In the Cellar

So Floyd Landis comes forward and admits to doping — after years of proclaiming innocence — and then proceeds to pull a whole bunch of folks, including Saint Armstrong, down into the muck with him. The words of a chump loser looking to flail about and connect on a few cheap shots? Perhaps. But probably not. I think he’s telling the truth.

A good pal of mine (let’s call him Gearhead) is seriously into cycling. He races all the time, and he follows the professional circuit with the intensity of a guy who plays Fantasy Football for a living. Only GH does it out of the love of the game. He thinks Lance Armstrong doped. We had a long email exchange about Landis, and then I asked “Well, do you think Lance doped?” Him: “Oh yeah.”

Take the groupthink dynamic that led to the ubiquity of baseball juicing. Now amplify it. That’s cycling. Everyone doped. If you want to be a pro, you just do it. No questions. To NOT do it is to show a wavering level of commitment that jeopardizes your spot. (Think of the prevalence of “greenies” — uppers — in baseball. Allegedly, many starting pitchers would be straight-up pissed if they found out one of their infielders was playing unenhanced. Tellingly, to play unAdderalled is deemed “playing naked.” MLB passed a rule against greenies a few years ago. I would love to get my paws on the number of ADD prescriptions written for players since then.) If you’re part of a cycling team — and it is a common mistake to think of cycling as an individual sport — you are in. Everyone is in. No weak links. Everyone’s on the “hot sauce.

Here’s Gearhead, in his own words, on the culture of doping in cycling: “Yes, there’s absolutely a group-think effect.  You hear again and again in cycling: ‘everyone is doping; doping is the only way I can stay a pro.’  There are a number of things to take from this, but two stand out for me.  One: cyclists have given up their accountability and personal choice.  When you assume that doing something illegal and dangerous is necessary, you already passed the threshold of considering whether or not to dope.  Before the needle’s in your arm, you already believe you have to do it.  Two: there no consideration of its actual benefits.  Strangely, this sort of perspective is almost totemic.  Doping is something you have to do because everyone does it.  Everyone doesn’t seem to be doing it (according to this logic) because it necessarily works; everyone is doing it because ‘everyone else is’ (or ‘must be’).”

What seems like desperation or skullduggery on Landis’ part can, when seen through a different lens, seem downright understandable — and perhaps, I daresay, sympathetic. Landis wins the Tour de France in 2006 — another miraculous American win! He gets busted for doping. Accusations, denials, SCANDAL. Basically, Landis toed the party line: if caught, deny deny deny. Claim it was a fraudulent test. Some freak occurrence. Whatever. But do NOT blow the lid off the big, huge secret: EVERYONE is doping. It is not really a secret — cycling has been mired in doping scandals for a long time now — but, rather, the secret is that the people who are caught are not the rogue outliers. They’re just the poor bastards who got caught.

So Landis denies, denies, denies. And, finally, for whatever reason, he steps forward. There is a Jose Conseco aspect to Landis, sure: lots of fingerpointing in the media spotlight. Thing is, Conseco was right — time and time again. I think ol’ Jose is a media whore in a way that Landis is not (Landis would not, I suspect, appear on Vh1′s “The Surreal Life”). I think Landis wanted it all to go away; only it keep up, and he became a scapegoat for the sport he loves. And there one has a choice: fall on the grenade or burn the whole town down. And, eventually, he chose the latter.

Of course, Lance denies, denies, denies — the routine should be familiar by now. Lance’s battle with cancer and return to repeated glory was an amazing story. Everyone ate it up. My boss at a gas station I used to work at when younger — thick Masshole accent; love for the BoSox; hatred for the Yanks — would bound out of the garage, hollering, “Lance won another mountain stage! Holy shit! He’s done it again!” He, like so many others, was genuinely excited. Just like we were excited about the McGwire and Sosa home run battle. That narrative got crushed, of course, but Lance’s narrative of resilience and glory remains. Lance ain’t dumb: he knows damn well that if/when he gets busted, poof, it all goes down the drain. Just another tainted hero, like Shoeless Joe Jackson. I imagine that living in that world of possibility is quite stressful. But I also think that Lance has a big enough ego that he’s somehow thought around/through that. He IS that good, dammit. One has to believe the falsities to lie convincingly, we are always told. Then again, maybe Lance is just banking on everyone toeing the line and holding the secret. The big problem, Gearhead tells me, is that Landis’ story has all sorts of information, names, and details that could lead to subpeonas, court appearances, damning testimony, and so on. Lance Armstrong will NEVER admit to doping. (Well, maybe if he could score a tell-all book deal and soft-focus 60 Minutes interview….) But there remains a possibility that a ring of convincing accusations might form around him. Many people will never believe it. You see those Livestrong bracelets all the time. Lance has long since became much more than just a bunch of consecutive Tour de France victories. Beating cancer is no joke. Lance will ALWAYS have that, and, frankly, that is the most important part of his message/persona. He won. Fuck cancer. But his persona grew and disseminated, in all likelihood, through systematic cheating. Everyone was doing it, sure, but does that make it right? That is a tricky question — and it brings to mind the nauseating cacophony of hand-wrining WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!” articles about cheating in baseball — without a clear answer. But I do know this: Lance’s saintly persona exists because of his perceived exceptionality. He is a driver, a winner, a stoic, a champion. Perhaps so. But he probably got there by cheating like everyone else. Not so exceptional.

Here are a bunch of cool links on this broad topic. Read up and enjoy. (These articles are all courtesy of Gearhead. I’m trying to get the information out there. You know my opinions now. Go form your own.)

1. A highly informative article on Landis and the culture of doping in professional cycling. The running comparison to Pretty Boy Floyd didn’t work for me, but maybe it will for you. Essential reading. Here.

