A few days ago I offhandedly composed this post, a none-too-positive review of an art show I went to. Then, after a little reconsidering, I followed it up with another, more accurate reflection on the show and my reaction to it. In my mind, that was case closed. Imagine my surprise, then, when I opened my email later that day to find a Facebook friend request from none other than Mr. Mararian, the artist himself. I suppose I can thank google alerts for that one.
My secondary reaction, after surprise, was confusion. Not in regard to accepting the request, but why was he friending me? Did he read my panning of his show, even if I revised my statements the next day? There was the chance that he only saw that there was a blog that mentioned him and then researched the author (me), did a simple search and figured he was contacting one of his newest fans? Since, in my mind, the only people who would ever care to read this blog are my mother and a few high school friends, it had never even occurred to me that someone mentioned as an actual subject (save for yesterday's post) could then actually read my comments.
This is naturally what real critics have to deal with all the time, so I guess it is even more incentive (though few critics/bloggers abide by this) to take extra care in crafting a negative argument. Had I know that Mr. Mararian would perhaps stumble upon my initial post, I would have been far less haphazard about my review of it. This isn't to say I would've tried to suck up to him and needlessly praised his work, but I would've been sure to have printed a more accurate appraisal of his show. Methinks there is a lesson to be learned here.
My next question was whether I should acknowledge his request in some way. I wondered if I should send him a message, apologizing for my first rash denigration of the pieces he had surely worked so hard to produce. Should I enter into some kind of dialogue? Was he expecting I would contact him? Should I make a peace offering by mentioning how much I really loved his Phobias series? Tell me, Al Gore, father and founder of the interwebs, what should I do?
Well, Al Gore didn't answer me, so I gave into my natural instinct, which is to do nothing. I accepted the request (why not?) and sent no message, as chances are the successful Mararian either (a.) didn't read my post; (b.) didn't care; or (b2) didn't care and then requested my friendship as his special way of letting me know that he didn't care.
In conclusion, the internet is a spatially unique place. Even a blog as small and insignificant as this one can still be found by just about anyone, which is a funny thing to think about when I'm writing, though I guess an important thing to keep in mind. One could use the ol', "If you don't have anything nice to say..." adage, but I think I'll lean more toward being careful that when I bash something, I better have my story straight (see: Avatar).
As for morals, I think I'll go with one of my favorite ones ever, courtesy of our good friends Calvin and Hobbes...
Calvin: Well, Hobbes, I guess there’s a moral to all this. Hobbes: What’s that? Calvin: Snow goons are bad news. Hobbes: That lesson certainly ought to be inapplicable elsewhere in life. Calvin: I like maxims that don’t encourage behavior modification.
Back in the next couple days with the first installment of a 10 part series that I'm fairly excited about.
It's not often that I get to read a real book written by someone I know. I've read some of the novels of my old college professors, but not until after I was "long" departed from their classes. So, on that level, it was a treat that I got to recently read Christopher, a novel written by my new LA acquaintance, screenwriter/author, Allison Burnett. Allison has been tremendously generous and helpful to me since I've been out here, but I'm not going to devote a whole post to how nice he is. Anyway, the novelty (no pun intended, but noticed and kept) of reading a book by someone I know would not nearly be enough to make my travels through the pages enjoyable. Luckily for me, and for anyone else who has had the pleasure of reading it, Christopher is great book.
Christopher tells the story, not surprisingly, of a young man named Christopher, who moves to NYC after his divorce to follow his dream of becoming a writer. This tale is, however, narrated by Christopher's next door neighbor, the highly literate, cunning, egocentric BK Troop, who has an immediate attraction to Christopher that blossoms into a full-blown love for his new idealistic, and unfortunately for him, heterosexual wall-sharer. Both characters are wonderful, endearing in completely different ways, and psychologically realistic. Through each other (though independently as well) they mature into better, more complete people than at the onset. (The book takes place in 1984, each chapter a month.)
