Don't forget about the Spirit Foul Blog from 2005. Good stuff. Stories about crime-fighting and one of the best play calls of all time, "Quan to Lisa, Rice!" You know you want to click.
(It should be noted that those posts predate nyetjones.org, so be prepared for references to some strange dude who may or may not resemble me).
Showing posts with label Polaroid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Polaroid. Show all posts
Monday, August 3, 2009
Friday, August 1, 2008
Neon Champ
Last Friday, Beck trekked up to Rochester for the annual Family Reunion. We made an executive decision to send one representative this year and leave the other at home for dog-caring duties. Beck won the rosham. So i was home alone, set for a weekend of dog-sitting and tutoring.
And then a student canceled on Saturday, and then another, leaving me with an open Saturday afternoon. And I had gotten an e-mail the previous week which i had pretty much opened and immediately disregarded because the event it referenced was on a work day. But i remembered it upon the second cancellation: there was a goofy Ultimate tournament down in Tucson, a mere two hours away! And so I calculated that if I ran home, walked the pups, got my stuff together and took off, I would get there just in time. And with two hours transit, maybe five hours of playing, and two hours back, the dogs would be alone for nine hours, which is pretty much what they did all the time up in Boston. So off I went.
Ahem, and a big back up, for two reasons. One, I hadn't run in about two weeks, hadn't played Ultimate, and had really only done anything vaguely athletic while tossing the disc in the park with Ben and Ali. So i was going to be out of shape for this bad boy. But I've played entire tournaments while out of shape, not just one day hat deals like this, and survived just fine. So BRING IT!!! The second problem is little more heinous: while playing for Polaroid, we had a pretty awesome team saying which simultaneously reveals the nature of Ultimate and what a bunch of jerks we could be. The saying: "Ultimate Frisbee: Love the Game, Hate the People." Yeah, we sucked. But, hey: it's a great game. And the hippie-ish, non-athlete, nerdcore vibe of it drags it down at times (just like the non-hippie, athletic, non-nerd competitive asshole vibe can drag it down). This tournament screamed more people than game; for one thing, it was starting at 4 and running until 9 on a field without lights... eh? And there was much more mention of "kegs" and "boat races" and the like than, say, what version of rules they were using, what format the tournament would be in, how many people would be there. So to extend a weirdly referenced metaphor from the previous post, this was gonna be way more Grateful Dead concert than church or baseball or Ultimate.
So it goes. The opportunities to play Ultimate in this area are few and far between, so i decided to bite the bullet and go, just put on my happy face. I've played goofball tournaments like this before that have been an absolute blast; it all depends on the people who end up on your team and how well you can strike a balance between good play and lunacy. So i jumped in the car and listened to some schwank tunes down to Tucson, getting there just in time to be placed on a team and get ready to go.
Only it turns out that fewer people showed up than the tourney organizers anticipated. So what was supposed to be a 6 team, 10 players per team tournament turned into a 6 team, 6 players per team tourney. And we played fives! FTR, I would have shifted gears and gone four teams, 9 players each and played sevens, but I was not in charge. So we were playing with one sub, and we were playing with only five on a relatively normal sized field. More running plus fewer subs. If you're smart, you can see where this is going.
My team consisted of Jack, Jorge, Lilly, Sam, Ana and me. Ana was just learning how to play, but otherwise we had a pretty experienced team (these things are called "hat" tournaments b/c they mix your names in a hat to pick teams, but they do make people rank themselves in an effort to balance the teams). We started play at 4, and it was hot hot hot. Not 114, but still, 95+. Ran ourselves a bit ragged and won game one, 11-6. Things cooled down for game two, and we eeked out a tight win, 10-8. By then it was 7, though... and quite dark.
Bust out the glow-in-the-dark apparel! Every player got four gitd rings to place on their body, and the standard issue Ultimate discs were replaced with slightly heavier discs with a light source affixed to the bottom. And each team got different colored glo-rings. Somewhat ludicrous, but quite cool, too. We were neon orange (nice and bright) and played our third game of the day against a team wearing neon blue (not so good against the duck light). One of the teams wore neon green rings and looked pretty much straight up Tron.
SO, playing in the dark is quite tough. As you can imagine, people drop passes a lot more frequently, and it's difficult to gauge depth perception with any reliability. So the games were pretty sloppy, but we pressed on. I actually made several (5+) layout catches in the dark, a weird experience for sure. Anyways, after a few points of adjustment and figuring out how to deal with the weird conditions, we ran away with game three. The easy highlight was when a huck went up and the light source on the bottom went out. 'Twas like a saucer vanishing into the night.
So 3-0 on the day got us a ticket to the finals and a bit more no-subs, lotsa running play. And that point everyone else stopped just to heckle and watch the finals, though it's hard to heckle what you can't see - I had a rather nutzoid trailing edge lay out hammer grab in the game, but it happened at the other side of the field so pretty much no one saw it. The people on the sideline got progressively drunker as the game went on, and all the usual stupid Ultimate hippie side of things - "Play a no pants point!," etc. - went on in Spades. I, frankly, reserve my right to keep my pants on. That's what makes me American (the right, not the pants).
So we won, big time. Huzzah. I won a tournament, something I can remember happening in... let's see, sectionals '00, regionals '02, random tourney with Polaroid, random good cause tourney... and that's about it. So this was the fifth. So apparently this is a rare event, or I suck. Hmmm...
Anyways, a fun tournament, but it prompted a ton of questions. One - I knew nobody there. A couple of guys made the trek down from Phoenix as well, but they aren't really guys I know all that well. So there were two people I recognized, and a ton I didn't. On the one hand, it's cool that anyone can jump in and have a good time with a bunch of people that they don't know - I met a couple of the U of A players and some other folks who were reasonably cool. On the other hand... weird to be in such a big mix and feel entirely a stranger. I also had to drive home, making me much less inclined to partake of the beer-based funniness. So there's that. I guess the second question is, then, why do that? For every part that is fun - playing well, hanging out with new folks - there's a long drive, potential for injury, the guaranteed soreness afterwards, the recurring "why do I do this again?" questions...
Oh, and I should have mentioned the soreness a little more prominently. Here we are, six days later, and i STILL have sore hamstrings. Turns out that sprinting for five hours is not good if you haven't even jogged in a couple of weeks. Dumb, dumb me. On the plus side, ankle held up quite nicely.
Rewinding, after the day wrapped up and we took team pictures and such, I booked it for home and dogs. I intelligently grabbed some Wendy's Fries on the way out of town, a delicacy I don't partake of all that often but one which was highly called for in this case of salt deprivation. And they hit the spot - man, best fries ever. I highly recommend running for five hours just so you can taste fries afterwards. It may be worth a week of awkward walking.
Another note - the key to late night driving is Erasure, specifically the compilation "Pop!." I guarantee that it is impossible to fall asleep with that perfection of 80s synth pop resounding in your ears. Who? You. You need love like that.
So overall I would say the experience was a good one. At this exact second in time, I'd say I'm unlikely to go back next year - playing in the dark is kinda dumb and dangerous, even if fun, and the peripheral shenanigans were pretty annoying. Then again, I say that now, and I 'm sure next summer I'll be itching to get in any playing I can. So, per usual, we shall see. But you read it here from a glow in the dark champ - it's fun, but it ain't that awesome. And ow.
And then a student canceled on Saturday, and then another, leaving me with an open Saturday afternoon. And I had gotten an e-mail the previous week which i had pretty much opened and immediately disregarded because the event it referenced was on a work day. But i remembered it upon the second cancellation: there was a goofy Ultimate tournament down in Tucson, a mere two hours away! And so I calculated that if I ran home, walked the pups, got my stuff together and took off, I would get there just in time. And with two hours transit, maybe five hours of playing, and two hours back, the dogs would be alone for nine hours, which is pretty much what they did all the time up in Boston. So off I went.
Ahem, and a big back up, for two reasons. One, I hadn't run in about two weeks, hadn't played Ultimate, and had really only done anything vaguely athletic while tossing the disc in the park with Ben and Ali. So i was going to be out of shape for this bad boy. But I've played entire tournaments while out of shape, not just one day hat deals like this, and survived just fine. So BRING IT!!! The second problem is little more heinous: while playing for Polaroid, we had a pretty awesome team saying which simultaneously reveals the nature of Ultimate and what a bunch of jerks we could be. The saying: "Ultimate Frisbee: Love the Game, Hate the People." Yeah, we sucked. But, hey: it's a great game. And the hippie-ish, non-athlete, nerdcore vibe of it drags it down at times (just like the non-hippie, athletic, non-nerd competitive asshole vibe can drag it down). This tournament screamed more people than game; for one thing, it was starting at 4 and running until 9 on a field without lights... eh? And there was much more mention of "kegs" and "boat races" and the like than, say, what version of rules they were using, what format the tournament would be in, how many people would be there. So to extend a weirdly referenced metaphor from the previous post, this was gonna be way more Grateful Dead concert than church or baseball or Ultimate.
So it goes. The opportunities to play Ultimate in this area are few and far between, so i decided to bite the bullet and go, just put on my happy face. I've played goofball tournaments like this before that have been an absolute blast; it all depends on the people who end up on your team and how well you can strike a balance between good play and lunacy. So i jumped in the car and listened to some schwank tunes down to Tucson, getting there just in time to be placed on a team and get ready to go.
Only it turns out that fewer people showed up than the tourney organizers anticipated. So what was supposed to be a 6 team, 10 players per team tournament turned into a 6 team, 6 players per team tourney. And we played fives! FTR, I would have shifted gears and gone four teams, 9 players each and played sevens, but I was not in charge. So we were playing with one sub, and we were playing with only five on a relatively normal sized field. More running plus fewer subs. If you're smart, you can see where this is going.
My team consisted of Jack, Jorge, Lilly, Sam, Ana and me. Ana was just learning how to play, but otherwise we had a pretty experienced team (these things are called "hat" tournaments b/c they mix your names in a hat to pick teams, but they do make people rank themselves in an effort to balance the teams). We started play at 4, and it was hot hot hot. Not 114, but still, 95+. Ran ourselves a bit ragged and won game one, 11-6. Things cooled down for game two, and we eeked out a tight win, 10-8. By then it was 7, though... and quite dark.
Bust out the glow-in-the-dark apparel! Every player got four gitd rings to place on their body, and the standard issue Ultimate discs were replaced with slightly heavier discs with a light source affixed to the bottom. And each team got different colored glo-rings. Somewhat ludicrous, but quite cool, too. We were neon orange (nice and bright) and played our third game of the day against a team wearing neon blue (not so good against the duck light). One of the teams wore neon green rings and looked pretty much straight up Tron.
SO, playing in the dark is quite tough. As you can imagine, people drop passes a lot more frequently, and it's difficult to gauge depth perception with any reliability. So the games were pretty sloppy, but we pressed on. I actually made several (5+) layout catches in the dark, a weird experience for sure. Anyways, after a few points of adjustment and figuring out how to deal with the weird conditions, we ran away with game three. The easy highlight was when a huck went up and the light source on the bottom went out. 'Twas like a saucer vanishing into the night.
So 3-0 on the day got us a ticket to the finals and a bit more no-subs, lotsa running play. And that point everyone else stopped just to heckle and watch the finals, though it's hard to heckle what you can't see - I had a rather nutzoid trailing edge lay out hammer grab in the game, but it happened at the other side of the field so pretty much no one saw it. The people on the sideline got progressively drunker as the game went on, and all the usual stupid Ultimate hippie side of things - "Play a no pants point!," etc. - went on in Spades. I, frankly, reserve my right to keep my pants on. That's what makes me American (the right, not the pants).
So we won, big time. Huzzah. I won a tournament, something I can remember happening in... let's see, sectionals '00, regionals '02, random tourney with Polaroid, random good cause tourney... and that's about it. So this was the fifth. So apparently this is a rare event, or I suck. Hmmm...
Anyways, a fun tournament, but it prompted a ton of questions. One - I knew nobody there. A couple of guys made the trek down from Phoenix as well, but they aren't really guys I know all that well. So there were two people I recognized, and a ton I didn't. On the one hand, it's cool that anyone can jump in and have a good time with a bunch of people that they don't know - I met a couple of the U of A players and some other folks who were reasonably cool. On the other hand... weird to be in such a big mix and feel entirely a stranger. I also had to drive home, making me much less inclined to partake of the beer-based funniness. So there's that. I guess the second question is, then, why do that? For every part that is fun - playing well, hanging out with new folks - there's a long drive, potential for injury, the guaranteed soreness afterwards, the recurring "why do I do this again?" questions...
Oh, and I should have mentioned the soreness a little more prominently. Here we are, six days later, and i STILL have sore hamstrings. Turns out that sprinting for five hours is not good if you haven't even jogged in a couple of weeks. Dumb, dumb me. On the plus side, ankle held up quite nicely.
Rewinding, after the day wrapped up and we took team pictures and such, I booked it for home and dogs. I intelligently grabbed some Wendy's Fries on the way out of town, a delicacy I don't partake of all that often but one which was highly called for in this case of salt deprivation. And they hit the spot - man, best fries ever. I highly recommend running for five hours just so you can taste fries afterwards. It may be worth a week of awkward walking.
Another note - the key to late night driving is Erasure, specifically the compilation "Pop!." I guarantee that it is impossible to fall asleep with that perfection of 80s synth pop resounding in your ears. Who? You. You need love like that.
So overall I would say the experience was a good one. At this exact second in time, I'd say I'm unlikely to go back next year - playing in the dark is kinda dumb and dangerous, even if fun, and the peripheral shenanigans were pretty annoying. Then again, I say that now, and I 'm sure next summer I'll be itching to get in any playing I can. So, per usual, we shall see. But you read it here from a glow in the dark champ - it's fun, but it ain't that awesome. And ow.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Untamed Dinner
The Jullietta is in town!!! Yay!!! SO call your favorite nature show hosts and settle in! Juliette and her mom are both in Phoenix to celebrate the 100th birthday of Julliette's mom's first cousin. Yep - Julliette has a first cousin once removed who is 100 years old, destroying all notions of the myth of generations. Wowsers.
Picked up Speckle about 7:30 from her hotel on Central Ave. which turned out to have an address different from the one she gave me by an order of magnitude. This would not have been a big deal if, say, she had been at 3 Central Ave. but was instead at 30, but unfortunately she was at 4000 instead of 400. There was a gigantic gutted building / scaffold where her hotel would've been, so I figured things out relatively quickly. No probs - got her, went down to the restaurant on 5th ave and beat everyone there by a solid fifteen minutes. Beck, Dan and Christina met us down there for a little Lovett '99 reunion.
We went to Cibo's, an italian restaurant in a converted house in the middle of a downtown neighborhood. Very tiny, so we ended up waiting 45 minutes - hour, but that was cool, as we got to hang and chat at the bar. As mentioned here previously, J-ette is engaged, but we managed not to drown her with wedding questions for the duration. She's still kickin' it up in Boston (Cambridge, actually), rocking the computer consulting world and occasionally playing Ultimate with Polaroid*. Doing well in all respects (though she did have the pleasure of staying in Newark last night due to a missed connection. And it turns out the airline won't reimburse you for "an Act of Air Traffic Control").
* - This just in: Polaroid nearly got blackballed from playing in league this year! Turns out there's an option to list teams that you don't want to play due to past conflicts. And six teams listed Polaroid! Ouch! Turns out only one of them could even possibly be connected back to when I played, so I can't take too much blame. Good to see that "Spirit Foul" lives on. People ended up talking it out with some of the other captains and got the black marks removed from the team's record, but egad man! Serious drama in the northeast!
(Of course, this being Ultimate: sounds like a team named "Black and Blue" cheated last year and brought a ringer to the tournament, got caught, and got banned from league this year. So they... changed their team name. And have been playing as though nothing happened. Ooh. Stupidity reigns).
Anyways, when we eventually did eat, we had excellent homemade single dish pizzas, and it NAILED the night. Fantastic. Great meal, great hanging, and a continuous flow of water to parch our desert-dry throats. We were seated directly under the air conditioner, so when we finally left it was about a fifty degree transition from inside to out. Exciting. Took the Julliette back to the hotel and headed home - probably won't see her again this weekend as she has all kinds of centennial parties to attend, but great to see her for the time we did.
