I stopped being a Christian when my uncle was murdered. I was in eighth grade, and the notion that there is a so-called “heavenly father” that would allow this sort of shit to happen was preposterous to me.
After finishing up David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest and Chuck Palhnuik’s Damned, I’ve decided that I wanted to re-read the Bible.
I’m midway through Leviticus right now, and I have to say that I really don’t like this God. He is like a drag queen you run into at 7 a.m. after a night of drinking, fucking and coke. His makeup has completely run down his face, the heel has broken off on his shoes and he’s holding his wig while stumbling along the sidewalk. He’s a jealous bitch that you just want to run away to the other side of the street from. It ain’t pretty.
I’m hoping this God has some redeeming qualities. After all he has sparked so many wars over the millenia.
The coldest time of the day is the immediate hours before sunrise. At least that is what we are told. I’m usually safely ensconced in the layers of bedding in various states of unconsciousness unless there is a sudden urge to evacuate my bladder. Regardless it’s a rarity that I am outdoors when it’s so cold*, but there I was in the Saturday predawn walking towards the torch-lit Coliseum and into the condensed remains of my breath in the still dark morning.
* I know full well that it was snowing on the East Coast and power got knocked out to two million residents. But I also know I pay more to live in a place that should always be sunny and 80 degrees year round. So I will complain about the cold, and all of the people who question my complaints can just get fucked.
The sun rising in the east behind ESPN's College GameDay set.
ESPN’s College GameDay has become a phenomenon. Week after week host Chris Fowler with analysts Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and Desmond Howard go to the site of the biggest football matchup and do their pregame show using the cheering students as a backdrop for their set. Like other pregame shows, they give out the talking points of the day’s matchups. What does Duke need to do to upset Virginia Tech at home? Will Russell Wilson shake off last week’s disappointment and have Wisconsin win big on the road at Ohio State? Is Kansas State’s head coach Bill Snyder the best coach there is?
But it’s become more than your standard run-of-the-mill pregame show.
“We want to be analytical,” GameDay coordinating producer Lee Fitting told me after a production meeting Friday evening. “We want to be historical. We want to be educational. We want to be entertaining. That’s the goal to find the mix.”
For three hours, the first hour hosted by the lovely Erin Andrews on ESPNU, it chugs and chugs on until their final segment, the climax of the morning. Offstage goes Howard and onstage comes a celebrity guest who along with Herbstreit and Corso pick games. The final game they pick is the game that is hosted at the site they are at and culminates with Corso wearing the mascot headgear of the team he picks to win.
That’s the money shot. That’s why the hungover masses from last night’s parties braved the lines (at least approximately 15% of the folks I asked in my highly unscientific poll). As to why I’m there, that is something a bit more complicated.
Back in the spring of 1997 while looking for colleges I didn’t base my decision on the state of their college athletics: I based it on who would accept me as an electrical engineering major**. That’s how I wound up at UC Santa Barbara, a school without a football program in any division.
**One of a string of horrible life decisions I made. Obviously I’m not an engineer. I suppose if I could have gotten in to UCLA or Cal as an English major or undeclared, but what can I do about it now?
I have never experienced the thrill of pre-funking in the dorms then making the trek down to the stadium on game day blitzed out of my mind. Although looking back at it not having a football team didn’t really make a difference: I still don’t remember much of my Saturdays in college.
There were no fight songs. No chants. No cheerleaders. Not even a Division III game. And there definitely was no GameDay for me.
I have no context as to how autumn Saturdays work for the millions of college students across the country. So that’s my best guess as to why I dragged my 30-something corpse to a place that belongs to teenagers and 20-somethings – to figure out what all the hubbub of Saturday football is all about.
The view of walking towards the set of ESPN's College GameDay set with the lit torch of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in the background.
The broadcast starts at 9 a.m. Eastern time which means it’s a pre-sunrise 6 a.m. on the West Coast. “It definitely adds a different dynamic to the show,” stage director Mike Ruhlman told me. Despite having to be awake at 3 a.m., “we can get some great shots of the sun rising.”
