Hoop Dreams

I'd like to talk about basketball, because if you knew me in real life that's the last thing you'd probably expect me to obsess over, sports-wise (well, that and NASCAR, golf, or hunting. Oh, and fishing, bowling, or spelunking). But, it turns out that I am kinda a hoops geek. The answer eludes me as much as it does you.

I think there's something to the dual nature of the sport (glory-hogging individuality and team-oriented selflessness) that appeals to me, or the sides of me that would be attracted to either side of that coin. Unlike in football, you can see the players mask-less and helmet-less, and unlike in baseball there's no clear hierarchy unless you're paying attention (and to be honest, I usually am not. I couldn't tell you what a point guard is in the NBA). And it's not that I even enjoy watching hoops on the telly; apart from the Finals, I can't really sit through an entire regular-season game. But put a book about the sport down in front of me, and I'm entranced from cover to cover.

Weird, huh?

Right about now, it would be appropriate to reveal that, somewhere buried in the depths of my stillborn computer, there lies a manuscript (only a few pages, nothing much beyond a few false starts) of mixed fiction/autobiography entitled "The Loneliness of the Trash-Can Basketball All-Star." If I ever get my computer fixed, or another computer, I'm not sure if I'll use the same set-up or title (because like I said, false starts). But I am quite obsessed with throwing items of trash (usually rolled-up paper towels or empty soda bottles) into trash cans in a manner that suggests Michael Jordan...if Michael Jordan were under six feet, white, kinda pudgy, and near-sighted.

My romance with basketball is not a contemporary one; not for me the Lin-sanity of last season (though I did push the "like" button on the Facebook Jeremy Lin app because I'm a sucker for online crazes). No, I prefer the hardscrabble days of West and Wilt, Russell and those eleven championship rings, and Jordan in his greatness. I've read books about all of the following, as well as Bill Simmons' simply-titled "Book of Basketball" (which I recommend as a great primer on the history of professional hoops), and books about the college game. In fact, right now I'm on a quixotic mission to track down a copy of "The Open Man," Dave DeBusschere's diary of the 1970 Knicks championship season, simply because I saw it mentioned in "When the Garden Was Eden" (an excellent book about that same Knicks team of the Seventies). I don't even have a dog in the NBA professional fight (though the idea that LeBron now has a ring with Miami is galling, to be sure).

Basketball will never be my favorite sport (baseball, which I also love to read about) or second-favorite (football, college and pro). But it is the one that, when I'm daydreaming or remembering climactic scenes from the Michael J. Fox verison of Teen Wolf, I could see myself playing, albeit minus the lycanthropic transformations mid-court. Okay, maybe a little of that sneaks in, but only after I've been fouled. Basketball on the page fascinates me as few other things do, and I'll be damned if I can explain it. But it is a beautiful game to read about, that's for sure.

Ghosts of Octoberfests Past

This weekend is the annual drinking fest/excuse to get drunk known in these here parts as "Octoberfest," which is German for "wait, we invaded Poland again? Why did we ever elect that funny-looking guy with the Chaplin moustache again?"

I do not plan to go (which is not the same thing as saying "I'm not going," because often it seems I tend to do the opposite of what I planned lately, and I'm working on that), because I have often come away from Octoberfest in the past with one of two things: an upset stomach from the questionable "German" cuisine found herewithin, or a huge sense of disappointment. It is the latter that I will address now.

For a growing boy with growing acne scars, the Octoberfest weekend seemed to offer a chance to break out of the confines of my normal, humdrum existence as "the medical oddity of the Walhalla Greater Educational System" (in that I seemed to have few friends, no game with the ladies, but plenty of pizza-reminiscent boils protruding from my face, each mini-Vesuvius tender to the touch) and perhaps become a super-stud, or at least "attractive to older girls whose boyfriends snuck them a beer." My interest in girls began to rise right as my interest in riding the rides available began to peak, though I retain a fondness to this day for the questionably-maintained "swing ride." This was a contraption that spun you around and around, rising you higher and higher until you noticed that the scary-Vietnam-Vet-looking guy who ran the machine was off on a smoke break and you'd gotten sick of the combination of fried donut holes before the ride and the repetition of Def Leppard hits during it. Good times, good vertigo-inducing times.

