I started watching football all the way back in 1979, when I was 8 years old, and stuck in a wheelchair for six weeks while recovering from fairly major foot surgery on both feet. I didn’t have a ‘team’ back in those early days. We watched a lot of the Dallas Cowboys (with Ed ‘Too Tall’ Jones, and Randy White and Tony Dorsett) and Los Angeles Rams (with Jack Youngblood and Vince Ferragamo) and San Diego Chargers (with Dan Fouts, Charlie Joiner, Kellen Winslow, Chuck Muncie and Don ‘Air’ Coryell). We watched whatever was on our TV that Sunday.
It wasn’t until the epic playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the San Diego Chargers on January 2, 1982 that I knew I had a ‘team’. The Chargers, with their high flying, fun-to-watch offense, and never-say-die attitude, became my team. I stuck with them for years, even though their success seemed to peak on that glorious Saturday evening in Miami. But even more than a fan of the Chargers, I became a football fan. I loved the game. I loved the strategy. I loved to watch it. I loved to play it, even though I was way too small and too slow and too timid to ever play organized tackle football. I’d spend hours on my front lawn, punting the football as high as I could into the air, catching it myself, and then returning the punt back up the lawn against imaginary defenders, juking and cutting, and leaving them in the dust.
Sometime in high school, I think around 1987, I started watching the Detroit Lions. Pontiac, Michigan was only 75 miles from my house, and because the Lions’ games were on the TV more than just about anyone else, I started tracking their progress. I even sent them plays I designed to see if I couldn’t help them win. I still have a team picture, signed by Coach Wayne Fontes as a thank you for my ‘help’. I can say, without hesitation, that I was a Lions fan well before they every drafted Barry Sanders. But life as a Lions fan did get better once he arrived—at least for a little while.
Back in 1996 I was introduced to the world of fantasy football. I played it for three years in Colorado, then for another four years after I moved to Washington. I won my league once. It’s the only trophy I’ve ever won in anything. I also played in a pick’em pool and did pretty well in that as well.
For one season, back in 1999, I bought season tickets for the Seattle Seahawks when they were still at the Kingdome. The seats were ten rows from the top of the third deck. It was loud and it was crazy. But the Lions were coming to town on opening weekend, and I just had to see Barry Sanders run in real life at least once. Barry retired 3 days after I got my tickets in the mail, so I never saw him on the field, live. Still, that was the game I took my dad to, and was his first-ever pro-football game. The Lions won. I also managed to see the Seahawks play the Raiders on a Monday night that year. The third deck was crazy for that game.
In the years while I was dating my wife-to-be, and in the early years of the marriage, NFL Draft weekend became ‘my special weekend’—like Christmas in April. The year the kids were born, we dressed them up in Lions gear the Saturday of the draft. I was all-in on the NFL. I even had the NFL Sunday Ticket so I could watch my beloved Lions lose, week after week.
Five years ago, my fantasy league fell apart due to a horrible commissioner. I cancelled my DirecTV halfway through the season the Lions went 0-16. I just couldn’t ruin my Sunday afternoons anymore. My wife and I still played the pick’em pool, and we both often placed in the top 10 of about 60 players. But slowly, my interest began to wane.
This year, neither of us wanted to play in the pick’em pool. The amount of football we watch has dropped dramatically. Had I not been on the couch so much due to my GBS, I would have rarely had the TV on on Sundays. The NFL has slowly lost its appeal for me. Last weekend, in a conversation with a friend, he asked who I was rooting for in the Super Bowl, and I had to ask who was playing. That’s a long way from being NFL-obsessed.
So what happened? Was it that I live a much busier life these days? Not this year. I’ve watched a lot of TV, but not much of it was football. Was it because of the huge contracts the players earn and the billions the owners rake in? It’s bothered me before, but it didn’t stop me from watching. I mean, I didn’t go to games as often as some people I know, and I didn’t buy a lot of NFL merchandise, so watching the NFL didn’t cost me a lot of money (except for the stadiums we all pay for through our taxes).
