We can watch the State of the Union address on 15 different television networks. Sadly, I don't think I can share this fact on 15 different social networks.
One of the many amazing things about ConFusion was that, despite the fact there were 762 authors in attendance, it never felt like there was a huge "pros vs. fans" divide. I've been at cons where it feels like the pros build their little fort and hang out there, and only reluctantly leave to do panels or signings.
I think we're incredibly lucky that, as much as we joke about "the cool kids' table", an overwhelming percentage of our authors - both regulars and newcomers - are so accessible.
(I mean, Jay Lake was so accessible that I managed to sit next to him at dinner on Saturday night without realizing who he was. *blush*)
It strikes me as sad when people think that commercial success in their field makes them superior to the people who are paying for their books or tickets to see them play. Without your fans, you don't have a career.
Not only do the authors who come to 'Fusion seem to understand that, I think that a lot of them don't even see a distinction between the two groups. They are fans even before they are "pros."
(That might be my own experience talking, though. I'm also a professional writer, albeit in a different field, and I've somehow accumulated almost 2,500 Twitter followers. Metrics like Klout say that I'm very influential online, and there are actually people who have seemed excited to meet me. None of that makes any sense to me. I just write about sports and try to be amusing online. I'm so thrilled when someone wants to meet me that I bring them ice cream. I was asked for an autograph once (exactly once) and I tried to talk the woman out of it.)
Anyway, as always, I digress. Whatever the reason, we have a wonderful group of people who come to ConFusion every year, and it doesn't matter what any of them do for a living.
I think we're incredibly lucky that, as much as we joke about "the cool kids' table", an overwhelming percentage of our authors - both regulars and newcomers - are so accessible.
(I mean, Jay Lake was so accessible that I managed to sit next to him at dinner on Saturday night without realizing who he was. *blush*)
It strikes me as sad when people think that commercial success in their field makes them superior to the people who are paying for their books or tickets to see them play. Without your fans, you don't have a career.
Not only do the authors who come to 'Fusion seem to understand that, I think that a lot of them don't even see a distinction between the two groups. They are fans even before they are "pros."
(That might be my own experience talking, though. I'm also a professional writer, albeit in a different field, and I've somehow accumulated almost 2,500 Twitter followers. Metrics like Klout say that I'm very influential online, and there are actually people who have seemed excited to meet me. None of that makes any sense to me. I just write about sports and try to be amusing online. I'm so thrilled when someone wants to meet me that I bring them ice cream. I was asked for an autograph once (exactly once) and I tried to talk the woman out of it.)
Anyway, as always, I digress. Whatever the reason, we have a wonderful group of people who come to ConFusion every year, and it doesn't matter what any of them do for a living.
How do you balance the good and bad of a life?
Joe Paterno died this weekend at the age of 85. He was the head football coach at Penn State for *46* years. In that time, his players had a graduation rate of over 90%. That's almost a thousand young men that he helped get a college degree, most of whom never came close to playing in the NFL.
Ask those players, or the men that played or coached against him, or the media members that covered him, or the endless charities that he helped, and you would have had a very hard time finding a single person that would have said a bad word about him. The word you would have heard most often? "Class."
Three months ago, that would have been the entire tone of his obituary. A giant of the sports world, and a great person.
Obviously, that all changed in November with the breaking of the Jerry Sandusky story. In 2002, a graduate assistant coach told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky, a former assistant coach under Paterno, anally raping a young boy in the football team's shower facilities. Paterno reported the allegations to Tim Curley, the school's athletic director, and, more importantly, to Gary Schultz's, Penn State's then-VP of director and finance. The reason that was important is that one of Schultz's duties was overseeing the Penn State University Police Department.
Paterno, Curley and Schultz all knew that Sandusky had been investigated in 1998 for child abuse, but charges hadn't been filed. Despite that, Schultz, for reasons that he will have to live with for the rest of his life, did not take the matter to the campus police. He did not inform any law-enforcement agency at all. No investigation took place until several years later, when a different victim of Sandusky's came forward. Last November, a grand jury indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of sexual abuse. Curley and Schultz were also indicted for perjury and failure to report child abuse.
Curley, Schultz, Paterno and PSU president Graham Spanier all lost their jobs in the aftermath of the grand-jury indictments. Paterno, though, was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. He had done what he was required to do by law - he had informed his superiors, including the university official who oversaw the campus police.
However, the fact remains that Paterno - one of the most powerful people on the Penn State campus - made no effort to stop the cover-up of Sandusky's crimes. Because of that, Sandusky remained free for another nine years and other victims have come forward to say that he sexually abused them between the 2002 incident and 2009.
Joe Paterno was 76 years old when these allegations were brought to his attention. He has said in recent interviews that he had never been faced with a situation like that, and he didn't know what to do. Sandusky wasn't working for the football team in 2002 - he had conveniently retired after the 1998 investigation - and Paterno says he thought he had done the right thing by telling the people above him on the chain of command.
In 1988, a couple of us at the Oakland University school paper decided we wanted to adopt a college football team. It was just a silly thing - OU didn't have a team, and we wanted to cover one. We picked Penn State, because we didn't want a Big Ten school (this was long before they joined the conference) and because they had a winning tradition and a squeaky-clean reputation.
Since then, through my work with AP, I've interviewed Paterno a few times, but always after games, never in any in-depth situations. I always admired the way he handled himself, his players and his program, but I'm not going to pretend that I knew him at all.
