So then i was all like whaaaaa??? Linear narrative? Chronological Order? That doesn't sound like any ballad of any tin man I ever heard of. So we're dropping that straight-forward, here's what I did on my summer vacation this then this account and just writing whatever I feel like in the given moment. Don't worry, I've still got a checklist on the desktop - we haven't gone INSANE. So you'll get all the same bits, just not necessarily in their proper, cling-to-your-enlightenment-principles-of-temporal-continuity order. It'll be like living in Hopi time, if, ya know, the Hopi could talk*. So kick back, attempt to set your car CD player to random and accidentally jam your hand into the flux capacitor, 'cause we're gonna go back in time, Dana Carvey style, to March 17, 2008.
* - By far the biggest White Man Ignorance faux pas of recent memory occurred while the Searls were in town. We went up to Tonto National Monument, which will get its own blog treatment, pictures and all, later. But for now: egads. The Monument is a cliff dwelling, extraordinarily obviously constructed with masonry, a huge amount of community involvement, etc. There must have been fifteen signs detailing how the Salado Indians had irrigated the area, farmed, you know, generally LIVED a freaking post-agricultural development type life. I mean, they were nomadic, but this was clearly a highly-organized, humans-conquering-the-environment type endeavor. So Margie, aka iPMM, got her heroin fix I mean took us to the gift shop to get her National Parks Passport book stamped. And I was flipping through a Sonoran Desert Wildlife book when this nice looking, older WHITE man walked up to the counter to talk to the park ranger. And he asks,
"Did these Indian peoples have language? I mean, could they talk, or did they just grunt at each other? Like, ugh, urrrgh, Unnngh?"
Holy cultural insensitivity Batman!!! Or, holy embedded notions of one's racial superiority!!! Note that we're not really talking about the dawn of man here - this was circa 1400, not circa 2001 zarathustra moments. But it got better! The lady behind the counter - presumably a, you know, representative of American park ranger authority to visitors from all over the world - says, "You know, I'm not sure. They certainly didn't leave any writing. Let me go back and get someone smarter than me."
Side note: how sweet would this be if that were the standard retail operator / customer service response? "I'm sorry, the person you have dialed is TOO STUPID to answer your question. We'll be back with the manager promptly."
So, to all the credit of park rangers everywhere, the second ranger comes out and asks "Did you have a question?" And Stupid White Man repeats his question. And the park ranger takes a deep breath - showing all the practiced restraint of someone who had clearly uttered the words, "The bathroom is over there, to your left," a thousand times - and informs the man that indeed, these peoples had language. He starts to say something to the effect of "This is somewhat obviously indicated by the level of cultural complexity!!!" but then just sold him a passport book. He's your pusherman. (Seriously, props to the ranger for not absolutely losing it there. He definitely knew his stuff and managed not to give this guy the well-deserved comic book guy treatment).
So I shared this tale with the family, and "Native Americans couldn't talk" became a running gag for the whole week. Id' like to think that our shmarmy comments and hyper-ironic treatment of SWM's ignorance somehow vindicated four hundred some-odd years of genocide. Somewhere, a tear is rolling up an Indian's cheek and back into his eye. (Note this great Dinosaur comic which is at least tangentially related to the topic. I heart that comic big time, btw. Also, note that the above joke about Hopi time is ENTIRELY BASED on Hopi language. And the iPMM also found a placard by a Native American that said more or less "Without language, our culture is nothing." Wow, just wow).
So all this time travel crap leaped into my brain on Sunday. We were playing our usual Sunday pickup game, when organizer and general great guy Jot (Ultimate player, father of three and an ironman triathlete - impressive dude) threw me a hammer. Only it slipped out of his hand and wobbled like mad, then fell off its intended path and adopted more of a Watson-Crick, double helix trajectory. With some nifty reading and a layout, I caught it, and then after the point, of course, I heckled Jot on his throw. Started off with something like, "Damn, Jot, I think that hammer broke the space-time continuum," and he replied "Hammers? Where we're going, we don't need hammers." "I said, oh yeah, who's the President in 1985, future boy?" and he says, "I'm not sure, but I think he's traveling on the U.S.S. Nimitz." Damn, game set match Jot in the sport of "dorky time travel references." Seriously, any reference involving "The Final Countdown" and not mentioning Europe or a nasty synthesizer riff wins the reference game for me. Nice work, Jot.
Speaking of the Ultimate - a week and a half ago, though I was bedraggled by flu (it's like if he says it enough times, he thinks people will start to feel sympathetic), I trekked down to Tempe for the Spring league playoffs. The games are not worth recounting, really - despite my bronchi hanging out my throat, I played very well in the semi-final game and we coasted to about a 15-9 win. We played a hotly contested finals against a to-that-point undefeated team and ended up winning 15-11. So yay, we're the champs of a crappy four week spring league! Ah, wait. The game was hotly contested at moments, with a couple of could've gone either way calls and some violations by people who probably didn't no better. I was guarded by an experienced player for much of the game who did know better, but he decided to pull every dirty Ultimate trick out there. Running into me in the stack, pushing off on cuts, limitless, tackle style hacking on the mark. Fun times. At one point, I caught a dump, immediately turned to huck, he ran into me - blatant foul - and called travel (!!?!?). And then contested the foul, and then came in on a stall count of four - even though I had the disc maybe for a second. BLAH! I must've asked him politely five times to watch it, but it had no influence. So eventually I lost my temper a bit, which did not involve clocking the guy, but did involve me deciding not to put up with any more of the crap. So I was in a heightened state, and started playing crazy D. A couple of points later, I laid out completely past a guy for a D, landed on the ground in front of him - the disc is already on the ground - he steps on my back and called a foul on me. Different guy, but my patience was gone by this point. Instead of contesting, I politely said "B.S., etc." This was not taken well. So, a chippy game, one that we ultimately won, and one that really didn't register in my head as exceptional in any regard.
