F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, "The rich are different than you and me." Now we have yet another reason why this statement is accurate.
According to a recent examination of gun permits, lots of rich professional athletes carry guns to the grocery store, the Hummer dealership, the bar and the strip club. Evidently these paragons of masculinity feel threatened by the people who surround them. By this logic, I should not go into a sports bar unless I enter via a tank and exit the tank clad in knight's armor with a bulletproof Kevlar vest on top of my chain mail.
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| Will you keep this man's spit for DNA-testing purposes? (Getty Images) |
But despite all this, I'm sympathetic to the dangers inherent in being a professional athlete. Maybe it's because I also lie awake at nights worrying about somebody trying to steal my 50K C-Nat gold chain or my gold-encrusted pimp stick. We're talking scary stuff here. Especially when I've already worked so hard to be understated about my possessions. But, hey, you know what, I don't make a big deal of the fact that I'm drinking a Miller Lite from a platinum goblet and people tend to leave me alone.
What's really surprising to me is that carrying a handgun is so readily accepted by the friends of professional athletes. Even living in a Southern state and having been taught how to fire one when I was in first or second grade, the fact that so many people actually carry handguns is shocking to me. Maybe it's because America today is statistically much safer than it was even 30 years ago, or maybe it's because I've been shot at for rolling a cheerleader's house in high school, but I just don't buy the fact that more people with firearms make anyone safer than they already were. I think, more often than not, it just escalates a stupid situation into an even stupider one.
How would you react if one of your buddies out at the bar leaned over to you and said, "Don't worry about that guy up at the bar who bumped into you," and then showed you that he had a gun. Wouldn't you flip out? If you did anything other than ridicule your friend to within an inch of his self-dignity, you'd be blowing it. I can't imagine anyone not reacting like they did in Swingers when Sue pulled the gun. Yet, evidently, having a gun is cool. Please, Attila the Hun killed people with the Hun bow. If you want to really be the man roll into the bar with a bow strapped to your back and settle your fights by trying to get an arrow strapped into a medieval device.
Personally, the scariest thing I've ever heard of at a bar was a guy from Canada I knew who used to carry a mouthpiece in his pocket when he went out drinking. Then, just before he would get into a fight, he would take a step back, insert his mouthpiece and fight. The guy was so premeditated about his bar fights that he wanted to make sure his teeth were protected. That's completely terrifying to me, and this guy didn't even need a gun. Honestly, if some guy puts a mouthpiece in, and your name isn't Royce Gracie, and you aren't capable of making a grown man renounce his mother, his father and his children by putting his pinkie into a submission hold, run.
But ClayNation is nothing if not sympathetic to the trials, tribulations and terrors afflicting professional athletes in our modern-day society. So I decided to catalogue the top 13 dangers facing them today.
1. Guys wearing your jersey: Let's be clear here. These guys are looking to make a name for themselves even though they are currently wearing your name on their back. Can you imagine the street cred a fan would have if he beat your ass while wearing your own jersey? Incidentally, I saw Jermaine O'Neal at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas two years ago. His entourage was made up of several guys wearing his basketball jersey. This was almost too awesome for words. Danger meter: 7 bullets out of 10.
2. Stephen Jackson: I'm actually even scared to type his name. ClayNation Canon No. 511: If Stephen Jackson is in your bar, choose a new bar. I just looked over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't already in my room. Danger meter: 10 bullets out of 10.
3. Women who will retain your saliva after you spit on them: I don't know how more hasn't been written about this. But Tennessee Titans cornerback Pacman Jones allegedly spit on a woman at a bar here in Nashville and she kept the saliva so they could run DNA tests on it. How does this even happen? Isn't the first reaction when you get spit on, is to immediately remove the spit from your person? Yet somehow this woman was happy to keep spit on her.
There are only two comparisons I can think of when immediate removal of bodily fluids didn't occur: On Deadwood (when George Hearst spit on E.B. Farnum and threatened to kill Farnum if he cleaned himself) and when Monica Lewinsky kept the blue dress. Incidentally, if you want to get a woman fired up, mention that you don't think it was that weird that Monica Lewinsky kept the stained dress. I thought this thing had blown over, and I somehow ended up making this argument recently. Trust me, fireworks will ensue. Danger meter: 6 bullets out of 10.
