Month: March 2014

Lets just get to it, shall we?

1. I’m not one of the 5% who made it through the first day of tourney games unscathed. My 14 out of 16 correct calls included every upset save for the maddening North Dakota State win. I went on a limb and put St. Joe’s over Conn. My bad. My Billion dollar bad. Now my wife has already scolded me for expecting to win, but it is my philosophy to expect the best possible outcome in anything I do. If you plan for success you are prepared for success. If you plan for failure then that is what you’ll get. Well, sometimes you can plan for success and still fail. Yep, that happened. Of course, the 100K is still on the table so long as I run the table with the next few days of picks.
2. I’m about a week out from the next round of coaching and I’m chomping at the bit at bit. Soccer is a different style of athleticism, one that lends itself to high energy practices that go smoother than those of football. I haven’t quite figured football out yet, but I still have time for that. Soccer is about dribbling, passing, running, shooting, and stopping the ball. I can handle that. I can handle it because the assistant coaches around me are amazing.
3. There should be more, but there aint.

Sorry, Mr. President, but you got it wrong this time.

Much is made over the president’s annual bracket for the NCAA Tourney. Part of me feels that this is a pseudo-racial demarcation of acceptable stereotyping. After all, the black guy who plays a lot of pick up basketball with top NBA guys (yeah, he has a court in the White House and a jump shot that Lebron James respects) has to know a lot about the brackets. Well, not this time. I’m in a competition with nearly everyone who watches college basketball. Warren Buffet put up a billion dollars to whoever calls a perfect bracket. My bracket says that Iowa State is going deep into the dance while President Obama’s does not. Only one of us can be right and I need the money way more than #44 does.

The NCAA Tournament is comprised of 68 teams battling in a single elimination format. They are divided into four regional tournaments that resolve into a Final Four that, this year, will be held in North Texas. My bracket is based on a familiarity with the Cyclones and the teams they faced–particularly Baylor U who I think will benefit from the momentum of the Big 12 tourney and a large dose of confidence.

Just as we read based on our understanding of the world around us, we pick under identical conditions. Here’s hoping my conditions lead me to a Billion dollars.

There is no question that the most prolific TV show format is the dramatic cop show. I’ve evolved my theory about this to reason that this is the result of human conditioning. In spite of all of the wonderful people in the world who yearn for peace, we are still a largely patriarchal realm and in that we are driven to the ideas of violence, justice, and sex. Cop shows provide all three in spades.

Look at these three things like a fix. Assume for a moment that people want to engage in violence. This is the fundamental assumption that Fight Club makes. In truth that assumption can be extended to include the thought that most people want to be in the presence of violence and are too afraid to commit it themselves. Those self same people likely want to commit ‘just’ violence. In other words, they want to whip up on the baddies and not just jack a grandma buying fiber at Target. This is proven by games like Grand Theft Auto which compel you to perpetrate acts of violence on, well, undesirables, indigents, criminals, and douche bags. That last one was my wheelhouse. I’d yank a fool out of a nice car and wait for him to take a swing. Then. It. Was. On.

Sex is a given and hardly worthy of conversation. If you aren’t having it, you probably want to know that other beautiful people are–at the very least so that you can imagine that you could have such a scenario unfold in your own life.

Justice is tied into the other two concepts. Requited love is an aspect of justice. We want to see the guy get the girl and vice versa. We also want to see the bad guy get what s/he deserves, which is the key component to a good cop drama. Once you add up all the rest of the goodies it is easy to see why these things proliferate on TV.

A single day makes you older, but the concept of rolling over a year, like 2013 becoming 2014, is a big deal. I’ve never given it much thought in regards to myself. My first real bday party was a surprise party my wife through a few years ago. Last year we had a 70’s party that was sort of a Bday party for me as well. These represent the sum of my nearly 4 decades of bday glee, so it is hard to relate to those who celebrate bdays on a yearly basis. I’ve given that privilege to my kids to the best of my ability, but kids are expensive entities that always want the absolutely most expensive experience imaginable.

What I’m saying is: Birthdays are an important cultural and personal touchstone that should be honored. I’m learning day by day to honor myself with the help of the people who surround me. I’m learning that the more we take care of ourselves, the better we are to the world around us.

Some Thoughts:

1. The problem with any institution–be it government, education, corporation, family, etc.–is the egos of the individuals involved. People want what they want and often believe they know more than they actually do. This creates a difficult situation when new ideas emerge. New ideas are threats when they don’t come from you. They are worse than threats when they could be perceived as weakening your position.
2. I used to think that everyone had the best interests of their constituents at heart. I know better now. Some people are just hustlers with nice smiles and few discernible skills. Those are the people to be most afraid of.

