So that's the Nano. Here's the OH NOES!!!
Seriously. Oh, no.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Nano And Ohno
Hey, I'll get back on track with some posts about our Rochester Thanksgiving visit and another stellar GPGDS show in the next couple of days. In the meantime, big congrats to Katherine, fellow blogger and frisbee-er who finished her NanoWriMo novel, 50,000+ words in 30 days. Huzzah!
So that's the Nano. Here's the OH NOES!!!
Seriously. Oh, no.
So that's the Nano. Here's the OH NOES!!!
Seriously. Oh, no.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
New Music
It is a little late for what feels like a Dia de los Muertos song, but this beautiful canción crossed our path and we had to share it.
DeVotchKa
DeVotchKa
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Week 14 Recap
We're headed to Rochester today for Turkeyness, so here' s my account of this one day week:
I went in yesterday with four things to do: print out/ read articles for my seminar class, grab a book from the library, borrow a pair of books from Clark, and go to Law Class. Let's review:
1. Well, that was easy enough.
2. That, too.
3. Oh, wait. Clark was out sick. No problem, I went to his office, and the admin for CSPO let me in. Only the books on Clark's shelves utilize an organizational scheme only apparent to Clark. After ten minutes, I found only one book that was tangentially related to the ones I needed, only to discover when I returned to my office that it was the same one I had just checked out from the library (they had different covers, but yes, I'm an idiot). So a total fail on this front.
4. Our law class featured a guest lecturer, an Arizona judge who will remain nameless (but who is pretty high up in the judicial hierarchy, so this should appropriately strike you as terrifying) who claimed expertise in all areas neuroscience. Only... she had no idea about anything neuroscience. I can't even duplicate her bizarre thoughts / sentences. She kept confusing gray and white matter, kept making bizarrely vague allusions to "frontal lobes" and "you know, the amygdala." She said "there's no free will because your brain knows what you will do before you do." I think she was trying to talk about conscious experience, but she kept repeating that line as though there were a guy named brain in my head who is really in charge. She kept talking about "psychopath" versus "sociopath" with the grand definitional heuristic of "sociopath means they don't have a conscience." Huh? She then talked about a "murder gene." She then said, "You know, not to be stereotypical, but those Native Americans who are supposed to be kind and gentle are actually really violent and alcoholics." You know, not to be stereotypical. She then said that it was surprising that some serial killers had "mainstream upbringings with conservative values." She then said that "everybody empathizes, you can't help it." This came MAYBE five minutes after talking about sociopaths and psychopaths.
I'm not even hitting the bad science stuff. She said she would admit neurologic PET scan data because, unlike other judges, she had read about it. She offered no justification for its use - and there's plenty of reasons not to want to accept pet scan data as somehow indicative of someone's behavior or capacity to act morally - just that she thought they were good pictures that would help the jurors out. I repeat:
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
That was about the first half of class; the second half she spent sharing two cases she had presided over in which a serial murderer was involved. It turned into 45 minutes of "war stories." I feel this is a common enough phenomenon; the doctor types I was exposed to certainly fell back on "cases" and spinning yarns as a way to connect with one another. Lawyers seem to do the same. But there was something a little too gleeful in the way she talked about sentencing the men to death. She joked about their last words and deeds, and did imitations of their courtroom testimony. In addition to angry at the wall of stupid that was being spewed at me w/r/t neuroscience, I started to feel dirty. That's when I realized, and when I wrote in my notebook:
This is lawyer porn.
And apparently it works, as the lawyers-to-be in the room was enthralled with these ridiculous stories. I mean, no one was Paul Reubens or wearing trench coats or anything, but sheesh.
All of which could be summed up as wow, that was a colossal waste of time/ a day, and wow, am I ever terrified that she represents "expertise" in neuroscience at the judicial level. I'd hate to see the uninformed.
Alright, ugh. On that note, I'm going to Rochester. See some of you in a few. I got my potato mashing muscles ready.
----------------
Now playing: Guns N' Roses - Shackler's Revenge
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I went in yesterday with four things to do: print out/ read articles for my seminar class, grab a book from the library, borrow a pair of books from Clark, and go to Law Class. Let's review:
1. Well, that was easy enough.
2. That, too.
3. Oh, wait. Clark was out sick. No problem, I went to his office, and the admin for CSPO let me in. Only the books on Clark's shelves utilize an organizational scheme only apparent to Clark. After ten minutes, I found only one book that was tangentially related to the ones I needed, only to discover when I returned to my office that it was the same one I had just checked out from the library (they had different covers, but yes, I'm an idiot). So a total fail on this front.
4. Our law class featured a guest lecturer, an Arizona judge who will remain nameless (but who is pretty high up in the judicial hierarchy, so this should appropriately strike you as terrifying) who claimed expertise in all areas neuroscience. Only... she had no idea about anything neuroscience. I can't even duplicate her bizarre thoughts / sentences. She kept confusing gray and white matter, kept making bizarrely vague allusions to "frontal lobes" and "you know, the amygdala." She said "there's no free will because your brain knows what you will do before you do." I think she was trying to talk about conscious experience, but she kept repeating that line as though there were a guy named brain in my head who is really in charge. She kept talking about "psychopath" versus "sociopath" with the grand definitional heuristic of "sociopath means they don't have a conscience." Huh? She then talked about a "murder gene." She then said, "You know, not to be stereotypical, but those Native Americans who are supposed to be kind and gentle are actually really violent and alcoholics." You know, not to be stereotypical. She then said that it was surprising that some serial killers had "mainstream upbringings with conservative values." She then said that "everybody empathizes, you can't help it." This came MAYBE five minutes after talking about sociopaths and psychopaths.
I'm not even hitting the bad science stuff. She said she would admit neurologic PET scan data because, unlike other judges, she had read about it. She offered no justification for its use - and there's plenty of reasons not to want to accept pet scan data as somehow indicative of someone's behavior or capacity to act morally - just that she thought they were good pictures that would help the jurors out. I repeat:
AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
That was about the first half of class; the second half she spent sharing two cases she had presided over in which a serial murderer was involved. It turned into 45 minutes of "war stories." I feel this is a common enough phenomenon; the doctor types I was exposed to certainly fell back on "cases" and spinning yarns as a way to connect with one another. Lawyers seem to do the same. But there was something a little too gleeful in the way she talked about sentencing the men to death. She joked about their last words and deeds, and did imitations of their courtroom testimony. In addition to angry at the wall of stupid that was being spewed at me w/r/t neuroscience, I started to feel dirty. That's when I realized, and when I wrote in my notebook:
This is lawyer porn.
And apparently it works, as the lawyers-to-be in the room was enthralled with these ridiculous stories. I mean, no one was Paul Reubens or wearing trench coats or anything, but sheesh.
All of which could be summed up as wow, that was a colossal waste of time/ a day, and wow, am I ever terrified that she represents "expertise" in neuroscience at the judicial level. I'd hate to see the uninformed.
Alright, ugh. On that note, I'm going to Rochester. See some of you in a few. I got my potato mashing muscles ready.
----------------
Now playing: Guns N' Roses - Shackler's Revenge
Fifteen Years of Silence; Fifteen Years of Pain
I had just an excellent, excellent experience in my car at 10:07 AM on Sunday. Slid a fingernail under plastic wrap, peeled it back, and cracked the case open with a little trick that Will Robertson showed me back in the day to break the sticker label cleanly. Opened that pristine case, popped the CD off that stupid plastic ring, and slid it in the car player. One minute and twenty four seconds later, for the first time in a decade and a half, a brand new Axl Rose wail filled my car.Chinese Democracy is finally out.
Yeah, of course I bought it the first day out. I've pledged my allegiance to Guns N' Roses on these interwebs before, and I don't care how many bad reviews it gets - actually, the majority have been positive - you have to stay true to something lest you go careening off into a nihilistic tailspin, and dammit, late 80s early nineties overblown dinosaur rock is my tenet. So I'm gonna embrace my inner headbanger, my follow the masses twelve year old who still loves to play "You're Crazy" on the acoustic. These are the highly offensive RAWK tunes that made us.
I don't want to try to review the album here, not that anyone cares about that sort of thing anyways (I happen to think Chucky CK nailed it, anyways). I just want to reflect a bit on the CD opening experience here. I picked up Appetite in the Houston galleria from a tape store clerk who should have known better. I listened to it at low volumes in my bedroom to keep the explicit lyrics from attracting attention. I got Lies on cassette, too, played it over headphones on a Walkman. I got Use Your Illusions the day that came out in tape form, locked myself in room with a pair of notebooks, thoroughly evaluating them track by track. I got The Spaghetti Incident? in CD form, blared it on the downstairs CD player when my parents were away and couldn't figure out for the life of me what had happened to G'N'R1. And then nothing for years and years.
So popping open that CD had a ritual effect for me. AND I was still in the glowing buzzing glow of the Ultimate win from the previous night. So sonic childhood reminiscing rock euphoria on top of residual frisbee euphoria produced quite the effect. I just sat for a second and smiled like an idiot while people passed the car en route to spending money they don't have on flatscreens and such. (The album was exclusively sold at Best Buy. I somehow managed to not let this tarnish the AUTHENTIC ROCK I was hearing). After letting it thunder for a bit and debating whether to roll down the windows or not (I went with not for maximum reverberate in the car experience), I finally pulled out of the lot and headed home. Continuing to rock, of course.
These particular CDs have a sort of JFK-where-were-you flash-bulb memory for me; I know exactly where I was the first time the metaphorical needle dropped on all of these bad boys. They're not the only albums that I've had that experience with - 311's Transistor, Steely Dan's Aja, A Tribe Called Quest's Low-End Theory are but a smattering of the multitude of big impact first listens I've had. But regardless of the years and the lack of Slash, a Guns N Roses album is always going to have a stupid pride of place. And now I add "in a Phoenix Best Buy parking lot in a Honda Civic" to the pantheon of sacred places.
So I'm not gonna review it, but I'll qualify that it rocks appropriately, it needs to be listened to on headphones, and wow, there just really isn't anything quite as grandiose, ridiculous and transcendent as an Axl Rose penned anthem. I've thoroughly enjoyed blaring this bad boy in the car and have been writing to it almost exclusively the past two days.
So for all the bloated, for all the unmet expectations, for all the "there'll never be another Appetite" sentiments, I'm just glad there's another G'N'R album in the world. It reminds me of being young and stupid and caring. New but old. A number of people have pointed out that this album as a CD is one of the last of its kinds, that Axl as an epic out of control megalomaniac rock personality is one of a dying breed. I don't know about that - it certainly seems that CDs and albums-as-release-events have been and will continue to be further be blown to smithereens by digital music, but no more Axls in this fine world? Say it ain't so! I'm just gonna hang on to this one and keep the dream alive for a few more spins.
Said the guy listening to the album on his computer in mp3 form...
1 The Spaghetti Incident? is an album of primarily punk covers. At the time, everybody dug "Hair of the Dog," a Nazareth classic rock tune, and "Since I Don't Have You," a doo-wop cover the Axl made entirely his own. Those were tracks one and eight, and the rest of the album pretty much baffled me. NOW, in with a healthy self-schooling in the annals of punk, I know where the hell those songs are coming from. And they actually carry those covers quite nicely. But man, without that historical background, your average fifteen year old heard that album with a decided look of "huh?" on his face. You can understand why it was so disappointing for that to have been the band's swan song.
----------------
Now playing: Guns N' Roses - Riad N' The Bedouins
A Fnuky Winter Aftermath
So yay, I'm up at 4:30 with a throbbing toe.
"Ooh, ooh, GOUT!"scream a thousand first year med students. "Too much uric acid! Acidosis! Too fat! Stop drinking red wine from a 400 year old cellar!"
No, not quite. I have a couple of bad blisters on either side of my foot from Saturday, and one is on my big toe and under my 10 year old callus I have from Ultimate. This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about my nasty feet, but suffice it: it's a deep bad blood blister, and playing on it last night ripped it pretty deep. Ugh. At least now I get to take a week or so off up in Rochester and let the general Nyetplex heal. About time.
So yeah, we started men's league last night. A big fun time - I was playing at about 63% because of my all-out insanity this weekend, but got progressively looser as the day went on. Here's the team I'm playing on:
Keith - Captain and VOTS president, good handler with mad backhand hucks
Miller - young crazy guy from ASU, fast and raw
Clint - Fast young player; really inexperienced
Cole - Superstar athlete up there with Vince in terms of athleticism. A lovable jerk, if that makes sense. And a badass player.
Damon - Mentioned here several times; recent import from Canada with great throws who is sweet in the sky
Danny - rookie; don't know him.
Dixon - Sprawl captain type; older, feisty player. Kinda an unlovable jerk. But a very good, quick and crafty player.
E-Bay - ASU athletic player who is fast and a bit raw, too. All of the ASU guys are fun individuals who pretty much fulfill all kinds of state school stereotypes1. Good dudes.
Jack - Older player who is very wily and fast. He's probably 38-42 or so and plays like he's 21. Incredible. He additionally has a dog named Zoey who is the best Ultimate dog on the planet. She just sit son the sideline the entire game without a peep. S & W, take note.
Jason - Younger folk, don't know him.
Joe - another Sprawl handler, solid guy.
Roland - Older player, captain of Offshore Swilling and a very nice guy. He's much older - late 40s early 50s, I think - but plays solid.
Ryan - A very good Sprawl handler - reminds me a big of Johnny Swills from the Tufts days, only he's right handed.
Simon - German kid who just moved here; tall skinny and pretty quick, really nice and really enthusiastic. Great kid, and getting a lot better. He played really well last night.
Tommy - Another relatively unknown rook.
So a good mix of folks, and I get to play with Cole2 again, as well as Jack, Keith and Damon who are some of my favorite dudes from VOTS to play with (Ebay, Miller, and Ryan are no slouches either).
Last night, as mentioned, I still was feeling great. I played okay - good hucks and general throws, and actually cut pretty okay, but I was just crappy in the air - I had three chances to go up and sky for one - none of them good throws, now that i think about it - but I just came up empty. Oh well, sometimes you get the bar, pass the beernuts. I really wasn't feeling it last night, and still managed to make a pretty reasonable contribution.
We won the first game 17-4 or some such against the likes of Pete, Sam, Bryan P, and Paul of fnuky fame. We just killed the other team coming out of the gates, going up 6-0 and never looking back. On the few occasions where they did score, they threw zone at us and we just SHREDDED it. Badly. Probably my highlight of the night happened when their deep deep cheated up and I hit a guy with about a fifty plus yard hammer for a goal. Also had some nice deep forehand hucks. Keith was smoking in this game. Nice.
Our second game was against team Nabity, also including Justin (not the fnuk, the tall dude from Sprawl), Cisco, Josiah, Ned, Tricky, Tim, and Rob. WOw, tha tteam looks good on paper (but they all do, what with 4 teams instead of 16). They played well, we did at times, but we had a lot of drops and general sloppiness. This was the game where I couldn't sky, presumably because I'm still sore from the other night. Ah, well. I did get a handblock on a Justin backhand huck, though, which is kinda like taking a fastball off your hand from two feet away. Ouch. We played them tight, I had some nice deep throws to different people, especially Jack, but we came up short in the end and lost 14-13. Good game.
