November « 2006 « Black Marks on Wood Pulp / by Corey Vilhauer

Twin-VP

November 21st, 2006

MVP! MVP! I never expected this.

The MVP this year was supposed to be between Derek Jeter of the Yankees and David Ortiz of the Red Sox.

The two Minnesota Twins candidates – Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau – were supposed to split the votes, causing both to lose out.

East Coast Bias®™ was supposed to render a small-market American League player hopeless, constantly overlooked by reporters and slotted as lower in talent than New York and Boston stars.

I guess that’s why they vote, isn’t it?

Congratulations to Justin Morneau – the man that led the Minnesota Twins to an improbable regular season comeback; who hit .321, had 34 homers and 130 RBI; and who made only $385,000 last season. Yeah. $385 thousand gets you an MVP these days. In the National League, where MVP Ryan Howard’s salary is $355 thousand, you’d even have 30K left to spend on concessions.

Some people call it a bad choice. Well, you know what? The votes are all that mattered. Derek Jeter probably deserved to win the MVP this year. In fact, I’m almost certain he did. I’d have voted for Joe Mauer, myself. I don’t even think Morneau is the best player on his TEAM.

But, you see, sometimes the votes fall in favor of a guy with more emotion behind him – the guy who can get his team to play better and can charge up a clubhouse like no other – instead of the player with better stats, more marketability, and sheer popularity.

Ask Steve Nash. It happened to him twice. And there’s no denying it. The baseball writers of the nation have spoken. The sports writers around the world have spoken. This year, at least, they’ve voted en masse for Canadians – Nash, NHL MVP Joe Thornton, and now Morneau. Which is pretty sweet, actually.

But it’s even sweeter that a Minnesota Twin is the Most Valuable Player of the American League for the first time since Rod Carew won it in 1977.

The Minnesota Twins had the best pitcher (Cy Young winner Johan Santana, which wasn’t a surprise and therefore didn’t make it to BMOWP’s front page) and the best hitter. And they still lost in the first round. Is this what it’s like to be a Twins fan?

If so; God help me.

Comments: 10

Issues Considered: Baseball, Minnesota Twins, Sports

A new sister-in-law

November 20th, 2006

I often times talk about my friends on this site – when they graduate, when they marry, when something special happens in their lives. It’s natural – at that moment, all of my thoughts are directed toward those people. My friends are my family, and it is only natural that I feel happy for them.

This weekend, the one person who has been the most like family, my friend Jim, the kid I spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out with, got married. This is the same kid who I hung out with every day, watching television, growing up and living life, whose basement I lounged in and whose mother spoiled me (all of us, really) as if she was quietly mothering 20 high school and college aged men and women. In away, she was. And in a way, this one person has been more like a brother than anyone I’ve ever known.

With our group of friends, a marriage brings to mind a twist on an old family cliché: we’re not losing a friend; we’re gaining a friend. Over the past few months, Mel has become a great friend. And now she’s married. To Jim. A de facto sister-in-law to a lot of us.

With all of this explanation, I’ve lost the scope of what I wanted to say. Which is that love is beautiful, and that finding a perfect match is a rare, yet fully attainable, experience. We shouldn’t be amazed by it, but it’s all the same an amazing act. We search and we search and finally find someone, and it clicks immediately and we can’t imagine being without him or her for even a second. All of our thoughts and our secrets transfer over to that person, and we vow to live the rest of our lives together without barriers and without anything but the highest level of caring and understanding.

Yeah, to some people marriage is just as cliché as a long used turn of phrase. But it’s a complete act of emotion in which you give yourself fully, without hesitation and without trepidation, and join together as a couple in order to make better individuals. So whenever it happens, of course I’m happy.

Congratulations to Jim. You’ve married an advertising account manager, which is good because now I have someone to talk shop with. And, because Mel likes board games and Clue the Movie, she’s all right with us.

Congratulations to Mel. You’ve married into a hell of a great family of friends. Welcome into the fold. We’re not as obnoxious as we seem.

Congratulations to both of you. You’ve both found your match. And there’s really nothing more beautiful than that.

Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Friends

Seasoned tickets

November 17th, 2006

Our Champions. This morning we received our Sioux Falls Skyforce season tickets.

I’m not sure I’ve been so excited for sports tickets in my life. I’ve seen the Pacers in Minneapolis twice. I received a special bus/ticket package to see the Chicago Bulls during their heyday. I’ve sat rink side to write about a Sioux Falls Stampede game that was filled with brutal fighting and helped extend a team record-winning streak. But this is a new experience. Now I belong. I feel as if I’m part of the team.

