Pandemic Diaries, May 29, 2000

 

mark@marktreble.com

 

The Pandemic Diaries May 29, 2020

 

It’s Tommy, and I’m back. Holy Shit! Here I thought things couldn’t get worse. I’ve never been so wrong in my life.

 

This dude in Minneapolis was killed by Minneapolis police. That shouldn’t have happened. The police officer who knelt on the dude’s neck should be tried for murder. I don’t know a single person who isn’t outraged, and it seems everyone in the country is in agreement that this was a tragedy and police brutality involving African-Americans needs to be stopped. The victim, George Floyd, deserves justice.

 

Here’s where things get fucked up. We’re all in agreement, right? So, who are the protesters trying to convince? YES, LOGAN, I HEAR YOU, IT’S WHOM. NOW SHUT UP. Sorry about that, my husband corrects me about once a day, which is once too often. No, we’re not having a crisis in our marriage, I’m just satisfied with the state of my grammar. Logan isn’t, which I think is his problem.

 

So, we all agree this was a bad thing. I don’t need convincing. The mob is angry about police targeting unarmed black men for death. My brother, Antoine, looked into it and found a database that listed every police-caused fatality from last year. He found nine unarmed black men killed by police the whole last year. That’s nine too many, but it doesn’t sound like there’s unlimited racist brutality among the police.

 

In Minneapolis, a police station was burned down, and the Mayor ordered the police not to stop the mob. This is crazy. I wonder what half-baked ideas Mayor Lightbrain is going to come up with. There are crowds roaming the streets, despite lockdown orders because of the virus. The city ordered police to disperse crowds protesting the lockdown, and Lightbrain has ordered police not to use force to disperse people protesting this dude’s death. I stopped believing there was much science behind most of what our city and state are doing some time ago. This is just the cherry on top of the Sundae.

 

People are complaining about inequality for African-Americans, and I agree. We’ve tried to fix it for nearly sixty years now, just throwing money at it. It isn’t working. I’m not smart enough to know what we should be doing. I am, though, smart enough to know that if what you’re doing isn’t working, you should stop it and try something else. One of our black team members sent an e-mail to everyone on the team complaining about being oppressed. I answered it asking if being forced to take $8 million a year was part of the oppression. I hit reply all. Probably time to lay low for a while.

 

The shooting has started already in Chicago. This isn’t going to be good at all. There are protests all over the country about this. I agree that the inequality should be addressed, and that police brutality should be wiped out. I’ll be happy to march and carry a sign for that. But we’ve now got the clinic open four days a week to the public because of people getting trampled, hit by thrown rocks, and one poor guy caught fire when protesters threw some sort of fireworks at him. How does that help bring equality?

 

It’s my turn to make dinner, so I gotta go. I have forty-seven recipes that I’ve mastered. Creamy peanut butter and jelly on white bread, crunchy peanut butter and jelly on white bread, and forty-five variations. I’m adding pickles and potato chips to be sure it’s a balanced meal. See you in two weeks.

 

Pandemic Diary, May 22, 2020

 

mark@marktreble.com

 

Surprise, it’s me, Tree Murphy. They let Antoine host one of the broadcasts, so I told them I got to do the same. They tried arguing with me, of course, but I reminded them they had never won an argument with a six-foot-ten-inch two hundred-forty-pound NBA center in the past. What made them think they were going to win this time?

Antoine talked a lot about what we’re doing to help others deal with the pandemic. I’m the prototypical dumb jock on the team, and have played that role since I was a freshman in high school. When the team broke up for our first year of college, I dropped the act. Then, when the Minotaurs pulled off a magic act and reunited us, I took it up again. I have to admit, it’s partly true. I’m not a genius like Antoine or Logan, I can’t do therapy and training like Tommy, I can’t even read minds on the court, the way Ralph seems to. But I’m a pretty decent average guy who’s playing for the best team in the NBA, and I can do stuff.

Like, I can drive. Suhail usually drives the clinic van, but I have a crossover and great spatial awareness. That means I know where I am in relation to other things at all times. It’s one of the few things an average male seems to do better than an average female. So, the clinic’s phone rings in my apartment at night. Most nights I do two to three runs taking somebody to a hospital or urgent clinic. Most weeks I go out to break up a fight that gets called in. Usually it’s not a fight, but a beating or gang rape.

