When I was in graduate school several years ago, the introvert in me – and that would be 100 percent of me – was desperate for some quiet time.
You don’t get much in graduate school. It’s all group projects and collaboration (another overused word! noted for later topic) and covering for That Guy.
I found then that there was one place, one unlikely place, where I could enjoy near-complete silence: my dental hygienist’s chair.
I’d lay down on the vinyl, in that curiously comfortable decline, and we’d say nothing. I’d close my eyes. I knew when to close my mouth for that tube thing. She might ask if I had summer plans when we were done. Maybe.
I still don’t even know her name. I don’t need to. This is still one of my favorite things to do because there is no talking, and no one feels awkward about it.
I suspect that’s why so many of you cook, or write, or train, or paint: It’s not always a solo pursuit, but it’s quiet.
Desperate for basketball
There’s this Rush song. Maybe you know it. Oh, of course you know it. Everybody knows it – it’s Rush. It’s “Spirit of the Radio.”
And there’s a phrase in it that describes the majority of my basketball viewing, if you can call it that: it’s “a friendly voice, a companion unobtrusive.”
See, there’s quiet, and then there’s isolated. I can do the latter all too quickly.
With basketball, I can turn the volume on low to just barely hear some of the region’s TV announcers, all companions unobtrusive. I can watch it out of the corner of my eye as I exercise for excessive periods of time, something else done perhaps in the pursuit of quiet.
The NBA’s Summer League, while nothing like the NBA or especially college basketball*, would ostensibly fit the bill, yes? Turn the volume down to low. People moving about. No one talking to me, just in my vicinity, the voice just familiar enough.
Champs…of the Euroleague. Sorry, guys, we know you worked hard, but still
Except.
ESPN, the Satan of sports broadcasting, took over the Summer League two or three years ago. Which means there is constant yapping. I mean, Dan Dakich. Would you shut that whole in the middle of your face? For a second?
I know the answer to this.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, DO NOT USE THAT MIC, DAN DAKICH
The NBA does a lot of things right, but man, I’m looking at cricket as an alternative. Cricket! In America! What is this country coming to?
*Wait until November, friends. I will try not to but probably still will bore you to death with Big East basketball. Sorry in advance.
It’s been a curiously beautiful holiday weekend here in the upper Midwest. The sort of weather, really, that makes you wonder what sort of tragedy is around the corner. It’s sunny today: will there be a tsunami tomorrow? In the upper Midwest? Sure, why not?
Just getting myself all wet!
But that’s not the only reason I’ve not been as visible as my start. I’ve turned up my anxiety tenfold, all on my own, by announcing to you, my dear readers, that you should be reading all my posts because there will be something interesting in there.
I’m pretty sure there are few things that can stop a writer faster than saying out loud that you’re good. So it’s back to the drawing board for me, talking about nothing, talking about everything.
It’s also a good time to reflect on what’s been great this week, what’s been less than great, and what’s to come this week.
Like so many I’ve body image problems; I didn’t know how to manage the variability with sorting out the right amount to eat. There were tears! So embarrassing.
Because it turns out that eventually, your body will manage this for you. I found myself starving and migrainous toward the end of the week, even with a higher caloric load; I couldn’t help but eat more. With another 600-700 kcals total – that’s a lot! – I found myself dropping weight.
Fitness friends, I’ll keep you posted.
Women’s World Cup: Turns out that the U.S. won. Who would have guessed?
What this brings up is an interesting discussion of how one is paid by an employer: is it based on value to the company as a part of overall revenue, or individual performance?
Outside of sales, the U.S. doesn’t pay people based on individual performance. Or in this case, team performance. The men’s team gets paid more because the men’s world cup generates more revenue. Nevermind that they’ve never made it past, what, the round of 16, if they make it all?
One wonders if after today, a new compensation model for the women’s team won’t become more necessary. I’d like to hear U.S. Soccer tell the world that the crappy men’s team makes more money because the men’s world cup sells more ads.
By the by, I actually have no idea what happens in a soccer game!
Less awesome
Body image: The opposite end of my diet and exercise win. I’ve never felt so much anxiety over what should just be a matter of basic health.
It’s 2019. In era of body positivity my obsession is antiquated, and I hate myself for that, too.
I found myself crying like a baby first with worry, then with self-loathing. I can’t win for losing.
Ruined chicken: Less horrifying than my inexplicable vanity, pride and downfall from it, is my ruined poached chicken, a recipe I can make with my eyes closed.
