Sunday, May 29, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Rise Together...from the OKC Bombing to the Western Conference Finals
...and here is the link to the article:
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
THUNDER UP!
So, I have a new favorite team. The people who know me best know the University of Oklahoma Sooners have always been number one...not any more. The Oklahoma City Thunder have captured the hearts of not only yours truly, but the entire state of Oklahoma. Forget what the team has done to this point in the playoffs; if the Thunder go on a Playoff drought for the next 45 years, I will still Thunder Up as loud as humanly possible.
See to understand my love, we must first look back to the 1990s. I’ll try to limit my emotional nostalgia, but most of my childhood was spent watching the Chicago Bulls--more importantly, his Airness, Michael Jordan--with my ever-youthful, single mother. Every night the UnbelievaBulls played you had better believe our massive, 27-inch TV was tuned in to WGN. It wasn’t about a team for me, I was awestruck by a singular entity. Michael Jordan meant the world to me, and I would never find another athlete who rose to his Airness. Or so I thought...
...instead of finding a new player, I found a team. The now three-years-removed Seattle Supersonics (who also played the Bulls in the 1996 Finals) became my new love. I will proclaim right now: I have never loved anything as much as this team. The way they work with the community, give maximum effort every game, and carry themselves with complete humility trumps everything I’ve come to expect from a sports team.
But for a minute, let’s take a short look at the three years they have been in our community--wait, even more importantly, let’s retrace our steps to one of the most tragic attacks on American soil. On April 19, 1995, 168 lives were unjustly taken in downtown Oklahoma City. Since this fateful day (and yes I’ve chosen my words carefully), our city has been on the rise. No team, or city projects, will ever replace the lives lost. Yet somehow fate has brought our city to this climactic juncture. Yes it is just a sport where men shoot an orange ball into a hoop...but maybe--just maybe--it’s more than that.
I read an article at the beginning of this season in Sports Illustrated which detailed the initiation process of new Thunder recruits. Royal Ivey was acquired in the offseason and was also the focal point of this story...
“Now every new player is taken to the memorial, usually in the weeks leading up to training camp, and sometimes more than once. When guard Royal Ivey came to Oklahoma City for his free-agent visit this summer, he asked Presti about the crowd at the Ford Center, how such a small market generates the most noise in the NBA...Presti ushered Ivey to the memorial. ‘It took my breath away, Ivey says. ‘After that I called my agent. I wanted to be a part of this.’”
This may seem ridiculous to non-sports fans, but this team has corralled OU and OSU fans into a single arena, they’ve relocated big-businesses to downtown OKC, and they’ve brought financial support to a once-suffering downtown. Wins and losses may seem important, but when 50+ fans show up at 3:30 am to suport the team after a triple-overtime win in Memphis, I would say this team means more than winning a gold trophy.
At this point, I’ve been lucky enough to attend five of the eight playoff games witnessed in our hometown over the past three years. I’ve seen us lose to the defending-champion Lakers in Game 6, trump the Denver Nuggets in five games, and struggle against a battle-hardened Memphis Grizzly squad sifting through their own recent catastrophe. Yet, still I find myself expecting more. I know this team can do even greater things for this city. I don’t expect a championship--hell I don’t know what to expect at this point, but the potential of our hometown Thunder is if nothing else, optimistic. But I do know one thing; the Thunder will be here for years to come, and I will always be here to support them. In short, THUNDER UP!
-jh
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Best Music of 2011...already?
After 2010's epic run, I expected a bit of a let down. I knew that many critically-acclaimed groups were releasing follow-up efforts, but the year is already beyond my highest hopes. Not only will 2011 trump everything 2010 had to offer, we are about to witness the evolution of music in a single year.
