Radio Love Song

Recently, I heard a DJ mention that "Let's Dance To Joy Division" by The Wombats is his favourite song, and it appears on a Spotify playlist from the producers of Guardians of the Galaxy, presumably to remind everyone the franchise still exists while they wait for the next instalment in a couple of years.

I was intrigued, so when I got home, I looked the song up on YouTube (Still no streaming music for me. I listen to music the old fashioned way: files I've bought and downloaded.) The song is very good, though I wouldn't list it as my favourite. On the list of indie songs that name-check indie bands, I'd place it ahead of "Let's Make Love and Listen to Death From Above" by CSS, but behind "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" by LCD System.

But then it hit me how weird this whole experience was: A DJ mentioned a good song - but didn't play it - and I looked it up myself to hear if it was any good. That's not how the whole DJ concept is supposed to work; their job is after all to play good music. But in today's radio world, it's just accepted that outside of college radio, the music is pre-approved focus-grouped demographic pablum, and the DJ's have no say in it.

But the DJ's themselves seem reasonably free to express themselves - after all, ads for radio stations usually promote them as much or more than the music. So we have the strange situation where DJ's can express their personality by talking about edgy music, but aren't allowed to play it.

Similarly, big-budget movies are okay with using obscure music in self promotion, even if the movie itself is a safe comic book sequel. So these two media may be restrained by the need to be safe bets, but don't mind acknowledging alternative choices the consumer might make. It's like some kind of weakened dystopia where Big Brother won't show you rebellion, but is okay with everyone talking about it.

Is Pepsi Okay?

I'm amazed by these new diet coke ads. Coke seems to be rebranding it, with energy-drink-style cans, and young-person-based-ads. I know I'm not the target market, but they look awful. You know, the ones where they're walking down the street talking to you.

(And here's the other. I have to admit: it's cute that if you're watching closely, you'll see them pass each other. I'm embarrassed that it took me so long to notice that.)

I may not be the target market, but I do remember some of the embarrassing ads that tried to appeal to me when I was part of the hot demographic. Both then and now, it was clear that they were putting these ads together based on what the ad execs had seen on TV or overheard in malls, not by actually talking to young people. "Maybe you're into friends who leave voice mail"?!? What does that even mean? Can you be into friends who don't use voice mail anymore? It's like they wrote the script using Mad Libs Millennial Edition.

I guess there is a certain challenge in understanding new generations. In my case, they were trying to figure out what Generation X cared about, before finally realizing it was nothing. Now they're trying to focus our what Millennials have in common, and are realizing that is also nothing. Well, one thing most of them do share is a disappointment in an economy that isn't giving them opportunities for rewarding or prestigious careers. You know, like jobs in advertising, where they could have prevented this embarrassment.

Meanwhile, Pepsi had an ad that walks us down memory lane. That's a big departure for them. As I observed previously, one of the few constants throughout my life had been Pepsi constantly trying to align themselves with whatever young people idolize. But one of the necessities of that strategy is that your ads have to live in the now: if you're appealing to today's kids, you can't mention that you were also trying to appeal to their parents. In this case, they not only admit that, they go on to tell you that they helped your grandad score at the drive in.

The fact is, we've entered a new pop-cultural epoch, where time no longer exists. Between reboots, rehashes and remixes, we're experiencing everything at once, so nothing can be hot, cold, retro, or camp anymore. It's like at the fall of communism, some people claimed it was the End of History. I didn't believe that then, and it turned out to be totally wrong, but somehow Pepsi rejecting trendiness feels even more monumental. It's like the concept was dying on us, and society needed Pepsi to give us permission to let it go, and herald this new era.

In Between Jays

This coming baseball season is shaping up to be strange in at least one way: how few teams are trying to win. I saw one article that pointed out that fewer than half of teams will actually be putting in an effort to compete, with the rest in mid-rebuild, and going through the motions while building up a collection of prospects.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, since their list of rebuilding teams counted teams like the Blue Jays that are half-heartedly competing, neither trying to improve the roster nor rebuilding. But then, you know that if they aren't fast out of the gate, the clearance sale will begin.

It's not hard to see why this is happening. The last three World Series winners (Royals, Cubs, Astros) have shown us the optimum strategy: grooming a generation of prospects to peak at the same time. Teams that do this have a clear enough advantage that there isn't much point shuffling along with a mediocre line-up and hoping for the best.

On the one hand, that's refreshing: we went through twenty years of feeling it was futile to compete with big spending teams, so a change is welcome. Now it's futile to compete with great farm systems. The problem is that while this trend has produced some impressive teams - and allowed some smaller markets a better chance to compete - it's not very entertaining if half the teams are just biding time while they wait for tomorrow's stars to mature. And people are starting to notice.

To understand this, we have to go back to the question of why we watch sports. We may want to see our favourite teams win, and we may enjoy it when they win championships, but the truth is that most of the enjoyment of sports comes from seasons where your team is somewhere in the middle. They aren't world-beaters, but they aren't terrible either. You feel like you might compete if things line-up right for you. And it's good that you can enjoy those mediocre seasons, because that's where teams usually spend most of their time.

