10 Minute Rule

I should just call tonight’s post Beast Mode.

Time and time again I find myself drawn to Marshawn Lynch. I liked him as a player though only in passing. My youngest feels like he is the one true Running Back in the NFL. The kid loves him, and being the kind of father I am I find all sorts of videos and shows on the guy. The more I get to know about Lynch, the more I recognize that Beast Mode is a genuinely honest and open human being. Tonight’s lesson came from Bear Grylls, who took Marshawn through rough terrain as part of Grylls survival show. I laughed at the honesty and vulnerability Marshawn displayed. It was fantastic to see a man built on a foundation of toughness show that he can be afraid and he can still rise to the occasion in spite of that fear.

Lynch is exactly what I think of when we hear about athletes needing to be role models. He runs a social outreach network powered by his salary and the support of the city around it. Lynch gives scholarships and does youth outreach, but most importantly, he is unabashedly real. He’s street and doesn’t pretend he is not. Listen to how he talks and you know right away. Wait for a brief outburst of ‘that real’ and you will be rewarded. Grylls was. He brought skittles on their excursion, knowing the connection Lynch had to the candy his mother used to give him before games. Lynch responded by jacking the bag in the middle of the night, waking Grylls in the process.

Lynch is good people and as I watch my youngest emulate him, I am proud to see that happen. He chose a guy that is more than what you see on the surface.

Some Thoughts:

1. The role of parents in the desires and successes of their children cannot be understated. Yes, at some point you must let them go and define their own path, but their energy or lethargy or desires can be traced directly back to the conditions under which they were raised. I watch this every day in my life and recognize that I am not always making the best kids.
2. I ain’t making the worst kids either.

I am so proud to be a teacher. There are days where this is not the case at all–the days where the class chemistry is so bad that it is more like working as a janitor than as an educator. This semester I have 7 classes and six are totally awesome. One is trash, but that kind of stuff is gonna happen. Heck, I might even turn that one around. Thus is the power of teacher-student interactions. I think I’ve gotten things off to a good start this year–even if tonight left me drained…

 

Some Thoughts:

1. RGIII is S-A-W-F-T.
2. Meanwhile, Victor Cruz has heart for years and you can’t teach that.
3. Josh Norman failed to impress. Revis actually pooped the bed.

I am starting the blog before football. I ought to be meeting with my writing group this morning, but instead I am in my office preparing to produce something they can actually see. I wouldn’t say I am stalled as a writer so much as I am hesitant. Steinback famously quipped, “When I face the desolate impossiblity of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”

I’m pretty sure he spelled impossibility correctly when he wrote it. I’m also certain that the idea of the impossible, while terrifying to him, was something he overcame quickly. He stood on the edge of the cliff and jumped. I stand on the edge of the cliff and pontificate. This is indicative of our relative success.

So here I stand and prepare to find an excuse not to write. Perhaps I will deal with school work, or sort files, or do laundry. Or maybe, just maybe, I will write.

Some Thoughts:

1. The greatest indication of M. Shymalan’s skill as a director is the utter dissapointment people had when first seeing the creature in Signs. Think about it. What could he have put on screen to meet your expectations? What rough beast, its time come round at last, could’ve shambled unto the screen and been greater than the expectations birthed inside of your own head? Where did those expectations come from? I’ll tell you where: He built up a level of suspense and expectation so complete that when we first see the thing so many of us laughed at how far short it fell of the horror we expected in our minds.
2. I looked up a few reviews of my work last night. Not too many. It felt the way I imagine it does to hear a noise somewhere in the basement and go to the top of the stairs, call out into the darkness, and perhaps flip on the lights. You look, but not terribly hard because you are afraid of what you might find. As expected, I saw nothing to terrify me. Still, I remained at the top of the stairs.

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.