IsMagical

2005 isn’t so long ago that it’s the Stone Age of the Internet. Social media’ing was all the rage —MySpace was king, some Luddites were still on Friendster, and the new, New Wave was all about poking friends on Facebook. Blogs were around and popular if not accredited sources of information (just like today! “Ba-ZING!”), and if you knew a cursory amount of HTML, had a few free hours, you could be web logging to all of your LiveJournal fans in no time. Craigslist had caught fire (for the web sophisticates of the U.S. Midwest) in 2003 and was a fascinating spectator sport.

In any case, as mundane as those examples seem, people-watching and —most reflective of the jaded 20-something I was— boredom set in quickly. And with the detached, bored, slack-jawed, webgazing and voyeurism came the need to share with friends. Now when I say “share” I don’t mean that there were buttons on a webpage to post to Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, et cetera, instead, I mean sharing via email or IM. Particularly with Craigslist there was a strong need to share the goofiness and madness of others, to wit (actual IM conversations ensue):

[My Yahoo! Messenger Avatar]: “Somebody actually is asking for free rent in exchange for blow-jays?” <Craigslist ad url>

[Friend’s Yahoo! Messenger Avatar]: “That can’t be real.”

[Friend’s Yahoo! Messenger Avatar]: “Check it out, this “crazy” person is just giving away their entire collection of Ranger Rick and Highlights magazines.” <Craigslist ad url>

[My Yahoo! Messenger Avatar]: “That’s nuts! Let’s go get them.”

While 2005 wasn’t the Stone Age of the Internet, there was a strong sense of brazenness to the whole thing. An earned (and novel) sense of the Old West to the entire concept of a social Internet.

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“I don’t know a sound solution. I don’t know.”

For years now, we’ve all soldiered blithely on. Too eager to believe that he would be back. That his brittle bones would somehow (through the magic of science? Wizardry? ANYTHING?) reverse their course and calcify with elasticity instead of more brittleness. And we were all far too naive. Too hopeful.

To do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different outcome, that’s a definition of madness, but damn if this wasn’t hopeful madness. To ignore a 19-year-old using a cane to conceal a hobbling, surgically reconstructed gait? To dismiss a track record that saw him play the totality of one regular 82-game season in four years? To think his oversized, sandstone frame would ever allow him to sustain through the rigors of one 82-game season? This was all madness.

Yet there was Oden, toiling with the labored sadness of an over-the-hill golden retriever. Eager to please, fully willing to please, but with a look of uncertainty, of pain, and most damning, a look of self-doubt. His ocean of talent, frustratingly, was trickled out in mini-sized bottle of Poland Springs. “Snake bit,” “star crossed,” it doesn’t matter. To label him a “bust” is a disservice. To consider him a “project” is, again, madness; for now we can only think of Oden as a man and one who has to consider a completely new trajectory than the one that saw him so completely capable of reigning dread on his opponents as frequently as the Fates have cursed his body.

I almost never write up or, heck, even opine about music unless it’s Destroyer/Bejar-related. It’s my thing and you probably have enough haughty sources for music reviews/ideas and I mean we can all agree that Bowie and Queen tracks are the BEST. In any case, I’m breaking one of my few codes and writing about music for you, the wonderful audience of IsMagical, translation: “Listen up.”

The Gremlins EP is amazing. Just unbelievably weird and sexy-as-all-get out.

Okay, so aside from the fact that I’m 99.99% positive the very first noises on “Introducing” are the chopped noises of the whale-Dory encounter from Finding Nemo (Brian’s favorite movie, Gettin’ Faded category) dig on the next track. 

Track Two: “Maim My Bitch” has that pull of listening to underwater sounds with your eyes closed, maybe you’re actually underwater or maybe you’re on Ketamine, in bed next to someone who you’re glad you know, but you’re nervous about knowing them in that way and you’re wondering “Who put this Blue Planet doc on?” In any case, welcome to the official IsMagical makeout track for 2012.

Beyond “Maim” the EP is just ridiculous. Slow, woozy, “Is the room moving or is the music moving, MAN.” “JonBenet” is probably my second favorite after MMB, and, well, lyrics about spider nests and JonBenet’s passing? [stamp of approval] Add a savage and wrenching guitar solo that almost seems like a throwaway, … enough! … I’ve had enough, Gremlins, you’re cool with me.

