When Ill-Informed People Regurgitate Political Rhetoric On Facebook

College Payoff

4-team playoff? Everyone will miss the BCS once this shady reach-around is instituted in 2014. For now I'll just say---You don't fool this old rube, college football.

Your college football playoff Selection Committee 

Those old men relieving themselves in the picture? That's your selection committee (kind of,) and here's what the Great Oz (ESPN) says: "The committee will be charged with giving all teams an equal opportunity to participate in the playoffs and will consider factors such as strength of schedule, head-to-head results and whether a team is a conference champion."

What part of that is a computer incapable of? Odds are the committee will be made up of conference commissioners, retired coaches, and retired players. Let me tell you something right now---Bobby Bowden didn't know where the fuck he was for the last three years he was coaching. I imagine he's in an Alvin's Island right now wearing a snorkel and trying to convince the register girl that these souvenir shot glasses are actually "pee-pee hats."

Old players? You mean this one? Or this one? Or this one? Christ.

Don't even get me started on conference commissioners. These are the same conference commissioners that have rejected a playoff for 20 years because it had "the potential to infringe on academic expectations of student athletes." Horseshit. As soon as the playoff became economically viable these fools shook on it, and were so giddy about the possible financial windfall, they appointed a committee of this---

What bowl are you taking us to?

So, yes, college football, I doth protest. I love you, and I will watch you. But just like a stripper in Panama City, I will never trust you.

What I Wish I Was Doing Today

Roll Tide, fools.

Ugh. Whatcha Say Whatcha Say, Ugh. New York*

I hate New York. Let me rephrase—I tire of New York. I tire of television’s depictions of New York, whereby ANYONE can make it. I thought the whole deal was “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!” Apparently not. You want to impress me? Make it in Phoenix. That place blows.

I tire of people falling in love in New York, but then almost not getting together, but then getting together right when the lights of some building flicker on. Fuck you. I tire of people in New York being “neurotic” and thus “interesting” instead of “neurotic” and thus “eat shit”. 

this guy made it

I tire of the Knicks, who haven’t been relevant since Clinton was throwing late night cigar parties. I tire of Spike Lee’s camera-close-up rants. It’s not subversive anymore, you little troll; it’s just derivative racism. Eli Manning? Oof. 

I know I’m in the minority here. I realize that New York is the center of everything. New York is our cultural power source. It’s the reason America as a land mass didn’t move any farther west. Why is everything accepted in California? Because those poor folks are too far from the power source! They don’t have the strength to fight it! What “it”? Any fucking it!

It’s the same reason people in my home state of Alabama are so stubbornly fucking backwards. See, Alabama is entirely too close to the power source. Don’t ever let rednecks drink the redneck juice and redneck too close to the power source or them rednecks will just redneck other rednecks into a big redneck**.

This morning I see that the New York Mets played the New York Yankees in a baseball game and all the world is smitten! Two New York teams play New York in New York? New! York! There’s a subway!

Make contact or me and mom
don't love you anymore. 

Look, my father wasn’t a baseball fan and neither was my grandfather or my older brother. Mom didn’t watch it. Grandma didn’t watch it. Nobody in my family watched baseball. Love of sports (by and large) is a learned condition. You watched games with an older family member, a mentor, a creepy postman. No child ever actually walked onto a playground, saw all the sports being offered there and said, “Oooohhhh! That one! That one where people stand still most of the time! I want to do that one because I just don’t have the energy for the others!”

No. Didn’t happen. You ever go to a little league game and see a fly ball land and roll right passed the center fielder who’s staring at cloud shapes and chasing nose goblins? He’s fucking bored. The coach has to yell at him to get his head in the game. Scars him for life! Years later he’s calling me to ask if we can go watch the Mets/Yankees game. No. No we cannot.

Two teams who play baseball in the same city played one another. Makes perfect sense to me. But this morning I thought all the excitement was over a cancer cure, or world hug-it-out day, or Nickelback had exploded into a beautiful firework, or Kanye West had disappeared. You’re this excited over baseball? There are 14,000 more games. Is it the subway?

* I love Hip-Hop. Thank you, thank you, thank you, New York, for Hip-Hop. 

** There's no real point in bringing up what's actually backwards with regards to education, institution of a lottery for better funding, the university's specific navigation of racism, immigration, corrupt local government, etc., because all anyone else hears is the word "redneck". That's why the same southern jokes still slay, somehow. People see no problem with regionalism. Cool. I mean, fuck off, but cool. 