But if you're in a cycle of compete-selloff-rebuild-compete, then you never have those seasons. You have meaningless seasons of waiting punctuated by a few seasons of greatness. Those winning periods are nice, but the point is that you never go into any seasons with any intrigue. And if the whole league is using that same strategy, then there's not much to talk about, other than asking which of the four teams peaking this year are going to win.

It's similar in basketball, though not for the same reasons. Here in Raptorland, it's pretty strange. The team is first in their conference, in a season where the big obstacle, the Cavaliers, are looking beatable. You'd think that any team in our situation would be dreaming about winning it all. And yet, no one is talking about that. The most you hear is discussion of how we have a realistic chance of winning the Eastern Conference. No one is planning a championship parade; no one is even acknowledging the possibility.

The NBA may not be locked into baseball's extreme-makeover pattern, but in the same way that it's remarkable how few baseball teams are trying to compete, it's amazing how few basketball teams are true contenders.

But the other two big-four sports are at the opposite ebb. The NFL has had a great deal of parity for a while now. But this year we saw breakthroughs by the Eagles, Jaguars, Bills, Saints, and my Rams. That underlined the fact that coaching changes and under-the-radar personnel choices can have a big effect on a team's fortunes. For an NFL fan - as long as your team doesn't rhyme with "frowns" - You know that competitiveness could be right around the corner.

Meanwhile, hockey has so much parity that an expansion team is contending for first overall. That's got to have fans everywhere thinking that getting a competitive team is easier than they suspected.

For the last decade plus, the formula for success in the NHL has been to draft and develop a few superstars, keep them for the long-term while cycling through a succession of supporting players, holding on to them for as long as you can afford them. It was a nice system, since it rewarded planning by a well-run team, but unlike baseball, you could keep the core of a successful team together for a while, instead of selling-off the entire team and starting over after just a few years of contention.

But now, some teams with stars are failing. The aforementioned expansion Golden Knights are essentially a team that's nothing but a supporting cast, and it is succeeding. It could just be a fluke, or maybe they've stumbled across a whole new way of building a team. Who knows where that's going to go, but it certainly sounds more interesting than the baseball situation.

Keep Listening

Like a lot of Canadians my age, I have fond memories of Muchmusic. Not just silly, embarrassed memories, but some genuine appreciation. Although it could be juvenile and amateur, they offered a wider variety of music than any radio station, and so cultivated a more mature appreciation of music that we would otherwise have had. Also, their many genre-based shows allowed young music fans a deeper dive into their favourite music than you could get anywhere else at the time.

As a young proto-hipster, I especially enjoyed their alternative music show, The Wedge, and its predecessor, City Limits. They introduced me to musical possibilities a kid in small-town Ontario would never have had a chance to be exposed to, some of which would become life-long favorites.

But like I say, it wasn't perfect, and I think it's time for a reckoning of some of Muchmusic's crimes. For instance, they sometimes gave musicians a poor introduction. I'm still kind of ticked that I didn't get into The Smiths until years later because Much convinced me they had nothing more to offer than "Girlfriend in a Coma." Is not a bad song, but not the catchiest in their catalogue, and surely not the one you would use to introduce people to the band.

But that sort of thing tended to happen: they'd arbitrarily overplay one song in a bands ouvre, denying viewers the chance to get a better idea of their music. To be fair, they were limited by the fact that is a video channel, and have a mandate to choose good videos. But I suspected that we were also at the mercy of taste-makers behind the scenes, and if someone at the station had a thing for a particular song, then we were just kind of stuck with it.

Which brings me to fellow Mancurians, The Fall. The only song of theirs that I ever recall appearing on Muchmusic was "Eat Y'self Fitter," which I thought was one of the worst songs I'd ever heard. So for years, I had a very negative view of them.

Occasionally, I'd see The Fall mentioned alongside legends of the Manchester Scene, which would confuse me, having written them off as talentless weirdos. Eventually, though, between Internet radio and YouTube, I got to hear some of their other songs, and was surprised to find that they were much better.

After the recent death of The Fall's singer-songwriter Mark E. Smith, there were more accolades for the band, so I checked out some more of their songs on YouTube, and again, they fit into a fun, creative flavor of post-punk that I appreciated. After a few songs, I noticed that "Eat Y'self Fitter" appeared in the list of suggested videos, so I tapped on it to see if it was really as bad as I remembered.

Indeed it was. I'd describe it as the musical equivalent of one of those terrible Saturday Night Live sketches where they repeat the same joke over and over, and it's not just unfunny, you're not even sure why it was supposed to be funny. So I Googled the song to see if I was the only one that had the same reaction, and I was shocked to find that it is one of the all time favorites of British uber-DJ John Peel.

So I guess the lesson here is that not everyone's tastes line up. And never judge a musician by one song.

