The A$$-Clowns

I may have overvalued my dignity...

I’ve got to start this story somewhere and I’m semi-arbitrarily starting it on Hollywood Boulevard when my music producer son and I were walking down the street and some ass-clown comes by, riding a skateboard being pulled by a dog on a leash while simultaneously filming himself with an i-Phone on a selfie stick.

When I got done laughing (I was laughing at the ass-clown, not with him) I asked my son WTF?

My son informed me the skateboard/ass-clown was a Hollywood Boulevard regular and could often be seen doing stupid stunts he’d film and put on the internet to get followers. My son and I agreed that if this was the kind of thing you had to do to get internet followers, we were going to skip that part of the program because what’s the point of being famous if you’re famous for being an ass-clown?

Hunter S. Thompson once asked how low does a man have to stoop to become President of the United States (and as we’ve seen, it’s pretty goddamn low) and there’s no shortage of people willing to become ass-clowns to get famous.

(And right here we should thank the movie Office Space for giving us the term “ass-clown” and I’ve got an entire essay about that movie, which I’ll post over the holidays, so now you have that to not look forward to.)

The ass-clown/skateboard incident happened around 2018 and we’ll now set the Wayback Machine for 2014 and the publication of the book…

Jason Kendall and I wrote a book about baseball—Throwback—and when we sent the manuscript to the publisher, we were told it was a unique and great book and when I asked about marketing, I was told they would set up a couple book signings, but after that it was up to us to promote the book.

Just one problem:

Jason and I had no interest in marketing or promoting ourselves (we were interested in baseball, not book-selling) and when Jason was asked if he’d like to go to Pittsburgh to do a book signing (he played for the Pirates) Jason said:

“I’d rather go to fucking Iraq.”

BTW: In my opinion, Jason’s refusal to promote himself and schmooze with reporters (the people who do the voting) is the main reason he’s not in the Hall of Fame and if you want to read my argument on his behalf—and it’s a pretty good argument—here you go:

Bottom line: we were interested in baseball not marketing and promotion and the one time I tried to suggest promoting ourselves on social media, it didn’t go over so hot.

Jason and I were writing the book by drinking beer and talking baseball and it was mainly me asking dumb questions and him giving me smart and funny answers and my music-producer son said that sounds fabulously entertaining (it’s what podcasts have turned into) so I say I’ll ask Jason about the idea of recording a book-writing session.

I tell him I’ve got an idea to promote Throwback and he asks what is it and I say: “We get a camera…”

Jason says: “You lost me.”

And stands up and leaves the room, which made me laugh because his comic timing was perfect and made me wish we had filmed the exchange because you would have laughed, too.

In any case, we do a minimal amount of promotion and Throwback comes out and according to the publisher, we did “OK” financially and I wish I could be more specific, but along with marketing ourselves, we also had next-to-no interest in digging into what “OK” meant.

And we’ll now fast forward to last Saturday night even though it’s in the past and if you’re currently smoking weed I probably just blew your mind (also: GOD is DOG spelled backward) but if you’re not smoking weed you probably want me to get on with it, which I’ll do immediately.

An Evening of Informative Television

So last Saturday I’m watching a Netflix documentary called Breakdown: 1975 and the documentary argued that 1975 was a pivotal year in a lot of ways and one of them was the movie Jaws coming out.

Now here’s a list of movies that also came out in 1975, followed by the film’s box office gross and budget:

• Nashville: $10 million on a $2.2 million budget.

• Rollerball: $30 million on a $6 million budget.

• Three Days of the Condor: $41.5 million on a $7.8 million budget.

• Dog Day Afternoon: $56 million on a $3.8 million budget

• Shampoo: $60 million on a $4 million budget.

• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: $163.3 million on a $4.4 million budget

So a pretty good year for movies, but Jaws was the one that changed Hollywood because it made so much money:

• Jaws: $495 million on a $9 million budget.

After that Hollywood doesn’t just want good movies, it wants BLOCKBUSTERS and movie marketing expands with the popularity of Jaws and they realize they can open a movie everywhere at once as long as they market and promote the hell out of it and that summer you couldn’t go anywhere or listen to anything without seeing or hearing about sharks. Jaws led to the Saturday Night Live skit “Land Shark” and Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” and for about two years I was afraid to sit on a toilet because, while the odds were long, I wasn’t 100% sure I wouldn’t hear that shark theme right before I got bit in the ass by a Great White Shark with a poor sense of direction that had wandered into our local sewer system.

Anyway…

Let’s face it; there were no Good Old Days and money was always a consideration, but now the amounts of money skyrocket and Hollywood wants insane profits on the films they produce, so making $7.8 million on a film like Nashville is no longer worth it and, as a number of Hollywood people pointed out in the 1975 documentary:

Any time you’re more interested in the money than the product you’re producing, things tend to get fucked up.