There is a very clever element of post-modernism throughout the novel as, and I hope this isn't too much a spoiler for anyone, Christopher the character works on his first novel (a mostly autobiographical one), we are reading BK's version of what that novel could/should/would have been. This element brings the novel a fitting symmetry by the end, but I won't give that away any more than I already have. This is Allison's first novel as well, and I wonder how much of it is autobiographical since it kind of feels like its drawing on many elements from his own process and maturation as a person and writer.
It is a very fun read, quite entertaining, though not in a low-brow kind of way. The language is rich and the prose is graceful, but the plot too is easy to get wrapped up in. I enjoyed the many musings on being an artist and facing the obstacles of becoming a writer. That theme, which was most of the book, was especially relatable to me, particularly as I'm only a little younger than the protagonist. Granted, Christopher is much more up-and-down than I am, divorced, and haunted by a maniacal mother, but our end goals were more or less the same.
Not that I doubted the book would be good, but it's difficult to expect that a piece of art you know very little about will prove to be so excellent. Once I cleanse my palette with a bit of non-fiction (some more of the aforementioned David Foster Wallace) I'll probably tackle the sequel, The House Beautiful, still narrated by BK but without the object of his affection, after that. From what I understand, the sequel is more of a comedy that this one (Christopher was funny, but was a dramatic work at heart) and, I think, doesn't have the complete sprawl of a character's life in it. I'm looking forward to it.
If you want to read an amusing bit about how the sexual orientation of his narrator led to more than a couple misunderstandings for Allison, read one of his essays about it here.
Back tomorrow or Monday, perhaps with my tardy top 10 films of 09.
This is my first post to also run over at Pop Culture Nerd. I realize posting it here as well means today is my first ever double-dip, but I wanted to get that art show backtracking, shoddy journalism mess off the top of the queue. Though Michael Mararian requested to be my friend on Facebook, so I think one more entry to tie it all up and to reflect on the unusual nature of the blogosphere is in order.
In the meantime, my thoughts on Contra...
The second album usually determines the staying power of an artist. For every debut LP that suggests greatness, is a sophomore release that confirms or denies it. For me, the follow-up must both feel familiar—be faithful to what the band is—as well as explore new ground, because I want to hear the elements that grabbed me in the first place, but as something more substantial than just The Debut Album: Part Two. As such, after the firestorm of admiration around Vampire Weekend’s eponymous LP and the anticipation and hype that surround Contra, the question remained: Were they in it for the long haul, or would they burn out like so many former “next big things”?
The answer? Vampire Weekend is here to stay…probably.
Contra is definitely a good album, even a very good album, though I don’t feel it quite captures the simple genius or fun of their first record. Furthermore, the “indie Graceland” aesthetic—one of the elements that endeared me most to Vampire Weekend—is not as prevalent this time around. Despite this, Contra will likely be one of my favorite albums released this year. There is subtlety, thought, and purpose behind the music. Frontman/guitarist Ezra Koenig is at his best when his voice doesn’t have to work too hard and his melodies are so natural you feel like you’ve been listening to his songs for years—prime examples being “I Think UR a Contra,” a quiet, elegant tale of falling out of love, and “Diplomat’s Son,” a multifaceted yet graceful journey through an aristocratic adolescent romance (as well as one of the songs that best fulfills the formula of “new but faithful”). Vampire Weekend’s instrumental arrangements and rhythmic interweavings are even more advanced and challenging this time around, mostly to their benefit. From song to song and section to section, new instruments and lines drop in and out, sometimes sacrificing continuity, but also creating remarkable moments, such as the cascading faux-horn lines of “Run” and the layered, yelping choruses of “White Sky” (though I would have preferred if the yelps had been swapped for something nicer).
