Look, I would hardly be considered a sports fan. And I don't watch much sport news programming on TV. I'm much more of a literary person, and that doesn't mean that I watch that nauseating BookTV on C-Span, it means I like to read about sports. Sports news on television (forget sports radio, it makes blogging seem like friggin' high art) is generally stupid and repetitive. I mean, I like a well-constructed four minute sports segment as much as the next guy, but for the most part the TV's got the fluff. And a lot of 'reporting' that happens on TV (sidelines especially) borders on the masturbatory. So I like to get my sports news from a newspaper. Call me old fashioned. At least I read it on the web.
Anyhow, as I said, I like to watch games, but not sports news, and I like to read about sports after it has happened and someone has answered all the questions and digested them into a useful format I can read in a few minutes.
Imagine, then, my surprise when the Monday papers were filled to bursting with tales of the 'emotional' victory of the New Orleans Saints over, I don't know, I think the Carolina Panthers. It was apparently a real big deal that the Saints won because their city (except the rich part) was destroyed by a gigantic flood, and they won't be playing there again until 2006 or so.
It about made me sick. Because football is such a nasty, commodotized industry that it's impossible for me to believe that this team has any more of a connection with New Orleans than any other team has with its hometown. I scanned the roster, and I count two people who went to college in the area, and only one of those grew up there (the other one went to a weird little junior college in Mississippi and was born in Connecticut, go figure). There's nothing wrong with this, it just means that the New Orleans Saints' win in the face of the hurricane's destruction of New Orleans is no more 'emotional' than my ability to catch the bus on Monday. 'Against the odds,' I was running late and I was 'playing for my hometown,' or at least trying not to be late for work again. Give me a break.
Oh, and what the hell, Gees? The Falcons ate the Eagles for lunch yesterday. Field goals? Field goals? Seriously, I didn't watch past the half because I figured I was in on the jinx, but things didn't get much better after I hit the sack. Thoughts?
There isn't a mission. There isn't a goal. It's just words on fake paper, sliding and tripping and flowing all over the place, because we're all full up on words in here and there is no way we can keep them inside. Like Tony says, "Nothing in here is true."
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
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