I spent one memorable (in a bad way) Octoberfest stuck til closing hours because the woman who was my friends' and mine ride (no, not like that; she was kinda gross looking) was busy chatting up potential serial killers who wanted a ride (yes, now I mean it like that). Another memorable (in a bad way) Octoberfest was when I drank some of the watered-down swill they sold in the tent and I realized that I'm a cheap drunk. Okay, maybe that was a good development, but it wasn't so much for my sister, who gave me a ride home and tried to cover up my drunkeness from my grands. Epic fail.

But I do have good memories, where the possibility of bliss lasted long before the eventual pin-prick of reality let all the air out of that balloon. Strangely, my favorite memory doesn't involved a failed attempt to score a hottie; one year, at the height of the Barney craze, some poor soul thought they'd dress up as the purple dinosaur to entertain the kids. My friend Chris and I were not kids, but we did have water pistols. We shot Barney a couple of times, made some kids cry. I'm not proud of it, but I actually look back on it now with whimsy. I can say that I assassinated Barney in a sense. Going up on the resume now.

But alas, most of my memories of Octoberfest (like the one immediately after my drunken one, where I went in the hope of running into yet another unobtainable beauty and came up snake-eyes) are ones of "meh." After you stop being a kid but aren't old enough to drink, it can be a post-childhood hell of mistaken signals and misheard directions that mean she will *not* be joining you in the Beer Tent after all. When you can drink but choose not to, and teenagers annoy the hell out of you, it's just about going there so the kids that you're uncle/cousin to can have a good time, and they went last night without me. So no, I don't plan on attending. Besides, the one girl I'd want to run into there isn't going to be there. She's in Greenville now. So no Octoberfest for me, bitches. At least, I don't *think* so...

33 1/3

This past week, I observed my birthday by leaving work early (with their consent; when you leave early and don't tell anyone, it tends to piss them off), and lighted out for the territory between darkness and light, between civilization and madness, between good and less good (evil is too strong a term), between all that is wonderful and luminous and all that is cast in shadow and likely an alien looking to munch on your entrails when you turn around the corner. In other words, I went to Anderson.

My adventures there began with a stop at a record store where I bought a used copy of the Grateful Dead's greatest hits. Truth be told, I've never bought into the myth of the Dead, travelling caravans full of nake hippie chicks or no. Interminable live jamming has never appealed to me as something to either listen to or sit through, and so when I want something by the Dead, I want the studio records, which have some truly beautiful songs that I can enjoy without an endless guitar-and-woodwind solo or two. Then I proceeded to a used bookstore there that I frequent often (and which I will abstain from identifying here). While looking at the sci-fi section (someplace I'd never usually venture, but I'd been thinking about giving Ray Bradbury a try), I kept on walking down the aisle past the paranormal until I was confronted with a shelf I wouldn't have expected: erotica.

Erotica? In Anderson, South Carolina?

Just to be sure, I perused a few pages of each and every volume to be sure it was just as disgusting and degenerate as I thought it must be from the lurid cover photos and saucy descriptions on the back cover. Yes indeed, this was filth of the second-highest order (not quite Cinemax-after-Dark filthy, but you get the idea). I was shocked (shocked!) to find that there was gambling going on at this establishment, in other words.

No, I did not buy any...but funny story: On the way out of town (after visiting the mall at two in the afternoon and being reminded of a zombie movie with the absence of sentient beings in any of the shops), I ran into smut yet again. Not twice, but thrice!

