Book Update

I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.

The editors want massive rewrites, to the point where the entire focus of the book is shifted. I created this monster by adding some new elements they fell in love with and now want to be front and center to the story.

My initial reaction was….let’s just use the word frustrated and leave it at that.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I could see they were right. At least, the spirit behind their ideas was correct. The reason they like these new elements is because they’re solely devoted to character development and make readers care about what’s happening in the other side of the story. I get that. However, their idea for how to rewrite it falls flat to me, and doesn’t make much sense.

So, essentially, I thought I had two options. Submit what I have to others or try another rewrite.

Or….and this came to me at 3 in the morning Saturday, I could rewrite it my own way to give the editors what they want while still keeping what I want. I’m going to talk this over with an editor, but even if they don’t go for it, I’m still going to do it.

 

Massive rewrites, onward!

Why I Hate Duke

I’m reluctant to spend quality time focusing on unbridled hatred. It’s generally a waste of time and rarely makes me feel better. That’s usually because hatred is venomous and while it feels good on the way out, venom comes from venom sacs and just refills once its gone.

There are a few teams I dislike and subconsciously play Emperor Palpatine music in my head whenever I watch them, but Duke is on a whole different level. I don’t like the Highlands Blue Birds. I’m annoyed by the New York Yankees and baseball in general. The color black and their generally dirty play does the San Antonio Spurs no favors in my book.

But I HATE Duke. HATE, HATE, HATe them. My hatred for Duke is venomous. I mean, black mamba venomous. If, heaven forbid, you were forced to print out these words and eat them, you’d go comatose and then die in less then five seconds. Organ failure would be the cause. If, somehow, you were stranded in the arctic and needed to start a fire from my collection of blog print-outs, this particular entry would set off a nuclear explosion visible from Ecuador. If Lord Voldemort were somehow still alive, this blog entry would make a perfect horcrux.
I hate Duke.

And while normally, I wouldn’t write about hate because it serves no purpose, this occasion is different. That’s because Duke just won the National Championship two days ago. This no longer venomous hatred. Now, it’s bile. And it needs to get out.


There are probably a million different reasons to hate Duke. Picking one is like picking your favorite gold bar in Fort Knox and heisting it. That doesn’t make sense? Of course it doesn’t make sense. Why take one when you can take them all?

There are a variety of entries in the Duke Hateopedia. Sustained success is easy to hate. Every team from the Yankees to the Lakers deals with it. Douchebag behavior on the court is also easy to hate. From floor slaps to the infamous Laettner stomp to JJ Redick being JJ Redick, Duke has that market cornered. Elitish snobbery? Check. Obnoxious fans who somehow think they’re “crazier” than other fans because they wear face paint and yell in a high school gym? Okay. Media homerism that consistently puts them on a pedestal when they don’t really deserve it? Got it.

Then there’s the regional hatred. Obviously, no one else in North Carolina likes Duke. Most people in Kentucky hate Duke as well. Laettner’s shot in 1992 still breaks my heart every time they show it on the CBS pregame introduction, and this year was even worse because Butler came THIS CLOSE on that desperation halfcourt heave to erasing that ’92 shot from the collective memory banks of college basketball fans everywhere.

Of all the reasons, most don’t fit for me. Sustained success isn’t something that makes me cringe, mostly because my team has more sustained success than Duke. Besides, that’s not really hatred if you hate a team because they’re good. That’s jealousy.

The players themselves don’t really bother me, either. Yes, sometimes they make dirty plays and act like pampered jerks, but so do a lot of other players on other teams. Besides, most of their players seem to be well-spoken, hard-working, smart and like to act vaguely homosexual around their friends. In short, they are just like I was in college.

To further that, Coach K is a damn good coach and you’d better believe I was rooting him on when he was the coach of Team USA in Beijing.

And while their fans are obnoxious, I’ve had personal encounters with Duke fans at Duke-UK games and you know what? They’re cool people and bought me a beer.

So, really, the reason I hate Duke is not because of Duke itself. It’s because the media, particularly ESPN, constantly tells me I should like them. I can’t stand this.

What makes it even more maddening is how the media has recently started to paint my team, Kentucky, as the “villain” in opposition to teams like Duke. The reason for this is obvious. Calipari is a lightning rod for controversy and openly courts players who treat college basketball as a stepping-stone to the NBA. The end result is that Kentucky is painted as dirty whereas schools like Duke do things “the right way.”

