Like my life, this blog, I fear (know? expect?) has been taken over by ultimate. It’s a slow, creeping process where by I relinquish any pretense that the silly game which I love is some temporary external activity. It’s ceased to simply be something I do, a choice among choices, it has a far more definitional feel about it. Ultimate represents some sort of boundary within which my personality and personal drama are acted out. The community of people with whom I share this passion or I guess, affliction, continues to grow in size and prominence. Like any similar change, the movement into a new community comes with gains and losses. I’ve made new friends in DC. The community has come to mean meeting people with whom I shout silly things, scrape knees (I’ve come home bleeding 5 out of the last 8 nights), commemorate victories pyrrhic and epic, and generally recount the great fortune, that is, sharing this passion. And in general I love it. There are days when it can be absolutely taxing, just emotionally wrengching. And somedays, I do wish I could better explain it. I’d love to be able to give voice to the deep need in my life that ultimate fulfills. But we all have our goals, some want to buy the world a Coke, and that’s hard too.
The emotionally wrenching part is hardest to explain. Some days I expend so much energy on the sidelines and on the field that I’m almost in tears in the quiet moments that follow the incredible physical and I’m almost embarrassed to admit, spiritual high of shared competition. Tonight I’m residing in one of those moments. There is a classic sporting expression, an exhortation to further sacrifice: “leave it all on the field.” I’ve always been partial to this expression and the sentiment it represents. My own personal mantra has been something similar, “it only hurts when you lose.” For me the notion of losing is a fairly amorphous one, there is losing in the absolute fashion (scoring fewer points) but there is also the loss that comes from feeling like something less that your best was offered in support of your teammates. The gnawing, clawing painful realization that people, friends who count upon you (even in a silly game) received less than your last full measure (not in the Lincoln sense—I’m not that crazy) of effort. And so I play ultimate with a willful disregard of its toll on my body. I layout eagerly, knowing full well it will destroy my shoulder, bruise my chest (and occasionally ego) and often tweak my knee. And while it’s not true, in any real sense, I believe that it only hurts when you lose (the will to compete or to give of yourself, that is)
And so, in general, I try my best to leave everything on the field. When I was younger and liked team sports less, the goal was to impress my parents, or prove to older bullies that I was more than just the smart kid in class. I guess that was the first and, for a long time, dominant reason that sports mattered to me. I was constantly trying to prove to kids who hated me that I was worthy of their admiration or at least tolerance. The one sentence, never uttered, for which I played was: "Wow, Aaron, you’re smart and you can really play ______" (insert sport X). In service of this goal (acceptance) I adopted a sporting persona dramatically different from my everyday life. In normal life I was, when younger, different from my peers and woefully uncool (by their measures). I cared about things that never mattered to my classmates. I was a progressive child in a conservative suburb. Even more so, I was tender. When teased, I cried. When upset I cried. When frustrated, which was pretty much all the time, I felt alone and unloved by my peers. None of these things are remarkable, nor do I assume them to be, they just are necessary explanations in order to better understand the transformative role that sports played in my younger life—and may help to explain why ultimate is such an emotionally relevant part of my current life.
As a kid, if I was tripped or bullied or just embarrassed I felt helpless. No where in the rules of the playground could I find a loophole that permitted safe harbor for the geeky, hyperactive kid who cared more about national politics than pop music. But sports allowed me an outlet. It was a place where I could reinvent myself. Instead of being the kid who got hit and cried, I became the kid who sought physical contact and never ever cried. If I was hit (as happened) in the knee with a pitch while catching I immediately tried to stand up. In this case, my knee failed to support my weight and I came crashing back to the ground. But I kept trying to stand and protested loudly and angrily at being taken out of the game. A failure to complete an inning was akin to admitting personal failure, personal limitations and sports was, and maybe still is, about killing that part of me. About bringing to the fore an Aaron who can destroy by force of will the part of me that worries about my peers and fears their condemnation. I should further explain that I was never the strongest (pretty clear), fastest (see previous parenthesis) or more capable. But I was among the most intense players. My sports of choice growing up were baseball and basketball. I was never officially allowed to play football, though our backyard variety further reinforced the theme. We had a standing rule in the football games of my younger days where you could perform an onsides kick. This basically involved throwing the kickoff as high as you could and while the ball was descending from its great and loping arc you would gather around the poor sap who decided to catch the football and then as absolutely deck him. You would try to gather as much momentum, and turn it into as much pure force as possible only to release it on a supposed friend at his most vulnerable moment.
I was always the receiver of the kickoffs. I always wanted the ball. I wanted to know that, on a sports field, I could take whatever hit was delivered and that I would not fumble and would not fail.
In my other “official” sports the story was much the same. I pitched and caught in little league. Loving above all other moments, the collision at the plate. It was the chance for the skinny kid with the strange inability to shut up or be normal to take the best shot from the larger, well-loved boys. And with the armor of my position and my persona fully intact, I felt invincible. In school I could be bullied, harassed, taunted, mocked and sometimes made to cry. Behind the plate I was tougher than you, harder than you, and never ever dropped the ball. In 9-10 collisions at the plate in my little league days, I never dropped the ball. I was hit so hard and so flagrantly fouled in one game that the offending player was ejected, but I never dropped the ball—doing so was showing weakness, and that was the role of Real Aaron. Sports Aaron fit in, oh sure he’d reference NPR instead of WBZZ, and he’d talk about the righteousness of Lloyd Bentsen and the folly of Dan Quayle instead of ….oh I don’t know, nearly anything else, but overall he played a role, he was of value.
