Trying to Get Up for NFL 2017

I started this blog in 2009. I had a few reasons for doing so, but the real driver, the catalyst for the entire thing, was to have a place to write about my thoughts on the NFL. It was the sport at that time in my life I cared about more than any other. I wanted a place to express my opinions, on who the best teams were, on what the real best players were, on how wins for QBs were useless, on how Manning was better than Brady, and on who I thought would win each week. Eight years later, more than anything else football has owned this blog. And for the first time, I think that isn't true.

In 2009-2011, I wrote a lot about football. In 2012, it went to a new level, for a few reasons. First, I got a job early that football season and could essentially relax and write more. Second, it was Manning's first year back from injury and was probably the last year I was truly invested week to week. Third, it was the year I started betting on football. Not a lot, not enough to where I was risking bankruptcy, but betting all the same. That year I started writing a piece each week called 'The Power Rankings & the Rest' where I not only ranked each of the 32 teams, but also ranked the games in the upcoming week. It was the apex of my love of the game.

Five years later, I have hit the nadir. I honestly have to work myself up to care about the upcoming season. I had a fantasy draft today in a league filled with friends who I knew back in the pre-blog days, where I would use our lunch table to expound on the game the same way I would on this site. In that draft, I caught myself numerous times thinking "who is this guy?" or "he plays for that team?" These are questions I wouldn't be asking myself even last year. For instance, I had no idea that Pierre Garcon now played for the 49ers. I would be stricken with fear if I didn't know this 10 years ago.

I wrote multiple times during the last season how my interest was waning, and that was true. The largest story for me was the rise of the Raiders, rekindling a love for my first football wife. The Patriots ended up winning the Super Bowl, in excruciating fashion, a game I did not watch, though mostly because I did not care to see the Patriots win another Super Bowl in ridiculously close fashion. Last year was the start of a new era, where I cared more about other things on Sundays, where I tried to follow European Football more closely (Hala Madrid!). I tried to avoid thinking about the NFL, which I knew was in a post-Peyton world. Sadly it was not yet in a post-Brady world.

I shouldn't say my lack of interest is totally due to the continuing dominant presence of the Patriots. Certainly, they were a dynasty from 2001-2007, a period where my interest in the sport only grew. Strangely, in that period, the Patriots owned my team, while I at least can take solace over the last handful of years, the Mannings have had more positive results against New England than anyone else. No, it isn't really just the continued brillaince of New England. It is also not just Peyton leaving. It is a whole era of players leaving.

My favorite games that I've ever seen were probably from the 2006-2009 timeframe, maybe add in 2011-13. It is stunning how few of the players who played in those games are still left. I know the NFL has a quicker, faster turnover than most sports, but still, when I load up the 2011 NFC Championship Game (NYG vs. SF), I am startled by how few of those players are still in the game today. Maybe it is a sign of age, but when all the good players are younger than you, or at most five years older (Rodgers), it makes you re-evaluate things.

I will never not love the NFL in an intrisnic, almost unconditional way. The strategy, the physicality, the settings, the beautiful tapestry it has woven across America. All those things resonate with me. But from a day-to-day following the league, well that has stopped. Maybe I'm stupid to live in the past, to spin up the 2007 NFC Championship Game and revel in a setting a decade ago, but that was the NFL I remember, not the game it is now where each QB is worth the highest salary in the league and each one throws for 4,000 yards unless they get hurt. I grew up in a very different league. The fundamentals may still be the same, but the result is not.

Ever since the Pats epic comeback, I've thought a lot about this upcoming season. On how I could better use my Sundays. On what the NFL really means to me. On if there is a path forward in my life as a sports fan without the NFL being a central element. And at least for one off-season there was. I didn't follow Free Agency at all. I only extremely tangentially followed the draft. I barely cared about training camps or preseasons. Again, I honestly did not know a lot of the offseason transactions around the league. And you know what... it's made me actually get excited for the season to come.

I have no doubt my love for the NFL has peaked and reached its plateau years ago. I think it ended its high period in 2015, when somehow the Broncos stole the #1 seed and won the Super Bowl, and the other conference was full of incredibly fun teams like Carolina and Arizona. Maybe it one day comes back. In some ways, it hurts that I am something of an NFL free agent. I still love the Raiders, my first true NFL love. Manning is gone, and I've come to realize my ties the Colts were tenuous at best - I care far more about the Colts fans, specifically the ones I came to know on 18to88.com, or StampedeBlue and Colts Authority, rather than the actual team. A man without a direction is not a good position to be in as an NFL fan.

Ultimately, come Sunday, September 10th, I'll probably still care (I'm going to avoid New England's opener like the plague), but I definitely won't care as much. I won't care enough for it to rule my Sunday's starting at 12:55 PM EST. I won't care enough to waste hours during the week scouring ProFootballTalk. And I feel for the first time, I won't care enough that the Patriots seemingly inevitable romp to a 6th Super Bowl won't impact my life too much. In reality, this is a better position to be in, but it does ultimately feel like something is missing. No matter how much I say my football loving phase is in the rear-view mirror, it truly won't ever escape me/. 

Trip Review, Serbia & Croatia, Pt. 2

Dubrovnik

The little jewel at the bottom tip of Croatia, Dubrovnik was always going to be a stop on the trip. It rose to more prominence within our group for being the real home of Game of Throne's King's Landing (along with a few other settings in the show). The Game of Thrones tour was one of our main tourist attractions coming into the trip, and the three-plus hour walking tour of Dubrovnik's old town and the Bokar Fortress (The Red Keep) next to it. Dubrovnik itself is quaint, beautiful and just a truly enchanting little town nestled deep down the Adriatic Sea.

