There But for the Grace of God Go the Big Four

Though Alexandre Dumas was speaking of a sea man when he wrote, “an old sailor, at once the pilot and captain, looked on with that egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have escaped yesterday and which may overtake them tomorrow,” he could easily have been speaking about the sportsman.

This season we’ve witnessed Mourinho’s bizarre unraveling at Chelsea and Gary Neville’s Valencia debacle. In the recent past we’ve seen David Moyes’ failure and Fernando Torres’ goal drought. These men endured hardship and humiliation in a most public forum, inspiring pity and cruelty around the world. The jokes made at their expense were merciless and plentiful, but they were rarely made by peers.

The desperate plight of David Moyes at Manchester United was mocked relentlessly in the media and by fans–but never by other managers. In Moyes’ struggles, the managerial world could see their own. It doesn’t pay to tempt fate and what happened to Moyes was widely agreed to have been the inexorable destiny of any manager who followed Sir Alex. 

While respect amongst colleagues would appear to be an admirable quality in all professions, certain personalities on the tennis circuit feel otherwise. 

The tennis world has been criticized for being too nice. There is an outcry for more rivalries like Connors-McEnroe–replete with open hostility and smack talking. The outcriers assert that Nick Kyrgios and Ernests Gulbis are “refreshing” in their hubris.

 Kyrigos incited critisicsm from players and fans when an on court mic caught his mumblings during a match against Stan Wawrinka. Kyrgios, speaking of Stan’s girlfriend, said, “[Thanasi] Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate.” Kyrgios was fined for his comment and chastised by Roger Federer (the closest thing to being excoriated in the polite tennis world). Federer said, “I think we all agree that [Kyrgios] definitely crossed the line by a long shot. We’re not used to that kind of talk in tennis. I know in other sports it’s quite common, maybe normal. Not in our sport, really. I think it’s normal that the tour comes down hard on him and explains to him that it’s not the way forward.” Federer didn’t come down too hard on the young Australian and Wawrinka himself only asked that the ATP dispense justice–this is, after all, the gentlemen’s game. 

Perhaps less inflammatory, but plenty audacious, Gulbis called the Big Four boring. He said their press interviews are “crap”. He said tennis is missing “war, blood, emotion”. Tennis players give press conferences that are, like most professional athletes, exceedingly politically correct. They typically cite luck as a factor in their victories and refuse to be baited into saying anything negative about their opponents. 

Gulbis was ranked 40 at the time of his comments. The comments alone were the most notable thing he had contributed in some time. He possessed a luxury the Big Four did not–anonymity. The Big Four would be subject to immense scrutiny if they strayed from the standard party line, “I played exceptionally today and my opponent put up an admirable fight,” 

Additionally, the Big Four are endowed with wisdom. Their own careers have had dips and and having reached the highest heights (unlike Gulbis), they know the devastation of a comedown. Perhaps Gulbis, unaware that a drop from the top spot is the most painful, is unable to empathize and recognize that a brutally honest press conference could be counterproductive.    

While most people are thankful that Djokovic has greatly reined in his immature behavior and controversial comments (and impersonations) over the years, there is a population who decry the sanitization of his public image. Djokovic, they argue, has been peer pressured into behaving like a bland tennis robot. 

Boris Becker has tried to bait Federer into saying something headline worthy, declaring that is it common knowledge that Novak and Roger do not get along. Federer would not take the bait and Becker is the one who ends up looking provocative and stupid. We began with a discussion about empathy. 

How much of the political correctness in the tennis world is due to that “egotistical pity men feel for a misfortune that they have escaped yesterday and which may overtake them tomorrow?” A great deal, I believe.  

The Big Four always express the belief and hope that Rafa will be back and play at the level ‘we know he is capable of’, though all evidence points to a slow, but real, demise. Do they believe recovery is possible? Or do they espouse such views out of charitable and empathetic motivation? 

Tennis is a lonely sport in which the only people you can relate to are your bitter foes–who else knows the devastation of losing in the final of a Grand Slam? Tennis is a sport so mentally grueling and emotionally taxing that shared experiences forge friendships and respect that can transcend rivalry. The Big Four’s empathy is no act. It is a sincere product of the common experience of going through the greatest highs and lowest lows that only a chosen few at the apexes of their fields can understand. 

