Two Challengers, Both Doomed

Heard an advance copy of the new album from The New Pornographers, entitled Challengers, due out on August 21st courtesy of the esteemed Matador Records.


At least the album cover is good...


Someone on the Hipinion board stated their opinion that each consecutive New Pornos album has been half as good as the last, and I more or less agree with that; Twin Cinema was the first mortal album of theirs, as The Electric Version was untouchably brilliant, and listening to Mass Romantic is almost akin to a religious experience. So where does that put Challengers?

It's just not good. I never thought I'd say this about a New Pornos album, but it's...boring. Newman can't seem to write a hook to save his life, Neko Case and Dan Bejar are clearly just mailing it in, and Kathryn Calder really doesn't add anything to the group's sound, as she's just a less charismatic version of Case (and a live replacement, after all). The best moments on this album are 'pretty nice' but that's all, there's nothing mind-blowing or even close to approaching it. You can't blame them for not trying, as you can witness the slick production and the attempt at epic grandiosity on the six and a half minute 'Unguided', but nothing on this record goes anywhere at all. Simply put, there's no interesting hooks, and unfortunately that's where the New Pornographers live and die.

How much longer is this band gonna last? Mass Romantic featured a group of musicians excited by the possibilities and fully embracing them, The Electric Version was the sound of a band sitting down a working together as a group, but since then it's seemed increasingly like Carl Newman And Guests, as Bejar and Case focus more on their respective solo careers. I wouldn't mind Challengers as an AC Newman solo record, but as a New Pornos release, the talents of Bejar and Case in particular are wasted. This is just not an interesting record. I'm pretty disappointed.


6.8/12


I don't know what they're doing, and it looks like they don't either...

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Meanwhile, the 2007 NBA Finals wrapped up last night, in one of the worst Finals in recent memory. Nobody likes the Spurs, yet they had to get matched up against one of the most terrible Finals teams in history, resulting in the expected sweep.

Get your hands off my Eva, you dirty scum!!!


I think the Cavs' predicament was summed up in one play near the end of the game last night, when Donyell Marshall found himself wide open for a corner three. He got the ball, but didn't shoot right away, he almost looked stunned that he was so open. After getting that pass, Marshall paused for a few moments, looked around confusedly, looked at the basket, and took a shot...and airballed it. If I were LeBron James, I'd either punch his lights out, cry softly into my mama's shoulders, or both.

The ABC crew did some game breakdown somewhere in the third quarter, where they showed LeBron aggressively driving to the basket, drawing as many as five Spurs defenders, then doing the right thing and shipping the ball out to an open teammate. The teammate, without fail, missed.

They've been saying it from day one, but LeBron James needs help on this team. That's unacceptable.

So who should the Cavs draft this year? Oh wait, people don't seem to realize something yet: THEY DON'T HAVE ANY DRAFT PICKS THIS YEAR. Wait, are you serious Roger? Yeah, the Cavs will not be participating in this year's NBA draft, often cited as one the deepest drafts in years. Apparently they traded one pick to the Magic in exchange for Gooden and Varejao, and the other to the Celtics along with Jiri Welsch in a complicated deal where they got back, I don't remember, cash or something? Good job, guys.

The Cavaliers did not belong in the NBA Finals. They looked completely lost from the tipoff of Game 1. Yet amusingly, it will be difficult for them to build on this year's "success" because they don't have any draft picks! They'll have to rely exclusively on landing big names in free agency, and look at how that's worked out for them so far: Larry Hughes, Damon Jones? All pretty good, except you know, not.

At this point, I care more about my newborn son Bryce Maximus James than I do about this team...can you really blame me?


I really can't see the Cavs returning to the Finals next year. That would require exponential growth from players like Gibson, or possibly this "Shannon Brown" fellow that they drafted in the first round, who saw exactly seven seconds of action in the entire playoffs (thanks popcornmachine.net). Either that, or LeBron would work on improving his game and carry this team even more, a spectacular but dangerous proposition. I'm happy for you, Cleveland, but I think the consensus is that this was a fluke, so don't get your hopes up too high.