2. A rather damning instant message conversation between two pro cyclers. Guess who comes up? Here.

3. Here are two informative interviews about doping and cycling. Here. And here.

4. A rather blustery article about Landis as crazy-prophet. Here.

5. Perhaps the gem of the bunch: a long interview with Floyd Landis himself. Here.

Sorry everyone! It’s been a busy month, to say the least. I haven’t even logged into the blog weeks, sadly. But I paid my pittance: I had to sort through roughly 150 comments, at least 145 of which were spam. Lots of “Thanks!!!! Excellant post:)” or “Awesome writing. I have a pizza recipe to talk about” or “I have been look 4 answers and you always provide them. Ur awesome. Let’s link to each other!!” And then there are the 5-6 posts in Russian. Look, I know I probably about about 3.7 readers, but part of me is weirdly satisfied by all the, erm, activity that seems to be happening behind the scenes here In the Cellar. I’ll have stuff coming up real soon — probably even in a few minutes.

So I was at a Cubs’ game on a beautiful afternoon. The sun was warm; the beer was cold. The Wrigley Field bleachers offer some of the best People Watching in all of the Midwest. You have a collection of dudes who rolled up as soon as the gates open, and they are already drunk. Sweaty hairlines, retro sunglasses, Cubs regalia, and lots of “SHUT UP BRO!” and “DON’T BE A PUSSY!” On the warmer summer days, their shirts are usually off before the game even starts. At least one of them will be thrown out of the game for disorderly conduct. (I’ve seen someone get tossed BEFORE the game starts on a few occasions.) You have the bevy of sorority girls, scantily clad and shrieking, most of whom seem to enjoy the practice of stacking each empty booze glass on the bottom of the fresh one. So you can see, by the odd pile of rimmed plastic cups, that Girl #3 has managed to drink 7 beers by the 4th inning. You have the faintly creepy older dude buying drinks for these ladies. You have the older dudes with the withered Cubs tattooes on the biceps, forearms, whatever. You have the boyfriend and girlfriend who are openly making out in the bleachers during BP like it’s some high school dance scene in a John Hughes movie. But this last game I ran into a few type of Bleacher Creature: the guy who just won’t shut up. There were a group of guys who basically met the criteria for the “DON’T BE A PUSSY!” group of drunk fratty guys, only they weren’t sitting close enough, didn’t get there early enough, and decided to keep their shirts on. They were all slightly rowdy. One guy, though, broke from the pack early on. He delighted in screaming at the Astros’ centerfielder, Michael Bourn #21. HEY 21! HEY TWO ONE! YOU SUCK! HEY TWO ONE! YOU SUCK! HEY TWOOOO ONE! YOU FUCKING SUCK! The usher told him to knock off the profanity, and his response was “Oh, ok, I can’t swear?” Visible frustration rippled through the crowd. Dude just wouldn’t quit it. Several people — including me — pointed out to him that his voice was annoying, his call cats obvious and repetitive (there was another in his group that’d unleash a rather humorous salvo with welcome discretion and restraint; those contributions were appreciated). Finally, by about the seventh inning, he hadn’t quit. HEY TWO ONE! THAT WAS A WEAK THROW! YOU ALMOST DIDN’T MAKE IT! (#21 caught a fly ball and made a lazy throw back to the cut-off man. No runners were on base.) So I turn around to my vociferous neighbor and say, “Do you realize that he cannot hear you? He’s too far away from you, and there’s too much general noise. He can’t hear you. So knock it off.” His bizarre and aggressive response: “It’s cool, bro. Just turn around your hat.” (I was wearing a Cubs hat. I’m not sure what this means.) The guy was screaming, sure, but in that throaty way that cuts up your vocal cord but doesn’t actually carry far — it’s not ‘sharp’ enough. What I’m curious about — and why I bother writing about this slightly-amusing but rather unpleasant experience — is why makes this guy and Those Like Him tick. His guiding philosophy, from what I can tell, is that paying for this ticket basically allows him to act like a foolish loudmouth. It’s his right to get drunk and yell stuff and be crass. He seemed to realize there were limits (he stopped swearing, more or less, once warned), but he was at the park and he can do what he wanted. People tried to get him to stop, but to no avail. He wasn’t particularly funny (i.e., his comments clearly weren’t for the crowd’s amusement), and he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself — in that he was hell-bent on yelling “HEY TWO ONE! YOU SUCK! HEY TWO ONE! LOOK AT ME!” with an almost robotic ferocity. And, for whatever reason, whether it be drunkenness, stupidity, or too much second-hand exposure to roofies, he did not catch (or listen to) an abundance of social signals that his antics were displeasing just about everyone who wasn’t him. He was there, and he was going to scream at the center field who probably can’t even hear him and if he could he’s certainly heard enough catcalls in his life to be used to them. There are idiots and assholes everywhere. What’s odd about this sort of guy, though, is in the direct clash between the individual and community. Cubs fan like coming to Wrigley. He seemed to be an impassioned Cubs fan. There’s a generally recognized truth that sitting in the bleachers and drinking some beer and cheering for the home squad is a good use of one’s leisure time. As the Cubs fans stereotype goes, everyone’s having a good time, win or lose. But this guy’s the turd in the punch bowl: his contributions only subtract from everyone else’s enjoyment. Now, it’d make perfect sense if he were, say, a fan of the opposing team and was a macho dude and wanted to cause some havoc in the stands. (He ought to save some time and join the fanbase of either the Red Sox or the Yankees. Cubs fans cannot be arrogant and domineering; they haven’t won shit in over a century.) Him and his special relationship with the Cubs trumped all rules of communal enjoyment. (If I yell at the center fielder, repeatedly, I’ll eventually get to him and help my Cubbies win! It’s like I’m on the team!) Again, were his yelpings less frequent or funnier, it wouldn’t have been much of a problem. No one wants silent concert-hall appreciate, but there are some rules of decorum. I’ve never run into this type of loudmouth. Have you?

