The Big Lebowski and Philosophy

May 9, 2014November 17, 2023 Rilaly1 Comment

Throw the [Damned] Ball

Throw the [damned] Ball is the title of the first chapter of Jeff Bridges and Bernie Glassman’s collection of philosophical anecdotes: The Dude and The Zen Master. This particular chapter details the deliberations that The Honeymooners character, Ed Norton, would go through when preparing to do things that the character Ralph Kramden would instruct him to do. When Kramden would instruct Norton to sign a document, for example, Norton would flail his arms out a number of times, and go through a number of other, hilarious deliberations in a presumed search for that perfect, inner place he had designed for signing a document that Kramden informed him was important. The joke was that it was just the signing of a document, but that the Norton character believed that it warranted a degree of importance he had a difficult time finding. These deliberations would carry on for an extended amount of time that the Ralph Kramden character found so exhausting that he would end up exploding with a “Just sign the thing!” comment.

Bridges brought this scenario to a bowling coach who was hired to inform the cast of The Big Lebowski on the mechanics of bowling in a manner that would appease most bowling aficionados that happened to see the film. The deliberations that the bowling coach went through –pausing to include the necessary notes on the intricacies involved– carried out in a manner that Bridges found reminiscent of Norton’s deliberations, until Bridges said:

“Anyone ever tell you to just throw the [damn] ball?!”

The bowling coach’s friends found that response hilarious. The bowling coach, being a bowling guy and a philosophy freak, had, at one point in his life, tried to find the perfect harmony between mind and body before throwing the ball down the lane. This search, he confessed, could take as long as five minutes, until his friends shouted: “Just throw the [damn] ball!”

The import of the tale is that some of the times, we can get so locked up in our search for perfection that we end up forgetting to just do whatever it is we’re trying to do. And, it could be added, the repetition of doing whatever it is we’re trying to do can prove to be far more instrumental to learning than thinking about it can.

We all fall prey to trying to perfect what we do by doing something different or something more this time out to rectify, or improve upon, what we did in the past. Our antidote is to do more, less, or less and more. When we write out a resume, we seek more information, but we know that headhunters want less, or more information in a more concise manner. When we write a report for our current employer, we try to stick to the less is more principle, but we often have to add more for clarity. When writing an informal email to a friend, or an internet article, we know we’ll lose them with too much information, but we can’t help adding that extra paragraph of complete nonsense that drags on too long. It’s funny though, interesting and educational. All right, educational is a bit of a stretch, but … what if we, flipped this whole thing around and added a little here and there, and we know we don’t need that exposition, because it’s… “Just throw the [damn] ball?!”

There is this desire, in all of us, to add the perfect cherry atop the pie, or if that particular cherry isn’t perfect enough, we may try adding another cherry, and another cherry, until the pie is so perfect that it now has so many cherries, that it’s a cherry pie, and that’s not what we intended. Plus, all those other cherries have cost the cherry atop the pie its unique, special, and tantalizing quality.

“There is always more information out there,” Bernie Glassman said.

Writers often have to fight this urge to add more, when they’re editing an essay, a short story, or a novel. All original drafts are incomplete in some way, but the question every writer struggles with is the idea of whether that incompleteness is as a result of quantity or quality? Most writers want their pieces to be more: more persuasive, more provocative, and more relatable, but as we all know more is not always more.

More characterization can feel necessary when a fiction writer is attempting to make their character more relatable, and it may be in some cases, but in other cases it can be redundant, counterproductive, and superfluous information that ruins the flow of the material. More is not always more. Some of the times, it’s too much.

This brings us to the fundamental question of when do we reach a point where completion can be considered established? I’ve often found a unique harmony in three. One piece of information, or one example of a pro or con, doesn’t feel like enough to establish a relationship with the reader; two feels incomplete in ways that are difficult to explain, but you know it when you see it; and four feels like it’s too much more. Three, in most cases, has a harmony that rounds a point out. I’m sure if I discussed this predilection with a therapist, they would inform me that most of the fairy tales my mom read me contained the magical power of three. I don’t know if that’s the answer, but I do think there is some form of subconscious power in three.

“We’re all looking for perfection,” Bridges says to conclude the Just throw the [damn] ball chapter, “but perfection is often a past and future tense that we’re not going to achieve in the present.”

Bridges speaks about the difference between reading movie scripts in rehearsal and reading lines before the camera. He says that when he reads a chunk of dialogue in rehearsal, he might walk away thinking that he nailed it. If that happens, he might spend the time between rehearsal, and going before the camera trying to memorize the pitch, the rhythm, and the pauses he used when he nailed it.

“Once that camera clicks on,” he says, “it’s almost impossible to nail-it in the exact same manner you did in rehearsal, because the conditions have all changed, and until you can learn to adapt to the current conditions before you, you’ll never be able to repeat the lines with any proficiency. I nailed it in rehearsal, why can’t I find that same place?