Duke depends on experienced upperclassmen instead of inexperienced one and doners like John Wall. Sure, that’s true, but only because Wall spurned Duke in favor of Kentucky. Coach K recruited him HARD and didn’t get him. Now, you think for a second that his status as a one and done would be vilified at all if he was at Duke instead of at Kentucky with that scumbag Calipari? Nope, me neither.

The whole notion that certain college programs are considered “clean” whereas others are “dirty” is a farce in its own right. People like to point at Calipari and say he’s dirty based on the incidents with Camby and Rose. In the case of Camby, rules were broken and UMass paid for it by vacating wins. You know what? The same situation happened with Corey Maggette and Duke. He even admitted to taking money from an agent. Just like UMass, their wins from that season should be vacated because technically, Maggette was no longer an amateur. Guess what, though? Duke was cleared and no wins were vacated.
Hmmm…..

My point here is that anyone who thinks that any big time college basketball program is run squeaky clean is misguided. Grey is part of the game. Yet certain programs are put on this pedestal of pristine whiteness, and in the case of Duke, I’m not just talking about the color of their player’s skin. Until perception comes closer to reality and Duke is given the same media treatment as everyone else, I will continue to hate them because my hatred for unfairness needs to have a focal point.

Also, I will continue to laugh at Jon Scheyer’s game face.

When your team loses

I'm going to miss moments like this.

           As a general rule in sports fandom, you can really have one team. Sure, you may really like some teams and enjoy watching them play. You may root for some teams over other teams, but there’s usually something missing.

            For instance, I enjoy watching the Lakers play. They’re a good team. Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest basketball players on planet Earth, Ron Artest is fantastic during press interviews, and when Sasha Vujacic plays well, videos like this get made. I enjoy watching them play, but again, they’re not my team. When they win, I feel some small measure of pride in their accomplishments, but when they lose, I don’t feel anything. That’s because they’re not my team.

            The Kentucky Wildcats are MY team.

            I don’t just enjoy watching them play. I cheer with every dunk and jumper. I yell at the tv when they play dumb. My stomach gathers into knots when they start to lose. When they win, I feel happy.  When they lose, I feel bad. And when they lose badly, I crawl into a hole and numb my sadness with cheese crackers and Disney movies.

            Saturday sucked. I hate seeing my team lose, but the cold, hard truth of the NCAA tournament makes it much worse. With pro teams, there’s always the prospect of next year. Not just next year, but next year with the same players. When a college team loses in the tournament, though, that just isn’t the case. John Wall isn’t coming back. Demarcus Cousins isn’t coming back. Patrick Patterson isn’t coming back. More might not be coming back. Just like that, it’s over.

            If I could, I would adopt a pro team as MY team. It just seems easier. When your team is good, there’s very little chance they’ll lose to a lesser team. Playoffs negate that possibility because they allow talent and skill, rather than game plans and sometimes, gimmicks, to shine.

            Not that West Virginia was a bad team. It’s just that the first half was one of the weirdest I’ve ever seen. The Mountaineers didn’t make anything other than three pointers and a few free throws the first half, and were it not for that statistical anomaly, Kentucky would have been up big. Of course, the Wildcats poor play was not expected, either, and much of the credit for that is due to West Virginia’s defense. The bottom line is that for one game, West Virginia outplayed Kentucky. That can’t be denied, but if the tournament wasn’t the tournament, and they were playoffs instead, Kentucky would win in five, maybe six, games.

            But is the tournament, and it is March Madness, and my team lost their mind for one game and now a bunch of one and dones are three and out. It makes me genuinely sad that the only way I’ll get to this see this team play again is on ESPN Classic, but what I can do?

            Nothing much, except resign myself to becoming a Nets fan or whatever team has first pick in this year’s draft.

 

   

March Madness Advice: Don't Pick Cornell

If you’re following March Madness, by now you’ve heard all the yarns about Cinderellas and the Davids of the college basketball landscape. It’s a fairly predictable storyline that gains its charm from unpredictability. Every year the same thing happens. Small, mid-major schools take down premier basketball factories, and this year is no different. Except, it is, because this year has more parity than ever, and the media is trying REALLY HARD to push two Cinderellas on us. Northern Iowa already grabbed one slipper when they knocked off Kansas last round. Now, a lot of writers, analysts and experts are picking Cornell to topple Kentucky.

 

Don’t believe them.

