What Is It About Michael Jordan?

With the final installation of the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary “The Last Dance” airing last night, I find myself being fascinated with what exactly it is about Michael Jordan that we find so fascinating. Obviously, he may be the greatest athlete many people have ever seen. There is something that makes him different than that though. It’s the thing we know on the tip of our tongue, but you just can’t quite piece together the source of why we all love such a complicated person. In other words, Jordan was a questionable father, an teammate without much compassion, and overall not a model person. Yet, we all admire him and when he speaks you listen.

As I watched the documentary and grappled with this question of why we obsess over Michael Jordan more than any other athlete, I focused on those big moments where he always delivered. The reason no other athlete gets a 10-part documentary is because no other athlete plays a career that is so much like a movie. Each historic performance, triumph, rival, and tale like the “flu game” (or poison pizza game) creates our good guy in a superhero movie that we want him to be. Even if the actual guy may not be always a good guy. Jordan’s flaws made him endearing to fans, and his coldness made people love him more. Fans wanted his happiness the way a stereotypical privileged child seeks their distant father’s affirmation. Like that father, Jordan would occasionally creek open the door of humanity and make you believe that somewhere inside the cold, shiny, robotic exterior there was the person who met the unrealistic standard everyone held him to. That glimmer of the “perfect MJ” as we all pictured him made him the massive figure he was. It was also why when he disappointed fans off the court people felt betrayed, even though they knew who he was consistently going to be.

In this documentary the time where I saw the light to Jordan’s humanity shine the most was with the Bulls security staff. Jordan was a complicated person, a challenging teammate, and a strong personality. Yet, it was around team security that the “rip your heart out” or “cold-blooded killer” descriptions of Jordan on the court were not the person you saw. The security staff could have been just people Jordan dealt with and thought nothing of, but Jordan show that is not who he is. These stories of Jordan’s relationship showed that inside him there was a caring and compassionate person. The relationships Jordan had with the security staff were not just strong, they were the most important relationships in his life. He described Gus Lett as a “second father”, and if you know anything about Michael Jordan it is how much his father meant to him. When Jordan described his relationship with Lett that way, that is when my question was answered. We are fascinated with Jordan because no matter how flawed he is we do not want a perfect hero. We want a hero who shows us part of what we see in ourselves. We are not “good people” or “bad people” that fit into a box. We are all human and in Jordan we see all of us. He is someone who makes good choices and bad ones, and who sometimes feels profound emotion and then sometimes does not. Jordan is not cold like he appeared to us on the outside, he is cold sometimes, but shows compassion in a way where we believe in who he can be.

Unstated in our perception of Jordan is how it impacts people when Jordan fails to reach the human level we know he has. When he said “Republicans buy sneakers too”, it hurts all of us like a close friend insulted us. It’s because we have seen how he will fight for something he believes in, like Gus Lett, and we know he is making a choice that he knows falls short of our expectations. However, those failures in many people’s eyes almost keep us more attached to Jordan as if we as fans can change him. It is Jordan’s flaws, combined with his unique moments of brilliance and compassion all wrapped up in one of the most dominant athletes ever that make him one of the most fascinating public figures we have ever known.

Survivor Recap, But Just Ben

Survivor Season 40 ended last night with a runaway victory from Tony Vlachos. Tony dominated most of the game and will deservedly get a lot of praise for how he played this season, the first “all winners” season in the show’s history. This post will not be included in the list of praise pieces on Tony, because I want to talk about Ben.

Ben was one of a few controversial winners featured on this season. Ben’s first season, season 35, he made it to the end of the game with few allies. Ben’s strength was his ability to find hidden immunity idols, or as some Survivor fans would say hoping to get lucky. In the final three with Ben was Chrissy, largely perceived to be the most strategic player on the season. With that information, one would assume Chrissy won. However, Ben, a military veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, had a story that was too captivating for the jury to overlook and ultimately pushed him to victory.

Fast forward to this season. Ben was somebody who fit the profile of a show stealer who had something to prove in a season where few other cast members had anything left to prove. At a minimum, it seemed like a safe bet Ben would play a pretty aggressive game. Instead, he may have put together the most bizarre season the show has seen since Jonny Fairplay made up a story about his grandmother dying in order to gain sympathy (yes, that really happened). Ben had strange feuds with cast members like Jeremy, and seemed completely befuddled that he was on a season with somebody as good as Boston Rob.

Ben declared early in the season that he was uncomfortable with how cutthroat his game was in his previous season, and wanted to think of people on the show more so as friends than competition. That’s a perfectly reasonable approach, and I think it is the same strategy that won the season for Tony. Ben’s idea of being nice was essentially to not play Survivor though. He had an alliance of himself, Tony, and Sarah. It was extremely obvious to anybody watching if that three ended up as the last group standing, Ben would be receiving no votes as he had almost no relationships outside of the alliance and objectively poor gameplay. In other words, Ben was just out on an island while 19 other people played Survivor. Naturally, the typical move in that “stealth” position is to turn on your own alliance in order to put yourself in the power position. However, as Ben has proven he is not afraid to go off course from what is typical on this show.

Ben was sitting in the final five on the doorstep of being, well, third place barring some strategic move that would appear unavailable. That said, still achieving a goal many Survivor players have to make it all 39 days. That would be something to look back on as an achievement, and it is usually not uncommon to see a weaker player get brought to the final three as a non-threat to the other two players chance of winning. Instead, Ben decided to tell his ally Sarah to vote for him so that she had a vote that Tony was not apart of and could make a stronger case to the jury. While an extremely kind and loyal gesture, when you put it together with the rest of Ben’s season it makes his entire game one of the strangest ever. He decided to go out on Survivor and admittedly it was a personal journey more than a competition. I really hope Ben got what he needed, and he really does seem like a good guy. However, the show is about pushing to achieve the ultimate goal, not to have a vision quest. Ben’s humanity was admirable, but in the context of the game it was completely bizarre. Ben came on this season as a polarizing figure. In a season where he could have rewritten the story of his last season, he instead decided it was not in his interest to play the game before he even decided to get himself voted out.

Fudge Brownie M&M Review - The Double Chocolate M&M

Fudge Brownie M&M’s are the latest addition to an ever-growing of list of variations to the coated childhood chocolate candy being tossed out on shelves. A more apt name for this version would simply be “the double chocolate M&M”, but I understand having an M&M with a “I’m just here for the paycheck” face holding fudge brownies on the packaging was a marketing opportunity that is too tempting to pass up.

 

Is it better than the original?

This is not too hard to me to answer as I have not liked regular M&Ms since I was about nine. Yes, the fudge brownie ones are definitely better. Are they good? Probably not. But definitely better. Which, I guess has to be the floor for any M&M variation.

Are they good?

As I eluded to in the last paragraph, no these are not great. That said, if you like M&Ms these are just double chocolate M&Ms so I assume that is good. There is no actual brownie, which as a gluten free person is a win, but I imagine they would have been better with a brownie in them.

Should M&M chill with the variations?

This is the main “strong” take I have in this post. Absolutely. M&Ms have been making a strong push for the Mountain Dew of snacks/candy for years now. In 2005 everybody was walking around with an original Mountain Dew and M&Ms. Now both have so many variations on their own product I cannot even keep track of how many there are, and I make jokes about people who consume either.

Is this the best M&M variations?

For me, the caramel M&Ms still take the crown for best variation of the candy. Now I know what you are thinking, “the caramel M&Ms were not even good”. You are correct. They were not good. Neither is any variation on M&Ms and if we are being honest, M&Ms overall just are not very good candy. In that context, I’ll give these M&Ms a solid C+ grade.