15 Albums...part 3

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I've broken it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....This is part three, w/ albums 11-15--see Monday & Tuesday for 1-10 if you're so inclined....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

And thanks for the kind feedback, memories, etc...

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

11. Foje: 1982 (1996) What turned out to be Lithuania's biggest rock band's swan song was released months before I arrived to teach English in February 1997, and I blew seeing their farewell concerts that summer (chronicled on the live set Vilnius. Kaunas. Klaipėda [1999]), though I made up for it by seeing Andrius Mamontovas solo a number of times. Foje was crucial to my Lithuanian education in several ways: their lyrics gave me fodder for early language lessons; the breadth and depth of their fanbase underscored to me the presence of a whole national pop culture of which I was only getting the haziest of clues; and their serving as a key into contemporary Lithuanian culture nudged me (ever so politely) to understand that I just had to think beyond cinema in my, erm, scholarship.... Their last album was my first, but by the time I left for IU I had the entire back-catalog on cassette--subsequent fieldwork meant subsequent securing of same on CD, along with the run of Mamontovas solo work. Research, don't you know...

12. V/A: The Inner Flame (1997) This tribute disc was released as a fund-raiser for guitarist Rainer Ptacek that first summer in Lithuania--by the time my parents sent me a dub that Christmas, he was gone. I only saw him play once, at Club Congress in Tucson. I remember thinking he was a roadie when he first went up on stage, ballcap and all--then I remember him doing amazing things with steel guitars and digital delay loops. I subsequently searched all over Tucson filling in his back-catalog (typically, much of his stuff is only available from a German import label). This record connected me back to Tucson, and his picture was on the wall of my Šeduva classroom until the end of my career as a Lithuanian secondary school teacher...

13. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997) Back in the day, in Lithuania, you could buy pirated cassettes of just about anything. And not just in Vilnius, either: I believe I bought this on tape at a kiosk in Utena for five litas (which, given the old 4:1 exchange rate, I can assuredly assert came to all of $1.25). Sure, it appeared to have been pressed in Belarus. Sure, two of the songs had been deleted (due to time constraint or musical taste, I'll never know). Sure, the order of the remaining songs was quite different from the "proper" release. But I'll take my 10-track Belarussian tape over your CD any day of the week....

14. Miles Davis: Kind of Blue (1959) It took me a long time to even start to appreciate jazz--and I've got a lot to learn. I find myself feeling defensive that I've got what could be considered such a "cliche" of a record on this list, but the truth of the matter is that there is no single record I have listened to in the past five years than this one. Every semester I find myself grading more than I ever imagined when I put together my syllabi (note to self: less grading this spring!), and this is a record to grade to, to read to, to relax to, to write awkward sentence constructions to. You know what I mean.

15. John Coltrane: A Love Supreme (1964) If Miles is someone with whom I can do a ton of academic work (at least on that release), 'Trane is not. John Coltrane demands your attention--not at first, but soon enough. And it's only worse on the deluxe re-release that includes a rare live set of the entire suite (complete with pissed-off French crowd that wants more!)... A Love Supreme refuses to be functional--it's too much for that. Hearing the band repetitively sing/chant the title--it's as close as anything I can think of to a zen moment.

15 Albums...part 2

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I'll break it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....This is part two, w/ albums 6-10--see yesterday's post for 1-5 if you're so inclined....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

6. Brian Eno: Before and After Science (1977) Sophomore year of college at Gustavus--and the vast majority of our studying was done at the North Mankato Perkins restaurant, the only 24-hour cafe/diner/coffee shop to be had in the area. Ace and I would bring our Walkmen and a stack of tapes to study with. I think I read about Eno in Rolling Stone as not only the producer of debuts by Ultravox and Devo, of key albums by Bowie, Talking Heads, and now U2, but also as a solo artist of merit (after a one-record stint with Roxy Music)... I think I'd bought a tape used at Bookman's in high school, but never got my head around it until one night I happened to throw it in my Walkman whilst eating a PeterBert Special (we ate there so often we could order OFF the menu if certain cooks were working). What is it that just CLICKED that night, after several years of having that tape just sitting around? The music hadn't changed--but maybe I was. "No One Receiving," "Backwater," "Julie With...," "Spider & I".... So many great songs here! This jump-started me to first fill out the "vocal" back-catalog from the '70s, and then start in on the ambient stuff....

