Quick Thoughts On Sports, Music and the Dog Days of Summer

The middle of July is always a nice time to schedule a family reunion or a vacation of the traveling variety because there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING going on in the world of sports and/or entertainment for a couple of weeks. Sure, baseball is a joy to experience but, takes quite a bit of patience to watch that so many people lack in 2017. Football is still weeks away from their preseason hypefest and Summer League basketball has wrapped up along with most of free agency (unless you REALLY need to know where Derrick Rose ends up and it's somehow not China).

Any chance I have at a non-injury related diss of Derrick Rose, I will take.

As some might have noticed, my blog has been suspiciously quiet this Summer and that is the result of A. Life happening and B. The WRBL Year In Review for 2016 coming at a snail's pace sometime before the WRBL Draft of 2017. With all of the content coming this Fall and Winter, I'm hoping to even things out a bit. Until then, I am conserving most of my energy the way Miguel Sano did during the Home Run Derby. Speaking of which, I am so elated that the MLB has absolutely nailed down the perfect format for a derby. It's just a shame that Aaron Judge did not use the final two minutes he had remaining on the clock as he had already clinched a win for the real Mid-Summer Classic.

I continue to love NBA free agency but, there is something unfamiliar in the air that brings me down a bit and that's the seemingly 100% unbreakable truth that is the Warriors remaining unbeatable. Chris Paul, Paul George, Jimmy Butler and Gordon Hayward all changed teams and yet, nothing is different about the league. The Warriors keep adding shooters and ignoring big men because why not? Nick "Swaggy P" Young should be fun to watch and Omri Casspi is criminally underrated. Their main rivals in Cleveland added two lesser names in washed up Point Guard Jose Calderon and consistently inconsistent Jeff Green. Yawning after a July like this in basketball should not be acceptable but, it has become reality.

HBO's The Defiant Ones is a four-part documentary about the rise of musical masterminds Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre and is just as fun as I thought it would be. It has been so long since the Stevie Nicks/Tom Petty duet and Marilyn Manson's rise that I had forgotten either existed despite the huge impact both had on music and somehow, Iovine was behind the scenes for everyone's peaks. The 260-minute series also does not shy away from the Dee Barnes lawsuit with Dr. Dre and has interviews with Bono, Kendrick Lamar and so many more. It does not hurt the series that the songs playing throughout could all be considered classics now.

Some gems of albums are coming out this season with Broken Social Scene, Waxahatchee and Lorde already making this a Summer to remember for indieheads of the world. Typically, I only have one album that I focus all of my hype and future attention to at any given moment but, with Tyler The Creator, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers, Kesha, Declan McKenna, Passion Pit and Lana Del Rey all coming in with new albums, my brain is just uncertain on how to process all this exciting content falling onto my Spotify playlists. I kind of want everything now but, I'm pretty certain that Arcade Fire is telling me that that is a bad thing? (I really don't know what their talking about anymore but, it's more fun and danceable than ever before).

Along with my music suggestions, I have to suggest listening to The Starters Podcast this Summer (specifically, their Drop-off episodes that run weekly during the NBA offseason) as they have moved on from the sometimes repetitive topic of sports to the most bizarre of topics like this week's "Would You Rather?" episode that answered tremendous questions like "Would you rather crap yourself once a week in private or once a year in public?". Trust me when I say that you cannot get content like that anywhere else.

Finally, I'd like to give a shout out to my cat Whisper, who died right before my most recent post at the age of 13. She was a pretty dope cat and I respect all dope animals that just let humans sleep when they need to sleep and know how and where to go to the bathroom immediately upon arrival in their respective houses while occasionally being comic relief ("Oh, what's that? You're about to read something on a table?" SITS ON BOOK. She caught like 15-30 mice last Summer that may have otherwise overthrown the household so yeah... RIP Whisper Todd: War Hero and Cool Cat.

Born too late to hear Dr. Dre in his prime, lived long enough to experience dank memes.