In the weeks leading up to LeBron James’ return the Cleveland, the rhetoric on both sides of the Cuyahoga river was ratcheted up to levels epic even for fans in a city that has already been savagely beaten with life’s stick on repeated occasions.

I may make fun of the city of Miami’s vacuousness and lack of anything cool other than an art festival that shares a name with an equally uncool Swiss city, but Cleveland is almost too real: gritty and harsh, like the lighting in gas station rest rooms. The Clevelanders I know are smart and dependable as hell, but the city is actually hell.

Let me put it another way: last time I was there I saw a guy stopped at a traffic light and he was smoking something illicit through a Sprite can. He was also driving a short bus. He looked over at me, grinning, as if to say, “That’s right… a Sprite can. Who cares?”

And so, since virtually the only source of sports pride in the town left it high and dry, and was returning for the first time since abandoning it, NBA front office personnel were understandably concerned that the nationally televised game could get pretty ugly. Their wariness was exacerbated by the news that sports announcing hero Charles Barkley — he who can undo any attempt at bringing order to a chaotic situation merely by saying exactly what’s on his mind — was working the game. Knowing all of this, the league sent in reinforcements.

Best-case scenario was that the fans were going to shout epithets and make James uncomfortable; worst case, they would throw things and try to injure him. (I had suggested that perhaps the team should consider hiring the Hells Angels to provide security for the event, but my idea was rebuffed.)

LeBron tried to put on a brave face in the days leading up to the game, in that monotonous way athletes have of saying, “It’s just another game” even when it isn’t. But deep down he realized the scope of what was to come: an unprecedented hate bath.

Pregame warm-ups were an absolute circus. James is the Cavs fans’ Benedict Arnold, their Brett Favre one team ago. And they didn’t waste a moment to let him know, or an opportunity to mug for the cameras.

Although I’d heard that the Cavs were banning fans from bringing in offensive signage, what I noticed was this: other than signs using the seven words you can never say on television, everything else seemed to be fair game.

Then James, as tone deaf an athlete as I have ever encountered, decided to add insult to injury and rock that stupid thing he does with the chalk.

All I could think as I saw the fans’ pained faces was that, if he’d tried that in New York, even Woody Allen would’ve doused him with beer. It isn’t as if he was offering a tribute to a dead relative, or anything of importance. It was part of a self-congratulatory faux messiah moment. With chalk. And if he took the day off, what would’ve happened? Apparently, the thought was too much for him, or Nike, to bear. It was a pretty ugly, tasteless moment, his way of showing the fans how angry he was that they were hurt. An act of defiance, long after the barn door had been torn off and the horses had escaped.

And yet, as it turned out, for the people venting their spleens in person, that maneuver was actually the high point of their evening. From the opening jump, James was on them like Godzilla on Tokyo. Like he was the angry one, the hurt one, the humiliated one. James spent three quarters paying back every fan for every sound that they’d uttered during the intervening months since he face-spit them on national television.

He taunted the Cavaliers players, mouthed off to their coaches, stomped around every inch of the court, followed by Dwyane Wade and the other guy, and broke the collective will of his former teammates. And they, in turn, appeared to have developed a manner of Stockholm syndrome, laughing and joking with him while they were undressed, publicly. James played remarkably, as if his life depended upon it, for three quarters. Mercifully, he took the fourth off but the damage was done. And done and done and…

It was as if no one told the Cavaliers players how important the game was. They were given a chance to show James that he had made a mistake by leaving, and that the team could win without him. Or even compete with him. But they just stood by and waved him through for another thunderous dunk or cutting pass.

If I were a Cavs fan I would be embarrassed by the players’ effort, by the crazy owner and his doofy typeface, and by the fact that LeBron James, who was clearly sweating his reception, barely broke one during the game.

Tony Gervino is a New York City-based editor and writer obsessed with honing his bio to make him sound quirky. He can also be found here.

Photo by Bob Jagendorf, from Flickr.

To go along with your Girl Talk breakdown, please enjoy this handy chart mapping the samples of All Day.

I can’t quite recall who it was now — maybe Linford Christie? — but a couple of years back some athlete, having found himself in hard times, recounted his terrible tale of woe and explained that his burdens had become so difficult to bear that he was drinking a bottle of wine a day. The revelation was supposed to illustrate just how far the fellow had fallen, but all I could think was, a bottle of wine a day? I have a bottle of wine with dinner. I absent-mindedly had half a liter of Wild Turkey yesterday before “Monday Night Football” started. Now, sure, I am probably not the world’s greatest example of alcoholic restraint here, but I am trying to give a little perspective to my feelings of underwhelmedness on this report that Britain is the drinkiest nation in the world.

