The Jim Crook Blog

David Halberstam, 1934 - 2007

2007-04-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

Two posts in two days? That's much better than my usual post-every-six-weeks pattern. But I wanted to write a few words about David Halberstam.

If you didn't hear already, David Halberstam died in a car accident early this morning in San Francisco. For those unfamiliar with him, he was a history/sports writer, and he was one of my favorite authors. Patriots fans are probably most familiar with his recent book about Bill Belichick, The Education of a Coach, but he wrote a bunch of sports books before that, including Breaks of the Game, The Teammates, October 1964, The Amateurs, and my personal favorite, Summer of '49, which chronicled the Red Sox and Yankees battling to the last game of the season for the A.L. pennant in 1949.

They're all great reads, and I'd recommend them to anybody. Halberstam was not just a sportswriter, though. He wrote about the Vietnam War in The Making of a Quagmire and The Best and the Brightest. He covered the 1950s in, um, The Fifties. And in The Powers That Be, he took a look at the corrupting influences of power and money in the media.

In my junior year of college I wrote a paper on Halberstam for my Literary Journalism class. "David Halberstam: Anecdotal Sportswriter Extraordinaire" I called it, and it wasn't just a catchy title; it was also, I thought, a really good description for his style of writing. What do I mean by this? Why explain it again, I'll just copy and paste the opening paragraphs from that paper:

"When reading David Halberstam’s The Breaks of the Game one gets the feeling that the author is a seemingly ubiquitous presence within the lives of the men who make up the 1979 Portland Trail Blazers. Halberstam takes the reader to places that are generally off-limits to the basketball fan. The reader is in the locker room with a non-responsive head coach Jack Ramsay, devastated after a particularly painful loss. He is in the trainer’s room with Larry Steele, who anxiously wonders if his knees will ever be well enough to play again. The reader sits in at lunch with the coaches while they discuss whom to cut and whom to sign. He even goes back a few years to Kermit Washington’s days as a gangly, unskilled high school basketball player.

"Halberstam, of course, is not ubiquitous, though he is a fine storyteller. In fact, Halberstam’s writings can be considered a collection of carefully constructed anecdotes, whereby he gathers information from various sources and, rather than quote these sources verbatim, he writes a story in his own words that, in most cases, is interesting and informative."

Well, I don't know, maybe that doesn't completely convey my point, but if you want to read the rest, let me know and I'll send you the next 11 pages. I know I don't post often here (and maybe that'll change), but I wanted to post a few words on Halberstam's work, and maybe, just maybe, that would encourage you to pick up one of his books. You won't regret it.

The Surreal Life: Artie Lange and Friends

2007-03-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

So there we were - LenDogg, Stevie B, Jonah, and I - lounging on the leather couch in the VIP Gold Room of the Saint Bar in Boston with Bud Lights in hand and shots of Sambuca on the table, listening to Artie Lange reminisce about his visit to UMass Amherst in 1988. "I slept for about a half-hour that weekend," Artie tells us. And he is talking to us. We four UMass grads are shooting the shit with Artie Lange, who's fresh off a sold-out performance at Symphony Hall. "I brought a duffel bag with clothes up on Friday," he says, "and by Sunday afternoon I realized I hadn't even opened it. I didn't even take out a toothbrush!"

We do the shot of Buca (Artie refuses), and sit back. "Dogg," the LenDogg says to me. "There's Artie Lange, sitting five feet away from us." Then he points to the red-headed comedian on our left: "There's Jim Florentine," says the LenDogg. "This is surreal." Funny he said "surreal," because that was the exact word I was thinking of.
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Len and I met up with Steve and Jonah at the Pour House around 6:30 Friday night. We four all went to UMass together, and Len and Steve were roommates sophomore year. Tonight, Steve is our meal ticket. He is an assistant producer on The Howard Stern Show (Stern fans might know him better as "Steve the Intern"), and he's using his connections to get us tickets and backstage passes to "Artie Lange and Friends" at Symphony Hall tonight.

