Serfing The Wave Of Corporate Feudalism

We are only who our masters are.

Or who we recognize our masters to be.

I thought about this as I thought about something someone said to me last night.

My son and I went to an Atlanta Braves game last Saturday. The Braves played the Detroit Tigers and lost 2-1. It was hot as hell. Seriously, if hell exists, and hell is hot, that's how hot it was. And they only had standing-room-only tickets, mostly because there's not an American League ballpark closer than Baltimore.

But it was Free Hat Day, so it was all worth it.

Last night, when I was finished playing ball, a guy asked me where I got my hat. I told him I got it for free at the game.

"See?" he turns to his friend. "Free hat day. I told you we should have gone."

(The hat's nice enough. It's got "NAPA" on the back, because NAPA sponsored the whole thing, but anything's cooler when it's free).

At which point a guy who tells me he's headed back to "New Yawk" this weekend says, "Yeah, but it ain't the Yankees."

As in, the Yankees are better.

And I suppose they are. There was that whole "Who's the Team of the '90s?" thing in 1999, when the Braves and the Yankees met in the World Series. The Braves had won in '95, the Yankees in '96 and '98. Whoever won in '99 would be the "Team of the '90s," because the Braves would have won as many World Series and would win the tie-breaker because of all their divisional championships.

And the Yankees proceeded to sweep them.

Which leads me to my point:

The Yankees have been able to maintain a high level of success because of the nature of how teams are built in Major League Baseball.

There's a limit on how much the team can pay for its players. Beyond the salary cap, the owner of a certain team has to be willing to pay a luxury tax to exceed the limit.

George Steinbrenner is willing to do this to make the Yankees a winner (which hasn't really worked out so well in the past seven years in terms of actual championships). In fact, he's willing to pay just about anything.

The Yankees are a convenient target because of this. Or a cause to join the bandwagon.

I do neither.

Other than respect the fact that an owner is willing to spend money on his team instead of stand aloof on the sidelines and line his own pockets with the money that comes in from those who follow their respective teams.

George Steinbrenner wants to win, and he will do anything, within the rules, to do it.

The Atlanta Braves used to be like that, when Ted Turner owned them. Then they sold out to Time Warner, then AOL/Time Warner. And on and on ...

It strikes me, as someone looks at my free hat and compares my team with another team, that neither of us are able to define our success by the success of a team.

(That's not to say that what a fan invests in a team is without merit. You earn the right to be a winner if the team you suffer with and celebrate for wins. That's how the whole thing stays afloat).

But if you think about it, we're only what our masters allow us to be.

A Yankees fan is only worth as much as his master is willing to pay to make his team successful.

Even if lightning strikes and the Marlins or the White Sox win a World Series, the Yankees are in it every year. They are the standard-bearers.

The Braves used to be in that class, before the master decided to spend less money.

And that's the way it is.

My success, currently, depends on who my master allows me to be.

Work. Want. Need. Acquire. Have. Owe. Default.

It's true of so much of the world, as the world consolidates ever closer to corporate feudalism.

You can aspire to be a master, but then you are nothing but a ruler of others.

Unless you are nothing more than a master of yourself.

And to do that, you have to be willing to want nothing.

Nothing except your freedom.

Or nothing more than a free hat.

Patterns On The Foosball

I spend very little time shouting to the heavens myself as a man of the Christian faith. That's just how I try to handle it.

But it is a core component of who I am and is an important aspect of what defines me as a person in this world.

I say this to warn you that 1.) I'm going to talk about Jesus and the Bible, 2.) 'm going to talk about homosexuals (a.k.a. "gays," "homos," "queers," "sodomites," "fags") and 3.) I find myself precluded from condemning those in the faith who disagree with me.

If you've made it this far, I have an experience today I'd like to share with you.

One that bespeaks not only of the wisdom we should seek from children but of understanding the differences between us and the differences in things -- particularly, in this case, a difference in what makes a small, plastic ball what it is.

In short, I think we've got a lot we can learn from children and about how we go about creating enemies that don't exist (as noted in my favorite passage in the Bible from Luke chapter 9):

46 Then there arose a reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest.

47 And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a child, and set him by him,

48 And said unto them, Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.

49 And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.

50 And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.

***

So ...

A group of guys get together at lunchtime twice a week to play pick-up basketball. We play at an Episcopal church, one that I don't attend but am involved in because they're depending on me to coach my son's basketball team through their church.

I attend another Episcopal church that has no gym and, as far as I can tell, no one who remotely cares to play sports.

We Episcopalians are but one sect of the larger Anglican Church. Among Anglicans, the issue of gay marriage is divisive. And so it is locally, too. The Episcopals in New Hampshire have elected a gay bishop. My church doesn't have as big of a problem with the issue as the church whose gym we play basketball in.

In fact, the larger church with the gym has decided not to give money to the association we share, the Diocese, in protest of the election of the gay bishop. That makes us not so kindred after all. But, as always, we're working through it.

