Little League and sports haikus

My nephew, who plays for the all-star team of the same Lubbock Little League I played in growing up, was in Fort Worth over the weekend for a state tournament.

Will plays multiple positions for the Southwest All-Stars, and my brother is one of the team coaches. (Added note: This team is coached by the sons of and includes two grandsons of two former Texas Tech baseball coaches, my Dad and Larry Hays. Kinda neat.)

Will at the bat.

It’s been too long since I went to a Little League game. I had a great time. The teams playing at this level – even if they are 9 and 10 year olds -- are playing some good quality ball. Plus, you get a great seat and things move slowly enough that you can keep track of things. I like going to Rangers games, but the cost is stupid and the distance I have to sit away from the action means I spend most of my time making estimates as to what just happened.

Sam and Dad calculate batting averages and time to diaper change.

Good ole Southwest finished second, which is nothing to sniff at; but there was some serious disappointment when they lost their final game. Still, it was fun to see the family and watch my nephew play. And with some luck and work, there’s always next year.

I remember that time in my life – when there was always next year. Sigh.

Sports related haikus
(At this point, a few words more than suffice.)

The Cowboys
Romo? Whatever.
The old boss is the same boss,
bad Botox or not.

The state of the NFL
Now Michael Vick can
stop torturing his doggies
and start hurting fans.

The BCS
The stadiums fill.
Excitement runs high, and then
Everybody whines.

The Rangers
I am sorry, but
my belief circuitry has
been fried to a crisp.

On Tech’s chances
I’m sure we’ll do good.
But it won’t be as awesome.
Success breeds boredom.

On the University of Texas
Mack
Brown
Dumb.

Swimming?

It's kinda hard to take pictures of your kid's swimming lesson, when you have to deal with a body conscious Mama and the problems of shooting on a cloudy day across a pool.

Also, Sam hasn't quite learned how to always look for the camera and smile yet. (Let's hope he never does.)

Anyway, the boy is taking lessons at the nearby YMCA. It's not like they teach toddlers how to do the butterfly. It's more learning about how to be in water and get used to it. I have my doubts about the overall usefulness of said course. It's not like the boy is going to tell us how much he learned. On the other hand, it's special together time with at least one parent, and you hope he gets a chance to get used to being around other kids. If not the water.


Sam and Meredith enter the YMCA, Sam decked out in his hat, swim shirt, swim trunks and Croc shoes. Did I mention it was a cloudy day? Meredith applied sunscreen once we got poolside.

Me and my wife have had several conversations about Sam's "red" crocs. As they seem to be more mauve. My wife insists she bought them out of the boys' section. It was Todd who pointed out that it's not the color, so much as the fact that he's a boy, and he's wearing Crocs.

Ah well, for a 22-month-old, practicality overrules all.

The swim lessons are fairly basic and unstructured. The kids get in the pool, splash with their legs, splash with their feet, and then work through various aspects of being in water -- jumping in, going under, etc.

The lesson begins.


And we work on the floating on the back.

There is generally one moment of the lesson where the kids are brought along further than they were the day before. On Thursday, this was the instant the children were all dunked -- very quickly -- under water and brought back up. It was as if eight crying and screaming spigots were all turned on at once.

Still, Sam obviously enjoyed himself, splashing all over the place and making his noises. I guess I'm a normal enough parent as I just enjoyed the chance to watch.

Geek update: Game of Thrones

Weird how I note something one day and there's news on the subject the next day. On second thought, it's not weird. It just shows how far behind I am.

Anyway, Sean Bean, has been cast to play the "lead" in Game of Thrones, the upcoming HBO series based on A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series I was talking about two posts back.

The books revolve around a battle among seven kingdoms and between two ruling families for control of the Iron Throne, the possession that ensures survival through a 40-year winter to come.

Bean will play Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, known for his sense of honor and justice, who becomes closest adviser to King Robert (Addy).