At one point, someone on our team gacked it, and I ended up one on one with Eric in the endzone with no mark on. If you don't know, the defender is pretty much screwed in this situation, especially when the guy you're guarding has 6 inches of height on you. But the funny thing was that we both planted hard to cut at the exact same moment - it was like I was reading his mind - and we put our feet right into one another. It hurt quite a bit, but once we figured out we were okay - we came off the field for an injury - we just laughed about it. It was almost a choreographed collision. Good times with Nabity3. He played really tough D all night and hucked and skyed a bunch for scores; good game for him.
So a kiss your sister 1-1 night, not ideal but pretty decent considering how crappy I felt.
1 - Perfect example: last night, we're trying to come up with a team name. Keith offers "Ho ho ho" because, you know, 'tis the season, and our jerseys are red. One of the ASU guys chimes in with "What about 'Bitch Bitch Bitch?'" 'Cause, you know, ho = bitch, ha ha ha. And then another with "Ladies Suck." It devolved into locker room trashy talk in seconds. At which point I stand up for women everywhere and sarcastically say, "Why don't we just call ourselves Misogyny?"
Silence.
"What's that mean?" comes simultaneously from three of the ASU guys.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for state standards!!!
2 I've come to appreciate the dude the more I get to know him. He remains unbelievably cocky and all that, but he's a fantastic player and he is always intensely looking for ways to make everyone better. Good times; and playing with a guy like him (or Justin from fnuk, or Pallaver and MAZ from Tufts, or Damien from Rice, i.e. a superhuman superstar) is always sweet.
3 So Eric says something like, "Well, I did my job." "Huh," I replied. It turns out that he was picked in the 4th round (meaning in the top 16 players) and I was picked in the first (top 4) - maybe actually the 2nd round, but Keith had the snake picks, i.e. picks 4 and 5, and took Cole and me. So he was joking that if he as a fourth pick had taken out a first pick, he had done his job. Ha. But interesting - I got picked toward the very end in this draft last year, so apparently my stock has gone up. I don't think I would have taken myself that early - I just can't jump with the big guys and can't run with the speedsters, so it seems you would want more sheer athletic ability with your top picks. Still, it's a good feeling and gives me a bit to live up to. So once I get healed up a little, I will have to get some track workouts in so I can throw down for real. It occurs to me that I am once again 4 years out from surgery, and it was right about this time after the first one that I started feeling back to myself. It's not like I have a lot of empirical data to back that up, just seems that it takes a few years to get completely back up to speed.
But it made me feel crappy last night, because I was way too sore to play like a first round draft pick. And I just couldn't do anything in the air, ugh. I did only have a single turnover in the games, though - at least only one that I would be willing to take the blame for - and handled well, so if that's what I was drafted for, then awesome.
"Ooh, ooh, GOUT!"scream a thousand first year med students. "Too much uric acid! Acidosis! Too fat! Stop drinking red wine from a 400 year old cellar!"
No, not quite. I have a couple of bad blisters on either side of my foot from Saturday, and one is on my big toe and under my 10 year old callus I have from Ultimate. This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about my nasty feet, but suffice it: it's a deep bad blood blister, and playing on it last night ripped it pretty deep. Ugh. At least now I get to take a week or so off up in Rochester and let the general Nyetplex heal. About time.
So yeah, we started men's league last night. A big fun time - I was playing at about 63% because of my all-out insanity this weekend, but got progressively looser as the day went on. Here's the team I'm playing on:
Keith - Captain and VOTS president, good handler with mad backhand hucks
Miller - young crazy guy from ASU, fast and raw
Clint - Fast young player; really inexperienced
Cole - Superstar athlete up there with Vince in terms of athleticism. A lovable jerk, if that makes sense. And a badass player.
Damon - Mentioned here several times; recent import from Canada with great throws who is sweet in the sky
Danny - rookie; don't know him.
Dixon - Sprawl captain type; older, feisty player. Kinda an unlovable jerk. But a very good, quick and crafty player.
E-Bay - ASU athletic player who is fast and a bit raw, too. All of the ASU guys are fun individuals who pretty much fulfill all kinds of state school stereotypes1. Good dudes.
Jack - Older player who is very wily and fast. He's probably 38-42 or so and plays like he's 21. Incredible. He additionally has a dog named Zoey who is the best Ultimate dog on the planet. She just sit son the sideline the entire game without a peep. S & W, take note.
Jason - Younger folk, don't know him.
Joe - another Sprawl handler, solid guy.
Roland - Older player, captain of Offshore Swilling and a very nice guy. He's much older - late 40s early 50s, I think - but plays solid.
Ryan - A very good Sprawl handler - reminds me a big of Johnny Swills from the Tufts days, only he's right handed.
Simon - German kid who just moved here; tall skinny and pretty quick, really nice and really enthusiastic. Great kid, and getting a lot better. He played really well last night.
Tommy - Another relatively unknown rook.
So a good mix of folks, and I get to play with Cole2 again, as well as Jack, Keith and Damon who are some of my favorite dudes from VOTS to play with (Ebay, Miller, and Ryan are no slouches either).
Last night, as mentioned, I still was feeling great. I played okay - good hucks and general throws, and actually cut pretty okay, but I was just crappy in the air - I had three chances to go up and sky for one - none of them good throws, now that i think about it - but I just came up empty. Oh well, sometimes you get the bar, pass the beernuts. I really wasn't feeling it last night, and still managed to make a pretty reasonable contribution.
We won the first game 17-4 or some such against the likes of Pete, Sam, Bryan P, and Paul of fnuky fame. We just killed the other team coming out of the gates, going up 6-0 and never looking back. On the few occasions where they did score, they threw zone at us and we just SHREDDED it. Badly. Probably my highlight of the night happened when their deep deep cheated up and I hit a guy with about a fifty plus yard hammer for a goal. Also had some nice deep forehand hucks. Keith was smoking in this game. Nice.
Our second game was against team Nabity, also including Justin (not the fnuk, the tall dude from Sprawl), Cisco, Josiah, Ned, Tricky, Tim, and Rob. WOw, tha tteam looks good on paper (but they all do, what with 4 teams instead of 16). They played well, we did at times, but we had a lot of drops and general sloppiness. This was the game where I couldn't sky, presumably because I'm still sore from the other night. Ah, well. I did get a handblock on a Justin backhand huck, though, which is kinda like taking a fastball off your hand from two feet away. Ouch. We played them tight, I had some nice deep throws to different people, especially Jack, but we came up short in the end and lost 14-13. Good game.
At one point, someone on our team gacked it, and I ended up one on one with Eric in the endzone with no mark on. If you don't know, the defender is pretty much screwed in this situation, especially when the guy you're guarding has 6 inches of height on you. But the funny thing was that we both planted hard to cut at the exact same moment - it was like I was reading his mind - and we put our feet right into one another. It hurt quite a bit, but once we figured out we were okay - we came off the field for an injury - we just laughed about it. It was almost a choreographed collision. Good times with Nabity3. He played really tough D all night and hucked and skyed a bunch for scores; good game for him.
So a kiss your sister 1-1 night, not ideal but pretty decent considering how crappy I felt.
1 - Perfect example: last night, we're trying to come up with a team name. Keith offers "Ho ho ho" because, you know, 'tis the season, and our jerseys are red. One of the ASU guys chimes in with "What about 'Bitch Bitch Bitch?'" 'Cause, you know, ho = bitch, ha ha ha. And then another with "Ladies Suck." It devolved into locker room trashy talk in seconds. At which point I stand up for women everywhere and sarcastically say, "Why don't we just call ourselves Misogyny?"
Silence.
"What's that mean?" comes simultaneously from three of the ASU guys.
Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for state standards!!!
2 I've come to appreciate the dude the more I get to know him. He remains unbelievably cocky and all that, but he's a fantastic player and he is always intensely looking for ways to make everyone better. Good times; and playing with a guy like him (or Justin from fnuk, or Pallaver and MAZ from Tufts, or Damien from Rice, i.e. a superhuman superstar) is always sweet.
3 So Eric says something like, "Well, I did my job." "Huh," I replied. It turns out that he was picked in the 4th round (meaning in the top 16 players) and I was picked in the first (top 4) - maybe actually the 2nd round, but Keith had the snake picks, i.e. picks 4 and 5, and took Cole and me. So he was joking that if he as a fourth pick had taken out a first pick, he had done his job. Ha. But interesting - I got picked toward the very end in this draft last year, so apparently my stock has gone up. I don't think I would have taken myself that early - I just can't jump with the big guys and can't run with the speedsters, so it seems you would want more sheer athletic ability with your top picks. Still, it's a good feeling and gives me a bit to live up to. So once I get healed up a little, I will have to get some track workouts in so I can throw down for real. It occurs to me that I am once again 4 years out from surgery, and it was right about this time after the first one that I started feeling back to myself. It's not like I have a lot of empirical data to back that up, just seems that it takes a few years to get completely back up to speed.
But it made me feel crappy last night, because I was way too sore to play like a first round draft pick. And I just couldn't do anything in the air, ugh. I did only have a single turnover in the games, though - at least only one that I would be willing to take the blame for - and handled well, so if that's what I was drafted for, then awesome.
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Royal WEfnuk: The Champions
Back row: Drew, Chunlang, Josiah, Pat, Paul, Alex, Justin, Wade, Nyet
Front Row: Brenda, Teri, Genevieve, Alex
Not pictured: Ned, Nathan, Amber
Front Row: Brenda, Teri, Genevieve, Alex
Not pictured: Ned, Nathan, Amber
Ah, so groovy that I dig me. What a great group. There are some better, more in-focus team shots here, but they invariably have someone with closed eyes or the like. I'll try to post more as I get them from other peeps.
Here's another nice pair of pics that caught both of the captains:
Good times. Of course, the key graphic is this one:
Ah, how sweet it is. Great season, folks, one for the memory banks. A collection of memories from Saturday / The Finals (which will probably make for abstract poetry to anyone who isn't me):
Full field backhand hucks to Pat, just riding the night, under the lights, all goes quiet, and he makes the two hand grab.
Full field forehand huck to Teri - same silence, same float, in the semis.
Justin crazy two hand layout block in the finals.
Alex sliding layout catch for the win (in pool play against Nabity et al).
Brenda trekking deep for the cut after Paul hit me on a flick... for the score!!!... in finals.
Laying out on ________'s break mark backhand, making a sharp vcut, getting it back, and hucking to Alex (male version) for the score.
"Skying" Vince.
SKYING the crap out of everyone to take half in finals.
The "sexy" play with Justin that actually didn't score (scoober and go, huck to Alex... just a hair too long).
Silent sneaky goal score in the semis after Justin toed it in but not in.
Getting CRUSHED on a blade from Pat.
Josiah with the CALLIGOAL in the Schrute Hucks game.
Justin's Hammer to Drew for the score.
Skying Damon on a hammer in the end zone.
Punting the disc!!! I know, I'm a jerk.
Big layout in the semis for a karmic D.
Paul jumps over Damon for the big spike D.
laser flick to Paul in the corner for the score.
Justin blade to wide-open Genevieve for the score in the finals.
There were others. What a day. What a team.
The Royal WEfnuk.
The Royal WEfnuk: The Finals, Part II
Oh, let's just get on with it. WHAT HAPPENED?
Got to TSC, mucked around a bit waiting to figure out what fields we were on, and my stubborn no-games-in-the-dark efforts were rewarded with a BIG, BRIGHTLY LIT soccer field on which to have finals. The vast majority of the spectators made the trip over, and the grill and food and all that stuff did as well. YEAH! We warmed up with an endzone drill and then got back on the line, ready to receive the pull to restart the game at 2-2.
It is hard to remember a strict play by play, but I can give you the score line up to half: 4-2, 4-3, 6-3, 6-4, 8-4. Oh my goodness goo, we were running them into the ground. Justin, Paul and Pat teamed up to match up with Vince, Damon, and Eric, while I occasionally ended up on Damon as well. Genevieve and Teri took on Pauline on the other side. SO those were the "big matchups," but what quickly became apparent in this game was that not only were we winning those matchups, but our other ones - Teri, Brenda on whomever, Josiah, Wade, Alex, Drew, etc. on whomever, we were just open at will and on the other side, forcing tough throws and throwaways all the time. It's not an exaggeration: The Royal WEfnuk peaked at the perfect time. Fourth game of the day, game to fifteen, and we FLEW around the field all game long. AS things progressed, the other side just kept getting slower and slower and slower.
Do you know how this ends? 11-4, 11-5, 12-5, 12-6, 15 FREAKING 6. We killed them. Killed. Destroyed. Embarrassed. Justin shut down Vince, no one could hang with Pat*, G shut down __________, Paul played huge, Alex played huge, Teri, Alexxx, EVERYONE... It's silly to go on and on citing names; suffice it that everyone contributed in a major way. TEAM effort, perfect gelling, just euphoric Ultimate.
* - brief aside - WOW, did Pat have a bad day of Ultimate. I mean, for Pat, Pat had a bad day. just a ton of drops and throwaways. No matter; bad Pat is still quite good ordinary mortal. But I would be a terrible reporter if I did not mention this. No bag on pat; sometimes you just have bad days. But I will say that as athletic as he is, if he could just do a couple of little things - bend his legs when he throws, for example - he would be unstoppable. Actually unstoppable, not hyperbolically unstoppable. Like I said, don't think this is ragging on the dude, he made a number of clutch grabs and busted deep for my hucks very much more than once. Just felt bad for some of those oh-noes! moments.
G commented that while everyone contributed, it had some Justin and Nyet show moments. No contest. J is just, man, fantastic. It bears repeating: he shut down Vince. Vince was pretty much a non factor. I played solid D (with a highlight reel layout in the endzone for a D, AND a sky of Damon to D a hammer, boo-yeah), but really just played offensively out of my head. Going up for discs, perfect hucks backhand and forehand, scoobers, give and gos, you name it. My pulls were high and floaty and to the back of the endzone the vast majority of the time. One of my top ever games. I even "skyed" Vince at one point - granted, it helps when the disc never gets above 10 feet off the ground in a skying contest with Mr. Noe, but we both went up and i came down with it. I don't mean to be a narcissistic doif (yes, that is my new word), but this is my diary blog, and I came up big in the clutchety clutch against guys who are on paper much more athletic than I. A nice personal moment; an even better team one.
