My Bobby

I had attempted to write this post on my iPhone right after posting that last blurb, but after getting about halfway through, I noticed that there was no “save” button and lost everything. Stupid glitch. Anyway, here’s take 2:

It all starts with Craigslist. A couple weeks ago I was glancing through the postings in the Writing/Editing section of job in Boston and I came across a listing looking for “7 writers to work on screenplays and novels”. It sounded interesting, and I’ve been wanting to get back into writing more, so I sent off my resume.

The following Sunday at 8:15AM, I get a call from a guy named Johnny. He begins the conversation, with no regard for the fact that I’m still mostly asleep, by telling me that he has just gotten out of prison. He had been in prison for 12 years, on charges that were not discussed, though he did admit to having been in the mafia and to being a mercenary. His voice does not lead me to doubt this information at all. He speaks with the oddly mixed accent of an Italian gangster who has grown up in Boston. He goes on to tell me about how he has all of these ideas for stories, but he is cursed with being a terrible writer, so he decided to post on Craigslist. He said, “I only expected to get about a dozen responses, but I’ve gotten hundreds!” Never underestimate the number of wannabe writers in the world.

At this point, I’m still half asleep and skeptical of the whole situation, but amused and interested in the ridiculousness of the situation. He starts to lay out the framework of about 4 different story ideas, and while a couple weren’t very original, the stories had heart. I got the undeniable sense that this guy was really serious about doing this thing. A couple of the stories sounded like things I could do, and he mentioned some children’s stories, which also piqued my interest. So, I set up a time to meet him. If for nothing else than to meet the guy and be able to tell that story.

I reserve a Zipcar, and head up to Wakefield on Wednesday two weeks ago. Knowing only that I’m meeting Johnny at a deli, there are a couple other writers scheduled to be there, and that the guy is “very tanned”. That last bit turned out to be somewhat of an understatement. Johnny looks like he is made out of the leather from cowboy boots that have been left in the Arizona sun for a few years. He smells like it too. He’s got white hair, and gold rings on each pinky, and seems to only wear button up shirts that are only buttoned about half way.

At first, it’s just me and a girl named Julie there to meet Johnny. Johnny starts out this meeting by saying, “The literary world is the hardest job I’ve ever tried to get into. People keep telling me, ‘These guys are cut-throat. It’s tough.’ But, I’m not scared of anything. When you have the blood of over a hundred men on your hands, you lose your fear. You lose your envy. Why envy the guy when you know, ‘I can kill him’?”

I’m not sure how he managed it, but Johnny was able to seamlessly segue into the story ideas from there. Again the ideas were good, some were pretty generic, but there were some really solid stories too. And in all there was a hint of old school racism, like “a black guy who stutters, but is hung like a horse,” or “a Chinaman that no one can understand what he’s saying.” It’s all harmless until the third writer shows up, a black guy named Will, who has been doing some work in film in the area (check out the site for a movie he worked on “Business is War“.)

Suddenly, the story ideas get subtly altered, and Johnny is now talking about “a Chinaman talking like ching chang chung,” and “a guy who stutters.” It got a little awkward because Johnny has no idea about the writing process and got down on Will for “being negative” simply because Will was asking questions on target audiences and such. A slightly confused and defensive ex-merc is an odd thing to see.

It did lead to another interesting bought as Johnny started to explain his start in the mafia (only tangentially related to one of the story ideas). He started doing favors for his grandfather and grandfather’s friends when he was 5 or 6. Just the tips from these favors was making him about 20 dollars a day, while his father, who worked in a factory, made about $22 a week. By the age of 14, he was being asked to beat kids up. By 16, he was asked to stab people, because it was still a juvenile offense and he wouldn’t go to jail. By 18, he was a killer. And in his 20s he was making about $4,000 a week.

Everything got pretty squared away, and we all thought things were just about done, when Johnny decides he needs to elaborate on one story about male divorcees. For some reason, Johnny felt the need to talk about the guys’ sexual exploits in the story, but somehow got sidetracked into saying, “I used to ask every girl I met, ‘Can I fuck you in the ass? Can I fuck you in the ass?’ Then, I went to the doctor and I had to get a prostate exam. The nurse takes this stick about this big (miming something a little thicker and longer than a drinking straw) and shoves it in my ass. And, that thing feels like it’s this big (miming something about the size of a tube of Pilsbury cookie dough.) I was like, Jesus! I never asked a girl to fuck in the ass ever again.”

