GRNDR CockTales 52 Weeks of Drinks

For this week's adult beverage, we looked at all sorts of holiday appropriate mixtures and got pretty disgusted doing it. Something called a Cupid Kiss is made with Creme de Cacao, Creme de Noyaux, Cream and a strawberry. To make a Valentine Cocktail, mix gin, egg white, lemon juice and raspberry juice. Wow...Those just sound... Wow. Wow. Ummm...How about just dipping your strawberries in a nice chocolate beer.

LOL: Bloody Valentine Redux (Not the one in 3-D)

It's a few hours before the worst of all holidays begins. We mean, of course, Presidents Day. Wait, what? There's another holiday this weekend. Oh yeah. That one. Ugh. Valentine's Day; all the expense and pressure of Christmas and New Year's, with none of the excessive drinking and football. It's a holiday so bad that it's very initials stand for venereal disease. Here's hoping everyone makes it though the next two evenings without one of those "this night didn't live up to my impossibly high expectations" fights. Aw, who are we kidding. There's no around that. The good news is that we have a double dose of college humor to make you feel better about your impending doom.



Our buddy Ben Schwartz, of RejectedJokes.com fame, has this original video over at College Humor. Someone at CH who is not our buddy but probably a very nice person posted this; what it might look like if a child wrote a book about divorce. The piece really needs to be seen in all it's crayon-scrawl glory be appreciated, and we don't want to outright steal the image. So click over there, read it real quick and then come back.

Grinder Music: My Valentines are Both Funny and Bloody

The most famous song relating to the horrible holiday that's upon us is "My Funny Valentine", from the 1937 Rodgers and Hart musical "Babes in Arms." The song has been recorded at least 600 times, by artists including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Dolly Parton, Elvis Costello, Carly Simon, Chaka Kahn, Johnny Mathis, Van Morrison and Miles Davis. Also, Kanye West sampled Etta James' version for his song"Addiction," which is kind of like a cover version. Sort of.


Julie London sings one of the all-time great versions; if you like smoky, seductive ultra-lounge that often swerves into an ethereal, David Lynch-ian weirdness. This "My Funny Valentine was her last recording, performed for the soundtrack of the 1981 Burt Reynolds vehicle "Sharky's Machine."


The song's popularity led to a Valentine's Day-themed slasher flick "My Bloody Valentine," a 1981 cult hit. The movie, in turn, led to a band in Dublin to take the name for their own. This is the Dublin-born, London-based band My Bloody Valentine and their song "Realise." You've got to love any band with a base player named Colm Ó Cíosóig. If anyone knows how to say Colm Ó Cíosóig, by the way, we'd love to hear how.

SportsGrinder 02.13.09

The Toronto Raptors agreed to send Jermaine O'Neal and Jamario Moon to the Miami Heat in exchange for Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks, which is totally rocking your world if you play fantasy NBA. Otherwise, you know that O'Neal has been a marked man since the "Malice at the Palace" and it's hard to see him working well with Wade. Miami apparently tried to get Josh Howard from Dallas, but it didn't fly. Marion, 30, is averaging 12 points a game this year is looking more and more like one of the many players whose numbers were inflated under Mike D'Antoni in Phoenix.


Early Thursday evening, a Kansas State fan left KU center Cole Aldrich's cell phone number on a KSU message board. With the Wildcats and Jayhawks scheduled to battle Saturday afternoon, K- State fans gave Cole a few dozen, or hundred, texts and phone calls. Aldrich was not amused. He returned at least one call, leaving a message which contained phrases like "dunk the ball all over you (mf'ers)" and "can't wait to drop 20-10 on you." Deadspin has link to the audio.


Yeah, so that thing about certain flavors of Vitamin Water causing you to fail NCAA drugs tests? No so much, says SportsByBrooks. It's an urban legend, like spider eggs in bubble gum and that thing about a hamster and Rod Stewart. Or was it Richard Gere and a gerbil? Anyway, who cares about the NCAA. Our question is whether drinking Vitamin Water can really help LeBron James be a lawyer? Actually, that's a lie. That question came from a SportsByBrooks commenter, "Abe Froman,"and was too go to ignore. Many props to the Sausage King.


