Can you really win the lottery every single time you play?  In a word, yes.  In two words, heck yes.

Times are tough all over. Word has it that there’s a single job left in the entire country, so working is out of the question. Sponging off ma and pa might be an option, but that’s not something most swinging singles would want to do. Fame could work if you’re as outrageous as Kim Kardashian, but she’s one of a kind and you probably aren’t. It appears we’ve exhausted every possibility save one: the Powerball lottery.

Powerball is a can’t-miss proposition. Introduced in 1992 as a quick and painless way of getting poor people to give their money to faceless state bureaucrats, this legal numbers racket has created almost as many millionaires as the Charlotte Bobcats. Unlike the Charlotte Bobcats, though, the lottery doesn’t demand a 42-inch vertical leap or a textbook jumpshot in exchange for such princely wages. It requires only that you pick the best numbers, which is a snap if you know your lottery strategies as well as I do.

See, many people erroneously believe that the lottery is just a game of chance. The numbers are randomly selected, they say, and there’s no way to beat the system. Well, there’s a name for such people: losers. Not only can you beat the system, you can beat it frequently. A master lotteryman can walk out of his apartment, stroll down to the corner grocery, buy a ticket, and count on five or six years of guaranteed income. It’s just that simple.

“How do I become a master lotteryman?” you ask.  Friend, it’s easier than growing a goatee or leaving the shiny hologram on your fresh and swagalicious new hat. First, get a handful of your favorite numbers — I happen to like 1, 7, 9, 3 and 2 — and draw them close to your heart. If you need help picking favorite numbers, opt for extremely powerful ones like your grandfather’s dog’s birthday or the combined weight of the contestants on “American Idol.” It’s good to have favorite numbers because they carry a lot more luck. Since the lottery was designed for players with average or below-average luck, that extra luck will put you over the top.

Next, develop a feel for the stores in your neighborhood that sell lottery tickets. It’s all about location, location, location in this game. Some stores are real cold and never sell a winner. Others sell nothing but winners. These places are referred to as “hot shops” or “hot boxes” in lotteryman lexicon and are where you want to go when you need fast cash.

You’re also going to need plenty of intuition ­— “court vision” to put it in terms that a Charlotte Bobcats hoopster could grasp. You can cultivate this intuition by reading lottery winners’ stories, which are available on your state lottery website. One woman won big by playing the lottery during a week when her hands itched, so that’s something you could try. Another fellow got so nervous about playing that he had his wife buy the winning ticket. That would probably be a bit tougher if you’re a confirmed bachelor, but I think it would work equally well if you substituted an aunt or uncle for your spouse.

Finally, you ought to think about what you’re going to do with all of your winnings. The usual crowd of do-gooders and try-harders will put the arm on you to donate that money to conceptual artists, buskers, documentary filmmakers or some other distressed, dispossessed group. Far be it from me to tell you how to spend your gil, but cutting-edge Nate Silver-style statistics show that the lottery is one of the safest investments you can make. Plus, you’ve won before, so your odds of winning again are bound to have increased. In that respect, winning the lotto is a lot like riding a bicycle: it’s a skill that, once learned, will never be forgotten.

Photo–Flickr/NotionsCapital

MTV Road Rules star Susie Meister speaks with gymnastics legend Nadia Comaneci, the first woman to score a perfect 10 in Olympic competition.

At the Montreal Olympics in 1976, Nadia Comaneci made Olympic history. She was the first to get a perfect 10 in gymnastics, and then she repeated this incredible feat over and over again. Once a member of the Romanian team under Bela Karolyi, Comaneci now lives in the United States with her gymnast husband, Bart Conner. Today, she talks to me about that amazing performance in Montreal, training with Bela Karolyi, and her work with the Special Olympics. Oh, and I ask her about her time with Donald Trump on Celebrity Apprentice. She is a legend, and frankly, I have no idea why she agreed to talk to me. She truly is a Perfect 10. You can visit her website for more on her gym, appearances, and charity work: www.bartandnadia.com. Follow her on Twitter: @nadiacomaneci10 and follow me @susie_meister.

Listen to the interview by clicking here!

Strongman NC Harrison is comfortable in his very large body, even if he confounds the expectations of others.

It’s hard to feel beautiful at five in the morning.  I sit on the bench in my laundry room gym—I’m not even high class enough to have a garage gym—and perform the ritual.  The liniment goes on my wrists first, the Tiger Balm, then the gauze, the tape, then heavy duty Inzer wraps, since I’m pressing today.  I’m not using a barbell but since I broke my left wrist twice during high school football games, once during a game proper and once during a sideline scuffle with a teammate, it never hurts to take chances.

I run over the checklist in my mind: good morning message left for the girlfriend on Skype, dogs nestled all snug in their beds, term paper on images of domestic violence in the Book of Ezekiel turned in on Blackboard, wraps so tight that my fingers feel almost numb but not quite.  Good.  I slip Tori out of her CD case and onto the deck.  Most guys I know, some of them among the strongest in the nation, the world, listen to either thrash metal or gangsta rap while they train.  They say it gets their blood pumping.  This is valid.  I can remember listening to things like Pastor Troy with guys in the fieldhouse or late at night at football camp, or to Slayer with other wrestlers before tournaments, blaring “Raining Blood” between matches.  There’s something tribal about the pounding drums in either of these genres, something that awakens the warrior. That’s cool.  I can’t do it, though. I’m no warrior and I never have been; I’m strongest when Tori whispers, “Trapped in purgatory, a lifeless object alive, awaiting reprisal, death will be their acquisition,” not when Tom barks it, or when she asks, “why do we crucify ourselves every day?”

♦◊♦

 My spinal erector muscles, which the cook in me laughingly refers to as my tenderloins, are filled with blood.  I’ve been training strongman style, again, and worked up to a three rep max on front squat last night followed by two sets of eight Hummer tire deadlifts.  The pain in my lower back was sweetly excruciating and at the time made me wonder if careers were available as a professional weightlifting masochist, but now it just aches dully and makes me wish I’d popped a few Motrin before bed. Not doing the deadlifts wasn’t an option; less weight was not an option. South Carolina’s Strongest Man is soon, then Georgia’s Strongest Man, and in October I want to throw at the Darien Highland Games.  I’m also ravenous but don’t really feel like eating.  Sometimes a hard session late at night makes me queasy, in the morning.  I could never eat early on Saturdays, in high school, and now I can’t if I screw up and lift or sprint (which is more important than one would imagine for strongman, since the events are timed and set at stations apart from one another) too late in the evening.  It doesn’t matter; pressing doesn’t stress me as much as squatting or deadlifting. I can eat afterwards.  A dozen eggs, bacon, coffee, orange juice.

There’s a great pleasure into talking to others who are in the know.  A female friend who has competed in the regional Crossfit Games gets it and so do the basketball players from a local college, my undergraduate alma mater, that I meet at the grocery store.  They just got a brand new gas grill, the same make and model as mine, and we talk about the best way to cook a steak, sea salt and cracked black pepper, and make sure to get the grill hot, hot, hot, one thousand degrees Fahrenheit if you can, no less than six hundred.  This is the only way to get the Maillard reaction, to really get the steak you want.  When they ask me, “What do you bench press, man?” I demure and say, “I haven’t bench pressed in years, guys, really, not much.”  It’s pretty much true.  I don’t train for competitive power lifting anymore, right now, and I doubt I could hit ninety percent of my old max without a month or two of hard warming up.  I can push press or power jerk eighty-five percent of it without any trouble, though, even strict press over my considerable body-weight.  I was never a great bencher, anyway, though, not like Shawn Latimer wearing Inzer gear or Big Jim Williams in a white t-shirt.

I hit three sets of twelve with dumbbells, clean and press.  Since I don’t have a log (that’s a little specialized for a laundry room) this mimics the log clean and press better than anything I can think of.  This is a big, brutish move done with little technique. It makes me feel like a caveman and, like most mornings, I cannot decide if this is a good feeling or a bad one.  As usual I pray the Shema and the Lord’s Prayer between sets.  It calms me, cools me, prepares me for the day. I compose the outline of a sermon, based on linked midrashim, in my head while I balance between the earth and two big hunks of iron.  Multi-tasking is the saving grace of a busy man.

♦◊♦

 I don’t tend to get traditional compliments, the way people think about them, very much.  When you’re big, thick and hard enough at the same time to defy certain categories of peoples’ expectations—like bodybuilder, fat guy, athlete—then they don’t know what to say.  I do get compliments on my cooking, on my academic or ministerial achievement, but rarely on my appearance in any way. I remember something particularly nice that a Fed-Ex guy said to me once, though, on Wrestlemania weekend. He was delivering my rubber bumper plates.  He loaded the tens and fifteens onto a hand-truck to carry them to my door; I racked the thirty-fives, forty-fives and twenty-fives like an Atlas Stone and carried them.  “Man!” he said, “You’re strong as hell!  You must be like a wrestler or something!”

“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to explain my whole athletic history but feeling pretty good, “I used to wrestle a little bit.”

“I’m gonna watch Wrestlemania,” he said, “I can’t wait to see Triple H versus the Undertaker. Man, you gotta be as strong as Triple H!  Big as Triple H! Maybe stronger!  If he can’t beat the Undertaker maybe you can!”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking of the Undertaker’s twenty year streak of victories at Wrestlemania and how he could almost represent an indomitable obstacle in any area, “maybe I could, eh?”  We shook hands and took our leave of each other.  I sit at five AM, wrapping my wrists and feeling a little better and more beautiful because a delivery man, for whatever reason, looked at me and believed in me.  The world also seemed a little more beautiful because I had met a grown man who felt that pro-wrestling was on the level.  It was still real to him, dammit, so maybe I could be too.

Read more posts in the Moustache Club’s Male Body Image series: The Buffest Nation on Earth

Joe Weider and the Creation of the Perfect Male Body

Male Bodies and the Lies We Tell About Them: The Making and Faking of Professional Wrestling

Photo–Flickr/UggBoy

Oliver Lee Bateman examines Pain & Gain director Michael Bay’s problems with male body image. 

Although professionally trained and reasonably well educated, Michael Bay directs only the worst movies.  Movies so wretched that he apologizes for them.  Movies that, even when “good” (like The Rock, which is part of the Criterion Collection), achieve said “goodness” through bombast and craptacularity rather than any genuine engagement with or concern for the material.

That’s fine.  We all aren’t destined to follow in the footsteps of Bergman or Peter Watkins, which is for the best since most of  their work, while undeniably gr8 (gr9, even), is very taxing on the ol’ attention span.  Even a man such as myself, who can devote 20 straight hours to something as mindless as Skyrim without batting an eyelash, would be hard-pressed to tackle all 190 minutes of Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander¹ in a single sitting.

It was in the spirit of watching some brisk, entertaining badness that I actually paid² the princely sum of $5 for admission to a matinee showing of Bay’s latest trash-rock opus, the horribly titled Pain & Gain.  The film is based somewhat loosely on a series of events that you can read about in this Slate article; the historical accuracy of the film, at least for the purposes of this essay, is irrelevant.  Nor do I feel the need to comment on whether Bay glamorizes the activities of the “Sun Gym Gang” beyond noting that, my goodness, look at how pathetic these cartoon characters are.

Instead, what I want to address is how Bay explored issues of masculinity in the course of making a film that, while every bit as slickly-produced and vapid as his previous offerings, is something of a minor masterpiece.

♦◊♦

The Daniel Lugo of the film, Mark Wahlberg’s Daniel Lugo, is a brainless con artist who believes that anything is possible here in the “buffest nation on earth.”  The body Wahlberg developed for the role is perfect:  it is not the body of the bodybuilding professional, the Ronnie Coleman/Jay Cutler build with the giant abdominal wall that pokes out like a bizarro beer belly, but the squat and overstuffed physique of the somewhat committed amateur poseur.  I know this body because it’s the body I have inhabited, with periodic ups and downs, for the past twelve years; and it is a body that is nothing special.  Lugo, however, believes that this lone and meager achievement, viz., the cultivation of a physique that might have won the 1942 AAU Mr. America, has destined him for greatness.  He is a “doer,” a fact he realizes at a motivational seminar hosted by Ken Jeong, and the rules that apply to the morbidly obese and frighteningly  thin people for whom he serves as a “professional spotter” do not apply to him.

Anthony Mackie’s Adrian Doorbal is another recognizable type:  consumed by feelings of inferiority stemming from his apparent micropenis, Doorbal overcompensates by abusing steroids and planning to undergo a phalloplasty.  He lusts after voluptuous women, but succeeds in winning the heart of Nurse Robin Peck (Rebel Wilson) only when it becomes clear that he is financially secure.  He is the least criminally-minded of the culprits, yet complies eagerly with Lugo’s kidnapping scheme, in principal part because he hopes to prove and thereafter enhance his manliness.

 Paul Boyle, the composite character played by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, is the largest and most intimidating of the three, and clearly the most ill-at-ease in his massive body.  He is huge and violent, filled with unspeakable passions and a vague, abiding desire to “do good.”  Physical outbursts are his ultimate solution to all problems, ranging from an attempted homosexual seduction to a temporary absence of cocaine from his addiction-fueled lifestyle.  He wants to be perceived as “soft,” yet is simply too “hard” to be anything but a lumbering, doomed goon.

The other men who populate the film, ranging from Rob Corrdry’s washed-up, horndog ex-bodybuilder gym owner to Tony Shalhoub’s arrogant, egotistical Jewish millionaire, all seem equally deserving of the punishments meted out to them.  Only an ostensibly “natural” man, the detective Ed Du Bois (Ed Harris channeling the stoic cool of Clint Eastwood) can bring this tragicomedy to a close.  No lessons are learned–Lugo, in fact, uses the trial to give an impassioned speech about the American Dream–and the guilty are mocked, punished, and, in the cases of Lugo and Doorbal, sentenced to death.

♦◊♦

If one looks carefully, peeling back the lurid technicolor layers of Bay’s glorious one-upping of the Coen Brothers, at base this movie is concerned with the exposing the fatuousness of post-Pumping Iron manliness.  As the police come to arrest him, Daniel Lugo is doing Roman chair sit-ups and screaming about how “hard” he is.  At other anxious points in the film, he pauses in his illicit activities to “get a pump.”  His self-confidence is nearly unshakable and utterly misguided.  Only when individuals such as the adult filmmaker whom he is attempting to defraud question his intellectual bona fides does Lugo lose his cool.  At no point, however, is he in charge of any situation: he is always as schlubby, out-of-place and dumpy as his large-but-not-enormous physique makes him look when he’s wearing a short-sleeved button-up shirt.³

Lugo’s explosive, misplaced pride results from the potent and thoroughly unreflective narcissism that consumes him.  He, Doorbal, and Boyle are not really “friends”:  their most powerful relationships are with themselves.  Doorbal and his penis, Boyle and his imagined self-righteousness, Lugo and his genius-bestowing muscles–each is, to quote Susan Bordo, a product of a culture where a man’s most enduring bond “involves [himself], his member, and [whatever] has been put on the face of the earth just to get him hot.”  Their urges and drives are internal, and they seek to perform on command.  For Doorbal this is literally the case, as when his wife gives him injections so that he can sustain an unimpressive erection.

These men do not caress or really even touch the female characters in the film.  Lugo has so little interest in sex that he dupes the European stripper with whom he has been intimate into “taking care” of Boyle for the “good of the mission.”  At one point, Doorbal, so concerned about the loss of a domestic life in which he may soon recover full use of his phallus, continues to inject an interloping adult film star with horse tranquilizers until her heart stops.  Only the retired Du Bois has a normal relationship with his (apparently second or third) wife, in whom he confides his concerns about the case he has begun to investigate.

Is Du Bois the “hero” of this picture, then?  Insofar as this farce has one, I suppose he is.  But Michael Bay’s purpose is not to offer a way forward, only to present a heavily stylized portrait of men not even half-full.  This is probably as close as Bay will get to directing Great Movie, and i appears to accomplish everything that the auteur-fronted Spring Breakers sought to do, only at a faster pace and with Dwayne Johnson’s charmingly over-the-top performance in place of James Franco’s.  When we watch Pain & Gain, we are watching the stupid men from a stupid culture of faux-machismo behave stupidly, and for some of us, myself included, that hits a little too close to home.

1.  Nor have I ever finished it, for that matter.  I’ve GTG’d (given up the ghost-ed) on that film almost as many times as I have Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, a book that people never seem to tire of assuring me is “just wonderful once you get into it.”

2. As opposed to watching an awful, hand-cammed film, which is just about all Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers or that 42 movie deserved.

3. A look, alas, that I know all too well.

Read more posts in this series:  Joe Weider and the Creation of the Perfect Male Body

Male Bodies and the Lies We Tell About Them:  The Making and Faking of Professional Wrestling

Photo–Flickr/Hollywood_PR

Oliver Lee Bateman explains why we should pay closer attention to the sports that we watch.

While watching a poorly hand-cammed¹ version of the movie 42, I arrived at the following conclusions:

1. Chadwick Boseman bears a striking resemblance to Jackie Robinson.
2. If it weren’t for his undeniable Harrison Ford-ness,  more people would acknowledge that Harrison Ford is a great actor.²
3. The baseball scenes, which I expected to be atrocious, are perfectly acceptable.
4. In twelve months, nobody will remember that this movie was ever made.
5. Sports can’t save us, nor can we learn anything from the actions of ostensibly gr8 men such as Branch Rickey or Jackie Robinson.

Allow me to elaborate on the last of those points.  In the wake of the fulsome praise directed at Jason Collins for his decision to disclose and thereafter discuss his sexual orientation in the pages of Sports Illustrated³, it is imperative that we distinguish between the appearance of an important sign of social progress and the actual significance thereof.  What is notable about Collins’ declaration, and also about Robinson’s arrival in Major League Baseball, is that these were mere stages on life’s way; in both cases, something had to give.

Mind you, this is not to derogate the value of either action but rather to underscore that they did not occur in a vacuum.  In Robinson’s case, the “lords of the realm” would either admit African-Americans on their terms or continue to allow African-American businessmen to control a small but notable slice of the postwar baseball market⁴.  Collins, aware that the closet had become an impossibility in today’s changing sociopolitical climate, made a perfectly reasonable decision under the circumstances to get out ahead of the weather.  In neither instance did professional athletics, considered institutionally, redeem our fallen society or show us the way to a better tomorrow.  Yet many folks, particularly those who do not study or even watch sports, never seem to tire of making such claims.

♦◊♦

If sports cannot save us from ourselves, what purpose do they serve?  As someone who identifies, at least secondarily, as a sports historian, I’ve wasted a lot of precious time that could have been better spent absolutely killing it at video poker grappling with this question.  I still don’t have a comprehensive or definitive answer⁵, but I believe that I now have the germ of one.

See, within the discipline of history there’s this ongoing debate about whether historians should emphasize change or continuity when discussing the past.  Unlike the question of whether the US History survey taught to freshmen should be split at 1900 instead of 1860 or 1865, this is actually a conversation worth having.  If one chooses to emphasize change, he or she risks exaggerating the “pastness of the past.”  In other words, the gunslingers of Deadwood and the immigrant workers who participated in Pittsburgh’s “Hunky Strike” become the occupants of an alien land, their weltanschauungen inaccessible even through careful analysis and sympathetic readings of whatever primary sources they’ve left behind.  Taken to its illogical extreme, the writing of history itself is made impossible–how could anyone truly tell the “story” of such a past?  But, on a certain level, we recognize that this is unsatisfactory; the past, as Walter Benjamin so eloquently noted, is continuously piling up behind us as we are blown forward into an eternal present.  Thus, it stands to reason that certain continuities warrant our attention:  hasn’t humankind always loved, laughed, hated, warred, ached, wake-and-baked, etc. in much the same way?  Shouldn’t the long run receive priority over a handful of well-known but ultimately unimportant historical events?  This too has its flaws, given that our very mentalities are altered over time as new concepts enter and re-form our discourses.  That isn’t to say that a figure from the past, magically brought forward into the future by the machinations of some Doc Brown-style mad scientist, couldn’t eventually translate his thoughts into our language⁶, but situating this out-of-time individual within a new paradigm would take some doing.

