The Greek Freak, General Hospital, and the common man
How basketball offers a version of masculinity way more noble than what we get from our supposed leaders. Also: Reflecting on my father while discussing ayahuasca & more bad signing of Gov. Cuomo.
This is the Rubesletter from Matt Ruby, comedian, writer, and the creator of Vooza. Sign up to get it in your inbox weekly.Welcome to another Rubesletter! A big shoutout to all the new subscribers who signed up after reading my “The most unbelievable things about life before smartphones” essay (there’s a video version too) that resurfaced last week thanks to a mention on Hacker News. Phew, that site really drives some traffic. More on all that in a future edition. Here’s what’s shaking this week…
How the NBA offers an antidote to toxic masculinity
Video: Reflecting on my father while discussing ayahuasca
Video: Cuomo’s inappropriate sign language interpreter returns
Quickies on meditation, Covid, baked ziti, etc.
Spotted links on slaughterhouses, the perfect contract, and Simone Biles.
Keep talking and dribble
I’m tweaking. I’m going through withdrawal. I’m trying to live without my fix. Because Basketball is over. The NBA playoffs are done and so are the post-season bumps (i.e. the Olympics, the NBA draft, and free agency) that sustain us hoops junkies until the regular season begins in October. (No, I don’t watch NBA summer league. I have boundaries.) Living without it is making me realize how much basketball got me through pandemic; the back-to-back seasons were a lifeline that helped me feel like part of society when we were all siloed and alone.
Surprisingly, that evokes memories of my mom. For decades, my mom would watch General Hospital every day it aired. From Luke Spencer to Robert Scorpio, she was invested. I remember her getting outraged when Duke Lavery yelled at Demi Moore’s character (yes, Demi started her career on GH): “Forget your conscience!” My mom screamed at the screen, “You should never forget your conscience!”
The devil inside
The only other time I saw TV upset her that much was when I was a kid watching MTV. The video for “Devil Inside” by INXS came on and she misheard the lyric as “every single woman has the devil inside.” She bellowed, “Wrong! Every single MAN has the devil inside!” In that moment, I realized how much toxic male BS she must have endured before she met my father. (Wait, maybe that comment was about my father!? Hmm.) Anyway, years later, I realized the actual lyric was “every single one of us the devil inside.” Whoops.
Her love of this soap opera was rather bizarre since she was a bohemian artsy type who spent the rest of her free time consuming highbrow media about mythology, poetry, philosophy, etc. Why she was so intrigued by GH? I asked her once and she replied, “It’s my way of staying in touch with regular Americans.” That answer always cracked me up, as if it was her umbilical cord to the common people.
But lately, I’ve realized that’s how I am with basketball. Like my mom with her daily soap, the NBA is my way of connecting with “regular” American men. See, I don’t really fit in with baseball cap bros. And when I meet someone’s dad, there’s typically little common ground. That’s why I’m thankful I can throw down on a convo about salary caps and draft picks. It’s a lingua franca for normie dudes and way better than discussing the weather, traffic, or why so many of these guys insist on wearing sunglasses on the back of their necks.
Getting freaky
Over the past two seasons, the NBA has felt like more than a way to connect with American guys though; it’s begun to feel like the solution for them. The season ending saddens me in part because the NBA is one of the few places left you can watch powerful men who actually behave like role models.
Take Giannis Antetokounmpo. The man’s entire life story is like a Disney movie. You know how models get scouted? That’s how he was discovered as a teen in Greece. Some coach saw he had the body and threw him onto a team even though he didn’t know a thing about the sport. But Giannis had the fight in him. He stayed at the gym practicing until midnight and slept on an exercise mat in the weight room instead of facing the Fascists and neo-Nazis who menaced immigrants in his neighborhood. “He was very competitive,” said his first coach. “He didn’t like to lose. He couldn’t do that much, but he had that spirit.”
That spirit remains. It’s why it was such a delight watching him fight his way to a championship. You couldn’t help but root for him; he’s such a good natured guy off the court, yet on it he scratched, clawed, and endured merciless free throw heckling in order to get his team over the top.
(My only bit of advice to Giannis: Speed up that whole free throw pantomime process. When you’re bad at something, don’t drag it out and add even more time/pressure; just get it over with. Note: This is also my philosophy in the bedroom.)