We stayed in an AirBNB, with an overly stressed and difficult host (someone who had the gall to actually want to impose the stated quiet hours), about a 20-minute walk up from old town. It is in the more residential part of Dubrovnik, close to the Rixos 5-star hotel. The AirBNB had a beautiful balcony overlooking the sea and the sloping coast of Dubrovnik. With Mt. Srd behind the Dubrovnik city line below it, the view reminded me distinctly of Cape Town. Maybe not as perfect as the Cape Town view is (Mt. Srd is no Table Mountain), but it comes really, really close.

The old town is the heart and soul of Dubrovnik, nearly fully rebuilt form the NATO bombings in the late-90s. The town is replete with orange tile roofs that sparkle in the sky, creating just a perfect sense of old-town Europe - and coincidently, King's Landing of course. The old town is full of small tunnels of alleys and pathways with high steps and vertical drops. For such a small area, it is scary how topologically diverse it is. The streets are full of upscale restaurants, including one that deserves its own shoutout - 360 Restaurant, at the corner of the Old Town at the riverfront.

360 Restaurant is a tremendous restaurant, with an amazing view, and incredible food. You can either get a 2 or 3 course meal for about $70, or a 6-course tasting menu for about double. We all got the 2 or 3 course meal, which also came along with an amuse bouche of deconstructed, frozen celery (really good), and a dessert plate of reconstructed cookies. My appetizer was perfectly cooked scallops with truffle sauce and squid-ink chips, and then a main of pigeon, with lavender-crusted pigeon filet, and a confit-style leg, with a foie gras side. The food was incredible, the setting, with a nice solid wind, was great, and the whole envioronment was a special night in Dubrovnik.

And little did I know the night was just getting started. The night ended at one of Dubrovnik's main night spots, Culture Club Revelin, a nightclub built into the walls of the Old Town, in a 16th century fortress. The club is large with a few different bars, people in cages, lights, DJs. We came on a night with neon lights and streamers passed around everywhere. The best part of the place, really, was their AC that ran really well throughout to keep the place cool. Of all the clubs we went to on the trip, Revelin was my favorite experience.

The rest of our time in Dubrovnik featured seeings the depths of the town, a quick trip to a rocky beach close to the Rixos resort, and the highs, taking the cable car up Mt. Srd to the Panorama restaurant. The food at the restaurant itself wasn't all that great, but the views, especially with our group seated at the edge with a clear barrier allowing us an unobstructed view of the entire city below. The old town was lit up nicely with flood-lighting iluminating the fortress walls, and the expanse back towards where we stayed too had enough lights to mark out the sprawling up-and-down nature of Dubrovnik.

Dubrovnik as a whole is the right type of touristy. Tourism absolutely drive the cities economy. The city itself has a population of only around 50,000, but an annual tourism visitation of around 2.5 million. But the tourism is of a higher class than that of some major Western European city, or even Split, with hawking stalls selling touristy bullshit. Dubrovnik surprisingly didn't have that. It was a classy, untouched haven of tourism deep within Croatia's longer-than-expected coast.

Driving the Coast

The drive between Dubrovnik and Split is one of the most beautiful in the world. The Adriatic coast to the West (our left while driving), the hills and mountains to the East. The drive traipses up and down, winding through the coast and mountains, while taking a small little detour into Bosnia (more on that in a minute). The drive, if done in one go, takes about three and a half hours. Ours, with many, many stops for photos, a stop for lunch at a beautiful little seaside town, and some traffic, took seven, and it was a truly glorious seven hours.

The drive is more or less fully on one road, Highway 8. The beginning of the drive takes a bit to get going, with not too many great photo stops in the beginning. The drive really starts to take off once you get into and out of Bosnia. For some reason, you have to drive through Bosnia to get to Split, with a bridge that would bypass this detour still under construction. This should be a tough roadblock, with not one but two passport checks, but while they have lanes for passport checks, when we pulled up and started to hand the guy our passports, he literally just waved us to go through. On the one hand, this was great as it didn't slow us down, on the other, what the hell was that? Is there literally no security on those borders? It is really a tiny part of Bosnia, and I imagine a good percentage of the crossers are inevitably heading back into Croatia, so maybe some sort of deal was made?

Anyway, once you enter back into Croatia the real magic of the drive begins. Each winding turn gives better views than the last. It has the mountains and sea combination that I last saw on the drive to the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, and while the natural beauty may have been slightly less regal than that, the small towns that dot the bottom of the hills added a bit of flair to the photos and the sights. Along the way you pass many windmills (Croatia seemingly is quite energy-forward), so many small towns, and so many mountains that tower over you. You even pass a winery, with Winer Rizman smartly setting up a shop right when you get back into Croatia. The stall servers food and wine tastings, has some sleek bathrooms, and overlooks rows and rows of vineyards in a truly pristine setting.

Sooner or later, we had to stop at one of the small towns for real to get something to eat. It was Gradac, right when the Highway 8 makes it way back to the coast after a brief jaunt inwards. Gradac has a sandy beach, a real novelty for most of Croatia, and a perfectly tamed water in an inlet of the coast, the mountain walls jutting up. It reminded me a lot of False Bay in South Africa, with the restaurants lined up at the bottom.

The rest of the drive included one memorable photo stop where I had to drive up a steep cliff to a small, deserted church to get a good view of the land, dotted with small towns and hills, behind it. It was dangerous, rash, and so very worth it. Sunset occured three-quarters of the way through the trip, creating a perfectly glistening shine on the towns and hills. We finally reached Split around 8PM, a wonderful day on the coast of Croatia behind us.

Trip Review, Serbia & Croatia, Pt. 1

The last week I spent with 5 to 7 friends in Serbia and Croatia. It was my first visit to Europe proper in two years, and first to those countries. My parents went to Croatia nine years ago. They had a great time. I had other friends go to Croatia and Serbia and say the same. I was excited to go on this trip mostly to spend a lot of quality time with my strongest group of friends, but also to experience two new countries, and more selfishly for my personal achievements, three more airports and an additional airline. I'm not doing a diary of the trip, but more of a reflection of the visit across the different cities of my visit.