Season tickets – especially to a semi-pro, incentive-laden, minor-league-promotion-style NBA Development level team like the Skyforce – are special in and of themselves. They welcome you into an elite club, one that comes with special t-shirts and bragging rights. And even though I was never in danger of being shut out of a game – they rarely sell out, after all – I can still go, knowing I’ll have the same seat. Every game. Regardless of who we’re playing.

Listen, I know that season tickets to the Skyforce are a far cry from Minnesota Vikings or New York Yankees season tickets. But for the price (less than $3 per ticket!) and for the amount of games we go to, this was necessity. I’ve never had a chance to do this – to follow a team for its entirety, from opening day to championship.

My teams are all out of town, strewn across the United States; Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Miami. There’s no way I can follow those teams. But here in town, we’ve got our own brand of local sports, one that is just a degree away from being big time.

And, until this year, I was unable to even support the Skyforce fully. I worked nights. I wasn’t sure what my schedule would be for upcoming games. I couldn’t commit. I couldn’t make the vow; to devote myself to Section M, row 13, seat 1.

Now I can. I mean, this is MY team now. We’ve not only supported them for the last two years, but we’ve now put our money where our mouths are by dedicating ourselves to the team for 24 home games. We are part of the crowd. We’re a group of the “usuals.” Even if it’s small-time, it’s OUR small time.

Regardless of what happens, I’ll be there. When the unbelievable happens, I’ll be there. When the heartbreaking happens, I’ll be there. When the Sioux Falls Skyforce plays like a group of spoiled NBA wannabes, I’ll be there. Just as I’ll be there when they come together and form a cohesive team of truly professional players, each individual part playing for the good of the group and the enjoyment of the fans.

When the game is tipped off, and I’m sitting in my seat – MY seat – watching the game I love, played by players that aren’t being paid millions; that are just happy to be there, working hard and fighting for the chance to make the big time, I’ll hopefully come to the realization that I’m a very lucky person. Because even though the Sioux Falls Skyforce is just an NBA Development League team in one of the smallest NBA Development League cities in the nation, they’re still the team I’ve chosen. They’re MY team. And, for this year at least, no one can take that away.

Comments: 3

Issues Considered: Basketball, Sioux Falls Skyforce, Sports

A voice, lost

November 16th, 2006

A quick note on the power of a journal.

Over the past few days, I’ve found myself tuning out the sports radio blather I often used to gravitate towards, instead turning the dial towards our local public radio channel. I don’t know why this is happening, but it is. I suspect it’s because I’m tired of listening to radio personalities yell at each other about why the Jets are sunk and why the SEC is a better football conference. But that’s a subject for another day

Yesterday I heard a piece on All Things Considered about a wartime diary that was discovered in Vietnam. In it, the author, a young Vietnamese woman who had joined the VC as a doctor, describes the horror and fright of living in wartime Vietnam, including her own views on communism and war and graphic details about the injuries she found.

It’s an amazing story, not because of it’s content, but because of the beauty of the writing. It’s simple, but passionate – a true philosophical, anatomical, and personal journal from one of the world’s most mistake-ridden and violent wars. It’s not written by a soldier, or by a historian – it’s written by a young woman, Dang Thuy Tram. A person. A voice from deep inside the “trenches.”

From the diary:

April 8, 1968: Today I did an appendectomy without enough medicine, just a few tubes of Novocain. But the wounded young soldier never cried out or yelled. He just kept smiling, to encourage me. I felt so sorry for him, because his stomach is infected. I would like to tell him, ‘Patients like you, who I cannot cure, cause me the most sorrow.’

It was discovered, and surprisingly saved, by a member of the U.S. Military — Frederick Whitehurst, assigned to the 635th Military Intelligence Detachment — a person who was charged with burning seemingly worthless Vietnamese documents after finding an abandoned house. From the article (which, actually, you should read in full):

Whitehurst and Nguyen Trung Hieu, his South Vietnamese interpreter, were standing by a 55-gallon drum.

“I’m throwing things in there and they’re burning, and over my left shoulder, and I remember this, Nguyen Trung Hieu was looking at the diary and said, ‘Fred, don’t burn this. It has fire in it already,’” Whitehurst says.

Whitehurst kept the diary. He smuggled it out of Vietnam, knowing its importance. He started working for the FBI and couldn’t do anything with it – communist countries and FBI agents aren’t supposed to visit, after all. Finally, years later, he found a taker – the Vietnam Center at Texas Tech University. They located the diarist’s mother, and the two were united.

