Men have an innate desire to celebrate athletic achievement. This is probably because Our Hunting Fathers relied upon their athletic prowess for survival, and it is no surprise that the best hunters and warriors are revered and rewarded in nomadic societies and lionized in folklore. Anthropology is the field which best explains why modern men are hardwired to want to be like Mike.

Professional sports–grown men playing children’s games in public for money—is a multibillion dollar obsession in this country. (Of course, this includes Division One college football and basketball—a malignant growth on our system of higher education, but that article has already been written.) Millions of American males (myself included) spend an absurd amount of time not merely witnessing this grand spectacle, but talking about it, reading about it, and digesting hours of sports radio and television shows.

Sports media is ultimately a discussion about morality. This is acutely apparent on sports talk radio, a large and growing presence in radio markets large and small. And sports talk radio is largely a debate about what constitutes manhood. (The overwhelming majority of the hosts and callers are male, and on the rare occasions when women’s sports are discussed, they are often held up for ridicule.) No matter what the subject, high salaries, steroids, what it takes to be a champion—it’s about what type of men these athletes are. The hosts and callers argue endlessly about whether particular athletes are winners, whiners, losers, or stand up guys.

But athletic competitions are not morality plays. Despite our inherent tendency to assign virtue to the victors, when one team defeats another on the sporting green, it signifies little about the actual character of the men involved. But something inside us wants to believe that the winners are more virtuous, or that they practiced harder, or that they are simply better people who deserved to win.

Sadly, however, grace under pressure in the athletic realm has no correlation to one’s behavior in real life. This is confirmed by a cursory look at the Jurisprudence section of the local sports page. The NFL is our favorite sport by far despite the frequency with which the exalted men who play professional football are being arrested for all manner of malfeasance, including rape, murder, assault, and drunken driving. (For a literary example of this phenomenon, see John Updike’s novel Rabbit Run. Like so many real life jocks, Rabbit Angstrom is a winner on the basketball court but a louse and a loser in his personal life who abandons his pregnant young wife and calls her a mutt).

When it comes to sports, people are inclined to ignore one of life’s basic lessons: an unexplainable alchemy of talent, luck, and preparation add up to worldly success. The winners are not necessarily superior to the losers, and Jesus doesn’t love them any better than He loves anyone else.

Hollywood understands all this. Witness the perpetual onslaught of tedious formulaic movies where our hard-working and virtuous hero almost always wins. Movies like Rocky and The Karate Kid are more cliche than storytelling, where lovable underdogs prevail against opponents who are simply depraved monsters.

There are many outstanding sports movies which defy and often even ridicule our expectations, including Dodgeball, Happy Gilmore, CaddyShack, Raging Bull, White Men Can’t Jump, Eight Men Out, Moneyball, North Dallas Forty, Million Dollar Baby and Friday Night Lights.

The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation.

“If you could look deep enough into anyone’s character, even perhaps your own, you would find a sense of machismo.”

So it is in life—from sun, to moon, to earth, to night, to day, to you getting up in the morning and going out to play a game of ball. All the rhythms of life are in some way related, one to another.

—The First Book of Rhythm by Langston Hughes

So you know, that you’re over the hill
When your mind makes a promise that your body can’t fill

—Old Folks Boogie by Little Feat

I love to drive past Brea Junior High School on Lambert Road on warm nights when guys are playing basketball under the lights even though I had to quit over a decade ago. I played regularly in the same pickup game for over twenty years (roughly 1980-2000) until my body said, “No mas.” At some point we all must accept that the beat goes on without us.

On Saturdays and Sundays we would meet on the dirty asphalt: Kenny, Mitch, Oscar, Bob, Tony, Carl, Dave, Robert, Michell, Regan, Jeff, Rob, Brian, Don, Andy, Steve, me and whoever else decided to show. Some showed up sporadically; others were there every Saturday and Sunday. Year round unless it was raining, we almost always had enough guys to play five on five full court basketball. Sometimes so many guys showed up that when you lost you’d have to watch three or four games before you could play again.

Streetball has no constitution, but there are rules which vary somewhat from court to court. Two nearly universal rules make it possible for a guy to show up and play almost anywhere.

(Warning: Although I’ve shown up by myself and played at ballcourts in various locals without serious incident, it is always advisable to bring backup when playing with guys you don’t know. And some games should probably be avoided outright. I stopped playing at a particular court in Pomona when a buddy told me that disputes there sometimes involved firearms.)

Rule One: Players call their own fouls and all calls are respected. Play stops any time a player yells “foul,” and his team gets the ball back without any arguing or complaining–well, that’s how it works in theory. But if someone abuses this rule by calling a foul every time he misses a layup, that player will eventually face a barrage of verbal reprimands, sometimes from his own teammates. This is how the game regulates itself.

Rule Two: The winning team keeps playing while the losers go to the back of the line. At our court next game always went to the five guys who had been waiting the longest, which is a good way to maintain tranquility and keep the games flowing. (At many streetball venues, players are able to call “next” and then choose whomever they want to be on their team–for example, one player might call next and then wait to choose the best players from the team that just lost, ignoring guys who have been waiting for several games.)

