Month: April 2015

This is the more coherent version of yesterday’s sleep-addled post. Seriously, I fell asleep writing the post. I was still typing at the time, so remember very little of what I wrote. I do remember what I did not write, which is a comprehensive draft board that identifies team needs and possible scenarios. Here is the philosophy: I think a QB goes first. Naturally, the biggest and most pro ready QB is Winston, so he goes to the Bucs. He is a BUST. Sure, he has a great arm and solid pocket presence, but the kid has entitlement issues that may pervade the locker room. Any able-minded individual reading this might wonder how I know this, especially given the fact that the Bucs have spent hours with and researching the kid and I’ve just watched his TV stuff. So, how do I know? Technically, I don’t. Still, I have a feeling for this sort of thing that comes from watching how these dudes interact and factoring that in with their backgrounds and past history of other players and playing styles given the offense and coaching situation they are walking into. That being said, Winston + Lovie  = Hot mess. The media pressure and lack of a significant winning culture and positive player role models (especially with him still in that Florida land) will end badly. However, it will start tonight. Here’s some other things going down (if only in my mind)

 

 

1. Bucs — Jameis Winston
2. Titans — Leonard Williams
3. Hawks (Trade from Jags) — Dante Fowler
4. Raiders –Amari Cooper
5.  Redskins — T
6. Jets — Marcus Mariota
7. Bears — Vic Beasley
8. Jags (From Hawks) — Shane Ray
9. Giants — Brandon Scherff
10. Rams — Todd Gurley
11. Vikings —  Melvin Gordon (and trade away Peterson)
12. Browns — Kevin White
13. Saints — Devante Parker

After this it gets really speculative because there are multiple trades in the works and people are moving around to fill needs in the wake of the Peterson trade…

Some Thoughts:

1. In addition about being a post about the draft, a modernized version of the slave auction (if only in terms of an individuals right to decide who to work for and how much they get to receive in terms of compensation), 1820 happens to be the year that 86 African Americans founded what would later come to be known as Liberia.

Tomorrow is the NFL draft, ending this tremendous and painful hiatus from professional football. It isn’t that they guys aren’t playing, its that the NFL network and its simulacra ran out of things to talk about a very long time ago, which made the network feel really empty and foolish to watch. Now things are back on track and we don’t have to hear poorly fabricated stories designed to keep us hooked. Well, I’m still hooked to the point where I feel the need to release my own mock draft. (Look out, Mayock!) on the other hand, I’ve avoided things so much that the below is the best I could do accurately.

1. Bucs — Jameis Winston
2. Titans —
3. Jags
4. Raiders — Leonard Williams
5.  Redskins
6. Jets
7. Bears
8. Hawks
9. Giants — Brandon Scherff
10. Rams
11. Vikings
12. Browns
13. Saints
14. Dolphins
15. 49r’s
16. Texans
17. Chargers
18. Chiefs
19. Browns
20. Eagles
21. Bengals
22. Steelers
23. Lions
24. Cardinals
25. Panthers
26. Ravens
27. Cowboys
28. Broncos
29. Colts
30. Packers
31. Saints
32. Patriots

More on this tomorrow as I fully tune in and start to sink into the draft..

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Unnaturally tired tonight. Not a fan of that feeling. I am a fan of 1819 though. Specifically,  Savannah, the steamboat, which got to cross the great ocean for the first time.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Myrlin Hepworth again–specifically his argument that all actions are about giving or receiving/hoping to receive love. It triggered a connection to the words of buddha who wrote, “In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” I often wonder if I am abiding by those questions. I’ve become fearful of such things as loving and letting go. One oft leads to trusting (which can lead to hurting myself or them) while the other invites the unknown. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is on the other hand a difficult thing. I sometimes wish that I could have my own Buddha moment and, in a fit of meditation, realize the answer to all that is bouncing around in my head. Only, that isn’t how life works.

I’m coming around to recognizing that life works on the fulcrum of chance and individual effort. Fear is the barrier to effort. Trying–in anything–leaves you vulnerable and exposed. This is a truth I see played out in writing students each day. Few wish to try because none are willing to fail or moreover be embarrassed or noticed for that failure. It is easier then to not try, to take the path of least resistance, which is no path at all.

