Hawwwkeeyyy. That's how it's said if you have ever played it. Aside from a few pond hockey opportunities as a 5-year old child, I know next to nothing about hockey. So when I signed on to the Union vs Clarkson hockey match for Time Warner, I was less than thrilled. I couldn't check off any of the Sports Viewing Trifecta, or the three requirements for enjoyment of sports watching: I had never played the sport, I barely understood its rules, and I certainly didn't give a rat's buttock who won the game. Hockey is as familiar to me as Elle magazine.
Let's focus on the game itself. 5 vs 5, with 1 goalie apiece. Fine, that's like soccer, I can live with that. But substitutions? It doesn't seem to matter where the puck is for a substitution to take place. In, out, in, out, ROTATE! Each hockey substitution reminds me of a relay race in which one team consistently cheats by beginning to run before his teammate touches his hand. The official rule is that a player can enter the game if whom he is substituting for is within 5 feet of the bench (according to proicehockey.about.com). What referee can measure 5 feet in the blink of an eye? I propose changing that rule to require a good ol' fist bump (sometimes referred to as a "dap" or "knucks") prior to a new player skating onto the ice. This rule change would make it easy to determine who can legally substitute and who cannot. Who's with me?
It's unlikely that I will ever understand what constitutes a penalty in hockey. There is so much grappling, shoving, slamming each other into walls, and lost balance that penalties appear totally arbitrary to the layman (me). Occasionally I will even see on TV two grown dudes with fists bared, encircling each other on skates. Then they fight. If that's not a penalty, I don't think I'll ever understand what is (I think it actually is a penalty, but it's a penalty for both sides... So what's the difference?) Is calling someone on the other team a "poof" a penalty? How about ramming your skate into their upper thigh? What about intentionally passing gas as they skate behind you? That call would sound something like this: "*TWEEEET* 2 minute penalty on #42 for Aggressive Farting." The point is that I don't know what hockey penalties are. All I know is that there is a box of shame that players must go to where fans can jeer at them and call them names from the safety of their seats. Similar to medieval stocks, but without tomato throwing.
The game, to me, is confusing, with arbitrary whistles and massive amounts of testosterone (which isn't that weird, but hockey is especially aggressive.) So what about strategy? If I were coaching, my strategy would be this: Stick 4 of the 5 field players in front of the goal, and play 1 versus 5 on the rest of the ice. Could anyone POSSIBLY score with 4 defensemen lying down on top of each other in front of the goal? Plus a goalie to act as he normally does? I think not. In all likelihood, there is a rule preventing this, but until someone proves that to me, I'm sticking with my guns.
So now what about the fans? Do they understand all of the game's intricacies that I am missing? Well, according to what I witnessed at the Union-Clarkson game, the answer is a nice, resounding "No". When I attend a game I love, like soccer or basketball, I think of the strategy my team could employ to win, and yell out some helpful advice to my team, such as "Watch out for the other guy!" (My advice is rarely heeded.) I don't just yell generic crap like "Be aggressive" or "You suck ref!", but even that I can understand. Hockey fans are a different breed. They yell "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", and I'm pretty sure it's because nobody knows what to say (although it may have just be that drunken college kids don't feel like thinking too much about their cheers. My sample size is small.) What should they yell? "Skate faster!"? That's the worst cheer ever. Hockey fans love the fast-paced action and the slamming bodies, but, from what I've witnessed, understand the game only a teensy-weensy bit better than me, and are too inarticulate or drunk to express their knowledge.
Somehow hockey gets grouped into the "Big 4" of American sports (with basketball, football, and, ugh, baseball), but I'm not sure it belongs there. Couldn't we just give it to Canada specifically? So instead of being a "Big 4" sport, it could be one of Canada's "Big 2" sports (the other? Curling, of course.) Unless there is a serious, nationalistic passion for the sport, like in Canada, it just doesn't feel fair to designate hockey as a "Big" anything. Can a sport be considered "Big" if only a small fraction of it's population play's it due to it's high costs of padding, skates and sticks, rink use, and doctor's visits? (If you argue that football is the same way, I will retort that you don't need an ice rink to play football, and then sulk a little bit at the validity of your argument.)
