It's Boss Time!

Tomorrow, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band play the Super Bowl halftime show. There's been tons of speculation, discussion and debate among the Boss fans on the matters of "is he selling out?" and "what will they play?" Rather than wait until after the event to weigh in, I thought I'd lay my thoughts on the line beforehand. I can't stand people who offer the standard hindsight genius ("Oh yeah, I KNEW that was gonna happen!" Really? Can you tell me if Pittsburgh is gonna cover?). So here are my thoughts:

The "Sellout" Issue
Call Bruce a sellout if you like, but in 2009, getting on the radio is far from enough to sell records. People don't listen to the radio to find new music anymore. They take it wherever they can. There used to be one or two channels for that, radio and mainstream music magazines. If you got on the radio and Rolling Stone (or later, Spin) wrote about you, your album went gold. Now, if you only get radio play and love from the music rags, your single could chart on Billboard but you still might only sell 30,000 copies (in '02, Elvis Costello was nominated for a couple Grammies for a great album that earned truckloads of radio play and critical praise, and the album had only sold 30,000 during the three months between its release and the nomination). If you don't do the t.v. shows, stream samples on your website, sell advance songs on iTunes for 99 cents, license your music for film and/or television and/or video games and/or grocery store chains, get a ringtone deal, and do all the interviews and promotional appearances you didn't have to do (read: wouldn't have done because you didn't have to) as recently as ten years ago, you won't sell a lot of records. And as Bruce signed a 10-record deal with Sony/Columbia - the label he's been with for his entire career - for the largest advance in history back in '03 ($114M up front for the Boss), I'm sure that came with a detailed list of what he'd do to sell records, things he wouldn't have done years ago but things that are not considered "sellout" in the reality of today's climate. My personal opinion is that he looked around and saw the band aging. Danny Federici, who'd played organ, glockenspiel and accordion with Bruce since the 60s in the bands Child and Steel Mill before joining the Bruce Springsteen Band in '71, passed away last year and that naturally inspired a more succinct awareness of mortality on E Street. I think Bruce wants to squeeze in as much E Street activity as he/they can before it becomes unrealistic. Clarence Clemons is 67, walks with a cane and is living with a painful hip replacement. Bruce may have some regrets about having broken the band up for ten years between '88 and '98, prime earning years given the band's age, commercial viability, and the domestic economy at the time, and he wants to set everyone and their families up for life. Back to the matter of "selling out" - we still respect the Stones, the Who, and U2, right? Well, I do, at least for their music catalogs. Will we look back on those artists' careers and discard the Stones for using "Start Me Up" on the Windows 2000 commercial, or the Who for using a variety of songs for a variety of products in the early 21st century, or U2 for pimping the iPod? If you're not with me on this, let's go to Bob Dylan, who let Victoria's Secret use his music to sell women's underwear. In '98, Iggy Pop let a vacation cruise line company use "Lust For Life" and Curtis Mayfield let a car company use "Superfly." The examples are endless. Is Bruce a mercenary for playing the Super Bowl halftime show? Yup. Are we all mercenaries for making career choices because they pay us money that allows us to live a lifestyle that we're comfortable with, given our options? You bet. If you owned a business and someone offered you the opportunity to promote it or show it off for 12 minutes in front of a global audience of about 160 million, you'd be crazy to say No. And so we see, Bruce Springsteen is not crazy.

What's He Gonna Play?
Here's a guy who does make a set list for every show, but it's different every night and he ALWAYS abandons it in favor of audibles he calls out to the band. This must drive the band crazy as they must scramble to change instruments, sound and lighting guys alike, but it keeps things interesting and fresh for us all and it's one of the many things we love 'em for. I think "Born to Run" is the only guarantee. Most of his best concert pieces are 8-12 minutes long so it's a tough prediction. "Rosalita" would only leave him 3 minutes for other material, though I'd love to see this because [a] it's one of the greatest songs ever, and [2] given the huge advance Sony paid him in '03 which undoubtedly resulted in this halftime show, it's got the line, "your papa says he knows that I don't have any money, but tell him this is his last chance; to get his daughter in a fine romance; because the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!" Alas, while Rosie is the greatest epic concert piece known to mankind, I don't think the Boss will use nine of his twelve minutes on any one song. Given that... I'd like to see him open with "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" right into a condensed version of the Detroit Medley he used to do ("Devil With the Blue Dress" / "Good Golly Miss Molly" / "Jenny Jenny" / "C.C. Rider") and maybe add a couple to it, like "Woolly Bully" and/or "Double Shot of My Baby's Love" and then bust right into "Born to Run." If he can do each in 4 minutes, there's a nice 12-minute set. I got the new album, half of it is awesome and half is throwaways, and I know he's doing this gig to promote the new album, but with only 12 minutes, I hope he doesn't play any new stuff. So there's my official prediction:
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
Detroit Medley
Born to Run

