While I am indeed blogging for my health and just to hear myself write, it'd really do my heart good if you see any ads at the top that interest you and click on them.
For a moment today, one of the ads that Google placed in the box above was one for "Democratic Singles," for whatever reason.
I wonder if "vegan, doesn't shave armpits" appears on any of the female profiles there? (Thinking to myself: Only 84%!)
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Monday, February 27, 2006
R-E-S-P-E-T-C
The Captain told me once that the most awesome band name in the world would be Urethera Franklin.
The Captain's not wrong about much.
The Captain's not wrong about much.
Radio show, radio show ...
Local radio has become virtually non-existent in my area, and I imagine it’s becoming more so across the country, especially in non-urban areas like mine, as more and more of the nation’s media owners become aware that it’s way cheaper to get radio programming out of a box in Arizona than it is to have actual local flavor on the radio. I can think of maybe one commercial radio station in my immediate area where you can turn on the radio at 9 in the evening and hear the voice of someone who’s physically in the radio station you’re listening to.
The first one of those “canned” stations that I remember hearing was WFLQ out of French Lick, back when it started in the early 1980s; the only way I knew it was canned was the fact that they’d only mention the station name in a bumper coming out of commercial. I don’t remember anything else about it other than the DJ one day talking about how odd it was that there has never been a president named Mike or Michael.
In the late afternoons, if I’m near a radio, I’ll listen to WAMW out of Washington just to have a local voice talking to me, in spite of the oldies. WWBL is canned by that point in the day (they are live and local from 5am till roughly 3 or 4 in the afternoon during the weekdays and are all canned during the weekends.)
Radio was actually my first career choice once I was old enough to determine what I wanted to do with my life. (When I was 5, I wanted to be Tom Wills, but that didn’t pan out, as Tom Wills already existed at WAVE-TV in Louisville. Still does!) I shadowed at the old WKMD in Loogootee one day in 6th grade, and at what was then rock station WRTB in Washington in 8th grade, and was just fascinated at the concept of broadcasting - sitting in a studio, talking to thousands, delivering breaking news to the community, broadcasting the local team's basketball games, warning the local populace about an impending blizzard ... it just all seemed so exciting! And to spin some records on top of it? What a sweet deal!
(As it turns out, I had a face made for radio, but not the voice for it; my voice is the diametric opposite of the smooth baritone that many of today's professional disk jockeys have ... many of my phone conversations with strangers have the phrase "please stop calling me 'ma'am'" interjected exasperatedly at some point within.)
WRTB was all local in those days, and since you don’t know what you got till it’s gone (a song they played often when it was a hit), it was very comforting in retrospect. Being a pillar of the community, they agreed to let me and the Captain shadow them for half a day, and we got to sit in on the "Mitch in the Morning" show. Later, Mike Grant, who is now with WTHI-TV in Terre Haute, called in to tape a news report for airplay later in the morning, but didn't realize that a couple of junior high schoolers were in the auxiliary studio with Mitch. He stumbled over a couple of words and dropped an F-bomb, and Captain and I were sure that the radio profession was the coolest thing in the world.
Anyway, WRTB's rock format eventually gave way to the Real Country format that is now found at that point on the dial, on WWBL, and as I said earlier, they drastically cut back on their local staff. As for Captain and myself, he DJ'd up at Franklin College for awhile, then at the community radio station in Bloomington, while I DJ'd at my dorm radio station in Foster Quad at IU and then was pretty much out of radio by that point. Both of us know how to use a radio now, but that's about the extent of our involvement with that magical musical box.
The first one of those “canned” stations that I remember hearing was WFLQ out of French Lick, back when it started in the early 1980s; the only way I knew it was canned was the fact that they’d only mention the station name in a bumper coming out of commercial. I don’t remember anything else about it other than the DJ one day talking about how odd it was that there has never been a president named Mike or Michael.
In the late afternoons, if I’m near a radio, I’ll listen to WAMW out of Washington just to have a local voice talking to me, in spite of the oldies. WWBL is canned by that point in the day (they are live and local from 5am till roughly 3 or 4 in the afternoon during the weekdays and are all canned during the weekends.)
Radio was actually my first career choice once I was old enough to determine what I wanted to do with my life. (When I was 5, I wanted to be Tom Wills, but that didn’t pan out, as Tom Wills already existed at WAVE-TV in Louisville. Still does!) I shadowed at the old WKMD in Loogootee one day in 6th grade, and at what was then rock station WRTB in Washington in 8th grade, and was just fascinated at the concept of broadcasting - sitting in a studio, talking to thousands, delivering breaking news to the community, broadcasting the local team's basketball games, warning the local populace about an impending blizzard ... it just all seemed so exciting! And to spin some records on top of it? What a sweet deal!
(As it turns out, I had a face made for radio, but not the voice for it; my voice is the diametric opposite of the smooth baritone that many of today's professional disk jockeys have ... many of my phone conversations with strangers have the phrase "please stop calling me 'ma'am'" interjected exasperatedly at some point within.)
WRTB was all local in those days, and since you don’t know what you got till it’s gone (a song they played often when it was a hit), it was very comforting in retrospect. Being a pillar of the community, they agreed to let me and the Captain shadow them for half a day, and we got to sit in on the "Mitch in the Morning" show. Later, Mike Grant, who is now with WTHI-TV in Terre Haute, called in to tape a news report for airplay later in the morning, but didn't realize that a couple of junior high schoolers were in the auxiliary studio with Mitch. He stumbled over a couple of words and dropped an F-bomb, and Captain and I were sure that the radio profession was the coolest thing in the world.
Anyway, WRTB's rock format eventually gave way to the Real Country format that is now found at that point on the dial, on WWBL, and as I said earlier, they drastically cut back on their local staff. As for Captain and myself, he DJ'd up at Franklin College for awhile, then at the community radio station in Bloomington, while I DJ'd at my dorm radio station in Foster Quad at IU and then was pretty much out of radio by that point. Both of us know how to use a radio now, but that's about the extent of our involvement with that magical musical box.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Off the Bush bus.
I'm done with it.
Between Governor Daniels forcing Daylight Savings on us and the President's phenomenally poor judgment on leasing vital ports to a United Arab Emirates company, I'm pulling back my support of both of the Republican administrations that affect me. To me, they've become the Axis of Ugh.
My dad, bless him, says that if the Republicans "ran a horse turd against that S.O.B. Daniels" in the primaries in '08, that he would indeed vote for the horse turd. I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'd need to know where the horse turd stood on the key Indiana issues of our time, like forcing Daylight Savings on a populace that didn't really want it – I wouldn't just vote for a horse turd sight unseen. (Whereas I know where the current governor stands.)
Meanwhile, on a national level, having supported this president through thick and thin, having given him every benefit of the doubt in the war on terror and giving that benefit of the doubt more weight than I would for domestic issues - after all, what good, exactly, is the future of Social Security if we are all blown up by Islamofascists? – I can't do it anymore.
Now, I don't care about the Vice President's hunting accident; we've all accidentally shot someone at least once in our lives. It happens.
But the Dubai ports deal is the last straw for me. It has the potential to undo everything we've accomplished since 9/11. Even though in all likelihood it wouldn't, on its face, the deal just sits *wrong* with me.
Is it racist for me to not want our ports leased out to an Arab country, even one that is supposed "allied" with us in the war on terror? Are there not plenty of American – hell, even merely Western – companies that could have leased the ports so that they don't even slightly increase the chance of people entering the country who want to fly airplanes into our buildings?
Am I just overthinking this? Am I taking this to a not-so-logical conclusion? Can the fact that it just doesn't seem like a good idea be enough? There's just something that doesn't feel right about the deal; I'm not alone in thinking this. Lileks says:
That's about right.
Anyway, like I said, I'm done with it. And I know that there are people who are much smarter than me who will try to convince you otherwise, but I am certain – and I am an optimist by nature, by the way – that we ("we" being the Republicans) are going to lose big-time in this year's midterm congressional elections. In our haste to clear out Congress of those who have supported this and other boneheaded initiatives put forth by the Bush administration, there will be otherwise good men who will fall victim to the public's growing "vote the bums out" sentiment. At the very least, the House will be lost, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the Senate fall into Democratic hands also.
Everything that the Republicans railed against during the mid-90s Republican revolution is now what they have become themselves - corrupt, insulated, hellbent on keeping power instead of doing what is truly best for the country. It's a shame, too; once you betray the trust of the voting public, it is lost for an entire generation, so take a good look at your Republican-controlled Congress: it will likely be the last you see of it for decades to come.
Between Governor Daniels forcing Daylight Savings on us and the President's phenomenally poor judgment on leasing vital ports to a United Arab Emirates company, I'm pulling back my support of both of the Republican administrations that affect me. To me, they've become the Axis of Ugh.
My dad, bless him, says that if the Republicans "ran a horse turd against that S.O.B. Daniels" in the primaries in '08, that he would indeed vote for the horse turd. I have to say that I'm inclined to agree with him, but I'd need to know where the horse turd stood on the key Indiana issues of our time, like forcing Daylight Savings on a populace that didn't really want it – I wouldn't just vote for a horse turd sight unseen. (Whereas I know where the current governor stands.)
Meanwhile, on a national level, having supported this president through thick and thin, having given him every benefit of the doubt in the war on terror and giving that benefit of the doubt more weight than I would for domestic issues - after all, what good, exactly, is the future of Social Security if we are all blown up by Islamofascists? – I can't do it anymore.
Now, I don't care about the Vice President's hunting accident; we've all accidentally shot someone at least once in our lives. It happens.
But the Dubai ports deal is the last straw for me. It has the potential to undo everything we've accomplished since 9/11. Even though in all likelihood it wouldn't, on its face, the deal just sits *wrong* with me.
Is it racist for me to not want our ports leased out to an Arab country, even one that is supposed "allied" with us in the war on terror? Are there not plenty of American – hell, even merely Western – companies that could have leased the ports so that they don't even slightly increase the chance of people entering the country who want to fly airplanes into our buildings?
Am I just overthinking this? Am I taking this to a not-so-logical conclusion? Can the fact that it just doesn't seem like a good idea be enough? There's just something that doesn't feel right about the deal; I'm not alone in thinking this. Lileks says:
Because it feels immediately, instinctively wrong to nearly every American, and that isn’t something that can be argued away with charts or glossy brochures. It just doesn’t sit well. Period.
*snip*
… Doesn’t matter whether it was a deal struck between the previous administrators and the UAE; that’s not how the issue will be seen. And it certainly doesn’t matter once the President gets all stern on the topic and insists he’ll veto any attempt to keep the deal from going through. At that point, millions of previously resolute supporters stand there with their mouths open, uttering a soft confused moan of disbelief.
That's about right.
Anyway, like I said, I'm done with it. And I know that there are people who are much smarter than me who will try to convince you otherwise, but I am certain – and I am an optimist by nature, by the way – that we ("we" being the Republicans) are going to lose big-time in this year's midterm congressional elections. In our haste to clear out Congress of those who have supported this and other boneheaded initiatives put forth by the Bush administration, there will be otherwise good men who will fall victim to the public's growing "vote the bums out" sentiment. At the very least, the House will be lost, and I wouldn't be surprised to see the Senate fall into Democratic hands also.
Everything that the Republicans railed against during the mid-90s Republican revolution is now what they have become themselves - corrupt, insulated, hellbent on keeping power instead of doing what is truly best for the country. It's a shame, too; once you betray the trust of the voting public, it is lost for an entire generation, so take a good look at your Republican-controlled Congress: it will likely be the last you see of it for decades to come.
Winless Watch (Boys): Down to three; on to sectionals
The penultimate Winless Watch of the 2005-06 IHSAA boys basketball season finds the number of winless teams reduced by one; North White's Vikings removed themselves from the list by virtue of their 80-66 victory over Kokomo Christian on the last day of the regular season. This leaves Cannelton (pending the outcome of Friday night's game against Restoration Christian, which hasn't yet been reported to John Harrell), Howe Military and Cowan as the only winless teams in the state heading into sectional play.
Assuming - and it's a big assumption, I know, but make the leap if you can - our three WW teams fall in their first sectional games, that will bring to 20 the number of winless teams in the decade (calling the 2000-01 season the start of the decade). Where does this year's WW triumvirate stand in relation to its predecessors? Here, as WW sees it, are the 10 worst winless teams of the decade thus far, based solely on average margin of defeat:
10. (tie) 2003-04 Fountain Central, 2002-03 North White - (-27.0 ppg) - More on North White in a minute; Fountain Central, on the other hand, fell hard after its 16-6 season in 2002-03, having compiled a 6-56 record since. In the 03-04 season, the team went 0-21; that edition of the Mustangs was the school's nadir. While a 3-point defeat at the hands of Turkey Run was the high point of the season, other losses were by 56, 50, 49, 49 and 41. Believe it or not, that only garners them a tie for 10th on this list.
9. 2003-04 Lake Station (-27.1 ppg) - Save for a 3-point win against River Forest in the second game of the season, Lake Station would have been a WW member this year, but in 2003-04, they would have been full-on, dues-paying members of the list had it been in existence. That year, a 1-point loss to Westville was one of the Fighting Eagles' two single-digit defeats; the other was a 7-point defeat at the hands of LaCrosse. Eight of their defeats were by 30 or more points, including a 55-point shellacking by Hammond Noll in the sectional.
