We're gonna come at you like a spider-monkey!

In between long bouts of jobless boredom and short periods of furious writing, I've been trying to stay on top of this year's USA basketball team, because, let's face it, any team with D. Wade, Carmelo and LeBron on the same roster just begs to be noticed. They're playing their first exhibition game right now in Vegas against Team Puerto Rico, running away with a 38-point lead. But before we get our hopes up (or brush aside a game that doesn't really matter), we would do well to remember a few things.

Most prominently, we handed Puerto Rico their asses in a 2004 exhibition game, only to have our asses handed to us later that year when we opened up against team PR in our first Olympic game. Team USA ended up going 5-3 in Olympic play, barely holding on for a bronze medal finish.

This time around, the US has gone for a more symmetrical approach in constructing their roster. This team has more balance, fewer holes, and is quicker and younger than the last squad. And new US coach Mike Krzyzewski has been emphasizing to his players the importance of their playing as a team -- in fact, THE team -- representing their country.

Out of the gate tonight we saw a team USA struggling to apply full-court pressure to a very quick Puerto Rican team. One advantage of having a coach like Coach K running this team is the respect he affords. If he wants them to play the game with a more international flavor, that's exactly what they'll do -- going back to college play with the full court press and strict zone defense. After a shaky first quarter, team USA pulled it together to take a permanent lead; and as the take-aways and fast court breaks started piling up, so did the point spread.

That trio of Wade, Anthony and James really is something to write home about, but the most important thing we saw tonight is the willingness of every man on the court to find the open shooter, whether in the lane or on the perimeter. Chris Paul's passing game is flawless. Kirk Hinrich and Gilbert Arenas bring an outside game that the 2004 Olympic team was sorely lacking. And with youth comes a hunger that might have been missing from that team as well.

This was the first in a series of games leading up to their first prelim on August 19th in the 2006 FIBA World Championship. Their next exhibition games come on the 7th and 8th in China against the Chinese and Brazilian national teams, followed by a five team, international mini-tournament in South Korea. And after that, the games start counting. Only time will tell if team USA decides to bring their A-game this time around.

Seven Swans, Take Two

In lieu of Avalanche, the new Sufjan Stevens album of outtakes and extras from Illinois, I thought it about time to take another look at Seven Swans, another Sufjan album sometimes described as a B-side record. I've never quite understood my roommate's recalcitrance to call it a "real" album, and here are the reasons why.

For starters, Seven Swans only sounds similar to Michigan in that it's a Sufjan album, written and recorded in the early days of his career (or so we're hoping). So while Illinois and Avalanche could be called companion albums, Seven Swans and Michigan cannot. Granted, Michigan and Seven Swans are both melancholic albums when compared to Illinois, yet the mood of Seven Swans springs forth more-so from the sparse and limited arrangements rather than from the lyrical content. The album stands apart from Michigan in its rejection of the multi-layered sonic approach utilized on Sufjan's state-themed albums. Not until "Size Too Small" do we hear a song that would sound very much at home on Michigan.

Yet it's the lyrical content what really sets Seven Swans apart from Michigan. While there are some fairly straightforward songs in the mix (take the lyrics of "Abraham," for instance: Abraham, worth a righteous one /Take up on the wood /put it on your son), many of these songs simply don't make a whole lot of sense. The songs of Michigan are intensely personal -- whether about Sufjan's home, his own experiences, and the experiences of his song subjects -- or grounded in historical geography. Seven Swans takes an entirely different approach. As a writer, Sufjan is stretching his wings outside his old home state and really reaching for something different, something new. At times he succeeds, as in "In The Devil's Territory":

Be still and know your sign.
The beast will arrive in time.
We stayed a long, long time.
We stayed a long, long time.
To see you, to beat you,
to see you, at last.

It's hard to tell who the "you" in the song is. And it's impossible to tell who the narrator of the song is (we can't assume it's Sufjan simply because he's the one doing the singing). Yet even amidst the confusion of the song, the "you" in the song can be interpreted as a romantic "you." And despite references to "the beast," it's still Sufjan's most pop-oriented song to date.

Other songs are more difficult to measure. While "Size Too Small" is almost as achingly gorgeous as "Romulus" (from Michigan), its meandering lyrics are a bit of a putoff.

Everything rises, going at it all.
All the surprises in a size too small.
And what if I told you
I was still in love with this?
Would you surprise us
in a size for all of me?
I still know you.
And I still like you, the best man.

Yet other songs are head-scratchers in an absolutely wonderful way. "We Won't Need Legs To Stand" is either about the Eurcharist, the Eschaton, the prayer of the High Priest, or maybe even the cry of a paraplegic prisoner:

So faithful, so few,
so pardon, and done.
And when we receive,
we give a change at last.

And when we are dead,
we all have wings.
We won't need legs to stand.
And when we receive.
to see a change at last.