Dena’s taught me enough first aid that I can usually make sure the scumbags don’t die that night. I’ll give them a warning before getting out of my car, but gangs all just laugh. They stop when I get out of the car with a baseball bat and almost seven feet tall. If they don’t run away, I take them down. Some idiots pull out their guns, which is why my girlfriend, Tonya, rides with me. She was on the Army Marksmanship Team, and if someone points a gun, he loses a knee. If he gets a shot off, he loses a head. Nobody yet has been quick enough to lose a head.

Giving back to the community feels good. Marginalized people have been hit hardest with the pandemic and the recession. I don’t know how much more they can take. I’m healthy, so is everybody on the team, we’ve got the best jobs in the world, and we’re all rich. I got nothing to complain about. I’m tired of self-righteous politicians putting down poor people who can’t work from home. The ones doing it are the same people who accuse others of blaming the poor for their plight. Pisses me off.

Don’t know if we’ll ever have a season. It’s a sad day for the game; Jerry Sloan died. Yeah, I know, some PR flack wrote the statement for the commissioner, but that doesn’t make it any less valid.

Jerry Sloan was among the NBA’s most respected and admired legends. After an All-Star playing career in which his relentless style shaped the Chicago Minotaurs in their early years, he became one of the all-time greatest head coaches during 23 seasons with the Utah Jazz – the second-longest tenure in league history. 

He was the first coach to win 1,000 games with the same organization, which came to embody the qualities that made Jerry a Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer: persistence, discipline, drive and selflessness. His more than 40 years in the NBA also paralleled a period of tremendous growth in the league, a time when we benefited greatly from his humility, kindness, dignity and class. Our thoughts are with Jerry’s wife, Tammy, and their family, as well as his former players, colleagues and the Minotaurs and Jazz organizations.

RIP, Jerry

 

Pandemic Diary, May 15, 2020

 

mark@marktreble.com

 

The Pandemic Diaries May 15, 2020

 

Hi, everybody. Yes, it’s me, Antoine Jackson, in the flesh. My two ugly brothers thought some cosmetic improvements could be made to their weekly broadcast, and here I am. They’ve talked about all kinds of stuff, just not the important things. Like playing ball. Today is the day the teams start withholding 25% of players’ salaries on account of the lockdown.

 

League executives have already taken a pay cut, back in March. The league protected player salaries for March and April, even though there weren’t any games. I hear some complaints, but won’t name names. And, maybe some of the complaints are justified. I mean, I don’t know anybody else’s financial situation, just my own. And, let’s face it, I’m not a charity case. Taking a pay cut of 25% still leaves me far better off than almost everybody else in the country. Players’ average salary this year is more than seven million bucks. Most Americans would be thrilled to have one percent of that as an annual salary.

 

The cut only applies to cash compensation, so things like my apartment aren’t affected. Maia and I talked, and we’re writing a check to the Minotaurs for a quarter of the rent every month. Just seems fair, you know. And then, if the apartment becomes subject to the salary cut, we won’t have so much of a change in circumstances. We’re then giving away a third of what’s left over. We can more than afford that.

 

What we’re doing is splitting that into thirds. One-third goes to Aunt Kamesha’s clinic in Florida. She and Logan figured out that her biggest need in the future is nurses and specialists. So, she’s putting some of that money into scholarships for nurses and a few other specialties. She’ll eventually have a podiatrist and a chiropractor on staff as well as a medical lab scientist, all part-time. Another third goes to Dena for the clinic and food bank. And the last third goes to Maia.

 

She reads a whole lot. I mean she’s always reading something. She learned from her Grandfather, Mister Jake, how to craft internet search queries. No joke, he doesn’t know shit about the internet, but he was an editor for more than half a century. Learned how to do searches of microfilm; the internet is easy, in comparison. She finds small businesses that are about to go broke, and sends them some money. Usually about a thousand bucks for each employee. All anonymous, her bank finds local banks to handle the transfers.

 

This is not me blowing my own horn; I do enough of that on the court. I’m not just good, I’m real good. And that doesn’t happen all by itself; I had a lot of help. Without my Aunt Kamesha, I’d have been stuck in Special Ed in New York. Without my brothers Logan and Tommy, I’d have been just one more above-average black high school player. Without Maia, I’d have gotten into all kinds of trouble, just like all those other flash-in-the-pan black ball players. That’s right, NBA players are overwhelmingly black and ungodly rich. We’ve got more than our share of delinquent assholes, and I could easily have become one of them. Except for Maia. So, we’re just giving back.

 

All of us here at the Minotaurs are doing that. ‘Cause it’s a good thing.