Delusions of Adequacy

I'm not this Stephen Tilson.

 

Nor this one either, though I've been a huge Thomas Dolby fan since about 1983.

 

Sorry to disappoint anyone. I don't even like soccer very much. Read down a bit and you'll see what my preferred game is.

If he's doing this kind of thing now, what will he do once he has the full power of the state to back him up? Obama's Missouri Truth Squads http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIenDGSAdPA Questions: If I point out how ridiculous it is for Michelle Obama to try to commiserate with the poor while she's pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars a year as an official at a hospital that Barack secured massive amounts of money for, is that a character attack, a lie, or simply misleading? How large will be my fine or how long will I have to serve in jail? If I say that when Obama repeatedly talks about his tax cut (which I'm sure we'll get, just like Clinton's middle-class tax cut in 1993) he never mentions how his "cuts" will affect singles like me, and that my taxes WILL go up under his plan, am I lying, misleading, or attacking his character? Will the police break down my door, or will I merely be subpoenaed to appear before the local Truth Squad? If I say that he won his first election by selectively disqualifying the votes of those who supported his opponent, am I attacking his character? Simply misleading? Or outright lying? Will I be the only one in the interrogation room, or will my family be dragged in, too? And if I point out that the mother of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek, an Obama supporter, had asked him NOT to wear her son's bracelet at campaign events or mention his name in connection with the campaign, or even the real possibility that after all that Barack forgot his name forgot his name and had to look at the bracelet to remember it, am I misleading, lying, or attacking his character? Will I be allowed to do community service for my crime, or will I simply disappear? Am I overreacting? I sure hope so. Because if this is the kind of thing he does now... Of course, it's of a piece with his lawyers' actions in trying to threaten TV stations against airing ads critical of Obama. Don't air that ad or you could lose your FCC license http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/ObamaLetterNRAAd.pdf "A chill wind." Thank you for the phrase, Tim Robbins. It perfectly describes this Marxist's campaign for pres-- Hey, who's that knocking at my door?

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Sorry. Watched Prince of Darkness last night.

Just a quick update to let everybody (all three of you) know that an update will be coming soon.

Just as soon, that is, as I get a spare moment to breathe.

What's been going on, briefly:

1. Basketball has NOT ended for the year. In fact, thanks to the miracle known as "youth basketball," I've been watching our girls and boys continue to play during the off-season. It's nearly as good as the regular season.

2. I'm in the process -- the highly stressful process -- of wrapping up the best school year ever. In doing so, I'm looking forward to next year, when I'll have a handpicked class of the best sixth-graders we've had in years; a class composed not only of the cream of the crop, but of the cream of the cream.

3. I haven't had time to go the movies lately. That doesn't keep me from having opinions about, among other things, The Da Vinci Code, opinions I'll be sharing as time permits.

I notice that, up until this post is made, you could see every post I've made this entire school year, since September when softball season was in full swing. If it seems like the year was short... well, it was.

More later.

June Carter Cash WAS a real woman, you airhead.

It came within a minute of not happening at all.

Dalton's boys, smarting from the two defeats they'd been handed by our boys during the regular season, hit the court in the second-round game of the Region 7AAAA basketball tournament at the Northwest Georgia Trade Center determined that there wouldn't be a third.  The night before, they'd beaten Hiram in the first round -- Hiram, one of the two teams that had managed to defeat Murray in the regular season.  It wasn't even close.  The Dalton Catamounts dominated the game and crushed Hiram in spectacular fashion.

So the script was written and the stage set.  If the game had been a pro wrestling match, it would have featured the Catamounts as the good guy that had been sucker-punched twice by an unkempt and foul-natured marauder, the MCHS Indians -- those uncouth, uncultured roughians from across the Conasauga River, those backwoods rednecks and sheep-chasing farmboys who'd had the audacity not only to show their ugly faces in Dalton's gym, but handed the Cats a 68-34 humiliation in front of a capacity home crowd.  (In Murray County's honor, the Dalton cheerleaders had worn John Deere hats and camouflage caps emblazoned with the word HYPE -- a reference to our 17-2 record and the attention our boys had garnered in the local press.)  The Cats were surely peaking at the right time; and the third time would be the charm...

