it's only fantasy if you aren't winning


my pointing out that i've now won five fantasy football titles in ten years isn't really bragging. it's just stating the fact of the matter.

however trivial you may think the world of fantasy sports is, let's face it. that just means you haven't played them. for years now, i have championed fantasy football as my true gateway into my love for the nfl. it really is kind of astounding to me that more of my friends won't follow along. everyone and their mother roots for a college football team, most of the folks i know being either alabama or auburn fans. and don't get me wrong. if you are going to have a rooting interest, you might as well pick one that has a legitimate shot at winning their championship, which both of those schools do. unless your rooting interest is, in fact, your alma mater, why one would torture themselves by rooting for a little sister of the poor is beyond me, but that probably only further indicts me as a fairweather fan, which i totally am. that being said, if you are going to pay attention to college football played at high levels, i don't understand neglecting the natural next step of watching professional football on sundays. every nfl team has 20-30 equivalents of your favorite college player. the game is faster, more efficient, more athletic and more powerful. and if you ever get a taste of it and like the flavor, there is nothing that would solidify your nfl fandom more than owning a fantasy team. on an average roster, you have 14-16 players representing almost as many teams, which means you'll be invested in more than 75 percent of every game that's played on a given nfl sunday. rooting for your players. rooting against the players on your opponent's teams. reconciling which you'd rather happen first. your fantasy team winning? or your real team (sorry falcons)?

fantasy football has given me a greater appreciation of the just-less-than gods that entertain me every nfl sunday. fantasy football has also given me a greater appreciation of how good i am at fantasy football.

two years ago, i did this.

this year, i won again.

while i ended up with two marks in the loss column in 2010, i don't know that i enjoyed a nfl season any more than i did this year, the main reason being one of my favorite football players of all time, mike vick, not only lead his real team to a division title, but he anchored the alabama asianmen all year, too. there is no sweeter feeling for this fan than when real life rooting interest also pays dividends on your fantasy roster. for having played as long as i have, it's really kind of a surprise it hasn't happened more often. i had rowdy roddy white for a couple years. i traded for michael turner last year. that's really the list. maybe subconsciously, during the draft, i avoid falcons because i know my heart would want to start them every week even if it wasn't the most sapient fantasy move (god help me when julio is on an nfl roster next year). probably an enlightened strategy. like most of my strategies.

let's break down the season. for the first time in the history of our league, we used the auction draft format, which means, in theory, every nfl player is available to each team in the league. the only factor is how much you want to pay for him. each team starts with a $200 budget with 16 players to draft. my first and most expensive pick ended up being the fourth best player on my team. not great, but not the worst money i could have spent. ray rice only single-handedly led me to one victory all year. it just so happened to be my playoff semifinal. i'll take it. my next three picks also ended up as major contributors to my cause and top four players at their respective positions (tom brady, greg jennings, jason witten). it may be just a coincidence that not one of the other nine teams in my league could make that claim. it's probably not. with the 84th (EIGHTY-FOUR) pick in the draft and my 8th selection, i stole the number one running back in fantasy and my mvp, arian foster. don't try to remember anything substantial he did at tennessee. he was a bust. don't worry about what round he was drafted in the real nfl draft. he wasn't. i paid $16 for him. including my own ray rice, 20 running backs were more expensive in our draft. it may be just a coincidence that i ended up with him. it's probably not. those five picks (out of 16) were the only five that started more than 8 games for my team. the other starters in my championship game came via our waiver wire, which means they had either been cast aside by one of the other nine teams after their draft or they were not taken among the 160 picks in our auction. of those types of players that ended up on my team (coincidence? probably not.), dwayne bowe ended the year as the 3rd best fantasy wide receiver. darren mcfadden was the sixth best running back. another player ended up as the 6th best player at his position, too.

mike vick.

mike vick was my first true waiver claim of the year. i claimed him before week 2 after kevin kolb went down with a head injury in week 1. vick led the alabama asianmen to the first of his 8 (out of 14 team total) victories that week. asianmen went 8-1 in vick's 9 (brady went 6-0. brett favre went 0-1) starts this year, the only loss (one of only two during the entire campaign, remember) coming in week four when the redskins knocked him out during the first quarter. thanksgiving weekend, mike vick enacted his revenge on the redskins on a monday night when he turned in the third best performance in the history of fantasy football. after scoring 74 points for me that night, i blindly and unconditionally started and rode to victory vick the next four weeks even while tom brady outscored him sitting on my bench in the last three of those four. i benched vick in my playoff semifinal, going against my gut, and almost lost as he outscored brady by 30 points while sitting. i scraped by, started vick in the title game and ended up not needing him as my opponent's players were either hurt or didn't show up for the most important game of the fantasy season.

the most interesting part of the vick story, relative to my league, is this. vick got hurt week four and was out for a few games. brady had his bye week five. i needed a quarterback for week five, and i had three options. drop vick, pick up replacement. drop brady, pick up replacement. concede the loss and keep both. well, i don't really do "concede the loss", so i hedged my bet by dropping vick, knowing that if i did so with brady, some team in the league would swallow him up and away from me. i lost week five anyway (stupid favre!), but still sat at 3-2, nowhere near the bottom of the standings and nowhere near the top of the waiver wire. i dropped favre immediately and claimed vick. i opened up my league wednesday morning melancholy at the thought that someone would have gotten him ahead of me. but they didn't. i got him back. it may be just a coincidence that i didn't lose another game the rest of the way. it's probably not.

as cocky as this post sounds (and is), fantasy football is a fickle game. barring injury, you're likely (not promised) to get good production from your top three picks. everyone is. and so, a fantasy draft and season has nothing to do with the first three rounds. it's the middle 4-11. what rookies are going to get playing time? who will be the dark horses (foster, vick) in the age of fantasy sports where all the dark horses have already been identified by some fantasy "expert". how closely can you man the waiver wire in the first couple of months (mcfadden, then bowe) to find a producer on a bad team that might be turning into a good team where he'll produce even more? it's fickle. and it's trivial. but 50 million(-ish) people can't be totally wrong. and if i am going to do it, i might as well do it right, right?

so, i do.

war asianmen.

again.

hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-three)


it's christmas eve as i start banging away at what, according to current form, may end up being my last blog post of 2010. i hope not, but things have slowed down on HACAM in the last three months. Not intentionally, mind you, but life has happened, facebook continues to happen, and an alarming (-ly wonderful) lack of drama related to the church also continues to happen.

this will be the first time in six years that the blog's post count drops, and i am not sure how i feel about that. i suppose it was bound to happen. until the day comes when someone starts paying me to piss "you" off, i will have other things that must be prioritized over writing about my girls, my church, auburn's quarterback and julio jones. last year seemed to be the perfect storm of subject matter (for kevin o'kelley). in 2009, of course, the girls continued to grow, mature, annoy and fascinate. towards the end of last year, i started wrapping my head around the idea of having "had" cancer (note: started being the operative word. until i am proven wrong again ((please, lord, let me be proven wrong again)) in january, i am still worried constantly about bad cells growing into something badder inside my body. i wrapped my head around the idea long enough to start writing about it, which was cathartic. alabama football did their thing in the last third of the year. they performed above already high expectations, recaptured my imagination, and won a national championship. rolando mcclain won the butkus. mark ingram won the heisman. julio made it all possible. 2009 was a banner year for subject matter, yes it was. and then along came facebook.

if there is one thing above all others that has contributed to the post count dropping in 2010, it's got to be my more active involvement on THE social network. i stuck my toes in the water last year, just in time to reap the facebook birthday wishes benefits, but, this year, i just went ahead and dove on in. quick-hit topics or links that i may have given attention on the blog in 2009 went straight to facebook. it was easier that way to get a quick response and gain a conversation about those topics. one of the downfalls of the blog was/is that, in many instances, by the time a friend found their way to a post on HACAM, the subject was old news. with facebook, if something strikes my fancy and i want to talk about it, i link to the story and go. i had never experienced gratification so instantly, and it was terribly rewarding. at the same time, though the blog may have lost out in quantity, in my opinion, it's probably gained in quality. the posts that now make the cut have often festered for days to some degree, and some of the fat ends up being trimmed away. i am interested to see if this trend continues in 2011, or...

will i start to tire of facebook? i don't know. it's a good question. i am still a relative facebook newbie, and i am still a huge fan of the footprint it's made on my life. i talk with people that i would never have more time for than to say "hi" or "bye" to. i can passively pay attention to long distance friends and relatives without intruding into their lives any more than "like"ing a status or telling them that their family is beautiful based on the pictures they post. i have fallen in love with the good-natured debate that i've found on topics that have reached some level of import in my life. on the other hand, i've found it interesting to observe those friends and "friends" that have started to fall out of love with facebook. they have claimed that it has taken up too much of their time, that they are too dependant on it. others have claimed to just plain hate it. others have remembered the "good ole days" when it didn't include status updates and wish for a facebook that is never coming back. a less commercial, a less farmville-y, a more innocent facebook. a boring facebook. those people that have given up on the facebook will likely claim that their life is a more fulfilling place without it. and it may be. for now. for ever. who knows. all i know is, right now, i like it. one of my 2011 resolutions will be to gauge, this time next year, if i still feel the same.