(This morning: full of pizzafied energy, I went for an hour long 6.8 mile run. So with two miles yesterday, that brings the total for the week to 27.1 miles. I'll go 3-4 tomorrow, depending how my legs feel, and that will put me over 30 for the week, well on the way to the 100-150 range I'm shooting for over the next month. Yeah, doing it, etc.).
Picked up Speckle about 7:30 from her hotel on Central Ave. which turned out to have an address different from the one she gave me by an order of magnitude. This would not have been a big deal if, say, she had been at 3 Central Ave. but was instead at 30, but unfortunately she was at 4000 instead of 400. There was a gigantic gutted building / scaffold where her hotel would've been, so I figured things out relatively quickly. No probs - got her, went down to the restaurant on 5th ave and beat everyone there by a solid fifteen minutes. Beck, Dan and Christina met us down there for a little Lovett '99 reunion.
We went to Cibo's, an italian restaurant in a converted house in the middle of a downtown neighborhood. Very tiny, so we ended up waiting 45 minutes - hour, but that was cool, as we got to hang and chat at the bar. As mentioned here previously, J-ette is engaged, but we managed not to drown her with wedding questions for the duration. She's still kickin' it up in Boston (Cambridge, actually), rocking the computer consulting world and occasionally playing Ultimate with Polaroid*. Doing well in all respects (though she did have the pleasure of staying in Newark last night due to a missed connection. And it turns out the airline won't reimburse you for "an Act of Air Traffic Control").
* - This just in: Polaroid nearly got blackballed from playing in league this year! Turns out there's an option to list teams that you don't want to play due to past conflicts. And six teams listed Polaroid! Ouch! Turns out only one of them could even possibly be connected back to when I played, so I can't take too much blame. Good to see that "Spirit Foul" lives on. People ended up talking it out with some of the other captains and got the black marks removed from the team's record, but egad man! Serious drama in the northeast!
(Of course, this being Ultimate: sounds like a team named "Black and Blue" cheated last year and brought a ringer to the tournament, got caught, and got banned from league this year. So they... changed their team name. And have been playing as though nothing happened. Ooh. Stupidity reigns).
Anyways, when we eventually did eat, we had excellent homemade single dish pizzas, and it NAILED the night. Fantastic. Great meal, great hanging, and a continuous flow of water to parch our desert-dry throats. We were seated directly under the air conditioner, so when we finally left it was about a fifty degree transition from inside to out. Exciting. Took the Julliette back to the hotel and headed home - probably won't see her again this weekend as she has all kinds of centennial parties to attend, but great to see her for the time we did.
(This morning: full of pizzafied energy, I went for an hour long 6.8 mile run. So with two miles yesterday, that brings the total for the week to 27.1 miles. I'll go 3-4 tomorrow, depending how my legs feel, and that will put me over 30 for the week, well on the way to the 100-150 range I'm shooting for over the next month. Yeah, doing it, etc.).
Monday, August 21, 2006
Weekend Post! Proof of Car!!! Mundanity!!! Spelling!
Site or Gossip? Review of Through a Glass, Darkly coming soon...
Alright, you wanted proof, here you go:
If you were as awesome as the Beck and me, you too would get to gaze at this Knight Rider-esque display as you drove willy-nilly over the land of Mass. Here are some shots that more or less demonstrate that so much depends upon a blue civic, sitting in our driveway, beside the pink house:
Please note that the car / speedometer size ratio is not to scale.
So thar she blows, hope you dig. IPMM and IPJ saw the blue ghost in person this weekend - they were in town for a wedding, so we met them and Greg and Meghan Saturday night in Coolidge Corner for some good Japanese / Korean food. Fun times, and a bevy of references to Beck's wedding were made. On other dinner-related news, Beck and I went out with Ali & Ben to Canyon Cafe where we learned that sometimes Pomegranate margaritas are not really all that pomegranatey, and sometimes burritos have abnormally large chunks of garlic in them. Everyone involved survived. We also cemented the following joke in the pantheon:
Q: How do you get an elephant into a Safeway?
A: You take the 's' out of 'Safe' and the 'f' out of 'way.'
Genius! In other joke-related news, I tried to play Ultimate again this weekend - HA! Buh-dum-ching. No, seriously, I headed out to the BUDA summer club tourney to give it a whirl, and made it through 2 games just fine - played pretty well actually, hucked it like crazy - but then the third game rolled along and I couldn't run any more due to the heel. Argh. On the plus side, we won those first two games and added a third win in the last game of the day, matching our season win total. So we are not quite as hopeless as people may have thought, which is cool. On the definite downside, Cork hurt his knee Saturday in a manner that looked very ACL-ish. Gigantic bummer.
And that's about it - other than some mundane stuff about the adventures of Nyet and his inability to change guitar strings without breaking them, which is not a happy story. Argh - but it's fixed now. One more week of summer, and it's back to daily Nutdom. Can't wait. Beck started small animal surgery today and is on call tonight, so I may or may not get to see her.
Oh, and in other joke-related news... ladies and gents, your 2006 Boston Red Sox!!!!
That's about it. More stuff to come.
Alright, you wanted proof, here you go:
If you were as awesome as the Beck and me, you too would get to gaze at this Knight Rider-esque display as you drove willy-nilly over the land of Mass. Here are some shots that more or less demonstrate that so much depends upon a blue civic, sitting in our driveway, beside the pink house:
Please note that the car / speedometer size ratio is not to scale.
So thar she blows, hope you dig. IPMM and IPJ saw the blue ghost in person this weekend - they were in town for a wedding, so we met them and Greg and Meghan Saturday night in Coolidge Corner for some good Japanese / Korean food. Fun times, and a bevy of references to Beck's wedding were made. On other dinner-related news, Beck and I went out with Ali & Ben to Canyon Cafe where we learned that sometimes Pomegranate margaritas are not really all that pomegranatey, and sometimes burritos have abnormally large chunks of garlic in them. Everyone involved survived. We also cemented the following joke in the pantheon:
Q: How do you get an elephant into a Safeway?
A: You take the 's' out of 'Safe' and the 'f' out of 'way.'
Genius! In other joke-related news, I tried to play Ultimate again this weekend - HA! Buh-dum-ching. No, seriously, I headed out to the BUDA summer club tourney to give it a whirl, and made it through 2 games just fine - played pretty well actually, hucked it like crazy - but then the third game rolled along and I couldn't run any more due to the heel. Argh. On the plus side, we won those first two games and added a third win in the last game of the day, matching our season win total. So we are not quite as hopeless as people may have thought, which is cool. On the definite downside, Cork hurt his knee Saturday in a manner that looked very ACL-ish. Gigantic bummer.
And that's about it - other than some mundane stuff about the adventures of Nyet and his inability to change guitar strings without breaking them, which is not a happy story. Argh - but it's fixed now. One more week of summer, and it's back to daily Nutdom. Can't wait. Beck started small animal surgery today and is on call tonight, so I may or may not get to see her.
Oh, and in other joke-related news... ladies and gents, your 2006 Boston Red Sox!!!!
That's about it. More stuff to come.
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
It's hot; I'm not.
So the grand Ultimate experiment, busted foot and all, did not go off greatly on Tuesday. 97 degrees, for one thing, which meant my shirt was completely drenched before warmups had really even gotten going. On the plus side, that meant everything got stretched out pretty quickly, I felt nice and limber; on the minus side, missing my running schedule for the entire summer and the heat combined for a severely out-of-shape experience. So I played, and my foot held up for about 8 or 9 points, then started hurting a little, then a lot, probably maxing out at 6 on the trad 1-10 scale. This put me hobbling around the field while out of shape and overweight - I'd give myself max of about 65 percent of my normal spry self. Which meant that I just wasn't getting to discs as quickly as I'm accustomed, and on a couple of occasions guys took off deep on me and my heel would not allow for a quick fireoff - so I got burned badly. My throws were reasonable; actually, a few excellently placed hucks to Jay and Quan and a couple to Lisa which she unfortunately could not catch up to. As you can imagine, the whole thing was hella frustrating.
But that really wasn't the half of it - during the hour plus ride home, my foot stiffened up more or less to its maximum possible stiffness, so that even just lifting it slightly off the floor of the car put the strain of gravity on it, causing a very slight plantarflexion that more or less ripped the attachment out of the bone. Or that's what it felt like, anyways, gunshot stop pain that makes you stop everything on a dime. Not that I've ever been shot, but - yeah, it was that post ACL-surgery waking up as the pain meds are wearing off kinda pain, pretty high. I try not to be wussish, but I had just run around on the thing through that pain, so yeah - this was worse. Thoughts of retirement worse. It eventually chilled out once I got home and moving around, and actually was not terrible the next day - but, hmmm, that seems to be where things stand right now. SO, apparently I can play craptastic Ultimate where I can't guard anyone and then drive home in borderline screaming pain. Huzzah!
(This is the part where you all cry for me and send flowers).
(Seriously, 1-800-GET WELL. You should 1-800 get on that).
To pull us back into the realm of good perspective, remind myself that this is just Ultimate and not, you know, my source of livelihood, read about the Caucasian Wide Receivers Association of America. Ricky Proehl, especially you're Tecmo Super Bowl version, you are still my dog.
As long as I'm throwing links up into the mix to distract myself from the pain, check out the transcendent ridiculousness that is a music video by Muse. I mean, really check it, that's some pretty dope stuff, yah yah.
So, getting back to it - where does this Ultimate thing stand? It may be time to hang 'em up, at least for this season that never was. It's extraordinarily disappointing, but the crappy level at which I'm able to play is not worth the pain, long drives and gas prices. I may throw myself out there one more time, but focusing on getting the heel in reasonable repair may be the way to go at this point.
Pulling this into less of a self-pitying session and more of a this is what's up - it remains good having the Beck back. She's in anesthesia these days with The Wolf, so they are working hard an occasionally staying up all night for their troubles. So that's cool.
I spent the bulk of the week trying not to melt - record temperatures the past few, highlighted by heat index factors of 118 or so on Wednesday which, it turns out, the greater Boston are can not handle in the slightest. The dogs and I took refuge in the study with fans or the bedroom with a window AC unit. We all survived; they passed the time with frosty paws, and I passed it... drumroll...
Writing! Yeah, started a novel this week. It is so mind bogglingly terrible it defies explanation. The whole experience has been disheartening; I think I just find myself geared to short stories and bloggy type attention spans, so I write these scenes that are supposed to lay down characters and intentions and some of the big bang things in a novel, I look up and they're 3 pages long in Word in 12 point font. Damn. So, it's gonna be a long process, as I need to reorient my brain around the thing. Once I get something that I'm reasonably happy about I'll post it for general perusal, but it's been four days and nothing that I would call good has come of it, so don't hold your breath.
That's about it - Nut-trafficking this weekend, all day Sunday and into Monday, so I'll be sure to not report that monstrous pile of boredom. Until not then...
But that really wasn't the half of it - during the hour plus ride home, my foot stiffened up more or less to its maximum possible stiffness, so that even just lifting it slightly off the floor of the car put the strain of gravity on it, causing a very slight plantarflexion that more or less ripped the attachment out of the bone. Or that's what it felt like, anyways, gunshot stop pain that makes you stop everything on a dime. Not that I've ever been shot, but - yeah, it was that post ACL-surgery waking up as the pain meds are wearing off kinda pain, pretty high. I try not to be wussish, but I had just run around on the thing through that pain, so yeah - this was worse. Thoughts of retirement worse. It eventually chilled out once I got home and moving around, and actually was not terrible the next day - but, hmmm, that seems to be where things stand right now. SO, apparently I can play craptastic Ultimate where I can't guard anyone and then drive home in borderline screaming pain. Huzzah!
(This is the part where you all cry for me and send flowers).
(Seriously, 1-800-GET WELL. You should 1-800 get on that).
To pull us back into the realm of good perspective, remind myself that this is just Ultimate and not, you know, my source of livelihood, read about the Caucasian Wide Receivers Association of America. Ricky Proehl, especially you're Tecmo Super Bowl version, you are still my dog.
As long as I'm throwing links up into the mix to distract myself from the pain, check out the transcendent ridiculousness that is a music video by Muse. I mean, really check it, that's some pretty dope stuff, yah yah.
So, getting back to it - where does this Ultimate thing stand? It may be time to hang 'em up, at least for this season that never was. It's extraordinarily disappointing, but the crappy level at which I'm able to play is not worth the pain, long drives and gas prices. I may throw myself out there one more time, but focusing on getting the heel in reasonable repair may be the way to go at this point.
Pulling this into less of a self-pitying session and more of a this is what's up - it remains good having the Beck back. She's in anesthesia these days with The Wolf, so they are working hard an occasionally staying up all night for their troubles. So that's cool.
I spent the bulk of the week trying not to melt - record temperatures the past few, highlighted by heat index factors of 118 or so on Wednesday which, it turns out, the greater Boston are can not handle in the slightest. The dogs and I took refuge in the study with fans or the bedroom with a window AC unit. We all survived; they passed the time with frosty paws, and I passed it... drumroll...
Writing! Yeah, started a novel this week. It is so mind bogglingly terrible it defies explanation. The whole experience has been disheartening; I think I just find myself geared to short stories and bloggy type attention spans, so I write these scenes that are supposed to lay down characters and intentions and some of the big bang things in a novel, I look up and they're 3 pages long in Word in 12 point font. Damn. So, it's gonna be a long process, as I need to reorient my brain around the thing. Once I get something that I'm reasonably happy about I'll post it for general perusal, but it's been four days and nothing that I would call good has come of it, so don't hold your breath.
That's about it - Nut-trafficking this weekend, all day Sunday and into Monday, so I'll be sure to not report that monstrous pile of boredom. Until not then...
Sunday, July 9, 2006
The fog has lifted.
Cloud Atlas
Thumbsucker
St. Elmo's Fire
Over the Hedge
Shopgirl
Being There
Just picture me blowing the collected dust off the keyboard right now, cracking knuckles and preparing for a triumphant return to the blogverse. Not really. Things have been pretty low key at Rancho Graftonero lately, and I've been sub-inspired to log the events, or the lack of them. A number of contributing factors exist - but here is a slipshod, out of order, top of my head style recollection:
Yesterday I went to the wedding of Dave Wu (a good friend and teammate of mine from Polaroid) and Mary Tibbetts (the sister of another Former Polaroid teammate of mine, Mike Tibbetts, who has been sucked away from the world of Ultimate by the more demanding and legally required world of fathering). Rather I went to the reception, as I got there late because of work at the Nut. In typical me fashion, as I walked up to the church and saw Dave, I walked up and said hey, congratulations. Then I noticed the long line leading up to Dave. Yep, my wedding entrance involved cutting in the receiving line. I rock. I took my respective place among the Roid brethren and sisthren, and said my proper congrats a few minutes later. The wedding, incidentally, was in Arlington, a couple of blocks from our old house, and the reception was over by the Arlington library. Nice little trip down 2001-03 memory lane. I miss Arlington fiercely, seriously. Anyhoo, nice touches of Asian and Aryan culture at the reception, complete with Asian tea ceremonies and cheesy DJs. Jerrel, in a shocking move, dominated the dance floor. He also dominated the open bar, ordering everything from mojitos to tequila sunrises to something he claimed was called a "Wu-wu." Fun times
I raced home from the wedding in an effort to get Beck to a dinner with her Vet school "friends" who lamely neglected to give her a ride. I was too late, so we went out to dinner in Worcester at the Rhino Cafe where I may have had the best cheesesteak sandwich I've ever had. My arteries actually arranged their fatty deposits in smiley faces; it was that good. We also got to hang out with an older couple that may or my not have been on a date at the next table, and we got to see a lot of locals who were drunk and/or on motorcycles. Plus there were a couple of scantily clad womenfolk who were either being stood up by dates or streetwalking; I did not perform a litmus test. Love me the Worcester, yes. We headed home after a great meal and watched a little Robot Chicken, a rather LSD-influenced stop-animation show by Buffy-vet (or maybe the Buffy cast member who required a vet) Seth Green. The episodes are 11 minute blitzes perfectly attuned to modern attention spans, and among the highlight jokes was a PSA by Optimus Prime of Transformers fame about prostate cancer (we transformers are robots and therefore have no organic inner organs, so we cannot get cancer. But you do, and you can, so get your ass checked!). I also have to give, I don't know if "props" is the ride word, maybe, stunned adulation, to the "Zombie Idol" parody of American Idol where dead rock stars performed as Zombies. In the end, the zombies went eat-brains crazy, and Ving Rhames showed up with a shotgun to finish them off appropriately, which any zombie fan knows is only accomplished by destroying their head. The transcendentally tasteless joke involved Rhames deciding not to shoot Kurt Cobain, but rather just handing him the shotgun and watching him shoot himself in the head. This was approximately 1000 times less morbid when displayed in claymation.
