36-0

i've been sitting on this for several months now, keeping it in my pocket (courtesy of the great barstoolio) for just the right time. well, if tonight isn't the right time, then when would be?

you heard me mention his name over fifteen months ago. andy and kiker being the exceptions, i may have even introduced him to you. he wasn't the mvp of the game tonight. that honor goes to glen coffee and mark ingram and one of the best offensive lines in the country. but his presence as metaphor and actuality combined with the mentality of this alabama team that has completely bought what nick saban is selling made "the leap" tonight. not that the eleven wins of 2008 prior to this day were not important. each was a step in the journey. but it was tonight that exposed their in-state rival's six game winning streak as being flawed, at best, and, at worst, meaningless. it was tonight that alabama re-arrived on the national stage as a worthy opponent to the mighty tim tebow and his army of really fast guys. it was tonight that alabama became alabama again. because "being alabama" means controlling, no, dominating your rival in such a way that hindsight proves them to be no more significant a blip on your season's radar than any other victim.

julio didn't win this game by himself. he wasn't even the catalyst for the change (see: saban) that has now come to those that see through crimson colored glasses. maybe he was wise enough to see what was coming before the rest of us. maybe he was just lucky to be along for the ride. he will be the one player above all others that will represent this season of transition and looking ahead to looking back fifteen years from now, that'll be a pretty cool place to be for him i would think.

i am glad i was among my 'bama friends and family tonight. i am glad that i didn't have to swallow my enthusiasm out of respect for "the other side." whatever happens next week, you can watch alabama in a bcs game at my house. a bcs game. in year two. wow. if tebow and co. do stem the tide (pun intended), temporarily, when they (and stafford and moreno) have departed for the nfl in 2009 and left star jackson and julio to rule the sec without them next year, there will be nothing and no team remaining to prevent alabama from ascending to the top of college football once again.

roll. freaking. tide.

thanksgiving is not supposed to be this hard
(part two)


i felt mine looming last evening. that beginning of a cold that i can feel coming a mile away. my throat starts to get itchy, but it's a different kind of itchy than something brought on by a simple allergy or the changing of the seasons. something has been stuck in your throat for a day or so now. you just didn't know it. and now, you know it because your throat is being rubbed raw. as we speak. as i type. snot. the kind of snot-induced raw that makes it feel like i am swallowing tiny, little razorblades each time the spit accumulates to the point in my mouth that i have to get rid of it. two options. spit it out (which doesn't work out too well in bed or in the car.). or swallow. owwwww!!! the razorblades! a cold is coming. a cold has come.

mine turned out to be the lesser of two evils. you can follow the above link if you want to remember my thanksgiving experience from a year ago. the short version...i threw up. a lot. it sucked. sarah woke this morning feeling nauseous. not a good sign. by the time i woke up, her stomach was full-blown upset and we were questioning whether or not the trip was worth taking. it was a heartbreaking decision. i could tell from her face. you could see that she worried about the car ride to georgia the same as i did the car ride home last year. but she didn't want to pass up the company. she didn't want to disappoint her mom and that mom's 24 hour-plus effort (that doesn't include time spent gathering groceries) to produce a feast equal to that of feasts from years past. she didn't want to miss her family. she doesn't get to see them often enough as it is. she didn't want to miss anything. and so, we went.

the car ride was fine. no stops after the gas station to fill up and collect ice. the girls were good. nothing significant to complain about if you don't count the want to complain about the ever-increasing need to throw up. she was a trooper. but the ride took it all out of her. and most of her precious family time was spent huddled up on the couch and hoping that the feeling would go away. she took a break from the couch a few times to travel to the bathroom or eat some of the feast (a move she now regrets). she did visit a little, but i bet it felt like much more of a chore than she envisioned this time last night. i empathize. thanksgiving is not supposed to be this hard. for sarah, this year and, for me, last.

