Month: February 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

Feeling better today, although it was a busy Tuesday and Wednesday morning has me at St. P’s for my library duty. Thus, I’m going to try to breeze through some stuff before I get too far behind.

Marcus Smart
A buddy of mine has said all year that he found Smart scary. Not in a threatening way, but rather, well, I’ll paraphrase, “That guy is just such a competitor, I’m afraid he’s going to snap at some point.” I guess that happened Saturday.

I’m of the camp that athletes should never interact with the fans, unless it’s good-natured trash talk. Challenging fans, no matter what they say, is just asking for trouble. You simply can’t win as a player if you step to a fan, whether they’ve said something offensive to you, thrown something at you, or just been in your ear all night.

I’m interested to see how the time off affects Smart. There’s no way to say that this season hasn’t been a disappointment for him. Will he use the time away from the court to get his mind right, reset, and play the way he’s capable? Or with Oklahoma State’s other issues on the court (under-sized, under-manned), are they a lost cause and he will continue to be frustrated for the final month of the season? Or will he just muddle through the rest of the schedule, eager to get out of college and get to his training for the NBA draft?

ESPN will be in Stillwater on March 1 for the KU game. I know they’re hoping for a big redemption story.

Michael Sam
I’m loathe to give any University of Missouri athlete any credit, but I’m offering up my biggest props to Sam. I believe I’ve consistently written here, in the ten years I’ve published online, that eventually we will look back at all the controversies about whether gay people deserve the same rights and treatment as other tax-paying Americans as a silly episode in our history. I still believe that.

That said, when Sam came out publicly on Sunday, it became a day that will always be remembered. He will get drafted, he’s too good not to. But even if he never does anything notable on the field in the NFL, he’s taken an important step for everyone, not just football players or gay men. We have a long way to go, but people like Sam will help us get there.

My favorite Twitter line about Sam came from a woman. NPR’s Lina Holmes wrote:

I really feel like I need to explain to some of the locker room worries how women manage to deal with straight male doctors.

Bravo! Just because a gay man is in the locker room with you does not mean he’s going to force himself on you.

KU Hoops
Longer post on this later this week, or early next. Quick summary: they’re in a better spot that I hoped they would be when the Big 12 season began. Amazingly, next week’s game at Texas Tech might be the biggest game of the year for them. Win that, they can still lose their remaining two road games at Oklahoma State and West Virginia and, should they hold serve at home, likely win the conference. Lose in Lubbock, and the door is ajar.

The good thing is Texas has a brutal schedule left and the rest of the contenders seem content on beating each other up. That 7-0 start for KU will likely loom large when the season ends.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the living room, looking out the front window, waiting for the next snowstorm to hit. The first flurries are expected to start falling in the next hour, and by morning we’ll have 8-10” of new snow. Yeah, I’m about done with this winter bullshit.

What a waste of a month January was. St. P’s and St. E’s follow different schedules, so the girls had slightly different delay/cancellation experiences last month. Both of them sucked, though. M. and C. missed five days of school, one of which they’ve already made up, and were delayed just three times. L.’s school, which follows the local public school schedule, had it tougher. Six days cancelled, six delayed, plus the MLK holiday. They were in school 13 days in January, only seven for the entire four hours. Since it’s a preschool, they’re not making the days up. Which, honestly, I’m fine with. We’ve made enough adjustments to our calendar already without having to add a bunch more make up days.

I’m guessing that, at best, both schools will be delayed tomorrow, if not cancelled again.

We should have saved one of those Florida trips for this year.

I had big plans for January, too. I was going to begin making some contacts that could, potentially, lead to some more work projects this winter and, ideally, turn into at least a part-time gig next fall when L. moves to St. P’s. All this weather bullshit, combined with my natural laziness, means I haven’t done squat in that area. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow…

Anyway, I know we’re not the only ones suffering this winter. And we’re fortunate that I am able to be home and deal with all the schedule craziness. I’m just annoyed, a little bummed out, and completely done with winter. I know there are other parents who have had a terrible time finding people to watch their kids when the school schedule has been adjusted.

I just hope this is the last big snowstorm of the year. Or at least the last one that hits during the school week. There’s already another potentially big storm forecast for the weekend. Sigh…

I’ve come up with a phrase or two over my ten years of publishing my thoughts online that I particularly enjoy. One of those is “comprehensive ass-kicking,” used to describe, well, comprehensive ass-kickings.

I’m pretty sure the Super Bowl is the classic example of one.

Man, that was ugly. I missed the opening 12 seconds, as we were hosting friends and there were kids running around and we lost track of time. I raced downstairs, kicked on the TV, and looked at the clock. “Cool,” I thought, “I didn’t miss anything.” Then I saw the score. 2-0, Seattle. Wait, what?

I also missed most of the third quarter as we were saying our goodbyes and putting the kids to bed. So I missed Percy Harvin’s back-breaking kickoff return to start the half.

In other words, I pretty much missed the two most important moments of the game. And when I was watching, I was putting away some quality beers with alcohol contents in the 7-10% range, so my view of the game may have been impaired.

Not a bad game to miss the details of.

I never saw that result coming. If there was going to be a blowout, surely it was going to be Peyton throwing for 500 yards and eight TDs, right? But, he looked awful in the biggest game of the year. Again. Seattle overwhelmed the Denver line, the Legion of Boom manhandled the Broncos receivers, and Peyton never looked sharp when he did have time. It’s not all Peyton’s fault, and he doesn’t deserve all the blame. It is, though, another pretty weighty piece of his evidence for those who argue he isn’t the greatest QB to play the game.