7. The Stone Roses: The Stone Roses (1989) I must confess that even while I was studying at UEA that Fall of 1989, I was aware of how big The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays were (ah the weekly purchases of NME and Melody Maker!), but I hadn't fully investigated until back stateside. My story is that I spent my money on trips to Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany...which is true! But it's also true that I was measuring each purchase in terms of the number of Guinness pints sacrificed otherwise. Still, once back at GAC to finish my junior year, I played this disc into the ground--I even remember having an absurd argument with two fellow-travelers over who got into the Roses first. How could a debut album be this perfect? And how could it all dry up so soon?


8. Kitchens of Distinction: The Death of Cool (1992) Having graduated college, having made a mess of my personal life, and thus having moved back to AZ for a time, only to move back to MN for a while more, I was plotting my next move from a shared apartment in Uptown. Somehow I got the biggest bedroom in a shared 3-bedroom apartment, despite having the least furniture. I kid you not: we set up a fully-functional train set I got for Christmas in my bedroom, with the TV in the middle to count down the New Year of 1993. This is an album full of sonic space--big enough to step inside, and try to figure out how to invite someone else in, too. Seeing Kitchens at First Ave. was a treasure--they seemed honestly gobsmacked at the positive feedback they were getting from the crowd (as an opener for 99.9-era Susanne Vega). One more album and they were gone...

9. Tindersticks: Tindersticks (1993) It used to be an annual rite to try to track down the year-end issues of both New Musical Express and Melody Maker to get a look at their year-end best-of lists. This was a crucial record from UT days, although I might have picked it up originally in Bloomington studying Czech Summer 1994. The dark and moody atmosphere lent itself to any number of late night study sessions, writing blitzes, and sleep soundtracks. I remember hearing Curtains (1997) playing at a record store in Poznań several years later, recognizing the band on the spot, and willingly handing over all the złotys I had...


10. Everything But The Girl: Walking Wounded (1996) Sure, the papers cried foul: folksters coming late to the trip-hop party, and all that. But the tunes were there, and it captured a weary determination that permeated our mid-90s circle of friends in St. Paul. This was one of the cassettes I took with me to Lithuania in '97, which seemed again to strike the right chords. Ben Watt had nearly died before he made this album, which could then easily be heard as a rebirth, as a redefinition of who they were going to be as a band. After having to walk away from NYU, and going to Lithuania to teach, I too was hitting the reset button... At the time, it felt like the hardest decision of my life--but in retrospect it was one of the best decisions I ever made....

15 Albums...

Too long a hiatus from writing--the blog (to say nothing of the book proposal) has gone to seed in recent months. What is Winter Break if not a chance to jump-start neglected projects, New Year's resolutions, yadda yadda yadda? So here's a comfy way to ease back in: taking a cue from the "15 Albums" thread that circulated through Facebook last summer, I'm finally writing a bit from the list I'd jotted down after getting to enjoy several of your posts....To embellish and/or spread it out a bit, I'll break it into a bite-sized, 3x5 format.....If you've not done this yourself, it's worth it to take a few minutes....and be in touch!

Bjorn's 15 Albums (in chronological order of when I got hold of them):

1. The Beatles: Revolver (1966) My parents were big Beatles fans--dad in particular. I had this Fischer Price plastic record player with which I used to listen to my records as a little boy...Well, OK, they weren't mine--I'd bugger off with dad's records at four years old, and listen to them in the basement.... "Tomorrow Never Knows" is still one of my favorite songs.... So not only would I scratch them all to hell (imagine the stylus quality of that Fischer Price--go ahead, I'll wait), but I would also let them pile up unsleeved on the floor of that red-painted, cement floor. Do you think I protected those records before we played dodge ball or football or Nils Patrol (a whole other shame spiral)? Riiiiight. So if the meat grinder of a record player didn't get them, the red paint embedded in the record's grooves from kids' stepping/slipping on the stacks of vinyl did. Dad got a working copy of Revolver again when the Beatles did their first CD catalog roll-out in the 1980s...other albums from this early period that I destroyed included CSN&Y's 4-Way Street (1971), which I actually replaced for him on vinyl after a PDQ run...

