Everybody's got their little quirks. Today I noticed two of mine in particular.
First, as far back as I can remember I have always checked the coin return on every vending machine that I see. One of my earliest memories as a kid was a trip to Sea World. What do you suppose I remember about that day at Sea World? The shows? Aquariums? Shamu? No. I remember that as we were walking out towards the main gate at the end of the night I looked in the coin return of a pay phone and found a quarter. It was easily the highlight of the trip. Flash forward to today - as I left the public library branch inside a little strip mall I spied a promising little Pepsi machine and decided to conduct a closer investigation. My efforts were rewarded with a dime, baby! Score! It's not so much about the money (although it's always nice to accumulate some change for parking meters and such), but rather it's about the thrill of discovery.
I picked up the second quirk much more recently, circa 2000. I had a missionary companion who used to grab leaves off of every tree or bush we'd pass, fold them over a few times, tear them in half, and then smell the torn leaves. Then he'd be all, "You gotta smell this one! It's awesome!" I'd reluctantly smell it and respond, "Yep, that sure is awesome." But once you've smelled enough torn leaves you realize that every leaf has a distinctive and intriguing smell. Flash forward again to present-day Brian and his shiny new dime walking out of the Plymouth Mall - I saw an interesting little tree and decided to check it out. I ripped off a leaf and the smell was okay, but nothing to write home about (wait, I guess I sort of am writing home about it).
So, if you're looking for a couple more quirks to add to your repertoire I'd highly recommend coin return checkin' and leaf sniffin'. If nothing else you'll be negligibly wealthier and have pleasantly aromatic fingers.
The Utah Jazz are looking primed to sweep the Houston Rockets in the first round of the NBA Playoffs, and I've been rapturously watching every second of every game and then relentlessly searching out every word that has been printed about the Jazz the day after the game. But then again, I've been doing that for every Jazz game for the past five years.
Lately I've been trying to put my finger on the reason why the Jazz matter so much to me. Why it is so deeply satisfying to me when they win and why it is so gut-wrenching when they lose? Why should a basketball team matter at all to anyone? I recently found an article published in The New Yorker in 1975 in which sportswriter Roger Angell considered the very same question (in his case he was thinking about Carlton Fisk's famous home run in the 1975 World Series), and I think his answer cuts right to the heart of the issue:
It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look -- I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring -- caring deeply and passionately, really caring -- which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete -- the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball -- seems a small price to pay for such a gift.
I really care about the Utah Jazz. My love goes way back to when I was a little kid and Stockton and Malone were two of my biggest heroes. I watched all the games and I collected basketball cards like nobody's business (I still have them in a box at my parents house - here's hoping those fifteen-year-old cards are worth a small fortune now). But when I was a teenager I became disinterested in the Jazz because that's what was cool to do as a teenager: cultivating disinterest in things. But in 2003, when Stockton retired and Malone ran off to L.A. chasing a championship ring, I became deeply nostalgic and my love for the Utah Jazz reawakened. Without Stockton-to-Malone the Jazz were supposed to fall to the very bottom of the NBA. But they had a tough team full of no-names like Matt Harpring, Raja Bell, and Andrei Kirilenko who played their hearts out and surprised everyone by coming within one win of making the playoffs. Watching that team somehow claw their way to a winning record, I fell in love with the Jazz all over again.
I've gotten really invested in this group of players. I marveled at Kirilenko becoming an all-around disruptive force to opposing teams and cheered when he made the All-Star team. I was overjoyed when the Jazz pulled the off-season coup of snaring Boozer and Okur. I was in agony when Boozer got injured and sat out almost two full seasons and we missed the playoffs both years. But then I watched Deron William's first game as a rookie and when he hit a half-court shot to beat the buzzer I knew he would be incredibly special. Last season's march to the Western Conference Finals took everybody by surprise, and I felt an enormous amount of pride at watching my boys step up and defy everyone's expectations. This season I attended Kyle Korver's first game with the Jazz on New Year's Eve and everyone in the building collectively sensed that we had found the missing piece that would push us over the top.
