Texas Two-Steppin' and a Duke Jansen Weddin', Pt. 2

Showered at Aaron's, and when I sat down on the inflatable mattress to put on my socks, I noted the dubious quality of the mattress's adjective. Seems it had sprung a leak. Worth noting. We got ready, Beck in pretty sundress and I in suit, and drove down Mopac to 290 West to head out to the wedding locale. We thought it was going to take us a while to get down there, so we rushed to get ready and left at about 5 for the 6 o'clock wedding... and got there at 5:30. Others who shall rename nameful (Here's to you, Mr. Robertson) made temporal errors in the opposite direction and were lucky that the wedding started fashionably late. All's well in the end; our favorite Elway look-alike father-to-be continues to lead a charmed life.

The plus of getting to the wedding early was that we got a couple minutes to chat to some of our Rice friends. Jason* was a class above us ('99) at Rice, and so the majority of the people there were from that class. So we got to see Charity, Josh, Big Joe C, Marcus, Rayo, Will, Amy, Christy, Laura (Jason's sister) and Angie, all for the first time in quite some while. Carrie and Ryan joined us for the wedding ceremony itself; Carrie was very excited to finally see a Jewish wedding as apparently this is on her life's to-do list. Harrison managed to find a babysitter for the evening, so the Stallings were in full party effect.

* - Jason is a genuinely hilarious guy, a great friend, and the epitome of Jewish computer science major indie-rocker bleeding-heart-on-his-sleeve cool-geek. He's 5'6"-ish and probably weighs 140 lbs. if his Wilco t-shirt is wet, and displays crack-addled flying squirrel levels of energy. He pulled us on campus our sophomore year with his juniority, so we would be in his eternal debt even if he weren't one of the coolest dudes we know. One of my favorite Jason quotes requires a set-up: at Rice football games, there was a dumb cheer that went "Let's Go Rice Owls!" and had everyone put their hands up like, supposedly, Owl's wings (with thumbs interlocked and fingers waving). Jason noted that this hand signal looked a whole lot like 9 candles, and so changed the cheer to "Let's Go Rice Jews!" I am sure this is going to be lost in translation, but the svelte Jewish guy jumping up and down yelling "Let's Go Rice Jews!" at what, success aside, were still Texas football games, was impossibly hilarious. Good times.

Anyhoo, Jason is a super sincere, romantic guy who seems to have been searching for the one - and loudly - since we met him. And he could not have looked happier at his wedding; he really seems to have found her in Phoenix, and is generally living a very great techie kind of life in Austin. If you had lived through some of his comp project deadline shenanigans, you might have spent a lot of time worrying about this outcome back in the day, and seeing him successful and superhappy was a real treat. Props to Jason aka Duke Jansen, thanks a ton for having us at your wedding, and I remain impressed that you remembered our Fresh Prince rip-off secret handshake.

Really lovely ceremony in the (somewhat) traditional Jewish vein, complete with groom-circling, Chuppah, glass-breaking, etc. The pre-wedding music included a mix of the usual (Pachelbel) and pop (Beatles, Once Soundtrack), which was neat (and very Duke Jansen). Phoenix was lovely; we unfortunately barely got to talk to her over the course of the night as she was busy in typical bride-fashion, but she seems appropriately sweet for Jason. But why tell when you can show, right? This is the ADD-age; so here's there save-the-date video:

See? Supercute the pair is. We all yelled Mazoltov to a beaming couple as the ceremony concluded and headed upstairs for a luscious cocktail / appetizer hour. The food was excellent; I'll refer you to Beck for details, but a post-wedding Waffle House was entirely not in order. Stuffed mushrooms, cheese and fruit plates, pasta bar and prime rib, egads. Too good. The party was fun (a Jason-DJed iTunes affair), and we had a good time chatting and dancing. Solid wedding*, all in all.

* - I realized in writing this that I never did write about our New York trip to Andy's wedding or Julliette's wedding. Shame on me. I will recount one thing here - at a certain moment on the dancefloor in NY, the DJ put on Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," a quite ballsy choice for a wedding. And I look around, and Andy, Josh, and Elliot - all regular couch-residents during Tuftsmen parties of yore - were up and tearing it up. Josh and his SLF Nicole in particular decided to embody pure youthful energetic love; it was quite a sight/ memory. Good times. I'll try to recount more of this in full posts - as promised - time makes the memory grow blonder. Ugh.

