Zooming out
Learning a lesson about the value of distraction and how sports plays into that.
Sometimes, I think in lyrics. Not my own, mind you, but from songs I’ve listened to. They’re usually songs that I have listened to a lot, at least enough that they have taken up residence in my brain years (or decades) after I heard them.
This is, of course, pretty stupid. It’s also not the best idea to bring this up in social settings because….drumroll please….I listen to a lot of strange music that nobody else gives a shit about or ever really did.
Anyway, let me tell you about the song lyric stuck in my head and how it relates to a weekend of attempted mental health. This will be about sports in some way. It may take us a while to get there.
If you were around about 30 years ago, you might remember a little three-piece band named The Presidents of the United States of America. There were quite popular for about six months following the release of their self-titled debut album, which peaked at #6 on the US charts.
They were a creative group, so much so that they invented new ways to play the electric guitar.
From their Wikipedia page:
The band used unusual instruments: Ballew’s basitar and Dederer’s guitbass. Both were regular guitars, but the basitar had only two strings (both heavy-gauge) and was played through a bass amplifier, and the guitbass had three strings that Dederer played “like a bass” through a guitar amplifier. Both instruments were tuned to an open C♯5 chord.
None of this really matters, but I really loved that band at the time. And when their second album came out (titled II), there’s a pretty good chance that nobody listened to it more than me.
This puts me in a weird position of occasionally singing lines from songs on that album, which peaked at a respectable #31 on the US charts in 1996, around people who are never going to get the reference.
I’ve never heard the band explicitly state that the opening song (“Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, Part 1”) was an homage to The Beatles "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” but I assume that it is. The songs are similar in a myriad of ways, the most obvious being that it’s the band breaking the fourth wall and talking straight to anyone that just pressed play on the album.
It’s fun. It’s cheeky. And it’s simple/catchy enough that I find myself occasionally singing the first few lines at least once a year.
I spent this weekend in the bay area with some friends. We visited breweries in Berkeley. We ate pizza in Oakland. We had breakfast at The Buena Vista in San Francisco. We drank tiki drinks in San Jose.
Fun times were had, including attending me attending an NHL game for the first time in probably a decade:
That game was great, by the way. The Sharks won in Overtime after being left for dead early in the third period. I thought the roof was going to come off the SAP Center but, luckily, it held.
Outside of a back-to-back NHL weekend, I found plenty of opportunities to find sports on TV in the establishments we were patrons of. Even if it was a 30 year old TV tucked away in the corner, it usually had an NFL game on. And, in case you’re unaware, the NFL had itself a very entertaining weekend.
Between the NFL action and the NHL games, adventuring in cities I hadn’t visited in a long time, there was a lot of opportunities for me to ignore the news.
Back to that silly song and its silly lyrics for a moment…
The band was worried about being something akin to a one-hit wonder, probably best described as a one-album wonder, and I’m sure there were plenty of conversations about getting a similar level of attention on album number two.
That’s why I always giggle at them starting the album by asking the audience “What do you desire?” and then answering that question with “Explosions and fire!”
What is it that people desire, consciously or subconsciously? Is it craft and artistry or is it explosions and fire? Contrary to what we want the answer to be, it often is the latter that can grab our attention away from the former.
That’s why, at least for me, it was very hard to not look at my phone this weekend. It was very hard to not follow what was going on in Minneapolis or Iran or Greenland and worry about how everything could (continue to) spiral out of control and wonder what I can do to protect myself, my family and my friends from that fallout. There were plenty of (mostly metaphorical) explosions and fire.
But I kept staring at those TVs. I didn’t really care who won any of the games, I was following the narratives.
WR1 for the home team has left the game with an injury? How will the QB adapt? Who becomes their go-to target on 3rd down? WOW, WHAT A PASS!
I let my brain jump feet-first into the calm and pointless waters of sports. There was more than one time when I thought I had lost my phone because it hadn’t been out of my pocket in hours. I laughed a lot.
This morning, I decided to catch up on the news. I dug through my favorite newsletters and listened to parts of the more recent episodes of my favorite non-sports podcast and my brain feels like it’s on fire.
And, yeah, that’s my shit that I have to deal with. I have a scheduled session with my regular therapist later today. But this weekend did give me a peek into the world of those that spent years yelling “Stick to sports!” at me.
I still think sticking your head in the sand 24/7/365 is not a way that I am comfortable living my life. If it’s comfortable for you, more power to you. I can’t ignore the real world for more than a weekend out of town, but I understand the appeal and I think I get where sports fits into that.
And I do think it’s healthy to give yourself breaks (Like a day or two of not checking in on the news. Or, if you can do it, a day or two without a screen). There’s more news, and most of it is pretty terrifying, than there has ever been before. Evolution used to take enough time for our brains to adapt, now things are moving a little too fast.
So, the next time you find yourself worrying about what’s going on in the world or unable to look away from the explosions and fire, maybe look up at the corner of the room for a TV. Or buy a ticket to some sort of competition, if you can. And maybe, even if you don’t care about either team or the sport being played, jump in and play in the warm waters of the game to give your brain a break for a while. There will be plenty of time for the rest of it later.