my selfish self is almost angry at sarah's plight. i want to be sick, to embrace my cold, but i can't give in to it yet. not while hannah is still up. my night will be spent tossing and turning and being mad at the world, but, right now, hannah is asking me to come and sit with her for a few minutes before she goes to bed. she's been a big girl today.

tuesday, at work, i screwed my back up something fierce. i aggravated it swimming earlier in the summer and reaggravated it towards the end of the softball season. tuesday, while helping my stocker sling cat litter, my lower back locked up out of nowhere. i wanted to drop to a knee when the pain took my breath away, but my pride wouldn't let me. later that night, in spite of my being aware that basketball would only exacerbate the problem, i played anyway. my back repaid me by making it very hard to tie my shoes without crying yesterday morning. this thanksgiving day, i spent a collective four hours sitting in a car. my back repaid me by making it very hard to walk without a limp for the first half-hour or so after getting out of the driver's seat both in rome and birmingham. tomorrow, i should just rest. let the sick take me over. lay on a heating pad as much as the girls will allow. be lazy. then again, i am due to exercise tomorrow. and, then again, the girls don't give a shit that my back hurts and that sarah wants to throw up all over their sweet faces. so, those two things (the sick and the pad) will have to wait, most likely.

now comes the part where you tire of my complaining (or, where i do). i know it could be worse. i know i still have way more to "be thankful" about than i deserve. there is just a part of me that is a little pissed. the kind of pissed i am any time i anxiously await something because of how awesome it could be, but the event or occasion is prevented somehow from reaching it's full potential. i'll get over it. tomorrow morning, i'll re-read this post and the one from last year and feel pretty silly and fairly petty.

right now, i hope sarah feels better in the morning. and i hope that i don't feel considerably worse. and i hope that we can have a relatively happy next couple days home.

this is a picture. see it as a such. a polaroid of sorts. a moment in time. tomorrow will be different, because i will be different. but there will still be a picture that documents this moment in time. that picture is this blog. this post. it doesn't capture me. it captures a picture of me. it captures a moment. it just did. get it?

say, "cheese"!

i'll be there in spirit


i am about thirty pages from finishing men with balls by drew magary of kissing suzy kolber and deadspin. it's flipping hilarious, and the only reason i am not too broken up about finishing it is that the new freedarko book will brace my fall.

while reading today, drew treated me to this quote from retired major leaguer, carl everett. it made me laugh out loud today like it made me laugh out loud a few years ago when the wise professional dispenser of knowledge baseball player uttered these words:

"they (dinosaurs) didn't exist. god created the sun, the stars, the heavens and the earth, and then made adam and eve. the bible never says anything about dinosaurs. you can't say there were dinosaurs when you never saw them. someone actually saw adam and eve. no one ever saw a tyrannosaurus rex."

classic.

anyway, i thought this would be an appropriate homage to rev. short and his sermon that i hate i'll miss in the morning due to being at the store.

hope you smile too. if not, say "hi" to adam and eve for me.

maybe i didn't realize what was coming out
(but, what if i did?)


there is something dreadfully wrong with me and i am not sure what to do about it. wednesday afternoon, i was sitting on my couch watching the movie, speed racer. i was about fifteen minutes from the end of the big race, just shortly after speed tells a rival driver to "get that weak shit off my track." should have been a funny and/or compelling moment. speed was finding his inner neo. everything was making sense. everything had slowed down. degree of difficulty as compared to his fellow fictional racers no longer existed in his world. he was becoming the best. all that was left was to finish the race, collect the trophy and kiss his girl. before all of that happened (and it did happen), i felt a rush of emotion come over me.

my eyes began to well up. had i not contained myself, i could have out and out bawled all over myself right there, all alone, in my living room with no one but the cats to console me. i thought to myself, "what the crap is this??? what is going on with me. i am watching speed racer for christ's sake! get a hold of yourself, man!" and i did. i got a hold of myself. but as the end credits rolled, it wasn't celebrating speed's victory that was forefront in my mind. it was my almost becoming a blubbering chim-chim while watching an escapist, family/action movie meant to entertain, not to pull at heartstrings.

