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My writing partner and I spent the last two weeks or so working on a pitch for a sports comedy about a gawky journalist who decides to pick up basketball. As part of our research, I came across George Plimpton, who older and more literary people will think of you a goose for just hearing about. Well, HONK! This here’s a documentary about that time he, a blue-blood with an unbeatable attitude, trained to play in a pre-season exhibition game against the Detroit Lions. It’s sort of like if you put JFK in Jackass.
Nov 24, 2020
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Don't you detest when you see a coach who is always screaming at the players, has an ugly mug on his face, and is as arrogant as a college professor, as if coaching is his birthright, and not something more innately collaborative? Surely, they are coaches still like this, ones that believe that being a prick is synonymous with wearing a headset and looking at a playbook, such as the Giants's Brian Daboll, but there is one coach that I have been truly impressed by recently: The Detroit Lions's Dan Campbell. Campbell, who reminds me of my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers's Mike Tomlin, is "Football guy" personified: the kind of football coach who wakes up thinking about hugging his players, says "dude" every sentence, and puts them in the best position to succeed.
Last night, the Lions beat the Packers 34-31, partly because of Campbell's decision to go for it on fourth down when a field goal with 48 seconds left would have given them the lead. However, it would have also given the Packers the ball back with enough time for hotshot quarterback Jordan Love to tie or win the game for the Pack. Campbell went with the gunslinging move like David Caruso in NYPD Blue. He went for it, the Lions's running back, David Montgomery was able to make it despite Jared Goff falling down, and then the Lions counted the clock down before winning the game with a field goal. It was sport as theater. Now, the Lions still make me nervous -- Goff, the quarterback, is not an elite quarterback, and the surging Philadelphia Eagles's stingy defense can possibly make life hard for him --- but they are the *best* team in the NFL. Campbell's fostered a winning environment, as trite as that phrase can be.
Campbell's enthusiasm for the game is infectious, an unquestionably masculine but romantic view of coaching and football for the TikTok generation. He uses the traditional ways of being a football coach to also be chic and personable. He used to be a former player, and partly why he took the Lions job --- an organization that has not been very successful throughout its history --- is because he used to play there and he felt like he understood the Detroit community. Safety Brian Branch said that they would run through a brick wall for Campbell. I've always had this theory about American Football: It isn't always fun, because of the violence and the lack of clear financial comfort that some non-quarterbacks don't get, so unless you are Bill Belichick and you win all the time, your coaching style has to inspire devotion in your players. Joy must be apart of it, or what is else there? CTE?
Campbell is pure graciousness. He loves his players. It is easy to love them when they are good, and the Lions have an excellent offensive team, and a scrappy defensive team that has held steady despite some injuries. An offense that is based on running the football and play action, the Lions are fun to watch because they were made a different image than the Chiefs, or Brady's Patriots. It isn't a supreme quarterback with gaping holes throughout the roster. This is a deep team that relies on movement and pace. Watching the Lions play is fun, in a league that needs more weirdness and whimsy. But, Campbell seems like the star of the team even though he does not play. They were made in his image. He's the dude you want to be around, thus want to play for. Is this style something that will continue to spread throughout the league? One can hope.
Dec 6, 2024
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i do not watch the superbowl but since it is happening i cant help but think about this incredible 2017 multimedia science fiction work published in sb nation that details the relationships between satellites in the deep future who have become sentient and observe humans (who are now immortal) playing abstract games of football (some spanning years, countries, etc) and trying to understand it all. it is really artful and absorbing i really have never come across anything like it before
Feb 12, 2024
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I grew up playing soccer and was probably the worst and least motivated kid on the team. Having jerk teammates and coaches really soured the whole of sports for me, and I never really picked them up again as a viewer or player until a few years ago. Some good friends roped me into joining a fantasy football league, and I won the whole enchilada in my first year! After kind of paying attention for a season, you start to recognize players and learn about teams' reputations. Soon enough, you're rooting for your favorite team and players!
Jan 24, 2024
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Anybody remember a clip show about banned music videos that, incidentally, ended up on one of the networks that banned them? It was either VH1 or MTV2, and they ran stuff like Nine Inch Nails’s “Closer,” Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” and Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up.” Anyway, I was glued to the TV whenever it came on and I think a lot of my aesthetic sensibilities came from that 90s-00s golden age, making me into (regrettably) a bit of a music video snob. No offense, but the VFX-driven spectacles of today just don’t hit when you cut your teeth on stuff from CANADA and the Directors Bureau (whose website sadly doesn’t even have their best stuff anymore). The unique exception is director Cody Critcheloe, who goes by SSION (pronounced like the latter half of *passion*), and his new video for Yves Tumor is nothing less than what I’ve come to expect from the multihyphenate: a hyperreal vision of Los Angeles replete with larger-than-life characters who are characteristically drawn up from real life, and handmade props that belong in a museum, but I’ll settle for a gallery. (In this case, it’s a smashed-up hand-painted sunburst convertible and a leather jacket with a The Cochran Firm logo.) It’s the stuff dreams are made of, cementing Critcheloe as one of the most exciting and visionary directors of our time (other notable mentions include Eugene Kotlyarenko, Anne Alexander, and Minister Akins).
Nov 24, 2020
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Ummmmmm ten years or so these creeps from the midwest changed music, more or less...And ten years later they have a new album that fucks harder than ever? And then there’s this mixtape, which also really fucks. I’ve probably listened to it 20 times now (and counting). I don’t know, listen to it. It’s hard to describe. (If I wanted to write about music, I probably would have kept writing about music lol)
Nov 24, 2020
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I found this on a massive list of Sword and Sorcery movies on Letterboxd, which is where I find obscure films that other, sharper connoisseurs already know about. Well! I was looking for something like Berserk, Excalibur, and Joan La Pucelle, and boy was this it: Bresson’s 1974 reimagining of the grand finale of the Grail Quest is as earthbound as it is transcendent, smashing the depths of legend and poetry against humanism to produce a stark vision of the end of the Age of Myth. Most of the criticisms in the Letterboxd reviews are aimed at its seeming dryness, or lack of emotion. Hooey! It’s all here. If you want to see knights cry, go watch The Witcher or something.
Nov 24, 2020