I Wish You Way More Than Luck

"Here's something that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship- be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now."

--David Foster Wallace*

David Foster Wallace turned 50 today.

There was, of course, no celebration for the man. He hanged himself three and a half years ago. His words- in speeches, novels, essays, articles, interviews, the monstrous thing they call Infinite Jest that I haven't yet worked up the courage to read- those genius words are the David Foster Wallace that lives on.

People given extraordinary personal freedom are ultimately then overwhelmingly and painfully alone. It is a trade-off we must confront, a double bind we must accept, a battle we must fight more today than ever. And nobody laid out a better path to consciousness and humanity and, dare we say it, happiness in the tragicomic clusterfuck that is life in modern middle-class America.

David Foster Wallace lost his long bout with these modern demons. Doesn't mean we mortals are fucked, just that life is hard, really hard, and doesn't get easier. We can avoid our own demise by staying conscious of one last paradox- the message of the man who couldn't follow his own advice.

Thank god words live on.

Au Revoir, Bruce: An Early Search for Illinois' Next Basketball Coach

If there was any doubt, it's gone now. Illinois needs a new basketball coach.

No matter how much he screams at the oven, Bruce Weber's proverbial turkey refuses to cook, leaving the Fighting Illini with five straight losses and a 16-11 overall record (5-9 in the B1G). Saturday's 23-point loss to visiting Nebraska* featured a 36-4 Cornhusker run that will serve as the signature moment of a shitty season. Much like Ron Zook's horrendous home loss to Purdon't, it also marked the end of a mediocre era.

(*This is fuckin' NEBRASKA, man. The Huskers haven't made the NCAA tournament since 1998, and have never won a game in six March Madness appearances. They proudly display memories of scintillating NIT berths on their website. For the flagship basketball program of a state that contains the ridiculously rich recruiting base of Chicago, any kind of home defeat to Nebraska should be considered a fireable offense. Seriously. Fuckin' NEBRASKA.)

Things started swell for Coach Weber in Champaign. His first team won the Big Ten regular season title and appeared in the Sweet Sixteen. His second team rattled off 29 wins to start the year (something no team may ever accomplish again) and reached the national championship game, falling just short against North Carolina in St. Louis.

And after that? Well, all the good players left. It's OK to have only two offensive plays ("motion" and "move") when your starting backcourt features Deron Williams and Dee Brown and Luther Head. Do the same with DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul and Sam Maniscalco and the results may not look so good. In seven seasons following the Final Four run, the Fighting Illini have just two NCAA tournament wins. The metaphorical lasagna that was so yummy now tastes like shitty Olive Garden takeout.

The majority of this blog's readers currently attend the University of Illinois. I tell you today- be mad as hell. Illini basketball should never settle. It should not be considered a "once-proud" program.

Hundreds of NBA players have grown up just two hours north of Champaign. If Illinois can get one of the top three players out of Chicago every year, the team should never win less than 20 games again. For some reason, though, Bruce Weber doesn't think he can get Derrick Rose or Anthony Davis or Evan Turner. There's nothing wrong with looking for under-the-radar players, but when your recruiting class has less top 150 players than Harvard, well, you might wanna hit the trail a little harder.

Obviously, Bruce Weber isn't a bad basketball coach. A total idiot doesn't win 68% of his games and get to a national championship on accident. He is, however, quite limited, both in recruiting and in strategy. His is a formula that works with Bill Self's players, not Bruce Weber's. His tenure has not been bad, but lately it hasn't been good either. Looking at this season and this blowout loss, it is almost certainly time for a change.

In this spirit, we look forward to a better future. We look for a leader that can capitalize on fertile recruiting territory. We look for a coach with a more varied and adaptable approach. We look for a personality to reinvigorate a stagnant team. We look at the men briefly profiled below.

***

ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS- It won't happen, but it'd be awesome if it would.

• Brad Stevens, Butler- Clearly the best coach in college basketball today. Took Butler to the national championship game twice. However, he's signed with the Bulldogs through 2021 and has turned down other jobs (though none as big as Illinois) in the past. It's also unlikely, even if he's willing to leave Butler, that the cash-strapped Illini can pony up the salary he would demand. If both sides are interested, though, Illinois has to make it happen.

THE REALISTIC LIST- Moderately exciting coaches due for promotion.