Actually, the truth is, I feel ashamedly terrible about this, too. the chicken turned out a bit tough and dry, but it’s not inedible; I tend to think of food as fuel, so what do I care? Somehow I do.
Setting myself up to fail: I’m not sure why I felt compelled to let you know that even if I’m talking about boxing, you’ll want to take a look. As though I can come up with some life lesson every time I start typing.
Today is a great example of not even coming close.
Coming up this week
There are a few topics I’d like to discuss. Whether or not there’s a life lesson in any of it, I don’t know.
Overuse of the word “journey”
Women’s sports
How much work at work is too much work
When are you too old to accomplish what you want?
Can I fix my poached chicken?
Until then, I thank you all for reading! Have a great week!
I have a lot of interests that might seem to only interest me. For example, while writing here, I’ve got my right eye on the NBA free agent trade news crawl. I might write something about that, and at first blush, that might not interest any of you.
Though I don’t succeed every day, I do my best to find the story within those stories that would be of greater interest to all of you. There’s always something.
For example, I did a piece about UConn rejoining the Big East. I titled it poorly; the greater part of that piece were thoughts about the state of women’s sports. I know there’s a lot to talk about there.
So I have two points: a) I’ll do my best to title pieces in a way to illustrate the bigger picture in the piece that might interest you; and b) I hope you’ll give them a skim.
I’m open to suggestions, and am happy to cover a particular topic. I have a perspective on everything! Feel free to let me know in the comments.
The longer I can keep this up, and the longer you stick around, the more you’ll understand that outside my emotional maelstrom I can talk about normal things. These are my favorite:
Making people laugh
Boxing
College basketball
And specifically, Big East basketball.
In what’s been the worst-kept secret for about a week it today became official that the UConn Huskies would again be joining the Big East, the conference its administration once felt fine abandoning for its woebegone football program. Well.
I don’t know if the same administration has any understanding about sunk costs and throwing good money after bad and things that just aren’t going to happen, like a successful Connecticut FBS football program, but it’s nice to have a founding member of the Big East back home, even if home is now on the side of the street with the big cathedral on it.
The Big East is different now.
I get it though. A Big East alumni who grew accustomed to watching her team play Louisville through various conferences for around 30-odd years, I know it sucks when a serious rivalry goes away in the name of ESPN conference alignment goals.
So to my Big East sister schools who’ve been playing UConn since the early 80s? Freeze ’em out at the Dunk, Cooley. Jay Wright, just do your super-model thing. Georgetown, if you could pull one out, that’d be great. Make them as welcome as ever in Jersey, Seton Hall. St. John’s, um, I kinda don’t know what to say to you right now.
Or vice versa! It’s great either way. Plus, I’m looking forward to seeing UConn play new foe Xavier. That’s probably gonna hurt for a while.
Women’s basketball
Here’s where UConn really helps the Big East basketball product if it doesn’t eat it alive first.
It’s not as though the better women’s teams aren’t spread out anyway, but only two have stood out of late in the Big East: DePaul, which does nothing else right, and Marquette, which has two state-of-the-art athletic facilities across the street from each other. Which is to say, the women’s game may have improved there despite what Marquette hasn’t done for it.
With UConn women’s basketball in the fold, shining a big bright Maglite on how little gets put into women’s sports everywhere but there, we may see some additional resources allocated to the women’s game. I’d like to think so. The Big East might be focused exclusively on basketball, and that’s great for those of us who could care less about football. But it’s the men’s game. And see, women play basketball, too.
I watch a lot of boxing, including (or especially) women’s boxing. Unlike many of the men (Anthony Joshua?), I’ve not seen one woman boxer lack heart. They all want to win. Bad. Man, do they work. (Same’s true for women MMA fighters, if that’s your gig.) But training resources? There’s a wide gulf between a lot of them, and it shows up in skill and entertainment value.
Imagine what women’s basketball might look like if more were invested in it nationwide. Or just conference-wide. If there was a palpable sense that the NCAA, university and fans cared. By “palpable,” of course, I mean American dollars. The outcomes may never be the same. The product may never be as “good” as the men’s game. It’d be nice to have the opportunity to judge for myself.
Welcome, UConn!
Ok, enough time on the soapbox. Bring your heathen fans, UConn! Bring your mean women’s team, tall in their black hats, to kill us all! Bring your rebuilding men’s team which, no doubt, is on the way up. Get Shabazz Napier to some of the games – I always liked that guy. Any lacrosse? Bring your bad grammar to our small-school message boards. A good time will be had by all, I know. Here’s to 2020-21! It can’t get here fast enough.