“Because,” he continues, “That place may have never existed, or it may not have existed in the manner you thought it did. A person can go through all of the deliberations of trying to find that exact same, perfect place again, and they can go crazy with the thought that they never will. Some of the times it’s better to just throw the [damn] ball.”

Be the man they want you to be

Bridges talks about a fan detailing for Bridges the idea that The Dude’s characteristics, are nothing more than a manifestation of another of The Big Lebowski’s character’s needs. The fan said that at one point in The Dude’s life (a theoretical point that preceded the time span of The Dude’s life documented in the movie), the Dude became the Dude in all the ways that this Donald character needed a Dude character in his life. The Dude liked those characteristics so much that he may have incorporated them into his personae. The fan’s suggestion was that we’re all becoming different people at various points in our lives, based on interactions, events, and time. Some of the times, we don’t like those characteristics, and we discard them soon after we’ve fulfilled someone else’s short term needs, but at other times they fit us like a glove, and we incorporate them into our spectrum of characteristics.

When a momentous occurrence happens in one’s life, such as becoming a parent, few can move forward without that event affecting their character in some manner. If this momentous moment doesn’t affect a 180 degree change on us, it changes us in a gradual way that an infrequent visitor of our life may recognize, but those around us do not. We may have had parental characteristics in us before, but they were never tapped, until someone (the child) needed them.

After becoming a parent, a good husband, a responsible homeowner, and a quality employee, we might want to revert back to that character that our beer drinking buddies knew on a Saturday night, but in the aftermath of tapping into all those other characteristics, the beer drinking buddy characteristics feel false. You may want to become that fella that all of your drinking buddies knew, at least for one night, but you have changed in ways that make that character irretrievable. You may not know how much effort you’re putting into this, but your drinking buddies pick up on it.

There are also characteristics that we display for the expressed purpose of impressing others. The popular parlance for this is an ‘A’ game. Our ‘A’ game may be something we reserve for our grandmother, prospective employers, or that incredible blonde that walks by our cubicle every day. Some may say that displaying an ‘A’ game, if we reserve it for these temporary moments, is the very definition of phony, but what is phony about it? I had a friend who engaged in lecherous behavior with the hot blonde. She enjoyed it, and they developed a relationship based on that character. He was very different with me, and he was a respectful, young gentleman around his grandmother. We might follow the latter two examples with an ‘of course’ reaction, but anyone who witnessed the exaggerations between the way he acted around the blonde and the grandmother might confuse them with being phony. I know I did, until I realized that he was able to tap into those characteristics for the benefit of all parties involved. His grandmother enjoyed it when he modified his character around her, because she considered it a sign of respect. He enjoyed it too, because he could be a young kid again in her presence, and in some ways, he could be the person he always wanted to be. The blonde obviously didn’t want him to act that way around her. If she did, she would’ve either corrected him or simply walked away. Instead, she engaged in a level of competitive banter that ushered him onward and inward to capitalize on whatever crude characteristics he had.

What if, in the course of this temporary display, we find some nuggets of our personality that appeal to us, and everyone around us, so much that we incorporate them into our spectrum of characteristics in the way the fan suggested the dude did to please Donald.

We’re all changing, in other words, and we’re all affected by conditions, circumstances, and the people we run across, that we all achieve some sort of compilation of reactions to the people around us that informs our personality.

That’s just your opinion

The goal of any writer should be to write a book that causes one to think in ways they would not have if they never picked their book up. If this was the goal of the authors of The Dude and The Zen Master, then I say mission accomplished. One glaring example is the That’s just your opinion section. We hear this often in our culture, when another disagrees with our opinion. My reply has always been, “Of course that’s my opinion. Where do you think I got it?” Glassman’s twist on this trope is that some of the times a person needs to say this to themselves. If that person has failed to the point that they’re devastated by it, it could be said that the characterization of that failure is just one person’s opinion, theirs. Others may see our failures, and they might form an opinion of us based on that failure, but people move on. When the smoke of that opinion clears, there is only one opinion that matters and survives, our opinion of ourselves. That opinion, Bernie Glassman says, is still just an opinion, one person’s opinion. If the subject of that opinion can convince themselves that it’s not a fact that they’re a failure, but an opinion, it might help them move on. While this may sound like a bunch of gobbeldy gook to some of us, if it could be used in a productive manner to lead more people to just throw the [damned] ball again without all of the complications of previous failures involved.

The Conspiracy Theory of Game 6, 2002

April 30, 2014January 10, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

I am not a conspiracy guy. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I think Elvis is dead, and Paul McCartney is not. I don’t believe Colombian drug lords took the lives of Nicole Simpson and Ron Brown, and I don’t believe that the American Government had any involvement in the terrorist incident that occurred on 9/11/2001, but I do believe that the officiating in game six of the Western Conference Finals, in 2002, was either so incompetent, or so biased, that it invited the ‘C’ word into the conversation.

