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Kentucky Wildcats Morning Quickies: Prince Edition

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By wamarsh

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Good morning and happy Friday, ladies and gentlemen of BBN. Prince Rogers Nelson passed away yesterday at the age of 57. He sold over 100 million albums in his career making him one of the best-selling artists of all-time. Music critics said his sound blended funk, R&B, acid rock, and pop. He was also known, like David Bowie, for his androgynous gender-bending persona. He also did more for the color purple than any other human in existence with the possible exception of Alice Walker.

The public outpouring of emotion has been interesting. It's become ritual for people to dramatically (melodramatically?) talk about how much they loved a celebrity immediately following their death. Already this year we've gone through that cycle with at least Gary Shandling, Merle Haggard, and Bowie. The cynic in me wonders why I didn't hear more about the collective fondness for these titans prior to their death. Social media lends itself to disingenuous mourning as a lot of people want to feel a part of something, perhaps? Maybe fables are crafted to help make sense of the senseless?

I won't pretend to be a big Prince fan. I know his biggest hits, and "Erotic City" is my jam, but most of his oeuvre is a blind spot in my music consumption. Still, there's a lot of smart people I respect who say Prince's catalog of work is worthy of all this postmortem praise - fake or not - and so I'll do a deep dive this weekend while doing chores, and probably become a fan like everyone else.

Prince Tweets of the Morning


Your Quickies:

Kentucky football
  • UK secured a commitment from a four star safety out of Ohio last night ICYMI.
  • Mark Story identifies four games that will define the season. I was prepared to see him cite Southern Miss, but was pleasantly surprised to see Story went with the four teams I would have gone with as well. UK needs to win three games against these peer programs this season for a bowl. If UK wins all four of these games the team wins seven games, and a team good enough to win seven games can usually pull off an upset to get to eight wins.
Kentucky basketball
Other Kentucky sports

College football
College basketball
Other sports news
  • The Rockets held off the Warriors last night.
  • There was also a no-hitter pitched last night too.
  • This ESPN Magazine article about Tiger Woods' life in the wake of his father's death is exceptional and sad.
  • Arguably the UFC's biggest star just pulled out of this summer's major pay-per-view. Fighters have long complained about not being compensated for doing all the promotional work required for main and co-main events. There is no collective bargaining agreement for fighters in the UFC.
  • Dan Wetzel writes convincingly on how college athletics has become a boondoggle for everyone but the students.
  • Jon Jones fights this weekend, and his mastery of range is a big reason he's been so successful. This is a great technical breakdown from a writer who started off in the comments section of SB Nation's Bloody Elbow, became a writer at BE, then moved on to Sherdog.com, and now is writing about MMA for one of the country's biggest newspapers. There's hope for all of you fine commenters. Chase those dreams!
Other news
  • Here's an interesting take on how visiting museums is a pain. I will say, people were taking pictures of famous paintings long before cell phones also had cameras built into them.
  • I believe Pappy Van Winkle bourbon is released in the fall, but a Louisville Kroger is about to sell ten bottles of the 12-year in the lead-up to the Derby. If you live near Middleton you might as well put your name in the hat.
  • Bomani Jones writes for Playboy why there will never be another Prince (SFW).

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