Finally SI.com gets us ready for this weekend's big race with a slideshow of celebrity picks for the Daytona 500. Because no true NASCAR fan could live without Khloe Kardashian's thoughts on the race. We'll root for Mark Martin, by the way. We've picked him to win every Daytona 500 since 1912, so why stop now?

THE DAILY GRINDER : The OctoMom Cometh

We tried to ignore Nadya Suleman, hoping she would go away. Everyone involved in that hot mess reeks of hype and dysfunction; the unmarried, unemployed 33-year-old college student with 14 kids. The doctor who did the work and the thrill-seeking media who deemed the story "OctoMom." Okay. We take it back. "OctoMom" is actually kind of funny.

But still, the story is impossible to dismiss as just another Freak-of-the-Week show; one more sad example of the old irony that you need a license to fish, but any idiot can have a kid. There is an air of oppressive creepiness about Suleman's story; an epic callousness by everyone involved that touches on something deeper and more disturbing in American life.

Where to begin? Suleman claims she paid to have the 14 children conceived by in vitro fertilization with part of a $165,000 disability settlement. She got that after a back injury suffered while working at a state mental hospital. You know, kind of like how Lucky on "King of the Hill" makes a living by slipping on pee. She plans to raise the kids on $50,000 in student loans until she finishes school. Somewhere along the line, she also managed to get some plastic surgery that was, apparently, supposed to make her look like Angelina Jolie. (Which makes sense. Jolie is the patron saint of compulsive moms.)

Meanwhile, the hospital where Suleman's eight new children remain under care has applied to the State of California for help with expenses. Because, you know, California is just swimming in cash right now. Essentially, the woman's entire life is paid for by taxpayers. She's a walking bailout.

But the "welfare queen" aspect of the story is only grating. If these children had been conceived separately, with real fathers instead of a turkey-baster, no one would have noticed. Suleman is less a symbol of welfare-state madness than the more ethically complex issues engendered by the rise of fertility science. When a woman with no clear means of survival beyond the kindness of strangers can have fourteen kids, it feels like nature's most fundamental process, the act of reproduction, is being perverted somehow, fucked with for the sake of ego.

Is Suleman really so different from Alex Kuczynski; the socialite New York Times reporter who wrote exhaustively about paying a woman to bear her child? And what about the thousands of women like her; the rich, white, barren suburban ladies who hire poor, brown-skinned fertile women to carry their seed. Yeah, there's nothing unssetttling there. Don't forget about lesbian couples who want pregancy with out a penis and gay men who want kids without a womb. None of this feels like it's about nurturing kids. If people want a child to love, thousands await adoption. The obsessive baby-making is about selfishness; about people's egocentric belief that the human race won't survive without a big dollop of their DNA and having a "real child" will confer some sort of immortality.

Being a parent has evidently become an another "right," to which everyone feels entitled -- even if they don't happen to have the necessary equipment, like, say, sperm, eggs or a viable womb. On some gut-level, it all feels creepy, like we are heading for a sci-fi dystopia where people send away for kits and grow their own babies at home, like sea monkeys.

Suleman, by the way, set up a website to receive donations. She also claimed to be getting death threats and said she moved to "a secure location." You know, like Dick Cheney. She said this through her publicist. Naturally. Meanwhile, Suleman's ex-husband just announced he's releasing a sex tape of the couple on their honeymoon. Just kidding. He didn't. But would you really be that surprised if it was true?

The Daily Tune: Crack a Bottle

Guess who's back. Eminem, with mastermind Dr. Dre behind him, has a new single, "Crack a Bottle," and it broke the Nielsen SoundScan record for opening week downloads with 418,000 units moved. That beats the mark of 335,000 set by TI and Rihanna's "Live Your Life"


Check out the remastered version of "Crack a Bottle" that leaked online late last year. Sure sounds good to hear Dre's voice again.

LOL : A Monumental Pain-in the-Ass, An Evil Plot from Space or Both?

VD is coming. Nah, not venereal disease. Worse. Valentine's Day is upon us -- the holiday which exists solely to make single people feel lonely and to torture men in relationship who finally recovered from the emotional and financial strain of Christmas and New Year's.

Yes, it's time for another round of nights out and pricey gifts -- with all the possibility for screwing up that such things entail. It is true, as the song says that , "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's amore." However, when something bites your hand and it's not what you planned, that's a moray. Or, possibly, it's the backside of baboon. Literally. We can't stand to deface our beloved blog with such ugliness, but you might want to check it out. The pic is very NSFW. But only if you work at a zoo. Go look and come back. We'll wait here and our these V-day gifts that no one should give or get.











