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The Straight Dope answers all of the important questions, like: Do birds pee? Why do people clink their glass when they toast? Is Popeye's nemesis Bluto or Brutus? What's in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? Why do Corn Pops come in a silver bag? And what the hell is the Pompatus of Love?

British Bands; American Solos

I saw a commercial the other day for the Eagles' new album (sold exclusively at Walmart!), which called them "American's Greatest Rock Band". That's ridiculous, I thought, and started thinking of the greatest bands in my head (Beatles, Stones, U2). And I counted off a lot of UK bands in my head before I got to an American contender.

Then I started thinking of the great solo acts in history (Dylan, Elvis, Springsteen) - and they all have American passports. I struggled to think of a Brit* in their weight class. Hmm, time for some research...

Instead of a long debate about what constitutes "great", I went to a reasonable source: Rolling Stone magazine's "The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time". This is by no means a perfect list (the Everly Brothers made it but REM didn't) but let's face it - RS has earned the right to be the arbiter of the 50 Greatest as well as anyone. So let's start there.

First some numbers:

• Of the 50 artists on the list, 37 are American; 10 are from the UK; 2 are Canadian; and one is Other.
• The Top 10 acts all conform to the British Band-American Solo pattern.
• As do 23 of the top 25.
• The first American band on the list is the Beach Boys, at #12.
• The first solo Brit on the list is John Lennon at 38, and frankly, that's cheating, since his band fame got him there. The first true solo Brit is David Bowie at 39, and the only others are Van Morrison at 42 and Elton John at 49.
• Thus, of the ten British artists on the list, 6 are bands and 1 is the guy from the Beatles.
• Of the 37 American artists, only 9, or about 25%, are bands with names that don't include their frontman (e.g. Sly and the Family Stone). And even of those 9, three of them feature brothers (Ramones, Beach Boys, Everly Brothers).

Some thoughts about artists who weren't on the list...

• Eric Clapton is a surprising omission. We tend to think of Clapton as a solo guy, but showing his Britishness, Clapton was a serial band-joiner (Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & the Dominoes) before he finally decided, hey, I'm going Solo.
• Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers is an American band, but one that followed that Guy+Band nomenclature that is popular among Americans (Bruce + E Street; Smokey + Miracles) but rare among Brits (Elvis Costello being a rare exception - but hey, his whole name is American). I'm inclined to think of these artists as Solos.
• Other popular American bands not on the list also have brothers (think Alex Van Halen and Tom Fogerty). It's as if, even when Americans form bands, it's out of either fraternal pressure, or one guy (Smokey, Bruce, TP, Sly) takes control.
• Bon Jovi: band or solo? More importantly, who cares?

What does all this mean? Hell, I don't know. Maybe the Brits are more team players, band of brothers and all that, while Americans are individualists by nature.

I just find it interesting.

* Yes, I'm using the word Brit here loosely, including Ireland. As someone who marches in the St. Patrick's Day parade in NY every year I should be ashamed of myself - but I'm referring to the British Isles. Further, while I personally put Van Morrison at the top of any list, he was just never as huge as the biggies mentioned in the parenthesis.

Manning-Brady: Best "Who's Better?" Debate Ever

Wilt-Russell. Marino-Montana. ARod-Jeter.

Most of the "Who's Better?" barstool debates follow the same script. One player (Wilt, Marino, A-Rod) puts up monster stats and sets records, but generally comes up short in the post-season. The other (Russell, Montana, Jeter) puts up good stats, but wins far more championships. *

Team allegiances aside, the guy who thinks Bill Russell's 11 rings and 15 point scoring average trumps Wilt Chamberlain's one ring and 30 point scoring average, is likely a Montana-Jeter booster as well. And vice-versa. (For the record, I tend to support the stats guy. It's not Marino's fault he didn't get Jerry Rice, Roger Craig, and the Niner D as his teammates).

Until 2006, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning followed the script perfectly. Manning put up monster stats but did little in January. Brady won 3 Super Bowls with efficient but not eye-popping statistics.

Then Peyton became Brady. This isn't unusual - great players who don't win are often told they lack that special winning quality - but they often prove their critics wrong (see: Elway, John). It started on November 7, 2005 when the Colts, who had lost 7 straight to the Pats, went into Foxboro and whipped the Pats. They beat them in Foxboro again a year later; and again in January 07, this time in the AFC Championship game, and with one of the greatest comebacks ever. Peyton Manning and the Colts went on to win the Super Bowl, giving his barstool supporters a huge edge in the Manning-Brady debate.

But now something truly unusual is happening...Brady is becoming Peyton. Tom Brady, who never threw more than 28 TDs in a season and had only thrown for 4K yards once, is on a pace to break all of Manning's and Marino's single-season records. The barstool debaters are flummoxed.

This doesn't happen. Jeter doesn't suddenly hit 50 homers one year. Russell doesn't win an NBA scoring title. Montana doesn't throw 40 TD passes.

The only thing that can make this story better is if the Colts beat the Pats in January. Then the role-reversal will be complete. And the barstool boosters will have to reverse their roles, too.


* I've ignored individual sport rivalries like Ali-Frazier, Tiger-Phil, or Borg-McEnroe. In those sports, winning truly is the only thing that matters. As for Mantle-Mays, I think baseball fans were smarter in the 50's, and realized that Mantle won more titles than Mays because of Berra, Whitey et. al. rather than some magical winning superpower.

What is "Free Time"?

Over the last ten years or so, friends of mine would occasionally find an email from me in their Inbox, with an attachment. The attachment was a carefully researched short essay on some random topic – Eli Manning’s passing stats, why the British tend to produce great bands and Americans great solo performers, a comparison of John Adams’ and Thomas Jefferson’s place in history.

One day a friend of mine, a frequent recipient of the sports essays, called me up.

“You know those emails you send, with the essays attached?” he asked.

“Yes?” I said, expecting some kind words about them.

“Can you stop doing that?”

So I did. But I didn’t stop writing them. Eventually I figured I might as well start a blog. And here it is.

Is there any theme to this blog? The primary topics are fairly mainstream things – sports, music, politics, literature, history. But the thing that tends to get me started on a topic is when everybody is thinking one way, and ignoring all of the evidence that they could be wrong. I then get interested in the contrarian view.

My mission statement is to provoke a "Huh". Not the interrogatory "Huh?", which roughly translates to "What the hell are you talking about?"; but the exclamatory "Huh", which means (and think Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson here), "I did not know that."