So yeah, on that note, we went to bed, ending a day that started at 5 AM for me. I've been driving vans for the Walnut Hill camps this summer, a job that only makes me feel moderately pointless, so that's nice. Kids are nice for the most part, but I've spent more time at Logan than I ever thought I would like to. Yesterday wasn't too bad: two trips, but then things like last weekend involved 7 trips to and from starting at 6 AM and ending at 9:30 PM. It passes the time, and the camp director Charlie and the RAs (Rachel, Becca, Jon, Anna, Lillian) are all cool people, so it's been a reasonable way to spend a few hours out of each week this summer.
What else have I been doing, damn? Well, I couldn't resist the new deal on the Tacoma DM-10 at Mr. C's Music. So I effectively traded up from my Sigma, which was a little bit of a bummer because I just had a pickup put in it - but they were nice enough to give me a break on transferring the pickup over to the Tacoma, so that was cool. Sad to see MyFirstAcoustic (TM) go, but happy to have an American handmade gorgeous acoustic guitar in my possession. Sounds magnificent, plays excellently - they don't actually make this guitar any more, and it's in mint condition despite being a few years used. Acoustic guitars theoretically sound better and better as they age, and this one is starting from a very, very high point. Pscyhed, and don't worry sportsfans, eventually there will be some sound files put up here.
So I've been running my way through some guitar basics books lately in an effort to re-establish a more technically correct foundation for whatever it is that I'm setting out to do here. I'm making slow progress, and I get frustrated very easily, which is lame - I've found that relaxing myself before I play and only going in 45 minute spurts or so has been more effective than tension-building hours-long marathons. So I've been doing a lot of play for 45, read for 30, play for 45, watch part of a movie, etc. It's working. Again, recorded results on the horizon. (Speaking of, I have finally gotten my computer rigged for recording and for some electronic music-making. I have truckloads to keep me busy through the next year out here in the South Grafton barren wasteland).
Oh, the ol' SG isn't that barren - we went out to eat at Vinny T's with Ben & Ali the other night, and headed back to their place for scrabble and cobbler. And we actually hit the Post Office Pub the other night with some of the vet-friends for some beers and ear-piercing karaoke. And on July 4th we went to Jessica's (aka, the Brooke Shields Denise Richards love-child) for a rainy, moist, mosquito-laden barbeque, complete with s'mores and sparklers. And we watched Italy qualify for the World Cup finals in true patriotic fashion. So yeah, some solid socializing going down - and this morning, Jill (of med school fame) is headed out our way and we've got dinner scheduled with our terrorist friends the Ben Alis. Nothing's gonna stop us, now.
World Cup - tres exciting. Finals today. I've probably mentioned this, but the soothing crowd chants, the hours of tension, the monumental effort for the chance at something that will likely prove futile - there's a lot going on that's drastically romantic and beyond American general comprehension. The flopping is, por supuesto, total crap, and if it weren't for that I'd be completely sold. It's too bad American pro soccer is effectively the minor leagues of the world - otherwise, I might tune in, a lot.
Time to tune out? Okay, yeah. But I'll pick up the entry level here. More blogging, more reviews, try to get my head wrapped around some writing. Should have some fuel for the fire after the Jill Ben Ali experience. We'll see. Until then, get your prostates checked. If you have them.
Thumbsucker
St. Elmo's Fire
Over the Hedge
Shopgirl
Being There
Just picture me blowing the collected dust off the keyboard right now, cracking knuckles and preparing for a triumphant return to the blogverse. Not really. Things have been pretty low key at Rancho Graftonero lately, and I've been sub-inspired to log the events, or the lack of them. A number of contributing factors exist - but here is a slipshod, out of order, top of my head style recollection:
Yesterday I went to the wedding of Dave Wu (a good friend and teammate of mine from Polaroid) and Mary Tibbetts (the sister of another Former Polaroid teammate of mine, Mike Tibbetts, who has been sucked away from the world of Ultimate by the more demanding and legally required world of fathering). Rather I went to the reception, as I got there late because of work at the Nut. In typical me fashion, as I walked up to the church and saw Dave, I walked up and said hey, congratulations. Then I noticed the long line leading up to Dave. Yep, my wedding entrance involved cutting in the receiving line. I rock. I took my respective place among the Roid brethren and sisthren, and said my proper congrats a few minutes later. The wedding, incidentally, was in Arlington, a couple of blocks from our old house, and the reception was over by the Arlington library. Nice little trip down 2001-03 memory lane. I miss Arlington fiercely, seriously. Anyhoo, nice touches of Asian and Aryan culture at the reception, complete with Asian tea ceremonies and cheesy DJs. Jerrel, in a shocking move, dominated the dance floor. He also dominated the open bar, ordering everything from mojitos to tequila sunrises to something he claimed was called a "Wu-wu." Fun times
I raced home from the wedding in an effort to get Beck to a dinner with her Vet school "friends" who lamely neglected to give her a ride. I was too late, so we went out to dinner in Worcester at the Rhino Cafe where I may have had the best cheesesteak sandwich I've ever had. My arteries actually arranged their fatty deposits in smiley faces; it was that good. We also got to hang out with an older couple that may or my not have been on a date at the next table, and we got to see a lot of locals who were drunk and/or on motorcycles. Plus there were a couple of scantily clad womenfolk who were either being stood up by dates or streetwalking; I did not perform a litmus test. Love me the Worcester, yes. We headed home after a great meal and watched a little Robot Chicken, a rather LSD-influenced stop-animation show by Buffy-vet (or maybe the Buffy cast member who required a vet) Seth Green. The episodes are 11 minute blitzes perfectly attuned to modern attention spans, and among the highlight jokes was a PSA by Optimus Prime of Transformers fame about prostate cancer (we transformers are robots and therefore have no organic inner organs, so we cannot get cancer. But you do, and you can, so get your ass checked!). I also have to give, I don't know if "props" is the ride word, maybe, stunned adulation, to the "Zombie Idol" parody of American Idol where dead rock stars performed as Zombies. In the end, the zombies went eat-brains crazy, and Ving Rhames showed up with a shotgun to finish them off appropriately, which any zombie fan knows is only accomplished by destroying their head. The transcendentally tasteless joke involved Rhames deciding not to shoot Kurt Cobain, but rather just handing him the shotgun and watching him shoot himself in the head. This was approximately 1000 times less morbid when displayed in claymation.
So yeah, on that note, we went to bed, ending a day that started at 5 AM for me. I've been driving vans for the Walnut Hill camps this summer, a job that only makes me feel moderately pointless, so that's nice. Kids are nice for the most part, but I've spent more time at Logan than I ever thought I would like to. Yesterday wasn't too bad: two trips, but then things like last weekend involved 7 trips to and from starting at 6 AM and ending at 9:30 PM. It passes the time, and the camp director Charlie and the RAs (Rachel, Becca, Jon, Anna, Lillian) are all cool people, so it's been a reasonable way to spend a few hours out of each week this summer.
What else have I been doing, damn? Well, I couldn't resist the new deal on the Tacoma DM-10 at Mr. C's Music. So I effectively traded up from my Sigma, which was a little bit of a bummer because I just had a pickup put in it - but they were nice enough to give me a break on transferring the pickup over to the Tacoma, so that was cool. Sad to see MyFirstAcoustic (TM) go, but happy to have an American handmade gorgeous acoustic guitar in my possession. Sounds magnificent, plays excellently - they don't actually make this guitar any more, and it's in mint condition despite being a few years used. Acoustic guitars theoretically sound better and better as they age, and this one is starting from a very, very high point. Pscyhed, and don't worry sportsfans, eventually there will be some sound files put up here.
So I've been running my way through some guitar basics books lately in an effort to re-establish a more technically correct foundation for whatever it is that I'm setting out to do here. I'm making slow progress, and I get frustrated very easily, which is lame - I've found that relaxing myself before I play and only going in 45 minute spurts or so has been more effective than tension-building hours-long marathons. So I've been doing a lot of play for 45, read for 30, play for 45, watch part of a movie, etc. It's working. Again, recorded results on the horizon. (Speaking of, I have finally gotten my computer rigged for recording and for some electronic music-making. I have truckloads to keep me busy through the next year out here in the South Grafton barren wasteland).
Oh, the ol' SG isn't that barren - we went out to eat at Vinny T's with Ben & Ali the other night, and headed back to their place for scrabble and cobbler. And we actually hit the Post Office Pub the other night with some of the vet-friends for some beers and ear-piercing karaoke. And on July 4th we went to Jessica's (aka, the Brooke Shields Denise Richards love-child) for a rainy, moist, mosquito-laden barbeque, complete with s'mores and sparklers. And we watched Italy qualify for the World Cup finals in true patriotic fashion. So yeah, some solid socializing going down - and this morning, Jill (of med school fame) is headed out our way and we've got dinner scheduled with our terrorist friends the Ben Alis. Nothing's gonna stop us, now.
World Cup - tres exciting. Finals today. I've probably mentioned this, but the soothing crowd chants, the hours of tension, the monumental effort for the chance at something that will likely prove futile - there's a lot going on that's drastically romantic and beyond American general comprehension. The flopping is, por supuesto, total crap, and if it weren't for that I'd be completely sold. It's too bad American pro soccer is effectively the minor leagues of the world - otherwise, I might tune in, a lot.
Time to tune out? Okay, yeah. But I'll pick up the entry level here. More blogging, more reviews, try to get my head wrapped around some writing. Should have some fuel for the fire after the Jill Ben Ali experience. We'll see. Until then, get your prostates checked. If you have them.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
It's Hot; Ridiculous Ultimate; Spastic Siblings; Hurricane Stanleys; Tickle-Me-Ridiculous-Plot
Site or Gossip?
CBS Update
The AJ has hit South Grafton, yo, and it will never be the same. He joins us in our time of insane heatwave, unfortunately, so we're all cooking a little bit in the apartment. Bah - 97 degrees or so the last couple of days. Nothing a little fan or one-room AC unit or, failing those, and if you're a dog, a bowlful of ice cubes can't cure. He should be fine with the heat anyways, as should everyone, lest I launch into a Texas-two-a-days diatribe. Crap, Johnson, you couldn't run out of sight in a week.
Let's see - some rather unwise persons, let's call them Dom and Mad, had Aaron Z-rayed only to learn that he has some mild congenital hip dysplasia. I am sure it is uncomfortable - but it seems to have been an act of enablement, giving him "hard scientific medical evidence" that he can wiggle around and spastically move like a orangutan suffering from heroin withdrawal. I mean, the neck cricks, shoulder and back-popping were ludicrous enough, but now it's full body insanity - he can't just sit and watch TV, he does Roxette leg kicks and spasms and good lord is it distracting. Like I said, I am sorry he has an uncomfortable hip, but his method of dealing with it makes him look like he has some spastic axial Tourette's or something. He theoretically has stretches and exercises to do, but I 1, can't suggest that he do them, for that would be an intrusion on his very soul, so 2, I will keep a rough count of how many times I see him do them over the next few days. Shockingly, at the start of the 36th hour, the odometer is still stuck on zero. As long as I'm bitching, on the ride home last night he began trying to recount which of my stories he had read, and he managed to recall all of 2 pages. So he says he's going to "read them while he's here" so we can talk about them. If you need a job done four months after the fact, Aaron is your man.
Picked Aaron up at the aeropuerto Sunday evening, and it took us nine years to get back from Providence - the New England "unmarked road" phenomena were in full effect. We watched Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night; very disheartening for the Dallas fans out there. The foul called on Nowitzki with 1.6 seconds left (on DWade) was, um, interesting - the general consensus is that the last few seconds of the game, particularly in THE FINALS, are "let them play" seconds. So calling a phantom foul on Dirk to give Miami the win is kind absurd. I like free throws as much as the next guy, but 25 of them? I suppose Wade has more star-power than Dier Dirk. Hmph. Anyhoo, Beck made burritos, very delicious, and we had a good night at home.
Aaron slept until 11 Monday; got up for a little while to jam on guitar a bit and then went back to sleep. We watched the first hour and a half of St. Elmo's Fire, and jeebus, I'm going to have to review that film. I couldn't sit still to watch it - is Aaron's hip infectious? - just way too much awkwardness, preposterous story lines and characters (Emilio?), etc. So bad it's bad kinda thing. We only watched the first 1.5 hours of it because we had to leave at 4 to go to my Ultimate game...
Just another dumb experience under the belt. Nothing to do with the actual Ultimate, and actually more to do with the lack of actual Ultimate. We were supposed to play BBN in Lexington, which is not a stone's throw from Grafton. I needed to stop by the Natick Library; Aaron needed some shoes. So we left the house at 4:15, got to Natick, did our things, and left there about 5:20. We got to Lexington a little after 6 thanks to some more unlabeled Boston streets. SO we get there, and BBN is there, but so is some other bunch of quacks. So the BBN captain had double-booked us, and the brilliant solution was for them to play to 11 and then we would play BBN afterwards. We half-heartedly scrimmaged in the meantime, and then got to play for a whopping 25 minutes or so when it got dark and mosquito-y. Bah. Big fat waste of time - on the plus side, my knee and shoulders felt a lot better, but I mashed my heel at some point during the game and am limping around today. So I think I am officially boycotting the MIT game tonight. STUPID!
Aaron and I stopped by Chili's in Framingham on the way back to get dinner and watch Carolina win the Stanley Cup in a fun hockey game. The local regulars were out in full force last night, so I suppose we got to see the makings of a really lame, corporate white-washed and American standardized real life version of St. Elmo's Fire. The characters in the bar were vastly less attractive, though mounds more believable and infinitely less annoying. Fun to see Carolina hoist the Cup, and glad they didn't let Edmonton run the table on them. We came back here and I showered and pretty much immediately went to bed. I just came to the computer this morning - Aaaron & Beck are asleep - to find THIS on my desktop, so maybe Aaron will come through this time.
Whatever. Fun having AJ in the hizza. We'll try to do some recording today, methinks.
CBS Update
The AJ has hit South Grafton, yo, and it will never be the same. He joins us in our time of insane heatwave, unfortunately, so we're all cooking a little bit in the apartment. Bah - 97 degrees or so the last couple of days. Nothing a little fan or one-room AC unit or, failing those, and if you're a dog, a bowlful of ice cubes can't cure. He should be fine with the heat anyways, as should everyone, lest I launch into a Texas-two-a-days diatribe. Crap, Johnson, you couldn't run out of sight in a week.
Let's see - some rather unwise persons, let's call them Dom and Mad, had Aaron Z-rayed only to learn that he has some mild congenital hip dysplasia. I am sure it is uncomfortable - but it seems to have been an act of enablement, giving him "hard scientific medical evidence" that he can wiggle around and spastically move like a orangutan suffering from heroin withdrawal. I mean, the neck cricks, shoulder and back-popping were ludicrous enough, but now it's full body insanity - he can't just sit and watch TV, he does Roxette leg kicks and spasms and good lord is it distracting. Like I said, I am sorry he has an uncomfortable hip, but his method of dealing with it makes him look like he has some spastic axial Tourette's or something. He theoretically has stretches and exercises to do, but I 1, can't suggest that he do them, for that would be an intrusion on his very soul, so 2, I will keep a rough count of how many times I see him do them over the next few days. Shockingly, at the start of the 36th hour, the odometer is still stuck on zero. As long as I'm bitching, on the ride home last night he began trying to recount which of my stories he had read, and he managed to recall all of 2 pages. So he says he's going to "read them while he's here" so we can talk about them. If you need a job done four months after the fact, Aaron is your man.
Picked Aaron up at the aeropuerto Sunday evening, and it took us nine years to get back from Providence - the New England "unmarked road" phenomena were in full effect. We watched Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday night; very disheartening for the Dallas fans out there. The foul called on Nowitzki with 1.6 seconds left (on DWade) was, um, interesting - the general consensus is that the last few seconds of the game, particularly in THE FINALS, are "let them play" seconds. So calling a phantom foul on Dirk to give Miami the win is kind absurd. I like free throws as much as the next guy, but 25 of them? I suppose Wade has more star-power than Dier Dirk. Hmph. Anyhoo, Beck made burritos, very delicious, and we had a good night at home.