Despair.com are the geniuses behind the "Demotivation poster" template, meme or whatever you want to call it. This is their latest tasty product, BitterSweets.












We must have Daytona 500 on the brain. For our Valentine's Day gift, we were going to ask for these Jeff Gordon Heart Boxers. Then we we remembered we aren't incredibly, incredibly gay.


















Women love getting lingerie for Valentine's Day. This "Sexy Cupid" outfit, replete with bow-and-arrow, is just the thing to give that special lady in your life. Provided, that is, she enjoys dressing like a high-end call girl. Otherwise, she is going to kick your ass, ask why you didn't get her jewelry and not give you head for a month.

SportsGrinder 02.12.09

It's always news when Deadspin even mentions motorsports, so huge props to the site for throwing up this image of how to arrive at the Daytona 500 in style. This sweet ride can be yours right now on Ebay for a mere $12,000 grand. If you buy it, make sure people know it's not Kyle Bush in there or you will never survive Talladega.

While we are at it, Deadspin also links a story about how certain flavors of Vitamin Water contain "impermissible or banned substances", which could lead to suspensions for some athletes.
The National Center For Drug Free Sport says the flavors Power-C, Energy, B-relaxed, Rescue, Vital-T and Balance contain banned compounds taurine, L-thiamine, ECGC and glucosamin; only two of which we've heard of). Heavy use could result in a positive drug test. This may be bad news fro a few student athetes, but it's great news for Vitamin Water. Knowing there is something in that stuff worth banning makes us much more like to give it a try.

Ken Griffey Jr. is heading back to Seattle. Weird. In other news, Nirvana is reforming, "Caroline in the City" is back on the air and Bill Clinton just finished his first term in office.

In a victory that absolutely everyone saw coming, Erin Andrews has been voted Playboy's Sexiest Sportscaster for 2009. SI.com's Extra Mustard has a Valetnine's Day interview with the sideline queen. Here's our wildly edited version of what she said.

SI.com: Are you a big Valentine's Day person? Andrews: I'm a… freak. …Lighting a bunch of candles and getting a few bottles of wine would be perfect. SI.com: What do you usually like…? Andrews: Well, I'm a… freak. I like… electronic, because then I can reap the benefits. SI.com: What about a guy coming…? Andrews: …Yeah, definitely. … sometimes it's good... Being a …lover... Any guy …is okay in my book.

Wow. Erin Andrews really has a dirty mind. Okay, she doesn't. We do. To read the actual interview go here.

THE DAILY GRIND I: Joat's up joaith Joaquin Phoenix

Joaquin Phoenix is the kind of actor who hangs up on journalists. Then again, some journalists think having a 10-minute phone interview with Joaquin Phoenix gives them the right to ask about his dead brother, so you can't blame the guy for hanging up when they do. Maybe that sort of thing is why the Oscar-nominated star announced he was retiring from acting to focus on a Hip-Hop music career; as documented by his much-laughed-at debut at Las Vegas club. Then again, maybe the whole things is a hoax. That's was the impression we got from his bizarre appearance on Letterman last night. In a thick beard, big sunglasses and a dark fedora pulled low. He shook hands, then simply refused to engage. On anything. He answered questions in monosyllables, barely acknowledging the audience, even when they clapped for him. Mostly, he just sat.

This was the kind of incredibly awkward, compelling interview Letterman had all the time back at NBC. Watching Phoenix stammer and brood, the crowd's nervous laughter rising, it was like the Letterman glory days, when Andy Kaufmann, Harvey Pekar and Crispin Glover used appearances as a combination of performance art and public psychotherapy. You never knew if they were playing a role and there was always a sense that something unplanned and possibly ugly was about to happen. It was fantastic.

You know how when you see a good spoof, like a well-done commercial parody, there is one instant when you don't know if what you are watching is real? This whole interview was like that.