humc still gets it's share of love in the land of HACAM, but the lack of drama or controversy since bishop-gate has almost been unsettling. we are in a very serious and deserved phase of transition at this point, one that calls for less talk and more action. the natural church development process is hoping the third time ends up being the charm. the long-range planning committee still searches for our vision. and yet, something still feels...i don't know. i'll explore it more here after the new year. for now, we'll enjoy the relative peace and hope that's it the quiet before the storm of growth...if...that's even what is supposed to be happening.

it's been yet another quite a year. i'll inventory my 2010 resolutions soon and see how miserably i failed at them.

see you soon. i gotta go check facebook. (winking smiley)

"the cam newton situation is not isolated"


i spent the first four hours of our drive home today listening to sports talk radio. over the course of any given week, the more sports talk you listen to, the more nauseating it can be. however, monday mornings on the national shows are usually the exception to that rule. why? well, in the three hour slots the shows have to fill, they have to breakdown and analyze anything and everything important that happened in the world of sports since they signed off sometime friday before lunch. i flipped back and forth this morning between mike and mike and colin cowherd on espn and dan patrick's nationally syndicated show. between the sports talk and the girls being really, really good, the first two-thirds of the trip actually kind of zipped by.

the most interesting segment, to me, came from dan patrick. one of the many topics covered, naturally, was the heisman trophy presentation and the coronation of cam on saturday night. the fact that newton won the award wasn't what was interesting. if you'd been paying attention to heismanpundit.com since midseason, you'd have already known the result. what was interesting about the heisman segment was the story dan patrick told about a conversation he had saturday night with a college recruiter/coach from "outside the sec" that was also from a perennial top 25 program. patrick said they talked recruiting shop for close to an hour over dinner and the recruiter told him that once a "kid" was drawing interest from sec schools, his program then proceeded to back off from the recruit because they couldn't "compete with the sec when it came to "resources". the "resources" in question, patrick went on to explain, were not facilities or academics or even readying the athlete for the pros. the "resources", of course, was money. lots and lots of money. the coach told patrick that the sec is "on a different level" in a lot of ways. one of those ways, he suggested, was due to the fact that "the cam newton situation was not an isolated incident."

naw. you don't say?

make note, the conversation that patrick was retelling had nothing to do with cam newton, other than his was the situation that sparked the convo, but everything to do with the big business of college football.

it was pure coincidence, of course, that smu's story of fraud/exploitation/profiteering played immediately after the heisman ceremony on espn. the program had been scheduled for that saturday for months, i am sure. the irony was not lost, though. i noted back in my cam newton "to be or not to be" post that my favorite story of recruiting corruption came from that campus and eric dickerson's trans "A&M" (he showed up at smu with a trans am that he claimed his grandmother bought him. later it came out texas a&m boosters had purchased the car for him). you would have thought that a sexy, high profile football program being removed from the planet for several years would have served as a cautionary tale. it did not. all that happened is that it drove the crookedness further underground, where it then went on to include shady characters like logan young and kenny rogers and whatever name that runner for this guy that works for that agent goes by these days.

what tickled my ear's fancy the most this morning was patrick saying, specifically, that the recruiter wasn't calling the sec's five star athletes out as sour grapes. he didn't see the athletes the sec schools could afford as athletes that weren't "good enough" or "a good fit" or "right" for his program. he just couldn't get them. he didn't have the "resources". so, he had to forget about them and move on to less expensive options. "it is what it is".

you can talk about what a "winner" or "fine young man" cam newton is all you want. me? i could wax rhapsodic for three more years about how julio jones changed my life. i am convinced he's most likely the best human ever. none of us really know otherwise, right? that's what i've been reminded of so many times with regards to the most recent scandal, hasn't it? "how do you know?" "where are your facts?" "who told you this?"

and "they" are right. i don't know much. about anything. but there are people that do. i listen to them.

can we all just admit, then, that conferences and schools that can afford to pay their assistants more than the average nfl coordinator (and that's not even mentioning the head coaches) probably share some of that cash with their recruits/players? is it a proportionate or even fair share? um, no. probably not. but it's something. whether it's literally or figuratively shoved underneath their dorm room door makes no difference in the least.

here's hoping that all of this noise that's made by concerned fans and alum advocating on behalf of athletes being paid above the table pays off somewhere down the road.

until then, i'll continue to bask in the awesomeness that is the sec. thank god i was born and raised an alabama fan. it must suck to root for teams without boosters with deep pockets.

january 18, 2010 seems like a long time ago


almost eleven months ago, 2010 resolution #7 was "see brian more...". it didn't really work out the way that i wanted it to. i could claim weak-ass excuses like "how time flies" or the girls or church or work or softball or the blog or too much time on facebook or too much time losing track of friends, but all of them would be just that. weak. and ass.

savannah is a long way away, even as the crow flies, sure. the sheer thought of the six to seven hours in the car with girls that are going to go apeshit halfway there has played a big part in my selfish ass presenting the "it's december. i work in retail. i gotta work." card year after year when sarah or sarah and hannah or sarah and hannah and caroline have made the trip for the last however long without me. believe me. it's been a long however long.

last year, brian was there and the girls got to see him without me. i had missed tons of time due to my surgery and there was no way i could get away. it made my heart warm, though, to know that hannah and caroline would get to hang out with him, and they did. i was jealous, but happy at the same time.

our relationship has never been the most functional even when it was our "normal". lord knows we weren't the only children of divorce in the world, but it felt like it a lot of the time. my friends, in particular, all were from families whose parents had stayed true to their vows. i don't know if that made them happy or not, but going to their houses to hang out had a very weird and comfortable vibe to it. going to my friends' houses felt, for me, like walking into a norman rockwell painting. i know that any of my childhood friends that might read this blog are rolling their eyes right now at the thought of their home being the picture of americana. whatareyougonnado? when you are child of divorce, you see, especially one that was old enough when their parents separated to know that divorce was some fucked up shit, you (i) find yourself pining for that societal feeling of "normal" for the rest of your (my) life. as you (i) get older, you (i) realize along the way a sad fact, that you're (i'm) searching for the pot at the end of the rainbow, but it doesn't stop you (me) from wanting it. badly. my friends had it. and i didn't. breakfast in the morning. dinner together around a table. family functions. both parents at open house. simple shit. shit that children of marriage take for granted. or maybe they don't. maybe they realize that kind of stuff is special. for a kid that started putting up barriers pretty young, i convinced myself that they took it for granted. and it gnawed at me for years. when i came home from a friend's house, nothing was "normal". my mom did everything in her power to make it feel that way, and for that i will be forever indebted, but it just...wasn't. not the "normal" that i told myself i wanted. when i was eight, nine, ten years old, i just wanted my parents to be back together again. i was eight when my parents divorced. brian was four. our relationship was never going to be functional. and the fucked up thing about it was that it had nothing to do with us.

growing up, most of my memories of brian and our time together have been appropriately revisioned or romanticized, because remembering the bad stuff is a fucking waste of time. we didn't have a ton in common and we held that against each other a lot. i've told the story before, but i will say that if you've never had a younger brother hurl a throwing star at you with ill-intentions, well, you haven't lived. thank god, by that standard, i have. our age difference and the fact that i was an asshole didn't help our cause as we got older. brian did his thing. i did mine. we enjoyed each other's company every now and again. played some video games. went to the movies. nothing crazy. we fought. a lot. never to the point of regret. i loved him. more than anything. i just didn't know how to do love right. probably still don't. in the midst of all sorts of chaos, though, i think about how much i must've let him down...

i figured out how much brian meant to me too late. he was already gone down a dark path that i couldn't save him from by the time i did. he would admit that. i tried a couple times. to save him. to save us. maybe more than a couple. i felt like i was doing him a favor. then i felt like i was enabling bad habits. we cut ties again and/or again. i said cliched bullshit like, "he's got to want to help himself". i prayed for him, not even knowing what that really means. a year would pass. i would call my mom and ask her about him. "he's doing okay." or "i haven't heard from him in a while." were the stock answers. occasionally, her voice would perk up a little and you could tell they had a really nice conversation. those were good days. more time passed. he did some more rehab. he tried to sort things out at our aunt's house. that didn't work. then he moved to florida. finally landed in savannah. i figured out how much brian meant to me too late once. it makes me happy that i learned from that mistake and made better efforts.