In retrospect, my elementary and middle school peers were some pretty desperate people. It was a desperation borne of recognition. They knew that there had to be winners and losers. They recognized far earlier than I did that childhood social interactions are built around who is winning and who is losing. Who knows the grossest thing, who knows the most about this taboo of taboos we call sex (Answer everyone else but Aaron. I was, and maybe still am, remarkably clueless). If the answer was you, you were winning. If you could pick on someone else you were winning. As a child I thought of social interactions as something more than a zero sum game. I was not interested in defining my role in opposition to yours. Never occurred to me. I thought we could all be winners. It sounds naïve and probably was. It’s only now, I mean literally right now as I write this that I realized just perfectly sports fit into my childhood. Sports were a place where keeping the tally of who was winning and who was losing was fair. It was based on performance, on effort, on ability. It had nothing to do with whether you were cool. For a few months in the summer people like me would be valued, would contribute and would undermine the veracity of the stereotype which I so ably wore during the school year.
So what, if anything, does this have to do with my life today. I think ultimate plays a similar role to sports from my youth. I have an insatiable need to prove that I’m worth something. This gnawing insecurity that maybe I’m no good. Either objectively or in relative terms. I’m not sure where this insecurity comes from. But I know that something about ultimate helps me cope. Something about testing myself and finding my actions worthy of occasional admiration makes me feel like a tolerable human being. Ultimate is a chance to prove to myself and to people about whom I care a great deal that I’m worth caring for. That any affection they may have for me is not misplaced because I’ll give whatever I have to be worthy of it. This probably sounds a bit absurd, and over the top, and may be just that. But there is a part of me that feels it might be true.
And so I play ultimate with a reckless abandon. In the end, for me, it is about offering up to the good of the team all your physical gifts and making yourself completely emotionally present throughout the games and practices. I show up to games having spent the morning pacing around my apartment because I cannot calm down. I want to play so badly. I pace on the sidelines because I cannot sit still. I just want to be helping my teammates so badly. Even these people, whom I’ve known for a matter of months, I love. It’s a weird love, not the full lasting deep kind. Not the real kind. So maybe love is the wrong word, but it’s a devotion that’s similar to that. It’s a feeling of kinship, or maybe fellowship. But it’s emotionally draining. To spend a weekend with people you adore, yelling, screaming, diving, straining, bleeding and fighting is taxing. And after the joy of shared competition is over and after the cars are packed and the players returned to their normal Sunday routine (icing, trying to explain to significant others why they are hurt, again) we’re all back to being real, normal people. It’s like the end of the summer as a child. The end of every tournament is the end of the magical space in which I can redefine my ability and personality. I have to talk in sentences that makes sense. I won’t be able to say “Yeah, BRDM” or “Yeah, Paul*,” “Yeah, tapping the keg” (ad nauseum) and have it make sense. I lose that world at the end of every tournament. After “leaving it all on the field” I have almost nothing left. I’m emotionally spent, I’m just wiped out.
And while I know it’ll be back to this world again soon, and that unlike in my youth, my real life is pretty fucking stellar, it’s still sad. It’s an emotional remnant of a time when sports allowed me to feel worthy, and know that I could be valuable. I guess we all need that, and so maybe that’s how I should explain ultimate. It’s my community, it’s my place where I want desperately to be found worthy, and where I want to be a part of something where winning and losing aren’t just a zero sum game. This weekend, we lost every game, and as I came back to my apartment yesterday and my roommate’s friend asked me as I struggled to walk and bled all over my socks, "Was it worth it?" To which I replied “There’s no where I’d rather have been, and nothing I’d rather have been doing.”
*I realize this is a pretty unfunny post, and may read terribly in the morning. But right now it says a lot of things that I need to say, so it’s going to get posted. But, also one really funny movement from the weekend. So while playing ultimate it is very common for people to shout, “Yeah, BRDM.” Basically the syntax is as follows, Yeah followed by any noun, many of the verbs or any concept. You can cheer for just about anything you can imagine. Case in point, a teammate of mine throws a very errant pass to another teammate. The disc is coming down slowly and several people are gathered under it. I’m on the sideline and say hopefully, it’s alright he’s going to catch it. The disc is predictably swatted away by one of three defenders. I take a beat and turn to Shamik, who heard my previous assurance that “he” was going to catch it and say, “I never said who ‘he’ was.” To which Shamik replies, “Yeah, caveat.”
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Sunday, August 21, 2005
What's in a Number, What's in a Name
DC Nasty, the team I joined upon moving to DC, has undergone a transformation. After several years with the same name and a rotating lineup, we chose to change our name (and hopefully keep our lineup). It's been a period of changes for the team. For one thing many of our key players are completely new. My teammates Ed, Shamik, Paul, Lily and Megan are all new to the team. Though I think I may be the newest of that group. That’s some serious turnover and I think those additions will help (though I cannot speak to the players whom we replaced). All the same an old name failed to capture the soul of this new entity.
So we did what all good democratic entities do: we voted. Everyone on the team was encouraged (frankly I hounded people) to submit names to the group. In the end we accumulated 41 names. Many stunk, some of your author’s choices, in retrospect, were a bit off. Though I will continue to believe that St. Eugene could be a great name (St. Eugene is the patron saint of dysfunctional families, a pretty apt description for most ultimate teams). After voting (a 3 choice weighted vote administered by yours truly) we whittled the list to three choices: Wiki, U-Dog and Polly and Illuminati. Wiki as in the –pedia, and it’s Hawaiian for fast and informal, U-dog is a reference to the 60s cartoon, and Illuminati just sounded cool to enough folks.
Following a tournament we gathered together to consume some grilled meats and down a few beers in the hopes of uniting this motley crew of folks into a team. Never underestimate the value of shared meals, stories and humiliation as team building exercises. We managed to achieve each of these goals, and we also decided on the team’s name.
Drumroll.......
Big Red Death Machine.
