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Riding a Bike

· October 6, 2014 · Blog Entries · , , , , · No Comments

It’s just like riding a bike.

That’s a saying that they use, implying that the action to which they are applying the statement is easy to pick up once you’ve learned it. A skill that never really goes away. A relatively easy action.

The people that say it? I doubt they’ve ridden a bike in a while. Because it turns out that riding a bike is not really “like riding a bike.”

A few years ago, my annual attempt at losing some weight involved a bicycle. It had been maybe a decade since I had ridden one. Not really sure where my old bike went. How does one lose a bike? Blame it on the six places I moved to and from in the ten years after college.

I went to Target, making the initial investment of a new bike, a tire pump, and bike lock. Skipped the spandex, thank you very much. Came home, checked the tires, and jumped on without much thought.

I mean, it’s just like riding a bike, right?

Okay, balance was off a bit there.

The first problem was just getting on the bike long enough to find the pedal. Even with one foot on the ground, butt on the seat, the bike wasn’t terribly sturdy. But I finally got up on that thing and made a solid pedal forward. The tires wobbled and rubbed against the brake pads as I made it partway down my driveway.

I got off the bike and went inside to find a wrench. Spent the next half hour loosening the brakes, tightening the lugnuts that attached the wheel to the bike, and doing a general once-over on the rest of the bike. Things I rarely had to do in my youth. After much work, I was able to get back up and take the new toy for a spin.

This time I made it past the driveway and even partway down the block. It was wobbly. Oh, I suppose it would be more accurate to say I was the wobbly one. Every time I slowed, which was much more often than I remembered, I had to get not one, but both, feet on the ground to stop from falling over. My top speed could not have been much more than that of a brisk walk. The wind that had once blown in my face was now still.

I did finally make it out of my neighborhood, and in fact pedaled my way around town on a moderately regular basis that summer. Even trudged the hour-long ride to work a couple of times. But even after I got those over those initial hiccups, the youthful freedom and exhilaration that once came from riding a bike was gone. Riding a bike became a chore. And this was not just because I now had the ability to drive a car to my destination much faster and simpler. It was also because the mechanics were different.

The seat was nowhere near as comfortable as I remember it. There was often a numbness in my nether regions that I promise did not exist at the age of ten or fifteen. Sometimes in the middle of a ride I would get off the bike just to feel if my testicles were still attached.  Also, the coasting was gone. Even though I was on flat ground, I could not pedal a few times and then coast, as I used to do. Standing up on the bike, something I used to do to go faster, now became a necessity just to move. And to protect my junk. But then my back would hurt if I stood too long. The tires also had to be pumped and tightened with frightening regularity. I would not leave my house for a bike ride without a wrench in my backpack.

Hence it was NOT “just like riding a bike.”

I know most, if not all, of these changes came from the fact that my body was different than the boyish body that used to ride. My two hundred and, let’s say, thirty pounds put additional pressure on the frame and the tires. But I’m pretty sure that even if I could go back to the one ninety or so I was at the end of college, the last time I biked with any sort of regularity, I don’t think the original physics would return. Because I wear my weight like a forty year old man now.

Another pithy saying might be more apt: You can never go back.

I’ve run into this phenomenon again recently with the arrival of my daughter. My wife and I took her to the park and I attempted to take her on the swing. How hard can a swing be, right? No shifting of gears or complicated chains to deal with. Basic physics. Why, I was completely ready to officially change the saying to “it’s just like swinging a swing.” Except it wasn’t. It was exactly like riding a bike.

I sat down in the swing with my baby on my lap. My feet were on the ground, thankfully, because that strip of leather was wriggling and writhing underneath me. Adult girth was again making battle with muscle memory. My wife suggested I wrap my arms around the chain ropes, and although I initially rolled my eyes (“Come on, I think I have enough body control to lean against this swing”), it wasn’t long before I took her advice. Some semblance of stability had been attained, so I walked a couple steps forward, a couple steps back, and said “wee” to the unimpressed baby.

Then came the big test. I walked myself back as far as I could while keeping my butt on the rubber strap and arms around the chains. This was farther back than I could go as a ten year old. Woo-hoo. Score one for the grown-up body.  I let go and lurched through the air, acutely aware of the downward pressure I was placing on not only the swing and the chain, but the entire steel swing set.

I went forward, then back, and was beginning to lose momentum. It was at this point that I looked down at my legs, sitting there awkwardly beneath my daughter. I looked up at my wife standing in front of me, and asked a question that third grade might have travelled through time to make the third grade me cry.

“Wait, do I kick my feet out going forward or backward?”

How the hell could I forget something like that? Isn’t it nature? The basic physics that a three-year old knows intuitively?

What’s worse is that I still don’t know. There was no way I was going to try with a baby on my lap and the entire structure threatening to come down upon us both. I’m pretty sure you kick out while going forward and tuck your legs in while going back. But while sitting here with my laptop in front of me, that seems like it would counteract the force of the swing. I mean, you don’t step forward with the same foot that you’re throwing with, right?
“Remember when you used to swing as high as you could and then leap off?” the crying third grader just screamed back at me.

