Raise Your Glass, Your Horns, And The Dead

Is this thing on? It exists, so I guess it isn’t off. But it sure seems dead. 

No more! I bid thee RISE! RISE oh poor and neglected blog!

Fisting ourselves back to life! No, wait..

Back in times of yore when I used to be something resembling a productive human being, I blogged. Seriously! Look back and you’ll find older posts. Those weren’t here when I started. And every year and a half or so, I would write up a big blog post covering music I’d personally discovered that year, allowing me a brief glimmer of feeling important. I’m a tastemaker, goddammit! Anyway, welcome to another one of those. Nice to see that my skills in introductory text are as refined as ever.

I honestly don’t know how long ago I started cobbling together this particular list. But this time around I have since gone back through and pruned it, achieving the bare minimum of not completely wasting your time. You’re welcome! And in the interests of changing things up a bit, and because I relish the opportunity to rant and mock, I’ve added something new to the stew pot this time around : BAD SHIT. Please don't start adding shit to any stew pots. It doesn't seem like a good idea.

Now, a few ground rules. Everyone loves rules! I’ll be interspersing the bad entries throughout this post, thus regularly taking the positivity of the good finds and dragging them to Hell. Yay! I’m also avoiding some obvious dreck. For instance, there are some metalcore bands out there who are clearly trying to offend for attention. Fuck that. And some sad little garage band who made the mistake of putting out a single before learning to play their instruments, or the latest Rebecca Black-type mess, also won't appear here. All of these entries have earned their spots the traditional way : by outright failing to deliver. Some are bad albums. Most are bad songs. A few are comebacks that really should not have ever seen the light of day. So, enjoy that. Or don’t. Just read it, fuckers! With no further ado or no ado at all, really

One more little thing : Just like last time, here’s the ‘listen along’ playlist on Spotify if you can’t be bothered to read and hit some links. That shit’s hard, son! Ain't nobody got time for that! And no, the BAD SHIT entries will not be on the playlist. But they're funny and totally worth your time!

Honorable Mentions

Just like last time around, here are a few entries that don’t have enough material to merit a full mention. But because I love my own words and want to shove more of them into your eye holes, I’ll briefly talk about them anyway. Win win?

FKB - I saw these guys open for Pop Evil. They are the oddest assemblage of people that I have ever seen share a stage. The lead guitarist looks like he should be shredding in a metal band. The drummer often had his eyes closed. The bass player just looked uncomfortable with everything and everyone around him. But put it together, and they were actually a pretty decent pop rock group.

The Post I Didn't Want to Write

What a firecracker of a title I’ve got working there. Yes, I’m going right back to the “I can’t title for shit” well. Cut me a break, I have very few wells!

So, some time has gone by since I wrote a post that didn’t have anything to do with what I’ve been listening to over the previous year. Warning : A new one of those posts is beginning construction very soon. And I’ve wanted to return to this sad barren wasteland of a blog. But I had absolutely no idea what in the Hell I wanted to write about.

Yay. Wonderful. Huzzah.

And then I got laid off.

So I guess that covers the “What’s new, Cliff?” portion of things. Good. Got that out of the way. I also discovered that I’m allergic to Purex laundry soap, but that offered pretty limited options for decent writing fodder. One can only write “Holy shit, was I itchy!” in so many ways. And then this happened like so much really crappy source material. So, go me?

Anyway, yeah, got let go. The circumstances around the whole thing were frankly a little bit bizarre and a little bit nonsense, but that’s a story for in person. I’ll try to maintain some barely coherent level of semi-professionalism in the online world. Sweet mercy, he can LEARN! Anyway, it’s where I currently find myself, so I guess it’s just back to what I always do whenever I find myself in this position. Except that I actually don’t remember and don’t know what to do in this position because it’s been ten years or something like that since I’ve actually been here. Yep. A decade. I was surprised, too. I’ve achieved some basic level of relative stability. Until now.

And I have basically no clue what to actually do.

Okay, I know what to actually do in terms of basic stuff. Like looking for a job. Actually, the job search had already commenced a month or two before this went down. Again, that’s an in person kind of topic of conversation, but suffice to say that I wasn’t a happy boy. And I already put in my EI application. That’s new. Never done that before. But now I’m just left waiting. Waiting so long, in fact, that I had to call them up so that they can actually call me back at a date in the near future and finally tell me whether or not I qualify. And I’m sure that process makes sense to somebody somewhere. Good for them.

