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.
It came to me as I surveyed a local bookstore. Many people write and believe things earnestly which are false, even monstrously so. And I saw such a book, authored by a noted celebrity. Right then, I understood as clear as day the truth of Christmas: it’s not about cultural conservatism, clean living, or patriotic fellow-feeling; the issue is fundamentally Christological.
I’m OK with the fact that I probably play too many video games and watch too many sports. I’m not that important, and no one is relying on me for survival as of yet. But I learned something the other day from a game I was playing. Indulge me, for this requires some explanation.
A very good friend of mine directed me to a recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly on the state of health in the US, and the delivery of said services. I say it that way because the author, David Goldhill, says an overemphasis on health management (epitomized in the phrase, “health care”) as opposed to prevention and overall well-being, may be in large measure responsible for exploding costs, and the number of preventable deaths by infection.