Month: June 2022

One of the better days on record in the last few months. I had a chance to walk my kid (and two of his brothers) around the campus of his future University. He is registered to attend college in the fall. It was not the moment of magic I thought it would be, but that was a fatherly delusion. Heck, he barely made it to the car before we drove off to the college without him. He showed a lack of interest for some time before he started getting interested and started talking about places on campus he wanted to check out. It was a realistic trip–he got to a point where he was finally interested and thinking about being here next semester. That is enough for me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Weird to note but I am watching Star Wars: A New Hope and the Death Star plot feels waaaaay too similar to the new Top Gun to be a coincidence. I see you, Tom Cruise. I see you.
2. Obi-Wan is a wonderful character and I enjoy what they are doing with him and enriching his and the history of that time period between episodes 3 and 4. It is a great sight to see.
3. The kid got to start tonight in his 7s tournament. That represents growth and hard work. He fought to get the spot back and he earned it for at least this night.

Moneyball. The idea was first made commercial by baseball when the Oakland A’s shirked conventional wisdom and used algorithms to determine which players would best function together. I believe this to be the only logical way the New York Knicks can return to relevance in basketball. The Knicks have had a better than 50% win record just twice in the last decade. In each of those seasons they were top four in the eastern conference. They haven’t won 55 games in a season since the 94-95 season, which is to say they haven’t been particularly relevant in approaching thirty years. Why? Old thinking. They’ve been chasing that Ewing team for a decade and it put them in cap hell. The answer then is to step away from chasing big money and start chasing big roles.

Most teams in the NBA rely on a superstar and build around that star in a way that promotes what that star is particularly good at while allowing role players to come and go around that star, so the franchise at least has a face. Now this can be successful if your star is a top NBA player, but even then today’s NBA requires a number 2 guy. Lebron needed Kyrie or Anthony Davis or Dwayne Wade to take off some of the pressure, because the reality was that teams understood that winning meant stopping Lebron. It is nearly impossible to stop a team with multiple stars, because you cannot scheme against that. Only, I believe you don’t need stars. You need good players and good scheme and smart rotation. You need a handful of hungry Al Horford types, a DeAndre Ayton type, a coterie of shooters, etc. The reason for this is simple and we see it happen with every so-called cinderella in the NCAA. When players of a similar skill level and deep rotation work together, they are successful. There is little fall off when one player is off the court because: Next man up. Furthermore, different groups can play with different schemes, highlighting different talents, so a defense cannot reasonably key on one thing. This last bit is especially important in the playoffs where you see teams like the Warriors forced to change their offense in order to be effective against a team that studies and plays good D.

I propose the Knicks start fresh. Get rid of as much expiring money as possible and retool around four different offensive schemes and players who can be effective in at least two of those schemes. Every night a new look and a new rotation. Make it less about stars and more about squad and you’ll carry the Knicks back out of the basement. Stars aren’t coming to New York. You need roleplayers who want to win.

To quote the late great Old Dirty Bastard: “I’ma rub your ass in the moonshine. Let’s take it back to ’79”

789, actually. I wrote, ”  All of this bubbled to the surface when I started thinking about how little time I spend with friends. I felt like being away from my friends was okay in one sense, because it meant more time with the wife. However, it also meant that I didn’t have access to that writer’s world (I tend to hang out with writers) nor did I have guy time. Both of these are incredibly important to maintaining who I am. This is probably the key part of having your own friends–you have a better chance of holding on to that core being that your partner married.”

That was a long time ago and before I even fell into a suburban community; before I really fell into this unusual yet totally ordinary life I never planned. My partner now thinks I planned the whole thing–that I was operating from a master script on when and where to do all things. That isn’t right. I’m a person who rides the currents of the situation. I’ve been a wave rider my entire life. I cannot tell you many times where I’ve gone a place that I’ve forced the going. It happens naturally or generally not at all. Even when I went to graduate school It was a natural experience to be asked to go and to follow the path presented.

I don’t blaze trails. I don’t know how to. I know how to read the world and see the signs of what works and doesn’t work. My partner blazes trails and leads the way, but I think she wants me to lead with her. I think she wants us to walk forward into the darkness hand in hand and make our own light and make our own trail. It terrifies me, but I love her and that is enough to do something different and to try the things I’ve never tried before–no matter how much they terrify me.

Some Thoughts:

1. Still sick. Yuck.
2. Still looking forward to game 3 on Wednesday, because I love the way the Warriors play basketball and I love watching them matched up against a very good team.
3. Some Job openings popped up in Seattle. Maybe Mr. Talislegger goes to Washington?
4. I’ve been tossing around a handful of ideas for stories in my head based on old works of literature–hence the nod in #3. No, it wasn’t literature, but these old titles keep bumping about in my head.
5. Still considering what Waiver Wednesday ought to look like this week. Monday I had thoughts and today I have others. Sick does make the head spin
6. Reva Sevander just is not a good character. The show itself is lagging…

I’ve been trying to get a rush job on my passport and exploring a number of different sites that offer such services. It didn’t take long to recognize that this is a crazy hustle. Individuals are hard-pressed to find an appointment without driving hours from a major metropolitan area to get an appointment to be seen. You need to be seen for such things to happen and there are no appointments anywhere because private firms book all of them and then charge people money to use these appointments. This explains why there are no available times, but there is also nobody ever taking an actual appointment. I cannot be entirely mad. These businesses are smart enough to corner a needed market. Rushmypassport, on the other hand, simply charges you to fill out the paperwork you can fill out freely online and then charges you again to send it. Yeah, they really hustle. This isn’t like the tax paperwork situation–no they don’t help you fill it out or do anything but merely show you where to click and sign for normal passport action. For rush action they generally rely on the same appointment booking scheme that everyone else does. The end result is an industry built upon leaving government workers with nothing to do all day…

And me struggling to get a passport renewed.