I have a feeling I’m in store for a lot of moments like this as I raise my first child. Forget riding a bike. Life is more akin to driving a car. Except it’s the opposite. Objects in the rear view mirror are farther away than they appear.

In the first week of my baby’s life, I found myself, like most new parents, trying desperately to get her to sleep. Rocking her, cradling her, putting a pacifier in her mouth. Nothing was going the trick, so I thought I’d sing her a lullaby. I went with the basic lullaby that I think is required by law to be on every mobile. I think it’s called “Lullaby and Good Night,” but it’s basically two short notes of the same pitch, followed by a longer note about half an octave higher. Except I had no idea what the words were. The best I could come up with were “Go to sleep, go to sleep, won’t you please go to sleep now.” Probably not the most soothing words a newborn has ever been sung. I switched to “Too Rah Loo Rah Loo Rah,” but only knew the part that was on an episode of “Cheers” once.

I see more of this coming. What about those nursery rhymes that exist in every elementary school? Do they still sing “Down by the old mill stream?” Right now, the only rhymes I remember from my youth start with “I like big butts and I cannot lie, you other brothers can’t deny.”

My future third grade daughter has joined in the crying of the past third grade me. But that’s parenting, right?

The few things I can actually remember from childhood have probably changed, too. She’s getting closer to sitting up now and we’re helping her by putting her in the right sitting position. The words “Indian style” were barely out of my mouth before I realized that can’t be proper any more.

My wife shook her head.

“Sorry, Native American style?” I was reminded of the time I had to tell my grandma that calling Brazil nuts “Black people toes” didn’t make it any less racist.

“They call it criss-cross applesauce now,” my wife informed me.

What the-? I know they had to come up with something, but really? I’m sure Daniel Snyder’s taking notes. Now taking the field, your 2016 Washington Criss-Cross Applesauces!

So there’s going to be some growing pains. Some things I’ll figure out as I go along. Turns out I don’t need to know any lullabies, my daughter is perfectly fine falling asleep to Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful.”

And if my daughter is the only first grader whistling Blues Traveler harmonica solos while the rest of her class sings “Rock a Bye Baby” and “Three Blind Mice” (two TOTALLY morbid kid’s songs), I’m okay with that.

Because raising a child’s just like riding a bike. It’s constantly changing. And there’s probably  gonna be a skinned knee or two along the way.

Why You Gotta Be So?

· September 29, 2014 · Blog Entries · , , , , · No Comments

Why I gotta be so?

I often get in love-hate relationships with elements of pop culture. Usually it’s a TV Show I keep watching only to justify the amount of time I’ve put into it. The last two seasons of “How I Met Your Mother” fit into that category. In the middle of almost every episode, I would ask myself, “Why the hell am I watching this?” And the usual answer was “Remember how funny that one episode in the first season was?”

This summer’s love-hate entry is a song. So the good news is that it should be much more ephemeral, lasting only four minutes at a time and already waning from its peak rotation. But this love-hate is different than most, in that I truly can’t decide if it is an excellent or horrible song. Yet when it’s done, I’m filled with that same “end of the chip bag” sense of introspection.

You were singing that at the top of your lungs, weren’t you? Yeah, how does that make you feel? Boy, you’re going to regret that one in the morning.

It’s just so catchy. The music is great. Just the right instrumentation, rhythm, movement. A peppy little reggae beat that I can twirl my three month old baby to. And isn’t that why we listen to music? Because of the music? So what could be wrong with it?

The lyrics. The lyrics are horrible. And dammit, it’s the lyrics that I have to sing along to whenever it pops up on the radio.

The song is “Rude,” by Magic, and although it started the summer obscure, it listed as the number one iTunes download a few weeks ago, so it now exists in the zeitgeist. If you know the song, you might even be humming it right now. Hell, if you’re anything like me, you knew which song I was talking about four paragraphs ago. I was referencing it while teaching the other day, and all I had to say was “What’s that catchy tune with the really stupid lyrics?” and two or three students offered up “Rude” before I could even describe it further.

The radio station I first heard the song on encourages people to text them if they like or dislike a song. Of course, this seems to be encouraging people to text while driving. I, ahem, have of course, cough, never texted my opinion on a song while driving. I mean, that would be illegal. And please believe me when I say none of this happened anywhere near a moving vehicle of any kind. Honestly, officers, no need to check my phone records.

The first time I heard the song, I was grabbed by the perky, upbeat rhythm and went for my phone. I had already thumbed in the word “like” when the crystal clear singing got to chorus. If one can have a spit take whilst not only not drinking but also driving (er, standing completely still nowhere near a car), I might have done just that. The lyrics, and the entirety of the song, are stupid.

I’m the first person to say that in most songs, the lyrics don’t matter. I can’t understand the lyrics for most of the songs on the radio in a given day. I’ve even karaoked a few songs only to say “Oh, that’s what he says there?” when the lyrics pop up. “Rude” is a song that might have benefitted from a bit more Eddie Vedder style mumbling.

