Kobe Bryant and Occam’s Razor May 31, 2007
Posted by rosolio in Basketball, Los Angeles, Media.add a comment
The term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ carries a hell of a stigma. The first image conjured is usually that of the Kennedy Assassination, the rumors of alien landings at Roswell, and a remarkably horrible movie starring a pre-Himmler Mel Gibson. That history forces all logical theories under the umbrella of the insane. Well here’s one that’s not: Kobe Bryant meant exactly what he said when he requested a trade from the Lakers.
“Why would he do that?” gasp the talking heads on the ESPN channel fleet. “He’s the most marketable star in the second largest market in the country!” Okay, so we’ve eliminated one possibility: exposure.
It rarely makes sense to listen to someone’s explanation because most people lie, especially when it involves their career or money, but what the hell. Kobe’s demand for a trade came as part of a yelling match with the David Carradine of raising one’s voice, Stephen A. Smith. He claimed to be angry that he wasn’t getting any help from the front office, that they weren’t committed to surrounding him with championship caliber talent. That makes sense, considering that Kobe has been surrounded by young players such as Andrew Bynum and Kwame Brown. But then you recall Kobe’s part in running Shaquille O’Neal out of town. So that’s out; Kobe doesn’t want to share the spotlight.
It could be that Bryant’s having trouble with Head Coach Phil Jackson again. Jackson killed him in his book, calling Kobe “uncoachable.” Who can blame him there? There isn’t a point to drawing up a triangle offense with five players involved if one of them refuses to pass the ball. But Kobe has thrived under Jackson, and they’ve seemed to have buried the hatchet as the Zen Master still roams the bench at the Staples Center.
Wait…it’s got to be money. Hang on,…Kobe netted $17 million this season. Scratch that.
Well, those are the reasons that The Artist Formerly Known As Number Eight would want to leave the Lakers. What did I miss?
The Lottery…the NBA Draft Lottery.
The Celtics, Hawks, and Sixers all had a shot to land Kevin Durant or Greg Oden in the lottery, but the coveted top picks were swiped by Portland and Seattle of the Pacific Northwest. With the exception of LeBron James, all of the league’s stars are buried west of the Eastern Time Zone. The aforementioned Shaq is the beginning and end of the star power out East, and his time is quickly drawing to a close. Sure, Paul Pierce and Gilbert Arenas are big time players, but you don’t see either of them doing Sprite ads anytime soon. No one transcends the sport out there.
And the league is dying because of it.
Boston and New York used to be die-hard hotbeds. Between the Boston Garden and the hallowed MSG, some of the most devoted fans called the East home. People whine about an East Coast bias in sports, look at the results of the major cities on the Atlantic Coast this season:
Washington: 41-41
Philadelphia: 35-47
New York: 33-49
Atlanta: 30-52
Boston: 24-58
Of those teams, only Washington made the playoffs, and they were dead men walking with Arenas out.
The NHL moved Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles to build the league out West. The NBA was banking on an Oden or Durant (or both) to bring save the league back East. And while they could be great players, Corey Brewer, Jeff Green, and Joakim Noah aren’t going to do that. Kobe Bryant, on the other hand…
Everyone was looking for a sequel to the famed “Frozen Envelope” draft that landed Patrick Ewing in America’s number one market. I wouldn’t be surprised in David Stern had a hand in getting one of the league’s best players out of American’s runner-up.
Even though he’s in a gigantic market, Bryant is quickly losing star-ground to fellow westerners Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki. That will only increase with the addition of Oden and Durant to Pacific Standard Time. In a coast devoid of star power, however, imagine how bright Kobe’s could shine.
I guess the truth really is in the first place you look.
Chasing It May 28, 2007
Posted by rosolio in Baseball, It.add a comment
You can’t fake It. If It’s not there, odds are pretty good it never will be. It’s not something that anyone can manufacture, either. It is an elusive bastard.
This morning, it was plastered all over the bastion of journalistic integrity that is Sportscenter (Walter Cronkite wishes he thought of “Booyah!”) that the New York Yankees are on the brink of canning General Manager Brian Cashman. 
The man who collects allstars like a rich cougar collects poolboys, the guy who’s responsible for raiding other ballclubs of their best players, shaving them like show dogs and dragging them to the Bronx, is about to be the fallguy for the failings of the fourth place Yankees.
The thing is, the only people fighting this firing are the ones saying it’s manager Joe Torre who deserves to be held accountable. They want blood, they don’t care whose it is. Over a team that has been in the playoffs each of the last eleven years. So they haven’t won a World Series in seven years. Ask a Cub fan about patience.