Gametime, and for the first minute Murray enjoyed one of only two leads the whole night, going up by five.  Dalton came back with a vengeance, and moved the ball crisply, defended with overwhelming pressure, and attacked the rim with abandon.  And for the next thirty minutes, they played the game of their season: every time Murray would threaten a comeback, the Cats would rally and slam the door a little harder.  

Murray wasn't helping itself, either.  Our boys seemed by turns confused, indifferent, and lost.  Guards and posts alike missed open lay-ups, allowed themselves to be boxed-out and outrebounded, and turned the ball over time after time on horrible, off-balance, forced shots.  It was five guys playing individual ball, not the tightly-coordinated, unselfish team with the swarming defensive pressure that had gotten us to this point.  While Dalton's boys were having the game of their lives, ours were struggling to remember how to play.

A five-point Cat lead at halftime swelled to nine at the start of the fourth quarter.  On the Dalton bench and in the Dalton bleachers, elation: revenge at last for two defeats, and those Murray rednecks put in their proper place at last.  

But even if they were having the worst game of the season... even if their shots weren't falling... even if they were struggling defensively... our boys still held on to whittle Dalton's lead in the fourth to a mere four.  Perhaps they were buoyed by the couple of hundred Murray fans on the west side of the gym, those of us who shouted encouragements and contributed a great deal of rhythmic hand-clapping and foot-stomping.  Or perhaps it was just their natural competitiveness.  But they kept it close.

But close isn't winning.  And for thirty-one minutes, Dalton was winning.

But a high-school basketball game lasts thirty-two minutes.

And after thirty-one minutes came the minute in which our guards finally realized that they couldn't force off-balance scoop shots and expect to get anywhere near the hole.  The minute in which they played defense the way they'd been playing all season: pressuring the ball the whole way down the court, getting in the ball-handler's face, hands snapping out like striking cobras to tap the ball away and into the eager hands of the Indians.

The minute in which they found the open posts at the back door, and the lay-ups went in.

The minute in which Murray got its second lead.  The only lead that mattered, as they won 57-55.

Friday night and last night came within a minute of not happening.  I will write of them later -- they held their own treasures, and I want to commit them to writing before their power wanes.  

But first I wanted to remember how close it came to not happening, those moments that followed in the ensuing days.   The moments that grew out of the thirty-second minute.

The regular high school basketball season ended last night, with a Murray County sweep of all four games at Ringgold.  So today was my first Saturday since November without a basketball game to go to.

I went to the movies (Capote, parts of which I slept through), bought Luther and the SNL Best of Will Ferrell DVD, and caught up on last night's episode of Battlestar Galactica.  I also got some writing done.

In other words, today without basketball was a complete waste of time.

J.J. Redick is from Roanoke, Virginia.  He should be playing ball for either UVA or Va. Tech, not scoring forty points for Duke against UVA.

I'll be a Redick fan when he's in the NBA.  I wish I could be one now.

If the span of a man's life is three-score and ten years, I have reached the midpoint.

Thirty-five today.

I woke up this morning thinking that there are more days behind than there are ahead.  Who knows?  Maybe there are, maybe there aren't.  In any case, I spent my morning shower contemplating what I've done in my years on earth, compared to my ambitions when I was younger.  Here's what I came up with:

I used to want to be involved in making movies somehow.  A director or an actor.  Failed.

I wanted to have  a novel published by this age.  Failed.

I wanted to have provided my parents with a grandchild by this point.  Failed.  (Given my marital status, this is not a fact entirely to be despised.)

I wanted to own a piece of land, and perhaps build something on it.  Failed.

I wanted to be in good physical shape, and able to do the things I've not done since I was a kid.  (Play basketball, for example.)  Failed.

By the time I got to school, I was thinking ahead to what I was going to do to mark the day, and deriving whatever comfort I could from it.  I planned to give the kids a free day and play chess because it's a tradition.  At the end of the day, there'd be basketball games -- only the fourth set of middle-school games I've gotten to attend (given the hectic nature of the high-school's schedule, which I've followed with a devotion that has drawn bemused and appreciative comments from parents, players, and other fans), and games that would be attended by the girls from last year's eighth grade team and their families -- it'd be a homecoming and reunion of sorts.  And then I planned to go to a local restaurant for a late dinner, a restaurant I've frequented so much lately that the servers mostly know me by name.