or was it?

i doubt the wachowski's overarching goal for the movie was to make 32 year-old men weep, but there are certainly familial themes that drive the plot that might speak to all of us on some level. maybe on wednesday, i was just on that level.

i've been walking around in a haze for a few weeks now. few things are bringing me joy and that's just a crying shame. i look forward to getting away from the store and being at home, and then the burden of "doing my share" around the house makes me mope-y. i dreaded heading to the gym to play basketball all afternoon on tuesday. it took me getting there, breaking a good sweat and looking around to see me and one other guy were the only white guys out of our eleven man collective. i thought, then, to myself, "this is what you've been dreading? this wonderful metaphor of what our church could look like if we could ever focus on filling needs versus shifting that focus to stupid blogs (figuratively speaking, of course.)?" it wasn't just the black/white ratio that jumped out at me. it was a young thing. a fun thing. a, man, we picked to be here tonight rather than somewhere else thing. it was a beautiful thing, and i came within a hair of calling everyone and calling the night off. i am having a hard time, still, finding what's worth smiling about in my life, because something seems to be stuck in the way. or a lot of things. if i figure it out, you'll be one of the first to know.

"i always kind of, sort of, wished i was someone else", you know? that's part of it. i wished i was that guy that didn't get hung up on why people won't return e-mails in a timely matter when i am that guy that couldn't return a phone call in a timely matter if his life depended on it. i wish i could corner the market in my mind where i am always optimistic and never cynical or skeptical. i wish that i could find better ways to tell sarah that hindsight shouldn't be an excuse for saying what a good idea our family pictures turned out to be. you can take me out of them. that would probably up the quality, but we never would have had the images of our girls that we just can't take our eyes off of since last night. i wish that i wouldn't be so disappointed in people that i care for and about that my thoughts breed "contempt"uous language that those same people could use to misconstrue and mismanage my message to those beautiful little girls. i wish that i was the type of person that could see the good in everyone more than skip directly to the bad. i wish, much of the time, for a fresh start. somewhere away where the history of my name and old title and my cuss words and my lack of time spent currently with my parents weren't as much as my (your) definition as they've become. suitcase in my hand, "i always kind of, sort of, wished i looked like elvis."

but that wouldn't be fun, right? not that being sad or frustrated or annoyed is fun. not all the time anyway. but running wouldn't be fun. running from what? running from where? whom?

it's probably ok for me to cry at speed racer as long as i come out of the funk as focused as i went in. i am ready to get out of the funk. maybe acknowledging the funk is the first step in recovering from it. we'll see.

the shame of this is that, in a lot of ways, i've been a runner all my life. running away from the things that are hard. from the things that make me uncomfortable. from the things that i can't completely control. from my mom ('til recently). from my dad (still jogging kind of). from my brother (found him again). from my church (um, yeah. i am back.). i guess it's just too bad for my church that i drew my line at her. it's too bad that the evolution of me (what? people can evolve?) came at a time when huffman had become important to me again. when running was no longer an option. it's too bad. or it's too good. depends on how you're willing to feel about her.

as soon as i shake out of this funk, you'll see me smiling again. to you, it could be a genuine smile or a sinister and miscalculated one. but it won't change the message behind the smile.

think.

the week the blog stood still


it's been a while since i let a week pass between posts. i've missed being here. i don't know or think that it has been a lack of time, necessarily, to blame. maybe just a lack of computer time. yeah, we'll go with that.

whatever the case, nothing too revolutionary has happened in this world of mine between my boasting about something that no reader gives a crap about and this morning. i'm on a ridiculously long streak of consecutive days that i've had to go to the store. i know, i know. cry me a river. most of my extra attention has been pointed toward the arrival of our new point-of-sale system. we are only nine years late, but, as of monday, pet supplies "plus" roebuck has reached a 21st-century level of technology. the new stuff is fun. we have all been excited about it. it's felt a little like an early christmas present. as with any change, there have been headaches accompanied by the usual anxiety. that said, so far, so good. all signs point toward me not having to be present at all on saturday. that makes me happy. too bad there isn't a meaningful football game on 'til 700 that night. that's ok. maybe the family and i can do something fun.

