It's Just..... Love

I know why I am a sports fan. It’s so much more than the game. I love the game(s) but sports are such a magical thing that they can’t be classified as just a love of the competition. I love them because some of them are everything I am. Basketball is quick, impulsive, fast-paced (unless you’re Princeton or Nebraska, puking noise) every play is a risk. And they are also everything I am not. I am not a patient man but Soccer and Baseball are such patient games and they are the two sports for which I probably have the strongest affiliations. My love of the Red Sox and of Arsenal is well documented and so enraging because I devote all this time and almost always come away in agony. Whereas in basketball with the Jayhawks and the Celtics I’ve been rather lucky with my success and also have come to understand that losing doesn’t deny that you had a great season, with the Red Sox and Arsenal I all too often end each PAINSTAKINGLY long season ( Baseball- 162 Games, Soccer- August to May, between 1 and 3 games a week) with the disappointment of not having my patience rewarded. And then there is football, which is so strategic and explosive that it’s both me and not me at the same time. It’s so analytical but at the same time so unpredictable. But with this sport sadly I’ve become more than accustomed to losing, between the Vikigns (sans that one great year with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, cough-cough-Brett-Favre) and the Jayhawks, I am used to better teams running up the scores and me going across the street to get some more beer.

But I don’t just love sports for the way they are like me or unlike me but for what they do for me. They give me something to look forward to, to be interested in, to devote myself to. Something to be a part of and something to believe in. To believe that 11 men on a soccer field can bring you happiness with some tricky footwork and nice off-the-ball movement is such a powerful thing, because you are so tense and then the goal comes and you explode out of your chair and you are absolutely euphoric, probably a similar feeling to how my Dad felt at my birth. That kind of joy or sheer pain is not easily replicated. I can’t tell you how I responded when Mario Chalmers hit that shot to send the Jayhawks into overtime and on the 2008 championship. I can’t tell you how I felt with Aaron Boone hit the homer in 2003 and ended the Red Sox season so cruelly. It’s a supernatural experience, being in love with a team. Because it’s like a relationship. I’ve got to pay it enough attention so I know what is going on, I go up with it and down with it, I stay up late for it, I get up early for it (Arsenal play morning games in England, 6 am here, and yes, I get up). It’s love. They’ve enchanted me with their spirit. Teamwork and the beauty of the game. I can’t explain it in a way that a non-sports fan would understand. It’s just…. Love.  

And I love sports for the stories. Triumph over all odds, the bond of men (and women, although, let’s face it, often to a lesser physical degree) in pursuit of a common goal, the resilience of someone beaten down and rising back up. How can you hear stories like that of Kevin Everett, who was paralyzed playing football for the Buffalo Bills and is now walking fully again with the support of the Bills behind him, and not feel good about humanity. Or of the Team Manager with Downs Syndrome at a high school in Long Island a few years ago, who was put in for the last 10 minutes of the last game of his senior season, for the first time ever…. And scored 28 points. It warms your heart. Stories like the ones Hollywood has made bank on that still get me every time I see them (Remember the Titans, Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, Rudy, etc.) and also the ones they haven’t made bank on yet, like the ones shown on SportsCenter on a weekly basis that jerk tears out of anyone that watches them with me, even my totally sports illiterate roomies (artists. Pfff.).

I understand people disliking sports because players in the 8 major sports (Basketball, Baseball, Football, Soccer, Hockey, Golf, Tennis, and, I say this begrudgingly because I still think it ain’t a sport, NASCAR) could end so world hunger if they donated half of their salaries, but I can’t control that. And to be honest, my life would be less interesting and a lot less exciting if professional sports didn’t exist. No watch parties at bars, no communication with my old Frat brothers via Fantasy Football, no Super Bowl parties, no days during the Holidays where the family just sits together and watches football or basketball. And I would miss all of that. The excitement. The passion. The agony and ecstasy of the love for the game. That’s why I love sports. Because there is something positive for everyone. Because I need them. 

Like A Virus

August 12, 2011

Like A Virus

What thief has snaked our souls?

What’s happened to the best of us?

Crack the whip

And clasp your hands

Around the absence of it

As it pours out of you

Like a virus

When did it get so cold?

Which of us is responsible?

For the chill of deceit

And that mark on her arm

The rum on the floor

The burning of time

As we slip from truth to truth

Dealing in certainty

In an uncertain age

Casting shadows on memories

Blasting the walls

That we built

By the sea

Where is reason?

