To seek celebration through suffering is the essence of a life well-lived.
Only those who have the stones, the moxie, those who dare to scale the rocky terrain of accomplishment, connection and bonding can truly suffer, for they are the ones who endure the mountainous road, and those who grieve the loss of what they’ve earned. Continue reading
The album begins with a foggy crescendo, an open-air atmospheric shimmer upon which any number of musical and spiritual possibilities could spring. It begins in much the same way life does: wordless fanfare, brimming with physical unrest, time unmarked, a blank canvas as beautiful and pure as any found in nature. It is here that the familiar ring of The Edge’s guitar beckons: First in 6/8, before the rhythm section commences, turning a gentle invitation into a pummeling 4/4 heartbeat. Distilled to its essence, there is nothing complex, only layer upon layer of simplistic building blocks which befuddle the listener with the aggregate’s grandeur and majesty. And that’s all before Bono’s booming vocals and skyscraping lyrics provide the formal introduction: Continue reading
Asthma. Six letters. Two syllables. One constant in a life perpetually in flux.
The frailty of the human existence, the whole of human suffering, can be boiled down to its essence when your ability to inhale, to exhale, has been compromised. To sit there, gasping for oxygen the way a celebutante seeks attention, the way the impoverished lay defeated after scouring their surroundings for nourishment. Without oxygen, there is no life. And with very little oxygen, a life can amount to very little. Continue reading
A 17-year old black male lay motionless on a Florida sidewalk, and the world barely blinked at first. Just another young negro, victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Probably had it coming, too.
Musta been a victim of gang violence. Musta been packing heat. Musta been a drug deal gone band. This type’a shit happens all the time in Black America: Every ghetto’s sad story.
But High School senior Trayvon Martin wasn’t struck down by a gang member in the ghetto. Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, a white man with a Peruvian mother, a self-appointed ‘neighborhood watch’ captain. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Trayvon Martin, all 140 pounds of him, was armed only with an Arizona Ice Tea and a bag of skittles, draped in a hooded sweatshirt. Hell, that sounds a lot like me as a High School senior. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Trayvon Martin wasn’t involved in a drug deal. Trayvon Martin didn’t do drugs. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.
Trayvon Martin didn’t have this coming, and if he’d been a gangbanger, a drug addict or carrying a weapon on him …. well, he still wouldn’t. Because that shouldn’t matter.
I don’t really know how to put this delicately, but NO ONE DESERVES TO DIE.
No one deserves to get followed several blocks, approached by a stranger, asked ‘What are you doing here?’ and forced to swallow lead while being laid to waste in cold blood.
Some state that he shouldn’t have been inside the ‘gated community.’ I’ve been in Florida’s gated communities. This ain’t The Real Housewives of Orange County. My mom lives in one. They’re just neighborhoods, little planned communities with a perimeter fence. You shouldn’t have to account for your whereabouts at all times. Everyone has a right to walk down a street. No one has the right to die on it.
Some (ahem, Geraldo Rivera) state he shouldn’t have been dressed in a hoodie. Because folks who rob convenience stores, who get arrested in drug busts, who gangbang, are always in hoodies. You know who else can often be spotted in hoodies? 17 year-olds at band practice, skateboarders, lacrosse players and people who are just plain fucking cold. Using that logic, rape victims shouldn’t dress sexy. They’re just looking for trouble.
Some state George Zimmerman was doing his neighborhood watch duty. He did not. He did neighborhood hunt duty. Here’s why:
1. He followed Trayvon Martin. Trayvon was walking. Down a street. There are no eye-witness accounts that he’d done anything but walk out of a store and back toward home. Zimmerman had no reason to suspect Martin of anything. Except that Martin was, you know, black.
2. He called 911. Again, stating how suspicious Trayvon looked. A kid. Walking out of a store. I’ve walked out of thousands of stores. It’s what you do after walking into a store.
3. The police told him to STOP FOLLOWING Trayvon, because there was not enough first-hand knowledge to warrant any kind of law enforcement, much less warrant any kind of vigilante law enforcement. Zimmerman ignored this advice and kept on following, even using the words “Fucking Coons” during the recorded call.
4. Zimmerman, against the orders of the police, approached Trayvon Martin. Some folks have suggested Trayvon Martin could’ve done something to avoid this. The burden of avoiding a violent conflict lies in the aggressor, not the defender.
