#i show this clip to everyone i know. the dramatized rendering of the hotel room KILLS me every time.

[babymets]

i think it's high time i started posting my favorite clips from history of the seattle mariners

[alitheamateur]

The Grind-Chapter 9

Warnings: Mentions of violence.

Colton had offered to retrieve my car and park it on the top level of the parking garage, so the herd of relentless paparazzi outside wouldn’t catch a shot of me leaving the hotel in clothes from the night before, at 10 a.m the following day. The 16-minute drive back to my apartment had soothed me deeper into a sleepy trance, along with the settling smorgasbord from breakfast. A dizzy nausea was attacking me too, as the nerves for Colton’s fight in only a handful of hours kept growing, and growing. He liked to be the overly-confident big mouth when it came to the topic, but I knew there had to be a sliver of anxious stress somewhere in him. I knew because I’d heard him go on & on about how “important this was to his career,” and he “hated to admit it, but he really needed to prove himself across the world of MMA.” 

I gulped a swig of Pepto Bismol from the bathroom medicine cabinet, and stripped my clothes for a much needed power nap in my bed which suddenly felt like rocky ground after sleeping on the expensive pillowtop at the hotel last night.

Warmer days were more & more frequent in the city now, so I was able to wear a suede peep-toe bootie that night. I followed instruction and sported my leather jacket per Colton’s request, along with a loose-fitting black shift dress that rubbed at my mid-thigh. My makeup a bit more dramatic courtesy of the cobalt blue trace of eyeliner I added, and my hair left down, tousled with loose waves. I never usually let it get much passed shoulder length as it held more tangles in doing so. But, the man in my life had quite the attraction to my now very lengthy, ombre blonde strands. Any time he’d escort me to the shower, I was required to turn my back to him for a brief moment so he could observe the water cascading through my hair, causing it to paint slickly down to the bra line of my back. He combed his digits through the ends, tracing the flow of warm water down to the noticeable dimples indented in the small of my back. So, not quite ready to let go of that particular little habit he had developed, I indulged him with a longer style for now. Wrestling with myself after awaking from my nap, I texted him.

L: Thanks again for last night <3  I’ll be sure to pack my first aid kit in case you need some extra TLC tonight!

Fully expecting just to be left on “read” without a reply, I was all the more pleasantly surprised when I heard his designated text tone chime across the bedroom.

C: No. Thank YOU for last night. And if those medical supplies you’re talkin’ about include a tight fittin’ little nurse outfit then YES PLEASE!!!!! I love you, Livvy Caroline.  

After arriving at the Palumbo Center, I decided to park my Honda in the covered complex rather than on the street, figuring I’d probably be loaded up into the black Suburban that Colt had rented so he & the team could all ride together this weekend, to paint the town after his victory. I tucked my arm through the chained strap of my crossbody purse & adjusted the “L” pendant necklace that was nestled between my cleavage. I felt sexy; important even. No one else in the arena knew that I was the girlfriend of the lethal animal that would be headlining tonight, but I certainly did. And it made me high.

I strolled boldly into the side entrance, greeting one of the guards I had become familiar with throughout the countless other events I had covered at the Palombo. Emmett, a towering steel wall of unyielding strength.

“Pretty as ever, Ms. Liv. How you doin’?” he said with the polite tipping of his worn tan Ascot hat.

“Doing fantastic, Emmett! You ready for this one?” We always exchanged predictive play-by-plays of whatever particular event of the night was, and I appreciated the fact that he didn’t chuckle or mock when a woman such as myself chimed an opinion in regard to athletics. Something rare, but regretfully present at at least two hockey games I attended for work when I first moved here. One being from a coach I approached for a question post-game, stating that he was “sure I could give him pointers on how to improve the teams’ uniforms if he needed them, but otherwise he didn’t have time to speak with me.” That was the first instance I questioned whether the big city of Pittsburgh would ever be the place for me.

“Oooooooooh girl, you know this gonna be a brawl.”

Chuckling lightly to his animated response, I shook my head with a pat to his arm and moved passed to head to the main room and locate my seat. Since I had entered from the private entrance, I had to navigate through the hallways and locker rooms to reach the arena floor. Smiling blankly at by passers, I reached into the side pocket of my bag for the nude lipstick I planned to apply at my pitstop to the restroom. My pace slowed a bit in struggle to locate it, eyes looking down in search. When I finally grasped it tucked away under a wad of crinkled receipts, my gaze lifted again to push open the door of the ladies’ room. However, I couldn’t seem to muster the very minimal effort it would’ve taken to open it, due to the hooded man marching down the wide hallway.