For 23 years, everything people had told me about him made it impossible to believe that he would cover up a crime like this. He cared too much about people.
But he knew Sandusky, knew there were previous allegations, had spoken to an eyewitness, and sat by when the 2002 allegations were covered up. At any point between 2002 and 2008, he could have ended the entire cover-up with one phone call to any of hundreds of reporters. He didn't. When the investigation finally began, he cooperated - the reason he wasn't indicted - but he could have made that happen years before, and kept Sandusky away from so many other kids.
Joe Paterno did a lot of wonderful things for a lot of people - and I'm not at all talking about his wins and losses on the football field. I truly believe he was a good man who cared deeply about helping people.
But at one crucial time in his life, he didn't do the right thing. For whatever reason, he let Jerry Sandusky walk away from a horrible crime, and gave him several more years of freedom to abuse more children. Those victims, and no one knows exactly how many there have been, can never regain what Sandusky took from them.
I don't know you balance this. It obviously becomes a huge part of his legacy, but does it become all of it? Does the inaction of an old man destroy everything good had done until that decision?
Joe Paterno never wanted to stoop coaching, because he didn't want to end up like Bear Bryant, who died a couple weeks after retiring at the end of a long coaching career. Sadly, he not only ended up the same way - he was fired on Nov. 9 and died on Jan. 22 - he saw his life's work eternally tarnished in the process.
He wasn't 100% saint and he wasn't 100% sinner. It takes a much wiser man than I to figure where he belongs on that scale.
Joe Paterno died this weekend at the age of 85. He was the head football coach at Penn State for *46* years. In that time, his players had a graduation rate of over 90%. That's almost a thousand young men that he helped get a college degree, most of whom never came close to playing in the NFL.
Ask those players, or the men that played or coached against him, or the media members that covered him, or the endless charities that he helped, and you would have had a very hard time finding a single person that would have said a bad word about him. The word you would have heard most often? "Class."
Three months ago, that would have been the entire tone of his obituary. A giant of the sports world, and a great person.
Obviously, that all changed in November with the breaking of the Jerry Sandusky story. In 2002, a graduate assistant coach told Paterno that he had seen Sandusky, a former assistant coach under Paterno, anally raping a young boy in the football team's shower facilities. Paterno reported the allegations to Tim Curley, the school's athletic director, and, more importantly, to Gary Schultz's, Penn State's then-VP of director and finance. The reason that was important is that one of Schultz's duties was overseeing the Penn State University Police Department.
Paterno, Curley and Schultz all knew that Sandusky had been investigated in 1998 for child abuse, but charges hadn't been filed. Despite that, Schultz, for reasons that he will have to live with for the rest of his life, did not take the matter to the campus police. He did not inform any law-enforcement agency at all. No investigation took place until several years later, when a different victim of Sandusky's came forward. Last November, a grand jury indicted Sandusky on 40 counts of sexual abuse. Curley and Schultz were also indicted for perjury and failure to report child abuse.
Curley, Schultz, Paterno and PSU president Graham Spanier all lost their jobs in the aftermath of the grand-jury indictments. Paterno, though, was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. He had done what he was required to do by law - he had informed his superiors, including the university official who oversaw the campus police.
However, the fact remains that Paterno - one of the most powerful people on the Penn State campus - made no effort to stop the cover-up of Sandusky's crimes. Because of that, Sandusky remained free for another nine years and other victims have come forward to say that he sexually abused them between the 2002 incident and 2009.
Joe Paterno was 76 years old when these allegations were brought to his attention. He has said in recent interviews that he had never been faced with a situation like that, and he didn't know what to do. Sandusky wasn't working for the football team in 2002 - he had conveniently retired after the 1998 investigation - and Paterno says he thought he had done the right thing by telling the people above him on the chain of command.
In 1988, a couple of us at the Oakland University school paper decided we wanted to adopt a college football team. It was just a silly thing - OU didn't have a team, and we wanted to cover one. We picked Penn State, because we didn't want a Big Ten school (this was long before they joined the conference) and because they had a winning tradition and a squeaky-clean reputation.
Since then, through my work with AP, I've interviewed Paterno a few times, but always after games, never in any in-depth situations. I always admired the way he handled himself, his players and his program, but I'm not going to pretend that I knew him at all.
For 23 years, everything people had told me about him made it impossible to believe that he would cover up a crime like this. He cared too much about people.
But he knew Sandusky, knew there were previous allegations, had spoken to an eyewitness, and sat by when the 2002 allegations were covered up. At any point between 2002 and 2008, he could have ended the entire cover-up with one phone call to any of hundreds of reporters. He didn't. When the investigation finally began, he cooperated - the reason he wasn't indicted - but he could have made that happen years before, and kept Sandusky away from so many other kids.
Joe Paterno did a lot of wonderful things for a lot of people - and I'm not at all talking about his wins and losses on the football field. I truly believe he was a good man who cared deeply about helping people.
But at one crucial time in his life, he didn't do the right thing. For whatever reason, he let Jerry Sandusky walk away from a horrible crime, and gave him several more years of freedom to abuse more children. Those victims, and no one knows exactly how many there have been, can never regain what Sandusky took from them.
I don't know you balance this. It obviously becomes a huge part of his legacy, but does it become all of it? Does the inaction of an old man destroy everything good had done until that decision?
Joe Paterno never wanted to stoop coaching, because he didn't want to end up like Bear Bryant, who died a couple weeks after retiring at the end of a long coaching career. Sadly, he not only ended up the same way - he was fired on Nov. 9 and died on Jan. 22 - he saw his life's work eternally tarnished in the process.
