Phantoms of the hardwood and the injured reserve

I was the last person on the planet to get a cellphone, a debit card, as well as try sushi (and I'm referring to the vegetable rolls). So it makes sense that I only just now watched Sonicsgate. If there is an individual who lives under larger rock than I do, it's a documentary about how the city of Seattle lost the SuperSonics. Between the years of 2004 and 2008, I did not have cable and lost touch with what was happening with the team. During the latter of those years, I lived with a now ex-girlfriend who harbored a deep-seeded hatred for any sort of athletic competition besides horse racing (if that even qualifies). Combining the factors of estrangement from broadcast media and exposure to a significant other's contagion of negativity, I simply stopped caring about the Sonics. I remember being on campus at WWU, hearing the rumors of the team moving and thinking with indifference, "business is business."

But after watching the documentary, I've realized how deep the roots run. Seeing vintage footage of Payton, Kemp and Schrempf, along with some of the other more historically underappreciated players like Sam Perkins and Hersey Hawkins, it's pure nostalgia. It made me realize how big a Sonics fan I was when I was young. The Seahawks were annual disasters and the Mariners only had a few memorable years (which both the organization and city still try to unsuccessfully cling to). The Sonics were the real deal and regularly contended in the playoffs. So they were easy for a kid to get into. And those games in May and June were intense; I'd be cursing Karl Malone and the rest of the Utah Jazz in my mind for all four quarters.

Now that I've seen how everything went down, it depresses me. Mismanagement of players, poor draft picks, bumbling local ownership and politicking, deceitful buyers...and a plethora of other things the film does a good job of outlining/explaining. I don't know man, it bums a dude out. (And you know who else got bummed out? Ex-season ticked holder, Sherman Alexie. That's who.) The worst part has to be that the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team that the Sonics became, is right now playing in the Western Conference finals. Good game.

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Think I screwed up my elbow. Too much working out. Took the week off. No lifting. Don't want tendinitis. But I think I'm going to lose my mind if I don't engage with some iron soon.

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To capture the essence of this post, I give you Harvey Milk. The album the song below is off of is A Small Turn of Human Kindness. (It came out last year and really should have made my "best of" list.) Most artists just front with the "you guys, I am really sad and I need to sing these songs" and end up sounding too catchy to actually be sad about anything. Harvey Milk, on the other hand, don't sugarcoat despair. While on past releases they've definitely played around with some blues rock and have been known to cover an entire R.E.M. album live, nothing of the sort exists here. Crushing sludge and doom. Exclusively. I don't think I've ever heard anything that so poignantly characterizes the sense of completely bottoming out. Makes Elliott Smith sound like he just needed a Xanax.