Never fear, Bureaucracy Man is here to wrap everything in seventeen layers of needless red tape!

Of course, this follows a small chunk of time wondering whether or not I would even qualify for payments, since my previous employer wouldn’t actually tell me why I was now a former employee. To be exact, I was told that they were “unable to disclose” that. Which led to panicky wondering about what insane reason they were going to gin up for all of this, only to finally get access to my Record of Employment and see the words “Was not a good fit”. That was what you couldn’t just tell me? That? What the Hell? This is ignoring the fact that I think this reason is both totally made up nonsense, and yet also totally accurate and correct, but that’s diving dangerously close to territory that would negate my status of barely semi-professional. So yeah, it has been a lovely few weeks of stress for someone who hates things being completely out of his control and who does not deal well at all with the unknown. Good times!

Getting back to the general point of all of this, I know how to do all of that stuff I just spent a paragraph sort of describing. And I know how to deal with the reality of being angry. I’ve spent too much time in the past just stewing to head back down that terrible roadway to nothing good. So now I just sort of hold it in a reserve tank that gets opened up once I’m working out or doing anything

Congratulations on such an incredibly dated reference!

physical and need a bit more oomph. I figure that way I can actually benefit from it. Congratulations. You ‘beat’ me. I’m going to get better now. I do very well with that “Oh yeah? Well, double dumb ass on you!” sort of mentality.

But then I end up getting all kinds of pissed off at myself because I’m slipping back in to really dumb habits and just generally feeling sorry for myself. And fuck, that isn’t helping anything, is it? But I can’t really pretend that it isn’t there, even though I feel like an idiot for actually feeling slapped because the job I didn’t want anymore anyway is no longer mine. Or maybe I’m angry that I left a job that I liked to get more hours at this new place and ended up completely miserable and now have nothing to show for that change except waiting. Of course, I’m not psychic, so it isn’t like I could have known that my interview was pretty much me being fed a bill of goods and that this soon-to-be employer was going to be an irresponsible bunch of WHOA, let’s just steer this bad boy back on course to utter confusion again.

So maybe I don’t know how to deal with being pissed off. And I don’t know how to deal with being stressed out. And I’m trying to walk through this mental maze of realizing that I’m not the idiot that I was ten years ago, but I’m a completely different brand of idiot now, and that idiot is just as incapable of understanding what in the world he’s doing. Like I said before, I thrive on showing other people that they were wrong. Perhaps I need to figure out how to make that work on myself, too. “Oh yeah, me? I’ll show…me.” Okay, I am now completely lost in the morass of whatever the Hell this paragraph was supposed to be getting to.

Look, dear readers! An image to reflect how you're probably feeling right now! You're welcome.

Getting back to what I REALLY don’t know how to do any more, and that’s somehow fill all of this time. Because holy mother of fuck do I find myself with a lot of goddamn time! Sure, I work out 4 days a week, I walk every day, I meditate every day, I need to eat occasionally, and I fire off applications. But that really eats up shockingly little time. That leaves a fuck ton of hours that I find myself needing to burn off. Too many of them end up expended on things so totally pointless that I couldn’t even tell you what I spent them actually doing. And that DOESN’T include stuff like playing The Division 2 for 55 hours (and counting, because that game actually is fun), or finding myself watching Baywatch episodes on E!. Side note : Holy shit, is the music on that show awful. Not just the shitty songs they commandeered to play during the weird musical interlude sections of nearly every episode, but that general background music is shockingly bad. This was the #1 show on television, and THAT was the best they could pull for music?! And I could do other things, but other things usually end up being something like this exercise in whatever exactly it is that I’m trying to accomplish here and now.

And I really don’t know what this is. I don’t know what this was supposed to be. Maybe it at least lets me knock the rust off of whatever mediocre level of writing talent I possess so that I can write more? I will try to make it better than this. That shouldn’t be a difficult goal to achieve. I don’t know what the fuck to do with my time to avoid finding myself just spinning away down another weird rabbit hole like this. Seriously, this is like the blog post equivalent of the album some artist releases when they’re at peak arrogance level. This is my own personal Fat Axl moment. At any rate, I don’t really have much of a choice. It’s not like I’m just going to sit here and do nothing. That doesn’t get me anywhere. So something it is. What will that be? I’ll tell you when I know. I guess I’m hoping that maybe if I get all of this out somewhere it might stop clogging up the interior of my skull. In the short term, it’s going to be a lot more waiting than I’d like. I’m just going to have to learn to deal with that.