Streetball is an institution which functions as a building block of our civil society. Each week we chose to freely associate with one another in order to exercise our appetites for conflict, competition, and fellowship. All sorts of good and bad things can happen when grown men attempt to maintain comity and civility while fiercely chasing a round little ball. Over the years there was often much shouting and bluster, but we were usually able to settle disputes without assaulting one another.

I don’t want to frighten any of my younger readers, but in the age before smartphones, human beings who desired fellowship actually had to talk to the people around them. And that’s what we did between games, we talked about everything. Sports. Life. The weather. We even talked about the onomatopoetic ramifications of Chick Hearn’s expression, “in-n-out heart BUH-RAKE.” That’s why I miss the guys as much as I miss the game.

Drivers, teachers, lawyers, students, contractors, forklift operators, electricians, surgeons, linemen, entrepreneurs, computer programmers, waiters, painters, carpenters, college professors, air conditioner repairmen. I miss the guys.

Ingredients:

1 400 gram can of Zanahorias en Escabeche (Sliced Pickled Carrots with Jalapenos)
1 1/2 cups white rice (or brown rice if that’s what you’re into)
3 cups chicken broth
1 chopped bell pepper (or half a stalk chopped celery)
2 teaspoons olive oil

Directions:
Combine rice, vegetables and broth. Add oil and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil and reduce to simmer until liquid disappears (approximately 20 minutes).

Thinking v. Feeling

Poet said We think by feeling
A thought that echoes Hume
No logic-minded being
Would genuflect at tombs

We feel therefore we think
Is what they’re finding out
This unappealing link
Is Descartes turned inside out

With a touch of intervention
From our modern frontal lobe
My breed maintains ascension
On our lovely little globe

Toughest on the block
With more appetite than smarts
Condemned to rule this rock
For the cravings of the heart

I have students bring two copies of their rough drafts. While the students are doing their peer reviews, I scan the other copy, looking at the structure of the essays rather than proofreading them. The students are free to proofread one another’s essays.

Directions

1. Turn in one copy of paper to instructor.
2. Take two Peer Review Worksheets.
3. Get into groups of 3-4 Students.
4. Take turns reading papers ALOUD to group.
5. Pass paper clockwise (or counterclockwise if you’re feeling rebellious).
6. Silently read another student’s paper and fill out worksheet.
7. Repeat steps 5 & 6.

Rough Draft Peer Review Sheet

Author: __________________________________________________

Reader:__________________________________________________

Paper Title:_______________________________________________

This paper is ______pages long (excluding Works Cited page)

This paper includes a Works Cited page in MLA format: Yes No

Thesis statement is in paragraph # _____

Copy thesis statement verbatim.

Two enlightening quotations from sources that the author utilized are:

and

Two notable sentences that the author composed are:

and

What is the paper’s strongest feature?

An Amusing Teacher Story

During a discussion about ESP, a student informed the class that he possessed a “sixth scent.” Miraculously, I resisted the temptation to say, “You’re telling me, buddy.” (Life rarely provides such a perfect straight line.)

Dishes

Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?
Did you forget to turn on the machine?
Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?
Why do they smell so foul and obscene?
Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?
They seem to lack all luster and sheen.
Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?
Why are they yucky and moldy and green?
Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?
You look confused; don’t you know what I mean?
Are the dishes in the dishwasher clean?

It would be redundant to say that Dave was “completely devastated” when his hamster died because there cannot be degrees of devastation. I can be extremely scared by radio reports of zombies in my neighborhood, but it would be inexact to say that I am extremely terrified. Conversely, it would be oxymoronic* to declare that Dave was only “slightly devastated” by the news of his hamster’s untimely demise.

For the poet (by which I also of course mean the novelist) the phrases completely devastated and slightly devastated have all sorts of wonderful possibilities. However, writers seeking precision with their words (students enrolled in a Freshman Composition class, for example) should avoid such phrases.

* George Carlin has helpful lists of redundancies and oxymorons in his book Braindroppings

Evaluation

State whether the highlighted portions of the following sentences are redundant, oxymoronic, or grammatically acceptable.

1. I was a tad heartbroken when my wife left me for my younger brother.

2. My aunt is a little bit pregnant.

3. Dresden was totally incinerated by the Allied bombing.

4. Labron James is extremely overrated.

5. My cat was completely dead after the accident.

6. Gertrude was a little bit exhausted after studying six straight hours for her English exam.

7. Osvaldo was completely miserable after he lost the tiddlywinks tournament.

8. The traffic around here is somewhat slow after jai alai matches.

9. Pham was extremely furious when I told her the results from Dancing with the Stars.

10. Ted overdosed slightly on pain medication.

Lies

The sky is green
The sea is pink
Babies don’t cry
And shit don’t stink

The sky is green
The sea is pink
Babies don’t cry
And shit don’t stink

Tivo

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients

* 1 cup sugar
* 1 cup canned pumpkin
* 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
* 1/4 cup fat free vanilla yogurt
* 2 large egg whites
* 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
* 1 tsp ground cinnamon
* 3/4 tsp salt
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
* cooking spray

Preparation

* Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

* Combine first 5 ingredients in a large bowl, and stir well. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture, stirring just until moist. Stir in chocolate chips.

* Spoon batter into a loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pan, then remove. Cool completely on wire rack. Makes 16 slices.

**To make it even healthier, try Splenda instead of sugar! I didn’t want to try it for the first time making it, but the next time I make it I’m going to try this to see how it compares!