Ummm, not exactly, but I won't spoil it for you.

Bean played Boromir in Lord of the Rings, and has otherwise made a career of playing determined men with antique weapons and impractical uniforms. Naturally, I'm a fan.

Cat-hat

I take it as a good thing that Sam has been so enthusiastic about getting a book read to him. A couple of weeks back, Meredith checked out a catalog of Dr. Seuss classics from the library, and the boy became even more enthusiastic about reading.

Brutally enthusiastic. Sam now lets us know it's storytime by bringing us a book and chanting "read! read! read!" -- while punching us in the face with said book to make sure we get the idea.

I can't say why he likes Seuss. The stories are far more complicated than the books he already has, and I can't really believe Sam understands what's going on. I guess the pictures and the rhyming and the expressions are easy for him to enjoy.

For me, it's a trip through some stories I'd almost forgot. Before this month, I couldn't have told you what happened in The Cat in the Hat, except what I vaguely remembered from the movie. Now I could tell you that the story seems to be an exploration of a child's conflicting need to behave and to act independently.

I was curious enough after reading it for the 50th time to see if I could locate the original film on YouTube. All I found was a clip. It's easy to see why the cartoon hasn't stayed with us. A Charlie Brown Christmas has a timeless message with iconic music. The Cat in the Hat comes off like a cheap variety show.

Memories from a place I've never seen; notes

It must be getting late into the travel season, if the Star-Telegram is running travel stories on small-town apple orchards near Idalou, Texas.

Still the Apple Country Hi Plains Orchards seems to be a place with plenty of charm:

“Many customers use the backdrop of the low-hanging, red, green or slightly pink apple-covered trees as a photo opportunity for their children. Giggles and laughter are heard through the rows of trees as pickers compare and contrast their harvests with others, some sampling their take along the way and providing on-the-spot reviews, all good reports.”

I grew up in Lubbock, went on dozens of road trips that took through Idalou, and up until I read the story, I had no idea that this place existed.

Still I remembered times when I was small, when my Mom would put me in the station wagon and we’d drive out to nearby farm, where the owners allowed you to pick your own share of the crop. Mom would get a basket of green beans, take them home, pick off the ends and can them. At the time, I thought it was maybe the most boring process in the world.

For a couple of anniversary gifts, my Dad bought Mom fruit trees for the backyard. I recall the apples and pears always being too small and too picked over by birds, squirrels and insects to be of much use.

In time I’ve come to realize how ignorant I am of the basics of gardening. It seems there used to be a cultural expectation that you’d be able to plant a rudimentary green space and be able to talk about the health of your tomatoes.

We get further and further away from the agricultural roots we all used to have. Now, gardening seems primarily about mowing and edging the lawn. I notice some people get way into it, acquiring a huge amount of information and putting together yards the way Star Trek geeks learn Klingon.

But the general, practical knowledge that every adult used to have – I think that’s left us.


Arguing with the movie-rental rack
It’s probably a bad idea to try to pick out a comedy from Blockbuster when you’re in a bad mood. Last night, scanning the new releases, it occurred to me that 99 percent of what the entertainment industry offers is mind-dissolving garbage.

Yes, I already knew this and generally, I don’t care, but for some reason it became aggravating how these people -- screaming or looking surprised and hot – on the DVD box covers so often get off telling you how you should live your life.

Do we allow the members of any other occupational group get away with that? “Hi, I’m underworked, overpaid, and the proud owner of a disastrous social life that would destroy anyone making under $250,000 a year. Also, my work consists of either fluff or toxic fluff. So be like me.”

Actors should be the most humble group of people on earth. Anyway, we rented “Tropic Thunder,” which, being a vicious and hilarious satire on Hollywood, lightened my mood nicely.


Surrounded by haters

Meredith: Dan Fogelberg? Really?

Sandy: Yeah. "The leader of the band is tired. His eyes are growing old." You have a problem with that?

