I think the rest of the family would agree that KC’s most valuable skill, aside from paying the mortgage, is his ability to barbecue. His status as the Potentate of Protein allows my parents to achieve a high-efficiency division of labor at dinnertime that delivers tasty results for everyone involved. While KC’s love of the grill is motivated in large part by the satisfaction he gets from watching the family enjoy the fruits of his labor, I believe that KC also barbecues for a more simple reason: he is a pyromaniac.
KC abhors propane like nature abhors a vacuum. He claims that this is because charcoal gives the meat a smoky flavor. Again, this functional, normal-human reason is partly true. But the root of KC’s adherence to the charcoal creed is that it better allows him to indulge his impulse to Light Shit on Fire.
KC has generously passed his bbq knowledge on to me. Of course, the first step in my education was learning how to light the fire. As a child, I did not question my father’s instructions to use enough charcoal and lighter fluid to kickstart a nuclear reactor in order to cook a few pounds of ground beef. I also did not realize that welding gloves are not part of the average grillmaster’s toolkit. But KC has a unique style that requires him to move the coals when they are at their white-hottest, so the welding gloves prevent him from melting the flesh off of his hands. Only when I grilled with outsiders did I realize that these approaches are not standard practice.
I was also too young to appreciate the irony of KC--a man in charge of safety at an industrial plant, a man whose laptop is papered with stickers like “Make safety first, and make it last”--instructing his young son to douse the charcoal with gasoline when we ran out of lighter fluid. But really, why would anyone knock on a neighbor’s door or drive five minutes to the grocery store when you have transportation-grade hydrocarbons sitting idly in the garage? Plus, it’s not every day that you can throw a match across your patio and ignite a four-foot high tower of flame with a satisfying whoosh*.
Many supposed grillmasters only operate in spring, summer, and fall. They claim that the cold prevents the fire from getting hot enough. KC, on the other hand, welcomes the winter because the need to overcome subzero temperatures gives him license to operate at the intersection of food preparation and pyromania. First, the cold weather gives him an excuse to use his outdoor fireplace. The pretense here is keeping warm, but the true objective is to Light Shit on Fire. This is best exemplified by a particular winter night when KC was multi-tasking, raking leaves while grilling meat and tending the outdoor fireplace. He finished up the job by using a leaf blower to clear the patio. To the average homeowner, a leaf blower is nothing but yard-cleaning machine. To arsonist near an open fire, however, a leaf blower is a ten horse-power inferno accelerant. KC, chomping on the stub of a Swisher Sweet with a pyromaniacal gleam in his eye, used the leaf blower to pump oxygen into the outdoor fireplace until the flames climbed several feet above his head. The rest of the family watched this unfold from the kitchen window, completely unsurprised by what we were witnessing.**
KC overcame an unusually cold Memphis winter by drilling additional air holes in his smoker. The smoker got so hot that it glowed like the Eye of Sauron, liquefying its exterior paint and melting all of the snow within a six foot radius. This past Christmas, when a cold day threatened to stymie his turkey smoking, he wrapped the smoker in beach towels for insulation. When I pointed out that he likely would have fired one of his employees for executing a similar maneuver, he said “This ain’t the plant, Alice.”
*Really, I am making this out to be worse than it really is. I would do the same thing. But I don’t know any better; my job does not require me to visit employees in the hospital when they have accidentally set their hair on fire.
**Kudos to my mom and her amazing memory for recalling this and many other stories.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Pencil Neck
The beautiful people have their vanities. Matthew McConaughy refuses to co-star with a man who is taller than himself. Tom Cruise has a personal eyebrow stylist. And KC owns one of these.
I considered my father to be a man of science until he bought this contraption. Despite appearances, this is not a device intended to spice things up with the missus. Rather, it was once KC’s weapon of choice in his ongoing battle with Father Time. Allegedly, this thing helps build neck muscle. You see, KC’s vanity is the Fear of the Pencil Neck.
Like any red-blooded American, KC equates looseness in the shirt collar with lightness in the loafers. And really, the Fear of the Pencil Neck is probably rational when you are dragging fifty and sport a noggin whose circumference rivals that of a sewer lid. Any atrophy in the neck area will be amplified.
But this device is not the answer. A first-grader can recognize the undue stress placed on the vertebrae when one uses the neck as a hinge to lift copious amounts of weight. But the quest for beauty can cloud the mind.