Boss, What Can Ya Tell Us?
In the Super Bowl press conference, they asked Bruce how he could represent his legendary 3-hour concerts in a 12-minute halftime show. His answer was pretty cool:

"The idea of the show is, you're going to the Meadowlands or to one of the shows that we regularly play, and you get lost on the way. You're watchin' the clock and, damn, the show's startin'. You stop in a bar and get some directions. The bar gets held up while you're there. It takes another 45 minutes to get out of that. Then you come back and you miss your exit on the Turnpike, you drive another 30 minutes to get back around, and so you make it into the stadium at 2 hours and 48 minutes into the show. That's what you're gonna see. The last 12 minutes."

Kick-off is at 6pm EST, 3pm PST. The game is on NBC.

Detroit Medley, live at the Capital Centre in Landover, MD on November 24, 1980:

Jesus Built My Hotrod

Inspired by recent events and conversations, this entry will address the ever-growing presence and imposition of conservative religious values as they pertain to gay marriage.

What is morality? What's right, what's wrong, and what defines those things? Webster defines moral as "of or relating to principles of right and wrong behavior" and its primary synonym is "ethical." So how does Webster define ethical? "conforming to accepted standards of conduct." So far, no good. I'm looking for something that's fair, and terms like conforming and accepted aren't definitive to me, I mean, when we talk conformity we're entering "because I said so" territory and when we talk accepted I must ask, "accepted by whom, exactly?" So, how does Webster define right - as in right and wrong? "being in accordance with what is just, good, or proper." Okay, I can work with that terminology. Just offers more of the same but also some hope, as its definition brings [1] "having a basis in or conforming to fact or reason" and [2] "being what is merited or deserved" but also [3] "conforming to a standard of correctness." Moving along, how is good defined? There are many things the word can mean (think man, that thing was heavy, it must have weighed a good 85 pounds! and use your imagination from there). In our context here, Webster calls good "of a favorable character or tendency." Look up "proper" and enjoy more of the same, a variety of contexts and definitions, the most germane to our discussion being, "marked by suitability, rightness, or appropriateness." And so we see, Webster, the definitive authority on the English language, leads us in vague circles on the topic.

Back to the original question.
What is morality and vice versa? I guess it depends on who you ask. Ask me and I say a moral act is one which helps others, while an immoral act is one which harms others. Does "morality" apply to every act of human behavior? What if something neither helps nor harms anyone? In my opinion, in a push, a harmless act would qualify as moral because it isn't immoral. Ask a member of any number of Christian sects and you'll be directed to the Bible for a host of definitions, interpretations and ideas.

Most Christian sects posit that as gay sex is immoral per their (or God's per the Bible's) definition of the term, gay marriage is contrary to God's will, and they'll cite Romans 1, I Corinthians 6:8-10, and Jude 1:7. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition, religious objections to same-sex marriage are often based upon biblical passages at Genesis 19:5, Leviticus 18:22, and Leviticus 20:13. Religious organizations that oppose same-sex marriage include the Church of God in Christ, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, the Conservative Mennonite Conference, the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, the Hutterite Brethren, the Orthodox Church in America, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Due to the ambivalent language about homosexuality in Buddhist teachings, there has been no official stance put forth regarding the issue of same-sex marriage. There are both conservative and liberal views about homosexuality and same-sex marriage in Hinduism, similar to many other religions. Sorry for the detail. Just trying to be fair.