i think about him all the time. and i think back. i think about what a disservice i was to him as a big brother. how the same shit that i felt so sorry for myself about was ten times worse for him. i think about the little kid that was thrown out to pasture by people that should have loved him the most and i wish that i would have had the courage to make things better. to appear as the ghost of "what the fuck are you thinking???" to those that should've loved him most and allow them to see the error of their ways. but i didn't. or i couldn't. or i was too immature at the time to grasp what was happening.

after we reconnected a few years ago, it was how it always should have been. it took one conversation to hear in his voice what i hoped that he heard in mine. that i loved him. that i had always wished him well, just not always in very practical or helpful ways.

since then, we've been as functional as two brothers that are six hours apart can be i suppose. i think we miss each other. i know i miss him. the brian that i talk to now is the one that i took for granted growing up. smart. caring. tender. tough. when all the dcd shit hit the fan a couple years back, he was the one that i wished i had by my side, not to beat anyone up but to be the explicit voice of reason that only someone that cared about me but had also lived their life outside of the perverted walls of "the church" could be. when i found out i had something growing inside of me last summer that wasn't supposed to be there, i knew i needed him to be with me, feeling confident that just his presence alone would scare the surgeon into not fucking up when he cut me up and pulled things out.

i see me talking about him now and i realize how much of a selfish asshole i still am. i don't deserve his care or concern any more than anyone that ever hung him out to dry does, but, when i asked him to come, he came. that's who he is.

i've told him and i hope he knows that i would kick ass for him, too, if he needed it. i would even listen, too. i can't wait to listen to him this weekend. as much fun as i am sure our family will have, as much good as i know it will be for me to be with sarah and hannah and caroline with her dad's side of the family, seeing brian will be what i think about when the girls are going apeshit somewhere on the macon side of atlanta. i'll think of him chasing me around the house, throwing shit at me. i'll wish things weren't for him the way they were, because people i know who claim "i hit the bottom" haven't seen it. brian has. he has the scars, many of them self-inflicted, to prove it. once upon a time, if he ever stared at you really hard, you kind of wanted to pee your pants a little bit. he was that guy.

that stare is still there, i bet, if he needed it to be. i see a different look in his eyes now. a glimmer that personifies hope and the kind of person i want my girls to grow up to be. smart. self-sufficient. strong. and sweet.

see you in a couple days, dude. when i do, i hope time will move slowly.

hannah and caroline and me
(part forty-two)
((my first real mistake as a parent))


mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...

or football fans.

i was having a conversation a couple days ago with a buddy about how i loved a (good-) spirited debate. surprising, right? my definition of debate, though, especially in the realm of this blog or on facebook must be naive or misshapen or skewed or something. if i've learned anything from HACAM and facebook over the past five years, it's that i am "dangerous", "stupid", "sexist", a "bammer", a "mind-reader", "cold-hearted", "mean", "bad for my church", "tactless", among other qualifiers, most of these from people that i've enjoyed, at some point in my life, fraternizing with. it's hard to argue with any of them i guess. mainly, because if i do, people will call me names again.

i imagine these, my most glowing qualities, come out and to the surface while i am watching an alabama football game. since hannah was born, absolutely nothing has changed with my attitude or the way i comport myself during these games, at least the ones that mean something to the greater "process" and the ultimate end of a conference and/or national title. i clap and yell with glorious support when the team executes a play to perfection. i flail and moan and kick and scream and hurl venom towards the field or television when something goes wrong.

all the while, hannah (and now caroline) are somewhere in the vicinity of the game, too, taking it all in.

readers of this blog that don't use the word "fuck", don't worry (yet). neither of the girls have taken to the interwebs with their own journals contributing to the downfall of civilization by using their own variations on their daddy's "dirty words". that'll come, though. don't you worry.

when we got in the car after the game last friday, though, indisputable evidence of my (and her mommy's) influence poured out of the first baby girl. as we pulled away from rebecca's, hannah started crying. soon, her crying turned to bawling and within a few seconds, she was inconsolable. after letting her cry it out for a few minutes, i asked why she was so upset. it was because she was worried that a friend, whose parents root for auburn, would brag and make fun of her the next time they saw each other. damn.

was she upset that alabama lost the game? maybe, but not so much in the literal outcome of the literal game. she was upset that her friends who had chosen to root for auburn would have something on her the next time they got together. i resemble this sentiment, wholeheartedly.

i love a spirited debate, mainly because, removed from the subject in question, whether that be a football team or lunch at krystal, i pride myself on being able to separate the sinner from the sin, if you will. if you don't like alabama as much as i do, that's fine. if you think a whopper is tastier than my little piece of heaven, that's fine, too. i'll argue why i think i am right, or feel right. i might even argue why i think you are wrong. i am not going to call you a douchebag, even if i think you are being one. that's just the way it is.

kids, specifically my first grader, can't be this rational. not yet. kids are the worst trash-talkers, because it's all emotion that's vomiting from their mouth. they don't care about making good points. they just "nanny, nanny, poo-poo" all over their classmates faces with no regard for the emotional trainwrecks they are leaving in their wake. i know this because i was the worst at it. i can specifically remember an instance from my childhood when i lost a friend for over a month because i kicked his ass in tecmo bowl and wouldn't stop talking about it for a week. it was "mean". "tactless". "stupid". all of those. i suppose i knew better. my mom would've kicked my ass had she known about it. but i didn't go to school with my mom. and hannah doesn't go to school with hers. or her dad. we can't protect her from kids being cruel. we just get to pick up the pieces after someone's broken her heart.

the sad part about that meltdown in the car after the iron bowl was how predictable it was. by my injecting her, week after week, year after year, season after season with the idea that football and alabama football is worth giving your friends a hard time about, i let the meltdown happen. i produced it. it was my creation.

as i said, i know kids are mean. that part i can't change. they are all emotion. it's part of their charm and part of the reason i want to stick my head through a glass door half the time.

i also know kids are impressionable. and i've impressed upon my child that she should give a shit when a friend of hers who has parents that have impressed upon them to be an auburn fan comes bragging about a victory in a football game. because i've done this, i've given her a reason to worry about something that she didn't ask for.

that kind of sucks.

as she gets older, i'll have to make sure she is able and trained to respond to others with something more substantial than tears. i'll have to impress upon her the value in (good-) spirited debate.

then she won't have any friends either.  

football?


for all the attention that HACAM has paid to alabama's football season, you'd have thought the owners presidents had locked their paid-to-play scholarship athletes out, paving the way for fans to spend more quality time with their families, make up with long lost friends and find mission opportunities in our local and respective communities. those ideas, in an of themselves, are fairly ludicrous. in fact, college football has been played this fall.

as it has happened, i've actually watched most of alabama's games in their entirety. i left work early twice this year to make it home before the 2:30 cbs kick only to watch bama's potential dynasty fall at the hands of stephen freaking garcia and jordan "he's a quarterback now?" jefferson. as the season and the promise of back to back sec and national championships went down in flames courtesy of the two biggest underachievers at quarterback the sec has seen in 10 years, you can understand my lack of want to wax poetic about a team that, on the field, turned out not to be who i thought they were back when i put up this season's only college football preview that mattered. in that column, i feared the idea that auburn would come into today's game with more at stake. i cannot tell you how brutal the reality of that idea coming to fruition is for this alabama fan. not because i hate auburn, mind you, but because i wanted something incredibly special to bookend julio jones career in a way that, no matter the outcome now, cannot happen anymore.

julio jones has been the most prominent recurring character on this blog since it's inception, if you'll allow for the obvious exception of my girls. julio and his coming to alabama marked clearly the end of one era of alabama football and the beginning of something newer, something more polished, something more worthy of the resources my rooting interest of choice possesses. remember when tim tebow chose florida over alabama? of course you do. remember when julio chose alabama over everyone else? of course you do. the next year, trent richardson sealed julio's ("he a pretty big...") deal and chose alabama over florida, signaling not only the end of urban myer's overlord-ship of the sec, but it meant that things like sec championships and the like would now run through tuscaloosa for the foreseeable future. much to my dismay, this season, south carolina and lsu came through t-town, figuratively, and lived to tell the tale. they both navigated through alabama's still young secondary and made their seasons memorable at alabama's expense. it's been a hard pill to swallow.

harder still is that a win today over auburn doesn't mean much of anything for the tide. sure, it would end auburn's national championship hopes, but, for alabama, it's would only be a moral victory. the alabama in my head takes no joy in playing spoiler. it would continue into next season an impressive run of consecutive victories at home. yet, it would only feel fulfilling up until auburn and south carolina met next saturday for the right to carry the sec champion's banner for a year. in my eyes and my eyes only, i almost view the outcome for this alabama football team in today's iron bowl as lose, lose. if they lose to auburn, their state rivals continue a march towards their own dream season that proportionately and historically would mirror alabama's run last year. if they beat auburn, it only shines a brighter light onto the losses in columbia and baton rouge and makes the season's lost relevance seem more substantial.

for julio, if when he declares himself eligible for next spring's nfl draft, the impact will not feel nearly as significant as it should or would have if he could claim two sec and/or national championships on his resume'. instead, he will simply be remembered as the best receiver in the history of the school. that's it. the torch of his legend will quickly be passed to trent and his memory will start to fade. it makes me sad.

today, in the three and a half hours the game will be played, i will root, root, root for the home team, but, if they don't win, it won't be a shame, per se'. it will just be another loss to another good team with flaws that this group of alabama football players and coaches couldn't take advantage of this year. my world will not end.

if they win, though, i hope it's because julio treated the auburn secondary like he did tennessee's. i hope, by the end, he's established himself as the best, pound for pound, player on the field. i hope he can take this game by the horns from his totally dependant position and dominate.

the credibility of my predictions became null and void the moment alabama transformed stephen garcia into brett favre (the good one) and alshon jeffrey into terrell owens (the younger one), so there is no need to predictably fashion a scenario in which alabama wins this game.

i will say this, though. in the meta-narrative that has been the last three years of alabama football, i was right about julio.

and that makes me happy.

roll julio.