8. 2003-04 North White (-27.4 ppg) - It's not been North White's decade, really, having compiled a 7-118 record since the 2000-01 season, including three consecutive winless seasons (and very nearly four out of five if not for this weekend's victory). The 03-04 Vikings were the culmination of three consecutive 0-21 seasons. Three defeats in the single digits were offset by 11 defeats of 30 or more points, including a 63-16 defeat by Carroll (Flora) in the second game of the season, as well as consecutive defeats by 31, 48, 50, 36 and 34 to close out the season. The Vikings are the early leaders in the WW Overall Team of the Decade competition, but there's still time to turn it around (see #2, #3 below).
7. 2002-03 Shoals (-27.6 ppg) - WW's alma mater has never been a basketball powerhouse, appearing in a sectional championship (and losing) on average of maybe once a decade. Your humble correspondent witnessed the Jug Rox's season opener on this particular year, a 91-34 defeat at the hands of White River Valley; the game was not as close as the final score indicated. While improvement followed - the next seven games were lost by only 37, 30, 30, 36, 27, 34 and 35 - the Rox couldn't quite get over the hump, but they came close: in one weekend, they lost by only 7 to Dugger and 8 to Restoration Christian (who was not yet a full IHSAA member). The season closed with a respectable 13-point defeat in sectional versus North Daviess, and the Rox powered to a 5-win season the following year.
6. 2003-04 South Central (Union Mills) (-29.9 ppg) - The Satellites mixed it up with 20 opponents in the 03-04 season and came away empty-handed; Wheeler tripled up on them, 97-31 for their worst showing of the season, while they fell by only 8 to Michigan City Marquette for their closest defeat of the season. The rest of the season tended to lean more toward the former than the latter; only five of their losses came by less than 20 points, but eight of their losses came by more than 30.
5. 2003-04 Fort Wayne Keystone (formerly Fort Wayne Christian) (-30.2 ppg) - It took the Eagles almost a season and a half to garner their first win in IHSAA play (against Kokomo Christian, the same squad North White took out this weekend). Aside from their three defeats against current WW member Howe Military (by 3, 5 and 6 points, respectively), the closest they came to tasting victory was a 9-point loss versus Lakewood Park, who defeated the Eagles four times that season (by 9, 10, 21 and 28). Other notable defeats by the Eagles were by 45, 45, 50, 54, 58 and 67. Even White's beat them three times. White's doesn't beat anybody three times. (Except ...
4. 2005-06 Howe Military (-36.2 ppg, pending sectional) - The Cadets came close against White's in their third meeting of the season this weekend, falling by a 65-62 score. They didn't, however, come very close the rest of the time. Consider their game of February 1 against Central Noble - the Cadets fell 100-29. Low point? Not quite - two nights later, they traveled to Fairfield and lost by 97 points - 111-14. Yikes.
3. 2001-02 Oregon-Davis (-40.5 ppg)
2. 2002-03 Oregon-Davis (-44.2 ppg) - Yowie zowie. That was a futile stretch of basketball. When you take into account the following season, where the Bobcats went 1-20, the total record for the three years was 1-60. The lowlight was probably a 102-16 defeat at the hands of Glenn; over the two winless seasons, the Bobcats fell by 60 or more points eight times. No one should have to lose by 60 points. And yet, this season - remember earlier, where I said there was time to turn it around? - the Bobcats should challenge for a sectional crown, as they sit at 18-3 going into the tournament. Wow!
1. 2005-06 Cannelton (-50.4 ppg, pending results of Restoration Christian game on 2/24, as well as sectional) - The results are a roll call of misery. Start with a 52-point defeat against New Washington (the Mustangs finished the regular season with two wins to their credit), then a 70-point defeat at the hands of Paoli, followed by 68- and 60-point losses against their county rivals Tell City and Perry Central, before a 32-point loss against South Central (Elizabeth) stemmed the flow somewhat. That was followed by losses of 74, 81 and 74 points. Oregon-Davis had eight defeats of greater than 60 points over their two winless seasons; the Bulldogs had nine this season alone. Take away the two-game stretch against Cloverport (Ky.) and New Harmony, where the 'Dogs lost by only 6 and 4 points respectively, and that -50.4 margin would be even worse.
I understand that the Bulldogs were a little bit depleted this year (gee, do you think?), returning only one player from last year's 2-19 effort, but still, give them credit for showing up and trying to compete. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I really feel for them. There's a lesson to be learned somewhere from all of this; no, the lesson is not "don't suit up for Cannelton," but rather a lesson of persistence in the face of adversity. Or something like that.
(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)
Assuming - and it's a big assumption, I know, but make the leap if you can - our three WW teams fall in their first sectional games, that will bring to 20 the number of winless teams in the decade (calling the 2000-01 season the start of the decade). Where does this year's WW triumvirate stand in relation to its predecessors? Here, as WW sees it, are the 10 worst winless teams of the decade thus far, based solely on average margin of defeat:
10. (tie) 2003-04 Fountain Central, 2002-03 North White - (-27.0 ppg) - More on North White in a minute; Fountain Central, on the other hand, fell hard after its 16-6 season in 2002-03, having compiled a 6-56 record since. In the 03-04 season, the team went 0-21; that edition of the Mustangs was the school's nadir. While a 3-point defeat at the hands of Turkey Run was the high point of the season, other losses were by 56, 50, 49, 49 and 41. Believe it or not, that only garners them a tie for 10th on this list.
9. 2003-04 Lake Station (-27.1 ppg) - Save for a 3-point win against River Forest in the second game of the season, Lake Station would have been a WW member this year, but in 2003-04, they would have been full-on, dues-paying members of the list had it been in existence. That year, a 1-point loss to Westville was one of the Fighting Eagles' two single-digit defeats; the other was a 7-point defeat at the hands of LaCrosse. Eight of their defeats were by 30 or more points, including a 55-point shellacking by Hammond Noll in the sectional.
8. 2003-04 North White (-27.4 ppg) - It's not been North White's decade, really, having compiled a 7-118 record since the 2000-01 season, including three consecutive winless seasons (and very nearly four out of five if not for this weekend's victory). The 03-04 Vikings were the culmination of three consecutive 0-21 seasons. Three defeats in the single digits were offset by 11 defeats of 30 or more points, including a 63-16 defeat by Carroll (Flora) in the second game of the season, as well as consecutive defeats by 31, 48, 50, 36 and 34 to close out the season. The Vikings are the early leaders in the WW Overall Team of the Decade competition, but there's still time to turn it around (see #2, #3 below).
7. 2002-03 Shoals (-27.6 ppg) - WW's alma mater has never been a basketball powerhouse, appearing in a sectional championship (and losing) on average of maybe once a decade. Your humble correspondent witnessed the Jug Rox's season opener on this particular year, a 91-34 defeat at the hands of White River Valley; the game was not as close as the final score indicated. While improvement followed - the next seven games were lost by only 37, 30, 30, 36, 27, 34 and 35 - the Rox couldn't quite get over the hump, but they came close: in one weekend, they lost by only 7 to Dugger and 8 to Restoration Christian (who was not yet a full IHSAA member). The season closed with a respectable 13-point defeat in sectional versus North Daviess, and the Rox powered to a 5-win season the following year.
6. 2003-04 South Central (Union Mills) (-29.9 ppg) - The Satellites mixed it up with 20 opponents in the 03-04 season and came away empty-handed; Wheeler tripled up on them, 97-31 for their worst showing of the season, while they fell by only 8 to Michigan City Marquette for their closest defeat of the season. The rest of the season tended to lean more toward the former than the latter; only five of their losses came by less than 20 points, but eight of their losses came by more than 30.
5. 2003-04 Fort Wayne Keystone (formerly Fort Wayne Christian) (-30.2 ppg) - It took the Eagles almost a season and a half to garner their first win in IHSAA play (against Kokomo Christian, the same squad North White took out this weekend). Aside from their three defeats against current WW member Howe Military (by 3, 5 and 6 points, respectively), the closest they came to tasting victory was a 9-point loss versus Lakewood Park, who defeated the Eagles four times that season (by 9, 10, 21 and 28). Other notable defeats by the Eagles were by 45, 45, 50, 54, 58 and 67. Even White's beat them three times. White's doesn't beat anybody three times. (Except ...
4. 2005-06 Howe Military (-36.2 ppg, pending sectional) - The Cadets came close against White's in their third meeting of the season this weekend, falling by a 65-62 score. They didn't, however, come very close the rest of the time. Consider their game of February 1 against Central Noble - the Cadets fell 100-29. Low point? Not quite - two nights later, they traveled to Fairfield and lost by 97 points - 111-14. Yikes.
3. 2001-02 Oregon-Davis (-40.5 ppg)
2. 2002-03 Oregon-Davis (-44.2 ppg) - Yowie zowie. That was a futile stretch of basketball. When you take into account the following season, where the Bobcats went 1-20, the total record for the three years was 1-60. The lowlight was probably a 102-16 defeat at the hands of Glenn; over the two winless seasons, the Bobcats fell by 60 or more points eight times. No one should have to lose by 60 points. And yet, this season - remember earlier, where I said there was time to turn it around? - the Bobcats should challenge for a sectional crown, as they sit at 18-3 going into the tournament. Wow!
1. 2005-06 Cannelton (-50.4 ppg, pending results of Restoration Christian game on 2/24, as well as sectional) - The results are a roll call of misery. Start with a 52-point defeat against New Washington (the Mustangs finished the regular season with two wins to their credit), then a 70-point defeat at the hands of Paoli, followed by 68- and 60-point losses against their county rivals Tell City and Perry Central, before a 32-point loss against South Central (Elizabeth) stemmed the flow somewhat. That was followed by losses of 74, 81 and 74 points. Oregon-Davis had eight defeats of greater than 60 points over their two winless seasons; the Bulldogs had nine this season alone. Take away the two-game stretch against Cloverport (Ky.) and New Harmony, where the 'Dogs lost by only 6 and 4 points respectively, and that -50.4 margin would be even worse.
I understand that the Bulldogs were a little bit depleted this year (gee, do you think?), returning only one player from last year's 2-19 effort, but still, give them credit for showing up and trying to compete. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I really feel for them. There's a lesson to be learned somewhere from all of this; no, the lesson is not "don't suit up for Cannelton," but rather a lesson of persistence in the face of adversity. Or something like that.
(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)
... and Don Knotts.
My writing today would not be complete without mentioning the passing of Don Knotts, who crossed over to the great Mayberry in the sky after a battle with lung cancer. (Note: some reports are saying "pulmonary and respiratory complications.")
Knotts, of course, was best known as Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" in the 1960s. While the show had Andy Griffith's name in the title, Knotts was vital to the show's success; recall how the show stopped being funny after Knotts left the show to pursue a career in film.
(If you're ever in doubt as to whether any random episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" is worth watching, make note of whether the show is in color or black-and-white. If it's in color, change the channel - Knotts' departure from the show coincided with the colorization of the show.)
Don Knotts was the model for David Caruso, as his ill-advised jump to the big screen spelled career doom - such films as "The Reluctant Astronaut," "The Love God?" and "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" weren't exactly "Citizen Kane," or even "Pillow Talk." But Knotts did well in resurrecting his career and ended up doing work as varied as the swinging landlord in "Three's Company" to the TV repairman in "Pleasantville" and Mayor Turkey Lurkey in last year's "Chicken Little."
I recall the last decade, when the National Enquirer would have a slow news week and have a some variation of the following on its cover: "Andy Griffith: Six Weeks To Live!" or "Don Knotts Blind, Near Death!" Still, to hear of Knotts' actual passing is more than a little bit of a shock to me, even though the Enquirer had prepped me for this moment for years.
How iconic was Deputy Fife? In my county, Fife would often get write-in votes during presidential elections in the '80s and '90s. I imagine he still will.
Knotts, of course, was best known as Deputy Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show" in the 1960s. While the show had Andy Griffith's name in the title, Knotts was vital to the show's success; recall how the show stopped being funny after Knotts left the show to pursue a career in film.
(If you're ever in doubt as to whether any random episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" is worth watching, make note of whether the show is in color or black-and-white. If it's in color, change the channel - Knotts' departure from the show coincided with the colorization of the show.)
Don Knotts was the model for David Caruso, as his ill-advised jump to the big screen spelled career doom - such films as "The Reluctant Astronaut," "The Love God?" and "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" weren't exactly "Citizen Kane," or even "Pillow Talk." But Knotts did well in resurrecting his career and ended up doing work as varied as the swinging landlord in "Three's Company" to the TV repairman in "Pleasantville" and Mayor Turkey Lurkey in last year's "Chicken Little."
I recall the last decade, when the National Enquirer would have a slow news week and have a some variation of the following on its cover: "Andy Griffith: Six Weeks To Live!" or "Don Knotts Blind, Near Death!" Still, to hear of Knotts' actual passing is more than a little bit of a shock to me, even though the Enquirer had prepped me for this moment for years.
How iconic was Deputy Fife? In my county, Fife would often get write-in votes during presidential elections in the '80s and '90s. I imagine he still will.
Do the Olympics still matter?
Of course they still matter - what kind of stupid question is that? They just don't matter to the extent that they once did.