 

They’ll, of course, trot out well-reasoned arguments as to why Cornell has a chance. They’ll say they shoot the ball really well, don’t turn the ball over, and don’t back down from superior talent. They’ll also say they soundly beat two great defensive teams in Temple and Wisconsin.

 

These are reasonable arguments, if Cornell was playing a really good college basketball team. Unfortunately, Kentucky is not just a really good basketball team. They’re turning into a great team at just the right time, and there might even be debate if they’re actually a college basketball team considering they have at least five NBA first rounders on the roster.

 

Defensively, Temple or Wisconsin are simply not in the same league as Kentucky. That’d be like comparing a pack of golden retrievers to a pack of wolves. With really, really long wingspans. Offensively, remember that part I said about having five NBA first rounders?

 

And even then….

UK has John Wall.

John Wall isn’t just a superstar in the making. He IS a superstar. I’ve seen him play live, and watching John Wall lead the fast break is absolutely one of the most mesmerizing spectacles in sports. Watching opposing defenses on their heels as they try to contain him is like watching little kids at the beach collecting shells trying to outrun an incoming wave.

 

And it isn’t just like John Wall is a superior athlete. He’s a superior basketball player. Freshman don’t just come into Division I basketball and average 7 assists a game. They just don’t. John Wall does, which means he not only outruns, outjumps, and outlasts opponents, he outsmarts them, too. The whole “smart kids vs. dumb jocks” doesn’t play here. John Wall is the best point guard in college basketball, and good point guards aren’t dummies.

 

Kentucky in a rout.

And if you think Cornell’s players are endearing, check out this:

Lost and the Trajectory of Crazy

I watched an entire season of Lost.

That is the answer to the question, What did Mike do while he had a sinus infection and DAYS of time to kill with only an internet connection at his disposal?

I watched season 5, and up to the current episode of season 6, and I watched them all good.

For some reason I can’t remember, I stopped watching the series after season 4. I just got tired of having every episode ending with more questions than there were at the beginning, the pacing grew tiresome, and Claire died. All in all, season 4 sucked something awful and drove me off. But I’ve always intended to come back. Really, honestly, I have. I just somehow never got around to it. It wasn’t until last week at work, when the guys at work started watched season 1, that I felt the need to delve back into the Lostiverse. And if I’m completely honest, a major motivation for watching the whole series is to actually reveal plot spoilers to them when they ask me, and then have them not believe me because the ideas are so ludicrous I have to be making them up.

Seriously, talking about Lost season 6 to people who think they know what’s going on is Lost season 1 is like trying to explain Lebron James to guys who still play basketball with peach baskets.

And THAT is what is so awesome about this show. Clocking in at well over a hundred episodes, the story is huge, sprawling, mysterious, intriguing, provocative, captivating, infuriating, and above all else, absolutely crazy.

Except it’s not crazy. Because this has been planned from the beginning. Somehow, all these different timelines, flashbacks, flash forwards, sideflashes, hot flashes, and other story arcs fit together in a way that maintains a perfect balance of giving viewers what they need without giving them what they crave.

I mean, yes, it’s crazy. A lot of things don’t make sense and probably never will make sense despite thousands of theories written on fan blogs and message boards. Don’t get me wrong here. The story arc of Lost is completely insane.

But here’s the thing. It has been from the beginning, and that what makes it NOT insane. It isn’t as if the writers of this show were caught by surprise with its initial popularity. They expected it, and mapped out where the series would go. I’m sure there have been alterations through the years, but essentially, season 6 is the season 6 they planned for all along. Which means that all of the mystery and all of the intrigue, no matter how crazy it is, has a purpose. It is driving towards a conclusion and not just being used as a hook to keep people watching year after year.

I can get behind that.
I dare say watching over twenty episodes in a span of three days qualifies me as invested.

Thoughts on the ipad, ebook readers and Hitler

The iPad comes out in a few weeks, and while it looks neat and hip and Apple-y, I’m not sold on it. Not at all.

In regards to portable technology and my willingness to pay United States currency for it, there are several factors that are brought into consideration. Price, performance, durability, functionality, etc. All of these things are considered, but one factor always comes first.

Can I poop comfortably with this in tow?

I’m pretty sure I can’t with the ipad. This is why I am not yet sold ebook readers, either. I do a great deal of reading on the can (currently reading The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Oh Geez Why Does This Have Such A Pretentiously Long Name), and quite honestly, I don’t trust myself with expensive technology when my concentration is focused elsewhere, if you know what I mean. And I’m sure you do because I’ve spent a whole paragraph talking about the kindle and making toilet.

