SPORTS WEDNESDAY

i saw bo jackson play baseball once. i'd seen the great runs he'd made as an auburn football player. i'd heard all the stories. w/someone like lebron around nowadays, it's hard to remember that other "complete" athletes ever existed(who, someone might ask nowadays, was jim thorpe, my childhood hero). i saw him down in sarasota, during spring training. he was playing for kansas city, a team i never liked. he hit a bloop single to left that was fielded cleanly & quickly by whoever was playing leftfield for the white sox at the time. by the time the leftfielder had made his throw to second base(what should have been a perfunctory precautionary rote move), jackson was standing there on second, his trajectory around the base paths nearly invisible but certainly magical. there was a moment of utter silence & then the nearly reflexive roar of the crowd. it was quite a sight to not really see. bo jackson only lasted eight seasons in professional baseball & only a couple were really productive.

i thought about this moment of magical realism last night when i watched rickey henderson being interviewed on mlb network. henderson did what i saw jackson do countless times, over several decades. of course, henderson is known for being kind of nutty, speaking about himself in the third person & making odd non sequiturs. not last night. i wouldn't say he was eloquent but he was definately adequate in assessing his place in baseball history. he really doesn't have to say much though. he is simply the greatest lead-off hitter of all time. he is the most electrifying base stealer ever. he is a first ballot unanimous choice for the hall of fame. guys like this don't come up very often. w/all that baseball has gone through these last few years, having someone w/such astonishing natural physical skills going into the hall is a true blessing.

that he's going into the hall w/jim rice, the boston great whose talents & stats have been unbelievably ignored all these years, is just frosting on the cake.

life takes care of this for us

we had one more suicide this year off the golden gate bridge than we did in 2007. since 1937 when the bridge opened, there have been more than 1300 hearty souls to take the plunge. if you saw the riveting documentary "the bridge," you know that there's no soaring transcendent moment when you take that plunge. you drop like a rock & smash yourself into the concrete-like water. no womb re-entry. no human fantasy fulfilled. just ignominious death in all it's grinning glory.

anyone who survives the drop (amazingly, there have been a few)pretty much spends years in physical therapy & probably the rest of their lives in real true physically human pain. in the film, what's interesting is that the real true mental pain that drove them to make the leap is gone. vanished. for one survivor, it vanished (that real true mental pain)when he saw his hands hoisting his body up over the railing. "at that moment," he says, " i thought: all my problems, they're nothing, they could be easily solved." very quickly, his new problem became a very real physical one: surviving the drop & it's aftermath.

most of these folks (in the film, anyway)are under 40yo. they don't have cancer. some have jobs. they're only about half way through their run. they simply failed to see that their cul-de-sac was an intersection. what they also failed to see is that friends have to cope, workers(those lucky ones who get to fish them out of the bay)have to deal, & the world just keeps spinning on.

in 2008, 34 folks made the drop.

"counterfeit infinity"

a remarkable life that ends abruptly is just that. there is nothing remarkable about death. it is the lowest possible common denominator of all living things. the only thing remarkable about it is that tragic or stupid or bizarre deaths will inevitably have someone remark on them. other than that, it is base & w/o any redeeming qualities.

i used to say, half-jokingly, that death is the worst thing that could happen to us when we're alive. for the most part, i believed that. but a scene from joy williams' "breaking & entering" made me reconsider. one of the characters, a wild ex-hollywood stunt man, is constantly saying, "fuck death! when death comes for me i'm gonna piss in his face..." & then he knocks back a shot of bourbon. of course, death has other plans for him & when it shows up, rather than take him, it cripples him w/a paralyzing stroke. mute & confined to a wheelchair, he spends most of the novel being wheeled around as an inert object, cognizant of his circumstance but unable to do anything about it.

when considered, that's probably the worst thing that could happen to us when we're alive(or some variation thereof)but god knows we fail to see it. humans are capable of generating so much self-pain over such trivial things: lovers, jobs, lovers, money, lovers. when we're young we have feelings that seem so large, so all consuming that we can't imagine surviving them but we do. then, here they come w/just enough variation to blindside us all over again.

i met charles bernstein the poet once, at uva. i liked his work &, even more, appreciated its significance. i remember richard rorty walked out of bernstein's reading & my appreciation for bernstein went off the charts. i had no idea he was married to susan bee but i'd enjoyed her artworks & her work on various journals associated w/the language poets. i didn't know they had children.

i found their daughter's blog, girldrive, quite by accident. i've always had an interest in subcultures, marginalized voices have always spoken meaningfully to me. women in general & esp younger women of a certain age(just out of high school to a few years out of college, the effects of their institutionalized oppression either taken hold fully or not yet fully shaken off)are marginalized voices. emma bernstein's blog gave those specific voices a place to sound out. her own writing struck me as beautiful but facile. she was gifted w/words(as her father is)but the words seemed to inflate feelings that were small or insular. they exaggerated common experience too dramatically & produced a "counterfeit infinity." it would be easy to get lost in those words & lose track of the actual feelings or even the world itself. beautiful. dangerous. damned.

it is not natural in this new millenium for a parent to bury their child. i'm not sure it's ever been natural. this is one of those empty losses that compels everyone who hears of it to remark on it. the magnitude of this kind of loss is what's remarkable. that doesn't make death remarkable.

inward desolation
horror of
great darkness

great things
on the ocean
break

& counterfeit
infinity

21.xii.08

[italicized lines after Coleridge's notebooks]

EMMA BEE BERNSTEIN MAY 16TH 1985-DEC 20TH 2008



for more info & a link to her blog, girldrive, click on the poetics sidebar.