At the risk of wandering too far afield, let me conclude this aside by stating that, while I find the debate fascinating⁷, I have no horse in the race.  However, I have devoted a great deal of attention to popular culture generally and sports specifically because I believe that these subjects can serve as a lens through which we might better perceive what everyday people in the past were thinking about.  What do I mean?  Well, consider how much time you spend talking with your friends about sports or television or fashion or some other inane bullshit.  If you add it up, it probably amounts to a considerable portion of your waking life.⁸ If one of my successors (hopefully much better compensated on account of how Future People will treasure public education) is seeking to give his audience a window into your thoughts, he will ignore the likes of Kim Kardashian and Terrell Owens at his peril.  In other words, sports are not intrinsically important, but instead derive their importance from the fact that so many people in a given society pay attention to them.⁹

♦◊♦

The 1998 Major League Baseball season was one such moment when national attention fixated on professional athletics.  Enamored of the back-and-forth home run derby between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, fanboy-ish sportswriters waxed poetic about how these two demigods had redeemed a game still trying to recover from the devastation wrought by the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

When these two unfortunates were revealed, along with countless others, as PED users, the reprisals were swift and brutal.  Now we got the other story that sportswriters will never tire of writing:  Can sports be saved?  The public continued to watch professional baseball–in fact, the sport is now more profitable than ever–albeit with a sort of weary-yet-aggrieved belief that the men they watched were all dirty rotten cheaters.

In this case, we have a clear example of how a sportswriter-imposed and utterly fantastical narrative can obscure the actual historical value of sports.  The trees in our example consist of all this nonsense about who was “cheating” and who wasn’t; the forest is the much larger issue of how laborers in a specialized capitalist enterprise were modifying their bodies so as to extend their working lives.  This is, I believe, one of the signal questions of our current century:  what counts, in baseball or in any other endeavor, as “performance-enhancing?”  The stark, unsubtle response indicates to me that we do not yet possess a sophisticated enough vocabulary to discuss certain large-scale changes to what constitutes “natural” human performance…and that realization,even absent the provision of any concrete answer to the aforementioned question, is one of enormous significance.

There was nothing special about McGwire’s 70 home runs or Sosa’s 66 beyond the fact that these were high statistical totals.  Neither man was a hero; neither, upon being “outed” as a steroid creation, became a villain.  They were, however, two men among thousands who responded to a host of incentives (some economic, some narcissistic) by electing to “artificially”¹⁰ enhance their physiques.  With millions of Americans enhancing their own performances using substances ranging from Adderall to Zoloft, McGwire and Sosa, like Robinson and Collins, are indicative of a larger societal shift–in this case, a shift toward better living through chemistry.

♦◊♦

Here, then, is my own contribution to the “can sports save us?” genre.  My answer is a resounding no, in principal part because the question itself is flawed.  Sports cannot save us, but if we reflect carefully on what we would otherwise consume in a mindless and haphazard manner, we may learn something about who we were and who we are in the process of becoming.

1. Alas, Jerry Seinfeld was not the cameraman on this film.

2. Srsly, watch Peter Weir’s The Mosquito Coast and then try arguing that Ford isn’t one of the 20 or so greatest film actors who ever lived.

3. Isn’t it curious that Collins elected to make this disclosure via a media outlet best known for its traditional print publication?  It  appears that the allure of the SI cover, curse or no, remains alive and well even in the age of Grantland and Deadspin.

4.  Follow that link.  Negro League Baseball by University of Delaware-based historian Neil Lanctot is easily the best work on this subject, one that is far superior to earlier anecdotal, impressionistic monographs such as Robert Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White (a groundbreaking book, to be sure, but now somewhat dated).

5. Even conceding, as every rational person must, that there are certain objective truths that can be apprehended by our minds, I can’t imagine that this is one of them.

6. An incommensurable or untranslatable language is, according to philosopher Donald Davidson, not a language at all.

7.  Not etymologically speaking, though.  That would be icky.

8.  Such a claim is valid for industrialized, First World (let’s leave the discussion of this fraught term for another time, eh?) societies; as applied to societies where the great majority of individuals eke out a meager subsistence existence, I doubt that the study of popular culture has much usefulness.  Fortunately, I’m a post-1945 specialist in US (not American) History!

9.  Note that I didn’t write that these folks claim that sports are actually important.  Aside from those “can sports save us?” pieces that appear in the wake of a major catastrophe or some socially significant feat, even most sportswriters would concede that the life of the spectator is one of superficial time-squandering–an exercise in mindlessness, as it were.

10.  ”Artificially” as opposed to what, Stanford prof Henry Greely would ask.  What constitutes a “natural” performance enhancer?  Meditation?  Push-ups rather than barbell presses?  A good night’s sleep?  Should the consumption of  genetically-modified foods be taken into account?  &c.

Photo–Flickr/SD Dirk

What can a “sport” built around fakery and deception teach us about the lies men tell themselves?

I had known almost since I began watching it that professional wrestling was a load of bullshit.  My parents, who took entirely too much satisfaction in dispelling any childhood illusions that I happened to harbor, wasted little time in telling me so.  Nevertheless, I derived a measure of solace from the fact that these cartoonish characters who pretended to be real athletes were musclemen nonpareil.  Then this happened:

Dino Bravo, a skilled middle-of-the-card wrestler from the 1970s who would eventually wind up shot to death by mafia hitmen, had salvaged his declining career in the late 1980s by beefing up (via “juicing,” most likely) to play the role of “the World’s Strongest Man” in feuds against WWE stalwarts such as former football player “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan and the equally “juiced-up” fading veteran Don “The Rock” Muraco.  ”The World’s Strongest Man” is a recognizable type in the wrestling commedia dell’arte, and has been performed with great skill by actual strongmen Ken Patera, Bert Assirati, Crusher Blackwell, and Mark Henry.

The bloated Bravo, who was a decent bench presser by “juicer” standards (somewhere in the 400 to  500 pound range, I’d  wager), appeared out of his element with these styrofoam York¹ plates and a more-than-generous spot from future Minnesota governor Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  I had just watched my 18-year-old half-brother complete an actual repetition with 405 pounds on the barbell and could still recall my father working with similarly heavy weights during the prior decade; nothing they did ever amounted to a 715-pound raw bench², but none of it looked as stupidly easy as this phony weightlifting exhibition, either.  And it was also curious that Bravo was the man tasked with doing this, given that the WWE had once employed Ted Arcidi, a world bench press champion and a behemoth of a man over whom I had obsessed years earlier.  To be fair, Bravo, even in this heftier state, could still sell wrestling moves and give a half-decent interview, whereas Ted Arcidi could barely wriggle his arms on account of all the mass that he had packed onto his squat frame.

♦◊♦

Why, twenty years hence, is a forgettable event like this worthy of recollection, much less commemoration?  It was, as I already noted, utter bullshit, but it is also extremely revealing bullshit.  Ever since the so-called “Gold Dust Trio” of wrestling promoters recognized that fans cared much more about exciting outcomes than they did for the glorified clinching contests into which unscripted professional wrestling had devolved by the late 1910s, the sport faced a crisis of legitimacy.  Its earliest champions were, in the main, accomplished “hookers” (i.e., men who could actually wrestle), but occasionally burly entertainers like ex-football stars “Big” Wayne Munn and Bronko Nagurski and former boxing champion Primo Carnera were given extended runs at the top of the card.  By virtue of their prior success in other activities, these non-wrestlers were capable of selling lots of tickets; however, they were also capable of being pinned by anyone with a modicum of grappling talent³.  As such, their opponents were under heavy pressure to make them seem like unbeatable monsters.

Competition among wrestling organizations necessitated the creation of ever more outré fictional characters for whom the fans could cheer.  Dark-complexioned Italian immigrants became “Wild Men of Borneo,” obese college boys acted out the part of illiterate hillbillies, and anybody with a reasonably sophisticated vocabulary and a half-decent physique could find semi-gainful employment as an effete, aristocratic villain. Even real backstories were embellished: college football backups became NFL gridiron greats, Olympic alternates became Olympic champions, and actual Olympic champions became “World’s Strongest/Best Conditioned/Most Perfect Men.”

When Vince McMahon assumed control of the WWE from his father during the early 1980s, he took this practice to new heights.  A notorious “juicer” with a body of immense proportions, McMahon was inspired by the work of Joe Weider’s International Federation of Bodybuilders to create a roster of pumped-up strongmen with made-up (and trademarked) names and superpowers.⁴  Having Bob Backlund, a bland good  guy with a solid amateur wrestling background, as world champion simply wouldn’t cut it in this brave new world.  Instead, McMahon turned to 6’6″ bassist manqué and steroid abuser Hulk Hogan, his answer to Weider’s similarly larger-than-life Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Much as Schwarzenegger never claimed to be anything but a bodybuilder–he once refused to engage his legendary rival Sergio “The Myth” Oliva, a trained powerlifter, in a powerlifting contest on the Tom Snyder Show for precisely that reason–Hogan was never anything besides an extremely limited professional wrestler.  Both men, however, proved quite adroit at seeming “hard” and “masculine,” an ability that brought them great success during a decade characterized by superficiality and excess.

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“A culture that idealizes, fetishizes, is addicted to the hard and impenetrable,” Susan Bordo writes in The Male Body, “is a cold and unforgiving place to be.” I grew up in this culture, and did everything I possibly could to avoid being perceived as soft or weak.  My father was hard and impenetrable, and he ruled over me and my half-brother with an iron fist.  Ours was a household dedicated to the ideal of his strength and dominance.  ”Boys,” Bordo continues, “are ashamed to tell others when they are injured; the simple act of telling is an admission that they are not bearing their pain ‘like a man.’”  My half-brother and I became strong not to cow our peers–we were usually (regrettably) the ones doing the bullying–but to protect ourselves from the pain our father caused.

We needn’t have bothered.  Much like the Dino Bravo bench press, much like the dozens of Olympic also-rans who were billed as Olympic champs, our father’s strength, though certainly still real in some tangible sense, was not what it once had been.  His business consumed nearly all of his time and energy, he was aging, he was deeply unhappy…what we perceived in him was what, in caricature, Vince McMahon and Joe Weider sold to their viewers:  a façade of strength, and nothing more.  He was flappable to a tragicomic degree, his mind a roiling ocean of anxieties and horrifying childhood memories.  He, too, had nothing for protection but his remaining illusions of hardness.

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 The critic Roland Barthes claimed to admire professional wrestling because it provided the spectator with clear and distinct signs:  the good guy was unimpeachably good, the bad guy was incorrigibly bad.  Although the Attitude Era forced an adjustment of that paradigm, the signs remained clear.  The massive bodies, the manufactured backstories, the obvious deceptions (try to imagine middle-aged Hunter Hearst Helmsley or jorts-wearing John Cena actually vanquishing MMA champion Brock Lesnar!)…this endeavor is in many respects the very embodiment of male overcompensation and male insecurity.  The participants, no longer necessarily “good” or “bad,” still vindicate their phony hardness in pitched, scripted battles.

When I watch pro wrestling nowadays–which, for a host of reasons, isn’t that often–I sometimes find my thoughts drifting inward.  Are we men all, I wonder, nothing but poseurs?  On that score, wrestling has one final lesson for us.  For many years, in order to maintain the original “kayfabe” myth, promoters paid fees to state athletic commissions that regulated professional wrestling as a sport.  In the course of revamping his father’s federation as a “rock and wrestling” outfit for the MTV generation, McMahon stopped paying his  dues to these organizations, explaining that he was in the entertainment business.  His matches might feature feats of athletic derring-do, but they assuredly weren’t sporting exhibitions.⁵

This admission, though little more than a historical footnote, is nevertheless deeply fascinating.  McMahon conceded that he is in the business of peddling obvious falsity to the multitudes. He is an honest liar, thoroughly shady and corruptible in all respects, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in on the scam:  after all, his best and most tasteless WWE-verse jokes are on you.  Just buy the t-shirts, the programs, the pay-per-views, the commemorative cups and life will go on as always.

Moreover, serious fans view this truth/falsity stuff as irrelevant. They watch the matches for the quality of the performance:  the truth, in their opinion, is arrived at only through a careful evaluation of the act of pretending.  The most noted example of this approach to professional wrestling was postmodern grappler C.M. Punk’s “worked shoot” promo, which catapulted him to the status of the most important man in the WWE who wasn’t John Cena.  The promo was “worked” in the sense that it was part of a storyline in the fictional WWE-verse; it was a “shoot” in that Punk had aired some actual criticisms with Vince McMahon’s jort-loving, Cena-centric approach to booking.

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It is here, I believe, that we find an answer to the airy and undoubtedly Gen-X question “are we bros just a bunch of poseurs?”  Punk lays it on the line:  yep, my work is a load of bullshit, but some of us are better at this bullshit than others.  For those of us mature enough to recognize the difference,  feigned “hardness” is true or real insofar as one can perform well in such a “hard” role.  In my teen years, I once criticized a renowned professor for being a person who could simply “recite a good script” during his lectures.  But now I realize that, yes, of course that’s all he did–the man wrote the script, for crying out loud!

When you’re young and stupid and scared in a society that insists that you “be a man” (whatever that means), you sometimes find yourself claiming to be way more than you are.  You say you’ve heard of bands that you know nothing about, you purport to lift weights far beyond your Mr. Puniverse skill level, you pretend to have read the great books that any hip scholar worth his salt should have already tackled…and then one of three things eventually happens:   you  keep lying about having done this stuff but don’t ever accomplish any of it, you never do it and focus on doing things you actually care about, or you do it and refuse to look back.

As C.M. Punk’s improbable rise to the top of a profession dominated by musclebound pretenders demonstrates, it’s possible to fake it until you make it.  Come to think of it, is there any other way?  ”Being a man” may at first entail a great deal of self-deception in response to social pressures, but at a certain point along the haphazard highway that leads to mature contentment, it comes to mean nothing more (or less) than “being yourself.”

^{1. Bob Hoffman, the founder of York Barbell Company, was notorious for staging weightlifting exhibitions in which he would perform difficult lifts, such as the bent press, with hollow or aluminum plates on specially-made lighter bars.  Never better than an average lifter by the standards of his era, Hoffman, who billed himself as the “father of weightlifting” in his company’s marketing literature, seized every opportunity to display his virility, thus satisfying the demands of his enormous ego.} 

^{2. Nobody would raw bench 715 pounds until Scot Mendelson did it in 2006. Unlike the 1000-pound bench-suited feats of recent years (also strangely phony, in their own way), I can attest that this is an extraordinary human performance record. I’m certainly no Mendelson, but the bench press has been a lift at which I’ve enjoyed a fair bit of success and I believe I’m qualified to speak as at least a semi-authority on it.}

^{3. Carnera, who had risen to the top in boxing by winning a series of fixed fights, was no stranger to this practice.}

^{4. McMahon was also inspired to create his own professional bodybuilding federation, a venture that failed in much the same way that his later-in-time XFL experiment would. In both cases, an emphasis on the colorful personalities of the competitors couldn’t offset a mediocre product.}

^{5. This was also partly in response to the efforts of investigative reporters such as John Stossel, who devoted considerable time and energy to exposing an enterprise that everyone but a handful of gullible schoolboys knew to be fake. For his trouble, Stossel was punched in the mouth by “Dr. Death” David Schultz, one of the last ardent defenders of the business. For his trouble, Schultz was fired by the WWE. “Dr. Death” would later appear on a highly entertaining episode of the Morton Downey Jr. Show, where he scored big with a friendly crowd by lambasting former pro wrestler and NFL player “Big” Jim Wilson on account of Wilson’s daring to criticize the industry’s terrible working conditions.  Downey Jr., himself an ardent wrestling fan, would appear at Wrestlemania V in a skit that concluded with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper spraying him with a fire extinguisher. All of this is outside the scope of the piece, I suppose, but the videos in those links are almost too good to be true.}

—

Read more posts in this series:  Joe Weider and the Creation of the Perfect Male Body

Photo–Flickr/Snerkie

Can you alma mater afford to fire its head football coach if he fails to win a national title? Can it afford not to?

Pity poor Gene Chizik, who won perhaps the most meaningless and suspicion-arousing national title in the history of college football¹ only to wind up getting kicked out of a crashing plane with nothing but a taxpayer-subsidized $10m golden parachute and his wife’s undying loyalty to save him. Jon Embree of Colorado and Frank Spaziani of Boston College were also shown the door, although neither move was surprising or particularly expensive for the schools involved. As far as mid-major moves go, North Carolina State’s decision to can Tom O’Brien and Purdue’s dumping of Danny Hope make far less sense.

What is the expected ceiling for such programs? NCSU once squeezed double-digit wins out of star QB Phillip Rivers during the Chuck Amato era; Purdue got to the Rose Bowl behind the arm of Drew Brees and the coaching acumen of Joe Tiller. That would seem to be as good as it gets for these programs, which can successfully fill three-quarters of their stadiums on a good week and have a handful of decent rivalry games to excite their alums and undergrads. O’Brien, in particular, had distinguished himself as a quality college coach, someone who was capable of keeping his players out of the newspapers and on pace to graduate in four seven years. Both of these men managed to win six or so games a year, including an occasional upset, and O’Brien boasted an admirable 5-1 record against UNC, NCSU’s only meaningful in-state opponent. However, much like Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, who somehow succeeded in wringing 8-10 wins and 3-5 NFL draft picks per season out of a once-mighty program in a city that no longer cared about it, these men didn’t win national championships.

To which one can only write: LOL WTF LAWLZ ROFLCOPTERSAUSUS REX??? In what is undoubtedly the least fair amateur or professional sport in America², the notion that a team like Pitt, NCSU, or Purdue could win anything absent some Cam Newton-acquiring, NCAA rules-flouting shenanigans is ludicrous. College football, which requires the maintenance of professional-sized operating budgets in spite of the fact that the players are neither appropriately compensated nor allowed to major in the sports they’re playing³, is a meritocracy in the same way that the English Premier League and the Forbes 500 Greatest Humans are: if you don’t have it ($$$), you can’t get it (titles).

At the moment, fellow Texas state employee and former UNC Tar Heel Mack Brown earns 100x my salary. The only government worker anywhere near Mack’s pay grade is men’s basketball coach Rick Barnes, who pulls down a cool $2.5m a year in exchange for the sporadic success he achieved during the heyday of Kevin Durant, T.J. Ford, and Royal Ivey. Brown’s buyout is a bit more reasonable than Chizik’s was; he’s due only $2.75m if canned after 01/01/2013, as he most likely will be. Perhaps Brown, like Barnes, just hasn’t won enough at a place that expects to win every single season.⁴ The fans and rich boosters deserve more than one national title for their $7.5m; they deserve an endless chain of wins, one after another, subsidized by the seemingly endless wealth of an athletic program that can even afford to pay Augie Garrido $950,000 to coach the men’s baseball team in front of the 1,000-2,000 spectators Baseball America subscribers who care about such things.

The mounting head injuries and resulting litigation will eventually bring about the demise of football, but it will do little to change the bizarre financial structure of college sports. The attention will shift to basketball—understandably so, since it’s far more enjoyable to watch—and the cycle of firings and buyouts will continue. Kent State and Memphis and Miami (FL) and Grand Valley State and Lamar University and Texas-Pan American and Arizona State are all equally compelling title contenders, and each should settle for nothing but the best.⁵ Not in terms of faculty output or student quality, of course, because there’s nothing ESPN SportsCenter highlight-worthy about some geek pencilling in a bunch of correct answers on a Scantron form or Dr. Zimickiewicz droning on about the discovery of a flame-retardant polymer that also boasts considerable laxative properties and tastes like lemon pepper beef jerky. Hail to the victors, bro!