let's see. what else? the church task force met again this past sunday. we actually took our first productive step after three meetings of brainstorming/discussion/conversation and have decided to ask the church, corporate, if they'd be interested in having a hispanic mission located on our grounds. what's that you ask??? you thought we already had a hispanic ministry/mission/whatever located on our grounds? well, technically, you are correct. we have. for a number of years. crazy thing, though. the church was never really asked about it. it just, kind of, happened. and for months on top of months, the church has been asked to take on a "support the troops, not the war" mentality with the whole thing. so, we came to a novel and consensus place. why don't we ask the church if this is something that we really want to do? sounds like a good place to start. or re-start. i don't know if we can, realistically, find our way back to the ground floor of this matter. there has been too much confusion and too many hurt feelings for biases and subjectivity to be left at the door. but, at least, the church will have her say. personally, i think it will be a fascinating conversation. one that i think will depend too much on the current financial standing of the church. but i do hope we are able to have an intelligent conversation about it and leave with a better understanding of where we, as a church, want to head.

hey? have y'all tackled that whole "communications"/structure/lack of vision thing that you've been pounding away at here for three years now?

um, not yet, but i hope that's coming next. so, that is kind of new and interesting.

let's see. what else? alabama won (and one) again. auburn lost. yada, yada, yada. my heart wants to explode thinking about a week from saturday.

hannah and mommy went to see high school musical 3 without me. don't tell anyone, but i am a little torn up about it.

sarah is finally licensed. thank. freaking. christ. oh yeah, and congratulations!!!

thanksgiving is nigh. dressing and coca-cola salad is too. god, i can't wait. i do get a teaser trailer to the big event tonight at church. that's pretty rad.

i guess that's about it for right now. sorry for the diary-ish entry. i might have more to say later. may be friday. either way, i am sure your day or week will be wrecked with anticipation.

my fantasy team is better than yours
(i wish i could say that it was my fault)


i haven't said anything about it to this point in the season because i didn't want to jinx anything. i hope you'll forgive me for letting my geek flag fly for just a couple minutes. as of yesterday morning, i won my fantasy football league's regular season crown. woohoo!!! for real. you can check out the proof right here. there i am. the proud alabama asianmen. 10-0. just like some other team i am fond of...hmm. we won't bring them up just yet. obviously, i have now jinxed myself. but that's ok. i couldn't contain myself any longer. and considering i could lose my last three regular season games and still win it all (due to head-to-head beat downs of the two current 7-3 teams), i say screw it. why not gloat, right?

for the uninitiated, fantasy football is fairly simple (in theory). you and your buddies draft teams made of real nfl players. their real stats are then manipulated into a fantasy format that allows for you to be completely disappointed when your favorite real team wins (i am looking at you, dog whisperers) but one of your fantasy wideouts (i am looking at you, roddy white) doesn't put up 100 receiving yards and a touchdown along the way. it's awesome.

i wish i could tell you that there was some serious strategy aspect to it that i have mastered over the years. something that i do better than everyone else. something more than coincidence that proves why i seem to have consistent success in this entirely trivial world of competition. i don't know that i can. sure, i watch enough espn and read enough that i know who should be good and who might not. but there is not as much science to it as i wish or as fantasy "experts" would tell you. as a matter a fact, most of the time, your fortunes come down to a whole lot of luck (or lack thereof).