No, I think something in me has changed since I’ve had kids. I’ve come to recognize that it’s what society sees as entertainment that shows where its moral compass is pointed. Football has always been violent, no doubt. Players are dressed up like gladiators, and the hits are glorified by the networks and by the league. Only very recently has the league started to curtail this glorification, and the pushback by football fans, and by the players themselves, has been tremendous. They see it as neutering the game—removing the violence they love. This violence is critical to the definition of who they are. In their view, this violence is needed by men to keep their manhood and needed by boys in order to become men. And even the violence of football isn’t enough. Things like Ultimate Fighting have raised it to a whole, new, shocking level. It’s this yearning for more violence, not less, that’s turned me off.
Yes, pro football players are well paid for the risks they take, and they are adults, and should be able to choose what they do for a living. But the vast majority of football players are kids and college players, who never see a dime for the risks they take. The NCAA makes a butt-load of money off the backs, and the knees and the shoulders and the skulls of the amateur player. Sure, many players get scholarships, but not all, and the injury gods don’t save the catastrophes for those on a full ride.
Proponents of football say it teaches teamwork, sacrifice, unity and self-confidence. I say kids can practice teamwork on science projects, can sacrifice by volunteering for whatever cause they see as important, can show unity by helping their fellow man, and gain self-confidence by working on an artistic skill. Human-kind has enough problems that need solving that we don’t need to create more by finding entertainment in doing violence to each other.
My wife and I have had long talks about this, and it’s highly unlikely we’ll let our son (or daughter) play organized tackle football. Its my job as a parent to protect them as best I can, for as long as I can, and enrolling them into something that showcases violence isn’t something I’m comfortable with.
I realize that there is a certain amount of irony in the fact that while I am condemning football, I write stories that, in some cases, glorify violence. On that front, all I can say, right now, is that fictional violence and real violence are two totally different things. Only when fictional violence encourages real violence do the two equate, and my writing doesn’t (I hope) do that.
So, after this very long, somewhat rambling note, will I be watching the Super Bowl? Probably not. I just don’t appreciate the sport of it enough now to overcome my doubts about what it is doing to society.
But do I have a prediction? Well…um… who’s playing again?
Right.
Um….
Ravens: 26 – 49ers: 24.
…is getting new glasses.
The Old Me has on frames I bought probably ten years ago. The lenses have been updated a few times, but I decided this time it made more sense to get new frames at the same time I was upgrading my prescription (Cost-wise it was $30, but I’d be without my old glasses for a week, which I couldn’t afford).
The New Me is sporting much lighter frames. I have to be careful with these glasses though, as things are much farther away than they appear. The mesh in the window screen in my office appears to be big enough, when viewed with this magnification, to fit a dragon through.
I haven’t figured out yet if the new prescription is working correctly for me or not. My eyes were pretty sore by the end of yesterday, but I spent most of the day on the computer, not reading. I think the new glasses may be better for reading than computer work. I can almost see individual pixels with these things on, and that doesn’t feel quite right. We’ll see. (ahem).
I thought I’d give a little update on life with my iPhone 5 since we took delivery back at the beginning of the month. I’ll preface these thoughts by saying I spend a lot of time at home these days… working, writing, editing. I get out of the house occasionally to do things with the kids, and occasionally for things like Toastmasters, appointments and meetings. But 90% of my time is spent somewhere around our suburban home.
The reason that disclosure is important, is that I am far more likely to be using my iPhone over a wireless connection than LTE. I use it while I’m watching TV to look something up, or to check Twitter while waiting for the kids to finish their baths. I used my old iPhone 3GS all the time for this type of activity, especially during baseball season, from all over my house, and it worked flawlessly.
But when I try to surf on my iPhone 5 via my wireless connection from anywhere but in my office, right next to my wireless router, it’s a crapshoot. 1 bar. Maybe two. If I have my hand anywhere on the phone, I automatically lose at least 1 bar. Often, in my living room, just 30 feet from my desk, my phone will jump back to LTE. And if it doesn’t jump back, the connection just hangs up, and the phone sits there, waiting. The LTE works great, but I don’t think I should have to use it within sight on my freaking router. The case is the same for my wife’s phone. She’s gone as far as to turn wireless off completely on her phone, and does everything via LTE.
I have chatted with Apple support, and followed all of the guidelines on their site (changing the settings on my router, resetting all the devices, etc.) For a day, maybe two, things might have been a bit better, but 90% of the time, I get little-to-no wireless service. I’ve seen on-line that this is a very common problem with the iPhone 5 since the introduction of iOS6. The forum entry regarding this problem is over 100 pages long.
