Hardwood Odyssey

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Sports

Mar 13, 2014


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This article ran in the December 2009 issue of the Garfield Messenger (Garfield HS, Seattle). Tony now plays for the Philadelphia 76ers.

Sometime in October, my esteemed editor Larson Gunnarsson approached me with a proposition: I was to try out for the basketball team and give an account of the adventure. In the coming weeks, this agreement came back to haunt me. Since my days as a freshman, I had harbored an immense respect for Garfield basketball players. They were huge. They secreted swagger. They leaned against corridor walls, arms crossed, smiling fiendishly. Their presence drained all my confidence, any sense of myself. Tony, especially. His talent conferred on him an almost godlike stature, someone who couldn’t be defined in terms of “sophomore” or “underclassman.” A mere mortal myself, I craved his arrogance, his natural gifts, his world. I did not know or care about the personalities of Garfield ballers, but in their presence I felt awe, and something that bordered on fear. And so, the month before tryouts became increasingly painful as the sheer short-sightedness and stupidity of the agreement began to dawn on me. I would be matching up with varsity players. Varsity. Goddamn varsity. Every time I passed Tony in the halls, or Correy Bagby, or Jaron Cox,  I could only think: fuuuuuuuuck.

I enlisted Wilson Platt for emotional support. Wilson, a junior, started varsity last year, but he was not intimidating like the others. Cheery, likeable, and white, Wilson provided an outlet for my misgivings and insecurities about the looming tryouts. “The worst thing that could possibly happen,” I remember him saying, “is you get kicked out.” Vaguely reassured, I awaited the first day of tryouts the way an old man sits on the porch and ponders his fate.

When judgment day arrived, I was ready. I hydrated consciously throughout the day. I went home after school to stretch and grab a potassium-laden banana. I slipped on my fresh new Reebok crew socks, laced up my grime-encrusted Nikes and was out the door. At precisely 4:30 I walked into the gym foyer. Fifty people or more stood around, some talking and laughing, others plugged into their iPods with their heads down. I noticed shorter, baby-faced freshman and sophomores slouching, dispersed at random intervals, and felt a minor resurgence in confidence. I found Wilson in this scrum and sauntered up to him with as much grace and coolness as I could muster. In mid-saunter, I felt the eyes of big black dudes boring holes into the back of my head. I felt small. Wilson met me with his usual winsome smile. But at that moment, first-year coach Ed Haskins ushered the crowd into the gym, hopeful frosh and cocksure seniors alike.

Haskins sat everyone down in the bleachers. I studied him as he introduced himself and his assistants. He wasn’t tall, maybe 5’9″, but he commanded respect. Not just with his calm, sure voice, but with the way he gestured his arms, the way he explained the tryout semantics and included all of us in his gaze. After a brief warm-up, Haskins shouted: “Baseline!”

The first sprints were easy enough, but Haskins was not satisfied. He paced. He fumed. “This is unacceptable!” he shouted. He paced some more. “You will support your teammates as they run. Because you know you want them to support you! Let’s go!”

The response was overwhelming. Dudes sprinted high-knees down the court – high-knees – and everybody shouted out support, clapping their hands, eyebrows pointed in focus. The energy in the gym crackled. I was swept along in the frenzy, as much from legitimate excitement as my desire to simply to be included and not stand out.

The practice zipped along. The energy from the lines did not waver, but the severity of the sprints increased. We began doing “deep sixes,” six court lengths. Haskins chewed out the loafers. “You need mental toughness to play basketball!” he bellowed. “You walk? You are not mentally tough!”

We ran by class. Seniors last. Initially, I hung with the pack, but there was no gas in the tank for the last sprint. Going into the sixth and final turn, I was at least half a court length behind the next senior. As the pack finished at one end, I was working my way past the opposite three-point line. Wilson shouted “Let’s go Danny!”, which was slightly uplifting, but at the same time made me feel like a highly functioning autistic.

Haskins mercifully allowed a water break. I could hardly move. My vision had blurred. It took immense self-control and willpower to climb up the bleachers to my water bottle. As soon as I touched my dry lips to the lid, Haskins shouted “baseline!” I staggered back towards the group assembling at one end of the court, but did not stop once I reached it. I made it to the foyer before the dry-heaves began. I turned around long enough to see a guy giving me a wide-eyed, oh-shiit look before I plunged onward, finally reaching the bathroom, feeling my way to a stall, leaning over the toilet, and letting the vomit fly like a Nolan Ryan fastball.

I remember feeling so pathetic stooped over in that bathroom stall, remnants of the day’s chow mein clinging to my lips, standing still and alone while everybody was toughing it out in the gym. Whether it was a matter of pure exhaustion, as I hoped, or a matter of mental strength, as Haskins might have believed, I was weak. Practice ended soon thereafter. I departed the gym, feeling, if possible, smaller and more insignificant than when practice had begun.

The next day’s practice included only juniors, seniors, and underclassmen stars. The group shrank to 21; the stragglers had vanished. “This is essentially a varsity practice,” Haskins told us. “And I ask only that you hustle.” He interspersed sprints throughout the practice, but they were ultimately irrelevant next to the heart of the drama, the sacramental moment where we touched basketballs.

