It will be soon
To sit and eat peanut butter and jelly and drink the celebrated Oatmeal Stout is the flavor represenation of the clash of my youth and a new age. Finger painting meets art appreciation set to classical music. I've always believed that age is only a number and as I continue to be unable to play Ultimate that number hovers dangerously close to 500. No offense to the hobbits.

Is it prime?

I got passport photos taken last week. Time has certainly passed between passport photos. Nothing makes ten years quite so apparent as comparing 2 x 2 close-ups. My glasses have squared off. My hair has migrated from the top of my head to my chin and jawbone. I look wiser and rougher, but I'm still me.

Upon a time: A short review
Once is a rich man's Music and Lyrics. It's beautiful and moving, charming and genuine. What it lacks in Hollywood production it makes up for with splendid singer-songwriter music that spins a tale of awkwardness, connection, and creativity. I suppose it's a musical, or perhaps a love story. Either way, I dare you to watch it and not want to make music and love of your own.

Word

The word fairy has pointed out that "fervent" may not have been the word to use in yesterday's post. fervent (adj.) having great warmth or intensity of spirit. I might have been able to get away with it once, but twice really elucidated the awkwardness.

Ripe might have been a better word. The banana joke certainly points in that direction. ripe (adj.) advanced to the point of being ready to use.

Words have been tricky for me lately. They aren't coming out so well and I'm second-guessing them when they do. Times like these make me pleased that blogging doesn't put food on the table.

The great thing about Mary

Kella has greatly undertold the ambush of Mary. It grows more fervent with each passing day. By now, it's pretty fervent; if it were a banana it would probably be black. Luckily, its just a story and I'm just its teller.

I needed to visit the icon and ice cream establishment Ted Drewes, famous for concretes and other cold concoctions. Having grown up with just the bulk of Missouri between me and Ted, I was fond of the place and suggested we hit him up for something chill. Kella agreed. Then she hatched her ambush plan.

It didn't start out as an ambush plan, just a friendly visit. It started with a phone call that went unanswered and then another and another. If we had been asking Mary out on a date, our call volume would have been high, but we weren't and it wasn't like she was answering the phone anyway. I should mention at this point that although I was and still am quite fond of Mary, she and I had fallen pretty far out of touch. Far enough that if Kella hadn't been around I wouldn't have even found her in the phone book or known which side of the Mississippi she called home. If Mary and I had been components of a BLT, we probably would have been on separate sandwiches at this point. None of that would stop Kella; she is a determined woman.

We arrived on Mary's street, where brick houses bumped up against their neighbors and sidewalks sliced through front yards. Every house had porch steps. The straight slightly sloping street looked like the suburbs of a childhood someone older than me would remember. We found Mary's home and the ambush unfolded.

More calls went unanswered. So did banging on the door, ringing of the doorbell, and shouts of "MARY!" through the screen. Lights were on, but nobody was home. Dogs didn't bark. Babies didn't cry. Streets were quiet and Ted awaited. I would have given up at this point, if not at points before. I didn't want to wake anybody. I started to doubt my appeal to Mary at 9:30 PM on a school night. I tried to convince Kella of this; but, and you may have heard this, she is a determined woman. She strode confidently to the neighbor's door and rang the bell. A neighbor, a friendly enough Midwestern woman with proper neighborly curiosity answered the door as I stood on the sidewalk between the two houses. Kella introduced herself and explained our plans and our surprise that Mary's family was not to be found. The neighbor took in the story only eyeing the bearded stranger lurking on the sidewalk once. Fortunately for me, beards hide blushing, and darkness hides the rest.

The concerned neighbor and Kella proceeded to go through the same knocking, ringing, shouting ritual that I had already witnessed as I stood on the sidewalk behind them. Had we been scorned lovers of Mary's this was the point where she might have considered a restraining order.

