Nobody Asked Me, But...

Some would call it gimmick-infringement. Others would call it a loving homage.

The sports writer Jimmy Cannon used to have a column he’d fire off on days when his employers expected him to file but there wasn’t much happening. It was a feature he called “Nobody Asked Me, But…” which gave him license to write about whatever was on his mind. It also let him wander from one topic to another without being forced to stretch out some trivial bullshit just for the sake of reaching standard column length.

(The big homie Jimmy Cannon, reminding us that the 1930s and ‘40s were a real boom time for the makers of hats and trenchcoats.)

Cannon, whose plaque you can find hanging in the hilariously understated Boxing Hall Of Fame in Canastota, New York, also offered one of the greatest ever descriptions of fight managers:

“The fight manager wouldn't fight to defend his mother. He has never participated in a crime of violence but he lives by the code of the underworld. He imitates mob guys in his dress, speech and manners. He accuses all inefficient pugs of being yellow; he has been a coward in all the important matters of his life. He is cranky and profane when he talks to the kids he manages but he is servile when addressing the gangster whom he considers his benefactor. He has cheated many people but he describes himself as a legitimate guy at every opportunity.”

Replace gangster with oligarch and yeah it pretty much still applies today.

Jim Murray, the sports writer who I grew up reading in the Los Angeles Times, was the one who first introduced me to this style of gimmick column. He used it for the sake of a day off, but also as an excuse to lob a few pithy observations and/or cranky complaints at the world and call it work. I’ve always wanted to steal this bit but no outlet I worked for ever liked the idea. Maybe that’s what Substack is for. And there’s no better time than a Friday.

Nobody asked me, but…

1. One of the best and easiest things a pro fighter can do for his popularity is commit to a signature hat. It’s silly and stupid, especially in the rare sport that explicitly forbids any type of headwear, but it works. Just look at Khabib Nurmagomedov and Donald Cerrone and now Shavkat Rakhmonov. It gives us a way to tell you apart from the crowd. You’re the guy who always wears that hat! Thing is, you’ve got to do it very early on. If you’re five years into a UFC career and suddenly start wearing a Kangol, we’ll assume you’re in crisis or balding or both.

2. I won’t deny that sports gambling ruins some people’s lives. So do alcohol and drugs and sex and money, if you can’t maintain a sense of perspective. But I’m also not going to pretend that there isn’t some unique joy you can only get by putting five bucks down on a baseball game you otherwise wouldn’t care about and then monitoring your investment over the top of a couple domestic beers.

3. You don’t need to understand everything that everyone else does or believes or feels. But you should be vigilant to ensure that you don’t act like an asshole about it just because you don’t understand it.

4. Acting like an asshole about these things is not the same as thinking like an asshole about these things. I have all kinds of asshole thoughts about you people. I also know how to keep them to myself.

5. One of the worst things about the trend of endless superhero sequels and IP-mining taking over the film industry is that it removes the fun of going into a movie cold. You know that feeling you get when you go to a movie knowing almost nothing about it except when it’s playing? And then about 15 minutes in you start to realize, wait a minute this actually seems like it might be good or new or just totally different? It’s one of the most thrilling feelings you can have sitting still by yourself in the dark. It’s hard to get that from a movie whose whole selling point is that you already know the characters and the story.

6. I’m suspicious when people describe things other people like as “a waste of time.” Video games. Romance novels. Bird-watching. Whatever. What do those people think the time should be for? None of us asked for it and yet here it is. They keep making more of it and no one knows when it will run out. As soon as you start looking at the hours between now and then as a currency for which you’re always trying to find the highest possible rate of exchange, you’re totally screwed.

7. Everyone gets unquestioned permission to like terrible music as long as they first fell in love with that music between the ages of 15-22. That music will always sound like your youth, therefore it will always be special to you and nobody gets to say shit about it. Under these parameters (and these parameters only), I won’t judge you for liking Creed and the Spice Girls and the Dave Matthews Band but you have to agree that you won’t judge me for liking Third Eye Blind and Megadeth and Less Than Jake. We all understand that it was a different time, we were different people, and nostalgia forms a blind spot into which taste must never intrude.

8. The big homie Ken Bruen once wrote that a person’s friends don’t ever get to make them feel bad about themselves. That, he said, is the job of the rest of the world. There’s something to that.

9. The big homie Jane Hirshfield wrote that hope is the hardest love we carry. There’s something to that too.

10. Any time someone starts talking about what is or isn’t happening to “our children,” that’s your permission to stop listening. There are no our children. There are mine. Yours. Someone else’s. We don’t get to make their decisions for them, and the people who really, really want to usually don’t actually give a shit about them. Once a person argues for or against some law on the basis of our children, what he is really doing is trying to justify his inability to mind his own fucking business.

11. Nothing will fuck you up faster than fear. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of some imagined future. I won’t say there’s never been a good decision that came from a place of fear, but there have been soooo many more bad ones that start there.

12. If you ask me to construct a perfect hockey team purely on personality types, I’ll tell you I want: defensemen who wish they’d become pro wrestlers or rodeo cowboys, wingers who secretly think they’re the best athletes on the team but would never say so out loud, a center who views everyone else on the team as the supporting cast in a movie about him, and a goalie who is deeply and at times uncomfortably weird. Also I want a coach who, whether things are going good or bad, just stands there with his arms crossed chewing a piece of gum like he’s trying to destroy it.

13. It is never a bad idea to go for a little walk. Around the block. A mile or two. Deep into the dark forest of the soul. Doesn’t matter. I’ve had to talk myself into it many times, but never once have I regretted going for a little walk.