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Paul Wesley

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Everything posted by Paul Wesley

  1. I'm just putting this here because I'm sure someone here likes it. A few of you really belt it out when you're in the car and no one's watching. I mean, not me though. I use antlers in all of my decorating.
  2. The time I've spent with a guitar in my hand - or just doing anything creative - has probably declined to an all-time low in 2023. I've had a constant feeling of being overwhelmed and stressed and starved for time. Some of that is real and some of it is probably imagined - i.e. I haven't been super productive with the time that I *do* have. So for me, offering to coordinate a writing group is just an attempt to salvage what's left of the year, and to show some grit even though I'm not feeling super gritty. I'm just trying to create some self-accountability. In the past, when I was trying to finish an album, I would book a studio/engineer and a rhythm section, with the goal of doing drums/bass and scratch vocals/guitar on four songs in a day. Invariably, when I confirmed the session, I only had 1.5 songs and then maybe a riff and the fourth song usually didn't exist at all, and then I'd have two or three weeks before the recording date to get them done. I've written several songs at 3am when the band is showing up at 10. I subscribe fully to the Duke Ellington observation: "Don't give me more time. I don't need time. I need a deadline." Anyway, I've never been part of a songwriting group, much less led one, but here's what I'm imagining: 1. Every month, you get a three or four prompts to pick from. A couple of them can be specific (tempo or key or style) and a couple can be broad (topics or a short lyrical phrase that you have to use). Everyone can throw one out or email me suggestions and I'll come up with them. There are a shit ton of "songwriting prompt" websites to steal from. 2. An iPhone recording is probably going to be the default format. If y'all want to do zoom or in-person, we could do that too. We *could* start a thread in this forum, but I imagine people (maybe including me) would be more comfortable sharing things on a zoom call or an email chain. 3. Something due on the first of the month from now through Jan 1. That's a fairly self-limited commitment, and seems both ambitious and achievable. I would LOVE to have five songs done or semi-formed by New Year's By comparison, the Mraz/Schneider song game - which I was never part of - had a song due every Friday, and you were kicked out of the group if you didn't submit something. https://www.npr.org/2013/11/24/246755925/for-a-few-musicians-beating-songwriters-block-is-all-in-the-game One song a month is a WAY lower bar, though maybe we still have to use the threat of an Amish shunning in order to hold everyone accountable. I'm open to suggestions for a format that is most inclusive and most helpful. Tell you what, if you want "in," then "like" this post with the Gritty Fuck Around and Find Out icon. I don't know what's a reasonable quorum (maybe eight people minimum?). If we get a quorum after a few days, I'll PM everyone, and I imagine it will probably be easier to operate offline, like we'll start a new email chain for each month. In the meantime, change your fucking strings and get your gummies ready.
  3. Not sure which thread to put this question on... I'm curious how much interest there would be in a songwriting group. And if we had one, how would it function? Prompts would have to allow for a variety of styles. Songs due on the first? Publish them on this website, somewhere else, in person, ? Maybe have one song due on the first of each month through New Year's? I would maybe be down to run something for the rest of 2023.
  4. AUTF, nice guitar. Congrats.
  5. I agree with all of this, but wanted to add: The exact same player behaviors are reported differently depending on how the team is doing. A guy who is always laughing and singing along to his music and playing practical jokes.... when you're 8-0, all his teammates will nod along and smile and say "we like to keep it loose." If they're 0-8, then he's a clown who doesn't care about the team. --- I think that as Texas has been stumbling and bumbling since 2010, this "culture" stuff is often more imagined than real. After six years of Vince and Colt, and after a couple MNC games and a couple other top-5 finishes, Mack Brown should have had our roster ***full*** of NFL talent from top to bottom. But he didn't. He was too busy saying "No, thank you" to RGIII and Johnny Manziel, and Texas spent the next decade playing against guys like that, while our own offenses were led by Case McCoy, Jerrod Heard, and Tyrone Swoopes. It was just as bad on the offensive line, where we had another position group that was likely one of the 3- or 4- worst in the conference for a fucking decade. Was that a "culture" problem? I would argue that it was 80% a roster problem - some combo of failing to identify and failing to sign the best players in your home state, and maybe 20% everything else (coaching, strength and conditioning, "culture"). I mean, Case and those JAG linemen could have been choirboys with Navy-Seal levels of discipline, and they weren't going to win the conference simply because they had sub-par talent. Hell, in the Manziel documentary, we saw behind the scenes during his 11-2 freshman season. Those Aggie teams didn't have winning "culture." Yes, Manziel was a great college QB, but they were a salty team because just before Sumlin took over, Mike Sherman had filled the offensive roster with NFL linemen and skill position players. The filmmakers didn't even mention that in passing. They just told us that a perennial Big 12 doormat became an SEC juggernaut the day Manziel showed up. Without all that other talent around him, his college career would have looked a lot more like Mahomes (brilliant QB talent on a .500 team). Maybe a better example would be the 1980's Miami teams, who were all about strippers, cocaine, hot tubs, and South Beach nightclubs, and yet played for the national championship year after year after year in spite of their culture. Meanwhile, the JAGS playing for the service academies were waking up at 4am, working their asses off for 18 hours a day, and winning jack shit. tl;dr Having more talent than everyone else will get you do double-digit wins WAY more consistently than having "culture."
