Scottsdale Softball Friday Night C-League juggernaut NO DRAMA won its third consecutive league championship last night! The second of which I've been a part! YEAH, THAT CHAMPION FEELING.
We futzed around in the regular season, sweeping two teams 2-0 and splitting with the rest to give us a 9-5 record, good for the third seed. The tournament was standard issue, 8 team single elimination, and we drew the 6th seed to start the day. We came out mashing, winning that opening game 19-4 on a run-rule. I got to play all kinds of different positions - 3rd base, SS, left-center, right-center - and fielded well (except for one ball that i pulled up on so as to not run over our RF; ended up missing that one as a result). I also came out mashing - big line drives to left and right field, and in my third bat one-hopped the wall with a line drive. So i was feeling pretty good, and some of my spotty hitting struggles of late seemed non-existent.
Unfortunately, there are only two fields for the playoffs, so the 3-6 and 4-5 games happen at 6:20, and the 1-8 and 2-7 games happen at 7:15. We had to wait an hour before our next game. This being softball, several of our team members went to various fast food establishments to get things like Baconators and five dollar footlongs. Oh, dear. I stayed put to watch the 2-7 game as the winner would be our semi-final opponent. The 7 team only brought 8 people, so that laugher ended quickly with the 2 seed - our arch nemesis and team o' jerks Beer Goggles - winning 20-something to 1.
So this team has historically been gripey with us and with the umps - they're good, can hit and field and all that, but really are just not pleasant to play against. There's been something of a long standing rivalry between this team and mine, NO DRAMA, since well before I came to the team, no love lost, the whole thing. The only real connection i have to the beer goggles, aside from the couple of times I've experienced their gripey attitude, is that one of their players named D_____ is a cantankerous Ultimate player who has stormed off the field on occasion. Not a fun person, one of the people I cross off on my draft lists. So we were hyped for a second round matchup.
OH SNAP - I don't know, I can't explain, have no idea what happened, but we came out STROKING. Were up 4-0 after one and got them out 1-2-3, then came the inning that would not stop. We batted around twice - with 12 batters - and after the mayhem, it was 21-0. They were the hometeam and scored 4 to avoid the 2nd inning run rule, but we tacked on 6 more in the top of the third to go up 27-4 and then shut them down in the last inning to walk away with an embarrassing, ass-kicking run rule win in the SEMIS! Unsurprisingly, as they fell behind by a ton, they got gripier and gripier with one another, at us, at the umps, at everybody. Eric slid into second, accidentally bumped their secondbasewoman, and immediately came up apologizing, but that didn't stop their pitcher from cussing at Eric. Ed took a walk late in the game - on four terrible pitches - and their SS griped about Ed being a "big pussy" - this after their team took multiple walks in their game against eight people. Ha, ha, ha is all I have to say. Their pitcher quick pitched me - he threw a pitch when i only had one foot in the batter's box, which isn't really the biggest thing in the world (or necessarily illegal), just discourteous. I responded by smashing a double to left on the next pitch. I hit well - we all hit RIDICULOUSLY well in this game, just screaming liner after screaming liner. Anyways, to wrap up the semis account, it was a total humiliating laugher, and here's the quote from one of the umps:
"I know we're not supposed to root for or against teams, but I loved watching Beer Goggles getting it handed to them."
Ha! Personal triumph and schaudenfreude wrapped up in one!
On to the finals against the cleverly named "Master Batters." Not a whole lot to report - they had a tall pitcher with a weird hitch delivery who threw knuckle balls. He gave us a touch of trouble at the start, but we figured him out well enough after an inning or two. They were good and nice - lots of joking around on the field, and good competitive play. We fielded GREAT - Brock in particular played out of his head at SS - and came up with some huge clutch hits. An 8-4 victory with Ed running down the last flare to right field - NO DRAMA CHAMPS!!!
Great night of softball. I hit just fine, and didn't really have to make very many plays in the outfield - the better teams tend to not hit it in the air as much, so I think I only had one or two plays out there all night. NEhoo, fun times, and I think we're officially on the books as a dynasty. Do I smell a B league in our future? (Hopefully NO!).
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Sparkleberry Alarm Clock
Good sense? NO.
Innocence? NO.
Crippled? YES.
Kind? HELL NO.
