Friday, April 24, 2009

The Most Beautiful Game

Brilliant legal theorist, deconstructionist and social critic; that's Stanley Fish. No one ever guests him on talk shows, and I think I've seen him but once on a panel many moons ago, where I was struck by the incisiveness and range of his mind. Add to that he's a really good writer, and you have someone who means business.

When I stumbled upon this essay while perusing his archive at the NYT, I was floored; Fish, the intellectual, the brilliant critic and essayist, shared with me a love for basketball far beyond fan worship of one's home team. Not the nebbish, say, Woody Allen (who happens to be a huge Knicks fan) is, Fish, nonetheless and by his own admission, is anything but athletic, whether in ability or looks.

But that doesn't stop him.

This boy plays. His love for the game - "addiction" by his telling - shines through, and because he's such a good writer, that "hidden dimension" that only players can ever know is revealed, at least hinted at, in mental pictures and feelings. That feeling is, on a "basic" level (for lack of a better term) something at once mysterious and glorious.

[But] for me, playing basketball is above everything - even those times creating art. There's something about synergy, creating with teammates that, when it clicks, is unique. It's the most beautiful game. There's a feeling of connecting to your teammates that, at its best, is like you're plugged in to the universe in a very direct way; it's a transcendent experience far beyond words.

I know it sounds corny and new age-y, but it's a pure experience - thought doesn't enter in. There's only seeing and doing.

Two things stand out from those brief encounters with "the zone": 1) The euphoria it produces is more sublime than anything - you literally desire nothing, and 2) "you" seem to disappear and yet be more present than ever. If that sounds too Tao-ish then tough. This is the limitation of words here aside from meager writing skill.

One time I was talking to a surfer and he was relating how there are certain times when he catches a wave just right, and the feeling that it produces is indescribable. I told him that for athletes, it's called "being in the zone." It doesn't come often and in fact is the rarest bird, but when it does, all you can do is watch and marvel.

Then it flies away.

Branford Marsalis - another big hoop head - likes to make the analogy of how playing in a band is like playing on a basketball team, with everyone with their roles and contributing to the common good. I disagree, and I, like everyone, love music. Sports in general and basketball in particular have that physical release; so does sex, but those feelings are animal-biological. Tantric sex with Raquel Welch when she was 24 may help me there, but until then.... I will give his analogy some props though, because improvisatory jazz and rock have that element in common with basketball, particularly pick up games where there's no strategy much less people who know how to play from the book aspect.

For me it's about "running" (what hoop heads call it) with the boys on a late afternoon when the heat's not as bad and the shadows are long, the promise of cold drinks and devouring food waiting; knowing, somehow, that Mitch will make the cut, seeing him in the periphery, fooling my defender and then getting the pass to him as he lays it up. That feeling is something that has become as branded in me as anything.

In the following essay, Fish waxes poetic about the game we both love in far more eloquent terms than I ever could. He may get his March Madness pick wrong, but then again so did I (Louisville) and aside from that, on the court of the essay, I'm a pick up player - he's Magic Johnson.






March 22, 2009, 10:00 pm

My Life on the Court
I have been playing basketball since I was seven years old. That’s more than 60 years, and as March Madness moves into full swing, I find myself thinking about the game and my addiction to it.

It isn’t skill. I can do two things — shoot from the outside and run. (I don’t get tired.) I dribble as little as possible. I drive to the basket once a decade; I’ve blocked two shots in my entire life, and if white men can’t jump, this white Jewish man really can’t jump. Maybe twice a year my shot is on and I feel I can’t miss. On days like that I think that I’ve finally arrived and can’t wait for the next game. But when game day rolls around again and I get out on the court, I find that I have regressed to my usual level, which is several degrees south of mediocre.

In all these years I have had two triumphs. Once when I was playing on the beach-side courts in Laguna Beach, every shot went in. The other players, black and Latino, started to yell, “Larry Bird, Larry Bird.” I knew it was a joke, but I savored the moment anyway.

Another time, when I was living in Baltimore, I hired a tall young man to remove the leaves from my lawn. When I came back a couple of hours later I found the leaves merely rearranged. I complained and refused to pay. We got into a shouting match, and then I asked, “Do you play basketball?”