case in point, the key to a good fantasy team is to have good depth. why is that, you ask? (or, you don't ask, because you don't care about my fantasy football team.) well, i'll tell you. in the nfl, beginning around week 4 and ending week ten, four teams each week have byes. that means you are going to have guys on your roster unavailable to accumulate fantasy stats for you one week out of the season (unless they get hurt and are out for longer. then you hate that they exist.). therefore, you will need to have guys on your bench that you can plug in during the bye weeks and hope to god that they can be half as productive as your starters. well, my team has quality depth this year, but isn't really because i knew any more than the other guys in my league. in the late rounds of my draft, i took fliers on three rookie running backs that just so happen to have turned in solid to really good years. all of a sudden, i look brilliant for picking them. all of a sudden, i am killing guys during the bye-week match-ups because my team isn't losing points when i am not playing my starters. all of a sudden, i am 10-0 and guaranteed the first seed in the playoffs with three weeks to go in the regular season. and all of a sudden, i can be obnoxious about it for a good month before my inevitable and tragic fall from grace in the post-season.

we all have things in life that we are good at. we all have things in life that we seem to be lucky at. sometimes, the stars align, lucky and good meet to hold hands, and little things in life such as fantasy football regular season titles present themselves and make us smile.

this morning, i am happy with my little thing. and i'll be happy to wear my meaningless victory like bad axe body spray and walk around the room to let my buddies smell me. smell me and like it. because you like bad axe body spray, don't you? don't you???

ah, sweet victory. i love 10-0.

hey? who else is 10-0?

you're funny


when you peddle pet supplies for a living, there is a higher than your average chance that you'll run into the occasional person that takes the ownership of their pet(s) a little too seriously. the same can be said in every walk of life i guess. people take work too seriously, burning the midnight oil and staying in the office ungodly amounts of hours 'til their eyelids' war with the part of the brain that reminds you of your actual need for sleep is lost. 'til their significant other gives up on yet another night of watching the month-old episode of fringe that "i really want to watch with you...it's just...work. i've got so much to do."some people might call this productivity at it's finest. some might argue that it's stupid. kiker and i have joked for years about the guys like "takes softball way too seriously guy". you know the guys. they wear baseball pants to play softball. they grunt when they hit the slowly pitched, size of a grapefuit ball as if they have just slayed a dragon. they don't shower. some people might call this competitive fire. some might argue that it's stupid. people take church too seriously. praying all the time. reading the bible. helping people. totally assessing what it really means to be a christian. wearing wwjd bracelets. some people might call this holiness. some might call it stupid. it's all relative.

relative to what?

exactly. now, we're getting somewhere.

pet ownership is no different. i am reminded of this every day i happen into the store. a woman came in yesterday to pick up millions (or so it seemed) of cans of cat food that i had special-ordered for her. as i was loading them into her truck for her, she talked to me of her disappointment in the results of tuesday night's presidential election. this lady has long been retired, and over the course of her retirement, she has inherited, taken in or rescued hundreds of cats. her current count stands at 77 (she thinks). a great cause is this if you are into cats. and she is into cats.

she told me that she felt ashamed to live in this country as of wednesday. she felt like all of her years of hard work had now been wasted. she told me a story of working 80 hours a week (doing godknowswhat) for two straight years before her husband had his second heart attack. she told me that after his heart attack, she retired and took to volunteering at her church (across the street from mine). she told me of how she prayed for her country's forgiveness after tuesday night and hoped that "when we were attacked", those that didn't vote for "the black man" would be removed from harm's way. i told her that i hoped she was right and that i hoped she didn't worry about such things too much. we then started talking about her cats again, and i found it fascinating the lengths to which she would go, from time to time, to find homes for her cats with elderly persons in our shared community that she thought "could just use a little company". i wished her luck in her efforts and told her i would see her next month. next month, we'll have the same general conversation. we have it every month.

her political views didn't and don't bother me. she, more or less, just summed up (i assume) the talking points she heard on fox and friends. her theology didn't and doesn't bother me. to each their own, you know? her story about working eighty hours a week didn't bother me, but it did make me sad. that's just too much, right? her passion for her cats didn't bother me. hell, through those cats she was enacting her own sort of ministry. i am sure she didn't see it that way. it's a fact that we all could just use a little company.

when you peddle pet supplies, there's a higher than your average chance that you'll run into a person that takes the ownership of their pet(s) a little too seriously. when we find those persons, we literally try and exploit that weakness. sell them dog cologne. a wicked automatic litter pan. a bandana. sell. sell. sell.