You know how it's difficult to focus on a person talking about something you just don't give a crap about? That's what watching hockey felt like to me. What my forced attendance of Union-Clarkson hockey really made me consider was how most people feel when intentionally attending an event that they will not enjoy for somebody else's sake. It's the strongest show of support when somebody puts themselves through misery for another's sake. Like girlfriend's watching a television game because they know their boyfriend enjoys it. Or mother's going to their son's sporting events. Or husband's enduring a chick flick with their wives. They fake interest just for you. That means something, and became all too apparent as I sat through 2.5 hours of hockey.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Court Side Journalists
Upon sitting down in my cramped court-side seat to protect my "talent" from stray basketballs, a quick glance to the right yields two pretty unremarkable characters. Both work for the Albany Times Union, and I have scanned many an article written by each of them. Yet, until I began working with Time Warner Cable, I had no idea who they were. And it wasn't like I had suddenly unmasked the caped heroes, revealing the simple human beings behind them, but rather that I had read their name tags and recognized them from somewhere... I couldn't quite remember... Oh yea, they wrote in the Times Union. It certainly wasn't a storybook revelation about me meeting my lifelong heroes, although that would make for a much better story.
When I finally picked up on who they were, I began reading their articles in each morning's paper more thoroughly. It became pretty clear who did what. Guy #1 wrote the game reports, Guy #2 did the color. I was immediately disappointed in the systematic nature of it all. I had always dreamed that writers wrote purely on inspiration. But there we were, 3 peas in one court-side pod, 2 professionals and 1 amateur, me watching them, them watching their computer screens. I was rollin' with the Albany "big" dogs.
It became pretty apparent, pretty quickly, that "rollin' with the big dogs" wouldn't be the stressful, self-consciousness inducing endeavor I had imagined. One glance towards their computer screens told it all. Yes, 2 fully-grown journalists, sitting a jock straps length apart, were sitting at their laptops, talking... Via Twitter. It took me a little while, but I finally realized that they were each commenting on the other's Tweets. They could have looked up, and practically whispered what they were saying to each other. One guy could have coughed a little bit and forced the other guy out of work for a week with the flu. They could probably have guessed with 99% accuracy what the other had eaten for dinner, including appetizers and dessert, just by how close there breaths were to each other. Yet, they tacitly decided that Twitter was a better option. Any self-doubt that I had harvested about the responsibility of my seat position flew backwards out of me and smacked the guy screaming drunken obscenities at the refs right in the face.
Guy #1 is a brutally ordinary looking guy. He writes color-by-number articles, except in words. He just reports the facts. I often see him preparing the final product on his laptop with 5 minutes left to go in the game. The outcome doesn't really matter, because all he needs is to know who scored an important bucket, and when. He has a template in which he fills in the blanks, occasionally adding a key transition word such as "However" or "But". I want to believe that he wishes to move up to articles with less restriction, but he sort of looks like he's all set with his templates. If he were a painter, he would be fine with producing only predictably beautiful landscapes. He's good at painting rolling hills and menacing mountains, so why move on to anything else?
Guy #2 is the flamboyant color man, the one that gets deep into the action and asks the tough questions. Comparing his Times Union photo with his actual self is comical. In the newspaper, he looks like a strapping 6'4" hunk in his mid-30's with cleanly cropped hair and a trimmed goatee. In actuality, he's about 5"9" in his mid to late 40's with unkempt hair and a penchant for dandruff. He wears black jeans, a t-shirt, and a suit jacket way too often. He's the more sociable one, and can regularly be caught pal'ing around with old buds in the crowd. His garrulousness is expressed in his writing style. I envision him typing emphatically the last word of his witty column, and grinning at his own pithy last sentence.
I have never met these two men, nor shaken their hands, nodded my head at them or slapped them on the back while clamoring "How are you old sport?" They are journalists, and they are good at what they do. I imagine them like Frodo and Sam Baggins. One is the colorful and popular Frodo, who can be weak-hearted at times, while the other is the simple, steady Sam who keeps Frodo staggering forward in their quest to destroy the One Ring in Mordor. Together they make a great team. We can only hope that they will soon feel comfortable enough to speak their first non-Twitter sentences to each other. It may take time, but I think they'll get there.
When I finally picked up on who they were, I began reading their articles in each morning's paper more thoroughly. It became pretty clear who did what. Guy #1 wrote the game reports, Guy #2 did the color. I was immediately disappointed in the systematic nature of it all. I had always dreamed that writers wrote purely on inspiration. But there we were, 3 peas in one court-side pod, 2 professionals and 1 amateur, me watching them, them watching their computer screens. I was rollin' with the Albany "big" dogs.