Fortunately, KC abandoned this contraption after a while, but not because of its potential to harm his fragile, aging spinal column. He gave it up because it did not produce the intended result, i.e. an eighteen inch headstump with the power to enslave all cubicle workers within a 300 foot radius.
But the battle against the Pencil Neck continues. In his newest strategy, he plants his forehead in the middle of a Swiss exercise ball that is balanced against the wall at shoulder height. I believe the theory is that his neck must support his body weight and thus receives some sort of benefit. I cannot use photos to provide a visual display because this technique is so cutting edge that the internet has not even heard of it yet.
I considered my father to be a man of science until he bought this contraption. Despite appearances, this is not a device intended to spice things up with the missus. Rather, it was once KC’s weapon of choice in his ongoing battle with Father Time. Allegedly, this thing helps build neck muscle. You see, KC’s vanity is the Fear of the Pencil Neck.
Like any red-blooded American, KC equates looseness in the shirt collar with lightness in the loafers. And really, the Fear of the Pencil Neck is probably rational when you are dragging fifty and sport a noggin whose circumference rivals that of a sewer lid. Any atrophy in the neck area will be amplified.
But this device is not the answer. A first-grader can recognize the undue stress placed on the vertebrae when one uses the neck as a hinge to lift copious amounts of weight. But the quest for beauty can cloud the mind.
Fortunately, KC abandoned this contraption after a while, but not because of its potential to harm his fragile, aging spinal column. He gave it up because it did not produce the intended result, i.e. an eighteen inch headstump with the power to enslave all cubicle workers within a 300 foot radius.
But the battle against the Pencil Neck continues. In his newest strategy, he plants his forehead in the middle of a Swiss exercise ball that is balanced against the wall at shoulder height. I believe the theory is that his neck must support his body weight and thus receives some sort of benefit. I cannot use photos to provide a visual display because this technique is so cutting edge that the internet has not even heard of it yet.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Hold the Light
Many father-son relationships can be defined by a single group of words.
“Luke, I am your father.” (Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, 1980)
“Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie.” (Ralphie Parker and The Old Man, 1983)
“You can’t see the line, can you, Russ?” (Clark Griswold and Rusty Griswold, 1989)
“Hold the light.” (KC and myself, 1987*-present)
When something breaks around the house, KC generally tries to fix it. Oftentimes, the fixing must take place in a dark, hard to reach location where his mole-like nearsightedness and sausage-like fingers prove to be extreme handicaps. Fortunately for KC, two things happened. One, his wife bore him a son. And two, Conrad Hubert invented the flashlight in 1898. So when the going gets dark, I get going. Meaning that I shine a flashlight on whatever it is that KC is trying to fix.
Over 20 plus years, Holding the Light has evolved into a ritual. KC tries to do the work without my aid, but realizes that he “can’t see shit.” He finds me somewhere in the house and asks me to Hold the Light. I dutifully Hold the Light. After about three minutes, my mind wanders and the flashlight beam does the same. KC, usually lying on his back with sweat pouring down his face and the blood rushing to his head, calmly reminds me to Hold the Light on The Work. The beam continues to wander. Then he breaks down and shouts, “Seth, HOLD THE LIGHT. ON THE WORK” and I re-engage for another three minutes.
Really, these situations are more than a ritual. They are an allegory for our entire father-son relationship. KC proactively struggling against Mother Nature, his heels on the edge of the abyss. Me adding to his insanity by not exactly doing as I am told and second-guessing many of his decisions.
“Are you sure you want to use that wrench?” “It would probably be easier if you sprayed WD-40 on it first.” “Are you sure you want to take that off?” “Why didn’t you do this first?”
I have no business back-seat driving these situations. Despite years of Holding the Light, I know very little about home repair; certainly less than KC. But the man has a track record which suggests he could use some help from time to time.
Like when he was working on the underside of his Ford Bronco but forgot to engage the emergency brake. Our basketball pole was the only thing that stopped the car from plowing through a fence and coming to rest at the bottom of our neighbor’s swimming pool. Or the time he tried to remove an axle head from the same Bronco. The greasiness caused his hands to slip, and he punched himself in the face with a closed fist. Or the night he tried to turn off the water valve in our upstairs bathroom. The toilet overflowed. Everyone was in bed, and the front of the house was a swamp before my mom heard the water running down the inside of the walls . Or the time. . .