What is the power of a lost voice? When diaries like this are found, what insight can be given to the horrific events that shaped them? When a young woman describes the atrocities of war – the bloodshed and the fear and the false hope – what is she leaving behind for the rest of us? A greater understanding?

Think of how important Anne Frank’s holocaust diary is. Think of what Tram’s diary – with its strong anti-communist slant and its reality laden comments – will mean to generations of future Vietnam citizens. It has already sold over 400,000 copies in a country that usually runs a printing cycle of 2,000. It’s coming to the United States soon. I will be reading it when it gets here.

We all jot our thoughts down from day to day, whether it’s on paper, or on the Internet, or just as a series of mental notes. Often, it’s not even meant to be read. But it’s these thoughts that serve to shape our lives for the future generations we may not even get a chance to meet. Journaling isn’t just a self-righteous way to talk about you – in certain situations, it can be an important slice of life.

What are you writing about? Is it going to change the world? Is it casting a light on a sticky subject, or is it just the random musings of your boring life? Either way, it’s necessary. Because we never know what our thoughts will mean when moved to the future. We never know when we’ll be given a chance to really speak. To really let our lives be known.

The death of Thanksgiving

November 14th, 2006

Something scares me.

No, the people on my block who already have their Christmas lights up do not frighten me. Neither do the stores that have been featuring their holiday specials and Christmas decorations for the past few weeks. I’m not even that annoyed by what seems to be a “too early” form of holiday cheer.

There is one thing, however, that I’m a little scared of.

What happened to Thanksgiving?

In the past, we saw a general succession of holiday offers. Halloween promotions began as soon as Back to School sales were cleared out. Thanksgiving items sprouted up during the last week in October, overlapping with Halloween and thrust into the forefront as the stores dumped their leftover candy into the sale bins. Then, around the end of the first week of November, Christmas began its two-month-long trek.

This led to the ultimate pairing – Thanksgiving and the Day After. Thursday and Black Friday. A day of rest and a day of excess.

This year, we’ve lost Thanksgiving. Seriously – I’ve heard nothing about it.

Halloween ended and Christmas began. Black Friday ads have been popping up all over the Internet. Wal-Mart is already offering their Day after Thanksgiving sales. And we haven’t even eaten our turkey yet.

I always found Thanksgiving to be a welcome respite from the materialistic throes of Halloween and Christmas. It was a few weeks of rest, a necessary sabbatical that served to recharge my mind in preparation for the Christmas onslaught. You ate, you enjoyed your family, you realized how lucky you were, and then you prepared for holiday shopping.

On the day after Thanksgiving, you begin shopping for Christmas. On the day after Thanksgiving, you put up your lights, you garland your fence, and you begin baking cookies. On the day after Thanksgiving, you give in to the lure of holiday music and peppermint mochas.

This year, it’s all gone. We’ve had our peppermint already. We’ve discussed putting our lights up. We’re halfway done with shopping. We’ve jumped over Thanksgiving and started in on the cheer of Christmas.

Maybe we should take Thanksgiving back. Not for what it represents – a governmental fake holiday that was created to foster patriotic sentiment – but for what it used to be. We should consider it a time of rest. A respite. A sabbatical. Everything I mentioned before. Because if we don’t do that, we’ll lose it. We’ll watch our brightened beacon of anti-materialistic virtue – a lighthouse amidst a sea of shopping and candy and things and stuff and want-want-want – slowly become flooded, crumbling under the weight of consumerism.

There is a holiday between Halloween and Christmas. It’s called Thanksgiving. It means an extra day or two off. It means family and friends and it triggers the first round of remembrance for the past year. Don’t forget about it. It’s important, too.

Now, if you don’t mind, I have to finish ordering Christmas gifts on the Internet.

On being prompt

November 13th, 2006

Some days I want to write something on this blog. And I try really hard. But I can’t write about the books I’ve been reading and the fate of the 4-3 Indiana Pacers every single day. You’d all leave. Hell, I’d leave.

On these days that I try really really hard, I find myself at the end of the day wondering what I should spit out. What should I say? I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I’ve got blogger’s block. And that’s embarassing — if I can’t say anything random, what chance do I have in life?

So from now on, I’m subscribing to a “writing prompts” e-mail list. It will send me ideas. They might be lame. If so, I’ll skip them. But sometimes they’ll be great. And if they are, you’ll know.

Anyway. This is what ends up being counted as a post on “blogger’s block” days. Sorry.

Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Blogging, Meta, Random, Writing

Bringing sexy back

November 11th, 2006

In honor of a great episode of The Office this last Thursday, I bring to you the best Office Mash Up Ever.

JT and Michael Scott = Match made in heaven.

Comments: 3

Issues Considered: Videos