Ill Communication

When texting just isn't sufficient. RIP

How do we keep up with all of the people we care about? Family, old friends, new friends, friends in low places, friends with benefits, Fox and Friends, friends we’ve made at conferences, friends we met on twitter. We could, I suppose, clarify what constitutes “friend” vs “acquaintance” vs “dude/chick that seemed cool,” but because all those qualifications are often separate parts of the same process, and because you’re not an idiot, we’ll just say “friends". 

An article in the guardian from 2009 questions whether technology is a tyrannical force “driving us further apart.” Not if INXS has anything to say about it!

If 2009 is too long ago—“C’mon, Mink, I’ve live-tweeted the births of three children and Instagrammed 16 vacays since then, bruh”—then here is a more current labeling of modern communication as a tyrannical force dumbing us down. Mark Bauerlein's piece feels very much like an updated version of Sam Waterston’s robot worries. 

Miami Heat fans would say you're just hatin'. Then they would do this and this.

I don't necessarily disagree with what Elizabeth Day is saying, though she seems terribly young to fear machines, because she's simply reporting back the beliefs of communication's old guard--"Hitch this calligraphy to the wagon, Buck, and make sure Mrs. Haversham receives it directly!"--but I do take issue with Bauerlein's assertions, which seem more provocative than proven. 

There’s a running joke within my crew of how incapable I am of surviving without my cellphone, even while physically amongst friends who are trying to carry on a conversation with me. I am never beyond pulling out my cellphone while a buddy is in mid-sentence to check my twitter, Facebook, email, or text. In my mind, I’m fully capable of doing all of the things all of the time. But the fact is that it’s rude, and it’s a social misstep I no longer even recognize I’m making. It’s routine, habit, addiction. I am immersed in so many lines of communication that I forget those right in front of me, and subconsciously, I think, I worry that if I don’t know what’s going on everywhere with everyone and don’t respond asap that the world will pass me by. It’s terrifying!

This is why I, in part, agree with the rhetoric that accuses me of being a mindless drone plugged into a spiritually dead world, leading us further away from the very intimacy that defines us as human. My b.

But where these saviors of ye old handshake miss the point is time and priority.

I say! What ravenous clicking on that picture box!

Bauerlein says, “most young people in the United States neither read literature (or fully know how), work reliably (just ask employers), visit cultural institutions (of any sort), nor vote (most can’t even understand a simple ballot.)"

Surely you’re aware that young people today travel much more than generations before, and that, there is only so much you can bring on a plane. Shall I pack an extra suitcase of books because I like the smell of paper, or just use my kindle? It’s a valid question. For while I’m sure not everyone uses their kindle to read War and Peace while on layover, they’re also not all banging away on Pac-Man.

At Florida State University (where I am a PhD student in Creative Writing), Graduate TA’s teach over 80% of the undergraduate courses offered in the English Department. Ask our employers how that’s working out for them. I would forward you their numerous emails lauding our efforts each semester, but I doubt you’d read them. Principles and all.

What counts as a “cultural institution”? Museums? Visit them each time I’m in a city that has them. Not all do. But that speaks to government funding of the arts, as well as each particular city’s wealth of economy. Much larger discussion, but it’s not the fault of those who tweet.

Voting. Oof. You can’t be serious. Is it your belief that Obama was elected President of the United States largely on the shoulders of old white people? You think Butch, who runs the hardware store in upstate New York, plastered his windows in “Hope” or “Change”?

Scientific method? In what arena? Tuesday I was with a young writer who got every physics question correct at trivia night. We were in a bar WRITING the answers in PENCIL on PAPER! Oh, the sophistication!

I can recount a ton of American history: there’s slavery, the corruption of government, capitalism, the patriarchy within the literary community (past and present), war, an economy our corrupt government renders impossible to understand or control. What else? Oh! Classism. Elitism. Racism. Ageism. Gender bias.

Here's a local representative. Impressive, right? 

You’ve got us on the knowledge of local representatives. We suck at it. Then again, local government is more easily corrupted, so we become jaded. That’s still our fault, but again, more complicated than just, “those damned kids.”

“They spend unbelievable amounts of time electronically passing stories.” You mean like news of what’s happening in the world? Oppressive regimes? The rise or fall of democracy? Polling numbers? Essays by an increasingly intelligent army of bloggers who often report the world’s happenings before Scoop McNulty at the Times can pull his golf pencil from his favorite fedora?

Oh. You don’t like funny cat pictures, e-cards, duckfaces, OMG’s and LMFAO’s. These things raise my hackles, as well. But then again, they take 2 seconds of your life, and you can choose to ignore them, dial Professor Pumpernickel on your rotary, and complain over static.

