Garden State Happened!

Not our fields, but you get the idea

Roll Call Garden State! Jive Finally Goes to a Tournament

This past weekend was a momentous occasion for the Jive Turkeys… we got to play Ultimate! Steakfest was cancelled last weekend (which upset me greatly) and Roll Call was cancelled this weekend, but we scrambled and secured a spot at Garden State.

Because winter is evil and has spring tied up in a back room somewhere, the forecast called for lots of rain and cooler temperatures. Didn’t matter! We were gonna play this weekend. Our pool consisted of SUNY-Geneseo, SUNY-Brockport, Ithaca, and Keane State. We knew nothing about any of them, and we hadn’t played outside yet, so, naturally, we were ready to go.

Saturday

A couple cars drove to Simon’s in Philly for Friday night, and early Saturday morning it was time to hike to the fields in Mercer, NJ. The weather that morning was actually pretty nice, mid-fifties with cloud coverage, but no rain. Yet. The first game was against Keane State, and we came out firing. We got an early lead based around chilly offense and the use of our new zone defense. Unlike previous years, we had really been practicing a trap zone, and Garden State was the first time we’d gotten to use it. The zone helped us take half at 7-2, and from then on we switched over to man-to-man defense. We stayed strong offensively, but our man defense was just not as good as the zone, and Keane was able to score a few points. The game finished 13-9, a pretty comfortable first win of the season, but rain had started to fall around half-time. One of the TDs headed our way after the game, and she had nothing but bad news: we had to move fields because Mercer College didn’t want us destroying them further. Fair enough. We had a bye anyway, so that gave us a near 3 hour super-bye!

We had tons of time before our next game, so of course Simon, Zard, and I went to a nearby liquor store. Simon picked up some Bandit (for the weekend!), Zard got some Chuggable Red Franzia, and I decided it was time to face my old demons and drink another fifth of Mead. We didn’t have time for these drinking adventures given that we were playing games that afternoon, so we headed back to the fields to prepare for SUNY-Brockport. They were definitely not a great team, and our zone was pretty dominant against them. The field was fucking awful; we had a softball “infield” in one of the end zones. I use quotations because it was essentially just mud and dead grass that was turning into mud. Fun times indeed. Anyway, we won that game 13-7.

We had another game against Ithaca up next, but conditions were getting even worse than previously thought possible. We bargained for a short game to 7, and got ready for Game 3. Again, we deployed zone defense and got some easy turns. At one point they were just hucking discs from the trap side into our defenders. Suffice to say, those throws were knocked down. We converted these opportunities and got a 4-0 lead. Ithaca did manage to score one point, on a nice layout grab, but that was all they would get. We’d cruise to 6-1 before they eventually said “alright, you guys win” and walked off the field. Really guys? It was just one more point…

Our last game was supposed to be against SUNY-Geneseo, a highly ranked D-III team that we were really hoping to beat. We didn’t even get to play them, however, as Brockport, and the TD, told us that Geneseo had gone home. Apparently they got their 10^th game and decided to book in out of the torrential rainstorm. Cool with us, as that meant we could go home a round early and shower. All this good news proved too good to be true, as Geneseo apparently “returned to the fields” after ever single fucking team left (we were the last team there, so we’d know) and expected to play us. This led to a lengthy email chain where neither us nor Geneseo wanted to forfeit and decided we’d play the game tomorrow morning if the tournament was still on. About that...

We got an email later that night saying that Sunday had to be cancelled because of bad weather and dangerous field conditions. This meant we would not be playing the Geneseo game, and that we could go home that night. Well, most of us were excited about going 3-0 on Saturday, so we stuck around Philly for the night and got drunk. A good time was had by all, especially those who drank the second fifth of Mead. Yes, we drank the first and bought another. Don’t ask me why.

To be perfectly honest, none of us were particularly surprised that Sunday was cancelled. It was great that we got to play three games on Saturday, but the conditions were truly miserable. Garden State represented the first chance for us to play meaningful games this spring, but we can’t qualify for rankings because we haven’t played enough games. Instead, from here we move on to Sectionals, and hopefully Regionals.

