Death by Pigskin

I went running for the first time in half a year. Once around the university, as usual. And as always, it destroyed me. I always come crashing in, my lungs like a jet turbine, spitting and heaving and whining. But while I was running, Thanksgiving break came flooding in, and I was able to process the mess of situations with people I had not seen in a long time. I have always been enamored by the idea of a double life, because I believe we all live one, and in these double lives we are sometimes forced to like things we would rather have no part in. A great example of this is my relationship with football.
    Chuck Klosterman is right when he says that “football does not try to sell anything except itself” in his book Eating the Dinosaur. While every other sport sells ideas, football merely presents the brutality of combat in a coliseum, which it is. Baseball, Chuck says, sells the sport of the American legend, while basketball sells itself as the urban grunge underground sport. Soccer is also in this category, with its focus in America as being underground as well. But football is the sport of football. “Are you ready for some football?” Rock music clanging in sync with pads striking each other in a battle worthy of the ancients. Thousands of fans cheering for more violent destruction of young men’s bodies. Quarterbacks hurling the pigskin to new lengths and receivers throwing themselves into the abyss with hopes of connecting. With all these things considered, in a poetic exciting way, why don’t I like football?
    I understand and respect football. I really do. I played from age seven to freshman year of high school. I understand the basics, and I understand the drive. I was never good at football, but I always acknowledged and sometimes had just a taste, of what it would take to climb to the heights of the better players of any age. I respect what football does for us as consumers, especially with TV’s in every room. Football presents itself as a universal code, especially to men. Sometimes it’s awkward when women talk about football, but to some it’s flattering and kind of hot. A girl like that obviously knows the key to a man’s heart. But for men, it’s almost a class prerequisite in order to take the “adult male in society” class. Every man should have a firm understanding of football by my age, because it represents the culmination of everything men want out of life. Why even talk about this? Everyone knows how big football season is, and everyone doesn’t need a second helping, but I think to point out some aspects of this will help us to understand who we are and where we come from, and also where we are going.
    Let’s start with the basics: football is the most violent large medium sport available. Of course you could compete with Rugby, but it’s not like anyone’s going to talk thoroughly about Rugby unless you play it. Football grinds bones and spits out mush. It ruins many athletes’ lives later through injuries. Football, resultantly, embraces technological advances, unlike other sports. The goal of football is much like war: to move up the field by force, and plant the ball in the end zone. “War is a business of positions” said Napoleon Bonaparte, and he was right about football. And for generations that missed wars, you talk about football, because it’s the closest thing that can be commercially spat at us day in and day out. Ironically while we love to talk about comradery in war, football embraces individual stars. I know of no sport that should focus on a team collaborative effort more than football. You think Peyton Manning single handedly runs that offense? No, he owes much more to his lineman who provide him with the time in the pocket. But because of the belief in the individual, we love heroes, and kids love heroes, and that’s how it’s always been.
    This became extremely apparent when my 8 year old cousin and I were watching The Mummy Returns and out of the blue he mentions “Tracy Mcgrady.” Baffled, I look at the TV screen. No one in the Mummy is named Tracy. I finally asked him, “Who is Tracy Mcgrady?” He turns to me and says, “He’s on the Detroit Pistons.” I look down and think of myself as an idiot. I only know that it’s basketball, because otherwise it would be the Detroit Lions, and few people care about baseball enough to know the Detroit Tigers. But I’m really not. My cousin worships sports, and he does it because like George Clooney says in Up in the Air, “Because they follow their dreams.”
    Even if you don’t own any form of modern television programming agreement, you can hook up an antenna and watch football. Granted your selection will be smaller, but you’ll be consuming the sport like everyone else. But when you do have the opportunity to have cable or satellite, the choices are expanded ten fold. Then after that you’ve got the final slot of an addiction. Now it’s not just NFL, it’s also college, and you can even catch some high school games. This means that you could presumably track an athlete’s career anywhere from 4 years, to 8 years, to 15 years! Do you realize what kind of time commitment that is? But in perspective, this is not a bad thing to the average male. In fact, it’s a good thing, and it’s easier to explain with another medium that will never be as popular: Video Games.
    On November 4th 2010, Microsoft released their new installment for the Xbox 360, the Kinect. The premise and the goal behind it are very easy to see: grab the consumers from Wii by using an improved version of motion controls. Kinect uses a new 3-dimensional camera system to retrieve your body dynamics and movements and implement them into the game, presenting a 1:1 relationship with the game. You, in fact, are now the game. You don’t need a controller, wires, equipment. All you need is your body and space of course. And while this may seem like a step forward in video gaming history, it represents everything I hate about the video game industry sometimes.