Either way, perhaps the issue is most simply resolved here: by legally defining marriage as an opposite-sex institution, the government infringes upon the constitutional right to the freedom of religion. If those opposed to same-sex marriage must cite a 2,000 year-old book as the primary support of their argument, then I must cite some more recent but historically sound examples - I'll pick the three that come right to mind:
Thomas Paine. His [sarcasm] little-known [/sarcasm] pamphlet Common Sense which states, "As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all government, to protect all conscientious
professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith…" largely inspired enough British subjects to sail for freedom to what would become America. Ironically ahead of his time as a thinker, the primary topic which prevented Paine from securing a role in the development of the new republic was his fervent opposition to slavery.
Roger Williams. Here in the U.S., some of the early colonies which were founded as a result of religious persecution, were not tolerant of dissident forms of worship. Williams found it necessary to found a new colony in Rhode Island to escape persecution in the theocratically dominated colony of Massachusetts. Geographically it's the smallest state in the union, but without it we'd have no Farrelly Brothers movies. It was also the first state to declare independence from Britain, the site of the first and oldest 4th of July parade, the first colony to enact a law prohibiting slavery in the U.S. (1652), and more contemporarily the site of the first NFL game (1929), the first automobile race track (1899)...
Thomas Jefferson. This [more sacrasm] obscure [/sacrasm] revolutionary for whom a street is named in every American city proclaimed in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, "[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." The document is one of only three accomplishments Jefferson instructed be put in his epitaph (the Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia being the other two).

If you oppose same-sex marriage on Biblical grounds, I'll challenge your point of reference. I don't discredit yours, the book by which you live and believe. I believe the Bible is a very useful collection of works. But don't you discredit my points of reference, either. Nobody knows who authored your book, there is no evidence of any of its first half (the Old Testament) and very little of its second half (the New Testament). My points of reference were authored not only by historically documented people, but they (both people and documents) were necessary and influential in forming the State which you claim should be governed in accordance with your point of reference.

Definitions of Morality Redux.
Let's agree to disagree on what "moral" means. If you take your cues from the Bible, then same-sex activity and marriage is immoral. I don't agree with that notion, but I do understand it and respect the right of those who opine that way. If your definition of "moral" doesn't rely on that document, then it probably isn't even a matter of morality; rather, it's just an incidental and harmless tendency in some humans, some folks are born with this tendency and some are not. It seems that the Biblical definition of morality is ideological, where the one I employ is practical. Who's right? That's subject to interpretation. Should it be a matter of public policy and law? No way.

Of course, there are some religious folks who consider homosexuality a disease in need of a cure, and some sects insist on exorcism, but that's where I draw my line - you know, the "you're so f***in' nuts I can't even talk to you" line. Now, back to the world of the semi-sane...

It's not as if I'm making an argument for some short-lived trend like the Macarena as our national dance (is there a national dance? I'm gonna look that up), or for Seinfeld to be our national sitcom - I like Seinfeld, and if you don't like it, I'm sure the sights and sounds are excruciating to you (Jerry does whine a lot) but if it doesn't work for you, change the channel, let those with (according to you) bad taste enjoy it, and move on to whatever program works for you. No harm, no foul, and hopefully nothing immoral aside from the characters who don't actually enter your real life.

"Gay marriage dilutes the definition of marriage as defined by...."
When gay marriage pees in your marital pool to a degree which resides in the same species as hetero unions of the unhealthy, abusive, and unfaithful nature - and/or when the divorce rate falls below 50% - give me a call.

Even if we agreed that, at the risk of minimizing the Biblical case, "God says it's wrong" - what's your beef? If same-sex couples wish to practice the tendencies and preferences they're born with, and have access to the same marital recognition and rights as any other citizen, how does that affect you? I insist that it does not affect you in any real, tangible way. Not in terms of your real life, as you get up, go to work, come home, shop for groceries, clean the house and such. The "gay thing" doesn't stand in the way of anything you want to do. Does it affect your insistent reconciliation of what you consider moral, your definition of marriage, and what exists before you in the world? Sure, you have the right to consider it wrong, judge it, and worry about it just as much as you choose. Should that make it illegal? No, it should not.

Fat Free Milk?