Here I offer some perspective on my playing ability. I have fundamentals. I can pass and set screens and play D, but that’s about it. Giving me the ball is a bad idea. In the rec city championship game last year, I took fourteen shots and missed fourteen shots. So needless to say, I had serious misgivings about scrimmaging with varsity. We ran full-court 5-on-5 drills. I was the weakest, smallest, and least skilled player on my team, by far. My teammates said nothing, but I could tell what they were thinking: Who is this little bitch white boy and what is he doing here?

Interestingly enough, the first couple of minutes went swimmingly. I was guarding someone smallish who couldn’t blow by or overpower me. For the first time in my life, I dove after a loose ball. I launched a three-pointer off the backboard, but shrugged it off. I began to feel a sensation that verged on the comfort zone. Until Tony guarded me.

It was just one play. But it was the worst play of my life. I received the ball on the top of the key. Tony stepped up and settled into a crouch across from me, maybe two feet away, eyes wide like a hyena’s. “GIMME DEEEZZ!” he screamed. He stretched his massive wingspan, as if to embrace me, although truly he was letting me know, you will not enjoy this. Too focused to be deterred by fear, I drove to the left and cut past him. In retrospect, I can only presume he wasn’t trying, because a) realistically he would lock me up in a heartbeat, and b) he subsequently pushed me from behind and poked the ball away.

Scrimmage progressed, and I slowly found a role on my team. I seldom touched the ball, set a few screens on offense, and played the most tenacious defense I could muster. Although I performed this role relatively well, I didn’t feel a part of the team. It was as if there were two groups of people trying out that day: those who were locks for varsity and those very close, and then everybody else. The outsiders. The varsity players were outgoing and arrogant, like a fraternity, a very exclusive fraternity of which membership was nearly impossible to attain. The outsiders may even outperform varsity players, but that does not grant them a spot in the varsity clique. I held my own against Correy Bagby on defense, an enormous personal victory. I busted my ass, played unselfish basketball. I shattered this illusion that varsity ballers play on an entirely different level, an inhuman level, but I remained still an outsider, lowly and unimportant.

As practice drew to a close, I gathered my belongings, kept to myself. Didn’t say a word. But inside, a strange sensation was brewing, displacing the insecurity and discomfort I had experienced in the days leading up to tryouts. I felt bold. Simply because I had staved off humiliation, I was unconquerable. Exhausted yet weightless, I gave Wilson one last high five and stepped out into the cool crisp night.

“gimme deez”

Stranded in Kenya: The Seahawks Win Super Bowl XLVIII

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Sports Travel

Feb 25, 2014


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The Seattle Seahawks played nineteen games this season, and I watched all of them — all of them, except one. As the Seahawks took the field at MetLife Stadium to do battle with the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII, I was fast asleep in the Kenyan bush, 100 miles west of Nairobi. It was 2:30 in the morning. When I emerged from my tent at dawn the game was long over. I dreamed that the Seahawks had beaten the Broncos, 16-14.

Team Kenya Safari consisted of my brother Andrew, Mom, Mom’s friend Betsy, and Mom’s sister Margaret, and myself. Safari! Wooo!!! The morning after the Super Bowl, we went on a hike to visit a primary school and learn about the trees that heal gonorrhea (‘gon-OR-rhe-a’ in Kenyan parlance). Jonathan, a Maasai warrior, was our guide. We had visited his village the day before. I asked him if his village played any sports for fun. “No,” he said, “but I ran relays in college.”

We would next have Wi-Fi in four days’ time, at the Lake Nakuru hotel. We could stream the Super Bowl there. By some T-Mobile voodoo magic, Margaret’s husband was able to deliver her the final score. She told Betsy, and they were on strict orders not to discuss the game until the rest of us had watched it ourselves.

We mingled with lions, zebras, and elephants on the Serengeti, paid visits to villages, farms, and schools, and made escapes from hordes of rabid whittled-giraffe salesmen. At last, we made it to the Lake Nakuru hotel. Andrew, Mom, and I sat outside at a picnic table overlooking the lake, sipping Tusker (the local brew of choice) and downloading the NFL Game Rewind app on Mom’s iPad so we could watch the game. The app loaded at a glacial pace, but our spirits soared high above the Kenyan savanna. The wait was finally over. Seahawks! Broncos! The big enchilada! Let the rumble begin!!!

I tapped Begin Stream. A message popped up. It read: “Sorry, NFL Game Rewind has not been cleared for use in your region.”

What happened immediately next was a blur. Profanities were uttered. Tusker was consumed. “Isn’t the NFL supposed to be trying to expand into foreign markets?” Andrew asked.

Marooned by the National Football League. Classic. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. But if I had endured the four-day wait with anything less than 100% hope for a successful viewing, I would have folded and asked Margaret the score. It was a valiant effort, and for that I patted myself on the back. Now there was little choice but to rip off the band-aid. Mom checked the score and announced the result: the Seahawks won. 43-8.

