Podcast, TV

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Peak TV Season Wrap-Up, 2015-2016

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Summer doesn’t just mean blockbuster movies; it also brings about the official end of the TV season. Even though the era of “peak TV” means that the traditional TV-season model is crumbling, we still thought the summer would be a good time to circle back and examine some shows and trends from the past nine months. We talk about shows we love and shows we think get too much love! Where do Last Week Tonight, Girls, The Last Man on Earth, Better Call Saul, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The People vs. OJ Simpson, Catastrophe, and, yes, Love fall on that spectrum? Listen to Marisa, Sara, Nathaniel, and Jesse talking TV to find out!

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Movies, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Summer Movies from 1996

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Summer is here! It may not technically start until June, but Memorial Day Weekend is sort of the cultural kick-off to summer. It used to be when the first big summer movies would start to roll out, but those have been moved up to the first weekend in May. Our latest podcast throws back to a time when that tradition wasn’t quite in place; as per our now-annual tradition, we took a look back at the ten highest-grossing movies from summer 1996. Summer 1996 saw the release of a variety of audience favorites and forgotten non-gems; please enjoy our thoughts about a bunch of old movies and in some cases, what we were up to twenty years ago. What’s our favorite Michael Bay movie? What summer 1996 movies wouldn’t fly today? Which stars had hot streaks continue or crash and burn? These are the questions this podcast will endeavor to answer.

Spoiler Warning: Lots of spoilers for movies that are two decades old.

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Movies

The 16 Handles Theory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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So, this is something I’ve been thinking since we recorded our Captain America: Civil War podcast. In the podcast, we asked whether or not Marvel house style trumps director style, and if that makes a difference when watching a movie set in the MCU.

Since then, what I realized is that, for me, watching MCU movies now feels like going to a 16 Handles where 15 of the handles are broken. Sure, the toppings are different, but it’s always the same flavor underneath.

Nothing about it is bad. It’s dessert! Who doesn’t love dessert? I go to 16 Handles all the time. But, if you asked me what my best dining experience was last year, I’m never going to say, “Oh, it was that time I went to 16 Handles,” because I go there so often.

In the case of the MCU, the directorial flourishes are the toppings. Sure, you can say that the movies are all different because Guardians of the Galaxy is a little jokier, while The Avengers is a little more epic. But, still, they’re all MCU movies, which means they follow a Marvel template, with the same Marvel story beats in each one—it’s basically the same dish each time.

I didn’t always feel this way. Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger were different enough from each other that I didn’t feel like I was being served the same thing repeatedly. Captain America was period, so it had a totally different vibe. Thor, for better or for worse, was steeped in Kenneth Branagh’ ornateness—it didn’t feel like a touch of decoration slapped on top of a typical superhero movie. And, since I don’t think Jon Favreau has much of a voice of his own, the voice that comes through the most in Iron Man is Downey’s.

I believe Rob said in the podcast that the first installment of each character’s franchise is the one that’s allowed to be a different flavor, but that’s not really true for me anymore. There wasn’t much distinct about Ant Man, except that one bit with the Thomas the Tank Engine that I bet dollars to donuts is a remnant from the Edgar Wright script.

With Doctor Strange, Black Panther, and this new incarnation of Spider-Man on the horizon, I hope Marvel gets its part-one mojo back, or lets the movies get a little bit weirder and different and a little disconnected from each other. If not, it’ll be fine. I’m not against empty calories. But I’d be so much more excited if I was sampling something entirely new each time.

Comics, Movies, Podcast

SportsAlcohol Podcast: Captain America: Civil War

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Mother’s Day Weekend means that all the SportsAlcohol got together to watch and talk about Captain America: Civil War
Spoiler Warning: Lots of spoilers about this movie and the MCU in general

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Movies, Music, Podcast

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Richard Linklater, Everybody Wants Some!!, and Sing Street

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When did April change over from the cruelest month into the best movie month of the year?! Nathaniel, Sara, Marisa, and Jesse all saw Everybody Wants Some!! and Sing Street and wanted to talk about their common ground, as well as the careers of their respective directors: Richard Linklater and John Carney. Listen to our wide-ranging discussion and find out:

  • What we like best about Linklater
  • If any of us have seen The Newton Boys
  • What movies (besides Once) Sing Street brought to mind
  • Whether we could stomach hanging out with the baseball team from Everybody Wants Some!!
  • Our bizarre next assignment for John Carney

Spoiler Warning: We talk about the endings of both movies.