Around 84 per cent of Britons are drinkers — way ahead of the lowest nation, India, where just 27 per cent ever have a tipple — compared with the international average of 71 per cent. The survey found nearly one in ten Britons admit to drinking every day, almost twice the number in France. Around 41 per cent of Britons drink regularly, more than our nearest rivals in Australia, 27 per cent, and the international average of 17 per cent.

I mean, are we supposed to be impressed by these statistics? Who doesn’t drink every day? And, more importantly, how the hell do they get through life that way? It’s unthinkable.

Alert! Code red! This coming Friday’s Awl reader’s party, a party thrown by readers for readers, also known as the Awl Hawliday Bawl, has a change of venue! We hope you will join us there. (Yes, you!) So the new venue for Friday, December 10, is the Ella Lounge, at 9 Avenue A, which is located, unsurprisingly, between 1st & 2nd streets. Why? Let us tell you!

In an ironic twist of fate (that is not actually ironic), the nonprofit outfit Transportation Alternatives was double booked for our previous party space! Hmm, where have I heard that name before? OH RIGHT! For much of the 90s, in exchange for a lowered rent from our East Village landlord, the nice boys (and I do mean boys, though that looks somewhat improved) of Transportation Alternatives were employed as the supers of my apartment building. Yes. You can imagine how well that went: a bunch of bike-crusading fellows were supposed to like, sweep the stairs and change lightbulbs and deal with the trash. Oh yeah. In any event, eventually they left. And SO WE MEET AGAIN.

In other news, next week’s party in Boston (AKA Cambridge) is still on track.

YOU CAN’T KEEP DUCKS DOWN, HATERS.

“They’re some of my best friends. I’m not bigoted at all; I’m not racist.”
 — Texas State Republican Executive Committee member John Cook explains that his desire to oust Republican House Speaker Joe Straus, who is Jewish, is not a matter of prejudice. “I got into politics to put Christian conservatives into office. They’re the people that do the best jobs over all,” says Cook, who wants to oust the Republican House Speaker because he is Jewish. “My favorite person that’s ever been on this earth is a Jew,” added Cook, presumably referring to Woody Allen. On a related note, I have always thought that I could have a lucrative sideline in being a public figure’s “Jewish friend” in times of crisis. “Why, I’ve known John Cook for years, and he doesn’t have an anti-Semitic bone in his body,” I would be happy to say. For a fee, of course. You know how Jews are about money.

Photo by Larry D. Moore.

Right now, people are demonstrating outside a British court, where Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange will most likely receive bail and a court date, according to the American papers, or, according to the English papers, he will enter the European fast-tracked extradition system. Assange turned himself in early this morning local time on Swedish charges, described by the (British) police as “one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.” One interesting thing to note, according to the Guardian: “If extradited to Sweden under the European Arrest Warrant — a process which could be concluded quickly under the fast-track procedure — Assange will be vulnerable to other extradition requests from countries including the US.”

Dear Davida,

Sorry for squeezing your hand so tightly at the Gravediggaz concert.

This would have been fall 1997. I was working at Vibe magazine. You had looked me up and given me a call after reading something I wrote — and I was flattered. We hadn’t spoken in a couple years, I don’t think. Not since we’d graduated college. We hadn’t spoken in any substantial way, really, since you’d broken up with me at the end of junior year. Which was okay. We’d only been together for a few months. A nice, easy-going relationship; never very emotional, never a huge big deal. But I was freshly single again when you called, and (I hope it won’t make you uncomfortable to note) you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever gone out with. So I was more than just flattered. I was totally psyched. I would have very much liked to be going out with you again.

As you know, you are black and I am white. I mention this because the fact came into play that night. At least for me, it did.

I had gotten us on the guest list for a Gravediggaz concert. Gravediggaz were a sort of rap supergroup formed by RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan and Prince Paul, who produced the first three De La Soul albums, and two lesser known MCs named Frukwan and Poetic. They had just released, or were just about to release, their second album, The Pick, the Sickle and the Shovel, which I had reviewed for Vibe. (Here, I have to pause and extend a side apology to anyone who read that review. Because it started with a line that I liked very much when I wrote, but have come to regard as embarrassingly self-indulgent. I said, I think in the very first sentence, that the Gravediggaz sound was “heavier than seven lead weathervanes.” It was fun, sure, to write about rap music in rhyme, and I’m not opposed to the practice in principal. But clearly, I’d gotten drunk on the sound of the syntax, and forgotten the importance of the meanings of words. Do they even make weathervanes out of lead? I mean, I’m sure it’s been done. But it can’t be the standard, can it? I mean, are weathervanes particularly known for being heavy? They shouldn’t be, right? They are designed to be pushed by the wind, after all. That’s their purpose.)