Part of me takes the last two weeks' news about American Idol trouncing the Winter Olympics in the Nielsens and fears for the future of the republic. Then, before I get completely reactionary, the other part of me takes the following two facts into account and breathes a little easier:
1. America is not a nation that loves its winter sports. When I worked in the cable ad sales industry, the Winter Olympics were a tough sell - local advertisers just didn't foresee a return on investment for running ads during the Games. There are pockets of the country - mostly in the north - that are just rabid for games on snow and ice, but there's a reason that hockey is about fifth in the pecking order of the major professional sports here in the States. (And fifth may be a little generous.) Perhaps the lack of gratuitous beefcake shots (gratuitous picture of beach volleyballer Misty May's butt here) is a dominating factor; winter sports just aren't sexy.
All that aside, let's face it - the United States just isn't very good at most winter sports; the pool from which to draw competitors isn't quite as deep as it would be for basketball - not that we've exactly been lighting it up on the world stage in recent years in that game. But in addition to the general dearth of snow and ice in the bulk of the country, a lot of these sports seem to me to be quite pricey. It doesn't take a whole lot of scratch to put up a hoop in a driveway or create a makeshift baseball diamond down at the park - but equipment for sports like hockey, curling or skiing are a little more expensive, I think. Not to mention finding a place to perform your sport - you can't exactly build a bobsled track in your backyard. Even skating, which requires the least amount of equipment, requires at the very least having a place to skate and train. Sure, a lot of people make it happen, but the impediments seem much too prohibitive for all but the most passionate.
(Then again, I suppose if you don't have the passion for the sport, you have no business being in the Olympics.)
2) If this were 1988, perhaps it wouldn't be a problem that this year's Games are in Italy, about seven time zones away. NBC's tape delay of the Games for primetime viewing is a factor in the ratings decline of the Olympics - when I can go to any number of websites and find any amount of information on the day's outcomes, or even watch the ESPN networks' tickers, I'd be a lot less inclined to sit through the same events in the evening if I knew how they were going to end - especially if an American didn't win. (The sheer hilarity of Lindsay Jacobellis' crash excepted.)
(Unfortunately, this is something that I agree with that poseur Bill Simmons about. Ugh. I'm very disgusted with myself right now.)
Anyway, the next Winter Games are in 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia ...
(That's in Canada, for the less geographically inclined among my readership.)
(You know, Canada ... the country just to the north of the United States.)
(If you're looking at a map, it's "up" from the United States.)
Sheesh.
... and we'll have a better gauge on whether the Games are still relevant. These are questions we'll probably be asking before then, when the next Summer Games are held in 2008 in Beijing.
*****
I would be remiss if I didn't address Bo-dee Miller's comments after his five-times-over failure at Torino.
One quote from Miller sticks out. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bo-dee said:
Miller was rich enough before the Games from endorsements that he never has to ski again - he could have been experienced the Olympic-level partying and socializing as a tourist, couldn't he? Couldn't his spot on the team didn't go to someone more deserving, more hungry, who wouldn't have been "comfortable" with "accomplishing" an 0-for-5 record. I wonder how the first alternate to the U.S. ski team feels, knowing that Bo-dee half-assed it?
Part of me takes the last two weeks' news about American Idol trouncing the Winter Olympics in the Nielsens and fears for the future of the republic. Then, before I get completely reactionary, the other part of me takes the following two facts into account and breathes a little easier:
1. America is not a nation that loves its winter sports. When I worked in the cable ad sales industry, the Winter Olympics were a tough sell - local advertisers just didn't foresee a return on investment for running ads during the Games. There are pockets of the country - mostly in the north - that are just rabid for games on snow and ice, but there's a reason that hockey is about fifth in the pecking order of the major professional sports here in the States. (And fifth may be a little generous.) Perhaps the lack of gratuitous beefcake shots (gratuitous picture of beach volleyballer Misty May's butt here) is a dominating factor; winter sports just aren't sexy.
All that aside, let's face it - the United States just isn't very good at most winter sports; the pool from which to draw competitors isn't quite as deep as it would be for basketball - not that we've exactly been lighting it up on the world stage in recent years in that game. But in addition to the general dearth of snow and ice in the bulk of the country, a lot of these sports seem to me to be quite pricey. It doesn't take a whole lot of scratch to put up a hoop in a driveway or create a makeshift baseball diamond down at the park - but equipment for sports like hockey, curling or skiing are a little more expensive, I think. Not to mention finding a place to perform your sport - you can't exactly build a bobsled track in your backyard. Even skating, which requires the least amount of equipment, requires at the very least having a place to skate and train. Sure, a lot of people make it happen, but the impediments seem much too prohibitive for all but the most passionate.
(Then again, I suppose if you don't have the passion for the sport, you have no business being in the Olympics.)
2) If this were 1988, perhaps it wouldn't be a problem that this year's Games are in Italy, about seven time zones away. NBC's tape delay of the Games for primetime viewing is a factor in the ratings decline of the Olympics - when I can go to any number of websites and find any amount of information on the day's outcomes, or even watch the ESPN networks' tickers, I'd be a lot less inclined to sit through the same events in the evening if I knew how they were going to end - especially if an American didn't win. (The sheer hilarity of Lindsay Jacobellis' crash excepted.)
(Unfortunately, this is something that I agree with that poseur Bill Simmons about. Ugh. I'm very disgusted with myself right now.)
Anyway, the next Winter Games are in 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia ...
(That's in Canada, for the less geographically inclined among my readership.)
(You know, Canada ... the country just to the north of the United States.)
(If you're looking at a map, it's "up" from the United States.)
Sheesh.
... and we'll have a better gauge on whether the Games are still relevant. These are questions we'll probably be asking before then, when the next Summer Games are held in 2008 in Beijing.
*****
I would be remiss if I didn't address Bo-dee Miller's comments after his five-times-over failure at Torino.
One quote from Miller sticks out. In an interview with the Associated Press, Bo-dee said:
"The expectations were other people's," he said. "I'm comfortable withMmm-hmm. Yep, it was an Olympic-level failure for Miller, who was favored to, at the very least, bring home something besides a hangover. He didn't just rock - he rawked.
what I've accomplished, including at the Olympics ... I wanted to have fun here,
to enjoy the Olympic experience, not be holed up in a closet and not ever
leave your room. I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level ... I just
did it my way. I'm not a martyr, and I'm not a do-gooder. I just want to go
out and rock. And man, I rocked here."
Miller was rich enough before the Games from endorsements that he never has to ski again - he could have been experienced the Olympic-level partying and socializing as a tourist, couldn't he? Couldn't his spot on the team didn't go to someone more deserving, more hungry, who wouldn't have been "comfortable" with "accomplishing" an 0-for-5 record. I wonder how the first alternate to the U.S. ski team feels, knowing that Bo-dee half-assed it?
Friday, February 24, 2006
Marking Time ...
Don’t get me wrong: There aren’t many other places that I would rather live than where I do. I had my fill of city life several years ago, and I don’t think I’d ever go back. My wife and I are both close to our families where we are now, yet not sitting right across the street from them so they could pop in at anytime. The cost of living here, the land we are on and the house we are in are all pretty low in comparison to surrounding areas for the most part, the taxes aren’t backbreaking, and the government generally stays out of your way. I like being able to step outside my door at night to see the moon and stars. My neighbors keep to themselves, and so do I. I can give my wife and my son a good life here.
All told, it’s not nearly as awful a place to live as I thought it was about 10 years ago, when I used words like “backwater,” “ass-backwards,” and “Martintucky” to describe it and swore I was never coming back here to live. We’re all young and ignorant at some point in our lives, and some people carry that youth and ignorance with them well into their 70s, but I’m glad my wife and I settled down here.
That being said, the current Eastern vs. Central time zone debate – the flashpoint of which is in my little county - is a little fascinating and maddening at the same time.
A little backstory:
Martin County has been home to a naval base since World War II; about 5,000 people, both people employed directly by the federal government and contractors like myself, work within Crane’s borders, and a large number of jobs that support Crane’s work (directly, like contractors who aren’t based at Crane, and indirectly, like restaurants and gas stations) rely heavily on the base’s continued existence – annual revenue from the base is around $1 billion.
So, because we have the biggest cash cow in southern Indiana within our borders, we tend to swing a bigger stick somewhat than a economically poor, barely literate county with a population of 10,000 otherwise would … especially in the current time zone debate.
For various reasons (the “farmer’s lobby” being the main culprit, allegedly), the state of Indiana has long been a staunch opponent of Daylight Savings Time, so much that over 80 out of our 92 counties don’t observe it. During the winter months, we are on the same time as New York, Louisville and Cincinnati, but during the summer months, we are on the same time as Chicago and various points west. Confusing? I guess it could be, if you’re not used to it.
One of the things Governor Daniels promised to do when he got into office was to settle the debate once and for all – Daylight Savings Time would be instituted, come hell or high water. The only question that remained was whether the bulk of the state would be in the Eastern time zone or Central time zone.
The governor left the decision up to the individual counties, so Martin County’s commissioners held two public meetings to get a feel for what time zone we should be in. The original debate over what time zone our region should fall into sparked waves of apathy at first – around 70 people combined to attend the two meetings. Where was everyone else?
Anyway, indifference reigned, even after the Commissioners petitioned the Department of Transportation to put Martin County on Central time. Only after the DOT handed down its decision to lump Martin in with our neighbors to the west and south in the Central time zone while keeping our eastern and northern neighbors on Eastern did it become a lightning rod issue. Various employee organizations at Crane decided to get involved, much to my chagrin.
Why the chagrin? Because it is not right – even for a 900-pound gorilla like Crane, which lies almost entirely within Martin County’s borders – for Crane’s organizations to tell the rest of Martin County what time zone it’s going to be in. You’ve got people who only work in Martin County, and otherwise don’t give a damn about the county the rest of the time, forcing a decision on those of us who *do* live and work here; I have a wife who works in Dubois County, nowhere *near* Crane, and you’re going to make the decision for her? We made our decision last year, and our decision was to move to year-round Central time. This was a Martin County decision, and Martin County’s citizens spoke about it last year, albeit rather indecisively – because Martin County otherwise has zero jurisdiction over the Crane base, and vice versa, Crane employee organizations have no right to make the decision for us.
“But it’ll be easier for the base to be on the same time as Washington D.C.,” the pro-Eastern argument goes.
Of course it will be, because none of that pesky math will be involved – adding one hour to the current time to figure out what time it is in Washington would be a bitch. Remember – a lot of the people at Crane are engineers; they have helped put together smart bombs that can track their target down to the exact millimeter from a floating battleship in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles away. Yet, 9:15 a.m. + 1 hour = 10:15 a.m. is a concept that renders systems obsolete!
It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
(And, by that logic, the installations at Rock Island and other places in the Central time zone should also move their clocks forward one hour to be on the same time as Washington. Where do you draw the line?)
“But the bulk of the base’s employees live in counties that will be on Eastern time,” another pro-Eastern argument goes.
Is that a math question or a question of convenience? If it’s the former … math!!! If it’s the latter, life is full of inconveniences. I think it’s pretty damned inconvenient to even get up and go to work a lot of mornings. Tough.
Point is, the line was going to fall somewhere, and someone somewhere was going to be pissed off about it and/or screwed by it. Me? I don’t really have a dog in the fight; I was only a fan of Central time solely for the more convenient television hours. Ultimately, I don’t really care where we land – I have a preference that we stay on the same time as Dubois County because of my wife’s job there, but neither of us cared enough to go to the meetings. And if it happens that we end up divided at the Martin-Dubois line, so be it; we’ll suck it up and carry on. (That’s not bad advice for those affected, incidentally. Too much to ask? Probably.)
But I have no use for people who use ignorance and apathy as an excuse, then whine – and that’s what it is: whining – when they wake up and realize that they might be adversely affected by a change. It’s as if a stranger walks up to you and tells you, “OK, I’m going to put this large, pointy stick in your ear. It will puncture your eardrum, give you vertigo and maybe even scramble your brain. Oh, and your silence equals consent!” You don’t say anything, and he indeed puts a large, pointy stick in your ear, puncturing your eardrum, giving you vertigo and maybe even scrambling your brain. You go, “Ow, that hurts!” (Or, possibly, “Arrrwuhngert!”) Seriously - what did you expect?
All told, it’s not nearly as awful a place to live as I thought it was about 10 years ago, when I used words like “backwater,” “ass-backwards,” and “Martintucky” to describe it and swore I was never coming back here to live. We’re all young and ignorant at some point in our lives, and some people carry that youth and ignorance with them well into their 70s, but I’m glad my wife and I settled down here.
That being said, the current Eastern vs. Central time zone debate – the flashpoint of which is in my little county - is a little fascinating and maddening at the same time.
A little backstory:
Martin County has been home to a naval base since World War II; about 5,000 people, both people employed directly by the federal government and contractors like myself, work within Crane’s borders, and a large number of jobs that support Crane’s work (directly, like contractors who aren’t based at Crane, and indirectly, like restaurants and gas stations) rely heavily on the base’s continued existence – annual revenue from the base is around $1 billion.
So, because we have the biggest cash cow in southern Indiana within our borders, we tend to swing a bigger stick somewhat than a economically poor, barely literate county with a population of 10,000 otherwise would … especially in the current time zone debate.
