Thursday, February 25, 2010

Painted Shoes



I found these painted shoes in the town of Seaside, Florida. The shoes were all painted by kids in their grade school and were set out on these steps to dry. Clicking on the link will take you to its page at William Drew Photography where you can see a larger view of it.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Maybe The Best Song I've Ever Heard

Andrew McMahon has got to be the most unheralded songwriter in the history of music. Back in 2002 I stumbled across an album titled "Leaving Through The Window" by a band named 'Something Corporate'. I fell in love with the album. I later bought Something Corporates album "North". Again, I loved the album. Andrew McMahon was the singer/songwriter for Something Corporate. After the band finished up touring for their North album they decided to take a break. They were not planning on killing the band, they just wanted to get away and rediscover what made them become Something Corporate in the first place.

Andrew put together a side project called Jack's Mannequin. On the day they finished recording their debut album 'Everything in Transit' in 2005, Andrew was diagnosed with Leukemia. He is now in remission, and in 2008 Jack's Mannequin released The Glass Passenger. I've absolutely loved all four of these albums.

This past Saturday, Feb 20th, I got the chance to see Jack's Mannequin in concert at First Ave. and it was one hell of a show. I was on Youtube today and came across some videos from that First Ave. show. As I was reading through some of the comments I saw some talk about a song called Konstantine and how people scream for it to be played at every Jack's Mannequin concert and Andrew doesn't like hearing that. I had no idea what they were talking about.

Tonight I was online and I decided to look up Konstantine. I found out its a song from the Something Corporate days that wasn't on either of their two albums. I then found a video of the song. I took a listen.

Fuck me.

This song makes me melt. Listening to it is like being in heaven for 9 minutes.

Here it is. Something Corporate - Konstantine




And as a bonus, here is a live performance of it.




From the wiki for this song (yes, the song has its own wiki):

"Konstantine" is a song by alternative rock band Something Corporate. The song is the third track of their album Songs for Silent Movies, which was only released in Japan.

The song is about lead singer Andrew McMahon's relationship with his ex-girlfriend Krystal and their breakup.

Although the band has stopped touring, fans of McMahon's new band, Jack's Mannequin, still request the song to be played while the band is touring. McMahon refuses to play the song and has said in a recent interview, "If I ever play it, I’ll have to play it forever, every night. If it weren’t such a big deal for me to play Konstantine, then I probably would play it. But the truth is, as soon as I bring that song out one time, I will never be able to walk through a venue, no matter what band I’m playing with or no matter where I’m at, and not have people chant and cheer for it.”

The Darko Initiative



I'm a few days late with this, but I should comment on the Minnesota Timberwolves trade that happened before the NBA's trade deadline last week.

On Wednesday February 17th the Timberwolves made a trade with the New York Knicks, sending them seldom used Brian Cardinal for seldom used Darko Milicic. This is a trade that shows why David Kahn is doing a much better job than Kevin McHale did. I'm not one of those people that bashes McHale. He did a very good job of building the franchise up from being a laughingstock to a team that made it to the Western Conference Finals. Of course it then headed straight back to being a laughingstock before Kevin left not of his own accord.

There is a chance this trade will end up just being a wash for the Timberwolves. Brian Cardinal was not going to be on the team next year and he wasn't playing this year. Darko has been on record saying he is done with the NBA and will head home to Europe and play there next season. So, if Darko does stay in Europe next year, the T-Wolves are no better or no worse than they were without the trade. And that is the absolute worse this trade can be.

The good side of this deal? Milicic was taken #2 in a very deep and talented draft. He probably should not have been taken then, and hind-site says that was an absolutely horrible pick by the Detroit Pistons. But the fact remains that he does have some undeniable skill and for whatever reason has not been able to put that skill to use in his NBA career. He is also only 24 years old which means he should just now be entering the prime of his career. A time that his physical skills should start to flourish. He has been in the league for seven years already, and has mostly been an afterthought through those seven years. He's shown flashes of the brilliance that made him become the #2 pick in that draft, and he's also shown why he finds himself at the end of the bench on most of the teams he's played for.

He is exactly the type of player the Timberwolves need to compliment Al Jefferson and Kevin Love, and if Milicic can figure out how to use his skills here, this will be one of the best trades this team could ever make.

As I'm writing this, Darko has played exactly one game with the Timberwolves. He has stated he flat-out is not in game shape because of his lack of playing time in New York. So we should be expecting some growing pains here in what will amount to a 27-game tryout that will let each side know if Milicic will be a good fit with us or be better off going back over-seas. In that one game he played... WOW. Who would have seen this coming? He played 19-minutes, which is more than anyone could have expected him to play. But the thing is he earned those minutes. He scored 8 points, grabbed 8 rebounds, blocked 1 shot and had two assists, one of which was a beautiful back door pass to Damian Wilkins. But the big stat of the night? He was a +35, which means the Timberwolves outscored Oklahoma by 35-points while he was in the game. That's an insane number especially considering a)it was a close game decided by two-points and b)we lost. It would be easy to see someone be +35 in a blow-out win. It would be easy to see a +35 with someone playing garbage-time minutes. But this was a +35 where he found himself playing meaningful minutes and he found himself on the court for the last 4-minutes of a game decided by just two points.

It was only one game, and maybe that will be the peak of his career with us. But if he can build on that, and enjoy himself and comeback to play next year and years to come, wow, this trade would just be brilliant for the Timberwolves. The T-Wolves don't need a center that needs to score. They need a center that can play defense, block some shots, grab some rebounds, and score when needed and that is exactly what Milicic can bring.

Here's looking to some positive days with Milicic as the starting center for years to come.