He wasn't 100% saint and he wasn't 100% sinner. It takes a much wiser man than I to figure where he belongs on that scale.
OK, I'm up to nine books in 13 days. Off my pace of 366 (forgot about Leap Day in the original post) but still on pace for 253. That would be a record.
Not going to make it to 253, though. First off, I don't intend to be sick for all of 2012. I've spent most of the year - both weeks - fighting my annual chest cold/bronchitis. I haven't missed any work - I've actually worked quite a lot - but I've also spent a lot of time lying around, trying to get rid of this. A Kindle Fire turns out to be perfect for that, and lots of driving has also meant plenty of time to listen to Audible books. That's why, of the nine books I've read this year, only one of them was printed on paper.
Also, I have Pat Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind coming up, and even if I stayed in my sickbed, I'm not blowing through that puppy in a day or two.
[Unknown LJ tag]
#7: First Through Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri. This is the actual brick-and-mortar book. (Not actual brick-and-mortar.) I bought it at the Grand Canyon gift shop, choosing it over a book by the same author listing all the people that have died in the Grand Canyon, including how it happened. That turned out to be a lucky break, since my brother already had that one. It would have been on the 2010 list. Let's just say I'm glad I read it after we stood on the canyon rim.
This book, though, combines the journeys and letters of several of the men who took part in John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers. They started in Wyoming and finished in Baja California. This was a group of 10 (down to six by the end) Civil War veterans who weren't particularly well trained for this, weren't using suitable boats and didn't get along all that well. Fascinating book, and I'd love to travel along the Colorado some day, but not on that trip with those guys.
#8: So Paddy Got Up, edited by Andrew Mangan. An anthology of short pieces about Arsenal, the English footballing giants that play in North London. My favorite English soccer team is Sheffield Wednesday, but they are currently in the third tier of the sport, thanks to some horrible financial and strategic mismanagement, so I follow Arsenal. Yes, despite the 1993 FA Cup final. I'm still bitter about that, thank you very much. Reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby got me interested in Arsenal, and Alan Davies' hysterical Arsenal podcast keeps me following along. Mr. Davies is best known as Stephen Fry's constant foil on QI.
Anyway, this is a book written by journalists, authors and bloggers. About Arsenal. If you like Arsenal, it is very good. If you don't, I wouldn't suggest it.
#9: Rookie by Scott Sigler. The story of 19-year-old prodigy quarterback Quentin Barnes and his struggles to make it in the Galactic Football League. Raised in a religion that believes every non-human species is the spawn of Satan (literally), our plucky 7-foot, 360-pound hero (football players have gotten REALLY big by 2682) has to adjust to playing with and against aliens with 25-foot vertical leaps, 2.8 times in the 40 and 700 pounds of bulk. Luckily, not all at once. Oh, and the teams are used as smuggling vehicles for organized crime.
This sounds utterly ridiculous, but it isn't. Anyone that knows me knows that I can not stand fiction that does sports badly. The second-biggest flaw in the Harry Potter books, behind JKR desperately needing an editor that would point out the times she wrote 200 pages in which nothing happened, is Quidditch. The rules don't make any sense and the charity book that she wrote about the history of the sport is so embarrassingly bad that I would have returned it - I've never returned a book unless I got two copies - if the proceeds hadn't been going to charity.
I understand that not everyone loves sports, or knows as much about sports as I do. That's been my job for the last 22 years. But if you don't understand them, don't write about them. You wouldn't put chemistry scenes in a book if you didn't know anything about chemistry, and you wouldn't put graphic sex scenes in a novel if you were a virgin. Write what you know.
Scott Sigler knows football.
He had to advance the sport 700 years into the future, add alien races with superhuman abilities, and keep the whole thing balanced enough that the game can have the same rules and the same outcomes. That's not easy - the players with the 25-foot vertical leaps alone change the sport into a 3D game - but I'll be damned if he didn't pull it off without a single blunder. If there's a single notable football mistake in there, I didn't catch it, and I tend to catch these things. Ask my wife, who has had to suffer through hours of TV dramas with sports episodes.
(He's also a huge Lions fan, although I didn't learn that until I followed him on Twitter.)
I know I'm gushing - this is an entertaining YA novel, but it isn't the start of the next Foundation series - but it is so refreshing to see someone actually put some effort into sports fiction. I thought I was going to be doomed to wait for![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1)
justinelavaworm's WNBA novel.
Not going to make it to 253, though. First off, I don't intend to be sick for all of 2012. I've spent most of the year - both weeks - fighting my annual chest cold/bronchitis. I haven't missed any work - I've actually worked quite a lot - but I've also spent a lot of time lying around, trying to get rid of this. A Kindle Fire turns out to be perfect for that, and lots of driving has also meant plenty of time to listen to Audible books. That's why, of the nine books I've read this year, only one of them was printed on paper.
Also, I have Pat Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind coming up, and even if I stayed in my sickbed, I'm not blowing through that puppy in a day or two.
[Unknown LJ tag]
#7: First Through Grand Canyon by Michael P. Ghiglieri. This is the actual brick-and-mortar book. (Not actual brick-and-mortar.) I bought it at the Grand Canyon gift shop, choosing it over a book by the same author listing all the people that have died in the Grand Canyon, including how it happened. That turned out to be a lucky break, since my brother already had that one. It would have been on the 2010 list. Let's just say I'm glad I read it after we stood on the canyon rim.