• Shaka Smart, VCU- The best of the realistic candidates, Smart led 11th seeded VCU to last year's Final Four. Young and coaches an up-tempo brand of basketball. Smart dude. Doesn't make that much money. Former Billy Donovan assistant (pretty much a golden ticket to promotion in the college coaching ranks). Doesn't have a huge track record, but his enthusiasm would get fans and recruits to notice Illinois again.
• Anthony Grant, Alabama- He was Shaka Smart before Shaka Smart, parlaying his assistant gig under Donovan at Florida into the VCU job, where his team upset Duke in the tournament. Though everyone loves him, his Alabama teams have been mediocre. Would have a better base to build from in Champaign. Good candidate, not great, but you could certainly do worse.

THE LONG SHOTS- Retreads, assistants, and other unlikely candidates.

• Robert Smith, Simeon High School- This vaguely reputable article says Derrick Rose's high school coach could be a serious candidate. Simeon may be one of the top high school programs in the nation, but the jump to a major Big Ten job is still massive. Would likely recruit brilliantly, but the Illini job will attract too much interest from proven coaches to warrant taking a chance on someone with absolutely no college experience.
• Chris Mack, Xavier- A fairly good coach that only gets mention here due to his striking resemblance to Highland High School principal Derek Hacke. This makes him HLA's official third-favorite candidate. 
• Some assistant coach somewhere- If this were football, I'd have the names of a shit ton of coordinators ready to go. Alas, HLA understands football way better than basketball, and you readers will have to deal with that. Hiring an assistant is always a possibility, but AD Mike Thomas allegedly likes candidates with head coaching experience (as he proved in hiring Toledo's Tim Beckman in football). Unlikely, but never say never.
• Some fired coach somewhere- Hiring another school's sloppy seconds doesn't look good, but this is the school that hired Ron Zook two weeks after he was done fucking Florida over. Ben Howland, who took UCLA to two Final Fours, could get his walking papers; Jeff Capel, Blake Griffin's old coach, is another fired commodity on the open market. These wouldn't be exciting choices, but then neither was Frank Haith- and look a how that's worked out for Mizzou.

IF THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR GOES ON A COCAINE BINGE, SEES A UFO, FOLLOWS IT TO HIGHLAND, IL, AND ONLY INTERVIEWS CANDIDATES IN THAT PODUNK SHITHOLE TOWN- These men have what it takes, but for whatever reason their brilliance continues unrecognized by the greater sporting community.

• Todd Strong- Highland High School's head basketball coach rubs some the wrong way for reasons unknown to this blogger. A fiery and brilliant leader of men, he is also a leading expert in social psychology. While recruiting would be difficult for the one-eyed Strong (as he cannot legally drive at night), vaunted assistants Sam Weber and Caleb Houchins would do much of the dirty work for him. Could use notoriety of the Illini job as a springboard to run for Senate on a post-Tea-Party platform that is really just a bunch of batshit conspiracy theories about Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and their massive left-wing conspiracy to raise the world's oil prices. (His solution? NUKE THE FUCK OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST.) With his potential to solve the problems of the world as well as those of Illinois basketball, Todd Strong is the socially conscious man's choice to lead the Illini in 2012.
• Kalen Wagoner- The greatest coach NCAA Basketball 06 for the Playstation 2 has ever known, I promise to bring my unique brand of phenomenal swag from Columbia to the Chambana area. My unparalleled knowledge and love of everything R. Kelly has ever done ensures that I will relate to the African-American inner-city youth that tend to be blessed with basketball playin' genes. I will employ my many genius friends already at U of I as the collective Jonah Hill to my Brad Pitt, ensuring our on-court efficiency with sound off-court computer engineering. We will only shoot three pointers on offense and only use an aggressive full-court trap on defense. Though I have little coaching experience, my brilliance is so obvious that I cannot be rejected for both the football and basketball jobs at UIUC. After my hiring, Illinois basketball, you're gonna like the way you look- I guarantee it.

***

It is time for change Illinois basketball can believe in. It is time for bold decisions. It is not a time to settle. It is not a time for conventionality. The leader of the program must pursue excellence with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. We at HLA are fans of the University of Illinois and would be honored to serve if called upon. We believe Illinois basketball will be great again, and we will cheer them on along the way.