 

to be or not to be
(cam newton)


cameron newton.

cam newton.

scam newton.

cash newton.

i stand with cam.

if you are a fan of college football, the story is inescapable. annoyingly so. fascinatingly so. hilariously so. the emotion attached to your level of interest solely rests on if you are an auburn fanatic, an auburn fan, an alabama fan, an alabama fanatic, a college football fan with another rooting interest or a casual sports fan that happens to watch a lot of sportscenter. let's break the groups down.

auburn fanatic - cam newton is your child. just like any of your children, you absolutely will not allow yourself to believe or see that your quarterback is guilty of anything. ever. neither are his parents. or anyone that may have represented him. none of the scandal would have happened if not for a massive conspiracy perpetuated by a scorned school(s) and ambulance chasing media and people that wanted auburn to fail because everybody hates auburn except auburn fanatics. if you have judged cam newton guilty of anything other than being awesome, you have jumped to conclusions, you have not reserved judgement and you should be shot. you are not worth the human blood that streams through your veins. people in this country are INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY, GODDAMMIT, nevermind the fact that cam newton is charged with no criminal wrongdoing. to the auburn fanatic, this scandal proves to you what you've known all along. everybody is wrong. and you are right. about everything. to this group, cam newton is jesus christ. if i were cam newton, i would avoid this group at all costs.

auburn fan - this group has been the most compelling to follow over the last three weeks. the story broke. unbelief was shouted from the mountaintops and in chorus with the athletic director and head football coach at auburn university. the story was "garbage", "unfortunate" and "sad", up until the point there proved to be legs to the story. all of a sudden, it made less sense to argue that the new york times and espn and foxsports and every other media outlet that ran with this story were the journalistic equivalent of the national enquirer. (a good example of this shortsightedness happened last weekend before the auburn/georgia game. a story started to make waves that cecil newton had admitted soliciting mississippi st. for cash, but his son, family nor auburn ever knew of it. lesser outlets with lower standards, like tidesports.com ran the story. interestingly enough, espn and fox and the new york times did not. why? because the story only could credit one source. so think about that for a second. to break these kinds of stories, the larger outlets and their editors are rarely, if ever, going to throw caution and their reputations to the wind just to break a story about auburn university. not based on one source. they just aren't. and they didn't. so, now, what does that say about everything else they've reported thus far? i digress.) all of a sudden, the athletic director and the coach were told by someone to shut the fuck up and, for the last week or so, they have. auburn fan sees this as foreshadowing. they are processing the information, hoping that nothing is acted on before auburn can play their last three games, and they'll deal with any future consequences in the future, ever being able to play the "well, no one could stop us on the field. so, there!" card. their alma mater or rooting interest of choice may be punished, but this season will live with them forever, whether it is erased from technical history or not. cam newton should probably fear these people, too, because if, IF he turns out to be just as much a part of this story as his father, auburn fan will defend their school/rooting interest and they will turn on him faster than he threw that laptop out of his gainesville dorm room. burn.

alabama fan (the group i claim) - this group loves their school/rooting interest of choice passionately, just like any fan of any school/rooting interest does. they also know that a strong sec makes their team look even better, so they cheer for the other schools, even auburn. earlier in the season, when cam newton was an unknown quantity, alabama fan was every bit as mesmerized as the rest of the college football country. who was this guy? the more cam newton led auburn back from deficits to victory, the scarier the prospect of his ruining alabama's season became. then lsu ruined alabama's season. then the story became the scandal that wouldn't stop growing. then it became much more interesting to follow the scandal than it was to spend time worrying about alabama games that held no more national or conference significance. this group has been through this before. they know that the murkier the waters get, the clearer the picture becomes. this group knows what is going to end up happening, and they are starting to feel bad that the auburn equivalent of alabama's dream season of 2009/10 will be tainted forever. cam newton should only care enough about this group to want to further drive a nail into the coffin this season has become for alabama fan. one year removed from the bcs national championship, debate concerning cotton bowl vs. capital one bowl sounds as exciting as that one time i tried to watch dancing with the stars.

alabama fanatic - this group stirs birmingham talk radio's drink. they are every bit the conspiracy theorists that auburn fanatics are, only more practiced. to this group, the ncaa is always looking for a reason to come down on alabama. this group fears that the fbi's investigation into cam newton will only serve to uncover that one time that one booster paid julio's mom to take that one vacation to cabo. to this group, cam newton (or his father or an agent or a runner for an agent or it-doesn't-matter-else. it all breaks the same rule.) is not only guilty of soliciting money, but he used what money he eventually got from auburn to pay for prostitutes and throw them out of his dorm window, too. burn. auburn boosters totally paid for cam newton. they paid for cecil newton's church to be renovated. they've been paying players for years. and after they come off probation for the cam newton thing, they'll pay players again. alabama fanatics give human beings a bad name, but they do make auburn fanatics want to kill themselves. i know two wrongs do not make a right, but if we could let these two groups battle it out at legion field with spears, the world would be a better place. cam newton should pay minimal attention to this group unless a member of this group embedded themself into the auburn fanatic group and actually paid cam newton. to that person, he should probably say thanks.

a college football fan of another school - to a person, EVERY SINGLE football fan of another school is loving this. why? because every school is guilty of some ncaa violation. they just haven't been caught yet. for football fans of other schools, 2010 will go down as that year you didn't have to worry about anything other than football. boise fan can be obnoxious. tcu fan can be self-righteous. oregon fan can celebrate the idea of a national championship. and lsu fan can be satisfied that a team with the worst quarterback situation in the history of top ten college football teams will finish the season 12-1 and ranked in the top five. a quick aside...my favorite recruiting story is the one about eric dickerson from way back in 1979. he was a senior in high school and started driving a brand new trans-am that he told people his grandmother bought for him. later, it came out the trans-am was purchased by texas a&m.  eric dickerson ended up going to play football for smu. just brilliant. cecil or cam or albert means or reggie bush or name-that-athlete-that's-been-caught-scamming isn't the first to try and outfox the broken system that is the ncaa and they won't be the last. every single college football fan of another school should know this and be thankful the hammer is pointed elsewhere this year. cam newton should love this group, because they unconditionally love him.

casual sports fan that happens to watch a lot of sportscenter - cam newton should be terrified of this group, because they all want him to die. instead of talking about sports, espn has flooded their lives with this story of yet another entitled college athlete that broke some rule (or someone broke it on his behalf) and now they have to sit through two segments of joe fucking schad before the monday night crew starts to break down the chargers/broncos game. this group doesn't even like college football. they have no idea where auburn is and they have no idea what any of this has to do with them. if cam newton comes to their professional city, though, they will love him and throw their underwear at him because they've heard on espn that he is "just that good". casual sports fans are the best. especially of pro sports teams. they care nothing about the process that led this person to be on that team. they just care about winning. of course, they are part of the problem, too.

i've gone on record with no one and everyone in particular to say that i believe cam newton will eventually be ruled ineligible. i said that way before EXTREME DENIAL gave way to reasonable analysis. i said that because i live in the world of sports. and in the world of sports, this kind of time and attention is not paid to something that will lead to the cam newton allegations being proven entirely false. it just doesn't happen. you can hold that opinion against me i suppose or believe with your whole heart that the cam newton thing will be the exception to the rule. you may like to read or listen to npr or knit or stay up too fucking late so you can complain about being tired the next day or play videogames or spend too much time at church or whatever your vice is. mine is sports. it doesn't make me an expert. it just means that i am right this time. i'll probably be wrong the next time.

