Marquee Matchup

I took a little heart out of the Boston Celtics' win over the Detroit Pistons last night. For years I have been a latent Celtics fan, having come to them out of the mild frustration with growing up with an ABA franchise down the road. The Denver Nuggets nee Rockets were never much to speak of when I was a kid, and by the time David Thompson showed up to become the first basketball star in the mile-high city, I had already moved on. To Boston.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the team that I had picked out of mild desperation already had a winning tradition by the time I started to take mild interest in them. I was even more impressed when Larry Bird showed up. The Hick from French Lick gave me a work ethic to emulate and endless enthusiasm for the game. And a lot of highlights.
Speaking of highlights, it was about this same time that my buddy and future roommate began his own infatuation with the Philadelphia 76ers and their star, Doctor J. When he did move in with me, we got along fine with the few weeks out of the year when the Sixers played the Celtics. It was never quite the rivalry that the Celtics had with the Lakers, but it was an intense little bit of Atlantic Conference competition. Sitting in our living room in Colorado, we longed for the chance to one day take in a game in the Garden, or the Spectrum.
The closest we ever came was when the Nuggets finally joined the NBA and every so often we would be visited by our teams from the east. We would buy tickets and promise the other that we would not actively root against the other's team, but it was fair to cheer for the Nuggets. I spent a lot more time during these years with the sports pages. I learned to flinch when I saw that Bird's back was acting up, or smile patronizingly when I heard that Dr. J. was retiring.
Then, like all relationships, things changed. My buddy moved back east. Another friend and I drove him and his footlocker down to the airport in Denver. We made our farewells, and he went off into the night sky. And then I was alone.
Well, not really alone. My other friend could sense my mood, and so he suggested we drive over to McNichols Sports arena. "Maybe we could grab a couple of cheap seats." I mumbled something that sounded like assent, and off we went. Sure enough, when we got there, the game had just begun, and we bought a pair of ten dollar tickets and made our way up to the rafters. The Nuggets were playing the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I tried to maintain interest while I shook off the list of things I wished I would have told my eastbound buddy before he left.
This was back in the days before LeBron James, and a matchup between the Nuggets and Cavaliers didn't pack the house like the Sixers or Celtics. There were a lot of empty seats, and the lasting sense memory I have of that night was the sound of Dan Issel was making his way up and down the court for one of his last seasons. This was a guy who had the not-so-clever-but-very-appropriate-nickname of "The Horse". From way up high, we could hear his heavy breathing as he chugged up and down the hardwood. And in these echos, I felt an era coming to a close.

Someone To Watch Over Me

I think science is important. I believe that we should continue to discover all new forms of life wherever they might be, including other planets. That is why I find it difficult to reconcile my feelings about the discovery of Amazon Indians from one of the world's last uncontacted tribes. They have been photographed from the air. Pictures released on Thursday showed them painted bright red and brandishing bows and arrows.
Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which supports tribal people around the world said, "The world needs to wake up to this, and ensure that their territory is protected in accordance with international law. Otherwise, they will soon be made extinct." The thing that the world needs to wake up to, according to Corry, is the way that illegal logging in Brazil and Peru is encroaching on the territory of these primitive tribes.
While it is a certainty that the destruction of the rain forests of the Amazon is a crime, I find myself wondering about the need to keep seeking out "undiscovered tribes" to confirm that they are, in fact, undiscovered. The fact that most of the photos show men poised to fire arrows at the airplane passing overhead suggests that they do indeed want to be left alone. One can imagine the excitement in the cockpit: "Did you see that? Bring it around again so I can get another shot of the angry villagers!"
This begs the question of just how primitive the will continue to be, after their brush with the noisy metal bird. Part of the Prime Directive in "Star Trek" was a very strict non-interference policy. I imagine that Captain Kirk would have found some way to beam down to the surface near the village, painted himself up red, and wandered in to observe the natives close-up and personal. He might have even found a way to nab a few moments with some red-painted babe. But would he have posted the pictures on Al Gore's Internet?
I suspect it's just a matter of time before this becomes the next great vacation hot spot. I blame the voice-over: "...To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before, and build theme parks there."

