Blog of a Ridiculous Man

One thing that irks me about my early writing is that there are all these clever puns and brilliant wordplay, to the complete detriment of substance. It's an echo-chamber of an artist who has little else to speak of save for art itself. Jetsam from a high-IQ individual obsessed with creative genesis and process to the detriment (often to the deliberate detriment) of end product. I had this essay in high school where I used a run of twenty-six consecutive words each (you guessed it) starting with a consecutive letter of the alphabet. When I found this essay in my archives, I was blushing and couldn't bear to find the passage. I got a perfect score with the substitute who graded it saying, "Yeah, your command of the English language is much greater than mine, and I have no right to judge it." There was some truth to that statement, but, like not all that much. I wasn't that smart. I was intelligent and knew a lot of words, but I wasn't communicating intelligently: I was pontificating and stretching the limits of how I could use language, more like a 5-year-old learning to knead dough than someone who cared about the bread at the end. I was writing for the sake of writing, trying to find my own voice, and in the process of process, I became embarrassingly self-indulgent and substanceless, which would've been fine if there wasn't also a lump of perfectly round dough that I was proudly presenting to others as if I'd solved world hunger. Heh. In and of itself none of this is a bad thing. Figuring out what makes you go, figuring out what you're capable of, figuring out how many voices you can fit into that fugue? Yeah, it's important stuff. And in the end tally, some of it was honestly pretty decent, or at least salvageable as more than archive.

It's Not That Easy...

Apologies to everyone that has ever lived for this. Credit to Joe Raposo (songwriter of "Bein' Green") and the Muppets. Also: Sorry. Heh.

It's not that easy as RJ.
Having to spend each day on a young-and-dismal team
When I know it would be nicer on the Spurs, or purple and gold
Or someone more competitive... like that.

It's not easy as RJ
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary wings.
And the rookies tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy Barnes from UNC
Or stars like Steph Curry

But RJ's a sharpshooting wing
And RJ can be sweet at slashing
And RJ can dunk like it's no thing, or lead like a king
Now a veteran, he mentors a team

When RJ's all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder?
Why wonder? I am RJ and it'll be fine. I am Richard Jefferson.
And I think that's what I want to be.

American Pie with RJ as the Big Bopper (The Gothic Ginobili Sessions)

Note: I have about 100 unpublished drafts at the Gothic Ginobili, and it's not doing anyone any good to have these things just lying around. So now I will put the occasional good-but-hard-to-publish piece in a place for my thousands (nay, millions) of loyal readers to indulge. 

Today, it's my parody of American Pie, where the theme is none other than Richard Jefferson's tenure in San Antonio. This definitely should have been published. I am bitter to no end that this is what I'm resorting to in order to get this published. Its appeal is obvious and limitless. The New York Times should be beating down my door for this vintage American comedy I am producing. j/k lol ;-p. Let's get started. Heh.

A long, long time ago
I can still remember
How that RJ used to make me smile
And I knew if he had his chance
That he would win some Con-fer-ence
And Spurs fans would be happy for awhile...
But the trade deadline would not abate
And I read about how Golden State
Had acquired Richard Jefferson
I couldn't take one more step...fferson.
I can't remember what I said
When I learned about his moving head
Our title hopes were surely dead...
When we got...S-Jax instead

So bye, bye, Richard Jefferson, bye
Most respectful expectations you did defy
But now it's S-Jax at the wing who now flies
Singing "This is now the team that I die....
This is now the team that I die...

The Meta-game Dialogue That Inevitably Accompanies a League of Legends Session

"Hey, I was wondering if anyone wants to give me tips on playing this hero."

"Pick another one. That hero is under-powered."

"No, I mean, I really enjoy play-"

"Pick another one. That hero Is not nearly as good as these alternates."

"Come on, I just want some advice. Look, I could easily go to one of hundreds of forums and find out exactly how to play any of these heroes, including sites that would tell me exactly what you're saying about hero selection. I know I could win 51.5% instead of 51% of games if I played the metagame and picked the most OP heroes at any given time, searching for a marginal advantage, but that's fucking retarded as advice. I don't enjoy playing with those heroes as much, so yes, changing up my hero selection might mean winning a sliver more, but it's also completely limiting my enjoyment of the game which decreases my enthusiasm to make it through the early game. And besides, even if I lose slightly more often, that will eventually be accounted for in the matchmaking system. God fucking damn it. I just want to enjoy myself for the five fucking hours a week you guys insist that I play."

The Confluence of Albums and Basketball Teams: Criteria, Justification, and "Pet Sounds"

My friend (and editor at the Gothic Ginobili) Aaron contractually obligated me to write this piece after another 3000-word unpublishable rant about stats. He says that all my pieces are basically just Lovecraftian ramblings about Richard Jefferson and the "untold nature of numbers" (my words, not his). Guilty. This is... actually a good point, Aaron. You're right. I need to loosen up. Heh. So, *sigh*, here's a possibly-viral, reader-friendly post for all the music lovers out there! I was thinking about how musical albums (like LPs) would translate to basketball teams. There are several modes of analysis we can use to base a sane comparison on. After all, consider the following:

• Depth- how many songs are good? How many songs are playoff good?
  • Numerically this works seamlessly. Most teams have about 10-15 players and most albums have about 10-15 tracks (and in both cases a typical listener's playing time for each song will be proportional to that song's quality, with the last few often being skipped entirely in both cases). What is the distribution of the album's quality?
  • Playoff depth? How many players would you honestly trust to start or finish the Western Conference Finals? Not so fast, Ramon Sessions, even though we all love you. How many songs would you honestly listen to on their own for pleasure? Not so fast, "That's Not Me" from Pet Sounds (okay, situationally, sure, sue me, I'm nostalgic). Not so fast, 2nd-best George Harrison song on a Beatles album (except Here Comes the Sun)! How many songs would you trust with your life?
• Good Fit/Chemistry/Variety between the players (especially when it comes to the role players) is essential when talking about the greatness of teams.
  • This can mean fit caused by track ordering/lineup tandems (see side B of Abbey Road).
  • But it can also be fit caused by inherent chemistry (for example, between a offensively-limited stopper and a ball-dominant volume-shooter). To keep with the Beatles' example, "Revolution #9" and "Good Night" from the White Album are both very good songs, in my humble opinion  But they work especially well in that specific order: the transition from one to the other is epic and shows a deep understanding of how to use those two songs in the lineup.
  • "Fit" means that players can be put in lineups that play better than the sum of their parts, but it also means that the team has a diverse skillset of pieces for matching up against any opponent (or any adjustments that opponent might make). The players can "fit" into any basketball puzzle needed of them. The musical equivalent to this is to have a range of styles, aesthetics, moods, lyrical modes, chords, etc. Basically the questions boil down to "Is this a versatile album to listen to in a variety of situations?" Like: Would you put a stretch of this album on in your friend's car (sorry, Pet Sounds/2003 Spurs/2011 Mavericks)? Would you listen to this album alone if you were feeling depressed (sorry, Rush, but come on, you are a silly band. You are a silly band to like [I'll call you back when I'm better I will meet you and we will get ice cream together you are so funny, Rush, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings]. Sorry, Ringo [except for the devastatingly sad "Don't Pass Me By". Dead serious])?
• Star quality:
  • What do the stars do? Do they have a simple game or are they multifaceted? Are they just very good players or are they transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime, impossible-to-replicate players? Are they conducive to building a great team or are their talents actually a limiting factor in the team's ability to attain greatness?
  • What do the best songs do? Are they simple or musically complex? Are they simply very good or are they transcendent masterpieces? Is the song conducive to building a great album around or do they call undue attention to themselves and fit poorly with the other songs on the album?
• Offense vs. Defense - Offense is musical creativity, defense is musicality. Sue me, the metaphor falls apart here. I'm not going to rely on this except as a sort of semantic tie-breaker. Bob Dylan's mid-60s output is a balanced two-way team, not too great in either.
• Pace - pace is pace. Err... I mean tempo is tempo. Possessions per minute is beats per minute. But possessions aren't beats. There you go.
• Historical Success. What did this team/album do? Did it never win any championships but everyone that watched them won championships of their own? Sup, SSOL Suns (thanks, Bill Simmons, for that prenatal article premise, by the way).

This is gonna be a series, usually covering albums I've listened to dozens (if not hundreds) of times: Today I'm gonna review The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, later I'll probably do such masterpieces as Songs In The Key of Life by Stevie Wonder, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart, That One Pretty Good Kanye Album That Everyone Pontificated About, Especially Kanye, by Kanye West (or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, as it's more commonly known), Moment of Truth by Gang Starr, and, finally, the greatest album of all time, which is, of course, Om by John Coltrane.

Let Earthquakes Be Earthquakes

"Welp. Still haven't posted at The Gothic Ginobili yet. Writer's block."

It's the strained, pathetic cry of futility, meaning nothing and aggravating me with its meaninglessness. I've long known there's something to this block beyond some nebulous "things have to change": it's just that I haven't known or been able to articulate just what.

I love basketball, and I love writing about basketball. As the spooky, CIA-monitored, RJ-enshrining, prevolutionary version of my contributions to that blog, Pearls of Mystery gives the lie to the writer's block. I have no trouble writing these sentences and approving them for publication when I'm safe in the knowledge that no one will read this crap. And so it goes that here I can write whatever I want, and I feel not just respite from the "block" but the non-existence of this block entirely. It's not performance anxiety, either: If you could witness the number of things I manage to say about sports in a given day to friends and acquaintances, you'd think that I'd thought about little else. I love the public discourse, too: That's not the friggin' problem. Nor is time commitment: I've been spending a lot of time learning sort of the theoretical and empirical basis for competition. I've really been exploring my most basic impulses, competitively, and been learning to articulate them. That's not the problem.

There is no damn writer's block, and there's nothing wrong with the Gothic Ginobili. So what the hell gives? Why am I suddenly so d*mn profane? LOL.

Well, the truth is, I think it starts with my relationship to my family (especially my extended family on my father's side). See, I love my family dearly and I'm certain they love me back. But while the love is unquestionably genuine at every turn on both sides, the relationships, communications, and expressions are ingenuous and infinitely questionable. Which is only to say that the love is human.

"Only at Nightfall": A Return of the Mystery and a Manifesto at Dawn

Hi, everyone. Oh, I see you've tripped over your own feet and spit out your coffee at having seen a new Pearls of Mystery post. Yes. Well, nice trip. See you next... it's almost fall, and it's been several months since I have posted here. This is good because I've been posting and editing at The Gothic Ginobili, which is in the process of becoming a Truehoop affiliate.

Now, The Gothic Ginobili has been wonderfully successful by any measure, thanks mostly to Aaron McGuire, but I've had a lot of great pieces go up and I've done a lot of fine editing. We've even had a few new writers and a few more guest writers, which is wonderful. I had a lot of pride when my link to "The Consummation of Dirk" turned out to connect its fine DFW-influenced author Jonathan Callahan to a literary magazine for the analogical "Beyond Good and Evil" to the "Thus Spake Zarathustra" of "Dirk".

Overall, the only regret I've had with GG is that the consistent feature I could theoretically bank on for a couple posts a week has thus far eluded me. So I go through alternating periods of intense posting activity and barren writer's block. So - in the utter midst of such a block - I want to spend my way out of the recession, so to speak, by putting  some ideas to virtual pen.