For a few minutes, you figured Phoenix was pulling a prank. No 34-year-old white guy with two Oscar nominations is going to quit acting for Hip-Hop, and nobody, no matter how sullen, can possibly be that obtuse on national TV. Then, a second later, you thought that he wasn't kidding, that he was drunk, high, tripping or had stopped taking some sort of vital medication. Then you figured he was just acting like a doofus (he is an actor) to get revenge against the film studio for some slight, or maybe as a general "fuck you" to the starmaker machinery, of which Letterman is a part. Even watching the video two or three times, it's hard to tell if Phoenix is insane, acting insane or just pulling some kind of elaborate joke/publicity stunt. There's a real possibility that he doesn't know. Wait… We just it watched again. It's a joke. For sure. He almost cracks up a few times at the end. It's got to be a joke. We're sure of it. Almost.

The Daily Grind 02.11.09

Frankly, we are getting pretty sick of the economy. Hold on. Let's rephrase that. We are getting sick of hearing about the economy; the relentless drumbeat of numbers, the debates over bailouts and stimuli, and if the government should fund research into bees. It's all very taxing, no pun intended.

On a gut level, the whole stimulus-bailout idea just seems dumb to us. It's counterintuitive to think a nation with too much debt could solve it's problems with more spending. But maybe taxing the future to finance the present is one of those ideas it takes an intellectual to understand.

To us, the idea that government "has to do something" seems silly. Left alone, absent any big money from Washington DC, the economy will eventually grow again. That's what economies do. At least, they always have.

Economies grow because human beings want goods and services. People who provide the goods and services that others find valuable will prosper, hence creating a demand for more goods and services. Voila! The magic of free markets. It began at the dawn of human history and will continue whether or not the Federal Government helps people weather-strip their homes.

Congress and Obama could have done nothing; no big infusion of tax dollars borrowed from posterity, no bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit. The government could just spend a few hundred billion on improving unemployment benefits and health care -- for people at the bottom who really need it, and let the invisible hand take care of the rest. If a company fails because it makes a bad product, oh well. Time to make a better product. If a bank goes bust from bad loans, that's life. Someone will eventually buy those "toxic" assets and make a killing.

Yeah, we know. Laissez-faire economics is out of style. Even Wall Street lions get welfare since the market crashed. So now that it looks like the stimulous will happen, can we at least dial down the "End of Days" rhetoric? Anyone who reads blogs or watches TV news is familiar with the Apocalyptic style. In a culture where one must shout to be heard, every problem is a crisis and every crisis becomes a disaster; whether it's turmoil in Iceland, air quality in California or whatever chunk of the sky happens to be falling that day.

No one even uses the word "recession" anymore. It's too tame. Now we hear only "meltdown," "disaster" and (you knew this was coming) "another Great Depression." Martin Wolf, a columnist for the normally staid Financial Times, warns of "apocalypse." Even the President is getting into it. Last week, stumping for the stimulus, Obama warned Americans the crisis could become a "national catastrophe" and there's danger that "our nation will sink into a crisis that, at some point, we may be unable to reverse."

Really. Ever? If we don't pass this particular bill, America will never, ever recover? If taxpayers don't spend a half-billion dollars to renovate the Department of Agriculture, the Republic will fall into irrevocable decline and be cast upon the dustbin of history? Seriously? Whatever happened to the optimistic Obama that we loved on the campaign trial?

The stimulus bill has good stuff in it, but it isn't helpful for the President of the United States to suggest that the nation can't survive without it. No matter how necessary Obama believes the stimulus to be, his more important role is to be a calming influence in tumultuous times. He should comfort, motivate and inspire, not threaten a "catastrophe" if he doesn't get his way.

The Israeli elections are over. Kind of. Anyone who thinks we need more political parties in the US needs only to look at the confusion in Israel. Tzipi Livni's centrist Kadima party won the most Knesset seats, with 28, to the Likud party's 27. But neither scored near the 61 seats needed for a majority, so Russian immigrant Avigdor Lieberman, whose right-wing party appears to have won 15 seats, may end up deciding who wins.

Whoever takes power, it is always nice when a Middle Eastern country has a free, open, nonviolent election. There's really only two countries in the region that do; Israel and Iraq. So how does the international media report the story? The BBC says "Arab press despair as Israel votes." The Telegraph UK says "Peace is the big loser in the Israeli election," and Time Magazine avows "Israel Election Dashes Hopes for Peace." Yeah, well, maybe. But it also dashed hopes for peace when the Palestinians voted for Hamas. You would think a party that provoked a such crushing invasion would suffer next time at the polls. Probabaly not.