People were keeping fantasy points, and Justin and I tied for first with 7 (though I never trust those accounts; seems to me we were both higher than that). Game ended on a weird note - I had done some serious mental picture exercises of catching layout for the final goal, and it came to be, though it was more of a sliding catch on a flick from Justin than an actual layout. I was so gaga excited - haven't been this amped for a win since the Tufts days - I just punted the disc, football style. In light of the aforementioned drama, this was probably not the best move; Volo was apparently walking up to shake hands at the time and took it pretty personally. We apologized and made up after the game, so no worries; it was all pretty silly though. As Wade said, "From the reaction, I thought you had spit on a baby or something." Nope, just an exuberant celebratory spike, and per usual, no one appreciates that sort of thing. My bad.
And then, BIG HUDDLE at midfield, with a whole lot of "You realize we just won league??!?" sentiment from the fnukers. Just a great circle of THE LOVE right there. Teri and Alexxx gave Genevieve and I Yo-Yos as captaining presents; Justin had performed his usual "give me your favorite beer"* line at the grocery store and got Miller Lite. Teri and Alexxx busted out a bottle of champagne. I mean, cloud of clouds. Just an awesome feeling. Dancing to the tunes from the beatbox. I believe MAKE IT FNUKY was playing.
* - Justin routinely smooth talks waitresses by asking them to give him their favorite beer. This is unfailingly awesome. Note that Justin is a blond Wisconsin sweetheart and probably falls somewhere between "Hey There Deliliah" and "More than Words" in the panty-dropping effect department. Just a smooth, smooth operator, but with a touch of Midwestern aw-shucks that completes it. He's taken, ladies, so um, please to pull them back up. Anyways, this super great line apparently backfires at Fry's.
I really need to get up to school now, but I'll try to post some tourney highlights as I remember them later. Sorry the finals game didn't get the full treatment, but really it was just a lot of super chilly play, taking care of the disc, beautiful hucks deep, intense D, you name it. High power disc. And we completely took it to a team that had been way cocky all season long, showing up to games drunk and the like, thinking that maybe they could just coast their way through. They are all nice folks, but I did find some of those antics a little disrespectful. Regardless, they ran into an absolute juggernaut that night. I loved that game not in a schaudenfreude way, but in a "here's what a good draft, discipline, a balanced team and devotion to one another can accomplish in the face of supposedly superior athleticism" way. If that's not a t-shirt slogan, then what is, really?
More later. Gotta get some work done. Props to one of my favorite teams ever, The Royal WEfnuk. Uncut fnuk. The bomb. The hardest working team in Ultimate business. I will think of you ever time I hear Parliament or JB from here on out. Many thanks.
Got to TSC, mucked around a bit waiting to figure out what fields we were on, and my stubborn no-games-in-the-dark efforts were rewarded with a BIG, BRIGHTLY LIT soccer field on which to have finals. The vast majority of the spectators made the trip over, and the grill and food and all that stuff did as well. YEAH! We warmed up with an endzone drill and then got back on the line, ready to receive the pull to restart the game at 2-2.
It is hard to remember a strict play by play, but I can give you the score line up to half: 4-2, 4-3, 6-3, 6-4, 8-4. Oh my goodness goo, we were running them into the ground. Justin, Paul and Pat teamed up to match up with Vince, Damon, and Eric, while I occasionally ended up on Damon as well. Genevieve and Teri took on Pauline on the other side. SO those were the "big matchups," but what quickly became apparent in this game was that not only were we winning those matchups, but our other ones - Teri, Brenda on whomever, Josiah, Wade, Alex, Drew, etc. on whomever, we were just open at will and on the other side, forcing tough throws and throwaways all the time. It's not an exaggeration: The Royal WEfnuk peaked at the perfect time. Fourth game of the day, game to fifteen, and we FLEW around the field all game long. AS things progressed, the other side just kept getting slower and slower and slower.
Do you know how this ends? 11-4, 11-5, 12-5, 12-6, 15 FREAKING 6. We killed them. Killed. Destroyed. Embarrassed. Justin shut down Vince, no one could hang with Pat*, G shut down __________, Paul played huge, Alex played huge, Teri, Alexxx, EVERYONE... It's silly to go on and on citing names; suffice it that everyone contributed in a major way. TEAM effort, perfect gelling, just euphoric Ultimate.
* - brief aside - WOW, did Pat have a bad day of Ultimate. I mean, for Pat, Pat had a bad day. just a ton of drops and throwaways. No matter; bad Pat is still quite good ordinary mortal. But I would be a terrible reporter if I did not mention this. No bag on pat; sometimes you just have bad days. But I will say that as athletic as he is, if he could just do a couple of little things - bend his legs when he throws, for example - he would be unstoppable. Actually unstoppable, not hyperbolically unstoppable. Like I said, don't think this is ragging on the dude, he made a number of clutch grabs and busted deep for my hucks very much more than once. Just felt bad for some of those oh-noes! moments.
G commented that while everyone contributed, it had some Justin and Nyet show moments. No contest. J is just, man, fantastic. It bears repeating: he shut down Vince. Vince was pretty much a non factor. I played solid D (with a highlight reel layout in the endzone for a D, AND a sky of Damon to D a hammer, boo-yeah), but really just played offensively out of my head. Going up for discs, perfect hucks backhand and forehand, scoobers, give and gos, you name it. My pulls were high and floaty and to the back of the endzone the vast majority of the time. One of my top ever games. I even "skyed" Vince at one point - granted, it helps when the disc never gets above 10 feet off the ground in a skying contest with Mr. Noe, but we both went up and i came down with it. I don't mean to be a narcissistic doif (yes, that is my new word), but this is my diary blog, and I came up big in the clutchety clutch against guys who are on paper much more athletic than I. A nice personal moment; an even better team one.
People were keeping fantasy points, and Justin and I tied for first with 7 (though I never trust those accounts; seems to me we were both higher than that). Game ended on a weird note - I had done some serious mental picture exercises of catching layout for the final goal, and it came to be, though it was more of a sliding catch on a flick from Justin than an actual layout. I was so gaga excited - haven't been this amped for a win since the Tufts days - I just punted the disc, football style. In light of the aforementioned drama, this was probably not the best move; Volo was apparently walking up to shake hands at the time and took it pretty personally. We apologized and made up after the game, so no worries; it was all pretty silly though. As Wade said, "From the reaction, I thought you had spit on a baby or something." Nope, just an exuberant celebratory spike, and per usual, no one appreciates that sort of thing. My bad.
And then, BIG HUDDLE at midfield, with a whole lot of "You realize we just won league??!?" sentiment from the fnukers. Just a great circle of THE LOVE right there. Teri and Alexxx gave Genevieve and I Yo-Yos as captaining presents; Justin had performed his usual "give me your favorite beer"* line at the grocery store and got Miller Lite. Teri and Alexxx busted out a bottle of champagne. I mean, cloud of clouds. Just an awesome feeling. Dancing to the tunes from the beatbox. I believe MAKE IT FNUKY was playing.
* - Justin routinely smooth talks waitresses by asking them to give him their favorite beer. This is unfailingly awesome. Note that Justin is a blond Wisconsin sweetheart and probably falls somewhere between "Hey There Deliliah" and "More than Words" in the panty-dropping effect department. Just a smooth, smooth operator, but with a touch of Midwestern aw-shucks that completes it. He's taken, ladies, so um, please to pull them back up. Anyways, this super great line apparently backfires at Fry's.
I really need to get up to school now, but I'll try to post some tourney highlights as I remember them later. Sorry the finals game didn't get the full treatment, but really it was just a lot of super chilly play, taking care of the disc, beautiful hucks deep, intense D, you name it. High power disc. And we completely took it to a team that had been way cocky all season long, showing up to games drunk and the like, thinking that maybe they could just coast their way through. They are all nice folks, but I did find some of those antics a little disrespectful. Regardless, they ran into an absolute juggernaut that night. I loved that game not in a schaudenfreude way, but in a "here's what a good draft, discipline, a balanced team and devotion to one another can accomplish in the face of supposedly superior athleticism" way. If that's not a t-shirt slogan, then what is, really?
More later. Gotta get some work done. Props to one of my favorite teams ever, The Royal WEfnuk. Uncut fnuk. The bomb. The hardest working team in Ultimate business. I will think of you ever time I hear Parliament or JB from here on out. Many thanks.
The Royal WEfnuk: The Finals, Part I
GAME ON. But before things could get going, an annoying set of circumstances. Only two of the eight light stations were operational on the field where we were supposed to have finals. Crap. The fields had bright light on about a 20 by 90 yard swath, but darkness everywhere else. So we moved over to another set of fields that technically were not ours. Those fields were not a whole lot better: there were only lights on one side of the fields, and only about half of those were working. So with the finals were starting at 5:45, we got ready to play on some sketchy fields in the borderline dark. Less than ideal. AND we had no idea who actually had the rights to the fields on which we were squatting. Uh-oh.
But with a huge crowd and not really a whole lot of other options, we got going. Roland, Pauline, Genevieve and I met out at midfield to flip for pull and get things going. Everything was VERY HAPPY at this point (that is called CAPITALIZATION for FORESHADOWING EFFECT), hugs all around and wishes of good luck to both teams and to all players. We lost the flip, but R/P insanely elected to receive. (This, for the record, is completely stupid; unless you think there's so much wind that no one is ever going to score (and you might not ever reach halftime), you should ALWAYS elect to pull. This way you get the disc first to start the second half, and there's a good shot at getting back to back goals (if you score to take half and receive to start the second). There's no reason to elect to receive. How can people not know this?). So we gathered up, gave a ever positive pregame runrunrunrunrunFNUK cheer, and took it out there.
They scored after working it a bit on the first point, then we ran off two with some good hucks and a toss to Alex. They responded with a deep shot to Eric. So it was 2-2 when...
DRAMA!!!! A bunch of soccer players showed up who had the rights to the field at 6:00. Uh-oh. Jose debated with them a bit, but they were unwilling to swap fields, as is completely reasonable because THEY HAD RESERVED THE FIELDS.
(It bears mentioning that a lot of the soccer guys were Hispanic, and unshockingly a lot of the Ultimate players are Caucasian. And a subset of these Ultimate Caucasians, it turns out, are kinda racist jackasses. I was highly disappointed to hear a few "Call INS" type statements muttered around the crowd. That is just bullshit on an epic level. Maybe I have an upbringing in San Antonio, a Hispanic childhood great friend, Clark football played alongside Hispanic kids, etc., to thank for a certain lack of idiocy, but OMFG what is up with a bunch of educated middle class whiteys immediately resorting to epithets? Like I said, this was just unnecessary and embarrassing from my standpoint. It's also why all the statements of "colorblind generation" and "yes we can" blind optimism should be taken with a grain of salt. Sheebus. End cynical rant now).
So getting back to the non-racially-motivated drama, we had a problem. Tempe representatives were reasonably apologetic, and offered us a softball or hopefully a vacant soccer field over at the Tempe Sports Complex. That was the best they could do, as no light engineer types were working that night. Our other option was to stay here and play in the dark on the aforementioned unlit fields. Before we got together to make a decision, Genevieve and I consulted with our team and got basically two comments: "We're not going to play in the dark, are we?" and "We have to play finals tonight!" I had no interest in playing in the dark - the fields we were on were already questionable, and playing on a half-lit swath of field with the other end in shadows struck me as idiotic. I told this to Genevieve, and we went into the captain's meeting with a preliminary condition that playing on the dark fields was not an option.
So Jose, G, Pauline, Roland and I met at midfield. And the very first thing I said was, "I am absolutely not comfortable with playing on those dark fields. It's not safe, it makes for crappy Ultimate, and it's just off the table. I'm not budging on this." It was probably more benign than that, but I feel that I emphasized that it was just not up for discussion. People get hurt playing in the dark, and I wanted no part of being responsible for someone getting hurt just so we could have a crappy finals game in the dark.
So, long story short, Pauline goes APESHIT. Mind you, I barely even know this girl, have played a grand total of one game against her and interacted with her not at all. But she starts screaming at me. Yay. So we try to discuss it, and she storms off. She grabs a bike and rides down to the unlit fields, then comes back and yells that it's "not that dark." I reply that she's missing the point, the fact that it's dark at all is the problem. I'm arguing for safety, and she can't trump that for convenience.
Genevieve made the excellent point that this is the equivalent of playing when there's lightning out - you hate to be that guy who says "stop playing" when all the little kids want to play, but you know what? People get hit by lightning. And people in the dark twist their ankles, twist knees, run into one another, etc., much more often. Plus on top of that, IT MAKES FOR CRAPPY ULTIMATE when you can't see. So I was arguing a severe minority position of "let's go to TSC," but it was really one in the interest of player safety and good Ultimate.
The obvious problem was that the crowd was not necessarily going to be willing to trek over to TSC. And the *completely unstated* other problem was that Pauline et al had brought a grill and didn't know how they were going to get it over to TSC. If she had even mentioned this AT ALL, she would have garnered a lot more sympathy from me. I had no idea that this was what she was so freaked out about. Instead, she elected to yell at me repeatedly, and then when I just kept repeating 'Sorry, we're not playing in the dark," she pulled the awesome third grader move of turning to the crowd and saying "Sorry guys, finals is canceled and it's all Nyet's fault! Nyet decided we can't play." You stay classy, chica.
So she walked away before we had finalized anything and was being, sorry for the sexist-historied language, Hysterical in the psycho-hose-beast since and not the more acceptable Def Lepard one. So she walked off. So Genevieve, Roland and I looked at each other and said, "Okay, let's just go to TSC." (Actually, at one point Roland and I were just going to rosham for the championship; I have no idea if anyone in the Southwest knows about throwing your fire, which I still have not done, so this could've been mad controversial). So we made the decision, Jose made an announcement, and we all grabbed our bags and headed for the cars.
Pauline, natch, throws a fit because "she didn't get to vote." At this point, I had really run out of descriptors. What's past pscyho-hose-beast? Rock-of-Love hose beast? She was out of control. Jose took the brunt of this screaming, calmly replying "You walked away, Pauline" for the bulk of it. We all headed to our cars...
Genevieve rode with me over to the fields, and I'm extremely glad she had my back on all of this. She didn't feel I was being unreasonable, and she said that this wasn't the first time P had lost it like this. But the wheels had been set in motion for me personally, and a nasty little thing that Mike 'Verbal" coined called "THE HATE STICK" was vibrating within me. P is an elite, nationals club level player. She's good. She gets no sympathy from me with regard to her Courtney Love on eightball behavior or her femaleness. If she wanted to escalate things and call names and scream and try to call me out in front of the entire VOTS crowd, more power to her. But she's gonna get a HATE STICK beating*.
* - Note that HATE STICKS are metaphorical. I would not beat Pauline with an actual tree-sourced stick. This is more of a "wake your inner demons, play out of your head" kinda stick. And take no prisoners. And... see below.
So, to clear all of the Pauline stuff out and get on to the finals, there were four things on the field. One, I poached off on someone at one point, and so I was outside of ten feet of my guy. I turned and sprinted downfield to catch up, and Pauline decided to jut out into my lane to try and stop me. I don't know if this was an intentional pick or what, if she's actually savvy enough to know that I was outside of ten feet of my man, but regardless, I had about 0.3 seconds of warning; she jumped out into traffic. So unsurprisingly I hit her and she went flying. But I couldn't call a pick, so i just kept going. Sorry. In my mind, that's a foolish dangerous play on her part. And she's an elite player, so she pretty much knows what she's doing if she chooses to play that way. Whatever. I am not down with letting aggro ladies play their "I'm just a girl" card.