It became pretty apparent, pretty quickly, that "rollin' with the big dogs" wouldn't be the stressful, self-consciousness inducing endeavor I had imagined. One glance towards their computer screens told it all. Yes, 2 fully-grown journalists, sitting a jock straps length apart, were sitting at their laptops, talking... Via Twitter. It took me a little while, but I finally realized that they were each commenting on the other's Tweets. They could have looked up, and practically whispered what they were saying to each other. One guy could have coughed a little bit and forced the other guy out of work for a week with the flu. They could probably have guessed with 99% accuracy what the other had eaten for dinner, including appetizers and dessert, just by how close there breaths were to each other. Yet, they tacitly decided that Twitter was a better option. Any self-doubt that I had harvested about the responsibility of my seat position flew backwards out of me and smacked the guy screaming drunken obscenities at the refs right in the face.
Guy #1 is a brutally ordinary looking guy. He writes color-by-number articles, except in words. He just reports the facts. I often see him preparing the final product on his laptop with 5 minutes left to go in the game. The outcome doesn't really matter, because all he needs is to know who scored an important bucket, and when. He has a template in which he fills in the blanks, occasionally adding a key transition word such as "However" or "But". I want to believe that he wishes to move up to articles with less restriction, but he sort of looks like he's all set with his templates. If he were a painter, he would be fine with producing only predictably beautiful landscapes. He's good at painting rolling hills and menacing mountains, so why move on to anything else?
Guy #2 is the flamboyant color man, the one that gets deep into the action and asks the tough questions. Comparing his Times Union photo with his actual self is comical. In the newspaper, he looks like a strapping 6'4" hunk in his mid-30's with cleanly cropped hair and a trimmed goatee. In actuality, he's about 5"9" in his mid to late 40's with unkempt hair and a penchant for dandruff. He wears black jeans, a t-shirt, and a suit jacket way too often. He's the more sociable one, and can regularly be caught pal'ing around with old buds in the crowd. His garrulousness is expressed in his writing style. I envision him typing emphatically the last word of his witty column, and grinning at his own pithy last sentence.
I have never met these two men, nor shaken their hands, nodded my head at them or slapped them on the back while clamoring "How are you old sport?" They are journalists, and they are good at what they do. I imagine them like Frodo and Sam Baggins. One is the colorful and popular Frodo, who can be weak-hearted at times, while the other is the simple, steady Sam who keeps Frodo staggering forward in their quest to destroy the One Ring in Mordor. Together they make a great team. We can only hope that they will soon feel comfortable enough to speak their first non-Twitter sentences to each other. It may take time, but I think they'll get there.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
From My Vantage Point: Commentators
Sit back, relax, talk about sports, be opinionated, look good on TV, sound smart. This is the life of a television sports commentator. Is there a better job out there? I don't know, I may be the wrong person to ask, but, aside from the pressure of not looking like an idiot in front of a wide audience, it's tough to see the job's difficulties. Here's my first hand account of a commentator's life.
First off, some background information (why is this always necessary?) I work for Time Warner Sports in Albany. I set up the microphones and cameras and help adjust the wiring prior to the game. I break it all down after the game. There are many complicated parts of the job, but it is mostly straightforward. The team does Siena basketball games, UAlbany basketball games, local college hockey games, and local high school basketball games. Each venue is a little different, so we need to be able to adjust our set-up to the environment. At the Times Union Center, where Siena plays its home games, the commentators sit court-side behind a severely rectangular table. The problem is that there is nobody to protect the expensive equipment positioned in front of them from stray basketballs or diving players. This is where I come in. (It's really a good thing that no players dive out of bounds at half court where I sit. Errant basketballs I can handle, errant 6'9" 250 pound Sasquatches may be more of a challenge. Obviously Time Warner picked me for this job because they felt confident that I would not run and hide if a player came barreling my way. They were very wrong. Only a hearty raise could make me reconsider.)
Second, an ironic aside. I assumed everyone would want this court-side spot, neatly positioned between the game commentators and sports journalists, but, to my amazement, nobody else wanted it. NOBODY ON THE TIME WARNER SPORTS TELEVISION PRODUCTION TEAM IS PASSIONATE ABOUT SPORTS! They love cables and TV production. Works out alright for me. (It does make striking up conversation a bit difficult, seeing as I would rather discuss sports and they would rather talk technology. We understand our differences and interact accordingly.)