2. Kiss: Alive II (1977) After cycling through my neighbor's 7" single collection (Gary Puckett & The Union Gap, represent!), I found my first band. Well, I found them through Troy (one of my best friends around this 3rd grade period), who had found them from his older brother. The blood! The noise! The make-up! The (barely) double-ententes that we didn't understand ["You pulled the trigger of my love gun"? Nothing. "She wants a rocket ride"? Nada. I kid you not.]! This wasn't my first record of theirs (that'd be Destroyer [1976]), and it wasn't the record I quasi-conned Grandma Merrifran to buy for me (Dressed to Kill [1975]?)--and it's not even the double-live Kiss record that I'm supposed to have liked more (that would be Alive [1975]). But this was something that was mine--something I shared with my friends that my parents tolerated, but never embraced. Looking back, maybe all those Kiss posters on my wall were doing some serious identity work...

3. Queen: News of the World (1977) The first post-Kiss album I bought with my own money, in 5th or 6th grade... Not too radical a break from early elementary school, I grant you, but it was still an important transition. "Sheer Heart Attack" and "It's Late" were on heavy heavy rotation, if only in my bedroom. This arena rock vein continued into junior high (Styx! Led Zep!) and even early high school (Def Lep! Crüe!), though it came up against a growing interest in pop music (see Rock, Vol I [1981], my first-ever mix tape of 7" singles, from Pat Benetar to Foreigner) and its new wave variants (Human League! Devo! Gary Numan [see below]!)....

4. Gary Numan: Telekon (1980) I'd bought the 7" of "Cars" at the time, but hadn't pursued Mr Webb any further until I came across this album in the $1.99 cutout section at the Musicland in Tucson's El Con Mall. I distinctly remember scrutinizing this album with dad's headphones over and over while pouring over the liner notes. This was the musical break with my rocker friends--this is where I was finally more "Whip It" than W.A.S.P....The blame for my Tama Techstar electronic drum set can probably be pinned on this record too (although I learned to play it by spending way too much time with the self-titled A Flock of Seagulls [1982]...I still have a slab of vinyl inches thick of Gary Numan records (domestic releases, imports, singles, you name it)--seeing him in Boston within a month of moving to New England took me right back to the days of Alice Vail Junior Jail....

5. U2: The Joshua Tree (1987) Fast-forward to spring of senior year of high school, and there I am with Bret (then-editor of the Rincon Echo--I was the "Arts & Entertainment Editor or some such thing) camped out for U2 tickets. (Remember "camping out" for tickets?!) U2 opened their tour that year in Phoenix on April 4th (!) in response to then-Gov. Mecham's policy to be the last state in the union to not adopt MLK Day as a state holiday. (Tucson was two shows later.) I think that show was the week I saw U2, X, and Hüsker Dü all in the same week. And in December, they wrapped up the tour again in AZ, as Jack P. scored tickets for the show being filmed for Rattle & Hum (1988). I never managed to finish that cassette with all the extra tracks from the singles, but the recent re-release satisfied all the completists out there. And of course, "U2" will always be remembered as the Hangman answer that stumped Eric's brother Paul on a OSLC camping trip ("U....question mark?" NOOOOO! "U.....period?" NOOOOO!).....

Why ethnic studies?

Ethnic Studies Week (Oct. 1-7) at BSU was part of a nation-wide effort to raise our collective profile, as well as draw attention to regressive state legislation in Texas and Arizona, effectively restricting programs like Latino Studies or African-American studies in these states' secondary schools, colleges and universities. (Blog site readers: see the Google map of sites around the country taking place below!)