Air Travel

I took two airlines that make up the Lufthansa's Group, one of the EUs big 3 airlines. It was Lufthansa to Belgrade (via Munich), and Swiss back from Zagreb (through Zurich). Both airlines were perfectly fine. Lufthansa impressed me slightly more with their Airbus A340-600, with new, comfortable seats, a cool downstairs bathroom area/ The food was fairly similar on both. With Swiss, the plane (an A330-300) just seemed old, with drab brown seats and aging screens. The movie selection was fairly similar on both and neither had a lot of good options. Oddly. the Swiss flight seemed to have the entirety of Richard Gere's career work. This was OK as I slept through Chicago and watched Primal Fear for the first time, but both Lufthansa and Swiss had a stark lack of good movie options.

Airports were similarly average. Munich is a nice, fancy airport but being stuck in the non-Schengen area greatly limits food and amenity options. This wasn't a problem as I wanted to sleep for most of the 3-hour layover, but I had to eat breakfast (and a beer! - hey, airports are time-free zones) in the one restaurant available while on the other side of a glass was ten different ones. Zurich was the other aiport I had a long layover in and found it fairly mediocre this time. I used to quite like it, but I think I have been to enough of the great Asian airports since my last trip through Zurich (2011) that my expectations certainly have changed. The best part of Zurich Airport really was that their Priority Pass lounge in the E Concourse, has a balcony overlooking the planes with great views of two runways. It was a perfect backdrop in that sense. Overall, I've come to pleasantly accept air travel to Europe as a nuisance. Easily give me a 10+ hour flight over this mid-tier 6-8 hour ones.


Belgrade

I'll give the Serbian capital this: they are very much on the right path. Serbia is seemingly a good half-decade (if not slightly more) behind Croatia on the development scale to recover from the brutal decade that was the 1990's for all of ex-Yugoslavia. There is no real evidence of the bombings or the destruction, but just evidence of the slower growth the city has had since then. We stayed in a hostel in Belgrade in the heart of the city, but Belgrade is large enough to necessitate taking cabs - sadly not Uber as it hasn't come there yet. Like many things in Serbia, Uber is a few years away.

The city of Belgrade itself is quite nice. Not as picturesque as the Coastal towns I would later visit, but it has nice open squares, ornate buildings, and many little alleys and streets that would not be out of place in any European city. Belgrade city center is a series of roads on either side of the Sava river. The river is a lifeblood in the city, with lines of nice restaurants on one side and a series of barges that house clubs on the other side. More on the clubs in a minute, but the restaurants that line the Sava river are all fancy, with beautiful settings and beautiful people (Serbia has gorgeous people in it), and are all really cheap. One of the lasting impressions in Serbia was just how cheap the country is. This may change as tourism improves (Croatia was not cheap), but for now that is a wonderful bonus.

Belgrade is a hilly town, with loads of rolling streets leading down towards the Sava river. The walking tour (that Belgrade proudly offers for free) covers a lot of different elevations, up to the Belgrade Fortress and its view overlooking the city, and down to the main square. The view from the top of Belgrade exhibits both how large the city is, and how much construction is going on, both the continue to develop the waterfront and then also to build out the other side of the city, the 'New Belgrade.'

For sites, Belgrade has only a few real places of note that we visited. First was the Nikola Tesla museum, a small house that honors the life and legacy of Serbia's great contribution to world scientific development. Tesla himself left Serbia prior to much of his greatest years, but he still is a home crown jewel, with his name adorning currency, streets, airports, etc. The museum highlight was actually a 10-minute demonstration of a few of Tesla's contributions to science, acted out with real created lightning and AC-driven model boats that shook the world in the early 20th Century. The other site was the St. Sava Temple, a giant Serbian Orthodox temple in the heart of the city that is large and harrowing inside, with a perfectly ornate crypt chamber.

The restaurants in Belgrade were fine, with us going to the reputed Ambar one night, and hanging out at the perfectly-too-touristy Bohemian area with musical bands playing table to table the other night. The other highlight of Belgrade is the nightlife. It is known as one of the hidden party-city treasures of Europe, and while my group of friends aren't touring the Balkans just for partying, we are of the right age and energy level to partake. We went to everything from an outdoor packed bar the first night (Saturday), to an incredibly chill bar/lounge, to a rocking club on a barge called Club 94 on Sunday Night. Clubs in Belgrade basically open at 10 or 11 PM, don't really get going until ~1AM, and close the earliest at 5AM. One club we missed was the underground Drugstor, whose hours are 11PM-10AM.

Club 94 was a floating madhouse, with a really good mix of early-00's hip/hop (right in my friend group's wheelhouse) and bottle service that gave us a full handle for $100, which when you break it out isn't a bad deal. It was a fun last night for Belgrade, ending up seriously impacting our ability to make the flight the next day to Dubrovnik in time. It was the capper to a fun two days in Belgrade. Overall, I can't wait to see where that city and country goes. They have some political stability and it is becoming a more known tourist destination. They are trying to hard to build up the city and in their credit, all the pieces are there.

Game of Thrones Late Struggles and the Issue with Plot

There's been a nagging sense during this season of Game of Thrones that something is off. Sure, maybe it is the 7-episode order making everything move 14% faster, or the fact that characters are together again making for more central story-telling, but something definitely seems off. More than anything, this dip in Game of Thrones made me immediately think of the last show to be such a cultural phenomenon to end - Breaking Bad. It was a better show, but to me it had the same late-seasons strangeness. It also split up its last two seasons into shorter installments. But more than anything, what it did was focus way too much on the plot and the end-game. And I fear that Game of Thrones is doing the same thing, just not with the same pure brilliance Breaking Bad did.