Aaron slept until 11 Monday; got up for a little while to jam on guitar a bit and then went back to sleep. We watched the first hour and a half of St. Elmo's Fire, and jeebus, I'm going to have to review that film. I couldn't sit still to watch it - is Aaron's hip infectious? - just way too much awkwardness, preposterous story lines and characters (Emilio?), etc. So bad it's bad kinda thing. We only watched the first 1.5 hours of it because we had to leave at 4 to go to my Ultimate game...
Just another dumb experience under the belt. Nothing to do with the actual Ultimate, and actually more to do with the lack of actual Ultimate. We were supposed to play BBN in Lexington, which is not a stone's throw from Grafton. I needed to stop by the Natick Library; Aaron needed some shoes. So we left the house at 4:15, got to Natick, did our things, and left there about 5:20. We got to Lexington a little after 6 thanks to some more unlabeled Boston streets. SO we get there, and BBN is there, but so is some other bunch of quacks. So the BBN captain had double-booked us, and the brilliant solution was for them to play to 11 and then we would play BBN afterwards. We half-heartedly scrimmaged in the meantime, and then got to play for a whopping 25 minutes or so when it got dark and mosquito-y. Bah. Big fat waste of time - on the plus side, my knee and shoulders felt a lot better, but I mashed my heel at some point during the game and am limping around today. So I think I am officially boycotting the MIT game tonight. STUPID!
Aaron and I stopped by Chili's in Framingham on the way back to get dinner and watch Carolina win the Stanley Cup in a fun hockey game. The local regulars were out in full force last night, so I suppose we got to see the makings of a really lame, corporate white-washed and American standardized real life version of St. Elmo's Fire. The characters in the bar were vastly less attractive, though mounds more believable and infinitely less annoying. Fun to see Carolina hoist the Cup, and glad they didn't let Edmonton run the table on them. We came back here and I showered and pretty much immediately went to bed. I just came to the computer this morning - Aaaron & Beck are asleep - to find THIS on my desktop, so maybe Aaron will come through this time.
Whatever. Fun having AJ in the hizza. We'll try to do some recording today, methinks.
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Oh, Dad's not gonna dig that final score...
Who loves game sevens?
Preston the Llama loves game sevens.
Carolina got *mauled* by Edmonton tonight and now heads home to face the most exciting thing in all of everything, an NHL game 7. It probably has not come out in any way to this point that I love hockey, clearly a dank betrayal of my confederate roots. The lockout pretty much killed my enthusiasm of late (the Finals have resurrected it to a great degree), but there was a time when I would watch any hockey game of any variety any time. I randomly took on the Sharks as a team of choice - and you may think I'm using "random" in that quasi-cool, late 90's early aughts way, as in "OMG, you hooked up with the most rando skank last night!" but I'm not - really, my roommate Ryan and I picked random teams to play against one another in NHL 98; he got Carolina, I got San Jose - and ever since that fateful night in '98, I've been a southernly displaced ice addict. Like I mentioned a couple fo days ago - there's some deadly romanticism in the struggle for every advantage when goals are scarce, something that soccer embraces and hockey just a little bit less so. But hockey also has body checks and fights, so they apply to my non pony-tailed side, too.
Only problem, getting back on track, is that we have an Ultimate game Monday night during the game 7. Boo-urns! I guess I'll record, or maybe stop by a sports bar on the way home all stanktified. Too bad.
Ah, Ultimate. I haven't played in a couple of weeks - been banged up a little, generally unenthusiastic about the game and the Roid, and seriously unenthusiastic about the prospect of driving over an hour only to have a game rained out. Hopefully the time off has healed my weary legs a little bit. We'll see.
Not much else - we went to the Worcester Art Museum with Val, one of Beck's classmates this morning. The museum was very cool; we didn't see a ton, but saw some surrealism that... well, hey, I'll just:
Violin d'Ingres by Man Ray (1924)
Which is just a fantastic image. Saw lots of others that I don't particularly feel like scouring the web for right this second... in fact, it's too late for art talk. Suffice it - good time, good inspiration from the museum. I listened to Miles Davis's A Tribute to Jack johnson to drown out the ill-dreamt commentary from the other patrons, and it made for an excellent soundscape.
Got some Chinese food with Val in a dingy Worcester Chinese restuarant. The food was excellent; the ambience was full of solicitors, sleazy dudes and general dirtiness. Val is a crazy driver, not surprisingly. That's all I got. Oh, she also likes to suck a large quantity of face with her boyfriend in public.
Tiredness creeps in. Time to bed... AJ tomorrow! Wahoo!
Preston the Llama loves game sevens.
Carolina got *mauled* by Edmonton tonight and now heads home to face the most exciting thing in all of everything, an NHL game 7. It probably has not come out in any way to this point that I love hockey, clearly a dank betrayal of my confederate roots. The lockout pretty much killed my enthusiasm of late (the Finals have resurrected it to a great degree), but there was a time when I would watch any hockey game of any variety any time. I randomly took on the Sharks as a team of choice - and you may think I'm using "random" in that quasi-cool, late 90's early aughts way, as in "OMG, you hooked up with the most rando skank last night!" but I'm not - really, my roommate Ryan and I picked random teams to play against one another in NHL 98; he got Carolina, I got San Jose - and ever since that fateful night in '98, I've been a southernly displaced ice addict. Like I mentioned a couple fo days ago - there's some deadly romanticism in the struggle for every advantage when goals are scarce, something that soccer embraces and hockey just a little bit less so. But hockey also has body checks and fights, so they apply to my non pony-tailed side, too.
Only problem, getting back on track, is that we have an Ultimate game Monday night during the game 7. Boo-urns! I guess I'll record, or maybe stop by a sports bar on the way home all stanktified. Too bad.
Ah, Ultimate. I haven't played in a couple of weeks - been banged up a little, generally unenthusiastic about the game and the Roid, and seriously unenthusiastic about the prospect of driving over an hour only to have a game rained out. Hopefully the time off has healed my weary legs a little bit. We'll see.
Not much else - we went to the Worcester Art Museum with Val, one of Beck's classmates this morning. The museum was very cool; we didn't see a ton, but saw some surrealism that... well, hey, I'll just:
Violin d'Ingres by Man Ray (1924)
Which is just a fantastic image. Saw lots of others that I don't particularly feel like scouring the web for right this second... in fact, it's too late for art talk. Suffice it - good time, good inspiration from the museum. I listened to Miles Davis's A Tribute to Jack johnson to drown out the ill-dreamt commentary from the other patrons, and it made for an excellent soundscape.
Got some Chinese food with Val in a dingy Worcester Chinese restuarant. The food was excellent; the ambience was full of solicitors, sleazy dudes and general dirtiness. Val is a crazy driver, not surprisingly. That's all I got. Oh, she also likes to suck a large quantity of face with her boyfriend in public.
Tiredness creeps in. Time to bed... AJ tomorrow! Wahoo!
Thursday, June 1, 2006
Straight Up Official Yo!!!
Uh. Uh. Good God Y'all!!!
Welcome to the new digs! Very exciting! Well, not really. But I found a nice affordable option for a classier name than webpages.charter.net/nyetjones, so I went for it. Please enjoy the lack of ads, the literally tens of saved keystrokes I just, er, saved you, and let's all thank a massively effective ad campaign that led to my hookup with a certain domain name / website host that is quite synonymous with well-endowed women, super bowl ads and, perhaps more exactly, va el papá. Hip Hip Hooray, Hooooh. The Mack Dad will make you jump jump. And such.
Good week, in quick sum - spent the entire Memorial Day weekend cleaning the apartment and rearranging the study to make a sweet recording studio for this summer; the creation of which will be documented in the "blog entry that never happened." Tuesday featured a glorious Polaroid comeback win, helped along by a scoober-happy me, Wednesday featured a dubious nickname acquisition by Ben Sprecher and an excellent meal with VB and Ali. Thursday, today, featured a long day at school, the restringing of my guitars, and a Walnut Hill Art Show, always a cool experience. I will hopefully post things soon.
Not much energy to report anything else - hopefully this weekend will feature a surge in nyetjones content to validate the expenditure. Remains to be seen.
Wooha! Enjoy it!
Welcome to the new digs! Very exciting! Well, not really. But I found a nice affordable option for a classier name than webpages.charter.net/nyetjones, so I went for it. Please enjoy the lack of ads, the literally tens of saved keystrokes I just, er, saved you, and let's all thank a massively effective ad campaign that led to my hookup with a certain domain name / website host that is quite synonymous with well-endowed women, super bowl ads and, perhaps more exactly, va el papá. Hip Hip Hooray, Hooooh. The Mack Dad will make you jump jump. And such.
Good week, in quick sum - spent the entire Memorial Day weekend cleaning the apartment and rearranging the study to make a sweet recording studio for this summer; the creation of which will be documented in the "blog entry that never happened." Tuesday featured a glorious Polaroid comeback win, helped along by a scoober-happy me, Wednesday featured a dubious nickname acquisition by Ben Sprecher and an excellent meal with VB and Ali. Thursday, today, featured a long day at school, the restringing of my guitars, and a Walnut Hill Art Show, always a cool experience. I will hopefully post things soon.
Not much energy to report anything else - hopefully this weekend will feature a surge in nyetjones content to validate the expenditure. Remains to be seen.
Wooha! Enjoy it!
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Death of a Legend. A Gas Guzzling, Distinctly Male-Odored Legend.
The materially real elements of the past week got the same job done and should be therefore be stored in the same lost basement as Maggie Gyllenhall's razor blade collection - achingly painful, not entirely real (she was "acting" after all), but at least they keep the teenage girl in both of us in the realm of the feeling. I'll go backwards because it's simpler to remember things this was and it has the added bonus of destroying any semblance of suspense, something for which all writers strive.
Friday - Fun times. Drove the rental car into school to meet a student at 7:30 who has been MAD struggling with a History paper. When I first met her, I got the impression of a racecar in the red, the MFing Guns of the Navarone, a mushroom cloud-laying mofo, mofo. She seemed like she was about to simultaneously blow and implode, so I hid my razorblade collection accordingly. But Friday morning, ella fue calm and collected, a shining example of someone benefiting from something I would, were I a real estate selling midget twin, call "Maximize Your Humanoid Potential Via the Magic of Calm, Rational Evaluation and/or, er, Synergy." Or, a little something Marcellus Wallace may have summed up as "Chill Them N$%^&^%s Out 2006." Anyways, if this whole teaching gig fails (which, by most accounts of relatives / relatives-to-be, it already has), I can always become a ledge-talker-offer. Seriously, yeah, I'm actually pretty happy with the way things have worked out, she has gone from near incident-to-be-documented-in-an-agenda-serving-Michael-Moore-documentary to just another kid who's going to graduate from high school. On second thought, maybe the notoriety and fame would have been worth it... but so yeah, we put the finishing touches on her paper, she turned it in, and is in all hopeful likelihood high school degree and therefore college / rest of her life bound.
Then I helped with some fetal pig dissection. I cannot answer questions like "where is the inguinal ligament" with a simple "there it is;" I find myself compelled to get my education on. Hey, you don't spend 100K on a tutoring training program for nothing. This, natch, leads to a truckload of fun moments where I am talking to 16 year old girls about why docs ask boys to turn and cough. The over-under on the date of my termination for "Explicit scientific language" is November 12, 2006. Place your bets, ladies and gents.
Fairly normal rest of the day, class, education, SAT tutoring, confirmation of right-brained kids' inability to grasp the concept of natural logs. Good times. After school, threw the frisbee with Corrine, her hubby Jarod and Spencer, eventually joined by a slew of other students. Impromptu Ultimate game exploded, and despite the grapefruit of fluid that has taken residence in my right knee, I had a great time. As an added bonus, I taught the kids how to do hilarious spikes, and so a new generation of poor sportsmanship is well on its way. Screw it, it's funny. A torrential downpour (what else carries the adjective "torrential?" I mean, besides illegal downloading?) brought our fun to a screeching halt, so I drove home soaking wet to my empty house. FUn evening despite that - read, watched some of Indecision 2004, and basically put off apartment cleaning until Saturday.
Thursday morning started at 5 - I decimated the house in a failed attempt at finding a happy combo of a bicycle lock and its key. No such luck. I even tried using a bic pen on the lock I did find, but I didn't have the correct model. Of lock, not pen. I mean, really, you think I needed the bic 2006 and I only had a '98 lying around? So after hurriedly getting ready (dressing, walking pups, etc.), I decided to just bike to Ben's house and get a ride with him to the train station. But the bike was clunking with gear changes, so I walked instead, 2 miles up Rte. 122 to Ben-Ali Manor. Got a blister, hoo-ah. Ben took me to the train station; I rode to Natick; Walked to School. More Fetal Pigs. Paper help.Good class. Win took me to Avis Rent-a-Car, where I stood in line with some cocky mofo surgeons. They were awesome dudes and well aware of their status as awesome dudes; treated the counter clerk accordingly. Ugh. I had reserved a sub-sub-compact POS, and they didn't have one, so I got to drive a Pontiac G6 for Thursday-Saturday for the SSCPOS rate. Home, dogs, back on highway to Cambridge for an Ultimate game...
Roid successfully pulled a G'N'R in the early nineties tour act, meaning we went on stage 3 hours late if at all. Unfortunately, the game ended after an hour and a half, so we got our collective ass handed to us, 15-9 or so. The game was a joke on several levels - Magazine Beach right on the Charles (windy), played between two tee-ball games (20 yards wide, 50 yards long field), did I mention the majority of Roid (everyone other than of Ben, Cork, Kelvin, Lisa and me) did not show up. J-ette was getting beat by a newbie; that was the kind of hustle that was going down. It was horribly frustrating; I felt like I was right back in the classroom with people who could not be talked into working hard. On top of that, the idiocy of Youth (the other team was BU-laden) resulted in some terrible calls AND a guy pulling the classic pansy move of jumping into the lane to stop my cut. Won't get into it; I am vowing not to talk on the field any more. We'll see how long that lasts. As an added bonus, I spent 2 hours in the car getting to this game, and had an hour ride back. Sub-excellent.
Wednesday morning I drove Ben's new car to work, which gave me a little bit of that nice Captain Kirk feeling, what with the *ridiculous* GPS system on board. More (or less, since this thing is chronologically backwards?) fetal pig dissection - I shouldn't gloss over this, as I had a pretty great time helping kids slice and dice. More tutelage, lots of faculty lounge antics - really, on the social front, I had a great week, even engaging in some banter with various counter clerks and delivery men. I think this was the day where a certain ballet-dancing student gave me sassback in class so I laid into her (verbally, natch), ultimately putting the fear of a polygamy approving god into her. She stopped the sassback instantly, so as dumb as I feel chewing out someone half my weight, it got the job done. We're covering logs and exponents this week, and it's a hopeless endeavor. The whole round peg, round hole concept is not flying. Sigh. Faculty meeting, in which Win and I were essentially insulted and left unappreciated. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Went to the library after work, and en route got the call - the jeep is dead, long live the jeep. The engine was bone dry (despite my having changed the oil 2 months ago) and the engine locked up; your classic hilarious sitch where the new engine trumps the blue book value of the car. Actually, just FTR, the Kelley Blue Book is $1015, and I think they probably tacked on that extra $16 to keep me from crying. Anyhoo, hence the car renting, walking and etc. Don't know what I'm going to do about this, but in the near future, I'll just drive the Beckmobile. I'm thinking something small and relatively fuel efficient; an Accord or Corolla would probably do the trick. But wait, doesn't Ben have a... crap, he just sold his Corolla. That's why I was driving his new car; I headed out to Waltham to pick him up after work as he had left the house with his Corolla and was coming home with a cool $6900 cashier's check. We went out to Pepperoni Express and S&S with the alley wolf, and lumbered home to a thrilling night of rental phone calls. Ugh-ness. This was also the night that a grey-haired sapsucker won a recording contract, the kind of thing that would have been banal in the 1950's but today draws 35 million viewers. Given the chance, I wouldn't even want to be the voice of my generation.
Tuesday? Drove Ben's Corolla in its pre-sold state; that's for sure. Went over the exam in class; read kids riot act about the test corrections assignment. More tutoring. Great guitar lesson; worked on learning notes on the fretboard and faster scale techniques. Hmmmm... okay, now we're getting back too far, as my memory's getting hazy. The next (previous days', I mean) section probably deserves its own entry, anyways. It's upcoming. Not to be confused with, "Up and Coming."
