WCS 4: For Better or Worse, You're On the Team
A Week's Sojourn that Explores Pay-to-Play Realms, Tentatively
Missouri State Museum's African American Portrait Collection / Photographer Unknown
A hearty welcome to all of the new subscribers who happen to be selling weed on Instagram. I truly had no idea you were out there until this weekend.
For updates and the occasional surprise, follow West Coast Sojourn on Instagram, Facebook, and Substack. We’re working to make more and varied content available to you.
And now for the 10 most riveting stories of my week:
10. Heads up: These Lakers are HUGE
In an inversion of the last season’s Opening Night squad, which opened with two wins against 10 losses, the 2023-24 Lakers are going to be physically enormous. Think 2020 Dwight and JaVale, but still bigger.
Lakers Film Room
Last fall’s squad relied on Russell Westbrook, a guard, to rebound; frequently played 6-2 Patrick Beverley at forward; and gave major minutes to the undersized Dennis Schroeder and Kendrick Nunn. In next week’s camp the Lakers will have the emerging Max Christie (6-5) joining newcomers Cam Reddish (6-8) and Taurean Prince out guarding wings with Austin Reaves, and Gabe Vincent, and D’Angelo Russell.
In their frontcourt, the Lakers have new 6-9 center-forward Christian Wood. Coach Darvin Ham can now mix and match between the long Wood, Anthony Davis, Jaxson Hayes, Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Lebron James.
Camp starts on Oct. 3. For L.A.’s preseason opener, the Lakers travel to San Francisco to play the Warriors on Oct. 7. The NBA season starts on Oct. 24.
Lil Hit
The Hollywood scribes got some good stuff and are set to go back to work, but they won’t be doing it before the thespians and vocal artists get their deals.
The Town/Deadline
Niners fans travel like college parents following their kid’s limited gridiron career, as though there will be soon be no more games.
9. College Jocks Can Stop Pretending
They Don’t Consume Cannabis
In June, the NCAA’s Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports proposed to remove marijuana from the organization’s banned substances list. On Friday, the announced it will advise its governing bodies to introduce and enact legislation to stop testing and punishing players for cannabinoids.
Marijuana Moment
“This recommendation is based on extensive study informed by industry and subject matter experts (including doctors, substance misuse experts and membership practitioners),” the body said in a Friday statement.
Of course change has been too slow in coming. It’s undeniable though that recent institutional progress in cannabis policy is starting to resemble a genie coming out of its bottle.
Lil Hit
For any number of reasons, you might want to clean your system of THC. Here are the best approaches.
Leafly
Light Tokes & Deep Thoughts [Branded Content]
Over the weekend in Fresno’s Tower District I sat down with a couple of young friends to puff and chat about the credibility of legal weed testing. Both Lain, a 22-year-old Fresno State student with multiple health challenges, and their boyfriend James had experience with unlicensed weed. (Fresno, population 544,000, has only two dispensaries.)
On this day we were doing things legal.
I packed the bowl of my Vessel Helix pipe and brought up a few points on California’s top regulator’s move to step up testing of flower, including random tests. That’s just how out of hand the practice of inflating advertised THC levels has become.
Lain enthusiastically supports the regulatory upgrade.
“I’m looking for the lowest percentage,” said Lain. “I’m looking to know exactly how much there is. I need to know it’s a relatively low percent to know what to smoke, because my tolerance is so, so low.”
Lain sat out our first round with the Vessel, a modern interpretation of the classic pipe that combines artful sophistication with cutting-edge engineering. I asked Lain to break out the low-dose cannabis that I’d gifted them. The bud came from my last stint in Oregon.
This time we all hit. James brought up lab shopping, in which product is taken from testing service to testing service until they get their desired numbers.
“People are going to find a way to cheat the system,” James said.
In conjunction with Vessel, West Coast Sojourn is offering a spiffy product giveaway. Subscribers can win a gorgeous, ultramodern Vessel pipe, simply by referring your friends to WCS. Each referral earns a raffle entry. Participants must be U.S. residents. Winners will be announced in the October 2 newsletter.