5. Trayvon Martin did what most people would do. He ran. Some folks said, “If he didn’t do anything wrong, then why did he run?” He ran because he was afraid. Because that’s what you do when you’re being chased. When you’re being hunted.
6. And when he couldn’t run fast enough, he defended himself. Without a weapon. He brought his hands to a gun fight. Of course he lost.
Zimmerman’s self-defense theory doesn’t hold up. He attacked. His decision to follow. His decision to call police. His decision to keep following after the police told him not to. His decision to step out of the car. His decision to chase. His decision to shoot. This was an unprovoked attack on an innocent person. Doesn’t matter if he was 17, 47 or 77. That he’s a kid makes this more of a tragedy but no more of a travesty.
What was Zimmerman defending himself against? A Skittles shower?
Trayvon Martin didn’t deserve to die. But he did die. Because he is black. Because black people, particularly black males, are irrationally feared. Still. White people cross the street. Ladies clutch their purses a little tighter. Still. In 2012. Why?
Why must black parents have to teach their black kids about the “Code?” About how to lay still and essentially say ‘yezza-masta’ whenever asked about why they are where they are and why they do what they do? Shouldn’t it be everyone else talking to their kids and teaching them a lesson that “There is no reason to be afraid?” That we are all the same? That everyone has the same rights to grab skittles and ice tea from the store?
Why must black males go above and beyond what’s reasonable to illustrate that they’re not a threat? Not a criminal? Not a menace? Why should that burden fall on them?
“Be aware of your surroundings.” “Don’t appear to be threatening.” Nobody should have to be told this just to have the rights to coexist on this pebble we call Earth. A gathering of 12 young black males outside a Chick-Fil-A doesn’t necessitate a SWAT team and a six-pack of squadron cars. But we’ve seen it happen. And it frankly makes me sick.
In the wake of Trayvon’s killing, hundreds of articles and millions of words have been spilled about how black people need to talk to their kids about protecting themselves. These words are superfluous, for the real words that must be written must instruct people of all other races to stop perceiving blacks as suspicious, dangerous, violent and threatening. While you’re at it, maybe you could teach your kids that all blacks aren’t great dancers, dunkers and poor students and workers. I can’t believe I have to say this, but Black people are people. They share cultural commonalities and cultural differences the same way whites do. The same way asians do.
We’re all just people. We’ve got our own culture, our own habits, our own vices, our own talents. And most of us – hell, damn near all of us - share similar goals, like wanting to mind our own business, get to where we’re going, and drink our ice tea in peace.
Wake up, people. Nobody hunts in self-defense.
People often ask me, “Do you believe in God?”
I’ll often respond, “I don’t know.”
To which they will, if they believe, automatically reply, “If you don’t know … then you don’t believe.”
If you don’t know … then you don’t believe … Continue reading
As we know, Steve Jobs, co-founder and creative mastermind behind Apple Computer, died Wednesday at age 56.
Many have focused on Jobs and his relentless attention to detail, his company was synonymous with technological breakthrough and aesthetic beauty. And while those are important, those who latch onto those as the secret behind Apple’s indelible success and ferocious 21st-century comeback only hit the mark halfway. Continue reading
I wanna take a step back for a minute, and discuss something important.
There’s an ESPN Radio station down here in Austin, AM 1530, that plays the Mothership’s full programming lineup day-in and day-out, with the exception of some UT games, and the occasional Texas Stars tilt in the AHL. There’s no local sports programming whatsoever. Just Mike & Mike, then the Herd, then Doug Gottlieb, Brian Kenny and Jason Smith. Then, they do it all over again from the top.
Now, at first, I thought this would bother me. “No local coverage? But how will I dig into _____” and the static that followed was not of the shoddy reception, but rather of my own lack of empathy to the local sports market, and, finally, to my own realization that I never listened to local sports radio much, anyway.
WGR up in Buffalo is a fine local radio station. It’s perfect for the market, all bluster and blue-collar with hard-working, colorful local radio personalities. But I never listened to it. I listened to Scott Van Pelt and Freddie Coleman and Jason Smith. I watched PTI. I listened to the Matthew Berry and Bill Simmons podcasts (though, in Simmons’ case in particular, the quality of his program is wildly inconsistent, and it all depends upon the quality of his guests). And that’s it. Still my routine.