Yeah, turns out like most democracies, decisions are made by those who show up. After talking about the various choices upon which we had voted, we decided that they all sucked so we went with Big Red Death Machine. I think it’s sufficiently ridiculous and despite sharing it's ackronym with that of boredom (BRDM) it's a good name and moreover I really enjoying playing with this group of people and feel more included now that we’re ALL calling ourselves this new thing. It’s nice, when I first moved here I was trying to choose between two seemingly disparate ways of playing ultimate: regionally competitive men’s ultimate and midlevel regional co-ed. I still wonder from time to time where my skill set places me, meaning if there were some sort of ultimate draft at what level would I be playing. Would I be able to play nationally competitive, regionally or mid-regionally? But that’s only one part of the equation the other part involves enjoying every minute of practice, and sharing in the creation of a team. That's the part of this sport that I love even more than playing, being a part of something larger than myself. It's a little like a campaign, you take a bunch of crazy fuckers bind them together under a common flag and then ask them to do things that are beyond sound judgement and their own perception of self-limitation. Oh and there's usually a fair number of attractive members of the opposite sex just to keep the lizard brain happy.
And as it turns out, I’ve really loved playing with BRDM. We’re a team that’s starting to figure out what it’s like to be a team. We are cheering one another, we’re going out for dinner and drinks. Teammates tease, taunt, and support each other. It’s a good situation. This is the first time I’ve been involved with naming a team, and it’s the first team for which I’ll have a jersey with numbers and the whole shebang.
Which forced me to select a number.
As a child I never had a favorite number. It seemed like numbers were symbols devoid of much communicative power, and so I never really picked one as my own. Oh, and even more importantly playing baseball most of our shirts were assigned by height. So the smallest child wore #1, while the largest was usually assigned #19. As a lanky kid who didn’t like tight shirts, I think I tended to get 11. That seemed the right size for me. But I never really cared about the number I wore. So when I got to pick my number here it was strange how easily I chose my number: 25. I first thought about selecting 25 when Jen and I were still dating, and it was the date of our anniversary, but the strongest attachment to the number comes from, sadly, Paul’s death. He died 10.25, and for some reason the number 25 has seemed a pretty powerful symbol since then. So I’m number 25 on this team…a childhood of Michael Jordan worship, and I pick 25 instead of 23. I guess I can think of myself as having grown up.
After picking my number (which I should add, I’m really proud of) I went to ESPN to try and find out what famous players have worn my number. (I guess it should be the other way around, presumably KC Jones didn’t select 25 in admiration of me). The most famous players to wear 25 are Barry Bonds….Mark McGuire….Rafael Palmerio….and Jason Giambi. So astute readers, what do each of these men have in common? That’s right they’re all baseball players. Oh, and they are all fucking steroid-ed out of their minds. There’s more juice in them than a carafe of Tropicana. These are men with veins with diameter of a garden hose and forearms that require headbands not wristbands. I have inadvertently selected the universal symbol for ‘roid head. Terrific. It’s hard to imagine a person less likely to be accused of using “the juice” than me. I once described my earlier physique/fashion choices as looking like a toothpick being wrapped in Kleenex. Put another way, I have a much easier time filling out a 10-40EZ than I do any shirt. But now I’m in the company of these great cheaters -- Mighty Caseys of the “medical” enhancement revolution, and Aaron: a modern redux of the 98lb, sand-kicked, weakling. Pretty great..
But what’s in a number. A lanky player wearing any other number would layout just as sweet.
So we did what all good democratic entities do: we voted. Everyone on the team was encouraged (frankly I hounded people) to submit names to the group. In the end we accumulated 41 names. Many stunk, some of your author’s choices, in retrospect, were a bit off. Though I will continue to believe that St. Eugene could be a great name (St. Eugene is the patron saint of dysfunctional families, a pretty apt description for most ultimate teams). After voting (a 3 choice weighted vote administered by yours truly) we whittled the list to three choices: Wiki, U-Dog and Polly and Illuminati. Wiki as in the –pedia, and it’s Hawaiian for fast and informal, U-dog is a reference to the 60s cartoon, and Illuminati just sounded cool to enough folks.
Following a tournament we gathered together to consume some grilled meats and down a few beers in the hopes of uniting this motley crew of folks into a team. Never underestimate the value of shared meals, stories and humiliation as team building exercises. We managed to achieve each of these goals, and we also decided on the team’s name.
Drumroll.......
Big Red Death Machine.
Yeah, turns out like most democracies, decisions are made by those who show up. After talking about the various choices upon which we had voted, we decided that they all sucked so we went with Big Red Death Machine. I think it’s sufficiently ridiculous and despite sharing it's ackronym with that of boredom (BRDM) it's a good name and moreover I really enjoying playing with this group of people and feel more included now that we’re ALL calling ourselves this new thing. It’s nice, when I first moved here I was trying to choose between two seemingly disparate ways of playing ultimate: regionally competitive men’s ultimate and midlevel regional co-ed. I still wonder from time to time where my skill set places me, meaning if there were some sort of ultimate draft at what level would I be playing. Would I be able to play nationally competitive, regionally or mid-regionally? But that’s only one part of the equation the other part involves enjoying every minute of practice, and sharing in the creation of a team. That's the part of this sport that I love even more than playing, being a part of something larger than myself. It's a little like a campaign, you take a bunch of crazy fuckers bind them together under a common flag and then ask them to do things that are beyond sound judgement and their own perception of self-limitation. Oh and there's usually a fair number of attractive members of the opposite sex just to keep the lizard brain happy.
And as it turns out, I’ve really loved playing with BRDM. We’re a team that’s starting to figure out what it’s like to be a team. We are cheering one another, we’re going out for dinner and drinks. Teammates tease, taunt, and support each other. It’s a good situation. This is the first time I’ve been involved with naming a team, and it’s the first team for which I’ll have a jersey with numbers and the whole shebang.