Another bookstore that I frequent (and again, shall remain nameless) called to me, and I decided to look at the slim nonfiction section they had. Wouldn't you know that, when I turned around from considering a Bill Bryson book, I came across yet another "erotica" section (though they labeled it "steamy romance," because good Southern Baptists don't read erotica)! Once again, I checked to make sure these were as filthy as I thought they'd be (we have to protect the children!) and left in a huff. Well, if you can be said to "huff" by picking something off the nonfiction shelf, purchasing it, and thanking the pleasant lady behind the counter.

But wait, there's more: in a thirft store I stopped at in West Union (!), do you know what I found lurking in amongst the Republican diet books and John Gray self-help manuals. Yes, smut! Vintage Seventies smut, at that (the kind where the guy has a moustache and a Camero, in that order). For some reason, I think the people working there don't actually bother to see what books someone brings in for donation, because West Union is full of good church-going folk (all two of 'em). Apparently I had a nose for smut that day, as well as the hands to pick it up and flip the pages, the eyes to see and comprehend the words, and the class to put the books back after deciding that no good hiding place would suffice in my abode in which I could keep them from innocent eyes. For shame, America!

I blame Obama....

Chipper Jones and The One-Game Playoff of Doom

Last weekend, I saw my little sister all grown up, getting married to the father of her baby, and (with a modicum of family drama) get through a wedding day that she deserved. She's still the little baby who spit up on me the first time I held here, twenty-four years or so ago. But I still say she did that on purpose...

And now I look forward to a milestone all my own; in a few days (Tuesday, actually...don't know why I'm being so vague about it) I will be thirty-three years old. Jesus started his ministry at thirty-three; I'm not that ambitious. Plus, I don't have twelve close guy friends who would listen to me even if I formed a philosophy based around basic respect for every human being regardless of their "standing" in society. They'd just grab another beer and see if the Panthers can get the point-spread.

Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they're missing by not being Giants fans...

Thirty-three is an age that doesn't necessarily have to mean anything (the ones like thirty, forty, fifty, and so on, get all the press), but I do want it to mean something, just for me. I'm well aware that I tend to stand in my own damn way when it comes to achieving things that I want to achieve. For instance, I have long dreamed of becoming intergalactic bounty hunter Boba Fett, but rare is the time when I've actually tried to do anything about it. This year, I'm finally getting that live-sized replica of the Slave I I've had my eye on.

I've always had the vague notion of writing for a living (see as evidence "blog, this one"), but maybe now would be a good time to really buckle down (sans my own PC, as it were, but still) and give it a real try. If anyone knows of a newspaper that needs a crotchety thirty-three-year-old, let me know. I used to write for a pop-culture weekly, and it was the most fun I've had in a while.

Anyway, I would like to try harder this year, unless the Mayans were right and the world ends on December 21. I'm sure Fox News will somehow blame that on Obama.

Let's ask a Mayan...

Cardaphobia

This week I got an early birthday present, in the form of yet another card I don't need, from a gas station I tend to stop at early in the morning to get my prerequisite soda and healthy breakfast snack (usually it's one of the two green sodas, Mello Yello or Mountain Dew, and a packet of Lance crackers. Coronary at 33 sounds likely). I took it not to be rude and say "no, my wallet is full of useless discount cards already!" But my wallet is in fact full of useless cards already.

When did discount cards become the new thing to unload on regular patrons at a business? If the discounts actually saved you money right then and there (as opposed to "racking up points in the near-future, after the Great Dragon Apocalypse of 2017 has rendered life above ground perilous for humanity and thus you really don't need to drive to work today"), it would be okay. And yes, the few cents I save with some cards does make me feel better about being such a cheap, cheap bastard.

Sometime while I was busy reading Gravity's Rainbow for fun, extreme couponing became all the rage, and not just with seniors who are afraid that a black man in a white house will take away all their pills (or have a robot attack them, for my fellow Classic SNL fans out there). Saving money is the new spending money, but extreme. If anyone needs to save money, it has two thumbs and is this guy. But still, when I need a card to save a penny on some Bandaids at CVS, something is wrong with America.