As much as I enjoy Buffalo sports, I realized outside of watching (or listening to) the games and reading the local columnists and corresponding SB Nation Blogs for the Bills and Sabres and Syracuse Orange, I didn’t really need all that extra local coverage. Just give me the game locally, and the compelling national storylines, delivered by smooth, polished, engaging personalities – of which there are precious few.
All this extra stuff, all the incessant 24-7 coverage, the rampant repetition of tired talking points by local and national media .. it is exhausting. I feel by 530pm, I can arrange PTI’s entire C-block by myself. Local sports hosts expressing trumped-up outrage over trading a fifth-round draft pick … is exhausting. It registers an 0.8 on my Quality-of-Life Richter Scale.
Over half of all men who wish to go into television broadcasting start out by going into sports. I was one of them. I did the weather for a year. That was enough. Amazingly, based upon the volume of talent it takes to put together a pre-game show, there’s enough jobs for them. Are we losing sight of what’s really important?
Maybe we were supposed to just wake up, listen to our favorite personality deliver the sports news and watch the game at night. Stats can be followed at our leisure. If we were that big into numbers that really mattered, maybe we’d all be stock traders instead of stat junkies. Maybe we could come up with pro-bowl ballots for the S&P, or Top 10 Sexiest Senators.
It doesn’t have that ring to it. At least not yet. For all our deep thinking and disproportionately-placed passion is squarely centered upon sports, for which there are now nearly 300 radio stations devoted squarely to them.
Hi, sir, long-time listener. First-time caller. Why does the lack of a promising prospect at Left Tackle anger you more, sir, than your kid’s juvenile arrest record?
I’m 28 and the tectonics of my sports fandom have shifted irreversibly. Like the gradual reversion of a scar sinking into the fiber of one’s skin – in which eventually it becomes seamless and blended and meshed, as it becomes less ‘abscess’ and more ‘recess’, I find myself more rationally studying the sports landscape.
Part of this is due to immersion, as a writer, as well as a fan, I experience dozens (if not hundreds) of sports videos, clips, articles, columns, games and discussions per day, and I am forced to extract what’s important, relevant and profound. Part of this is due to exhaustion, as that very same drowning in sports content numbs and wears at the flesh between my earlobes and elsewhere. Part of this is due to dependency, as the longer I’ve liked and followed sports, the more of my ‘fix’ must be plundered to ascertain similarly heightened levels of intrigue.
Still, one very real, very gradual, phenomenon locked my attention and continues to stare it down: I’m now the same age as an athlete in their “Athletic Prime.” I’m no longer looking up to athletes as heroes or role models, I’m no longer college-aged, hoping to go pro, and I’m no longer a wide-eyed rookie hoping to grow into my tremendous talent or spread my wings into superstardom. No, I’m now the same age as “the guy.” Your franchise cornerstone.
I was sitting on the couch with the lady last week as she followed the oblong pigskin with me – her staring not so much at the TV, but rather through it, eyes half-glazed over in boredom/exhaustion/confusion – and that thought crept back into my head: “This is just a game.”
Then Marshawn Lynch broke through with the “run of the century”, a 67-yard scamper through which he broke (at my count) nine tackles, including a fanatical stiff-arm where he chucked a New Orleans defender halfway to Tacoma. It brought shivers to my shoulders and a silent scream to my throat. My emotions were, as follows, “HOLY SH*T! … I gotta text my friends … Where’s the video! … Amazing! … Why did the Bills trade him? … I am so mad … Tell me he turns into an all-time great … Where was this in Buffalo? … Sonuvab***h, Seattle’s not just going to cover, but win outright … What an upset!” This all went through my head in the span of 60 seconds. When I was a college senior, Marshawn Lynch was a senior, too … in High School.
I then realized, I am wildly engaged with, and three tax-brackets beneath, athletes who may be younger than I. But, yet, they appear to exist outside the constructs of age. I don’t feel older than them, but when empirically remember that I am, it bewilders me. I think, “How did they get to do what they do?”
Athletes talk endlessly about “doing what it takes to win” and “putting in the effort” and you hear about work-ethic, dedication and “leaving it all out there on the field.” And I realize that was never me. And that these folks who are, by and large, physical specimens that could outrun and outhit a Toyota Prius (quite easily, I assume), are also geared specifically to do just that, and have trained their brains to do so from a tender age. They’re young, they’re powerful and they’re committed. Say what you will about some of the legal transgressions or smack-talk, but these are some incredible human beings.