It’s been a frustrating spring season for Jive; having multiple tournament cancellations is never easy. I do think, however, that we have a good amount of Ultimate left to play, and that we’ll be ready for the postseason. Maybe we didn’t get to go to all of our planned tournaments, but the season is not over. So now we go into Sectionals ready to play at the high level we know we are capable of. I probably won’t look back on Garden State and say I had “fun” at the tournament, but at least we got to play this weekend. I'll take that moral victory.

Select Highlights

-Marshall’s NBA-inbounds style mark against Keane State

-Salad being the coldest person on Saturday and screaming “I’m an Icicle!” in Nic Cage voice

-Moller believing that Powerade made a flavor that looked and tasted exactly like Franzia Chuggable Red

-Slap getting flattened in the mud

-Simon’s layout D against Ithaca that prompted the Ithaca bro to say “Nice D! But why did you do that?” because laying out meant getting covered in mud. They quit after we scored from this turn.

-Murtha sleeping in a chair

-Bow to the Pharoah

Winter's Bone (or, the State of Jive's Spring Season)

Thursday, March 20, 2014. 

The scientific name for this day is the Spring Equinox, but it is more colloquially known as the first day of spring. Or, maybe this year, the “is winter actually fucking over?” day. While I certainly hope that winter is done and dunmire, I must admit that I am not yet ready to celebrate the arrival of spring. Why? Because of a number: zero.

Zero is the number of games the Jive Turkeys have played this season. Well, not technically. There were those four winter leagues games (4-0), and the games at High Tide (3-5), but when it comes to games pertaining to college rankings and the postseason, Jive has played none. It’s March 20^th, and we’ve not played a single “in-season” game.

Our original plan for the spring season was such: March 1-2 at Bring the Huckus (New Jersey), March 22-23 at Steakfest (Philly), and March 29-30 at Roll Call (Maryland).  Considering we need 10 games to qualify for end of the year rankings, we figured that three tournaments would more than secure us that number. Sound logic, until Winter Storm Gandalf and Co. stepped in and ruined our plan. Long story short, we dropped Huckus because of terrible conditions and changing field locations, and just this past week we received word that Steakfest was cancelled.

The news was crushing. We’ve been looking forward to Steakfest all season: The competition was good, the fields are usually very nice, and it represented our first chance to play as an entire team. If our goal is to finish in the Top-16 for D-III teams and earn another bid to Nationals, Steakfest was the place to start making that push. Naturally, we scrambled and tried to find another tournament for this weekend, but our efforts amounted to nothing more than frantic emails and pissed-off texts. River City Lights (a tournament that I know nothing about, so I will not explain it) had spots open, and was ready to have us attend. We hesitated, making sure that enough people would make the trip to Richmond, which, at close to four hours, was much more of a time commitment than Steakfest. In our hesitation, we lost our spot (to a B-team, because of course) and lost any chance of playing a tournament this weekend. So now we find ourselves on campus this weekend, waiting another week for Roll Call.

I’ve never really dealt with tournament cancellations, but from what has transpired over the past week, I can say that it sucks. I’d like to think that everyone who signed up to go is disappointed, but I won’t put words in people’s mouths. Instead, I’ll speak for the seniors. No matter the level of commitment, this spring seasons matters to the seniors. It is our final season with the team. Our last chance to create something with Jive. Our chance to go out on top. And because of a never-ending winter, we have not been able to do any of these things.

So until next week, I’ll be on campus, instead of playing Ultimate. I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself, but not in the same ways that I could have at a tournament. Furthermore, the cancellation of Steakfest already makes me nervous for Roll Call next weekend, seeing as though their fields are also polo grounds. (Polo grounds do not especially like cheap, college Ultimate teams tearing up their ground. They’d rather high-paying polo players did that.)

Maybe I’m pessimistic. Maybe I’m just bitter about Steakfest being cancelled. Or maybe I see my last season with this team slipping away, with none of us able to do anything about it. We’ll play Ultimate this spring; I’m certain of that. But how much of it will make me feel accomplished and how much of it will make me ask “what if?” Guess we’ll find out next month.

A Move in Books

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life." - Mark Twain

Almost a year and a half ago I moved from small-town Staunton up to Alexandria on the periphery of DC. One of the many things that changed was that I started doing something I hadn't done with regularity since my early teens: read.

