It's all on the line today

Dr. Spoonlove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Wooden Spoon

If Atlanta United loses today, they’ll “win” the Wooden Spoon, the trophy given to the last-place finisher in MLS each season. More accurately, the Anthony Precourt Memorial Wooden Spoon. It’s a real trophy given to the winning side’s supporters. It looks like this.

It’s some combination of objectively hilarious, surreal and a total bummer that this season in particular is ending like this. I remember back in January when me and Joe hustled over to Hartsfield-Jackson to wait around with 150 Atlanta United fans in the international terminal as Miguel Almirón returned to bring 2018 back to Atlanta. A new sporting director, a new head coach, an old DP, and a renewed sense of optimism were supposed to make this year special. Instead, we’ve got today.

I love bad movies. That’s in part because I’m a bad person and, well, I’m glad it didn’t happen to me. For so many to put so much time and effort and money into a group project and have it turn into The Room or Jupiter Ascending or Manos: The Hands Of Fate makes me laugh. Making a movie is a massive undertaking with multiple people working towards the common goal of creating something that will provide entertainment for people they’ve never met (and maybe make them a little money in the process). Many bad movies are purely focused on the cash, but the best have noble intentions. The joy in watching that particular kind of trainwreck is that they’re achieving their goal…just not in the way they intended.

My favorite bad movie is called “Stickfighter.” It’s a crime thriller about a martial arts champion/ex-DEA agent—“John Lambert”— who works to avenge the death of his partner. The star of the movie, naturally, wrote the movie too. It includes moments like Nameless Henchman #1 kicking off the climactic fight against Lambert with the line, “Let’s make the news,” a phrase I’ve worked into my day-to-day ever since and you should too. It also includes zero fights with sticks.

But those moments aren’t what make Stickfighter special to me. There are worse and better movies in both good and bad ways. But the first time I saw Stickfighter, I saw it in a small theater. There were maybe 30 folks there on a weekday night. One of them just so happened to be a surprise special guest. “John Lambert” showed up.

Not actually him, the actor/writer/martial artist who played him. I…I don’t want to type his real name, I think he has Google Alerts on. Anyway, John Lambert lived in Atlanta at the time, heard someone would be screening his movie 25 years after it first released and decided to swing by.

As startstruck as we were, the room felt awkward. No one knew how he would react to us reacting to John Lambert roundhouse kicking his way through Los Angeles’ most dangerous cartel. We laughed like hell anyway. The crowd ate it up.

After the movie ended, John Lambert stood in front of us to answer questions. When someone asked what it felt like to watch us watching his movie, he got emotional. He simply felt glad that whatever it was he made, made people come together.

No one intended for today to be the worst movie in MLS history. Most everyone involved with giving us the first-ever Spoon Off had the best intentions before they failed spectacularly. There’s no doubt that today is a monument to something less than mediocrity and that good intentions don’t excuse what a total disaster this has all been.

But this is also our last chance this year to be with each other as a community and feel whatever we want to feel about the 2025 season. Whether you want to be angry about it or laugh it or a mixture of both is up to you. It’s all valid. Regardless of what you choose, I’m immensely appreciative of the fact that we’ve gotten through another season with our listeners and readers and Discorders coming together to be a part of this, for better or worse or dear god how could it possibly be this bad.

I’m hopeful and confident that we’ll be able to rally around better days in the near future. That will undoubtedly be more fun. For now though, we’re stuck in this theater watching two John Lamberts go head-to-head, stickfighting for the lowest honor possible.

There will never be another game with these kinds of stakes in our lifetime. There’s never been a season worse than this and likely never will be again. We’ve got one more day to experience it all together before we have to wait a few months to do it again.

So, screw it, I guess. Let’s make the news.