It sounds weird to criticize any show, particularly a drama, for being too plot-driven, but in reality I think that is fair. A great show isn't always involved on moving from A to B, but going from A to F and focusing a lot of time on B, C, and D. Like many things, few shows did this better than The Wire, which changed its long-form plot each season, and was so slow, so exact it took hours for things to progress. Episodes were isolated, were rarely built off advancing some central plot. That's why I can put on any episode of The Wire at random and be entertained. If anything, some of the better episodes were early-to-middle of seasons before the plot coalesced.

Both Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones were like this. The best seasons of Game of Thrones was always paced slowly and methodically. The best seasons showcased politics, religion, race relations. There were so many lost plots of Jon north of the wall, or Dany's long march through Essos, or Stannis's entire storyline. Sure, they are all either meaningless or forgettable now that we turn towards the final stage, but in reality showcased a show at the peak of its powers, playing off great, voluminous, source material.

Breaking Bad was even better in this regard, showcasing so many small moments, be it Jesse vs. his parents or relationship with Jane & Andrea, to Walt's up and down relationship with his son, to Hank loving minerals. Breaking Bad, to me, was at its best when it was character-driven rather than plot-driven. The final two-part season of the show was way too plot-driven for me. Memorable, sure. Great, definitely. But not as rewatchable, not as lasting as those earlier seasons when it was smaller.

Taking this back to Game of Thrones, my favorite two seasons of the show were its first and fourth. The first was the show at its smallest, before they introduced so many players, cities and 'kings' that muddled Seasons 2-3 way too much. It was a long character study of a honest, good man losing his life due to that unwavering, naive purity. Season 4 was a great character piece of King's Landing, from Joffrey's evil, to Cersei and Tywin's scheming, to Jamie and Tyrion being so conflicted. Sure, you can so those seasons were plot-driven (all of Game of Thrones is), but even their 'showcase' episodes.

This season of Game of Thrones has been way, way too plot driven. Each episode has some 'Wow' moment, but the plot is now overtaking sense, be it the suddenly rapid transit that has popped up all over Westeros, with characters traipsing from region to region at the drop of a hat, or the convenient plot devices and idiotic ideas. The show is still good for the reasons it will go down in history: the incredible film-making quality of the show and the way it can pull of grand scenes and action like no show ever. Yet, there is a feeling that as Game of Thrones hits its final stretch, it has lost some of the soul that made it great. Behind those action packed moments and incredible staging, used to be a heart of dialogue and personal introspection, something that is glaringly missing in this short season.

I have hopes that Game of Thrones can stick the landing plot-wise, and even if it doesn't, it has provided more incredible moments than all but a handful of dramas I've ever seen. It only seems wobbly now due to how incredibly stable and great it has been. But much like Breaking Bad lost some of its luster for me during the end, Game of Thrones seems to be following a similar fate.

The A-B-C's of TrueHoop TV

A few years back I wrote a piece about my favorite sports podcasts. It turns out I didn't include my true favorite, and on the week following its way-too-early demise, I must wax all-too-poetic about the legacy and memory of TrueHoopTV (aka TrueHoop, aka The Basketball Analogy, aka TBA). It seems that the shows end is not 'The End' for the collection of unique voices spearheaded by the Evil Producer Jade Hoye, but for many in the strong family that the show built, the end of THTV/TBA signified the end of an era. To memorialize, I'll break out the old 'A...B...C...'s' about this brilliant little podcast that burned way too brightly to last forever.


A. is for Amin Elhassan

Let's start off with one of the TrueHoop OGs. Amin Elhassan was such an instrumental part of the show, well beyond his duties of hosting the BOMM show on Monday's after that became a thing in mid-2016. Amin Elhassan is many things, but mostly a seemingly good dude that toes the line between confidence and arrogance better than anyone I've ever seen. He also was a behind the scenes driving force in growing THTV and later the TBA podcast into something more than a daily basketball discussion. The BOMM podcast was always a great appetizer to the Week at the THTV restaurant, and he perfectly navigated that show and used his connections brilliantly to get great guests on. But more than anything, I love going back and listening to old episodes, before the BOMM days, when Amin was less the moderator and more the contributor, the brilliant, caustic, bombastic personality he portrays so well.


B. is for Banned & Bontemps

In the beginning, I didn't get the Tuesday Show, with four to five white, country NBA reporters. Over time, it became arguably my favorite show of the week - and nothing was better than the incredibly sick rapport between Banned McMahon and Timmy Goodtimes. Firstly, 'Banned' is a national treasure. For someone whose voice is so stereotypically hick, he had easily the fastest, sharpest tongue of anyone on the whole roster. He was the only person who could spar with Radio Ethan and out-fox him without even putting on a character. And nothing was better than seeing Banned McMahon take it to poor little Tim Bontempts. Goodtimes held his own nicely, and got a few jabs back, but Banned truly was the 'baddest man in all the land.' Banned's rise into a true THTV superstar cemented the Tuesday show for me, and became such a crucial part of my weekly drives through the Greater Toronto Area.


C. is for Callers

Having Callers on the show started in earnest with an appearance by Jimmer Jimson Jr., on January in 2017. It was a brief appearance during the end of the Friday Mailbag, an episode I listened to shoveling up the one big storm we had last year. The first one didn't go so well - though Jimmer became a cult favorite in the THTV/TBA universe. In reality, the first 3-4 didn't go to good. The first good one had, as Big Wos noted, the advantage 'of being black'. Anyway, overtime, the guests became more numerous and of far higher quality. In the end, the last few Friday Mailbag's featured more airtime with guests on than just the regulars, and the guests in some cases became regulars, like Tony's Trivia, a game Kaleigh Brandt seemed to mercilessly cheat at, and Anthony Canton III's brilliant poetry. By the end, TBA was a truly communal affair.