FOOTBALL!!!!!

So yeah, the season sort of crept up on me like a ninja and I didn't get a chance to write up my usual scathing previews of every team. But I'll put something up, dammit! Something filled with the sort of scorn and mockery that I feel is expected of me by whatever poor unfortunates actually read this thing.

NFC Thoughts

In the East, it's the Eagles and mediocrity. Philly will be just fine, even with Carson Wentz a question mark and a linebacker corps that consists of Jordan Hicks and...can't we just play dime every snap? The other three teams are completely interchangeable. New York went all in on taking one more shot at the title, meaning they're gambling that the secondary doesn't revolt against another coach and that a 37 year old quarterback looking old was entirely down to all of the receivers getting hurt at once. Dallas is hoping that getting Zeke Elliott back returns Dak Prescott to former glory, and they're helping that happen by giving him the illustrious receiver tandem of Allen Hurns and Brice Butler to throw to. And the offensive line is starting to fall apart. And they were caught off guard by their 37 year old tight end retiring, and the backup plans are a box of Shreddies and the trainer's second cousin who watched football once. Washington let Kirk Cousins go, deciding he wasn't worth all the money. Instead they traded for an older Alex Smith and then handed him just slightly less than all the money. And they traded their best young corner to get Smith, making them even more reliant on an aging Josh Norman. And their promising rookie runner got hurt, so now it's Adrian Peterson producing for one game and then 16 weeks of announcers asking what's wrong with him. Survey says : he's old as balls.

The North sees the Packers promising a whole new way of building a team! No longer will an injury to Aaron Rodgers subject us to Brett Hundley 'playing quarterback'! No, we'll now suffer through DeShone Kizer in a Packers uniform. Still no running back. Still no interior line. Yet another Packer retread trying to patch over the cornerback position (Hello, Tramon Williams!). But they signed every old tight end available in free agency. And Randall Cobb is here to fill the old AJ Hawk role of 'How is this player still on the roster?'. This all seems very familiar. Detroit is still a team. They scraped together a few retreads who won't do anything and called it an offseason. Minnesota inexplicably continues to draft cornerbacks in the first round and ignore other needs. They signed Cousins, get Dalvin Cook back, and did absolutely nothing to address an offensive line that failed them too often last season. If the defense can hold everyone to 7 points, they'll be fine. Chicago signed people who have actually been real wide receivers before! And they traded so many draft picks away for Khalil Mack that I briefly wondered if Mike Ditka had taken over the franchise.  Good thing they were only one big piece away from contending, if we ignore the 6 or 7 other pieces that they still need.

The South will yet again see the Falcons, Saints and maybe the Panthers compete for the top spot. Atlanta is loaded with young talent on defense and game breakers on offense and look primed for a big season. That means they'll win 8 games and spend the entire year finding new and exciting ways to shit all over themselves while everyone tries so hard to make Matt Ryan : Elite Quarterback be real that the Earth will spontaneously combust. New Orleans weirdly decided that the best way to help keep Drew Brees on top is to let a significant portion of his receiving corps walk and go with Ted Ginn as the replacement. Who needs pass catchers who can, you know, catch? They also gave up a ton to move up in the draft in order to land a project defensive end who is nowhere near ready to compete. Carolina actually has receivers! And they have two offensive tackles who might be entirely fictional people. I honestly have no clue who these guys are. I'm also 100% certain that fictional human beings are better than Matt Kalil would have been. The defense is only counting on Julius Peppers forgetting that he's 57 years old. And Luke Kuechly staying healthy for the first time ever. And two safeties being granted by a magical genie, because they don't have any now. Let's not forget about Tampa Bay, though people usually do. The quarterback is suspended for grabbing the crotch of an Uber driver, but says that now that he's a dad he's been granted the wisdom to know that shit ain't cool. Only fatherhood can teach a man that anything rapey is generally frowned upon. Sure. The offensive line is still a train wreck. The running backs suck. Chris Conte is somehow STILL a starting safety, and I think he's been dead for 3 years. Good thing they spent all of their resources just accumulating defensive linemen.