For various reasons (the “farmer’s lobby” being the main culprit, allegedly), the state of Indiana has long been a staunch opponent of Daylight Savings Time, so much that over 80 out of our 92 counties don’t observe it. During the winter months, we are on the same time as New York, Louisville and Cincinnati, but during the summer months, we are on the same time as Chicago and various points west. Confusing? I guess it could be, if you’re not used to it.
One of the things Governor Daniels promised to do when he got into office was to settle the debate once and for all – Daylight Savings Time would be instituted, come hell or high water. The only question that remained was whether the bulk of the state would be in the Eastern time zone or Central time zone.
The governor left the decision up to the individual counties, so Martin County’s commissioners held two public meetings to get a feel for what time zone we should be in. The original debate over what time zone our region should fall into sparked waves of apathy at first – around 70 people combined to attend the two meetings. Where was everyone else?
“I know I was a lazy butt who didn’t get out of the TV room to vote and just(What? Some house have a room where the occupants do nothing but … watch TV?)
assumed we’d stay on Eastern time,” said Stacy Bryant, a 23-year veteran of
Crane Division, Naval Surface Warfare Center, and a 13-year resident of Martin
County
Anyway, indifference reigned, even after the Commissioners petitioned the Department of Transportation to put Martin County on Central time. Only after the DOT handed down its decision to lump Martin in with our neighbors to the west and south in the Central time zone while keeping our eastern and northern neighbors on Eastern did it become a lightning rod issue. Various employee organizations at Crane decided to get involved, much to my chagrin.
Why the chagrin? Because it is not right – even for a 900-pound gorilla like Crane, which lies almost entirely within Martin County’s borders – for Crane’s organizations to tell the rest of Martin County what time zone it’s going to be in. You’ve got people who only work in Martin County, and otherwise don’t give a damn about the county the rest of the time, forcing a decision on those of us who *do* live and work here; I have a wife who works in Dubois County, nowhere *near* Crane, and you’re going to make the decision for her? We made our decision last year, and our decision was to move to year-round Central time. This was a Martin County decision, and Martin County’s citizens spoke about it last year, albeit rather indecisively – because Martin County otherwise has zero jurisdiction over the Crane base, and vice versa, Crane employee organizations have no right to make the decision for us.
“But it’ll be easier for the base to be on the same time as Washington D.C.,” the pro-Eastern argument goes.
Of course it will be, because none of that pesky math will be involved – adding one hour to the current time to figure out what time it is in Washington would be a bitch. Remember – a lot of the people at Crane are engineers; they have helped put together smart bombs that can track their target down to the exact millimeter from a floating battleship in the middle of the sea, hundreds of miles away. Yet, 9:15 a.m. + 1 hour = 10:15 a.m. is a concept that renders systems obsolete!
It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
(And, by that logic, the installations at Rock Island and other places in the Central time zone should also move their clocks forward one hour to be on the same time as Washington. Where do you draw the line?)
“But the bulk of the base’s employees live in counties that will be on Eastern time,” another pro-Eastern argument goes.
Is that a math question or a question of convenience? If it’s the former … math!!! If it’s the latter, life is full of inconveniences. I think it’s pretty damned inconvenient to even get up and go to work a lot of mornings. Tough.
Point is, the line was going to fall somewhere, and someone somewhere was going to be pissed off about it and/or screwed by it. Me? I don’t really have a dog in the fight; I was only a fan of Central time solely for the more convenient television hours. Ultimately, I don’t really care where we land – I have a preference that we stay on the same time as Dubois County because of my wife’s job there, but neither of us cared enough to go to the meetings. And if it happens that we end up divided at the Martin-Dubois line, so be it; we’ll suck it up and carry on. (That’s not bad advice for those affected, incidentally. Too much to ask? Probably.)
But I have no use for people who use ignorance and apathy as an excuse, then whine – and that’s what it is: whining – when they wake up and realize that they might be adversely affected by a change. It’s as if a stranger walks up to you and tells you, “OK, I’m going to put this large, pointy stick in your ear. It will puncture your eardrum, give you vertigo and maybe even scramble your brain. Oh, and your silence equals consent!” You don’t say anything, and he indeed puts a large, pointy stick in your ear, puncturing your eardrum, giving you vertigo and maybe even scrambling your brain. You go, “Ow, that hurts!” (Or, possibly, “Arrrwuhngert!”) Seriously - what did you expect?
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Winless Watch: Very Extra Special Boys Sectional Draw Edition
Before I get to my discussion about the upcoming sectional tournament, hearty congratulations go out to the Union (Modoc) Rockets, who graduated from the Winless Watch list with a resounding 89-40 win over Seton Catholic last weekend, then turned around and defeated fellow WW member Cowan on Tuesday night of this week, 50-49. In addition, Kouts also posted its first win of the year; the Mustangs defeated River Forest over the weekend, 54-38. That brings the statewide number of WW brethren to four.
The sectionals are often the marquee event on the high school athletics calendar, whether it be for basketball, football or cross-country. While winning the first round of the state tournament is old hat for some schools, for most others, a sectional title often means that your season was a success, and even a loss in your next game at the regional can’t tarnish your season. A sectional championship can make a 4-17 season an unqualified success, while the glory of an 18-2 record can be stained somewhat by a loss to a 7-13 team in the sectional round.
Due to the advent of class basketball, some might believe that a sectional championship doesn’t carry the same weight that it used to carry, since smaller schools don’t have to go through bigger schools to win a title. Phooey, I say. Yes, I miss single-class basketball, and I agree wholeheartedly with anyone who wants to go back to the single-class system, but the system is what it is right now, and you still have to win two or three games to advance to the next round. If you’re a school of hard knocks like Medora (enrollment 96), does a sectional trophy lose its luster because you had to go through schools a little closer to your size like Springs Valley (enrollment 283) and Northeast Dubois (enrollment 296) instead of larger schools like former sectional foes Seymour (enrollment 1209) and Brownstown (enrollment 565)? I can’t claim to speak for Medora, but I have a feeling I know what the answer would be.
Anyway, Medora has something to its credit that other schools – from Class A schools like Shoals and Vincennes Rivet all the way up to Class 4A schools like Hamilton Southeastern – can’t claim: a sectional trophy in its case (from the 1949 Seymour Sectional). And while the list of schools without a sectional championship to their credit shrinks by at least one or two every year, there is still plenty of seemingly-terminal sectional misery to go around.
So, who has the best shot of cutting down the nets for the very first time come next weekend? Winless Watch’s pick to break their drought will be the winner of the Borden Sectional; as I see it, it will likely come down to the host Braves and the Lanesville Eagles (the draw fell just right so that the two teams wouldn't meet until the title game). The two squads have won a grand total of zero sectional titles between them; WW predicts that Lanesville will break their winless skid and be cutting the nets next Saturday night. The Eagles go into their sectional as a prohibitive favorite, having drawn the bye in addition to carrying a glossy 18-3 record into the final weekend of play – probably the best season in school history.
All of this leaves us with the original impetus for this recurring post – the set of teams that are winless on the year. There will be at most four teams out of the 393 IHSAA basketball-playing schools who will end the regular season winless. How did the draw stack up for them?
Cannelton, as we can see from their results, has been resting its starters all season in preparation for the sectional. (After all, the girls did it – winning all of 1 game during the season before upsetting New Harmony in the sectional … only to lose by nine touchdowns to Wood Memorial in the championship.) Still, the draw was less than favorable to the Bulldogs, as they face Evansville Day School in the first game of the Wood Memorial Sectional. The Bulldogs gave the Eagles everything they could handle on January 31, but Day eked out an 80-28 win.
Howe Military drew the host school in the first round of the Fort Wayne Blackhawk Sectional. The Cadets did not face the Braves during the season, but for what it's worth, Blackhawk is building a winning tradition, as their last three seasons ended at the semistate, state championship, and semistate respectively. Though tradition can only carry a team so far, look for the Braves to start a deep run into the tournament with a convincing win over the winless Cadets. (But ultimately, they still play the games, right?)
North White faces Pioneer in the bye game next Friday night at the Tri-County Sectional. The Vikings played Pioneer on February 3 and very nearly removed themselves from the WW list, falling 43-40 to the Panthers. Consider this: if North White pulls off the mild upset, you'll have a 1-20 team playing for a sectional title - isn't Indiana high school basketball great?
Lastly, Cowan drew Union City in the first round of the Blue River Sectional. One of the Blackhawks' 18 losses thus far on the season came at the hands of Union City, 59-46 on December 29. The Indians carry a 12-8 record into the final weekend of play before the sectional.
And, if it doesn't work out for these Final Four, perhaps someone would front travel money, rent a gym in Indianapolis and have these four duke it out. (That's really not an awful idea – certainly better than the Tournament of Champions that was held during the first couple of seasons after class basketball started, where the message was, "Well, you're a champion in the sense that your season will probably still end with a loss.")
(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)
The sectionals are often the marquee event on the high school athletics calendar, whether it be for basketball, football or cross-country. While winning the first round of the state tournament is old hat for some schools, for most others, a sectional title often means that your season was a success, and even a loss in your next game at the regional can’t tarnish your season. A sectional championship can make a 4-17 season an unqualified success, while the glory of an 18-2 record can be stained somewhat by a loss to a 7-13 team in the sectional round.
Due to the advent of class basketball, some might believe that a sectional championship doesn’t carry the same weight that it used to carry, since smaller schools don’t have to go through bigger schools to win a title. Phooey, I say. Yes, I miss single-class basketball, and I agree wholeheartedly with anyone who wants to go back to the single-class system, but the system is what it is right now, and you still have to win two or three games to advance to the next round. If you’re a school of hard knocks like Medora (enrollment 96), does a sectional trophy lose its luster because you had to go through schools a little closer to your size like Springs Valley (enrollment 283) and Northeast Dubois (enrollment 296) instead of larger schools like former sectional foes Seymour (enrollment 1209) and Brownstown (enrollment 565)? I can’t claim to speak for Medora, but I have a feeling I know what the answer would be.
Anyway, Medora has something to its credit that other schools – from Class A schools like Shoals and Vincennes Rivet all the way up to Class 4A schools like Hamilton Southeastern – can’t claim: a sectional trophy in its case (from the 1949 Seymour Sectional). And while the list of schools without a sectional championship to their credit shrinks by at least one or two every year, there is still plenty of seemingly-terminal sectional misery to go around.
So, who has the best shot of cutting down the nets for the very first time come next weekend? Winless Watch’s pick to break their drought will be the winner of the Borden Sectional; as I see it, it will likely come down to the host Braves and the Lanesville Eagles (the draw fell just right so that the two teams wouldn't meet until the title game). The two squads have won a grand total of zero sectional titles between them; WW predicts that Lanesville will break their winless skid and be cutting the nets next Saturday night. The Eagles go into their sectional as a prohibitive favorite, having drawn the bye in addition to carrying a glossy 18-3 record into the final weekend of play – probably the best season in school history.
All of this leaves us with the original impetus for this recurring post – the set of teams that are winless on the year. There will be at most four teams out of the 393 IHSAA basketball-playing schools who will end the regular season winless. How did the draw stack up for them?
Cannelton, as we can see from their results, has been resting its starters all season in preparation for the sectional. (After all, the girls did it – winning all of 1 game during the season before upsetting New Harmony in the sectional … only to lose by nine touchdowns to Wood Memorial in the championship.) Still, the draw was less than favorable to the Bulldogs, as they face Evansville Day School in the first game of the Wood Memorial Sectional. The Bulldogs gave the Eagles everything they could handle on January 31, but Day eked out an 80-28 win.
Howe Military drew the host school in the first round of the Fort Wayne Blackhawk Sectional. The Cadets did not face the Braves during the season, but for what it's worth, Blackhawk is building a winning tradition, as their last three seasons ended at the semistate, state championship, and semistate respectively. Though tradition can only carry a team so far, look for the Braves to start a deep run into the tournament with a convincing win over the winless Cadets. (But ultimately, they still play the games, right?)
North White faces Pioneer in the bye game next Friday night at the Tri-County Sectional. The Vikings played Pioneer on February 3 and very nearly removed themselves from the WW list, falling 43-40 to the Panthers. Consider this: if North White pulls off the mild upset, you'll have a 1-20 team playing for a sectional title - isn't Indiana high school basketball great?
Lastly, Cowan drew Union City in the first round of the Blue River Sectional. One of the Blackhawks' 18 losses thus far on the season came at the hands of Union City, 59-46 on December 29. The Indians carry a 12-8 record into the final weekend of play before the sectional.
And, if it doesn't work out for these Final Four, perhaps someone would front travel money, rent a gym in Indianapolis and have these four duke it out. (That's really not an awful idea – certainly better than the Tournament of Champions that was held during the first couple of seasons after class basketball started, where the message was, "Well, you're a champion in the sense that your season will probably still end with a loss.")
(Special thanks, as always, to the inestimable John Harrell, whose Indiana High School Basketball site is priceless to me when putting together Winless Watch. The man should go into the Hall of Fame someday for his tireless work on compling current and recent Indiana HS hoops info.)
