YOU'RE WRONG
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
It's the night of the second game. There's a tribute to the greatest ballplayers ever. Among them: Pete Rose. Officially banned from baseball for life, he's back for the first time in years. The fans give him a standing one. More than the one for Hank Aaron. His first chance at really feeling good.
Then comes sleazeball Jim Gray. He's a seedy wimp who couldn't hold a bat without the other end touching the ground. With half the integrity of Geraldo Rivera, he's there to interview the great one. He starts on the gambling bit. Rose denies it. Interview over? Oh no.
"You agreed to a ban from baseball for life,'' says Gray.
``It also says I can apply for reinstatement in one year. I was looking forward to that day,'' answers Rose.
The badgering continues. Here's Rose with a glimpse of glory. Here's this scum, trying to destroy it.
``You know," says Rose finally, "I'm surprised you're bombarding me with this. I'm here to do an interview with you on a great night, a great occasion. You're bringing up something that happened 10 years ago.''
I don't get it. So he gambled. Big fuckin' deal. He bet ON his team, not against it. Gray was evil, malicious. He used sleaze for the ratings. Typical of TV newscasters.
It was Monica Lewinsky again. The press needling for something people don't care about. What is this? The National Enquirer?
Now we go to the third game. Chad Curtis is an attractive guy for a whiteboy. During the year, The Yanks rarely used him as player. This game he's in the outfield. His second trip to the plate. KERPOW! Homerun. In the tenth inning. KERPOW! Another homer. A game ender.
Atlanta cries in its CNN hanky. Now it's Chad's chance to be a star. The postgame interview where the baseball world is watching. The interviewer? The same Jim Gray who fucked over Pete Rose.
"Well, Chad," says Gray, "you made some homerun there."
"I'm sorry," says Curtis, "because of the Rose thing, we as a team have decided not to talk to you." Then he says high to his grandma and turns his back on the sleazeball.
"Yes!" I say clapping my hands. "Yes! That guy had a chance to be famous and he passed it up. Instead, he decided to be great." I'm happier at his action than I am at the Yankee victory. That man has balls!
The next game, I expect to be less thrilled by the predictable victory than by seeing Gray kissed off again in the postgame. What happens though? Nothing. Tore, the Yankee manager, gives an interview. The guy presents the series trophy, for G-d's sake! Later, I find out that the baseball commissioner and Yankee owner George Steinbrenner gave the team a talking to. The team caved in. Fell like a gringo with the cramps. Rolled over. Screwed, they thanked the rapist.
Baseball season is over. I'm pissed-- and I got a column to write. An issue 200 column. My 189th for this zine. Lefty, the column-master, says it's gloves-off time. I'm free to attack anyone else who writes for the zine. Perfect, though I think I'll only attack George Tabb. Who reads anyone else? Right?
The Yanks and the world in general have given me a topic for issue 200: BALLS. Those who got 'em and those who don't.
Of course, I'm using balls in the metaphorical sense. I'm not talking about testicles. Lotsa girls I know have more balls than the most hangingly endowed male. I'm talking about balls as we know 'em. Emma Goldman balls. Suzy Bright balls. Camille Paglia balls.
Chad Curtis had 'em. His teammates didn't. They let him down. Collapsed. These days it takes a lot of under-rock looking to find real balls.
Two Negro groups in New York have balls. I wish I could remember their names. Both of them joined with New York's Norm Seigel, head of the ACLU here, one of the balliest guys I know. Negroes and the ACLU are not an unlikely combination. But what was this combination for? TO PROTEST THE BAN ON A KU KLUX KLAN DEMONSTRATION! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Another man of balls joins the party, the right reverend Al Sharpton. He's the only Christian minister I actually admire. Sharpton has more balls in his hairstyle than you have in your entire body. And he's here to support the Klan's rights. As it turns out, the Klan marches.
It's downtown New York. The cops cordon off the march area. There are 17 Klansmen, each of whom get a 10 on the ballsometer. They stand, walk back and forth carrying a few signs no one remembers. That's it for awhile.
Alas, the whole affair is not a display of spherical magic. Who are the wimps? Who lack the balls? Yep, it's the "counter- demonstrators." These guys, mostly white, show up like gang- busters. A bunch of thugs, they're more interested in getting on TV than doing any real good.
One pathetic young whiteguy slips behind the police line. SOCK! He lands one on the jaw of some startled Klansman. What a man! Yeah right. That attacker is as macho as a skinhead stomping a homo. Big tough guy, with a hundred pals backing him up. Listen buckaroo. Your fist just hides what you really are: A wimp!
You want more wimps?
Let's get on the time machine. Let's move back twenty years, give or take a couple. I'd been to Europe a few times, but never with a band. Only David Bowie did European tours... and he IS European. Can you imagine fucking people who talk all those funny languages? Can you see yourself getting free beer of every color from clear to black? Can you picture yourself eating snails and sheeps' stomach? I can only dream what it'd be like. Maybe I can find out tonight.
