10 Minute Rule

Before I get too deep into the review, I need to confess that my movie going experience was affected my outside factors. In fact the projector itself seemed so put off by the film that a half hour in the thing just shut off. The theater had to start it up again and ‘fast forward’ to the part where we left off. This isn’t a typical moviegoing experience, but it did make the movie memorable. Unfortunately, that is all that made the film memorable.

Joy is a story loosely based on the life of HSN star Joy Mangano, who you may know as the woman who invented the self-ringing mop. The woman herself appears to be an interesting figure, but as my partner pointed out, this movie seems more biographical of Jennifer Lawrence than Mangano. Hence, I suppose, the term loosely based.

One could say the film is loosely based on everything David Lynch ever wrote and directed (save eraser head. That was just ridiculous). The movie felt like someone trying to do a Lynch film and not actually being Lynch, which is a style that I am starting to suspect typifies David O. Russell. I Heart Huckabees, Anyone?

Lawrence and DeNiro headline a hard working cast that does what it can to inject something real into this drama, but most of it–even  the always dope Elizabeth Rohm–seems like they are beating their heads against a wall, or a script in this instance.

I recommend seeing this movie. At home. On Bootleg. Or Lifetime.  The redeeming quality of the film was that it stopped for a while, forcing the theater to give me free tickets to another film. I’ll review that one in this space soon…

I had a moment of weakness and complaint today, approaching the head of the parks and rec and asking why some teams get to keep players 5 years in a row and other don’t get to keep players in that fashion. I am a little bitter about the whole situation, because I feel like the team I wound up with is talented but can’t really match up with the stacked deck of a particular team in my league. In other words, its the same thing I see every year for certain coaches.

This year I have three teams and two days removed from the season openers, I haven’t been able to get a full practice for a single team. Weather is an issue, but more often than not it is parents who aren’t quite able to make the practices for a variety of issues. At the 10-12 level I have two players who are basically meeting the team for the first time and a third we haven’t seen in weeks and he is supposed to be the starting quarterback.

8-9, where all the drama is (there is a team just like this at the 10-12 level, but whatever) I’m dealing with a team that doesn’t really know the offense or the defense very well and given the limited number of players overall (9 with 6 on the field), we haven’t been able to run much of anything. We do have confidence to go with a handful of players who have never played before and are very timid. I am going to need to manage people better than I have in the past in order to ensure the players have fun and are successful.

I don’t have a thing to say about 6-7 yet. We haven’t seen enough players to even know what we have beyond a handful of ‘starters’. I have a cornerstone to build around and hope to play some good games. It will be fun to see what goes on with this group.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I think we are at the point where we need to part with our cat. The last cat was born around the same time as my allergy-stricken boy and while she affected him, it was nowhere near as bad as the new kitty. This relationship is unhealthy for my son and I need to make the call to move on from the cat–from cats in general.

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about my spirit. Apparently the words I put to web lead many to believe I am depressed. Even my mom was concerned about me. Let me be clear: I’m not depressed in the least. In truth, I’m extremely happy and hopeful about life. I recognize that there are crater-sized pitfalls all around me, but I also realize I am exactly where I want to be at this point in my journey. Moreover, I have a solid support system in place–people who love me and care about the writing I do and the things I love. This is an extremely fortunate thing; something not a lot of people can say.

Part of why I think people feel I’m somber is because I am so dang entrenched in thought and consideration. There are times where I feel completely overwhelmed and times where I feel like I have nothing at all to do, which leads to this sense of imbalance, and if anything this lack of pure giggles 24/7 is a result of really feeling how that imbalance affects me. I automatically feel better when I’m overwhelmed, because I don’t know what to do with myself when I don’t have a lot to do. Conversely, I get burned out very fast when I am overwhelmed, which leads to a great deal of fatigue. None of it is healthy. So, I’ve been trying to step back and process how I think and see the world and consider better ways to do things–considering balance.

Balance, I think is the most important thing to achieve in life, because a balanced man moves forward without falling into those pitfalls.

I am one of those people who probably would still have an afro if I could. I mean that not to reflect a love of big hair so much as acknowledge that I tend to appreciate static things. Memories are born of time and place and as time passes, places are sure to change. As such, returning to those places in search of your memories can often be a fruitless and frustrating experience.

 

I miss Harlem. I miss the subtle danger of it; knowing that I couldn’t walk down a certain street late at night without definitely getting got. As I walked past that street yesterday I noticed the police had portable floodlights running, chasing away any menace that old spot could hold. It just isn’t my Harlem anymore. The Apollo Theater has a Banana Republic attached to it. On the surface that seems like one of those, ‘so what?’ moments, but think through it. The Apollo is perhaps the most iconic black theater in the world. It is representative of the burgeoning black culture of the Harlem Renaissance. Banana Republic is a high thread count, high-end version of the GAP. The GAP.

