Posted in Uncategorized on December 28, 2010 by Mike
For the past, oh, nine years (and three years before my time in Arizona), I’ve played on a city-league softball team. The team formed when I was in grad school, and was comprised of a bunch of English grad students. We may not have fielded the best teams, but we had the most clever team names (“Fielder’s Indifference” was a personal favorite). Don’t get me wrong, we were competitive in our Thursday night D league, but I played because I liked hanging out with those guys. After games we’d sit around drinking Miller Lite in the parking lot, talking about literature and dissertations and profs until the lights at the park were turned off. Yeah, we were geeks.
Of course, being a team of grad students we lost members regularly to scheduling conflicts and graduation. I left for Arizona with my wife where we stayed for two years, and when I came back to College Station I found the team still active, but with a completely new set of faces, minus two or three guys who were still working on their PhD s. Still, I kept playing, fall, spring and summer. I’ve played every position regularly except first base and catcher, mostly without incident. I did, however, manage to break my nose six years ago playing third base when a grounder took a bad bounce, leading to a trip to the emergency room. My wife was non-plussed.
For the past three years I’ve been the pitcher for the teams (we also have a co-ed team), but now the team is not an English department team; in fact there are only three guys who have ties to the department. But that’s not the reason I’m hanging up my cleats. This past fall wore on me. I’ve been team manager for the past couple of seasons, and between getting money from the team members (some of whom I didn’t know before they stepped onto the field for the first game) and trying to make sure we had enough guys each week, which has been a real chore for the past two seasons, softball has ceased being fun and been more of a hassle. And maybe it’s just the fact that I’ve been the “old man” on the team for the past five years, but the “jerk” factor on opposing teams has ballooned considerably. Most teams we’ve been playing against these past couple of seasons have been mouthy bastards, it seems.
While still competitive, we haven’t really been a team so much as a collection of individuals for which Thursday night softball is convenient. Many of the players go their separate ways after the games and while there’s still drinking in the parking lot, it’s a small, irregular group, and I’m only able to stay occasionally. Wives, kids, and jobs take precedence among us. There are a couple guys I’ll miss seeing on Thursday nights, though outside of softball I don’t see anyone on the team regularly. But I don’t know that I’m going to miss the game all that much.
And that’s the best reason I can give for my retirement from softball.
Posted in Uncategorized on December 24, 2010 by Mike
I’m not too big on resolutions (another chance for failure), but I’m making one now: this blog is going to see regular updates. I’m aiming for three times a week.
…seems to be our admin’s policy these days. Not to complain too much here, but the admin. has lately made a few decisions regarding the daily running of the school that have been relatively unpopular among the staff.
I’m not too upset about the lesson plans they have us submit each week – I (now) think that lesson plans can be valuable, though I often find myself diverging from them by the end of the week due to the fluid nature of English lectures/discussions. If I (or the students) want to spend more time discussing a particular idea about The Tempest, I should have that ability to adjust the schedule. It happens, and, without sounding arrogant, I hope, it happens all the time in “good” classrooms.
But then there’s the attendance issue. We take attendance on the computer, which involves clicking “PRE” or “U” beside each student’s name. We USED to have an “ALL PRESENT” button, but the admin. took it away b/c some teachers weren’t taking time to actually take roll (which blows my mind, honestly – HEY, IT’S PART OF YOUR JOB), which resulted in some students being counted present for two weeks when, in fact, they had never set foot on campus. So we’re all being punished for that.
The admin. also decided that all classes should have a minimum number of grades by the time three week reports come around and then a min. number of grades when the six weeks ends. They decided upon 5 and 12, respectively. Four of those have to be major, er, excuse me, “academic achievement” grades (another decision by the admin to change the terminology) as opposed to “academic practice” grades (once known as daily grades). It doesn’t work too well for English classes because we like to have our students write, and grading writing in a meaningful way takes time. It also doesn’t help that the six weeks periods this semester are actually “five point two” weeks due to a desire to have finals completed before Christmas. Less time, more grading. Yay.
Another decision made by the admin. concerns their attempts to curtail fighting at our school (it seems it’s a problem this year, though I don’t recall as many fights in previous years compared to the numbers that we’ve had this year). The admin. has attempted to bribe the student body with off-campus lunch if we have no fights for a certain number of days (I think it’s 30 – a fight resets the countdown). Hasn’t happened yet – I think the longest fightless span we’ve had is eight days (could be wrong here). Something about the futility of not thinking about a blue-eyed polar bear occurs to me at this point.
