Snake America Fifty Four
Snake is a bi-weekly electric trade magazine covering salable goods. This week? A Lonnie Smith Desert Storm corner jacket, and a hearing test booth. Online reading? Please subscribe.
eBay: Lonnie Smith corner jacket, Desert Storm, $395 BIN, with offers: Not enough people wear corner gear. It might be miseducation. What does a cornerman wear? A tracksuit, or maybe something like this in the summer. It's an open answer. TitleBoxing.com's webstore, an admittedly biased source of information, sells the following products as things available and necessary to a cornerman:
TITLE Boxing Coach & Trainer's Equipment Bag, Boxing Gauze & Tape, Blood Stop Hemostat Gauze (Single Packet) (on sale), QR Wound Seal, Quick Seal Nosebleed Kit, Trainer's Cut & Blood Coagulator Astringent, Petroleum Jelly (TITLE-branded), TITLE Premium Corner Towel (priced at $4.99), Corner Towel ($2.99), Leone Italian Terry Towel, Water Bottles, 9" Ice Bag (traditional, Three Stooges (USA 1941) shape) ($9.99), Fighting Sports Ice Bag ($12.99), Super Cotton Boxing Swabs, Instant Cold Pack, Corner Sponge (!), Latex Gloves, No Swells, Corner Bucket, TITLE Boxing Corner Sanitation Buckets, Fighting Sports Corner Bucket, TITLE Corner Caddy, Pro Style Corner Tote, Fighting Sports Corner Tote, Deluxe Trainer's Scissors ($8.99), TITLE Trainer Scissors ($7.99), Fighting Sports Trainer's Scissors ($9.99), Sweat Enhancers, Pre-Wrap ($1.49), Fighting Sports Pre Wrap ($1.99), Namman Muay - Muscle Liniment, Cleaning & Sanitizing Products.
But no trace of pants, shorts, shirt or a jacket, leaving the reader or consumer to rightly assume that anything goes for the sartorial decisions of cornermen both on high and just starting out. It just depends on the fighter. Who is Lonnie Smith? Per the auction seller, "Lonnie Smith was an important welterweight fighter in the 1980's and 90's." His page on BoxRec.com lists a record of mostly wins and some losses. He is classified as a super lightweight and of orthodox stance, which means he's right-handed. It doesn't say who his cornerman is. His son, also named Lonnie Smith, also boxes. I clicked on that Smith's suspensions report on his BoxRec page and was prompted to enter my email--"This data is for testing purposes only !" it said, and I have yet to receive the report. The elder Smith was named (The) Ring Magazine's Progress of the Year for 1985, in recognition of having made the most amount of progress of presumably any working boxer in the preceding 12 months. So the seller was wrong, since Smith was only important for the second half of that decade. Smith didn't lose in both 1984 and 1985, and so I'm not sure to which 12 months the magazine is referring. Francisco Quiroz, who won the same award in 1984, did not pick up a win in 11 straight bouts between 1980 and 1982, and won his three fights in 1983. In 1984 he won and then defended the WBA World light flyweight title. I guess the 1984 award was for 1983, since there was no progress in 1984. Ring also recognized the Prospect of the Year from 1983 until 2011, with no award between 1989 and 2010, and manager of the year, but only in 1983. Freddie Roach is the best-known cornerman working now--he was mentioned in a Talk of the Town last fall--with Bundini Brown and Angelo Dundee tied for all-time. Brown put a lot of ideas in Ali's head, but Desert Storm II was Smith's design. A Sept. 19, 1991 article in the Henderson (Nev.) Home News describes the press conference leading up to his Sept. 14 fight (for the WBC junior-welterweight title) with Julio Caesar Chavez, then the title-holder and 75-0 (62 KO), and the fight:
Smith shouted Saturday night would be "Desert Storm II" for himself just like the troops who ran away. Smith kept running away from Chavez for 12 rounds.
I have to assume the slogan on the cornermens' cabana suits was sewn on in the days after the press conference, though it might have been something Smith was saying to himself in the months training up to the fight. The reporter describes the main event:
The crowd at the Mirage was like the crowd after the Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Roberto Duran fight. That fight was also a big disappointment but the crowd had fun brushing elbows with celebrities after the fight. There was more action at the Mirage gaming tables than at the ring. And, my friends, that's the main reason for staging events at any hotel—the final draw at the casino. Getting back to the fight: Smith showed his true colors when he showed a lack of class with his disrespect for the Mexican National Anthem after our National Anthem prior to the fight. Even Smith's manager, Sterling McPherson, said "I'm very ashamed of what took place out there."
The reporter doesn't get into the nature of the disrespect. It may have been the shorts the cornermen wore--US flag. I bet it was something else. The loss was the biggest fight of Smith's career. I didn't see the disrespect in the YouTube video of the fight. His shorts were white. Mike Tyson was color commentator for this fight. He had been arrested for rape the previous July. Recommended.
CraigsList: Hearing test booth, $1,000, Flatbush & Ave. U: I am not sure a room like is necessary for a hearing test. I asked my friend Sam for his thoughts on hearing test booths, and he said he's seen them in ASMR trigger videos, but never in person. There are at least eight mobile phone apps to self-administer hearing tests, for iOS and Android, and none of the handful of hearing tests listed by on WebMD involve or require a room. The WebMD tests include whispered speech, tuning fork and pure tone tests, speech reception and word recognition tests, otoacoustic emissions testing, which is for babies, and auditory brain stem response testing, which is done with electrodes. Many non-well-child-visit hearing tests for kids are done in schools--and the baby hearing tests are done at hospitals, which can get noisy. I took mine in the library when I was a kid, which wasn't very loud.
The Hearing Check app, from Action on Hearing Loss, England's official hearing foundation, doesn't require a hearing test booth. The first review for the app on the iTunes page says it's "an excellent app. I took the test and it said I had some hearing loss. Got checked out and found that both ears were totally blocked with impacted wax. Following treatment I took the test again and got the all clear." How could anyone need anything else? This app is doing for the hearing test booth what ticket websites have done for the travel agent. I bet people and companies who own or invested in hearing test booths are trying to get rid of them as fast as they can. Does anyone have more than one booth? WebMD says these tests can be performed in audiometry laboratories. Per Google, there aren't any in New York City. I'm not sure what an audiometrry lab is. A booth such as this can also function, with slight modifications, as a soundproof recording studio. I feel like Rick Rubin had one in his basement in the Jay-Z movie (USA, 2004). Jay-Z rapped in it without using a lyric sheet. It can't be that hard. Soundproof is soundproof.
Thanks for reading, and for bearing with me during Spring Break. Tell your friends to subscribe. Thank you to my friend Matt Bellosi for designing and printing business cards, which, if you see me around, ask for one, and I'll give you a couple, since I'm carrying them around now. I also have handbills with that logo on one side, and Nuclear War Now's latest album on the other. Thank you to my friend Andrew for the help with that.
Snake
Last Snake: Wool swim trunks; Italian clock radio (unsold and re-listed; for sale)
Snake Before That: English Soccer Team soccer ball; US Track singlet (for sale; sold)