Month: June 2015

The package from Target arrived at my door on Thursday afternoon. A few days had already elapsed since the release of Batman: Arkham Knight and I was already afraid to scan the internet for fear of being lured into a freshly finished walkthrough. Instead a booted up the new PS4 and set off to become the night. In a matter of moments I knew that this game wasn’t going to be like Arkham City. This was going to be a beast of a different order.

I’m not much on spoilers, but I’ll say this: The story isn’t much on continuity. This Batman is a departure from the comic lore, as we saw in the previous incarnations. However, there are some inconsistencies here that rattled even my willing suspension of disbelief. Relationships are drawn in a way that is supposed to point back to the comic history and the books, but does so in a way that flips all of that on its head and recreates connections for us to build something new out of something old. All things considered, the new is slightly off putting. The same can be said for the characterizations thus far. The chip on Robin’s shoulder is starting to look like a medieval Pauldron and Nightwing has turned into a straight up Jackass. This isn’t to say I don’t like him or the game. I’m saying its different is all. Its like looking in a mirror and realizing the image across from you is wearing a different shirt.

The game can be frightening. There are moments when I said out loud: What the–! It sinks into your head and in the dark of the room you start to feel like you’re being transported to the bleak world of Gotham. Its definitely worth the visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I’ll settle for beating down baddies by the cab load in a fun and dynamic combat system that finally allows me to do tag team moves.

So, I got off on a bit of a rant yesterday about the staggering difficulty of coaching a handful of basketball teams through what is quickly devolving into a frustration-rich five-week season. I’m done with that rant. It distracted me from some of the real stuff happening in our country. Things like the confirmation of same-sex marriage as a right. Other stuff happened too. Donald Trump is officially in the race for president and the defacto Republican nomination leader, given the fact that Jeb Bush has not apparently declared his candidacy for reals.

While I like to think that my personal life and situation have some blog value I am aware that this other stuff is a much bigger deal. Here’s what I have to say about the Supreme Court ruling: Well done. I am a supporter of Gay rights, but that isn’t the reason I say well done. I say that because I am proud of the court for standing up for individual rights as opposed to enforcing discrimination. I get it: We are a Christian nation, separation of church and state aside. However, Christianity is open to interpretation and the basic tenet of that religion, IMHO, is love and not the letter of a text that has been retranslated and reimagined by a King who had his own agenda… I’m not trying to blaspheme here. I’m just trying to say that if God is love, lets let love fly.

As for Trump, he’s got his good points, but he’s also a dude that struggles to recognize that his words carry consequences. Just because he feels he can say something and has the backing of American firepower, doesn’t mean that another nation won’t feel the same way and won’t feel like they need to stand up for themselves. We have gone through a tough decade and a half of Anti-American sentiment across the globe. We need someone who wants to reverse that trend, not someone who may quite possibly make things worse in that regards…

Who am I voting for? I have no idea yet.

I’m only going to talk about youth basketball for a minute and then I’m going to get into some other stuff. Today all three of my boys played their games. The 6 yr old won his game but left feeling like life was basically about anger and spitting on things. The 8 and 10 yr olds lost and it was as much the fault of inconsistent refereeing as it was on bad coaching and kids just not fully being into the game.

I got a letter from one of my mom’s basically upset about the way the 6-7 yr old team was developing. A lot of focus was being placed on so-called star players and there was this rumor floating about that these stars had been playing together forever. I hate gossip. I hate it even more when it devolves into justification for why something you perceive to be happening is ‘happening’. Now the team in question does have an outstanding young player. I’d never met the kid before this year. He’s a superstar. One of the other so-called ‘Supers’ has been playing with my kid for a year or so, but with him size is his super power. That leads me to the allegation. No, I didn’t stack a six year old team. In fact we are young and inexperienced with a handful of players who know something about the game. Truth be told my kid, who was the star of the team last year, has been downright awful this season. That leads me to the truth behind the complaint. The mom in question admitted that her kid has always been the superstar of a bad team. He grew accustomed to being the go-to-guy and in this situation he’s JAK (Just Another Kid). It can be defeating for a kid to realize his stardom needs to be put in perspective. That’s what is up with her kid and mine.

In this game in particular my boy wound up guarding some aggressive kids who foul relentlessly. Not one for taking guff (the baby of the family must learn how to stand up for himself), he fought back and there were several scuffles throughout. That got him angry. Missing all of his shots pissed him right off. I cannot account for the bad shooting across the board on our team. We hit nearly everything in practice–even when being aggressively defended. Come game time the water spigot shuts off. Sahara Shots. Adobe brick homes laid at the feet of their opponents. Regardless, we rebound well and win a lot of games, so there’s that I suppose. I am more concerned about sinking attitudes and bad ball movement.

Which brings me to 8-9.