Back at Aaron's, we briefly hung out with Kristen and bro before heading to bed. Kristen had noted the deflated mattress and had actually bought another one - only it, too, did not hold its air. Beck and I woke up several times over the course of the night, as there was just enough air such that whenever one of us moved, the other one rolled along the airwaves and onto the solid floor. No one's fault, but that did not exactly make for a great night's sleep. We got up early and had some time to hang out with K&A before going to Jason's place for brunch.

Another excellent meal provided by our hosts - Jason and fam had provided to-die-for breakfast burritos that entirely quenched my go-to-Taco-Cabana urges. Sooooo good. We said adios to Carrie, Ryan and Harrison as they left for Dallas and got a tour of Jason's sweet digs. Nice place, pleasant brunch, and all of our Rice friends had their wee ones scampering about. We got our fill of food, gave Jason and Phoenix our best wishes, and headed back to SA.

Oh, right - it was cold and rainy all weekend in Texas. I think my dad had planned to take us out to the driving range Sunday, but instead we hung out, knitted, read, watched football and baseball. Low key, but after our violent night's rest, it was a welcome chill day. We had turkey- and hamburgers for dinner, and headed to Grandpa's for pie afterwards. Another ten pound delta trip to Texas.

Got up very early the next morning to fly back to Phoenix. Beck had the day off and tried to use her wiles to get me to play hooky; alas, I had class at 12 and a slew of angry students to answer. So i said hey to the pups, grabbed a little lunch, and then fought through the day at ASU like a zombie. And survived! Fun trip home, really glad we got to see the fam and the Rice folks and Aaron's play/ce and everything. And thus ends the tale.

Confessions of a Frustrated-o-holic

Hard-times for my VOTS Fall League team of late. Our captain, Nipar, basically wrecked himself at Southwest Regionals; Alan's been out of the country the last two weeks and missed Thursday's game with Swine Flu; Tom "Heart Attack" has been battling knee issues and is both hurt and out of shape, and of course I'm a walking case study in -itises. On the women's side, Tanya has been AWOL, Angel's, um, "captaining," and Tricia has been dealing with knee issues, too. The rest of our team, with the exception of Tim (who is new to town) and Wes (who plays casually now and then) consists entirely of people who have played less than a year, meaning Beck is one of our more experienced players. Beck has a forehand and can catch things that are thrown upside down, too, which also gives her a leg up on a lot of our teammates. Anyways, we are unsurprisingly struggling BADLY, and a lot of teams are figuring out that there are only a couple of people on the field that need to be treated seriously in order to shut us down. AND we struggle terribly on defense, too, which means that teams are scoring on our turnovers a very disproportionate amount of the time. Ugh.

So, in case you didn't notice, I'm not exactly throwing down the detailed game writeups this season. I lack the adjectives beyond "another" and "bad." So I'm doing everything I can to go out and have a good time, try to teach people a little bit, though I'll fully admit that I'm frustrated. Part of it is just a typical competitive nature that detests getting blown out of game after game and having to do way more than my share for the team; part of it, though, is that there doesn't seem to be a degree of learning here, and we're making the same mistakes in week 6 that we made in week one. It's frustrating, because among other things, I can't even get throws to Beck when people are constantly cutting her off and cutting when it's not their turn. I can't even throw to my WIFE!!!! I'll stop before this turns into a rant, but it gets to be frankly unfun to play uphill game after uphill game where you're not just getting beaten, you're making guys on other teams who are very, very average look like all-stars. And it's not like they're even playing well, they just have multiple people running around the field uncovered. AND you can't even try to get your newer players involved in a good way, because they're either not open or they're cutting each other off left and right. It's even more "not Ultimate" than VOTS is normally "not Ultimate." I'll do my best to keep a good attitude, but it just feels like a pointless farce*.

* - Mayhaps this is reason #2476 we should run this league by autodraft - granted, there are a lot of unknowns that go into it, injuries and foreign travel and bad self-ratings, but man do we have a weird team. Affected badly by injuries, sure, but DAMN.