It was the first Seattle championship of my lifetime and instantly the greatest moment in Seattle sports history. As such, I got up and humped the air triumphantly, but I could already tell something was wrong. There was no euphoric rush, no pleasant tingle, not even the kind that comes from swishing a three-pointer. There was nothing to savor. I hadn’t earned the emotional reward of victory. I hadn’t hiked to the mountaintop, I flew there by helicopter. I had cheated. Or rather, I had been cheated. I would be better off in Jonathan’s village, I thought, having never heard of the Seattle Seahawks, never grasping the concept of sports because sports only exist on the upper rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

I self-diagnosed myself with acute retroactive FOMO. It can be more or less summed up in terms of my friend Larson Gunnarsson. Heart of gold, lover of dogs, he was that kid in 3rd grade who licked slugs and cried when his team lost in football at recess. He is the truest sports fan I know. He flew out from Seattle to New York, where I live, to attend the Super Bowl with his brother. After the game, he posted on Facebook: “Tonight is the single best day of my life and nothing has ever come close. SEAHAWKS!!!!!!!”

I know exactly what sort of afterparty went down, because I’ve constructed it in my imagination. Immersed in a giant army of Seahawks fans, Larson, our friends, and I take to the streets of Manhattan full of Jim Beam and jubilation, first the East Village, then Downtown, then up to Midtown, then to Central Park as the sun rises to share what remains in our flasks with the homeless, and finally to the Upper West Side for Monday brunch.

***

Stranded in a distant land. A victim of injustice. I couldn’t even relate my plight to my own brother, a diehard Mariners fan but only a casual Seahawks fan. For the first time, I found myself craving the 12th Man.

Over the course of the 2013 season, I grew increasingly cynical about the Seahawks’ famously loud home crowd, the 12th Man. As the Seahawks’ record progressed from 4-0 to 8-1 to 12-2, the national media paid the 12th Man progressively more attention and fair-weathers piled onto the bandwagon. I rolled my eyes as the 12th Man attempted to coronate itself with the Guinness record for world’s loudest crowd. I rolled my eyes as people posted pictures of their freshly needled ‘12’ tattoos, as one young couple named their newborn Cydnee Leigh 12th Mann. What a bunch of tools, I thought. I didn’t need the 12th Man as a prop to prove my devotion to the Seahawks. If there is a God, he knows I’m a real fan.

A couple days before the Super Bowl, at the elephant orphanage in Nairobi National Park, we spotted a woman taking pictures with a 12th Man flag, and Mom chatted her up. Margaret, a Denverite, sidled up alongside the woman and nudged her in the ribs. “Go Broncos,” she said.

The woman nudged Margaret back. “Go Hawks,” she said.

This jocular ribbing amongst women in their late fifties continued for about ten minutes, after which Andrew and I were coerced into posing for a picture with the 12th Man flag. To my horror, Mom later posted the picture to Facebook.

Mom isn’t much of a football fan. But if we had been able to stream the Super Bowl at the Lake Nakuru hotel, I would have watched in relative silence while she screamed obscenities and made herky-jerky guttural noises at the screen. The line between the fair-weather and the diehard blurs in the moment of reckoning.

Mom is a lot like Ramsey from the Bud Light “It’s only weird if it doesn’t work” commercial in which the narrator, who we’ll call Steve, is forced to watch the Patriots game with the overzealous Ramsey. I hate watching football with Ramsey. All he does is yell. They can’t hear you, Ramsey! But the Patriots never lose when Ramsey comes over to watch. I love you, Ramsey, Steve says.

Who is crazier, Ramsey or Steve? Ramsey becomes so engrossed in the drama of the game that he loses contact with reality and forgets he’s with people. Ramsey is Alan from “The Hangover” gone berserk. Steve keeps his composure, but he’s convinced himself that Ramsey, if sitting in Steve’s living room, possesses the ability to bend cosmic vibrations such that they align in the Patriots’ favor. Within every fan there is both Ramsey and Steve, both the passion and the superstition that sustain the belief that fans are as integral to the sport as the players. If players are artists and no one recognizes their work, did they create anything to begin with? Arrogant and selfless, fans want above all to compel their players to dig deeper, until they become more than just an audience – until they become actors.

The 12th Man isn’t an expression of tradition. It’s an expression of this belief that fans matter. The central precept of the 12th Man is to be heard, the goal to disrupt the opposing offense’s play calls and snap counts. Since 2012, the Seahawks are 10-8 on the road and 17-1 at home. The cause is worthy. The cause is virtuous. As the 2013 season progressed and the stakes rose, the cause broiled itself into a tsunami that breached the walls of CenturyLink Field and swept across greater Seattle. Fair-weathers everywhere, their capacity to emote no less than that of the diehards. My dad reported that during his trip to the grocery store the day before the Super Bowl, “every woman from age 5 to 85 was wearing a Seahawks jersey.”

The 12th Man isn’t an expression of tradition. It’s an expression of a civic pride Seattle never before knew it had.

The morning after the failed attempt to watch the Super Bowl, we went on a game drive in Lake Nakuru National Park. As the rest of Team Kenya Safari clutched their binoculars and scanned the horizon for rhinos, I laid despondent and wistful in the backseat, my mind elsewhere. I wasn’t thinking about the highlights I’d ended up watching on repeat the night before, or the Seahawk players who had fulfilled their lifelong dream of winning a Super Bowl. I thought about Larson Gunnarsson and company going buckwild in New York. I thought about the 700,000 Seattleites who turned out for the victory parade.

