Category Archives: Muddled Musings

The Art of Owning It (First Draft)

 

 

It’s time to reinstate the draft.

Not the traditional one, where we send kids to die in the name of suchandsuch in the middle of Whogivesafuckistan.

Instead, the draft needs to reverse polarities; people would be drafted into political office.

Think about it. You would decimate PACs, which should be as illegal as yellow-cake uranium. Lobbyists wouldn’t know where to draw their crosshairs — or even whether a draftee could be bought. Hell, honest people would dread it like jury duty. Even better.

Joe Moglia gave me the idea. Joe Moglia is the head football coach of the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers, a little team tucked in a little school tucked in little Conway, South Carolina.

I’ve been to Conway. When the water isn’t in the humid humid air, it’s flooding your basement. Rocks don’t like to live in Conway. Unknown

The Chanticleers were a mediocre team at best. The school didn’t have a football team until 2003. Its stadium, fully packed, seats only 9,200, less than half many Texas high schools.

But the Chanticleers (a Middle English word meaning roosters) 200px-CoastalCarolinaChanticleershad heart. Made the playoffs a few times, and managed a so-so 4-5 record — not that the tiny conference is even eligible for the major Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) playoffs.

Then along came Joe.

Joe didn’t live and die by sports. In fact, he spent 17 years moonlighting in banking while he knocked around small southern schools, which weren’t quite used to — or didn’t quite believe in — life outside a gridiron.

Joe does. Every Wednesday during the season is “No Football Wednesday,” in which Moglia talks to players about life during and after sports: how to manage your money; find a job; deal with predators.

He has signs that dot the arena: BAM. It’s an acronym for Be A Man. But Moglia told a local news crew that BAM wasn’t about hitting harder, running faster or barking louder. “It’s about taking a stand, respecting the other guy’s and admitting when you’re wrong,” he said.

In other words, Moglia wants his players to own it.

How difficult, that lesson must be. We’ve mistaken an apology for owning our part, contrition for correction. Sorry isn’t the final word on owning it. It’s the first word of a thoughtful  acceptance speech. Do pollsters really wonder why Donald Trump and Ben Carson lead GOP polls? They may be nuts, but at least they own their insanity like crucifixes.

But like I said, kids at Coastal have heart, and they heard Moglia. For three years running, the Chanticleers have been Big South Conference champs. Their winning percentage is 76%. Next year, the FBS will promote Coastal Carolina to the big-league Sun Belt Conference, meaning, one day, the roosters could crow about a national championship.

Who would deem it impossible, especially for Moglia? One day, you’re a father of four, holding two jobs to make ends meet. The next, you’re on ESPN’s Sportscenter highlight reel.

Bam.

Let’s start that draft list with M’s…

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Gristle or Treat!

 

Aside from mom and sis, there’s little I miss about the East Coast since leaving there 15 years ago.

Space  and free time are as rare as plutonium. There’s a palpable tension and gruffness. East Coasters love to bitch about how out of touch California is with real Americans. But I defy anyone to find a state more American than California; after all, 1 out of every 8 Americans chooses to live here.

And the weather there is miserable. Trade winds may blow West to East, but hurricane winds blow in the opposite direction, straight to the East Coast. A Bronx Cheer from Mother Nature.

But the East Coast does get one thing right: All Hallows Eve. The packed-in housing is a trick-or-treaters delight. And, if it doesn’t rain, the fall air feels good when you’re wearing a latex head. I love latex heads.

I have a few. Ultraman. A mentally troubled clown. clown The Joker.

My favorite, though, is headless. Just a latex mask of a neck stump — with the decapitated head attached to a fake rubber hand so you can put your own inside the skull and move the mouth. My ex-wife and I would unpack it every October for our haunted house party, which drew friends from out of state and costumed kids, literally, by the hundreds to our front door. denverrocks

spencenipsscottsmooch

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But we had to tone it down after one child nearly died of fright. Well, that and blunt force trauma.

It was Halloween 1998, and Spencer flew in for the annual ritual. That year, he decided to don a creepy skeleton costume and hide behind the side rails of our front porch to “greet” unsuspecting visitors. Half of which were moms, who apparently thought it hilarious to visit a haunted house that could cause their children to lose control of the bladders or bowels.

That year was our biggest Halloween turnout. At least 250 kids (we counted the scant leftover candy). At least a dozen moms drove kids from their neighborhoods to our house, which was sprinkled with Bates Motel signs, tombstones and severed limbs, all blinking and rotting to Halloween sound effects of creaks and moans and screams. I would have made a great dad.

As the night wound down, a station wagon pulled to our front curb. I peeked through the inconspicuous slits in the collar bone to find a black woman, perhaps in her mid-30’s, pulling up with her daughter, about six and in a princess costume,  in the back seat. DSCN0290

The mother hopped out, ran back to open her daughter’s door. But the girl, seeing the grisly scene, shook her head. No way she’s risking life and limb for a goddamn mini Baby Ruth.