Somewhere between my heart and belly is this force of nature that wishes to give and receive love everyday, and to be exposed and to try and to take risks–not just the smart ones, but the real ones. Layers of fat and doubt have grown over that force, locking it away. Each day it cries to get out and I think to myself, what will it take for this thing to get out.

I suppose all it takes is to say, and to believe, and to get behind the idea of “now.”

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Best Agents of Shield episode in a while. Vintage Coulson. Vintage.
2. Started at the gym again along with modifying my diet quite suddenly. The result is upset stomach, ridiculous soreness, and vomiting. Not a good look, old man.
3. Castle is one of the shows that gives providence to black women without being about black people. Way to go, Castle.
4. 1818 was the year Keats wrote his sonnet ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’ the poem is its own reason for an appearance in this slot. I’ve always been fond of it, if only for the relationship I have with that same thought process. An older student and I spoke about death today. We talked about the afterlife and our beliefs and what it looks like for each of us. For her it was a singular moment of joy. For me it is a new start–a transformation into something else as the wheel of reincarnation and karma spins on. That is the most frightening.

I must confess to being at a loss for words this evening; snapped up in the vortex of basketball, grading, kids sports practice, kitty litter and fatigue. I find myself writing the same sentence over and over again like a wail for help or at least sleep–some temporary reprieve from what has come to be a semesterly period of raw de-energization more commonly referred to as the last few weeks of school. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the end and summer brings the sun. Arise fair sun and kill the desperate gradeless who are already sick and pale with grief…

Alright thats enough of that. How about..

Some Thoughts:

1. At Sam’s Club you wave your membership card in front of an automated kiosk and they give you free samples of drugs.
2. Two games left in the football season and I’m really starting to recognize what a stand up dude my son’s coach is. He’s good and I can see, as a father, why he relies on his son. Still, he wants each kid to have the best possible experience. He wants to win but he wants to have fun doing it. Too bad he’s done after this. The High School team demands too much attention. Does that mean I’m up?
3. 1817 marked the start of the firs Seminole war, which actually began because the tribe was harboring runaway slaves. It reminds me of how not terribly long ago people who look like me were merely seen as the property of people who don’t look like me. Yet today I can publish a daily blog, and write stories in books that feature best selling authors, and perhaps most surprisingly, stand in front of a classroom of mixed faces and races and teach them without fear of being whipped or even sold. Yeah, racial tensions are still here, but we’ve come a long way, baby.

Watching Outside the Lines this morning got me thinking about the fight this weekend in ways not at all pertaining to fighting itself. Next week Floyd Mayweather is going to battle with Manny Pacquiao. As Manny said in his famous commercial, ‘He’s going to fight me?!‘  The show, coupled with this excellent article about the lionization of Mayweather speaks to the fact that we back boxers based on who they are as individuals often as much as who they are in the ring.

People hate Mayweather. In truth, they often love to hate him because he embodies all of the principles seen as fundamentally wrong. Mayweather has been convicted of domestic assault five times. He spends money like it doesn’t matter at all. He is brash and arrogant and surrounds himself with an entourage that includes 50 Cent, Triple H, and Justin Bieber. First off, anyone who gives Bieber street creed isn’t great. However, the big black mark is his assaults on women.

Lets consider Mayweather for a moment: This is a violent man. He is a boxer. He is someone who we pay extraordinary amounts of money to see him hit people. There is a mentality attached to that which lends itself to violence outside of the ring. Mayweather has served time in jail for domestic violence. He has done the time for the crime. Now what many wish to see is Mayweather’s livelihood stripped from him for the crime he committed. I think this goes too far and misses what people really want from him. See, Floyd Mayweather has not apologized for his reprehensible actions against women, often falling back to the adage ‘Only God can judge me’. Well the people feel as if they are representative of that invisible force and have judged and found him guilty, basically as a human.

In the end, this fight is going to exist on multiple levels. There is no question about Pacquiaio’s status as a national hero and no question about Mayweather’s role as a villain. On that level we know who the public likely wants to win. On the pure boxing level, the outcome is still in question.

