Video Killed The Radio Star-Part 1*

In my mind and in my car,
we can't rewind we've gone to far

*The first in a soon-to-never-be-completed series examining the impact of 10 different music videos on TCF's early childhood


So my last entry on this site was posting a video by a band. What a quaint idea. Clearly I'm showing my age.

Videos are the vestigial organs of pop culture these days. As has been widely reported, MTV doesn't even bother showing them anymore, and now Vh1 has morphed into E! with music celebrities. A few random video "breakthroughs" have gained popularity on the Internet (like the one with guys on treadmills), but these videos nowadays are just lumped in with the zillions of other parodies, old commercials, embarrassing home videos, and other viral web stuff that dominates the Internet. The scale of pop media is so much smaller and the scope so much bigger than it was back in the good ole days. And by the good ole days, I am, of course, referring to the 80's.

In 1982 my parents got cable. Some of my earliest memories from my childhood are of sitting on our couch and holding a large plastic box with a bunch of white buttons on the left side. Not electronic, touch-sensitive buttons, oh no. These buttons required at least ten pounds of pressure to lock into place, and only one button on each row or column could be in the "down" position at a time. It wasn't so much channel surfing back then as channel pounding. The box connected directly to the TV via a thick six-foot cable. It could have been the cable box for all I know, and not even a remote. I watched a lot of television.

When I got bored of watching TV alone, I would ask and receive permission from my mom to head over to our back yard neighbors' house and watch with them. The Silers had three sons: Eric, who was six years older than me (my brother's age), Alex, who was a year older, and Woogie, who was a year younger (Woogie's real name was Brian, no one had any idea why he was called Woogie). The Silers were really into Pro Wrestling (WWF), He-Man, football, and destroying things. Their dad owned a camper he kept in the driveway. I think they had a sister too, but tellingly, I have absolutely no recollection of her. My older brother and I spent a lot of time over there.

When you watched TV in 1983 outside of Saturday morning, you pretty much only watched MTV. We'd take the occasional break to play their Intellivision (an incredibly underrated early video game system), but the videos were the main event. MTV's music library in that period was roughly 50 videos, and if you watched for long enough, you could memorize the exact order the videos were played in. We did this. The five of us also developed a "game" that consisted of us adopting the identities of the people in the videos for the course of the video. Eric and my brother (the elder statesmen) always got to choose which person in the video they were first. Eric usually picked the lead singer, and my brother always followed with the lead guitarist. Then, Alex, Woogie, and I would fight over the table scraps of bassist, drummer, or the other random characters in the video. A lot of times Eric would veto our selections and make one of us be the saxophone player that inevitably showed up halfway through the song. Then we would all make fun of whoever had the lamest character, which was usually the saxophone player. It was great fun.

An unexpected consequence of all the time I spent with the Silers watching MTV was that a relatively small number of music videos ended up playing a disproportionally large role in the forming of my psyche. In my relatively sheltered, suburban upbringing, MTV was the window showing me (what I thought were) some viable options for my adult life in the larger world. The great/awful thing about this is that almost all of the videos from the early 80's have cynical or superficial or terrifying overtones. In retrospect, these videos help explain a lot about the failure of many of my high school and college relationships. I'm still unraveling the mysteries of their influence over me.


The first video I'd like to examine is Hall & Oates "Maneater":




The lessons are pretty straightforward here. Women are dangerous, possibly pumas. Stick close to your boys (in this case, John Oates and G.E. Smith from the Saturday Night Live Band). Dramatically stare at the camera every now and then. Make sure your hair is correct. And the girl that shows up at the end may be a huge disappointment.

In 1983, I was, of course, forced to assume the identity of the sax player in the video. Which is why, this Halloween, I'm dressing up as Darryl Hall. Finally, I get to be the lead singer.

Hand In Glove (Part 2)

Yeah it's not really a preview anymore, but I'm running out of song titles....

The Reds defeated the Cubs Sunday 1-0 at Wrigley. I was able to watch this incredibly boring pitcher's duel on MLB's extra innings package (the Reds offense looked awful, but the Cubs' was worse) which I recently signed up for. Kyle Lohse (above) pitched a great game, striking out 12. The game was called by Chris Welsh, who's been doing Reds games for quite a few years now, and Thom Brennaman, Marty Brennaman's son, who was hired this past season to pair up with his dad in the radio booth and call some TV games as well. Also, as far as I can tell, he was hired to be fucking annoying.

