Truth in advertising
I've decided there are two kinds of intelligence (probably way more, but I'm not intelligent enough to know more): book intelligence and street intelligence. I was one of those guys that had street intelligence. And my street intelligence was so intelligent I hung out with all the book intelligent kids so everyone thought I was book intelligent too.
You following me?
I did the same thing in sports. Two of my best friends in high school were captains of the football team. And my girlfriend was captain of the cheerleaders. So I was always seen, years later, as one of the football stars at Ossining High School..
Which means I was street intelligent in football too, cause I sucked at football. Not so-so; not pretty good; sucked. Twenty four karat sucked.
Now basketball and baseball? I could hold my own there. But football? Arm-grabber extraordinaire... stay as far away from getting my ass kicked as I could, which meant when the play went right, I went left lest I should be asked to tackle someone and mess up my nails.
But this story isn't about my athletic ability. It's about telling the truth about athletic ability.
At our class reunion about 10 years ago there was a happy hour the night before and I went and found myself at a table where the leader of our reunions, the wonderful Sande Nelson, was describing me to someone else as one of the football stars. Now even some 35 years later, as today, the words football and star together attached to a name means something. Football at my high school was big. So, by extension, I too was big.
Only I wasn't. Oh I started on the team my senior year and most of my junior year for that matter (after Jerry Mariano broke his nose and opened a spot for me). But 'big' in the sports way? Not even close. In fact our senior year (maybe Junior too, I don't remember) the coaches would hand out these stars that you were supposed to affix to your helmet between games. You got a star when you did something big like score a touchdown, made an interception, made a crucial tackle. The aforementioned captains had stars all over their helmets. In fact you could hardly see the maroon of the helmet they had so many stars.
Me? One star... and I have a feeling the coach gave it to me because we were both embarrassed... here I was a starter with just one freakin' star...
Which leads me to a conversation about the basketball coach at Manhattan College, and former football coach at Norte Dame, the CEO of Yahoo, Dean of Admissions at MIT and... well, you get the idea... all of whom lied on their resume and as a result got shit-canned from their jobs.
In other words all of these guys actually thought they WERE big because they figured nobody would know or find out.
I can't do that. I have this embarrassment index that lights up when something comes out of my mouth that isn't exactly the way it went but I say it anyway. To be honest with you I fought that reflex a lot when I was working with Denzel and Shaq and Anna Kournikova (doesn't mean I'm above name dropping, obviously). Somehow the rub-off that comes from this kind of stuff seems to stick on you too, though it shouldn't . So I was always careful about what I said I was actually doing with those folks to make sure I didn't write myself into one of Denzel's movies (though we did have a running joke about me playing Sammy Davis Junior in one of his movies), or describe my shooting foul shots with Shaq (closest I came was at a Lakers practice when he tried to fix me up with an ESPN reporter) or hit a little around the court with Anna (closest there was teaching her to give a speech at her home in Miami). In other words I was always scared of getting caught by something so I never inflated the resume.
And I had nothing to lose. These guys have everything to lose and they do it anyway! Really, why?
Well the answer is because they like the applause. They like to go to the reunion and be called one of the 'stars' even if they weren't. And they want more. They want the next job. The next promotion.
Me? I just want to escape without having something really really stupid come out of my mouth and I'm not about to chance it by making stuff up (once right after my long, illustrious baseball career with the Cubs -- one summer -- I was invited to Phil Esposito's golf tournament as a so-called 'celebrity' because they promised celebrities for every foursome and ran out of the real guys. When I got to the first tee someone asked me, 'so Kurt, what years were you with the Cubs?' at which time I realized the jig was up and never did that again.)