Which forced me to select a number.
As a child I never had a favorite number. It seemed like numbers were symbols devoid of much communicative power, and so I never really picked one as my own. Oh, and even more importantly playing baseball most of our shirts were assigned by height. So the smallest child wore #1, while the largest was usually assigned #19. As a lanky kid who didn’t like tight shirts, I think I tended to get 11. That seemed the right size for me. But I never really cared about the number I wore. So when I got to pick my number here it was strange how easily I chose my number: 25. I first thought about selecting 25 when Jen and I were still dating, and it was the date of our anniversary, but the strongest attachment to the number comes from, sadly, Paul’s death. He died 10.25, and for some reason the number 25 has seemed a pretty powerful symbol since then. So I’m number 25 on this team…a childhood of Michael Jordan worship, and I pick 25 instead of 23. I guess I can think of myself as having grown up.
After picking my number (which I should add, I’m really proud of) I went to ESPN to try and find out what famous players have worn my number. (I guess it should be the other way around, presumably KC Jones didn’t select 25 in admiration of me). The most famous players to wear 25 are Barry Bonds….Mark McGuire….Rafael Palmerio….and Jason Giambi. So astute readers, what do each of these men have in common? That’s right they’re all baseball players. Oh, and they are all fucking steroid-ed out of their minds. There’s more juice in them than a carafe of Tropicana. These are men with veins with diameter of a garden hose and forearms that require headbands not wristbands. I have inadvertently selected the universal symbol for ‘roid head. Terrific. It’s hard to imagine a person less likely to be accused of using “the juice” than me. I once described my earlier physique/fashion choices as looking like a toothpick being wrapped in Kleenex. Put another way, I have a much easier time filling out a 10-40EZ than I do any shirt. But now I’m in the company of these great cheaters -- Mighty Caseys of the “medical” enhancement revolution, and Aaron: a modern redux of the 98lb, sand-kicked, weakling. Pretty great..
But what’s in a number. A lanky player wearing any other number would layout just as sweet.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Xenobotany
Monday Morning. I rise at 6:30. Well that’s a fib. The alarm ended my sleep at at 6:30, I arose after a few trips back into the land of dreams and consequence free action. Around 7:00 I jumped up and got ready to head to my bosses’ house. (and yes that is, I believe, the correct punctuation...the home of two of my bosses, they are married). Wandering over to Heller’s Bakery to grab a croissant and bagel (planagel really…to be eaten on the plane) I embraced the thick morning heat of my newly adopted city. It’s 7:30 am and the heat conspires with my block long walk to create intricate sweat-based Rorschach designs on my newly pressed shirt. Wonderful. I think this one under on my right pec reminds me of a dancing bird trying to eat its own wing. Fantastic…some sweat, some sweets, and some psychoanalysis. Carbohydratic nourishment in hand, I returned home and for the first time in my life (I believe) I called a cab. I do not, as a matter of course, make use of cabs. They make me nervous: 1) it’s rare that I really know where I’m going 2) Even though I love making conversation under normal circumstances, the cab conversations I’ve had have just been a bit strange or at least strained. But the walk to the residential portion of DC where my bosses live seemed more than just a bit daunting under the watchful gaze of the hateful sun. So a cab was my option. Oh, and to add to the desirability of this option was the fact that I was traveling on business and because I’m no longer working for a 2-bit operation we can afford to reimburse for travel expenses. The cab arrived at 8:00 and we were off. On the way I relayed my destination: Phoenix. “But it’s a dry heat, ” offered the cab driver wearing one of those scotish hats that seem too stereotypically perfect for a real cabbie to actually wear. “Yes”, I replied, “though so is an oven.” The surface of the sun is also fairly dry, and similarly unappealing as a summer destination (though I guess the sun is pretty much off limits year round, from the little astrophysics I know). I was informed by my cab driver that the real place to visit is New Mexico, because that’s where Don Imus lives. This struck me as patently ridiculous. Who bases their geographic preferences on a radio celebrity, let alone Don Imus. Proximity to Don Imus means nothing. He’s a radio personality. He exists in the ether. By his very definition he can exist (in manner in which this man encounters him) in numerous places at once. Don Imus could live in the right back tire of a monster truck parked at the Stuckeys on I-90 in Wall, South Dakota, and you wouldn’t know. But I chose not to mention my theories on the role of Don Imus as a tourist attraction. Instead we talked (he talked) about how “fucking environmentalists have made DC terrible with all the imported trees.” Apparently the driver was fleshing out a theory wherein everyone in DC has sinus problems solely because there are too many trees, especially Asian trees. There may, in fact, be a botanical point to be made here, but I just admitted the truth, “that I hadn’t thought of that.” Similarly I’d never thought of trying to weight train by bench pressing a canvass sac full of rabid foxes while eating deviled eggs. See there are lots of things I’ve never thought of.
Eventually we pulled up to John and Nancy’s house and I disembarked, tipping well. Odd conversation aside, we made great time and that’s what he gets paid for, so why not tip well. Plus, I gained new insight into what I’ll forever think of as xeno-botany. The people you meet.
Eventually we pulled up to John and Nancy’s house and I disembarked, tipping well. Odd conversation aside, we made great time and that’s what he gets paid for, so why not tip well. Plus, I gained new insight into what I’ll forever think of as xeno-botany. The people you meet.
Saturday, August 13, 2005
What's with Hungary
While wanding the backroads of the internet I came across this site. Music Ecosystem. The site is designed to help record execs to better market their songs...it does this by telling you what songs are being downloaded (illegally, I assume) the most.
It's a data mining application. But it's incredibly comprehensive. It tells you the % of users who have an artist or song in their collection.