I'm basically missing the skin on my elbows and knees due to a bevy of layouts on Wednesday night. This morning, Wrigley comes into bed and is being excessively cuddly, snuggling against me and avioding all my sore extremities. Aw shucks. And then Sparkle comes in and lies more or less on top of Wrigley to cuddle, too. Awww, double super cute. We're all in a half-asleep slumberville of adorability. I even started humming "Together Again" from The Muppets Movie. But then S-dog decides she wants to be petted and rakes her evil, pointy claws against my skinless arm. YOWSERS. The train has left slumberville; I am wide awake and it's not alright ma i'm bleeding. More effective than time to make the donuts: Sparkle T. Dog.
Innocence? NO.
Crippled? YES.
Kind? HELL NO.
I'm basically missing the skin on my elbows and knees due to a bevy of layouts on Wednesday night. This morning, Wrigley comes into bed and is being excessively cuddly, snuggling against me and avioding all my sore extremities. Aw shucks. And then Sparkle comes in and lies more or less on top of Wrigley to cuddle, too. Awww, double super cute. We're all in a half-asleep slumberville of adorability. I even started humming "Together Again" from The Muppets Movie. But then S-dog decides she wants to be petted and rakes her evil, pointy claws against my skinless arm. YOWSERS. The train has left slumberville; I am wide awake and it's not alright ma i'm bleeding. More effective than time to make the donuts: Sparkle T. Dog.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Mark of Zorro: 1-1
"Sunrise doesn't last all morning / A cloudburst doesn't last all day"
The Zorro lost our game tonight, 14-13 on hard cap, bringing a reasonably glorious Nyet /Genevieve-captained team winning streak to an end at 15 glorious games. So it goes.
We drew a second game match-up with the team that I think most people out of the gates regard as favorites, Dustin and P-Mo's "Premature Huckulation," and yes, that is exactly as funny as anything would be if you took a sexual phrase and stupidly substituted an Ultimate term in for one of the words. Dustin is a 6'9" mega-goon whom I'm sure I've mentioned before, and goon is not necessarily a pejorative, it's just a in-my-circles term for a really tall Ultimate player. Dustin fancies himself a handler oddly enough, as being 6'9" generally makes him unstoppable on high throws. It's usually a little weird, though tonight he played pretty well at the handler spot (and might I add that he can be kind of hard to defend - a couple of times I laid out on discs which I thought I had a chance, but Mr. five foot arms just reached way the hell out in front of himself and made me feel stupid for even thinking the possibility existed). PMo is Pauline, our starlet from last league's finals. I made an effort to play nice with her tonight, giving her some compliments and hopefully letting bygones be bygones; she is a pretty solid player and it's no fun to run into people constantly with bad air betwixt you.
So the reason they are favored out of the gate is that they grabbed Damon, very athletic good throwing Canadian import, and Jason Trant, solid tall jumping all-around player if a little attendance unreliable in the playoffs / finals (you may recall that we could have grabbed this guy with the seventh pick in the first round, but he dropped all the way to fifth pick in the second round because people didn't want him missing the playoffs for their team). They then proceeded to grab nothing but 6'1" and taller players for the rest of the time, resulting in a forest of goons. So between a GIANT captain, a great player female captain, two great players and an army of gigantism-suffering clones, they are a tad imposing to say the least. Very athletic and anchored by some leadership and skill - Viral asked me at one point, "how did they get so many athletic people?"
The most notable thing about the game, particularly early on, was that neither team was being careless with the disc - flashes of club. They pulled to us to start things off, and we just buzzed it down the right sideline with a series of crisp throws and catches. Kelly put up a little bit of a goofy throw (she basically just threw a flick even though I wasn't cutting toward her and Jason was between me and the disc; I nonchalantly reached around his head and snagged it), and I followed up with a goofy IO scoober to Miller for the score, 1-0, us. We pulled to them, and within a couple of throws Damon put it up deep for (???) and they came down with it.
We figured, what with their DNA-based altitude advantages, that they would try to huck it all night long, so we converted to a straight up mark for the rest of the game. We still need to work on this a bit, but generally speaking, the straight-up mark is standing head up and about 3 yards off the person on the mark with your only intent being to stop hucks. And this worked great - we really made them work it up the field instead of just sending it to big guys, and it paid off in a lot of good defense from us and a lot of turns. As mentioned, it wasn't 100% effective because a few of our players bought some fakes and let hucks off, but overall we had a good working strategy for them.
On the next couple of points, I beat a guy deep for a flick huck from Rich, they came back and had to work it hard up the field but eventually scored. 2-2, and no turns after four points! Tres exciting. We finally cracked first, and they took advantage of a short field to go up 3-2. Craig put up a horrendous blade huck to me on the next point, and I skyed Burger to rescue the score. 3-3, and thus far just a tight, intense game with good decisions coming from both sides.