Meredith: Fogelberg? He’s just, you know, limp.

Sheesh, I have a problem picking the non-mockable side of the argument lately.


Waiting for a geek moment
Last night, after enjoying my Fogelberg moment (suckas), I plowed through the last three chapters of A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin. It’s his fourth book in his Fire and Ice series, which I think is the greatest work in fantasy* since Lord of the Rings. (With a thanks to Tom for his recommendation.)

The end of the book features a chapter from the next in the series, and advertises a 2006 publishing date. So I go to the library web site to order a copy of A Dance With Dragons, and discover nada.

Figuring the book might be published under a different name, I head to Wikipedia, and discover that – dang it all – three years later, Martin is still writing the book.

Part of me is angry that he can’t get his act together and that he’s obviously been distracted by all the attention the series has generated and an attempt to get a TV show going on HBO.

On the other hand, I think back to the Lord of the Rings movies, and how Return of the King became a disorganized, overlong mess that missed the mark more often than not** because Peter Jackson obviously felt too much pressure to finish on time.

Martin has written his fans that the book will be published when they’re good and ready. So fine.

The thing is, he still has three novels to go, he’s over 60, and he doesn’t look like he’s in the greatest of shape. I can only hope he doesn’t pull a Robert Jordan on us.

*I highly recommend the books, but you should be warned that Martin often writes like a 12 year old with a disturbingly large collection of Soldier of Fortune and nudie mags.

**For example, they took that “We all bow to you” thing straight out of Mulan -- Mulan! – for God’s sakes.

Rock on. Softly

So what does it mean if it's 2 a.m. on Saturday night, you can't sleep, and you find yourself digging up Dan Fogelberg hits on YouTube?



It means you have awesome taste in music, yo.

I loves me some BCS

Update: As this post led to a spirited discussion on Facebook, I'm adding my final argument there to the bottom of this in an attempt to clarify my point.

I don't want to sit through another season of teeth-gnashing and urgent moral outrage, but I realize I have to, after reading this first shot in the annual mock battle. I think the primary reason we keep arguing about this is because sports columnists often can't come up with an original idea before deadline:

On top of today's Star-Telegram sports section:

Designations are at heart of what's wrong with the BCS
The current BCS system is flawed because it shapes the prejudices against non-automatic qualifiers

(No words scream "read me" like "designations" and "non-automatic qualifiers.")

So, as everyone prepares to dig out and dust off the "BCS UNFAIR!!!" talisman from their complaint box in the storage shed, I'd like to post my yearly "SO FREAKIN' WHAT!!!" statement and get it over and done with.

I spent three days trying to write this, and then realized I was far too bored with the subject to even gather up the motivation for a full-on essay. Here are the points I wanted to make, in a much shorter fashion:

• College football's bowl system manages to pull off what no other sport does -- massive amounts of interest in the regular season and massive amounts of interest in the postseason. I hear people talking all the time about how great the NHL playoffs are. Yeah, only in contrast to the regular NHL season, which no one even bothers paying attention to.
  
• Because every game in the college football season is critical, you end up with great stories like Appalachian State beating Michigan, which give great people like Jerry Moore a couple of weeks of celebrity that they otherwise wouldn't get. In a college playoff system, that game gets swept under the rug and people only talk about how Michigan's seeding will be affected.
• The quality of any playoff system would be infinitely corruptible. I point to the current state of Texas high school football. We now have two tiers of playoffs -- for big schools and small schools -- at the six-man level. We're talking about schools that have 10 people in their senior class being put in a higher tier than schools with eight people in their senior class. We've opened up the playoffs so much that schools that go 2-8 get into the postseason all the time. It makes no freakin' sense, other than giving people the ability to say they made it to the playoffs.
• People know that controversy is good for the game. I'll end with a bit from the Wall Street Journal, quoting the man who created the AP college football poll:

The point is that rankings were never about fairness or producing a clear-cut winner. They were about creating what fans need most: something to argue about. Before he died, the AP sports editor who created its famous poll, Alan Gould, explained it this way: "It was a case of thinking up ideas to develop interest and controversy between football Saturdays. . . . That's all I had in mind, something to keep the pot boiling. Sports then was living off controversy, opinion, whatever. This was just another exercise in hoopla."

