Dear Mike, a Letter to Myself 31 Years Ago

    I have to admit I have been mulling this letter for two weeks.  It's harder than at first glance, cuz on one hand you want to prevent yourself from all these dumb things you did, and on the other you don't want to just preach and preach, especially to yourself.  Especially when you realize you never liked being preached at. Especially by someone like yourself.  The only rule I used is 'total honesty.' Finally I decided to write the sparest letter I could, and figured I would figure the rest out.  Also, note to my precious kids and anyone else who is bothered by time/space continuum questions ("If you never met mom, then I wouldn't be around!")  Just go see Hot Tub Time Machine. 

 Here is a quick background: On August 15, 1979, my twentieth birthday, I did what I did on my tenth birthday, I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway. Only this time I got an extra birthday wish, I got laid after.  On a boat in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee.  I was a pizza place manager near Boston at the time, and getting ready to return to Marquette University for my junior year.  I was just about to meet my first wife.  And I hadn't chosen the name 'Mikko' yet, I was just Mike Mac.  I guess that's all the exposition you need, forthwith, my letter to Mike.

Dear Mike:
I'm going to assume you are not freaked by this note, and that you actually believe you are writing to yourself from thirty one years in the future. Sometimes the words will be different colors in this letter, don't worry about it, it's too hard to explain, just go with it.   Finally, when I say 'now' I mean 'then,' that is, I mean back where you are in 1979.

The Next Generation
And it's mostly good news, obviously, we make it to fifty one which is saying something. And healthy. And thin. And I promised not to give too many future events away, but the Red Sox WILL win a couple of World Series'. So hang in there.
These are the things you are good at:

• Writing
• Directing
• You are also a good guy

     Stick with those.  Acting is fun, but you are only following it as an ego thing, trust me. Go get training now and you will save yourself a lot of later bullshit. In fact here are two immediate steps to take:

1. Quit school now.
2. Move to New York.

School
     Your instincts are not wrong.  School is (as they say in my time) a massive fail. You will not learn anything of value there. You are only sticking it out because of some misguided sense of duty and loyalty.  And you are afraid of Dad.  Listen, Dad is a good guy, remake friends with him as soon as possible, I'm serious.
     Jesuits, and most Milwaukeeans for that matter, are not so much good guys.  Get out.  It's sad to say but the mentality that is choking you there in the midwest will spread across our sad nation, and bring us lower and lower.  The more you make yourself happy, and a better person, and beyond the coming national wave of conservative smug hate-mongering like you witness almost daily in that Wisconsin hellhole, the better chance you have of making a difference.  And you will find happiness quicker.
    Trust me, get on the phone, wrangle your money back from those cheap-ass phony priests, and

Move to New York
     Face it, you wimped out. You coulda went to NYU, but you didn't know. It's ok, I forgive you. You belong in New York, or even London, or Paris. Big cities agree with you, and you will meet more people who believe in you.  Don't worry about the money.  It will come.  Live in the Village, get a rent-controlled apartment (if that exists yet) and never fucking give it up.
     And while in New York hang out exactly where you want to be but think you have no chance to succeed.  You will succeed. Let me add another strength you have, you attain goals exceedingly well.  Relax.  Don't be afraid. Go where you want, do what you want to, and you will achieve happiness. You will recognize those things by this sign "If you want it in your life, and it scares you to your ankles, it's probably worth attempting."
    While in New York, do the Forum, as soon as it comes around.  Just keep your eye open for it. Trust me, it will save you a decade of suffering.

If you want it in your life, 

and it scares you to your ankles, 

it's probably worth attempting.

You're a Good Guy
     Relax. You are. Not many may love you, but many many admire you and are inspired by you. And no one dislikes you more than you. Relax. There are three things that go under your good guyness - Girls, God, and Money.

Girls
     Look, we had no sisters, and even if we did, it wouldn't change things. Women, almost without exception, are rife with problems, depression, and self-obsession. Don't 'save' them, don't 'enable' them, don't fall in love with their failings, don't fall in love with one just cuz she 'likes you back.' The thing women really respond to is respect. Respect each one you meet, and maybe she won't be your mad lover, but she will be a great friend and addition to your life. Besides, men are better for hanging out in groups, women are better for the one on one chat. Ask any woman.
     The news isn't good for your lovelife, but a lot of it is cuz you don't relax. It's ok. You are lovable, you are a good guy. There will be adventures enuf to make your friends drool, but even those will be a side-effect of your self-loathing. Love yourself and the girls will notice.  And by the way, you have so much else to do, let the women look after their own. The right one will find you. Relax and let her.

God
    Does it exist? Doesn't it? It doesn't matter. Generally if you meet someone who tells you they know everything about God, they don't. And you, don't explain things, just say 'thank you.' Or don't even say anything, you have no secrets. Once you realize this it's like a great weight being lifted off of you. This rule can be extended to most communications:  if someone tells you "I'm the type of person that ..." They are not.  If someone says "What I really hate is ..." They have that thing. If they begin a sentence with "All I'm saying is ..." you can ignore the rest.

