The Sport of Serfs

Black Betty - Ram Jam (mp3)
For Tomorrow - Blur (mp3)

UGA’s A.J. Green was suspended for four games for selling his own jersey for somewhere in the range of $400-500. A 1-game suspension per $100 of profit. According to Michael Wilbon’s column in the Washington Post, UGA rakes in a healthy six figures in pure profit off the sales of various licensed versions of A.J. Green’s #8 UGA jersey. Meanwhile, A.J. Green could only buy three Kindles with the money he made.

That makes my head hurt. But not as much as the next factoid.

Somewhere between 1.6 million and 3.8 million brain injuries - mostly concussions - are suffered each year during sports activities. There’s no reliable way to track athletes and concussions in high school because so many players are afraid of missing games or falling in dutch with coaches (PDF, GAO.gov). The number of emergency room visits for concussions for children ages 8-19 doubled from 1997-2007 (PDF, Pediatrics).

I play fantasy football. I am a moderately fervent UNC sports fanatic. My daughter plays select soccer, and it would take the jaws of life to remove her from doing so for the foreseeable future, because she loves it. So I’m not the Anti-Jock or Gozer the Destructor, apocalyptic death-bringer of all things sporty. But I would happily bet that we’re approaching the point, in the coming decade, where the cultural pendulum will reach its pinnacle of sports obsession and begin returning to something more in line with reason.

Take a look at Newsweek’s latest feature on college athletics, “The Case Against College Athletic Recruiting,” which is a troubling (if admittedly oversimplified) investigation into how important playing a sport can be in the college admission process... at all levels for schools of all sizes.

After my rant about our local paper, perhaps I’m beating a dead horse here. But sports are often hurting the very people it claims to help -- the students. It’s hurting them physically with concussions, torn ACLs, broken bones, and it’s taking advantage of their pipe dreams by giving them “scholarships” and then making millions of dollars off them. And those great college scholarships earn them majors in amazing things like “sports management,” “African-American Studies,” and “General studies.” (The top 10 list is here.)

What I’m saying is, the claim that these money-making athletes (read: D-I basketball and football players) get a free ride in college and should be grateful is a lie we all know to be a lie. We want to be deceived. We also prefer to believe that football is “safe enough” because they wear armor and are super-sized humans with super-speed. We say this even as we watch approximately 45 players get carted off the field during the Clemson v. Auburn football game last weekend. (OK, slight exaggeration, but myself ant at least three friends declared that game “one of the most violent football games in recent memory.”)

At some point, the willful self-deception will have to stop. Because it always does.

We are currently riding a sports bubble not unlike the housing bubble and dot-com bubble of the recent past. BThe economic unfairness of the college system, and the evidence piling up on the kind of permanent physical damage we’re doing to teens and young adults will eventually force us to wake up. And we will wake up. We will eventually decide that the risks are more costly than the rewards.

Sports won’t die. Nothing at all like that. But I do believe my grandchildren will grow up in a society that doesn’t use phrases like “select sports” with quite the same zeal and focus. It’s possible this will be because everyone speaks Chinese and plays table tennis. Or it’s possible we’ll all be dead because an astronaut hit us or we did something to our planet that we can’t fix that wipes us out.

Or maybe the zombie virus will actually come. (And oh hell yeah I’m gonna watch “The Walking Dead” on AMC. You betcha! I say, to quote our most famous American zombie. I have a huuuuge soft spot in my heart for zombies.)

Addicted to The Midnight Hour

The Midnight Hour - The Commitments (mp3)

For a brief while I felt a little guilty about my late nights of self-enforced solitude in the confines of my own home.

"Nothing good happens after midnight," one friend is fond of saying. She mostly means her child(ren). She also kinda sorta means adults, too. But she doesn't say it out loud because she doesn't want to sound as judgmental about it as she actually is.

Another friend puts it differently: "When I'm up alone after 11 p.m., I find myself doing a lot of things that aren't ultimately all that healthy."