The commentators for Time Warner are coined "talent" by the production crew. I'm not sure where the term originated, but it took me a while to figure out whom was being referenced. It makes sense. They ARE the only ones who deck themselves out in perfectly tailored suits. They ARE the talent. But if they are talented, does that mean we are incompetent? Do they say things like "We have to make sure the "incompetence" has all the wires hooked up right" or "Doesn't "incompetence" know we need to look our best for national television?" I hope not. Calling them "the talent" has always struck me a little sorely, since we are just as important to the entire process as they are. Maybe it just becomes normal the more you work with Time Warner. Maybe I am sore that I'm not the one being called talented. Nobody else seems to care.
Here's what television viewers don't see: The space that we sit in is more cramped than the space provided by airplane engineers. As TV viewers merrily listen to the soothing voices of their court-side commentators, those same commentators are stuck in what feels like a confessional box. To add insult to injury, the floor is filled with so many wires and plug-ins that you kind of need to prop your feet up in front of you or keep them squeezed under your chair which, due to a step up required to leave the area, is impossible to slide out from under you. It's sort of like being plugged into the Matrix when you sit down. Once you're in, there's no turning back.
Something I get to see that TV viewers don't is the commentator's body language and physical reactions to plays. For instance, when Siena's in a tight game, and they give up an easy basket, the color commentator often stomps his foot and grimaces. It's kind of a knee-jerk reaction. He's followed Siena for a long time, and he hates to see them lose. The funniest part about it is that he immediately tries to cover it up afterward, even though the TV viewers can't see him. On the air, he says "Good offensive possession for _______ and a tough foul call for the Siena Saints". See, I know better. What he's actually thinking is "What a terrible, boneheaded defensive play by Siena, if I were out there playing I could do 10 times better myself. Put me in Coach!"
Commentators have an interesting job. If you think about it, all they do is add words to what everyone sees. In this way, the job is both easy and difficult. Saying something that is in front of you is easy, but saying something that adds insight to or extrapolates on what everyone just saw is difficult. They need to add value to the viewer experience while not saying anything particular opinionated or brash. I suspect that it's a tough balance to achieve.
Next time: Court-side Journalists
First off, some background information (why is this always necessary?) I work for Time Warner Sports in Albany. I set up the microphones and cameras and help adjust the wiring prior to the game. I break it all down after the game. There are many complicated parts of the job, but it is mostly straightforward. The team does Siena basketball games, UAlbany basketball games, local college hockey games, and local high school basketball games. Each venue is a little different, so we need to be able to adjust our set-up to the environment. At the Times Union Center, where Siena plays its home games, the commentators sit court-side behind a severely rectangular table. The problem is that there is nobody to protect the expensive equipment positioned in front of them from stray basketballs or diving players. This is where I come in. (It's really a good thing that no players dive out of bounds at half court where I sit. Errant basketballs I can handle, errant 6'9" 250 pound Sasquatches may be more of a challenge. Obviously Time Warner picked me for this job because they felt confident that I would not run and hide if a player came barreling my way. They were very wrong. Only a hearty raise could make me reconsider.)
Second, an ironic aside. I assumed everyone would want this court-side spot, neatly positioned between the game commentators and sports journalists, but, to my amazement, nobody else wanted it. NOBODY ON THE TIME WARNER SPORTS TELEVISION PRODUCTION TEAM IS PASSIONATE ABOUT SPORTS! They love cables and TV production. Works out alright for me. (It does make striking up conversation a bit difficult, seeing as I would rather discuss sports and they would rather talk technology. We understand our differences and interact accordingly.)
The commentators for Time Warner are coined "talent" by the production crew. I'm not sure where the term originated, but it took me a while to figure out whom was being referenced. It makes sense. They ARE the only ones who deck themselves out in perfectly tailored suits. They ARE the talent. But if they are talented, does that mean we are incompetent? Do they say things like "We have to make sure the "incompetence" has all the wires hooked up right" or "Doesn't "incompetence" know we need to look our best for national television?" I hope not. Calling them "the talent" has always struck me a little sorely, since we are just as important to the entire process as they are. Maybe it just becomes normal the more you work with Time Warner. Maybe I am sore that I'm not the one being called talented. Nobody else seems to care.
Here's what television viewers don't see: The space that we sit in is more cramped than the space provided by airplane engineers. As TV viewers merrily listen to the soothing voices of their court-side commentators, those same commentators are stuck in what feels like a confessional box. To add insult to injury, the floor is filled with so many wires and plug-ins that you kind of need to prop your feet up in front of you or keep them squeezed under your chair which, due to a step up required to leave the area, is impossible to slide out from under you. It's sort of like being plugged into the Matrix when you sit down. Once you're in, there's no turning back.
