Coach KC

When I was a junior in high school, I put together a recreational basketball team with some of my friends. After a broad national search, we enlisted KC to be our coach. He brought impressive credentials to the position:

1. As a young man, lettered for the Kirkwood High Pioneers basketball squad that finished second in the Missouri state championships in 1973.
2. As an old man, he founded the Beer Nuts, a men’s recreational team whose name was inspired by the sign listing the offerings in aisle six of the Germantown Kroger grocery store.

The search committee was particularly taken with KC’s aggressive approach to the game. For example, while playing for the Beer Nuts as a 40-something-year-old man, he tackled another 40-something-year-old man into the bleachers as retribution for a seemingly dirty foul on a Beer Nuts teammate. This tackle took place several minutes after the offending foul while the teams were lining up for free throws, displaying KC’s ability to develop a plan and wait patiently for the right opportunity to execute it. The search committee knew that these qualities would serve KC well in his position as the coach of the Grace Evangelical Church’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B.

Like any master craftsman, KC knew that he needed to build his team from the ground up. Naturally, he started with our warm-up drill, which he borrowed from the 1973 Kirkwood Pioneers. The Pioneer’s warm-up drill, full of complex passing patterns and thunderous slam-dunks, mentally deflated their opponents before they even stepped on the court. While some might have questioned the ability of Grace Evan’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B--composed of millennial white boys--to execute a warm-up drill intended primarily for 1970s African Americans, KC was undeterred. Knowing that intimidation was the key to victory, he devoted two full practices to teaching us the warm-up drill. He finally gave up when he realized that only two of us could make a layup and exactly none of us could dunk.

Having assessed the talent at his disposal, KC decided to focus the fundamentals of the game. He started by teaching us how to pass the ball.

“No arm-high passes,” he said, “Those will get stolen. You have to put it where they can’t get their hands on it. Seth, stand over here with your arms out like you are playing defense. Now, you can either do a bounce pass,”—he bounced the ball underneath my outstretched arms by way of demonstration—“or you can whizz the ball past their ear.” To demonstrate this approach, he fired a robust chest pass right into my face.

To further hone our passing skills, KC trotted out a timeless drill known as the Three Man Weave. In this drill, three players start on one baseline, run the length of the court while passing the ball to each other, and finish with a layup at the opposite basket. The Three Man Weave quickly became the bedrock of the Grace Evan’s 17 & Under Boy’s Team B practice regimen. I estimate that 50% of total practice time over two seasons was devoted to the Three Man Weave. This devotion was not exactly because of the drill’s effectiveness. Rather, it was because of KC’s insistence that we make three layups in a row before stopping the drill. This requirement was problematic for a team on which only two of players could make a layup with any amount of consistency. And one of those players enjoyed smoking marijuana more than playing basketball, so he did not make it to every practice.

In order to increase the drill’s difficulty and keep himself from going insane while we bricked, airballed, and otherwise aborted layup after layup, KC wandered around the center of the court with his eyes shut and his arms outstretched, attempting to swat the ball while shouting “Ray Charles defense! Ray Charles defense!” Fortunately, he never received any OSHA complaints from the blind, black, or musically-inclined members of the squad.

When we weren’t taking chest passes to the face or running the Three Man Weave, we scrimmaged. We usually had an odd number of players, so KC would participate. The consummate teammate, he rarely shot the ball. Except for one time when he got the ball on a fast break. That time, he tried to dunk the ball from the free throw line.

I was supposed to be guarding KC on the play, but I was hopelessly out of shape and trailing the action. For this I am thankful, because I was afforded a panoramic view of the following: KC received an outlet pass at midcourt. His head on a swivel, he dribbled toward the basket. As he approached the free throw line, he left his feet, looking to execute a jump pass. However, all of his teammates were also out of shape and trailing the action. Now he was in midair and had to make an effort to score the ball. His legs trailing behind him like the tail of a tube-socked comet, KC extended the ball toward the basket with his right arm. He executed what can only be described as a half-dunk, half-finger roll. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), he was still three feet from the rim. The ball drew no iron and bounced harmlessly to the floor while KC landed in a heap in the middle of the lane. He was unguarded.