I was just forced to make chocolate milk with fat-free "milk." Milk is wonderful. When I say milk, I mean whole milk. Fat Free Milk is not Milk, okay? Look... Diet Dr. Pepper, it's different; Diet Coke, I guess you can have that, too. Those products include a substitute for what differentiates them from their base product counterparts, sweetener stand-ins for the high fructose corn syrup that don't taste the same, but they do the trick, they may not rust through the paint on the hood of your car, but they're sweet enough to satisfy enough people (mostly girls and guys with girlish tendencies) to make a market. All terrifying aftertastes aside, I can respect that, because those diet soft drinks have different flavors - we've come a long way from Tab - and it becomes a matter of taste, acquired or otherwise. Back to milk... The real stuff, the deathtrap 3% stuff with red ink on the label, is fantastic. It tastes good, especially when ice-cold. The other stuff, 2%, 1%, Skim, Fat Free - all it is, is watered-down milk. If we can agree for a moment that whole milk tastes best... I ask you, skim/2%/1%/low-fat/non-fat milk drinkers... just how much f***ing milk do you drink? Unless you're throwing down a gallon a day, I urge you, just drink the real stuff and cut your dietary corners elsewhere. At least in other areas of consumption, you'll enjoy flavor alternatives and not watered-down versions of the real thing.

Like White On Rice, Baby!

JIM RICE HAS FINALLY BEEN ELECTED INTO BASEBALL'S HALL OF FAME

Well, it's about &^$%$#%#* time. Jim Ed has been on the ballot since '95 and this was his final year of eligibility. What kept him out of the Hall for so long? The two most common theories are:
1. His career wasn't long enough for Hall of Fame consideration. I disagree. Without taking a few years to develop into a great player, and without tapering off for several years at the tail-end of his career as even so many of the great players do, usually waning in mediocrity and with teams they didn't spend their good years with; instead, he began great, remained great for 12-13 seasons, and then had 2 seasons in which his output was above average for a major league starter before his final, injury-riddled year (1989). He could have stuck around, as there are always teams who want to sign an aging legend whose skills and health have taken him to Ordinarytown. Should it be held against him that he didn't spend a few final years with some godforsaken cellar team, adding some misrepresentative fluff to his career stats? His career was more efficient and that should have worked in his favor all these years. His first 12 full-time seasons were dominant, beginning with the '75 season in which he was runner-up for Rookie of the Year and 3rd in the MVP voting (he lost both to teammate Fred Lynn, who remains the only player in history to ever win both). Jim Rice and Ty Cobb are the only players to lead the league in total bases three years in a row. From '75 through '85, he led the league in home runs three times, runs batted in (twice), runs, slugging percentage (twice), and extra-base hits. He was also an 8-time All Star who finished among the Top Five in the MVP voting six times, winning the award in '78. He did the thing that supposedly drives Hall of Fame consideration: he dominated his era.
2. He wasn't congenial enough with the Boston sports writers. I disagree. For one thing, the Boston sports writers don't dictate who gets into the Hall. For another, he wasn't an ornery, arrogant prick like (for example) Barry Bonds. He was just a quiet guy. He was a team captain, for cryin' out loud. Besides, have you ever met a sports writer? Well I have, plenty of 'em, and that field doesn't exactly attract the popularity contest winners or the well-mannered.

If you're a numbers guy, there are plenty Hall of Famers whose career statistical portfolios don't measure up to those of Jim Rice. Take Tony Perez, one of my favorite players, of whom I was a fan growing up, and who spent some time in a Red Sox uniform later in his career. Perez was inducted in 2000. It took Rice 16 seasons to amass 382 homers and 1,451 RBI. Perez played 23 seasons but had fewer home runs (379) and only 201 more RBI (and RBI was always his calling card). Also, Perez was a .279 career hitter while Rice hit .298. But as Perez picked up a couple rings with the Big Red Machine, not so arguably baseball's all-time greatest team, well, that doesn't hurt.


I'm not saying Tony Perez doesn't deserve his bust in Cooperstown. He absolutely does. I'm just saying it was a long time coming for Jim Rice, and with no good reason.