Whichever it is, it works.

It's not fair to ignore this and call Seven Swans a series of Michigan casts-off simply because of two nods towards everybody's favorite pleasant peninsula (Lake Michigan and Detroit, in separate songs). It's Seven Swans that gets Sufjan pegged as a freak-folkster. And the songwriting, while perhaps his most abrasively "Christian" material, scares me like the others can't. Take the title track, "Seven Swans":

We saw the dragon move down.
My father burned into coal.
My mother saw it from far.
She took her purse to the bed.
I saw a sign in the sky:
Seven horns, seven horns, seven horns.
I heard a voice in my mind:
I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord.
He said: I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord.
He said: I am Lord, I am Lord, I am Lord.

When you finally get to the refrain at the end -- He will take you/If you run/He will chase you-- it's difficult to tell if the taking and the chasing are romantic, or the most terrifying thing in the world. Being chased by God sounds like something from the Song of Solomon, but in the context of the lyrics and the mood of the music, it feels like it may be just as terrible as being burned by the dragon. There's no doubt that it finds inspiration in the fantastic imagery of the Book of Revelation, and yet it really doesn't bring much eschatological comfort considering it doesn't end like John's Apocalypse does. Mostly, it seems to just end in judgment and fire. Period. And that's no good. In fact, if "The Transfiguration" didn't immediately follow "Sevens Swans," I would probably be too afraid to dare another listen.

All these instances, at least for me, are what really allow Seven Swans to stand on its own two feet. Lyrically and sonically, it's a separate experiment from Sufjan's 50-State-albums. One only need to take a look at the track listing for Avalanche to realize that this is an album of outtakes -- songs that just didn't make the cut. An in depth look at Seven Swans, however, shows that it's an entirely different beast of an album. One of very different sounds, shapes and textures. One that is a pop record all its own.

And one that I'm oh-so-grateful to have and to hold and to hear.

Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Mark Mothersbaugh!

There's a fantastic little interview with Mark Mothersbaugh, DEVO frontman and composer extraordinare for Wes Anderson, over at Cinematical.com that deserves your attention. As well writing such gorgeous scores for Rushmore and The Royal Tennenbaums, Mothersbaugh has also written the music for TV shows like Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Rugrats. And if that wasn't the coolest thing you've ever heard, he also adopted a baby girl from China!

Plus, his website's pretty sweet, too.

Our most ambitious work to date

We are strong and pure of heart, etc.(!)

We are sitting these days, and smiling. We are thinking of ways to reverse time, to warp space, to hunt down vampires and turn them to dust, and things of that nature, regarding villainy and H.G. Wells and Stephen Hawking. These days are full of mosquito bites and awkward conversations, armies of one and superfluous congressional sessions. These days are full of all these things and more.


Things these days are full of, in Wisconsin, but not Chicago:

1. We have seen wooded hills without buildings!
2. We have seen fireflies, lightning bugs, usually around 8:15pm!
3. We have seen Best Week Ever, courtesy of VH1!

Things these days are full of, in Chicago, but not in Wisconsin:

1. We are missing Taste of Chicago, for the second straight year!
2. We are missing Stella get skinnier, or at least that is our hope!
3. We are missing all that heated concrete, which really isn't such a big deal, which in fact, we pretty much hate!

Then, later on in the day...

We are thinking of how many unfunny comedians there are in this world, and how we know so many funny people who aren't comedians, and how we ought to have the power to hand out sitcoms to our friends. We are thinking of other things we ought to be handing out to our friends. Such as, a) music to love; b) cake to eat; and c) bottles of tap water, because tap water is free.

Burn yr iPod.

We are listening to the Concretes so very much these days, and by we I should like to mean all of us, and everyone we know, and their aunts, uncles, cousins, etcetera, for the good of mankind and mother earth, for the betterment of society as we know it, for bits of the eschaton in our cd players, but not necessarily our mp3 players, because the jury is still out on whether or not we like those, but as of last count we are 9-3 in opposition, mostly because there are definitely times when music should not be played, when we should shut the fuck up and listen to the sounds of our surroundings, and remind ourselves that we are not actors in a movie, and we do not need a soundtrack when we laugh and dance like children of the night, and there are no happy moments that would be better experienced in montage, and we can never understand another person's life in two and a half hours, and books have no singles from the Shins and they are better for it.

To reiterate:

1. We are not living in a movie.
2. Life has its own soundtrack; it's called our hearts and hands and the crunch of gravel beneath our feet.
3. There is no such person as Meg Ryan/George Clooney in real life. And we are better for it.

Also, we have voices, and our voices are the greatest voices in the world, regardless of what others may say, because they are bastards, and we are children of God.

While our kids are dying in Iraq, let us speak endlessly of outlawing flag burning and same-sex marriage all the while pretending it has nothing to do with that election in November!