The answer is obvious to anyone who can see beyond all of the dollar signs and corporate sponsorships. I am no Yankee fan, quite the contrary. It was looking up the standings at the Bombers from the vantage point of the Orioles that I understood exactly what’s wrong with the most valuable franchise in sports. There was a clear shift in philosophy, a shift that coincided almost exactly with the team signing away beloved Orioles ace Mike Mussina.
In the pre-Mussina days, the big names were not the guys who scared you as an enemy of the pinstripes. They were the guys like Paul O’Neill, who would bat .250 the whole season, but all of his hits would come at the worst possible time. Your team could be up on the Yanks by three in the eighth inning, but you knew a run was right around the corner. A bloop single by Posada, a standup double by O’Neill, an eight pitch walk to Jeter, and boom, Tino Martinez hits one out. Suddenly you’re on the wrong side of the result, and here comes the unhittable Mariano Rivera. Game over. These teams had an energy, a contagious camaraderie that made them the dynasty they were. Fiercely clutch, the only way to beat the Yankees was to survive the inevitable run. Few did.
And they totally forgot that.
Gone were the role players, the setup men, the glue guys who made those teams such a bitch to play against. In came Chuck Knoblauch, who crumbled so severely under the pressure that he lost his ability to make a routine throw to first base. In came Jason Giambi, who went from Giant Killer to just another guy. Even Alex Rodriguez, the most gifted ballplayer of this generation, found himself on the sports page only when he wasn’t getting it done. With rising expectations, the Yankee front office decided they needed to secure victory by bringing in talented mercenaries, guys who hardly cared about the guy next to them in the batting order. Why should they. They only just met.
No matter how much money the nation of Steinbrenner hurls onto the field, he can’t buy It. He can’t even find a group of guys that would be guaranteed to have It. It just happens, and that requires a bit of patience. You need selflessness, which is hard to get with eight figure salaries.
You could argue that this applies to anything. Are teams better than individuals? Usually. People have eccentrities and neuroses and daddy issues. A group doesn’t. Successful businesses get this. Mismanaged ones try to fake it, with company retreats and open bars. Because you can’t guarantee It by working harder or spending more or doing anything, a lot of people are ready to believe that It is basically a product of luck and nothing more. Cashman won’t be around to find out if that’s true or not, so I’ll give the ending away for his sake.
It isn’t.
Common Sense Man: Cardinals, Trust Falls, and Ludicrous Lawsuits May 24, 2007
Posted by rosolio in Baseball, Common Sense.1 comment so far
I think I’m pretty good about being an American. It’s not hard to get a C+ in that at all. You just need to pay your taxes, stand for the National Anthem, and not board-check Margie, the little old lady with cataracts the size of DirecTV dishes, when she tries to merge into your lane on Lakeshore drive. We might want to. After all, the daffy woman’s left turn signal has been on since the Carter administration. But we don’t. We show restraint. And a lot of that comes from the psychotically basic of civilized duties: trust.
Considering how many people I know that can’t drive a golf cart in a straight line and have been busted for DUI, it’s an absolute miracle that the driving system works. You stay in your lane, we’ll stay in hours. We’ll observe speed limits (at least the signs, while we gun past them). It’s really amazing. Wow, we really trust the shit out of each other, don’t we? In today’s Patriot Act and identity theft America, how do we trust each other? Because we trust ourselves to do our part. I’m trusting Margie not to t-bone me because she’s trusting me to do the same.
But, if there’s a car crash, it has to be someone’s fault.
Accidents happen all of the time, way less than they probably should. The more stuff auto manufacturers cram into cars to distract us, the more likely we are to be…distracted. I’ve fished for a CD in the foot-area of the passenger seat while on the highway. If little ol’ Margie didn’t see me in her larger than average blind spot, I would have been dust. Accidents are accidents, sometimes bad things just happen. If you’re boozing, bad things are slightly more likely to happen.
The reason I’m talking about this is that I just read that the father of Josh Hancock, the St. Louis Cardinals pitcher who died in a fatal car crash, is suing the bar his son was visiting for over-serving him. Over-serving. Josh wanted booze and the bar served him. And they’re getting sued. For not protecting young Josh against himself and his own horrible judgement. Let’s break this down.
I know people who it is goddamn impossible to tell if they’re wasted. I know some people who become more eloquent after a six or seven beer buzz. The fact that it is ever, EVER on the bartender for serving someone who made the horrible decision to get behind the wheel of a car while blacked out is totally insane. Also, a little indisputable fact, no one who gets in an alcohol related accident or popped for a DUI does so on their first go round. This was probably closer to the 30th time for the late Josh Hancock.
