Grazing in the Grass

As a frequent watcher of sports, I hear the words unbelievable and miracle a lot. This is despite the fact that because the event is being viewed, recorded, and rebroadcast multiple times, I do, in fact, believe an even has occurred. And, while a team performance or individual moment might be outstanding, I don’t put it on par with paintings of the Madonna weeping.

A word that I am not having much problem with is “surreal.” I am not a huge fan of surrealism, as Dali and the like never evoked anything in me. However, if the word only means that it has a dream like quality, how can I judge that? I don’t know what other people dream. I don’t remember my own dreams most of the time.

I remember one day in high school, Dave telling me that he and Gruve were at a lacrosse practice. He said that in the field next to him, there were a bunch of men from India. They were playing cricket. They were smoking cigarettes. And they were cranking Hank Williams, Jr. as loud as it could go. Dave told me it was surreal. I always assumed the surreal part was that guys from India like listening to Bocephus.

We are less than a fortnight since the World Cup of Cricket. I don’t think that got a lot of play here. However, my wife and I were on the continent and only received one or two channels in English. BBC or Skynews or Euronews or CNN International touch on sports, occasionally. By sports, I mean soccer or Grand Prix auto racing. The entire time we were in Europe, the only mention of anything related to the United States was when an international runner announced he was injured and would not run in the London or Boston marathon. However, even soccer was pushed from the headlines because of the World Cup.

On the day of the finals, Julie and I were outside of Zurich. We were sitting on a deck at a pub that, as is common, couldn’t accept a U.S. credit card. If you don’t have a chip in your card, it has to be swiped. A lot of places don’t like paying extra for that machine, especially if they don’t pander to American tourists.

I was drinking a Coca Cola. Julie had a Carlsberg. The motorcycle enthusiasts beside us were smoking cigarettes. The Asian family on the other side of us was laughing and throwing watermelon rinds into the otherwise pristine river running beside us. The world cup was showing on a television inside, and despite the fact that no one spoke English, we kept hearing cries of “That’s good!” from the Indian patrons during their time at bat. It qualified as surreal. You know why?

My glass had seven or eight cubes of ice in it. That is truly dream like. This is the first time I have been Europe and not only been given ice without request, it was not just a singular die sized piece of ice. Plus, the bottle of Coke was frosty cold. It was a refreshing moment.

Also refreshing was the basketball game I watched as we settled in for the night in Paris. During the trip, there was a betting house that showed sports and let you wager on them. I told Julie that after a week of no sports, I would gladly watch a Minnesota Timberwolves game against the Cleveland Cavaliers. This was better.

It turns out that San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker owns partial interest in a French league team, ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne. ASVEL Basket was playing Le Mans. Because my wife is from San Antonio, we took a rooting interest in Parker’s team. At one point, ASVEL had three Americans on the court, USC’s Davon Jefferson, Clemson’s Cliff Hammonds, and Florida’s Matt Walsh. Walsh, incidentally, could not be stopped. He can shoot the ball.

But most of my time was spent watching former Dallas Maverick Pops Mensah-Bonsu. Does anyone remember that the Mavericks D-League team played in Fort Worth? Pops was on that team. Why didn’t I go see the Fort Worth Flyers play? Why wasn’t I a season ticket holder? Does anyone realize that Pops played professional basketball in Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston?

Now that is what I call “surreal.”

...And Still Young

Julie and I are working on my parents’ lawn. The man from across the street asks us if we want to borrow his mower. I had not seen him in awhile. Last time he was in town, he was on leave from South Korea. He is now home from Afghanistan.

I ask him what it was like in the Demilitarized Zone. He said that the stuff going on the North Korean border is insane. It will never get reported to the UN or media, but he called them MFers a lot.
He talked about being on guard duty and playing “quick draw” with the North Koreans. Right down to aiming at each other. He said it was right out of the old west.

They threw grenades at their camp. When he got promoted, a team of North Koreans tried to kidnap him. He said that he was on a project and heard a truck pull up. Since he was pulling wire from the ceiling, he was not in the computer room where he was supposed to be. He said the door bust open and six guys with tasers and side arms came in. He said he jumped off the ladder and through an emergency exit to the street where he didn’t stop running until he got to other soldiers. He was told that they take them across the DMZ and release them in North Korea to make their way back.