View Ethnic Studies Week October 1-7 Initiators in a larger map

I jumped at the chance to speak at yesterday's roundtable, "Why Ethnic Studies?" After all, I grew up in Arizona, and got my M.A. in Texas--what was happening in these places I've called home?

You all that are reading this and living in either of these states can answer that far better than I can, of course. But these are not isolated cases--this is a nationwide trend of disavowing difference and diversity (Glenn Beck's co-opting MLK in the name of "unity" is just one loud, pungent example).

In the run-up to this week, I picked up the latest book by bell hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom (2010), the third and final installment of her "pedagogy trilogy." The chapters are short and sweet--I'm reading them like morning meditations. Today's nugget of practical wisdom, for instance, was on decolonization. On p. 25, hooks writes:

"The most essential lesson for everyone, irrespective of our race, class, or gender, was learning the role education played as a tool of colonization here in the United States."

So part of our ongoing mission as teachers and educators is to consciously push back against (re)colonization of our schools, as part of our effort to consciously push back against (re)colonization of our society.

Taip, mums galima.

Dispatch from Starbucks

It's time to jump-start the blog again this fall--having absorbed the initial blow of the Fall 2010 semester, and still standing, let's get back on the proverbial horse. And what better way to do so than to talk a bit about my new "remote office"....Starbucks.

I know, I know. Really. I know. What I wouldn't do to have Bentley's transported over here from Tucson!

But what can I tell you? Local coffee shops in Plymouth roll up the welcome mat at 6pm. Starbucks is open until 9, which is at least better. And then there's wi-fi. Check out the page that pops up once you agree to the Terms of Use! Play along at home!

So yeah: wi-fi. Email, Blackboard, even fantasy football managing ("no, I'm not interested in trading Aaron Rogers to you for Michael Vick, but thanks for asking!"). Blogging too, apparently--once I'm so moved. After about a week of listening to the piped-in music (seemingly a rotation of tracks from discs they are selling, though I'm not totally sure), I'm back to using MySpace for streaming records (right now? Happy Monday's Hallelujah [1990]). I'm even using the time to screen DVDs for classes, like the Criterion Collection release of El Norte (1983) for my Foundations of Media Studies course...

"People haven't gotten really mad--that annoys me."

In an effort to improve blogging sustainability, I continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Last week, BSC's assistant director of alumni relations sent a query email re: what faculty are reading this summer. Here's the skinny....

ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac....I'm mentoring Mike Gálvez's ATP grant project, which is to make a documentary film while driving across the USA. Kerouac grew up in Lowell, and this classic captures some of the crazy maddening bliss of an extended road trip...We're reading all of these books together, and then talk about them on iChat (me on the Cape, him on the Road)...

DEKALOG 1: ON 'THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS' edited by Mette Hjort.... Mike's film springboards off of THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (2003), a superb collaboration between two Danish directors: Jørgen Leth and Lars von Trier--von Trier sets up a series of "obstructions" to push Leth forward as a filmmaker and as a human being. This thoughtful collection makes us go back to the film again and again...

DOGME UNCUT: LARS VON TRIER, THOMAS VINTERBERG, AND THE GANG THAT TOOK ON HOLLYWOOD by Jack Stevenson....Lars von Trier was principal instigator behind the Dogme95 film movement whose attempts to jump-start creativity through constraint quickly translated beyond Denmark and into something of a global contra-Hollywood strategy. Nothing says "student filmmaking" quite as succinctly as "creativity through constraint," right?...

LARS VON TRIER: INTERVIEWS edited by Jan Lumholdt....This collection allows us to see von Trier wrestling with ways to attack film form and style in thoughtful and direct ways. Sample banter: "Q. What are your comments on the reactions [your thesis film] has brought? A: Well, they've hardly been good enough, because people haven't gotten really mad. That annoys me. But we'll just have to hope that that happens a little later."...

~bpi

(Formerly Lutheran) College, Inc.

I'd kept the link to the Frontline special College, Inc. in my inbox for several months, hoping to eventually get back to it this summer. Last night was the night--and a little extra surfing brought the issue into even sharper focus. The program looks at the rising phenomenon of for-profit colleges and universities, the significant debt load with which it burdens its students (much higher than even non-profit private schools, much less non-profit publics), and the inordinate default ratios such loans are generating...