I’ve been a conspiracy guy before, suggesting that there might be one in certain situations (not the ones listed above), and I know that “C’mon” smile we give conspiracy guys. I know the “C’mon” smile well, because it is better to give than receive. The “C’mon” smile asks you if you know the totality of what you’re suggesting, and it asks you if you know how many people would have to be involved for it to be true. We try to avoid that smile at all costs, but if I’m ever going to “get over” the idea that a conspiracy prevented the Sacramento Kings from advancing to the NBA final in 2002, someone is going to have tell me how two of the NBA’s top officials made so many bad calls that the Lakers’ had twenty-seven free throws in the fourth quarter, on May 31, 2002, that just happened to lead to one more game out of this very heated and very popular series. I don’t want to believe the conspiracy, if there was one, reached into the upper echelon of the NBA or NBC, or that these two NBA officials had any money on the game. I do think, however, that these officials had a bias towards the Lakers, reflected in the numerous bad calls they made, that ended up affecting this game, and I think that latter point is near irrefutable. I also think it’s plausible that the officials may have been trying to make up for the “bad, or missed,” calls that some complain happened to favor the Sacramento Kings in the previous game, game five of the series. Whatever the case is, the officials of this particular game, made a number of calls in game six that provided an insurmountable advantage to the Los Angeles Lakers.

It can be very enticing to be that guy who defaults to conspiracy theory any time our team loses. Doing so prevents fans from dealing with the fact that their team may not have been as skilled, as clutch, or as lucky as the other team in those decisive moments when their team lost.

Poor officiating is poor officiating, and most rabid sports fans need to take a deep breath of fresh air to reboot when calls don’t go their way. Most sport fans need to accept the idea that until we load these games up with computer sensors, or mobile robots, there are going to be bad calls, and missed calls that cost one team a game. It’s the human element of the game that results in the fact that game officials –even in the age of instant replays– are going to make bad calls.

I’ve dropped the ‘C’ word in the past. It’s what die-hard fans do in the heat-of-the-moment, but at some point, we all realize that more often than not, our team is going to lose. It’s hard to be rational in the heat-of-the-moment and realize that even though the bad call happened to be a bad call, it was nothing more than a bad call. Age and experience have taught me that more often than not, the ‘C’ word is often better left in the hands of the screaming drunk at the end of the bar, watching his team get annihilated.

There is one conspiracy charge, however that I may never be able to shake. If I live for another forty years, and I become twice as rational as I am now, I may still be decrying the unfairness that occurred in Game 6, 2002 of the Western Conference Finals. To say that I’m not alone with these concerns would be an understatement, as this game has become one of the most popular games cited by those conspiracy theorists who claim that the NBA will do “whatever it takes” to get its most popular teams in the championship.

To attempt to put all of these Game 6, 2002 conspiracy theories to rest, Roland Beech, of 182.com, provided an in-depth analysis of the game. After this exhaustive review, Beech found that the:

“Officiating hurt the King’s chances at victory.” He also declared, “No nefarious scheme on the part of the refs determined the outcome.”

Sheldon Hirsch from Real Clear Sports expounded on Beech’s findings, commenting that the Kings:

“Were clearly unlucky, (but) that’s not the same thing as being cheated.”

After reading, and rereading Beech’s analysis, I’ve found Beech’s findings to be thorough, meticulous, and objective. These findings, however, have done little to quell my irrational condemnation of two of the three referees who handled Game 6, 2002, and a Game 6, 2002 cloud has loomed over every NBA game I’ve watched since, and it will continue to be there in any NBA games I might watch in the future.

Corroborating Evidence?

When former NBA referee Tim Donaghy received a conviction for betting on games in 2007, my first thought went to Game 6, 2002. He was not an official in that game, it turns out, but he did submit a letter, and later a book, that suggested a collusive effort on the part of two of the three referees to affect that game’s outcome. This letter does not mention the teams involved in Game 6, 2002, but the Kings v. Lakers series was the lone playoff series to go seven games in 2002.

“Referees A, F and G [Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt] were officiating a playoff series between Teams 5 [Kings] and 6 [Lakers] in May of 2002. It was the sixth game of a seven-game series, and a Team 5 [Kings] victory that night would have ended the series. However, Tim [Donaghy] learned from Referee A that Referees A and F wanted to extend the series to seven games. Tim knew referees A and F to be ‘company men,’ always acting in the interest of the NBA, and that night, it was in the NBA’s interest to add another game to the series. Referees A and F favored Team 6 [Lakers]. Personal fouls [resulting in injured players] were ignored even when they occurred in full view of the referees. Conversely, the referees called made-up fouls on Team 5 in order to give additional free throw opportunities for Team 6. Their foul-calling also led to the ejection of two Team 5 players. The referees’ favoring of Team 6 led to that team’s victory that night, and Team 6 came back from behind to win that series.”