SPORTS SUNDAY

i guess i should feel some kind of pride or excitement or something in regards to florida winning the national championship. i don't feel anything. maybe indifference, if that's a feeling. i lost interest in college football many many years ago when michael & i used some tickets trapper had scored for a georgia/florida showdown at the gatorbowl in jacksonville. this should have been heart-pounding excitement, the sec championship was up for grabs. what it was was cold & cramped & oddly w/o any excitement at all. we were way way up in the stadium, so high that any activity on the field looked like clay-mation figures from "voyages of sinbad". the only sounds we could hear were from the drunken louts around us. i kept thinking, "we should be in a bar somewhere. it would be warm w/beer & television w/slow-motion replays of close-up action. there would be convenient bathrooms." i hated the experience.

i remember greg ulmer , the hip avant-garde prof at g'ville arguing back in the early 90s FOR college football programs. this was when the gigantic(seating 100,000) stadium was being built right in downtown g'ville. all the cool kids in the class were stunned that this guy would advocate for such a thing. his point seemed to revolve around money; the more the football programs brought into the universities coffers, the more cool events could be scheduled, like guillermo gomez-pena or noam chomsky. someone pointed out that the lion's share of the money actually went back into the football program. "hey," ulmer replied, "we'll take what we can get from this spectacle because it is not going away anytime soon."

he was right. but there was enough of a stink raised that the money, all the money, started being divvied up & new programs emerged(primarily & happily women's sports)& new scholarships were funded. of course, all that opened several new cans of worms but it was mostly lost on me. i never went to a game at the new stadium. for me, it sat there in downtown g'ville like that mothership in "close encounters..." but w/o any allure(the fact that it was named after a notorious racist was the only feature i found interesting). i knew that no matter how much money they spent on that monstrosity there would still be no instant replay & that shirtless drunk painted orange & blue would still be howling in my ear. exactly what made that drunk howl & feel his school spirit soar made me feel cold & cramped w/an uncomfortable need to piss. even the largest spectacle couldn't provide a convenient bathroom.

"i don't know where but she sends me there"

i didn't buy the first vibrator i used for sex play. i stole my mother's. at 18yo in pensacola, there really wasn't anywhere to get the damned things. like condoms, the idea of buying a vibrator "over the counter" was beyond my imagination. besides, mother made it easy for me. she kept hers in her bathroom cabinet, in the back behind the towels. like i've said before, the jones family just did this kind of thing. i knew nothing would be said.





i'm not sure if i had my hands on an actual "vibro-sage, aids in health & beauty" but my original tool was very similar to it. having it though & figuring out how to use it were two different things. i mean, yeah, i knew the technical things: plug it in & throw the switch. it wasn't that simple. this was 1973. these things weren't part of the zeitgeist & i wasn't sure how to approach my partner w/an electrical device when, up until then, things had been proceeding on a strictly fleshy basis.

i resorted to what now seems like THE age old standby, massage. look at all the original packaging for early vibrators. they're covered w/drawings or pictures of happy beaming women holding a cock-shaped "massager" to their faces. touting my "vibro-sage" as a great massage aid was easy, esp since it wasn't cock-shaped. i had lots of other camouflage for this subterfuge. "the art of sensual massage" had come out sometime around then & we were already baby-oiling ourselves up & getting naked. i determined that this was the next step. what a visionary!

actually, my vision was rewarded w/astonishing effect. i remember i was renting a "cottage" out on p'beach at the sun ray motel & still working at the tiki motel right next door. x had come out on one of my days off & i had her oiled up & all ready for a tension reducing massage. the "vibro-sage" was already plugged in & hidden beneath the covers. somewhere around 15 minutes into the massage, i stealthily pulled the device out, hit the switch, & immediately applied it to her back, somewhere on the soft tissue just above her butt. "wow," she said enthusiastically, "that feels great!!" me? i was about to explode. it was working!

for the next 30 minutes the vibro-sage was slowly maneuvered over her body, tho i skillfully avoided direct contact w/her genital area. she had become a human puddle there on the bed, totally blissed out. now for the coup de grace, i thought. when i slide the device quickly down the cleft of her butt & onto her warm & very relaxed genitals the result was almost instantaneous. her body seemed to clench & i asked if she was ok. "i'm going to cum in a second if you keep that up," she groaned. "well...cum then," was my gallant reply. she did too. convulsively & very very vocally, she writhed around, nearing breaking my wrist, clutching at the sheets. it went on for over a minute or so it seemed. unprecedented. remarkable. unforgettable.

