People Who Danced Onstage at Madison Square Garden on Saturday While Prince and Sheila E Played ‘A Love Bizarre’

● ?uestlove
● Dr. Cornel West
● Naomi Campbell
● Tavis Smiley
● Jamie Foxx
● Whoopi Goldberg
● Spike Lee
● Sherri Shepherd
● Alicia Keys
● John Leguizamo
● Guy in Steelers jersey who was quite possibly a Steeler

People who danced in section 302: Maura Johnston, Seth Colter Walls.

Cellphone contracts represent both the semi-sexual climax and death rattle of our civilization. This magical meeting of law, technology and corporate bravado has created a whole wild new frontier of consumer interaction, undoing along the way centuries of prevailing thought about the customer being “right” and having any power of “voting with their dollars.” It’s remarkable what we chose to accept! But if you think we have it bad in America? Try dealing with canceling a cellphone contract in France: “Go to the United States and once you are there, go to the Mairie de Californie (aka the ‘city hall of California’) and get them to write you a letter saying you live there.”

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has given each of his party’s female MPs a specially-designed ring worth nearly $2000 as a Christmas gift. The “Italian ‘tricolour’ rings which [are] made of three bands of white, yellow and pink gold studded with tiny diamonds.”

With apologies to Arcade Fire, Cee–Lo, Hot Chip and Kanye, Nick Cave and Grinderman get my vote for best music video of 2010, for the glorious “Heathen Child.” And here they go, just before the year ends, following it up with another one that feels like it was taken right out of my subconscious. Like, is there anything I could possibly like watching anywhere near as much as aging rock stars dressed in gladiator gear and leopard-print underpants, dancing in space, conjuring society’s nightmares with the magical power of their laser beam eyes? Oh, yes, maybe. How about a canary having heart palpitations and doing pelvic thrusts atop its bamboo perch, while a vampire squid swims through inky darkness — its huge, cataract eyes seemingly seeing nothing and everything at the same time? Yup. That’ll do it. These guys have got my number all right.

Here’s “Heathen Child,” in case you haven’t seen it since this summer. But remember, it still might not be entirely safe to watch at work.

Holiday confessions from a charity call-center employee: “You start off nice and easy, saving lives £2 at a time, but once you really realize how easy it is to save lives (just £2 a life!), it becomes harder and harder to draw any kind of line. A life! you think. For the price of a coffee!”

by Abe Sauer

John Kerry (D-MA)
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Christ Dodd (D-CT)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Joe Lieberman (Asshole Hypocrite-CT)

Abe Sauer really can’t stand Joe Lieberman either.

Awl pals Amy Goldwasser and Peter Arkle (you will recognize his artwork from the Rich People Things book) took to the trains to find out what New Yorkers are reading. The results are here.

by Bethlehem Shoals

Captain Beefheart died with the mark of the weirdo on him. If the twelve-tone Howlin’ Wolf acolyte who dabbled in Surrealism and late Coltrane hadn’t once been mistaken for a rock musician, his passing wouldn’t be national news. But he was, and thus became the kind of eccentric who can’t simply be ignored. Beefheart had to be confronted.

Some records don’t get reviews, they get epigrams. Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica isn’t “the sound of a generation”, “when [insert genre] grew up”, or “the greatest no one ever heard.” Instead, it’s “that one you have to listen to at least once” — after which, presumably, you’re either converted for life or come away hopelessly alienated and yet somehow better off for it. That was certainly my experience with it. It was recommended to me as a rite of passage, and although I was already listening to Albert Ayler and early Sonic Youth for fun, my first encounter with the record was jarring. Trout Mask wasn’t just noisy or ecstatic — it was ugly and proud. And yet this 90-minute song cycle could never be mistaken for nihilistic. It was creative in the most literal sense, a loud, harrowing language that had burnt away or scrambled once-familiar vestiges.

At the time of these sessions, Beefheart’s Magic Band was a bleary-eyed, zonked-out cult of blues primitivism, free jazz, and contemporary composition that sprang out of the best and worse impulses of the sixties. With virtually no money, they lived like ascetics in a rented California house and devoted themselves to music that had no business aspiring to naturalism. Their leader was imperious, even cruel — former band members claim that Beefheart denied them food and sleep, and egged on conflicts that sometimes led to violence — but also strangely earnest. The contorted, off-kilter riffs he drilled them on were his version of school spirit, if not divine messaging. There was also a satirical impulse there, something Beefheart shared in common with on-and-off buddy (and frequent biographical reference point) Frank Zappa. Yet Trout Mask is so thick with both bile and gleeful nonsense that it’s hard to separate irony from garbled prophecy. What does it all mean? Demanding in the most literal sense, this record turns the hard questions back on the listener.