Money
     You'll never have it, and a great friend of yours will tell you "You are less interested in money than anyone I've ever met." And she will mean it as a compliment. Just get over it now. The important things will get paid for. And bankruptcy is great revenge against financial monsters. There is no shame in not having money. Set your sights on what you want and the universe will provide. Maybe that is God.

The Big Picture
    I can't do the next generation of life for you, you'll have to do it yourself.  And besides I already did it.
    And.
    Even if you don't do anything I've suggested; even if you break up with a good woman to choose a lesser one; even if you stick it out in the snows of Lake Michigan; even if you find yourself in an unairconditioned apartment in a rundown neighborhood with a wasted marriage crappy job owing more money than you've ever seen in one place and a serious opportunity and desire to just end your life ... you are still lovable. You are worth something.
    And looking back at how creative and ambitious and clever and loud and stupid and arrogant you were, and brave, I love you more now than ever. Certainly more than you do as you read this.
    Relax.

School Daze (part one)

or

What’s so bad about messing up the kitchen if it gets your kid into Harvard?

or

If school were all that we wouldn’t need summer vacation

            I don’t really consider myself an expert in many things, least of all child development.  I never thought of myself as having the qualifications.  I'm a dad, but as far as I know there isn’t a test they administer before you attain such a distinction.  I was a kid once, so I guess I have my memories.  But I never thought I was in a position to speak educatedly on childish matters. 

            Then one day I was shootin’ at some food, and up from the ground came … this grown up doctor who told me, “I was in your group at the CAC when I was twelve.”  The surprising thought came to me, “Wow, I've been conducting children’s theatre workshops for over twenty years!”  And one thing I always noticed in my groups, way before I was aware of such things as educational options – homeschooled participants far out-performed their peers, were way more stable in the social environment, never had typical ‘dramas’ other kids had, and their parents – though generally as annoying as most other parents – showed a keener interest in the whole experience for their kid.

            And now that I'm an old papa with new babies, I've had literally a generation of input and observations on how kids become former-kids.  And one thing stands as clear as the Gulf of Mexico isn’t right now:  homeschooling can save the country.  And if your country goes down the tubes, the homeschooled kids will be fine.

            There’s more than a few issues that get dragged into this discussion, so sadly for you, my kind readers who like to comment that I ‘rant and rave’ and have a ‘mouthful’ to say, this may be a two- or three- parter.  So I might review a movie or two in my next blog just to break up the scholastic tone.

A Ton of Homework

            There are a couple of things that have to be laid out at the top because these discussions, if you deign to research them has a lot of noise.  Education, at least in the States and in Britain, is an explosive political football.  Every elected official tries to distract us from waste and corruption by rolling out the ‘Education’ mist of horse manure to get audiences to like the official.   The sad side-effect of this is that once they are in, and without any real mandate from an under-educated constituency, the scary monster under the desk called ‘Education’ gets shuffled off to school boards and superintendents.  I will eviscerate these scumbags in a future blog but there is so much time and so little to do.

            One reason information to us, the wonderful people, is held captive by the bad people on both sides, is that the arguments rage on while each group stands on slippery concepts, allowing for much mischief.  As we look into these terms I hope you will see how scary this subject really is for many people unprepared to look at it. 

     Here is what I mean when I say:

·         Mature – this slippery word gets used in so many contexts, it can mean a lot of things:  a good wine, a rich insurance payout, a well-constricted child in the classroom, a reason to keep your grandmother from driving, and if you venture into porn, it is the scariest word in the dictionary.  For my purposes I will use it sparingly, and to indicate a person who chooses to avoid dramas that force others to stop what they are doing to tend to that drama.

·         School – we all know what school is right?  Do we?  Very few people, except those with an advocacy axe to grind, really answer the basic questions of what school should do.  And those axe-grinders -- cult-militia types for example – dwell exclusively on one function for their own diabolical purposes.  For the rest of us it is a scary exercise to pin down the roles of a school, cuz then they have to conform to them, and well, look to any newspaper for their excuses on why that doesn’t happen.  Anyway, for this essay I expect school to

·         Teach the 3 R’s

·         Demonstrate to the kids good citizenship in the community

·         Encourage technological as well as creative thinking

·         Have some sort of plan for dealing with spirituality, even if it is to declare itself neutral and throw it back to the parents

·         Teach physical, nutritional, and mental fitness

·         Finally I don’t expect schools, whether in the home or in those ugly federal brick buildings, to be perfect fonts of information

·         Parents – the “accidental school.”  Everything parents do, from espousing their political views, to how they slurp their soup, educates their kids.  I have a dear friend who listens to a pleasant little band, but openly wonders why her three year old likes their music so much.  Well same reason why my older kids adore the Clash even though they were babies in that band’s heyday:  mom and dad love it, so it’s ok for baby to like it too. 