Polite answers and a refusal to be provoked are not entirely rooted in self-preservation and the avoidance of controversy. The list of athletes touted as the next big thing who fail to reach their potential is almost as long as the list of career journeymen who never make it out of relative obscurity. Given the luck and timing required to have the sort of athletic career that makes you a global superstar, it is easy to imagine that a few points played differently or an injury or two could be the difference between a Federer career and a Monfils career. The perspicacity that comes with success is a huge part of tennis’ “too nice” problem. 

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On Injury

Injury is an unfortunate, but inevitable part of sport. Some players are lauded for remaining largely injury free through long careers (Giggs) and others are dismissed and mocked for being too fragile (RVP). “How much more could he have achieved if he hadn’t had those terrible injuries?” will forever be a popular topic. The media tirelessly covers player injuries and does so to such an extent that it sometimes seems exploitative. Fans also feel at liberty to express their opinions on the validity of tackles, fouls, timeouts, and trainer summons. 

Tennis and soccer are at opposite ends of the spectrum for in-match injury credulity. Tennis fans are generally receptive to any hint of injury and its impact on the player’s performance. After a slip or fall, it is not unusual for a player to lapse mentally for a couple games and fans do not hold it against a player. Conversely, in soccer we expect a player to get up and carry on at 100% after a crunching (but fair) tackle because soccer players are infamously dramatic. Time wasting and running down the clock are not a factor in tennis, which might account for greater sympathy. 

As is true in any sport, tennis injuries are over scrutinized and given too much attention. Commentators tirelessly wish the injured player well and (generously) attribute poor form to ‘lingering’ this or that. At the 2013 US Open, American Mardy Fish’s heart condition was covered to absurdity. Overindulgent injury coverage is problematic because it’s boring and uninteresting, but mostly because it takes away from live play.

Injuries are something that should be mentioned once and not again. It’s like a friend telling you she’s training for the marathon. It’s good information to know, but please do not share the minute details or give a minute by minute update.

If the player is competing, it’s fair to assume that is not a grave injury and therefore shouldn’t be given so much air time. But have you considered the broadcaster’s perspective? It is in their best interest to spin the fantastical yarn of the injury odyssey. If the sensationalist tone is not kept up, viewers (with their tragically short attention spans) may get bored and start watching WWE or Tosh.0 instead. Injury as entertainment is a distasteful but very real plot line in sports media. 

It is unfair to suggest that a player act against his own best interest for the entertainment value of a match. The dishonor of a tennis retirement is sometimes rooted in perceived gamesmanship or tanking. Djokovic is still haunted by his early career habit of retiring from numerous matches (sore throat was one instance). The idea is that a player knows he is going to lose so he attempts to save face by chalking up the lousy performance to an injury. Tennis players must make this call on their own and suffer the consequences. If an athlete is lambasted for making the right decision for his or her career and health, there’s something wrong with public perception of tennis retirements. It’s like when Gatsby dies. No one cares when the drama is over. They care more about the injury-hype than the player. This attention is paid selfishly because fans don’t want the match to end. If a player appears to be cramping or clutches his stomach the commentators can speak of nothing else. It’s like when there are rumors about an old (and irrelevant band) reuniting. Interestingly, the retirement equivalent in soccer, asking to be subbed off, is regarded without incredulity. 

Fans want to see players dig in and in both tennis and soccer, fans are gratuitously reverent of self-sacrifice. The line between persevering to one’s own detriment and trying one’s absolute hardest is hard for even the player to identify. Soccer players receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to making the decision to remove themselves from the field of play. The immense difficulty of securing a place in the XI renders the thought that a player would voluntarily elect to be subbed off unthinkable. The ‘sub him off’ rolling hand gesture makes your heart sink for the player. When a player must make the difficult request to be subbed off it is unlikely you will see him in the following match. 