Even when the lyrics are decipherable, they don’t need to make a lot of sense. I watched Alternative Nation at midnight through most of college, and I was fine with a song about a chick who puts Vaseline on her toast. There’s a Crash Test Dummies song that merely describes three people who had little quirks. No point to the song, whatsoever. Perhaps the point of the song was going to be explained in the chorus, but they just decided to sing “mmm mmm mmm mmm” instead. Then again, I’m pretty sure the lead singer of Crash Test Dummies can sing the Brown Note, so we best handle him with kid gloves to protect our bowels.

So I’m fine with silly, pointless songs. I’m fine with fun lyrics without a lot of depth. I’m fine with not even knowing what the guy is singing about. So what’s the matter with “Rude?”

For those of you who haven’t heard the song, the entire thing is about a guy asking his girlfriend’s father for permission to marry her. Yes, in the year 2014, an entire song is devoted to an action that was already insulting and obsolete fifty years ago.

In the first place, asking a girlfriend’s father for “permission” to marry his daughter is insulting to your future bride. It’s the 21st century and you’re implying she can’t make this decision for herself. After the father gives you permission, will the discussion turn to the dowry? Because I’m pretty sure that’s where the whole asking for permission came from. While you’re at it, go ahead and have the father sign the marriage license, because obviously your new wife can’t be trusted to sign legally binding contracts or anything.

But even more than the insulting nature, in the 21st century, the question is pointless. I think this makes it even more frustrating to have this song sung so earnestly. Honestly, what’s the father going to say? No? Chances are you’re already living with his daughter, and even if you aren’t, you’ve at least got some carnal knowledge, right? So Dad says no and you say “Gosh, Pops, you want me to keep getting the milk for free? Awesome. And just for you, I’ll throw in an extra ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ or two when I’m shtuping her tonight.”

I do understand the desire to alert your future in-laws. You’re setting the stage for your future with your wife, and that includes her family. I found a nice way to do this was to let them know, but not ask their permission. The night before I proposed, I told my father-in-law “I’m going to ask your daughter to marry me tomorrow. I hope I have your blessing.” I was not asking permission, but I also wanted them to be prepped in case their first response was going to be “You’re marrying that loser?” they had fifteen hours to get it out of their system.

But the father in the song said no. I imagine he saw the litany of poems and songs this kid had written for his daughter and, understandably, felt he had no future writing drivel like that. The guy should have asked permission with the background music playing. Then the father probably would’ve said yes, because, I can’t stress enough, it’s fun and catchy music. Although if the father said yes because of the music, then the song would never be written, and I believe that’s how the space-time continuum begins to collapse.

The singer then goes on to sum up why asking a father’s permission is a pointless exercise that barely deserves a mention, much less a song. He’s going to marry her anyway. So you really weren’t asking permission, were you? Any Catholic can tell you the wonderful difference between asking for permission and asking for forgiveness. Again, my father-in-law comes into play here. He asked my grandfather-in-law permission and was told no. So what did he do? Hint: he’s my father-in-law and my wife wasn’t born out of wedlock. So even 40 years ago, it was understood that asking permission wasn’t really asking permission. Yet here we are listening to some Canadian croon on about a non-issue.

“What the hell is he singing about?” I said out loud, phone frozen in my hand, when the chorus hit. “Is this whole song about… Why, this isn’t a new song at all. It is clearly from 1955.”

I quickly thumbed a “dis” onto the front of the “like” text I had already written. I was just about to hit send when the “marry her anyway” part hit. At this point, the music goes from a 4/4 beat to a 6/8 beat. It’s subtle, a change that most people without music backgrounds might just consider a tempo change or not even notice. And it’s quick, maybe only six measures then back to 4/4, but the effect is to take a straight-forward reggae song and fuse it with something else. I still can’t tell what. Is it reggae-rockabilly? Can that even exist? So I sat there, transfixed again by the music with the phone in my hand, unable to push send on either a “like” or “dislike.”

Which is really where I still am today. I never turn the station when the song comes on. Most of the time I sing along. I’m singing lyrics I can’t stand about a subject I find insulting. But dammit, what else can I do?

Of course, listening to it as much as I have, I now know the lyrics quite well. The more I’ve gotten to know them, my initial hatred has only grown. I know I’m picking nits here, but there are two major errors that I’ve found with the song. Both are semantics, and both would barely warrant a mention if not for the catchy tune that makes me listen to the horrible lyrics.

The first problem deals with grammar. Or not even grammar, but how to write dialogue. The lead-in to the first chorus states the father’s response: “You say I’ll never get your blessing for the rest of my life. Tough luck, my friend, but the answer is no.” Okay, is it just me or does that line start out as an indirect quote, then finish as a direct quote?

