Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Blog Profile of the Day: Morthas

Today's Profile: Morthas.com

This site of sports autographs and memorabilia is named for Morthas, the Greek god of collections and collectors, who was a lesser known cousin of Hephaestus (also a nephew of Zeus and Hera).

I interviewed Steve Ironsides, the proprietor of Morthas, from his home in suburban Boston, one of those little hamlets ending in "—ham." When I caught up with him on his cell phone, he was actually at the Whatever-Ham Post Office, picking up his latest autograph, former Pittsburgh Pirate shortstop Dick Groat.


MPF004: So, how did Morthas begin?

Steve Ironsides: Well, I guess the beginning goes back to Greek mythology and how Morthas was born to--

MPF: No, I mean the website. How did Morthas.com get started?

SI: Oh. I was inspired by the 83F Project, which is one man's mission to get every single baseball card from the 1983 Fleer set, signed by that player. (Editor's note: Ironsides doesn't really talk in hyperlinks over the phone. I added them later.) It's ambitious to be sure, but it's only one sport and only one year. I thought, I can dream bigger! I can take on all of baseball! All of sport!

I draw the line at bowling and golf, though. I'm not convinced anything you can do while drinking qualifies as a sport. Same goes for shuffleboard and darts. Just because it's on ESPN at 3 a.m. doesn't mean it's a sport. I'm looking at you, Australian rules football!


Not a sport according to Steve Ironsides, no matter how many old ladies in the pub watch you play.

So, to make a long story short, I bought out the rights to 83F from the poor sap who thought it up. It cost a pretty penny, but hey, this is Web 2.0! I mean, Google paid a shitload for Youtube, so I figure at those rates, 83F was a bargain.

MPF: Uh, OK. does that mean you make money on Morthas?

SI: You don't understand how the Internet works, do you? How long have you worked in the Internet industry?

MPF: Uhh ... about six weeks.

SI: Exactly. Get back to me when your ears dry.

MPF: Right. So, um, did you have a lot of the memorabilia on your own, or did you go raid your parents' basement, or do you buy stuff at card shows?

SI: A little bit of all of the above. I'm lucky that my mom didn't throw out my childhood baseball card collection, like so many moms of our generation. Some I've acquired in adulthood, some I get from going to shows and exhibitions, some I trade with people I've met through my website, some I get from little old ladies in Omaha, Nebraska. Really, from everywhere.

MPF: Fascinating. Say, why is Boston, your hometown, so good at sports all of a sudden? Or should I say "wicked good"?

SI: I'd love to display some of that classic New England humility and say it's a marvelous coincidence that all the teams are playing well, it was just our time, we've been lucky as fans, and all that. In reality, THEO EPSTEIN RULZ!!! And TOM BRADY RULZ!!!! (Ed. note: he really does talk like that over the phone.)

MPF: Yeah. Well, thanks to for talking with me today.

SI: No problem man. Come check out Morthas.com for new finds every day!



Will do, Steve. You can find his excellent web site on the blogroll to the left.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Craig Finn Knows a Lot of Big Words

Jay Farrar has gone through a curious evolution as a songwriter. His earliest songs dealt with the bleak, mundane existence of a blue-collar life in a small town and the desperation to escape it:

What has life for 50 years in this town done for you, except to earn your name a place on a barstool ... there was a time you could put it out of your behind, leave it all behind, that time is gone ... now it's life in some kind of trap looking for a way out.

and
...inebriated in doubt, still aware of everything life carries on without. There's one too many faces with dollar sign smiles/gotta find the shortest path to the bar for a while. ... There's a trouble around, it's never far away/The same trouble has been around for a life and a day. I can't forget the sound cause it's here to stay: the sound of people chasing money, and money getting away.

On his last two records, Okemah and the Melody of Riot and The Search, he's returned as a lyricist to the directness that marked his early Tupelo work. But in between, his lyrics got more poetic ... and obtuse. (Not that there wasn't poetry in his earlier work: check out "Still Be Around" or "Whiskey Bottle" or "Graveyard Shift" for proof.)

Farrar is certainly worthy of an essay of his own, but it is this penchant for "big words" in his middle period (roughly Anodyne through Terrior Blues) that caught my ear a few years ago. I started to notice it on Sebastopol, his solo debut. Phrases like "pell-mell from the committee of welcoming" have such a rhythmic bounce; the "ell" sound and the "uhm" sound ricochet off each other brilliantly.

Even that brief phrase (from "Voodoo Candle") contains two three-syllable words. Now there's nothing magical about three-syllable words, other than they don't show up too often in daily English. Hell, even the Gettysburg Address, one of the most respected pieces of oratory in our great country's history (or should that be our GREAT country's GREAT history?), was composed mostly of short, one and two syllable words. The three-syllable word is basically a cutoff point to separate the ordinary words in English from the ones that have a little pizazz...the ones you need to have a modicum of intelligence to employ.

(And too many big words can drag down your prose. In eighth grade, Mrs. Conrad--I can't believe I just plucked that name out of thin air--gave us a writing test to measure our vocabulary. Except she told us in advance that the whole point was a vocab count. So Sean Ellars wrote this paper called "Nero's Den" about swim practice, filled with painfully large words. He got a high vocab count score, but it was like reading George Will write about Marcel Proust if Proust were a baseball player, except 1000 times less enjoyable.)


Does this look like a guy who writes lyrically complex songs? Yyyeaah, I thought not.

And longer words show up even less frequently in pop-rock lyrics. Go ahead, name me a favorite song from your teen years, and count up how many "big words" are in there. Maybe one or two...certainly not 17.

