YE YE YE
Ye formerly known as Kanye
loses his lucrative contract to adidas
BLITZ 21
The last few nights before the 2022 New York Marathon, my first, I had difficulty sleeping. I was giddy with excitement and fear of failure. I framed everything about the event on November 6th. Before or after that day. I prepared my teaching in advance and flaked at a wedding for fear of Covid since I’d postponed my second booster til after.
My friend H got worried. “Let me get you something to chill,” she said and rang my buzzer, an assortment of gummies in a mason jar. “They’ll mellow you out. CBD mostly, traces of THC at best,” she promised.
Her eyes landed on the coffee table where I’d arranged my race gear and Adizero Pro3s.
“You're still wearing Adidas?” she asked, sucking her teeth.
Touché, I thought. I assured her that my dislike for Ye went way back to when he still went by Kanye and was married to Kim. Besides, Adizero Pro3s were a far cry from Yeezys, I added defensively. They were marvels of design and technology.
“You Germans are too white to notice when a Black guy talks shit," H said. “You’re a foreigner, vote with your dollar. It’s the least you can do.”
That’s precisely what I had done for the longest time. I chose the Swoosh over the three stripes. But when the allegations against Oregon Project’s running trainer Alberto Salazar, Nike’s founder Phil Knight's donations to the Republicans, and reports of Uyghur forced labor in Nike factories began to pile up, I switched. Unless one has access to classified national intelligence files on the guest bathroom of Mar a Lago, it is hard to keep up with human rights violations and other hot business insights these days. How is anyone supposed to keep track?
As soon as I think I have a handle on my carbon footprint, boycott plastic for a full 37 minutes, and stock the wardrobe with vomit-colored recycled formaldehyde, a tsunami obliterates a nation, nuclear arsenals are armed, and cooking oil prices rise 20-fold.
“Then there’s the evil cotton from Xinjiang!" H added and put a gummy in my mouth. "Chew!"
Relaxation hit me like a wrecking ball and plunged me straight into my worst nightmare. I was in Central Park, running the marathon. A few hundred feet before the finish line, the thick soles of my Pro3s melted into the ground, the energy rods clawing the asphalt. The mood in the spectator stands grew dark. “Anti-semite collaborator,” someone yelled. Others joined in shaming me.
As I tried to pull away, a legless Elon Musk floated by. A quick downward glance confirmed that I also had legs no more. Elon and I were in the Metaverse! Everything suddenly looked a lot more brilliant, high definition, and ugly. Elon offered me a shriveled mushroom, a leftover from Burning Man.
“The only way to endure Zuck's lack of imagination here,” he said.
I leaned forward as if riding a hoverboard and followed him into some digital Smurf cave. There, Ye, Kim, Demna, and Raf, the fashion-forward nomenclature, chatted about virtual style, ignoring us.
“With Twitter, I will reinstate freedom of expression and liberate humans from the oppression of clothing.” Elon unbuttoned his floral shirt (Dries?), revealed his white torso, which I will never be able to unsee, and shouted: “Abolish sartorialism!”
Ye, insulted by the sudden shift of attention, launched a tirade eclipsed by frantic censorship bleeps.
“Fuckin’ moderators,” Elon grumbled when Ivanka dashed in with Jeff, who offered to reactivate my Amazon Prime account at a bargain price.
I wondered how he knew that I’d canceled it.
Ivanka torsoed in front of Elon and insisted that Ye didn't mean it that way with the Jews the other day, that she would know, having converted to Judaism to marry Jared: "Empowering experience for a woman!" she whispered and parted her lips.
Her mouth opened to a dark abyss. The scene tumbled like a scene from Chris Nolan’s obnoxious Inception. A mob of angry Metaversians approached the crater of Ivanka’s formerly mouth hole and peered in. Triumphantly they pulled Papa Donald from the pit, as unkempt as Saddam in his last spider-hole days. This was how I had secretly imagined Donald's fate. Melania's hysterical laughter echoed devilish from afar, chanting something in Serbian. “Thank God for the prenup,” the subtitles read.
I woke up, realizing it was my alarm. I stretched under the blanket, feeling fabulous. Time for one last shakeout lap before the marathon.
November 2022