And yet…the Vampire Weekend LP was something I’d really never heard before. It was the rare feel-good indie “rock” record that wasn’t hokey. You could put it on and let it play right through—in a bar, at a party, hanging out in a basement—and people wanted to know what it was, independent of whether they even liked it or not (though most clearly did). Not to say that Contra won’t get it’s fair share of complete runs in a myriad of settings, but it sounds more like everything else this time around, even if slightly. It’s more produced than the debut, which compromises the balance of their sound. There are electronic drums and uncommon percussion and even some vocal effects, but it’s hard to find a place where any of this make their music better. For example, Contra’s “Giving Up the Gun,” while it’s new for Vampire Weekend, doesn’t seem to be charting any new territory as its pulsing, electronic background and vocal harmonies remind me more of a Postal Service song than my favorite musical Columbia literati. Similarly, their effortless, melodic sensibility—ubiquitous on the first album—is on occasion disappointingly replaced by frantic disjointedness, sections of “California English” and “Cousins” being the worst offenders.
Vampire Weekend’s guitarist-keyboardist, Rostam Batmanglij, told Rolling Stone, “Our first record kind of has one vibe, one tone. [Contra] goes in a thousand places at once.” To dismiss the debut as “one vibe, one tone” is to undersell the distinctness between the songs and to belittle the cohesion and flow of the old LP, but this quote sums up both what’s great and not-so-great about Contra: too many twists and alterations crammed into one record, but, as it is seeps into the bloodstream, enough detail and emotion to keep me coming back for years.
I'm not going to completely retract my previous entry, but I would like to point out some of its flaws and maybe think a little about some basic psychological principles in the context of why those flaws came to be. If you don't like self-indulgence, you may not enjoy this entry.
It started this morning with a response to my last entry from this fine artist, someone who, admittedly, knows a lot more about art and a lot more about what it takes to create a piece of art than I do. I, of course, know very little and one could make a good argument that, as such, I shouldn't be criticizing real artists. I'll get to the specifics of the response in a moment, but let's just say it made me reconsider.
Let me break my self-analysis down into three parts:
1.) Polarization: Writing about something, even in a venue as trivial and inconsequential as this silly blog, often seems to create this pressure to have an opinion and make a judgement. Rereading my entry about "Youth Parade" makes it sound like I pretty much hated it. And, as I was writing the post, I did pretty much hate it. Until I thought back to the night I actually was at the gallery, and realized that while I didn't love it, I sure didn't hate it. I remember making a couple complete rounds of the show, taking it in, and talking with my fellow gallery-goers about what the pieces meant, arriving at the conclusion I wrote about yesterday. Granted, it didn't take long to arrive at the conclusion, and one of the reasons I remember feeling ripped-off by the directness of the show was a melodramatic, depressing passage printed on the wall when I first walked in. (I don't remember the specifics, but it had some statistics about adolescent/college suicide among other things.) But, the fact remains, I really didn't hate the show when I was there, and yet when I started writing about it, the snowball of negativity started rolling down and I ended up with a rather scathing post. The post was more interesting to read (maybe) than a wishy-washy recounting of the show, but maybe not even that. Why did the article end up that way? Did I feel some odd pressure to either like it or hate it? When I tagged the post initially (before I started) the "bad things" tag was absent and I wasn't planning on including it--by the end it had to be there.*
* It has since been removed.
2.) Cherry-picking: We tend to pay more attention to those things which confirm our beliefs and arguments, and we tend to ignore that which challenges those beliefs. This is why most liberals think conservative pundits are idiots (okay, they are, bad example)--this is why most conservatives think liberal pundits are idiots. Anyway, I was tremendously guilty of this in my post yesterday. Now, it's a fine line between picking the strongest examples to make an argument and making an argument and then finding a piece of evidence that fits it. (For example, when I used to write academic essays sometimes I would write a paragraph and then leaf through the books I was supposed to be using until I found a quote that I could use without having to alter what I had just written.) So, yesterday, the only piece I really discussed at any length was one of the more unambiguous ones. While I still maintain that many of the pieces are saying the same thing, I completely and utterly ignored almost an entire half of the show, that is, the section with the guns with stickers on them and the different masks (only the Jon Bennet mask is shown online). What's even weirder, is that in the back of my mind I kind of knew I was doing this, but I never actually slowed down enough to really notice this and change my actions. Once my claims about the show were called into question, however, I was actually able to recall this nearly subconscious acknowledgment of my cherry-picking data, even though I mostly missed it at the time. Which leads me too...