Later, she threw a terrible backhand, just a terrible decision that would have been a turnover regardless, got touched on the hand and called a foul. This was a dumb call, and I just joked "don't worry, I call fouls on my swill throws, too." She snapped back at my relatively benign (and for the record, more self-deprecating than anything) comment. HATE STICK reawoken. Two throws later, she tried a break mark backhand to my guy and I got a COLOSSAL, horizontal flying layout D on it. I took off downfield and muttered "Nice throw" to her. Nothing big in the grand scheme of trash talk, but apparently her head was now entirely occupado, and it further destabilized her. She was worthless the rest of the game; got shut down by Genevieve, dropped passes, threw CRAP away, couldn't toe the line or stay in bounds on her good bids to save her life.
The last event was late in the game - they threw a Z, and Pauline was playing wing. I came streaking down the sideline, and she started sliding over to cut off my path. So when I got close, I cut out further and started to go by her. Only again, she decided to jump into my path at the last second. This time I tried to avoid her by turning sideways, but with two sketchy knees, I'm not about to throw on the brakes to avoid someone who's playing D like that. So surprise, surprise, little miss dirty D got run over again, and this time came up screaming. This time, after saying "that was a fundamentally dirty play and you know better," I just stopped talking to her. I was highly tempted to comment on her relative level of rationality all night, but I didn't. Ugh.
Perhaps all of this makes me a terrible person, and granted, I was meaner than I needed to be. I really, really did not appreciate her little calling me out act, and I let it overwhelm me with hatred. That is not good, I suppose. And there's probably some gentleman's code that says don't run over girls, no matter how psychotic and contact-initiating they're being. But there's a point where when an athlete chooses to engage in a little psych warfare, I find it completely ethical to respond in kind. I may be the only person who realizes that 1, I was nowhere near as mean as I can be, and 2, if I really wanted to run over someone, I would just do it and there would be no mistake. That is, natch, highly subjective, and I don't expect anyone to excuse me or be sympathetic toward me because I'm essentially saying, "I could have hit her harder." Respect to Pauline; she's a great player. But if she wants to be a great player and wants to throw down, and then expects some reprieve or some kind of license to play like a little thug because she's a girl, she's not getting it from me.
In the end, if she considers that good strategy, she is just wrong. Don't wake the HATE STICK. It was already finals of league, it was already a revenge game. I was already pumped. Already at 11. She may have just upped it to 11.4. Mistake. Read On.
POST-SCRIPT: I'm done griping about P. She's a great player, a fun person in other contexts, and she just got overly emotional about everything. I really do think she was just disappointed about the whole grilling issue, and it just cast a shadow over everything. I have no remorse for the events on the field; I was trying to be honest above, and I do feel that she was playing dangerously and should have fully expected the contact that she engendered. Trash-talking may have been over the top, but I kept it pretty subtle and did not bring up anyone's mom or anything. So okay, I apologize for saying "nice throw." Really? Anyways, it's over for me, this was my catharsis and I'm not gonna mention it anymore in the writeup. Again, she's a fantastic and truly impressive player, and as someone who also gets highly worked up, I appreciate her intensity. Let's move on.
But with a huge crowd and not really a whole lot of other options, we got going. Roland, Pauline, Genevieve and I met out at midfield to flip for pull and get things going. Everything was VERY HAPPY at this point (that is called CAPITALIZATION for FORESHADOWING EFFECT), hugs all around and wishes of good luck to both teams and to all players. We lost the flip, but R/P insanely elected to receive. (This, for the record, is completely stupid; unless you think there's so much wind that no one is ever going to score (and you might not ever reach halftime), you should ALWAYS elect to pull. This way you get the disc first to start the second half, and there's a good shot at getting back to back goals (if you score to take half and receive to start the second). There's no reason to elect to receive. How can people not know this?). So we gathered up, gave a ever positive pregame runrunrunrunrunFNUK cheer, and took it out there.
They scored after working it a bit on the first point, then we ran off two with some good hucks and a toss to Alex. They responded with a deep shot to Eric. So it was 2-2 when...
DRAMA!!!! A bunch of soccer players showed up who had the rights to the field at 6:00. Uh-oh. Jose debated with them a bit, but they were unwilling to swap fields, as is completely reasonable because THEY HAD RESERVED THE FIELDS.
(It bears mentioning that a lot of the soccer guys were Hispanic, and unshockingly a lot of the Ultimate players are Caucasian. And a subset of these Ultimate Caucasians, it turns out, are kinda racist jackasses. I was highly disappointed to hear a few "Call INS" type statements muttered around the crowd. That is just bullshit on an epic level. Maybe I have an upbringing in San Antonio, a Hispanic childhood great friend, Clark football played alongside Hispanic kids, etc., to thank for a certain lack of idiocy, but OMFG what is up with a bunch of educated middle class whiteys immediately resorting to epithets? Like I said, this was just unnecessary and embarrassing from my standpoint. It's also why all the statements of "colorblind generation" and "yes we can" blind optimism should be taken with a grain of salt. Sheebus. End cynical rant now).
So getting back to the non-racially-motivated drama, we had a problem. Tempe representatives were reasonably apologetic, and offered us a softball or hopefully a vacant soccer field over at the Tempe Sports Complex. That was the best they could do, as no light engineer types were working that night. Our other option was to stay here and play in the dark on the aforementioned unlit fields. Before we got together to make a decision, Genevieve and I consulted with our team and got basically two comments: "We're not going to play in the dark, are we?" and "We have to play finals tonight!" I had no interest in playing in the dark - the fields we were on were already questionable, and playing on a half-lit swath of field with the other end in shadows struck me as idiotic. I told this to Genevieve, and we went into the captain's meeting with a preliminary condition that playing on the dark fields was not an option.
So Jose, G, Pauline, Roland and I met at midfield. And the very first thing I said was, "I am absolutely not comfortable with playing on those dark fields. It's not safe, it makes for crappy Ultimate, and it's just off the table. I'm not budging on this." It was probably more benign than that, but I feel that I emphasized that it was just not up for discussion. People get hurt playing in the dark, and I wanted no part of being responsible for someone getting hurt just so we could have a crappy finals game in the dark.
So, long story short, Pauline goes APESHIT. Mind you, I barely even know this girl, have played a grand total of one game against her and interacted with her not at all. But she starts screaming at me. Yay. So we try to discuss it, and she storms off. She grabs a bike and rides down to the unlit fields, then comes back and yells that it's "not that dark." I reply that she's missing the point, the fact that it's dark at all is the problem. I'm arguing for safety, and she can't trump that for convenience.
Genevieve made the excellent point that this is the equivalent of playing when there's lightning out - you hate to be that guy who says "stop playing" when all the little kids want to play, but you know what? People get hit by lightning. And people in the dark twist their ankles, twist knees, run into one another, etc., much more often. Plus on top of that, IT MAKES FOR CRAPPY ULTIMATE when you can't see. So I was arguing a severe minority position of "let's go to TSC," but it was really one in the interest of player safety and good Ultimate.
The obvious problem was that the crowd was not necessarily going to be willing to trek over to TSC. And the *completely unstated* other problem was that Pauline et al had brought a grill and didn't know how they were going to get it over to TSC. If she had even mentioned this AT ALL, she would have garnered a lot more sympathy from me. I had no idea that this was what she was so freaked out about. Instead, she elected to yell at me repeatedly, and then when I just kept repeating 'Sorry, we're not playing in the dark," she pulled the awesome third grader move of turning to the crowd and saying "Sorry guys, finals is canceled and it's all Nyet's fault! Nyet decided we can't play." You stay classy, chica.
So she walked away before we had finalized anything and was being, sorry for the sexist-historied language, Hysterical in the psycho-hose-beast since and not the more acceptable Def Lepard one. So she walked off. So Genevieve, Roland and I looked at each other and said, "Okay, let's just go to TSC." (Actually, at one point Roland and I were just going to rosham for the championship; I have no idea if anyone in the Southwest knows about throwing your fire, which I still have not done, so this could've been mad controversial). So we made the decision, Jose made an announcement, and we all grabbed our bags and headed for the cars.
Pauline, natch, throws a fit because "she didn't get to vote." At this point, I had really run out of descriptors. What's past pscyho-hose-beast? Rock-of-Love hose beast? She was out of control. Jose took the brunt of this screaming, calmly replying "You walked away, Pauline" for the bulk of it. We all headed to our cars...
Genevieve rode with me over to the fields, and I'm extremely glad she had my back on all of this. She didn't feel I was being unreasonable, and she said that this wasn't the first time P had lost it like this. But the wheels had been set in motion for me personally, and a nasty little thing that Mike 'Verbal" coined called "THE HATE STICK" was vibrating within me. P is an elite, nationals club level player. She's good. She gets no sympathy from me with regard to her Courtney Love on eightball behavior or her femaleness. If she wanted to escalate things and call names and scream and try to call me out in front of the entire VOTS crowd, more power to her. But she's gonna get a HATE STICK beating*.
* - Note that HATE STICKS are metaphorical. I would not beat Pauline with an actual tree-sourced stick. This is more of a "wake your inner demons, play out of your head" kinda stick. And take no prisoners. And... see below.
So, to clear all of the Pauline stuff out and get on to the finals, there were four things on the field. One, I poached off on someone at one point, and so I was outside of ten feet of my guy. I turned and sprinted downfield to catch up, and Pauline decided to jut out into my lane to try and stop me. I don't know if this was an intentional pick or what, if she's actually savvy enough to know that I was outside of ten feet of my man, but regardless, I had about 0.3 seconds of warning; she jumped out into traffic. So unsurprisingly I hit her and she went flying. But I couldn't call a pick, so i just kept going. Sorry. In my mind, that's a foolish dangerous play on her part. And she's an elite player, so she pretty much knows what she's doing if she chooses to play that way. Whatever. I am not down with letting aggro ladies play their "I'm just a girl" card.
Later, she threw a terrible backhand, just a terrible decision that would have been a turnover regardless, got touched on the hand and called a foul. This was a dumb call, and I just joked "don't worry, I call fouls on my swill throws, too." She snapped back at my relatively benign (and for the record, more self-deprecating than anything) comment. HATE STICK reawoken. Two throws later, she tried a break mark backhand to my guy and I got a COLOSSAL, horizontal flying layout D on it. I took off downfield and muttered "Nice throw" to her. Nothing big in the grand scheme of trash talk, but apparently her head was now entirely occupado, and it further destabilized her. She was worthless the rest of the game; got shut down by Genevieve, dropped passes, threw CRAP away, couldn't toe the line or stay in bounds on her good bids to save her life.
The last event was late in the game - they threw a Z, and Pauline was playing wing. I came streaking down the sideline, and she started sliding over to cut off my path. So when I got close, I cut out further and started to go by her. Only again, she decided to jump into my path at the last second. This time I tried to avoid her by turning sideways, but with two sketchy knees, I'm not about to throw on the brakes to avoid someone who's playing D like that. So surprise, surprise, little miss dirty D got run over again, and this time came up screaming. This time, after saying "that was a fundamentally dirty play and you know better," I just stopped talking to her. I was highly tempted to comment on her relative level of rationality all night, but I didn't. Ugh.
Perhaps all of this makes me a terrible person, and granted, I was meaner than I needed to be. I really, really did not appreciate her little calling me out act, and I let it overwhelm me with hatred. That is not good, I suppose. And there's probably some gentleman's code that says don't run over girls, no matter how psychotic and contact-initiating they're being. But there's a point where when an athlete chooses to engage in a little psych warfare, I find it completely ethical to respond in kind. I may be the only person who realizes that 1, I was nowhere near as mean as I can be, and 2, if I really wanted to run over someone, I would just do it and there would be no mistake. That is, natch, highly subjective, and I don't expect anyone to excuse me or be sympathetic toward me because I'm essentially saying, "I could have hit her harder." Respect to Pauline; she's a great player. But if she wants to be a great player and wants to throw down, and then expects some reprieve or some kind of license to play like a little thug because she's a girl, she's not getting it from me.
In the end, if she considers that good strategy, she is just wrong. Don't wake the HATE STICK. It was already finals of league, it was already a revenge game. I was already pumped. Already at 11. She may have just upped it to 11.4. Mistake. Read On.
POST-SCRIPT: I'm done griping about P. She's a great player, a fun person in other contexts, and she just got overly emotional about everything. I really do think she was just disappointed about the whole grilling issue, and it just cast a shadow over everything. I have no remorse for the events on the field; I was trying to be honest above, and I do feel that she was playing dangerously and should have fully expected the contact that she engendered. Trash-talking may have been over the top, but I kept it pretty subtle and did not bring up anyone's mom or anything. So okay, I apologize for saying "nice throw." Really? Anyways, it's over for me, this was my catharsis and I'm not gonna mention it anymore in the writeup. Again, she's a fantastic and truly impressive player, and as someone who also gets highly worked up, I appreciate her intensity. Let's move on.
The Royal WEfnuk: Interlude
Lest I forget, there was one thing and one thing only that propelled me to some particularly fnuky, dominant play throughout pool play and the semis. And it was a certain purple shirt. No, not the standard issue, non-hcuk design VOTS shirt. This shirt:
A special thanks to the iPJ for a whole lot of inspiration and intimidation. At least fifteen different opponents commented that my shirt was too intimidating for them. They usually said this in a cowering position as I stood over them having skyed for a score. Oh, the power of iPJ. Take me to the iRiver. Drop me in the iWater.
A special thanks to the iPJ for a whole lot of inspiration and intimidation. At least fifteen different opponents commented that my shirt was too intimidating for them. They usually said this in a cowering position as I stood over them having skyed for a score. Oh, the power of iPJ. Take me to the iRiver. Drop me in the iWater.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Royal WEfnuk: The Semis
The crowd started to gather for semis - some solid hecklers like Jose, Dave Abdoo, Jack and the like were there, too, so it was serious GO time. Beck pulled up right about this time, too, pushing me over the top with all kinds of evolutionary impress-the-mate motivations. It was on.
Given our ridiculous losses of the tosses in the pool games, I elected to go with a game of Cowboy-Grizzly-Ninja to decide who would pull first in the semis. I even warned Jesse ahead of time that nothing beats ninja, but he foolishly threw cowboy and lost to my hi-ya. We were pulling first.
This game honestly went by in a blur - we just played our usual disc control game and crazy tough D. We matched up very well, sicking Justin on Jesse and then letting the the trickle down effect give us favorable matchups. They responded by throwing zone - we dissected it a bit, but had some bad drops and turnovers at the goal line on three points in a row. And they capitalized. So we were beating the zone handily, but botching it at the last second. This put us down 4-2, at which point they for some unknown reason called timeout.