So yeah, a weird week. Dead cars. Multiple outings with up-the-street neighbors (though I think those came mainly Sunday-Monday), but I don't feel like recounting that portion just yet). Backtalking spoiled-brat students. Psychotic parents (an entire subgenre that I pre-edited out). Psychotic teachers. Pop-culture dregs. Episodes of House where scrotums explode. An A+ in the chaotic universe game. As an added bonus, if you google a certain pop music singing contest show and something that said show might make you inclined to do (smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets, etc.), you don't get sympathy, you get things like "OMG, if Jill Smith doesn't win, I am so going to smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, and tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets." Come to think of it, they probably wouldn't say "drink hemlock." Regardless, consider this humble blog a solid vote AGAINST Jill Smith.
Because if you don't vote, how can you complain?
Friday - Fun times. Drove the rental car into school to meet a student at 7:30 who has been MAD struggling with a History paper. When I first met her, I got the impression of a racecar in the red, the MFing Guns of the Navarone, a mushroom cloud-laying mofo, mofo. She seemed like she was about to simultaneously blow and implode, so I hid my razorblade collection accordingly. But Friday morning, ella fue calm and collected, a shining example of someone benefiting from something I would, were I a real estate selling midget twin, call "Maximize Your Humanoid Potential Via the Magic of Calm, Rational Evaluation and/or, er, Synergy." Or, a little something Marcellus Wallace may have summed up as "Chill Them N$%^&^%s Out 2006." Anyways, if this whole teaching gig fails (which, by most accounts of relatives / relatives-to-be, it already has), I can always become a ledge-talker-offer. Seriously, yeah, I'm actually pretty happy with the way things have worked out, she has gone from near incident-to-be-documented-in-an-agenda-serving-Michael-Moore-documentary to just another kid who's going to graduate from high school. On second thought, maybe the notoriety and fame would have been worth it... but so yeah, we put the finishing touches on her paper, she turned it in, and is in all hopeful likelihood high school degree and therefore college / rest of her life bound.
Then I helped with some fetal pig dissection. I cannot answer questions like "where is the inguinal ligament" with a simple "there it is;" I find myself compelled to get my education on. Hey, you don't spend 100K on a tutoring training program for nothing. This, natch, leads to a truckload of fun moments where I am talking to 16 year old girls about why docs ask boys to turn and cough. The over-under on the date of my termination for "Explicit scientific language" is November 12, 2006. Place your bets, ladies and gents.
Fairly normal rest of the day, class, education, SAT tutoring, confirmation of right-brained kids' inability to grasp the concept of natural logs. Good times. After school, threw the frisbee with Corrine, her hubby Jarod and Spencer, eventually joined by a slew of other students. Impromptu Ultimate game exploded, and despite the grapefruit of fluid that has taken residence in my right knee, I had a great time. As an added bonus, I taught the kids how to do hilarious spikes, and so a new generation of poor sportsmanship is well on its way. Screw it, it's funny. A torrential downpour (what else carries the adjective "torrential?" I mean, besides illegal downloading?) brought our fun to a screeching halt, so I drove home soaking wet to my empty house. FUn evening despite that - read, watched some of Indecision 2004, and basically put off apartment cleaning until Saturday.
Thursday morning started at 5 - I decimated the house in a failed attempt at finding a happy combo of a bicycle lock and its key. No such luck. I even tried using a bic pen on the lock I did find, but I didn't have the correct model. Of lock, not pen. I mean, really, you think I needed the bic 2006 and I only had a '98 lying around? So after hurriedly getting ready (dressing, walking pups, etc.), I decided to just bike to Ben's house and get a ride with him to the train station. But the bike was clunking with gear changes, so I walked instead, 2 miles up Rte. 122 to Ben-Ali Manor. Got a blister, hoo-ah. Ben took me to the train station; I rode to Natick; Walked to School. More Fetal Pigs. Paper help.Good class. Win took me to Avis Rent-a-Car, where I stood in line with some cocky mofo surgeons. They were awesome dudes and well aware of their status as awesome dudes; treated the counter clerk accordingly. Ugh. I had reserved a sub-sub-compact POS, and they didn't have one, so I got to drive a Pontiac G6 for Thursday-Saturday for the SSCPOS rate. Home, dogs, back on highway to Cambridge for an Ultimate game...
Roid successfully pulled a G'N'R in the early nineties tour act, meaning we went on stage 3 hours late if at all. Unfortunately, the game ended after an hour and a half, so we got our collective ass handed to us, 15-9 or so. The game was a joke on several levels - Magazine Beach right on the Charles (windy), played between two tee-ball games (20 yards wide, 50 yards long field), did I mention the majority of Roid (everyone other than of Ben, Cork, Kelvin, Lisa and me) did not show up. J-ette was getting beat by a newbie; that was the kind of hustle that was going down. It was horribly frustrating; I felt like I was right back in the classroom with people who could not be talked into working hard. On top of that, the idiocy of Youth (the other team was BU-laden) resulted in some terrible calls AND a guy pulling the classic pansy move of jumping into the lane to stop my cut. Won't get into it; I am vowing not to talk on the field any more. We'll see how long that lasts. As an added bonus, I spent 2 hours in the car getting to this game, and had an hour ride back. Sub-excellent.
Wednesday morning I drove Ben's new car to work, which gave me a little bit of that nice Captain Kirk feeling, what with the *ridiculous* GPS system on board. More (or less, since this thing is chronologically backwards?) fetal pig dissection - I shouldn't gloss over this, as I had a pretty great time helping kids slice and dice. More tutelage, lots of faculty lounge antics - really, on the social front, I had a great week, even engaging in some banter with various counter clerks and delivery men. I think this was the day where a certain ballet-dancing student gave me sassback in class so I laid into her (verbally, natch), ultimately putting the fear of a polygamy approving god into her. She stopped the sassback instantly, so as dumb as I feel chewing out someone half my weight, it got the job done. We're covering logs and exponents this week, and it's a hopeless endeavor. The whole round peg, round hole concept is not flying. Sigh. Faculty meeting, in which Win and I were essentially insulted and left unappreciated. I'm not mad, just disappointed.
Went to the library after work, and en route got the call - the jeep is dead, long live the jeep. The engine was bone dry (despite my having changed the oil 2 months ago) and the engine locked up; your classic hilarious sitch where the new engine trumps the blue book value of the car. Actually, just FTR, the Kelley Blue Book is $1015, and I think they probably tacked on that extra $16 to keep me from crying. Anyhoo, hence the car renting, walking and etc. Don't know what I'm going to do about this, but in the near future, I'll just drive the Beckmobile. I'm thinking something small and relatively fuel efficient; an Accord or Corolla would probably do the trick. But wait, doesn't Ben have a... crap, he just sold his Corolla. That's why I was driving his new car; I headed out to Waltham to pick him up after work as he had left the house with his Corolla and was coming home with a cool $6900 cashier's check. We went out to Pepperoni Express and S&S with the alley wolf, and lumbered home to a thrilling night of rental phone calls. Ugh-ness. This was also the night that a grey-haired sapsucker won a recording contract, the kind of thing that would have been banal in the 1950's but today draws 35 million viewers. Given the chance, I wouldn't even want to be the voice of my generation.
Tuesday? Drove Ben's Corolla in its pre-sold state; that's for sure. Went over the exam in class; read kids riot act about the test corrections assignment. More tutoring. Great guitar lesson; worked on learning notes on the fretboard and faster scale techniques. Hmmmm... okay, now we're getting back too far, as my memory's getting hazy. The next (previous days', I mean) section probably deserves its own entry, anyways. It's upcoming. Not to be confused with, "Up and Coming."
So yeah, a weird week. Dead cars. Multiple outings with up-the-street neighbors (though I think those came mainly Sunday-Monday), but I don't feel like recounting that portion just yet). Backtalking spoiled-brat students. Psychotic parents (an entire subgenre that I pre-edited out). Psychotic teachers. Pop-culture dregs. Episodes of House where scrotums explode. An A+ in the chaotic universe game. As an added bonus, if you google a certain pop music singing contest show and something that said show might make you inclined to do (smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets, etc.), you don't get sympathy, you get things like "OMG, if Jill Smith doesn't win, I am so going to smash my face against a wall, drink hemlock, and tear my pulsating eyeballs from their swollen sockets." Come to think of it, they probably wouldn't say "drink hemlock." Regardless, consider this humble blog a solid vote AGAINST Jill Smith.
Because if you don't vote, how can you complain?
Friday, May 12, 2006
It Was Twenty (Five)Years Ago Today
Happy, happy 25th B-day to the A-Child. Hope it's a good one bro. Of course, I took birthday revenge on you and sent you exactly the present that you sent me! Ha ha ha! As Ralph Wiggum might say, I stoo-stoo-stoop to your level! Mwuhahah. I did manage to call Captain Goober and leave a message consisting of nothing but me saying "Five squared" in "Revolution Number Five Squared" fashion (i.e., "Five squared... five squared... five squared" said in monotone, approximately 48 times). When Aaron called me back, it led to this exchange:
A: That message was crazy.
N: I thought you might like that.
A: When did you get all existentialist like that?
N: Um, what? Not that I'm not existentialist, but...
A: You know, existentialist. Like Salvador Dali.
N: Um, dude, I don't think Dali was an existentialist.
A: Yes he was!
N: I'm pretty sure he was a surrealist.
A: And surrealism falls under the umbrella of existentialism.
N: Uh, oh, but it doesn't.
A: Yes it does! I learned that in school!
N: You sure about that? I'm pretty sure that's not right!
A: It is too right. Dude, I know the art stuff, okay!?!?
N: Okay, whatever dude. It's your birthday.
A: No man, I'm telling you, Dali was an existential... wait.
N: Yeah?
A: I think I meant impressionist.
N: Well, that makes more sense.
A: Right. Impressionism is an umbrella of surrealism.
N: AN inverted, melty kinda umbrella.
A: Huh?
N: Nevermind. It wasn't funny.
Later on, Aaron attempts to reprise my phone message:
A: Square root of 525... square root of 525...
N: Um, dude. Dali. Try again.
A: Huh? Oh, yeah, Square root of 625.
N: I guess Dali wasn't an exponentialist either.
Borderline pantheon joke right there. You may now bask in my self high five.
Life as a Pseudo-Bach has been less than stellar, I must say. I miss the Beck, and she is having some awfully long days up at the equine ambulatory rotation in upstate NY. And Wriggs and Speelarkle have been less than calm in her absence, resulting in a lot of in-and-out-of the bed all night, resulting in a lot of asleep then awake, asleep then awake all night for me. Badness. Combine this with some ill-advised late-night NBA video gameage, movie, and/or chapters of books, and you've got a tired dude. Combine that with some hangage at the chateau Ben-Ali, and last night's Ultimate game followed by Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad show, and you've got someone near comatose trying to teach your children about hyperbolas (a deadly virus, according to one student who, last I checked, is not hard of hearing).
Let's do this thing - BACKWARDS! Rainy disgusting day today, filled with one student showing up late for a 7:45 quiz with the timeless excuse that she had "overslept." Bollocks! Many a snide comment about my own 5:30 wakeup time ensued. And yet, I let her finish the quiz. WTFIUWT, everyone. So then biology with a student, then math SAT, and then class, where I ran what should have been an excellent RPG-style exercise forcing them to solve equations with conic sections. Ah, What Should Have Been and What Never Was - it went well, and then the usual suspects (AC, JC, CU, ATT, etc.) decided to be jackasses about the entire endeavor. There's a heady feeling of May burnout in the air at the 'Nut these days; not coming from me, mind you, but from... my lovely students. More SAT verbal tutorage, a great conversation with Win about these fallible times and the inanity of everyone outside the set that is Win and me, and back home to now. All of this against the backdrop of miserable rain, gray skies and 40 degree weather. Holla, New England, Holla.
Last night, 9 pm-11 or so - live at the Middle East Upstairs with the Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad. Jamie's doing well, and they put on a *serious* show - packed the room on a Thursday evening, all the kids bopping up and down like only the league of elite suburban-raised white dancers can. I kid, I kid - in all seriousness, rocking crowd, and GPGDS has added a keyboardist and some schwank guitar effects since the last time I saw them. Just really a brilliantly solid show - perfect energy, crispness, and Jamie's made this weird from transition to talented, confident musician to straight-up rock star in the best way possible - just uber-confident now and has this air about him that says just let it rip, groove and play. They sounded absolutely fantastic, and like I said, could not possibly have been a better vibe in the club. Awesome stuff, and I think the GPGDS is doing nothing but steepening that upward slope. Keep it up, yo. Saw Meghan and Greg there, too, and shared a few stories under the general category of "Walnut comedy" as we parted ways post-show. Came home, rolled in about midnight, walked dogs, etc., and got not enough sleep (proceed to paragraph 3 for a less Momentous chronology).
Before the ME show, headed down to MIT at 5 to wait for our 6 pm game with the combo team of Mr. Sparkle and Bad Egg, heretofore known as "Bad Sparkle." Now that is a niche audience joke. So raining, disgusting, windy weather, and BS doesn't show with a full squad until approximately 6:55. So we begrudgingly agree to play and proceed to get our asses kicked - we just had a ton of trouble dealing with poaches, couldn't guard their XX's to save our lives, and had a whole lot of clogging / dropping / throwing-away that only enhanced the bad loss effect. I personally played alright, though I am still struggling with hitting girls on incuts (particularly, in my vain and self-centered defense, when they are cutting erratically and not really running). So two turns in those situations, one on a garbage time huck attempt to Andre, but otherwise solid play, including a bunch of near handblocks, some goal-saving poaches, three or four poach-D's and the like. Oh, yeah, and maybe the most brilliant scoober I've ever thrown to Dave Wu - break mark, over two poachers and floated it right into a little pocket out of reach of the stack, hitting him in stride for a 25 yard gain. (Hey, it's my bloggy and I'll brag if I want to). Other highlights - Sprecher went a little psycho on D, and... that's it. Really. A very uninspired performance that can probably be attributed to our lack of ability to get up for a late-starting game. That's not to make an excuse, it's just to say that a lot of Roiders got it into their heads that the game wasn't happening and proceeded to play accordingly. Bah, humbug. Ugly stuff. I took off my soaked clothes and headed to the Middle East. Ben was nice enough to walk the dogs.
Speaking of Benjamin, on Wednesday I drove with him to the Toyota dealership so he could drop off his car and then headed back to the aforementioned chateau for beers and fun. Ali got home at a reasonable hour, so we went to Sebastian's, a local fish joint. Good stuff. Hilarious times, per usual. We headed back to their place afterwards and watched...
THE WORST EPISODE OF "BONES" EVER.
Bold claim, right? I think they need to teach the May 10, 2006 ep of Bones in script-writing courses on the day they cover "How Not to." The plot was "ripped from the headlines" (a tagline always indicative of true creative genius) and every inch of dialog managed to be terrible and a vague aimless debate on the merits of the Iraq was and the soldier's place in history, etc. I mean, David's lines made Angel's "Buffy, I love you" deliveries reek of Olivier. On the plus side, the Secret Society at Yale is now known as Skull, Ali and Bones. Cause in Aliwood, it's all who you know, and Ali knows Bones.
Somewhere, I'm sorry Mr. Jackson, but you're holding a bowling ball and muttering "Bo knows Ali?" under your breath.
Seriously, really great time on Wednesday. Tuesday and Monday were both spent grading tests, and let's just say the red inkwell runs dry. Students seem to be losing focus, seniors are being jerks, everyone has plays and art shows... we have entered the May of our discontent. Right on schedule.
Alright then - we've had 4 straight days of rain and no sign of letup anytime soon, so this weekend may be an Ultimate Wash. Boo-urns But Ali's 30th is tomorrow, and you know ONLY mayhem can ensue. 'Twill be surely recorded in the annals of web. Until then...
A: That message was crazy.
N: I thought you might like that.
A: When did you get all existentialist like that?
N: Um, what? Not that I'm not existentialist, but...
A: You know, existentialist. Like Salvador Dali.
N: Um, dude, I don't think Dali was an existentialist.
A: Yes he was!
N: I'm pretty sure he was a surrealist.
A: And surrealism falls under the umbrella of existentialism.
N: Uh, oh, but it doesn't.
A: Yes it does! I learned that in school!
N: You sure about that? I'm pretty sure that's not right!
A: It is too right. Dude, I know the art stuff, okay!?!?