1. Only this one compares. Isn’t it crazy to think that Colorado and Georgia Tech once shared a national title, much less graced the AP Top 25? That’s what a series of bad coaching hires (Paul Johnson, Jon Embree, Chan Gailey, Gary Barnett, et al.) and grotesque sex scandals (poor Katie Hnida!) will do to a program. Chizik’s Malzahn-and-Newton-fueled run to an already-forgotten title was unlikely to be repeated, so why keep a man who couldn’t even equal Dan McCarney’s level of success at Iowa State around? Better to prepare for a few years of Bobby Petrino in the here and now, before some other success-starved program sets aside its better judgment in the interest of making a run at a top-10 finish.
2. Just Bing Google a list of athletic department operating budgets and you’ll see what I mean. Pitt, for example, spends something on the order of 50m less on sports than The Ohio State University does. Football teams in the PAC-12 earn more from their conference’s amazing TV deal than a place such as UAB or Akron (or perhaps, to exaggerate the point a bit, the entire MAC put together) spends on all of its sports teams.
3. That kind of arrangement has worked out just fine for the Klitschkos and all of the other Eastern Bloc behemoths who earned advanced degrees in fields like “Physical Science” or “Physical Education.” My father, who played football at WVU, majored in Phys Ed; why don’t most of these would-be sportsmen? Doesn’t it make perfect sense—more sense than an empty degree in “communications” or enrollment in a difficult course that would necessitate laughable attempts at plagiarism like this ? Former NFL player Michael Oriard has an even better proposal, but I suppose it’s best to keep things as they are rather than risk disturbing the calm. The system’s worked out splendidly for everyone involved, after all.
4. For various reasons, Auburn shouldn’t be counted in the same league as such elite sports-focused universities. 1957 split national title aside, it’s a second-rate program, with fewer resources to draw upon that similarly-situated schools like Texas A&M or UCLA. 8-4 is a reasonable expectation; 2010 redux is assuredly not.
5. Given how laughably poor most football game-calling is from a probabilistic standpoint, wouldn’t it make sense for Texas to jettison high-paid assistants Bryan Harsin and Manny Diaz and just hire the “expert”/”championship”/”all-Madden”-level AI from NCAA 2013 to handle decisions regarding two-point conversions, fourth-down attempts, and the like? The savings could then be funneled into an SMU-style slush fund and used to procure the services of more talented players.

Photo–Flickr/ESwift

An earlier version of this post appeared at Penny & Farthing.

MTV star and Religious Studies scholar Susie Meister spoke with two members of the Westboro Baptist Church because she believes we can all learn something from them.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW

Hate Group. Cult Members. Fearmongers. Bigots. I know what people say about the Westboro Baptist Church. This Kansas church run by leader Fred Phelps, Sr. (a former civil rights attorney who is now disbarred) and comprised mostly of Phelps family members has made quite a name for themselves with their colorful signs reading “God Hates Fags” and other inflammatory slogans.  They picket at military funerals and other high-profile events.  They are openly jubilant when innocent people die, claiming it was in God’s just plan.  I know who they are and what they believe, but I chose to interview them for my podcast, The Meister Piece, anyway.

Many think the constant media exposure of the Westboro Baptist Church is part of the problem.  People ask why we would give them so much attention when all we’re doing is promoting their hateful message.  In preparing my guest list for my podcast I was faced with these same thoughts.  Why would I use my platform to provide a voice for a group who openly condemns homosexuals, uses slurs, and believes God not only allows, but orchestrates, horrific acts on humanity for their disobedience?

As a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies, I was interested in speaking to the Westboro Baptist Church to better understand their theology.  In the same way it is important to study the life and politics of Adolf Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan, it is also important to understand theology (however revolting it might seem).  I wasn’t interested in debating with them or condemning them publicly. I decided my intellectual interests and genuine curiosity justified my interview.  I knew that it would be seen as a provocative and I ran the risk of being accused of being an accomplice to their hate.

Steve Drain, who is a convert to the church, handles all of their media requests. Incidentally, his daughter recently wrote a book, Banished, describing her experience in and excommunication from the group.  I requested an interview with Shirley Phelps-Roper who is an outspoken media presence and has appeared on “Tyra,” “Hannity and Colmes,” and other shows.  I was told I could get an interview, but I wasn’t told with whom.  We “met” over Skype and the caller was Rachel Phelps Hockenbarger.  She is a daughter of Fred Phelps, and says they have been on the streets picketing for 22 years.

She was attractive, articulate, charming, and sweet.  She said a lot of things that most people find offensive, but she also revealed a commitment to her community, her family, and, of course, her faith.  A mother of seven children, Rachel had just come back from hot yoga, and apologized for her rosy cheeks. The idea that a member of the Westboro Baptist Church does hot yoga was fascinating to me.  She said her kids get all A’s and one of her sons wants to be an animator. I know a lot of you are probably angry that I would even bother to include this information—why would I want to humanize someone who spews judgment and seems to condone violence towards innocent people?  I guess the short answer is because that’s how I would want to be treated and I believe in the “Golden Rule.” Her behavior has no influence on how I believe she should be treated.  And her beliefs do not change my call to love my neighbor.

Two days after our interview, bombs went off in Boston.  I chose not to post my interview, and instead asked Rachel if I could speak to her one more time to ask about why they see the bombs as God-ordained.  She agreed.  When she called on Skype this time, there was a sign behind her that said, “God Sent the Bombs.”  She believes the bombs were an act of judgment towards Massachusetts for being the first states to legalize same-sex marriage.  In her theology, God actively intervenes in good and bad ways to demonstrate his approval and disapproval towards humans.  While most of us see the bombs as a demonstration of evil or at least very sick thinking, the Westboro Baptist Church believes they are a part of God’s divine plan.

Theologically, the Westboro Baptist Church is a testament to how one’s interpretation of the Bible (or most sacred texts) can make almost anything defensible.  In their worldview, love includes condemnation of the things they believe God hates including homosexuality.  They are Calvinists who believe everything that happens is pre-determined, both on earth as well as in the afterlife. They are not interested in converting you.  They believe God has already chosen who He wants to be saved and damned.  They see their picketing and the hateful signs they hold as a demonstration of love.  They say that their focus on homosexuality is merely in response to society’s obsession with it.  They have an affinity for the God of the Old Testament, who was quite merciless in his judgment, wrath, and hellfire for those who disobeyed.  While most Christians now tend to gloss over or dismiss the evidence for a vengeful God, the Westboro Baptist Church focuses on it.  The God who coordinated an earth-wide flood, had a hand in wars, and ruined the life of Job, demonstrates how God is actively engaged in earthly matters, according to them.

I find the Westboro Baptist Church’s interpretation of the Bible to be profoundly inaccurate, selective, and skewed, but I suppose mine is too.  I prefer to focus on social justice, unconditional love, and tolerance. Maybe we’re all guilty of confirmation bias with regard to our faith—we find whatever texts and doctrines support our existing worldview and choose those as the foundation for our belief system. In the case of Westboro Baptist Church, it seems the heavy hand, charisma, and dominance that Fred Phelps Sr. has demonstrated towards his family and church drives most of their biblical interpretations.  I know many of you will write comments below quoting Scripture about “casting the first stone,” “God is love,” and the fruits of the spirit, and I spoke to Rachel about those things, but that is not how they choose to see their God.

In the end, perhaps if we were all as devoted to our beliefs and as enthusiastic about unbridled love towards our fellow man as the Westboro Baptist Church is about their dogma, maybe love would win.  They are not violent (physically) and are well-versed in their rights to picket even when their message is offensive. I celebrate that we live in a country where even the most disgusting message can be spoken and the most repulsive religious expressions are legal as long as they don’t infringe upon mine.  In the end, I know love wins. I just wish the Westboro Baptist Chruch knew what love is. I can only hope I live a life that compels them to picket my funeral.

Photo–Flickr/Burstein!

The “is he or isn’t he?” saga of former NFL All-Pro Kerry Rhodes suggests that keeping silent about one’s sexuality may no longer be an option.

Back in the 50s and 60s, the tabloid press speculated about the sexual orientation of heartthrob George Nader. Rory Calhoun and Guy Madison came under similar scrutiny.  So did Roy “Rock Hudson” Fitzgerald, god rest his soul.  For a time, the illusion of heteronormativity was preserved by means of a full-court press agent press:  lavender marriages, pay-per-appearance galpals, publicity photos of these hunks changing tires or pumping iron.  Some, like Sal Mineo, gave up the ghost rather early; others clung to their privacy until the bitter end.

Now, however, such cloak-and-dagger operations strike us as the quaint rituals of a benighted time.  ”Just be yourself,” goes the contemporary mantra (so long, of course, as that “yourself” isn’t too too transgressive!).  This is, in the main, a positive development; after all, why shouldn’t each person be free to cultivate an identity commensurate with his or her needs and desires?  When addressing the issue of his own sexuality, musician and spoken-word performer Henry Rollins insisted that he wasn’t gay, because if he were, he “would  burn the closet down.”

Professional men’s athletics, particularly the high-revenue sports popular in North America, remains the last preserve of the closet that Rollins claims he would so eagerly destroy.  In a perspicuous post that recently appeared on the sports commentary mega-site Grantland, critic Wesley Morris noted with approbation the casual, taken-for-granted homosexuality of future WNBA star Brittney Griner and opined that, far from a single spectacular “coming-out” admission by a male star, the character of the NFL and other leagues may simply be altered via the gradual admission of men, like openly gay NFL hopeful Alan Gendreau, who made their sexual preferences known long before entering the league.

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This accords with other cultural breakthroughs that were not so.  The legendary Jesse Jackson winning the presidency in 1984 would’ve been a genuine watershed for the civil rights movement; Obama’s triumph in 2008, by contrast, represented a not-at-all-unexpected victory by a blandly competent public servant with an Ivy League pedigree.  Outing Tom Brady or Tiger Woods might change the game, but Alan Gendreau signing with the woebegone Cleveland Browns would move the needle not at all.  Yet this is fine, perfectly fine–the future is coming, and with it will come the ascent of more people who are free to “be themselves” (again, so long as “themselves” aren’t too too transgressive).

Pity poor Kerry Rhodes during this liminal moment, though.  The tabloid media has got him cornered, dead to rights, and now, on the basis of photos like the ones below, he is being compelled to spill the beans.

But wait!  Rhodes is far from finished.  No, he has an ace up his sleeve:

According to a member of BA who claims to be close to the situation, Kerry Rhodes is engaged (to a woman) and set to get married this summer. The woman has yet to be named but is said to be a model who is “drama free” and prefers to  ”stay out of the lime light”. Another person who also claims to be close to the situation says that she is a “corporate chick from DC” that does not “live off of him” or “prefer to be a Baller’s wife”. Maybe Kerry’s unidentified fiance models and is a corporate chick at the same time. It is possible, I guess. The wedding is said to take place in June and according to one of these sources Kerry has dated this young woman for 10 years.

It’s rare to see the marriage card played at such a late date, particularly for someone who isn’t a Scientologist, but there you have it.  And really, given the antediluvian attitudes of some American footballers against whom Rhodes has played, all of this–the caution, the possible surreptitious second life, the accompanying self-loathing and denial–makes sense.  Michael Vick’s brother Marcus, who has fallen on hard times following a semi-successful career quarterbacking Virginia Tech to second-tier bowl games, certainly wasted little time in heaping homophobic scorn upon Rhodes’ former teammates on the Arizona Cardinals:

Those Arizona Cardinals got a brunch of Fruit Tarts on there team….. Watch out for the pile on pumps this year!!

Marcus Vick, alas, has been too busy evading arrest to clarify this remark, but the point stands.  Rhodes, whether involved with Russell “Hollywood” Simpson or the “drama-free” female model to whom he claims he is engaged, is in an awkward position.  He could give the tabloid media the confession it craves, only to have to deal with more vitriol from the likes of Vick and rival NFC West cornerback Chris Culliver, who claimed that he “can’t have that sweet stuff” in the locker room.  On the other hand, it’s possible that there’s nothing to confess.  Rhodes may indeed be engaged to be married, may indeed have a legitimate platonic reason for cavorting with Simpson, or may indeed be legitimately bisexual (an orientation that is much more difficult to justify in an era that demands such “is he or isn’t he” answers) as well as totally open with his fiancée about this fact.

♦◊♦

“Things aren’t like they used to be, and they never were.”  George Nader and Rock Hudson would likely have preferred our time to theirs; the burden of constantly pretending to be someone else is a weight that few would wish to bear. Yet for the confused and uncertain, does the pressure to disclose an  ironclad sexual identity constitute a similar punishment?  Such disclosures are certainly not mandated by the LGBTQIA community, which represents an ever-broader coalition of orientations and interests, but rather appear to be a nod from the tabloid media to the interests of its primarily heterosexual and still surprisingly conservative audience.

Marcus Vick must know if Kerry Rhodes has “the sweet stuff.”  Chris Culliver wouldn’t dream of putting his own 100% red-blooded heterosexuality on the line against someone who may secretly find him attractive.  Dr. Phil McGraw, that paragon of psychiatric probity, will settle for nothing less from Ronaiah Tuiasosopo than a full confession of his homosexual lust for future gridiron great Manti Te’o.

Forced outings under duress make for great theater, but such imposed labels are nothing more than straitjackets.  I do not profess to know the intentions of Rhodes or Tuiasosopo, but I do believe that the business of “ defin[ing] one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe” should remain a distinctly personal endeavor.  Rushing to judge those engaged in that process does them and everyone else a disservice.

Photo–Flickr/Lobster Stew

Jim Jividen loves Bravo almost as much as he loves the NFL Draft.  Now he’s found a way to combine the two.

I enjoy the NFL Draft – I’ve got Kiper’s blue book, the Ourlad’s guide, and the Top 100 Big Boards for Rang and Mayock.  You want to know why Bjoern Werner projects as a left defensive end in a 4-3, I got you.

I enjoy Bravo.  I know the easy stuff, like to whom “close your legs to married men” was said, but can also play some deep cuts.  Who was the best cast member from NYC Prep?  What didn’t ever get sold at End of the Century on Gallery Girls?  I got you.  My Bravocabulary game is tight.  That sounds like a good game, actually.  Call Parker Brothers.

So let’s put those things together.  Mock Draft!

1 Kansas City – This isn’t a draft with an Andrew Luck who you’d deal your whole board to pick; this isn’t a draft with an Orlando Pace or a Jonathan Ogden, a can’t miss franchise saving left tackle – so the Chiefs pick the one can’t miss superstar, Nene Leakes, bringing swagger and catchphrases with her to middle America. With two network roles and about to add a second Bravo show – Nene’s going to be a Trump Check cashing, sack dancing, scenery chewing machine. Plus, her oldest son was once arrested for bringing pot into a police station. Bloop! Plonk!

2 Jacksonville – A colorless town (with an unsettling burnt armpit odor) picks a colorless player (who is also weirdly odorless, the carbon monoxide of offensive linemen, he recently contributed to the deaths of half the cast of MTV’s Washington Heights) Luke Joeckel T Texas A&M

3 Oakland – It was Al Davis’s last wish, someone to return that renegade, swashbuckling, outside the law glory to Oakland. That person – the table flipper and recipe thief – Teresa Giudice. She brings along her husband Joe, who posed as his brother for a fake driver’s license, as they take their outlaw act to the East Bay. The Autumn Wind is a Raider. Pillaging just for fun.

4 Philadelphia – Chip Kelly comes from Oregon and he’s bringing one of his own, no, not Toni and Candace, co-owners of Women and Women First, that’s on IFC, but instead his pass rusher, Dion Jordan OLB Oregon.

5 Detroit – 50 years ago Detroit had the highest per capita income in the country; in 2009 the Silverdome sold for half a million bucks. This is a town in need of a hero. That hero – Shahs of Sunset star Reza Farahan, who referred to his best friend of two decades MJ as having been “double stuffed by some Jewish cousins.” Perhaps it is an overture to Michigan’s healthy Middle Eastern population, and the pick becomes controversial when Reza refers to Lions QB Matt Stafford as a “yummy white ho.”

6 Cleveland – the Browns get their best cornerback pairing since Frank Minniefield/Hanford Dixon by giving Joe Haden a partner – Dee Milliner CB Alabama.

7 Arizona – I spent two weeks there last summer and there is nothing hotter than Phoenix. Except Padma Lakshmi, who the Cardinals absolutely steal with the 7th pick.

8 Buffalo – The Bills head into the season with Kevin Kolb as their starting quarterback; they end it with Geno Smith QB West Virginia.

9 New York Jets – Desperate for a pass rush, the Jets get the best edge man in the draft, Barkevious Mingo OLB LSU.

10 Tennessee – Music City USA has its pick of the full Bravo canon, from “Tardy for the Party” to “Money Can’t Buy You Class” (or my favorite, Miss Lawrence’s “Closet Freak”) – the pick is the singer of “On Display”, Melissa Gorga, whose husband Joe’s comfort with women’s wear could probably get her booked at Tribe.

11 San Diego – before Philip Rivers gets killed the Chargers get the best tackle on the board, Eric Fisher T Central Michigan.

12 Miami – the median age of the town still drops .25 years with the somewhat unexpected selection of Inside the Actor’s Studio host James Lipton. And now, from the questionnaire  developed by the legendary Bernard Pivot, Jim – What is your favorite word…suplex. My favorite word is suplex.

13 New York Jets – You don’t deal Darrelle Revis unless it’s for a tattoo worthy of Rex Ryan’s other arm.  In the spirit of Mike Mamula, the Jets pick a combine hero; one of the all time Height/Weight/Speed guys who has all the measurables:  Atlanta based male stripper Ridiculous.  Dude’s gonna need a bigger cap.

14 Carolina –the value on the board is in the interior of the defensive line, the Panthers leap at Sharrif Floyd, to whom Chris Berman has presumably already given the obvious musical nickname.

15 New Orleans – the Saints year in football jail comes to an end, they want to spend this pick on someone who is above the fray, beyond reproach – and that’s Lisa Vanderpump. Jiggy becomes the toast of the French Quarter but is viewed as bougie by residents of  Treme.

16 St. Louis – the Rams have been faceless since the end of the Greatest Show on Turf when Kurt Warner resumed his previous life bagging groceries and Mike Martz passed away mumbling “the horror, the horror”. Andy Cohen returns to his hometown to become that face, serving  both an on field and front office roles. Wednesday becomes Shotski night in the Ram locker room.

17 Pittsburgh – the top defensive end is still on the board and the Steelers need to replenish that edge rush. Ezekial Ansah DE BYU.

18 Dallas – other than the American Family Association, there aren’t too many organizations I dislike more than the Cowboys; my least favorite Bravolebrity is Millionaire Matchmaker Patti Stanger. Here’s hoping they can’t turn the card in fast enough.  I enjoy it when people I dislike align in some fashion; if Nancy Grace married my freshman year forensics coach, I’d put the wedding announcement on my fridge.

19 New York Giants – there remain 3 premium offensive linemen on the board, give New York the best tackle left Lane Johnson T Oklahoma.

20 Chicago – the Bears are dying for a guard; there are two elite interior linemen in the draft and both remain in this spot – Chance Warmack G Alabama.

21 Cincinnati – what are the two things we know about the Bengals? 1. They could use an influx of cash 2. They aren’t afraid to draft players whose characters come into question. The pick is Adrienne Maloof; she brings some casino money and a sleazy veneer. Chef Bernie and Rod Stewart’s son come along for a dysfunctional entourage.

22 St. Louis (from Washington) – the best receiver in the country is still available here, Travon Austin WR West Virginia.

