Life Lesson #237: Read a $*# %@&^ Book!

My mother read to me when I was young. I don’t particularly remember any of those stories, especially not the plot lines, etc. But I do remember sitting with her, listening to her, watching the words on the page and observing the illustrations. I also partly remember one: a brown, hardbound book called the “The Wind in the Willows.” - I don’t remember the story at all but it had some great gloss pages and beautiful, and also creepy, illustrations.

Journalists, academics (in particular, psychologists (in particular particulars, developmental psychologists (I could go on))) have had things to say about this, I can’t quote them or paraphrase, because I haven’t actually done my due research here. Meh, it’s Sunday. But, if I did read them, I’m positive the research would support the following hypothesis: reading to your kid gives him/her special powers. There it is. Pure science, well probably, backing me up. The academics won’t let me in their gates right now so I can’t verify this, something about membership dues - unjust taxation I say!

So yes, I have super powers. It is nothing on the level of say, Gambit or Scott Summers (aka, Cyclops), but it is simply this: curiosity. All kidding aside, being read to develops the brain while instilling a fundamental requirement to exist in our societies: language. It is through language that we learn to navigate our social world, it is the machine by which a society’s culture is maintained, the currency upon which society operates. It makes, records, preserves and transcends our history, our mark upon the abyss. Anyway..

A recent random Facebook conversation generated from one participant the question: What can you get from a book that you can’t get from television/film?

“Books vs. Movies: The False Dichotomy” - that could be the title (they have to have a colon, it’s a rule) of an academic paper that argues: what can you get from a book? Something different than what you get from film of any kind. A book requires a lot from the reader, more than is required from a viewer of film. In film, most of the heavy lifting is done for you, it is more passive in nature. - Film is an art of its own with it’s differing levels of class and grade. - But a book requires the reader’s engagement and participation. Above all it requires their imagination. And when one engages their imagination, it opens up doors; curiosity is an addiction, for the more doors that are opened the more you want to open.

For children books a powerful vehicle of language, second only to the spoken word. They can be a powerful exercise of the mind, getting certain parts in the brain in shape while it is developing. For adults, books can represent maintenance and perhaps a certain level of brain building (scientists?). Reading Shakespeare is like doing sit-ups strung upside down with your feet shackled to a pull-up bar. While watching the movie version of Romeo & Juliet (the one with Leo and guns) is like strapping one of those ab shocker devices to yourself and sitting on the couch: you want the same effect, you just aren't going to get it.

Get to the point, dude: my mother read to me, I then continued to read books on my own from the time I first could until today. Fiction, non-fiction, academic, philosophy, classics, novels, whatever looks good and opens a door I’m curious about. It’s a life lesson that contributed to who I am, who I developed into as a person. As always, thanks Mom.

I like books. I like to talk about books. I like to hang out with other people who like books and like to talk about books. As such, the following random facts, beliefs and characteristics concerning my relationship and experience with books is undoubtedly biased:

~Every book I have ever read, at some point or at many points throughout reading it, I have smelled it. I have a categorization of book smells.

~Astronomer, astrophysicist, author and science popularizer Carl Sagan said this: “I think the health of our civilization, the depth of our awareness about the underpinnings of our culture and our concern for the future can all be tested by how well we support our libraries.” - from Cosmos. I couldn't agree more.

~During my college years at UND, I would walk the shelve-aisles at the absolutely wonderful Chester Fritz library and randomly pull books from the shelves, read bits and pieces, and put them back. Wandering those aisles with all that collective knowledge and in places absolute genius is both awakening/enlightening and humbling.

~I usually buy cheaper paperback versions because I have a tendency to really USE my books. They get thrown around, beaten up, and written in. I also have a tendency to swear at the authors of some of these books in the margins. Just because you read something doesn't mean you have to agree with it and just because you don’t agree with it doesn't mean you should stop reading it.

My point of this blog is essentially over. Read a god damn book! But if you wanna hang around a little longer, here are some things I've read over the years that I particularly enjoyed:

“I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural born thief.” - On The Road by Jack Kerouac

“Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessing of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.” Candide by Voltaire.