Something I get to see that TV viewers don't is the commentator's body language and physical reactions to plays. For instance, when Siena's in a tight game, and they give up an easy basket, the color commentator often stomps his foot and grimaces. It's kind of a knee-jerk reaction. He's followed Siena for a long time, and he hates to see them lose. The funniest part about it is that he immediately tries to cover it up afterward, even though the TV viewers can't see him. On the air, he says "Good offensive possession for _______ and a tough foul call for the Siena Saints". See, I know better. What he's actually thinking is "What a terrible, boneheaded defensive play by Siena, if I were out there playing I could do 10 times better myself. Put me in Coach!"
Commentators have an interesting job. If you think about it, all they do is add words to what everyone sees. In this way, the job is both easy and difficult. Saying something that is in front of you is easy, but saying something that adds insight to or extrapolates on what everyone just saw is difficult. They need to add value to the viewer experience while not saying anything particular opinionated or brash. I suspect that it's a tough balance to achieve.
Next time: Court-side Journalists
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Games of Epic Proportions
As I watched the final seconds of overtime tick down in what is now known as the Albany Cup, I came to the conclusion that sports are, for lack of current creativity, da bomb diggity fo sho. Here I was, in downtown Albany, with about 9,000 rowdy Albanian college students, alumni, and innocent bystanders, enjoying the competition in front of me. It took a moment like this to realize how excitement and contentment are completely relative to the environment. I will now attempt to decipher that last sentence with more sentences. Starting... now:
To start: The Albany Cup is a regular season, division 1 basketball game between Siena College, a regular NCAA tournament participant with a growing reputation, and UAlbany, a regular league doormat with little national exposure. Slightly David and Goliathesque, these two make up the highest level of basketball in town. The Times Union Center, a building with too much capacity for it's market base, rarely gets more than 4,000 or 5,000 spectators. Arguably, Albany only gets excited about basketball this one time every year.
So, to summarize: Once a year, Albany, a city with no professional sports teams and a couple of mid major level college athletics programs, gets rowdy and excited over this one basketball game. To anyone outside of the Capital Region, the game means nothing, but to everyone in the arena, it's the game of the year.
Which brings me back to the original point. We, as Albanians, don't have access to Madison Square Garden, humongous football stadiums with pro teams, or all the excitement that comes with highly successful local teams, but because of this, we get excited for something of minuscule proportions. Does the small stature of the event on a national scale make it worse? The answer is no, because relative to the other home games each team plays throughout the course of the year which are mostly low-key affairs, this game has a boisterous, energetic atmosphere, and although it's only a bunch of people packed into a sort of small stadium watching mediocre teams play each other, it's still the most exciting thing around. I don't think it's a stretch to say that fans at this game felt MORE emotional contentment at it's completion than plenty of spectators do at pro events.
As I watched fans filter out of the arena from my court-side seat (more on the reason for this arrangement in the near future), it dawned on me that a great game had just taken place and that most fans were leaving the arena satisfied (the game was so good that I'm making a huge assumption that the losing fans were okay with it. HUGE assumption.) Fans weren't satisfied because the game had great national implications, but because they had attained a feeling of satisfaction from watching Albany's singular important college basketball competition go down to the wire, with David pulling out the upset win. It warmed the hearts of only a relatively few people, but that was good enough for them. Or, better put, us.
To start: The Albany Cup is a regular season, division 1 basketball game between Siena College, a regular NCAA tournament participant with a growing reputation, and UAlbany, a regular league doormat with little national exposure. Slightly David and Goliathesque, these two make up the highest level of basketball in town. The Times Union Center, a building with too much capacity for it's market base, rarely gets more than 4,000 or 5,000 spectators. Arguably, Albany only gets excited about basketball this one time every year.
So, to summarize: Once a year, Albany, a city with no professional sports teams and a couple of mid major level college athletics programs, gets rowdy and excited over this one basketball game. To anyone outside of the Capital Region, the game means nothing, but to everyone in the arena, it's the game of the year.
Which brings me back to the original point. We, as Albanians, don't have access to Madison Square Garden, humongous football stadiums with pro teams, or all the excitement that comes with highly successful local teams, but because of this, we get excited for something of minuscule proportions. Does the small stature of the event on a national scale make it worse? The answer is no, because relative to the other home games each team plays throughout the course of the year which are mostly low-key affairs, this game has a boisterous, energetic atmosphere, and although it's only a bunch of people packed into a sort of small stadium watching mediocre teams play each other, it's still the most exciting thing around. I don't think it's a stretch to say that fans at this game felt MORE emotional contentment at it's completion than plenty of spectators do at pro events.
