Muxtape - by JW

I put music up - you listen to it. Possibly you like it, maybe not. Regardless WE ALL are enriched by the experience.

It’s environmental! Depressed folk everywhere must look elsewhere to violently poison themselves as a way of shuffling off this mortal coil.

How long do you think it will take for someone to whine and have this pulled?

I’m not sure if any of you were aware of this, but former NBA star Latrell Sprewell recently had his house foreclosed. Apparently, his rims business owes money, he’s way behind on his mortgage and well, the man’s broke. Sprewell is also known for turning down 14 million a few years ago because he “can’t feed his family on that”. On an non-related, but somewhat related note, future NBA star OJ Mayo is under controversy for accepting money from “friends” who supposedly work for his prospective future agents while he was in high school and college.

With Mayo’s story, it’s not really that suprising, especially when you consider the fact that he signed up at USC without even taking a tour of the school. With Sprewell, it’s either really well implemented karma, really unfortunate, or really funny depending on your own personality and sensitivity. But that’s not really what I am here to talk about. Because when I read about Latrell Sprewell being broke, all I could think of is how poorly the NBA, and pro sports in general are at fully preparing their young for being rich and famous. And when I read about OJ Mayo, I also think of how silly it is with college sports and how they treat and view the students that are athletes at their school.

So, I decided that doing is better than talking about it. You can go to EPSN.com to check out everyone’s opinions, most of which you either have, or don’t care about. In lieu of that, I’m here to bring forth change. That’s right, I got a plan for these college kids like OJ Mayo to not end up Like Latrell Sprewell. After spending a bit of time on it, I have come to the conclusion that the most obvious thing a major sports college should do is have all their athletes major in being a famous athlete.

You’ve seen the NCAA tournament at one point in your life, and when you watch one of these tournament games, the same occurrence will always come up. They will show the star of the team, bringing the ball up the court after making a great play, and the commentators will do the kid’s bio in 5 seconds, always bringing up his major. And that major, while possibly realistic is always something that screams “this kid knows about taking the path of least resistance”. Foreign Languages. English. Business. All of which are legit majors, and all of which are broad enough to suggest that that kid could be biding his time in easy, nondescript classes, keeping that GPA level and making the school boatloads of cash. Can the students be intelligent and have a great major while being excellent at their sport? Of course. How often is this a correct statement? Not often enough if it makes me want to come up with a theory about majoring in famous.

So, let;s get down to brass tacks. Some of these kids go to these schools because they want to eventually want to go pro. They choose the school with a good coach, good team, high profile. They major in classes that are dead easy, and sometimes the school is crooked enough to let them slide through. The sad part is is that most of these athletes come out of poverty, are looked at as the golden hope within their families and then get put in a position that they are not ready for, because they never been educated for it. The concept of the student-athlete is laughable, and the concept of “having something to fall back on” is cute and novel, but unrealistic. If you wished to be a doctor, would you start taking English Literature classes so you’d have “something to fall back on?” If a kid is going to college to play on the team, then he or she must be prepared to eventually live within a scope of fame, money and pressure that they will experience when they go pro.

So here’s the gimmick: if you’re a highly recruited athlete, and you get that scholarship to go to a big school and you know fully well that you’re leaving in two years to go pro, then you’re taking my new curriculum, “being a famous athlete in the 21st century.” Here is the syllabus:

A two-year curriculum (for the NBA), four years (for the NFL) option. In this major, you will get the training needed to handle fame, not get in over your head, learn about who to avoid, how to deal with money, where and when to sell yourself and basically never be in a position in which you’re turning down 14 million and foreclosing on your house three years later.

The course layout is as follows:

- Accounting and business management. You’re going to be making an insane amount of money in a short amount of time. With this comes both happiness but also the possibility of danger if you manage it poorly. This area of the curriculum will cover how to successfully manage your cash, including investments, business opportunities, the hiring and staffing assistants and business managers, and general advice on both making your money last, and more importantly, grow.

- Marketing. If you’re high touted and as talented as everyone says you are, then you will eventually start getting endorsements and will build your name into a brand name. With this comes marketing, because there’s a fine line between being a creative icon and a corporate shill. Demographics will be covered, history of advertising and theory, and the general knowledge you need to know when and why to pick the shoe deal over the hot dog deal.

