Go Suns

The Suns are about to go into battle incredibly shorthanded against their hated rivals with everyone in the country who does not live in San Antonio and is not related to David Stern rooting for them. If they lose tonight, the season is probably over and everyone has another reason to hate the Spurs and David Stern. If they win, not to overstate things, but it may alter the course of NBA history, as the Suns can likely ride this momemtum all the way to the title. Its like the Battle of Agincourt, if Henry V were an Italian with a porn star moustache. I am about to hunker down to watch, but I wanted to pass along this highly entertaining dialogue over at Slate between Neal Pollack and Paul Shirley. I am typically not a fan of Pollack's, as I think his ratio of self-satisfaction to actual wit is high even for a McSweeney's writer, but he's a Suns fan, so we're on the same team right now. Shirley, meanwhile, is a former benchwarmer for the Suns, as well as about half the professional teams in the northern hemisphere, who has established himself as a witty and insightful writer known for giving his 12th man's perspective on basketball. Check it out.

Summertime

Well, temps in the Phoenix area are now fimly implanted in the triple digits, which means summer is here. School is over, work is boring and I have unwound the ball of stress caused by my mother's inexplicable idea to have a family reunion over Mother's Day weekend. I am now relaxed and prepared to refocus on this blog. I promise to have regular updates, at least every other day, from now until school starts back in August.

Now, onto my summer /viewing list:

• Cultural Amnesia by Clive James. Started this one about a month ago and have been slowly working my way through it. It is a collection of short essays organized around an A-to-Z list of important cultural figures of the 20th century. The major theme of the essays is the way artists and intellectuals responded to the two great cultural threats of the century: fascism and communism. It is the best type of political criticism, raising serious questions about the moral standards we should hold artists to. They are the types of questions many avoided in the wake of the Paul de Man Nazi controversy but they need to be asked. But this is far from James' only concern and he proves himself to be the best type of dilletante, letting his omniverous intellect range from Dick Cavett to the death of the teaching of prosody.

• 7 Seconds or Less by Jack McCallum. I have always loved the Phoenix Suns, coming of age as a sports fan just in time to witness their fabled 1992-93 season in which Charles Barkley, Kevin Johnson and Dan Majerle led them to the finals and united the city like no other cultural event before or since. Their renaissance over the past three years has been one of the great sports stories in the city's history. We have long been both a sports and cultural backwater, but the current Suns team has revolutionized the game and simultaneously injected a dash of intelligence, class and innovation into the usually staid, conservative and red-state world of pro sports. Head coach Mike D'antoni is an Italian celebrity who spends his summers at Donna Versace's villa. Leader Steve Nash is a (formerly) long-haired Canadian who reads Marx and favors anti-Bush t-shirts. Leandro Barbosa grew up is Sao Paulo, Brazil and his life apparently inspired the movie City of God. Boris Diaw is a dapper and classy Frenchman. Raja Bell became a folk hero by bodyslamming Kobe Bryant, the epitome of everything intelligent and decent people hate about sports. They are the rare sports team that a lefty book nerd can love unconditionally. Anyway, this is all to say that I am happy McCallum's book has come along to document this wonderful creation. McCallum folowed the team for most of last season, shadowing the coaching staff. It is a fun and entertaining read and a great examination of the job of NBA coaches.

• Veronica Mars Season 1. I got into this show towards the end of season 1, then lost interest about halfway through season 2. Apparently, I jumped off at the right time, if critics are to be believed. Anyway, I always wanted to go back and watch the rest of the excellent Season 1 and I found the DVDs for $20 yesterday. I figured it is a good way to wean myself off of the equally witty and brilliant Gilmore Girls, which ends tonight.

That is all of my list for now, but more is to be added in the weeks to come. In closing, I would just like congratulate David Stern. Once again, your half-assed enforcement of your own rules is putting the Spurs and Pistons on a collision course in an attempt to break their own record for lowest-rated Finals ever. I don't know why Stern seems intent on punishing clean-playing, entertaining teams like the Suns and rewarding teams like the Spurs, who are only interesting when doing something dirty.