So why did it take so long for James Edward Rice to be inducted, and on his final ballot of eligibility at that? Two reasons:
1. His output declined quickly at the end of his career which, at 16 seasons long, is a little shorter than that of a traditional Hall of Famer. With a career 162-game season average of 30 home runs, he hit only 31 in his final three seasons (1987-89). In between his first and last seasons ('74 and '89), during which he was a part-time player, Rice registered 14 tremendous seasons, collecting all the stats and accolades detailed above, an elite slugger of his era, a guy no pitcher in baseball wanted to face when the Sox needed a hit. Maybe if he'd arrived at the major league a couple years earlier en route to that stellar '75 season and then stuck around for a couple mediocre old-man victory-lap seasons, his career stats (and his bank account) would have been padded enough for earlier induction.
2. He never had a career-defining, highlight-reel post season moment. In my opinion, if there's only one factor to identify as the reason it took so long to get Rice into Cooperstown, this must be it. The Sox went to the World Series twice during Rice's career. In '75, he sat out with a broken wrist; in '86, though he finished third in the MVP voting and posted a .324 batting average with 200 hits, 110 RBI, 20 homers, career-highs in doubles (39), walks (62) and on-base percentage (.384), the only thing anyone remembers about the '86 Series is the ball dribbling through Bill Buckner's legs.
The good news is, as history unfolds, nobody remembers how long it took for a guy to be inducted. Hell, of the 26 players to surpass the career 3,000-hit milestone, only half of them were inducted on the first ballot. Tommy John, with 26 seasons and 288 wins, not only isn't in, he hasn't come close, never breaking 30% of the ballot (75% is required for induction). Bert Blyleven, another dominant pitcher with a statistical case for his position very comparable to Rice's, was denied this year on his 12th ballot (you get 15 before you're off the list for good). The list goes on. Ironically, Rice's career ended just as the Steroid Era began pissing in the pool of baseball purity. In his first year of retirement, the Red Sox won the American League East and were swept in the ALCS by the Oakland A's, whose roster included eventually-famous juicemonkeys Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. It might have been quite a sight, watching Rice, who at 6'2" and 200 lbs. and considered a Big Man in his day, playing against Canseco (6'4" and 240) and McGwire (6'5" and 225) - talk about the pre and post juice era Pepsi challenge... Ultimately, playing before the Steroid Era probably helps a guy's HoF candidacy, as it removes the "did he or didn't he?" question surrounding the purity of his stats (or his pee). McGwire and Canseco, among many others, may never see Cooperstown as a result of their drug-induced stats. But then, if the benchmark is dominating in your era, maybe the steroid guys will get in, that is, if the baseball writers determine that virtually everyone in the game was using the stuff, theoretically leveling the playing field and rendering the stats relatively fair within the era. Who knows. Maybe I'll rant about the steroid era in a future post.

For now, let's consider it a good day, the one on which Jim Rice was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Red Sox unofficial policy on retiring numbers is that the player must [a] be in the Hall of Fame, [b] have played at least ten years in a Sox uniform, and [c] have finished his career with the Sox. Opening Day tickets at Fenway probably just tripled in value, as they will raise #14 alongside #9 Teddy Ballgame, #4 Joe Cronin, #1 Bobby Doerr, #8 Carl Yastrzemski, and #27 Carlton Fisk, who spent his final 13 seasons wit dose udder Sox over by dere in Chicago but was later hired as a Red Sox special assistant so they could raise his number without breaking the "rule."

Jim Rice, Hall of Famer. I know a few people who will have an easy time getting used to saying that.

Sham Wow Slap Chop Whatdyado!

This guy is (according to the Interweb) a reformed Scientologist whose real last name is Offer. I'd make fun of him, but while [a] the Scientologist thing is "low-hanging fruit" defined, [2] he does deserve credit for being among the few of them who got out without winding up on the business end of a mysteriously unsolved murder or "suicide" - [III] though he's surely not making Springsteen money, [d] dude can most likely buy and sell me ten times over. Before I cry in my chowder ("Good God, where did I go wrong?"), let's enjoy this little slice of salesmanship and consumerism, shall we? Highlights (watch for them...) include:

"Stop having BORING tuna. Stop having a BORING life!"

"You're gonna love my nuts."

"We're going to make America skinny again!"

I know this guy is a failed song parody artist who probably signed up for the walk-in try-outs for The Soup, Blind Date, and Cheaters. Still, though, can we not playfully wonder if our man here was court-ordered to make these infomercials? In any event, to Mr. Offer, I sincerely say: Good on you, my brother. While the rest of us sit in cubicles and work godforsaken middle management schmuck jobs, you're doing this and most of us would trade places with you in a heartbeat. SLAP CHOP!