Alright, enough whining, let's have a game account. I played pickup on Wednesday after taking a week off in Austin/SA, and I was gasping for breath more or less the entire time. This combined with some lightheadedness I had in SA while playing freaking HORSE w/ my dad made me more than a little concerned that something was wrong, but fortunately, I seemed to have my lungs back under me on Thursday night. All of the above-mentioned factors came into play, and despite the fact that we were playing the winless cellar-dweller from the other league, we got absolutely destroyed. They won 15-7, and it was never in doubt. We just can't cover anyone, and when the other team has Kuda, Bonnie, Bill, Tricky, and Cisco, plus a new 6'10" guy, plus other moderately athletic peeps, we're doomed. We tried throwing some Z at them, but our cup was super loose and it was entirely ineffective. Perhaps you are starting to see why I don't write these games up; I am way too negative.

I personally didn't play well. Or really, I'll be fair to myself - I realized that we can't really complete four passes in succession, and so I took more chances than usual and had to play cutter rather than handler. And things were just off - I missed a trailing edge grab on a huck where i had to navigate through three guys; I couldn't figure out where I was on the field after a swilly huck traversed the entire width of the field and couldn't decide whether I needed to greatest it or just catch it; I actually had a disc fall out of my hand for no apparent reason while trying to go to a forehand grip, and that hasn't happened to me in more than a decade. On the throwing side, everything I put up either hit people in the hands and was misread/dropped, or I put out perfect throws... for people who were just a hair faster. Basically, I think I let the "carry the team" mental state get to me, tried to do too much, and had an unspectacular day. So... yeah. Enough of that.

I did have at least two decent plays, and I'll let you SEE them rather than describe them - wahoo! Kevin Hatch, father of one of the players in our game (for the other side) and a VOTS-oldtimer, shot some video of our game and just posted it on the interwebs. It's twenty minutes long, so I hardly expect you to watch it, but I'll list some highlights and you can do what you will. Hopefully I'm not imagining all of the above, and you can see some of the things (our team dropping hammers, their team running around sans defender, etc.). And full disclosure - this edit is missing my idiotic, right-in-front-of-the-camera disc drop, so I'll post that if Kevin tracks it down, too. Alright, here are some things to watch for:

3:10 - Nyet flies by Beck and scares the crap out of her. Nyet is sorry!
3:40 - Streak deep by the Nyet and the floater-flick for the score.
6:20 - One of the hammer drops I was talking about.
7:15 - Still can't believe I didn't come up with this, but note that I shouldn't have had to run around the crowd back there.
8:40 - Good chance to play "you make the call." She claimed I hit her arm... I continue to contest.
11:00 - Tim throws a hammer shot to the back left corner. Some dude poaches off and runs into me from behind. I fall, I tip it, make the circus catch. Gratuitous spike. All in good fun.
13:15 - Bonnie makes a really nice huck to a super tall guy, and I poach off and sprint across field to try for the D... only to get skyed. Don't worry, I'll get my revenge.
17:10 - Another one.
19:08 - Revenge! I sky the 6'10" brand new player. And show him the disc, of course. Whilst wearing my devil horns from last year's Halloween costume, no less. Please ignore the bad-languaged heckling from the sideline...

Huckalumps 15 Confessions 7 - Vots Fall09 League from Kevin on Vimeo.

Anyways, fun times, and thanks to Kevin for taping. Here's to improving next week.

Texas Two-Steppin' and a Duke Jansen Weddin', Pt. 1

Finally, a moment's reprieve from fetus=slave arguments and students griping about their essay grades*, and now I can recount our trip to South Central Texas. Last Thursday, Beck and I got a ride to the airport from friend Xtina (of D/C fame) and headed down to the balmy 95 degree tropics of San Antonio, TX., where my dad picked us up and took us back to good ol' Shavano.

* - It's time to play our favorite game, "Was That Ironic?" A student turned in a 1400 word essay for an assignment that was explicitly restricted to a 800-1200 word range. He heartily contested his grade when he received a C- for his essay; he thought he had written an A paper that was docked to a C- solely for missing the restrictions (more accurately - he was docked from a C to a C-). He requested an explanation of his grade. I wrote him an e-mail detailing the mistakes in his paper, documenting the times and places when/where he could have learned about the word restriction, and explaining all the ways in which he could have been more succinct in his paper. The e-mail, largely focused on the ways in which brevity is superior to gratuitous floridity, was itself 1600 words long. Now, WAS THAT IRONIC?

