Maybe I am a little biased, but writing a review of a George Strait album feels a little like saying, “Water is very good.” Rarely has a man of only 58 years attained such influence. More than this, he is still at the top, churning out hits routinely and consistently as we speak.
Mike Abernathy climbed into his new Camry, confident he’d made the right choice. It’d run forever; the new engines had been developing at a rapid pace, and Mike could be a man while getting “green points” too. And to think he’d be sitting in one now, after the foolish and self-serving environmental “investments” during the Obama administration—well, it was a minor miracle.
The second of four releases by Robin Thicke in 2006, the Evolution of Robin Thicke made him a star. As a journey through sixteen tracks, this album is tantalizingly uneven. Even so, if the next releases ever add up to a total album, this guy will be on top of the world.
I found Paul McCartney's 2007 album, Memory Almost Full lying around my house. Though I am young and conservative after a fashion — having grown tired of the insipid statism and relentless conventional wisdom that emanates from the generation which gave us the Beatles — I thought this 2007 release would be intriguing. And it was.
Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds was so omnipresent during the 1990s that I’m sure many fans of pop and R&B were sick of him. The soundtracks, the monster hits for every artist from Boyz II Men to Madonna to Toni Braxton to the 1996 Olympic theme song – he owned the music world. So, why did some of his best work ever end up never being released?
The truth is I liked Tiger too much. I liked his youth, his ethnicity, his arrogance. Call me one who simply favors a front-runner, but I like excellence. At the least, I admire dominant athletes and teams as much as I hate them.
Connie Stevens was furious. She had been summoned from a firm-wide meeting by her son’s teacher. She naturally asked if the face-to-face meeting could wait, and was told instead that she should come immediately to meet, and remove, Peter from school for the day. What could he have done? She willed herself to recite “the prayers,” in the hope of escaping irrational anger at her son, the teacher, and the world.
There was something of a minor furor over Roberto Alomar’s narrow failure to be elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame by 8 votes last month. Alomar, the celebrated second baseman whose prime in the 1990s was celebrated even at the time, famously spat in the face of an umpire while playing for Baltimore. In short, the word is that he may have ruffled more than a few feathers.
Muhammad Ali’s birthday was a few weeks ago. Most people who count themselves boxing fans are fans of Ali, in my experience. He was in possession of a rare set of boxing skills, especially his hand speed, unrivaled among heavyweights. Ali’s mobility and evasiveness set him apart as well. I find myself strangely drawn to his fights, even those I’ve seen several times before.
It should not have been close. The scandal of it is that Brett Favre is already a three time MVP from the 1995-97 seasons, which was a record until now. That he lost the award to another great, Peyton Manning, in itself is not scandalous; that he lost it this season is.