In their most recent victory over the Rockets, Korver threw up a rushed shot that hit the side of the backboard, but Kirilenko got the rebound and tossed it back to Korver who threw up a one-handed prayer to beat the shot clock. Swish. It gave the Jazz a five point lead with 20 seconds left in the game and proved to be the dagger that killed the Rockets. I went nuts. Watch:
To me, that improbable series of events had "Team of Destiny" written all over it. These guys are special. Williams, Booz, Memo, Millsap, Harp, AK, Brewer, Korver - I love them all. They may not go all the way this year, but with their core of great young players they have the potential to be championship contenders for many years to come.
Just like Angell said, it may seem silly for to be so emotionally invested something as trivial and random as the flight of a ball, but caring so much about it is exactly what gives me so much joy. The Jazz are a constant in my life - I loved them when I was a kid, I love them now, and I hope that I still love them and still go nuts when my boys are up 2-0 over the Houston Rockets in the 2058 NBA Playoffs.
P.S. - I think the Jazz are definitely the favorites to win it all in 2058. Place your bets now.
Brian Presents: made its Ann Arbor debut last Friday with the 1940 Howard Hawks-directed and Cary Grant-starring screwball comedy His Girl Friday. It was a historic occasion for Brian Presents: for a few reasons: as previously stated, it was the first one in Michigan (it had previously appeared in Utah and Ohio), it was the first Brian Presents: of the Facebook era (this was by farrrrr the easiest Brian Presents: to organize and publicize), and it was the Silver Anniversary of Brian Presents:. Well, I guess not "anniversary" since it was founded in February, 1999, but still it was the 25thBrian Presents:.
Preparing the food is half the fun. The soda-cracker pie (bottom right) was my main project, but I also made some fresh Brazilian-style Limeade and, you guessed it, ChocoRamen (bottom left).
Picture's a little blurry, but these are some of my cool friends.
Maggie on our fabulous fake LoveSac. She's using my 'Brian Presents: Recommends' handout as a coaster.
John and Erick keepin' it real.
As far as I could tell it was a hit - there were about 15 people there (an ideal number - any more and it's a little too big) and afterwards people started asking me when I was going to do the next one. Most of my friends are scattering pretty soon for the summer so I'm not sure when I'll do it, but be on the lookout for Brian Presents #26: The Blue Kite.
I think this picture of the lawn outside the music building says it all. (If you look closely you can see the barbecue set up near the wall and a football in mid-air.)
It's finally starting to warm up around here after a very long winter - we had a snowstorm as recently as Saturday - and it's as if everybody is starting to come out of hibernation. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode where they ban "Itchy and Scratchy" cartoons and suddenly all the kids of Springfield emerge from their houses where they had been indefinitely sequestered in front of the T.V. They initially shield their eyes against the brightness of the sun, but then they slowly remember how to play hopscotch and marbles and jump-rope, all accompanied by Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.
It's 71 degrees outside, the sun is shining, I've wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and my new cheap flip-flops (my favorite kind), but the most beautiful thing about today is that I am done with school! I have spent most of this week in the computer lab until the wee small hours (wee = 4:30 a.m.) working on my final projects, but I just turned in my second major paper in as many days and now I'm done, baby! I survived the first year of my doctoral degree. One down, two to go.
I've got a couple of deadlines for final papers looming over me so I don't really have time to write a proper post right now, but I just figured out how to put video clips on my blog and I wanted to share something that never fails to make me smile.
Watch this one first just to reminder yourself how this goes:
Now watch this one (in SAP!):
Have a nice day! (Special thanks to technical advisor Jessica Allen for teaching me how to post clips)
Last fall I saw a great little documentary called "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" which chronicles the epic showdown between the world's two greatest Donkey Kong players as they battle to set the world record for highest score. The film prominently features Twin Galaxies, the official governing body for judging and recording world record attempts for video games (when the Guiness Book of World Records wants to include video game scores, they go to Twin Galaxies as their source). Ultimately the film is about the futility and vanity of pursuing world records because someone will always come along and beat you, your great accomplishment will be forgotten, and the brief satisfaction that comes with attaining a world record is probably not worth the sacrifices you made to achieve it.
Obviously I missed the point of the movie, because when I left the theater all I could think about was how cool it would be to have a world record in something, if only for a little while. So I went to the Twin Galaxies site to see if there were any world records that I could plausibly set. Most of the records are completely untouchable, but I noticed that no one had ever submitted a world record attempt for the fastest full completion (no warping) of Super Mario Bros. 2, a game which has always been a specialty of mine.