The fact is, to meet a friend or to call a friend or to write a friend a letter takes time. Now imagine you've more friends than just Professor Pumpernickel. Now imagine those multiple friends are dealing with the shit that life often is and need a shoulder to cry on, an ear to ramble into. Or they just want to discuss what they've seen, read, heard. Or they have a relevant joke. Or, GASP, they want to discuss work, an assignment, moving, etc. 

So you’re a part of these multiple dialogues with multiple friends, and often, you require these same things of them. You are the shit in the shit of life with shit on your mind you must get out in lieu of going bonkers fucking crazy. This happens.

And it happens on top of the little things one must accomplish each minute, each hour, each day in order to be successful.

Going out for a paper means having to dodge these people.

Technology, while certainly flawed in many ways, makes this navigation faster and more manageable. It’s that simple. If I couldn’t IM or email or tweet or Facebook comment on a friend having a baby, getting married, suffering a death in the family, getting a job, publishing a book, then we would lose touch. I don’t want that. The world is hard enough without adding “lonely as hell” to the equation. I love these people. I am fortunate to have them in my life, and if technology makes that easier, Christ, makes it possible at all, then we’re better for it. Not to mention the FUCKTONSHITLOADS of information made readily available at the click of a key. I don’t even have to leave my house. I don’t have to go outside, travel to some location, pick up a paper, and run into your crabby ass who’s probably going to cut me off in traffic because you drive like shit.

What’s more is that many employers, at least in my field, now REQUIRE a social media presence on applications. Facebook, twitter, a blog, an email, Pinterest. PINTEREST! They want me to scrapbook! So even if I wanted to sit in a dingy house reading my Freud through a monocle and stroking my beagle, Claudius, I would still be FORCED to be a part of the digital community in order to make myself more viable for potential employment.  

Got it? Now, go follow me on something.

Hatin'

Last night I was drinking hatorade with some haters who, like me, exercise haternomics on those non-haters who disdain our haterology, rendering them merely the haters they were hating…ahem…hatin’.

Fine! I would genuinely "hate" to listen to this conversation.

Actually, I was just watching game 4 of the NBA Finals, ground zero for haters and non-haters alike. Or maybe our entire world is broken into these two extremes, and America is ground zero, and aesthetics are on trial, and I’m behind the times, hatin’.

You’re hatin’ on the times, Brometheus.

I’ll make this brief because I’ve a houseguest and don’t wanna start hatin’ on houseguestin’, nahhh mean?

The use of the word was valid in its inception as a way to describe someone who exhibited a wholesale dislike for every facet of another person/thing, even if those characteristics one “hated on” were unrelated. It was shorthand—“It’s not that you necessarily dislike all of these things, but you dislike them on the basis that I perform them. You, hater, are hatin’.” Now the word, as well as any derivation, has become a crutch—sign of a clear refusal to accept any dissenting opinion or analysis, a cloak that masks an inability to offer any comprehensive, coherent, orconstructive criticism of an opposition’s point. It halts any sort of dialogue, and relegates human communication to the playground, whereby one kid asks, with genuine interest, what you believe eating a bowl full of mud will accomplish, and you respond by crying, shitting yourself, and sticking your tongue out.

If you disagree with me it doesn’t mean you’re “hating” and if you do claim that you “hate” me, well then, fuck you. Know what else? If I do not offer a coherent argument in opposition to your opinion, but rather, I berate you, refuse to listen, and act like an asshat, you can tell me to fuck myself! How would that be? Things can get real nasty!

Appreciatin'

But they don’t have to. Why? Because what we’re talking about when we say—hating, hater, hatorade, hatertude—is taste, which is often simply a matter of opinion. Sometimes we can be really passionate about our opinions, and it can be a blast because we’re buzzed off of an argument and giving as good as we’re getting and, in the process, maybe discovering flaws within our own argument or completely valid, mind-altering aspects of someone else’s argument in the process. Or we could just never get to that point because we’re yelling “hater” back and forth, dismissing one another without cause, and setting the gift of language back thousands of years.

It’s called “communication”, I think. But fuck if I know. Could be that I’m just hatin’.

An Open Letter from a Fortunate Son

Dear Elizabeth Wurtzel,

Today I read your article in the Atlantic—1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism And Make The War On WomenPossible—and thought about my own mother. She is not, and has never been, a member of the 1%. However, by carelessly defining Feminism in strictly economic terms, you manage to devalue stay-at-home mothers within all social classes. Shame.