(But don't expect too much. You will never be the best because you will never be Mizzou.)

Lisztomania

1. You, my three to five readers, are not getting the content you demand and deserve. Remember that while liberating Highland, IL is still my main goal in life, things in Columbia, MO demand more attention right now. For the dearth of intelligent posts I apologize.

2. Did you know Mizzou beat Kansas in basketball? It was fun. Even though it's old news, I will talk about it more soon!

3. Or not. It will take a while to write, because I like thousand word posts, which take time from actual life. And I have to cover zoning board meetings. (Journalism is for rockstars).

4. #FaithInHaith #FaithInHaith #FaithInHaith

5. Frank Haith IS an asshole, though, for sequestering his players in a hotel after the game. Mike Dixon was ready to fuck every living soul in the Tri Delt house, and possible some inanimate objects in there as well. To deprive him of this opportunity is at best mean and at worst an international human rights violation.

6. American TV? Fuck no I don't watch it. Special1TV, a discontinued British satire of the English Premier League featuring notable futbol managers in puppet form hosting their own call-in show? Seen almost every episode.

7. Speaking of the Special One, Jose Mourinho coming to Tottenham Hotspur? This possibility excites millions of my fellow American Spurs fans. It will never happen, though.

8. Barcelona should really go buy Gareth Bale and put him at left back and be the best fucking team ever. It worked wonders for me in FIFA 11, it will work wonders for Pep Guardiola in Actual Soccer 2012.

9. I have decided to produce a series of posts to help Ricky play FIFA better. His problem, of course, is that he can't score. Real life problems = video game problems.

10. In our last gratuitous thought on futbol: Zambia won the African Cup of Nations yesterday. It was kind of a beautiful miracle that featured kind of a heartbreaking backstory and kind of a dramatic penalty shootout. It makes you wonder if sometimes history really is written in the stars.

11. Is there something in Asian genes that predestines them to obtain all teaching assistantships? Some geneticist must research this.

12. Not that there's anything wrong with Asians or Asian TA's. I just find it a little ironic that someone that can't speak English is allowed to teach communications classes. Obviously this is way too much to ask.

13. "You should be getting into journalism if you have faith in the role of a journalist and believe in what we can do for society- not just because you want to go to basketball games every Friday night." -my professor, just now

14. Well then I'm fucked. Change basketball to football, and that describes me perfectly.

15. This means I need to find something else to do. Right now, that plan is "strategic communications" (read- become a slimy PR hack and/or modern day Don Draper). Not sure if this will lead to fulfillment and happiness, but then nothing in life ever ultimately does.

16. Now the professor says NPR is in its heyday? Hipsters really have inherited the Earth.

17. The title of this post is just another shameless excuse to link to some song I love/vaguely care about/have heard once or twice before. I will not stop doing this until I run through my whole iTunes library. It may take a while to get through 1268 songs.

18. I will never link to Adele though. This I promise.

19. Next year, MGMT wins all the Grammys that Adele got last night.

20. That is all. Now go look at some bitches in yoga pants.

M-I-Z - D-G-B

One week ago, a certain wide receiver announced his intention to play college football at the University of Missouri. Succumbing to the alcoholic charm of head coach Gary Pinkel and an irrefusable offer of part-ownership in offensive coordinator David Yost's booming haircare product line, Dorial Green-Beckham chose the Tigers over a bunch of lesser schools.

The positives of this move are obvious for both sides. Mizzou gets the number one recruit in the nation, a 6'6", 220-pound wide receiver that can run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds and catch any ball thrown in the 10-foot radius around him. DGB arguably becomes one of the biggest icons in school history just by committing here, proving the program's relevance after a disappointing 8-5 season in the face of a much-scrutinized move to the rugged (read: shitty offense goes up against awesome, physical defense) SEC. Condensed: there ain't anything wrong with getting good players. Ever.

(He also avoids the putrid state of Arkansas and legendary "happiness succubus" Bobby Petrino, as one would know had they followed the signing day Twitter conversation of crazy Joaquin Phoenix and fatass Spiderman).

It gets tricky when you consider the second-worst human invention of all time (behind relationships, of course): expectations. I'm not quite sure either party knows quite what they're getting into.

