For Whom the Blog Tolls

5 Pieces I'm Proud Of: 2014

2014-12-27T12:11:00.001-05:00

Hey all,

This is a collection of links to a few things I've written in 2014 that I'm especially proud of. I've written quite a lot this year, and it was tough to narrow down, but I felt it was important to just zero in on a handful to share. Here they are:

"The Best Team No One's Talking About": A longform piece on the Ohio State Women's Rowing Team, which previewed what would eventually be a national championship season.

http://www.landgrantholyland.com/2014/3/31/5358288/ohio-state-womens-rowing-national-championship

"The 2014 Big Ten All-Heist Team": A look at the guys with the coolest names in the Big Ten, told through the lens of an Ocean's 11-esque caper.

http://www.landgrantholyland.com/2014/9/21/6284223/the-2014-big-ten-all-heist-team

"Cardale Jones and the Last Crusade": The best damn Ohio State QB fanfiction you will read this year.

http://www.landgrantholyland.com/2014/12/5/7318501/ohio-state-football-cardale-jones-big-ten-championship-game

"A Bus Story": A short reflection on the ideas of memory, judgment, and ownership.

http://315buckeye.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-bus-story.html

"Blankmap Chronicles: Book I, Chapter 1". The first chapter of the first-draft fantasy/adventure novel I've been writing all year. This was technically written in 2013, but I've reworked it a number of times this year and I'm considerably happier with it than I was 12 months ago. You can toggle to the other chapters from this site, as well:

http://www.wattpad.com/62214454-the-blankmap-chronicles-book-i-1-bed-moving-dreams

Thanks for sticking with me all year!

Show Your Work

2014-11-20T03:20:00.000-05:00

Writing is inherently a kind of masturbatory act, one that far more people than you would ever guess engage in, and one that you never want anyone to catch you doing. I think that's why it's so hard for fledgling writers to share their stuff, gather feedback, or even just get used to putting themselves out there, consequences be damned. I'm still working through that part. It's one I'm not sure I'll ever get past. So it goes.

Since January 1st, I've been engaged in a kind of self-challenge involving writing every single day for a year. I know that I want to write for a living some day, but I've felt that for a long time and it's only in 2014 that I've started taking an honest stab at it. There's no one in the world who claims to be a plumber despite not plying their trade on a daily basis, or who insists that they're a doctor despite never having practiced medicine. So why do so many people claim to be writers who've never actually put a word on the page? I was like that for a long, long time--full of ideas, of beautiful words and phrases, and too damn scared to put any of them down on paper to see if they stood up to the light. This year has (somewhat) changed that.

To date, I have missed 5 days of this year, not a word produced or thought jotted down. 4 of those came on my first return visit to Columbus since graduation; the 5th was the day I officially moved across Seattle--you try writing anything worthwhile behind the wheel of a '99 Civic, ferrying all your worldly possessions back and forth in a city where people can't drive worth a damn.

The point of all this rambling is to put my money where my mouth is. To put my work out there, to be read and seen and judged and ignored. That last one is the hardest to stomach, I've found (to paraphrase Kubrick, the most frightening prospect about the universe is not that it's malicious, but that it's indifferent), but all the same, I'm pretty proud of staying on track this long if nothing else. I've posted a chapter or two here and there in the last few months, but I've been avoiding doing that for awhile now thanks to that spiral of self-doubt I mentioned above. I want to change that.

So here it is, the 1st 12 chapters of a fantasy/adventure novel I've been working at off and on since August of 2013. I've worked on a number of other things in that span, but this is where I've chosen to stick my focus for the last 4 months or so, ever since I joined WattPad (where the novel is hosted). It's really, really hard not to hedge all of this with the usual protestations--"It's a first draft!" or "This is just some dumb thing I've worked at, not very hard, mind you"--neither of those things would be entirely true, and they're pointless cries for attention and reassurance. Fuck that noise, though, as the kids say. I hope you read it, and enjoy it, but my life will not be materially different if you don't.

If you are interested in giving feedback, I'd be thrilled to hear it, even if it's along the lines of this being super boring, needing more action and less description, or what have you. You're already my favorite if you've read down this far in the blog post, and any feedback is just icing on that delicious cake. WattPad also has an app, if you're really a lunatic and want a way to take my words on the go. The link is to the main story page, but you can toggle through chapters with the drop-down menu.

http://www.wattpad.com/story/20431231-the-blankmap-chronicles-book-i

Happy reading, all.

A Bus Story

2014-07-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

Today I took, I think, the most beautiful bus ride I've been on since moving to Seattle. It was the same southbound route that I've taken a hundred times--down to the Central District on the 48 bus from the U District--and it wasn't particularly nice out this morning. The air had that sort of gray chill that probably comes to mind when people who haven't been here think about what Seattle must be like. It's a bright, sunny afternoon as I write this, but this morning was utterly unremarkable on that score.

So the bus ride wasn't beautiful for its newness, nor for the quality of day I could see out the window. The beauty lay in the people onboard with me, though they too seemed unremarkable at first glance.

The first of these was a woman sitting in the front seats, those that are perpendicular to the rest of the seats on the bus. She had boarded before me, so she was already seated when I hopped on. I breezed past her without a second thought--that is, until she stood up to get off the bus. It was at this point that I noticed that both of her hands were formed not of four fingers and a thumb, but each had been naturally fused into a sort of hook shape (I apologize for not knowing a more correct and dignified way of describing this).

She grasped the bus pole, smiled at and thanked the driver, and was off. I saw her standing outside the bus. She pulled a phone from her purse, opened it, and began to laugh. What was initially so captivating to me was that she seemed so genuinely happy, so carefree, despite her (I thought) obvious disability.

That thought lasted about five seconds before it was replaced by one of utter self-disgust. What does that say about me? That I was surprised that someone with a handicap could be so obviously happy? I think we expend a lot of energy and effort pitying people who we perceive to be less fortunate than us, particularly the disabled. But the more I think about it, the more unhealthy and condescending that viewpoint seems to me. I should know better from experience, too--would I really want the rest of the world to spend their time pitying my cousin, who has lived her whole life with several severe developmental disabilities? Wouldn't I expect them to see her simply as a human being, as I do?

So the first five minutes of my bus ride were beautiful because they forced me to challenge the way I see the world and the assumptions I hold about people.

At the stop where the smiling woman got off, a mother and her two towheaded sons got on. The mother occupied the exact same seat as the previous woman. One son was at most seven or eight years old, the other couldn't have been older than two. As two-year-olds are wont to be, he was incredibly vocal, albeit incoherent. I watched them all interact for a good long while--as a former elementary school teacher, I'm a sucker for watching kids do funny stuff; as someone that only has brothers, I'm always keen to observe the way other brothers deal with each other.

I wasn't disappointed. The mother would hold the younger brother up and let him explore the area around him--the window, the seats, the standing bar. All the while, his older brother would explain everything to him in a manner that you could just tell was bursting with pride. Older brothers are notorious for wanting to show how much they know, and this one was no different, but you could also tell he was just happy to be able to help his little brother understand the world.

While this was going on it struck me that there was a good chance that none of them--or at least, neither of the kids--would ever remember this very poignant moment in their young lives. It got me thinking about memory, and what a strange shape it takes. I now have a memory of a family I will likely never see again, one that they themselves might never share. Who stops to think about, and preserve, any one in particular of a lifetime of commutes on public transport? So I'm now in the odd position of maybe being the sole possessor of this memory, which doesn't belong to me at all.

I personally have very vague recollections of anything that happened before age eight or nine. I remember feelings, colors, faces, more than I remember actual conversations or events. And why would I have anything more than that? Kids are pretty much by definition incapable of nostalgia, so it's not a surprise that they don't take the time and effort to cement memories within themselves that will withstand in full the test of time. Why would they? When people gripe that youth is wasted on the young, one of the things I think they're really saying is that young people don't do justice to their own important moments. They don't intentionally create memories. They just live.

So my bus ride was also beautiful for the pure, unbridled interactions I got to witness between two brothers who will never know what kind of effect they had on me.

The last thing that made my bus ride beautiful had a timeline that in places overlapped that of the brothers. At one of our stops, an Ethiopian woman got on the bus using a single crutch. She didn't look a day above forty. She sat in another perpendicular seat, across the aisle from the blonde family. In the seat across from mine was an Ethiopian man of similar age. (By the way, I know they were Ethiopian because of how they talked--I don't know a word of Amharic, but I have a ton of Ethiopian students in my classes and caseload, so I hear it spoken pretty much daily.)

They rode in silence for a good long while, though they had exchanged a polite nod when she sat down. Two or three minutes before she got off, she leaned over to her left and asked the man a question. He snapped upright and answered her, and they fell into a friendly conversation. It was like watching ice melt, the way their faces slowly softened into bigger and bigger smiles as the conversation went on. Like I said, I didn't understand a word, but I felt like I didn't have to. The emotion present was pure, unaffected. About the only thing I did catch was the woman's name, Yodit. Because the world is funny and there is no such thing as coincidence, I learned that name a week ago in the closing chapters of a phenomenal book (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, Dinaw Mengestu). On those pages, Stephanos, the narrator and himself an Ethiopian immigrant to the U.S., muses that the name of his American love interest (Judith) is just an anglicized version of the "original" (Yodit).

The woman's stop came, and she said her goodbye with a smile. I watched the man as she exited, and his face was that of someone who is frantically deciding between two equally terrifying prospects. At the last second he dashed off the bus, too. I was captivated watching this--the woman heard him coming, and turned back with a smile. They shook hands, and he appeared to be talking a mile a minute. The way we so often do when we're putting ourselves out there emotionally, and the nerves are taking hold. The bus pulled away, and the last I saw of them was their hands, still clasped.

So on a gray unremarkable morning, with a moderate hangover and the furthest thing from a sunny outlook, I experienced the most beautiful bus ride of my short Seattle career.

"Faith in Humanity: Restored" is bullshit

2014-07-03T12:28:00.002-04:00

Few things bother me more than the deluge of posts on every facet of social media that claim “faith in humanity: restored.” What a bleak outlook that must be, any way you slice it. Either you’re emotionally malleable to the point that your feelings about the world regularly swing 180 degrees, which doesn’t say a lot about the quality of those feelings, or you see so little good in the world that an online video of a stranger doing something kind (read: something we should all be doing anyway) makes you abandon your position and proclaim that all is right with humanity. Or you’re just a poor chooser of words and have gotten sucked into the clickbait word vortex and know of no other way to voice your happiness.

I’m reminded of Dickens: “Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.” One uplifting video on the internet should not restore your faith in humanity any more than one heinous act of terrorism or violence should take it away. Humanity is an enormous, complicated sum of parts that completely defies all of our reductive pigeonholing. School shootings, discrimination, wanton violence—these things are terrible, almost namelessly so. But they are far from the sum of our collective hopes and dreams. They are far from the total of our ambitions and achievements.

I realize how callous it might seem that I presume to talk about things like this. By most standards, I have led an enormously untroubled life. And as a white, cisgender, heterosexual male, I am the farthest thing from a target demographic for the world’s hatred and persecution.

But I still feel qualified to talk about hurt, if not on a macro level. I hurt plenty, and I have hurt plenty, and I think part of being alive is that that never goes away. You do learn from it, though. You learn to compartmentalize, to self-criticize and self-critique. You learn that there is no love like first love and that you will never again be as unreservedly happy, or as sad, as you were at sixteen. You learn that scar tissue, by whichever nefarious means it has been created, is tougher than skin.

Don’t let your faith in humanity be restored by simple acts of kindness. To do so means that you have let your faith in humanity be taken away by simple acts of violence, of evil or anger or revenge. We are better than that, and worse, and we would do well to remember it. Words and phrases ring hollow when they become so overused. Try a new way of saying things—You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next.

On Boy Scouts and Gay Leaders

2014-04-22T18:26:00.003-04:00

In 2008 I earned the rank of Eagle Scout as a member of Troop 51 in Fayetteville, New York. I have bragged about this in the past, but this is not bragging--I simply want to put my viewpoint in context.

On Monday, the Boy Scouts of America revoked the charter of a Seattle Boy Scout troop who stood behind their openly gay Scoutmaster. This was in keeping with a longstanding BSA rule refusing the leadership of "open or avowed" homosexual men. The BSA only recently acted to allow openly gay youths in Boy Scout troops, with that decree coming last May via a vote from the BSA's national council.

I will put this as plainly as I know how: The Boy Scouts of America, by holding onto this policy, are committing a moral and social wrong. Their ban on gay leaders within the Scouts reflects the ignorance borne of an outdated understanding of what homosexuality is and who homosexuals are.

The official policy of the BSA, as of 2004, reads as follows: "Boy Scouts of America believes that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the obligations in the Scout Oath and Scout Law to be morally straight and clean in thought, word, and deed." This revision, while still ethically disastrous, was changed from the 1993 resolution, which stated that "homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirement...that a Scout be morally straight and...that a Scout be clean in word and deed...homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts."

The BSA is making the problematic choice to espouse the belief that being sexually straight is akin to being morally straight. And by doing so, they are doing an untold number of their members a great disservice.

What are scouts who are struggling with their own sexualities, their own identities, to make of this? Boys who might love every moment they've spent with their troop, love all the new skills they've learned and the sense of community they've gained, essentially being told that when they grow up they will be unfit to lead, because of who they might love? Or boys who happen to have gay fathers, unable to understand why their dad wasn't invited on the camping trip when everyone else's was?

Look. I understand that joining the Boy Scouts, either as a boy or as an adult leader, is a choice. No one can make you, and there are those who would say that if a gay leader didn't want to be removed from his position, he never should have joined an organization that was so contrary to his own principles in the first place. But (at the risk of building a straw man here) I would be willing to bet that most people who would say that have never spent any great length of time inside a Boy Scout troop.

I refer back to my own experience as a scout, which spanned from 1998 to 2008. In Cub Scout Pack 153 and BSA Troop 51 I interacted with and served the community alongside boys and leaders from all walks of life. This included a number of scouts who were "open and avowed homosexuals" (to borrow the BSA's own troublesome phrase), as well as some who were neither open nor avowed but weren't heterosexual, either. Young boys are shitty to one another for any number of reasons, but in my memories of Troop 51 no one was outwardly shitty to anyone else strictly because of their sexual preference. In the ways that counted, we were by and large a very open, if strange and occasionally lazy, bunch.

It is in this way that individual Boy Scout troops, and individual Boy Scouts, are a far cry from what the BSA claims to be as a whole. Troop 51 harbored its fair share of gay scouts during my time in it, as well as a number of atheists and agnostics (both of which also fall in the "unacceptable" category as far as BSA is concerned). And in a twist that will hopefully surprise no one, there were good and bad gay scouts. There were good and bad agnostic scouts. There were good and bad hetero scouts. There were good and bad rigidly Christian scouts. It was, frankly, an awful lot like real life.

One of the things Boy Scouts are required to learn is the Scout Law, which lists the twelve characteristics that all scouts must have. They are as follows: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The idea is that these twelve points are all equally valuable and important in the life of a scout.

I suspect I, like many, struggled hardest with the law of "obedience". What I've learned as I've grown older is that obedience is only valuable when it's reflected upon--we should stay accountable and obedient to those we trust and respect, but blindly obeying orders is not exactly healthy behavior. By stripping Troop 98 of its charter, the BSA has made that most troublesome of scout laws, being obedient, more valuable than my personal favorite scout law, being loyal. These scouts, as well as the Reverend Monica Corsaro, stayed loyal to a man who they believed was a good man and a good leader. They stayed loyal to their principles at the expense of remaining obedient to a faceless superior.

In doing so, these boys ascribed to a much higher "standard of manhood" than that passed down by the BSA's ruling council. The troop as a whole, including Rev. Corsaro, displayed their open minds and open hearts and received a national rebuke. The BSA is allowing each of them to join up with other troops, but that seems like so much wishful thinking on the council's part--who would want to continue on in such an institution? An institution that upbraids and degrades those people who don't fit the narrow, outdated ideal of what it means "to be a man"?