3.) Cognitive Dissonance*: People are uncomfortable when they are forced to hold two contradictory beliefs in their heads. This is why #2 happens, so we can avoid such a feeling. When I got an email this morning defending parts (though not all) of the show I had previously ragged on, I suddenly had two conflicting beliefs: (a.) that this show was useless; but, also (b.) that a real artist, who knows more than me and whose opinion I greatly respect, did not think the show was useless. In this case, my desire to correctly appraise the art show was challenged by evidence (even if just in a casual email) that I was wrong. This whole post is perhaps just a way for me to iron out this dissonance. By revising my negative summation of the show as well as revisiting pieces in the show that were actually clever and creative, I can satisfy my need to "be more right." And, true to cognitive dissonance, I'm not forcing myself to change my belief on the show, it just happened, even to the point where I am now confident that my new belief is in fact the correct one.
* I think. It's been a while since I've studied any social psychology.
The circumstances for all of this are ideal in that my opinions about things I feel more knowledgeable about (i.e. music and TV) are far less capricious. If someone writes an impassioned case for why Glee is the best show on TV or for why Kings of Leon is the world's best band, my opinion on those two will not change at all. (I apologize to Glee for comparing it to Kings of Leon.) Another principle at work here (notice the bullet points have ended) is the pressures of social conformity. When someone, me for example, isn't confident discussing an opinion, I will be much more likely to adopt the opinions of others. My natural inclination is that I'm wrong, instead of everyone else being wrong (see: Avatar). While I'm not abandoning my former complaints entirely, I'll now admit that there were aspects of the show--the execution/precision, the stickers on the guns, the masks, some of the children--that were worthwhile. These are also the elements pointed out to me as, in fact, being good. Also, upon reexamination, I feel that categorizing the show's message as "too simple" doesn't accurately reflect that myriad of pressures facing kids. Some of the pieces don't seem to highlight a different pressure than the one before it, but many of society's ills are in fact covered.
So, in conclusion, I didn't love the show, but I didn't hate it either, and, more than that, I feel like I was the one who was too simple-minded for railing on it as I did. I guess I learned a lesson about the dangers of sacrificing accuracy when writing critically.
Here's my reparation...Mayer Hawthorne's "The Ills." I wish there was a good live video of this, but there isn't really. Alas.
I returned to the Corey Helford gallery in Culver City recently for a show called "Youth Parade" by Michael Mararian.
Did not care for it.
First of all, and most obviously, the images were not pleasing the look at--I picked the most harmless one for the heading of this post. This unpleasantness was clearly intentional and the art was meant to elicit a visceral response. Fair enough.
But where I suppose the art really fell short for me was that it was intentionally offensive/shocking to theoretically convey a message, but it did so in such an excessive manner that it failed to be effective.*
* One could obviously argue that this too was the point--that it has to be over-the-top to reach anybody in today's society--but (if anyone is making that claim) I would reject it and I think that the most powerful point is one that is given with subtlety and acknowledgement of all factors (like my go-to favorite example for all that is good: The Wire) rather than one that just smacks you over the head with itself.
The message, or at least the message that this art screams to the novice artgoer, is that grown-up society and all its ills and pressures, corrupt our kids before they even have a chance to succeed. To this I say, great. I can agree with that.* Where this show lost me is in two places...
* There's even a season of The Wire about that!
1.) The pieces are devoid of subtlety. They're blunt. I like when art (of any kind) makes me think. Take for example, a particular piece where a young girl (maybe about 12) wears a Yale t-shirt and a graduation cap. All up and down her arms are razor blade cuts. What's left to think about after seeing that other than, "Gee, people sure put a lot of pressure on their kids to go to good schools"? I agree with this point, but I didn't need to see a little girl who cuts herself to understand or be reminded of this.* Going so overboard to make what is perhaps a fairly innocuous point feels like cutting off someone's hand to teach them a lesson about shoplifting.
