Delaney competed in her second triathlon, in Clute, Texas, this weekend. She finished 2nd in her class.
Delaney’s 2nd Triathlon from Kent Newsome on Vimeo.
Music: I Go Hard, by Gangstagrass, from their excellent record Lightning on the Stings, Thunder on the Mic (purchase @ Amazon).
It looks like my plan to dump satellite and cable TV and give Apple all of my money has hit a snag. For that to happen, iTunes would have to be very reliable in getting TV shows up and into the iTunes Store.
Based on my experience so far, that ain’t the case. I bought a season pass to Big Brother 12. The double elimination episode (Episode #22) aired on Thursday night. It’s Sunday afternoon, and it’s nowhere to be found on iTunes.
There’s another episode on tonight.
I’m not the only person who’s noticed this.
My thoughts exactly.
I try to be a mellow, zen cat. I really do. I fail miserably, but I try. It’s always the dogs that get me.
When I think back about the times I have completely lost my mind, at least as an adult, 4 of the 5 times have been over a dog. Not a woman. Not money. A dog. The other time was when some dude threw a beer bottle at me in a roadside honky tonk between Vancouver and Kamloops. Even then, I was on my way to Jasper to look for wolves, so it was somewhat dog-related.
The first time was when I lived in Nashville, back in the eighties. Some lady two houses down left her dog in the backyard. Every weekday. This dog would bark from the minute she left until the minute she let him back in that night. I was at home a lot, either studying or writing songs or goofing off or trying to sleep. I tried for weeks to mentally filter that dog out. I thought about killing it for a while, but poison is for sissies and I didn’t have my shotgun with me at the time. I thought about killing her, but she was a girl. Eventually I waited until a Saturday when I knew she was home and knocked on her door, planning to have a calm, neighborly conversation. She gave me attitude, I started screaming, she concluded I was both a psycho and a danger to her pet, and the dog problem was solved.
About 10 years ago, in my old neighborhood, the guy two houses down (yes, this is a pattern that will continue) took his family on vacation for two weeks. He didn’t take his dog. No, the dog got left in the backyard. Presumably someone fed the dog, because he was nourished enough to bark, non-stop, from dusk till dawn. Every. Single. Night. This time I had my shotgun, but he was a black lab. If it had been one of those little yappy dogs…
So for 14 nights I sat in bed listening to that dog bark. Our bedroom was upstairs in the back of the house, so it sounded like that dog was right outside our window. On the 14th day, when I stumbled home from work, read-eyed and bleary from lack of sleep, I saw that he was back. I stomped over there, with absolutely no intention of having a calm, neighborly conversation. He gave me attitude, and things quickly degenerated into me telling him, in no uncertain terms, what I would do to his dog and then to him, if I didn’t get peace and quiet. We stared each other down a few times after that, but I never heard the dog again. Problem solved.
Fast forward to my current neighborhood. A couple of years ago, some young guys moved into the rent house, two doors down. By all accounts, they seem like good kids. Certainly much better behaved, in general, than I was at their age. But, they have a dog. I’ve never actually seen the dog, but for months I heard him. Again, our bedroom is upstairs, at the back of the house. That dog may be two yards over, but when he barks it sounds like he’s in bed with me. For months, I was woken several nights a week by barking.
I tried to persevere. But I was worn out and down. During a particularly active week, barking-wise, I found myself sitting in bed at 3:00 a.m. listening to that dog bark. Loud and incessantly.
Since I had never (and still haven’t) actually seen the dog, I wasn’t positive which house it lived in. I marched outside, and walked up and down the street trying to figure out where that dog lived. It’s harder than it seems, because the lots are big and everyone has high, solid fences. I narrowed it down to two houses, either two or three doors down. Unsure where to knock (and wanting to avoid scaring an innocent, possibly armed, party), I just started yelling “Will someone shut that f#*king dog up!” Two neighbors stuck their heads out the door, told me they were also sleep-deprived thanks to that dog and, by process of elimination, helped me identify the right house.
