It was 75 degrees on Saturday in Dallas. I’m not sure if that temperature was official. It may have been 71 degrees or even 76. I don’t know. But people were saying it was 75 degrees. The sun gleamed, its rays not burning but warming, pleasantly, like it knew not to overstep its boundaries because it was January Continue reading
The Prologue
The streets were mostly empty as the sky turned gray over downtown Kansas City.
The temperature had dropped below freezing, and the voices of laughter could be heard from just a few feet away, echoing off the solid surface of the Ice Terrace skating rink at Crown Center.
I kept walking. My right hand holding a notepad and bearing the frozen temperature; my left hand tucked into my coat pocket; my shoulders jutting inward, pinching toward my shoulders — the posture of a man trying to escape the inescapable feeling of dry Midwestern cold.
I had been walking all day. Through shopping malls. Through parking lots. Through the streets of Kansas City. Now my three-hour journey was almost over; and I was craving the warmth of another shopping center.
The stores at Crown Center sit in the heart of 85 acres of offices and hotels and restaurants and retail. It’s one of the prime tourist attractions in Kansas City proper; and perhaps this says something about my city.
There is no beach in Kansas City. The skyline ranks somewhere between average and non-existent — sometimes you have to squint to realize that the collection of tall buildings in front of you is it.
Kansas City is a place to live; not a place to visit.
It’s a town of famous barbecue and fountains and shopping centers; It’s a town with depressing winters and blistering summers; fleeting falls and short-lived springs. A town with a baseball franchise that is major-league in name only. And a town with a world-class arena with no team to play in it.
And, of course, there is football.
The first floor of Crown Center was nearly deserted. It was a Sunday. And it was the afternoon.
I looked around for an ATM. I needed some cash for a caffeine fix, and my wallet was empty.
I walked past stores, past Fritz’s — a restaurant where they bring you your food on a train — and past a Z-Teca that looked like it belonged in 2001.
Finally, with cash in hand, I approached the counter of the coffee shop.
A small crowd had gathered in front of the counter. And their eyes were focused on the small HDTV perched next to the espresso makers and coffee mugs.
The game was in the fourth quarter by now. And in the background, you could hear the faint sound of radio broadcasters.
After a few moments, a family approached the scene with a stroller and a collective look of curiosity.
The man glanced up at the television and his eyes began to widen.
“Honey,” he said, breaking the silence. “How long were we eating?
His wife — her hands on the stroller and her attention on the baby — stayed silent.
“Honey,” the man said again. “The Chiefs were down three 30 minutes ago… now they’re down 20.”
I looked at the man, looked at another face of exasperation, and turned my head back to the television.
The thought and events of the past 72 hours aligned in my head. How did I get here, standing in a quiet and sober and artificial shopping center, watching the Chiefs lose another playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium.
It was their fourth straight home loss in the postseason, a dizzying feat of futility.
And, somehow, I had managed to miss them all.
*****
The Assignment
The phone began to vibrate on Friday evening. I was steering my 2001 Ford Taurus through suburbia, on my way to cover a high school basketball game in South Kansas City.
I dug the phone out of my front pocket…
Hello…
The voice on the other end of the line was one of my editors at The Kansas City Star.
The conversation could have been timed in seconds.
Editor: What are you doing this Sunday?
Me: Uh… nothing… why?
Editor: Well, we think we might have a story for you. We’re not sure, but something Chiefs related.
Me: … Like a fan story? Like go to a bar and watch the game?
Editor: Maybe. We’re still thinking about it… but are you free?
Me: Sure… I’m game for anything.
I pulled the phone down from my ear and clicked END. OK, I thought. I can handle this. Maybe I’ll watch the story at a bar. Maybe I’ll go to Arrowhead and interview some tailgaters. This could be cool.
I’ll still be able to watch the game. The streak will still end. This is the year.
*****
The Past
Memories are a funny thing. Sometimes they’re sharp and clear, ready to be pulled from the shallowest recesses of your brain without hesitation, like the biggest folder in the file cabinet.
But, of course, sometimes they are shadowy and blurry, beaten and molded into new shapes … until they’re not even really memories anymore, just scenes in your mind, curious recollections of lost memories.
I feel like I should point this out. But I also feel like I should say this: I don’t know which category these following memories fall in.
I can’t remember not remembering them, nor can I remember forgetting them.
But still, something feels foreign about them, like I filled in the gaps with dreams or other stories from the past.
But here’s what I do know: When I was in the first grade, I sat in Ms. Bingham’s class at Nall Hills Elementary on a Monday morning and listened to my classmates talk about their weekend.
This was January of 1994 — a different time. And as I sat there, I remember looking across the room at a classmate named David. Now, this part may not be central to this story – but it is most central to my memory.
David didn’t talk. He wasn’t mute. And he wasn’t dumb. He was simply a small, rather sickly looking 1st grader with a fear of talking. So he didn’t.
For months that year, David didn’t say a word. Not at recess. Not at lunch. Not during reading class. Not a word. I don’t remember exactly how he managed to get by – but he did. He would write stuff down on a notebook. And he would do his work. And he was just the first grader who didn’t talk. Didn’t all elementary schools have one of those kids?
So on this Monday in January, another day of dry Midwestern cold, Ms. Bingham stood up in front of the class and asked us about what had happened the previous weekend? It was like current events for first graders.
Oh, you watched cartoons? Excellent. You went to your brother’s basketball game? Great. Your family went out to eat at Godfather’s? Wow.
So the discussion started, and after a few seconds, David scribbled something on his notebook and held it high in the air with two hands.
“Oh, David, what does that say,” Ms Bingham said, walking closer.
“The Chiefs… are going… to the… Super Bowl,” she said, reading David’s notebook.
“Well, not yet,” Ms Bingham said. “But they’re getting there.”
Yes, the Chiefs had just beaten the Houston Oilers in the AFC Divisional playoff round. They were heading to Buffalo to play the Bills in the AFC Championship Game. And in my mind, my innocent 7-year-old mind, they WERE going to the Super Bowl. They weren’t going to lose.