LeBron James this past summer caught a bit of flack for throwing Cleveland under the bus on Live Television. But he also donated millions to charity that same night, and consulted with financial planners, agents, coaches, players, family, friends, supporters, branding experts, CEOs and other professional athletes to make what he could out of a threshold situation. It was calculated, cunning and remarkably mature, especially for a 25 year-old. My 25th birthday, I got thrown out of a bar for vomiting in public, throwing a potted plant, picking a fight with a 60 year-old man and dropping a few drunken n-bombs. What’s the opposite of “doing what it takes to win?” Yeah, I did that.
So when I think of these young pups playing the game, giving their all on the field, and I refer to one of them as a “headcase” or “immature”, I say it with an off-hand, tongue-in-cheek reverence. Does it take a somewhat crazy individual to administer as much physical pain on another human being as possible for 60 continuous minutes once a week? Absolutely. And it probably predisposes them to locker-room outbursts, DUI arrests and the like. You gotta cope with it somehow. But immature?
Well, these cats are younger than I, making the same mistakes I did, and finding out the hard way there’s folks who want to take advantage of you and probably will. But, in every concrete sense of the word, these same people did it all the right way. For their every success can be measured empirically in stats and rings, wins and losses. Real life outside the lines ain’t that black-and-white. And they’re getting paid seven (sometimes eight!) figures over the course of a mere 5-to-10 years to measure their strength in that fashion. I respect that.
So what happens when you turn 28? If you’ve aged properly, you’d think what happens is your admiration’s been de-mythologized. Athletes turn from heroes in a Greek sense, to heroes in an Algerian (not the country, the author) sense: It is their routine, their workman-like approach to the grandiose and mystical that’s admired, rather than the grandiosity and mystical itself.
In other words, you see the men behind the gods. You stop believing in miracles, and yet you start believing there’s men and women out there who can run through the five boroughs or New York City faster than any regular human can drive through them during a regular workweek, because you see it on the 6pm Sportscenter.
Less imagination, more incredulity. Welcome to the age of coming of age.
Gonna let you in on a little secret: I’ve watched three National Championship games since 2000.
Luckily, two were Miami-OSU and USC-Texas. Unforgettable tilts that will go down in sporting lore as two of the greatest games played in any sport.
The other was the Oklahoma-FSU game, which ended 13-2, I believe. A hideous eyesore that left me perplexed and nonplussed.
I’ve seen parts of others, but I often tune late, catch intermittently, or turn off early due to lack of competitiveness or lack of interest.
I’ll watch the Super Bowl to its bitter end, even when the teams have slugged it out to a one-sided drubbing. I’ll watch every game of a World Series sweep. Ditto for the NHL and NBA. I religiously watch college basketball’s championship tussle. Why can’t I get up for the BCS Title game?
The answer’s not an indictment of the BCS, I believe more often than not, they get the two best teams in the country into the game. It still doesn’t feel like the “National Championship.”
If the college football season’s a novel with each week as a chapter, then bowl season is not the final chapter or conclusion, or even an epilogue. It’s an Appendix. The title game is the final in a series of 35 extras posted at the tail-end of the novel that stretches 13 heart-stopping weeks (or chapters).
It doesn’t have the feel of the final chapter because the structure and conditions aren’t the same. Namely, the one condition that matters most: This game is not played on Saturday.
Pro football is played on Sundays. Its playoff games are played on Sundays (though, sometimes Saturdays, to accommodate eight teams). Its Super Bowl is played on Sunday.
Every meaningful college football game is played on Saturday, from Week 1 to Conference Championships. Sometimes on a Thursday or Friday. In bowl season, for TV ratings or marketing purposes, this is to flattened affect switched up, and we get exhibition bowl games played on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Holidays and in the afternoon and late at night and by the time we get to the National Championship game, on Monday, January 10, we’ve had enough.
It’s a phenomenon called “State-Dependent Conditioning.” If certain conditions are met, we’re more likely to absorb and entertain ideas and experiences. It’s why they pump fake bakery or BBQ smells in Disney World. It’s why there’s a last-call and a dinner bell. We’re dogs, and on Monday, January 10, Pavlov’s taking a nap, or vacationing in the Lesser Antilles.
So, my proposal to fix college football is simple. It isn’t to overhaul or scrap the BCS at all.
Keep your 35 bowl games and do the following with them:
Play eight on the first Saturday in December. Play seven on the second Saturday in December. Play six on the third. Five on the fourth. You want TV money? Stretch them to Friday Night if you need.
