Is there a difference between a contest and a game? With the money involved, are people "playing?" Games corrupt into contests. Pete Rose is certifiably corrupt, from the aesthetic point of view of baseball. It's not about gambling being a bad thing, of itself. A game is make-believe.

   I don't tend to like "virtuoso" music that much--often seems to get too caught up in a fantasy of it's own importance.

Drugs? Pro football will fuck you up whether you do drugs or not, it's proven to be pretty unhealthy in and of itself. Why do they care about drugs then? Because it's about football, not about Everything. Because of the idea of an unfair advantage, not because of health concerns. The whole point of a game is to pretend that it matters in the least what you do with a ball, and to forget the rest of the world, for a while. My 3 cents. I like to play, but have never been able to "root."