Bryan Joiner

Two months ago, I knew what fiction was. I’ve spent a good amount of my life trying to understand how it is that people ever write novels, and two months ago, I was on it. I took a fiction writing class and everything popped into place. There was no big secret: you wrote about your own life, about the things you did every day, and worked it into a bigger story. All the “references” people make—and here I think of Joyce and Ulysses—aren’t clever beyond comprehension, they’re just a record of what Joyce saw in Zurich-Dublin-Trieste-wherever.

Two months later, that feeling is completely gone. I have a new job, one where the floor is shifting beneath me at the same time as I’m trying to find a solid place to stand. This takes up an incredible amount of energy. The office I work in is sparsely populated compared to its capacity—I’ve been sitting at the same unaccompanied desk for two weeks—and I can still see more people when I bob my head up as I could see at my old office of nine people. Hardly anyone talks to each other, either. Talking to each other is reserved for events. Something happens in the computer machines, and the reward is human contact.

My job was supposed to be work-from-home, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Logistically, I need to be in a place where I can access my new company’s internal server. A special microchip-enabled card I have is supposed to make that happen. It doesn’t work, but it does get me into the company’s office, where I can access the system. What I do nowadays is look at a trend meter, hit refresh, find a few funny things to write about, and write them. You won’t find them anywhere on the web, because they website isn’t live yet.

Until it is—actually, long past that point—I’m going to feel like I’m floating. I wish I had some sort of better conclusion. It’s just so weird after having been stuck at a tiny company for so long. For as much as I wanted not to be there, I didn’t try to escape. I waited for escape to come to me, in the form of a job offer, effectively. What I’ve learned is that everything takes effort, even getting a good job. Which sounds silly, but what I mean is that I’ve quickly adjusted to the fact my new job has serious ups and downs. If I had looked a little harder, maybe it would have fewer downs. Maybe there’d be more people talking. The good part is there’s always tomorrow.

Sports Illustrated says, via vote, that Eric LeGrand, paralyzed in a football game for Rutgers last year, “leading” his team back onto the field in a mouth-operated wheelchair, is the “sports moment of the year.” It’s not. It’s an incredible human interest story, and it’s incredible for LeGrand, but it’s a human moment, not a “sports moment.” It is, sadly, something we will see again. The sports moment of the year should belong to something we won’t.

Nor is the photo of two people kissing during the Vancouver riots, as suggested by Quickish, the sports moment of the year. It wasn’t on the field of play and is tangentially related to anything really memorable. Serendipitous sport-related photo of the year? Bam.

This is the sports moment of the year, with apologies to my cousin:

I was on the train this morning and two dudes who obviously didn’t know each other were talking about the NBA. They talked for the entire 20 minute ride I was on. They really enjoyed it. They weren’t trying to get away from each other. They were sifting through topics like a kid sifting through sand. The Lakers, Clippers, early-aughts Knicks… they covered it all.

Now the Clippers are relevant! How awesome is that? It would be considerably more awesome if their owner wasn’t such an odious human being, even by the advanced standards of sports owners. He’s an old, racist kook. It makes it hard to root for them. But we haven’t had to deal with that particular problem for a long time. Now we do.

It’s quite different from what’s going on with the Cleveland Browns, where a proud city and franchise crumble under the weight of their own insecurities. The Browns are the NFL’s worst franchise, if you’re grading on a curve. At least the Bengals have nothing to shoot for. They’re just the Bengals, and always will be.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, with only sports to talk about.

Why am I doing this?

And why am I broadcasting it?

Oh blog, I’ve missed you. It’s fun. I write stuff here and then I hit “publish” and I’ve published something!

I’ve been long-form writing recently, so this is sort of a novelty.

While I’ve watched quite a few NFL games this year, probably more than I’ve watched in years, I don’t find anything that’s happening in the league particularly interesting. The Packers are a great team, but their games reek of formality. The Patriots are standing tall, waiting to be toppled. The Steelers are doing their thing, as are the Ravens. The Tebow thing is not as interesting as the Von Miller thing. The Cowboys and Giants are doing their Cowboys and Giants things. The Jets are the Jets again. The Titans apparently still exist. The Eagles dropped the ball, lost it, pouted about it, and repeated it.

I’ve been a fronter on hockey. I’ve watched a few games but not that many. The Bruins are apparently awesome. I’ll check back in in April.

Now the NBA is back. I am failing to resist the urge to care. The NBA is really, really fun to talk about. Not contract stuff like Bill Simmons likes, but just random team stuff, like where Tyson Chandler is going, because it seems so consequential and inconsequential all at once—the essence of sports. When a big player is moving teams, it often seems legitimately newsworthy, and you’ll forget you’re talking about sports. Not so with the Nene. Nene plays basketball, that’s his job, and we talk about where he’s going to end up the way we talk about what news organization would be best for a blogger. It’s great.

I’m digging the Jalen Rose podcasts more than the Simmons ones these days, but the Simmons intro is still better.

Speaking of Simmons, I’ve noticed that he still likes to get worked up at stat things when he’s against them, but doesn’t refrain from whipping out statistical comparisons between players when they serve his case. As if Garbageland didn’t make it clear, I think the site is throwing Simmons’s flaws into sharp relief. It’s hard for me to hate on a site that has Charlie Pierce writing for it, but Simmons’s personal history with him is still offputting. Nonetheless, a W for Grantland. Still not a great percentage there.

What else? Oh yes, the Christmas music. I don’t know. I just finished season 1 of Sons of Anarchy in about three days and that stuff is heavy. It’s also quite good. The Jacks/Tara stuff brings up stuff from my own (biker) past. I need dulcet tones to come down. That’s a thing, right? Dulcet tones? (/looks it up) It is! And I used it right!

