This Column Is MSN Sports' Sloppy Seconds

I'm not about talking shit. I never have been and I never will be. I personally think that it looks poor upon the person speaking it and it can create hypocrisy if such "shit" ends up backfiring. Nobody likes backfiring shit. It's way too messy.

Well, such is the situation that ex-Dallas Stars' player Sean Avery finds himself in. 

In short, for those who do not know, Sean Avery finds himself without a team and a hefty fine from the NHL for trash-talking Calgary Flames's player Dion Phaneuf when he said that Phaneuf was getting his "sloppy seconds" by dating film starlett, Elisha Cuthbert. By calling a public press conference to throw out such low-ball comments, Avery effectively sealed his fate on the NHL's unemployed list and burned any rickety rope bridges that he still had with anyone in the league. Avery has been known to act-out in the past, and this latest stunt cost him his job.

Was such a press conference sleezy? You bet your balls it was. Should Phaneuf and Cuthbert feel offended by such comments? Yeah. Should Avery lose his job, get mega-fined by the NHL, and have every player, coach, and water boy look at him like a lepper in ancient Jerusalem? No, no, and no.

It's an understatement to say that this entire situation was blown out of whack. It's an understatement to also say that Sean Avery is simply a misunderstood hockey player, but I digress. I feel as if I am a minority here when I say that Avery should not have been fined nor should he have been kicked off his team. Both penalties are preposterous consequences for what I like to refer as "guy talk."

Look, what Avery said was pretty low, but can any guy honestly say that he has not said something publicly to a group of people along those same lines? If you can, then you're either a lying sack of crap or you're not human.

Unless you're dating the Virgin Mary herself, every guy is getting some other guy's sloppy seconds on some girl. It's a harsh and blunt way of stating that someone is receiving sex, a relationship, even a kiss from a girl who has already been with another guy, but it is nothing new to the worlds of relationships and humanity. 

Guys talk this way and I'm sure that many girls have similar conversations with their close girl friends. People, it's normal. Go ahead and explain your escapades or talk lowly about your ex's new d-bag boyfriend. It's alright. 

Jealousy is human. Trash talking is human. Disappointment at failed relationships is human. Perfection is not human and we should not hold people--even celebrities or athletes--to such standards, no matter how big of a twat-waffle he or she sounds. Shit happens, fuck-ups happen. Such is life.

Now I'm going to go get sloppy seconds on someone's quesadilla downstairs. Oops, probably shouldn't have published that.

Ryan Joseph: A Collection

I'm a firm believer in not writing an article--or pretty much anything--without having a substantial amount of your time, energy, emotion, and focus behind the desired product. Strong emotions--whether they are subjective or objective at final print--fuel all writers. I hate having to write on a gas tank half-empty and I hate looking half-assed.

So as such, I have nothing new to write today. Suck it up. 

However, for those of you who read my blog or have just stumbled across my link in my Facebook statuses because you have nothing better to do--you creepers--I have included articles from my senior year of high school published in Dublin Jerome High School's student magazine, The Verve. Included are various "Ryan's Rockin' Records" (I DID NOT choose the ridiculous column name) and other editorials from the '07-'08 school year. 

Love 'em, hate 'em, feel a sort of apathy or ambivalence towards them, I don't give a shit. I'm okay with being umimpressive. I sleep better.

(In order to view each article, click on a picture to enlarge each page)

College Football's Great European Awakening

I love the anarchy that occurs in the BCS year in and year out. It makes me so happy that something so dysfunctional continues to exist--and makes money. There's more drama in a college football season than on an entire season of "The Hills"--and that's saying something. The cries for a playoff in NCAA Division I football (or the "FBS" as it is referred to now) continue to pile-up from every yuppy blogger and hubristic sports journalist to even our own president-elect. The proposal to scrap the current bowl system in favor of an eight team play-off seems simple enough, right? A way to fairly determine college football's rightful champion of champions?