None of this seemed to have an effect. And then when I was really ready to give up, which was three notches above ready to give up, their ritual reached ears and my blush reached pinker. Finally, we entered the house, Mary appeared, eyed me for a moment in then said in a high-pitched greeting straight out of my past, "DAVE." The blush left, Ted was on his way, and I was regaled by the fabulous storytelling styles of Mary.

Score one for determined women. Score one for an ambush.

Like the Kool-Aid Man says

Oh yeah. If you want to see the College Championship Finals , check it out on CSTV: men and women. Try to spot me in the crowd!

Where were you when the Internet overtook TV and where will you be when Ultimate takes over the world?

Book review: Pistol

I don't find books. Books find me.

I just finished a wonderful, painful biography of Pete Maravich. I'd heard of Pistol Pete before, but I had no idea what he meant to the game of basketball or to anyone else. Kriegel did a beautiful job of trying to capture the thrill of watching Pete play (here's a glimpse on YouTube). He also captured a lot of the pain that Pete went through trying to live up to expectations and fight through injuries. He told a complete story from the generation before to the generation after. I didn't quite cry or leap from my seat, but I think I was close on both counts.

Update: This glimpse is better. It really shows what a great scorer and passer he must have been. He's got all the moves that NBA players of today have clearly copied, or by now have copied the players that copied Pistol Pete. He was clearly ahead of his time and probably hungry... Wow.

Now even spam is taunting me

From the inbox between the snapfish solicitations and the promises of better performance (wink, wink) comes the latest jab at my inability to shake an apparent ab strain- "Can you imagine you are healthy?"

Leave me alone, spam. I'll get there.

I made a Steamboat Willie joke today. It wasn't that funny. I don't want to talk about it.

Black pants, black shirt

She melted into her black Passat. Her exposed arm became silver trim. Her blonde hair the translucent passenger window. This singular event in a parking lot caught merely by a passing glance would forever confuse his mind's tenuous hold on women, cars, and transformers.

The straw before the straw

The little things are getting on my nerves lately. I suspect it's related to lack of exercise. Today, a very little thing about sent me over the edge. I was grocery shopping. On my list were the item eggs. Eggs is probably too strong for what I want. I really just want "egg". I think I've used an egg in the last three months. It was time for another. I'm willing to plop down $1.50 for one egg and 5 eggs that will have unrealized potential, which is really doubling their unrealized potential. First they are not baby chickens and then they are not brownies. The eggs that pick me end up seriously down on the actualization scale. If there is an actualization scale.

I looked around at the eggs and saw the various dozen egg holders. Now, back in the day, the last time I bought eggs, I could tear one of those dozen containers to make two six-egg single-guy friendly egg carrying cases with extra ventilation. I ripped and clawed and eventually came up with one this time. It was a lot harder than I remembered. As I was being checked out, the checker paused and looked at the eggs. She was new, so I didn't think much of it until she said, "Did you rip this? Because we don't sell them like that."

I nervously laughed and said, "You should."

She called her manager over and he looked at them too. He wasn't new, but by then I was embarrassed and unable to get my words out. He said, "We don't sell these."

I wanted to eloquently state that I had no $#%@%$# use for 12 eggs, but all he got was my sheepish grin. At about that same moment he opened up my six eggs and noticed one was broken. "One is broken," he told me. "Give it to him for a dollar," he sighed. The checker confirmed that I still wanted the 5 good eggs and 1 broken one.

I should have cried out, "HECK YES! That puts me closer to my actual egg need," but instead there was vigorous head-shaking.

Epilogue: I have emailed my displeasure to Safeway. I am trying to decide whether next time I should buy 12 eggs and then drop 11 of them on the floor, along with a note that says, "bring back the six." It will be in lowercase letters because they are ominous.