This book, though, combines the journeys and letters of several of the men who took part in John Wesley Powell's expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers. They started in Wyoming and finished in Baja California. This was a group of 10 (down to six by the end) Civil War veterans who weren't particularly well trained for this, weren't using suitable boats and didn't get along all that well. Fascinating book, and I'd love to travel along the Colorado some day, but not on that trip with those guys.
#8: So Paddy Got Up, edited by Andrew Mangan. An anthology of short pieces about Arsenal, the English footballing giants that play in North London. My favorite English soccer team is Sheffield Wednesday, but they are currently in the third tier of the sport, thanks to some horrible financial and strategic mismanagement, so I follow Arsenal. Yes, despite the 1993 FA Cup final. I'm still bitter about that, thank you very much. Reading Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby got me interested in Arsenal, and Alan Davies' hysterical Arsenal podcast keeps me following along. Mr. Davies is best known as Stephen Fry's constant foil on QI.
Anyway, this is a book written by journalists, authors and bloggers. About Arsenal. If you like Arsenal, it is very good. If you don't, I wouldn't suggest it.
#9: Rookie by Scott Sigler. The story of 19-year-old prodigy quarterback Quentin Barnes and his struggles to make it in the Galactic Football League. Raised in a religion that believes every non-human species is the spawn of Satan (literally), our plucky 7-foot, 360-pound hero (football players have gotten REALLY big by 2682) has to adjust to playing with and against aliens with 25-foot vertical leaps, 2.8 times in the 40 and 700 pounds of bulk. Luckily, not all at once. Oh, and the teams are used as smuggling vehicles for organized crime.
This sounds utterly ridiculous, but it isn't. Anyone that knows me knows that I can not stand fiction that does sports badly. The second-biggest flaw in the Harry Potter books, behind JKR desperately needing an editor that would point out the times she wrote 200 pages in which nothing happened, is Quidditch. The rules don't make any sense and the charity book that she wrote about the history of the sport is so embarrassingly bad that I would have returned it - I've never returned a book unless I got two copies - if the proceeds hadn't been going to charity.
I understand that not everyone loves sports, or knows as much about sports as I do. That's been my job for the last 22 years. But if you don't understand them, don't write about them. You wouldn't put chemistry scenes in a book if you didn't know anything about chemistry, and you wouldn't put graphic sex scenes in a novel if you were a virgin. Write what you know.
Scott Sigler knows football.
He had to advance the sport 700 years into the future, add alien races with superhuman abilities, and keep the whole thing balanced enough that the game can have the same rules and the same outcomes. That's not easy - the players with the 25-foot vertical leaps alone change the sport into a 3D game - but I'll be damned if he didn't pull it off without a single blunder. If there's a single notable football mistake in there, I didn't catch it, and I tend to catch these things. Ask my wife, who has had to suffer through hours of TV dramas with sports episodes.
(He's also a huge Lions fan, although I didn't learn that until I followed him on Twitter.)
I know I'm gushing - this is an entertaining YA novel, but it isn't the start of the next Foundation series - but it is so refreshing to see someone actually put some effort into sports fiction. I thought I was going to be doomed to wait for
justinelavaworm's WNBA novel.Six days into 2012 and I'm still on pace for 365 books read this year. The Kindle Fire might be the greatest Christmas present I've ever gotten.
#1 - The World Is A Ball by John Doyle. A Canadian sportswriter's adventures covering international soccer tournaments from 2002-2010. Didn't like it at all. It was a poor job of sportswriting combined with a poor job of travel writing.
#2 - Unofficial World Football Championships by Paul Brown. What would happen if the world soccer title was treated like a boxing championship, and it changed hands every time someone beat the current champ? An internet group decided to find out, tracking the mythical belt from the first international match in 1872 - Scotland 0, England 0, which didn't actually declare a champion - until the current day. Would you like to guess who the current champion is? I'll give you a chance to think about it.
.
.
.
That's right, it is North Korea. Spain held the title after the 2010 World Cup, but lost a friendly match to Argentina, who then lost to Japan. Japan held the title for over a year, but then lost a World Cup qualifying match to North Korea. The Koreans's next defense is in late February against Tajikistan. For all of the American soccer fans out there, we've actually held the title twice. Once for a few days during the 1950 World Cup, after the famous upset of England, and the second time after beating Portugal in the 1992 U.S. Cup. On that occasion, we lost the title to Australia! Also, I've covered a world-title match, though I didn't know it at the time. During the 1994 World Cup, Switzerland won the title by beating Romania 4-1 at the Silverdome.
#3 - The Book of Murdock by Loren Estleman. The latest (and I fear last) book in Estleman's series of Westerns starring U.S. Deputy Marshal Page Murdock. Estleman is best known for his Detroit-based mystery novels, but he's also a great Western writer.
#4 - Hunting Badger and #5 - The Wailing Wind, both by Tony Hillerman. These are two of the books starring Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn as police officers on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. I've read a couple of the books before - my dad was a big fan - but I've been more interested lately, since we visited that area while we were in Arizona. My outstanding hat was bought in Cameron, located on the Little Colorado River, in the Navajo Nation.
#6 - On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery by Robert M. Poole. I'm guessing you can figure out what this is about. Fascinating history of one of the most moving places I've ever been.
#1 - The World Is A Ball by John Doyle. A Canadian sportswriter's adventures covering international soccer tournaments from 2002-2010. Didn't like it at all. It was a poor job of sportswriting combined with a poor job of travel writing.
