Archive for July, 2007

Soon and very soon, Barry Bonds is going to hit his 756th career home run. It could be tomorrow, it could be some time next week. I’m really not seeing it going any further than that, provided he plays every game for the next couple weeks. Especially since the Giants are about to start a homestand. If there’s a right time and place, it’s coming up now. Of course, when he does surpass Hank Aaron’s total, all the conjecture on how much Barry’s steroid use contributed to his total will begin anew, as will the sportswirters’ hatefest. The Bonds situation is interesting to me for a variety of reasons. First, it gives me a reason to challenge some of the assumptions that I think many people in general, and sportswriters specifically, have. Second, it’s a chance to think about the way the media, and increasingly, fans are becoming a part of the sports action. Then there’s some more stuff. But that can be a little surprise.

That Barry Bonds is one of the more reviled sports figures of today is beyond question. But if you ask why, the answer gets a little dicey. Certainly, he’s never been particularly friendly to reporters, and he’s never ever been the “aw-shucks” type of player. He’s good and he knows he’s good and he doesn’t mind if you know that he knows he’s good. If he does see playing baseball as a privilege, it seems that he also believes that we’re privileged to see him play. In a way, I can’t even argue with that. Thing is, he’s not the first one to have that type of attitude. Not even close. So why is he such an outcast? The media has a lot to do with it. It would be a fallacy to lay all the blame at the feet of the media, however. I think Barry is in the position he’s in today because he sits at some weird confluence of arrogance on his part, resentment by the people who cover him, and yes, race. Oh. And then there’s the whole ‘he may not have been caught cheatin’, but he sho’ did somethin!’ factor.

Taking the items in reverse order, if Barry did use ‘roids, and the evidence does seem to be stacked against him, he’s not the only one. A certain pitcher, whose name I won’t call, but had the temerity to request to not-travel on days when he’s not playing (and actually got that request granted!) seems to have had as freakish an upswing in production in his 40’s as Mr. Bonds, but outside of certain circles, there’s not the cry that something must be amiss. It’s just amazing. There certainly wasn’t the same level of back chatter when Mark McGwire was chasing Roger Maris’ single season record. We knew something was up; McGwire didn’t swell up like that just by eating spinach. But baseball needed a hero and McGwire was the red-haired, freckle-faced “aw-shucks” guy to play the role. Course now, if we’re being fair, we can’t scrutinize Barry and let Mark ride. But the difference is that while people may be pooh-pooing McGwire’s (then) record now, it’s years after the fact. He got to shine in his moment. For Barry, on the other hand, every time he hits another home run, some sports writer tries to cast aspersions on his achievement talkin’ about some, “… but does it deserve an asterisk?”

The other three elements kinda blend into each other in such a way that for me, at least, it’s hard to distinguish them. To a degree. I think that first and foremost, many sportswriters resent Barry Bonds because he doesn’t play the media game that they want him to play. He talks when he’s ready, not when they are. And to an extent, I do feel sympathetic for them, because they’re just trying to do their job, but at the same time, their incessant sniping makes me think of jilted lovers who keep some kind of nonsense going because the object of their affection pays them no mind. Not to be sexist, but some sportswriters act like high school girls. Why try to make a villain of the man because he won’t talk when you want him to?

But there’s more to it than that. In Muhammad Ali: His Life And Times, sportswriter Mike Katz says this: “I guess it’s common for sportswriters– and I put myself in the group — to lull ourselves into thinking we’re smarter than the athletes we cover. It was true then, and I think it’s true now. But then that takes us back to the question of intelligence, or at least the perception thereof.

In this culture, our assessment of intelligence is based primarily on a person’s facility with words and numbers. If a person can speak well, write well, or perform mathematical computations with little or no problems, they get to be regarded as intelligent. And yeah, those are definitely markers of intelligence, but by no means the only ones. Without going too far into Gardner territory, suffice it to say that there is a strong argument to be made that the ability to excel in sports to the degree required to be a professional athlete requires not just skill or talent, but kinesthetic intelligence. Only thing is, who’s gonna give up that power? It’s one thing to concede that a person is a better athlete while retaining the air of intellectual superiority. If athletic skill IS intelligence, however, then where does that leave the sportswriter? So what we have, then, is a group of people who, because their strengths place them closer to the center of what’s commonly regarded as being intelligent, get to act as gatekeepers. As a friend of mine once said, “the media don’t tell us what to think, they tell us what to think about.” But even more than that, if we’re not careful, they can frame the manner in which we think about whatever it is that they’re telling us is important. Obviously, this has implications beyond sports, but that’s as far as I’m taking it right now. A couple weeks ago, I asked why Stephon Marbury is not as highly regarded for his off-the-court actions as he could be. Well part of it is that we have gatekeepers who, for one reason or another (maybe something pernicious, maybe not), don’t think that story is important enough to feature, and certainly not important enough to repeat on a daily basis.

