10 Minute Rule

Today is all about the brain being all over the place. I’m back to reading speculative/hard sci-fi and it is reminding me to think about every day things. I realize that sounds odd, but the stuff I’m reading questions the way we conceptualize every day life and has brought back the question of whether or not we are actually free-thinking beings or if everything we do is a response to a script we were socialized towards from birth. This is the question that initially tipped me towards sociology and psychology and remains that question that reminds me to give time to daily free thoughts. Like these.

Some Thoughts:

1. The WWE has never had a Heavyweight Champion they define as black. I know, the Rock is quite black, but they rather view him as Samoan and advertise him on that basis. So, since ’63 the entertainment league has avoided the black champion and, the league has been notoriously racist over that same time period. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the league is a mirror of Vince McMahon’s inner desires. Yet there are still enough bright superstars to keep most viewers interested. Less so now as he plays out some soap opera drama with his son. Even my kids are bored.
2. One of the issues I am dealing with is a completely disjointed english class. One of the students who actually is making an effort to learn something pulled me aside after class and remarked on the lack of chemistry in the class. Perhaps this impending week off reflects a good time frame to regroup–just like I’ve been trying to do with the Mythology class.
3. Wrestling is helping my kids to discern between reality and fantasy–when they want to. They accept that everything about wrestling appears to be false, but they are unwilling to accept that wrestling itself is false. Its like understanding that the ingredients of a cake can’t really exist and then happily eating a slice. You should see them around Christmas.
4. Spring break is upon us and I haven’t figured out what to do. I recently had a series of conversations that served to remind me that the majority of our lives are based around sports. I want to do something different this break that is not at all sports related–especially now when there are no practices to be held.

Einstein is quoted as saying, “It is not that I’m smart, it is that I stay with the questions much longer.” I hadn’t been able to directly apply that to my life until recently. After a long weekend and a particularly hard day in classes I realized that part of what is making me so frustrated these days is being around people who simply don’t care.

I have a history of not being around the right people. You can track my lifelong productivity by that scale. The better quality of folk I associate with, the happier and more full my life is. This is not to say I’m not around good people, but the majority of my day is spent around people who aren’t making my life better. Of course, defining better or good is a slippery slope in of itself. That is why I am falling back to the Einsteinian view on this particular philosophy. I’m not staying with the questions long enough. Moreover, I’m not staying with the people who are staying with the questions and that has become more and more apparent.

I can count the amount of time I spend with friends in seconds per week. I spend more time with students who don’t remotely care about their education than I do with friends and than I do with students who care about their education. Such a thing wears on you and leads to serious burnout. Worse, it leads to brain rot, mental drain, and an inability to be a creative force and stay fresh and innovative.

Tuesdays and Thursdays I find myself in a room full of excited writers. I love the experience and it renews me every time. Still, it is not enough. I need more of that interaction in my life and not just as a teacher. I need thinkers and doers and people who are pushing the envelope in one way or another. That is what NYC was to me and that is likely why the sleepy suburbs are making me chafe.

1. The sign on the door read ‘No Guns Allowed’ there was some legal mumbo jumbo below the bolded letters and the red circle with a line through it covering a firearm. Their choice to exclude guns was pursuant to one law or another. I thought about it, wondering if I cared very much. Turns out I don’t. I thought I would. In fact, I was certain for some time about not wanting guns in the classroom. Laws have been proposed and battled over for years in regards to guns in the classroom at all age levels. Why Kindergarten teachers would need guns is beyond me, unless you believe Sandy Hook happened (which I happen to believe and wonder why a vocal minority do not). Even then, we are talking about a relatively invisible percentage of situations in which guns would be needed in a school or a restaurant or anywhere, really. Unless you’re looking for trouble…

 

 

2. Inside people were bustling about. The workers moved speedily from table to table, trying to get their customers fed and processed out with as much haste as was allowable in a sit down establishment that didn’t have a giant gold M out front. It made me think of pace, which reminded me of the football championship I’d botched the day before. It wasn’t a thought I really wanted, so I settled down to watch everyone for a while, breathing in the atmosphere and energy of the place. The people were Sunday relaxed and I tried to imagine what their lives were like. They were couples and families, grandpas and grandchildren. They were almost all white, save for the one Asian woman with the white husband. Everyone seemed happy and, though not familiar with each other, they seemed communal.

 

3. The busboy shucking coffee was rather effeminate. I’d noticed him earlier because of his makeup and was curious, not about his orientation but the reactions towards him. The more I watched, the more I recognized that there really weren’t any reactions, as if the people eating simply didn’t care or take offense. I smiled inside.

 

4. I’m not a small town guy. I feel like the stigma of such things creates such an expectation that a small town is nothing I’d ever want to be associated with. The fact is, however, I live in a small town and I do small town things. I’m a local coach. I spend Sunday morning in the café with all the other locals. I talk to my neighbors. The more time I spend here the more I wonder if this is the existence I am meant for or if it is simply a rest stop along the way of my journey towards… whatever. I don’t have any answers but I do recognize that the white picket fence is starting to chafe and I haven’t a clue what to do about it.