#2 - Unofficial World Football Championships by Paul Brown. What would happen if the world soccer title was treated like a boxing championship, and it changed hands every time someone beat the current champ? An internet group decided to find out, tracking the mythical belt from the first international match in 1872 - Scotland 0, England 0, which didn't actually declare a champion - until the current day. Would you like to guess who the current champion is? I'll give you a chance to think about it.
.
.
.
That's right, it is North Korea. Spain held the title after the 2010 World Cup, but lost a friendly match to Argentina, who then lost to Japan. Japan held the title for over a year, but then lost a World Cup qualifying match to North Korea. The Koreans's next defense is in late February against Tajikistan. For all of the American soccer fans out there, we've actually held the title twice. Once for a few days during the 1950 World Cup, after the famous upset of England, and the second time after beating Portugal in the 1992 U.S. Cup. On that occasion, we lost the title to Australia! Also, I've covered a world-title match, though I didn't know it at the time. During the 1994 World Cup, Switzerland won the title by beating Romania 4-1 at the Silverdome.
#3 - The Book of Murdock by Loren Estleman. The latest (and I fear last) book in Estleman's series of Westerns starring U.S. Deputy Marshal Page Murdock. Estleman is best known for his Detroit-based mystery novels, but he's also a great Western writer.
#4 - Hunting Badger and #5 - The Wailing Wind, both by Tony Hillerman. These are two of the books starring Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn as police officers on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. I've read a couple of the books before - my dad was a big fan - but I've been more interested lately, since we visited that area while we were in Arizona. My outstanding hat was bought in Cameron, located on the Little Colorado River, in the Navajo Nation.
#6 - On Hallowed Ground: The Story of Arlington National Cemetery by Robert M. Poole. I'm guessing you can figure out what this is about. Fascinating history of one of the most moving places I've ever been.
I'm going to try to type up a Arizona trip report, but I took a lot of pictures. (Surprise!)
Here are two:
Here are two:
Buzz knows how to hit a cue:
12/31: Indiana Pacers at Detroit Pistons, 6 pm.
1/1: Minnesota Golden Gophers at Michigan Wolverines, 4 pm.
Limits the New Year's Eve partying a bit. I'm going to have to stay sober for one thing.
1/1: Minnesota Golden Gophers at Michigan Wolverines, 4 pm.
Limits the New Year's Eve partying a bit. I'm going to have to stay sober for one thing.
I know it's been a while, and I owe all you about 100 posts. I have a new job ... I think I've posted since my wedding, haven't I? That was four years ago, so I must have mentioned it at least once.
I keep telling myself to start posting to LJ again, but I feel kind of embarrassed about vanishing, and then I don't know how to start back up, so more time goes by...
Today, though, I have a message I want to share. If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, I'm sorry, because I've been beating this to death for the last 12 hours, and now you're going to have to hear it again. It is just something that touches me and I hate that it has gotten so badly twisted.
I'll be back with more posts. I promise. I'll even tell you about my new job and what it was like to cover a US soccer game for the first time in 17 years.
Tonight, though, just read about Alice.
I keep telling myself to start posting to LJ again, but I feel kind of embarrassed about vanishing, and then I don't know how to start back up, so more time goes by...
Today, though, I have a message I want to share. If you follow me on Twitter and Facebook, I'm sorry, because I've been beating this to death for the last 12 hours, and now you're going to have to hear it again. It is just something that touches me and I hate that it has gotten so badly twisted.
Everywhere you look on Twitter tonight, you see the hashtag #alicebucketlist and a message about how a dying young English girl wants to be a trending topic.
Horribly, Twitter has taken a beautiful message and turned it into something narcissistic. Alice Pyne is indeed 15 years old, and yes, she's dying of cancer. She posted a bucket list on a blog that her mother helped her set up, and she's gotten millions of times the attention that she expected.
In a lot of ways, it has become an incredible story. Most of the items on her bucket list are just the things you would expect from a 15-year-old girl - she wants to swim with sharks, she wants to meet her favorite band, she wants a private party at a movie theater and she wants to go to Cadbury World and eat lots of chocolate.
But there's one item on the list that madeaiela and I cry when we read it, and has made people cry all over the world. It isn't about trending on Twitter - as far as I can tell, she doesn't even know Twitter exists. She wants to get as many people as possible to look into joining the bone marrow donor program. It's too late to save her, but she knows that it isn't too late to save the 15-year-olds that will come after her.
I can't arrange for her to meet Take That or take her on a Kenyan safari, but I can try to do two things.
First, I want to make sure that people know that the message isn't about getting her trending on Twitter. If that were her wish, she'd be thrilled - she's been a trending topic all over the world for much of the last 24 hours.
Second, I want people to know what she really wants, and to read what she's actually written, and look into donating bone marrow. It's a way to save a life, and in a tiny way, make things a little brighter for an incredibly brave girl.
Her blog is here: http://alicepyne.blogspot
Please read it and share it. And if, like us, you have a teenage daughter, make sure you don't take her for granted.
Horribly, Twitter has taken a beautiful message and turned it into something narcissistic. Alice Pyne is indeed 15 years old, and yes, she's dying of cancer. She posted a bucket list on a blog that her mother helped her set up, and she's gotten millions of times the attention that she expected.
In a lot of ways, it has become an incredible story. Most of the items on her bucket list are just the things you would expect from a 15-year-old girl - she wants to swim with sharks, she wants to meet her favorite band, she wants a private party at a movie theater and she wants to go to Cadbury World and eat lots of chocolate.