And then we just kicked it into extra gear. Our zone handling went from 99% to 105%; we got yards at will and were nice and careful against their short deep Jesse. I nailed Pat a couple of times deep for scores, forcing their deep deep to stay way back, and the whole field just opened amazingly. We also cranked our D - our ladies really shut down their women, Paul made some plays, I had a crazy lay out bid that gave us a short field turnover, and thing were back in their right place. We took half 7-5, then slowly pulled away. My favorite play of this game was a full field forehand flick to Teri for a goal that made it 12-9; just a friggin' beautiful play all around - Teri made a perfect deep cut, the throw went up and shot but then just held up perfectly for her to track down in the endzone. Borderline poetic. We nailed the door shut after that, winning the deal 13-9.
Like I said, it gets kinda blurry playing all day, and this game went by in a flash. We were down early but didn't panic, and the rest of it just seemed like the same old fnuk, just chilly handling when they threw their Z and unstoppable cutting when they played man, AND we got up in their grill on D and took it home. Very, very exciting, and it goes without saying, another stellar matchup with Jesse and Marisa. Great game, very clean - a couple of argued calls, but nothing crazy, and it all worked out.
The Royal WEfnuk to this point had just done what they were supposed to do and held seed. Over in the other semis, Offshore Swilling was having a helluva time with Orange Qangaroos, but eventually won 13-11. Setting the stage for the rematch of the year. If you will recall, the only game that fnuk had lost all season was in the first week to O.S. We were missing Justin and Teri that week, two HUGE contributors, and we had been itching essentially since that very evening for another shot at the star-studded, undefeated, everyone's pagan idol of a team. And we were getting it.
In the FINALS.
Given our ridiculous losses of the tosses in the pool games, I elected to go with a game of Cowboy-Grizzly-Ninja to decide who would pull first in the semis. I even warned Jesse ahead of time that nothing beats ninja, but he foolishly threw cowboy and lost to my hi-ya. We were pulling first.
This game honestly went by in a blur - we just played our usual disc control game and crazy tough D. We matched up very well, sicking Justin on Jesse and then letting the the trickle down effect give us favorable matchups. They responded by throwing zone - we dissected it a bit, but had some bad drops and turnovers at the goal line on three points in a row. And they capitalized. So we were beating the zone handily, but botching it at the last second. This put us down 4-2, at which point they for some unknown reason called timeout.
And then we just kicked it into extra gear. Our zone handling went from 99% to 105%; we got yards at will and were nice and careful against their short deep Jesse. I nailed Pat a couple of times deep for scores, forcing their deep deep to stay way back, and the whole field just opened amazingly. We also cranked our D - our ladies really shut down their women, Paul made some plays, I had a crazy lay out bid that gave us a short field turnover, and thing were back in their right place. We took half 7-5, then slowly pulled away. My favorite play of this game was a full field forehand flick to Teri for a goal that made it 12-9; just a friggin' beautiful play all around - Teri made a perfect deep cut, the throw went up and shot but then just held up perfectly for her to track down in the endzone. Borderline poetic. We nailed the door shut after that, winning the deal 13-9.
Like I said, it gets kinda blurry playing all day, and this game went by in a flash. We were down early but didn't panic, and the rest of it just seemed like the same old fnuk, just chilly handling when they threw their Z and unstoppable cutting when they played man, AND we got up in their grill on D and took it home. Very, very exciting, and it goes without saying, another stellar matchup with Jesse and Marisa. Great game, very clean - a couple of argued calls, but nothing crazy, and it all worked out.
The Royal WEfnuk to this point had just done what they were supposed to do and held seed. Over in the other semis, Offshore Swilling was having a helluva time with Orange Qangaroos, but eventually won 13-11. Setting the stage for the rematch of the year. If you will recall, the only game that fnuk had lost all season was in the first week to O.S. We were missing Justin and Teri that week, two HUGE contributors, and we had been itching essentially since that very evening for another shot at the star-studded, undefeated, everyone's pagan idol of a team. And we were getting it.
In the FINALS.
The Royal Wefnuk: The Remainder of Pool Play
The big day finally showed up, and man oh man was I e'er-pumped. Knew going into it that the first two games of the day would be Keith's Schrute Hucks and Eric/Katherine's Plastic Hurling Phenomenon. Big games stood in our way. But first let's set the scene...
(Prelude 1 - I stupidly played softball on Friday night. The whole thing was going fine - I played infield (third base) and was intentionally taking it easy, saving my juice for the next day. This actually resulted in a ridiculous 8-9 day, all doubles and triples. Wahoo, I am a line drive machine. But then in the second game the ump made a terrible call1, one that ended up costing us the game. But we all got fired up, and so when someone tried to take 3rd on a hit to left-center and the throw came into me, I chased her back to second and laid out to tag her. Sweet, yes, but my arms were skinned, too. And my quad got reaggravated. Stupid, stupid me.
But smart, smart me - after Beck and I had a late dinner at the surprisingly passable Chuy's (not the Texas version), we came home to watch some Weeds episodes. I iced my quad something fierce, and it seems like it helped a ton. Yay us.
The real point of this prelude, though, is that after Weeds, when Beck had fallen asleep on the couch and I was finish ing up my third 20 minutes of icing, I lazily clicked through the channels and saw JAMES BROWN LIVE on the Late Show with David Letterman. Okay, it wasn't JB, it was "The All-Stars" or some such, a James Brown tribute band. But UH-Good God Y'all-Can't pass the people can't pass the HIT ME if that's not a sign I don't know what is - a prelude of FUNK for the fnuk).
(Prelude 2 - woke up Saturday morning and watched those Ulti-videos I posted yesterday for pump-up effect. They worked mightily. Also jammed out an acoustic version of Paradise City the likes of which the world has never seen. Yeah. Pre-game pump up! I've been doing this crap since 1991. Let it be known that G'N'R's "Don't Damn Me" worked excellently back in the day of Hobby basketball games. Let it also be known that this is something of a shoutout to Mike NTPB for his birthday, as he will undoubtedly remember this. I followed this up with a healthy dose of Parliament and then some GPGDS on the car trip there. Made my usual ritual stop at the grocery store, loaded up on NSAIDs, and I was good to go).
Showed up early to help set fields and check out the early games. There had been some lighting problems on Thursday night, so those teams showed up at 11 and played half-games instead. I said hey to Jessa and Marisa and encouraged them to beat Mamba and make it to the semis. Chatted with some folks who are new to the area (I met a nice lady named Melissa who was out there with her very little baby; she just moved here from New Hampshire and wanted to check out League). The games themselves were a relatively pointless exercise; other than some classic VOTS sloppiness and a couple of horrendous, make you want to cry for the guy gacks by Byron, they were pretty uneventful. Both higher seeds won anyways, so nothing changed dramatically. Those teams did have a built in excuse should they lose later in the day, though, so that was sub-ideal. Just a slew of crappy things that were outside of everyone's control - more on that in another post, but Jose did an admirable job keeping things together. As for the actual field-setting, due to a lack of space the fields were pretty skinny, unfortunately - skinny fields lend themselves to playing zone, something that is not necessarily a weakness of ours, but certainly not a strength. So I was not thrilled about that, but whatcha gonna do.
Justin showed up early along with Ben, and we hung out a bit before game time and took some warmup laps. Let me just put out there that Justin in THE MAN. He's take-home-to-your-daughter nice, and just a phenomenal, FAST player. Got him in the fourth round on a steal (and a bit of a tip from Eric), and wow was he HUGE. ANyways, he again brought his boom box, and this time Wade (eventually - both he and Pat showed up late for our first game, what the hell?) brought a generator so we were set for all day fnuk tunes. Yeeha. Quad felt reasonable if not great, and game time rolled around so here we go...
First game of the day was against Keith's Schrute Hucks. Keith told me before the game he thought the spread should be 12 (in a game to 13, yikes) - they were missing their 1st, 2nd and 4th round draft picks, a pretty big blow to a team that had struggled a bit during the regular season anyways. This was a pretty unbalanced game on paper, and it ended up being pretty much exactly that - we ran out to a big lead on some hucks and disc control, and they just couldn't keep up.
To be perfectly honest, we played fine on D, but after getting up big (7-2?) we got really, really sloppy on O. A little bit of playing down to the other team's level, but it's something that gets me crazy - I would much rather just run over a team in super efficient boring fashion and be done with it. We got it together again and ended up winning 13-6; this was a very ho-hum game, but just enough to make me uneasy about the next one. We had gotten our juices flowing and the kinks out of our system, though, so that was cool.
The following showdown game vs. Eric/Katherine's team was big. We both smoked our first (really, second) round games and elected to play a little early at 11:40. We lost the toss - something we had not done all season but then did in all three pool play games, yikes - and Eric, being not-an-idiot, elected to pull to us to start the game. They shot it to us, and on the first couple of points I hit people deep for scores; this had huckfest written all over it. They returned a couple, and at 2-2 it was seemingly on.
Seemingly. Our D was really, really good, and forced them into a goofy situation of almost exclusively throwing between Rob, Eric, Chris and Tom - they also had a new woman who caught a few scores in impressive fashion. But they relied a lot on hucks, and not just hucks - really high-precision-requiring hucks to the back corner or trying to hit guys with lasers. Just a lot of low percentage throws that did not often work for them - felt like they were swinging for the fences every time out. Justin matched up on Rob and they more or less equaled one another; Pat took Eric a fair amount, and we otherwise just matched up well. After some minor D adjustments and our usual crispy offense, we started to pull away. They semi-shockingly threw zone against us only on one point - Wade absolutely shredded it with a big flick, we scored, and they just gave up on it. After that, it became a game of efficiency; they kept taking precision shots deep that didn't connect, and we took much higher percentage shots that did. Good game, but we ended up winning 13-7.
A side note: many, many props to Eric. There was a point where he cut and I tried to move over into position and cut off his route but really just ended up colliding with him. I thought he would call a foul but he didn't, just let it play on. And then about a minute later, we had the disc back, I laid out for a pass and he kind of clipped me from behind in the legs. I was going to just let it go, but he called foul on himself. That's a really hard thing to do in a fiery competitive game, and I admired it big time. This was another in a series of tense games that didn't get nasty. They played well, but I think we had just a hair too much handling for them and a lot of their high risk dice rolls didn't pay out.
So pool play finished, and it was on to the semis. Black Mamba, the one seed from Tuesday, was missing more or less everybody - their men played savage all day, and they only had three women. So unsurprisingly, Multiple Scoregasms beat them to win their pool. This set up the semis as a rematch of our game from last Thursday, a game we had won 15-11 but had been mightily tested in. So it looked to be a good matchup...
1 Runner on first, one out, batter hits a line drive to short, short drops it pretty blatantly intentionally to try to turn two, but the ump calls a dead ball. And then... he calls both batters safe. Because that somehow makes sense in commander cuckoo bananas land. So, the relevant rule is 6.05 (l) if you care to look it up, but it plainly states that a batter is out when a fielder intentionally drops a line drive in order to make a double play. The ump refused to reverse his call or even look at a rule book. The next batter flied out, and then they proceeded to score 8 runs on a variety of ridiculousness. None of which would have scored had that aforementioned fly out been the third out. Which, you know, IT WAS. Ugh.
(Prelude 1 - I stupidly played softball on Friday night. The whole thing was going fine - I played infield (third base) and was intentionally taking it easy, saving my juice for the next day. This actually resulted in a ridiculous 8-9 day, all doubles and triples. Wahoo, I am a line drive machine. But then in the second game the ump made a terrible call1, one that ended up costing us the game. But we all got fired up, and so when someone tried to take 3rd on a hit to left-center and the throw came into me, I chased her back to second and laid out to tag her. Sweet, yes, but my arms were skinned, too. And my quad got reaggravated. Stupid, stupid me.
But smart, smart me - after Beck and I had a late dinner at the surprisingly passable Chuy's (not the Texas version), we came home to watch some Weeds episodes. I iced my quad something fierce, and it seems like it helped a ton. Yay us.
The real point of this prelude, though, is that after Weeds, when Beck had fallen asleep on the couch and I was finish ing up my third 20 minutes of icing, I lazily clicked through the channels and saw JAMES BROWN LIVE on the Late Show with David Letterman. Okay, it wasn't JB, it was "The All-Stars" or some such, a James Brown tribute band. But UH-Good God Y'all-Can't pass the people can't pass the HIT ME if that's not a sign I don't know what is - a prelude of FUNK for the fnuk).
(Prelude 2 - woke up Saturday morning and watched those Ulti-videos I posted yesterday for pump-up effect. They worked mightily. Also jammed out an acoustic version of Paradise City the likes of which the world has never seen. Yeah. Pre-game pump up! I've been doing this crap since 1991. Let it be known that G'N'R's "Don't Damn Me" worked excellently back in the day of Hobby basketball games. Let it also be known that this is something of a shoutout to Mike NTPB for his birthday, as he will undoubtedly remember this. I followed this up with a healthy dose of Parliament and then some GPGDS on the car trip there. Made my usual ritual stop at the grocery store, loaded up on NSAIDs, and I was good to go).
Showed up early to help set fields and check out the early games. There had been some lighting problems on Thursday night, so those teams showed up at 11 and played half-games instead. I said hey to Jessa and Marisa and encouraged them to beat Mamba and make it to the semis. Chatted with some folks who are new to the area (I met a nice lady named Melissa who was out there with her very little baby; she just moved here from New Hampshire and wanted to check out League). The games themselves were a relatively pointless exercise; other than some classic VOTS sloppiness and a couple of horrendous, make you want to cry for the guy gacks by Byron, they were pretty uneventful. Both higher seeds won anyways, so nothing changed dramatically. Those teams did have a built in excuse should they lose later in the day, though, so that was sub-ideal. Just a slew of crappy things that were outside of everyone's control - more on that in another post, but Jose did an admirable job keeping things together. As for the actual field-setting, due to a lack of space the fields were pretty skinny, unfortunately - skinny fields lend themselves to playing zone, something that is not necessarily a weakness of ours, but certainly not a strength. So I was not thrilled about that, but whatcha gonna do.
Justin showed up early along with Ben, and we hung out a bit before game time and took some warmup laps. Let me just put out there that Justin in THE MAN. He's take-home-to-your-daughter nice, and just a phenomenal, FAST player. Got him in the fourth round on a steal (and a bit of a tip from Eric), and wow was he HUGE. ANyways, he again brought his boom box, and this time Wade (eventually - both he and Pat showed up late for our first game, what the hell?) brought a generator so we were set for all day fnuk tunes. Yeeha. Quad felt reasonable if not great, and game time rolled around so here we go...
First game of the day was against Keith's Schrute Hucks. Keith told me before the game he thought the spread should be 12 (in a game to 13, yikes) - they were missing their 1st, 2nd and 4th round draft picks, a pretty big blow to a team that had struggled a bit during the regular season anyways. This was a pretty unbalanced game on paper, and it ended up being pretty much exactly that - we ran out to a big lead on some hucks and disc control, and they just couldn't keep up.