Mac was leading the pack, and Colton tailed the end of the line with his hands settled into the front pocket of a sweatshirt, headphones adorning his neck. His thinned, focused eyes instantly found mine, rendering me unable to even blink. Just as he was strolling right past me, those very same eyes sank to the now heavy rise & fall of my chest, then traced down the span of my glowy, toned legs. Last on the list of body parts for him to make love to with his eyes, he locked his penetrating sights onto my sex, sucking his bottom lip between his teeth. He need not use words, because I knew unmistakably what those black pupils were envisioning. I watched his head turn then to face forward as he was escorted into what I assumed was his locker room. Now that my underwear were sopping for the evening, that was that.

 The profuse adrenaline spreading like a smoky vapor throughout the arena almost had me stimulated like a wave of lust. Not near as much as the very rated PG-13 encounter I had just had with Colton backstage, but stimulated, nonetheless. Black folding chairs lined the room, neon lights showing the stains of gum, spilled soda and ketchup splatters that covered the concrete floors. My seat was two rows behind the announcers table, and I was pleased with the exceptional view I would have for the fight. The jumbotron hanging from the rafters displayed a countdown clock reading 37 minutes until the match would be underway. I settled in, tucking my purse into my lap after removing my cell phone for some leisure social media catch up to aid in passing the time.

The crowd steadily poured into the empty seats, along with the television broadcasters at the booth in front of me. Luckily, I was able to eaves drop on the preshow now underway, hearing one of the suited men state that “Danny Mendez was in for a true contest with Colton Ritter.” An ounce of relief came over me that there were people other than myself and members of Colt’s camp who sincerely believed he had a very likely shot of stealing the belt tonight, but not enough relief to still the tapping of my toe, or erase the clamming of my twiddling hands. Suddenly the bulbs of the LED gym lights began clicking off row by row, and rap music began to thump from the mega speakers. 15 minutes running down the clock now. Short clips of Danny’s past battles flashed on the theater size screen, along with a few clips from Colton at the gym. Before I knew it, total darkness for a moment, followed by circling blue spotlights all around the cage.

Realizing it was indeed showtime now, whistles, claps and sporadic shouting ensued under the arena rooftop. Everyone began standing when the chords of “Let’s Go” by Run The Jewels struck up and a single white light aimed towards the tunnel entrance. Colton had left me with the daunting responsibility of selecting his song of introduction, so I knew any moment he would emerge into sight when I heard the tune begin.

Colton came trudging into view wearing the same sweatshirt he’d been sporting earlier, only now changed into his red fighting trunks. Mac’s logo, along with several other local business names were stamped as sponsors down the sides of his shorts. I was shocked at how many fans of his were revealed by the off-beat chants of his name, and of course the army of female admirers hooting like retrievers in heat. He didn’t waste any time making his way to the waiting referee, offering no high fives or fist bumps to hecklers swatting over the steel barricades of the aisle. He stripped the sweat absorbed shirt handing it to Mac, raised his arms to be patted from top to feet, then pulled back his lips to reveal he was wearing his required mouthguard. I always loved the way the chunky plastic made his lips fatten out when clenched between his teeth.

Next, the black latex gloves of the official smeared a thin layer of petroleum jelly onto each cheek bone, along the bridge of his nose, then across his perspiring forehead, and granted him entry into the cage door. Colton took one of the three steps entering and proceeded to jog two laps around the perilous steel playpen, rolling and stretching his bulging neck and trap muscles. He continued familiarizing himself with every square inch of the octagon mat taking in deep gulps of air through his nostrils, then exhaling gradually out his mouth. From what I could see, he gave the impression of a man prepared, focused and dangerously hungry for blood. The boom of Danny’s theme song didn’t seem to faulter Colton’s bluish eyes. Clear eyes, just like I had told him.

The second fighter followed his own pattern of flashy introductions kissing the cheeks of two women and a baby along his journey in, then aiming a single middle finger towards Colt during his examination from the same ref. When the door was latched behind him, both warriors stalked their opponent.

The suited announcer took his mark in the center, microphone in hand. “Ladies and gentlemen, good evening and welcome! The following match up is for the Professional Fighter’s Federation Middleweight Championship. Introducing first in the left corner your challenger weighing in at 184 pounds in his PFF debut, Colton Ritterrrrrr.”