*Date is an estimate. I was born in 1985, and I figure that by age two, KC would have judged my hand strength sufficient to hold a flashlight.
“Luke, I am your father.” (Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, 1980)
“Daddy’s gonna kill Ralphie.” (Ralphie Parker and The Old Man, 1983)
“You can’t see the line, can you, Russ?” (Clark Griswold and Rusty Griswold, 1989)
“Hold the light.” (KC and myself, 1987*-present)
When something breaks around the house, KC generally tries to fix it. Oftentimes, the fixing must take place in a dark, hard to reach location where his mole-like nearsightedness and sausage-like fingers prove to be extreme handicaps. Fortunately for KC, two things happened. One, his wife bore him a son. And two, Conrad Hubert invented the flashlight in 1898. So when the going gets dark, I get going. Meaning that I shine a flashlight on whatever it is that KC is trying to fix.
Over 20 plus years, Holding the Light has evolved into a ritual. KC tries to do the work without my aid, but realizes that he “can’t see shit.” He finds me somewhere in the house and asks me to Hold the Light. I dutifully Hold the Light. After about three minutes, my mind wanders and the flashlight beam does the same. KC, usually lying on his back with sweat pouring down his face and the blood rushing to his head, calmly reminds me to Hold the Light on The Work. The beam continues to wander. Then he breaks down and shouts, “Seth, HOLD THE LIGHT. ON THE WORK” and I re-engage for another three minutes.
Really, these situations are more than a ritual. They are an allegory for our entire father-son relationship. KC proactively struggling against Mother Nature, his heels on the edge of the abyss. Me adding to his insanity by not exactly doing as I am told and second-guessing many of his decisions.
“Are you sure you want to use that wrench?” “It would probably be easier if you sprayed WD-40 on it first.” “Are you sure you want to take that off?” “Why didn’t you do this first?”
I have no business back-seat driving these situations. Despite years of Holding the Light, I know very little about home repair; certainly less than KC. But the man has a track record which suggests he could use some help from time to time.
Like when he was working on the underside of his Ford Bronco but forgot to engage the emergency brake. Our basketball pole was the only thing that stopped the car from plowing through a fence and coming to rest at the bottom of our neighbor’s swimming pool. Or the time he tried to remove an axle head from the same Bronco. The greasiness caused his hands to slip, and he punched himself in the face with a closed fist. Or the night he tried to turn off the water valve in our upstairs bathroom. The toilet overflowed. Everyone was in bed, and the front of the house was a swamp before my mom heard the water running down the inside of the walls . Or the time. . .
*Date is an estimate. I was born in 1985, and I figure that by age two, KC would have judged my hand strength sufficient to hold a flashlight.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Balls
When I first started going to the gym, I was under the age minimum so I did my best to keep a low profile. I kept my eyes to the floor, and I did not talk to any of the patrons. One old man, however, went out of his way to talk to me. He was a regular at the gym, known among the patrons for wearing shorts so short that he exposed his balls while stretching.
The first time he spoke to me, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room, bending over to tie my shoes. A pair of feet suddenly entered the top of my vision, and a voice began to ask me a question. As I raised my head to mumble a reply, I almost swallowed my tongue. The old man was standing in front of me, completely naked. And since I was sitting down his wad of balls and dick were at eye level, about two feet from my face. I do not recall the contents of our conversation; I only remember keeping my head permanently inclined in order to avoid contact with his meat eye.
Since I was relatively new to the world of locker rooms, I tried to take the incident in stride. Maybe that’s just how it is, I thought. However, eleven years of subsequent locker room experience indicate that normal men do not approach 14 year old boys in the locker room while naked and offer their junk as an olive branch.
Of course, that is just my own interpretation of locker room etiquette. Others might disagree. Such as one of my undergraduate professors. He and I arrived at the gym at approximately the same time and happened to select side-by-side lockers. We struck up a conversation during which he began to change his clothes. This would be completely unremarkable but for the fact that he never completed the task. He just stood there naked for the entirety of our conversation, which seemed to last an infinite number of minutes.
Other examples abound. Like the fat guy at my gym in Urbana who would practice his golf swing in the nude while staring at himself in the mirror. Or the people that lie on the locker room tiles and stretch while naked. Or the two or three guys that I have seen engaging in meticulous, open-forum crotch-scaping. A man’s face is the only thing that he should shave in public.