Destroyer's music escapes almost all genres, yet still covers most. Kaputt's sounds are an amalgamation of soft-rock, jazz, 80s pop, 70s disco, and even big band; or in other words, two generations of junior high dances, proms, break-ups, marriages, and mid-life crises. Somehow Destroyer have covered more genres than most musicians will in an entire career--within a single album. Kaputt is ever-changing, yet oddly seamless within a haze of 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to 2192 bliss. Destroyer has honed the most distinctive sound you will ever witness: and done so with ease.
Fleet Foxes are among many artists competing with the sophomore album hype in 2011. Since 2008, the band from Seattle have been on hiatus which many critics believed to be a retooling of their medieval folk perfection in their self-titled debut. Instead, Fleet Foxes have built upon their folk origins with a heavier acoustic influence. Every track is more structured, more harmonized, and more unified than their previous effort. Robin Pecknold's lyrics are still the pinnacle of the group's potential, but in Helplessness Blues Fleet Foxes have found solace as a cooperative force.
Destroyer's music escapes almost all genres, yet still covers most. Kaputt's sounds are an amalgamation of soft-rock, jazz, 80s pop, 70s disco, and even big band; or in other words, two generations of junior high dances, proms, break-ups, marriages, and mid-life crises. Somehow Destroyer have covered more genres than most musicians will in an entire career--within a single album. Kaputt is ever-changing, yet oddly seamless within a haze of 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s to 2192 bliss. Destroyer has honed the most distinctive sound you will ever witness: and done so with ease.
Fleet Foxes are among many artists competing with the sophomore album hype in 2011. Since 2008, the band from Seattle have been on hiatus which many critics believed to be a retooling of their medieval folk perfection in their self-titled debut. Instead, Fleet Foxes have built upon their folk origins with a heavier acoustic influence. Every track is more structured, more harmonized, and more unified than their previous effort. Robin Pecknold's lyrics are still the pinnacle of the group's potential, but in Helplessness Blues Fleet Foxes have found solace as a cooperative force.
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Maybe it was James Blake's ability to reshape time signatures and rhythm into a coherent beat, or his contortion of sound to the point of elegant infraction that won the praises of critics in his 2010 post-dubstep, electronic-mash-up EPs. Whatever the reason, James Blake stared down a massive hill of hype entering 2011 upon releasing his debut album. But here, in his freshman effort, he's redirected his focus on samples of his own voice and piano, creating a simplistic, emotional, eclectic, phenomenon of an album at the most important phase of his career.
Although Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has released seven of the final eleven tracks of his latest album over the past seven months, the buzz created from his work with Animal Collective's massively acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion is at cataclysmic heights. Yet even now, before the final mixes of the album have touched the ears of the masses, I promise there will be no meltdown. Noah has found a way to make his music even more approachable at this stage in his career. His music is hard to label--even more so with my rudimentary writing--but just know this: Tomboy will be the album of 2011.
Although Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) has released seven of the final eleven tracks of his latest album over the past seven months, the buzz created from his work with Animal Collective's massively acclaimed Merriweather Post Pavilion is at cataclysmic heights. Yet even now, before the final mixes of the album have touched the ears of the masses, I promise there will be no meltdown. Noah has found a way to make his music even more approachable at this stage in his career. His music is hard to label--even more so with my rudimentary writing--but just know this: Tomboy will be the album of 2011.
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Radiohead have waited years to release their follow-up to the fan-favorite In Rainbows, and the maturity shows early on. Each track is light, tight, seamless, and focused. Radiohead have layered their sound to the heights of an entirely new soundscape. It's no coincidence that Jonny Greenwood's recent film orchestration has seeped into the Radiohead conscience. Dislocated time signatures, evolutionary simplistic loops, and constant abstract rhythms have only evolved Radiohead's sound into a futuristic eargasm. The Radiohead we've come to know and love is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
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-jh
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Top 10 Films of 2010
Well, I finally got around to it, and just in time for the Academy Awards this weekend. 2010 Started off with a bang and never looked back. Before the 2009 Oscar winners were even announced, Scorsese started off strong on a year to remember. From Shutter Island to Inception to Black Swan, 2010 provided a more than promising start to a new decade.
