Month: December 2014

I imagine a life where the human race is unified and driven towards a singular purpose–be it exploration to the stars, defense from a common threat (again from the stars, or zombies, or disease, or maybe a super AI… I read and write a lot of scifi). Since we don’t have that world, I too fall deeply into my distractions from the fact that we don’t have that world. Presently I am distracted by football.

The most interesting and disappointing football situation of the season is the firing of Rex Ryan. This is a purely New York fan thing. Here’s what I didn’t like about Rex–he stuck with players even if they sucked. I kinda like that about him from a distant standpoint, but I recognize that it means guys like Geno Smith (terrible QB who will have an occasional gem of a game a la Rex Grossman) get to run their mouth and continue sinking franchises. I hope the Jets have a change of heart and bring the dude back. If not, let him go to ESPN where I can hear him talk football all week. Regardless, I will follow and like whatever team he coaches next. I’m willing to bet Revis Island goes with him.

Outside of Rex, I’m starting to get excited about the upcoming college football championships. I’m a long time Oregon fan and a more recent Florida State fan (I wanted to go to the U but they wanted no part of me once I got over it, I got over them… besides, FSU had Deion). To see them go head to head for a shot at Alabama (I give Ohio State no chance) will be a fun fun night. Nobody gives FSU a chance, forgetting the fact that they are not only the only undefeated team in the tourney but are also the defending champions. It has been so long since FSU caught a whuppin that their defense dropped the word ‘lost’ out of the vocabulary. Now with Oregon it is a different set of challenges. The Seminoles are going to be playing their toughest game of the year on thursday, regardless of if they win or lose.

I woke up this morning thinking about all the good that comes out of having kids and living the life I do. Then I yelled at my kids once or twice for what amounted to, well, stuff kids do and are expected to do. It led me to recognize how differently I can perceive reality based on whether I’m deep in it or rising above it. My youngest reminds me constantly to rise above hate (of course, that’s the motto of his favorite wrestler, so there’s that) and I intend to. However, when I’m in the thick of dealing with the nutty personality of my kids (3 boys is a lot. A lot a lot), I can’t see the forest for the trees.

I think the key to recognizing how valuable and special life is has everything to do with taking a moment to reflect. It has been weeks since I did that in any substantial way, and as a result I spent a few weeks lamenting about how crappy my situations are and how much stuff there is to do. On the other hand, I could be dead, homeless, or just hanging in there. I could lack talent, or be frightfully ugly, or just be an asshole. There are some many terrible and negative paths that life flows towards and very few and narrow paths that flow towards goodness. I’ve been blessed to be on the path towards goodness and that’s why it is important to me to do something with the opportunities I have.

Heck, if I don’t, I don’t know what is going to become of my little ones. My kids watch me for ideas about what to do. I want them to see a man who is strong, proud, and above all else, driven.

In my past life I dealt with a lot of dead-enders–people who no longer believed they were capable of greatness, let alone getting out of bed. I hit that point in my life about two years ago and tried to recall all the things I’d learned from teaching them and interacting with them. I learned it was largely a matter of lifestyle choices. They made so many bad ones that they no longer understood how to make good ones. In some cases, they’d found shortcuts to pleasure or happiness and having found the easy way, no longer wanted to work for it. I’ve come back around to that way of thinking myself as of late. It was a tough thing to recognize that I don’t really want to put in the hours for the things I really want in life. It is tough to realize that I’ve been looking for shortcuts for a very long time. On the other hand, it is a good moment for me, because I can fall back on those teachings and learnings and recognize what it is going to take to be the best version of myself.

It is going to take a lifestyle change.

The first thing I do in the morning is make a big pot of coffee, load it up with creamer and power on Minecraft. I call it my creation ritual. There are a number of things wrong with this ritual that I can adjust to move closer to the life I’m destined to live. The first is to change the creamer. Coffee creamer limits (and even counteracts) the healthy effects of coffee. So, I’ve been researching alternatives. Coconut oil and vanilla extract are an option. Likewise, diving headlong into crafting is a fun start to the day, but why not modify the ritual by making a ‘to do’ list for the day before crafting, and then spend ten minutes exercising before crafting. Then the minecraft becomes a reward for positive behaviors and not just an expectation.