My opinion, not a fact, is that parents should be one hundred percent responsible for filtering all educational input for their children - whether that means helping with homework, making a school play costume, or patiently explaining that just because the teacher accidentally said “Shit” in classroom doesn’t mean you should say it, Billy - the final thumbs up or down on a learned concept comes from the Pee & Em.  

It also means instead of picketing the school to (let’s take one example from the left and right) get rid of Huckleberry Finn, or get rid of that diabolic textbook that says the earth is four million years old, it is the parents’ duty to ‘correct’ the flaws from school, and from all outside experiences in the home setting.  Yes, this means that kids may have different opinions than the ones we vote on whether they are homeschooled or public schooled.  I'm in a small Texas town as I write this, and I just went to their Fourth of July celebration amongst the locals, and re-read my last sentence.  Scary huh?

·         Curriculum – this isn’t just class plans and field trips – it must be a well-thought out schematic for what the ultimate goals of the program will be.  A friend of mine, when he was fourteen, left his homeschooling to go to a pretty good private school because he pretty much hated his dad.  He left the school at the end of the year cuz he was mystified that they “didn’t teach the whole book.”  It’s not enough to pick a killer algebra text with kewl references to Sting or Super Mario or the Los Angeles Lakers,  the school has to go the distance and declare “Every student will have these abilities by May.”  Really scary, huh?

·         Socialization – ooh hoo hoo this is the big one.  So big, that among homeschool freaks, especially the religious hacks, it is referred to as the ‘S’ word.  It makes me chuckle because they spend their time trying to nail it down, polish it up, so they can validate their already valid educational choices, but because it is a slippery word it scares them.  I chuckle cuz it’s kinda like revenge for the way the religious folks insinuate themselves into evolutionary arguments and dwell on slippery concepts like no one was actually around two million years ago to leave a time capsule with a calendar in it so they make all their claims from that uncertainty, so it’s fun to see them squirm a little on this one.

However socialization is an amazingly instant deal-breaker for a majority of (institutionally educated) noobs who are uncomfortable with the idea of homeschooling.  I'm already up to 1200 words in this blog and I'm still introducing the subject so I will wind this up soon and promise you that the next installment will be all about (cue the music) socialization.  Any comments on this first part with screeds about socialization, or other pre-emptive attempts to debate me, will be handled in a mature way – I will ignore you until I have a chance to spam my infallible wisdom upon you all.

Oh yeah my definition of socialization:  raising kids not to be assholes.

Fear Factoring, Will This Be on the Test?

            As promised I will deal with issues to homeschooling in future blogs – I'm not sure how many there will be, but the next one will be on socialization, the one after that will be on how homeschooling is actually normal and what most of us think of as normal school is not, and if I have the energy, I might wrap it up with something amazingly ingenious.  Or not.

            Before I go though I have a couple of theories on why we post-industrial, post-nuclear-scare, post-Red Sox-curse parents harbor these issues surrounding modern education.

a set of parents that have raised pretty good kids could raise a hundred dogs without breaking a sweat

Theory 1:  Grownups are afraid of children.

            They have the skin we want, they have the energy we want, they have the hair we want.  They ask questions that a hundred fifty years ago weren’t considered rude “Mama where does poop come from?”  “Papa, why is that lady in a wheelchair?” “How come my doll doesn’t have a peenie or a vee-gee?”  But most of all, when you hold a baby, and consider the length and breadth of the next eighteen years it scares the beejesus out of you.  And that’s assuming no jail or teen pregnancies in the future.

            These days almost everything can be handled virtually:  banking, consuming news or music, booking a vacation, hitting on chicks, learning a language, even paying taxes – they have a commercial in Houston of people ordering pizza and getting show tickets from their laptop while waiting in a movie line.  Let’s face it, it’s a pretty cool time to be alive.  

There is no way to raise kids virtually.  This sets up a ‘slow down’ in the middle of a seemingly quick-paced, smooth-running day. 

            This is one reason I see the fetish-ization of dogs in our country.  I hear people all the time say “I raise a dog, this is my substitute for a child.”  Really?  Let me tell you something, a set of parents that have raised pretty good kids could raise a hundred dogs without breaking a sweat.  You feed it in the morning, go to work, jog with it in the afternoon, and take it to the park sometimes.  Dogs conform to our virtual non-home lifestyle.  This is not an indictment of dog-owners, it’s just with rugrats you need to have a lot more dedication and attention.

            Add to that the typical day-to-days for most people are not geared to mesh with the needs of kids.  Two working parents now necessary to pay for cable tv, decent food, and a leaf blower really need to budget time if they want to mess it up with kidlets.  The whole concept of ‘the Terrible Twos” is a relatively new one.  It evolved because normal child development patterns directly conflict with getting to work on time.  When Mama steps out of the shower in the morning to see all of her makeup spread across the floor, she isn’t going to immediately recognize this as a normal developmental place for a two year old to be -- experimenting, theory testing, testing boundaries, applying color theory, tactile discovery, etc.  She’s going to be like “That’s two hundred goddam dollars worth of Estée Lauder!!”