It's drive-into-and-then-fly-around-in country, thankyouverymuch
I'm going to start lobbying for a Mideast counterpart to the Midwest. I think Ohio (that's spoken with hand gestures and transformer noises-oo-ee-ee-oo) is unfairly classified as midwestern. It's not even in the central time zone. Ohio (oo-ee-ee-oo) proved to be an excellent driving destination. Just far enough to make the ol' rumpus hurt, but not far enough to send shivers up my spine. There would be no Arby's encounter this time, only a car ride full of arms in the air like we just didn't care or perhaps cared too much and dancing, or the seated marching to The Bravery's circus/Andy Griffith-esque trip theme music. Eventually, we'd end up in Columbus to watch the annual flight of the frisbees. It's a mating ritual. It's a force of nature. (C) It's none of the above. (D) It's all of the above. The College Ultimate Championships is where some very aggressive, physical, beautiful Ultimate gets played. My favorite moment was a successful greatest in a quaterfinal match-up between Stanford and Texas. A big huck to the end zone by Texas was D'ed by Stanford. The Texas guy then jumped out of bounds to grab the D'ed disc and flung it back in for a score. They don't call it the greatest for nothing. I was awed by one Colorado man because he appeared to be doing nothing and then suddenly was doing everything. I think I only saw him try once, every other time it was effortless. He was bored. Discs couldn't move fast enough to elude him and no one could keep up. In the end, he was only one man and he was felled by a bunch of Ho'dags.

Life on the streets
The Spring Onion's on this street are possessive. Not in an Ike and Tina kind of way, but in a purposeful and commanding way, in a way that rhubarb will never know. I sense that these onions have it figured out. They aren't the sticky hot onions of summer. Their insides are not a frozen wasteland of emotionless existence. No, not at all. They are Spring Onion's. They are onions of rebirth, of new life; they are the phoenix of onions, rising from the compost to take over a salad. A really big salad. A sort of mixed greens of the universe.

I'm lying. I don't even know what spring onions look like. I certainly wouldn't know a purposeful one from a slacker onion. Maybe the onions on this street are no more purposeful than you or me... or mostly me.

The blockbuster as metaphor

I have not seen Live Free or Die Hard, but I don't think it was filmed in New Hampshire. That's disappointing. However, from the preview, I was able to discern that it's clearly a movie that goes beyond action flick and straight to social commentary.

As best I could tell, Bruce Willis represents the boomer generation. The villains in this film are representations of government programs like social security or health care. Hopefully, one of them is named Doc. It looks to me that as the action unfolds, the boomers (Willis) have to fight the villains to save their children. Only a screening will let me know whether the boomers and Willis succeed in righting the societal ills or if as the final installment of this franchise, we finally see some hard dying.

It just takes a little

There is a tightness in my stomach. It's not nerves or a premonition or a hernia. What it lacks in narrative qualities it makes up in ongoing pain and annoyance. The abdomen is a vastly underrated piece of the machinery of being mobile. I know it should, but my pain has not stopped me from playing Ultimate, a less-than-stellar brand of the stuff, but Ultimate still. Today the off brand was particularly frustrating, as the pain in my abs was supplemented by the very poor decision to eat pre-game pie.

Take it from me, pre-game pie equals error. Pregame pie will, how do you say, gum the works. It's a recipe for the gastrointestinal fireworks. Not, as Napoleon would claim, flippin' sweet. So between the muscles that surround my stomach and the stuff going on inside I was not exactly fit to rock. I was probably more fit to be a rock.

Dropped passes, poor throws, a handblock by my defender... my play was a reflection of my mid-section. Except for three points where it wasn't. The highlight of those three was when my defender asked, "do you stop running?" At least for a moment, my torso went back to being carried around and around by my legs.

That's better than post-game pie.

I'm trying

In about fifth grade, I tried out for the Bob's IGA baseball team. Bob's IGA was a grocer, now defunct, and strikes me as an excellent little leauge team sponsor. I don't know whether Bob was, I didn't make that team. I never had much of a bat, or much of an arm. My fielding was decent, but not spectacular, and certainly not enough to make up for my difficiencies in two other pretty important baseball skills.

