"It'd be pretty cool to win a hand. Ever." -- Chris Crowell
I just watched the movie Cool Hand Luke for the first time while drinking some Wright Pils(es), and I'm going to write about it while listening to the Tribe game. Cool Hand Luke is a movie from 1967 starring Paul Newman. Yea, it's been around awhile (and if you don't want Cool Hand Luke spoiled for you ... hop into a time machine). Anyway, Luke is a cool dude. He's charismatic, and he's got that suave graying hair that cool dudes get when they get older. He even wears a bottle opener around his neck, which is the coolest thing ever, just to prove how god damn fucking cool he is. Also: He's a war veteran (you get the idea he's seen some shit), and his mom eventually dies (he sings and cries a tear about it). So, he's cool, but he's got a past and feels shit. The ultimate combo.
Coolness only goes so far though, and Luke isn't that excited about his rural life. So, he acts out. The movie basically starts with him being cool -- drinking beers while cutting the tops off parking meters (Stick it to the man! Fuck parking meters!) and very quickly he's arrested and made part of a chain gang. From there, he and a bunch of low lifes, scallywags and closeted homosexuals have to live together, shave roadside grass together and basically pass life together until their sentences are up. Could be a few years; could be half a lifetime. And just in case you are wondering, cutting the tops off parking meters apparently gets you two years. TWO YEARS! Anyway, whatever -- Luke is in there with all these dudes for awhile, and it sucks.
Ol' Luke though, boy howdy, does he ever make it interesting. All the captives bond, and it's because Luke brings them together. Sure, they are prisoners, and they have few day-to-day joys, but they make the most of it, god damn it. They try to accomplish tedious prison work at a faster pace, just to see the looks on the guards' faces! They box each other! They have egg eating contests! They play cards for low stakes! They have fun group shower sessions! Seriously, it looks like the best vacation you've never taken with the best dirty friends you've never had.
Man, life is sweet in the chain gang. Anything is possible. When Luke attempts to escape during the movie, it's a foregone conclusion he will make it, and then, we assume, he will help everyone else escape and they will all live in the same neighborhood, join a local Elks Club, raise hell, bang broads and high five until their hands hurt.
*****
Fuck LeBron James. Let's just get that out there. I'm mixing in some praise here, and I want my main message to be clear. Fuck him. For life.
The guy won an NBA championship the other day. This is now a fact of life and an unsurprising one if you have two eyes and a brain. OK, one eye and a brain. OK, even Helen Keller (even though she isn't real) would assume No. 6 would win a championship at some point. Seriously, the asshole is a THREE TIME
MVP of the league. Translation: He better fucking win a championship. It
would literally be unprecedented if he didn't. In the NBA, the
best players win championships at some point. The otherwordly players
win several, and No. 6 is otherworldly. He is. I'm serious. Let me be
clear here: This. Was. Never. Up. For. Debate. Dude is/was/will be
awesome at basketball and has more talent in his left nut than anyone in the league.
As much as people (myself included because it was just so much god
damn fun) got swept up in the
dumb-fuck national media's narratives about LeBron being a choke artist and all of
that, that was never the real reason to hate this guy. I watched the guy come up clutch, and so did everyone else if they had memory past yesterday. He was the best player in the world in the playoffs in 2009 -- but Mo Williams couldn't hit a jump shot and we lost to Orlando. He dragged the worst cast of characters of all time to the NBA Finals in 2007 -- but they met a vastly superior team in the San Antonio Spurs (thanks for falling to the young gun, in-over-their-heads OKC Thunder this year, Spurs!). But now he has finally won a title so ... what? I'm supposed to not hate him? What does that have to do with anything? How does this make any sense?