Silver Jews............ .04%
Modest Mouse............ .76%
Built to Spill............ .36%
Neutral Milk Hotel............ .16%
The Pixies............ 1.84%
The most popular artist... Eminem. 29.25% of all users have an Eminem song in their collection.
The program will also tell you what kinds of music people with Modest Mouse will like. I should like
You can also search for the most popular artists in a given country. For instance Austrians really like The Rolling Stones, while Argentines love Oasis and the Poles are into Madonna and The Talking Heads. Hungarians have from what I've seen thus far the worst taste in music...or at least the furthest from my own:
1. Supertramp.
2. Barry White.
3. Chicago.
4. Paco De Lucia
5. Yes
Oddly enough, in Britain the most popular artist...Bruce Springsteen. That's right, more Brits have the Boss than the Beatles. This is the marriage of two great things, ready data (especially in list form) with music. I love it.
It's a data mining application. But it's incredibly comprehensive. It tells you the % of users who have an artist or song in their collection.
Silver Jews............ .04%
Modest Mouse............ .76%
Built to Spill............ .36%
Neutral Milk Hotel............ .16%
The Pixies............ 1.84%
The most popular artist... Eminem. 29.25% of all users have an Eminem song in their collection.
The program will also tell you what kinds of music people with Modest Mouse will like. I should like
You can also search for the most popular artists in a given country. For instance Austrians really like The Rolling Stones, while Argentines love Oasis and the Poles are into Madonna and The Talking Heads. Hungarians have from what I've seen thus far the worst taste in music...or at least the furthest from my own:
1. Supertramp.
2. Barry White.
3. Chicago.
4. Paco De Lucia
5. Yes
Oddly enough, in Britain the most popular artist...Bruce Springsteen. That's right, more Brits have the Boss than the Beatles. This is the marriage of two great things, ready data (especially in list form) with music. I love it.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
I was not born...
I was reading an email from the Silver Jews listserv, of which I am a registered member. Just skimming an interview with David Berman from Pitchfork. My eyes landed on this line, it seems to perfectly encapsulate the last post.
"I was not born to be the center of attention in a crowded room."--David Berman
Damn Straight.
"I was not born to be the center of attention in a crowded room."--David Berman
Damn Straight.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Party time excellent
A few weekends ago I spent my Saturday skipping from party to party. I began the evening with a long and leisurely Metro ride to Ballston. Accompanied by a great book (Snow Crash) and my iPod I transferred and rode out into the warm and humid embrace of Virginia. The first party of the evening was the housewarming party for my friend Susan. Susan and I first met in high school and first became friends when we worked on the production of A Midsummer’s Nights Dream my senior year. It was the first show I’d ever stage managed and she was the ASM (Assistant Stage Manager). Currently I work I polling and she’s….a professional assistant stage manager. I should really contact Actors Equity and see if I can get some sort of finders fee for discover her talent…though in all honesty the greatest miracle was that I didn’t destroy her interest immediately. I liked stage managing but I was constantly making it up as I went along. Being a moron with a prompt book appealed to me, and I was pretty good at pretending to know that which I did not.
Susan’s party was about 2 blocks from the Ballston Metro. In the space of those 2 blocks I passed two parties in which it appeared Abercrombie and Fitch had invested heavily. It’s entirely possible that I passed by a convention of the “I heart A&F” society. Thankfully Susan’s party was filled with people my speed: theater folks and law students. I hung around for about 2 hours in blissful uneventfulness. Soon thereafter I packed myself (book, Frisbee and iPod) up and schlepped myself back to the Metro. Then it was over to Logan Circle and Allison Stuntz’s homewarming. It’s strange that the home necessitated warming, since a week earlier I was there warming it with my good wishes and poorly made jokes. Allison played host to the aforementioned music theme party.
This party was a bustling and bursting affair. There were numerous folks fitting the profile of nearly political job in DC. There were interns, techies, legislative staffers, pollsters, consultants, organizers and lobbyists. It was like a job fair without the promise of employment. I quickly sought out and adopted as my own a circle of Dean staffers. We caught up and I found that my little nebula of friends soon dissipated and dispersed in search of other friends, potential one-night stands and other staples of the 20 something party.
I meandered around and caught up with old friends and tried to worm my way into conversations in order to make new friends. But, truth be told, I really wanted to be at home reading Snow Crash. So I ventured to the second floor and said my goodbyes to the few folks I knew up there. As I was saying goodbye to my friend Buffy I saw Sandra. You may remember Sandra as the host of a party I went to sometime ago. At that party I felt awkward and out of place and so I left early. Well it turns out Sandra read that post and thought it a slight at her, or at least her friends. At Allison’s party she began yelling at me. Shouting accusations, and loudly and somewhat violently quoting back to me lines from my post. It was mortified. I write these posts realizing they are going to be read, but I tend to have a sense of whom I imagine will read them. Even still I try pretty hard not to say mean things…and in fact I don’t think I said anything mean about Sandra. But still here I was getting accosted, loudly for something I’d written. I was being asked to explain who were the “busty women and busty men.” Now I don’t remember writing the second half of that, and I was certainly not going to enter into a debate about the nature of blogging and the idea that writing what you feel is sometimes more important that writing what was there. I tend to write what happens to me, but some of the descriptions are, of course, more in the Hunter S. Thompson methodology…where you write what you know to be true even if it never happened. So in this case I explained how I felt about the party even if it’s not accurate in the sense of a documentary. Anyways, I was not about to enter into that discussion with Sandra at this time of the evening. So I did the next best thing. Basically I pointed to someone else, she looked there and I ran out of the house. I essentially reenacted a scene from a Looney Tunes Cartoon. I half expected to be destroyed by an anvil, or to draw a hole on the wall and jump through it.
