Month: March 2017

I took my boys to the college slam dunk contest and it was awesome.

I should start at the beginning. A week ago a groupon popped up advertising the contest and I jumped on it. Unfortunately, this groupon was a dead end. I paid full price anyway. Me and the three wound up in some prime seats at GCU arena. That’s when we met the Havocs. This was Havocs lite. Just one section of crazies straight out of NBA 2k17. I’m not joking. This is the student section during Midnight Madness NBA 2k17. Here are the havocs. Yeah, that actually happened. Happens, actually. They do this every game. I kinda like it. This madness carried on all night and at some point the players got down to the business of competing.

It started with a 3 pt shootout featuring the best college BB has to offer. It came down to a kid from Iowa University and, get this, a kid from GCU. Yeah, the crowd loved it. I loved it. The GCU kid choked and lost. The Iowa kid wound up getting had by a female player who is one of the cleanest shooters I’ve ever seen.

Dunks soon followed. They were spectacular. One dude did a 520 in the air and dunked it. The crowd favorite choked–just like the GCU kid–and though he lost the match to a Hoya, the crowd still loved him up.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Haters gonna hate and I hope AP proves them wrong. I hope this dude comes back after passing the 30 year old mark and tears this league up. OG’s everywhere would be lit.
2. Trump’s Washington remains a shit show that Trump himself is somehow immune to. In other words, he is the new teflon don. Why? Primarily because he doesn’t care. It is that simple.
3. Black Insomnia has been crowned as the world’s strongest coffee. Actually, it sounds more like my superhero name. Sign me up.

Last night I experienced what is scientifically known as Postprandial somnolence, and more commonly referred to as a food coma. I call it the ‘itis. I’ll let you figure out what that is short for. Anyway, it works like this: I eat a large amount of food–specifically fast food–and I pass out. That is it. That is the entire process. Habit burger went in, sleep came out. Not the happy sleep of the unencumbered, but the heavy fretful sleep of a creature who had a whole bunch of stuff to do, but foolishly decided to stop at habit burger at 6pm only to wake up in an aching heap around 2:50 AM. Yeah, that happened. Not only did it happen, but it continues to plague me as my eating habits have gone completely to hell.

As we’ve come to expect, there is no moral to this story. There is just me and my distended belly waking up broken on a couch night after night in a meat haze. This is what drug abuse looks like. And being a single guy. And irresponsibility. And depression. However, none of those things are really me. I’m just unskilled and unequipped of cookery. And Lazy. I’m clearly lazy.

This is the consequence of foolish action and, yes, it is that bad. Waking up on the couch meant I had not prepped for class, or graded, or written anything worthwhile, or played Mass Effect: Andromeda. The last one is especially gut wrenching. I need to solve the fast food issue.

Some Thoughts:

1. A week slightly removed from football means a week where I can pause and take a breath and not race through, hungry for the weekend.

 

One of those nights when putting together a single coherent post seems terribly out of reach. As a result, I am going to attempt to assemble several less coherent (read: shorter) thoughts over the span of ten minutes. Let us begin…

1. The health care reform failure does not fall at the feet of the president. The GOP had 7 years to develop a plan for what to do with heath care and they came up with nothing. This tells me that they never thought they would actually get a real chance to reform or repeal ACA. This current effort is the equivalent of getting caught with your pants down.
2. Trump is a bully and a baby and we as a nation are okay with that. His response to this ACA repeal failure was to basically throw a tantrum, call a bunch of people and say that he actually won, and blame everyone else for the failure.
3. Spandau Ballet.
4. The sister site to this, 2626east.com, is set to undergo a major overhaul based around some student design philosophies. I cannot hide my nervousness about what they are going to do.
5. That is it. Seriously. That is 10 minutes.

Anyone who has ever seen a Buddhist monk create a sand mandala only to later destroy it knows about impermanence. Anyone who has watched a pet fish die knows about impermanence. I am becoming a student of this philosophy and learning more each day about the idea of clinging. See, impermanence is the reality of and acceptance of the fact that nothing is permanent. We can embrace this ideal by accepting that things will change and enjoying the moment we have. We can reject this ideal by clinging to what is happening now and trying as we might to maintain a moment. I try to apply this philosophy to all that I do in life now. I apply it to love, to expectations, to sports, to parenting. All of these things exist, for me, in flux. Nothing is fixed. Each moment shall be different and yield different emotions.

I have loved, and lost, and divorced, and loved again, and watched that bond strained by clinging. I have expected and been pleased and been disappointed, and expected again with similar results. I have played, and coached, and anticipated (see: expectations) and lost site of the moment in search of the goal. This has hurt my kids, my players, and myself. I have seen my kids grow and my role change as a father and clung, and been saddened by the loss of togetherness and, in some moments held them back and in others watched them fly. This too must change because clinging to a thing that explodes leaves me injured. Watching it explode into beautiful light brings me pleasure.

Ten minutes of faux buddhist philosophy on a day we presently leave to the Gods. I think that is fitting.