23 Minnesota – the Vikings have lost 4 Super Bowls; Tom Colicchio has won 5 James Beard Awards; you need to start changing the culture in Minneapolis. He’s the pick.

24 Indianapolis – there is some reason to believe that Colts owner Jim Irsay is batshit crazy, or at least, enjoys a little drinky drink every now and again. That’s a good description of Sonia Morgan, who brings her interns and toaster ovens to the Midwest.

25 Minnesota (from Seattle) – They thing they’re drafting Mike Singletary; personally, I think the Vikes are about to get Catfished, but they’re taking Manti Te’o ILB Notre Dame

26 Green Bay – Kenny Vaccaro S Texas is still on the board for the safety hungry Pack.

27 Houston – The Texans are close, filled with really talented players on both sides of the ball, but Matt Schaub, even though he’s not a bad QB, just isn’t field general enough to lead this team to the Super Bowl. You know who is? Jeff Lewis – he’ll feed Andre Johnson and fill the writers’ notebooks. If he and Jenni Pulos can stay out of protracted litigation, this is the pick that puts the Texans over the top.

28 Denver – Elvis (Dumervill) has left the building, the Broncos get the best lineman on the board, Star Lotulelei DT Utah.

29 New England – Bill Belichik does what he wants. And what he wants is to hand out with Vicki Gunvalson’s Maybe Boyfriend Brooks. “I don’t care what Tamra says, Brooks is the Bomb Dot Com.”

30 Atlanta – The first Husband/Wife combo on the same NFL team since the secret Ken Anderson/Pete Johnson elopement in 1981 – the Falcons draft defensive lineman Kroy Beerman’s wife (why? Why did he do this?) Kim Zolciak.

31 San Francisco – Sure, as someone who watches every Niners game I could give us Brandi Glanville, just for the Oscar dress alone – but our need for a safety wins out with the pick of Jonathan Cyprien S FIU.

32 Baltimore – the Ravens look for doubles in the first round, someone safe with a good track record and a high motor. Plus, we’re reminded by GM Ozzie Newsome, “Girl wrote No Scrubs!” Kandi Burruss.

 

Photo–Flickr/CleaningQuickie

If that’s what it takes to pay the bills, an older and wiser Jim Jividen will kiss any flag that’s placed in front of him.

About 15 years ago, I ripped an American flag clean in half.

I should probably clarify.

About 15 years ago, when I was just starting to teach, I had a lesson on symbolic speech where I asked students if my tearing up an American flag would be offensive.

After getting some measure of equal action on both sides I took a piece of  notebook paper, spent about 30 seconds pencil drawing a flag, that, while having the appropriate sections where 50 stars and 13 stripes might be located, was really just a collection of squiggles that I nonetheless called “An American Flag” before I tore the paper in half to a healthy howl of protest.

The discussion then unfolded about the nature of personal offense and when it is that legislation is an appropriate remedy to protect from that offense and finally about why it is that students saw an American flag in that piece of paper, despite (more evident upon my reconstruction of said paper, Ta-Da!) only the label to reasonably indicate such. I maybe mentioned Rene Magritte, or at least sang a little of that one Paul Simon song, ‘cause dude could get pretentious back in the day.

I used to say it wasn’t a good lesson unless someone was a little unsettled; exercising your brain is like any other muscle – if it’s not sort of uncomfortable you probably aren’t doing it right. Like most of my stuff, any blowback dissipated by the end of the week, and I was on to the next mildly provocative lesson, probably about why I would have voted to acquit OJ Simpson.

But this was an Age Before the Wars. Not the actual wars, the ones in the Middle East with hundreds of thousands of fatalities, but instead before the Imaginary Wars on Christmas and Easter. Before the days when half of the Republicans in the country were of the view that Christianity should become our national religion and “Happy Holidays” became an epithet. So, when a Communications professor at Florida Atlantic University recently taught a similar lesson by having students write the word “Jesus” on a piece of paper and step on it - the result was the university apologized, the lesson was removed from the curriculum, and that self-professed Christian instructor has been shifted to online only courses given resultant death threats.

Which I guess is a good demonstration of the power of symbolism. Or the power of power.

It’s been a long time since I taught anything like that American flag lesson. Even had one been, as was the case at FAU, in a departmentally approved textbook, I know that’s trouble I don’t need to buy. I started running a cost-benefit analysis of everything that came out of my mouth about a decade ago, and student engagement almost never balanced out the heft of job insecurity. “How many students are likely to be unhappy if I…question the merits of the Cold War…or discuss that there are views of morality that exist in the absence of belief in a divine power….how many of those students will then ding me on an evaluation, or worse, complain to the Dean…and how many of those complaints will it take before I lose my health insurance.” I don’t tweet, and one of the primary reasons is that Monday afternoon, the somewhat incendiary “On Fox News, someone’s about to say none this would have happened if the marathoners got to bring their own bombs to the race” fell out of my fingers. But the only person who read it was my mother and she’s unlikely to complain to my employer.  The mass of men lead lives of quiet utilitarianism.

I can’t say that I loved college. But I loved the idea of college. I loved the idea that classrooms were places where thoughts could bounce off the walls like a trampoline park; I went to a not particularly invigorating school in a not particularly invigorating time in a not particularly invigorating part of Ohio and even I had a history professor within the first two months of my freshman year discuss the struggle of some marginalized group by quoting e.e. cummings:

I will not kiss your fucking flag….There is some shit I will not eat.

That was the fall of 1988.  I neither say nor feel any similar sentiment. 25 years later, I kiss any flag that’s placed in front of me. I got bills and that’s how they get paid.

Even if that flag is just a doodle on a ripped in half piece of notebook paper.

Image–Wikipedia

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By accepting Chris Brown’s apology and consuming his products, are we saying domestic abuse is forgivable?

I recently watched an interview where Matt Lauer asked Chris Brown about his violent past with then-girlfriend Rihanna. Brown said all the “right” things regarding his progress including that he has moved forward, attended counseling classes for 52 weeks, and learned it was “absolutely wrong” for him to give his girlfriend black eyes, tear at her face, and nearly push her out of a moving vehicle. He then promoted his latest single.

Something about this did not sit well with my soul. Is it that easy? Should a public figure–or anyone, for that matter–beat the crap out of his girlfriend, do his court-mandated punishment, and go on acting like everything is perfectly normal? The larger question for me, though, is whether certain “sins” are unforgiveable–not in the religious sense, per se, but in the practical sense. The leaked images of Rihanna, post-beating, with her swollen face and empty eyes, still linger in my mind, and the interviews, pre-beating, where Brown talked about his mother as the victim of domestic violence, ring in my ears. Are his platitudes about “moving forward” and his served community service sentence sufficient penance for his sin?

If you are not a fan of Brown’s music you might see him merely as a blip on the hip-hop/R&B radar, or even a pariah of pop culture, but his music is undeniably successful, and despite appealing primarily to a female demographic, Brown has seen little backlash financially from the hit (pun intended).

Since the initial revelation that Brown had assaulted Rihanna on the eve of Grammy night, there have been several articles written lamenting female fans that have tweeted him referring to the assault by disparaging Rihanna and/or saying he could “beat [the female tweeter] anytime.” Such a response toward an admitted girlfriend beater makes it unclear who to be angry at: the abuser, the media, or a “rape culture” more generally. My unease was exacerbated by the fact that in recent months, it has been presumed that Rihanna has been at least casually dating Brown again. Surely we, the public, should forgive him if the victim herself has. She said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that not only did she forgive him, but she still loved him. In that moment, I felt like I had been punched in the gut (so to speak).

We have frequently watched as celebrities melted down publicly. The revelations of Charlie Sheen’s epic binges, Mel Gibson’s explosive temper, and Tiger Woods’ serial infidelity all unfolded publicly, and while all were despicable, they felt forgivable. Chris Brown’s violent attack on Rihanna seemed different. Was it the vivid imagery of the leaked photographs, the façade of a happy pop couple, or the horrific feeling that if this could happen to a gorgeous, talented, strong-minded woman like Rihanna, then this could happen to any one of us?

In the opinion of most, Rihanna seems to be falling into the “fool-me-twice” category, wherein victims of abuse often come back for more. But perhaps the public is as well. By accepting his apology and consuming his products, are we saying domestic abuse is forgivable? The alternative is assigning him a life sentence for what, for all we know, was an isolated incident with his girlfriend. It would be a lot easier to believe he simply flew off the handle “just this once” if he hadn’t since had a series of outbursts including an outburst on “Good Morning America” and feuds with rappers Drake and Frank Ocean. At least we know he doesn’t just bully women.

It seems silly that we would require artists to live up to a certain moral code, but with each dollar we spend on their products, it feels like an endorsement, not just of their music, but also of their private lives. For me, Chris Brown’s “apology” seems hollow and contrived, and even though he has served his sentence, I’m just not quite ready to forgive. Even if Rihanna did.

Photo–Flickr/OM Gee

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In the first of a series of posts about the objectification of the “ideal” male body, Oliver Lee Bateman examines the life and times of fitness entrepreneur Joe Weider.

Owing to an @Schwarzenegger tweet that had been retweeted by a friend of mine, I learned that you will be able to stream Joe “The Master Blaster” Weider’s memorial online.  There’s even a countdown until that blessed event, although it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hold your breath as long as the late, gr8 Weider now can.  The man lived an almost impossibly extended life–93 years, far more than you or I or any other mere mortal can expect.  He had long since passed into legendary status, with his name (pronounced “Wee-der,” not “Why-der,” although I favored the latter version until a few years ago) plastered across nearly every piece of third-rate exercise equipment ever sold at your friendly neighborhood K-Mart.

This isn’t going to be another matter-of-fact summary of the Master Blaster’s bona fides.  The story of Joe Weider’s rise from first-generation Jewish immigrant anonymity in Montreal to exercise mogul-dom has been documented extensively elsewhere, most notably in the Weider brothers’ autobiography Brothers of Iron, which is filled with the sort of selective memories and self-aggrandizing anecdotes you’d expect in such a source, as well as in  Muscle, Smoke & Mirrors, Randy Roach’s sprawling, shambolic weightlifting history. Instead, I’d like to address Weider’s invaluable contribution to the late 20th-century problematization of the male body.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post about the cartoonish bodies of 1980s WWE wrestlers, I harbored an intense desire to reach epic, Ted Arcidi-esque proportions.  This was a ludicrous and implausible objective, but it arose out of painful experience:  by cultivating such a carapace of hard muscle, I hoped to armor myself against the depredations of my father, a former star college athlete who bulked large (both literally and figuratively) in my life for a very long time.  This concept of muscularity-as-armor has been written about to great effect by feminist academic Susan Bordo and literary critic Samuel Fussell (Fussell’s book Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder, in which he describes his transition from feckless academic to competitive bodybuilder, is essential reading on this score), and I’ll discuss it in greater detail later in this series.  For now, however, it is sufficient to note that this desire brought me into contact with the manifold works of Joe Weider.

For the young, aimless meathead in the early 90s, Weider was unavoidable.  He was the “trainer of champions” (of beauty pageants that he sponsored and judged).  He was the “father of bodybuilding” (by which one means the person who popularized and, I would later learn, degraded an activity that actually had its roots in late 19th century gymnastics and strongman competitions).  He was the the “king of supplements” (most of which probably consisted of little more than flour and baking soda).  My first set of weightlifting gloves bore his name, although I had, as mentioned previously, no idea how to pronounce it (also, no one anywhere should ever, EVER use weightlifting gloves for any reason besides looking cool in a co-starring role opposite the Rock).  Some of the first and most worthless fitness advice that I received came from his horrifying glossy magazines.  I purchased a set of rinky-dink Weider dumbbells, which I kept under my bed and used to perform the hundreds of bicep curls recommended in the aforementioned glossy magazines.

I did all of this, contributing tiny amounts of my allowance to the Weider coffers, without realizing the Master Blaster’s pernicious influence on the American male writ large.  As I continued my fruitless quest to construct a body that would be heard long before it was ever seen, I looked past the freakish performance-enhancing drug creations that festooned the nigh-pornographic pages of FLEX.  The only other male body that I cared about–really, the only body I cared about at all during this period–was my father’s immense frame.  Not until years later, after I had long since abandoned my quest for superhuman size and begun focusing on general fitness, would I recognize the ramifications of Weider’s lifelong effort to enrich himself at the expense of others.

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Like fellow charlatan/businessman/con artist Vince McMahon, Joe Weider conquered a disorganized niche sport.  Arising in opposition to 1930s-era physical culture enthusiasts like York Barbell magnate Bob Hoffman and diminutive Sealtest muscleman Dan Lurie, the Weider brothers wrested control of the physique competitions that these fitness pioneers oversaw. Hoffman, who supervised the US Olympic weightlifting program during the most successful period in its history, staged his AAU “Mr. America” pageants as add-ons to strength shows and lifting competitions.  However, the popularity of these exhibitions quickly outpaced that of the events preceding them, and, regardless of whether the pageants were held first or last, they invariably drew larger crowds than the athletic components of Hoffman’s AAU meets.

The Weiders, operating across the border in Canada, quickly recognized the potential inherent in these bodybuilding spectacles.  Even as Bob Hoffman and his supporters argued that one should “train for strength and form will follow,” Weider used his magazine Muscle Power to argue against the 3-day-a-week, 3-lift, 5 set by 5 rep routines favored by massive brutes like 300-pound strength champion Paul Anderson:

Let me tell you fellows, you’ll never become a [bodybuilding] champ with 3 workouts a week.  So, as far as I am concerned, none of them [Hoffman, Paul Anderson, et al.] knew what they were talking about. And those who advocate the same methods today are still back in the stone age of bodybuilding.  Right now, I am going to bury this stone age idea, this unscientific nonsense, the stick in the mud teachers of our sport have been propounding.  I’ve killed off more stupid bodybuilding ideas in the past few years than all the other instructors put together. Now I am going to debunk another. No champion, not a single Mr. America title winner, ever built his body working 3 times weekly.

The apotheosis of the Weider routine can be seen in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ambitious but flawed Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (which is almost as much of a Weider hagiography as the brothers’ own autobiography):  a rep-heavy, hours-long grind that is undoubtedly intended to be done in conjunction with a regimen of anabolic steroids of the sort that physician John Ziegler introduced into professional sports in the late 1950s.  There are merits to Weider’s method, and Weider himself, although never a good lifter in any conventional sense, employed it to good effect in the course of developing a lithe, sinewy body that enabled him to place competitively in a handful of 1950s physique pageants.  But, as is the case with the ill-trained but slick-talking sports guru Greg “Coach” Glassman and his periodization-free CrossFit methodology, much of what Weider endorsed in official organs like Muscle Power was utter bullshit.  Safer, more performance-oriented approaches to weightlifting, like those outlined by former powerlifters Mark Rippetoe and Jim Wendler, are in the tradition of Hoffman, Anderson, and shoulder press champion Bill Starr; they owe almost nothing to Weider’s work (though Wendler does concede that higher-than-average reps, in the 15-20 range, are useful for some assistance exercises), and, in the case of Rippetoe and his Starting Strength program, break violently with Glassman and CrossFit as well.

But this is altogether too much history, and very nearly beside the point.  What matters for our purposes is that Weider’s mantra of “train for form and strength will follow” would eventually win the day; he triumphed by separating the physique pageants from the athletic moorings that had grounded them in performative reality, and then took his act mainstream when Ziegler’s first-generation steroids came into widespread circulation during the 1960s, changing forever the look and shape of the pageant “champions” (i.e., the men that Weider picked to win, in the same way that Vince McMahon picked his John Cenas and Hulk Hogans) that Weider bragged about “training” (i.e., “juicing”). Whence we have had forced upon us, in turn, Reg Park, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lee Haney, Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, and now the shameless Kai Greene (that link is extremely NSFW and features an extremely disturbing method of “juicing”; please watch this video if you’re looking a slightly more PG version of what that guy is all about).

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Was Joe Weider, who inspired a generation of young men to build first-class physiques, really such a bad guy?  A full answer to that requires a brief discussion of how the Master Blaster paid the bills back in the late 1950s, when the federal government still aggressively prosecuted the sale of pornographic material through the postal mail and full frontal nudity was banned.  During this period, magazines like the pocket-sized Tomorrow’s Man, published and edited by the homosexual nutritionist and fitness expert Irvin Johnson, began doing gangbusters business among male readers.

Tomorrow’s Man featured the work of some of the finest gay physique photographers of the time, men like Earle Forbes and Lon Hannigan, as well as articles on diet and nutrition from Johnson, who claimed to have invented the earliest protein supplements.  For Johnson, the magazine was a labor of love; for Weider, who was neither a homosexual nor at base particularly interested in nutrition or even fitness, its audience represented another market to be exploited.  In short order, Weider was ripping off Tomorrow’s Man and muscle enthusiast Bob Mizer’s all-illustration, no-content Physique Pictorial with trashy, exploitative, and extremely lucrative offerings such as Demi-Gods and The Young Physique. In an extraordinarily homophobic article published in a 1957 issue of Bob Hoffman’s exercise-oriented Strength and Health magazine, York Barbell weightlifter Harry Paschall excoriated all of these publications but singled out Weider’s offerings as particularly worthy of scorn:

We agree…that the Weider publication Demi-Gods (along with its sister magazine The Young Physique) sets a new low in the sordid world of the queer books. The menace of these homosexual magazines is more serious than ever before, and the cause of clean physical culture threatened by peddlers of pornography.

As David Chapman and Brett Josef Grubisic explained in their excellent pictorial history American Hunks: The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture, 1860-1970, not all of this material was created equal–and Weider’s publications were of a far lower standard of workmanship than those of his competitors, most likely because he was only in it for the money.  By the time the feds moved against his offerings, Weider had already departed for the bigger time:  peddling the tanned, greased-up, and extraordinarily “camp” monstrosities who would owe their fortunes to his patronage.

♦◊♦

Here, then, is where Joe Weider worked his worst mischief.  He, like Vince McMahon, seized control of an admittedly silly but strangely profitable little industry that was ripe for the plucking.  To accomplish this, he first commodified the male body.

But in so commodifying it, he alienated the male body from any conceivable function that it could perform.  He took the male body away from the homosexual photographers who had, from the time of Eugen Sandow’s arrival to American shores at the turn of the century, succeeded at glorifying it in heretofore unimaginable ways.  Instead of beauty, Weider offered them cheap filth, the sort of material that, taken to its logical conclusion, culminates in the truly depressing (see the above NSFW Kai Greene link, wherein–spoiler alert!–he has sex with a grapefruit).  To the weightlifters in Bob Hoffman’s York Barbell camp, the men who won gold medal after gold medal at world lifting championships, he replaced their actual strength with the mere illusion of strength (“train for form and strength will follow!”).  And for the rest of the men who in one way or another reacted to bodybuilding culture–and how could you not, when all of the notable 1980s action heroes (save Bruce Willis) and 1980s pro wrestlers (save Dusty Rhodes) were beefcake caricatures?–he gave them an aspirational image, beamed out along supermarket checkout aisles throughout the land, to which no reasonable person, male or female, should ever want to aspire.

Then he sold those men a bunch of junky products and flour pills that he claimed would replicate the effects produced by chemical substances developed via legitimate scientific research.  Then he assured them, in a manner redolent of Charles Atlas’ old “The Insult that Made a Man Out of Mac” advertisements, that other men would submit to  their newfound muscles and women would swoon over them (insofar as women were involved in any of this  muscle-building business at all; as noted in “The Power and the Gory,” Paul Solotaroff’s account of the steroid-fueled rise of 1970s bodybuilding icon Steve Michalik, women were frequently cast aside in favor of an extra hour or two to lavish on “back day”).  Then he died at age 93, wealthy beyond my wildest imaginings, and this quagmire was the legacy he left us.

