I've Got Your Cocoa Right Here

It's done. It's complete. Just seven days before some of them are due, I finally got around to sending out all my application materials for the schools I'm applying to do my Ph.D at. Now if I can just get past this graduating thing, I'm set.

Sports

I don't normally like talking about the NBA, but since I got into a NBA fantasy league this season with some friends, I've been paying more attention to the hardcourt action. However, I can't seem to figure out how this damn stuff works. My team is stacked, yet I'm in second to last place. How can I be in second to last place when I have a team like this:

Guards: Steve Nash, Ben Gordon, C. Billups, S. Francis, B. Davis, G. Wallace
Forwards: Shawn Marion, A. Harrington, R. Lewis, D. West, A. Walker, L. Odom
Center: Marcus Camby, Raef LaFrentz

Granted, Raef sucks this year, but look at that lineup! I should be dominating. Unfortunately, I'm only first in the 3-pt and assist categories, and dead last in shot %, free throw %, and scoring. Wtf. I guess I'm not as dominant at fantasy hoops as I am at fantasy football.

Speaking of that, Ryan of Muzzle of Bees, you're next, bro.

Also, the trend of me picking up players and then ending their seasons has continued as my new addition Braylon Edwards will miss the rest of the season with a knee injury and after picking up Roydell Williams last week, he proceeded to break his wrist. I'm pretty sure it's all my fault too, just ask Darrel Jackson, Marc Bulger, Julius Jones, Mewelde Moore, Ben Troupe, Jamie Martin and whoever else was on my team that got hurt. Serisouly man, I'm like fucking voodoo to NFL players.

News

Margaret Solan discusses the future of English in college:

. . . "All of which is to say that there is no “field,” so there can’t be any “future” or even “futures.” That “s” in our GW lecture series title is trying to reassure us that instead of a profession-killing chaos what we have now is a profession-enhancing variety, richness, flexibility, ferment, inclusiveness, choose your reassuring adjective. Yet when there’s not even a broadly conceived field of valuable objects around which we all agree our intellectual and pedagogical activity should revolve, there’s no discipline of any kind."

Ten misconceptions about Islam, from the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts.

What to do about Walmart, from Tom Paine.

My vote for most-badass story of the year: Russian squirrel pack kills dog. Where's Rocky and Bullwinkle when you need them? Get it, Rocky the Squirrel? I'm so funny.

The Washington Post wonders where have all the men in college gone? Apparently, they've never been to UW-Platteville, aka Sausage City, Wisconsin

Does anyone care the XMEN 3 is coming out? Does anyone realize Kelsey Grammar is in it? Frazier is such a badass.
Music

The Lawrence Arms have wrapped up recording on Oh! Calcutta! which is slated for a March 2006 release.

The Lawrence Arms - "On With the Show"

Featured Album: Jamiroquai Dynamite (2005)

Do you think J is cool? I do, ever since he put out that video where he's dancing all over the walls and stuff. That being said, I've never actually owned any Jamiroquai...until now.

Wondering where the long-delayed new studio album from Stevie Wonder went? Perplexed as to why it's been removed from the upcoming releases roster, not once, but twice in the last two years?

Maybe we should ask Jamiroquai's Jay Kay, the British neo-funkmeister who needs to seriously consider depositing his song royalties straight into Wonder's checking account. Under the guise of space cowboy and beneath fluffy Seuss hats, Kay's shtick is both intoxicating and cheap: when he opens his mouth, sultry music escapes, slinky, moonwalkable stuff with a stale bouquet, like the scents from an Innervisions yard sale filtered through a 20-year wormhole. Is this the future? A giant recycling heap stored inconspicuously below a sequined dance floor? In its breakthrough 1996 single, Jamiroquai opined that the imminent future was "virtual insanity". Ten years later, "virtual" still clouds up much of the crystal ball -- Dynamite is virtually a 21st century rehash of classic soul, served with a side of disco kitsch. Is Dynamite really Wonder youthfully repackaged or has it sent Wonder into damage control mode, afraid he'd appear to be imitating an imitator?

Does it really matter? Jamiroquai just wants to groove us, wants to get our feet bubbling to big distorted, chunky riffs ("Feels Just Like It Should"), spit-shined disco glides that hiccup like Prince's "Kiss" on a Studio 54 budget ("Dynamite"), and pixilated soul for the Nintendo generation ("Electric Mistress"). As long as they flaunt the bluesy guitar licks ("Black Devil Car") and shower us with major seventh chords ("Seven Days in Sunny June"), will we bite, completely oblivious to where they were hijacked from? "Starchild" is a damn good slice of undeniable, so should we care if its verses are nothing more than "Superstition" in a flimsy disguise?

The main reason it's so hard to embrace such likeable music is that it's blatantly transparent. Kay and company may mimic the façade of their idols impeccably, but their songs have vapid centers. The operative word in "soul music" is soul, man, and we've got to be able to see and feel it, not just look through it. Kay's voice is like velvet touching the magic place, affecting Curtis Mayfield falsetto in "Feels Just Like It Should" and Stevie Wonder sass in just about everything else, but he's got little to say beyond the oft-heard club pick-up line. Ladies, you'll remember such repetitive, grope-accompanying pleas as: "Girl, you got the look", "Let's burn this highway down", "She's just a love machine", and, if you happened to reject one of those, "Why'd you have to drop that bomb on me?" Dynamite may aim for a space on the shelves next to the classics, but it's merely club music made for anonymous bump-and-grinds, something to stain the armpits of T-shirts and accelerate other social lubricants.

When the Jamiroquai libido wanes, socially conscious topics bubble to the surface. Because who doesn't like to talk politics after a feisty romp in the sack? The syrupy piano ballad "World That He Wants" and Pointer Sisters jamboree "(Don't) Give Hate a Chance" feel calculated when sandwiched between the humid odes to horniness. It's at times like these that you wish Jamiroquai just stuck to doing what it does best: thieving attitude from the greats while embarking on the ultimate hook-up quest.-PopMatters

1. Feels Just Like It Should
2. Dynamite
3. Seven Days In Sunny June
4. Electric Mistress
5. Starchild
6. Love Blind
7. Talulah
8. (Don’t) Give Hate A Chance
9. World That He Wants
10. Black Devil Car
11. Hot Tequila Brown
12. Time Won’t Wait

Bonus: New Amsterdams alter-ego the Terrible Twos, a band conceived by Matt Pryor of Get Up Kids fame intended for toddlers and young children, have posted new songs.

You can click here to check out the tracks: "When I Get to Eleven" & "Caroline."

Kids stuff, but catchy nonetheless.

And remember kiddies, tt's cold out, but don't worry: Veritas Lux Mea has your cocoa right here with the brank-spanking new "Hot Picture for a Cold Day" series, starting . . . now:















There, aren't you already feeling warmer?