As I watched fans filter out of the arena from my court-side seat (more on the reason for this arrangement in the near future), it dawned on me that a great game had just taken place and that most fans were leaving the arena satisfied (the game was so good that I'm making a huge assumption that the losing fans were okay with it. HUGE assumption.) Fans weren't satisfied because the game had great national implications, but because they had attained a feeling of satisfaction from watching Albany's singular important college basketball competition go down to the wire, with David pulling out the upset win. It warmed the hearts of only a relatively few people, but that was good enough for them. Or, better put, us.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Flash Gym
A perk of volunteering time in Siena College's Athletics Department is that I am granted access to their gym. I take advantage of this kind gesture by moving heavy metal objects up and down and side to side for free, and consider it fun. I even found a little side room with plenty of machines and free weights, a spot where people sightings are rare. We'll call it "Sanctuary" from here on out, because it's almost always quiet, mellow and relaxed.
Well, the other day I was happily throwing around pounds in Sanctuary when I noticed a few guys with matching shorts and t-shirts loudly amble into the room. I was concentrating too hard on the start of my next set to pay much attention to them. A few seconds later, I was also concentrating too hard on getting through the first couple of reps to notice the entrance of 30 more uniformed bros. And I was working so hard to finish out the set that I didn't notice when someone turned on the surround sound stereo system that was blasting some techno-rap conglomeration. Finally, I finished my lift, and looked up to find myself in a jungle of matted hair and butt slaps. Lax Bros.
Lax Bros. The worst kind of bro. They had infiltrated Sanctuary by the sneakiest of means. Had I not been in the middle of a lift, I could have seen, smell, heard, and probably tasted them coming. Alas, I was caught off guard. But I couldn't leave. No group of grunting men forces me out of Sanctuary. Not on my watch.
So I hung in there, dodging what felt like 25 pound weights flying by my face. Sanctuary is not a big place, and certainly not big enough for 30 fully grown Lax Bros. Considering the combination of noises, including music, belching, and ceaseless Lax chat, I'm somewhat surprised we didn't blow the roof off of the building. I tried to focus on my lifts, but found it difficult to concentrate when woolly mammoths all around me were springing forward, grabbing 80-pound free weights, doing 3 bicep curls, dropping the weights on the ground and on each other, and then bellowing at the top of their lungs. It's just a tough lifting environment.
And then, just like that, the hair-whisking, fist-bumping, pro-spotting machines of human nature were gone. I couldn't believe it. They were like a swarm of hungry fire ants that got full. It reminded me of one of those flash videos that you see on YouTube where people just start dancing in department stores, for the soul purpose of catching it's workers off guard and confusing everyone in the store. It happens really quickly, and then it's over. We'll call it a Flash Gym.
And I now consider it fact that Sanctuary has magical powers, namely the ability to vanquish the most terrifying of mythical creatures, including the fearsome Lax Bro.
Well, the other day I was happily throwing around pounds in Sanctuary when I noticed a few guys with matching shorts and t-shirts loudly amble into the room. I was concentrating too hard on the start of my next set to pay much attention to them. A few seconds later, I was also concentrating too hard on getting through the first couple of reps to notice the entrance of 30 more uniformed bros. And I was working so hard to finish out the set that I didn't notice when someone turned on the surround sound stereo system that was blasting some techno-rap conglomeration. Finally, I finished my lift, and looked up to find myself in a jungle of matted hair and butt slaps. Lax Bros.
Lax Bros. The worst kind of bro. They had infiltrated Sanctuary by the sneakiest of means. Had I not been in the middle of a lift, I could have seen, smell, heard, and probably tasted them coming. Alas, I was caught off guard. But I couldn't leave. No group of grunting men forces me out of Sanctuary. Not on my watch.
So I hung in there, dodging what felt like 25 pound weights flying by my face. Sanctuary is not a big place, and certainly not big enough for 30 fully grown Lax Bros. Considering the combination of noises, including music, belching, and ceaseless Lax chat, I'm somewhat surprised we didn't blow the roof off of the building. I tried to focus on my lifts, but found it difficult to concentrate when woolly mammoths all around me were springing forward, grabbing 80-pound free weights, doing 3 bicep curls, dropping the weights on the ground and on each other, and then bellowing at the top of their lungs. It's just a tough lifting environment.