As soon as I get some time, I’ll head up to the Apple store, and have them test it out. No doubt, on an Apple Router, it will work just fine. Netgear (my router manufacturer) is pointing the finger at Apple, and Apple seems to be pointing it right back. Some people have found success by switching their wi-fi network to an unsecured mode, but I’m not willing to do that—not for a phone. I’ll see if getting a different phone fixes anything.
As for the other features of the iPhone, well, I’ve found that since the phone barely works unless I’m at my desk, I don’t use it for much. I check to see if any of my email accounts have mail, and then I go to my desk to read them / respond to them. I barely look at Twitter anymore via my iPhone (the requests time out half the time). I do check LinkedIn, but that works better when I’m on LTE. I’ve spent so little time actually using the phone that I haven’t yet filled up the extra row of icons on my first screen. I still have just 16 apps there.
In short, I have nothing but buyer’s remorse regarding the iPhone 5. If the battery on my old 3GS held a charge a little better, I’d switch back to using it. There’s clearly a problem with iOS6 and iPhone5 when it comes to wireless. Hopefully Apple resolves the problem soon and blasts out a mea culpa to make their customers aware how to resolve it. If I had a chance to do this over again, I would definitely bite the bullet and transition to Android. I stayed with Apple because I wanted a hassle free upgrade. So much for that.
Last Saturday night, I was home, alone, and rather bored. I’ve watched a lot of TV in the past year, and sometimes, you just run out of good stuff to watch. So I saw something on NetFlix Instant watch from my childhood and decided to see if it still held up.
Yes, I tried to watch the first episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century starring Gil Gerard and Erin Gray. I loved this show as a ten year old. I knew the special effects would be a bit campy, but I wasn’t prepared for the dialog and the costumes. I watched about 25 minutes before I turned it off. That brief exposure was probably enough to spoil the memory of that show for the rest of my life.
When I went to bed, I started thinking about other TV shows I loved as a kid that I had best not ever see again, in order to preserve that childhood memory. Here are the top six that I came up with:
Gilligan’s Island: How many people born in the US or Canada between 1950 and 1980 do not know the words to the theme song? I’m betting it’s a pretty low number. And most of us probably have pretty pleasant memories of that show and all of Gilligan’s antics. But I think the guffaws would now be groans, and it might be more than a bit painful to watch.
The Dukes of Hazzard: Some people watched this show for Catherine Bach’s short-shorts. I was a bit too young for that—I watched it for the General Lee. The car stunts were the dialogue, and that car was the star. But there’s just no way that could work for my 41 year old brain. It’s best left stuffed in the back of my memory.
Battle of the Planets: We rushed home from school every day to watch Battle of the Planets / G-Force. I remember being so upset when it was preempted for the 1980 Summer Olympics. I’ve heard of other people going back and watching this series later in life, and having their memories ruined. So far, I’ve been able to keep my will up. I wouldn’t mind if my kids watched it, but I’ll stay out of the room.
CHiPs: For many years, what I knew about California, I learned by watching CHiPs. To this day, when I hear the word Sepulveda, I think of motorcycles in high speed pursuit. But I don’t think the Harleys and the disco and would stand up to a second look these days.
Happy Days: Sunday, Monday, Happy Days… yes, they were. Even with the canned laugh track and corny naiveté, this was one of those show that just stuck with you through the years. But going back, and seeing it again? Why ruin a good thing?
Battlestar Galactica: I actually sat down with my kids a few weeks ago and tried to watch the first episode of BSG (the original). My son couldn’t watch past the first thirty minutes. I tried to watch the end, but I couldn’t. BSG 2004 was just so much better, and so different, that the original just doesn’t stand up. I regret watching that half an episode. I shouldn’t have tainted the memory.
I’m sure that there are lots of other shows that I watched as a kid that I would never watch again—shows I have no desire to watch again (Different Strokes, Growing Pains, etc.) But the shows above are the ones I have good enough memories of, that I might someday be tempted to watch, and I have to steel myself against the desire, in order to prevent the tragedy which is the ruination of a pleasant childhood memory.
What shows from your childhood that you loved do you worry wouldn’t stand up to the memory?
When you have twins, sometime you get twice the sugar.
And oh yeah, the time…it just flies.