In other fun news, Chicago, as you probably know, is the third largest city in America. It has 2.85 million people. It is nearly twice the size of Phoenix, the 5th largest city. Arkansas has 2.88 million people. That’s the cut off state. Here are all the states with that have fewer people than Chicago’s city limits: Kansas, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming. That’s 18 states! (And if you make the cut off the population of NYC, the largest US city with 8.36 million, only 11 states clear the bar.) But let’s stick with smaller-than-Chicago. Of those states, I’d say 11 are staunchly Republican, 4 are staunchly Democrat, and 3 have freaky political cultures that are hard to predict (NM, NH, ME). That’s a lot of Senate votes to come from meager populations. (My favorite example of our off-kilter system of political representation is that Wyoming, population 544,000, gets two Senators and only one Congressman. And the latter is underworked: the system has one representative per over 700,000 people, although that’ll change with the new census data.) The moral of this story is that the Senate has all sorts of problems that ought to be fixed but probably won’t, but one problem that could and should be fixed is the filibuster. If we play the game that each of the 11 conservative states has 2 Republican senators (which isn’t far from the truth), then that’s 22 votes for 16.4 million people. If this were a state of 16.4 million people, it’d be the 5th largest, ahead of Illinois and behind Florida. Kill the filibuster: it’s way too easy for smaller states to gum up the works. And, of course, the smaller states tend to be conservative. Only six of the top 20 populated states — TX, GA, NC, AZ, IN, TN — are thoroughly conservative.

Today’s lesson: loudmouths in the stands and the filibuster are both bad.

Here are a few more cool links that have floated downstream to me in the last few days.

-Check out some eye poppingly sad graphs about wealth and inequality in America. Ugh.

-They’ve found it: the quintessential Fox News image. Nukes + Paranoia + Blonde + Sneer.

-Some of these nasty-minded “demotivational” posters are outstanding. Probably NSFW.

-Here’s a fascinating piece on the Senate, and how it’s become a nasty place to do work. Die, filibuster, die.

Back back back. I was in Italy, the land of beautiful architecture and insane scooter-riders, for a little while, and I apologize for my absence. I have a few posts brewing, but, for now, here are some fun links to tide you over.

1. Here an excellent piece about the art of writing. (Thanks Bookbag.) Go Lynn Go.

2. Don’t use predictable passwords. Here’s a scary article explaining why. Get a better PW.

3. Three things that are FINALLY brought together: a) Waterfalls; b) Sandwiches; c) Tom Selleck. FINALLY.

4. Interesting idea: playlists for your computer based on your mood. No SlapHappy?

5. Many of you have probably seen this, but in case not: here’s an outstanding piece on Roger Ebert’s life post-surgery. Thumb Up.

6. A list of favorite opening lines in literature. A few favorites are missing, but this is a good list. Who is there?

7. Woooboy. Why am I not at all surprised? Yikes. Axis of Evil.

Oh, and congratulations to the 2009-2010 New Jersey Nets! Y’all recently notched your tenth win, so you will avoid going down as the worst team in NBA history. Well done! Sign LeBron and all is forgiven.

I recently watched *Funny Games*, the 2008 Americanized shot-for-shot remake of a 1997 Austrian film by Michael Haneke (who directed both). I hated it — hated it more than any movie I’ve seen since *Crash* (2004). Sure, I saw and intensely disliked *Away We Go* for its willingness to stroke its precious hipster protagonists who were, like, just better than everyone else, in their own quiet-but-cool way. Gag. My disdain for *Crash* isn’t healthy, as some people do like it — for reasons that escape me — and I’m not usually able to be politic about it. But it’s been years, thankfully, since it robbed *Brokeback Mountain* for Best Picture, and I haven’t had to talk about it for a good long while. I don’t often hate movies (the three I’ve named here are the only ones I can think of in the last 5 years), but I definitely hated *Funny Games*.

I knew what I was getting myself into. It had a whirling evil merry-go-round of a trailer, which was a self-conscious nod to *A Clockwork Orange* and its sensationalist trailer. *Funny Games* will be violent and probably disturbing, and it seems to have a level of interaction with the viewing audience. Fine, check. I don’t mind art that gets up in my face; being made to feel uncomfortable can be productive element of art. Can be, yes, but not here.

Here’s the basic plot: the posh Farber family (Tim Roth, Naomi Watts, and their little son) drive their Range Rover and big sailboat/small yacht to their gated lake house in, say, Long Island or Connecticut. Soon after arriving for a summer sojourn, two young, preppy fellows, Peter and Paul, show up at their door. Nephews of nextdoor neighbors or some such. Upon entering, these two guys — who look and act like boarding school hellions, with Paul as the smart kind and Peter as the dumb kind — begin to mess with the Farber family. They came to borrow eggs and break them by accident and then knock a cell phone in a sinkful of soaking spinach and then ask to borrow MORE eggs. It’s basically a satire of a comedy of manners (how far will they go? how far will politeness stretch!? will someone speak up or let the unsaid rudeness rule?), until Paul gets fresh with Tim Roth (albeit in a very passive-aggressive way, “You’re acting so shamefully rude, Mr Roth!”) and Timmy slaps him. Bad mistake. Paul smashes Mr Farber’s knee with a golf club, and now Paul and Peter have the Farbers as victims in their own home. Creepy home invasion, some mannered rhetorical jousting, the feeling of something dark and awful lurking beneath these social misfirings — that’s all fine. This part of the movie was actually, to me, quite riveting — in the same way that the opening scene of *Inglourious Basterds* was riveting. A duel who’s outcome you already know, basically, but the path there is wordy and weird.

Once the setup happens, the movie begins to get progressive worse: first boring, then insulting, and finally just plain obnoxious. Peter and Paul, you see, mess with the Farbers. Will you be dead by morning? We bet you will, but the bet needs rules! Let’s hash out the terms while Naomi Watts looks tied up and sweatily vulnerable. Michael Pitt, who has the world’s most slappable face, turns to the camera, looks directly at us, and says things like “You’d like us to do that, wouldn’t you? Well wait to see what happens!” The “funny games” aren’t funny or even entertaining. Edward Albee’s brilliant play, *Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?* has a harrowing second act, called “Walpurgisnacht” in an ironic nod to an evening of released dark and supernatural forces in Goethe’s *Faust*, in which George and Martha, the super-duper dysfunctional married academic couple, play a “game with rules” with their dinner guests in which G and M take our all their anger and insecurities out on each other and their guests. It sounds boring but is a theatrical tour-de-force. And it’s the same sort of creepy “things are much more serious than they seem” vibe as *Funny Games* is going for, only for Albee it’s hugely successful (*Woolf* is a beautiful but devastating play) and in this film it’s an empty gesture — provocative things could have been done here, but instead the movie wanted to trot out dumb and crass ideas that masquerade as Provocative Ideas.