“And in your right corner, the current undisputed Middleweight champion with a weight of 181 pounds Danny “The Matador” Mendez.”

I wanted to join the thundering “boo” at the mention of his name too, but refrained professionally. Mendez had fans, but many of them boastful douchebags such as himself.

I felt as if I needed to bury both hands over my heart to trap it inside my chest, and I can only imagine the feelings that were swarming Colton’s body. Tyson O’Brien, the preferred ring official across the circuit was passed the mic and motioned Mendez and Colton to step to him.

“Alright fellas, we’ve been over the rules. Protect yourself at all times, and you will follow my instructions. We’re gonna have a clean fight tonight. Touch gloves.”

Neither seething man extended a hand, instead retreated to their labeled corners with no interest other than drawing blood.

Tyson addressed Colton, “you ready?” Receiving one single nod in answer. After the same reply from his opponent, he dropped a hand to begin the time. The clock began ticking on potentially the most sickeningly vexing 25 minutes on my sheltered life.

 Round One

Twenty-five seconds in, and a fist had yet to be thrown. The two danced gracefully barefoot around each other, faces hid partially behind gloved fists. I could tell by the unsteady breaths from his nostrils that Colt was holding back a brutal eruption. Mac coached him to pace himself, because Mendez had a reputation of exhausting an opponent to the point of break, then he would unleash. So slow and steady would most likely win this race.

Colton would be the first to stretch forth in assault, however only connecting with Mendez’s thrown block. I swear I could hear a wisp of power cut through the air. The instant combo of left-right-right he threw next though, tagged his opponent just below the right eye. Danny smiled at the pain, now extremely ready to get things started indeed. Colton seemed to have a bit of an advantage with a reach much longer than Mendez, resulting in explosive strikes to the reddening body of the predicted victor.  His head movements strategically executed to clear any blows to the face in the first 2.5 minutes, but the leg kicks from the current champ were connecting painfully to his thighs. The handsome combatant carried a slight limp on his left leg for a moment, babying it from the strike. One leg lift however played in his favor when he was able to grab Danny’s calf and manage a powerful takedown that sent his back crashing to the ground.

Before he was pinned under Colt’s powerful legs, he managed to turn on all fours on his elbows. The attempt to escape was lost nevertheless when my red shorted fighter wrapped one arm around his torso, crushing with the force of a vice grip. He had evidently done his homework for this match up. His hands pounded like concrete blocks against the cauliflower ear and exposed temple of Danny, one blow he connected on the corner of his brow even resulted in the first blood secretion on the mat. He was like a great white in the open water inhaling the sent of a wounded seal. His right-hand imposed fist after fist, and Mendez was visibly shook.  37 seconds remained on the timer.

Shortly thereafter the time keeper smacked together his wooden blocks to notify now only 30 seconds left in the round. Dan wormed his way out of the hold to stand to his feet, placing ample space between the two of them for a brief instant before charging Colton with a swift roundhouse kick, thankfully missing. A blow horn shrieked, and the men retreated to corners joined by training staff members. I thought I may need medical attention next when I released a breath of momentary relaxation and noticed the half moons of nail marks I had pushed into the inside of my thigh. This round undoubtably belonged to Colton.

 I was suffocating the urge to dart straight to the concession stand for a generous dose of nerve settling liquor. Was I cut out to be the girlfriend of a fighter? Could I really stomach watching him suffer blow after blow to the head, or have to spend the weeks after a match nursing a concussion? Driving him around the city in search of an oral surgeon to repair the teeth that had been forcibly removed from his gums? Was I thick-skinned enough to tarry that journey? The answer is no. The idea of it all made me want to projectile vomit the lavish breakfast I had with him that morning. The daunting apprehension that even every day mundane tasks like choosing where to get gas, or what facial cleanser wouldn’t cause a rash literally sent my brain into unnerving override. I didn’t have the thickened skin for it. I wasn’t designed for dramatic unraveling’s. But, he was like a computer technician rewiring a hard drive from the inside out when it came to my old habits. Colton Ritter was reviving me, rebuilding me into the daring, strong and ultimately better version of myself, and I would forever be grateful. I could feel myself developing the depth of not only headstrong, flourishing journalist, but loyal, passionate life partner as well.  So, if nursing contusions or taping broken fingers was necessary to my repertoire, then so be it.