KC and I would ride to practice together in my car. This provided me with a prime opportunity to torture him with the rap and butt rock that were staples of my music library at the time. He did like one song, however--a live version of Sister Hazel’s 90s chart-topper “All for You,” and it became a tradition for us to listen to it while we rode to and from practice. I associate that song very strongly strongly with rec basketball, and I make sure to keep a copy on my mp3 player. That way, I am regularly reminded about Dr. KC rising to the rim with a wild look in his eye and his mustache fluttering in the breeze.

One of those days

It has been one of those days.

I woke up early this morning in order to drag my sorry self across town to Virginia in order to attend a conference at the US Patent Office. I did not want to attend this conference, but my boss is the sponsor so I was making the trip in order to show solidarity. I did not adequately shake the cobwebs from my brain, and I walked out the door of my apartment with my bike but not my backpack. The door to my apartment automatically locks behind me, and my keys were in my backpack. My phone was also in my backpack. This becomes important later.

It is early enough in the morning that no one was working in the apartment management office, so I just say, "ah fuck it," and figure I would collect my stuff later in the day. Not having my keys means I cannot not lock up my bike. I had originally planned to ride my bike to the subway station. However, now I have to execute a time-consuming maneuver in order to drop off my bike at my cubicle and walk to the bus that would take me to the metro. I am now running behind schedule, and my anxiety was marginally increased because I do not have a phone and therefore had no idea what time it is.

Anyway, I get on the subway knowing that I needed to switch trains once in order to get to Alexandria, VA where the conference is being held. This is approximately a 40 minute trip if nothing goes awry. Unfortunately, I get crossed-up with regard to train switching, and I try to switch trains at the wrong stop. This costs me about 20 minutes of waiting for another train. At least I think its 20 minutes, because I have no clock.

I finally get to Alexandria, get off the subway, and walk to the US Patent and Trademark Office. Though the directions to where I was going were inside of my backpack which is now inside of my apartment, I am fortunately able to locate the building. Or, I should say, buildings. The USPTO is an enormous place. I was sort of counting on being able to walk in and ask someone where I needed to go to find the conference. But there is no centralized desk. There are only security desks manned by dead-eyed bureaucrats who have not heard of my conference and would rather stare into the middle distance than give me any information. And I don't have a phone with which to contact any of my coworkers who might know what's going on.

After about 30 minutes of rigamarole, I find a nice person who lets me use her computer in order to find out where the conference is located. Turns out I am in the right place. But at the wrong time. The conference is tomorrow. I want to unzip my skin, run into a wall, and explode my bones into a pile of dust. I locked my keys in my apartment about two hours ago. It has been a long journey, one which I did not want to make, with no reward.

But my day was just beginning.

I take the subway back to campus. The only reason I go back to my office instead of going straight to my apartment to get my bag is that my bike is in my cubicle, and I can ride it back to my apartment. As I am walking to my cube, one of my fellow students says, "Seth, are you ready for the meeting?"

"What meeting?"

Turns out today was the day that PhD students were supposed to "pitch" their research to a venture capitalist in order to make sure that we can make sure that we can explain why what we are working on is useful to people in the real world. This is a very worthwhile exercise. I have trouble extemporaneously describing my research, and this will be good practice. But I am completely unprepared. It is 11:21 and the meeting starts at 11:30. I am just lucky that I came back to campus to get my bike, or I would have missed the meeting entirely.

My research "pitch" is not humorously disastrous, but it does not go well. I stumble over my words more than usual, and I have difficulty answering the man's questions. So by the end, I am feeling more dumb than I usually do.

After this, I have a meeting with a professor about a project that I am not convinced is going anywhere but is taking up a lot of my time. The meeting is long and frustrating, but again, not humorous. It just sort of adds to my frustration level.

Then I check my email. It contains the editor's decision letter for the only paper that I have under review at an academic journal. This paper has been rejected at one journal, and has now been under review at this second journal for about 5 months, which is a pretty long time. I was been pretty sure that this journal was also going to reject my paper, and I just wanted to get it over with. The editor's decision letter will tell me whether the paper has been rejected or invited to be revised and resubmitted to the journal.