Below is a timeline of events in my mother’s life; and while I do not believe these few completely define her, they are stories I enjoy telling, and speak to my respect and admiration for the most amazing woman I have ever had the privilege (something your bio says you know an awful lot about) to know:

1966—Lorette Mink is a junior at Benjamin-Russell High School in Alexander City, Alabama. Two rather large senior girls who graze in the hallway like bison bully her younger brother, Lynn, a 9th grader, with cruel consistency. He is ashamed to tell anyone in his family. Hearing of the daily beasts from a friend in the cafeteria one morning, my mother stops eating lunch, quietly approaches the table where they are feeding, and asks them to accompany her to the hallway. 20 minutes pass. As two faculty members are making their way back to their classes, they hear a ruckus in the women’s restroom. Inside, a girl lies beneath a stall, head cracked and nose bloodied. Inside the stall, my mother stands over the second girl, screaming incoherently, and dunking her head in toilet water. In 1966, Lorette Mink is 5’ tall, 98 pounds. Lynn goes on to serve two tours in Vietnam. At a family reunion years later, my uncle will tell me that my mother is the toughest person he has ever known.

1977--I am adopted by Lorette and Henry Mink. I am 3-months-old. The building where they claim me is in Montgomery, Alabama, marked only by a four-digit number. 

1978—I am 16-months-old. Fascinated by everything, especially potted plants, I decide it would be in my best interest to swallow a rock*. Facedown on the floor when my mother notices, she yanks me up by the ankles in one hand and desperately pounds my back with the other, dislodging the rock and saving my life. The first time.

Despite my protests, mom refuses to get this tattoo.

1981—4-years-old, leaving University Mall in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where mom and I had been Christmas shopping. A pick-up truck cuts the parking lot, slamming into my mother’s Volkswagen at full bore. The car is totaled. Mom, dizzied and bloodied by the crash, mumbles to see if I am okay. I had yet to hook my seatbelt when it happened. Her hand is on my chest. In the crash, my back never lost contact with my seat. The second time.

1982—I am 5 and mom leaves a lucrative career to be a stay-at-home mom. My father pleads with her not to, that she will become bored, that she’s the type who must remain busy, that she is great at what she does. “I know,” she says, “but now I want to be my best at this.”

1986—Lorette Mink is preparing dinner in the kitchen, the front of our house. I am in the back of the house, the sunroom, allegedly watching after my baby sister, who is 3. Suddenly my mother rushes past me, kicking my Nintendo controller unplugged, interrupting my game of Metroid, and sending me into a white-hot rage. She leaps into the shallow end of our pool to rescue my sister, who is standing flat-footed on the bottom, surely wondering where the fish are. I never knew my sister was outside, and I was sitting no more than four feet from the screen door, the one she used to go exploring. In so many instances to come, I will never figure out how it is my mother knows things.

1985—3^rd grade, Northington Elementary, Tuscaloosa. Do you remember when you discovered you could produce fart noises with your hand and armpit? I do. What a glorious time! The whole world before you! The time I realized this my teacher, Mrs. Wolmack, was having a particularly trying day. When I did it, and Wolmack realized I did it, she jerked me up by the arm in front of the whole class. “Do that again and I’ll beat the shit outta you,” she screamed. Mrs. Wolmack was a feminist**, you see, and she’d be damned if she was going to take this abuse from an 8-year-old. She made a paycheck, goddamnit! These stay-at-home moms were failing her! After school I got into mom’s car in tears. I had never been cursed by my folks, much less by another adult. Mom turned the car off, grabbed my hand, and marched me back into the school, to Wolmack’s classroom. She told me sit.

“Hello, Mrs. Mink, what can I do for you?”

Most of Danny's roles just involve him
playing a male version of my mom. 

My mother, a solid foot shorter than Wolmack and much lighter, moved toward her with such speed that I didn’t notice her taking actual steps. She grabbed Wolmack by the throat and put her against the wall. All that touched the ground were Wolmack’s toes.

“You want to ‘beat the shit outta’ someone, here I am. But I’m telling you right now, lady, you better bring a lot more than that paddle.”

