Return of the Sax

Clearly, I tempted the saxophone gods with my post about the 80s ridiculous love of the saxophone because  it's randomly back in full force.

People love the saxophone again.  There's saxophone solos in pop songs such as Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory" and Katie Perry's "Last Friday Night," and even Bon Iver is incorporating the saxophone into  his songs

I guess it makes sense though.  People keep trying to bring back movies and TV shows from the 80s so eventually they were going to make their way to saxophone.

Musician Glenn Frey has to be pumped about this because he loved the 80s sax.  He's been waiting years for this.

I think his best friend is Steve Sax, not the former baseball player but a sax he named Steve.

Frey's 80s songs "The Heat is on" and "You Belong to City" are like saxophone porn.

But if there's one person who really spearheaded the revival of the saxophone, it has to be this guy with his unbridled passion for it.

Studio Notes on Raiders of the Lost Ark

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a great movie, but it could have been a disaster if George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had taken the bad notes they allegedly received from a studio executive.

Courtesy of the blog Notes From Execs, these are the notes they got.  It's a pretty funny read because they're so absurd.

Within the first couple of notes, the studio executive already dislikes the things that make Indy distinctive  including his hat, archaeology background, whip and fear of snakes.

Instead he believes that Indy be a spy or cop that bites the heads off of snakes and spits the poison at the guys chasing him.

As for the whip he says, "Whip?  What is he a lion tamer? No.  Lose the whip."

Most of the other studio executive's notes indicate that he wanted "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to be more like a soft core porn.  In every scene, he thinks Indy should be "boning" a woman.

He has a really strong affinity for using the word "boning."   When the studio executive references the girl with the writing on her eyelids, he says,

"This is precisely why he should be a cop.  Cause he's a teacher, he can't take her out back and bone her"

That's not even his best one, although there's a little bit of build up to it.

It would happen after the executive suggests Indy finds out where the government put the Ark by slamming a federal agent down on a table and yelling,

"Top men are going to be needed to put you back together when I've beaten you like a Mexican housekeeper for not letting me investigate that Ark and all the little aliens that keep flying out of it."

These notes are really like a window to the soul of a nymphomaniac, abusive, and racist studio executive.

Anyway, then the federal agent would tell Indy where the Ark is so Indy could find it and logically "bone" Marion on top of it.

Although the worst part in all this is that you realize that Lucas and Spielberg actually took one of this guy's awful notes and used it in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

"How about monkeys in the jungle in the beginning, and they help him fight those guys with blow pipes?  Indy could swing on a vine and do a Tarzan cry, it would be exciting and hilarious!"

If there was any doubt that the last Indiana Jones was an abomination of a movie then this definitely proves it.

Ian Darke: The Best Thing to Happen to American Soccer Coverage

You may not know who British play-by-play announcer Ian Darke is, but he has elevated American soccer coverage.

Since ESPN hired him to call the 2010 Fifa Men's World Cup,  he has brought enthusiasm to the game of soccer that had been missing in the United States.  

He continues to do this with his coverage of the 2011 Fifa Women's World Cup.

Darke's not pretending to be interested in soccer like some other play-by-men, he's genuinely excited about great soccer plays and it shows.

Nothing exhibits this more than Darke's call of Holland's Giovanni Van Bronchorst goal against Uruguay as "An Absolute Firecracker" in last year's World Cup (the video at the top of this post).

He's soccer's equivalent of  Gus Johnson, the energetic football and basketball play-by-play who's a fan favorite.

They both strike the perfect balance between embracing a fan's excitement, but not going over the top.

American soccer has been fortunate to have two of its greatest moments enhanced by Darke's dramatic calls.

Landon Donovan's goal to beat Algeria and send the U.S. to the second round of the 2010 Men's World Cup and Abby Wambach's miracle 122 minute goal to tie Brazil in the quarterfinals of this year's Women's World Cup were both called by him.

They're great plays on their own, but Darke really captures the elation of these moments.

With Darke signed to ESPN through the 2014 Fifa World Cup, I look forward to more exciting soccer coverage from him.

I'm Not Racist But

The website I'm Not Racist But is definitive proof that nothing good can happen when a person starts a sentence like that.

The only thing worse than that might be someone starting a sentence with "Let's eat at Arby's."

The website searches facebook for all the public status messages that begin with those words and then posts them.

It's crazy how many people seem to think the phase gives them a free pass to say whatever they want.

From what I've seen, there's a strong correlation between "not being racist" and not knowing how to properly use words such as "too" or "there."

Comments range from the curious "Not to be racist but do all Asians run like there (sic) some type of ninja" to "I'm not being racist but they were black and it seems these days that black people are inconsiderate of others."

But at least this idiocy does get amusingly mocked like this, this, and this by the website.