Push Play

When I worked in a really "big time" club and we hosted a "big time" guest DJ, I'd wait until the guy had been "spinning" for a few hours, then walk up to some guido - who'd likely coughed up upwards of $100 just to get in - and ask him when the "big time" guest DJ was going on.

"Yo, he already spinnin', yo!"

"He is?"

"Yeah!" the guido would reply.

"Fuck, I couldn't even tell the difference."

I wonder if this ever made a dent.

Rodney Hampton

One of the things I’ve always found comical about living in New York is the asinine way in which people latch onto our local teams as soon as they start winning. This happens here because we have so many fucking teams, and so many options to run from the front when one of them makes good and wins a title like the Giants did.

I saw this happen with the Yankees back in 1996. From 1981 to 1996, the Yankees didn’t do shit. In fact, all they did in ’81 was make it to the World Series and lose, so technically, they hadn’t really done shit since 1978. When I’d run into one of the many jerkoffs back then who’d insist upon getting in my face and telling me how great the Yankees were, I’d simply ask him to tell me who played shortstop for the team before Derek Jeter did. This was something most people in New York couldn’t do, because none of them paid a shit-lick’s worth of attention to the Yankees before they started winning.

Where the fuck were these people in ’88? Screaming their heads off for the Mets, that’s where. Or, better yet, paying no attention to baseball because it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t fashionable, and the two options we had to root for in this city both sucked ass.

So, yes, this is targeted at all you people who became Giants fans two weeks ago. I know your whole deal, because I know how fandom operates around here. You’re not reinventing the wheel, believe me. Yankees fans already wrote the book on this shit. If the Jets had won the Super Bowl – which is, admittedly, a ridiculous hypothetical – most of the two million people who showed up for the parade today would be storming around Manhattan wearing green and white. That’s the way it goes here. In other cities, you’re given one team, and you kind of have to support them if you’re going to watch sports. In New York, it’s not like that.

The Super Bowl is fun, and it’s a major event when the home team is playing in it – and wins it – but let’s be real for a minute. If, when they show the graphic introducing the starting offense and defense for the team you’re supposedly a fan of and you’ve never heard of twenty of the team’s twenty-two starters, you probably haven’t paid enough attention to justify wearing a jersey and jumping around and screaming like a jerkoff.

Talk to me next year when the Giants suck again and everyone’s back to wondering why Eli doesn’t seem to care. I’ll still be wearing my Mark Bavaro jersey in section 308. Will you?

Fade to Black

When I played football, I wasn’t one of those guys who needed to paint my face and stalk around the locker room for an hour getting ready for a game. I didn’t need to head-butt lockers, sniff ammonia, listen to thrash metal or watch Rocky movies. I didn’t need any of that shit because I found out, at a young age, that I wasn’t the one pulling the strings.

In fact, I didn’t even need to think about the game until it actually started. I’d go through all the usual pre-game shit – the stretching, the warm-ups and the positional and team drills – but I wasn’t using that time to prepare my mind. That part was done for me by “that other guy” before I ever stepped on the field. I never had to worry about ignition, because it wasn’t me out there once we made it to the opening kickoff.

I’d fuck around on the field. I’d talk to people, make faces at girls and wave to my parents. I’d start conversations with people about things other than the game. I’d make a point of doing this with guys who insisted upon putting themselves through a whole psyche-job scene before leaving the locker room, because I thought they were funny. Hysterical, even. I found it amusing that getting focused – getting mad – could take some people any longer than a split second, because that’s all it’s ever taken for me to snap the fuck out and forget the consequences.

See, something happens to make me get like that, and it only takes a second for whatever it is that causes me to get like that to kick in, which is what happened on Sunday night after the Super Bowl. I got like that because there was something I thought I needed to do, and there was an unfortunate shitload of collateral damage as a result. “That other guy” came around for a visit, and he stayed about an hour too long this time around.

This part of my personality is extremely useful when it comes to things like playing football or coming to the defense of someone I care about or work with – or both. Everything takes a backseat to whatever needs to be accomplished at that moment. The pieces, I’ll happily pick up once everything’s done. Fuck you, fuck them and fuck everyone, because something needs to happen, and it needs to happen right the fuck now.

Theoretically, I’m supposed to be able to temper this shit a little better as I get older – and, in fairness, I have – but it’s still in there and I’ve not been able to root it out. Actually, I think it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older because these little episodes of mine happen at the least opportune times possible, when stakes are higher and I’m dealing with people who aren’t expecting a “published author” to morph into a raging white trash psychopath over something so stupid as a perceived slight.

Living with “him” requires a hell of a lot of dichotomous give and take. He lets me know I’m still alive, but he’ll probably get me killed one of these days. He’s helped me start my share of relationships with women, but he’s responsible for ending just about all of them. I love him and I hate him. I wish he’d go away, but I’d like to keep him on retainer just in case.

Today, however, he’s on my shitlist, and I’m not entirely sure how he’ll make his way off. Either way, I doubt he even cares.