I mostly followed the plan.  The day was long and entertaining -- I actually got foundered on playing chess, mostly because I spent the day teaching it rather than playing it against opponents who could actually present a credible challenge to me.  (I went undefeated today in at least half a dozen games -- not that that's anything like commendable when facing the caliber of adversary I took on.)  And the games were... well... not exactly painless.  The middle school girls haven't fared as well as I'd hoped given their debut back in November.  The seventh-graders haven't had a single victory -- they've only broken into double-digit scores a few times this season.  The eighth graders haven't done much better; their bad habits from last year made a comeback, and their play was never as consistently good as their first game.  The portents were there, but they augered wrong; the eighth-graders are finishing something like 4-8, with no real hope of advancement in the upcoming NGMSAL tournament.  Tonight's matchups followed form; the seventh-graders lost by twenty-something, the eighth-graders by forty-two.

But at least I got to hang out with my kids a while.

And it was, of course, the kids who came to the rescue of my psyche today.

From the moment I let it slip (okay, not entirely accidentally or anything) to Heather this morning that it was my birthday, nary an hour passed in the day when some chorus of adolescents weren't wishing me a happy one.  A sign appeared on my door before I even got to my room this morning that said: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. T. -- I PITY THE FOOL THAT DOESN'T WISH YOU A HAPPY BIRTHDAY.  In lieu of cake, I was supplied by Heather and Sarah with a miniature pecan pie and a cinammon swirl from the Lance machine in the lobby.  In fourth period, a squad of basketball players and track-team members arrived in my room to sing "Happy Birthday" to me.  And tonight, Tember, the eighth-grade point guard -- whom I spent fourth period teaching chess to, and who has proven a surprisingly quick and agile study -- made sure that all our ninth-grade visitors and their parents knew the personal significance of this date for me, and I was congratulated by a veritable parade of parents, and serenaded by the kids a second time at the gym doors after the game.

And I don't have words for the gratitude I feel toward them all.  "Thank you" is a dry and barren response to such outpourings of good will.  One wishes he could take a little of the joy other people have given him and put it back in their hearts.

And who put me here?  Who crossed my path with that of these people, and all the others I've known who have made my life good in ways they can never understand and I can never express?  Who brought me out of the desolation that my life was, just a few years ago, and gave me back everything I thought was lost and gone?  Was it fate?  Was it luck? Was it me?

Don't be absurd.

Thank You, my Lord.  Thank You.

Whatever a failed life is... this isn't it.

How I identify myself, in order of priority: highest to lowest.

1. Christian
2. Member of my family
3. Friend of my friends
4. Teacher of my students (see also above)
5. American

I reserve the right to revise and extend.

I wish there were enough hours in the day for me to both live the life I'm living and tell you all about it in excruciating detail.  I can only hint here at the highlights of the last few weeks, but I can do it in one word: basketball.

Or, to be more precise:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!BASKETBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For it is the season of my contentment, the time of year in which boys and girls and men and women don short pants and special shoes and run up and down ninety-four feet of hardwood while bouncing a ball and launching it through metal hoops.  This is, I tell you, the apotheosis of human achievement, the reason we have cold weather in the fall and winter so we'd think to move our athletic events indoors where we can practice the most perfect sport known to mankind.  We were put on this earth for two reasons: to glorify God and enjoy basketball.  (No, I'm not being flip.  I truly think of Dr. Naismith's invention as a blessing straight from God.)

Each week brings a flurry of games, and I have, over the last two weeks, been to (if I recall correctly) about fifteen of them.  That's five a day each Saturday, plus multiple games on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays.  Mostly high school games -- I started going to them so I could see my kids from last year, and I've stayed with them because our freshmen and varsity boys' squads are spectacular to watch.  And they win -- they've won every game I've seen them play, often coming from behind and outplaying teams whose average height and skill level would qualify them to be, if not in the NBA, then at least Division II college teams.