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
You Never Even Called Me By My Gnome
Some thoughts about David Allan Coe for no particular reason while listening to the Chris LeDoux compilation “781 Cowboy Songs” (you’ll listen till you’re saddle sore):
David Allan Coe has written some great songs in his long career, including the landmark workingman’s anthem for Johnny Paycheck, “Take This Job and Shove It,” and also sang one of the five greatest country songs ever, “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” Country radio sees DAC as tainted, though, for one of two reasons: 1) that album of X-rated songs he put out over a decade ago, or 2) the legendary tattoo of a spider on his wanger. It’s a shame, really, because he’s still out there busting his ass, making records and touring. And he's probably got a pretty good-sized cult following.
I have gotten a hold of some of the songs from “Rated X,” and really, the songcraft is just astounding. I’m not kidding! If you ignore the lyrics and just hum the melodies, you’ll find that the songs themselves are as strong as, if not stronger than, roughly 99.8 percent of what’s on country radio today. Yeah, the lyrics are a little … ahem … rough around the edges, shall we say. So? Look up “rough around the edges” in your Funk-N-Wagnalls, and if there’s any justice in this world, you’ll find a picture of David Allan Coe. But I don’t see any reason to blacklist him from country radio just because he’s not a young, pretty thing like Dierks Bentley.
But I guess because he’s not Alan Jackson, whose Dumbass Song of the Month has been a regular occurrence for about four years now, and because he doesn’t take silly catchphrases and turn them into dumbass little three-minute hits, and because he’s not really waved the flag in song after 9/11 (not that I’ve heard, anyway), and because he’s not bedding that gnome-Amazon mix Gretchen Wilson (although their offspring would be a sight to behold), then he doesn’t fit into any of the little boxes that neatly make up today’s country radio.
Now, I have nothing against Alan Jackson - it’s just that his songs seem stale as soon as they hit radio. That’s not a phenomenon specific to Alan Jackson, incidentally. For instance, there are just too many songs about dead people on country radio these days – dead parents, dead neighbors, dead siblings, dead spouses, dead soldiers, dead self - and their expiration date (pardon the unintentional pun there) passes by about the :08 mark of the first listen. I don’t doubt that the songs mean something to someone somewhere - maybe even to you, Dear Reader, and if so, I’m so sorry for your loss … but my heartstrings are just tugged out at this point, you know what I mean?
But Alan Jackson’s got nothing on Toby Keith, whose music I enjoyed up through “How Do You Like Me Now?” Then overnight, he dumbed down his songs exponentially and, not coincidentally, became Entertainer of the Year soon after. I’ve been willing to give him somewhat a pass because he backs our soldiers so wholeheartedly, but ye gods – he’s just awful anymore. “I’m gonna get drunk and be somebody”? What does that mean??? It doesn’t even make sense!
(I have a buddy who says that Gretchen Wilson is “Bedford hot.” If you’ve ever been to Bedford, you’d understand.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah – David Allan Coe.
If there were ever a David Allan Coe tribute album (encompassing the good, the bad and the ugly), these artists and groups probably would not appear on it:
Martina McBride
Charley Pride
Michael Bublé
Sleater-Kinney
Kenny Rogers
Public Enemy
Townes Van Zandt*
David Allan Coe
* - deceased
Incidentally, here is my favorite sidebar item ever from The Onion:
David Allan Coe has written some great songs in his long career, including the landmark workingman’s anthem for Johnny Paycheck, “Take This Job and Shove It,” and also sang one of the five greatest country songs ever, “You Never Even Called Me By My Name.” Country radio sees DAC as tainted, though, for one of two reasons: 1) that album of X-rated songs he put out over a decade ago, or 2) the legendary tattoo of a spider on his wanger. It’s a shame, really, because he’s still out there busting his ass, making records and touring. And he's probably got a pretty good-sized cult following.
I have gotten a hold of some of the songs from “Rated X,” and really, the songcraft is just astounding. I’m not kidding! If you ignore the lyrics and just hum the melodies, you’ll find that the songs themselves are as strong as, if not stronger than, roughly 99.8 percent of what’s on country radio today. Yeah, the lyrics are a little … ahem … rough around the edges, shall we say. So? Look up “rough around the edges” in your Funk-N-Wagnalls, and if there’s any justice in this world, you’ll find a picture of David Allan Coe. But I don’t see any reason to blacklist him from country radio just because he’s not a young, pretty thing like Dierks Bentley.
But I guess because he’s not Alan Jackson, whose Dumbass Song of the Month has been a regular occurrence for about four years now, and because he doesn’t take silly catchphrases and turn them into dumbass little three-minute hits, and because he’s not really waved the flag in song after 9/11 (not that I’ve heard, anyway), and because he’s not bedding that gnome-Amazon mix Gretchen Wilson (although their offspring would be a sight to behold), then he doesn’t fit into any of the little boxes that neatly make up today’s country radio.
Now, I have nothing against Alan Jackson - it’s just that his songs seem stale as soon as they hit radio. That’s not a phenomenon specific to Alan Jackson, incidentally. For instance, there are just too many songs about dead people on country radio these days – dead parents, dead neighbors, dead siblings, dead spouses, dead soldiers, dead self - and their expiration date (pardon the unintentional pun there) passes by about the :08 mark of the first listen. I don’t doubt that the songs mean something to someone somewhere - maybe even to you, Dear Reader, and if so, I’m so sorry for your loss … but my heartstrings are just tugged out at this point, you know what I mean?
But Alan Jackson’s got nothing on Toby Keith, whose music I enjoyed up through “How Do You Like Me Now?” Then overnight, he dumbed down his songs exponentially and, not coincidentally, became Entertainer of the Year soon after. I’ve been willing to give him somewhat a pass because he backs our soldiers so wholeheartedly, but ye gods – he’s just awful anymore. “I’m gonna get drunk and be somebody”? What does that mean??? It doesn’t even make sense!
(I have a buddy who says that Gretchen Wilson is “Bedford hot.” If you’ve ever been to Bedford, you’d understand.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah – David Allan Coe.
If there were ever a David Allan Coe tribute album (encompassing the good, the bad and the ugly), these artists and groups probably would not appear on it:
Martina McBride
Charley Pride
Michael Bublé
Sleater-Kinney
Kenny Rogers
Public Enemy
Townes Van Zandt*
David Allan Coe
* - deceased
Incidentally, here is my favorite sidebar item ever from The Onion:
More headline hilarity:
I won't even copy the headline here; I encourage you to click on this link. As you read it, remember that this is a headline in a professional newspaper - or at least, its web version. You know, where they pay to have headline writers who avoid this stuff.
Oh, and about the headline: Well, I question it too! They ought to get the SOB, whoever it is!
Oh, and about the headline: Well, I question it too! They ought to get the SOB, whoever it is!
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Shelmerdine or bust!
I'm having a hard time getting revved up for the upcoming NASCAR season; in fact, I don't see myself watching much of anything besides today's Daytona 500, the other plate races, and the Bristol and Richmond races. With Ricky Rudd's quasi-retirement and Dale Jarrett's recent mediocrity (which, incidentally, coincided with my selection of him as "my driver"), there are now fewer and fewer reasons for me to watch what was for awhile my favorite sport. The "Young Gun" (blech) I enjoy watching the most is Carl Edwards, but the sport has become so white-bread, sanitized and boring that it's no longer appointment television for me. The Good Ol' Boys ain't anymore, and they've been supplanted by media-friendly pretty-boy types who typically couldn't carry Richard Petty's helmet. They're like pop music; the edges have been rounded off, and their every word is calculated down to the last by their handlers. It's disgusting.
That being said, the best story of today's Great American Race is undoubtedly that of Kirk Shelmerdine. To come down to Daytona and still make the show in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds - bringing a two-man crew and one car to do battle with teams staffed by dozens, even hundreds of workers and multiple cars - is really what racing is all about. Here's a story about the dream-come-true nature of Shelmerdine's effort this week.
I know he's got a snowball's chance of winning today - I don't know that he's even got the equpiment to run 500 miles - but I'll still be pulling for the #27.
And - as a nice bonus - Scott Riggs missed the race. I don't know what Ray Evernham was thinking when he signed Riggs, who's shown a propensity for driving with his head in his ass. I recall well the Busch Series race a couple of years ago - at Kentucky, I believe - where he ended up sideways in the middle of the track, and in the middle of all of the traffic around him, still gunned the car around and drove off. That forever earned him the title "King of the Shitheads" in my book.
That being said, the best story of today's Great American Race is undoubtedly that of Kirk Shelmerdine. To come down to Daytona and still make the show in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds - bringing a two-man crew and one car to do battle with teams staffed by dozens, even hundreds of workers and multiple cars - is really what racing is all about. Here's a story about the dream-come-true nature of Shelmerdine's effort this week.
I know he's got a snowball's chance of winning today - I don't know that he's even got the equpiment to run 500 miles - but I'll still be pulling for the #27.
And - as a nice bonus - Scott Riggs missed the race. I don't know what Ray Evernham was thinking when he signed Riggs, who's shown a propensity for driving with his head in his ass. I recall well the Busch Series race a couple of years ago - at Kentucky, I believe - where he ended up sideways in the middle of the track, and in the middle of all of the traffic around him, still gunned the car around and drove off. That forever earned him the title "King of the Shitheads" in my book.
Caution: Old Fogey Alert
I touched upon here the difficulty I had accepting snowboarding as an Olympic sport. Those thoughts haven't changed, and if snowboarding is on during the NBC family of networks' Olympic coverage, I tend to turn away immediately to something else - if Animal Planet ran the Puppy Bowl during the Olympics like they do during the Super Bowl, I probably would have watched that instead. (For the uninitiated, the Puppy Bowl is three hours of puppies playing. That's it - just puppies playing. I believe that this year, they also had kittens playing.)
HOWEVER, thanks to the time difference between Turin (or Torino or Totino's or whatever the rightful name of the city is) and the United States, and the fact that NBC's primetime coverage of the Olympics features events that have already taken place several hours before, I was tipped off to the rather comical ending of the "women's snowboardcross" (WTF?) event on Friday.
Here's a story about the gold medal that wasn't for the Americans. Long story short, Lindsey Jacobellis had about a three-second lead in the event with about 100 meters to go when she began hot-dogging it on the next-to-last jump ... at which point, she busted her ass, tried to recover, and was passed at the final jump by her closest competitor, a Swiss rider. The video, if you happen to see it, is pretty priceless. Gold medalist Tanja Friedan began celebrating with her coach and teammates, while a mere 5 feet away, Jacobellis stood watching in shock. It is a piece of fabulous video, and I'm so happy I had the heads-up of the results so I could tape it. I hope I never accidentally tape over it, but I'm sure I will.
But that's the problem I have with the whole concept of snowboarding-as-Olympic-sport: the complete and utter disrespect and lack of etiquette shown by its participants, especially those of the American variety. Sure, I can imagine - and have seen - showboaters in other sports, and they get their comeuppance as often as not. But Jacobellis' "Hey, y'all, watch this!" moment is a microcosm of everything I hate about snowboard pollution at the Olympics.
I have a hard time accepting that "half-pipe" is a legitimate sport. Is it an athletic endeavor? Sure - it requires you to be off your hash pipe long enough to do loop-de-loos and twisty twirls and the other stunts they do. Is it a sport? Questionable, though my vote is for "no" - typically, if it requires a judge to tell me whether I won or lost, if I'm required to attain "style points," then I have a hard time considering it a sport.
"But what about gymnastics and figure skating?" you ask.
Yeah, what about them?
"Well, they use judges!"
Yeah? So?
"Aren't you being a little hypocritical?"
Yeah.
"Boxing, too, if one opponent isn't knocked out."
Shut up.
I will grant that, because it was a race instead of a judged competition, and because there is a clear winner at the end after the leader falls down to my great joy, "snowboardcross" is closer to legitimacy than any of the other Winter X sports that have invaded the Olympic movement. But I don't see myself ever truly embracing it.
The SF Chronicle article I linked above also spoke about the fact that without the snowboarders, Americans would only have won 4 medals thus far, instead of the 10 that is shown in the medal standings. I accept that Americans have been traditionally awful in winter sports, and I have no expectations of us ever sitting on top of the standings after the Winter Games are over, because we are not a nation that really loves its winter sports. But to artificially inflate the numbers with "sports" that we created reeks of ... well, it just reeks.
HOWEVER, thanks to the time difference between Turin (or Torino or Totino's or whatever the rightful name of the city is) and the United States, and the fact that NBC's primetime coverage of the Olympics features events that have already taken place several hours before, I was tipped off to the rather comical ending of the "women's snowboardcross" (WTF?) event on Friday.
Here's a story about the gold medal that wasn't for the Americans. Long story short, Lindsey Jacobellis had about a three-second lead in the event with about 100 meters to go when she began hot-dogging it on the next-to-last jump ... at which point, she busted her ass, tried to recover, and was passed at the final jump by her closest competitor, a Swiss rider. The video, if you happen to see it, is pretty priceless. Gold medalist Tanja Friedan began celebrating with her coach and teammates, while a mere 5 feet away, Jacobellis stood watching in shock. It is a piece of fabulous video, and I'm so happy I had the heads-up of the results so I could tape it. I hope I never accidentally tape over it, but I'm sure I will.