Into The Woods

If I hadn't already been a supporter of Barack Obama, the sound bite I caught on this morning's news probably would have swayed me. Speaking at a Colorado high school, he reminded us, "Education starts at home." When I heard these words, I was getting ready to head off to work at a public school in Oakland where this might have come as some sort of debatable notion.
Today's experience was unique, in that my wife came along with me for the day to act as one of the chaperones for our fourth grade field trip. She went in prepared as a veteran of countless field trips with our son's class, as well as a great many over the years with my students. She had been listening to the stories and watching the stress drip off of me for the past several months, but I don't believe she was ready in the way she might have liked.
She found a way to challenge one girl by asking her, sincerely, if she could go five minutes without insulting someone. After a couple of false starts, she got a streak going, and was able to finish off the day remembering the admonition, "if you can't say something good about someone, don't say anything at all." It was a very quiet afternoon for that girl. My wife wasn't as successful with all the kids in her group, but she was buoyed by the support she got from another parent who kept it much more direct: "Knock it off."
Meanwhile, up the hill, I was managing a conflict between a parent and one of the volunteer naturalists who was leading another group. Apparently there was a wide gulf between what each of them felt was "respectful", and each one insisted that the other was being "disrespectful." The kids needed some direction, so I got them settled and sent the grownups to opposite sides of the forest to cool off.
The punch line to all of this action is this: I only ended up taking fourteen of my twenty-four students on the trip, with the expectation that these were the best-behaved. Compared to other field trips, this one went fairly well, with an equal amount of fun and education and only trace amounts of overt discipline. Still, there were plenty of grown-ups at the end of the day shaking their heads, wondering aloud, "How do you do it?"
I suppose when it comes to field trips, if you'll pardon the expression, some children need to be left behind.

Fractured Fables

A famished fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States saw some clusters of ripe black grapes hanging from a trellised vine. The Fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States resorted to all His tricks to get at them, but wearied himself in vain, for he could not reach them. At last the fox who was a press secretary to the President of the United States turned away, hiding his disappointment and saying:"The Grapes are sour, and not ripe as I thought."
This is the fable that the White House would like us to read as their comment on Scott McClellan's new book. "Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," said current White House press secretary Dana Perino, a former deputy to McClellan. "We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew." Neither Ms. Perino nor Mr. McClellan are particularly vulpine, but the moral of the fable would seem to work for either one, if we continue to stretch this metaphor with the McClellan memoir represented by the grapes.
Here's some of the sour ones: In Pinhead's second term, as news from Iraq grew worse, McClellan says the president was "insulated from the reality of events on the ground and consequently began falling into the trap of believing his own spin." All of this was a "serious strategic blunder" that sent Bush's presidency "terribly off course."
"The Iraq war was not necessary," McClellan concludes.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in August 2005, for instance, the administration went on autopilot "rather than seizing the initiative and getting in front of what was happening on the ground."
It's that "on the ground" thing that Pinhead and his cronies seem to have the hardest time with. As long as they remain in the air, all is well. Just like those grapes, way up high.

Dream Job

I always know that I'm going to wake up tired when I spend a night working in the book warehouse. Last night I had to do inventory, and it wasn't any fun at all. Back when I worked in a real book warehouse, I kind of enjoyed inventory. It was kind of like a holiday. Everyone, including the office staff, came out and counted all the books we had on all our shelves. Twice. As part of the warehouse management, it was my job to watch over this process, and double check any vast discrepancies between the first and second count. But the thing that made it really interesting was the night before, when there were only three of us hanging around until the wee hours printing the counting sheets, sharpening pencils by the gross, and eating McDonald's cheeseburgers by the bagful.
In my dreams, it's never quite as much fun. Like last night, it was much too dark, and the shelves were too close together. Even though I eventually found the title I was looking for with a flashlight and three different sets of directions, I still ended up confused as to exactly how many were actually on the shelf because they were stacked so precariously. Of course it didn't help that I had a number of different employees coming up to me during my search and asking me questions for which I had no answer. In this way, the dream was very much like real life, and in this way I took some mild comfort from it.
Then came the denouement: My father appeared, and stood quietly by as I finished a third and fourth count of the stack that kept shifting. He was very patient, but I knew that if I stopped and talked to him, the magic would end. Sure enough, when I stood up to speak, he just nodded, and I woke up.
I never would have guessed that a book warehouse would be a place to go for solace, but something about this dream made me feel safe. Seeing my father again was nice, but disconcerting at the same time. Over the long weekend I had reminisced with my mother and younger brother about Memorial Days past. At the end, we came to the same essential conclusion: The past is just that, and you can keep it safe in a box to take out on those special occasions. Look, touch, reflect, replace, return to present. But only after a second count.