But let’s bring this back to Mr. Bonds. Being the son of a great baseball player and having had the opportunity to observe things first-hand, Barry developed a high degree of media literacy. Unfortunately for him, and perhaps for all of us, that literacy fostered skepticism and mistrust. He viewed the media as more of a threat than an ally and now it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Having said that, I think that race is not the primary factor in his treatment by the media, but I think that it may exacerbate the situation. It’s all conjecture, but I think that the picture of Barry that we get in the press has more to do with his treatment of the press than anything else. Otherwise, he’d be in the Ken Griffey Jr. category.

I wonder how the steroid story would’ve played out if he were a media favorite.

Okay. The Notorious will be on the Black Bloggers Roundup on NPR on Wednesday, 7/25. Look for the radio voice to be in full effect.

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Get Simpsonized. Like this here…

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A gambling ref? As bad as Mike Vick and the dogfighting scandal is, and believe me, it’s bad, at least that doesn’t affect the integrity of the game. A ref who gambles on games - including the ones he’s refereeing? That’s six whole other levels of bad. We’ll explore at least one of them soon.

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Now this is the type of professor I’d be. Kill that noise from the textbook publishers. Now granted, the fact that I’d probably be in a literary discipline makes that easier than it would be if I were in a hard science, but still. I like the level of caring reflected here.

Y’all know who you are.

Batman vs. Spider-Man.

I’m rollin’ with Pete.

(from okp)

On the recommendation of Stanley Crouch, I bought the book, Pimps Up, Ho’s Down by T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting (and I still hate seeing the plural of “ho” as “h-o-’-s”!). It could’ve been a couple dollars cheaper, but it’s definitely informative. I read it all in one sitting, but it’s pretty dense, so I wasn’t really able to narrow down my (relatively minor but still significant) points of contention to anything I can easily talk about. I’m going through it again, though, so PU,HD may be a source of material for a good minute.

At any rate, to get us started, I’m gonna give an unadulterated quote and we’ll see what we can make of it.

Hip hop culture is no more or less violent and sexist than other American cultural products (think Playboy, prime-time news and television, the flourishing Hooters restaurant chain and now-bankrupt airline, The O’Reilly Factor, hard rock, country music, the blues, or Abercrombie and Fitch catalogues). However, it is more dubiously highlighted by the media as the source of violent misogyny in American youth culture.

That sounds perfectly logical to me…in fact, I’ve said it here (well, here and at the old Stereo) a couple hundred times. Only thing is, as true as it may well be, there is no market for that kind of truth. Meaning this: stories that get traction are the ones that create controversy or conversely, re-tell widely-accepted truisms. Hip-hop’s selling the most? X, Y, and A are prevalent in hip-hop? It must be responsible for the occurrences of X, Y, and A in the world. Only it’s not. X, Y, and A are there, have been there, and would be there if rap had never evolved as a genre. Which is not to say that it has no impact.

Like I said a couple days ago, I don’t know that it’s really possible to listen to certain songs all the time and not be impacted by them. That’s why, for as much as I think of the production on Niggaz4life, I really can’t listen to it a whole lot. Songs like “To Kill A Hooker” and “One Less Bitch” are the types of records that can stain your soul, and I want them to stay in that category. If I listened to them all the time, even if I never acted on them (which I probably wouldn’t) the way I see the world would probably change a little, and that’s a view I don’t wanna appropriate.

As a model for a class project I’m having the kids in summer school do, I decided to map out my crate-digging excursions. The sites are not numbered in any particular order; I made them up as I thought of them. Of course, there are some stores whose names I didn’t remember, or that aren’t there any more. For instance, the store that used to be on Lancaster Avenue, where I bought my You’re Gonna Get Yours b/w Rebel Without A Pause 12″. That would DEFINITELY make the map. But anyway, I’m thinking I will keep this going and see how much of the country I can cover while buying records. I know there are some good spots between Philly and DC that need exploring. Not to mention that I need to get up to New York.

My challenge now is trying to find old school Gospel albums. Specifically, I’m looking for the Pray For Me album by the Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer Choir, among others.

