That time Elvis shot his TV in Disgraceland

I’m a fan of journalist Jake Brennan’s podcast Disgraceland. 

And the release in book form of some of the most outrageous rock ‘n roll historical storytelling from that show is perhaps even better. The first story Brennan tells in Disgraceland: Musicians Getting Away with Murder and Behaving Very Badly is about the sad last days of Elvis Presley.

As “Fat Elvis” slid ever further down his rabbit hole of greasy fried food and narcotic cocktails, he premeditated how he was going to use his .38 pistol to shoot the TV the next time singer Robert Goulet’s “shit-eating grin”appeared on screen.

It wasn’t just the fact that Goulet moved in on his girl back when Elvis went off in the military. The story postulates that one of his major sources of intense loneliness stemmed from being the survivor when he was born and his twin Jesse Garon Presley died in childbirth.

By the time Elvis died in 1977, he had amazingly not had a top 10 hit since “Burnin’ Love” in 1972 and not had critical success since 1969’s “Suspicious Minds.” It had already been nine years since his NBC Comeback Special, which tells you how long it had been since Elvis was the King.

The source of Elvis’ sorrow and anger (at that TV) was of course, as we all know after seeing last year’s Baz Lurman movie, Colonel Tom Parker. The grifter from Holland who assimilated into U.S. society by getting people to give money to circus acts jumped into the 1950s fad of rock n’ roll, finagled a contract for Elvis that gave himself lots of rights, and got the singer moved over from Sun Records to RCA, where the hits started flowing. 

It's Lake of the Ozarks fantasy football draft time!!!

Every year at this time I go back to see many of my high school and college buddies in Osage Beach, Missouri, overlooking the country's largest man-made lake (with as many miles of coastline as California).

It's a highlight of my year. It would be an even bigger highlight of my year if I could win the league one of these years. We've been running it for 28 years and, while I've won a few lesser league awards over that time, I still have yet to win the big prize - the Fantasy Bowl.

Maybe this is the year. I better do my homework because the league is full of NFL sharks. What I can successfully manage is determining which of these throwback and new helmets that will be used by various teams this year look good or look like a mess.

I think the wacky Detroit Lions one is new and not a throwback. And the same for the Indianapolis Colts' one, although I think that one looks better. Can the Cleveland Browns' new Auburn-like white helmet finally bring them wins?

My favorites of the throwbacks are: 

• Tennessee Titans: But it seems a little nonsensical to have Tennessee use the classic Houston Oilers' look.
• Denver Broncos: The iconic D is way better than the terrible design the team has had for many years.
• Seattle Seahawks: It's a classic look, even if they almost literally never one when they had it.

But the clear winner has to be the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' helmet. The team is embracing their dark years that had nothing going for them except Lee Roy Selmon and those beautiful powdered oranges.

Andre Agassi dishes the juice on the classic tennis scene of the 1980s

At age 36, while playing in his last U.S. Open, tennis legend Andre Agassi recalled how his body, especially in the morning, felt like that of a 96-year-old and how he hated tennis with a passion, as he always had.

Part of his preparation for matches would be to say things out loud that would make him feel brave, like “control what you can control.”

In Open: An Autobiography, Agassi's excellent 2010 book, the tennis legend leads off telling about his epic 5-setter at the 2006 U.S. Open against Marcos Baghdatis, in which both of them go through severe physical turmoil.

When he was a boy, his violent Armenian father would demand Andre hit 2,500 balls a day and one million balls a year on their backyard Vegas desert court to help make him unbeatable. And he would foam at the mouth if young Andre hit the ball into the net, training him with a net raised an extra six inches. His father set him up to hit with Jimmy Connors when Andre was four, and Connors said the boy was “sure to become very good.”

Not only did little Andre hit against Connors, but he got to hit with his idol Bjorn Borg and Ilie Nastase, who was a real jerk to him. His father bet a large sum of money with the former NFL great Jim Brown to battle Andre, and Andre crushed Brown 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.

His father escaped from Iran and landed in Chicago via Ellis Island. He changed his name to Mike and was a boxer who instilled in Andre to counterpunch. If someone’s strong suit was their forehand, keep hitting it to their forehand so they come to hate their forehand. The same for a serve or any other strength.