The girls, unfortunately, haven't done so well, though there are signs that a reversal of fortunes is in the offing -- at least for the freshmen and JV teams, where my kids do most of their playing anyway.  The less said about the varsity girls, the better, maybe; they have a set of problems that anyone familiar with the game will understand fully when I say the word selfish.  

And not only has there been basketball, but I've gotten to watch it all in the company of some of my favorite people on earth: my kids and their parents.  I've gotten to meet, talk to, laugh with, commiserate with, and further befriend about a dozen people I'd gladly be stranded on a desert island with.  It's down to them that the last few weeks have been among the happiest I've ever lived.

How happy?

Nearly a year ago now (and it's hard to believe it's been nearly a year, so fresh is the memory of it) I wrote about our trip to Knoxville to see the Lady Vols and the Lady Bulldogs play, and how that night would be a powerful gem of a moment to which I'd turn in the future for memories of what it's like to be completely glad to be alive.

That was just one night.  In the last couple of weeks, I've had four or five more just like it, with the promise of more on the way.

The only thing that in any way diminishes my complacency is that it will eventually end.  The uniforms will be turned in and the gym lights turned out for another endless spring and summer.  And there'll be track in the spring and softball in the fall, but these are mere shadows, whited sepulchres, poor facsimiles of the glory that is basketball.  It will end and there'll be nothing for it but a long and unameliorated wait till it begins again.

But even if it were to end tomorrow, I've experienced it today.  Thank you, Lord, for basketball, and for these people, and for these nights.  They are more than I deserve.

It's ON!

The 2005-2006 basketball season has begun locally. Our 7th and 8th grade girls played their first games last night, and the freshmen who were the apples of my eye last year begin their schedule with a scrimmage Friday night.

Last night, I was happy again, at last.

Our season openers were at home, against the other county middle school, our arch-rivals and sister school. Fiat from on high has declared that henceforth our rivalry shall be against Dalton, not Bagley; but come on... we still know the truth.

Bagley is evil.

For one thing: they're the new school. A nice, big, modern facility in the wealthy northern part of the county. They get the best of everything; we get the leftovers. But that's forgiveable. Somebody has to be the golden child, and why shouldn't it be them?

No, what's unforgiveable is this:

They recruit.

I have no proof of this, of course, unless you count the dark rumors I've heard as proof. Or unless you count the vows I had from certain students last year that they would not defect to Bagley... only to arrive at school this year to find out that they had indeed defected. Their starting seventh grade point guard swore to me she'd be back at Gladden... she wasn't. (It's not her fault, and I have no animus against her, it's just crushing disappointment. And wonderment at the judgment involved in the move; she didn't get to play at all last night, beyond the first few minutes, while if she'd stayed with us, she'd have played at least thirty or thirty-two of the thirty-six minutes.)

(UPDATE: Okay, I'm a dope. Each quarter in middle school ball is six minutes... which add up to twenty-four, not thirty-six. So my little point guard buddy couldn't have possibly played even thirty minutes of the game. But twenty, certainly.)

They also drove up the score. Against NGMSAL rules. The final was 42-10, an unconscionable result. I mean, sure, win by ten or fifteen, but thirty-two? That's poor sportsmanship. And there's no reason for it but meanness. Against our team -- only one of whom had ever worn a basketball uniform and played before last night -- Bagley fielded a team of rec ball champions and veterans of traveling teams. (Whom, as you will recall from the preceding paragraph, they recruited from us.) They scored at will and kept us from even crossing the half-court line on offense. They subbed, sure, but even then they continued to score at will and keep us in the backcourt, while our poor green players froze like deer in the headlights, unable at times even to remember the simple offensive sets, disheartened and discouraged and tired in the second quarter.

(So what would I have done, had I been coaching Bagley and my subs were dominating the game? Simple: I would've taken a few subs out and played a four- or even a three-man team. The rules of basketball state that you can have no more than five players on the floor; you can have as few as you want. I would have allowed my opponent to close to within ten or so, then put back in my full team of subs, and if they'd narrowed the gap any more after that, I'd have returned the starters. You don't have to run a score up to 42-10. That's just ridiculously unsportsmanlike.)