We got a couple of breaks on the ensuing points and nabbed a two point lead that lasted til 7-5. It's hard to remember all of the chicanery that went on here, but big plays to remember were a nutsoid huck from Craig that went sailing out of bounds toward the right corner of the endzone. I made a lay out greatest attempt on it - laid out out of bounds, caught the disc and sent it back over my shoulder before I landed - but unfortunately, in a addition to doing all of that, I couldn't break Jason's "mark" as he caught the disc in front of Kelly. Ah, well, 'twas still a valiant effort.
Best part of the night happened somewhere in here - Jeremy got the disc in the middle of the field about twenty yards out from the endzone, and I cut in hard and got the disc. Turned around, and wide open cutting to the corner was Beck - sent her the flick, and SHAZAM! A Love Connection! For the Score! Nothing quite as fun as seeing Beck grab the disc out of the air and touch it to the ground to indicate "I'm in." Aaron, if you're reading, she SIGNIFIED.
Beck also played great defense all night - all our women did, actually. Our whole team did, *actually.* Just ran hard. Sub plot #1 of the night was that Jason and especially Damon ended up having to stay in from about that 7-5 point on, and not only did they stay in, but they were touching the disc every other throw. Not to take anything away from their other players - Dustin played great and chilly at handler, Pauline moved the disc well, and a couple of other people (Rob tolar in particular made a huge number of possession catches for them) got reasonably involved, but especially down by the endzone, it turned into the Damon show. We forced them to throw it a gerbillion times, but - especially since we were doing a fairly even steven rotation and not trying to match our top picks with theirs all night - you know, in the interest of letting people have equal playing time and all that - our great defense broke down at times. We took half 8-5, but had to pull to them to start the second, and hit a pretty significant lull.
To the tune of a five point run from them. Ugh - maybe we should have played zone or something, but I don't know if it was our D so much as our horrendous offense. It's hard to remember precisely what went on here other than that our crisp decision making left the building and we obviously got tired - or, I should say, our men got tired. Again, our women rocked out - Beck and new girl Selina (pronounced Suh-lye-nuh) typically took their second woman and honestly, I can't remember their second women touching the disc (and they were not shabby players - Megan and Irina!). Allyson, Kelly and G usually had to take Pauline, and while Genevieve giving Pauline trouble is to be expected, Allyson and Kelly both took it to her as well, Allyson even beating her deep for a score. Hiya! But... back to the boys. We got a little tired, and again, with Damon, trant and Dustin out the for all but MAYBE three points in the second half, we started to have problems - and even when we slowed those guys down effectively, they were getting a lot of easy resets to other players.
Our effort stayed high the entire time, though, which was just huge. This really was your classic knock-down drag out, with both teams having to runrunrunrunrun. And at this point I'm badly repeating myself, but we picked our poison against that team with the straight-up mark, and it really paid off. Yeah! Still, tired defense corresponded with tired offense, and what had been a crisp, flowy offense sputtered a lot in the second - a few handlers to rename nameless put a lot of deep throws up for incompletions, and it killed us. They took the lead 10-8, and the rest of the game we fought and clawed, always one point behind - in fact, I think the game went 10-9, 11-9, 11-10, 12-10, 12-11, 13-11, 13-12, 14-12, 14-13... the soft cap went on at 13-11 and the hard went on (obviously) on the last point, so this was really a game that didn't end and was separated by (I suppose) two breaks.
Case in point of the attack of the tireds - I got a big D when it was 12-11, tossed it to Viral and headed for the endzone with no one around. But he just didn't step into his throw, and it floated way up. So Jason, Damon and Todd all closed in while I'm camping under the disc - I had to jump and grab for it at its highest point because of the oncoming traffic, and I had another "hit the broken tip of my finger" experience, just couldn't get up high enough / couldn't close my fingers around it. Really should have had it, another drop - BUT, there's no reason I should be having to sky three people for that catch in the first place. Frustrating, and it's not to pick on Viral for that particular play, just an instance of where being worn out led to a bad throw led to a bad catch. They scored, so instead of 12-12 we were still down 13-11. Nuts.
On a completely different point, though, either Jeremy or Viral put up a swilly throw to the endzone, and who read it correctly and grabbed it? Your favorite new Ultimate player, BECK!!! Her second goal - fantastic!
