NEVERMIND, I WAS WRONG...HERE'S WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIP HOP

It wouldn't be so bad if, I don't know, she wasn't smiling. Or maybe if they rapped. Wait...what in the hell am I saying...there is nothing at all that would make this remotely acceptable. This is probably the very worst thing that could happen to hip hop. While the Olympics were on, I found myself absolutely hypnotized by the coverage. Even by the Today Show coverage. My grandfather was gravely ill one week of the Olympics and I was at home after 8AM which, I have found, is always a horrible mistake. Because at about 7:50AM or so, the Today Show shifts from pertinent (or at least interesting) news stories to horrible, purposefully-marketed drivel. It happens instantaneously. I was sitting there at 7:51 and the Hip Hop Grannies come on and I thought to myself, "This is why I go to work everyday is to avoid crap like this." Then, I was thinking, there are millions of zombies out there watching this and I felt great embarassment. I felt embarassment for hip hop, its artists, its legacy. There are probably grandparents out there that thought the Hip Hop Grannies were awesome. I'd rather hip hop be represented by naked women and semi-automatic weapons if the alternative is the Hip Hop Grannies. I want the head of whoever booked this act on the Today Show.

Pedroia bat cleanup last night against the White Sox. We go from Manny batting cleanup to Pedroia, a 5'8"-180-pound second baseman, taking up cleanup duties. I'd be concerned if he wasn't batting .320+ and going 4-4 two nights in a row. The dude makes contact and that's what makes him ideal for the cleanup spot. You don't have to hit it out every time up--especially in Fenway where you have a 37-foot left field wall. Here we see Pedroia after the Sox secured a spot in the postseason last year--a year they'd go on to Championship glory once again.

Nice shirt, Pedroia. Since trading the biggest player of the last two decades and Yankee-killer, Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, the Sox are 18-8. The Dodgers are 12-16. It's still early, but in a move that basically was supposed to get us to the end of the year, it appears we're shaping up decently. We're not out in the clear yet. Oh yeah, and Rory, I got your message. I'd love to talk Yankees and Sox especially since the Sox took the last series in that old toilet bowl called Yankee Stadium. We'll see you when you're in town.

I'm watching A&E Biography on Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. This is incredible stuff. In my age, I've grown to be a huge fan of the Smile project which is recognized as the one album that marked the Beach Boys descension from world-wide acclaim into oblivion and also shows a mad Brian Wilson only becoming madder. At first, he called it "a teenage symphony to God," but later called it "inappropriate music" and refused to discuss it. It took 36 years for Brian to record and release Smile properly after most of the material appeared on the the record Smiley Smile/Wild Honey.

It's both depressive and hopeful, ugly and beautiful, political and blissful. Behind it, however, was a man who was so depressed and manic that he would lay in bed for weeks in drug-induced states, overeating and, because of a mounting fear of water, refusing to even shower. He had lost his mind, but in that loss, his musical genius came forth.

I'd say that Smile hits me still in the way that Abbey Road blew me away after knowing the Beatles as "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" for years. First time I heard Abbey Road, I thought, "Now that's crazy." Put "I Want You" off of Abbey next to "She Loves You" and there's an incredible level of musicianship and creativeness being achieved on the later stuff. If it were anyone other than the Beatles, you might find it difficult that they were the same group. The Beach Boys are the same way with me. I don't care about "Surfin' Safari"--I'd rather jam "Heroes and Villains" off of Smile. The dimensions of the music and the definitively bizarre sound of the music is more haunting and moving than anything the Beach Boys did prior and I don't really mind saying so.

Find a copy of Smile and purchase it. I was a little skeptical of the re-record aspect to the project, but it's killer. Trust me. Here's to Brian Wilson, America, Labor Day and the Red Sox. To hell with the Hip Hop Grannies.