This weekend in the Premiership saw some killing by killers. Dempsey and Balotelli (who else?) so let us discuss the honors, distinctions and actions that separate these two from the rest and each other.

Mr Sturm Und Drang:

“Woulda Been A Sniper In Harlem”

The Original Winger has got the video of the game cincher, until FOX/Premmie goons take it down, but, “Umm, Yes! More of this.” First off, let’s talk about the stamp/stomp that was. “Balotelli is dirty,” [feigned outrage, rabble-rabble!] “Smarten up, dunny,” that just makes his legend grow more. Does he need to sublimate his own strife? Maybe. All he does is seek-and-destroy, he’s an agent of chaos that just so happens to be a top 5 talent in the league when he’s swimming in anarchy. Dude burns down his house with fireworks hours before the Manchester United match? “WHY ALWAYS ME?”, 2 goals and a United pistol whipping, he silenced everyone.

After stamping —aside, Umbro can you make a Balo shirt with Stampy from The Simpsons, kthxbai— Scott Parker, the penalty kick! Oh, the penalty kick! Balotelli’s stillness belies the fury and rage of his psychotic emotional maelstrom, watch that video. Watch and know anarchic genius, the mastermind of a pipebomber, of a revolutionary who, more than anything, “Just wants to watch the world burn, Master Bruce.” What cause does Balo need beyond humiliating Tottenham? “Keeper is a knocker, check my fake to the right and know my left, son!” Goal. “Audience, you are now my voice.” “Spurs? Hate me now.”

So sure, Balotelli sublimates and makes manifest his strife, more reasons to love the dude. Jordan sublimated (though not always manifested) maddeningly stupid disses from chumps on the 1991 Timberwolves just so he could win a bet against Pippen. The stamping, yeah, it was dirty, what’s your point? Moral indignation? Fury that he wasn’t kicked out of the match? He’s serving a four-game ban, for what isn’t that terrible of a stamp. [SIGH] “Yeah, I know it’s still a stamp, you’re missing the point.” Moralizing? That nonsense is for your churches and temples. Soccer is its own church with its own gods and Balotelli sprang forth from the skull of Cronus fully formed and ready to rule.

“Fuck a Carling Cup. You call me Bawse from now on, I kept you 3 up in the Premiere”

Balotelli is a fire-breathing, thunder and lightning combo of such raw power and cunning that he evades description. Drogba sorta packs the same Nissan truck frame with a bit more speed, but the Cote ‘d Ivorian doesn’t pack the brains and psychosis of our 21-year-old protagonist. Balotelli, a reiteration, is living the life the rest of us are too afraid to dream, let alone live. If you want your sports figures to be without passion, psychosis, goofiness, god-given talents made manifest in their own time and own way, buy a LeBron #6 jersey, punch yourself in the balls and reup on your Xanax ‘scrip.

Real American Hero:

“I Stay Icy On Purpose”

If Balotelli sprang forth from the skull of a Titan, life’s manuscript set ablaze with his own Zippo and smiling; Clint Dempsey crept in the backdoor a la Loki from Norse mythology and not Marvel Comics. Dempsey was the second-best child in a family of superstar athletes with a budget to only send one of the gifted children to the Yellow Brick Road of athletic lucre and that was his tennis-playing wunderkind sister. Broken mirrors, broken lives later and his sister is dead and Demps is the benefactor of that largesse and then forges himself into the nastiest American soccer player in a generation (or ever?) The story is the type of Horatio Alger mythmaking that went out of favor sometime between the 1950s and the 1980s (thanks, baby boomers!) but, yet it’s there. Trailer park upbringing, teammate’s families raising funds so he can stay on the travel team, Furman (Furman?), New England Revolution, to Premiere League. If you’re just now catching up with the narrative and the man, note too, Dempsey became the first American player to ever notch a hat trick in the Premiere League this past Saturday.

Goal one was a strictly a “right place, right time” tally, but the other two?

“Don’t Have To Go To Church To Get To Know Your God”

“Is Your Majesty Not Entertained?” The Yankee said with a droll affectation.