There is debate all over the web about the future of newspapers. All sorts of new and old media theorists are scrambling to think of ways to "save" the industry with micro-payment systems on the iTunes model or endowing newspapers as public trusts, like museums, supported a combination of grants and private donations. Ugh.

Look, here is the problem with newspapers. The papers themselves, the hard copies, cost too much to make and move. The regular newspaper subscriber isn't only paying for writers and editors to gather and organize information. Much of the cost is putting that information on paper with ink, then distributing that to thousands of doorsteps. That's not a that cost consumers are willing to bear when they can get the same information faster, for free, on a website. Add the environmental impact of printing and distributing and the consumer has one more reason to say no. While there will always be market for information, the market for a fleet of truck drivers is gone and not coming back -- just like the monopoly big city newspapers once had on classifieds.

Ultimately the debate will not be decided by what newspapers do or don't do, but by technology. Just as Apple showed that people will pay for music if you make it easy, they could do the same for the written word. Imagine a hyper-thin, flexible video screen that can download for a fee, on the iTunes model, while delivering an experience as aesthetically pleasing as paper. Call it the "iRead." Sony is working on a flexible screen as our a few other companies. But it's still five years away. Maybe three.

Grinder Games

February has been the month of shattered illusions, at least if you are incredibly naive. First came the earthshaking news that Michael Phelps smokes weed. Now we find out that Alex Rodriquez used performing-enhancing drugs. Wow. Really? No way. That is a stunner. You could knock us over with a used needle.

Also not surprising was that ESPN's Peter Gammons slurped A-Rod in last night's interview/apology. Filip Bondy in the New York Daily News rightly excoriates Gammons for kowtowing, saying Gammons is "a professional apologist for the sport," and a "pitchman who has the trust of the sport's insiders for all the wrong reasons."

Couldn't have put it better ourselves. Gammons stopped reporting on baseball a long time ago -- right about when he and Karl Ravech made those commercials reenacting a scene from "The Natural." The Panglossian glow with which Gammons presents the game helped enable Major League Baseball to ignore obvious steroid abuse for more than a decade.

Oh, and did we mention that Dwayne Wade may not be the nice guy he seems. British commodities trader Richard Von Houtman says the $1.7 million, two-story apartment in Miami Beach he rented Wade was trashed by the star. Von Houtman described finding apartments filled with used condoms, empty bottles, half-smoked blunts and uneaten food. “They’d have these parties in there two or three times a week,” Von Houtman said. “There were always dozens of people in there. Rappers, Dwyane and his entourage, women they’d pick up in clubs.”

Anybody interested in sports news that has to do with, you know, sports, not gossip, can check out the top NFL Free Agents for 2009, along with predictions about where they might go.

The Daytona 500 is this weekend, about which we are psyched. There is no better event to watch on HD and really, after a NASCAR off-season of bad news and worry that has precisely mirrored the mood of the nation, it will be a relief to see the green flag fall. One way or another, the races will go on. Ed Hinton has this hysterical chat with Humpy Wheeler about what NASCAR will look like in 2059.

Daily Threeome 02.10.09

1) The story of the day is that the $838 billion economic stimulus package passed the Senate. Now the House and Senate must reconcile the differences between their two bills in hopes of getting legislation on President Obama's desk to sign by next week.

Yawn. We've got to go with "whatever." We won't pretend to understand the finer points of economics -- like how you can spend your way out of a deficit. In fact, we'd venture to say that economists also don't understand economics. As far as we can tell, making economic predictions is like betting the spread in the NFL. Anyone who's right more than 51 % of the time gets considered an expert.

Again, whatever. There seems to be a mainstream consensus that the stimulus bill has to happen, so we're on board. But we will spare you a slew of opinion-summarizing links from the usual media suspects. After reading a dozen columnists of varying political stripes (all warning of catastrophe if their favorite squeaky wheel gets no grease), we can sum up pretty quickly. Liberals think the bill is too heavy on tax cuts and conservatives think there's too much spending. Tadah! We just saved you an hour of partisan blather.

2) Next up, Chris Brown's pre-Grammy fight with Rihanna is big news, we guess, because Chris Brown was a different kind of R&B star. He doesn't wear bling and sport a gangster scowl. He sings about love instead of gang-banging. Allegedly beating the crap out his girlfriend, the wildly sexy Rihanna, has now cost Brown his endorsement deal with Wrigley's Gum; ironic because Rihanna allegedly had bite marks on her arm. next for Brown is a court case, a plea bargain, anger management classes, a press conference asking America for forgiveness and a "comeback."

