The one time I spoke with Kobe Bryant popped into my mind a few days ago. Our brief chat at the Forum came in the hour before a Sunday matinee that featured one of the most outrageous in-game sequences either one of us ever saw in person.
He was 19.
Pardon me if you’ve heard me recount the Shaq dunk anecdote multiple times, possibly even in a Sojourn email. I’ll be quick and re-mixy: The Knicks were in town. Shaquille O’Neal had just dunked on back-up New York seven footer—and eventual Oregon Republican gubernatorial candidate—Chris Dudley.
The dunk wasn’t normal. Shaq brutally overpowered the Caucasian Yalie. O’Neal did a full chin-up on the rim, bringing his balls up around Dudley chin, then shoved the Knick to floor, as if to say “No homo.” Next, The Big Fella’s off running, to set up defensively. Dudley loses is it as teammate Larry Johnson comes to calm dude down. Too late; this is a nationally-televised match-up.
The sequence plays out in less than five seconds.
Dudley certainly ain’t trying to fight Shaq—not even the pretend variety of fisticuffs that you’re used to seeing in the NBA. Dudley has no interest in chancing it, so he fires his inbound pass past Latrell Sprewell and past Kobe, whose sightline to me is only partially blocked by Dudley.
Dudley hit Shaq in the ass with the basketball. The loud, sold-out Forum crowd got louder. An official’s whistle blew. The game went on, but no one in the entire building had seen NBA action of this nature. Certainly not the young Kobester.
When Bryant died in that horrible, hubristic helicopter crash, I’d had an ongoing expectation that I would run into him one day and get to do what I failed to post-game at the Forum. That is, take dude aside and have a laugh over the bananas nature of the play.
I had the privilege of floor seats because I worked for ESPN, but I had been watching Kobe Bryant play at The Forum since he was a 17-year-old boy. My South Pasadena Little League team got to go onto the field at Dodger Stadium as I pointed out Rachel Robinson. Ervin Johnson “rubbed some Magic” on the belly of my sons’ mother. And I have what seems to me a complicated relationship with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (He almost certain doesn’t give a shit.)
I’m privileged to have access to successful sports fandoms.
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In a capitalistcontext, having good sports teams is a kind of personal achievement. It’s a point of pride that my Southern California-born children won’t know the psychological abuse that was earnestly supporting the 20th-century Cleveland Indians, Cavs, and Browns, the last of whose ownership clowned the devoted fanbase by ripping the team out of town under night’s cover.
Yes, I’m happy to have put to bed the rituals of convincing myself my small-market team has a championship chance. That is why it pains me to say I will no longer be a Lakers fan if the Buss family’s deal with Dodgers owner Mark Walter goes through. Walter’s Guggenheim Partners owns stock in the for-profit-prisons that ICE is filling up the nation’s actual best people. His TWG Global partners with the wildly objectionable Palantir Technologies, whose anti-immigrant activities are vile enough for Stephen Miller to be a part of.
Birthday tribute
I changed the cover of my Year 58 playlist, a collection of songs that tickled my fancy over the 365 days between July 30, 2024 and next Wednesday.
It’s a shame, too, because the New Yorker cover image of The Greatest Baseball Player Alive is hella elegant. But rooting for the Los Angeles Dodgers is a thing of the past, at least until the Dodgers organization gets its morality together.
It may be my birthday that’s coming, but I am the ones handing out freebies. Through Wednesday, both my true-crime conversation with The Knife podcast’s producers and Jack Boulware’s witty SF lit chat will roam beyond the WCS paywall.
Wish me a happy 59th birthday on Instagram or, better yet, via Venmo.
Self-justifying fans will argue, correctly, that if you look even a little bit into the sports ownership class you’ll find more avaricious investing than not. But maybe this is where we are as a culture, the place where we make hard choices. It’s a conversation that needs to be had.
Anyway, we’re doing 10 this week, right? Or has the format changed?
10 PDX’s We Are Everywhere fete celebrates tart art
Upon first settling into Portland 15 years ago, I developed the running joke that—on average—every woman in town is .25 percent sex worker. Not a lot has since dissuaded me from that opinion.
That’s how prevalent the culture is in the PNW.
To celebrate creativity among the range of local laborers who specialize in sex, in August the Clinton Street Theater will present the We Are Everywhere Festival, three range-y days of film, dance, and more. Willamette Week
The rare week-opening festival opens on Monday, Aug. 11 with a micro film festival—as opposed to a microfilm festival—followed by a pole dancing competition at Kit Kat Club on Tuesday night. Closing out the event will be Wednesday’s group art exhibition at a private studio’s open house.
“One of our movies is by a sex worker, but it’s about a bunny rescue,” reports producer Nikki Lev. “Lots of variety will be had.”
Lil Hit
Almost exactly two years ago, 20-year-old Kev Hill swung down from Portland to Eugene for the Lane County Fair. An asthma sufferer, Hill was hunted down by a horse-mounted posse and tackled by local “deputies.” He filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday. Atlanta Black Star
Hypin my folks
I am a major-league fan of the folks behind Liquid Culture and always excited to share their projects. Not enough EDM so far the West Coast Sojourn mixture, it must be said.
