Thursday, March 31, 2011

Season Totals

Hey, kids.

Well, my first season of Men's softball in Burbank ended tonight.  I've added up all my stats to the best of both my recollection and math skills.  They are as follows:

17 for 27 batting = .629 avg

Not bad considering the rustiness I've felt and being in a new league.  I'm hoping to improve this for sure.  One odd thing is that all but one hit was a single.  I hit a double tonight finally.  I think that has to do with the speed of the players in the league and I've been pretty conservative on the bases.  If I can hit balls that skip by an outfielder, I can run for days.  The main thing I need to focus on as a hitter is waiting for the ball.  I think I have a tendency to step too early and then swing a bit flat-footed.  Then it's nothing but arms.  I'll generate more power if everything moves together toward the ball.

13 RBIs

Actually pretty good considering we only played 8 games.  I was hitting 3rd in the lineup most of the year,  a position where you need to be productive, so this feels good.

13 Runs Scored

I set out to score at least a run a game and almost scored 2 so this feels good as well.  This shows that my wheels are still working somewhat.  I definitely could've been more aggressive on the bases but I didn't trust my legs to do what they've done in the past.  I definitely need to do some sliding practice to get over the fear that I'll burn/skin the hell out of my legs.  That'll help me feel more confident as well.

Fielding:

I couldn't tell you how many errors I made this year.  It's not because it's SOoo many but that I don't keep track.  One of the major things I need to do is be more tough.  I get pretty nervous when a teammate throws the ball hard or in the dirt.  I need to be more sure of myself and my hands and not be afraid to put my head behind my glove.  It's the best way to see what the ball is going to do but it's obviously dangerous too.  But if I do it more on balls in the dirt, I'll feel better than I do bailing out on them.  I need to take some more grounders if I can and focus on getting my body in front of the ball, not panicking, and keeping it in front of me at the very least.

Overall not a bad year.  Our team was a good group of guys and we played much better the last 3 or 4 games.  I love when we battle and don't give up.  There's no shame in it and we can walk proud even after a loss.  One thing I wish I could change is our pitchers attitude at times.  He can go from playful to rage in one swing of the bat, his and theirs.  He got warned in at least one game and I'm surprised it didn't happen more.  Tonight he and I argued, which was the first time that's happened, about plays he thought I should've made.  They were mostly grounders between myself and the second baseman.  I knew I could've done more on them and the last thing I needed was an on-field lecture.  Whatever advice can wait for the dugout and a scolding helps no one.  If I'm pissed at you, I may not be able to concentrate on the next hitter.  Anytime someone makes a mistake, and we all do (this ain't the pros), the best thing to do is let it go and be ready for the next opportunity.  Hopefully this will improve going forward.  I can't say for sure.  I think I held my own and when we got into the dugout, I was waiting to give him an encouraging fist bump, letting it go as best I could.

Well, I hope somebody read this the whole way through.  If so, there's a check box below for: funny, interesting, or lame (my addition).  Check it if you're so inclined.

Baseball season started today as well.  It's a great time of year.

:-P  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Here I Go Again...

Hey, Kids.

So I've been having really weird sleep patterns for the past couple of weeks, hence I'm writing this at 5am.  I have usually had trouble falling asleep initially but now that isn't an issue.  My problem now is that I fall asleep almost right away but wake up about 3 to 4 hours later and then I'm unable to fall back asleep.  Or if I do fall back asleep it's around 5am and when my alarm goes off at 6:15am, I'm dead tired and snooze till at least 7am (lately) but once as late as 7:30.

I'm not sure what's causing it.  I haven't changed anything in my diet.  I mean, I've been trying to eat a bit better and to diversify my light snacks.  I've been buying apples and fat free cherry Yoplait but I can't imagine either of those causing it, nor do I eat them everyday.  I can't say that I'm stressing about work because things have been pretty steady there and I don't take it home with me.  The one thing that has somewhat corresponded with this quasi-insomnia has been the fact that I've started going on hour-long walks at night; usually around 7-7:30pm.  It's not like it's particularly taxing, nor is it that energizing (if it were you'd think I'd have trouble falling asleep initially).