In the West, the Rams acquired everyone. Seriously, everyone. Brandin Cooks came in and got paid, because his production has never been based on other receivers drawing the coverage away from him at all. Aqib Talib and Marcus Peters give them two top notch cover guys who are also petulant children with massive egos. Ndamakong Suh will help them improve their standing in the 'Most Curb Stompings' stats category. They signed everyone to massive contract extensions, and players always stay motivated once they get handed eight figure bonus check! After the Rams, it's a grab bag of meh. San Francisco handed Jimmy Garoppolo the GDP of Africa based on 5 games of production. The team convinced itself that Jerick McKinnon is a lead back and that Richard Sherman doesn't need Achilles tendons to play cornerback. Arizona actually drafted a legit QB prospect, then guaranteed he'll play by signing Sam Bradford. Old Larry Fitzgerald is still the entire receiver corps. Somehow, they seem to believe that old and marginal linemen like Justin Pugh and Andre Smith will fix the blocking. Seattle is convinced they're still relevant. No secondary beyond a disgruntled Earl Thomas. No pass rush, since Cliff Avril retired and they traded Michael Bennett to the Eagles for a can of kidney beans because he dared admit that the team is bored by Pete Carroll. Don't worry though, Carroll brought in Jordan Peterson to talk to the roster! An old, self important ass bag telling grown men to clean their rooms will right this ship! The offense consists of Russell Wilson trying not to die long enough for Doug Baldwin to get open against triple coverage. They overdrafted a running back and added nothing to the offensive line.

Division winners - Philly, Minnesota, New Orleans, LA Rams
Wild cards - Atlanta, Carolina

AFC

The East belongs to the Patriots while the other teams scrabble around and try to pick up enough scraps to not be total shit. New England at this point isn't even really that great a team. One Dont'a Hightower injury and the defense completely immolates again. Gronk will beast out for ten weeks before falling over, shouting "Gronk go boom!" and being lost for the year with a torn everything. This conference is so milquetoast that they'll waltz into the at least the AFC Championship Game, only to again be undone by Belichick inexplicably benching a starting defensive back for no reason. Miami was making prudent financial decisions before finally returning to normal and acquiring the massive contract of Robert Quinn. I can't imagine how it has to feel relying on Ryan Tannehill to lead you back from failure. The Jets actually drafted themselves a legitimate looking quarterback, meaning he'll somehow have thrown 23 interceptions before even stepping on the field. They have no pass rush even if they blitz everyone on the field, on the bench and in the press box. They can't block an inanimate object. The Buffalo Bills have managed to go from unlikely playoff team to the worst team in the entire NFL. They dumped out of their accurate quarterback who didn't turn the ball over and handed the reins to a man who threw 5 picks in one half of one game. He's backed up by their top draft pick, who has a cannon for an arm. He also has a cannon for a brain. His accuracy problems in the Mountain West conference led to bad turnovers and inconsistency against powerhouses like Sister Mary's School For the Blind and Chucklefuck Tech, but that will totally sort itself out at the highest level of the sport. The receiving corps is filled with the failures of other teams. The offensive line is simply offensive. Hope has been lit on fire and powerbombed through a table.

In he North, the Steelers are back with the same obnoxious bullshit that they had last year. Here's Big Ben talking about retirement, only to then whine when the media asks if he;s hanging up the cleats and proclaiming that he'll play for another 5 years. Here's Antonio Brown protesting that he doesn't want attention, then arriving to training camp in a fucking helicopter landing in the middle of the main practice field. Here's the team's NFLPA representatives grumbling out loud because Le'Veon Bell actually wants to be paid before he's left crippled for the rest of his life. Go team! The Bengals have a deep, talented defense filled with playmakers, only one of whom is a dangerous fucking idiot. They improved the blocking. They have backs. AJ Green remains one of the best receivers in the league. Andy Dalton is the poster child for mediocrity. Tyler Eifert is more of a rumor than an actual tight end at this point. Marvin Lewis will bizarrely remain the coach of this team well past the extinction of mankind. It will just be cockroaches and a confused looking Marvin wandering the Earth. Baltimore has again convinced itself that it's a dark horse team. They remain quarterbacked by a man who has to look up at Andy Dalton in the rankings. The running game is fine if all of their backs can extrapolate 2 game samples of fluke production across a whole year. The receivers are like an Island of Misfit Toys. The defense is totally reliant in injecting enough venom serum into Terrell Suggs that he can stay productive. The Browns actually managed to smartly overhaul their entire backfield and improve enormously at both quarterback and running back. Their myriad injured players are healthy once more on defense. And then they handed the entire thing over to the man who is 1-31 in the past two seasons. 1-31 is supposed to be impossible. The entire league was restructured to prevent any franchise from ever being this incompetently bad. Impressive work, Hue Jackson! He's helped in his efforts by Gregg Williams somehow remaining defensive coordinator. Colin Kaepernick is blackballed for kneeling for the anthem, yet this guy gets busted running a fucking bounty system where defenders got paid to intentionally injure opponents and he continues being employable. He isn't even any good at his job! A Gregg Williams defense largely consists of overstaying their welcome in their base set, a linebacker getting burnt when asked to cover a wide receiver, then Gregg cursing about how the players can't execute.