This postseason we also got to see what makes Giannis tick mentally. In one post-game presser, he sounded like the intro to a Headspace guided meditation on ego loss:
“When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. ‘I did this. We were able to beat this team 4-0. I did this in the past. I won that in the past.’ And when I focus on the future, it’s my pride. ‘Yeah, next game, Game 5, I do this and this and this. I’m going to dominate.’ That’s your pride talking,” expressed Giannis ahead of Saturday’s Game 5 in Phoenix. “I try to focus in the moment, in the present. And that’s humility. That’s being humble. That’s not setting expectations. That’s going out there and enjoying the game.”
I also enjoyed how, after winning it all, he threw shade at his superstar comrades who keep swiping left on teammates in order to join up with fellow superstars. Sitting between the NBA championship and Finals MVP trophies, he said, “It’s easy to go somewhere and go win a championship with somebody else. It’s easy…I could go to a super team and just do my part and win a championship. But this is the hard way to do it and this is the way to do it and we did it, f*cking did it. We did it, man.” Hell yeah. In the era of life hacks, it’s nice to hear someone stand up for something other than the path of least resistance.
It reminded me of Pat Riley’s infamous taunt/rant presser, where he tried to persuade Lebron, after losing in the Finals, to stay in Miami. He explained, "This stuff is hard. And you got to stay together, if you've got the guts. And you don't find the first door and run out of it." The message: Dig down deep, stay together, fight, persevere, overcome. There is no easy way. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
It’s how you lose
My own middling basketball career topped out in 10th grade with my role as bench warmer on the Irvington High School JV team. That season was the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life up to that point. We ran endless suicides, did laps if we missed free throws, and learned a complex matchup defense that baffled other teams. In retrospect, it was a pivotal learning moment in my youth: I realized I could push myself harder than I’d thought possible. I’d never done anything that difficult in my life before. If it was easy, everyone would do it.
You don’t get that message much in our society anymore. America’s gone from JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you” to George W.’s post-9/11 message to go shopping: "Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed." Then: No guts, no glory. Now: No guts, no problem.
Of course, our political messaging has gone even further off the rails since then, including our latest ex-Prez’ worldview that losers are suckers (as are dead war veterans). In the NBA playoffs, it’s how you lose that matters. Quit on your teammates like Kyrie in Boston and the whispers will follow you forever. But if you keep fighting on the way down, you’ll gain the respect of your peers and fans. This year, Chris Paul, Paul George, and Kevin Durant all fell, yet still cemented their reps as legit warriors.
In fact, I’m often most impressed by losing performances. Watch Lebron go 1-on-5 vs. the Golden State Warriors and nearly prevail is the most impressed I’ve ever been by him. Watching Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat battling in the bubble (and eventually losing) elicited similar feelings. Character is revealed in how one loses.
Shut up and dribble?
After the Finals this year, Monty Williams, the Suns coach, came in to the Bucks locker room to congratulate them after his team’s loss. He put his arm around Giannis and said, "I just wanted to come and congratulate you guys because you guys deserve it. I'm thankful for the experience. You guys made me a better coach and you made us a better team. Congratulations."
It was so refreshing to see a man lose with grace instead of be a whiny baby about it. No blaming the refs or complaining, just ‘ol fashioned sportsmanship. It felt like a breath of fresh air in the midst of non-apology apologies and "the election was stolen" nonsense. (When you lose, take the L like a man. Every time I hear that crap, it sounds to me like some dude who gets zero matches claiming, "Tinder must be broken.")
Actually, it’s all got me fantasizing about what it’d be like if NBA coaches were our government. Imagine this cabinet:
Pop - President
Monty - VP
Kerr - Sec. of State
Thibs - Sec. of Defense
Nick Nurse - Treasury
Doc - Press Sec
Bud – Housing or whatever it is that Mayor Pete does because, like coaching Giannis, I assume it’s something that’s tough to screw up too bad.
“Shut up and dribble” was always a dumb thing to say, but it’s even stupider when you realize hoops culture offers a version of masculinity more noble and inspirational than the nonsense spewed by our supposed leaders. Every time I hear some politician get on a talk show and bitch about the opposing party while our government fails to actually get anything done, I think to myself: Shut up and legislate.
Video: Reflecting on my father
BreakThruRadioTV invited me to do a series of video essays where I reflect on my father and his death. In the first one, I discuss doing ayahuasca. (If ya don’t know, it’s a hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon and I’m a big fan.) The top question I'm asked about it: Do you vomit? Short answer: Maybe, but it’s worth it! In fact, it might be exactly what you need. In this video, I explain how my first experience with ayahuasca/vomiting revolved around judgement and the death of my dad.
Support and get bonus content
Subscribe to the Rubesletter! 👇👇👇
Video: Cuomo’s inappropriate sign language interpreter returns
Governor Cuomo resigned! He probably realized he could never recover from my sign language interpretation of his responses to the allegations.