Little steps add up to a change of lifestyle. Nobody gets there overnight, but we are so used to seeing the finished product that we forget the work it took to get there. That’s why we love shortcuts. It’s like a good friend said (and i’m paraphrasing here), Nobody remembers the string in a pearl necklace.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I wish I was thoughtwired. I wish the words that entire my mind could be instantly stored in .doc format to be worked through later. If someone out there is into brain-sensing tech, please make a thought wire. The thing is, I lose so much really rich fiction and ideas just walking around in the world and thinking up stuff without access to something to write it down the way I thought it. I’m talking in terms of speed here. You can voice record on your phone, but that takes time to load up and is tough to do while driving. Sadly, I get a lot of good ideas while driving to and from work…

The cat came up with the title. Her paws clicked the keys as she strolled across my keyboard. Skitty’s been helping me through a relatively stressful holiday season. The kids are cooped up and bored, refusing to listen to a single request. I don’t entirely blame them–I was the same way as a kid. The break is supposed to be full of good cheer and fun and we’re not entirely in that place yet. We still have a week left to get it right.

Sometime at the end of that week is a slate of football games of real significance. The college football playoffs have arrived in the form of the Rose and Sugar bowls–a 4 team playoff designed to determine what two teams will battle for the national championship in the Cowboy’s AT&T Stadium.

This is a pretty paltry 10 minutes of thoughts and not my best foot forward. Rough week, as I said. I don’t have the words with me this evening…

I found a Jarvis app today that has a pretty nifty timer feature that I’m using right now to mete out 10 minutes. I found the app while trying to connect to the TMX app for the Marvel Experience. I didn’t find the TMX, but this is quite a consolation prize. In fact, the entire Marvel Experience had a bit of a consolation prize feel to it. Today we took the entire family to see Marvel’s newest 4D showcase. The traveling show parked itself in Scottsdale, Arizona near a collection of Cactus League ball fields. The scene started with $10 parking–a common figure in AZ event parlance. Once we hit the gate we hit our first of many snags.

The Marvel Experience is a multi-room digital playground based around an accessible storyline. The experience begins with a check in. You’re provided a shield wristband with a sensor in it and told to wait on line.  You stand in a queue until enough people who are checked in for the same time slot as you to arrive for them to play the first ‘movie’. That first clip introduces you to Spiderman and Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson edition). Fury says you are an agent in training and goes on to describe what that is going to be like. In the next room you get to watch agents in action flying around on the screens above your head. The main villain is introduced and you are introduced to your role in this story. After a moment, the doors to the main hall open and you and your entire batch of new recruits stream in. This is where the show proceeds to fall apart.

The problem is too many people and too few activities. The lines were nuts. There were 7 main ‘experiences’ that each involved some sort of video projection and some minor physical activity (climbing, aiming, etc). Almost everything was built around kinect sensors, which meant the motion response was good if a little slow on the uptake. The people running the stations were hit or miss. Some of the workers were fantastic and were really into the show. Others seemed overwhelmed and incapable of handling the crowds or stations. This was by far the weakest part of the event. Though it could have been great, the long lines meant you spent 30+ minutes waiting for the more popular events. If we had all day that would be fine, but after an extended amount of time (2 hrs?) your wristband buzzes and you’re politely asked to move on.

Moving on was the best decision we made. Though the rest of the experience goes quickly, the last three rooms are based entirely on the technology you see at Disney Studios. This is a fully immersive 3 and 4d experience that, though quick, was highly enjoyable for kids and grownups alike. If I had to rate the Marvel Experience on the last 3 rooms alone, I’d give it 4 stars. Given that the rating is collective of everything, 3 stars is the best I can offer.

 

Last night’s post was written under a coffee haze while taking a break from developing an elaborate clue hunt that, ostensibly, was created by Santa Claus. As I’m watching my boys excitedly tear through the house looking for these presents I can’t help but think about how much of a lie Christmas has become. We lie about Santa, we lie about the hunt, we added the elf on the shelf–another layer of lies. As I peel back another layer of my life and expose the rawness beneath I find that the lies never stop. We lie about being happy, being fulfilled. We lie in order to be strong and put up appearances for the family, for each other, for ourselves. Lie after lie after lie and never once do I call myself a liar. The truth is, I can tell any story, adapt to the situation in any way and it all becomes another costume that I wear, another layer that I put on to keep me from exposing myself to, well, myself and confronting the very real flaws and challenges I have as an individual. Lying and running. I used to think I was pretty damn good at one of those things, but as it turns out, my true strength is in the other.

 

Another year another xmas and good cheer to all

Like last year, I hope you’re all having a ball.

This poem is something I write to remind

Of the year I look forward to and

the year I leave behind

This xmas is special as my sweet boys age

On old traditions we may turn a page

I seek for them happiness and to feel loved

By mother, by father, by those lost up above.

