A HUGE Upset, I Guess
Posted: October 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Other Sports, Pop Culture | 62 Comments »
So, I was reading the paper this morning — actually sitting out on the patio of a restaurant, eating breakfast and reading a newspaper, like the good old days — and I came across the most amazing sports fact of the day.
Here it is: In Beijing, the 226th-ranked women’s tennis player in the world, Zhang Shuai, defeated No. 1 ranked Dinara Safina. This made Zhang the lowest-ranked player to ever defeat a No. 1.
Well … I was totally blown away. Aren’t you blown away. Isn’t that amazing? I’m not talking about the fact that Zhang Shuai beat the No. 1 player in the world. I mean the part about Dinara Safina being the No. 1 ranked tennis player in the first place. What? Dinara Safina? Who in the hell is Dinara Safina? I mean, you know, I used to be a big tennis fan, and I still try to keep up with it best I can. We are besieged with Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova … the Kim Clijsters comeback was stirring, I think Carolina Wozniacki is a plenty popular Google search.
But Dinara Safina was the No. 1 player. Who knew? How could that have happened? Isn’t this like waking up one day and hearing that someone you had some vague knowledge of the day before — say, Rory Sabatini — had somehow become the BEST IN THE WORLD. And the thing is, I don’t mean this as a knock on Safina — I’m sure she has won any number of Moscow Opens and Bausch and Lomb championships and whatever. No, I mean this as a knock on myself. I never expected I would be so out of sports touch that I would have barely have heard of the No. 1 player in the world. I mean … Chris Evert, Tracy Austin, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Martina Hingis, the Williams sisters, Arantxa Sanchez Vicario, even crazy Jennifer Capriati … I was UP on what was happening at the top of the women’s tennis ladder.
Then again, it seems like I was up on everything then. I just knew stuff. I knew who the big bands were, I watched the big television show, I saw the hot movies, I was up on pop culture. I didn’t have to work at it. That just happened naturally.
Now? I don’t know who the heavyweight champion of the world is (I’m guessing a Klitchsko of some kind). I really don’t remember who won the Indy 500 this year.* I have never heard of the person with the No. 1 album on iTunes (Brandi Carlile?). I have never seen a single episode of any of the CSIs and I really have no idea what the show “Heroes” is about (the commercials baffle me). Am I just too old? Am I losing touch? I used to know all this stuff instinctively. I was a pop culture and sports sponge. Now … not so much.
*Wait, yes I do, it was Helio Castroneves, right? I remember now, he’d just gotten out of tax evasion charges.
Then again: Maybe in this tennis case it isn’t me. Unless I’m entirely mistaken, Dinara Safina has never won a grand slam event. The only reason I have ever heard the name is because I recall her getting utterly annihilated by Serana Williams in Australia. And then, I seem to recall her getting utterly annihilated again in Paris by a player I could not name.*
*I looked it up. It was Svetlana Kuznetsova.
I think one thing people in individual sports like tennis need to do is come up with a scoring system that makes sense to the rest of the world. You can’t call someone the No. 1 tennis player in the world if they have never won a major championship. You just can’t. I don’t care how many Rio Opens they win. If you have make four Grand Slam events worth 200 times as many points as every other tournament — do it.
Dinara Safina is the No. 1 ranked women’s tennis player in the world? How did I miss this? Well, apparently it doesn’t matter because she isn’t No. 1 anymore. In addition to making history in her loss, she dropped to No. 2 behind Serena Williams. That’s good. I know all about Serena Williams.
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Circle Me, Jerry Atrick.
The question about the pop culture – I’m a decade younger than you, Joe, but I feel the exact same thing. So the questions are:
1. When did you loose your pop culture mojo? Ten years ago, or more recently. If it’s the former, then I guess that’s just life. If it’s the latter, then either I’m just lame, or . . .