Some Thoughts:

1. 1816 brought us Charlotte Bronte. Say what you will about Jane Eyre, it has stood the test of time.

 

I am so profoundly sick and tired of hearing people ‘remind’ me that Obama was only elected based on the color of his skin. To recognize how profoundly arrogant and dismissive that claim is, consider that the majority of voters across the planet vote along party lines. Yet, how often do you hear people say, ‘oh he only won because he’s a Republican’? You aren’t likely to see that comparison made, because as the Pew Research center put it, ‘Most fundamentally, it is an attitude, not a demographic.’ We are far more willing to challenge a demographic than we are to question our own attitudes. This begins to explain how quickly we are willing to dismiss voting along party lines as something that ought to be looked at and questioned.

This doesn’t stop at race. Google the term female president and there is a long debate between writers of the top American newspapers about wether or not it is a good idea. Yet, do we question if we should have an affluent white male president? Google that and no such debate will come up.

I say all this to think about the way I think and the way we think collectively as a nation. We are a nation of comfort and rarely are we quick to accept change–even when that change is obvious and relevant. We are a nation that fought against the cellphone, against wireless internet, and even challenged milk. We question everything new but hardly anything that has a longstanding history with us.

That is simply the American Way.

Some Thoughts:

1. 1815 was the year dental floss was invented… And the year the cavity creeps began to hide in caves like afghani militants…

Football coaches—coaches in general—rarely get the credit they deserve for the complex work they do. Now I’m not conflating this work with what Neil Degrasse Tyson and his ilk do, but all too often the thinking man’s side of athletics is overlooked. Consider this: as a football coach you have to be a strategist, a poker player, a master motivator, and leader, and what can be best described as a ‘personality wrangler’. This multitude of roles must be achieved expertly and simultaneously in order to be a success. I’m learning this as a coach and as a researcher/observer of coaches. I’ve been studying the good ones from pee wee all the way up through the pros, watching game film and even attending games to gain a clearer understanding of what I want to put into coaching and what I want out of it as a result. Through my research I learned that I do want to coach more, not just for the excitement and gratification, but because it is going to make me better at everything else.

I don’t multitask terribly well. It is a flaw that I have tried to address through research, but research only taught me that you cannot research about multitasking without discovering the futility of the act and pressuring evidence of the inability to truly do so. I disagree with the experts. I know this because I do coach. I carry these multiple roles and tasks forward in the coaching role and do so through compartmentalization and planning. I especially do so through seeking the help of those around me. Every coach has coordinators and assistants handy to take a lead role in aspects of the work. In my personal life I try to do all of that on my own and fall flat. So, delegation is the key there—do as much as I can reasonably and effectively handle and delegate the rest—leaving room to manage that delegation.

 

Easier said than done, of course.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I might be done with the skater look on guys and gals alike. The problem is the ubiquity of it all, at least here in the flaming AZ valley where girls rock jet black booty shorts, vans, and a concert tee as a kind of ‘cool’ shorthand. This came to a head over the course of a week when I saw no less than six girls from behind and thought, quite reasonably, that they were the same person. This was not all at once, mind you. This was not the sometimes cute, sometimes stupid tendency to wear matching outfits as a symbol of teen unity. These were individuals in locations throughout the city that looked exactly the same. The guys are worse. If I see one more dude in black shoes, black socks, and a purple flat brimmed ball cap I am going to snap. Of course, I say this as a black man who is exceptionally fond of gym shorts and athletic sandals with socks, so there’s that.
2. It is raining.
3. Sitting here at McDonalds watching an old man and his son or grandson interact. It makes me look forward to being a grandpa and having those moments when my grandkids are old enough to understand the world and still want to talk with me about that world.
4. 1814 marked the birth of Samuel Colt and the first public steam locomotive rail line. You don’t get more wild west than that.