Now I've always loved reading and it's not like I ever stopped reading, it's just something that I did less of in high school and then very little of in college. Obviously I read a ton for class while in school (shoutout to Professor Pinsker) but I did little to no reading for my own pleasure. Being raised mostly without TV (and completely without video games) I spent a lot of time reading and I probably have more of an attachment to books than many folks in my generation.

Starting a job in the big city was an abrupt change and one of the major changes was the commute, which continues to reign as the bane of my existence. I could write pages about how much I hate my commute, but I'll boil it down to the (only?) positive: I have hours a day with nothing to do but read. Those sleepy mornings and the long, dark metro rides home are mostly spent reading whatever I can find in the apartment or at the library. I had forgotten how caught up I can get in a good mystery, whether fiction or non, or how easily I can slip into a fantasy world of magic or spaceships.

I personally tend to look for new suggestions for reading material on blogs or "best of" lists so I figured I would share what I've enjoyed over the last 18 months or so and hopefully someone else reading this list will also be looking for something new and check it out. Please feel free to add any comments or suggestions.

These are some of the books that I've read in the last year or so that really stood out to me, and things I definitely recommend checking out.


The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi (2009)
I'm pretty picky about my sci-fi, perhaps from a lifetime of being a huge Star Wars nerd/snob/defender, but I was blown away by this Hugo and Nebula award winner from 2010. Set in 23rd century Thailand, global warming has raised the tides and tensions between racial and social castes. Calories have become currency and Anderson Lake is the agent of an economic corporation that has sent him on a dangerous and mysterious mission. His venture brings him into contact with Emiko, one of the New People, a bioengineered but now outdated servant, cast aside to the cruel slums of Bangkok. Together they witness the fall and rise of an empire while international corporations, terrorists, and corrupt factions claw for power in the streets of Bangkok, fighting not just to survive but to control the survival of others. One of the best sci-fi books I've ever read and I absolutely recommend it whether you're a fan of the genre or not.

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood
James Gleick (2011)
I had no idea what to expect when I started this book, and it turned out to be one of the more interesting things I've ever read. Gleick leads the reader on a study of information theory and its genesis and concepts that spans from African drum communications to Wikipedia; which he terms a modern-day Library of Babel. The Information explores topics from the origins of spoken and written language to the digitization and compression of data which has become an essential component of the modern world. Information theory is something I can honestly say I'd never thought about in depth or intentionally, but Gleick engages the reader and challenges you to assess how and why you know facts or ideas. I've heard him referred to as a "science writer," and some chapters do run a little heavy on scientific or mathematical theory, but overall the book is very readable. It's an extremely interesting text and I feel like I could presumptively say that it will make you think a little differently about the world around you.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
Richard Rhodes (1986)
When my Dad responded to my interest in the Manhattan Project by providing me with this tome by Richard Rhodes, some quick research revealed to be the authoritative history on the subject. It's 880 pages, but it garnered a Pulitzer and a National Book Award and is must-read for any history buff. The book takes a while to get to the Manhattan Project and the big explosions we all learned about in middle school, filling the first oh-so-many pages with an immensely detailed account of the persons and events responsible for the discovery of radiation and its powers. Despite being a bit dense with chemistry and physics at points, Rhodes binds science and world events together with the personas he provides. By the time you finish the book you're as apt to remember these mathematicians and physicists for their interest in hiking or their part in a play as well as you do for their great scientific accomplishments. It's not for everyone, simply based on length and academic material alone, but if you're interested in the subject area the book is fantastic and the accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end are incredible.

The People Who Eat Darkness
Richard Lloyd Parry (2010)
When Lucie Blackman disappeared from Tokyo in the summer of 2000, the British blonde and her family became the focus of an international media storm. Parry, a foreign correspondant in Japan at the time, recalls a bizarre and riveting saga almost stranger than fiction that winds through the Japanese social strata and the criminal investigation. I knew nothing about the case before I picked the book up and I struggled to resist the revealing powers of Google after I quickly got caught up in the building drama of Parry's journalistic style. The People Who Eat Darkness is a fascinating look at Japanese culture and the unraveling of the Blackman mystery is the stuff of nightmares. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a gripping read.