“Yes,” he answered, and I said, “There’s a gym up the street; let’s play for it. You win, I pay you; you don’t, I don’t.” He replied, “Are you crazy old man?” (At the time I was in my mid-forties; I hate to imagine what he’d say today.)

We trekked to the gym and I beat him three times by big scores. In the first game he didn’t guard me because he didn’t believe I could do anything, and I hit one long shot after another. In the second game he guarded me too closely, and I went around him. In the third game he didn’t know what to do, and it was all over. The whole thing took less than half an hour, which was good because in another 20 minutes he would have figured out that I had only two moves and that both of them could easily be neutralized by someone taller, stronger and more athletic, all of which he was.

And then there are the thousand other times when I walked off the court either feeling happy not to have embarrassed myself (although I hadn’t done much) or trying to come to terms with the fact that I had indeed embarrassed myself. Whichever it was, I always knew that I would be back.

Why? Why continue to do something I wasn’t any good at nine times out of ten? Well for one thing basketball players are by and large generous. (There are exceptions.) If you’re not very skilled, if you’re old and slow, they will make a place for you in the game. In his recent book “Give and Go: Basketball as a Cultural Practice,” Thomas McLaughlin speaks of the ethical practices that emerge in the course of a game even though no rules have imposed them: “Every time one of the players in our game says to a weak player as he is taking an open shot that he will likely miss ‘Good shot,’ he is weaving the ethical fabric of the game.”

I have often been the beneficiary of that ethical fabric, even when those weaving me into it are perfect strangers. For one of the great things about being a basketball player (or pretending to be one) is that no court is closed to you which is why I always have a basketball in the trunk of my car. You can just show up wherever there is a hoop and a game and you will be included. (This holds also in foreign countries where there may be a language barrier, but never a basketball barrier.)

At Live Oak Park in Berkeley I played with college standouts and with American Basketball Association all-star Lavern Tart. On a famous court in the West Village I played on a team that won every game. It was glorious even though I never touched the ball. In a strict sense I didn’t belong on those courts, but pick-up basketball doesn’t enforce any strict sense and is willing to relax the demands of competition and winning for the sake of extending its pleasures to those whose skills are minimal.

What are those pleasures? They are not, I think, pleasures that point outward to some external good. Rather they are the pleasures of performing (however badly) within the strict parameters of a practice whose goals and rewards are entirely internal. Hans Gumbrecht, in his book “In Praise of Athletic Beauty,” links sports to Kant’s account of the beautiful as the experience of “pure disinterested satisfaction.” It is a satisfaction, Gumbrecht explains, that “has no goal in everyday life” (like virtue, it is its own reward), and he quotes with admiration Olympic swimmer Pablo Morales’s description of the pleasure he feels in competition as “that special feeling of getting lost in focused intensity.”

The marvel is that focused intensity can be achieved even in the act of failure, even by someone who knows what to do but most of the time can’t quite do it. And it is for that intensity — not its object or its goal — that one plays, for in those moments of surrender to the game all one’s troubles, all one’s strivings, all one’s petty irritations fall away. And if, occasionally, you actually do set the hard pick or deliver the perfect pass or make the improbable shot, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

And by the way, my money is on Duke to take it all. A pick from the heart.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

BlAsian: Ding Hui

One of the things I have always wondered about racists is their complete denial, ignorance or dismissing of biology and history. Here's what I mean:

Many moons ago I participated in APA advocacy in media, which led to me being involved in some whoop dee doo boycott of the broadcast networks. I won't say anything more about it because I had my doubts from jump, but, live and learn. Anyway, as a result of this project, I participated on a panel for a local cable show. On this panel were esteemed spokespeople from various guilds and orgs - and schleppy ole me in their midst. I was and felt like the grain of sand in a delicious dessert you just happen to bite into.

Toward the conclusion, after all the nattering, I took the opportunity to point out something; here in LA we have the most diverse population in the world, it's like some kind of weird experiment, with lines crossing everywhere. One of the outcomes of that has been, for instance, areas such as Koreatown, which was formerly populated by blacks, and now Latinos and Koreans.

It goes without saying that any culture is xenophobic and racist, but just imagine this scenario; a school in Koreatown where a bunch of Korean boys are standing around talking. Then a cute Salvy girl walks by. You really think they aren't going to take note?