this little old lady wasn't one of those people. she took it just serious enough. she had found a balance. and a cause. and time to watch tv. she loved her husband. and she loves white people. maybe she winces at the idea of a black man being president. maybe that black man will make her life better. maybe she'll change her mind. and maybe that would change her mind about other black men (and women). one can hope, right?

i take alabama football way too seriously. i am a tightly wound ball of nerves about tomorrow. i didn't go to alabama. why do i take it so seriously? do you want to know?

or is it easier to just label me crazy? or stupid. or angry. or misinformed. or misunderstood. or eccentric. or pointed. or dramatic. or sincere. or respectful. or determined. or loving. or kind.

where is he going with this?

now, we are getting somewhere.

62,509,207
(i was one)


"how do you feel..."
"i feel like hope won." - oprah

for someone that blogs and waxes incessantly about how great "hope" is, i figure i'd do myself and my girls a disservice if i don't share a few thoughts here about the election last night.

due to his insanely brilliant work for baseball prospectus, i worship nate silver and would trust any of his thoughtful and calculated projections enough to bet my house on them. i wasn't wary of my candidate not winning last night. nate's other passion, politics, led him to start the now famous projection blog, fivethirtyeight. that site, among others, has been projecting obama as the easy winner based on polling data for weeks. now, obviously, people still had to go out and vote (and, wow! did they ever?), but if the polling numbers were even close to accurate, it was obama's night to lose. he didn't.

and do let me say, i think it's awesome. i think obama is intelligent. thoughtful. respectful. he plays basketball well. i want to believe he reads freedarko in all of that spare time of his. he talks of an america that i would like to believe in. he speaks with a genuine sparkle in his eye that seems lost in the world of robotic political candidates. he talks of change. i think he wants what is best for his country and for it's citizens, and i get the feeling he's willing to have a conversation with folks that don't see things his way before he presses forward any sort of "agenda". seems novel.

yeah? but what about the issues? eh, they are what they are. he's a democrat. i'm a democrat. we agree on most things political. whatdoyouwantmetosay?

and, of course, he talks of hope.

according to the results, fivethiryeight was right on when projecting mccain to win my state by over twenty points. i can, at least, lay claim that i was on the winning side of my county, the first time in my electing history that has been the case concerning the president. what does that say about my immediate surroundings and how i play into them? that's for another post, but it is a good step forward. a very good and hopeful step. for me.

if i am lucky enough to grow so old, one day i will talk to hannah and caroline's children about the historic nature of yesterday's election. the next four to eight years we'll have to wait to see if it was a truly transformative one. in the meantime, for the next two and half months, i look forward to all the water-cooler and talk-radio and 24-hour news and sunday school and church-wide discussions on how obama and we can turn hope into momentum into change. how does that happen? where is the handbook? what does that mean for me? do i really have to do something? well, yeah, probably. if not, all of this hope talk just turns into more cliche'.

there are a lot of things in the world that we do not have a handbook at our disposal to help us "fix". that doesn't, necessarily, mean it can't happen. it just means that the rhetoric and politics and good intentions eventually have to give way to honest discourse and action plans.

and that's where things get tricky. messy. painful. and personal. to lay a new and "hopeful" action plan will mean admitting that the one we are currently following is not working. to be honest and constructive will mean that some people's protected feelings may be bruised. if we are fortunate, the bruises will just toughen us up and prepare us to punch back. to take back the idea and ideals that we believe in but for too long we've been willing to sit back and let inertia be our guide.

snowballs heading downhill can be stopped, but not by wishful thinking. not by taking credit for someone's poor decisions and spinning them positive. not by holding grudges. not by huffing and puffing. not by claiming something that's just not there.

hope wins battles. a battle was won last night.

change wins wars. change stops snowballs. change means you have to do something. be pissed. be happy. know why you're either. be something. do something.

um..., is he still talking about obama?

no.