Yes! We are frustrated these days with the state of how things are, and frustrated with our lack of power to make things right, to restore lands to their original owners, to support those who toil and labor rather those than who pillage and exploit, to stand up the chairs of justice on all four legs, declaring an actual year of jubilee, a factual year of jubilation, letting lands lay fallow and tax cuts expire, realizing that while it may sting today, we owe it to our children to leave them with a better world than what we were given. Let us be stewards and not corporate raiders. Let us be Peter Parkers and not Norman Osbornes. Let us seek truth, even when it hurts like hell! I'm talking to you, Rick Santorum!

We have run out of things to say.

Finally, do we remember that one scene in Conan the Barbarian, where Arnold slugged that horse in the face? Oh man, that was completely freaking ridiculous! I'm talking to you, Rick Santorum!

Hell, yeah!

In this Episode -- Unexplained Files

OMG! Agent Mulder is missing! Agent Mulder is dead!

I had forgotten how often Chris Carter used this trick. TNT is showing, like, a bazillion X-Files episodes tonight, and I'm going to try and stay up until three or four in the morn to watch them all. They kicked it off with the Season Two finale, Anasazi, which is a hella crazy-good episode to start with. This series was awesome. This series kicked ass. High school TV was B+. Today's TV is C-, barely.

Chris Carter needs to get off his rich poopshoot and make me some new entertainment.

Western Civ! O How We Miss Your Smiling Face!

O to be a high school teacher!

Don't walk, run to the nearest computer and read A Brief History of the World -- a new world history cobbled together from numerous student papers. Some of my favorite bits:

• Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him.
• Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenburg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull.
• Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands.
• Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.

O death and obesity! You never fail to make me laugh!

Everybody Loves Jesus!

In reaction to a joint Christian-Muslim protest in India, 7 of the country's 29 states have decided to ban The Da Vinci Code from their theatres. State officials feared protests and other types of demonstrations if the film was allowed to show, even though such protests have yet to actually materialize (at least, nothing like the marches in Fiji over the film). The Da Vinci Code has been showing in India's other states since last Friday, to packed cinemas.

Hooray for Jesus buddies!

Hurray for Muslim/Christian Buddies, Inc.!

Let this be a lesson to terrorists everywhere:

Mutual loathing for The Da Vinci Code trumps all wars!

As do funny hats!

Harry Potter, Ph.D. Candidate in Physics

Scientists are awesome! Scientists have invented mathematical equations! Equations that would (theoretically) allow certain (somewhat-theoretical) "metamaterials" to bend light around an object and return said light on its original trajectory as if it had never hit the object at all! Thus, invisibility!

Science is magic!

This article is magic!

Except!

According to the laws of physics, an invisible person would necessarily be blind. In order to see light, the eye must absorb it, but in order for a person to be invisible, the body must not absorb any light.

Science is good. But magic is better.

Some Updates, Some Barry Bonds, Some Aaron Sorkin, Some Drawings

Barry Bonds broke the record, but things haven't gotten any better for him.

And Matthew Perry will not be doing any crushing of Grey's Anatomy come fall. Studio 60 has been moved to Monday nights.

Lastly, I photoshopped a picture of a ninja fighting a dog robot in hell. Life is full of possibilities these days.

Codes and Codas and Tom Hanks So Needs a Haircut (Bad)

First, a disclaimer: I intend to see this movie. Of this, let there be no doubt. It is, in my mind, the second in a horrendously awful trilogy of films that must be seen this year (the first being King Kong, and the third, Snakes on a Plane -- I am easily entertained by Dino fights, atrocious theology and, well, snakes on planes).

That being said, A.O. Scott's review of The Da Vinci Code is a literary gem (though a week old, I know, I know; but life is so very hectic right now with all the vast amounts of nothingness that bombard me each and every day). I say that (the literary gem part), mostly because I'm a former English major (four full semesters!), but also because I love making fun of things like Tom Hanks' haircut and Ron Howard films and Dan Brown (in general). A short sample from the review should give you the idea:

To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on "Cinderella Man" and "A Beautiful Mind"), have streamlined Mr. Brown's story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. "Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair." Such language, note the exquisite "almost" and the fastidious tucking of the "which" after the preposition, can live only on the page.

What I love, love, love the most is that I felt the same exact way, though I never got to the particular sentence Mr. Scott points out; I put the book down somewhere around page one -- when the Albino was flaying himself with something sharp or sinewy or otherwise ouchy instead of just saying his Hail Mary's and getting on with the act grace. But I bought the book for a penny (hardcover, no less), so no big loss. My parents have both read it, and are charging through the rebuttal book I purchased at the same time, which, again, I never really read. I had more pressing things (like Steve Engleheart's mid-70's run on the Avengers) to waste my time on.

Mr. Scott's review in its entirety can be viewed here. Registration might be required; I can never remember what parts of the NY Times' website call for it.

So go forth, my friends. Happy viewing!