making the team

I have never been what you would call an athlete. My high school sports career consisted of one practice with the junior varsity basketball team. It’s not like I didn’t learn the value of teamwork, though. I was a key member of the Quartz Hill High School Math Team—talk about dealing with the pressures of competition, try being the guy on the team everyone turns to when the team has a differential equation to solve! But, I just tried to stay inside myself, bring my ‘A’ game, and give a hundred percent (it was the math team, after all—we knew that you can’t give ‘a hundred and ten percent’).

I was at a lot of games in high school, because I was in the pep band, and I’d like to think I brought quite a lot of pep to my school. The problem was the music. It was the mid-seventies, and band directors across the nation began to toss out John Phillip Sousa in favor of watered-down Sousa-like arrangements of hip tunes the kids might like. Our band actually marched to an arrangement of the theme from ‘Shaft.’ Which would be like your grandpa performing “Me So Horny.”

The last year I was in band, the school began issuing letter jackets. To the band. And the choir. That’s right, you could letter in band. I chose not to get one, realizing I was enough of a target carrying a briefcase and a clarinet. I didn’t need the jocks, who were already inclined to shove me in a locker, to think I was mocking them by wearing a jacket that looked just like theirs, but with an embroidered music lyre on the sleeve.

I love watching sports, but I follow baseball more than the others. The NBA has become a little…thuggish for my tastes. With the chest thumping, tattoos, trash talking and women dancing on the sidelines, I’m never sure if I’m watching a sports event or a rap video. Football’s exciting, but it’s hard for me to root for guys who are just grownup versions of the guys who…shoved me into lockers.

Baseball is my sports passion. My favorite thing about it? It’s the only professional sport that the average guy can watch and say things like “Hell, I could have made that catch.” Now, granted, the average guy probably couldn’t in fact “make that catch,” but we all think we could, because, hey—it’s just catching a ball. No different than having a catch with dad, except that dad wasn’t juiced on ‘roids. As far as I know. Point being, nobody watches a Vikings game and thinks “Damn, I could have tackled that two-hundred fifty pound guy who runs the forty in under five seconds!”

The pro sport I can’t get into is hockey, which is followed with religious fervor here in Minnesota. The high school tournament is actually televised here, which creates scenes of middle-aged men in bars swearing at sixteen year-olds playing a game. Plus, the puck is too small. Make that thing the size of a discus so I can figure out where the hell I should be looking. Also, in the NHL, too many teams make the playoffs. I’m pretty sure if I could get five of my friends together with some sticks in late January, we would be given a playoff berth.

I’ve moved around so much, my team loyalties are literally all over the map. Wherever I am, I follow the home teams, because if they win a championship, I can help overturn cars and set shit on fire downtown, because that’s how we celebrate athletic excellence in this country.

I spent some time in Chicago, and I think my favorite moment as a spectator came at Wrigley Field. Game against the Phillies. I was in the bleachers for batting practice, and a misguided woman was trying to get the attention of one of the Phillies outfielders, screaming that she loved him. Suddenly, with no prompting, HUNDREDS of Cubs fans began chanting “SHUT UP BITCH”, in unison, until she, in fact, shut up. Very fun, in a scary, villagers-with-torches sorta way.

Sometimes, a team’s name is what seals it for me. I’ve been a Vikings fan since I was a kid in Southern California. Sports is combat, and your name is what you carry into battle. Historically, if Vikings defeated you, they pulled your lungs and still-beating heart out of your body, and that’s what I want my team to do. Metaphorically, of course.

The other Minnesota team names are less intimidating. ‘Timberwolves,’ I suppose, are scary enough, but ‘Twins’? “Hey, honey—I think the twins are coming for the weekend, would you make up the guest room?” The U of M Golden Gophers? Please. Is that the meanest animal you could think of? “Watch out—the Gophers are in town—they’ll…annoy you by burrowing in your yard!” And don’t get me started on the missing-an-‘s’-so-it’s-not-really-a-team-name Minnesota ‘Wild.’