Some frustrations in the game, nearly all occurring in our bad second half - we stopped dumping the disc, kept trying to put up laser hucks... I beat my guy deep a bunch of times and our handlers (Craig, Tom) had trouble putting up nice hucks; on another one of those late 13-12 points, I had jason by 20 yards and Craig fired a laser past me on which I had no chance. Genevieve caught a lasery blady huck from Tom... about a foot out the back of the short endzones. Somebody dropped their mark on Damon while I was guarding Jason for an incut, and Damon somehow managed not to just get a huck off but an IO backhand huck - against a straight up mark! So I sprinted and actually caught Trant, but my big lay out came up about a foot short. Devastating, but it was a pretty perfect huck against a great receiver; just gotta tip your hat to that (and mutter under your breath about whoever let the throw go off). Just a ton of missed opportunities, and I'm sure the other side had them, too, but it felt like we lost our legs and minds together.
Damon toward the end of the game did not get so much chippy as whiny - something happened between Jack and him, and whatever it was put him in a mode where he just complained and made whiny, nothing touch foul calls. He called a foul on the mark on me on a play where yes, there was contact, but it was a step through break mark throw and he really just threw it away. This was on the goalline at 13-12, and I wasn't the only one - and not just people from our team - who found it a little cheesy. Whatever, didn't contest it because I was not interested in the ensuing hissy fit. P Mo cheated a little bit earlier in the game with a pick call, too - it was actually seventh level cheating, but I made the smart decision and didn't even bring it up with her.
But I'll bring it up here - Jeremy cuts deep to right side of the endzone and smokes his guy. Pauline poaches off on Jeremy - a totally reasonable play - but she without a doubt leaves Allyson. Allyson cuts in, and is now wide open in front of me, a solid 8 yards away from Pauline. Meanwhile, the guy trying to guard jeremy runs into Pauline - and Pauline calls a pick! So not only is it your usual controversial not-within-three-yards pick call, she actually SET the entire thing up - she called a pick on a player who was guarding the same player she was guarding!!! STUPID! EGREGIOUS! I take umbrage.
But like I say, just blew it off, and generally had a very congenial, even positive night of interactions with the PMo. Huzzah for good sport. Actually, i was just beaming after the game - this was probably the best all-around VOTS game I've played in terms of featuring hustle, smart play (for most of it) and mutual respect in the midst of fierce competition. Good times, PH.
So anyhoo, a great game, we scored the final point on hard cap leaving us to never know whether they actually would have scored that 15th point. I was very proud of our team though think there is a lot of room to improve. Proud of the Beck for scoring and playing great, hustling D. Proud of myself for remaining above the fray despite an intense, emotional and hotly contested game. Not so proud of yet another drop and have wasted a lot of time wondering what the hell is going on - but all I can do is maybe practice some more jumping one handed grabs and hope this finger issue subsides soon. Also not so proud that this ended up being some 2300 words and I still don't think I captured what a fun night it was - I hung / played tight defense on taller and faster guys than me all evening, and our team really showed that it's got BIG TIME potential if we can work out the kinks. We shall see - thanks for reading if you did.
p.s. Also - disappointed that i was off with both Jack and Genevieve last night - just wasn't on the field at the same time they were. They both played great, just not with me. Sigh...
The Zorro lost our game tonight, 14-13 on hard cap, bringing a reasonably glorious Nyet /Genevieve-captained team winning streak to an end at 15 glorious games. So it goes.
We drew a second game match-up with the team that I think most people out of the gates regard as favorites, Dustin and P-Mo's "Premature Huckulation," and yes, that is exactly as funny as anything would be if you took a sexual phrase and stupidly substituted an Ultimate term in for one of the words. Dustin is a 6'9" mega-goon whom I'm sure I've mentioned before, and goon is not necessarily a pejorative, it's just a in-my-circles term for a really tall Ultimate player. Dustin fancies himself a handler oddly enough, as being 6'9" generally makes him unstoppable on high throws. It's usually a little weird, though tonight he played pretty well at the handler spot (and might I add that he can be kind of hard to defend - a couple of times I laid out on discs which I thought I had a chance, but Mr. five foot arms just reached way the hell out in front of himself and made me feel stupid for even thinking the possibility existed). PMo is Pauline, our starlet from last league's finals. I made an effort to play nice with her tonight, giving her some compliments and hopefully letting bygones be bygones; she is a pretty solid player and it's no fun to run into people constantly with bad air betwixt you.