* To Mararian's credit, this is also one of the few pieces that actually has a background that contributes something to the piece, as it has an orange shadow/outline thing of a beautiful girl--who I thought was actually supposed to be Harvard grad & world class beauty Natalie Portman, but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, the message of this piece was still blatant.
2.) This kind of ties into the first point, but not only is there not much to think about, there really isn't much to look at either. I can only look at two toddlers with knives covered in blood for so long. There just isn't much happening on an aesthetic level. Throw in the fact that they're disturbing to look at in the first place and, well, it's not a great combination.
All in all, I think this is art in which shocking is masquerading as good. Mararian may think he's provoking a worthwhile response in me, but I'm not being illuminated as to any issues of our culture; my response is only, to be blunt as the show itself, "No shit."*
* Or, for the kiddies that read this blog, "Thanks, Captain Obvious."
Check out images from the show here yourself, let me know if you think I missed something. This link leads to the "Current Gallery" page, so once the next show goes up, you may have to navigate around into the "Past Shows" section. I'm sure you can figure it out.
With less than one week until the final season premiere of Lost, I think it's time to devote a little time to what's at stake for this season. Unlike a lot of other shows, being a dedicated fan/writer of the Lost universe means watching the show repeatedly and knowing all the connections so as to be able to formulate theories and hypotheses as to, you know, what the hell is going on. Despite being with the show since the almost beginning (I caught up on the seemingly extinct creature once know as "summer reruns" after season one) I'm not quite a Lost-scholar, so I'm going to look ahead more than I'll look back.
Where are we now? Spoiler alert: Season 5 ends with a flash of white light that may or may not have killed everybody or reset the timeline or burned off Richard's eye shadow--nobody can say for sure. As such, this season could start anywhere. It may start exactly where we left off, the white light having no effect at all; it could be the exact way Season 1 opens, our familiar characters again strangers on a plane; or maybe it'll be hundreds of years ago with those two dudes (one of them is Jacob) from the beach. Nobody knows! I remember feeling this way after the dynamite Season 3 finale (the one where Jack meets Kate at the airport and proceeds to blow our minds) in that it was possible (though it didn't happen) that Season 4 might take place complete off of the island and follow the Oceanic 6 in LA or wherever they'd migrated to. Basically, anything is in play for Season 6, in regard to time, place, and characters.
Why did it have to be that way? There were multiple occasions last season when I had to postpone my judgement on a plot twist as I needed to see if it was paid off in the last season. That is, a few things that happened last season seemed more than a little arbitrary, justified with no more explanation than someone declaring, "It has to be that way!" or something. For example, "recreating" the 815 flight seemed a little suspicious to me. Sure, this version of the flight is missing 90% of the same people, but, we gotta have Jack's dad's shoes! Let's just say that kind of device (which occurred more than a few times last season, though not being a Lost-scholar I can't recall them all [remember, this a blog, not a court case] but, trust me, this wasn't the only offense) can either come to make sense in the final fabric of Season 6 or will be exposed to be a manufactured obstacle to inject a little more drama into the last season.
Who are those guys? Speaking of contrived, I hope I wasn't the only one who was more than little put-off when Lost seemed to so proudly pat itself on the back for tricking us into thinking Locke was still alive (will he be alive somehow in S6?) by making the other-dude-on-the-beach inhabit his body. That guy was never in any episode before that last one and it seemed a little deus ex machina for that to be the secret. Speaking of deuses, check out this Lost preview...
Is this just because Spanish Lost fans are more intrigued by the notion of Gods, or is that guy from the beach some kind of God? Is Jacob a God? Are they some kind of all-powerful aliens? Is this another Matrix-type Architect thing? To re-suggest what I mentioned in bold-type-section #1, could Jacob and his adversary be two of the more major characters in this season? With much of the action taking place a hundred or two-hundred or a thousand years ago?