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Music

TRACK MARKS: “Kiss” by Prince

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In April of 2001, the struggling Arizona Top 40 radio station 104.7 ZZP  was getting ready to relaunch as 104.7 KISS-FM. The station’s format was undergoing a transition from Mainstream Top 40 to Rhythmic Top 40, and the change would be punctuated by three days of “stunting.”  Stunting is a common radio practice of abruptly airing something unusual, often used when stations change formats or owners as a way of generating listener interest and publicity. From 6pm on April 20th to noon on April 23rd, 104.7 would play Prince’s “Kiss” on a loop.

I didn’t know any of this radio business background at the time. And I didn’t even really know much about Prince. Sure, I’d seen the Batman movie with his music, missed this Animaniacs joke going right over my head as a kid, and knew Purple Rain was a thing that existed, but I didn’t have particularly cool musical tastes and couldn’t have told you much beyond that. I’d flip around hunting for songs I liked on the radio, but I didn’t buy many albums or go see much live music. What I did do, as a high school senior in Apache Junction, AZ, was go to the park on weekend evenings to goof off and play racquetball with friends until the park closed. Then maybe we’d go back to my folks’ place and bake some cookies before watching a movie or SNL. I was Not Cool, I wasn’t particularly self-conscious about that, and this isn’t a story about how Prince changed my life or anything. But one thing that was really special about him was that he made a world that was cool and sexy and kind of dangerous accessible to even a square kid sitting in the parking lot at Prospector Park, listening to that song one more time (okay, maybe two more times) before getting out to play.

I left the dial tuned to 104.7 that entire weekend. “Kiss” is pretty immediately arresting, with its stripped down arrangement, that jangly guitar lick right before the last word in the chorus, and Prince’s slippery falsetto lead vocal. It was so different, and I admit I genuinely wasn’t even sure at first whether I was listening to a man or a woman. The song is funky as hell and doesn’t even have a bass line. It also felt sexier than anything I’d ever heard on the radio, and he was mostly just singing about getting a kiss.

I don’t know how many times I listened to that song in those three days, but I do know I was genuinely disappointed on April 23rd when the world went back to normal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baPsgmDexno
Life

Observations You May Have If, Hypothetically, You Somehow Get Yourself Into The Press Room at a Presidential Debate

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You are asked to arrive two hours early. With nothing but your laptop, a communal wooden table, and large TV screens playing hours of CNN, you’re more productive in those two hours than you were in your previous eight at work.

The venue has left freebies on the seats. By the time you get there, two hours before the debate, the freebies are already gone. Journalists are fast.

You wonder if anyone else in the bullpen had a previous stint as a wedding magazine editor and was mentally converting the press room into an event space. (It’s easy—turn the desks into banquet tables, swap out the laptops for place settings, turn the TVs into centerpieces, and you’ve got an industrial-chic thing going on.) You decide that the Venn diagram for political reporters/weddings editors probably has little overlap, at least outside of D.C.

There is a clear delineation in dress between on-camera reporters, print/web reporters, and you.

You find that the hardest working people at the debate are not the campaigns, the staffers, or the security. They’re the people manning the food trucks out back.

You only ask two questions the entire night: What is the WiFi password, and where are the aforementioned food trucks. You are embarrassed to admit that you asked the second question first.

You watch the other journalists take photos and shoot video. You wonder if all of their B-roll have footage of you chowing down on the fare from said food trucks.

When the Broadway performer sings the National Anthem, you wonder about whether or not to stand. What are the rules about standing when you’re watching the Anthem being performed on a TV showing footage from the building next door? You glance at the person next to you for guidance; he’s German.

The coffee is free. It’s good. A half-hour into the debate, you get one for yourself. You reach for the milk; it’s empty. Journalists are fast.

You’re constantly struggling between the desire to go use the ultra-fancy porta potties and the worry that they’ll talk about the one issue you’re professionally interested in while you do.

Relief washes over you when it becomes clear that you and the German will become please-watch-my-stuff-while-I-use-the-fancy-porta-potties buddies.