So the reason they are favored out of the gate is that they grabbed Damon, very athletic good throwing Canadian import, and Jason Trant, solid tall jumping all-around player if a little attendance unreliable in the playoffs / finals (you may recall that we could have grabbed this guy with the seventh pick in the first round, but he dropped all the way to fifth pick in the second round because people didn't want him missing the playoffs for their team). They then proceeded to grab nothing but 6'1" and taller players for the rest of the time, resulting in a forest of goons. So between a GIANT captain, a great player female captain, two great players and an army of gigantism-suffering clones, they are a tad imposing to say the least. Very athletic and anchored by some leadership and skill - Viral asked me at one point, "how did they get so many athletic people?"
The most notable thing about the game, particularly early on, was that neither team was being careless with the disc - flashes of club. They pulled to us to start things off, and we just buzzed it down the right sideline with a series of crisp throws and catches. Kelly put up a little bit of a goofy throw (she basically just threw a flick even though I wasn't cutting toward her and Jason was between me and the disc; I nonchalantly reached around his head and snagged it), and I followed up with a goofy IO scoober to Miller for the score, 1-0, us. We pulled to them, and within a couple of throws Damon put it up deep for (???) and they came down with it.
We figured, what with their DNA-based altitude advantages, that they would try to huck it all night long, so we converted to a straight up mark for the rest of the game. We still need to work on this a bit, but generally speaking, the straight-up mark is standing head up and about 3 yards off the person on the mark with your only intent being to stop hucks. And this worked great - we really made them work it up the field instead of just sending it to big guys, and it paid off in a lot of good defense from us and a lot of turns. As mentioned, it wasn't 100% effective because a few of our players bought some fakes and let hucks off, but overall we had a good working strategy for them.
On the next couple of points, I beat a guy deep for a flick huck from Rich, they came back and had to work it hard up the field but eventually scored. 2-2, and no turns after four points! Tres exciting. We finally cracked first, and they took advantage of a short field to go up 3-2. Craig put up a horrendous blade huck to me on the next point, and I skyed Burger to rescue the score. 3-3, and thus far just a tight, intense game with good decisions coming from both sides.
We got a couple of breaks on the ensuing points and nabbed a two point lead that lasted til 7-5. It's hard to remember all of the chicanery that went on here, but big plays to remember were a nutsoid huck from Craig that went sailing out of bounds toward the right corner of the endzone. I made a lay out greatest attempt on it - laid out out of bounds, caught the disc and sent it back over my shoulder before I landed - but unfortunately, in a addition to doing all of that, I couldn't break Jason's "mark" as he caught the disc in front of Kelly. Ah, well, 'twas still a valiant effort.
Best part of the night happened somewhere in here - Jeremy got the disc in the middle of the field about twenty yards out from the endzone, and I cut in hard and got the disc. Turned around, and wide open cutting to the corner was Beck - sent her the flick, and SHAZAM! A Love Connection! For the Score! Nothing quite as fun as seeing Beck grab the disc out of the air and touch it to the ground to indicate "I'm in." Aaron, if you're reading, she SIGNIFIED.
Beck also played great defense all night - all our women did, actually. Our whole team did, *actually.* Just ran hard. Sub plot #1 of the night was that Jason and especially Damon ended up having to stay in from about that 7-5 point on, and not only did they stay in, but they were touching the disc every other throw. Not to take anything away from their other players - Dustin played great and chilly at handler, Pauline moved the disc well, and a couple of other people (Rob tolar in particular made a huge number of possession catches for them) got reasonably involved, but especially down by the endzone, it turned into the Damon show. We forced them to throw it a gerbillion times, but - especially since we were doing a fairly even steven rotation and not trying to match our top picks with theirs all night - you know, in the interest of letting people have equal playing time and all that - our great defense broke down at times. We took half 8-5, but had to pull to them to start the second, and hit a pretty significant lull.
To the tune of a five point run from them. Ugh - maybe we should have played zone or something, but I don't know if it was our D so much as our horrendous offense. It's hard to remember precisely what went on here other than that our crisp decision making left the building and we obviously got tired - or, I should say, our men got tired. Again, our women rocked out - Beck and new girl Selina (pronounced Suh-lye-nuh) typically took their second woman and honestly, I can't remember their second women touching the disc (and they were not shabby players - Megan and Irina!). Allyson, Kelly and G usually had to take Pauline, and while Genevieve giving Pauline trouble is to be expected, Allyson and Kelly both took it to her as well, Allyson even beating her deep for a score. Hiya! But... back to the boys. We got a little tired, and again, with Damon, trant and Dustin out the for all but MAYBE three points in the second half, we started to have problems - and even when we slowed those guys down effectively, they were getting a lot of easy resets to other players.