            A more appropriate term than “Terrible Twos” would be “Inconvenient Twos.”  Inconvenient, years of commitment, having to re-learn what photosynthesis is, and many more scary issues have all conspired to make the modern day IPhone-toting executive absolutely horrified at the thought of changing diapers.  And who can blame them?

Theory 2:  Most people hated school as kids

            Sure you have your memories of the sophomore chicken barbecue or a really cool art teacher who used to hang-glide to school, but most folks, if pressed, will say school, especially high school, sucked.  I mean don’t you remember your parents trying to help with chemistry or something and they would say things like “Oh I hated this stuff when I was in school.”  (With of course the unspoken addendum that we had better learn it.  In my day, parents would smoke at this time while telling us not to; and not vote, while telling us to.  So, what can we say other than parents, and most teachers, are human.) This aversion to school really dictates how society proceeds with school programs in every "advanced" nation.

            And students that actually like school are ostracized or, at the very least, considered ‘weird.’  I had eight (sic) kids in my math class in my high school class of 200 students cuz we were, yknow, freaks. We were the ‘smart ones’ who got math.  We gleefully scarfed up our lessons so much so, that by the time I graduated I could test out of first year college calculus.  Us guys didn’t really like most of our other classes, but we had a great math teacher who was a different order than the rest of the nuns, was Italian among a largely French faculty, and operated her class differently than the others.  In a future blog I will talk about how important it is to not be afraid to give kids lots of work – she certainly wasn’t.  And we loved it.

            I think it is noteworthy to point out that none of the eight of us, including the two girls, got dates to the Junior Christmas dance.  Oh wait, Kathy O’Malley did go – she had the most perfectly, large-but-not-too-large, shaped breasts of anyone.

So I supposed we learned an important socialization lesson there.

Next week (or whenever) School Daze (part 2) “He That Lives by the S Word …”

Soccer vs Football

Or

If all 32 teams tie each other in the first round, is there a second round?

Or 

New insults to cast back against the old ones cast at us.

This year when the World Cup got under way and everyone started tying everyone I started to hear all the familiar arguments about soccer, and I had the same feeling I had a few years ago when the Bushites poked up the flames of the evolution ‘controversy’:  I was like “Didn’t this get sorted out like a hundred years ago?”

I don’t hate soccer, and to be honest I have tried more to accept this as a form of entertainment than anything I can think of – I mean I’ve only tried pot a couple of times and I don’t smoke it.  Ok, tried it, didn’t work for me, fine.  Works for you – far out.  Don’t sweat me.  But soccer, it’s like I'm more wrong for not loving it, than people are right for liking it.  I mean hey, it’s a fine hobby like chess or volleyball or a zillion other pastimes, far out.  Have your championships, and your cups, and your Kaka, but don’t be hatin’ on me cuz I don’t want to go to the party.

I will be getting to the actual reasons I don’t admire soccer much as a sport a little later, but there is this, I don’t know, politicization of the thing, as in the case of a lot of things that bother petulant Euros about us, that inevitably surrounds the issue.  So I'm sorry, but I have to talk historically, politically, then philosophically, and then finally I can get to why despite its worldwide popularity, I don’t have a bookmark for the soccer scores on my browser.

The Americans are identical to the British in all respects except, of course, language. Oscar Wilde 

OK before we begin let’s talk about soccer/football semantic thing.  It drives fans (mostly Brits) crazy that Americans insist on calling football soccer.  The standard retort goes something like we invented a botched, confusing, complicated version of sacred soccer, and then arrogantly called that Football … and then what?  What, annoying English soccer fan? Pulled the word ‘soccer’ out of our butts just to tick you disaffected coalworkers off? 

What actually happened was that back in the nineteenth century the hoity toity sons of British imperialists wanted to extend their effeminate boarding school activities to the athletic field (or “pitch” I suppose they would say), so they started organizing.  You see when England was the top dog world-violator, the United States was building, and the Victorians were doing what they do best – organizing.  They basically took a “sport” that every pair of street urchins across the world had invented since there were streets -- kicking a ball/box/rock/cat through two posts -- arrogantly declared it their own sport and organized leagues.  In their defense the only trains that work in Myanmar today are the ones the Brits built during world war two, so sometimes organization, imperialism, and greed can work.  In their offense while the United States was inventing a democratically perfect game – baseball; and changing the tedious rules of one-dimensional soccer into an admittedly flawed, but far more entertaining sport – football; the Brits were organizing leagues and apparently there were Rugby-style leagues (where you could use your hands) and Society or Association leagues (where you could only use your feet and vagina).  These two forms of ‘football’ got typically adorable British diminutives: ‘rugger’ from ‘rugby’ and ‘soccer’ from ‘society.’  So the word actually comes from the very twits that complain about us using it.

