From the SPORTS DESK (Mission Statement)
Why Sports Desk?
Why Sports Desk?
Why Sports Desk?
The NFL owns one day of the week – Sunday. (So that’s the time to have those) Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.
~ Emmanuel Acho, Sports Analyst
I’m not the biggest sports fan in the world, although Go 'Niners! In truth, I’m not so much a fan of sports as a fan of sports fans. Maybe it’s the anthropologist in me, with a lifelong attraction to cultures and subcultures.
Maybe it’s the lingo. Because it’s sports writers and sports talk that actually blow my skirt up. The subject is limited. There’s a game. Somebody wins and somebody loses. What happens in between is where the magic happens. Which of course brings us to the Good Doctor Hunter S. Thompson.
Whether at his first writing gig, as sports editor of The Command Courier at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, or under his own name at ROLLING STONE, or later as Raoul Duke, or later still at ESPN, HST occupied the Sports Desk. I’m a big fan, so I stole the fucking title, OK? Let’s just get that out of the way now.
I’m not trying to write like him. I’m not that stupid or deluded. I do honor him, as best I can, by quoting him when appropriate; by keeping his memory front and center. I also make an effort to be accurate about the important stuff. And I do use his device of starting with a quote, so there’s that. But I make no mention of Fear & Loathing, at least not as a couple. I’m not particularly interested in guns, although I do believe in keeping a can of whoop-ass handy. I left alcohol behind over forty years ago, hence, I’m alive. I smoke weed every day and have for over fifty years. Harder drugs are, shall we say, situational. So much for the gonzo lifestyle. That’s not where it’s at for me, anyway. It’s all about the words.
Sometimes just one word can do the trick. I was across the kitchen with my hands in soapy water when one guy on the TV says, “They won ugly,” and the other guy says, “Yeah, but it was a pretty ugly.” I love that shit.
So Sports Desk is my official title. I’ve used it for years, actually, as my portable territorial imperative: Don’t bother to give me a title, I come with my own. There is literally nothing else you could call me that I would like better. Or that guarantees a grin. And seriously, isn’t that what we’re in it for? I certainly aim to get one out of you every now and then.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid
The new dawn balloons as we free it
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
~ Amanda Gorman, US Poet Laureate, Biden Inauguration, 2021
I don't want to die with my song unsung. The rest of this would-be online magazine is meant to shine a light on some cool folks who shine their own light through the darkness. I’ll be writing about things I never experienced myself, hence the focus on accuracy.
But the Sports Desk is where I get to riff on things from my own point of view and from my own experience. Not that I won’t interject myself and my rarely humble opinions into all the other sections of the rag, as well. That, to me, is the essence of gonzo journalism: unabashed participation in the story by the writer.
Why My Way?
Why Sports Desk?
Why Sports Desk?
Above far-out meme-ery by Fad Albert. Click for more weirdness.
Aim high.
~ George Walker, Author, Storyteller, Original Merry Prankster
Sometimes I think my very existence is a prank on MK Ultra.
Like many in the so-called counter culture, much of my adult life was at the effect of the CIA. I was not in it, but I was of it.
Even at my most radical (wilderness survival training for the Black Panthers, f’rinstance,) I came to realize even that was a reaction to my father’s manipulations. For the record, he was a CIA doctor with a State Department cover, who took custody of me and my nine-year-old sister in 1957 when I was twelve.
Mind Mastery vs Mind Control
Getting massively dosed in Boulder, Colorado, my senior year in college may turn out to have been the prank. For years, I thought it was on me. Now, I’m not so sure. I would be the last to claim any sort of mastery over my own monkey mind, but I did manage to weasel out of having it completely broken and controlled. What saved me might have been the night I (barely) passed the acid test.
We Are the Backfire.
Put your good where it will do the most.
~ Ken Kesey, Author, Storyteller, Original Merry Prankster
In a recent discussion on a Hunter S. Thompson-inspired Facebook page, we debated whether MK Ultra had backfired, given the hippies, the ‘sixties, gonzo journalism, etc. We decided it was on us to make sure it did. We are the backfire. It’s on us to stick a giant Day-Glo flower down the barrel of a ghastly, evil weapon that was, and still is, pointed straight at us. And have fun doing it. But we can’t be naive. We need to know what’s what.
The Direction of Personal Freedom.
When I got my copy of Jake Feinberg’s book, THE BUS TO NEVER EVER LAND, I scanned the Table of Contents and went straight to Page 62: Mountain Girl/Carolyn Garcia, looking for…that thing. That one thing I was looking for. And there it was:
I wanted to stir the drink, but I also wanted the information that the Merry Pranksters had about living as a "free person.” Having lost my job and floating through Palo Alto at eighteen, I needed a direction at that moment, and they provided it. “Here’s the direction of personal freedom.”
~ Mountain Girl/Carolyn Garcia
So here we are. We aim to honor our heroes and help spread the good word to future generations: You can have fun doing good. You don’t have to buy into the old CIA adage, borrowed from the Texas Rangers, that to destroy your enemy you must become him. You don’t have to destroy him or become him. You can prank him! You can respond with outrageousness, with laughter and poetry, with music and art. You can shine a light. You can be the light.
Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
~ Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
I have no training as a journalist, much less an investigative journalist. I studied languages in college, six including English, plus anthropology. My career was politics. Nevertheless, this rag is also intended to “disinfect” some nasty, dark corners, maybe send a few cockroaches skittering across the linoleum while we wield that cleansing light sabre. It could get ugly. There may be Fear. There may be Loathing. But we will not dwell.
The balance comes as we celebrate and memorialize those “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.” ~ Allen Ginsberg
Why a Blog?
Why Sports Desk?
Why a Blog?
“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes...because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."
~ Steve Jobs
I don’t want to leave it all on Facebook. For one thing, I’d like some continuity of thought. Sometimes I think if I could just download everything I’ve ever put up on Facebook, maybe I already wrote a book.
Besides that, I wouldn’t mind stealing a few clicks from Mr. Zuckerberg. Isn’t that the way the game is played?
Selah!
PS I didn’t know anything about Emmanuel Acho until I googled him to get the quote right.
It was another bubble that floated up out of soapy water while I was across the room. I had a pre-game show on and it jumped out of the TV at me. I scrambled for a pen and paper in time to grab a piece of the quote and the name attached to the voice.
Looking further into the Acho situation (and what a pleasant surprise that turned out to be,) I skimmed past all the Bachelor/Bachelorette bullshit, reluctantly admitting to myself that even a stupid vanity joint like The Bachelor could be a forum for discussion. Hell, it was aimed straight at an audience I would never reach. Gotta hand it to them for that.
Finally, this:
“I love being a bridge for reconciliation,” Acho wrote on Instagram. “Our world is disconnected & divided, my goal is to unify.”
I didn’t know. Now I know.
Isn’t that what the game is all about?