The other two goals were the sublime notches of a pure scorer. A learned scorer, who, unlike a Balotelli, or more accurately a Messi, honed his craft because he had to to keep up. Apprenticing and working with what raw materials he was given and forging them through external, brutal training and the foundry that a man’s soul only burns in the face of personal tragedy. Dempsey occasionally can come across as a bit “Favre-ian”* in his “Aww shucks-edness” and his largemouth bass-catching dreams and pics on Twitter, but never forget that he is an assassin. One who has spent his time learning and snatching at bits of knowledge to make his passes crisper, to make his movements more subtle. Whatever speed he’s lost, his knowledge is now paying dividends. He, amongst his multitude of skills, has that “Oh so American!” wolfishness about him, that predatory ability to piker away and then finally to strike and to vanquish.

*By Premiere League standards only.

A few days back Nike dropped the FuelBand which they have been promo’ing very hard on Twitter with #MakeItCount. Since the tail end of December, #MakeItCount has been their jones, it’s everywhere on all of the Twitter channels —basketball, football (both kinds, kids), running, collect ‘em all— and Swoosh even dropped a mothership Twitter handle: Nike. Now we begin to see points of intersection, the picture becoming clearer, with what the company is planning for tomorrow’s United-Arsenal match at Emirates Stadium. Click.

Now we see that #MakeItCount wasn’t merely a lede for FuelBand, but a very aggressive 2K12 marketing initiative. Internet-ready marketing slogans stitched into cleats? Check. Star Swoosh athletes’ Twitter handles stitched into cleats? Check. This is how you work when you’re the biggest alpha male in your business and want to reinforce your dominance. “What’s up adidas? Meet my hammer. Boom.”

Nike hasn’t released anything saying that the players will be wearing FuelBands or if the shoes are equipped with the accelerometer and calculating device itself, but well, how far is Nike away from building this tech directly into the kits, cleats or pads of any player in any sport?

H/T to the indomitable @BSTO and the ever-dope Beautiful Gear.

*Update: Agency that made the ad is R/GA. Interesting!

Nike has released their latest piece of technological marvel, the FuelBand. FuelBand —essentially Swoosh’s next generation of Nike+ technology— is a nifty, seemingly omniscient gizmo that provides you with feedback on how many calories you’re burning while working out AND while you’re just doing you. It measures your expended energy when you climb a set of stairs, walk to the bus stop, type on a keyboard, whatever. The technology is cored around two mighty impressive doohickeys/science things, namely: a three-axis accelerometer (to more effectively measure your body’s every movement); and a proprietary algorithm that takes into consideration your oxygen consumption, along with more standard fitness device metrics such as calories, steps taken and duration.

The above ad is the usual from Nike. Supremely well-packaged pop culture nods, interspersed with Nike’s own brightest moments and athletes that are at this point just as canonical to pop culture as the cover of “Abbey Road” or Homer Simpson. Again, just another gem in W+K’s(??)* crown as best agency out there.

The real intrigue about FuelBand is whether Nike will team up with Open Graph on Facebook or not. Facebook announced this week the 60 companies/apps that are teaming up with Open Graph in 2012 and there’s nary a Swoosh on the list. Already, there’s the standard “status updating” ability of the device, Nike has had this for years and was integral to Nike+ bands too. They promo-ed the hell out of the device with the #MakeItCount trending topic on Twitter, but I am surprised that there isn’t a deeper integration with Open Graph…for now. Or, and this is speculative conjecture on my part, maybe Apple* told Nike to hold back on fully integrating with Open Graph? There’s a growing rift between FB and Apple and this could very well be a tete a tete between those two monsters of e-commerce and community and Nike siding with Team iPhone. Which sorta makes sense until you remember that Facebook will likely have 1 billion users very soon. And again, I’m not seeing how there won’t be some deeper integration with Open Graph, and Facebook in general, in the not-too-distant future for the gadget. But, it’s kinda curious and fun to rumor-monger and say “huh” sometimes.