Basically in the USA, this second name stuck to the third most boring phys ed class activity (after exercising and listening to coach’s lame stories of how he almost got in the Olympics) and Yank kids grew up calling soccer, well, soccer.  And then with the advent of international communication and Uncle Sam replacing John Bull as the world’s slavemaster – a jealous England started commenting “Why in the world would you call football ‘soccer?’ after all it’s about a foot and a ball?”  And Americans basically answered like a girl talking to a stalking ex-boyfriend, “Well soccer sucks, and we have a thing we call football now, so it’s not worth changing its name, so please get on with your life.”  And changed our phone number.

And let’s face it, organized soccer is all over the world cuz the Brits sent it out there, good on ya.  However, in the face of how ‘unilateralistic’ and ‘nationalistic’ Americans are called for calling a British import by its given name; consider that every non-English speaking country that calls it “futbol” or something (where the words in that language are not ‘foot or ‘ball’ – pelota de pie?)  is a reminder of England’s past political sins.

In the world today, there are at least five countries – Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand, and oh us hopelessly uncultured Septics, that call soccer soccer – though “officially” they have changed it in some places to align with the burgeoning international smelling of money in the thing.  Though what ‘officially’ changing a sport’s name means exactly, I'm not sure – didn’t the States ‘officially’ switch to the metric system or something in the seventies? 

Anyway my take is they should call it ‘vaginaball’ because it honors a way-too-maligned body part, it is more descriptive of play, and let’s face it, more people would get interested in watching.

Getting my kicks abroad

Ok now that that’s out of the way.  I have tried to ‘enjoy’ soccer in at least five, no six, different countries (I had forgotten England lol).   I was watching yet another soccer game in some other country with a small group of fans – ok actually it was one real fan, his wife, a casual fan, and two America-haters who didn’t know a soccer ball from succotash but enjoyed this international pastime of using soccer as a pin attempting to deflate American ego.  And once again I tried, I really tried to enjoy the thing.  I was polite, but not cowed the way many polite Americans try to be when they don’t want to, oh I don’t know, offend the hosts’ national team.  Then the guy notices something on the tv guide – with a phony cosmopolitan smile he said “There is a baseball game on.   Let’s watch.” 

Cardinals/Cubs, great rivalry, good example of good baseball.  The guy gets up and hits a monster shot in the gap, but the outfielder makes a great cutoff to keep the guy at first.  So the runner has to put on the brakes and in the process he gives the camera a panoramic-view of his big-ass butt.

My hosts, not sharing my politeness, bust out laughing.  They ridiculed the ballplayer because y’know “How could this guy be an athlete?”  “This shows baseball is not a sport, he could never play football” (they meant soccer).

The player was Albert Pujols.  Easily the best hitter in the game.  When Pujols retires he will be honored with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, and these mokes dismissed him on looks.  Now I aint gonna lie, Albert, a Dominican immigrant, does have some badunkadunk – which for a first baseman is not necessarily a bad thing.  When one of those speed demons comes tearing up to first on a hit, it’s nice defense to have them thinking about that bulk in their way.  And that’s one of the many beauties of baseball – and to a lesser extent American football and basketball – there is a job for every physical type – short people, fat people, tall people, whatever.  I mean if competitive sport is some sort of catharsis for war lust, than this is more indicative right?  Heavy artillery, speedy cavalry, workman infantry … ok sorry, that’s another blog …

In soccer there are two physical requirements:

-Can you run ninety minutes straight without a heart attack?

-Do you hot oil condition your hair once a week? 

So while we warmongering, shallow, elitist Americans don’t appreciate a cultured sport like soccer, it’s ok for footy-niks to nickname it “the beautiful sport,” and demand their teams be manned with nothing but leggy hot guys and nothing else.

Funny side story – when I bounced this blog idea off some friends, I had mentioned The Onion ran a comedic story about soccer finally admitting it was gay.  She said “I'm offended by that, I think gay people would have more taste than liking soccer.”

And I too, btw, harbor no homophobia, but if I want to see effeminate men prance around with nice hair for ninety minutes I’ll go to a musical.

Soccer blows

A minor note – another impediment to enjoying the World Cup is the incessant beebuzzing sound of the vuvuzelas.  The vuvuzela if you haven’t been studying your Zulu is a horn that they constantly blow at South African soccer games.  Like many exciting things, it was actually first found in Mexico, but only in the 1970s and I guess Modelo in a can is cheaper so Mexican fans have given up on the horn and they aren’t around as much at their soccer matches anymore. 

Anyway the horn got to South Africa and has been a sort of mainstay for about a decade.  The sound of twenty thousand of them makes a television broadcast of a World Cup match even more annoying than if it was just soccer by itself.  Amidst world-griping about the noise and “Could you please, I don’t know, cut it out?”  FIFA smarmily chastised the world implying we were insensitive outsiders saying that the vuvuzela is a revered African (they left out ‘South’) tradition and how dare we ask them to give up such a sacred rite?  Of course a contrite world, with visions of Shaka Zulu and his native impi’s blowing these things as they deliciously wiped out yet another military contingent of Eurotrash soccer fans, backed off.  Except this ‘ancient’ tradition is younger than my wife.  AND you expect us to believe that in a country where the average black income is 1600 USD a year and white is 8600 USD, that an eight dollar plastic horn is the same as a Sumo wrestler performing a centuries-old salt purification? 