But that's the problem I have with the whole concept of snowboarding-as-Olympic-sport: the complete and utter disrespect and lack of etiquette shown by its participants, especially those of the American variety. Sure, I can imagine - and have seen - showboaters in other sports, and they get their comeuppance as often as not. But Jacobellis' "Hey, y'all, watch this!" moment is a microcosm of everything I hate about snowboard pollution at the Olympics.
I have a hard time accepting that "half-pipe" is a legitimate sport. Is it an athletic endeavor? Sure - it requires you to be off your hash pipe long enough to do loop-de-loos and twisty twirls and the other stunts they do. Is it a sport? Questionable, though my vote is for "no" - typically, if it requires a judge to tell me whether I won or lost, if I'm required to attain "style points," then I have a hard time considering it a sport.
"But what about gymnastics and figure skating?" you ask.
Yeah, what about them?
"Well, they use judges!"
Yeah? So?
"Aren't you being a little hypocritical?"
Yeah.
"Boxing, too, if one opponent isn't knocked out."
Shut up.
I will grant that, because it was a race instead of a judged competition, and because there is a clear winner at the end after the leader falls down to my great joy, "snowboardcross" is closer to legitimacy than any of the other Winter X sports that have invaded the Olympic movement. But I don't see myself ever truly embracing it.
The SF Chronicle article I linked above also spoke about the fact that without the snowboarders, Americans would only have won 4 medals thus far, instead of the 10 that is shown in the medal standings. I accept that Americans have been traditionally awful in winter sports, and I have no expectations of us ever sitting on top of the standings after the Winter Games are over, because we are not a nation that really loves its winter sports. But to artificially inflate the numbers with "sports" that we created reeks of ... well, it just reeks.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Winless Watch (Boys): Warriors, Raiders win!
This week's Boys Winless Watch sees two teams bid a fond adieu to our list. As predicted here a few weeks ago, Woodlan's Warriors punched its ticket off the list by defeating fellow WW squad Southern Wells on 2/9, 60-43. Duly inspired by that defeat, the Raiders then went out the following weekend and won on the road at Blackford, 87-77. Congrats to both teams for their removal from WW!
We're down to six teams on the boys' version of Winless Watch, and that list will become at least one fewer later this week, as Cowan and Union (Modoc) meet for the right to get off this list. In order starting with worst average margin of defeat (as of games of 2/17):
1. Cannelton (-50.3)
2. Howe Military (-36.7)
3. Union (Modoc) (-30.7)
4. North White (-29.8)
5. Cowan (-18.3)
6. Kouts (-12.2)
When you combine the fact that Cannelton's Bulldogs are scoring on average 50 fewer points per game than its opponents, and its strength of schedule according to Sagarin is 376th out of the 393 IHSAA boys teams, it appears that the Perry County school will be a runaway choice for the WW Boys Team of the Year. But there's still one week left in the season, and Springs Valley, Restoration Christian and Whitesville (Ky.) Trinity still lurk. The Blackhawks and Lions probably aren't beatable (although Cannelton did give RC all it could handle in a 99-38 defeat about 3 weeks ago), but what of Whitesville Trinity? The Lexington Herald-Leader pegs the Whitesville Trinitarians (sorry, no nickname information available) at 15th out of the 16 teams in their region, so who knows?
Personally, I'd like to think that the level of competition in Indiana is such that the weakest school in Indiana can still beat the weakest team from Kentucky, so on February 21, when the two teams lace up, we will all be Bulldogs for one night.
We're down to six teams on the boys' version of Winless Watch, and that list will become at least one fewer later this week, as Cowan and Union (Modoc) meet for the right to get off this list. In order starting with worst average margin of defeat (as of games of 2/17):
1. Cannelton (-50.3)
2. Howe Military (-36.7)
3. Union (Modoc) (-30.7)
4. North White (-29.8)
5. Cowan (-18.3)
6. Kouts (-12.2)
When you combine the fact that Cannelton's Bulldogs are scoring on average 50 fewer points per game than its opponents, and its strength of schedule according to Sagarin is 376th out of the 393 IHSAA boys teams, it appears that the Perry County school will be a runaway choice for the WW Boys Team of the Year. But there's still one week left in the season, and Springs Valley, Restoration Christian and Whitesville (Ky.) Trinity still lurk. The Blackhawks and Lions probably aren't beatable (although Cannelton did give RC all it could handle in a 99-38 defeat about 3 weeks ago), but what of Whitesville Trinity? The Lexington Herald-Leader pegs the Whitesville Trinitarians (sorry, no nickname information available) at 15th out of the 16 teams in their region, so who knows?
Personally, I'd like to think that the level of competition in Indiana is such that the weakest school in Indiana can still beat the weakest team from Kentucky, so on February 21, when the two teams lace up, we will all be Bulldogs for one night.
Winless Watch (Girls) - Final 2005-06
All six of the IHSAA girls' basketball teams who started sectional play on the Winless Watch list ended the same way. The final results (in order of margin of defeat):
1. Gary Wallace (-39.2) - an 88-point defeat at the hands of SB St. Joseph's in the final week of the regular season pushed them to the top of the list
2. Lawrence Central (-37.9)
3. Indianapolis Howe (-33.1)
4. Sheridan (-31.2)
5. Lake Station (-27.4)
6. Churubusco (-18.4)
But margin of defeat doesn't tell the whole story. Taking into account Jeff Sagarin's strength of schedule index, the Winless Watch girls team of the year is the Indianapolis Howe Hornets. The Hornets' stingers were broken this season, posting an 0-20 record against only the 334th toughest schedule in the state. Lake Station's Fighting Eagles actually had a worse strength of schedule (354th, by Sagarin's math), but were saved from WW TotY ignominy by having a narrower margin of defeat.
Lawrence Central was also strongly considered for TotY dishonors, but an almost 38-point-per-game margin of defeat is tempered somewhat by the fact that they played the 17th toughest schedule in Indiana this season, which means that they didn't load up on a schedule of Blind School, Triple Amputee Tech and Daleville. Sheridan and Churubusco, meanwhile, also had much stronger SoS numbers than Howe. (Gary Wallace was not considered, as they played only 12 games this season, which equates to little more than half a season.)
Congrats to the Lady Hornets of Indianapolis Howe - the Winless Watch 2005-06 Girls Team of the Year!
1. Gary Wallace (-39.2) - an 88-point defeat at the hands of SB St. Joseph's in the final week of the regular season pushed them to the top of the list
2. Lawrence Central (-37.9)
3. Indianapolis Howe (-33.1)
4. Sheridan (-31.2)
5. Lake Station (-27.4)
6. Churubusco (-18.4)
But margin of defeat doesn't tell the whole story. Taking into account Jeff Sagarin's strength of schedule index, the Winless Watch girls team of the year is the Indianapolis Howe Hornets. The Hornets' stingers were broken this season, posting an 0-20 record against only the 334th toughest schedule in the state. Lake Station's Fighting Eagles actually had a worse strength of schedule (354th, by Sagarin's math), but were saved from WW TotY ignominy by having a narrower margin of defeat.
Lawrence Central was also strongly considered for TotY dishonors, but an almost 38-point-per-game margin of defeat is tempered somewhat by the fact that they played the 17th toughest schedule in Indiana this season, which means that they didn't load up on a schedule of Blind School, Triple Amputee Tech and Daleville. Sheridan and Churubusco, meanwhile, also had much stronger SoS numbers than Howe. (Gary Wallace was not considered, as they played only 12 games this season, which equates to little more than half a season.)
Congrats to the Lady Hornets of Indianapolis Howe - the Winless Watch 2005-06 Girls Team of the Year!
My last words on Davis - I promise.
While I might have the column space to write a thousand flowery, poetic, gosh-we’re-sure-gonna-miss-him, so-long-good-and-faithful-servant words about the impending departure of embattled-because-he-brought-it-upon-himself IU basketball coach Mike Davis, I don’t have the inclination to do so. Personally, I hope that the door doesn’t hit his butt on the way out, but that’s neither here nor there.
I do take issue, however, with this from the Indianapolis Star’s Bob Kravitz:
He clearly had to fight some racism.
Are you serious? Can you really toss around a charge like that with absolutely zero substantiation? (I didn’t clip the quote in the wrong place or anything like that – Kravitz snuck that sentence into the end of a paragraph before moving on.)
I do hope that before he leaves, if he'd fought racism as hard as Kravitz thinks he did, Davis does offer a list of soda fountains, restaurants, water fountains, etc. in the state where he was denied service because of his race. Sorry to make light of it, but that was really an uncalled-for quote.
I don’t pretend to speak for the rest of the IU fanbase, especially since I haven’t considered myself a part of that group of people since roughly September 2000 (my bandwagon jumping during the team’s run to the NCAA title game excepted). But I think the fanbase would probably be a little bit more forgiving if he had added any banners to Assembly Hall before this recent run of mediocrity. And I think that IU’s fans, by and large, don’t care if a person is white, black, red, yellow or purple with green polkadots, as long as he can coach and put up Ws. I’ll admit that maybe we’re not the most racially progressive state, but if someone as white-bread as Rick Majerus – or even “one of us,” meaning someone from Indiana, as Coach Quixote so eloquently uttered it – had coached this team and missed the NCAA tournament the last two years while threatening to miss it again this year, you don’t think he’d be ran out of town on a rail?
Coach Oliphant then promptly goes and undoes a lot of the traditions that had been built over the last 30 years, has a modicum of success only with Bob Knight's players, and once they're out of the system, blazes a trail of mediocrity unseen in recent memory at the school. He installs a shitty pro-style offense that involves a lot of people just standing around - an affront to those of us in Indiana who appreciate good, fundamental basketball. And then, when his players that he recruited - and Coach Oliphant was an excellent recruiter, don't you recall - turn out to be unable to carry Landon Turner's jock, he places the blame squarely on the fans who are offended by the awful brand of basketball being played for them.
I don't think a Coach Oliphant (or a Coach Blab or a Coach Lindeman or a Coach D'Alosio, or Coach Zorb from the planet XY-950A) would have lasted nearly as long as Coach Quixote did.
Mike Davis got every opportunity to turn it around in Bloomington, and this was going to be the year. Instead, his team lost at Indiana State because they were outcoached, and I had a feeling that maybe the end would be sooner rather than later. Yeah, they stayed close to Duke and UConn (at home), but hell, Virginia Tech almost beat Duke at home this year, and I don't hear anyone proclaiming Seth Greenberg as a Coach of the Year candidate.
Like in a squatter's house after a flood, it'll take years to get that smell out of the basketball program. I'm just glad the process is finally starting, and I hope that IU doesn't screw it up again.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Don't cry for me, Indiana
Coach Quixote: "Don't be sad for me."
OK! Done!
Seriously, it'll be hard, but I'll give it my best. I'll try to avoid mustering any sympathy for someone who'll walk away with about $800K after all is said and done.
Perhaps we should start a fund to supplement his income.
OK! Done!
Seriously, it'll be hard, but I'll give it my best. I'll try to avoid mustering any sympathy for someone who'll walk away with about $800K after all is said and done.
Perhaps we should start a fund to supplement his income.
Rise of the Weather Robots
Had a fairly quick-yet-hellacious storm last night. I was greatly interested in spending time here addressing the Coach Quixote situation in
Meanwhile, I looked out toward to the west less than a quarter-mile and saw that the houses along the highway were well-lit. To the north less than a quarter-mile … they had electricity. About a mile to the southeast, they had electricity. But the houses on my road are on some sub-line that is constructed not from, you know, whatever it is electrical lines should be made of, but instead papier mache and velcro. It’s probably not even connected to the substation, but rather some cardboard box that has the word “substation” written on it and a picture of Reddy Kilowatt. So, we get frequent outages. Moreover, since that sub-line only serves nine houses, the electric company tends to repair first the lines that serve more people, before finally coming around to ours. It’s enough to make a man buy a generator, or move.
Even though I’m a weather geek and would love to go off chasing tornadoes someday, storms tend to petrify the hell out of me. I recall well the sick feeling I would get in my stomach when I was little every time the skies would turn threatening, and the afternoon soaps my mom watched would typically have a crawl with some garish orange font that would cover half the screen (this was back before chyron’s Great Leap Forward). Channel 10 out of Terre Haute, I recall, would break into programming with a full-screen photo of a storm cloud or a funnel cloud and the appropriate watch or warning; it would be introduced by what used to be the Emergency Broadcast System warning tone, which was a fairly high-pitched tone that ran for about 15 seconds and, at about 10 seconds in, finally wormed its way through your auditory canal and directly into your cerebellum, as if aliens from Ed Wood movies were firing their Ray Guns of Great Discomfort and Noise into the air to control the minds of the population.
The entire pastime of weather warning has been overhauled in the last decade or so. The smooth (though annoying) Emergency Broadcast System warning tone has been consigned to the ash heap of Cold War-era alert relics, replaced by something that approximates a buzzer you’d hear at a high school basketball game. If you thought the previous tone was annoying, you’ll have a field day with the new one! Three long buzzes start the warning, then a synthesized voice named Craig (or, if you live near an NWS transmitter that uses a female voice, Donna) comes on and “reads” the alert. Craig was the successor to the synthesized voice that the National Weather Service had created named Paul (who I originally thought was the product of NWS outsourcing to
Anyway, since televisions and computers tend not to work when electricity to them is cut off, I spent a good part of the last evening with Craig, hunkered down with my weather radio waiting for the storm to pass.