An ex of mine, whose default position was flat on the couch, was an MMA fan. For someone so lazy he could not have chosen a more physically demanding sport to follow. It requires strength and smarts to solve each puzzle of an opponent, whose skills may complement or conquer the other’s. For this the sport is admirable. There’s an opening for almost everyone.
Now gyms that smell like sweat and toilets are all over the country, in strip malls and old warehouses, and my ex went to one, at least for a while, to learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu – one of MMA’s primary martial arts. I don’t know what color belt he left with, or why he stopped going. But I can’t imagine a man who ran out of breath a minute into missionary making it five minutes on the mat. With anyone.
Hey, Conor. How ’bout some pants? Photo: The Sun
It was through him that I was introduced to the sport at all. I’d not seen much of it. just enough to find it so much more brutal than boxing. It was often much more boring than boxing, too, with 10, sometimes 20 minutes of two people rolling around in shorts like underwear preceded by five minutes of pat-a-cake. I didn’t get it. Constant commentary would come from the couch. Ah, that’s where all his breath went. I was nice about it. It wasn’t until watching Conor MacGregor, as much an entertainer as a fighter, that I stopped pretending to listen.
It was Friday Night Fights or something like that. MacGregor was wiry and little. Too short for me to date, to be honest. He’s a ginger. Of course, I thought, and there’s the Irish flag. The Irish usually box, I’d said out loud, but was told that wasn’t true anymore because Conor MacGregor.
“Does he have more of a stand-up game?”
“You mean, is he a striker? He does everything right, you’ll see. He’s really fast.”
MacGregor’s got a neck tattoo, a crown declaring his collarbone king, and I thought this career had better work out for him. He would fight in those tiny shorts, the kind sold in the ladies’ department. I felt awkward watching MacGregor go on about his business in such little leprechaun shorts.
My ex was right, though. MacGregor was fast. He was powerful, maybe fighting a weight class lower than what was natural for him. He was flash and not without flaws – he grated. And yet he was thrilling in a sport that silenced its audience because so often there was nothing to cheer for.
Yeah, and fast. Or rather, his decisions were fast. And in the long five-minute rounds of MMA, fast decisions look like lightning.
It must be said that fast in MMA is slow in boxing. Witness the difference between MacGregor’s speed, future opponent Floyd Mayweather, and some children boxing in the dirt:
This is important because Conor MacGregor is set to box Floyd Mayweather (49-0) on Aug. 26. No kicking, no striking, no grappling, no choking. No fighting. Boxing.
MacGregor, as seen in the video, is working on a different bag and different skill set than Mayweather. He’s not on a speed bag. He’s on a heavy bag. OK.
But look more closely. Look at MacGregor, punching in a way that made me understand, finally, that punching isn’t striking and he’s trying desperately not to strike. He punches with forethought, solving the puzzle of an opponent who’s long gone while his legs plant heavy, stalking the octagon in his head.
Note: MacGregor, this is how you punch. Photo: Tom Hogan.
But look more closely. Look at MacGregor, punching in a way that made me understand, finally, that punching isn’t striking and he’s trying desperately not to. He punches with forethought, solving the puzzle of an opponent who’s long gone while his legs plant heavy, stalking the octagon in his head.
Look at Mayweather Look at MacGregor. Look at the kids.
MacGregor could be publishing dummy footage to stack the odds. The Irish love to gamble and win or lose, he could get paid twice. He would not be the first Irish to gamble on his own fight. But is he in league, then, with his sparring partner to publish the same damning evidence? No. Or maybe. I don’t know. MacGregor’s a great fighter but he’s annoying. It’s the tale of his tape. And anything could happen anyway. If Mayweather’s not ready for Irish gamesmanship after 20 years, then shame on him.
I could say the same. My ex, who like MacGregor wore his Irish ancestry like cape and would also not shut up about anything, was exactly who he was, always. This didn’t happen to me when I was 20. This happened when I was 40. I knew his game somehow but like a paying crowd he gave me what I was looking for until I would always seek it. Like sugar. Like booze. Did he leave some in the couch cushions? He didn’t even shower on Sundays, but I was high enough until the next fight. Anticipating, replaying knockout in a sport I merely tolerated for too long.
Until I didn’t. I drew him in then tiptoed away. A fight’s a fight and I won.
To Ron Livingston, Richie Woodhall, and my hero, Claressa Shields (pictured above). Shields fights for the WBC Super Middleweight World Championship at 10 p.m. Aug. 4 on Showtime.