Of course, like many school districts, we have a “zero tolerance” policy w/ regard to drugs and weapons. However, this policy often leads to ridiculousness extremes, as evidenced by a kid who brought a toy gun to school and was expelled for a year, and another nine year old girl who brought a small swiss army knife with her sewing kit (for the scissors) and was narc-ed on by a little boy who will probably go dateless through high school. Zero tolerance allows for no room/trust for a teacher’s discretion, allowing legal liability to commandeer common sense.
The point – that I’m admittedly incredibly slow in getting to – is this, raised beautifully by my classroom neighbor and fellow newspaper advisor: “If we are expected to differentiate and modify and motivate the unmotivated so that a ‘one size fits all’ education in our classes isn’t acceptable, why doesn’t the administration have this same standard for themselves?”
…and we’ve spent the past day looking around the house for it. She seems to think that our 4 year old daughter got a hold of the ring while in the bathtub, and perhaps it’s now down the drain. Still we’re turning the house upside down looking for it.
She had to leave to help out with the Wienerfest this morning, but when she left she said she’d be “extremely grateful” if I could find the ring.
Posted in Uncategorized on September 14, 2010 by Mike
…on my way to work the other day. The driver in the Suburban ahead of me had tapped her brakes before going through the light so I had already slowed down on approaching the intersection and, seeing that I’d be going through an early red if I gunned it, decided to stop.
That’s when driver in the truck behind me honked his horn. I crane my head around to take a look and see Mr. Patience raising in his arms in frustration. I was not the bigger man – I mouthed a few choice comments his way and then turned back to wait for the green light.
Of course, as I make the turn and drive onward, the driver of the truck decides he has to roar down the road in the left lane to pass me. But there’s a red light not even a quarter mile later so he has to stop and wait…again…while I drive past him to take a right turn.
As I passed him I rolled down my window and proceeded to send some sarcastic comments his way – to my credit I did NOT flip him off.
There are times that I really hate people. One of these days someone is going to catch me on a very bad day at exactly the wrong time and his bad day will begin.
Yeah, I know, “almost” meeting a band seems kind of pathetic. But here’s the story…
These are the guys I almost had a beer with
Anthrax has been my favorite band, oh, since I was 15. I’m not going to try to explain why, as I think someone trying to explain why a band connects with him or her is ultimately a tedious exercise, but suffice to say I think I saw/heard a lot of my personality through their music. They had a fuckin’ sense of humor about themselves, and I appreciated that. They read comics and Stephen King, as I did, and their guitarist at the time, Danny Spitz, used a guitar emblazoned with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – the original Eastman and Laird depictions, not the bastardized children’s cartoon versions. Fuckin’ cool, IMO…
I had this poster up in my room...no, I didn't date in high school, why?
Anyway, I lived through the ups and downs of the band over the next twenty plus years, even going so far as joining the Anthrax Fan Club sometime after turning 30 (don’t judge – I’m loyal to a fault). The website, as fan club sites are wont to do, posted updates about the goings-on of the members, and it was here that I learned that their drummer, Charlie Benante, collected action figures, just like me. Yeah, sure, he was the drummer of one of the legendary “Big Four” metal bands, but I used this as evidence against my wife’s claims that she had “married a geek.”
Early in my collecting career I was only buying the Lord of the Rings figures that came out with the Peter Jackson films (today…eh, it’s best I don’t get into that right now). I still have most of them in their original boxes, unopened – largely because I have no place to display them – but I do have the “Fellowship” figures displayed in my classroom. So that meant I had another set of the Fellowship still in their boxes.
The Fellowship of the Ring figures. I sent my duplicates of Aragorn and Frodo to Charlie.
OK, back to Anthrax. One day a message comes up on the website that Charlie was looking for a couple figures for his LotR collection, namely a Frodo and an Aragorn. He joked around a bit about how he knew it was geeky (damn you, Charlie!), but it was better than wasting his money on drugs (the band has always had a reputation for NOT doing drugs). He then asked if anyone out there had those figures and offered Anthrax “swag” in exchange for them.
Damn right I was on that.
