If It Were The 90’s, This Would Be A Zine

The latest issue of Spin magazine has informed me that Radiohead, in keeping with their socially-conscious image, is in the midst of executing an environmentally-sound ‘low-emission’ tour. No word on whether or not the band has placed an equivalent cap on bullshit-emissions: those resonances which emanate from the nexus of overdrawn emotions and their spectacular correlate: the turgid stageshow. I get the feeling that people would laugh if Kiss were to make a similar gesture.

A Buffalo Newsarticle about former Bills’ offensive lineman Mitch Frerotte (who died last week) reminded me of how the reading the sports page can be such a drag. Not that particular article, but articles wherein a given writer calls out a player for being old, or used up, or damaged goods, or over the hill. It’s especially disconcerting when one considers that the ‘hill’ in most professional sports, at around 30 years old, is more of a knoll. When I open the sports page and get an earful of grouchy-ass pissing and moaning instead of analysis and clues on where to put my money it’s enough to make me turn to the business page. Sportswriting too often resembles the note sounded by a disappointed child.

There are intelligent guys like Charlie Rosen (over the course of the 2007-08 hoops season he had a excellent series on his mental breakdown and subsequent retirement from coaching in the CBA), who actually watchesbasketball games, yet even he can’t help bemoaning the ‘thug culture’ that’s supposedly become such a bane to the sport. Then there are guys like Jason Whitlock who is totally insane: he attempted to establish a connection between the popularity of this year’s finals match-up and the dearth of tattoos to be found on the competing teams. That’s superstition not research. There is George Will, who finds in baseball the same confirmation that he finds in politics: that he is correct and it’s good to see that events in the real world still correspond so nicely with his ideology. Most guys are like the Buffalo News’ Jerry Sullivan, whose brand of insight is perfectly summed up in a phrase of his own coining: ‘column as I see ‘em’. The narrow band of sportswriting ranges from cranky to inhumane and rarely stops to consider its purpose: to entertain and astound with its narrative of struggle and record of feats.

Anyway, here are two quotes of Mitch’s from the aforementioned article from 1990 and 2005, respectively:

“In this game, I can be as freespirited as I want. Guys who are doctors, lawyers, businessmen, whatever, they can’t be that way. They have to have a certain kind of image. But in football, it’s a matter of who’s sicker out on the field on Sunday. And I have the opportunity to be crazy and nuts.”

“I’m damaged. I’m 40 years old and all I know how to do is pull and pass block. I can’t work because I’m totally disabled.”

Broke my humerus, but there is nothing funny about it.

First I get really loaded

then I lay out on the roof

and the sun gives me power

to get even more loaded

Does that make him a piece of shit?

For sale: Brown derby’s.  Men’s, size 10 1/2.  Good shape; only worn in south.  Need new laces.  Interesting trades considered.  Leave number in comment bin.

“The biggest problems involve some bar owners who get into a business that they’re just not qualified to be in,” Parisi said. “They have no dress codes. They don’t care who they serve. That’s where the problems happen.”

 That quote is from Frank Parisi, Chippewa St. entrepreneur, in response to last weekend’s shootings on Pearl St; it begs the question: ‘How does one determine who to serve?’  This is the question that dress codes posted in nearly every window up and down Chippewa St. try to answer.  The usual list includes (such a list is posted in the window at McCarthy’s Bar and Grill, which hosted the latest shootings): No backwards hats, baggy jeans, jerseys, etc.

We can do away with the notion that the Chippewa district caters to an upscale crowd (I don’t care how much money Bacchus spends on red carpet and velvet rope), the scene at 4:30a.m. on any given Friday and Saturday night is enough to dispel that notion: streets cordoned off by armed police officers; hundreds of drunken zombies fumbling for car keys; vomit flying everywhere: in general, a breakdown of any semblance of civilization.  If that’s not enough, then tell me how someone wearing a baseball cap forwards is more virtuous than a person with the same cap on backwards; how tight jeans are classier than baggy jeans; how many bars on Chippewa would deny entrance to a patron wearing a Buffalo Sabres/Bills jersey?

What’s the real criteria?

The same Buffalo News article that the above quote was taken from also said that police would be targeting ‘thugs’; in a previous article, which outlined the Mayor’s new safety plan, his honor warned any ‘bad actors’ that might be thinking of a night out in the Chippewa district. 

The plan calls for increased police presence (many bars already hire off-duty officers for protection, which raises a couple more questions: “What kind of atmosphere are these downtown businesses promoting that they need to gobble up so much of the police force; and, who really wants to party with cops anyway?) and 24hr. camera surveillance.  As a resident of downtown neither proposal makes me feel safer (there were three off-duty officers outside the night of the shooting last weekend; what difference would six have made?) or encouraged that the current administration has any real plan to develop a downtown friendly to its residents (not even the homeless ones, which by my count outnumber the ones who live consistently in-doors).

 The other question the Mayor didn’t address is the one of gang violence.  Why, for instance, wasn’t this safety plan put into effect months ago when a young man was fatally shot outside the same bar, or a couple months after that when there was an all-out shoot-out in the adjacent parking lot?  Is it because people who weren’t automatically presumed to be in gangs were injured this time; additionally, is the Mayor cool with thugs shooting each other up so long as it’s not in a business district?

Went to work, had the following conversation:

 Student:  Do you know anything about the Southtowns campus?

Me:  No.

 Student:  …’cause I’m tryin’ to transfer there; this place is getting too hood.

Me:  Word?

Shane Meyer has been leaving around bits and pieces of his autobiography for months now; I know there’s not much else to it, just a few scribblings left ‘carelessly’ here and there, so that I will end up thinking more of it than I ought to. Anyway, this is from the script version. He’s hoping to get it ‘optioned’. (I think he thinks if he uses enough Hollywood verbiage something might happen.)

(Voice Over)

She moseyed over until she was close enough to make it hard for me to pretend I didn’t notice, at which point I acknowledged her by turning the outer part of my lips in toward my teeth and then abruptly let them snap back out.

I wasn’t sure what she made of that.

But she started talking… saying this and that and something along those lines until I sewed her up with a hard look.

She took a little weight off her left foot, carried it up into her shoulder, glided into mine, and rested.

I eased my look and her eyes fell to the floor, rolled to the side, and rested on her drink. She confessed:

“Normally I don’t drink.”

I replied:

“Oh, is it making your emotions run all wild?”

She said:

“I want to kiss you.”

and I:

“The timing’s all foul - not that it hadn’t crossed my mind: the kiss… that and about fix or six other things”

I sensed she was about to float away just before I put my hand behind her waist, drew her near and planted one on her.

She was light and easy as she floated into me.

You get the idea. This goes on for pages and pages.