Favorite Album Friday #1

In an attempt to write more about one of my favorite things in life, and to stimulate my lazy ass to do more with this blog, I'm starting a new feature called "Favorite Album Friday," or #faf if you're so inclined. In this space I'll be writing about some of my all-time favorite albums, and the albums that are currently bending my ear. Who knows, maybe it will become a thing. And yes, it does seem weird to talk about "albums" in the age of digital music. But that's a conversation for another time.

For my inaugural #faf post, I've chosen the album Southeastern by "alt country" singer/songwriter Jason Isbell, which came highly recommended to me by a former colleague (and for that I can't be thankful enough). Originally a member of the band Drive-By Truckers, Isbell has been putting out solo records since 2007. Southeastern is his fourth solo effort, and though I've not yet heard his previous albums, I can't imagine how they could be better than this one.

I've long had a tendency to associate albums with seasons, a habit that's generally based on when I first immersed myself in the music. But some music just lends itself to certain seasons, beyond the simplicity of winter=dark music and summer=happy music. REM's Reckoning, which I first heard in the summer of my 13th year, always reminds me of that summer and how I felt when I first heard it. But there's also a lushness to the sound of that album, particularly Peter Buck's guitar, that reminds me of the warmth of a summer in full bloom. Southeastern, to me, is a winter album. It has moments of darkness, both musically and lyrically, with songs driven by despair, loneliness, and regrets. But it also has moments of light.

One of the great tricks of the "confessional" singer/songwriter is in being able to craft incredibly personal songs that draw from the artist's experience, yet have a universal appeal. When done well, it's a revelation. When done poorly, it's comical. Southeastern would be a great album on those merits alone. But the craft is elevated when singer/songwriters use their own experiences to become and inhabit other characters. Isbell does just that on Southeastern, creating a cast of characters clearly drawn from his life and acting as the narrator to their (and his own) tales of despair and failed dreams. In the end you almost feel as if you've caught a glimpse into the lives of a small community somewhere in the southeastern U.S, perhaps in northern Alabama, where Isbell grew up. 

Southeastern is a beautiful, sad, and yet somehow hopeful album. Part of that comes from the warmth of Isbell's voice and delivery, which conveys the hope of someone who's seen hard times and made it through to the other side. It reflects his own battle with addiction and his experience with sobriety. As hard as life can be, he seems to be saying, it's still worth living. In a collection of songs about cancer, suicide, addiction, and abusive relationships, Isbell comes up with lines like "god bless the busted boat that brings us back" and "you should know compared with people on a global scale, our kind has had it relatively easy." That kind of attitude keeps the album from being a complete downer.

So while it might not exactly happy happy funtime music, Southeastern is well worth a close listen, even in the light of summer. 

Here's a taste to get you started:

Acts and Results

For those who thought the Iraq War was a thing of the past, yesterday's announcement by President Obama that the U.S. will be sending 300 military advisers to assist the embattled Iraqi government should serve as an important reminder of one thing: the impact of decisions made without thought given to the consequences can have a long shelf life.

My career in the news media began shortly before the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003, when I was working as a producer at a public radio station in Boston. During my time in news radio, I was involved in producing programs in which analysts and pundits discussed and debated the run-up to the war, the invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the post-invasion chaos and the shame of Abu Ghraib, the bloody descent into quagmire, the surge, and ultimately the withdrawal of U.S. troops. I spoke with soldiers who were proud  of what they had achieved in Iraq, and those who felt like it had been a waste. I heard from listeners who were furious about the decisions made by the Bush administration, and those who applauded them.

Though it did not divide the nation the way the Vietnam War did, for several years the Iraq War dominated political discourse in America. But by the time Obama came into office and the war dragged to a close, the public had grown weary of Iraq. Most people, it seemed, wanted move on. There was a recession, and another war, to deal with.

But the news that's come out of Iraq in recent weeks, and the recent scandal at VA hospitals, are reminders that the Iraq War never really went away. For many Americans who fought there, it has continued, in the form of shattered bodies and shattered minds. For Iraqis, the disruption and chaos of the war has remained. The tribal and sectarian hatreds unleashed by the U.S. invasion have only grown stronger. Whether you're inclined to blame this reality on the Bush administration for invading Iraq, the Obama administration for leaving Iraq, or the Sykes Picot Agreement, depends on where you sit on the political spectrum. And yesterday's announcement by the President indicates that Iraq, for the foreseeable future, will remain an American problem.