  6. Yeah, that's staggering. And yet we can be pretty sure there's more. Maybe a lot more.
  7. I just find it impossible to feel good about Mike Pence or (or Chris Christie) when - in 2023 - they get heckled by Trump's deluded, cult-like followers. It's like watching a horror movie where the monster goes out of control and kills the scientist who made it. Those guys vigorously and willfully contributed to the creation of this American monster.
  8. I definitely didn’t say that. I was reacting to you saying “everyone does it” in a thread about the starting quarterback betting on his own game. Yes, I’m sure tons of athletes gamble on sports. No, I don’t think a bunch of Power-5 starting quarterbacks were using their parents as shills to bet on their own games.
  9. Dude, you've responded to me three times on this page to call me out, and you're absolutely wrong. The subject is betting on your own team. So follow me here: "Integrity of the game" means that all the fans and spectators can reasonably believe that they're watching a fair contest where each contestant is acting in the best interests of the program/school/team. Betting against yourself, or shaving points obviously makes the contest a sham. But betting ON your own team also destroys the integrity of the game, because there are hundreds of scenarios where the gambler's interests MIGHT fall out of line with those of their team. - A baseball team is down three runs in the eighth inning, and the bullpen is thin. In many situations, the team that is losing is better off saving certain pitcher(s) for tomorrow's game. But if Pete Rose bet big money on THIS game, now he's motivated to squander those players on the small chance of a comeback even if it makes his team much more likely to lose tomorrow. - A football coach has the outcome of the game in hand, but he's up 17 in the fourth quarter and the spread was 21. He's motivated by $ to keep valuable starters on the field to get one more meaningless score, even though the best interest of the team is to keep those guys healthy and available for the rest of the season. - A team has a meaningless game this weekend. Regardless of the outcome, the conference title will be decided next week. But the starting QB, who's been nursing a sore shoulder all season, has put a big bet on this week's game, and now he's motivated to misrepresent his health to the coaches in order to win the game that matters to HIM, even in a situation where it makes his teammates less likely to win the game that matters to everyone else. College football has betting lines and injuries are a big part of the game. These situations happen regularly. If coaches and players are putting money on their own games - EVEN IF THEY BET ON THEMSELVES - then every single Saturday, we'd be watching contests where players MIGHT have an interest other than 1) win, 2) stay healthy, 3) consider big-picture goals such as conference championships, etc. That ABSOLUTELY destroys the integrity of the game. Why? Because when the ball is kicked off, no one - including administrators, coaches, teammates and fans - could know whether they're watching a contest where those conflicts of interest are in play. Either you have no idea how gambling works or you don't understand what "integrity" means.
  10. When coaches and players bet on themselves, it creates situations where their betting interests MIGHT not align with competitive interests. When you kick off or throw out the first pitch with that possibility, it ABSOLUTELY destroys the integrity of the game. Read it again. It’s not the least bit contradictory.
  11. Betting on your own team absolutely destroys the integrity of the game. You might behave differently (use a pitcher who ought to be saved) if you’ve got a big $$$$ on *this* game. I understand that the argument isn’t as straightforward for a player betting on himself, but it’s a line that just can’t be crossed, and anyone who does it should lose eligibility. Al, you’ve got to be fucking joking with “everyone does this.”
  12. OK, but how would that compare to the weekly Notre Dame TV ranking from the 80’s and 90’s? I’d bet they were in the top-2 or -3 games every week. Not to mention: they used to finish the season in the top five as often as not, and that’s not happening anymore either. They’re still a powerful national brand, and they’re gonna get courted by all the super conferences, but considering where they came from, I think Deej is right - seems like they’re still overplaying their hand.
  13. Watching Trump talk, it's just so plainly obvious what a vile, selfish, malicious person he is, and how little he fucking cares about America or anyone in it. But watching Christie talk makes me way more ragey, because Christie embarrassingly rolled over like a little fawning bitch to enable and justify selfish and anti-American behaviors (up to and perhaps also including overthrowing American democracy), but then almost immediately, he goes out and claims the moral high ground and wants us to know he's principled and steadfast, and he's the antidote to the monster he enabled for half a decade. Remember that Trump gave Christie covid when they were doing debate prep in 2020. Not ten or fifteen years ago, where he could have some plausible deniability, but 20fucking20... looooooooooong after we saw Trump make a political career out of racist claims against a black man's Americanness, mock a reporter's disability, talk about his own daughter in sexual terms, cavort with Epstein, brag about getting away with serial sexual assault, insult the parents of a man who died fighting for this country, extort Zelensky, stand on an international stage in Finland and repudiate American intelligence agencies in favor of sucking up to Putin, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. If I were interviewing Christie, I would lose my fucking mind if he tried to say, "I just didn't know how bad Trump was."