Additionally, Foursquare and Path teamed up with Nike. To what ends remains to be seen, “checking in” at stoplight on the corner of Damen and Wellington doesn’t really strike me as fun or, y’know, on my mind if I’m going for a run. So with working out it’ll be interesting to see if there’s another layer of seamless checking in or whatever for Path and Foursquare to harness.

*I’m not certain if that ad is W+K, but I’d be really surprised if it wasn’t. Again, it’s not W+K, but R/GA a London-based digital agency. Very impressive work.

*Apple and Nike have a very friendly relationship going back to Nike+ ver. 1.0 and Apple helped develop the Nike+ shoe chip, the Nike+ apps for iPhone, websites, etc.

Australian scientists have discovered, for the first time in the history of modern science!, that two separate species of sharks are capable of hybridizing. Now before everyone gets all in a tizzy about the potential for whale sharks and great whites to reproduce (a scary and bad prospect) it is very important to note that the two species that crossbred are sister species. The blacktip shark and the Australian blacktip shark are very closely related, although genetically diverse enough to be valid and different species —they look a lot alike, but the Aussie is typically a bit longer and they have differing numbers of vertebrae, plus genetic differences like allozyme and mitochondrial DNA variations and genetic markers.

The really exciting part about this news is that the team of scientists discovered that there are multiple generations of these hybrids patrolling Australia’s coastal waters. What does this mean? It means that the hybrid babies (F1* or first generation, if you will) of Mr Blacktip and Ms Australian Blacktip are they themselves virile and capable of reproducing, “y’know, “making babies.” F2 or second generation hybrids were discovered, which is really cool and sorta rare with hybrids. For instance, the mule, a hybrid between a lady horse and a gentleman donkey, is sterile. What’s not so cool, is that with reproducing hybrids, there’s the threat of one species (the Australian Blacktip in this case) disappearing. But if there are multiple generations of these hybrids out there and still healthy number of Australians (there are) that threat seems minor.

*F1 actually stands for filial one, which is science’s way of saying “first generation. “iPhone F1 came out in 2007, et cetera.” #ScienceNerd

H/T: The indomitable Andrew Thaler.

Remind me again about the USA actually winning the Cold War, because as far as I can tell from this video, KREMLIN IS PWNING. Unicorns, turntable burgers, marriage proposals, creepy burger patty masks, the smoking hot blonde, glasses-wearing counter girl? What I really enjoy about this commercial is it’s proof of Westernizing hipsterdom invading Russia (and, fingers crossed) simultaneously being parodied. Does Vladimir Q. Public get the same level of chuckles from this commercial as US citizens are spoiled with when we see this YouTube?

H/T: @LittlePriest

Yesterday I was gofering about and had to buy an orchid for a friend’s girlfriend*. Biology nerd that I am, I got to thinking about how frustrating it is to keep orchids alive in Chicago*. Now don’t get me wrong, orchids are really, really, really neat. They are a fascinating example of the divergence and capability of evolution and a species’ ability to adapt to any conditions, mind you, as long as it’s not the upper midwest in winter. Inevitably, the consideration of orchids relative mortality rates led me to consider my nemesis, the giant panda. Now, on the Twitterz I had myself a nice, old-fashioned mini-rant on these insufferable evolutionary dead ends. But now it’s time for some pontificating.

The panda, like so many contemporary “celebs” in the vein of the Kardashian monsters and Hilton tarts, have used American obsession with “the cult of celebrity”

And bully for the panda. The WWF logo is what most of us are exposed to in elementary schools as we, at a tender age, are taught about the perils of pollution, habitat destruction, endangered species and the menace of extinction.

Still, World Wildlife Fund, if we’re really fretting over endangered species, and mind you, this may be personal preference, I’m putting the Siberian tiger as my logo every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Now let’s discuss the folly of the panda and why … sigh … cuteness aside, this is one evolutionary dead end for the ages.

The giant panda is from a taxonomic classification just like you and I! Kingdom: Animalia —we’re all animals, unless you’re a literate oak tree; Phylum: Chordata —Bang! we’re all critters with spinal cords, centralized nervous systems (some, like hagfish have really primitive CNS’s but whatev) and backbones; Class: Mammalia. I’m going to be really surprised if you’re not a mammal. Order: Carnivora. Ah-HA! We’re not carnivores, humans by scientific determination and our own evolution are omnivores, pandas ARE carnivores however.