“Hey, dude,” comes the retort, “you don’t understand poetry. Every word needs to count. We have to worry about rhythm and rhyme. It’s taken you 2000 words to write about a three minute song.” Touche. I can’t imagine writing poetry. Way too verbose. And I understand that poetry, and by extension songs, don’t have to follow strict language rules. But poetry or prose, you’ve got to be consistent with who is speaking. Indirect dialogue is fine, but keep it indirect the whole time.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of rhyming? No and know are homophones, I don’t think that counts as a rhyme.

The second language problem I have is the very name of the song. They could’ve gone with “Marry Her Anyway,” which is the catchy 6/8 part and captures the point of the song better. But instead they went with “Rude.” The singer’s response to the father’s denial is “Why you gotta be so rude?” This is the second worst rejoinder in history, topped only by his next line, “Don’t you know I’m human, too?” (Insulting the father’s observational skills isn’t going to win him back to your side.)

But rude? I don’t know that I would classify a man not thinking someone is good enough for his daughter as being “rude.” To be rude, one needs to be deliberately hurtful. If you ask someone out on a date and they say no, that is not rude. If they say “not if you were the last human on Earth,” that’s where the rudeness comes in.

In the song, the father was even nice enough to say “Tough luck, my friend.” That has to be one of the more polite denials I’ve heard. Maybe he just felt you had insulted his daughter by asking someone other than her to make this important decision. I don’t know if this is Alanis Morissette “Ironic” level of mis-definition, but it’s up there. SO Canadians don’t know how to define words in song titles. Is that rude? Stereotypical, maybe.  While we’re at it, Bryan Adams was only nine years old in the Summer of ’69, so Canadaian singers are bad at both math and English. Probably more hyperbole than rude, but getting closer. I’m not saying the test for rude and the test for libel should be the same, but they’re in the vein.

Canadian singers suck? That would be rude, so I wouldn’t say it. Plus if I said that, the lead singer of the Crash Test Dummies would vacate my bowels.

By the way, you asked the father for permission and then ignored his answer. Sounds like he had a justified reason for his answer.

He didn’t even bring up the fact that you tried to rhyme no and know.

See what I did there? That was intentionally hurtful.

I know, I know. Why I gotta be so…?

The Roaring Game

· September 23, 2014 · Blog Entries · , , , , , · 3 Comments

AKA My Introduction to “Good Curling.”

The last few Winter Olympics, I’ve become more interested in curling. You may have seen it buried on USA Network or CNBC After Dark or whatever the 75th network down the NBC depth chart is. It’s the one that looks like shuffleboard on ice with a bulls-eye at the end.

Oh yeah, it also has brooms.

I would watch these games with fascination. What the hell were they doing? Why were they yelling so much? And who the hell sweeps ice? By the time the Vancouver Olympics rolled around, I was starting to understand the basic scoring and resulting strategy. My Italian grandpa had me playing bocce ball since the age of five, so it was easy to convert – one point for every stone of yours that is closer than your opponent’s closest stone.  When Sochi rolled around, I found myself armchair quarterbacking – “Why don’t they just put the stone right there? That seems simple enough.”

I started to wonder how one gets into this crazy Scottish/Canadian creation? The fact that most of the American Olympians hailed from Wisconsin and Minnesota made me assume I’d never find out. But boy, if I ever found myself in a place with tundra as the dominant vegetation, I’d have to check it out. I mean, the Olympians don’t look all that fit, they’re not flying at 50 MPH on ice skates, they’re not cross-country skiing. They’re pushing a little rock and walking alongside it to the other end. I’ve played bocce. I’ve bowled. I’ve even swept a floor once or twice in my life. I know I’m the kid that always got stuck in right field for Little League, but seriously, how hard can curling be?

Turns out, in a few ways I was right. And in many more, I was wrong.

It’s not that difficult to find or get started in a curling club. There are actually six clubs in California alone, and others in such frigid locales as Las Vegas and Phoenix. It’s a sport that most people without knee or hip problems can probably learn and play with some ability after a few hours. But mastery? That takes much more.

Most start with a Learn to Curl class.  It starts with a 20-30 minute preview of how the game works, for those rare few who hadn’t been DVR’ing the Sochi matches from 2:00 AM. Then it goes out onto the ice rink to practice setting up and delivering the stone.

It was at this point, long before I had actually set up “in the hack,” that I realized my early assumptions were a bit off.  The distance to the target is way farther than it looks on TV. I figured it would be about the length of a bowling lane, but it’s double that. It more or less runs the length from one hockey face-off circle to the other.

After a half hour or so of practicing delivery without the rock, then with the rock but without letting go, and of course plenty of sweeping, we finally got to make a legitimate curling shot. I crouched myself down into the hack and looked toward that distant target. You can’t even see the bulls-eye, since it is on the ground. Instead, a person stands at the other end and gives you a target. In this Learn to Curl class, the target was laid down by the instructor.  Go ahead, he was showing me, shoot for the button (that’s the middle of “the house,” or bulls-eye area). I reared back, focusing on the target and remembering all thirty minutes of form practice, and let it fly.