- Sociology/Psychology. You possibly have issues if you’ve gotten this far. Everybody says to you twenty times a day that you’re god, you’re the next big thing and you better not fuck it up. This will eventually give you some issues, because positive reinforcement can be almost as bad as the negative kind. There’s also a bunch of people who will take your newly gained insecurities and your entry into this new world and use it to suck you dry. With this area, you will better learn to deal with people, deal with yourself, deal with the pressures, the coach, the GM, the teammates, the good, the bad, the ugly and basically keep you as grounded as humanly possible. Basically, this area will keep your ass out of jail.

- Theater and Public Speaking. You’ve gotten past marketing and money management, so now you’re signing up for those well selected ads. Well, no one wants to hear you stutter through the sales pitch, and everyone knows that athletes that can perfect a great sound byte get way more attention and cash than those who use the same old clichés. This is where public speaking and theater comes in. You’ll learn how to be comfortable in front of people, because there is a difference between being on the court/field in your comfort zone and in front of a mic or a camera. You’ll also learn to do well at ads, and because your career can’t last forever, a smooth transition into the booth when you retire, or god help you, smash up an appendage. To those who think that this is a useless section, think about this: as good of a player Kenny Smith is, what do you remember more; his two NBA championship rings, or how entertaining he is with Charles Barkley on the pre game show on TNT?

These four areas, if completed with interest and the simple passion and drive that comes with wanting to be larger than life will generate not only great personas and players, but a steep drop in stories like Mayo and Sprewell. Don’t you think that if USC went to OJ Mayo and gave him this option he wouldn’t take it in seconds? Don’t you think that if Latrell had this option he wouldn’t be foreclosing on a mansion and be in debt? It’s time for colleges to go back to what the intention is - education to prepare kids for the future. If a kid’s future desire is the NBA or the NFL, then they need to be prepared for that on all sides. And the student/athletes that want to major in English, or Anthropology? Electives will be their salvation. If the culture of pro and college sports continues to live within the myth of churning out “well rounded student athletes” then we’re going to have a lot more 19 year olds getting Bentley’s in their freshman year and being cautionary tales a few years later. It’s plainly simple - if you want to be a chemist, no one bats an eye when you sign up for labs. If you want to be a famous athlete, no one should be wary of having a student get the same applicable education for that profession.

If people are correct when they theorize that these are the end days for the world, the newest season of the Real World will signal the absolute peak of where reality Tv can go, and thus give everyone the epitaph they need.

The show has now hit two decades - that is twenty years of kids who are now old people who never ever decided to do something with their lives in lieu of trying to take that “reality fame gamble” somewhere else than the show. It always confused me, especially these last few seasons when the people obviously were being exploited that anyone would want to go on the show. After all, maybe four people have ever transitioned it to something else (Kevin from season 1 = writer/possible senator; Jacinda from England = indie actress; The Miz = WWE tag team champion, and if you want to count Eric from season 1, or Tonya who hosted a dance show and did Cinemax porn, respectively.) - everyone else who tries burns out and lets their ashes reside in Real World/Road Rules Challenges.

So, I guess what always bothered me was the fact that while everyone wanted to be on the show to transition for fame, there was always a presentation to it that made the show seem like some great “coming of age” happening in their lives. But the newest Real World has finally abandoned everything that could be related to normalcy. It has given up on kids just trying to have an “experience” and it has leapt right into the thick of truth by having the show in Hollywood, where every single one of them want to be famous.

This move by the creators is genius in effect. We as the viewer want to do two things with this show: be entertained and laugh at the people who decided to sign up. Within two episodes, Real World: Hollywood has accomplished this in spades.

There’s Joey, a spiky haired, overtly buff Guido who wants to be an actor. There’s Sarah, freshly 21, out of college and a budding broadcast journalist with a boyfriend that she cheated on within the first night there. Brianna is I believe an albino stripper who wants to be a signer and has a boyfriend that ended with a warrant. Kimberly is a hayseed who is unsure of other races and wants to be a reporter on Extra. William is a rapper/dancer/producer who will probably be looked at as a carbon copy if Will I Am if he gets any sort of fame. David is a jock/frat boy and is so bland I forgot what his dream is.