His father screwed up the tennis chances of Andre’s other siblings by holding on too long as their coach, so he sends the boy away to Florida, to the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, whose owner seems 250 years old to Andre because of his love of tanning. He quickly finds out that the place is like a Lord of the Rings jungle prison. One inmate is Jim Courier, who likes to play drums his parents sent him. One reason Agassi had his famous pierced ears was because jewelry was not allowed by the creepy heads of Bradenton Academy, where the tennis kids bussed to school while at Bolletierri. He also got a pink mohawk. Eventually Agassi amazingly coerces Nick to let him drop out of school to take correspondence courses. Andre is so excited that, at 14, he will never have to learn anything ever again! Even more amazingly, Nick eventually becomes Andre’s coach and, dare say, friend.

In Agassi’s second tournament as a pro, when he was still just 16, he played John McEnroe, “which feels like playing John Lennon. The man is a legend … although I’ve often rooted against him, because his arch rival, Borg, was my idol.” McEnroe won soundly, 6-3, 6-3. But the star gives a glowing endorsement of the kid after the match and that gets the tennis world aware of the possible new star.

Agassi was a bit intimidated the first time he headed to New York for the U.S. Open, in 1986. He lost in the first round and proceeded to go on a terrible losing streak. He felt he was often better than the players he was losing to but instead of raising his game like he did with better players, he was pressing, “not letting things flow,” which “is one of the deadliest things you can do in tennis.” 

At one point he walked across the street after losing in Washington D.C. and “berated the trees” in Rock Creek Park. He then gave all his racquets to a group of homeless men in the park. At this point he was truly set to quit tennis, but there was a message on his machine back at the hotel that tells his a player has dropped out of a North Carolina tournament and they would pay him $2,000 just to show up. It was there that he started to catch fire, soon winning matches against Michael Chang, Luke Jensen, and Pat Cash. He eventually lost to world #1 Ivan Lendl in Vermont in the semis (after he also witnessed Lendl walking around the locker room before the match with nothing but tennis shoes on). Lendl, ever the jerk, told the press that all Agassi had was a “haircut and a forehand.”

That's my summary of the book's first third (see Part 2). As you can tell, it's juicy stuff. And besides a haircut and a forehand, Agassi sure can spin a yarn.

RIP Pee-wee Herman

Pee-wee Herman, whose real name was Paul Reubens, has passed away at the age of 70 after a six-year-long battle with cancer. Which is your favorite of his catchphrases and jokes?

• “I know you are, but what am I?”
• “I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.”
• “I meant to do that!”
• “Ha, ha! That’s so funny, I forgot to laugh.”
• “I’m not crazy; my reality is just different from yours.”
• “I’m not sure if you know this, but I love breakfast food!”
• “Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!”
• “Why was the math book sad? Because it had too many problems.”
• “Why did the bicycle fall over? Because it was two-tired!”

Jason Isbell has released his most perfect album yet

The new Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit album Weathervanes is the former Drive-by Trucker's magnum opus. He has had great albums before but this is his best alt-country display yet; 13 songs of pure perfection.

Weathervanes, recorded over just two weeks at the legendary FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama (pictured), was written and produced by Isbell, who has done an amazing job of taking control of his life and career after some very troubled years of substance abuse.

"Weathervanes," the name of the album and the title track, is of course a metaphor for the uncertainty and change that is often a part of life. 

If 2023 ended today, my top five rock releases would be Isbell then:

• 2. Lil Yachty: Let's Start Here. (this starts out sounding like a cross of Pink Floyd and the best Funkadelic and never releases its sonic grip. The Atlanta mumble rapper graduates from his old style into a super slick batch of jazzy, dancey, and weird pop greatness. I don't want to stop listening)
• 3. The Lemon Twigs: Everything Harmony (the band's fourth album is its best and most consistant, with pop and yacht and a lot of mellow at the end. Not a snoozer in the bunch)
• 4. Geese: 3D Country (Brooklynites blast onto the scene with a freak-party jam that mashes up country and blues and soul with a heaping helping that lands somewhere between Ween and Radiohead)
• 5. Alex Lahey: The Answer is Always Yes (this is the best non-Courtney Barnett Courtney Barnett album of the year. Lahey is a rock and roll songwriter who is thoroughly modern but could also fit in any era, such as the ones with The Strokes or Blondie)

Isbell has also made my year-end album lists in 2011 with How Will I Rest (#46); in 2013 with Southwestern (#77); in 2015 with Something More Than Free ("best of the rest"); in 2017 with The Nashville Sound (#49); and, most recently, in 2021, he made my list of Biggest Disappontments with Georgia Blue. So the new album is bit of a very pleasant surprise.