Now I haven’t bought any of Curtis Jackson’s music since…ever, because it just doesn’t speak to me. For the most part, it never has, although I thought the song, “How To Rob,” definitely deserves to be menitoned in the same breath as Biggie’s “Dreams.” That song notwithstanding, I just don’t fool with Curtis like that. Because he is such a major celebrity and has sold goo-goggles of records, however, I am treated to instances of his wit and wisdom. And in this case, I’m only being partially facetious. Reading an interview with him in Spin Magazine, it’s obvious to me that 50 is not dumb. At all. When it suits his purpose, he can clearly detail the connection between a person’s media choices and that person’s life decisions. When it comes to his music, however, there is no such thing.

He says the following about hip-hop vs. other forms of entertainment:

Then are these black leaders, like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and Benjamin Chavis and Russell Simmons, who are saying hip-hop should be cleaned up, just hypocrites who are looking for easy publicity?

They don’t mind the cable television programs giving you the same content; they don’t mind the Internet having the same content available. I think it affects people a lot more to see a film where somebody realistically gets their head blown off than to listen to somebody rapping for three minutes. And what about rock’n'roll? The guy who shot up Virginia Tech was a Led Zeppelin and Nirvana fan. If he’d had a 50 Cent CD in his case, we probably wouldn’t even be talking right now.

Honestly? That last sentence? I believe that’s absolutely true. Had the shooter at Virginia Tech been listening to 50 or some other rapper, people would have been hopping rain dances about how hip-hop has to be stopped. While I’m sure the entertainment angle was explored, in his case, I think the focus was on video games, I think it’s very interesting the types of material that are labeled in the media as being more dangerous than others. In some ways, it makes me think of the disparity between crack and cocaine. What’s the difference in the material? Nothing, really. Crack is cocaine. It’s not any more or less addictive. But the difference in sentencing? Quite substantial. Some have suggested, and I’m not disinclined to believe it, that the difference is the perception of who’s selling it and who’s using it. Same thing here.

Then 50 goes on to talk about Scarface. And I think he has a valid point. To an extent.

…Look, let’s talk about Scarface [the 1983 cocaine odyssey written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian DePalma]. OK? And how it impacted people. It was more than just violence in a film. It gave you a description of somebody coming from not having anything, to selling drugs to the point where they made it beyond the expectations of anybody who actually sells drugs in the neighborhood. It showed us that. And Godfather, Goodfellas, those were movies that made an impression. If you made a study of people who are incarcerated and asked them if they have those films on rotation, I have no doubt they would tell you, yes, they watch those films, repeatedly. Did that condition them mentally to go out and do what they did?

No, but all those films ended very badly, and you can say that there was a moral of sorts involved because the heroes all died or were ruined.

And you know what people are gonna say? “I’m gonna do exactly what he did, I’m just not gonna go out like he did!” The statistics tell you that [if you're selling drugs] your ass is going to jail or you’re dying, one or the other. It’s obvious. And people know that, and they still go into that life. They tell themselves that they’re going to get out before something bad happens. It doesn’t matter what movie they’re watching or what song they’re listening to. You can’t use entertainment as an excuse.

To an extent, what he’s saying is true. The decision is made without respect to what type of entertainment is consumed. Yet, Curtis later points out that the people consume that exact type of material in order to do what they’re going to do. So which is it? Either it doesn’t have an impact or it does. There is no such thing as “it can impact you if you want it to, but if you don’t it won’t.” Cuz honestly, my follow-up question would be this: do you think people’s behavior would be the same if they listened to “Lord Help Me” by Donny Hathaway50 times a day? Now intuitively, I know that some people would commit mayhem no matter what they listened to. At the same time, it’s also true that what a person feeds himself shapes the person he becomes. So my guess is that a substantial portion of people on the “Lord Help Me” diet would begin to think and behave differently than the ones on the “Murda, Murda, Murda” diet. But that only makes sense. And for Cent, it’s all about dollars.

I finally came up on a 45 adapter. To celebrate, this week’s list will be from 45s that I may or may not convert to mp3.

Chicken Head - Bobby Rush
Uh Uh Boy, That’s A No No - Candace Wright
Ali’s Theme - Michael Masser
In The Pocket - King Curtis & The Kingpins
Everybody Saw You - Ruby Andrews
Love To Love You Baby - Donna Summer
Ten and Two (Take This Woman Off The Corner) - Gene and Jerry
Good Times - Kool & The Gang
I Can’t Stand A Woman Two Timing A Man - Bobby Hutton

Yesterday, I came up on a SEALED Talking Book LP.

Now that’s what I’m talkin about!

School’s out. Summer school’s in. The unplanned but not unexpected hiatus is over. Tasty treats soon.