Many Mizzou fans expect DGB to step on the field and become not only the best player on the field, or in school history, but in all of college football. Obviously, anybody with DGB's skill set will succeed to some extent no matter who he's going up against, but the jump from Class 5 high school football in Missouri to the SEC is a daunting one. We have to realize that DGB probably won't catch 100 balls for 1800 yards right away. He will disappear in games due to double and triple-coverage and the consistently questionable strategy of Gary Pinkel and the decidedly mediocre pocket passing of James Franklin. He won't win the Heisman because his team won't be good enough.

It's not to say he's not the second coming of Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson (those two, after all, are gods). He could become the greatest player in school history. He may break every school receiving record halfway through his junior season. He may win every individual award and break every NFL Combine record and lead the Rams to six Super Bowls and get elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, but he is still a single solitary human playing the ultimate team game. He will not lead Mizzou to a national championship.

If the fans expect superhuman performances from DGB right away (as I think many do), a certain segment on the lunatic fringe will turn on him. They'll say he doesn't try hard enough, that he relies on his prodigious talent, that he's a bust. They are exactly the same people that relentlessly chanted his name for two straight hours two Saturdays ago at Mizzou Arena. When you receive the kind of fierce adoration DGB got before even committing (much less playing) here, even the most grounded, realistic people would expect an everlasting honeymoon, and eighteen-year old kids (I was one just three weeks ago) aren't that grounded and realistic.

In the end, there's little we know about DGB's college career right now. We can guess with some certainty that he has a healthy ego (or at least enough to hashtag his own nickname in a tweet). Don't begrudge him that, as anybody that can do the things he does deserves to feel pretty damn good about his life.

We can also guess what he'll expect from Mizzou fans - hell, he's already told us:

"I kind of like that they didn't get too fired up. They weren't trying to distract me from what I had to do in the game. Wherever they came from, whether it was Columbia or St. Louis or back home, I thought they did pretty good. That gives me comfort in knowing, ‘OK, they're cool. They're not going to bother me while I'm in a game, trying make me float out mentally from what I should be doing to pay attention to what they're doing.'"

The entire state of Alabama would scoff at the intensity of even the most unhinged Missouri football fans. DGB needs to realize, though, that Columbia ain't always Chillumbia; people give a shit about Mizzou more than SEC partisans currently give them credit for. I know basketball is a foreign sport in the South, but the intensity at that Kansas game? Palpable, to say the least. Faurot Field will never be Bryant-Denny or Jordan-Hare, but Mizzou has good fans that expect good efforts and good results.

Ultimately, the size of DGB's ego must remain proportional to his stats on the football field. If he lives up to the staggering expectations, he could have all the understatement and humility of Kim Jong Il and we will still love him unconditionally. If he does not - and there will be times when he simply cannot meet the bar, no matter how high his vertical leap - he must realize how bright the spotlight is. He cannot react to adversity with petulance and expectations of acceptance from fans. He cannot coast through his college career as a brief pitstop in the race for NFL millions. He cannot let DGB, the mythical supercreature, replace Dorial Green-Beckham, the tough-luck teen that just happened to hit the genetic lottery.

At some point, DGB will disappoint. Mizzou fans have not conditioned him for the criticism he will inevitably receive. It doesn't mean he can't take it. It doesn't mean this whole thing won't end real, real well.

Well, Shit

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.” 

-Charles Bukowski

I've got no idea what the fuck to do.

Not now. Not in ten minutes. Not in ten years. Not ever.

No enthusiasm. No joy. No fun. Even the most basic conversation a struggle. Always tired but can't ever sleep.

No time to do too much and too much time to do nothing.

No idea what to write. Can't put words together. Once you think you can write good and pretty, writer's block really kills the ego. Makes you feel like less of a man.

Mitt Romney is about to become president. (Though he certainly doesn't remind anybody of themselves, the man he's running against is black. Gasp! Is he also Muslim? Is he socialist for a welfare state? Does he give a slight shit about poor people? The horror!)

Football season is almost over.

Got damn. Life sucks.

It isn't that bad, I know I know. Just average first world pains combined with a mild strain of seasonal depression. The aimless and absurd ups and downs of middle-class American youth. One huge glut of insecurities to swallow and digest and shit out and swallow again. Nothing that hasn't passed before and won't pass again.