But there's one item on the list that made
aiela and I cry when we read it, and has made people cry all over the world. It isn't about trending on Twitter - as far as I can tell, she doesn't even know Twitter exists. She wants to get as many people as possible to look into joining the bone marrow donor program. It's too late to save her, but she knows that it isn't too late to save the 15-year-olds that will come after her.I can't arrange for her to meet Take That or take her on a Kenyan safari, but I can try to do two things.
First, I want to make sure that people know that the message isn't about getting her trending on Twitter. If that were her wish, she'd be thrilled - she's been a trending topic all over the world for much of the last 24 hours.
Second, I want people to know what she really wants, and to read what she's actually written, and look into donating bone marrow. It's a way to save a life, and in a tiny way, make things a little brighter for an incredibly brave girl.
Her blog is here: http://alicepyne.blogspot
Please read it and share it. And if, like us, you have a teenage daughter, make sure you don't take her for granted.
Tonight, though, just read about Alice.
OK, the Bowls for Food project is officially up and running. Action For Hunger/ACF International is working with me, and they have provided a page at support.actionagainsthunger.org/goto/bow
This project means a lot to me. If you've ever wanted to buy me a Christmas present, or you have a few extra dollars, please take part. Even if you can't afford to help, pass the word along.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
This project means a lot to me. If you've ever wanted to buy me a Christmas present, or you have a few extra dollars, please take part. Even if you can't afford to help, pass the word along.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Would you donate $1 to Action Against Hunger for each point your favorite college football team scores in a bowl game? The drive would be called "Bowls for Food".
frdelrosario, you are welcome to donate $1 for every point Auburn gives up. Or for every year of probation that they get for Cam Newton.
frdelrosario, you are welcome to donate $1 for every point Auburn gives up. Or for every year of probation that they get for Cam Newton.If you could organize a online fundraiser for any charity, what would you pick?
If you had to live the rest of your life in a movie, what movie would you pick?
I love playing with things like Kevin Bacon numbers. I've now come up with three ways to figure out mine - the "official" way, a semi-legit way, and a less-legit way.
Under the official rules, my number is 5. I worked on "The Message" and "Within the Woods Redux" with Connie Mangilin, Sarah Sydlowski, Mike Zawacki, Jamie Sonderman, Jonny Victor, Stevie Robinson and I'm sure people I'm missing, all of whom worked on "InZer0" with Rio Scafone, who was in "Gran Torino" with Clint Eastwood, who was in "Space Cowboys" with Marcia Gay Harden, who was in "Rails & Ties" with Kevin Bacon. There are approximately 922 ways to get from Eastwood to Bacon in two links, by the way.
The semi-legit way, since my two movie jobs have been as a photographer, is to also count non-movie photo projects. That gets me a 3. Julia Ho was one of the first models for my soon-to-be-revived Earth Project - you saw one of the pictures in my last post. She just finished filming "Conviction" with Minnie Driver, who was in "Sleepers" with Kevin Bacon.
The third way gets me a Bacon number of 2, which is to use my sportswriting career. I've interviewed Michael Jordan dozens of times, and he makes underwear commercials with Kevin Bacon.
The other such number is the Erdos number, which measures how many links it takes to get from an academic paper that you've written to one written by prolific mathematician Paul Erdos. I don't know this one for sure, but I think it is 5. I wrote a paper with a professor at Oakland that was presented at a conference in Belgium, and there are at least two OU professors with Erdos numbers of 2. I don't know of any direct collaborations that would get me a number of 4, but I know that a 5 has to exist.
That would give me an Erdos-Bacon number of 10 - you add the two together. Among actors, the lowest known are noted brainboxes Danica McKellar and Natalie Portman, each with sixes thanks to academic papers they wrote in college. Mayim Bialik has a seven.
I suspect, of my friends, the lowest would have to be an NPL person that appeared in Wordplay. They all have Bacon numbers of three, via Jon Stewart among others, and I'd bet some of them have very low Erdos numbers.
(The baseball version is getting to Babe Ruth, which I can do in four links, having interviewed Frank Robinson as a manager. He played with Gus Bell, who played with Ray Mueller, who played with Ruth.)
Under the official rules, my number is 5. I worked on "The Message" and "Within the Woods Redux" with Connie Mangilin, Sarah Sydlowski, Mike Zawacki, Jamie Sonderman, Jonny Victor, Stevie Robinson and I'm sure people I'm missing, all of whom worked on "InZer0" with Rio Scafone, who was in "Gran Torino" with Clint Eastwood, who was in "Space Cowboys" with Marcia Gay Harden, who was in "Rails & Ties" with Kevin Bacon. There are approximately 922 ways to get from Eastwood to Bacon in two links, by the way.
The semi-legit way, since my two movie jobs have been as a photographer, is to also count non-movie photo projects. That gets me a 3. Julia Ho was one of the first models for my soon-to-be-revived Earth Project - you saw one of the pictures in my last post. She just finished filming "Conviction" with Minnie Driver, who was in "Sleepers" with Kevin Bacon.
The third way gets me a Bacon number of 2, which is to use my sportswriting career. I've interviewed Michael Jordan dozens of times, and he makes underwear commercials with Kevin Bacon.
The other such number is the Erdos number, which measures how many links it takes to get from an academic paper that you've written to one written by prolific mathematician Paul Erdos. I don't know this one for sure, but I think it is 5. I wrote a paper with a professor at Oakland that was presented at a conference in Belgium, and there are at least two OU professors with Erdos numbers of 2. I don't know of any direct collaborations that would get me a number of 4, but I know that a 5 has to exist.