Then-NBA Commissioner David Stern denied the allegations Donaghy made in this letter, stating that they were made by a desperate, convicted felon. Stern said Donaghy was a “singing, cooperating witness”, and Stern has since referred to any, and all, Donaghy allegations as those coming from a convicted felon.

It is true that Donaghy is a convicted felon. He received a conviction for betting on games he officiated. Does that mean everything he wrote in this particular letter is false? How many times has a convicted felon provided evidence that others later corroborated? At this point, however, there are no corroborations for Donaghy’s allegations, and a cynical outsider could say that Donaghy picked this particular, controversial game to serve up as a sort of plea bargain either to the FBI, or to the society that holds him as the lone, proven corrupt official of the NBA. Some have also said that Donaghy’s explosive allegations were made soon after the NBA required Donaghy pay them $1 million dollars in restitution.

It’s oh-so-tempting for scorned Kings’ fans to believe everything Donaghy wrote, and deny everything the former lawyer Stern said to protect his product, but it is difficult to deny the “desperate act” characterization Stern uses when referencing Donaghy’s allegations. Especially when we put ourselves in Donaghy’s shoes and we imagine how desperate he had to be in his efforts to salvage his reputation after being the lone NBA official convicted of throwing games.

Corroborating Outrage!

In the absence of corroborating evidence, outraged Kings’ fans can find solace in the corroborated outrage that followed by a number of outside sources, including consumer activist Ralph Nader, the announcer of the game Bill Walton, and the numerous, prominent sportswriters who watched the game. Bill Walton called Game 6, 2002 one of the poorest officiated important games in the history of the NBA, and that characterization is almost unanimous.

At the conclusion of the game, consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote an email to then-NBA Commissioner David Stern:

“You and your league have a large and growing credibility problem, Referees are human and make mistakes, but there comes a point that goes beyond any random display of poor performance. That point was reached in Game 6 which took away the Sacramento Kings Western Conference victory.” [My emphasis.]

As evidence of his charge, Nader cited Washington Post sports columnist Michael Wilbon who wrote that too many of the calls in the fourth quarter (when the Lakers received 27 foul shots to the King’s nine) were “stunningly incorrect,” all against Sacramento.

After noting that the three referees involved in Game 6, 2002 “are three of the best in the game”, Wilbon wrote:

“I have never seen officiating in a game of consequence as bad as that in Game 6 … When [Scott] Pollard, on his sixth and final foul, didn’t as much as touch Shaq [Shaquille O’Neal]. Didn’t touch any part of him. You could see it on TV, see it at court side. It wasn’t a foul in any league in the world. And [Vlade] Divac, on his fifth foul, didn’t foul Shaq. [These fouls] weren’t subjective or borderline or debatable. And these fouls didn’t just result in free throws, they helped disqualify Sacramento’s two low-post defenders. And one might add, in a 106-102 Lakers’ victory, this officiating took away what would have been a Sacramento series victory in 6 games.

“I wrote down in my notebook six calls that were stunningly incorrect,” Michael Wilbon continued, “all against Sacramento, all in the fourth quarter when the Lakers made five baskets and 21 foul shots to hold on to their championship.”

Wilbon discounted any conspiracy theories about an NBA-NBC desire for Game 7 etc., but he later wrote that:

“I still consider [Game 6] the single worst-officiated game in the 28 years I’ve been covering professional basketball. It was egregiously, embarrassingly bad … Stern and the NBA had better deal with it quickly, lest they appear completely unaware of a condition that will threaten the credibility of the league.”

“It’s the only time, I think, I’ve ever written an entire column about refereeing for the purpose of being critical.”

In his letter to Stern, Nader also cited the basketball writer for USA Today, David Dupree, who wrote:

“I’ve been covering the NBA for 30 years, and it’s the poorest officiating in an important game I’ve ever seen.”

Grant Napear, the Kings’ radio and TV play-by-play man the last two decades, still labels Game 6:

“Arguably the worst officiated playoff game in NBA history.”

When LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke asked Commissioner David Stern about Game 6, 2002, in person, during the NBA Finals that year, Plaschke states that Stern turned defensive:

“[Stern] looked at me,” Plaschke wrote, “pointed his finger, and said, ‘If you’re going to write that there is a conspiracy theory, then you better understand that you’re accusing us of committing a felony. If you put that in the paper, you better have your facts straight,” Plaschke wrote, quoting Stern. Plaschke alluded to the fact that he [Plaschke] didn’t have any facts, and as a result he did back off, but that he had just wanted to ask Stern about aspects of Game 6, 2002, that Plaschke had witnessed.

