A love letter to Radiohead from an overenthusiastic fanboy

Radiohead are ready to release their 8th studio album, The King of Limbs, in a couple days. Like In Rainbows before it, it comes as a sudden surprise for fans. Radiohead have taken charge of every aspect of their career, and I couldn't be happier for them.

Their release methods isn't a lesson in subverting the label system, it's their reward for a long, successful career. They get to finish albums and drop them on the unsuspecting heads of their fans, with no leaks, no media hype, no six month wait, because they've been critically and commercially successful on a level that's almost unheard of these days. They can announce on Monday that their new album will be coming out on Saturday, and every rock and roll nerd in the world will be alternating between holding their breath in anticipation and clapping their hands with glee. They don't have to spend money promoting their new album, because they just have to update their website, and the news reports will flow from there. They don't have to do SNL, or emerge from an egg at the Grammy Awards, or make music videos, or do anything other than let their music speak for itself.

As a longtime fan of theirs, it's gratifying to see them so in control of their own destiny. It's almost reassuring in a way, seeing consistent brilliance pay off so handsomely. The music world is filled with superstars undeserving of their wealth and fame (Black Eyed Peas), brilliant songwriters who work in relative obscurity or cultdom (Robyn Hitchcock, Robert Pollard), and great artists forced to submit to a reunion they're not interested in because that's their most financially sound option (Stephen Malkmus, oh good lord, Stephen Malkmus).

To get to the point, Radiohead are a special band, and we're lucky to have them. I have no clue what The King of Limbs sounds like, and neither does anybody else in the world, but there's no doubt in my mind that, at the very least, it's going to be very good. Their legacy is firmly secured at this point. This new album, and anything else they might do, is a gift, and I'll treat it as such.

the joy and pain of sports

One of the interesting aspects of being a sports fan is the way our expectations rise and fall with teams' fortunes, especially the relative joy and disappointment that comes when those expectations are or aren't met.

What I'm realizing is that the better your favorite team is, the less you enjoy when they win, and the more it hurts when they don't.

For my entire life, the Philadelphia Phillies have been my favorite team in my favorite sport, and for the past few seasons, they've been among the best teams in baseball. Accordingly, expectations are high, and failing to make the playoffs would be a devastating disappointment. Never mind that prior to their run of division titles starting in 2007, they'd made the playoffs exactly once in the previous 23 years.

Contrast this with any of those 23 years. In 1993, when they went from a last place finish in 1992 to a division title and a National League Championship, it was completely out of the blue, and though their eventual loss in the World Series was devastating, the players on the team that season have engendered a wealth of goodwill that lasts to this day. Even Mitch Williams, run out of town by Curt Schilling after the blown save that broke the hearts of the city, is now a frequent guest on Philadelphia-area sports shows. Just try to watch this clip without getting angry or sad (unless you're from Toronto, in which case you can enjoy this clip while Roy Halladay is on the mound tonight in a Phillies uniform):



Likewise in 2001, when the Phillies made an unexpected run for the NL East title, faltering in the final month of the season and finishing just two games behind the Braves. If the Phillies of 2010 had held the division lead for almost the entire season before blowing it at the last minute, it would be a cause for outrage. Coaches would be fired, players would be shipped out of town, and the pitchfork-wielding masses would gather outside Citizens Bank Park with the name "Cliff Lee" on their tongues. In 2001, it was a pleasant surprise, a memorable ride that fell just short.

Or take 2008, when the Phillies were expected to do well, and won the World Series. For fans like myself, who hadn't even been born the last time a Philadelphia team won a championship (I missed the 76ers 1983 title by six months), and for a franchise like the Phillies, with no World Series titles since 1980, and only one in the previous 125 years, it was elating. And I knew even then that if they did it again the next year (or if they do it this year), it'll never be as good as it was in 2008.



This is a fairly simple equation when you think about it. The more you expect of your team, the worse it feels when they fail, and the less you expect, the better it feels when they exceed expectations.

So imagine the crushing joylessness of being a fan of the New York Yankees, a perennial favorite every year since the mid-'90s, a team that expects to win the World Series every year. Maybe not having won it since 2000 made it better when they won last year, but it has to be tough being invested in the only sports team in North America for whom five championships since 1996 is considered disappointing.

Or maybe I'm just covering up for how much it hurt when the Phillies lost to them last year, and preparing myself for the same possibility this year.

