Ideal Bowling

I went bowling the other night.

Midweek get-togethers with friends are a nice way to break up a work week. Bowling is a challenge for me. It’s difficult just picking up spares but feels like it should be much easier. On the first roll I knock down about half the pins. The second is even more embarrassing. It doesn’t matter how they’re lined up either. Pins on opposite sides of the lane are nearly impossible to hit. Most people can get one but without a bouncing the pin off the back and striking the other one, forget it. Have you ever seen anyone actually do that? Nail a perfect 7, 10 split?

When I have three pins staring at me all lined up down the center I’ll miss to one side or the other. If the pins are clustered on one edge I’ll just miss by rolling past the side or clunking it in the gutter. My favorite is when two pins are standing up with a bowling ball size gap between them. I make a selection on which one to hit and miss both pins going right between them.

It makes me think of the boat chase scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

“Are you crazy don’t go between them!”

“Go between them are you crazy?!”  

No matter how wide the miss I always manage to stare at the cleanup gate like I’ve just seen an elephant knock them over with his trunk. It’s partly confusion and partly surprise, Why? How? Bowling is no different from every other activity. In order to get good you have to spend time at it. On a good year I’ll go twice, so I won’t be getting better anytime soon. Bowling, pool and darts are just games you play at the bar or at birthday parties or on a snow day from school. Obviously some people compete in them like any other sport, but for most of us these are occasional events. We can only …ahem, spare so many hours every year. Mostly I just think WAAAAY too much about the larger implications; hence this blog.

That I get too frustrated with my ability is a given; why I get so frustrated is a mystery. I’m not the kind of person that needs to be good at everything all the time. I’m as competitive as most guys but I think I have a standard idea in my head of what the performance level should look like. Let’s call it “Ideal 1”. It’s an artificial level that exists in my head representing my expected game. Ideal 1 doesn’t measure my actual ability, it’s pure fiction. It isn’t rooted in past efforts or realistic notions. How I arrived at this level is anyone’s guess.

You’ll understand this feeling if you’ve ever watched the US Open and thought “I should be able to do that”. Of course you don’t mean “I should be able to do that” at the same level and Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer.” You just mean I could volley the ball back and forth over the net, no problem. But it is a problem. A very big problem. What you should ask yourself in reply to the silly assertion is “Based on what, should I be able to do that?”

 Anything short of Ideal 1 is failure, which is tough on the psyche. It’s not a competitive thing as much as an expectation; again, for a game which I don’t play often and have almost no knowledge of. I don’t expect to get over 200 and if the highest score of the group is 175 and at 145, I’m OK with that. But those sub 100 games are embarrassing even if the top scores are only a few points above that. Ideal 1 doesn’t come with an exact score number which is convenient because then I’d have to name it.    

What is that mechanism in my thinking that makes me imagine a world where lofty expectations are the norm, based on nothing?

There is good news however. It seems to lessen with age. I’ll bet it never goes away completely though. I can make fun of myself a little more now.

Life is basically a collection of moments like my ill imagined bowling expertise. We think we have some notion of how it goes until we start to play, start to work, start to raise kids and start to save and invest money. Suddenly it all starts to seem unfair and we wonder why we aren’t better at this? ‘I’ve watched others do it and it doesn’t seem that tough’ is a kind of unspoken rule. I didn’t expect the setbacks or the debt. I didn’t expect the illness or the lack of opportunity. I thought education would ensure a better buffer.

But everyone who stays at it improves, with effort and with learning. That may be the only truly observable lesson. Stay in the game, even when you struggle with the wobbly pins.

Signs Signs Everywhere Signs

 

Who was it that said "If you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying"? Alex Cora, AJ Hinch?

 Well the Astros tried hard, and took sign stealing to an industrial scale level. Manager AJ Hinch was suspended for a year by the commissioner, as was the General Manager Jeff Luhnow. Promptly after that Astros owner Jim Crane fired them both. The league also tacked on a 5 million penalty to the team for violating policy, which they can afford now after dumping both Hinch and Luhnow.

If you’re not up to speed on this scandal here it goes. Since at least 2017 the Astros used a sophisticated form of sign stealing from opposing pitchers in their home games. Sign stealing is familiar to everyone who’s ever played little league. If you’re a runner on second you look at the sign the catcher gives the pitcher and you try to relay that sign to your teammate at the plate. If the catcher puts one finger down it’s a fastball (usually) and two fingers mean an off-speed pitch like a curve or change-up. You can communicate to your batter a signal like tipping your cap or clapping. Teams look for it though and try to come up with different signals to confuse. No one considers this cheating.