2. Do you think there is just TOO MUCH out there? We are constantly inundated with *everything* – shows that wouldn’t have existed 10 or 20 years ago on channels that didn’t exist 10 or 20 years ago. Avenues (like Amer. Idol) in which people 10 or 20 years ago wouldn’t have cut an album, can cut an album. Plus there’s the intertubes.
I don’t think that it’s a question of getting old or anything. I know as much about pop culture now that someone my age 20 years ago would have. It’s just that there’s so much more now, I know less of a *percentage* of pop culture. And maybe you do too.
Does that make sense? Where’s Chuck Klosterman – I need his help . . .
Isn’t Brandi Carlisle part of the Bangles? Wouldn’t that make her a contemporary of Joe’s? Or maybe I’m just out of touch, too…
MCP, It’s Brenda and it was the Go-Gos
It was Belinda, not Brandi in the Bangles (or was it the Go-Go’s?)
I agree with bigcat. There’s just too much out there. I try to keep up (I’m just now watching season 1 of Heroes), but there’s no way to stay on top of it.
So, I focus on stuff I like. If it’s a band that nobody else has ever heard of, so be it (by the way, check out Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers!)
At least I know who Joe Posnanski is, that’s enough for today.
Do not go gently into that good night, Joe!! Fight it! Losing touch with current pop culture is the first step towards old man-style irrelevancy.
You don’t have to like it, but you need to know it.
i know exactly what you mean, joe. i feel the same way. i mean, i know who dinara safina is, mostly because i was always a fan of her brother marat, but i’ve completely lost touch with pop culture. and i can tell you exactly when this happened: when i became a parent.
this might apply to you, too.
The pro tennis tours have a not-so-hidden agenda – they want the big stars playing lots of tournaments to keep sponsors happy. So being ranked #1 is not equivalent to being the best player – it’s the person who’s racked up a lot of points by doing well in a lot of tournaments. If you’re better than everyone else but decide to grind out fewer of the routine tournaments (e.g., the Williams sisters), you won’t get the #1 ranking. If you play a tournament every single week of the hard court season, you can move up even if nobody thinks you’re the best (e.g., Jelena Jankovic – didn’t she hit #1 briefly two years ago?).
You have a family and real things to keep track of now. Let it go.
Seemed like in the ’70s tennis was pretty close to golf in coverage, attention and all. Now it doesn’t seem close at all, but then I’m out of touch myself.
Maybe it’s because contemporary pop culture pretty much sucks. And no, I don’t say that because I’m an old man. Anyway pop culture needs to get off my lawn.
The problem is that the number of bands, shows, movies, short videos, etc has increased at a much faster rate than the number of hours in a day.
If we were on the 35 hour day, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Sometimes, I take joy in having no clue what is going on in some particular corner of pop culture. No idea who won the last American Idol, and frankly, I’m glad I don’t know. No idea what’s happening on Grey’s Anatomy. Unfortunately, I can’t help but know what’s going on with Jon and Kate. Damn you CNN.
In the sports world, last year I was listening to the radio when they said James Harrison won the NFL Defensive Player of the Year award. I had no idea who he was (this was before his big INT return in the Super Bowl). As a Chiefs fan, I’ve drifted away from the NFL the past few years, more towards college football. I don’t play fantasy football or watch every Sportscenter or MNF. But I kind of thought I would know who the best defensive player in the league was.
*sigh*
Belinda Carlisle is the lead singer of the Go-Go’s.
No wonder you can’t keep up on pop culture Joe; you’re publishing multiple thousand-word blog posts daily. Get away from the computer and watch some TV.
Just kidding; I prefer that I read your posts rather than you knowing all about Heroes. At our house we liked season one but dropped it midway through season two.
Seconding Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, and also the predecessor The Refreshments. IIRC, the Peacemakers are a combination of some Refreshments and some Gin Blossoms.
And finally, in an unscripted coincidence, in The Machine I’m at Oct 4, 1975, Game 1 Pirates vs. Reds on the same day that the 2009 MLB playoffs start.
Er, she was #1 for most of the year and Serena’s been bitching about it nonstop, not sure how anyone following tennis wouldn’t be aware.