    Like when the movie industry makes movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen some attempts at money grabbing are so obvious that it destroys any legitimacy of the creation. Kinect presents several problems for Microsoft rather than solutions. First off Microsoft obviously has no idea who their audience is. Either that or they are so stunned by the Wii demographic that they are willing to trade their current fans for others. This is unsettling and scary for people like me. I’m kind of a video game connoisseur.
    I take pride in knowing a wide range about video games. I know what makes Donkey Kong thrilling on arcade. I know what was so incredible about Shadow of the Colossus (the game Adam Sandler played in Reign Over Me). I understand the importance of Halo in the rise of console shooters. I could write a ten page essay just discussing the leap in story-telling because of the work Bioware provides in all their videogames. Indeed Bioware right now is the AMC of the video game industry, and they’re firing on all cylinders.
    But anyway, when Microsoft is willing to throw away people like me for the family audience, it bothers me. Because that means an end to great games like Mass Effect 2, and Bioshock because families cannot possibly play this game on the Kinect. Kinect presents great opportunities for games, but I don’t think it will be fully realized. Mainly this is because of the release titles being dumb kid shit like Kinectimals which is like a “Giga-Pet” that you can’t take with you. Just Dance 2 and Ubisoft’s workout game both look cool, but it’s not worth shelling out $150 to purchase the hardware, then $60 more to purchase the actual game. That’s like 32 small pizzas, and in an over 21 estimate, approximately 175 bottles of beer.
    Kinect really does present the no win scenario for people like me. Suppose Kinect is amazing, and it explodes with popularity. All that means is we are going to get more crappy, kiddy games that don’t feature a great story, and don’t allow for good atmosphere or immersion, because how can I immerse myself in something that is so hard to use? Seriously, you thought Wii was going to be amazing, until you realized how crappy that little sensor was below or above the TV. While this seems cool, it is no different. Suppose Kinect falls apart. No one buys it, and no one likes it. That’s a huge investment by Microsoft down the drain, along with lots of other gaming companies that attempted to sell a Kinect game. Video gaming is a risky business, and the reason why shooting games are everywhere is because they always outsell other genres. Gaming is one of the biggest places where you don’t want to take risks. The project is worthless if it doesn’t sell, and if reviews come out bad, then the game will most likely tank, because games are too expensive to try out. People do or do not buy videogames.
    People who play Xbox 360 are not children. Some are, but most are teenage to middle age men who love action games, role-playing games, and a good story, and online competition. Not only is it bad for business to release Kinect, but it is offensive to the fans who own the hardware and have stood by Microsoft since its first steps into the console world.
    Now with everything I just said, if I were to pull this out anywhere in the social world, I would be shot down hard. Don’t give me some, “I would talk about it” because I’m never talking about one particular person. I’m talking about if we were in a group. In a new social setting when you are talking to strangers, there’s no finer way to break the ice than football. The blood of American men is injected with football, and here’s why: the more you know about football, the cooler you are. I’m not kidding. I could talk about Michael Vick’s change as a Quarterback since jail time. I could talk about how much of an idiot Vince Young is for text messaging “sorry” to his head coach. I could reference how many upsets by underdogs occurred over Thanksgiving break, and people would only love and reinforce me for it. Football presents a scholastic irony where even though it’s about a lot of muscle on the field, the people watching must know everything. Sports Center and ESPN show off so many damn statistics and analysis and news that you would think football is being played as much as baseball. All of my knowledge would just be regurgitated like everyone else from sports casters. That’s all anyone does. And all this goes back to high school when football was cooler than anything else. Dating the Quarterback was worthy of a party on the beach house and the players towered over everyone as they took the middle seats and lounged in the hallways. They always were assured of good grades, and always owned everyone. And nothing changes for years. If I were to talk about Mass Effect’s long time result in science fiction and how it preserves Star Wars and Star Trek culture, I would get thrown in the locker.
    Football cannot be stopped. I mean it. Football cannot be stopped. If a sport sells itself, is popular by its own merits, and rewards those who delve into its nuances, how do you stop it? You can’t create another sport, ever. History is the most important aspect of a sport. The older you get, the more you know. I feel like I was born with a sport debt. So much football happened before me, I had to relearn everything. I had to learn about the Catholic king Roger Stauback and had to learn about John Elway leading the Broncos and completely missed the 1970s Miami Dolphin era of greatness. Maybe that’s why I like video games so much. The lack of a large memory requirement allows for a chance to jump onto a train in which I could easily know all the passengers is kind of flattering and thrilling at the same time. But instead, I like many other people must watch football, because there’s no reason not to like it.
    So there I was, watching game after game, experiencing the brutal tackles with my father, commentating on the growing importance of the forward pass game, especially with the restrictions on cornerbacks these days. I’m next to him, drinking a beer, and I look at him. I look like him, I drink beer like him, I joke and talk like him. And I watch football like him. Are we so incapable of truly knowing each other that we must use some sort of sport to channel personality? No, maybe I should look at this in another perspective.
   