But let’s say one of the parents behind the fence in center field uses a high resolution video camera and zooms in on the catcher. The parent recording the game communicates to the batter by shouting or waving his hands. Most people rightly see this as cheating. Not just because of the magnitude but because the other team isn’t aware it’s happening. This is almost exactly what the Astros did. What they were doing, and it looks like the Red Sox as well, was industrial scale cheating. I’m sure they weren’t the only ones but they needed to be made an example of.

Rumors floated around the league after the 2017 season so other teams got wise to the Minute Maid Park (Houston) advantage. The Nationals, who just won the last series, used a complicated set of signs for all their games in Houston.

Pitcher Mark Fiers, who was with the Astros in 2017, broke the story to the Athletic in November last year. Minute Maid Park has a camera set up to record the game for instant replay purposes. This has been the case for all teams since 2014. Somehow the team was able to send the live feed to a dugout monitor where the players would watch and bang on a trash can for off-speed pitches and sit quietly for fastballs. If anyone was going to have major problems with sign stealing it would be a pitcher. Not to mention, doing something this brazen is bound to fall apart after your players start going to other teams. The Astros of course won the World Series in 2017. How much is due to their clever ‘replay gate’?

If it didn’t help, no one would bother. This is the biggest problem with cheating, you tarnish your reputation for something you may well have earned without it.

 It doesn’t matter that they had the best pitching staff that year, by a long shot. It doesn’t matter than Jose Altuve, George Springer, Carlos Corea, and Alex Bregman all had incredible years. Altuve even won the MVP award that year.

A lot of teams the Astros went through that year are rightfully salty today. C.C. Sabatha (Yankees) wants the win vacated as does David Freese (Dodgers). Kevin Youkilis  (Yankees) is disappointed that the penalties weren’t steeper. Trevor Bauer (Reds) trolled the Astros with video clips of AJ Hinch mocking the idea that the team was cheating. 

I don’t know how to feel about the punishment the MLB did hand down. In addition to the 5 million dollar fine slapped on the organization they also lose their first and second round picks for the next two years. It might not seem like much, but the real damage is not in payroll or future talent or vacated wins, it’s in the perception we have of players who cheated. Not to mention an organization that allowed it. 

Baseball’s commissioner Rob Mannford decided to not punish the players individually. It’s too difficult to determine to what extent each player benefited or went along with it to not upset the others. That’s a reasonable explanation for me but I can’t imagine it goes over well with players on other teams that got beat. If social media is any indicator of how other players feel about the Astros, it will be a while before this episode is forgotten.

One Shot One Thrill

Sam Mendes created an entire movie as one shot. It’s dramatic and focused, suspenseful and intense. By telling one story over the course of a full day, back stories and side narratives get eliminated. We follow the characters from start to finish with nothing in between.1917 is less about the war as it is set during the war. Very few scenes contain 'explainers' where generals discuss troop movements or point to maps and tell the audience where divisions are located. It’s a break from most war movies that seek to explore the historic costs of war, and the underlying political fault lines. 1917 wants to immerse you in the war, for a full day.

We are shown the mission at the beginning for the sake of plot; a British regiment deep behind German lines is facing imminent slaughter. Two soldiers are chosen to deliver a message to halt an attack before it’s too late. Other than that, most details about setting and maneuver are stripped away. We see and feel the way the soldiers do, a little lost and overwhelmed. This is a simple movie exploring the challenges of mission and the weight of responsibility. It doesn’t rehash political ideas about the war or the danger of nationalism. In this way the movie says less about World War I, or any war, than it does about determination, sacrifice and brotherhood--everything critical for carrying out mission in impossible situations. 

I’m not sure how much Sam Mendes (the director) believes this is a story about individual growth, but those characteristics are present. We see the reluctance to take the mission, the unlikely chance for success and the challenges that threaten to derail the whole thing.

“There goes First Principles, trying to stuff conservative ideals into movies again”.     

I don’t know a lot about camera work but this film is beautifully shot. We follow the soldiers as they traipse through empty trenches and open fields. We run with them to avoid bombs that light up the sky. The camera gets uncomfortably close as they kill and get shot at; it floats down the rapids after a jump into the river to avoid German gunfire. We feel as exhausted and nervous as the soldiers. The message the soldier carries is time sensitive, adding to our discomfort. We see dead bodies and rats scurrying through the muddy trenches and climbing over each other.