My freshman year of high school, I tried out for the freshman basketball team. Baseball had been out of the picture for a while, and basketball was my new sporting interest. I was a five-foot something scrapper. My shot was ok at best and it was matched by my passing and dribbling abilities. I could run and I could out-rebound a lot of other five-foot somethings. I might have had a chance. Only in my preparation for basketball I had discovered running. Running, it turned out, I could do well. After a single day of gymrat-like drills, I realized something about basketball. It wasn't running. So I scrapped plans to be a high school basketball player.

That was my last tryout for a long time. Running tends to take all-comers. Ultimate in most communities tends to do the same, and if it doesn't, there seems to be a self-sorting process. Not in this town. The Ultimate community in DC is large enough to support at least two men's Open club teams, and might have room for a third. So, after nearly 14 years without a tryout (job interviews don't count), I found myself out on the field trying to prove something to the people doing the picking.

It's been a complicated thing trying out for an Ultimate team. It's complicated by my body and its nonverbal complaining. It's also complicated by the sheer dependence on other people. There are certain skills that can make an Ultimate player shine, but to really have a great day, it takes great teammates. Teammates, who in this case are also trying out. Add to the mix, the wind, the lack of a weekend-ending goal, and this try out somehow seems more involved than my other two. It could be that it's more involved because, I've been playing this sport for 6 years and for once in a tryout my positive attributes seem to outweigh the negative. Maybe there's more at stake too.

The most interesting part of the process for me is trying to find the line between those that are going to get cut and those that aren't. It seems so fine. Talk about complicated, the best players may not get chosen, based on a team concept. Sometimes the best outright don't fit with the other puzzle pieces. In that sense, I'm glad I'm not the one doing the picking. This isn't gym class, but I'm never quite sure what it is. Fun, hopefully.

My future's so bright, I have to wear shades
or at least tinted glasses. Or maybe a hat. With a wide brim. Or a brim.

This game wouldn't be fun if we were perfect

There are moments when discs stick to hands like crazy glue is somehow involved, days where the sun shines brighter than an HDTV, and times when words fall into this box like they were wild horses released from a pen. Then there are moments, days, and times when the very opposite occurs.

Yesterday, in my first game of the day after my first cut, I had a moment when the disc hit my hand and glanced off, floating away in a sea of surprise and disappointment. It was a harbinger. The day was not filled with those moments, but we were never quite able to right the ship. And we sank.

The day was overcast. Rain has threatened us for nearly a week. It hasn't made good on those threats, perhaps realizing it is too drunk to fight, or maybe hoping that the threats will be enough to keep us in line. With the threat still lingering somewhere between cloud and sky..... Soaked. Shirt, shorts, face dripping with water. The weather had risen to the challenge and fulfilled the threats in a storm of nature's tears. With drops of rain rolling down my bike helmet and into my beard, I could not help but sing.

Rain. Rainbows. Lemons. Lemonade.

Times. Times just like these. When the wild horses can't be found and the pen isn't even mightier than the sod. Not that grass can't cut deep. They don't call 'em blades for nothing.

The life of a bean

Tonight I want the life that the L.L. Bean catalog promises me. I want to be in a place with my Adirondack chair in one of its three adjustable positions, perhaps all three as I mirror the sun sinking behind the lake. As darkness drips over the scene, I'd pull on my hunter green anorak, snuggling comfortably up near the light of a rechargeable lantern to finish a chapter in my Tom Robbins book. There'd be no mosquitos in my night. The only pest would be the one inside of me wondering how I'd gone so long without crocs hugging my feet. Yawning, but knowing that the night was too young for sleep, I'd switch on my LED boules balls and play the game that European campers preferred 20 years ago. Only, I'd do it in the dark. With the moonlit-colored jack just centimeters away, I'd emerge victorious, chuckle audibly with my mates, and then retire to my hammock, pulling a fleece blanket tightly around me and nursing my beef jerky. During my slumber I'd dream of another day frolicking near the dock under the warm summer sun. When the only cloud in the sky failed to shade me, I'd pull on my British-khaki-colored trekking hat, adjust the neck strap, and return to the frolick already in progress.