Even David knew it.
This is where the memory gets blurry. And I’m not sure what happened, or how much of the game I saw.
But I know this: I was inside the All-American Indoor Soccer center when I heard the news.
The Chiefs had lost.
Was I there to play a game? I don’t think so. I was only 7. Was I there to watch one of my older siblings. Probably. That must have been it.
But I can’t remember. All I can remember is the scene inside the building when the game was over. I can remember the glum faces. And the feeling of loss. No Super Bowl. Not this year.
And I remember the cherry icy sign at the concession stand. It was red and blue. And I think there was a white cat on the logo. Maybe not. My memory is hazy.
*****
The Day
I woke up early on Sunday. I needed coffee. And I needed a plan.
I had received my assignment the night before.
Editor: Rustin, we want you to go around the city and talk to people who have to work during the game. Think about it this way: For three hours, Kansas City stood still… but some people still have to work.
As my editor explained the assignment, I began to think about David and the sign he’d held up in the air. It had been 17 years since the Chiefs had won a playoff game. 17 years since David had spoken up in the only way he knew how.
My memory began to play hopscotch. I remembered going to a 6 p.m. church service during the end of the Chiefs’ heartbreaking home loss to the Colts in the divisional round in 1995. But why? Why did my family skip playoff football for Church?
We’re Catholic. And we went to church every Sunday. But why did we feel we HAD to go during the Chiefs game.
I remembered riding along a dark and lonely I-70 in 1997, when the Chiefs had folded against John Elway and the Broncos at Arrowhead, another excruciating home loss in the divisional round. My dad and I were listening to the radio, on our way home from a weekend trip to Manhattan to see my grandparents, and the broadcast told the story.
I remember my heart stopping when Elvis Grbac danced around the pocket, looking for a miracle on the final play. The ball would fall to the turf. And I would turn the radio off.
Six years later, I would be trapped in an elementary school gymnasium, refereeing youth basketball as the Chiefs lost to the Colts in a shootout at Arrowhead after another 13-3 season and another bye.
This was Kansas City. Make the playoffs. Earn a bye. And lose.
In 2006, the narrative pushed along; the Chiefs would slide into the playoffs once more.
This time there was no bye. This time there was no home game. There was just a loss; an embarrassing performance against the Colts in Indianapolis.
And as then Chiefs coach Herm Edwards shook his head on the sidelines, dazed by the disastrous outcome, I sat inside an elementary school gym, officiating a Kindergarten girls basketball game, listening for updates from a father with portable radio headphones in his ears, missing my fifth Chiefs playoff game in a row.
*****
The First Stop
The church parking lot was nearly empty when I pulled up. I opened the car door and looked for a sign of life.
A father and his daughter walked past me, nodding and smiling.
I had arrived at Guardian Angels Catholic Church in Westport a few minutes past schedule.
This was my first stop. I had planned on searching for a few churchgoers — parishioners, in this case — as they entered church.
Mass started at 11 p.m. — one hour before the Chiefs were to kick off against the Baltimore Ravens — and I was searching for any sign of red; any sign that said Chiefs fan; any sign of a person planning his day around this town’s secular religion.
But I was late. And so, here was my choice. Leave without my interview — leave without any proof of Priest Holmes jerseys or Chiefs Starter jackets — or crash the service.
I walked inside.
I had a recorder in my jacket pocket. And I was here for business reasons. But, hey, maybe I could just look for signs of Chiefs jerseys and then leave. No harm, right?
I sat down in the back pew. The service had just begun. And in seconds, I came across the first sign: A young, girthy man, maybe 26 or 27, wearing a Tony Gonzalez jersey.
Red was everywhere. On young kids. On moms. Entire families bonded by a team.
And for some reason, I couldn’t leave. Maybe it was the weight of Catholic guilt stored up inside me. Maybe I realized I needed to talk to these people. At least one. So I stayed. Through the homily. Through communion. Through the final prayers.
After the final song, I walked out quickly and waited on the parish steps.
The young man from inside walked out behind me. His name was Josh, and his Tony Gonzalez jersey poked out from his coat.
He told me he was on his way to watch the game with friends. He walked fast. Down the street, a car with a Chiefs flag in the window drove by.
*****
The Second Stop
Kayla Hathaway paced back and forth, a pizza cutter in her right hand and a Jamaal Charles jersey on her back.
She flipped open her cell phone, confirmed the news that had filtered from the kitchen and began to spin her blade over a piece of hot pie.
This was all she could do. The Chiefs were playing the Baltimore Ravens at Arrowhead Stadium, the first home playoff game in Kansas City in seven years, and Hathaway, an 18-year-old from Merriam, was stuck here, behind the counter of the Original Pizza at Oak Park Mall.
At Arrowhead Stadium, nearly 22 miles away, Charles had just run 41 yards for a touchdown, and the muffled sound of an energized Chiefs radio broadcast could be heard from inside the pizza stand’s kitchen.
“I love him,” Hathaway said.
And for a moment, Hathaway could almost envision the Chiefs’ first playoff victory in a generation — even if she was stuck at work, holding those feelings in, deprived of watching the biggest Chiefs game in years.
“I always have faith,” Hathaway said, the joy from Charles’ touchdown making the impending letdown even more demoralizing.
But on this Sunday afternoon, with the game still in the first half, and the pizza still hot, the Chiefs’ 30-7 loss to the Ravens was still a worst-case-scenario thought.
I left the mall, the sound of the radio broadcast playing in my ears.
The day wasn’t over. I still had time to watch this game; to finally witness the heartbreak on live and on television … on my own terms.
The desperation
By the third quarter, Chiefs fan Orlester Jones was shaking his head inside Gates Bar-B-Q on Main Street.
“Business will pick up in a second,” Jones said, glancing at the almost empty dining room. “After the game.”
By the fourth quarter, the mood at the skate rental desk at the Crown Center Ice Terrace had become, well, cold and icy.
