Burning Off a Pronounced Lack of Nervous Energy- the unfun job

I wanted to feel what it's like to write- and what I can produce- from extremely low energy.  Here goes...

Ever since Bokolis walked off the football pitch, the pace of just about everything has slowed tremendously for me.  The pitch was a fine distraction and diversion from all the bullshit the rest of existence relentlessly feeds us.  It spared me from having to encounter or associate with people who I felt had bought into it.

While Bokolis does his damnedest to sidestep all that nonsense, trying to sidestep it is- I gather- like trying to play a video game on master level when you're no master.  You slowly/surely/steadily get hit with the shit from the shitstorm until your power bar goes empty.

It's made all the more difficult when you're surrounded by people who eat that shit up (I guess the pun is intentional).  Bokolis has found myself in such an existence.  I am now torn between the allure of becoming old, fat and dumb, and swimming back upstream.

Bokolis cannot decide, as both options are at once equally appealing and unappealing.  My only coping mechanism has been to stack my chips, as the erstwhile cool kids might have said, and hope that the process kills me before I have to decide.

See, Bokolis had money and assed out multiple times in the 90s.  Most people lost their first money; I lost my second and third money.  At some point on that see-saw, Bokolis decided that I can't do this any more, so...throw in your metaphor- stood on 70 cents on the Price is Right wheel, hit the buzzer...errrr...took what was in the box on Monty Hall's table...I wasn't the big deal of the day, but went home quite better off than I started.

Money didn't mean all that much to Bokolis, except that it allowed me not to have to jump on the hamster wheel, not to fully engage the system, not to be laden by its demands.  Even in times of no (earned) income, I refused to be harried into slaving for a paycheck.  Essentially, I did work that, when combined with drawing from my stash, allowed for a largely carefree existence.  I'm not saying that I achieved Zen, but I'm still going to call it that.

Bokolis did not live anything approaching lavishly, even in the days of easy come, easy go.  But, unlike almost all of my friends (who were younger), I was unbothered by having to make rent.

At some point, Bokolis was roped into having to help out family- isn't it ALWAYS fucking family- doing, more or less, something that I've spent a lifetime avoiding.  It's put me in direct conflict with my ideology, how I've lived.

All this is for a family member who has always been driven by money/wealth, has plenty of it- certainly more than Bokolis does- yet needs me to keep it from falling apart.  Even though they have made this business their calling, somehow I am better at making the machines run.

The stakes are too high and there was no one else to do it.

Spiritually, it's prison.  Bokolis short-term memory is all over the place.  I spoon letters (though not numbers) in a way that I've never done.  It is testing my Zen.

Despite the attitude with which Bokolis- I post once a year and I can barely remember this asshole- writes this nonsense on here, I don't consider myself to be self-confident, but I do think I am self-assured.  I was captain of every football team that I walked into for the last 10 years that I played.  I never asked for it.  It just always found me.  I'm not going to explain why except to say that, when I get thrown into shit, I'm convinced I'm going to work it out.

Bokolis has got the same general attitude about my current drama.  The key difference here is that, unlike football, I can't stand what I'm doing.  It's been years now; I haven't grown to like it or even tolerate it.

Bokolis has come to understand that, rather than let ideology get in the way, all you can do is stack your chips while you can.  Money still isn't the motivator, but it's the measure of this game.

How much of it will Bokolis get to enjoy vs planning to keep it out of probate...I guess that depends on the stress.  The next kicking dirt on graves post may be about me.

Rickey coming, Jesus. Rickey coming

 In an alarming trend, milestones are now increasingly marked by people's passing.

Of course, Rickey is so fast, he was already banging on the pearly gates like, Henderson here! before Saint Peter could get to the front. 

Y'all know what court we was supposed to meet up on.  See you on the other side.

'til then, rest easy, Rickey.

Do you think I can beat Mike Tyson!

So, Bokolis corralled someone's account and hung in long enough to watch Mike Tyson be carried by Jake Paul for eight abridged rounds of what they claim was boxing.  This came somewhat close to retroactively ruining my childhood- some punk-ass white boy from the Cleveland suburbs besting a muthafucka from the streets.

Bokolis hopes Tyson got paid well for this.  According to the broadcast, Paul claims the idea for this circus was hatched when he asked a friend, do you think I can beat Mike Tyson?  Of course, I was able to rationalize that this wasn't the same Mike Tyson that I had built up in my head.

Already in a dark state of mind, this was a guy who showed up to the ring looking like it was past his bedtime.  Aside from sharing the belief that a legacy ain't nothing but a muthafuckin' Subaru, Bokolis can relate because I had fallen asleep during the undercard.  Twenty years ago, it might have been a disco nap. But, these days, it is decidedly an old-man nap.

Aside- also conducive to sleep was that this broadcast was brutal.  Is this what programming has become?

That was enough for Bokolis to think, uh-oh.  Other than seeing a random clip of Tyson training here and there, I know nothing about the build-up to this.  I've had friends telling me he looked good and in decent shape.