Shit, man. There really ain't anything to do but wake up and eat and try and make friends particularly girls and usually fail and feel bad and get happy and sleep and rinse and repeat and get ready to fuck the world all over again because life doesn't wait and there are mountains beyond mountains to climb.

Blogging Rule #437: Always end a shitty, pretentious post with an equally pretentious song vaguely related to the point you were vaguely trying to make but vaguely failed to articulate. The song will do all your 'splaining much better.

Most Important Meal of the Day

"I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned-beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours, and at least one source of good music…all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked."

-Hunter S. Thompson 

Say what you will about the good doctor- the man lived. His life was one great fucking time. Even though he ended it all himself, I don't think, as he raised the gun to his head, any regret passed through his mind. And that's when you know you've done something right.

I want his words. I want his life.

Think Less/Say Yes

"In the end, no one will ever give a shit who has kept shit 'real' except the two or three people, sitting in their apartments, bitter and self-devouring, who take it upon themselves to wonder about such things. The keeping real of shit matters to some people, but it does not matter to me. It's fashion, and I don't like fashion, because fashion does not matter. 

What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand. What matters is not the perception, nor the fashion, not who's up and who's down, but what someone has done and if they meant it. What matters is that you want to see and make and do, on as grand a scale as you want, regardless of what the tiny voices of tiny people say. Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a fuckload of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes. 

I say yes, and if that makes me the enemy, then good, good, good. We are evil people because we want to live and do things. We are on the wrong side because we should be home, calculating which move would be the least damaging to our downtown reputations. But I say yes because I am curious. I want to see things. I say yes when my high school friend tells me to come out because he's hanging with Puffy. A real story, that. I say yes when Hollywood says they'll give me enough money to publish a hundred different books, or send twenty kids through college. Saying no is so fucking boring. 

And if anyone wants to hurt me for that, or dismiss me for that, for saying yes, I say: Oh do it, do it you motherfuckers, finally, finally, finally."

-Dave Eggers*

Eggers is a pretty smart motherfucker and, while sometimes a bit overwrought, one of the better writers out there today. After about half of his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, I'm beginning to think the title may not be an exaggeration.

His point here is one I think about a lot, though I have little success implementing it. Even though we have greater ability to communicate today than ever before, we seem even more separated and fragmented and distant than usual. I guess it's because every time we communicate we're putting a little piece of ourselves out there to be judged, and that fear doesn't go away even for the most self-assured. In an era of constant communication, those pieces eventually add up to a paralyzing fear of opening up to new people or revealing new aspects of our lives to those we do know. And it all leads to the routine and stagnation we humans seem to naturally crave.

Eggers says, and I want to say, "Fuck that." If you want to do something, do it. If you're happy smile. If you're sad cry. If you're angry buy a Mitt Romney cardboard cutout and punch the hell out of it. If you're masochistic watch a Rams game while listening to Nickelback. Don't lie about how you feel to seem normal or to gain some perverted sense of community. Fuck the haters and the potential haters. Stay true to yourself and you won't have any regrets. Appreciate yourself and eventually others will follow suit.

Listening to the haters breeds regret, but so does not listening to the inviting call of opportunity. Better to do something and hate it than not do it and always wonder. So do things you've never done. Go outside. Laugh at others, laugh at yourself, laugh at life. You'll sleep when you're dead.

Now, if only I could listen to my own advice more often.

(song vaguely related to the larger point-you can figure out how, my genius readers!)

((plus, Japandroids are fucking awesome, so you really should listen!))

(((that is all.)))

*Eggers is a UIUC graduate! This is a fact that will hopefully please roughly one-third of our readers!

Hasta Luego, Miguel

Mike Martz answered the question nobody was asking yesterday.

The erstwhile offensive genius of the NFL has officially announced his retirement from coaching. As no team publicly sought Martz's services after his resignation from the Bears earlier this year, Martz's statement puzzled the media and the Twittersphere. Many no doubt saw it as one last, shameless grab at the spotlight by a man whose coaching star has faded- though his ego has not.

When a team hires Martz to its coaching staff, it can be sure of two things. The first: Martz will piss somebody off. He's certainly a little aloof and not a particularly warm fellow, and telling him to change his approach is a futile, if not counterproductive, exercise. His image as some sort of nutty professor, white-haired and bespectacled and shredding defenses with reckless abandon, has both made and ruined his reputation over the years.