But Greg though, is MTV’s masterwork. It’s so over the top that it cannot possibly be a real person. Greg is a wannabe male model with a deep voice who was supposedly picked by the internet. His screen name is “pretty boy”. He is at both times insanely over the top in his arrogance and also crippled with low self esteem. It is such an extreme character that it can only be an actor. Greg stirs the drink on the show, and with everyone swirling in stupidity and overacting, he sits in the middle, calling everyone around him “peasants.”

It is what it is, which I guess is a production steeped in imagery, product placement and paper thin shallow. For that, it is an exact mirror on how we are now. People who trash the show for casting the lowest common denominator always seem to forget that everyone that has been on that show is someone you know in your own life. At this point, we all have to realize that the concept of “psudeo celebrity” is so powerful that we are swallowed in it. If an uncertain economy, a hopeless war, rising gas prices, no cure yet for Cancer/AIDS, the feeling that no matter who we elect we will never win…. if none of those factors can sustain our attention for more than two seconds, then the only choice is to stand back, and let people decide to give a shit about who was voted out from Dancing with the Stars/Idol/Survivor. And for that, possibly the Real World should be looked at as both a low point for society and a high water mark for personal escapism and comfort. And because of this, the newest season of the Real World, set in the epicenter of all the unimportant bullshit people care about can be looked at as the greatest season in its’ history, because when they removed all the pretense than there is nothing else to do than let it burn and invite everyone over.

Oh yeah I bet you look at the above headline and think “What the fuck is HE talking about there?” But when I see these Spencer and Heidi people posing for these “spontaneous” photos, I see their nordic, Aryan beauty and all I can think is that either the New World Order is upon us, or Hitler’s dream of a master race has come true.

I don’t believe their innocence for a second. Look at the guy driving them around, and notice that he is neither Nordic or Aryan, something that I bet these two children of the corn frown upon. I bet they chose him specifically and told him that when the ride was over they’d put a bullet in his head behind some alleyway. They probably have his wife, or kid hostage, or maybe they blackmailed him with something else. All’s I know is, is that I am not fooled and if I have time/interest I will organize some sort of task force to bring these people down.

In the April Issue of Vogue (the Shape Issue, so grab it if you need to tone up!!) LeBron James and Gisele Bundchen are on the cover, as you can see above. Does anything look odd with this picture to you? Large, african-american, well built guy, skinny, white model? His hand sort of clutching her waist with full on frontal lobe primal scream while she sort of deflects with a cautious smile on her face?

Ok, let’s get down to brass tacks… who thought it was a good idea to replicate King Kong with the most famous african-american athlete at the moment, a guy who 90% of the time gets photographed dressed to the nines. LeBron gets his picture taken all the time, and most of the time it’s either an action shot in the game, or a high fashion shot of him in a suit. So, considering that, who green-lighted the concept to have LeBron look like some odd, non-speaking savage who will grunt and scream in front of the pretty girl? Better yet, this picture is making Vogue so proud because it is the first time that have had a black male on the cover. Not to get all hack comic on you all, but WHO WERE THE AD WIZARDS THAT CAME UP WITH THIS?? /lame catchphrase mode off.

I don’t know when it happened, but at one point I started coming to the realization that I had found myself out of the “loop.”

“The Loop”, as I put it, (and falling out of said loop) is what happens when most humans reach a certain age and what is hip just becomes silly, or confusing to them. No one ever thinks it will happen to them of course; when you’re younger you think you’ll be frozen in time of always wanting to seek out what’s new, what’s current, what’s hip. But it happens, and you can accept it, or begin to buy clothes and listen to music that make you look silly.

So I was prepared for being out of the loop; If I watched a band on TV that had a the high voiced, whiny male singer detailing his torment over pop punk I would say to no one in particular “fucking christ man, these kids suuuuuck”, and then think about how much better it was back in the day. I would end up trashing magazines like SPIN because I stopped caring about why I didn’t recognize the people on the cover. I leaped into not giving a shit, and it felt good.

But then I was in a room with some long unseen relatives who were young enough to be in the “loop” and we were watching MTV and FUSE. The two kids, aged 15 and 17 and dressed in the standard rebellious uniforms watched video after video of ring tone rappers, styled up white kids screaming over guitars and pop kiddies and buried all of em. The only videos they did like oddly enough were Guns and Roses and NWA of all things. So after watching them trash every new band for over an hour, I asked them why they liked the two acts who haven’t even made a new album in their lifetime.