Even for a bitterly cold Sunday in January, business had been slow all day. A man named Alfred Baca stood behind the counter. He talked about missing the game. And about working at the ice terrace. And, well, what else could he talk about?
“I just heard about (Dexter) McCluster’s fumble and the turnovers,” Baca said, “so I’m pretty much done with that game.”
My Sunday journey through Kansas City was nearly complete. And from Oak Park Mall to Crown Center — from the heart of Westport to downtown — a feeling of gloom was setting in.
Still time, I thought. I can still see this game.
*****
The Hope
Maybe some day it will happen. Maybe some day, the Chiefs will make the playoffs again. Maybe next year. And maybe I’ll find myself a couch and a television — and I’ll watch every play.
Maybe.
But on another cold Sunday in Kansas City, I spent my day nibbling at the crumbs and leftovers of another playoff loss.
I was standing inside Crown Center, sipping on my turtle mocha, and I looked at the television with the gruesome image of failure, and I quickly realized one thing.
I still had work to do.
Just a few paces away, a middle-aged woman named Ronda stood behind the counter in The Best of Kansas City store.
The sound of a dispirited Len Dawson on the Chiefs radio broadcast echoed through the empty store, and Gentry just smiled and shrugged.
“They’ve fallen apart,” she said.
She had been forced to follow the game here; and after a surprising number of Chiefs fans had shown up on Saturday night to buy last-minute items for the game, she was actually rather excited about it.
But now she was alone in her store, surrounded by some of the ‘best’ this city has to offer: Famous barbecue sauces, upscale chocolate, posters of the some of Kansas City’s most idyllic views, and the sound of another Chiefs playoff loss didn’t match the surroundings.
“The third quarter sounded really ugly,” Gentry said. “At this point, I’m happy to have just heard it and not seen it.”
Basketball is beautiful. It really is. Even the crummy WNBA ad campaign from a few years ago centering on that concept didn’t take away the simplistic yet resonant meaning of those three words. BASKETBALL IS BEAUTFIUL.
Rustin Dodd recently listed it as the most artistic game, more aesthetically pleasing than soccer and even tennis, a game, to me, defined by the unparalleled grace of its greatest champion, Roger Federer. But Rustin is right, and I fully understood why on Thursday.
I was watching the KU-UCLA game. All my life, I’ve loved Kansas basketball. That should come as no surprise to the 13 readers of this blog. The roots of my love are superficial at best, maybe embarrassing at worst. I began loving Kansas because of the colors. My parents, Debbie and Paul Dent, introduced the concept of colleges when I couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. Kansas wore red and blue. Kansas State wore purple. Red and blue was cool. And purple sucked. I was a Jayhawk.
Not long after, I began watching the basketball games because my dad viewed every one of them (and still does) like every member of the Jayhawk family, with religious fervor. I watched Steve Woodberry and Patrick Ritchie, then Jacque Vaughn and Ryan Robertson, then Jeff Boschee and Kenny Gregory, then Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison, and then in the most recent times I watched Russell Robinson and Brandon Rush. Then I stopped.
I haven’t watched much KU basketball this year, nor did I watch much last year. That is what happens when you live in a city located far away from Lawrence. There are bars to watch it here in Dallas and ESPN3 is a God-send and good Samaritans illegally stream games on Justin.TV, but the games have tumbled down my list of priorities. The euphoria present with every dribble in Lawrence-KC fades away when you leave the city limits. Even when I watch the games, I am not watching them the same way I do at Allen Fieldhouse or in a Johnson County family room. I am watching them detached from what makes the games special.
But I did watch on Thursday. I was into the game more than most I see because it was a tight game. I even got a little angry at the missed free throws and when Tyrel Reed threw away the basketball with 13 seconds left. Then Tyler Honeycutt squared up, then the entire game depended on his shooting stroke, then it hit me.
Basketball is beautiful.
I prayed he would make it. I wanted to see the union of ball and net. I realized I love KU, but I love basketball more. Basketball is improvisational art. It is spontaneous, and the performances last for two hours, longer if we’re lucky. No single team or player can transcend the joy provided by the actual game; they only contribute to it. That is what happened when Marcus Morris lofted a Todd Reesing pass in transition to Markieff Morris, and it is what happened when Honeycutt pulled up six feet behind the three-point line with a hand in his face and made the shot all of us knew he would make and the shot I wanted him to make so he could prolong the masterpiece he had composed over the last 39 minutes and 50 seconds.
Of course, had the refs not interfered with art, I also wanted Kansas to destroy UCLA in overtime.
So here we go, the sky is overcast and gray.
Through the window you can see cars driving 45 mph, people weaving through suburban sprawl, preparing for another holiday of thanks, visions of pumpkin pie and football and tryptophan overdoses dancing in their heads.
And it’s Nov. 24, 2010, and we’re way overdue for another edition of Brewhouse List Mania…
For those not in the know, List Mania is an ode to former Kansas City Star and current Sports Illustrated columnist Joe Posnanski, who famously wrote lists until one day, many years ago, he wrote a column saying he would never list again…
So here goes… we’re picking up the listing slack:
The four best places to run in Kansas City
1. Loose Park (If you can handle the constant collection of wedding photographers and kids posing for their senior pictures)
2. 18th and Vine (past the old, weathered building with “God Bless Buck” spray-painted on the side)
3. The lawn of the Nelson Atkins Art Gallery (in the shadow of the shuttlecocks)
4. Ward Parkway
Three awkward moments from everyday life
1. The one where you want to get a 7-day free trial gym membership, so you must sit through a 20-minute meeting with one of the trainers or supervisors.*
*It really is brutally uncomfortable. One time, I just want to be bluntly honest and say: Listen, there’s about a 0.5 percent chance I’m signing up for a membership. But you guys offer this 7-day free trial. So can I just work out? But, of course, you grit your teeth, and you smile, and you feint interest, and then you end up having this exchange.
Gym guy: So, do you stay active?