Welcome to the AFC South, where nobody is really atrocious (except maybe the Colts)! Sadly, nobody is really great, either. Houston's starting lineup is quite good, but their bench depth is thinner than starving children seen in United Way commercials. They're getting Deshaun Watson back from injury, and have helped shore up the blocking by doing absolutely nothing meaningful to upgrade the offensive line. Oh, and they're still coached by a supposed QB guru who believed going in to last season that TOM SAVAGE was his best option to start under center. Jacksonville's defense could be extraordinary, particularly with Myles Jack continuing to improve and Marcell Dareus being on the line from the beginning of the season this year. That's also dependent on Jalen Ramsey not being murdered by one of 73,497 people he's infuriated this offseason. Oh, and they handed a lucrative extension to Blake Bortles as a reward for managing to reach the peaks of thoroughly average quarterback. He won't be helped by a receiving crew now consisting of Austin Sefarian-Jenkins, Donte Moncrief, Keelan Cole and something called DJ Chark. Rather than upgrade that pile of filth, the team spent all of their money on a guard for a line that was already pretty good. Tennessee merely has to learn an entirely new scheme on both sides of the ball. Their receiving corps is barely out of diapers. The interior offensive line were all brought back after being more porous than sponge a year ago. And the team continues collecting ex-Patriots in some increasingly creepy clone experiment. The Colts finally get Andrew Luck back after a year and a half lost to career threatening injuries. His throwing shoulder now consists of a ball of twine held together by papier mache, and the right side of the line is still likely to guarantee that he ends up lying in a screaming heap on the field before the year is out. They have one good receiver. There is no running game. Eric Ebron was signed to provide a speedy tight end who can't catch. Defense remains a myth for other franchises to waste their time on.

Finally, we reach the West. The LA Chargers are the red headed stepchild of that particular market. Forget being outdrawn by the Rams, the city's new MLS team sold more tickets. Yes, really. They have the talent to do big things, but that talent is more fragile than Mr. Glass. They've already lost multiple players through training camp and the preseason. Half the roster is a tap on the shoulder away from dropping to the field with a shattered hip joint or exploded knee. And they continue to find new and exciting ways to shit away leads in the 4th quarter. This team is damned. Only an exorcism can save them at this point. The Kansas City Chiefs have moved on from
Alex Smith, beginning the Patrick Mahomes era. Sammy Watkins joins Tyreek Hill to give him a pair of explosive big play threats with all the reliability of a glue sniffing meth head. They finally began moving on from some veteran defenders, replacing them with castoffs from such notable defensive stalwarts as Buffalo and Dallas. They are guaranteed to lose at least three games because Andy Reid remains confused about proper clock management, time out management, and life in general. Denver remains coached by Vance Joseph so that John Elway has someone to pin the blame to when this roster yet again fails to get anywhere. Elway has proven a horrible judge of talent, but he'll be the GM forever because he's a Broncos legend and because the children of Pat Bowlen are too busy fighting for control of the team to notice what's happening to it. Let's go with Case Keenum as our latest attempt at finding a quarterback, because the one good year always becomes the new norm after a career of inconsistency beforehand. More chair shuffling on the Titanic deck known as the offensive line. Still no consistent slot receiver for the 79th consecutive year. But we'll ignore all of that and draft yet another pass rusher in the first round because the remaining quarterback prospect dares to have interests away from the fucking sport. And then, we reach the Raiders. Welcome to the basement, boys! The team traded away Khalil Mack (aka the entire goddamn defense) because they apparently couldn't find the money to pay his expected signing bonus. Of course, that lack of funds didn't prevent them from hiring Jon Gruden away from the broadcast booth for $100 million. Gruden brings his utter mediocrity in coaching and hilariously outdated offensive concepts to a team that spent the rest of the offseason collecting has-beens. Doug Martin, Jordy Nelson, Derrick Johnson, Leon Hall and Reggie Nelson join Marshawn Lynch on a team that would have been pretty damn good in 2014. They're smartly tanking just as they have to start trying to convince the people of Vegas to buy season ticket packages next year.