Our culture requires this kind of reputation inflation, I guess. Today you don't have to be really important to be recognized; almost anything will do it so people will do almost anything to be recognized (Kardashian anyone?) even something stupid (Brittany Spears come to mind?). The other night while clicking through the channels as we men are won't to do, I caught a few minutes of Dancing With the Stars where the so-called stars were seven people who were child actors in the 1960s and looked like it, people like Drew Carey who last starred in something dreadful in 1956, and a woman from Housewives from Atlanta named... get this now...NeNe. When she came out to dance in a tutu her rather substantial posterior should have resulted in someone yelling at the top of their lungs NO NO NE NE! But, of course, they didn't because not only does NeNe not care about this unfortunate clothing mishap she actually wants it because as Nike would say, 'no publicity is bad publicity.'
And why does Nike say that? Because us idiots can't get enough of these resume inflations to satisfy our end of aisle thirst for gossip about people that we want to see have trouble so we can feel better about ourselves, I guess. Or maybe we fantasize ourselves about being the 'end of aisle' fodder even if it's for wearing a tutu though we weigh 400 pounds.
You gotta believe that's what the Manhattan coach felt (who, by the way, has been allowed to keep his job as long as he goes back to school this summer and completes his degree. Let's see if we can reenact that scene in the locker room with the kid from the streets who has spent his life trying to survive by getting away with things and lying about them. COACH: 'son you gotta do the right thing and tell the truth.'. KID: 'got it coach; can you give me an example?'). Having that job in S. Florida (bailing on the kids he recruited at Manhattan... oh, sorry, I digress) was so important to this guy he had to lie he had a degree that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD CAN CHECK ON THE INTERNET TO CONFIRM IT'S A LIE. Worth the chance I guess...
No the allure, if that's the right word, of being end of aisle is just too much for these folks. Inflating their resume is probably the mildest thing they have done.
What all these people need is a week with my kids. That'll set 'em straight about saying something they didn't really do. Try slipping something by Kristin about a celebrity you know... yea, that'll work. Or inflate your stats with Kurt (once Kurt discovered that even my one year of stats in the low minor leagues in the early 70's were available, they show up in my inbox every once in a while just to keep me humble), and lie to my daughter Jennifer? Yea, good way to go home with a high voice.
We should all rise up and say 'no more to NeNe' and maybe it would stop. But oh, wait, why would we do that? We might miss a chance to see Drew Carey dance, which is like missing a chance to see Donald Trump's hair go east while his ass goes west. Who would want to miss that?
You following me?
I did the same thing in sports. Two of my best friends in high school were captains of the football team. And my girlfriend was captain of the cheerleaders. So I was always seen, years later, as one of the football stars at Ossining High School..
Which means I was street intelligent in football too, cause I sucked at football. Not so-so; not pretty good; sucked. Twenty four karat sucked.
Now basketball and baseball? I could hold my own there. But football? Arm-grabber extraordinaire... stay as far away from getting my ass kicked as I could, which meant when the play went right, I went left lest I should be asked to tackle someone and mess up my nails.
But this story isn't about my athletic ability. It's about telling the truth about athletic ability.
At our class reunion about 10 years ago there was a happy hour the night before and I went and found myself at a table where the leader of our reunions, the wonderful Sande Nelson, was describing me to someone else as one of the football stars. Now even some 35 years later, as today, the words football and star together attached to a name means something. Football at my high school was big. So, by extension, I too was big.
Only I wasn't. Oh I started on the team my senior year and most of my junior year for that matter (after Jerry Mariano broke his nose and opened a spot for me). But 'big' in the sports way? Not even close. In fact our senior year (maybe Junior too, I don't remember) the coaches would hand out these stars that you were supposed to affix to your helmet between games. You got a star when you did something big like score a touchdown, made an interception, made a crucial tackle. The aforementioned captains had stars all over their helmets. In fact you could hardly see the maroon of the helmet they had so many stars.
Me? One star... and I have a feeling the coach gave it to me because we were both embarrassed... here I was a starter with just one freakin' star...
Which leads me to a conversation about the basketball coach at Manhattan College, and former football coach at Norte Dame, the CEO of Yahoo, Dean of Admissions at MIT and... well, you get the idea... all of whom lied on their resume and as a result got shit-canned from their jobs.
In other words all of these guys actually thought they WERE big because they figured nobody would know or find out.