While their decision to self-sub is largely respected, soccer players are sometimes shortchanged when it comes to going to ground. Gamesmanship injuries are so common in soccer that commentators feel at liberty to judge the legitimacy of each foul and more often that not, commentators declare a fair tackle and that the player should have “done more to stay on his feet”.

Herein lies the difference between the way injury is perceived in tennis versus soccer. Since they are few and far between, tennis injuries are treated with a solemnity not granted in soccer. Additionally, with only two people on court and no subs, injury must be dealt with seriously and immediately. The frequency of tackles and diving in soccer means that each incident is received with a level of skepticism. This is not to say that tennis is free of gamesmanship injury.

The halt in play when Victoria Azarenka used an injury timeout to kill Sloane Stephen’s momentum was ten minutes. In those ten minutes Azarenka was able to recenter herself and unnerve Sloane, who had been close to an upset. This lengthy timeout is in contrast to soccer, in which injuries/fouls/treatment are nonstop and par for the course. The stoppage time at the end of a soccer match rarely exceeds five minutes. Add this to the first half stoppage time and you have roughly eight minutes of timeout for twenty-two players.

If injuries were as common in tennis as they are in soccer matches, it’s to hard imagine that players would be allowed such long timeouts. Skepticism and cynicism account for why injuries are either respected as authentic or vilipended as false. Tennis retirements are are considered throwing the towel in, but in-match injuries are treated as legitimate. Soccer is in the opposite–unless you ask to be subbed off, you’re just another whinger. 

Fans wouldn’t have such strong opinions about injuries, sub-offs, and retirements if coverage didn’t focus so operatically on them. If injury news were relayed simply as fact rather than as entertainment, all parties would be better off. But as long as gamesmanship exists, so too will injury fodder. 

William Richert's Third Party Vendor Outfit

I ordered a movie called Aren’t You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye from an Amazon third party vendor assuming it would arrive in a sanitized package with a printed receipt. The movie stars River Phoenix and is directed by the author of the book on which the movie is based: William Richert. My doorman handed me a padded manila envelope. Inside was a handwritten note, a copy of another Richert movie, and a DVD that was as homemade as anything I’ve ever seen. The printed DVD cover that sits between the plastic case and the transparent sleeve was a pixelated photo printed on non-glossy printer paper. Richert, or his assistant, must burn the DVDs and print the sleeves individually as orders trickle in.

The manila envelope had a return address in the top left corner--Richert's home or office address. The idea that this copy of the movie has been burned for me personally, and not mass produced in some Chinese factory, was so quaint as to be touching. When I opened the DVD case and saw that Richert had inscribed a message to me, I had a visceral reaction I can't explain. 

Having not yet watched the movie I ordered, the only association I had with Richert when I saw his note to me was his character in My Own Private Idaho, Bob Pigeon. Pigeon is an updated version of Shakespeare's Falstaff in Henry IV. Richert's Google search result confirms that his role in the Gus Van Sant movie is what he is best known for in the entertainment world. My Own Private Idaho is an excellent movie, but it has not reached a large audience and Richert is a relative unknown. My reaction to Richert's acknowledging my existence was not about celebrity or remote star stricken-ness. This was no brush with fame. 

Did you ever have a physical piece of something you could only love in the abstract?

Richert’s handwriting was a letter from Bob Pigeon. It was a note from Falstaff himself. Receiving the note was sort of like when you’re a kid and you go to Disneyland and seek out Mickey’s autograph. It’s not that you believe the guy in the costume is really Mickey—it’s that you have a personal and tangible connection to the character.  It’s the reification of something fictional. And what was a one way relationship previously now has a lane running back toward you.

I love My Own Private Idaho in the way that you only love a few movies ever. I read every review, essay, and interview that was even remotely related to the film. I watched James Franco's alternate version of movie in which he compiled unused footage into a sort of elegy to the late River Phoenix My Own Private River. It is the sort of movie that makes you feel you must watch more movies--to discover more things that make you feel this way. But it's a futile search and an inevitable disappointment because there are very few movies that will have the impact--and a number of factors have to align for the impact to be felt. You have to be at the right stage in your life, watch it with the right company, and be in the right frame of mind. My post-life-changing movie, movie watching binges have never produced the intended result (otherwise I would be constantly watching movies and having revelations).