As much as I admire and enjoy the vocabulary-building efforts of Farrar, there's a new bigshot in the pantheon of literary rockers, and his name is Craig Finn. Anybody who knows me shouldn't be surprised that this essay:

a) started out by talking about Jay Farrar and ends with the Dixie Chicks is about neither
b) is actually about The Hold Steady.

Finn, lead singer/shouter and lyricist for Brooklyn-based The Hold Steady, must be the most well-read rock musician you'd want to have a beer with (thus excluding boring, stuffy indie/arty types and London School of Economics-educated bazillionaires). His love of literature shows through in artfully constructed songs (ironically about NON-literary characters who spend all day getting drunk and high) and the occasional cultural reference that you don't even notice til the tenth listen.

Recently I was listening to Boys and Girls in America, Steady's wicked good 2006 album that dominated the Best of MPF list last year. I realized that Farrar certainly has company in the "wordy rock star" club. After singing/shouting along to Hold Steady songs for a couple years now, I sat down to find out: exactly how many big words does Craig Finn put into his songs?

The answer: a lot, cause I didn't even make it past track one. "Stuck Between Stations," a rollicking tale of author (more literary stuff!) John Berryman, contained enough fancy words to make a fifth-grade teacher proud.


Stuck Between Stations (17)

Paradise
America
together (x2)
demonstrations
colossal
expectations
dependent
undisciplined
dehydration (x2)
Berryman (x2)
Washington
surrounded
exhausted
critically
respected
retention
Mississippi

Yeah, he's got a couple proper nouns in there. But it's not his fault for knowing people with longer names. (You should count the "Minneapolis" and "Mississippi River" citations in his oeuvre.) When you're done reading this essay, watch the tremendously entertaining video for "Stuck Between Stations" here.

Compare that prodigious output to the breakthrough album from the Dixie Chicks, 1998's Wide Open Spaces. I remember listening to that record when it came out and thinking, yeah, they're good singers, and yeah, they're good looking, but man this material is dumb. The songs were uninteresting, the lyrics flat and basically pop drivel. There are some great songwriters here, including Maria McKee, Bonnie Raitt, and honorary Eagle J.D. Souther. And Susan Gibson, whoever she is, knows how to write a beautiful song.

Now, I've got nothing against the Dixie Chicks. They burst on the scene as yet another good looking country group with slick packaging, and have reinvented themselves as musical artists, writing their own songs and exploring more authentic musicality on subsequent releases. Plus they have the guts to announce the obvious (the current president is a dumbass, no matter what state he's from), suffer the consequences and come back stronger than ever. (And the president is still a dumbass.)

But honestly, have you ever read or listened to the lyrics of Wide Open Spaces? Well I have, so you don't have to. In the course of 45 minutes and 12 songs, they generate about as many big words as Craig Finn in one song.

Wide Open Spaces (the whole album) (19)

I Can Love You Better (Kostas & Pamela Brown Hayes)
intentions
believing

Wide Open Spaces (Susan Gibson)
foundation

Loving Arms (Tom Jans)
none

There's Your Trouble (Tia Stillers and Mark Selby)
none

You Were Mine (Emily Erwin, Martie Seidel)
forgiven

Never Say Die (Radney Foster and George Ducas)
none

Tonight The Heartache's On Me (Mary W. Francis, Johnny Macrae & Bob Morrison)
bartender
somebody

Let 'Er Rip (Billy Crain & Sandy Ramos)
situation
chemistry
complications
hyphenated
misunderstood

Once You've Loved Somebody (Bruce Miller & Thom McHugh)
solitude
somebody (x8)
everything (x2)
anyone

I'll Take Care Of You (John David Souther)
another

Am I The Only One (Who's Ever Felt This Way) (Maria McKee)
emptiness

Give It Up Or Let Me Go (Bonnie Raitt)
another (x3)
sacrifice (x2)
everything


Easy on the eyes. Also easy on the left frontal lobe.





So, what are you saying here, MPF, that big words makes you a rock god and little words makes you a dope?

No, of course not. In fact, there may not be any link whatsoever. I'll leave that to bored university professors to dissect...I'm merely an amateur. Suffice it to say that Craig Finn has a large vocabulary, and he's not afraid to use it.


University researchers have determined that listening to The Hold Steady may actually make you smarter.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

Love Thee Notre Dame

Hallelujah. On the same day ND (finally) won at home we figured out a design concept for the new (and improved) TMMPF blog.

And so, here it is. The place where you will be able to learn news (and we've had a lot of that lately) and views (anyone want to hear about the Iowa game yesterday?) from Mike and myself. And maybe, sometimes, Quigley Cat will pitch in.

First, for the news. In case you haven't heard, we've moved again. Last month Mike, Quigley and I drove from Manhattan back to Chicago. It was a move we've been working on for quite a while, and I can't tell you how happy we are to be home.

Mike is now working for Tribune Interactive, a division of the Chicago Tribune, and I am working for my New York company (Science and Medicine) out of our apartment in Chicago.


Speaking of our apartment, believe it or not we've moved back into the place that I left two years ago! The stars aligned and we were able to move back to Wrigleyville without having to kill ourselves looking for a new place to live. The apartment is great and we are very happy to be back.

It's been a crazy long year... 5 out-of-town weddings (including our own), trips to Florida and Boston, a move cross country... I can't believe it all really happened! Needless to say we are looking forward to a nice relaxing Thanksgiving at home.

And, of course, an Irish victory over Stanford.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Football Saturday

Iowa just lost. Dammit.

And Notre Dame won. Nice, but why can't they win on the same day?

Go Irish! Beat, uh, Stanford.