I’ve now written six novels. So far, Nowhere Wild is the only one of those six that I’ve even gotten close to attempting to sell, and it took about twenty full edits of that one before I met with any success. And next week, I start another full edit of it (this time with the help of my editor), to fix some major plot issues.
A couple of weeks ago, I got some feedback from my beta readers on one of my other books. It wasn’t pretty. I had a lot more work to do on it than I thought. I had been hoping for a quick, line-edit sort of edit, but parts of it needed a full rewrite. I wasn’t mentally prepared for that, and it sent me into a spiral of doubting my writing and doubting this whole author as a profession thing. The experience was eerily similar to the shock I got while trying to sell the initial version of Nowhere Wild which was about 60000 words longer than it should have been. I found that out at my first PNWA convention, and I didn’t take it too well then, either.
I spent part of last week transcribing the reviewer’s notes into the manuscript, and cleaning up the quick fixes. I could only do a chapter or two at a time, not because there were a lot of notes, but because each note felt like a stake through my heart. Part of me wanted to disregard the worst of the notes. The devil on my shoulder told me this was only the opinion of one reader. He almost convinced me the story was good enough to try to sell. “Besides,” he said, “You’re bound to get bad reviews at some point in the future. You’ve got to learn to deal with them, and not take them so much to heart.”
But the angel on my other shoulder was calling the devil a lazy-assed idiot. If there are things that are wrong with the story, fix them. They’re just words. Fixing it is your job, you stupid writer. Do it! So it takes three weeks longer than you initially planned. Better to go through the pain now, than to have it somehow reach the printed stage, and then get crapped on by all the book reviewers out there.
It took about a week for the angel to win out. After I finished transcribing the notes, I set the book aside for a few days. At first, I didn’t want to do anything writing related. Then, slowly, the story started creeping back into my head, and I wanted to read it from the beginning, and to see if the adjustments weren’t as bad as they first seemed.
So yesterday, I dug back in, from the beginning. I’ve worked through the problems in the first twelve chapters. Fixing the issues there weren’t nearly as bad as I had first thought they would be. Sure, there may be problems I find in the latter half of the novel that dictate I go back to the beginning and fix other things. I may have to rewrite the beginning altogether. Who knows? But on a chapter by chapter basis, the problems didn’t seem so overwhelming. Sometimes writing is like that. Sometimes, changing a few words here, or a paragraph there solves a major problem in a subtle way.
At least that’s what I’m hoping. And that hope has allowed me to sit back down and get started on the work. Looking at the whole manuscript all at once was just too daunting. But one word, one sentence, one paragraph, one chapter at a time, the work gets done.
Everwild is the second book in the Skinjacker Trilogy by Neal Shusterman, following Everlost, which I reviewed in November of 2012. It continues the story of the children who, when they die, are diverted from moving to whatever may come, and are stuck in the purgatory of Everlost.
In Everwild, the battle with the McGill is over, and Mary Hightower has lost her flock. But she is determined to rebuild it, and to get revenge on Nick, the Chocolate Ogre, for causing her downfall. Allie the Outcast finds out why skinjacking is such a rare talent in the Everlost, and Mikey McGill must figure out how to control the uncontrollable—his anger.
As sequels go, Everwild is pretty darn good. The scope of the story grows. The characters are so very identifiable through their unique traits… my wife and I actually discussed that there may be no other book (short of Harry Potter), where the characters are so marked by distinguishing characteristics. Writers really learn to appreciate when another author accomplishes this feat with such a large cast of characters—it’s one of the hardest things to do in writing.
The problems I had with the copy edit of Everlost where non-existent in Everwild. I don’t think I found any glaring errors in this one. Hopefully someone will go back and fix the Kindle version of Everlost.
I still have limits I’ve imposed upon my reading time daily—no more than half an hour at a time, just to allow my eyes to rest as I recover from GBS. But I read the last quarter of this book in a single sitting. I shouldn’t have… I paid the price for it the next day. But at the time, I couldn’t put the book down. So I guess that’s a pretty good sign for the book.
If you’re into YA books, and liked Everlost, you’ll love Everwild. If you were on the fence about getting into this trilogy, I can confirm that it holds up beyond the first book, and I can’t wait to get into the next one.
Not much going on this weekend, but we did have a beautiful sunset. So I thought I’d share.
Joe Beernink 