The other, more important certainty lies somewhere more quantifiable- more points will be scored. AThe converse also holds true- after Martz is fired, less points will be scored.* The facts bear it out (Martz's years with team listed in bold):

1998 Rams- 285 points (24th)

1999 Rams- 526 points (1st)

2005 Rams- 363 points (11th)

2006 Rams- 367 points (10th)
(*Yeah, so the whole "Fire Martz and Get Worse" thesis doesn't bear true here, but after 2006 it all went to hell for the Rams. Their scoring offense rankings since 2007- 28th, 30th, 32nd, 26th, 32nd. Having watched most of the shitty games in this era of 15-65 football, I can say it was as depressing, if not more so, than the stats make it look.)

2005 Lions- 254 points (28th)

2006 Lions- 305 points (21st)

2007 Lions- 346 points (16th)

2008 Lions- 268 points (27th)**

(**With Martz in 2007, the Lions went 7-9. Jon Fucking Kitna threw for 4,000 yards. After canning their wonderful offensive coordinator, they promptly dropped to 0-16 the following year.)

2007 49ers- 219 points (32nd)

2008 49ers- 339 points (22nd)

2009 49ers- 330 points (18th)

2009 Bears- 327 points (19th)

2010 Bears- 331 points (21st)

2011 Bears- 353 points (17th)

2012 Bears- ???

I know that after 1999 the record doesn't look so hot. Remember, though, that the 49ers and Lions had shitty players during his tenures there and that he nearly led a team to the Super Bowl on the back of a third-string quarterback just last year. Maybe those Super Bowl runs with the Rams were the perfect combination of scheme and talent at the perfect time, enough to mask some of the deficiencies in Martz's personality and coaching style. Maybe. The numbers and the anecdotal evidence lead me to believe the man still hasn't totally lost it.

Let me first point out the problems with my argument. I look at his career from a kid's wide eyes behind blue-and-gold-tinted glasses. I know I'm incredibly jaded from the past five years of Rams sucking and look back on the good old days as better than they really were. I realize the zenith of his coaching career, Super Bowl XXXIV, took place when I was seven years and one day old, and at that time I didn't understand football like I do (after a good ten years of Madden) today. I understand that he's sort of a dick and kind of a mercenary and that most people don't like him, which matters in a sport with as many interrelated parts as football does.

But if you really play to win the game, you should probably want that dick on your side. The man nearly doubled a team's offensive output in a single year. So his style leaves quarterbacks and defenses vulnerable. Tough shit for them. So he likes to do things his way. Get used to it. So do Mike Leach and Dana Holgorsen, and everybody loves them.

The NFL emphasizes notions of parity and competitive balance more than any other sport. Unfortunately, that mindset filters from the league suits to individual front offices and ultimately through an incestuous coaching pool. Everybody seeks to do things the same way, the Right Way, building defense and a strong running game. Most football fans see through this bullshit. Most coaches still don't.

Mike Martz was the rare exception, and count this blogger's voice in amongst the tiny chorus who will miss his presence on the sideline next fall.

HLA's Top Ten Songs of 2011

Because everyone else is doing it, and because I'm not good enough to come up with unique post ideas, and because we must advance the spread of hipster music throughout the world.

Enjoy it, motherfuckers.

10. Wavves- I Wanna Meet Dave Grohl

Because really, who doesn't wanna meet Dave Grohl?

9. Random Guy on Subway- Niggas in Paris

Because I needed an excuse to link to this video.

8. M83- Midnight City

Because EPIC SAXOPHONE SOLO AT THE END. The audacity! Got damn!

7. Cults- Oh My God

Because who doesn't love concept albums featuring girl power vocals and creepy Jim Jones cameos over 60's pop-inspired beats?

6. Manchester Orchestra- Simple Math

Because this song and this band are fucking fantastic.

5. Neon Indian- Polish Girl

Because until there's new MGMT, Neon Indian is my go-to band for trippy shit.

4. Cage the Elephant- Shake Me Down

Because we could all learn to keep our eyes fixed on the sun- even on a cloudy day.

3. Foster the People- Helena Beat

Because it's almost as good as Pumped Up Kicks AND you haven't heard it ten million times already. (Well...at least not yet.)

2. Grouplove- Colours

Because Grouplove are the bestest new band out there.