For me, movie obsessions die hard. I've watched countless bad movies because they involved an actor or director whose work elsewhere inspired me. I watched Gone Baby Gone, starring Casey Affleck, because he was a supporting character in Good Will Hunting. I hunted down a used copy of Full Metal Jacket Diary to see what Matthew Modine had to say. Every single Vietnam War book I've read is because of Apocalypse Now. I wrote a term paper on the parallels between the Odyssey and Coppola's The Godfather. I watched Stand By Me on repeat one for a week then I watched the entire River Phoenix canon, which led me to order Richert's Aren’t You Even Gonna Kiss Me Goodbye.

So you can see how William Richert's knowing who I am could inspire an unidentifiable feeling. He knew my name, even if just for a second, and that made my world smaller. He sent me his other movie, Winter Kills, and that means he appreciated that I sought out his work. Right? Because Winter Kills is available on Amazon for $24.88 if you want the DVD (Amazon itself, not a third party vendor) or cheaper if you stream through Prime. This is a guy who just wants to share his work. 

It's hard to remain emotionally uninvolved with objects of affection--whether they be fictional characters or whatever it is we refer to by the name 'film'. I don't imagine I would have had the same reaction if I had never seen Richert play Pigeon. Had I not, I would have found his personal note a nice gesture and nothing more. I've been to book signings and the inscriptions are a nice souvenir. But really those signed flyleaves are the cultured equivalent of a Disneyland tee shirt, a high brow Hard Rock Cafe tumbler. 

The note from Richert wasn't an interesting piece of trivia, or a funny outtake, or a deleted scene. It didn't illuminate my understanding of My Own Private Idaho or make me love it any more (I couldn't possibly). What the note gifted me was a tiny piece of history that mattered to me. It was no different than taking a pebble from the beach after one of those days you know you'll remember your whole lifetime.  

Judge Me Not For the Color of My Jersey

In Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby acknowledges that his fixation with Arsenal is such a part of his identity that to many friends and colleagues, to hear to the word Arsenal is to think immediately of Nick. When you self-identify with a club, you inherit its glories and legends, but also its crimes and infamy. And when you walk down the street wearing your club's jersey you are, for better or worse, subjecting yourself to appraisal by strangers.

Anyone who has worn a jersey in an environment where strangers must exist together for extended amounts of time (at an airport, in a theme park line, on a train) will have experienced the jersey inspired conversation at some point. It begins with thoughtful eye contact that is more serious than accidental. Then comes the "can I address you?" eyebrow raise, the perfunctory pointer finger directed at the jersey by way of explanation, and the pregnant pause you must take before speaking to a stranger to indicate that this isn't something the speaker often does.

Once conversation ensues, there is an unofficial assessment to decide whether both parties are at the same fandom level. You might be deflated to find out that the stranger is just a dabbler who knows the marquee players. Or you might be delighted to realize that someone else feels as strongly as you do about the dire need to quit switching Azpilicueta from left back to right back to left back ad infinitum and just keep him at right back where he belongs. There is momentary closeness and you reflect that you are glad to have worn your jersey today.

There are certain phases in life when people grow close and then part ways. In the intervening years you grow, change, and possibly put on weight. Then comes your ten year high school reunion. And though your classmates look nothing like they did a decade ago, they expect that you will look as if you were just let out of fifth period and vice versa. They have in their minds an image of you that is hard to let go--so they treat you as if you are someone who ceased to exist ten years ago. You find that it is difficult to assert your present day persona, but easy to slip back into the role prescribed for you. You do what's easy.

This is what it's like when a stranger strikes up a conversation with you about the jersey you are wearing. You play into the role of ever-hopeful Liverpudlian, ars gratia artis Gunner, or possession-obsessed Cule. It's an interesting experience to have your personality associated with, and distilled down to,  that of a club which has been formed over hundreds of years. It can be flattering, delusional, and completely off-base at once.

