Surprise!

November 30, 2008


surprise!

Yup. That’s exactly what you think it is. Surprise!

Stay tuned for even more talk about even more babies, I’m sure.

Tags: Baby Pictures, Vilhauer |

5 Comments

Season Ticket Review - Shaking off the rust

November 30, 2008


Skyforce

Game 1 – Iowa Energy (0-0) at Sioux Falls Skyforce (0-0). November 28, 2008.

You’ll have to forgive the choppy nature of this post. It’s Skyforce season again, and while I haven’t bothered to touch upon sports since the Olympics, and basketball has been off limits since the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship, I’ve been drug back into the Season Ticket Review by the pleading looks of a handful of loyal, if not sorely misled, fans.

Let’s just say I might be a little rusty.

More than just the writing, too. I’m rusty in being a fan. I’m rusty in understanding the nature of semi-professional basketball – the up and down nature, the streakiness, the completely unreliable lead.

Oh, the unreliable lead. How it gets me every time.

The Skyforce season began rather well. Up by 15 points near the beginning of the second half, I was already moving on to the next game. I was thinking of how easy it seemed. How well the veteran players seemed to be meshing. Our shots were falling. Our team looked fantastic.

I was thinking about how much crisper the team looked, a notion Kerrie mentioned several times. They looked more polished, less like the CBA team they used to be and more like the nearly-professional team they now are. Two years in the NBA D-League, with two years worth of great players and two years worth of Nate Tibbits experience, must have done the team a lot of good.

It was the best way to start out the first game of the 20th season, with a commanding win over a team that might soon become as big of a rival as the Dakota Wizards.

There was only one problem.

It was still only the third quarter. The Skyforce must have been rusty, too.

Because they ended up losing by 12.

Um, guys? Just so you know, that’s an awful way to treat a fan in section P who was already making plans for the playoffs.

It was the fourth quarter that killed us. Iowa shot 70% and outscored our guys 42-20 in the final quarter, and it seemed as if Iowa had constructed some kind of invisible robot that trolled the paint, knocking each shot a little off center, forcing ungodly shots and keeping the ball from ever entering the basket down low.

The defense was led by Courtney Sims. 22-point, 17-rebound, 11-block Courney Sims. That’s not a typo. That’s a triple-double. Including blocks.

Because I watched a lot of Boston Celtics playoff basketball last year, and because I often have delusions of grandeur when it comes to understanding the fine points of the sport, I began to formulate a complex reasoning as to why the Skyforce had suddenly found themselves sucking air.

It was the Rajon Rondo scenario, with big man Courtney Alexander playing the part of Rondo, a can’t-score defender who was needed on one end and a complete liability on the other. Knowing he can’t score, he wasn’t taken seriously. He was left wide open. He was given free reign down low. Setting the pick on a pick and roll opportunity failed because his teammates wouldn’t pass it to him. And his stat line shows his failure to help: 2 points on 1-10 shooting, 5 turnovers. Of his 13 rebounds, nine were offensive – easy shots, almost all of them either missed or blocked by Sims.

It was as if they were playing 4 on 5 offensively.

But I now see that it was more basic than that. We never bothered to establish an inside game. And when we did, we were sorely outmatched. There wasn’t much Iowa could do when we were making our jump shots. But when they stopped falling, the Skyforce began their own downward spiral.

Live by the jump shot. Die by the jump shot.

It was an awful way to start the season. But at least one thing is for sure – we can’t go anywhere but up.

Skyforce 101, Iowa 113.

Tags: Basketball, Sioux Falls, Sioux Falls Skyforce |

1 Comment

Darby

November 28, 2008


Three years ago, we knew my grandfather was going to die of cancer.

There’s no surprise in this story. He did, in January 2006, just days before his 71st birthday. We traveled to Idaho to spend one last Christmas with him, knowing he wouldn’t have another, and a few weeks later we were back, mourning instead of celebrating, feeling the relief of finality mixing with the grief of losing the rock our family was built upon.

For my grandmother, it was a tragedy. Her life partner, the man who provided for her all of her life, who served as the other half of the strongest marriage I had ever seen, who was a strong and loyal family man, successful business owner, loving father and husband, everything you would want a man to be – all gone.