Football is a time machine.

    And it doesn’t have all the crazy technical nuances and dangers of time travel. It is a simple tool that old and young can use to gather together and talk about and enjoy. And old timers can look back and see what was so great about their generation of players and mention it to the younger. The younger can create their own heroes, put them up, and say, “look what we’ve accomplished.” I can talk to my dad about the good old days of whoever, and he will nod and agree and we will laugh at hard hits, and we will yell at referees and we will always hate Aggies together.
   
Maybe football isn’t so bad.

Happy Thanksgiving, and 21

The globe is spinning.

It's one of those globes that feature an electromagnetic push and pull system. I can't really explain it any other way. If I were Dr. Manhattan I would say something like, "it's still there, twenty seconds in the past." For right now, it's just lying there. It's only effect is through an invisible force that hasn't existed in human thought until recently. I cannot stop staring at this globe that hangs there.

I'll keep it short and sweet for now, but I'm building up for something soon. For now, know that everything before this has already been written and posted on my facebook. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We live in a great country, a great life. We live a life of ease, all brought upon by the wonders of the intellectual intercourse of man upon matter.

Thoughts this Semester Part 9: Spanish and Jessica Rabbit

Here I am, finishing a portfolio assignment I do not want to do. I am learning about culture in movies and periodicals in a different language that has been spat out to me for six years. This is not a joke. I spent two years in junior high, two years in high school, and now two years in college and I’m just now finishing this requirement. At one point, I assumed that taking this early would prevent this from happening, like some preeminent strike that would assure my language safety. But now I am fully sure that Spanish has failed me, and so has Jessica Rabbit.

“Look Valiant, the wife’s poison but he thinks she’s Betty Crocker. I want you to follow her, get some nice juicy pictures I can wise the rabbit up with….the Rabbit sings at a joint called the Ink and Paint Club. Toon review, strictly humans only okay?”

Valiant goes, meets with Betty Boop, and based off of people’s responses, he’s a little confused on everyone’s reaction. Marvin Acme puts on cologne. Crowds of men storm to the stage. Valiant looks at Betty and says, “What’s with him?”

“Mr. Acme never misses a night when Jessica performs” Betty says. Valiant replies sarcastically, “he’s got a thing for rabbits huh?”