N: Okay, whatever dude. It's your birthday.
A: No man, I'm telling you, Dali was an existential... wait.
N: Yeah?
A: I think I meant impressionist.
N: Well, that makes more sense.
A: Right. Impressionism is an umbrella of surrealism.
N: AN inverted, melty kinda umbrella.
A: Huh?
N: Nevermind. It wasn't funny.
Later on, Aaron attempts to reprise my phone message:
A: Square root of 525... square root of 525...
N: Um, dude. Dali. Try again.
A: Huh? Oh, yeah, Square root of 625.
N: I guess Dali wasn't an exponentialist either.
Borderline pantheon joke right there. You may now bask in my self high five.
Life as a Pseudo-Bach has been less than stellar, I must say. I miss the Beck, and she is having some awfully long days up at the equine ambulatory rotation in upstate NY. And Wriggs and Speelarkle have been less than calm in her absence, resulting in a lot of in-and-out-of the bed all night, resulting in a lot of asleep then awake, asleep then awake all night for me. Badness. Combine this with some ill-advised late-night NBA video gameage, movie, and/or chapters of books, and you've got a tired dude. Combine that with some hangage at the chateau Ben-Ali, and last night's Ultimate game followed by Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad show, and you've got someone near comatose trying to teach your children about hyperbolas (a deadly virus, according to one student who, last I checked, is not hard of hearing).
Let's do this thing - BACKWARDS! Rainy disgusting day today, filled with one student showing up late for a 7:45 quiz with the timeless excuse that she had "overslept." Bollocks! Many a snide comment about my own 5:30 wakeup time ensued. And yet, I let her finish the quiz. WTFIUWT, everyone. So then biology with a student, then math SAT, and then class, where I ran what should have been an excellent RPG-style exercise forcing them to solve equations with conic sections. Ah, What Should Have Been and What Never Was - it went well, and then the usual suspects (AC, JC, CU, ATT, etc.) decided to be jackasses about the entire endeavor. There's a heady feeling of May burnout in the air at the 'Nut these days; not coming from me, mind you, but from... my lovely students. More SAT verbal tutorage, a great conversation with Win about these fallible times and the inanity of everyone outside the set that is Win and me, and back home to now. All of this against the backdrop of miserable rain, gray skies and 40 degree weather. Holla, New England, Holla.
Last night, 9 pm-11 or so - live at the Middle East Upstairs with the Giant Panda Guerrilla Dub Squad. Jamie's doing well, and they put on a *serious* show - packed the room on a Thursday evening, all the kids bopping up and down like only the league of elite suburban-raised white dancers can. I kid, I kid - in all seriousness, rocking crowd, and GPGDS has added a keyboardist and some schwank guitar effects since the last time I saw them. Just really a brilliantly solid show - perfect energy, crispness, and Jamie's made this weird from transition to talented, confident musician to straight-up rock star in the best way possible - just uber-confident now and has this air about him that says just let it rip, groove and play. They sounded absolutely fantastic, and like I said, could not possibly have been a better vibe in the club. Awesome stuff, and I think the GPGDS is doing nothing but steepening that upward slope. Keep it up, yo. Saw Meghan and Greg there, too, and shared a few stories under the general category of "Walnut comedy" as we parted ways post-show. Came home, rolled in about midnight, walked dogs, etc., and got not enough sleep (proceed to paragraph 3 for a less Momentous chronology).
Before the ME show, headed down to MIT at 5 to wait for our 6 pm game with the combo team of Mr. Sparkle and Bad Egg, heretofore known as "Bad Sparkle." Now that is a niche audience joke. So raining, disgusting, windy weather, and BS doesn't show with a full squad until approximately 6:55. So we begrudgingly agree to play and proceed to get our asses kicked - we just had a ton of trouble dealing with poaches, couldn't guard their XX's to save our lives, and had a whole lot of clogging / dropping / throwing-away that only enhanced the bad loss effect. I personally played alright, though I am still struggling with hitting girls on incuts (particularly, in my vain and self-centered defense, when they are cutting erratically and not really running). So two turns in those situations, one on a garbage time huck attempt to Andre, but otherwise solid play, including a bunch of near handblocks, some goal-saving poaches, three or four poach-D's and the like. Oh, yeah, and maybe the most brilliant scoober I've ever thrown to Dave Wu - break mark, over two poachers and floated it right into a little pocket out of reach of the stack, hitting him in stride for a 25 yard gain. (Hey, it's my bloggy and I'll brag if I want to). Other highlights - Sprecher went a little psycho on D, and... that's it. Really. A very uninspired performance that can probably be attributed to our lack of ability to get up for a late-starting game. That's not to make an excuse, it's just to say that a lot of Roiders got it into their heads that the game wasn't happening and proceeded to play accordingly. Bah, humbug. Ugly stuff. I took off my soaked clothes and headed to the Middle East. Ben was nice enough to walk the dogs.
Speaking of Benjamin, on Wednesday I drove with him to the Toyota dealership so he could drop off his car and then headed back to the aforementioned chateau for beers and fun. Ali got home at a reasonable hour, so we went to Sebastian's, a local fish joint. Good stuff. Hilarious times, per usual. We headed back to their place afterwards and watched...
THE WORST EPISODE OF "BONES" EVER.
Bold claim, right? I think they need to teach the May 10, 2006 ep of Bones in script-writing courses on the day they cover "How Not to." The plot was "ripped from the headlines" (a tagline always indicative of true creative genius) and every inch of dialog managed to be terrible and a vague aimless debate on the merits of the Iraq was and the soldier's place in history, etc. I mean, David's lines made Angel's "Buffy, I love you" deliveries reek of Olivier. On the plus side, the Secret Society at Yale is now known as Skull, Ali and Bones. Cause in Aliwood, it's all who you know, and Ali knows Bones.
Somewhere, I'm sorry Mr. Jackson, but you're holding a bowling ball and muttering "Bo knows Ali?" under your breath.
Seriously, really great time on Wednesday. Tuesday and Monday were both spent grading tests, and let's just say the red inkwell runs dry. Students seem to be losing focus, seniors are being jerks, everyone has plays and art shows... we have entered the May of our discontent. Right on schedule.
Alright then - we've had 4 straight days of rain and no sign of letup anytime soon, so this weekend may be an Ultimate Wash. Boo-urns But Ali's 30th is tomorrow, and you know ONLY mayhem can ensue. 'Twill be surely recorded in the annals of web. Until then...
Monday, May 8, 2006
Lamentable On-Field Behavior and the Reality of BUDAhood.
Rather mixed bag day of Ultimate yesterday.
Beck pulled out around 10:30, so I hung out with the dogs until 11:45 or so. Headed down to Waltham to find Josh Weinstock's team short on players, so I donned last year's pink jersey and joined them for a bit - tried to play real fade-into-the-background style, and ended up getting a couple of layout D's despite myself. But a real good time, just fun playing with some new people and hanging out and joking. Great. Right? Ummm...
Our game rolls around at 2, and on one of the first points of the game some big dude on their team tries to plow through me, and when I hold my ground and don't bounce off him, he accuses me of grabbing him. I instantly start jawing back, because he was essentially accusing me of cheating when I know I hadn't done anything. And I was overzealous about it, because I'm a raging pinko-commie asshole bastard, and set everything off on a great tone.
Later, I juke my guy, make a hard cut up the line and one of their captains who had been poaching a bit in the lane sees that there's no way he can possibly stop me legitimately, so he jumps into my path, knees jutting out and elbows up in my neck. Again, the bad mood already set (not to mention the fact that I'm not a big fan of cheating attempts to hurt me instead of legitimately defending, and the fact that this was an experienced player who knew better), combined with the fact that I could see it coming... Well, I basically gave him a nice little Ronnie Lott style shot, complete with forearm shiver follow through to keep his elbows out of my face. He flew about five yards backwards and proceeded to scream bloody murder, then got up and yelled foul in my face. I said, "right back at you guy; you know what you just tried to do there. And that's gonna happen every time you try that crap. Fair warning." Said as icily, "if he dies, he dies" style as I could muster. And I called a foul on him, completely legitimately, as he had just essentially attempted to intentionally slam into me to stop me from heading up the line. The big train, natch, won, so you can imagine how enthused their team was about my call.
The game just degenerated from there, and I was just out of my head pissed - I don't know if I just got scared at the prospect of having coming so close to having my knees taken out, or whether it was just that Beck was out of town was on her way out of town and I'm non-plussed about the next three weeks alone. But I was in a foul, foul mood, so I cranked it up on all fronts and played some rather psychotically good defense. Of course, this only got people angrier, as they didn't like it when I laid out on their womenfolk and less-good men. I got a D and was being guarded by a gigantor chump, so I smoked him - Deb made a bad throw which I laid out for and made a nice grab, subsequently rolling over the disc but holding on. Said chump, who is now 20 yards away, says that it's down because he saw it hit the ground. Nevermind the fact that my body was entirely between him and the disc, nevermind that he was 20 F'ing yards away and had no business claiming best perspective anyways - and so, tired of it, I let him have it a little bit, ultimately stooping to insulting his lack of ability to play defense with a barrage of quips to which he had no comeback other than to give me a blank look and say things such as "come on, man, respect my call." So I said fine, threw it back to the thrower and said "is that respect enough?" and he started bitching and moaning again, so I schooled him again, caught the score and punted the disc out the back of the endzone in frustration.
It kept going like this - arguments, heckles, everything, and really all that went down was that I to some extent single handedly kicked their ass. Like I said, fairly virtuoso performance, imho, featuring 5 or so handblocks and 6 or 7 layout D's and another 3 or 4 catches. But all the while I was intensely furious, and I unfortunately griped at some of the young guys on my team after the sixth time they couldn't appropriately position the stack. Which pissed them off (I felt horrible and apologized to them afterwards, all is good), and just made for an all-in-all horrible experience.
I just felt like crap for the rest of the day - in part because of the usual ridiculous nature of BUDA games, calls, attempts to injure me, lack of knowledge of the rules, inability to play competitively and not whine like a bitch every time something remotely intense happens. But really I felt terrible because, I 100% admit it, I totally lost it - I went from nicest guy on planet earth in the game with Josh to criminal mastermind out to kill and insult everyone in a 100 yard radius guy for our game. I fed off it well - like I said, I was a pretty demonic defender, for what it's worth - but I just had no interest in playing any more after about the 4thpoint of the game. I felt like an asshole, was an asshole, and I knew I was pissing off everyone, their team and mine, but I just couldn't get myself to let it go. It was depressing, and what's worse, when i think back about it - I mean, one guy falsely accused me of cheating, another tried to hurt me, and another made a rat's ass bogus call. I get angry when those things happen, and with the exception of just turning into an insult machine vs. the third guy, I really don't think it's illegitimate of me to defend myself, whether in speech or physically. So i just feel terrible, because I've got an obvious penchant for monsterhood, one that has gone from the self-hatred of my youth to wanton hatred for my opponents and teammates when i don't feel people are seeing things correctly. And like I said, what makes it worse is that in many of these instances, I feel completely justified - I'm not going to play sports and let people take cheap shots to my throat; I'm just not. I'll still feel terrible about it afterwards, and it will always make me wonder whether I should even be playing anything at all, but really, regardless of how big the dude is, does he really expect me to just let him do that to me?
So I'm clearly writing to attempt to cleanse myself. I think next week I will try pretending like I am playing as a guest like I did for the game with Josh, and hopefully that will help towards chilling me out. All I can do is get back on the course.
Oh, and lest I forget, I made one of the more ridiculous trailing edge layout catches I've ever had on a Julliette huck yesterday. Sweet times.
On the much, much brighter side - we followed up the 2.5 hour melee with a 2 hour Polaroid practice that went AWESOME. Just good stuff all around - Ben playing intense D, Q burning it up, Flor breaking the mark - all kinds of greatness going down. I am trying not to get hope overly up, but it looks like a special season in the making...
So yeah, I'm Nyet, and I still can't control my emotions on the athletic field. It's rearing its head these days as some outright hatred and rather demeaning heckles in the direction of the other team. I will try to be better, and I will in all likelihood fail at some point in the future, but them's the breaks. I've beaten myself up about yesterday more than that team can realize - though that's not any kind of excuse (for the things I did that I believe were actually unwarranted) - and so hopefully I can drop BUDA May 7, 2006 out of my brain and move on with a better "attitude" next time.
But seriously, dude? Don't ever try that cutting me off crap again. Seriously serious; it'll end the same way every time.
Beck pulled out around 10:30, so I hung out with the dogs until 11:45 or so. Headed down to Waltham to find Josh Weinstock's team short on players, so I donned last year's pink jersey and joined them for a bit - tried to play real fade-into-the-background style, and ended up getting a couple of layout D's despite myself. But a real good time, just fun playing with some new people and hanging out and joking. Great. Right? Ummm...
Our game rolls around at 2, and on one of the first points of the game some big dude on their team tries to plow through me, and when I hold my ground and don't bounce off him, he accuses me of grabbing him. I instantly start jawing back, because he was essentially accusing me of cheating when I know I hadn't done anything. And I was overzealous about it, because I'm a raging pinko-commie asshole bastard, and set everything off on a great tone.
Later, I juke my guy, make a hard cut up the line and one of their captains who had been poaching a bit in the lane sees that there's no way he can possibly stop me legitimately, so he jumps into my path, knees jutting out and elbows up in my neck. Again, the bad mood already set (not to mention the fact that I'm not a big fan of cheating attempts to hurt me instead of legitimately defending, and the fact that this was an experienced player who knew better), combined with the fact that I could see it coming... Well, I basically gave him a nice little Ronnie Lott style shot, complete with forearm shiver follow through to keep his elbows out of my face. He flew about five yards backwards and proceeded to scream bloody murder, then got up and yelled foul in my face. I said, "right back at you guy; you know what you just tried to do there. And that's gonna happen every time you try that crap. Fair warning." Said as icily, "if he dies, he dies" style as I could muster. And I called a foul on him, completely legitimately, as he had just essentially attempted to intentionally slam into me to stop me from heading up the line. The big train, natch, won, so you can imagine how enthused their team was about my call.
The game just degenerated from there, and I was just out of my head pissed - I don't know if I just got scared at the prospect of having coming so close to having my knees taken out, or whether it was just that Beck was out of town was on her way out of town and I'm non-plussed about the next three weeks alone. But I was in a foul, foul mood, so I cranked it up on all fronts and played some rather psychotically good defense. Of course, this only got people angrier, as they didn't like it when I laid out on their womenfolk and less-good men. I got a D and was being guarded by a gigantor chump, so I smoked him - Deb made a bad throw which I laid out for and made a nice grab, subsequently rolling over the disc but holding on. Said chump, who is now 20 yards away, says that it's down because he saw it hit the ground. Nevermind the fact that my body was entirely between him and the disc, nevermind that he was 20 F'ing yards away and had no business claiming best perspective anyways - and so, tired of it, I let him have it a little bit, ultimately stooping to insulting his lack of ability to play defense with a barrage of quips to which he had no comeback other than to give me a blank look and say things such as "come on, man, respect my call." So I said fine, threw it back to the thrower and said "is that respect enough?" and he started bitching and moaning again, so I schooled him again, caught the score and punted the disc out the back of the endzone in frustration.
It kept going like this - arguments, heckles, everything, and really all that went down was that I to some extent single handedly kicked their ass. Like I said, fairly virtuoso performance, imho, featuring 5 or so handblocks and 6 or 7 layout D's and another 3 or 4 catches. But all the while I was intensely furious, and I unfortunately griped at some of the young guys on my team after the sixth time they couldn't appropriately position the stack. Which pissed them off (I felt horrible and apologized to them afterwards, all is good), and just made for an all-in-all horrible experience.
