WCS 27: Stephen A. no longer says, "Stay off the weeeed!"
And other ways that basketball analysis has grown less stupid
Yesterday author Ellen Holland—who happens to edit the physical iteration of High Times magazine—stopped by to see me in East Oakland for a fun and eye-opening conversation that I’ll post for paid subscribers on Wednesday.
Today I learned the resolution of San Diego journalist Jackie Bryant’s imbroglio with Stripe, the banking app through which we Substack scribes get paid. My eyes were opened—in the manner of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange’s infamous aversion therapy treatment scenes. And what I witnessed was the opposite of fun.
Bryant was featured in the Sojourn’s special holiday Productively Stoned posts. She’s among the best we have covering weed and, like me, Bryant’s Substack work has featured links to businesses that deal in cannabis. Stripe and Substack eventually came to terms with Jackie, but not before I flushed the Productively Stoned Last Minute Gift Guide—my highest performing post, until my recent reparations coverage—like so much journalistic contraband.
The last thing I need is this income generator stilled.
More than the elephant in the room, gambling is the planetary eclipse in baseball’s Ippei Shoehei Ohtani imbroglio
I’m very glad for Bryant, San Diego magazine’s managing editor and a mother to a toddler. I’m sad for all of us good journos jumping over prohibition-created hurdles.
In 2022’s A Just and Legal Weed series I wrote about what lawyer Allison Margolin has called “the criminalization of consciousness.” Last week’s scare was a part of that subtle, ever-present criminalization, same as the “protective” packaging that slows your product opening experience and slowly strangles the planet.
Like the federal laws that keep so many complex renters—and hotel room occupants—from consuming this legal, taxed good in one’s own privacy.
Getting by in today’s media environment is hard enough without being criminalized in a fashion that hasn’t made sense since… forever?
Shit fuck damn, Stripe.
Ten. Things. Now!
10 The heightened hoops talk of Mind the Game
Sometimes I think too much about hoops. You’d be appalled if you knew the actual bandwidth that NBA stuff occupies. When the amount becomes too outrageous even for me, I remind myself that the part of my brain that should be thinking of a two-state solution or helping to solve the climate crisis is devoted to something meaningless.
That doesn’t happen much. Mostly I’m just amped on basketball and want it discussed better. The just-debuted Mind the Game is the podcast that dissatisfied fans like me have been waiting for.
It will always be beyond me that Shaquille O’Neal is an in-studio analyst. Nothing in his playing career suggested any particular gift for seeing the game and his behind-the-desk-career has nothing to indicate latent talent. And Charles Barkley is a troll, one who’s only recently acknowledged a stylistic revolution that’s almost a decade old.
This is why—no matter how much they flirt with pretention—Lebron James and JJ Redick are doing Da Lawd’s work in delivering Mind of The Game. The very first episode clarified aspects of play scheming that I had been fuzzy on forever. Already I see the game differently.
The NFL used to have Edge NFL Matchup. The NBA now has this podcast, for the oxymoronic “serious fan.”
Lil Hit
If Portland is vying for the title of Northwest’s most drugged-out scene, rural Washington is the dark-horse candidate, with its insufficiently-seen fentanyl crisis.
Seattle Times
If Dwight Howard is the answer, then what’s the question?
9 What’s “3rd place” have to do with PDX public spaces?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to West Coast Sojourn to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.