Q1 Mixtape: In Which Damn Bitch My Feet Hurt

Weird couple of months for music ... major releases ranged from surprising (Bright Eyes) to abysmal (STROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKES, ugh), with some weird outsiders pushing forward (looking directly at your weird ass, Nicolas Jaar). All in all, it makes for probably the most disjointed mixtape since this project started - still, it's also likely the highest-quality. Go and buy some albums, kids, amazing things are happening.

And, if you haven't yet, recognize that Odd Future is taking over the fucking planet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIOtLeJNrRU
Free Earl, indeed.

-"Yonkers," Tyler the Creator
-"Damn Bitch My Feet Hurt," Mz. Luscious
-"Bury Us Alive," Starfucker
-"Civilian," Wye Oak
-"All Die Young," Smith Westerns
-"Mirror," Burial/Four Tet/Thom Yorke
-"I Heart California," Admiral Radley
-"Blackberry Hype," Maxwell D
-"Invented You Now," the Hood Internet
-"Measurements," James Blake
-"Ungirthed," Purity Ring
-"Raid," Pusha T w/ 50 Cent
-"Will Do (XXXChange Mix)," TV on the Radio
-"Raw Spectacle," Miracle Fortress
-"Damn These Vampires," the Mountain Goats
-"Seafarer," Tennis
-"Suicide Demo for Kara Walker," Destroyer
-"Space is Only Noise if You Can See," Nicolas Jaar
-"Shell Games", Bright Eyes

Sherman Marched to the Sea, We Marched into a Dirty Garage

11:15am

So it begins ... 3 of the 4 TVs are set up without trouble (the fourth exists, but we have no way to go VGA -> coax as of yet ... this is the definition of first-world problem). Fuck it, I'm sure TruTV.com will suffice.

I have Clemson early, and now kind of like Butler since ODU at -2.5 seems about 2pts too many. More on this another time, after beers.

There's meat in the smoker and homoerotic jokes about the meat in the hopper ... also, apparently Sam's Club orange juice does not need to be refrigerated. This was a surprise to me.

The crew so far:

-Troy: Poops too much, text-message ring tone is the Super Mario power-up noise, we had to turn on a fan onto him already. Expert meat-smoker, also insert own joke here.

-Tony: Loves cheese, walks on the beach, amateur pornography and the photography of Ansel Adams. Plays the banker in Monopoly, yet resists the urge to cheat. Just an all-around OK guy.

-Jared: Already bet his first buy-in for the Points Pool, thus being the first person to rebuy before noon on day 1. Stopped and played Golden Tee at 8am at the inimitable Johnny's Hall of Fame.

-Noonan: Canceled an entire day of SUPER-IMPORTANT insurance meetings in Minneapolis to drive down and get drunk. Hopefully has a job on Monday, but either way will have a story.

-Brent: it's his house. He's boycotting the Laptop Craze - there are literally four laptops and an iPad among us. Brent is using an abacus to select his picks, which is weird because he hates the Chinese.

-Justin: Loves betting the under, which is the worst watching experience in the history of basketball, to the extent that it's now referred to as "taking the pussy" (versus "taking the balls"). Somehow, "taking the balls" is better. No comment.

-RC: Let me tell you 'bout the Hurricane. The man the authorities came to blame, for something he never even done.

The Q4 Mixtape - The Assassination of Bad Lil Wayne by the Coward Bangladesh

Download HERE!

(Year-end Best-ofs to come tomorrow-ish?)

1 - Girl Talk - "Triple Double" (download album at www.illegal-art.net/allday - legal!)
2 - Lil Wayne ft. Cory Gunz, "6' 7'"
3 - Shit Robot - "I Found Love (TBD Remix)"
4 - K-Os - "I Wish I Could Believe"
5 - Kanyeeeezeeee - "Lost in the World (ft Bon Iver)"
6 - Robyn - "Dancing on My Own"
7 - Deerhunter - "Coronado"
8 - Tennis - "Marathon"
9 - Ty Segall - "Girlfriend"
10 - Ye - "The Joy (ft Pete Rock and etc)"
11 - Diamond Rings - "You and Me"
12 - Perfume Genius - "Mr. Peterson"
13 - Vampire Weekend - "California English Pt 2"
14 - Girl Unit - "Wut"
15 - Jai Paul - "BTSTU"
16 - Crystal Castles ft. Robert Smith - "Not In Love"
17 - Drake - "Fireworks (Deadboy Slo Mo House Mix)"
18 - Destroyer - "Chinatown"
19 - Fabolous - "You Be Killin Em"
20 - Tonetta - "My Bro" (UNREAL)

The Q3 Mixtape: RIP Randy Moss (and, Hopefully, Jason Varitek)

It's about that time again . . . this one's slightly more hip hop-heavy than usual because, well, it was kind of a shitty quarter for musics. At least for singles, anyway. Other than the Kanyeezy, that is- he's still ridiculous. What a beating - everything he's done is outrageously good. Download here!

