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Marcus Smart, Michael Sam, The Boss

Late Sunday night, I wrote a piece for Forbes about Marcus Smart, the Oklahoma State basketball player who shoved a fan in the stands. Just as I filed that piece, the news broke that Missouri defensive lineman (and NFL prospect) Michael Sam had announced that he’s gay. So I decided to write a little something about why that matters.

It’s funny — I thought the Michael Sam story would knock the Marcus Smart story to the back of the line, and it has, based on the little bit of ESPN I’ve watched today. But for me, the Marcus Smart piece has about four times as many views as the Michael Sam piece. Not sure if that has something to do with the work, or the timing, or what. It’s just interesting.

More important, if you happen to live in the Charlotte area … Bruce Springsteen is coming! Just last night, I saw a YouTube of a cover song he played in Australia. I’m petitioning for him to play this in Charlotte, and at every show from here on out, really.

 

 

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Wake up, make tea, write songs, repeat

Last night I used an iTunes card I got for my birthday (thanks, Katie and Elizabeth!) to watch the first half of the documentary on the Eagles. It’s really good. I like them a lot, but even if you don’t, it’s fascinating to see how music brought them together and fame broke them apart. My favorite moment was Glenn Frey talking about his early days in Los Angeles, when he and roommate JD Souther lived above Jackson Browne. None of them had made it yet — Browne’s place wasn’t even an official apartment, just a cubbyhole in a basement in Echo Park. But he already knew the secret to success — not just at writing, but pretty much anything else.

Here’s Frey:

We slept late in those days, except around 9 in the morning, I’d hear Jackson Browne’s teapot going off with the whistle in the distance, and then I’d hear him playing piano. I didn’t really know how to write songs. I knew I WANTED to write songs, but I didn’t know exactly … you just wait around for inspiration, you know, what was the deal?

I learned through Jackson’s ceiling and my floor exactly how to write songs. Because Jackson would get up and he’d play the first verse and first chorus, and he’d play it 20 times until he had it just the way he wanted, and then there’d be silence, and then I’d hear the teapot go off again. It’d be quiet for 10 or 20 minutes. Then I’d hear him start to play again, and there was a second verse, so then he’d work on the second verse — he’d play it 20 times — and then he’d go back to the top of the song and play the first verse, the first chorus and the second verse another 20 times, until he was really comfortable with it, and, you know, change a word here or there.

And I’m up there going, So that’s how you do it. Elbow grease. You know, time. Thought. Persistence.

After I wrote all that down, I remembered Bill Simmons wrote an opus on the documentary a few months back. It’s worth checking out, too.

Simmons is right, by the way: That’s a beautifully done scene — a little gem of storytelling. (It doesn’t hurt when Glenn Frey is your narrator.)

Anyway: Elbow grease. Time. Thought. Persistence. If you want to write, that’ll get you a long way there.

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Three things from Questlove that made me think

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From Questlove’s memoir, “Mo’ Meta Blues“:

1. I was and am so devoted to the review process that I write the reviews for my own records. Almost no one knows this, but when I am making a Roots record, I write the review I think the album will receive and lay out the page just like it’s a Rolling Stone page from when I was ten or eleven. I draw the cover image in miniature and chicken-scratch in a fake byline. It’s the only way I really know how to imagine what I think the record is.

2. Imagine if there was a “Legend of Bagger Vance”-type figure who came to me when I was in London and told me that I wouldn’t see my first big check — I mean a real big check, a check that could make me feel secure and safe — until I was twenty years into the industry. I don’t know what I would have done.

3. Part of me would just like to relax and have one job that pays me the amount I need to survive. And another part of me wants the creativity that comes out of struggle and frustration and fear. It’s a never-ending cycle, which must be how I want it, on some level.

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Jason Isbell and lessons for a fat man

Jason Isbell is in town tonight. I’ve been listening to his new record, “Southeastern,” for a few weeks now. Every song is touched with power and grace. He’s from Alabama, I’m from Georgia, and the people he knows and grew up with are like the people I know and grew up with. It’s like the first time I read Larry Brown and thought, that guy understands my people. But with Isbell it’s more personal. A couple of lines from one of his songs have stuck in me like an implant. He has put words to the greatest struggle in my life.

The song is called “Live Oak” and these are the lines:

There’s a man who walks beside me, he is who I used to be

And I wonder if she sees him and confuses him with me

The character in the song has led a wicked life and is trying to start over. Isbell himself spent a lot of years drinking too much and is now trying to live sober. Here’s what he told NPR about the meaning of those words:

That started as a worry that I had when I cleaned my life up, decided to be a grownup, you know? I worried about what parts of me would go, along with the bad parts. Because it’s not cut and dried. It’s not like you made the right decision and everything’s great and you’re a better person for it. … there are some things that are lost forever and that’s just the fact of it.

I have thought far too much about this notion over the years, for a different reason.