Around 7, we take a cab over to Symphony Hall, and hit up will-call. We get our tickets, and Steve calls Teddy, who is Artie's personal assistant. Teddy meets us at the front door and leads us past security through a side door and into the backstage area. As soon as we step into the backstage hallway, we see Artie standing in a doorway with headphones on. Artie greets Steve - "Hey Brandanadino!" (his last name is actually "Brandano") - and Steve then introduces Artie to each of us. Artie has a good, firm handshake (I care about these things). His hair and beard are graying out a bit, and he's somewhat shorter than I thought he'd be.

We walk into a room where other people are already hanging out. Nice room, but small, with a big, classy piano on the side (which would later be used as a collection area for empty beer bottles. Nice.). Artie heads off to another room in the back. I'm freaking starving so I'm very pleased to see the platter of bread and deli meats in the middle of the room. I help myself to a ham and cheese sandwich, and then the beer arrives. Heineken, nice. Scoping out the other people in the room, we determine that Artie's mom and sister are here. Artie's sister, Stacy, looks to be in her mid-late 30s and is rather attractive. Artie's mom is an older, smaller version of Stacy. Handsome family all-around. There are also some people from Newbury Comics in the room; Artie's doing a signing there tomorrow afternoon.

We learn that Jim Florentine will be the opening act and is going on-stage around 8:00. Florentine is known by some for doing some of the voices on Crank Yankers (Special Ed, Bobby Fletcher). We passed him in the stairway a little while ago when we went down to get our VIP stickers (they actually just say "VISITOR"). Around 8:00, Teddy starts more or less kicking people out of the room and has them go into the hall itself to find their seats. Being the very important people that we are (an assistant producer on the Stern Show and friends of an assistant producer on the Stern Show), we get to stick around in the room for awhile longer, listening to Florentine's set on the speaker in the room.

And then, kind of a strange scene occurred: With the room mostly clear, Artie came back, and so did Greg Fitzsimmons, who's the act between Florentine and Artie. So it was me, Jonah, LenDogg, Artie Lange, and Greg Fitzsimmons in a room together. Now, I don't know much about performing standup, but I'm pretty sure the last thing a comedian wants before going out on stage in front of thousands of people is to make small-talk with some jerkoff with a "VISITOR" sticker on his shirt. So I leave Fitzsimmons to his own thing - which seemed to be grabbing some water and listening to part of Florentine's set. "Rowdy crowd," Fitzsimmons says, or something to that effect, when he hears the heckles coming Florentine's way. I wouldn't say he looked nervous, but it seemed Fitzsimmons definitely was thinking about how to handle this crowd. Artie and Fitzsimmons left, and we sat around listening to Florentine's set. I made another sandwich.

Steve then told us we could take a picture with Artie, so we left our room and went to a smaller room where Artie and Fitzsimmons were. Fitzsimmons was writing down notes on a piece of paper. Again, we left him to his own devices and posed for a picture with Artie, who was really nice about the whole thing. "Did it come out all right?" he asks Len when he checks his camera. It did. You can see it below. We thanked Artie and wished him luck.

Florentine wrapped up his set and now it was Fitzsimmons's turn. I made my way into the hallway so that I could see Fitzsimmons right outside the door that led to the stage. That was pretty cool, to see him in his last few moments backstage, and then seeing him go through the door to the stage. (Trust me, it's a lot cooler than I'm able to make it seem here in blogform.) We decide to head in to the show and take our seats.

The theater person escorted us to our seats - Orchestra section, Row E, Seat 20, my ticket read. Allow me to translate: fifth row, dead center. That's right - there's the stage, the 1st row, the 2nd row, the 3rd row, the 4th row, and then us. Incredible. Just awesome. A few years ago when I saw Seinfeld in Providence, I was way back and could barely make out the guy. Tonight, I can see the sweat on Greg Fitzsimmons's forehead as he tells a joke about powdering his balls.

Fitzsimmons has a great set and expertly handles the rowdy crowd with some great one-liners for the hecklers (your mom jokes, mostly). Now it's time for Artie. The crowd gives Artie a standing-O as he enters the stage to the sounds of "Baba O'Riley."