I didn’t expect a lot of wins. This is another young team–one that had never lost a game until this season. Five kids from the squad have been together for years and years. They know each other well but the skill levels are all across the board. These aren’t the globetrotters. We have a few Washington Generals in the five. We have a few more still on our 11 kid roster, with little by way of height. We took our first loss in week 2 and haven’t looked towards the win column since. The first two losses were by a combined total of 3 points. This latest loss was 7 points and to a team with a great deal more talent. We competed as expected. By the end of the year we should be back to form. Unfortunately that also means no basketball for another 11 months.

I won’t talk about the 10-12 game. Thats the one that got me riled. I’m not an angry person by nature, but I nearly completely lost my mind out there. It sets a bad example for the kids and for that thought alone I was able to hold it somewhat together, but what happened on the court was so beyond unfair that by the end we had at least 3 kids crying and three more ready to fight.

Tough day on the court indeed. I was supposed to get to more stuff, but ten minutes and all…

A good friend reminded me that this project is likely more for me than it is for them. Probably, but they don’t know whats good for them. They’ll love it when it is done. The loft aspect is what will make it fun. The loft effectively creates space below each bed to give each boy his own private space. I’m still working out how it is going to look and that is the basis of this blog. I’m stuck on the bed design.

Right now I’m considering a U shaped layout that allows for a bed on each of the three parts of the U and creates space above and below for privacy. My issues are numerous. There is the issue of the giant Snorlax  plush toy bed living below one of the beds now. This fun yet secondary bed is part of the room and part of the space. It has to live below the bed because there is no place else to put it. No matter which part of the bed it goes under, Snorlax effectively eliminates a private space for one of the boys, leaving two with spaces and creating yet another headache for me. This the becomes a project that causes problems and inequality.

So what is the solution? Right now the beds are merely wasted space and I want to be able to do something useful with that space. It may be that the three spaces are redesigned not as personal space but as purposeful space. Only, to what purpose?

The other major issue is height of the bed section. 30″ allows them to sit up for now. 37″ allows me to sit up. How high should a bed be?

Tonight was the NBA draft, a time of great hope and opportunity–unless you’re a Heat or a Knicks fan in which you know, respectively, the GM gives little value to draft picks or know your team will trade away the player they draft just as that player gets good. I would be the latter. I watch the Knicks draft in order to see who is going to be good on someone else’s team. Ask Lebron about that one. He had two Knicks starters–starters from THIS SEASON on his squad at the finals…

The Knicks thing kicked in immediately as they traded away 2013’s #24 pick for this year’s #19. Goodbye Tim Hardaway Jr. You were just starting to get good. That makes three starting guards dumped by the Knicks in the past 8 months. The #19 pick wound up being another guard who will probably find his skill set properly exploited in another offense–maybe Phoenix.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Fans of the Wayward Pines books will be deeply disappointed by the TV show. There are too many reasons to list. I mean, the stuff is not nearly as tightly woven and on message as the book. They should’ve done better for a mini-series.

It is easy to identify the balance in a relationship and easier still to recognize it as it tips further in one direction or the other. I, for example, recognize that I tend to see Wednesdays as a maintenance day and a prep day for when the kids come back on Thursday morning. My goal is for them to walk into something new and spectacular, be it something I’ve upgraded, some magical experience I’ve prepared for them, or something so small as a new game (see previous post on spoiling). As I’ve been thinking about how to get centered and get more productive, the idea of that balance keeps staining the air around me like used cat liter. There is the realization that my relationship with the boys is not balanced but there is also the understanding that it cannot be completely balanced. We are after all father and sons and not partners.

So what then is the necessary balance? I think in all relationships there has to be a basic understanding of needs of and from all parties concerned. For me there is an inherent need to please, so a lot of this stuff I do can be self-gratifying. On the other hand I need to feel like the things I do for people are appreciated in a way that I recognize as appreciation. This is made difficult in a parental relationship (though perhaps no harder than in a marital one) because the kids don’t fully understand my expectations of appreciation unless I explain it to them.

There’s the rub and the crux of this blog. I can, with difficulty, wrap my head around the fact that my boys don’t know how to act unless I tell them how. Therefore I can, and apparently sometimes do, tell them how they need to behave in order for me to continue providing them with a gleeful existence. What I recognize now is that it is much harder for me to separate my expectations of understanding from my grown up relationships. I don’t think I’m alone. I’ve heard far too often the term ‘he/she should know’ That term speaks to an inherent philosophy that one party has in some way intuited or even straight up told the other about desires and needs so much that the other party has ingrained this into their psyche. Unfortunately, this is often NOT the case.

I fear many relationships are torn apart by a failure to communicate and if we could all just reiterate what we want and need–without getting angry or defensive about the need to reiterate–a lot more relationships would be happy ones.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. A friend identified Banshee as male chick lit. I really like that term. It ought to be publicized…
2. 1876 (yes I’m back to that if only briefly) was the year of the famous Indian Head penny. It was also the year of the battle at little big horn. This feels important as we are considering putting a woman on the $10 in the same breath as we are rolling back abortion rights and continue to have less than equal wages.

