The Lacrosse Thing

You're a Wolf - Sea Wolf (mp3)
Cumbersome - Seven Mary Three (mp3)

Lax Bros. Pronounced "Lacks Brohs," not "brothers" or "bras."

Lax Bros is the name my school has given the guys amongst us who play lacrosse. It is not a term of endearment. Rather, it is a term that the rest of the school gave the Lax Bros because they are so annoyed by the general attitude and behavior of said guys. And then, said guys, taking pride in their different-ness and the fact that other students are jealous, gleefully adopted it for themselves as well.

Meanwhile, I sit back and think to myself, WTF? Riddle me this, Batman. How can a sport that registers on the same level of Pop Cultural Consciousness as curling or duckpin bowling get so much attention, most of it so super awful bad and negative?

First, the Duke Lacrosse Scandal. Now the Virginia Lacrosse Scandal. The first surrounded a case that, ultimately, was a crock of shit. The second was all too real. In both cases, the demeanor and attitude of  Lax Bros was under the microscope and looking ugly.

Professionally, I got lots of love for lacrosse. It's one of the most powerful marketing tools a school like the one where we work can have. In lacrosse, if you have any talent and potential, and if you live in the South, your chances of getting college attention increases exponentially at a prominent lacrosse school. Baseball or wrestling or football, you can play those most anywhere and, if good enough, raise the right eyebrows. Not lacrosse. Most schools don't have a team, and most of the ones that do have one more in name than in quality. It's also the perfect sport to appeal to a niche market all expensive independent schools need: "Full Pay Students."

That's my professional take.

Personally, I can't deny the pervasive, annoying reality of the Lax Bro attitude. Nor do I like that some coworkers seem to celebrate and encourage it. Unfortunately, the penis-dangling competition amongst adults in high school environments is neither exclusive to us nor exclusive to the sport of lacrosse.

A friend sent me this link to a very opinionated piece on the George Huguely murder, and it included this description of the stereotype in question:

For better or worse, I’ve grown up going to hundreds of lacrosse parties over the years, forced to acknowledge these "athletes" that looked more like caricatures of a stereotype—overgrown hair, croakies around their neck, a lacrosse pinnie, pastel-colored shorts, some rainbow flip flops and a backwards hat. (For all the generalizations you hear, 9 times out 10, this is actually what they look like.)

Herein begins my sympathy for the culture: They can’t help it. Lacrosse is a sport that’s somewhere between Youth Soccer and Jai Alai. It was created by Native Americans, but perfected by a bunch of Mid-Atlantic prepsters, eager to congratulate themselves on their dominance of a sport that only they can play.

Because of the expensive equipment, and the distinct advantages provided to those that learn the game on suburban travel teams or at expensive prep schools like Landon, the sport remains fairly insular among wealthy children. To excel at lacrosse, it helps to have parents that have the resources to fund the hobby, and the time to cart their children to and from games.

It's true of other sports, too—hockey, for instance, requires similar time/money commitments from the families of young players—but the economic divide is more pronounced with lacrosse. If it seems like the sport belongs to different class, that’s because it does; most of the schools that excel are all-boys private schools, with skyhigh tuition, strict dress codes, and large expanses of green field space. Look at the top 10 High School Lacrosse Programs in the country.

The writer, Andrew Sharp, throws down a vicious and pitiless assault on its culture.

A part of me takes great pleasure in watching him skewer it all. Any fan of Revenge of the Nerds or Glee would have to derive a healthy dose of joy from reading such a screed. But... but I also feel like the guy has put together something of a straw man.

In college, I knew lots of lacrosse players. Most of them were the very jerks Sharp describes. None of them, to the best of my knowledge, killed anyone.

And it's not like lacrosse players had a monopoly on egregiously awful stereotypes. I only encountered the UNC wrestling team out at bars six or seven times, but every single time, one of them got in a fight. It was like a meeting of Napoleon Complex Anonymous invading the bar scene. I also knew more than a few fratters. One frequent reader and former fratter doesn't even tolerate use of the word "frat," but expects you to say "fraternity." ("Would you call your country a cunt?" he asks. And I tend to think, "Well first, it ain't my frat. Secondly, if my country was named "Kappa Sig," I might well call it the C-word and a whole bunch of other awful names. That said, he knows I love him anyway.)