As a Gustie grad (Class of '91, yee haw, etc.) it's particularly interesting to me to see how ELCA-related schools have been affected by the changing landscape brought on by recession & educational for-profit speculation. Readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education have been able to monitor the death throes of Dana College, outside Omaha. A little surfing brought a new stunner to me: Waldorf College in Forest City, IA was sold to a for-profit last year...

Some background: My grandmother Lois still lives in Forest City, and my late grandfather Wilfer worked at Waldorf for several years as a custodian. From my first day as a professor, I thought about how his work at college had laid the foundation for my own. So Waldorf has a soft spot in my heart...

One of the things education speculators look for is existing accreditation, so that they can buy into legitimacy (and have a pipeline to those all-important federal student loans). The failure of such a transfer means the end of Dana College. Waldorf College continues, but is now much closer in spirit to the University of Phoenix than it is to Gustavus Adophus College, I'm afraid.

My hope is to see my grandmother this fall (long overdue), and maybe I will have a chance to get a first-hand sense of what's happening at Waldorf. If any of you have ties with any of these schools, and/or have first or second-hand experience with for-profit higher education, I'd love to hear about it...

On The Road...online

One of my projects this summer is mentoring my student Mike Gálvez, who won an ATP research grant to make a series of short documentaries whilst on the Great American Road Trip with his buddy Trevor. One of the books we're reading this summer as part of his foundational research is Jack Kerouac's On the Road. And this time through, as I read this at HOME in my HOUSE that looks over a GOLF COURSE (what would JK say?!), I find myself using the Internet to make the book more of a hypertext: MySpace pulls up tracks like Charlie Parker's "Orinthology" (1946); Google Maps bring up towns like Ogallala, NE in an instant.
So now I just need to find the origins of the phrase "Pisscall!" on Wikipedia...
View Larger Map

LT '10 tour scrapped--maybe next year?

Unfortunately we didn't get enough students this spring for the Lithuanian study tour. The post-mortem points to a lack of branding ("...and Lith-u-a-nia is where?"), funding issues (study grants have dried up, and loan requirements are such that a separate new loan application would be required of interested parties), and general economic malaise (students have to work more this summer to pay their bill from last semester so they can register late for next semester)... It sounds like over half the proposed trips for the college won't run, so there's cold comfort in knowing we weren't alone. Still, though!

But we're going to try again in 2011, this time with a more systemic outreach to other campuses nation-wide that have a stake in things Baltic (Indiana, Ohio State, Washington, Yale, etc.) as well as Boston-area schools that might have interested students (Harvard, Emerson, Stonehill, etc.).

And in the meantime, as I start to hunker down for the upcoming joint Baltic / Scandinavian studies conference next weekend, I find myself daydreaming about a winter trip to Norway, centered around the 2011 Tromsø International Film Festival. I'm afraid it would cost 25-50% more than the proposed Lithuania trip, but maybe the lure of an international film festival (and even the Northern Lights?!) will get some folks to commit to an arctic expedition before the start of spring semester...

Noir de Mexico

When was the last time you stopped a film less than five minutes in, just to make sure you just saw what you just saw? That's what happened to me tonight, screening Aventurera, a 1950 noir-musical gem from Mexico.

Actually, truth told, the plot lurches forward several more times before the nine-minute mark--by then, you realize that what you are confronted with is the template for everything from telenovelas to Desperate Housewives and pretty much everything inbetween. Imagine The Bad & The Beautiful with a half-dozen cabaret numbers, and you're close.

Running a search for stills to post on this post, I came across a festival happening next month in Austin: the 13th Cine Las Americas (21-29 April 2010). Looks like a great fest--I guess us folks stuck in Massachusetts will have to content ourselves with some of the other free classic titles the fest has screened in years past under the title Sin, Scandal & Song: Victimas del Picado (Victims of Sin, 1951) and La Mujer del Puerto (Woman of the Port, 1934).