The corporate analog to the decision letter is the performance review. Now, I said that I was pretty sure that the paper was going to be rejected, but publication, like performance appraisal, is a random process that heavily depends on who is evaluating your work. So, like an employee who knows that he is a bum but is still holding out hope for a 10% raise, before I open the decision letter, I think to myself, "Maybe I am lucky."

The first lines of the letter suggest that perhaps, yes, I am lucky. They read, and I quote:

"I like the topic of this paper. Here [sic] is a growing realization that the intersection of organizations, careers and entrepreneurship is an important and fertile field for research. We need ambitious theories and careful empirical documentation of the key patterns and processes at work."

Yes! I think to myself. This is exactly what me and my coauthors want this paper to be about--the reviewer gets it! The random element has worked in our favor!

Then, uh, I read the next sentence.

"This paper does not deliver on that, unfortunately, both in terms of the theory and the empirics."

Then the reviewers go on to cut the paper open from groin to sternum, highlighting all of the flaws that me and my coauthors already know existed as well as pointing out some new ones. It's like telling a fat person that he is fat and then saying, "oh by the way, your breath smells horrible." Needless to say, the paper was rejected.

I go home, and the first thing I do is console myself with a Sports Illustrated and a bowel movement. It's my first of the day and, as the reviewers of my paper alluded to, I am full of shit. And I clog the toilet. And I don't own a plunger. Luckily, I have a slotted spoon and a cooking pot.

Nowhere to go but up. But first, I must go back to Alexandria, VA in the morning . . .

Cub Scouts

I learned a variety of lessons from my time in the Cub scouts. You already know that none of these lessons have anything to do with Survivor Man skills. In high school I nearly burned our family’s house to the ground on Christmas day by starting a fire in the fireplace and forgetting to open the flue. I am basically unable to operate a screwdriver. How about knot tying? Negative. I tie my shoes with bunny ear loops like a kindergartner.

One lesson that the Scouts did teach me is the value of technology. I learned this lesson by participating in the Pinewood Derby. If you don’t know, the Pinewood Derby is contest where Cub Scouts race wooden cars the size of a TV remote down a sloped track of about 50 feet. In my first Pinewood Derby I bought a little wooden car at Hobby Lobby, covered it with yellow and blue tempera paint, and waddled naively to the Farmington Elementary gymnasium for the race.

On the entry form, I should have listed my name as Seth Carnahanski. My cutesy-tootsy blue and yellow tempera block of wood was crushed like a Polish horse in the face of the German blitzkrieg. Shame and the passage of time cloud my memory, but I don’t think that my car even made it to the finish line. My competitors had glossy paint jobs, flame decals, and a firm understanding of the concept of gravity. They weighted down their cars to the contest limit in order to make them move faster down the track. This strategy had not occurred to me.

The second lesson that I learned from the Scouts is that adults do not unconditionally love and respect every single child on the face of the earth. Up to that point, I thought that disagreements and dislike magically disappeared when you turned 18 and that maturity compelled adults to get along with everybody, especially kids. Then I observed Scout Master KC try to tame a particularly shit-headed member of Troop 362.

That’s right, KC was the den leader for my second grade cub scout experience. Miraculously, no fatalities, losses of limb, or even property damage occurred under his watch. This is probably because the den was mostly composed of pretty calm kids. One boy named Eric, however, needs to donate his brain to science. He was insane with ADHD. I wish I could go back in time and watch KC try to tame this stallion. At the time, all I could tell was that KC did not like this kid. What were the clues that alerted my eight year old radar? Maybe it was when KC tied Eric to a tree. KC claims that this was to keep him from running away into the woods while we were camping. Or perhaps it was when we lined up along my fence to play dodgeball before every meeting, and I watched KC tattoo the child-demon with multiple well-placed fastballs. Or maybe it was when KC took the troop to a fire ant farm, buried Eric up to the neck in sand, and coated his head in honey.*

* One of these is untrue.