Many serious Beefheart fans prefer 1970’s Lick My Decals Off, where Magic Band acknowledges the outside world just enough to treat the music as advanced, if still alien. While it’s an idiom all its own, it’s one that can influence others, not just spawn imitators. In its own haphazard way, Lick My Decals participates in history, alluding to the punk, art rock, and fusion that would follow. But it’s Trout Mask that represents Beefheart’s great crossover moment, his most abrasive work and his most relevant. In the 41 years since its release, has come to signify utter, impregnable strangeness, and Beefheart, a Great American Original who, for all we know, may have at some point been considered for inclusion in a Gap or Microsoft campaign. Trout Mask is the bum posted up in front of a fancy restaurant like he knows something about the menu.

The day after Don Van Vliet died, Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas was traded to the Orlando Magic, giving him yet another chance at a comeback. From 2002–2007, Arenas was a voluble scoring machine who put the long-suffering Wizards back in the playoffs. Arenas also had a theatrical streak, a sense of himself as performer and sports as entertainment, that only heightened his competitive nature. And then, as a sidehow, there was “Gilbertology”, the unusual, colorful, and just plain goofy behavior that made him an internet sensation.

In the nineties, Dennis Rodman’s dyed hair, piercings, and tabloid-ready personal life (I dated Madonna! I’m bi!) passed for “weird” among basketball players. By contrast, Arenas’s shtick was too unpredictable to wear thin. When Arenas was described as “weird”, it was part of a game — his game — that engaged fans in a way athletes just didn’t anymore. He put a personal touch on every buzzer-beater or scoring rampage. Every locker room appearance could yield a classic line; every magazine feature, some new revelation about what made him tick. Lang Whitaker deemed him “the first blog superstar”; between his perilously confessive blog on, of all places, NBA.com, and seeming inability to give brief, topical quotes for reporters on deadlines, Arenas needed the web as much as it needed him. David Roth wondered if Gil wasn’t “a throwback to the charismatic, recognizably human hoops superstars of the ’70s and ‘80s.” Chuck Klosterman concluded that “People are not fascinated by Arenas because his behavior is outrageous; they’re bewitched because they have no idea what his behavior is supposed to signify.”

Arenas was a confounding presence in the league but, as long as he was playing well, was also an altogether welcome one. That changed when he missed the better part of two seasons with knee injuries. No one wanted to acknowledge that the possibility that Gilbert Arenas might actually be, well, weird, in the way Ron Artest had proven himself to be. Artest was a problem; Arenas was a brand with rough edges. When Arenas’s luck changed, Gilbertology took on a darker tone, and yet for those two years, somehow waiting on Gil’s return to action was part and parcel with letting him have a personality. He came back healthy, and seemingly engaged, for the 2009–10 season, only to sent his career — and the Wizards organization — into a free-fall that January. As a particularly acrid joke, Arenas decided to settle an argument with teammate Javaris Crittendon by putting four weapons in Crittendon’s locker with a note to “pick one”. One was a gold-plated semiautomatic Desert Eagle. That shit is diesel.

What happened next remains murky, but it’s worth noting that the disagreement was over cards; that Arenas had already, reportedly, idly threatened to blow up his teammate’s car; and that DC has zero tolerance gun laws. He was allowed to keep playing, pending investigation by the league and law enforcement. Yet Gil simply couldn’t help himself. Within days, he was dancing around in pre-game warm-ups with his fingers cocked back like six-shooters, picking off invisible enemies and smiling where a smirk would have been more appropriate. His teammates, even strait-laced Antawn Jamison, surround him, laughing. Commissioner David Stern was not amused; he promptly yanked Arenas from active duty, eventually suspending him for the rest of the season.

