Happy post-Halloween to everyone. I hope you enjoyed your office costume shenanigans or slightly awkward Halloween parties as much as I did.
We had a Marilyn Monroe, Princess Leia, and a pumpkin walking around yesterday at work. My redneck vampire costume was a big hit, but everyone just mistook me for a warehouse worker with the mullet and trucker hat. That worries me; does that mean our warehouse workers have vampire teeth? I didn't think the dental plan was that bad.
To top things off, I even carried around a couple of cans of Blud Light, like a true redneck vampire would. Of course, people again just thought I was carrying around Bud Light, and frighteningly enough, nobody seemed to have a problem with that. Ah, Northern Wisconsin.
Sports
If there was ever a reason for a man to wear purple, it's today.
The Bucks open up the 2006-2007 season tonight at Detroit, a rematch of last year's first round Central Eastern conference playoff matchup.
What's in store for the new look Bucks this year? Sports Illustrated's scouting report clues us in:
T.J. Ford is gone, but his underrated backup is more than ready to take over
When point guard Mo Williams learned this summer that the Bucks had traded T.J. Ford to the Raptors, he wasn't as excited about inheriting Ford's starting job as you might think. "It was definitely a case of mixed emotions," says Williams. "T.J. and I are best friends. But after a while we realized it was for the best. T.J.'s happy in Toronto, and I love Milwaukee."
Last season Williams, a 6'1" fourth-year pro out of Alabama, dazzled off the bench as a shoot-first point guard, scoring more than 20 points seven times and winning two games with buzzer-beaters. At the All-Star break he was a leading candidate for the Sixth Man Award, and he might have won had he not been hobbled by a foot injury in the second half of the season.
Milwaukee had enough confidence in Williams to trade Ford for a young power forward, 6'10" Charlie Villanueva. "Mo is a dynamic player," Bucks shooting guard Michael Redd says. "I know everybody talks about T.J. and how fast he is, but Mo likes to push it too. He's underrated in that regard."
Williams might be one of the NBA's most underrated players, period. Two years ago, with Ford sidelined, he averaged 10.2 points and 6.1 assists in 80 games. He has a quick first step and a reliable shot, but he needs to improve as a floor general. Williams spent the summer watching film of Chauncey Billups and Steve Nash, among others, to get a feel for how they control the game.
"I'm a firm believer that everything happens for a reason," says Williams. "I guess you could say this is my time. Now I just have to go out and prove it."
I absolutely love the aquisition of Villenueva. I always felt like he was really talented, but just didn't jive with the Toronto squad. With Bogut coming back from an off-season injury and the new addition of CV, I think the Bucks are poised to make another playoff run...hopefully past the first round this time.
SI.com scouting reports for all NBA teams.
Lights, Camera, Action
Further proof that is doesn't suck to be a Sports Illustrated photographer. Although I'm starting to wonder what their job is...to photograph sports or to try and catch girls falling out of their shirts.
Music
Featured Artist: Memphis
Memphis’ sophomore LP, A Little Place In The Wilderness, by Stars singer Torquil Campbell and Chris Dumont features Metric’s James Shaw (bass, trumpet, drums, mix) and Josh Trager of the Sam Roberts Band (drums).
A Little Place In The Wilderness was recorded in a Vancouver hotel room and at Studio Plateau in Montreal in the depths of winter – which may explain its many references to snow. The album’s first track ‘I Dreamed We Fell Apart,’ is ghostly and hypnotic with its references to winding country roads, dreams and time’s velocity. The song is also an appropriate introduction to a record about ghosts, dreams and the wilderness of the heart. With gentle horns and strings that swell in almost every track, A Little Place In The Wilderness is evocative of innocence and the sprawling daydreams of childhood. Dreamy and foreboding, it is an intricate record from a South-meets-North duo that is the ideal soundtrack to finding a peaceful place amid chaos.
Back in the early 90’s, Chris Dumont, originally from North Carolina, had a fortuitous meeting in New York City with Torquil Campbell. The two formed a band with Campbell’s childhood friends Chris Seligman, James Shaw, and Adam Marvy. Later, Seligman and Campbell formed Canadian sweetheart pop group Stars, Shaw went on to found Metric, and Dumont dreamed his days away to the sounds of the carousel in Central Park.
Over the summer of 2003, Campbell invited Dumont to Vancouver and, quite suddenly, Memphis was born. Campbell, who writes pop songs with a poet’s eye for detail and an actor’s ear for cadence, would weave his words to Dumont’s clean guitar hooks and bossa nova harmonics.
Praised for its swooning guitars, piano melodies and lo-fi soundscapes, Memphis’ debut, I Dreamed We Fell Apart, was described as “a beautifully crafted snapshot of the warmest feelings that come while you’re discovering the world. Delicate whistles are weaved in with lo-fi electronic beats and dreamy keyboards… It captures love in eleven tracks” - Prefix Magazine. Their sound is still swathed in velvety textures, a consonance of dreamy strains of strings and brass, but the beats and synths take a backseat to tender riffs and spirited orchestration, and when the tempo spikes, pop bliss flows forth. Completely overwhelming in scope and texture the new opus is the sound of little epiphanies on a collective consciousness level, suggesting that the duo has found sanctity in “A Little Place In The Wilderness”.
Memphis - "I'll Do Whatever You Want"
Also make sure to check out this band of note: The Big Provider.