That would give me an Erdos-Bacon number of 10 - you add the two together. Among actors, the lowest known are noted brainboxes Danica McKellar and Natalie Portman, each with sixes thanks to academic papers they wrote in college. Mayim Bialik has a seven.
I suspect, of my friends, the lowest would have to be an NPL person that appeared in Wordplay. They all have Bacon numbers of three, via Jon Stewart among others, and I'd bet some of them have very low Erdos numbers.
(The baseball version is getting to Babe Ruth, which I can do in four links, having interviewed Frank Robinson as a manager. He played with Gus Bell, who played with Ray Mueller, who played with Ruth.)
aiela and I finally watched Gran Torino tonight. I can definitely say that it is the best movie ever made that includes a cast member that has sat on our porch swing:
(Julia plays Clint Eastwood's doctor.)
In the 1920s and 30s, the Jewish Purple Gang ruled organized crime in Detroit. Eighty years later, it is almost impossible to find any traces of them - Detroit hasn't been kind to historical locations, sometimes because of progress and often because of decay, but I spent several hours this afternoon doing the best I could.
The results are here.
Oh, and if you find a 105-year-old member of the Purples, do NOT mention "Jailhouse Rock" to them. They hated that song.
The results are here.
Oh, and if you find a 105-year-old member of the Purples, do NOT mention "Jailhouse Rock" to them. They hated that song.
Lots of thoughts and pictures later, but first, the coolest thing of the day:
I had it analyze the most recent chapter of my novel...
This is where I should make the long post about covering Armando Galarraga's "perfect" game, and the worst umpiring call I've ever seen, and interviewing a heartbroken Jim Joyce after he realized that his terrible mistake had cost Galarraga the official perfect game. That was one of the most gut-wrenching interviews I've ever done.
Oh, and there should be something about Austin Jackson's brilliant catch in the ninth inning, and about the game lasting just 104 minutes - the shortest game I've ever covered - and, well, just everything that happened.
But, well, I have to be back in the press box in eight hours, and I need some sleep.
Oh, and there should be something about Austin Jackson's brilliant catch in the ninth inning, and about the game lasting just 104 minutes - the shortest game I've ever covered - and, well, just everything that happened.
But, well, I have to be back in the press box in eight hours, and I need some sleep.
Hi, I'm Ernie Harwell...
May of 1990. I'm a 20-year-old college senior covering his first Detroit Tigers game for the Associated Press. I had done a few Pistons games, but mostly, my journalism career was limited to covering Division II basketball and soccer at Oakland University. To say that I was nervous is a massive understatement.
I was sitting by myself in the media dining room at a table in the corner, trying not to feel utterly out of place. At that moment, I heard a voice ask if one of the other seats at my table was available.
It wasn't a matter of the voice seeming slightly familiar - it was THE voice of my life's summers. It was the voice that I had listened to every night from April to October since I had been a little kid.
I stammered out that no one was sitting there, and the gentleman set down his food, took a seat, offered his hand and said the most bizarre four words anyone has ever spoken to me ... "Hi, I'm Ernie Harwell."
Of course he was Ernie Harwell. Everyone would have known that. I had watched games on TV and announced them into a tape recorder, trying to sound like Ernie Harwell. Why was my idol telling me who he was?
You know why? Because that's how equals treated each other, and Ernie Harwell never felt like he was superior to another person. I spoke to him hundreds of times over the next 19 years, right up until his last appearance at Comerica Park in 2009, and I never saw him act with anything but class and dignity and kindness. Even when he learned he was dying, and that the end was coming sooner rather than later, he was never bitter, and he was truly grateful for every bit of sympathy he received.
Ernie passed away last week, while I was at Disney World, and I was unable to attend the viewing last Thursday at Comerica Park. However, I'm typing this from the stadium's press box, and the on-field tribute is about to begin. There are hundreds of people taking pictures of his statue at the stadium entrance.
Everyone will remember Ernie in their own way tonight. For me, it will be those simple words that he said to a young stranger in a press room a long time ago.
Rest in peace, Ernie. Thank you for your talent, for your friendship and, especially for being the best person I've ever known.
May of 1990. I'm a 20-year-old college senior covering his first Detroit Tigers game for the Associated Press. I had done a few Pistons games, but mostly, my journalism career was limited to covering Division II basketball and soccer at Oakland University. To say that I was nervous is a massive understatement.
I was sitting by myself in the media dining room at a table in the corner, trying not to feel utterly out of place. At that moment, I heard a voice ask if one of the other seats at my table was available.
It wasn't a matter of the voice seeming slightly familiar - it was THE voice of my life's summers. It was the voice that I had listened to every night from April to October since I had been a little kid.
I stammered out that no one was sitting there, and the gentleman set down his food, took a seat, offered his hand and said the most bizarre four words anyone has ever spoken to me ... "Hi, I'm Ernie Harwell."
Of course he was Ernie Harwell. Everyone would have known that. I had watched games on TV and announced them into a tape recorder, trying to sound like Ernie Harwell. Why was my idol telling me who he was?
You know why? Because that's how equals treated each other, and Ernie Harwell never felt like he was superior to another person. I spoke to him hundreds of times over the next 19 years, right up until his last appearance at Comerica Park in 2009, and I never saw him act with anything but class and dignity and kindness. Even when he learned he was dying, and that the end was coming sooner rather than later, he was never bitter, and he was truly grateful for every bit of sympathy he received.
