The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Read online

  Here is my point: The Occupy movement hasn’t attracted brilliant people who have real ideas for change; it has attracted the worst elements of the human race to what has amounted to a high-minded excuse for a party. Mask an acid trip and a few sexual-assault cases with civic responsibility, and suddenly all the liberals are behind it. That makes about as much sense as leaving education policy in the hands of Playboy bunnies, who have clearly benefited enormously from learning how to read, write, and tally some numbers.

  God help us, the turkey corollary is a more provable law than gravity.

  or you kids out there whose idea of “playing a game” means sitting in front of a TV with a controller in your hand, blowing the heads off computer-generated zombies, this chapter title will have little meaning. Those of you a bit more seasoned in the ways of life and have actually played a board game will doubtlessly identify this phrase from the game Monopoly. The thought of this game will probably cast you back to picking up the card that carried this phrase, and from there it may cause you to recall the phrase that immediately preceded it. If you are still with me, then you might even have made the connection between that prior phrase and the desperate relevance it has had in my life. Yes, I just took a very long-winded and roundabout way to get you thinking about three simple, yet highly consequential, words—”Go to jail.”

  While working in real estate, the government charged me with money laundering, and I was completely guilty. Before you write me off as a degenerate, let me explain what the problem was. What in God’s name does “money laundering” mean? If I were to come over to your house right now, knock on your front door, and ask you what that term means, would you be able to tell me? Moreover, would you be able to explain how to go about laundering some money? If your answer is yes to both of these questions, and you could show me detailed graphs to better explain the entire process, then you are either a lawyer or a degenerate. Personally, at the time I was charged with this diluted, mysterious offense, I was clueless that I was doing anything wrong.

  Let me take you back in time. …

  I am twenty-seven years old and I just receive my shiny, brand-new real estate license. Having labored hard to earn it, I start to use it. I get a job and do what all real estate people do. I begin showing, pitching, hustling, selling. I’ve got clients and a boss and co-workers, just like everyone else. It’s going OK. Getting a good, solid reputation. The schedule allows me time to train and coach the kids. When time allows for me to do only one, I coach the kids.

  I’m heading mindlessly down this path, and then years later I receive a call. The voice on the other end of the phone is real friendly.

  “Hey, Chael, I’m a big fan,” the man says. “Love watching your fights.”

  “Great, how can I help you?”

  “Well, I’m an agent for the government, and we need to clear a few things up. We need your … expertise in understanding a few things.”

  “Sure, happy to help,” I say. “But I’m no expert. I’ve only been doing this a few years—kinda learning as I go. Maybe talk to my boss or one of the good, experienced salespeople here? I’ll put someone right on. Let me just put you on hold a sec. …”

  “No, Chael. You’re the guy we think can help. Help us. Can you come down one day this week so we can talk?”

  “Ummmm, sure. If there is anything I can do, of course. I’m your guy!”

  So. Go downtown. Actually bring a few T-shirts to give to my “big fan.” Even bring a few in smaller sizes for his kids. It’s the least I can do. They’re letting me help get rid of the bad guys. What I don’t bring is the notion that I could have done something wrong myself. What I don’t bring is a lawyer.

  I get there and sit down. I’m expecting to leave in a half-hour, after supplying them with whatever meager insight my short tenure and low position in the office have afforded me. I’ll leave a few T-shirts lighter and maybe with my very own plastic “Junior G-Man” badge.

  Then the questions. They start innocently enough. General questions on broad enough real-estate-oriented topics—things I’ve told them I am no expert in. But then the inquiries begin to circle ominously back to the third deal I ever did, a deal based on the instructions and approval of my superiors. And I can’t help noticing that my “big fan” and his fellow agents, who were slapping me on the back, laughing, and talking to me about my UFC fights just a few minutes ago, are now staring at me like a pack of hungry wolves staring at a baby bison with a clubfoot and a racking cough.

  Why are they looking at me like that? I’m on the team, aren’t I? I came down to help. I’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide. But it’s becoming clear—even to a well-meaning lummox like myself who stubbornly believes in everyone’s benign and charitable nature despite a lifetime’s worth of contrary evidence—that I have no fans in this room. In truth, I am a conviction waiting to happen.

  My mind races. Should I have lawyered up like a villain in an episode of Law and Order? Are they going to slap the bracelets on me, read me my rights, and then lead me into the bowels of the building as if we were in an episode of Dragnet?

  This cannot be happening. I’m a law-abiding citizen. A pillar of my community. I coach wrestling a few nights a week. The kids look up to me and ask for moral advice. I don’t belong here.

  But I am here, and the questions are getting more and more specific. Copies of paperwork with my name on it—paperwork I ran past my bosses to make sure the deal was legal and ethical. It’s good, Chael. We do it all the time. Put it through. I didn’t even make any money on the deal. I did it to close out paperwork and move on. What the heck is going on?!