I have no deep insight regarding the identity groups that have acted against this nonsense–as, e.g., with the gay “bear” subculture described in loving terms by Andrew Sullivan in the virtual pages of Salon–or the individuals who operate outside of it, examples of which can be found in worthwhile pieces from Noah Brand, Josh Magill, and Margitte Kristjansson that have been published by this magazine.  No deep insight, but an abiding faith that this monolithic and stupid cultural practice will die away, as so many others have, leaving behind little trace beyond a series of incomprehensible images of those Weiderian hulks who once walked, or at the very least lumbered, across the surface of this earth.

TTFN, Papa Joe!

Featured Photo–Wikipedia

Oliver Lee Bateman laments the inability of game developers to produce a video game that captures the unique charms of professional wrestling.

I was excited when my review copy of the latest installment of THQ’s WWE series arrived. I hadn’t played a wrestling game on a console with any regularity since 1997, when WCW vs. nWo: World Tour combined with Final Fantasy VII to consume the majority of my free time during junior year of high school.¹ Since then, dozens more wrestling games have come out, most developed by THQ and roughly corresponding to whatever “season” the WWE was on, á la EA’s various pro sports series.

I loaded up WWE ‘13 and selected the “story mode” that allows the player to relive the WWE’s ludicrous Attitude Era, a nadir in wrestling creativity that has recently begun to be rehabilitated as the preteens of that era have reached adulthood. Would this “story mode” allow me to impregnate Mae Young with a plastic glove, as powerlifter Mark Henry had done? Would I have to push the square button as fast as I could to avoid having to plant a smooch on Vince McMahon’s bare bottom?

No, there was to be nothing so fun as that. The game’s “story mode” opens with the founding of the heel stable Degeneration X, a creative decision that enabled Hunter Hearst Helmsley to go from career midcarder to Vince’s son-in-law and heir apparent. But you’re not involved in the backstage machinations that led to this; instead, you’re put in the role of Shawn Michaels and forced to immediately fight Mankind. I skipped the far-too-long entrance sequences² and got right into the match, which IRL had turned on outside interference from HHH that enabled the Heartbreak Kid to win the day. What followed was a sloppy and exceedingly silly engagement. I moved my character forward and had him throw a punch. Mankind appeared to be staggered by the blow. Michaels threw several more punches, knocking him through the ropes and onto the floor. The commentary somehow managed to repeat itself despite my being a mere :40 into the match. The only offensive attack so far had been a punch. Not a low punch or a high punch, just a punch.

Mankind reentered the ring while I struggled to figure out how to exit it. As I fiddled around with the controls, he grappled my character and then bodyslammed him. I jabbed at the buttons and got HBK back to his feet, whereupon he was bounced off the ropes and into a clothesline. He rose after some more furious button-pushing, then got body-slammed again. All this in under 1:30! Mankind was a legendary worker, but he wasn’t an especially fast one, so this pace didn’t make any sense. Although the graphics were superior to those of WCW vs. nWo: World Tour, the underlying gameplay was the same. Grapple, slam, grapple, slam. After another :60 of these moves, I lost the match by pinfall.

Determined not to repeat my mistakes, I studied the controls and then restarted the “story mode.” This time, HBK walked right at Mankind (your character can’t run or even move as fast as the characters in UFC Undisputed can, it seems), grappled him, and hit a neckbreaker. While he was on the ground, I had Michaels give him a few stomps. When he rolled to his feet, I grappled him again. From there, it was bodyslam, bodyslam, bodyslam. At one point he successfully grappled HBK, but I pushed the “reverse” button at the precise moment³ and escaped the hold. Then came another series of cheap, easy moves. Although I didn’t have a life bar to follow, it appeared that Mankind was approaching the end of the line. Toward the close of the match, HHH came to ringside, perhaps to interfere in the bout if Mankind was thrown outside. But I didn’t bother with that: I bodyslammed him a few more times, applied the superkick by pressing triangle on the controller at the appropriate time, and avenged my earlier loss.

Following my bodyslam-fueled victory, I quit the game, opened the PlayStation’s disc tray, and placed the WWE ‘13 disc back into its box. I felt dirty, used, taken for a ride. What had I just done? I couldn’t bear to give a product like this another ten minutes of my life. Better games—Starcraft 2, Skyrim, Super Smash Brothers Brawl—were out there demanding to be played. In a certain sense, this is a golden age for gaming: the great games are extremely well conceived and almost infinitely replayable. Yet there is also more glossy, polished trash on the market than ever before, and I had just encountered some of it. THQ meant well, I suppose, and people who have followed this series⁴ will doubtless enjoy the latest offering. Considered apart from issues of brand loyalty, however, WWE ‘13 is not a good game.

The problem is this: THQ doesn’t know how to make a video game about wrestling. That’s not surprising, given that most people, including the people at THQ, don’t really understand what wrestling is all about. Some serious commentary about the sport has begun to appear, but wrestling has never successfully transcended its disreputable origins. Although it’s a billion-dollar industry⁵, its employees, marginalized by the larger culture, still cling to the carny mentality of yore. Pro wrestling, then, remains little beyond trashy prime-time filler, and even its “smarks” probably wouldn’t accept a game that placed backstage developments at the forefront, regardless of how integral they are to it.

That was, however, the premise of Adam Ryland’s Extreme Warfare text sims, and I suppose he has cornered the market⁶ on games that put you in the booker’s position. Nonetheless, if the THQ crew could take their considerable skill at fashioning “uncanny valley” likenesses of pro wrestlers and apply that toward creating a sandbox world for the player’s Paul Heyman/Vince Russo/Ole Anderson/Dusty Rhodes booker character to inhabit, I can’t even conceive of how good the resulting game would be. Imagine roaming freely around whatever arena your show is taking place at, talking with wrestlers, ironing out grievances, helping set up matches, and perhaps even interfering in them. You could start by working in a tiny regional promotion and wind up in the WWE. Or, in a historical mode, you could take charge of a federation like Georgia Championship Wrestling during the late territorial era and attempt to survive WWF’s takeover attempt. In a game like this, you would be empowered to do almost anything that one could conceive of a wrestling promoter doing⁷, and in an intuitive, visually appealing way that Ryland, owing to budgetary limitations, hasn’t yet produced.

This won’t ever happen, of course⁸, but isn’t it pretty to think that it could?

1. I’m not sure if there was a way to become “good” at WCW vs. nWo, although my cousin Charlie became proficient at staging somewhat realistic-looking wrestling matches with it. I, on the other hand, became proficient at chaining together 15-20 Scott Norton (yeah, everyone’s favorite arm wrestling champion was in there) powerbombs to win a cheap and easy victory. You’d strong-grapple the guy, quickly do the controller movement for the powerbomb, hurl the guy to the ground, pick him up, strong-grapple him while he was dazed, and then do it again. If he somehow managed to break the sequence, you’d wait a few minutes, run through some regular grapples, and then do it again. However, even a properly-staged wrestling match in this game was quite absurd; after all, how many hurricaranas-in-seriatim could one expect to see in a match? How could a man’s back withstand the force of 15-20 powerbombs? And, most importantly, in an activity where winning and losing was predetermined by the booker, why should the virtual matches be framed as a contest of fighting skill at all?
2. Why are sports video games so laden with this filler? How many programmers work exclusively on designing lavish sequences that are nearly always fast-forwarded or skipped? Surely no one lingers on these scenes: after watching the opening to a new game in Madden or EA’s companion NCAA Football series, I can’t imagine that even the most lethargic among us would sit blithely through it again. The exceptions to this rule are FIFAs 2012 and 2013, which feature blissfully short introductions leading to enjoyable gameplay, and NBA 2k13, where the Jay-Z-overseen soundtrack embeds itself in one’s brainpan, thus making the pregame music videos almost impossible to ignore.
3. What was being tested by this particular “reverse” function, I wondered? WWE ‘13 was the first game I had played in a very long time where everything that I was being asked to do seemed utterly pointless. This came as a shock, given that THQ’s UFC Undisputed 3, although a bit complicated at points (your “blue worm” chases your opponent’s “red worm” when you’re applying a grapple!), was nevertheless a faithful simulation of that sport. Therein lies the problem: UFC supplanted pro wrestling as the nation’s most colorful fighting sport, and, as has been noted elsewhere, its bloody reality made the lurid fantasy inherent in pro wrestling seem silly and shallow by comparison.
4. Can such things be? Is there anyone among us who has played every single WWE game?
5. Albeit one in which the near-monopsonist McMahon’s huge profit margins hinge on the fact that his actor-stuntmen are not unionized and deprived of access to employer-provider health care.
6. This game, or least the versions that I played up to the ‘08 ediition, is every bit as good as the much better-known Out of the Park Baseball simulator. However, I’m quite certain that Extreme Warfare’s subject matter, which has far more limited appeal, has in turned limited its sales. There are other issues with the game, though: it takes a maddeningly long time to move your federation forward in time, and match staging entails a significant amount of point-and-click micromanagement.
7. Lest one might argue that this would be impossible to make, a game along these lines would be far more “bounded” than Skyrim or LA Noir. The arena is a finite space, and the activities that could be undertaken there would be limited in number. You wouldn’t, for example, be able to just run around shooting people, although you would find yourself dealing with sex scandals, drug scandals, and backstage conflicts among your wrestlers.
8. No self-respecting game development company would put millions of dollars toward the creation of a game that would interest only Dave Meltzer, the Masked Man, and a handful of late 90s e-wrestling veterans. That means we’ll have to content ourselves by continuing to combine Fire Pro Wrestling Returns with Extreme Warfare—a clunky and inelegant solution, but a solution nonetheless.

An earlier version of this article appeared at Penny & Farthing.

Not all attention-grabbing newspaper headlines are created equal, argues Oliver Lee Bateman.

…or so the latest science tells us:

Bigger is better—at least when it comes to a woman’s penis preferences, a new study says.   Women may have felt pressured to say the politically correct thing: That size doesn’t matter, said study leader Brian Mautz, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, Canada. So his team set up an experiment in which 105 Australian women—averaging 26 years old—each looked at 53 life-size images of various computer-generated male silhouettes projected onto a screen.

But wait, there’s more!

A German study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concludes that staring at women’s breasts for a few minutes daily is better for your health than going to the gym. ”Just 10 minutes of looking at the charms of well-endowed females is equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out,” said author Dr Karen Weatherby, an expert on ageing. ”Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation.”

There you have it:  cutting-edge research, carried out according to the strictest standards and published in peer-reviewed journals.  The work done here, at least in the case of the penis study, improves somewhat our understanding of the nature and evolution of the human body, so I suppose that’s mostly pretty alright.

Yet the story can’t stop here, and we can’t stop here, because the media needs killer headlines.  What it doesn’t need are nuanced explanations of either of these  studies–the fact that the first  study also found that shoulder to hip ratio trumps height or penis size was buried at the bottom of most published accounts–or insights from the researchers themselves save a juicy (and hopefully pun-filled) sound bite or three.

♦◊♦

Judging from the sheer volume of insightful, progressive blogging now taking place on teh internetz, ours is a more enlightened age than any that has preceded it.  An age of wonders, wherein we might all work together to heal the harms inflicted by our benighted ancestors.  Then, like so much manna from heaven, come these eminently clickable headlines from places like Time and The Daily Record. “Well now, ‘Women Prefer Big Penises’,” a casual first-time browser of such a site might think after seeing this post on the main page.  ”That sounds like something I’ll click on.”

Assume, arguendo, that he or she does indeed click on it, and away we go.  ”Women Prefer Big Penises” commences with a quote from a news article summarizing the aforementioned big penis study.  Should the reader proceed further?  If this person is anything like the ADD-afflicted students I teach, many of whom sit in the back row of my freshman history class watching Breaking Bad or scrutinizing the text messages on a significant other’s phone, the buck will stop there.  Now is not the time for patient reflection; now is the time to strike.  ”I hate all this stuff about big penises!  That’s so unfair!  Penises can be all sizes, man.”

In another corner of the Internet, a lengthy essay based on a hasty overgeneralization of the work of the late Paul Feyerabend is being prepared for publication on some longform deep-thinker’s quarterly that gets a fraction of the web traffic the site that published “Women Prefer Begin Penises” does.  ”Oh, we’ll teach those counterfeit scientists to go about problematizing male and female bodies,” this solitary genius author, whose heart is in the right place, thinks aloud.  ”The time has come for me to undermine their position as epistemological autocrats, in the process freeing people from the tyranny of abstract concepts such as ‘truth’, ‘reality’, and ‘objectivity’.”

♦◊♦

Soon, for reasons that will remain completely obscure to all save the original parties to “Women Prefer Large Penises,” a war of mostly like-minded and good-hearted people will rage across the twitterverse, the blogosphere, and the tumblrland.  Big breasts and big penises, small penises and small breasts…everything will be up for grabs.  A regular brouhaha of a donnybrook of a slobberknocker, one that could eventually wind up mired in a discussion of racism on HBO’s Girls (remember that, folks?  that was only two or three centuries ago, give or take) and may even warrant coverage from the same mainstream media organs that broke the news about these penis/breast studies.  Or at least from BuzzFeed, which is almost the news in much the same way that West Virginia is almost heaven.  Regardless of the form this coverage takes, I can assure you that it will be every bit as nonsensical as the reporting on the studies that occasioned the conflict, with underpaid ex-Bleacher Report interns finding ways to shoehorn as many SEO-friendly references to big breasts and big penises into whatever content they end up generating.

Who, then, is to blame for this hypothetical mess?  The various well-meaning folks coming at this problem from the myriad of approaches that constitute today’s shambolic American Left?  Nah.  As both Richard Rorty and Walter Benn Michaels have observed elsewhere, the real culprit is capitalism.  Controversy creates clicks, and clicks congeal into cash (for somebody, anyway–certainly not for me or those Bleacher Report interns!).  Alas, reacting to stories that could’ve first been rendered in a more nuanced, more boring format, is exactly what the publishers of such controversial material are hoping for.  And hey, fancy that, I just did precisely what I’m criticizing other people for doing.  But look, bro, this work is for science!  At least, it’s for science in the same way that staring at breasts is for science, which is to say it’s a colossal misreading of a far less exciting point.

But if you were to ask breast researcher Dr. Karen Weatherby a question along the lines of, “Say, my brother’s a zoophile, and I’m coming at this from a totally real and not at all facetious or judgmental place, but would his weak heart get the same benefits from staring at a dog’s genitalia?” and then make your headline “Doctors Say Staring At Animal Genitalia 10 Minutes a Day If You’re a Zoophile is Good for Your Health,” you’ll get some hits, I suppose, but probably the wrong ones and not nearly enough to keep the lights on.  And that’s a shame, because even if it’s equally accurate, it will turn off rather than titillate the mildly pervy relatives who kept forwarding the original piece to me with a “personal message” along the lines of “LOL GUESS UR IN GOOD HEALTH SONNYBOY!”

The people have spoken, and their message is loud and clear:  dude u seen that 1 thing bout teh big dicks

Photo–Flickr/Tiger Girl

Wrestling expert Jim Jividen previews Wrestlemania 29 and ranks every single Wrestlemania match in the pay-per-view’s long and storied history.

Sunday is Wrestlemania 29.

The first major sporting event I can specifically recall watching in real time is the ’77 World Series; I remember Reggie Jackson’s three homer game with more specificity than I do Albert Pujols matching him in 2011.

I had just turned 7.

The year before the Reds won their second straight World Series; when I think about those late 70s Yankee teams I feel them as part of my life– the way I process thoughts about the ’77 World Series is very different than everything that came before.  The Big Red Machine might as well be the Gas House Gang to me. They’re pages in history books.

Popular sports bloggers now are younger than I am; there’s a heavily trafficked Giants blog whose author is too young to remember Will Clark. I haven’t entirely reconciled that yet – probably in the same way someone of a generation previous to mine who read something I wrote about baseball fifteen years ago wouldn’t be inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt about Willie Mays.

I don’t remember any World Series before ’77 or Super Bowl prior to XII.

But Wrestlemania? I was 14 in the spring of 1985, a wrestling fan for 2-3 years at that point. I saw Rocky III in a Marion, Ohio movie theater and Hogan and Mr. T in their SNL sketch with Fernando as it was airing.

Not Fandango. Fernando. These kids today…

I’ve seen them all. Every minute of every match. Sunday we do it again.

WWE Title Match: The Rock © vs. John Cena
-A year ago, the build for the first version of this match was predicated on an inter-generational fight. Rock, representing the “Attitude Era” the much lamented golden age of wrestling profitability criticized Cena (and, by extension, the ethos of modern WWE) as being a children’s product. The Rock’s a weird vehicle for that as a broader perspective might see both as quarter pounders with different wrappers – the shift from Styrofoam to cardboard doesn’t really change a flavor designed to be palatable to the most mouths possible. I still go to McDonald’s sometimes; it’s a super familiar taste but I don’t confuse it with a 4 star sandwich.

Rock’s got the strap, which will surprise fans who only tune in once a year and wonder why the guy in those Paul Walker movies is on USA leading into a dancing segment by the Funkasaurus. He ended CM Punk’s run, the longest since the Hulk Hogan title reign during which that first ever Wrestlemania took place, at the Rumble (Cena won the actual Rumble to get the shot) and has presumably been toting this belt to all of his B list functions subsequent (I’m picturing Rock at In and Out with Dax Sheppard and Marlee Matlin; the newly designed title belt over his shoulder as they split some animal fries off the secret menu).

The storyline is that Cena lost a match he could not afford to lose at WM28 and it has ruined his life. That might be more impactful had they played that at any point, in the way, say, that TNA is doing with AJ Styles. Instead, Cena walked out of losing to the Rock and right into going over the returning Brock Lesnar at the very next PPV and spent the year being the same John Cena we’ve seen for years, unchanged by wins, losses, time, space. He’s a cartoon. Brightly colored, one dimensional, voiced by Hank Azaria. He’s TV’s John Cena.

He wins here, because he has to, in a match that will be just fine and too long and not worth watching a second time.

I think there’s a possible heel beatdown postmatch, either by Lesnar, taking out his frustrations over losing to HHH – or, more interestingly, by Lesnar and Punk together – finally joining forces under Paul Heyman to become a mega heel duo.

World Title Match: Alberto Del Rio © vs. Jack Swagger
-Del Rio has held the secondary world title belt since the beginning of the year, turning babyface in such a transparent way to gain Hispanic interest you’d expect that Rance Priebus had joined the creative team. He’s been targeted directly by a newly repackaged Jack Swagger, now an anti-immigrant zealot with a particularly effective mouthpiece, Zeb Colter (Dutch Mantel). Swagger may not come out of Mania with the belt, but he’s already polling really well in his red state congressional primary. I look forward to reading his position papers on climate change (Like evolution and raising taxes on millionaires – another secular scientist hoax) and gun control (If Jesus wanted to limit how many assault weapons I could own, why did He give me two hands?).

Swagger won the Elimination Chamber match in February to get the shot and has taken out Del Rio and his walkaround guy Ricardo multiple times. They’re both competent midcard workers; give them 14 minutes and they can give you a 3 ½ star match. I’m going to say Del Rio keeps, but is then laid out by Swagger allowing for Dolph Ziggler to cash in the briefcase and win the strap.

 Brock Lesnar vs. HHH
-Imagine if you will, from a business perspective, the following counterfactual – Brock doesn’t put Cena over immediately upon returning to wrestling; instead, he takes that white hot reaction he received a year ago when he emerged, a conquering hero in the eyes of a wrestling public that viewed him as a legitimate, UFC approved, wrecking machine – and runs over everyone they put against him all year long until facing the Undertaker at Wrestlemania. An unbeatable, maybe uncontrollable, legitimate beast against the Streak. Look, my wrestling preferences are not aligned with the business needs of WWE; I am willing to accept that the Wrestlemania I’d construct with this roster (Generico and Pac would get 22 minutes) is probably not the one best calculated to sell merchandise. But nothing, from the time Lesnar walked from behind the curtain the night after last year’s Mania, could have seemed more obvious, from solely a business perspective, than Unstoppable force v. Immovable object, and they absolutely could have had that match and chose to toss it away.

