For those who aren’t digging the futbah repartee skip down a few paragraphs. For Brian and Derek, a few notes:

I read a lot the past week about how the Wally Buono/Pinball Clemmons matchup tilted more towards the Lions and I thought, huh? As coach of the Calgary Stampeders, a team that had the most regular season wins in the 1990s and that should have won 5 or 6 Grey Cups (they won 2, lost 3), he had a bit of a history of choking in big games, be it the title game or the western final. And so I figured if anything, Clemmons would bring more to his team in terms of intensity than would Buono.

A lot of sportswriters are giving Buono a (pardon the pun) pass for starting Dickenson over Printers but I’m saying you don’t leave the league MVP sitting on the bench. Other than the opening drive in the first quarter and the spirited scramble into the end zone in the fourth quarter (sending me into nervous fits), Dickenson was only average. Wouldn’t it have made sense to switch things up a bit for the second half by having Printers come in? Wouldn’t it have forced the Argos to change their game a bit?

Apart from the QB decision, I think the biggest mistakes B.C. made were:

1) Abandoning their running game when it appeared to be doing very well; is there an unwritten rule that says you have to pass at some point during your drive? I was tearing my hair out watching Antonio Warren barrel his way through the Argo D with abandon and then breathed a collective sigh of relief when they started attempting passes again. Had the Lions run on every other play, my team would have been in deep shit.

2) Punting the ball with 2:00 minutes remaining in the game. Why not go for it? It’s a lot easier to erase an 8-point deficit when you actually have the ball. Had the Lions gone for it on 3rd and presumably long, and missed, the Argos would have had the ball at around midfield. Which would have meant what? That B.C.’s defense would have had to stop Toronto from getting the first down. Well, don’t they have to stop Toronto from getting the first down after the punt? What does it matter where they stop them? Let’s say you do stop them at the 20 instead of the 50? The Argos punt and you get the ball back with, say, a minute left in the game? You’re back where you were before, around midfield, down 8 points, except this time with no timeouts and less time on the clock. Now as a Toronto fan, I was thrilled to see my team get the ball back and overjoyed when they picked up enough first downs to run out the clock and clinch victory, but I was thinking, “Man, I’m glad the Lions were stupid enough to give us the ball back”.

3) Punting short and wussily: not what you’d call an impressive special teams strategy. Alarmed by the prospect of the Argos returning the ball for great field position, the Lions decided to kick short and away which kept the ball away from the Argo return team and resulted in… the Argos getting great field position. Though they abandoned this strategy later in 2nd half to much success, the damage at that point was already done.

By contrast, Toronto’s offensive and defensive coordinators ran the best strategy they could with the players that they had. The defense let the Lions run but shut down the pass. The offence knew they couldn’t rely on getting by BC’s run defense so they passed a lot but mixed up the passing plays to pick apart the Lions’ rather weak secondary.

As a long suffering Leaf fan, I am especially grateful to the Toronto Argonauts for rewarding my support with 5 championships in my lifetime. Sometimes they’re terrible, sometimes they’re mediocre (as they were midway through this season), but the last few weeks, and on Sunday in particular, they were champions!

Back to the (great, btw) topic of music reviews…

I like music reviews. I like reading them and agreeing or disagreeing with the reviewer’s comments. If not for print/online reviews (and my close proximity to Derek’s ever expanding though largely unwrapped collection) where would I find out about good music? Certainly not from FM radio, at least here in Toronto and in most cities in the United States. While the Ryerson and UofT stations feature one or two decent programs, I’m usually not fortunate enough to be listening when these programs are aired; whenever my dial dips into the 88s and 89s I’m treated to dancehall reggae or a spirited discussion on the history of the labour movement in aboriginal communities.

[Side Note: Not that the Globe and Mail is the definitive word on music but I’d really like it if they reviewed more than one or two discs each week. Carl Wilson and Robert Everett-Green both contribute interesting pieces each Friday but I always find myself looking for more. Perhaps we could do away with the far-from-droll comics or have them supplant Saturdays’ repulsively flippant ‘hatch/match/dispatch’ feature in the Toronto section, to make way for an expanded music review section].

Now I love digging into the reviews in Now, Eye, Exclaim, the Rolling Stone, and various websites. But I take all the reviews I read with a grain of salt and I’m willing to enthusiastically disregard any discouraging piece if my heart is set on the disc or if I just have a feeling that I might like it. A record review, be it negative or positive in tone, is really just an expression of the writer’s experiences, biases, and preferences. In the case the local publications, a lot of the writers are young and attempting to make a name for themselves and so they ratchet up the hyperbole in order to establish a ‘voice’, however irrational or asshole-ish this voice may be (ahem, Mr. Perlich).

Reading reviews requires a strategy akin to that of deciphering the Film Festival Programme Book. Words like ‘driving’ and ‘forceful’ usually connote straightforward drumming, ‘expansive’ hints at the presence of long stretches of nothing but guitar, ‘textured’ means that some 40 different guitars were used and dubbed over one another in the editing, and ‘personal’ usually means that the sound quality is going to be crap.

I also look for consistency among reviews. If more than one source is telling me an album is worth checking out, or is describing that album in a way that appeals to me, than I'm more inclined to bite. That’s not to say that 5, 10 or 200 reviewers can’t be completely wrong (most praised the latest Wilco album which, despite repeated listening, I’ve yet to embrace) but if a trend emerges it does give me a clue as to what to expect. What would be nice is if there was a website along the lines of www.rottentomatoes.com that would compile all sorts of different reviews and give an overall positive/negative rating based on the content of each review.

As for longer reviews along the lines of NYT I’m all for it but I suspect that those who review discs often find themselves at a loss as to what to write about. This is why you get the inevitable comparisons/references to other, recognizable bands and silly proclamations like ‘A triumph...’ or ‘Shimmering brilliance...’.

My question for you: Are music reviews inherently limited because they are attempting to express in words what an artist is expressing in another medium, ie. through music?

Not that I’d embrace a review conveyed through a series of yodels or violin solos. And I recognize that the role that lyrics play in music but...I dunno...I suspect that music reviewers, perhaps unconsciously, recognize that they can't adequately describe that to which they have just listened.

Thoughts?