I emailed the guy who was running the website (“Brent”, I think) that I had the figures, and almost immediately (maybe a day later), Charlie is emailing me about what I’d want for the figures. Now, I was thinking a set of signed drumsticks (though I don’t have a drum set nor any real musical inclination), but then I emailed my twin about an idea I had – I wondered if I could get the chance to meet Charlie/have a beer with him next time they went on tour and came to Dallas? I didn’t want to push it – I had visions of Charlie suddenly thinking he had some sort of weirdo emailing him – but my brother encouraged me to go ahead and ask – all Charlie could really do is laugh and say “nice try – how about a pair of signed drumsticks?” So I emailed my idea, telling him how I’d like to buy him a beer. He had posted a message a few weeks before, a “Blast-Beat”, talking about how important it was to stay in touch with your musical roots, and I’m pretty sure I mentioned that Anthrax was part of my “roots.”
Here’s where it got very fucking cool – Charlie agreed. He even said he’d get me and a couple guys into the show in exchange for mailing the figures to him. I don’t recall that I asked for “backstage access” or anything like that, but Charlie agreed to get us in the door. I emailed my brother with the news and was the fuckin’ man for the next few months: “Your dedication to being a geek has finally paid off!”
Later that year Anthrax came through Dallas on a small club tour. I had emailed Charlie a few times between when I sent the figures his way and the concert date – I’m not going to exaggerate things, it was largely me asking some questions about the band and his experiences with him giving some quick replies, though I did get a longer, more passionate email from him after I asked him about the Great White concert that ended up killing 100 fans because of the pyrotechnics the band used in the small club. He was pissed at the carelessness shown. But the emails were few because I didn’t want to be “that guy”, though I have to admit it was pretty cool to have Charlie’s email address.
I’ll also admit I was nervous about the arrangements – who knew if the band would communicate with the club to get us in? I was going on faith, I suppose. And if I wasn’t “on the list” then what did I do but hand over a couple figures worth about $20 total for nothing. We got to the club and waited in line for a bit, shooting the shit with a couple other guys there.
Then the doors opened, and I went up to the woman taking the money and told her I should be on the list. She looked at me like I was full of shit, and then walked away for a bit to where I couldn’t see her and came back with a piece of paper in her hands. “What’s your name?” she asked. I told her and she scanned down the paper and said, “Yep, go on in”, with what seemed to me a bit of resentment in her voice. The guys behind us called us back and said they had to hear how I accomplished that, so I quickly told the story of the Lord of the Rings figures – they were impressed.
The show started off with some local band who tried to get the crowd going but couldn’t overcome the apathy. They closed with Metallica’s “Seek and Destroy”, though, so they left the stage on a high-note. I seem to recall a second band being scheduled to come on before Anthrax, but there was apparently some cluster in the scheduling and were no -shows. Anthrax came on with their fairly standard “Blues Brothers” music moving into “Among the Living” and the show was on. By the way, “Among the Living” kicks ass – you need to listen to it again:
Anthrax puts on a damn good show, no matter the size of the venue. Frank Bello, the bassist, has a presence on stage that’ll make you think he’s playing for you individually the whole damn show. John Bush, the singer at the time, knew how to work the crowd, too. So after about an hour and half/two hours of moshing and head-thrashing later, the place cleared out and the lights came on, and the techs started disassembling the stage.
The band members moved immediately to their bus and we’re left there hanging out, drinking the last of our beers, and I’m wondering if I’m supposed to go back and hang outside the bus and wait. I should also mention this: Dimebag Darrell made an appearance after the show and I saw him getting on board the bus with Anthrax. We decide to go outside with some other fans and see what happens, but after about five minutes of that, my brother turns to me and says, “You know what, we got in for free to a fuckin’ Anthrax show – that’s good enough for me. We’re 32 and don’t need to be waiting outside a tour bus.” I agreed and we walked back to the car, got in, and left.
Yeah, a bit anticlimactic, to be sure. But there’s a bit more.
On my drive back home from Dallas I texted Charlie’s email address thanking him for the tix and such. Charlie texted back saying sorry he missed us, telling me that he did have somebody look for us after the show, but apparently the meet-up just didn’t happen. Again, though, how much can I complain?
