Linkatharsis: Collegiate

Reading some of my favorite blogs that have been discussing the upcoming football seasons, I'm struck by how blah I am about it, both college and NFL.

It's not that I'm not interested. I am genuinely pissed that I missed two fantasy drafts because of personal obligations and haven't gotten around to undoing the damage done by Yahoo's auto drafter. But I'm not checking ESPN on the hourly or trying to arrange Carolina viewing parties with other Tar Heel alums in the city like I used to. Shit, I don't even know a single Heisman candidate east of Los Angeles.

I blame living in New York and Carolina's happy mediocrity. I'm removed from the college football mentality (yes, Chapel Hill is a football town) and half the people I knew when I moved here are elsewhere or out of touch now. Plus, that the Carolina Panthers can't put together two non-awful seasons together makes it hard to get excited about anything they do.

And I guess I'm no longer spending every morning watching 3 SportsCenters over a bowl of cereal and wondering whether I should study at school or on the beach. Seriously, if you have a year or two to mess around and not advance your career, do it in South Beach. You won't regret it.

So everyone on the World Wide Interweblogosphere is talking about Late Registration and the 9.5 score from the grand arbiters of taste at Pitchfork. If you're scoring at home, that's 0.5 higher than Clappy.

Dude, I'm skeptical, but like Ian (I think), I'm willing to give it a chance because of the score, as much as I hate to admit it. I've listened to about five songs off it and I'm thinking it's okay, not great. I'll go on over to iTunes to give the rest a listen.

But are we seriously talking about a Album of 2005 candidate that features the Maroon 5 guy? Really? And 50 years from now, when we're living in spaceships and eating fois gras in pill form, you know we'll be talking about how we thought it was okay to let Jamie Foxx take his Ray Charles act on the road.

For more about the kids at Pitchfork who point us to socially acceptable music, check this piece in NY Times.

To coincide with the release of Late Registration that will surely change the face of hip hop, NPR's Fresh Air is celebrating Hip Hop Week by airing interviews (some recorded and aired previously) with artists whom Kon the Louis Vitton Don will render irrelevant.

Pioneers Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel and Kool Herc were featured Monday and today we move to the mid-80's and the Def Jam era with Russell Simmons, Run-DMC, L.L. and Public Enemy.

Why am I mentioning the Steph Klein spoof in three straight posts when I don't even read the stupid thing (Greek Trag, not ToTS)? This is the last one for foreseeable future, I swear.

Tale of Two Sisters has now moved over to Typepad where they won't get shut them down for some bullshit cease-and-desist, because you know, they're paying customers and all.

I don't check out the Gothamist comments section as much as I used to because after a while, it's really the same ol' same ol'. But then you stumble upon a gem like this, What can I say? Me like potty humor.

George W. Bush, quickly becoming the Celine Dion of US Presidents - adored by his staunchest supporters, vilified by non-crazy people.

Within the next 48 hours, Michael Owen will be sipping Newcastle Brown Ale and sending "Wish You Were Here" postcards to Beckham and Zidane.

You kinda had to figure he wasn't coming back to Liverpool and all the Cisse-to-Lyon speculations were just that, speculations. I would've liked to have seen him back on Merseyside but once Newcastle put in the 17 million pound offer, there was no way Liverpool was going to cough up that much, especially when they only got 8 million to send him to Madrid. Plus, there are more pressing needs, backline and right midfield, though we might have to wait until the January transfer window to fill those holes.

I'm glad that Owen will be getting regular playing time, especially with the World Cup looming next year, but it's a shame that the deadliest English striker this side of Wayne Rooney will not play in Champions League.

I imagine my readers are, well, intelligent enough to dismiss intelligent design as bullpoopoo non-science but if anyone tries to lay the crap on you, save yourself some time and send this link that debunks the shit out of it:

But saying, as intelligent design proponents do, "You haven't explained everything yet," is not a competing hypothesis. Evolutionary biology certainly hasn't explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn't yet tried to explain anything.

Jaymay has a bunch of shows in NYC coming up, says brooklynvegan.

Finally, NOLA View weblog (and NOLA.com) has been reporting several times a day on Katrina. Could've been much, much worse but the levees have failed and that's bad news when you're lying below sea level.