For the record, as I type these very words, it's 12:27 a.m. I am not at present touching myself, nor have I at any point in the current 24-hour cycle. I am not looking at inappropriate pictures or reading inappropriate things. I am not communicating with anyone the former Elin Woods would find cause to beat in my windshield with a golf club, nor am I engaged in any form of high-stakes illegal betting. I'm neither manufacturing nor participating in any sort or kind of illegal substances.

It's 12:31 a.m., and I'm doing nothing all that terribly wrong.

That's not always the case, mind you. No sense in getting into which particular options might, on occasion, land on my late-night radar screen, you cheeky monkeys you. I just ain't no cherub, is what I'm sayin'.

At times, I have been incredibly conflicted about all this. About my almost chemical dependence on nocturnal independence. About the fact that, no matter how late my wife stays up to be by my side and experience late-night life with me, I must stay up another one or two hours later.

It has helped to learn I'm not alone. There's millions of us out there. I recently had the opportunity to hear my boss express, almost word for word, the very explanation I myself have for this need. He, too, it would seem, suffers from this affliction, this addiction, this need to have solitude prior to slumber.

And, in truth, I write this not merely because I'm awake at 1 a.m., but because circumstances around people I know have just yesterday served to remind me that we all carry burdens and mysteries that even our best friends can rarely fathom unless it's written to them in big 50-font print.  That whole "quiet desperation" thing is just flat-out universal, my friends, and if you don't know you're quietly desperate, just hang out a little longer, and it'll come to you.

My mother, my wife, and several other women I know and respect seem to savor and prefer the early-morning solitude. I don't mean to make this a gender issue, because I know a few guys who prefer the 5 a.m. wake-up to the 1 a.m. bedtime, but for me the inclination does divide largely along gender lines... yet I think the product and the motive is ultimately the same. My mom, my wife, theyt wake up and greet a happier day if they earn just a few minutes, maybe a half an hour, where they can gather themselves without the burden of other duties, without the distraction of obligation to something other than just waking themselves up.

For me, I need the right to put myself to sleep. To sing my own lullaby. To watch or listen to or play whatever I need to get my mind calmed down. And I just can't seem to do any of that very well with other people around. (Unless I'm really good 'n' drunk. Which is hardly a kind of practice I want to make too terribly regular. Certainly not more regular than it already is, thankee very much.)

I love -- no, I need -- the Midnight Hour. Sometimes it comes at midnight, but not always. The Midnight Hour isn't a moment on the clock. It's a tipping point in the caverns of your being that tells you to call it a night, that in fact begs and ultimately demands you to do so.

Just you and I.

Written under the precise level of intoxication required to think a post using the words "I" and "me" almost 500 times would somehow express something larger than merely an unhealthy obsession with the author's own sense of self-awesomeness.

Oh Wait, Was She a Great Big Fat Person?

Fat - The Violent Femmes (mp3)
Wait - White Lion (mp3)

Sometimes honesty is nothing but a dangerous weapon. Maybe we don't mean to hurt people with it, but sometimes we do damage with our honesty that can't be easily mended.

One of the most personally agonizing moments in The Breakfast Club occurs when rich girl Claire (Molly Ringwald) spouts too much honesty for anyone. My alter-ego, the nerdy Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), suddenly realizes he potentially has four new friends from all walks of school life, and the ramifications of that possibility excites him.

BRIAN
So, so on Monday...what happens?

CLAIRE
Are we still friends, you mean? If we're friends now, that is?

BRIAN
Yeah...

CLAIRE
Do you want the truth?

BRIAN
Yeah, I want the truth...

CLAIRE
I don't think so...

ALLISON
Well, do you mean all of us or just John?

CLAIRE
With all of you...

ANDREW
That's a real nice attitude, Claire!

CLAIRE
Oh, be honest, Andy...if Brian came walking up to you in the hall on Monday, what would you do? I mean picture this, you're there with all the sports. I know exactly what you'd do, you'd say hi to him and when he left you'd cut him all up so your friends wouldn't think you really liked him!

ANDREW
No way!

ALLISON
'Kay, what if I came up to you?

CLAIRE
Same exact thing!

BENDER
(furious and screaming at Claire)
You are a bitch!