And lo and behold, at that very moment, at around 3:30 a.m., one of the guys walks out his front door. I assumed he had heard me raving, but it turns out he was just getting something out of his car. When I stormed up and started bitching at him, it startled the crap out of him. I think he jumped 3 feet when I started yelling from the middle of his yard. At that point, things became more funny than rage-inducing. So I told him his dog was killing me, and the other neighbors. He said he’d take care of it, and he did. I hear that dog every now and then, but not a lot. Problem solved.
Then comes last night. My next door neighbors, who unlike the other dog-owners I actually know (and like), have a dog. Now I like this dog a lot. He comes over to visit whenever he can. Hell, he’s been in my house, which is more than most of my human friends can say. But he will bark.
For some reason, he ended up in the backyard at 2:00 a.m. He started barking wildly. The dog two doors down sounds like he’s in our room. This one sounds like he’s in our room with a megaphone. To make matters worse, Delaney had a triathlon training session at 7:00 a.m. this morning (yes, she is a Jedi). I waited 20 minutes or so, thinking that someone would let him in and he’d shut the hell up. No such luck.
Once again I wasn’t 100% sure which barking dog was the culprit, so I went out back and started yelling wildly. You know, mediation, hillbilly style. It worked, and my neighbor and I spoke. Him apologizing for his dog, and me apologizing for being a raving maniac. Intermittent sleep deprivation over an extended period makes it really hard to be mellow and zen.
Interestingly, I was once on the other side of this equation. When I was a kid, I had a German shepherd who was a barker. His pen was down the hill, past some trees and away from the house, so I don’t remember him keeping me awake. But the neighbor on that side complained one day. This was before dogs rode the coattails of kids to the no-punishment, new age, “he’s my baby” place. So I borrowed a bark collar for a week. Problem solved.
They still make them.
Part 1 (August 2010)
Casaubon’s Book over at the Science Blogs is starting a post-apocalyptic novel reading club.
This is about as targeted to my interest as humanly possible. Science fiction is my genre and post-apocalyptic is my favorite sub-genre. So let’s get it on. I’m going to update this page from time to time, and I hope you’ll add your recommendations in the comments.
Any discussion of book, and certainly any discussion of post-apocalyptic books HAS to begin with Andre Norton’s Daybreak 2250 – AD, also known as Star Man’s Son.
This was the first science fiction book I ever read, and it remains one of my all-time favorite books. Some people claim that this book, published in 1952, was the first book set in a post-nuclear world. I love, love, love this book, and highly recommend it.
Another book- or actually 7-book series- that I really like is The Pelbar Cycle by Paul O. Williams. The Amazon description sums it up well:
One thousand years after a devastating and chaotic series of nuclear exchanges, all that is left of the United States of America are scattered, warring tribes and small city-states. One of the latter is Pelbar-proud, civilized, and intolerant of change and new ideas. Rebels and troublemakers are sentenced to a year of exile at the massive midwestern fortress of Northwall, defending Pelbar against the fierce Shumai and Sentani tribes. Restless and brilliant Jestak is a visionary who has seen and learned too much in his distant travels to be content with life in Pelbarigan. During his exile at Northwall, he makes contact with Pelbar’s age-old enemies and risks all to rescue his beloved Tia from nomads armed with long-lost weapons from before the atomic holocaust. Jestak’s daring quest for love brings profound changes to his world.
I really enjoyed all of these books.
One of the best forms of post-apocalyptic story is the journey, in search of a better place. I can give you four of these to start with. Obviously, Stephen King’s The Stand and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are both excellent books. Lesser known but still very good are James Van Pelt’s Summer of the Apoclypse and J.G Ballard’s The Burning World, published in 1964.
Another of my favorites is David Brin’s The Postman.
I am a huge fan of vintage science fiction, and buy used paperbacks in bulk on eBay. You can get a lot of books cheap, and discover a lot of good, out of print books.