To be perfectly honest, we played fine on D, but after getting up big (7-2?) we got really, really sloppy on O. A little bit of playing down to the other team's level, but it's something that gets me crazy - I would much rather just run over a team in super efficient boring fashion and be done with it. We got it together again and ended up winning 13-6; this was a very ho-hum game, but just enough to make me uneasy about the next one. We had gotten our juices flowing and the kinks out of our system, though, so that was cool.
The following showdown game vs. Eric/Katherine's team was big. We both smoked our first (really, second) round games and elected to play a little early at 11:40. We lost the toss - something we had not done all season but then did in all three pool play games, yikes - and Eric, being not-an-idiot, elected to pull to us to start the game. They shot it to us, and on the first couple of points I hit people deep for scores; this had huckfest written all over it. They returned a couple, and at 2-2 it was seemingly on.
Seemingly. Our D was really, really good, and forced them into a goofy situation of almost exclusively throwing between Rob, Eric, Chris and Tom - they also had a new woman who caught a few scores in impressive fashion. But they relied a lot on hucks, and not just hucks - really high-precision-requiring hucks to the back corner or trying to hit guys with lasers. Just a lot of low percentage throws that did not often work for them - felt like they were swinging for the fences every time out. Justin matched up on Rob and they more or less equaled one another; Pat took Eric a fair amount, and we otherwise just matched up well. After some minor D adjustments and our usual crispy offense, we started to pull away. They semi-shockingly threw zone against us only on one point - Wade absolutely shredded it with a big flick, we scored, and they just gave up on it. After that, it became a game of efficiency; they kept taking precision shots deep that didn't connect, and we took much higher percentage shots that did. Good game, but we ended up winning 13-7.
A side note: many, many props to Eric. There was a point where he cut and I tried to move over into position and cut off his route but really just ended up colliding with him. I thought he would call a foul but he didn't, just let it play on. And then about a minute later, we had the disc back, I laid out for a pass and he kind of clipped me from behind in the legs. I was going to just let it go, but he called foul on himself. That's a really hard thing to do in a fiery competitive game, and I admired it big time. This was another in a series of tense games that didn't get nasty. They played well, but I think we had just a hair too much handling for them and a lot of their high risk dice rolls didn't pay out.
So pool play finished, and it was on to the semis. Black Mamba, the one seed from Tuesday, was missing more or less everybody - their men played savage all day, and they only had three women. So unsurprisingly, Multiple Scoregasms beat them to win their pool. This set up the semis as a rematch of our game from last Thursday, a game we had won 15-11 but had been mightily tested in. So it looked to be a good matchup...
1 Runner on first, one out, batter hits a line drive to short, short drops it pretty blatantly intentionally to try to turn two, but the ump calls a dead ball. And then... he calls both batters safe. Because that somehow makes sense in commander cuckoo bananas land. So, the relevant rule is 6.05 (l) if you care to look it up, but it plainly states that a batter is out when a fielder intentionally drops a line drive in order to make a double play. The ump refused to reverse his call or even look at a rule book. The next batter flied out, and then they proceeded to score 8 runs on a variety of ridiculousness. None of which would have scored had that aforementioned fly out been the third out. Which, you know, IT WAS. Ugh.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Madonna in LA
Madonna played to rave reviews in Los Angeles last week. The Clarion Content has long been a fan so that does not surprise us. What was interesting about the show was the special guests Madonna had invited.
Her Sticky & Sweet Tour was playing in the beautiful Chavez Ravine stadium of the Dodgers. The star studded crowd included such luminaries as Drew Barrymore, Rick Rubin, Ryan Seacrest, Heidi Klum, Kate Moss and Fergie. The highly culturally attuned Madonna's visual showcase included many images of Obama, whose election she recognized as cause to celebrate. She is also keenly aware of issues of sexual politics as the LA Times noted, Madonna and her rainbow-coalition dance crew, "enacted that struggle (Proposition 8) on-stage, both figuratively and literally." She was quoted from the stage, "There is one little disappointment, though. I'm sorry to hear that Proposition 8 passed. But we will not give up the fight -- never."
So what about those guests!?! Megastar Justin Timberlake sang "4 Minutes" from Madonna's newest release "Hard Candy." Much more interestingly, long time Madonna fave Britney Spears performed. The Clarion Content, full disclosure, is a huge Spears fan and Spears defender. Britney, noting, she's nobody's f*cking victim joined the divorcing Madonna on stage for the ending chorus of a well received version of "Human Nature." It is our thinking that Madonna hopes to mentor the troubled Spears; the patriarchy has a love/hate relationship with strong women who refuse to deny their sexuality.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Get Psyched for DISC!
The tourney tomorrow is serving to be very distracting. Ah well. To get fired up, here are some videos that serve as a proper response to "What's Ultimate frisbee?" or "You guys wear cleats, really?" or "Do your dogs play?" or "Hippies!" Forgive the stupid music, and keep an eye out for MAZ.
Take Two
When the reading gets boring, the reading go a linkin':
Avant video games: Punishment is kinda awesome, whereas Randy Balma Municipal Abortionist is merely brain-melting. ROM CHECK FAIL is also frame-shifting. Seriously, AARON, check out the first one.
The Glue Society does some cool art.
Speaking of "art" - did you see the fake NY TIMES?
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
The same "artist" made a revisionist history installation where the Confederacy had access to dinosaurs. Yeah.
Another Don Hertzfeldt film called Genre. He's the guy who made Rejected.
Writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut.
I really like this cartoon.
Frank posted it, but this video is still great.
This is just a fantastic article on the top 50 baseball players this year in the MLB. There are also links to positional breakdowns. If you're interested statistical breakdowns of offense and defense - generally, defense is a lot more important than you might think - check it out.
While we're at it, an explanation of a new way of looking at pitching. (tRA)
All 30 Starting Rotations, Slots 1 Through 5. A saber-evaluation of pitching staffs.
Or you could, you know, read about professional foosball.
Coyote versus ACME.
Speaking of toons... SPLATTER.
An argument for who's going to take the brunt of the economic downturn.
A funny non-game game. And a game game.
The genius that is "write or die" - forces you to keep working or it yells at you. AWESOME.
The killer coda to this hilarious story is that the spider recently sold on Ebay for 10K+.
Rice Fight Never Die Blue Gray in the Sky Stand Cheer Drink More Beer Go Go Go Goooooo Rice.
Election night behind the scenes.
I dig this art site. And National Geographic pics, too.
This is a kinda cool visual effect.
Roger Ebert on how to review.
Giant lego man appears on Brighton beach.
So this is not-nicely-named website, but is an interesting concept: all of the buzzwords from the 2008 election.
More DFW content - here's an account of parts of his career and his depression.
Here's another commemoration piece.
A conversation with David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Mark Leyner - Charlie Rose
In fact, just check out The Howling Fantods, a good source of all things DFW.
Except that you should REALLY, REALLY read this Onion piece, too.
Alright, back to work. Here are a smattering of videos to ease your pain. First, the Flaming Lips B-movie is finally coming out:
And you have to like this:
And this:
Turn off the silly music, but watch this awesome vid of divebombing birds:
And finally, a new trend: rewritten songs that match their videos. Nice:
Avant video games: Punishment is kinda awesome, whereas Randy Balma Municipal Abortionist is merely brain-melting. ROM CHECK FAIL is also frame-shifting. Seriously, AARON, check out the first one.
The Glue Society does some cool art.
Speaking of "art" - did you see the fake NY TIMES?
No one knows who they were or what they were doing
The same "artist" made a revisionist history installation where the Confederacy had access to dinosaurs. Yeah.
Another Don Hertzfeldt film called Genre. He's the guy who made Rejected.
Writing advice from Kurt Vonnegut.
I really like this cartoon.
Frank posted it, but this video is still great.
This is just a fantastic article on the top 50 baseball players this year in the MLB. There are also links to positional breakdowns. If you're interested statistical breakdowns of offense and defense - generally, defense is a lot more important than you might think - check it out.
While we're at it, an explanation of a new way of looking at pitching. (tRA)
All 30 Starting Rotations, Slots 1 Through 5. A saber-evaluation of pitching staffs.
Or you could, you know, read about professional foosball.
Coyote versus ACME.
Speaking of toons... SPLATTER.
An argument for who's going to take the brunt of the economic downturn.
A funny non-game game. And a game game.
The genius that is "write or die" - forces you to keep working or it yells at you. AWESOME.
The killer coda to this hilarious story is that the spider recently sold on Ebay for 10K+.
Rice Fight Never Die Blue Gray in the Sky Stand Cheer Drink More Beer Go Go Go Goooooo Rice.
Election night behind the scenes.
I dig this art site. And National Geographic pics, too.
This is a kinda cool visual effect.
Roger Ebert on how to review.
Giant lego man appears on Brighton beach.
So this is not-nicely-named website, but is an interesting concept: all of the buzzwords from the 2008 election.
More DFW content - here's an account of parts of his career and his depression.
Here's another commemoration piece.
A conversation with David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Mark Leyner - Charlie Rose
In fact, just check out The Howling Fantods, a good source of all things DFW.
Except that you should REALLY, REALLY read this Onion piece, too.
Alright, back to work. Here are a smattering of videos to ease your pain. First, the Flaming Lips B-movie is finally coming out:
And you have to like this:
And this:
Turn off the silly music, but watch this awesome vid of divebombing birds:
And finally, a new trend: rewritten songs that match their videos. Nice:
Study Breakin' With the Internets
Cleaning out ye olde bookmarkes in reverse order, we find:
Hak makes PGA Tour. Seriously.
Interesting: SOme of the Challenged Franken Ballots. People are dumb.
Happy 40th Birthday White Album!
Speaking of the Fab Four, an interesting article on that mystery chord.
And, oh yeah, despite being halved, they may have a new song coming out. This song.
The love you take?
The Coolest Word-Nerd Gadget Ever: Visuwords
Next time someone asks you a dumb question, give an annoying answer.
In another in a long series of DFW links, here's an essay about conservative talk radio.
The Compelte Monty Python on the web.
This may be fake, but kids' letters to G_d are hilarious.
Fire Joe Morgan calls it quits.
Do you like Obama Buttons? 'Cause this guy does.
I've linked to these before, but tilt-shift photography is cool.
The World is Simpsonized.
Nice article on James Joyce.
Note to U.S. Presidents - DO NOT flash gang / sexual innuendo signs in photos. They will laugh at you. And ftr, that is the 2008 champion ASU track team, and that is supposed to be a trident. Yeah, right.
And now, videos. This first one is an incredible Guitar Hero parody:
You may or may not be aware that one of my favorite jokes involves a nun and a revolving door. Here is another joke about nuns:
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by the California Guitar Trio
If you had my particular set of childhood experiences, you would now be humming Classic IV's "Spooky" and thinking about Uncle Schmedley. The will will not be read! What color will it be? Oh man, I just realized that was Rocky Horror with sea lions instead of transvestites.
Please file under que el diablo?:
ANd note this video because 1, Pete Drake OWNS Peter Frampton, and 2, what is with those people? The post I read described them as "David Lynch extras." YES.
And who doesn't love THIS:
So, one thing I'm interested in studying is philosophy of fiction. Here's an example of something that just kills me. Why are we so dumb?
Play 99 Bricks. It's like Tetris AND Jenga!
I think Ah-nold has been reading White Noise.
Nice photo-blog from Boston.com. Another from the WSJ.
I had just heard a certain song on the radio when I read this.
And another Onion link! Take that, Pitchfork!
Alright, time to get back to work. But one last thing. Just in case you're not grabbing Chinese Democracy this week - and if you're not, you ain't seen nothing Nyet - you can still get a free Dr. Pepper because the album indeed came out before the end of 2008. But really, you should get the album, because Chucky CK Klosterman gives it an A-, and his word is gold. Plus any review that contains the line "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going with the Mexican vampire accent"can only be about a work of genius. So support AXL!!!
Hak makes PGA Tour. Seriously.
Interesting: SOme of the Challenged Franken Ballots. People are dumb.
Happy 40th Birthday White Album!
Speaking of the Fab Four, an interesting article on that mystery chord.
And, oh yeah, despite being halved, they may have a new song coming out. This song.
The love you take?
The Coolest Word-Nerd Gadget Ever: Visuwords
Next time someone asks you a dumb question, give an annoying answer.
In another in a long series of DFW links, here's an essay about conservative talk radio.
The Compelte Monty Python on the web.
This may be fake, but kids' letters to G_d are hilarious.
Fire Joe Morgan calls it quits.
Do you like Obama Buttons? 'Cause this guy does.
I've linked to these before, but tilt-shift photography is cool.
The World is Simpsonized.
Nice article on James Joyce.
Note to U.S. Presidents - DO NOT flash gang / sexual innuendo signs in photos. They will laugh at you. And ftr, that is the 2008 champion ASU track team, and that is supposed to be a trident. Yeah, right.And now, videos. This first one is an incredible Guitar Hero parody:
You may or may not be aware that one of my favorite jokes involves a nun and a revolving door. Here is another joke about nuns:
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by the California Guitar Trio
If you had my particular set of childhood experiences, you would now be humming Classic IV's "Spooky" and thinking about Uncle Schmedley. The will will not be read! What color will it be? Oh man, I just realized that was Rocky Horror with sea lions instead of transvestites.
Please file under que el diablo?:
ANd note this video because 1, Pete Drake OWNS Peter Frampton, and 2, what is with those people? The post I read described them as "David Lynch extras." YES.
And who doesn't love THIS:
So, one thing I'm interested in studying is philosophy of fiction. Here's an example of something that just kills me. Why are we so dumb?
Play 99 Bricks. It's like Tetris AND Jenga!
I think Ah-nold has been reading White Noise.
Nice photo-blog from Boston.com. Another from the WSJ.
I had just heard a certain song on the radio when I read this.
And another Onion link! Take that, Pitchfork!
Alright, time to get back to work. But one last thing. Just in case you're not grabbing Chinese Democracy this week - and if you're not, you ain't seen nothing Nyet - you can still get a free Dr. Pepper because the album indeed came out before the end of 2008. But really, you should get the album, because Chucky CK Klosterman gives it an A-, and his word is gold. Plus any review that contains the line "You know, I've weighed all my options and all their potential consequences, and I'm going with the Mexican vampire accent"can only be about a work of genius. So support AXL!!!
Weeks 12 & 13 Recap
Quickly, the last two weeks at ASU:
Monday (Nov. 10): Endured perhaps the most boring lecture on sustainability of my life for monday seminar. No offense to the speaker or the field, but man oh man, he was describing "ethnographic" work he did by observing sustainability engineers from various fields and settings, and it was just horrendous - at one point he showed a video clip of a conference where people had split into groups and were all talking simultaneously. It was just as stupid as being at one of those conferences where they split you up and make you write on a giant pad in big fat marker, only less exciting because it was a freaking video of that mundane activity, and you couldn't understand anything anyone was saying. His comment afterwards was, "as you can see, it's hard to figure out what's going on." Pretty much wanted to smack my head with a book right there.