Unfortunately, I am not without guilt in the keep-yourself-to-yourself department. One day about two years ago, I was at the gym, bent over at the waist in front of a treadmill with my legs about shoulder width apart, trying to stretch before I went running. I was standing in front of a mirror, so I wound up staring absently at my own ass. I slowly began to realize that something was not right. There was a weird pink splotch on the back of my pants. At first I thought that I had spilled bleach on my clothes. Then a horrifying realization washed over me. I could not remember the last time I had cleaned my apartment, much less used bleach on anything. This was not a stain. This was my balls. My shorts and my underwear each had gaping holes which apparently lined up perfectly when I bent over. My insistence on wearing my clothes until they disintegrated had finally caught up with me.
The first time he spoke to me, I was sitting on a bench in the locker room, bending over to tie my shoes. A pair of feet suddenly entered the top of my vision, and a voice began to ask me a question. As I raised my head to mumble a reply, I almost swallowed my tongue. The old man was standing in front of me, completely naked. And since I was sitting down his wad of balls and dick were at eye level, about two feet from my face. I do not recall the contents of our conversation; I only remember keeping my head permanently inclined in order to avoid contact with his meat eye.
Since I was relatively new to the world of locker rooms, I tried to take the incident in stride. Maybe that’s just how it is, I thought. However, eleven years of subsequent locker room experience indicate that normal men do not approach 14 year old boys in the locker room while naked and offer their junk as an olive branch.
Of course, that is just my own interpretation of locker room etiquette. Others might disagree. Such as one of my undergraduate professors. He and I arrived at the gym at approximately the same time and happened to select side-by-side lockers. We struck up a conversation during which he began to change his clothes. This would be completely unremarkable but for the fact that he never completed the task. He just stood there naked for the entirety of our conversation, which seemed to last an infinite number of minutes.
Other examples abound. Like the fat guy at my gym in Urbana who would practice his golf swing in the nude while staring at himself in the mirror. Or the people that lie on the locker room tiles and stretch while naked. Or the two or three guys that I have seen engaging in meticulous, open-forum crotch-scaping. A man’s face is the only thing that he should shave in public.
Unfortunately, I am not without guilt in the keep-yourself-to-yourself department. One day about two years ago, I was at the gym, bent over at the waist in front of a treadmill with my legs about shoulder width apart, trying to stretch before I went running. I was standing in front of a mirror, so I wound up staring absently at my own ass. I slowly began to realize that something was not right. There was a weird pink splotch on the back of my pants. At first I thought that I had spilled bleach on my clothes. Then a horrifying realization washed over me. I could not remember the last time I had cleaned my apartment, much less used bleach on anything. This was not a stain. This was my balls. My shorts and my underwear each had gaping holes which apparently lined up perfectly when I bent over. My insistence on wearing my clothes until they disintegrated had finally caught up with me.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
No Ticket
My sister attended the University of Missouri. When it was time to move her to campus, the family did just about everything right. Stockpiled Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons. Bought her a coat that would hold up against the Missouri winter. Built a loft for her bed. Bought a miniature refrigerator and a fashionable red plastic microwave. We did not, however, remember to reserve a truck to transport these items from Memphis to Columbia.
Prince Ali arrived in Jasmine’s city with 75 golden camels. Hannibal marched on Rome with the aid of hundreds of elephants. Genghis Kahn and his Golden Horde swept across Eurasia on the backs of thousands of horses. All of these beasts could have fit comfortably inside of the 25 foot straight truck that my father rented from Ryder at the last minute.
If you get in a wreck on a motorcycle, there’s a decent chance that you will die but it’s somewhat unlikely that another driver will get hurt. But if you get in a wreck behind the wheel of a 25 foot straight truck, you’ll probably survive but the road will be littered with innocent corpses. Yet somehow you must have a special license to operate a motorcycle, and Uncle Sam only required that KC breathe on a mirror in order to rent that 25 foot behemoth. In hindsight, the Ryder employee manning the rental desk probably did not even go that far. He likely took one look at KC’s moving day outfit, which consisted of a red t-shirt and mid-thigh jorts (cut-off jean shorts), and knew that KC was eminently qualified to operate heavy machinery.