CLAIRE
Why? 'Cause I'm telling the truth, that makes me a bitch?

BENDER
No! 'Cause you know how shitty that is to do to someone! And you don't got the balls to stand up to your friends and tell 'em that you're gonna like who you wanna like!

CLAIRE
Okay, what about you, you hypocrite! Why don't you take Allison to one of your heavy metal vomit parties? Or take Brian out to the parking lot at lunch to get high? What about Andy for that matter, what about me? What would your friends say if we were walking down the hall together. They'd laugh their asses off and you'd probably tell them you were doing it with me so they'd forgive you for being seen with me.

BENDER
(furious once again)
Don't you ever talk about my friends! You don't know any of my friends, you don't look at any of my friends and you certainly wouldn't condescend to speak to any of my friends so you just stick to the things you know, shopping, nail polish, your father's BMW and your poor--rich--drunk mother in the Carribean!

Because I've always identified (begrudgingly) with Brian, Claire's words wound me every time I hear them. They are painful because they are true and honest, and Claire says them with a begrudging regret for and resignation to the way the world works.

Rebel flunkie John Bender (Judd Nelson) goes all great vengeance and furious anger on her, and his rhetorical skills overwhelm the argument, but they never can take away from the scathing truth of her honesty. Bender only wins because he plays dirty and can redirect the subject. When Brian returns to prodding Claire about her response, she again gives a painfully honest answer, making everyone angrier at her still.

Their anger does not change the validity of her claim. Sometimes it's easier to pass judgment on the one cruel enough to say it than it is to acknowledge that we'd be equally guilty... but denying it the whole time.

The only one who stood firm that her friends would accept Brian into the fold was Allison (Ally Sheedy), and that was only because Allison was friendless and could thus offer a lame "the kind of friends I'd have wouldn't mind" response. Which is much like me claiming that none of my pit bulls would ever bite anyone... if I ever bought any pit bulls.

At one point, Bender tells Claire that her name is "a fat girl's name." Which is the best way I can lead into my point...

What makes a fat person fat?

I know I'm burying the lead here, but when having to answer this question, I find myself in a horrible place. Rather than being Brian, the Club's naive victim, I'm suddenly Claire, the honest asshole who says stuff even though it's cruel to say. Obviously, I try keeping these thoughts to myself unless I'm writing a blog or dragged into a friendly debate.

Do fat people eat too much? Is it the curse of genetic inheritance? Do their grandparents spoil them? Are they a lazy at a different level? Can we blame it all on William Howard Taft or the gravitational pull of the moon or cauliflower? Our beliefs here sway us in stories about Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines, or about health insurance costs, or about the decade of network television sitcoms ruined by the glut of snarky and annoying fat guys with hot wives.

A series of Slate articles wrestles with the science debate on weight and how much is linked to the curse of genetics. Although I can't rightly read these articles without acknowledging that I hit some version of the genetic lotto in being skinny, I also can't get past my own anecdotal experiences that most overweight people I know got that way because they eat too much, eat too unhealthily, and are far too inactive.

Overweight people should have to buy two plane tickets when necessary. I wince thinking that my insurance rates are governed by smokers and unhealthy eaters rather than my own moderately irresponsible lifestyle. That Leah Remini would fall in love with Kevin James makes me throw up in my mouth.

Maybe I'm an awful person for admitting this. Maybe it's such an aggravating topic because the whole truth is much more complicated than mere DNA structure or the number of Whoppers consumed. But I doubt I'll ever be capable of viewing one's weight on the same scale of "just born with it" as one's skin color, height, or even sexual preference. One day, if science can prove me wrong, I will do my best to change, but I will mostly pray that I won't pass along my own prejudices to my children.

To those loyal readers who are overweight or agitated by my stance, I shrug a Molly Ringwald shrug and regret to inform you that I can't even play "Heart + Soul" with my toes or apply lipstick using my cleavage instead of my hands.

I've loved the Violent Femmes song since I bought that album back in the '80s. I just added the White Lion song for the pun fun of it. And because it's probably White Lion's best or second-best song.