My Best Buy credit card died a while back because I didn't use it much, and now they've sent me a new one, extending my credit. For what purpose other than to engorge me on flatscreen TVs and 3-D DVD players, I know not; my relationship with technology is a bit like Andy Rooney's was with eyebrow trimmers. But the card is active, and there are all those One Direction CDs coming along...plus the DVD/t-shirt combo for "Best of Kenny Loggins: Live at Red Rocks." I mean, c'mon...it's Kenny Goddam Motherfucking Loggins, for Christ's sake.

My debit card is about the only piece of plastic that always comes through in a pinch, though sometimes that pinch becomes a bite on my rear end. Plastic cards will be the death of America, I say, a plot by the Illuminati, the Nazis, the Chinese, the Better Business Bureau, the GOP, the FBI, the CIA, and AARP working together to rob us blind.

Perhaps I've been sipping too much Go-Go Juice...

Suck It, Zuckerberg

I just finished The Boy Kings by Katherine Losse, a former insider at Facebook, and it helps confirm a belief that I've had ever since seeing The Social Network: Mark Zuckerberg and his helpers are exactly the sort of people who would start a social-networking site, because they lack the real-life skills to actually make social connections in real life.

Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I think the cold, utilitarian mode of the website doesn't leave much room for human interactions, and for a long time I was cool with that. Because, cavet emptor, I'm exactly the sort of person who would be attracted to a website that keeps people at arm's (or computer screen's) length, even if I see them in real life.

My own Facebook story goes back to 2006, when I was starting back at college and everyone at Clemson was asking me if I was on Facebook. I had a MySpace account because, for the years when I wasn't seemingly moving in any forward motion towards a life of my own, it seemed like I would be left behind in the rush to become something, and I was insecure enough to think that an online profile, however miniscule, was preferable to no online identity at all. You can be anything you want to be online, the internet seems to promise, taking the place of traveling roadside elixir salesmen in talking up the tonic that is online communication. It's just a click away.

So I joined Facebook and haven't looked back...except when I have, and wondered what I became.

Facebook in those days was more user-friendly (sorry, but Timeline is shit. Absolute horrific horseshit, and reading Losse's book confirms for me the belief that Zuckerberg et al. don't give a crap what we as users think about it), and I used it alright. I sent friend requests to people I barely knew from some English class where we might have one social interaction tops, whilst discussing Wuthering Heights. But online, we could become "friends," which meant something (though I don't know if any of us ever knew just what). We could write on each other's walls (my inner comedian could be released full bore on display for the world), send messages if something more private needed to be said, and God help me I poked poor girls to death when that was still a thing (is it? I haven't poked in ages, and don't intend to start back now). But I don't know that it really solved the existential loneliness I felt at both being part of the circle and being apart from it. I didn't live on campus, and I had a job, so my weekends and "free time" were not my own. In those early days, Facebook more often than not made me feel less of a loser because, while I didn't have the time or resources to hang out as much in real life with my friends, I could still stay "connected" to them, revel in the same Beer Pong photos as they did, and it was okay.

Facebook, to be fair, is not evil; no technology is, unless the person using it does so for evil purposes. But it does facilitate something that the internet is infamous for, the sense (however real or imagined) that actions don't have consequences. You can poke someone, the internet says, and they might respond, but it doesn't mean that it has to mean anything (unless you're flirting online, then it's loaded with all sorts of meaning). The internet is meant to be a conduit for communication, but the extent to which we let it replace real-time, face-to-face (as opposed to Facebook-to-Facebook) interaction says a lot about us individually. There have been times when I thought nothing of sending a post to someone that could be misconstrued, or read wrong (I have a sarcastic sense of humor, something which can get lost nuance-wise in the cold, digital display of the spoken word), and there have been times when I thought that Facebook told me more about a person than he or she (usually she, because like every guy I've tried to friend-request girls I liked, and most of the time they accepted, and this led to me imagining all sorts of things that weren't there because it was easier to write on their wall than talk to them in person) said to me. Facebook enables that part of us that's afraid of rejection, that wants to be loved without doing the hard work of connecting for real.