Some Thoughts:

1. I find the title funny. Just me. Get with it.

 

I’m writing this after my town’s first ever flag football tourney. We lost. Both teams. Our older kids suffered from a coach (me) who wasn’t there the whole time because he had another squad. More importantly, they weren’t really that old and in the 10-12 division, the older stronger teams won the day. Our younger kids fell victim to, well, themselves. We played in the finals against an out of town team we’d beaten earlier in the day and were far too tired to really give it our all. Somehow those kids seemed fresh. Furthermore, we did not play well and that led to a loss.

Which led to the end of a very fun season. I’m worn out and grateful that it is over. I know soccer is right around the corner, but my role in that is merely as spectator. The other coaches in town can deal with that stuff. All I want to do is nap for an entire summer.

Sports takes up such a predominant part of our lives here that it is hard to know what to do when you aren’t worrying about it. While I am still helping to coach one tackle team, that work is limited and I can honestly say I have time to do things with my kids.

The problem is, I am not sure what to do with em.

Struggling for a topic tonight. Considered writing about prayer, but there is nothing I have to say that isn’t going to come off as awkwardly as the Trump post a few days back. Apparently I don’t do satire well. I also don’t do so well with TV drama, despite the hours I spend watching them. I’m not sure what I am trying to gain from so much bad tv. A distraction, yes, but I feel like I have the deeper goal of uncovering what works in episodic film, a nobel gesture, but one that didn’t –hasn’t–worked.

Sleep works. I’m exhausted to the point of falling down on the blog again.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I remain surprised by how much sports consumes my life. If I could just shut it out I’d have entire days of the week available to me.

Exhale.

It has been a whirlwind of a week. There are a lot of things happening at once and not all of it is wonderful. For the sake of inner smiles, I’ll start with good, go to bad, and go back to good in the end.

Here’s some good: I got to see my eldest run track for the first time. I was super proud of him. I watched track quickly become his favorite sport and watched him have some decent times despite not being equipped with the right shoes or having very much practice in certain events. He was proud of himself, especially in distance where he beat kids he swore up and down were faster than him. Moreover, he did it in the craziest fashion imaginable. He ran a 100m dash and within a minute of finishing that race they were lining him up to run the 1600m. He did that race less than a minute and a half after the 100m. Dude hadn’t even caught his breath. Beast mode.

I like to use that term, beast mode, in regards to my boys because it reflects a certain killer instinct and ability to rise above common performance. Unfortunately, the beast comes out of coaches as well. I’ve been seeing it more and more in flag football and my dumb ass has been feeding in. It doesn’t take a whole lot for me to turn into one of those coaches lately, and I am certain it is at least partially inspired by doing too much and getting involved in petty conflicts. It is supposed to be about the kids and not about a coaches’ ego or desire to be the leader of a winning team or desire to defeat another coach whose ego and attitude you find personally offensive. This is not about taking someone down a peg.

Hell, I am not even playing. I’m coaching. No pay, no real stake other than my stake in the players. Nothing at stake beyond ego and I need to invest less of it in winning or losing and more of it in putting the kids in position to succeed.

That is the good I’ll end with. I’m watching the kids enjoy this and I enjoy them doing it. So, maybe thats the focus I need to have. That and that alone.

No, this account has not been hijacked.

I decided to come out and take a firm stance. I decided it was time to do what so little of America seems willing to do right now: Be absolutely honest about the nation I live in. If we just take a moment to peel back the veil of American society we see something very striking. We see, without a doubt, that Donald Trump represents the id of the American people. Donald Trump represents, to quote dictionary.com, “the part of the psyche, residing in the unconscious, that is the source of instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in accordance with the pleasure principle”. He is, therefore, the most honest representative of America that there can be, and as such ought to be our president.

Neil Gaiman wrote in American Gods, “This is the only country in the world, that worries about what it is…The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are.” Well, we know what we are as well. We just spend an awful lot of time catering to the voices of the minority opinion. America is 63% non-hispanic white. Hispanics, 17%. People who are black like me only represent 12.3%. Asians barely creep past the 5% mark while those who consider themselves multi-racial number 2.4% (according to the Census Bureau). So when you hear ‘Red-blooded Americans’ odds are you are in a conversation about white people. Trump caters to that demographic. Trump caters to the mindset that America is to be the all powerful voice and leadership of this planet. Trump is representative of who we are (primarily) as a nation and should be given the job to lead us. It is time for us to stop trying to be this all-inclusive stay nation and become who we have long been deep down inside. Trump brings all of this to the surface.

To say that I am wrong is to say that this nation doesn’t need to be governed by its id, but instead, as a brain is governed by its ego and superego, needs some other representative that mitigates our raw voice and perhaps gives strength and soul to the voice of minority thought. But are we truly that nation? Are we a nation that wants to hear all voices, or are we a nation that wants to be strong, and make money, and be great in our own eyes and in the way we have for some time defined ourselves and defined strength?

