The last few years since I broke my ankle, it’s been a recurring story of rehabbing a lingering physical issue only to have something else betray me. Most recently, I spent the winter strengthening my ankle and back and getting into shape so I wouldn’t hurt myself at New Years’ Fest. The Reed alum team went as the Reed College Utah Jazz, below, and had a blast.

However, early Sunday I slammed my knee into the clay on a layout D and, after the bruising and swelling went down, I’ve still had fluid and numbness– probably acute bursitis that recurs if I lay out without knee pads. This set me back far enough that, combined with unemployment, it was clear that Rhino wasn’t in the cards for me this summer.

Naturally, after a few months of work to stabilize the knee and get my aerobic fitness back up to par, I tore my hamstring at Knife Fight practice last week. This is the third major episode of this, starting the last weeks of my senior year at Reed, and I know that I’ve got a month of rehab ahead of me plus another month of gradual strengthening– meanwhile losing ground on throws and drills and team time. Right now, though, I’ve given myself another week of absolutely no running, and we’ll check in when I start swimming and trying out a series of flexibility runs– thanks BLW for providing these with some advice.

Darts

Yep, I’ve been working hard during this stage of limited employment to get better at darts. Three seasons of team league gone by, I have two C-league championships and a B-league semifinals exit under my belt and have started to try my hand at singles competition.

I entered the Oregon Open in early April and thoroughly embarrassed myself on both days of competition. The first day was blind draw doubles; I got paired with a guy who probably tied me in the bottom 5% of the players there. We both knew it, and it sent our mental game to utter hell. I played the worst darts of my life, my hands were shaking uncontrollably, I was missing the board entirely and not having fun; completely in my own head. The only other darts experience I’ve had like it was when I had food poisoning during a team match; we won handily but I still felt like I’d lost. Left feeling miserable ad embarrassed; I knew if I played at my average skill level we would have won a few legs easily.

I went back the second day for Doubles 501 with my team captain, Mike. The competition was much better, since the pairings weren’t random, and we performed much better. However, the play started about two hours after the scheduled time, so by the time we faced an opponent Mike and I were on the bad side of a number of large, cheap rum and cokes. Over the next few hours we played some great games, won several against players that on other days would be out of our league, and lost a few gimme games by not hitting our outs. In the end, we were eliminated after pool play, and I was totally out of control. Amongst all the slurring, I have a memory of jogging to the pisser for the 20th time, weaving drunkenly among hundreds of people holding sharp things. Not my finest hour, but a ton more fun than the previous day.

Determined to leave the solo competition jitters behind me, I entered Portland’s summer singles league. There are 4 ranked divisions of six players, and I’m in the bottom division. Three months of work later, I’m a quantifiably better player than at the Open– specifically, consistency on scoring in 01, more out practice, and work on my weak areas of the board in cricket. The league shook itself out quickly; over halfway through I’m solidly the second best player in my division of 6.

“It will be very difficult for us. I always said our best chance was to go the front route. Facing Armagh or Tyrone, there’s probably only one conclusion. Let’s be realistic,” he said.

If this plays true to form, Tyrone will face Dublin, Kerry or Donegal in the quarterfinals. Mayo is ineligible for a matchup, to preclude the possibiliry of a Roscommon/Mayo repeat of the provincial. Dublin would make for the best story, since they knocked Tyrone out in semis last year, but they’re also possibly the strongest side of the provincial champions. A Kerry matchup would come with its own history– Kerry, Tyrone and Cork ruled the last decade together– and Donegal is again another hard Ulster duel, and anyhow we’d like to see an all-Ulster final, wouldn’t we, fans?

3a) Mugsy is back in a Tyrone jersey. Hopefully he’s good for a goal and 2 points v Armagh.