Hey, that sounds like a great B-movie plot: the weather radio robots decide to arise and throw off the chains that their human masters have placed upon them, band together and give people fake weather warnings. “My God – a tsunami warning? But we live in
(Maybe a C-movie.)
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Breaking: Davis out?
Fabulous news!
Now, can I start rooting for them again, or do I have to wait until after the season ends? Ahhhh, I'll sleep on it.
Now, can I start rooting for them again, or do I have to wait until after the season ends? Ahhhh, I'll sleep on it.
The Davis Follies: Day 1,793
Just a thought:
If Mike Davis cuts by about 50% the time he spends complaining about his critics/fans/media/anyone else he deems guilty of his team's underachieving this year, and takes that time and applies it to actually, you know, coaching, I imagine that IU's season could still be salvaged. (Not that I particularly care to see that outcome.)
Isn't this the same team that Davis said was his deepest and most talented? Isn't this the same team that Davis said would be able to overcome the injury to any one player on the team?
Consider this quote, from about two months after Davis' official hire as head coach:
If Mike Davis cuts by about 50% the time he spends complaining about his critics/fans/media/anyone else he deems guilty of his team's underachieving this year, and takes that time and applies it to actually, you know, coaching, I imagine that IU's season could still be salvaged. (Not that I particularly care to see that outcome.)
Isn't this the same team that Davis said was his deepest and most talented? Isn't this the same team that Davis said would be able to overcome the injury to any one player on the team?
Consider this quote, from about two months after Davis' official hire as head coach:
"What you can't control, you can't worry about. You can't control what goes on on the outside. You can control what goes on on the inside."And yet this column from the Louisville Courier-Journal's Rick Bozich states everything I wanted to say tonight. Here's a choice quote:
It's not angry fans, indifferent administrators, critical sportswriters, tough scheduling, unlucky injuries, bad officiating or aging facilities. I'll say it one more time: You've done bad work. Your teams are disorganized and uninspired. They're consistently short on grit and long on making excuses.Me too, Rick. I have nothing further to add. The prosecution rests - as does Davis' team's defense.
If you want to talk basketball, I'm ready. You win with defense. You lose with indifference to defense. Davis' players defend as if they'll get a technical foul for bending their knees.
There are 334 Division I teams. IU ranks 151st in field-goal percentage defense. I can't blame that on fans who threaten protests. I can blame that on a coach whose team shrinks from pressuring the ball.
Technical difficulties ....
Sorry that blogging has been a little light in the last week. Aside from parenting, husbanding, roadtripping with my son, and the copious amounts of overtime I've been putting in at work, I've also been trying to get my new toy - a 20GB Creative Zen Touch MP3 player - to work.
I'm no techie, so I don't know if the issue has been with the player or my computer, but I've reloaded my music library onto the player on three separate occasions, and once it gets to a certain level, usually between 3700 and 4000 songs, I get error messages for the remainder of my library. Also, when the player is loaded with that number of songs, and I hook it up to my computer to try to rip the balance of songs from, my computer essentially freezes up - Task Manager says that CPU usage is at 100%, and I can't access my player on my computer. Ugh!
Part of the issue seems to have been with Windows Media Player 10, which came with the MP3 player. On Attempt #3, I cleared all the songs manually from my player (because I was unable to do so via the jukebox function software that was installed on my computer), then did a system restore on my computer and restored it to a point previous to the purchase of the player, then did not re-install WMP 10. That seems to have helped somewhat; this time, I used MusicMatch to transfer the songs to my player, and got about 4100 out of my 4600 songs to transfer. That's the best I've been able to do, though - what of the other 500 songs that I'd like to have on my player?
All of that being said, the player itself is pretty cool, and when I'm not trying to get it to interface with my computer, I love it, and am very happy with it.
Anyone have any thoughts (besides "you should have gotten an iPod instead")?
I'm no techie, so I don't know if the issue has been with the player or my computer, but I've reloaded my music library onto the player on three separate occasions, and once it gets to a certain level, usually between 3700 and 4000 songs, I get error messages for the remainder of my library. Also, when the player is loaded with that number of songs, and I hook it up to my computer to try to rip the balance of songs from, my computer essentially freezes up - Task Manager says that CPU usage is at 100%, and I can't access my player on my computer. Ugh!
Part of the issue seems to have been with Windows Media Player 10, which came with the MP3 player. On Attempt #3, I cleared all the songs manually from my player (because I was unable to do so via the jukebox function software that was installed on my computer), then did a system restore on my computer and restored it to a point previous to the purchase of the player, then did not re-install WMP 10. That seems to have helped somewhat; this time, I used MusicMatch to transfer the songs to my player, and got about 4100 out of my 4600 songs to transfer. That's the best I've been able to do, though - what of the other 500 songs that I'd like to have on my player?
All of that being said, the player itself is pretty cool, and when I'm not trying to get it to interface with my computer, I love it, and am very happy with it.
Anyone have any thoughts (besides "you should have gotten an iPod instead")?
Judge Ito! Dan Quayle! Pee-Wee Herman! Topical humor is funny!
It's time once again for the quadrennial jokefest that ensues whenever someone witnesses for the first time (or, as is often the case, for the first time since the last Winter Olympics) the sport of curling. I can't imagine that members of the USA curling team ever get tired of their sport being a punchline - would you get tired of defending the legitimacy of whatever mindblowingly dull endeavor *you* participate in?
Here is a nicely animated website that explains the basics of curling. I still don't get it, but I don't understand the "offsides" rule in hockey, either.
Still, I'd rather watch three hours of a person pushing a stone down the ice and two people scrubbing the ice furiously in front of it than 10 minutes of the athletic endeavor that has somehow snuck its way into the Winter Games - snowboarding. Even though I wish the American team well - all of its members - I'd really prefer that the X Games crowd roll another number for the road and go back to Berkeley. But then again, that's probably just the old fogey in me.
Here is a nicely animated website that explains the basics of curling. I still don't get it, but I don't understand the "offsides" rule in hockey, either.
Still, I'd rather watch three hours of a person pushing a stone down the ice and two people scrubbing the ice furiously in front of it than 10 minutes of the athletic endeavor that has somehow snuck its way into the Winter Games - snowboarding. Even though I wish the American team well - all of its members - I'd really prefer that the X Games crowd roll another number for the road and go back to Berkeley. But then again, that's probably just the old fogey in me.
A brief foray into etymology:
The answer to my question in the first paragraph of a post below about the one skank who sings, who fell chronologically between Britney and Jessica: Christina Aguilera.
Unfortunately, the question also brought up a debate about the appropriateness of the usage of the word “skank.” Other than my NSFW postings, “skank” is somewhere near the upper limit of the filthiness of the language I will use here.
Heh. "Filthiness." Anyway:
“Skank” actually has its roots in the Latvian “sçhrënk,” which is an adjective that translates roughly to “ease of usage.” Here’s the story (I don’t have a source; this is common knowledge to anyone who’s ever taken a comparative politics course in college, which is pretty much everyone):
Many of the machines and Soviet-made products in the East, especially farm machinery, were not unlike old Rube Goldberg contraptions, mostly due to the fact that the murderous police state would make vanish anyone who didn’t look busy. Once communism fell, though, things changed, and a machine that took a 35-step process to do something as simple as sort corn could be replaced with something a little more modern. Compelled by this development, processes to "shrink the process" were starting to take hold; this was the forerunner to the “Lean” manufacturing process being implemented in companies around the world today.
In the latter part of the 20th century, once Western companies started marketing more to the former Soviet republics, the streets of
Soon, other Western consumer habits began to take hold in the former Soviet republics, from Coca-Cola and MTV to gambling and, for the purposes of this story, prostitution. Johns would frequently speak of the “sçhrënk” of the woman they spent the previous evening with.
As globalism took hold and our world started to become smaller, “sçhrënk” evolved into the word we know today as “skank,” so as to avoid confusion with the word “shrink.”
Distantly related word: the semester I took my comparative politics course at IU, I roomed with a guy who was my childhood best friend. He would refer to as "skronking" the nighttime activities he would participate in with his girlfriend. (It's a euphemism!)
Related word: when “CSI:” is on TV, I often play a game I invented called “Skanko.” It’s like bingo, except the board is a 6x6 square instead of 5x5. Whenever the character Catherine Willows whines about the sorry state of her relationship with her daughter, or when she investigates the death of a stripper, or when she looks like she has indigestion anytime the topic of Sam Braun (her father) comes up, or when she is on the TV at all, or when a commercial is on and I accidentally think of how much I despise her character, I cover a spot: S-17 … K-21 … A-43 … N-54 … K-61 … O-75 … Skanko! During any episode of "CSI:", a game of Skanko takes about 6 seconds.
Unrelated word, or even an antonym: the greatest game in the history of “The Price Is Right” - both the game show and the slot machines I often play in Tunica - is Plinko. Plinko is good, clean fun for the entire family; Skanko is not.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Crouching Tiger, Flying Dutchmen
Today's travelogue finds me and my son in the northern Knox County town of Freelandville, a spot in the road where Indiana highways 58 and 159 meet. Freelandville's claim to civic pride rests primarily on its 1941 basketball sectional championship, in which the tiny school slew the mighty Vincennes Alices, one of southern Indiana's most storied high school basketball programs. Freelandville then took the first game of the regional the following weekend, and gave eventual state champ Washington a great game for three quarters in the nightcap before falling.
At the southeast corner of the four-way stop where 159 ends at 58, I saw the Dutchman Cafe and was reminded of the old school's mascot. Such a nickname would never fly today, you know. Hofstra University shed its highly offensive "Flying Dutchmen" nickname a few years ago, replacing it with one that belittles a much smaller group: black country and western singers. I hear that at halftime of each basketball game, a Hofstra student dresses in a western shirt and chaps, straps on a guitar and sings "Kiss an Angel Good Morning." Race-baiters.
The Freelandville Dutchmen would not pass muster today, as they would be pressured to change their nickname to some blandly inoffensive abstraction, like ... Pride, for instance. Or, better yet, to some made-up noun that doesn't really connote anything, like the MLS' MetroStars. Nevermind that Freelandville was founded by Dutch, and that Dutchery evokes a great sense of pride in the locals. I think that's what this whole nickname controversy boils down to - these mascots were created out of a sense of pride and respect, which is something that those who oppose nicknames like "Braves," "Indians," etc., just don't seem to understand. It's along that line of thinking that explains why you don't see any teams called the Welfare Queens or the Meth Addicts.
Although the locals might argue otherwise, like yesterday's destination, Wheatland, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to hang around Freelandville for very long - for instance, the town has exactly one fewer gentleman's bar than Wheatland has. Son and I rolled into town from the east on 58, found a few abandoned storefronts and houses, as well as a grocery store long ago shuttered. But they have a nice website touting their town, the Freelandvillers do.
Faced with a decision to continue westward toward Carlisle and Merom on 58 or south toward Bicknell on 159, we chose the latter so we could start meandering back home.
I really enjoyed the trips I took with my son this week; I imagine that he felt less enamored with them, for usually at about an hour or so into one of these trips, just after we started heading back toward home, he'd get really fussy and eager to get out of his car seat.
But I enjoy soaking up the history of the small towns in my area, for one reason or another. I really haven't figured out why. I do, however, have a better handle on the melancholy feeling that sets in when I'm in those towns - dying often brings sadness, and the fact that a lot of small-town America is on life support also brings a certain sadness.
At the southeast corner of the four-way stop where 159 ends at 58, I saw the Dutchman Cafe and was reminded of the old school's mascot. Such a nickname would never fly today, you know. Hofstra University shed its highly offensive "Flying Dutchmen" nickname a few years ago, replacing it with one that belittles a much smaller group: black country and western singers. I hear that at halftime of each basketball game, a Hofstra student dresses in a western shirt and chaps, straps on a guitar and sings "Kiss an Angel Good Morning." Race-baiters.
The Freelandville Dutchmen would not pass muster today, as they would be pressured to change their nickname to some blandly inoffensive abstraction, like ... Pride, for instance. Or, better yet, to some made-up noun that doesn't really connote anything, like the MLS' MetroStars. Nevermind that Freelandville was founded by Dutch, and that Dutchery evokes a great sense of pride in the locals. I think that's what this whole nickname controversy boils down to - these mascots were created out of a sense of pride and respect, which is something that those who oppose nicknames like "Braves," "Indians," etc., just don't seem to understand. It's along that line of thinking that explains why you don't see any teams called the Welfare Queens or the Meth Addicts.
Although the locals might argue otherwise, like yesterday's destination, Wheatland, there wasn't a whole lot of reason to hang around Freelandville for very long - for instance, the town has exactly one fewer gentleman's bar than Wheatland has. Son and I rolled into town from the east on 58, found a few abandoned storefronts and houses, as well as a grocery store long ago shuttered. But they have a nice website touting their town, the Freelandvillers do.
Faced with a decision to continue westward toward Carlisle and Merom on 58 or south toward Bicknell on 159, we chose the latter so we could start meandering back home.
I really enjoyed the trips I took with my son this week; I imagine that he felt less enamored with them, for usually at about an hour or so into one of these trips, just after we started heading back toward home, he'd get really fussy and eager to get out of his car seat.