My first shot made it just about to mid-ice. Hey, in my defense, had this been as long as a bowling lane, like I originally thought, that would have been dead on.  It took me three more throws before I could get a stone past the “hog line,” the minimum possible distance for stone to be in play. The hog line is a little bit beyond the blue line in hockey, so I had increased my throw by maybe fifty percent, but the hog line is also still a good twenty feet from the house.

With a half-hour or so to go in our two hour training, and still with only a couple of legal shots to my name, they wanted us to “play a couple of ends to see what that’s like.” We only managed to get in two ends (an end is the equivalent of a baseball inning), and each player throws two stones per end, so I only managed to throw four shots. This is the most common complaint about Learn to Curl classes – by the time you put it all together, you only get to take a handful of real shots. But that’s how they keep you coming back for more, I suppose.

And that’s how it happened to me. My final shot, with some good sweeping by my teammates (more on that in a moment) landed directly on the button.

Oh, Damn! I thought to myself. First time out and I hit the hardest shot in curling? Maybe it’s too late for #Sochi2014, but #Pyongyang2018? Here I come.

Turns out hitting the button with no other stones blocking the way isn’t really all that hard. Maybe not as easy as a free-throw in basketball, but not all that much harder. Maybe like an undefended three-pointer.

“You know what we call that?” another instructor asked when I made a similar shot at a later practice. “A target.”

So here I am, some six months later, having gone through two Learn to Curls, two “advanced trainings” (basically Learn to Curl without the first hour), a six-game league, and a bonspiel. In the league, they paired newbies with veterans, and I benefited from this arrangement to the tune of an undefeated 7-0 (counting the playoffs). In the “bonspiel” (what curlers call their weekend-long tournaments), I played one sheet over from two women who had four Olympic appearances between them. Veterans want newbies nowhere near them at a bonspiel, so we fielded a team where my ten times curling was tied for the most. From both of these experiences, I learned more about how simple, and yet how difficult, this game can be.

Each player on the team throws two rocks in a row, interspersed with the other team.  Each player should, then, have a different forte or strategy. During our season, I was the lead in all but one of the games.  The lead’s job is to intentionally throw the rock short of the house.  These “guards” can either be curled behind or raised into the scoring area later. If the lead were to throw that definitive button shot, like I had in the Learn to Curl, it would likely be knocked right out by the other team, and then we’re either back to square one or else the other team is now in a better position. I’ve actually had a team knock my own rock out of the way, then have their stone ricochet behind a guard, making it very difficult to knock out.

The strategy for the second and third team members (throwing rocks 3-6) varies depending on what the play area looks like after the two leads throw those first four stones. And, at least at the level I usually play, those first four have done some kooky, crazy things.  Rare is the game where there are four perfectly placed guards, or even three guards with a well-placed point behind them. The two basic shots for them  are a takeout, which is exactly what it sounds like, or a draw, which is an attempt to score a point closer to the button than the other team’s stones. The one game I did not play lead was quite an adjustment, as I was trying to throw harder than the lead throws.

Then there is the skip, the captain of the team, who spends the first six shots providing the target at the far end of the sheet before taking the team’s final two shots. I skipped during the bonspiel because of my huge experience advantage of having curled one more time than the rest of my team. Skipping is a very lonely life. All the other curlers hang out with each other, walk back and forth while sweeping, even chitchat with the opposition. The skip stands at the far end, calculating and permutating  the constantly changing game. And particularly with a team of newbies, he must think of what might happen if (nay, when) the shot is missed. What is Plan B? Or Plan G? Or what is the worst possible thing that can happen with this shot?

Then, when the skip gets in the hack to take those final shots, the “what’s the worst that can happen” strategy is much more noticeable. I can’t count the number of times my final shot knocked a couple of my opponent’s stones into the house, raising their score from two to four. The lead is like the kickoff return guy. Can a good kickoff return help the drive? Absolutely. Can he fumble or lose ground? Sure. But most of the time, he’s not going to affect the game much. Set up a guard or return the ball to the 25 and the other players on the team are in position to do their thing. When you’re skipping, you’ve become the kicker attempting a 50-yard field goal to tie or win the game. You’re Dennis Eckersley facing Kirk Gibson. Except I was never Dennis Eckersley. At my best, I was in Byung Hyun Kim territory. I can’t count the number of times I made the long walk toward the hack only to tell my teammates, “Well, if I can draw around those five stones with a perfect button shot, we might be able to salvage one point.”

Why does the skip tell his teammates what he’s aiming for? Because they are the sweepers. When someone first watches curling, the first question is usually about sweeping. What is the purpose of it  and does it really make much of a difference? The simple answer is yes, sweeping matters. In my league team, the other rookie and I didn’t always hit our shots, but we were two of the stronger sweepers.  Our ability to salvage a short shot into a guard, or to raise a guard into the house, made us partly responsible for some of that undefeated season.

