Portfolio

From thin air, comes oxygen.

Living Lockout

October is here. The NBA preseason is officially canned, and as the Lions and Bills are combined 8-1, they remind us that nothing in life goes as planned.

Almost nothing: Darius Miles faces charges for wielding a loaded gun through a St. Louis airport. That shocked no one who’s familiar with former Trail Blazer violations against domestic air travel regulations, and common sense in general. Sebastian Telfair and Damon Stoudamire have yet to return my calls.

If I may, the nature of the Second Amendment is notoriously misconstrued within the NBA. The inalienable right is reserved for all players, except the Arenas/Crittendon and aforementioned West clauses. However, in Denver, club arms policy was left to the interpretation of Chris Andersen, who after a tragic misread several years ago, restricted Nugget players the right to “bare arms,” and the subsequent impact on Mile High tattoo parlors was remarkable.  The franchise was never the same.

Anyway, a quasi-normal NBA season seems to be sailing further way. As of October 10, players and owners were roughly 8 percent in disagreement over player (“basketball”) compensation. More than a handful of guys are set to polish their international games in Europe, South America and Australia, including Tony Parker, who will play with a French team he partially owns, for a monthly check just shy of $2,000. Delonte West has been getting the rough end of snide rumors about the financial impact of player unemployment.  I refuse to continue this banter, by, say, speculating how Parker’s two grand measures up against the monthly pay of West’s prospective day job. But if I were being held by my collar off a skyscraper, I would probably take the under on Delonte.

Excuse me.

As we quiver in fear of autumn’s entertainment compromise between Sundays, we must sadly anticipate television programming that is way less awesome than Blake Griffin’s post-game reel. Though optimistic paramedics continue to monitor the NBA’s cardiac arrest, life must go on for now. Thus, I have outlined an 8-month interpretation of life less the National Basketball Association.

October 29, 2011

Pan American Games, Guadalajara, Mexico

United States wins Men’s 4X100 with a reserve team (Ellis, Rose, Westbrook, James)

LeBron James wins Long Jump competition

October 31, 2011:

Halloween

DeMarcus Cousins and Tyreke Evans bring rookie Jimmer Fredette to a party after a workout.

Jimmer was terrified, but loosened up after a while.

LeBron James Jr. dresses up as Kobe Bryant.

Deron Williams states that he is never coming back to America.

November 4, 2011

Kyrie Irving’s NBA 2K12 record on X Box Live improves to 7-5. He has officially played more games as a professional than as a Duke Blue Devil.

November 15, 2011

Last Day NFL teams are permitted to sign free agents

Bill Belichick lures Dwight Howard to sign a one-year contract to play defensive end.

November 24, 2011

Thanksgiving

Laker players gather at Kobe’s house.

Kobe and Matt Barnes bet on the SF/Baltimore evening matchup.

Kobe takes Baltimore. Wins. Barnes thrusts popcorn bowl in his face. Kobe doesn’t flinch.

Newly slender Fat Joe hosts tofurkey feast at Rucker Park.

December 1, 2011

Madison Square Garden hosts first Slamball event in years in front of a raucous crowd of 12,000.

Larry David occupies Spike Lee’s empty courtside seat.

Spike shows up at halftime, Larry is removed.

December 25, 2011

Christmas Day

St. Nick Collison and Thunder teammates lead a Secret Santa operation for Oklahoma City’s underprivileged.

Russell Westbrook shares!

December 31, 2011

New Year’s Eve

Chris Bosh returns the Bowflex that his teammates bought him for Christmas.

Mark Cuban to Young Money: Party at Dirk’s!

January 1, 2012

New Year’s Day

Resolutions:

Dirk: No Patron after midnight.

Brandon Jennings’ agent: Get Brandon (@H00dFavorite) off Twitter.

James Harden: More Beard.

January 12, 2012

Patty Mills is mistaken for The Weeknd, performs alongside Drake in front of 25,000 in Sydney.

Patty Mills retires from basketball.

February 5, 2012

Super Bowl

New England narrowly defeats Green Bay, 21-17.

Dwight Howard records two sacks, one pass breakup.

February 14, 2012

Valentine’s Day

Minneapolis launches quick strike “Love Is In The Air” campaign, featuring Kevin Love showering romantics with Sweetheart candy from a helicopter.

Love misses flight to Minnesota from Los Angeles. Darko Milicic assumes role as Love’s body double (double).

Love gets the credit in the newspaper.