The group of guys we have to play basketball is, for the most part, decidedly conservative. A number of them attended Bob Jones University. And, for the most part, we don't really tackle any issues (other than whether a ball hitting the top of the backboard is out or if it actually has to cross behind it).

***

There is one of my comrades, however, who shares my penchant for intellectual discussion of theological issues. He is a graduate of Bob Jones.

On Tuesday, I explained to him that the church he was sitting in was part of a larger Church that has pioneered the unchartered waters of gay marriage. This makes him a bit uncomfortable. I explain to him that, like a number of other members of the Anglican communion, this church does not agree with that adventure.

"Good for them," he tells me.

"I'm sure you think that," I say.

We discuss the nature of homosexuality as it relates to Christianity. We do this while naked men take showers to get themselves ready to head back to work. My position is not a particularly comfortable one, particularly in the overall setting I find myself in.

We discuss our Bible.

I explain that I think the words of St. Paul have been misinterpreted in regards to his letters to the Corinthians. That the commonly referred to condemnation of homosexuality is anything but. In fact, I say, his letter is absent the sexual neurosis we suffer from today and is more an instruction on how to best clear your mind to understand God.I point out that Paul was a revolutionary in his rejection of Jewish custom and his elemental doctrine that love comes first above things like, say, circumcision.

He tells me it says what it says.

I tell him the original Greek rendering isn't so conclusive as the later translations that are colored by the onset of homophobia in the Church. I tell him that central to my argument is that we don't always know what something means, because we value first the perceptions that come naturally to us.

He tells me about "hermeneutics" and "epistomology" and how to be a Christian you have to believe what the Bible says and that there is a standard for that.

I tell him how I agree, but that our understanding of what the Bible is actually telling us is inadequate because of our nature.

We talk about Greek terms like "arsenokoitai" and how we disagree about whether St. Paul lists the practice of homosexual intercourse as wrong or whether he's talking about the use of sex as an agent to exert power over another human being (ie. the boy prostitutues in the temples). I argue that sexual identity as a concept as we know it today wasn't a concept as such back then.

He tells me I'm being intellectually dishonest.

I tell him he's a fundamentalist, and that there's no use in trying to tell a fundamentalist there might be another, more-sophisticated intepretation of the Bible. And I ask him what possible personal motivation I would have to take such an unpopular position, particularly among a collection of sweaty, manly guys who generally espouse values that don't coincide with an acceptance of gay union.

He tells me it's easy to dismiss an argument by calling someone a fundamentalist.

I tell him agree.

I also tell him it's presumptuous and destructive to assume that I'm intellectually dishonest because I don't accept the notion that the Bible can only be interpreted one way. I tell him the Bible is not a dead document. It's wisdom is revealed to us over time.

He agrees.

I tell him subjugation based on race was not long ago justified through the Bible similarly to how persecution of homosexual identity is today -- a state of being that, quintessentially, is irrelevant to the Christian faith.

He argues, intelligently, that the Bible is explicit on this matter, but at no point were the human failings of racial subjugation based on race an accurate interpretation of the Bible by the parties involved.

I tell him that he and I suffer from an inability to agree that the Bible is open to interpretation by the same standard as so many other instances, like race, where politics and greed and hatred strong-armed their way to form new words and new conventional wisdom.

I tell him there is room for more understanding, particularly from an apostle who was known for his allusive, indirect method of communicating his points.

He tells me that, in this case, there isn't.

He tells me to prove that the concept of a loving, monogamous homosexual relationship wasn't a concept back then. I tell him to prove to me that it was. He reminds me of a statement I made to him the last time we discussed this. That "I'm not going to do your homework for you."

Notwithstanding the inherent flaw in trying to prove a negative, I accepted the challenge to re-introduce myself to all of the literature that I studied a couple of years ago to come to terms with this contentious issue.

And we both agreed we would see each other on Thursday, to play some ball.

***

And show up today we did.

Neither of us, however, were really in the mood to discuss the theological ramifications of sexual orientation.

My 7-year-old son came with me as part of a morning-with-Dad-at-work thing. He had played basketball there at the gym during the winter basketball season. One of the problems I had as a coach was getting the little kids to quit playing at the foosball table and to come learn how to play basketball instead.

I'm glad my son was there. It afforded me the opportunity reconnect myself with the core of what makes me a man of the Christian faith. A large part of it being the wisdom of children and the inherent truth that the least are the greatest.

My son enters the lockerroom as my friend and I are changing to go play.

He holds up a small, bubblegum-sized ball with a pattern that resembles a soccer ball.

"Look what I've got," my son says.

"You've got a soccer ball," my friend says.

"No," my son says.

"Oh, you've got a basketball?" my friend says. "Because you like basketball, right? Do you shoot that basketball?"

"No," my son says.

"That's because it's a soccer ball," my friend says.

"No," my son says. "It's a foosball."

I get the last bit of my battle armor on and head out the door.

And as I walk out, I can't help but say, "Yeah. That's just one of those things that's left to interpretation."