Our effort stayed high the entire time, though, which was just huge. This really was your classic knock-down drag out, with both teams having to runrunrunrunrun. And at this point I'm badly repeating myself, but we picked our poison against that team with the straight-up mark, and it really paid off. Yeah! Still, tired defense corresponded with tired offense, and what had been a crisp, flowy offense sputtered a lot in the second - a few handlers to rename nameless put a lot of deep throws up for incompletions, and it killed us. They took the lead 10-8, and the rest of the game we fought and clawed, always one point behind - in fact, I think the game went 10-9, 11-9, 11-10, 12-10, 12-11, 13-11, 13-12, 14-12, 14-13... the soft cap went on at 13-11 and the hard went on (obviously) on the last point, so this was really a game that didn't end and was separated by (I suppose) two breaks.
Case in point of the attack of the tireds - I got a big D when it was 12-11, tossed it to Viral and headed for the endzone with no one around. But he just didn't step into his throw, and it floated way up. So Jason, Damon and Todd all closed in while I'm camping under the disc - I had to jump and grab for it at its highest point because of the oncoming traffic, and I had another "hit the broken tip of my finger" experience, just couldn't get up high enough / couldn't close my fingers around it. Really should have had it, another drop - BUT, there's no reason I should be having to sky three people for that catch in the first place. Frustrating, and it's not to pick on Viral for that particular play, just an instance of where being worn out led to a bad throw led to a bad catch. They scored, so instead of 12-12 we were still down 13-11. Nuts.
On a completely different point, though, either Jeremy or Viral put up a swilly throw to the endzone, and who read it correctly and grabbed it? Your favorite new Ultimate player, BECK!!! Her second goal - fantastic!
Some frustrations in the game, nearly all occurring in our bad second half - we stopped dumping the disc, kept trying to put up laser hucks... I beat my guy deep a bunch of times and our handlers (Craig, Tom) had trouble putting up nice hucks; on another one of those late 13-12 points, I had jason by 20 yards and Craig fired a laser past me on which I had no chance. Genevieve caught a lasery blady huck from Tom... about a foot out the back of the short endzones. Somebody dropped their mark on Damon while I was guarding Jason for an incut, and Damon somehow managed not to just get a huck off but an IO backhand huck - against a straight up mark! So I sprinted and actually caught Trant, but my big lay out came up about a foot short. Devastating, but it was a pretty perfect huck against a great receiver; just gotta tip your hat to that (and mutter under your breath about whoever let the throw go off). Just a ton of missed opportunities, and I'm sure the other side had them, too, but it felt like we lost our legs and minds together.
Damon toward the end of the game did not get so much chippy as whiny - something happened between Jack and him, and whatever it was put him in a mode where he just complained and made whiny, nothing touch foul calls. He called a foul on the mark on me on a play where yes, there was contact, but it was a step through break mark throw and he really just threw it away. This was on the goalline at 13-12, and I wasn't the only one - and not just people from our team - who found it a little cheesy. Whatever, didn't contest it because I was not interested in the ensuing hissy fit. P Mo cheated a little bit earlier in the game with a pick call, too - it was actually seventh level cheating, but I made the smart decision and didn't even bring it up with her.
But I'll bring it up here - Jeremy cuts deep to right side of the endzone and smokes his guy. Pauline poaches off on Jeremy - a totally reasonable play - but she without a doubt leaves Allyson. Allyson cuts in, and is now wide open in front of me, a solid 8 yards away from Pauline. Meanwhile, the guy trying to guard jeremy runs into Pauline - and Pauline calls a pick! So not only is it your usual controversial not-within-three-yards pick call, she actually SET the entire thing up - she called a pick on a player who was guarding the same player she was guarding!!! STUPID! EGREGIOUS! I take umbrage.
But like I say, just blew it off, and generally had a very congenial, even positive night of interactions with the PMo. Huzzah for good sport. Actually, i was just beaming after the game - this was probably the best all-around VOTS game I've played in terms of featuring hustle, smart play (for most of it) and mutual respect in the midst of fierce competition. Good times, PH.