But there’s no confusion after her sleek and perfect debut into the movie. Smooth voice, silk hair, puffy lips, and I was in love with her before I knew I liked girls. No one can deny that there is something impossibly sexy about Jessica Rabbit, because, “she’s not bad, she’s just drawn that way.”

Jessica Rabbit never asked for that existence, but here she is, amazing crowds with her song, “Why don’t you do right?” And right there in plain irony, the most amazing woman in the history in creation is married to a rabbit.

We’ve already discussed how much I love and watched this movie as a child, but it goes beyond words. Jessica Rabbit inspired two things about what kind of man I should be: a man that does right, and a man that makes women laugh. This movie may very well have set up the framework for my entire high school personality in regards to women. Even Betty Boop explains to Valiant that Jessica Rabbit, “is a very lucky girl.”

The movie makers were not stupid when they made this movie. They had every intention for Jessica Rabbit to be everything a man wanted. She was dedicated, even though there were hundreds of men that visited the Ink and Paint Club. She was a beautiful and possibly dangerous hourglass. She had longer legs than a giraffe. She had sly, sexy eyes. But more important than any of this: Jessica loved and married Roger, the ugliest, badly dressed Rabbit because Roger could tell a joke.

Sometimes I love and hate my childhood, and this subconsciously may be the reason why I hated growing up. As much as I hate real life, eventually I would have to turn and face the terrible truth. And the truth is that women cannot possibly be Jessica Rabbit. Now I walk through life with no expectations, because of the fact that she does not really exist. All those wonderful thoughts of a future of jokes to keep someone to me was a house of cards. It was the biggest joke of all. I can imagine women looking at Jessica Rabbit with hate and disgust, because they have every right to be upset. Jessica Rabbit represents everything that most men want to a perfected Hollywood degree, and just like John Cusack and I, it cannot be achieved.

Spanish has truly failed me, because every time I walk into class I see it even in the teachers’ eyes. There is nothing more insulting to an educated person than to have wasted six years of his life when he could’ve just gone to a foreign country for six months. Everyone in my class walks in tired, and uninterested, because the world of Spanish has been gutted and offered as a refused sacrifice. We’re done listening to the culture of Guatemala, and hearing about the past subjunctive, which is hard to even define in English. Teachers look at us and just pass us through. What was a burning desire is now nothing but frustration.

It’s not their fault, but it’s somebody’s, and I don’t know who is responsible. After six years of Spanish I can’t even put it on my résumé.

I hate everything Spanish. I hate Dia de los Muertos. I hate nouns that have to agree in number and gender. I hate all the stupid little equations they teach you. Necesito una vida sin Spanish. In hindsight, I would’ve visited a country. In hindsight I would’ve told Ms. Gray, and Ms. Podd, and Mr. Garcia, and Ms. Jones, and Sra. Evans, and Sr. Torres, and Sra. Muniz, and Ms. McClanahan that I quit, and hope their language becomes illegal, because I am ruined.

What did they hope to achieve? Did they really think that it would work? 23 hours of English on every other day and one hour of Spanish? An easily breakable online program that encourages bypassing? The almost impossibility of failing because each exam is worth 5% which is abysmal compared to being ¼ the power of participation and attendance.

And here is where we enter, knowing that all we need to do is provide our carcasses as a sacrifice, so they can see that and be pleased.

“C’mon Roger let’s go home, I’ll bake you a carrot cake” -Jessica Rabbit

Thoughts this Semester Part 8: Now 36, Then, and Video Games

“And the future, it’s here, it’s bright, it’s now.” -Regina Spektor, Machine

We wake up with our music, our alarm, technologically geared to our time frame. We eat our breakfast, brand name and all, as we watch the televised imagination of our world unfold. We go to work, while smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee with a name stamped on it. We read magazines of people showing us how to live, and we do exactly what they say. We go home to watch a football game sponsored by someone with a halftime report sponsored by someone with commercials in between every first down. And while it may make my life easier, I can’t help but thinking of “Now!”