Since the arrival

Humans have given way to bottles

Have given way to needles

And the graves we dig

Get wider with the day’s passing

But we make the time to dig

Beneath the burning embers

And the gnashing of teeth

Who’s sucking my neck?

Blood-thirsty shell

Of you I used to love

Eyes full of nothingness

Bearing down on all of me

With the emptiness of you

Snarling with your savagery

As you chomp

And it pours out of me

Into you

Like a virus

I wasn’t what you were looking for

A common theme for the bitten

Misery breeds misery

Hate breeds hate

And the purity of us decays

With each gash we open

And each soul we spoil

What’s happened to the best of us?

A wave on a rock

A stiff breeze blows past

Who's got the remedy?

A spark in this city of ash

We Used To Wait

Waiting is a funny thing. Everything makes you wait. Jobs, people, commercials, loading screens, lines. Life is waiting for something to happen, it happening, you enjoying/loathing it for it's duration, and then waiting again. And lately that's been my favorite hobby. Waiting and drinking (sorry family) have been my most frequent activities for the past weeks. Whether it is for a job to call back, for a meeting with a friend, for money so I can do things, whatever. That's what I've been doing and it's only recently occurred to me that that is indeed the reason that nothing has been happening. How interesting that when I finally said I would stop waiting for everyone else, I got a call for an interview and a text from the friend.

So why do we wait? Because I know this isn't at all the first time this epiphany has leaped out to me, but it always fails to take. Maybe because it's easier to wait. Play the victim, so to speak. Or maybe it's not that we've just been waiting but that we've been lingering on what we waited for instead of moving on and leaving those things to fate. But on the day that I decided to be through, these things decide to come through? How interesting our world is.

LISTEN TO:
We Used To Wait - Arcade Fire

Let's Start Strong

It's my first post on my new blog. And where better to start than the state of our nation. Not all of my posts will be political. They will be the experiences of a young, and not-all-knowing, but opinionated young man as he runs through his artsy life in New York City. But what is more pressing now than our monetary situation? As we creep toward further financial decay, what do our leaders do? Delay voting on bills that need to be heard and continue arguing just in an attempt to deface the other side. It's childish game play and, as Fareed Zakaria recently pointed out in a very Zakaria-esque Op-Ed in The Washington Post, our Political Parties have rapidly deteriorated into warring factions instead of a cohesive body of different opinions. 

When did we make Congress a playground for spoiled kids? Seriously. This stuff is getting to be ridiculous, to the point where people won’t care if the GOP or the Democrats win a particular battle because they’ll just by shocked that something got done. This government needs to learn that as long as parties and reelection take precedent over the fiscal and moral issues of the nation at large, we will never flourish as our public demands us to. When did we let the casts of Mean Girls (With Michelle Bachmann parading around as Regina George) into our hallowed halls of reason? When did we let the grumpier old men (Reid and Boehner) run bi-partisanship into the ground? We need grown-ups who aren’t afraid of not being reelected, who aren’t afraid of actually solving issues who don’t give a SHIT about the party banner they ran under. When our nation is collapsing under the weight of our debt, when we default on our loans, the Parties aren’t the ones paying for that. We are.

And I realize that all of you will point at this piece and shout to your friends at work ‘NAIVETE’ or ‘EVIL LIBERAL SOCIALIST’ but what other solution is there? I’m most certainly not a socialist  but it doesn’t take a degree to know that the Bush tax cuts and these two unfunded and God’s and Generals –esque (that movie never ended, swear to God it’s still playing) wars are the largest contributors to our debt. I realize that the wars are a process, so that’s another story, but why not nix these cuts that have obviously outgrown their use (did they really have a positive one, besides making Dick and George’s friends happy). Political Parties in this country have become gangs. They have become completely entrenched and obtuse. Who will be the one to step out and make something happen? Who will be the one to do what this country needs and push legislation for a raise in the debt ceiling AND for a spending cut, because really, before August 2^nd you aren’t going to get one without the other. John McCain took a step the other day when he seared both sides’ behinds. Is that old fence-straddler the only one? Where you at, people we elected to unify our nation? Did we make a mistake? Or is it that we were set up to fail? Who knows if bi-partisanship is even possible, but we all know how to compromise, it's just a question of doing it. Abandon liberalism, abandon the Tea Party. Remember that there are things bigger than your constituency in Suburbia and your party leaders. There is us. The voters. America. Fix us. We need it.