Understand that it’s fucking Mordor.
It’s totally evil.
It really is.
Entertain for a moment the idea that the NFL might actually be nothing more than a flashy delivery system for gambling. The games are just accessories created to facilitate the exchange of a mind-bending amount of money. It’s impossible to calculate how much cash– both legally and illegally– is bet on the NFL each year, but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars. It might be a trillion. The NFL, and the owners of each of the the 32 teams that comprise the league, make pornographic amounts of money– so much so that even the pathologically greedy Donald Trump wanted in on the action back in the 80’s.
Working beneath these overlords are the players. About 70% of them are black, and the average length of a career is about 3 1/2 years. It is a brutal, collision-based sport, but beyond the mechanical failure of knees, hips and such, there is CTE, a brain disease that virtually every football player seems to acquire due to the concussive nature of the sport. And because the NFL is evil, they withheld this information from the players even as symptoms set in and raged amongst them.
Essentially, what the NFL does is hire people to engage in combat while America bets on who the winner will be.
It’s the bread and circuses we’re fed.
The game itself is about martial precision rather than athletic improvisation. The players are armoured and anonymous, strategically deployed by the technocrats on the sidelines, and whatever exuberance or individuality they bring to the game is swiftly crushed. When celebrating and dancing after a touchdown became a thing, the league outlawed it. It was considered “disrespectful,” ( but not in the same way that calling a team The Redskins might be “disrespectful”) which put another way means it was considered too black. In effect, they took an African-American product, subordinated it to the tastes of a conservative white audience, and profited obscenely from it.
Colin Kaepernick, a talented black quarterback, ( It was not that long ago that a black quarterback in the NFL was unheard of, the belief being that they didn’t have the “faculties” to perform the job) began the practice of taking a knee during the national anthem as a protest against against racial injustice.
He was subsequently black-balled from the league, even though his talents should have been in high demand. In his absence, others players stepped up to continue the practice, all of which came to a head when Trump started calling for the sons of bitches to be fired. This cynical and amoral manipulation of existing divisions in the nation forced the players and owners to respond.
Siding with those who are against racial injustice and for freedom of expression seems like a pretty obvious choice. I mean, this is a no-brainer, right? History is unfolding in such a way that it’s forcing people to make a choice, whether they want to or not, and many players took the knee. And the photographs–all so familiar, inevitable and urgent– were deeply moving. They gave me chills, and for a moment it was easy to believe that things might finally be changing for the good.
But then again, this movement was taking place largely within the pitiless machine that is the NFL, and so many sought a middle road that they hoped wouldn’t interrupt any revenue streams. The Dallas Cowboys, led by their owner, took a knee before the anthem, and then standing, locked arms as a team during the anthem.
It was a muddle of a message, one that managed to suggest the players had some sort of solidarity with ownership instead of a grievance with institutional racism, but that was the point. It was supposed to mean all things to all people. Ultimately, they co-opted the symbolism of Kaepernick’s protest to support the idea of “protest” without actually joining the protest. It was nothing more than damage control, a gesture as empty of meaning as a Pepsi commercial, and one more thing the NFL can add to it’s wall of shame.
]]>There’s always one just-past-middle-aged man– usually with long grey hair pulled back into a pony tail or up into a samurai knot– executing some interpretation of a martial art using a huge wooden stick or some such. Whenever I see one of these men I am forced to imagine their apartment, and I do not like that. I do not like the fabrics and odours and screensavers
that puts in my head, and so I’ve always kept a kind of hostile distance from them.
Our park, the park where we take our son Jones to play every day, has one of these guys. He is pudgy, dresses all in black, and looks like somebody whose life had been taken over by Columbine ninja fantasies a long time ago.
As such, I have not yet chatted with him, and have chosen instead to make fun of him behind his back. However, since my completion of pulmonary rehabilitation I have hired a personal trainer and I now work-out in this park, which brings me in direct competition with the Columbine ninja for the creepiest man in the park. Yesterday, he was stationed, with his collection of magic sticks, by the bench where I now work out.
This is the conversation that took place:
Me: Hey there, what are you up to!?
Columbine Ninja: ( Continues his maneuvers without saying a word.)
Me: I’m about to work-out. Here. By this bench. This one here. Is that okay with you?
Columbine Ninja: (Raises one hand to shush me)
Me: (Begins to pull out resistance bands from a Shopper’s Drug Mart bag)
Columbine Ninja: You must never disturb a warrior when he is training.
Me: Are you a warrior?
Columbine Ninja: ( Does a maneuver with his big stick, strikes the branch of a tree)
Me: Nice.
Columbine Ninja: The true warrior is invisible to those who cannot see.
Me: Yes, of course, I should have known that.
Columbine Ninja: Not all who wander are lost.
Me: Are you a part-time life coach or something?
Columbine Ninja: I am a student, not the master.
Me: Uber driver?
Columbine Ninja: I am a student of Kenjutsu!
Me: I think you work at a weed dispensary.
Columbine Ninja: Anata wa seik? shite imasu.
Me: What was that, Klingon? That doesn’t impress me in the least.