Division winners - New England, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville, Kansas City
Wild cards - LA Chargers, Cincinnati

Super Bowl - LA Rams over New England

Hark the Herald Angels Scream

Oh hey, a blog! I should write in it and stuff!

Thanks, Rambo! Really can’t wait to see you drag your withered ass through another sequel that nobody asked for. Really…really can’t wait. Fuck.

So yeah! There were plans to write. Those plans went up in a blaze of malaise and apathy. But that fire was pretty non-committal and was easily extinguished, and now here we are. Lucky us.

This banter is absolute shit. Know what isn’t shit? Music! Thanks, Andrew W.K.! You should seriously be the theme song to everything made from now on.

Okay, a lot of music is absolute hot fucking garbage. Let’s ignore that and check out what I like to listen to, because I like to feel like a big man. I’m important, goddammit! Sweet merciful fuck, let’s just start this thing up before I continue babbling like a pompous asshole who likes to think that he’s entertaining.

Long story short : Music that was new to me in 2017, or late 2016. Doesn’t matter when it actually came out, just that I hadn’t really listened to it before last year. The list isn’t nearly as long as last year’s was, because that was utterly insane. But apparently I’m a size queen because I’m going to stack on some quick honorable mentions! EVEN MORE TIME BEFORE I GET TO THE POINT! YOU’RE WELCOME!

Bones (UK) – Just a warning for parents : watching the intro sequence of that video around little kids is going to lead to questions like “What is that man doing to that lady?” You have been warned. Apparently there was some long forgotten shitty band called Bones already, so they added the UK to their name? Or they just did it because they liked it? And/or they’re British? I don’t fucking know (Actually, they are British. I do know that part). I also have no goddamn idea what to classify this music style as. Electro-drum-sass? Who fucking cares. Genre titles mean nothing anyway, so just enjoy it. And the three other singles they have (Make that four). And that’s it. No actual album yet, hence the honorable mention. Come for the catchy beat that drills into your fucking head, stay for the cunnilingus! Okay kids, it’s time for that talk…

Greta Van Fleet – I actually really like these guys, but they have a single 8 track EP, half of which was previously released material. And that’s it. And they’re pretty much the greatest Led Zeppelin cover band of all time. Close your eyes and tell me for certain that you could definitely tell the two apart and I’ll punch you in the fucking nuts for lying to me. The goddamn kid on the mic sounds like Robert Plant. It’s uncanny! I’m curious to see (hear, I suppose) what direction they follow from here. Hopefully it’s a tad less clone-ish.

Tech N9ne – This man lives as the ultimate example that everyone needs an editor. He puts out multiple double length albums every year, splitting his time between his own stuff and Collabos collections that link him up with seemingly everyone involved in music on planet Earth. Maybe that’s the end goal? The problem with being that prolific is that you end up being very inconsistent and wobbly. So while the good stuff is REALLY DAMN GOOD, there’s too much other stuff that just…yeah.

Who am I to argue with Neo? Let’s actually get this cranked up. Oh, since a person or two asked about a playlist last year, I made one on Spotify (Though there are a few tracks that aren’t on Spotify, which is annoying). So you can listen to that as an accompaniment, or ignore this post and just enjoy that if you’re a fucking lame-ass who wants to get away from my rapier wit and keen insights. RUN! RUN, YOU FOOLS!

Once More Into the Breach

The pigskin apocalypse once more draws near! Hide your women and children, for the warriors of the gridiron might decide to beat the Hell out of them, and that’s totally cool so long as they don’t dare kneel while the national anthem plays. Sigh.

Oh, NFL.

And with a new contract in hand, Roger Goodell is in charge for the foreseeable future, or at least until the Cowboys get the hammer dropped on them again and Jerry Jones snaps and kills him with a caviar spoon. And in that moment, Roger will provide glorious entertainment and value for probably the first time in his entire life. So we all have that to look forward to.

