I watched NBA all star Saturday night 2024 this evening or what I now like to call the eyeball death ear-brain energy harvest- shareholder lap dance festival of the end times.
I mean its not that serious. But the program despite its insignificance... is significant and I think it speaks to something distinct about this time of life.
As a fan of the NBA I’ve watched this event for years. NBA players gather to do various challenges related to basketball activity. Part of the excitement involves the mixture of personalities, The possibility of an exciting viral moment.
But every year it’s a disappointment. It’s an ad farm really. It’s three hours of commercials and maybe thirty minutes of content. You get roped into the capital masochism of it all and can’t stop watching because the entertainment is so gingerly dolled out.
I recalled the scene in the wire, drug dealer Stringer Bell is talking about extending crack with baking soda. Selling an inferior product cause the junkies will buy it anyway. Maximizing profit by minimizing quality.
This tension is everywhere, the degree to which sellers can avoid getting away with scamming. Wherever that line is, it was crossed tonight by the NBA and TNT and it speaks to the screenification of consciousness that is reaching new heights of absurdity on this current planet plane .
Most interestingly and prophetically the action tonight took place on a basketball court that was also a massive television screen.
Big screens and sports are synonymous. Jumbotrons exist. They help us consume the game and we tolerate the psychological manipulation they perpetrate
But playing the game on a Jumbotron?? Literally playing sports on top of a screen?
I mean how ironic. Sports, exercise, competition. They're meant to be an escape right? From screens? Pure physical might, the natural capacity of bodies to do incredible things. This is all supposed to be separate from our increasingly screenified reality. Right? I mean Even if we watch sports on tv, we’re watching something real, tangible, felt. Something primal that exists beyond tech.
But this tv court... it didn’t have to be so bad. Unfortunately, it was as if the producers were all coked up and being stupid. The display was just too absurd.
All night the court was changing colors, flashing images, playing videos, plumes of flame and shining stars followed the players...
The three point contest was the worst of it. It was sponsored by a soda that I will not name but its branding features the most noxious oversaturated slimy shade of green that the human eyes are capable of rendering.
For the duration of the contest the tv court was lit up in this nasty shade of green, illuminating all of the players from below with its vomit glare. The soft warm hues of human pigmentation were transformed into zombie flesh. It was as if the gates of green capitalist hell had opened from below and everyone was in free fall. Deus ex machina yo
It was as if the fundamental rules of matter and sight were suddenly turned off. As if god decided to show us what was really going on beneath the surface of the court. The evil money energy that is hidden, bubbling, frothing, hissing and now screeching. Always, somehow… mostly... beneath our sensory awareness. Not tonight though, not when the rules of taste are so throughly abandoned.
The tv court wasn’t the only first for the evening. WNBA player Sabrina Ionescu and Stephen Curry faced off in a special head to head three point shooting competition.
This, I think, might be the first time a WNBA player has featured prominently in a marquee NBA event which is beautiful and inspiring. There is little overlap between the two leagues and that likely depresses the ratings of the WNBA and the salaries of their players. It is unfortunate that perhaps the NBA has not done as much as it could to integrate the WNBA into its programming.
However, It was still a great moment. Sabrina shot very well, just about as good and better than the NBA players. She did lose to Steph, arguably the greatest shooter of all time, but only by a few baskets. The two stars hugging and complementing each other was awesome and I’m sure profoundly inspiring to many young athletes.
…..Except… they both were bathed in mutant zombie acid and maybe I’m neurotic but it was hard for the moment to live as what it should have given its treatment by the evil soda company.
This, the camaraderie bit, is what sports is really about! Or should be. The competition, the collaboration, the shared respect between players and fans, the capacity to inspire young people to bring out the best in themselves.
These are sacred things and new technology and the greediness of corporations threaten this love and life force that they unfortunately have the responsibility of delivering to us.
Other small notes. The audio of the show was completely incomprehensible. I couldn’t believe it was so bad. The sound of the commentators in the arena was battling with the voices of the tv broadcasters. None of it made out. Unfortunately we have another metaphor for the state of our media culture...
Separately, or not separately... This month Apple's new Vision Pros hit the shelves and peoples heads and it feels like a big moment.
I haven’t tried the device myself, which is
the companies' version of a VR headset. But from what I have gathered the experience is pretty compelling.
And this is all scary and bad. The screens are coming from all sides now. That’s what this device is. You’re literally strapped into like a dozen screens. It completely merges itself with the reality that you perceive. Your world becomes the screen....Does that sound familiar??? Ahhhhh. It’s all a lot.
We as people are meant to be of the world, in the world. Screens do nothing but separate us from our nature. They twist and pervert and cast shadows upon our brains that are difficult to escape from. I think we all need to be so so cautious. We will be tempted by these new devices and abilities but they don’t need to be used.
What this moment may need is the profound recognition that progress might mean turning backward. Not in all respects of course. But in terms of technology and media big time.
Our mental health has been declining rapidly because of this “progress.” our social fabric is tearing at the seams. It needs to be mended. And that’s an analog process… sewing… ha.
What does it mean to sew?
love, Jack
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