If Saving Private Ryan tried to answer the question “What is a life worth?” 1917 tries to answer the question “How does responsibility change a person?” In particular, responsibility that’s put-on, demanded of, critical for others. From a movie point of view, war is as good a theater to explore these questions as anything. It’s unrelenting, mistakes are deadly and there is no time for regret. We keep moving through the mess, determined. Lives depend on it after all.

I read an interview with the director, Sam Medes, who talked about shooting the opening scene from Spectre (James Bond film) in one shot. Because that sequence is one shot and completely memorable, he wondered what an entire movie shot this way might look like. 1917 is the result and the shots really pull you in. The word he kept using was “immersive”. He wanted an immersive feel for the audience.

It’s a granular and emotional story with just the scantest reminders that this takes place during World War I. 1917 is interested in the human part of mission and the mettle required to focus and finish.1917 shows how difficult situations create extraordinary courage.

This will win an Oscar. It has to.

Jogging Routines

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update on running. 

Mostly I’ve settled into a routine that feels like autopilot so the news is pretty much the same. I go 15 to 20 miles per week over the course of 3 days (sometimes 2). I run outdoors on Sunday because traffic is light and because I like to get 9 or so miles in. Sunday is still my most consistent day and also my long day. The pace has improved on the margins but only a little. I guess as long as my primary goal is distance, time will remain a secondary concern. I like where I’m at, just under 10:00 minutes per mile and occasionally under 9:50 per mile. That isn’t exactly lightning speed but it feels comfortable for now.

Comfort might be the problem though. I imagine jogging in the winter the way athletes imagine their off-season, as a time for maintenance. They hit the weights and do cardio, but the real grind happens during the regular season. The practices are intense, the schedule is packed and the stakes are high. I’m hardly an athlete in the off-season, but the lack of a specific goal keeps me comfortable with my routine. I want to be ready to get into a half marathon at pretty much any time of year. The races are still a ways off but I never should need a 2 month program to get back into shape. I do plan on doing a few more this year. I only did two last year and one was a disastrous trail run.

 “Never again!” he shouts as the mountain air fills his lungs and he trips over a hiking log, gasping like a rioter through a cloud of tear gas.

The weather has been spectacular, especially when you consider this is usually the coldest time of year and it hasn’t dropped below 30 in over a month. The wind is the wind. If it’s too strong I don’t go, but up till now it hasn’t held me back. I’m under no illusions that winter will continue to be so mild throughout the rest of the year. We did just hit January after all. But I’ve been through some mild winters before in Oklahoma. We seem to get them every 3 to 5 years. It might not drop below 30 again.

I started out early (6:30 am) on Sundays during the summer because the heat gets unbearable in the morning. I stuck with it in the fall despite the cooler mornings. It just made sense to get the run in early and it still does. Since I go to gym early during the week I decided to stick with the early run on Sunday as well.

I’ve been fortunate not to have terrible injuries. I don’t push anything too hard anymore. On countless occasions I’ve injured shoulders, joints and muscles while lifting weights and trying to set personal records. After a few of those you lose your competitive drive and try to work out smarter. For bad injuries you can miss months at a time, no exercise and no alternative. So I improve at a slow pace. That’s OK with me. Jogging isn't sprinting.

Naval Blockade

What’s amazing about the case of Chief Petty Officer Gallagher is how much it resembles bureaucratic entitlement in Washington DC. Trump gives an order and everyone affected by it finds ways to obfuscate and ignore it. From the ambassador in Ukraine to the intelligence community, to the Justice Department and FBI and now the military, the administrators are in open rebellion. Whether they are right on the substance of the disagreement is beside the point.

Does the president set policy or doesn’t he?

If you’re a little unfamiliar with the story of the decorated SEAL Eddie Gallagher, here is the short version. The Navy held a court-martial hearing for the commander accused of killing an ISIS fighter that was wounded. The medic that accused Gallagher changed his story on the witness stand, saying instead he (the medic) actually killed the ISIS fighter. That’s a strange enough development, but Gallagher was convicted of posing with a dead terrorist like a kid at the zoo. That seems like writing a citation for jay-walking because you couldn’t prove he robbed the liquor store. It’s nothing, a joke. 