I will always be proud to be an Eagle Scout, because I know what I've accomplished and I know the years of work it took to attain Scouting's highest honor. But as long as this foolish, archaic policy remains in place, I will find it impossible to be proud of the Boy Scouts of America.

Untitled Story, Chapter 2 (excerpt)

2014-04-04T02:55:00.003-04:00

The ship rose out of the water taller than anything Solomon could have imagined, taller even than the highest trees he had climbed on his father's land. The scope of everything in the port dazzled him, from the dock jutting into the waves like a piece of road transplanted in the ocean, to the mooring lines as wide around as his waist, to the ocean itself, impossibly vast, rolling and frothing just as he had envisioned in his daydreams. The one element he had never considered was the smell of it all. He was hypnotized by the tang of salt on the air, something he had only ever tasted on rare occasions in town when the butcher had slipped him pieces of cured meat as his father conducted business across the street. But this...this was salt as he had never imagined it. It filled his nostrils, his lungs, and his mind as he stood on the bustling path that led from the seaport market down to the docks. Dizzy with the sights and smells, he sat himself on top of a barrel out of the way and took it all in as best he could.

For a boy who had spent the better part of his life wandering the woods alone, such a place was a shock to the senses. He saw all manner of men either rushing or lazing about, clad in strange clothes and speaking to each other in tongues he did not understand. Strange as it may seem to those who are well-read, and knowledgeable of the world, and who have spent their lives meeting all kinds of people, Solomon Hyrax had never before considered that there might be whole groups of others that didn't speak in the same language as he. This revelation and the observations that led to it were enough to keep him fixated in his seat for well over an hour.

He gazed at the crowded tumble of stores and homes that vied for space in the town that stretched out behind him. They were ramshackle, mostly, painted in pale pinks and blues and yellows. Where the paint had chipped away old boards showed through, eroded in strange patterns by the salt wind and turned an odd green by the moisture. Solomon's eyes took all of this in, so new and different from the dry and comfortable Naweego that he had grown up in, eventually alighting on a building nothing like the others.

It was shaped like an odd sort of cone, black and white stripes spiraling up its sides, with what appeared to be a tiny glass house at its top. This building stood far apart from the rest, perched at the end of the ancient stone seawall that led across the mouth of the town and out into the rocky shoals. Solomon never left the barrel, but his mind was working overtime processing all the rough-hewn majesty of the oceanside town. He was chewing without thought, barely cognizant of the matronly woman who had come out of a nearby shop and pushed a steaming, meat-filled pastry into his hands.

During this time, the older Hyrax was dashing about attempting to haggle for last-minute supplies and making sure all preparations had been made in advance of their arrival. In truth he was in a state of anxious panic, setting the wheels in motion for an undertaking full of possibilities both hopeful and terrible. Jacques was and always had been an exceptionally brave man, and the anxiety clawing at his chest and suffocating his breath was a new sensation to him. He was not a man readily given over to hoping for things, practical as he was, but that emotion was fighting for space within him as well. Though he never could have vocalized it, part of him hoped he was doing right for Solomon's sake as much as for his own.

He need not have worried, at least on Solomon's account. One of the things that marks children as children (and which marks them as nearing adulthood when they begin to lose it) is the unwavering belief that their parents know what to do in any situation, particularly the tough ones. Solomon was no different, and had always believed his father to be a man whose decisions were correct. This too might seem curious, given the utter lack of socialization or emotional connection developed in the Hyrax home, but Solomon's lifelong isolation must again be taken into consideration.

After a great deal of time Jacques emerged from the cobbled street's dry goods store with another man. Two others followed them, one pushing a roughly hewn wooden cart piled high with sacks of flour and potatoes and the other rolling a veritable flotilla of barrels with skill. Though Solomon knew nothing of such matters, there was no mistaking that the man striding beside his father was a person of importance. This newcomer exuded an air of power and authority, and though he was at least a head shorter than either of the Hyraxes, it was apparent to Solomon that he ought to stay out of this man's way.

Jacques summoned Solomon with a twitch of his head as he kept pace with this authoritative newcomer. Solomon lifted himself down from his perch, working a kink out of his saddlesore backside as he hurried to his father's side. The new man was talking away, in a manner as rough as the boards of the shop they had just left.

"...can't promise that. But my best guess is eight days out before we reach the Chasm. Can't take ya no further. My crew and I'll be banking straight north once we reach it to finish our supply run and start fishin'. If your people are where you say they'll be, we should be able to pass ya across to 'em without too much trouble."

"Thank you, Captain. Solomon..." His father paused. "We're off to sea. Can you understand?"

There seemed to be more to the question than that, but whatever it was went unasked. Solomon retrieved his trunk from where it lay behind the carriage as their walk wheeled them down towards the dock, the great ship looming larger and larger as they approached. Solomon scarcely dared believe it. After his long years of sleeping and dreaming and imagining the sea, he was about to sever the invisible ties that bound his feet to the land and set sail for the first time. The destination hardly seemed to matter; indeed, the thought of where they might be headed barely crossed his eager mind as he made his way up the gangplank onto the sturdy timbers of the vessel that lay waiting for him.

. . . . .

They were at sea for three nights before Solomon was able to lie down for bed without feeling as though his insides were down below the deck, rolling around the cargo hold among the barrels of wine and smoked meat and gunpowder. Those first few days were among the most unpleasant of Solomon Hyrax's young life. All of his romantic notions of life at sea, all of his yearning to know the most intimate details of a ship's handling and operation, had seeped out of him through the planks of the Windjammer's deck as he lay curled up and immobile behind an enormous spool of rope.

He had never felt so acutely aware of being sick; consequently, he had never felt so little care about the things going on around him. Men came and went, his father among them (though for much longer periods of time than anyone else who came to sit with him), carrying out duties and affairs that Solomon could not muster an ounce of interest in. He had spent those three days inwardly cursing himself, his stomach, and the sea. Here was the clear beginning of an adventure that he had spent a short lifetime pining for, and he was too violently ill to take any more part in his oceanic journey than a piece of driftwood takes in its own.

Now, as all seagoing folk know, these kinds of ailments are usually temporary. Before he knew it, though long after he began silently begged for it, Solomon was feeling almost himself again. He found that he was absurdly hungry, and it dawned on him that he had not eaten a bite since the pastry he had savored from on top of the barrel at the docks of Merriport. The tingling excitement that had electrified him the moment he stepped on board had been deadened by the rolling of his stomach. Now, as his seasickness started to subside, Solomon's feelings of flighty happiness began to well up in him again. He rose from his makeshift quarters, steadying his weakened knees by propping himself up on the massive coil of rope.

"Well, well. Finally decided to join us, lad?"

Solomon pushed a limp coil of salt-bleached orange hair out of his face and saw standing before him the same dubious-looking man that had come to his house (could it only have been four nights ago?). His weatherbeaten face was wreathed in the acrid smoke of his black pipe. Solomon nodded slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements in case his innards decided to betray him again.

"Good to see yeh on your feet. Yer father'll be lookin' for yeh. Give your corner there a moppin', when yer feelin' up to it."

The man was gone. He had still given no explanation of who he was, or why his coming had created such a momentous frenzy in the Hyrax home, or where they were going.

. . . . . . .

Despite what the strange man had said, Solomon did not hear a word from his father for another two days. He would see the older man every few hours, usually deeply engaged in the work of the ship. Jacques' sinews bulged visibly even beneath his salt-stained cloth jacket as he went about his work. Solomon had always assumed his father to be a man of prodigious strength, but to see him in action tying off the sails or carrying up whole crates of dried food from below deck was something else entirely. At fifteen years old Solomon was quite strong himself, though he did not help with any of the work taking place on board save for the mopping requested by the strange man. No one spoke to him except to bring him food, and somehow it didn't seem to be his place to ask for a job to do.

What Solomon did do was what he had always done: climb. The rigging of the massive ship provided ample opportunity for a boy as skilled as he to pull himself up, hand over hand, into the highest places. A quick test of any line's tension told him whether or not it was already secured in place, and if it was he could make use of it. He found the climbing of ropes and masts to be a welcome challenge, as the whole apparatus was fundamentally more unsteady than anything he had climbed all of those lifetimes ago--or was it only weeks?-- in the colorful woods of his father's land.

From his vantage point high in the rigging of the Windjammer, Solomon could see the sailors going about their business far below. As he had done on trips into town with his father, as he had done his entire life, he imagined what the people far below were like. It troubled him only a little that he was not actually getting to know them, only creating lives for them in his own head, because he had no reason to believe that they had any inclination to get to know him in return. If they even knew he existed.

He finally spoke with his father on a hot bright morning, quite by accident. Solomon had taken it upon himself to sweep out the deck in front of the captain's quarters. Having finished early, he decided to sweep the inside as well. He had yet to find a locked door on board the ship, and guessed that this would be no different. He eased his way through the well-worn door, moving quietly in his fashion, and was startled to see his father sitting at the captain's desk poring over a large and fraying map. The older man's shirt was completely unbuttoned, and in the dusty half-light filtering through the porthole he saw what looked like ink stains covering his father's sizable chest. Jacques Hyrax was sweating considerably in the stuffy cabin, but his perspiration was not making the ink run, and Solomon stood transfixed as his eyes began to focus on the strange shapes and patterns swimming across the torso of a man who had never been anything but primly dressed in front of his son.

If the elder Hyrax was startled by his son's presence, he didn't show it. His ice-blue eyes locked on Solomon's as he buttoned his shirt all the way back up and buried the pictures on his skin once more. He reached for a cloth that lay to the side of the desk, and slowly mopped his glistening forehead. Solomon detached his eyes from his father's chest, now covered by Jacques' rough blue shirt and utterly unremarkable.

He rarely ever spoke to his father, especially without being spoken to first, and never asked him a question without good reason. But Jacques was just sitting there, calmly and with jaw set, as though expecting one to come. Hundreds of them danced across the front of his son's mind, begging to be asked, and Solomon blurted out the one he thought might bring him the least trouble.

"Father…who is that man? The one who came to the house, I mean. I…"

For a few more moments, agonizing to the ever-placating young man, Jacques remained quiet with his eyes fixed directly on his son's. When he finally broke his rigid pose, his magnificent red beard was matted by the force of his sigh.

"I'm afraid I don't know his real name. I have always known him simply as Rip Rap. He is an old sailor and now serves as the keeper of the lighthouse that you may have seen when we were in Merriport. As such he's perhaps the best-informed man on the entire coast. He brought me some news on the day that he came to the house, and Rip Rap's news is always worth something…for good or ill."

Sweat was beading on Solomon's forehead and he could see the dust motes filtering down in the strong beam of sunlight that came through the closed porthole behind his father's head. The air in the room was becoming stifling. He dared not ask what the news had been.

"I'm glad to see that you're up and about. Ships take some getting used to. Give it another few days and you'll be moving around like you've spent your whole life on board. I'll sweep this office from now on, so you can leave it out of your list of duties. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt in the galley for you to clean up, while you're in the mood. And please tell Rip Rap I would like a word, if you come across him."

Solomon took the hint that his interview was over, and left the room with his broom in hand. As he made his exit he saw his father begin to unbutton his shirt once more.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Post-Script: Pissing on the Dead

2014-03-26T02:10:00.000-04:00

The Marshallese, being a family-oriented society with little in the way of available land space, almost always bury their dead at home. Just about every house you see there has two or three dusty white headstones in the yard, high rectangular graves with rectangular markers rising from one end. My host family's home was no different--there were three gravestones on their property, the closest being maybe six feet from my bedroom window. Nothing says, "Welcome to your home for the year" quite like three dead people to share your personal space with.

Their presence at first presented me with one of my more serious ethical dilemmas--others included "Should I eat this endangered sea turtle that's been served to me?" (guilty) and "Is it morally defensible to tape two seven-year-olds together who won't stop brawling, in the spirit of teaching them a lesson about cooperation?" (doubly guilty). Anyway, the dilemma presented by the three deceased housemates was, namely, whether or not it was okay to just piss out my bedroom window at night despite my proximity to their final resting places. The alternative, mind you, was to try to make my way through the pitch dark in an unfamiliar house with a full bladder, undo a series of knots that functioned as a lock, and take care of business before negotiating the same process in reverse. While also trying not to step on the sleeping forms of my three host siblings, who used the floor as a shared bed. Mind you, Marshallese dark was not like American dark. There was no light pollution there, no headlights going by, nothing. Once it was dark you better have known where you were.

As so often (unfortunately) happens, convenience trumped my moral platitudes in this case. I decided a few weeks into my stay on Aur that I would just let fly out the window, so to speak, should a middle-of-the-night situation arise.

This system worked out just fine for me from August to February, with a few notable exceptions. These usually involved me grossly misjudging the time of night (having gone to bed at 8:45 for lack of light or social options) and thinking it was a lot later than it really was. I would assume I was in the clear and proceed with my nightly micturating, only to have someone in my host family come around the side of the house and witness a thin stream emerging from the dark conspicuous frame of my window--it being, say, 10 pm and not 2 am as I had imagined. To their credit, they never once mentioned it to me. This I took as early evidence that we were going to get on just fine.

(PSA: this longwinded story is about to go from lighthearted to soul-crushingly bleak.)

As I said, my system worked well into February--a full six months of urinary freedom. But on the morning of February 16th, a Saturday, I woke up to the sound of men shouting and shoveling right outside my window. I was pissed off at the chaos for about three minutes before getting up to see what the commotion was. I didn't pull back my window curtain; rather, I got dressed and went out the door and around the house. What I saw felt like a sucker punch to the gut, a complete reflex that occurred before I had even finished processing what I was looking at.

A group of the men had dug a shallow trench, maybe six feet long, in the earth directly under my bedroom window. Lying in the trench was a woman, and it was immediately clear that she was no longer alive. I went out of my head for about ten seconds, just not processing or hearing anything clearly. When this wave passed I sprinted over to my school's principal, standing among the men, to ask what in God's name had happened. He explained that she had been sleeping in one of the small tin outbuildings on the next door neighbors' property, and an enormous breadfruit tree had collapsed and crushed it. Breadfruit trees generally run pretty big, with sturdy and visible roots, but there had been a colossal windstorm the night before and it had come loose. Help had come to her too late, and she never woke up. She died in the little trench as the men attempted to minister to her with medicines both modern and traditional. I should selfishly mention that my cot rested against the 1/2"-thick piece of particle board which served as a wall of the house, meaning that their ministrations and her death had happened less than a foot away from where I was sleeping. I probably don't need to explain how that made and still makes me feel.

The woman in question, Kathleen (pronounced Cat-a-lane by the Marshallese) was the mother of two of my students and the aunt of about nine others. The gut-punch I got was clearly nothing compared to the one received by the entire community, who had known her for her entire life. Everyone is family on an islands like that, in both a communal and biological sense, so when someone dies everyone loses a neighbor, a friend, a grandmother, a child. It is a strange, strange feeling to be a relative outsider in the midst of such deep-seated grief. From the events that transpired following Kathleen's passing, however, I learned two very important aspects of Marshallese culture. These simultaneously made me feel like part of their communal family (because they let me into something intensely personal and emotional), and like even more of an outsider (because I could not in the least relate to how they were handling things). Allow me to explain.

The first thing I learned is that the Marshallese, despite their passionate Christian beliefs (thanks to generations of missionary influence), are afraid of nothing except ghosts. They swim with and kill sharks, climb limbless 50-foot coconut trees, and sail vast expanses of ocean in canoes that look like they barely float, all without batting an eye. But the possibility of a ghost--a timon (bastardized from demon)--puts them right over the edge. They cannot cope. This particularly applies to the children. After Kathleen passed away in my backyard, the kids of Aur basically foreswore the whole property for weeks. It became taboo. It took more than two months for any of my host siblings to even sleep in the house again, and only then with a solar flashlight running all night. I was regarded by my students as some mixture of crazy and heroic for continuing to sleep in my room and using that side of the house at all. For my part, I mostly just felt terrible for Tammy and Darrel (Kathleen's kids, my students) that their friends had turned their mother into the village bogey-woman. Despite all their charms, kids are occasionally just as capable of being shitty to each other as adults are.