To say that the initial incident, or the FINGER GUNZ dance, were worth the trouble is foolish. Arenas threw the Wizards into disarray — luckily, they won the draft lottery and nabbed Kentucky phenom John Wall first overall that summer — and, as he has acknowledged this year, threw away his last best chance at being a featured star. What’s often forgotten, though, is that you can’t rationally separate Gil the Sinner from Gil, Comic Genius. Last winter’s meltdown was the price of his earlier, more convivial weirdness. And yet somehow, in going beyond the pale, or suggesting a psychology that went deeper than “weird”, Arenas lost the mark of the weirdo. He returned to DC a rueful, frank character; when he spoke to the press, it was somewhere between a suicide note and the grizzled drop-out who could’ve been a contender. In Orlando, no one’s expecting the return of Gilbertology as part of the package. If anything, he’ll be graded on his professionalism, regardless of how well he plays. Anything else augurs danger.

Critique and dissent are, in theory, part of our socio-political mainstream. Rebellion is a commodity; deviance, however principled, repulses. What attracts us, though, is this construct of the Weirdo. This crystallized, kooky individualism, the notion that originality is both profound and entertaining, is also distinctly American. We care about Beefheart, and once cared about Arenas, because what made them interesting transcends what it is they actually did well. Weirdness also spills over boundaries of race, class, and gender; it makes for beloved, if ultimately harmless, figures. But it’s a delicate balance. Arenas went too far; it was by accident that Beefheart was brought into orbit and judged as one of our own. That the professional athlete ended up marginal, and the resolute avant-gardist an unlikely outpost of pop, attests to just how little control the Weirdo has over his own fate.

Bethlehem Shoals is a founding member of FreeDarko.com and a regular contributor to NBA FanHouse. Pay attention to his book and FD’s art emporium.

by Jeff Johnson and David Roth

Jeff: I am ready to talk about anything but the Jets.

David: I think that’s best. Fans are organizing sit-ins at Buffalo Wild Wings establishments across Long Island. North Jersey Living is spiking its “Rex Ryan On Veal Chops, Khakis and Looking Good At 275” feature. Fireman Ed Anzalone has been weepily sliding down the fireman’s pole, over and over again, at the Center Islip firehouse he calls home, and is refusing to spell any word aloud. It’s pretty bad.

Jeff: I don’t think Anzalone is as far out as Islip. I think he’s actually been lobbying unsuccelsffuly to have Queens Boulevard named after him since David Dinkins was mayor, but yeah, I can’t add anything more to it. Of course Rex Ryan might end up having to take the fall for a rogue Hofstra alum.

David: A fall that will have very literal repercussions across North Jersey. The term “rumblings of discontent” are not at all a metaphor in this instance. They are gastric, and they are literal.

Jeff: I was super happy to be filled with moral indignation at Sal Alosi, until it dawned on me that I probably couldn’t resist tripping a guy in that situation. The Jets have like nine great receivers. Two solid running backs. And they’re scoring three points a game. If they were doing better, and just barely blowing games, perhaps, Nick Folk would be sitting on the shaky bar at the hydrochloric acid dunk tank, but…

David: Sanchez is the weak link to me. The handsomest, and far more natural than Eli in those Toyota commercials, but also just the crummiest of late.

Jeff: Do you think the Bears and Vikings are right to be concerned about a frozen field?

David: Yeah, kind of. I mean, I think they’re more right to be concerned about it than Tom Waddle is to call them fruits for being concerned about it. There’s a lot of work that needs to be done for that field to get even faintly usable. I’ve written a lot about this for WSJ this week. I mean, I’ll still watch the hell out of the game, though. I’m looking forward to the steaming lineman head and shivering punters and idiotic my-tribal-tats-keep-me-warm sleevelessness from tough guy nose tackles.

Jeff: Waddle said they were fruits? Couldn’t they just put some heated tarps on the thing for a couple of days and soften it up? They have a thing there called a snow dragon. That’s in there melting snow in bulk.

David: They actually are putting a tarp down, by the way. That’s how they’re doing it. They were supposed to cleared the field Saturday, and then put a tarp down and blasted heat under it for two days or so. There’s like a two-inch sheet of ice on the field now.

Jeff: I’m excited to see Joe Webb start. Tarvaris Jackson was trying to play like Jim Nabors against the Gions (Note: I don’t know who the Vikings are, where they play anymore, or whom they play. I do wish they would have brought “Geoff George” out of retirement, though).

David: I guess because he had turf toe? That particular ailment is way mis-branded. It sounds kind of embarrassing, like something there’s a special niche Tinactin for, but it’s apparently is a nice way of saying “the bone melted” or something horrible like that.

David: Also, Waddle didn’t say they were fruits for complaining. Columnists did. And Chris Kluwe is tweeting his discontent and none of the players seem all that pleased about it. I suspect Dan Hampton said they were fruits, probably through a mouthful of beef somewhere in the upper Midwest.