So anyhoo, a great game, we scored the final point on hard cap leaving us to never know whether they actually would have scored that 15th point. I was very proud of our team though think there is a lot of room to improve. Proud of the Beck for scoring and playing great, hustling D. Proud of myself for remaining above the fray despite an intense, emotional and hotly contested game. Not so proud of yet another drop and have wasted a lot of time wondering what the hell is going on - but all I can do is maybe practice some more jumping one handed grabs and hope this finger issue subsides soon. Also not so proud that this ended up being some 2300 words and I still don't think I captured what a fun night it was - I hung / played tight defense on taller and faster guys than me all evening, and our team really showed that it's got BIG TIME potential if we can work out the kinks. We shall see - thanks for reading if you did.
p.s. Also - disappointed that i was off with both Jack and Genevieve last night - just wasn't on the field at the same time they were. They both played great, just not with me. Sigh...
Revolution No. 20
This has leaked onto the interwebs in the past couple of days, and I suspect it will be taken down by Michael Jackson or Nike or Apple Records or EMI or whomever owns the rights to these things. Ladies and Gents, new music from the Beatles: studio take 20 of Revolution No. 1 / 9.
You can just listen to it online via this site, or you can also find it in mp3 format if you're a little crafty (or if you e-mail me and I, um, don't send you an mp3 link because that would be wrong).
You can just listen to it online via this site, or you can also find it in mp3 format if you're a little crafty (or if you e-mail me and I, um, don't send you an mp3 link because that would be wrong).
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Empirical Evidence
On a certain fantasy basketball board, the question recently arose as to whether our buddy Andy, given 30 minutes, would be able to score on Lebron James. After much speculation regarding vertical jumps, angle of release, etc., the empirical test was finally called for: a computer simulation. Speculate no longer, gents - Andy gets it done:
Slump / Slumdog / Slump Dogged
Had a really, really bad pair of softball games on Friday night. Not only did I top the ball every time up (still managed to get on base 5 of 6 times, but still, damn), I overran a ball in the outfield and made a big fat error. No good. We did win both games which puts us in good shape for the playoffs - first game's Friday at 6:20; I'll let you know how it goes. Man, a bad streak in softball lately, but I did a good job of keeping my head held high and a positive attitude for the future. Hooray for small victories.
Beck worked on Saturday, and so did I - headed over to Mama Java's, read four articles AND wrote my phil paper for this week (posted earlier). Yeah productivity! Met Beck at home, had some crunchy turkey burgers (Cajun style!), and went to see the super-Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire at a local cineplex.
So, the Slumdog... I did enjoy the story-framing, the soundtrack, the cool multi-locale, the must-have-been-technically-challenging cinematography, and the overt attempt to enlighten mainstream Western audiences as to the plight of a huge chunk of the world's population. And the kids were fantastic - charismatic, pulled off the street urchin charm with aplomb. There was just something - and maybe this is more of a product of post-hype effect - lacking about the movie for me. Ebert pointed out in his review that behind the above-mentioned aspects and the fact that it's a mainstream American movie in India with Indian characters, this is a film with a rather traditional plot: brothers with a protective yet conflicted relationship, a wet-blanket love interest who inexplicably inspires deranged loyalty from the protagonist, a severely Westernized gangster motif of late redemption, and the requisite happy ending. So I see it as a movie with some fantastic moments, some beautiful story-telling, but ultimately a hiddem fomulaic-ness that seaps through if you pay attention.
Side note - some triumph of the human spirit commentary has accompanied this movie, and I just don't know how to respond to that. For every ounce of credence that I want to credit to the characters' perseverance, I want to equally note the horrors of a culture that permits that sort of stratification and abuse, worse that we feel there is somehow a possible happy ending offered by a game show. Don't want to delve too much into this - again, I did enjoy and appreciate a lot about this movie - but I question the ability of at-least-somewhat formulaic fiction to give me elated feelings about a reprehensible set of cultural circumstances.
Fast forward to Sunday - Beck and I hit up the circumference trail at Squaw Peak, ate a delicious brunch, did some house work, then headed to pickup. Went extraordinarily well - Beck had a great afternoon with some good catches and throws, even a jumping above-head catch on a deep throw - good times! I had a pretty great session, too, with a crazy layout on the very first point of the day, a bunch of skies and Ds, no turns (except for a ridiculous joke thumber I threw at one point) and several just spot-on hucks. I brought it, for whatever reason, and other than getting charley-horsed by Nipar on a skying catch, the day went perfect (my quad is really sore, but pretty much better now (Tuesday evening)).