UPDATE 2009:
When I wrote the foregoing four years ago, a 32-point margin seemed like a lot. But a couple of years later, another Bagley team kept starters in and full-court pressed our 7th graders the entire four quarters and ended up beating us 70-7. Now that is unconscionable.

Still, I've by and large converted to the "it's your job to stop my offense" school of thought. Mostly. Though 70-7 is disappointing, it's mainly disappointing because it was adults using kids to humiliate other kids.

Also, today I'd never ever suggest playing a three- or four-man team against five. That would be insulting.

(As I write this, the Duke Blue Devils are up by 30 over Seton Hall in the NIT quarterfinals, but I'd be willing to bet the final score won't be quite that close. Besides, that's the upper echelon of the NCAA, the rarified atmosphere of ACC basketball, where Duke is ranked number 1 and is under no moral obligation at all to be gracious to their opponents, beyond observing the simple rules of the game and maintaining a sense of decorum and not stepping on opposing players when they fall, as former Dukie Christian Laettner once did in a game. Laettner is one reason I dislike Duke, even though he hasn't played there in nearly 15 years. Duke's fans are the other reason I hate Duke. When it comes to college ball, I favor UVA and ABD: Anybody But Duke.)

UPDATE 2009: I still hate Duke.

Of course, the outcome of the seventh grade game had been a foregone conclusion; all day long, I heard comments from our players like "We're going to lose" and even "I hope I don't have to come off the bench." When you have attitudes like that, defeat becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But part of me says that at least they didn't have their hopes crushed. They lost, but they expected to lose. Rather reminds me of my own short-lived basketball career when I was in sixth grade, and we were 0-6 or something. Those losses hurt, but they never surprised, and I think that made them more bearable. The one thing that you have to watch coming out of losses like that are backbiting and blaming; if some of the players are noticeably better than others -- which they always are -- they will tend to blame their weaker sisters, sometimes volubly and in front of everybody. This creates dissension and hurt feelings that are often impossible to repair in the course of a season, if ever, and that utterly destroy the team trust and cohesion that is essential to good basketball. I know this from personal experience from the inside.

But despite the drubbing, all the seventh-grade girls were there today for practice. And they worked harder than I've ever seen them work before, even the ones who normally cut up and have to be herded more firmly than the others. They ran drills to improve their speed and footwork and ballhandling, and I do mean they ran, something I'd not seen in their plodding approach to practice heretofore. They're bouncing back from their first defeat... I hope they can bounce back from the rest. God bless them for their tenacity, and reward with victories their willingness to work hard and eagerness to please their coaches.

(And if no victories are forthcoming, Lord, at least help us all learn what You are trying to teach us through our defeats.)

The eighth-grade game was totally different.

And a great deal more fun to watch.

The first thing I noticed about Bagley's starting lineup was that three out of the five starters had originally been Gladden students. And looking over at their bench, I saw at least four more former Gladden kids there. My comment to a student sitting beside me: "It's like we're playing ourselves out there."

Our lineup, on the other hand, included exactly no girls who had originally been Bagley students before the big redistricting of last year (not to mention the recruiting). One of our girls had gone to Bagley in the seventh grade after attending sixth grade at Gladden; to my mind, that makes her originally a Gladden student. So: Gladden students go to Bagley and play; Bagley students come to Gladden... and get cut.

(Which, I realize, may undermine my thesis that that seventh-grade point guard should've stayed with us so she could have played more minutes, but I assure you there is no way she would have been cut. Besides... she was a Gladden kid!)

Now, this year's eighth-graders were, in seventh grade, fairly pathetic. They would admit this, though reluctantly. They didn't work as a unit; the guards were hotdogs and the posts were usually surprised to get a pass from the backcourt. And while the guards were hotdogs, one of them routinely took long-distance shots without being open or having a good look, while the other routinely stole the ball and drove the entire length of the court, easily outdistancing the transitioning defense with her tremendous acceleration and footspeed... only to lay the ball up full-force, without taking into account the forward momentum the ball already had on it (when you make a lay-up, the faster you're going, the softer you put it up), and the defense would simply grab the rebound at half-court and transition back to offense.