Jeff: Most of Dan Hampton below the belly button is all held together by brass hinges, I think. Richard Dent was always my favorite Bear. He once propelled himself over the offensive tackle, parallel to the ground and sacked the quarterback that way. Like a Hovercraft.

David: They put a tarp down on Dan Hampton’s lower body, too. Trying to get the cheese in his veins melted and recirculating.

David: I want to know more about the Snow Dragon. Really I want to pilot a Snow Dragon. Or be in a band called Snow Dragon. That mostly plays White Lion songs.

Jeff: I thought it was like a Zamboni, but apparently it’s just a furnace that they attach to a pick up truck and dump snow into it to melt. I was hoping it was a moving melting machine. Growing up in Wisconsin this is a fantasy you have. Something that’s like a Domino’s oven on wheels, blowing extremely hot air on the pavement, but then you realize it would destroy the roads, and funding is stripped by your new governor who was too smart to finish college.

Jeff: I was thinking of going to this game as I will be in the midwest. But I don’t think my kid is going to want to stand in line to race to the good seats at 4PM for a 7:30 start time. That is horse shit. Though it would be the game to bring him to because no one will be getting drunk (er) at the stadium.

Jeff: So maybe I will make an appeal to OLD PEOPLE in the Twin Cities.

David: Our core readership. Elderly people in and around Mankato of Swedish descent.

Jeff: Older season ticket holders. Who have 100 level seats. YOU DO NOT want to be out in that weather. You are 64 years old. Sell me your tickets.

David: Do the right thing, Mr. and Mrs. Lundegaard. Let Jeff and his kid sit outside in six-degree weather for seven hours. (I’m trying to help)

Jeff: Actually, it’s going to be way, way too cold. The novelty of seeing the Vikings outside in Minnesota for the first time in 30 years is not worth it. This will be the 1,158th time I have mentioned this, but I got to meet Walter Payton and Eddie Payton outside of the old Met Stadium as a child after a game. This was, of course, long before the ’85 Bears. Walter Payton was a mythically awesome figure in my childhood. But conjuring that nostalgia up when the reality is Jay “Natural Light Face” Cutler and Matt Forte trying to hang a 5–3 victory on many Vikings who don’t seem to want to be there might be impossible. The Bears game against the Patriots was like watching Dog The Bounty Hunter trying to strike up a casual conversation about law enforcement with some senior CIA guys. “Whadda you, uh, sorry I got ranch dressing on your suit, there, Ace. I’m packing a Ruger in my tube sock. And also a butter knife.”

David: I feel like Martz is going to crank up the weird for the cold weather. “When it’s this cold, you want your tight end throwing a lot of passes.” I didn’t see the Pats/Bears game, but I saw the box score.

Jeff: It finally hit me that Mike Martz reminds me of Lars Thorwald/Raymond Burr from Rear Window…Anyway, Wes Welker kept jumping up from passes that he caught acting like he had discovered gold. Like no one has attempted to catch a pass in the snow before. I think if I was making a million bucks I would be out there “trying hard” in all kinds of weather.

David: I also saw a lot of guys in Urlacher jerseys wandering around the Upper East Side that night, looking forlorn. All the brashness the Urlacher jersey usually gives you was gone.

David: So are the Patriots as good as they’ve looked? I’ve mostly seen box scores, but they’re beating teams by 2007 margins. By Steve Spurrier retardedly trying to game the BCS computer margins. Also, do you feel like we don’t talk about the Patriots enough?

Jeff: Yeah to me the big thing is they are just are making zero mistakes. Which really sets them apart right now from almost all NFL teams. There’s a lot of bad football being played for it to be so late in the season. Like to the point where the ball looks a little strange to most of the players even. “We’re supposed to do this tackling thing on everyn play? That seems a little odd. I kinda just like watching the guys run past me.”

David: It’s the better coaches who don’t have to remind the guys of that too often. I imagine the really worn-down ones are just like “You know, whenever you can. It’s cold, I get it.” Marvin Lewis is just reading an old issue of Self and listening to Luther Vandross on his headset and just generally doing his best to convince himself he’s somewhere else… If you were the Bengals owner, you’d keep forgetting that the Bengals exist. Getting stuck in traffic every Sunday and being all pissed and confused like, “Every Sunday, I swear, without fail. Unbelievable!”