But mom wasn’t having it. She opened the door and physically pulled her from the car, carrying her to the foot of the porch staircase. The girl again shook her head, but mom assured everything would be all right, and pushed her toward the nine steps.

Reluctantly, girl ascended. I whispered to Spencer to not pop out from the side, that this girl was truly unnerved. She took each step deliberately, as one would take up an executioner’s gallows. When she emerged on the porch, she stretched her arm as f a r o u t as she could for the candy bowl, as if she were touching a boy with cooties. I didn’t even make the the mouth move. Just a bloody head in a candy bowl, surely a restrained touch. Like I said, dad material.

No matter. Once she got the candy bar, girl turned and ran. Fast. And leapt from the top stair. Far. Hollywood stuntmen wouldn’t make that leap without protective gear and a padded floor.

Not Princess Stuntgirl. She took off and was caught at the foot of the steps by her mom, who was in a fit of hysterical laughter. I pulled off the mask and ran to the porch edge.

“Sorry!” I called out to the woman. “Don’t worry!” the mom responded, still chuckling as she carried the girl back to the car, though she need not have carried, the girl clutched so. “She’s a little scaredy cat.”

The houses here in L.A. are too spread out to score much of a payday on Halloween. I get a dozen kids, at most. Still, I love the night, and will put the dogs in costume. Esme gets a faux leather jacket that makes her look like a gangster (or that she’s into sadomachism). Teddy gets a dunce cap.

But I always put a “Beware of Dog” sign out, so that, instead of coming to the door, kids ring the doorbell, safe outside the gated front entrance.

I wouldn’t want kids losing their heads.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f00DhPY5W-U

 

 

 

 

Breaking Small (or The Revenge of the Tighty Whities)

 

It’s been a rough year for Breaking Bad junkies.

First, we had to go cold turkey when the finest drama on television concluded its remarkable run. Then Aaron Paul starred in the abysmal Need for Speed. Bryan Cranston took a forgettable role in Godzilla (though he redeems himself playing a legendary screenwriter in Trumbo). And we won’t discuss  Metastasis, the Spanish-language remake of the series that turned out muy mal.

METASTASIS spa

Even the Vince Gilligan-helmed Better Call Saul, the prequel to Breaking Bad, lacks the tension (though not the dark absurdity) of its source material. Besides, Season Two doesn’t even begin until 2016.

But like a rush of Blue Meth to the market, a show has emerged from BB‘s ashes that not only takes its cues from the dusty drama; it eerily parallels the spectacled odyssey of Walter White.

Say hello to Fargo, Season Two.

Violent, gory and grinning with a wicked sense of humor, Fargo has established itself as the finest crime drama on television. And by avoiding the sophomore jinx that beset shows like The Killing and True Detective, Fargo towers as TV’s best “anthology” series, in which plots and, sometimes, entire casts, reset with each new season.

Such was the challenge of Fargo, which won 10 Emmys last year. But instead of mimicking the first season, which was really an homage to all Coen Brothers films (Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo is a reinvention of No Country for Old Men‘s Anton Chigurh) antonchigurh, Fargo instead tips its cap to something just as sinister, but more New Mexico-centric.

Consider:

  • http://childpsychiatryassociates.com/treatment-team/kathleen-morgan/kathleen_morgan-600/ A touch of suburban evil. A mild-mannered protagonist (Jesse Plemons) tries to live a quiet, domestic life, but finds he has a knack for the macabre (even in tighty whities). Unlike Walter White’s “molecular dissolution” of victims, Ed Blomquist chooses to turn the unfortunate into hamburger. overalls
  • midships A son struggling with physical disability: Walter White Jr. (R.J. Mitte) suffered from cerebral palsy; in Fargo, young Charlie Gerhardt (Allan Dobrescu) copes with a crippling, as-yet-unnamed condition that resembles muscular dystrophy. cerebralpalsy charlie
  • A Bob Odenkirk past. He was a founding father of Breaking Bad and the first Fargo, playing a deputy in 10 episodes. saul
  • Location as character. New Mexico played as big a role as any character in Breaking Bad, much like Minnesota deserves a screen credit in Fargo.
  • The death bell. Breaking Bad‘s uncle Hector rang a bell whenever hell broke loose, much like the bell that scores Fargo‘s soundtrack when a body winds up metabolically challenged. bell

 

Of course, Fargo need only sustain itself for one season, requiring just a sixth of Breaking Bad‘s endurance record. And there’s always the risk of the show running out of gas by season’s finale.

But ask any diehard Breaker if they’d take even a nostalgic sliver of the crime classic’s heyday, and you’ll get a resounding, uniform response. toddnjesse

Ding ding.