Month: September 2016

I have a lot on my mind this Saturday. Had a great Bday bash for the boy, and coached some football. Here are my thoughts…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Had a tough football loss today in the MM league. The National Champions took us down 14-6, but in doing so really showed us that we have the talent and design to beat that team. We made mistakes early, but once we settled in we had them cold.
2. Meanwhile the JPW team is pure trash. I really hate putting people’s business in the street, but with this situation I couldn’t hold back. They forfeited the first game at the half because they were getting their butts kicked. That head coach lost his job. We are without a head coach now and effectively are without leadership. I don’t like it. I like the individuals running the program but what they are doing is totally ineffective for the talent and caliber of player they have. As a result they have failed to gain a first down in three straight games, loosing each by a minimum of 32 points (see forfeit). This latest game was stopped by the referee because it was just too ugly. We did not compete. Moreover we put a kid back there to play QB who hadn’t played QB with this team. It was a mess. Yet the coaches continue to offer platitudes like, ‘we are getting better every week.’ and ‘our kids did good out there’. The program above the MM level is a joke and everyone knows it. Unfortunately that means we are losing a lot of talent to other teams. So the handful of complimentary players that form the nucleus of our skill player set are being treated like top talent when, including my own kid, they are not.  I can forgive the TM team for losing all the time, because they lack enough talent and they really lack experience. 20 kids on that team and only 8 can play at a time. You just cannot keep your talent on the field and when the noobs come in… Look, it is little kid football, but these things are impactful. This is how they will remember the sport moving forward.

Finally had a chance to see the Jon Stewart ‘drop in’ on Colbert’s show. His straight talk is legendary and exactly what propelled him to the top of the late night ranks. He did a complete segment. Hell, he even went after Arby’s because, well, its what he does. His largest applause line came when he responded to Trump’s ‘blue collar billionaire’ remark by saying, “That’s not a thing.” That moment was so classically The Daily Show that I was hungry for his return. It also set me to thinking about why the new Daily is not as good as the old.

I adore Trevor Noah and his approach to the medium, but it doesn’t even hold a candle to Stewart. He is trying, but he cannot sit across from the kind of people Jon sat across from and deliver the level of intelligent examination and quick banter that Stewart is known for. Noah is funny, but he is just funny. Stewart remains a sharp-tongued assassin who is responsible for tearing down a lot of political rhetoric designed to ruin us as a people.

I am a people watcher. This becomes an obstacle in my profession when I find myself deeply observing a group of students who turn at once towards me wondering what I could possibly be looking at. That is when all of us realize we are still in class and things just got weird. No, it isn’t as bad as that, though I have been wrapped up in a student presentation so utterly that I was still observing student behavior from the audience while the presenters are staring at me uncertainly, having completed their talk.

Occasionally I make it weird like that. These observations fill my creativity tank, pumping in dozens of personality types an relationships.

Some Thoughts:

1. I have declared war on indirect language. That is not to say there is no room for the word ‘some’. In fact there are specific uses for the pronoun–for pronouns in general. Here, for example, is a fine use of some. ‘Some Thoughts’ indicates an unspecified number of thoughts that is largely based on how close I am to 10 minutes into the writing.
2. I recognize that I observe females more than males, largely because I am drawn to the idiosyncrasies of female behavior. Less largely because it is easier to observe more attractive people. This alone does not make me a perv. In truth the observation is more about interactions than anything else.

I have fallen in love with the word sometimes.

The day I married, my group (I was a singer once, long ago) sang a song called ‘sometimes’. Perhaps that is where I met her; where our romance took flame. I was young and full of words and spirit. She was wise of the world and encompassed a great many things. I do not know how or when it happened, but she became my crutch. We are together even now and the relationship is destructive. Sometimes and her sisters somehow and her mother some crawl into my brain at night and empty out all my creativity like old shirts they think I ought to no longer have. I want to do away with her. Not kill her, but perhaps send her somewhere (ahh that forgotten sister somewhere always lurking just beyond view). Better, send her to a place where there are fields of purple flowers and at the center a blue rose wavers in the breeze. A place of name, description, and purpose so clear that some and all of her children will have no place there.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. It is fitting that we call celebrities stars as we orbit around them, drawn by the light and gravity of their fame. Stars exist in each every day life as well, and we are drawn to them by the same cosmic forces, compelled to follow them, digesting the essence of their words and ideas like fuel that powers us and returns to them to make them glow even brighter. There is an ecology of stars spiraling throughout our days and nights spinning fast and free, careening into each other and away again, sometimes taking whole galaxies with them.
2. It is the people in your orbit that nourish you, so beware of whom you orbit and who orbits you.
3. Imitation ought to be the sincerest form of flattery, but it often feels like inspiration to fabricate ones entire way of being; a Chinese knock off of a life not completely understood. I have experienced such shadows twice in my life and each time the sweet shade diminished themselves in my eyes but burned brightly for everyone else. It seems then that I am quite mediocre at being me and when done well, being me is met with great fanfare.