Artie's act is pretty interesting, in that it seems like he came to the stage with a few bits in mind, but was really willing to just fly by the seat of his pants. Kind of like a whaddya wanna talk about? attitude with the crowd. "CHUG IT!" one audience member requested, referring to the Jack and Water Artie was sipping. "All right, motherfucker, I'll chug it," Lange replied. Teddy came onstage with a fresh Jack and Water once Artie was done. "JETER'S A FAG!" offered another crowd member. "Oh come on," Artie responded, "he fucked one guy. Gimme a break."

Artie asked if there were any Stern fans in the building. Yes there are, we told him. He then did impressions of Crazy Alice, Blue Iris, and Jeff the Drunk. Artie then talked about in no particular order: his drug problems, Las Vegas, the New York Jets, Mike Tyson, and playing basketball with nine black guys. He wrapped things up by playing a clip from his Mad TV days where he was coked out. As the clip ran on the big screen, we snuck out so we could get backstage before the crowd.

Backstage I run into Florentine in the hallway. "Good set, Jim," I say, even though I heard about 10 seconds of it. "Hey, thanks man," he says. Five minutes later, Steve introduces us to Fitzsimmons. "Hey Greg, great set, enjoyed it," I say. "Hey thanks alot, nice to meet you," Fitzsimmons says. He then points out that I'm nicely dressed for Symphony Hall (I'm in work-clothes, a button-down shirt and khakis), and that he himself was dressed poorly (jeans and a sweatshirt), and he was the one on-stage. Steve then formally introduces me to Florentine ("Hi Jim, I'm Jim," I say). Florentine and Fitzsimmons then excuse themselves as they have to return to the stage to join Artie for a final goodbye-and-thanks-for-coming.

LenDogg with Florentine and Fitzsimmons

For the next 20 minutes or so we stand around in the increasingly crowded backstage room. Teddy, Artie's assistant, is figuring out the details of the after-party. The party will be at Saint, a bar I've never heard of. Finally, it's time to leave, and we start to file down the stairs to the back door. Artie's up near the front of the line, escorting his mom and sister, and deciding who's riding in what car. We follow Artie out the door, where a handful of autograph-seekers pounce on him. He signs while walking to his limo. Steve, Len, Jonah, and I hop a cab and head over to Saint.

The Saint is a classy joint, apparently, because they won't let Steve in wearing sneakers. It's also connected to the Copley Plaza Hotel, where Artie is spending the night. We hang in the hotel lobby while we wait for Artie to arrive and get us in, sneakers and all. Finally, after about a half-hour of waiting, Artie and friends arrive, and we are whisked through the back entrance of Saint and into the Gold Room below. I don't think I'd ever been whisked anywhere before. Have you ever been whisked? It's great to be whisked somewhere, you should try it.

The Gold Room is made up of one of those half-circle leather couches that stretches around a glass coffee table. The room opens into a big bar area, which in turn opens into another bar area. There's flashing lights and club music. Artie takes a seat on the couch and we follow. Turns out, one of Artie's longtime friends is a UMass grad, and after he finds out that we're all Minutemen as well, he gets Artie to tell his UMass story.

Florentine's here; Fitzsimmons isn't. Everyone who was in the backstage room is here. In the big bar area there are people who weren't at the show, and I'm not sure they're allowed into this Gold Room, where we sit with Artie. Artie's pretty laid-back here, sipping on a Jack and Water, talking to people's friends on their cell phones (or their father, in Lenny's case), and posing for pictures. Florentine's chatting with three girls from our backstage room. And we're just trying to soak in the surrealness (is that a word?) of hanging out with Artie Lange at a private after-party in a trendy Boston bar.

The rest of the night was pretty low-key. Artie sat and sipped until about 12:30, when he and his sister took off. We decided soon after that to call it a night as well. As we were leaving, Florentine kindly obliged our picture request. "Three homos," he said as Steve took the picture of Lenny, Florentine, and me.

Left Saint, took a cab back to Brookline, and drove home. The End.