3. FInally, a panel of three federal judges in California ruled that overcrowding in state prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, and the state must cut the prison population by as many as 57,000 people. Judges said the ruling, which has already been appealed, could save the state more than $900 million a year. Great. Let's start right away by releasing everyone in jail for the heinous unforgivable crime of marijuana possession.

According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the state's total prison population at the end of 2007 was at 170,129. Of those, 33,738 were imprisoned for drug crimes, with 13,456 of those in jail for simple possession of pot. If California wants to alleviate prison overcrowding, those 13,000 stoners are a good place to start. Tomorrow. Today. Now.

Five Things All Losers Hate

There's nothing more annoying than nonconformist conformity. Like Stephen Fowler, the mega-jerk who went on ABC's reality show, "WifeSwap" to gleefully revel in every ugly stereotype about San Francisco liberals.

Fowler, in addition to being generally rude, repeatedly called Midwesterners "ignorant and lazy," denigrated the US military and, to put a cherry on top, refused to sing the National Anthem. For a guy who touting a stratospheric IQ, Fowler wasn't smart enough to figure out that badmouthing America on primetime national network TV was a bad idea. The good news is he was forced to apologize and resign from two environmental boards. We can only hope more public censure is to come.

The incident got us thinking about the many, many things Fowler and his ilk don't like; guns, fast cars, sports, beer, pizza. In other words, almost everything that makes life fun. Here is our look at the Top Five Things Weenies Love to Hate.



Wal-Mart
It's pathetic and absurd the way culture snobs bash Wal-Mart; a company whose only crime is selling more goods and services at lower prices than any other retail operation in the history of mankind. Have you ever noticed how the people who complain that Wal-Mart "destroys small town life" are the same people who have never been to a small town. Here's a secret about shopping at Mom-and-Pop owned stores on a small-town Main Street: It sucks. Shopping takes forever, prices are high and the selection is bad. Wal-Mart also pays more and has better benefits than most Mom and Pop-owned retail.


McDonalds'
Mickey D's is an almost unparalleled American success story. The chain has not only served more food, faster and cheaper than anybody else, Ray Kroc's franchise concept revolutionized restaurants. People like to bitch about corporate sameness, but if you have ever tried to find a place to eat in a strange city, you know corporate sameness like Chili's, Applebee's and, yes, the Golden Arches, can be a blessed relief to find. McDonalds had drinkable coffee now, too. No, nobody is paying us for this.






Television
There is no surer sign of cultural snobbery than TV-bashing. Since the fist big shows in the 50's, every douchebag with a college degree who wants to sound smart has railed against the boob tube. It's kind of sad, really. Anyone who has never enjoyed Barney Fife, Cliff Clavin and Dr. Johnny Fever, to name a few, has missed out. Anyway, TV has changed since the days of "My Mother The Car." With the cable explosion, "TV" can now mean cooking shows, Japanese anime, the London Symphony Orchestra or a guy eating raw camel balls in the Sahara.

Maybe even more importantly, the sensory experience of TV has gotten much, much better all of sudden in the last few years. HD has radically improved the broadcast picture and sound, while DVR's have dramatically reduced the number of commercials people have to watch. Refusing to watch any TV at this point is like living in the 1920's and refusing to take part in this new technology called "movies." You're just being dumb and missing out.

Megachurches
Probably because the word sounds scary, people think "megachuches" are where radical, gay-hating, anti-abortion extremists go to watch closeted gay preachers. But "megachuches" are no more or less conservative than any other church. It’s just a catch-all coinage for a congregation over 10,000 people; which sounds big unless you consider that twice that many people will show up for a moderately interesting high school football game.


The Killers
Okay, they don't quite fall into the catagory of things that snotty super-liberals from San Francisco hate. Guys that that only listen o NPR. But we still hear a lot of bashing and want to defend them.

Yeah, the last record was synth-heavy and Brandon Flowers' voice lacked the urgency of the other two. Everyone is allowed a slump. Maybe the band had too much success with the first record and got too well-fed. Being worshiped as gods in Britain is enough to screw up anybody's career.