Today is my eldest’s birthday. On Sunday the woman I love celebrated the day of her birth. Two birthdays in three days celebrated completely differently. These two people are separated by age and culture, but as my eldest ages I am starting to see in him a deeper understanding of what it means to grow up. He is tasting maturity and finding it at times bitter and at times freeing. All of this is part of a celebration, which I create based on his ideas. That leads me to wonder, what is the celebration really about?

Tonight we are having a Video Game Tournament in his honor. He didn’t ask me to do this. I offered and he accepted. He didn’t ask for a card or a special dinner. I offered and he accepted. I suppose even at 12, all that he gets is offered as opposed to asked. It is the same with all of my children as they move from birthday to birthday, creating parties that mimic the celebrations of others and, in part, create a social dynamic that says, “Hey, look how lavishly we celebrate our kid.” Such things say more about the parent than the kid. This is true, I believe, of any birthday event where outsiders are invited to participate. In short, the party is also for them.

Tonight’s tourney is for him and partly the response to him not having a clue what he wants to do or get for his bday. We are doing the lavish thing too, making our way to Xtreme air to battle the American Ninja Warrior course and perhaps take in a little hoverboard dodgeball (sounds stupidly dangerous).

I haven’t secured a cake, but I will and we will observe the classic tradition of singing that bday song, but I still have to wonder why. We only grow out of the things that don’t matter for a lifetime. I wonder why we still do some of them at all.

Things I think I think is a staple of the Monday Morning QB column by Peter King. It is the basis of some thoughts. I’ve borrowed the format on occasion and I do so again here tonight:

Things I think I think:

I think the Rock’s Ballers TV show is good but not good enough to justify paying for HBO. Nothing is. Once the Game of Thrones series ends for the season I cut off the channel and save up my cash for the next season. This is something HBO ought to consider, not because of me but because there are millions like me. Give us something worth staying for.

I think technology is going to be the downfall of American education. Consider the fact that a large number of schools rely on google-based learning, which is great for google, great for Pearson, bad for cognitive development. Not much of the world beyond the screen is given the proper attention. Students can live and learn in-screen without all the peskiness of the outside world. They already want to live in their phones, but now we are going to make their education laptop ready too?

I think the NY Giants defense is going to make a heck of an impact in the first few weeks–starting with the unbridled destruction of Dak Prescott. Given that he is the golden boy, his dismantling won’t be well televised, but he doesn’t have the time leading up to Sunday’s game to prepare as he should.

I think sleep is an important part of the health process and the more I lack, the weaker I become.

I think room service is one of the best things ever invented, tight up there with the Wok, gunpowder, and ‘to go’ orders.

It turns out the draft is actually tomorrow. That is great because at noon on Saturday I was walking towards a football field, phone in hand, trying to figure out how to get the draft to work while my eldest son was being trounced on the football field. His squad ended up losing 56 – 0 and somehow still cheering about their performance. I too cheered that the draft was on Monday, because I remain unprepared.

This isn’t my first rodeo. My other team is a partner affair and he did the heavy lifting on the draft. Monday’s situation is a two QB league, which after the events of the last few days, seems to be a whole new ballgame. Bradford is a Viking. Dak is going to start all year–unless injured in which case Sanchez will take the helm. I feel like there is a great deal of uncertainty in this process. I am not alone. Fantasypros.com has several mock draft tools available scrambling to determine what is really going on in the world of football. According to my last mock with them moments before I blogged, I am looking at a B+ roster if stick to my current strategy.

That strategy includes the NY Giants as my defense. I am going to put my faith in big blue. Not in Beckham, mind you. He will be gone by the time I pick. So will a host of QBs. I’ll get Manning. I usually do. I’ll pair him with a Tyrod Taylor or something of the general ilk. Unlike most fantasy drafts my focus is still on the RB. I expect to win out from that position–kinda like my youth tackle team does.