We weren’t there when he passed away. My grandmother was there. My aunt, uncle and cousin were there.

And Darby was there.

Three years later, Darby too is prepared to pass.

Darby, an Akita, was more than a dog. He was the number two male in the house, an overgrown teddy bear known for getting into binds. Fiercely protective of my grandparents, yet incredibly sweet, he found himself growing old due to a series of untimely fights: a handful of black labs, a porcupine, a series of additional wild animals His skin was scarred, his hair becoming patched. His eyes clouded, began to bleed, until no amount of drops would cure them. His hips went through surgery. His weight ballooned until my grandmother could no longer pick him up.

As of this weekend, my grandmother has made the decision to put Darby to sleep.

Think about that. For her, Darby is the last remaining connection to my grandfather. He is the link that binds my grandfather’s life and memory. When my grandmother looked at Darby, she saw an animal that my grandfather loved, despite his faults, despite his difficulties. Darby was my grandfather’s best friend, just as many dogs have been best friends to many men.

Darby was there when my grandfather died, nuzzling his hand, fully aware of what was going on during those last few hours of hospice. He held that memory strong, until he felt it in his bones, in his hips, through eyes that could no longer see, blinded by bad luck and a sped up mortality, bleeding from his sockets like tears for those who have passed. He took on the pressures that my grandmother felt, weighting them on his back, collapsing under the pain, sapping it away from her mind, like a sponge cleaning up a staining oil.

It was as if he lived the part so my grandmother wouldn’t suffer, serving as the living embodiment of my grandfather’s legacy.

At the same time, he was just a dog. He was merely mortal.

Not to get all Marley and Me or Mitch Albom on you, but it’s heartbreaking to think about. They say dogs have no soul, but perhaps this is because they so fully take on the soul of those they love the most. They serve as a reminder; of what’s good in life, and of what’s important. Unbiased love, blindly unconditional, feeling everything you feel, both sympathetic and dismissive, as if they understand your plight but know it’s better to move on.

In putting Darby to sleep, my grandmother is finally ready to take that last step. To cut ties with the past, to face up to a future without her greatest love, to put the grieving out of misery and to walk forward.

To let go of the pain.

To let go. Move on. With fond memories, before things get worse.

To say goodbye, to both Darby and my grandfather. And to say hello to tomorrow.

Tags: Grandpa Boyer |

5 Comments

Thanksgiving traditions

November 26, 2008


Traditions don’t sprout from nowhere, like a spontaneous generation of history with ten years of memories attached. They are made. Created, either through careful planning or on the fly.

Sometimes they live on forever. Other times, they die as forgotten relics of past holidays.

The creation of a tradition is a careful proposition, balanced on the edge of sentimental wishing and genuine repeatability. Simply calling something a tradition can seem fake, especially when there is little emotion behind the act. There’s something disingenuous about it in a very “department store creating holidays” sort of way.

At the same time, you can’t always depend on them to generate naturally. If you wait to repeat the same thing year after year, you’ll be waiting a long time. Holiday plans are so mangled and different from year to year that even the most basic of activities has a small chance of being replicated.

So it’s with an air of humility that we take on two traditions this year for Thanksgiving - one of each type; established and new. Cinnamon rolls and parades in the morning, just like Kerrie’s family had always done, and a written list of things we’re thankful for – a new tradition that failed last season due to my forgetting to create a list.

I’m excited to take part in these traditions, both new to our home but by no means new to the world. They promise to be memorable not just because of the activities involved, but also because they form a backbone for the family, an event that locks us together, free of the typical bustle and shackles of typical life. Free to be together, unabashedly enjoying each others company without the pretense of a schedule.

Traditions create memories that are one-hundred-percent in the moment, built up by years of experience. You know they’re going to be special before you even begin. And you remember them for the personal connections therein.

Happy Thanksgiving. And for those who don’t celebrate, happy Day Off of Work.

Tags: Vilhauer |

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FreeDarko Presents…

November 25, 2008


Free Darko presents...Hi.

First of all, if you’re a basketball fan or a fan of well-written, intelligent sports literature and you aren’t reading FreeDarko, you’re should reconsider. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re pardoned - just follow this link, add it to your RSS feed (along with Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie and ESPN’s True Hoop) and enjoy the three best blogs in basketball.