Bill Simmons, of ESPN, called the game:

“The most one-sided game of the past decade, from an officiating standpoint.”

Nader concluded his letter to Stern:

“There is no guarantee that this tyrannical status quo will remain stable over time, should you refuse to bend to reason and the reality of what occurred. A review that satisfies the fans’ sense of fairness and deters future recurrences would be a salutary contribution to the public trust that the NBA badly needs.”

The point to which Nader and Wilbon alluded is that there has long been a conspiracy theory among NBA fans that the NBA wants the Lakers to win. The Lakers are showtime. They are West and Chamberlain, Magic and Kareem, and Kobe and Shaq, and the reasons that the NBA might favor a Lakers team in the championship begins with the word money and ends with a whole lot of exclamation points. This point is not debatable among conspiracy theorists, and non-conspiracy-minded fans, but how much the NBA would do to make that happen has been the core of conspiracy theories for as long as I’ve been alive.

Conspiracy theories exists in all sports, of course, but they are more prominent in the NBA, because most officiated calls in the NBA are so close, and so subjective, that they invite more scrutiny, more interpretation, and more conspiracy theories than any other sport.

What was Stern’s reaction to Nader’s letter?

“He spoke like the head of a giant corporate dictatorship,” Nader said.

The Point Beyond the Random

Some might see it as a populist play for a consumer advocate and presidential candidate, like Nader, to cover a sporting event in such a manner. I do believe, however, that Nader was right to warn Stern that public sentiment could turn away from his product, when it reaches a point where the normal conspiratorial whispers crank up to screams of indignation. I know that those whispers gained more prominence for me, after Game 6, 2002, and in every game I watched thereafter.

“There comes a point that goes beyond any random,” Nader wrote.

There comes a point that no fan can pinpoint when disappointment becomes outrage, and outrage progresses into conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theory becomes an outright lack of trust. There comes a point when those who still believe in a fair NBA where outcomes are not predetermined, and victories are granted based on merit, are laughed off, in the same manner WCW fans are laughed at for still believing in the integrity of their sport.

“The Kings could’ve won that game,” is the usual response to charges that the officials decided the game, “and if they secured a couple more rebounds, made a couple more field goals, and free throws, they would’ve. The Kings had numerous opportunities to win that game, no matter how many free throws the Lakers were awarded in the fourth quarter (27) of game six. And … and, if the Kings won game seven, at home to boot, this whole matter would be moot. They didn’t, and the rest is history, Lakers’ history!”

This response often quells further talk of bias and conspiracy theories, because it is true. It’s also true that the two teams in the 2002 Western Conference Finals series were so evenly matched that that the series went seven games, and of those seven games, one game was decided by more than seven points, and the two games that preceded Game 6, 2002, were both decided by a single point, and the final game of the series couldn’t be determined until overtime. It’s also true that when two teams are so evenly matched, anything can provide a tipping point … including officiating.

As I wrote, the “C’mon” smile often follows this line of thought, and what follows that is a statement like: “Your team’s job is to make it so the refs cannot determine the outcome.” Again, this is all true, but outraged Kings’ fans would admit that their 2002 team wasn’t that much better than the 2002 Lakers, and if they were better, it was by a smidgen, and that smidgen was wiped out in game six by the Lakers having twenty-seven free throws in one quarter –the fourth quarter–after averaging 22 free throws throughout the first five games.

Author Brian Tuohy adds an interesting asterisk to this discussion:

“The Sports Bribery Act was passed in 1964 and that [law] specifically states you cannot bribe (my emphasis) a player, coach, or referee to alter the outcome of a sporting event,” Tuohy says. “Well, if the NBA says to its referees, ‘Hey, we want you to do this, that, or the other thing out on the court,’ they’re not bribing them to do it. That’s an employer telling the employee how to do their job. And if this is how they want the job done, they’ll go out and do what their employer asks. There’s no law that prevents the NBA from fixing the outcome of one of its own games.”

So, when Stern attempted to intimidate Plaschke out of making an accusation, by saying that Plaschke was implicitly accusing the NBA of a felony, did Stern do so with the knowledge that it’s only a felony if the NBA paid the referees to make it happen? My interpretation of Tuohy’s comments, based on what he said about the NBA Draft Lottery is, “It’s their league. They can do with it what they will.” In other words, if the NBA were to fix a game that action might break the social contract of fair play with the fans, but as far as the law is concerned, Brian Tuohy states, “[T]hey have total control and can do whatever they want with these games [to] feed into their entertainment industry, which is professional basketball. There’s nothing out there that stops them from doing it, so if they want to, they could.”