“Society provides us with warm, reasonably comfortable caves, in which we can huddle with our fellows, beating on the drums that drown out the howling hyenas of the surrounding darkness. ‘Ecstasy’ is the act of stepping outside the caves, alone, to face the night.” - Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective

“I believe that every man represents humanity. We are different as to intelligence, health, talents. Yet we are all one. We are all saints and sinners, adults and children, and no one is anybody’s superior or judge. We have been awakened with the Buddha, we have all been crucified with Christ, and we have killed and robbed with Genghis Khan, Stalin, and Hitler.” Beyond the Chains of Illusion by Erich Fromm

“Leasure is the mother of Philosophy; and Common-wealth, the mother of Peace, and Leasure. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

“There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to give some of it away to imaginary things.” Human, all too Human by Friedrich Nietzsche

“Once someone says what do I care? about the affairs of state, the state should be considered lost.” On the Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Happy Reading!
-Mike

A Responsible Steve Harvey

The nice thing about telling myself that I have to write a new blog at least once a week is that I tend to do a few more things during the week/weekend then I use to do. I’ve always been one to try and seize the day a bit but whereas I use to be in a situation and think that maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t…now I think, it would be better for the blog if I just did it. So yeah, this blog has taken over my life and has now become the devil sitting on my shoulder…but it has also served as the angel too.

If you look back through our blogs you’ll read some of mine that are all about going out, partying and overall making some terrible decisions, but you’ll also read a lot of my blogs where I’m talking about how awesome the kids on my bus are and the things that I’ve tried to have them create for me and my attempt at just getting them to enjoy their childhood and live each moment to its fullest.

So I think that I have a pretty balanced life. There’s definitely quite a bit of craziness in it, but I have been forced into many responsible roles as well and I also enjoy those too. I’d like to just think that when given an opportunity to do something different, or something creative that I certainly take the opportunity to do it.

Which brings me to one of the main thing I wanted to blog about this week…

I would first like to apologize to anyone who received a bunch of texts from me featuring pictures of Steve Harvey. I blame a friend of mine who brought this little gimmick to my attention:

 

I obviously didn’t find anything too odd about the random pictures of Mr. Harvey, especially coming from this buddy of mine, he’s a bit off but I think that’s probably why we’re such good friends…really, he’s more like a brother than a friend! But after a while I got a notification from twitter saying that I had been mentioned in a tweet. After a little research I found this:

I quickly started to follow “A Responsible Man” and pretty soon my whole time line was filled with retweets of the conversations others were having doing this same thing. Most of the time I would have just thought it was kind of funny and then moved on with my life…but I thought to myself, I wonder how many people I can get with this, and also…that may make for a good blog!

So I started texting people. Some were probably like me with my friend and didn’t think anything of it coming from me and after several texts, they still didn’t mention anything. I have to tell you, trying to get a reaction from people by doing something like this and not getting any return is very disheartening…but then something magical happened:

Josh’s Conversation

By the end of this conversation I was feeling pretty bad…yet couldn’t stop laughing, and showing people. But then I woke up the next morning and just continued doing the same thing. Here’s the conversation I had with another one of my friends who I was going to go have dinner with and see their baby:

Kristen’s Conversation

 

 

 

So now I no longer have any friends…which is something I find myself ending these blogs with more and more often…I guess I’ll always have Steve Harvey.

You Only Get One Chance at Being a Kid

So this is life…the only one we get apparently, so we better make the most out of our time here.

I was recently having a conversation with a high school student on my bus and she had brought up that she was thinking about quitting the sport that she plays so that she can work instead. I know she has a really hard working family and I know that there are a million things out there that everyone thinks they need, and most of these things are obtained through purchasing them with money earned by work…but sometimes I think we forget that the best things in life are truly free. They’re not things at all, but experiences and time spent with people doing things…anything can be fun if you have the right combination of people, even if it’s just you.

So I told this girl my standard response when I hear that someone is thinking about quitting a sport, or any other extra-curricular activity…

Some of my greatest friends when I was a kid use to play sports with me, in fact, they were some of the best pure athletes that we had in our class. They worked hard at being good, but they had all the basic athletic talent to start with that so often makes a good athlete a great one. But then, something happened. For some reason they decided to quit sports. It may have been that they wanted to make some money, or that they didn’t like the coach harping on them, or whatever. The point is they quit, and I didn’t.