The other thing I learned was the process by which the Marshallese grieve. Funerals are just about the only time you will ever see an outer-islander exhibit any kind of sadness. Marshallese adults simply do not cry, ever, with this one exception. It's a cultural sticking point that I really can't identify with in the least. The kids, like kids anywhere, cry all the time over hurts real and imagined, but by the time they reach age fifteen or so the ability to act on that impulse is almost entirely gone. The Marshallese are also not an outwardly affectionate people in the physical sense, ever, so it was beyond bizarre for me to be at the house that day and see upwards of forty people milling around in the presence of a dead body without a single hug being issued or tear being shed. We often forget how thick the American lens through which we view the world is, and this was one of the times that my cultural bias was readily apparent. It was truly surreal. My clumsy attempts at comforting Tammy and Darrel made me feel even more out of place, like I had just stumbled into a meeting that I wasn't supposed to know was taking place. They all just sat there, looking kind of dazed.

Like I said, there was zero crying before the funeral. What we would call "calling hours", the Marshallese call the ilomeji. That word literally breaks down to "I see dead person/people." Eat your heart out, Bruce Willis. The ilomej went on all afternoon the following day and a vigil was kept over the body all night, until the next morning's funeral service and burial. Just before the coffin was lowered into the ground I saw my first adult Marshallese tears. It was chilling. To see such reserved women absolutely lose it, all at once, was hard to watch. It wasn't so much weeping as it was screaming. Kathleen's family pounded the lid of the coffin as they mourned, clinging to it until the last possible second.

What sprang to mind as this was all happening, as I was handed a shovel to help with the burial, was a crystal-clear memory of twelfth-grade AP Latin. The year's task had been translating Virgil's Aeneid, and the entire class had struggled with the parsing of a passage describing the sacking and burning of Troy. Our teacher, the brilliant Dr. James Hunt, told us that in English the words we couldn't grasp referred to something called ululating. Dr. Hunt said that he could explain what it meant, but we probably wouldn't truly understand because we had no cultural frame of reference for it. American women display grief in all manner of ways, but generally not with the ululations, rending of clothes, or pounding of the breasts in sorrow, as these Asiatic women had done in antiquity and the Marshallese women were still doing today. It is a gesture suited to the most unspeakable sadnesses possible. Speaking of Latin, Seneca had a saying for this: "Light griefs are loquacious, the great are dumb."

It's worth noting that the whole process, from death to burial, was over in about twenty-six hours. Being on island time (as they will proudly tell you), the Marshallese typically don't put on a shirt without three days of hemming and hawing, delays, and schedule changes, so the fact that something as momentous and important as a funeral could be pulled off so quickly was a borderline miracle. Perhaps this speaks to the hard life of the Marshallese throughout history, a catalogue full of short lives and unpleasant deaths in an impossibly unforgiving setting. I was and am humbled and grateful that they deigned to give me so much of themselves throughout the year. This particularly comes to mind when reflecting on how they were all so accommodating and thoughtful in the midst of their mourning--at a time when they had every reason to be resentful of the intruder on their grief, they still insisted on feeding me before themselves, giving me a seat of honor at the funeral, and allowing me to help shovel the earth that put Kathleen in her final resting place.

From that day forward I figured it was only right that I should never again piss in the presence of their honored dead.

Untitled Story, Chapter 1

2014-03-07T12:06:00.003-05:00

(This is the first draft of the first chapter of an as-yet untitled story I've been working on. Any and all feedback is welcome! Later chapters draw on my experiences in the Marshall Islands, in a re-imagined sort of way.)

When Jacques Hyrax was a boy, he would often wake in the night feeling as though his bed had moved. It was not uncommon for him to feel the motion of waves rolling beneath his mattress as a whiff of salt air filled his nostrils, or for the frosty blasts of a snowstorm to howl by just outside what might have been a cave tucked away in a mountain. Of course, the bed never really went anywhere, but such is the kind of imagination that, if it is cultivated and allowed to grow tall, produces the kind of people who go on grand adventures and have many tales to tell. Jacques Hyrax was of just such a mind. He would eventually go on to have adventures of the sort that he had imagined as a boy (some of which will be related here), or else there would be no tale to tell, but life is long and can be dull in the early going when one is unable to get out and see the world. For now, what we should note first is that Jacques eventually had a son. The son was named Solomon, and he too happened to be the sort of boy who woke in the night feeling as though his bed had transported him somewhere both strange and wonderful.

On the occasions that Solomon Hyrax would wake with this feeling, he would lay awake for awhile with his head and torso out of the covers until the sounds of pounding surf or howling wind or driving snow faded back into the recesses of his imagination. This did not always come quickly or easily, and if sleep refused to come he would slip out of bed and pad softly down his hall to the top of the stairs. Because he was quick and slender he made no noise in doing so, which allowed him to scan, unnoticed, the familiar sight of the ground floor below him.

More often than not, he would peer down and see his father sitting in his favorite armchair in front of the wavering embers of a dying fire in the fireplace. On the infrequent times that he deigned to speak to the son, his father was kind, though rarely cheerful, and on those fire-lit nights the older Hyrax wore the thousand-yard stare of a man who had seen and done strange and regretful things. Of course young boys rarely have much to really regret, and as such Solomon was only vaguely aware of what might be stirring behind his father's glassy distant eyes. But it didn't take a lifetime out in the world to recognize that all was not settled in the mind of the private, solitary man who had raised him.

He had noticed that when the two of them would walk into town together, down the dirt road flanked by towering ancient trees and across two winding hills before coming to the cobbled street of smiths and bakers and chemists, that people on the street always gave his father a wide berth. The older Hyrax had a distant stare for these occasions too, though it was not the stare of a man lost in thought so much as one of shutting out the world before it could do the same turn to him. Solomon could not remember his father wearing anything other than sleeves that buttoned all the way to the wrists and shirts with high stiff collars, even on the warmest of these days in the town, and he always supposed the townspeople's stares might have had something to do with the odd fashion in which his father chose to dress.

The two of them would run these errands perhaps once a week, the fiercely bearded towering man and the tall slight youth. Anyone watching them would have known them as family only by their matching shocks of red hair. Otherwise they could not have been more dissimilar--the man hawk-nosed and muscular, the boy elfin-featured and lean, with a deep tan to his skin even in the winter months. Jacques' eyes smoldered turquoise blue, while his son's were the grey of a stormcloud out across some distant sea. The assumption of the townspeople had always been that the boy's looks favored his mother's, though none of them could ever recall seeing or knowing her. For that matter, neither could the boy.

They said little as a rule on these excursions, for although his father had never forbade his asking questions, young Solomon seemed to sense intuitively that intrusions into the pensive mind of the older man were unwelcome. The man went about his business quickly and firmly, often stopping in a number of stores and buildings marked by words that the boy was unable to understand. He had never been taught to read, and his education had consisted entirely of learning the paths of the forest behind his house, the calls and cries of any number of wild animals, and the climbing of trees.

They had no neighbors near their house, a two-story structure of pink-tinged stone, as their property was bounded by forest on two sides and rolling fields of grass and clover on two others. As such Solomon had no friends, but he also did not know the want of them. He passed his hours at home going about the chores his father set for him, or learning every inch of the forest, or building model ships in his room. He had never been on a ship, or even seen one in person, but they often appeared in his dreams. If it could be said that the boy felt he was missing anything in his life, it would be the absence of ships and the sea in his landlocked existence.

. . . . .

Very little changed in the life of Solomon Hyrax until he was fifteen years old. The passage of time marked itself, of course, with the changing of the leaves on the tapestry of trees that blanketed his father's land, from green to a palette of reds and golds until all fell off for the winter. Such has time always passed in that part of the world, with the townspeople harvesting the dead and dying trees to heat their cottages through the oft-blustery winters. The boy relished snowy afternoons when his chores were finished, for he welcomed the challenge of climbing trees whose branches had iced over in the night and were prone to dumping their snowy burdens at the touch of a hand. Still he loved these adventures most, because something was moved deep inside of him at the touch of his ungloved hands on the frozen steely arms of oak and ash. He could sense, intuitively, the dormant life and warmth of these wooden sentinels that lay beneath their icy exteriors. These treks were often followed at night by bed-moving dreams, sometimes to far-flung tropical islands under the blistering sun or sand-swept desert vistas that seemed to stretch on forever. His dream sensations, he found, rarely matched the season.

The winter months of Solomon's fifteenth year gradually passed into spring (too quickly, in his opinion) and green gradually returned to the countryside. The boy found that the only good thing about the melting of the snow was that his walks to town became considerably more pleasant when he wasn't tramping through a knee-high blanket of snow crusted over with frost. Upon returning home he would kick his dew-covered boots off into the grass and tramp barefooted up the stone stairs to his room, pushing the slatted window open and feeling the breeze drifting through the window, still clinging to winter's last icy suggestion. Solomon pictured ships in some distant harbor setting out again, sails unfurled by hard-living men who spoke roughly but knew their vessels like parts of themselves, venturing fearlessly into waters still mapped by the broken ice floes that drifted and bobbed in the unforgiving green waters.

It was on one of these days in the early spring, as the far-off sea rolled and crackled under its frigid covering, that just such a man came to the boy's house. In later years he would remember it as the day that marked the real and true start of his strange adventurous life.

. . . . .

The small hard man sat with Solomon's father all night, as far as the boy could tell. It had been early afternoon when he had arrived, the youth having only just finished his small neat lunch when the raps on the heavy wooden door began echoing off the stone walls and flagstones throughout the house. It seems prudent to note that, though anyone else would have known what ceaseless banging at the outside of a door on a pleasant afternoon might mean, Solomon was hopelessly confused by the noise. As far as he could remember, no such thing had ever occurred at his home before. His memory did in fact serve him correctly (those boys who dream vividly also having excellent memories, as a rule). The Hyrax household had not received a visitor once in his fifteen years, and he had been quite unsure of what was happening.

Dumbstruck as he was, he had remained quite stationary in his father's favorite easy chair, a seat upon which his legs had only recently started reaching the floor, and had stared across the ground floor at the front door. He had gazed past the myriad maps and charts that adorned the sitting room's walls, past the large strange bones and fangs that ornamented his father's dusty soaring bookshelves, to the door which had creaked slowly open. His father had approached the door with measured pace as the afternoon sunlight illuminated the visitor from behind, casting his entire visage in shadow as he had stepped unasked into the house. Solomon had found his legs then, and had bolted up the stairs to his room as quickly as they would carry him.

Toward midnight, as the moon poured silver light through the boy's window, he rose from his bed and crept, like so many other nights, to the top of the well-worn staircase. His father and the stranger sat facing one another, chairs barely a foot apart, speaking rapidly in low voices. Though he could not say for sure, Solomon believed that this new man was telling his father something urgently, something that his father was unwilling to believe as true. Smoke poured from their mouths and pipes as the conversation continued, but there was little for Solomon to make out. He was immediately inclined to distrust this visitor to their quiet home. Something seemed unsettling in the man's eyes, which darted constantly from side to side in their thick hooded lids. The boy had never seen anyone dress in such a strange rough manner, his pants in tatters and his blue coat low-collared and dirty. Nor had he ever encountered a man whose beard was plaited as this man's was. Though thick and grey, it bore intricate braids from the jawbone to its tip, and the smoke of the stranger's pipe seemed to meld with the beard, to change its shape into a shimmering and substanceless cloud of silver.

Solomon eventually returned to his room, sleep finally coming despite the moon's brightness through his open window. He felt as though he had only dozed a moment when he awoke to the rough hand of his father on his shoulder. The older man was firmly shaking him awake, whispering his name with urgency.

"Solomon Hyrax! Wake up, child!"

Solomon sat bolt upright upon hearing the strained quality of his father's voice, rippling with an almost fearful tone. The sun had not yet started to rise above the horizon, and the dewy air pouring forth through the open window lent a chill to his body deep down as he came awake from a sleep in which his bed had gone nowhere.

"Father! What time is it?"

"Never you mind that just now. Up, child! Up!"

Solomon clambered out of bed to find clothes laid out for him on his desk's chair, a sturdy wooden contraption with a seat well-worn from his years sitting, thinking, playing at it. He was astonished to see that his small trunk was by the door, already packed full, and his small heart sank at the thought that his father might be sending him away. What could have happened? Had their visitor demanded he be taken away?

Groggily, he lifted the trunk (in only one hand; though he had never taken a trip before, he had often hefted it in quiet restless moments as he daydreamed of what might lay out in the world, and until this past year this exercise had always required a two-handed effort) and hurried clumsily to the stairs and down them. A little ways down the path, he could just make out the shape of a horse and carriage in the predawn gloom. It was this that his father hurried him towards with breathless haste. The previous afternoon's visitor was seated at the reins, and barely glanced at Solomon as he hoisted his trunk into the carriage and jumped in behind it. A terrifyingly uncertain moment passed in the boy's mind as the thought of his forced flight began to settle in his mind, but it was partially dispelled seconds later as his father dashed around the carriage and jumped in on the other side with a trunk of his own. He banged twice on the inside roof of the carriage, and it leapt to life in an instant as the horse sped off recklessly down the path. Having only ever walked the path to the village, and everywhere else to boot, Solomon was at once thrilled and frightened by the speed and novelty of the vehicle. His father said nothing, and as always Solomon thought it better not to ask, though the older man's eyes were lit with a strange frenzied glow that didn't seem to match his tight, grim expression.

The town was called Naweego and on that morning Solomon Hyrax knowingly set foot outside it for the first time in his fifteen years. Although perhaps 'set foot' is the wrong way to describe it, as the boy and his father were pulled the entire way--through fresh morning hills, dirt roads, and dewy meadows-- in the roughly hewn carriage driven by the strange little man who had arrived the previous afternoon.

Big Ten Heist Team Power Rankings

2013-10-05T17:15:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, I came across the following tweet while reading Grantland's weekly college football roundup:

@DangerGuerrero: Michigan has players named Fitzgerald Toussaint and Blake Countess. They're one DB named Rene Le Serge away from having a crew for a heist.

This witty observation, coupled with my hatred for all things Michigan, got me thinking: Are all college football teams as chock full o' heist-worthy player names as UM is? What about just the Big Ten? I started doing some research, and found a glorious treasure chest of dudes who, based purely on name value, I would follow into an Ocean's 11-style heist without a moment's hesitation. Without further ado, I present your 2013 Big Ten conference All-Heist power rankings.

1. ILLINOIS FIGHTIN' ILLINI

Heist Crew: Man Berg (QB), Fritz Rock (WR), Devin Church (RB), Zane Petty (DB), Nick North (DB)
Honorable Mentions: DeJazz Woods (DL), Houston Bates (DL)
Left at Home: Pat Flavin (OL), Wes Lunt (QB)

Top to bottom, Illinois' roster screams "Heist-worthy". I would pay good money to see a movie about suave criminals starring Jason Statham as "Devin Church" and Dolph Lundgren as "Man Berg". Very few weak spots here. If only their football team could pull off the smooth moves I mentally attribute to their handsome hypothetical counterparts.

2. IOWA HAWKEYES

Heist Crew: Solomon Warfield (DB), Nico Law (DB), Andrew Stone (WR), Boone Myers (OL), Jordan Cotton (WR).
Honorable Mention: Brett van Sloten (OL)
Left at Home: Greg Mabin (DB), Peter Pekar (TE), George Kittle (WR)

If "Solomon Warfield" isn't the name of Terry Crews' next action movie character, I might quit on movies altogether. "Boone Myers" evokes visions of Burt Reynolds, hamming it up as a wily old southern ex-con. "Nico Law" was the role that late-80's Jean-Claude van Damme was destined to play. Another roster full of middling football players blessed with fantastic names. On the other side of the coin, from here on out everyone named Greg is getting left behind. Can't be bringing a Greg with you when you're stealing millions of dollars/jewels/hearts.

3. NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS

Heist Crew: Kain Colter (QB), Dwight White (CB), Christian Salem (QB), Pierre Youngblood (WR), Chance Carter (DL)
Honorable Mentions: Joe Cannon (CB), Brad North (OL), Xavier Menifield ()
Left at Home: Pat Hickey (LS), Chi Chi Ariguzo (LB), Mike Trumpy (RB)

Idris Elba, Robert Downey Jr., and Matthew McConaughey star as "Dwight White", "Kain Colter", and "Chance Carter" in 2013's "WILDCATS: THE MOVIE". The cast would need to be rounded out by a team of suave, preferably foreign-born individuals (Omar Sy as "Pierre Youngblood"?). I once heard Kain Colter referred to as a "Swiss Army Knife" on the field, as he can pass, run, and catch, so his character would have to be a consummate jack-of-all-trades. Chi Chi Ariguzo gets left home for obvious reasons (namely, that name brings to mind Tracy Morgan's character in the 2005 remake of 'The Longest Yard').

4. NEBRASKA CORNHUSKERS

Heist Crew: Vincent Valentine (DT), Chongo Kondolo (OL), King Frazier (RB), Logan Rath (DL), Boaz Joseph (CB)
Honorable Mentions: DJ Singleton (DB), Givens Price (OL), Zaire Anderson (LB)
Left at Home: Thad Randle (DT), Jay Guy (DT), Ron Kellogg III (QB)

Quentin Tarantino would need to direct Nebraska's heist film, as "Vincent Valentine" sounds like the kind of steely, remorseless criminal that QT would create to drive his next sociopathically awesome splatter-fest. Samuel L. Jackson would be the obvious choice to play "King Frazier", the no-nonsense shit-talking wild card hired gun. Djimon Hounsou as "Chongo Kondolo" is a perfect fit. This heist wouldn't be the stealthy quiet kind. With this crew, smash-and-grab shoot-em-up tactics are the only way to go.

5. MICHIGAN STATE SPARTANS

Heist Crew: Taiwan Jones (LB), Blake Treadwell (G), Dan France (OL), Leland Ewing (LS), Damon Knox (DL)
Honorable Mentions: Kodi Kieler (C)
Left at Home: Denzel Drone (DE), Mike Sadler (P)

Hugh Jackman IS "Leland Ewing" in Bryan Singer's 2013 film "SPARTANS", a chromed-out fast-paced hacker movie (that includes at least 3 heavy-handed metaphors about gay acceptance). Matt Damon helps carry the team as "Dan France", a career criminal who struggles with the ethics of his profession in light of the recent birth of his daughter. Breaking from cliched heist movie norms, "Taiwan Jones" is black rather than Asian.

6. OHIO STATE BUCKEYES

Heist Crew: Ezekiel Elliot (RB), Kato Mitchell (WR), Ben St. John (OL), Cardale Jones (QB), Vonn Bell (DB)
Honorable Mentions: Warren Ball (RB), Philly Brown (WR)
Left at Home: Eli Apple (CB), Chris Rock (DL), Kenny Guiton (QB)

Spike Lee directs this ultimately heartwarming tale of five friends who rise from the mean streets of Cleveland to become rich, successful criminals. These modern-day Robin Hoods take down soulless corporate interests in order to give back to the struggling community that birthed them, dishing out street justice to pimps and drug dealers along the way. Will Smith and Wesley Snipes star. This movie, nay, film, wins several Academy Awards.

7. MICHIGAN WOLVERINES

Heist crew: Blake Countess (CB), Fitzgerald Toussaint (RB), Justice Hayes (WR), Taco Charlton (DE), Jack Doyle (LB)
Honorable Mention: Richard Ash (DT)
Left at Home: Jake Butt (TE) (LOL), Jack Wangler (WR) (ROFL), Henry Poggi (DT) (LMAO)

Let's be honest, those top three names are awesome, and Michigan's team was the inspiration for this post. But I'm a huge homer and there's no way I'm putting UM ahead of tOSU in any ranking except "sucking". Plus the squad gets dragged down by potentially the most awful bottom three names in the league. This movie would be a middling, semi-entertaining crime story with an entirely European cast. A doing-this-for-the-paycheck Colin Farrell stars as team leader "Jack Doyle".

8. PURDUE BOILERMAKERS

Heist Crew: DeAngelo Yancey (WR), Jack De Boef (OT), Andy Garcia (LB), Danny Ezechukwu (LB), Armstead Williams (LB)
Honorable Mentions: Ruben Ibarra (LB), Cameron Posey (WR), Sterling Carter (WR)
Left at Home: Greg Latta (DE), Shane Mikesky (WR), Austin Appleby (QB)

Andy Garcia, himself an "Ocean's" movie alum, takes on the role of a lifetime as "Andy Garcia", the leader of an international heist crew boasting smooth criminals from Mexico (himself), the Netherlands (Jack De Boef), Ghana (Danny Ezechukwu), America (Armstead Williams), and England (DeAngelo Yancey). They call themselves "The Boilermakers", a reference to their first clandestine operation as a team. It involved a train heist, and it was awesome. Savvy readers will note that the "Greg Rule" has again been applied here.

9. WISCONSIN BADGERS

Heist Crew: Jazz Peavy (WR), Reggie Love (WR), Jack Russell (K), Darius Hillary (CB), Walker Williams (OL)
Honorable Mentions: Dezmen Southward (S), Jesse Hayes (LB), Robert Wheelwright (WR)
Left at Home: Jeff Duckworth (WR)

An ancient treasure. A fearsome mountain. A hostile tribe protecting their birthright. A man struggling to live up to his family's legacy. Christoper Nolan's "THE BADGERS" tells the story of Darius Hillary, great-grandson of legendary Everest climber Edmund Hillary, and his crew. So named for their striped, furry attire, The Badgers are an experienced team of mountaineers and thieves trying to find their place in the world. Each man is haunted by his own demons, none more so than Hillary, who must make his way to the unknown faces of Everest and find the "treasure hidden within", or die trying. But does his checkered past put the rest of the team at risk? Leo DiCaprio stars.

10. MINNESOTA GOLDEN GOPHERS

Heist Crew: Maxx Williams (TE), Brock Vereen (DB), De'Niro Laster (LB), Martez Shabazz (DB), Gabe Mezzenga (TE)
Honorable Mention: n/a
Left at Home: David Cobb (RB), Tommy Olson (OL)

Affectionately known in the criminal underworld as "Team Scrabble" (based on how many points they would each get for their names, on average), the squad calling themselves The Golden Gophers have big shoes to fill. Each is the son or younger brother of a rich, respected, career criminal; each has serious shortcomings in his criminal toolkit. Can this ultimately lovable, scrappy band of misfits pull together to earn some serious cash, and find themselves along the way? Watch 2013's "GOLDEN GOPHERS" and find out. The Rock stars as "Maxx Williams".

11. INDIANA HOOSIERS

Heist Crew: Nate Boudreau (QB), Danny Friend (TE), Nick Stoner (WR)
Honorable Mention: n/a
Left at Home: Chase Hoobler (LB), Steven Funderburk (LB), Dan Feeney (OL)

Spolier alert: This low-budget Cajun-weed-chic movie will not do well at the box office (or on the football field). Gary Busey 'stars' as "Danny Friend", a Hawaiian shirt-wearing loose cannon trying to make one last big score on the streets of New Orleans. Because Taylor Kitsch has never been in a good movie ever, he plays the role of "Nate Boudreau".

12. PENN STATE NITTANY LIONS

Heist Crew: DJ Crook (QB), Jesse James (TE), Jack Seymour (QB), Christian Hackenberg (QB)
Honorable Mention: Chip Chiapalle (RB)
Left at Home: Gregg Garrity (WR), Garry Gilliam (OT), Gary Wooten (LB), Wendy Laurent (C), Alex Butterworth (P)

Sanctions against the production company prevent this movie from ever being made. The Greg(g) Rule applies to this Nittany Lions squad, which also somehow fields two guys named Gar(r)y on the same 53-man roster. Pretty mind-boggling stuff. They also have a guy named Wendy, and the man who would be their heist crew's leader has a name that sounds like a moniker that a 13-year-old might self-apply. Last place is the obvious spot for PSU here.

An Open Letter to ESPN

2013-08-06T23:09:00.000-04:00

To whom it may concern,

As a lifelong sports fan, ESPN has been a staple of my daily routine for as long as I can remember. For many, many years, your network provided excellent and unparalleled sports coverage, particularly during episodes of "SportsCenter". This "flagship" program was an hour packed with highlights, insights, witticisms, and analysis. If a viewer craved exposes, emotional stories, or discussion of the personal lives of athletes, "Outside the Lines" (often following "SportsCenter") provided a perfect medium to explore this side of the sporting world. This sort of investigative reporting provided a perfect complement to the action-packed, diverse hour that was "SportsCenter". Except in the smallest of markets, a viewer was practically guaranteed at least a few highlights of his favorite team taking the field/ice/court if they had played that night. It's what made the show so great: a broad appeal, brimming with highlights that were enriched by the commentary behind them.

I wish I could still talk about "SportsCenter" like this in the present tense. For several years now, however, the quality of this program has been steadily deteriorating to the point that I no longer recognize it as the bastion of sports videojournalism that it once was. I think I can pinpoint the first time I noticed the show beginning to fall off. It was the summer of 2008, and a swimmer named Michael Phelps was taking the Beijing Olympics by storm. It was undoubtedly a feel-good story, one that we could all get behind as Americans. His chase for eight gold medals was a series of inspiring televised moments that many of us will likely never forget. The only dark side to his success was the fact that sports programming began to feel oversaturated with coverage of the man. My friends and I jokingly started referring to ESPN as "PhelpsCenter", due to the unyielding focus on this Olympic hero. Interviews with people only tangentially related to the situation, and to the man, began to permeate your programming. The reporting on Phelps started to take on the breathless, hero-worshipping air of freshman girls who have been smiled at by the varsity football captain in the hallway. ("He's so funny!" "OMG his workouts are in-sane!" "He eats 12,000 calories a day and is still so ripped?? Ughhhh I must be dreaming!")

The Olympics ended, and eventually the Phelps talk began to recede into the distance, but we the viewers soon found out that "SportsCenter" had developed a taste for this kind of thing. You had gained viewership by capitalizing on this type of rabid, singular focus that deconstructs every possible angle of an athlete's personal life, body language, relationships, and possible flaws. It wasn't long after Phelps' moment in the spotlight that the specter of Brett Favre's will he-or-won't he retirement reared its ugly head. For weeks (in consecutive summers!), every morning's edition of "SportsCenter" seemed solely dedicated to scrutinizing the minutiae of Favre's life and decision-making process. Were Favre less hungry for the spotlight, he would have been justified in filing a restraining order against ESPN's own Ed Werder--the man practically camped out outside the quarterback's Mississippi home, reporting on the movements inside as well as wildly speculating about the end result of Favre's decision. We were even 'treated' to police chase-style aerial footage of Favre's black SUV taking him to and from airports as the situation played out. The man was a good quarterback, not OJ Simpson on the lam, and this coverage seemed to be ESPN's "crossing the Rubicon" moment: the die had been cast, the shark had been jumped. There was no turning back.

Since then, "SportsCenter" has devolved into a steady rotation of flavor-of-the-month stories that are beaten into the ground by day three, and yet are not given up on until weeks or months later. Tiger Woods' imploding personal life followed Favre's indecision; LeBron James' "Decision" special came less than a year later. (Yes, yes, that hour-long debacle raised $100,000 for the Boys' and Girls' Clubs of America. It also turned the sporting press into a group of fawning yes-men waiting for a handout from a benefactor elevated to divine status.) I need not remind anyone of the biggest story to follow LeBron's "Decision" and the ensuing season, in which his first title bid in Miami fell short. An oft-criticized, poorly-mechanized quarterback was given a chance to start for my beloved Denver Broncos, and his unconventional way of winning in the face of adversity (even when the adversity was his own poor decision-making) set your network newly aflame with endless material for the talking heads. Your media circus has barely let up in the nearly two years since Timothy Richard Tebow first started a game in the NFL, through his trade to the Jets and subsequent release, and it continues to this day as he dons the practice jersey of your favorite team to hate, the New England Patriots.

(Not-so-quick sidebar: What does your network have, exactly, against the New England Patriots? As a devoted supporter of a different AFC team, I could hardly be called a Patriots fan. But I feel compelled to defend them in light of recent events--namely, the Aaron Hernandez murder trial. Your coverage has repeatedly made it seem as though members of the Patriots organization, from owner Robert Kraft to coach Bill Belichick to quarterbacks Brady and Tebow, are somehow morally culpable for Odin Lloyd's death. Hernandez's choices were his own, and by all accounts most members of the team chose to have little to do with him outside of the team facilities. Had he made threats in the locker room, or suggested in the least that he intended or was capable of such a crime, then perhaps an intervention might have been necessary, or at least possible. But to condemn an entire organization for the actions of one troubled member is not only shoddy analysis, it's blatantly unfair. I haven't heard an iota of blame being levied against the Kansas City Chiefs for linebacker Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide, and your network's collective memory seems conveniently short in the case of ESPN golden boy Ray Lewis, who escaped a murder conviction by the skin of his teeth a decade ago. I suspect that your network's chosen Belichick-as-Machiavelli storyline stems more from the fact that he refuses to play your game, to embrace the era of TMZ-style guerilla journalism, than it does from any indiscretion he has actually committed.)

As far as Aaron Hernandez is concerned, the coverage carried out by 'SportsCenter' to date has bordered on the level of absurd reached during the Brett Favre years. At one point early last week, we were treated to three consecutive days of coverage of the police searching the lake near Hernandez's home. The lack of information being stretched into four-minute "news" bits became laughably apparent when the biggest piece of information delivered was that police had found a cell phone that was entirely unrelated to the case. I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, especially since I have no background in sports journalism, but this is hardly the kind of "news" your viewers are clamoring for.

The most recent examples of this overexposure not named Hernandez are those of Johny Manziel and Alex Rodriguez. In the case of the former, I can only say that I am unsurprised. Not because I believe Manziel to be an out-of-control, irresponsible party boy (although recent leaks about his autograph troubles speak to some level of character issue), but because when someone is elevated to such an iconic, borderline mythical status at such a young age, they are almost guaranteed to disappoint. And regardless of how Manziel fares, ESPN will benefit. Either he salvages his reputation and repeats his record-breaking season, thereby proving the hype perpetuated by ESPN correct, or he is suspended, disgraced, and less than what he was last year, in which case your network will have months' worth of fodder with which to continue playing out the Johnny Manziel saga. Triumph or tragedy, you will capitalize, because you have established a perfectly closed feedback loop that one or two athletes a year are chosen to occupy. Oh, and in the case of A-Rod, I think most sports fans are tired of him in general. A few more concrete examples of what a self-serving, rule-bending prima donna he is will not change the emotional landscape for many. Enough.

Perhaps I should not allow the decline of one television program to negatively impact my life so severely. In the long run, maybe it isn't so important. After all, I am only twenty-two years old--nostalgia isn't something I should be cultivating too strongly when I plan on living for quite a while longer. And yet...I feel compelled to give in to that inner tug to complain about the fact that you were once great and are no longer. I will not call it sadness; I have experienced the shattering of too many of my illusions to get sad about them anymore. But in the mold of the cliched movie dad, I will say that I am disappointed in you. Disappointed that you used to stand for things, that you caved in and sacrificed your best qualities to try to be who you thought we wanted you to be. You were wrong. Those of us out there who truly do care about sports have no time and no attention for an hour of sports news that feels like an open comedy audition mated with the worst of HLN programming. But like Nancy Grace has done on HLN, so have you allowed circus clowns like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to dominate your airtime and rhetoric. They seize their time on camera to bring out the worst aspects of discussions on race, religion, and human nature, exploiting controversial viewpoints that no rational human being could support. They employ, as was once said of President Warren G. Harding, "an army of phrases moving across the landscape in search of a meaning". And we, your customers and viewers, are tired of the whole charade.

You have gotten lazy, ESPN, as all who achieve near-monopoly status are wont to do. Why should you change? You are, after all, the "Worldwide Leader in Sports". But I contend that you still hold this title only for a lack of competition, of better options. I, for one, hope that the new Fox Sports Network lights enough of a fire under your ass to force you to uphold basic principles of journalistic integrity, and revert back to giving the people what they want: fair, broad coverage of American sports leagues that provides insightful analysis and tough reporting, instead of inflammatory baseless analysis and spineless reporting. Scandal is easy, it is cheap. It is also the mark of hacks and those with little of import to say. As a lifelong lover of sports, I can only hope and petition that you find it in the collective conscience of your network to stop coddling reporters who do not report and analysts who do not analyze, and get back to what made you once great.