There was one night where I had a weird dream that woke me up but most dreams aren't any weirder than dreams normally are.  But it does seem like I wake in the middle of dreaming.  It's not like I jolt upright in a cold sweat or anything.  It's like I'm dreaming away, REMming it up, and my brain gently says to itself, "Well that's enough of that" and I gently wake up to see 2:45am staring at me in harsh red alarm clock writing.  And as soon as I'm up, my brain starts firing off on all sorts of shit; seemingly things I had thought about prior to going to bed.  And also weirdly, I usually have some song from the day stuck on repeat in my head.

On weekends, it seems like my body makes up for it and cashes in this sleep-debt and I seem to sleep upwards of 10-11 hours.  Since I stay up later on weekends than weekdays, this means I might end up in bed till 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  Well, generally more like 1ish.  While I generally have my weekends free, or have evening activities planned, it still kind of kills the day (the daylight more specifically) so it's hard to imagine getting out to the beach or taking a road trip as I always fancy doing but never seem to.

So tonight (this morning?) I've just decided to go with it and do what my body, or more likely my brain, wants.  I'm awake, brain.  Ya happy?!

Anyone have any ideas, similar experiences, thoughts?  Keep in mind I'm not having trouble falling asleep initially and when I wake up in the wee hours, it's too late to take anything, e.g. melatonin, sleeping pill, etc.  I'd rather not take sleep aids though I usually need melatonin to drop this rhino on Sunday nights [after sleeping in as I do].

Anyway, here's hoping today my workday doesn't suck.

:-/  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbthzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Hef

Hey, Kids!

I usually wake up on Sundays feeling shitty and tired; much like a hangover minus the BAL or regret of what I might have done the night before.  Nope.  I'm just a man with a fatigued body and a hungry mind.  While I eat my breakfast and try to muster the energy to be productive in even some small way, I try to engage my mind with some form of media.  It's a somewhat passive engagement, I know, but it's all I have the strength for in my slumbery stupor.  The thing that is oddly important is that this media not offend me visually.  I am eating after all.  So I usually turn to sports.  They're fairly banal visually speaking.  I mean unless a player is constantly spitting (I'm talking to you Matt Garza), it's pretty easy to watch without drawing up any queasiness that I feel so much more vulnerable to in the mornings.  Of course right now there are no good sports to watch on a Sunday morning being that football has ended and baseball, my true love, has yet to start (from a televised perspective).

So I've been turning to Netflix.  But not just any old movie will do.  I find myself unwilling to watch a narrative film because I feel like the experience might be tampered by my mood. I find myself turning to documentaries.  It's weird because I think that it's okay to watch them regardless of my mood much like I'm okay with watching them with the lights on; something that I'm not happy about with narratives.  You don't have to be as intently focused it seems.  It's like watching the History channel to me.  How many of you turn off the lights to watch that?  So anyway, that's generally how I spend my Sunday mornings: watching documentaries.

This morning I watched Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, And Rebel.  It was a very thorough depiction of his social significance in American society.  It got me to thinking about my perceptions of the man.

I think that most people my age think of him based largely on his personal life, and the wackiness that we've seen of it on The Girls Next Door.  It's generally shown him to be an out-of-touch old man surrounded by young women.  I think in most people it's the last perception of someone that sticks and if this were my last perception of Hef, it'd be a sad one.  But thankfully this documentary served as a very welcome reminder of the large amounts of good Hef has brought to the world.

He and his magazine have been completely inclusive in terms of race.  It can't be stated enough how significant that was, being that the magazine was started in the early 50's.  Hef has long embraced jazz music and it's stars which were largely black and Playboy has had in depth interviews with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Jim Brown, and Jesse Jackson among others.  I can't say for sure how many of the bunnies were black but Hef's stance on racial equality was so public, both in the magazine and his TV show, it bordered on revolutionary.