The re-Hash

The world is a smaller kinkier place and it has been since last Thursday. I went on my first Hash run on that day. This group, like others, was said to be "a drinking club with a running problem." Having a bit of a running problem myself, I figured a hash run might be a kick.

I arrived to find a wide variety of people in a wide variety of shapes and colors milling about, some already drinking beer. The pink skirt, the green on green matching shorts and shirt, the billowing black bucket hat stand out in my memory. Some had the look and shape of typical runners, others had the look and shape of typical drinkers. Most were somewhere in between, and a few even had on really tight pants.

At some point during the milling I noticed a chalked "6:54 Hares off" on the sidewalk. The hash had already begun. Four runners, called hares, were out setting the course. They left small piles of orange flour to mark the trail and where the road split the hares left a chalk circle, called a check, to send those of us in the pack to scurry in all directions to search for the right path.

Meanwhile, the millers organized to introduce the vistors, those that had hashed with other clubs, and the virgins, those that had never hashed before. Introducing myself and giving the club-appropriate nod to the recruiter who had brought me to my hash I announced before the crowd, "I'm JustDave and Bound-to-Succeed made me cum." Experienced hashers have descriptive names. These names tend to be on the vulgar side, as does much of the "official" hash conversation. Throughout the night I would meet "Sticky Throt*le", "Cum Dumpl*ng" and "Dildo Bag*ins". There was a pack full of like-named hashers.

As the pack took off after the hares by following the flour and chalk on the streets, I felt the world shrink. We bounded over sidewalk and street, 50 or more people racing around like recess had just begun. Loosely, we had direction and purpose, something like beer, running, and company or maybe it was tracking the hares. The objective was not as clearly defined as the course we were trying to discover.

There was a fascinating "leader and lemming" mentality in action. Some leaders were clearly not trusted by experienced hashers. The checks tended to produce a moment or even a minute of standing around and waiting for the right trail to be discovered. Sounds of "bad trail" or some signal of the right trail could be heard before the stampede would start up again. Personally, I struggled some with cutting corners on the trail when the opportunity presented itself. Was I cheating myself? fellow hashers? the hashing deities? None of the above, it seemed. And the crowd of runners poured on, sometimes bunching together and other times stretching out in a dynamic band not entirely related to speed.

"BEER NEAR" may have been one of the most excited hasher calls of the day. Eventually everyone found the van that carried the beer and settled in for a gossip or a drink or both. A few could be heard re-hashing the current hash. Others were doing a bit of pre-hashing. Next week, apparently is Cinco de moustache; an event I was encouraged to attend based on my current facial hair situation.

After everyone had gathered again, and the hares had set out to set the second half of the trail, the group pounded away from the van in the coming darkness. Within 200 meters, we stumbled upon my first BC- back check. The whole pack then set about retracing our steps. The new trail soon plunged us into the woods where running became more of an exercise in not stumbling or getting poked by branches than a fluid movement with the legs. Eventually we emerged from the woods and continued on to the finish.

The second half of the hash seemed to have fewer checks and the pack began to unspindle into a long line of runners, much to the disappointment of my hash buddy. We bounded through places I'd never have found on my own, and wound through alleys that I didn't even know existed. The world seemed like ours, 50 or so runners out taking over the night. We pressed on until the sounds of "Beer Near" echoed through the air again.

I thought that beer and running wouldn't mix, but beer has never tasted so good. It was a bit like magic Gatorade, only with fewer electrolytes and more hops. I downed some beer as well as some delicious cookies and waited for "the circle."

The circle was a delightful place, filled with singing, revelery, and pornagraphic references. I'd describe it more thoroughly, but the song lyrics escape me, the revelery may have been beer-induced, and the pornagraphic references are probably best left untold.

The cops did stop by, but apparently they understand the world in all of its shrinked kink.