Jeff: I have some sympathy for some owners. By they way I saw in the comments of your column Friday — speaking of owners — that someone had linked to that blessed rundown of Daniel Snyder’s high-octane assholery in D.C.. Unreal.

Jeff: I think I am going to cheer for Tampa Bay to run through the playoffs in the NFC. I don’t really like any of the AFC teams. I wish Cleveland were doing well.

David: I think by their standards, or like relative to expectations they actually kind of are? They’re playing over their head.

David: Losing to Buffalo is always bad, though. It’s rude, more than anything. The NFL equivalent of leaving one little square of TP hanging on the roll in someone else’s bathroom. That’s what kicking a field goal from the one-yard line in the first quarter against the Bills is. Which the Browns actually did last week. I am aware that the TP thing pertaining to the Browns is gross, and I am sorry.

David: Tampa Bay is not actually good, which makes me like that they’re winning. I still don’t think they’ve beaten a team with a winning record. And they only beat the Redskins because that poor kicker had the worst day of his life and because the entire Redskins team is in open revolt against Shanahan. It’s like a really violent, really overpaid episode of “Hogan’s Heroes” down there. LaRon Landry’s trying to dig a tunnel to Aberdeen, Maryland and then will be like “Follow me to freedom! And a Ruby Tuesday’s in a mall!”

Jeff: are there any teams this season that like their coach? Steve Spags in St. Louis?

David: The Steelers. I suspect that Spagnuolo brings a lot of appetizers from home in an attempt to curry favor.

Jeff: I have a feeling Spagnuolo tolerates less shit than Coughlin. There’s a chance that he will punch your wife and kid if you get out of line. Stop practice and drive to your kid’s school and give him a spanking

David: Bringing caponata to the linemen meeting. “My nonna made it. It’s vinegary because of the olives, so look out for that.”

David: Well, that’s like Coughlin’s secret thing, right? He looks like a psychopathic Jesuit. Like Savonarola in khakis and an ill-fitting windbreaker. But he actually doesn’t enforce much discipline on the team. He just yells and ensures that everyone gets to practice five minutes early. But then the whole team loses their helmets for a whole day, or Justin Tuck invents a sack dance that involves dropping his pants and he’s just kind of too screamed-out to do anything about it.

Jeff: I do like Barry Cofield’s dance.

Jeff: Coughlin did have gum the other day again. I saw that.

David: The simple pleasures. He enjoys his white wine vinegar-flavored Dentyne. He enjoys that, and he enjoys punctuality, and he enjoys buying pants at the golf superstore on Route 17. He was very complimentary about the service the team got at the Marriott in Kansas City after they beat Minnesota last week. But that’s about it.

Jeff: I forgot about that. That post-game speech went on for hours. Like he was a victim of some war atrocities. “Let’s not forget that an unforgiving God put our team in peril. In a sea of confusion. I just don’t know what you can do anymore. There’s only so much you can take. It was just a lot for us to handle.” It’s called a snowstorm, you fucking jackass. Get a club sandwich and do a jigsaw puzzle and wait it out. Holy shit. Put that Hoagy Carmichael CD on. Yes, Tom. The NFL got very impatient and decided to move on without you and the Vikings. As a result, you are out of the playoff hunt, and your dog was also euthanized.

David: Oh, and here’s another thing he enjoys: challenge flags. There was a good moment when he threw one last Sunday and he was kind of shuffling down the sideline with it really fast. It looked like a Candid Camera episode in which a mean priest was persuaded to chase a dollar bill down a sidewalk.

Jeff: I wonder when Cowher will be coming back?

David: I hope he stays away a bit. He needs to take it easy. I have a friend who swam against Cowher’s daughter in high school. She said that you could hear Cowher cheering for his daughter — really screaming exhortations at his daughter — from underwater, really clearly.

David: To be clear: she was hearing this from underwater. Cowher was above water. Unless it was an emergency, in which case he’d jump in and hold up signs with messages like “INTENSITY” on them.

David Roth co-writes the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix, contributes to the sports blog Can’t Stop the Bleeding and has his own little website. And he tweets!

Jeff Johnson tweets here. He is also responsible for doing weird things with old sportscards here and here.

What a week it’s been! Thank you for your patronage. So if hearing five writers reveal all (or most!) about their book editors got you down, then go go change all your Internet passwords again and put on some Christmas music and learn how to make yourself some guido honey balls (that’s a technical cooking term!) so you can get off the Internet now. Go! Run!