Anytime we hear conspiracy theories, our first impulse is to dismiss them. The best way to dismiss a conspiracy theory is to call it a conspiracy theory. How many foolish notions have just enough juice to be interesting? There are so many that when someone dismisses another one as nothing more than another conspiracy theorist, most of us join them in dismissing it on that basis, and we don’t listen to another word the conspiracy theorist has to say. The next easy dismissal is to suggest that in order for a true conspiracy theory to work, there would have to be so many players involved. There would have to be various people at various levels who knew about it and have remained silent about it all these years. “How come there have never been any leaks regarding game 6?” is something they might ask. As we’ve written throughout this piece, there is no substantial and corroborated evidence to suggest that the NBA, or its officials, decided this game. At best, we have a boatload of circumstantial evidence that we think would convince a jury to award Sacramento a Larry O’Brien. On the specific topic of the number of people involved, however, we think it could be as minimal to three to four people. It could involve nothing more than a simple call from David Stern to the referees who worked this game to do whatever they have to do make this wildly popular series between two evenly matched teams last one more game. As Tuohy suggests, Stern might have viewed it as good business.

On the topic of dismissing a conspiracy theory on the basis of being a conspiracy theory, Brian Tuohy adds:

“If you look outside the United States right now, today, we know soccer matches are being fixed. We know tennis matches are being fixed. Cricket matches are being fixed. Rugby matches are being fixed. People are being arrested and convicted of fixing those sports. So it’s amazing that in the United States, none of this happens. What other crime happens worldwide that doesn’t happen in the United States? Apparently, game-fixing is it, which I don’t understand. How is it happening everywhere else but despite billions of dollars being gambled on American sports nobody’s fixing a game? Well, I don’t believe it. It’s only considered a conspiracy theory because people don’t want to believe it potentially could be true.”

Those of us who prefer to be on the other side of this argument often inform our conspiracy theorist friends that there isn’t more than meets the eye. Most of the time, the truth is the truth, the facts are the facts, and scoreboard is scoreboard, but facts are stubborn things, and they’re also pretty boring. It’s boring, and anti-climactic to say that one common, ordinary man could take down a president. There’s little-to-no literary value in the suggestion that a bunch of ragtag losers could take down one of America’s greatest monuments to commerce without conspiratorial assistance, and it does nothing to ease our pain to admit that a team beat our team based on superior athletic talent alone. Raised in a pop culture that feeds into our idea that there has to be more than meets the eye, we end up believing that there is, as we stare at those zeroes on the scoreboard, and we watch the other team celebrate, and we listen to the post-game interviews with a lump in our throat. This dream season can’t just be over, we think. There has to be more to it, but most of them time there isn’t. Most of the time one team loses and another wins, and the conspiracy theorist becomes more ridiculous every time they attempt to say that there has to be something more to it.

Having said all that, those of us who try to avoid the ‘C’ word as often as we can, ask those who offer bemused smiles to our conspiracy theories if it’s just as ridiculous to suggest that such moments never happen? Especially when, as Brian Tuohy suggests, they happen all the time, all over the world. “I’m not going to say it’s never happened,” the rational reply, “but it didn’t happen here.”

If it didn’t happen here, even the most objective analysis would find that two of the three officials involved in Game 6, 2002, made an inordinate amount of calls in favor of the Lakers, and because these two teams were so evenly matched, those calls provided an insurmountable advantage for the 2002 Lakers. We’ll never know whether or not these “best officials in the game” were just incompetent for one game in their careers, or if they were acting in a nefarious manner, but those of us who watched every second of the May 31, 2002 game –and slammed the “off” button as hard as we’ve ever slammed an “off” button before, or since– believe that it was a point beyond the random that damaged the social contract we had with the NBA, and its integrity, in a manner that is irrevocable.

Rilalities V: Challenges and Insecurities

April 25, 2014December 11, 2020 RilalyLeave a comment

The 6’5” Guy

“I’m six foot five,” a man named Joe said when I met him. He did not work this into his greeting, and he did not say it in the early minutes of our introduction but it hung over his sizable head until he acknowledged it.

Those fortunate enough to meet Joe will discover the reason we learn about his height soon after learning his first name. The natural inclination of most is to drop their last name soon after saying their first name. Some drop their last name soon after mentioning their first name as a matter of habit, and some do it because they’re so proud of their family and heritage. Others might mention their occupation soon after mentioning their first name. I didn’t learn any of that from Joe in the brief moments Joe and I spoke. I learned that Joe was 6’5”. Joe was more 6’5” than he was Joe, and those fortunate enough to have a conversation with him that extends beyond superficial pleasantries will learn how 6’5” he is. If the conversation we share with Joe evolves into a minutes-long discussion, and the listener doesn’t acknowledge his height in anyway, he’ll break the news to them:

“I’m six foot five!”