He talked about the propaganda. He said that you couldn’t help but listen to it. It was in this melodic singsong voice. In the winter, he said you could hear it through the entire valley. He said it was haunting, and he still has nightmares about it. Funniest thing he said all night, “I’m at a base camp in Afghanistan, and I’m having nightmares about Korea.” He also said that the propaganda weather reports were pretty accurate.

I ask about care packages. He chuckles, saying everyone asks about the care packages. He says hygiene products are beloved. He thought it was great when he opened a package and found toothbrushes, toothpaste, or soap. He said baby wipes were ok. He said boxes would be left open and inside you find the same things. Cup of soup, powdered drink mix, and Tabasco. “Heck, the army gives us that.” Girl Scout cookies, on the other hand, are gold.

He also says that there are more playing cards in Afghanistan than in the United States. “Everyone sends playing cards. Send dominos.” No matter what, he says nothing is derided. “We know people here mean well.” He says most of his leisure time was spent watching movies. Lots of guys have laptops. And every laptop has 500 gigs of movies on them.

His official last day in the army is about a month from now. He says that they told him he was being promoted to E-6. He said he didn’t want to spend his time doing Power Points, so he declined the bonus and didn’t re-enlist. He is going back, though. He says the first contractor job he was offered was for $150K. He says he will come back as soon as he has saved a million dollars. Until then, he is waiting out his enlistment. He is eating all the fast food he can find, and drinking beer. Something he says you can’t do in Kabul.

These are big words to hear from this man. Mainly because I am not yet 40, but I once baby sit this war veteran. I was about 15, so he was about 4. Our last real conversation happened when I was home from college. He had ridden his bike to the train crossing and was telling me the difference between the train whistles for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe and Amtrak.

There are no bikes today. We are in his driveway sitting on the tailgate of his pickup truck. His truck has two stickers on it. One is the Parachutist Badge. The other says Afghanistan Campaign Veteran.

My dad comes over to us for a second. He hugs my father and calls him “Mr.” like he has since he could talk. My dad says, “He is taking a contract job over there. He says the office is in a Green Zone. An underground bunker with concrete walls 20 feet thick. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

As my father returns to the house, our neighbor continues. “That place is secure. But the job is 50% travel. That’s when they’re going to get you.” He points to my mother’s car in the driveway. It is a 1992 Plymouth Sundance. “The cars just like this... Pack them with 500 pounds of explosives. There isn’t much they can’t destroy.” I almost tell him about Jed’s cousin who was the machine gunner on a HumVee behind the one that got hit with the IED. I stay silent, realizing he is not the audience that would care.

He says, “I get a shiver every time I come out of the house and see that in the driveway.”

He won’t have to face that for long. He is moving in with his brother in a couple of weeks. He is going to hang around until he gets the call sometime early next year. When he came back, he rented a 30 foot dumpster. We figured they were remodeling.

“No,” he says, “I just had to throw everything away.” From attic to garage, he knew on the flight from Kandahar that the first thing he was going to do when he got home was to get rid of everything. He bought new furniture, but I don’t think it had the intended effect.

I have little input during most of the conversation. Until he asks about where Julie and I are working, I don’t have much to say at all. Soon, though, he asks me about TCU football and the Rangers playoff chances. We laugh over a story from our youths when his dad met Nolan Ryan. We talk about the other residents on the block. For awhile, things seem normal. Unfortunately, normal means that the mosquitoes do him in. “I have to get inside. These things are killing me.”

Dang mosquitoes.

Wade Old Misery Phillips

When I was in high school, I had an English class where we would compete in contests. This involved dividing the room and asking questions for points. We once named our team “The Camel No Filters,” because we were the brand of choice.
This resulted in the opposing team taking the name “Vous etes les betes stupides.” Obviously, four years of French had taught someone enough to form the sentence “You are stupid animals.” However, since our French courses were more designed to teach us how to count our change at the train station, no one could have known the French words for camel (chameau) or no filter (sans filtre). Scott, a classmate also called Ed Duke, changed our name to “Vous etes les geeks.”
Needless to say, the moniker applied to all. It was an accelerated English course for advanced placement. It was not exactly a bastion of the popular.
This class is where we read The Destructors by Graham Greene. A story which showed me that literature was like art. Sometimes I would get it. Sometimes I would not.