But I enjoy soaking up the history of the small towns in my area, for one reason or another. I really haven't figured out why. I do, however, have a better handle on the melancholy feeling that sets in when I'm in those towns - dying often brings sadness, and the fact that a lot of small-town America is on life support also brings a certain sadness.
On Wisconsin ...
As expected by anyone who pays attention to these things, IU fell tonight to Wisconsin by about 20 points. Hee. Like all other Big Ten teams, Wisconsin is my favorite team on average of twice a year.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Coyotes, pregnant strippers, school consolidation and thyme
The coyotes are out in full force tonight. I’m somewhat shocked that we even have coyotes in Bramble, as we’re not really in a remote area. Lest you confuse “coyotes” with “wolves” - wolves are more majestic, and their baying fits perfectly in that “Call of the Wild”/Zane Grey picture that many of us have of the Old West. Coyotes are, on the other hand, scroungy, nasty animals that are almost as mean as the one sales rep I worked with in Bloomington; both should be shot on sight. (Figuratively speaking on the latter, of course.) Put another way, coyotes are the (who’s the one skank that sings, the one that fell chronologically between Britney and Jessica?) of the animal world.
My wife is working split-shifts this week, leaving the house around 1am, dropping off our son at the sitter’s (who is a Saint for taking him at 1:30 am), and working from 2 until noonish. When you have a 20-month-old son, sleeping at any time other than the hours that normal people sleep can be a chore – “Why is Mommy sleeping at 4 in the afternoon? It’s play time!” he seems to be asking, and Mommy, not Daddy, is the perfect play partner at that point. To that end, after I got home from work, I put him in the truck, and we drove around for about two hours.
He’s learned a new phrase – “Beep beep!” It’s very sweet. So we spent part of the two hours beeping back and forth with one another. Then he tired of that, and spent most of the rest of the time looking around out the window at the countryside.
We ended up in Wheatland and Bruceville; boy, could Daddy tell him stories about Wheatland! It’s a small town of about 500 in Knox County, home to nothing in particular except for what sanitized speak would term a “gentleman’s bar” called the Satin Lady. The Lady is known in these parts as the Home of The Pregnant Stripper – a running in-joke that, if memory serves, undoubtedly rang true at one time. (The Satin Lady was also the site of a particularly violent lap dance I received one drunken night about 8 or 9 years ago, but I digress.)
The Satin Lady used to be on U.S. 50, which ran through the heart of Wheatland some years ago. U.S. 50 between Washington and Vincennes was eventually four-laned, and instead of also going through Wheatland like its predecessor, it bypassed around the south end of town. Somewhat appropriately, the bar sits at the end of a dead-end road where they lopped off old 50. You can still see the Lady from new 50, where the name of the bar is painted in 15-foot letters on its tin roof. Classy!
To get to Wheatland proper, you have to turn north off U.S. 50 onto Indiana 550, which is the only highway that runs through the town now. (If you pass Hindostan Falls, you’re on the wrong 550.) Once you get to the intersection of old 50 and 550, you can turn west toward the Satin Lady, or you can turn east toward the Wheatland Motel; I didn’t drive by to see if it was still in business, but the big 20-foot sign was still along the road. On what appeared to be Main Street, there’s a post office and, next to it, a mural for the Wheatland Jeeps. The brave and noble Jeep was the mascot of the old school, which passed into history when the consolidation bug hit Indiana in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the school was rolled up into the utterly charmless-sounding, although geographically correct, South Knox.
(I’ll go on the record right now as saying that school consolidation did as much as anything to kill small towns across Indiana, and if the USPS moves forward with its plan to close a lot of smaller post offices, there wouldn’t be much of a reason for a lot of those towns to exist anymore. Once its residents die off, these towns will eventually fall off the map, like so many towns in dusty West Texas that are populated only by tumbleweeds, armadillos and the rusted-out skeleton of a gas station.)
I don’t know if, in due time, my son will appreciate the history (and sometimes-charm) of small towns around here like I do; if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be the first. Beep beep.
Had an epiphany tonight. Was standing outside the house smoking, and I was looking in through the living room window, watching my wife talk on the phone and my son play on the floor. My epiphany was: “My God – is this what I would be doing if I died? Looking into the window at the family I left behind, while they sit unaware that I’m watching? How sad is that??” It was like a scene out of “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “The Sixth Sense” (or, possibly, “Ghost Whisperer,” starring Jennifer Love Hewitt’s guns and the original Amazon woman from the moon, Aisha Tyler). It was a very sad moment, really, a sad, sad kick in the pants.
It really served to be more of a wakeup call than anything: “Hey, dumbass – do you want this scene to play out for real? Then you’d better stop smoking, start eating better and get some exercise, you mancow.”
“But I drink beer only, like, once a month now. If that.”
“Ooh, gold star for you. And when you do drink beer, you get completely blotto. Your liver thanks you! Now, let’s get to the rest of it!”
Ugh. Some consciences are never happy unless I’m miserable.
Anyway, smoking. I had smoked for about 7 years before quitting cold turkey on my wife’s 30th birthday back in 2002. Never really gave it a second thought except in my dreams, when I would dream about smoking and think, “Damn, I’m off the wagon again.” One night around February of last year, I smoked in a bar during a poker game, and was back off of it again after that. Thought to myself, “This is neat. I can pick it up and put it back down again! I’m in control of my former addiction!”
Well, no, I’m not. My in-laws had a big blowout pig roast in the last part of July to celebrate their 35th anniversary/re-wedding. We bought a pack of smokes beforehand to have for the evening, and ended up smoking only about half of them. Then – and here was the fatal flaw in my “pick up/put back down” scheme – we left the rest of the pack in my truck.
The following Monday after work, I got in my truck and thought, “Wow, that was a long day, and hey, those cigarettes are just begging to be smoked.” And so I did … and it was really nice, felt really good. So I snuck around for about a week, clandestinely smoking and getting hooked – want to feel good more now!!! - without anyone else’s knowledge till I finally broke down and told my wife about it. I cut a deal with her to where I could continue smoking until school was finished. “OK!” she said.
Graduated in December. It’s now February. I’m still smoking a pack a day. I’m furious – not at Big Evil (i.e. Philip Morris et al), but at myself for ever thinking I could just start and stop smoking like it was a game of Red Light/Green Light. Thankfully, the missus hasn’t brought it back up. She knows I know, and I know that she knows I know.
How does this tie in with the rest of my epiphany? I haven’t done a lick of physical activity for several years. I eat very poorly. For many people, the act of eating a meal is an event, something grandiose and to be savored and cherished with friends. (I hate those people – “good food and good friends” and all that crap just never resonated with me, and I really have grown to resent people close to me who have lived by that credo.)
For me, food is strictly utilitarian; I tend to go for something quick and dirty and generally bad for me instead of something that takes time to prepare with healthy ingredients and all that noise. And, of course, the faster the food, the better.
As I tend to tell my wife: “I’m 31 (deleted) years old.” As such, I guess it’s time to face up to the fact that I can’t eat like a finicky 8-year-old the rest of my life. Well, I suppose I could, but that would make the rest of my life considerably shorter. (Or, I could stop smoking, start eating better, and then go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Crapshoot of the gods, you know.)
My wife is working split-shifts this week, leaving the house around 1am, dropping off our son at the sitter’s (who is a Saint for taking him at 1:30 am), and working from 2 until noonish. When you have a 20-month-old son, sleeping at any time other than the hours that normal people sleep can be a chore – “Why is Mommy sleeping at 4 in the afternoon? It’s play time!” he seems to be asking, and Mommy, not Daddy, is the perfect play partner at that point. To that end, after I got home from work, I put him in the truck, and we drove around for about two hours.
He’s learned a new phrase – “Beep beep!” It’s very sweet. So we spent part of the two hours beeping back and forth with one another. Then he tired of that, and spent most of the rest of the time looking around out the window at the countryside.
We ended up in Wheatland and Bruceville; boy, could Daddy tell him stories about Wheatland! It’s a small town of about 500 in Knox County, home to nothing in particular except for what sanitized speak would term a “gentleman’s bar” called the Satin Lady. The Lady is known in these parts as the Home of The Pregnant Stripper – a running in-joke that, if memory serves, undoubtedly rang true at one time. (The Satin Lady was also the site of a particularly violent lap dance I received one drunken night about 8 or 9 years ago, but I digress.)
The Satin Lady used to be on U.S. 50, which ran through the heart of Wheatland some years ago. U.S. 50 between Washington and Vincennes was eventually four-laned, and instead of also going through Wheatland like its predecessor, it bypassed around the south end of town. Somewhat appropriately, the bar sits at the end of a dead-end road where they lopped off old 50. You can still see the Lady from new 50, where the name of the bar is painted in 15-foot letters on its tin roof. Classy!
To get to Wheatland proper, you have to turn north off U.S. 50 onto Indiana 550, which is the only highway that runs through the town now. (If you pass Hindostan Falls, you’re on the wrong 550.) Once you get to the intersection of old 50 and 550, you can turn west toward the Satin Lady, or you can turn east toward the Wheatland Motel; I didn’t drive by to see if it was still in business, but the big 20-foot sign was still along the road. On what appeared to be Main Street, there’s a post office and, next to it, a mural for the Wheatland Jeeps. The brave and noble Jeep was the mascot of the old school, which passed into history when the consolidation bug hit Indiana in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the school was rolled up into the utterly charmless-sounding, although geographically correct, South Knox.
(I’ll go on the record right now as saying that school consolidation did as much as anything to kill small towns across Indiana, and if the USPS moves forward with its plan to close a lot of smaller post offices, there wouldn’t be much of a reason for a lot of those towns to exist anymore. Once its residents die off, these towns will eventually fall off the map, like so many towns in dusty West Texas that are populated only by tumbleweeds, armadillos and the rusted-out skeleton of a gas station.)
I don’t know if, in due time, my son will appreciate the history (and sometimes-charm) of small towns around here like I do; if he doesn’t, he wouldn’t be the first. Beep beep.
Had an epiphany tonight. Was standing outside the house smoking, and I was looking in through the living room window, watching my wife talk on the phone and my son play on the floor. My epiphany was: “My God – is this what I would be doing if I died? Looking into the window at the family I left behind, while they sit unaware that I’m watching? How sad is that??” It was like a scene out of “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “The Sixth Sense” (or, possibly, “Ghost Whisperer,” starring Jennifer Love Hewitt’s guns and the original Amazon woman from the moon, Aisha Tyler). It was a very sad moment, really, a sad, sad kick in the pants.
It really served to be more of a wakeup call than anything: “Hey, dumbass – do you want this scene to play out for real? Then you’d better stop smoking, start eating better and get some exercise, you mancow.”
“But I drink beer only, like, once a month now. If that.”
“Ooh, gold star for you. And when you do drink beer, you get completely blotto. Your liver thanks you! Now, let’s get to the rest of it!”
Ugh. Some consciences are never happy unless I’m miserable.
Anyway, smoking. I had smoked for about 7 years before quitting cold turkey on my wife’s 30th birthday back in 2002. Never really gave it a second thought except in my dreams, when I would dream about smoking and think, “Damn, I’m off the wagon again.” One night around February of last year, I smoked in a bar during a poker game, and was back off of it again after that. Thought to myself, “This is neat. I can pick it up and put it back down again! I’m in control of my former addiction!”
Well, no, I’m not. My in-laws had a big blowout pig roast in the last part of July to celebrate their 35th anniversary/re-wedding. We bought a pack of smokes beforehand to have for the evening, and ended up smoking only about half of them. Then – and here was the fatal flaw in my “pick up/put back down” scheme – we left the rest of the pack in my truck.
The following Monday after work, I got in my truck and thought, “Wow, that was a long day, and hey, those cigarettes are just begging to be smoked.” And so I did … and it was really nice, felt really good. So I snuck around for about a week, clandestinely smoking and getting hooked – want to feel good more now!!! - without anyone else’s knowledge till I finally broke down and told my wife about it. I cut a deal with her to where I could continue smoking until school was finished. “OK!” she said.
Graduated in December. It’s now February. I’m still smoking a pack a day. I’m furious – not at Big Evil (i.e. Philip Morris et al), but at myself for ever thinking I could just start and stop smoking like it was a game of Red Light/Green Light. Thankfully, the missus hasn’t brought it back up. She knows I know, and I know that she knows I know.
How does this tie in with the rest of my epiphany? I haven’t done a lick of physical activity for several years. I eat very poorly. For many people, the act of eating a meal is an event, something grandiose and to be savored and cherished with friends. (I hate those people – “good food and good friends” and all that crap just never resonated with me, and I really have grown to resent people close to me who have lived by that credo.)
For me, food is strictly utilitarian; I tend to go for something quick and dirty and generally bad for me instead of something that takes time to prepare with healthy ingredients and all that noise. And, of course, the faster the food, the better.
As I tend to tell my wife: “I’m 31 (deleted) years old.” As such, I guess it’s time to face up to the fact that I can’t eat like a finicky 8-year-old the rest of my life. Well, I suppose I could, but that would make the rest of my life considerably shorter. (Or, I could stop smoking, start eating better, and then go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Crapshoot of the gods, you know.)
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