“(Guns and NWA) were real, man” the two kids said. “You could tell that they didn’t give a shit and just played their music.” Now the sentiment there is interesting, both in how educated they are towards music that came before them, but also in the fact that every new band they trashed got the label “poseur” from them. I went home a bit later, and rethought my status of being outside loops.

What if it’s more than getting older and not paying as much attention anymore? What if the “cool” actually did die, and maybe the kids were right after all when they called out the weakness of the new school? I’m not going to fully support this by saying that I am still really into it; don’t think I got some sort of self-absorbed ephipany here. But, there is a theory in all of this, and it is simple; the two groups the kids mentioned both were very organic in both their honesty and their music. So, if this is the case, is there no real chance for anything honestly creative to survive these days?

Options are great, but what I tend to go back to is the fact that sometimes when the options and the field are so wide open, everything gets buried and nothing can rise above the middle. Record companies, movie and television studios and businesses in general are down all over and it seems that they’re spinning their heads over trying to figure out what the average young person likes. Thousands upon thousands are spent trying to figure out the hearts and minds of youth and what they’ve gotten from all this is that the youth (and the rest as well) don’t trust, or don’t care about anything else than exactly what they like. And EVERYONE likes something completely different from the next. Everyone, at least in the eyes of mainstream culture went “out of the loop”, because there’s no need anymore to get served up what the big companies are selling, because we’ve been given the freedom to get it ourselves.

And what does this say? Well, I’m thinking that it’s great in the short term and decrepit in the long term. Because the hype mongers can’t get a read on us, things come and go with rapid delivery. A band gets popular and comes out of nowhere due to My Space, or i-tunes. The record label signs them, and rushes to over expose something that people only had a passing fancy on anyways. Juno was a mediocre movie at best but everyone who wrote a review latched onto it because it felt on the surface to be something natural. And even though it got all the hype the backlash started up on it five seconds afterwards because no one wants someone to go insane over something that you casually like.

What needs to happen is a rethinking of the way things are promoted. Entertainment has a short life span now, and it is because of the fact that when you’re so overloaded with content you always want to check out what else is out there, even if you like what is in front of you. This is ok on the surface, but you need to be able to recognize the wheat from the chaff, and when there is no limits it all comes up to the amount of annoyance you get with the hype surrounding it. And i’m not sure if there’s any real answer as to how this can be fixed, but I know I can take comfort in the fact that even if I am out of the loop, it appears that another loop is rushing down the line soon.

At my homestead, my phone number seems to be exactly like a cellphone number belonging to a teenage girl by the name of Ashley. How do I know this? because beyond the area code, Ashley’s number is exactly like mine, and there is a boy she knows (I say “boy” because he sounds between the ages of 15-17 and has a voice that hasn’t exited puberty) who ALWAYS CALLS ME LOOKING FOR HER.

Every once in a while, i’ll get a call:

Boy: *imagine a higher pitched young guy voice* “Uhhh hi, is Ashley there?”

Me: FUCKING NO MAN… you used the wrong area code, AGAIN.

Boy: “uhhh, sorry.” Click.

This infuriates me, if for nothing else than the fact that it has been a repeatable mistake that the guy really should be correcting. But the fun part, is when he calls me later at night, COMPLETELY WASTED.

It started out with kindness on my part:

BOY: “uahag,jagltdgljkhlk hellllllllllllllllllllo, isssss Ashhhhley THerrrrre??”

ME: “No man, you got the wrong number.”

BOY: …………………………………… OOOOOOOOOH UGHHHHH-K

This happens every once in a while. So, in the avenue of being vengeful, I found out his number, a land line, and I also believe his parents number. I also got her number, this mysterious Ashley. I still have these numbers written down, and I play with the idea of posting them on the interweb for all to hear. So, I have decided to make this a lil morality play. via e-mail, or by comment, give me you thoughts as to why I should, or should not use this information for evil. Explain yourselves; don’t just say yes or no. Tell me why i’d be wrong, or justify my right. I will then tally the votes and do whatever wins. This way, instead of myself playing god, I will use the populace to play god; thereby making the kindness or wrath a symptom or evidence of where we are as people.

So, think inside your hearts. Weigh out the karma, whether or not this is cool, and tell me what to do.

Sitting in the bitter cold of a hospital parking lot waiting to pickup a family member makes you think of things in a different way. Leaning up against my car in a reserved pickup spot right on time yet still waiting for 30 minutes and you begin to wonder how in the hell anyone ever comes out of here alive.