Point is, as despicable and predictable as most of those frat guys were, I'm pretty sure none of them murdered any girls in cold blood, either. Date raped? Gang banged? Grouped together to beat the crap out of a single dude? Oh yeah, they did all of that crap. But murder is a different level, and just because they're assholes doesn't make them automatic candidates for a capital crime. The Duke lacrosse thing serves as that reminder quite nicely.

In conclusion, I wish Andrew's essay had been much shorter. It should have been summed up in a few sentences:

1. I hope George Huguely gets shivved in his nuts a few times in the clink.
2. I pray for Yeardley Love's soul and beg God that nothing like this ever happens again.
3. I sure wish so many lacrosse players weren't such giant fucktard narcissistic assholes.

The Art of the Stab

Gold Guns Girls - Metric (mp3)
Wink - Blue Mountain (mp3)

The April 1 NYTimes op-ed piece entitled "The Myth of Mean Girls" was published on the perfect day, because the authors are fools. They use the story of Phoebe Prince's suicide after she was barraged with threats as a time to talk about how girls aren't violent.

The op-ed writers work themselves into a lather rattling off statistics about how non-violent girls are, never once paying attention to the fact that the statistics they use -- assault, robbery, murder, other physically violent crimes -- had fuck-all to do with the kind of things that led to the girl's suicide. It's like using the story of an earthquake in Calexico, California, to talk about the failures of Obama's healthcare bill.

Phoebe Prince wasn't punched or stabbed or shot. She wasn't dangled off a building or dragged around behind a horse. She was emotionally beaten to death.

Boys use knives. Girls use mental daggers. Boys sweep the leg. Girls shred the synapses.

A handful of my female coworkers have teenage or college-aged daughters, and every single one of those girls said, without hesitation or uncertainty, that the middle school years were the cruelest and most uncomfortable years of their lives. These girls attended the all-girls school in town, and they all said the misery began to abate in the ninth grade and was more or less gone by the end of the sophomore year.

In coed schools, the misery stretches out a little longer, as the hallway locker battle of loves and crushes constantly swirls around them. I remember watching Heathers with some of my mom's students, and two of the girls kept laughing and saying, "Did the writer go to Red Bank?" and "Oh GOD I know that girl!!"

Part of this is about maturity. Girls tend to have greater control of their impulses. They take fewer risks. They throw fewer punches. They struggle less with ADHD.

But part of this goes back beyond Macbeth and Delilah. Why should women go around hitting and kicking things when they can get some doofus moron beefcake who's easily led around by his elephant trunk to do all that violent shit for them?

You never saw Don Corleone shoot anyone. Why should he when he has dozens of people eager and willing to do the wetwork for him? Same with girls. They stick with the mental cruelty. It's tougher to prosecute, and the scars last longer.

If you think I'm knocking the female gender, I beg you to reread, because that's certainly not the case. But women aren't all sweet li'l innocent angels. The blood they draw in fights are drawn out of the soul, not the skin. Black eyes and broken arms make for good pictures in a trial. You can't take a picture of a bleeding psyche. It's almost impossible to catch mental cruelty on a hallway camera.

So back to that op-ed piece. They're right. Boys are more physically dangerous, and it's not even close. If anything, the physical violence gap is growing. But don't go letting those facts lead you to believing girls are harmless.

Ask any teenage girl. They'll set you straight.

Metric's 2009 album Fantasies is just about the most addictive thing around and just won't leave my repeat list three months after I bought it. Blue Mountain played a cool set when they came to Chattanooga.

Yes, He's a Dick.

Blackjack - Everclear (mp3) *
Mean Mr. Mustard - Beatles (mp3)

To use our President's favorite words, Let me be clear: Dick Cheney is a dick.

Detesting Dick Cheney doesn't require the slightest bit of political bias. In fact, it has almost no basis whatsoever in politics. I don't like HIM. As a person.