February 15, 2011

Kris Humphries files for divorce. Sites emotional abuse, will settle out of court.

March 1, 2012

Brian Scalabrine returns from Europe, hired by Food Network to host a bi-weekly Italian cooking program. His mother signs on as co-host.

Ratings soar.

March 25, 2012

Houston Rockets’ and former Arizona Wildcats Jordan Hill and Chase Budinger spend Spring Break in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Budinger hired as glass-bottom boat tour guide, does not return to America.

April 1, 2012

Lamar Odom tells Khloe he loves her.

April Fools!

April 15, 2012

Chris Bosh hired as head coach of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream.

Later that night, Bosh has a nightmare.

April 30, 2012

Metta World Peace announces he is a Green Party candidate for the United States Presidency.

The globe is rattled.

May Day, 2012

Midnight

A violent jolt shakes landmasses from Australia to Alaska. Coastal towns worldwide sink and submerge into their bordering water bodies.

Without a moment to gasp, Earth is inexplicably steered from its natural orbit, thrust from the Sun’s cozy proximity, and everything freezes and dies.

The Mayans chuckle.

Our dearly neglected baseball.

September 28, 2011

It’s the last night of Major League Baseball’s regular season, and both the AL and NL Wild Card races are knotted up.

Oh, fun.

In Atlanta, the Braves blow a one-run lead over Philadelphia in the ninth, and eventually fall in the 13^th. Meanwhile, St. Louis whips Houston, and claims the NL Wild Card spot, tearing it from a Braves team who led the race by 8.5 games less than a month ago.

As Tampa Bay trails 7-0 to the Yankees, it appears Boston will escape total humiliation after blowing their own 9-game Wild Card lead during September.

Not so fast.

By the power of well-swung ash wood, and perhaps a drop of early-autumn magic, shit got weird. A 3-run shot from Evan Longoria caps a 6-run 8^th inning that brought Tampa Bay within one, followed by a two-strike, two-out bomb from pinch hitter Dan Johnson that tied the game in the 9th. Keeping the Buffalo Wild Wings reference to myself, Longoria shoots a walk-off line drive to left field in the 12^th, and in an all too wonderful night of baseball, Boston chokes on a one-run, ninth inning lead in Baltimore, drowning Red Sox playoff hopes.

But we don’t care.

Despite childhoods blessed with little league every spring, big ballparks with our parents in the summertime, and Ken Griffey Jr, our generation has misplaced our love for baseball.

How? I will attempt to loosely corral that explanation in six parts:

1) Mark and Sammy chase Maris. Mark wins.

2) Three years later, Barry beats Mark.

3) We find out everyone was cheating.

4) Cell phones destroy attention spans.

5) Pitchers get better.

6) Pitching dominance bores everyone.

It’s not just baseball though. A lot changed. Jerry Rice retired, and suddenly a 4.5/40 was slow, LeBron James redefined the threshold of human athleticism, Usain Bolt shattered the 100-meter record by accident, and Kim Kardashian dumped Reggie Bush and Miles Austin for Chris Humphries. You, me and Lamar Odom were like, “WTF!”

So what’s the constant variable here? It’s speed, man. Speed kills, and speed killed baseball. If one human being embodied the population of the world, a single eyelash represents the number of people on this planet that can hit a big league pitch into the outfield. That’s probably generous. But if that eyelash can’t hurdle a defender en route to a windmill, we don’t give a fuck – change the channel, dude.

What makes baseball incredible, and truly unique, is what can happen in a split second. While professional athletes of other major sports utilize constant motion and rhythm to draw their special talents, big league baseball players can make a play; can make music, spurred from a dead standstill. Our attention to detail is so frail, that if a man isn’t running down a line at 25 mph, or flying towards the rim changing hands, it doesn’t seem “athletic.” Baseball is just a bunch of bearded men, spitting tobacco, standing around until the (I surrender) pathetic pulled hamstring on the way to first base. I’ve sat with my friends through wonderful baseball games, complete with great pitching, hot bats and slick plays in the field. But as soon as a guy makes a funky error or base-running blunder, their heads are back in their phones, pessimistically unmoved by the best stickball in the world.

The game just isn’t beautiful to younger people right now. Baseball, everyone all together now, “clogs up Sports Center.” We won’t kill our electronics and ambient bullshit for two hours to enjoy one of the oldest, most celebrated American pastimes. We certainly love eating, drinking and enjoying sports during the sunny seasons. Somehow, we’ve abandoned the ballpark, a place America built for that company and joy.