What in the holy hell is wrong with us? People are suing McDonald’s for making them fat; it’s the worst food on the planet. Yes, the millet the peasant workers were eating in Seven Samurai is of a higher nutritional quality. People suing cigarette companies for making products that kill them. The guy who sued the lawnmower company after picking it up and using it on a vertical hedge. The commercials that show an H2 diving under the sea and turning into a Bond car have a tiny disclaimer that reads “Simulation, do not attempt.” What happened to trusting people not to be idiots? How can we plan to protect people who have no common sense? Wouldn’t Darwinism have kicked in back when this kid was eating paste in the 1st grade? What’s so wrong with that? It drives me out of my goddamn mind that we need to modify our rules to cater to people who can’t be Trusted to look out for themselves and each other. God forbid someone feel bad about being called stupid, even if they’re destined to pull a Death Proof on an unsuspecting family of four who Trusted them to not do exactly that.
Hancock’s father is upset and is looking for someone to blame other than his son who made a bad decision and died for it. He violated the trust of everyone else on the road by not being in full capacity to drive. There’s that T word again, a cornerstone of being an American citizen. Another one is responsibility, and in this case, it all lies with Josh Hancock.
See You In Arizona Bay May 18, 2007
Posted by rosolio in Chicago, Immigration, Los Angeles.add a comment
CHICAGO – I should probably explain myself.
I had decided I wasn’t going to go even before I’d gotten the letter admitting me to law school. A ferocious reshuffling of priorities in the first few months of 2005 left me considering the possibility that if I became a lawyer, I’d never get the chance to write a movie. It was always one of those things that was on its permanent backburner, behind the other backburners, in another kitchen, really. But I knew that I’d been thinking about writing and performing comedy since I left college and the sketch group that brought me back from the dead, and that it wasn’t likely to stop once I picked up the books and headed to court. I wrote a sketch during the LSAT, for the love of christ (for the record, of the 22 questions I missed on the LSAT, 19 of them were on the section where the sketch was born. And yes, it killed), how was I ever going to give up on this? As relationships fell apart and people I knew as mentors literally died around me, I decided that living with regret was the worse possible thing in the world.
So I concluded that bailing on the bizarre, impractical Dream was impossible and decided to give It a shot. But the grind of waiting tables and praying to God, Allah, Krishna, and whoever else that someone saw my standup set that is the lifestyle of New York and Los Angeles wasn’t my scene. Long story short, I moved to Chicago and picked up with the Second City Conservatory, working with directors and ridiculously funny people and finding some way to pay the rent. I locked myself in with complete and utter tunnel-vision, totally ignoring any thoughts of what the next decade or year or month was going to be like. I did a bunch of shows on the various stages at SC and a few others around Chicago and had a great time. I could have stayed here forever.
But that wasn’t the next step. I ended up with an audition and a callback for a sketch show in Los Angeles, and before my last show at Second City was cold, I landed a job as a writer…in LA.
The bane of my existence, the place the great Bill Hicks called Arizona Bay…I’ll soon call it home. I was going to go through all that stuff that so many people have gone through before: the search for an agent, the traffic, football games at ten o’clock in the morning. Amidst all the other people trying to Live the Dream, I was going to blend in like egg nog ice cream, which I once ate under the false pretense that it was vanilla. So we’re underway.
Still in Chicago and I might get the call to move at any minute. I’m guessing June. I’ll document it in full…
A few random things:
-Immigration bill looks like it’s going to work out. I think it seems fair, I’ve already heard a few people angry that they’re fining the illegals $5k as part of their trek to citizenship. Well, they’ve been in this country for awhile and haven’t paid taxes. Also, there’s that whole thing about ‘illegal’ immigrant; they’re criminals according to our government. Al Capone’s empire came crumbling down because of tax evasion, five grand isn’t a thing. I would like to hear alternatives from anyone who disagrees with the bill or my assessment that it’s more than fair, not to start a fight, but because I’m open to listen. That’s how conversations work, despite what CNN and other media outlets want you to think.
-Jerry Falwell’s dead this week, and it’s about time. I’m tired of famous people becoming 
saints after they die, especially people who are famous for being terrible human beings. Falwell said the United States deserved 9/11 because of all the athiests, gays, minorities and tits on TV. His sermons led people to agree with his sentiments that the Civil Rights movement was the worst thing that has ever happened to this country. Falwell was a terrorist, no better than a low-ranking Klansman who harrasses black families in suburban neighborhoods. Every time part of you wants to show some remorse for his recent passing, remember that if he had his way, black people would be calling him “massah”, gay people would be on fire, the 700 club would be the only show on TV, and if you are Jewish, Muslim, atheist, Buddhist or just not Christian enough, you’d be dead. I think he was a horrible guy, you’re entitled to your opinion (oh, he wouldn’t want that either).