8. Is Puka Nacoua the
Slottiest Slot Receiver Ever?
Hours from now on Monday Night Football, the new unusual name that will become a household word makes its prime time debut.
Drop Puka’s name in your chat. A la, Richie Incognito. Or Larry Csonka. Or, Ha Ha Clinton-Dix. Born Makea Nacua in Western Samoa, the Rams rookie out of BYU broke the record for receptions in a player’s first two games.
NFL.com
Puka means chubby.
Have a look at the 6-2, 205-pounder’s highlights. His game’s all dart and catch. We haven’t seen Puka Nacoua Over The Top and may not all year. He’s Welkier than Wes Welker, Eddier than Edelman. He’s Puka, a prototypical possession receiver who averages an almost polite 10.6 yards per catch.
A fifth-round pick, Nacoua has stepped in for the injured Cooper Cupp to catch 25 balls in Weeks One and Two and set fantasy league waiver wires on fire. He also makes the surprisingly competitive Rams a legit playoff threat, as by Week 5 Cupp is expected to join Nacua in catching Matt Stafford passes.
Lil Hit
Leafly has undertaken a tricky stock maneuver to avoid NASDAQ delisting.
Geekwire
7. Michelle Wolf in Three Acts
Photo by Thibault Penin on Unsplash
It’s Great to Be Here, Michelle Wolfe’s latest, had me at gerrymandering, the most racist thing in America that can still be done openly.
I mean, Wolf’s three-part comedy tour-de-force almost certainly had me before then. But ya almost never hear a good gerrymandering joke, and there are so few candidates to even see the joke. Never mind write and tell it. Just the existence of this nearly-thrown-way gag was next level, to me.
Michelle Wolf gets America like that. It’s Great to Be Here should get saluted with a Chef’s Tongue Kiss. It’s that fucking good.
Netflix
The former competitive swimmer and pilloried Correspondents’ Dinner host is now an expat, living in Barcelona. To say that new distance has honed her already sharp take is colossal understatement.
Like Nikki Glazer, Wolf is awesome at engaging the foibles of sex. Only, with Wolf the stories are avenues to larger points about the human condition. Her stuff on the Me Too movement and beauty’s value have not left me. Nor will it you.
6. Now, to See Who Will Be MLB’s MVPs
Down behind the Orange Curtain, part of what’s given Shohei Ohtani his Paul Bunyan lore is the absence of eyeballs on what he’s accomplished. Stateside, he’s no Travis Kelce, in crossover or Q-Score terms. An award that overlooks meaninglessness in regular-season play, the MVP Award of baseball’s American League will go to the two-way Goliath from Japan, Vegas says.
Meanwhile, over the season’s final weeks, the Dodgers’ Mookie Betts must continue to hang with Atlanta’s stunningly great Ronald Acuña, Jr.
Vegas Insider
Acuna recently joined the elite membership of baseball’s 40-40 club. Only pre-cheating Barry Bonds, cheating A-Rod, cheating Jose Canseco, and Alphonso Soriano join Acuña.
Over the season’s second half, Betts has been the NL’s best player, leading in batting average (.357) and Wins Above Replacement.
5. In a Season Of Phony Juggernauts,
Niners Are a Legit Hard Case
Don’t flip your wig.
Pontificating over which NFL teams are of dependable quality is a fool’s errand at this time of year. How many fools did the Dallas Cowboys make on Sunday by losing to the Arizona Cardinals, a team that’s understood to be intentionally losing?
Let’s only talk pro football specifics for a bit.
We know that Miami (see below) is for-sure good. And so are the San Francisco 49ers, who won on Thursday.
Scary good. So too are their fans, as the footage above suggests. On top of brawling until the bitter end, they travel like college parents following their kid’s limited gridiron career.
