I don’t want to get too graphic, but here’s a hint: Look at the way Danny Ainge shot his jumper. Then look at the way Jamaal Wilkes shot his. Enough said.
QUESTION # 6—“What kind of drugs should I take?”
Remember the first game of Magic’s career, when Kareem hit a skyhook at the buzzer against the Clippers and Johnson hugged him like a grizzly? The only people I know who behave like that are usually on Ecstasy. Meanwhile, Celtic People smoke pot, just like the Chief.
QUESTION # 7—“David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar?”
This is a tricky one, because Dave was the ultimate California boy and Sammy’s heaviest solo record is titled Standing Hampton, which I think is in New Hampshire (the Red Rocker also looks a bit like Bill Walton, sans headband). Yet upon further review, it’s; all too obvious: Celtic People are Roth People, because that’sthe original, definitive incarnation of a classic archetype. Laker People are Hagar People, because Sammy was in the band longer and ultimately sold more albums (just as L.A. ultimately won five titles to Boston’s three, while Magic won twenty-two of his thirtyseven head-to-head meetings with Bird). Hell, the Lakers weren’t as cool, but they were better, you know?
QUESTION # 8—“Should capital punishment be legal?”
Laker People say no, as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a human rights activist who would question the validity of any practice that essentially replicates the original crime. Celtic people say yes, because anybody who’s ever looked into Larry Bird’s eyes knows he’s killer.
QUESTION # 9—“Is Adam Sandler funny?”
No
QUESTION # 10—“What socially irresponsible rap music should I support?”
According to N.W.A., life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money, and James Worthy (arrested for soliciting a Texas prostitute in 1990) would undoubtedly agree. Therefore, Laker People dig Ice Cube. Celtic People go with Eminem, the only white guy who can keep up.
Now, I know what you’re saying: Question #10 is just a race thing, which is exactly what you refuted four thousand words ago. And I’ll admit this is a slippery slope, and something that’s hard to avoid. Bob Ryan was very up front about this. “When the subject of race does come up, there’s one thing you can be sure of,” he told me. “The Celtics were clearly the favorite team of blatant racists. And that’s a sorry commentary on the world, and no fault of the Celtics. But the fact that they had so many great white players made them heroes to racists and people in the Deep South. Even in Boston, there was an element of their fandom that was very happy they had white superstars. Anybody who would deny that is naive.”
So perhaps that’s me; perhaps I’m naive. Perhaps it seems like the Lakers and the Celtics represent everything in life simply because they represent the psychological war between black and white, the only things just about everybody in America can seem to understand. Perhaps the only real reason I worshiped Larry Bird was because he was a God I could create in my own image.
But part of me knows this was really about Pop-Tarts. And about Oswald. And about voting for Bob Dole.
David Halberstam has noted that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were actually raised with paradoxical pathologies: Halberstam insists Magic’s middle-class upbringing was a traditional white experience, while Bird’s impoverished, screwed-up childhood (his father committed suicide when Larry was nineteen) was more stereotypically black. Perhaps this is part of the reason both men could so successfully represent people who have absolutely nothing to do with them. I am not a white person; not really. I am a Celtic Person. That’s my identity, and I’m never going to try to pretend I’m some sort of eclectic iconoclast. This does not mean I’m always right and you’re always wrong, nor does it mean I subconsciously need other people to feel the same way I do about anything. You don’t need to side with the Boston Celtics to be a good person. But you should definitely side with somebody. Either you’re with us or you’re against us, and both of those options is better than living without a soul.
(Fonzie recalibration interlude)
In every episode of Happy Days, Arthur Fonzarelli was surrounded by adoring teenage girls. The Fonz would snap his fingers and they would rush to his embrace. This phenomenon was central to all Happy Days–related discourse. We (as viewers) were constantly regaled with stories of his remarkable exploits at the popular make-out locale Inspiration Point; these tales often involved twin sisters. This was just an accepted part of life. Richie Cunningham would periodically wander up to the Fonz’s spartan apartment over the garage, and—inevitably—Fonzie would be with a buxom (and strangely mute) high school junior.
This forces us to pose an ethical question: Are we to assume the Fonz was having sex with all of these girls? I mean, this was the 1950s, and Milwaukee is a conservative Midwestern city. It’s hard to believe that such a staid community would be supersaturated with so many sexually aggressive teenage girls. Moreover, we are supposed to perceive the Fonz as a “good guy,” correct? Oh, he’s a bit of a rogue (what with all the bull riding and shark jumping and whatnot), but he’s certainly not the type of guy who would sexually corrupt dozens—perhaps hundreds!—of virginal high school females, many of whom would have undoubtedly been under the legal age of consent in the state of Wisconsin (currently eighteen years of age). That scenario is unthinkable. We cannot exist in a society where someone like Fonzie would be lionized for being an insatiable sexaholic, a statutory rapist, and a potential child molester. This is not the behavior of a “good guy.” And since Fonzie never seemed to have a long-term rapport with any of these girls, it’s unlikely that he ever experienced a loving, mutually satisfying, logically advancing relationship (the lone exception being Pinky Tuscadero, who did not seem to reside in the immediate Milwaukee area).
That being the case, there is only one conclusion to draw. For the entire 255-episode duration of Happy Days, the Fonz was a virgin.
9 Porn 1:09
When exactly did every housewife in America become a whore?[40]
Now, this is not an attack on housewives. I can’t say I support the idea of every housewife in America being a whore, but I suppose things could be worse; a loose army of housewife whores is obviously preferable to 2 million housewife serial killers, or 3 million housewife crackheads, or 10 million housewife crossbow enthusiasts. Still, the fact that we have so many whorific housewives is mildly unsettling and profoundly inexplicable. It’s hard to wrap your mind around the motivations of a forty-four-year-old mother smiling while someone takes a series of photographs that prominently feature her birth canal.
Yet according to the affable robots at google.com, there are 6,250 sites on the Internet that prominently include the phrase “naked housewives.” There are also 7,110 that include the phrase “nude housewives,” which I suppose is technically classier. We have 586 that promote “housewife whores,” while a solid 2,600 offer a more generic alternative (“housewife sluts”). I could only find 51 that contain the phrase “my wife is a whore,” although that number is somewhat offset by the 6 sites specifically promoting that “my wife is a fucking whore,” not to mention the semiofficial domain name housewifewhore.com. Since one can assume all of these sites have—conservatively—50 whores apiece, that’s a little over 830,000 domestic sexaholics in English-speaking countries alone, all of which can be located in roughly ninety seconds.