Rances Barthelemy makes one of two intimate shots on Kyril Relikh. Photo: DBN
On Saturday, May 20, Cuban boxer Rances Barthelemywon his WBA light welterweight title final eliminator bout against Belorussian Kyril Relikh in a unanimous decision. Each 140-pounder was knocked down by the other, but only Relikh enjoyed several illegal left-hand backfists and two shots to the junk. 116-110, 115-111 and 117-109 were the scores for Barthelemy.
Like his fellow Cubans, Barthelemy held the outside of the ring. Cubans are the ballroom dancers of boxing: They toe about the edges, ceding control of the ring to their opponents, whom they then draw into jabs and uppercuts timed like a Swiss watch. To do this a Cuban can use several rounds to size up his opponent. Who gets bored. I get bored. So opponents are drawn in and I’m glad for it, because boxing is about punching. But the Cubans are experts at defense, precision, getting out the way. They lead the waltz as they appear to be led.
Kyril Relikh was drawn in. Then he out-punched Rances Barthelemy by a ratio of 2:1. 248-137 in overall punches. 190-91 in power punches. An average of 80 punches per round for Relikh versus 43 for Barthelemy. Relikh out-landed Barthelemy in nine out of the 12 rounds.
Still Relikh lost. He had no reason to doubt the outcome because he did everything right, including dropping Barthelemy in the fifth round with enough power punches to kill a cow. He had the numbers, the proof. He had the crowd. And he lost.
Barthelemy gets the decision, plus a positive reply on OKCupid. Photo: Tom Casino
At this point, you’re not thinking about boxing anymore, are you? You’re thinking, This is online dating. It’s the kind of recognition I saw onKyril Relikh’s face he watched Barthelemy fall to his knees in gratitude, knowing he would go home alone without any clue what happened…and never would.
Online dating requires an incredible investment of your time before you ever even meet someone. It’s like a six-month training camp, including an hour a day sparring just to get to coffee. You get pretty tired. So when you come across someone who’s the right height, uses good grammar, has all his teeth, whatever, he gives you the hope of a no. 1 contender.
It doesn’t start out that way. Like the man who contacts you simply because you’ve clicked an interest in their profile. On paper he’s a catch, but he’s checked the tape: so are you. He mentions his ’69 Buick. You know about ’69 Buicks. So you ask questions about the ’69 Buick because what guy doesn’t want to talk about his ’69 Buick with someone who knows about ’69 Buicks? Not this one. Did you ask the wrong questions? Or the right ones? Don’t care. Took a flyer on this one anyway.
Then there’s the man in whom you see a number of commonalities, including but not limited to compatible sun signs. That’s become one of the best signs out there. He’s an Aquarian, like you, and his humor seems uncannily similar. A lefty to your righty, you bet. You send a funny inquiry, and you know it’s funny because you can read. Must’ve been too funny. Or not funny enough. Note to self: test your material.
Then there’s one with the funny hat. Why aren’t you using your photo with the funny hat anymore? He meets your now-minimal standards and you expect even less. Yet, there he is, changing that photo immediately, writing immediately, writing you back immediately. It’s quality work, a conversation filled with the kind of one-liners you think about once a conversation is over except that it’s all happening right now. You ask for him out for coffee. Because you’ve done everything right. Right?
You thought you drew him in. Now you’re six inches from the ropes and Funny Hat is six inches in front you, stepping on your foot. Judges never look at the feet.
Kyril Relikh, right, dislikes the Western Hemisphere, Match.com. Photo: The Mirror
In October 2016, Kyril Relikh fought Scot Ricky Burns for the WBA World super lightweight title in Glasgow, Scotland. Relikh was the world no. 1 contender; Burns clinched Relikh, ran from Relikh, and failed to land Relikh for much of the fight. He was gassed. He looked to have lost rounds one, two, four, six, nine, 10, 11, and 12. If you’re counting, that’s most of them. Burns said he felt like he’d been hit by a bus. For a boxer to say that after a championship bout means that his opponent truly did everything right.
The judges scored the bout 116-112, 116-112, 118-110 for Ricky Burns.
Kyril Relikh, if you ever step foot in the English-speaking world again, get in touch. I think I’ll be available.
Note: The WBA has recently ordered a Relikh-Barthelemy rematch. No date has been scheduled.
This post is dedicated to Ronald McIntosh, Richie Woodhall, and Claressa Shields, who would be doing quality work on Funny Hat’s face.
thingspeoplelookup.com 