as far as cam newton goes, though, none of this matters. he is a gun for hire. he will leave auburn after one year like he left florida like he left blinn community college because auburn is a means to a professional end in professional football. he said as much back in gainesville. although illegal information has been leaked that suggests otherwise, his story is that he left florida because he didn't want to sit behind tebow. he wanted to play football. he served his "time" in community college last year so that he would be ready to take his talents to a school that wanted a physical freak of an athlete to play quarterback for their school for one year, two if he got hurt or accidentally chose a school that sucked at playing football and didn't do anything for his draft stock.

another tangent. that's the part of this "i stand with cam" thing that i will never understand. i get that auburn fan and especially auburn fanatic loves their school. i get that newton is primarily responsible for the success of this season and, because of that, you feel some indebtedness to his causes or concerns, but you don't. you were going to cheer for auburn every bit as madly and every bit as passionately if barrett trotter was leading your team of choice to a 8-4 season. success breeds contempt, though. contempt for common sense, common sense that has been traded for blind loyalty to a young man that has reportedly said both before his freshman year and before this year that he wanted to play football somewhere other than auburn. he loves auburn now, sure. he may come back and visit on the school's dime in the future to be celebrated and wave his hand to the crowd and laugh with bo jackson. he loves auburn now, because he ended up there. period. excellent. end tangent.

as far as cam newton goes, this story makes him instantly and infinitely more marketable. once he is drafted next spring, the theme of redemption and struggle will follow him for two to three years or until he has proven himself as a capable starting quarterback in the nfl, whichever happens first. his commercials, if he's lucky, will stress those themes and make him and his family even more money.

cam newton will be alright. currently, he is protected from the lion's share of this mess anyway. his school and his coaches encourage him and feed him enough of it like chum in the water to motivate his performance. his school and his coaches, his fans and fanatics will cheer wildly for him friday and then a week from saturday and then in some bowl game and then he'll move on to where he was going all along. to be a professional football player.

when i was a little younger, not a day passed that i didn't think about how i wished i was a professional athlete. when i was a little younger, like yesterday, i daydreamed about it. could you imagine, a year from now, being in cam newton's shoes? a millionaire professional quarterback in training. how great would that be? this season's scandal and the head end of his redemption story fully focused in the rearview mirror. he and his dad, sitting across from each other reminiscing about those tough times. "they tried to take you down, son. but they couldn't do it. not my boy." cam smiles back at him. "thanks, dad."

"when i was a little younger" wasn't that long ago.

to be or not to be cam newton.

i choose "to be".

500 posts of summer kevin
(a retrospective)
((hannah and caroline and me))
(((part forty-one)))


you've claimed to hate something, but for some reason you're drawn to it anyway. you've understood the logic, and yet you've hated it for the same logical reasons. you like to journal, or you did. but you don't anymore. you've had thoughts that ranged from the silly to sincere as to how people have journaled of and about you. you've been flattered. you've been mad. you've swore you'd get even. you've been proud that you didn't. and so here goes... -me, october of 2005

had you asked me on monday night, october 24, of 2005 if i thought the blog would have lasted over five years and five hundred posts, my honest answer would have had to be "no." i've never been known as someone that's stuck with something very long. aside from my family and, what, 3-5 long time friends, the only thing in my life that i've ever been able to throw myself completely into was church, specifically the seven year run when i served on the staffs of huffman united methodist or common ground.

i don't know that i would say that i am a flake in that regard. i've never been terrible at following through with commitments, per se, but to take on something like a blog, a hobby and time-killer in every sense of those words, and stick with it and the original vision through which it was created impresses me. it really does. i am proud of myself. it's a nice feeling.

as has been documented on this uniform resource locator(s) ad naseum, the genesis of this place was not complex. in the early and mid-2000's, social media was transitioning from niche to mainstream. every young person, seemingly, in my youth department had something called a livejournal or a myspace page that they would use to communicate either their angst or joy with their internet community. for the longest time, i was only an observer. the outlets, while frowned upon in general, were fascinating snapshots into the working minds of teenagers and college students that i held near and dear to my heart. they were conversations that our daily routines would never allow us to have one on one or in other more corporate settings. sure, sometimes they would lash out against parents or friends or others in their lives and, sure, some of it seemed to be done without regard for rational thought, but it didn't make any of the entries any less compelling.

at the time that hannahandme.blogspot.com was born, hannah was about to turn two. i could feel the beginning of the end of one era of my life happening and moving from being paid by a church to not being paid by a church felt like a seismic shift. sarah and i were growing busier by the second. the huntsville experiment would have been hard to make work without hannah in the mix. with a baby girl as part of the equation, it was nearly impossible. i started looking for and brainstorming my own not-so-private outlet. i've loved writing for a long time. i'd, at that point, built up enough passer-by experience with blogs and the like that i figured i could stumble my way through my own. wouldn't it be cool if i started writing things down so that somewhere deep into the future hannah (and now caroline) could be introduced to parts of her father that she may have never known? and so, it happened.

five years and five hundred posts later, HACAM (formerly known as HAM) is still running strong. not a day passes that i don't think about sitting down and writing something to my girls. unfortunately, not many days pass that afford me the disposable time to make that happen. my pace has slowed in the last couple of months, but i am hoping that the end of fall soccer means a little extra time to invest back into the blog. back into ongoing series like "to be or not to be" and "conversations with kathy" or ever-going series like "hannah and caroline and me".

to the handful of people that have been with me from the beginning and continue wasting their life by making this blog a part of your daily routine, i can't thank you enough. you know who you are. without your constant constructive, critical and supportive feedback, i would have probably hung this thing up the first time a united methodist pastor commented that he wanted to see me because of some jacked up opinion i shared "for all the world to see". "fear the community", anybody? :)

to the rubberneckers that have been handed a sheet of paper with my asinine reflections upon them and were forced to read them against your will because the department of homeland security demanded you to, i am sorry. and i agree with you. my existence threatens all of us, and i should be destroyed.

to those that i've hurt with my "potty mouth" or posts that obliterated some perception you had of me prior to your reading one out of the now 502 entries, that was not my intent. if i wanted to push your buttons, i'd kill one of your threads on facebook.

speaking of facebook, to those of you that have met us because i now shamelessly promote this place to 271 (and counting or subtracting...depending on who i pissed off yesterday) of my closest "friends", thanks for visiting. "pass some time" while your here. just don't expect anything that will add even one iota of depth to your life. remember, in the immortal words of the pearl and the jam, "this is not for you". pimp your blog on facebook, too. everyone is doing it, right? i'd love to read your thoughts.

to my brother, brian, that won't read something unless i text him asking him to, i love you. you are the third muse. every time i write something, i kinda hope you read it and wonder what you think. i wish i could see you.

to sarah, who got tired of me asking her "what did you think of the blog?" four and a half years ago, thank you for your support and i am sorry, more than anything, that people being little bitches about something i've written hurt you once, let alone the seventy-five other times.

and to hannah and caroline, well, here's a tip of the hat to the first 500. my labor of love has only cost me one kidney up to this point, and i do not blame that on you two. i love you both more than anything this world could ever offer me in return. i can't promise you that some slippery little misfit will never hurt you. but i can promise you i will call him a fucking douchebag on the internet when he does.

with love, daddy

because it's never too early for christmas advent


here's a sneak peek into what you'll be getting when the 2010 humc advent devotionals are handed out come, you know, advent. don't you worry, though. i know for a fact the others will be way better than this one.

forgive the capitalization.

--------------------------

Maybe one day soon

It will all come out
How you dream about each other sometimes
With the memory of
How you once gave up
But you made it through the troubled times -Fountains of Wayne

Living in and on our own “private Idaho” on the corner of Huffman and Gene Reed Roads, it’s easy to feel like HUMC is the only community of faith that has ever suffered or will ever suffer from the emotional and sophomore-ish ups and downs of life.

Surely, other congregations have mastered the calculus of interpersonal relationships while we’ve just discovered that we are behind the curve. “He said, she said” doesn’t exist at “the church across the street”. Otherwise, they would have empty spaces in their parking lot, too. The “University of Jesus” down the road never questions their leaders. They have their ducks in a row, and, therefore, have the capacity to build new buildings that will serve even more members of their community in new and fantastic and interactive ways. “That church that my friend goes to now” hugs and kisses each other all the time. Then, they go and hug homeless people and feed them and, then, they hold hands and sing “Kumbayah” and always go home happy. Right? Right?

Well, of course, none of the above three hypotheticals are totally accurate, but it’s easy to feel that way at Huffman United Methodist Church. The comforting thought is that Huffman United Methodist Church is no different from “the church across the street”, “the University of Jesus” or “that church that my friend goes to now”. If we don’t intentionally and often remember the connectedness that is a life lived in union with The Divine Spark, it’s easy to feel isolated and alone and discouraged, no matter where you hang your hat on Sunday morning.

If Advent means anything to me, it means a fresh and renewed understanding that I am not alone. It means that it is time again to renew the effort “to put on a new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”. If not for myself, I effort for my family and my church family and those that I call “brother” and “sister” in Christ.