D. is for Dad Pods

TrueHoop was Henry Abbott's baby. Abbott was a true OG in the new-age basketball media, and lent his name first to a brilliant little enclave within ESPN, and ultimately TrueHoop TV and finally the podcast. He finally got hi, I don't know, revenge(?), with his short-lived but brilliant Dad Pod with David Thorpe. It was part of my weekly commute through the GTA to Bellwood's Brewery, its 40-50 minutes timing perfectly with Toronto traffic. It wasn't as raucous as the other installments (save for the Dance Break interludes) but featured two 'old hands' just shooting the shit about life and basketball development more than the game itself. It was very different than any other segment of the THTV universe, but one so special, if not long lived.


E. is for Ethan Sherwood Strauss

Oh, Ethan. What to say. THTV was family axed for a week back in April when ESPN went through its Black Friday. It was reborn, but a piece of its soul was always going to be missing without Ethan Sherwood Strauss. There's was no better punching bag on the show, but what made it work was that everyone was punching up - punching up towards a great writer, a great mind, a person who would drop million dollar words for no reason, and of course had connections to the Golden State Warriors. Ethan was also an amazing storyteller. I've relistened to his brilliant yarn about losing his passport in Bangkok during his honeymoon, full with such little meaningless hilarious details like not bartering with cab drivers and him leaving his new wife at the airport being like the Titanic sinking. Ethan was also one of the OGs of THTV, and in reality, I didn't know truly how important he was until he was gone. Sherwood was irreplacable, enough so that he takes up two letters, with the 'R' assigned to his person as well.


F. is for Fornicating Bears

Jade's legendary story (both on the POD and on instagram) of two black bears having sex in his back-yard kiddy pool doesn't make this list because it is funny, it makes this list because it existed on the air. Late in its run, TBA became less about basketball and more about the lives of the people on the show - a change that didn't really impact its quality one bit. Jade's tales from Connecticut were always welcome, whether it was his rough and tumble upbringing, to the forested nature of his current residence. Stories like these made the show less a tutorial in the game, an analysis of a sport by experts, and more getting a seat at a very diverse, integrated dinner table.


G. is for Gone with the Windy

I already mentioned in the B&B spot how much I grew to love Tuesdays Gone with the Windy, but let's reiterate from a more personal angle. Early in 2017, I was doing a project in Vaughan, Canada, a good 30-35 minutes north of Toronto Central. Being me, I decided to drive down into the city a lot for dinner (hey, when your not paying...?), and the THTV podcast kept those drives interesting, and few better than my Tuesday drives. Sure, at first the minuteau that the show covered could get irritating, but I soon (very soon) learned to love it. It is more than just the rapport between the Tims, it was Tom Habestroh's guitar, it was Windy's hot taeks that he would push so far against an audience so dismissive. Everything from Windy's dislike of Al Horford's contract, to his passionate defense of why the NBA shouldn't cut down from 82 games. It was a far more combative podcast than you would think given it was the only show to actually gather four tried-and-true basketball journalists together.


H. is for Hoooooops

The good ol' promo code of 'Hoops' became, randomly, one of the more lasting, if random, running jokes in the history of the podcast. Each time it was read, another 'o' was added to the name. Running jokes are the throughline of any great friend network, and the running jokes within the THTV/TBA universe were all so great. From 'leveraging the chat', to Wos's mysterious job, to Tray knowing everyone on earth, to KP being a machine, to Wos loving IPA's, to JV (RIP) being a tinder all-star. So many episodes were enlivened by the never ending run of jokes upon jokes upon jokes.


I. is for Intro Music

Oh the music. Jade's diverse, vibrant collection of random unlicensed music was so note perfect. Each show had an intro (and, for the most part, outra) song that fit so well, from the cheeky whistle on Tuesday, to the hard bass line on Monday, to the excited clapping hands on Friday. The music helped give each show an identity straight off the bat. More low-key was the brilliant collection of itnerlude music played during the episodes. Legend has it if you ask the Evil Producer Jade for a song with a timestamp he'll provide the goods, and why not? The music is one of the most underrated contributions Jade brought to the show.


J. is for Jade

The story of THTV and TBA begins and ends (literally, with him leaving ESPN) with Jade. The Evil Producer was the throughline of everything they did. It was, seemingly his personal passion project turned up to 11. What Jade did was so incredible, slowly cultivating an amazingly close-knit group of both podcast regulars (a roster that went a good two dozen deep) and more importantly and more impressively listnership. The TBA community was just that, a network of thousands and that came together around a truly impressive feat of engineering from the Evil Producer. To be honest, I was not at first on board with Jade becoming a more active (see: contributing) member of the shows beyond his producing, but he quickly won me over with his earnest approach, his valuable contribution as a true raconteur, and his unending love for the TBA community he was so instrumental in building.


K. is for Kaleigh

What to say about the only regular (non-FOB pod) female THTV/TBA-er. Kaleigh was truly an awesome part of the THTV experience. First off, it is hard to imagine someone with her specific combination of skills and personality traits. She was brilliant, could do a rubik's cube in ridiculous time, could wax poetic with memorable long-form monologues, and she was also a foster child who coupled as a true beauty. Quite a unicorn. Oh, and she seemingly never saw any movie worth seeing and reveled in the fact that most of the pop culture on the show flew well over her head. Kaleigh became an integral part of the show's community, making many random jump-in's on the TrueHoop reddit. Shouts to Rachel Nichols, or the many smart, funny and delightful women who appeared on the FOB show, but Kaleigh was so good as the primary female member of the gang.


L. is for Large Casts

There is no podcast I listen to on a normal basis that features more than two hosts. When a show with normally two people adds a third I find it distressing. When a podcast I like makes it more of a panel experience, like The Nerdist, I find it almost offputting, so off is the distribution of speaking and the clarity of voices. Somehow, someway, this mom and pop podcast show was able to do this better than anything I've ever seen. Hell, it does it better than live TV panel shows with 3-5 guests. There were episodes, generally on Friday, that featured 6-8 people and could distribute time somewhat equitably. It could go one without people talking over each other, without anyone feeling left out or domineering. I don't know how this could be possible over Skype, when media finds it hard to do in person, but it worked, so so well. If anything, the smaller the roster the more depressing it was. Every episode should have been the famous Thanksgiving Mailbag that featured 10 people.