When a team wins a championship, how much ownership can fans claim? They exist on the same emotional plane as the players. But unlike fans, players both participate in and bear witness to greatness. The role of the fans is ambiguous and peripheral, no matter how intense their fervor. If fans lay dubious claim to the real trophy, they at least can claim a parallel simulacrum of a trophy and pass it around amongst themselves. A fan isn’t on a journey with the players – he’s on a journey with other fans. The players aren’t his brothers — the fans are.

Watching the Seahawks has been a reliable source of emotional and existential purpose for me over the years. If my reaction to them winning the Super Bowl by a score of 43-8 is any indication, sharing the viewing experience with others, however remotely, must be meaningful. When I watch a Seahawks game alone in my New York apartment, I am not Bear Grylls, self-sufficient in a wilderness of degenerate Patriots, Giants, and Jets fans. I am occupying the same psychic space as other Seahawk fans watching the game same as me. If Andrew, Mom, and I had been able to watch Super Bowl XLVIII, it’s not as if we would have been the only three Seahawk fans on Earth. Through time and space we would have rode with the 12th Man.

Tatted: A Year Later

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Life

Apr 03, 2013


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I got a tattoo on my 21st birthday. Having turned 22 a few days ago, I figured it was time to sit down and reflect on the decisions that were made that fateful night.

My cousin and I celebrated with a trip to a BYOB sushi restaurant in Greenwich Village. After dinner, we walked a few blocks away into an establishment called Whatever Tattoo. I told the guy to ink me up. On the inside of my left arm, two inches above the elbow, a ‘206’ – the area code of my hometown Seattle. We scrolled through fonts. He needled at my arm for 5 minutes. I threw him the dough.

I sent the fam a pic the next day. Dad was stoked. Mom thought it looked like a numerical identification marking from Auschwitz. Back at school the next week, I showed out. Yea… I’m tatted. Sup ladies. It was all so gravy at first. Little did I realize, I had acquired a problem of placement. Had the tattoo been inked a few inches higher, it would be covered up by a t-shirt. But it was not. I hadn’t anticipated the task of explaining its meaning to every other person I encountered. I even formulated a stock Portuguese explanation during my trip to Brazil last summer. Within months, the 206 tatt was beginning to lose its luster.

Why’d I get it? Seattle is my home. Seattle is beautiful. A brief bit of history: in 1903, the Seattle Park Commissioners brought out the Olmsted Brothers to plan a comprehensive park system. They came back with a recommendation for several dozen parks new parks of varying character and a 20-mile boulevard to run between them. The City Beautiful movement was at its zenith, and most of the Olmsted Plan was implemented within the next three decades. Between 1900 and 1930, the population of Seattle increased from 80 thousand to 365 thousand; the park system developed in step with the rest of the city, so that the City Beautiful movement was not reform but organic creation, the parks and boulevards woven into the hills and water and distant mountains and integrated into the Cartesian street grid and urban fabric.

206 is an important symbol because it distinguishes Seattle from the suburbs across the lake – the 425. The Eastside. The Eastside thinks it’s hot shit, but really it’s just a bunch of Ugg-caliber biddies and vainglorious simpletons. It’s a different state of mind over there, and the geographic divide reinforces this gap. ‘206’ thus refers only to the part of Seattle I like.

Once I went to college and gained an east coast perspective, the 206 tattoo started to seem like a worthy expression of my nostalgia, and I suppose of some preemptive nostalgia for the years ahead when I would be living in New York or something. Also, I figured that it would act as a bat signal for fellow Seattleites in those faraway places. If I met them, I would show them the tatt and become the insta-homie. In a nutshell, I felt compelled to state my territory. When my 21st birthday rolled around, I didn’t have a location on my body in mind, but I figured in that moment that the time was right to commit to the ink.

The tattoo can be problematic in two ways, and they are both ironic. First, it compromises my Seattle-induced nostalgia. It thrusts my 206ness to the forefront of my consciousness. I look at it everyday. I am physically bound to the 206. How can absence make the heart grow fond if I do not perceive absence?

Second, a more serious problem: it compromises my self-expression. As a jazz musician, I try to adhere to the notion that you should improvise like you are withholding some piece of information. This mindset forces you to think more deliberately about the choices you make during a solo. It forces you to keep one in the chamber, so that you can unleash it when the time is right. And as much as I love Seattle, I prematurely blew my load with this one. The act of inking a visible 206 tattoo on my skin was an ostentatious gesture of Seattle pride the likes of which I will never be able to express again.

So, there is an imbalance. How to repair it? I need to take some pressure of the tattoo. For one, it draws attention to my pale, skinny arms. I gotta get tan. I gotta get jacked. Maybe I should get another tattoo. Maybe I should work up a sleeve. That’s what John Mayer did. He used to have just one tattoo, and it was similar to mine: SRV on his upper left arm, for his guitar idol Stevie Ray Vaughan. Then he got his whole arm covered.

Maybe I should just get dirty at guitar, like John Mayer. I’ve been playing guitar for nine years. Why should I come this far and not keep going? How could I? Miles Davis once said: “it takes a long time to sound like yourself.” I want to speak for myself in proportion to the ways I’ve invested my time and energy. I want to speak with my guitar. Not some tattoo I got on a whim.