But, what Bokolis saw was a guy likely both neutered and bloated from painkillers.  Paul looked like he was on whatever the current version of Adderall is.  Tyson offered a modicum of energy in the first round, faded in the second- at least, that's what we saw after restarting the feed due to the buffering- and that's when I noticed that Tyson was working with a bum wheel.

If memory serves, this was the issue in his final proper fight.  His knee was gone, so he tried to get himself DQ-ed and, when that didn't work, begged off.

He didn't need to beg off against this opponent, as Paul is not an elite-level pugilist and Tyson was still able to mostly dodge what he threw.  That got Tyson to the finish line, well behind on the scorecards.

Rounds 3-8 were sad to watch, as Bokolis knew that Tyson had no chance.  The crowd was muted by its realization that 1986 Mike Tyson was not in the building.  Further humbling surely came with the realization that they had suckered themselves, and would have to wait for someone else to knock the GH out of Jake Paul. 

The only saving grace was that his reflexes were such that he didn't stand in front of Paul's right hand long enough to get KTFO.  This would've really fucked my shit up.

It was an eerie parallel to June 8, 2002.  Bokolis was watching Lewis-Tyson in, of all places, Cleveland, Ohio.  From the second round, it became clear that Tyson didn't have it and was going to get knocked out.  Unlike the nostalgic saps in jerry's place last night, the crowd in the bar in Cleveland was decidedly anti-Tyson.  While Tyson was champion in the hood, these middle-America white folk were full-on cancel culture.

It might have also been that it was a generation later, people who only knew Tyson as an ex-con rapist who wanted to eat his children and as the guy who, at the pre-fight hype fest that ultimately got the fight pushed back, told the punk-ass white boy who yelled out to put Tyson in a straightjacket that he would fuck you 'til you love me, faggot (after Tyson walked up and- a work, just like Tyson's slap on Paul was- threw a hook toward Lennox Lewis).

Disclosure- on three occasions, Bokolis has worked this into the act when shagging a bird, minus the part after the comma.  Needless to say, there was no second trade on any of them.  One was too thick- figurately thick- to get that it was coital shit-talk, the second was repulsed and couldn't wait to get away from me, the third liked it, and I couldn't wait to get away from her.

Just like that night in Cleveland, it ended with Round 8 and with Bokolis closing off another chapter.

Ale Bunga Ale

 

So, Berlusconi faded away, and Bokolis had a few things go through my mind.  For a bit, I wasn't sure what to think.

This man bankrolled AC Milan's surge to dominance, both of Serie A, the strongest league in Europe at the time, and through European football itself.  Officially, his reign over the club ran from 1986-2017, but the time Bokolis will most fondly remember is the the run of ass whuppin from 87-95.  There were Scudetti, there were European cups, and there was a barren period for the dreaded Juventus, which shut up everyone around me. 

Somewhere in there, Berlusconi managed to become prime minister of Italy.  When Bokolis had to explain Berlusconi to Americans, I would use the comp of Donald Trump for the bombast but, as Trump was a comparative piker, I would throw Ted Turner in there, mix the two and say that it was like Trump being president.  Then we would snicker, Donald Trump president, yeah right.

With Trump fulfilling the prophesy, it turns out that Italy were early adopters, you might say, of (right-)wingnuts.  Bokolis ribbed my Italian buddy about this, goading him (into invoking Benny Bianco from Bologna and) to state the obvious- just as they were in 1921, except, this time, it's the US increasingly looking like heading down the Via D'Annunzio.

In those heady days, it was kind of a cute novelty to have the owner run the whole country.  His time in charge lasted about as long as novelty does. 

That said, once Berlusconi came back from being prime minister, Milan, while still a top club, no longer would dominate as they did.  During his second run as Prime Minister, his stench of both his politics and appetites started to define him, even in the eyes of Milanisti.

By the time he came back from his third turn, the world had been introduced to the terms bunga bunga and culona inchiavabile, Barbara was fucking the striker, Pirlo was off to Juventus. Berlusconi, in addition to hurtling towards senility (as American football fans have seen with Al Davis and are now seeing with Jerry Jones), was in the process of having his comeuppance finances dwindle and empire unravel. 2011-2017 was a period of regression for AC Milan while we waited for Bunga Bunga to divest, and even that was a shitshow.

Berlusconi shitting all over Italy was possible to overlook while Milan were delivering trophies, but ultimately became impossible to reconcile.

Suave homes, the hedge funds have got it from here.

I bet that y'all thought this was going to be about the Iron Sheik. 

I'd have too much to say, and it's already been done.  In at once treasuring and lampooning him, we've all effectively been eulogizing him for the last 15 years.  He was always a Bokolis favorite, as he looked like one of my uncles, and almost as ornery.

With any luck, he has come up on his daughter's murderer, put him in the camel clutch, and humbled him for all times.

Suave homes, namber vun, there'll never be another.

Boom! He's on his back!

When Bokolis followed gridiron football, one of the things that made it worthwhile was listening to John Madden blather on about something that was apparent to a fan capable of critical thought, though maybe not to the larger nation of mongoloids, in such an endearing way that excused him telling us stuff we should already know.