Me: Yea
Gym guy: Do you have any chronic health problems?
Me: No
Gym guy: Do you eat three meals a day?
Me: More or less
Gym guy: What about snacks?
Me: Uhh… yea, I guess
2. The one where you meet with a financial planner for the first time. Again, lots of feinting interest and head-nodding and smiling and general awkwardness.
3. The one where you see a friend you haven’t talked with in months – or even years – but you know a few specific details about said person via Facebook or Twitter.
Person 1: Hey! I heard you got engaged.
Person 2: Oh really, how’d you here?
Person 1: Umm, yea…. I. Don’t. Recall.
The top three most artistic sports
1. Basketball
The perfect mix of athleticism, agility, hand-eye coordination and improvisation
2. Soccer
If the saying is true, and happiness really is in the doing, then the true brilliance of soccer is in the build-up, the small moments that lead to a goal, the vision, the touch passes, thinking three moves ahead, like a game of chess.
3. Tennis
They call boxing the sweet science, but tennis is perhaps sweeter and more scientific. There’s footwork and long rallies and angles and geometry and endurance. It’s an individual test of wills, and there is no coach, no caddy, no person offering advice. Just the player, the racquet, the brain — and the opponent.
Ten things to be thankful for on Thanksgiving
1. Thanksgivings at home
2. Sitting in a high school press box on a chilly fall night with Kenny Chesney’s “Boys of Fall” playing in the background
3. Pumpkin spice lattes
4. The smell outside Allen Fieldhouse on a cold winter night
5. Girl Talk’s new album
6. Jamaal Charles in the open field
7. Apples with peanut butter
8. YouTube clips of Lionel Messi
9. Live performances from Arcade Fire
10. Newspaper front pages that hit you right in the gut
Five song lyrics for the fall
1. “Johnny works in a factory and Billy works downtown…Terry works in a rock and roll band…Lookin’ for that million-dollar sound,” — Springsteen, “The Promise”
2. “Between the click of the light and the start of the dream,” — Arcade Fire, “No Cars Go”
3. “Load the car and write the note…Grab your bag and grab your coat…Tell the ones that need to know…We are headed north,” — Avett Brothers, “ I and Love and You”
4. “I had to flick nothin and turn it in to something… hip hop turns to the future of rock when I smash a pumpkin,” — Wyclef, “Gone till November”
5. “Why should we worry, no one will care girl… Look at the stars so far away…
We’ve got tonight, who needs tomorrow?” — Seger, “We’ve got tonight”
I had my first cruise experience when I was 19 years old.
There’s something about a cruise vacation. It’s different than your typical tropical vacation to Cancun or Tahiti or Cabo.
I guess the general point — the specific mission of each trip — is pretty similar.
It’s about getting away and soaking in sunshine and sipping fruity drinks by some body of water. Paradise, right?
But if you’ve been on a cruise, you probably know that cruises are different.
You’re on a ship with the same 1000 people or whatever — and something happens during those six or seven or eight days you spend on the water.
The cruise ship becomes a sort of small town on the sea. You interact with the same people. There’s only a few places to eat. And if you go on a really long cruise, like eight or nine or 10 (!) days, other vacationers — other cruisers — start to develop reputations. You learn about the family from Michigan with three daughters. Or the creepy-nice family from Texas, with the mullet-rocking dad who always extends his fingers like guns when he sees you and says HEY!!! I KNOW YOU!
These are people you feel like you’ve known all your life. And yet, they still don’t seem real. Nothing seems real. You go eat ridiculously large meals and you go to the “Cruise club” at night — a place called the “Viking Lounge” with a disco ball in the center, a place you would never go in real life, but this is a cruise and faux-reality rules the day.
By the end of the trip, you have memories that blend together. You remember certain things, like the free soft-serve ice cream machine on the pool deck, but you’re not sure if what you just experienced really was paradise — or just some strange construction of it, designed by some marketing executive at Royal Caribbean who works in some office somewhere far, far away from the sea.
I thought about all of this yesterday when I stumbled upon a story on CNN.com about a stranded cruise ship with 3,300 passengers on board.
On the surface, the story seems mildly absurd. Apparently, the ship lost power on Monday after a small fire began in the ship’s engine room. That, of course, wasn’t the ludicrous part. The ludicrous part is this: Sure, we feel for the cruisers, who had their vacations ruined and suffered a few mild inconveniences. But the story on Wednesday made the whole ordeal sound like a national catastrophe, like a real-life version of that terrible movie “Poseidon,” with people rationing food, and guests running around the ship all frazzled, with their shirts untucked and fresh sets of stubble covering their faces.
According to the story, the USS Ronald Reagan was called in and guests were forced to eat — wait for it, wait for it, — pop tarts and cold cuts…
Oh the horror.
From CNN.com:
“Passengers said they were not told there was a fire. Guest Marquis Horace said the cruise line told passengers there was “a flameless fire. … Everybody just laughed.” And passenger Ken King said guests were told there was “a lot of smoke.”
“It was absolutely deplorable,” Horace said. At one point, the ship ran out of food, he said, and “they started making mayo sandwiches.”
“I expected a really nice time and it was like Gilligan’s Island or something,” he said.
He said he ate a lot of bananas and dry cereal, but at one point didn’t want to eat anymore because the smell of overflowing toilets, spoiled food and rotten milk was overwhelming.
Once the USS Ronald Reagan showed up to assist, passengers felt safer, he said. And the Navy provided good food — Horace said he particularly enjoyed the bean burritos.”
You serious, Clark?
Oh, we certainly have sympathy for the maligned cruisers — especially the elderly woman who rode a motor scooter and had to be carried up and down the stairs because the elevators didn’t work.
That sucks for her. And we feel. We really do.
But let’s not pretend this is some sort of tragedy.
A bunch of rich people paid thousands of dollars to go on a vacation and eat gluttonous amounts of food — and then they had to settle for cereal and bananas and mediocre deli meat* when a major snafu occurred.