Sincerely,

Charles McKeever

K-Rockathon Is Not Decadent But It Is Certainly Depraved

2013-07-30T15:02:00.003-04:00

The following is a harrowing, possibly exaggerated account of the writer's day as a beer server at Syracuse's "K-Rockathon".

I pulled into the State Fairgrounds at 9:40 am, the air ripe with the smell of decaying human intelligence. It took me several tries to find the VIP/Vendor parking lot, and I was briefly delayed by a gibbering drunk behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra, screaming at his mother over the phone. His vascular neck and overall complexion made me grateful for the numerous medical tents set up inside the Fairgrounds, as his day seemed destined to end in either a vein-bursting fit of apoplectic rage or a vomit-spewing episode induced by crippling amounts of bottom-of-the-barrel $5 lager. It was eighty minutes before the gates were set to open, and already the chain link fences were groaning under the mass of jiggling black-clad flesh pressing against them in anticipation. Cries rang out left and right, an ad-libbed discordant chorus accompanied by the honking of truck horns--"Hail Satan!" "Three Days Grace Rules!" "Ooooaaa-a-a-a-ahhhhh!"

I hustled from my car (a recycled-plastic Saturn Ion adrift in a sea of pickup trucks old and new) and through the gates, exchanging a nod with the uniformed officer guarding the crosswalk as to say what we were both thinking--"Yes, these people exist." I felt like a Christian being led into the Coliseum early in the day, before the raving spectators and lions arrived. My nerves jangled all the way to Beer Booth #1, where I faced the prospect of trying to slake the unquenchable thirst of this teeming horde of flesh. As I approached the Booth, I was hailed by a passing roadie pushing two speakers on a dolly. His black shit-kicking boots, green cargo shorts, and stained brown tour T-shirt showed plainly enough that he would have been here an hour early even if he wasn't being paid to.

"K-Rockathon twenty fuckin' thirteen, am I right buddy?!"

I gave a curt nod and half a smile as I made to move past him, but this non-reply was clearly unsuitable.

"Lineup's gonna be sick, brother!"

Feeling the weight and ugliness of the day already setting in, I decided on a different tactic.

"Sure will be. Not sure the crowd's going to be to my liking, though."

"Hell, my man, you scared of a little moshing? I lost two teeth in that pit last year and I'll be right back innit again, you bet your ass."

He peeled back his upper lip to show me that he wasn't joking.

"Oh, I'm not scared of it," I said, "Just not sure I'm gonna like the shade of it. Paper said they're expecting a record turnout of blacks this year. Mexicans, too."

"Aww, you're shittin' me, brother."

"Can't say I am. I guess it's been a terrible growing summer in the south...too much rain when they only need a bit, no rain at all when they could use downpours. Never know what it's going to do from week to week. So they're all hanging in CNY for the summer hoping to get work. Berry farms, Finger Lakes wineries, that kind of thing."

"Naww! Well shit, this ain't their scene! Whoever heard'a a crowd like that comin' out to bang around to Sevendust? Or mother-friggin' Chevelle??"

"The internet is a powerful force. Bands are spreading their tour info and music videos like never before...Just last week my buddy Jose told me that Flyleaf is the best thing he's heard in years. Times are changing, amigo. No one says you have to like it though, God knows you've still got the right to dislike it."

"Bastards! That shit-eatin' Cuomo is probably eatin' all that right up too! Let me tell you somethin' about our precious gov-nor, you got a minute?"

"Actually I don't. The crowds will be in any minute, gotta get a table of cold foamers ready for 'em. Wouldn't want anyone here having to stay sober, would we? But hey, keep your head up in that crowd..."

I gave a last nod and ducked under the Beer Booth's restraining rope. I watched my weather-beaten roadie friend shuffle off pushing his speakers, spitting through the hole in his front teeth more pensively now, and occasionally giving a shake of his head as he pushed. I thought I could hear a faint muttering..."Mexican bastards..."

Still on edge, I knocked over three sleeves of cups immediately upon entering the booth. I hastily began rearranging boxes on the floor to make it seem as though I knew what I was doing and that I was supposed to be there. The booth manager called for the taps to be turned on and the first wave of cups to be filled. It wasn't a moment too soon. The gates opened at exactly 11 am with a whoosh, the same sound Pandora must have heard upon opening her fateful box. The crowd descended like a cloud of bats, and the losing battle to keep the supply in line with the demand began.

A quick word about how the average Thon-goer was supposed to go about getting his half-hourly allotment of alcohol: First, he had to stop at the ticket stand and pre-purchase beverage tickets to be redeemed at the booths. This 'drastic' measure was enacted in the aftermath of K-Rockathon 2009, when a wild stampede of metal enthusiasts crashed through the tables at the beer tent--foaming at the mouth, frenzied with drunken greed, they made a run on the cash boxes and made off with an undisclosed sum. Several off them made off anyway; the rest went down under the force of the meaty fists and pepper spray of event security. I'm told the brown cloud hung over the Fairgrounds for days afterward, and all beverages served for the remainder of the concerts smacked of Habanero chilis.

For the remainder of the day, I learned what it felt like to be the proverbial sailor dying of thirst while adrift at sea. Company policy forbade us from drinking on the clock, and I needed the $100 too badly to risk being sent home. By 6 PM the smell of Shock Top had so thoroughly permeated my nostrils that they felt caked in orange peels and coriander, with a dusting of wheat, and still I resisted the temptation to throw one back. I give myself extra credit for this feat because no one subjected to 12 hours of the kinds of ranting, screaming gibberish spouted by K-Rockathon's so-called 'bands' should ever have to do it sober. I passed the time instead by imagining what the studio practice sessions for the members of these otherwise-unemployable groups must sound like. It's difficult to picture the Beatles, while recording the White Album, turning to each other..."That take was pretty good, mate, but it could use more noise. And your vocals were far too comprehensible."

As morning wore on into evening and evening became night, the stream of faces at our counter steadily seemed to roll themselves into one fuzzily-outlined Face. The Face had red-rimmed eyeballs and multiple neck tattoos...beneath the Adam's apple the body seemed to be breaking down like a mud hut in the rain. The rivers of humanity had overflowed and left this mass, this Face, awash on the fair shores of Onondaga lake. In the fleeting moments that my eyes were able to focus themselves on individuals rather than their collective mass, I saw pairings so strange that Noah himself might have abandoned the Ark and left mankind to be swallowed by the flood. Aseptic, sexless women with the arms of twelve-year olds and shirts taken from the Hot Topic bargain bin being pawed, groped, and led around by men so large and fleshy that their skins appeared to be attempting an escape from their frames. Spray-tanned girls with fake breasts and irredeemable facial flaws holding hands with diminutive men in trucker hats with barbed wire tattoos. Shirtless yokels, more redbodies than rednecks, whose chins seemed to vanish into their chicken-thin upper bodies, tongue kissing girthy women in halter tops that contained 1/3 of the fabric necessary to render their appearance socially acceptable. At no point could I single out a heterosexual couple from the crowd and say, "Now, there's a smart match."

Despite the rain that came off and on throughout the evening, I had the sweats. It was sensory overload...an assault on the eyes and the ears. The clock struck ten and I dizzily signed out from the hours sheet, a doctor's scrawl brought on by fumes and fearful haste. I dashed from the Booth, trying to beat the insane traffic...in the distance, the sounds of car horns and curses rang out. Ah! A perfect coda to an exhausting day for the ears. Faster now, almost to the gates...I collided with a heavyset bald man wearing a t-shirt that read, "Save a Fuse, Blow an Electrician!" I couldn't bring myself to consider why he might be wearing red-lensed Oakley sunglasses at this time of night. Finally, to the car, out onto the proud highway, as the heavenly I-690 chorus of squealing tires and police sirens sung me home...

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. IV: What I've Learned This Year

2013-05-04T20:17:00.000-04:00

Rather than write another long-winded anecdote about my time in the Marshall Islands, I've decided to wrap things up with a comprehensive and long-winded list of things I've learned this year. These cover a range of topics, from the personal to the cultural to the philosophical. So, without further ado: This year, I have learned...

-That it is possible to be soul-crushingly lonely in a room full of people singing to and celebrating you

-That sarcasm doesn't translate well into other languages

-That the only acceptable reaction to waking up in the night with a cockroach on your face is to
scream "motherFUCKER!!" and spike that cockroach off the wall

-That complete strangers can treat you like royalty while treating their own children terribly, and find no contradiction inherent in that

-That having a say in what you eat on a day-to-day basis is a majorly underrated component of happiness, one I will never again take for granted

-That nothing switches on a primal brain-freeze quite like the torpedo silhouette of a shark cutting through the water under the moon

-That children, especially in groups, are just as capable of being shitty to each other as adults are

-That I'm terrified to try teaching in the U.S., where there are real expectations for teachers and helicopter parents earn their title

-That it is very possible to get sick of eating pancakes

-That a select few Marshallese people are more generous, decent human beings than 97% of the Americans I know

-That you can win over a room full of sixth-graders for a whole year by meeting a daily quota of one masturbation joke in their native tongue

-That anyone who voluntarily goes celibate and sober for extended periods of time is probably a lunatic

-That our feelings, personalities, and identities are inextricably linked to our native culture, which only really becomes apparent when you experiment with "breaking free" of that culture

-That every single one of us is going to die someday, and consequently it is foolish to wish for a single second to pass more quickly than is already does

-That the previous statement is pretty much the epitome of "easier said than done"

-That writing and receiving real letters is about 1000% more enjoyable than e-mail

-That your sense of time completely goes out the window when you live in a world of perpetual summer

-That being a local celebrity is a pretty exhausting responsibility

-That it is possible to be nostalgic about Syracuse winters

-That unshakable moral principles can turn into loose guidelines pretty quickly when you have to adapt to a new life and a new culture

-That "this too shall pass". despite being one of the most worn-out clichés ever, has real teeth when you have to actually live in a situation that calls for thinking that way

-That it is possible to buy Ramen noodles for an entire bar and have no recollection of it

-That one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by the American government happened in these little islands, and hasn't ever really been atoned for (Google- "Bravo test")

-That SpongeBob SquarePants is set in one of the lagoons of Bikini atoll, and the fact that all the characters are able to talk and interact is allegedly a result of the aforementioned Bravo test

-That things that build character in the long term are never fun in the short term

-That it is in fact a small world, and it is impossible for me to go anywhere-even 9,000 miles from home- without meeting a half-dozen people who know my friends or acquaintances or old classmates

-That it doesn't feel like a small world at all when you fly across the entire Pacific Ocean

-That commonplace words-like "for", "at", and "have"- can have about a million different permutations and situational meanings, which makes teaching ESL a dicey proposition to say the least

-That living in your head because you don't have many people to talk to can be a useful exercise but gets either boring or terrifying after awhile

-That there are lots of different flavors of coconut

-That there are some kinds of fish I really enjoy

-That Americans are probably in the minority when it comes to getting riled up about public breastfeeding

-That if you stop drinking for five months, twice, you'll rediscover the jawline you forgot about in college

-That if anyone is still reading, I probably owe them big time

-That doing something worldly for a year doesn't entitle you to give advice, and you should probably stop now.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. III: Flying Fish Lacrosse

2013-04-08T22:19:00.001-04:00

   Let me begin this tale by apologizing for the number of seemingly unrelated twists and turns it will take. Tangents are apparently a byproduct of spending months at a time as the only American in the immediate vicinity. There are a handful of people here who are perfectly capable of communicating in English, but as non-Westerners, they have no frame of reference for my usual conversational/written go-to's--Good Will Hunting quotes, sports trivia, literary discourse, and the like.

   From 4th grade through 8th grade, I attempted to mold myself into a competent lacrosse player. Fayetteville-Manlius has a proud lacrosse tradition, plus all the cute girls played for the ladies team at my proud alma mater, Wellwood Middle School (suck it, Eagle Hill). I played in the district's summer league for three years until I was old enough to play for the school's modified team in 7th grade. I was what you could optimistically call a "project" on the lacrosse field. I was terrified of getting hit, plus my right arm and hand were even more useless and uncoordinated then than they are now. Puzzlingly, I also opted for a Carolina Blue/Gold helmet at the GB Lax Store before the season began--definitely wouldn't stand out on a team whose colors were green and white, right?

   Anyway, I languished on the B-team for my two years on the team. My biggest career highlights were getting the ball stuck in the head of my stick after winning (!) a faceoff, and taking one shot that went about eight feet wide of the net. I proudly told my dad that I had almost scored, and, in what seemed like a dick move at the time (but seems much more sensible in hindsight), he told me that that probably wasn't something to be bragging about. What this is all getting around to is that I pretty much sucked at lacrosse, but I liked being on the team, so I consequently spent a lot of time off the field goofing off on the bench/sidelines. This left me with plenty of time to practice and perfect cool stick tricks. I got pretty good, actually--I figured that if I couldn't be a lacrosse player in the truest sense (as in, you know, actually playing), I could at least pass for one when the pads were off.

   I've forgotten just about all of these tricks now, but little did I know that one little scoop-and-cradle move would come in handy nine years down the line, in a remote corner of the Pacific where no one has ever heard of lacrosse. As with all of my Marshallese adventures, this one started unexpectedly, thanks to my friend Manny (readers may remember him from the turtle hunting story). I had gone to his house to bring him a few pairs of socks, which I had no use for but he could really use--the men here wear them under their flippers when they go spearfishing. I handed off the socks and chatted with him for a minute, but he was clearly in a hurry to get going somewhere. It was dark out, and I saw him dig out a hard hat and fasten it to his head. It was a contraption worthy of Richard Tyler from The Pagemaster (obscure pop-culture reference alert!)--the middle of the hard hat had been removed, front to back, and in in the gap rested a massive flashlight held in place by fishing line. He switched it on and headed to the back of his house, where he retrieved his fishing net.

   Marshallese fishing nets look like what the Native Americans might have used for lacrosse goalie sticks, had they been more interested in stopping shots and less interested in using their games to practice warfare. Entirely wooden, the nets are about seven feet long, with the net itself rigged from thick fishing line which has been meticulously woven and tied into a grid. Manny informed me that he and his neighbor, Action (3-time captain of the outer island All-Name Team) were going out after flying fish in Action's boat. Did I want to come?

   I did. Now, this may come as a surprise to those of you familiar with my noble, badass Eagle Scouting roots, but I had never actually caught a fish before the incident I'm writing about. Of any kind. Ever. This fact had made me feel steadily less and less manly as my year among some of the greatest fishermen alive progressed. As a frame of reference, on the same day as this story, my host father brought home a dogtooth tuna (jilo in Marshallese) that was honest-to-God the same size as my seven-year-old host brother. He caught this beast with only a handline, no reel or gaffe necessary.

   My job on this first expedition turned out to be incredibly superfluous. Action steered the boat, Manny perched on the bow edge with his net and helmet-flashlight combo scouring for prey. I...sat. And held another flashlight to help sweep the areas Manny might have missed. I watched him go seventeen-for-eighteen on fish that we saw, deftly maneuvering the huge net and lifting 15-inch flying fish (jojo) from the water. It was a cloudy, moonless night, which meant that there was a dearth of jojo out and about. Allegedly, they're drawn up to the surface by moonlight and starlight, and we had none. Long story short, I had zero part in actual fishing that time around.

   Fortunately for me, a rainy day later that week broke into a cloudless, starlit night, and Manny summoned me to join the expedition again. This time, I brought my host father's net (of the same make as Manny's), so as not to be denied the chance to scoop a few myself. Getting into the boat, I thought back to that modified lacrosse sideline and hoped I still had a trick or two to fall back on, since the instruments were so similar. Manny, as I had already seen, was fluid and graceful with his net, clearly a natural who had nevertheless spent countless hours perfecting his craft.