I say to hell with that idea. Let's really light this whole bag of shit on fire. Let's set up college football based on a ten-tiered league designed after my professional sports league of choice, the Barclays English Premier League, professional soccer's best league. 

Instead of using the polls to determine whom our eight team playoff will consist of, let's make instead ten divisions within the FBS of twelve teams. There will be no championships, the only games that matter are the regular season games that each team plays against the eleven other teams in its own division. If you finish in 11th or 12th place, you are relegated (or, in American terms, dropped) to the division below you. The team with the best record at the end of the day wins the championship in the top division. Teams finishing in first and second place in the lower divisions are then promoted to the division above them. The goal is to fight and stay in the top division or to work one's program up to that plateau. 

Scrap the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, SEC, Pac-10, Big 12 and whatever other mid-major conference consists within the current FBS realm. These divisions will be national, giving premier match-ups to the college football fan week in and week out.

For instance, a weekend could include such games in the top division like Georgia-USC, Ohio State-Texas, and Oklahoma-Florida. This is a college football fan's wet dream, the black tar heroin to the college football junkie. Weak non-conference schedules? That bullshit excuse can finally be thrown out.

What about money? What about rivalries? What about the American way of blowing things out of proportion and then making money off it?

I'm sorry to break it to you, folks, but the current system just isn't cutting it. A playoff would not solve anything either. And money can be made just as easily by promoting such high-profile match-ups. Hell, sell advertising rights on the damn jerseys. The NCAA does just about everything else now to blur the line between miserly capitalism and student athletics. 

And who needs a rivalry when you're fighting for survival every week? The drama of a rivalry is injected for each and every game, multiplied by ten.

The Europeans have it right when they design every league after a table system, letting the regular season determine the champion. It rewards the team that plays the best when it matters the most: the regular season.

Book of Chuck

Here's a quick hypertext link binge for all who enjoy basking in what I call the "Book of Chuck."

Does Chuck Klosterman's Opinion Really Matter?

Thom Yorke: Music-Industry Prophet?

A Brief History of the 21st Century

Enjoy.

All of these stories have been written by Chuck Klosterman and have appeared in various issues of Esquire.

Everything In Its Right Place

It's very, very weird how time just seems to fly by. It's a cliché saying, but it's unbelievably true. Just a second ago, it felt like I was just getting down to Athens, and now, within the next three weeks, I'll be leaving for a month and a half to aimlessly and methodically work my life away in my hometown. 

I think in the two months that I've been down here for my freshman quarter in Athens, I have written two papers for a grand total of two and a half pages (and all in Spanish). While I'm not necessarily celebrating my lack of writing on subjects that I'll more than likely forget, I really came into college thinking that I'd develop carpel tunnel by mid-October. As of November 2nd, my right hand is still working.

However, during my blog posts, I think I've spent three-fourths of my writing time listening to Radiohead in order to inspire each and every one of my posts. I don't know why I choose listening to Radiohead over, say, Jay-Z to write these posts (or any writing for that matter), but I feel there is something inherently embedded in Radiohead's work that translates to intellectual writing. It's sort of like Red Bull for the brain.

For most, it's hard to study--albeit write--while listening to music, but Radiohead possess this ethereal ability to tap into the deepest cavities of my writing lobe. Maybe it's the fact that Kid A listens like a concept album about human cloning and materialism, or OK Computer arouses thoughts of our society being completely run by computers. "Fitter, Happier" creeps me the hell out, but I'm sure that was Thom Yorke and co.'s intended idea about living, breathing technology.

For me, the best music isn't necessarily the music that gets you pumped up nor makes you mindlessly want to dance around and watch "The Hills" incessantly; the best music has substance, it inspires thoughts, ideas, and grandeur. Music with a message takes the medium to its desired heights: as a way of communicating ingenious ideas.

Chuck Klosterman has already hit on this, but I wanted to further it. Radiohead possess the aforementioned quality. They sound like an audible George Orwell novel (Hail to the Thief essentially is) and they help me to create my most studious work. 