In The Destructors, Greene introduces us to some young teenagers who spend most of their days being good for nothing. We are introduced to four of them by name, T (Trevor), Blackie, Mike, and Summers. The remaining five to nine members are pretty interchangeable. Basically, Blackie is in charge until T shows up. T wants to step up to the next level. The idea for a day activity goes from attempting to ride buses for free to destroying a house from the inside.
The house belongs to an older gentleman with rheumatism named Thomas whose greatest fault is that he offered the boys chocolates on his way home from the store. He also made the mistake of showing the home to T when asked to see the house. This house not only survived the Blitz of London, it was built by Christopher Wren.
So while Thomas, or Old Misery as they call him, goes on holiday, the teens break in and set to what is in modern terms now called a “tear down.” Walls, floors, furniture, staircase, bathroom fixtures, bedding, all destroyed. Then, they turn on the water in the house. The last act is to tie the main support to a truck in a parking lot. When the driver of the truck accelerates, the house collapses.
The story ends with the driver releasing Thomas from the outhouse where he spent the night, courtesy of the teens and laughing at the situation.
This story pretty much ensured I would never read Graham Greene again. It is also proof that just because some committee agreed to put a story in a textbook, you don’t have to make students read garbage. I say this because we were told the theme of this story is that Destruction = Creation. A student in our class announced that he was going to slash our teacher’s tires, break all the windows, and set fire to the interior, just so he could hear our teacher say, “That Jamie is so creative.”

The Dallas Cowboys present this week’s football as literature moment with Wade Phillips playing the role of Old Misery. Wade is cast in this role instead of Jerry because I don’t find it hard to believe that in real life, Wade has offered a football player chocolates out of kindness. Jerry, on the other hand, wouldn’t do anything kind unless he could profit from it.
Playing the role of The Destructors are Keith Brooking, the Cowboys secondary, the Cowboys offense, and David Buehler.

The easiest parallel to make among the destructive is David Buehler as Mike. This is because Mike does some things to the benefit of the group. Just as Buehler executes his one trick and seems to make every tackle on the kicks run out of the end zone, Mike warns them of Thomas’s return and distracts him so he can be trapped in the lavatory. Mike also leaves on occasion, much like Buehler’s ability to make field goals.

In the story, Summers goes from distrusting Old Misery to being the first to recognize T’s leadership and joining the demolition to asking if they hadn’t already done enough. Mike Jenkins thought he had done enough as he watched Johnny Knox sprint pass him on a 3rd and 15. I have news for Mike Jenkins. When players from Abilene Christian University are leaving you in their dust, you need to seriously reevaluate your assessment of your speed. But Orlando Scandrick showed us that he isn’t even Mike Jenkins’s peer, and Mike Hamlin showed he isn’t the peer of most random NFL personnel.

And the role for leader of this debacle is a tie between Keith Brooking and the Cowboys offense. They bear this mantle due to the incredible hype and lack of any substantive return they give you. Actually, Brooking wouldn’t be that bad if he just quieted down. But if you gather a team around you and yell “The stage is set! The lights are on!” you should do something more memorable in a game than be ten yards behind Greg Olsen as he leaves your coverage for an easy touchdown.
The offense is the ultimate destruction. Three headed monsters, first round draft picks, wonderboys, a top 5 tight end, and reformed Backstreet Boy Tony Romo equal turnovers, lack of direction, and an incredible lack of clutch performances. You know what that makes? The antithesis of anything constructive. And it is not creative. It is garbage.

Jerry "Reisman" Jones

In the mid 60s, E.M. Nathanson wrote a book about misfit G.I.s in prison given a chance at freedom called Project Amnesty. The premise was that the soldiers were given the option of staying in prison to serve their sentence or going on a suicide mission. Knowing that most of the convicts had little to no aspirations to perform a sacrificial patriotic act, they were given an incentive. If they lived, they would go free. The book was called The Dirty Dozen.