-Cee-lo Green, "Fuck You"
-The-Dream, "Love King"
-Cali Swag District, "Teach Me How To Dougie"
-The Thermals, "I Don't Believe You"
-The Gaslight Anthem, "Bring It On"
-Das Racist, "hahahahaha jk"
-Atmosphere, "The Best Day"
-Curren$sy ft. Mikey Rocks, "The Hangover"
-How to Dress Well ft. Yuksel Arslan, "Decisions"
-The Cool Kids, "Gettin' Flicked"
-Arcade Fire, "Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)"
-Chromeo ft. Ezra Koenig, "I Could Be Wrong"
-Jukebox the Ghost, "Half-Crazy"
-Kanyeeze ft. everybody, "Monster" (Really, Nicki Minaj's entire freakout deserves call-out - INCREDIBLE)
-Les Savy Fav, "Sleepless in Silverlake (Acoustic)"
-Menomena, "TAOS"
-Robyn ft. Snoop Dogg, "U Should Know Better"
-Rusko ft. Gucci Mane, "Got Da Groove"
-Superchunk, "Crossed Wires"
-Wavves, "Idiot"
-Mark Ronson ft. Q-Tip, "Bang Bang Bang"

30:30 ... 4 Days in October Impresions

It's a frigging overload. Some observations:

-Millar calling out CHB and telling him he'd start G7 at 2B and bat 9th was unreal - "Then you can take back that 'frauds' comment" was beautiful.

-Marriotti's stupid ass saying the Sox were done at every opportunity was wonderful. That wife-beating douche should spend his 40 days of community service shining the 04 trophy and learning how to do some sort of blue-collar profession so the world is never submitted to his shit again.

-The different versions of how Pedro went into the 7th game between Tito and Petey were the least surprising thing ever.

-Schilling's leg looked like the science experiment it was. Unfathomable. He also looked drunk in his interviews, but I'm OK with that.

-Bernie's noodle arm in center played SUCH a huge role, that I'm stunned I didn't recall in hindsight. What a great baseball player (and, reportedly, guy), but that guy wouldn't play CF on our slowpitch team. THROW BETTER YOU DOUCHE.

-Tony Clark's ground-rule double is the single luckiest thing that ever happened. I'm pretty sure ever.

-When you were a kid, you always just knew your heroes would come through, regardless of the situation - whether it was Superman, your dad, some guy in an apocryphal story, or whatever. For a long time, David Ortiz was that guy - you just couldn't imagine he wouldn't rip, wouldn't lose one with the game on the line, wouldn't come through. In hindsight, it's just so, so sick. He was Superman, your dad and Paul Bunyan all rolled into one fat dork who crushed fastballs.

-Calling Schilling "Old Man River" on the plane (and Pokey getting down) was just amazing - that's f-ing Pokey Reese! SERIOUSLY!

-I'm sure others won't get it - but it was one of the best hours I've seen on TV. I couldn't be happier.

<3 RC

In which people are still people, for better or for worse . . .

It is absolutely Amazing - capital-A "Amazing," and not the banal offhand throw-away lower-case "amazing" tossed off by teenagers and people with nothing to say - Amazing the lengths to which guys will go to cheat at something like slow-pitch softball.

OK - the phenomenon isn't unique to weekend warriors on the softball fields. Guys (and girls) will cheat at literally anything, whether or not there is a tangible reward for success at the end. I'm pretty sure everyone knows this - but still, each and every example shocks me even further, each and every time.

I recently sold a relatively-rare bat online - one whose rarity and desirability are almost entirely driven by teenage girls who use it for high school and AAU/travel ball. This means the high price is actually driven by . . . dad, the guy who requires this specific rare bat to get His Dear Daughter (which is terminology actually used - kill me) the base hits and bombs needed to get a non-scholarship to a third-tier D-1 program. A used, 3-year-old bat goes for more than MSRP when it was new, simply because the belief exists that this bat is magic - this bat will put the individual over the top.

Sure, I'm an asshole for exploiting that system for my own profit (give or take 300% profit, if we practice full disclosure) - but the real inanity came in the offers I received for it. Multiple people offered me "shaved" or otherwise altered bats - bats for beer-league slow pitch that have had material removed from the inside to attempt to illegally increase performance. The smallest-midget theory is now being ass-raped by Godwin's law, resulting in this surreal place where guys will cheat to win a t-shirt.

My lovely girlfriend played in an all-woman's tournament last weekend. There, one of her teammates had an illegal bat tagged by the poor schlub of a woman working the registration desk. She knew the bat wasn't approved for play. She smiled and attempted to hit it - and eventually stopped not out of fear of being caught and being sanctioned, but instead because the swing weight was too heavy.

Sure, I'm cherry-picking from softball - 12 year old kids exploit map hacks and glitches to run up retarded scores in Modern Warfare 2 on the Playstation, and I can't tell you how many cockfaced teens have quit online games of Madden on me simply because I won. It's part of human nature, sadly - but these events, all in succession, really drive home just how ridiculous people can be. Amazing. Big A.