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| 10. Animal Kingdom Dir. David Michôd |
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| 9. Exit Through the Gift Shop Dir. Banksy |
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| 8. Toy Story 3 Dir. Lee Unkrich |
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| 7. The King's Speech Dir. Tom Hooper |
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| 6. The Kids Are All Right Dir. Lisa Cholodenko |
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| 5. Shutter Island Dir. Martin Scorsese |
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| 4. Inception Dir. Christopher Nolan |
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| 3. Blue Valentine Dir. Derek Cianfrance |
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| 2. The Social Network Dir. David Fincher |
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| 1. Black Swan Dir. Darren Aronofsky |
Best of the Rest:
127 Hours
Enter the Void
The Ghost Writer
Greenberg
I Am Love (Io sono l'amore)
Inside Job
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
True Grit
Waiting for "Superman"
Winter's Bone
The Ones That Got Away:
45365
Another Year
Biutiful
A Film Unfinished
The Way Back
-jh
-jh
Friday, January 14, 2011
More Music: A 2009 Retrospect
After finishing my Music of 2010 lists, I wanted more; So, I set my sights on the year prior. Instead of writing another long-winded Top 10 list, I've decided to overview a year bursting at the seams with fresh potential.
Grizzly Bear created their most accessible folk album to date. Raekwon found his masterpiece in a long-awaited sequel. The xx debuted with enough sensuality to make Chris Isaak blush. Dirty Projectors refined their bizarre sounds to a crystal point. Girls proved that surf rock can be more than just The Beach Boys. Passion Pit stormed the scene in a whirlwind of jovial electropop. Muse established their M.O. Yeah Yeah Yeahs audaciously, yet triumphantly, shifted genres. Phoenix mastered their virtuoso pop-rock album. And Animal Collective blew my collective mind.
But lets stop here for a minute. This may ultimately seem a foolish statement, but Merriweather Post Pavilion is the greatest album of our generation. After witnessing the perfection of "My Girls," I had to rethink the entire ranking process. Time and key signature changes are nothing new, yet Animal Collective create layers upon layers and simultaneously rewrite music. Animal Collective collectively brought me to my knees in astonishment. The Baltimore quartet dominated a year chock-full of fun and inventive sounds. While "fun" can often be mistaken for inferior, 2009 proved to be definitive, and more importantly, energetic.
-jh
Grizzly Bear created their most accessible folk album to date. Raekwon found his masterpiece in a long-awaited sequel. The xx debuted with enough sensuality to make Chris Isaak blush. Dirty Projectors refined their bizarre sounds to a crystal point. Girls proved that surf rock can be more than just The Beach Boys. Passion Pit stormed the scene in a whirlwind of jovial electropop. Muse established their M.O. Yeah Yeah Yeahs audaciously, yet triumphantly, shifted genres. Phoenix mastered their virtuoso pop-rock album. And Animal Collective blew my collective mind.
But lets stop here for a minute. This may ultimately seem a foolish statement, but Merriweather Post Pavilion is the greatest album of our generation. After witnessing the perfection of "My Girls," I had to rethink the entire ranking process. Time and key signature changes are nothing new, yet Animal Collective create layers upon layers and simultaneously rewrite music. Animal Collective collectively brought me to my knees in astonishment. The Baltimore quartet dominated a year chock-full of fun and inventive sounds. While "fun" can often be mistaken for inferior, 2009 proved to be definitive, and more importantly, energetic.
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| 10. Grizzly Bear Veckatimest |
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| 9. Raekwon Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Pt. II |
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| 8. The xx xx |
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| 7. Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca |
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| 6. Girls Album |
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| 5. Passion Pit Manners |
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| 4. Muse The Resistance |
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| 3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs It's Blitz! |
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| 2. Phoenix Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix |
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| 1. Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavilion |
-jh
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