The formula is pretty standard. The dozen don’t like each other. They don’t like their commander. They don’t like any other officers or military units. There is a singular moment in which they bond. They form an efficient unit. They value the mission over themselves.

At least, the sane ones do. There is a character in the book named Samson Posey who basically wears a loin cloth and paints his face in tribute to his Native American heritage on the night of the attack. Posey was a bear of a man who didn’t retaliate until poked and prodded. His crime was a single punch that killed a man. But Posey was not the problem. He was completely stable compared to Archer Maggott.

Maggott was a racist bible quoting simpleton. He demeans the minority soldiers and is way more off kilter than most.

In the middle of the mission, Maggott loses it. He endangers the mission by leaving cover before others are in place.

The Dallas Cowboys met their own Archer Maggott. His name is Alex Barron.

Alex Barron was also in a prison of sorts known as the 2005 – 2009 St. Louis Rams. The proficiency of those teams was affected in no small part by Barron’s league leading 34 false start penalties in his last four years. Barron is given a new life by being traded to Dallas, who had to be thinking they had a pretty good back up lineman. After all, Barron was a former first round pick.

In the middle of the Cowboy mission, Barron lost it. I agree that no play loses a game. So I don’t hang my hat on Barron’s holding call on the second to last play of the first half moving the ball back to set up the Tashard Choice fumble. (Nice time for your first fumble in three years, Tashard.)
I can’t even show the last play and Barron’s horrible technique resulting in a penalty that wiped out the game winning touchdown.

But I can point to Barron’s incompetence throughout the entire game preventing the Dallas offense from functioning normally. We saw the off balance line more than ever and Jason Witten in the backfield to block instead of splitting the seams.

Was it Posey’s fault that he was put with a group in which he didn’t belong, knowing he could snap?
Is it Barron’s fault he is put in a position to fail, knowing he would fail? Washington coordinator Jim Haslett told his team that they would get Barron to commit penalties. This was a known known.

And that is the fault of the leadership that put Maggot and Barron in positions to cause harm.

If You've Seen One...

I had never been to Pittsburgh. And I didn’t begin my visit with a negative opinion of the city. I dislike the Steelers, but had no opinion of the town. Besides that, I liked the Pirates and the Penguins and Phish, if there is any correlation to the Dr. J movie.

The reason for our trip was to attend the engagement festivities for Julie’s cousin. This would complete a circle of sorts as I met this cousin and her fiancé at our formal engagement party three years ago. I remember him best for introducing me to room temperature Dr. Pepper. I thought he was a bit touched. As someone who doesn’t imbibe alcohol, one of my complaints about Europe was their apparent ice shortage. Any drink order that required ice consisted of a singular cube usually the size of a peanut M&M.

I was converted easily. There was nothing wrong with room temperature Dr. Pepper. It was smooth, mellow, even. I brought this up the next week during lunch with a co-worker. This guy knows a lot about a lot. If I had to play a game of trivial pursuit with my house at stake, he would be my partner. (Julie would want him to be my partner, too.) He tells me that he remembers advertisements where people drank Dr. Pepper hot, like tea or coffee. I haven’t tried that, but I vouch for the other.
So, our first full day in Pittsburgh was a Friday spent walking through downtown. Lots of construction going on, which I wasn’t expecting. Count me among those that thought of a coal town that was not exactly prospering. This is where Pittsburgh got me. Sure, the roots are in coal, but this Carnegie Mellon’s town, too. And the Heinz family.

This was a big topic that night for me. Julie’s family has always been accommodating, but the best discourse came from her cousin Neil. Neil is still in college, in another state. He wasn’t supposed to be there because he was supposed to be in a wedding the next day, in yet another state. He was taking a pass because he was ill. Other wedding invitees had dropped him off on the way to the wedding, leaving him to find a way back to school by Monday. Talking with him, you knew that it really wasn’t an issue, somehow it would happen.

Neil explained that he had fielded his share of phone calls from friends asking how to get somewhere at all hours of the day. “Pittsburgh is weird. How many other cities have 2nd and 3rd street running parallel in opposite directions, then two blocks later, they cross each other?”