I just felt like crap for the rest of the day - in part because of the usual ridiculous nature of BUDA games, calls, attempts to injure me, lack of knowledge of the rules, inability to play competitively and not whine like a bitch every time something remotely intense happens. But really I felt terrible because, I 100% admit it, I totally lost it - I went from nicest guy on planet earth in the game with Josh to criminal mastermind out to kill and insult everyone in a 100 yard radius guy for our game. I fed off it well - like I said, I was a pretty demonic defender, for what it's worth - but I just had no interest in playing any more after about the 4thpoint of the game. I felt like an asshole, was an asshole, and I knew I was pissing off everyone, their team and mine, but I just couldn't get myself to let it go. It was depressing, and what's worse, when i think back about it - I mean, one guy falsely accused me of cheating, another tried to hurt me, and another made a rat's ass bogus call. I get angry when those things happen, and with the exception of just turning into an insult machine vs. the third guy, I really don't think it's illegitimate of me to defend myself, whether in speech or physically. So i just feel terrible, because I've got an obvious penchant for monsterhood, one that has gone from the self-hatred of my youth to wanton hatred for my opponents and teammates when i don't feel people are seeing things correctly. And like I said, what makes it worse is that in many of these instances, I feel completely justified - I'm not going to play sports and let people take cheap shots to my throat; I'm just not. I'll still feel terrible about it afterwards, and it will always make me wonder whether I should even be playing anything at all, but really, regardless of how big the dude is, does he really expect me to just let him do that to me?
So I'm clearly writing to attempt to cleanse myself. I think next week I will try pretending like I am playing as a guest like I did for the game with Josh, and hopefully that will help towards chilling me out. All I can do is get back on the course.
Oh, and lest I forget, I made one of the more ridiculous trailing edge layout catches I've ever had on a Julliette huck yesterday. Sweet times.
On the much, much brighter side - we followed up the 2.5 hour melee with a 2 hour Polaroid practice that went AWESOME. Just good stuff all around - Ben playing intense D, Q burning it up, Flor breaking the mark - all kinds of greatness going down. I am trying not to get hope overly up, but it looks like a special season in the making...
So yeah, I'm Nyet, and I still can't control my emotions on the athletic field. It's rearing its head these days as some outright hatred and rather demeaning heckles in the direction of the other team. I will try to be better, and I will in all likelihood fail at some point in the future, but them's the breaks. I've beaten myself up about yesterday more than that team can realize - though that's not any kind of excuse (for the things I did that I believe were actually unwarranted) - and so hopefully I can drop BUDA May 7, 2006 out of my brain and move on with a better "attitude" next time.
But seriously, dude? Don't ever try that cutting me off crap again. Seriously serious; it'll end the same way every time.
Sunday, May 7, 2006
Non-Beck Birthday News from the Previous Week
THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Sorry, just felt a dire need to give my blog a more official feel. SO, what did go on this week? I hardly remember...
On the school front, more fun in the classroom, as the students are gripped in the throes of senioritis and/or bitter laziness. In all seriousness, I think the rigorous performance schedules are getting to them. To which I respond with stories of two-a-days and 108 degree heat, a go-to weapon which no one can defeat. You see, Coach Robbins and Padron, you did make me a MAN - I can face anything, because nothing is *quite* as shitty as the crap you put me through in high school! Thanks for that endearing life lesson. I will now use that en-masculating experience as comedy fodder for the remainder of my days. Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's high time I started forcing teenage Jews to say the Lord's Prayer. YEEHA!!! And for the record, I have recently been reflecting upon the logical brilliance of "If it was easy, everyone would do it," which contains not only improper subjunctive grammar from a supposed "educator," but also the false assumption that everyone's dream is to become a high school football player. Nice!
Wow, where did that come from? Maybe I should find someone to talk to about all that pent up rage? Anyways, yeah, the kids are worn out, but they're also alright. This week featured parents getting angry at me for tutoring charges (which turned out to be a billing department gaffe). On Thursday I got OBSERVED by our department head and threw down an A+ style lecture, complete with off-the-cuff quips, brilliant explanations of theoretical aspects of the problems we were doing (ellipse eccentricity, for the record), and even corrected some bad grammar AND some disrespectful behavior from a ballet dancer who shall remain nameless. En fuego I Fue, just like Kobe's 81. So that was very cool and made me feel decent about myself, huzzah. And it only supports the notion that I would be a nice addition to the permanent fulltime staff of Walnut Hill, something that STILL has yet to be set in stone. I think we are T-minus two weeks from the wrath, incidentally. I might have to go all "high school football" on the administration. I will, la-ti-da, run them until they puke.
Kids were great this week, both in he sense of actually working fairly hard and providing me with comedic fuel. That's right, it's time for : REAL. CLASSROOM. DIALOGUES! (Applause).
Day One.
NJ: Does anyone know who created the Cartesian coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Okay, I wasn't going to give you any homework, but now I would like you to look up the creator of the Cartesian coordinate system AND tell me what his famous philosophical quote was.
Day Two.
NJ: Alright, who can tell me who gave us the Cartesian Coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: No one did the homework?
S1: Was it Darwin?
NJ: Yes, and his famous theory was on survival of the xy-planest. No, it was not Darwin.
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Anyone? Bueller? [note the cliched go-to joke]
S2, looking at laptop with WiFI access: I think it was Rene Descartes.
NJ: Thank you for doing your work ahead of time. You all get zeroes.
S3, finally piping up: But I did it. I know it was Rene Descartes!
NJ: Okay, what was his famous philosophical saying?
S3: "I think therefore I am."
NJ: Good. So [S3's name] gets credit, and everyone else gets zeroes.
Multiple S's: That's not fair.
NJ: Really? how exactly is that not fair?
S4: I did the homework, I just didn't remember it.
NJ: Hmmmm. Seems to me that would be a difficult thing to prove...
S4: You can't PROVE I didn't do it!
NJ: Let's put it this way - I think you didn't do it - therefore, you didn't do it.
The final line elicited laughs from everyone, ESL or no. My first universally successful joke of the semester, and it's only May! My other mind-bogglingly solid joke from the week -
NJ: [Bob Smith], where is your textbook?
BS: I forgot it. Can you help me with how to do problem 17? I don't remember the formula.
NJ: I gave you guys a handout yesterday with all the formulas you'll need for this section. It also explains step by step how to do problems like that.
BS: Oh, but I don't have it.
NJ: Did you get it yesterday?
BS: Yeah, but I left it at home.
NJ, frustrated, as this is the 17th time Bob Smith has done this: Hrrrrrrrmph. [Waits]
BS: Can you show me how to do the problem?
NJ: Bob, you're frustrating me. I need to tell you something, but I need to make sure it comes out the right way. Hold on.
BS: Okay.
NJ: [waits 30 or so seconds]. Bob?
BS: Yeah?
NJ: Bring your stuff to class.
Nice! And that was by far my best comedic timing of the year. Other funny things happened. And you might never believe me, but it was actually a fairly excellent week education-wise. So good times all around.
First mid-week Roid practice was Thursday, and it went very, very well. I think the new era can be summed up by one event. We were playing 5-pull, a drill where the team splits up into two squads and the loser of the drill has to make up the difference in points with sprints. My team won 5-0, meaning the other team was going to have to run 5 sprints after a hard drill. I didn't say anything, just got on the line with the other team to runt heir sprints with them - and EVERYONE on the TEAM did TOO! Very cool, definitely the best "we're all in this together" moment I've had in a sports environment since days with the Tuftsmen. In all sincerity, something that can be hard to find on the blog these days, it was a sublime moment. I think things could potentially be very cool this year.
Friday night was fun; Beck was dead-tired so i hung out with Ben, ate some pizza and watched Tivo's Daily Shows and Colbert reports. Fun times fun times. FYI, the May 4, 2006 ep of the Daily Show was surreally excellent.
And just so they don't get lost in the mix:
Here is a video of one of the most ridiculous skies I have seen in Ultimate. Please excuse Beau's very Ultimate-esque language.
Here is a skit called "The Evolution of Dance" that is hilarious - please excuse the scantily-clad women ads on the sides.
Have a great week folks. And remember, don't take anything too seriously. TNSLFAFNSA.
Sorry, just felt a dire need to give my blog a more official feel. SO, what did go on this week? I hardly remember...
On the school front, more fun in the classroom, as the students are gripped in the throes of senioritis and/or bitter laziness. In all seriousness, I think the rigorous performance schedules are getting to them. To which I respond with stories of two-a-days and 108 degree heat, a go-to weapon which no one can defeat. You see, Coach Robbins and Padron, you did make me a MAN - I can face anything, because nothing is *quite* as shitty as the crap you put me through in high school! Thanks for that endearing life lesson. I will now use that en-masculating experience as comedy fodder for the remainder of my days. Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's high time I started forcing teenage Jews to say the Lord's Prayer. YEEHA!!! And for the record, I have recently been reflecting upon the logical brilliance of "If it was easy, everyone would do it," which contains not only improper subjunctive grammar from a supposed "educator," but also the false assumption that everyone's dream is to become a high school football player. Nice!
Wow, where did that come from? Maybe I should find someone to talk to about all that pent up rage? Anyways, yeah, the kids are worn out, but they're also alright. This week featured parents getting angry at me for tutoring charges (which turned out to be a billing department gaffe). On Thursday I got OBSERVED by our department head and threw down an A+ style lecture, complete with off-the-cuff quips, brilliant explanations of theoretical aspects of the problems we were doing (ellipse eccentricity, for the record), and even corrected some bad grammar AND some disrespectful behavior from a ballet dancer who shall remain nameless. En fuego I Fue, just like Kobe's 81. So that was very cool and made me feel decent about myself, huzzah. And it only supports the notion that I would be a nice addition to the permanent fulltime staff of Walnut Hill, something that STILL has yet to be set in stone. I think we are T-minus two weeks from the wrath, incidentally. I might have to go all "high school football" on the administration. I will, la-ti-da, run them until they puke.
Kids were great this week, both in he sense of actually working fairly hard and providing me with comedic fuel. That's right, it's time for : REAL. CLASSROOM. DIALOGUES! (Applause).
Day One.
NJ: Does anyone know who created the Cartesian coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Okay, I wasn't going to give you any homework, but now I would like you to look up the creator of the Cartesian coordinate system AND tell me what his famous philosophical quote was.
Day Two.
NJ: Alright, who can tell me who gave us the Cartesian Coordinate system?
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: No one did the homework?
S1: Was it Darwin?
NJ: Yes, and his famous theory was on survival of the xy-planest. No, it was not Darwin.
Students (collectively): ...
NJ: Anyone? Bueller? [note the cliched go-to joke]
S2, looking at laptop with WiFI access: I think it was Rene Descartes.
NJ: Thank you for doing your work ahead of time. You all get zeroes.
S3, finally piping up: But I did it. I know it was Rene Descartes!
NJ: Okay, what was his famous philosophical saying?
S3: "I think therefore I am."
NJ: Good. So [S3's name] gets credit, and everyone else gets zeroes.
Multiple S's: That's not fair.
NJ: Really? how exactly is that not fair?
S4: I did the homework, I just didn't remember it.
NJ: Hmmmm. Seems to me that would be a difficult thing to prove...
S4: You can't PROVE I didn't do it!
NJ: Let's put it this way - I think you didn't do it - therefore, you didn't do it.
The final line elicited laughs from everyone, ESL or no. My first universally successful joke of the semester, and it's only May! My other mind-bogglingly solid joke from the week -
NJ: [Bob Smith], where is your textbook?
BS: I forgot it. Can you help me with how to do problem 17? I don't remember the formula.
NJ: I gave you guys a handout yesterday with all the formulas you'll need for this section. It also explains step by step how to do problems like that.
BS: Oh, but I don't have it.
NJ: Did you get it yesterday?
BS: Yeah, but I left it at home.
NJ, frustrated, as this is the 17th time Bob Smith has done this: Hrrrrrrrmph. [Waits]
BS: Can you show me how to do the problem?
NJ: Bob, you're frustrating me. I need to tell you something, but I need to make sure it comes out the right way. Hold on.
BS: Okay.
NJ: [waits 30 or so seconds]. Bob?
BS: Yeah?
NJ: Bring your stuff to class.
Nice! And that was by far my best comedic timing of the year. Other funny things happened. And you might never believe me, but it was actually a fairly excellent week education-wise. So good times all around.
First mid-week Roid practice was Thursday, and it went very, very well. I think the new era can be summed up by one event. We were playing 5-pull, a drill where the team splits up into two squads and the loser of the drill has to make up the difference in points with sprints. My team won 5-0, meaning the other team was going to have to run 5 sprints after a hard drill. I didn't say anything, just got on the line with the other team to runt heir sprints with them - and EVERYONE on the TEAM did TOO! Very cool, definitely the best "we're all in this together" moment I've had in a sports environment since days with the Tuftsmen. In all sincerity, something that can be hard to find on the blog these days, it was a sublime moment. I think things could potentially be very cool this year.
Friday night was fun; Beck was dead-tired so i hung out with Ben, ate some pizza and watched Tivo's Daily Shows and Colbert reports. Fun times fun times. FYI, the May 4, 2006 ep of the Daily Show was surreally excellent.
And just so they don't get lost in the mix:
Here is a video of one of the most ridiculous skies I have seen in Ultimate. Please excuse Beau's very Ultimate-esque language.
Here is a skit called "The Evolution of Dance" that is hilarious - please excuse the scantily-clad women ads on the sides.
Have a great week folks. And remember, don't take anything too seriously. TNSLFAFNSA.
Monday, May 1, 2006
And the one-sided conversation begins anew.
A long silent week, as though things weren't happening. Oh, they are. They are.
On the job front - things look good for next year. In all likelihood 5 classes if not 6, plus benefits and advising kids and all kinds of cool stuff. Good deal. Students were relatively great this week, the ones I tutor and my class and everything. I mean, they did their share of griping about tests, didn't show up, got 60s on quizzes, etc., but they were altogether amiable. Plus I had a great conversation about Brave New World one day during a calculus session, so you know we're set.
Margie (that's iPod Mary Magdeline, for those of you not in the know) (aka Ma Searl) has been in town this week for an art conference down in Boston. We had a great dinner at the aptly named "Westborough Korean Restaurant" on Wednesday, and I mean great, best Korean food I've had in my life type great. People should be warned though, that they apparently lace their soy sauce with crack or something equally addictive; Beck hit that stuff and asked for refills like Old Faithful, only at smaller intervals and with fewer fat Midwesterners around. Behold; it was a sight. So much of an addict was Beck, btw, that she returned to the Westborough Korean Restaurant twice this past weekend. INSANITY! We went Saturday night with Ben and she went Sunday night with iPMM while I stayed at home, graded papers and ate pizza. Oh, and watched a great Simpsons episode (on Principal Skinner's opinion on wymen's inherent inferiority in math and the resultant scheme by Lisa Simpson), followed by a just god-awful, violently terrible episode of Family Guy. I just posted my Searl-Board monologue on why I think it's somewhat unfair to compare the Simpsons to the Family Guy, but last night's FG episode just hit on everything I dislike about it, and something South Park ripped on not too long ago: the fact that a lot of FG's "humorous" non-sequiturs amount to pointless pop-culture references. Actually, not really much references so much as referential insert capsules that add nothing to the show and worse, fail to make me laugh - I'm thinking specifically of the "that time Moby Dick stayed with us" scene from last night. Ugh, guys, ugh, and the gay marriage plot - Seth MacFarlane, the voice of 18 months ago.
Ultimate yesterday was a mixed bag: an easily won but thoroughly stupid BUDA game (including, among other things, my being called "superhuman" in a derogatory fashion, Dave being accused of not drinking his coffee, a guy claiming to have heard a sound from 60 yards away *before* he saw something from said 50 yards away, another dude catching a disc a solid 4 yards out of the endzone, stumbling forward, and then claiming to have landed in the endzone 7 seconds later) (there were others, you can call me and ask about it if you'd like) followed by a very hard but invigorating first practice of the Polaroid season. New pickups include Ben, Jason and Ethan on the men's side, all of whom look solid + and give us a sweet variety of go-to guys. Pumped we are. So good times ahead, hopefully we'll have a fun season.
Beck's rotations continue to go well; she has one more week in large animal surgery and then it's off to Rochacha for an externship. Did I mention Greg and Meghan took us all out top dinner at Blue Ginger on Friday? Also awesome, and we ate with Fred and Nunny, friends of the Searls from their Cooperstown days, and Meghan and Margie made a boatload of gastroenterologist jokes, none of which (I am sure) Fred had ever heard before. Numerous other jokes were made about "Beck's wedding," where I apparently am in the loop enough to be granted the DJing job. Huzzah! And when Nunnny asked us how we were going to handle religion in the ceremony, I said I thought we would pass out the opiate of the masses and just let everyone smoke it. Then Nunny bumped into Ming Tsai, quite literally. We also learned that Ming Tsai's wife is named Pauli, which answers all kinds of questions regarding her college major. All in all, a solid night.