Do I regret it? Sometimes. Could I have chosen a better location? Probably. But at the end of the day, tatt is me, I am tatt, and I don’t have much choice other than to rock the fuck out of it. Its location is a reminder that decisions have consequences, its permanence a reminder of my mortality, its audacity a reminder that in life, it’s best to do it large.

Me in ten years.

Sell My Sole

by

Carver Low

Season Categories Published
MP00 Music

Feb 20, 2013


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If there is one thing the current state of culture has given us, it’s choices. Many, many choices. An appetite for cultural consumption entails scrutiny of musicians, writers, chefs, and everything else we could possibly have an opinion about. With all this effort being expended, we naturally feel that we have given something of ourselves to whatever it is we’ve chosen to bestow our all-important ‘taste’ upon. When something we like suddenly leaves a sour taste in our mouths, we don’t only want to spit it out. We want to create a spittle-filled impressionist painting of our disgust on the social media canvas to show everyone just how shitty it tastes. Only, we’re really no different than children spitting out something without thinking just because they don’t like how it looks and they “don’t” eat Chinese food. Amid their exploding fame, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are the latest to experience this phenomenon.

About a week ago, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis unveiled their latest in “holy-shit-we-aren’t-signed-how-did-we-do-that” moments” by releasing and promoting an adapted version of their song “Wings” for the upcoming NBA All-Star Weekend. For many this was nothing more or less than impressive. However, for Macklemore fans who follow his music more closely, this amounted to nothing less than Brutus stabbing Caesar while telling him that his wife tastes like Cheerios. In more literal terms, he was quickly accused of selling out for the big bucks.

This kind of pseudo-controversy isn’t new to Macklemore. His clean-cut image, wholesome, positivist messages, and soccer-mom-liberal political views make him an easy target in the hip hop world. Of course, none of this bothers Macklemore. Listening to his lyrics, one of the clearest themes is that he doesn’t want or need to fit into any box, even the one many of his fans love. He spent enough years trying to be something he’s not through drug use and abuse, and through his sobriety he’s found a kind of self-assuredness that only leads to success. He is more than happy with his millions of fans who adore him (sometimes to an almost idolatrous extent) to be affected by the “hardcore” rap blogs that label him as a poseur or co-opting white guy — pariahs in the hip hop world. Given the impervious nature of Macklemore’s brand, it’s only logical that his biggest detractors are his most vocal fans.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis remain unfazed by their critics and humble in the face of adoration, driven by a conviction in themselves and comfort in their own skin. In his song “Wings” Macklemore tells the story of his love of sneakers. Part of that story is his realization that people are willing to steal and murder to get the sneakers he so loves, and the self-questioning that comes from realizing something you love may only be hurting you and everyone around you. He ends by stating that he is “trying to take mine off,” which is to say, stop obsessing over Nikes and their marketing driven brand. Taking his final words as gospel, it does seem contradictory for him to lend his brand and song to the NBA, an unabashed proponent of consumption (and Nikes). Given these apparent contradictions, it’s easy to say that Macklemore has sold out on his ideas for what ever it was the NBA was offering. The problem is, the easiest thing to say isn’t always the most accurate.

Being labeled as a sellout is nothing new for musicians. Take Bob Dylan (who, I would like to make clear, I am not comparing Macklemore to). After attaining an enormous following by writing and performing socio-political American folk songs, he made a leap into rock ‘n’ roll and away from social issues. To him it represented a disillusionment with himself, an all too human loss of faith in both his ability to enact change and society’s ability to accept it. To his audience, it felt more like this:

Movie adaptations aside, the audience hated the new sound and quickly branded Dylan as a sellout for abandoning his protest songs. Looking back, Dylan’s transition away from protest music was a natural process of growth for him.  There are many who prefer his rock music to his folk songs. Nevertheless, at the time abandoning folk music meant Dylan contradicted everything he had previously stood for, even if he personally didn’t feel that way.

Dylan and Macklemore’s cases are not the same. Dylan changed his sound and his content, but never refuted anything he previously wrote. Macklemore implicitly contradicted himself by placing himself in the NBA commercial and removing the lines of his song that are critical of Nike and consumerism. Are all of these uses of art selling out, despite their differences? The rules for selling out are political, which in this case means empty rhetoric and posturing. I’m reminded of a dilemma I went through in the latter half of my high school years.

When I was 15 and 16, I was obsessed with punk rock music and the surrounding ‘scene.’ I read ‘zines (the punk rock version of magazines), went to shows, and even sported a Mohawk for a few months. Punk rock is especially applicable here because unlike most other music genres, by nature it is anti-establishment. This anti-authoritarianism also drives members of the punk rock scene to constantly scrutinize each other for selling out, which could consist of a band signing to wrong label, a writer not focusing on the right things, or a songwriter changing their sound at the wrong time. It may be driven by scene politics, but those were scene politics I cared about back then.