The next day, a couple of people in the league post these diatribes to our local frisbee website about good spirit and such, the usual softer side of Ultimate. No one said "Nyet sucks," but it was all pretty thinly veiled, and there were some pretty demeaning things typed. I felt terrible - admittedly, I had some pretty deeply felt grievances toward one guy on the other team in particular, and I let it get to me and lost my temper a bit. SO, yeah, I felt bad. But I also had some people e-mail me calling BS on the people who posted for doing it in such a public fashion, and a couple of the more competitive players - my bud big Nate whom I've mentioned here before, in particular - made a point of coming up to me last night at league and telling me what a load of BS they thought the whole thing was. (The posts, ftr, have since been taken down by the site admin, who agreed that it was "poor spirit" to play such public opinion games). I was pretty upset that the people hadn't spoken or contacted me directly and had chosen the public forum as an outlet, so I contacted them directly.
And it was great. I admitted fault - again, I lost my cool and got way to competitive because of one person - but we also had a good discussion about the purpose of league and keeping things fun and such. It turns out that some of the things that they were upset about turned out to be differing interpretations of rules. We essentially cleared things up. So that was very cool. That said, it has pretty much always been my opinion that in a competitive game with people making their own calls, things can get heated. And it's all fine, as long as people talk it out after the game. There's a certain level of, um, imperviousness that people need to adopt. Just ask my great friend (and future president) Ariel - you can SCREAM at someone on field and still be great friends years later. Again, this is not saying that it's excusable to yell at opponents - you should keep it low-key if possible - but as much as it is disrespectful to the opponents to lose one's temper, it is disrespectful to the game to play it sans passion. And passion carries some argumentative baggage on occasion. Particularly when Joe Cheater is fouling you every three seconds - the nice irony being that if you call of those fouls, you're the jerk being ticky tacky.
After all of this, though - the feeling bad, hurt feelings, etc. - I got a good dose of people being very great. There were some bad feelings, and I'd like to think that my direct contact approach benefited all of us more than the name-calling on public message boards that preceded it. Things are cool with both of the peeps involved and me. We worked it out, person to person (not, as iPMM would have us do, station to station). Which is great, and hopefully we're all the better for it. I know I'm going to make a bigger effort to keep cool at league games now. I really enjoy the Phoenix ultimate scene - small and not-as-competitive as it is, it still makes for a nice little family, as I was telling Mike NTPB on the phone just before the games. So the end of this little emotionally-trying episode was a good one.
And I brought my reborn chilly attitude to league last night (remember,thanks to the time machine, we're back in St. Patrick's Day) and had a great time. Our team has a lot of fast guys and gals without the best throws - so I doubt will win league or anything, but it will be fun to see them get better over the course of the season. And yes, that's pretty much me putting a good face on something that, if last night was any indication, will be a frustrating experience. We lost 15-7 or so, and I'm pretty confident that I caught or scored all of our goals. If I am your go-to deep, you are in trouble, mis amigos. As I said, lots of people who do a good job getting open but then turn it over a lot. Oh, well. Also of personal self-glorifying note - on one play, I was standing on the left sideline at about midfield when the other team put up a huck to the right sideline endzone for someone else's guy. I got on my proverbial horse, sprinted about 50-60 yards and got a shoulder high layout D. Very, very exciting. And completely aided by the fact that the receiver had no idea that I was there - he was milking it a bit. Still, fun, all out aggressive play, and I think the flu may be getting behind me. Yah.
The main thing, though, that was sweet about last night, was that I spent a fair amount of time being guarded by / guarding a former ASU player named Vince Noe. OMG-to-the-max - I'd seen him play before, but this was the first time I had gotten stuck in a lot of one-on-one, guard him in the open field situations. Say it with me in your best Strongbad teen girl squad voice: he is SOOOOOOOOO good. Wow - probably about 6'2" or so, fast as all get out, malicious hops, fantastic throws, and the nicest guy you will ever meet. He smoked me a few times, but I actually got him once or twice, too. On one of the last plays of the game, someone threw him a terrible, blady, 30 foot in the air pass - one of those "no way, automatic turnover" throws - and he just calmly SOARED for it. Seriously, dude has a twenty-two foot vertical. Unbelievable.
Anyways, as I said, we played each other all game and had just a spectacular time. And after the game, we were talking about club Ultimate and he basically gave me a "get your ass out to Sprawl" pep talk, which was completely unrequested and very benevolent of him. So I think I'm going to lace 'em up and see if my knees / ankles / etc. can take some club Ultimate. They practice on Wednesdays, so hopefully it'll round out the Ultimate for the week, which is currently only happening Sunday and Monday. Anyhoo, my adoration for Vince should be painfully apparent. It's a pretty humbling experience to break out all of your best cuts / moves and have a guy stay right on your shoulder. Hot damn. He's definitely in the Damien Scott / Maz Zalisk / Neil Pallaver echelon of players I've known.
Thanks for reading this far - I know the Ultimate stuff is probably highly uninteresting. It's been a rough but good week in that regard - I'm aware that I get heated easily, so I'm glad that we could all talk it out and try to be chillier in the games to come. The immediate result was a great spirited, fun game last night - even though we got our collective ass handed to us! (I am, still, looking forward to next week when I will not be covered by one of the top five players I've ever seen). So, I'll leave this stupidly long point by re-accentuating my man crush: Here's Vince on the freaking Price is Right!!!
I sincerely hope "I'll kick you right in the ankle" will replace "The price is wrong, bitch" as Bob's catchphrase.
No comments:
Post a Comment