Some Thoughts:

1. I’ll be talking basketball on Waiver Wednesday and, perhaps, a little moneyball conversation about my sad sad Knicks.
2. I want to spend 1,000 on a solid espresso machine. Maybe more. I want the hotness. I lack the cash. I need a better income stream.
3. Or less expensive tastes…
4. And fewer kids…

I stumbled into a predicament of an audiobook nature. I cannot stomach the guy reading the Malazan book of the Fallen series. With each remaining novel clocking in between 35 and 45 hours I cannot sit through six more of these atrociously read narratives. I want to read these books again and I will actually need to read them in order to get through them. Perhaps it is a good thing, but it is a time consuming thing–I can read audio and do other stuff. So, what do I make time for? DO I get a kindle and take it on the road?

All of this is being discussed in my head under a haze of what can best be described as ‘fuzz’. I am still sick with who knows what and it is rippling through my body like sonic detonations. I hurt. My head hurts. My spirit hurts. Tomorrow I have to work, so I have to shove all of this down and just handle my business. I do not want to.

But I will. I usually do.

Developing some wonderful story ideas that will ultimately test me as a writer and will help me become a better writer. I want to include some of these stories here in the blog moving forward. I’m not quite there yet. In the meanwhile…

Some Thoughts:

1. Still reveling in the creepy world of Mr. Nightmare. It is a different sense of creepy than Mr. Ballen, who also tells stories.
2. Sick. I hate it.
3. The gym life is, well, going… I am trying to get myself to a point where I reduce belly fat and feel healthy, but I don’t feel healthy and I am only getting older…
4. I’m damn near 50. That is nuts.
5. The scheduling day to day also is not going as well as I hoped. I need to be more diligent and have the follow through I’ve been lacking. On the other hand, I’ve been pretty good with keeping up with the school stuff so far.

Back to writing.

I think that the endless cycle of write hard and then barely at all is not a good look for anyone. Balance in all things is required. Presently I am moving back towards writing at a decent mark and putting in the hours I need to in order to remain successful. I’m still developing new prompts for my students and going through prompts created and vetted by others that my students can use. I am excited to be around writers –if only virtually. It feels good to be a part of that community and offer what I can to help writers move further along with their stories.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I plan to write something pretty good this summer. Oh yeah. Its is gonna happen.

Some Thoughts:

1. I don’t understand NFTs.
2. Reworking my desk setup to display my lightsabers. I plan to display them in the camera range and help complete the look.

Still binging my catalogue of new-ish Mr. Nightmare clips as, somewhere in the distance, the Warriors are getting clapped. I’m trying to get into a particular mindset and prepare for a solid summer of writing and of teaching writing and get back to that being the core of my professional life. Now it isn’t always that and is fluid or absent, but I want it to be that and I want to be representative of that in my life. Lately I’ve been thinking about who I want to be vs. who I am and moving in the right direction. I want to be the kind of writer who is able to go to conventions and present topics and sell books and have a good time meeting people and hanging out. That is more in line with who I am and intend to be outside of the professional.

Let’s talk about Deshaun Watson.

I want to start this by saying I am not defending this man in any way shape or form. He is an idiot. He is an idiot in exactly the same way that Micheal Vick was an idiot. In saying this I am going to acknowledge the embedded racism that makes the Watson and Vick cases front page news that may ultimately cost the latter a chunk of his career as it did the former. I am saying this largely because of the quick and dirty dismissal of the Robert Kraft incident where he solicited sex from a massage parlor and was arrested (charges dropped) and the people giving the massages (and sex) were also arrested, prosecuted for sex trafficking, and later jailed. I can’t even begin to get into the nonsense of Commanders owner Daniel Snyder and his 15 cases of sexual harassment. These owner cases vanish as quickly as possible–with Snyder’s being the catalyst for a much needed name change as an obvious way to deflect attention.

But this isn’t about right, wrong, or even racism. This is about a very dumb man who entered into an arrangement with a woman who enabled his behavior (including with her own daughter–by her own admission) and empowered him to put women is terrible situations. Let me be clear: Watson may not be willing to say it (legal reasons) but he went to these women with the intent of having a sexual encounter. He admitted to having sex with three of them, and the fact that he went to at least 40 different women indicates that this is some sort of fetish he is into. The problem is that this fetish doesn’t take into account the feelings or rights of the women being solicited. They are being abused, and while some are okay with it, some are not. He is clearly of the mindset that massages end with a ‘happy ending’ and that is not right.

So, we have established him as the bad guy. Now let’s acknowledge the culture that gave him that stupid idea.

When life beats you up, fall into fiction!

I’m going to dive a bit deeper into the Itokolian Duelists. After watching the first two episodes of Obi-Wan, I am in the mindset of trying to create something in the moments I can find inner peace. The something in this particular instance is a costume and a backstory for that costume. I’m thinking about the hair and what that hair should look like. I don’t have a ton of hair to begin with so I’m going to consider shaving vs. adding. Styling through shaving seems to be the look here–something with lines of hair reflective of a clan pattern.

That brings us to clans. In my mind the Itokolians are a clan based culture and each battled–largely as a sport and a way to settle land disputes. While most clans were roving, a few were stationary, and they represented the ‘elders’ the way the Lenape represented the elders of the native tribes of early east coast America.

I want the garb to represent that to an extent–the long cloth on only one side being a mark of defensive posture and or how they ride their beasts of burden. For this I plan to load the light sabers (oh yeah, they definitely used those and were NOT Jedi) on the right side–one logn on the back and one short on the leg.