"In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures leave you half-exposed...Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy... There is never a good time to compromise when [the lives of the American people] hang in the balance." -- former Vice President Dick Cheney

First of all, when commenting as a semi-liberal, I'm all in favor of Dick Cheney and his big mouth. Politically speaking, I want Dick out there. I want Dick to remain as the purple shiny head of Republicans on television sets, in newspapers, on the web. I want Dick everywhere Dick can go. I want Dick to grow in presence and confidence. I want Dick on the lips of all right-wingers everywhere. The far right might oppose gay marriage, but they sure do love Dick. And the liberal in me loves them for doing so.

Every day he keeps flappin' his yap, the country is reminded why we voted for someone else, and we're reminded of just how scheme-driven and stealth-lovin' these guys were for a long time.

However.

The other part of me is the part that wants America to survive and advance. I want our leaders to disagree but work together. I want compromises and debates and a genuine bipartisan search for progress and long-lasting sustainable growth. I want "sustainable growth" to symbolize something greater than money. I want it to encompass who we are as a society, what we value, how we prioritize. I want America to thrive across multiple dimensions.

That part of me despises Dick Cheney with a seething, bubbling kind of disgust that rarely works its way through my veins, and I just want the bastard to go away and leave us alone.

Dick Cheney is the ultimate non-negotiator. Dick is the kind of parent who asks you for your thoughts and then rolls his eyes or completely stops paying attention when you talk. Dick is the teacher who only gives you an A+ when you spout out verbatim the same shit he's been spewing, because creativity is for pussies. Dick Cheney is the football coach who thinks a practice that fails to get boys puking or passing out must have been a bad practice.

Do you remember the less-than-good but wonderfully guilty pleasure film Varsity Blues? Do you remember Jon Voigt's role as the megalomaniacal coach willing to do anything to win? Yeah, that's Cheney. Lie, cheat, fib, confuse, misdirect, misrepresent. Do whatever it takes, and at any cost, to win.

Dick Cheney is a bad person. Worse yet, he's just flat-out dangerous, because he's the moron who believes there's only one way -- his way -- to skin a cat, to climb a mountain, to get to the other side. Even conservative columnist David Brooks thinks so. (Brooks also takes the time to gig liberals by reminding them that, so far, Obama's foreign policy is only a hair's breadth kinder or gentler than Bush's.)

Maybe Cheney's defenders like assholes. Maybe Republicans want Grandpa Simpson with a shotgun running the country. Maybe they want Archie Bunker -- except with less heart -- making decisions that will shape the future for our children. Or, maybe his defenders would say I'm only paying attention to the Public Dick. That Private Dick is actually sweet, loving, caring, humble, gracious, and generous. That Public Dick is playing a role no one else has the balls to play.

I can't do anything about the former. If you like angry bitter paranoid spiteful men running things, ain't nothing I can say to you. But the latter... well, I think that's a crappy logic. As the well-quoted Jesus Christ says, "Even sinners love those who love them," so Dick being a swell guy with his family hardly impresses me.

Further, why was it unpatriotic and supporting the terrorists to question our government's decisions in 2004, but in 2009, if your name is Dick Cheney, it's perfectly OK to speak up in opposition to the President's direction? Five years ago, doing so was tantamount to bankrolling Al Qaeda. Now, apparently, it's safe enough in America for Dick to say stuff. Maybe he thinks he protected us well enough that dissent is now less dangerous.

If any conservatives have read this far, I want to repeat that politics has virtually nada to do with this. Were Dick a lib'ral, it's possible some of my anger would be replaced by a more-powerful shame, but the emotional negativity he would dredge up in my bowels wouldn't decrease. Just ask me what I think of Pelosi some time.

So, Dick, for the good of the country, would you please go ahead and put a sock in it? If it makes you more comfortable, you can attach some electrodes to that sock and stick it over your privates. But putting it in your mouth would be fine, too.

I'm guilty of committing song repetition on BOTG for the first time ever, but dammit, the Everclear song is just perfect for ol' Dick. My apologies to the repetition, and I'll try not to do it again for at least another year.