Some Thoughts:

1. Speaking of the kids, week 2 brought things into focus. We now know who the teams to beat are in every division my boys play in. Sadly I only forsee two or three wins for the littlest Talislegger. The eldest will not win a game. When a bottom 4 team beats you by 56 and you gain no first downs, all hope is lost.

I never quite realized how competitive (or angry) I was until watching my boys play football today. The team I help coach picked up a win (2-0) while the other two boys landed losses (0-2, 0-2) with the eldest’s team looking flat out awful. That is where my story begins–with a culture that is not quite dedicated to winning. A parent said to me, “I don’t care if we win; I just want us to have fun and play well.” There is a disconnect between the idea of playing well and winning that doesn’t belong there. See, for many parents of youth atheletes, these two concepts remain independent. In some cases there is a legitimate culture against winning.

That brings me to the main point: Parents cannot see past their own children. I am part of the problem. When my son was benched a few years ago I immediately blamed the situation on a nepotistic coach who appeared to have more interest in putting forward a handful of key players than developing unskilled talent. Or maybe he just felt my kid didn’t have talent–either way there was no communication on how the kid could improve. This was the situation I dealt with today following our win. Two sets of angry parents had nothing but negative things to say about our organization and coaches from top to bottom. Why? Because their kids are not playing and in one case losing passion for the sport. Sound familiar? It did to me.

I have a soft spot for the situation and, for a second, I analyzed my entire history with this team and decided that this particular parent was smoking crack. Here is why: We play backups on both side of the ball, often playing an entire second offensive unit as our first unit of the game. Both of the kids in question are on that unit. This was not why the passion was fading. The passion was supposedly fading because the kid is a lineman and isn’t always getting it. Definitely isn’t liking it. He wants to be an NFL running back. He lacks the speed, agility, awareness, and communication to displace any of the 12 distinct players who have a chance to run the ball. Yep, 12. Out of 28. When I was an angry dad the number of kids who touched the ball hovered around 4. Out of 24. That number has since increased to six or seven and I applaud the coach for his growth. Still, 12? That deserves some measure of respect.

So that is the point: Respect. Those parents disrespected me despite me reaching out and trying to listen. In truth every time I reach out to listen to anyone I am disrespected. Being the nice guy means getting walked on and that is a crap lesson to learn.

Yet learn it I have.

It turns out I confused the draft quite badly.

What I thought was going to be a Sunday draft is actually a saturday draft right in the middle of a slate of kid games. So that happened. Or is happening. I am not sure how to deal with that. There doesn’t seem to be a buddhist meditation to help figure that kind of stuff out. Actually, the meditations remind me not to care so much, because such things do not actually matter.

I agree.

I’m still gonna play though. The shorter discourse on the destruction of craving suggests that nothing is worth adhering to. Still, I live in a world and personal existence of craving therefore, in an anti-buddhist way, I cling to a great many things.

Too many, in truth.

Some Thoughts:

1. Just saw an Amazon commercial where a family used a bit of costuming to make their dog resemble a lion and placed said lion in front of their infant child. It was supposed to be moving. I was moved to consider this the beginning of PTSD.
2. I am reminded that Zombie flicks tend to focus on stereotypes–usually outcasts–and slam them together with people who are usually the ‘insider set’ and make the outcasts the powerful ones. It is a delightful story form.
3. Someone born the year I graduated high school would be well into their twenties…
4. Somedays are so bad that you hardly get time to talk to the ones you love…

Today just the thoughts…

Some Thoughts:

1. The hardest part about being a youth coach is the inability to discern what the other team can do. This is made worse by the fact that there is stuff out there on the net if you look hard enough. I don’t and therefore don’t have the game footage I need in order to make informed decisions about how we ought to be preparing. So, we stick with a basic prep package–getting better at our craft, so we are ready for all comers.
2. I have incredible students. With such great people to work with comes the responsibility to step up my game and truly provide them with an experience they will benefit from and remember. Believe that.
3. Fast and Furious 8: Helen Mirren edition? What the heck happened there? I mean they exploded the cast like it was an expendables film. Did I mention Charlize Theron? No? Yeah she’ll pop in as the lead villain… They even found an Eastwood to throw in the mix. There was some reported beef between Rock and Diesel. Rock and a hard place? Too soon?
4. Speaking of too soon, they turned Captain Cold back into a villain. I think they had to because Wentworth Miller can carry that show by himself. They needed him to balance out what is a weak Legends of Tomorrow cast.