Monday, October 22, 2012

Lil Wayne & The Riot

Sometimes I'm writing about things I can't believe I'm writing about. But alas. Here we are. Lil Wayne. And me getting cranky about baseball fans. (After watching 60 Minutes on my own, unbidden last night, I channel Andy Rooney below.)




On October 20th, Li'l Wayne tweeted a congratulations to Ryan Theriot, sometimes short stop of the San Francisco Giants. The internet, including most of San Francisco, subsequently freaked out. Lil Wayne's name was being thrown around in conjunction with this team. So much so that he came to San Francisco to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame during last night's seventh inning stretch of Game 6 of the NLCS. Ryan Theriot would subsequently score a run.

What I couldn't figure out is why everyone in San Francisco was freaking out about this. "Ryan Theriot KNOWS Lil Wayne!" Yeah, and?

I wondered if this was perplexing because they didn't have a key piece of information that I had, so I tried to share it on the Twitters. No one seemed to care. They just marveled that Lil Wayne and Ryan Theriot, forgive me, were "homies". And it seemed to be interesting because the presumed uptight white boy was friends with the hard core, face tattooed rapper. Which just revealed so many of people's own biases and long held stereotypes it was absurd. I thought, "Wait, the white boy can't really be friends with the rapper? That's where we're at, America?" *headsplode*

So I have to explain some things:

Ryan Theriot and I went to LSU together. And I don't mean this in the were in the same place at the same time on a campus of 20k undergrads sense. My sophomore roommate was a student athletic trainer and we hung out with the baseball team a bit. I'm not saying Theriot and I were super tight or anything, he's not coughing up NLCS tickets for me, we are talking about a decade ago (*cringe*), but I was at the same house parties he was at, was introduced to him a few times at clubs and could head nod him on campus without feeling like some jerk hanger on. My friend definitely made out with his friend at one point and then there was this hilarious should only happen in romcoms subsequent mistaken identity thing between his friend and my friend.

I'm also pretty sure, and am trying to confirm with my old roommate, we were at a party at his apartment when he first got to LSU. Not that it really matters, but I like to know I'm not completely losing my mind.

He would also date, and eventually marry, an LSU cheerleader at the same time one of my best guy friends was like the equipment manager for the cheerleading squad and pretty good friends with her. (Yeah...I don't really have an explanation for that guy friend's role. He really wanted to be a cheerleader but didn't make the cut and so just sort of hung around the sidelines doing scut work for the squad? He's harmless. And sort of nerdy.) So him and his future wife were familiar to me and my friends.

Also during this time at LSU are a lot of the Cash Money recording artists. Master P, and even Snoop Dogg, moved their families out of the less safe New Orleans and up I-10 to Baton Rouge, plucking them all down, to the horror of those that lived there, in the McMansions of the Country Club of Louisiana. (There's an MTV Cribs from around this time with Master P, and maybe even one of Snoops's earlier houses, that is very definitely shot in Baton Rouge.)

Once they were in BR, they'd head to the LSU Rec Center and play pick-up basketball games on the courts there. I know this because I would see them, back when I was super into working out and was at the rec center like every day. Master P strolling through lobby of the rec center to or from playing basketball against a bunch of frat boys. I don't specifically recall seeing Lil Wayne there, but I don't doubt he was too.

I'm not saying Theriot and Lil Wayne met at the rec center, especially because athletes had their own world class workout facilities on the other side of campus. They don't work out with the common folk. What I am saying is that LSU baseball was a thing (they'd win the college world series that year), were known at the clubs, and since Cash Money was definitely hanging out in frat boy establishments both in BR and NO at the time, it's not outside the realm of possibility that they ran into each other during this time and got to know one another. Their friendship doesn't strike me as odd.

AND even if they didn't, once Theriot entered the majors, still spending his off seasons back in Louisiana, it's not an impossibility he met Lil Wayne then. It's not a huge state. Anyone with a little bit of famousness can meet anyone else with the same. It doesn't strike me odd at all that Theriot and Lil Wayne would know each other. (Which seems to be confirmed in this Yahoo! story, published after I started writing this post, negating most of the above but I'd committed already!: Both men are from Louisiana (Theriot is from Baton Rouge and Wayne is from New Orleans) and met each other "through friends of friends. Long story," Theriot said.)

That Theriot would like Wayne's music enough to become friends with him shouldn't be shocking to anyone, and that argument irked me more than even people being perplexed at their friendship. Some of the whitest white boys I know are the biggest consumers of hard core rap. In fact, most of those guys are in Louisiana/The South more than here. So can we all calm down with our hidden racial bias that Lil Wayne and Ryan Theriot are apparently going to crawfish boils in the off-season together?

Oh: and about the fucking hats during "God Bless America". If anyone had any recall they'd know this wasn't the first time they'd seen it. Did the same thing in 2010 during our WS run. They're a key piece of famed SF satire show Beach Blanket Babylon. I really don't expect people outside of SF to know that, but five seconds of internet researching instead of "WTF is with the hats?" would be nice. I mean hell, even Deadspin got it right.

I haven't even been watching the baseball games. I save my crazy for football Saturdays and have convinced myself that because I didn't watch those final three games the Giants played against the Reds, I can't watch the rest of the games because of the laws of my made up superstitions. And yet I'm somehow still finding ways to be really annoyed by everything surrounding this team via the internet. Like #Rally___. #RallyZito started as sort of a macabre, delusional, misguided thing that I totally support. Like, "AHAHAH! Elimination game and we're putting in Barry effing Zito! AHAHAH! Laughing so I won't cry!" That was funny. I can get behind that. I understand that sort of fandom insanity. But then the corporate muckity mucks get their hands on it and turn it all sincere for #RallyVogy, or even worse, #RallyEnchiladas, his night before he pitches meal. I mean...really?

I guess what I'm saying is: Stop being assholes, NHL owners, and get the CBA worked out so I can have my hockey back.

Also: if I had my druthers, every baseball stadium would have an organ and a wooden scoreboard and nothing else. Apparently I'm 80 years old.

Now excuse me, I'm gonna go eat some prunes and spend an hour on the recumbent cycle going 3mph for 45 minutes.*

*not really

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