The late author David Foster Wallace once discussed the human side that desires silence, and doesn’t get fed.

It becomes more and more difficult to ask people to read, or to look at a piece of art for an hour, or to listen to a piece of music that’s complicated, and that takes work to understand.”

With that sentiment in mind, I wish for days ahead where we embrace silence, the pre-pitch hush of the crowd, and sit patiently, content until the crack of the bat, when beauty ensues.

I always wanted to be a hip hop investigative journalist.

Been a fan of his music for years. Meaning, when Tha Carter came out, I was wondering where the tattoos and dreds came from. Needless to say, that was a long time ago. However, I’ve been waiting to scratch this Lil Wayne itch for a while.

So, yeah, I guess it wasn’t always cool to be in the Bloods.

Listen, I don’t really care. That much. I just began to ponder my iTunes library, which houses more than 405 D’Wayne joints. His flood of musical influence has come largely in the past 6 years, when everyone’s mp3 library became way more fed in the middle of the alphabet.

In an industry that supposedly prides itself on honesty, Lil’ Wayne honestly dreamt his modern day, red-synonymous persona sometime in between his 2002-2004 musical hiatus. And it obviously worked. He’s got more money than could ever be blown on marijuana, codeine and Louis Vuitton, and with the approach of Tha Carter IV, his career isn’t slowing down. No one questions the man.

I just think it sucks.

His inebriated, unorganized yet astonishingly lyrical complexities are all riddled with references to gang culture that don’t remotely resemble the foundation of his music, and likely, his life. He was once one of the coolest dudes for the fact that he was one of the youngest, yet most established MCs in the game (going strong since age 14). He makes a successful charge for the top charts in the mid-2000s, gathering a broad and diverse audience for his resurgence, and he’s rebranded a bonafide gang member. He’s been buzzing around the B-hive ever since. Was I the only one watching?

(Whoever made this video was too.)

I don’t want to shed too much unnecessary light on gangs. The broader issue that I’m tackling is that Lil Wayne’s audience should demand more from him. Intellectually. True, few can maintain his recording habits and lifestyle to build evidence and work of that magnitude. BUT, this is a smart guy, so I hope I speak for at least some minority that thinks his sound has been long-drowned, belligerent, moderately entertaining…shit.

Say, if by some divine miracle, I were to introduce someone to Lil Wayne that had never heard him before (booking next flight to the Amazon). What would I show them to say: Here’s a 15+ year veteran of the rap game, look what his ouvre has culminated to thus far. Hip hop observes, grows, matures, reflects and tells the whole story. What is your music doing, Wayne?

I want to hear some honest reflections about your life: beginning as a child in New Orleans; about a life more than half spent in the music industry, in which you continue to thrive in; about the trade-offs of growing up inside of tour busses and hotel rooms, as opposed to back home; about raising your daughter as a teenager, and what it’s like to be a father (of 4). Did you enjoy prison? I want to hear something, anything that is not a completely glossy or vulgar snapshot of your industry character.

Tha Carter Documentary attempted to dissect this persona.

It’s just days after the release of his latest mixtape Sorry 4 The Wait.

I, for one, am waiting for the day he intersects his ability to sell records with a project that sells me on his artistry less Weezy, starring D’Wayne Michael Carter Jr. instead.

I want more of this:

Peace

Can’t take the biography thing seriously.

Recently I submitted an application for a Los Angeles agency’s new portfolio school. They wanted the story of my life in 500-words or less. Here’s what they got:

(clears throat)

I was born blind.

My early optical deficits cultivated my keen ear, and my enthusiasm for music was wildly evident. I taught myself to apply the needle to a turntable at age 3, preferring Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.”

I eventually gained my sight at age 6, and taught myself to read by my 7^th birthday. I developed a passion for blues harmonica at 10-and-a-half, and ran away from home at 11 to explore my heritage and musical direction in Biloxi, Mississippi.

I returned to the Northwest for high school at age 14, poised to settle down and begin a normal life. Seamlessly, I integrated myself into various nooks of the student body. I would arrive early to tutor biology and political science, and stay long after academic hours shooting dice with the basketball team. My high school years were otherwise balanced playing competitive tennis and chess.  At the pinnacle of my high school career, I put the pawns and rooks away and paid my undivided attention to my racquet.

