Monday, November 15, 2004

Bedtime Movie Story Some nights, I just don't have the enthusiasm to tell Linus the kind of bedtime story he wants.  One problem is that you can only tell so many Spiderman and Superman stories that have to follow more elaborate machinations than a Chinese opera.  Three a week from me on those, tops. I try to tell him real things.  Amelia Earhart.  Mount St. Helens.  The Electoral College.  Bugs.  Some nights you have to coax him more than others, but if you can get a good grabber at the front, he'll stay with you all the way.  Tonight we talked about Frankenstein.  We talked about the book and the movie.  I gave him the full movie rundown, even the parts about digging up the bodies.  No problem for him.  Of course he'd have to dig up bodies.  Who would volunteer to donate their brain while they were still using it?  He had to ask what volunteer meant, exactly, but once we cleared that up he agreed that digging up the bodies was the only real solution.  I mentioned that the movie was in black and white.  He couldn't believe anybody would willingly make something black and white.  I explained that color film wasn't always around.  ("What's 'film'?")  I said movies had changed a lot.  He asked how.  I told him color was one way, sound was another.  We went through all of that, and I explained how the Pixar movies he likes aren't made the way other movies are made, with actors and all that.  He understood that to be the case, but wasn't able to put his finger on how movies like that were made.  I told him TV was different now, too.  I told him about getting our first color TV when I was 8.  The notion that people watched black and white TV sent him into core meltdown.  It just couldn't be possible!  I told him I loved movies.  I told him which of his movies I liked the most (Monsters, Inc., Babe, Toy Story), and which favorites of mine he had already seen (Lord of the Rings, Two Towers, Ghostbusters).  I told him that he and I were going to see a lot of movies together in our lifetime, that there were so many movies I wanted to watch with him when he got older. But all that can wait.  We still haven't seen the Incredibles yet.  10:22:34 PM    Say what?[]