I’m a fat guy. You can say obese or overweight or heavy or one of those other words if you want. Fat pretty much covers it. I have never been anything else. I’ve gone to bed a thousand times — ten thousand times — believing I would start getting in shape the next morning. Sometimes I hang in there for a while. I’ve always backslid. There are a lot of reasons. Here’s the one that makes me sound a little crazy.

I worry that when I lose all this weight, I’ll also lose some essential part of myself. I worry about the good parts going with the bad parts.

This is terrible logic on a bunch of different levels. I’m fully aware of that. But when you’ve been one way all your life, there’s no way of knowing how it’ll turn out when you make a big and permanent change. I love my life, except for being fat. I don’t want to screw up the things I love in the process of getting rid of what I hate.

It means something to me to hear somebody confront this same thing, and deal with it, and live a better life on the other side.

I learned a long time ago not to make role models out of musicians (or athletes or famous actors). I don’t know Jason Isbell except from his music, and some interviews, and his Twitter feed, where I found out we share a love for the Braves. But I do draw inspiration from somebody who pushed his way through the door I’m headed for.

A few weeks ago I mapped out a walking route through our neighborhood. There’s a hill a couple blocks away that I’ve avoided ever since we moved here. It’s not much of a hill for somebody in shape — I saw a woman running up it the other day, pushing a baby stroller. But it’s a haul for me. The first day, I had to stop about a third of the way up. The next day I got a little farther. And the next, farther still.

I don’t always go up the hill. But I started a Seinfeld chain for walking. I’m up to 25 days.

Those of us who have one addiction or another, or just people who have a little something about themselves they want to change — there’s no way of knowing what that new person will be like. Some people might like the old one better. That’s life. One thing I know is this: Jason Isbell made himself a new man and then made one of the best records I’ve ever put in my ears. That gives me hope.

 

 

 

 

 

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My Top 10 Things of 2012

Now that I write sports for a living — it still feels weird to say that — I’ve talked a lot about my favorite sports moments of the year. I’ve already written about the stadium shaking in Gainesville and the moments right after the Alabama-LSU game and Johnny Football beating Alabama. So I left sports off this list. The one common thread among all these things is, they moved me — made me laugh or cry or think or sing along. Sometimes all at once.

10. “Argo

It wasn’t until weeks after we saw this movie that I understood what I liked most about it. I grew up on those great ’70s detective shows — “Mannix,” “Barnaby Jones,” and of course “Rockford Files.” “Argo” is set in 1980, and that look is what got me — the washed-out lighting, all those wide lapels and shaggy haircuts. There are lots of other things to love about the movie. It’s a thriller, but (almost) all the violence is offscreen — the tense moments center around ordinary things, like whether someone will pick up the phone at a crucial moment. It’s like an Hitchcock movie in that way. It’s never wrong to put Alan Arkin, John Goodman and Bryan Cranston in a movie. Ben Affleck is just right for his role. It’s all based on a true story. But what I’ll remember is the way the film looks. “Argo” is basically the best “Mannix” ever made, and that’s a big compliment.

9. LCD Soundsystem + Miles Davis

So many people make so many mashups these days that just about every song has mated with every other somewhere on YouTube. But after seeing this, by Alessandro Greenspan, I never want to hear “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” in any other way. And I never want it lip-synced by anyone other than Kermit the Frog.

8. “Call Me Maybe”

For that keyboard riff in the chorus. For the twist at the end of the video. But mostly for that one line in the bridge:

Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad

That’s a line for anyone who’s been in love with the perfect idea of someone who just hasn’t come around yet. That’s a great pop lyric.

7. “Somebody that I Used To Know” (Walk Off the Earth cover)

Somehow I saw this before I heard Gotye’s original. I still like this version better. I’d pay to see a band play a whole set this way. “And now, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody…'”

6. “Steal Like an Artist

At the beginning of the year I gathered a bunch of books on one shelf with the intention of reading them all in 2012. I ended up reading five of the 25, which is right at the Mendoza Line. What happened this year is the same thing that happens every year — I’d walk through a bookstore and new books would just stick to me, like I was made of Velcro. Austin Kleon’s book stuck early on, and it’s the one book I’ve kept nearby all year. This book is for all of us who fear that whatever creative work we’re doing is just theft from those who came before. The truth: it IS theft, and great artists have stolen from one another throughout the centuries — expressing old ideas in new ways is exactly how art gets made. This book will free your creative soul.

5. “Parks and Recreation

4. Chris Jones’ “Animals” and “The Honor System

Full disclosure: I’m praising the work of friends here. Chris, from Esquire and ESPN the Magazine, is the best longform journalist in North America (I have to say it that way because he’s Canadian). “Animals” is the story of his that got the most attention this year — it’s about the men who had to hunt down the animals that escaped from a private zoo in Zanesville, Ohio. I know of at least three other big magazine pieces on the same story, but no one understood it the way Chris did, and no one else put the reader so deep inside it. There’s one paragraph, about a bear and a hunter and a camera that measures body heat, that breaks my heart every time I read it.

