Hit by a Pitch

If you grew up listening to The Replacements, you might appreciate this.

I just . . . um . . . I . . . um . . . it appears I have been rendered speechless by what I’m about to share with you.

If you don’t know, Danilo Gallinari is from Italy and plays for the Denver Nuggets. As we speak, the ink is drying on the 4-year, $42 million extension he just signed with the team. He’s also on my fantasy basketball team, which appropriately and lamely is named the Galloping Gallinaris (in my defense, it’s only named this because I was totally messing with the guy who kept trying to trade some dude I’ve never heard of, a melted Snickers bar, and a bag of Fritos crumbs for Gallo, but goddamn if I didn’t know better than to take that deal).

Danilo Gallinari also apparently has some killer dance moves, if by “has some killer dance moves” I actually mean something else entirely. I hate when people post videos and tell you to watch them, really, they’re hilarious, but that’s exactly what I’m doing here even though it fills me with the existential angst that results from doing what you hate people doing. I’m not only speechless, I’m also incapable of conducting myself in accordance with the standards to which I hold others. I hope you’ll forgive me, though, because I make the party start.

Much love to @nuggetsnews for bringing this to the world’s attention.

Next time I go to a Nuggets game, I’m going to bust out the Gallinari.

Because I can’t listen to local sports radio these days (you turn it on and it’s all blah blah Tebow blah blah, still, nine years after they were eliminated from the playoffs), I’ve been listening to music in the car. Also, Soren likes music in the car. Usually, before we even get down the block, he’s asking for “Dew song?” (dew = more in Sorenspeak). He likes music in the car as much as he hates when you pull down the sun visor and look at yourself in the mirror, thereby besmirching his view with your hideous visage.

The best musical entertainment my car has to offer is a CD player and a random selection of CDs from many years ago when I still bothered putting anything on CDs, plus one I got from the face-tattooed artist himself outside the liquor store by the Unsafeway  (which, for the record, is no longer unsafe). I’ve discovered that it is in fact possible, after many years, to get tired of Wale remixes, as well as pretty much everything else.

The one CD I haven’t been tired of lately is labeled, in Ben’s handwriting, “TRACY THINKS SHE’S THE SHIT.” If I recall correctly, it features songs I picked out from his music library in the early 2000s. It’s a lot of deep, housey stuff — Mark Grant, Maxwell, Naked Music NYC — I seriously can’t get enough of It’s Love (Joshua’s Mo Luv Vocal).

Because this is what I’ve been digging, this is what I wanted to put on my January 2012 playlist. But I can’t make a whole playlist of old stuff. So I took a little disco and mixed it with some Crisco and brought it back — no wait, that’s not what I did. I took a little early 2000s housey stuff, mixed it with some space disco, and threw in a few new things I just discovered today. Playlists (the exception being very meaningful playlists) are always better when you include new stuff you just found and think will fit but aren’t totally sure. I also advocate including at least one song that really doesn’t belong at all. (I was thinking about this today while pondering the anatomy of a good running playlist, which I’ll share with you as soon as I get it all figured out.)

Sidenote: How do you discover new music these days? My two favorite sources are Ben and Hype Machine. Hype Machine can be a little like looking for the perfect dress in a thrift store full of dubstep, but I always end up finding some good stuff.

Anyway, for a limited time, get the whole thing here. Here’s the tracklist. Enjoy!

Update: I forgot a song! Duh! Here is the updated playlist with the song (Stuck by Peven Everett). The tracklist should be amended to add that song at #25, then change Polish Girl to 26 and Contact High to 27. Sorry about that! Attention to detail = not my strong suit.

Here’s something awesome you haven’t seen before, short film “On My Way” by Chavar Dontae.

Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I make up random shit to worry about. Before I had a kid, this usually resulted in lengthy consultations with Dr. Google wherein he diagnosed me with horrific and terrifying illnesses. Now that I have a kid and I’m convinced he’s relatively normal in terms of physical and mental development (the early days were touch-and-go, as they say), these worries usually focus on the state of our neighborhood public school or random things that aren’t life threatening.

Tonight I worried about how, if I had to, I would explain the concept of the beat to Soren. The good news is, if it’s okay for me to say this, my kid has moves. Seriously. He can kind of dance and when he does, his movements indicate that he has at least a rudimentary understanding of and appreciation for the beat. But how would I explain it?

I suppose the usual course of action these days it to turn to Wikipedia and ignore the Please read: A personal appeal from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales while you read whatever it is you came there to read. Wikipedia defines “Beat (music)” as follows:

The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level (or beat level). In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove. In hip hop and R&B music, the term ‘beat’ commonly refers to the non-vocal layer of the song not including instrumentals, which is frequently based on a looped recording of a drum-rhythm. Much music is characterized by a repeating sequence of stressed and unstressed beats (often called “strong” and “weak”) and divided into measures organized by time signature and tempo indications.

Well, that’s certainly exciting.

The beat seems kind of like the Tao. The beat that can be named is not the eternal beat. I think it’s just something that we know. It’s a basic body and brain thing. (Is that a cerebellum thing? It’s best that I not spend too much time thinking of neuroanatomy — studying that shit was one of the worst semesters of my life.) It’s like pornography in the sense that you know it when you hear it. It’s what makes you shake your ass. It’s what you hear and like before you realize you like it. I’m a big fan of sauce on pizza. The beat in a song is like the sauce on a pizza. If I have a pizza without enough sauce, I want more sauce to the point it’s like feeling completely parched after hiking to the top of a mountain on a super-hot day when you didn’t bring enough water. If I listen to a bunch of, like, guitar rock, I want more beat. I’m thirsty for it.

It’s like this:

So maybe the beat is something you just know. Maybe you can take it for granted. But then I realize there are rules we have for Soren (seriously, we have a written list) and they’re super-obvious things but things we might have to tell him just to be careful. (For example: Wear a condom. No face tattoos. No meth. Don’t hurt other people or animals.)

I guess the beat isn’t something that can be explained in words. I mean, it can, as evidenced by the Wikipedia quote above. But shit like “the pulse of the mensural level” sort of kills the fun of the beat and, ugh, sounds kind of, um, period-y.

The best way to learn about the beat is to experience it. Fortunately, Soren loves that. He loves music and can’t help but dance or at least bob his head when he hears it. (I’m guessing most kids do this?) His latest thing, when music stops, is to do the sign for “more” and say, “Dew song?!” (For some reason, he says “dew” instead of “more” and “circle” instead of “crayon.”) So he’ll learn from experience, which I suppose is the best way to learn.

Because I’m light on content this week, here’s a video of my kid dancing to an entirely inappropriate song. I miss his long hair.