Hockey also has the ‘Avalanche’ and the ‘Lightning.’ Look–a team’s name should be either something iconic, specific to that city (‘Pistons,’ for example) or the name of an animal that might kill you. And it should be plural. I think the reason the WNBA hasn’t drawn more fans is that half of their team names are…just concepts. The ‘Dream.’ The ‘Sky.’ The ‘Liberty.” These would be great names–for a team entering a poetry slam. It’s a slippery slope—what’s next–an expansion team called the Anchorage Angst?

Now. If you happen to own a team, and you’re not able to extort a gazillion dollars from the city you’re in for a fancy new stadium, so that city calls your bluff and you move your team—pick a new name. Utah Jazz is an oxymoron. Call yourself the Utah Missionaries, or the Salt Lake Polygamists, but leave the Jazz in New Orleans. L.A. doesn’t have Lakes—you don’t get to be the ‘Lakers.’ You can be the Los Angeles…Tourists. And while British Columbia may have grizzly bears, so there could be Vancouver Grizzlies, ‘Memphis Grizzlies’ just sounds stupid. How ’bout the Memphis Presleys?

I think all real sports fans look forward to the Olympics, and next year the Winter Games will be in Vancouver. The one event I never understood in the Winter Olympics is the biathlon, which is essentially trudging through snow, while stopping occasionally to shoot a rifle. I get cross-country skiing, and I get shooting things. Do one or the other.

I mean, while we’re combining random things, let’s have an event in the Summer Games that combines the 100-meter butterfly with…archery. The next Summer Olympics will include two new sports—rugby and golf. Now THERE are two activities that should be combined. Golf would be much more interesting if you could tackle your opponent as he lined up his tee shot, and all the golfers got into a big scrum at each hole.

To any actual athletes reading this  (‘Athletes Who Read’–on the next Tyra!), understand that I harbor no ill will toward those of you who might have picked on me. And really, it worked out for the best. Sure, because of your freakish physical talents and genetic luck, you have the opportunity to earn millions of dollars while I have the opportunity to…i dunno, have dozens of people read my stuff. But it’s been years since I’ve been shoved into a locker, and besides, I’ll always have the clarinet to fall back on.

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tricks and treats

Not sure why, but as a kid I never did the dress up ‘trick or treat’ thing, probably because even when I was very young, I was a nerd. I started playing the clarinet when I was ten years old. Instead of, say, learning how to interact with my peers and develop healthy friendships. I didn’t take part in a lot of normal, typical-growing-up cultural memes (you remember, before ‘memes’ were called ‘memes’ , and were just called ‘stuff a lot of people did that other people did first?’) No, but there is a plaque with a red ribbon that says I read forty books in first grade. Hmmm…now why was I a virgin till I was twenty?

When I got to college, I finally learned how to cut loose—sure, I was a cybernetics major living in a dorm, but oh, lemme tell ya–I could do some crazy shit. Got into a prank war with a roommate. It started when he thought it would be fun to mess with my record collection. Now, I had something like seven hundred vinyl albums, and I was (okay, still am) kinda anal-retentive. Of course they were alphabetized. And sorted by genre.

So one day he screws up my albums, and I put his pillowcase in the freezer before he comes home. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to—anyway, you get the point.

I did drag once, in college, on Halloween. Being a culturally aware, sophisticated, twenty-first century  bisexual, I realize that Halloween is the one night when closeted queens get to let their freak flags fly and nurture their inner Grace Kelly. Back then, I just thought it would be funny. (warning: frightening images ahead) So I’m hanging out in the dorm lounge in a kinda springy floral print sundress and big floppy hat, and a girl who lived on my floor says “I’d kill to have calves like yours.” Though I’ve never done drag since, it’s nice to know I had options.

As an adult, I loathe Halloween. If it’s not drunk frat boys wandering around in Uptown made up as zombies, it’s drunk frat boys yelling at women wandering around in Uptown  made up as slutty nurses. Okay, maybe my problem is with drunk frat boys. But you’d have a problem with them too if you lived in a dorm and they kept pulling the fire alarm at three in the morning when you had an organic chemistry test the next morning at eight.