As the end of "The Tourist" begins to unwind, I think it would be apt to stop. Because when Thom Yorke says, "idiot, slow down, slow down," I probably should. 

Here are some pictures from the Kooks concert on the 14th of October that actually fit onto the page. Thanks to Kelsey Fiehrer for the taking these pictures at Newport Music Hall.

Although I had a complete meltdown during my last blog entry over the music scene--or the apparent lack of a music scene--in Athens, I'm very happy to have done some more in-depth research to find two pretty good bands from my university's hometown. 

Wheels On Fire and Papadosio all give Athens an alternative to the cliché, Papa Roach metal that I found littering the "Athens, Ohio" Myspace Music pages. Thank God for these Ohio University luminaries.

Wheels On Fire is a garage rock, up-tempo band that sounds like a country-fused version of the Thermals, a sound befitting of the Appalachian ruggedness of Athens. "Too Stubborn to Fold" is a dizzying, progressive jam that sounds like an ode to Chuck Berry.

Papadosio combines elements of psychadelia and electronica to make a distant, relaxing concoction of synthesizer and pedals. "By the Light of the Stars" uses hollow drumming, trippy vocals, and a lethargic sound that sounds almost as if syrup is dripping off of the keyboards lacing this track. 

Papadosio's EP, By the Light of the Stars, can be downloaded for free off of the band's website (www.papadosio.com) and all of Wheels On Fire's tracks can be purchased for $0.99 off of their myspace page (www.myspace.com/wheeelsonfire).

I think that I'm going to go back on my original intentions for creating this blog. As I've come to explore the Athens music scene, I've come to realize that the majority of the bands are either thrash-hardcore rip-offs that sound like Papa Roach B-sides, or are indie-folk rock wannabes that really have no signature, recognizable sound. I'm disappointed so far to say the least. However, I haven't completely given up on the scene here, and I'm sure that there are going to be some great bands sweeping through here at some point. But that day still has yet to come.

For the time being, I'll humor myself (since I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who reads my own work consistently, if that's possible) by making this blog a continuation of my work on my high school publication, The Verve. That ranges from artist/album reviews and recommendations from my own selection of shitty music to my critique of our society as it relates to pop-culture. Although I'm still not doing much reporting like I should be if I want to land a spot on a publication down here, I'll at least keep my material fresh and let my ideas/opinions wander to whatever consenting/dissenting ears will listen. I am essentially a Chuck Klosterman knock-off (probably on the same knock-off level as those bands from Athens). But it's ok. I'll make it juicy for ya.

My reason for getting on this afternoon and writing was the subject of a blog that I read on Yahoo. It was a response to Vibe's current issue about the 64 greatest rappers and how the issue focused more closely on the greatest rappers that have recently released an album, as compared to the greatest of all time. To me, focusing on rappers that are only relevant now essentially defeats the point of one of those adverbial, "greatest" lists. I share the same views as the author when he points out that including rappers such as Soulja Boy Tell 'Em and Flo Rida, but not Rakim or Chuck D is ludicrous (wow, that actually turned out to be kind of a pun, considering that "Ludacris" was included in Vibe's list). 

Now, I might be white, I might be from an upper middle-class suburb, and I wear a good amount of Ralph Lauren Polo, but even with my qualifications (well actually, I think that I am pretty well qualified then to critique on rap music) such a list is ludicrous and way off the mark, at least in terms of the match-ups and participants. Eminem and Jay-Z--the winner and runner-up, respectively--are legitimate and worthy finalists, but the rest of the list seems shoddy and does resemble a list created only for the past few years. 

With that being said, maybe clarification on Vibe's part about what kind of "greatest" list this is would have been better to set it apart. And even if this list only consists of rappers from this decade, Vibe could have done a better job picking better MCs to include as compared to Soulja Boy and Flo Rida. Leaving out someone like Papoose or Zion I while putting in "rappers" whose songs only gain popularity through some crappy, mass-produced dance movie is inexcusable. Think your list through next time, Vibe. That way you won't have some 18-year old journalism student having to comment on its absurdity on his blog.