1992—It is late on a terribly sticky September night in Brookwood, Alabama. Me (9^th grade,) my buddy Ralph (a junior,) and my mom are in the driveway. Ralph and I are practicing jumpers and she is snatching boards, telling stories. It’s difficult to practice while laughing. Everyone in my high school (9% black) recently found out that Ralph is dating the prettiest girl in school, Misty. Not a problem, except that Ralph is black, and Misty is white. Around 8 p.m. a truckload of white boys and white men barrel down my street. My house is at the end of the cul-de-sac. The truck is blue. Rebel flags are hooked to both sides of the cab. They slow down in front of my house to throw beer bottles, to scream nigger lover, we’re gone whoop yer azz, and nigger loving bitch. My mother does not approach the truck, now center with the driveway. Instead, she begins to walk briskly toward the road, the cut-off point. The truck spins out, and it picks up speed as it nears my mother, who stands now in the middle of the road between the truck and our street’s exit. A horn. She does not move. You better move, nigger lover. She remains. The truck swerves, takes out a mailbox in the neighbors yard and spins away. Not a bottle is thrown at her. Not a word exits the truck as she becomes smaller and smaller in the taillights. Just mouths agape. She never budged.

Elizabeth, the problem with your article is that only in the title, and the ending, do you actually qualify your critique. You pit working women without children along with working mothers AGAINST stay-at-home mothers of all classes. It’s sloppy, and because of that, you must get touched.

Lorette Mink has shown me what’s right and what’s not in this world. She explains the why’s of when my heart is broken and points out the what the fucks when I am the breaker. All I know of sacrifice, of work ethic, of responsibility, and of goodness comes from her. My successes are a result of my mother, and my failures are a result of me wandering too far from the lessons she instilled in me. If this sounds like rhetoric, then perhaps you haven't been listening close enough when you’ve been told this before.

Many of us loathe the super wealthy. Welcome to the party, Princess. Maybe the women you mention in your article who do nothing but attend yoga classes are the wrong stay-at-home mothers to ask.

If it’s payment you require in order to judge value, consider this: I’ll ask mom to meet you in the street, to beat you six ways from Sunday, and then sit you down and listen to your problems, to offer solutions, to hug your neck and tell you how wonderful you are, how this world is a son of a bitch, and the fact that you’ve made it this long with such success, woman to woman, makes her very proud. When she’s done, I’ll pay her. Does this suffice?

This morning I called here to ask if she stands for Feminism.

“Of course. You know that. But then again, I stand most of the day. I sit down when I cut grass, though. Love that riding mower. 2 acres is too much. Does that mean I’m not a Feminist?”

“Mom, what do think of yoga?”

Silence.

“Uhhh…Oh! That little green thing in Star Wars? I didn’t really care for those movies. You loved them, though. Are you eating? I want you to make sure you’re eating. You let me know if I need to send something down there.”

Thank you, Mom. I love you.

* At 5-years-old I am reunited with rock, this time burying it in my ear. In undergrad, my first slam poem involves personifying gravel. Yeah, it's a problem. 

** By Wurtzel's definition: a woman with a job resulting in monetary compensation. 

Wish I Was A Little Bit Cooler

INDEPENDENCE DAY IS ON!?

BuzzFeed just posted 20 Set Photos That Will Change How You See These Films. Assuming I’m a part of the universal “You” in that sentence—no, no they won't. Not only did I know James Earl Jones wasn’t Mark Hamill’s father, but I also knew Luke Skywalker wouldn’t actually die if he “fell to his death”. I was also pretty sure the Imperial Snow Walkers that attacked the Rebel hideout in Hoth were not 50 stories high; and when Han Solo said, “that’s no moon” in reference to the Death Star, it was a part of both the fiction and the reality. It wasn’t a moon it was a space station. But it wasn’t a space station either—it was a toy.

That’s what movies are all about, really, or at least a lot of the films I really enjoy—watching other people activate toys without putting their own hands in the shot. Suspension of disbelief, I think it’s called. It’s why, even now, Jurassic Park comes on TNT and I’m all, “RAD! T-REX!”

If you really want to change how I see a film, find a photo of Wes Anderson with the RZA.

I imagine that if you posed the who’s your favorite director question to the Occupy Movement, Wes Anderson would take the majority vote, which is funny to me, because the bulk of his characters are the 1%, even as his shtick is aimed at the 99.

I'm gonna need a little more pucker. 

Yesterday I had this conversation with one of my closest friends, a big Anderson fan and supremely intelligent woman who can’t wait to see Anderson’s new film Moonrise Kingdom. Part of my anti-Anderson rant is that he hits the same note over and over. Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are quirky white Republicans.  Bottle Rocket bores the piss out of me. I refuse to watch The Darjeeling Limited because I’m familiar with Orientalism and don’t care to see it enacted by a Wilson brother. I don’t care to see anything practiced by a Wilson brother.