And then, just like that, the hair-whisking, fist-bumping, pro-spotting machines of human nature were gone. I couldn't believe it. They were like a swarm of hungry fire ants that got full. It reminded me of one of those flash videos that you see on YouTube where people just start dancing in department stores, for the soul purpose of catching it's workers off guard and confusing everyone in the store. It happens really quickly, and then it's over. We'll call it a Flash Gym.
And I now consider it fact that Sanctuary has magical powers, namely the ability to vanquish the most terrifying of mythical creatures, including the fearsome Lax Bro.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Fame and Fortune
I am sure that fame is not arrived at through pursuing one's dreams, as everyone claims. If this were true, there would be more famous people than homeless people.
I was watching a show on MTV tonight called The Buried Life, where four guys (Canadians, I might add) set out in an RV to cross off items on their list of "stuff we've always wanted to do but probably won't ever get the chance to". The items vary from asking out the girl of their dreams (in this case Taylor Swift) to getting married in Vegas to making a million dollars in one day. They get away with this crap by also promising to fulfill other people's more practical and socially beneficial dreams when they complete one of theirs. It's a fun show that I find worth 30 minutes of my time.
It got me thinking: What does it take to become a talking point amongst regular people? Watching these guys clown around on screen, and thinking of other reality TV stars and celebrities of their ilk, I realize that they have something a bit different from the average. They click together, fill the necessary niches that any successful guy group has, and probably have a keen sense of film-making and editing. So they had this idea. And they did it. And somehow they are now famous.
But they're like 23! (I'm not really sure how old they are, but they look about my age.) It CAN'T be that all four of them have dreamed of this idea for years, and they knew that it would be a kick-ass, popular sensation. I doubt they had a business plan. What they had was a perfect blend of characters, one that unintentionally combined for success, and this simple chemistry propped the whole crew up through the dreaded beginning stage.
Imagine these guys sitting around a college campus or dormitory, coming up with this idea. How many other college students have come up with a comparable novelty? Why aren't they famous? They may half-heartedly pursue it for a short time, but more often than not motivation wanes and the idea fizzles out. Maybe the idea wasn't great in the first place, but these concepts must evolve as they are undertaken fully, and that's where the genius lies. I highly doubt that the guys on The Buried Life had this all sorted out before they set out to film their show. Maybe they dreamed that it would become a national sensation, but it's hard to imagine that they actually believed themselves. It's easy to imagine that they were just in it to have a blast.
We all want to be famous, or at least for someone to recognize us on the street. We've all got that dream of seeing ourselves on TV or in a magazine or authoring a book. And we're told our entire lives that "we can become whatever we'd like if we work hard at it" and to "not let anyone tell us what we can and can't do". But no matter how hard we work, more likely than not, we will never become reality television stars or celebrities, which is what many people would like to "become".
My point is this: Consider all of the ideas similar to The Buried Life that went forward, did not become famous, but satisfied it's participants nonetheless. For example: This blog. I write it because I believe it goes towards improving my long-term writing abilities, but also because it's kind of fun. In all likelihood, it will not become famous or noteworthy, because it isn't new or different. It's an idea that I undertook for the purpose of being able to express myself, and because it's something I somewhat like to do. There are no repercussions if nobody ever reads it or gets inspired from it, so it's a win-win. I think that creative undertakings where fame and fortune is a vague subplot and in which failure doesn't exist, are how stars are accidentally born.
Today, everyone's so focused on becoming the next big thing, a stressful endeavor in and of itself. Look at some ideas that took off, like Facebook and Reality TV. These didn't occur through careful planning and quick, efficient work to get ahead. It seems to be that they came about mostly through luck and trial and error. We can't try and try and try again to innovate. It has to come through an individual or group passion that evolves into something entertaining to others. So stop worrying about getting ahead of the curve, and let the world spin as it may. In my opinion, acting this way will get you there faster anyways.
I was watching a show on MTV tonight called The Buried Life, where four guys (Canadians, I might add) set out in an RV to cross off items on their list of "stuff we've always wanted to do but probably won't ever get the chance to". The items vary from asking out the girl of their dreams (in this case Taylor Swift) to getting married in Vegas to making a million dollars in one day. They get away with this crap by also promising to fulfill other people's more practical and socially beneficial dreams when they complete one of theirs. It's a fun show that I find worth 30 minutes of my time.
It got me thinking: What does it take to become a talking point amongst regular people? Watching these guys clown around on screen, and thinking of other reality TV stars and celebrities of their ilk, I realize that they have something a bit different from the average. They click together, fill the necessary niches that any successful guy group has, and probably have a keen sense of film-making and editing. So they had this idea. And they did it. And somehow they are now famous.