So I hooked Conrad up to the VCR (see this previous post for info on Conrad) and spent a couple of months practicing the game and timing myself, pushing myself to keep cutting my time. I realized that since there was no record to beat, I could have just sent in any tape of me completing the game, regardless of the speed and that would have been god enough. But If I'm gonna set a world record, I want to send in my very best, dangit! My initial attempts clocked in at about an hour, but I soon cut that down to about 38 minutes. I decided that I would send in my tape as soon as I broke 35 minutes. After a few more days I had done it: 34 minutes and 17 seconds. It was a thing of beauty to watch - every jump perfectly timed, nary a wasted motion, and I only died once - on the very last level.
Two weeks ago I carefully packed my precious tape in a bubble-wrap insulated envelope and mailed my tape off to Manitoba to be reviewed by the "referee" (that's the official title of a video game record judge). I finally heard back from him today when he sent me the following email:
Brian, I am writing to you with regretfully bad news. I recieved your tape in the mail on Monday and due to the current queue, I've just got to it at the moment and was going to watch it before going to bed. Unfortunately, when I took the tape out of the jiffybag, the front panel of the tape fell right out into my lap. As a result of this, nothing is there protecting the tape and I am unable to view the tape in its condition. I can't say I've had this happen before.. so I am at a loss for words... aside from wishing to offer you an apology in accord to this, as there's no way I can verify your tape in its condition or repair it either. [The sides were too brittle to try and put things back on.] I'm sorry I have to be the bearer of such news as I was really pumped about verifying this run. :(
Just like the videotape, my dreams were crushed. Maybe this will teach me the lesson I should have learned from the documentary - that pursuing a world record is a grand folly.
Yeah right! As soon as finals are over, I'll be right back at it. Plus, the Dr. Mario points record seems within my grasp as well. But this time I'll be smart and submit my scores digitally.
When I left Utah last summer to go spend the summer with the Ohio Light Opera, I packed pretty much everything I owned in my car because I knew that at the end of the summer I would be headed straight up here to Michigan to start school. As I was packing, I found a lot of random boxes of my old stuff down in my parents' basement. I just crammed the boxes in the car without really examining the contents, but after a couple of weeks in Ohio, I started to rummage through those boxes, where I discovered all of my old origami books and paper. I hadn't touched any of that stuff in about fifteen years.
Long story short, I got back into origami. Big time. I found origami to be the perfect activity for my downtime backstage because I could do it while socializing, I could pick it up and put it down at any time (like when I had to go on stage), and I could brighten up the dull green room by displaying my completed models on the wall. After a few weeks, I had a pretty substantial collection up on the wall and the display had earned the nickname "The Menagerie." By the end of the summer, the Menagerie had grown to about 80 pieces, which is pretty ambitious when you consider than many of the more complicated models can take an hour or more to fold. I gave each piece a unique name, which I print on one side, and on the other side I initialed my work 'BET' (my initials are actually BDT, but I somehow acquired the nickname 'BET' in Ohio last summer).
I certainly don't pump out origami at such a ridiculous rate now, but I still love to make something new every week or so. If I'm at home just hanging out and relaxing with an episode or two of Buffy, I might as well have a little origami wild boar or T-Rex to show for it, eh?
Here are some of my favorite pieces I've made:
Marcelo the elephant, one of the founding members of the Menagerie
Xavier the stegosaurus, Julius II the deer, and Reggie the Triceratops chillin' on my balcony in Ann Arbor
Derek the pterodactyl, Bert the robin, and Ernesto the Brontosaurus in my dressing room during Postcard from Morocco
At the end of the summer at Ohio Light Opera I put all the members of the Menagerie up for adoption, and all the great friends I made over the summer took a little origami souvenir home with them. If a few years from now the only thing that those friends can remember about me is that I was that one guy who sat in the green room cranking out all that origami to make the often-dreary green room a more colorful and fun place, I'll be more than happy with that.
Follow Them to the Edge of the Desert
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I dreamed that I was passing through Arizona with a bunch of friends from
Ann Arbor en route to Utah, but just before our caravan reached the border
we pas...