In other, equally significant NFL news, recent Thursday Conversation partner Ngaio Bealum has a team in my Coastal Athletic League called Smoke a Super Bowl. He’s in first place, but I’m leading this week and have the Iggles’ Jaylen Hurts and Tutu Atwell of the hometown (!) Rams going tonight. I should be over .500 by tomorrow.
5. Now that Coach Prime Is Gone…
Unfair, but funny as hell.
On Thursday, the real opening weekend of college football began. Three-and-oh teams butted heads all weekend, and the real and the fake found themselves separated.
ESPN
Back in 1936, Notre Dame beat Ohio State 7-2. It was possible on Saturday to watch OSU-Notre Dame and pretend prehistoric times were back. The offenses were conservative and the defenses stout. Like the spread offense never happened. Great ending though.
Oregon defensive lineman Casey Rogers had my fave oddball play of the day when Oregon faked a punt, got Rogers the rock, and helped the 6-5, 300-pound former lacrosse player rumble outside for a first down and much more.
Ricky Pearsall of Florida had perhaps the sickest college catch I’ve ever seen. And Washington State’s Josh Kelly made another insane catch.
A bunch of old dudes got into games and in Virginia a woman played safety.
4. Who Will Slow Down Miami?
Photo by Titus Blair on Unsplash
Yesterday, upon the Denver Broncos, the Dolphins dropped an iconic number in the mode of Kobe’s 81 and Barry’s drug-aided 70. Numbers that, in an ongoing tsunami of digits, will stand out for a real long time.
Miami didn’t just score 10 touchdowns. Tua Tagovailoa and company did their thing with flair:
Miami’s 70-20 win over Denver has fidgety folk asking whether the Dolphins are the greatest offense ever.
The Ringer
Lil Hit
Apropos of nothing, here’s the Browns’ Joe “Turkey” Jones, sacking Terry Bradshaw, brutally. When my kids ask me what old-time football was like, I show them this.
Coming on Thursday
Photo by Antonio Olmos
A lot of the fun of this newsletter has been reconnecting with old friends through the Sojourn Conversation. On Thursday I’ll hopefully have for you a chat between me and Tony Olmos, one of my life’s most important friends as well as a spectacular portrait artist and documentary photographer.
3. Changing Faces with Columbia Care
In 2022, Columbia Care was set to merge with Cresco Labs in a cannabis company deal that it’s leadership promised would be as big as Coca Cola. That merger fell apart in July.
Now the devalued operation is rebranding as The Cannabist Company.
Highly Subjective
The multistate operator has been a hotbed of lawsuits and fines.
The Cannabist will continue converting its retail portfolio to the Cannabist brand through next year.
2. Might Relegation Heal 2-Pac’s Woe?
A couple of days ago they had the 2-Pac Bowl in Pullman, Washington. Don’t get me wrong, I love Washington State versus Oregon State, have played cornhole and gotten rip-snortin’ drunk at Beavers-Coogs. But with no other teams it’s going to be hard to get good recruits coming to these PNW hinterlands.
Now Oregon State’s athletic director is floating an innovative idea that hails from the world of soccer.
ESPN
Both teams are at risk having their Power 5 status stripped next season.
On Thursday, OSU AD Scott Barnes said, "As you think about the future of even media rights, I think a sort of relegation model, either in unequal distribution, a contraction of teams and/or peer relegation will take place. I think that's coming.”
Lil Hit
If you were on the road yesterday you may have heard Herm Edwards—sharply downgraded and barely present— spout takes in ESPN Radio’s land of “I will say” and “You make an excellent point.” It’s been a year since Arizona State fired its “CEO Head Coach” after a greasefire coaching run.
Sports Illustrated
1. The Not-Awful Things Fox Did for Sport
All true, but what about Fox’s good stuff?
The Press Box (32 min mark)
New approaches to photographing football, the ultimate TV sports event, forced other networks to follow. Fox’s David Hill innovated The Score Bug. It’s hard to imagine a time before we could always know the score.
Just as Murdoch used the NFL rights to help make Fox a proper entertainment network, the network put on the air programming that the previous Big Three would never have touched, like The Simpsons and In Living Colour.