Also, Jack's Mannequin and Kings of Leon both have new records out. From what I've heard so far (JM's "The Resolution" & "Annie Get Your Telescope" and KOL's "Sex On Fire"), both albums should provide both sets of fans with something to go spend their hard-earned dough on. Help our economy out right!

You can check either bands' singles at their respective Myspace websites:

www.myspace.com/jacksmannequin

www.myspace.com/kingsofleon

There's so many necessities that a college student needs. Food, clothes, shelter, Facebook and books are all givens. Based on the person, there could be a multitude of various other items that one needs in order to sleep, eat, shit, and function during the day.

I guess you could throw television viewing in there as one of those necessities. It's a downtime activity--a hobby--a definite get-a-way from the skull numbing and sterilizing effects of hours of homework and studying. It's a well documented fact that hours of The Office and Sportscenter lead to higher test scores--and procrastinating. But more often than not higher test scores.

So while enjoying my break from my constant neutering of Journalism 133A and Spanish 213 homework, I flipped between channels and eventually settled on Family Guy. And to be honest, I just couldn't watch it. Which I find surprising because I'm going to make a guesstimate and assume that about 76.4% of Family Guy's audience is probably made up of 18-24 year old males from typically suburban communities (and I can only assume that the other 23.6% of Family Guy's viewing population consists of lepers, Marxists, and Cuban defects).

Granted, there have been a few episodes of Family Guy where I have caught myself emitting that girlish, incessant giggle that I possess, but those have been few and far between. But there's something about Family Guy that somehow doesn't translate to me. How is that every other freshman guy I know can quote any random Peter Griffin tangent present in any episode, yet I can't?

While this definitely isn't a case of one person having a better sense of humor than another, or even a case of one person being better than another,  it just seems like American young adults--or maybe the American population in general--just don't have the attention span to watch something that's coherent and uniform in nature; a show that actually has a PLOT behind it.

South Park is equally as crude and liked as Family Guy by twenty-somethings and pimple covered teens, yet the two shows couldn't be more opposite. Family Guy is almost a slapstick show, in so much as it moves from bit to bit, satirizing every bit of American pop-culture and life. The actual story of the episode takes a backseat to whatever random event occurs after a character brings up some odd, perverse, anecdotal allusion (example: the five minute fight Peter had with a chicken in the episode, "Death Is a Bitch"). 

South Park is equally as scathingly satirizing in its writing, but all of the satirization takes place around and in support of the main theme of the story. You can laugh as much as you want at the episode of South Park where Cartman is empowered by Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, to exterminate the Jews, but all the criticism of society, all the humor within the episode is conducive to the plot. Everything is tied together into one little ball of filth and laughs.

 But it still remains a mystery to me how South Park is even rivaled by a show like Family Guy, and how people can still sit and watch a show that would cause one to have a seizure from jumping around so much. 

But maybe it's something that is the result of how our society is rapidly changing, and how the media and entertainment no longer rewards the tangible and thought-out, but the quick and abbreviated. Newspaper readership is down in the United States in Europe, quickly being replaced by video, and entertainment seeks money by producing content merely to be "that next big hit." Family Guy is merely following suit here. It's only exacerbating the fact that we cannot merely sit and read a book or newspaper, or even take in anything with a bit of logic and organization. We are being spoon-fed bits and pieces of information until we vomit up money and our attention spans.

However, I'm definitely being patronizing here, and I probably shouldn't be. The world's just a changin' and...oh, look, a bird!

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So I totally forgot to put this up yesterday, but here's my artist for this past week...

I've always been wary of bands/artists containing already-made celebrities. Now while both Johnny Depp and Keanu Reeves are members of decent bands for the occasional get together, we all know how spectacularly female tabloid fodder Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan's pop-albums bombed. Sort of like a car stuck in the middle of a train track while a train roars dangerously nearby, you can kind of tell how well a celeb known for something else other than music is going to fare. It's bad, and you want to go get help, yet at the same time, it's just so flamboyantly disastrous that you can't look away.