I have a very diverse group of friends, I like to think that I can be friends with anyone and I try to be. I like the diversity because every different person brings something new to a situation and to the little time I have on this planet. But in high school, you get busy with school, sports, work, and hopefully family. The time you have left over is generally spent hanging out with the people you spend a lot of time sharing common interests with, such as sports. The friends I had that quit playing ended up spending their time with the people that didn’t play sports and all too often these kids ended up getting themselves into trouble…and stayed there.

Now I’m not going to say that athletes don’t know how to get themselves into trouble, it’s really quite the opposite of that. I spent most of my high school career getting myself into trouble, but there is also a stigma that goes along with being an athlete, especially in a small town. The whole town may know what you’re up to, but a small community likes to see their high school teams do well, and they’re willing to look the other way every now and then to keep the teams players on the court/field/etc. It’s sad but true. But whereas I may have had the occasional cocktail or two while in high school, my former friends started hanging out with rougher and rougher crowds, not just getting into alcohol but drugs as well. One thing led to another and before long these kids were pegged as “losers” and once that gets put into your head, it’s hard to get it out.

Basketball and Football kept me out of trouble in high school for one reason or another. They also helped me to at least pass my classes because I wanted to stay eligible to play sports. I was by no means the greatest student that my school has ever seen. I lacked motivation in the classroom and I’d like to say it was because everything just came so easy to me, but mainly it was because I simply lacked motivation. I think that I am a pretty smart guy, but a really smart guy would have spent more time working on school, getting a scholarship and getting his college paid for!

Which kind of brings me back to this student I was talking about. I think she has a really good head on her shoulders and wants to have money so that she can attend college, and really be able to live independently someday, which is something I think most of us were shooting for in high school. But here’s what I told her, and what I hope she really holds onto from our conversation: “You only get one chance to be a kid.”

Pretty simple, and we’ve all heard it a million times…but looking back, do you think you really accomplished it? Do you think you got the most out of your time?

Personally, I think I did. I believe I had a pretty decent balance with everything that went on in my life and had a hell of a time doing it. I got to play sports and learned discipline and team work. I spent oodles of time with my family and although it wasn’t always the cool thing to do, I’ll cherish that time more than anything else I did. I also was introduced to organized religion through the Catholic Faith (not for me), got a basic education which eventually laid the groundwork for me to continue into college and helped me to develop a thirst for knowledge that has never been quenched…even if it didn’t appear until after my first attempt at college turned into a 24 hour party…for 5 years. I also have a very distinct moment in high school where I grew a backbone and stood up for something I believed in. The experience wasn’t a great one as it ostracized me from most of my class for most of my senior year, but I stood up for what I thought was right and it’s something that I have an easier and easier time doing as I get older. It started in high school at a moment when I decided that what I was doing might not be popular but it was what was right.

It has all been part of my education, my life lessons if you will, and I attribute most of it to my parents letting me become the person I was destined to one day be. Am I all they hoped for? More than likely not, but I’m me and nobody else can fill the role!

So if you take anything from this blog, I hope it’s not, live your life with no regrets, or anything cheesy like that. Everyone has regrets. You can call them mistakes or lessons or whatever, but you’re only lying to yourself…they’re regrets. We make mistakes in our lives, things we wish we could change, but sometimes you can’t, sometimes you must just move on with your life and try not to miss the next great thing.

No, the one thing I’d like you to take from this blog is to live a balanced life. Make time for the important things and never turn down an opportunity to try new things and meet new people. Fill your little time on this planet with as much joy as possible, and hopefully if you do it right, the things people will remember about you won’t be your regrets but the example of how to live your life to the fullest.

Now, I believe it’s time to switch sweatpants and settle in for another long day on the couch watching college basketball…maybe I missed the lesson…

Go Duke (like go home, because you’re done now…)!

I lost the bet...I mean, Duke's The BEST!