Don't Stop Believin

I have never seen a whole episode of The Sopranos. I've really only watched two scenes.

One of those scenes, however, was the highly-anticipated and highly-controversial series finale, aired Sunday night. The conversation about the scene was inescapable on Monday, so as a curious human being, I searched for it on Youtube and sat down to watch. It's since been taken down by HBO for obvious reasons, but since nearly everyone in the known universe is already giving their opinion on it, I thought I'd give mine, as inconsequential as it probably is.

I was floored. Completely stunned, in the best way possible. I think that the final scene of The Sopranos might actually be the best scene in anything ever. Why are people so keen on closure? That's almost never how life works, right?

The abrupt end definitely raises obvious paths of interpretation, but more technically than that, it's cinematically brilliant. The quick cuts, the difficulty with the parallel parking, the stream of suspicious characters, Tony's paranoia, the Journey power ballad on the jukebox, it all adds incredible tension, and the release left me gasping for breath. A shorter, 20-second version was uploaded to Youtube today and will probably get taken down soon, but even watching that, my breath gets stolen every time the end comes.

Seriously, I think it's the best scene of anything that I've ever seen. I'm completely inspired to watch every episode of The Sopranos now (it'll never happen, but the interest is at least there, where it never was before). All you who hated the ending: why? What were you looking for? What was it about The Sopranos in general that made the ending unpalatable? Admittedly, I'm a complete Sopranos newbie; that's only the second scene I've ever seen! But to me, that was the best way you could possibly end a dramatic series. I wonder how many people will ever try to copy this, and inevitably fail. That was the best ending. Ever.

I Wonder How He Slept That Night

Everything that could possibly be said about last night's Game 5 of the Cavaliers-Pistons series has already been said by sports writers both amateur and professional across the country. Yet I think we can all agree that it's still not enough. Last night was one of those transcendent events that lifts sports, in general, from the realm of silly playfulness into the very core of what it means to be Human. Okay, well maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, I think sports are still inherently pretty ridiculous as a concept, haha. But it's these kinds of moments that make you forget that!

What you get from moments like these is a glimpse into the extremes of what a human being is capable of, but not in a hey-look-I-can-throw-a-ball-through-a-ring kind of capability; it's more general than that. Actually, it's almost the closest we can get to witnessing war first-hand in our suburban American homes these days, with LeBron James as our soldier, vulnerable and human and needing our sympathy, and overcoming tremendous obstacles to singlehandedly dispatch the enemy, in a story that's almost too awesome to be real at all. Deadspin posted the above photo this morning, and it continues to blow my mind to this very minute. There are five Pistons defenders in the photograph. LeBron James is the only Cavalier. This was the game-winning shot. It encapsulates everything that happened last night, both literally and metaphorically. Then again, if they turned Game 5 into a sports movie, I don't think I'd like it. It just wouldn't be the same. 'Based on a True Story' absolutely does not compare to the fact that I was there, I saw it, I had no idea what was going to happen next, but What Happened was beyond compare.

I know that I saw the immortal Jordan Flu Game live on tv, as well as his famous final shot to down the Jazz, but I was a little kid back then, and so my memory of those games is extremely fuzzy. Plus, that was almost expected from Jordan at that point in his career, so I don't remember thinking that his accomplishments were all that amazing at the time. This, then, was quite possibly the most spectacular individual sports achievement that I have witnessed, and can remember vividly. Obviously that's biased since this happened yesterday, while Jordan had his moment, what, almost nine years ago? When I was only 12 years old? But when I'm 30 years young, I think I might still remember LeBron James knifing through the Detroit defense over and over.

And after all that, wouldn't it be hilarious of LeBron didn't have anything left in the tank, and the Pistons won the next two games to win the series? The irony would be incredible. And I can totally see it happening!

In other news, nobody likes the Spurs. Please lose. Thanks. This video continues to crack me up, and also fuel the fury.
Can we at least have a consolation bracket, so we can watch the Suns again?