"If you go there, you are preparing to die."

We Share Our Mother's Health - The Knife (mp3)
Doctor! Doctor! - The Thompson Twins (mp3)

My view of health care is a little skewed.

As we drove through Nairobi on our way out of the city in the summer of 2007, I found myself mesmerized by the easy comparisons and contrasts between what I was seeing and my Traditional American Notion of a city.

Heavily-trafficked streets that aren't streets so much as bumpy surfaces similar to the surface of the moon, except brown. Rows of one-story shack-like buildings painted a variety of over-bright colors dimmed by mud and time that serve as their own version of shopping plazas. Nice hotels where security guards armed with automatic weaponry use long poles with mirrors to ensure there is no bomb strapped under your car before allowing you into the entryway.

One of the more telling moments about just how far out of Kansas we really were occurred when we passed one of Nairobi's hospitals. (For all I know, it was the ONLY hospital.) The building was a maroonish color and went up at least six or seven stories, and it looked more like a large prison complex than my notion of a hospital. When our driver pointed it out, I said something to that effect, and his response was, "It is a bad place."

"The hospital? Is a bad place?" I asked.

"If you must go to the hospital, you are preparing to die."

Being dim, I needed clarification. "Are you saying that you don't go to the hospital if you're just, sort of, sick?"

"No no. If you go to the hospital, you are close to death. You don't go there unless you have no other hope."

When it comes to health care, this experience is the health care equivalent of your mother's "There are starving children in Africa" speech. I've seen starving children in Africa, and I've seen hospitals in Africa. More importantly, I've seen the public opinion of hospitals and health care in Africa, and it ain't pretty.

Amongst my in-laws, I'm pretty much the lone voice of liberal dissent. My politically vociferous in-laws range from Ann Coulter and Neil Boortz to Sean Hannity and John Stossel (That's the one who's a Libertarian in Republican's clothing). There might be an albino Walter E. Williams in there as well. But there's nothing so reasonable as a David Brooks or George Will amongst them.

Anyway, because everyone needs a common enemy, I'm constantly CC'd on their email exchanges regarding politics, and once in a while I take the bait and engage in smart-assed or sincere disagreement with them. Lately, every day seems to include a handful of email exchanges from these Righties about health care. Being Righties, they insist that Obama's plan will obliterate all private insurance companies and leave us with a system even more incompetent than that stupid wacky Canadian system.

Disclosure: I know jack and shit about health care. (And, as Ash from the Evil Dead series would say, "Jack just left town.")

I've read plenty, but I don't really know anything beyond personal experience. But here's two things I know with absolute certainty: (1) The rising cost of insurance has virtually obliterated every penny of my salary increase for the past eight years; (2) Ain't nothing about health care in 2009, when compared to 2001, has gotten better where me and my family are involved, at least not nearly enough to explain sucking away virtually every cent of my pay raises.*

* -- Note to rich people: I'm in education. Three percent of shit is a mere teensy dingleberry, cash-wise. So the fact that my insurance increases leapfrogs my pay probably means little to you in your fancy mansions on the hills.




I don't know whether Obama's plan will do any good. It's entirely possible it could have the scare-mongering effect conservatives claim, although I doubt it. But all this conservative talk about how free markets correct themselves and would lower costs and be more efficient... well, that clearly ain't happening in the world of health care. And all the spinning in the world ain't gonna make it so.

And compared to Kenya, I know we're lucky to have the system we have, flaws and all.

But I believe deeply that what we're getting for what we're paying is, in no uncertain terms, a racket. It's a sham. A complicated Ponzi Scheme of payments going to lawyers and insurance companies and drug reps and God-only-knows who else. I believe, without equivocation, that health care and insurance shouldn't have to be this expensive. I believe the system has proven itself incapable of fixing its own problems. I believe our government, unfortunately, is the last option at trying to force those wheels to set in motion.

Until powers from the Right -- or some insurance companies -- prove they can make wheels turn in a different direction with promising results, then I'm forced to back the only cards I see getting played. Inaction seems to have proven a failed option.