In May 2014, I was wearing a USMNT jersey in Philadelphia. As I crossed the street a guy with the same USMNT jersey enthusiastically greeted me. In that "Hey!" was shared excitement for the upcoming World Cup. In August 2015, I was wearing a Real Madrid jersey at Arthur Ashe stadium. I watched Rafael Nadal unravel at the US Open and cheered for his opponent Fabio Fognini. Most of the crowd was behind Nadal, including three Spanish speaking girls behind me. In response to my enthusiasm for Fognini I heard one of the girls say something in a disdainful tone about a certain "Madridista". My little sister, eight years old at the time, was wearing a Chelsea jersey at a hotel. The doorman excitedly asked who her favorite player was, clearly a supporter himself. A grown man found kinship with a child over something as trivial as a jersey. I have a hundred stories like these where a jersey has inspired friendship, eye rolling, curiosity, or a line of questioning designed to determine whether my support was soi-disant or bonafide.

Imagine wearing some other facet of your true identity on your sleeve and having strangers approach you based on the tidbit of information. Some of us wear things of this nature: wedding bands, religious accessories, military uniforms, medical bracelets. And then there are the image and status items we don with the express desire to be seen as a particular type of someone: cowboy boots, mohawks, ripped jeans, Nirvana tees, fake glasses, flannel shirts. The difference between the two categories (which are often conflated) is that the former has a greater sense of authenticity while the latter is meant to inculcate style. A wedding band means you're married--wearing cowboy boots by no means entails that you are a cowboy. The jersey falls somewhere in between.

Yes, there is a certain continental appeal attached to being a soccer supporter over, say, being a hockey or baseball fan. But no, you do not believe you are a professional footballer. The trend element can render the jersey as inauthentic as a non-Lumberjack flannel shirt wearer and land someone in the second category described above. But there are, of course, fans who have no other motivation than to support their club. Wearing a jersey is both an active and passive act. You are presenting yourself in one way. The world is viewing you in another. Sometimes the two views overlap.

Obviously, what a stranger makes of you based on your attire should not inform what you choose to wear. This is a grade school lesson. But in cataloging a few of the unexpected jersey based interactions I've had, I've reminded myself that we all crave ways to identify and categorize other people. While assuming certain truths about someone based on their club of choice is different that judging their watch or car, it is still a base desire to equate one small detail with a sweeping generalization. Sharing a facet of your identity outwardly creates an opportunity to be oversimplified. To acquaintances especially, your club ties may be your defining factor. You will become flatter in their minds, but you will exist where you may have been a shapeless mass before. Is it worse to be flat or shapeless?

An American in Futbol

At the Exploratorium in San Francisco, there are a number of interactive exhibits on social behavior. One such exhibit is spread throughout an entire gallery. It's a simple setup. On a waist-high post are two oversized buttons--one red and one blue.

There are four or five of the posts spread around the gallery, all within shouting distance of one another. A large screen is divided into two halves and keeps track of how many times the red button is pushed and how many times the blue button is pushed. For each time you press the button, you get one point.

Kids and adults begin to push the buttons, unsure of what it will lead to. When they realize that hitting the buttons make their "team"'s score go up, they press rapidly and begin to communicate with strangers pressing their same hued buttons. Observing someone furiously invested in hitting a button compels bystanders to adopt the same behavior with the adjacent, rival button. The other posts begin to populate as red and blue teams are self-formed. The team members--strangers who have never met, some young children, some grandparents--urge one another on loudly.

You now have pairs of people standing side by side, slamming buttons as if their lives depend on it. The button pushing is to no end. The scores, it seems, would continue to go up infinitely. The spectacle is something to behold. The exhibit is supposed to remind us how easily and arbitrarily rivalries and teams can form.

There is nothing fundamental about which team you align yourself with. Essentially, which button is open? Which stranger is yelling more loudly in your direction? That alone is the criteria for team selection.

It's unromantic to think this way, though. We like to think we pick our clubs because we identify with them on a meaningful, even spiritual, level. We pick them because we share values, beliefs, and overarching ideology. We pick them and they pick us; it is a symbiotic relationship. Ideally we are born into our clubs, in which case, they were part of us even before we came to be.