Nevermore

I recently saw a trivia question asking what a group of ravens is called. You may already know that a group of crows is a "murder," which is one of the most famous of the oddball animal group names. But I hadn't heard of a group of ravens before, so I had to look it up. It turns out that a group of ravens is an "unkindness," or a "conspiracy." That's certainly better than my deduction that it's a "manslaughter" of ravens.

What's interesting is that my Google search also turned up this article from the Audubon Society, arguing that it is, in fact, a "group" of crows, ravens, and whatever, since that's what people actually call them. As a birder, he's never used or heard any of the obscure group names, so you can't really say that a group of ravens is called an unkindness, since people in real life call it "a group of ravens." At most, you're just saying that people centuries ago called it by the obscure word. He goes further and asks experts on various animals if they've ever used or heard the group names, and not one had.

Most interestingly, the wombat expert pointed out that wombats don't get into groups, thus begging the question of how anyone devised that they should be a "wisdom" of wombats. I would further point out that although these group names come from the middle ages, no English-speaker set eyes on a wombat until centuries later. So someone out there is just arbitrarily coming up with more of these names, and now has slipped up by including animals that don't group together.

But back to the original idea that these names aren't real. I hadn't really thought about it before, but he's got a point. I mean, here I am, a trivia fan, and yet I've never found the groups of animals interesting, or made much headway in remembering them. I guess that's why; trivia isn't just random info, it has to have at least some importance to be interesting, say, by linking to some other facts. I can remember that the Baltimore Ravens football club is named after the poem because it was written by local boy Edgar Allan Poe. But I'm never going to remember an unkindness of Ravens, even after writing this blog entry about it.

On a similar note, can we lay off the phobia name trivia? I hate it when people ask, "What is 'flentaphobia' a fear of?" I think what you mean is, theoretically, what would it be a fear of if it actually existed. Yes, that's what it theoretically would be called, but just because you can put some Latin roots together, doesn't mean it's an actual thing. I could just say that I have inaniaephobia, the fear of inanity.

Things The Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About Life In The Future, #39

You'll see Moe Berg of The Pursuit of Happiness perform "I'm an Adult Now" on TV at age 58.

Das Boo

It's an occasional custom in hockey for fans to boo a hated player whenever he touches the puck. There are numerous reasons why this can happen. Usually it's because the target has committed some sort of dirty play against a member of the home team.

But often, the booing has a mob-mentality to it that waters down its meaning. Years ago, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin was suspended for throwing a stick into the stands. Later, Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson broke his stick mid-play, and jokingly mimed throwing it into the stands. Leaf fans took offense, and gave Alfredsson the booing treatment for years to come. For one thing, the original act wasn't really offensive. But also, hockey is a sport where grave injustices are often left to stand, and booing is the only recourse for fans. It's depressing to think that the punishment given to an unstable cheap-shot artist is the same one given to a guy who did a mildly insulting joke.

Even more unfair is when the crowd turns on a member of the home team. One of the most embarrassing experiences I've had as a sports fan was when the Leafs "fans" decided veteran defenceman Larry Murphy was so personally responsible for the team's woes that they began booing him every time he touched the puck. It was one of the great justices of the game that he was traded to Detroit just in time to win a couple of Stanley Cups.

And this week, the Leaf faithful extended the booing treatment to Nashville's star defenceman PK Subban. Of course, that was a little awkward, booing a guy who's not known for dirty play, and happens to be the only black guy on the ice. To be fair, there's never been a clear, irrefutable explanation for why many people don't like Subban. He may be a different race than most hockey players, but he also differs in other ways: he's a very outgoing individual in a sport that usually values people who fit in. In the past, I've argued that is actually an interaction between the two causes: people cast an especially critical eye towards him because he's of a different race.

So was there an element of racism in the fans' booing? We can't say definitively, so instead, I'd like to look at a different question, which may also say some disturbing things about the sport's culture. I may think there is a racial component to the hockey culture's treatment of Subban, but for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say this is nothing to do with race. That still leaves the question: why do so many people in hockey hate PK Subban?

Like I said, he's not known for dirty play. He also seems quite friendly in interviews, and is famous for being very charitable. So the only way left to explain it is his personality. Or more specifically, we're talking about the way he expresses it. The hockey world is okay with players like Brent Burns, who are eccentric in ways that fit the hockey culture better, with beards and good-natured oafishness. But charismatic fashionistas are not welcome.

This could be a problem for the sport in the future. For all its dominance in Canada, you can see that the powers that be in hockey are worried, given how many ad campaigns are trying to encourage kids and their patents to get into the sport.

If Subban's treatment is racist, that's bad news for these recruitment drives. We're talking about a sport that's hugely white, in a country that's becoming less so. It's clear that hockey's long-term health requires getting more diverse. But if Subban's treatment is not racist, that may be less bad morally, but it would actually be worse for the sport. If kids don't perceive the rejection as being about colour, they'll see it as being about personality. The lesson will be that if you want to be your own person, then you're not welcome here. To generations that will grow up with more and more avenues of self expression, we'll be selling a sport where your individuality may only be expressed through degrees of aggression.