 

I cannot say that all of the renovations to Harlem are bad, but I can say that they are largely designed to chase money and as a result chase the people who built the culture there out of there. Like my Aunt who passed, after spending fifty years in the same apartment in Lenox Terrace, most of the people who built the idea of what Harlem is and left a legacy of family are left to watch all of that swept away in a cloud of expanse and money.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Apologies for a painfully short blog yesterday. The funeral, burial, and post-funeral gathering lasted from early morning into well into the evening. This is a day I did not have the mind to write. I was burnt from the travel, emotions, and seeing so much family after such a long time. It was a warming family experience and the tribute to the memory of my great Aunt. It was also a lot for one day.
2. On another note I want to thank my family and friends for all of the love and support that poured in. It is always comforting to know that in times of need you are not alone. My mother said words to that effect after everyone was gone and we were left with the conversation of ‘what happens next?’
3. I also learned that being a grown up means handling stuff. It means more than just being the guy people turn to but being prepared to be that guy—being knowledgeable and ready for any situation that presents itself, because things are going to happen unexpectedly and people are going to turn to you for guidance.
4. New York gave me a cold.

This situation in Oregon has me rely confused. In a time when we are supposed to be cracking down on terrorism, how is an armed group of men being allowed to take over a government facility AND get crazy press off of it? This is a bizarre situation that is only getting more crazy as new evidence emerges. Turns out this group is being lead by the sons of Cliven Bundy who famously forced the government to just walk away from a million dollars in debt Bundy owed, because the Bundy family went guns up and decided to stand up. Again, if I decided the IRS was wack and was going to defend my ‘right to not pay’ with a rifle in hand, I’d be in jail or dead within minutes.

These guys are still there!

This is really ridiculous and needs to be handled.

I’m sitting in my mother’s living room still recovering from yesterday’s red-eye to New York only hours removed from the impending funeral of my great aunt. Needless to say I’m emotionally unbalanced. I have a very small family to begin with and with her death I can now count the members of my family on my mom’s side that are older than I am on one hand. Maybe it is the churning of memories, the slow movements through my aunts house, even the pulse of the city itself that reminds me of how I grew up. Each moment here is draped in memory, and the more I remember things the more confused I get. For starters, where did black Santa come from?

Its a curious question to be sure. It popped into my head while sitting here looking at a black santa doll, a remnant of this year’s christmas to be sure. The thing is, there was no black santa when I was growing up. There was no Kwanzaa either. The holiday was formed before I was born but it didn’t gain any real traction until I was at least ten. Being here and seeing all these new traditions makes the past feel distant and in many ways false–as if I couldn’t have come from this place and these people whose new customs I do not know.

The death of loved ones makes matters even worse because Aunt Darlie was the memory keeper; the person who knew what happened, didn’t happen, and how things unfolded for our entire family. It was her self-directed and very important role and now there isn’t anyone out there to fill that. So I wind up feeling like a person who grew up in a history that no longer exists–one that has been replaced by modern responses to commercial holidays and gentrified neighborhoods. I’ve become a tourist in my own childhood. Strange feeling there.

*Apologies for not posting this yesterday. I was away from the internet while in transit.*

Today I spent 6 hours on the football field watching my three boys have a great time playing a game I love and they have come to love as well. I cannot remember how I started playing football. I know it wasn’t my mom who got me started (or ever expressed any desire in my playing). It is just one of those things I discovered individually. I wonder if I’ve given my own boys enough room to discover things individually. Nowadays it feels like their lives are so scripted that there isn’t a lot of room for self discovery. As a kid I was lucky if I had a ‘planned event’ to go to or be a part of. Everything was me trying to find new avenues away from boredom. Today I spend a lot of my life planning things for the kids to do and spending an enormous amount of time being on—creating an environment where they are challenged, fulfilled, and given things to do.

 

I get that it is a different world from the one I grew up in, but how much of kids lives really need to be scripted and filled with activity. There is a lot to be said for self – discovery and independent exploration. Maybe this year I dial things back. Maybe I move away from the console and closer to the front yard where they learn how to decide for themselves what is fun and what is a waste of time.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. There is also a lot to be said for balance and for carving out enough of the day to be about you. I say this not so much because I don’t want to devote time to my kids, but because I also think it is important for them to recognize that being a parent means that your life changes—not ends. In other words, they need to see me experiencing my life and doing the things I love—especially the things that don’t necessarily involve or include them at the core. This shows them that parents can remain people.