Instead they have this. Brock beat Hunter at Summer Slam, Brock broke Hunter’s arm (and Shawn’s, for good measure) and then F-5’d the Old Man. Hunter busted up Brock hard way in retaliation and then was forced to put his career on the line to get this match.

They’ve added Shawn for Hunter’s corner and made this a No Holds Barred stip, ensuring this will be a good match; I’d guess no worse than second best on the show. Theoretically it’s possible that Hunter might lose (perhaps with Shawn throwing in the towel in a way that could lead to a year long build to a Hunter/Shawn match at WM30; maybe if they are both violating their retirement stip for one match they can get away with it – maybe DX goes into the Hall of Fame the night before to add to the tension) but I don’t know that Hunter has it in him to lose again to Lesnar.

CM Punk vs. Undertaker
What story were they planning to tell before Paul Bearer died?

In each of the previews I’ve written in this space, I’ve discussed Punk’s title run; encouraging as far back as August that it be centered around length. Punk had the longest WWF/E title run in a quarter century; it’s the first line in his wrestling obituary. So here he is, just two months after the end of that historic run in a match against what is probably the most focused upon streak in the history of wrestling – the Undertaker’s unbeaten Wrestlemania record.

And instead of that story – we’re throwing around an urn.

Among the merits to the last four Undertaker matches was the lack of goofy. The Undertaker is no longer undead, he’s a veteran athlete who, through guile and fortitude, can rise to the occasion one day a year and win his match regardless of circumstance. He’s extinguished Michaels and Hunter in “last of a dying breed” matches – where the implicit (and last year, explicit) premise has been the last connection to the glory days of the promotion is on display, maybe for the last time.

Remember when Hunter stood in the ring in the build to 28 and told the Undertaker that there weren’t any guys in the dressing room like the two of them anymore?  My money is it’s Punk who would have been the most pissed off, the most likely to want to tell those old men to get the hell out of his ring.  He could have done that here.

Instead of that – instead of running on that kind of aggrieved, believable, “you Attitude Era assholes need to go away – and with my 400+ days as WWE Champ, I’m the guy to make it happen” fuel — they gave Punk Paul Bearer’s urn. And that just makes the Undertaker so doggone mad!

There’s some mileage to be gained from a full frontal attack on the Attitude Era – Punk could have told the Undertaker that not only is he better than the Dead Man, and Michaels, and Austin, and Rock – but there are a half dozen guys buried throughout the roster who are better than they are now or ever were and it’s time the WWE stopped living in its past. Much like Punk’s original shoot promo, the way to generate some heat into this program would be to tap an existing vein. I can believe Punk’s pissed off that the Undertaker is still hanging onto his Wrestlemania spot; I can’t believe that Punk is tormenting him about William Moody’s death.

The problem with using “real life tragedy” in a wrestling angle isn’t that it’s distasteful or disrespectful – it’s that it isn’t believable; it makes the program a joke. No one above the age of 12 could possibly think that Punk could really be desecrating Paul Bearer’s remains, and no one under that age has any idea who Paul Bearer was.

It should have been a one week reference — cut the heat promo on the dead manager, inject some personal animosity into the broader program – but what could have had some real energy just became a childish angle that makes this the most disappointing program of the Wrestlemania build.

It’s probably still the best match of the night, no worse than second behind HHH/Brock.

Tag Team Title Match: Team Hell No © vs. Ziggler and Langston
-Kane and Daniel Bryan have been champs since September. It’s almost 7 months. That’s the longest tag run in three years.

Has this been a good year for Bryan Danielson? A year ago, the most sustained show long crowd reaction the day after The Rock met John Cena was not for either of those guys, but instead for Danielson, who wasn’t even booked. Daniel Bryan chants filled arenas for months – and while you can’t call a 7 month tag title run a burial, he clearly isn’t as over as was he at this point last year. He became a crutch for creative; Danielson could do the comedy vignettes that would fill the programming, and the lack of good matches and the disinclination to frame him for the WWE audience as someone who you can count on when you want to see a good wrestling match (which was how they branded Mr. Perfect, for example) makes this sort of a lost year. Hopefully, what it’s done is eliminate the downside risk (good luck with your future endeavors) as his non-wrestling utility is probably accepted by management. I don’t know if he’s any closer to a 25 minute Wrestlemania match today than he’s been throughout his tenure with the promotion. Presumably, they recognize they can’t rely on Rock/Hunter/Undertaker for too many high profile matches going forward and would at some point utilize the star power of that generation to help create the next wave of wrestlers who will make the company money in future Wrestlemanias.  But there doesn’t appear much indication of that, and certainly not with Bryan.

I’m tired of being wrong about the champs dropping this belt and Danielson breaking free of this tag team. I predict it in every event.

I’m picking it here too. Ziggler and Langston win the belts.

Chris Jericho vs. Fandango
-For whatever reason, Vince became convinced that “evil ballroom dancer” was the right way to counterprogram RAW against Dancing With the Stars, and given his past appearance on that show (although I don’t know that it’s been referenced as part of this build) Jericho has gotten the call to help get Fandango over.

The “evil” element of the Fandango gimmick is working pretty well; he’s viciously attacked Jericho multiple times and looked believable in doing it. The ballroom dancer part of the gimmick has shorter legs; like Doink – it probably can’t work as a babyface. I’d expect this to be too short to matter much with the dancer going over (Maksim Chmerkovskiy left Dancing with the Stars this season, his run in to aid Fandango would be the weirdest Mania celebrity cameo since Herb, the guy who never ate a Whopper, teamed with GenichiroTenryu).

Ryback vs. Mark Henry
-This is not an arm wrestling match or a bodyslam challenge, but, for those of you unfamiliar with these men, it might as well be. They will stand in the middle of the ring and slowly hit each other with clubbering fists until Ryback bodyslams Henry and gets the win.

Randy Orton, Big Show and Sheamus vs. The Shield (Rollins, Reigns and Ambrose)

-If you’re like me you’re watching the inaugural season of Big Brother Canada…

…And you watch the US and UK versions as well – years ago, I was starting to go out with a woman and my brother said “tell her you own 5 wresting DVDs. Five. You keep that shit to yourself”. My international interest in the Big Brother franchise isn’t that – but it can see that from there.

So, if you’re watching Big Brother Canada, you know that the main alliance in the house has nicknamed itself The Shield and uses the X armsign upon casting votes to evict. I’m rooting like hell for them.

I’m also rooting for their WWE namesake – The Shield hasn’t gotten nearly enough ringtime considering the quality of two of its members; WWE doesn’t have to become the workrate based promotion that I’d prefer to recognize that they can use match quality to help get guys over. There’s no reason to beat them here against an ad hoc babyface team. Randy Orton looks as bored as a 14 year old during a mitosis lecture. If he doesn’t turn here, he’s never going to pass Biology.

Brodus Clay, Tensai, Cameron and Naomi vs. Cody Rhodes, Damien Sandow, Nikki and Brie Bella

There will be dancing.

That’s the show – it’s perfectly fine. The Undertaker/Punk and Hunter/Brock matches certainly have **** potential; the possibility of Ziggler cashing in his briefcase and Daniel Bryan wrestling for more than 18 seconds are also worth some anticipation. The pre-show has a Barrett/Miz (and maybe a Cesaro?) match; it’s five hours of sports entertainment for your wrestling dollar, and is bound to be a happening.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no analogue for the following:

I’ve seen every Wrestlemania match multiple times. This is, I believe, all of them. Ranked in order of quality, for whatever reason. Match times are rounded; the Wrestlemania at which the match took place is in parentheses; there’s a star rating for every *** and up match.

1 IC Title: Razor Ramon d. Shawn Michaels 19 min (10) 5
2. Owen Hart d. Bret Hart 20:30 (10) 5

3. Bret Hart d. Steve Austin 22 min (13) 4 ¾
4. IC: Ricky Steamboat d. Randy Savage 14:30 (3) 4 ¾

5. World Title: Chris Benoit d. HBK d. HHH 24:30 (20) 4 ½
6. WWF Title: Kurt Angle d. Shawn Michaels 27:30 (21) 4 ½
7. WWF Title: Shawn Michaels d. Bret Hart 62 min (12) 4 ½
8. Tags: Edge/Christian d. Hardys d. Dudleys 22 min (16) 4 ½
9. Tags: Edge/Christian d. Hardys d. Dudleys 15:30 (17) 4 ½

10. Undertaker d. Shawn Michaels 30:30 (25) 4 ¼
11. WWF Title: Randy Savage d. Ric Flair 18 min (8) 4 ¼

12. WWF Title: Brock Lesnar d. Kurt Angle 21 min (19) 4
13. Undertaker d. Shawn Michaels 24 min (26) 4
14. WWF Title: Steve Austin d. The Rock 15 min (15) 4
15. Kurt Angle d. Chris Benoit 14 min (17) 4
16. Eddy Guerrero d. Kurt Angle 21:30 (20) 4
17. Money in the Bank 15 min (21) 4
18. IC: Bret Hart d. Roddy Piper 14:00 (8) 4
19. Shawn Michaels d. Chris Jericho 22:30 (19) 4
20. Ultimate Warrior d. Randy Savage 20:30 (7) 4
21. Undertaker d. HHH 29 min (27) 4
22. WWF Title: Steve Austin d. Rock 28 min (17) 4
23. Undertaker d. HHH 30:30 (28) 4
24. WWF Title: CM Punk d. Chris Jericho 22:30 (28) 4

25. Edge d. Mick Foley 14:30 (22) 3 ¾
26. MITB: 14 min (24) 3 ¾
27. WWF Title: Steve Austin d. Shawn Michaels 20 min (14) 3 ¾
28. WWF Title: Hulk Hogan d. Randy Savage 18 min (5) 3 ¾

29. IC/Euro: Chris Jericho &Chris Benoit d. Kurt Angle 13:30 (16) 3 ½
30. WWF/IC Titles: Ultimate Warrior d. Hulk Hogan 23:30 (6) 3 ½
31. WWF Title: Diesel d. Shawn Michaels 20:30 (11) 3 ½
32. World: Rey Mysterio d. Kurt Angle d. Randy Orton 9:30 (22) 3 ½
33. Rock d. Steve Austin 18 min (19) 3 ½
34. Christian d. Chris Jericho 15 min (20) 3 ½
35. MITB 19 min (23) 3 ½
36. MITB 12:30 (21) 3 ½

37. World: Undertaker d. Batista 16 min (23) 3 ½
38. Undertaker d. HHH 18 min (17) 3 1/2
39. WWF Title: HHH d. Rock d. Mick Foley d. Big Show 36:30 (16) 3 ½
40. Shawn Michaels d. Ric Flair 20:30 (24) 3 ½
41. World Title: Undertaker d. Edge 24 min (24) 3 ½
42. Brainbusters d. Tito Santana/Rick Martel 9 min (5) 3 ½
43. MITB 13:30 (26) 3 ½
44. MITB 14:30 (25) 3 ½
45. WWF Title: John Cena d. Shawn Michaels 27:30 (23) 3 ½
46. Rock d. John Cena 30:30 (28) 3 ½

47. Ric Flair/Randy Orton/Batista d. Mick Foley/Rock 17 min (20) 3 ¼
48. Rey Mysterio d. Eddie Guerrero 12:30 (21) 3 1/4
49. Tags: Cactus Jack/Chainsaw Charlie (Terry Funk) d. New Age Outlaws 10 min (14) 3 ¼
50. Matt Hardy d. Jeff Hardy 13 min (25) 3 ¼
51. World Title: Chris Jericho d. Edge 15:30 (26) 3 ¼
52. Undertaker d. Diesel 16:30 (12) 3 ¼
53. Randy Orton d. CM Punk 15min (27) 3 ¼
54. World Title: Edge d. Alberto del Rio 11:30 (27) 3 ¼
55. Tags: Nastys d. Hart Foundation 12 min (7) 3 ¼
56. Rockers d. Haku/Barbarian 10:30 (7) 3 ¼
57. Steve Austin d. Savio Vega 10 min (12) 3 ¼
58. Hart Foundation/Danny Davis d. British Bulldogs/Tito Santana 9 min (3) 3 ¼
59. Tags: British Bulldogs d. Greg Valentine/Brutus Beefcake 12 min (2) 3 ¼
60. Terry Funk/Dory Funk d. Tito Santana/Junkyard Dog 11:30 (2) 3 ¼

61. Tags: Shelton Benjamin/Charlie Haas d. Eddie Guerrero/Chavo Guerrero d. Chris Benoit/Rhyno 8:30 (19) 3
62. Tags: Vader/Mankind draw Owen Hart/British Bulldog 16 min (13) 3
63. Jr. Title: Taka Michinoku d. Aguila 6 min (14) 3
64. IC: Chris Jericho d. Steve Regal 7 min (17) 3
65. Mr. Perfect d. Blue Blazer (Owen Hart) 6 min (5) 3
66. Greg Valentine d. Ricky Steamboat 9 min (4) 3
67. LOD/Ahmed Johnson d. Farooq/Savio Vega/Crush 11 min (13) 3
68. Too Cool/Chyna d. Eddie Guerrero/Perry Saturn/Dean Malenko 9:30 (16) 3
69. IC: RVD d. Steve Regal 6:30 (18) 3
70. Kurt Angle d. Kane 11 min (18) 3
71. Orient Express d. Rockers 7:30 (6) 3
72. Cody Rhodes d. Rey Mysterio 12 min (27) 3
73. US: Chris Benoit d. MVP 9 min (23) 3
74. WWF Title: HHH d. Chris Jericho 18:30 (18) 3
75. WWF Title: Randy Orton d. HHH d. John Cena 14 min (24) 3
76. Euro: Shane McMahon d. XPac 8:30 (15)
77. Euro Title: HHH d. Owen Hart 11:30 (14) 3
78. WWF Title: HHH d. Booker T 18:30 (19) 3
79. WWF Title: Randy Savage d. Ted DiBiase 9 min (4) 3
80. WWF Title: John Cena d. Batista 13:30 (26) 3
81. WWF Title: John Cena d. HHH 22 min (22) 3
82. HHH d. Sheamus 12 min (26) 3
83. IC: Razor Ramon d. Jeff Jarrett 13:30 (11) 3
84. WWF Title: Hulk Hogan d. Sgt Slaughter 20:30 (7) 3
85. Tatanka d. Shawn Michaels 18:00 (9) 3
86. Steiners d. Headshrinkers 14:30 (9) 3
87. Shawn Michaels d. Tito Santana 10:30 (8) 3
88. Ted DiBiase d. Jake Roberts 12 min (6) 3
89. Shawn Michaels d. Vince McMahon 18:30 (22) 3
90. Shane McMahon d. Vince McMahon 14 min (17) 3
91. World Title: HHH d. Randy Orton 23:30 (25) 3
92. Brutus Beefcake d. Mr Perfect 8 min (6) 3
93. Tags: Demolition d. Rick Martel/Tito Santana 8 min (4) 3