M. is for Mariano's Monta Monday's

There was no recurring creation better than Monta Monday's. I am not familiar with the genesis of the segment, the origins of it all (I'm sure Monta Ellis was involved), but Mariano's weekly paean to Monta Ellis was always incredibly hilarious. Each one had a familiar pattern that never got old, inserting Monta Ellis into every conceivable situation and showing his "impact" on history. My favorite, honestly, was the first, when Monta Ellis schooled a little boy on the basketball court, with the man doing the schooling as Monta Ellis and the man being schooled as James Naismith. Other great ones were how Monta was responsible for Good Friday and Easter, and how he inspired each track name on Illmatic while trash-talking Nas on the court. As they say, Where There's a Monta, There's A Way.


N. is for No Ethnic People at Ethan's Wedding

The Trail of Ethan was so perfectly TrueHoop TV. It was deep in the doldrums of the offseason. It was a quick joke at first when weeks prior Amin mentioned how there were no African American people at Ethan's wedding, which Ethan blamed on his isolated upbringing and La Jolla. What it turned into was a truly irreverant piece of comedy, full of strange southern accents from Amin (hilariously stupidly named 'Accented Justice') and Tom, and slowly Ethan being coerced into admitting that yes, there were no African American's at his wedding. The bit reached all-time levels when it was discovered that there was one person... the DJ, which unleashed Amin in all his glory ("A Man paid to serve at your every whim"). This came at the tail-end of Amin and Ethan's faux feud, but it was a perfect little climax.


O. is for Oakland

The shows connection to Oakland is not lost on anyone, especially Wos who is famously 'heavy in the bay.' It was there they held their first live show - being a gainfully employed adult in the New York area made it fairly hard for me to go, but I sure wish I went there. Oakland was also the home to one Ethan Sherwood Strauss. It was also the location of some legendary episodes in the 2015 and 2016 Finals when the crew lollygagged around the bay. Truthfully, I had no real idea of what to put for 'O'. I'm sure I missed something more obvious or at the very least more meaningful, but whatever. 25/26 ain't bad.


P. is for Pelton

It seemed to be a cruel fate for Kevin Pelton to be the host of the Friday Mailbag. He was infamously analytically inclined (some compared him, strangely enough, to a machine), wrote hard core basketball statistical tomes, and he was part of a show that strayed miles and miles away from being about basketball. But in reality, it was golden. KP was the lovable dork. First off, I loved his voice. I always pictured KP smiling, laughing when he spoke. Something about that voice just did it for me. Pelton was also always so good at going along with the joke, whether it be his fondness for everythign Seattle. or his own side 'Pelton-cast' that he does with his brother, or his likeness to a machine. Kevin was also famously dismissive of the quality of the questions he received for the mailbag, another funny little twist on the happy-go-luck guy his voice portrayed. Also, shouts to KP for also being an infrequent drop-in guest on the TrueHoop reddit.


Q. is for Questions from KP

I've gone back and re-listened to Friday Mailbag's from early in the 2016-17 season. It is startling just how many questions KP actually asked during the episodes. Overtime, the lack of questions asked became a joke, so often with Zach chiming in "have we answered one question." The pessimist would say this was them straying away from all sense of decency. The optimist, and realist, would say that the Friday Mailbag was never about the questions (Kevin was all too quick to admit that the questions often were very poor in quality), but about getting those voices together to shoot the shit. I got a couple questions answered over the years, most memorably the first listener question when TBA was born out of the THTV ashes in May ("Over/Under two weeks before the internet says the old pods were better"), and it was an honor to get a #AskWos question asked and answered. It really only was a select few.


R. is for Radio Ethan

One of the best parts of the THTV/TBA oeuvre was their ability to beat bits into the ground without them losing any of their effect. The best example was Radio Ethan, which started so organically. I think it first started by accident (admittedly, it predates my listening to the show), and was at first used sparingly and often on-command when Amin/Tom/Wos wanted Ethan to do it for fun, to mock the overtly macho, nihilistic vibe of sports-talk radio. In time, it grew to special episodes where Ethan played the character for a full hour. But Radio Ethan was still the best in surprise doses, none better when he broke into the BOMM studios in the Monday show after Trump's inaugaration, full with him changing Big Wos's name to Big Todd, and getting a new name as Mr. Radio. Maybe five years from now Radio Ethan would have become played out, but not a second sooner.


S. is for Spreecast

I wasn't a religious THTV watcher in the Spreecast / TrueHoop after dark days. It was a bit overwhelming at the time, a grainy Skype video footage of four people I don't know talking and making each other laugh in-between buffering and audio problems (Jade corrected this overtime in a big way). But the humble origins of the show did belie its brilliance. The few times I did check in I enjoyed it - enough so to remember the names of Amin, Tom and Ethan. I followed those three in their weekly chats in ESPN.com, a now defunct joy hidden in some dark, desolate corner of the Worldwide leaders online fortress. I don't know when exactly I became a daily THTV listener, but when I got myself committed for good, if anything I was depressed I did not consume more of their garage-band beginnings.


T. is for Tom Haberstroh

Not sure why, but Tom was always my THTV underrated MVP. He too was one of the original OGs of the universe, I believe, but why I grow to really enjoy Tom was his slow turn into the Andre Iguodala of THTV's death lineup, the man who could play all the roles (I guess this could be Draymond Green as well). He could joke it up with the best of them. He had his own characters, whether it be his incessantly amateurish guitar playing to Rodeo Joe. He was incredibly goofy. But he was also an incredibly sharp basketball mind that could more than hold his own on the Windy Tuesday podcast and break down the game both from an X's and O's standpoint and an advanced analytics standpoint. Tom may not have been the loudest, or the funniest, or the most raucous, but he was always there filling in the gaps just perfectly.