Not everyone is brought into the world with a vested interest in one club over the others. And so we each have a story of how we transformed into the crazed, delusional supporter you have before you today.  Americans with European football allegiances are especially interested in "how did you pick your club?" stories since so few of us have generations of supporters in our families. I'll tell you mine.

In the suburbia where I grew up, my little brother played in a league where each team was named after a well-known professional club. I could easily have picked Ajax or Inter, but Chris made Chelsea so I rooted for Chelsea U-8s and then I rooted for Chelsea FC.

We like all kinds of origin narratives--football partisanship is no different. We like to know how our favorite bands form, where did our parents meet, what was your first job, and so no. We love to impose and derive meaning from coincidence and happenstance. It's a thrill to imagine that there was something fated about the selection of our clubs as there must have been with the selection of our soulmates. Whatever path (the more circuitous the more destined) led us to our fandoms is proof that we belong. I refuse to believe that Chelsea's coming into my life was anything but part of the master plan. If Chris had been cut from Chelsea he'd have played for Aston Villa. Where would I be, then? Certainly not a Villa supporter.

There is a more deliberate purpose to our real and imagined origin stories. In our heart of hearts we tell ourselves these stories with the hope that our origin story will be our children's. I have no dad and granddad who held season tickets in the Shed End. Instead, I have youth Princeton soccer. And so shall my daughter and her daughter after that. And, for them, there will be no questions of belonging because I will gift to them the greatest facet of identity within my power--baby photos clad in Chelsea jerseys.

And after a certain number of generations the story will become myth and it will be as good--nay, better--than the hooligan grandfather I once yearned for. In mining for these ulterior motivations in myself, in facing what could be a nihilist view of first generation club selection, I am actually strengthening the bond I have to my club. Martin Sheen said, "Love is not a sweet thing, but a terribly painful endeavor because it requires total honesty." If he is right, I certainly love my club.

The choices we make, not our inheritances, are what form our identities. Isn't that what the sorting hat taught us? It is the old, and wildly misconveyed, adage: blood is thicker than water. That is, the blood of the covenant (given voluntarily) is thicker than the water of the womb (from which you are birthed unwittingly).

I can't speak for all Americans, but I have a dread fear of being 'found out'. I loathe the label 'poser'. Would my Chelsea support stack up against someone who doesn't have to wake up at 7 AM to watch the match? Against someone who attended their first FA cup match at age five? I, like my forefathers before me, am determined to give my children what I didn't have: freedom from the tyranny of neophytism. What I have lacked, I will provide.

Musical.ly: An Unexamined App is not Worth Downloading

The app is called musical.ly and it’s the eleventh most popular free app in the Apple app store. Its constituents are called “musers”. Musers select an audio clip and record a video lip syncing or dancing to the audio. Unlike Dubsmash, musical.ly allows musers to follow and like one another’s “musicals”. There is a leaderboard with rankings of the musers with the most “hearts” (likes) updated day over day.

My sister is an avid muser at 12 years old. And she is the Virgil to my Dante in the hellish, comical, and absurd world of musical.ly. Most musers fall in between the ages of ten and 16. Most are Brandy Melville girls or wannabes of such types. Many of the girls look older because heavy makeup is the rule rather than the exception. Instagram brows, dark lipstick, Kylie Jenner nails, and heavy eye makeup can make 14 look more like 18.

One of the most popular songs on musical.ly is Drake’s “How About Now”. The audio snippet goes as follows:
You ain’t really fuck with me way back then girl, how ‘bout now?
Cause I’m up right now and you suck right now

It makes sense when Drake raps these words. He’s an adult and old enough to have a “way back then” period in his life. I watched more than twenty muser’s #howboutnow tagged musicals and they all followed the same basic format. Drake’s song opens with a series of baby photos and then dramatically cuts to the muser singing sultrily into the front-facing camera—how bout now?! it demands. There’s an implicit wow-factor at work here. Following the collage of what are literally infant photos, the present appearance of the muser is revealed and meant to elicit a WOAH, that child grew up to become…that slightly taller child wearing burgundy lipstick? When the “now” you still has braces and the walls of your bedroom are hot pink—talk about bathos.