We hit up the Cafer aka Alamo Cafe the first night, meeting up with Deb, Pat, Ron, my mom and dad for the traditional authentically suburban Tex-Mex fare. Good times, and I got to explain the vagaries of the Bio&Soc program at ASU to a nacho-munching audience. Pat was very excited about a "Yarn Crawl" she was going to be doing in SA and Austin over the next few days; this is the same as the sport of "extreme bar-hopping" except that the product is wool socks rather than vomit. Yeah! This enticed Beck, of course. Deb and my mom are reading Infinite Jest, which I am very excited to learn; I reread it this summer and just finished going through its study guide, Elegant Complexity. Of course, now I am probably under some sort of obligation to not spoil things for them, so I'm not sure how I'll approach my long-promised-not-yet-delivered commentary. Considering I bought the book for my mom in 1999, she's now on page 70 or so, AND the book is roughly 1400 pages (if you consider the 6 pt. font of the footnotes) all told, it'll be a brief 190 years before I can post something without fear of spoilage. Hmmm... maybe I'll just put a warning at the top of the post. I think this was also the night when Matt Holliday took a flyball off his crotch and cost the Cardinals a playoff game; Grandpa swore off baseball immediately.

Friday was our faux-Thanksgiving; Beck and I made a quick grocery trip in the AM. On the way, we went to the yarn store to pick up some 3-gauge needles; we were a bit pressed for time, so Beck swore she was going to go in and out in two minutes. She told the people at the counter that she only wanted needles, her poor husband was in the parking lot breathing SUV-dioxide, and she didn't have time to talk shop, and they STILL tried to sell her cashmere yarn laced with caviar and Faberge eggs. I think the debate over whether knitters are evil capitalist bastards can be safely concluded. Beck and I then hit up the new wannabe Wegman's HEB superduper market and grabbed ingredients for Beck's caramel-tinged pumpkin pie. We ran home so Beck and my mom could get pedicures.

My dad and I had planned on going to the driving range, but between the unreasonably hot* Thursday and Friday evening, a Nor'therner blew through and dropped things down to the rainy low 50s. Ugh. My dad and I opted for a trip to the JCC instead, where he thoroughly mangled me in a couple of games of HORSE (though, to be fair, I haven't touched a basketball in 10 months, and my game was entirely oriented around lying-on-the-floor shots. And I did hit an unanswered half-court shot, so phbbbbbbt). Fun times, though the little jogging around I did did a number on my knee. I am in knee (I am in) pain (I am in love) for something new.

* - That's right, a Phoenician complaining about hot Texas. There had been highs of 85 in Phoenix the week we left, and we don't have this BS "moisture in the air" thing. Yeah, my blood is thin in a way that can't handle humid hot or cold of any kind. If I sit perfectly still, I'll be fine...

Later in the afternoon, Aaron and his girlfriend Kristen rolled in from Austin to enjoy our Faux T-Day. She's a children's lit-focused librarian, in case you're one of the few people who read this blog who doesn't already know that, and a great gal taboot. I mean, seriously, into Guided By Voices AND Dave Eggers? AND tolerant of the A-child? APPROVED. Next topic. No, seriously, it was great to meet / get to know Kristen over the weekend; she's a welcome addition to the clan.

Deb and Beck had made a variety of rubs and marinades for the turkey-substitute pork tenderloins. The menu for dinner Friday included those 'loins, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry-Jello salad, dinner rolls, and scalloped potatoes. My brother also made some ridiculously good pesto for an appetizer, and I'm pretty sure some of it found its way into the main meal as well. Delicious stuff, and 'twas followed by Beck's delicious pumpkin pie, a chocolate satin pie, and a chocolate-pecan pie. I ate way too much, which is a general truism about time spent at my parents' house; I always leave a greater person.