When it's all over... I swear that I wasn't forcing this whowhatwherewhenwhy thing until this point, the first three just happened that way...anyway. It's hard to believe, that this is all going to be over and we're going to get some kind of closure or, gasp, answers about this story. I was never one to complain that Lost gave ten questions for every answer. I, in fact, liked that*. I like putting in time for a pay-off later. That said, there better be a pay-off. If Lost thinks (and yes, by Lost, I mean Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, I imagine the show as a bizarre, smoke-like entity of its own) it's going to give us a Sopranos, No Country for Old Men, or 2001 type ending, there are going to be a lot of very unhappy people. Not that I think they will, but how can there possibly be an ending that's going to make everybody (or even most people) happy? The show has gotten into such a crazy place (time-travel, magic) that the revelation of what's happening isn't going to be some sort of simple solution, it's going to be nuts. Aside from what the ending is, it'll be kind of sad when it's all over. TV is about enjoying the ride, not getting to an end point (though Lost is perhaps a game-changer in this sense) and it will probably be an empty feeling when it's gone forever. Though, if the ending is good, watching it all again for clues and to better understand the arc may be fun as well. If end-theories are your thing, check this out one from a blogger who knows fifty times more about Lost than I do.
* If I have one complaint about Lost, it's that the dialogue and dedication to character has kind of been on the back-burner as the episodes become more and more jam-packed with plot and information. This is why I think Season 1 is the best, because it raises sufficient mystery and has a really engaging story, but also dazzles us with character building.
What...uh...What...hmm... Just kidding. Obviously I could've come up with a title that started with "what." This paragraph is basically a continuation of the one before it anyway. Now, before everything gets wrapped up, there is still one highly-antipated season of Lost. Since Lost is more of a super-movie instead of a regular TV show, so much depends on this final season. Newsweek even ran an article this week discussing how pivotal this season is to the legacy of the show, basically, this is season is the show's legacy. If this season is a miserably failure (it won't be, but consider it anyway) this show is a failure in hindsight. If the grand plan is a house of cards, in a sense, then people will always be able to say that the only reason anyone liked it is that it built up the expectations for an unattainable climax. On the other hand, if Season 6 is a huge success, does Lost become one of the great shows of all time? Right now, it seems like it could be headed for the legacy of an ambitious show that bit off more than it could chew, but took it too far (and, honestly, has another show ever traveled farther away from where it was in Season 1?) and didn't work. However, it could end up as a triumph of storytelling, a masterfully crafted epic that was always three steps ahead of even the smartest viewers, right up to its final, tour-de-force season.
We'll see. For a show that's brought such stunning highs, I wouldn't be surprised if it pulls it off. And if it's not? We'll always have Season 1...that and Mad Men.
* One last note, while I was writing this I read that Howard Zinn died. He will always remind me of this quote from Matt Damon's character to Robin Williams' in Good Will Hunting, "If you want to read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. That book will knock you on your ass." May he rest in peace.
Now, I'm no sportswriter and I'm sure there isn't much that hasn't been said about the Saints epic OT victory over the Minnesota Favres last night, but (if only just for me) I think a little time needs to be devoted to just how crazy that game was.
The Saints Were Dead. This is why games have to be watched live. No write-up nor set of highlights can ever recreate how over that game seemed as the Vikings were driving. I'd been rooting for the Saints but also for the game to be as close as possible--agonizing over the Vikings' repeated fumbling--but then was suddenly gripped with fear that the Vikes were actually going to win the game (barring a missed field goal, which, judging by these playoffs, was perhaps likely). This is why the Boise State-Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl was so incredible, this is why the Red Sox comeback against the Yankees was so amazing. In a movie, when the hero is about to die, we still have confidence he won't. Someone did, after all, write the movie and, as such, the movie will usually end well and will maximize the drama on the way there. Sports are the ultimate drama in this sense. Nobody knows what will happen. When the Saints seemed dead, in all likelihood they were dead. Except, as you know, they weren't.