A new look for a new decade... or something

I decided to fool around a little with the layout of this here thinger, since I hadn't changed it since I started it in 2005. It's still pretty bare-bones, which is how I like it. There's a new follow button that I'm not expecting anybody to use (seeing as how I haven't gone out of my way to let people know I'm writing again since I started writing again, and thus nobody is reading this), and there's a "share" thing that nobody will use either. But hey, at least they're there.

I might still do some more tinkering, because in my browser, the page looks like it's 75% empty space (EDIT: done, empty space reduced to 1/3). I think the sans serif font is a hit, though. Any suggestions from my imaginary readership are more than welcome.

booze makes the economy go 'round (and then vomit)

I used to go to a lot more concerts when I was younger than I do now (my heyday was probably age 17-19 or so). I liked getting there early, and standing as close to the stage as possible. I liked staying after the show and trying to meet the band, or at least get a set list off of the stage. It was an exciting ritual.

A lot of the time, at these shows, after standing outside the venue for an hour waiting for the doors to open, then standing in front of the stage for an hour, waiting for the first band to start, I used to look at the crowded floor around me and wonder why they didn't just start the damn show already. Everybody was there, what was the holdup?

Then last week I went to a show at the Electric Factory for the first time since I saw the Flaming Lips there in the spring of 2003, when I was 19. As a 26-year-old, my show-going habits are much different: roll in as late as possible just before the show starts, head straight to the bar, and lurk around the back of the venue, where I can actually see the stage, and I'm not packed in on all sides by sweaty hipster kids. In fact, the bar at the Electric Factory is in a separate upstairs section, which I'd never seen before because I'd never been there as an adult. (And no, 19-year-olds are not adults, and I think the only people who would argue that they are would be either 19 themselves, criminal prosecutors, or a military recruiter, but that's for a different post.)

It was up there, with a couple hundred people waiting over an hour for the show to start, every one of them holding a $7 plastic cup of Yuengling, that I realized the answer to the question that my 19-year-old self could never figure out. It seems obvious now, but I guess I'd never really thought that much about it, since most of the shows I go to now are either at all-ages venues that require pre-gaming at a bar down the street, or are at actual bars.

Why I don't care about an "Arrested Development" movie, even though I love "Arrested Development"

1. It's simply too late. At this point, the show has been off the air for longer than it was ever on the air. Even if they started production tomorrow, a movie wouldn't be hitting theaters for AT LEAST 18 months or so. What makes anybody think that something made so long after the end of the show would even be any good? At that point it's not a continuation, it's a reunion, the type of cheap, cynical stunt that I would think fans of Arrested Development would mock.

2. The series finale was a perfectly good ending. It not only wrapped up pretty much every loose thread (although it's been a while since I've seen it, so let me know if I'm forgetting anything), but it was explicitly designed as a mirror image of the pilot episode, or the completion of a circle. Anything else is going to be sort of a sideways tangent at best (like reissuing Thriller with bonus tracks) or an infuriating legacy-stainer at worst (like the fourth Indiana Jones movie).

3. Arrested Development's pace and tone won't translate to a movie. A feature-length film would be roughly the length of at least four sitcom-length TV episodes. I know as well as anybody that Arrested Development is one of the most endlessly re-watchable shows ever made (maybe second to The Simpsons), but have you ever watched four in a row, with no breaks? It's a tiring experience. The 21 minute sitcom is the perfect format for a show with such breakneck pacing. Stretch it out to an hour and a half, with no commercial breaks or breaks between episodes, and it's either going to have slow stretches in the middle just to break things up for the viewer and pad out the length (like the Simpsons movie) or it will be so frantically paced that by the end nobody will be able to pay attention and the plot will seem too nonsensical and convoluted (like the Futurama DVD movies).

So there's that. I promise that sooner or later I'm going to write about something I like, instead of whining about how everything sucks. So far the Tom Smash Blog rebirth has consisted of thoughts that wouldn't fit into facebook updates, so this is what we've got to work with.

Redefining the term "diminishing returns"

For a band that took a four year hiatus after its second album, Weezer has been hitting us with new jams at a pace that's almost distressing, at least to those of us who have since come to wish they'd broken up after their unbelievably brilliant second album, which looks more and more like ether Matt Sharp was secretly in charge of everything, or it was just a freak accident.

