The Kids Aren't Alright

The Odd Boy lay down by the football field

Took out a slim volume of Mellarme

The centre-forward called him an imbecile

It's an odd boy who doesn't like Sport.

Sport, sport, masculine sport

Equips a young man for society

Yes sport turns out a jolly good sort

It's an odd boy who doesn't like Sport. -Vivían Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Band

Night time in Treetown. Whatever it is you might be doing, there's something happening on a massive scale. A sporting event is being held about a mile away, and thousands of young whips are following it closely on their television screens. Walking down the middle of the street in my neighborhood, you could hear the game, its every moment narrated with alacrity, blasting out of TVs in nearly every apartment.

Any occurrence which favors the home team brings howls and yelps from throats sticky with beer. A turn for the worse and there's rage in the air, just as frightening and only slightly less dangerous than their elation. If they win, there'll be a riot. If they lose, expect random acts of aggravated vandalism and a general mood of nastiness. Stay indoors and pray they pass out drunk before too much damage is done.

I remember sports. They tried it on me in Junior high school. I was assigned a grimy little locker which I could stuff with filthy laundry and cali my own. Showers were a sort of hell where certain boys would scream deafeningly, creating an atmosphere which in retrospect reminds me of the fire pits from Fellini's Satyricon.

I played football exactly once. They stood us in formation, with our hands on our knees. A whistle sounded, and I was on the ground being stomped. Fuck this, I reasoned, and for the rest of that autumn I climbed a tree and read Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Fuck you all. I'm reading and I can't be bothered now.

Obviously, I've got an attitude. My attitude has been shaped almost exclusively by the behavior of the athletically inclined. Why is it these creatures begin to fester and become dangerous over the incidental outcome of a game? Now, games in themselves are potentially healthy and exciting ways for people to get together and blow off steam. Problems arise when all the game does is to generate more steam. Soon the spectators explode all over each other and anyone who gets in their way. Suddenly it's far from sportsmanlike. It's terrifying.

Baseball, being a traditionally gentlemanly game, is fascinating. Periodic trips to see the Toledo Mud Hens have become a part of my exploratory American research lifestyle. The crowd is always bizarre  and one feels as if Kurt Vonnegut wrote the script. When people really care about something, it's nice to see them get enthusiastically involved.

Hockey, which at first comes across as a blood-spattered brawl, truly affects people's lives in a penetrating way. The Stanley Cup is a sort of Grail, taken quite seriously by believers of the Puck. So I'm not here to piss anyone off. It's not nice to piss people off, and an enraged hockey fan could be dangerous.

Detroit rioted when the Tigers won too many games a few years back. Remember? It makes some of us wish for failure. So, too, do I wish that all of these people could pay attention to something besides who's on top. Just about every time I write a piece for this paper, I find a way to complain about that much abused phrase, "We're Number One." As long as this slogan comes out of these people's mouths, we are aligning ourselves with rudiments of genocide and ethnic cleansing. This I believe!

Yet I feel for those who exist in the grip of the Sport culture. I've a friend who grew up in a family of athletes, wherein he was expected to devote himself to football like his brothers did. Instead, this fellow's life revolves around cinema and alternative radio. He's even chucked the jocular alcohol mandate, and enjoys a well-organized, creative existence. Yet the upbringing is still there: months ago he awoke shuddering from a nightmare! In his dream he was pounding brewskies, and Bob Ufer was chastising him from the grave for having turned his back on a career in football! I was touched by this particular nightmare; the image of beers and Ufer is a sobering one.

I have begun to catch a glimpse of why basketball is of itself beautiful thing. Friends have explained to me: it's improvisation. It's Jazz. I felt that quite distinctly when Roy Brooks and his Aboriginal Percussion Choir performed an exciting tribute to the game. He had actual players dancing around the ensemble, bouncing balls and making shots, while another dancer blew a whistle and impersonated the referee. Jesus, that was beautiful. For a moment I saw the light and had to restrain myself from jumping up there and joining in. These were good men, happy with the sport. It was cool.

Back on the streets of Ann Arbor, the behavior of the mob who live by the scores is another thing altogether. Because the hate culture takes over, and I can't see the beauty anymore. Can't see for lookin. See broken glass, bloody noses, and a high school boy who was caught in the wrong part of the crowd at the wrong time and got stomped into the street. For awhile, the reports from the hospital said he could have been paralyzed by his injuries. Fortunately, he recovered. But doesn't this sort of thing make you nervous?

For years I have been personally terrorized by jock brutality. Every time there was a home game during the autumn, my fence would get kicked in. Today there's only posts. Testosterone smashes redwood planks with a swift kick. I ran out of patience when my fence ran out of boards. Also when some drunken ass dragged a painted mannequin off of our porch and smashed it in the street. See it? A female in effigy being thrown to the pavement again and again. If he does this to a statue, what will happen when he tries to interact with a living woman? Doesn't this sort of thing, I ask, make you nervous?

Who are these people? Think back. Around 1980, the administrative shirts at the U-M started talking about "Redirecting The University." They clearly stated that their goal was to "attract a different sort  of person to the U-M."What this meant was that they were going to redirect Ann Arbor, by attracting a different sort of person to Ann Arbor. And this they have done.

The emphasis at the U-M is visibly focused upon athletics and business training (I assume there's a difference between the two). Humanities are going strong, but the direction of the big flow has surely changed, as per instructions in the script. The crowd is getting really weird. Narrow-mindedness is in resurgence. Some of the faces and the minds within are twisted with intolerance. I have never seen such a crop of materialistic, violent, misanthropic upstarts. And I've been watching this town for a good many years.

The kids aren't alright. Nobody's taught them how to party properly , which is quite important. To party in the streets is a joy and should be done intelligently, creatively. Clean up after yourselves. Don't tear the town up, and you'd damned well better not start hurting other people, or you can get the fuck out of here. But I could talk like this forever and it wouldn't really affect what these young folks are like. I'd say we've got a problem, and it's not going away.

Let's thank all of those who are responsible. Especially those who sired such repugnant caligulas and raised them to spit in the faces of strangers. I've mentioned the hate-scrawls which decorate the stalls of the washrooms on campus. Rarely have I seen such venom displayed in the noble arena of graffiti. Now here's an update: brothers of color responded to racist inscriptions by demanding that the chumps affix their names to the bold, hateful statements. Interestingly, the author of the most ethnically offensive graffiti now signs himself as "Wolverine." That's wonderful. Thank you whoever you are for being so concise. I can see the writing on the wall.