  

President Trump gave him a pardon. But it was only a pardon for the crime of posing with a dead ISIS fighter. But overriding the Secretary of the Navy (Richard Spencer) and letting Gallagher keep his trident, the president gave the brass a middle finger. Maybe they deserved it, or maybe Trump was flexing his muscle a bit and letting the Pentagon know that they work for him. If you go constantly usurp the leaders that work for you it will create a backlash at some point, even if the president is within his rights to do it.

The public rarely hears cases like this. Most military courts stay behind the scenes and out public view. That’s best for everyone. When civilians hear about some of the grizzlier crimes they get put off. They can’t imagine how anyone could be so ruthless and cruel. But war does this to people and I prefer not to hear about every killing. If we’re talking about a Mai Li type massacre where civilians are rounded up and shot or raped and mutilated then everyone should know.

But this stuff with Gallagher seems minor, and considering he was acquitted of the murder charge anyway it seems even less important. It became important when Trump ordered the Navy to give Gallagher back his trident and end the ongoing investigation.

After the disastrous trial the prosecution leaked video to the New York Times showing interviews with the men from Gallagher’s platoon. It’s such a smarmy DC thing to leak classified information. I wonder if Americans even realize it is a crime.

 In the interviews Gallagher is called “toxic” and “evil” by SEALs under his command. They accuse him of being willing to kill anything that moves. Some of their complaints are just about his nasty language, “burkas were flying” and so forth.

Maybe he was a ‘toxic’ leader and prone to bloodthirsty language. If you’ve been around soldiers or sailors this is basically on brand for all of us, we’ve got a dark sense of humor. One recurring theme from most veterans of war is the callousness toward death and destruction. Teddy Roosevelt even wrote to his friend (Henry Cabot Lodge) about his ride up San Juan hill in Cuba “I killed a Spaniard with my own hand—like a jackrabbit”. Clearly loving battle a friend who fought with him during his Rough Rider days described him as “reveling in victory and gore”. That fighting men might actually get charged up by battle shouldn’t be surprising.

So how much of this is language and how much is real psychotic behavior? 

One aspect of this whole thing does make me cringe a bit. Why did a significant chunk of the men under his authority so despise him? I doubt if this is normal in the SEALs. These men have to be close and trust each other in the most dangerous situations; their lives literally depend on it. They accuse him of murder though, not a minor thing. 

It feels to me like there is a lot more to this story so I’ll reserve judgement on Eddie Gallagher for now. Whether Trump should have inserted himself into an internal matter is beside the point. When military leaders don’t fall in line they can be removed for even trivial things. President Obama removed General McChrystal from Afghanistan after a story about him calling the vice president “Joe Bite-Me”. I don’t think Obama really wanted to do it, but he would've looked weak otherwise. Silly nicknames mean disloyalty and as soon as the public hears it the command structure falls apart.

So far this insubordination against President Trump includes ‘appointed’ officials at Justice, State, Defense, the FBI and multiple intelligence agencies. The key word there is appointed. We expect elected officials (Congress, Senate) to stop the president’s agenda, not bureaucrats.

When administrators start to run their departments like little fiefdoms the country is in trouble. A house cleaning is in order.

Christmas Day-Off

I’ve been furiously avoiding the writing assignment for today. 

Not because I don’t like the topic or because I didn’t do any research, but because I don’t have a topic. The day is mostly wasted due my dentist appointment early this morning where I promptly came right back here to read news and check email. Then I ambled over to the couch to read a little more of the novel I’m plugging away at. After an hour or so I decided to get some coffee at a Great coffee house called Double Shot where I read a few more chapters of the book, not because of some need to finish but because of sheer boredom and a lack of a better idea. My brother and his family are still in town because of Christmas so I popped in for while over at my mom’s where they are staying. Then back here to get a little dinner and read some news hoping for spark of imagination or interest. So far nothing, but I’m writing anyway.

I did another scripture commentary yesterday morning, Christmas day. I’m going through the book of Acts chapter by chapter and doing some reflecting on the reading. I said “commentary” but on second look, that sounds a little more intellectual than what I’m going for. I try to do a chapter from anywhere in the Bible once a week. I don’t put them on my website because the pieces are a little too sloppy for the blog. And this is with the full knowledge that blog pages have pretty low standards. 

But by writing them and dumping them into a file folder I don’t have to edit them for clarity or grammatical errors. I don’t have to check for historical accuracy either which is the big one with the Bible.

