for those about to rock

i am trying very hard to not let this bother me

and yet, i can't help it.

something about this -- "opening dawn: fans up early for baseball" -- reminds me that in spite of loving baseball and knowing that the red sox are going to be my team for the rest of my life, there's this weird provincial constriction to being a fan of the sox that has nothing to do with (or at least, should have nothing to do with) how the players play the game, or really with the game of baseball in general.

it's like, i read this article about people packing into the bars in the early hours of a weekday morning to watch their team, and then, quite unbidden, those stomping chords that open "i'm shipping up to boston" go rattling through my mental jukebox (remember when the music people called 'punk' actually went for the jugular?), and oops, here comes boozy, brawling sully, red-faced and full of piss and vinegar, and somehow this more than any physical danger he could possibly represent makes him a man to be given wide berth, a man to be accorded a tacit respect, i guess, and yes sir, here comes some anonymous, crowing, drunken floozy wearing a pink red sox cap and hanging on sully's arm, and her volume will have to be tolerated by one and all because she'll put out some sloppy sex, things revert as they always do to form, bobblehead dolls, remdawg, wally, dunkin donuts, "-ah" everything, f-ing shaughnessy, real salt of the earth people, boston traffic, everything's a-ok, we're all marching belligerently without a care in the world, aside from the satiation of the loudest of our screaming hungers, onward and forward towards death.

this is what it calls to mind. it's hard now to imagine starry-eyed kids with big league dreams getting psyched for little league, and memorizing more numbers than a nasa engineer could hope to cram into his brain, and i don't think of elder figures passing along first-hand accounts of moments that have fallen through history's cracks to eager, reverential listeners, and i don't feel these sweeping, overwhelming senses of tenacity, of triumphing over adversity, of blurred racial and national lines, hands joined in the brotherhood of the common goal, because so many meaningless and certainly less vital elements of the game and of a team are amplified so greatly.

yahooism's been written about a million times over, and i certainly have nothing new to add to the discussion, but man, it just sucks when, just as has happened with music, politics, comedy, etc., yet another means by which the individual can make a healthy connection to the collective is co-opted, and the experience's innards get yanked right out so that all we're left with is a mold, a rigid, systematic way of creating expectations and reacting to outcomes. any fandom surely hedges on doing this and occasionally does indulge, but hardly ever to such a pervasive and overarching extent, and perhaps that's the price we pay for success.

maybe this speaks to my own generally foul mood, and that's really alright with me, and just like everything else reverts to form, i might as well welcome comments that speculate on my own unrelated creative, professional, social and romantic frustrations in life, because of course those must inform any observation i make that leaves a bitter taste in readers' mouths (i guess if i was in better frame of mind i'd merely think these things rather than write them?), and it's much easier to deal with an argument or observation on tangential grounds than it is to meet it head-on.

posted by jomilkman @ 8:07 AM