Mars Bar

I spent a couple of hours yesterday watching a bunch of guys in blue shirts sit and stare at their respective monitors. They did this with great intensity, but I can't say that it made for high drama. But I knew that somewhere, there was drama and excitement, and tension. The men and women at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena had been working for years for this moment, and you could see it in their faces.
You could see it when you looked very closely. We weren't in Pasadena. We were watching a projected image in Oakland, and listening to the crackly audio of Mission Control. We stood in that warehouse, surrounded by art and images of Mars, waiting for some real pictures of the Red Planet. We had come to celebrate the success of the Phoenix Mars Lander, at least vicariously. We filled the empty minutes wondering what might happen. Would a hole open up in the sky above us just as the lander touched down, with a booming voice emanating across vast regions of space shouting, "Hey! Leave us alone already!"
They sent a media package along. There's a DVD that contains, in addition to other cultural relics, Orson Welles' broadcast of "War of the Worlds". At this point, no one expects little green men to come creeping toward the lander to inspect and discover the disc. Instead it is included as a time capsule of sorts for the humans who eventually catch up to the various and sundry probes, robots and satellites that we've been lobbing in Mars' direction for the past thirty years or so. What a hoot that will be for our astronauts to drag the DVD back to their capsule to listen to the way we earthlings managed to defeat the Martians with our rhinovirus. Their ray guns turned out to be no match for our cough and cold season.
When Phoenix was finally on the surface of Mars, our crowd cheered right along with the scientists in Pasadena. Maybe we were relieved to be watching exploration instead of incursion. Later that night, I looked at pictures of Mars' north pole with my son. "Aren't they in color?" he asked. After all, the video we had been watching of Pasadena had been in color. And we had been able to watch them move. This just looked like a parking lot. A parking lot that is four hundred and twenty-two million miles away. That's a pretty neat trick.

My Sweet Bippy

I understand that by admitting that I not only watched "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" but I remember watching it. I remember Henry Gibson's poems and Arte Johnson's "velly interesting" Nazi. I remember the guy in the raincoat riding his tricycle and falling over when he ran into all manner of obstacles. I remember Gary Owens gorgeous baritone announcing the show from "beautiful downtown Burbank." I remember being intimidated by Jo Anne Worley and quietly aroused by Goldie Hawn. I remember being fascinated by the amazing chameleon qualities of Lily Tomlin. But most of all, I remember the ringmasters: Dan and Dick.
Dan was a playboy, obviously. He wore a moustache and smoked a pipe. He's the one who said every week, "Say goodnight, Dick." Dick was the one who seemed to be having all the fun. Regularly cracking up in skits, before during and after introducing segments, he always appeared to be having a good time. Most of what came out of his mouth sounded like double entendre, intentional or not. I imagined he probably woke up in that tuxedo most mornings. He gave me my first catch-phrase. Others, including Richard Nixon, took the standard, "Sock it to me!" I preferred Dick's "You bet your sweet bippy!"
As a matter of fact, I may have been one of the few people who was actually enthusiastic about the appearance of Rowan and Martin's film, "The Maltese Bippy." A werewolf movie starring the guys from "Laugh-In"? How could it miss? Most of what I knew about the film I learned from the pages of "Famous Monsters of Filmland", specifically the photos of Dick Martin undergoing the "painstaking process" of having the lycanthrope makeup applied to him for hours each day. In fact, it took me many years to get a chance to see it in its entirety, since my parents probably felt that even a "G" rated film that told the story of soft-core porn directors who get mixed up in a murder mystery might be beyond their precocious seven-year-old son.
When I finally saw "The Maltese Bippy: years later, it was a terrible letdown. It wasn't a werewolf movie at all. It was a spoof with very little "oof". To his credit, Dick seemed to be having a whale of a good time still, but the 1969 zeitgeist had passed, and the jokes worked better in Mel Brooks and Monty Python films. I had grown up, but they never had.
Now Dick has gone to join his partner in that big lounge act in the sky. Since Dan went on ahead, I'll just have to do it for him: "Say goodnight, Dick."