The glow of stage lights could be seen from miles away, a stark contrast from the dark sky. I followed that glow until I made it to the set where they were 15 minutes into the first hour where the students had already gathered with their signs.
At the heart of the show are the students. When I asked coordinating producer Fitting what was the best part about doing GameDay he replied that it was going to a campus for the first time.
“To see the excitement and the thrill these kids have to see the guys and be a part of the show, it’s awesome. It just adds to the show when you have a group of kids that excited.”
Obviously the GameDay crew has been out to USC on eight separate occasions, but nonetheless the students seemed to be filled with enough enthusiasm. There were the signs: “Yahoo should investigate the NCAA.” “Occupy the NCAA. 99% of sanctions. 1% of violations.” Admittedly I didn’t get that one. There were also the douchebaggery signs: “We are the 1%.” And there was the funniest one: “9 out of 10 California girls are hot. The 10th one goes to Stanford.”
Some of the signs held by students for ESPN's College GameDay broadcast.
What really incurred my wrath was how awake the students seemed to be. Here I was feeling it required Dr. Frankenstein to get me alive and walking much less coherent at such an hour. I guess that’s why they don’t do GameDay against a backdrop of 30-somethings.
There were a couple of kids who had stayed up from the night before. Most were like a group I encountered near the bronze nude statues at the peristyle entrance of the Coliseum: “Coffee and more coffee,” they answered when I asked how they were alive.
It was at that point when my initial dose of coffee was beginning to wear off. As I was heading backstage to get some much needed coffee, I hear two whistles and a charging scream as if I were on the set of Braveheart. The Stanford band dressed up for Halloween decided to charge the crowd. I narrowly missed the stampede and made it safe behind the barricade by a half second.
The Stanford band playing a song after their stampede towards the crowd.
The show was not supposed to come to Los Angeles. The original plan had them going to the Little Apple of Manhattan, Kansas for a Big 12 duel between what would have been undefeated Oklahoma Sooners and Kansas State Wildcats teams. Only Oklahoma didn’t follow the script losing at home to Texas Tech. With the enormity of the game diminished, GameDay made the last minute decision to come out for the Standford-USC battle.
“It’s something we always talk about,” GameDay coordinating producer Lee Fitting explained to me Friday afternoon after a production meeting. “We can change directions at a drop of a hat.”
With a dedicated crew that travels with the show, Fitting told me they can have the set broken down in three hours and packed in trucks ready to head to their next location. They haul ass to get to the next location where it takes a day to set things up, and voila! Television magic ready to happen.
And like that moment with the unruly Stanford band charging, it was television magic indeed. It was all a spectacle befitting of an epileptic fit of Guy Debord. Throughout the three hours, there were producers on the speakers telling the crowd, “More energy!” and “We’re shooting this corner and need to fill it up!”
There were even moments while the guys were discussing something on set that the male cheerleaders were jumping up and down in place holding up the cheer cards right behind the set. I didn’t have a monitor in front of me but it probably would have looked like a lot of background energy in the shot.
What made it surreal was the fact that these cheerleaders were absolutely silently. They were smiling and looking enthusiastic, but not one peep was heard from them. The crowd behind them were quiet too, the wear of standing for hours in an unnatural time of the day starting to take its toll.
As Debord said about the spectacle in his sixth thesis of The Society of the Spectacle, “It is the very heart of society’s real unreality.” Everything did feel unreal.
Even backstage behind the scenes watching Erin Andrews trying to warm up donning a baby blue snuggie adorned with penguins; the Stanford tree mascot guy generously allowing Corso to borrow the getup for the headgear segment of the show.
Where rejected signs go to die.
It didn’t seem real at any point. The steady build up going up the hill until finally Corso prances around the stage in the Stanford tree. No denouement, no resolution. Just the catharsis of the climax, a couple of deep breaths and a walk of shame.