From Facebook:

Here's the deal: Right now, we have a system that provides for a great, intense regular season and gives us plenty of post-season drama and great traditional bowl games. However, the argument is this system has to be destroyed because of this sense that we MUST have an undisputed national champion, and the ONLY WAY to do so is to have a playoff.

That makes the perfect the enemy of the good. First off, you suck away the interest from the regular season (I.E. basketball.) Second, it puts too much faith in the playoff process. Does the best overall team always win in a playoff? Of course not. It has far more to do with who's matched up with who -- basically, luck.

I think the system will eventually recognize a Utah, given time and continued success. And yeah, if I'm a guy from Tulane, I'm probably going to spend the rest of my life going on about "we could of been champs." But that's a lot better to say than, "Oh yeah, remember how Florida stomped us in the first round?" Which would be the final result, 99 out of 100 times.

Hamburger fight

This was on the Today Show last week, and included the proprietor of my favorite restaurant on earth, Tom Perini of Perini Ranch Steakhouse.

The funny bit is that the first two cooks try to do something really exotic with their burgers, whereas Perini's idea of exotic is to add green chilis.

(Kind of like how he makes hominy, with chilis and cheese and bacon bits ... hgggghhgh slobber.)

Anyway, I'd eat any of the burgers, and it's a decent bit that moves quickly. And of course, Bruno pops up at the end.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I've never had a Perini burger. I don't know if I could bring myself to drive two hours, 30 minutes and then order a burger.

Funny restaurant names, ha ha.

Here's a link to a site called Oddee that I'd never heard of but that seems to exist to post lists. I can't vouch for the overall quality, but this one on eateries was pretty good. I should warn the very easily offended that the majority of these names comes from Asian restaurants whose owners were probably unaware of the puns they were posting in neon. Also, No. 1 is a letdown.


So go ahead and click, if you have the velleity.

Old dog poem

Last fall, I took a creative writing class at Tarrant County College -- I suppose because I wanted to have more challenges than just writing the reacting-to-reality stuff that I post here, and because in the back of my mind I'm never giving up on getting a graduate degree in English, regardless of the number of decades it'll take.

Our teacher recommended I turn in a few bits I wrote to the TCC literary mag. This included a couple of poems and a short story. Since the short story was much more important to me, it was, of course, not published.

Meanwhile, both of poems made it in, which is funny to me, considering the amount of scorn I place on modern popular poetry. (I.E., I don't get how any medium so dead can attract that much pretentiousness.)

Anyway, I didn't try to do anything fancy with what I wrote, just do something I feel strongly about and keep things in a concrete world.

Hence, in one poem I wrote about a dog and Hico. I feel slightly bashful about posting it here, but not bashful enough to not make a little movie out of it. Click on it if you wish.

A new, one-scene play entitled, "Stupid freakin' bookstore"

Me: Plop 1,200-page precalculus tome on counter. Look expectantly at clerk.

Clerk: Looks at book. Scans bar code. "Hmmm ..."

Me: Monologue to audience. "@?&%&!$&!!"

Clerk: Scans bar code again. Looks at computer again. "They're coming out with a new edition in the fall. I can't buy this back."

Me: "So I get nothing on a book I had to pay full price* for. Y'all weren't selling used versions six weeks ago."

Clerk: "I'm sorry."

Me: Monologue to heaven. "But it's precalculus! Exactly what do they have to update? They haven't come up with anything new since the 1800s! I lose everything because they want to put in more pictures of Yoda? Why!"

Sigh.

Walking off, mumbling. "This "A" was dearly bought."

*$189