Anyway, the Gravediggaz: They were exploring this new style, “horrorcore,” pushing the violence and gore of gangsta rap over the top, in a winking way, and setting it to beats of an appropriate mood. Good Halloween music, spooky, psychedelic funk. They had a strong black-power bent, too, RZA being deep into the beliefs of the Five Percent Nation of Islam. White people are sometimes referred to as “devils” in their lyrics.

I really liked them. You did, too, and said yes when I invited you to come see them. We met at my place first, to smoke pot, which was something we’d always enjoyed doing together, before heading up to the show, which was at the old Supper Club, I think, off Times Square.

Whatever the venue, it was a dark, smoky scene when we arrived. A little like a basement party, though the ceiling was very high. Gravediggaz drew an audience from the grimier, grittier side of hip-hop. Poetic is holding a knife up to his eye on the cover to their first album. There’s a picture of a foot with a mortuary tag hanging from its toes on the back. There were not many women at the concert, and not many white people. I remember seeing only one other white person all night, in fact, a big, burly, bearded guy who I took to be a bouncer.

My awareness of these demographics was heightened by the fact that you and I were getting a lot of attention. Some of this attention took the form of guys looking at me hard. Some of it took the form of them approaching you, and whispering in your ear. This was somewhat uncomfortable. I don’t know what any of them said to you, but a part of me wanted to tell them, “Come on, man. She’s with me.” Of course, I didn’t actually know if that was the case in the way I wanted it to be. We were on a date, technically, but we weren’t in fact, dating. And also, is that ever really a good thing to say? People are allowed to talk to other people. Even to whisper to them. Women can speak for themselves, as you were doing quite well, politely declining offer after offer. Part of me wondered whether I was cramping your style. Maybe you would have liked to let one of these guys buy you a drink? Maybe you would have given one of them your phone number if I hadn’t been there? I didn’t, of course, say anything about any of this. I nodded a lot. The music was loud. For which I was thankful.

So as dark as it was, and as thick with the crowd, I felt a bit like there was a white spotlight shining on us. (As stoned as I was, and as generally self-conscious and -absorbed…) This feeling intensified when, about halfway through the concert, the music stopped, and, to introduce the next song, the group rolled out this giant stage prop, a twenty-foot tall guillotine, with a large dummy white person — a plastic mannequin, or maybe paper-mache? — lying at the bottom. Then RZA took the microphone and went into a long diatribe against the white man. Like a mock trial, listing all the offenses the white man had committed against the black man throughout history. The middle passage, slavery, Jim Crow laws, teaching false knowledge, etc. “And for these crimes against the black man,” he shouted at the end, “I pronounce you GUILTY!!!” Then the guillotine’s blade dropped and chopped off the white dummy’s head and the crowd erupted in a roar of approval.

“Fear” is a strong word. I never felt directly threatened. I guess the thought that someone might punch me in the face crossed my mind, but I’d been more legitimately concerned with my physical safety at rock concerts — caught in stampede surges toward the stage, or as a mosh pit spun out of control. That said, I’d reached out and found your hand during RZA’s speech. And after the blade came down, as the crowd was cheering and hollering and throwing fists in the air, as the massive thump of the next song’s opening beats shook the floor, I remember weaving my fingers through yours, and squeezing in a way so as to assert that we were there together, in this together. And to say, “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” And a little bit to ask, “Everything’s going to be all right, right?” There was a lot that I was communicating with that squeeze. I hope I didn’t hurt your hand.

Things calmed down after a minute, the music again the focus of the show. And soon enough I was laughing — somewhat at relief from nervousness, mostly to myself, at myself, about the ridiculousness of the situation. How must have I looked? The expression on my face, as I was standing there, imagining everyone was looking at me, when probably no one was. I leaned into your ear and shouted over the music, “That was crazy!”

“Yeah,” you said. And gave a sort of inscrutable smile back.

How crazy was it for you? I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it much more after that. Did you feel like everyone was looking at us, too? Did you wish you could disappear? Or that I would? Were you happy to be holding my hand, comforted as I was? Or was that weird for you? Did you wish you weren’t standing next to me? Or were you fine with it all?

We went back to my place afterwards and I kissed you and you kissed me back for a little while, but then you told me you weren’t interested in taking things further. You were sort of seeing someone else, apparently. I was a little disappointed. But it was okay.

Here are four scenarios in which “America will collapse (by 2025).” None includes zombies, which seems like an oversight.

Rosângela Rennó

Kris Martin

Koki Tanaka

Lisa Oppenheim

Oscar Tuazon

Cristina Lucas

Sudarshan Shetty

Scott Daniel Ellison

Michelle Jezierski

Rose Wylie

Jill Baroff

Jim Lee

Jagannath Panda

Carmen McLeod

Julia Kuhl

Jakkai Siributr

Gene Davis

Laura Oldfield Ford

Michael Schall

Whitney Bedford

Jenny Perlin

Zsolt Bodoni

Thomas Müller