   (By the way, I think a pretty compelling social experiment would be to take a bunch of outer island kids from the RMI to the U.S. and enroll them in contact sports. The students out here are freakishly nimble, and strong for their small statures. They are also incredibly fearless-in any field not involving demons- and they have an incredible tolerance for pain. They tackle each other on gravel and broken glass, jump on each other out of coconut trees, and generally just beat each other senseless whenever they have a chance. Absolutely no fear of bleeding or bruising. The girls are as impressive as the boys in this regard. They are solidly built, and many of them can hit a baseball farther than their male peers. Some wealthy, opportunistic coach of football, soccer, lacrosse, or baseball/softball needs to come snatch up a bunch of these kids and watch them start to dominate American youth leagues.)

   I mentioned in my turtle post the surreal feeling I get every time I cross the reef's edge into open water on this atoll. It was even stranger this time around, in the pitch black, not being able to see the depths falling away beneath me. Manny was again perched on the bow, one leg over the edge. I stood some five feet behind him, knees bent, riding out the small swells in the same manner that my brothers and I used to ride the CENTRO bus on the way home from working at the state fair--unsupported, surfing the turns with no hands. Manny got to work right away, scooping and cradling as Action brought the boat up on our unsuspecting targets. Flying fish really are incredible looking things--silvery-blue, biplane-shaped bodies, 'wings' of pale pink, hovering at the surface waiting to take flight. The goal when fishing for these is to snag them while they're at rest, because it becomes an infinitely trickier task once they launch. If they keep their tails dragging in the water, they can change direction even while they 'fly', and it becomes this interesting sort of dance across the surface. If they leave the water completely, they can propel themselves a pretty ridiculous distance in a very short time.

   I ended up catching nine of them over the course of our expedition. I wasn't counting my misses, but there had to have been at least fifteen of those also. I also missed one that subsequently turned and flew smack into the side of the boat, killing himself on impact. It was an easy snag after that, but it's probably unsporting to count that one towards my total. Anyway, my lacrosse-cradle strategy seemed to get a passing grade, as Manny and Action both claimed to be impressed by my haul. I'm going to assume they were just being nice, because Manny caught over a hundred of them. He was like Nomar Garciaparra up there, just hoovering fish into the boat.

   The other highlight of that trip was seeing a shark out in the open water for the first time in my life. I've seen them in aquariums, and many times this year on my dinner plate, but never one in its element, cutting silently through the water. As we passed it, Manny shone his flashlight quickly across it, and then got back to looking for jojo. He and Action didn't react in the slightest to the sight, leading to the following exchange once my brain registered the shape of what we had just seen.
   "Hey, Manny...uh, what was that?"
   "Shark."
   "Oh."
I experienced a moment of internal turmoil at that moment that froze me in place and hinged my jaw shut. It was the confusion created by the combatting desires of my curiosity, which wanted to yell, "Get your light back on that goddamn thing STAT", and my newly-triggered caveman fear-brain, which wanted to scream, "Back to land! The ocean gods are demanding a snackrifice!". Strange what a 2-second glimpse of that unmistakable torpedo shape can do to the mind of someone who has spent his whole life comfortably landlocked.

   All in all, it was a fascinating experience, and one I'm eager to repeat as often as possible in my last few weeks here. It was a good feeling to catch those nine fish and bring my lifetime total to...nine. And seeing the fish we were pursuing (plus that big one that we weren't) move through and above the inky nighttime ocean was breathtaking. As (who else) Hemingway once said, "If you ever get so that you don't feel anything when you see flying fish go out of water...you better turn in your suit." Ernest can rest easily knowing that if I actually owned a suit, I would be in no danger of having to give it up.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. II: Ghost Ship

2013-03-18T03:02:00.000-04:00

   During our program orientation in July, a group of us swam just about every day in the Ajeltake lagoon, a short walk from the elementary school we were staying in, across the street and down a path at the house of a very nice local family. It was a great place to bust out our snorkel equipment and the explore the reef communities underfoot--the lagoon was teeming with graceful angelfish, shy eels, those neon-colored fish that sell for 5 cents at pet stores, zebra-striped wrasse, and myriad other kinds that I know no names for. We would wade out to shoulder depth and alternate between snorkelling and floating, getting to know our fellow volunteers as we whiled away our free time in the electric blue water.

   Maybe a mile down from our swimming spot, we could see the bulk of a sizeable fishing boat. We assumed it was anchored and waiting to depart, but the first two weeks of orientation came and went without the ship ever changing position. Eventually we realized what an odd angle it rested at in the water, and concluded that it was more than likely beached on a sandbar, abandoned. A number of us made a pact that we would swim out to it before the end of orientation, when we would part ways for four-and-a-half months as we headed to our placements.

   Eleven of us set out on a Sunday morning after breakfast and walked down the road towards our launching point. (It is worth noting that on Majuro, the capital island and site of our orientation, it is not necessary to specify a road. There is literally only one, and it runs the entire length of the island.) We caused a minor uproar along the way, because large groups of white people are always an object of curiosity in the RMI, and our little band fared no differently. True to my Boy Scouting roots, I bore a length of forest-colored nylon rope tied around my waist, just in case. I had glorious visions of lassoing a cleat at the edge of the ship's deck and hauling myself hand over hand up the hull, to the wonder of my companions. Naturally, they would be full of gratitude for my timely (and badass) solution to what I assumed would be our chief logistical problem.

   After receiving permission from the family whose land we needed to cross to enter this new stretch of water, we entered the lagoon. The eleven of us fanned out at various speeds as we struck out for the ship, which we now saw was a good deal farther out than we had anticipated. I was the second person in line for the duration of the journey. This is not a reflection on my swimming prowess--I am competent at best, and not exactly resilient--rather, I just wanted to get the boring part of the adventure over with, and arrive at that towering red and white sentinel of the lagoon. Plus, I didn't want anyone to be able to claim they had to wait up for me.

   As we worked our way out into the water, I periodically looked behind me to check the progress of my companions. The number appeared to be dwindling--eleven, nine, seven, five...I was spared from any sentimental revels about comrades lost at sea in the brazen pursuit of the unknown when I saw them in the distance hauling themselves back ashore, tired and soaking.

   I arrived at the ship just behind another volunteer, a girl by the name of Julia. Julia gets points in my book for having frequented Manlius during her four year tenure at Colgate, and she is the oldest of five girls. Her father gets points in my book for living through that. Anyway, the ship was severely tilted on the sand bar, with the high side facing us. I have no idea how to estimate the length of a ship like that. I just know that it appeared massive--the hull and deck painted red and rusting; a white cabin and upper deck/control room rising above these. From the bow end, a formidable anchoring chain dropped some thirty feet into the water. The bow was pointed towards shore, but we had had to come up on the side to have a place to stand. It was calm inbetween waves, with waist-high water and level ground, but the slow swells came in at around seven feet, and it was quite an exercise to jump up and crest the waves each time a new one hit.

   The upside to these saline battering rams was that they provided me a way onto the ship that didn't involve utilizing expert knot-tying skills, deadly accuracy, or mermaid-seduction techniques. I simply sat in the ship's shadow and rode the natural elevator high enough to grab onto the outside of a now-windowless porthole. The next wave lifted my legs high enough to plant them inside a good-sized gap that had been rusted into the hull just below the deck rail. From there, I could maneuver myself through the hole, and did. Gentleman that I am, I went first for safety purposes, silently praying that my tetanus shot was up-to-date. Thankfully, I alit without incident.

   I helped Julia up through the gap and we took stock of our surroundings. I know pretty much zero about nautical terms, so please forgive any forthcoming errors of nomenclature. Directly in front of us was a door, and the cabin rose behind it, looming ominously, its paint peeling. The deck was upturned to such a degree that attempting any kind of movement without a railing would have been foolish, so we stayed off the main section of the deck. By this time, three other volunteers had made it to the ship--Michael, Jules, and Jessica. Five of us had made it from shore to ship, ready to explore the unknown.

   For most of my life, I assumed and applied an incorrect definition of the word "sublime". I had always believed it to mean wonderful, excellent, pleasant. But that's not it, not really. I was fortunate enough in my last quarter at OSU to take a fantastic lit. class with "The Mad Dr. T", Les Tannenbaum. In this class we explored the depths of Gothic narrative, and focused especially on the impact of the sublime in these works. More correctly, the term refers to things of such magnitude, aesthetic, or power as to render them beyond the scope of human reason or comprehension. Standing on board what we had dubbed "The Ghost Ship" was, by its correct definition, one of the first utterly sublime moments of my life. The ship's builder might well have been Ozymandias himself--"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."

   I've never been a fan of wanton destruction, but decay has always fascinated me. Creaking, abandoned barns; crumbling, centuries-old bridges; rusting shells of once-proud ships--these things have a certain haunting aesthetic to them that I cannot explain but never tire of. I guess there's something comforting in the slow march of the ages, the continued success of entropy. Remember, all those horse-and-buggies were new once, too.

   So there we were, five relative strangers, standing on the edge of something resonant with that wonderful quality of being beyond mere words. It was then, as we were clapping each other on the back and congratulating ourselves on doing what we had set out to do, that we realized the only member of our expedition with a camera had been amng the first to turn back. Oops. My initial thought was that this was a huge blow to the experience. How could I capture a triumph like this without a camera? I am a child and disciple of the Facebook age, and I enjoy (too much) being in front of the lens. This was among the traits that earned me the nickname "Hollywood" from some of my more bullshit-proof college friends.

   But I came to realize that no matter how many pictures we might have taken that day--as we worked our way around the deck, into the haunting engine room, through the disastrous cabin--I could not make you see it the way we had. Even if we had managed to fit ourselves and the whole length of her into the frame, frozen and unchanging, it would not tell the ship's whole story. Trivial or not, that moment felt so much bigger than a paragraph. To paraphrase Kerouac, we were on the roof of the world and all we could do was yell, I guess. And yell we did, whooping it up as we clambered down ringing metal stairways, clanging chains and tugging mooring lines as we scrambled like drunken sailors across the unmoving vessel.

   At no time was the other-wordly quality that possessed the Ghost Ship more apparent than when I came around a corner to mount the cargo hold and found, beyond all reckoning, a three-foot tall tree growing out of the deck, surrounded by a small square plate of new grass. A mile from shore, in the midst of abandonment and the harshest conditions imaginable--salt, wind, heat--life had found a way. And I found that fact to be just as incomprehensible, just as sublime, as the massive decaying ship creaking beneath my feet.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Volume I: Nighttime Speedboat Turtle Hunting

2013-03-08T23:55:00.001-05:00

I was walking home from school on Thursday afternoon when I ran into my friend Manny on the island's main path. He mentioned that he was about to go on a kawonwon, which means "sea turtle hunt", with a few other men from the village. Having only my lessons plans and a nightly routine of shower-read-sleep to look forward to, I did the prudent thing and invited myself along. I had resolved to break my monotonous daily after-school rituals, and this seemed like a good opportunity to make myself a more integrated member of the community.
"Will we be gone long?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "not long."

Perfect. I ran home, grabbed a camera and my life jacket, and headed for the lagoon. Preparations were already underway--rinsing out snorkels, spooling endless amounts of fishing line, and loading the snacks--in this case, an entire pandanus fruit, which was large enough to serve all six of us taking the trip.

We motored out into the lagoon. As many times as I experience the crossing of the reef's edge into the open ocean, I can never get over the sublime end-of-the-earth feeling it gives me to see such an awesome drop down into the rich blue water. Things got a lot less picturesque about five minutes later, as we entered into some heavy swells, which persisted for the rest of the hour it took us to reach our destination- a small, uninhabited island about 2.5 miles from Aur.

We tied up the boat and went ashore amid a storm of terns and frigatebirds, and hauled our supplies onto the beach. We followed the tracks of a turtle up the sand, a 3-foot wide pattern of dragging bulk and shuffling flippers. Manny immediately set to work with a long, sharp stick, driving it into the dune where the tracks ended. He was not disappointed--his fifth thrust saw the stick's tip covered in yellow goo, and he began shoveling with his hands until he uncovered his prize--a cache of perfectly rounded, soft-shelled turtle eggs. We collected these in a bucket and set them aside for dinner.

Afterwards, I went on a jambo (hike) with Herby and Timothy, two of the other men on the expedition. Five minutes into the walk, they had each wrangled a shiny black seabird with their bare hands. Timothy is lean and quick, but Herby is bigness incarnate, and I was pretty impressed by his nimble grab. They were beautiful birds, too--jet black with white crests, and beaks like knitting needles. Neither the men nor the birds made much fuss during any of this, as though each of them knew their roles perfectly.

We circumnavigated the whole island in a matter of 25 minutes or so, including a brief jaunt through one of the most ethereal collections of trees I've ever seen. They were towering, without branches for the first forty feet or so, and their bark was almost silver. The whole thing looked like Middle Earth transplanted in the jungle.

The sun was setting as we arrived back at camp, and the dinner preparations began. Those majestic birds whose praises I have sung quickly had their necks snapped and feathers plucked, and they were soon spitted on green saplings over a tidy cooking fire. On a separate blaze five feet away, the gigantic pot of turtle eggs was put on to boil in saltwater. At some point I began to wonder a few things: When would the 'turtle' part of our turtle hunt actually begin? Was this an overnight activity? Would I be playing hooky from teaching the next day, in pursuit of something whose taste I didn't even particularly enjoy? Luckily, Manny was able to illuminate some of the finer points for me while the eggs boiled and the birds roasted.
"When it gets dark, we go to the water. After we catch the turtle, we go home. Maybe soon, maybe middle of the night. Okay?"

Fortunately this was okay with me, since I didn't really have another option. While the food cooked, we began drinking coffee. Far and away the most successful western import in the RMI is coffee, and Marshallese men in particular fiend for the stuff in a fashion that would put to shame all of the Starbucks-addicted girls I knew in college. Each man also has his own strategy for making the perfect brew, though to my uninitiated palate, the instant coffee-powedered creamer-sugar triumvirate tastes exactly the same no matter which order you put them in or how slowly the creamer is added. We talked (okay, they talked, I barely understood a word) over a few cups of it and eventually dinner was ready.

There's a reason that stores put juicy chicken legs and breasts on display, cleaned and separated from the body, before sale. Mainly it's because it looks a whole lot more appetizing than being served the whole bird at once, from the tip of its beak to its kinked neck to its blackened feathers to its roasted lungs. This thing truly looked like someone had taken a flamethrower to Beaky Buzzard at close range. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in the Marshall Islands, ask as few questions about your food as possible.

Down it went, tasting slightly more agreeable than the stuff you scrape off your grill after a 5-hour 4th of July barbecue. I managed to take the edge off with a few turtle eggs, which unfortunately do not nicely harden after boiling like a chicken egg does. While they actually taste pretty good, they retain their (to put it mildly) semen-like consistency even when cooked, and it can get all in your hair and nose and drip off your face if you're not careful with your mouth. But I digress.

Darkness fell. Manny and Herby donned their goggles and snorkels and fired up their flashlights as they hit the water, wielding a big coil of rope and a brutal-looking gaffe. After a time, we saw them signalling with their lights from somewhere a few hundred yards off shore. We jumped into the boat and sped off in pursuit. We pulled up alongside them, and Herby tossed the weighted end of the rope into the boat as Manny struggled with something under the water that clearly outweighed him. We hauled at the rope, and Herby came up underneath the turtle to shove it on board as we tugged on it.

This thing was an absolute beast. Massive, glossy shell; pebbled, scaly flippers; a tail like a tapered club. It didn't seem to struggle or protest much, but it waved its tail like crazy for the first few minutes. We roared off in the boat, the men whooping up their triumph, and headed for home under a blanket of stars. On the way back, we met those same ugly swells head-on, and within five minutes we were absolutely drenched. By the way, whoever decided to use the name "Ocean Spray" to market a line of sweet, refreshing juices clearly had no idea what they were talking about. There is nothing tasty or refreshing about the spray of the ocean after the third or so shot to the face. I found it comical at first that grown men who weren't swimming would put on Snork-worthy goggles to take a boat trip, but they had the last laugh as I tried to keep my eyes open in the cold, salt-stinging spray. I also got hit by a flying fish at some point. Our boat passed through a number of swarms of bioluminescent jellyfish, their electric blue glow helping light the way home like miniature neon signs. Or tazers.