Watching the Marvel cinematic universe expand is like watching history repeat itself. There was a time when Bionic men, Incredible Hulks, talking cars, and other super-powered beings were television staples. In their wake came a deluge of medical and police procedural dramas. The psycho-social impact of the shift  requires much more in-depth explanation than a 10 minute blog post. Notably, however, recent dramas have been trending towards the military intelligence (likely as a reflection of combat actions and a population more interested in glamorizing the secret services) side of the fiction pool.

Cloak and Dagger is the new med drama and at times these constructs lend themselves quite well to the realms of the super-powered. Agents of Shield is one example of this working out fairly well. Blacklist is an example of one that draws upon real world-styled intrigue to keep the reader hooked without all the cgi and drama of super-powered people.

Nothing profound to announce about this development–not yet. I’m watching the shift and starting to form thoughts and opinions. I’ll write more as I theorize more.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1813 marked the birth of the Philomathean Society, the oldest U.S. literary society. This is of particular import to me as a writer, though I cannot claim to write literature of the small market publishable variety. I cannot in truth even claim to write literature. I write stuff like this. And I love doing it.
2. My son’s cat keeps dragging insects into the house to play with them. She has a hankering for roaches and spiders, neither of which I want her to drag anywhere.

I’ve managed to get into more political conversations about President Reagan with 18 year olds than anyone ever should. Thanks, Fox News. The latest was even more interesting as the student went on to extoll the virtues and foreign policy acumen of Reagan with the fervor of a cabinet member. I asked, ‘Were you even alive then?’ The answer is, of course, no. Which begs the question: Who taught you this nonsense? My initial thought was to say, No, the best American President ever was James Polk, to which the expected response would be, ‘who?’ Who indeed. The fact is, there is a sustained media campaign to make Reagan into the greatest American president and by that make the republicans into the greatest American party. It is working…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. 1812… Well, there was that war. There’s that. In truth though the war of 1812 spanned a bit longer, with conflicts cropping up as early as 1810 directly leading to the war declared in 1812. Britain was interested in kicking a l’il American arse much sooner, but Napoleon was tying up their attention. By the time war was declared they were able to do so on their own terms.
2. I’m not a fan of Sports Agents. They seem rather predatory in nature–a hanger on who is either a fast talker, legal wiz, connected, or any combination of factors. These guys take a percentage of a player’s salary in return for making sure the player gets what is deserved. In modern society is the agent even necessary though? Can’t a player save themselves 10% by being the arbiter of their own deal? I get the value of a middle man in terms of insular relationships and, well, history. I don’t know that we need these folks in all circumstances. Sometimes, like in the case of Adrian Peterson, the agent is just another problem.

 

I got thoughts. Nothing but thoughts. Here are…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Dear News Media, The Reds manager rant is not a story. Seriously. Calm the f**k down. He has good reason to be mad. I’d love to see a sportswriter try to reveal the Bengals playbook and player tendencies to a waiting audience and try to defend that… through the newly broken teeth he gets from his editor and fan base. I say he because women are clearly smarter sports writers than to do this crap.
2. There is no way I would ever let a car insurance company put a digital monitoring device in my car. That’s asking for all sorts of trouble.
3. Turns out the unarmed suspect killed by the 73 yr old reserve deputy was black. It didn’t seem to pertain to the case but one of the news stations felt the need to point it out. I feel the need to point out that anyone who doesn’t realize the difference between his firearm and his taser likely does not qualify for active duty–regardless of the color of the man he winds up shooting. Mr. Bates, you are benched… forever. Or not. This is Oklahoma. You might get to stay on. You won’t go to jail, that’s for sure. Wild West, yo. Mistakes happen and can be forgiven in the Wild West.
4. Unto 1811 where a fledgling Missouri was (literally) rocked by a trio of 7.5+ richter earthquakes only a few weeks apart. The mainland hasn’t been hit like that again since 1857… Now this is also the year we started allowing women’s golf tournaments–an oft overlooked step in the women’s rights movement. This was less tremulous than, well, a trio of earthquakes, but deeply important nonetheless.
5. Yes, I often r e a c h with this history stuff, but I like it.
6. Football anchors have absolutely nothing to say right now. A full day’s coverage of the 2015 schedule? That’s really sad. Still, Jets v. Giants? Whaaaaaat?