As I was walking down Figueroa I was wondering what the hell I learned in the previous three hours.
1. I still don’t fully understand the Saturday rituals, and I never will. It’s all right though. Since I don’t have that school loyalty, I won’t understand.
2. Stanford kids are more fun than USC kids. I don’t know whether it was because Stanford was the visiting team or whether it was because they don’t have a history of excellence. With USC it’s different. They have “Conquest”, “Tribute to Troy”, “Fight On”. There’s an austere pretentiousness*** about the Trojans that induces yawns. But with Stanford they just don’t give a fuck. I would much rather have drinks with them (although towards the end of the show I found a couple drinking Bud Lights and had to immediately reconsider that previous statement.)
*** And yes I fully understand that I am criticizing USC’s pretensions in one breath and citing Guy Debord in another. I’m a hypocrite, what can I say?
A view of stage right where the Stanford band and kids had congregated.
3. I will never ever work an assignment that requires me to me up at 5 a.m. unless I’m covering a seven-overtime playoff game in the NHL.
I finally did it. On October 12, 2011 I finished Infinite Jest. All 981 pages of main text and 96 pages of end notes.
The first time I purchased the book was in 1999 at the Borders in State Street in Santa Barbara. I don’t even remember what made me purchase the book — Did I already hear of David Foster Wallace or was this just a random selection that I was and still am prone to do? And I started it. Then stopped. Put it down. Restarted it. Put it down again. Got to page 610. Put it down. On and on and on.
Several months ago I finished Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and was looking for a new challenge. I actually finished Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality Vol. 1, another book I had abortingly read over the years. But it wasn’t that satisfying really.
Just on a whim I decided to pick up IJ again, and today I finished it.
I really enjoyed the book. I really really loved it. (I know, this is great analysis and all, but I am writing this less than an hour after reading the sentence, “And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.”)
But I’m not going to lie. It is a tough book to read. There are some sections that require a lot of dedication and concentration. I found the best soundtrack to read the book to is Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or anything by Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Maybe that’s why I feel so invigorated by finishing the book. Hence the bad webcam pic of me fucking that copy of IJ I bought in Santa Barbara in 1999.
So I’m going to read something less challenging now. The new Chuck Palahniuk novel Damned is next.
Raiders’ owner Al Davis died today, and sports people everywhere are eulogizing him. He was an innovator. He was passionate. He was paranoid. He was a maverick.
I don’t disagree with any of those things, but you won’t see me shedding any tears. When I was 16 years old, Al Davis took my football team away from me.
Growing up as an only child can be a isolating experience especially if your father is in his own world chugging a 24-pack a day. He was a functional alcoholic and wasn’t abusive: he just liked to be in his own world.
Even after my mom left my dad and we moved out here to California, I never had any formative sports education. Although to be fair to everyone in my family I was a sissyboy and a nerd who wanted no part in even watching sports.
Soon as adolescence creeped up I figured I needed to find out something rudimentary about sports. So I became a fan of the Dodgers, Lakers and Raiders — by this point the Rams were awful and complete laughing stocks. And I loved these teams especially the Raiders.
Now I didn’t follow any of the off field stuff. I just knew that quarterback Jeff Hostetler had an awesome ‘stache, and Art Shell could do no wrong. I heard about the Rams moving to St. Louis which was all right with me since at least the Raiders were still in town. (I would eventually completely change my opinion of this going so far as to celebrate when their owner Georgia Frontiere died.)
I knew Al Davis was looking for a new place to play. I vaguely heard about Irwindale. I heard about Hollywood Park. One day I woke up, and I found up they went back to Oakland.
Fuck them. From that point on I wished nothing but awful things for them until Al Davis died. So yes, I loved that Raiders-Patriots playoff game in 2002. And I loved their Super Bowl tank job. And I have thoroughly luxuriated in their recent spate of impotence. It’s been some very gleeful times.
So now Davis is dead. Now what?