Sister-kissing is actually accepted in many soccer-loving countries

Now for the philosophical.   By definition soccer is a half sport – one can only use half of ones body.  Now this is not meant as a put down, soccer is athletic to be sure, but it’s not a complete sporting activity.  Look I love watching Cirque du Soleil, I've seen about six or seven of their shows, but I wouldn’t want to watch a tournament of acrobats for a month either.

But the crux of my beef with the beefless sport – it’s too hard to score a point.  As a baseball fan I understand the subtler Euro argument that the entire match is a competition -- positioning, endurance, concentration -- but here’s the thing:  the idea of competition is to have a clear winner and a clear loser, otherwise why keep score?  The anemic scores and the eternal ties take away the whole idea of competition.

It’s so bad that even the announcers are consumed in the paradigm.  In the United States’ first match of the Cup, England scored in the first four minutes and the announcers were like “Well it’s going to be very difficult for the Americans to come back.”  Really?  In a one to nothing game it’s just about over with eighty six minutes to play?  As it was, the Red White and Blue (oh yeah England is Red White and Blue too) somehow fought back to make up the deficit of one whole goal, off a mistake by the goalie, and the first match between the two countries in over fifty years ended in a typical soccer anticlimax, a tie.

Now before any of you soccerites start accusing me of being a typical American who constantly needs sexy scoring to watch a sport and can’t appreciate finer things, let me point out a couple of things that should embarrass you.  Low scores means there is way too much attention on what should be less important things – goalkeeping and refereeing. 

In every stinking soccer tournament more stories and grinding of teeth are generated about this goalie messing up or that referee calling some blunder.  Like in England for days after their disappointing draw with the US, there was all this whining and pissing and moaning about how awful the goalkeeper was because of his ‘schoolboy error.’  And I'm sure not one journalist pointed out that the game was a 1-1 tie and if England was so good (which by the way they are not, they haven’t won the cup or even been a runner-up since 19 freaking 66) why didn’t they just oh I don’t know, SCORE ANOTHER GOAL?  I mean this goalie makes one mistake and the overhyped Wayne Rooney can’t get one by the Americans?  That’s the way a real man looks at the story.

Yes yes in the States we have scapegoats and bad refereeing as well and people go ballistic.  In a very famous blunder in Super Bowl XXV Scott Norwood of the Buffalo Bills missed a key field goal to blow the game against the eternally lucky New York Giants.  His name became scorned and his career took a dive, etc.  But that game at the time of his missed kick was 20-19 – in soccer terms the score would be 4-3 -- so at least there was some competition.  In baseball if a 0-0 game were decided by an error, half the stories would be on the bonehead making the error and the other half would be ‘Why couldn’t either team score?”  (In case you are wondering, Bill Buckner’s infamous error untied a 5-5 game.) 

Let us also remember soccer whining reached its height in 1994 when some dipshit pumped twelve bullets into Columbia’s goalie for messing up in the World Cup, the freak shouted ‘Goal!’ after each gunshot.  In that game (against the reviled United States) the more “macho” Columbia team could only muster one goal, but because goals are almost non-existent in soccer, it outrages the lower orders of humans that somebody could give one away. 

Same thing happened to a poor kid in Benin that brought new meaning to 'sudden death' just this month.

The same goes for refereeing, I mean even this year there have been a half a dozen stories about refs screwing up.  One even affected the Americans.  Interestingly not one soccer expert could explain what the foul was, and the referee apparently didn’t have to.  I'm not going to hit this too hard cuz the National Basketball Association has the worst referees in the world, but because basketball encourages scoring, the teams factor that into their gameplans.  Finally, I want to add that it’s obvious reigning champ Italy pays off the refs in soccer tournaments, but we in America are used to international competitions (soccer, cycling, Olympics) to being filthy – which is another reason we don’t get too excited about such silly things.

Access to the net

Not that anyone is asking but my solution to soccer’s ridiculous scores is to double the size of the net.  Simple.  “Cor? Wha’?” Sputters the bitters from flush-faced frecklies across the Empiah.  “You’re daft!  That is typicoo of yer bloody Septics, always wantin’ mo’ flash, mo’ scorin’  Dooble the net indeed!”  OK fine, don’t double the net, cut the net in half, add a second goalie, and make the game a sudden death, first to score wins.  I don’t care about the scoring, I want competition, I want to be un-bored.

In the interest of brevity, I will list the rest of the soccer jabs against blinkered Americans like myself in the Socratic method.  If you have other thrusts I encourage you to add them in the Comments below.  I will answer the ones where I can think of something kewl to say.

You say football is boring, well I think baseball is the most boring sport on the planet.

WTF do I care what you think about baseball?  It doesn’t change the problems with soccer.