Here's a teaser for Aventurera--the film is worth seeking out!

My life according to Gary Numan

I blame ASP for this...But I also thank her! Her Go-Go's-fueled post has inspired me to sort one of my own.

The game is: Using only song names from ONE ARTIST (or band), cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on any others you would like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. You can use current or older artists. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Your Artist: Gary Numan


Yeesh--here's an amazingly iffy video from 1982, for those reading on the blog site...Great bass on that album, but the persona he crafted...well, check out the video!

Are you a male or female: White Boys & Heroes
Describe yourself: Noise Noise
How do you feel: Berserker
Describe where you currently live: Cars
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: A Dream of Siam
Your favorite form of transportation: Films
Your best friend is: Are "Friends" Electric?
You and your best friends are: Remind Me to Smile
What's the weather like: Complex
Favorite time of day: Friends
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: I Still Remember
What is life to you? Oceans
Your relationship: Blue Eyes
Your fear: The Life Machine
What is the best advice you have to give: Cry, the Clock Said
Thought for the Day: Call Out the Dogs
How I would like to die: Down in the Park
My soul's present condition: This is New Love
My motto: Please Push No More

Frost knows syllabi!

The spring semester begins tomorrow, and somehow I am not scrambling to finish that last syllabus. I seem to have sorted things there--which only means that now I'm scrambling to set up Blackboard sites for all my classes. A net loss, come to think of it...

Syllabus revision is a (bi)annual ritual for the professorial crowd--not really a clean slate, but a chance to start over, for sure. You want to cut your workload, but you want to cover more material, but you want to make it easier on yourself, but you want to get better outcomes from your students, but... You see how this goes. Prof friends of mine reading this: you know what I mean.

Last semester, I taught a first-year seminar for the first time: an honors course on Central European cinema. The culmination of the class was to present at the college's undergraduate symposium with frosh and sophomores from across the college--sort of an in-house NCUR, if you will.

And part of what makes NCUR great is that you get to hear a discussion on Don Quixote, a panel on quantum physics, and a poster-board session on service learning...all before lunch. And so I felt at home hearing my student paper on the interplay between Polish film and its socialist-era contexts presented amongst several presentations doing close textual analysis of US poetry.

The poem that hit me across the head was by Robert Frost (somewhere RHS junior-year English teacher Mr. Mackey is nodding wisely) called "The Armful." It struck me that what Frost describes here is what professors go through as they try to revamp their courses (yet again!) in the hopes that they can it just a little bit closer to where it "should" be. Here's the poem, in its entirety:

For every parcel I stoop down to seize
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns--
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with hand and mind
And heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced at my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.

Classes start tomorrow...only four months until syllabus revision starts all over again. Camus would say: Surely we must be happy.

Fantasy Football: (no) prep is for losers!

Here's a note I originally posted on the Inter-Galactic Football League (IGFL) site this weekend--the league has been around for better than a decade, and contains a number of Gusties (although they let in at least one guy from Augsburg, but it's OK--he never wins). The lull between fantasy playoffs and actual real-life playoffs gives us a window of lethargy to craft stuff like this...
~bpi

Despite winning the East, WMD folded like the proverbial deck of cards in the semifinals to eventual champion Environmental Warriors. Any success I had this year was a matter of the waiver wire rather than the draft, I kid you not...

ROUND ONE: MICHAEL TURNER (RB)--Mind you, this is the #2 overall pick...After AP, it was a toss-up for me between Turner and Jones-Drew. Let's just say that, to date, Jones-Drew is a solid 3rd in scoring for running backs, while Turner is 12th, and fading. To a point, we were all sleeping: the top scorer, Chris Johnson, was taken in the middle of Round Two....

ROUND TWO: GREG JENNINGS (WR)--Sort of a homer pick, sort of a hedge against taking a seemingly overpriced 2nd RB (see Chris Johnson discussion above), sort of a hedge against taking a QB "too too early." Jennings is 27th in scoring for WR/TEs. Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot picked tight end after tight end? Remember how we all watched in amazement as the Robot won game after game, all the way to the championship game? Remember how we all made a mental note to let the Robot draft for us in 2010?