Ball on Sunday? I played in a Sunday pickup game for years, with a group of guys who had been playing for many years before I joined.  We had a sweet deal, a private gym nearly every Sunday from 10:30 am to whenever, and enough guys to run almost any weekend.  And it was a great group, on top of that.  The threads that ran through that weekend game also ran through my softball team, my fantasy basketball team, my local Wolves enclave, and so on.  I say "was" because we just found out last week that we weren't going to have access to the gym anymore.  It was a punch in the gut for all of us when we found out.  Emails were exchanged.  Anguished cries and misty trips down memory lane gave way to open weeping.  For over 8 years now, I've gotten used to my man Cliff asking me, "Ball on Sunday?", and hoping I was going to be able to make it. The worst part was the floor.  We heard a month ago that the old industrial tile floor had been removed, and a beautiful new, slightly elevated wood floor (springy!) had been installed.  Wood!  Nothing makes you want a nice wood floor like an industrial tile floor.  I first heard about the floor when Friend of Pipeline Cliff and I crashed our friend Dan's (another Sunday player) wedding.  (Cliff assured me it was OK to crash, because it was an Irish wedding.  We ended up leaving with two bottles of wine each, given to us by the host.)  As we sat eating free cake, ogling dancers, and helping finish the keg,Cliff noted the parquet wood dance floor, and his speculation about what the new wood floor would look like made us salivate in anticipation of playing on it.  Now we'll never see it.  We still play when it's warm out, of course.  We get a good four months that way.  Maybe five.  The thing is, when you stop playing ball, it can be hard to start again.  The main thing is having a regular game, and a place to play.  If you belong to a club or a gym, great.  But if you don't, are you really going to join one just to play ball with a bunch of guys you don't know?  Maybe, but also maybe not.  A lot of times it takes someone being proactive, and the reality is that as we get older, we tend to have less time to be proactive about something like that.  We also tend to have lousier, older bodies that take longer to get into shape and less time to get out of shape.  I mean, there's a reason you don't see as many 50 year olds out on the courts.  Guys slow down.  A lot of guys don't, but a lot more do.  I'm 35 and still feel very good getting up and down the floor, but I can also tell I'm starting to slow down.  That process isn't always linear.  The difference between 32 and 35 could be a lot smaller han the difference between 35 and 38.  The best intentions to play can easily get sidetracked, and the longer you sit out, the less likely you are to come back. I joined a work basketball league, one perk to working at such a huge place.  I did this before I knew my Sunday game was extinct, figuring at the time that it was a good way to meet some other people from work.  Plus, I had been looking for a second game a week as a way to stay in better shape and keep trying to improve (doubtful at this point, but I have delusions of mediocrity).  Now that my Sunday game is out, though, this league has taken on new importance. Tonight was our first game.  It didn't go so well.  We were up 20-19 at half, and ended up going down 47-31.  Total second-half collapse.  We had six guys, the other team nine.  I scoffed at the depth concerns of my teammates, but it had also been awhile since I played on a regulation-size court.  It was fucking enormous.  The baskets were in different zip codes.  But you know, I'm a warrior who brings his A game every night, so that was no thing to me.  What got to me happened about a minute before tipoff.  (Yes, there was an actual tip.  I wasn't chosen to jump for our team, a slight I won't soon forget.)  The captain of our team called out "Zone".  Now, I don't know about you.  Maybe you like to play zone defense.  Maybe you see a lot of that in your pickup games.  Me, I think zones are for pussies and slow fat guys.  Plus, they don't work all that well when you just show up and have never played together before.  Also, they don't tend to work well when the other team has a lot of good outside shooters and not much middle presence.  But whatever.  I'm the new guy.  They want zone, we play zone.  Certainly our lack of depth made the zone more justifiable, to conserve our energy.  And I think maybe some of our big guys had bad backs.  Zone, fine.  The problem with the zone, of course, against a good-shooting team is that the guys playing the top of the zone (me, for one) end up having to do a shitload more running around the perimeter, often to no end.  I spent most of the first half running from the wing to the top of the circle, back and forth, never once getting close to the actual ball.  Zone is essentially keep away from the defensive player up at the top.  Man, on the other hand, is about me keeping the ball away from my guy.  Much more fun.  Then, when my guy gets the ball, I'm right there with him, theoretically, and can actually harrass him, as opposed to running at him flailing my arms from a spot far away from him. Despite our zone, however, we end up the first half with a 20-19 lead.  I then get a bright idea.  I decide this zone is killing us, because not only have they been hitting outside shots and don't have a huge interior player, but I'm tired as shit and I haven't even sniffed the ball on "D".  So I talk to Randy, our Best Player (Dude hit several long shots with guys all over him) and Captain, and expressed my dismay at the zone.  Randy, being a player's coach, agreed, and we started the second half in a man.  Because I never play a zone, it's not something I get to hear much, but that first time the other team figures out you're in a man and screams "MAN!", it's pretty funny.  I'm thinking, "Yeah, MAN, bitches!  You're on lockdown!"  Instead, what happened was I figured out why we were a zone team. A layup drill quickly developed for the other team.  Six possessions, four layups, one complete and total bullshit offensive rebound for a hoop, and probably a missed layup.  I know I had my man, and watched him make many great and ordinary passes to wide open and cutting teammates.  After two possessions, we knew we had to reset who had who.  After four possessions, we did it again, with our outside voices.  After six possessions, we were back in a zone.  After that, it was too late.  Our Best Player stopped hitting, and so did I, but I didn't let that stop me from firing it up.  I probably went 2 for 10 from the floor, ended with four points.  It didn't matter.  The other team shot lights out no matter which D we played, and by the end one guy starting giving the "money" call while the ball was midflight.  I love that.  That guy's on my list now.  It's a long season, though, and for that I am glad.  I've got a game, and this one seems to have opened a door for me to play with a group on Saturday mornings.  I'm not thrilled they play at 7:30 am, but they do have a beautiful wood floor. I'd take the old group on the industrial tile any day, though. 10:03:55 PM    Say what?[]

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