I once spent the better part of a summer break driving an ice cream truck with no tape player or air conditioning around the hinterlands of Clermont County, Ohio (areas like Bethel, New Richmond, Goshen). The highlight of these long shweaty-balls days was, without a doubt, tuning in to listen to Marty and Joe Nuxhall call a Reds game. And that's saying something, because this was back when the heart of the Reds lineup looked like this:

3: Chris Stynes
4: Eduardo Perez
5: Reggie Sanders (who only played half the season)

Needless to say, the games were boring as shit (on a side note, I think it was the next season that the Reds picked up Dmitri Young and started an OF lineup consisting of Young, (Mike) Frank, and (Chris) Stynes. Get it. Young, Frank, and Stynes. I hate myself). But listening to Marty and Joe was awesome. They genuinely enjoyed each other's company, and Joe kinda mellowed Marty out when he got a bug up his ass. Joe was always just a scotch or two away from Harry Carey territory, and I could probably listen to him attempt to pronounce the name "Encarnacion" on a loop for the rest of my life and die a happy man. They'd switch play-by-play up occasionally to give Marty a little break, and Joe would basically chime in every 5 minutes or so to tell what was going on, breaking up the long chunks of uninterrupted silence. Marty was opinionated and generally upset with everything about the team, but I kind of felt like he had earned the right to be a little bit of a dick on the radio. You know, just because he was old and he had called a couple of classic World Series games.

Thom Brennaman is not old. He has not, thank god, ever called a World Series game. He did, however, apparently graduate from the Joe Buck indignant-school-of-condescending-broadcasting, which has gotten him far in the network broadcasting world (he called the BCS Championship game this year). Far as I can tell, he has all of his father's bombast and none of his likable qualities. He desperately needs a Joe Nuxhall. I think I heard Thom defer to Chris Welsh's opinion once the entire broadcast, but it really felt like an empty gesture. Thom, much like Buck, is not happy to just call the action and check in with the color guy for technical details. He's the judge, jury, and courtroom reporter for the entire broadcast. Some samples (approximate) from Sundays broadcast:

"I mean, what's Ryan Freel doing swinging at a 2-0 fastball?"

"I can't believe the Reds aren't stealing more bases against Lilly" (they had two SBs against him after only getting three baserunners the whole game)

"What in the hell is Jerry Narron thinking not leaving his starter in for the 9th inning" (after Lohse had thrown 114 pitches, a key fact that was never mentioned during the broadcast, Stanton and Weathers closed the game out)

"How dare Kyle Lohse throw anything on the inner half of the plate to Soriano when the wind is blowing in from right field in Wrigley" (Lohse had been pitching Soriano away the entire at-bat and used the inside fastball to set up his out pitch, the slider away. Soriano K'd on the next pitch, a slider away).

Leave the preachiness to Joe Buck, Thom. And take that stupid "H" out of your name while you're at it.

On a lighter note, I did find out that Friday night's game against the Phillies is going to be "Ryan Freel Dirty Shirt Night for Adults". And no, I didn't make that up. Ostensibly, it's because Freel always gets his his jersey dirty hustling in the outfield (kinda like Chris Stynes used to), but I think if I still lived in the Nati', I'd roll into GABP on Friday wearing this gem:



or this:



Really, there are lots of options.

Hand In Glove (Part 1)

The Good People laugh
Yes, we may be hidden by rags
But we've something they'll never have

TCF's Reds baseball preview begins with a look at recently signed pitcher Aaron Harang.

A lot has been made of the plight of small market baseball teams over the last 15 years. What with the Yankees and Red Sox locked in an ever escalating cock-fight to see who can spend more money on exotic foreign players and stockpile the most all-stars, times are tough for small market teams. Now I know the Tigers, Cardinals, and A's were 3 0f the final 4 teams in the playoffs last season (and that the Red Sox didn't even make the playoffs) and that baseball is attempting to restructure it's finances by introducing revenue sharing. But when I see the free agents signings from this off season (Gary Matthews Jr., Gil Meche, and Ted Lilly all signed contracts worth around 10 M a year for four or five years), I wonder if a team like the Reds can compete in this market. So far, the answer has been not really.

The Reds finished last season 80-82, 3 games out of first place. For the first time since the 99 season, the Reds couldn't pin their struggles on an atrocious pitching staff. The team's 1 and 2 starters (Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo) combined for 30 wins, almost 400 K's, and over 400 innings pitched. Today the Reds resigned their ace, Harang, to a 4 year-36 million dollar contract (with an option for a 5th year). With Arroyo signed through the next two season at around 7 M a year, the Reds have two solid, durable starters with very reasonable contracts for the next two seasons. With Homer Bailey (who some rate as the best minor league pitching prospect in all of baseball) waiting in the wings, the Reds, potentially, have one of the best starting rotations in the NL, and a foundation to build a winning team around.

Reds GM Wayne Krivsky has been quiet on the free agent front this year, signing Alex Gonzalez from the Red Sox to play SS and a bunch of unexciting utility infielders (Jeff Conine, Juan Castro) and possible #5 starters and relievers (Kirk Saarloos, Brian Meadows, Mike Stanton). All in all, I can't say I blame him for his reluctance to pull the trigger on any of the big name free agents out there. The Reds look pretty mediocre right now, but I'd rather they improve the team through trades during the season (and through the farm system) than through spending a lot of money in the off-season for overpriced free agents. And really the Harang signing is probably the best thing that could happen for this team in the off-season. The guy is clearly their best player (in my mind) and gives them a pretty good shot to win every game he pitches. The fact that he was cheaper to sign than Gil Meche is mind boggling (as any fantasy baseball player can tell you, Meche is nothing but a headache), but I gotta give Krivsky props for it. Now let's see if he can get this team a closer.