Law class - ugh, this guy came to give a guest lecture. The lecture was on performance enhancement in sports, and his basic take is that performance enhancing drugs are in no way different from anything else, and there actually is no ethical argument against them. I presume he thinks it will all just work itself out. He supports his argument with a spurious collapsing of various sports medicine, technologies and practices, honestly equating things like anabolic steroids, aluminum bats, overtraining and carbo-loading at various points. He was dismissive of questions and generally unpleasant; apparently he kept this up at a meeting with undergrads in the Bioethics Club meeting later in the week. Just a pompous guy, not a very fun exercise at all.
Tuesday - spent the majority reading evolutionary psych papers for a project I'm working on with Jason.
Wed - Finished reading those papers, only to have Jason cut our meeting short and then redirect it to a completely different topic. Too busy that guy is. We also talked about institution creation in law class, which was interesting only in its discussion of icann, the internet "governing" body, which is apparently just some dudes in California who more or less rule the world. CRAZY.
Thurs - started some more serious work on my seminar paper (it's on science communication and assumptions regarding the "scientific laity" in the Sociobiology controversy, wahoo) and did my reading for seminar. Reading was all about systems of organization during the progression of the Industrial Revolution and into the early 20th century (Fordism, Taylorism, etc.). Interesting stuff, and it set up
Friday - Holy Awkward Batman. Andrew was back for seminar and Clark was absent, which represented a distinct shift in professorial attitude. Melissa gave a presentation on the aforementioned systems organizations, and it was admittedly pretty muddled. Difficult to figure out her structure, what she was driving at, and there was no real narrative going on, just a slew of disparate notions. Andrew, tired of muddy presentations for the semester, all but heckled her during her presentation and then took the opportunity to give a short professional development talk about how one should give a conference talk. His points were all excellent and well-intentioned, but man did Melissa take the brunt of a response that was really to a semester's worth of bad talks. Melissa took it well but understandably got a bit defensive; then the class got defensive ("We didn't know what kind of talk we were supposed to be giving, it's not fair!"), and all the while Andrew was trying to point out that he wasn't concerned about this class, just everyone's ability to show up at a conference and pull off a good presentation. The subtleties here went unnoticed, and a lot of bad blood seeped out. Pretty ugly, actually. Melissa needed a beer at lunch to decompress.
Andrew is a really interesting guy. Funny, engaging, smart, passionate, but also carries a weird sense of "does not care" that reminds me of certain suitemates from my past. He can alternatingly come off as borderline asperger's and the life of the party. And he's also a sort of mover and shaker, but definitely of the rough joke-telling kind. So he can come off as blunt and a jackass. Example: he routinely responds to an unclear question in class by saying "In English, that would sound like this." He then "translates" the question into something more concise than whatever random spewing you just did. Okay, fine, it's a stock joke, and he goes to it frequently; it's pretty rude but it's all in good fun. The problem is, when he tells it by reflex after a German girl who barely speaks English struggles to ask a question in class, WOW. Awkward. (Incidentally, she played it off, saying "Oh, it's a joke, HA HA" in a sternly German way. Brilliant).
Anyhoo, Andrew's a good guy if a bit rough sometimes. We share an impatience for incompetence. He's also highly supportive of his students is his own way. Good times.
Monday (Nov. 17) - Heard from Donna Dean, a cool scientist with lots of high end NIH experience with all kinds of ideas on policy and the like. She just happened to be in town for the day, and it was probably the best class of the semester. Education by serendipity. Hey Ya. Hey Ya. Law class was law restrictions on science research, which essentially turned into industry practices and unwillingness of scientists to share data. More of the same. I got my paper back that day, and Dr. Marchant seemed to like it with only a couple of paragraphs that need reworking (and some miscellaneous typos and the like). Good stuff.
Jason had shoulder surgery in here, so he's been out all week.
Tuesday - Gathered everything and started buckling down for the sociobiology paper. Also did some of the reading for our seminar class which got moved to Monday. Long day of intense reading.
Wednesday - Read for seminar, worked a bit on my paper, and then decided it would be a great day to check out Andrew's lecture on The Selfish Gene. It was in his Science and Society class, TA'ed by the ever-awesome Jenny, and I was more interested in seeing how to teach a book like that in a large lecture format than anything else. Things gleaned: 1, an Andrew large lecture class is kinda like a standup set. He's hella funny, even if his class doesn't always get the jokes. 2, he went soooooo slooooooow. Which is good thing to do to make sure you keep everyone in a room of that size with you - but man is it painful if you've read and understood the book. I don't remember my Rice lectures being like this; then again, we didn't really have too many classes with 140 people in them. So a good and worthwhile experience; I'm definitely planning on attending again on Monday.
Law class was actually a reasonably interesting guest lecture on digital discovery. Law in the digital age is NUTS is the general message I'm getting - you can essentially get sanctioned for not backing up your e-mail in certain scenarios. Yikes.
Seminar was decent - we read Noble and Latour, and Johnny gave a fly-by talk on Noble (the military has shaped our production economy) and Katherine BS'ed her way through a talk on black-boxing science. The class was theoretically on standardization, so we waxed a bit in that vein. Then we covered our paper topics (mine seemed at least mildly interesting to all involved, though I got the ever-annoying "why does this matter?" question that I need to articulate better). And then Clark and Andrew teamed to give us a talk on how to write a prospectus or a grant proposal. Useful stuff, if a little weird to be coming three weeks before our papers are due.
Grabbed dinner with Johnny, Katherine, Andrew and his fianceé Shannon (who is super nice). Great time at Casey Moore's, and Andrew picked up the tab. What a guy!
I wussed out Thursday and worked from home. The reason we had class on Wednesday instead of Friday is that most everyone has checked out for the holidays already. Weird. I got a fair amount of work done and then headed over to the frisbee event. Bringing us to:
This second - I'm gonna head into the school to go to the library real quick, but other wise there's no real reason to work at ASU when I can do the same stuff in the company of my dogs. So I'll run down there quick, do some work, then head back here to do some work, then head over to softball for a light, light, good-lord-don't-hurt-yourself doubleheader with No Drama. And then on to the the tourney tomorrow... and a follow up Guitar Hero-fest over at D&C's. Fun times ahead!
Monday (Nov. 10): Endured perhaps the most boring lecture on sustainability of my life for monday seminar. No offense to the speaker or the field, but man oh man, he was describing "ethnographic" work he did by observing sustainability engineers from various fields and settings, and it was just horrendous - at one point he showed a video clip of a conference where people had split into groups and were all talking simultaneously. It was just as stupid as being at one of those conferences where they split you up and make you write on a giant pad in big fat marker, only less exciting because it was a freaking video of that mundane activity, and you couldn't understand anything anyone was saying. His comment afterwards was, "as you can see, it's hard to figure out what's going on." Pretty much wanted to smack my head with a book right there.
Law class - ugh, this guy came to give a guest lecture. The lecture was on performance enhancement in sports, and his basic take is that performance enhancing drugs are in no way different from anything else, and there actually is no ethical argument against them. I presume he thinks it will all just work itself out. He supports his argument with a spurious collapsing of various sports medicine, technologies and practices, honestly equating things like anabolic steroids, aluminum bats, overtraining and carbo-loading at various points. He was dismissive of questions and generally unpleasant; apparently he kept this up at a meeting with undergrads in the Bioethics Club meeting later in the week. Just a pompous guy, not a very fun exercise at all.
Tuesday - spent the majority reading evolutionary psych papers for a project I'm working on with Jason.
Wed - Finished reading those papers, only to have Jason cut our meeting short and then redirect it to a completely different topic. Too busy that guy is. We also talked about institution creation in law class, which was interesting only in its discussion of icann, the internet "governing" body, which is apparently just some dudes in California who more or less rule the world. CRAZY.
Thurs - started some more serious work on my seminar paper (it's on science communication and assumptions regarding the "scientific laity" in the Sociobiology controversy, wahoo) and did my reading for seminar. Reading was all about systems of organization during the progression of the Industrial Revolution and into the early 20th century (Fordism, Taylorism, etc.). Interesting stuff, and it set up
Friday - Holy Awkward Batman. Andrew was back for seminar and Clark was absent, which represented a distinct shift in professorial attitude. Melissa gave a presentation on the aforementioned systems organizations, and it was admittedly pretty muddled. Difficult to figure out her structure, what she was driving at, and there was no real narrative going on, just a slew of disparate notions. Andrew, tired of muddy presentations for the semester, all but heckled her during her presentation and then took the opportunity to give a short professional development talk about how one should give a conference talk. His points were all excellent and well-intentioned, but man did Melissa take the brunt of a response that was really to a semester's worth of bad talks. Melissa took it well but understandably got a bit defensive; then the class got defensive ("We didn't know what kind of talk we were supposed to be giving, it's not fair!"), and all the while Andrew was trying to point out that he wasn't concerned about this class, just everyone's ability to show up at a conference and pull off a good presentation. The subtleties here went unnoticed, and a lot of bad blood seeped out. Pretty ugly, actually. Melissa needed a beer at lunch to decompress.
Andrew is a really interesting guy. Funny, engaging, smart, passionate, but also carries a weird sense of "does not care" that reminds me of certain suitemates from my past. He can alternatingly come off as borderline asperger's and the life of the party. And he's also a sort of mover and shaker, but definitely of the rough joke-telling kind. So he can come off as blunt and a jackass. Example: he routinely responds to an unclear question in class by saying "In English, that would sound like this." He then "translates" the question into something more concise than whatever random spewing you just did. Okay, fine, it's a stock joke, and he goes to it frequently; it's pretty rude but it's all in good fun. The problem is, when he tells it by reflex after a German girl who barely speaks English struggles to ask a question in class, WOW. Awkward. (Incidentally, she played it off, saying "Oh, it's a joke, HA HA" in a sternly German way. Brilliant).
Anyhoo, Andrew's a good guy if a bit rough sometimes. We share an impatience for incompetence. He's also highly supportive of his students is his own way. Good times.
Monday (Nov. 17) - Heard from Donna Dean, a cool scientist with lots of high end NIH experience with all kinds of ideas on policy and the like. She just happened to be in town for the day, and it was probably the best class of the semester. Education by serendipity. Hey Ya. Hey Ya. Law class was law restrictions on science research, which essentially turned into industry practices and unwillingness of scientists to share data. More of the same. I got my paper back that day, and Dr. Marchant seemed to like it with only a couple of paragraphs that need reworking (and some miscellaneous typos and the like). Good stuff.
Jason had shoulder surgery in here, so he's been out all week.
Tuesday - Gathered everything and started buckling down for the sociobiology paper. Also did some of the reading for our seminar class which got moved to Monday. Long day of intense reading.
Wednesday - Read for seminar, worked a bit on my paper, and then decided it would be a great day to check out Andrew's lecture on The Selfish Gene. It was in his Science and Society class, TA'ed by the ever-awesome Jenny, and I was more interested in seeing how to teach a book like that in a large lecture format than anything else. Things gleaned: 1, an Andrew large lecture class is kinda like a standup set. He's hella funny, even if his class doesn't always get the jokes. 2, he went soooooo slooooooow. Which is good thing to do to make sure you keep everyone in a room of that size with you - but man is it painful if you've read and understood the book. I don't remember my Rice lectures being like this; then again, we didn't really have too many classes with 140 people in them. So a good and worthwhile experience; I'm definitely planning on attending again on Monday.
Law class was actually a reasonably interesting guest lecture on digital discovery. Law in the digital age is NUTS is the general message I'm getting - you can essentially get sanctioned for not backing up your e-mail in certain scenarios. Yikes.
Seminar was decent - we read Noble and Latour, and Johnny gave a fly-by talk on Noble (the military has shaped our production economy) and Katherine BS'ed her way through a talk on black-boxing science. The class was theoretically on standardization, so we waxed a bit in that vein. Then we covered our paper topics (mine seemed at least mildly interesting to all involved, though I got the ever-annoying "why does this matter?" question that I need to articulate better). And then Clark and Andrew teamed to give us a talk on how to write a prospectus or a grant proposal. Useful stuff, if a little weird to be coming three weeks before our papers are due.
Grabbed dinner with Johnny, Katherine, Andrew and his fianceé Shannon (who is super nice). Great time at Casey Moore's, and Andrew picked up the tab. What a guy!
I wussed out Thursday and worked from home. The reason we had class on Wednesday instead of Friday is that most everyone has checked out for the holidays already. Weird. I got a fair amount of work done and then headed over to the frisbee event. Bringing us to:
This second - I'm gonna head into the school to go to the library real quick, but other wise there's no real reason to work at ASU when I can do the same stuff in the company of my dogs. So I'll run down there quick, do some work, then head back here to do some work, then head over to softball for a light, light, good-lord-don't-hurt-yourself doubleheader with No Drama. And then on to the the tourney tomorrow... and a follow up Guitar Hero-fest over at D&C's. Fun times ahead!
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Royal WEfnuk: Pool Game I
Rematch against Bill's team tonight. They had that James character tonight whom they were missing last time we played, so the contest had a little bit of a different dynamic. And yet the same result - we gave up five points in a blowout win, this time 13-5 because of the shortened pool games. Here is the scoretracker: 2-0, 2-2, 6-2, 6-4, 12-4, 12-5, 13-5. There was a REALLY rough point in that little 6-2 to 6-4 gaffe - just a ton of turnovers for both sides, very sloppy play. Hopefully we got that out of our system before the weekend.
We had a little bit of fun tonight outside of the normal it's-fun-to-play-Ultimate fun. Justin brought a ridiculous boombox, and I made some funk, nay, fnuk mixes for the evening. SO we rocked out a bit during the pregame drills. Alex (female edition) brought an LP of funk songs that we signed and gave to the other team postgame. Beck also stopped by the game tonight which was very nice of her - I generally play better with my favorite audience member - but she wasn't feeling great after a long day at work, so she watched most of the first half and then headed home. She's sleeping now as I type and let Stephen Colbert talk at me.
The gameplay was solid - as I may have mentioned last time, this team poaches a lot, and with James, they also had a poacher who makes a difference in the air. We did a pretty reasonable job of taking advantage, especially as things wore on, but we initially seemed pretty dumbfounded by it, just jacked some hucks up and generally put too much zip on throws. Oh, well. Poaching is such a high risk, high reward strategy, and employing it 100% of the time is just bad defense - we spent half the game hitting wide open people in the middle of the field. I mean, granted, it stopped our easy hucking game, but it exchanged it for easy 20 yard gains whenever we felt like it. I guess I'm just looking forward to some higher quality matchups and honest D this Saturday. We'll see.
We collectively did a better job of getting our womenfolk involved on offense tonight - hit Brenda a bunch in the middle of the field, took some deep shots at Genevieve, hit Alex at midfield and had Teri handle quite a bit. Everyone really worked the disc well tonight - even Chunlang got in on some handling, so good times all around.