The curling ice is not clean like in hockey.  No glassy Zambonied surface here.  Instead, the ice is “pebbled” by tiny droplets of water, delivered like an exterminator spraying for bugs.  The pebbles do two things to the stone – slow it down and cause it to curl.  Sweeping flattens out those pebbles for a short time, allowing the stone to both go farther and straighter.  Sometimes the stone is light and you need to sweep like hell just to get it over the hog line.  Sometimes you need to sweep it straight until it gets past a guard, then you stop to let it curl behind the guard.  What happens if you want it to go farther but also curl? Or if you want it to go straight but slower? Well, then you’re screwed and that’s when everybody is quickly assessing plan B. It might be better to keep it straight so that it misses everything instead of curling into and raising the other team’s guard into the house. If you ever watch curling and hear them alternate between on and off, usually they’re trying to make it go further but curl. Or the skip might say “off, off, off,” then all of a sudden, scream “Yes, Hard, yes.” That means the stone finally curled in the right direction and now it needs to be swept as far as possible. Or it could also be an indecisive skipper, but that’s not likely at the level that is on TV. Plus the indecisive skip will say things like “Off. Shit, no. On. I mean… shit… Hard, I guess?”

The one thing that sweepers can’t do, that nobody can do once the stone leavers your hand, is to slow it down. Imagine if you were bowling and instead of throwing your ball through the pins, you had to make it stop right at the five pin. That’s the finesse part of curling, and that (plus the other team getting in your way) is really what makes it difficult. After the first few throws in a Learn to Curl, pretty much anybody can throw the stone hard enough to get through the house. So what’s constantly on your mind as you throw is to try to “take a little off.” Better to be a little short and have the sweepers get it where it needs to go than to send a meaningless stone flying through into the hockey goal. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been worried about it going too far and end up hogging the stone. And then on the next throw, I over-compensate and sail right through the house.

So while I’m far from a grizzled veteran, I guess I’m no longer a raw rookie. In some ways, my initial thoughts were accurate. It’s a game that can be learned quickly. And after three or four shots, most players can at least line up and play a game. And most of the leagues I’ve encountered or heard of have spots for these new players, and these new players can be competitive. However, there’s also an upper level of competition that takes years to reach. The Olympians that were on the same ice as me never called shots with Plan B or C in mind. They make their shots.

Although sometimes I pity their accuracy – there’s nothing as entertaining as watching an awesome cascade of unintended ricochets that steal some points. In the one game we won in the bonspiel, we were up by three and were playing a very conservative final end. On the other team’s final shot, we had one point on an outer ring, and there were about ten stones of various colors clogging up the area in front of the house. With no other option, she threw a stone at full force up the middle, knocking three of her stones in, one of which knocked mine out. We then had to take one final shot each on an empty sheet, with the closest to the button winning the game. That’s curling for you.

And if you don’t score any points? Still no big thing. After the game comes broomstacking, when  you shake hands, say “good curling,” and grab a drink. Oh, did I mention the winning team buys drinks for the losing team? So that 1-5 record my Team o’ Rookies compiled at the Bonspiel? Hell, we pretty much made our entrance fee back in free libations.

Nothing beats sitting around with the team you just spent two hours competing against and re-hashing the game. Man, I can’t believe you missed that shot by an inch. Did you see when that stone lost its handle? Why’d you call for that one shot? Do you think I called off the sweepers too soon?

                 Followed by the line repeated by curlers everywhere.

“If it was easy, they’d call it hockey.”

What to say about Sharknado 2?

· August 12, 2014 · Blog Entries · , , , · One Comment

Other than there should be no better post to start off a brand new blog.

I know this is a week and a half late, but as with any premium entertainment of this sort, I waited to view it with friends. And Beer. The beer probably would have been accessible on a Wednesday night, but getting friends together, and imbibing as much as we would need to properly experience the movie, would have been difficult on a Wednesday night. C’mon, SyFy (which I shall continue to pronounce “Siffy” as long as they continue to spell Sci-Fi wrong), broadcast Sharknado 3 on a Friday night and I guarantee the number of viewing parties will rival the Super Bowl.

The one major drawback of not watching live was the Twitter element.  At the beginning of every commercial break, they ran a handful of related tweets.  I don’t know if we benefited from having DVR’d the West Coast feed, but the tweets they showed were very timely.  Some related to the scene that had just ended or a cameo that was a minute or two old. I had the benefit of pausing and no time pressure, but a number of my tweets were half-written by the time the SyFy people had already processed and placed a smattering from the Twitterlanche. Then again, Twitter is what caused the initial Sharknado mania, so it makes sense they’d be on the ball this time. In some aspects, Sharknado also helped validate Twitter as a bona fide barometer of the pop ephemera. I’m sure there will be some future Master’s Thesis titled “The Twitter and Sharknado Symbiosis.”

As an aside, tweeting out a week and a half late, the predictive text on my hashtag had to make it all the way to the sixth letter before #Sharknado or #Sharknado2TheSecondOne came up. With three or four letters, Twitter thought I wanted to write #ShartToys. I don’t think I want to know why.