It would feel disingenuous not to mention that on the ride home, I also pissed myself a total of three times. The first two times were out of urgency--the coffee absolutely doing me in--and the third time was out of convenience, once I realized how warm I had gotten the first two times. So this trip marked a number of firsts for me: first seabird dinner, first time helping hunt an endangered species with intent to eat, first time struck by a hydroplaning fish at high speeds, and first time pissing my pants in front of five grown men. Thankfully, it was pitch black and we were being constantly soaked anyway.

I would like to add, in conclusion, that despite all of the weirdness, there was not a single unpleasant moment in the six hours that we were gone.The company and the experience made all of the minor inconveniences seem like something thrilling and fun. I've discovered during this island year that I truly love being on boats of any kind, especially when piloted by a race of people who are some of the most impressive ocean navigators in the history of the world. This trip was no exception. As we sped towards the warm lights of home, with the cold sea in my face and warm piss on my legs, I couldn't imagine feeling more alive.

Why Football Matters

2012-11-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

When I signed on to spend a year teaching in a country that still registers as a blank space on some maps I've seen, I knew I would be doing a lot of "doing without". Pizza, beer, television, (for a time) internet access, my family, my friends, etc...it was a lot to give up at once, but I was pretty sure that the newness of the experience would make those absences seem more like trifles. But as a 22-year-old, red-blooded American male, what I've found to be one of the most frustrating things gone from my life is the thrill of professional and collegiate sports.

Maybe I was spoiled at The Ohio State University, a hotbed for all things athletic with consistently successful sports teams and IMHO the most intimidating home stadium/crowd in college sports. Chief among these sports, as is so often the case, is football. For 3 years I saw an excellent, albeit frustratingly static, football team take the field Saturday after Saturday. I would rather not think too much about my Senior year's football season, a post-Tresselgate fiasco that resulted in OSU's first losing season since before I was born. On top of all of this Saturday glory, my NFL fanhood reached obsessive new heights in my college years, driven principally by a) a hugely competitive/ego-ridden/hilarious fantasy football league, and b) no one telling me that I couldn't spend an entire Sunday on the couch trying to derive some higher meaning in an otherwise meaningless Browns-Raiders 1:05 matchup.

As it turns out, I did derive some meaning from all of those hours of alternately cheering and pounding refresh on Yahoo to see if any of my team's skill position players had eked out another 10 yards of offense to bump me into the lead. I just didn't realize what it was until I left the country, relying on 2-month-old Sports Illustrated issues for my football news. (Minor digression--it was a really strange feeling to get excited about U.S. Olympic victories in the first week of October, only to realize that the Games had ended literally 3 months before I read about them.)

What I think I discovered about football is that it's a great extant way to validate yourself. Watching all those games can bring you emotions that few other things can, for a number of reasons. One, there's something in the human spirit deeply invested in seeing difficult tasks executed to a beautiful perfection. Two, there's something else in the human spirit that derives endless amounts of pleasure from watching people who we expect to perform perfectly screw up on the biggest stages of their lives- call it the car accident mentality. Three, which is perhaps the most important part of this rant, it is a form of complete escapism. The successes of players and teams that you value become your own successes. The failures of those same teams and players, conversely, are not regarded as your failures. There are few other arenas in life where you can point specifically to the exact cause of your unhappiness and delight in the feeling that you've somehow been wronged, let down, by something or someone you care about more deeply than you have any sane reason to. Has anyone else noticed this? That people, beyond all scope of reasoning, actually love to be wronged? Maybe it comes from our inability to accept our own failures, that we revel in being able to define a source of our own unhappiness.

This is why, ultimately, I miss football more than I miss vegetables or waking up when I want to rather than at the hour the family rooster decides is appropriate to start his morning routine outside my window. Out here, successes in the classroom are extremely rewarding, but also come in inches instead of leaps and bounds. Failures in the classroom have several vague cultural causes, but inherent in all of those failures is the feeling that I have personally failed to succeed. I don't mean to make it out as though my life here is infinitely depressing or that teaching has been a disaster; in fact, living here is wonderful and in teaching I have found a real passion. But what my life is missing is that filter, that barrier of competitive football of which I am not a participant but a spectator. There are no HD cameras to capture my fleeting successes, and no distant superhuman athletes to pin my feelings of failure on when they do arise. So, my life here is difficult, almost expressly because I have given up the one thing Americans have found they can't live without-beyond sex, beyond beer, beyond McDonald's--something to hide behind.

Social Media, Invisible Children, and 11th Hour Activism

2012-03-08T00:18:00.000-05:00

First off, I'd like to apologize for flooding everyone with what will surely be their umpteenth viewing of Kony-related media today. If you've spent any time online in the last 24 hours, I can pretty much guarantee you've at least seen the name "Josephy Kony" or the "KONY 2012" movement starting to spread. There is a positive side to this, and that's the fact that an entire generation of people is now at least acutely aware of some pretty awful atrocities that are occurring halfway across the world. It is admirable and somewhat amazing that so many of my Facebook friends, classmates, etc. have taken the time to watch Invisible Children's video about Kony and his crimes against humanity. Before today, I don't know how many people could even point out Uganda on a map, much less speak intelligently about any kind of issues present there.

This being said, I think it's of vital importance to call a spade a spade when it comes to this type of social movement. We have become, as my girlfriend so aptly put it, a society of 11th hour activists. We ready, fire, aim when it comes to trendy causes that actually stretch back decades. So many people lately seem to take special pride in being part of the "underrepresented masses"--whether it is the various Occupy movements or the Invisible Children, everyone seems determined to join up to feel like their voice, or the voices of the less fortunate, are being heard. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it, "That's really what you want in life...you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant, you want to feel like a participant in the goings on." There is nothing inherently bad or ignorant about this fact, it's part of the human experience.

But needing a level of connectivity doesn't excuse willful ignorance or uninformed thought. Let me preface this next section by making it absolutely clear that I believe what the members of Invisible Children Inc. are doing is incredibly noble, and what Joseph Kony and the LRA are doing is absolutely abhorrent. However, it disturbs me greatly that people my age can't help themselves when it comes to watered-down activism. Watching KONY 2012 is fantastic, it's a great first step. But where do we go from here? Shouting in protest about your tax bracket and unemployment is certainly within your rights. But does it put bread on your table?

The fact of the matter is, changing your Facebook profile picture is not going to directly remove a cruel warlord from power. Campaigns to create awareness generally do just that--make people aware. They do not change political structures, they do not force leaders to abdicate, and they don't pay your student loans for you. The other downside to all of this is that people watch a video like KONY 2012 and assume it tells the whole story. It neglects to mention the other organizations that are actually working to rebuild the infrastructure of Central Africa, so that the real Invisible Children have something to come home to. It neglects to mention that IC funnels money to the Ugandan government, and that is a major failing, because the government systems in other countries are not held accountable for every cent they take in. Intended or not, any social movement seeking to spread a message inherently creates its own propaganda.

I do not wish to denigrate those who have taken a vested interest in this or any other cause, particularly because some of our most inalienable human rights are at stake for people all over the world. Nor do I claim to be the most educated among my peers about Joseph Kony, Invisible Children, or anything related to this topic. All I really want is for my peers, this broad circle of 11th Hour Activists, to do more than repost, retweet, or re-anything. Take a moment, educate yourself a little more thoroughly, and then decide whether your cause is worth sharing with the world. To quote my Dad's favorite line from his favorite movie, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life". Quite frankly, neither is panicked, uninformed, and lazy.

Backyard Moneyball feat. Pablo Sanchez

2011-07-13T23:14:00.000-04:00

Recently, in the same week, I finished Michael Lewis' book Moneyball and rediscovered my love for Backyard Baseball 2003. Having very little to do this summer outside of babysitting, I was able to spend a considerable amount of time trying out a theory- that I could apply the theory Lewis explores, i.e. stocking up on undervalued traits like OBP and OPS and passing on "big-money" traits like HR hitting and base-stealing. That being said, here's how I drafted:

1. Pablo Sanchez, C. This is probably the most glaring departure from Billy Beane's standard, that being that everyone is high on Pablo and in a real-world situation, he would only sign for obscene amounts of money. Still, he has the smallest strike zone in the game, and has great speed for someone with so much pop. In fact, in a recent game, "Secret Weapon" (probably one of the least-fitting nicknames ever) hit for the cycle for my Pirates team. This great day at the plate included a 2-out double to drive in a run late in the game.

2. Achmed Khan, LF. The only Backyard kid wearing headphones, Achmed was my second pick because he, like Pablo, has a rare combination of power and speed. He also has one of the smoothest swings in the game, one that is seemingly without a hole if his stance is open. In the first 3 games of the year, he batted .692 and homered 4 times.

3. Pete Wheeler, 2B. Pete strikes out a little too much for a true Moneyball player, but his biggest weakness (strange strike zone leading to strange swing) is also one of his greatest assets- it's so narrow that he walks more than anyone on the team. BYBB 2003 doesn't actually track OPS, but his walks plus a .611 average can't be denigrated. One thing I've tried hard to do, a la Beane, is reign in his base-stealing attempts, because his pure speed used to make me cocky enough to try to steal 2 bases at once, which usually resulted in a juice-draining pickle or an out.

4. Ichiro, RF. Ichiro is the prototype player for creating runs without costing a team many. His only weaknesses seem to be that he outruns whoever is ahead of him on the basepath (unless it's Wheeler), and that he throws rockets that sometimes go over Dante's head. Which brings us to...

5. Dante Robinson, 1B. My brother Dan described him as a 40/40 guy, which I disagree with solely because he is much more valuable as a line-drive, RBI-type hitter than as someone who should be hitting for power. Still, he's another small strike-zone guy who doesn't make many mistakes on defense.

6. Nomar Garciaparra, P. He's one of the most highly valued players in the game, but at SS instead of P. Billy Beane's love of undervalued talent is embodied in Nomar's pitching ability. He doesn't drain his juice box very often, because his best pitch is the "left hook", a deadly accurate pitch that leaves the right side of Nomar's body, hooks to the left, and then runs back across the plate to the right. For right-handed, closed-stance batters, this pitch is nearly impossible to take anywhere but 3rd base via slow roll.

7. Amir Khan, SS. In the inverse of Nomar's situation, Amir plays SS for the Pirates despite being the 2nd most highly-rated pitcher in the game (behind Randy Johnson). The reason I switched Amir away from his preferred position? Lack of faith in the durability of foreign-born pitchers. Not really; I switched them a) because I wanted to do this in Moneyball fashion and not take the most common route to success, and b) because Amir's best pitch is his heater, which drains the juicebox much faster than the left hook. He is the only player I'm aware of that bats with a pre-ordained open stance, but this enables his weirdly long bat to operate effectively and rip the ball to left field whenever he makes good contact.

8. Ken Griffey, Jr., CF. Can spray the ball to both sides of the field, hit homers, and leg it out to beat throws consistently. Also makes a solid outfield anchor, who doesn't always get under the ball in time but makes up for it by having a cannon arm.

9. Troy Glaus, 3B. With an open stance, Troy can hit line drives to left almost as well as Amir, and better than just about anyone else. His lack of speed for an infielder makes him the kind of player that anyone but Billy Beane might pass on or undervalue, but his consistency at the plate and his ability to hit first base with his throws every time make him a core player on defense despite his shortcomings.

I realize that this could have been a monumental waste of time (and will continue to be, since I haven't finished my season yet), but the timing was right for me to try this little experiment and see if the same principles that can make an undervalued team successful in real life might also be applied to a computer game to create a winning team. Of course, it might just be that I win so handily because the game is designed for 10-12 year-olds, but it's still fun to crank BP homers off of Mr. Clanky with Pablo regardless. As Sanchez might say, "Gracias por leer este blog!"

Celebration

2011-05-02T23:24:00.000-04:00

Last night, America received some incredible news- that one of our oldest adversaries, the international face of religious terror, had been killed. The reaction on our campus at tOSU was delayed as we waited, breathless, for President Obama's official announcement. When it came, we took to the streets, honking horns, setting off fireworks, and waving flags. My group of friends flocked to McDonald's, suddenly craving Big Macs as though they were the tangible representation of our American spirit.

From there we took to Mirror Lake, where frenzied celebration resounded as hundreds upon hundreds of people jumped in and made the most patriotic acclamations they could think of. It really was a sight- the atmosphere, the muted lights and vibrant sounds, the chanting and screaming- I haven't been a part of anything more surreal in a long, long time. What struck me was how spontaneous the celebration really was: it was as though all of Ohio State flocked to Mirror Lake because we know no other way to represent our deepest and most elated moments, from cursing Michigan to graduating college. We came to Mirror Lake last night looking for some sort of instruction, and, finding none, took it upon ourselves to embrace our own raw emotion and get swept away in the historical poignance of the moment.

It is for this reason that I hope history is kind to us for taking part in such a raucous celebration, even when such a reaction seems to most of us now to be a natural one. We don't know what the ramifications of Osama bin Laden's death will be, but in the moment, that never seemed to matter. Because it was never really about death, anyway, at least for many of us. Our celebration last night, as morbid as it may later seem, was a celebration of the culmination of an effort that has spanned literally half of our lives. It was a celebration of what finally seems to be a moment of progress, no matter how nominal bin Laden's role may have been in al Qaeda these last few years. It was a celebration of finding something to feel truly good about being American again, and it was a celebration of our President's strong words renewing our American sense of Hope when it has recently seemed so hard to come by.

For that, I will never apologize, despite being a hopeless bleeding-heart pacifist. I don't celebrate killing, but I do celebrate triumph, and regardless of what the next five or twenty years bring, this will always be a defining moment of triumph for my generation. An American triumph with international importance, celebrated in a way that no one present could ever hope to forget.

"There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail...We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..." -Hunter S. Thompson

Mirror Lake, 5/1/2011

America's Game

2011-04-04T17:31:00.001-04:00

I meant to write this post on Opening Day, because it would have obviously been more fitting, but what can you do.

It seems only fitting that, at the start of baseball season, I should write something simultaneously detailing my love of the Red Sox and my bottomless hatred for the Yankees. The nationwide argument about this rivalry has changed dramatically in the last few years, particularly because winning 2 World Series titles in 4 seasons usually takes one out of the "underdog" category. But what's been hardest for me as a fan since coming to Ohio for school is explaining my obsessive fanhood to beleaguered Indians and Reds fans. I've been called out for being a traitor to my home state, a front-runner, and various other things, mostly by people whose entire geographical conception of the state of New York is based on the state and "the City" being one and the same. Fun fact: I have been to NYC exactly one time in my short life, and I was five.

Anyway, I think the best way I can explain myself in this regard is with an analogy about where I grew up. As my diploma will tell you, I am a proud graduate of Fayetteville-Manlius Senior High School. For those of you that don't share this esteemed distinction with me, let me describe the F-M area to you (and try to make some semblance of a relevant analogy at the same time). Much of Fayetteville (the Red Sox) is situated along the main drag of Route 5, in a lower geographical area than Manlius (the Yankees), which parts from Route 5 and spreads into rolling hills marked by housing developments. To return to baseball for a moment, one of the main criticisms thrown at Red Sox fans is that they bemoan the fact that the Yankees spend obscene amounts of money, but the Sox themselves spend the 3rd-most money of any team in the league. Here's where the analogy gets juicy. By all accounts, F-M as a whole has attained an almost gilded level of wealth- some of the families where I grew up had way more money than they knew what to do with (and I make no complaint about this, because I was a direct beneficiary of the generosity of such families more times than I can count).

However, treating F-M as a single entity does it a disservice, because as someone who grew up on the Fayetteville side of the tracks, I know there is a huge difference between the two, much like the Red Sox and Yankees. Sure, a lot of people in Fayetteville were wealthy, but not Manlius wealthy--the Fayetteville elite all seem to be artists, musicians (including the Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page, true story), the occasional dentist, chefs--things of that nature. This is in stark contrast to the multitudes of doctors, lawyers, and surgeons that characterize Manlius, especially to people in Fayetteville. My point here is one of aesthetics. The aforementioned rolling hills of Manlius seem to be populated exclusively with pseudo-Stepford shiny new developments where the numbers of the houses are the only things that really set them apart. This is in dramatic opposition to the wealthier parts of Fayetteville, where an eclectic blend of old mini-mansions and houses of the famous (including Fayetteville native Grover Cleveland) are painted every color of the rainbow, and are absolutely distinct.

