Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Their Sons Grow Suicidally Beautiful at the Beginning of October, and Gallop Terribly Against Each Other's Bodies

I'm amused and fascinated by the firestorm in the NFL over players, who are taught from pee-wee to high school to college to the pros that spectacular hits are the road to getting paid, suddenly being told they can't do what they've been trained and coached and paid to do (there's profit in those spectator hits) and worse, having their characters impugned by the very owners who pay them for (and profit by) the spectacular hits. It’s as if the viciousness the league has inculcated and marketed for decades is suddenly endangered by its own reckless success; it’s not surprising the owners seek to punish the players for the players' moral failure of carrying out the immoral orders of the owners.

The NFL owners and its players union after this season will almost certainly have a labor stoppage, probably an owners' lockout, and I've heard predictions that the owners' insistence that the players give back every single penny of debt the owners racked up themselves on stupid contracts and debt service will result in the cancellation of the entire season. The owners who today cry about helmet-to-helmet hits will in the next sentence extol the benefit of an 18 game schedule on 16 game pay as a bargaining chip. Concern with labor's physical well-being runs that deep.

Fine metaphors abound! DC afternoon rush, local sports radio, the conservative of the two hosts, on issue after issue between the players and the owners, agrees with motherfucking me! If it was the teachers union, if it was coal-miners, if it was the union that cleans his hotel room while he's on location at the Super Bowl, guess which side he's on. Janitors don't entertain him.

Watching the NFL owners fuck up one of the few money-making cash cows left in Bubbleville will be as educational as enjoyable. Watch, listen: an empire imploding, America in a terrarium.


Saturday is Jaime's night, you're going to see this image through this coming Sunday. What are the odds that United is awarded a PK if Jaime hasn't scored by the 60th, especially in a game as meaningless as this one? 1-3?


  

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.
 

7 comments:

  1. Ohio Valley poetry? Wheeling Steel closed long long ago! It was closed by 1981 when I went to college in Wheeling.

    Crispin Sartwell has an interesting take on Virginia Thomas / Anita Hill. Does Thurston Moore still "believe Anita Hill"?

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  2. Well, in my case it's Mon Valley poetry, but I love James Wright's poetry.

    Did you go to Wheeling Jesuit? Working here at Hilltop, I have work communications with Wheeling.

    I'll read the Sartwell. I like letting him jerk my chain.

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  3. I did go there, but it was simply called Wheeling College when I was there. The insertion of "Jesuit" by Father Tommy Acker happened after I left. The bizarre claim of "University" status happened even later. How many "Universities" have 2500 or fewer students? Well, at least one in Wheeling!

    Wheeling's a nice region. If they had a real winter with decent skiing close by, I could live there.

    Google "Roney's Point." It was a fun place to hang out.

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  4. That image makes me think I need a box of crayons.

    Also. This very morning I heard a certain right wing commentator griping about how evil Dr. Hill was to call the authorities. They're really insane.

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  5. I was wondering about Jack too---weird.

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  6. Any Mocovian who votes for Ehrlich probably didn't experience complete cognitive development. There's just no other rational explanation. Seriously.

    d-N, next time you indulge my Hanscrush, please include beefcake photos. Not that I'm ungrateful.

    Sasha? I know where you live. Don't go all Osi Umenyiora on my religion, and I won't go all Osi Umenyiora on yours.

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  7. I'll vote for you, if you want.

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