I just recently finished reading Richard Ford's "Canada," a novel set in 1960 about a teenage boy in Montana named Dell Parsons. The lives of Dell and his twin sister, Berner, are torn apart when their parents decide to rob a bank in North Dakota. The mastermind behind the ill-conceived plot is Dell's father, a recently discharged air force bombardier whose life hasn't turned out as well as he had hoped, despite his good looks and southern charm. Dell's mother, a quiet, intense woman who aspires to be a poet, reluctantly goes along with the plot, making adjustments that ultimately lead to their capture.

The entire second half of the novel, told by Dell as he verges on retirement from a teaching career, revolves around the consequences of that act. After their parents are arrested, Dell and his sister are thrust out into an uncaring world, both taking distinct paths that will shape who they become. While we are given first-hand account of the trials that Dell has to face on his own, we only get a sense of how poorly life has treated Berner. And while we're led to believe that Dell has had a fulfilling life, it's clear that the decisions made by his parents have haunted him, and will do so for the remainder of his life. Dell says of his parents:

"The past was cruelly ended, the future jeopardized. Though this may also be what joined them: an unexpected mutual awareness of consequence. Neither of them had been richly imbued with that. Lacking an awareness of consequence might've been their greatest flaw. Though each of them had reasons to know that acts had results."

Reading this passage, and contemplating what has happened in Iraq over the last few weeks, makes me think of Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns," which he translated to mean "the ones we don't know we don't know." In telling the story of his parents, Dell can see clearly the terrible choices they made, but understands their lack of awareness. While Rumsfeld should have had some awareness of what could go wrong in Iraq, as many others did, I'm not sure if he could have envisioned the rise of an organization even more violent and intolerant than al qaeda. And while President Obama likely had reservations about leaving Iraq in the hands of Nouri al-Maliki, as many others did, he clearly did not foresee the country verging on collapse less than three years after the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

But clearly, these acts have had results. How long we will have to live with these results is another question.

Kevin Love's Not Sayin'....He's Just Sayin'

Now that the NBA Finals are over, pro basketball fans in Minnesota can turn their attention to an annual rite of passage: waiting for the next inglorious moment in the history of the hapless Timberwolves.

This particular moment, a few years in the making and for many easy to predict, is now coming to fruition. Over the pasts several weeks it's become abundantly clear that talented power forward Kevin Love wants to be as far away from Minnesota as possible. It's a familiar template. Player signs a lucrative contract, players fails to bring his team success, player suggests that he may not be happy with his current situation, player ultimately tells the team and the media that he wants to be elsewhere. It's one of the more distasteful elements of modern professional athletics. And for Minnesotans, it's a painful reminder of the Kevin Garnett saga.

For awhile, Love seemed to be trying to play it a little differently. He spoke little about his future during the season. When the season ended, he initially stayed out of the spotlight and let his agent do the talking for him. Then he made a rather suspicious trip (with his agent) to Boston, where he took in a Red Sox game and chatted with current members of the Boston Celtics, a team with a storied history and 16 championships. And in one particular media appearance last week, he spoke of the frustation of not making the playoffs, referred to the the Timberwolves as "they," suggested that he needed to get better teammates, and said he hopes "everything works out for all the parties involved." Translation: "I hope they get a good deal for me."

Notice that he never said he wants to be traded. Because what's clear is that while Love wants everyone to know that he doesn't want to be here anymore, he doesn't want to actually come out and say it. As others have pointed out, it's classic Minnesota passive aggressive. It might make him feel like less of a prima donna, but the effect is just the same. Just tell us you don't love us anymore, Kevin.

You knew it was going to come to this. Ever since Love signed a four year extension in 2011, a deal that allowed him to opt out after three years, you just knew that he wasn't going to be in a Timberwolves uniform for too much longer. For starters, from the moment he signed the contract, he complained about not getting the maximum deal allowed under the collective bargaining agreement. (While that was one of former GM David Kahn's most egregious mistakes, I've always wondered if it helped Love build a straw-man argument for leaving; the oft-used "they didn't appreciate me enough" line, intended to imply that he's been slaving away for an organization that never really respected his talent.)

The bigger reason is that despite the efforts of current GM and coach Flip Saunders, the Timberwolves are a long way from being a playoff team, let alone a team that can compete for a championship. I don't doubt that Love wants to be on a team that wins and has success in the playoffs. That's what every professional athlete wants, with a few notable exceptions. I just can't help but wonder if part of it is a desire to be seen as a winner, as someone who puts team before his own numbers.

My feelings about the impending loss of Love are mixed. He's arguably one of the ten best players in the NBA, and he seemingly gets better every year. His offensive game has expanded exponentially since his rookie season, when he appeared too small to be a productive power forward, and his second year, when columnist Pat Reusse derided him as nothing more than a "garbage-time stats collector." His combination of three-point shooting, low-post moves, and deft passing makes him extremely hard to defend. He plays hard, and he might be the most intuitive rebounder in the league. Does he play defense? No, not very well. But his attributes far outweigh his deficiencies. And the Timberwolves are unlikely to get equal value in return.