It’s not a lack of diversity that bothers me, it’s that his films seem so far removed from any consideration that the word “diversity” exists; so embedded in a picture of white wealth that all my rural, blue-collar hairs go to a’curlin’ somethin’ fierce. My friend ignores these things, and chooses to concentrate on the beauty, the transformations of dialogue and character, and how much detail is rendered within the worlds Anderson creates. Totally fair. She likes the shtick. I’m the same way with many film-related things—Denzel Washington, terrible apocalypse movies, Kevin Costner, aliens, dinosaurs, Rambo, sports films, Meryl Streep, and the RZA.

I must admit that I adore The Life Aquatic, as well as its animated off-shoot, The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Gems, those two. I think my affection stems from those films being so imaginary, so completely fictional and wild that I buy the characters, I am sympathetic to them. And when one of the sets on those films is beautifully whimsical I’m sold because it should be.

But I quickly tire of wealthy white whimsy. Seems like whimsy in absence of any functional existence is whimsy made too easy. Anderson’s films are gorgeous to look at, and really smart. There are hilarious lines, and Bill Murray is the only person in Hollywood who I would allow to babysit my children if I had any.

My youth

There is a distinct possibility that I am the problem. I’m not quirky or terribly interesting. I was never into finger painting or crafting or The Pogues. I get very excited about monster trucks. My wardrobe is atrocious. Need some Motley Crue lyrics? Got'em. My parents have been married 43 years and are still very in love and are wonderful and so my “issue” ratio isn’t very high. My father’s favorite movie is Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and mom’s fave is Steel Magnolias—not exactly sanctuaries of diversity.

Which means I should dig Anderson, right? 

My friend tells me, just now, that it’s hip to hate Anderson these days. I’m the farthest thing from hip. There’s hip, then there’s me. I’ve always felt this way about his films. And things will stay this way, provided Hollywood continues to supply  me with aliens merc-ing the crushingly attractive, and masked men with garden tools keep chasing the innocent, wishing only to update their collection of skin jackets. 

Justifiable Fear

Nestled warmly beneath a spider-free crimson afghan on my spider-free couch this morning with a glass of iced coffee not brewed with or by any breed of spider, I came across this little piece of NICE TRY, SCIENCE! Professor Jon May, of Plymouth University*, says, "We like bright-colored butterflies and ladybirds, but spiders are dark-colored** with long angular legs, and the shape and color both have strong negative associations."

I can think of another image of dark, angular legs: 

Ever seen one of these, Dr. Crazy?

This is Adriana Lima. She has dark, angular legs, Jon. What Adriana doesn't have, Jon, is a pair of pedipalps. If she did, she could grind her kill to a pulp. Then (THEN?) she could liquify the ground pulp by flooding it with enzymes in order to digest it. 'THE FUCK?

Everyday I'm scuttlin'

Dr. Jon also posits that a spider's "fast movement scuttling off into dark corners also tap into deep rooted fears." I scuttle on the reg, Jon. This morning I scuttled to the kitchen, threw some cereal in a bowl, and scuttled back to my living room, where the lights were off. What I'm saying, Jon, is that it was dark, and I was scuttling like a bastard, completely aware of my scuttle, and of the dark. I wasn't scared in the least, Jon. Maybe because my legs are not dark and angular. Or maybe because there aren't 8 of them, and I don't have a thousand eyes, and a web for trapping, and oh yeah, TWO FUCKING TEETH FOR CRUSHING AND LIQUIFYING OTHER LIVING THINGS!

Dr. Insane also says that we are scared of what we can only see in the corner of our eye, that we will often report a spider bigger than the one we actually saw, or that we will...wait...hold the hell up...we will...this is tough to say.

People will "say they saw a spider crawl into someone's mouth, which they never do. We don't understand their behavior." 

I just told you their behavior! They trap, crush, liquify, and kill things! Did you black out, you fuck? In the corner of my eye there's a Law and Order episode on mute. Not scary. The biggest spider I've ever seen was about as big as my palm. How'd I know? I ACCIDENTLY LAID MY PALM ON IT! I lost years that day, Doc. Years. Why lie? 

And I've never said I saw a spider crawl into someone's mouth? Who says that? Who is this someone? Were you at a GWAR show? Are you wearing spiked shoulder pads and drinking ketchup in your mom's basement? Is Plymouth University real? 