“Now? I don’t know who the heavyweight champion of the world is (I’m guessing a Klitchsko of some kind). I really don’t remember who won the Indy 500 this year.* I have never heard of the person with the No. 1 album on iTunes (Brandi Carlile?). I have never seen a single episode of any of the CSIs and I really have no idea what the show “Heroes” is about (the commercials baffle me). Am I just too old? Am I losing touch? I used to know all this stuff instinctively. I was a pop culture and sports sponge. Now … not so much.”
I’m 25 and I don’t know about any of those things. Does this mean I’ll be living in a cave by the time I’m forty?
Well, probably…I’ve never been the most tuned-in person. But I suspect there’s another reason. Pop culture just ain’t what it used to be. Twenty years ago, pop culture was near-universal. Now it is merely the most popular of dozens of niche “cultures” competing for everybody’s attention. It is very, very easy to ignore Brandi Carlile (whoever the hell that is) because you rarely listen to the radio (and never top 40) and use friends or Pandora for music suggestions. So I can tell you about the new Air album or Thom Yorke’s new band, but couldn’t name a single Brandi Carlile song. It is very easy to ignore what is on TV right now because, if you miss it, you can netflix it or catch it in reruns or on the Internet. I didn’t watch “The Sopranos” for years, until 2008, when I watched the whole series through a combination of Netflix, HBO on Demand, and streaming online video.
Does Joe’s ignorance of this stuff have to do with his age? Probably somewhat. Does my ignorance of it have to do with my lifelong disinterest in much of pop culture? Surely. But the nichification (not a word, but whatever) of pop culture plays an equally important role.
sort of like when “duane kuiper rocked steve stone!”
“Old man-style irrelevancy” as it is so delightfully called up there is a great place to be. The only reason you need to keep up on crap you don’t care about is so you can brag about it and talk about it with other people who live in the factual world of pop culture knowledge exchange. “Did you see X?” If I say yes, we rehash the plot….now I just say “Nope, never heard of it” and save so much time!
This line of discussion cracked me up:
“I have never heard of the person with the No. 1 album on iTunes (Brandi Carlile?).”
“Isn’t Brandi Carlisle part of the Bangles?”
“It’s Brenda and it was the Go-Gos.”
“It was Belinda, not Brandi in the Bangles (or was it the Go-Go’s?)”
Perhaps this is not the best crowd for a discussion of popular music. This sounds like a dialogue in the TV room at a retirement home.
Safina holding the #1 for as long as she did was an abomination to the rankings system. For a while after Wimbledon there was a very BCS-esque talk about the system in women’s tennis.
Taylor Swift?? Who’s that dude??
I can relate. I’m 32 now, and growing up I used to watch everything sports related (except golf). And I mean everything. Triple crown, grand slam tennis events, Indy 500 the Olympics (couldn’t get enough coverage), all four major sports, boxing. Hell, I’d probably watch Jai Alai if I came across it.
Then at some point, I gradually lost in interest in all of the non-majors, and now I barely even watch hockey and basketball anymore. I’m basically a two-sport guy (football and baseball), though oddly enough I actually watch more golf than I did when I was young (thanks Tiger – yeah, I’m one of those guys). I’ll still watch the occasional grand slam tennis event, and was drawn in a little by the Olympics last year. It’s probably a function of time and priorities I guess.
I’m probably a little less clueless than you on some of the pop culture stuff, but I’m sure I’ll be there in a decade or so.
What tennis needs is a ranking system like the one they use in chess (Google “elo rating”), where everyone from beginner to World no. 1 is on the same scale. Every match counts towards the ranking and you gain more points for beating better players, and lose more points for losing to worse players. For the official pro rankings they could simply have a minimum of, say 30-40 matches played in the last 52 weeks to qualify. I think overall it would be fantastic for the game. People would want to play tournaments to keep up their rating and it would be great for club level players arranging matches.
BONES is better than CSI.