Although Joe and I spoke for a total of about three minutes, I had the impression that the man could’ve written a bestseller, won the Heisman Trophy, saved children from a fire, or discovered the cure for cancer, and his height would still be his greatest and worst attribute. No matter what happens to him in life, I think Joe will prefer to have “Here lies Joe. He was 6’5” chiseled into his gravestone.

Joe was an interesting guy. He appeared to be conversant on a wide range of topics, and he managed to tell some stories from his life in an impressively timely manner, but everything he spoke of kept coming back to that refrain of his life.

His height was the reason he had trouble finding chairs to sit in with comfort, the reason his 5’3” mother was always on him about stuff, and the reason he couldn’t be as particular as he wanted to be about the clothing he wore:

“You can’t be finicky about clothes when you’re 6’5” and built like me.”

Joe, we should also note, was broad-shouldered. This attribute, coupled with the idea that he was 6’5” was the reason he had trouble going door-to-door to talk to people.

“Would you be comfortable discussing politics, if a man my size came-a-knocking on your door?”

His height was also the reason, he informed me, that he had such trouble finding a decent woman. That subject matter may have shocked most people, or at least made them somewhat uncomfortable, as most people would deem such a discussion inordinately intimate for a conversation between two people meeting for the first time. I had a best friend in high school who was 6’7” however, so I was well versed in the travails of being an abnormally tall male in America today, and I was used to my friend going into such intimate details with people he just met. Joe and I did try, at various intervals, to move on to other topics, but he was unable to let the fact that he was 6’5” go as easily as I was.

What struck me as odd was that I never mentioned his height, and I don’t think I provided any verbal or physical cues that called attention to it. Was that the point though? I later wondered. Was my refusal to acknowledge his height such an aberration to his experience that until I acknowledged it in some way, he would not be able to move on until one of us did?

Being a tall man has numerous advantages, but it has almost as many disadvantages. As I wrote, I was well versed in the travails of being an abnormally tall man in America. I knew, for example, that a person’s height is the first thing people notice when another is taller than 6’3”, and the thing they talk about after the person leaves. “How would you like it if no matter what you said, ’Man he is a big fella ain’t he?’ is the only thing they have to say about you after you leave?” When you’re 6’5” people pester another about in malls. It’s the reason some guys won’t mess with you and the reason others do. It’s also the reason some women want to date you and others don’t. A 6’5” man could be the most charming person in the world, in other words, and most people will have preconceived notions about them based on their height.

With that in mind, one would think that an abnormally tall male, or a woman with abnormally large breasts, would find it refreshing when they’ve finally encountered someone who seems to be genuinely unconcerned with their attribute(s). One would think that they might find it refreshing when they’ve finally found a person who is willing to talk geopolitics with them without looking down their shirt, or saying, “How’s the weather up there?” One would think that someone who broke those patterns of human interaction would receive a bright smile as a reward, and maybe even something along the lines of, “Thank you. You may not even know why I’m thanking you, but thank you!” Yet, tall men and large-breasted women, just like all humans with exaggerated attributes, become so accustomed to these patterns of interaction that they feel compelled to draw your attention to them just to complete a line of dialogue comfortably.

Most people try to avoid talking about a trait they generally considered a negative, and they will do everything they can to avoid noticing it. When they consider that person’s attribute a positive, most people think you should feel privileged to have it, so they don’t mind drawing attention to it. “You’re tall Joe!” they will say, or “I wish I had those,” and they will add something along the lines of, “You should feel privileged.”

As my conversation with Joe continued, and he began to belabor the point of his height, I thought he was trying to assert some sort of dominance. I may have been wrong on that note, and it might have had more to do with everything I thought later, but I began to rebel against his theme by making a concerted effort to avoid the topic of his height. Our conversation ended soon thereafter, and we moved onto other people at the gathering.

“What did you say to Joe?” our mutual friend later asked. She thought Joe and I would have so much in common that we would hit it off.

“Why?” I asked.

“He says he doesn’t think you two hit it off.” When I asked her for more details, our mutual friend said, “He said he can’t put a finger on it, but he doesn’t like you as much as I thought he would.”

Without going into what I deem to be the unnecessary details of our otherwise innocuous conversation, I can tell you that the conversation I had with Joe involved no disagreements. To my mind, there were not even moments of subtle tension, and there certainly were no overt ones, but he didn’t like me. Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks every person has to like me, and if they don’t I think there has to be something wrong with them, but to my mind this conversation I had with Joe proved to be amicable if not pleasant. Joe and I also proved to be as like-minded on certain topics as our mutual friend thought we would be. The only thing I did, and that which I presume led Joe to state that I didn’t live up to the characteristics our mutual friend detailed for him, was refuse to acknowledge he was 6’5” in anyway, and I think he thought that if I was’t going to do that, I was probably a phony.