On the field, some divisions are insanely closely matched. Others look more like dropping a pro team or two in with a couple of JV squads and a football team comprised of lemurs in helmets. I will be providing my commentary on each team in my usual manner, scorn laced with liberal doses of mockery.

You will also notice the use of asterisks scattered throughout this entire thing. See, the league narrative is that Colin Kaepernick can’t find a spot based purely on his play on the field. I will be marking the existence of quarterbacks on rosters who kind of disprove that ridiculous claim. Advance peek : there are A LOT of them.

On with the show!

Death of a Stranger

I never met Chris Cornell. Obviously, I mean, I’m some random schmuck in Leduc. I’m not exactly loaded down with celebrity connections. The closest I ever came to the guy was seeing him and Audioslave live many moons ago. And yet, I find myself affected by his passing in a way that isn’t typical. Usually, someone famous dies and there’s a bit of “That’s too bad.” and then I take another sip of coffee and turn the page. Okay, obviously I’m on the Internet and not actually reading a paper but I’m making an analogy here. But this time I linger a little bit. This time there was a bit of a punch to go along with the news.
There are a few reasons why Chris Cornell’s death is a bit more of a kick to the crotch than all the rest. The guy is hands down one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time. Check out live videos from the past year or two and marvel as he continues to hit those high notes the same way that he did in the 90’s. A Soundgarden song provided the musical backdrop when two of my best friends danced for the first time after getting hitched. And Soundgarden were one of the bands of my youth. Now Chris Cornell is dead, and I’m 40 years old and much more aware of my own mortality then I was back in the day. Shit, I’m closer to 52 then I am to the age that I was when I first started hearing Soundgarden. That’s part of the reason why this one hits a bit closer to home for me. One more long tendril connecting to my younger days withers and dies off.
I was a big fan of David Bowie, James Brown, Phife Dawg and B.B. King, to list just a few of the names on the morbid ledger of musicians who have recently left this world. I was even lucky enough to see most of them (A Tribe Called Quest being an exception from that list) live before they passed. Obviously. Would have been one weird fucking show if it was post-mortem. But their passings didn’t really impact me in the same way.

The thing is, I got in to all of them later on in my life. But Soundgarden got in to my brain while I was still figuring out what in the Hell I actually liked. They were one of the building blocks in terms of music. Shit, they might have been THE building block upon which the rest of the foundation of my own personal house of musical fandom was built. Let’s hop into ye ol’ Wayback Machine and visit a time of young, dumb Cliff and his lamentable hair choices of yesteryear.


See, young and dumb Cliff was a total hair metal fan. Oh sure, he got out of that box a little bit, but only in terms of just straight up metal metal. That’s how Metallica and Pantera and the like made their way straight into his earholes. But that was it. That was all there ever would be. Grunge? Fuck that shit. Nirvana was the band that basically fucked up what he had liked before. However would Skid Row adapt and recover in a world of Nirvana? Incidentally, I’m still not the biggest Nirvana fan. They’re…okay. But if you’re the ones who plant the flag, you get to run the show. That’s how it works.

Alice in Chains (Fuck yes!) and Rollins Band (Angry guy shouting. Not really a stunner that young Cliff was all in) had made it through the firewall, but the rest of those bands could go fuck themselves. Pearl Jam? Obnoxious. Now I would best describe them as incredibly uneven. Smashing Pumpkins? What is with dude’s voice! And he seems like a douchebag. So, so true. Stone Temple Pilots? Redundant. Seriously, their first album sounded so much like Pearl Jam that everyone thought they WERE Pearl Jam. I never really got past that, even though they dumped the clone act and actually did some interesting stuff. Sonic Youth? Since when is guitar feedback and squealing music? I still kinda feel this way. Radiohead? Oh boy, whining! Sadly, just as I figured out that they were awesome, they decided to put the guitars away and fuck everything up. Soundgarden? Ugh, this is lame! With the exception of Outshined, which was pure early 90’s metal crunch that still makes me feel fired up and wanting to punch through a wall.

This went on for awhile until some evening when my musical brother-in-arms Liam suddenly told me that he had been listening to Soundgarden, and he actually kinda…you know…liked them and stuff.

But hey, Liam hadn’t really steered me wrong when it came to music (Except perhaps Mr. Bungle. I still flat out do not understand what in the fuck that was), so maybe he had retained his sanity. Maybe it was okay. Maybe I could listen to it and my world wouldn’t come crashing down. I was wrong. So wonderfully wrong.