Hef has also been an avid proponent of free speech, and not just in the case of his own magazine, but also in the arrests and trials of Lenny Bruce.  Hef literally lent Lenny Bruce the Playboy lawyers to defend his case.  This is hugely important to me both because I firmly believe we should have the right to say whatever (and I mean WHATEVER) in most civil forums and also because of my love of George Carlin.  Without Lenny Bruce there'd be no George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Maher, or David Cross because their language itself (the words) would be restricted and worst of all their ideas would be restricted.  Can you imagine what it'd be like if they got arrested all the time because some bureaucrat didn't like what they had to say or how they said it?  I've held firmly to the idea that comedians are the philosophers of our time, in the Socratic sense (except comedians make a living), in that they publicly question policy using logic and rational thought; things you may not always find in music or painting or literature (though you can, see Rage Against The Machine or Kurt Vonnegut).  So this was a deathly important battle.

Certainly watch this documentary to see and hear all of this in more detail.  I think it's important.

So back to Hef, I certainly understand the criticism of his magazine.  I have some of my own.  It's certainly relatively tame in modern society where EVERYTHING can be found with a mouse click.  But I think that that might actually make Playboy kind of quaint and classy in a way today.  What has bothered me about it was the proliferation of breast implants and the airbrushing away of ethnicity that I've seen, though only sporadicly as I've never been a subscriber to Playboy nor have I ever owned a single issue.  But I've perused...

Everyone who knows me knows I very much love breasts.  I don't know why and I don't care to examine it.  So it's definitely been troublesome to see the number of women getting implants sky-rocket.  I'm not against a woman trying to better herself, if that's the aim.  If it's a point of self esteem, that is, an attempt to gain some I completely understand.  It's no different than trying to lose weight.  It's about feeling better about yourself.  But the idea that silicone is the only way into Playboy and that bigger is always better is where I draw the line.  I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a picture on the internet and thought, "She'd probably be just as hot without those implants."  Or even worse is when you see the thumbnail of a photo and think the girl is gorgeous, click on it for a closer look, only to be repulsed by the amount of scarring she has from the surgery.  It's sad, and an unfair tradeoff if you ask me.  But I must acknowledge that this does go beyond Playboy.

It's also no secret that I've been a fan of latin women for a good long while now.  It probably has a lot to do with where I grew up.  There've been a few times where there's been a latina centerfold in Playboy and it seemed as if they tried to "airbrush the brown off" of her.  I can't say that it always happens but I can say it has.  Again, this issue may be larger in society than just the pages of Playboy but I can't help bringing it up when thinking about the magazine.  It may have to do with where Hef's tastes lie but that's purely speculation.  But if he asked me, I'd say, "Embrace the exotic, Hef."  There's certainly nothing wrong with our cornfed white girls but variety is always a good thing.

But to bring all back to Hef as a social and cultural icon: I think it's important to look past the characature of Hef that you may have and look at American culture and how it has progressed since that first issue of Playboy with Marilyn on the cover.  I don't know if it could've gotten here without him.  There have certainly been excesses.  But I fear to think what things might have looked like had we not had a choice.

Watch the documentary and make your choice.  Or don't.  See if I care.

:-P  Pbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbth!!!

Saturday, March 12, 2011

A New Home, A New Hope

Hey, Kids!

Welcome to the new home of my blog.  It's got the complete archive of blogs from both MySpace and Facebook; minus some shitty "what do you think of me" surveys.  Do check out the writings of the past because there's definitely some high quality shit to be found.  Even some of the included surveys contain gems that you'll only find here.

Hopefully, this new site will also be where I'll get back to writing longer form pieces, both "journally" and conceptual.  It'll be good to get back to it.  As you can see [on the right] I was pretty prolific for a casual blogger so it can become a useful tool for me once again.  At least comedy will be born.  Well, a boy can dream...

Thanks for reading, even if this is the only one you'll read.

-Aaron