Going Clear—

Anytime I finish a book as fantastic as Lawrence Wright’s Going Clear, I wonder what I am going to do with my free time? The book gives credence to Phillip Roth’s line about non-fiction being stranger than fiction. A complaint that an Amazon.com reviewer posed was: “If everything Wright writes is factual, why would anyone want to join the Scientology religion?” This reviewer stated that this was the only point, and a central point, that they found lacking in the book. If I were this Amazon.com reviewer’s teacher, and I lived by the credo, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, I would simply require that student reread the book.

Kiss in Rolling Stone—

Anyone that thinks that being “king of the hill, top of the heap, and ‘A’ number one” means that you will be able control your press, should read the March 28, 2014, issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Kiss may no longer be the band that sells platinum records every year, and they may be more about marketing than music at this point in their career, but this Rolling Stone article was supposed to be about their soon-to-occur induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. To read this piece in the Rolling Stone, however, that fact means little-to-nothing.

This piece of rock journalism was so shockingly brutal that one has to imagine that Gene Simmons is still throwing some of his much detailed Kiss memorabilia at the wall when he thinks about it. All four members of the band Kiss came under attack from the author of the piece, but the author reserved most of his unprofessional brutality for Gene. This writer’s attacks were so petty and snarky that a regular reader of Rolling Stone would suspect that Gene was a Republican candidate running for office. Yet, Gene’s not even a Republican voter, as he has made it public that he voted for both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton twice.

This article would also be an excellent read for journalism students seeking answers on what not to do with subjects they’re covering in an article. Having never taken a journalism course, I would have to imagine that one of the primary rules discussed in a Journalism 101 class is: “The articles that you write are not about you. No one will be reading your article to learn what you think, unless you’re writing an opinion piece. If you’re covering a subject in a journalistic manner, however, remember that your readers are only reading your article to learn more about the subject. It’s not about you. Your readers won’t care about your opinion, your preferences, or what you think about the subject you’re covering, so be careful how you frame their answers. If your subject says something stupid, infantile, or in any way revealing of their character, put that statement on the record, but do not comment, or frame, that quote in anyway. That’s not your job.” Judging by the course journalism has followed in the last generation, I’m quite sure that most journalism schools now include an asterisk with each of these rules that states: “Unless your subject is a Republican politician.” As I wrote, however, Gene Simmons is not a Republican voter.

Inspiration—

“This guy sounds like a complete fraud,” a writer said of a fellow writer I was describing. I wasn’t even done with my description of this fellow writer, when this writer interrupted me with her blunt characterization. I wasn’t shocked by her assessment of this fellow writer. She had said as much of other, more established writers, but it was apparent to me that this woman believed that by diminishing all other writers around her, her stature as a writer would somehow be fortified. Had this been the first time I heard any writer say such a thing, I would’ve passed her comments off as flaws in her character, but I’ve heard a number of novices, and well-established writers, engage in the this practice. If you’ve ever heard a U.F.O. chaser, a ghost hunter, or some fortune teller attempt to establish their bona fides by telling you that every other person engaged in their craft are fraudulent, then you have some idea what I’m detailing here.

Knowing how hard it is to come up with ideas, and execute those ideas to the point of proper completion, one would think that a writer would bend over backwards to extend professional courtesies to anyone trying to do the same. If you think that, you’ve never sat down with a group of writers.

“You can say he’s a poor writer,” I said, “But are you saying he’s not a writer?”

“I’m saying he’s probably a hack,” she responded. She didn’t arc her nose upward after saying that, but that’s how I now remember it. It seemed like such a violation of the code, on so many levels, that it was hard to comprehend how she could be so brutal.

She cut me off before I could ask her what she meant by “hack”. I know the general term applies to writers that write just to write, and churn out poor quality submissions for financial gain, but she had never read this person’s material. She had never even met the man. Yet, he was a hack in a manner that made her appear adept at using the word.

One essential component to avoid being called a hack, apparently, is to write so little that everything you write can be perceived as enlightened, or divine in nature. If you want to avoid being a hack, you should never write what others might consider mundane. Yet, those of us that truly love the minutiae involved in writing, believe that it’s only through exploring the mundane that moments of inspiration can be discovered.

One key component to being in a position to level such a charge, and have that charge stick –I now know after reading her material— is to never allow those that hear you level it, read your material. Your charge should remain an indefinable accusation that leaves you with the dignified, nose-in-the-air air about you.

Her material brought to mind the one key component of storytelling that every writer should focus on —be they a writer of vital, substantial material, or a hack— make sure it’s interesting. Translation: You can be the most gifted writer the world has ever read, but if your material is not interesting, no one will care.

In the face of the constructive comments (see negative) this woman received from our group, she said, “Perhaps, I’m a better editor, than I am a writer.” Translation: I have little in the way of creative talent, but I am, indeed, gifted in the art of telling others how little they have.