*Oh, yea… thank god for those bean burritos.
Still, we’re still wondering what the heck happened to all the food that was on the ship in the first place. I know that a lot of food will go bad really quickly. But in a matter of hours?
By Tuesday, the USS Ronald Reagan had resupplied the ship. According to CNN.com, “Sailors stood on the deck in 50-yard lines, handing off boxes of water, frozen bread, sandwich meats, granola bars, paper plates and more…
“Reagan received 60,000 pounds of food, bottled water and supplies by airlift for the cruise ship, said Cmdr. Greg Hicks, spokesman of the U.S. Third Fleet.”
60,000 pounds? By my rudimentary calculations — that’s about 18 pounds of food and water for each passenger. That doesn’t include all the staff, but these people weren’t exactly starving*.
*I have a friend who watched his first episode of “Man vs. Food” a few months ago, and when I asked him what he thought, he paused for a moment and uttered the following words:
“I’m pretty sure that’s why the world hates us.”
Well, file the Carnival cruise catastrophe under the same category.
Again, I hope nothing like this ever happens to you or yours.
But if it does, and you happen to be stuck in a semi-inconvenient situation, here’s one idea:
Take a moment to think about the millions around the world who will spend the next night without power, wondering when the next meal will come. Consider yourself lucky that you’re wealthy enough to be trapped on a cruise ship. And then unwrap your pop-tart, take a bite and savor the moment.
It just might end up being the most enjoyable thing you do all week.
The journey down Memory Lane (Sittin’ In Da Park) began with Nas and his Illmatic album. I had just moved a CD wallet containing some of my oldest CD’s from my room to my car and felt like listening to rap music. Illmatic begat DJ Clue’s Backstage Mixtape begat Ruff Ryders Ryde or Die Volume II begat Silkk the Shocker’s Charge It To Da Game, which got me thinking back to a time passed.
In 1997 to at least 2000, many commercial hip-hop/rap artists weren’t defined by the lyrics he spit or even the thumping beats in the background. A rapper was defined by one’s crew. One’s label. One’s association with someone better and more well-known than him or her.
It went like this. A talented artist, a Nas or a Jay-Z, released a couple of successful albums. He made enough money to buy the island of Cyprus. He released a clothing line. Then he decided to share the wealth amongst his friends, giving them a platform to rap while dreaming the friends could attain similar accolades but actually and smartly knowing they sucked but it didn’t matter because people would pay $14 for an album by a nobody and think it was decent because they were affiliated with said famous, successful rapper.
I was anointed into this rap community with Puff Daddy splashing the holy Cristal on my forehead. It was the same way every white millennial from suburbia experienced the dive into rap. His album No Way Out dropped in 1997, when I was in fifth grade. Puff Daddy, who actually went by Sean “Puffy” Combs for about seventeen minutes that year, had groundbreaking hits then, notably “Mo Money, Mo Problems” (actually on B.I.G.’s album) and “I’ll Be Missing You.” “Mo Money, Mo Problems” rocked and still does, but he was parroting off the fame of his late friend the Notorious B.I.G.
Biggie was the center of Bad Boy, the originator. He had the talent. He made the money. He lent cache to anyone with a microphone who drew near. Because of him, Bad Boy exploded. Artists like Lil’ Cease and Puff Daddy, as a rapper, became household names to hip-hop heads because they hung around with and recorded with Biggie.
And there was nothing terribly wrong with the Bad Boy clique, as far as music goes*. The Lox was a talented group, Mase a talented rapper pre his born-again Christian phase and Lil’ Kim was at least tolerable as a featured artist. The problem came because others across the country replicated the formula.
*The opinion that opposing rap alliances Bad Boy (east coast) and Deathrow (west coast) contributed to the deaths of Biggie and 2Pac is valid, if not irrefutable, but not the point of this blog post. I am simply here to discuss how much rap music sucked because of these amalgamations of non-talented musicians who just had good connections.
As Bad Boy reached its apex and then plummeted, other groups around the country took off. There were the Ruff Ryders. DMX, maybe the first rapper to be charged with both sodomy and animal cruelty, was the originator, his song “Ruff Ryders Anthem” announcing their arrival.
Besides DMX, there was Eve, a good musician and then people with names like Drag-On, Young Wun and Jin. Drag-On is such a terrible, forgettable rapper that you can’t even find his second-most famous song, “Groundhog Day,” on YouTube.
Other East Coast groups included the Flipmode Squad, headed by Busta Rhymes, Roc-A-Fella with Jay-Z and a short-lived effort by Nas’ Ill Will Records. Those mistakes brought us artists like Spliff Star and the Bravehearts and gut-wrenching songs like “Oochie Wallie.” But the worst offenders came from the South. The worst offenders included No Limit Records.
Other crews had a talented musician at the center; No Limit had Master P. He became famous because he uttered “ugh” every four seconds in his songs. He made two movies, “I Got The Hook Up” and “Foolish,” that no one, to this day, has ever seen. He played an exhibition basketball game for the Charlotte Hornets. He was not talented.
No Limit Records never aspired for artistic greatness, nor did it pretend to. The word business is commonly thrown out to describe the rap game, and no crew approached music as a business more than No Limit. Master P wanted the rappers from his legion, as he termed them soldiers, to release 20-song albums at a near-weekly basis. Wikipedia tells me that in 1998, 23 No Limit albums came out, a number that included a CD titled My Balls and My Word by a rapper named Young Bleed.
There was no thought put into any of it. Each album was the same. They contained forgettable odes about drug dealing and ghetto stereotypes and the requisite “fallen homies” and “crew shout-out” songs that featured seven artists. Nepotism got you signed. Master P’s brothers, Silkk and C-Murder, were on the label. The majority of the artists, like Mr. Serv-On, hailed from P’s hometown of New Orleans. None of them were good. None of them. Yet Fiend’s album reached No. 8 in the entire country, and rappers like Serv-On and Big Ed and the Gambino Family had albums in the top 20. Silkk the Shocker had an album go No. 1.