Do I sound a little mean? Bitter maybe? Well you, the reader may have a point but in reality i’m a bit dazed, confused and cynical when it comes to hospital care, insurance and the meddling, growing quagmire that has become health care in this country.

You enter your early twenties and as soon as you come off your parents health insurance (this is assuming you had any insurance at all - that’s another huge issue) everyone you talk to is unified in one thought: get some health insurance; sure it may take a chunk out of your paycheck, but you never know when you’re going to need it. This is a true statement, as anyone who had to pay insane amounts for their prescriptions will tell you. So you pay your fee, get a little more out of your paycheck and move on, feeling comfort that you can afford to be sick.

And then comes the bad part; you get sick, or maybe even get into some sort of situation in which you need the services provided by a hospital. You call your doctor and it’s 50/50 as to whether you can reach them, or their receptionist. You give that person your symptoms and ask them what to do. Because they can’t risk a lawsuit they end up telling you everything and nothing because if you can fully understand what they’re saying then you can blame them if it all goes south. You end up going to one hospital, but you find out that your PCP is only at the other one. You wait for hours upon hours in emergency room or admitting hallways and occasionally get seen by one of the thousands of doctors who are overworked, and forgot your name before you even told them it. One doctor wants this test done, but another thinks in a different way. You finally do get admitted but not after finding out you could have gotten a bed hours ago if it wasn’t for that one test that everyone forgot about, or dragged their feet on.

It gets better…

You get your bed, and proceed to be seen by a rotating circus of doctors, specialists, other doctors, nurses, nurses assistants and whomever else is in charge of that floor on that particular hour. You are now a chart; an object that has a list of what has been done to them and what will be upcoming. Every doctor you see tells you something different than the last and you end up becoming a human message service, informing them what the last person in scrubs told you. And your regular doctor? You probably haven’t heard from them yet, with the exception of love notes and hackneyed instructions sent by them to no one in particular. No one knows you, no one will remember you and you just hope to get out.

And you will get out - probably way too soon, because all a hospital does is patch you up enough to get you out. You get a handful of prescriptions that are completely different than the ones you need, and oh by the way no one called your insurance to check if you were covered for certain aspects so that ambulance ride will cost full price. If you’re lucky, you become a human super ball, bouncing from rehab centers to hospitals like some savage see saw. By the time you’re done with all of this, you wonder how you got there and where you are now; you also look into homeopathic medicine and Christian Science as possible alternatives. You just got threw into the blender of health care - consider yourself lucky you made out intact to tell the story.

Here’s the real issue; everything I just said has happened to you, or someone you know. The tragic part is is that as much as you’d like to blame the doctors, the nurses and everyone involved it won’t be that viable or realistic. The doctors take in way too may patients, have to deal with miles of red tape with insurance companies and usually get handcuffed from the start. Everyone in the hospital is overworked, up too late, burnt out and has to keep track of everyone to the highest extent. Even the insurance companies, as evil as they seem have to become multi-handed marionettes with coverage issues and mindful of those who take advantage. Everyone involved is compromised, and when people who wish to help and care get compromised, they begin to sour on the whole experience. It’s mind-numbing and it’s a maze that has no exit. I know this from experience.

In the last four years I have seen the following: One family member get shuffled from rehab to hospitals to rehabs to hospitals, basically getting well enough to leave one then ill enough to be put right back. She ended up dying in a hospital on the same day she was supposed to be shuttled back to the rehab center. Another family member went through a year of going to the hospital, leaving too soon, going back in, dealing with many doctors and specialists who gave out hope then recanted it after finding that he was not looked at as a worthy risk. He later died in the hospital after everyone knew they couldn’t dump him off. Finally, I have another family member who seems to be starting off on the same path of being bounced from one place to another; too old to matter yet too much to leave alone. From these experiences I have come to one conclusion; unless health care, and the way we conduct business changes, the biggest fear we as a country will face won;t come from a terrorist - it will come from a lingering symptom that we think may be serious enough to see a doctor about.

http://www.superficialgallery.com/Columns/JW/That-Tingling-Feeling-Is-Not-Love-It-May-Be-a-Heart-Attack.htm

http://www.superficialgallery.com

also, go to old school Blowout/9479 writer Jay Pud’s blog: http://dastardlylatchkey.blogspot.com/