Fan Mail

I was sifting through the mounds of fan mail in my IDS mailbox this week (that’s right, MOUNDS — WEEKEND columnist jobs come with a very high public profile) and among the accusations of criminal libel and requests for birthday party appearances, I found this gem of a complaint letter. Enjoy:

Dear Sheeple of the IDS,
    I can’t believe you guys still do album reviews. Being a fan of music is such a tired old cliché. Seriously, it seems like you can’t even walk down a sidewalk in Bloomington anymore without seeing some vapid human cookie cutter with his headphones on listening to his iPod.

You think you’re so original listening your Kurt Vile, your James Blake?
Please, could you be trying any harder? You can’t find a more hypocritical band of bourgeois assembly-line built wastes of life than music fans.

Many of my friends started wearing old school 90s NBA jerseys to be, you know, like for the irony? People come up to us like, “Oh, wow, I didn’t know you were such a big Atlanta Hawks fan!” and we’re all like, “Yeah, I love Moogie Blaylock.”

Anyway, I decided to take it a step further. I actually started watching sports. Yeah, I know. It doesn’t get much more ironic than that.

My friends were like, “Oh my God, Blake, are you really spending $320 a month for a cable plan that lets you watch every single minute of every game of the four major sports, plus NASCAR and Pro Fishing?”  And I’m like, “Yeah, isn’t that just hysterical?”

So anyway, I started getting really into this one sports league called the NBA. You might have heard of it. I was a huge fan earlier in the season, and eventually some of my friends started watching games with me.

Some of the NBA’s more recent games really just haven’t cut it for me, though. You’ve definitely heard of these ones. They’re called “The Playoffs.”

It wasn’t that a lot of people were watching them now, it’s just that the NBA really wasn’t my scene any more. I decided to move on.

I guess you could say I was still into the genre of basketball, but I just wanted a more authentic experience. I started checking out this one really raw group called the “Bloomington South Panthers.”

They put on some really swag games, but eventually one asshole bouncer got me kicked out and banned from their venue. He was all like, “You don’t even go to school here,” and “you can’t drink Tecate Light in a high school gymnasium, son.”

From there I got turned on to this really hip little place to catch basketball games around town called the YMCA. The first time I showed up, there was an ages 8 to 10 league game going on, and it was just so real, you know? Just me, the players and the player’s parents. I really suggest you check it out sometimes.

A few lame parents will see you eyeing their kids with your mustache and your thick beige glasses and throw labels on you, like "pedophile", but ignore them. They just don’t get it.

Here’s my point, though. It was then, walking out of the YMCA after the game was over (final score: 23 to 25. So raw!) that I stumbled across the most underground basketball game anyone has ever seen. It’s only meant for true sports fans: old men playing pickup basketball.

I sat down and watched like six games. Such an intimate experience.
So if you guys at the IDS WEEKEND really want to stay relevant in this post-post-modernist culture of manufactured repetitions, I suggest you start following old men playing pickup basketball.

You’re welcome,
— Blake Michaelson AKA “The Hipster Sports Fan”
@HipstrSportsFan on Twitter