Blessed with powerful incisors, canines and claws, the panda shuns nature’s gifts and uses these, to instead pairing said gifts with perfectly well-developed binocular vision and instincts to hunt prey, eat bamboo for upwards of 22 hours a day. Why does the panda spend nearly every waking hour eating bamboo? Funny story, actually. See, the panda’s digestive tract is that of a carnivore. It owns very few of the beneficial flora and fauna that populate herbivore and omnivore’s gastro systems that allow for the efficient breakdown of plant matter into nutrients, proteins and necessary amino acids. See, it’s a carnivore and should be perfectly content to eat meat, but NOOOOO the panda has to have 99% of its diet consist of bamboo. So it has to eat nearly constantly to harness even its remarkably low energy levels for a wild animal, all the while leaving it with the remarkable/disgusting ability to poop about 40 times a day.

Still, if being a ridiculously, needlessly, pointlessly fussy eater was the panda’s only evolutionary shortcoming, I think we could all agree that it was the weird, but “OK” black sheep of the mammal family. However the panda has another trump card in its hell-bent drive towards biological irrelevance and that card is: terribly low birth rates in nature and in captivity. The panda is notorious in the zoo circles as one of the most difficult animals to breed successfully. Notorious to the point that zoos have at various times used panda porn* and sneaking tabs of Viagra into the male panda’s food to get the finicky non-lovers to make love. All to no avail. And in nature, the results are not much better, scientists have at least since the 1970s been conducting surveys to determine where the panda population is at —the most recent one just got started— and the outlook isn’t promising, per usual.

Pandas just seem to be a bizarre misstep in Mother Nature’s CV. Mind you, one that has for a few generations hooked the developing minds of youngsters into at least superficially caring about the environment and conservation, thanks to the WWF, and maybe that’s enough.

*He was outta town. I had to pick up a camera charger at his apartment, his gf would be the one letting me in.

*NB: It’s a bitch-and-a-half unless you have one of those glassed-in orchid houses. They require humidity, sunlight and temperature requirements that one is strained to find in December in the Windy City.

* Mating videos of amorous pandas. How pandas were ever in the mood for “makin’ whoopy” or by what stroke of luck someone had a camcorder with which to record I’m not certain.

My passion for sports hit a nadir this fall. The ominous and perpetual threat of the NBA’s “nuclear winter” combined with the sheer boredom of the NFL’s regular season had me huffin’ gas, reading Portnoy’s Complaint (whilst listening to Crichton’s Terminal Man on audiobook) and caused me to shed a paying —Temporarily? Well, I have “some ‘splainin to do” to my editor. “Hi, Tim!”— writing gig where I covered the Chicago Bears. What? Am I stupid? No. Depressed? Yes (and that’s never stopped me in the past!) But just as my bedraggled sports fan/viewer/celebrator psyche could take no more, a comet’s trajectory intersected my own and injected me with hope.

[Clarion Calls/Clearing Clouds/Choir of Angels]

Mario Balotelli, Manchester City’s demented court jester of a demigod, entered my life via G-chat and as a result my sputtering/damp campfire of interest in sport, in general, and soccer, in particular, has been coaxed back to life with such kindling pieces as this. A day later, this —dude, scored two goals against Man City’s biggest rival Man United a scant 36 hours after torching his house down with fireworks. That, of course, segues into this. Which leads us to some of the more choice quotes of Fall 2K11 from monsieur: these.

Take Balotelli’s latest goal (video up top) and note the flourish and shimmy he dresses the ball with on his own rebound. “No headers for you, good-sir ball. You’re going to the back of the net posthaste with my shoulder rocket.” Digest what he did and know that this is Rondo’s headball alley-oop in a regular season match with ramifications, to boot, if something goes a bit wrong and (somehow) the ball doesn’t go in.

The mythical narrative, on and off-the-field, that Balotelli is scribing for himself is an acid-induced jaunt through an athletic Horatio Alger story. His dreams, his brashness, his ability, it is what we all should want to spectate, gawk at, slack-jaw gaze about. At this point the man is living the dream most of aren’t big enough to even fantasize about.