I’ve always wished McMillan would work towards exorcising the bench stigma that’s rife in the NBA. For the last few years the Blazers have had one of the best benches in the NBA; until injury consistently forced bench players into starting roles. An interchangable second unit lead by Roy, Batum, and Camby would be a dream to me. Having two franchise sixth men to bring elite level scoring ability to back up the muscle of my hoped-for line of Felton/Matthews/Wallace/Aldridge/Oden will take some ego-nursing. Last, the continued development of Mills or a dream rookie year for Nolan Smith to handle the ball maturely for the second unit is a best case situation for me; we know Felton can play entire games, but I’d like to avoid a season of that with whatever seems to be in the water at the training facility.

2b) However, this may be moot because of the NBA lockout. What bullshit. That being said, please excuse the cynicism, maybe what the Blazers need to get Paul Allen his bling is a season the same length as Oden’s shelf-life.

In short, hopefully all this talk is just to get discussion started, feel out other teams’ roster commitments, and put a fire under KC.

West Brom showcase tomorrow, Columbus away on Saturday.

Last, another episode of Choppin’ Wood, your favorite Timbers podcast.

I’m a fan of the third song in the show, ‘Will there be stars’.

Gnarls Barkley: Reckoner (Radiohead cover)

Raconteurs: Bang Bang (Nancy Sinatra cover)

Saul Williams: Sunday, Bloody Sunday (U2 cover)

Korean superstar Lee Seung Yeol: One (U2 cover)

PART I:

I grew up in a forest on a hill in rural Western Oregon, smack between the highway and the ocean. Logging country. Down one fork of the road is a community of sheep & hay farmers and loggers; down the other is a hilltop settled by hippies way back when, who then grew up and had kids and went gray but didn’t change too much. That’s Summit. Once a summer they have a big festival where the grown up kids come back with their kids, from the cities, and the friends from hippie days who never stayed out in the woods, and everyone remembers that, hippies or loggers, everyone likes pie and music and lemonade and beer.

My Dad, Early 80's

A ways back I linked to a video made by Dr. Paul Hochfeld, a family friend and one smart, caring dude. I want to share one he finished recently, about a (perhaps the) pillar of the Summit community, one of the originals: Earl Newman. Here I’ve excised a 2am blither on the nature and purpose of art, because it was bad, so suffice to say that Earl is a fantastic artist, and can certainly be placed in that box, but once you’ve met him he can never be contained by it. Watch the video here…

It’ll take a while.

PART II:

In the video, which is in no way at all about me, Paul (who’s known me since I was adopted by my parents around toddlin’ age) interviews a lot of people who’ve also known me for 24 years, among them folks with kids my age (well, they were kids when i was one). People who remember my dad hitting on my mom before they were anything to each other, much less me. One thing strikes me, that you can’t see: most of the people in the community are artists, whether in steel or glass or wood or paints or cloth or music. Among those interviewed is Polly, who shares my birthday (next week!), and who used to watch my sister and me often. She was one of a group of women in the community who would get together and make a quilt for every new baby that came along. Mine is still hanging in my parents’ house; some of my and my sister’s favorite animals clearly became so subconsciously because they are featured on our respective quilts.

My microcosm of life (ultimate) has recently had me thinking about institutional memories and interpersonal dilations; the points at which relationships built on ‘what’ transmute to those based on ‘who.’ Strangers with roles become friends with names, and in time the mash of context, details, secrets, and shared experiences becomes intimacy: visceral and comfortable. As in ultimate– coaches, veterans, rookies, heroes and opponents– so too, obviously, in life: lovers, bosses, regulars, fellow-whatevers.

This video, and memories of being two to five feet tall and who mattered how back then, put this into a very bright light, as childhood memories resurfacing will do. It’s also bittersweet, since it’s a reversal of the process above: I still have strong instinctive reactions to these people, who were once huge figures in my young life, but they’ve slipped back into roles. Key details required for real processing. No longer grokked. Part of this, perhaps, is moving away from childhood, when a certain adult can be defined as, say, ‘Beard. Has horses. Dependable source of peanut butter and honey sandwiches.’