My brother and I and a couple other guys have pit tickets to the upcoming “American Carnage” tour featuring Slayer, Megadeth, and, yep, Anthrax. I’m tempted to pull out Charlie’s email address (one I’m not sure he still uses) and see if he might be willing to have that beer.
… put on by Wizards of the Coast, the company responsible for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game and legions of fantasy novels that occupy the shelves of your local bookstores. This particular contest was a chance for an unpublished writer to tackle a novel revolving around a particular god/goddess in the pantheon of the Forgotten Realms (and I figure most of the people reading this are now rolling their eyes – yes, we’re talking hard-core geekdom here – but in case this doesn’t turn you away I’m providing some links for the uninitiated); in this case it was a goddess named Loviatar, maiden of pain.
Now, I hadn’t played D&D since junior high, but I had been reading a few of the Forgotten Realms novels (particularly the Drizzt Do’Urden novels written by R.A. Salvatore), and had been playing variousvideo gamesset in the realm (plus I stayed at a Holiday Inn…), so I decided to give it a shot. I spent that summer cooped up in my high school classroom – I would teach summer school each day and then spend a couple hours working on my 10 page sample and plot outline.
I was in heaven.
Don’t get me wrong: because I knew very little about the Forgotten Realms/Faerun, I spent quite a bit of time (and money) reading the various D&D books educating myself about the world and the key figures there. The research was oftentimes a pain in the ass because WotC (reasonably) expected its authors to know their history and be familiar with the major events of the fiction set there. I was hopelessly behind the curve. But writing that sample, creating that storyline was intoxicating – I loved the process, and by the time I finished my sample I thought I had a puncher’s chance to at least get noticed by the editorial board over at Wizards of the Coast.
The rejection letter came about three months later.
I console myself a bit by telling myself that, judging by some of the message boards I lurked at where other posters who had submitted their entries had received rejection letters early on, my own rejection came later suggesting that perhaps my entry made an early cut. Of course, the rejection letter itself doesn’t say that, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Another point I pride myself on is that I actually submitted the sample – I could have started it and left it for dead once I realized just how much I didn’t know, but, in what to me is actually a startling exception to my normal pattern of “get good idea, get distracted and move on to something else”, I followed through. And I’ll also say this: I still have the sample, and I still like reading what I’ve written; again, normally not the case. Sure, there are some changes I would make, but I still think it’s an engaging, intense read.
My brother and a couple others who I asked to proof the sample have on occasion asked me if I’m ever going to finish it. Right now I’m toying with the idea of doing so on this blog, though I fear the whole “start it, not finish it” if I do commence to serializing it. Another problem is that last year I got rid of all those damn manuals and books detailing the realm, so I’d have to either start looking at Wikipedia to refresh my memory or just wing it, and not worry so much about getting it right as far as Faerun is concerned. The latter option appeals to me. We’ll see what happens…
…here are the songs that ran through my ipod while doing so:
“Fucking Hostile” – Pantera (not the best running song, particularly at the beginning of the run – might have to take that one out)
“Whatever” – Godsmack (you know, the edited radio version takes away something from this song…oh yeah, the f-bomb)
“Houses of the Holy” – LZ (really got me going when Plant started wailing “Said there ain’t no use in crying…”)
“Medicine Train” – The Cult (Sonic Temple’s one of the best rock albums out there – underrated song on the album known for “Sun King” and “Fire Woman”
“Falling to Pieces” – Faith No More (this one’s been on my iPod since I was training for my half-marathon; still like hearing it while running)
“Turning American” – The Wildhearts (the bridge to the chorus about killed me as I was near the end of my route and it’s damn heavy. Here, listen for yourself:)
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved raccoons. Don’t have the foggiest idea when this began, just know that from a very early age I would check out books from the library about them and constantly pester my parents about getting one for a pet. May have had something to do with rumors that my dad had had one when he was young, but also I’d attribute it to Rascal, a non-fiction account about, yep, a boy and his pet raccoon.
Anyway, when I was about 13 or 14 I got my chance: a neighbor of my best friend growing up (Mike) had a litter of raccoons fall through his ceiling and the mother took off. Mike and I each paid I think $50 for a kit (Mike shared the same fascination with raccoons); I selected a male and he took a female. We had grand plans of mating them later on and selling the kits (though I don’t think it was particularly legal to own a wild raccoon in suburban Dallas).