94. Rey Mysterio d. CM Punk 6:30 (26)
95. Jr. Title: Matt Hardy d. Rey Mysterio 5:30 (19)
96. Jr. Open 10:30 (20)
97. Undertaker d. Ric Flair 19 min (18)
98. Vader/Owen Hart/British Bulldog d. Yokozuna/Ahmed Johnson/Jake Roberts 11:30 (12)
99. World Title: Batista d. HHH 21:30 (21)
100. US Title: JBL d. Chris Benoit 10 min (22)
101. JBL d. Fit Finlay 8:30 (24)
102. IC: Rick Rude d. Ultimate Warrior 9 min (5)
103. Boss Man/Akeem d. Rockers 8 min (5)
104. Randy Savage d. Crush 9:30 (10)
105. IC The Rock d. Ken Shamrock 5 min (14)
106. Hardcore Title: Kane d. Raven d. Big Show 9 min (17)
107. Hardcore Title Battle Royal 15 min (16)
108. WWF Title: Bret Hart d. Yokozuna 10:30 (10)
109. Bret Hart d. Bob Backlund 9:30 (11)
110. Roddy Piper d. Goldust 12 min (12)
111. WWF Title: John Cena d. Edge d. Big Show 14:30 (25)
112. Euro: Eddie Guerrero d. Test 8 min (17)
113. IC: Boss Man d. Perfect 10:30 (7)
114. Roddy Piper d. Adrian Adonis 7 min (3)
115. Randy Savage d. Greg Valentine 6 min (4)
116. Women’s Title: Mickie James d. Trish Stratus 8:30 (22)
117. Hulk Hogan d. Vince McMahon 20:30 (19)
118. Islanders/Bobby Heenan d. British Bulldogs/Koko B Ware 7:30 (4)
119. Hart Foundation d. Greg Valentine/Honky Tonk Man 7:30 (5)
120. Hulk Hogan/Mr. T d. Roddy Piper/Paul Orndorff 13 min (1)
121. Tags: Money Inc d. Hulk Hogan/Brutus Beefcake 18:30 (9)
122. Hardcore Title: Bob Holly d. Al Snow d. Billy Gunn 7 min (15)
123. Undertaker d. Randy Orton 14 min (21)
124. Hulk Hogan d. Rock 16:30 (18)
125. Edge d. Booker T 6:30 (18)
126. IC: Road Dogg d. Ken Shamrock d. Goldust d. Val Venis 8:30 (15)
127. Lex Luger d. Mr Perfect 11 min (9)
128. WWF Title: Undertaker d. Sid 21:30 (13)
129. Ricky Steamboat d. Hercules 7 min (2)
130. Hercules d. Haku 6:30 (5)
131. HHH d. Goldust 14:30 (13)
132. Tags: Owen Hart/Jeff Jarrett d. DLo Brown/Test 4 min (15)
133. Tags: Owen Hart/Yokozuna d. Smoking Gunns 9:30 (11)
134. Mankind d. Big Show 7 min (15)
135. Headbangers d. Doug Furnas/Phil Lafon d. Godwinns d. New Blackjacks 10:30 (13)
136. Goldust/Luna Vachon d. Marc Mero/Sable 9 min (14)
137. Euro: DDP d. Christian 6 min (18)
138. Randy Orton d. Ted DiBiase/Cody Rhodes 9 min (26)
139. Bobby Lashley d. Umaga 13 min (23)
140. Undertaker d. Kane 17 min (14)
141. Women: Trish d. Victoria d. Jazz 7 min (19)
142. Chris Jericho d. Jimmy Snuka/Roddy Piper/Ricky Steamboat 9 min (25)
143. WWF Title: Miz draw John Cena 15 min (27)
144. WWF Title: Yokozuna d. Bret Hart 9 min (9)
145. Floyd Mayweather d. Big Show 11:30 (24)
146. APA/Taz d. Goodfather/Val Venis/Bull Buchanan 4 min (17)
147. Rick Martel/Ton Zenk d. Don Muraco/Bob Orton 5:30 (3)
148. 12 Man Tag 11:30 (28)
149. RVD/Sabu/Sandman/Tommy Dreamer d. Elijah Burke/Matt Striker/Marcus Cor Von/Kevin Thorne 6:30 (23)
150. Undertaker d. Mark Henry 9:30 (22)
151. IC: Big Show d. Cody Rhodes 5 min (28)
152. Bill Goldberg d. Brock Lesnar 13:30 (20)
153. Steve Austin d. Scott Hall 10 min (18)
154. Tags: Natural Disasters d. Money Inc 8:30 (8)
155. Tags: Billy Gunn/Chuck Palumbo d. Hardys d. Dudleys d. APA 14 min (18)
156. British Bulldog/Lex Luger d. Blu Brothers 6:30 (11)
157. Tags: Men on a Mission d. Quebecers 7:30 (10)
158. Boss Man/Bull Buchanan d. D Lo Brown/Godfather 9 min (16)
159. Kane d. HHH 11:30 (15)
160. Tags: RVD/Booker d Dudleys d. La Resistance d. Mark Jindrak/Lance Cade 8 min (20)
161. IC: Rocky Maivia d. The Sultan (Rikishi) 9:30 (13)
162. US: John Cena d. Big Show 9 min (20)
163. Rikishi/Kane d. XPac/Road Dogg 4:30 (16)
164. Ted DiBiase draw Brutus Beefcake 10 min (5)
165. WWF Title: Hulk Hogan d. King Kong Bundy 10 min (2)
166. Tags: Kane/Show d. Carlito/Chris Masters 6:30 (22)
167. Boss Man/Virgil/Slaughter/Duggan d. Mountie/Repo Man/Nastys 6:30 (8)
168. Demolition d. Tenryu/Kitao 4:30 (7)
169. Tags: Demolition d. Powers of Pain/Fuji 9 min (5)
170. Lawrence Taylor d. Bam Bam Bigelow 11:30 (11)
171. Greg Valentine/Brutus Beefcake d. Rougeaus 4 min (3)
172. Tags: Nikolai Volkoff/Iron Sheik d. Barry Windham/Mike Rotundo 7 min (1)
173. Killer Bees d. Iron Sheik/Nikolai Volkoff 6 min (3)
174. IC Randy Savage d. George The Animal Steele 7 min (2)
175. Batista d. Umaga 7 min (24)
176. Kane d. Randy Orton 11 min (28)
177. Undertaker d. Big Boss Man 10 min (15)
178. Undertaker d. Jake Roberts 6:30 (8)
179. Roddy Piper draw Bad News Brown 7 min (6)
180. Rick Rude d. Jimmy Snuka 4 min (6)
181. Ted DiBiase d. Jim Duggan 5 min (4)
182. Ted DiBiase d. Don Muraco 5:30 (4)
183. Tatanka d. Rick Martel 4:30 (8)
184. Randy Savage d. Butch Reed 4 min (4)
185. WWF Title: Hulk Hogan d. Andre the Giant 12 min (3)
186. Battle Royal 10 min (4)
187. Battle Royal (2)
188. Tag Team Battle Royal 8:30 (14)
189. Razor Ramon d. Bob Backlund 4 min (9)
190. Virgil d. Ted DiBiase 8 min (7)
191. Barbarian d. Tito Santana 4:30 (6)
192. Rick Martel d. Koko B Ware 6 min (6)
193. Honky Tonk Man d. Jake Roberts 7 min (3)
194. IC Title: Brutus Beefcake d. Honky Tonk Man 9 min (4)
195. Tito Santana d. Executioner (Buddy Rose) 5 min (1)
196. IC Title: Junkyard Dog d. Greg Valentine 7 min (1)
197. Undertaker d. Kane 8 min (20)
198. Ricky Steamboat d. Matt Borne 4:30 (1)
199. Rick Rude draw Jake Roberts 15 min (4)
200. British Bulldog d. Warlord 8 min (7)
201. Hercules draw Billy Jack Haynes 8 min (3)
202. Harley Race d. Junkyard Dog 3:30 (3)
203. Tags: Big Show/Miz d. John Morrison/Truth Killings 3:30 (26)
204. Randy Savage d. One Man Gang 4 min (4)
205. Women: Victoria d. Molly Holly 5 min (20)
206. Undertaker d. Jimmy Snuka 4:30 (7)
207. Tags: Rikishi/Scott Taylor d. APA d. Charlie Haas/Shelton Benjamin d. Bashams 6 min (20)
208. Hardcore: Spike Dudley d. Maven d. Goldust 3:30 (18)
209. Bushwackers d. Rougeaus 5 min (5)
210. Paul Orndorff draw Don Muraco 4:30 (2)
211. Doink d. Crush 8:30 (9)
212. Butterbean d. Bart Gunn 30 sec (15)
213. Mr. T d. Roddy Piper 10 min (2)
214. Hulk Hogan d. Sid 12:30 (8)
215. WWF Title: John Cena d. JBL 11:30 (21)
216. Women: Jazz d. Lita d. Trish 6:30 (18)
217. WWF Title: Yokozuna d. Lex Luger 14:30 (10)
218. Bret Hart d. Vince McMahon 11 min (26)
219. Don Muraco d. Dino Bravo 5 min (4)
220. Butch Reed d. Koko B Ware 3:30 (3)
221. One Man Gang d. Bam Bam Bigelow 3 min (4)
222. Earthquake d. Greg Valentine 3 min (7)
223. 8 Man 1:30 (27)
224. Ultimate Warrior d. Hercules 4:30 (4)
225. Big Moss Man d. Akeem 2 min (6)
226. John Morrison/Trish Stratus/Snooki d. Dolph Ziggler/Layla/Michelle McCool 3:30 (27)
227. Kelly Kelly/Maria Menounos d. Beth Phoenix/Eve 7 min (28)
228. Women: Chyna d. Ivory 2:30 (17)
229. Women: Wendi Richter d. Lelani Kai 6 min (1)
230. Beth Phoenix/Melina d. Maria/Ashley 6:30 (24)
231. Women: Trish d. Christy Hemme 4:30 (21)
232. Torrie Wilson/Sable d. Stacy Keibler/Jackie 2:30 (20)
233. Women: Alundra Blayze d. Lelani Kai 3:30 (10)
234. Women: Sable d. Tori 4:30 (15)
235. Women: Melina d. Ashley 3 (23)
236. LOD d. Power&Glory 1 min (7)
237. Owen Hart d. Skinner 1 min (8)
238. Ultimate Warrior d. HHH 1:30 (12)
239. Tags: Demolition d. Andre the Giant/Haku 9 min (6)
240. Test/Albert d. Al Snow/Steve Blackman 7 min (16)
241. Jim Duggan d. Bad News Brown 4 min (5)
242. Earthquake d. Hercules 5 min (6)
243. Jim Duggan d. Dino Bravo 4:30 (6)
244. Dino Bravo d. Ronnie Garvin 4 min (5)
245. Jake Roberts d. George Wells 3 min (2)
246. The Mountie d. Tito Santana 1:30 (7)
247. Andre the Giant draw Hulk Hogan 5:30 (4)
248. King Kong Bundy/Lord Littlebrook/Little Tokyo d. Hillbilly Jim/Little Beaver/Haiti Kid 4:30 (3)
249. Gimmick Battle Royal 3 min (17)
250. Undertaker d. Big Show d. Albert 10 min (19)
251. Torrie Wilson d. Candice Michelle 4 min (22)
252. Akebono d. Big Show 1 min (21)
253. Kerry Von Erich d. Dino Bravo 3 min (7)
254. Undertaker d. King Kong Bundy 6:30 (11)
255. Adrian Adonis d. Uncle Elmer 3 min (2)
256. King Kong Bundy d. SD Jones 30 sec (1)
257. IC: Rey Mysterio d. JBL 30 sec (25)
258. Hart Foundation d. Bolsheviks 30 secs (6)
259. WWF Title: Hulk Hogan d. Yokozuna 30 secs (9)
260. Earthquake d. Adam Bomb 30 secs (10)
261. Red Rooster (Terry Taylor) d. Bobby Heenan 30 sec (5)
262. ECW Title: Kane d. Chavo Guerrero 30 sec (24)
263. Sheamus d. Daniel Bryan 30 sec (28)
264. Corporal Kirschner d. Nikolai Volkoff 1:30 (2)
265. 10 Woman Tag 3:30 (26)
266. Women: Fabulous Moolah d. Velvet McIntyre 1 min (2)
267. Brutus Beefcake draw David Sammartino 12:30 (1)
268. Great Khali d. Kane 5:30 (23)
269. Andre the Giant d. Jake Roberts 9:30 (5)
270. Bodyslam Match: Andre the Giant d. John Studd 6 min (1)
271. Boogyman d. Booker/Sharmell 4 min (22)
272. Dusty Rhodes/Sapphire d. Randy Savage/Sherri Martel 7:30 (6)
273. Bam Bam Bigelow/Luna Vachon d. Doink/Dink 6 min (10)
274. Terri Runnels d. The Kat 2:30 (16)
275. Miss Wrestlemania Battle Royal 6 min (25)
276. Jake Roberts d. Rick Martel 8:30 (7)
277. Undertaker d. Giant Gonzalez 7:30 (9)
278. Michael Cole d. Jerry Lawler 14 min (27)

Photo–Flickr/Interbeat

There’s a not-so-fine line between assertive leadership and chucking basketballs at your players’ heads.

—

Video recently leaked of Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice Jr.–the son of Duquesne hoops legend and longtime Portland Trail Blazers announcer Mike Rice–berating and physically assaulting the players on his team. As someone raised in an environment of near-constant emotional turmoil, I had a powerful reaction to this footage. “What an amateur,” I thought, recalling marathon screaming sessions in which the foam and spittle from my beloved father’s mouth would soak through the front of whatever ridiculous neon-colored late 80s/early 90s t-shirt I happened to be wearing. Following that, and on a more serious note, I experienced a profound feeling of pity for Rice.

Mind you, I don’t envy Rice’s players their situation, saddled as they are with a well-compensated ($650k per annum!)  New Jersey state employee as their mentor. But, much as an individual who has stood on the sidelines of five divorces might perform flawless color commentary for other break-ups, I can watch Mike Rice implode and understand precisely why it is happening.

Rice, you see, is failing miserably at his new, higher-profile job. After semi-succeeding as a Fordham University benchwarmer and then as the person responsible for transforming the Robert Morris Colonials into a team, uh, “powerful” enough to defeat a lackluster Kentucky squad in this year’s NIT, he hasn’t so much as broken even in the Big East during his three seasons as Rutgers’ head coach.  And it’s abundantly clear, as NBA veteran Eric Murdock (best known to me, and perhaps to you, as a playable character on the Sega CD version of NBA Jam) states in the brief Outside the Lines video at the beginning of this essay, that Mike Rice doesn’t have a clue.

♦◊♦

Why do the heathen rage? is a question that, in the hands of the great Southern author Flannery O’Connor, ends with the ineffable.  Why do Mike Rice Jr? rage, on the other hand, can be answered quite simply: dude can’t coach.

When the chips are down and the odds are long, going batshit crazy is a time-tested and almost-always ineffective option for harried athletic administrators of all stripes. The Woody Hayes school of leadership, which comprises everything from pounding on your own forehead until it’s bruised and bloody to punching out opposing players, can serve as a substitute for genuine motivational skills as well as a mask for deep-seated insecurities.

It’s also a style of behavior that the American public, in most instances, will no longer countenance. CEO types like Bill Belichick and player’s coaches like Jimmy Johnson are now the norm–and why, to be honest, would a grown man want to play for anyone else?  Sport even at the collegiate level is a semi-professional endeavor, and the participants are all above the age of consent (though not, it must be noted, beyond the age at which brain maturation is complete).  For these individuals, products of a postmodern society who are sometimes derided by deluded champions of a bygone status quo as “immature” or “undisciplined,” watching a man like Mike Rice make a spectacle of himself is the stuff of a Family Guy cutaway, not a source of pride or inspiration.

What has to be frightening for them, though, is knowing that their scholarships–one-year grants, renewable annually–are in the hands of such an unstable and incompetent individual. Rice, who possibly believes he’s channeling Bobby Knight and Vince Lombardi, fails to understand that the violent tempers of those coaches, notable strategists and teachers both, were their least attractive qualities. Knight, after all, lasted at Indiana University until it became clear that he no longer had the tactical and recruiting acumen needed to offset his ferocious anger.

♦◊♦

Mike Rice, like so many others before him, has confused “being hard-nosed” and “having fire in one’s belly” (to repeat but two sportswriting bromides) with performing a complicated task at a high level. There is, perhaps, some correlation between competitive intensity and success, but outward-directed anger of the sort displayed by Rice is merely an attempt to give the appearance of both qualities. It is no different from puffing up one’s chest or sucking in one’s gut: sheer pretense, intended to gull the rubes into believing that they are in the presence of gr8ness.

In a recent post here on the GMP, Susie Meister pointed to infighting among women as a structural problem that reinforces sexism.  Mike Rice’s outburst provides an example of a different, albeit related, issue that affects many men; viz., how impotent rage, projected at others but truly focused at oneself, is the result of an inability to discuss personal limitations and weaknesses in a candid way.

If Mike Rice were honest with himself and others, if he took his disappointed players aside and shared his darkest feelings with them in a not-at-all whiny and superficial way, couldn’t it be argued that that he had chosen the most courageous course of action available  to him?

Whenever I confess my own ignorance to the students in my classes, admitting that I know just enough to know that I don’t have all of the answers about the specialized field of history that I teach, I am forced to recall my beloved father’s vitriol-filled rants. I still wish that, far from heaping anger and abuse upon me and my half-brother for days without end, he had instead told us the awful truth: although he had once been a star athlete like some of those hapless kids on the Rutgers basketball team, his life hadn’t turned out the way he wanted it to, and he was now just as lost and confused as everybody else.

—

—

Photo–Flickr/NickP

“We need to stop expecting other women to help us just because we’re women, too.”

Critics and viewers lauded Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s hosting job at the Golden Globes this year.  The rave reviews agreed their timing was flawless, their writing was smart, and their charm was undeniable.  What should have been a celebration of women in comedy became a stereotypical catfight thanks to one attendee who was less than impressed with their comedic performance.  Taylor Swift did not take well to the hosts’ jab at her well-documented romantic foibles.  In an interview with Vanity Fair, Swift responded to the joke by referring to a pearl of wisdom offered to her by Katie Couric, noting that “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Aside from the ways in which Swift’s statement makes her look like someone who takes herself far too seriously (particularly in light of the fact that the reason we are so familiar with her love life is that she has made millions of dollars writing songs about it), there are myriad problems with her statement.  Surely Swift would not argue that female comedians can only make jokes about men.  And what exactly does she mean by “help,” anyway?  Why would Fey and Poehler aim to help or hurt anyone in an awards show monologue? Perhaps most disturbing, however, is the idea that women should be helping women just because they’re women.  The concept reeks of sexism, and undermines the ability of women to achieve on their own merits.

♦◊♦

The relationship of women with other women is fraught with allegations of cattiness, competition, and childishness.  This “feud” between Fey, Poehler, and Swift demonstrates the way some women believe the “sisterhood” of gender should provide a safe haven, thereby rendering them immune from criticism or, in this case, harmless jokes.  I’m also curious about Katie Couric’s intention in making this statement in the first place, assuming she actually did.  Surely, she wouldn’t argue that “helping” other women means turning a blind eye to their flaws in the name of some unspoken vagina-related bond.  I think it’s safe to say Sarah Palin would reserve a spot in that “special place in hell” for Couric after the much-lampooned (by Fey!) interview she did during the 2008 presidential campaign where she appeared, well, less than prepared.

The complicated relationship women have with each other has played out recently in the media coverage of Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy.  The obsession with her “bump” has become fodder for countless magazines who either claim she is gaining weight at the rate of approximately five pounds a day or that she is desperately trying to stay thin during the pregnancy and already planning her tummy tuck for the “post-baby bod” covers that will inevitably follow.  Curiously, women have been writing articles about how even though Kardashian has made a career of broadcasting (literally) her life, this “fat-shaming” is bad for women.  I think everyone agrees that calling people fat simply to flog them in the public square is mean-spirited and fruitless.  But who buys these magazines? Women.

♦◊♦

Perhaps when demonizing the media for printing these stories, we could also consider why they do it.  Celebrity and pop cultures magazines will not print stories they don’t think women want to read. We love nothing more than to watch the women we covet for their beauty succumb to the reality of gestation and childbirth.  When they somehow manage to get back into their size 2 jeans six weeks after they give birth, we snarkily refer to their private chefs, plastic surgery, and celebrity spas.  “Well, if I had a million dollars and a chef, I could lose the weight too,” we cry.  If you don’t like the stories these magazines and entertainment shows produce, don’t consume them.

For me, these two examples connect in the ways women navigate their relationship with other women. We want women to be considered just as funny as men, but don’t allow any of those jokes to be about one of us.  We want to simultaneously be angry with the media for “fat-shaming” Kim Kardashian, but we clamor to buy the next In Touch Magazine to vote on which celebrity wore an outfit “best” (and, implicitly, who looks like crap in the outfit).  Our sisterhood is rife with contradictions, and we need to stop expecting other women to help us just because we’re women too.  This does not help our cause and it reinforces gender stereotypes.  The last thing we need is to be the perpetrators of the sexism we fight against.

For the record: the Fey and Poehler joke was funny, Swift needs to learn how to take a joke and contextualize advice from her mentors, and Kim Kardashian is not fat–she’s just pregnant.  If you consume the content that pits women against each other, then you’re a part of the problem.  Instead of reading about Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy diet, you could be writing a song about how you are “never, ever, ever, getting back together” with someone. Or something.

Featured image–Flickr/DonkeyHotey

Does same-sex marriage represent the final frontier in the movement for LGBT rights? Should it?

Remember when the powers that be got together and banned some forms of public nudity in the Castro district of San Francisco? I was in the Castro once, about a half-decade ago, and the nudity I witnessed didn’t strike me as overwhelming or unbearable.  My drive through that area certainly wasn’t as memorable as my visits to the half-dozen places that claim to have invented the mission burrito.¹ The issue in this case, as far as I can tell, concerned full frontal male nudity; the very sight of male genitalia remains abhorrent to all save the most flamboyant male homosexuals, it seems. This conforms with the curious double standard that persists in popular cinema: a glimpse of M. Fassbender’s penis can send shockwaves through the industry, but bare breasts² and gratuitous violence don’t warrant anything beyond a hard-R rating and a knowing wink from the horndog teens in attendance.

Slowly but surely, the LGBT movement went “mainstream.” The Castro nudity ban was modest—there are numerous exceptions built into it—but it did raise the question of whether the movement’s very success has marginalized those individuals who aspired to reconsider the very nature of sexuality itself.³ This “look we’re represented on Modern Family so we’ve made” stuff is utter nonsense, and I doubt seriously whether any same-sex couples buy into that sort of mawkish pandering. Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet’s characters are no different than any other set of stereotypical and insipid sitcom characters, except they don’t kiss on camera as much because “enlightened” fortysomething heterosexuals still think that’s icky.⁴

If this is as far as things will go–if even the most allegedly progressive city in America can draw some kind of arbitrary line in the sand, a line that has bare breasts on the “okay” side and cock rings on the “not okay” side—well, that’s extremely problematic. Issues of gender and sexuality and marriage &c. are already complicated beyond belief⁵, a fact which the nine old people on the Supreme Court of United States should take note of but probably won’t. Thus the question:  should people of the same sex have the right to marry one another? But here is a better question:  Should no one? Furthermore, should we drive intimate activity out of the public square? Or would keeping it there actually have the effect, for “gays” and “str8s” alike⁶, of releasing human sexual yearnings from the Internet ghetto where most people have cordoned them off? Who the hell knows, but no one should be satisfied with half-measures and moral victories.