I am now free to love the Raiders again, but I have since become a huge Chicago Bears fan. Hell, I even know the words to the Bears fight song.
Plus if the Raiders do move back down to L.A. and I am privileged enough to cover them, I have to put my fan card away again.
So I don’t quite know what to do. I’ll see how things are tomorrow and take it week by week.
This song was released in 2001, and it is perhaps the catchiest song from The (International) Noise Conspiracy. The title is very catchy too! “Capitalism Stole My Virginity”
That’s about how I feel right now: betrayed and disgusted by everything going on in the world. Here’s the quatrain that is most notable:
Robbed out of our bleeding hearts
Smashed our illusions, tore them all apart
Now we are unsentimental and unafraid
To destroy this culture that we hate.
I’m just sitting here waiting for the official word to come down on whether the NBA season will be cancelled or not. I already have it written, just waiting to have it go live. So here’s my desktop. You’ll notice it’s cold, cloudy and Bjorky.
I’m going to preface this by saying I’m a spoiled shit. Having duped people in thinking I’m working sports media, I am privileged. I get to watch sports live in a space where cheering is not allowed. Hell not talking to someone is not considered a faux pas.
I was invited by a PR company to look at the renovations going on at the Rose Bowl while also getting to watch the September 17 UCLA noontime game against Texas from a luxury box. I knew full well I wasn’t going to be in the press box, and I was fine with being in a confined space with cheering fans. That’s why god invented iPods.
The problems started before that Saturday. My ticket and parking pass was supposed to be sent via Federal Express on Friday. I had to cover a Dodger game that night, but when I got back home there was nothing.
Being someone with horrendous rejection issues, I sent an email back to the PR company wondering what was going on. Am I still invited? Is this still happening?
Saturday morning I got a reply saying that it was still going on, sorry for the confusion, Fed Ex said they delivered, yadda yadda yadda. But nothing.
Since I would have to pay a lot for parking, I opted to take public transportation to the Rose Bowl. I was also running a bit late, so I had no time to get coffee. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem since I’m in a luxury box, they surely have to have coffee available.
Once I got to the stadium, meet up with my PR contact to get my ticket and get in the box, I find there is no coffee. There’s food, beer, soda and hard liquor available. But. No. Fucking. Coffee. I ask to get some coffee in the box.
Anyhow I get the tour and thankfully get a cup of coffee from the Rose Bowl trailer. We get back to the box, no coffee. I ask around if I can get coffee in my box, and the response I get is that they don’t have coffee.
What the fuck? No coffee?
Things were so dire instead of homicide I dropped way into suicidal thoughts. Well maybe that had to do with the combination of no coffee and watching UCLA football.
I am fully aware that I could have gone all the way downstairs and waited in a long line to buy a small cup of coffee for whatever gouging price they sell for. But no. Isn’t the point of a luxury box? Like I prefaced earlier, I’m a spoiled shit. In press boxes I get as much coffee as I want. It just boggled my mind that in a luxury box at the Rose Bowl, one the most historic venues in the world, coffee was not to be had.
I threw a hissy fit. I was around a bunch of people I didn’t know who looked happy. My head felt like it was going to explode. I was in misery. I did think about hurling myself out of the box, but I didn’t want to be the story — I guess all the time I spend in press boxes have rubbed off on me.
The game ended and I got back to Old Town Pasadena at around 4:30 where the first coffeeshop I saw was Intelligentsia Coffee. Fuck them.
They are so fucking snooty about their coffee they had no empathy for the caffeine-deprived desperation in my bloodshot eyes. They took their damned time to get me my red eye, and then they had the fucking nerve to charge me $7.85 for a 16-ounce cup.
I know tons of people who like Intelligentsia, but fuck them. I hope they go bankrupt. It’s coffee, not fucking foie-gras. And not that good coffee at that.
The lesson learned: like people struck with emphysema who have to lug around an oxygen tank, I need to lug around a coffee tank. I also learned I’m not a very nice person uncaffeinated.