Saturday, we all, at separate times, headed up to Austin. Aaron was headed up early to get ready for his play, my fam was meeting Kristen's fam for an early lunch, Pat was headed up to get intoxicated on lamb fur before the play started, and Beck and I were meeting Carrie, Ryan, Harrison (the toddler not the Ford), Brett, Matt, Ebit, Ben, and Noah for lunch at Rudy's. Yeah, more eating! Great BBQ, great seeing old Rice friends, and I even had the privilege of playing a whole lot of the "drop the toy truck on the ground over and over and over and over and over*" game with Harrison. We went straight from there to Aaron's play, the Tom Stoppard classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The leads were AWESOME; especially Rosencrantz (no, wait, Guildenstern). Seriously, I spent a lot of the time wondering what precisely the difference between this high school production and any community or professional level production would be, and with few exceptions (cough cough The Player cough), I saw no difference. Bang up job by Aaron et al., even if the vast majority of the audience was left clueless by the goings on (hint - it helps a lot if you've read Hamlet recently, and it helps even more if you've been reading a 1400 page novel loosely based on Hamlet, too). Thoroughly enjoyed it, and we booked it out of there to Aaron's apartment to get ready for the wedding. Which is as good of a place to take a break as any.

* - And over.

AR: Radiator

Super Furry Animals - Radiator (1997)

I have a genre in my iTunes library called "British / Psychedelia," and there is perhaps no better band / album to sit as its archetype. (Okay, "Welsh / Psychedelic," you crazy fact checkers, you). Radiator is exemplary neo-pop-psychedelia that borrows melodic schemes / timbre from the late '60s pop-psych movement quite liberally and infuses it with a heady dose of prog, not only in the ridiculously complex counter-melodies and extended instrumentals, but also in melodramatic lyrics about demons, spies, chupacubras, "mountain people," dios mio. The central melodies / narratives, primarily on guitars (acoustic & electric), are bathed in otherworldly synths that dance hither and thither; I don't think it's humanly possible to hear this and not have your lingua franca term for "swirling" pop to mind. I, for one, would not object to SFA being used as the dictionary stand-in for what psychedelic music is; next to the XTC offshoot Dukes of Stratosphear, it's probably the most overt attempt at setting out to capture this particular sound (though, to be fair, it's thoroughly updated with Atari-blips for today's hip kids).

It's also archetypically British because the music evokes virtually every major UK rock act from the era: The Beatles, the Kinks, the Stones, David Bowie, Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett, even all the way up to the Sex Pistols for a bit of a punk component, all make appearances. Amazingly, while retreading a whole ton of in-your-LP-collection sounds (particularly Bowie, who seems to jump in every few bars), they manage to sound utterly original. This is quality, often ethereal music that wears its influence on the record sleeve but doesn't come off as a retread.

And there ends the positive. Because of all the mayhem surrounding the central lines, the singing gets buried and ends up sounding quite thin. I, sadly enough, don't like the vocalists or the way they are positioned in the mix, and this is pretty much the kiss of death for an album in the Nyetverse. There are additionally some reather onerous, dragging songs about the aforementioned proggy characters. With all apologies to that genre, there's just something utterly dorky* and ineffectively melodramatic about it - the songs "Demons," "Bass Tuned to DEAD," "Down a Different River," "Download,"** and "Mountain People" all commit this sin. You'll notice that's about half the damn album, including the entire final 18 minutes or so. Ugh.

* - Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of prog (sometimes). I don't categorically dismiss it. But there's a certain mode of presentation - usually, these big, laborious, drawn-out numbers that try to invoke EPIC-ness via dirge-like rhythm - that consistently reminds me of the David Cross bit where he discusses the Genesis creation story and describes it as "some serious D&D shit right there." I can't take it, and in combination with these skinny vocals, I just want to cut the music then and there; I don't care how nice the swirling is.

** - One of the rare tunes in my collection that earns the one-star rating not for being spoken word or a quick ambient track but for being 4T (toothpicks-to-the-temple) BAD. It's nearly a carbon copy of the song "Superheroes" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which itself not a bad song, but hearing it blatantly ripped off is violently vomit-inducing.

So I'm left with an album that has enough good moments to keep bringing me back, one that I fully admit has an overall cool sound and nifty songwriting, but one that I can't stomach. To be fair, there are some cool, tight highlights - the emphatic opener "The Placid Casual," the acoustic bopping avalanche of "The International Language of Screaming," and the punk-thrash of "Chupacubra" all get the job done and then some. And I am ever grateful that my collection contains the wacky, energizingly bouncy "Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir," perhaps the world's best "wish-I-knew-Welsh-so-I-could-sing-along" number. But even these songs carry the weight of my biggest complaint about the album: as unique as these guys are, one of my favorite bands is a neopsychedelic outfit that carries about 10¹⁷ times as much oomph. That, natch, would be The Flaming Lips, and with that superior psychedelic-y product out there, the good moments on this disc are not enough to warrant a recommendation.