Looking around sheepishly, you wonder if anyone would catch you searching, “When does the debate end?”

You don’t have Imposter Syndrome; you are an imposter.

Music, Podcast

SPORTSALCOHOL Podcast: Eagles, Weezer, and California Music

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Both The History of The Eagles and its Documentary Now! parody are currently on Netflix.  This coincides with the release of Weezer’s latest self-titled album. This has gotten us thinking a lot about California music recently, but what does that even mean? Sara, Marisa, Sabrina, Jesse, and Rob tried to break that down. Topics we covered include:

  • The Eagles (and other bands our parents like)
  • Weezer through the years
  • faux-spiritualism
  • the feminist impact of overalls-releated imagery in songwriting
  • How little we actually know about rap
  • My new genius account: http://genius.com/roberthenryk

Spoiler Warning: Lots of spoilers about The History of The Eagles

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Music

#IndieAmnesty, or Remember When You Used to Be a Rascal

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Like many music fans of a certain age, I spent a good chunk of my free time yesterday reading tweets with the hashtag #indieamnesty. If you weren’t as glued to the feed as I was, it went down like this: Teenagers, music fans, band members, and even politicians confessed their supposed crimes against music and/or themselves. It was an ode to time wasted on ill-advised message boards, embarrassing  run-ins with bands at gigs, misguided tastes, and poor fashion choices.

https://twitter.com/jimwaterson/status/717717057022869504

Some of the tweets were about old, ill-formed opinions, but most of them were memories of in-person escapades. As Spector’s Fred Macpherson wrote in the Guardian, “The most important events were never really the ones the NME were writing about, they were the things happening to you and your friends on the frontline...Indie amnesty brings together thousands of relatively banal anecdotes about unglamorous people doing slightly idiotic things into something quite majestic.”

https://twitter.com/catherinebray/status/717687876486635520

It was also extremely time-specific. Though indie music certainly has a longer timeline, the #indieamnesty stories focused on a narrower scope, and the same band names kept coming up over and over again: the Strokes, the White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, the Libertines, the Arctic Monkeys, and Vampire Weekend.

Of course, some of the SportsAlcohol.com founders were not immune to #indieamnesty fever.

https://twitter.com/roberthenryk/status/717926369750073344

I wish the #indieamnesty feed could continue forever.

I loved it because I was there. I was the one making a fool out of myself at concerts, investing a ridiculous amount of money/time/energy going to shows,  and lurking in LiveJournal communities before posting in my own blog about gigs. I may not have a framed $20 bill that was given to me by Pete Doherty, but I know what it felt like to want to preserve a moment like that. I still have signed setlists hanging in my home office.

https://twitter.com/scotscribbler/status/717713095934742528

But what’s even better is the word choice in the hashtag. It’s not #indiememories. It’s #indieamnesty.

Conventional wisdom states that stuff that happened 20 years ago is cool. That’s why we’re having such a ’90s revival now (and why Happy Days was made in the ’70s about the ’50s, The Wonder Years was made in the ’80s about the ’60s, and That ’70s Show was made in the ’90s about the ’70s, and so on).

The flip side to that is that stuff that happened 10 years ago is supposed to be embarrassing, In the ’90s, people cringed at the hair metal and shoulder pads of the ’80s. In the ’00s, bands shunned the ’90s flannel and baggy Salvation Army gear for — of all things — tailored suits.

https://twitter.com/SLOWCLUBREBECCA/status/717771815200886784

With #indieamnesty, music fans of today say they refuse to feel bad about the music they were into 10 years ago.  In Salon, Scott Timberg writes that you should “never apologize for carrying a Weezer lunch box.” I say that, whoever confessed it isn’t apologizing—she’s declaring amnesty. She’s not requesting a reprieve; she’s taking it. And that’s what I love most about it.

https://twitter.com/gravesmeredith/status/717748134781300736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I haven’t been following the indie scene that closely recently. I don’t want to entirely blame this on my infant daughter, but she’s partially responsible. After reading these tweets, I hope she grows up to be a fan of something. I hope she daydreams about it, sketches it in the margins of all her notebooks, doodles it on her sneakers, make fake tattoos about it in sharpie (but only fake ones). And, when she’s old enough to know better,  I hope she declares amnesty of her own.