Out here in real Cleveland fan world, nothing has changed about this story except the level of depression. No. 6 finally did it, and it wasn't in Cleveland, and I'm sad about it. Legit -- this is depressing. I watched most of the games in the NBA playoffs, but I could not watch the final game. I read a book and fell asleep at 10 p.m because I was so depressed about what I knew was going to happen. I could not see him lift the trophy and celebrate or even prepare to do so. In a right and just world, we draft this hometown guy, he eats undeserved pile of shit after undeserved pile of shit until he finally figures it out and wins the title for his own redemption and for the redemption of his hometown fans. Oh how sweet that was going to be. We all hate eating shit! Let's stop eating it together! But no. The 2012 champs are (is?) the Miami Heat. Led by a coward who left his team to try and form a super one.
Bottom line: The success of LeBron James is NOT equivalent in any way to the amount of hate he receives. These things are mutually exclusive. He's a fucking basketball terminator. He can do everything on offense. He can guard every position on defense -- relentlessly. He sees the floor like the best point guards in the game. He can control the game like maybe only five guys in the history of the game. I know all of this. I knew all of this. I hoped for all of this when we drafted the guy when he was a wide-eyed, scrawny 18 year old. The fact that he delivered on this promise is in no way shocking.
Here's the problem though, dicks, and why I will remain bitter until they have to tear the wine and gold foam finger off my cold dead hand: HE LEFT! HE QUIT ON US! THAT'S WHY I WAS MAD BEFORE! THAT'S WHY I'M STILL BITTER! THAT'S WHY I WILL ALWAYS BE BITTER! AND HE WON THE FUCKING THING, NOT WITH A SUPER TEAM, BUT WITH A BROKEN DOWN SHITTY ONE THAT IS COMPARABLE TO HIS TEAMS IN CLEVELAND! WTF! WTF!!! WTF!!!
It could have happened here, but it didn't. It should have happened here, but it didn't. There are plenty of factors that I'm not going to rehash, but No. 6 took his terminator talents to South Beach and realized all of his gifts with another cast of low lifes and scallywags and closeted homosexuals.
But it's Cleveland. Lather, rinse, repeat, right? Did I expect a different result? Are you kidding? If Art Modell can move the Browns and win a Super Bowl within five years (or whatever it was; I'm not Googling Modell or Ravens) then any evil in this world is possible. I wouldn't be surprised to wake up tomorrow and find that the Catholic Church has been allowed to get away with child molestation for decades (wait, WHAT????). This isn't a right and just world. LeBron winning a title isn't an injustice; it is completely logical. Him winning it after shitting on our back? That's injustice.
But that's Cleveland.
******
So Luke was a pretty cool dude, but the thing of it is, Luke's ass was in prison. There was no escape. Believe me, he tried like eight times. Every time you think he's free and clear the bosses catch his ass. In the end, you REALLY think he makes it. For real this time. He's out! Freedom!!!
However, he has a sarcastic conversation with a god he doesn't believe in, and then suddenly he's surrounded by cops again, gets shot and is driven off in a cop car while dying. The end.
Here's the thing though: After he gets shot, his buddy beats up a mean cop, and the mean cop gets his trademark sunglasses run over by a car. It's a cool moment. Also, as Luke is being driven away with a bullet in his neck, he is smiling a wry smile. Good ol' Luke. This is because even though Luke bled to death, he went out on his terms. He wasn't going to let this shitty, oppressive life keep him down. He was going to find ultimate happiness in this life or die, and, by god, he did. He died. Luke is a cool dude like that.
Here's the thing though: Luke fucking died. Make no mistake about it -- cool sonuvabitch smile or not -- that is the smile of a dead man. He didn't really win. Seeing it outside the story, as omnipresent viewers, he might have won (or at least avoided eating a pile of shit), but did he really? In a movie, he's a champ. In whatever backfuck town he lived in, he's a dead nobody that couldn't escape his fate (He had to do TWO YEARS). Luke didn't believe in god, so there is no assumed afterlife glory in this story. He just lived his life, and then he died because he was frustrated. Luke was a cool dude, but he lost.
Alls I'm saying is, if you're a Cleveland fan, don't smile in the cop car. FROWN as hard as you can. Fuck that cop's sunglasses. Either we escape and win, or we die bitter and bleeding to death with no other meaning.
... The Tribe won tonight, by the way. ... That's cool... Go Tribe, and Go Cavs.
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