Status: Not Recommended (though check them out if you get a chance, because maybe *you* can get past the vocals)
Nyet's Fave: "Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir"

Regionals (Before I Forget)

Really having trouble finding time for Regionals talk, and the memories, like fingerpaints, are slow-ly-fad-ing. So here's a personal account of highlights*, followed by some team level commentary:

* - So sue me; it's easier to remember my plays, okay?

1. Against Sweet Roll, get a fish-cut pass up the line that floats out in front of me about seven yards outside the endzone... I time it, jump, catch the disc and long-jump-style extend my feet. My cleats come in just past the line for the goal - tres exciting.
2. Against Strike-Slip, first point, grab a backhand to the sideline, look up, see EBay settled in behind a poach, and hit him with a 20 yard upwind scoober for the score. SWEET!
3. Later against SS, down 12-11 - Rob catches a disc on the forehand sideline; I cut past my guy for the upfield flick. Rob floats it right between us, chest high. We both run, both layout, collide mid-air and come down in a heap... only I've got the disc! GOAL!
4. Down 13-12 against SS, Vince gets the disc on our own goal line and sends a forehand to me that bounces way up into the air. I jump as high as I can and blindly shoot my arm up above my head - and CATCH the disc with the very tips of my thumb and forefinger. Come down with it, Dixon is streaking deep, so I fire a big upwind flick to him, completed at the goal line. Time out!
5. We run our timeout play, no go, so Dixon dumps to Josiah. I streak across the endzone with my guy a yard off me. Josiah puts it high, I step in front of my guy as he lays out into my back and hold on for the score. Tied! YEAH! (We lost on a Defensive double game point... boo!)
6. (The Condors game was pretty bad all around; I had a huck to Stoli I think, but nothing particularly special. Let's just fastforward to Sunday, shall we?)
7. Against Monster, cut to the front left corner and someone (?) floats it in there. Poach comes off and is screaming at me, but I jump in, take the hit, and catch the goal. Boo-yay.
8. Monster is running an aggressive zone against us as we're headed straight upwind. The mark is basically doing things to my leg one shouldn't do without having paid for an expensive meal first, so I pivot to my backhand. He is in the process of hacking me, so I take the "free pass" and fire a big upwind backhand huck to Justin D. Gets us out of the endzone and leads to an upwind goal (same guy molesting me, and I break him for a score to Skunk).
9. Monster throws an up-the-line cut; I poach off and SKY everybody for the disc, running over my teammate in the process. Oops. Flip to BP who... throws it into a poach. Ugh.
10. Justin catches the deep pass, I'm his trailer - I make three sharp S-fakes and curl back to JD's forehand. My much faster, more athletic defender gets completely lost in the veteran jukes, and Justin lightly tosses a forehand that I run under and corral to set up double game point. And we win on a pass from Dixon to Stoli after a turn. Huzzah!
11. Against Condors Part Deux - wind is still howling, and after catching a strike-flip pass, I LAUNCH one of the better throws of my life, a full field up (strong) wind backhand to Dixon. He runs it down, semi-lays out for the catch / goal and is so excited he "spikes" it by chucking a hammer into the air. Nutso! Very exciting, and seriously, given the wind conditions, one of the best BHs of my Ultimate life.
12. I got guarded by sick fast dudes all game in this one, but managed to get open on all kinds of dumps and swing cuts. On one, I caught the disc in stride headed up fielded, planted my left foot and went into a deep lunge to fire an upwind flick past Justin's defender to his waiting endzone hands. Defender calls travel (dubious! video replay shows NO TRAVEL). No matter - disc tapped in, Justin clears, Rob makes the exact same cut - and i fire the exact same forehand for a second goal. Laughter ensued.
13. Someone threw a dump a little too close to a poach who came off and laid out right at my chest. I didn't back down, caught it, and took him like a president-bound bullet, square between what would have been the numbers. Dude goes down in a heap and immediately starts screaming; I was worried he'd broken a vertebrae. No, just cramping - we helped him out and off the field. Not really a highlight, more just weird, but that was one of the more violent collisions I've had on the field in a while and I brushed it off like nothing. Bizarre, as the guy wasn't exactly tiny. Maybe Texas Football taught me something after all. (Just call me All Stet Nyet).
14. And for the last one - my guy is defending me with his arms, giving me love taps all the way down the field. The last one is a little egregious, so I finally call a foul. He contests claiming he "had position" (?), and so we start afresh. I fake up field, he tries to step in my way, I step around/behind him, give a big head fake and head the opposite direction. He chases the head fake badly, and I am all by my lonesome as Rob tosses it three yards for the score. Still got it, at least on occasion.