I personally played fine - one bad throw into a poach when trying to huck to Genevieve, but otherwise hit all my deep throws and everything else, threw a bunch of scores and caught quite a few, too. Some layout D bids, a couple of rescue Ds for teammates, and some generally decent D on my peeps - even coerced a horrendous huck out of Clint. No real animosity, either, despite "playoffs!" Called a foul on Brendan (he slammed me from behind on a hammer from Justin; Brendan claimed that I jumped into him which was fairly bizarre, but whatever, no biggy). James called a travel from half a field away on a give and go cut which just struck me as sour grapes; it was 11-4 at the time and the call was entirely pointless. But no heatedness, so good times. Yay friendly Ultimate.
Ned showed up tonight - first time back since his wife passed away. He and Nathan (his son) are missing this weekend, but I am glad we got to say hey to Ned before the season ended. He played great, despite not really having exercised at all in the past several months, lots of super steady and solid handling.
So, step 1 of the playoffs completed. We've got big games against Schrute Hucks and Plastic Hurling Phenomenon between us and the semis. Should be fun. I have (perhaps stupidly) agreed to play softball tomorrow night, so hopefully that will be more of a "stay loose" thing than a "tire myself out" thing. My quad is still tight, but doesn't seem to be getting worse. Ugh. Stay tuned for the account of how we did - I will forego predictions here, and suffice it to say, regardless of how we do, it's been a fun season with some pretty solid play.
We had a little bit of fun tonight outside of the normal it's-fun-to-play-Ultimate fun. Justin brought a ridiculous boombox, and I made some funk, nay, fnuk mixes for the evening. SO we rocked out a bit during the pregame drills. Alex (female edition) brought an LP of funk songs that we signed and gave to the other team postgame. Beck also stopped by the game tonight which was very nice of her - I generally play better with my favorite audience member - but she wasn't feeling great after a long day at work, so she watched most of the first half and then headed home. She's sleeping now as I type and let Stephen Colbert talk at me.
The gameplay was solid - as I may have mentioned last time, this team poaches a lot, and with James, they also had a poacher who makes a difference in the air. We did a pretty reasonable job of taking advantage, especially as things wore on, but we initially seemed pretty dumbfounded by it, just jacked some hucks up and generally put too much zip on throws. Oh, well. Poaching is such a high risk, high reward strategy, and employing it 100% of the time is just bad defense - we spent half the game hitting wide open people in the middle of the field. I mean, granted, it stopped our easy hucking game, but it exchanged it for easy 20 yard gains whenever we felt like it. I guess I'm just looking forward to some higher quality matchups and honest D this Saturday. We'll see.
We collectively did a better job of getting our womenfolk involved on offense tonight - hit Brenda a bunch in the middle of the field, took some deep shots at Genevieve, hit Alex at midfield and had Teri handle quite a bit. Everyone really worked the disc well tonight - even Chunlang got in on some handling, so good times all around.
I personally played fine - one bad throw into a poach when trying to huck to Genevieve, but otherwise hit all my deep throws and everything else, threw a bunch of scores and caught quite a few, too. Some layout D bids, a couple of rescue Ds for teammates, and some generally decent D on my peeps - even coerced a horrendous huck out of Clint. No real animosity, either, despite "playoffs!" Called a foul on Brendan (he slammed me from behind on a hammer from Justin; Brendan claimed that I jumped into him which was fairly bizarre, but whatever, no biggy). James called a travel from half a field away on a give and go cut which just struck me as sour grapes; it was 11-4 at the time and the call was entirely pointless. But no heatedness, so good times. Yay friendly Ultimate.
Ned showed up tonight - first time back since his wife passed away. He and Nathan (his son) are missing this weekend, but I am glad we got to say hey to Ned before the season ended. He played great, despite not really having exercised at all in the past several months, lots of super steady and solid handling.
So, step 1 of the playoffs completed. We've got big games against Schrute Hucks and Plastic Hurling Phenomenon between us and the semis. Should be fun. I have (perhaps stupidly) agreed to play softball tomorrow night, so hopefully that will be more of a "stay loose" thing than a "tire myself out" thing. My quad is still tight, but doesn't seem to be getting worse. Ugh. Stay tuned for the account of how we did - I will forego predictions here, and suffice it to say, regardless of how we do, it's been a fun season with some pretty solid play.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Pygmy Tarsiers
One of the smallest primates known to humans was recently rediscovered after 85 years without a sighting. Previously thought to be extinct, these little shubbas, pygmy tarsiers, were recently uncovered in the cloud forests of Indonesia. They weigh about 2 ounces and can turn their heads 180 degrees.
They are also the spitting image of Gremlins. Seriously!
whoa...
They are also the spitting image of Gremlins. Seriously!
whoa...
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Finally, a decent bagel
The Clarion Content has long sought after decent bagels in North Carolina, until recently it had been a trying and ultimately dissatisfying quest. Having northeast genetic stock on our editorial staff, standards were high. You don't bring Bruegger's bagels to the Clarion offices, lest you want to me mocked and derided until you run away cowering and crying. Bruegger's bagels are no more than one tiny half step removed from a frozen Lender's bagel (aka hockey pucks.) Lender's bagels are to bagels what Yugos are to cars, golf pencils are to writing implements, what dial-up internet is to a T1 line. Sure they are vaguely members of the same class, but they are craptastic. A Yugo hardly begins to make one understand the powerful possibilities of the automobile. A golf pencil can be used to scratch something down, but need to erase? Fugit about it. And if you grew up on MontBlanc's, you are never going to believe that someone else considers a golf pencil satisfactory. Really? Really? You are willing to accept that?
So one can only imagine how excited we were after ten long years of searching to finally encounter, not only a decent bagel in the Carolina's, but an excellent one. Previously we had not met a bagel in the state of North Carolina that we would have rated over a 4 out of 10. New York Bagel & Deli of Cary, NC is the diggity. Of course, made from scratch! Their bagels are old school, huge and just the right texture. Not to mention, they are not so blinded by blueberries and other fruits, as to neglect the traditional flavors; garlic, onion, poppy, seasame, pumpernickel and so on. Their staff is top notch, most days owners Tom and Josephine Nurrito* are behind the counter. Even when they're not, the service is always impeccable. And if it is not always delivered with a smile, the gruffness hides some genuine caring about the people and the product. Your happiness is assured, they won't let you leave less than satisfied. Maybe it is just all that experience, they have been a family business for over 75 years. (Most of it elsewhere, as 75 years ago Cary was a field.)
* Josephine always has a delightful smile.
Text Google
google 466453
Did you know that you can text Google at 466-453, or "Google"---it is sweet!
Among the things Google can tell you:
But a few examples:
sports scores, text "NY Rangers score"
weather, text "w Durham"
movies, text "m 27707"
stocks, text "the stock symbol"
local stuff, text "Harris Teeter Durham" (a local grocery store, Google replied with their address and phone number)
define words, text "d tonsure" (the shaping of evergreens by clipping, or a bald spot resembling the shaven crown or patch worn by monks and other clerics.)
flights, text "ua 440"
...and we saved our favorite for last, calculator, text "144*18"
Rest assured there are even more applications depending on just what your cellular device can handle. Follow this link.
The reply is almost instantaneous. The Clarion Content is lobbying the good folks over at Google to support the Google, "I feel lucky" feature via text. It would be such an argument solver to be able to text Google, "23rd President" or "Robin Williams real age"...
Did you know that you can text Google at 466-453, or "Google"---it is sweet!
Among the things Google can tell you:
But a few examples:
sports scores, text "NY Rangers score"
weather, text "w Durham"
movies, text "m 27707"
stocks, text "the stock symbol"
local stuff, text "Harris Teeter Durham" (a local grocery store, Google replied with their address and phone number)
define words, text "d tonsure" (the shaping of evergreens by clipping, or a bald spot resembling the shaven crown or patch worn by monks and other clerics.)
flights, text "ua 440"
...and we saved our favorite for last, calculator, text "144*18"
Rest assured there are even more applications depending on just what your cellular device can handle. Follow this link.
The reply is almost instantaneous. The Clarion Content is lobbying the good folks over at Google to support the Google, "I feel lucky" feature via text. It would be such an argument solver to be able to text Google, "23rd President" or "Robin Williams real age"...
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Imágenes del día
Took a quick study break this morning, and lo:
Then looked at this and saw sadness:
Then I looked at this and achieved perfect mental paradox: tragicomitragiedy.
It's a perfection sandwich! I am now ready to return to work...
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Then looked at this and saw sadness:
Then I looked at this and achieved perfect mental paradox: tragicomitragiedy.
It's a perfection sandwich! I am now ready to return to work...
The Royal WEfnuk: The Playoff Bracket
Here's are the pools1 for playoffs:
The numbers in parentheses are the "Nabity Ratings" seeds, but they don't determine the pools. The logic behind this: we are the 2 seed from Thursday, so we get to play the 3 and 6 seeds from Tuesday and the 7 seed from Thursday. Offshore Swilling is the 1 seed from Thursday, so they play 4 & 5 from Tuesday and 8 from Thursday. And the reverse is true for pools A & B (Mamba was 1 on Tuesday, Orange Quangaroos was 2, etc.). Make sense?
So looking at our pool, because that's all we really care about, we'll start off playing DIRT, Bill's team. DIRT lost a great player in Putty (who moved to LA) and has been hurting since - we beat them 15-5 in the regular season, but they were also missing a pretty solid deep threat named James in that game, so things could be different. Our second game will be against Schrute, Keith's team, whom we beat 15-7 in the regular season. They played us very tight in the first half, though, so another challenge.
The premier, showdown game will be against Eric and Katherine's Plastic Hurling Phenomenon, a team we haven't really seen2. I played on their team Taco Technique last fall; they are solid players who are more importantly smart. Perhaps they will figure out that they key to stopping us is not guarding Justin, Pat, Teri or Genevieve. Just let them run loose on the field. Seriously. Fortunately, we're playing them on the 22nd and Katherine will be in the throes of trying to finish her Nano novel - her level of distraction will clearly be the key to the whole thing. Here's hoping to several writer's-block infused days so she still has 10,000 words to go or so by that point.3
Brief comments on the other pools - Offshore swilling is not going to have any trouble coming out of their pool whatsoever. Two Buck Huck has Pete and should therefore be something, but otherwise, no worries for them. Pool B should be a doosy, but I see Blue Goo pulling the "upset" out of there. Orange Qangaroos is Sam's-now-Justin's team, and they seem solid, but it would be weird if they "held seed" against the goo. Pool A is wide open, as Mamba is going to be missing at least three impact players that I can name off the top of my head (Skyler, Cisco and Big Nate). I mean, BN may decide to play on a torn hamstring, but that would be hella silly. As such, MS has a good chance to bust out of that pool - that's the team that we played Thursday night, and if they could click on Saturday, who knows.
There's a lot of disparity in the league - I don't know if this league is any better or worse than other leagues, but still - so big upsets don't seem real probable. But you never know (that's why you play the games, blah blah blah). I'm optimistically nervous. If we click, we are very tough to beat - hopefully our efforts throughout the season - and our nice tune-up game, thank HASHEM, on Thursday - will pay off with some crispy disc in the tourney. I'll keep you updated.
1 Lifted from the primo web work of Katherine at the VOTS site.
2 I saw them briefly on the Tuesday before Halloween, which doesn't count for much given that half of everyone was wearing pirate costumes and ostriches during the game. They look very similar to Taco Technique personnel-wise, actually, and play similarly. Eric will be a force to deal with and I would be absolutely shocked if they didn't throw a lot of Z. Again, we'll see, but I like our matchups with everybody. Eric may live to regret helping me with the draft ;)
3 I am fairly confident that this is the first time Ultimate Frisbee trash talk has incorporated writer's block. I call copyright.
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The numbers in parentheses are the "Nabity Ratings" seeds, but they don't determine the pools. The logic behind this: we are the 2 seed from Thursday, so we get to play the 3 and 6 seeds from Tuesday and the 7 seed from Thursday. Offshore Swilling is the 1 seed from Thursday, so they play 4 & 5 from Tuesday and 8 from Thursday. And the reverse is true for pools A & B (Mamba was 1 on Tuesday, Orange Quangaroos was 2, etc.). Make sense?
So looking at our pool, because that's all we really care about, we'll start off playing DIRT, Bill's team. DIRT lost a great player in Putty (who moved to LA) and has been hurting since - we beat them 15-5 in the regular season, but they were also missing a pretty solid deep threat named James in that game, so things could be different. Our second game will be against Schrute, Keith's team, whom we beat 15-7 in the regular season. They played us very tight in the first half, though, so another challenge.
The premier, showdown game will be against Eric and Katherine's Plastic Hurling Phenomenon, a team we haven't really seen2. I played on their team Taco Technique last fall; they are solid players who are more importantly smart. Perhaps they will figure out that they key to stopping us is not guarding Justin, Pat, Teri or Genevieve. Just let them run loose on the field. Seriously. Fortunately, we're playing them on the 22nd and Katherine will be in the throes of trying to finish her Nano novel - her level of distraction will clearly be the key to the whole thing. Here's hoping to several writer's-block infused days so she still has 10,000 words to go or so by that point.3
Brief comments on the other pools - Offshore swilling is not going to have any trouble coming out of their pool whatsoever. Two Buck Huck has Pete and should therefore be something, but otherwise, no worries for them. Pool B should be a doosy, but I see Blue Goo pulling the "upset" out of there. Orange Qangaroos is Sam's-now-Justin's team, and they seem solid, but it would be weird if they "held seed" against the goo. Pool A is wide open, as Mamba is going to be missing at least three impact players that I can name off the top of my head (Skyler, Cisco and Big Nate). I mean, BN may decide to play on a torn hamstring, but that would be hella silly. As such, MS has a good chance to bust out of that pool - that's the team that we played Thursday night, and if they could click on Saturday, who knows.
There's a lot of disparity in the league - I don't know if this league is any better or worse than other leagues, but still - so big upsets don't seem real probable. But you never know (that's why you play the games, blah blah blah). I'm optimistically nervous. If we click, we are very tough to beat - hopefully our efforts throughout the season - and our nice tune-up game, thank HASHEM, on Thursday - will pay off with some crispy disc in the tourney. I'll keep you updated.
1 Lifted from the primo web work of Katherine at the VOTS site.
2 I saw them briefly on the Tuesday before Halloween, which doesn't count for much given that half of everyone was wearing pirate costumes and ostriches during the game. They look very similar to Taco Technique personnel-wise, actually, and play similarly. Eric will be a force to deal with and I would be absolutely shocked if they didn't throw a lot of Z. Again, we'll see, but I like our matchups with everybody. Eric may live to regret helping me with the draft ;)
3 I am fairly confident that this is the first time Ultimate Frisbee trash talk has incorporated writer's block. I call copyright.
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