The movie mocks our need for violence. Been there, done that — ever read *Titus Andronicus* or *The Duchess of Malfi* or seen *Pulp Fiction* or even *Hot Fuzz*? Yes, American movies have become increasingly violent, as Alive! and I blog-chatted about months and months ago. Yes, “torture porn” is a sick and ridiculous genre; I have no interest in watching the *Saw* franchise, but I’m told it does quite well. What leads us to want to watch something like *Saw*? Sure it’s distasteful, but is it ethical — why or why not? Is every act of viewing — the inherent voyeurism of film — an act of violence, whether because of feminine sexuality and misogyny, or a presupposed violent-male POV, or the capitalist economy that fuels the film industry? Why do we like Bad Things, and why do so many narratives need them to work? These questions, which may or may not interest you, are not asked in this film — not at all. Perhaps the film thinks it is asking these questions, but I’d strongly disagree. Asking one or some of these questions would mean using the medium of film, and its implied relationship to the audience, to take up and work through the issue. What *Funny Games* settles for is Paul turning to the camera to deliver his occasional “Yea, you like this dontcha!” lines and a few other assorted glib tricks. At one point, P and P kills the little Farber boy — you knew that was coming — and seem to take off. Cut the Farbers, both battered and wounded (and Naomi Watts partially clothed), trying to gather themselves. What follows is a single-shot of AT LEAST 4-5 minutes of them just lying there, panting, whimpering, pulling themselves together. It’s awful. But it lacks any felt signification — there’s no attachment to these characters and their plight. We don’t see them lying themselves gathering together like Lear and Gloucester to take on a malevolent universe. Nope, just “panting porn.” It’s supposed to be excruciating, and I’m willing to bet that the director would be pleased to learn of my eventual boredom. This is just a cold formal exercise, nothing more, nothing less. Look, look! it says, see the suffering! You wanted it, sort of, by coming to this movie and not walking out when Paul involved you — NOW LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE. Versions of Brecht’s *Three Penny Opera* end with the lights being turned on the audience as a character accuses them of being whores, bawds, gamblers, and thieves. Brecht liked to mess with his audience, since he say theater as a way to raise political and social consciousness and thus a jostled viewer was a changed viewer, but that *Opera* exercise has significant thought behind it; it MEANS something. Timmy and Naomi panting in the semi-dark means nothing. Maybe the film wants that interpretation too, since the Farbers are just pawns in the games of P+P; if so, that’s both misanthropic and, well, outrageously insulting to the viewer. “You stupid shit,” it seems to say, “why but WHY are you still watching this. Your continued viewing only further condemns!”

Later on in the film, Naomi grabs a hunting rifle left too close to her and shoots Peter in the chest. SPLAT — lots of blood and he get thrown back against the wall. (I’ve never seen the original Austrian version, but I’m told that there’s almost no on-screen violence. In this, er, shot-for-shot remake, things have changed.) Paul curses and expresses self-pitying anger and stomps over to the TV table — “Goddamnit, this wasn’t supposed to happen!” — and grabs the remote and hits rewind (yes, poor reader, he actually hits rewind and actually rewinds the scene, as if he Zach Morris snapping his fingers to freeze *Saved By the Bell* actors and deliver a witty monologue) in order to have time to grab the gun before his comrade gets pelted. To go back to Brecht, in his theater he wanted the wires to show, so to speak, so that the audience was never fully taken in by the spectacle. Well, here we have a postmodern blackhole variant: “Yes! Let’s fuck with the audience! Ohhh! Gore! But, wait, that’d mean a typical plot where the captives win and there’s narrative closure with Lessons Learned and we are NOT doing that so let’s actually rewind the film IN THE FILM — have you forgotten that you’re watching a film? Well don’t, jerk! Because the director and actors, not you, are in charge and we just rubbed yer nose in it! — while the film’s chronology still lurches forward….dude, my head’s gonna explode with all these deep interpretive games.” Brecht opposed forms of realism because they’d trick an audience into sympathy and identification, and these, for him, shut down critical engagement. So he wrote weird scripts and demanded unusual acting styles to break that too-easy bond. But, see, Brecht’s plays use these techniques to try to make a point. *Funny Games* has the distinction of being decades ahead and two steps behind: it’s using similar tricks for vapid ends. Violence is bad and you, viewer, are bad for watching it. Now let me pocket your money while I tut-tut you for being stupid! Oh, and did I mention that my movie is purposefully vague (or, uh, lazy) so you can’t really, in the end, tell if we’re condemning violence or suggesting that we’re inescapably bound up with it? Hell, even Antonin Artaud’s famous “Theater of Cruelty” techniques are driven by strong philosophical stances. *Funny Games* grates the viewer for 2 hours to make a handful of facile points.

The movie ends by P+P dumping Naomi off the stolen boat/yacht (Paul kisses her forehead, says “Ciao Bella,” and tosses her overboard) — so much for her. And then they land on a neighbor’s pier and dock and roll up on a gray, misty morning and ask the woman if they can borrow some eggs. IT HAPPENED AGAIN! The cycle of violence continues! It’s like, uh, uh, uh *No Country For Old Men*, only without any grounding or relevance whatsoever! Like so many ideas in this film, it’s “pretend deep”: it’s superficial while also gesturing toward a bottomless pit of regressive irony. Thing is, if you sit and puzzle out what’s what, you quickly realize that it means jack-shit — there’s no play of ideas, no mutual undercutting, no interpenetration of interpretations, no undecidability, no nothing. Beckett’s plays and prose take us to the edge of a cliff and we see the abyss below, an abyss where the sort of stuff I mentioned DOES happen, where one can follow out interpretive threads but always get caught or jumbled. In other words, you can think through the ideas in Beckett; you can’t come to firm answers, but you can see that some pretty smart shit is going on there, and, while it might not be for all types, it has intellectual and literary worth. *Funny Games* is like staring at a blackhole painted on a wooden floor. It’s just there, a stupid blackhole painted on a stupid wooden floor. OHHH WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

I didn’t need to watch this movie to learn that a piece of art can push back against me. I kinda-sorta knew what this movie was about, going in, but I figured I’d be both smarter and more problematic. The movie’s satirical and moral goals are so painfully obvious and, well, not all that interesting. I don’t even mind a film that treats me roughly (I am a big fan of both *Blue Velvet* — which basically accomplishes everything movie does, while also being smart and beautifully shot — and *Mulholland Drive*, both of which treat their audiences with something less than deference); what I mind is a film that tries to be intelligent, clever, and self-righteous while making points, repeatedly, that anyone with a pulse can figure out in moments.