The commercial success led to No Limit’s greatest sin, spawning the Southside’s other mistake, Cash Money Records. Like No Limit, it differed from some of the other rap crews. It had talent at the center, in Juvenile and a young Lil’ Wayne, but usually crews were started by rich, established stars. No one had any money for Cash Money records. As you could imagine, this became a problem, considering the sole gimmick of Cash Money was to describe how much money they had even though they didn’t have any.
Every single song was about Bentleys and Rolexes. A song like “Rich N*****” would have a verse that would then turn into the chorus for the song “Loud Pipes.” It was cut and paste, and borrow the sweet cars and platinum chains that were in the music videos. Thankfully a few years ago, Cash Money handed everything over to Lil’ Wayne so the label actually survives today and resembles little of the genre-ruining entity it was years ago.
Back then, rap had changed. The music at its origins was largely about MC battles. One person rapped to the same beat as another, and a crowd decided who was better. Individual talent won out. If someone grew up on the same street as DMX, it didn’t matter. You were exposed if you didn’t have the necessary skill. But in the late 90s that was no longer the case.
The rap industry resembled the real world in that who you knew mattered as much as what you could do. The talented didn’t necessarily catch the breaks. Sure, some did, but far too many got in through connections. Memphis Bleek was from Marcy, so Jay-Z gave him a spot on Roc-A-Fella and the opportunity to release two terrible albums, maybe more.
That was the late 90s and the early aughts for hip-hop. Excess and undeserved opportunity. Fortunately the Internet came along and gutted the music industry. Commercially successful rappers don’t make near as much as they used to, and the cliques full of wannabes dissolved years ago because stars can’t afford to offer alms to their friends. All that’s left are the Drag-On and Silkk the Shocker albums tucked into a CD wallet in the front seat of my car, albums I still listen to and still question why.
The phone conversation was wrapping up, and for just a moment, I had one of those uneasy feelings, like a head rush that hits you a foot lower, in the chest, and then filters out through your extremities.
I was talking to an old baseball player named Buddy Biancalana. This was a work assignment, something on the 25th anniversary of the Royals’ 1985 World Series title.
Biancalana was a shortstop on that team, and he had become somewhat of an overnight folk hero in the mid-80s. He was a journeyman with a goofy name, a heartthrob to a small generation of teenage girls, a baseball player who would break into the main stream for a few weeks, even appearing on David Letterman’s old NBC show.
So I wanted to ask Biancalana how often people bring up ’85. How many times do people recognize him — or recognize his name — and ask about those three weeks in the October of 1985.
Can fame, even fame as fleeting as one memorable performance in a World Series 25 years ago, survive?
“You know,” he said, “there’s a lot of people around now that weren’t even born yet in 1985.”
“Yea,” I said, laughing quietly into the phone. “I guess that’s right.”
And then I paused for just a second. And I had that strange feeling.
You know, I wonder if this guy realizes that the reporter he’s talking to is one of those people?
A week later, I would be sitting in a frigid press box at a high school football game in Kansas City.
I was bundled up, hunkered over my laptop computer, and a little upset about the dozens of thick cords from the local television station that had to be connected to some outlet outside the press box.
These cords were keeping the door open, and it was freezing, and so maybe I looked pretty young all balled up in a black coat that would never be used in the Rockies.
Still, I wasn’t quite expecting a parent to approach and ask if I was a student at the school where the game was being played.
“Umm. No. I work for the newspaper,” I said.
This happens every once and a while — a few weeks ago I had a stadium custodian say, “You don’t look old enough to be a reporter.”
“Well, I look pretty young,” I said. “But I’m not as young as I look.”
The man nodded and walked off.
And in my head, I replayed what I had just said.
Wait, was that Zen?
So I guess this is sort of a rambling post about adulthood and age and all that.
But not quite.
It’s also a post about paths and choices and moments that point us in a certain direction.
A few weeks ago, as I was working on that story about Buddy Biancalana and the 1985 Royals, I came across the fact that “Back to the Future” had premiered during the 1985 World Series.
Maybe it was the history geek in me — or maybe I just enjoy small little connections like that — but I found this fact beyond enthralling.
So, of course, for the next 10 to 15 minutes I binged on “Back to the Future” Google queries.
I read old reviews, and found articles on the 25th anniversary, and then I stumbled upon a clip of a cast reunion from the Today show.
They were seated together, answering the usual questions you hear in these types of interviews.
“So,” the host said, “Why do you think this movie resonated with so many people?”
The camera focused in on Lea Thompson, who of course played Lorraine Baines McFly (and would later star in a forgettable ’90s NBC sitcom, “Caroline in the City,” which of course proves I watched too much television as a kid).
“I think,” Thompson said, and I’m paraphrasing here: “There can be that one important moment in your life that can change everything.”
At the time, I didn’t think much about that. Pretty soon, my caffeine rush subsided and I went back to researching the 1985 Royals.
But a few nights ago, I had another one of those uneasy moments.
I was doing some late-night reading on the laptop, searching for something — anything — that would be worth sacrificing sleep. And after a few seconds of clicking, I found a random blog post about the 10th anniversary of ESPN.com’s “Page 2.”
I don’t think about “Page 2” much these days. I do check out ESPN.com on a daily basis. And I know “Page 2” is there, just a link away. And I know there’s still content on there, a daily dose of opinion-pieces and sports and pop culture and other stuff.
But by now, it more or less fades into all the other noise on an extremely crowded and chaotic sports website.
But for minute, I remembered being 14 years old and using my parent’s old dial-up internet — I believe Netscape was our browser of choice — and stumbling upon the writers on “Page 2”.
Jason Whitlock was a contributor then, and, of course, I knew about him. So was Hunter S. Thompson, and as a 14-year-old who spent most of his free time lobbing shots at the basketball goal in my driveway and ordering JBC’s at Wendy’s with friends, I’ll admit I had hardly heard of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Of course, Bill Simmons was writing back then. Just some young guy from Boston who wrote a lot about the Red Sox and a lot about “The Karate Kid”.