The Secret History
Donna Tartt (1992)
Described as more of a whydunit than a whodunit, Tartt's first novel is probably my favorite thing I've read in the last year. I can't say I've been more caught up in a book in quite a while. The story takes place at an elite private college in Vermont, following the story of blue-collar Richard Papen as he gets sucked into the secretive and enthralling Classics program. The other class members are Henry, Bunny, Francis, Camilla, and Charles. We know from the outset of the book who dies and and how he dies, but the journey to and from that point is astonishingly well written. Much like Classics professor Julian Morrow's students, the reader is entranced, bound to Richard's story and his inevitable descent into misery. It's not a light-hearted read, but it is one of the more memorable and riveting books I've picked up in a while; I recommend you do the same.

Sabriel
Garth Nix (1995)
This is sort of a cheat, because I read this book in high school and rediscovered it the summer after I graduated college. Set in the fantastical Old Kingdom, Sabriel's eponymous protagonist is a young girl who finds herself unexpectedly pressed into her birthright as Abhorsen (one who puts the dead to rest). It's too hard to describe the whole world that Nix has created in just a couple sentences, but the gist of Sabriel's calling is to serve as a necromancer who combats those who would raise or draw power from the dead. Sabriel is the first in a trilogy, and I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and rereading the set. The way that Nix has woven a world full of magic, death, and history are unique among other fantasy concepts I have come across, and I fully endorse Sabriel as a fun, interesting read for any fantasy fans out there.

The Round House
Louise Erdrich (2012)
I must say that I've rarely been as gripped by a book as I was by Louise Erdrich's excellent The Round House. Erdrich draws from her Ojibwe heritage to tell the coming-of-age story of a teenaged boy, Joe, whose life on the reservation is shattered by his mother's rape. His mother survives physically but is psychologically shattered and refuses to speak of the attack, leading Joe and his father to try to identify the mysterious man who has traumatized their family. There is quite a bit of detective story mystery and intrigue mixed but in the end what gives the novel so much emotional clout is Joe's story. He recounts everything from casual boob jokes and sex stipulations with his friends to the infectious grief spreading from behind his mother's perpetually closed door. Told from Joe's grown-up perspective, his narrative often seems shrouded in a veil of guilt and regret that hangs heavier some times than others. Simply saying that The Round House is about a boy who was forced to grow up too fast, or a boy on a detective mission would be doing the astonishing power of the book a disservice.

The Golden Spruce
John Vaillant (2005)
This was the very first thing I read upon reaching Alexandria, at my Mom's recommendation, and all I can say is that I regret not finding it sooner. What begins as a mystery surrounding an abandoned kayak in British Columbia turns into a flowing story about the Pacific Northwest's history and in particular, the history of its trees. This long, sad story ranges from Native American totem poles to the unavoidably scathing record of the logging industry's devastation of coastal North America. Ultimately it culminates with the tale of one man and one very special environmental anomaly: a golden spruce. Like in his previous and also excellent The Tiger, Vaillant writes beautifully and presents a fascinating microhistory that left me with a powerful desire to travel to the places painted on his pages, something I consider a high compliment.

American Gods
Neil Gaiman (2011 "Author's Preferred Text")
I had never read any Neil Gaiman before the much-lauded American Gods, but it was completely deserving of the hype (Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards among others). I'm not really sure how to begin explaining what this book is about or how far beyond what I expected it went. NY Times reviewer Kera Bolonik referred to it as "noirish sci-fi road trip novel," and I guess that's a good place to start. The novel begins with our large, quiet, prestidigitorial protagonist Shadow being released from jail a day early because his wife has died. The lost and grieving Shadow is tracked and recruited by a mysterious Mr. Wednesday to accompany him as an assistant. We soon discover that Mr. Wednesday is far more than he seems and that in fact very little is as it seems. Shadow learns that gods exist in America and they are pining, waning, and scheming to avoid the only true end for a God: being forgotten. The novel is a myriad of mythologies, dreamscapes, and light societal commentaries blended into a fantastic adventure. I give Mr. Gaiman boatloads of credit for coming up with such an original, unique concept and producing such an interesting book.

Others of Note:

Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon (1995) and Red Dragon, Thomas Harris (1981) - very good books, but also cases where the movie is actually better than the book (re: Fight Club).

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Mary Roach (2004) - really, really interesting if you can stomach it.

Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy (1985) - it wasn't as great as I expected, but still a masterpiece and something that should be on more reading lists.