The final insult is that this is a shot-for-shot remake of a film directed by the same guy. He felt the need to peddle this shit for two different markets, in two different languages. Better yet, a production team felt the need to bankroll this. (I imagine them like the nihilists in *Lebowski* — “Ja, Lebowski! Ve beleeve en not-ting!”) And the likes of Tim Roth and Naomi Watts and the oh-so-slappable Michael Pitt signed up. The budget was 15 million; the film made half of that in theater.

I wanted productive discomfort; what I got was boredom and some spit in my eye. But I gotta be honest: I still dislike *Crash* more than *Funny Games*.

Given my love of literature and sports, I’ve always been attracted to sports writing. Unfortunately, most of it sucks; or, rather, the writing itself is bland and formulaic, or else overly combative and shrill, and often filled with all sorts of eyerolly cheap rhetorical tricks. But some writers leap above the fray. David Foster Wallace’s pieces on tennis (an autobiographical account of his competitive youth tennis years, an essay about following around Michael Joyce, a good-to-average player, on the men’s circuit in the early/mid-90s, and a cover story for the NYT Magazine about the beauty of Federer’s game) are among the best pieces of non-fiction I’ve ever read, period — they just happen to be about tennis. Roger Angell has been giving us gorgeously constructed baseball writing for upwards of 50 years.

For whatever reason, I’ve been reading several books on the NBA recently. I can’t say why, exactly. My Nets are horrible this year, and I’ve been doing a decent but hardly thorough job of keeping up with the weekly operations of the League. I’m not watching that much basketball, but I’m doing lots of reading about it!

It all started with David Halberstam’s *The Breaks of the Game*. (Amazon page here.) It’s an insidery, non-linear account of the late 70s Portland Trailblazers teams. Basically, they came together for 1.5 magical seasons, and, during that run — which was lead by Bill Walton during one of his only sustained bursts of bodily health — were among the best teams ever to suit up. The perfect team, according to some. But Walton got hurt and things got bitter and he was traded to the San Diego Clippers and now the Trailblazers are just trying to hang on and earn a low-spot in the playoffs. I can’t say for certain if he pioneered the book-length “you’re inside the lockerroom” genre, but he certainly took it to heights that probably won’t be surpassed. The NBA in the late 70s was a fragile creature, burdened by poor marketing, rampant drug use, and being an increasingly “black league” with all the anxieties and contentious issues that raised. This is the pre-Bird/Magic/MJ NBA, a pre-David Stern NBA. It’s fascinating stuff — particularly since all sorts of NBA material is readily available on YouTube in ways it isn’t for other sports. The reason to read it, though, is its superlative prose style. It’s a beautifully written book. I’m willing to bet a non-sports fan would enjoy this work.

Bill Simmons’ *The Book of Basketball* came out and soared to the top of the NYT Non-Fiction List. (Amazon here.) Some critics pointed out a tension: Simmons writes as a “regular guy / Man of the People” and yet now he’s cranked out a THICK basketball book that shot directly to #1. At what point does popularity+celebrity+financial success imperil the conceit of “I’m just a regular guy in the stands?” An worthy question, but one I can’t answer. All I can say is that you get a lot of Bill Simmons, for better or worse. You’re going to get the requisite heaps of Boston homerism and “clever and interesting but not THAT clever and interesting” pop culture references and analysis. A little too much casual sexism and machodude “Yo, here’s another Vegas story!” Lots of “Oh, I did SO MUCH watching, reading, and data crunching to make this book,” which, shockingly, wears thin almost immediately. The book is over 700 pages long, and it could easily lose 200+. It’s whole point, though, is excess. Tons of stats and comparisons and lengthy footnotes. Unfortunately for Simmons, it’s like he’s picked up the annoying tics of David Foster Wallace, only he’s boiled them down to a syrupy reduction that eliminates most of the wonky joie de vivre that characterizes DFW’s long footnotes and detailed excursions. I wasn’t planning on reading this book, but a friend lent it to me and I gave it a go. And, to my surprise, I am really enjoying it. Irritating passage or section? Speed up! The monster is long and fractured, so there’s no need to remember much or keep information to build on. The most entertaining section, which takes up about 350 pages, is a breakdown, in ranked order, of the best 96 players, in his opinion, ever to take the court. This is where the excess comes in handy. Simmons might not have the writerly grace of Halberstam or DFW, but he’s clearly passionate about the NBA to the point of obsession, and he finds ways to offer his tumult of assembled stats and ideas in ways that are usually both accessible and entertaining; I commend his ability to enliven what is dull or esoteric. This book is best read slowly. There are several reviews that essentially say, “Ya, good book. A fun read. But I really wish I didn’t have to read it in 2 days to get out this review.” Good gravy. I can only imagine. This is a good one for the nightstand or the porcelain throne. If you aren’t already interested in the NBA, stay away — this one will overwhelm to the point of vexation.