Feeling alone is a very human and flawed emotion. In Advent, in Christ, it is never “us vs. them” but a global connection that helps us work for a Greater Good.

Scripture: Ephesians 4:20-25

34 is just a little older than 33
(hannah and caroline and me)
((part forty))


this time last year, i was certain i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i am still pretty certain that there is something bad lurking in there somewhere.

i don't have a real reason to think these thoughts. my neck is still jacked up, but i've been told not to worry about that. occasionally..., okay pretty much every day i'll feel some sort of twinge on the left-hand side of my back and think, "fuck me. there is a tumor in the other kidney now". i've been told this line of logic is irrational, too.

we lost it yesterday morning with hannah. i mean...lost. our. minds. she's been on-again, off-again congested for a couple weeks now and was pretty gunked up yesterday morning. naturally, we were out of liquid everything, so sarah suggested she take a pill. hannah freaks out. starts crying. backs herself into whatever corner that she can find. sarah starts negotiating in a very nice and concerned mommy voice. "you can do this, hannah. you put the pill on the back of your tongue. you put some kool-aid in your mouth. you lean your head back. you swallow." game over, right? hannah tries the first time and somehow performs an unintentional magic trick. the pill ends up in the kool-aid. sarah fishes the pill out of the kool-aid. hannah retreats, saying "it's nasty" and doesn't want to try again. sarah tells her that's not an option. she's already made the mistake of telling hannah that, now that the pill is wet, it really is going to be nasty. hannah will not try again with the first pill. sarah throws it away. she opens another pill for hannah to try again. this time, hannah gags and kool-aid ends up on the kitchen floor. it's now time for all of us to leave the house. we were running early. not anymore. all the while, the negotiating tactic has gone from cool and collected to "kick the door in, shoot...ask questions later" to sniper-level "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" i have been invoked as a weapon. "hannah, if you don't swallow this, i am bringing daddy over here and, well, you don't want daddy over here." another fail.

i come over and it's my turn. i ask hannah for her undivided attention and make sure that she hears me when i tell her "you are ruining the morning." excellent, right? i try and encourage her as best i can that she can do this. it's not scary. "here, why don't we try this. daddy puts liquid in his mouth, then puts the pill in to swallow it. try that." she takes the kool-aid in her mouth and then proceeds to toss the tiny pill under her tongue. god. dammit. she swallows the drink. catches the taste of the nasty-ass whatever kind of pill is in her mouth and spits it back out. she's crying. sarah's crying. caroline has no idea what the fuck is going on, but she is still pretty fucking stoked about her new boots that she got sunday, so she's super-cool.

negotiations have now moved from "we gotta take this fucker out. NOW! NOW! NOW!" level to "fuck it. let's just blow the city up. atomic bomb, please." i am ready to rip my lovely, sweet, smart, gentle, playful, wonderful first daughter into a million little pieces. i will rip her into a million pieces and i'll do it in front of her mother. her mother and i will laugh, laugh, laugh at each other the maniacal laugh that only parents at their wit's end with no discernible answers know and we'll take caroline to school and pretend like none of this ever happened.

hannah tearfully looks at caroline and mouths, "help. me."

caroline looks back and says, "zip my boots, mommy", making no sense at all.

sarah was finally like, "dude. we probably need to back the fuck off for a second." it's just a pill.

so, we backed off. we talked. i crushed the pill up (instead of my daughter) in hannah's kool-aid and she took her medicine. i walked out after making up with hannah. it took me a good hour to come down from never wanting to see her again. i picked her up from daycare after school and gave her a big hug. she was past the morning. i was thankful for that being the case.

this time last year, i was certain that i still had cancer in my body.

this time this year, i still wonder, but i move on with my day in the hopes that i don't.

episodes like yesterday morning and the fury with which i momentarily think unhealthy thoughts about my daughter(s), family or friends are telling. they tell me that i care again, which is different from twelve months ago. twelve months ago, i just stared into space a lot and worried about when i was going to die.

i am happy to care again, but i ashamed of how easily i can and have stepped into occasionally being a dickhead to the people that i care about the most. i suppose it's easy to do that. rather, i hear that i am not the only one guilty of it.

maybe, if i am lucky, another good report in january will free me from even more demons. maybe some of the fear and anxiety and anger and spite that boils over and into situations like yesterday morning will no longer be a part of me.

more than likely, they will be a part of me, though.

i'll just have to handle it better.

end of the world
(part eleven)
((the end of "the end of the world"))
(((the banger's embrace)))





"they say you can't relive the past, but as the lights went down it all came rushing back."

back in march of 2009, i picked up propagandhi's supporting caste with the expectation that it would be every bit as valuable to my music collection as their previous effort, potemkin city limits. after the first listen, i knew i was not going to be disappointed. after the second, third, fourth and fifth spins, i was certain that, based only on my own opinions and taste, caste had leaped into my own personal pantheon. the place where good albums go after they are determined (by me) to be great. in the last 12-14 months, this album, above every album in my vast and varied broken plastic case that sits on the floor of my closet, has taken its rightful place. it sits on the throne. it looks down at every other album purchased by me or for me. it sees potemkin at it's right hand. burn, piano island, burn to the left. it glances across the room and sees nevermind and dookie and one chord to another, pinkerton and chumps on parade and hello rockview and dog problems and tell all your friends and out come the wolves and dude ranch, electric boogaloo and 59 sound and when the pawn... and tens on top of tens of other albums that, over the course of the formative realization and continuing creation of one kevin michael o'kelley, have served as my personal soundtracks. caste looks over his subjects that, at some point in time, i personally allowed to define and motivate me, and caste sees that it is good.

i "luff, two f's" this album. i completely consumed it in a way that would have never happened before my blog became a four letter word. before the blog, i loved music. played it badly. appreciated and respected those much more talented than me. appreciated and respected those that ever crafted a tune that i couldn't get out of my head and made my life a better place. since the blog's inception, though, i have written about my music and the way it has moved me. for a couple years, i wrote out "best of..." columns in which not only could i identify which of my purchases provided the most healthy return on my investment, but i could process why. i am no music critic. i don't know the difference between a "good" album and a "bad" one. but i can tell you if an album is "AWESOME"  and i can tell you if "it sucks". taste is relative. "your favorite band sucks", right?

as an extension of those "best of..." posts, at some point early last year i decided i would deconstruct caste in a way i had never thought of before. i would take each song, play it on a loop and see where my my mind and my fingers would take me for a little while. fucking cancer interrupted that flow last summer, but i was happy to pick it back up several months ago and today brings us to the conclusion of the "end of the world" series.

"bangers" is a song written by a fan for a fan. it details any and every long strange trip any person has ever made to pay good money to watch their favorite band play a show. we all have "that story" to tell, right? we've all packed too many people in a protege and headed east to atlanta since, with very few exceptions, only shitty bands come or ever came to birmingham in their prime. we've all packed way too many people in a protege and headed east to atlanta ready for a moment captured in two or three hours that could possibly "change our life, man". the sound hall would be small, smoky and stink like hell. the proprietors would keep letting people in the door even though you knew they reached capacity, like, 100 people ago. you stood shoulder to shoulder with bastards you've never met, but, for the next three hours, you would be their best friend and they yours. if their ass got knocked to the ground, you would pick them up and they you. you would stand, jaw agape, at being 25 feet away from this band that had wrecked your crappy-ass stereo and car speakers for months. they looked just like you. same age. same size. same shitty goatee. but there was one difference. they played your favorite songs.

you would bounce and bellow, scream and wail at the top of your lungs. force yourself a foot closer...and then a foot closer to the stage. scream in agony if you took an elbow to the face. stick your chest out and glare like a bad-ass as you delivered elbows of your own. this wasn't just a show, man. this was fucking war, albeit amidst the friendliest of fire. the opening band that you never heard of with the killer-ass name rocked you more than you anticipated. you went and bought their shirt. the headliner did what headliners do. they tore the roof off of that dilapidated auditorium, temporarily paralyzed your eardrums and sent you home completely cool that some dude behind you sprayed vomit on your back an hour ago.

the last song in this series is what music and a show is about and can be about. communal, live together or die alone experiences that you share with yourself as much as you do your buddies. it's not an original thought that there is something shreddingly primal and intensely personal about the music we love.

chances are, you probably don't worship the ground proagandhi sweat on. it's okay. it only makes you a moron. and all of my best friends are morons.

chances are, i don't like your favorite band either. it's okay. it only makes me a moron. and i've been a moron for a lot longer than you've been a moron.

sarah, let it be known that i would like "night letters" to be played at my funeral. turn it up to eleven, please. the congregation will whisper to each other that it makes perfect sense. "he's always been such a fuck-up". and i will move forward with a smile on my face to...