Susanna Hoffs – vocals/guitars
Vicki Peterson – vocals/guitars/bass guitar
Debbi Peterson – vocals/drums/bass guitar
Michael Steele – vocals/bass guitar/guitars (1983–2005)
Susanna had an affair with Prince, and so he gave them the song “Manic Monday,” their first hit.
Belinda Carlisle had a pretty good solo career after the Go-Go’s (Heaven is a Place On Earth, I Get Weak), then posed for Playboy, weird facial surgery, fake tat-ta’s and all.
If we’re taking “pop” to be short for “popular”, pop culture barely even exists anymore.
You can take any number of measures. The number of TV shows that do at least a 15 rating; the number of million-selling records in a year; number of million-selling books in a year; movies seen by at least, of let’s say, 5% of the population. We’ve fragmented to a point where pop culture includes everything and nothing.
You know what pop culture is for men in America? The NFL. That’s it. There’s nothing else. Nothing else has the breadth of impact that dozens of TV shows, movies, books, and records had 30 years ago.
I felt as Joe did when I first heard of Dara Torres, that 41 year old swimmer on the U.S. Women’s Olympic team. The first I heard of her was when the announcers casually mentioned that she was 41 years old as she was standing next to the pool in Beijing about to start a race. I said to 3-year old son, “She’s 41? Holy f—g s–t! How did I not know this?”
The difference is that I thought that NBC or ESPN or whoever failed to market this woman properly. I didn’t take it as a sign that I was getting old.
Until now, that is. Thanks Joe.
BigSteve @10 had me cracking up, and I’m alone at my computer, but I refuse to say something like “LOL” or “I just squirted my coffee all over the keyboard” because no one, in the history of the information superhighway, has done that.
Anyway, screw pop culture. It’s an oxymoron.
Mikey @26:
Waxing postmodern has no place on this blog.
I’m lost on everything Twilight related and all actors under the age of 25. They all look like greasy teenagers to me.
Safina was ranked number 1 a lot of the year and I remember Serena bitching about it during the US Open. I don’t know how they could rank her that high because she consistently loses to vastly inferior opponents. What we need is someone to drone on incessantly on ESPN about the rankings (a la college football) even though is really doesn’t matter.
Now I can’t get the picture of the RNC Chair all playing bass for the Bangles back in the day. I know he’s trying to expand the Republican’s cultural base, but I think this would be a bit much, even for him!
Joe,
As has been suggested it is the kid thing (at their current ages, mine are 4 & 6) that takes you out of pop culture.
Frank DeFord did a story on this ranking sham on either NPR or Gumbles’ show. You should ask him about it when you run into him at the water cooler at SI. He’s still with SI, right?
I don’t mean to post multiples here so quickly, but I’m watching the in-between-games special on TBS, and I must say, after seeing the Brandon Inge visitations to these two ailing children, I feel really, really bad that Inge didn’t win last night. And I’m a big Twins fan. Very goosebumps-ish stuff.
Safina holding the #1 for as long as she did was an abomination to the rankings system.
Let me come to defence of both Safina and the WTA. Until the US Open, Safina had played the most recent series of majors very competitively (semis or finals in all), and had won a slew of other non-major titles.
Serena, OTH, had won 3 of 4 majors, but had done ZERO else – she was getting knocked out in the first round of all kinds of non-major tournaments (and, needless to say, had zero non-major titles).
Can you imagine the outcry if Tiger won 3 of 4 majors in a year, but missed the cut in all other tournaments?
Joe,
Any thoughts on the thousands of ridiculous things that came out of Chip Caray’s mouth last night?
Chip Carey:
“BASE HIT! CAUGHT, out there! And the throw to the plate…..OFF-LINE! AND THEY GOT HIM!!!”
Don’t consider yourself out of touch, Joe. Pop culture as we knew it really doesn’t live here anymore. As the information age grew, so did the entertainment possibilities. Endless entertainment possibilities turns to endless amounts of popular entertainment or personalities. Complicating this even more, the continued enjoyment or rehashing of past pop-culture icons. Today, almost anything 70s or 80s is treated as a pop-icon and added onto those currently surrounding us. I can go get myself a brand new spiffy Max Headroom t-shirt on my way to see GI Joe in the theaters (sidenote to rant on a personal pet peeve – do we really need every 70s to 80s show/cartoon and/or toy remade into a cheap knockoff?). And throwing yet another wrench into the equation; countless non-pop culture aspects are treated as cult, making them a form of pop-culture just the same.
Today, pop-culture is basically our own. That is, it is what you make it in your world. With millions of pop icons to choose from, it is impossible to know them all, so we only know what we choose to focus on. If you choose to chase the trendiest music possibilities out there, you will surely know who Brandi Carlile is. You choose to focus instead on what is important to you and those directly around you, then this will be the pop culture in your life. It doesn’t mean you are out of touch, it just means you cant possibly touch everything when everything is expanding at an unbelievable rate.
Oh, and @ 21: Bellwether Johnson
“Taylor Swift?? Who’s that dude??”
Circle me, Norm?
It’s a fragmented world. This includes the sports landscape. I knew about Dinara Safina and I know that the heavyweight champs are Vitali Klitschko Wladimir Klitschko, and Nikolai Valuev, but I’ll admit that I couldn’t remember the Indy 500 winner– and I’d have absolutely no clue who would be #1 on iTunes. That you’ve grown older and raised a family probably has something to do with the disconnect, but really it’s about fragmentation.
Here’s one of the whys: It’s really easy nowadays to follow the sports you really care about in fanatical detail. Coverage is in-depth, and a variety of excellent blogs allow fans who otherwise would be far-removed from the sport to delve into all the nitty gritty. I don’t even own a TV, but I imagine I’m much better informed about the NBA than most fans could possibly have been back in, say, the early ’90s.
But because you can dive so deeply into the sports you really really care about, it also becomes easier to tune out the stuff you aren’t passionate about. I certainly know less about NASCAR than I did back when I was a teenager. And it’s not that I was a fan then but not now. Back then, to get my sports fix I would read the daily paper, absorbing every last detail. I couldn’t get enough information, and that information invariably included stuff on sports that I didn’t really care about in any meaningful way. Now, I still have that abiding need for sports information, but there is so much more content now for every sport, such that I can fill my need without having to read about NASCAR or the NHL. I never have to leave my niche. And that pattern is being repeated throughout the sportscape, and beyond.
Joe -
I’m 37, so I’m totally on board with the point of the post. But you should check out Brandi Carlile. She’s good. Like, staying power good. Not Springsteen good, but definitely Sarah McLachlan good. Better even. She’s a keeper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq-ZmAYLeB8
speaking of being out of the loop….
I had no idea until being in Borders today that was “another” new book out about the 1975 Reds (albeit in the context of just being about 1975 Game Six).
Us Joe Fans must be brainwashed.
> Chip Carey: “BASE HIT! CAUGHT, out there! And the throw to the plate…..OFF-LINE! AND THEY GOT HIM!!!”
Sounds EXACTLY like John Sterling. In fact, sometime within the past few days, John did exactly the same thing: called it a base hit, then said it was caught. (And he had no excuse, like confusion over whether it had been trapped or something. Or at least he never said so. But then he never explains anything except his own crackpot theories on how the game should be played.)
But don’t get me started on my boy John, the worst sportscaster since Shelby Whitfield, which is going some.
Not on topic, but just so good. I’m watching the Dodgers and Cardinals on TBS, listening to Vin Scully via the internet courtesy of mlb.com (and $14.95/year, but it *seems* to be free in the postseason). The Cardinals Mark DeRosa dove back into first base on a line drive out, and it looked like he drove his hand into James Loney’s spikes, and cut himself a bit. And Vin Scully, the hall of fame broadcaster, honest to gosh, said, “It’s just a little thing, I’m sure the former football player will ignore it, but wouldn’t it be something if somewhere down the road DeRosa has to make a throw and that cut affects him?
You all probably know by now that in the bottom of the third DeRosa made a great snag of a hard grounder hugging the line with runners on first and third, got up, and airmailed the ball on one hop to the right fielder.
Scully’s only working the first and last three innings, so I may go back to television (they have Tom Veducci now and then with some insightful comments), but I strongly recommend that if you’re watching the game, listen to Scully.
I kinda look at it the other way around. I look back at when I no longer cared about pop culture and wish it had happened about twenty years earlier. What a waste of time spent following stuff that didn’t matter at all to my life — when I could’ve been doing something either useful or more fun or both.
Nowadays, I’ve got too much going on in my life to waste my time watching what some celebrity is doing with his or hers.
Susanna Hoffs sang for the Bangles, Vicki Peterson played drums, and there were two others.
Belinda Carlisle sang for the Go-Go’s. Jane Wiedlin from said group also had a couple of solo albums.
I can’t pinpoint an exact time, but the combination of American Idol, getting a job where I couldn’t listen to music at work and getting married all contributed to me losing my musical mojo.
I consider myself pretty on top of pop culture just because I’m young enough to have friends to keep me up on these things, but wow! I had no clue that Brandi Carlile had the number one iTunes album, and that makes me happy. When she came out with her debut she did an in-store at this record shop that I worked at in college and pretty much no one showed up. To make matters worse (for her) the tour bus had already gone on to the venue and she had no one to drive her there. So I drove her, her mom, and all her gear to the show in my beat up 1993 Mazda 323 hatchback with 280,000 miles, no mirrors, no horn, and no air conditioning. But she was completely cool about it, very friendly, great sense of humor, and we had a wonderful conversation. Her kind of music was never really my thing, but I enjoyed her debut and now that you’ve reminded me of her again I’ll have to pick this one up.
Joe: You’ll be happy to hear that because of Safina’s loss and the vagaries of the ranking system, as of this coming Monday Serena Williams will be #1. So you’ll have women’s tennis covered again!
[...] October 7th, 2009 | Filed under: Other Sports, Pop Culture | 46 Comments » So, I was reading the paper this morning — actually sitting out on the patio of a restaurant, [...]
When it comes to pop culture, you gotta pick your spots.
I make sure that I know more about Latin culture than most old, fat, white guys.
Which is pretty easy.
La Oreja De Van Gogh, RBD, Juanes, Daddy Yankee… that’s about all you need to know.
And it is great fun to be a fan of Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria, and all those Venezuelan Miss Universes.
Ummm, maybe Megan Fox is part Latina, too?
Then I just act like white culture is lame and bores me too death, while Latin culture is SO cutting edge.
Wa-la! I’m back ahead of the curve.
It’s easy.
Joe, I read your SI.com column and a column with the same theme by Thomas Boswell over at the Washington Post. You both say anything can happen in the postseason, so don’t bother making predictions. There is no script. It’s true, anything can happen. But you also say “Don’t say it can’t happen” about the Twins beating the Yankees. Well, I’m going to say it. It can’t happen. The Twins cannot beat the Yankees. In fact they can’t even come close. I know in an “anything is possible” world, the sun might rise in the West and Uncle Sam might tell you that you don’t have to pay taxes this year. But when it comes to the Twins beating this year’s Yankees, it cannot happen. And it’s not an opinion, it’s a hard and fast rule.
One thing I love/hate about this blog is that I can read Joe’s post and have two or three points I want to add to the discussion, but then by the time I read all the comments, I have 20 and have to pick and choose between them or risk writing a novella.
My own pop culture obliviousness occurred about three years ago – a combination of age and marriage conspired to knock me out of the loop.
I’m pretty out of it musically, after being pretty well-informed (not necessarily about top-40 stuff, but about indie bands,) and that’s what bothers me the most. I feel like I’m in a rut where I’m just looking for new stuff from bands I liked back then as opposed to emerging acts.
I think the whole Napster/Kazaa/Limewire phenomenon helped kill that for me, too. I used to download tunes just to see whether it was worth investing time in a band. Now, the threat of viruses and the threat of prosecution has driven me away from those venues, which had earlier managed to break my habit of going to CD stores to see what was new.
On the television side, I think it’s just getting to the point where there’s too much out there to absorb. With the proliferation of channels, there are now TONS of must-see shows (or so people tell me) but I don’t have time to follow them all. As such, I’ve missed out on 24, the Sopranos, Weeds, Mad Men, Rescue Me and about 20 others that people whose opinions I respect have recommended, with no hope of getting caught up.
I suppose the most tell-tale sign of my obliviousness came a few days ago when my wife was watching some sort of gossip-paparazzi show and I didn’t recognize about three-quarters of the celebrities on there. It’s not that I care about celeb gossip, but if these people have photographers following them out of restaurants, shouldn’t I at least have heard of them?
Oh, and not a clue who Dinara Safina is. Never heard of her until Joe’s post.
Great story Jojobebop! It is stories like this that remind us all that in light of all the overblown media/network/youtube hype regarding whoever the latest “next big thing” is – they are still people with real human characteristics just like you and me. Which I believe is what has tempered my desire to keep with all the latest pop culture. That and 5 kids! BTW, this is what has led to my becoming an even bigger Vin Scully fan. I try to catch him doing the west coast games on MLB Extra Innings after the kids are in bed any chance I can!
I’m not even 40 and, still, I feel like I am caught in a sort of pop culture neverland. Not only do I not know the latest pop culture stars on the margins; I also don’t realize that past marginal stars have died.
Every year, my wife makes fun of me when it gets to the “In Memoriam” part of the Oscars. With each clip, I go: “Harvey Korman died? When? What from?” “Dom Deluise is dead? No shit? I thought he just put out a cookbook.”
Yeah, I’m totally irrelevant. And, sad thing is, I don’t really care.
wasn’t belinda carlisle married to former dodger (faux) pheeenom mike marshall?
Music is fractured enough that very few people know or care who the best-selling album is by this week. There are enough niches that you could be a music expert, but not have heard of some of the top selling songs on iTunes.
You can try to listen to all the most popular music or you can try to listen to the best music/the music you enjoy the most. I wouldn’t worry about that, Joe.
Joe: What’s funny about this is that Brandi Carlile is someone, judging by your taste in music, that you’d really like. Excellent songwriter, great singer, a bit country but basically Americana rock/folk/blues. Imagine if Janis Joplin had grown up listening to country, and that’s pretty close. But she’s real, a legitimate artist, and certainly has nothing to do with the plastic young female singers you see these days, in all genres…
Re: Heroes
I’ve never watched it either, but I could never figure out how a show with the tagline “Shave the cheerleader, save the world” managed to get past the FCC and onto a network in primetime.
Make it mandatory that anyone being ranked must play all 4 grand slams and X of Y other tourneys (barring approved injuries).
That would get the slackers like serena out there more often perhaps and it would make the slams relatively more important if everyone is playing the same rate and if slams get even a few extra points in ranking.
As for Heroes it was save the cheerleader, save the world and it had an interesting concept in eyar one but it quickly paled for me.
It’s the confusing family-name thing that makes it hard to identify Dinara. We (mostly) all knew Marat Safin, good-looking guy who was at the top of the men’s rankings for a year or two.
This is his sister, not quite so good looking.
VH-1 made pop culture uncool.
I’m an avid tennis fan so allow me to help you guys out a ‘lil. You have to play x number of tournys (I believe 12), but Serena was bad in the non-majors and Safina was just good enough in majors to maintain #1. I mean right after Serena attained #1, she lost. This situation is all due to Henin’s sudden retirement while she was still #1, creating a vacuum at the top spot.
The Men’s game is REALLY great right now, on the other hand. A golden age.