The most recent addition is also the weirdest, and perhaps even the best. *The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats, and Stars in Today’s Game*. (Amazon here.) I’m a big fan of Bethlehem Shoals, the nom de plume of Nathaniel Friedman. He writes Free Darko, one of my favorite sports blogs. (For all you fans of *The Wire*, he ran a blog during seasons 3 through 5 called Heaven and Here.) Shoals’ writing style is, er, unusual. It’s one part NBA geek, one part transcendental philosopher, one part sociologist. His writing sometimes kicks free of the earth and soars to places rich and strange. For this book he teamed up with a few other folks, including a kick-ass illustration team. There are amazing pictures on just about every single page. Hell, it even has a foreword by Gilbert Arenas (gulp). It’s like a hipper version of the Bill Simmons basketball book smashed together with a rad graphic novel. It’s every bit as nerdy as the Simmons book, but it’s interested in the present league, whereas *The Book of Basketball* takes on NBA history. There are about 20 chapters on various players. Consider Leandro Barbosa, a Suns guard — and one of the fastest players in the league. The first picture has him, with ball, out running several birds, a jockey-on-horse, a cheetah, a missile, a sprinter, a few arrows, and a jetplane. At the beginning has a sidebar that asks three questions. What He Gives Us: Sprightly, elastic play with Brazilian cross-rhythms; What He Stands For: The unadulterated glee of forward motion; Why We Care: Because tranquility sometimes lurks near extremes. Then comes a long essay on the player, some swell illustrations of some of his best moves, and even a great chart that tracks all the various ways that Barbosa scored in “seven seconds or less” — the famous Suns offensive strategy in the mid-2000s — much more often than his teammates.
I’ve never seen a sports book anything like that, and I think it’s awesome. They scare up all sorts of weird stats to show that, for example, Arenas shoots way better from 28-38 feet (FAR away!) than from 23-24 feet (the already far away NBA 3pt line). Or that Rasheed Wallace, a notorious hothead, plays much better after his first technical foul. There’s a pictorial explanation of all of Amare Stoudemire’s tatts. Or this crazy graphic, sort of like a word cloud, of all the stat lines of All-Stars that Ron Artest has completely shut down. Or the amazing subtitle of the Stephon Marbury chapter: “Hategoat.”

And there’s a hilarious glossary in the back. Example entries:

“Eastern Conference”: The worst basketball in the league, played in the first states of the Union.

“Iverson, Allen”: The personification of every reason uninformed people give for why they prefer NCAA baskeball to the NBA. Also credited with single-handedly destroying the league after Jordan’s second retirement.”

“Kareem’s Jacket”: Bizarre Native American-meets-David Crosby leather-fringe joint that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wore at a 2006 playoff game. Still known about the Internet simply as “the Jacket.”

“Kemp, Shawn”: Father of hundreds and former high-flying highlight-reel staple who transformed into a doughy wasteland of a man after he left for the Seattle Supersonics.

“NBA draft”: Day on which people with humorous names wear funny baseball caps and ill-advised suits.

“Tesh, John”: Composer of the immortal NBA on NBC theme, a sweeping ode to all that is epic and swift in this game.

Like the Simmons book, this one won’t really appeal to non-NBA fans. If you happen to be a bigtime graphic novel fan, though, you might give this one a ride. NBA fans, look this one up. It’s weird and wonderful.

I’m usually not too keen on this genre, but this is an excellent mashup of film clips from movies of the 2000s. It’s set to three songs: “Lose Yourself,” “All That Jazz,” and “Mad World.” It’s a fun exercise in the power of the citation: how many clips can you recognize? Even more fun: surely you haven’t seen ALL the movies in these clips (and if you have, that’s both impressive and disturbing), but I’m guessing you can recognize some of the movies you haven’t seen. Why? What gives it away? How do you, in general, point toward something larger through a representation of something smaller? (The classic example is a skull = *Hamlet*.) Another fun game, for me, was seeing reminders of many films I haven’t seen in several years. My minor emotional responses toward the various clips made for an interesting little rollercoaster ride.

Enjoy!

Wow! What a game!

The first quarter seemed to suggest it was going to be all Colts, all day. Peyton and co. were marching, and the Saints offense looked tepid at best. Drew Brees looked rattled, Reggie Bush was largely ineffective (how shocking!), and the 3-and-outs were tiring out the defensive unit. I figured it might be a 17-0 halftime on the way to a beatdown.

But then Pierre Thomas started kicking ass. (Memo to Saints: making PT your main RB and have Reggie Bush in for trick plays, punt returns, and as a RB/receiver out in the flat. He stinks at everything else.) And then Drew Brees heated up, found his confidence, and, from what I can tell, did not throw another incomplete pass. That guy was on fire. He wasn’t throwing many 40 yard strikes up the middle, but he was completing a ton of 15-20 yard hits.

I was wrong. Totally wrong. I figured that the Saints offense would wake up eventually — which it did — but by then it’d be a close game and no way was Peyton Manning losing a close game. But then he choked, throwing a TERRIBLE pass that resulted in a Pick Six TD that blew the game wide open. That cornerback made an outstanding run, pointing for a block and then cutting through that lane at the right moment, and then outrunning the fat O-line guy (a difficult task, I know). I figured the Colts would march and score a TD and then it’d be tie game and Saints ball and then things would get spicy. But, nope, Peyton threw a pass worthy of Brett Favre. So unlike him. My viewing compatriots and I were in awe, over and over, of Peyton’s ability to throw passes that literally cannot be caught by anyone but his receiver. He loves the down-and-away ball. Either it’s a reception or incompletion. Whatever happened — a miscommunication? — he threw a ball toward the inside shoulder of a receiver (never a good idea on a slant up the middle) and the CB jumped in front, snatched the ball, and took off. It was the same sort of throw that Brett Favre submitted. Thing is, Favre throws horrible INTs sometimes. Manning hardly EVER does that. When it happens, it’s almost always a bad break — one of those bang-bang NFL plays that features a tipped ball and a safety that dives about 15 yards to basketcatch a fluttering ball. I cannot remember the last time I’ve seen a Manning Pick Six. (Surely one happened during those early 00s Pats v. Colts playoff games where the Pats stomped all over the Colts?) With all the chips on the line, the biggest football geek of them all through a terrible, horrible, don’t EVER do that sort of pass. Weird.

But then the Colts just marched right back down the field. Only they were content to take the 8-yard dump passes up the middle (which the Saints were obviously giving away), which is fine, except that it killed the clock. There was a dim chance of a comeback, only Manning hit Reggie Wayne, his best receiver, in the hands on 4th down. Wayne was standing in the endzone. Game over.

God bless Sean Peyton for taking that Gatorade bath like a victorious conqueror. He gets nailed and pumps his arms in the air and his teammates pick him up and he looks so fierce and competitive and, well, happy. It’s was lovely. It ALMOST made me forget that he was sporting both gelled-spiked hair AND a visor (shudder). Note to Nick Saban: the Gatorade bath is what happens to winning coaches in big games. Sort acting like a sissypants when you get nailed with that cold, sticky liquid. I’m sure it’s unpleasant, yes, but you just won a HUGE game (in his case, the BSC championship) — ENJOY IT.