1. Yuck- Get Away

Because that guitar sounds so fucking good I could fap to it ten times a day.
At least.

Hide Your Tebowners: A Few Thoughts on a Relatively Anonymous Quarterback

Last semester, for a variety of unimportant reasons to be examined never, I took a religion class, and got damn did I dread it. As an atheist, I figured it would be me and a couple hundred Bible thumpers of all different varieties. There would be a few C.S. Lewis-reading hipsters, and some more gun-toting flag-waving hicks, and even more average people who claim their Christian faith but do little in their lives to demonstrate it. There's nothing wrong with any of these (admittedly short-sighted) stereotypes; everyone has their own ways when dealing with higher powers, as well they should. It's just not the way I roll. I figured I'd just sit in a corner and keep my mouth shut, and at least enjoy the comedy provided by the inevitable bastardization of Jesus' actions and words into justification for bigotry and intolerance.

Of course, then, it became my favorite class, but not for the reasons I thought. The whole thing turned out to be genuinely enjoyable. Sure, there were some comments and viewpoints shared that I wouldn't agree with, but there were no examples of cray-cray zealotry. Disagreement and debate were always polite. The class centered around Christianity (of course), but nobody complained when it turned to Buddhism and Islam. When a Wiccan guest lecturer spoke, nobody even asked if he was a witch (or threatened to burn him at the stake!). People just didn't say stupid shit, and that surprised me in the best way possible.

Then we talked about Tim Tebow.

***

The genius of Tebow, and more specifically the marketing campaign that surrounds him, is that his name comes up in places and discussions it should never appear in. Athletes that get the type of incessant coverage in and out of the sporting world that Tebow has usually meet two criteria: 1) they must kill some dogs and/or rape some women (or perhaps commit the equally heinous crime of divorcing a Kardashian!), and 2) they must be good enough at their sporting day job for us to give a shit. Tebow doesn't come close to meeting either of these requirements. All he had to do was kneel.

To say that any NFL quarterback is a significant figure in modern religion is blasphemy. To give that honor to a man at the helm of the league's second-worst passing offense only heightens the sin. Yet there we were, sitting in 313 Strickland, capitulating to the ESPN-manufactured narrative of Tebow as a Figure of Significance, making him matter way more than he should.

Football, like any other sport, is great because no matter what level it's played on, in the end it's just a game. It's a diversion from the heavier issues that legitimately plague our lives and our culture and out Earth. Any individual outcome doesn't effect the course of our lives or of American history or of the universe. Despite the outsize attention and love we show for football- and this blog is one of the worst offenders- in the end, none of it matters.

The natural human impulse of finding meaning in meaninglessness has to work its way into everything, though, and that impulse has settled its focus upon the quarterback of the now 9-9 Denver Broncos. I don't know if he believes his Lord & Savior Jesus Christ actively intervenes to help him win football games. If God does exist, I hope he would help the billions of people that can't find or afford food and shelter before a millionaire quarterback that can't throw a spiral. I don't think divine intervention is the secret to Tebow's success. I sure hope it isn't.

***

Our religion class spent a good twenty minutes discussing Tim Tebow a week or so after his frantic late touchdown scramble to beat the Jets launched Tebowmania in earnest. A few people praised his willingness to expose his beliefs to such ridicule (upon which you wonder how much hatred people could really have for the player that sells more jerseys than any other in the NFL). Another girl loudly defended his right to speak his mind and wondered what exactly the haters were trying to achieve.

It was then I decided, in a last-ditch effort to restore sanity, I had to break my vow of silence and talk for the first time in the semester. Wasn't a big indignant speech or anything; I just pointed out how popular he actually is and how the underdog role he's fashioned is pretty much bullshit (after all, what bigger advantage can one have in life than God's hand actively intervening on their behalf?), and that I support people who are good at what they do*. What's so special about a guy who gets paid to play quarterback but can't even throw a spiral?

And then I waited for the backlash that didn't come.

There would be one more comment. This girl grew up in Serbia and still has quite a heavy accent, yet in her words she exhibited the greatest understanding of football and culture and religion and America I have ever seen.

"Yeah, I just don't understand what the big deal is. I mean, like he said, if Tebow's a shitty player that doesn't even matter, why should we care about him?"

Nobody had an answer for her question.