On to the movie itself. I have to hand it to the producers. While some low-budget success stories try to ramp up the cinematography or editing or special effects in the sequel, Sharknado 2: The Second One stayed blessedly true to the original. I’m sure the budget was substantially larger – hell, they managed to shut down a block in Manhattan, that’s got to take some coin – but the overwhelming feel was “Oh, y’all like this? Then here’s some more.”  One of my favorite parts of the original was the rapid switching from stormy to sunny skies in the same scene. That still existed in the sequel, although I suspect it was much more intentional this time.

The first movie made a number of homages to Jaws, as is only natural in a shark movie. The sequel, however, did not feel constrained to copying just one movie franchise or even one genre. The opening scene shows Tara Reid and Ian Ziering (I’m sure their characters had names, but nobody knows them) flying across the country in a plane that happens to fly through a shark storm. In a straight copy of the old “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” Twilight Zone episode, Ian Ziering sees a shark on the wing, then it’s not there. Throughout the movie, he seemed to take most of his acting cues from the Christian Bale Batman model (talking gravelly makes you a bad-ass), but in the opening scene he was pure Shatner.

Note to SyFy: Shat-nado. Thank you, I will take my residual checks now.

Once the sharks, who of course were real and not imagined, breach the plane, the tribute changes from Twilight Zone to Airplane! And lest one thinks they were aiming for one of the more serious flying disaster movies, like Airport, they cut to the pilot, the second (after Kelly Osbourne as stewardess) and best cameo of the film.

There were many cameos in the movie, and I have seen various reports of which ones were “the best.” Biz Markie certainly deserves a mention. Wl Wheaton’s was short but memorable. Billy Ray Cyrus as a New York surgeon with an Oklahoma drawl certainly jumped out. Daymond John gets honorable mention for jumping from Shark Tank to Sharknado. Then there was Jared from Subway. Yes, Jared from eSubway.  I refuse to mention the people who played themselves, such as Al Roker and Kelly Ripa, Even if Kelly Ripa stiletto-ing a shark with her high heel was two seconds of pure heaven.  But appearing as oneself is not a proper cameo in a movie like this. In our drinking game, we quickly stopped taking a “cameo drink” when people appeared as themselves. Don’t worry, there was still much to drink about, especially since our particular rules made us drink any time there were “ominous shark fins.” This might explain why my review focuses on the early parts of the movie.

But the best cameo had to be the pilot of the airplane (sorry, Airplane!), Robert Hays. Ted Freaking Striker from the Airplane! movies was cast as the pilot in yet another doomed flight with no basis in reality. I sat on pins and needles for the entire scene hoping for him to repeat some timeless quip from the old movies. Alas, nobody else in the cockpit was named Roger, Ober, Unger, or Dunn. They were flying nowhere near Macho Grande. The closest we got was a girl in the bathroom bouncing up and down like the one putting make-up on in Airplane! (or the man shaving in Airplane II: The Sequel, a subtitle almost as brilliant as Sharknado 2: The Second One).

Of course, this movie’s bathroom girl gets eaten by a shark, one of many to breach the outer hull of the airplane. Robert Hays goes the way of most of the cameos, forcing Ian Ziering to pull his very own Ted Striker, running to the cockpit and landing the airplane. The airplane had absolutely no structural integrity yet, but after flying through a shark infestation at 35,000 feet, one supposes that the physics of a surfer landing a plane that is missing half of its fuselage is a moot point. In the first movie, he could fly a helicopter because he “saw it in a movie once.”

At this point in the movie, something happens to Tara Reid’s character that pretty much takes her out of a majority of the movie, a great call by the producers. The slightly improved production value was enough to make her plastic much more noticeable. And frightening. Kari Wuhrer was also in this movie. I don’t think the Botox allowed her to move her face at all. But that’s all I will say about Kari Wuhrer, because she will forevermore get a pass from her time on “Remote Control.”

Except one more thing about Kari Wuhrer. Her character spends a lot of time out at the Statue of Liberty with three other females. They all might or might not have been related to Ian Ziering’s character. Regardless, Kari Wuhrer and these other females were frequently talking to each other, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about men. So at least Sharknado 2: The Second One passes the Bechdel_Test, something which cannot be said about most blockbusters.

The next major scene worth noting took place at Citi Field. The best weapon in the first movie had to be the barstool, which a brilliant patron doubled back to get in order to bludgeon a shark with it later. In the sequel, the barstool is replaced with a comically large bat. Comically Large Bat, a souvenir bought during the Mets game, is so magical that it seems to change in size depending on the scene, including growing to roughly the size of the shark that it is hitting for a homerun. Yes, they hit a shark for a homerun at Citi Field, complete with the Big Apple rising up. So I guess it was a home team shark homer.

Inexplicably, the Sharknado is fused with a cold front at Citi Field, explained by Al Roker on a “Today” show broadcast that seemed to go on all day and night. This brought up the promise of a Shark-Nor’Easter. One of my friends is desperately hoping for a Sharkvalanche spin-off, and the detailed explanation had us convinced that was where it was going. But after Citi Field, there was no more snow nor any other mention of the amazing weather phenomenon that they had specifically cut away to explain. I assume this was only done because it was filmed during the winter, so they had to explain why the baseball stadium was surrounded by snow. But the news report failed to mention how the sudden downpour of summer snow caused the snow outside the stadium to be a pre-existing blanket. Nor did the news report mention why the producers couldn’t find stock footage of Citi Field in rain.