Babylon dazzles with early Hollywood excess

It took me about five nights to watch Babylon, an epic three-plus-hour 2022 film starring Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie. Barbie, this is not. It’s more like a hot mess in the best-possible way, combining Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Quentin Tarantino’s Gimp scene from Pulp Fiction, this movie is an entertaining ride tour de force for those who love Hollywood history.

The debauchery of early Los Angeles dreamed up here by writer and director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash and La La Land) couldn’t have possibly been this extreme in the days when the silents were morphing into moving pictures with sound. I suppose it’s possible, but while this is a lot to take for the faint-at-heart, the amount of memorable scenes, which are often like short contained films all on their own, gives viewers a pretty high rate of bang for the buck.

Babylon was scheduled to have a major theater release but then was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, which ended up losing the studio a ton of money on the flick.

Robbie, perhaps most decadent of all, plays Nellie LaRoy and is loosely based on Clara Bow, a famous silent film actress. Pitt plays Jack Conrad, loosely based on John Gilbert, a famous silent film actor who struggled to make the transition to sound films.

By the end, nearly every character has been exploited and riven by the drugs, sex, and violence of the time and place. Alongside Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, and Ryan Murphy’s Netflix show simply titled Hollywood, an argument could be made that we are in a golden era of exploring L.A.’s fascinating movie history.

5 out of 5 stars

My TennisDC season ends with heartbreaking but encouraging loss in the tourney semis

My spring TennisDC 18+ singles league has wrapped now that I bowed out in the semifinals. After perhaps my best match of the season in the quarterfinals, a 6-3, 6-4 victory at Fort Stevens (see one rally that I lose in the video above), the semis would prove to be a more difficult and chaotic battle. 

On Wednesday night, I took the first set 6-4 and felt I was continuing to play the same steady, solid type of match as the previous one. My serve has been greatly improving this summer and I was getting everything back and not missing. I wasn't going for big winners. Rather, I noted that my opponent was making errors, so my plan was to play defensively and just keep the ball in play.

He had a 5-3 lead in the second set when his errors started happening again and I was grabbing a second wind in the brutal heat of the Turkey Thicket courts. I evened things at 5-5 and then he suggested we suspend the match. Granted, despite the heat, the after-dinner masses had transpired and people were patiently waiting for courts. The claustrophobia was made even greater by the hordes of people playing pickleball right next to our court and, of course, the Summer of '23 style heat. I agreed to pick up the match later, although in retrospect trying to win the next two games and the match might have been a wiser strategy.

Regardless, we met back up Friday morning. The courts were already scorching even though we arrived before normal work hours in an attempt to get a result as early as possible. The previous session had gone two hours and this one would prove to stretch over an hour, and although the heat no doubt affected me, his youth probably meant it was rougher on me. I definitely felt less strong and less able to always get the ball back as consistently as I had been.

We broke each others' serves after reconvening at 5-5 in the second set to make it 6-6. The tiebreaker was a neck-and-neck barnburner. In fact, it was almost like I was playing myself. His style was very similar and the overall score in points must have been completely even. He was able to sneak out the tiebreaker 8-6.

Since we were running out of time before we both had to get to work, we decided to settle it with a 10-point tiebreaker rather than a full third set. It looked like I was going to pull it out when I was up 6-4. But then I double faulted and he called up a couple winners out of the depths. He came back to take the tiebreaker 10-7.

Despite the loss, I was really happy with my performance. In the Spring 1 season, I wasn't even trying to win but rather I was getting back in match shape after a few years away from singles competition. But this was Spring 2 season and going 6-2 and making it to the semis was a greater jump in performance than I expected. Hopefully I can win the Fall season.