But they're like 23! (I'm not really sure how old they are, but they look about my age.) It CAN'T be that all four of them have dreamed of this idea for years, and they knew that it would be a kick-ass, popular sensation. I doubt they had a business plan. What they had was a perfect blend of characters, one that unintentionally combined for success, and this simple chemistry propped the whole crew up through the dreaded beginning stage.
Imagine these guys sitting around a college campus or dormitory, coming up with this idea. How many other college students have come up with a comparable novelty? Why aren't they famous? They may half-heartedly pursue it for a short time, but more often than not motivation wanes and the idea fizzles out. Maybe the idea wasn't great in the first place, but these concepts must evolve as they are undertaken fully, and that's where the genius lies. I highly doubt that the guys on The Buried Life had this all sorted out before they set out to film their show. Maybe they dreamed that it would become a national sensation, but it's hard to imagine that they actually believed themselves. It's easy to imagine that they were just in it to have a blast.
We all want to be famous, or at least for someone to recognize us on the street. We've all got that dream of seeing ourselves on TV or in a magazine or authoring a book. And we're told our entire lives that "we can become whatever we'd like if we work hard at it" and to "not let anyone tell us what we can and can't do". But no matter how hard we work, more likely than not, we will never become reality television stars or celebrities, which is what many people would like to "become".
My point is this: Consider all of the ideas similar to The Buried Life that went forward, did not become famous, but satisfied it's participants nonetheless. For example: This blog. I write it because I believe it goes towards improving my long-term writing abilities, but also because it's kind of fun. In all likelihood, it will not become famous or noteworthy, because it isn't new or different. It's an idea that I undertook for the purpose of being able to express myself, and because it's something I somewhat like to do. There are no repercussions if nobody ever reads it or gets inspired from it, so it's a win-win. I think that creative undertakings where fame and fortune is a vague subplot and in which failure doesn't exist, are how stars are accidentally born.
Today, everyone's so focused on becoming the next big thing, a stressful endeavor in and of itself. Look at some ideas that took off, like Facebook and Reality TV. These didn't occur through careful planning and quick, efficient work to get ahead. It seems to be that they came about mostly through luck and trial and error. We can't try and try and try again to innovate. It has to come through an individual or group passion that evolves into something entertaining to others. So stop worrying about getting ahead of the curve, and let the world spin as it may. In my opinion, acting this way will get you there faster anyways.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Goodnight Moon
Each night, there exists a minute or two when I lay down for sleep on my back in my warm bed, tuck my hands behind my head, and melt into an utter state of relaxation. Not until recently have I experienced this moment of bliss. It's as if the weight of decisions made that day leaks out of my body and adds to the pillowy softness of my mattress. It's a wonderful feeling, although it comes at a very odd point in time.
Why would this be happening now? I've been bitching and moaning for the past 3 months about jobs, living arrangements and just about anything else I can think of. To be honest, I'm at peace with my situation. I've somehow been able to enjoy the minimal amount of work I do and not felt the burden of finding something better. And instead of being scared of the last sentence, I'm okay with reading it over again. Some things aren't meant to be pushed that hard, and this job search is one of them.
What's the use of pushing so hard for something more when I'm content with what I've got? Eventually, I know for a fact that the contentedness I feel now will drift away, and at that point I will more doggedly pursue a new location and a new line of work. But until then, setting limited weekly quotas for such onerous activities as applying for jobs, researching grad schools, studying GMAT's and networking leaves me most at peace.
And it all culminates in the minute or two when I compress the day into my head before bed. I summarize it and recreate it and look forward to the next one. Life ain't so bad.
Why would this be happening now? I've been bitching and moaning for the past 3 months about jobs, living arrangements and just about anything else I can think of. To be honest, I'm at peace with my situation. I've somehow been able to enjoy the minimal amount of work I do and not felt the burden of finding something better. And instead of being scared of the last sentence, I'm okay with reading it over again. Some things aren't meant to be pushed that hard, and this job search is one of them.
What's the use of pushing so hard for something more when I'm content with what I've got? Eventually, I know for a fact that the contentedness I feel now will drift away, and at that point I will more doggedly pursue a new location and a new line of work. But until then, setting limited weekly quotas for such onerous activities as applying for jobs, researching grad schools, studying GMAT's and networking leaves me most at peace.
And it all culminates in the minute or two when I compress the day into my head before bed. I summarize it and recreate it and look forward to the next one. Life ain't so bad.
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