Stage 5

Sorry to keep harping on Titus, but he just seems to keep popping up, so I'm going to give him the floor to kick off this week's discussion of The Sopranos:

A better head her glorious body fits
Than his that shakes for age and feebleness.
(T.A., 1.1.190-191)

Mafia dons, both the real ones and the much more interesting fictional ones, have long liked to link themselves with their Roman ancestors, none more so than History Channel fan Tony Soprano, who once used the reign of Augustus to attempt to tutor Uncle Junior on being a benevolent dictator. And as The Sopranos winds down, it appears that Tony and his colleagues are learning the lesson of their fictional ancestor Titus.

In declining to be named Emperor, Titus argues that he is an old man, soon to die, which would only lead to them having to find a new emperor sooner rather than later. He is man that has achieved success through brute force and physical strength. He has survived 40 years on the battle field seeing many younger men, including his 21 sons, fall, and that has added up to . . .what? His physical strength is rapidly dissipating, his body is betraying him, he is too old to be emperor. What is waiting for him at the end of the road? If the play has a redeeming quality, it is this affecting portrayal of a man out of time, who only knows one thing and can't do it anymore, who is a stranger in the land in the fought to protect, in many ways more of an foreigner than his Goth prisoners.

It is a drama modern sports fans are intimately familiar with. Like the ancient epics and mythologies handed down over generations of oral storytelling, sports deals in similar master narratives retold for every generation with new actors in the lead roles. One of our favorites is the star past his prime who refuses to hang it up. It is superb tragicomic tale. Elite pro athletes are made up of two things: a natural athletic ability combined with an unhealthy competitive streak. From puberty (at the latest), their entire existence revolves around perfecting a very specific skills and using it to destroy their competitors. Then, in their late-30s, just as their peers in almost every other profession are just starting to hit their professional stride, that natural athletic ability starts to disappear, though the competitive streak is still there. So they hang around until they have been embarrassed by younger versions of themselves enough times that they finally are forced to give up the only thing they have ever know how to do. And they are only 40, with close to half their life left to live. Like Titus, their fortune is made by their bodies, which then betray them.

Which brings us to Tony and his pals. Let's take a look at the last three episodes, going back to last season's finale:

"Kaisha": Phil Leotardo, acting boss of the New York family and Tony's chief rival, suffers a heart attack and has quadruple bypass surgery.

"Soprano Home Movies": Tony, boss of the New Jersey family, celebrates his 47th birthday and gets his ass kicked by his creampuff, model-railroading brother-in-law Bobby, and spends the rest of the episode lamenting his lost manhood and worrying that Carmella will no longer be attracted to him.

"Stage 5": Johnny Sack, currently-incarcerated boss of the New York family, is diagnosed with terminal cancer and dead by episode's end. At the beginning of the episode, he is told that it is Stage 4 lung cancer, and fills in the blank himself "And there's no stage 5, is there?" Later, Phil, still recovering from his heart surgery, tells Tony he does not want to be boss: "Being a boss is young man's game."

Tony, Phil and Johnny Sack, the three most powerful men on the show in terms of mob hierarchy, are all being betrayed by their bodies. A mob boss's power is not embued by sovereignty or rule of law, but physical strength. However, having spent possibly all of that strength getting to the top, they no longer have the strength to hold on to it.

All of this takes us back to show's first season. Forty-something acting boss Jackie Aprile dies of cancer, creating an opening at the top. Mob bosses, like Roman emperors, always have trouble with succession because it is neither strictly heritary or strictly meritocratic. In this case, the captains want Tony, but Uncle Junior thinks the title is rightfully his. Tony creates a compromise by giving Junior the title, but running things behind his back. Junior, like Titus, has fought his way to the top, only to be too old to rule once he got there. Tony is now facing the same problem.


A quick off-topic note: Radio Open Source, a public radio show from Boston, excerpted my "Batshit Crazy" post on their website in conjunction with an episode entitled "Entertaining Violence", dedicated to a Boston of production of Titus. It is a great listen, and very relevant in light of the Virginia Tech incident on Monday.

Speaking of Virginia Tech, I feel like I should say something in light of Monday's comments on Grindhouse and Paglia's Mozart/Jack the Ripper comparison, and I will eventually, but I just don't think I can right now.