In 1943, Abraham Maslow released his Hierarchy of Needs, a pyramid of etched social and psychological desires embedded into our consciousness from birth. At the top of the pyramid, morality, problem solving, spontaneity. In the midsection, sexual intimacy, family, friendship. At the bottom, in red ink, sex, sleep, breathing, excretion.

In 2002, ESPN released its EOE doc entitled “The Life – Landon Donovan.” Were Maslow alive to see it, he’d have realized that for the first time in recorded human history, a profile of a single man has, at once, fulfilled every human need. If looped on a continuous stream, the endpoints of the universe would bend toward the continuum and touch, creating an endless stream of black holes filled with Romulans with closely cropped bleach-blonde hair and an infinite number of Pablo Mastroenis butchering The Beatles’ “Blackbird” on a pock-marked, out-of-tune Fender acoustic.