badly behaved kids on an island and force them to battle each other to the death.
Like Tarantino’s movies, the setup is quick and effective.
The humor darkens: A baby-voiced Japanese teen explains the rules of the game, including the fact that the collar worn by contestants goes “boom” under certain circumstances.
Each “player” gets their own weapon. As the plot unfolds, the “players” learn who has what, and figure out how to work with what they have.
Finally, there are liberal amounts of blood, and much killing. Mixed with the sardonic dialogue, it’s easy to see why Tarantino loves it so much.Despite the nihilistic milieu, the story focused on traditional stuff — loyalty, trust and friendship; and in the end, it was actually sort of sweet, much sweeter than bleak 60’s and 70’s films like McCabe & Mrs. Miller or The Wild Bunch. Worth seeing, just for that weird juxtaposition.
Journalist Mikal Gilmore discusses the research of his Rolling Stone cover article, “Why the Beatles Broke Up.”
What I found most troubling, most tragic, in all of this was two things: Both Lennon and Harrison (Lennon, clearly, in particular) did their best to sabotage the Beatles from mid-1968 onward, and when it all came irrevocably apart, I believe that both men regretted what they had wrought. I don’t think that John Lennon and George Harrison (but Lennon, again, in particular) truly meant the Beatles to end, even though they might not have known it in the moment. I think they meant to shift the balance of power, I think they meant for the Beatles to become, in a sense, a more casual form of collaboration, and I think they clearly intended to rein in Paul McCartney. But they overplayed their hand and — there’s no way around it — they treated McCartney shamefully during 1969, and unforgivably in the early months of 1970.
Excellent Deadspin post about the undisciplined and occasionally crooked world of NBA scorekeeping. It’s based on the story of a guy named Alex who once kept score for the Grizzlies, and it includes this gem about how Nick Van Exel (who wasn’t known for his passing, let’s say) racked up 23 assists one night:
A little more than a year later, with Nick Van Exel and the Lakers in town, Alex decided to act out. “I was sort of disgruntled,” he says. “I loved the game. I don’t want the numbers to be meaningless, and I felt they were becoming meaningless because of how stats were kept. So I decided, I’m gonna do this totally immature thing and see what happens. It was childish. The Lakers are in town. We’re gonna lose. Fuck it. He’s getting a shitload of assists.” If you were to watch the game today, you’d see some “comically bad assists.” Alex’s fingerprints are all over the box score. He gave Van Exel everything. “Van Exel would pass from the top of the three-point line to someone on the wing who’d hold the ball for five seconds, dribble, then make a move to the basket. Assist, Van Exel.”
Thomas McGuane takes a shot at describing what it’s like to land a tarpon:
The closest thing to a tarpon in the material world is the Steinway piano. The tarpon, of course, is a game fish that runs to extreme sizes, while the Steinway piano is merely an enormous musical instrument, largely wooden and manipulated by a series of keys. However, the tarpon when hooked and running reminds the angler of a piano sliding down a precipitous incline and while jumping makes cavities and explosions in the water not unlike a series of pianos falling from a great height. If the reader, then, can speculate in terms of pianos that herd and pursue mullet and are themselves shaped like exaggerated herrings, he will be a very long way toward seeing what kind of thing a tarpon is. Those who appreciate nature as we find her may rest in the knowledge that no amount of modification can substitute the man-made piano for the real thing — the tarpon. Where was I?
I came across this in The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, an absolutely killer collection edited by David Halberstam, but you can check it out in the SI Vault: “The Longest Silence,” by Thomas McGuane.