It was so different* than any sports writing I had ever read.
*At that point, my sole sources of sports coverage consisted of The Kansas City Star and Sports Illustrated — and even then, I mostly just read Joe Posnanski and Rick Reilly.
And I don’t remember the day or the week or month, but I remember sitting down one night, reading Page 2, and saying, I think I want to do this.
I didn’t know much about journalism schools or newspapers or the relentless onslaught of the Internet and its future effect on the publishing industry, but I knew I wanted to do that. I wanted to do what I saw on Page 2.
Ten years later, I sat up in bed and retraced the past 10 years. So much had happened. My journalism tastes have evolved. My goals have shifted,too. And it’s hard to return to that instance and remember what it felt like to be 14.
I like to think that I still feel 14. And, according to that dad at the high school football game, I must still look 14. And on most days, it doesn’t feel like Page 2 debuted 10 years ago.
My story on Biancalana and the Royals would be published in The Star on the same morning I would read that random late-night blog post.
And it was a strange feeling. Because there are moments I still feel like a teenager, and adulthood still feels like some faraway place — a space and time still firmly waiting for us in the future.
But then, I’ll open up the mailbox, and I’ll see my name on an envelope. And I pull out my checkbook and pay the electric bill. And then I’ll see my name in the morning paper, and I’m reminded that life is moving, always moving, and the future is here — and there’s no going back.
To the regular readers: Many apologies for lackadaisical posting here. I’m working on a writing project outside of work that is killing my time and I know Rustin is always busy working what amounts to two jobs at the Star. That said, let’s take this as a step toward much more regular posts.
I sounded like Christine O’Donnell, and those preceding words are the hardest I’ve typed in a long time, maybe ever. But it’s true. Click here and look back at the introductory blog for the Brew House, written almost a year ago today.
Or just read. This was my attempt to define a blog, a meaning I considered philosophical back then and can now regard only as stupidity or perhaps something that ranks higher on the not-so-smart list, like ignorance.
“Some were people’s opinions about politics or sports. Some were just pictures. Some were random thoughts. Some seemed to be nothing more than a person’s daily schedule.
“Then it became clear. There really is no definition for a blog. Blogs are anything. Blogs are you.”*
A year later, I only want to say that whatever blogs are, they aren’t Christine O’Donnell. And I want to ramble on about the last year of my life, the first year of the Brew House, in this first State of the ‘Brew’nion. In much the same way my thoughts about the definition of blogs have changed, so has much else in my life. Of course, unlike my opinion of the meaning of a blog, this change was more natural, more a gradual step of a never-ending evolution, something Christine O’Donnell would claim doesn’t exist.
*If you don’t get the O’Donnell reference. Watch this commercial and then you will.
I’m sure all of us feel like this. It would be strange for us not to evolve. Years blend and blur into the next, the only concrete difference being the four digits we type next to the day and month at the top of Word documents, but then you realize the smaller changes that take place each day when you slow down and look in the past, past what’s in front of you. I think these changes particularly relate to people my age.
Last fall was the first time since I was six years old that I didn’t begin a new school year in late August. College had ended. I had stopped living with two of my best friends at 12th and Louisiana, just five minutes from the Union and five more past Fraser toward the heart of campus. I would no longer drink at Dollar Night on Wednesdays or write my Morning Brew for the Kansan on Sundays. I wouldn’t study. I wouldn’t sit in lectures. I wouldn’t purposely stomp really loud on our hardwood floors at the apartment just to be freaking hilarious and annoy the people who lived below us.
I would put on a polo and slacks – thank God not a tie – and go to work. I would be thrust into a city I hadn’t seen or visited since third grade, a city where I knew only one person and he would be moving to Korea in two months. I wouldn’t be around young people all the time. That was the biggest thing. Life wouldn’t continually intersect with the lives of others that are the same age, and I think all of us probably took that comfort for granted. People with similar goals, opinions and lifestyles surrounded us from grade school through college. We could always talk with someone and likely find common ground.
And now I would have to work with adults, spend a significant chunk of my day with them. Not one person under the age of 35 was employed at my office when I took my job. They would be people who are married. People who have kids. I wouldn’t even have a dog. Or a cat. What had life become? What would it become?
A year has passed. I’m still living in Dallas – and enjoying every day. The two strangers I rented an apartment with off Craigslist weren’t serial rapists, per the usual Craigslist zeitgeist, and have become two of my good friends. Younger people have been hired at work, and the adults aren’t so bad either. Uptown bars aren’t a whole lot different than those on Mass. Street. I bought a new car, performed standup comedy twice, saw some sick bands at Austin City Limits, played ball at the Rucker, choked in several matches of a tennis league, ran a half-marathon. I’m comfortable, probably every bit as comfortable as college. Life has become life.
And nothing feels different from a year ago, although plenty is. Every day or perhaps every week marked a small yet significant alteration in life’s delicate fabric, and every day probably will bring the same from here on forward. Sometimes this evolution might not be easy. Sometimes the nicks and cuts might linger. But it always feels right to take time and look back on all those changes and realize that they make you better.
That’s the point of this State of the ‘Brew’nion, to take inventory of an always-evolving life. Who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be next year? Who knows what it will be like for any of us?
I only know one thing won’t change. I can say with certainty that I’ll never be a witch.
The movie lineup always seemed to be the same. The couch was always my homebase — a comfortable headquarters in which to waste the day. And the tennis was always the sideshow, a constant soundtrack of grunts and popping racquets.
This was how you spent Labor Day. This was how I spent Labor Day. It could have been 1995 or 1996 or 1997. The year was inconsequential to the real story: a young kid having a day off school to relax and think about the upcoming events of the fall. High school football. Tailgates. Book reports. And so on.
I thought about Labor Day on Monday — what it used to mean, what it means today, how the old routine, movies on basic cable channels, tennis on a blurry 24-inch standard definition television, doesn’t exist today … and, well, couldn’t exist today.