Which results in…

Jake Paul Getting His Ass Kicked

After the 1975 documentary I tuned into the Jake Paul-Anthony Joshua fight which I never actually saw because they were taking way too long and if an event starts after 10 PM Central Standard Lee’s Bedtime, I’m probably going to say fuck it, go to sleep and read about it later.

Also because I was pretty sure the fight was going to suck—which it did—and I based that accurate prediction on this photo:

You can hype yourself all you want (Jake Paul predicted an upset, which turned out to be 100% accurate because a lot of fight fans were upset this match took place, but it was about money, not boxing) but when Hype meets Reality, Hype’s going to get its ass kicked.

You can’t talk your way out of Joshua being five inches taller, 26.7 pounds heavier and having a six-inch “reach” advantage which basically means Joshua’s arms are longer and he could hit Jake Paul while Jake Paul was still half-a-foot away from being able to hit Anthony Joshua.

Also…

Anthony Joshua has boxing experience at the highest level and Jake Paul doesn’t; Jake got famous as a YouTube “influencer” and started fighting ex-fighters who had to be drug out of retirement to get a payday.

Quick Word of Advice:

You don’t want to fuck around with professional boxers, even old ones, because unlike the rest of us who get our ideas about fighting from movies, professional boxers have training and at the age of 74 (or 75, the internet’s not sure) Jack Dempsey knocked out two poorly-informed muggers who tried to rob him.

My History with Boxing

I was and am a huge Muhammad Ali fan because he was a great boxer and funny and charming and stood up for his beliefs and when he could have accepted being drafted and spent a couple years in the military (most likely doing publicity tours and putting on exhibition matches, because no way they would send him to Vietnam) he refused and said he had no quarrel with the Vietnamese and none of them had called him the N-word and his enemies were right here in America.

That took balls in 1967 and cost him a lot.

I loved watching Ali box: he was fast and graceful and smart in the ring (he’d turn it on in the last 10 seconds of a round because he thought that’s what the judges would remember when they scored it) and in the process I learned a few things about boxing, but the one time I sparred with a friend, who boxed in college, the best compliment he could come up with was:

“You sure can take a punch.”

When you’re most notable boxing skill is getting hit in the head it’s time to get out of the ring, which I did immediately.

My interest in boxing declined precipitously when they started creating new divisions so they could have more “champions” and “championship bouts” and now there’s a WBA champion, a WBC champion, an IBF champion and a WBO champion and I can’t name any of them and once again that’s about money, not boxing.

Also…

We found out getting hit in the head repeatedly isn’t good for you (man, did not see that one coming, possibly because I’ve been hit in the head repeatedly) but if anyone was going to get hit in the head anyway, I’d vote for Jake Paul because I’ve spent way too much of life listening to people (OK, actually “guys” because generally speaking women don’t do this shit) say they think they could hit major league pitching or nail a three-pointer in the NBA or last a couple rounds with a professional boxer and having spent a good deal of my life around professional athletes, guys need to stop saying that shit.

But As I Was Almost Saying…

Having 21 million subscribers to your YouTube channel won’t help you dunk a basketball or hit a 100 MPH fastball or outrun an NFL cornerback and when Hype met Reality last Saturday night, Hype tried to avoid fighting and it got so bad the referee told the fighters: “The fans didn’t pay to see this crap.”

The referee told the fighters they had to stop stalling; Jake Paul was running away, clinching when Joshua got too close and diving at Joshua’s legs which is acceptable in football, but embarrassing in boxing.

But actually fighting didn’t work out so well for Jake Paul because when he got too tired to keep running, he got knocked out in the sixth round when Anthony Joshua broke his jaw in two places.

So All’s Well That Ends Well?

Before the fight, Laila Ali (Muhammed Ali’s daughter and a former professional boxer) said Paul had no business being in the ring with Anthony Joshua and Lennox Lewis (three-time world heavyweight champion) said the fight was a “bad idea” and someone (I was starting to lose interest so I forget who and/or whom) pointed out that a lot of people were going to watch the fight just to see Jake Paul get his ass kicked.

And he did.

So you might think everyone learned their lesson and all’s well that ends well, but then I read Jake Paul “made or might make” over $100 million for fighting Anthony Joshua and for $100 million I’d let Anthony Joshua give me wedgie at high noon in Times Square while I sang an a cappella version of the Beatles “I’m A Loser.”

Turns out, the A$$-Clowns just might be on to something.

And to finish where we started, last night I called my son the music producer to make sure I got the story right and asked if he remembered the ass-clown on the skateboard and he said yeah he did and then added:

“I’m pretty sure that was Jake Paul’s brother.”

Jesus, just checked and Jake Paul’s brother Logan is estimated to be worth $150 million.

I’ve already got a skateboard; can anyone loan me a small dog and a leash?

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