BOOM. Young Cliff’s brain started firing in ways that it never had before. This was kinda different. This was him trying something he had previously dismissed and realizing that he liked it. And if he could be wrong about this…
Fast forward many years. Cliff is now listening to punk, funk, Motown, hip hop, gangsta rap, blues and pop. Not all of that came from one Soundgarden song, but the willingness to expand my tastes and try listening to different things started there. That song planted the seed. That song changed the way that I thought about what was good and bad music. That song encouraged me to always be seeking out something new. And I continue to live that way today.

Take that away and I might be one of those sad middle aged dudes continuing to rock out to the sounds of their past in a desperate ploy to continue believing that the past is still right now. I’d be part of the legion of damned who funnel into venues as their creaky music idols of old continue to tour in a nostalgia festival that just demeans everyone involved. To be clear, I have no problem with old bands touring or being seen live. But we’ve all encountered those sad individuals who refuse to admit that they’ve gained fifty pounds and lost thirty years and keep on keeping on like it’s 1987. So thank you, Chris Cornell. Because nobody needs to see that. And I do somewhat enjoy maintaining a shred of personal dignity.

Making Changes

Okay, I’m going to just strip away the safety net and see what falls out with this one. This is one of those times where I’m going a little bit more ‘stream of consciousness’ and then coming back around and cleaning up the mess into something that makes at least a little bit of sense…hopefully. I don’t know where exactly it’s going to end up going, and it’s probably going to jump around a bit. It’s like old school Cliff blogging, only with actual editing. Hopefully it doesn’t turn into just a huge mess. And on that optimistic note, let’s begin!

I’ve talked here before about changes that I’ve made in my life. The past year in particular has been huge. I look at a lot of things differently from how I did before, deal with things differently and react to things differently. And what I’ve learned beyond anything else is that the more things change, the more I want them to continue to change. Since it’s making me happy, let’s keep it rolling forward.

But the thing with making changes and trying to find new opportunities to adapt how I’m doing things is that I need to find new sources for that change. It’s like working out. As I find new people to follow who know what the fuck they’re talking about (And for Chrissakes people, MAKE SURE they know what they’re talking about unless you want to totally screw yourself up), I’m constantly exposed to new ideas and exercises and ways to move. I’ll try things out, some of which make the cut, and some of which don’t end up being something that I personally find interesting, but all of them are at least worth a try. 

So, I have this great basis for always changing and tweaking what I’m doing in terms of workout routines. But trying to find those new ideas elsewhere is still pretty new to me. I have that same ravenous appetite for more, but I don’t have my shit nearly as figured out in terms of finding the next challenge. That means seeking out new sources for ideas and changes to possibly take on, and I’m largely flying blind here.

On a somewhat related note, I’ve decided that this year is going to see me return to the world of books. I used to be a voracious reader, but I’d gotten away from it to the point that 2016 was an absolute fucking travesty. I was really disappointed by my pitiful output and wanted to get back to reading more, so I’m going to put in a real effort this year (So far, not bad. Do board game rulebooks count? If so, I’m kicking ass). And since I already had the goal to pound through some books in 2017…

Well, that’s nice. More books. With bright covers, and lengthy descriptions and…hold the phone. Are those…

Are those self help books?!

Yes they are. Oh, but that doesn’t even cover the basics of how far down this particular rabbit hole I’ve gone (…phrasing…). At the time that I’m writing this intro, the book on the right is the only one that I’ve actually read part way through (New entry to confuse the timeline! I’ve now read two of the three!). All of those chunks of paper stuffed in there are to mark pages where something really clicked for me. I fully expect all three of these to look like a similarly chaotic mess towards the end. And that’s kind of what this post is going to be all about. Those passages, and how they relate to things I’m switching up or have already altered in some way.

Believe me, I’m also a little weirded out by all of this. Even reading stuff like this represents one drastic fucking change for me. Hell, I used to mock the shit out of this sort of thing. Then again, that mockery was largely me just trying to cover up a lot of insecurities, so let’s perhaps keep walking by those utterances of the past. It helped that the first two such books I’ve read were filled with jokes and a lot of F bombs, keeping them somewhat relatable.

Buckle up, folks. This is going to be an interesting ride through the land of honesty. It’s like the Land of Dairy Queen, just with reality in place of chocolate rivers. So…okay, yeah, it kind of sucks.