But as good as Kevin Love is, trading him doesn't have to be a devastating blow for the Timberwolves. While it's certainly not all his fault, Minnesota has never made the playoffs with him. In a season where the team finally had the talent to be truly competitive, he couldn't get them into the playoffs. That's what great players, transcendent players, do, no matter what their supporting cast lacks. Sure, Love put up great offensive numbers and seemed to do everything he could to help the team win, but truly great players do things that don't show always up on the stat sheet. Sometimes it's instilling a belief in teammates, or setting a tone that losing (or lack of effort) is unacceptable. Love hasn't succeeded on that level.

So yes, Kevin Love will likely be leaving Minnesota soon, and yes, it's unfortunate. He's a pleasure to watch. But we'll get over it. We'll find another player who embraces the cold as much as he embraces the challenge of resurrecting a franchise that hasn't seen too many good times. And then he'll probably want to leave, too.

A Bad Stretch for the Beautiful Game

For the soccer players, fans, and officials alike, the World Cup can't start soon enough. And that's not just because they're giddy with anticipation.

Over the past several weeks, the soccer world has been hit by an avalanche of bad news. It started a few weeks ago with a detailed investigation by the New York Times into widespread match fixing in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. Just days later, the U.K. Sunday Times ran a story alleging that a former executive of FIFA, soccer's governing body, paid out nearly $200,000 to current FIFA delegates to persuade them to vote for Qatar as the site of the 2022 World Cup. The selection of Qatar, a tiny desert nation where temperatures are well over 100 degrees in the summer, has always raised eyebrows, and allegations that the country is essentially using slave labor to build stadiums haven't helped. In May, FIFA president Sepp Blatter even admitted that choosing Qatar as host was a mistake. "Yes, it was a mistake of course, but one makes lots of mistakes in life," Blatter told Swiss broadcaster RTS.

Soccer in America hasn't been exempt from all of this bad PR. Just read Buzzfeed's fascinating story on Bill Blazer, the man who simultaneously put U.S. Soccer on the world map while bilking it of millions of dollars. Blazer happens to be a good friend of Jack Warner, a man who's no stranger to FIFA scandals.

And if that weren't enough, the host of this year's World Cup, the country that might love soccer more than any nation on earth, doesn't seem all that happy about hosting the event. "We are like the Romans — we spend everything on wine and sport,"a Brazilian woman told USA Today. Between pissed off transit workers and citizens who are simply disgusted by the $11 billion dollars being spent on the event, Brazilians seem more interested in protesting the games then watching them.

How did it come to this for the beautiful game? Perhaps because off the field, it's pretty ugly business. There have long been corruption scandals in international soccer. A line from the Times' investigation on match fixing may provide a clue as to why:

"Many National Soccer federations with teams competing in Brazil are just as vulnerable to match fixing as South Africa's was: They are financially shaky, in administrative disarray and politically divided."

International Soccer is a huge business, and any time business collides with national interest, large-scale construction projects, and personal greed, there's bound to be corruption.

On Thursday, however, the games will start, the hearts of soccer fans from Algeria to Uruguay will swell with national pride, and some of these scandals will be forgotten (at least by Americans, who once the Cup is over, will go back to not caring about soccer). One of the great things about the World Cup, like the Olympics, is that it can unite people through a shared love of sport and the thrill of watching world-class athletes compete. As hokey and naive as that may sound, I believe on some levels that it's true. But perhaps this World Cup, and the issues it's bringing to light, can also force us to rethink these "mega events."

The problems highlighted by the 2014 World Cup go beyond soccer. Brazilians are not just unhappy about money being spent on soccer stadiums being built in the Amazon. They're also unhappy about the billions being spent on venues for the 2016 Olympics, many of which will become obsolete the moment those games end. They're unhappy because that money could be used to address crime, poverty, and infrastructure. The economics of hosting major international sporting events may have made sense at one point, but not anymore. Just ask the people in Socci or Athens. Paying billions of dollars for a few weeks of tourism and publicity doesn't seem to have much lasting economic value, unless I'm unaware of the endless earning potential of velodromes and speed skating venues.

Maybe these events have simply become too big, too expensive for their own good. Maybe we should think about picking a handful of cities that could host World Cups and Olympic games on a rotating basis. That might deny some countries their turn in the international spotlight, but it might mean less corruption and fewer wasted dollars. Because, in the end, we tune into these events for the competition and the human spectacle, and the setting means little. At least it does for me.