The rest of the movie is sharks. And then some sharks. Followed by sharks. A weather map with swirling fronts of blue and red sharks.

Oh, and an alligator in the sewer, which is promptly eaten by a shark. The sharks continue to have the uncanny ability not only to survive and move on land, but also to aim themselves as they are coming out of the tornado (water spout, really, or else how would the sharks survive in it? Because I’m sure there were many biologists consulted on both of these projects.

Judd Hirsch showed up as a taxi driver. This almost rivaled Robert Hays for playing a character related to what you are best known for. But he’s Judd Hirsch, and he’s had many other claims to fame. But, and this bears repeating, this movie had Robert Hays flying a doomed airplane.

Judd Hirsch’s death (Oops, spoiler!) is also tainted by serving as precursor to my one major complaint. A number of people swing Tarzan style from the roof of one submerged car to another. The rope falls into the water with one person remaining, apparently stuck with the car sinking and (naturally) sharks all around. The guy looks at his friend, who had successfully made the jump, then back at the sharks that were forming perfect stepping stones between the two cars.  The two men shout “Frogger!” and he jumps from shark to shark until he makes it across. Now here’s the problem: the sharks were not swimming back-and-forth perpendicular to the cars. Instead, there were three of them forming a line from one car to the next, making it a Pitfall move, not a Frogger move. I can’t believe the editors let that slide, what with all of the painstaking attention-to-detail in every other scene.

No death scene rose to the level of the Hollywood sign in the first movie. That scene was memorable not only because it was the aforementioned Barstool Guy who died, but also because of the line he muttered (“My mom always said Hollywood would kill me”) right before being smashed by the giant W.

The closest parallel in The Second One was the Statue of Liberty’s head, which gets ripped off and hurtled toward the city, rolling down a street and crunching a poor soul.  The scene was not dragged out like when Barstool Guy dodged the swirling letters for a minute of screen time. And there was no fitting quote from the soon-to-be deceased. We actually had to rewind it because we were sure we had missed some “Viva la Libertie” or other reference. But there was nothing. Come on, writers, don’t start mailing it in yet.

The final scene was precisely what one would expect. The logical fallacies came at me so fast, I couldn’t keep track. Why does a random person walking down a New York street have a pitchfork? Or was that a trident instead? Who abandons their fireworks truck in the middle of a Sharknado?

How do all of these chainsaws keep running? Okay, seriously, this is the one that bothered me in the first movie as well. I’ve never really used a chainsaw, but my understanding of them is that they have a kill switch. You have to physically be hold a trigger mechanism or else it dies.  I mean, my lawnmower has this feature and a runaway lawnmower would seem much less likely to sever a body part than an airborne chainsaw. But in this movie, one lucky New Yorker just happens to have multiple chainsaws in his truck bed, each of which he starts up on the first pull (again, something my lawnmower in incapable of) and throws into the tornado. They then spiral upward, cutting through hundreds of sharks each, liberating this particular sharknado in the name of peace and justice. Although I’m sure these were Stalin-esque chainsaws who were actually going to instill their own draconian puppet state in the power vacuum that now existed in these funnel clouds.

Syfy, are you paying attention? Chainsawnado: Behind the Iron-Toothed Curtain! Seriously, call my agent.

The sequel ends much like the original, with Ian Ziering facing down a particularly menacing shark who had taken a loved one (or part of a loved one), mano a mano. Although I seem to remember Tara Reid showing up at just the right time to tip the balance of power against the shark. Somehow, just as in the original, the defeat of this one shark amongst the thousands flying through the air signals the end of the Sharknado threat. Having now seen it twice, it still makes no sense. Was that shark controlling the weather? Was he the shark leader and now all of the other sharks will docilely fly back to the ocean?

The twist in the sequel, though, is that this shark wasn’t just the shark from the last ten minutes of the movie.  Oh, no! It turns out this shark is the exact same shark that attacked them in the plane at the beginning of the movie. Despite the fact that the plane was 35,000 feet in the air and presumably somewhere over mid-America. This shark must surely be the most tenacious and most travelled shark in existence. It also must be the shark with the slowest digestive system in the world. I understand the adage of tying a plot together, of showing something in Act One and bringing it back in Act Three. But I’m not sure this is precisely how it should be done.

It does set up an interesting premise for Sharknado 3, though, doesn’t it? Obviously that shark was targeting poor Ian and Tara. Was this personal? A vendetta? Had the shark mob put a hit out on our intrepid duo after the events in Los Angeles? And does this shark now have children, a spouse, a cousin whot now must track them down to exact their final revenge? It’s dripping with possibilities.

We finished up the movie, as I assume many did, with a trip to YouTube for a group viewing of “Just a Friend,” by Biz Markie. Why? We were just too exhausted to make it all the way through Airplane!

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