As a single adult, Halloween sucks because if it’s the one day when if you’ve chosen not to have obnoxious children, they get delivered to your door. I think the first time I realized I had become a ‘grownup,’ that I was now on the other side, was a Halloween night a couple years ago, when a couple of adorable moppets mocked the candy I was giving them. “Don’t you have anything else?” As I shut the door, I actually thought to myself “When I was their age” and muttered the word ‘ungrateful.’ The transformation was complete. I had become my stepdad. And by the way, when I was their age, I would have been happy with an Abba-Zabba bar.

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zombie pride

It was inevitable. The backlash had to happen. First, the dominant culture is afraid of the marginalized outsiders. Then, they embrace them, intellectuals praise them, Hollywood makes movies about them. Finally, the overexposure causes the outsiders to resent all of this, criticizing a culture that has appropriated its very soul.

So it is with Zombie-Americans. Tired of being mocked and caricatured, the zombies are rising up (this time metaphorically) against the living.  At an event in Wausau, Wisconsin, over five thousand zombies attended a conference called “Things That Are Eating US.” The president of the Zombie-American Coalition Embracing Fundamental Responses to Overt Negativity (ZACEFRON) addressed the brain-eating throng:

“As a zombie, I have I have witnessed the revulsion from people as we have just tried to coexist. We never asked for a place at the table–only the freedom to stumble around your cities at night. We are not here to frighten your children–but we do want them to stop pretending to be us.

As with so many things, the media is to blame. Now that we’re trendy, you would think some filmmaker would paint a true picture of zombie culture. But “Zombieland”? Really? Woody Harrelson from ‘Cheers’ is after us now? There’s a band called ‘The Zombeatles’ and they do a song called “Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead”? How clever. People meeting up for ‘zombie pub crawls’?

This has to stop, non-people. We deserve respect.  At least vampires are occasionally given nuanced portrayals on film. And they’re shown living in Gothic mansions, while we are always seen living in some dingy graveyard.

We are not without a sense of humor. We tolerated your Halloween costumes and were even willing to laugh at the first couple of ‘Living Dead’ movies. But these portrayals of us are based on stereotypes, and they have led to fear and hatred.

The mainstream culture needs to realize that zombies are people, too—or, more accurately, were people. To trade in caricatures is unfair. Like most hatred, zombiphobia is rooted in ignorance. The living must realize, when they put on their blotchy makeup and tattered clothes, that somewhere there is a young zombie who’s afraid to come out of the grave because he doesn’t want to be ridiculed.

We can come together with our non-zombie friends. If only they knew how many of us live in their world, as accountants, telemarketers, Starbucks employees. Some of us have even chosen to hide our true selves to reach celebrity status in the land of the living. Kim Kardashian…Brad Garrett…Willem Dafoe…all undead Americans.

We, the zombies, are like the living in so many ways, and yet we are treated as second-class citizens. How many of us have tried to buy a nice townhouse, only to have the realtor run away screaming because we look different? How many of us have been prevented from exercising that most basic right, that of voting, simply because our limbs sometimes fall off? We still deserve a voice! Even now, In most states, a zombie is not even allowed to get a driver’s license!

It is true. We eat brains. But is that any stranger than eating liver? And while it’s true that we kill some of you, you end up rising from the dead and becoming…well, a zombie. And you have no memory that we killed you, so nobody’s the wiser.

Although we have come far as creatures, we have many slow, shuffling steps to go. Why are there no roles for zombies in any prime-time network shows? You’d think we’d be perfect for “Two and a Half Men,” but they went with a kid. Even reality TV—“Survivor”? I think a zombie could do very well on that show.

In closing, let me just say that we, the undead, will not stop with our brain-eating and what-not. But we demand more than brains. We demand equality. Where is our health-care plan? Why are they shooting us in the head, instead of trying to understand us? We are not so different from them. We WERE them, at least until they died and turned into us.”

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