On Monday, I watched 20-year-old Caroline Wozniacki outhustle Maria Sharapova to a straight-sets victory on the blue courts at Flushing Meadows.
It didn’t really feel like Labor Day. I still had to work. The memories of school are fading further and further into the past. And I rarely watch basic cable.
*Who needs movies on basic cable when you have Netflix?
But for a moment — with Wozniacki winning, and with the afternoon off, and with some average comedy on some average cable channel — I was transported back to 1996.
I remember one Labor Day in particular. And I can’t remember if it was TNT or TBS or USA — but I know the movie marathon was promoted as the Labor Day Leisure Day Special. And I remember, as a 10- or 11-year-old kid, there was nothing better.
It was wall-to-wall movies — most with Steve Martin or Chevy Chase. And there were commercials for television shows I never watched — like “Highlander” and “Silk Stalkings” — and there was Pete Sampras exchanging groundstrokes with some old nemesis … Petr Korda? Goran Ivanisevic? Patrick Rafter?
And maybe the movies are only memorable only to me.
But there was Steve Martin and Rick Moranis saving a Little League field in “My Blue Heaven.” And there was “Problem Child 2” … and the subsequent question of our time: why was this movie ever made?
There was “Fletch” and “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” — and if we were lucky, “Three Amigos.”
And there was nothing better. This was a time when it was still considered socially acceptable to record television movies on VHS Tapes. This was a time when, if you weren’t one of the lucky ones with HBO, and my family surely wasn’t, you still had to go to the video store to find movies without commercials.
And so, as I watched Wozniacki, a 20-year-old former prodigy, a player a full four years younger than me, I wondered where all the time had.
And then… another Labor Day was left in the distance.
There are times when the words won’t come out, when the fingers punching the keyboard can’t produce what the mind desires.
There are times when excessive commitments from work or social life take away any opportunity to write.
And then there are times when you hear about a nine-day traffic jam in China and the thrill of absurdity and inexplicability knocks down any considerable blogging obstacle.
So, did you hear about the traffic jam?
The one that’s lasted for, oh, about nine days. NINE FREAKING DAYS. People have been caught in traffic. Not moving. In their cars. FOR NINE DAYS.
That’s six days longer than the Isner, Mahut zombie match, longer than “Ben-Hur” and only a day shorter than the average checkout line at Wal-Mart.
And it’s actually still happening, all of it on a road connecting Beijing to inner Mongolia. The armada of cramped, immovable cars stretches for more than 60 miles.
I’ve never been to China, but I’ve read about the driving and the roads and the congestion from the author Peter Hessler. It’s grating. The best way to describe its insanity and mind-warping annoyance is this: Picture the worst traffic you’ve experienced and multiply it by 735, add thicker-than-L.A. smog, an alarming number of Volkswagens, bad tires, and a lack of passion for the well-being of an automobile, and then pretend that in addition to those variables you also have Dane Cook sitting next to you in the passenger seat.
Yeah, it’s that bad. This time it became worse because in addition to the usual problems, there was also construction. Yes, construction. A few oranges cones and cranes have led to a nine-day and counting headache.
Reports say people are playing cards to pass the time and sleeping in their cars. Food comes from vendors who are gouging the unfortunate drivers. But these stories aren’t nearly enough in-depth. This is the biggest event in weird news history. There should be on-the-clock CNN reporting*. So many questions are unanswered.
*Perhaps if there were a balloon boy hovering above, CNN would increase its coverage.
What have people been listening to on the radio?
What if someone left behind his or her cell phone at home that day?
What if you were driving back from a first date?
What do you tell your boss?*
Sorry Bob, not going to be able to make it in today, tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, next Monday, next Tuesday, next Wednesday or next Thursday.
What if you had to go to the bathroom?
What if your air conditioner was broken?
At what point did drivers decide to put the car in park and rest their legs. Or is there still a driver out there with his car on, keeping his foot on the brake pedal and thinking that at any second the flow of traffic could resume?
Even without stories, we know this would be an absolute nightmare. Besides Dane Cook, there are few nuisances in our society worse than traffic. A famous scene in “Office Space” displays our cultural opinion.
Either the bald guy or Michael Bolton is on his way to work. I think it’s the bald guy. Anyways, his lane stops moving so he switches into another that is moving. That lane stops. His former lane starts moving. He switches back. That one stops. He screams, he pounds his steering wheel and that, my friends, is traffic.
But this, this Chinese ordeal, isn’t traffic. It’s beyond that. It really isn’t even a nightmare. Nightmares contain bits of reality. This can’t be real. Our imaginations can’t wander far enough to create such implausible, lasting chaos.
I remember getting stuck in traffic for two and a half hours last fall. There was no construction and no accident. It was just plain ol’ Texas confusion! And it sucked. My IPod shuffle saved the last piece of my sanity.
I can also think of the worst traffic I’ve seen. It was in Cairo. A main avenue was fraught with honking cars and a whole lot of random vehicles, like horse-drawn carriages and makeshift buses where people sat on top of the roof and hung out doors and stopped wherever the quote-un-quote bus driver felt like stopping. There was even a guy in a sweatsuit running in the middle of the road. I’d never seen anything like it.
And this is 735 times worse. Drivers in China are living something beyond the throes of nightmare, and the strangest part is they hardly seem to care.
I looked over and over for quotes about this event, about this insanity, and I kept coming across only one.
It comes from a guy with the last name Wang.* Wang is a trucker. He told a reporter that from CBC News that he had been stuck in the jam for the past three days and two nights.
*Really? In a story about Asians, the lone guy quoted has to have the last name Wang.
He told the reporter that drivers had been advised to take detours, to get the hell out of the mind-bending traffic snarl. But he was going to stand his ground. He wanted to stay as long as he could.
“I would rather stay here,” he said to CBC, “since I will travel more distance and increase my costs.”
And unfortunately there are no words to justify that man’s decision.
The Brew House 