Disco Vietnam Speaks on Rocky, AI, and Communism…

I’m on my grind cousin; I ain’t got time for frontin.’ At least not today. So I’ve asked my boy Barry Schwartz aka Disco Vietnam aka Young Disco (Nah Homey–not Sisqo) aka ‘07 Daryl Franchise, one of the illest music journalists and pop culture essayists in New York to bless Rosenbergradio with some real talk. If you want to read some of Barry’s work peep his piece today in Stylus Magazine on Mariah Carey’s Christmas album. He’s the most brilliant and tolerable hipster I know—and he doesn’t live in Williamsburg.

Did you know the most popular jersey in China is actually not Yao Ming’s but rather Allen Iverson’s? I don’t know too much about the dictatorship of the proletariat but I find this to be completely and utterly fascinating; all things considered, Allen Iverson is probably the least Communist basketball player to have ever lived.

And that’s not a knock, though I can see how one could construe it to be. Allen Iverson represents a lot of things, which is ultimately why he’s the archtypical post-Jordanian modern black athlete. He’s loud, brash, occasionally destructive, thuggish, ruggish, bone, shoot first point guard with cornrows and tattoos, the embodiment of all things white sportswriters hate.

But the main reason white sportwriters seem to vehemently despise him so much is because he embodies all those things while being undeniably brilliant.

Allen Iverson plays harder (on offense) than any other pro basketball player alive or dead, risking life and limb on every drive to the hoop, like a Shitzu who steps to a Great Dane because he doesn’t comprehend how small he really is. Today Stephen A. Smith interviewed Iverson and asked him how he would describe himself as a basketball player, to which Iverson responded, rather matter-of-factly, “A killer.” That’s some fucking intense shit.

I’m from New York. As you know we aren’t so lucky (it’s funny to think there was actually a time not too long ago when people weren’t sure who was better, Iverson or Marbury). But in the wake of Iverson’s trade I can’t help but feel Philly and New York aren’t more alike than we think we are in certain respects.

Philly has an interesting relationship with its star athletes. They hated Lindros, T.O., Cunningham and even Mike Schmidt much in the same way New York has completely forsaken Marbury and to an even greater extent Alex Rodriguez (which is really a whole other essay)

The people of Philly love Iverson because of all the above; he plays with a hard-working underdog reckless abandon that reflects the blue-collar ethics of Philadelphians the same way Charles Oakley and John Starks and Paul Lo Duca are heroes to New Yorkers while we boo Patrick Ewing and Allan Houston and time Carlos Beltran. The only difference is Iverson blends the two: he is the blue collar superstar. He can be all things to all people (except sportswriters). Both New York and Philadelpia approach their acceptance of professional athletes in this manner but Philadelphia is saddled with an ironic emotional baggage that will prevent them from ever truly enjoying a winning team ever again. This emotional baggage is ironic because the reason for it technically doesn’t really fucking exist.

And this reason is Rocky Balboa.

In 1977 Rocky won best picture. This isn’t entirely interesting. What is interesting were the movies that it beat: Taxi Driver, All the Presidents Men, Network, Bound for Glory. Each of these films, with the exception of Bound for Glory, are fucking incredible (the 70s were the golden age of cinema, obviously) but each of these films, with the possible exception of Bound for Glory, also takes an almost mind-numbingly cynical and bleak view of contemporary America. Rocky, on the other hand, accepted the flaws of contemporary America, but its approach is mind-numbingly optimistic, it’s a boxing movie, yes, but its mostly a story of how even the seemingly disenfranchised can attain the American dream. It’s fucking biblical. It’s the reason why tonight I will see the sixth installment in a franchise that, while it has been enjoyable, hasn’t necessarily been good in 30 years.

A Young Hipster (not Barry Schwartz) pushes his chram into the neck of his favorite nonexistent hero….

Now, the problem with all this is that the entire city of Philadelphia has completely internalized the story of Rocky and adopted him as its favorite son much the same way New Jersey has adopted the similarly hopeful-in-the-face-of-adversity Bruce Springsteen. To this day Philadelphia rests literally in the shadow of a 15 foot statue of Rocky. Now, that’s all well and good except for one thing.

ROCKY ISN’T FUCKING REAL!

Rocky is the actualization of the perfect athlete and the perfect sports story: a rags-to-riches charismatic people’s champion who should always lose, somehow always wins, but most importantly never quits. Who could compete with that? (This is to make no mention of the fact that if your only exposure to boxing was the Rocky movies and then you watched real boxing, you would immediately think real boxing fucking sucked) How could the city of Philadelphia ever fully appreciate any of their teams or their players’ accomplishments when they’ve already ostensibly accepted a fully-idealized version of victory as fact?

You could argue Allen Iverson was the closest Philadelphia has ever had to its real life Rocky, even down to that commercial a couple of years ago of Iverson drinking eggs and dribbling through the streets of Philly at the ass crack of dawn. A 5’11’’ point guard who “played every game like it was his last,” consistently doubted, placed in inevitable losing situations and consistently performing beyond his capabilities.

Now he’s off to the Denver Nuggets, which is the equivalent of Rocky V. Could be good. Probably won’t be. Hopefully it will have some good moments (“Hey you knock him down, why don’t you try knocking me down.”) I’ll assume Philly is in shambles right now and I sense, given everything, they may never truly recover from this.

This will have to suffice. There are much higher stakes now:

At the end of Rocky IV, Rocky stood before the Russian Premier and told them “Anyone can change.” Three years later the Berlin Wall fell. Some have argued Rocky effectively ended the cold war.Today some are predicting within the next five years communist China will become the world’s dominant superpower.

Not if Allen Iverson has anything to say about it. I mean, they’re already wearing his jersey.