DEFENSE! DEFENSE!

This afternoon most of the people in the Twin Cities will be watching the Vikings take on their eternal rivals, the Packers in storied Lambeau field. I, along with Quinn, will be at the Barn, watching the Gopher Women take on 23rd ranked New Mexico. There was a time when nothing would take precedence to a Vikes playoff game. Remember, I’m old enough to remember Fran Tarkington and the Purple People Eaters. Which has a lot to do with the fact that I couldn’t give a shit about today’s game. In fact I’d probably be rooting for the Pack. They certainly deserve it more. I just can’t give my heart to a team that can’t make a big defensive stop and never makes the big play on defense. I remember games where the defense outscored the offense.

The Gopherettes on the other hand can bring some ‘D’. When they turn up the half court trap pressure, they must be terrifying. Shannon Schoenrock actally does a demented staccato scream that resembles a warcry from the natives of her hometown in Southwestern Minnesota. Maybe something her German ancestors learned in 1863. Certainly disconcerting. And then you have April, laying in the weeds waiting for that telegraphed pass, for the oppotunity to come flying out of nowhere to make the interception and start the break. And behind that you’ve got Janelle McCarville ready to not only block your shot, but tip it to herself ala Bill Russell and fire an outlet pass to a breaking guard. Or to Jaimie Broback a 6’3″ power forward who can run the floor like a guard.

I like this team. They were picked for third in the Big10, but OSU has already lost a game, so that might put them in the fight for the title. It’s different not having Lindsay on the floor, but it does give other talented players the chance to step up once in awhile. I love the coach. Pam Borton. She doesn’t bullshit and you can just see the way she used the pre-season as a teaching tool. I think she’s close to getting them where she wants them to be, but you can bet they will be improving all season. And you can bet a big part of their identiy will be defense.

EDIT: Well eat my words, the Vike’s defense played great, and they actually beat the Packers. Which will be nice tomorrow at work. Not having to put up with gloating CheeseHeads.

And the Gopherette’s. Held New Mexico to 35 points.

I know that I sell myself here as a jock. It’s kind of a “the older I get the better I was” deal. But I did hold my own around most of the hoops venues of the twin towns. And I can play tennis slightly above the level of embarrassment. My self image is that of a hardnosed jock. And I love athletic competition.

It hasn’t always been that way though. Through high school..actually more like through the Forest Service days, I was the whimp’s whimp. I was so skinny that at one point my sister’s first husband (a former all stater and gopher hoopster) could get his hands all the way around any part of my body except my head. I got my bird like frame from my mother who in her youth was cast as a “Starving Armenian” in a church drive to help the Amenians. I could have been the model for the before in Charles Atlas ads.

I think that for some reason my coming as this late life baby, out of nowhere or as a result of my Father’s new found sobriety, made Mom feel like I was some fragile gift from God. I was babied and spoiled and over protected and so by the time kindergarten rolled around I was a physical coward. I was so terrified of getting hurt that I really shied away from the boy’s rough-housing. Susan Egge beat me up for cripes sake.

In northwestern Minnesota March is an iffy month. You’d have a big snow storm followed by a couple of days of sunny weather in the high forties and then a dive into the single figures above zero. This would have the effect of turning the playgound at Thomas Edison elementary school into a jagged, frozen desert, a sheet of ice with frozen clumps of dirt and grass and jagged shards of ice protruding from it’s surface.

Thomas Edison was one of those fifties style schools, brick, one story and spead out. Two of it’s wings formed a rectangle open at one end that bordered the playground. When we arrived at school in the mornings and after lunch (it was a nieghborhood school and most of us walked home for lunch), even in the coldest weather, they made us wait outside in that rectangle until it was time to open the doors.

The rougher boys occupied their time playing PumpPumpPoleAway. That’s what we called it. I couldn’t find a reference to it on the net, but I think it’s called Bulldog now. It’s a form of tag that starts with on person being “it,” and the rest lined up on one side of the yard. On a signal. “PumpPumpPoleAway” in our case, everyone runs to the opposite end of the field and “it” tries to tag them. If you are tagged you stay in the middle and join the bulldogs. The process is repeated until the last person is left.