I'd like to thank my good friend Lucas for suggesting this act to me, and it totally changed my view on all bands containing an A-lister (or any "lister" for that matter).

Jason Schwartzman's--the lovable antagonist pariah in "I Heart Huckabees"--solo project, Coconut Records, comes packaged as a mellow West Coast breeze, sounding like a mix between the Shins, the Beach Boys, and Rooney. Schwartzman incorporates acoustic guitars, easy on the ears drumming, and even some fast-paced guitar solos to make that trip down the Pacific Coast Highway all the more tangible for people this side of Los Angeles. 

"West Coast" off of Coconut Records' debut, Nighttiming, fuses a bouncy, pop sounding keyboard and synth with a deaf, pitsicatto piano to build a likable, if not anthemic chorus to end the song. Featured on the season four soundtrack to the hit show The O.C., Schwartzman longs for his crush in lyrics like, "and I miss you/I'm goin' back home to the West Coast/I wish you would've put yourself in my suitcase/I love you."

"Nighttiming" starts with a funky bass intro, reminiscent of fellow Californian musical legend Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, and then bursts into an early 80s techno, synth freak fest. Sounding like a Hello Goodbye dance-punk jam, Schwartzman flows seemlessly using the chorus, "yeah you've been nighttiming, baby, uh-huh" to get the listener up and moving. Like the subtle, escalating caffeine high that you get by drinking a Pepsi, "Nighttiming" concocts as potent--and addicting--of an effect.

Schwartzman has created a flowing, Californian pop-music bear with his debut album, one that's just as catchy the first time as it is the fiftieth time--and I think I'm approaching that listening milestone quickly. 

This weekend's been great with the exception of OSU's latest cop-out in a big game. I'll leave my loathing there concerning my state's beloved--although I don't know how appropriate that title is now--Buckeyes. I think I'll just forget about it, because stewing over it will just cause my already tattered expectations to be trampled more. Thanks for the douse of piss you coated my heart with, Buckeyes!

Anyways, I got into a very in depth conversation today with a few of my other peers during a very windy hookah session outside of a friend's dorm over musical preferences and the state of mainstream music as we know it today. For followers of my columns the past few years at Dublin Jerome, I would frequently touch on the apparent lack of--for lack of better words--heart that many musicians put into their music nowadays. And that might be a pretty quick conclusion to jump to. But after talking it over with my fellow hookah-mates, my opinion seems to be one that's commonly shared--at least to six other 18 year old O.U. freshmen.

While that might not be the best sample size to take when deciding whether music still has the same heart that it used to--I know McCarthy, my sample size "n" should be much larger--I think it would be safe to conclude that many others share the same sentiments. And it's not to say that music now isn't catchy or appealing, at least to some. There's just that "umph" factor missing, the place where the music should leave an aftertaste as potent as getting too much coal on a hit of hookah should be.  

What happened to the days when one could tell you the entire track listing off of the Weezer Blue album? The exact lyrics to a Fall Out Boy song from Take This to Your Grave? The exact point in a Lil' Wayne song when you can clearly hear Weezy make his trademark snicker? Well maybe that last example is still possible, but the last time I checked, I can't even tell you the name of a song off of Weezer's latest CD (better known as the "Red Album" to keep with the title ingenuity), or, for that matter, Infinity On High.

And once again, I could simply be jumping to conclusions. I'm sure that there's plenty of die-hard Weezer and Fall Out Boy fans out there just wanting to prove me wrong. And I don't blame them. Both are pretty great bands, no matter your musical preferences. But to the casual fan, that guy you know down the hall in your dorm in college, your class' professor, or your parents, do you really think that they could tell you even one member in either band? And "that guy that's banging Jessica Simpson's sister" doesn't count.

But when has one of these "big" bands really made something so outlandishly big, fantastic, and catchy that your grandmother will ask you if you're into that band with the nerdy looking lead singer or the guitarist with the girl pants on? It just seems like that heart has fallen out of the music, that one defining aspect that made your favorite band exactly what it was--your favorite band.

