Beware (Celebrate) the Underdog

From the beginning, this year’s football season disappointed me. I simply could not find a team or player I wanted to root for. The good Baptist in me kept telling me to get on the Baylor bandwagon and they impressed me in the games I watched - but given Baylor’s history, caution dominated. The thrilling end to the Alabama/Auburn game Thanksgiving weekend gave me some hope that the conference championship games would redeem the season.

The season’s final weekend left me smiling.

Two things that can be said for underdogs is that they are still dogs and they have fight.

In the conferences that have a championship game, both teams competing are there for a reason. Some conferences have disparity between the divisions, but teams rise to the top because they have demonstrated the greatest skill over the season.  That does not go away when they face a team perceived to be stronger. Almost universally, the underdog proved they deserved to be in the game.

And dang my dominating caution. After the earlier Oklahoma / Oklahoma State game eliminated the possibility of a tie for conference champion, I watched what turned into the Big 12 championship game with some Longhorn faithful. Despite our alma mater falling in the game, we all agreed that Baylor deserved the win - and Baylor as a program deserved it after the decades of mediocrity at best.

The competitiveness of the games reenergized what was becoming a lagging interest in sports. The underdogs, several times victorious, returned the excitement to sport. If the projections for the bowl games hold true, then bowl season promises to be as competitive as this weekend. The beginning did not meet my expectations, but if it ends the way the last weeks have been, then I will be happy - thanks to the underdogs.

Lady Gaga on Repeat

Lady Gaga’s latest collection dropped this week following a slow rollout of individual songs and videos. The initial songs struck me much like previous songs of hers, I was not immediately blown away, but they grew on me the more I heard them. After listening to ARTPOP straight through a few times, I felt the same way. The songs grew on me.

Now that the album is fully released, I look forward to seeing how it is performed in the coming months through videos, television appearances, and in concert. Lady Gaga’s music can stand alone, but it is not fully complete without the performance pieces included. She is a performance artist like we have not seen in a generation. Each performance (essentially every time she is seen in public) for the next months will be completing the story of ARTPOP.

Better than any of her previous albums, ARTPOP tells a story. The songs stand alone, but they also stand together. So far I have not heard any individual songs that strike me as a “Poker Face,” “Bad Romance,” or “Edge of Glory,” which are songs I could put on repeat just for themselves. Then again, I did not pick any of them initially when listening to The Fame or Born This Way.

Despite not finding a go-to song on the initial listen, I am certain I will find songs that will grow on me and that I will return to from time to time just as I did with the previous albums. Much of that connection will come in the following months as the ARTPOP performance plays itself out. The first week has not made me fall in love with the album, but I am at the same place I was with Gaga’s previous releases and they are still among my most played collections even after a few years. As happy as I am that she has released a new cd, I am even happier that there will be another year of Lady Gaga in performance.

Disenchanted

Out of habit I continue to tune my television to sports channels on a regular basis - actually much of the time the television is on now that I live alone again. The last few months have had me questioning why because I have found none of the pleasure I normally gain from watching sports. I

am usually pretty easy to please as long as it is a sport in which I have some interest, but lately I just get frustrated at much of what I see in the games.

Football in particular has been almost unbearable to watch. My favorite teams performance has been lackluster to say the least. They are good, but not quite winning good. The one winning team only does so because most of the teams they have played sucked worse than they do. This season has not offered much to see on the field.

When the Kansas City Chiefs are 9-0 (equaling the number of games won in the lasts 2 seasons combined), you know there is something wrong in the NFL.

The indecipherable and unplayable new rules in the NFL for “player safety” fit perfectly with the ineptitude some teams (like the Chiefs) have shown in the past years. Stung by lawsuits lost for ignoring the extent head injuries have harmed current and former players, the league instituted rules to minimize the risk of head injury to the players coming up with a version of big-boy flag football. The truth is that when 300lb bodies slam into one another at full force, even without head-to-head contact, brain injuries occur. The new rules have caused so many players reticence about making typical moves that the game is not nearly as entertaining.

Coupled with the watered down game is a watered down roster of players. No player at the college or professional level has captured my interest. I can barely name a player on any team outside of Texas - not even on the suddenly glorious Kansas City Chiefs. Never before have I felt so apathetic about all the major teams and players.

My curmudgeonly spirit dominates this season. Maybe next season my fan spirit will return.

How Did That Get There?

I bought a new iPod for my recent road trip so I could download my entire music library to give myself the full range of music to match whatever mood I found myself in. Over the course of the trip, I made it through a variety of genres and in each one, more than once as an unfamiliar song began to play, I asked myself, “where did that come from?”

 

To be honest, I have not completely listened to much of the music in my library because I like free stuff. My 15.2+ days of music consists mostly of purchases I have made over the years – either digitally or on CD and transferred. Still there are a few dozen albums I raided off the free downloads on Amazon and other sources (LEGITIMATELY!).

 

The problem with most of the Amazon free downloads is that they are sampler albums from many smaller studios. Some of the artists they feature are quite good and may well make it into mainstream circulation at some point; however, far too many of the artists will never make it out of their garage. Most of the songs that made me scratch my head at how they came to be in my library came from these albums. One takes this risk with freebies.

 

Of course there are a few of the collections in the library that I listened to on repeat at one point and now wonder what I ever heard in the songs. Conversely, some of the collections have grown in favor with time. And of course there are the classic standbys that are as good today as when they came out.

 

I enjoy the way the standby classics transport me back to earlier events. Certain songs I hear transport me to high school while others take me back to the dorm at college. One in particular takes me to a San Antonio dance club in 1986 (I Wanna Be a Cowboy). The power of music never ceases to amaze me in the ways it can alter my mood, recall memories, and cement new experiences into memory that any other medium.

 

Free stuff is too alluring for me to resist, so I will continue to download the good, bad, and ugly as it becomes available. You never know when that rejected song will be the one most perfect for a special occasion.

 

Or which one will have me again scratching my head.