on sports injuries

There was a definite turning point in my life when I became horrified of seeing sports injuries. Somewhat odd, I know, considering how much I watch sports, but it's really become quite a phobia. Anytime I see a player crumple, I immediately look away. If I've recorded the game, I'll start fast-forwarding immediately, covering my eyes so I can't even see anything in the sped up replay. Even if it's nothing, just a light scrape, a bit of soreness before the player returns to their feet, I still refuse to watch. If it's a highlight show and they announce that they're about to show an injury, I immediately change the channel. Without even seeing the clips, I still become upset just imagining what it might have been.

It all changed a few years ago when I was watching Sharks hockey. One of my favorite players was flying down the ice heading into the corner when, at the absolute worst possible moment, he lost his footing and slid feet first into the boards at probably 15-20 mph. I immediately realized that it was a dangerous play and I was already hoping young Marco Sturm had had time to react, bend his knees, twist his body away from the impact. The camera quickly cut to him lying on the ice, at an angle perpendicular to the camera, his body in a vertical line up and down the screen, his feet facing toward me. Before I had time to think about anything else, I noticed that his right ankle was noticeably off. Below the knee, just above the ankle, his leg jutted out from the rest of the neat vertical line that his body was creating on the screen. His hands, trapped inside the padded and awkward hockey gloves, futilely reached toward his askew limb. On his face was an expression of pure terror, his eys locked on the same improbable angle which had just upset me, and he was noticeably screaming. The producers quickly cut away and sent it to ads.

After I saw this I turned the TV off and sat alone in my apartment for about an hour. The only thing I was concerned about was getting that image out of my mind, but it wasn't as easy as just wishing it. To be perfectly honest, just typing that paragraph above rather upset me; the image is still horrible to me.

The reason I bring it up is because I just caught a replay of a soccer game I watched over the weekend. In it, the bright young Man U talent Alex Smith suffers a broken leg and a dislocated ankle. Again, I noticed something wrong during the live action. Again, I had to desperately fast forward through the replays of the accident while trying to keep my mind from creating too many gruesome images of what might have happened. Alex wasn't screaming, I think because he most likely passed out within a few moments from the shock. When I was flipping channels and saw the replay of the game tonight, I realized that it was at the spot roughly 2-3 minutes away from the injury occuring. Without any hesitation I quickly turned the TV off and began the fight of trying to keep the terrible images out of my mind. I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch sports again without this fear hanging over me, but right now, no matter how stupid and insignificant you might think I'm being, it's one of the worst fears I've ever known. Public speaking is like meeting the girl of my dreams compared to seeing another sports injury.

So anyway, I ended up typing this because I got freaked out again, but if there's a lesson to be found here let it be this -- sports are fun to play, but goddamn you can fucking mangle your body if you're not careful. Please be careful.

on my knees

So to go along with becoming a movie star, I also managed to win one of the coolest ping pong points of my life over the weekend. I had to scramble after a good shot and was forced to lob it back. I've learned with some time that lobs can actually be reasonably effective if you get them near the endline; most people I'm playing with don't really have the tools to punish a high bounce that far back. So I successfully got the desperation lob to the endline like I was hoping and S. wasn't sure how to deal with it. Instead of going for the kill he played it short back to me to catch me off guard which worked okay. I was set up deep for a smash against me so I had to run up and actually hit my knees to dig the shot out and get it back across. Because S. had chosen not to kill it and I was able to stay alive, I was suddenly back in the point after two shots where S. thought he had me. I wasn't about to lose this point. The return came and it wasn't exactly in my wheelhouse so I decided what the hell, why not just keep flexing my game in the point? I hit a nice chop deep into the forehand corner (didn't know I had a chop, did ya? I like to keep 'em guessing) and the return came back into the net. Point - Tieg. So yeah, I won a point after desperately lobbing a shot that was mostly past me, getting the next shot over from my knees, and then finishing it off with a chop. Made my whole month, really.

on becoming a movie star, pt. 3

So last night I went to a reasonably large party and someone walking through at some point said, "Hey -- good job in that movie!" I stared at him for a while to figure out if he was a friend of mine just messing around or really some random person who recognized me and decided to say hey. As far as I can tell it was some random person who decided to say hey, so there you have it -- I've officially been spotted. That didn't take long. Now only if this whole thing can turn into that cheap tail like I wanted...

on becoming a movie star, pt. 2

Apparently I was on the big screen at the local theater on Thursday night. The short film I starred in was screened during the local filmmakers' night. I had no idea, I just found out because my friend C. went on a whim, saw me up there, and then asked me about it today. You'd think someone would have informed me. I could have found some red carpet and headed down to the show. Who knows how many people saw me up there, admiring my good looks, marvelling at my wit, quietly falling in love in the darkened theater?