This week Weezer are dropping yet another shit bomb on an unsuspecting public, and yes, I'm dismissing it with the term "shit bomb" without having heard a single song. See, every time Weezer puts out a new album, I hear enough people say "it's not that bad" that I end up checking it out, even though I know it absolutely will be that bad, and thus far, each one has been even worse than the one before it.

When the post-Pinkerton comeback started with a second self-titled album (the so-called "green" album), Weezer were mired in a genre that I just made up called "safety rock," songs assembled from an interchangeable grab-bag of bland verses, bland choruses that were loud enough to be distinguished from the verses, and guitar solos that were simply the verse melody, except on a guitar. The next phase, represented by Maladroit and Make Believe, found Weezer trying on a couple of different but equally radio-friendly hats: faux-pop-metal, faux-new-wave, lazy approximations of "El Scorcho" with added studio polish.

These albums were terrible, but not completely beyond hope, as they occasionally yielded a dull but somewhat pleasing single ("Island in the Sun"), and in one case, a brilliant pop song that remains the sole post-90s beacon of hope ("Keep Fishin'").

Since then... well, I think comparing the third self-titled album (the so-called "red" album) and Raditude to the Jonas Brothers or Katy Perry would be charitable, in that those are acts that make music that is competently performed and recorded, designed to separate teenagers and tweens from their parents' money before they grow old enough to discover better music. And they've engaged in a myriad of promotional stunts that are so numerous and so embarrassing that I don't even want to list them.

Now comes Hurley, with its gimmick title and gimmick cover, the latter being a possible attempt to cover up a sponsorship from the Hurley clothing company (and yes, when you're as rich and famous as Weezer, it IS still possible to sell out). As for me, I've learned a lesson I would have learned years ago, had I not spent so many countless hours of my childhood with Weezer's first two albums: Hurley is a steaming pile of shit until proven otherwise. Unless ten different friends of mine come to me begging and pleading to give it a chance, because it really is that great, it's an F, a 1/5, a 0%.

And with this new album comes the news that Weezer are contemplating a tour in which they play each city two nights, once playing their self-titled debut (the so-called "blue" album) in its entirety, and once playing Pinkerton in its entirety. I'm going to make the same easy joke everybody else is: apparently even Weezer have no interest in hearing new Weezer material.

The ethical conundrum of watching football

I've been a Philadelphia Eagles fan for as long as I can remember, but over the past four or five years, as the NFL season approaches, I feel more and more ambivalent, although I always end up watching anyway.

To start with, modern NFL football is damn near unwatchable. Between injury timeouts, penalties, replay challenges, and increasingly long commercial breaks (the latter made possible by the NFL's apparently limitless popularity), any sense of flow or momentum is thoroughly stifled. Add to this the fact that football, more than any other sport, is already inherently slight on action compared to the time it takes to play the game, and you end up with a game that takes over three hours to play, with as little as 11 minutes of actual football action.

To me, though, that's just the start of the problem, because I think there's a real ethical dilemma in being a fan of the NFL. I'm aware that the players are well-compensated, and that nobody is forcing them to play football, but I have doubts about how seriously many of them take the health risks.

It's certainly true that awareness of the reality of concussions has increased over the past couple years, but I don't see anything that suggests more than a token acknowledgement of the issue. The tough-guy warrior mentality that the NFL works so hard to foster has been ingrained for decades. A player who doesn't try to play through an injury is considered soft by coaches and fans alike, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that right at this very moment, there are players with concussion symptoms who aren't reporting them for fear that it might put their jobs in jeopardy. Worse, that fear might not be irrational.

Just today, the Eagles lost their defensive centerpiece (Stewart Bradley) and their offensive centerpiece (Kevin Kolb) to concussions. When Bradley took a hit, tried to get up, and then collapsed like a sack of potatoes, I literally felt sick to my stomach. Between Kolb and Bradley today, Brian Westbrook's troubles last year, and the lingering feelings over the suicide of Andre Waters, I'm starting to wonder how much more I can take. With every incident, I feel a little more like I'm personally responsible, along with everybody else who pays lip service to concern for the health of the players and goes back to demanding faster action and bigger hits.

I'm trying not to compare this to the Roman gladiators, but... well, I'm having trouble coming up with another comparison with the appropriate gravity.