I had been staunchly ‘punk rock’ for years, refusing to listen to the ignant rap music almost all of my friends listened to or buy into their mindless consumerism (my words). However, I was growing tired of constantly posturing, and frankly, ignant rap music looked fun (it is). Towards the end of my junior year, I was at a skate shop with a friend, being an aimless teenager. I had been toying with the idea of beginning to dress more ‘normally’ for a few weeks, and that seemed like as good a time as any to pull the proverbial trigger on my thoughts. I walked up, picked out a pair of black and white Adidas Shell Toe sneakers, and began my transition into dressing much more like everyone else at my school. I got what I wanted: an easier time fitting in with the more popular crowds, compliments on the way that I dressed, and attention from the ladies (hey ladies!). I didn’t feel bad about abandoning my former stances because I felt I hadn’t. I still believed in them, even if I didn’t wear them like a billboard on my clothes. In a sense, I was becoming more mature and seeing the world with more depth. However, that didn’t lessen the sting of being voted ‘Most Changed’ in our high school yearbook. Nobody really saw the award as an insult or an embarrassment, but for me it was a quiet reminder of the compromises I’d made in my views.

Change is natural, even healthy. I’m not the only person who formerly or currently defines themselves by the music they listen to, via the subject matter of the music (or lack thereof). The music we listen to is emblematic of our worldview, whether that worldview focuses on the horrors of global capitalism or the beauty of local ass-shaking. When we’re young, we go further than choosing our music to fit our interests, we alter ourselves to fit the words and sentiments of the musicians we like. In the awkward confusion of post-adolescence, adhering to a genre of music can be more comforting than any home.

However, when we give so much of ourselves to our music, we tend to expect something in return. By pouring so much of our own identities into an artist, we feel that much more disillusionment when the artist changes and we no longer feel the same connection. Most basically, when our favorite artist sells out it makes us feel illegitimate and misguided, meaning we’ve been misled, and only the weak are misled. When our favorite artist sells out, it is us who is weak, not them. The social media age only intensifies this effect, because every post and tweet we made hyping an artist becomes a testament to our own gullibility.

The problem is, this isn’t how music and art works. The artist makes it, we consume it. Part of the reason people love artists like Macklemore is because he refuses to do what is expected of him.  So why should we feel such personal disrespect when an artist does something we feel is questionable? Selling out tends to become a buzzword turned buzzsaw to cut down artists whose new direction we find distasteful. Macklemore suffers from this very problem, amplified through the intimate relationship he and Ryan Lewis cultivate with their fans.

In its original form, “Wings” tells the story of Macklemore’s relationship with sneakers. He has a hopeful beginning, a loss of faith in the middle, and a conviction at the end. However, we as a consumer pick out the pieces of the song that make the most sense in our lives and exclusively focus on those. In the case of “Wings,” those branding Macklemore a sellout identify most strongly with the anti-consumerist thought that “Phil Knight tricked us all.” The song is much more that that. It’s a human story (as only the best stories are) of contradiction and confusion, where Macklemore loves his sneaker but sees the evil they can be and are becoming. He is human, with human flaws, but has the courage to point out those flaws. His criticism is of our society’s commitment to consumerism, not of Nike or NBA specifically. He never changed his attire to Toms or even stopped wearing his Nikes, he only pointed out his own misgivings about what they’ve become. He definitely loves Nikes and probably loves the NBA, and who wouldn’t jump at the chance represent something you love?

I have my own reservations about “Wings” being used for the NBA All-Star weekend. I also have my own reservations about using the term sellout. Years of scrutinizing artist to make sure they are staying true to their stances while slowly slipping away from my own has a left a poor taste in my mouth surrounding the term. It unfairly reduces artists to statements and soundbites and cheapens the story they are trying to tell. The idea of selling out is rooted in the concept of authenticity and the conceit of hypocrisy. When an artist is labeled a sellout, it means they’ve contradicted a statement or stance they’ve made in the past, making them either a liar or a hypocrite. Everyone’s realized the redundancy of calling anyone a hypocrite; everyone contradict themselves all the time. It’s what makes us human, Homo sapiens. When we call Macklemore a sellout, in the end are we attacking the man who warned of being strangled by our laces, or the kid who put on a pair of Jordans and was elated to touch the net?

What the 2012 Seahawks Meant to Seattle

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Sports

Jan 15, 2013


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Two days ago, on the 14th play of an 80-yard drive, Jason Snelling took a shovel pass from Matt Ryan and waltzed into the end zone, giving the Atlanta Falcons a 27-7 lead over the Seattle Seahawks with 2:11 left in the 3rd quarter. It was their 5th score in 6 drives. At this point, a theoretical Seahawks victory would be one of the greatest playoff comebacks of all-time, by any calculation.

As a Seahawks fan watching alone on my computer in my room, I was distressed, but never in despair. I knew this game was not over. I had watched the Seahawks make the absurd look ordinary all season. Observe:

  • Week 4: Down 12-7 to the Packers with 7 seconds left, Russell Wilson heaves a Hail Mary to Golden Tate, giving the Seahawks a controversial 14-12 win.
  • Week 6: Down 23-10 to the Patriots with 13 minutes left, the Seahawks defense forces two punts and the offense scores the go-ahead TD with 1:18 on the clock to give the Seahawks a 24-23 win.
  • Week 13: Down 14-10 at Chicago with 3:40 left, Wilson engineers an 97-yard TD drive to give the Seahawks a 3-point lead with 24 seconds on the clock. After the Bears miraculously kick a field goal at the end of regulation, Wilson leads an 80-yard game-winning drive on first possession of OT.
  • Weeks 14-16: Seahawks bust 58 points on the Cardinals, 50 on the Bills, and then 42 on the 49ers.
  • Wild Card Round: Down 14-0 after the 1st quarter, the Seahawks outgain the Redskins 371 yards to 74 the rest of the way and win 24-14.