"...the place where all the best bands go." 

i am pretty sure humc just jumped the shark


i was chatting with the right reverend, chris perry, a couple weeks back about a lot of things. as always when we talk, i asked him about his progress at robinson springs united methodist church. as always when we talk, he asked me if anyone had firebombed my house because of my dirty little mouth on my blog. actually, he doesn't really ask that. but, he does ask me how i am feeling about things in general (he is nice like that) and how i am feeling about the church. this most recent conversation happened on the heels of blog-gate 2.0, version why can't kevin not say those words about cellphones and boring worship and george carlin or something like that. it's all a big ball of fuzz a few weeks removed. funny how i bet that seemed really important to some people in the moment. anyway, we got past blog-gate 2.0 and started talking about the church. he and i agreed that humc was in need of some serious victories. happy-stances that we could rally around, do together and feel good about ourselves for a little while. i mentioned that the halloween carnival was on the horizon, and, based on past experience, i hoped that the carnival would serve as just that. an event outside of worship where many in our congregation would actively choose to participate in some form or fashion, feel good about what will inevitably be a positive turnout and event, and wear a smile to church for a few weeks after. we are still in line to do those things. make the carnival happen. enjoy it and each other. smile for a few weeks after. use that positive to motivate us towards more positives. and i can't wait...

then this past sunday happened. nasty and i had already left the worship service sunday morning heading to atlanta when fonzie got on his skis. sarah called me just after we had said hello and good-bye to anniston, heading east on i-20.

"hey."

"hey."

"what's up?"

"i just wanted to tell you about harris' announcement/plea at the end of his sermon."

oh, god.

"go on."

"as he was finishing up his sermon, he came front and center, made sure everyone was paying attention to him and told us that if we didn't start filling up the pews on sunday morning, he was fairly certain the bishop was going to move him due to ineffectiveness."

...

alright.

i wasn't as much surprised as i was sad. sad that he felt like it had come to this. sad that, after having been with us for less than a year and a half, the powers that be in our conference were threatening (make no mistake either. the threats didn't just come down this week. they've been there for months) to remove him from this congregation because he had not steered us back onto (their) course fast enough for them. you see, humc, for those not familiar with the inner workings of our church or the united methodist church, is "asked" to pay a portion of their budget to the conference on the whole so that that money can be used for many, many connectional things. that portion is called apportionments. all churches are "asked" to find a way to meet 100 percent of their apportionment number, but if there is an honest effort being made towards the 100 percent, the conference will work with the church. huffman's problem is this. in the conferences eyes, it has been a really long time since humc has made an honest effort towards even 50 percent of our apportionment, much less 100. a couple years ago, the conference drew a line in the sand. no longer could united methodist churches be part of the connectional system if they were not willing to be true to the connectional giving. and huffman isn't true to the the figure we are being asked to contribute. not even close.

that doesn't mean we aren't working on it. not a finance committee meeting has gone by in the last year and a half where our connectional giving has not come up. we try and massage the money that we have to find ways to give more, but for us to make the letter of the number, we would have to make serious cuts to every section of the budget. that includes staff. which is where we are stuck between the biggest rock and our hardest place.

we love our staff. we can't cut one of them, can we? how would they buy groceries? and if we do, what potential does that give us to grow in the way our church hopes to grow in order to continue finding ways to minister to our huffman community as part of huffman united methodist church?

we love our building. in an unfortunate turn of events, our building now defines us. old. always on the border of being out of repair. seemingly more concerned with how we look on the outside versus what is going on inside. the maintaining of our old building is expensive. we can't cut there, can we?

and so, if we don't want to cut, if we don't want to redefine who we are or give up our building, we only have one choice. we have to grow. in number. and in "number". and by "number", i mean what is truly important to the bishop and our conference. the money we are expected to pay them. and that is all that matters. it's not our attendance that the conference cares about. it's our lack of connectional giving. it's money. it's what makes the world church go round.

maybe the conference jumped the shark before we did, but don't be confused. we got on skis sunday right along with them. if i won the lottery today and gave every bit of it to humc and only asked that humc pay our connectional giving for the the next ten years in one lump sum, we would never hear from the conference again. well, we'd hear from them. they'd ask to use our building sometimes, but there would be no more pressure on our senior pastor or on our members.

instead of sunday's service being about god, it was about money. it was not about worship. it was about attendance that, in theory, would make our bottom line look better. it was not about church. it was about business.

i don't blame harris for doing what he did. everyone has a boss. if his boss was god, we'd be fine. we'd be in good and the right hands. his boss is not god, though. it's our district superintendent. and his boss is our bishop. and our bishop is pissed at huffman because he thinks that he's sent us his best of the best and, in his mind, we keep burning down the forest.

"it only takes a spark to get a fire going.
and soon all those around can warm up in its glowing
that's how it is with god's love
once you've experienced it
you spread the love to everyone
you want to pass it on"

you may not like the methods with which i have chosen to articulate my love for my church on this blog. i get that. you don't like my potty mouth. i totally get that. you think i am stubborn. hardheaded. demanding. unwilling to submit. "always right". guilty as charged.

that being said, please get a copy of sunday's service if you missed it. listen to harris' plea with this post and your past experience with the church and this church as context.

i don't hate you, huffman. i hate this broken-ass down system and how we have fed this ugly beast for as long as we have.

getting butts in seats isn't what church is about. getting people to give their money to our conference is not what church is about. if people coming to our church or opening their wallets to give to a cause or a group outside of themselves happens as a result of god's love, then great.

god's love was not what sunday was about.

it only takes a spark.

war harris. and war humc.

the first post of october (baseball)


from february 11, 2010:

"do note that not one of my storylines worries about the braves chances at winning the division. i would love it if it happened. but the braves didn't add roy halladay to an already stacked team. the phillies did. it's wild card or bust, in my mind, when setting a realistic goal for the season."

so, the braves made the playoffs...as the wild card.

wow!

i mean that exclamation with the utmost sincerity. i resisted the temptation to post sunday because i would have been caught up in all the euphoria of the last game of the season, the last inning of the season when billy wagner looked like an absolute killer after showing his mortal side in the eighth, and how the braves, backs against the wall one last time in a season where that had become a recurring theme, gutted it out and held on for a win in their "most important game of the season". in baseball, though, moreso than any other sport, perspective is dreadfully important. one game or one series only becomes "important" based on the outcome of the previous game or series. the same logic can be applied to any sport, of course, but not in the same meta way that a 162 game regular season requires. given a few days now to ponder the strange course of the season, here is what i remember as the highlights.

 - opening day and the "THIS STADIUM IS UPSIDE DOWN!" call after jason "julio" heyward stepped up to the plate for his first major league at-bat and destroyed a ball into the right field bullpen. we'll get back to heyward in a second, but this moment had a more impactful lifespan than any other during the last five years.

- troy glaus being his usual terrible self in april only to explode and carry the braves through may and part of june, playing well enough to be the national league player of the month in may.

- heyward hurting his thumb, cox not allowing him to heal and heyward missing the all-star game.

- brooks conrad's monster walk-off grand slam to complete the bottom of the ninth, down by seven rally over the reds that propelled the braves into their best stretch of baseball they played all season.

- beginning of august, chipper gets hurt. i lobby for heyward being moved to the three hole. bobby cox does not listen.

- my timmy's string of dominance in late july and most of august that propelled him into the cy young conversation. he lost it a little bit in september, but made two HUGE starts during the last week of the season, won both, including the final game, and was the braves most dependable starter all year.

- derek lowe going insane during the month of september. 5-0, era under 1.25, commanding the confidence of this braves fan that he is totally going to beat tim lincecum in the opening game of the divisionals tomorrow night.

- martin prado and omar infante, period. last year, these guys "weren't good enough to play everyday". how about this season as one big "fuck you" to the detractors. infante finished third in the batting race, made the all-star team. prado was the braves offensive mvp this year, finished in the top ten in the batting race and made the all-star team. i was more heartbroken when prado went down for the year in the next-to-last week of the season than i was when chipper shredded his knee. that, in and of itself, tells me how emotionally attached i had become to prado. love that guy.

- mccann. mccann's the offensive lineman of the braves. you don't hear much about him. he just goes about his business being the best offensive catcher in the league and winning all-star game mvp's and hitting walk off home runs and braves fans, including me, just take him for granted.

- jonny venters being nasty and unhittable for the first five months of the season. billy wagner extending the same type of dominance through the end of the year.

- jason heyward will get his own post when the regular season awards start rolling out, but he should be the rookie of the year. end of story.

that's it. that's the scrapbook i have in my head for the braves, version 2010. this past sunday's game was incredible, but only because the previous 161 games had set it up to be so. the miracle win that i witnessed way back in april was every bit as important. the nine game losing streak that left the braves bandwagon searching for a driver was every bit as important. losing six of nine to the terrible nats and pirates down the stretch was just as important. the braves' sweeps of the mets and the marlins during the last 15 games of the year were every bit as important.