I named him Kipper. Again, don’t know why, perhaps because the name mimicked the chittering sounds raccoons make. He stayed in the house until we (read: my dad) built a large cage for him in the backyard; it had a few thick branches/logs set up within so Kipper could climb and a small box/den set up in one of the corners so he could sleep during the days. After Kipper was released the cage would become home to a flight of doves my dad kept (I was never quite sure why he wanted those doves, either).
Kipper was a fun pet for a time – he was definitely unique in the neighborhood. He would play with our spaniel, Three (her name’s another story), when he was young, much to the dog’s consternation, and he loved to ride on people’s shoulders. We fed him dog food and bananas and, to appeal to his hunting instincts, we would occasionally dump 5 or 6 “feeder” goldfish in his half-barrel water dish. He would perch on the rim of that plastic tub and put his paws in the water, grabbing those fish and chomping them down, his poofed ring-tail held straight out for balance. I would spend afternoons petting him and carrying him through the house, but raccoons are not affectionate like dogs or even cats – he would sniff and occasionally lick my hand, but he was not the type of pet to pine for attention.
In the meantime, though, Mike’s female had bitten a friend of his and the friend’s parents worried about rabies, so his raccoon had to be put down to test for the disease (negative, of course). I had Kipper for about a year or so, maybe two. The beginning of the end came one night when I went out to feed him his supper. When I entered the cage, Kipper darted down the branch from his den and attacked my leg – I mean he bit the shit out of my calf. I still have the scar from those nasty canines. I was able to shake him off and slip out the cage, but I was ready to get rid of him at that point. My dad, however, held off on that decision until Kipper attacked him a couple nights later and bit him on the head. We packed him up in my dad’s truck the next weekend and dad drove him out to a hunting lease, releasing him by a tank with a pile of dog food and a heap of bananas. I try to imagine the disappointment he must have felt when he realized banana trees don’t exist in central Texas. But I’m sure he lived a nice long life.
I’ve always figured Kipper’s aggressiveness came from his reaching sexual maturity, and obviously having no outlet for that. But it’s also a lesson to me that wild animals should not be kept as pets, no matter how much love for the animal you might have. I have fond memories of Kipper, but that night he bit me dominates them, sadly.
This past week a couple brought in a baby raccoon to my wife’s clinic – it had been attacked by dogs and had a broken jaw and leg. I was able to go in and hold it for a bit – they had named it ‘Radar’ (I suppose that works) – and it brought back some memories of Kipper. I was also able to introduce Radar to my older daughter, who now tells me that she loves raccoons.
1) I’m now in the mood to play some golf – haven’t picked up my clubs in about a year or so, but now being out on the links looks appealing. I need to find someone to play with who isn’t that good, though.
2) This past issue of Amazing Spider-Man, which began the “Grim Hunt” story-line (Kraven the Hunter is coming back from the dead – yeah, I know, what took them so long?) raised the religion/God issue in the Marvel Universe again. Kraven’s children are leading a black-magic ceremony to raise Kraven from the grave and it requires the sacrifice of another “spider” character; in this case it’s one of the Spider-Womans (the 90s version, proving once again that all things 90s are expendable). The interesting thing about this scene is that Electro, a long-time Spider-Man foe, is there and expresses some misgivings about being part of the ceremony before going through with it (“I believe in God, and this nonsense…”). Also, the Spider-Woman in question, just before she is stabbed through the heart while on the altar, recites the Catholic Hail Mary.
It’s odd to me whenever writers attempt to address Christianity (or any other real religion for that matter) in the Marvel Universe – I mean, this is a universe where Greek and Norse gods roam the streets. How does this fit into the religious practices of everyday Marvel universe people? You go to church to pray to God and outside there goes Thor, god of Thunder, off to do battle with Annihilus or some other super villain. That HAS to screw with your sense of who/what God is. I’ve seen it explained that the populations don’t necessarily buy into the idea that Thor is THE Thor (merely someone who has that kind of power) or Hercules is THAT Hercules, but still…how does one pray to a relatively distant God when there are god-like beings on the news every night?
3) It’s Father’s Day, one of those made-up holidays that serve no real purpose but to increase Hallmark’s bottom line. I don’t need the holiday to tell me I’m appreciated as a father…
The Lower Frequencies 