Clearly if there was ever a team who could make up a 20-point deficit in 17 minutes on the road in the playoffs, it was the Seattle Seahawks. And so I welled with pride as I watched my team fight back on both sides of the ball. Quick touchdown. 27-14. Earl Thomas interception, another touchdown. 27-21. 9 minutes left. Defensive 3-and-out, punt, defensive 4-and-out. Then with 31 seconds left, Marshawn Lynch ran it in to put the Seahawks up 28-27. It was a beautiful thing to behold, not just as a fan, but as a human, watching a team forge its own destiny.

A kickoff and two plays later, Atlanta had driven into field goal territory. Their 49-yard attempt cut effortlessly through the Georgia Dome air and split the uprights. Final score: Falcons 30, Seahawks 28.

From distress to ecstasy to shock. I suddenly felt in touch with the elemental side of life. This game carried significance beyond its temporal boundaries. It was the culmination of a breathtaking season by a young team of entertaining characters that formed a distinct collective personality in step with their improved performance, from a 4-4 start to an 11-5 finish. Slowly but surely, the 2012 Seahawks captured imaginations, gaining national recognition as they actualized their goals and blossomed into something pure. I now know what it feels like to be a parent.  After the loss to the Falcons, I was not mad, or even sad – only proud. The 4th quarter was so captivating that I could not process what was happening in real time. The game left me in disbelief, not that this team could stage such a dramatic comeback, but that this resilient, electrifying, swagged-out team was not of Boston or New York or Los Angeles, but of Seattle.

I read an article after the New York Giants won the Super Bowl in which Eli Manning was asked if he did it for the fans. No, he said, we do it for the guys in this locker room. It is not wishful thinking to believe that the players on the 2012 Seahawks do it not only for themselves, but also for the city and the name on the jersey. The 12th Man crowd, with the help of some well-designed stadium acoustics, is responsible for making Century Link Field the best home-field advantage in the NFL. In this age of Twitter, there is greater transparency between player and fan, and Seahawk players tweet thanks to the Seattle faithful on a regular basis. This should be taken with a grain of salt, but the time they take to express their gratitude is a nice gesture.

Seahawk fans were rooting for more than just laundry this season because we got to know the players both on and off the field. Starting in training camp, fullback Michael Robinson posted weekly 15-20 minute shows to his YouTube channel, The Real Rob Report. He films casual interviews and portrays the atmosphere inside the Seahawks practice facility locker room. Over the course of the season, Robinson introduced almost every player on the 53-man roster.

Football is a sport that dehumanizes the players. They are much more athletic than regular people, and they experience routine acts of violence that are far removed from everyday life. Helmets and masks obscure their faces. The drama is condensed to only 16 regular season games and a few playoff games. The game doesn’t have a consistent flow like basketball or soccer: the drama is then condensed even further into 4-7 second bursts. Offensive linemen are human shields and safeties are human projectiles. It’s almost impossible to relate to the players as they do battle. And that’s what makes The Real Rob Report so great. Robinson, a captain, welcomes you to meet the players with their helmets off. He has shown us how the Seahawks interact, what music they like, how they dance, and who they voted for in the election, or if they voted at all. He has shown us Red Bryant’s passion for cookies, and he has shown us Chris Maragos, the overconfident, white, backup safety, talk trash to Marshawn Lynch. Now, seeing Maragos standing on the sideline during a game brought me great pleasure.

Seattle has had a lackluster sports history, and the 2012 Seahawks have probably been the most exciting team the city has ever seen. More exciting than the GP/Kemp ’96 Sonics, more exciting than the 116-win ’01 Mariners, more exciting than the ’05 Seahawks who went 13-3 and played in the Super Bowl. That Seahawks team won methodically; The 2012 Seahawks won with style. With crazy comebacks. With dreadlocks flowing out the helmets of half of its star players, including cornerback Richard Sherman, indubitably the cockiest player in the league. With a potent read-option offensive attack. With a 5’10” quarterback named Russell Wilson who scrambles like a young McNabb and passes from the pocket like a young Brady. This season was a cultural movement the likes of which Seattle fandom has been waiting on forever.  This particular team’s identity cannot be separated from its symbiotic relationship between fans and players.

I must finish with Russell Wilson. He inspires me to become a better person. He inspires me to work hard and fulfill my potential. He won the starting job in training camp over big free agent signee Matt Flynn by waking up at 6:30 every day to watch film. He watched film the day after the Falcons loss. He visits sick kids in Seattle Children’s Hospital every week.  “I want to be great,” he said in December. “I want to be one of the people a 100 years from now, everyone talks about. That is the way I treat every single day.” He is the number one reason for the Seahawks improvement over the course of the season; he threw 10 TDs and 8 INTs Weeks 1-8, and 19 TDs and 3 INTs the rest of the way. He is the number one reason there has been a special relationship between players and fans this season. He is an underdog by virtue of his height, and we are all underdogs in one way or another. Russell Wilson transcends football. He is living proof that sports can be a valuable and even vital distillation of what we want to achieve and experience in life.