It’s much more important for the Old Testament because sorting out prophets and messages is tricky without looking them up. Mixing up the Zachariahs from the Zephaniahs might get me laughed out of polite society. Most books contain the same general premise, God’s people forget their covenant and need a prophet. As a story arc it’s all too common, rejection of the old law, problems with war or famine or disease, and finally repentance. But without the repetition and enduring love we wouldn’t get the New Testament, or the Savior, or the accessibility to God and eternal hope through salvation.

   

 For now my reflections are just personal letters. That may change in the future. I need more material and the Bible is an endless supply to me.

What’s strange for me is that work begets work. I’m more efficient when my schedule is full. When I’ve got a whole day with nothing to do, I do nothing. Something tells me this is normal for a lot of us. We complain that we just don’t have time to for home projects and learning. But with a whole day and nothing planned we flip through mystery books and sip coffee. After that we saunter to the kitchen (or waddle) and paw through the fridge looking for peanut butter cups and egg nog. Is it just me? I doubt it. With a full work schedule though I seem to squeeze a lot in, I need structure and deadlines. Or maybe I just shouldn’t feel bad about spending a day relaxing, snacking, napping and reading.

Living With Yourself: Review

I finally finished Paul Rudd’s Living With Yourself on Netflix. It’s only 10 or so episodes that I started right when it came out, I’m not much of a binge watcher though. I got hung up a month or so ago and sort of forgot about it. The Crown came out for season 3 so my TV priorities shifted. Since I'm caught up on the House of Windsor it's back to business. 

Living With Yourself makes assumptions about humans that ring true, we want shortcuts to happiness and our humanity is tied to our unique experiences, good and bad. 

Here is the story in a nutshell. It’s a spoiler alert because I can’t explain the show without giving some of it away. Stop reading here if you plan to watch it. Miles is an ad executive who is in a creative rut. His relationship with his wife Kate (Aisling Bea) is shaky at best; they’re trying to get pregnant but Miles can’t be bothered to show up at the fertility clinic. He is selfish and bored with life until a coworker recommends a spa treatment to revitalize his situation. The spa turns out to be a cloning racket where the ‘scientists’ create the improved clone with less fat and better habits. The host is killed, or supposed to be. It doesn’t take with Miles because of a screw up. He wakes up in a plastic sack buried under ground and scrambles to tear out.

That opening sets the tone for the eerie story that follows. Some of the scene music is creepy and foreboding with some lighter moments sprinkled here and there. It feels a bit horror movie-ish at times. Not because of violence but because of the unknown quality. Having a clone around and trying to keep it a secret presents some frightening scenarios.   

The rest of the series tries to answer the question of ‘how will this arrangement work?’ Can the two men coexist? Will clone Miles murder Miles? Will Miles murder his clone? Will the clone ruin everything by not playing his part?

 Another trick the writers have introduced is to show the same scene from both Miles point of view and the clone’s.  This prevents us from favoring one over the other and works to show distinctions when they’re important. This isn’t an evil twin story despite their predicament. We see one side and then the other.

Are the writers telling us that we behave differently when motivations are different? I don’t want to give too much away, but their approaches to life, as well as attitudes toward Kate are rooted in their histories. The Miles clone has the same memories as Miles but only as images or files that were transferred from another source. Miles carries the pain and emotional attachment to his wife the human way, through his experience. Their connection is physical and emotional and not easily replaced despite their current marital problems.

Miles is not a great guy. He is selfish, he lies to his wife and coworkers and scams local farmers. He is mopey and miserable at home and despite his wife’s request that he go to the fertility clinic, he ignores her. The Miles clone is a better version of himself, friendlier to guests and more attentive to Kate. Miles gets jealous and tries to reclaim some energy and initiative after a while. 

  

I like the simple plot so far. Guy gets mixed up in a cloning accident and has to figure out how to manage him, his clone and his relationship with his wife, which is rocky. Rudd doesn’t oversell any of the parts, he plays both characters straight. There is a running gag about Tom Brady at the cloning clinic that's pretty funny. 

I think there are two lessons from this show. First, no amount of shortcuts will ever lead to happiness and fulfillment. Second, humans are more than just bone structure and DNA with memories. Clones might be copies, but like a copy they are more of a picture than an exact replica. Cloning is really just a fun story telling device. Michael Keaton’s Multiplicity used it as well but played the object lesson (that shortcuts don’t exist) for laughs. ‘Living’ and Multiplicity both begin from the same point, stressed out people do dumb things.  Only Living With Yourself investigates the second lesson, that humans are flawed creatures but completely unique in experience.