There’s that, and I just don’t like them. Ebook readers sort of…suck. They’re slow, clunky and they just don’t have enough going for them to make me want to buy them over regular books.

One of the major selling points is that ebooks take up less space than regular books. Great. Good. Grand. Less paper usage, less cleared forests and less fuel for Nazis to keep warm in the winter. Awesome. I do like the idea of having all my reading material in a nice, small package at my fingertips, but guess what? I also LOVE the idea of having a castle with walls lined to the ceilings with gold-leafed books.

And a giant bathroom to read them all in.
Until they can offer me that, I just don’t see the point in bothering.

Speaking of Nazis, Hitler agrees with me:

The Winter Olympics

  

   I haven’t watched much of the Olympics this year because I don’t have a television in my apartment. I don’t miss them, or the television, as much as I should. Theoretically, I should love two weeks full of obscure sports that, with the exception of curling, all present the possibility of death. All it takes is one quick swipe of the blade across the femoral or jugular arteries on a triple axle for a figure skater, speed skater or hockey player to bleed to death. When skiers crash it looks like one of those special effects sequences in movies where the real person is obviously and ridiculously switched out for a limp dummy, only with skiing that limp dummy is still the actual person. Someone DID die while luging, and even cross-country skiers have an event where they carry a gun around.

    So the Winter Olympics are an awesome spectacle of danger.
    Except, of course, not really because NBC sees fit to tape delay coverage of everything even for those who live IN THE SAME TIME ZONE as the games. It doesn’t make any sense, and it all but ruins the suspense when the results are plastered all over the internet for hours before airtime. Asking me to stay off the internet for more than a few hours is like asking a blind cave salamander to pick his favorite color of the rainbow.

    One thing has stood out to me, though, of the little coverage I’ve watched. Actually three things. They would be Lindsay Vonn, Shaun White, and Kim Yuna. Granted, their star power has been amped up by a goodly amount of press coverage, but after watching them perform, it’s not hard to see why they deserve the attention.

    And that’s just the thing. It’s not that the attention is just some thing foisted upon people. Some people ooze it without even trying, like they have some sort of pheromone that just locks everyone else onto them. It isn’t their doing. It’s just…their being.
    Lebron James has it.
    John Wall has it.
    Vonn, White and Kim all have it, too.
    Of the three, Vonn’s is maybe the most subtle. Sure, she has sex appeal, but that isn’t really a factor when she’s skittering down the side of the mountain. Even in tight spandex. What’s compelling is to see just how edgy she rides, and how often it seems like she’s crazy, reckless and out of control. In fact, all the crashes are testament to the fact that, sometimes, she is. But it’s when she’s just barely holding it together, and subsequently kicking in the face of every other competitor who rides more fundamentally sound but slower, that Vonn really shines.

    Shaun White is a different animal. The dude doesn’t look like anything special, and before his run in the snowboarding finals, I was watching all the flips and the mcflurries and the 1520’s and wondering “These guys all look the same. What sets this Shaun White dude apart?” And then he launches into the pipe, rockets into cruising altitude on his first jump, and…“Oh, that’s what everyone is talking about.” Shaun White is the Michael Jordan, the Pele, the videogame version of Tony Hawk, the Chuck Norris of snowboarding.

    The same thing happened with Kim Yuna. Normally, I couldn’t care less about figure skating, but because it was on late and nobody else was awake to make fun of me, I watched it the other night at work. I don’t know why I forget this, but this year’s competition makes it pretty obvious. This is a competition. Maybe I forget that with all the glitter and estrogen, but one thing’s clear: If Kim Yuna met that Japanese chick in a darkened alley, only one would come out alive. And they’d probably be missing a limb or two.

So, in the words of Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men, “Ok, I’ll be a part of this world.”

    And just like with Shaun White, I was sitting there watching the ladies short program and wondering, “What makes this Kim girl so special?” The thing I was expecting was for her to be more elegant, showier, maybe. Which..she was. But the thing is, she was also simply a superior athlete. Everything the other skaters did, she did better. Faster. Cleaner. Stronger.

    Because of that, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, when we sit down to watch tv at work Thursday night, I’m going to demand that instead of watching Kentucky vs. South Carolina, we watch the ladies long program.

    Maybe it’ll be on late and my predicament can be averted. If that’s the case, I’ll be grateful for tape delay. For once.