It's winter. I'm hangin' out in front of CBGBs. The Dead Boys, are on tonight. Their first New York show since their European tour. Wow! A European tour!
In CBs doorway, Stiv Bators stands. He wears these skintight black and white pants. I can see the crotch straining as he leans with one hand against the doorjamb, talking to a girl in a pink fur jacket. She walks away. He shrugs. His pants loosen ever-so- slightly. I walk up to him.
"Hey Stiv," I say.
"Yo Mykel," he says.
"How was Europe?" I ask, "I really envy you guys' going over there and all."
"Europe sucked." he says, "You can't get a good hamburger."
Jeezus fuckin' Christ! Stiv Bators is a wimp. I'm crushed. What good is traveling if you eat hamburgers and drink Budweiser? You might as well sit at home in front of the TV. Balls IS traveling, but really doing it. It's eating what the locals eat, whether that's whale or locust. It's drinking what the locals drink, whether that's fermented mare's milk or dad's piss. Traveling with balls is immersing yourself in the place you travel. It's eating, drinking, sleeping, fucking like the people of the place you are. Balls is risking a few loose bowel movements or waking up with an exotic myriapod crawling up the back of your leg.
Traveling with balls is one of the many reasons that vegetarians are so wimpy. At least as wimpy as any hamburger eater. Vegetarians start with the rejection of local ideas. They refuse to allow other cultures or other people to challenge their ideas. They're afraid to participate.
Testing the strange, the unknown, the dangerous, that takes balls. I don't mean the packaged thrills of "adventure travel." I mean putting yourself in a place you've never been before. I mean challenging your ideas, prejudices, physical health... everything you know. I mean jumping into a psychic river filled with piranha.
A million years ago, when Larry Livermore wrote for MRR, he proposed a "smart punks club." To me that was as oxymoronic as "the feminist humor society." Anything that smacks of intellect, any word that has more than three syllables, anyone who says that life is more complicated than a Hollywood movie, gets the label "arty" or "pretentious" from punks. George Tabb, MRR's second best writer, is as smart as most college professors I know. Yet he plays dumb when he hangs out with the gang. It's punk rock.
In this kind of atmosphere, it takes balls to read... or at least to admit to it. It takes balls to use a word like myriapod. It takes big round blue-veined balls to discuss politics, economics, psychology, anything mental, using more than derisive scorn or bumper sticker clichs. Being stupid takes no balls at all.
It also takes no balls to preach without knowing. Any straight-edger whose never drank enough to sleep in his own puke, has no balls. I love to drink. It makes me feel good. I experience the world drunk in a way I could never experience it sober. Some people know that experience and choose not to have it. It's tough for me to understand, but I respect that decision. But if you've never done it. If you've never tasted what you preach against, I ask, "Why haven't you tried yourself, before you accept judgement from some one as stupid as you are?" Easy answer: you got no balls.
In the same balless boat are monosexuals who call themselves "straight" or "queer" or anything else. If you've tried it and don't like it... okay. I think you're weird but everybody's got her own taste. But if you haven't tried. If you reject a gender or a sex act out of hand. If you say "I don't do that," because you've defined yourself one way or another. I say YOU'VE GOT NO BALLS.
I once wrote, "You're not a man unless you've been fucked up the butt."
I was wrong. Or at least I was too limiting. If you're unwilling to experiment with something new. I don't care about your gender or your orientation. If you're unwilling to try a little pain. If you won't allow your sexuality to expand beyond, boyfriend/girlfriend kiss-grope-fuck, if you haven't been fucked in the ass, no matter what your sex: YOU'VE GOT NO BALLS.
Scene shift: It's Peter Landau/Lovely Kate's Xmas bash. The world's wildest party. Gash flashing, projectile vomiting, it's all here.
Sadsack Melissa sits on a chair. She rests her chin on her hands. Her elbows are on her knees. Staring at the floor, she speaks to no one.
"Yo Melissa," I say, "there's a party here. Have a drink. Get up and boogie. Lick crotch in the bathroom. You're supposed to be having a good time."
"I can't drink," she says. "My medication."
"Medication, shmedication. This is a party and your pulling that depressed bit."
"Mykel," she says before reciting the catechism, "depression is a disease. It's like diabetes. People with diabetes lack insulin. I lack serotonin. It's the same thing."
I want to punch her in the mouth.
Instead, I yell at her.
"My dad has diabetes," I yell. "Every day they test his blood sugar to adjust the insulin. They measure the insulin in his body by the amount of sugar in his blood. He constantly check and adjust his insulin based on blood tests. Prick a finger, test the biochemistry. How often was your serotonin measured?"
"Never," she says, "they can't measure serotonin."
"Ok," I continue, "how many lab tests were done before they prescribed this drug? How much blood was analyses for ANYTHING?"
"None," she said."
"Then it's all bullshit!" I shout, the remnants of my last mouthful of Olde English 800 dribbling down my chin.