Next stop: softball, after a healthy dinner at Tom's BBQ in Tempe. Delicious sausage sandwich and red beans and rice; I may have to get back there soon. The softball game: not so delicious. The other team consisted of reasonably good female players backed by a bunch of 6'3" and over men who could all mash. Those guys had no business being in an E-league or playing on a field that small - one of their guys hit a HR, but it was a 252' blast - not exactly something to be too excited about. Just a waste of time, and they effectively kicked our arse. Beck hit the ball well, and after slamming another couple of ground balls, I finally hit a line drive triple to right center toward the end of the game. Yay! Of course, I followed this up by making the last out of the game by inadvertently crossing the commitment line, and I know there's some serious marriage joke in there somewhere. Still, it was an effectively athletic slump-evidence-free double header, and I'll take it.
So a fun weekend. Back to the grind the past couple of days - I had a full day of reading / meetings yesterday, and another full day of reading, a presentation, a class, and general exhaustion today. Curenty waiting for the beck to get home from surgery, but that may not happen anytime soon. The Zorro has a matchup with the tallest team in Spring League tomorrow; I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.
Beck worked on Saturday, and so did I - headed over to Mama Java's, read four articles AND wrote my phil paper for this week (posted earlier). Yeah productivity! Met Beck at home, had some crunchy turkey burgers (Cajun style!), and went to see the super-Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire at a local cineplex.
So, the Slumdog... I did enjoy the story-framing, the soundtrack, the cool multi-locale, the must-have-been-technically-challenging cinematography, and the overt attempt to enlighten mainstream Western audiences as to the plight of a huge chunk of the world's population. And the kids were fantastic - charismatic, pulled off the street urchin charm with aplomb. There was just something - and maybe this is more of a product of post-hype effect - lacking about the movie for me. Ebert pointed out in his review that behind the above-mentioned aspects and the fact that it's a mainstream American movie in India with Indian characters, this is a film with a rather traditional plot: brothers with a protective yet conflicted relationship, a wet-blanket love interest who inexplicably inspires deranged loyalty from the protagonist, a severely Westernized gangster motif of late redemption, and the requisite happy ending. So I see it as a movie with some fantastic moments, some beautiful story-telling, but ultimately a hiddem fomulaic-ness that seaps through if you pay attention.
Side note - some triumph of the human spirit commentary has accompanied this movie, and I just don't know how to respond to that. For every ounce of credence that I want to credit to the characters' perseverance, I want to equally note the horrors of a culture that permits that sort of stratification and abuse, worse that we feel there is somehow a possible happy ending offered by a game show. Don't want to delve too much into this - again, I did enjoy and appreciate a lot about this movie - but I question the ability of at-least-somewhat formulaic fiction to give me elated feelings about a reprehensible set of cultural circumstances.
Fast forward to Sunday - Beck and I hit up the circumference trail at Squaw Peak, ate a delicious brunch, did some house work, then headed to pickup. Went extraordinarily well - Beck had a great afternoon with some good catches and throws, even a jumping above-head catch on a deep throw - good times! I had a pretty great session, too, with a crazy layout on the very first point of the day, a bunch of skies and Ds, no turns (except for a ridiculous joke thumber I threw at one point) and several just spot-on hucks. I brought it, for whatever reason, and other than getting charley-horsed by Nipar on a skying catch, the day went perfect (my quad is really sore, but pretty much better now (Tuesday evening)).
Next stop: softball, after a healthy dinner at Tom's BBQ in Tempe. Delicious sausage sandwich and red beans and rice; I may have to get back there soon. The softball game: not so delicious. The other team consisted of reasonably good female players backed by a bunch of 6'3" and over men who could all mash. Those guys had no business being in an E-league or playing on a field that small - one of their guys hit a HR, but it was a 252' blast - not exactly something to be too excited about. Just a waste of time, and they effectively kicked our arse. Beck hit the ball well, and after slamming another couple of ground balls, I finally hit a line drive triple to right center toward the end of the game. Yay! Of course, I followed this up by making the last out of the game by inadvertently crossing the commitment line, and I know there's some serious marriage joke in there somewhere. Still, it was an effectively athletic slump-evidence-free double header, and I'll take it.
So a fun weekend. Back to the grind the past couple of days - I had a full day of reading / meetings yesterday, and another full day of reading, a presentation, a class, and general exhaustion today. Curenty waiting for the beck to get home from surgery, but that may not happen anytime soon. The Zorro has a matchup with the tallest team in Spring League tomorrow; I'll be sure to let you know how that goes.
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