It seems that whenever a band gets too big for its own britches that they lose their soul, their identity that makes them so appealing in the first place. Granted they have to assimilate to time constraints, non-stop touring, and other promotional farce, but that shouldn't constitute a band to start throwing down more forgettable shit than a fat guy at a eating contest.

The only bands that seem to still be putting out material with any longevity seem to be the bands that never crack the top-forty, the ones that will be floating their music on Myspace until civilization--and the internet for that matter--cease to exist. Using my own anecdotal evidence, my iTunes kingpins like The Kooks, John Butler Trio, and Jurassic 5 seem to still be orbiting that galaxy of good music albeit the fact that any of those three could easily have one track blow their decently large underground fan base out of the fucking water.

So should I pray to any God that I can that all of my quasi-unknown acts never get airtime? And should I completely disown the mainstream bands that could quite possibly have turned me onto music? No. Of course not. But it makes you wonder what sometimes happens when our favorite bands turn sour at the first appearance on TRL. Maybe it's that emphasis on the individual or the appearance of the band in general. Or, more to the point, the fact that we now see our bands as a commodity, the product being used to push merchandise and hackneyed albums by our materialist, capitalistic music industry.

It's a blessing and a curse that this phenomena could all very well just be the plight of corporate greed, or just the simple fact that our society revolves around money and in order to keep our "favorite" music playing, we need to make sure that the buck does not stop before it gets to the record company. Because it costs money to produce the music in the first place.

It's a complicated issue. Or maybe there is no complicated issue at all. Maybe some of these bands really only had one or two good albums in them in the first place, and pulling their strings for more material was just too much to ask for. Whatever the case is, listen to what you want to listen to. Becoming a famous band doesn't have to be a death sentence. But everyone can tell the difference between what has soul and what does not. And that's something--no matter the "n" sample size--that we can all agree on.

First Post: An Introduction to Ryan's Rockin' Athens

To All Whom Read,

   For the sake of this first entry, I decided to take a formal approach and address all my future readers/subscribers in a letter format. For me, a letter symbolizes a kind of formal casualness--if there's even such a possible paradox. This format addresses--but does not shove down the throat--my message and my intentions in creating this blog. If anything, I hope that whomever reads my daily to quasi-daily panderings will find my opinions and views on music as a relaxing, if not introspective, look into not only the music scene that shapes Athens, Ohio, but also popular, established bands/artists that already shape our musical lexicon.

   For the past four years (prior to my freshman year in college at Ohio University), I have been an Arts & Entertainment correspondent and editor for The Verve, my high school's publication (much love to Jerome nation). I decided to continue my journalistic journey to one of the best journalism programs in nation at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism here at O.U.  My monthly column of music reviews became a staple those first four years of our high school's publication, and, according to most, my monthly column, Ryan's Rockin' Records, was the one article that they looked forward to most. Since I am in between non-paying writing jobs right now, I decided to act upon the advice of my journalism professor and start up R.R.R. again, this time in a more regular fashion. We'll see if I can keep up the daily updates past tomorrow, but I can't make any promises on my college schedule. However, don't feel that I'm just going to treat this blog as the red-headed step child whom I only call upon when I feel the need to. Oh no, even if I can't go day to day writing in this labor of musical love, I'll be thinking about it, only to come back with an even stronger post that's been stewing in my brain from the time that I posted last.

   For those who have read my columns from high school, I focused--primarily--on older albums by lesser known bands, but I eventually came to realize that my snobby taste in music ended up being everyone else's snobby taste in music. However, with the college edition of my column, I hope to review not only new releases and old classics, but also give the thriving Athens music scene the spotlight, with reviews of shows and--hopefully--band interviews and profiles. I want to spread the wealth here and warm-up to all potential audiences of this precocious music column. 

   Agree to disagree with me or become a believer of the Joseph Gospel, read at your own risk. So tune in, turn on, and drop out.

Yours In Life,

Ryan M. Joseph