Three Chiefs

In The Wackness, a film I saw last night described by a good friend in a dozen or less words as “Hey, I’m Josh Peck, look at how serious I can be. The end,” has a moment just before Peck and Olivia Thirlby consummate the thing when Thirlby lets Peck’s character know what his problem is:

“Know what your problem is, Shapiro? It's that you just have this really shitty way of looking at things, ya know? I don't have that problem. I just look at the dopeness. But you, it's like you just look at the wackness, ya know?”

The quote is as tired as the movie’s refusal to let any rap except De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest and Biggie be Significant. The whole movie is a spectacular failure, in fact, meaning not that it was outstandingly terrible but rather that it aimed so high that even in missing, it was a pretty alright flick. If all goes according to plan, in the coming months you will find that I am very intrigued by the unspectacular, which is perhaps what makes me referencing The Wackness in the first paragraph of my first post so appropriate.

Jon Greenberg has done his best over at the four letter (that’s ESPN for those of you scoring at home) in showing us just how truly average Mark Buehrle is, but there is much more to be said on the subject. When the ordinary transcends itself to become extraordinary, as the White Sox lefty did earlier today, it’s special. It’s one of the principal reasons I watch sports, in fact. But all this for another time.

I did not get to see Mark Buehrle’s perfect game from my humble living room in New York. It wasn’t televised here. Rather, I was tuned in to Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals between the New York Rangers and the Vancouver Canucks. In The Wackness, the drug dealers and criminals of New York City’s underground bash Mayor Giuliani with such frequency (all in an attempt by director Jonathan Levine to “establish the era,” I suppose) that you almost begin to dislike him – that is, until you remember that all he did was make Manhattan’s streets safe for the good guys. With 1.6 seconds left on the clock (after a dubious icing call on New York) and the Rangers up 3-2, the camera cut to Rudy sitting in the crowd with his trademark glasses looking bigger as ever, giving his hometown Rangers the applause they deserved.

It was a remarkable game. Those who say pre-lockout hockey was boring probably did not witness it. And when it was all said and done, when Mike Richter had made every save they needed from him, and Brian Leetch had played the hockey of his life and been named the first American to win the Conn Smythe, when Esa Tikkanen had aggravated and assaulted every Canuck on the ice, the dulcet tones of John Davidson rained down, “No more 1940!” And a few minutes later, when Messier, the big C adorning his jersey, hoisted the 36 pound Cup above his head in a moment of untainted triumph – that, my friends, is the dopeness. I think it’s important to appreciate it. When on For Reverend Green, Avey Tare of Animal Collective lets out what sounds like decades of anguish and anger in a few moments of primal, and yes, Animal shrieking, that is the dopeness. The nine minute scene in Boogie Nights, as Dickey will attest more than I, where Mark Wahlberg, Tom Jane and John C. Reilly make their ill-fated trip to swindle a coke addict out of his money, is the dopeness. When Ernest Hemingway says something three times as profound as a lesser author in one third of the words, it’s the dopeness. And we should be thankful for the dopeness, just as I am thankful not to have come of age in the mid-nineties, lest I would have used a phrase like it without even the faintest whiff of irony.

But the film is not entirely correct, in this humble author’s estimation. It is also important to look at the negative aspects of things in life. They may not always uplift you, but they’re a whole hell of a lot funnier, and doesn’t it feel good to bring someone down to your level through an act as simple and painless as judging them? Theodore Roosevelt, that bro, said that

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

But fuck that. I tend not only to defend but also to judge those who have failed, no matter how noble or ignoble their pursuits, pretty quickly. I am resigned to the coolness and timidity of my soul, if only it means I can take one last shot at Mike Lupica or people who insist Blade Runner is essential viewing. After all, how would we know the light without the dark? How would we know to appreciate the movement on Mo Rivera’s cut fastball if Aaron Heilman didn’t exist? The wackness is all around us, and we would do well to appreciate it as much as we appreciate its counterpart.

So go ahead and call this an introduction. I will be tackling a “real” issue when I write next, and will be talking most things culture in my posts at Three Chiefs. Although you wouldn’t know it by this brief piece, people have been known in the past to occasionally chuckle at what I write, so I will do my best on that front as well. In Dickey’s post below, he gives an admirable call for journalism with a capital j at ESPN. I took a course in journalism once. I don’t remember much, and so will leave you with this succinct statement about The Wackness.

You probably shouldn’t see it. You do not even get to see OLIVIA THIRLBY TITS.

Out,
Moss