Having said all that, I enjoyed “The Honor System” even more. It starts off as the story of a stolen magic trick — a European magician has ripped off a trick made famous by Teller, the silent half of Penn and Teller. (In this story, Teller speaks.) But soon the story rounds a sharp bend, and then another, and by the end it’s not clear if the trick is on Teller, Chris, the reader, or some combination of the three. I’ve emailed Chris about the story and I’m still not sure. But I am sure it’s an amazing feat of storytelling.

I’ve also, improbably, become friends with Michael Schur — former writer for “The Office” and “Saturday Night Live,” co-creator of Fire Joe Morgan, frequent Poscast guest, and, occasionally, Mose Schrute. Mike is now executive producer of “Parks and Recreation,” which tops all those other things (even Mose). “Parks and Rec” is something rare and remarkable — a comedy about nice people who like each other and care about the world around them. So many comedies center on jerks, or stupid people, or conflicts that would never happen in real life. That’s easy money. What’s hard is making a show that tilts the mirror just a little sideways, but is still cramp-in-the-side funny and earns its occasional moments of drama. I’m not sure “Parks and Rec” will ever be ranked with “Cheers” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” But it’s working the same ground. And it’s creating something beautiful.

3. Alabama Shakes

Of all the music I never got to see live, I miss those great Memphis soul acts — Otis Redding, Sam and Dave — the most. Brittany Howard and the guys come as close as I’ve heard, and Brittany throws in a little Janis Joplin just to show off. “You Ain’t Alone” is the one that hooked me — if you don’t love this live version, me and you can’t be friends.

But the track I keep coming back to is their cover of Zeppelin’s “How Many More Times.” Please, y’all, come play in Charlotte. Or anywhere near. I’ll drive.

2. “Justified

In many ways, the opposite of “Parks and Rec” — last season featured an Oxy-gulping villain, the murder of a thug named Devil, and a pig-butchering knife put to brutal use in the finale. But “Justified” also has dry, dark humor — it has to, it’s based on books by Elmore Leonard. And the characters are so deep and rich and well-acted that you’d watch just to listen to them talk to one another. Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder are fantastic, and Dickie Bennett’s hair — played by Jeremy Davies’ hair — should get a special Emmy every year. The new season starts Jan. 8, the day after the college football season ends. Somebody up there likes me.

1. Bill Murray’s speech to the Sally League

OK, this is sports — but it’s also Bill Murray, and Bill Murray crosses all boundaries. Here’s the setup: Murray is co-owner of the Charleston RiverDogs, a minor-league baseball team in the South Atlantic League — or as most fans call it, the Sally League. The Sally League inducted Murray into its Hall of Fame this year, because when you can put Bill Murray in your Hall of Fame, that’s what you do.

So Bill Murray gets up to give his induction speech. He’s wearing a ridiculous outfit and he starts cracking jokes in exactly the way you would expect. But then he tells a story about the first time he saw Wrigley Field. And then he talks about the best corn dog he ever had. And then he gives the players advice that just happens to sum up his own life and career in one perfect Zen sentence: If you can stay light and stay loose and stay relaxed, you can play at the very highest level, as a baseball player or as a human being.

May we all love something in our lives as much as Bill Murray loves baseball, and may we all find our own ways to express that love. Happy New Year, everyone.

Honorable mentions: Justin Heckert on the girl who can feel no pain. Michael Kruse’s TED talk. Bill Simmons and Jonathan Hock on Alfred Slote. Tig Notaro’s set. The LA Times’ space-shuttle timelapse. Seinfeld’s coffee with Michael Richards.

Email me: tommy.tomlinson@sportsonearth.com. Tweet me @tommytomlinson. Anytime.

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Three things I loved last weekend

Besides Saturday night’s college football, of course:

1. My friend Justin Heckert’s beautiful story in the New York Times Magazine on a girl in South Georgia who can’t feel pain. You might think that sounds like a wonderful life. But it turns out that, as her doctor says, pain is a gift. Here’s a conversation with her dad:

“Girl, what goes through your mind when you see someone hurt?” John asked her.

“I feel bad for them,” she said. “Because they go through the pain and I don’t. I would help them.”

“Define pain for you,” John said. “What does it mean for you?”

“I don’t know.”

“When you see someone else in pain, what do you associate?”

“That must really hurt.”

“What is hurt?”

Ashlyn squinted her eyes, as if in deep thought. She couldn’t answer him.

2. Les Miles’ postgame press conference after LSU survived against Ole Miss. Apparently someone chose that moment to ask if wide receiver Russell Shepard — a five-star recruit who has never become a star at LSU — is a “flop.” Miles’ response is everything about college football rolled up into one — the anger, the humor, the giddiness of a big game, the slight homophobia, the loyalty to your team. I hope Les Miles coaches forever.

3. Another Miles — Miles Davis — solos with the LCD Soundsytem from beyond the grave. Kermit the Frog is also involved. I have no idea how long it took to figure this out or put it all together. I’m just glad somebody had the idea.