brainsplotch

Back in the summer of 1986, I saw a strange little music video on MTV (back when MTV still played music videos--remember those days?). The entire clip was comprised of a black & white overhead shot of some sort of industrial site, perhaps a disused railyard or rock quarry. The song lyrics were superimposed in giant block letters in the middle of the screen. Prior to the lyrics' appearance were these cryptic lines, "Bury magnets, swallow the rapture, let's gather feathers," which undoubtedly left me scratching my young head The song, entitled "Fall on Me" was a somber, yet oddly catchy tune with a ringing Rickenbacker guitar sound. I was instantly hooked and haven't looked back since. (Okay, 2004's   Around the Sun was an awful album, but I digress). For the most part, I've been on R.E.M.'s side for 25 years. Back in 1986, I never would have thought that 25 years later I'd be talking about a new R.E.M. album. But the "boys"...

It started innocently enough: I was watching television one day when a Honda Accord car commercial came on. The background music was of a song I knew very well, a song I had first heard when I was about 13 years old and had grown to love more and more over the ensuing 30 years. The ad only featured the last part of the song: the vocalists’ multi-tracked voices singing, “Aaaaaaahhhh-aaahhh-aaahhh-aaahhhhhhh, heeeeere, I ammmm.” The song is “The Only Living Boy in New York” and the singers in question are Simon & Garfunkel, and hearing that song in that commercial soon led me to dig out my old Bridge Over Troubled Water CD, an album I hadn’t listened to in…well, I can’t remember how long. It has been a few years at least. Not too long after digging out BOTW, I learned of a soon-to-be-released 40th anniversary edition of the album, containing the remastered music (actually, probably just a repackaged version of the 2001 remaster) plus a bonus DVD with S&G's infamous and ver...

The Spartans bowed out in the first round of the NCAA tournament with a performance that was befitting of their entire season. They started off incredibly sluggish and throughout the first half and most of the second half were getting blown off the court by the UCLA Bruins. Then, when it appeared they were completely dead--down by 23 with a little more than eight minutes left--MSU made a furious comeback and and made us all dare to dream that maybe, just maybe, they could walk off the court with a most improbable victory. But, much like the season, they dug too big a hole to successfully climb out--and lost by two points. Thus ends one of the most disappointing MSU basketball seasons in many years. I can tell you that most MSU fans don't quite know how to take it. We've gotten just a wee bit spoiled around here and aren't accustomed to disappointment. We're certainly not used to losing to our archrivals in Ann Arbor not just once, but TWICE, in the same season. (I...

I’ve gone the entire season without commenting whatsoever on the subject of Michigan State basketball. It’s been a disappointing year for our hoops team: after starting the season ranked as high as #2 in the nation, the Spartans limped to a 9-9 Big Ten record (17-13 overall), while enduring every conceivable bad thing that could have happened to them along the way. I suppose the harbinger of bad tidings came in the off-season when Chris Allen was kicked off the team. Then, early in the conference season, Korie Lucious was removed from the squad. Other difficulties hampered the Spartans. Already thin after losing Allen and Lucious, Delvon Roe continued to fight through pain and injuries, Kalin Lucas slowly recovered from last year’s Achilles injury and only recently has played with the explosiveness of his first three seasons. The bigs never quite developed: Derrick Nix had disciplinary issues but has looked better as of late, Adrian Payne more often than not looked like a little lost o...