The same incongruity is presented when kids rap and sing about their “exes”. They’re tweens. Many of the videos are clearly shot in the backseat of mom or dad’s car, replete seatbelts cutting into the undersides of chins still swathed in baby fat.

Dubsmash, a comparable lip syncing app, works because you choose who to share your silliness with by sending it directly to them. There is no public profile for strangers or future employers to discover.  

Most muser’s unintentional comedy is rooted in the disconnect between their being terribly self-conscious and not at all self-aware—a hallmark of adolescence. Irony, sarcasm, and dark humor are not yet a fact of life. So a lot of the musicals are painfully earnest—even the ones tagged #comedy. When you see tween girls rapping about their “man” and using mildly profane language, there isn’t much to laugh with them about. You can only laugh at the absurdity of the videos. You have to wonder—what do these kids believe they are creating? Do they think it’s art?

Is it?

Originality is not particularly valued in musical.ly. From what I can glean, a great counterfeit is the most heavily rewarded type of musical. The entire concept of lip-syncing is derivative, so perhaps it’s apposite that the app’s luminaries are difficult to distinguish from one another. Musical.ly is the ultimate testament to capitalism. The song selection, camera work, makeup, and facial expressions are controlled entirely by the desire to imitate what is a proven success and acquire profit (hearts and followers).

I’m in a strange limbo where I can understand why my tweenage sister finds the app fun and worthy of hours of time spent—you can self-indulgently share your music taste and face/body and accumulate followers, the ultimate proof of self-worth— but I also find it stupid and embarrassing. I’d surmise that people older than mid-teen can’t indulge unironically because the app is so vain and self-aggrandizing. That being said, I made a wholehearted foray into the musical.ly world knowing no one I know was likely to be on it.

I could not, for my life, figure out how one prominent muser made her movements so sharp. Her camera work was enviable. So as millennials are wont to do, I looked up a tutorial on youtube. Admittedly, I felt some shame in doing so, but the muser had a channel with exactly what I was looking for. The channel and tutorial’s existence was consoling in some ways because I could rationalize that my desire for a step-by-step guide to lip syncing and gesturing was shared by enough people to create a demand for the tutorial I sought (warped, I know). The muser’s channel had many videos and lots of hate. I scrolled down to comments and the top-voted comment was: I can't believe I just watched a video on how to lip sync and add hand motions whilst filming. Wtf am I doing? The comment had 410 likes as of 1/5/16 at 11:40 AM. The comment acknowledges the ridiculousness of seeking out guidance from an internet famous tween in order to perform two straightforward actions.

At 22, the commenter’s final question resonated all too powerfully with me—wtf am I doing?

The musicals aren’t tongue-in-cheek, which is offensive to my sensibilities. But the reason I don’t tell my little sister to rein in her cringe-worthy red lipstick, Drake rapping, “goddamn, goddamn” videos that she will no doubt regret is that, in fact, I do get it. Not only is it fun when you get over the what am I doing aspect, but I was 12 once. I had AIM and Myspace and a host of other things I’d be chagrinned to speak to.  

I realize that my musical.ly adventure is rooted more in the social experiment realm than in organic belonging. I feel like the Queen Bees and Wannabes author. Or Jane Goodall. So to bolster my credibility, I’ll admit I’ve been a muser for about a week now—a heavy user, mind you. To counteract the invisible hand of the musical.ly market, my bright idea was to create a niche in which I’d be the most eminent muser: old music. How quaint am I? And what does it mean that I feel and fear old at 22?

It’s a mistake to treat all youth equally, though. In learning this app and subjecting myself to its content, I’m by no means envied by my peers. In musing, all I’m garnering (if anything) is social capital amongst tweens, which is an oxymoron. A twenty-something considered cool by tweens is necessarily uncool. These kids are silently mouthing about activities they have no clue about: drinking, smoking, sex. Driving. It’s entirely comical to enter the world of musical.ly as an adult. 
If I were to top the musical.ly leaderboard one day I don’t believe any of my friends would consider it “cool”. Because there is youth1: using a fake ID and the thrill of getting past the bouncer. And there is youth2: where you’re not even carded before being turned away. Musers occupy the space between youth1 and youth2. It’s the gap between your self-image and where your development actually is (mentally and physically). Muser’s belief that they occupy youth1 when they absolutely embody youth2 is the only explanation for the proliferation of these musicals, which are embarrassment incarnate.  