Thou Shalt Put No Other Rock Gods Before Me

In the span of 48 hours, I've met Tom Morello, shaken hands with Dan Marino and had a conversation on the phone with Harry Connick Jr.

And that doesn't make me a somebody. It just reiterates to me that I'm a nobody.

Tom Morello and Dan Marino are heroes of mine. The epitome of excellence in their respective fields.

Tom Morello plays the guitar with a wrench and, two nights ago, with his teeth. He's a guitar god with a brain and a conscience. These days, he's known as acoustic-solo-political-folk figure The Nightwatchman and the sonic sensei of the soon-to-be-reunited Rage Against The Machine.

Dan Marino was bigger than life to me when I was a child. My Mom was married to a guy from Ft. Lauderdale at the time who looked like Marino and indoctrinated me into the DolFans cult. It was a happy eye of the storm in my childhood. For me, Marino is the greatest quarterback of all time. I can say that because it's impossible to prove for sure, anyway. And my Dolphins hat has salt rings.

There's something about meeting your heroes. You don't know what to say, and, if you're me at least, you feel a little stupid. Like they might feel like they're supposed to do something more than smile, say 'hello,' sign an autograph or take a cell phone picture with you.

But I'll say this, and it's the thing that fans of people want to hear about the people they're fans of: Both those guys are, as the idolators like to say, "Cool Guys."

And isn't that what really matters? At least in terms of idolization? That they at least make you feel like they appreciate that you like them?

I can't say the same for Harry Connick Jr.

Not that he's not nice. He's cool enough, I guess. I just don't know anything about him, and therefore I don't care much about him, except that he's famous and I've always thought he seemed pretty smooth.

(Well, I did download some of his Christmas music and liked it ... and he's on Jay Leno a lot ... and he was Will Smith's pilot buddy who got offed by the aliens in "Independence Day" ... and he thinks SunCom gets it).

I wish I could say that me and Harry Connick Jr. were buddies.

But we aren't.

Maybe something about me not knowing anything about jazz. And maybe something about me telling him I'm sorry he was on hold because I was on the shitter.

I did Google him, though, with very little notice that I was supposed to talk with him this morning. And I watched one of his new music videos on YouTube. And I tried to give the impression that I was knowledgeable about his career.

No, we're not buddies.

Come to think of it, me and Tom Morello and Dan Marino aren't buddies, either.

But they're Cool Guys.

Guys who are only something if they're something to you.

'You Have Failed Me For The Last Time, Cleveland'

I have to give the Cleveland Cavaliers credit on hosting their first-ever NBA Finals.

Ben Harper's slide-guitar national anthem (a day before I get to see him and Tom Morello in concert, by the way) was a welcome -- in fact surprising, for corporate national television -- touch of rock-assness to a series that is sorely lacking in charisma.

And the whole montage of the cavalier sword obliterating the San Antonio Spurs' logo and going into a bombastic player introduction that crescendos with the majestic introduction of King James ... that's a symbol of a city hungry for a championship.

But Cleveland ... please don't do yourself in before the game even gets started. You're already outmatched as it is.

You don't play Darth Vader's empire theme to introduce an opposing team, emerging from behind a life-sized NBA Finals trophy, wearing all black and, similarly to the galactic empire, devoid of personality and all about the business at hand.

The only thing worse for Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia and Han Solo and the rest of the rebel crew watching with their veins bulging in their temples as the Dark Lord of the Sith force-chokes them into submission is hearing the ominous march.

In the face of their suffering, staring into the face of evil, the rebels can't help but think, "Why does this guy always get the coolest music? Nice."

I don't like the Spurs. Especially not since the Phoenix Suns got screwed out of an NBA finals appearance by their hand (the Spurs should sacrifice a lamb as supplication to the religion of inflexibility in interpreting rules).

But I have to say, as they emerge in their black uniforms for the starting line-up announcement, hated by so many for making the NBA so boring, with the Darth Vader theme pumping through a high-powered arena sound system, I can't help but think another championship is their DES-tiny.

It Must Just Be The Special Seasoning, Honey

I must be honest. I wouldn't write about this unless I got the opportunity to use a particular pairing of words that I don't typically find occasion to use.

Even still, it's a valid point.

I don't understand why it happens, but it happens.

Maybe there's some subversive cultural thing here that I'm missing. Some wisdom the 12th Century fishermen of the tropical Micronesian shores imparted. Some crucial ingredient to brew the true elixir of life.

But I'm guessing it's just laziness.



Give me a million years and I doubt I'll ever figure out how a restaurant or anyone else thinks it's OK to serve me a meal that includes as a prominent feature an animal whose intestines remain so prominently intact.

I know about chitlins, a.k.a. "fried pig's ass."

I know about cow-brain sandwiches.

And chocolate-covered chicken balls. No, that one's not real. I'm just going there with it.

And I know that shrimp are basically insects of the sea.

But please.

Please.

De-vein your shrimp.

Or in other words, cut out the poop shoot.