I know, I know, what could this possibly have to do with baseball? Well, here's why I fell in love with the Sox in the first place, and not the barely-geographically-closer Yankees. It never mattered to me that they spent almost as much money as their hated rivals. What mattered was the Cowboy Up, Gang of Idiots culture that has always seemed to pervade the Boston clubhouse. 2003 and 2004 were such fun years to watch in particular because of this mentality--sure, Johnny Damon and Manny Ramirez and Kevin Millar and Pedro were all getting obscene amounts of money to be there, but one got the sense that they really would have been there regardless, acting just as crazy, and having just as much fun playing the game with their absurd haircuts and wild facial hair.

Sadly, the poster child for the difference here turned out to be Damon himself, who left Boston for the Yankees and immediately cut his trademark locks and beard. "The Caveman" became the "Cave-sellout", someone who compromised his image for a sense of belonging in a clubhouse that has always had a mechanical feel to it (cue Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine"). The Yankees all buy into a singular image, and it does help them dominate, but you never get the sense that they're really having fun playing the game (any awkward congratulatory moment between Jeter and A-Rod exemplifies this). Compare this feel with the one created by Boston manager Terry Francona, who, when asked if he would consider Kevin Youkilis the "Greek god of walks", quipped, "I've seen him in the shower, and I wouldn't call him the Greek god of anything".

My views on the differences between the Sox and Yankees can best be summed up by Matt Damon in "Good Will Hunting"--when told by an elitist Harvard grad student that he will be making fries for said student's kids on their way to a ski trip, he replies, "Well, at least I won't be unoriginal". Having grown up on the "original" side of town, I can't picture ever wanting a place in a housing development, and I really can't picture ever wishing anything but the worst for the New York Yankees. /endrant

Distraction and Deception

2011-03-08T19:57:00.001-05:00

For those of you who have never experienced the joy of traveling a significant distance on a Greyhound bus, I implore you to take the voyage at least once. Go home, go visit a friend, go enjoy the sights of I-81- anything above 200 miles counts for credit here.

I suggest this, not because it is by any means a spiritually enriching exercise, but because it is probably the most interesting carnival of bizarre human behavior you could ever hope to experience. I've been in 7 countries in my lifetime. I go to school 413 miles away from home. I've been in practically half the states in this country. When I was twelve, I was offered a bag of weed on the streets of Jamaica. But there is nothing, I mean nothing, like the twisted little pseudo-reality that goes on in the intimate setting of a Greyhound bus, with its charming grey plastic-and-disco-upholstery motif.

On my most recent trip, a little over a week ago (Columbus to Ithaca and back), I had the good fortune to experience the following:

-A man verbally assaulting a Border Patrol officer, telling him he had the documents and photos to prove that 9/11 was an inside job ("Distraction and deception, man! Distraction and deceptionnnnn!!!")
-The same man putting his headphones on and singing in an unintelligible falsetto for the next hour
-Going from Akron to Columbus with the man in front of me having his seat all the way reclined, and the woman next to me having her baby's head rest in the crook of my elbow while it slept. So for approximately 90 minutes, I couldn't really move or breather particularly dramatically, for fear of a screaming baby and/or bruised knees

This isn't meant to be a post where I bitch and moan about how awful my life is, and how terrible the good people at Greyhound are. Actually, if you're one of those people who can hold their tongue while acts of unfathomable rudeness and general weirdness are going on all around you, there's no better way to spend 12-14 hours traveling. My first time ever on a Greyhound, I spent a good deal of time listening to the man behind me explain to the French exchange student next to him how his watch worked, and how it was the 19th anniversary of his "famous actress" girlfriend being raped and killed. I later witnessed this same man attempt to purchase pot from anyone in the Buffalo line that was "holding", and even later dealt with the mystery of this man's disappearance at a Utica Thruway stop when the driver stopped to de-ice the windshield. Gone, into the night, just as bizarrely as he had swept into it.

Riding long distances on a Greyhound, while not the most palatable way to travel, is a unique form of human experience that has so far been unmatched for weirdness in my life. Also, Amish people. So come on, take a chance and ride- and hope beyond hope that the stickiness on your arm is someone else's gum.

Abod's NCAA Musings

2011-02-23T17:41:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone how are you doing. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Alex (commonly known as Abod). I know Chuck from high school, and we have both started blogging. I do mine to productively kill time, and because I enjoy assessing college basketball. Most of my submissions to Chuck will be about NCAA Men’s basketball, with an occasional off topic here or there. It is at this point I should inform you all that I am a diehard Syracuse fan. I bleed Orange and Blue. So a majority of my posts will contain a large dose of SU basketball. I am just warning you all, I may get vulgar. Just a heads up.

Anyone who reads this, feedback is much appreciated. Either directly to me (Alex Boduch on Facebook, send me a message or something along those lines, Alexander.boduch@gmail.com via email), or through Chuck. I appreciate peoples feedback. If you think my writing sucks, feel free to tell me that. If you love what I’m writing, let me know that. If you think I’m a moron who is out of his mind, I will appreciate that as well. Anyone, enough of this intro, if you want to get to know me better, ladies, I’ll take you to dinner. Guys, we can go get pitchers of beers and bond over a nectar of the gods. So, onto my first post for Chuck:

The new NCAA rankings came out this week (surprise right?). Anyway, I was looking at the polls, and one thing really irritates me. There are two equally respected polls, but how do we know which one to base our “rankings” on? So, I decided to solve this problem, by creating “The Abod College Basketball Rankings.” To sum it up in short, I take a teams ranking from ESPN/ USA Today, and combine it with the ranking from the AP Poll. When two teams end up with the same number of points, I award the higher of the two rankings to the team that had the greatest positive change. If by some chance they both move up, I pick which team I like better. This is an imperfect formula for now, and I hope to honestly have a good one in place by the end of the season. So, I now present to you, the first segment of “The Abod College Basketball Rankings:”

1.) Kansas

2.) Texas

3.) The Ohio State University

4.) Pittsburgh

5.) Duke

6.) San Diego State University

7.) Notre Dame

8.) Brigham Young University

9.) Georgetown

10.) Wisconsin

11.) Purdue

12.) Arizona

13.) Connecticut

14.)Villanova

15.) Florida

16.) Louisville

17.) Vanderbilt

18.) Syracuse

19.) North Carolina

20.) Missouri

21.) Texas A&M

22.) Kentucky

23.) Temple

24.) Utah State

25.) Saint Mary’s

Also, writing this got me thinking. So far I have referred to myself a handful of times in the third person. For any person who went to middle school with me, do you remember Miss Carolla, the stunningly attractive 6^th Grade English teacher who used to talk to in the third person? All I learned from that class was how awful it sounds to actually speak in the third person.

So, this blog is going out to Big 10 Nation. This is a groundbreaking moment for me, because outside of reading the Club Tril blog (Yes, tOSU fans, even us clowns in the Big East read it), I don’t have much exposure to Big 10 Basketball. Things I can confirm about the Big 10:

1.) They have their own tv network, and it is CONSTANTLY showing gymnastics- this isn’t a bad thing, I am in no way complaining about this.

2.) Tom Izzo is a great coach- and here come the emails asking me what drug I’m on, and telling me how bad of a coach Izzo is. Just saying.

3.) Trevor Mbakwe from Minnesota is AWESOME- I’m sure I spelled his last name wrong. Kids a player. Not that I’m not impressed with Sullinger, cause hes a player, but at this point, nothing he does surprises me. Mbakwe had like 37 or something the other night I believe it was.

4.) You don’t get hated on by the commentators. A small list of people who hate on the Big East: Dick Vitale (still love him), Doug Gottelieb (steal some more comps you punk), and the other goon whose name currently escapes me.

Alright, that’s enough out of me for one day. So until next time, I hope you enjoyed it, and I appreciate any and all feedback you might give. GO ORANGE!!

to read more of Abod's thoughts, check out theabodblog.blogspot.com

China Stories (by featured writer Terry Creamer)

2011-02-16T00:15:00.000-05:00

Look for Terry C/ T Creams/ Terrence/ Red to be a semi-regular contributor to ITPWAC from now on. Here are some of his thoughts on his experience in China last semester:

Here is a blog post from my China blog. I made this one a tad more college and a little less family. I put a leash on my language in the blog cause my Mom was reading it.

--------------Guilin, Guangxi, China.

Just wow. Amazing place. Stories...

After kayaking to a river boat restaurant for lunch I didn't plan on watching them kill and gut our fish right there in front of us. A few slams of the fish on the ground, some thumps on the head, gut, cook, spice, and cook in beer to your liking, and that's how Guilin does 20 minute "beerfish". And if we had another hour we could've gotten our choice of the chickens running around the boat and dock. Prepared the same way. Yeah. That's called "hardcore" in America. But really, that's just "China".

Yangshou (spelling?) is basically the quaint bar town of Guilin. Absolutely fantastic tourist spot. http://www.painetworks.com/photos/ig/ig2591.JPG (this is a link to a picture of I believe Yangshou.) With such scenery in a bar town with my college friends I was not surprised to find myself awake late at night decently wasted with the munchies. I wasn't about to walk to try and walk to McDonald's, get lost, and become a sex slave or rice farmer. But God heard me, and he wanted to live vicariously through a double Cheeseburger craving. Next thing I know a Chinaman pulls up on his motorcycle outside our hotel where I am standing making my decision. Potential kidnapping aside, a "McDonalds" in Chinese and an exchange of 10 kuai ($1.30) has me sitting on the back of the bike with us racing along side streets to the glorious golden arches. He waits outside for me to order, I hop back on the bike and he brings me back to the hotel. And I still have my kidneys.

What would you do for the munchies?---------

Hard Knocks: 1667 Summit

2011-02-12T02:33:00.000-05:00

About a week ago, I hit the halfway point of my Junior year of college. More recently, the fine residents of 1667 Summit St experienced our 2nd run-in with the bum that we believe sporadically attempts to live on our roof and/or fire escape. The 1st encounter occurred on the night after finals ended Fall quarter, when our friend Julie walked out onto the fire escape at 3 am and found herself face-to-face with a disheveled looking man who introduced himself as "William". Needless to say, the police were called, and the big flattened box he had conceivably been blocking the wind with was disposed of. The best part about all of this is that for weeks, we had been hearing noises from above our kitchen, and repeatedly referenced the unspeakable acts that squirrels and raccoons must have been committing inside our walls. The creepiest part of all of this is that we found one of my t-shirts in a frozen wad up on the roof. So, there's that.

Where I'm going with all of this is that, at the halfway point, I think we've managed to cram more insanity into one household than I thought would be possible in an entire year. Heads smashed through cabinet doors. Bums stealing laptops. "Meezys" on the roof while singing Tenacious D to the neighborhood. UDF Deep Freezes at any hour of the night. Case races? How about keg races. Face-punching, mailbox-smashing, fungus-growing, literature-discussing goodness. Dishwasher? No, thanks, I'd rather let a bit of old meat sit in the sink and see how long it takes for maggots to appear. (Note- they do spontaneously generate, right?)

I think at this point, I can't really be surprised by anything. After all, these are the same people who signed up for a 1:15 am Thursday (aka Wednesday night, for those of you under 50) time slot for D-league intramural hockey. So...the rest of the year? In the words of the great Frank Reynolds, "It's gonna get real weird". The only question that remains is, can the rest of this year possibly be as depraved as the first half? I, for one, have faith. In light of this country's current Administration, one remarkably appropriate phrase comes to mind: Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

The Gentlemen of 1667 Summit

Nostalgia

2011-02-01T22:50:00.000-05:00

I've come to the conclusion that there is nothing that beats old school videogames. I don't mean Atari or CalicoVision or other grainy systems that I won't pretend to be old enough to have played as a kid. I'm talking the golden years, at least for my generation- somewhere between 1998 and 2002. Specifically coming to mind are those games that I have modern incarnations to compare to, like NFL Blitz (2000), Kobe Bryant's NBA Courtside '99, and Madden/NHL 2002. There's not really a fighting or driving game out there now that interests me, so I won't detail my love affairs with Super Smash Bros and MarioKart64- we all know those are stand-alone, once in a generation kind of games.

What got me thinking about all of this was the time I spent at home over Christmas break. I brought my 360 home with me, thinking that its novelty in my household would trump the appeal of the N64 that we always wear out when I'm home. This hypothesis failed for two reasons: One, I forgot that I only own one 360 controller and one game (Madden '11), so there went any multi-player activities. Two, I forgot that my brothers and I have made an unspoken pact over the years to never grow up, at least not in the presence of one another. With the limited amount of time we see each other in a given year, daring to not act like a kid at home would border on blasphemous.

That being said, I spent countless hours on that N64 in the 3 weeks I was in the Cuse. Blitz 2000 with my older brother, Super Smash with my younger, and Kart if we were all in the house at once. The 360 went completely neglected, except for afternoons I was home by myself. Faced with this realization, I was set on figuring out why it was that a piece of technology from 1997 captivated us more than one that was less than a year old.

What I think it boils down to, in the end, is the reality factor. With the N64 (or the PC versions of Madden/NHL), you know going into it that things are going to go wrong. The games are riddled with glitches, as well as nonsensical features that are inevitably going to screw someone over. But that's ok, because it always seems to even out and everyone squares with the house. For instance, in consecutive games of Blitz 2000 with my brother Dan, the following occurred:
-I lost 5 fumbles and was intercepted 3 times (game 1, I got smoked)
-I got scored on with 14 seconds left, and somehow managed to win the game on a 65 yard bomb to Jerry Rice (another plus- playing with certified HOFers when they are ridiculously unfairly good in the game), during the course of which he evaded two tacklers in the last 5 yards, a near impossibility with the way Blitz is set up.

As much swearing and throwing of controllers both of these circumstances elicited, it didn't really matter, because you have to expect things like that coming in. Technology sucked, things went wrong, and it always allows the loser to maintain a shred of dignity, because they always know that things out of their control drastically could have changed the outcome. Same as when I gave up a crucial first down in my Madden 2002 franchise last summer when, playing against the Packers, BrettFavre was lined up by the CPU a full 15 yards ahead of the line of scrimmage (major glitch). The ball was snapped directly into his hands, and 3rd and 12 became 1st and goal. Things balance out though, like I said- concurrently, I had been playing a season on NHL 2002, and Joe Sakic scored 125 goals for me in that one (playoffs included). By my count, that would put him 25 ahead of the real record, held by Wayne Gretzky (that's 100 goals, for those of you shaky with math). 25% better than one of the greatest to ever play the game...seems plausible.

Let's compare these traits to Madden 2011, the game I so unconsciously avoided in favor of Blitz. It has incredible graphics, players with faces and play styles that are incredibly accurate, and incredibly easy controls. Madden gets more and more realistic every year, so it should come as no surprise that this is (hypothetically) realistic to the nth degree. There's just one problem- guys put up the same monster numbers as the games that we expect to be unrealistic. A good player playing on the All-Madden setting can still put up 45 points and throw for 5 touchdowns. Put that same good player on All-Pro and those numbers become 70 points and 7 passing TDs. A 95+ running back like Chris Johnson or MJD can trash a defense for 300 yards, if you run the ball enough. That's not the NFL, that's NFL Blitz!

I don't mean to bitch; I love Madden '11 as much as the next guy and then some. It also has the nostalgia factor working against it- it's new, which means I don't have fond memories of 9-year old me playing it with my elementary school friends or long hours with my brothers in our cold basement wearing our thumbs out on hard blue and gray plastic controllers trying to top each other at it. Sorry, Shaq, but putting you in in NBA Live '11 will never trump taking Zan Tabac off the same Celtics bench in Courtside '99 and throwing down an uncontested slam, no matter how realistically sweaty you are. Strange as it sounds, I'd almost prefer in these cases to say...even if it is broke, don't fix it.

PS- At least 2 guys in Blitz 2000 (Fred Lane and Steve McNair) are already dead.