The first edition:
Quickies
🌀 Meditation is pretending not to worry about the things you’re obsessed with.
🌀 Covid keeps releasing updates like it's Apple releasing new versions of its OS.
🌀 Weddings would be more impressive if the bride and groom exchanged passcodes instead of vows.
🌀 "You can't judge them for it. It's a different culture." That's how I feel about judging people for things they did long ago. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
🌀 The people who hate vaccine passports also don't have actual passports so I kinda admire the anti-passport consistency.
🌀 Hats off to KN95 masks! Best knockoff success story since fake Birkin Bags.
🌀 Is it your partner’s birthday? Have some fun and post the same kinda message celebs post on social media: "Happy bday wifey I love u mommy u my heart rib toes and all. May GOD continue to bless u and ur spirit. This mark in ur life is the start to more greatness." What could go wrong?
🌀 This week in #followthemoney: How much money can someone make by telling people to take the vaccine? How much money can someone make by telling people NOT to take the vaccine? Exactly.
🌀 I'm the king of getting followed by people with 14 followers.
🌀 Portland is a pretty basic name for a city. It’s where the port meets land? Yeah, so is NYC and Baltimore and SF and every other coastal city. A little more creativity, please!
5-Spotted
1) What’s the most powerful force on earth? Balaji Srinivasan: “In the 1800s, God. In the 1900s, the US military. And by the mid-2000s, encryption.”
Technology is the driving force of history. Technology favored centralization in the US from arguably 1754-1947 (join or die in the French and Indian War, unified national government post-Civil War, railroads, telegraph, radio, television, movies, mass media in general, and mass production) and is now favoring decentralization from roughly 1947 to the present day (transistor, personal computer, internet, remote work, smartphone, cryptocurrency).
2) The Simone Biles Culture War Traveled Faster Than The News explains how Twitter makes you feel bad.
Twitter has decided that ‘Troll Makes Bad Tweet’ is major, national news, which it is not. While not 100% analogous, this type of ‘trending’ aggregation is somewhat similar to what places like Fox News do when they pick out tiny local stories and broadcast them to big national audiences. It distorts reality, flattens context, and invites a whole bunch of people to jump in and get good and mad…You will be forced — if just for a moment — to view Biles’ story through the flattened, shitty culture war lens. Maybe that will mean nothing to you, and you’ll go about your day unperturbed. More likely, it’ll stick around in your head as a tiny data point. Depending on your ideology, you might see it as further proof that MAGA-adjacent chuds are awful, racist jabronis looking to weaponize every story. Or you might see it as proof that the left is DEFENDING THEIR QUEEN or glorifying failure. In either instance, you just get the feeling that you’re surrounded by people who are deeply foolish and deranged — perhaps dangerously so. This realization might not send you into a depression, but it just generally feels bad.
3) You call that a contract? This is a contract.
4) Was discussing the word abattoir and how it’s such a classy way to say slaughterhouse: "Are you murdering animals in there? No, we're being FRENCH." Using a fancy french term is an amusingly euphemistic way to refer to the place where we make illegal immigrants catch Covid while slitting the throats of our future hamburgers. Along those lines, I always liked Michael Pollan’s idea of forcing 'em to have transparent walls.
Were the walls of our meat industry to become transparent, literally or even figuratively, we would not long continue to raise, kill, and eat animals the way we do. Tail docking and sow crates and beak clipping would disappear overnight, and the days of slaughtering four hundred head of cattle an hour would promptly come to an end — for who could stand the sight? Yes, meat would get more expensive. We’d probably eat a lot less of it, too, but maybe when we did eat animals we’d eat them with the consciousness, ceremony, and respect they deserve.
5) Bill Burr shows us the proper way to respond to Dr. Joe Rogan:
Thanks for reading!
-Matt
The end stuff
I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply, email mattruby@hey.com, or leave a comment. (I read/reply to all messages.)
If you’re reading this via email, clicking the headline up top will take you to a web version.
If you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.
Check the archive for back issues. Lots of good stuff there.
About the Rubesletter: Weekly musings from a standup comedian and startup veteran. If you like my comedy or writing, if you dig tech, politics, art, wellness, & pop culture, if you enjoy smart/nuanced takes & hate BS, if you’d like me to turn you on to other people making cool stuff, then subscribe.
Social media: Find me on Twitter (@mattruby), Instagram (@rubymatt), or YouTube.
My latest standup special is free on YouTube. And you can stream my standup albums “Feels Like Matt Ruby” and “Hot Flashes” too.