Everyone laughed at my imagined scenario. But the truth is that no matter how racist and jacked up parents are, there is nothing they can do to stop biology.
Anyone remember Strom Thurmond? What about president Jefferson dipping in the chocolate?


China calls up its first black athlete

A 19-year-old volleyball player from the eastern city of Hangzhou has become the first black athlete to be called up to represent China, triggering fierce curiosity among his compatriots.


4/15/09

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai for Telegraph

Ding Hui, who is affectionately nicknamed Xiao Hei, or Little Black, by his team mates, was included in the national team's new 18-man training squad.

The son of a South African father and a Chinese mother, Ding is expected to play a key role in China's push for gold at the London Olympics in 2012.

However, despite the fact that he was born in China and only speaks Mandarin and his city's local dialect, his elevation has stirred up some racial prejudices among his countrymen.

Commentators have noted that he has a "pleasant and perky nature" and is talented at "singing and dancing". On Chinese internet forums, he has been lauded for the "whiteness" of his teeth and the "athleticism of his genes".

China's black population is tiny, and attitudes remain relatively unsophisticated. One predominately African suburb in the southern city of Guangzhou is cheerfully referred to as "Chocolate City".

In the run-up to last year's Olympic Games in Beijing, large numbers of blacks were rounded up by police on suspicion of being drug dealers.

However, the black population is growing rapidly. Since 2003, when China started pouring investments into Africa, there has been a significant movement of Africans in the opposite direction. Guangzhou authorities believe there are now 100,000 Africans from Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Liberia and Mali in the city, and the flow is growing by 30 to 40 per cent annually.

Mr Ding told the Shanghai Wenhui newspaper that "people seem to care more about my heritage and appearance, but all I want to do is to play good volleyball". Referring to China's policy of drafting foreigners to boost its teams, he added: "I am not a foreign aid. I want to be included."

Li Shiping, the captain of the volleyball team, said the players had been irritated by the gawping of the Chinese media. "I had hoped the press would not dig out the boy's African heritage or his family details but instead focus on his skills and performance," he said, adding that there would be no chance to see Ding until a press conference next week.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Humility, Talent and Song Meet Your Moment: Susan Boyle

There's a saying in the business: "She killed," as in going on stage and having the audience in the palm of one's hand.

By now, everyone's seen and had their say about Susan Boyle, as if scripted by Tinsletown's storymakers. She has that completely potent and disarming combo: humility and talent. The truth is she has limited range but there are certain songs that match well with particular singers - this was a case. Even here with "I Dreamed a Dream," she struggles on the lower register at 3:17-3:29. A good vocal coach can help her around that, and we'll see. Nonetheless, she has the power and good tonal quality that matches this song well. Coupled with her charm and talent, the couldn't-have-been-scripted-better-Hollywood-buildup of doubt and outright laughing at her based upon her appearance and age... then the complete killing of the audience, and it's a classic.

Most people comment they love Simon's look/reaction when she first begins to sing, but there are two points in the video I like;

1. The first occurs at about 3:00, and is a shot of a few seconds from behind her. The bright lights and the loneliness of a solitary performer on stage makes a dramatic shot.


2. The second is at about 4:12, and would normally be the point in the song where "the big dramatic pause" takes place, where a singer, particularly a show singer (think Liza), gathers herself for the crescendo. Some showy singers also emote, closing the eyes, tilting the head, or flowery hand gestures... None of that bullshit here. Instead, with the camera on a medium shot she stands there smiling and nodding in time. Completely unpretentious.


After the big finish, she proves how unpretentious she is by just strolling off the stage, la dee da, la dee da, completely unaffected by all the hoopla, and they have to call her back for the judging - I gotta say, it's pretty cute.

Amanda Holden was the only one who was honest, saying while turning back toward the audience, that everyone "was against you," - that's code for, "because you're ugly, no one takes you seriously" - and that Susan's performance was "the biggest wake-up call, ever."

There's so much more I could say about her performance, because, not that I'm Godard, but like the great one did extrapolating and deconstructing the photograph of Jane Fonda in, A Letter to Jane, I think someone more competent than I could have a field day riffing about beauty and assumptions, let alone humility and being unpretentious.