Columbine Ninja: I wonder why it is that you have trouble breathing? Is it because you fear life? I think you are a scared man. In Kenjutsu they teach you how to control your breathing, how to master your fear before it masters you!
Me: I only have one lung.
Columbine Ninja: And all you need in order to live a failed life is one excuse.
And then the Columbine Ninja just walked away and I commenced the most melancholy work-out in history.
Excellent form, though.
]]>*********************************************
Round One
You’re in hospital. But it’s not for some pedestrian reason like suffering a heart attack after having a long, hot shower and then masturbating while visiting your parents. No, you are in the hospital because you did something heroic and cool, like destroying the Mountain Dew skate park/pinball machine theme park while fighting Vladimir Putin with a croquet mallet.
That is what you did and due to minor injuries, you’re in hospital. You’re recovering like a champion. No tubes are connected to you and you’ve grown a beard during your stay, even though you could never grow one before. You look good. The nurse who is looking after you is pretty and compassionate and thinks that she remembers you from somewhere. She has soft, cooling skin. You have the first pick in the fantasy baseball draft and you select all-world outfielder Mike Trout, the best player in the history of the universe. Your opponents, like Vladimir Putin when he saw you grab the croquet mallet, know that they are defeated.
Round Two
You are a young girl only just past her eighteenth name day and it is your fantasy baseball draft. Your hair is silky, like it was made from the finest silk of the seven kingdoms; your eyes as dark as the night with no moon; and your skin a pale cream. You are one of the most beautiful girls in all of Westeros, but you don’t think that.
You sigh as you look in the mirror. Who will you select in the second round of your fantasy baseball draft? There are many noble options, so many great warriors available to you, but whom to pick?
It is time. The cruel and maniacal King Joffrey Baratheon fingers his crossbow and suddenly shouts at you, “Pick damn it, before I take your head!!”
You look him calmly in the eye, “My Lord, I pick outfielder Ryan Braun of the Brewers of Milwaukee.” Unexpectedly, the great Braun had fallen due to suspicions of steroid use, and your pick is brilliant.
There is stillness in the room, and then, a faraway wolf howls in the daylight, the dye had been cast and you are full of a confidence you had not experienced before.
Round Three
In spite of the stunning beach, bikini model and sex star Kelly Brook and I were arguing about whom to select in the third round of our fantasy baseball draft. She wanted to take Clayton Kershaw, even though he was an obvious injury risk, while Dustin Pedroia seemed like an obvious choice to me.
“No!” Kelly screamed, splashing into the surf.
I pursued her, grabbing her firmly by the waist, and she turned her slick body toward me, her breath coming hot and fast.
“Goddamn it,” I insisted, “we need to pick a second baseman now!”
“I don’t know what’s right anymore,” she said.
“Yes, you do.”
“Dustin Pedroia, “ she breathed into me, “Dustin Pedroia is our pick,” and then we collapsed into the waves and into one another.
“Do you have air conditioning?” I asked.
“Dah,” he responded in a blunt, unfriendly East European accent.
“Would you mind turning it on, please?”
“It is expensive for me to run AC, it take more energy, you know? So I keep windows open for breeze, OK?”
“Look, I’m sorry, but I’m dying in this heat, and the regulations say that you have to turn it on if the customer asks for it, right?”
The driver, irritated, snorted.
“What?” I asked, also irritated.
“You are weak, little man who can’t take sunshine?”
“Yes, that’s right. I am a weak, little man who can’t take the sunshine,” I sighed.
The driver pretended to laugh, shook his head and said something in a language that I presumed to be Russian.
“Have it your way, little mister boss.”
He then powered up the windows and contemptuously snapped on the AC.
We drove in black silence for the next five minutes.
I hated his fucking guts.
I hoped his native country got obliterated at the Olympics.
Food poisoning.
Nightmares with toys.
No Internet.
Being dunked-on while playing pick-up.
All these pestilences I wished upon him.
As I sat there concentrating my hatred, I began to pick at my fingernails. This is a habit that manifests when I’m angry, and in this case I managed to peel off several crescents of nails, which I then stored in my pocket. This detritus felt disgusting so I opened the window and tried to throw them out of the car.
The driver, his furious eyes staring at me from the rear-view mirror, shouted, “You demand AC like little dictator and now you put window down! You have no manners in my home! You waste my money, it is now five dollars extra!”
“C’mon, don’t be such a prick, I was just throwing a piece of fingernail out the window. Would you rather I left if on the seat?”
“You are disgusting man.”
“Like you’ve never picked at your fingernails.”
“You know who you are? You are like Gollum from The Hobbit. That is you.”
“That tattoo of a bear you have on the back of your neck looks gay.”
The driver slammed on the brakes.
“Gollum throw body waste out of my car, I throw Gollum out of my car. Get out now or I break you into pieces.”
“Really, are you serious?”
The driver looked at me, his eyes softening.
“Maybe I am not myself. My boy is sick and the doctors say he might lose hearing. It is awful and I cannot sleep, imaging his world without music, and then people like you come in and complain about small, small thing and I blow top. You be quiet and sit still, say nothing and I will take you home, but remember, say nothing!”