Football is easily the most popular sport in the world, over sixty percent of people play it and love it, you don’t see the value in that?

Well seventy five percent of the world eats some sort of gruel with their hands for breakfast that doesn’t make gruel a fine dining experience.

Americans disdain for football is typical of their unilateralism, and geocentrism.  Your attitude reeks of ‘I only play my games, and I'm not interested in your games.”

I don’t know about that, we have adopted wine, sushi, sun dried tomatoes, rebozos, and shea butter.  Why?  Because those things are cool!  Soccer isn’t cool.  Furthermore, at the risk of sounding like a jingoistic butthead I have to point out that the American Constitution, as much as we ourselves don’t always heed it, is a document created out of our lack of desire for following the smaller minds of other governments.  Are we geocentric because we actually think about human rights?  Are we unilateral because we insist our friends do the same?  At the last check I saw that North Korea, Serbia, Slovenia, and Algeria all had teams in the World Cup this year, should we be more “multi-lateral” and adopt their judicial practices along with their quaint love of soccer?

Who the heck are you to judge?

I grew up in Boston, a very educated, very sports-addicted, very judgemental town.  That means I have opinions and I'm used to being hated.

Five million kids in America play this sport, are they wrong?

And at least five times that number of kids are being fed sugar, trans fat, and MSG – don’t misapply democracy here.  There are two reasons soccer is growing in popularity in the States.  First, the population of immigrants from soccer crazy countries is growing (this is my only argument in favor of closing the borders).  The second reason follows after the next insidious question.

My kid plays soccer, how dare you insult my parenthood.

Your kid plays soccer for two reasons:  it’s exercise, and it’s the cheapest sport to play.  And I have nothing against either one of those reasons.  That is the reason it's so popular in the world for cryin' out loud, it's only after that fact that its fans have to create some sort of appeal in it.  Heck, if I fail as a parent and my daughters insist on playing soccer, I am going to bring them to games happily because of those reasons.  But you damn well know they are also going to know how to hit a curveball as well.

I don’t really like sports, but I do like soccer.

Well, that is my point exactly.

New New Math - Tech vs Art

Differences

Between math

And Singapore math

Dedicated to sister clara at st bernards central catholic high school who is now solving derivatives in that great calculus conic section in the sky – the greatest math mind of my life

With apologies to the Korean yummy mummy who admitted to me that though ‘Singapore is the best math in the world, Korean is second best’ and is a testament to my eternal lust for my wife and my sporadic lusts for our Jewel who was born in Singapore, that I didn’t abandon the Singaporean ship for the promise of kim chi breakfasts et cetera. Kam sam ni da just the same ^^.

Ok

In “old” math like the kind I was raised on (and kicked butt in and was a grammar/high school star in and got an 800 in my SAT’s thank you very much) it's educational efficacy depended on the intrinsic trust of institutions that Americans embraced after world war two so if dad tells you to memorize your times tables dammit you should.

And there is nothing wrong with that cuz I to this day can feel in my fingers that eight times nine is seventy two and there just isn’t any other possibility

But lots of kids in my class couldn’t get that and not only that but they didn’t see why eight just couldn’t get over it once in a while and make nine seventy six

So there was this thing, which years later got called ‘right/left brain’ cognition and basically I called it ‘technology vs art’ and since I don’t work on tv or in the papers and am too lazy to write books, no one gives a crap about my theories, but the thing remains that math for the most part was what they would call a left brain activity meaning more or less ‘shove your poetry and your imagery and memorize your times tables and everything else will work out’ or what I would call ‘pure technology.’ Which for many, is boring.

Now of course this lends to the geeks loving it and the others abiding it and most loathing it cuz lets face it if you wanted to have a drop dead great movie party watching Caddyshack and decided to serve a menu of organic blue corn tortillas with boiled red beans and garlic and açai cherry drink and nothing else and explained that this was a nutritionally perfect meal, people would basically go to Rally’s and watch ‘The Hills’ while eating a Big Buford, Loaded Fries and a Coke. I mean there is nothing wrong with either meal except one is all technology and one is all art. (please don’t flame me about my using Rally’s as art, I mean they are art the way Norman Rockwell is art, accessible, easily digested – Ok its all techno food in the Michael Pollan sense but I don’t want to talk about it now so STFU).

Back to math.

Singapore math wants the numbers to be an alive thing in the student’s mind. I mean sure in the old math they had three apples plus five apples plus one apple equals nine apples and then five apples plus three apples plus one apple equals the same thing and then brusquely explained that this was the “Associative Principle.” And this was in the first chapter. And no one really defined what ‘Associative’ meant which if you think about it doesn’t mean anything – why didn’t they just say ‘Associating?”

Anyway

The point I didn’t make though I’m trying is that they drew apples, and by the lameness of the art in this tech-only club you could tell begrudgingly, because they wanted to … ‘You know, for kids.’