They finished last year 4-8.

Last night, they looked like a completely different team.

They're not, personnel-wise. All the starters are back from last year, with the exception of one girl who decided to pursue softball full-time instead, and recently tore her ACL while jumping over a campfire. (No, she was not the problem. She's one of the best athletes Gladden has ever seen, and one of the most easy-going and popular kids, with all the various social groups, in the school. She understood the importance of teamwork. I repeat: she was not the problem last year.)

But they've changed. Matured. They've made corrections and adjustments to their game. The posts are now fierce and fearless at both ends of the court, willing to take hard contact to draw the foul and hit the floor when necessary to make the play. The guards are still swift as cobras... and they've given up most of their bad habits. One of them had 19 points last night (eight of them in the last two minutes, off a couple of steals and a couple of spectacular lead passes), the other 11. They're lethal now, and they know it; the challenge with them is going to be keeping it from going to their heads.

(Note as I write this: I was right that Duke's lead over Seton Hall wouldn't be thirty at the end of the game. The final score is 93-40, Duke.)

It was an emotional game. That is a euphemism for a bloody screaming match between the coaches. Not at each other, of course, except indirectly, through the refs, like angry children fighting by proxy through their parents. And the refs handed out a couple of strongly-worded warnings and a technical (not against us, thankfully). And this is where I made my own meager contribution to the game, by rattling a coach's cage some:

All night long, both of the opposing coaches were standing, typically with one yelling at the players while the other yelled at the ref. This is against regulations; if there are two coaches on the bench, only one can be on his/her feet at a time. I kept expecting the refs to call them on it, but they never did until the fourth quarter, when finally one of the refs turned and rebuked them for both being off the bench at the same time. Being seated at the scorer's table, right behind the benches, I heard this admonition clearly, and I said something to the ladies at the scorer's table along the lines of "It's about time they got called for that; they've been doing it all night." The nearer Bagley coach heard me, and started to laugh sardonically. The ref who'd just told him to sit down heard him laughing, assumed the coach was laughing at him, and upbraided him some more. To which the coach responded "I was laughing at the big guy up there!" To which the ref responded "Yeah, sure you were." To which I responded with laughter of my own. Which was not sardonic at all, but deeply amused, indeed.

It was a satisfying game to watch. Bagley scored first, but we came back quickly with a flurry of points that brought us a lead we never relinquished... though we came within a point on several occasions. The issue was decided, finally, in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, and the last two minutes of the game were the dagger in the heart of the opponent's hopes. Final score was (if I recall correctly) 49-35.

The freshmen play tomorrow night, and the JV and Varsity play Friday.

Basketball season is HERE, and it's AWESOME, BABY!!!

...Okay, I promise I won't channel Dick Vitale any more this season.

I should really update this thing more often.

Recent developments:

1. Softball season ended in a double-header a couple of Saturdays back, both games of which we dropped to the one team we'd managed to beat during the regular season.  That team is in the state tourney now, and are still playing.  In late October.  As one of the softball coaches remarked to me last night at the football game, "It just shows you how good we could have been."  Sometimes, all the pieces are there, but things just don't click.

2. High point of those last two softball games was that I got to watch them in the company of a friend I hadn't seen in a while, a student who has posted comments here occasionally, and the upshot is that things seem to be going well for her and the girls from last year's eighth grade team.  Several of them expect to play varsity ball this year.  Open gym and conditioning have been going on for some time now, and try-outs are October 24... this coming Monday.  

3. Speaking of last night's football game: I consider football an inferior sport to both baseball/softball and the king of sports, BASKETBALL, but even someone (like me) generally indifferent to a game that consists mainly of guys running into each other and falling down could find something to be thrilled about in last night's matchup between the MCHS Indians and the NWHS Bruins.  Both teams had exactly the same record going into the game, and there was a playoff spot on the line.  Our boys fumbled away their first three possessions, which the Bruins converted to 14 points within the first few minutes of the first quarter, and were up 21-6 at the end of the first.