Seattle, in many ways, reminds me of the early Belichick-era Patriots. They are not loaded with superstars. Marshawn Lynch is a great back, but I doubt many people would put him in the top five in the league. Russell Wilson isn’t an imposing quarterback like Andrew Luck, nor a game-breaker like a healthy RGIII. But that dude finds a way to make big plays over-and-over. Richard Sherman gets most of the attention on defense, but that side of the ball is loaded with great players the average fan can’t name. Just one of those teams with a bunch of guys who are put in the ideal position by their coaches and turn into a roster that is better as a whole than its parts are individually. It will be very interesting to see how they handles success, as they have the parts and salary structure to keep being good for awhile if everyone remains committed.

Congrats to Seattle. I don’t think any city/franchise “deserves” to win when they’ve waited years to do so. But it was cool to see Seahawks fans hugging each other after the game. It’s funny how sports does that to us.

And I hope that Peyton comes back for another season. Not because he can’t stand going out like that, or because he’s obsessed with adding a second Super Bowl ring. No, I want him to come back because he was brilliant this season. Even in an era where the passing game rules, and guys like Aaron Rogers, Drew Brees, and Tom Brady have done ridiculous things, and Matt Stafford and Andrew Luck seem poised to push the game forward again, Peyton is still the pinnacle of the modern pro quarterback. I want to keep seeing him sling it around and making defenses look silly as long as he can do it.

Now on to college hoops and the wait for pitchers and catchers to report…

Four books in four weeks to kick off the year. But one of those was a children’s book I knocked out in an afternoon, so I’m feeling like I didn’t take advantage of January the way I should have. Also, I’m skipping one book, just because I’m still thinking about how to write about it. It’s the first time I’ve read a book written by someone I know, and while I liked it, for some weird reason I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts on it into words. Maybe next month.

The Round House – Louise Erdich
Interesting that I read this as I was listening to Okkervil River’s The Silver Gymnasium album a ton, as both are about the lives of teenaged boys in the late 1980s.

Here, the focus is on Joe, a 13-year-old Native American living on a reservation in North Dakota in 1983. His father is a tribal judge, his mother works in the reservation administrative offices, thus while his home is modest, he lives in relative luxury compared to many of his friends on the reservation. They spend the summer of 1988 doing what kids all over the United States did: riding bikes, swimming, sneaking around to poke their noses into other people’s business, and living in the esoteric world of a shared pop cultural love. In their case, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

But when his mother is raped and nearly killed by her attacker, his life changes dramatically as he and his friends work to find the man responsible for the crime.

In the process, Joe and his father bump up against the absurdities of Tribal vs. State. vs. Federal law, and the general lack of interest in rape cases when a white man is the rapist and an Indian woman the victim. They grapple with the need for revenge and justice vs. their belief in the rule of law and the desire to live a moral life.

It’s a powerful, often depressing book. It’s hard to believe that things were as backwards and depressed on the reservations as recently as 1988. For all I know, life has not changed that much since then. Which is even more depressing. Also, though, it’s as much about how we treat women. To a father of three girls, it hurt to read parts of this.

Still, a fantastic book.

The One and Only Ivan – Katherine Applegate
I read this on the recommendation of my brother in books, Dave V. He said he and his nine-year-old bookworm both read it. Seemed like a perfect exercise for my nine-year-old bookworm and me. M. muddled through it over the second half of her Christmas break. I think she was too distracted by the new toys and liberal access to Netflix to get through it as quickly as she normally does. But she liked it.

And then I knocked it out in a couple hours one day.

It’s a charming, sad, and beautiful tale of Ivan, a gorilla who lives in a mini-zoo in a sad, old mall in Ohio. With some help from the daughter of the mall janitor and his love of drawing, Ivan helps get his zoo-mates, and himself, transferred to a proper zoo where they can roam freely and be with others of their kind.

Oh the Glory of It All – Sean Wilsey
This has been on my To Read list for at least five years. Every few months I’d check and see if it was available at my library, with the answer always being no. When I was in a book buying mood, there were always others higher on the list. But I finally grabbed it. And I’m glad I did.

It is the memoir of Wilsey, the son of a rich and socially connected couple in San Francisco. Their brutal divorce in the late 70s/early 80s made news not only in the Bay Area, but also in national celebrity and gossip magazines. Following the divorce, Sean’s father, Al, married the woman who had been Sean’s mother’s best friend for years. Awkward. The new step-mother, who had always treated Sean with love and respect, turned on him and began treating him like garbage, especially in comparison to the two sons from her first marriage.

When Sean begins acting out, he’s shipped off to boarding schools on the east coast, where he fucks up spectacularly. He’s sent to “get tough in nature” schools, which he escapes. Eventually he lands at an alternative school in Italy where he finally finds his bearings, settles down, and changes his behavior for the better.

The final third of the book is about Sean and his father reconnecting in the late years of Al’s life, and the aftermath of Al’s death.

This book is alternately horrifying, especially for someone who will have teenagers soon, hilarious, strange, and warm. Wilsey is never really a bad kid. His parents just never know how to deal with him. Knowing he turned out halfway decent makes the craziness of his youth worth wading through.

As with any memoir, others, especially his step-mother, have challenged some of his assertions. Even if the truth he tells isn’t the whole truth, it’s still a portrait of a profoundly messed up family.

January 2014

• Okkervil River – 117
• Dum Dum Girls – 55
• Against Me! – 52
• Wussy – 26
• The Verve – 22
• Paul McCartney – 13
• Finn Brothers – 13
• Pearl Jam – 12
• Other Lives – 11
• The Chelsea Kills – 9

Complete stats available at my Last.fm page.