I can't do that. I have this embarrassment index that lights up when something comes out of my mouth that isn't exactly the way it went but I say it anyway. To be honest with you I fought that reflex a lot when I was working with Denzel and Shaq and Anna Kournikova (doesn't mean I'm above name dropping, obviously). Somehow the rub-off that comes from this kind of stuff seems to stick on you too, though it shouldn't . So I was always careful about what I said I was actually doing with those folks to make sure I didn't write myself into one of Denzel's movies (though we did have a running joke about me playing Sammy Davis Junior in one of his movies), or describe my shooting foul shots with Shaq (closest I came was at a Lakers practice when he tried to fix me up with an ESPN reporter) or hit a little around the court with Anna (closest there was teaching her to give a speech at her home in Miami). In other words I was always scared of getting caught by something so I never inflated the resume.
And I had nothing to lose. These guys have everything to lose and they do it anyway! Really, why?
Well the answer is because they like the applause. They like to go to the reunion and be called one of the 'stars' even if they weren't. And they want more. They want the next job. The next promotion.
Me? I just want to escape without having something really really stupid come out of my mouth and I'm not about to chance it by making stuff up (once right after my long, illustrious baseball career with the Cubs -- one summer -- I was invited to Phil Esposito's golf tournament as a so-called 'celebrity' because they promised celebrities for every foursome and ran out of the real guys. When I got to the first tee someone asked me, 'so Kurt, what years were you with the Cubs?' at which time I realized the jig was up and never did that again.)
Our culture requires this kind of reputation inflation, I guess. Today you don't have to be really important to be recognized; almost anything will do it so people will do almost anything to be recognized (Kardashian anyone?) even something stupid (Brittany Spears come to mind?). The other night while clicking through the channels as we men are won't to do, I caught a few minutes of Dancing With the Stars where the so-called stars were seven people who were child actors in the 1960s and looked like it, people like Drew Carey who last starred in something dreadful in 1956, and a woman from Housewives from Atlanta named... get this now...NeNe. When she came out to dance in a tutu her rather substantial posterior should have resulted in someone yelling at the top of their lungs NO NO NE NE! But, of course, they didn't because not only does NeNe not care about this unfortunate clothing mishap she actually wants it because as Nike would say, 'no publicity is bad publicity.'
And why does Nike say that? Because us idiots can't get enough of these resume inflations to satisfy our end of aisle thirst for gossip about people that we want to see have trouble so we can feel better about ourselves, I guess. Or maybe we fantasize ourselves about being the 'end of aisle' fodder even if it's for wearing a tutu though we weigh 400 pounds.
You gotta believe that's what the Manhattan coach felt (who, by the way, has been allowed to keep his job as long as he goes back to school this summer and completes his degree. Let's see if we can reenact that scene in the locker room with the kid from the streets who has spent his life trying to survive by getting away with things and lying about them. COACH: 'son you gotta do the right thing and tell the truth.'. KID: 'got it coach; can you give me an example?'). Having that job in S. Florida (bailing on the kids he recruited at Manhattan... oh, sorry, I digress) was so important to this guy he had to lie he had a degree that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD CAN CHECK ON THE INTERNET TO CONFIRM IT'S A LIE. Worth the chance I guess...
No the allure, if that's the right word, of being end of aisle is just too much for these folks. Inflating their resume is probably the mildest thing they have done.
What all these people need is a week with my kids. That'll set 'em straight about saying something they didn't really do. Try slipping something by Kristin about a celebrity you know... yea, that'll work. Or inflate your stats with Kurt (once Kurt discovered that even my one year of stats in the low minor leagues in the early 70's were available, they show up in my inbox every once in a while just to keep me humble), and lie to my daughter Jennifer? Yea, good way to go home with a high voice.
We should all rise up and say 'no more to NeNe' and maybe it would stop. But oh, wait, why would we do that? We might miss a chance to see Drew Carey dance, which is like missing a chance to see Donald Trump's hair go east while his ass goes west. Who would want to miss that?
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