9 World Cup 2026: Corruption as the heavy favorite
You know that footage of Trump kiping a medal during the FIFA club team World Cup champions celebration, and then walking off with the original trophy—leaving a facsimile for the actual players? That telling spectacle and near-perfect metaphor happened because earlier this year President Donald Trump designated himself chairman of the U.S. task force organizing next year’s World Cup.
Andrew Giuliani, 39, son of Rudy Giuliani, was named the executive director of his new World Cup task force by Trump. The task force will be part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Among the more disturbing facets of the CBS-Skydance arrangement is the $20 million in media propaganda that the evil corporation is said to be giving the Whites House. Variety
Downward-moving Target
The eternally likable Ron Funches cannot help but make light of the situation. Hard fact though? A people united are forever without defeat.
8 Cannabis hyperemesis is as real as it is rare
In that January before the pandemic set it, Alex Halperin and I asked Alice Moon into our Hollywood studio to record for the Weedweek podcast. She told us about the five-course meal of THC cuisine that forever changed her relationship with cannabis. Her story of continuous vomiting upon consuming cannabis was such a nightmare that I couldn’t fully accept her tale as true.
A rare condition, cannabis hyperemesis syndrome is gaining media attention, in part because anti-pot forces see an opportunity in our conservative epoch. But the condition really does demand for the sad cessation of Mary Jane companionship. Psychology Today
The registered cannabis practitioner who authored the PT piece says that only two of his nearly 1,500 patients have had it.
About three percent of chronic cannabis users get the condition, which can cause “ intractable nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain.”
Lil Hit
Roadside “sobriety” tests for cannabis are pseudo-scientific, writes a Rutgers law professor who believes the cops need to take a more robust approach. Marijuana Moment
The Full Herb Caen
Wonder if Musk can see the irony in his campaigning in 2024 to “make comedy legal,” and then not being able to find easy laughter for a to-be-determined amount of time…
A lot of the ballpark criticism seems valid, but that Bay Area press has had more than its share of fun shitting on Sutter Health Stadium, home of the West Sacramento A’s…
I wonder how ICE raids are impacting Lyft’s operations…
I can't think of a more shameful chapter in American history than the country’s role in the destruction of Gaza…
Hearing that America’s POTUS has driven Brazil to establish a “tax advisory office” in Bejiing may sound uninteresting, but the move illustrates how hardcore the US is driving nations toward China…
I was in Paris a day or so after candidate Barack Obama’s trip there. there. Being an American in France isn’t going to feel that good again in most of our lifetimes…
Tre Parker and Matt Stone’s decision to depict Trump and Republican culture as they did this week—tiny-peckered and anti-Christian—mattered in so many different ways that two assessments of the shows impact are necessary. That historian Richardson teaches the writing of South Park is particularly impressive.
Independent of the two White ladies, I think “Sermon on the ‘Mount” set the standard for how culture creators ought to wield our clout. Charlotte Clymer / Heather Cox Richardson
No fan of South Park, Clymer calls the episode “the best satire in years.”
On Monday, Parker and Stone signed a deal with Paramount for the global streaming rights to the show: $1.5 billion over five years. Ballsy.
Writes Clymer: “The question is: will Parker & Stone continue to up the ante in their criticism of Trump for the rest of this season? There are nine episodes left. The next 2.5 months could be a satirical grinder for the Trump administration, and it couldn’t come at a worst time given that his base is revolting over the Epstein files cover-up.”
Lil Hit
Yesterday, Luke Sang—owner of and chef at Hayes’ Valley’s three-month old Kis Cafe—announced via Instagram that he has stepped down. Sang dissed a formerly marginal social media influencer. Instagram / TikTok
Too $hort corner
No socialist he, Sir Too $hort (Todd Shaw) has a name that rings out on the streets of Oakland.
6 So, there is a line that Israel can cross?
As we creep up on nearly two years of disproportionate response to the Hamas attacks of October 7, something remarkable happened: Powerful forces that can make a difference this week began calling out Israel for committing the most obvious atrocity of our lifetimes—an atrocity which protesting in the US can get a person deported or defunded. Mass starvation seems to have been the threshold for action.
Slate offers one scholar’s slow realization that a terrible war might have been limited to only that. Decades of “sheltering in the shadow of the Holocaust” is the cause the slide into genocide, they said. Slate / Reuters
Also this week, the word “genocide” began appearing in the New York Times.
This season, more than 600 people have died while approaching relief trucks. The Israel Defense Army has done the bulk of the killing. Your tax dollars pays for their weaponry.
Lil Hit
That Sears store in Concord is the last left in the state now that the Burbank location has shut down. San Jose Mercury News
Portland may have a Yao Ming situation on its hands…
Some mornings I yank my body out of bed by saying, “Hike!” to myself…
Or—in a more chill mode—it’s, “Hit-it,” a la Otis Day when he starts singing in Animal House…
Don’t nobody go nowhere…
5 Cali legal weed plays Generals to Trump, the Globetrotter of betrayal
All over California, folks who follow the business and politics of cannabis have this week been yammering about the industry’s misplaced trust in the Whites House. If ever there was a sign that wypipo run government-sanctioned pot it’s getting fooled en masse by the le clown orange.
It took the recent immigration enforcement operations at Glass House Farms’ Camarillo and Carpinteria operations to shock these fools into reality. How high are these entrepreneurs, one might ask. Cal Matters
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