And then the even funnier part? I still haven't even seen the movie myself. The final scene (the unscripted one) is supposed to be good, that's what I keep hearing. So anyway, here's to hoping that some stranger recognizes me around campus or something. This could be my big break.

self-awareness

It was our friend Descartes who rather famously tied our consciousness to the seemingly unique gift of self-awareness. Pretty brilliant insight all in all, except that I'm not entirely convinced that all of us are really that self-aware. If we were really to apply this litmus, we might find a considerable set of subhumans among us. At the very least for a few hours a week every one of us falls below Descartes' expectations of us. Sometimes we do dumb crap that leaves us to wonder how much we really reflect on our own behavior.

But more specifically I'm talking about you, you little hipster punk who I loosely know, who chose to open our conversation at a recent party with this question:

"So you used to date L.?"

This was literally the first thing out of his mouth, with at most a brief "hi" beforehand, although it might have just been a mute headnod. This is the space that most of us expect a "how are you?" or a "haven't seen you around" or a "still playing ping pong" or something else softball and polite like that. This is how most people who barely know each other interact, with vague, polite, largely non-personal small talk, not in direct questions about 4 year relationships that ended quite some time ago.

But yes, of course it's true. I used to date L. I'm not certain why you might choose me to confirm this with, considering you barely know me and anyone who's even been loosely affiliated with the local scene for more than a year could fill you in on most of what you wanted to know. Here is a list of the questions I thought to myself, but had better sense than to ask out loud, because I'm aware of how they would reflect on me:

"Who are you? Why is that any of your business? Are you completely unaware what a stupid and obnoxious question that is? Don't you typically reserve questions about someone's past long-term relationships after you've met them for more than a total of 10 minutes or so? I suppose I should have been tipped off by those two terrible lip rings -- seriously, who gets two lip rings? One wasn't enough? -- that your self-awareness isn't all that high."

But then I shouldn't be so cruel to the young buck. Most people who weren't around when L. and I were still dating seem surprised when they find out about the relationship we used to have. I guess we don't seem like much of a match anymore, which is funny for many reasons that I won't really get into here. But I know the Arcata scene would cannibalize itself within a few months if there weren't these new crops of kids to bolster it every Fall, so here's a new one that is still finding his way around. Cute. I believe this was my response to the original question posed, word for word:

"Yeah."

I'm aware that I can get pretty icy when I'm upset or annoyed, sometimes on accident sometimes on purpose. This time I was purposely being as chilly as possible in my reply, no accidents here, because when I go to a party with a certain set of people that I consciously chose to start avoiding more than a year ago, and some new kid in the room who only loosely knows me chooses to greet me with inquiries into my past relationships, I feel I have a right to freeze him out a little. So here's the next topic for us to discuss:

"Well I made out with her last week."

I have no idea why you chose to tell me this, you overly-lip-ringed, cliche-blonde-highlight having, carefully-organized-unorganized-hair grooming, obnoxiously unaware, frigging cookie-cutter-young scenester you. Did you think I would care? Even if I did care, I still don't see why you would bother telling me such a thing. In the end it just made me view you in a negative light that I had never really considered you in before. Are you aware of that? I guess I could let you slide since, as I've mentioned above, you don't really know me at all, so perhaps you were trying to display some awareness that this might be some information that I was interested in. Well you can rest now with the knowledge that I truly don't care about what you do or don't do during the weekend, and you'd be best served in the future by not bothering me with questions about shit that doesn't concern you. Think about it, be a little self-aware.

my privacy

Oh internet, what can't you do?

I was just reading some poor 19-year-old's frustrations with his long distance, 16-year-old girlfriend. Although I could easily link any readers to the source of my entertainment, I feel that I should spare you the shame. It was as pathetic and misguided and wrong-headed as you are imagining, trust me. But the real coup de grace was when the guy posted the lengthy "where do we stand?" love letter for all the public forumers to read and critique. I suppose not even critique, as he had already sent it, but either way, I was privy to someone's intimate writings to one of the most "important" people in his life. It was a little weird.