U. is for Uncensored

What may have doomed the show in the end was how unfiltered, how raw, and how 'edgy' (in a corporate sense) the show was. By all accounts, Jade left on his own terms, but the show may not have been long for the world. ESPN may have grew tired of having non-ESPN personalities on a popular podcast network expressing opinions that could often be best described as being out-of-pace at the Mickey Mouse Corp. Still, what made it great was what killed it. The best part was the last few months when Jade seemingly went into Eff-You mode and let a few 'shits' sneak by. Beyond the literal uncensored nature, was how unfiltered the show was, not ever shying away from complex, controversial and sensitive topics, addressing them with a nuance and precision that was shocking for a show like this.


V. is for Valerie (Momma) Hoye

Not only was the TBA cadre of superstars a family, but in the literal sense they extended it to their family. There were a couple podcasts with Ethan and his wife Allie. Both Tom and Mariano's mom made cameo appearances. But more than any family member, Jade's Mom Valerie became a crucial member of the gang. I forget under what pretense was she first added to the Friday Mailbag, ostensibly to give her opinion on some TV show. Giving fairly accurate TV recommendations and opinions was her game, but overtime it extended into further opening a lens into Jade's life. Jade cultivated such a warm and welcoming atmosphere, with nothing more direct than a direct connection with his own Mom.


W. is for Wos

Oh Big Wos, mysterious, manic and marvelous. Big Wos began a great new era of the THTV story by being the first recurring non-ESPN personality. Overtime he became a crucially integral part of the show, their true 'supporting' player that would go on BOMM on Monday, moonlight every now and then on Gone with the Windy, and show up regularly on the Mailbag. There was the famed Wos Week early in 2017 where he appeared on each show during a week. Of course, one would think it is at best ridiculous for a grown adult man to do this while seemingly working a full-time job, but of course we don't exactly know what Wos does. We do know he has all the audio problems, shills for Drake constantly, calls Gordon Hayward his second son, and has a few choice opinions on the city of Boston. Wos, in many ways, was THTV's International Man of Mystery, and like Austin Powers, he's heavy in London/


X. is for X's and O's

I have gone through this whole alphabet with barely mentioning basketball, the topic the TrueHoop TV and the TBA podcast was supposed to be covering. To be honest, at times the utter lack of basketball talk was tough, but only because when they did go hard on basketball it was so good. Whether it was Windhorst and the Tims breaking down the salary cap, or Tray spinning yarns on summer runs and youth basketball, or KP bringing the numbers, or Abbott and Thorpe breaking down development and game play style. When it wanted to, TrueHoop and TBA could go so deep into basketball with an engaging style that was unmatched.


Y. is for Yeeerrrrrpppp!

OK, I'm going to get proselytize-y for second. One of the best facets of THTV was its ability to cut so easily across racial lines. From the simplistic sense, on its weekly roster was a show called 'Black Opinions Matter Monday' followed immediately by a Tuesday show whose standard roster was four white guys, three of whom lived in Omaha, Dallas and Charlotte. Jade's affectation for the phrase 'Yeeerrrr!' and 'Yeeerrrrppp!' was a small signifier of that. The show mixed worlds so well, from Tray's incessant shout-outs and the talk of dapping, to Rodeo Joe and Tom's huckster guitar alter-ego. Moving beyond the black and white was the FOB show featuring a cadre of Asian voices. To put it not-so-lightly, the show was about as diverse a program as there was.


Z. is Zach Harper

We end with Harper, the man who, more than anything, symbolized what I grew to love about THTV/TBA - the comedy. Honestly, to me a podcast is fairly meaningless unless it can make me laugh. All my favorite podcasts are either podcasts run by comedians, or about sports but have good enough chemistry that they bring the laughs (Joe Posnanski's Poscast with Michael Schur, and Marek vs. Wyshynski as prime examples). TrueHoop was the best at this, and Harper was the king of the jokes. He batted a pure .666 on his jokes too. Harper was there for the origins of the pod, but that was before I started listening. His 'return' to the normal rotation really did signal a shift in tone for the show, and his comedic focus and chops transferred quite easily to the rest of the cast as well. More than anything, THTV and TBA made me laugh. They made me learn, made me think, made me live through so many long drives through the Greater Toronto Area; but more than anything it made me laugh.


It seems like in some shape or form, they will return, but it won't be the same. Not literally in that it is very likely that the ESPN talent and the non-ESPN folks will be separated. Not emotionally as there won't be this perfect amalgam of sports, pop-culture, comedy and pure joy in one 60-150 minute package. TrueHoopTV and TBA filled way too much hours of time in my life. I've seen many podcasts that I loved come and go - many of them from ESPN itself, but nothing hit me like losing THTV and TBA. The show lives on at Podfanatic with a full archive, and more than anything it lives in my memories.

Ranking the Classic Pink Floyd & Van Halen Albums, Pt. 2

Now we get to the god stuff. These are all just incredible albums from start to finish, with the top ranking among the best I have ever listened to.

Tier IV - The True Classics

5.) Fair Warning

It’s commonly known as Van Halen’s dark album, one that has a more serious, dour, depressed tone. I get that to some degree. There are some pretty ‘dark’ songs, at least in relation to the rest of their albums. The darkest might be Push Comes to Shove, which is slow and plodding and perfectly rocking. Eddie's solo on that may be my most underrated favorite of his. The other dark song might be their most technically impressive on the album in Mean Streets, which has a fiery string of tapping at the start. But really, the album just rocks, really really loud and hard. Forget the darkness and the moodiness, it was all around brilliant.

