1. Tapes ‘n’ Tapes: I vaguely recall hearing their Pavement-aping indie rock, but their music is not something I’m familiar enough with to critique. What I hate is their name. Every time I see it in print, a voice in my head chirps “Tapes ‘n’ Tapes! Derp!” It pains me to sully this site by reprinting it, but I do it in the hopes that they either change their name or lose all media coverage.

2. ESPN: I discovered ESPN’s existence when I was nine or ten, thereby transitioning my fondness for baseball cards and box scores into live replays. I remember watching the same episode of SportsCenter several times in a row back when Craig Kilborn and Keith Olbermann were hosts. Eventually I got out of this habit, but when I was freelancing after college I’d make sure to reserve an hour of my undivided attention for Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption. When I got digital cable, ESPNews became a constant din in the background of my activities. It is safe to say that I have watched a great deal of ESPN programming.

But what is the state of that programming? Tired, misguided, pedantic. I realized sometime last year that ESPN has devolved into a constant barrage of the same exhausting arguments, typically delivered by the worst commentators on television. I’ve seen more than enough of Skip Bayless’s ridiculous, contrarian rants , thank you very much. Aside from Outside the Lines, there was no actual reporting being done, just rehashes of worn arguments, saccharine-laced human interest stories, or, worst of all, ESPN fluff pieces. Should I mention their live sports programming? Without hockey to draw me in or NHL2Night to cover the sport, it’s of limited interest to me. They have the worst baseball coverage team (Joe Morgan, ahem), Dick Vitale blaring over college basketball games, and far too much poker. Aside from the occasional college basketball or college football game, there isn’t much reason for me to watch the channel anymore. So I decided to make my New Year’s resolution to boycott the network.

Amazingly enough the boycott has stuck. The only time I’ve considered cheating was when the Patriots lost the Super Bowl—perhaps the greatest blow to another hated institution, Boston sports talk radio—and when I skipped to the channel Emmitt Smith was about to open his mouth. The impulse was gone. My stamina has been helped by the fact that my two colleges of interest—University of Illinois and Boston College—were downright wretched at basketball this year. I’d like to think that they’ll improve enough next year to get me to break this resolution, but I can hardly express the same level of optimism about ESPN.

3. 2008 March Madness: Avoiding ESPN for the last three months prevented me from gaining much of a foothold on the happenings of college basketball, so after Illinois made its failed run in the Big Ten tournament, I struggled to interest myself with the prospect of the annual basketball feast. Opting for episodes of Dexter over a large number of the first-round games didn’t help, but neither did the field itself. The coverage I read seemed to applaud having four number one seeds reach the final four as a long overdue justification of tournament’s conclusion, but that is damned chalk. If Davidson had put up a winning basket, they would have been my horse, but instead I’m left with one school that beat my college in its only title game appearance (UNC, who I’ve long hated anyway), a school who poached my school’s coach (Kansas), the school with the most titles (UCLA), and a school whose coach is desperately trying to portray his team as “friends first and teammates second,” gag (Memphis). As it turned out, I will adopt Memphis as a one-game favorite, praying that Bill Self doesn’t get to justify his departure. At the very least, it’ll be entertaining basketball, but I can’t say that my excitement level has flown off the charts. Hell, I forgot the semi-finals were even on today.

4. Murder by Death: When I first heard Little Joe Gould at the Highdive in Champaign, their bass player, Matt Armstrong, was warming up with the bass line to Mogwai’s “Tracy.” That anecdote has stuck for me for two reasons: first, I remember talking to Matt about it afterward and finding out that we had similar musical taste, and second, they actually sounded like Mogwai during parts of that set. I can’t think of the band without thinking of how much has changed. The original keyboard player and drummer are gone. The warm Cure influence from the first record has vanished. Their fixation on the old West is all-consuming. The post-rock elements have disappeared. The spectacle of their live show is gone. The lyrical narratives of Johnny Cash and Tom Waits have become the biggest touchstones for their last two albums, but the scope of the music has been pared down to pop structures. They’ve certainly found their niche, touring with the Reverend Horton Heat on a few occasions, but I’ve accepted that I am not a part of that niche audience. I still enjoy their first few records, though. Like the Exorcist, but More Breakdancing isn’t a cohesive document, but that’s part of the appeal. They wrote Cure-informed pop songs, post-rock epics, and aggressive rock songs, giving their live sets surprising variety. Who Will Survive and What Will Be Left of Them? has gained thematic and structural cohesion, but lost some of its predecessor’s spirit in the process. I miss the band that made those records.

5. Mono: I recently replaced the cassette adaptor for my iPod/CD player, so I didn’t anticipate it going on the fritz this quickly. But almost every time I get in the car, I only hear music out of the right channel. If I tinker with the cord I can get it to work again, but only hearing music from the opposite side of the car is threatening to drive me insane.