Because Neil wasn’t feeling well, he didn’t take part in the Heinz Field tour or the Pirates game on Saturday night. This game was part of the 50th anniversary of the 1960 World Series team. The video of Bill Mazeroski’s homerun was shown many times. What I did not know was that Julie’s uncle attended that game. His father had taken him out of school to see an historic event. Pretty great, huh?
Well it turns out, his sister was there, too. Prior to this, this aunt of Julie’s was best known to me with this note: she had been to six continents, and Antarctica was one of them.

Apparently, in 1960 the Pirates allowed Carnegie Mellon students to enter the stadium after the 7th inning. I had heard of this before. The Rangers did this throughout the 80s. Then again, there was not a long line taking advantage of this offer. Julie’s aunt walked over with her art school friends who thought it would be a good opportunity to draw faces and crowd scenes. So she was also there when the Pirates won it all.

Here is the kicker. To this day, it is the only major league baseball game she has ever attended.

Carrots are Divine

When McVey and I first lived together, it was as freshmen in a college dorm. Other than sharing a room with a brother nine years older than me for a short time, I had not occupied a bedroom with someone else for an extended period of time.

One of the great things about our living situation was that McVey’s dad was a technophile. He had the newest of everything as soon as it rolled off the assembly line. And whenever he bought a new toy, he gave his “old” equipment to his son. As a result, we had a receiver, tape deck, and speakers that were on par with just about anyone in Jester East.

The cd player, however, was mine. For some unknown reason, my parents had given me a Pioneer 6 cd changer for a Christmas present. I was never into purchasing music. I was one of those guys that recorded songs from the radio on to cassette. At the end of college, I still did not own enough cds to fill the 6 cd changer. I ended up trading it for a Tandy 386.

Every night, we would decide which cds to load, put it on random, and retire to our single beds that were about three feet away from each other. Inevitably, we would talk about some topic until sleep overtook us. I would like to say these were noble, soul searching topics. However, one night we were talking about the misanthrope that is Scrappy Doo. At some point, McVey uttered the phrase, “Scooby Doo was the most predictable cartoon ever.”

This is how we learned that our next door dorm mates eavesdropped on us outside our door. We heard raucous laughter, followed by the sound of a door slamming, and through the wall heard someone chortle, “Mother____ers talking about Scooby Doo.”

If I get around to it, I will write more about Royce and Big Joe, including their suggestion on how to obtain fake IDs and the time one of them confronted McVey in the hallway... while naked.

In any event, I wrote that story to set up the fact that I can talk about cartoons. I watched plenty growing up. You can figure the era. Saturday mornings with the Super Friends, Laff-A-Lympics, Underdog, Quick Draw McGraw, Yogi Bear. After school watching went from Mighty Mouse, Felix the Cat, and the Banana Splits Offerings of Wacky Races and The Adventures of Gulliver to the then cutting edge animation of Battle of the Planets and Star Blazers.

But nothing topped Saturday morning and 90 minutes of Warner Brothers / Merry Melodies. By the time I got to high school, the show was an hour long. When I came home from college it was a half hour. By the mid 90s, it was gone, replaced by Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

So, when Julie told me we were going to Pittsburg to her cousin Maggie’s wedding shower, I immediately thought, “There’s a cartoon museum in Pittsburg.” We went to the Toonseum our first day there and it was worth the trip. It is not huge, and while we were there was not exactly a huge permanent exhibit to write about. Disney drawing desk, check. Original sketches of Toucan Sam and Dennis the Menace, check. Wonderfully knowledgeable curator, double check.

But if you haven’t seen the Art of Akira exhibit, you are missing out. I don’t think that large scale cooperation and dedication to drawing can be put together again. The story of Akira’s creation as a movie, the effort put into the work, and the far reaching effects alone made the visit a delight.

But standing there, and seeing the craftsmanship of the cells, made me enjoy the movie so much more. There are layers and layers of artists’ visions that deserve appreciation. I was amazed we spent so much time in a not large space. When we started the tour, they had us watch a YouTube video about the exhibit. It was a mood setter. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBAJdtPVnZc)

And there is a decent selection of books at the Toonseum. If you haven’t checked out Ho Che Anderson’s King or Blegvad’s Leviathan, they have it for you.