I dialed in on the announcers again in effort to gather expert opinion on predictions now that the first round was in the books.

“I’m gonna be real honest with you, man. This is not at all how I saw this going. Ritter came out explosive! The kid ain’t the slouch that most of the locker room had expected. Matter of fact, Jake, a few guys for Danny’s camp have been callin’ him a ‘pretty boy’.”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard that little nickname floating around too, Brett. But it seems to me that so-called pretty boy is doin’ some serious punishing in that cage right now. Solid fist round for the newcomer.”

Pretty boy? Colt would roll over if he heard these guys refer to him that way on the radio. It absolutely suited him on the outward appearance, 98% of the heterosexual female population would agree. Still, it lacked the desired malevolent intimidation factor for the nickname of a mixed martial artist.

How can you spin this, Eliiot? Make it work…hmmm… Pittsburgh Pretty Boy? Ew no, too WWE. Pretty boy.. pretty boy. Pretty Boy Punisher? Oooooh, that’s got a ring to it. The Pretty Boy Punisher.

I would definitely add that to my article. Anything to deter the entire world of cage fighting from calling him a pretty boy, and taking him for a joke.  

The coaches scurried suddenly to the outer walls of the cage, clearing out water bottles and folding black stools before the next round began, and inhuman beasts attacked each other once more.  

TAGS: @torialeysha @eap1935

[watusichris]

A Bob Dylan Story, or Two

WARNING: The following may contain spoilers. Yes, spoilers.

In Martin Scorsese’s 2005 documentary Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, which takes in Dylan’s youth and the first five years of his recording and touring career, the late Izzy Young, the founder of Greenwich Village’s Folklore Center, picks through an early Dylan bio. He notes some of the singer’s more outrageous accounts about his early travels, and his claims of learning songs from blind Chicago street singer Arvella Gray and Texas songster Mance Lipscomb.

“I should have figured out right away he was bullshitting me,” Young says.

From the very first, bullshitting was an important, even preeminent part of Dylan’s self-manifestation, and some of the recent acts of archival curation on the musician’s behalf have also involved no small amount of manure spreading. (cf. my piece on the gospel set Trouble No More, here: https://watusichris.tumblr.com/post/167349872212/a-dylan-a-day-annex-narrow-is-the-way).

Scorsese’s new film Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, which premieres on Netflix June 12, is being described in some quarters as a “documentary,” but it is animated in no small measure by large servings of highly entertaining mendacity. Its subject gives a bit of the game away in its early minutes: Dylan takes a stab at explaining what the subject of the film might be, then halts abruptly and says, “Ah, bullshit.”

The movie, which is being accompanied by a 14-CD boxed set of music (my Variety review: https://variety.com/2019/music/news/bob-dylan-rolling-thunder-revue-live-box-set-review-1203235093/), is a major reclamation project. The copious documentary footage of Dylan’s titular tour of 1975 was shot for his maiden project as a film director, the excruciating, nearly four-hour Renaldo & Clara. I had a hand in launching that self-indulgent disaster in 1978, and to say the grosses were nightmarish is an understatement -- it flopped on arrival. It’s still a chore to view this addled junior-high stab at Children of Paradise. Watching it today at its full length on YouTube, I wanted to remove my brain from my skull with my own hands.

Dreadful as Dylan’s movie was, some astounding performances by Dylan and his many Rolling Thunder co-stars and cohorts could be found amid its stupor-inducing dramatic improvisations by Dylan and his cast of non-professionals (who included his wife Sara, whom he was trying to woo back into his good graces, and his former paramour and singing partner Joan Baez).

Wisely pretending that Renaldo & Clara never existed, Scorsese organizes the blazing footage of Dylan, his immense and febrile RTR band, and his co-stars into a chronological account, augmented by new testimony, of what the late poet and tour fellow traveler Allen Ginsberg calls “a con man carny medicine show” in a vintage interview.

Since Renaldo & Clara has been officially buried in the vaults for four decades and never officially released on home video, and the concert material that hasn’t been scrubbed from the Internet is not of the highest quality, the vibrant, newly cleaned-up footage in Scorsese’s feature will most assuredly blow minds.