Other vintage post-apocalyptic books I’ll recommend in this initial installment are On the Beach, Robert Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, Earth Abides by George R. Stewart, and We Who Survived the Fifth Ice Age by Sterling Noel.
Finally, though perhaps not a traditional post-apocalyptic book, let me give a nod to a good book I just finished- Ursula K. LeGuin’s City of Illusions. I really liked it. It has a similar feel to Daybreak 2250 – AD, and that’s high praise.
That’s it for part 1. Do you have some recommendations to add?
My kids are in full bummed-out mode now, with school starting for two of them on Wednesday and for the third next Monday. I remember the feeling- it’s like a massive case of the Sunday night work blues.
We decided to squeeze the last drop of fun out of the summer break, by going to Lost Pines for a long weekend.
We had a great time, swimming in the lazy river, rafting (and swimming, accidently or otherwise) on the Colorado River, rock climbing, riding a zip line, playing Pay Me, and hanging out with our friends the Fenrichs and the Veldmans.
Christina, Delaney, Remy, Cassidy & Raina
Here’s Delaney and Cassidy climbing the rock wall at McKinney Roughs Nature Park. They were the first two up.
The group, just before we rafted on the Colorado.
After climbing up the rock wall, Cassidy, Delaney and Raina rode the zip line.
Tech Note: There’s some serious weirdness with the video on Delaney’s first jump. I don’t know if this is a glitch in the iPhone camera or the program I use to convert the Quicktime files to MP4s. This video incompatibility business is really irritating.
After we climbed, rowed and zipped, we relaxed around the pool, and played tag in the lazy river.
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We had a lot of fun.
Now, back to the grind. . .
The 2010 SWAL Championship was held last night at Lamar High School in Houston. Delaney won the Freestyle, in a highly anticipated, very close and unbelievably exciting race. She also won the Breaststroke and was second in the Backstroke. Her medley relay team came in second, giving her two golds and two silvers for the night.
The Freestyle final was among my happiest moments, ever. It’s hard to describe how proud I am of her.
She’s done with SWAL events for the summer, but will continue to swim for Rice Aquatics.
Delaney had her first swim meet of the summer this week. She finished first overall in all four events. I’m really proud of her.
Oh, and she got her final report card of the year yesterday. Straight A’s for the year.
This post has multimedia content.
I can still remember how awesome it was. I’m really happy for my kids.
Billy Stewart – Summertime (Purchase @ Amazon).
Well, it looks like I may have been wrong. It may happen.
Which is really a bummer. Not just for Wake Forest Basketball, but for my relationship with spectator sports in general.
Let’s look back. When I was a kid, I was a big fan of five sports. Pro football, pro basketball, pro baseball, college football and college basketball. I knew all about the players on my favorite teams, and kept a constant eye on records and stats (none of which had dollar signs before them).
I had posters on my wall. It was good.
Then money, morals and the media killed almost all of it.
Without going into the bloody details, here’s where my spectator sports interest stood a week ago.
Pro Football: I go to maybe one Texans game a year, and watch less than that on TV. Pro football is largely about the money, the stupid player celebrations and the media. Fantasy football briefly rekindled my interest a few years ago, but when my fantasy league died last year, so did most of my interest.
Pro Basketball: I was an huge fan back in the day. From Lew Alcindor to Bill Walton (pre-Celtics) to Clyde Drexler. Then somewhere between then and now, it became a caricature of its former self. I haven’t been to a game in years, because the experience is only remotely about the basketball. It’s bad sensory overload and gives me a headache. I haven’t watched one minute of pro basketball on TV in years. It’s impossible to overstate my apathy towards the NBA.
All of this from a guy who used to play and watch hoops all the time.
