Sport: In Defence Of American Football.

Early last year, Miami police were called to a building housing a gym, a jewellery store, and a nightclub. They’d received reports of a burglary taking place inside. Upon arriving, Detective Mike Muley confronted a man inside the building. The man was built like a tank, sporting a questionable goatee and apparently not averse to violence. After a vicious struggle, Detective Muley – who later claimed he feared for his life - shot the man, nearly killing him.

That same goateed juggernaut had scored infamy years earlier when he didn’t show up to play in the Super Bowl – the definitive celebration of American sports excess – because he’d stopped taking his medication and went nuts. That man, Barret Robbins, was the centre for the Oakland Raiders.

It’s a sad story of a difficult life, of a man who came close to achieving the American dream – raking in stacks of cash playing professional sports – and ended up lying in a hospital bed. But that’s not the point of the story. No, the point is to illustrate that the National Football League attracts some genuine fucking weirdos. It rewards jacked-up, violent thugs and madmen with little regard for the sanctity of human life. It pays good money for the kind of men most people would cross the street to avoid. It collects maniacs and puts them on a paddock together, united only by a pigskin ball.

And that’s a wonderful thing to watch. Where else but in American football could you ever hope to find a collection of bloodthirsty men wearing spandex suits and astronaut helmets beating the goddamned shit out of each other on behalf of a maths-crazy, tactic-obsessed coach? The concept itself is a marvellous thing, and in action it only gets better.

American football is chess with violence. The pawns are replaced by a hulking defensive line who are collectively employed only to physically injure the offence as often and as effectively as possible. The queen is the quarterback, who can rush or pass or spike the ball, all the while trying to avoid the spine-cracking tackles every member of the defence wants to lay on him. The ball is the king: it will be protected at all costs, even if that means someone loses an eyeball or breaks their groin.

But, you say, aren’t the players all total girly sissies who wear skirts and eat Iced Vo-vos compared to rugby and AFL players? I mean, the NFL guys sport so much protection, while the Australian equivalents happily bash each other with only a groin guard and a mouth guard to ease the pain!

And maybe you’d be right. When you spend almost an hour getting the absolutely almighty shit beaten out of you by guys who sport brains made out of nothing but muscle and fat, it might be a bit girly to wear a mask. But then, it might just be practical; if every NFL player decided to stop wearing so much protection, by the end of 2006, approximately nine out of ten of players would be dead. And dead people can’t play sports, as evidenced by the failure of the 1996 Zombie Wrestling League.

American football is a beautiful thing. At first glance it seems to make so little sense – what is happening? Why is that guy running straight into that other guy? Who are these people? Who is controlling their movements? But it’s this twisted logic and the maths-meets-murder aesthetic that makes the yank brand of footy such a testament to the majesty of sport, and the mysteries of the mind. It’s brain food for the genuinely weird, stupid or violent. And that’s something that should be celebrated in every corner of the world.

(Originally published at Rouser).

Travel: I've Been To Poor Countries, And That Means I'm A Better Person Than You.

Travelling to a poor country offers you a lot: the enriching of your cultural palette, a wealth of treasured memories, a stunning awareness of the diversity of human culture, heaps of photos of you looking awkward next to semi-famous monuments, and, in most of the truly poor countries, the opportunity to get brain-fucked on cheap booze and low-grade hash. Indeed, I can’t think of an easier way to truly expand your horizons than to subject yourself to the cruel realities of an economically undeveloped – that is, shit poor – country.

Which is all well and good, but you can get low-grade hash and an awareness of the diversity of human culture by hanging out near the male toilets at the Kings Cross Hotel. But what you can’t get there is Geography-Generated Self-Importance Enhancement.

Let me explain. The second you haul your rich, relatively prosperous arse off the plane and stumble blindly into a distant land, you’re a better person. The mere fact that you dedicated a few thousand dollars to travelling overseas - instead of buying expensive shoes, obscure Pitchfork-endorsed albums, a talking robot dog, or all of the above – means that you’re an interesting, exciting person with things to talk about and interesting points for dinner parties.

Yes, as soon as you smell the grotesque stink of Delhi airport, your self-importance rises. The first time you see the beautiful, sweet-smelling rice paddies of Vietnam, you become a better person. When a poorly-groomed man wearing short shorts and a stolen army shirt offers you drugs in Cambodia, you’re officially more interesting than everyone back home… those spoiled, insular, middle-class arseholes who have no idea what the real world is like.

Geography-Generated Self-Importance Enhancement is a funny thing. It’s difficult to admit, but there’s even something oddly ego-boosting about being followed around by a sickly, legless Punjabi man who walks around on his hands begging fatcat tourists for tiny amounts of cash in a language they’ll never understand. It’s a comfort that comes from knowing that, hey, you’ve got two legs and you’re relatively rich and you’ll have another fantastic story to tell your mates over beers when you get back home. It’s the comfort that comes from knowing that you’re not a faceless, nameless, spit upon, starving member of a country with a population of one billion. And so, your self-importance rises. Thanks, poor country!

(Such an experience is also indescribably humbling and sad, but the ego does not often waste time dealing with tragedy. That’s why religious folk who survive massive disasters so often think, secretly, late at night, that there must be a reason they were spared while so many died around them, and that reason is probably because they are incredibly awesome and way better than everyone else and God probably totally has a boner for them).

But I digress. The enhancement of self-importance through travel isn’t a new thing. If Marlow had access to e-mail while sailing up the Congo River, you can beat he’d be sending daily missives to his mates back home. Things are great. I’ve been looking for some creepy Belgian ivory dealer. Saw some pygmies engaged in their savage dancing. It was a sight to behold… absolutely unimaginable. You guys have got to come and check these negroes out. Alexander the Great would get in on it too, if he could have. Yesterday was interesting: I conquered Anatolia and Syria. The Anatolians had fantastic food. I’ve been eating nothing but mutton sandwiches. Got drunk on cheap Persian booze and threw one of my generals in the Nile - hilarious!

But neither Marlow nor Alexander’s mates would read the e-mails. Instead, they’d see these tales for what they are: the continual reaffirmation of one’s own sturdy magnificence and cultural understanding amidst overseas chaos. These e-mails that travellers send – and lord knows I’m guilty of doing it over and over again – offer a small glimpse of a different world, yes, but mostly they tell your friends one thing over and over: I’m doing more interesting things than you and you’re at work reading about the interesting things I’m doing so ha-fucking-ha.

Once you get back home, the self-importance rises every time you spin a yarn about the time you were almost kidnapped by Argentinean bandits or that day when you met the Dalai Lama while eating vegetarian snacks near the Himalayas (or ‘the Himalaya’ as you’d correctly call it if you’d actually been there, like I have, because I’m awesome). You’ll find yourself casually mentioning your amazing travels at every opportunity, no matter how irrelevant or inappropriate that may be; your friend will tell you that their mother has died, and you’ll tell them about the ‘absolutely amazing’ funeral ritual you saw while backpacking in Rwanda in which they cut up the body, burn it on a pyre and then smear the ashes all over their bodies.
So, when you can, go overseas. You’ll be a better person for it. Better than all those fucking unaware, uninteresting swine who’ve never even dreamt of seeing Kilimanjaro rise like Olympus above the Serengeti. Boost your ego. Hop on a plane.

(Originally published at Rouser).