Bokolis was too young to have experienced Madden the coach, and too old to give a fuck about the video game. So, my impression of him will remain as the broadcaster from the 80s and 90s- with a beer commercial thrown in- who knew and cared just a little bit more than the rest. Bokolis brings this up because, watching a college basketball game today, I saw some kid, after his team battled all game to whittle a 10-point deficit and finally tied it in the final minute, settle for shooting from Curry land, down two with 20 seconds left. A friend of mine, when I relayed this to him, lamented that everyone thinks they can shoot 3's. It reminded Bokolis of an old Madden line, one where he explained that two things everyone thinks they can do, but can't, are kick field goals and play tennis. It was one of the many times Madden stumbled on to genius. Bokolis would like to think that, if Madden had stayed in the public eye long enough to experience the current NBA, he would have added shooting 3-pointers to that. Suave, homes. You blazed quite a trail.

Feudalism by any other name...

So, it seems the bloodsuckers at UEFA/FIFA have met their match in this soulless cunt, who is looking to blow up football as we know it by bringing to existence the long-threatened European superleague to finally run the European Cup competition, currently doing business as the misnomered Champions League*, out of business once and for all.

Feudalism by any other name...despite the stated nationality of the bloke at the head of the table, Bokolis' inner circle of friends considers him a middleman/facilitator, and puts the blame for this squarely on the shoulders of the American ownership regimes of EPL teams.

As it is, with the proposed league saying that the squad can't play domestically and its players could be precluded from playing int'l, this has the potential to bite them in their ass.

Most of the relevant players would have no problem choosing riches of the superleague over country, but what happens when they are no longer good enough to play for the new G-20 and the lord kicks them off the land? Like a deposed nobleman, they'll be thrown in with riff raff, and still(?) banned from playing int'l.

The fans might be the bigger issue. We've hung in with the CL through all perversions because we still manage to hold some silly romantic connection to the European Cup. This new league would be like rewriting the Constitution, to which we have no allegiance, and not (self-)required to support. For Bokolis' part, I have been slowly extracting myself from football these past few years. My head is still lodged up its ass, but the rest of me is out.

The P in EPL has always, to some degree, stood for Plastic. The chief purpose of rebranding was to capture the national/int'l TV market- the so-called 'plastic fans' who who don't live near the grounds and don't go to the matches. Of course, television now makes up the bulk of the big clubs' revenue; spectators are just there to help with the TV ambience.

Similarly, the TV revenue in play here renders those local fans to being a bunch of local peasants, like someone living in a bungalow next to a high-rise who won't sell to the developers.

Surely, the new bloodsuckers would buy off UEFA/FIFA for its blessing. The EPL and the FAs are not Bokolis' hero- just a more tolerable lot of bastards. They are all cut from the same cloth.

The fans' only recourse is to disavow the clubs. Only the English fans are capable of this. Bokolis would count Gary Neville among them. While G.Neville the filthy manc cunt is to be reviled, I very much like the way G.Neville the analyst shakes. He is just about as quick to slam his own club for its misdeeds as he is any other, and praise a club he dreads just as quickly as he would his own, which are about the best things you can say about an analyst. He rightfully shreds MUFC and LFC in the same breath.

Have you ever noticed the difference between who gets the championship trophy in football (the captain) and who gets it in American sports (the owner)? As part of the greater culture, as Bokolis pointed out to his circle, you see a big difference right there between Britain, hardly as left-leaning as much of western Europe, and America. In America, where corporations seemingly have more rights than humans, and the free speech granted to a corporation and its money extends to the right to tell you to STFU- with the threat, implicit or explicit, to throw you off its land- when your view clashes with its own, a man with an opinion like this wouldn't even get three minutes to voice it on corporate media, let alone an uninterrupted three minutes.

Bokolis remembers reading- maybe 10-15 years ago, an article about the growing American ownership of clubs in the EPL and how they were already lobbying to scrap relegation. Someone was cited as saying it will never happen because they need 2/3 of the votes, and then the league has to also agree, which it would never do. I thought, just you wait, pal.

It's this kind of nonsense that America is seeking to bring to old world Europe, only it has stormed the beaches of England this time.

Rugby for fairies LIV at Miami

Bokolis split the conference championships- the Packers were run over, a bad bet, and the Chiefs blasted their way out of adversity.  This leaves it at 5-5 for the playoffs, with it coming down to the final game.

Chiefs (-1.5) over 49ers - Bokolis is taking somewhat of a chance posting the evening before the match.  I am leaving myself open to the dead-hooker story.  In reality, I was in at -1 a long time ago, so any dead hookers will have to say missing until Monday.

Lay people are all over the Chiefs, while players seem to be favoring the 49ers.  Anyone taking the 49ers has to be putting tremendous stock in their defense and running game.  They might also be banking on Andy Reid mucking up the playcalling like he used to, on Kyle Shanahan winning that battle.

Bokolis will be banking on that 49ers running game not being nearly as good as you think it is, on the Chiefs daring Jimmy G to beat them, and, even if everything goes wrong, on Mahomes and that offense being able to blast their way out of it.  I see this as the Chiefs having a 75% chance of winning, which should translate to more than a two-point victory- more like two touchdowns.