Why I won't write about Russell Wilson trade rumors from this day forward
The record has been set straight. Everything else is just offseason filler and I won't waste your time
Training Day is a movie about stories. From the mundane to tales so fantastical that you had to be there to believe it.
It starts with Alonzo telling Hoyt to tell him a story, since he won’t stop bothering him as he’s trying to read a newspaper. Hoyt tells him about a DUI stop that turned into a drug bust and the incidental prevention of a murder, a story that would amaze at a party in Echo Park but it bores Denzel’s character, a hardened criminal disguised as a cop.
There are three more key stories that set the backbone of Training Day, but first let’s talk about what Alonzo tells Ethan Hawke’s character prior to the first story…
“This is a newspaper, right? It’s 90-percent bullshit, but it’s entertaining. That’s why I read it, because it entertains me.”
“90-percent bullshit”? Oh how we long for the days of 2001 again, when you still had 10-percent left over.
People everywhere are well past the time when the news was news. Now it is only stories. We are finding out more every day that the only information that gets the type of attention that results in clicks and therefore ad dollars and therefore media jobs, is the type of information that entertains.
And most of us feel the way that Alonzo does about it. It is just as acceptable to be entertained by the news as it is to feel informed by what gets reported on social media, on TV and YouTube, and even in the day to day conversations we have with friends. Sharing the rumors we heard online about our favorite people, places, and things.
I think at this point many of us are exhausted by the idea of being informed and craving a reprieve from the serious to simply be entertained for a while.
“Tell me a story.”
The second story of Training Day happens when the tables of power are turned on Alonzo in a meeting with the “Three Wise Men.” On the streets and with his crew, even in “The Jungle,” dubbed as the worst place in L.A., Alonzo is the alpha and he only feels comfortable when he feels in control.
But in this environment of a fancy restaurant in this part of town, and with these three men who are corrupt on levels that he’ll never see, Alonzo doesn’t ask to be told a story. He’s told a story because they’ve decided it’s time for him to hear a story.
And he listens. Like a 15-year-old boy being invited by his dad to come golfing with his buddies for the first time, he politely smiles, laughs, and waits for his cues based on what the other men do, it’s the only time we see Alonzo seem weak. As compared to Hoyt’s story though, it’s a doozy.
A convict gets a much lighter sentence handed down by the judge because he tricks the court into thinking that the peanut butter he had spread in between his butt cheeks and then licked off of his fingers was instead the peanut butter-like substance that usually tends to come from that area.
Not a pleasant story, but definitely the kind good enough to maybe get written into the middle of a movie one day. It’s also literally about fake shit.
From the beginning of last offseason to the end of last offseason, there was never a chance that the Seahawks would trade Russell Wilson. This didn’t stop a significant percentage of the NFL offseason news cycle, and an even greater percentage of the Seattle Seahawks news cycle, from being about a potential trade of Russell Wilson.
And Wilson trade rumors would have probably taken up an even bigger chunk of the 2021 NFL offseason news cycle if it hadn’t been for Aaron Rodgers and Deshaun Watson sharing the bulk of the rest of the news. Rodgers and Watson were not traded either and while Watson’s situation is unique to all others, we still found that the potential for either to be moved last year was actually close to zero.
So close to zero that with regards to those three names, we know that 0-percent of the rumors resulted in a transaction, and probably less than 2-percent of what took up the news was based on anything that we can say is verifiably true.
Somewhere in that two-percent is the fact that Wilson himself stirred the pot by releasing a list of four teams that he’d welcome a trade to; Rodgers legitimately wanting to know if the Packers were committed to winning a Super Bowl during his shrinking window of remaining years; and Watson definitely never playing for the Texans again and teams like the Dolphins kicking the tires on what a deal might look like.
There’s a tiny bit of truth to every rumor. We know that Hoyt’s story in the first scene is a true story because it’s a) not unbelievable and b) he’s the purest boy in the movie.
We don’t know if the “Three Wise Men” are ever telling the truth because they represent corruption, lies, and greed. They want something out of everyone. It is the desire to take that leads to corruption and it is often easier to take when you lie, embellish, and stretch the truth to fit the narrative that you need in order to sell what you’ve got.
That is how these rumors come to dominate the news cycle despite lacking the credibility and merit that used to warrant a discussion. With each passing year of NFL Twitter, I see the line between “radio station caller’s wild opinion that nobody takes seriously” and “journalist” is getting harder and harder to find. A meaningless blue checkmark and the word “sources” is sometimes all you need.
Sometimes you don’t even need the checkmark.
When it comes to the Seahawks looking to trade Wilson this offseason, Pete Carroll said this week: “Nah.”
When it comes to Wilson asking for or demanding a trade this offseason, Wilson said this week: “Nah.”
When it comes to any Russell Wilson trade rumors from this day forward, I only have one word: “Nah.”
Until news—NEWS—the 10-percent or 1-percent or whatever we’re left with these days—NEWS drops that Seattle has traded Russell Wilson, I won’t entertain any rumors about the Seahawks trading Wilson. That’s for the people who still want the “bullshit” on Wilson and who still want the “bullshit” on the Seahawks. That’s okay, we need to be entertained too.
We need good stories. The story that Hoyt tells you will not be terrible, it won’t be great, but it will be true.
The story that the “Three Wise Men” tell you will be great, but you can’t confirm how much of it is actually true or what their ulterior motives are in telling it to you. (In this case, probably something related to a gambling website or NFTs.)
The final story of Training Day is not one that is told, it is one that you see. And it is by far the best story of Training Day. I’ll give the abridged version—Training Day is streaming on HBO Max.
A rookie cop is on day one with his training officer, who baits him into unknowingly smoking PCP so that he can gain leverage against him at a later time. But when coming down from the PCP and staring into space while the training officer is driving, the rookie spots a young girl getting sexually assaulted in an alleyway and runs out to help her. She runs away but leaves behind her wallet, which the rookie puts in his pocket. Later that night, after the training officer has officially fucked him over for good and left him to get murdered by some associates, the wallet falls out of the rookie’s pocket and is found by the gang members who are literally holding a shotgun to his face in a bathtub. It turns out that the girl is the cousin of one of the gang members and this saves the rookie’s life, a lifeline that would not have even been there had he not smoked the PCP.
The best stories are not the ones you hear, they are the ones you see. Not the ones you read about, but the ones you experience.
We go along this journey of stories in Training Day, the next one always better than the last, and learn that at different points in our lives we are all going to be the snail and we are all going to be the old man on the porch saying, “What the fuck’s your problem?” depending on the situation. Or depending the Day.
Confused? Here’s another story:
Just know that if you go out seeking new Russell Wilson rumors every day, you are the snail.
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Training Day was a great movie with all of its twists and turns. We know training day is a story, but as I tried to post yesterday one CBS reporter was to lazy to get a real story. There are a million interesting true NFL stories write about one of those