Mike Fitzgerald, Norm Robbinson and Mike Young came up with a variation. The called it simply, “Tackle Pump.” As the name implies it wasn’t good enough to just tag the victim, you had to tackle them. So in the freezing cold, with jackets off and no protective padding, they would crash into each other, driving their targets into the frozen ground, swearing and laughing like maniacs.

I stayed on the sidewalk, ashamed of my weakness and fear.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And if it is broke, ignore the fucker.

I really hate this. I hate it when I’m the stupid asshole in the story. I won’t pain you with the boring technical details, other than to say there was a problem with some order entry today. I didn’t start it but when I went to fix the problem, it still rejected the entry. I got on a conference call with a couple of women who were actually trying to help me. I got all snarky when they started asking me about the details of the order and was giving them the old, “I know that…..I’m (sarcastically) aware of that….” You know being an indignant prick.

About five minutes after I hung up I realized I’d left off one letter in the the product code and that’s why it rejected. That’s one of the suggestions they made that I managed to get all huffy about.

I deal with people all day long who are bent out of shape with me for stuff that’s not my fault and often turns out to be, actually their fault.

We have seen the enemy and he is us.

I know I’ve been lame lately, kind of hit a creative dead spot.

Cold turkey on Celexa is a really bad idea. Starting day two I started getting this sensation like chewing on tin foil or whacking your funny bone…only through my whole body. It seemed to start in my spine just below the shoulders and radiate out. It got more and more frequent. I’m so dumb it took me almost a week to figure out what it was. And then of course my script was all hosed up and I had to make a shit pile of hostile phone calls in order to even get some. And believe me I was hostile.

My girl…the red head, the one I’ve watched since she was playing on the Falcon’s varsity in eighth grade, the one who was Minnesota’s Ms. Basketball and went to Iowa for a couple of years before she transferred back, took over the game for the Gophers on Sunday. With the score tied late in the first half she stole the ball out on the wing and got out ahead of everyone for a coast to coast layup. That was the beginning of a two and a half minute run in which she stole the ball the next two Indiana possessions, once for another layup and then for an assist when she hit Janelle (Shaq) McCarville for a breakaway. She added another steal, another basket and I think another assist. I love to see someone completely dominate a game like that. And it’s even better when it’s someone from the nieghborhood playing in the Big 10.

On another note: more typical Bobness going on. Last week I came home from working out and couldn’t find my glasses. Later I went back to the club to check and they weren’t in my locker. I began searching my car and the house in earnest. I didn’t find them but I found three other pairs. I’m talking about reading glasses here…nine dollars at the drugstore…but still. Today I went to the club again and when I got ready to hit the bike, I realized that they were in my shorts pocket. So they had been in my backpack the whole time.

I’ve run out of Celexa so Welbutrin is the only thing between me and my depression right now. I think I might stay off, there are some benefits, not the least of which is a upswing in the lumber business. Another effect (benefit?) is that suddenly I’ve been having very vivid and interesting dreams almost every night.

Last night’s was a doozie. You may remember my friend Adrien, who was shot and killed in D.C. last August. I went to high school and college with him. We were close, but I never knew he was gay until about a year ago. In spite of the fact that he was slightly effeminate and loved show tunes, I never even suspected it.

Isn’t it odd when in dreams you find yourself in a situation and you have a ready made history of what’s going on, you aren’t just plopped into the scene but you know what’s going on, what lead up to the situation. We were much younger, in our thirties maybe, I was working on a project with an older gay man, maybe my age now. I brought Adrien along to a meeting, bringing him in on the project. We were sitting in the guy’s apartment discussing the details of the job, when all of a sudden they start getting flirtatious with each other. The meeting goes to hell in a hand basket while these too guys suddenly realize they’re completely infatuated. I sit on the couch wondering how these two men, niether of which obviously gay, suddenly were having a love at first sight experience. I remember thinking, “Golly, isn’t this sweet?”

Dr. Freud?