I was mentored closely by tennis legend John McEnroe. So humbled he was by the grace of my play, he eventually resigned as my trainer to temporarily explore a career as a yoga instructor. Left to train alone, I set out for lofty athletic peaks.

My big tennis break approached as I qualified for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Unfortunately, my career hiccupped after I shattered my femur saving an infant child from a derailed roller coaster at Disneyland. My tennis career was paused, yes, but I managed to compete for the United States’ table tennis team in a wheel chair. Despite my temporary disability, I brought home a gold medal in the singles.

My first post-accident steps were taken to climb the podium. Queen Elizabeth II knighted me thereafter for my humanitarian efforts and competitive spirit.

Don’t get me wrong; my life hasn’t been all peaches and cream. Somehow I FAILED to trademark the Shake Weight AND Justin Bieber, both of which I created in college. This is sort of the reason I’m searching for work.

I digress. It was a fun fifteen minutes, but my celebrity drove me towards modest aspirations: life as a college student. I have since resided in Eugene, Oregon to study advertising and commence my professional career.

 

 

DENIED

Coach Bob Green, a legend.

New York State of Awe

No one can say more about what has already been said about New York City. But what the hell.

Fresh off a week in the Big Apple, and a special seed has been planted in the young, unorganized cultural sponge that is my brain. Though this reinforces everyone’s reaction to a weeklong NYC excursion in their early 20s, I gotta say, it might be the place to be.

Of course, NYC is a fantastic professional starting block. In the field of advertising, New York delivers some of the most unique and powerful work there is. From Manhattan’s hustle and bustle, to Brooklyn’s cozily nestled shops, creativity and passion are triggered from all corners of this city. I feel very fortunate for the opportunity to closely contrast the cultures of some of NYC’s biggest and smallest players. From a faraway classroom, it’s tough to bring to question why you solely idolize the agencies of immense stature and manpower. It is until you are introduced to the personality, drive and guts of New York’s smaller agencies that you are energized by the more eclectic and funky idea factories. This experience helped me conceptualize the best capacities for my own creativity, rather than how I might conform to a big agency prospect. I am pleased to report, however, that passionate work seems to be spurred from everywhere on the spectrum.

Lesson: get in where you fit in.

With grown-up things aside, NYC drew from me a fresh and childlike curiosity like few places do. Everything is big; everything has attitude; and I could easily spend all day wandering around like a 7-year-old in FAO Schwartz for the first time. You don’t have to go sightseeing to appreciate what’s there. I love that every time you emerge from the subway, there is a different world to interact with, and one so very different from where you were moments before.

Speaking of the trains, they are the most fundamental mechanism of New York that I cannot entirely fathom. Forget modern technology’s potential, I feel that New York City Transit is a modern marvel in itself. There are over 18 million people in Manhattan alone during the week. I mean, holy shit, 18 million people on 18 million different watches. The subway system fluidly shuttles EVERYONE to EVERYWHERE they need to go in a matter of minutes.  Imagining what it would take, even today, to carve out all those tunnels and design an efficient system makes me dizzy. Subterrane to sky scraper, NYC is of a superior scale.

As I said, within this universe are people. So many damn people. Everyone charging forward like there’s free pizza at the end of the block…served by the Yankees’ starting infield. The diversity is staggering, and observing this melting pot helped me realize something wonderful about New Yorkers: every individual, no matter the title, takes his/her business just as seriously as the next. How many other cities do you find all walks of life crammed together on the subway? So few people can afford not to live like a New Yorker that the idea of distinct class systems, as seen everywhere out West, is totally alien. The financier, the construction worker, and the hustler are side by side traveling their respective paths, chasing their respective goals. One guy might make more money, but neither guy can make the train move any faster, so what does it matter? Everyone is a New Yorker, and everyone has their own shit to do.

In Portland you can get a smile from a total stranger. That’s a beautiful thing. In New York, you’re just as likely to get hit in the mouth. Perhaps more likely the latter. It’s safe to say I come from a different planet. To New Yorkers, an insignificant planet. I don’t fully agree, but setting aside fresh vegetables and bike lanes, would I even have an argument? Maybe I’ll ask the financier, the construction worker, and the hustler…

They didn’t have time to chat.

Soon I could find myself heading to and from 15-hour workdays, jammed in the subway with these same aforementioned folks. A creative needs inspiration, and where better a place than New York City to find it? Depth, culture and personality are painted on every wall, driving every taxi cab, perched on every bench and flowing infinitely elsewhere through the city’s sleepless thoroughfares.