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Word of the day : brouhaha : a state of commotion or excitement ; hubbub, uproar

Philly forced a game 7 last night against Boston, and a resurgent, forward-deprived Miami looks to close it out tonight against Indy... The playoffs sure have been exciting so far (at least in the East), but is anyone else getting sick of fans and commentators going on and on about overrated/underrated players, legacies (hate that word!), "a sense of urgency," "getting in done," "stealing one on the road,""holding serve at home," "hostile environments," (a.k.a. any opponents' arena)... ? Nothing brings out the cliches like the NBA playoffs.

Perhaps most aggravating - and inexplicable - is how nasty and demanding the average fan is. Win me a championship or you're a bum! How can people possibly say that Lebron James isn't a clutch player or that he's overrated? So you're overrated until you win a championship? Come on! When did championships equal greatness? Robert Horry won seven titles - does that mean he's seven times better than Patrick Ewing or Charles Barkley? Please. What does being 'clutch' even mean? Making big shots at the end of games? Okay, Horry surely did that, but he wasn't half as great as Karl Malone or Allen Iverson was. Those guys dominated whole games, faced the other team's best defenders the entire game, and almost were never free - open - to take big shots. I think we just need a little perspective here.

If you had never heard of or seen Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Dwight Howard and, say, Chris Paul play and were watching the eight of them scrimmage, playing four-on-four, I ask you this...

Which one of those guys would impress you the most? Which one would have the most complete game? Which one of those guys could more-than adequately guard Howard or Dirk, play the point if need be and get others involved, take over the game, lead the squad in rebounds, get any shot he wanted, continually drive to the basket, and change the game defensively - all at the same time?

You know the answer. It has nothing to do with championships won either. It has to do with being the best player.

Stop being so damn demanding!

Today's soul track...

"Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City," by Bobby "Blue" Bland. It's a much-sampled song (heard in the movie The Lincoln Lawyer) that first appeared on Bland's 1974 album Dreamer and was a minor R&B hit for Bland.

If you're unfamiliar with Bland... get familiar! Born in Rosemark, Tennessee (right outside Memphis) in 1930, Bland joined Duke Records in 1952 after a stint in the Army. He, along with Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, helped originated the soul-gospel-blues sound;   Talk about a silky, extremely expressive voice. He played with Junior Parker's band in the late 1950s but had most of his success as a solo artist in the 1960s with a string of R&B hits: "Turn on Your Love Light," "That's the Way Love is," Farther Up the Road." His 1961 classic album Two Steps From the Blues was ranked #215 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Bland is a blues singer for those who don't care much for the blues. You hear his version of a classic and you never want to hear it done by anyone else. Underrated and wonderful, Bland was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2vCAqdFx1s

New Movies Opening This Weekend:

Men in Black III    Question: Does anyone remember what happened in Men Black II? Me neither. Director Barry Sonnenfeld (who's like Chris Tucker with Rush Hour in the sense that his career only consists of declining entries in an infrequent, overextended series), Will Smith, and Tommy Lee Jones are back in this average-reviewed three-quel. What critics are ga-ga about is Josh Brolin's turn as a younger version of Tommy Lee's Agent K; Brolin is reputedly great (one of the the year's best performances, according to Entertainment Weekly) at mimicing Jones' vocal mannerisms, facial expressions, and capturing the essence, the very Jones-ness, of the actor's persona.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

Chernobyl Diaries    Not screened for critics... And we all know that's not a good sign. I thought the trailers really popped, though. "From the makers of Paranormal Activity" (translation: the director of the first Paranormal co-wrote the screenplay), it's a film that follows a group of young extreme tourists as they mill about the still-radioactive grounds at Chernobyl and find that they're not alone. Probably exploitative, in bad taste, and terrible, but it looks like some sloppy, scary fun. If you liked Turistas...
Verdict: Interested

Moonrise Kingdom    I'd be lying if I said that Wes Anderson films did anything at all for me (the only one I fully liked was the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox mainly because I got a kick out of syncing up the fox's funny mouth movements with George Clooney's voice). Critics love his wacky, hermetic, cloying, Small Faces and Kinks-backed, oblique, post-ironic tender coming-of-age stories and unique brand of weirdness. This one has a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and, despite a terrific cast (Frances McDormand, Anderson stalwart Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis), I think it looks unwatchable. It's about two young kids who run away together into the 1965 New England wilderness.
Verdict: Not Interested

For those of you new to my blog, a bi-weekly feature I do is a quick focus on photographers. The concept of the feature originated because I knew (and still don't know) very little about famous, groundbreaking photographers other than the ones everyone has heard of: Ansel Adams, etc. So I went to the magazine Professional Photographer and found an article in which the editors composed a list of the 100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time. I've been making my way through the list, summarizing the life and career (and importance) of each artist and pasting a few photos that represent their oeuvre.

So we're up to #41:
Joel-Peter Witkin

Born and raised in Brooklyn (b. 1939), Witkin is best known as a photographer of the macabre. He got his first big break as a combat photographer during the Vietnam War, often filming the bodies of soldiers who had committed suicide. His work often deals with death, corpses (or pieces of them) and societal outcasts such as androgynes, dwarfs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites and physically deformed people. He constantly references famous paintings from art history. Because his work is so transgressive and shocking, he is often criticized as exploitative and titillating. He is influenced by Surrealism, Giotto, and Baroque art. His works, because of the way he distorts his photos using special techniques, often recall 19th century ambrotypes. (If you don't know what that is, as I didn't, look it up - it would take longer for me to proficiently summarize it.)

#42

Anton Corbijn

I recognize the Dutch Corbijn (b. 1955) more as a director of music videos - U2's epic "One," "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode, Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box," among others. He's also directed a couple of acclaimed movies: 2007's Control, a biopic of Joy Division's troubled frontman Ian Curtis; and the George Clooney-starring The American, a quiet, moody 70s throwback about a hitman laying low in the Italian mountains.

An in-demand album cover artist, Corbijn will probably best be remembered as a photographer of musicians.