As I ran out onto the street I realized, that sometimes I’m just not a party guy. I’m built for less intense encounters. I’m not equipped for the sensory overload that is a hectic party. After running a bit of the way to the Metro I descended into the underbelly of the transit system, resumed reading my book and thought about how nice it is to just sit….alone…reading.
Susan’s party was about 2 blocks from the Ballston Metro. In the space of those 2 blocks I passed two parties in which it appeared Abercrombie and Fitch had invested heavily. It’s entirely possible that I passed by a convention of the “I heart A&F” society. Thankfully Susan’s party was filled with people my speed: theater folks and law students. I hung around for about 2 hours in blissful uneventfulness. Soon thereafter I packed myself (book, Frisbee and iPod) up and schlepped myself back to the Metro. Then it was over to Logan Circle and Allison Stuntz’s homewarming. It’s strange that the home necessitated warming, since a week earlier I was there warming it with my good wishes and poorly made jokes. Allison played host to the aforementioned music theme party.
This party was a bustling and bursting affair. There were numerous folks fitting the profile of nearly political job in DC. There were interns, techies, legislative staffers, pollsters, consultants, organizers and lobbyists. It was like a job fair without the promise of employment. I quickly sought out and adopted as my own a circle of Dean staffers. We caught up and I found that my little nebula of friends soon dissipated and dispersed in search of other friends, potential one-night stands and other staples of the 20 something party.
I meandered around and caught up with old friends and tried to worm my way into conversations in order to make new friends. But, truth be told, I really wanted to be at home reading Snow Crash. So I ventured to the second floor and said my goodbyes to the few folks I knew up there. As I was saying goodbye to my friend Buffy I saw Sandra. You may remember Sandra as the host of a party I went to sometime ago. At that party I felt awkward and out of place and so I left early. Well it turns out Sandra read that post and thought it a slight at her, or at least her friends. At Allison’s party she began yelling at me. Shouting accusations, and loudly and somewhat violently quoting back to me lines from my post. It was mortified. I write these posts realizing they are going to be read, but I tend to have a sense of whom I imagine will read them. Even still I try pretty hard not to say mean things…and in fact I don’t think I said anything mean about Sandra. But still here I was getting accosted, loudly for something I’d written. I was being asked to explain who were the “busty women and busty men.” Now I don’t remember writing the second half of that, and I was certainly not going to enter into a debate about the nature of blogging and the idea that writing what you feel is sometimes more important that writing what was there. I tend to write what happens to me, but some of the descriptions are, of course, more in the Hunter S. Thompson methodology…where you write what you know to be true even if it never happened. So in this case I explained how I felt about the party even if it’s not accurate in the sense of a documentary. Anyways, I was not about to enter into that discussion with Sandra at this time of the evening. So I did the next best thing. Basically I pointed to someone else, she looked there and I ran out of the house. I essentially reenacted a scene from a Looney Tunes Cartoon. I half expected to be destroyed by an anvil, or to draw a hole on the wall and jump through it.
As I ran out onto the street I realized, that sometimes I’m just not a party guy. I’m built for less intense encounters. I’m not equipped for the sensory overload that is a hectic party. After running a bit of the way to the Metro I descended into the underbelly of the transit system, resumed reading my book and thought about how nice it is to just sit….alone…reading.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
Girls Gone WildWOOD
Last weekend I ventured up to New Jersey for the 13th Annual Wildwood Beach Ultimate Tournament. More than 150 teams from around the country show up to the run down beach town of Wildwood New Jersey for a two day ultimate tournament. I had long ago promised my meager services to the Oberlin reunion team. JKD and I were to drive up after work on Friday, but some horrible illness (sore throat, etc) struck JKD on Thursday and I was left scrambling for a ride. But in the Frisbee community you can arrange rides on short notice, in fact, it seems nearly to be expected. After emailing everyone I know who plays in the area I was able to get a ride and as the clock struck 7 I was wedged into a northbound Subaru with 4 other disc chasing maniacs.
After this weekend, I’ve come to realize that the feelings that most people associate with vacation: disconnect from daily life, a sense of being calm, a feeling of being rested and rejuvenated…I get these from ultimate tournaments. Normal vacations, like trips to visit other cities don’t do this for me. But an entire weekend of running around, cheering, chanting, screaming, and laying out, somehow this recharges me and brings me the release from my normal life that vacations are supposed to.
Upon pulling into Wildwood at 1 am I learned that I represented just the 4th player in Wildwood for team Oberlin. As Dan Scott put it the team came down with a case of the bails. This was further exacerbated by the fact that there were more Oberlin alums playing with other teams than there were playing for Team Oberlin. Our previous poor showing at Poultry Days meant that people were searching for more capable teams to join. A rare case of obies not sticking together and one that I have to admit really bothers me. But being the adorable rogues that we are we were able to recruit some players, and NAchie arrived from Oregon via Newark via NJ Bus Transit.
Rather than write up the results of each game I’ll just offer some general thoughts and maybe a few highlights here and there.
The first thing to realize about playing beach ultimate is that you play barefoot. I’ve long since sworn off playing barefoot. The last time I played ultimate without shoes was freshman year and in so doing I broke and sprained my big toe. Now I continued to toss on the quad for another hour until I was reduced to hopping to get the disc. Knowing when to stop has never been a trait associated with me sporting adventures. Playing barefoot on the beach is fine. Well, fine might be the wrong word. It’s nice and certainly different. But it does result in dozens of small cuts to your feet. Oh, and when you, as I did, step on a shard of glass from a stray beer bottle, well the cuts get a little larger. I stepped on this particular bottle (I didn’t get a brand, but I’ll assume it was Coors just to further fuel my hatred for that particular company) midway though Saturday. I continued to play for the rest of Saturday and through Sunday. When I finally got back to DC (and back from vacation) I realized that the now sand filled hole in my foot seemed to be the cause of no slight discomfort. How about that. Who could have predicted that? Aaron returned from a tournament injured, and yet still played well past the point of logical cessation. Stunning realizations. Not dissimilar from noting the fairly high humidity found in a glass of water.