Jordan on failure

I love being a coach–right up until the part where I have to give out the medals. Time and again I find myself handing out medals to everyone and thinking that it means nothing at all. I have a kid on the books on one of my teams that did nothing. He went to a few practices, maybe held a conversation or two with a teammate, but when I look at the stat sheet–nothing. The across the board zeros are indicative of his utter lack of effort over the course of the season. In truth, his effort deteriorated as the season dragged on. Yet, this kid is getting the same medal as everyone else on the team. His effort is being viewed as equal in the eyes of reward as those kids who left it all on the field every practice and every game. That is wrong. That is indicative of a culture plagued with an inability to accept failure. It is indicative of a broken culture too coddled and afraid of dealing with the ‘handlers’ of people who are absolute failures to allow them that opportunity to fail.

A few years back my fellow coaches and I started giving out MVP trophies. The idea behind it was straightforward: The current system did not allow us to praise a kid who worked hard and earned the right to be told s/he was a rockstar. The ‘everyone medals’ situation felt more like nobody medaled, and that kids like the one I mentioned above would feel like they didn’t have to exert any effort to be presumed to be successful. This is dangerous to the individual as well as to society as a whole. What happens to us when we never have the opportunity to recognize what it feels like to fail? What happens when suddenly those fail-sheltered kids are thrust into a situation where they do fail. Not only will they not understand what failure is, but they will be ill-equipped to recover from it.

The next Michael Jordan–in any endeavor–is going to be someone who screwed up enough to figure out how to do things the right way. The way we are going, the next Jordan has no chance of coming from the U.S.A. Failure is an opportunity to realize where you actually are in terms of skills and to realize how much work is needed to get to where you want to be. This is a universal concept. It applies to, and is perverted by our culture, all things that have the possibility of failure. I find it especially pervasive in the academic realm. It is extremely hard to fail a student in the k-12 system. So much paperwork and justification is involved in leaving a kid back a grade that it happens far less often than it needs to. Worse still is the way we treat failures. I’ve watched a student act like a complete screw up and work so little at learning that I thought, for a moment, he was trying to fail on purpose. What happened as a result? The kid was named student of the month.

I kid you not.

We are so afraid of letting people fail in life that we prop them up beyond the point of reason. This isn’t a political attack on systems like welfare because that is a separate situation. This is about the more prolific fear of failure that we have as a society. Jordan said failure is why he is successful. If we abandon the idea of being allowed to fail, we are abandoning the idea of success along with it.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Round 2 of the webpage rebuild. I’m trying to find something that fits me and is readable. I’m happier with this than the last one.

Lets get this out of the way first: I changed the layout of the page. I don’t know if I like it entirely. The change is primarily a response to a concern that that black on white lettering was tough on the eyes. The New York pictures are more a reflection of my longstanding homesickness.

If you like the new blog layout, hit the like button on facebook. If you don’t like it, leave a comment. See what I did there? It is harder and more time consuming to leave a comment than it is to jab the like button. I’m setting folks up to like the page or to dwell in their dislike silently. Gosh I feel like the government right now.

Change came to the page and change is coming to me with the opening of our local gym. I’m a guy who has spent very little time in gyms post-college, and now my body wants to let me know how bad that choice was. I’ll be talking about this more in a future blog–one where I start to tackle the idea of failure and how that is interpreted in modern (American) society. I’m not at that blog yet. I’m at the one where it is the saturday before I return to classes and I’m not entirely ready to return to classes.

Atop the list of tough things I have to do as a parent is withholding video games from my kids. I’m a gamer. I was born in the age of Atari. I swung through the Amazonian jungles with Pitfall Harry. I fought ghosts with the help of magical pellets. I saved the universe from the straight lined assault of pixelated aliens. When my parents tore me away from the console I moaned like it was a ghost limb. Now, despite saying like I’d never become my mother, I’m doing the same thing.

The 11 hour rule is something I instituted at the beginning of the break. The first day of break my kids stayed up all night playing Kindle games and then woke up ofter a few hours rest and played Xbox, etc the entire day. By the following night their eyes were bloodshot and they were grumpy and very unhealthy looking. I decided that from the moment games go off, the kids must wait 11 hrs to turn them back on again. If they go to bed at 7:39 PM they can start playing games at 6:39 AM the following morning. This has been an uncomfortable process to say the least. This morning my mid-kid switched the clock on his Kindle to convince me it was 8:25 when it was actually 7:25. After another 20 minutes of grumbling the trio decided upon lego play and actually had a good time of it.