  14. Didn't know he was on that podcast. I'll attempt to listen to it, but very likely it will end early with me screaming/swearing and turning it off in disgust. He can come across as reasoned and principled as long as you set aside the fact that he carried Trump's water for FUCKING YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS. He can persuade you that he'll crush Trump in a 2024 debate as long as you set aside the fact that THOSE EXACT DEBATES HAPPENED IN 2016.
  15. The Willie anecdote is pretty remarkable. As if we needed another anecdote to tell us what kind of person Willie is.
  16. Pretty much all you can say, right? Texas fans like to do charts like this for 2008 for Texas vs OU vs Tech. Or 2008 Texas vs Florida. We pretty clearly had a better resume than either OU or Florida, but there was a shit ton of clowning in the coaches' poll (like guys in the Stoops coaching tree voting OU #1 and Texas #5), and that was the year Tebow made his "no one's gonna work harder than me" speech - which the media fucking LOVED (and ignored that it came after Florida lost a home game to a .500 Ole Miss team).
  17. Doh!! I misspoke. I should have said that the same argument that kept *Texas* out of the championship game in 2008 ("should have won your own conference") was suddenly absent a few years later when conference champion Oklahoma State was screwed in favor of an Alabama team that lost a home game and didn't even win their own division.
  18. Great post. 1). Isn't it crazy how much offensive NFL talent Sleepy Mike Sherman was able to assemble for a bumbling and inept Aggie team around 2010-2012, while Texas - fresh off a string of MNC games and multiple top-5 finishes - had no viable quarterbacks, a bunch of skill-position JAGs, and one of the worst offensive lines in the league? 2). Totally agree on 2011 Oklahoma State. They got screwed out of the championship game they deserved. And the argument that was used to deny them their chance ("got to win your own league") was completely abandoned in order to hand Alabama a mulligan and a crystal ball a year or so later.
  19. Just to add: I realize that my post seems equally hopeless, but if Hoyt Richard’s can get out of a cult, there’s still hope for my right wing email-forwarding uncle (who almost certainly sent Trump some money, but still has his hair).
  20. Brisket, you might be right. But that kind of nihilism feels to me like trying to drive out darkness with darkness, and I’m just not willing to live with the resulting hopelessness.
  21. Well, I can't take credit for it. I listened to a podcast the other day where cult survivor Hoyt Richards used the phrase. He recounted leaving the "Eternal Values" cult - and after more than a decade of giving them millions of dollars while they shaved his head and performed group rituals where they verbally abused him, he STILL was vigorously resistant to labeling the group he had left as a cult. This was after many, many years of his very closest friends and his family doing big, coordinated interventions to confront him with "YOU ARE IN A CULT!"
  22. I got no hard feelings for Colorado. I don't know if they were trying to get ahead of seismic realignment or not. I think maybe they just took a big drag from the water bong, and turned down their Phish bootleg long enough to recognize their kinship with Portlandians (and their lack of kinship with the Southwest and the Great Plains).
  23. You probably weren't inviting actual responses, but I think about this question all the time. Forgive me for taking a stab at an answer: 1. Right-wing media has the format and the appearance of news. But instead of news, it relentlessly broadcasts conspiracy theories, and then lines up well-groomed anchors and fake authorities to repeat well-choreographed talking points that are always cynical ("all government is bad"), paranoid ("the left is trying to destroy your white, Christian culture"), aggrieved ("your vote was stolen"), and deeply hostile to experts ("Arrest Fauci!"). Almost every item they broadcast validates and reinforces their viewers's beliefs along one of those axes: government should be destroyed, liberals are evil, deep-state experts are wrong, and you (viewers) have been violated. 2. Conspiracy theories are infinitely more seductive and persuasive than nuanced policy discussions. 3. Experts on civil war (Barbara Walter's book is great) tell us that widespread political violence is most likely in countries that have tainted democracies (she doesn't use that language... she calls them anocracies), and is also far more likely when there is a demographic shift where one ethnic group knows that it is losing its ruling power. 4. It's pretty easy to fool people. It's nearly impossible to convince people that they have been fooled. How many moments have we had - including January 6 - where a lot of us naively thought, "**THIS** will be the thing that finally makes the Republican Party repudiate this fascist clown?" But there's never going to be a reckoning as long as 1. and 2. continue to exist. -- and especially if 1 and 2 exist in a country with the characteristics described in 3.
  24. My mother lives in an "independent living" community. I had lunch with her this afternoon on their campus, and their little bistro/restaurant had a DJ set up. He had two turntables and a big PA. And the DJ used those turntables to crossfade "Runaround Sue" into "Jailhouse Rock," etc. It was beyond amazing - and no, I don't think it was being done ironically. I thought about shooting some video just to show people that I wasn't making this up. Now I wish I had.
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