On New Year’s Eve, play four more games (love the Cotton Bowl as a late-afternoon game here), and on New Year’s Day, play the Orange, Sugar, Rose and Fiesta Bowls. We’re used to college football on New Year’s. The first Saturday after the New Year, at 7pm EST, play the BCS Title Game.
It’s simple. It provides us a coherent narrative; a progression. There’s clarity and a build-up and a division and a story arc. We’re given time to digest, preview and process. It’s perfect.
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That said, we hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here today. Enjoy the game tonight, we’ll see you back here tomorrow.
First of all … read this.
Just remember to come back when you’re finished.
So, got all that? Because, contained within those 11 paragraphs is the entire sad, sorry, sick state of the American way of life. I’ll list the salient data points, in order.
1. Tucker Carlson believes Michael Vick should have been executed … for animal cruelty and dog-killing.
2. Michael Vick killed dogs and is back playing, starring in, and being fawned over, in the NFL
3. People are unhappy about this, except for fans of Vick or the particular team he plays for
4. White people care about dogs more than they care about black people
5. Dogs get fed homemade and organic foods, dressed in designer outfits and nuzzled like infants
6. Black folks are apparently afraid of dogs, because redneck honkies would use attack dogs to maul their great-great-grandparents in the Jim Crow South
7. People can write for the Atlanta Post without establishing an iota of coherence (seriously, the article waffles like a cone)
8. Some whites hate dogs
9. Some black people love dogs
10. DOGS GET THROWN F@#KING BIRTHDAY PARTIES
11. Coltrane is an awesome name for a dog
12. God taught us humans to love dogs
13. Apparently, Gandhi judged the greatness of a nation by the way it treats its animals
14. People breed dogs for fighting
15. Dogfighting has nothing to do with football
16. Vick is apparently amending his character BY PLAYING QUARTERBACK REALLY WELL
17. White people hate black men with money
18. Tucker Carlson has no problem with Sarah Palin shooting moose from a helicopter.
19. Actually, I have no problem with shooting moose, either. After all, they are moose.
Conclusions:
Tucker Carlson is a douchebag who has a media voice because it is purposely inflammatory, and it is that very caustic abrasiveness that brings in ratings and ad revenue. It’s why Rush Limbaugh has a steady following, and Magic Johnson’s late-night show didn’t last past the C-block.
It’s never too late to correct a mistake, or to atone and amend one’s past. However, in America, the only way that you do this is through bringing success and wealth to others. Michael Vick’s assumed ‘redemption’ has little to do with his character, and everything to do with he’s putting up MVP-type numbers on a playoff-bound Philadelphia Eagles team.
People are more likely to love you if you’re the same color skin, or wearing the right color jersey.
Cute animals are the only ones worth protecting. You can’t club seals, kill dogs or torture kittens, but you can cage cows, whip horses, skin sheep and shoot moose.
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White Americans are ignorant, two-faced, scum-of-the-Earth, opportunistic, backhanded pricks. We butcher attempts at Spanish, we incorrectly recite Jay-Z lyrics to black people in a sad attempt to sound hip, we post advocacy links all over our Facebook walls for gay rights / animal rights / Darfur sovereignty despite never donating a drop of time or money to any cause, can’t tell various Asians or Eastern Europeans apart and think we know India because we’ve seen “Slumdog Millionaire” …
White Americans appear tolerant, knowledgeable, cultured, warm, caring and accepting when we presume it will make us money, earn us status or reflect well upon our character. When that incentive isn’t there, when the spotlight is off, well …
… let’s just say cooking tacos for exchange students from Costa Rica to give them “a taste of home” is sorta like giving a frog you catch a stick and a leaf in a bell jar to make it “comfortable.”
We (Yup, I’m white, too) don’t know anything, and when we try to care enough to know, we come off awkward and contrived. I know this.
So I’ll just go on cheering for the black men who put the ball in the end zone for my team, and cursing out the white men who put the ball in the end zone for the other team, and I’ll probably make the worst Pad Thai ever and ask a gay man for some fashion tips.
And then I’ll drink the pain of never being able to fully grasp it all away, because the more bubbles there are inside of me, the more comfortable I’ll be inside the big, giant, protective one my culture’s created for me.
See you Monday. I promise you, I will still be alive. Enjoy Wild-Card Weekend.