 

Duke University has been playing the game of basketball competitively for over 109 years! In this time they have established themselves as one of, if not the greatest college basketball programs in the entire nation. The basic stats for this organization are simply unbelievable and I think Wikipedia tells of their achievements almost as well as Dick Vitale:

Duke has won 4 NCAA championships (fifth all-time) and appeared in 10 Championship Games (third all-time) and 15 Final Fours (tied for third all-time), and has an NCAA-best .750 NCAA tournament winning percentage. 11 Duke Players have been named the National Player of the Year, and 71 players have been selected in the NBA Draft. In the 2008–2009 NBA season, Duke had more former players on NBA rosters than any other school. Additionally, Duke has 36 players named All-Americans (chosen 60 times) and 14 Academic All-Americans. Duke has been the Atlantic Coast Conference Champions a record 19 times. The program also lays claim to 19 ACC regular season titles. Prior to joining the ACC, Duke won the Southern Conference championships five times. Duke has also finished the season ranked No. 1 in the AP poll seven times and is second, behind only UCLA, in total weeks ranked as the number one team in the nation by the AP with 121 weeks. Additionally, the Blue Devils have the second longest streak in the AP Top 25 in history with 200 consecutive appearances from 1996 to 2007, trailing only UCLA's 221 consecutive polls from 1966–1980. As a result of such success, ESPN, in 2008, named Duke the most prestigious college basketball program since the 1985-86 season, noting that "by any measure of success, Duke is king of the hill in college basketball in the 64-team era of the NCAA tournament." Since that designation, Duke won another national title in 2010.

It is also important to note that Duke first beat the North Carolina Tar Heels in 1906 by a score of 19 – 18. This rivalry is one of the closest and longest standing rivalries in all of college or professional sports. In the last 87 meetings of the two schools, Duke is up by a total of 6 points. Wrap your head around that for a while here…6 points!

Some of the greatest players to ever play college basketball have without a doubt called Duke their home school. They have a rough go of things too, since almost the entire nation hates them. Duke is the most hated college basketball program in the nation, recently beating out Kansas and Kentucky for the honor, but the Blue Devils don’t care. They go out there each and every night and play with that chip on their shoulder and consistently put together winning seasons and All-American players. Although these players haven’t always transferred over to the pro’s that well, they did have the most players on NBA rosters in the 2008-09 season. Recent years have produced some extremely talented players who are even considered the stars of their NBA Franchise and will more than likely end up in the Hall of Fame someday.

Now with all of these attributes you may ask yourself, “How could anyone hate such a prestigious program?” As a lifelong Blue Devil fan I found myself asking the same question. Luckily I was able to find an interesting article on the 12 biggest reasons everybody hates Duke, while I was doing some research for this piece. Here’s what I found and some basic quotes on the material as well:

12. The Officials Love Them – Cameron Indoor Stadium has a mystical quality that turns charges into blocks, hacks into acceptable contact and stops the space-time continuum on three- and five-second calls – but only for the guys wearing white.

11. Floor Slapping – Part pump-up, part glory boy show-off, all lame and contrived. Taking a cue from how they officiate the game, refs probably see Duke Players slap the floor and don’t believe there’s any contact.

10. Coach K Says so. – Coach K reportedly said after a contentious game against Dean Smith’s Tar Heels, “If I even for one minute start to act like [Smith], don’t ask a single question. Just get a gun and shoot me.” A 2010 piece by Mike Lopresti (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2010-12-22-dean-smith-mike-krzyzewski_N.htm) tells about how they’re basically the same person aside from Coach K’s penchant for swearing and Smith’s fondness for Scotch…scotch, scotch, scotch…mmmm.

9. Dick Vitale – “No Duchess has ever loved a Duke as much as Dick Vitale.” Vitale overpraises Duke when they’re doing well, makes excuses when they’re playing poorly and reveres Coach K so much that he probably has a time share in Krzyzewskiville.

8. The Fraud – This one’s a little tough. It’s based off of “The Shot” by Christian Laettner that we’re so blessed to see every year around tournament time 2 – 3,000 times. It talks about how that’s what we see about the game but when Laettner deliberately stomps on Timberlake (not Justin) earlier in the game. I wasn’t aware of this…but I guess a player could have been thrown out of a game for something like this, which would have undoubtedly changed the game considerably…hmm.

 

7. The Lost Season – Once again, this is kind of B.S. It basically talks about how Coach K had back surgery and had to miss most of the 94-95 season and stupid Tar Heel fans complain that the losses weren’t counted against Coach K, even though he wasn’t coaching. Those guys can be such whiners!

6. They’re not as clean as you’d think. – Duke players know how to get away with cheap shots. One of my high school team mates was as close to a pro at this as I’ve seen so no judgment from me! But Coach K never takes any heat about it, prompting the writer of this particular article to state, “He’s like the SUV in a commercial that drives through the mud and comes out inexplicably clean at the end.”