Okay, bragfest over; you can tune back in. Overall, it was the best I've felt about going 1-4 (11-14, 13-14, 7-15, 14-13, 12-14) at a tourney; we hit a new level for sure at this tournament, staying competitive with some very solid teams, and it's certainly a big improvement over last year's squad. So a good foundation for the upcoming years - hopefully I'll stay more intact over the next few seasons (until i turn 33, of course, when it's MASTERS time and I can feel "young" again). Some individual notes:

Scratch that; I suddenly got a huge wave of tired. Instead, I'll list our POTT (player of the tournament) accompanied by the (POTW) play of the weekend, which is hopefully on video somewhere. Congrats to Justin D. - ran around like a crazy man all weekend and came up with innumerable huge plays. Audible "That guy's catching all their goals! / He has to get tired eventually, right?" comments from other teams. Had a ton of cutting highlights, deep-going highlights, etc., but the easy Play-of-the-Weekend was his silly-sick bookends in the 2nd Condor game - flying tsunami style layout D, runs deep for the forehand huck score. Sick, and right in front of his parents taboot! Great play all weekend. Nice work, homes.

Man, I just crashed and feel bad that this is getting the short shrift. I am very proud of Sprawl and the move that's occurred over the past year. I believe the next stop is NYF 2010, so we'll get back on the horse with some competitive scrimmaging before too long. In the meantime, great season, and here's to coming through on a few more double game points next time around.

Pave the World! Sprawl.

A Small Victory

I had to give a presentation in my Applied Ethics class tonight. I was one of five presenters, and we were each given five minutes for a question, fifteen minutes for presentation, and ten minutes for Q & A. The topic was Bioethics in Medicine: Abortion, and we were supposed to provide a case study and apply an ethical framework to it. Long story short: I fairly well rocked my presentation. I was talking about abortion in the context of early-pregnancy prenatal genetic diagnosis and how such decisions articulate with a particular feminist argument for the morality of abortion. (The feminist theory was from the article, "Embodiment and Abortion" by Catriona Mackenzie; it's a fantastic article both in terms of argument and in terms of "this is how one should write a paper." It's just exquisitely clear, interesting, and a real attempt to re-orient the abortion debates away from a clash of rights and toward responsibility and ways of being. Just fantastic, and I can share a copy if you're at all interested). Anyways, my talk went *really* well, was well-received, and I came home psyched after finally having something resembling a real adult style conversation in the class. So good feelings all around.

Of course, my talk probably seemed that much better because of the goofiness that preceded it. I started to try to type out one of the arguments just to give a flavor, but it's making me cringe too much. The gist - fetuses are just like slaves, and since we think slaves were human when we used to not think that, we should think fetuses are human. That apparently is a "historical argument" featuring "clear and logical thinking" and one that "cannot be contested." Even better is that apparently all fetuses have an inalienable right to life by virtue of their full human status, but she still wants to permit abortion in cases of rape. By what rationale? Women's autonomy. Maybe I do not understand the word, but that right sounds like it just got pretty alienable to me. Total disaster, she couldn't even comprehend the objections let alone address them; it was embarrassing for everyone. The other presentations tonight were not very good, but that one in particular encouraged a particular line of "WTF are you even talking about?" questioning from the crowd. Exciting times.

Anyways, I'm just glad that I came home on a Wednesday night feeling okay about the academic world, and that maybe just maybe I helped it a little bit this evening. I'm still somewhat infuriated by this class - tonight was, in the end, 2 hours of wackness for a half hour of good discussion - but at least during my presentation, several people got really engaged and made some progress. And that's just good for a change!

Leave It There

In case you missed it, here are several more reasons to cry at your reality.