My favorite plays in the game were:

-Manning’s two BREATHTAKING passes up-and-over the defense to the sidelines. He had one in the 2nd and one on the final drive. This weird deep passes that somehow blopped up and then down, avoiding several outstretched defensive hands along the way. Scary accuracy.

-The onside kick to start the second half. What stones! It’s giving implicit trust to special teams AND the defense. It might have looked bad if muffed, but given this and the 4th-and-goal attempt, Sean Peyton was going for the jugular.

-That ABSURD catch/play for the 2 point conversation that gave the Saints some safety. Thank goodness they overturned the horrible call. Of course it was in!

-The various Pierre Thomas pinball runs. That guy bounced off at least 1 tackle per run — usually more. He helped get the Saints offense started. Drew Brees was the clear MVP, but he owes some thanks to ol’ Pierre.

Well played, Saints. Please don’t torch Bourbon St. during your celebrations.

This Super Bowl excites me. After years of fluky teams making the big game (working backwards, Arizona, NY Giants, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Carolina), we are finally rewarded with a match-up of the two teams who were the toast of their respective conferences. The two best QBs. Both possess underrated — although is that possible at this stage? — defenses. Two exciting offenses, but for different reasons: the wonky surgical precision of the Colts versus the balls-out assault of the Saints. The Colts run just about the same plays every week. The Saints seem to come up with new and zany plays (often trick plays!) every week.

The Colts come into this game with more — more momentum, more experience, more support from gamblers and the press. They shellacked my Jets in the AFC championship. I was proud of the way the Jets played for the first, say, 27 minutes. The missed field goals hurts, sure, but that’s karmic justice for the first two games where opponents’ missed FGs proved critical. Rex Ryan blitzed blitzed blitzed (no surprises there), and, at first, it rattled Peyton. Some sacks. Some pissy faces on the sidelines. Swarming pressure. It felt like — I daresay — the early 00s Pats victories over the Colts. Rattled Peyton, knock him off his game, get him with agitated eyes and a furrowed brow and he’ll help you out by self-destructing. Well, he ran a helluva good 2 minute drill to end the first half. I expected as much, but it was an unholy alliance of brilliant offensive precision AND horrendous defensive breakdowns that I hadn’t seen since the early season. If a guy runs a deep slant over the middle, either the corner sticks or a safety picks him up, right? Well, not this time. Still, I figured Rex Ryan would holler at his defense and they’d come back out, fired up, and bring some more hell. Hell was brought, yes, but by ol’ Peyton. He lit up the Jets in the second half. He’s currently 5-1 against Rex Ryan defenses — the one loss was the controversial week 17 game where the Colts starters didn’t play the second half and they basically gave up their perfect season. Rex Ryan plays a certain kind of defense — of the KILL KILL MAIM KILL variety — but it’s consistently one of the best in the league. It took Peyton a little while to figure out what was going on (RR likes to blitz folks from odd places and angles and also enjoys delayed blitzes, so there’s a lot to compute), but once Peyton wrapped his mind around the package, he obliterated the Jets. It was sad and impressive. There are other reasons why the Jets lost, mainly that their running game was largely ineffective, but if I’m honest I can’t say that, given how well the Colts offense played in the second half, the Jets could have won. The Colts offense toasted the Jets D — the hottest defense in the league — and even the astonishing Darrelle Revis got badly juked at one point.

The Saints/Vikes NFC championship was an altogether different affair. If the narrative of the Colts/Jets was “the best team in the AFC got severely challenged, pulled it together, and then whumped an inferior opponent,” then the Saints/Vikes narrative was “WHO WANTS IT LESS?!” Holy crap, what an ugly game! Drew Brees never really found his groove: the patented 35 yard frozen ropes up the middle were 8 inches off target. So close, yet so far. Reggie Bush, the unexpected star from the last game, was simply horrendous. People, we need to own up to the fact that Reggie Bush is a mediocre-to-shitty pro. He remains an electrifying punt returner (and I wouldn’t be shocked if he made a big play in the SB off a Colts punt), and he can be a holy terror if he can get into the open field, but that’s the problem: he can’t often do that. Take Thomas Jones, the Jets RB: he will usually smash up the middle for 3-4 yards. Unsexy but consistent. He’s a human cannonball — hell, he used to play for the Bears! He won’t often break for a long run, but he won’t get nailed for a loss either. 3-4 yards, every time. As Madden might say, BOOM! Reggie Bush, on the other hand, will get tackled for a 2 yard loss. Or no gain. It’s amazing how often this happens. Sometimes he tries to get cute and head outside and gets tackled along the way. But other times he just flies into the line and, instead of emerging for 3-4 yards, he falls down immediately for no gain. One big game — the first in awhile! — got people all excited, and then Bush flopped pretty hard. That punt fumble was horrible.

The Vikes did the Saints a huge favor: they were the better team, overall, but they turned the ball over with an almost comic frequency. I couldn’t take the game seriously for a period in the second half. The Saints O was flat — no big plays, really, and a muted ability to move the chains. The Saints D wasn’t playing terribly, but the Vikes were marching often enough. But the Vikes kept on fumbling ball. Over and over and over. Adrian Peterson ripped off some nice runs, including a _fearsome_ TD run in the first half where he exploded through the line and then accelerated into the endzone before the secondary could reach him. It was manly. So there’s this scene in *The Program*, a flawed but underrated 90s sports flick about college football, where this RB keeps fumbling, so the coach makes him carry a football everywhere on campus and his teammates would try to sneak up and take it away — on the quadrangle, in lecture, whatever. Why can’t AP do this? I’m sure everyone’s been working hard at this, as it’s his only flaw. (Well, the others might be that he tries to break for huge runs a little too often and that he’s way too willing to huddle himself at defenders, a head-first human missile, that will shorten his career and perhaps even leave him horrifically injured.) So the second half was basically a game of Monopoly between two players who each owned about half the properties on the board and both had a lot of money. Boring stalemate. The Saints O couldn’t get it done. The Saints D let the VIkes move the ball, but they did a great job of forcing turnovers. Back to the Saints O, who couldn’t get it done (again and again). Punt. Back to the Vikes! Fumble. Ugh.