Did you know that Now! 36 has been released? It came out November 9, 2010, with hits like my personal favorite, “Dynamite” and my not so personal favorite, “Teenage Dream.” While the “Now that’s what I call Music” series has gone on internationally since 1983, it started in the U.S. with it’s first release in 1998. So you must be thinking, “how are there 36 of these when the U.S. albums are only 12 years running.” Well it’s not only for profit, but maybe there’s a whole angle we’re missing here, and finding it out may make me hate reality.

You’ll never guess what’s on the first Now unless you owned it. The only thing I guessed correctly was that it probably had a Backstreet Boys or N’Sync song. Sure enough, “As Long as you Love Me” was the number two track. Others included “Say you’ll be there” by the Spice Girls, “Zoot Suit Riot” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, and “Barbie Girl” by Aqua.

Different times.

It is amazing how much things have changed, and it makes you give the go ahead for 36 other albums. But there’s a bit of information I’m leaving out, and it’s the information that got me thinking about reality and what it’s all about: also on Now 1 is “Karma Police” by Radiohead.

I literally put my hands on my head and pulled some hair out in sheer horror of being another sucker of the mass production of advertising. “Karma Police?” Let’s be clear: Karma Police on Radiohead’s album of Ok Computer is not the reason why I adore Radiohead. If anything I’ve heard this song maybe four or five times. Yet here it was, a song by them on the first Now.

Was I just another pawn? Another man who was played for twelve years by some back stage puppet master? In short, yes and no.

“People want to be told what to do so badly, that they’ll listen to anyone” -Don Draper

While Don may not have been right about the direction of cigarettes or television, he was most certainly right about this. In this scene, Don Draper is replying to a criticizing hippie about the evil nature of advertising. “How do you sleep at night?” the attacker questions. Don replies, “on a bed full of money.”

Don Draper’s job is not easy, but it’s probably not hard either. From the house to work and back again, people are probably going to be flooded with information. What’s the latest this? Can I get that for cheap? Will my life be better off with this? Is my family going to appreciate that? The world is full of opportunities, and wasting away all of your money on products is certainly one of them.

Media may be the middle man of my manifestation of malevolence toward material reality. It is in music with which I imagine the world. Daydreams flicker as I listen to Radiohead. Musicals are joined by me as I listen to Regina Spektor. Michael Bublé serenades me as I get into a suit and tie. Nuclear Bombs explode on the far horizon as I listen to rock music. Hindsight feels so much better after watching Mad Men. Life feels so much more satisfying when I read Ayn Rand.

I could go on, but this is but a taste of the hefty meal we are being fed in order to live on day by day.

I will give you my best and often times craziest example. My philosophy of life is based around a medium that is ridiculed and talked down to. My way of expressing my opinions is based upon something that is mocked and made fun of even at church services.

My very soul was changed because of a video game.

Video Games

You may mock me, but this is no different than a change of opinion because of a book or a play or a movie. Understand that with growing technology, video games are not just repeats of Pong. It is a growing art form, where we are able to experience the lives of a military man without the psychological strain. We are able to visit other planets without a rocket. We are able to destroy hordes without ever carrying a sword. We are able to decide the fate of an entire race with the touch of a button.

This is what I’m talking about, and the game that changed me was Bioshock.

 Released in 2007, the game featured an underwater city and was a first person shooter (FPS). I knew nothing more about it until Bobby Kirkpatrick brought me over to play the demo. While the game looked appealing, I was an experienced gamer, and I could see technical laggings in some parts. The game just didn’t feel up to date, and I got confused at some parts. What the demo lacked in technical achievement, it made up for in storytelling and atmosphere. The man behind it all, Andrew Ryan, had become so fed up with life on the surface. There was no escaping the guilt laden sacrificial societies that existed there.

    “I am Andrew Ryan, and I’m here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? No says the man in Washington it belongs to the poor. No says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God. No says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone. I rejected these answers, and instead I chose to build: Rapture. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture, can become your city as well.”

After a horrific plane crash, you are the sole survivor trapped in the massive deep of the Atlantic ocean. You turn around and suddenly you see a lighthouse. You enter the dark, but dry island and take an underwater elevator that takes you through this fantastic speech and finally to the hidden city of Rapture itself. Glory is on the horizon, but instead, horror awaits you.