In musical.ly, as in Terrence Malick’s Badlands, the dissonance between what you see and what you hear is striking. Unlike Badlands, not in an artful way. 

Find me on musical.ly @teddydachamp

Yankee Stadium's Other Tenants

Playing on a field whose dimensions are dictated by America’s pastime is emblematic of NYCFC. The size of the NYCFC field is a testament to the club’s tendency to grovel to the basest tastes with panem et circenses.  

Take the most billed match of the year—LA vs. NYC. Or as you more likely saw it pitched: Stevie G vs. Super Frank (ignore that Lampard didn’t even make the bench). As for the match itself, the cameraman completely missed a goal because he was hell bent on a close-up David Villa. There was no goal build-up and not even a glimpse of the ball flying into the net. Viewers saw Villa walking near the halfway line, heard a cheer, and then saw a replay. It’s great that soccer is growing in the US. And it’s swell that aging internationals are willing to live out a well-paid early retirement on our shores. But can we please show goals live?

The NYCFC field fails to meet minimum size requirements—this much is clear to the naked eye. Opposition teams spoke of how they practiced long throw-ins before coming to Yankee Stadium because a good throw-in is equal to a corner at the Bronx stronghold. All media requests to measure the field were denied, confirming the open secret: soccer is ancillary to the NYCFC machine.

The restricted field at Yankee Stadium can hardly be expected to produce topnotch soccer—but NYCFC offers something else. The bulk of NYCFC’s allure is its landlord.

Soccer in a baseball stadium is a phenomenon in itself. It’s a novelty that might turn apathy to curiosity. There is inherent, American history at Yankee Stadium so a supporter will get something out of the experience no matter how poor (or confined) the soccer is. There is something of value simply in visiting the storied stadium.

The oddity of seeing a soccer match played on a baseball diamond is reason enough to go. A sort of athletic freak show, NYCFC’s strangeness is its appeal. Sure, NYCFC might have Pirlo, Lampard, and Villa, but throw in the Great Bambino, Mantle, and Jeter then Americans will watch this FIFA declared “ethnic sport for schoolgirls”.

The problem with the NYCFC setup is that the focus is not on the game but on the spectacle. Designated players take precedence over goals. The MLS caters to our wants as consumers, though. Does it think we’d rather see a DP walk around more than we’d like to see a homegrown MLS player score? Maybe we do. The number of Pirlo shirts at Yankee Stadium prior to his arrival indicates the MLS is simply giving us what we want.

For all that Yankee Stadium is doing to bolster soccer’s status in the US, is it doing so at the expense of the most iconic winning team in the world? The Yankees bought the MLS expansion rights with Manchester City. Imagine—how would you feel as a Yankees player? With baseball declared dead or dying daily, Yankees players must be resentful that their owners don’t even have the respect to wait for the autopsy report. You have just one foot in the grave and they’re already building a “football club” on top of you. Perhaps the Yankees can feel vindicated that their pitcher mound took precedence over decent football and constrained the pitch to a minute size. Perhaps they don’t care.

It’s unclear after just one season whether sport or spectacle will triumph for NYCFC. The appointment of Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira as manager speaks to the club’s prioritization of marquee names. NYCFC is on the egregious end of the spectrum in the gimmick arena as compared with other MLS franchises, but their impressive attendance indicates that there is a shrewd business mind behind their pageantry. NYCFC average 29,000 fans per match. The Red Bulls, Eastern Conference leaders, have an average attendance of 19,600 (capacity 25,000). Maybe it will end up being a ‘come for the Villa, stay for the Poku’ success story. Would Dog Day Afternoon or Serpico have reached so many people without The Godfather? A love for the sport, sprung from an initial interest in seeing a Champions League winner in the flesh is plausible enough.