5. Flopping – This one’s tough to argue…The best quote in here is, “European soccer players think Duke players flop too much.” But they also take some of the most ferocious charges I’ve ever seen. They just simply know how to play the game, even if that includes the occasional dramatic undertaking.

4. Taking Charges. – My thoughts are stated, here’s what the author of the article states: “On the other hand, when Duke isn’t spontaneously falling to the ground like an empty trash can in a stiff breeze, the team stands in the lane and takes the toughest charges in college basketball…It’s fundamentally sound. It’s also infuriating.”

3. The Cameron Crazies – Some people claim that the chants and things that the Crazies do are practiced rather than spontaneous, and for some reason this drives people insane. Truth be told, they are extremely creative in their cheering and Cameron Indoor stadium has got to be one of the greatest venues ever for sports. It’s designed to give the students the best possible experience at the game and they show their support of their team and school with all of the wackiness that they bring to every game.

2. Christian Laetthner – “Danny Ferry was the first Duke to gain widespread infamy, but it wasn’t until Laettner began winning titles that a Blue Devil player earned the scorn of the nation. He begat Wojo who begat Redick, who begat Scheyer who begat Ryan Kelly. Laettner’s the godfather of troll.” In the Fab Five documentary they all sum it up by saying that they all thought Laettner was a “bitch” but once they played against him, they all found out just how talented he really was.

 

1. They’re the Best. – “If Christian Laettner wasn’t any good, no one would have cared that he acted like a jerk. But he was the best player in college basketball, so there was a reason to despise him other than his cockiness and swagger.

Similarly, if Duke just had an obnoxious coach, it would be West Virginia. If Duke simply had crazy fans, it would be Maryland. If the team only flopped, it would be Real Madrid.

But Duke piles up the haters because, in addition to all those things, it’s the best program in college basketball. Four national championships in the last 21 years. Eleven Final Four appearances since 1986. Eight title game appearances over the same span. No other school can match those credentials.

The masses dislike Duke for the same reason they dislike the Yankees or the Cowboys or the Steelers: They’re worthy.”

I'd also like to mention that my brother and I took a self guided tour of the Duke campus before the 2012 National Tournament and actually got to see the players get on the bus for their opening game in Greensboro against Lehigh. We wished every player good luck and everyone of them thanked us, pure class. We even talked a bit to Coach K and thanked him for sending us a poster autographed by the entire team for our silent auction for cancer research each year. He was simply a peach.

 

I’m not going to lie…this was one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do. I spoke in an earlier blog about how I felt so terrible about what I had done and written that I desperately wanted to take a shower after every time I read it…there is no shower that can remove the feeling I’ve garnered from writing this. I will now retire to my shame corner with my bottle of Jameson and pray for better tomorrows…

UNC vs. Duke #2

 

 

            VS.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m sitting here so excited for tomorrow’s big game I can hardly contain myself. If you are an avid reader of our blog and a college basketball fan, then you probably know that I’m talking about the second matchup of the season of North Carolina and Duke.

The greatest thing about this matchup is the competition it brings out amongst the fans of the two teams, two of the contributors to this blog in particular.

As I get older I still really love to play basketball whenever I can and watch sports quite often, maybe not as often as I once did but still quite a bit. I remember in college, my cousin and I would devote entire Saturday’s to doing nothing but watching college basketball all day long. We may take a short break to roll some rocks at the local BWW’s on Golden Tee, but for the most part we were just living the dream watching hoops and eating some ‘za.

I couldn’t tell you the moment when I first started liking the Tar Heels. It wasn’t some distinct moment where there was a player or coach or the style that they played that made me like them…in fact it may have stemmed from simply not liking Duke. That sounds bad to say but I think I sincerely disliked Christian Laettner…who of course would one day end up a T-Wolf (FML).

The only way Magic let Laettner on this team.

 

The rivalry escalated for me as I grew up and found out how big of a rivalry it was. I would actively seek out Duke fans simply to tell them how much better UNC was than their team. I wasn’t always right, but it didn’t really matter, I had made up my mind and being mostly German I tend to be a bit stubborn (thanks Hitler). I think I have finely found the perfect rival for me as well in my fellow blogger and one of my best friends. He and I generally come up with a bet, such as me always having to wear a Duke shirt when we hang out, or him having to write a blog about how awesome UNC is when they won most recently here. We’ve also talked about getting tattoos but he’s too big of a baby for that…typical Duke fan.