Video games are wonderful. When my mom yanked the cord out I felt like she killed me a little. I’m certain the kids feel the same about my actions. I’m mature enough now to understand that she did it for a good reason. Kids need to know how to do more than mash buttons. They need to be able to find amusement in more than staring at screens–staring into other people’s imaginations–for their excitement. Part of that is on me as a parent to set the firm boundaries necessary to give space for creative play. Part of that is on them as children to take advantage of the opportunities the world affords.

When I was a kid I recognized that older people tended to worry about stuff. That worry manifested as attitude, anger, stress lines, heart attacks, binge drinking, and things the web is far too tame for me to recount here. New York is the capital of ‘work hard, play hard’ and likely birthed the phrase ‘burning the candle at both ends’. I decided back then that I would avoid a stress filled life and do as much as I could without overloading myself. This was a deeply naive notion. Now vacations are merely opportunities to catch up on the things that should’ve been done long ago and being off balance is merely a way of life.

This isn’t about being whelmed or overwhelmed. It is about the choices we make in life and how those choices affect us from day to day. Say for example you decide to coach a team. There are a lot of things that go into being a coach that extend far beyond handling players on the field and running practices. Each of those minute responsibilities are like tiny tick marks rubbing up against your conscience. Every morning I wake up and tell myself to make a list. Every day the list extends further and further.

We make up platitudes like, “the universe gives us as much as we can handle’ but I don’t find that to be accurate. The universe throws as much at us as it can manage. Whether or not we have the capacity to handle it is moot. I hope I can continue to handle what I do and survive what I don’t.

Fact: I don’t do sick well.

It is of course a fact of life that we’re going to get sick. Our body responds to changes in the environment and reacts the best it can to keep the bad stuff away. Occasionally the bad stuff has its way and knocks you on your bumm. Last night I raged a bit while writing around on the ground unable to get up and unable to force my kids to bed. I was angry at them for not deciding to listen and go to bed. I was more angry at myself for feeling like moving anywhere but that comfy spot on the rug. It wasn’t lazy. It was the sick having its way with me. Today I’m moving around slowly with a head dulled by fuzz, stuffed ears, and no energy.

The energy is about not eating and when I do eat not eating well. The problem is that I tend to drive myself into the ground and when I hit bottom I stop and wonder what happened. The New Yorker in me thinks, ‘Power through, young playa’ and the sensible me says, ‘take a break there’

Guess who wins?

Today is the official start of NFL free agency, where the hopes and dreams of fans are quickly ground into mulch at the realization that football is in fact a business. My favorite player, Darelle Revis was a victim of the business last year as he was shipped out to the Tampa Bay Bucs in a move that allowed the Jets to claim a great lineman and a terrible cornerback. Revis is on the block again as teams are realizing his hefty contract is far too large of a hit on the Salary Cap. Revis is set to head to his 3rd team in as many years, but it is not clear up to this point who that team will be. He won’t be alone. Cromartie, the Robin, of the Jets ‘once dynamic’ duo was also cut, signaling the end of the Jets once dominant secondary and, perhaps, the rise of the Browns. They have the old Jets ball coach and now they have their sights set on some dynamic defenders.

Some football problems can be addressed through the draft, while others require a veteran’s touch. My beloved Giants believe the Running Back situation needs a bit of both. They committed money to Rashad Jennings, a one year breakout back from the Raiders, and added some linemen to pave the way. In my humble opinion, this is a terrible move. Jennings was solid last year, but he isn’t an every down guy and isn’t the answer to the Giants empty backfield. Peyton Hillis isn’t the answer either, which is why I believe the G-men are looking to the draft for a long term solution.

Football is back into the swing of things. Why does it feel like it never ended?

Some Thoughts:

1. I wound up back in my home office today, attempting to use it as a place for writing and reflection. The reflection you can see here plain as day. It isn’t wholly about the space. It is about the distractions that come along with the space. I can say without a doubt that the room has improved, as I hoped it would, and it is nearly to the point where it doesn’t distract me. The people banging on the door are another matter entirely.
2. That being said, I am definitely at the point where I need to scale back and take a rest for a few months. No big stories–just books and books worth of ideas to be generated. It is time to restock the Idea Archive.