Aged 47, never married, she says she's never been kissed. I think part of Susan's charm is because people recognize that she's not canned, trained or spit out by a machine, let alone affected otherwise. She is your "basic real person" and an anomaly in today's world; humble, talented and unpretentious. Oprah's already reached out to have her on. Will she survive? I hope so.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Cary Fukunaga's, Sin Nombre

I haven't written about Cary Fukunaga's Sin Nombre yet because my homeboy, Luis Rodriguez was scheduled to speak on a panel after a benefit screening last week for Homies Unidos downtown. Fukunaga was on the panel as well, and we spoke a bit, he mild mannered and me respecting his space. Nice guy, and a hapa, Japanese as his surname denotes.

But that isn't even the most significant thing to this Asian raised in East Los; it was, upon hearing the vernacular of the MS members, I was impressed. They got it - calo' (the language of East LA) - right. In fact, I've often wondered about the very name, La Mara Salvatrucha, because I can't make out what it means. Trucha is a colloquialism outside of Spanish proper and belonging to calo'; it means watch out, as in, "Trucha homes, la chota (another calo'-ism) 'sta aqui" ("Watch out, man, the police are here."). Together with "Salva" as representative of El Salvador, and "Mara" as the first part of "maravilloso" ("marvelous" but also very possibly a response to the Maravilla barrio and their clicas, or sets as blacks say, the largest and most notorious in my day being El Hoyo and Lomita; the former having one of the most crazy but elegant sounding sub-clicas: "El Hoyo Maravilla Gansos" - who knew geese were cholos?) it's about as far as I get.

The preceding looks like a mish-mash paragraph but would only make sense to someone raised in East LA. This is because the movie takes part in Central America, much of it in Salvador, and yet when you listen to the MS gang speaking, it's East LA homeboys.

More, that isn't an accident, it's an unintended outcome initiated by the United States. After Reagan had funded all kinds of trickery and devilishness in Central America -- death squads for one -- coupled with the poverty and post-colonialist residue, this served to drive emigres to LA. The young Salvies, some of whom were born in LA, responded to the native gangs by themselves uniting - thus MS. Some joined established barrios - Dieciocho (18th Street) being another notorious one.

Then something pivotal happens again; it was either Bush one or Clinton that began deporting the Salvies back. This explains the exporting of LA gang culture - specifically, East LA gang culture - to Salvador and other parts of Central America (as well as Mexico); this is where Sin Nombre takes place, well after these deportations. And it's important to know this history before seeing the film, otherwise it happens in a nihilistic, existential vacuum where I can see some saying, "Look at those animals," while once again dunning mudpeople and ignoring historical contexts.

Luis made the salient point on the panel afterwards that there just as in our own backyard, the young kids are compelled by economics in large part. You're talking about very poor kids with no skills, experience and education. Thus, for some the very same reasons that flourished and flourish in LA that compel gang-related behavior, so too goes in Salvador. That's important to know.

It's a good film, well researched and acted. It just needs to be contextualized in history.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Dancin' Dora

This has been out for forever, but I needed a laugh today so looked it up cause I hadn't seen it in a minute.

The first time Cooky showed me this we were both cracking up for days. It's still damn entertaining.

So for posterity, here's Josh/J-Way doin' his Dancin' Dora. And stick to the end where Dora C-Walks!

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

EM08: Lawrence Summers & 8 Million Reasons

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration’s plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

I'm positive that had McCain won we'd now be living on carrots and mud, but then campaigning for president and senator Obama's tell - very vocally advocating for the bank bailout and then voting for it, what we now know is the largest heist in history - as I've said many times now really bothered me. Further, his rush to "do something" and the urgency he was conveying in the aftermath of the vote was at odds with the public perception of him as a thoughtful, reasoned and analytical man.

The dilemma now facing us is not unlike having a friend or relative whom you may like but that does weird or bad things. The problem with Barack is that it's not just a "weird or "bad thing" he's done and is doing, this just happens to be the biggest theft in history that he's a major part of. This is history-making serious. No amount of personal charm or smooth persona can change that.

I still like Barack, or maybe want to like him is more accurate. But he worries me to no end. Here's something on one of his econ advisers, Larry Summers, whom we now add to the players list where we find Geithner and Paulson.