I’m starting to find it hard to simply say that UNC is awesome and Duke stinks though. Through our charity efforts both programs have been pretty good about getting us items for our silent auction, but the main difference is that UNC usually makes us pay for an item (the money goes towards their charity efforts) but Duke has been awesome about sending us unbelievable items for free, such as team autographed posters. Granted, Duke is a private school and when my brother and I took a self-guided tour of the facility it was like walking around a castle, or should I say several castles! It is one of the most beautiful campuses I have ever seen, whereas the UNC campus was very comparable to any other state run university. As my buddy mentioned in his post though, it did smell like cotton candy and winning.

So as I’m getting older I may be growing a bit indifferent. There’s one guy on a college team that you should really like if you want to truly be a fan of the game for a long time though, and that’s the head coach. That being said, neither UNC nor Duke would be my favorite team, it would have to be Louisville. I have been a huge fan of Coach Pitino since his time at Kentucky; in fact it may have either been his Wildcats or Lute Olsen’s Arizona team that got me liking college basketball in the first place. Both coaches seem to be extremely classy individuals who not only cared about winning ball games, but the future of the kids that were playing for them on the court every year.



Al Pacino...I mean Rick Pitino

Coach Lute Olson

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This blog has certainly turned into a college basketball love fest for me…maybe I should get into my own experiences with the sport to show my competitive nature and possibly bring some humor to this overly dry post…

I mentioned that I love basketball. I use to be pretty competitive about the sport and always wanted to be on the court when the game was on the line. I didn’t need to take the last shot, I’m a pretty terrible shot anyway, but I wanted to be defending, rebounding, screening, or just doing whatever to help my team…but now I play mainly to get together with friends, have some cocktails after (or in-between) games, and just get some exercise.

We play in a city league in Grand Forks, ND and this past week’s game got me really realizing just how little the outcome of the game matters to me anymore.

The team we played were mostly guys that we know and have played with or against for years. They’re a lot younger than us and generally are the guys that will run you right out of the gym, so pretty much us from ten years ago…but with less talent obviously.

The whole game I kept looking up at the scoreboard and no matter how well it seemed like we were playing, the deficit just seemed to grow and grow. I started taking a lot of shots that I normally wouldn’t to try and get our team back in the game and I maybe took a few more chances on defense than I would have if we had been in the lead.

Towards the end of the game, there was about 1:40 left in the game, I noticed that the other team was going on a big run. They had been up by about 20 at one point and so now I was thinking, why don’t we just call this thing, it’s getting ridiculous…but then I noticed something…the deficit was shrinking…

Turns out I don’t pay attention to the game that well. What I later found out was that we had actually been the team that was up by 20 and my actions, pretty much single handedly lead to the evaporation or our lead and although I had a couple of good things finally happen in that final 1:40, the other team made a three pointer at the buzzer to send the game into overtime and then ended up beating us by like four points…

My ultra-competitive streak ended quite a while ago. I still love playing the game and cheering against my buddy’s favorite team just to get under his skin but when it boils right down to it I’ve come to realize how little of an impact these things have on my life. The other things, the part where I get to hang out with friends, have a few cocktails, make stupid bets, and get a little exercise…those are the important things.

I also ran in a few 5K’s, 10K’s, etc. in my days here and once again have decided that these may not exactly be for me either. I like the exercise, hanging with friends, etc. as I do with basketball but I’m never going to be one of those guys who needs to beat my best time or keep running further and further. I ran in one 10K last year that got a bit of a late start and when I started running it was 96 degrees! The track was two 5K laps and after one, I had had enough…so I quit and went and shingled a roof with my uncle, dad, brother, and cousins. It wasn’t any less hot, but at 30 years old, I don’t really think I have much left to prove to myself and I know what I like…a few cocktails, hanging with friends, and just the right amount of exercise. Add to that list, some dumb competitions and bets with my buddies, dealing with people, reading, and experiencing a little bit of everything I can well I’m alive, and you pretty much have me figured out!