There Are Some Who Call Me...

So we decided to be a two pet household. I don't think that is something we put on any census form, but it was a consideration for the first pet. We have known that Annie does not play well with others. It is partly because she is a mix between the most paranoid / break glass in the event of anything that might remotely resemble an emergency dog breed and the slightly off kilter canine version of Vietnam era tunnel rats.

We decided to go with a cat. We went to adopt one from a local PetSmart. We saw a neat black and white cat named Moo-Moo, but we were told that to adopt him, we had to wait until a Saturday for the adoption team. We learned that another store could do direct adoptions, so we went there instead.
Sure enough, there were two orange cats. One of them named Max was 10 years old and declawed. We were pulled to Max because he had quite the sob story.
The other orange had white markings and was five months old.

We called Max's foster family to ask some key questions about his behavior. In a stroke of luck, the foster was a former coworker of ours. She told us that she knew Julie and me and knew enough about Annie that Max would not be a good fit. That led us to the orange and white, named Ivy.

We both knew a name change was in order. Ivy wasn't going to work. Maybe a couple of years ago, Ivy would have made me think of Posion Ivy, nemesis of Batman. Now, it makes me think of the itchy rash on my arms and the biopsy done by my dermatologist that redefined ‘spongiform.’

Julie’s first recommendation for a name was Groucho. This was a nod both to the cat’s temperament and her wild hair. But the masculine name didn’t seem quite right. Since her willingness to be held was predicated on giving her kitten treats, the next name suggested was Miss Piggy. This didn’t seem to be flattering at all, so we started thinking on a broader scale.

How could we incorporate Annie into the picture? Well, for awhile after we rescued Annie, we called her Little Orphan Annie. We thought about Daddy Warbucks. Or Mommy Warbucks. My only request was that the name be Daddy (or Mommy) War Bucks. That way, I could say the cat’s middle name was War. This would make Annie a dog of war, right?

Well, that didn’t work out.

The next two names came from our fandom of artists we see live every chance we get. Name #6 was Pearl. This was a nod to Amanda Shires, fiddle player extraordinaire. But the orange and white didn’t fit our cat. So what about Neko?

Now we were on to something. We love Neko Case. I am pretty confident that I have seen Neko every time she has been through DFW, including that appearance with A Fine Frenzy and Rufus Wainwright and her first appearance at Sons of Hermann Hall. Our friend Julian told us that Neko meant ‘cat’ in Japanese. Perfect!

But then we found out what the Japanese slang for Neko meant. Now, we don’t hang out with a hipster Japanese crowd. We have seen Lost in Translation and want to visit Shinto temples and experience the new jazz scene in Tokyo, but we don’t get to interact everyday with cool kids from Kyoto. Still the possibility of eliciting giggles at our cat’s name was enough for us to strike that choice from the list.


Choice #8 was… Groucho. I don’t think this was so much a surrender to the unexpected difficulty of naming a cat. I think this was more a reference to her interaction with Annie.

Choice #9 was also a repeat. We were back to Miss Piggy. Julie even found out that Miss Piggy’s real name is Pigathius Lee. Still, what a mark to put upon our new cat’s forehead! Piggy?
But it did fit. So maybe we needed to stick with this reference. Option #10: Olivia. A pig from children’s literature. Heck, I can’t write a children’s story, but we could name our cat after a character. How about a derivative? Option #11: Olive. This was Popeye’s love interest. We could work with this. And we thought we had it.

Until a moment of genius, that is. The Aran Islands. Just off the coast of Ireland. Inisheer. Inishmore. Inishmaan. Aran! What a great name. We tried it. It fit. We felt pretty comfortable with it.
Then our friend Jed crushed our positivity, as he is wont to do. He told us that Aran sounded too much like Aryan. Knowing that we are sensitive to avoiding any misrepresentation on this subject, he successfully needled us into abandoning name #12.

So we moved to the east a little. Back to the mainland of Ireland. The town of Doolin rests in County Clare. County Clare is a welcoming and peaceful area in a country that holds many good memories for both us and our families. Lucky #13: Clare.