Part of the Rolling Thunder Revue’s allure derives from the starry trek’s short run of remote ’75 dates in New England and Canada, and the movie delivers the goods in spades, offering up those obscure shows in all their forceful glory. The visually pristine sequences of Dylan and company hurling themselves through then brand-new numbers like “One More Cup of Coffee,” “Isis,” “Romance in Durango,” and “Hurricane” and high-watt rearrangements of oldies like “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” shook the theater at the screening I attended.

Dylan himself is especially intense onscreen in his whiteface and plumed, flower-bedecked, wide-brimmed hat, dashing around the stage and locking eyes with his band mates and duet partners Baez and Roger McGuinn. Customarily a non-presence in front of a camera (even in his own movie), he is ferociously alive behind the RTR mic.

No less exciting is material captured by the side of the road, like a version of Peter LaFarge’s  “Ballad of Ira Hayes,” about the Native American hero of Iwo Jima, played at a Tuscarora Indian reservation, or an impromptu run-through by Joni Mitchell of her new song “Coyote” (reputedly inspired by an affair with tour mate Sam Shepard) with Dylan and McGuinn in Gordon Lightfoot’s living room.

Despite its seemingly conventional contours, Scorsese’s look at the short, lively life of the Rolling Thunder Revue should not be confused with his relatively straightforward docs like No Direction Home, The Last Waltz (which also features Dylan), or his films about George Harrison and the Rolling Stones.

“Life is about creating yourself,” Dylan says, and Scorsese acts as an accomplice in the present endeavor. The results are enjoyably perverse.

The sleight-of-hand approach announces itself in the film’s first minute. It begins with a clip from an 1896 short by Georges Meliés, the subject of Scorsese’s 2011 homage Hugo, in which the French filmmaking magician makes a woman disappear. (Just as the director renders Sara Dylan invisible in the proceedings, it should be noted.) A title card immediately appears: “Conjuring the Rolling Thunder Revue.” The word “conjuring” suggests that some of what the audience will be seeing is at once something more than and somewhat less than the truth. (A lyric comes to mind: “All the people we used to know, they’re an illusion to me now.”)

Keener-witted viewers of Rolling Thunder Revue may have already started to wonder about the veracity of some of what they’ve been watching by the time they reach a segment, late in the film, in which former Michigan congressman Jack Tanner talks about a trip to a Rolling Thunder show in Niagara Falls that was facilitated by President Jimmy Carter.

After you realize that “Tanner” is the actor Michael Murphy, reprising his role in Robert Altman’s political mockumentary Tanner ’88, you may start to understand that some of what you’ve already seen is the purest fiction. You then find yourself second-guessing some of the talking heads who offer their recollections.

So was that “European film director” actually a part of the crew shooting the tour? Or is he possibly a former performance artist? How is it that one of the purported tour promoters shares the name of the current chairman of a major Hollywood studio? Nah, couldn’t be. Should we believe an assertion by Ronnie Hawkins, who played “Bob Dylan” in Renaldo & Clara, that Scarlet Rivera, the exotic violinist on the tour, was a major freak who invited him to her hotel room to watch her have sex? (“She had a sword,” both Hawkins and Dylan report, darkly.) Was Rivera’s boyfriend really Gene Simmons of KISS, whose makeup supposedly inspired Dylan’s whiteface? (That one’s a real hoot!) Should we trust Sharon Stone, the star of Scorsese’s Casino, when she describes joining the tour as a 17-year-old?

Not content to toy with his own reality, Dylan has obviously given license to Scorsese to toy with everyone else’s, too. Note the picture’s subtitle again: “a Bob Dylan story.” In this case, a good synonym for “story” is “yarn,” and a decent yarn it is.

I suppose it’s appropriate that Allen Ginsberg, making a poignant posthumous return to Dylan’s stage, is the beating heart of Rolling Thunder Revue. After all, he was a man who appeared in Jack Kerouac’s novels as fictional characters – Carlo Marx, Alvah Goldbook, Irwin Garden, Adam Moorad. Dylan calls him “the Oracle of Delphi” here, and he brings the picaresque rigor of the Beats to the film, as he declaims his hardcore elegy “Kaddish” to an audience of little old ladies at a mahjongg tournament, reads Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues at the novelist’s Massachusetts grave site, and dances ecstatically in a hotel ballroom.

The poet is granted the film’s final moments, in which he instructs the audience to  “pick up on some redemption of your own consciousness, and make it for your own eternity.” That line seems almost like a description of Dylan’s and Scorsese’s playbook for this unusual movie.