Me dominating some 5K's

 

Tomorrow is UNC vs. Duke #2 for the season and a game I’m very much looking forward to enjoying with a few of my great friends. I’m going to be extremely cocky, win or lose – but it’s all just for fun. Don’t be surprised if you see one of us BDandLL contributors with a Blue Devil or Tar Heel tramp stamp come Monday though!

 

Editor’s Note: The greatest part of spell checking this blog was when Laettner came up…I got to hit, “Ignore All.” Go Heels!

No Longer 21?

Our collaborators have been doing such an awesome job writing blogs lately that I didn’t even have time to post one on Friday! Then I was going to do one over the weekend, and low and behold another blog from one of our awesome writers! So I figured now it was finally time for my weekly ramblings…which are precisely that!

Unlike most of our bloggers I don’t really sit down and write these blogs when something strikes me as a topic I need to write about. Really, I usually just start typing and hope something coherent comes out. Every now and then I’ll have some great experience over my week that really helps to move my post along, or I actually have one of those moments where I genuinely learn a life lesson and think…I better tell the world (or our 8 readers) about that. I’d like to apologize for lowering your IQ’s with my revelations. But this week I didn’t really have anything that moved me to write by my self-imposed Friday/Saturday deadline, so I was more than happy when the rest of the crew really picked up the slack!

My Friday night/Saturday morning probably holds quite a few life lessons that I could share with our readers as it had been quite a while since I had been out on the town and decided that if I was going to go I might as well go all out…but the details are a little fuzzy.

I started the night in a noble effort, going to the High School girl’s basketball game where we had started a new fundraiser for our charity basketball tournament. We do some half-time entertainment where we have some of the local high school kids go around selling $2 tickets for a chance at three shots, all of which could win you a prize. We do a free throw for a piece of pizza, a half-court shot for a $20 gift certificate to TNJ’s Bar and Grill, and finally a ¾ court shot for half of our progressive pot. We had done this event at about ten of the home basketball games this year and our progressive pot ended up at $891, with no one making the ¾ shot. The plan is to donate half of the pot to the basketball program and the other half will be donated to The V Foundation for Cancer Research through our charity basketball tournament, “Hoops for Hope.”

Unfortunately at the game a Richard Sherman-esque fan decided to throw a basketball at one of the players on the court and got ejected from the game, so that put a damper on the game itself but the girls ended up pulling off a good win in their last regular season game. For some reason, I figured all of that stuff meant that we should probably go celebrate…even though I’m not a coach, parent, or anything else really affiliated with the team…maybe I just wanted to have a few cocktails, one may never know.

We started our night at one of our local restaurants where we had a few bulldogs (nowhere in this town makes a decent Banana Daiquiri) and visited with some of the team parents, coaches and even the referees that showed up…until the fan that was ejected showed up everyone was having a pretty good time…then….crickets.

The guy was really nice and humble, and apologized for his actions. I’d like to think he was sincere…but I think I got my opinion of people like that out in the blog post about Richard Sherman. After he left we discussed the situation a bit more, but I was pretty much in celebration mode still for some reason so I moved on pretty fast.

We decided to leave the restaurant and moved onto the infamous TNJ’s to continue our night. As he often does, my brother said he was going to come up for one drink and take off, lucky for me his girlfriend recently turned 21 and wouldn’t let him escape!

My memory of TNJ’s is a little foggy, but for some reason I seem to remember trying to have serious conversations with people while some girl was grinding on my “shiz.” I say “shiz” because regardless of my “maturity” level…penis just seems inappropriate always.

Not so sure how the crowd at TNJ’s viewed my uncanny ability to multi-task, but I’ll have to admit…I was pretty impressed.

After closing down the bar (with my brother and his lady as well) I decided to go ahead and attend an after party at my buddy’s place, which probably wasn’t needed but at some point around the 3^rd or 4^th shot…you just start making bad decisions, like thinking you’re still 21 and that you should go to a post bar party…or that you can have serious conversations while some young lady is grinding on the aforementioned “shiz.”

The house party is where things get from foggy to, “What?! What Happened?!” I’m pretty sure I almost took home a chocolate lab puppy…even though it wasn’t for sale, or free to take. At some point I believe there was someone making enchiladas or some sort of tortilla based food. I feel like I might have put the moves on some girl at the party but as I woke up alone, as usual, I feel like maybe there was a failed attempt at multi-tasking in there somewhere.