4. Books: Am I the only person who would pay money to see Tennessee Titans backup quarterback Kerry Collins read a book to children? I find it completely improbable that he'd be able to hold the book up, read and turn the pages at the same time. Watch Kerry Collins on the sideline of a game sometime, he's got this vacant bovine stare. He looks just like the people who show up for Southwest flights and stand staring straight ahead in the line for more than two hours so they can board first. At some point in the future I'm going to write a column and rank the athletes I would most like to see read books to children. Trust me, Collins is on that list. Danger meter: 3 bullets of 10.
5. Women who will retain your semen after you sleep with them. A professional athlete who will remain nameless once told me he caught a woman trying to get his sperm out of a used condom and put it inside her. If you saw a woman doing this, you really would have to reconsider your choices in partners. Danger meter: 12 bullets out of 10.
6. Pepper spray: I've never been pepper sprayed, but I know several guys who have. Just mention it to them and their eyes will roll into the back of their head and they'll break out in shivers. It's the police restraining equivalent of six Jager Bombs in 10 minutes. Athletes seem particularly adept at managing to get sprayed. Rumor has it that the Cincinnati police force actually doubles their pepper spray stock when the Bengals season begins. Danger meter: 7 bullets out of 10.
7. Mike Tyson: My favorite story of the Tyson era was when his wife got into a minor traffic accident in the Washington, D.C., suburbs and he got out of the car and decked the other driver. Is there anyone you would least rather get into a minor car accident with? Can you imagine how terrifying that was to the guy he decked when Mike Tyson climbed out of the car? I think I would have fainted on the spot. Tyson is currently in the midst of a world tour and could end up hanging out with a professional athlete on your favorite team in the near future. Pray he doesn't. Danger meter: 5 bullets out of 10.
8. Taser: Chances that any of the professional athletes who have been Tasered know that Taser is an acronym for Thomas A. Swift's Electronic Rifle? 0 percent. Chances that a professional athlete from one of your teams will be Tasered within the next 12 months: 100 percent. Don't say you weren't warned. Danger meter: 7 bullets out of 10.
9. Lawyers: As a lawyer, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that the only people who get sued are the people who have something to lose. And it requires almost nothing to get a lawsuit filed. Put another way, the first question a lawyer probably asked the woman who Pacman Jones allegedly spit on was, "Did you keep the saliva?" When she said yes, he probably gave her a five and did a dance. Man, lawyers suck. Danger meter: 6 bullets out of 10.
10. Kim Jong-Il: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once presented North Korea's dictator with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan because Kim Jong-Il is such an NBA fan. I love this. I have lots of questions. For instance: Was the basketball personally inscribed? Did Kim Jong-Il get shoes, too, or a jersey? I can go on. For instance, what if we sent Mark Cuban over to North Korea to negotiate with him instead of someone from the State Department? Wouldn't this be every bit as effective? But Kim Jong-Il kidnapped a South Korean movie star and director in 1978 because he wanted to have a movie made in North Korea. Would it really be a surprise if he suddenly kidnapped a few NBA players and brought them overseas to play in the North Korean basketball league? Danger meter: 9 bullets out of 10.
11. Blood tests: Nothing good ever comes from a needle. Well, I guess maybe insulin if you're diabetic, but otherwise avoid them like the plague. This is doubly true when a single vial can cost you 18 years and millions of dollars. Danger meter: 13 bullets out of 10.
12. Boat cruises: It's gotten to the point where a team can't even fill up a boat with hookers, strippers, and sundry other working women who have several pairs of clear heels in their closet and have sex with them on the open water. What kind of country is this? Danger meter: 1 bullet out of 10.
13. Themselves: I guess this is my main point. I have yet to meet a person, athlete or otherwise, who wasn't more dangerous to themselves than anyone around them. Yet we constantly worry about the people we can't control instead of the one person we can. Gotta love the irony. Danger meter: 168 bullets out of 10.