This was the end of a two hour meeting. I was assigned to work on a story with Julie (though luckily that partnership was basically disbanded in our last meeting.) I can’t say why, but I just don’t like that girl. She seems like too much of a kiss ass. No good stories from the last meeting with Johnny, but I’m excited to write the story I’ve been given, and to see what other ridiculousness comes from having met this guy.

Keep trying

As tends to happen to me all of the time, I’ve fallen out of the habit of writing. I’m finding more and more that things I would want to put into a blog post end up being just emails to friends. Basically I just want to know that what I write is being read.

If I write a blog post, I have no idea who, if anyone reads it. This was slightly better back in the LiveJournal days because of commenting, but I got so few comments that it didn’t make much difference in the long run. With an email I can be almost 100% sure that my thoughts are at least being read (with the notible exception of anything I send to the Kid which will likely be read but not in a worthwhile time frame). And of course much of the time I will receive replies to the emails, this completing the social interaction and making he whole experience much more fulfilling than blogging.

Anyway, the bottom line is that I’m planning to occupy this space again and more often. The likelihood is that I’ll still send the emails so this space may be repetitive for certain people, but I plan to expand things here more than I might in an email. Because we all know that if the email is too long, it won’t get read.

I’m gonna end this one now because I have a story to tell so I want to start a new post for that.

NBA Draft

I just pulled this from the e-mail conversation on ESPN between Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell:

Gladwell: “The consistent failure of underdogs in professional sports to even try something new suggests, to me, that there is something fundamentally wrong with the incentive structure of the leagues. I think, for example, that the idea of ranking draft picks in reverse order of finish — as much as it sounds “fair” — does untold damage to the game. You simply cannot have a system that rewards anyone, ever, for losing. Economists worry about this all the time, when they talk about “moral hazard.” Moral hazard is the idea that if you insure someone against risk, you will make risky behavior more likely. So if you always bail out the banks when they take absurd risks and do stupid things, they are going to keep on taking absurd risks and doing stupid things. Bailouts create moral hazard. Moral hazard is also why your health insurance has a co-pay. If your insurer paid for everything, the theory goes, it would encourage you to go to the doctor when you really don’t need to. No economist in his right mind would ever endorse the football and basketball drafts the way they are structured now. They are a moral hazard in spades. If you give me a lottery pick for being an atrocious GM, where’s my incentive not to be an atrocious GM?

I think the only way around the problem is to put every team in the lottery. Every team’s name gets put in a hat, and you get assigned your draft position by chance. Does that, theoretically, make it harder for weaker teams to improve their chances against stronger teams? I don’t think so. First of all, the principal engine of parity in the modern era is the salary cap, not the draft. And in any case, if the reverse-order draft is such a great leveler, then why are the same teams at the bottom of both the NFL and NBA year after year? The current system perpetuates the myth that access to top picks is the primary determinant of competitiveness in pro sports, and that’s simply not true. Success is a function of the quality of the organization.

Another more radical idea is that you do a full lottery only every second year, or three out of four years, and in the off year make draft position in order of finish. Best teams pick first. How fun would that be? Every meaningless end-of-season game now becomes instantly meaningful. If you were the Minnesota Timberwolves, you would realize that unless you did something really drastic — like hire some random sports writer as your GM, or bring in Pitino to design a special-press squad — you would never climb out of the cellar again. And in a year with a can’t-miss No. 1 pick, having the best record in the regular season becomes hugely important. What do you think?”

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I don’ t know about pushing it to only having the lottery every other year, but full randomness in the lottery is actually pretty interesting.  Because I think he is right on the fact that the salary cap is the real determinant of success. The Lakers are always going to spend a lot, and they are always on top. The Knicks are starting to use their money wisely, and I like the way the future looks. The Spurs haven’t really bothered with the draft since Tim Duncan, and they are consistently a top level team. While on the other side, Toronto and Milwaukee, Minnesota, Memphis, the Clippers and Golden State don’t spend money, rely on the draft or spend their money unwisely and are consistently disappointing. I like how the future looks for Memphis and Toronto, but do we really expect them to be able to resign Gay, Mayo, or Bosh?

If teams aren’t willing to spend money on 3 key guys needed to win, why reward them for losing the most? Maybe a better idea than either that Gladwell proposes would be to rank the lottery chances in order not reverse order. Give the teams who are on the fringe of making the playoffs like Indiana, Charlotte and Phoenix the best chance at the top picks, so teams won’t routinely be stuck at the bottom with talent who don’t want to be there. Give all the teams incentive to win, and make the top picks worth more because it could really mean the difference between making the playoffs and not.