Joe Jarvis

Although the prospect of seeing Oscar de la Hoya permanently disfigured provides sufficient impetus for many to throw in for a pay-per-view, there are other reasons boxing has survived recent innumerable embarrassments. Evidenced in "Fight Club," the return to the Hobbesian state of nature is necessary, even strangely wholesome. And we, of the Point and a Click and the Land is Ours generation, are past the need for a Joe Louis or Sugar Ray Robinson. Two men minimally equipped meeting in the center of the ring at Joe's Sports Bar to beat the shit out of one another is enough.

The audience knows that none of the combatants is likely to ever wear a championship strap and that they're all amateurs, meaning mandated protective headgear and nine-minute fights reduce to nil the prospect of knockouts. No matter: in the first bout two lightweights in plain trunks and tatty tank-tops stalk one another for two rounds before electrifying the finish with simultaneous flurries, fists pinning cheeks to shoulders, neither man going down, leaving all seats empty.

The atmosphere updates the ring scenes from the glory days captured in black-and-white photographs. Rather than enormous press flashbulbs, hand-helds bear testament; in place of pinstripes and evening gowns we're decked in requisite athletic apparel and the inexplicably resilient Capri pants. Regardless, as the ref raises the jubilant winner's hand into the smog of cigarette exhaust and the crowd pops, one thing is for certain: preening Golden Boys and snide Britons be damned; this is still the people's sport and we love it.

(2002-09-18)

Also by Joe Jarvis

Hair line
The forthcoming "Vamp Human Hair-Trimmed" line is a take-off on the recent use of pony hair among prominent mainstream designers.
(2002-08-14)

STREET CIRCUS, PART 2
Andrew Butler is killing the activist stereotype. PETA members, wearing prison uniforms and monkey masks, squat in rows of chicken-wire cages outside the March of Dimes' Loop headquarters, beneath the banner "Stop Cruel Animal Tests. marchofcrimes.com." Butler and his 5-year-old daughter Shanti hand out pamphlets to chuckling passersby.
(2002-08-07)

IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Just inside the door of the Autonomous Zone—Chicago's haven for anti-authoritarian vegan polymarist cycling activists—a pugnacious clown idles away the time before he goes on stage by giving you shit for being so bourgeois as to buy Fluevogs and, perhaps only half-jokingly, trying to pass himself off as the doorperson to pocket the admission for tonight's Media Mayhem variety show.
(2002-08-01)

NONFICTION REVIEW
Peter Conrad introduces "The Hitchcock Murders" as a "grateful fan letter" to the legendary director after depicting his first viewing of "Psycho" as the experience in which he truly lost his virginity. What follows is an interesting mix of Hitchcock anecdotes, facts and steely analysis.
(2001-11-15)

FICTION REVIEW
(2001-10-18)

NOT MILK?
(2001-03-01)

REPAIR WORK
(2001-02-08)

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