The album contains the brownest of brown sounds from Eddie and the band. The masterpiece in this case was Unchained, a wall of brown sound that has become pretty instrumental in their success in the mid-80's. The sound was so pure, so riotous, so joyous. Similarly great sound quality emanates throughout the album, from Dirty Movies (a perfect Roth-era song lyrically), to Hear About it Later (still not sure how Eddie did what he does in the beginning), to Sinner's Swing. The album was full of incredibly tight, dark, dense songs, an apex of the Roth-era VH. 

The album ironically sold the least of any Roth-era albums, but it has captured a place in rock history. The album is a favorite among many VH fans and rock historians, a common choice for their best album overall. I, obviously, disagree as I have two more VH albums to come, but Fair Warning was a great period piece in Van Halen's development. It continued the growth they showed with Women and Children First, but a homage to their first two albums with the tightness of the songs. Fair Warning was not their masterpiece, but apart from their debut, no album better showcased what made Van Halen great.

4.) Women and Children First

I can easily flip this and Fair Warning, but Women and Children First gets a little more love from me because it was just a teensy bit more playful and more varied in style. While Fair Warning turned dark and heavy, Women and Children First played all over the map. It was such a fun album, going into standard rock, to jazz, to hardcore blues, to bluegrass, to metal. This was Van Halen at their greatest and most creative. It wasn't as momentous as the one VH album left, but it was as mature and in command as the band ever got. Plus, it has my favorite Van Halen song on it.

Romeo Delight is its name. To me, no song encapsulates everything that is great about Van Halen as this. Ironically, it doesn't feature a memorable solo from Eddie, but has everything else. Alex is great on the track on the drums. Mikey gets some great vocals in and has some of his best bass playing. Dave is brilliantly traipsing lyrics. The song itself is a not-so-well veiled ode to sex, partying and all-around having a good time. Eddie's guitar may not have a great solo, but it is so wild, so vibrant, so pouncing and joyous.

The rest of the album is nearly as great. Fools is probably the most Zeppelin-esque Van Halen ever got, while Loss of Control was their take on metal, just reduced to 2-and-a-half perfect minutes. This Could Be Magic let Eddie break out the acoustic and Dave slow down to a tee for a Soutehrn spiritual. The album was Van Halen in total command of what their band, their talent, their music was all about.

3.) Wish You Were Here

There might have been a lot of pressure on the band following Dark Side of the Moon. Somehow, someway, Pink Floyd came close. Maybe it wasn't as good as Dark Side of the Moon, but Wish You Were Here was a truly phenomenal album. It wasn't a pure concept album, it didn't have a consistent theme. It bounced around from Roger Watters disallusion to fame, to the band's general disallusion with the music industry's capitalism, to remembering the legacy of their old band mate Syd Barrett. The two-part epic that starts and ends the album in Shine On You Crazy Diamond is the headliner, but even the three songs that make up the meat in the sandwhich are great in their own right.

The two 'short' songs are the ones that will last with me. Have a Cigar is such a brilliantly written piece, so full of hilarious contempt and derision, with caustic sarcasm at the state of the music industry. Add to that the musical quality Floyd always possesses and it was an incredible short piece. Wish You Were Here (the song) was just the opposite. A haunting intro, a slight guitar riff, great background mystery from Rick Wright. The lyrics wrapped in metaphor after metaphor, a stark contrast to the rest of the album which is pretty open on its subjects. That two-parter is about as good as Pink Floyd gets (aside from Dark Side), a show of their hard rock musicality and then a show of their absolute brilliance in taking things slow.

Shine On is the masterpiece though. For an homage to Syd Barrett, it is so unlike the music he led Floyd into, but it doesn't matter. Musically, it was perfect, with sweeping melodies, brilliant harmonies, great keyboard from Wright, great riffs from Gilmour, and of course perfect vocals. The piece may drag at times, but Floyd's noodling in the slow moments makes it all better. Wish You Were Here was a perfect follow-up to Floyd's masterpiece, and taken in isolating it is pretty flawless by itself as well.

Tier V - The Legends

2.) Van Halen

There's many "I wish I was there" moments that I've had with rock music, but few would top "I wish I was there when Van Halen came out." The year was 1978. Disco ruled the music landscape. If I lived in Southern California and was between 17-25 there is a likelihood I knew of them already, but if I was in any other part of the country, the first album would have been my entry point... and my God was it an entry point. The album is Guitar brilliance from start to finish. Obviously, Ed's virtuoso performance is all-encompassing, but more than anything for me it was that tone, that beautiful meaty sound his guitar made, that was the throughline through the album. It starts off with what is not my favorite song, in 'Running with the Devil', but it was a good opener. But what came next changed rock music.

I first heard Eruption probably sometime in the mid-2000s, and even then, it changed my entire understanding of the guitar. I too was dumbfounded as to how this man could do THAT. It's been copied and played out by so many, but the original, uncut, version is still pure bliss. The rest of the album really doesn't contain one bad song in it. You get a perfectly Van Halen-ized cover of 'You Really Got Me', a shot-out to their days of rocking cover-songs as the best summer party band in LA. You get incredible guitar work multiple times over in 'Atomic Punk', or 'Little Dreamer', or 'On Fire.' You even get a change of pace with 'Ice Cream Man' that lets Dave have fun.

Every song on the track is memorable. You had the great intro riff in 'Ain't Talking Bout Love', or the soothing sexual tension of 'Jamie's Crying' and 'Feel Your Love Tonight', to the ridiculous pace of 'I'm The One' and 'On Fire.' Eddie's brilliance is pervasive, but so is Roth's energy and flair, Alex's solid drumming, and Michael Anthony's bass (more present than maybe it would ever be) and brilliant secondary harmonic vocals. Van Halen debuted with a masterpiece of a record, one that changed the focus of rock music back to American Hard Rock. It opened the eyes of many of rock music's great guitarists to come. It gave Eruption to the world. It belongs squarely in the pantheon of the all time great, singularly important, albums of all time.

1.) Dark Side of the Moon