I’m so proud of myself that I’m logging off.

This segment should make The Daily Show ashamed of itself. Not politically, but intellectually. The Occupy Wall Street protesters are/were no more divided/coherent than the attendants of the Rally to Restore Sanity, and are no more or less immune to criticism: The problem is, Triumph did it first, and better. It’s the difference between being a comedian and an asshole, and Stewart is on the wrong side of it.

… if your name is Emilia, email me at my first initial and last name at gmail. Call it a promotion.

Community is a great show because Dan Harmon doesn’t give a fuck. He’s turned the half-hour sitcom format into a half-hour sitcom laboratory. He has dared people to watch, and those who have (like myself) have been rewarded. He has also dared NBC to cancel the show, which they appear to have effectively done.

This is not a tragedy. This will dominate certain corners of the Internet for a few days and maybe longer, if Arrested Development is any indication. But given the sheer difficulty of getting and keeping a show like Community or Arrested Development on the air, today’s a day we should celebrate what we have instead of mourning what we’ve lost.

Arrested Development was a great TV show. I watch the entire series about once a year. I’m not the only one, and it’s the ability to consume the show in its totality that leaves fans wanting more, and feeling personally aggrieved that they don’t have more. They think TV executives don’t know shit. Well, the TV executives put the show on the air in the first place. They know something.

Same deal with Community. Even in its first season, a friend and I thought it didn’t stand a chance of a long run, especially if it got weirder and better, which is exactly what happened. The supersaturated talent in the cast alone assured its destruction, the same way Arrested Development sank by giving everyone something to do, all the time. These were complex, intricately layered shows that needed to be followed in their entirely to be understood on a minute-by-minute basis, which differentiates them from something like Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock or The Office, which have also suffered their own ratings problems at various times but could be understood in a self-contained context. You could watch it and get it. Not so with Arrested Development and Community. You were all in or all out.

They’re allegedly making new Arrested Development mini-episodes and a movie, as I’m sure you know. I’ll watch them, but I’m not jumping out of my chair. Remember Michael Jordan on the Wizards? Greatness fades. Sign online petitions for Community if you must, tell your friends if you feel so compelled, but don’t think you’ve really been screwed. You’ve been given a gift. Watch some old episodes and enjoy them, and before you know it, another great show will break through the absurd system with rules that ensure its very demise. It’s America. We always make more TV. Take solace in it.

God, I know I’m not helping. Like we need another d*ckhead telling us what we already know.

I’ll just say this: I’m not surprised in the least, for nothing having to do with the specific culture of Penn State. Anyone who believed a fairytale football program can exist is the one spinning the fairytale. I know nothing specific about Penn State except that their team is perpetually overrated. None of this is easy to accept, but it makes it easier. I’m not lying to myself.

That these things happen where they’re least expected should be what’s expected, so we take nothing for granted.

I’m surprisingly excited about this World Series. The Cardinals have become the Steelers of MLB—the team one half of the league sends up to represent it when it can’t come up with something better, and one that works for everybody.

The Rangers are particularly compelling because they lost last year. They lived with defeat for a year, and they go into this series knowing that if they lose, they might have that same feeling for a lifetime. They (many of them, at least) know what it’s like to deal with this particular loss, and they know as well as we do that they might never get another chance.

To which many people might say, hey, that’s nonmeasurable mumbo-jumbo, knock it off. My response is this: If we know who the best teams are by measuring, what’s the point of the playoffs? The playoffs are measuring something different, by definition, That’s why they exist. They exist to make heroes out people who don’t necessarily deserve it, which drives some people batty. To non-fans, it’s no less batty than us making heroes out of people we think DO deserve it, people like Barry Bonds, Ted Williams and Don Mattingly, who never won championships, nor invented the Polio vaccine. (Salk was a lousy shortstop.)

The celebration of one group of ballplayers does not have to be a repudiation of the other, and it’s not a stab to the heart of cold truth to celebrate the World Series champions for having accomplished something great. “The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” said F. Scott Fitzy, and that’s something to remember when the games are played.

I’m sort of beating a straw man here, but I’ve spent enough of my life tearing down artificial constructs like the World Series, and now I’m interested in why we need them, and how they work. It makes everything more fun, for me.

A few more thoughts on Chris Jones’s Grantland headscratcher:

• Either rooting for a sports team is an inherently silly enterprise or it isn’t—that’s your judgment call. I say that it’s not, and I say that is only by the collective decision of myself and others that it’s not that the Boston Red Sox continue to exist. If we all disappeared tomorrow and John Henry still roamed the Earth, the Red Sox would no longer be a viable business enterprise. We are, in a sense, the real owners of the team, with our NESN surcharges and MLB.tv subscriptions. Breaking the experience of a fan down into its discrete elements, and evaluating them logically, will lead you straight to volunteering at a health clinic in sub-Saharan Africa. (If you would like to do this, by all means go, and you are a wonderful person.) For the 99.9 percent of us who live in a world where we acknowledge that hardships are relative, and life can be tough enough as it is, including ourselves in team experience is neither conspiratorial nor grandiose—it’s just reflecting the reality of the situation. Can it be annoying? Sure, but it’s a key draw for why people become fans in the first place.

• Using the Marlins as an example would seem to be the exception that proves the rule. The Marlins are only able to exist because the Yankees, Red Sox, et al have so many fans that there’s spillover cash. If anything, this would give Yankees fans an opportunity to call two teams “we,” instead of zero.

• It just seems like it’s buzzkill for the sake of buzzkill, and preaching to a choir instead of trying to make any real argument.

I understand that tearing Grantland down is easier than putting it up, so I’m trying to be nice about this (for once), but jeezo peezo, as Frowns would say.