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I tried a cool app with a free one-month trial this season called Swing Vision. You can see what the video looks like in the photo above. It records matches or practicing and analyzes how you're doing. I wasn't going to pay a $150 yearly subscription for it, but I may buy a monthly subscroption for $25 later down the line if I want to check in on how I'm doing. 

Here are a few screenshots of the kinds of stats it collects, from a little more than one set in that quarterfinal match win:

The Highballers light up Greenbelt on a stormy night

I haven’t seen my friend Kendall’s band The Highballers much lately (though not for lack of opportunities; they play a lot of shows around D.C.), but I went with my wife and my friends Kevin and Megan tonight to Greenbelt, a little town in Maryland envisioned by FDR as the first intentional community. Once there, and secure from the raging heat storm outside, we stepped in the see the band in a great little concert room behind the New Deal Cafe. 

As Kendall said, the place always gives him "a real good vibe," and indeed there was a good mix of newbies like us and regulars. The place felt like if there were a bar and restaurant (tasty BBQ) at the cohousing community where we used to live in Silver Spring, Eastern Village Cohousing. Funky, fun, intelligent people all around just enjoying their time on Earth.

The Highballers have consistently gotten tighter and better. The whole band really seems committed and they played a lengthy and pleasurable set of covers and mostly originals. While Kendall and Belen traded off amazing harmonizing vocals throughout the country set (the good kind of country, it should go without noting), with such highlights as “I Didn't Mean to Get Drunk Last Night But I Did,” my favorite might have been “Older Guys,” a Gram Parsons tune covered later by Teenage Fanclub and made to sound like an Uncle Tupelo country-punk rager by The Highballers.

Kendall reminded us that it had been 10 years since we celebrated the band's album release at the time at the old Iota in Arlington, Va. Here was what I wrote about that album at the time, in my Best New Albums of January 2013 column:

The Highballers - Soft Music and Hard Liquor

My son was in the process of getting married to The Highballers' showman-leader Kendall's daughter in their preschool class. That would have made this review a conflict of interest, but luckily it was clean-up time and the kids were unable to comlete the ceremony. Regardless, I saw this band live at Arlington's Artisphere and they were a force. It's easy to compare them to an offshoot of Johnny Cash and June Carter (what with the boy-girl vocals and all), but The Highballers are much funnier, have smoking and tasteful musicianship all around, have lots of songs about drinking (which is, let's admit, the point of honky tonk), and gloriously adds a modern twist ala Uncle Tupelo and The Bottle Rockets.

So they be improving (or just consumate musicianship-ers), but they are also clearly just naturals. Oh, and our kids may not be married yet, but they are still friends. 

RIP Randy Meisner

Randy Meisner was the original bass player for Eagles (please, not the Eagles) before Timothy B. Schmit joined. He, like Schmit, also played for a time in the band Poco. Meisner was obviously a key player in the yacht rock era, a time when rock music was probably at its apex of mass popularity. While he was not a lead singer in Eagles, he was on one key song, "Take It to the Limit," which became the band's first million-selling single. He died in L.A. at 77 of breathing problems.

Wildflower showcases Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka perfectly

Wildflower was by no means at the top of my must-watch list, but anything with anyone from Mad Men (still my favorite TV show of all time) can't be too bad in my book. Kiernan Shipka, who played Don and Betty Draper's daughter Sally, returns all these years later as a high-school senior in a novel twist. She takes care of her parents, who are both intellectually disabled.

Released a few months ago to Hulu, Wildflower is a coming-of-age comedy-drama in which Shipka's charachter Bea (short for Bambi), falls into a coma right as she is getting into a romance with a hot new kid at the school played by the likeable Charlie Plummer. Shipka is also trying to figure out if she should keep taking care of her parents or start taking care of herself; she's great and in general a really mesmerizing actor. The Mad Men creators really knew what they were doing in terms of casting.

She's perfectly cast for this part too. A lot of the humor comes from the differences in the two parents' extended families. And the movie is quite funny and even silly. Despite the seeming seriousness of the content (disabilities, a coma) and the relatively deep explorations of love and acceptance, it is by no means a downer.

3.5 out of 5 stars