 

Some Thoughts:

My Dentist suggested that Romo should win MVP now that the Cowboys are a lock to make the playoffs. Look, man, take your victory in a secured playoff spot. Let’s not get all crazy about stuff. I mean, it’s like Wesley Snipes says, “Some people are always trying to ice skate uphill.”

‘Girls rule, Boys drool’ is a long held tenet of the feminine mystique that I’ve often dispatched as mere bravado. As part of the ‘best version of myself’ movement I’m reexamining a lot of the things I’ve dismissed and some of the things I’ve held as absolute fact. This simple rhyme, once dismissed is something that popped up again for me recently as I’ve watched the behaviors of kids on my block over the last year. It can be said that girls do wield a great and terrible power. My boys have learned this lesson. Consider the example of my neighborhood. Here, I believe, Be Dragons… In the form of young girls.

It started with a birthday party. Perhaps we should even go a step backward to the curious case of the invites. We were working on a shoestring budget and with a hoard of friends that my eldest wished to invite, as well as the people we already know in our grown up lives and needed to invite, there was precious little room to accommodate the entire block. Choices had to be made. The wifey and I ran down the list of names and considered, Santa-like, which kids were naughty and nice. When it came time for final cuts, she and I both agreed to leave out one kid in particular. This boy came from a very difficult home and is the boy who you always see first thing in the morning sitting outside throwing rocks at garbage cans, because he has nothing better to do with his day. This boy who we shall call ‘Caden’ for the sake of identification purposes, wasn’t all bad. He is rough around the edges and desperately unloved. So, as a result, he gets into scuffles and struggles with people.

As a result, we didn’t invite him. That should’ve been the end of the story. Instead, my precocious and braggadocio five-year-old decided to go to the kid’s house, let him know a party was going down and that other block kids were invited when he most certainly was not. That is not, as I sometimes say, ‘a good look’. Dear ‘Caden’ didn’t retaliate in any way–yet. Instead he told his cousin (one of the 10+ people living in the house…), a pre-teen girl the boys had played with for months. She did the work for him. The cousin put the word out that the boys were persona non grata. Friendships started to dry up immediately. In fact, two kids invited to the party ‘forgot’ to come.

I suspected all this at first but learned over time that word had been sent that the boys didn’t like ‘Caden’ and as a result weren’t cool. These boys are quite cool (much to my surprise–I thought my kids were nerds like me), but on the block they were hardly the cool ones. This all came down to a single girl. She instantly hurt the standing of the boys and her power extends to this day. There are still kids who don’t play with my boys. Such is the power of Dragons…. or girls.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Down five pounds. I can do this weight loss thing once I start getting serious about working on myself a little each day.

I’m definitely going back to Iron Man.

Used to be a time where I chose my heroes based on the powers they had/were given. I was a Wolverine guy. He had his crazy cool healing ability and hardly aged. I was envious of course, being a guy who doesn’t want to die (like ever). After that guy came Batman, a character that needs no introduction. My Bat-phase was on and off for years, but it was never as deep seated as Marvel’s own Jeckyll and Hyde. I thought The Hulk was all there was in life, because he had this rage button that, when depressed, caused the world to blow up. Not surprisingly, I was that guy in my elementary years. Eventually I moved on to Spiderman. He was bit by a radioactive spider and, after experience jaded him, decided to use his mind and powers in the best possible fashion. I was even more stoked when he came out publicly as the man behind the webs (Civil War). It doesn’t take a psych degree to tease out that I’m into heroes that, in a sense, make their own fate from the skills they develop vs. being born or falling into (often quite literally) some sort of power.

That brings me back to Tony Stark. The Iron Man found his own way, though he inherited his empire. He built his first suit from scraps, under duress. In other words, he worked hungry and earned the right to be a hero because of what was ultimately at stake. I for one chose heroes that are a reflection of myself. I have always felt that somewhere inside of myself is the raw ability to be a very successful individual who makes a real difference in the world. I take from Stark the inspiration to draw upon what I have and what I know to do something great.

I was saddened by watching the Hobbit. It occurred to me late in the film that this is it. This is likely the last big screen fantasy epic I’ll see for some time. That is a real pity, because the genre has real legs. Consider the wild success of Game of Thrones. That success spurred other era pieces, such as Marco Polo. Swords and mystery are all the rage again. Still, is anyone willing to mark out a budget as large as what is generally attached to Peter Jackson movies?

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The new sci-fi show, Ascension tackles some pretty tough philosophical ideas–some of the same stuff dealt with in Hugh Howey’s Dust. This is another new show for me, but this one is kind of more about thinking about the ideas than following the show itself. In other words, its a positive add.