One of my sources of joy in the past year has been spending time with a five-year-old, the son of my friend (and boss, and former coach). Witnessing glimpses of what’s going on in his head has been an amazing experience for me, thinking back on my own childhood. Specifically, I recall how, as a child, if i wanted something I would fantasize about it happening, playing out the resulting scenario in my head– Benny does this, too, often under his breath. Watching the video makes me recall a secret fantasy I had several times in my childhood: that the Summit blacksmith, Michael Hemmer, was going to secretly bequeath to me a sword he had made for me. Because of this belief, I always would try to involve myself in a conversation among my parents if Michael came up, or would want to go with my dad when he went to Michael’s to trade lumber for saw-mill repairs or blade sharpening.

I remember going to pick up my sister and mother from the scene of an accident when I was pretty small; I had a ‘gun’ made with a your basic right angle of two pieces of an erector set. I was supremely confident at the time that the policeman talking to my dad knew exactly what i was casually holding, and held a quiet approval for me as one of the ‘good guys’. This memory certainly inspires me to acknowledge when I pick up on whatever Benny’s imagining, as long as he’s trying to share his play.

Right now, when I show up at daycare to take him to school, or at his house to hang out with dad or take him to a Blazer game, Benny is unsurprised. He knows I’m good at numbers and picking up stuff and pulling the wagon. We grok. One day, a long time from now, he’ll remember “Shane? I think he worked for my dad and used to drive me to school. We played us some Man Vs Wild back in the day…”

But at that point, he’ll be pulling a wagon himself. That’s how it should be.

Here’re a few people who are: Mad as Hell Doctors, among them my family physician and friend, Paul Hochfeld (see my earlier post about his health care documentary here). They’re undertaking an across-the-nation road trip protesting our criminally flawed health care system, sharing their knowledge and personal experiences at town halls and public gatherings, and optimistically seeking a meeting with the President. Hopefully Blumenauer has a string to pull for them!

Evan Handler on health care and government-phobic hypocrisy, along the way answering the question at the top of my head: why should we censure Joe Wilson if he was, indeed, speaking his mind?

PS to the whole Wilson brouhaha: Every Congressman present was given a transcript to read beforehand. You think Joe Wilson was heckling in a fit of spur-of-the-moment righteous indignation? Sure.

–

The dangerous liberals at Mother Jones have two tidbits you shouldn’t miss.

The first is a graphic that displays the drop in media coverage of Iraq over the last years. Corollary to this is their daily photo reminding us that “We’re Still at War“; a reminder that we all should be hearing every day.

Does it get worse? Of course it does! Let’s read about torture! The CIA Inspector General released a report in 2004 detailing the interrogations ensuing from our seizure of suspected terrorists. In this report, you can read graphic descriptions of humans hurting other humans, and (the main point) soulless hair-splitting in which the inspectors bend over backwards to assure their bosses that the interrogators have at least heard of the Geneva Convention. Here’re some of the juicer bits, selected for us by Glenn Greenwald, who is surely a freedom-hating commie.

The release of the torture reports is all fine and good for people who are still stuck in 2005 Sheehan-land; we can tell ourselves how right we were and even reminisce about the good old days when we were all snootily aghast that Cheney won a second term. Two days out from this release, however, it looks like nothing in the future will change drastically. While there’s a chance that someone will be prosecuted, you can be sure that it’ll be the grunts who used power drills and threats of rape– not the men who said that there was nothing terribly wrong with that, and certainly not the men who told the men to say there was nothing terribly wrong with that. And that’s wrong.

In other news, RNC chairman Michael Steele is totally hilarious. He really should be given a TV show immediately.

Fidel Castro is now a pundit in international politics…

Last, swine flu is just a cold. Why are communicable diseases scarier than obesity or lung cancer? Eat well, sleep well, don’t watch TV. See you next time.