Look, I will not "sympathize" with spiders anymore than I will with a great white shark. Nor do I believe they're "misunderstood". I can appreciate you were at Woodstock, took the brown acid, and then played spider with a cross-eyed beauty from Nebraska named Lula. At some point you may have even scuttled. You dog! But spiders are actually scary for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is freakish appearance. In a world where people are scared of all sorts of harmless things--2% milk, hockey masks, minorities, Funyuns--I'm going to stick with spiders. It's safer that way. 

* Jon May didn't land on Plymouth University! Plymouth University landed on Jon May!

** That's RAYCESS! I am equally terrified of Neo, the rave spider.

Shhhh...He is Legend

When I was 12/13 one of my very best friends was a classmate named Derrick. Derrick was the funniest kid I'd ever known, that any of us had ever known. He had this technique of telling a joke, whereby he would deliver his punch lines through a clenched jaw, holding back his own explosion of laughter, convincing you that it was about to be the most glorious gem you'd ever heard. When the punch line finally came, he would cackle louder than anyone, head thrown back, hands hammering whatever surface was closest, his entire face soaked with tears. This was the late 80's, when mamma jokes ruled the day, and Derrick was the master. I've incorrectly recycled so many of his originals I feel like I should cut him a check.*

Not yet?

But there was a flip side to this arrangement. You see, sometimes I was behind Derrick, laughing along at the target of the joke, and other times I became the target. Once Derrick was focussed, his hunger for laughs was insatiable, and the filth and vitriol would increase with every uproarious crowd response. Kids are like that. Eventually, he would cool off, and there was comfort in knowing that your position as target was always short-lived, that one day you would return to the other side, a tiny child following a tiny piper. 

And sometimes I'm a rat, and Deadspin is my piper, and I follow along willingly because they are verbally annihilating something/someone I loathe. I love them for it. Sean Newell might very well be the Derrick of Deadspin, and his recent piece LeBron James Is Finally Good At Basketball might be mamma joke of the week around the water cooler. But it falls into a few traps:

1. Belief that the word "fuck" in an argument is not only provocative, but makes your case even stronger. 

2. An assumption that arguing against the crowning of an athlete as icon is equal to disregarding said

athlete's talent. 

3. Exaggerating, or in some cases, fabricating, your opposition's argument in order to make yours seem more just. 

According to Newell, LeBron's performance in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals "ushered in Go Fuck Yourself Basketball." Newell calls all naysayers "chuckleheads" because, in discussing

LeBron, us chuckleheads like to remind his fanboys that he "doesn't come up in the clutch" (he rarely does,) "disappears late" (these two aren't mutually exclusive,) or "plays hot potato with the basketball because he doesn't come up in the clutch or disappears late" (now you're just being pouty and redundant.) Newell goes on to reference KG, Pierce, and Allen as "Boston's Big Whatever." 

The Boston Celtics discuss possible strategies
during a timeout. 

I'm not fucking myself because LeBron had a phenomenal series, that he came up clutch, or didn't disappear late. I grew up in a time when a number of players did that. A number of players still do (re: Kevin Durant since he's been in the league.) And I'm not fucking myself because you pretend not to remember that three future Hall of Famers, each of whom have a number of clutch performances under their belts, are called The Big Three. Show some respect. The Big Three are, combined, 247-years-old, and pushed the world's darlings to a 7th game without home court advantage. 

I'm not fucking myself because you say, "The reason these kind of performances are revered as 'clutch' or 'legendary' is because they are rare." That's only partly true. They become "legendary", or rather, players become "legend" when they perform the magic so often it becomes the opposite of rare; it becomes habit. I'm not saying Jordan, Magic, or Bird ALWAYS came through. What I am saying, because it's fucking true, and because it's the main point we try to make after yanking you sucklings from LeBron's tit long enough to hear it, is that Jordan, Magic, and Bird were anointed only AFTER their magnificence became habit, only AFTER championship trophies and rings. We're not holding LeBron to a higher standard. We're simply holding him to THE standard.

LeBron James is an all-world performer, a man with the size of a 4, and the quicks and handles of a 1. He's like nothing we've ever seen. There. Happy? My problem is that so many anointed him on potential and acted as though we were the rubes for not playing along. "He's the greatest we've ever seen," you all say, and perhaps one day that will come to pass. But he's been in the league 9 years. Know what you were saying even before he was drafted in '03? Same. Exact. Thing. When he's wonderful we should go fuck ourselves, and when he's not, we're holding him to a higher standard, and it's all our fault. 

"Last night we watched LeBron do everything that could rightly be asked of him and in the process say I know you'll always want more, so Go Fuck Yourself." No. We watched LeBron continue an unbelievable season, one that deserves a ton of credit. But there's no need to fuck ourselves. We're fucked already. We're fucked because Sportscenter will proceed to fuck us with an adjective contest to describe LeBron. We're fucked because, rather than highlights of actual plays, we'll get stills of LeBron reading Twilight in the locker room. We're fucked because, if the Heat win a title, we'll be yelled at, "See! He's the greatest ever! We've been telling you since 2003!" And you have. But here's the fact you conveniently choose to ignore: only reaching the bar set by legendary players of the past makes it actually fucking true. 

* This is Derrick now. Doing work. We are very different than the children we were. He's still great. 

Teeing Off

One of these things is not like the others. The others are world class athletes, you see. But that one thing, in the Polo shirt and baseball cap, fist-pumping and screaming to throngs of wealthy white people because he just took an elongated kitchen utensil and aggressively tapped(?) a petrified ping-pong ball, he's merely a golfer. He's golfy. He golfs. 


ESPN just ran the above graphic with the caption: 
"Who is the most CLUTCH athlete in sports right now and why? 
            Woods, Pierce, Durant, Manning, and Bryant...all clutch players in their own right. But which current athlete is the MOST clutch. State your case."


Why, thank you. 


Golf is not a sport on the level of basketball, football, soccer, baseball, or hockey, the other sports appearing on ESPN. Tiger Woods is not an athlete. Tiger Woods is a man in excellent physical condition who, rather than taking advantage of that physicality, plays golf. Every time I've had this argument with golfing friends, the immediate defense is the same---"Have you ever played? It's tough. You're walking all that way, it's hot, it takes focus. It ain't easy." Let's break that down: 

Miyagi don't golf

Have you ever played? Yes. I was horrible. Bad form. Shanked balls. Some shots never even got off the ground. I put so many divots in the grass with my club I might as well have been using a hatchet. But I only played the one time, found it boring, and didn't continue. Like anything in sports, or life really, I imagine if one does it consistently they will improve. Case and point: if you frequent country clubs, see women as second class citizens, reference people of color exclusively through derogatory terminology, wear visors, put a Romney bumper sticker on your car, your wife's car, and that of your mistress, you'll not only be an exceptional asshole, but probably a hell of a golfer. 


It's tough. I suppose. Know what's also tough: draining a three with a hand in your face; driving the lane, absorbing contact, and hitting the shot; gaining yardage while maintaining possession of a ball, AND, avoiding 11 grown men who want nothing more than to cripple you; skating at 10-15 miles an hour while dodging toothless barbarians who navigate ice no less gracefully than ballerinas, THEN whipping a puck into a net that's being protected by an evil bus of a man; running for three hours using only your feet as everyone else is kicking your shins. Pretty tough. 


You're walking all that way, you're hot, it takes focus. This one slays me. You ever walk from Publix to your car in Tallahassee? It's fucking hot, boss. It's sweaty hot. Things rub together. Things happen that you don't talk about. Your ice cream melts. That's not a euphemism. You'll seriously lose a pint if you didn't get a primo parking spot up front. Know what else takes focus? Bank shots in billiards. Tell you what, I'm going to tweak a scenario my buddy James offered years ago:


I'll go to San Francisco. Lots of hills. Not a flat space, you agree? Good. I'll take a pool cue. I'll stand on a corner, and with all my might, I'll swing that fucker. I'll grunt, and you can moan, "ooooohhhhh", as you do. Then, I'll walk a country mile to some bar and sink a bank shot. I'll do this 18 times. When I'm done, I'll be so hot, and I'll be so tired. Know what I will not be strictly because of this exercise? An athlete. Focussed. Hot. Lots of walking. Not an athlete. 

Easy?

It ain't easy. Also not easy: trunk stands, playing chess really well, bowling a 300, running the table in 9-ball, writing a great poem/story/essay, reading Ulysses, being a parent, playing a round of disc golf with a hangover, lesson planning, sitting through a Tyler Perry movie, maintaining a good mood for ALL of AWP, breakups, kayaking, finding the perfect shower caddy, successful baking. 


I've long theorized that the reason golf is included, and so revered, on ESPN is because it allows old talking heads to occupy a space of athletics. If golf is a sport, and golfers are athletes, then when Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd and Michael Wilbon play golf they are playing a sport, and they are athletes. See how this works? And if those cats want to sip scotch, suck in their guts for photos on the links, and call golf a gladiatorial game at dinner parties, I've no problem with that. Just don't go throwing pics up all willy nilly, and comparing professionals who don't occupy the same realm. The rest of us are here trying to enjoy sports.