Pro Baseball: As a kid, baseball was the lesser of the big three, as far as my interest went. Free agency, the fact that I was a Braves fan as a kid (I stopped liking them when I moved to Texas in 1985 and became an Astros fan) and, mostly, the lack of a salary cap turned it from a real sport to a WWF-like faux sport, and my interest waned accordingly. I still watch a handful of games a year, and pro baseball is my favorite to watch in person. So it went from last to first on my pro sports list, but as you can tell, that’s not saying much.
College Football: As a kid, college football was probably second only to pro football on my list. I watched a ton of it. I still watch a ton of it, for three reasons. One, it seems to have changed less than the others. Two, it gained a lot of the attention share I used to spend on other sports that now bore me to tears. Third, Jim Grobe. Nuff said.
College Basketball: Until the last couple of years, my interest in college basketball had remained pretty constant. It’s become a little about the money and the media (if the NCAA Tournament does expand as reported, it will kill college basketball for the true fan, but that’s a topic for another day), but it’s still fun to watch. The Tim Duncan/Randolph Childress era was the high point for me, as a Wake Forest fan. Frankly, I didn’t watch many games this past season, because I thought the Deacons were just no fun to watch.
And now comes the fork. When Wake Forest fired Dino Gaudio this week, I was hopeful that a high profile new coach, with a proven post-season record, was forthcoming. Visions of a revitalized WFU basketball program danced in my head. I was really excited, and refused to believe that this would happen. Now it looks like it will.
I’m willing to wait and see, but this doesn’t look good.
Jeff Bzdelik may be the best possible choice for Wake Forest, but other than his brief tenure at Air Force, which is a far cry from ACC basketball, nothing in his won/loss record makes that obvious.
Look, I am just a long time fan with a blog. I don’t know squat about running a university athletic department. Maybe this hire will be a stoke of sheer brilliance. But if it is, Ron Wellman must have information that Google hasn’t found.
Because nothing about this makes sense to the untrained eye.
Wake Forest has a top 10 recruiting class signed. While it should never be a deciding factor in a new hire, keeping that class intact should be a goal after the hire is made. I’m not seeing anything that would excite me if I were one of those guys. Princeton offense? Seriously? Isn’t that what Herb Sendek tried at NC State? How did that work out?
I don’t know if its about friendship. Or trying to keep the former assistants employed (that’s sweet, but shouldn’t a major factor). Or maybe Ron was infected by that LOWF thing (the idea that Wake can’t expect to successfully aim high, so we should be happy when we avoid the bottom).
Someone will say that keeping the assistants will help keep the recruits. To that I say so would a high profile hire that indicates that Wake aimed high and hit the mark. Players want to win. Good players want to win and get drafted by the NBA. Convince them that this will happen, and you could have an Aardvark roam the sidelines and they wouldn’t care.
My working theory is that it’s a combination of three things.
One, Wellman believes other higher profile candidates are unavailable or uninterested. There’s just no way on earth that WFU would fire Dino Gaudio based on wins and losses to hire Jeff Bzdelik. There is just no way. I have thought, and this is supported by the fact that Wellman is apparently on his way to Colorado to speak in person with Bzdelik for the first time about this job, that there were some informal discussions between various parties over the Final Four weekend. Or maybe not. Regardless, it means that either there was a plan in place that blew up; this is the plan; or there was no plan.
None of those make me particularly happy.
Two, the LOWF spell goes deeper than I thought, and has spread beyond the “sunshine brigade” portion of the fan base. You know, those who are fired up that we made the NCAA Tournament and actually beat the other most under-achieving team in America to make a rare trip past the first round (of course that same post-season business was the stated reason for canning Gaudio). When it was reported that Bzdelik might be the guy, the sunshine brigade was momentarily stunned into lucidity and actually began crapping all over the idea with everyone else. Slowly, however, they are regrouping and have embarked on a halfhearted effort to convince us everything is fine. It’s about 49% valiant and 51% heartbreaking to watch.