Despite rolling up to a campus where she knew no one in a truck that screams, “I BROUGHT MY PONY WITH ME TO SCHOOL!,” my sister managed to make friends. I met some of them a few months later when my dad, my mom and I returned to Columbia to watch Mizzou play Nebraska in football.
The game was on a Saturday morning in mid-season. It takes about six hours to get to Columbia from Memphis, and we had to depart late on Friday night so that I could fulfill my princely duties slanging water for the Houston High School football team. Our plan was to open a vein, fill it with 6 hours of Wallflowers, Hootie, and Phil Collins; get to Columbia about 4 AM; sleep fast; and hurry to the game. We hit the road, and the plan seemed to be going well. Then, about two hours into the trip, just south of Cape Girardeau, KC shattered the southeastern Missouri silence with a sudden, thunderous “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
At first I thought Hootie’s uninflected droning of “Ionlywannabewithyouuuu” had finally, after seven years of family trips, broken my father’s will to live. Unfortunately I was wrong. KC had left the tickets to the game in the kitchen.
We turned around. We got the tickets. Ten or eleven hours after we first hit the road, we arrived in Columbia. We slept for a couple hours at the hotel and went to the game. I know that I was very tired at the game because I actually laughed when KC told me for the 76th time that the N on Nebraska’s helmets stands for knowledge. We dozed in the stands, but we were awake long enough to see Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch embarrass the Mizzou defense with a 105 yard touchdown run. The play was the cornerstone of Crouch’s Heisman-winning season and remains the most impressive athletic feat I have seen in person.
It turns out that ticket misplacement, along with size 8 cranial circumferences and inability to color inside the lines, is a genetic trait that can be passed from father to son. To read about my own ticket problems, click here.
Prince Ali arrived in Jasmine’s city with 75 golden camels. Hannibal marched on Rome with the aid of hundreds of elephants. Genghis Kahn and his Golden Horde swept across Eurasia on the backs of thousands of horses. All of these beasts could have fit comfortably inside of the 25 foot straight truck that my father rented from Ryder at the last minute.
If you get in a wreck on a motorcycle, there’s a decent chance that you will die but it’s somewhat unlikely that another driver will get hurt. But if you get in a wreck behind the wheel of a 25 foot straight truck, you’ll probably survive but the road will be littered with innocent corpses. Yet somehow you must have a special license to operate a motorcycle, and Uncle Sam only required that KC breathe on a mirror in order to rent that 25 foot behemoth. In hindsight, the Ryder employee manning the rental desk probably did not even go that far. He likely took one look at KC’s moving day outfit, which consisted of a red t-shirt and mid-thigh jorts (cut-off jean shorts), and knew that KC was eminently qualified to operate heavy machinery.
Despite rolling up to a campus where she knew no one in a truck that screams, “I BROUGHT MY PONY WITH ME TO SCHOOL!,” my sister managed to make friends. I met some of them a few months later when my dad, my mom and I returned to Columbia to watch Mizzou play Nebraska in football.
The game was on a Saturday morning in mid-season. It takes about six hours to get to Columbia from Memphis, and we had to depart late on Friday night so that I could fulfill my princely duties slanging water for the Houston High School football team. Our plan was to open a vein, fill it with 6 hours of Wallflowers, Hootie, and Phil Collins; get to Columbia about 4 AM; sleep fast; and hurry to the game. We hit the road, and the plan seemed to be going well. Then, about two hours into the trip, just south of Cape Girardeau, KC shattered the southeastern Missouri silence with a sudden, thunderous “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”
At first I thought Hootie’s uninflected droning of “Ionlywannabewithyouuuu” had finally, after seven years of family trips, broken my father’s will to live. Unfortunately I was wrong. KC had left the tickets to the game in the kitchen.
We turned around. We got the tickets. Ten or eleven hours after we first hit the road, we arrived in Columbia. We slept for a couple hours at the hotel and went to the game. I know that I was very tired at the game because I actually laughed when KC told me for the 76th time that the N on Nebraska’s helmets stands for knowledge. We dozed in the stands, but we were awake long enough to see Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch embarrass the Mizzou defense with a 105 yard touchdown run. The play was the cornerstone of Crouch’s Heisman-winning season and remains the most impressive athletic feat I have seen in person.
It turns out that ticket misplacement, along with size 8 cranial circumferences and inability to color inside the lines, is a genetic trait that can be passed from father to son. To read about my own ticket problems, click here.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
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 . . .
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 . . .
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