Saturdays have belonged to sports for as long as I can remember. This dates back to my time as a kid playing baseball. Now I have three kids of my own and I shuttle them around the suburbs to play. I coach them, occasionally, and that brings a whole new level of stress (note the hair or lack thereof) and pleasure (note the constant smirk) as I get to feel a hint of responsibility beyond the genetic. Still, pregame sucks because it is just one more thing we are waiting to do vs. actually doing. I’ve created a bit of a ritual about such things to mitigate the annoyance and anticipation. It starts with waking up and playing some games together, then we fall into our cartoons (Beyblade Burst + Pokemon) while we eat… something… then we get our gear and roll out.

The idea here is staying active to delay anticipation. I feel like I do this for a number of things in my life. The idea of staying busy isn’t new. Often it is applied to avoid negative situations, though it is harder to do that as the stress of negativity can be quite oppressive and life changing.

This entire premise is decidedly anti buddhist. In reality we should embrace anticipation and consider it and the moments leading up to and away from any activity that we find demanding. Embrace what we love and what we fear, for all is temporary and to be appreciated.

Any faithful reader of this blog knows I’ve been struggling. It will come as no surprise then that the struggle continues. I blame Maslow. Not the man, but the hierarchy of needs the man put out there. The pyramid below explains:

So, as with any structure, humans are built upon strong foundations. The basics of humanity are the physiological areas. I got that handled. Mostly. Safety is more of a concern. The plan is to move in roughly two months and I have yet to find a place to live (or way to pay for the move, or pack, or… you get it). That leads directly to #3: Love and Belonging. Now I’ve been in love for quite some time. I wouldn’t say that is handled. Far from it and it brings me to the edges of both sides of the emotional spectrum. Still, love is in the plus column… until I screw it up.

That leaves belonging. I don’t. I haven’t for some time. The majority of my friendships exist with me as the tertiary element. It isn’t ideal. I used to thrive on that because it granted me the freedom to move between groups and not be focused in on one set of friends. It was a bit like juggling. Now all the balls are rolling on the ground and I am left empty handed. I have my love, my writers, and a few good dudes. The work situation is a hot mess of outsiderness and the aforementioned groups have been ignored more than should ever happen. So, yeah, my bad.

With our yellow level in jeopardy the other stuff above hasn’t been truly functional. It is like trying to get to the top of a skyscraper when the elevator is out and you have asthma.

I’m still climbing.

The GOP is quietly racking up win after win all of which seem to have one goal in mind: Set loose the power of the corporations. Recently the GOP began the process of repealing the internet privacy laws widely panned by broadband services. These are the laws that prevent companies such as Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T from selling your internet history without your permission. Yeah, do everything in privacy mode–though an IP scan can show where you connected to regardless of browser privacy.

The issue here is that these massive rollbacks meant to help corporations ‘create more jobs’ are in fact probably going to do the opposite. Here is why: Corps don’t want to hire people unless they have to. Hiring someone is an investment. You invest salary, taxes, often healthcare, and retirement (coincidentally, the senate is also working to delete the rule that says retirement funds have to work in the customer’s best interest). Why make such a large investment when you don’t have to? PR? There are cheaper ways to get good PR. If I am company X and I can spend 10K to build a home for a homeless guy–preferably a vet (disabled if you got em), I am going to get more PR buzz on that guy than the 40K a year minimum investment on a front line employee. I can make my existing employees work harder or I can shift some of those roles to the internet or offshore where possible.

Corporations are smart and inherently against the interests of anyone who wants to share wealth amongst Americans. Corps want it all. They want consolidation of power and resources, which is why it is not going to be long before anti-monopoly rules are abolished in this country and we discover how quickly everything gels into a handful of Megacorporations.

Shadowrun had it right all along.

Some Thoughts:

1. Crazy excited for the upcoming games this weekend!
2. Mildly excited to do great stuff in class next week.

As much as I hate to admit it, Tom Brady is an amazing QB. Pair him with the genius of Beli–perhaps the greatest coach of our era–you have a winning formula. Hate on the Falcons all you want, but the Patriots just were flat out better in the second stanza. It is coaching. All the way down. Now, if my flag football magic holds true, the Rams, Saints, Texans, or Lions will be in the show. My vote is for the Texans. That is not the team I came in with, but I was coaching with them by the end of the season. I found a few solid tackle players out of that bunch as well. I believe that is the team that made this current tackle season playable, so much respect due.

On to the big point of the post: Giants. Yeah, I’m calling Texans v. Giants right now. I hope they have the ability and the sense to add Revis. I know there is a jersey number issue at play here, but his ability, while declining, can cement a secondary that has a handful of shockingly talented and young players in need of that level of dedication. I think he locks up the Giants’ chances on the back end while the draft will, as always, benefit the front end.

The one question before the draft is: What is up with the running game? I know the G-men went shopping for linemen and found something useful, but who is running behind them? That kid from UCLA? The late round dude? Well, Giants have been successful like that in the past but it has always come by way of committee. Who is in the committee this year?

Regardless, the big cog is gonna be Eli and his metronomic confidence. If he’s about that life this year, he might have a real shot of joining Brady in the hall and as the only other QB in recent times to lock down 3 Super Bowl rings.