 

 

 

 

Black Santa and other responsive fables

 

I spend a good deal of time around people who qualify as devoted gym rats. I am not such a person in any aspect of my life. My best friend once spent hours and hours training his video game character (in a non MMO–the original Shadowrun video game in fact) just to be prepared and bad ass enough to take on the game world once he stepped out of the door of his doss. I’m not that guy either. I’m the other guy–the one who does stuff when it is necessary and apparently works as hard as necessary to complete a task. It isn’t a bad person to be, but it isn’t who I want to be.

I want to be him, in a sense. I want to work as hard, not as necessary, but as possible. More to the point, I want to want to work that hard and train that diligently and do the things needed in order to be successful. I cannot say that I did all of that in 2015. I cannot say that I will in 2016. I can say that I gained an important level of awareness of where I am at with things and how I react to the world around me. Most importantly, I figured out the good in my heart and soul… and the bad.

So here’s my resolution in 2016: I’m going to be really good to myself. I’m going to allow myself the courage to fail and to learn from that. I’m going to allow my self the courage to succeed and learn from that.

Above all else, I really want to be the best version of me. I think I’m ready to actually make that happen.

2015 saved its best punch for last, and I have to admit. It dang near killed me. It al started well. The kids showed up at 5:40 and I was prepared with plates of sausage and pancakes to charge them up for the day to come. I knew there was some bad news to deliver right from the start. My great aunt–their great great aunt–passed away and I needed to tell them. They took it well. She was very old and lived a full life, so it helped that I was more interested in celebrating her memory than mourning it. It also helped that the news was given before we were set to drive to Flagstaff, AZ (a 3.5 hr trip) for their first ever ‘snow day’ sledding experience. The drive down was fun and filled with Daddy DJ and all sorts of growing excitement as we crested into snow territory. That’s about the only bit of good I can recall.

We hit the slopes and all had sleds and no gloves. My first trip down was super fast and I froze my hands. All the change in my pockets dumped out on slide. I collected it. The littlest Talislegger felt the same and demanded we go back to the car and get some gloves, even if we only had football gloves in the car.

The moment I got to the car things were bad. I couldn’t find my keys. It turns out I lost them on that first (and ultimately only) slide down the hill. I spent the next three hours searching through the snow for keys and growing desperately angry at a really ornery and not at all helpful ranger staff. I never found the keys.

After a dozen calls to different locksmiths I finally convinced one to drive up the mountain to make me a new key. He did it and charged me a straight up stupid amount of money for the service. Still, I was absolutely grateful for him and his good work.

Finally we got back in the car and headed home. We stopped to grab gifts for parties the boys had to go to (one that night) and after ten minutes on a series of unmoving lines we realized we would never get service and were getting later and later for the parties we were supposed to go to.

By the time I got home I thought the worst was over, but it wasn’t. I came home to garbage strewn all over the kitchen and library. I’d left a full (and closed) bag of garbage next to the garbage can and forgot to take it out in the morning before we left. The dog was grateful for the leftovers and, well, destroyed multiple floors.

Now I’m tired and bothered and sick of 2015. Happy new year and good riddance.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is not lost on me that my last post of 2015 is exactly 100 past the game year I became involved in writing for Shadowrun…
2. Sometimes I feel like I already died and I’m living some fantasy of a life I could’ve had. Weird but true.

 

A core principal of how I see the world is the idea that views–all views–are constructed. Unfortunately, some views are created as absolutes, which don’t allow any space for contrary or even slightly different views. Religion, for example is one of those views where often there is little room for different views. Is there one God or Many? God or Allah? The division we draw along these views creates tension that often bleeds into outright conflict. At the same time, the distinctions, or lines we draw, about our views is what creates identity.

What is identity but the balance of how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. That value is shaped by what we see the world as and how we see ourselves in it. This is all a large equation; the plus and minus of viewpoints and the 0,1 of computer language. When we find people who are similar to us we are largely talking about how these people view the world and view themselves and how they see their role and place in the world and the factors that affect that. This is why it wasn’t surprising that  a group of people in Walmart who all happen to be ‘open carry’ people felt the need to come together and acknowledge each other. It is culture and culture is often the signpost of identity.

The point of all this is to say that holding tightly to views creates suffering. The more I base my reality around particular views, the more I am hurt or enraged or shocked by the world not existing in accordance with those particular views. It is only when I am able to pull back and allow myself space to question, consider, even evolve my views that I can then find peace.