I spent the rest of my weekend holed up in my room, as I found out something I’m finding out more and more often these days…I’m no longer 21. Two to three day hang overs are now the norm and my productivity level severely decreases when I spend a night out. But you know what…I had a pretty good time.

As I’m typing this blog thinking about how much I wasted my weekend (even though they say time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time) I just received a text message from my sister telling me that she just won a DECA Outstanding Service Award…maybe next weekend I’ll try to be more productive. I think maybe just getting another blog posted by Friday would be a good start…maybe one that doesn’t make me feel like taking a shower every time I read it…

Whiskey & the Wolves

I believe a blog should be, in moderate instances and in small part, self indulgent. “Blog” comes from “web log” and a “log” is akin to journal or “log file." But because this particular blog is a collaborative effort, in this case, I may overstep the bounds of self-indulgent moderation. An important project of mine is beginning to take shape. I’m excited about it and as I am due for a new post and this is a current event, this blog makes it my turn at show and tell.

Before we get to the present I’d like to share a little back story. Like a previous season recap, here are the moments that have lead up to this project and the events of March 2014:

My music began with piano, then drums, bass, guitar. The guitar is my primary instrument, I only really dabble in the others. After a few failed start-ups, the band 9 Paces West was formed in 2001 in a mechanic shop in Lake Bronson, MN. At 18 and 17 years of age, we toured the local bars playing a barrage of new and old rock song covers as well as a constantly revolving (evolving) library of original music. College brought us to Grand Forks, ND and the band more or less followed, though we still played many of the same bars and other events back in Minnesota. This brought us to a house in Grand Forks, known as the Orange House, where I, along with 2 of my band mates lived and where the band rehearsed. A lot of great living happened in that place.

We met a lot of great people through playing shows with other bands and just knowing other musicians in our personal networks. One in particular, Starving for Gravity, was formed in the basement of the Orange House. For a few particular months both bands shared the rehearsal space and I’m not sure anyone really slept except through class. In 2004 we recorded a full length album, That Summer, which was released almost simultaneously with Starving for Gravity’s demo, When Did the Punks Get So Popular? We ended playing a lot of shows together, partying together, and I formed a solid friendship with Sir Lucas Holter, their vocalist.

Things slowly faded out for 9 Paces West in 2006-2007 and Starving for Gravity picked up and moved to Los Angeles. The hows and whys of that are for another time and place but in the 7 years that have passed since I’ve had an active part in creating and playing music I pursued school, married an amazing woman, taught sociology for a bit, and now find myself in the greater Los Angeles, CA area myself. While Starving for Gravity was no more, Lucas was still living here in CA.

In July 2013 Lucas, myself and Brad Kovar - also from Starving For Gravity - met up in a rehearsal space to just jam around a bit. With a riff I had come up with just hours before, we walked out with a song and unknowingly, a name from Lucas’ lyrics. Brad was, ironically, living back in Minnesota so after that first night, he flew back home. Lucas and I had never collaborated before, but quickly it became quite fluid and in the proceeding months we were able to write a number of songs that we feel quite proud of. It feels really, really good to be back making music.

Whiskey and the Wolves was technically born that night in July but the project is attempting liftoff in the next few months. Over the weekend of March 15th the three of us will be travelling to a studio in Denver, CO (sort of a halfway point between Minnesota and California) to record a set of demo tracks, 3-4 songs to form the foundation of an EP we hope to release later in the year. We also plan to start playing shows and adding musicians to round out a full band. But we’re doing it in a very, build-it-and-see-what-comes sort of way. I’m focused on this project, but if previous experience has taught me anything, you can’t force it.

That is where I am currently, and feeling pretty good.

~star date -308834.4021435819 (Yep).

If you’re at all interested in checking out Whiskey and the Wolves, we haz the Facebook where we are posting sneak peak rehearsal videos and other updates: https://www.facebook.com/lists/10100731244377495

If you like what you hear, we are asking for a little support in funding our studio time - along with our sincere gratitude, we will also offer digital downloads of our demos done in Denver and first dibs on future releases. As the project grows, we plan to give back as much as we can to those who support our project and make some bad~ass music to share with you. That site can be found here: http://www.gofundme.com/72gflk