  As I mentioned, I had no idea what money laundering was or how to go about it, so I asked my lawyer. This is how our conversation went:

  Him: Think of the biggest library you’ve ever seen, and then multiply that by three. That’s the federal law library, and nobody, and I mean nobody, knows what is in all of those books. If you tell them that you didn’t do this crime, and your statement has merit, they can simply dig into those books and come up with fifteen more charges to hit you with. They’ve chosen to bring you down. They’ve chosen to end your political career, and it’s going to happen. Now, you can fight them and go before twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty, or you can go along with them. Say you did it and go home.

  Me: All that happened was one guy gave another guy some money. Nobody knew this law existed, including our team of attorneys who approved the deal?

  Him: You are dealing with the United States federal government, the most powerful entity on planet Earth. Just hang your head and go home.

  Again, I couldn’t believe I had landed in that spot. But there I was, and there the charges were—hanging in front of me like a creature from the underworld sent back to destroy me.

  And destroy me it did. It was a deal I barely understood. It involved a technicality I couldn’t have identified even if I suspected it was illegal. I hadn’t been around long enough, and wasn’t a good enough salesman, much less crook, to conceive of it as an illicit moneymaking, or money laundering, enterprise. But that didn’t change the fact that the deal and I are now handcuffed together like two brawling drunks in the back of a paddy wagon. There are no keys to this pair of cuffs. There is no way out or away from the whole mess. I am connected to this mistake for life. My political career, which I was hoping to begin full-time after I retired from MMA, is shattered. Any good I could do, any positive change I could have potentially made as a member of government, is gone.

  Over a deal I didn’t concoct. A deal I was told was legal. A deal I didn’t profit from. And you people wonder why I act crazy sometimes?

  The moral of the story is don’t trust terms like, “We do it all the time.” Even if you’re just the grand fracking facilitator and not the scumbag proper, make someone else sign. If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s money laundering.

  Walk This Way, But Never To That Song

&n
bsp; “It seemed to me that his only sin was lack of imagination.”

  —Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall, 1939.

  itting around the ol’ homestead, engaging in some light reading of my least favorite French existentialist, I came across the above, which brought to mind something that has bothered me for a while—the uninspiring choices that fighters make in terms of their walkout music.

  It’s hard to believe that the vast majority of the poor lummoxes who fight for a living have atrocious musical taste and absolutely no sense of the power and drama that they could invoke with a good walkout song, but unfortunately that is the absolute truth. Do we continue to allow them to molest one of our most prized senses in such a filthy fashion? Do we continue to stand idly by as they ruin one pay-per-view event after another?

  Personally, I feel that those of us who have been blessed with a fine musical palette should help those who were clearly not. Whether it is seen by them as scolding for doing mankind a horrible injustice or as charity, this motley crew of offenders needs to be schooled in music much like a Brazilian plucked from the primitive streets of São Paulo needs to be taught how to use modern kitchen appliances like silverware. I’ve had it with the colossally unimaginative, puerile, sonic garbage that most fighters walk out to, and therefore the following is addressed as much to my fellow combatants as it is to you, my dear readers. I’m going to make some stylistic suggestions vis-à-vis walkout music in the hope of improving the quality of events and thus all of our lives.

  Let me start by making an official Chael P. Sonnen Rule. If you are a fighter, and so unoriginal and clueless that you come out with “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns n’ Roses, everyone in the audience is thereby allowed to throw one shoe in your general direction as that overrated, hackneyed, played-out trash-heap of a song heralds your schlepping decent toward the cage. If you clomp out to “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” by Drowning Pool, everyone present is thereby allowed to throw both shoes at you. And if the ensuing deluge of hideous, overpriced, slave-labor-produced footwear does not pummel you to death or send you running back to your dressing room in fear of your miserable life, and you actually make it to the cage, you must wear a dunce cap while you take your beating. Harsh? I don’t think so. How many times have you been subjected to those two crummy songs at fights? Seriously guys, this is all you could come up with? Really? Both of those songs were bad enough the first time someone walked out to them, and it’s not like they’re getting better with repeated playing. If they sucked then and they suck now, it’s safe to assume that they will suck forever. Forget that those songs ever existed.

  Next, no death metal with Cookie Monster vocals. You know exactly what I am talking about. No one wants to hear a lead singer trying to mimic Lucifer in the pits of hell. (And by the way, why do we all assume the devil talks like that? How does he get anything done down there if no one can understand a word he says? Has anyone on earth actually heard him speak? For all we know, the devil sounds like Truman Capote.) If the embarrassing Cookie Monster vocals weren’t bad enough, they are always backed up by dreadful, hyperspeed “music.” So stop. Even if that’s the garbage you waste your time listening to in the privacy of your own head, don’t torture the fans with it. You have a job to do, and yes, a part of that job is to perform in the cage. But another part is to find music that tells a story. If that is too complicated for you, then let me present a more simplistic directive: Choose a walkout song that isn’t sonically assaultive, incomprehensible, and annoying. In case that went over your thoroughly concussed head, let me spell it out in a way that could be understood even by those riding on the short bus: Death metal is out.