Courtesy of former LA Times columnist Robert Scheer & Truthdig...






Living Large and in Charge
Posted on Apr 7, 2009

By Robert Scheer

Not surprisingly, Lawrence Summers is convinced that he deserved every penny of the $8 million that Wall Street firms paid him last year. And why shouldn’t he be cut in on the loot from the loopholes in the toxic derivatives market that he pushed into law when he was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary? No one has been more persistently effective in paving the way for the financial swindles that enriched the titans of finance while impoverishing the rest of the world than the man who is now the top economic adviser to President Obama.

It is especially disturbing that Summers got most of the $8 million from a major hedge fund at a time when such totally unregulated rich-guys-only investment clubs stand to make the most off the Obama administration’s plan for saving the banks. The scheme, as announced by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, a Summers protégé, is to clean up the toxic holdings of the banks using taxpayer money and then turn them over to hedge funds that will risk little of their own capital. At least the banks are somewhat government-regulated, which cannot be said of the hedge funds, thanks to Summers.

It was Summers, as much as anyone, who in the Clinton years prevented the regulation of the hedge funds that are at the center of the explosion of the derivatives bubble, and the fact that D.E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund, paid the Obama adviser $5.2 million last year does suggest a serious conflict of interest. That sum is what Summers raked in for a part-time gig, in addition to the $2.77 million he received for 40 speaking engagements, largely before banks and investment firms, and on top of the $587,000 he was paid as a professor at Harvard.

Summers was a top adviser to the Democratic presidential candidate last year, and that might have enhanced his speaking fees, which seem to have a base rate of $67,500, the amount he received on each of two occasions when he appeared at Lehman Brothers before that company went bankrupt. Lehman had purchased a 20 percent stake in D.E. Shaw while Summers was employed by the hedge fund, and it would be interesting to know if the subject of the overlapping business came up during Summers’ visit to Lehman.

Lehman was only one on an impressive list of top financial firms that consulted Summers during a troubled period. Goldman Sachs was so interested in his thoughts that it paid him more than $200,000 for two talks, even though it soon needed $12 billion in taxpayer bailout funds. Citigroup, which has been going through hard times, managed only a $54,000 fee for a Summers rap. Merrill Lynch could pony up only a scant $45,000 for a Summers appearance last Nov. 12, but that was at a point when Merrill was in deep trouble, with the government arranging its sale. Summers, anticipating an appointment in the administration of the newly elected Obama and perhaps wanting to avoid any embarrassment the fee might bring, decided to turn over the $45,000 to a charity.

Why was someone as compromised as Summers made the White House’s point man overseeing $2.86 trillion in bailout funds to the financial moguls whom he had enabled in creating this mess and many of whom had benefited him financially? Will no congressional panel ever quiz Summers about his grand theory that the derivatives market required no government supervision because, as he testified to a Senate subcommittee in July of 1998: “The parties to these kinds of contracts are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies. … ”

Think of the sophisticates at AIG when you read that sentence, and then ask why Summers is once again at large in the public sector. Or take White House spokesman Ben LaBolt’s word for it that “Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration’s work … to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight—all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives.”

The very same executives that Summers had previously assured us could be trusted without any regulation. Why should we now trust Summers any more than we trust them? Couldn’t Summers just take his ill-gotten gains and go hide out in some offshore tax haven? If this was happening in a Republican administration, scores of Democrats in Congress would be all over it, asking tough questions about what exactly did Summers do to earn all that money from the D.E. Shaw hedge fund. As it is, with their silence they are complicit in this emerging scandal of the banking bailout.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

William Black

Bill Moyers had on Professor William Black, he is the only economics professor so far who makes sense to me.

The issue of criminality, collusion and the "Big Club" (populated by a few white guys, "...and you and I ain't in it") is at last being talked about openly on mass media, albeit on PBS.

To the short list of those helping us understand EM08, put Gretchen Morgenson Michael Lewis, Matt Taibbi, and now add Black.

Not only does Black agree with me about the crucial role of the ratings agencies, but he goes to the heart of the roles of Obama's point men, Tim Geithner, and former Goldman honcho and now Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson.