Bygone Era

Being in middle and high school in the farmlands of PA, it was always such a freaking score to be able to find a place that had their stuff on the shelves. I mean, we had the local college station (WDCV) where we could hear all this great music, but no place to buy it (and, when you could find it, it was twice as expensive as the garbage on regular radio).

On the plus side, when I went away to college, it wasn't until my junior year that most other people started to be aware that I had a good music collection to raid (and my collection became an involuntary musical resource for a lot of people in my dorms and apartments). What started out as "1001 bad groups" (my cousin, John Kling, had similar tastes in music, and, one of his fraternity brothers did a charicature with that title) became the music resource for a bunch of people. When I started at PSU, I always had to scrounge for people to drive all over the state to go to small clubs to listen to bands we liked. By the end, could easily find people to make the weekly drives all over the state. 

Still and all, by the time I had the money, means and traveling companions to be able to see REM, live, they were well into the peak of their career. The best I could do were shows like the one at the old Capitals complex in Bowie, MD (please don't ever ask me to call it US Air Arena). Seating was awful, but was still a great show (well, Stipe still had an awful tendency to go on long preaching jags - you kinda just wanted him to "shut up and play" - but still, it was a good show). So, never got to see them in an intimate setting.

Oh well, era long gone. I was actually kind of surprised by the announcement, given that I'd sorta lost track of them. I'd thought they'd faded out 10 years ago.

TV Listings

Yesterday was not a good day for the Big Ten in their various bowl appearances. And, frankly, I don't understand how we've come to having so many bowl games that all it takes for a team to get there is to have a better than .500 record. And, yeah, I realized it's all about money, but I still don't get how a team with a barely-winning record can even accept a bowl bid. Bowls are supposed to be "the big show" and a reward for a good season. How can you even think to go if you were a mediocre team?

At any rate, I was scanning through the cable guide, looking for something to watch - preferably something less painful than the day's bowl games. Eventually, as I hit the upper channel numbers, I noticed that the Big Ten Network was showing, "Big Ten's Greatest Games". I don't imagine that any of this year's bowl games will end up in future episodes of this show.

Big Ten Shits the Bed

Yegads. Go away for a vacation and come back to find the Big Ten shit the bed on the new logos and division names. WTF is this atrocity:

I mean, if the designers' goal was to create a united sentiment in a conference where all the members hate each other and agree on nothing, well, then, "bravo". They succeeded in creating something so sucktastic that everyone who's a fan of a Big Ten school can, at least, agree on how awful the logo is. And, if they can't agree on that, they can agree on how mind-bendingly stupid the new division names are.

Lastly, I don't get the whole Paterno trophy for the conference championship. I get that JoePa's an institution and the winningest living coach in BCS football. So, yeah, definitely worthy of having a trophy named after him ...except that he's: A) still alive; and B) still coaching. It feels like a not so subtle move by the league to get JoePa to step down. I'm a PSU alum and would be duly-bound to adore him (even if I didn't already like him for what he was, stands for and does), but the thought of JoePa winning a Stagg-Paterno trophy is rather weird.

Greh.

Stories like this make me wonder how much more JoePa we have...

http://blog.pennlive.com/davidjones/2010/08/big_ten_media_day_comments.html

I mean, it may just be that he's hitting one of those age jumps (for whatever reason, it seems like we don't so much age linearly as much as, suddenly, several years worth of our age expresses itself, then we go on some more at that level til the next age-batch hits). It may also be that we'll soon be seeing the passing of a legend. I mean, I gotta think that he's one of those people that, regardless of overall health, retirement would quickly put him in the ground.

Ugh.