The Vikings Blew It. Say what you want about the Saints' great effort, what it means for New Orleans, how their defense made big plays--the Vikings still blew it. I've never seen a team so brutally waste a chance at a long but makeable field goal--certainly not in a bigger spot. First, they got a 12 men in the huddle penalty. What!? 12 men in the huddle? How does that happen? Who's coaching that team? (Oh, right. Brad Childress.) This almost never happens. 12 men on defense, sure, that happens. But in the huddle? What a colossal penalty, pushing them just out of field goal range. Then, as a result, the Vikings had to throw the ball to try and get a few more yards. Which resulted, inexplicably, in Brett Favre throwing across his body--when he had some room to run--and getting picked off to send the game to overtime. The swing in emotion where I was watching this game (a living room full of Saints fans) was wild. Brett Favre's gunslinging ways had finally come back to bite Minnesota. After a shockingly good season, Favre's old fatal flaw reared its ugly head and cost the Vikings the game. And let's not forget the Vikings turned the ball over four other times! And twice in the Red Zone! That's the kind of loss that never goes away. Especially if you're...
Adrian Peterson. As an Adrian Peterson fantasy owner this year, I was flummoxed on the Vikings infatuation with throwing the ball so much this year, particularly in the Red Zone. I realize he got his share of TDs, but as a greedy fantasy junkie, it's not like they were dedicated to the run this year. Nevertheless, in the biggest game of the season Peterson was huge. 122 yards, 3 TDs. He did fumble twice, but neither was lost and the play where he recovered his own fumble--getting up off the ground and running ahead to dive on it--was one of the more athletic plays I saw this year. Fox gave us a great shot of him yelling about being taken out of the game, which could be labeled as selfish, but it looked more to me like a guy who just wanted it so badly that he almost couldn't understand that anybody could be playing as hard as him. I like Peterson and it was a shame he was on the losing end after such a monstrous effort. I read in Peter King's column today (I think it was King anyway) that Peterson came out of the locker room and silently watched the Saints celebrate on the field for 10 minutes.
The Officiating Could've Been Better, but it really wasn't that bad. The phantom pass interference on the Saints' game-winning drive was really the only one that I thought was bad, though there were others that were close. My argument against the interference call was that not only was the contact minimal, the ball was overthrown by too far for it to have been a catch anyway. Not that I thought the Saints wouldn't have scored anyway, but it would've been nice if the final drive had at least been penalty free. The review of Thomas' dive on 4th down wasn't incorrect as far as I could tell, but it's interesting how important those inches can be in regard to ball spotting when, (a.) most of the time the spot doesn't matter and it can be fairly loose; and (b.) spotting a ball is really, really hard and is almost arbitrary at times. Tough call for the Vikes, but it would've been an even tougher one for the Saints, so I'm all right with the call itself, even if the means of the call may be a little flawed.
Oh, Overtime. As Arizona showed us against the Packers in Round One, the defense can win overtime games, but it's always feels a bit unfair when a team wins the toss and kicks a field goal to win. I'm not saying the Saints didn't deserve it, but for such a hard fought game, it doesn't seem ideal that Favre and Peterson don't get to touch the ball in overtime. Imagine extra innings in baseball where the team in the field didn't get their at-bats if the first team managed to score. I don't think the NFL needs a system like the NCAA has, but I like the idea that if the first team kicks a field goal, then the other team gets one chance. If the first team scores a touchdown, I'm fine with it, but winning the toss and then getting a field goal seems too cheap at times. Once both teams get the ball, then it's regular sudden death, but offenses are too good these days and the toss is overly important as a result.
What a Superbowl Match-Up. Not since 1993 have the two #1 seeds met in the Superbowl. These have been the best teams all year long, they each have star QBs, and it should be a great game. If it can be in the ballpark of this NFC title game, then the NFL will certainly have made up for all those awful games in the early rounds--and, with this gem, they probably have already.
Oh, and Sean Payton Looks a Bit Like Hillary. See for yourself...