As avid readers may know ultimate teams tend to have strange names. It’s part of the charm. You never play a team named The Lions, or the Jazz. It’s stuff like Sexually Considerate, Yellow Suckmarine or Girls Gone WildWOOD. This is part of the joy of the sport, or at least part of the preposterousness and entertainment.
In terms of personal performance, I played well. In our first game I scored 2 of our three points, and threw for our third score. In our final game I scored our only point. I played nearly every point in our four games first day. I think it’s reasonable to guess that I layed out about 20-25 times over the course of the tournament. I adore the feeling of flying through the air, and when you play on sand (especially wet sand as we did) the landing is just as fun. The best part of our team, besides it being full of fun people/Obies was that we were all willing to lay out. No one finished the tournament without sacrificing their cleanliness for the good of the whole. That’s rare, and is to be most sincerely appreciated.
I don’t know from a New Jersey Boardwalk. I grew up in the Midwest. We don’t have use for boardwalks. We are not obsessive in our recitation and playing of the song “Under the Boardwalk.” We are plagued with other foibles but fetishizing the boardwalk is not one of them. Turns out the boardwalk is like the midway of a bad county fair, but as a permanent, celebrated feature of a town. Hard to imagine why NJ gets mocked. Before someone else points it out, I realize that other states have boardwalks and that Wildwood may be a particularly sketchy place. My favorite features of the Wildwood boardwalk were the t-shirt shops and the hunt the insurgent. Like so many other t-shirt shops the ones in Wildwood adopt an attitude akin to that of Alfred E. Neumann after a night at a strip club and three too many tequilas. It’s not about critiquing the flaws of society it’s about reveling in the degree to which the wearer of the shirt can distance himself from caring through the purchase of a shirt. That’s right, let’s prove just how little I care about something buy purchasing a product declaring my ambivalence.
The other startling feature was “Hunt the Insurgent.” In this “game” you are able to shoot (with paintballs) a man in a large protective suit wielding a shield. This man, dressed like the men from some of those women’s self defense classes, prances and gambols around as small boys pepper him shield with pastel colored splatters of paint. As I understand it this booth is supposed to reinforce our patriotism, and resolidify in public sphere just how much we hate those whom we should. Except, here’s the thing…the insurgents aren’t just sitting around getting shot. They’re firing back. An no point in time does the “insurgent” blow himself up, or threaten the person attacking him…oh and he has a shield. It just feels like it mocks the danger faced by those for whom hunting insurgents isn’t a boardwalk game. But I guess mocking the sacrifice of those who actually fight wars has become a cottage industry in DC, so I can’t really criticize Wildwood for making it more visceral.
=====
One non-NJ related comment. While driving back from the tournament my teammates and I were talking about my sparsely appointed apartment (I still don’t have a real bed, or you know, a dresser). The captain of my DC team commented, “you know not having a bed makes it much harder to score with chicks.” To which I responded, “I already have enough trouble with that, but you may have a point, I guess I don’t need to make things any harder than they already are. It’d be like having the steeplechase in the Special Olympics.” For which circle of Hell did I just punch my one way ticket?
After this weekend, I’ve come to realize that the feelings that most people associate with vacation: disconnect from daily life, a sense of being calm, a feeling of being rested and rejuvenated…I get these from ultimate tournaments. Normal vacations, like trips to visit other cities don’t do this for me. But an entire weekend of running around, cheering, chanting, screaming, and laying out, somehow this recharges me and brings me the release from my normal life that vacations are supposed to.
Upon pulling into Wildwood at 1 am I learned that I represented just the 4th player in Wildwood for team Oberlin. As Dan Scott put it the team came down with a case of the bails. This was further exacerbated by the fact that there were more Oberlin alums playing with other teams than there were playing for Team Oberlin. Our previous poor showing at Poultry Days meant that people were searching for more capable teams to join. A rare case of obies not sticking together and one that I have to admit really bothers me. But being the adorable rogues that we are we were able to recruit some players, and NAchie arrived from Oregon via Newark via NJ Bus Transit.
Rather than write up the results of each game I’ll just offer some general thoughts and maybe a few highlights here and there.
The first thing to realize about playing beach ultimate is that you play barefoot. I’ve long since sworn off playing barefoot. The last time I played ultimate without shoes was freshman year and in so doing I broke and sprained my big toe. Now I continued to toss on the quad for another hour until I was reduced to hopping to get the disc. Knowing when to stop has never been a trait associated with me sporting adventures. Playing barefoot on the beach is fine. Well, fine might be the wrong word. It’s nice and certainly different. But it does result in dozens of small cuts to your feet. Oh, and when you, as I did, step on a shard of glass from a stray beer bottle, well the cuts get a little larger. I stepped on this particular bottle (I didn’t get a brand, but I’ll assume it was Coors just to further fuel my hatred for that particular company) midway though Saturday. I continued to play for the rest of Saturday and through Sunday. When I finally got back to DC (and back from vacation) I realized that the now sand filled hole in my foot seemed to be the cause of no slight discomfort. How about that. Who could have predicted that? Aaron returned from a tournament injured, and yet still played well past the point of logical cessation. Stunning realizations. Not dissimilar from noting the fairly high humidity found in a glass of water.
As avid readers may know ultimate teams tend to have strange names. It’s part of the charm. You never play a team named The Lions, or the Jazz. It’s stuff like Sexually Considerate, Yellow Suckmarine or Girls Gone WildWOOD. This is part of the joy of the sport, or at least part of the preposterousness and entertainment.