  I also don’t want to hear any country-bumpkin music. The arena you’re fighting in isn’t a honky-tonk, and you aren’t in Tayxus. You fighters are all too young to have ever been in an actual honky-tonk, anyway. So enough with the awful country music. There’s too much twangin’. There’s too much steel-guitar playin’. And there are too many country hunks pourin’ out their precious little hearts about the girl they lost or their home in the woods or the deer they shot or the job at the plant they lost … or some other stupid, contrived story about living life up in “dem der hills.”

  Just so you know, every time you walk out to a bad country song you are conjuring a single image in the minds of all those in the audience. That image is of a seventies country-music queen with a shellacked mega-pompadour who is wearing a far-too-tight floral-patterned polyester pantsuit garishly decorated with rhinestones. And when those in attendance plug their ears in an attempt to block out your assault, they hear that country-music queen in the back of their heads, wailing and whimpering about how her mayun got released from the local pokey and done run off with some other country strumpet who had more teeth or higher hair. They know her song well because that’s what Uncle Hermes—the uncle who liked to give lots of uh oh-feeling hugs—played when he’d take them up to the cabin for long weekends. So while trying to block out your insipid choice of a walkout song, they have to relive painful childhood memories.

  Are you proud of this? It’s not like you’re keeping it real. Most of these country songs are written and performed by people who no longer live in the country, if they ever did (unless you consider Beverly Hills or a penthouse apartment in New York the “country”). With that said, I have to confess that I actually like country music, but I have no illusions about it or its place in the sport—that place being nowhere. If at this very moment you are thinking to yourself, “But Chael, you come out to a country song,” I want to inform you that I am simultaneously thinking, “That’s none of your damn business.”

  With country music out of the way, I want to address the whole Mexican thing. OK, you’re Mexican. God bless ya. I’m all for your sense of cultural pride, but when some guy walks out to mariachi music, I feel like I’m having dinner in a bad Mexican restaurant. As you begin your walk toward the cage, I always squint to see if one of your cornermen is carrying a plate of sizzlin’ fajitas (plate’s hot, folks). What makes it worse is that you don’t actually listen to that music. Your iPod is full of the same gangsta rap and up-tempo, modern music as every other fighter’s. You play mariachi music in your leisure time and while training as often as you wear a sombrero to the airport. And why don’t you wear a sombrero to the airport? Well, because it would look … stupid. All I ask is that you take that same rational mentality and cross-reference it with an image of yourself walking out to music that sounds like the “Casa Bonita” episode of South Park. I want you to really see and hear yourself, just as we hear and see you. If you do this exercise as I have instructed, a light bulb will most certainly flicker to life in your head and you’ll stop with the mariachi music. I know this will leave you with nothing, but I’ve got some suggestions. If you want a song that speaks to your cultural pride as a Mexican, can be considered good music, and won’t make the crowd smirk and giggle at your lackluster attempt to hammer home your inappropriate commentary on your cultural identity, try “Saint Behind the Glass” or “Will the Wolf Survive” by Los Lobos. Give those a listen. You’re welcome.

  The same goes for the whole Irish thing. You know what I’m talking about—the bad tin whistles; the screeching, bleating bagpipes; the self-conscious, single-minded lyrics and pathetic singing. Enough already. You’re Irish. We get that the English raped your grandfather’s sweet, sweet pride and that potato famine sucks. Can you play something as you make your appearance that isn’t repulsive or make us uncomfortable with the self-dramatizing, self-pitying tone intended to remind everyone that the British heisted a third of your country? (I’m not taking sides on that one—at least not yet, not in this chapter.) Every culture has its gripes, and bad music that illuminates those gripes, but we’re at a fight that we paid money to see. It’s your job to get us hyped for the fight, not make us feel pity or guilt or indignation because your dear departed great-great-grandmama lost her “four green fields” to the Redcoats a hundred years ago, or however long ago
that was. Most of you fighters boasting about your Irish heritage have never even been to Ireland, much less lived there. Under such circumstances, using the whole Irish Pride thing seems a trifle* silly, and more than a little lame and disingenuous.

  Let me share a little secret with you: On fight night, as you walk to the cage, at that moment, we don’t care about your self-appointed Gaelic-ness. Maybe tomorrow; maybe the next day; maybe never. That’s our choice. So stop. If you absolutely cannot resist the temptation to try stealing a little of the romanticism of the “old country,” at least make it upbeat and listenable. Deal? Again, I am not going to leave you high and dry, my dear sons of the old with sod between your ears. Try something from The Snake album by Shane MacGowan and the Popes. I will even tolerate “Going Back to Boston” by the Drop Kick Murphys. Forrest comes out to that; didn’t help much when I beat him via triangle choke*

  Moving on to gangsta rap. Again, I am going to share a truth known by apparently everyone but you. You are not a gangsta. Neither is the guy who made the music you are walking out to. He either owns a mansion somewhere in the hills or a triplex in a doorman building. Truthfully, he probably owns both. He also has an army of servants, which includes at least one personal manicurist. It has been well over a decade since there has been any interest in, or cultural cachet attached to, gangsta rap. You missed the boat, stupid. Remove all that crap from your iPad and stop living in a fantasy world. You aren’t fooling anyone. We know you are not hopping in your “six-fo’” and doing drive-bys postfight. It’s ludicrous. Enough.