From the moment you enter the city, you know something is wrong. Lunatics in party masks armed with hooks are butchering people. Screams sound in the dark. Luggage is scattered across the floor along with broken protest signs that decree, “Rapture is DEAD.” For the rest of the game, you must uncover the secrets that are hidden behind the propaganda posters and leaking pipe lines and abandoned art houses, and mutilated bodies.

Then I left my youth pastor’s house and went outside. Cars were blandly going by, my blue truck waiting as patiently as ever for me, and the sky was cloudless. Reality indeed.

Fascinated, that very same day, because I had a job, I bought Bioshock and played it immediately. What this led to was a roller coaster I could not imagine even existed. Eventually the conclusion of this game was so great, I had no choice but to do research while serving as a teacher aid for an English teacher Senior year. After a mere ten minutes, I came up with an intellectual source for the game of Bioshock: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand.

“What do you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Karen Hillier, my sophomore English teacher. “She’s kind of weird”, she replied. Not good enough.“What to you think of Ayn Rand?”, I asked Renee Simons, my senior year English teacher.“I hate her”, she replied. Good enough for me.

While on the way to a TMEA choir concert, I bought Atlas Shrugged for $25 dollars at a Borders in a mall. The book never left my side for two more months. A whopping 1200 pages, it was awkward hauling it from class to class without a backpack. Not only that, my copy featured a naked Atlas holding up the title. People I guess somehow assumed that it was a massive gay book.

Idiots.

What it was inspired a complete way of life that changed the lens through which I perceived the whole world. I personally emailed 2K, the makers of Bioshock, and thanked them for changing my life. Since then I have read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, Anthem by Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, and own a Lexicon of her ideas by her spiritual successor Leanord Peikoff. I have watched a documentary of her life. I am reading The Art of Fiction by Ayn Rand to help in possibly writing a book in the future. She is without a doubt, my favorite author.

This is why if you say, “Video Games are stupid” I will probably never listen to you ever again. And this is why I have a lot less respect for the pastor of The Village Church Matt Chandler. Matt Chandler is a man who always makes a metaphor that there are dumb men out there, and he always, ALWAYS uses video games as the medium through which he describes these dumb men. His description is paraphrased as something like this…

“There are men out there, who do nothing but play video games. You will not get better at life by playing Halo.”

And while some may be more detailed, he mentions other hobbies much less. I’m sorry Matt Chandler, you’re wrong, you’re dead wrong, but you and so many others seek to use video games as a stepping stool toward whatever agenda you need. You insult me, and you insult so many others who use my hobby by stating that the exaggerated old man who plays non-stop is every video game player to have existed, and we are supposed to feel guilty.

And this is why video games are attacked so often. It all goes back to advertising, and the fact that those shooters in Columbine also played video games. The reason why I feel bad and not bad for “Karma Police” being on Now 1 is because although it is there and my life is being sold to me, I still enjoy it, and with that I’m satisfied. The reason why people hate video games is because they assume people cannot think for themselves, and are just pushed and pulled by anything and anyone. “Those darn kids played violent games, and they just killed over a dozen students. Video Games must cause kids to kill people.”

WRONG. You’re so wrong it’s hilarious, because over a million players just got online and played Call of Duty, a game where you kill hundreds of people an hour, and there is not mass murder in real life (except for wars, which are started by Governments and politics).

Reality sucks, and this is why. It’s because no matter what I do in life, it will not be the way I’m supposed to live it. “Buy this because the people that matter have this.” If I read Atlas Shrugged, I’m selfish. If I play video games, I’m a nerd. If I work out, I’m a juicer. If I smoke, I’m engraving my tombstone. If you ask me, I’d rather not listen to it and listen to Radiohead, even if they were on Now1. If you ask me, I’d rather watch Mad Men and wish I was there instead of here. If you ask me, I’d rather avoid all the controversy and play some damn video games.