You can imagine the game for yourself when I tell you that even after that soul-crushing first quarter, the score at the half was 25-21, MCHS.  And you can probably imagine the euphoria in the visitors' bleachers, which was packed, SRO... there were at least seven or eight hundred people, maybe a thousand, from Murray County in attendance.  And every one of them -- yours truly included -- was very much into the game.  I went to bed last night hoarse and with hearing loss.

Second half was a shootout.  Now, as little as I know about football -- which is still quite a bit more than I really care to -- I do know that I don't like offensive shootouts.  I can appreciate the beauty of a truly defensive game.  Last night's didn't fit that bill.  NWHS scored within the first couple of minutes of the half to go up 28-25.  Then we scored.  Then they scored.  Etc. etc., ad nauseam.  I doubt there were more than four drives all night that didn't end in a touchdown.  But what the game lacked in defensive intensity, it made up for in offensive razzle-dazzle, and of course emotional intensity... we wanted to win.  Badly.

It came down to the last two minutes, as these things often do.  Having been down 34-31 at the end of the third, we scored a TD early in the fourth, and even though a penalty set our line back five yards, we managed a two-point conversion to go up 39-34.  A Bruins field goal knocked out lead down to two (39-37) with a bit less than two minutes to go.  We scored on our final possession, running out as much clock as possible (the Bruins had burned all their time-outs) and finally scoring with 20-odd seconds left to go up 46-37.  (I write this for those even more clueless than I about football: this was a reasonably safe score.  The best -- the absolute best -- the opponent could have done was tie, with a TD and a conversion, to force OT.  And this they would had to have done while maintaining enough focus and discipline to play the clock by passing and/or running out of bounds.  A tall order for a professional team, much less a bunch of 17 year-olds, even those who'd been playing since age 5.)

It was a barn-burner.  Aesthetic objections to offense-heavy games aside, it was a true thriller.  I'm glad a co-worker persuaded me to go, when all I'd really planned to do last night was play NBA Live 06.

4. Speaking of NBA Live 06: I like it.  Its new graphics, physics, and gameplay elements are very nice.  I have only two objections:

First, the "superstar" moves so heavily touted by EA, while fun enough to pull off, amount to game-imbalancing superpowers for the players with stats high enough to possess them.  Superstar moves are nearly unbeatable; the game requires significant tweaking of realism sliders to bring it somewhere near alignment with reality.  Out of the box, it's just too easy to dominate with superstars.

Second, there's an unbeatable move that the CPU has, which consists of a player first running back and forth under the basket for a while, and then tossing the ball up in a sort of reverse-layup that never misses.  Ever.  And is unblockable.  Believe me.  As a huge fan of shot-blocking, I have my shooting-guard avatar's block rating set at 99 percent, and the shot-block ability slider set at 100 percent, and I can block any shot in the lane, except for the Reverse Layup of Doom.  The Reverse Layup of Doom is not listed among the superstar moves, and the CPU does not require a superstar to pull it off.  Anyone -- anyone -- from D-Wade to AI to Dirk Nowitski to Brevin Knight -- can do it.  If the game included cutscenes of the refs goofing around between quarters, I'm sure you'd see them scooping it in there, too, without looking.

(If this were an EA forum board, at this point there would be a number of huffy responses along the lines of "Dude, their called sliders" and "dog u must suck on d try learning to play defens b4 u post ur sory-a$$ beyotching."  To forestall such penetrating insights, let me assure you that I've set every applicable CPU shot slider -- layup percentage, adjusted shot percentage, poor-release percentage, short-range scoring percentage, etc. -- to zero in an effort to stop the no-look RLD.  No joy, just a lot of lopsided victories for me -- despite the CPU's continued ability to put the ball through the hoop whilst not even looking at it and going the wrong way.  And I love playing defense.  Love it.  Live for it.  Believe me: this is the only shot the CPU can get on me down low.  Anything else, if my posts don't get it, my two-guard will.  Except the RLD.)  

I'm going to study the RLD, and as soon as I can divine its secret, I will teach it to our real-life players.  They'll be unstoppable.

NO!!!!

Not January.  Not January.

Now.

Now!

NOW!!!

Are you listening to me, Ronald Moore?  

...

...I guess not.

...is it January yet?

...

...is it now?

...

...how about now?