Now that we have that covered, I want to inform all of you that I have what could be the greatest basketball book ever written in my hands. The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac: Styles, Stats and Stars in Today’s Game by FreeDarko.

Forward by Gilbert Arenas.

Yeah. You heard me.

(And before any of you say anything, trust that I might be adding a little hyperbole to this. Yes, David Halberstam’s Playing for Keeps was a phenomenal pro basketball book, and there are countless more I haven’t read. But at this point in time, nothing is beating this FreeDarko masterpiece.)

The book is fantastically designed (a dying art, the design of books) and phenomenally written, touching on the best aspects of the game we all love. You can find it here.

BUY IT AND LOVE IT.

That is all. If you wonder where I am for the next two weeks, it’s reading this fucking masterpiece.

Tags: Basketball, Blogging, Literature, Random Links, Sports |

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1984

November 24, 2008


From the 30th Anniversary Issue of Adweek, by Goodby, Silverstein & Partners co-chairman Jeff Goodby, regarding the best commercial of the 1980s:

No one writing about the ’80s could skip the Apple “1984″ commercial. It changed the way we’ve approached not just the Super Bowl but all big-event advertising. It also showed that you could use a fairly obscure story from a book only English majors had read to make spectacular advertising. But although it was influential, it only ran once.

(Emphasis mine)

Really? George Orwell’s 1984 is a “fairly obscure story” that “only English majors” have read?

I mean, I know advertisers don’t read anything but books by other advertisers, but come on.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Books, Literature |

3 Comments

BMOWP Classic Album – Stranger than Fiction

November 20, 2008


Stranger than FictionStranger than Fiction by Bad Religion

I came to know punk late, in 1994. I had missed the birth of Green Day. I had never experienced the decade’s old tradition of watching shitty bands play the only three chords they knew in someone’s garage or backyard. Instead, I learned the same way everyone else did – through major label releases on college radio. My friend Eric ran an after-school radio show on the local college station (KAUR 89.1) and, in between playing new Faith No More and espousing his hate for Soul Coughing, he started slipping some of that year’s punk selections into the mix.

The transfer of tastes from metal to punk-alternative and grunge to straight forward popular punk was easy for us. If Metallica and Anthrax could lead to the smarter and more universally adored Nirvana and Alice in Chains, it was only logical that, with this normalization of music, we’d look to break out again.

So we both listened in awe as this new (to us) sound battered our minds. Pennywise hit my ears, thanks to Eric’s access. Strung Out. NOFX. And most of all, Bad Religion.

Listening to Stranger than Fiction, Bad Religion’s major label debut, was like opening up a textbook and realizing everything made sense. It was education by surprise – there was something so simple, yet so wonderfully original, and I was flabbergasted I hadn’t discovered it earlier. This wasn’t punk for the masses like Green Day and The Offspring – instead, it was edgier. It had a message.

It had a message. A real message, one that created questions and promoted thought. That was the key.

Looking back, this is what I had been missing – music bathed in political reason, crafted from true knowledge, highlighted by incredibly clever lyrics and a series of hooks that begged to be remembered. I started memorizing, understanding viewpoints I hadn’t.

It wasn’t until I dove into the back catalog – and, in turn, moved from Best Buy to Ernie November when it came to learning about new music – that I fully grasped the intensity of Greg Graffin’s knowledge. Sure, Bad Religion never tried to be in your face – they weren’t Propaghandi or the yet to be created Against Me! But it was there, still. The first step in acceptance. The perfect primer to what music could be.

I now know that I was blinded by something new, what I thought was the ultimate in real feeling. I now know that, in comparison to others in the genre, Bad Religion is seen as a major label cop-out, punk pioneers that lost their way, too intelligent and too basic for lasting consumption. I now know that there is better, more original, more raw, more evolutionary music.

It has never stopped my ears from wrapping around the familiar sounds of the album, though. It bridged a gap – a necessary gap, one that threatened to leave me in the throws of major label martyrdom, unable to branch out for lack of knowledge, stuck to the same because I didn’t know which direction to move.

We often forget that the albums we have left behind are the same ones that helped shape our tastes today.

Even more, we forget that those albums are, for the most part, still wonderful. Still familiar. Still important.

Still worth listening to, even if only once a year.

Tags: Music |

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