Army of Anyone

2006-12-06T19:40:00.000-05:00

I was driving around Hilton Head Island a few summers ago delivering pizza for Papa John's when the Velvet Revolver debut album came out, and besides JoJo and a little 'Tallica, I pretty much had that VR disc going in my car non-stop. The album was pretty solid, four or five pretty decent tracks and some good filler material in between. The whole supergroup experiment worked with these guys; Guns N' Roses and Stone Temple Pilots came together and made a quality record.

So I guess we can call Army of Anyone a smaller-scaled supergroup - they don't have the big names that VR has (Slash and Duff and the drummer from Guns N' Roses, Scott Weiland of STP), but they're quality musicians (Richard Patrick of Filter on vocals, the DeLeo brothers of STP on guitar, and a pretty kickass drummer I've never heard of). So my interest was certainly piqued when I heard these guys were coming out with an album this fall. I was never a HUGE STP fan or a HUGE Filter fan (the way I am with Metallica, U2, and used to be with Foo Fighters), but I definitely dug their stuff. I remember in middle or high school borrowing Filter's Title of Record from Justin Powers and blaring "Welcome to the Fold" (a kick-ass tune that still holds up today) in my room when I got home. Put it this way, if STP and Filter had Greatest Hits albums, I would probably pick them up. Actually, maybe STP does have a Hits record, but whatever, you get the point.

So what happens when two solid rock bands like Filter and STP make a record together? Well... hmm. How can I put this nicely?

It's OK.

Regrettably, it's just OK.

Maybe I was expecting too much. The first AoA single, "Goodbye," is one of those hard, driving, hard-driving rock songs that I love. You know how it goes... Heeeeeeyyyyyyy Goooooooooooooodbyyyyeeee, Wish you were here.... It's got a good riff, really good drumming, good vocals, and best of all, it's one of those songs that gets right to the point. No little intro riffs, just straight balls-out, in-your-face rock. And then at the end, it's got that really good drumming that you just don't hear in a rock song anymore. It's just a great track; in my humble opinion, it should be up for some kind of Best Rock Song award. The rest of the album? Not so much.

It's never a good thing when your first single off a record is not only the best track on the record, it's far and away the best track on the record. (Why buy the album when you can hear the best part of it on the radio for free? (Not that I condone listening to terrestrial radio.)) And that's what we have here on the AoA disc. There just aren't many decent tracks here; #1 is a slightly above-average opener (think of it as the Trot Nixon of album-opening rock tracks) but it's not as good as #2, which is the aforementioned "Goodbye" song. After tracks one and two, there are some forgettable songs; #5 was advertised as a potential hit but I don't see it happening.

Track #6, "Disappear," is interesting because it had a lot of potential to be great - like maybe even "Take a Picture"-great - but it falls short. Richard Patrick, if you're out there reading this, hear me out for a minute. You've got a great opening to this track - little simple guitar strumming for a quick few seconds before the rest of the band sets in with a good rock sound. The verses are decent - not great but good enough to work within a hit song - but your problem is that the chorus sucks. "I try to disappear" - yes, that part. Just doesn't cut it, it's not very catchy at all. I'm listening in my car, thinking that this track can go somewhere, but it doesn't, and it's because of a lousy chorus. You know why "Take a Picture" was so huge, because it had an awesome sound with an almost equally as good refrain: "Could you take my pictureeeee, 'cause I won't remember..." It worked. The whole song worked. And you were close to taking "Disappear" to that level, but it didn't happen.

By the way, now that I bring up Richard Patrick, I had an epiphany about this guy the other day. Now, am I crazy, or is he one of the more underrated vocalists of our era? I think the common misconception about this guy is that he's a screamer, because I think a lot of people associate Richard Patrick and Filter with their first single, "Hey Man Nice Shot," which you'll remember was a loud song with screaming. And so because of that I think a lot of people slough him off as a marginal vocalist.

But I think we've been short-changing Patrick, because the other day I heard a Family Values concert recording of Patrick and Flyleaf covering "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and you know what? The guy freaking pulled it off. I think it takes 1) balls and more importantly, 2) a shitload of talent to sing a U2 song without having people immediately think how much better Bono sounds. So I'm saying it's time we start giving Richard Patrick a lot more credit as a singer.