91-71. TWENTY games above .500. the sixth best record in all of baseball. in the meta-narrative that is any mlb team's season, the braves accounted for themselves quite well.

however the braves end up faring in the playoffs, in my opinion, the season has been a massive success.

while we are talking about it, though, the braves are going to beat the giants. tomorrow night and in the series.

we'll talk about the phillies if that prediction holds true.

roll braves.

the end of the world
(part ten)
((incalculable effects))


"she said she just turned six. she's got some good jokes for a kid. she's working hard to avoid a woman bleeding from her teeth...i know that sinking feeling all too fucking well. shame, frustration setting it. confusion that eats us inside out...i don't know what's wrong with me. i don't know why she can't wake up...her life goes on despite the fact her mom lies fucked up on the cement."


stephen colbert has taken some grief from people that take themselves way too seriously over the past few days since his testimony before congress on behalf of immigrant workers last friday, sept. 24th. the serious people seemed to think that the comedian coming before congress in character as the ultra-conservative champion of "truthiness" made a mockery out of the very real issue of immigrant workers' lack of rights and drew more attention to himself than those he was supposed to be lobbying on behalf of.

in some dark, dark world, in a universe removed from reality far, far away, i suppose i can see their point. what does this comedian know about immigrant workers? his entire shtick was borne out of one whole day of real labor. but in that one day lies the sad truth that politicians are not able to own. colbert's one day was one more day than the vast majority of those that are up in arms for or against more rights for immigrant workers will ever put into the "fields" of america.

count me in that vast majority. i can't tell you how much i never want to plant something that i would eventually eat. hell, i can hardly stand the thought of cooking something that someone else has harvested for me. i am the opposite of do it yourself in most instances. i take advantage of specialists, regardless of industry, found in the yellow pages any and every time i or sarah can't figure out how to stop water from dripping out of the faucet or a river running out of our air conditioning closet or how to make our grass as lovely looking as the neighbor's (a guy i have seen on his belly in his yard pulling weeds. are you kidding me? if you ever see me belly-down in my yard, i've either had a stroke or i lost a quarter down a hornets' nest and am trying to dig it out. either way, call 911). that's just me. call me spoiled. call me whatever. i am just playing with the cards that i've been dealt in the best way i know how.

same as immigrant workers. same as stephen colbert. same as the little girl in the propaghandi song that inspired these thoughts today. the little girl doesn't remind me of me. my mom has found problems as she's gotten older, but rarely did she exhibit any behavior (other than her choice in dudes) at home when i was a kid that i felt like i had to run away from. i and my brother were sheltered for a long time from the financial difficulties that come with being a single mom. we were sheltered from the early signs of the depressive state that has captured and imprisoned her for many, many years now. we were sheltered for a long time from her poor choice in dudes. she did what she could, playing with the cards she had been dealt.

not everyone in this world is as lucky as i was and am. this world is a filthy, filthy place. if we choose to see it, we can see it online and on our televisions and in our newspapers and magazines. people are mistreated. children are born into situations that will haunt and pervert every day of their life, no matter how strong they are.

and yet, we show so little patience. we don't want to see what comes next. we flip the channel. we expect things to happen as fast as we want them to. stimulate me now. satisfy me now. 30 weeks? how much longer is it going to take to make this worthwhile for me?

colbert, after hearing the last question that would be posed to him during his testimony, stepped out of his made-for-tv character and didn't quote scripture as much as he identified where he fit into the issue by citing the context of matthew 25:40, the "least of these..." passage. naturally, rather than listening to his sentiment, his detractors poked holes in his means. "he says bad words". "he isn't really a practicing catholic. how could he be? he's friends with jon stewart." "this is the best that congress can do? a comedian?"

it's this type of mentality that is destroying our human connections. rather than finding the common-ness between humans and working for the betterment of us all, we nitpick from our comfort(zone)able chairs.

raise your hand if you hate immigrant workers as people?

...

raise your hand if you think illicit drug use is a good thing? 

...

raise your hand if you like the state of birmingham's city schools?

...

raise your hand if you like abandoned children?  

...

raise your hand if you think you are better than any one person on the face of the planet?

...

confusing the issue(s) with the means by which the issue is raised or argued is a time-honored tradition.

doesn't make it right. 

"i know that sinking feeling all too fucking well." and yet, our lives go on despite the fact, our common sense lies fucked up on the cement.

being julio heyward
(part ten)
((fare thee well, bobby cox))


152 games.

that's how long the 2010 version of the atlanta braves were in the mix for the division. all things being equal, had you offered me that number before the season opened along with the deal that the club would still hold the slimmest of leads in the race for the wild card with 10 games to play, i would have jumped at it. given that deal and that deal alone, this is how i would have told you it happened.

jason heyward was worth the hype.

he has been. before he hurt his thumb in the second month of the season, he was going to run away with the nl rookie of the year trophy. then he hurt himself with one of his always cringe-inducing headfirst slides. cringe-inducing not because it looks bad. quite the contrary, it looks elegant and graceful, just like everything he does on the baseball field. cringe-inducing because there are ten digits that are exposed for all sorts of bad things to happen to them when sliding head-first into a base, all ten of the utmost importance if you are going to swing a bat and make contact with a baseball. he hurt his thumb. bobby cox kept trotting him out, because "i love seeing the kid play". his numbers dropped. he finally went on the dl and after cox's incompetence cost him STARTING in the all-start game as a rookie, (ugh) he came back. he got healthy. his average jumped 50 points, and he regained his form from april and early may. then chipper got hurt. braves nation (including myself) cast their lonely eyes to the twenty year old to lead them. on certain days, he has. he still gets on base a ton. but, to be as patient as he is, throw a breaking ball to him with two strikes that starts at his knees and ends up in the dirt, he is going to strike out 9 times out of 10. he's been good. probably rookie of the year good. but he hasn't been able to carry the team by himself.

hudson, lowe, jurrjens, hanson and kawakami would be the best starting five in the national league.

they'd have to be, right? the braves were never going to score a ton of runs. not like the phillies. and yet, only hudson has been really good this year. lowe is what we thought he was. jurrjens has been radically inconsistent. hanson should have 15 wins, but, when bad, he has been really bad. kawakami was the worst starting pitcher the braves have trotted out for more than 10 starts in 20 years. people call him "kamikaze" for god's sake.

chipper stayed healthy.

he did for a while. and then, of course, he didn't. on a great, jeter-esque jump throw against the astros, chipper's old knees couldn't hold him, and he shredded one of them, lost for the season.

those would be have been my three factors necessary for the above deal to manifest into reality, but only one played out. so, what happened?

martin prado and omar infante happened. both all-stars, both hitting over .300, both integral to the braves offensive success when they've had it. they've both been miscast as leadoff hitters, but the braves were presented no other choice when nate mcclouth forgot how to play baseball.

mccann's been mccann. i love mccann.

johnny venters happened. he's finally hit a rookie wall, but, wow, for several months he was unhittable. same with billy wagner. those two have been off the chain.

with the exception of one month and half by troy glaus and one grand slam by derek lee, first base has been a disaster.

the escobar/gonzalez combo at short has been up and down.

heyward is the only constant in outfield. platoon's sometimes "work", but they never thrive. how could they? baseball is a game where you will "fail" 65-75 times out of a 100 at-bats anyway. combine that fact with not getting consistent plate appearances, and you have a platoon. the ole "if you have two quarterbacks, you don't really have one." philosophy can be applied to the braves outfield, minus heyward. if you have four or five outfielders, you don't really have two.

and then there is bobby cox. the "players manager". the winner of all those straight division titles and a world series to boot. the guy that gets thrown out of games a lot.

i admit to being a "what have you done for me lately" sports fan, and here is what i will remember of cox in his last season. not being quick enough to let heyward get healthy. and this week's phillies series.

charlie manuel placed so much importance on this series, he rearranged his rotation to make sure his 1, 2 and 3 starters would face the braves. in doing so, he announced this series makes our regular season a success or a disappointment.

did cox find a way for hudson to pitch last friday against the mets so that he could pitch today against the phillies? nope. could he have rearranged things to get lowe a start too? of course. but he didn't. so, the braves went to war in the two biggest games of their season with a rookie making his first major league start on monday and a rookie making his seventh (i think) start last night. both were seriously outclassed. the braves lost both. thanks, bobby.

and now, the wild card that cox has said over and over and over again that he despises is "our" braves carrot on the stick.

i love the wild card. it allows me a small glimmer of hope that the braves may still wiggle into the playoffs after conceding the division last night. i can't wait to hear cox backtrack over the next few days and give us soundbites like "we just want to be in the dance" and riff on previous wild card winners' success. it will be soaked in irony and it will be beautiful.

here's hoping the braves have a little something left in the tank...,

in spite of their manager.