I was cursed with a form of synesthesia which made numbers have colors and personalities and good and bad breath (I love twelve, I always will), and made math really easy for me, and nuns question my boredom, and fellow students hate me - but to be honest I was glad I had it when I found out Nabokov had it too, anyway the point is unless you were a freak or especially afraid of authority (I was both) math was not going to work for you.

Now Singapore, that glorious city state with the best bird park in the world and a hottie almost as hot as my wife native: They ask you in the first chapter “What is heavier, an elephant or a leaf?”

Even the jocks could get this right in my high school.

Building on this idea that we intrinsically understand the gravity of a elephant, we could also get the gravity of eighty six vs forty seven. By subbing back and forth between numbers and THINGS, numbers BECOME things. And who is scared of a leaf?

Tlicks

Ok now the ‘tricks’ that us westerners (and they don’t call us round eyes cuz they don’t think they have slant eyes – they call us ‘big noses’) these famous Oriental tricks they teach are actually ways to look at numbers that exist but our paradigm has foreclosed – pretty much like the way East-hemispherians have pointed out in the last decade or so that you don’t really have to cook fish to enjoy it. How’s that been working out for our food/kewl date paradigm?

They teach a kid to mentally corral numbers in logical patterns – “Well forty seven and fifty five have to be bigger than twenty seven and thirty six therefore …” You see its not a trick its properties of numbers that we understand but just don’t need to put a name on just yet – ask any golfer how he picked a club for a shot and its exactly the same thing – and then I dare you to accuse him or her of using a trick.

By the way in the old math, if you slept thru high school, you would have to say forty seven plus fifty five is one hundred and two”

“No! One hundred two!” comes the inappropriate correction.

Big breath (these were the days before kids brought guns to school, so all was well for the teacher). “And twenty seven and thirty six is sixty three therefore the first solution is greater than the second.”

This is the byproduct of our dualistic society – get all the answers and then make a conclusion.

BTW no one explained what ‘solution’ or ‘conclusion’ meant either because no one really dared introduce grammar into such a tense setting … it's not this plus this IS this – it’s ARE this – but in the global view of Singapore math -- you have fifty five elephants joining forty seven ants well of course there ARE one hundred two animals at the picnic.

Another trick exposed!! Luridly written and it is my hope, read

Numbers are groups of other numbers – never tell an old school mathique this – cuz well nine times nine is eighty one and well there are other ways to get to eighty one but I really wouldn’t want to get into that mess …

But actually eight one is eight tens and one … well … one.

So we can play with those tens any way we want – forty six and thirty five? Well that’s seven tens, no wait eight tens and looky there! A one! Three times twenty seven? Oh god that wasn’t on the times table!!! Silly rabbit, tricks are for Asians – it’s just three times two tens are six tens, three times seven gives us two more tens and hey! That sonofabitchin one again!

Ok the times tables would beat Singapore on nine times nine by itself cuz hey I was up all night remembering every iteration of every single digit times every other one – it’s not that hard and its groovy when you start digging on the journey of nine --- But when is someone going to say to you ‘You gave us nine great days of work at nine dollars a day, so that will be … and if you say “Eighty one!” instead of “Muthafukka you better pay me more than that!” than you flunk more than math. So let’s say you have to deal with a real multiplication

I mean let’s say the Red Sox have given up sixteen runs every weekend for fifteen weekends and there are twelve weekends left – what can we expect from these tiring pitchers arms? Oh for the love of Jesus get me my Excel sheet!

But in Singapore math, with elephants and starfruit and (I have to admit) hot Singaporeans running around instead of scary sixteen times fifteen I fear not –

Let me break it down old school and new:

Sixteen times fifteen is six time five that’s thirty

And then let’s remember to carry the three and remember to add the three to six times one which gives us six plus three is nine so that’s ninety

Ok now forget everything so far! Except that you have a ninety waiting for you

And now one times five is five but remember to move it over a space and then one times one whew thank god the baseball season isn’t forty seven weeks long that’s one so now its ninety plus fifteen but that’s actually one fifty so the answer is

240

And now we gotta do extra stuff for the pennant race … mental stretching I will just check out Bill James’ latest book or at least see what Peter Gammons says on ESPN.

New school

In the land of caning they might say (in one of several languages btw but that’s another blog) there are one tens in fifteen so sixteen of those tens are 160 and the five ones left over make 50 more tens from the sixteen and now we are left with five ones times six ones giving us three more tens giving us 240 elephants the Blosox have given up

You see how that’s easier on the brain? You would if you didn’t have old school clogging your pothead mind ...

And then the snotty Singapore kid would say so we can expect 192 more runs in the last twelve weeks but then he would add too smugly that the Sox are going to host the Yankees the Rays and the rising Jays and Dice K is always hurt cuz they work him too much and the league will have figured out Tim Wakefield and pencil in two tough starts for Buch and Lester and so it will be more like 234.

Oh god I friggin' hate math!!

Anyway

That is the quicky white boy skinny on why the yellow peril kicks our butts in math, cars, video games, and other techie stuff.

Cuz its not all tech – theres art in there too.