Back to the album: There's not much worth discussing after track #6. I was disappointed to realize that track #9, "Father Figure," was, in fact, not a George Michael cover. But that song definitely more Filter-sounding than anything else on the record, and actually, it's not that bad of a track. Track #10 is OK. And I don't think I've made it all the way through track #11 yet.

And that's your album. I'm giving it two out of four stars. It's worth a few spins in your CD player, and "Goodbye" is definitely rocking, but the rest of the record doesn't stack up.

How does it compare to the Velvet Revolver debut album, you ask? Well, it holds up to an extent, but quite simply it's just not as good, and it's a shame because I like Richard Patrick and I like what his brother Robert did with his roles as T-1000 in T-2 and as a degenerate gambler in season two of The Sopranos. As for VR's disc, the first single ("Slither") wasn't the best song on the album ("Fall to Pieces"), and tracks #1, #4, #6, and #10 were all solid rock tracks. I give VR's disc three stars, and with it, the edge in debut albums from STP supergroups.

OSU - Michigan 11.18.06

2006-11-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

OK, a couple of things here.

1. Before the game on the CBS show, Craig James said something to the effect of whoever lost this game should not play in the National Championship in January. Later, during the call of the game, color commentator Bob Davie made the same point and added that it was his national championship, right there and then. I couldn't understand this logic before the game was even played, let alone after a 42-39 game WHEN PEOPLE ARE STILL SAYING THIS! Look, there is nothing you can tell me to make me think that the two best teams in the country shouldn't be playing in the national championship, and there is nothing you can tell me to make me think that UM and OSU aren't the best teams in the country. Yet this is what some of these "pundits" will WANT you to believe. I don't know if it's SEC or Pac-10 bias that's making these people say these things, because I don't even think there's a logical case AGAINST having a rematch.

Here are the facts: 1) Michigan has one loss -- to the #1 team in the country by THREE points on said #1 team's turf. Now, in my book, and according to most Vegas bookmakers, home-field advantage equals three points. THREE POINTS. So yep, I'm gonna make the argument that home-field advantage won this game for the Buckeyes. I don't know, do you think for certain that OSU goes into Ann Arbor and wins? I don't see that. 2) USC, the team who would sneak by UM if this craziness comes to pass, lost to UNRANKED Oregon St. OK, USC had a slightly tougher overall schedule than UM, but every one of their wins over ranked opponents was at home. (Yeah, that's right, the kid's doing a little research for this entry.) Fortunately, USC will lose at home to Notre Dame on Saturday, which will end this USC silliness. 3) Blah blah blah Florida and blah blah blah Arkansas, bottom line: these teams would be DESTROYED by either OSU or UM on a neutral field. Who wants to see the SEC in the national title game anyway? Oh, and Notre Dame? The same Irish who got the shit pounded out of them AT HOME by UM, 47-21? Those guys? Yeah, thought so.

So here's what it boils down to: the Craig Jameses and the Bob Davies of the world say that a loss to Ohio State by three points in Columbus should take Michigan out of the national title picture. I say BOOLSHIT! And sorry Bob Davie, but last time I checked, they didn't hold national championship games in Columbus, OH with 100,000 screaming fans pulling for the Buckeyes.

Put these teams on a neutral field and we'll see what happens. Michigan's earned the right.

2) The game itself was a good game. Not great, good. So I thought it a bit premature when I saw the "Instant Classic" tag. To me, great games don't end with one team running out the clock/kneeling with the other team unable to stop the clock. Great games don't hinge upon a stupid personal 15 yard penalty that gives the winning team a first down and the means to score an insurance TD. Great games have an exciting onside kick situation (if it's needed), and either the underdog recovers it or at least there's a little drama as to who will recover. There was none of that drama in this game. This was a good game.

Sure, there was a lot of scoring, there was a lot of back and forth, there was a lot of an excited Brent Musberger. But it wasn't great, and it left me wanting more. I guess that's my point here in this inaugural post. I want one more game. On a neutral field. Give us a rematch.