i was hooked.


vibrators in their myriad shapes & functions became a part of my sexual repetoire. i located a place in the cordova mall(spencer's, a cheesy "gift" shop)that sold not only the latest versions of the "vibro-sage" but those cock-shaped battery operated dildos in various sizes(for various orifices, of course). after x's electrifying response, shame or guilt would no longer keep me from "over the counter" purchases of any sex aid, object, or novelty. i made it a point of "giving" vibrators as gifts to girlfriends. i've heard that nowadays hip mothers give them to their daughters. now, of course, there are "rabbits" & "meas" & devices shaped like star trek phasers. every guy who's about to let his girlfriend tie him up keeps a wary eye out for strap-ons in the nightstand. no bend over bf me, they think.

i'm pretty sure vibrators made a difference in many of my girl friends lives. they definitely entered & altered the zeitgeist for the better. i KNOW a strap-on i gave to one gf came as a complete life-changing revelation. once she had her OWN cock, she was truly a new woman.

i was thinking about all this after reading an article about sex toys & the recession. apparently, women are willing to forgo various expensive accoutrements while still spending $145 on a "we-vibe, a compact vibrator, all slippery surfaces & c-shaped curves." while some folks are engulfed in the descending despair of financial ruin, others are choosing to face it w/their newly purchased luxury sex toys(some topping out at over $200) clutched firmly between their thighs. i imagine that if most folks could have one minute a day of what x had at the sun ray motel that day way back when, they'd shell out the money happily. they'd be helping the economy too.

the future of the music...business

i know, who cares? that's my initial thinking seeing the record industry collapse & all it's dependents vanish. these guys really did it to themselves. along the way, they fucked us as often as they could, robbed the artists, & ignored the various plights of their dependents(radio, print, record stores, etc). no one should shed one tear. not one. steve knopper doesn't think so either. his book "appetite for self-destruction" documents the fall of the music business in great detail. this is a link to the nyt review of it:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/books/07garn.html?ref=books


in the review, one sentence quoting the book rang so beautifully true in my ears:

there's a moment when producers & artists realize that cds "just sounded better than the lp, no matter how much its detractors complain to this day about losing the rich, warm analog sound."

though this isn't directly addressing the collapse of the music business(it's one of many moments that shape this particular historical account), it does address my firm belief that the new digital technology isn't ruining my experience of the music or somehow undermining the intentions & efforts of the artists.

i don't care that neil young thinks that when i listen to cds (or by extension an mp3)my "mind has been tricked but the heart is sad." there is nothing sad about being able to download the one listenable track from neil's latest w/o having to pay for the rest of the dreck on the album. & you can stop quoting all the scientific data detailing how the compression of the files must degrade the quality of the recording because what you can not bring me is the scientiful data detailing the percentage of human ears capable of discerning that degradation. & i don't mean personal testimonies from all those folks who SAY they can hear it.


the nyt's verdict on knopper's book is mixed(they mention two others, "hit men" by fredric dannen & "the perfect thing" by steven levy, as being more in depth & better written). i was just happy to catch that one sentence in passing.

myths of coolness

none of us were cool enough to be fans of the stooges way back in 1969(sorry, ken). it's just a fact. i think there was a lack of depth to our coolness.

i got to thinking about this today when i read ron asheton's obits in the chron & the nyt. the stooges released their epochal eponymous debut in 1969. it is considered an absolute historical moment in rock history. their next two albums are considered big deals too (their second album, "funhouse" is acknowledged as the "best" of the three albums they released in their original run). as a band, the stooges were done before i graduated from high school. i'd known mike & ken for maybe 2 years & philip for only a little longer. while we did kind of listen to the velvet underground & knew about love(the group)because ken insisted on playing one of their songs, the stooges were never played in philip's cave. not one of us did an acoustic version of "i wanna be your dog." none of us were their advocates.

what's striking to me now is how mainstream our "alternative" music listening was. our top 10 favorite albums from high school are all by folks who had top 10 hit SINGLES back then. w/the exception of cohen & phil ochs, our musical tastes were pretty mild. hendrix was as spicy as our tastes got. we can point out that most, if not all, of our guys are in the rock & roll hall of fame & that most, if not all, of the high school parking lot music isn't. i'm not sure that's much solace.

the stooges never had a hit single. none of their albums went above #150 on the charts. they were direct influences on punk, new wave, grunge & more (one of my favorites, chris whitley, has a great version of "i wanna be your dog" on his last posthumous album). the music is still powerful & immediate.

we can manufacture a number of explanations as to why these guys aren't on our lists. it's true that the harder edge of music didn't get it's due in philip's cave(tho philip was an unrepentant grand funk railroad fan). it's also true that access to non-charted music wasn't as easy then(remember radio station kaay from little rock arkansas? our area & generation's wolfman jack. i remember listening to this after midnight w/george tripping & me just wondering if they were going to play that spirit song i liked). there are lots more explanations.

i think we just weren't cool enough to get it. in pensacola, god only knows who was.