Three, for some inexplicable reason Ron’s desire to make a change was more important than the effect and results of that change. About the only way I can explain the timing and chronology of events would be if Ron wanted to make a change, right that minute, and deemed any change better than the status quo. I don’t agree with that- I’m afraid we are barreling a hundred miles an hour towards something much worse that the former status quo. But again, I’m just a guy with a blog.
As I noted the other night, I mean absolutely no disrespect to Jeff Bzdelik or Ron Wellman, but college coaches and ADs are highly paid public figures, so this sort of analysis comes with the territory.
My analysis, at least as of now, is that I’m going to have some time to fill.
I hope I’m wrong. For one reason or another.
It’s hard sometimes to be a Wake Forest fan. You struggle to become an elite basketball program, and almost- but not quite- make it. A taste of honey and all that. Meanwhile Duke and UNC go to Final Fours the way most of us go to meals, and even win National Championships in down years.
The one thing that makes it all bearable has been Ron Wellman, the Athletic Director. He is as much of a constant to the patient and hopeful WFU fan as Penny is to Desmond. He has shown a smart and steady hand, master-minding the resurgence (or surgence, maybe) of WFU’s football team by hiring and keeping Jim Grobe. Even the women’s basketball team made the NIT this year, which is about as likely as Hoosiers.
Earlier this week, Ron fired basketball coach Dino Gaudio, citing WFU’s consistent year-end and and post-season crash and burn. I tend to think there was more to it than that- WFU couldn’t even make the Final Four with Tim Duncan AND Randolph Childress, so whoever put a post-season curse on the Deacons did it long before Dino Gaudio even heard of Wake Forest.
Regardless, I thought it was the right move. There are hordes of WFU fans who are so beat down by years of disappointment that they have become conditioned to have low expectations for WFU sports. If we can stay in the top half of the conference, get to the Sweet Sixteen every other year or so, then we should be happy.
I have always thought that was utter hogwash. Wake can be an elite program. Apparently, Ron Wellman agrees.
Or so I thought.
When Dino was fired, we all had visions of Brad Stevens or someone similar dancing in our heads. Butler did a smart thing and signed him to a long contract (many confuse the concept of term with the concept of a buyout, but I’ll assume this extension takes him off the table, at least as far as Wake is concerned). Maybe we should change our mascot to the Stalking Horses?
Even with Brad apparently off the table, there are plenty of good prospects out there. Wake has a top 10 recruiting class signed. A high profile coach with a post season track record who promises an exciting offense and lots of fans in the seats and wins on the scoreboard could almost certainly convince all or most of the class to stay the course.
Just now, however, I read reports that Wake is just about to hire Colorado’s Jeff Bzdelik. Look, I don’t know Jeff and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t know anything about his coaching record or style other than what I have read. I mean absolutely no disrespect to Jeff, but college coaches are highly paid public figures, so this sort of analysis comes with the territory.
What I have read does not excite me. In the least.
Air Force? Fisher DeBerry is a life-long friend of mine, and I would have been stoked if Wake had hired Fisher to coach its football team (I actually begged Fisher to seek the job once). But basketball? NIT semi-final as a high-water mark? I do recall that Air Force beat Wake by something like 40 a few years ago. Maybe Jeff was the coach then, which I guess makes this a mathematical step-up. But seriously…
73-119 in the NBA?
32-57 at Colorado? The Princeton offense (hopefully that footnote is wrong)? One 4 star recruit (per Scout) in three years?
This is probably coming off as harsh, and I mean no disrespect to Ron or Jeff. But this does not sound like the roadmap to putting WFU [back] on the college basketball map. Or the way to keep a top 10 recruiting class in the fold (not that the recruiting class should be a deciding factor).
I choose not to believe this will happen, until it happens.
If it does happen, it will be soul crushing. Almost as soul crushing as watching the inevitable (and understandable) futile efforts at putting a positive spin on it.
Surely Ron is just goofing on us, right?
This is not going to happen. Sometime in the next few days I’ll come back here and tell you I told you so.
Everyone remain calm.
Newsome.Org 