If the Saints could have done SOMETHING in the third and early/mid-fourth quarter, they’d have won. If the Vikes could have avoided, say, half of their grisly turnovers, they’d have likely scored and won. But, of course, we now know why this darkly comic back-and-forth took place between the two teams: the football gods were setting up the agonizing-but-inevitable end. Brett Favre stars as Oedipus, only he’s not screwing his mom, he’s screwing over his fans. Again! Every performance. You come to the theater and think maybe this time Oedipus will do it differently. NOPE! Brett Favre is full of hubris. We all know this. Say what else you want about him — great man, gunslinger, mercenary, dickhead, everything that’s right/wrong about America — what can’t be argued is that he possesses hubris. In colossal proportions. Here’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines hubris: “Presumption, originally towards the gods; pride; excessive self-confidence.” Brett Favre makes big plays — this is inarguable. Brett Favre wants to make the big play to win the biggest game. This seems logical enough, but, thing is, he has an outstanding record of failure in those situations. His season-ending interception in the NFC championship game against the Giants 2 years ago was horrible. My Packers-fan friend was speechless. That was his last pass as a Packer. His season-ending interception last year was horrible. The stakes were lower, but this was a must-win game to make the playoffs, and this pick ensured a loss to Miami, a team who’s QB, Chad Pennington, was the guy Favre outsted when he came to the Jets as a hired gun. That was his last pass as a Jet. (Then the shit storm began. The chronicle of Brett Favre-as-diva-and-terrible-teammate was an unpleasant read. These were embittered ex-teammates, sure, but there was probably some truth there.) I have a few friends who are bigtime Vikes fans. I’ve been joking with them all season: just you wait, he’s going to do good and then begin to slip and then BAM he’s going to rip out your hearts. Well, simply put, Brett Favre had an extraordinary season. For anyone. But for a guy with his odometer, on a new team? Yikes. And he didn’t do anything stupid down the stretch. I was worried. I wanted Brett Favre to fail, I admit it, and he wasn’t following the script. So when the Vikes had the ball and were marching down the field into field goal territory as the clock wound down in the fourth quarter I was cursing the Saints for their offensive ineptitude. Their D gave them multiple gifts, which they scorned and threw back, and now, SOMEHOW, the Vikes were going to win. They were on the edge of FG range. Two runs up the middle for nothing. Then the slow drums of Fate began. A penalty for 12 men in the huddle, otherwise known as “the stupidest and most preventable penalty in football.” Now at the very edge of FG territory. At this point I perked up. I was glum and resigned to the Vikes’ — and thus Favre’s — success. I did not want to endure the fellatio party that would erupt when Favre won. But now, look, they are on the outside of their kicker’s range. He’s gonna try to make a play! OH YES. He rolls out on a bootleg. All the critics say he could have run for 5-6 yards, slid, and that was that — game over. Some say he’d been hit so hard and so often by the Saints — which is true, he got rocked several times — that he was battered or unconsciously worried and didn’t do that. Me? I think he wanted to be the hero. The hubris. So he’s rolling out right and decides to throw across his body. Try this at home sometime — it’s very hard. Sure, he’s got a handcannon, everyone knows that, but, still, it’s one of the hardest throws to make consistently. And, what’s more, he throws into the middle of the field. Lots of folks get jumbled up in there. Interception. The Chorus nods knowingly. The football gods chortle. A Viking fan offers a profanely horrified response. The best thing, of course, would have been a Pick-Six to break the tie and end the game. But, still, now that Fate was involved, the outcome was obvious: Saints win toss and elect to receive (NFL overtime is such horseshit). A few dubious calls later and they are in field goal range. Kicker splits the posts. Elation on Bourbon Street. Brett’s last pass as a Vike?

This long Favrian digression is meant to show that the Saints didn’t really do much to win the game. Hell, even the OT was a tense affair where they needed to get bailed out by the refs (as some allege) to win. The INT was crucial, of course, but that throw was so bad the guy was just in the right place at the right time. Seriously, if ANYTHING ELSE reasonable had happened — short run by Favre, incompletion, hell, him falling to the ground, the Vikes have a puncher’s chance of winning the game.

I’m guessing we’re going to see a different Saints team. Freeney’s ankle is one of those media obsession that make me a little queasy. Yes, he’s super important to the Colts’ defensive line, but maybe some more reporting on Haiti instead?? If he’s out, the guy who’s the most effective at pressuring the QB will be sidelined. If Brees has time he’ll hit a few homeruns. This could be a problem. Thing is, the Colts diced up Baltimore and the Jets, both teams with better defenses than the Saints. But here’s the rub: neither the Ravens nor the Jets have, erm, intimidating offenses. Neither of these teams play to outscore you — not at all. The Saints are completely capable of putting up 35-45 points. I’d see that score and not blink. With the Jets and Ravens, I’d wonder what the hell happened. The Colts have cannily won close games all year. This is demonstrable, and I think that will be the decisive element. If the game’s close down the stretch, it’ll be hard not to pick the Colts — many of them have the previous big game pressure, Peyton’s ridiculous, and, mostly importantly, they’ve done this all season. Thing is, the Colts offensive can easily sputter for a quarter. A few 3-and-outs. A bad fumble. And unlikely pick. The Colts win by being the better overall team and nipping out close ones. The Saints, when they win, tend to win by overpowering their opposition. It’s like the mid-2000s Suns “seven seconds or less” offensive in football form. The Saints can win if strike hard and early (like, before the fourth quarter) then hold on down the stretch. A Saints blowout (say, 38-17) wouldn’t surprise me. A Colts blowout would sort of surprise me. Anything close, though, goes to the Colts, in my book. And seeing how ineffective the Saints were on offense last week, plus the inevitable first half jitters (remember that atrocious first half of the Pats vs. Panthers Super Bowl? We needed Nipplegate to bring that game around) mean that the Saints probably won’t be able to chalk up enough points to surge ahead. And they certainly won’t get as many fumbles out of the Colts! This is all to say that I can envision about 2 scenarios where the Saints win and about 5 where the Colts win. Final score prediction: Colts 30, Saints 23.