And I think we all know and love the private spying that the internet can afford us, but let's be honest here, it gets weird after a while. Personally I'd rather live my life not knowing that some poor 19-year-old is spending hours stressing out and obsessing over the fact that he followed a myspace comment chain and suspects his 16-year-old long-distance girlfriend might be involved with another guy. It's funny at first, but if you really think about it, it's just depressing.

Either way, let this be a lesson to all of us. Although using the internet to spy on the lives of other people can be entertaining at times, it's pretty much guaranteed to depress you sooner or later. Better to just head outside.

the new world

I've made it something of a point to try to keep this space light-hearted -- short anecdotes, quick jokes, funny observations in general. I've wanted to avoid the high-minded seriousness or overt weepiness that one might find in other blogs (well -- minus the summer's worth of movie reviews, which was really just an attempt to prove to myself how easy such writing is (as well as keep track of just how much time I waste watching movies (which, incidentally, I did learn my lesson from, as I'm now only watching 2-3 movies a month (which, noteably, tend to be only of the good and/or interesting variety (so there))))), so please allow me a moment while I dip my toes into the field of music criticism, a field which I will admit finding rather obnoxious and ultimately pointless, but at least for today irresistible all the same.

I don't think it would be terribly insightful of me to point out that listening to music can be highly meditative. Certain music puts you into a certain state of mind, and as such certain situations seem to call for certain soundtracks. Drinking alone on a Thursday afternoon? I hope you have some AC/DC at hand. Getting high on the beach on a sunny day? You could do worse than Bob Marley. Crying yourself to sleep? Cat Power or Portishead should take care of you, if they weren't the ones to send you there in the first place.

(Side note -- for all you hipsters that play your synthed out, intentionally campy, painfully ironic crap for me to dance to at your parties, I hate you. There's dance music, then there's what you play at your parties, and no matter how drunk I might be in order to tolerate you in the first place, I still ain't dancing to that shit. Get some goddamn James Brown or stop inviting me over.)

The point being that today was another "head down to the court and huck the ball at the rim" day. The weather was nice (sort of nice) for a change and I wanted to take the opportunity while I could. Another highlight of heading out to the courts is the walk there. My favorite place to play is in Redwood Park, with a nice 5-10 minute walk through the redwoods leading up to the beautiful court tucked away in the middle of the trees. All in all it takes about 30 minutes from my house, so I was certain to select a CD I wanted to hear and I headed on my way.

Today's selection was Feed Me Weird Things by Squarepusher, a drum and bass, jazz-influenced, electronic-y, kind of jungle beat, industrial-type-thing, very modern, reminiscent of big factories, sweaty clubs, neon lights, dingy street corners, skyscrapers covering the skyline, subways, taxi cabs, what have you. Excuse the listener-response, impressionistic description but I have to admit that I personally connect this music with the modern city. Sorry if we're getting too touchy-feely in our music criticism, but then again I prepped you in the first paragraph this was coming, so stop crying.

(Another side note -- I've noticed much of my favorite music reminds me of the city, my favorite place to live. Coincidence?)

So as I was walking through the redwoods up to the basketball court, listening to chopped up drum loops and hectic sampling, I couldn't help but feel that the music and the setting were at odds. Typically when I think of lush green forests and the music that accompanies them, I think of Joni Mitchell or Jack Johnson or (worse still) Enya, and I can't help but think of Squarepusher as being on a vastly different end of the musical spectrum than all those groups (which some may call the 'good' end of the specturm, but I won't make such judgments here).

Yet I'm not certain why I think of things that way. I personally was terribly content listening to Squarepusher amid the towering trees. I don't see why I don't envision the forest and the outdoors as being as terribly hectic and confusing and threatening and disconcerting as the Mission in San Francisco, or the night clubs in Harlem, or the subway in London, etc. I'm pretty damn lost sometimes when I head outdoors for extended periods of time, spending my camping trips playing my Gameboy, or wondering about sports scores, or nearly drowning in the river, etc. So I've decided to try and rethink the metaphor of the forest that I keep in my mind -- less celtic, harp-y, folksy nonsense will fill it up, more chaotic, threatening, yet ultimately pleasing thought will take its place. Maybe thinking this way will help me get out of the house more. Maybe.



And a P.S. for those who still care -- While I was playing basketball on the court amid the trees, a jeep full of chiefs came roaring by on the road right beside it, a green jeep with a loud engine, all the men surely calculating the exact width and length increase implied by such a 'cool' ride. As they passed it should be no surprise that they shouted something at me, little me playing basketball all by myself, both on the way up and the way down.