ROUND THREE: TOM BRADY (QB)--Manning was still on the board, Brees had been passed up last time around, and Aaron Rogers (the eventual points leader) remained on the board. (Hey wait--f**king Ace scooped him up in the 3rd! So with the top overall RB and the top overall QB, Black Tail managed to get bounced in the division round? Uff da.) I noticed that my record this year pretty much paralleled that of the Patriots. And just like I felt really squeamish about my chances in the playoffs, despite winning the division...

ROUND FOUR: WES WELKER (WR)--Finally! Value for the money! Sort of. Welker finished 21st in scoring, although he always seemed like he was better. He'd have been a heck of a #3WR, but turns out to have been a bit of a stretch as a #2.

ROUND FIVE: ROY WILLIAMS (WR)--Yeesh. Disaster. Dropped and forgotten.

ROUND SIX: LEE EVANS (WR)--See "Roy Williams," above. It's a good thing I can justify this nonsense with the fact that I clearly did not do my homework.

ROUND SEVEN: FRED JACKSON (RB)--A desperation pick for a stopgap running back actually worked out for a few weeks. Lynch was suspended and Jackson actually did will for Buffalo for a while, then got cold and I dropped him. By the time he was rocking again, he was long gone off the waiver wire...But then I found Ricky...

ROUND EIGHT: JULIUS JONES (RB)--What can I say: the season was a constant fight to sort two believable running backs week-in week-out. Might have started a week or two for me. Yeesh.

ROUND NINE: FELIX JONES (RB)--Ha ha ha. Boy I was really sucking at this point of the night.

ROUND TEN: STEELERS (DEF)--Might have been a reach, but even this early, the Steel Curtain was probably more valuable than any of the three running backs picked in Rounds 7-9. A bye-week drop in favor of New Orleans, which worked out fine.

ROUND ELEVEN: MATT HASSELBECK (QB)--Adequate bye-week fill-in for Brady, but was just insurance.

ROUND TWELVE: Neil Rakers (K)--Did fine, but was shown the door w/ the bye week. Picked up New Orleans kicker(s), which worked fine.

ROUND THIRTEEN: JERIOUS NORWOOD (RB) (RB)--Insurance for Michael Turner, which, as it turned out, was warrented. Except that Norwood was hurt too by the time Turner went down.

WAIVER PICKUP THAT SAVED MY BUTT: RICKY WILLIAMS (RB)--Good Lord, who is that in 4th position for running back scoring?! Is this 2002 or 2009?! Sick!

MY NOD TO THE TIGHT END FAD OF 2009: VISANTHE SHIANCOE (TE)--He would never get a whole lot of yards, but Favre seemed to find him in the end zone with surprising regularity. More points than Jennings, that's for sure. And for the haters: he even scored more than Anquan Boldin!

So what have I learned from all this? First: don't dismiss tight ends out of hand. Second: don't wait forever to get that second RB. Third: crack the f**king magazine BEFORE the draft starts.

When's the baseball draft?

More balance in '10?

It seems I'm as vulnerable as anyone to making grandiose (and half-baked) New Year's resolutions--but I'm trading in mine for my wife Loreta's. It took me about two seconds to realize hers made waaaaay more sense.

Having worked through our discomfort w/ J-Lo, and counting down the minutes until 2010, Loreta asked me what my New Year's resolution was this year. I started to mumble something about more of everything ("everything" being book proposals and the like), but stopped short of anything definitive.

She, on the other hand, was perfectly clear: "I want more balance in my life." Absolutely right, of course. We've taken on new challenges in the past several years, and hope to take on more (and sooner rather than later)--but to take them on effectively, we both need more balance between work and play, career and home.

So if I sort out this book proposal, lead this study tour, etc., then cool. But not at the expense of other parts of my life which I can neglect, if I'm not careful.

Naïve? Maybe. (I didn't get the nickname "Skippy" from the Queen for no reason.) But it's a worthy goal--wish me luck. And I wish you a happy, healthy, and balanced new year to you and yours!