Ernie passed away last week, while I was at Disney World, and I was unable to attend the viewing last Thursday at Comerica Park. However, I'm typing this from the stadium's press box, and the on-field tribute is about to begin. There are hundreds of people taking pictures of his statue at the stadium entrance.
Everyone will remember Ernie in their own way tonight. For me, it will be those simple words that he said to a young stranger in a press room a long time ago.
Rest in peace, Ernie. Thank you for your talent, for your friendship and, especially for being the best person I've ever known.
Still not done with my Disney trip report, although I suppose I could do a Penguicon report:
Was a basket case the whole time I was there because of my fear of flying. Sorry for being rotten company for those of you I saw, and sorry for missing all the people I never did see. Thanks for the hugs, smooches and powdered bacon from those of you were trying to help or even had no idea why I was so out of it.
Anyway, while I'm not even ready to do a report on our day at Kennedy Space Center, which was amazing, I do want to share a group of pictures from there:
( Images behind cut )
Was a basket case the whole time I was there because of my fear of flying. Sorry for being rotten company for those of you I saw, and sorry for missing all the people I never did see. Thanks for the hugs, smooches and powdered bacon from those of you were trying to help or even had no idea why I was so out of it.
Anyway, while I'm not even ready to do a report on our day at Kennedy Space Center, which was amazing, I do want to share a group of pictures from there:
( Images behind cut )
Somewhere, I hope he and Moonlight are playing together again:
Dear Spark,
I know you don't understand what's happening to you, and I know you don't have any idea what is going to happen tomorrow. Sadly, I also know you can't read and you don't have Internet access, so you won't see this. But that's OK - I'll tell to you tonight and again tomorrow.
It isn't fair that we only got four years with you, but you know what? If I knew then what I know now, I'd still urge Brittany to pick you to join Kai and Moonlight.
In 49 months, you provided everyone that came into our house with unconditional love. Not just Angie, Brittany and I, but our family and our guests, and just as importantly, your feline housemates. When Moonlight was in declining health, you were always there to try to groom him, even if he didn't always appreciate it. You've always been a willing sparring partner for Kai, but learned to leave him alone when he decided to be the sedentary elder cat. And, of course, you and Storm were best friends from the day we brought her home.
I'll always remember your slow-motion wrestling matches with Storm, the way you helped my mom teach Brittany math and the way that you demanded everyone's complete attention when it was time to be petted. There was a reason God gave us two hands, and that was to pet you with both of them.
You didn't get a long time, but you filled that time better than any pet I've ever had. I'll mourn tomorrow, but I'll also remember the hundreds of good times you provided to all of us.
Thank you. Oh, and say hi to Moonlight for me.
Love,
Dave
I know you don't understand what's happening to you, and I know you don't have any idea what is going to happen tomorrow. Sadly, I also know you can't read and you don't have Internet access, so you won't see this. But that's OK - I'll tell to you tonight and again tomorrow.
It isn't fair that we only got four years with you, but you know what? If I knew then what I know now, I'd still urge Brittany to pick you to join Kai and Moonlight.
In 49 months, you provided everyone that came into our house with unconditional love. Not just Angie, Brittany and I, but our family and our guests, and just as importantly, your feline housemates. When Moonlight was in declining health, you were always there to try to groom him, even if he didn't always appreciate it. You've always been a willing sparring partner for Kai, but learned to leave him alone when he decided to be the sedentary elder cat. And, of course, you and Storm were best friends from the day we brought her home.
I'll always remember your slow-motion wrestling matches with Storm, the way you helped my mom teach Brittany math and the way that you demanded everyone's complete attention when it was time to be petted. There was a reason God gave us two hands, and that was to pet you with both of them.
You didn't get a long time, but you filled that time better than any pet I've ever had. I'll mourn tomorrow, but I'll also remember the hundreds of good times you provided to all of us.
Thank you. Oh, and say hi to Moonlight for me.
Love,
Dave
Things seem stable for Spark at the moment. He gets fluids every evening and he spends a lot of his day drinking water, but that seems to be enough to let him enjoy some quality of life.
It's a weird change. Instead of the hyperactive 4-year-old kitten that was in that body two weeks ago, there's now what appears to be an elderly cat. He's just as friendly and affectionate as ever - he fell asleep today with his chin on my hand, something he's done since he was tiny - he's just slower.
We were worried that Storm would have trouble adjusting to the new Spark, especially since Spark himself had had so much trouble adjusting as Moonlight aged, but she's been fine. She hangs out with him, but hasn't tried to wrestle or roughhouse like she would have done in the past.
We have no idea how long this phase will last. It might be a week, it might be a few months or it might be a couple years. He's going to be well-loved for however much more time we get with him, and when it is time, we'll sadly let him go,
It's a weird change. Instead of the hyperactive 4-year-old kitten that was in that body two weeks ago, there's now what appears to be an elderly cat. He's just as friendly and affectionate as ever - he fell asleep today with his chin on my hand, something he's done since he was tiny - he's just slower.
We were worried that Storm would have trouble adjusting to the new Spark, especially since Spark himself had had so much trouble adjusting as Moonlight aged, but she's been fine. She hangs out with him, but hasn't tried to wrestle or roughhouse like she would have done in the past.
We have no idea how long this phase will last. It might be a week, it might be a few months or it might be a couple years. He's going to be well-loved for however much more time we get with him, and when it is time, we'll sadly let him go,
