Month: August 2015

Confederate flag

I was cleaning out an old box of music stuff and came across a little confederate flag a band gave me. This band was urban LA hipsters schticking it up with country-ish music, and I was a pinch hitter on one gig. They liked confederate flags and I didn’t care one way or the other.

I realized it was a talisman of White privilege that I had been unaware of. The fact that I paid no attention was a White thing. No skin off my back.

I unfolded it and looked closely for the first time. Then I tossed it on the trash. Later I came back and saw it on top, and stuffed it into the pile to hide it.

Stadium Teams Sunday

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A thing I love about YouTube is that I can see the kinds of sports that interest me. Which includes pretty much anything but teams with stadiums. If it’s a team with a stadium, fuck it. If it’s motocross, snowboarding, martial arts, parkour, rock climbing, BMX, surfing, skiing, mountain biking, running, skateboarding, diving, fishing, wingsuits – etc etc etc – I’m into it.

When I look at the sports pages, it’s all teams with stadiums.

Teams with stadiums are decent enough. I get the appeal.

But boring, obvious, predictable. Nobody is ever going to do something different with football, baseball, or basketball. Innovation comes in ultra tiny packages.

They’re corporate. Without a super rich owner, there is no team. Stadiums are named after massive corporations. If a player threatens advertising, they’re gone.

The players bust ass, but you the viewer couldn’t be lazier. You watch TV. You gain cred by watching even more TV than other people. You eat crappy food.

Obviously the whole thing is sexist to an extreme. Commercials. Cheerleaders. Separate and unequal leagues.

You identify with your local team. You must be for that team, except when you are so true to another locality that you never stop identifying with them. It’s the height of meaninglessness.

It could be about outdoor recreation. Hiking, rock climbing, mountain climbing. Fishing and hunting. Camping.

Or aggressive riding sports: BMX, motocross, mountain unicycle, mountain biking. Skateboarding.

Or combat. Martial arts. Kickboxing.

Or instead of narratives about competitions, it could be about participating. How to improve your basketball shooting. How to pick running shoes. How to do a kickflip. The Internet has a huge amount of this stuff. The interest must be there.

Or fitness. Get In Shape articles. “Hey You! Reader! Drop the doughnut and do some crunches right now!”

Maybe the underlying issue is the economics of print and television news. There isn’t enough real estate to cover more than a few sports, and only stadium sports appeal to a critical mass.

On the Internet real estate isn’t a problem. You can always make more pixels.

And on an on. The list of alternatives to the status quo is not short.

It bothers me that the “Sports” section covers so little about sports.