1. Foodie opinion on the Mission burrito, which has been popularized in recent years by fast casual chains like Qdoba and Chipote, is mixed. Many deride it as a “culinary monstrosity,” a “diaper filled with bean paste,” etc. But for those of us looking for 16-18 oz. of belly filler/stomach liner at a modest cost, the central CA farmworkers who allegedly created this foil-wrapped foodstuff are to be commended. And the version that’s sold at El Faro is pretty good, even if eating there is “touristy.” What does that mean, by the way? Are all “touristy” things not good, owing to the very fact that tourists partake of them? Or are some of them actually good? e.g., I’ve eaten several times at Esperanza’s Mexican Bakery; the tortillas are made in-house and the pastries are pretty good. When I mentioned this to a Fort Worth native, he described it as a “tourist place” and said that he never goes there. Do you think it’s good, though? I asked him. He responded by saying that he didn’t know, since he’s only ever purchased pastries from the bakery. “That’s all you’d go there for, if you’re not a tourist.” Sure, whatever.
2. Although vajayjays are usually absent from even hard-R movies, too. Only “Barbie-doll crotches,” to use J. C. Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s lovely turn of phrase, are permissible in such productions. This, then, would seem to make Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill dance in The Silence of the Lambs the quintessential non-display of genitalia.
3. I write this as a partnered-off, monogamous person—a “square,” if you will—but wouldn’t a better goal have been to strike down that archaic religio-contractual institution and to replace it with something more in accord with our current understanding of human impulses and desires? Instead, the center-left of this particular movement has stopped short: they only want “tolerance” and “fairness.” Is that enough? The Black Panthers, the Weathermen…such wildcat groups have all fallen by the wayside. Only the great compromisers survive to be absorbed into the great, slow-moving “str8″ world; never mind, of course, that tolerance and fairness are completely vacuous concepts (the former is necessary only if one actually despises something but wishes to seem enlightened by countenancing its continuation, and the latter, if taken seriously, would prevent one from fully vindicating his or her understanding of “the right” or “the good”). In other words, is the gay rights movement—regardless of whether one agrees with its earlier and more radical objectives—in a less intellectually defensible position because it is compromising? I would say so—and I’d say the same about Christian evangelicals or any others who seek to moderate some message that they’ve decided is “right” and thus worthy of success. The people must choose, but they should be given the opportunity to choose among real alternatives, and make their choice based on the best reasons.
4. Also, remember when everybody in the blogosphere was bitching about how racist Girls was because it didn’t have black characters, even though there was no way, given its wretched subject matter, that it really could? Modern Family, as my friend Nathan Zimmerman has repeatedly pointed out, is 500x worse on this account: it’s got a cast of identity tokens and gets away with innumerable inoffensive-yet-actually-very-offensive jokes at their expense.
5. And, as Richard Rorty has argued, it’s altogether too likely to distract us from concentrating on more serious issues related to the redistribution of the vast amounts of wealth currently held by a handful of secretive and extremely powerful individuals—something that one assumes a “democracy,” by virtue of having more poor voters than rich ones, would’ve resolved a long time ago.
6. Plus everyone in-between, although this is particularly important for those “str8s” who want to be publicly titillated and teased yet can’t actually bear close contact with the human body.

Photo–Flickr/qthomasbower

Read more about same-sex marriage from The Moustache Club of America:  North Carolina Voters Are Decadent & Depraved

An earlier version of this post appeared at Penny & Farthing.

In Jim Jividen’s celebrity alumni version of this year’s NCAA Tournament, playwright Arthur Miller and actor James Earl Jones take on Joe Montana in a championship game for the ages. 

For the past quarter century, I’ve gone out the Monday morning after Selection Sunday to buy two copies of the USA Today. Why? Giant brackets (one to fill out, one to populate as the tournament played out) and team capsules. For several years, really through law school, I cut out those capsules, put them in a baseball cap, and would throw each team away as it was eliminated.

I still occasionally got laid. I can’t explain it myself.

Today, the capsules are largely as needed as a hard copy of the TV Guide but I was still surprised this year to see that discussion of the players has been replaced with lists of “notable alumni” of each of the 68 tournament teams.

That leads to this.

  The 2013 Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament as Predicted by The Notable Alumni as Listed in USA Today.

First Round (these are play in games, don’t let them tell you different)

NC A&T (Jesse Jackson) v. Liberty (Sid Bream) – Jackson’s one of the pivotal civil rights figures of the past 40 years, Sid Bream’s career WAR is 9.7 – Winner: NC A&T

Middle Tennessee St (James Mcgill Buchanan) v. St. Mary’s (Robert Hass) – This is only evaluating the alumni actually named by USA Today, so as to avoid researching where all of my favorite federal judges went to law school…except for this game. I used to go out with a Mid Tenn St alum, which, since it was an amicable break up, would lead one to believe they were the side – except that I was still seeing her when I met the woman who I would eventually marry, and that’s not a door that needs opened lest I risk her writing about her exes. Ain’t nobody got time for that. Winner – St. Mary’s

Boise St. (Steve Appleton) v. LaSalle (Peter Boyle) – Frankenstein’s Monster against some former CEO. Please – Winner: LaSalle

LIU Brooklyn (Terry Semel) v. James Madison (LeRoi Moore) – Moore was Dave Mathews’s saxophonist, when Semel ran Yahoo, the employees could still work from home – Winner: LIU

Let’s go to the regions.

Midwest
1.Louisville (Mitch McConnell) v.16. NC A&T (Jesse Jackson)
I voted for President when I was 17; I fell into a loophole in Ohio where, because I would turn 18 by the time of the 1988 general election, I could vote in the Democratic primary even though I was 17.

I cast that vote for Jesse Jackson. I don’t know how many other white 17 year olds who ever voted for Jesse Jackson, but I’m guessing we could fit in a really tiny car that would drive as fast as it could away from Mitch McConnell. Winner – A Shocker! – NC A&T

8. Colorado St (John Amos) v. 9. Missouri (Sam Walton). Let’s see, the founder of a non-union shop or James Evans, Sr., who, in a different time or place, would have been rebounding from one of those “temporary layoffs” with an overnight shift at Wal-Mart. This is a blowout. Winner – Colorado St.

5. Oklahoma St. (Barry Sanders) v. 12. Oregon (Ken Kesey). This is a war – how can the author of Cuckoo’s Nest go home in the first round? By hitting maybe the greatest college football player I’ve ever seen. Winner – Oklahoma St.

4. St. Louis (August Busch IV) v. 13. NMex St (Harold Reitsema) – One of these guys has an asteroid named after him. It ain’t the heir to a brewery. Winner-New Mexico St.

6. Memphis (Fred Thompson) v. 11. St. Marys (Robert Hass) – Hass and his wife got beaten up by a cop at an Occupy rally. Thompson probably wishes he were swinging the club. Winner – St. Marys

3. Michigan St (Magic Johnson) v. 14. Valpo (Not Magic Johnson) – Winner: Michigan St.

7. Creighton (Bob Gibson) v. 10. Cincinnati (William Howard Taft) – I’m not an institutionalist, but as great as Gibson was, he wasn’t both President and Chief Justice. Plus – fat guy solidarity. Winner – Cincinnati

2. Duke (Richard Nixon) v. 15. Albany (Harvey Milk). There was a book a year ago alleging Nixon used to bang Bebe Rebozo. Too little, too late. Winner – Albany

Round of 32:

8. Colorado St. (John Amos) v. 16. NC A&T (Jesse Jackson) – a 16 seed in the Sweet Sixteen? Winner – NC A&T

5. OK St v. (Barry Sanders) 13. NMex St v. (Harold Reitsema) – Ask Harlon Barnett who wins this game. Winner: OK St.

3. Michigan St. (Magic Johnson) v. 11. St Marys (Not Magic Johnson) – Winner: Michigan St.

10. Cincinnati (William Howard Taft) v.15. Albany (Harvey Milk) – If Taft doesn’t run for re-election and instead endorses Teddy, who made a sharp left turn while on safari, that third Roosevelt term is probably more progressive, certainly on race, than Wilson’s. Winner – Albany

Sweet 16:
5. OK St (Barry Sanders) v. 16. NC A&T (Jesse Jackson) – Sanders averaged 5 yards a carry for his career, Jesse’s kid’s going to jail for using campaign funds to buy one of Michael Jackson’s hats for 4 grand. Winner – OK St.

3. Michigan St. (Magic Johnson) v. 15. Albany (Not Magic Johnson) – Winner: Michigan St.

Elite 8:
3. Michigan St. (Magic Johnson) v. 5. Oklahoma St. (Barry Sanders) – Barry Sanders is one of the greatest backs in NFL history. He’s Not Magic Johnson.

               MIDWEST REGION WINNERS – MICHIGAN ST.

West:
1. Gonzaga (Bing Crosby) v. 16. Southern (Randy Jackson) – Bing Crosby’s been dead 35 years; he released a duet with Michael Buble 3 months ago. That’s the definition of survive and advance. Winner – Gonzaga

8. Pitt ( Gene Kelly) v. 9. Wichita St. (Bill Parcells) – there’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, of Parcells eating a Dove Bar while on a treadmill – that’s some pretty nifty footwork needed to pull that off. Unfortunately, on the other side of the court is Gene Kelly. Winner – Pitt

5. Wisconsin (Errol Morris) v. 12. Mississippi (John Grisham) – Art battles Commerce in the Round of 64. If there’s one place where art should still win that game, it’s college. Winner: Wisconsin

4. Kansas St. (Erin Brockovich) v. 13. LaSalle(Bill Raftery) – Send it in Jerome! Winner: LaSalle

6. Arizona (Garry Shandling) v. 11. Belmont (A couple of popular country singers). You could put all the popular country singers you can find in the same Intro to Sociology Course at Belmont and they still don’t beat Larry Freaking Sanders. Winner: Arizona

3.NMexico (Brian Urlacher) v. 14. Harvard (the 44th President of the United States). Harvard’s also got Conan O’Brien. The Crimson are gonna be a tough out. Winner: Harvard

7. Notre Dame (Regis Philbin) v. 10. Iowa St. (George Washington Carver). I’m allergic to peanuts. Winner: Notre Dame

2. Ohio St. (Jesse Owens) v. 15. Iona (Richie Guerin). Yeah, that seems like an unlikely upset on anyone’s bracket. Winner: Ohio St.

Round of 32:
1. Gonzaga (Bing Crosby) v. 8. Pitt (Gene Kelly) – without looking it up, I don’t think Kelly was ever accused of beating his entire family. Winner: Pitt

5. Wisconsin (Errol Morris) v. 13. LaSalle (Peter Boyle) – I enjoyed Everybody Loves Raymond as much as did anyone who only watched two episodes, but it didn’t get anyone freed from a Texas penitentiary. Winner: Wisconsin

6. Arizona (Garry Shandling/Geraldo Rivera) v. 14. Harvard (Conan O’Brien/Barack Obama). Here’s where depth comes into play; Conan/Shandling is a lean to the Wildcats – but then not only does Harvard come at you with Obama, they do it against Geraldo. Geraldo! Even the most hardcore where’s the birth certificate/terrorist fist jab/get your government out of my Medicare wacko couldn’t give it to Geraldo. Winner: Harvard

2. Ohio St. (Jesse Owens) v. 7. Notre Dame (Regis Philbin) – I’ve met two of the alums in this tournament; about five feet from where I’m currently sitting is the pen I may have taken from one of them. No, I do not have Jesse Owens’s pen. Winner-Notre Dame

Sweet Sixteen
5. Wisconsin (Errol Morris/Joan Cusack) v. 8. Pitt (Gene Kelly) – It’s a good battle between Thin Blue Line and Singin’ in the Rain – but Joan Cusack hits you with Say Anything and Broadcast News and In and Out and School of Rock and Perks of Being a Wallflower and it’s the Badgers who advance. Winner-Wisconsin

7. Notre Dame (Joe Montana) v. 14. Harvard (Conan/Obama) – I buried the lede. The Irish have a second listed alum. Conan’s good times, but he ain’t Letterman and while the Obama legacy isn’t written yet, FDR seems pretty far away. It’s that second group that Montana’s in. Winner: Notre Dame

Elite 8
5. Wisconsin (Morris/Cusack) v. 7. Notre Dame (Joe Montana) – It’s the same game as the previous round, you can find better documentarians than Morris and better Cusacks than Joan. But you don’t get better than 13 TD (rushing and passing combined) and 0 picks in 4 Super Bowls. Winner: Notre Dame

                WEST REGIONAL WINNERS – NOTRE DAME

SOUTH

1. Kansas (Wilt Chamberlain) v. 16. Western Kentucky (Kenny Perry). It could be that I went through a multi-month interview process with one of these schools to just come up short at the very, very end. It could be. Winner-Kansas.

8. UNC (James K Polk/Mia Hamm) v. Villanova (Don McLean/Maria Bello). I mean, have you seen The Cooler? Have you seen the Cooler? One side invaded Mexico and the other side is The Cooler? Winner: Nova

5. VCU (Stephen Furst) v. 12. Akron (the drummer for the Black Keys) Much like Howard Stern, I think the Black Keys are good, but Flounder is closer to my milieu. Winner: VCU

4.Michigan (Arthur Miller) v. 13. S.Dakota St. (Adam Vinatieri)
-Shockingly, it wasn’t a South Dakota St. grad who wrote Death of a Salesman. Winner: Michigan

6. UCLA (Jim Morrison) v. 11. Minnesota (Thomas Friedman)
-Friedman is almost always wrong about almost always everything. Morrison was the Lizard King. Winner: UCLA

3.Florida (Erin Andrews) v. 14. Northwestern St. (Bobby Hebert)
-My boy Maury is a Gator grad. What up Maury! And that’s how I avoid any reference to illegally obtained videos that blew up the internet. Winner: Florida

7. San Diego St. (Joe Gibbs) v. 10. Oklahoma (James Garner)
-I’m not generally swayed by iconic maleness – you give me John Wayne, and I’ll talk about a cartoon tough guy who liked to rhetorically punch hippies after avoiding military service himself. But James Garner? The Rock? That’s my dude. Winner: Oklahoma

2. Georgetown (the 42nd President of the United States v. 15. Fla Gulf Coast (I’ve been teaching in higher ed in Florida for a decade – there’s a school called Florida Gulf Coast?) Winner: Georgetown

Round of 32
1. Kansas (Wilt) v. 9. Nova (Maria Bello) – Wilt averaged 30 points and 20 boards for his career. He’s Babe Ruth. Winner: Kansas

4.Michigan (James Earl Jones) v. 5. VCU (Stephen Furst) – Michigan can leave the playwright on the bench for this one. Winner: Michigan

3.Florida (Erin Andrews) v. 6. UCLA (Jim Morrison/Rob Reiner)- The Lizard King and Meathead? That’s a gritty, veteran backcourt. That’s Mike Warren/Lucius Allen right there. Winner: UCLA.

2. Georgetown (Bill Clinton/Bradley Cooper/Allen Iverson) v. 10. Oklahoma (James Garner) – That’s a bad locker room for the Hoyas, a lot of guys needing the ball and time at the mirror. Winner: Oklahoma

Sweet 16:
1. Kansas (Wilt) v. 4. Michigan (Arthur Miller) – Wilt slept with 20,000 women. Miller married Marilyn Monroe. Winner: Michigan

6. UCLA (Morrison/Reiner/Jackie Joyner Kersee) v. 10. Oklahoma (Garner) – Have I mentioned I’m a big Garner fan? Winner: The Rock!

Elite 8:
4.Michigan (Miller) v. 10. Oklahoma (Garner) – Miller wrote Act I of the greatest American play in less than a day. With malice toward none and charity to all, we say goodbye to the Sooners. Winner: Michigan

          SOUTH REGION WINNERS: MICHIGAN

1. Indiana (Will Shortz) v. 16. LIU (Terry Semel) – who doesn’t enjoy a good crossword every now and again in 1998? Winner: Indiana

8. NC St (John Edwards) v. 9. Temple (Bill Cosby) – Did you know from the ages of 7 to 15, that Cosby thought his name was Jesus Christ and his brother Russell thought his name was Dammit? Really tragic stuff. I mean, not as bad as Edwards, but still. Winner: Temple

5. UNLV (Kenny Mayne) v. 12. Cal (Gregory Peck)
-Remember when I told you I’ve met two of the listed alumni? Did you notice the first one is in the Final Four? Winner: UNLV

4. Syracuse (Jim Brown) 13. Montana (Carroll O’Connor)
-Holy cats, can you imagine such a round one game? Now peep this. I’m taking Archie Bunker. Winner: Montana

6. Butler (Thad Motta) v. 11. Bucknell (Les Moonves)
-Moonves is married to Julie Chen and that keeps my favorite American reality competition show, Big Brother, in business. Winner: Bucknell.

3. Marquette (Chris Farley) v. 14. Davidson (Steph Curry)
Among the more overrated comedians of my lifetime – Farley. Among the more underrated players in the NBA – Curry. Winner: Davidson

7. Illinois (Roger Ebert) v. 10. Colorado (Rick Reilly)
-One of these guys is a terrific, important writer and cultural commentator. And the other is Rick Reilly. Winner: Illinois

2. Miami (Dwayne Johnson) v. 15. Pacific (Pete Carroll)
-Much like in the upcoming Wrestlemania, The Rock ends the evening on his back, looking at the lights. Winner: Pacific.

Round of 32:
1. Indiana (Will Shortz) v. 9. Temple (Bill Cosby): Seriously, I almost voted for John Edwards – that would be a tough one to walk back. All that filth and foul, filth. Temple gets an extra round just for having to go through it. Winner: Temple

5. UNLV (Kenny Mayne) v. 13. Montana (Carroll O’Connor): If I had finished 1st instead of 3rd, maybe this result would be different, Kenny. Winner: Montana

11. Bucknell (Les Moonves) v. 14. Davidson (Steph Curry) – you know the metrics say Curry is one of the great outside shooters of all time? He’s buried out there with my Warriors….oops. I mean, I’m completely objective, I don’t at all root for the Warriors (Go Warriors!). Winner: Davidson

7. Illinois (Ebert) v. 15. Pacific (Carroll) – If this were a half dozen years ago, when Pete was leading the resurgence of my Trojans, instead of today when he’s my chief enemy in Seattle, this game has a different result. But unless there’s been an email chain on which I’m not CC’d, it is not, in fact. six years ago. Winner: Illinois

Sweet 16:
9. Temple (Cosby) v. 13. Montana (O’Connor) – Archie knocked off Jim Brown, but gets his comeuppance in the Sweet 16. He should have listened to Edith all along. Winner: Temple

7. Illinois (Roger Ebert/Nick Offerman) v. 14. Davidson (Steph Curry) – My affection for Ebert is virtually boundless, but when he meets the GSW (Go Warriors! We Believe!) point guard he looks to be outmatched….until he’s joined by Ron Swanson, who builds a pyramid of greatness right into the Elite 8. Winner: Illinois

Elite 8:
7. Illinois (Ebert/Offerman) v. 9. Temple (Cosby) Shorts over 6 inches are capri pants. Shorts under 6 inches are European. Winner: Illinois

   EAST REGION WINNER: ILLINOIS

So, your final 4, three Big 10 Teams and the Irish

                                                                                                                                                              Michigan St. v. Notre Dame
                                                                                                                                                              Michigan v. Illinois

Semi Final: Michigan St’s got Magic Johnson; they also have creepy Dateline host Chris Hansen. Notre Dame has the greatest quarterback who ever lived and a guy whose pen I now have placed next to my brackets. Pen! Pen! Pen! Winner: Notre Dame

Semi-Final: Michigan’s got the genius playwright and Darth Vader’s voice. Illinois has a venerable movie critic and Ron By God Swanson. Even Ebert, I’m guessing, would not suggest he should go over Arthur Miller, and even Swanson would bow before Lord Vader. Winner: Michigan

In the real world, I’m taking Florida to beat Louisville in the finals.

But here – in the USA Today Notable Alumni Bracket we have:

                 Notre Dame v. Michigan

You guys know I’m from San Francisco, right? I mean, if it’s Montana vs. My Last Breath, I’m taking Joe. I didn’t hit Dwight in the back of the end zone. It’s only right.

       National Champions: Notre Dame Fighting Irish.

Photo–Flickr/Photogaby