In terms of personal performance, I played well. In our first game I scored 2 of our three points, and threw for our third score. In our final game I scored our only point. I played nearly every point in our four games first day. I think it’s reasonable to guess that I layed out about 20-25 times over the course of the tournament. I adore the feeling of flying through the air, and when you play on sand (especially wet sand as we did) the landing is just as fun. The best part of our team, besides it being full of fun people/Obies was that we were all willing to lay out. No one finished the tournament without sacrificing their cleanliness for the good of the whole. That’s rare, and is to be most sincerely appreciated.
I don’t know from a New Jersey Boardwalk. I grew up in the Midwest. We don’t have use for boardwalks. We are not obsessive in our recitation and playing of the song “Under the Boardwalk.” We are plagued with other foibles but fetishizing the boardwalk is not one of them. Turns out the boardwalk is like the midway of a bad county fair, but as a permanent, celebrated feature of a town. Hard to imagine why NJ gets mocked. Before someone else points it out, I realize that other states have boardwalks and that Wildwood may be a particularly sketchy place. My favorite features of the Wildwood boardwalk were the t-shirt shops and the hunt the insurgent. Like so many other t-shirt shops the ones in Wildwood adopt an attitude akin to that of Alfred E. Neumann after a night at a strip club and three too many tequilas. It’s not about critiquing the flaws of society it’s about reveling in the degree to which the wearer of the shirt can distance himself from caring through the purchase of a shirt. That’s right, let’s prove just how little I care about something buy purchasing a product declaring my ambivalence.
The other startling feature was “Hunt the Insurgent.” In this “game” you are able to shoot (with paintballs) a man in a large protective suit wielding a shield. This man, dressed like the men from some of those women’s self defense classes, prances and gambols around as small boys pepper him shield with pastel colored splatters of paint. As I understand it this booth is supposed to reinforce our patriotism, and resolidify in public sphere just how much we hate those whom we should. Except, here’s the thing…the insurgents aren’t just sitting around getting shot. They’re firing back. An no point in time does the “insurgent” blow himself up, or threaten the person attacking him…oh and he has a shield. It just feels like it mocks the danger faced by those for whom hunting insurgents isn’t a boardwalk game. But I guess mocking the sacrifice of those who actually fight wars has become a cottage industry in DC, so I can’t really criticize Wildwood for making it more visceral.
=====
One non-NJ related comment. While driving back from the tournament my teammates and I were talking about my sparsely appointed apartment (I still don’t have a real bed, or you know, a dresser). The captain of my DC team commented, “you know not having a bed makes it much harder to score with chicks.” To which I responded, “I already have enough trouble with that, but you may have a point, I guess I don’t need to make things any harder than they already are. It’d be like having the steeplechase in the Special Olympics.” For which circle of Hell did I just punch my one way ticket?
Friday, August 05, 2005
Familiar Sensations
Today was a great day for two strong familiar feelings. The first was a strange reminder of just how nice a peanutbutter and jelly sandwhich can be. Every day as a school kid I took a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich to work. Every day. For 6 years. The thing is, after 2 years I hated the taste of these sandwhiches. For a couple of years mom substituted graham crackers for the bread. I basically never ate my the largest part of my lunch for years. And yet I never told my mom (I have since told her). I'm not sure why I did this. But before this morning I hadn't had a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich since I was 11.
Looking for something to eat before I ran out the door to catch the bus I realized I had all the ingredients for the most simple of sandwhiches. Whipping one up and downing it with a glass of milk I was returned to an idealized 50s house with an apron and heel wearing mother. I felt like I should have been wearing a propellor beanie. And you know what, it's a great taste. The sugary and slippery jelly (preserves in my case) really does work with peanutbutter. I'm not sure why I figured this wouldn't be the case, but I was honestly surprised. Apparently generations of people weren't all wrong. Go figure.
The other familiar feeling was that of working...all day. Today I arrived before 9 and except for 5 minutes spent walking to get lunch, I worked all day. I'll be working for at least part of this weekend. There is something fantastic about The Large Project. Something reassuring about contesting with your own ability to focus, and endure and realizing that you're capable. I love work. I have, far too often, defined myself (and in my worst moments--others) by the work I do, or more appropriately by the sheer volume of work I am able to complete. Under less fortunate circumstances being an ADHD case tends to make me bright but disjointed, but when faced with work worth doing I get this strange focus and finally my energy and pace are put to use. Today was one of those days. I wrote a bunch, learned a bunch, and am mentally racing.
Here's to old favorites.
Looking for something to eat before I ran out the door to catch the bus I realized I had all the ingredients for the most simple of sandwhiches. Whipping one up and downing it with a glass of milk I was returned to an idealized 50s house with an apron and heel wearing mother. I felt like I should have been wearing a propellor beanie. And you know what, it's a great taste. The sugary and slippery jelly (preserves in my case) really does work with peanutbutter. I'm not sure why I figured this wouldn't be the case, but I was honestly surprised. Apparently generations of people weren't all wrong. Go figure.
The other familiar feeling was that of working...all day. Today I arrived before 9 and except for 5 minutes spent walking to get lunch, I worked all day. I'll be working for at least part of this weekend. There is something fantastic about The Large Project. Something reassuring about contesting with your own ability to focus, and endure and realizing that you're capable. I love work. I have, far too often, defined myself (and in my worst moments--others) by the work I do, or more appropriately by the sheer volume of work I am able to complete. Under less fortunate circumstances being an ADHD case tends to make me bright but disjointed, but when faced with work worth doing I get this strange focus and finally my energy and pace are put to use. Today was one of those days. I wrote a bunch, learned a bunch, and am mentally racing.
Here's to old favorites.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)