Fatigue has been kicking in hard core over the past few days. I think the time for good sleep is nigh. I’m not totally abandoning my previous assertion about how little sleep I need, but on occasion it is nicer to get a full night of sleep.

Of course, I’m not advocating unlimited rest. That’s just crazy talk. Still, this fatigue has me slipping into a coma between words and that just isn’t a positive measure of writing. I think it is best if I go lay down after …

Some Thoughts:

1. Does it all really boil down to sex and power? Everything I read, see, hear, and often experience is about these two sources of ‘pleasure’. If I’m being honest, even sex is about power. We fight, kill, steal, lie, cheat, and even pray over power.

Today was a good day to reflect on creating balance in my life and learning how to be comfortable and satisfied within my own skin, condition, and station. Balance is a huge element I’ve sought to achieve in my life. Getting that right will permit me to go back to being the best possible me. I kinda like that dude.. Here are some more thoughts..

 

Some Thoughts:

1. For the past four days I’ve awoken or come home to find the door to the guest room open. Each time I’ve shut it only to find it open again the following day. It stopped being a coincidence after the second day. Sometimes the kids are at the house when it happens and sometimes they are not. I haven’t talked about this sort of thing for some time now, but sometimes talking about a thing gives it power. I closed it tonight. We will see if it stays that way.
2. @Alexmorgan13 Way to go today. You really took one for the team and the ladies were able to capitalize.
3. It is hard to coach a team when you don’t get a lot of kids showing up to practice and even games. My 10-12 put up their best effort yet this past weekend and we were short-handed. The difference? We had almost everyone at practice.
4. My son’s cat is stalking me…

My kids have Kindles. They have multiple video game systems, a game room and enjoy all the fun a group of boys could possibly enjoy. It isn’t enough. Not a week goes by that they don’t ask to download some new free Kindle game. I’ve rarely said no because, well, its free. Whats the harm? It turns out the harm is developing a sense of entitlement and a deeply spoiled nature to the boys. It has to stop.

I think the culprit is a mix of permissive behaviors and a genuine inability to balance the lifestyle of yesterday with the needs of modern life. I get that the last part sounds like total BS. I mean, do kids NEED to have a kindle or an Xbox 1 or any other gaming platform? Do they NEED to watch shows constantly and have their own Netflix streaming queues or any of it? Not really. Honestly, I think my boys would be well prepared for the future if all they had were stacks of books and a C++ coding environment. The problem: I want to give them a great childhood as well.

Great isn’t necessarily defined by what you have, but these things we do have are contributing to the greatness. The problem is that they take everything for granted. I don’t know that they’re even aware of how little most people have. I need to learn how to strike a balance between what I give them and what they appreciate. It might take some time.

Some Thoughts:

1. Judy Mozes, the wife of an Isreali politician, took me by surprise when she joked that Obama coffee is ‘black and weak’. It constantly surprises me when people who should know better than to promote racism and try to reap the benefits of such shameless promotion. We are reminded on a constant basis of the horrors of the holocaust and told again and again that it should never be repeated. Well, it starts with off-handed jokes based on purported racial superiority. It matters less that she apologized for being caught than it does that she publicly made the remarks in the first place.

Let me start by saying that I’m not against sleep. This is a perfectly good mode of living for many people. Cats like sleep. Dogs as well, and their enjoyment seems to stretch into a lifestyle as they age. Still, humans don’t quite need as much of it as many would have you believe. I mean, why sleep so darn much? I’ve read that human adults need anywhere between 6-9 hours of nightly sleep. I haven’t seen six hours since the oughts. Part of that has to do with having children. I’m certain there is a biological imperative coded somewhere that says once you hit a certain familial size your sleep need decreases in proportion with additional family members. In that theory the 19 and counting family just stays awake all the time. I mean, maybe. They never sleep on the show.

Then there’s the issue of sleeping hazards. I would sleepwalk as a kid, awaking to find myself on elevators and what not–sometimes even actively willing myself back to a restful state hoping I’d reawaken in a much better situation (I mean, what if the elevator got stuck and I woke up trapped in an elevator. I’d promptly lose my shit). There’s the matter of sleep paralysis. One can wake up with a total inability to move. At all… That’s a terrible situation to wind up in.

In the end I think it is best to limit one’s sleep to a manageable REM allowance. This means anywhere between 160 – 220 minutes. In other words, people can technically get what they need in under three hours. I’ve gone a few days averaging two hours of rest and I’m not dead yet.

Of course this could all be the ravings of a man who doesn’t and hasn’t slept a great deal in a great while, so there’s that.