Now, to be fair, I don't intend to delete my Facebook account anytime soon: for one thing, I do have honest-to-God connections with real people that I know in real life but don't get to see anymore, and in that sense social networking really is social. Keeping up with someone's life might still creep me out a little bit (or appeal to the creepy part of me, whatever), but for people who were or are important to me whom I don't get to see for "real," it comes in handy. And while I've never met A.J. Jacobs or Will Leitch or any of the other famous people who accepted me as a "friend," I admire their work and hope that, maybe, in the course of my chosen desire to write for a living (I was interested in sharing myself that way long before social networking came along), I can field friend requests from people who read something I wrote, liked it enough to seek me out, and merely want to show that they like my style (without being prone to breaking into my home at three in the morning because they think we're "soul mates"). The internet still works in making me feel less lonely, less disconnected from the real world (i.e., anything that's not Walhalla). But I'm more careful about it.

I tend to spend less than an hour online every weekday, checking emails in case something important happens (usually not; like you, I get all kinds of spam promising a larger penis. How did they know that I had that problem?). I spend maybe five seconds checking my Facebook if someone posted on my wall or sent me a message, a few minutes more thinking up a witty saying or real-life emotion to do as a status update (as of this writing, and due to a week of listening to Talking Heads, it's a song quote), and maybe gaze longingly at pictures of my niece, who is one of the best things to come into my life in a while (there are a few others, but I won't name them here). I'm good with a few minutes spent there, and yes I'll post this link to my wall, so other people can find it and read it at their discretion. I don't worry so much about "dying unappreciated" as I did when I was younger and more pretentious. But I do still want to see a book with my name in the author's place someday, fiction or non-fiction (or both, as all the anti-Obama books seem to me). So after saying all that about Facebook, I'm gonna post this to it anyway. Humans are contradictory animals, something that I don't think Zuckerberg and the techno-geeks can fathom. You can't solve us with a mathematical formula; we just are. So suck it, Zuckerberg, for creating this addictive and now-essential tool that we all use, even when we hate ourselves for using it.

Jesus Christ: The Greatest Pro of All

I took that title from a line in Walker Percy's Love In the Ruins, which I bought a few weeks back and read over a couple of days this weekend. Hooray for putting things off until you don't!

Anywho, I have TV again...or at least more variety. Allow me to elaborate at length:

At the tail end of the TV season last May, a thunderstorm came along and knocked out a significant chunk of my channels. This was no problem initially because, as I said, the season proper was winding down, and summer reruns and summer "shows that didn't make the schedule during the regular season" were all I really seemed to miss out on. I could still get in a few channels here and there, and I had my reading to keep me occupied. I was good.

Until about last week, when I'd finally had enough. I'd had enough of not getting in channels that I liked just because they were pleasant background noise to my reading or napping (PBS's block of home-improvement shows are far less glittering, but they get the job done). I'd had enough of not getting to watch ESPN for at least a fix of "Sports Center" because it was one of the channels that went in and out. But mostly, I was tired of being stuck with the History Channel as the one that came in the best (of the ones that came in), and because the last time it had anything "historical" on it, Clinton was in the White House.

If you spend enough time watching the History Channel (and God knows I have, perhaps way too much), you begin to think that every workplace has "hijinks" and "kooky characters" who exist solely as a conduit through which the audience can enjoy themselves (though not because they feel better about themselves in comparison, which explains the sadomasochistic appeal of "Toddlers and Tiaras" and the entire block of MTV programming). When you know that "Couting Cars" is the auto expert guy from "Pawn Stars," it's only a matter of time before the go-to gun expert at the shop gets his own show.

God help us all.

Anyway, I'd like to go further, but I only have so long on the computer I'm on, so I gotta wrap it up. No TV: live-able, but barely once the fall season begins. Read more. Avoid TLC. That is all.