When the Seahawks plane landed in Boeing Field at dawn the morning after the Falcons game, Wilson tweeted, “Best feeling in the world seeing all the #12thman at the airport! Wow I love this team and this amazing city. #GoHawks.” The power of positive thinking in the face of defeat. The cult of Russell Wilson is growing fast, and there is little doubt that he will inevitably achieve his biggest goal.

The New Breed of Seahawk

by

Danny Schwartz

Season Categories Published
MP00 Sports

Oct 19, 2012


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This past Sunday, New England led the Seahawks 23-10 in the 4th quarter when Tom Brady locked eyes with dreadlocked Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman. “He looked at me like, ‘talk to me after the game,’” Sherman later said. “It’s just one of these things where I think Newton’s third law of motion applies. Every action has an equal or greater reaction.”

The Seahawks scored two late touchdowns to squeeze by the Patriots 24-23 for one of the most dramatic regular season victories in team history. Sherman took care not to do Isaac Newton right after the game.

“Me and Earl walked up to him and said, ‘We’re greater than you. We’re better than you. You’re just a man — we’re a team.’” An hour later, he tweeted the above picture, setting off an instant firestorm among the New England faithful. “Patriots fans mad lol…” said Sherman in his next tweet. “Talking bout Super Bowl rings…. What have u done lately? Oh ur 3-3 lol”

That is not a rational statement. One win does not outweigh 3 Super Bowl rings and 5 Super Bowl appearances in the Brady-Belichick era. Sherman doesn’t sound confident – he sounds arrogant.

And yet, I am delighted. Sherman has some attitude. It is significant here that he plays defense and not offense. Unlike on offense, everyone on defense plays with the singular goal of stopping the ball; to play defense, you need that strong carnal instinct. To me, this incident with Sherman shows that he possesses the type of competitive edge that’s essential to success on the defensive side of the football. If he is so happy with the Seahawks win that he talks trash to Brady after the game, then flaunts his trash-talking on Twitter, then backs up his flaunting – he is a real competitor.

Last year the Seahawks secondary anointed itself the Legion of Boom: Sherman, cornerback Brandon Browner, free safety Earl Thomas, and strong safety Kam Chancellor.  Sherman was the only member of the Legion of Boom not to receive an invitation to the 2012 Pro Bowl. Defensive backs are usually small and swift, like 5’11” Darrelle Revis. The Legion of Boom is huge. Chancellor is 6’3”/230, Sherman is 6’3”/200, and Browner is 6’4”/220. Sherman and Browner use their size best on bump-and-run and their length best to deflect balls. They aren’t the quickest, but they have a valuable counterweight in Earl Thomas, who at 5’10” uses his short legs to accelerate quickly from his position in center field; he has as much range as any safety in the league. So while these cornerbacks play an unorthodox style, their secondary is consonant as a whole.  Shit is working. Right now the Seahawks rank 5th in total defense and 3rds in scoring defense.

The Seahawks gave up 200 more yards to the Patriots than they had to any team all season. The Pats put together back to back 80-yard touchdown drives in the 1st half. But from then on, they scored only 9 points on 5 trips to the red zone. Sherman and Thomas each had a 2nd half interceptions, and the defense forced back-to-back punts with their offense down 13 points in the 4th quarter. They held Tom Brady to his lowest rating of the season.

Last night, the Seahawks lost 13-6 to the 49ers. They are 4-3. But still, this is the most exciting Seahawks season since they went 13-3 en route to the Super Bowl in 2005. Something feels different. New Nike uniforms help relieve the unsavory stank of the last 4 years (combined 23-41). The defense is young – rookie Bruce Irvin is on pace for double-digit sacks, rookie Bobby Wagner starts at middle linebacker. Starting OLB K.J. Wright is 23; Thomas is 23; Sherman is 24; Chancellor is 24; Browner is 28, but in only his second year in the league after a stint in the CFL. QB Russell Wilson is 23. Marshawn Lynch leads the league in yards after contact. It’s a youth movement…something great is in the works.

Shannon Sharpe once said,”Ray Lewis is the type of guy, if he were in a fight with a bear I wouldn’t help him, I’d pour honey on him because he likes to fight. That’s the type of guy Ray Lewis is.” Ray Lewis and Ed Reed applied the mischievous traditions they learned as Miami Hurricanes to the Baltimore Ravens, making it the most fearsome defense in the NFL for over a decade. They are animals, with no regard for human life. The Ravens D has been the Muhammad Ali of the league. But now Lewis is out for the year. The Seahawks D feels like the new Ravens. Fearless. Dickish. Brotherhood.

At the very least, they are giving the city of Seattle a sports team with a real edge, which was last seen in the Gary Payton/Shawn Kemp era in the mid-90s (Payton is still an active trash-talker on Twitter). The Mariners can’t score for shit, nor will they ever in the cavernous Safeco Field. The Sonics are gone. The Sounders are good, but the MLS is lame. It’s fun to rally around athletes who want nothing in life more than to win. If they talk excessive shit as a symptom, and if they can back up that sass, it’s even more fun. After the Tom Brady incident, Richard Sherman said, “People, they don’t look at the film. They don’t analyze anything. That’s why these analysts and commentators need to shut their mouth.”  Amazing. I’d like to thank Sherman, the Legion of Boom, and the 2012 Seattle Seahawks for restoring my faith in humanity.