There is NO conclusive proof of this serotonin-depression connection. Plenty of people are depressed, but don't have low serotonin. Plenty of others have low serotonin and aren't depressed. The entire mythology started from animal experiments.
Bright scientists shoot up some rats with a tranquilizer. It lowers their serotonin. They huddle in a corner. They don't move very much.
"Eureka!" shouts one of these drug company shills, "a lack of serotonin causes depression!"
The rest is in the marketing.
Melissa makes a comeback. "But it works!" she says.
"Double bullshit!" I say. "65% of those tested claim it works. That sounds like a lot, But 25% of the people taking a placebo-- a sugar pill that does nothing-- also said they feel better. Get it? It's bogus. A fraud."
Yeah, it's very convenient to say you've got a disease. It's biochemical and there's nothing you can do for it except take drugs. Depressed people do it. Drunks do it. Gamblers do it. Families love it too.
"Oh no, it wasn't our fault Melissa is depressed. Those 17 enemas a day and that wire hanger had nothing to do with it. It's chemical, you see?"
You're wimps! All of you. People with balls can take responsibility for themselves. They can say "I'm depressed because my life is shitty." They can say, "I drink, I eat, I gamble because I like to. If I want to stop more than I like to, I have to power to do it." People with balls are never helpless.
Who has balls these day? Well, besides Klan members in New York City, I'd say members of the Communist Party, NAMBLA, and Houston Astros fans have balls. Girls who openly express their sexuality and fuck like every guy wishes he could fuck have balls. Depressed people who make their lives undepressed have balls. People who write poetry and try to sell it on the street have balls. People who make porno videos with themselves appearing, have balls. Defenders of every unpopular cause. Travelers who participate in the lives of those where they travel. Writers who risk their livelihood or even their lives. All of these people have balls.
And you? If you live in Berkeley or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle and read MRR... that doesn't take much balls. If you're a punk, a vegetarian, straight-edge or any other fad- follower, you don't have 'em. But if you're getting this in Afghanistan. If you're on the outside. If you're the trenchcoat mafia in Littleton Colorado. The skin shows through my comb-over for you. My hat's off. You've got balls.
ENDNOTES: [Thanks to your protests, sit-ins, marches and church burnings, there are no longer column length restrictions at MRR. All power to the people! Yeah! Still, visitors to my website: www.freeyellow.com/members2/seidboard/index.html, or subscribers (email to: MykelB@ix.netcom.com) will receive a few extra endnotes.]
I got the following in an email message. It may be true-- or not. Anybody know?
Did you know that the black right to VOTE will expire in the year 2007? Seriously! The Voters Rights Act signed in 1965 by Lyndon B. Johnson was just an ACT. It was not made a law. In 1982 Ronald Reagan amended the Voters Rights Act for another 25 years. Which means that in the year 2007 blacks could lose the right to vote!
Does anyone realize that Blacks/African Americans are the only group of people who require PERMISSION under the United States Constitution to vote! In the year 2007, Congress will once again convene to decide whether or not Blacks should retain the rights to vote. In order for this to be passed, 38 states will have to approve an extension.
Unfortunately, your reader/writer doesn't really know squat about what he is talking about. For one, Irritable Bowel Disease has little to nothing to do with "Butt Sores", but is a cluster of GI diseases with similar symptomologies but differing pathologies. Ulcerative Colitis is simply an ulceration or ulcerations of the large intestine caused by an auto-immune response, while Crohn's disease is a more complex auto-immune attack on the whole of the GI system, but largely in the small intestine. Nicotine IS indicated as a convoluting variable for the onset of Colitis symptoms, but is contra-indicated for Crohn's disease, neither of which have a symptomology of "bleeding rectal ulcers", or "lovely butt sores".
Normally (as in my case) it involves the slow surgical removal of the small (or in other cases large) intestine.
Scott is NOT an asshole, by the way, but he's got a nasty one. Check out his website at: www.killcreek.com
The Vatican has not decided on appointing a patron saint for web-surfers despite increasing calls from Catholic internet users. According to a spokesman for Switzerland's Catholic bishops, many Catholics believe that the church needs to appoint a spiritual guardian for the Internet.
Researchers came up with the name of Saint Isidore, bishop of Seville in Spain, who was born between 560 and 570. Though Isidore is now unknown even to most Catholics, he has long been seen by scholars as a man ahead of his time.
Earlier this year (1999), the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault invited anti-porn headmistress Andrea Dworkin to speak at their convention. She accepted the invitation. Before her appearance, Louis Fortis, head of WCASA's Board of Directors called her and said she should forget it. He had just learned of her history. Then he called to tell her she couldn't speak because she is against the first amendment.
Two animal rights protesters were protesting the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two protesters to death.
And interesting sidenote to this is that Klatsky is a member of the White House's Apparel Industry Partnership. He sits on the Human Rights Watch board of directors.
--Mykel Board http://www.MykelBoard.com email: TheBoss@MykelBoard.com