What else? I watched, or rather started to watch, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" And you may be asking yourself why I'm not reviewing it, and I respond - because I did not watch it. WTBDWK has the dubious distinction of being one of two movies IN MY REMEMBERED LIFE that I have sat down intending to watch in entirety and not bothered finishing. The other was The Thin Red Line, another mind-numbingly dumb movie that, as an added bonus, was 3+ hours long. As a side note, that's pretty good - I mean, I even once sat through Now and Then, a film that I am fairly confident will forever reign supreme as my least favorite movie ever. Getting back to it - WTBDWK was quantum physics as explained to the brain-dead, followed by people giving their opinions without giving their credentials. Not that I could throw down and rap metaphysically and follow that up with my credentials (I mean, what the hell, Nyet Jones, M.?), but seriously, if you're going to wax rather unpoetically about physical reality ("I mean, man, what I used to think was real isn't, and what I think wasn't real is, man!"), then you should at least give us your name. Instead, the film showed us a bunch of the quasi-qualified, complete with beards, books behind them, wild hair and Indian accents. Basically, the whole thing was a tragically failed attempt to blow my mind, and amounted to nothing much more than a bunch of "woahs" and "it's really your mind that forms your reality" type commentary. Oh, and follow that up with some hideously moronic plot about an artist photographer and her anxiety pills, her meeting with a quantum cute black kid on a basketball court, numerous Tron-esque effects and miscellaneous equations, and, the kicker, a completely bullshit story about the Caribbean inhabitants and their "inability to see Columbus's ships because they had never seen one before" - ridiculous. I had heard that this film was some kind of cultish propaganda film, so I was entirely shocked by the lunacy contained within, but geez... not so much that they were wrong or manipulative, but just the sheer pathetic film-making that went into this. Sadness. As to the ridiculousness of the claims, I found another blogger who hits it pretty much on the head, so here is WTBDWK getting its deserved ripping.
Wigwee's nose is looking better every day, btw. Long blog, so I'll leave with you an A+ conversation I had with a student:
S: This number is really ugly.
NJ: Well, without ugly numbers, there would be no pretty numbers.
S: What?
NJ: It's like if everything were blue, we would have no word for "blue."
S: Wow, you're getting all philosophical today.
NJ: I'm always philosophical.
S: Always?
NJ: Well, at least when I'm talking.
S: (Rolls eyes). Well, that's pretty obvious.
NJ: Of course.
S: Of course what?
NJ: Of course it's obvious. As a teacher, that's my job.
S: What's your job?
NJ: To point out obvious things to the ill-informed.
S: Ha. Thanks a lot.
NJ: That was a joke.
S: I know.
NJ: I was just pointing out the obvious.
S: No, I know.
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that i was pointing out the obvious.
S: Yeah, and ...
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that I was pointing out that I was pointing out the obvious.
S: I get it! I get it!
NJ: I can keep this up all day.
S: But I got it the first time!
NJ: Only because I'm such a SWEET teacher.
S: (Smiles, chuckles).
NJ: That was a joke.
On the job front - things look good for next year. In all likelihood 5 classes if not 6, plus benefits and advising kids and all kinds of cool stuff. Good deal. Students were relatively great this week, the ones I tutor and my class and everything. I mean, they did their share of griping about tests, didn't show up, got 60s on quizzes, etc., but they were altogether amiable. Plus I had a great conversation about Brave New World one day during a calculus session, so you know we're set.
Margie (that's iPod Mary Magdeline, for those of you not in the know) (aka Ma Searl) has been in town this week for an art conference down in Boston. We had a great dinner at the aptly named "Westborough Korean Restaurant" on Wednesday, and I mean great, best Korean food I've had in my life type great. People should be warned though, that they apparently lace their soy sauce with crack or something equally addictive; Beck hit that stuff and asked for refills like Old Faithful, only at smaller intervals and with fewer fat Midwesterners around. Behold; it was a sight. So much of an addict was Beck, btw, that she returned to the Westborough Korean Restaurant twice this past weekend. INSANITY! We went Saturday night with Ben and she went Sunday night with iPMM while I stayed at home, graded papers and ate pizza. Oh, and watched a great Simpsons episode (on Principal Skinner's opinion on wymen's inherent inferiority in math and the resultant scheme by Lisa Simpson), followed by a just god-awful, violently terrible episode of Family Guy. I just posted my Searl-Board monologue on why I think it's somewhat unfair to compare the Simpsons to the Family Guy, but last night's FG episode just hit on everything I dislike about it, and something South Park ripped on not too long ago: the fact that a lot of FG's "humorous" non-sequiturs amount to pointless pop-culture references. Actually, not really much references so much as referential insert capsules that add nothing to the show and worse, fail to make me laugh - I'm thinking specifically of the "that time Moby Dick stayed with us" scene from last night. Ugh, guys, ugh, and the gay marriage plot - Seth MacFarlane, the voice of 18 months ago.
Ultimate yesterday was a mixed bag: an easily won but thoroughly stupid BUDA game (including, among other things, my being called "superhuman" in a derogatory fashion, Dave being accused of not drinking his coffee, a guy claiming to have heard a sound from 60 yards away *before* he saw something from said 50 yards away, another dude catching a disc a solid 4 yards out of the endzone, stumbling forward, and then claiming to have landed in the endzone 7 seconds later) (there were others, you can call me and ask about it if you'd like) followed by a very hard but invigorating first practice of the Polaroid season. New pickups include Ben, Jason and Ethan on the men's side, all of whom look solid + and give us a sweet variety of go-to guys. Pumped we are. So good times ahead, hopefully we'll have a fun season.
Beck's rotations continue to go well; she has one more week in large animal surgery and then it's off to Rochacha for an externship. Did I mention Greg and Meghan took us all out top dinner at Blue Ginger on Friday? Also awesome, and we ate with Fred and Nunny, friends of the Searls from their Cooperstown days, and Meghan and Margie made a boatload of gastroenterologist jokes, none of which (I am sure) Fred had ever heard before. Numerous other jokes were made about "Beck's wedding," where I apparently am in the loop enough to be granted the DJing job. Huzzah! And when Nunnny asked us how we were going to handle religion in the ceremony, I said I thought we would pass out the opiate of the masses and just let everyone smoke it. Then Nunny bumped into Ming Tsai, quite literally. We also learned that Ming Tsai's wife is named Pauli, which answers all kinds of questions regarding her college major. All in all, a solid night.
What else? I watched, or rather started to watch, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" And you may be asking yourself why I'm not reviewing it, and I respond - because I did not watch it. WTBDWK has the dubious distinction of being one of two movies IN MY REMEMBERED LIFE that I have sat down intending to watch in entirety and not bothered finishing. The other was The Thin Red Line, another mind-numbingly dumb movie that, as an added bonus, was 3+ hours long. As a side note, that's pretty good - I mean, I even once sat through Now and Then, a film that I am fairly confident will forever reign supreme as my least favorite movie ever. Getting back to it - WTBDWK was quantum physics as explained to the brain-dead, followed by people giving their opinions without giving their credentials. Not that I could throw down and rap metaphysically and follow that up with my credentials (I mean, what the hell, Nyet Jones, M.?), but seriously, if you're going to wax rather unpoetically about physical reality ("I mean, man, what I used to think was real isn't, and what I think wasn't real is, man!"), then you should at least give us your name. Instead, the film showed us a bunch of the quasi-qualified, complete with beards, books behind them, wild hair and Indian accents. Basically, the whole thing was a tragically failed attempt to blow my mind, and amounted to nothing much more than a bunch of "woahs" and "it's really your mind that forms your reality" type commentary. Oh, and follow that up with some hideously moronic plot about an artist photographer and her anxiety pills, her meeting with a quantum cute black kid on a basketball court, numerous Tron-esque effects and miscellaneous equations, and, the kicker, a completely bullshit story about the Caribbean inhabitants and their "inability to see Columbus's ships because they had never seen one before" - ridiculous. I had heard that this film was some kind of cultish propaganda film, so I was entirely shocked by the lunacy contained within, but geez... not so much that they were wrong or manipulative, but just the sheer pathetic film-making that went into this. Sadness. As to the ridiculousness of the claims, I found another blogger who hits it pretty much on the head, so here is WTBDWK getting its deserved ripping.
Wigwee's nose is looking better every day, btw. Long blog, so I'll leave with you an A+ conversation I had with a student:
S: This number is really ugly.
NJ: Well, without ugly numbers, there would be no pretty numbers.
S: What?
NJ: It's like if everything were blue, we would have no word for "blue."
S: Wow, you're getting all philosophical today.
NJ: I'm always philosophical.
S: Always?
NJ: Well, at least when I'm talking.
S: (Rolls eyes). Well, that's pretty obvious.
NJ: Of course.
S: Of course what?
NJ: Of course it's obvious. As a teacher, that's my job.
S: What's your job?
NJ: To point out obvious things to the ill-informed.
S: Ha. Thanks a lot.
NJ: That was a joke.
S: I know.
NJ: I was just pointing out the obvious.
S: No, I know.
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that i was pointing out the obvious.
S: Yeah, and ...
NJ: And now I'm pointing out that I was pointing out that I was pointing out the obvious.
S: I get it! I get it!
NJ: I can keep this up all day.
S: But I got it the first time!
NJ: Only because I'm such a SWEET teacher.
S: (Smiles, chuckles).
NJ: That was a joke.
Sunday, April 9, 2006
More drivel from the repeated victim of drive-by violin serenades.
A big gaping vat of silence from me the past week, probably reflective of the vast vat of meaningless drivel that filled it. How's that for an uplifting opener? Nice beat, can you dance to it? Seriously, Beck is very busy with her Large Animal Rotation (it's a hippo ballerina, no really) and I've been busy enlightening the ill-informed, or, as the case may be, sitting in their presence for an hour at a time. Actually, it was kinda a trying week, despite only lasting 3 working days, as I had a lot of trouble finding the motivation to do much of anything, writing, exercising or otherwise. That's enough on the woe is me front, just let it be publicly known that I am disappointed in my occasional flirtation with an utter lack of creativity. I couldn't have written anything to save my life this week, so it kinda sucked. Them's, as they say, the breaks. Brakes?
Beck and I went out for the unique Central Mass experience of a dinner at Chili's last night which was actually pretty fun. I taught my kids a bunch of proofs in class, earning the praise of "that actually wasn't so terrible" from one of my students. Nothing like the instant gratification of thanks for a job well done here in the teaching industry. Beyond that, it really just kinda lulled it's way by; I feel like it was just an endless string of teaching, eating, sleeping and dog-walking. SOmetimes I talk this way.
Today, Lisa the Laser Gordon came up with the brilliant team name "Arrrrrrr Kelly" for our Pirate-themed Ultimate hat team. I felt compelled to up the ante and include all kinda of unsavory jokes in our in-game and post-game cheers, none of which are brilliant enough to be recorded here. But a good time was had by all; we won 15-6 or so and got some plyos in with the Roid crew. Our hat team also features a ton of people who are all fairly cool and all play pretty well, so clearly the apocalypse is upon us. Seriously though, Arrrr Kelly, consisting of Andre, J-ette, Lisa, Deb, Dave WuTang, Alex, Matt, Joe, Steve, Luke, Elliott, Hannah, Kristi and me, your esteemed narrator, is a force to be careful with around minors. That's all I'm saying.
On yet another side note, I don't really feel like reviewing it, but I watched Hoop Dreams the other day and it just kills, same as the first time. I'm not really so much a fan of knee injuries, but just to see the way everything swings in the balance for those guys on the basis of something as fragile as cartilage - not good. And the terrible / poor homes they're coming from, and that their endpoint dreams of wealth and houses for their mothers really just boil down to the bourgeois everyday mundane - it's sickening, guilt-inducing and tragic all at once. I was also really weirded out by the Spike Lee scene in the middle, where he all but compares them to clowns for others' entertainment, and rants and rails about how it's all about money - at a summer Nike camp no less. Another shot to the uplifting nature of these days, for me anyways.
Sometimes I just hate all aspects. Ya know?
Beck and I went out for the unique Central Mass experience of a dinner at Chili's last night which was actually pretty fun. I taught my kids a bunch of proofs in class, earning the praise of "that actually wasn't so terrible" from one of my students. Nothing like the instant gratification of thanks for a job well done here in the teaching industry. Beyond that, it really just kinda lulled it's way by; I feel like it was just an endless string of teaching, eating, sleeping and dog-walking. SOmetimes I talk this way.
Today, Lisa the Laser Gordon came up with the brilliant team name "Arrrrrrr Kelly" for our Pirate-themed Ultimate hat team. I felt compelled to up the ante and include all kinda of unsavory jokes in our in-game and post-game cheers, none of which are brilliant enough to be recorded here. But a good time was had by all; we won 15-6 or so and got some plyos in with the Roid crew. Our hat team also features a ton of people who are all fairly cool and all play pretty well, so clearly the apocalypse is upon us. Seriously though, Arrrr Kelly, consisting of Andre, J-ette, Lisa, Deb, Dave WuTang, Alex, Matt, Joe, Steve, Luke, Elliott, Hannah, Kristi and me, your esteemed narrator, is a force to be careful with around minors. That's all I'm saying.
On yet another side note, I don't really feel like reviewing it, but I watched Hoop Dreams the other day and it just kills, same as the first time. I'm not really so much a fan of knee injuries, but just to see the way everything swings in the balance for those guys on the basis of something as fragile as cartilage - not good. And the terrible / poor homes they're coming from, and that their endpoint dreams of wealth and houses for their mothers really just boil down to the bourgeois everyday mundane - it's sickening, guilt-inducing and tragic all at once. I was also really weirded out by the Spike Lee scene in the middle, where he all but compares them to clowns for others' entertainment, and rants and rails about how it's all about money - at a summer Nike camp no less. Another shot to the uplifting nature of these days, for me anyways.
Sometimes I just hate all aspects. Ya know?
Monday, April 3, 2006
Game on!!!
Ultimate season is underway, yes. Played our first BUDA Spring Hat-League game yesterday with Team 30, a team suspiciously consisting of no fewer than 5 Polaroid players. Hmmmm.... anyhoo, hella windy day, so a game full of the usual BUDA mayhem, not to mention that we were all not exactly in top form (throwaways by me, MAD drops by Lisa and Deb, general badness). OH, but I did have a couple of point blocks and a Callahan goal. FUN! But in Buda, so MEANINGLESS! We went down 8-4 at half but stormed back to tie it at 11 for a double-game point - lay-out D by yours truly on the goal line, then we won the war of attrition and I hit Dave on a schwank backhand cut to win it. Exciting times. Actually, felt really good inshape-wise, though I clearly have a lot of sprinting to do before I get up to snuff. And throws were reasonable given the 30 mph gusting winds. On the minus side, I laid out for a too-far throw by one of our Brandeis teammates (Alex), and face-planted in the endzone. Exciting stuff, and I have the red welt on my forehead to prove it. All in all, I am very sore today. Ouch.
Spent the PM at Jerrel and Lisa's hanging out and watching NBA and various Daily Show clips on TiVo. Then the Dreaded annual Polaroid meeting - and I'll be captaining the hellacious crew this year along with Jerrel. Yee-ha. It was great to see everybody again, per usual, and Tom & Flor's baby Erik is making a strong bid for most ridiculously cute young thing ever (though I think he is still having his butt kicked by Sparkle). Good times, the season should be fun, even though we're gonna be missing some cool folks this year (Joggles, possibly Jay, possibly Cork.... sadness).
SO that's it for the cool weekend. The Walnuts are in NYC right now for Gala, so I have two days off from work. Hopefully I will be productive and either get some writing and/or taxes done. We shall see. But for now, I'm just gonna wallow in my soreness. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
Spent the PM at Jerrel and Lisa's hanging out and watching NBA and various Daily Show clips on TiVo. Then the Dreaded annual Polaroid meeting - and I'll be captaining the hellacious crew this year along with Jerrel. Yee-ha. It was great to see everybody again, per usual, and Tom & Flor's baby Erik is making a strong bid for most ridiculously cute young thing ever (though I think he is still having his butt kicked by Sparkle). Good times, the season should be fun, even though we're gonna be missing some cool folks this year (Joggles, possibly Jay, possibly Cork.... sadness).
SO that's it for the cool weekend. The Walnuts are in NYC right now for Gala, so I have two days off from work. Hopefully I will be productive and either get some writing and/or taxes done. We shall see. But for now, I'm just gonna wallow in my soreness. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
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