(Last side note -- I've even been meaning to write something here about people shouting dumb shit at me as they pass in vehicles, because there's been a real rash of it lately and I consider it one of the most obnoxious behaviors in the world. God bless N. for trying to throw a brick through the windshield of some such characters once; he'll forever be in my good books for that.)

Anyway, as I was walking back through town to return to my apartment, I came across the same jeep, parked in somebody's front lawn this time with the same crew of chiefs out attempting some kickflips on the sidewalk. It's Arcata, it's a small town, and yes I did know one of them. Not only did I know one of them, but I knew some pretty intimate pillow talk about him (remember -- Arcata), such as he likes to have women spit on him and spit on them back (yes -- in the sack), and, most desicably, he's very potentially a date rapist. So the next time you see a jeep full of assholes drive by and shout something at you, your assumptions were correct. Also -- ladies, if you've got the hots for a guy because he drives a kick ass jeep, just remember -- he's probably a spitter.

backpackers beware

As I was standing in line at the bank today I felt a tug on my backpack zipper. I turned to see who might be interfering with my personal possessions, assuming it's someone I know (it's a small town, you see them everywhere). It's actually a stranger, an older women who looks to be roughly around 40-years-old. She's about 5'3" with very light blonde hair, probably died, which is tucked under a round, felt hat before running down the sides of her face. She is otherwise wearing rather unremarkable Arcata garb -- a dark, heavy coat for the rain along with a long skirt which hangs down to her feet. I'm not certain what to make of the fact that she just tugged on my backpack; I assume the smaller pocket must have been open.

"Ummm ... thanks. It was open, huh?" I'm trying not to be rude.

She mumbles something, something vague and polite, I'm not certain. I turn around again, standing quietly in line, waiting for my turn to make my withdrawal.

She says something I can understand (to my back, it should be noted), "So what did you think?"

I turn around again, beginning to realize that there was more to this innocent backpack tug than I had originally realized. "You mean when you tugged on my backpack?"

"Yeah, what did you think?"

"Well, I thought my backpack was open. Didn't you just zip up one of my pockets?"

"Nah, It wasn't open. I just opened it and zipped it up again. I figure everyone needs to be messed with everyone once in a while."

I'm not entirely certain what to do at this point. Typically the response to being "messed with" is to be rude, mess with the person back, not stand quitely next to them in a line at the bank, even though all I want to do is to stand quietly next to this woman in line at the bank. Truthfully, I had somewhat suspected that she wanted to somehow be friendly and chat me up when I initially turned to her following the initial zipper tug, that's why I had turned completely away again, in an effort to politely ignore her. Aside from her admitting that she just wanted to mess with me, and wasn't closing an open pocket on my backpack, I'm having some difficulty getting over how rudely she had ignored my polite attempt to ignore her. She asked for attention in the zipper grab, I denied it. Now she had resorted to asking me directly, trapping me in conversation.

And like you might guess, she provided most of this conversation by herself. I swear to you I was in line with this woman no more than 120 seconds, but she managed to tell me all sorts of information I never cared to know. Apparently she lives in Trinidad. She finds Arcata very charming; she's only moved here three and a half years ago. She had just been in the bank, but had to come back because she had left her ID in the car. She found all the dreadlocks around town to be very cool, and they weren't anything like back home. If I had been in line for 90 seconds more, I might have found out exactly how many failed marriages and subsequent children she had, but thankfully a teller finally opened for me.

I don't think it will surprise anyone, either, if I admit a rather strong suspicion that this woman was either heavily medicated, on drugs, or just a little drunk at one in the afternoon. Not only was she obnoxiously weird, but she seemed to slur certain syllabes.

But perhaps the worst part was to here her praise Arcata and to have to politely agree -- "Yes, those dreadlocks and the people here are so interesting. Yes, I just love it here. Oh yes it's a great little town." -- because to disagree would further invite her into conversation, would announce that I had something to say and in some way wished our exchange to continue. Having met many different people in many different places in many different contexts, one discovers that simply nodding your head and agreeing is often the quickest way out of an uncomfortable situation. So for two minutes, in the middle of downtown Arcata, in open public view, I could be seen agreeing with a 40-something local yahoo that all the dreadlocks around town were in some way charming or non-revolting in any fashion, and I'm truly sorry for that. No matter how ashamed you feel of me, trust that my own shame is much worse, much much worse. If anything positive comes of this whole sordid situation, let it be this: the next time you feel your backpack being tugged, don't turn around.