I do not have the answers to these questions. I can only say that when Barack Obama first appeared as a candidate offering promises of hope and change, the resounding response from a significant portion of the country was, “Keep your change” so perhaps it is in this fashion that we have come to Trump who means to undo that change (which apparently was for the worse) and make America great again. If we are to accept who we are as a country, and if we are to magnify that then we need to become the country of Trump and vote to save ourselves from the alternative.

February closed its doors with multiple shootings. This one, perpetrated by a 14 yr old was considered so ordinary by CNN that I had to search along the sidebar between Caitlyn Jenner stories and a cop-involved shooting to find it. Equally disappointing is the fact that another article, this one about a cop murdered on the first day of work, did not make the front page. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter anymore. It is the way rings were when I was a kid. People get shot, guns get overlooked, and the cycle continues. At least the very badly written and performed Chi-raq made an effort to show us the gravity of the numbers. Still, who is listening? I don’t think anyone is listening or truly worried. Superman doesn’t worry about catching a cold and Americans don’t worry about the lasting effects of our culture.

This latest shooting involves an 8th grader culture which through whatever form of social learning they partook in, recognized that bringing a gun to school and trying to take people out was a good idea. I get being fed up with bullying and the like, but I don’t get the mindset that says, “just shoot em” Of course, the shooter had to be crazy, right? Wrong. The problem with that thinking is that it dismisses any possible discourse about the conditions that led to the shooting. At first, everyone wants to know how someone can come to the point to shoot a bunch of people. Once the crazy label sticks, nobody cares about the conditions. The focus shifts to gun access and politics.

I feel like we live in a shoot em up culture that not only condones public violence but rewards it. In such a culture one cannot be surprised that people get hurt.

I think I figured out why nobody with skin like mine was nominated for Best Actor or Actress. They were all too busy wasting their damn time doing Chi-raq. Seriously. No wonder Spike Lee boycotted the Oscars. He didn’t want anyone to have a chance to talk legit smack about his latest movie come atomic bomb.

It is a bad movie.

I’ve seen bad movies. This is on par with Eraserhead. I mean what he tried to accomplish and what actually happened is as far apart as Bill Nye’s science and Ted Cruz’s reason. Let me start with the fact that Nick Cannon was playing the hardest gangster rapper in the whole movie.

Nick Cannon.

The story of Chi-raq borrows from a classic tale discussing the war between the Spartans and the Trojans. Lee layers his own baggage (the slow and steady gentrification of New York, his lack of faith in those who are servants of the church, a crap load of female tropes, the war in Iraq, his disgust over the dislike and distrust of Obama) into a narrative that is as sing song and rhyme as any rap song or nursery rhyme and the level of intelligence lies somewhere in between. Well, maybe closer to total idiocy than anything else.

There is actually a sequence where a general wearing a confederate flag blindfold and underwear is sitting spread eagle on a cannon called whistling dick and waiting for a cammo clad black woman to have sex with him. Yeah, that actually happened.

I cannot condone this movie in any way, shape, or form. I’m glad Spike got it out of his system but I truly must question why he published the dang thing. What, did he expect an Oscar? I expected to turn it off, which I still might. See, I’m writing as the show plays in the background. I am trying to distract myself in any way possible, because to really acknowledge that Lee fell this far (one chick said “You just like having your man by the Jackie Robinson’s”) would be to admit that one of the most important (if not the most important) black director’s in the history of cinema was done.

I’m not ready to say that. I am also not ready to say Chi-raq is worth the film it was printed on.

Chris Rock killed it at the Oscars. If my partner in viewing is to be believed, he killed it a little too much. In other words, the controversy over race was expertly addressed early in the Oscars, but remained a prevalent theme that began to detract from the overall experience as the hours wore on. I agree with her in part. The constant references to the lack of color did drone after a while, but this was a necessary argument to have. What concerned me the most was that the whole race argument fell on the shoulders of Jada Pinkett-Smith, who doesn’t deserve to be out in front of this thing.

Joke of the night: (Rock) Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rhianna’s panties. I wasn’t invited! That joke encapsulated the problem right there. She doesn’t have the gravitas to make the argument that she did. Instead she came off as a woman angry about her husband not being recognized for this particular season of film work. I didn’t see his film, so I don’t know if he deserves it or not. I do think the people who won were very deserving of the honor–except for Leo who took that award from someone who earned it this year.

I believe there is a problem with being non-white in hollywood and I believe that problem is systemic and financially driven. The people with the money swear that white leads are needed to make money and that isn’t entirely true anymore. However, that old money tied to old ideas is what keeps Hollywood in our hearts and keeps the majority of people of color in the industry on the outs.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. What I love the most about the walking dead are the complex relationships and love stories that spring forth in this land of after death. The story here–the real story–is how you manage to stay human and sexual and maintain faith in the whole thing moving forward when it is so much easier to give up and become a monster–living or otherwise.