Right before Christmas, I flew down to North Carolina to visit Duke, something I’d previously done five times since I graduated in 2001. Though a lot remains unchanged in my life since my last trip three years ago – same job, same apartment, same obsessive sneaker collection – I’ve since met my future wife, which qualifies as a very significant positive change.
When we stopped for a snack at the general store adjacent to my freshman year dorm, a couple of wide-eyed freshmen, still shell-shocked from their first final exams, asked me what had changed about Duke in the thousand years since I’d been a student, and it got me to thinking.
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Back on July 4, I stood on a balcony in Union City and watched the fireworks over the Hudson with my friend Sam Reiss. I had gotten engaged to a wonderful girl four days ago, the possibilities seemed endless, and life was good.
Five months later, I’m typing this while lying in bed with my fiancée, resting up before we ring in the New Year on our couch. On our bedroom television, the Real Housewives of Orange County are screeching at each other at decibel levels that could drown out a jet engine.
And I absolutely couldn’t be happier.
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As evidenced by my relative lack of activity here, November didn’t turn out to be as placid as I would have liked. I make my living in baseball, and it seems to never really shut down at this point between awards, transactions and the new CBA being announced. In addition, my fiancée has moved into my apartment, so a lot of my time has been spent making sure this place is inhabitable for someone other than me. I’d characterize all of this as the good kind of busy.
After Thanksgiving dinner, my fiancée dozed off at around 10 p.m. while I watched episodes of The Walking Dead – pretty standard.
Amazingly, she still insists she intends to marry me after I woke her up at 11:30 to drag her to Wal-Mart.
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I can’t remember exactly when, but there was a point on Tuesday night while watching Jay-Z and Kanye West perform in Baltimore when I turned to my fiancée and said, “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as cool as I do right now.” This despite wearing a Mets jacket.
This is what Jay-Z and Kanye elicit with their “luxury rap”: You don’t do the same things they do, you don’t have their money, you can’t really relate to the majority of how they describe their lives.
But you still can’t help but feel cool, and somewhat inspired, by association.
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I haven’t had a ton of time to write lately because of the World Series, and some stuff I’ve done for Dime Magazine with Kyrie Irving and Penny Hardaway. Expect some more next week, I have a couple of ideas I’ve wanted to put out there.
But for now, I’m enjoying the Halloween weekend. If you’ve been a longtime reader of this site, you know I like everything about the holiday – the movies, the decorations, all of it. It’s basically the only holiday I truly like, though New Year’s isn’t that bad and I’m very slowly warming up to Christmas.
My belief is that you’re never too old for Halloween; I’d better believe that, since I’m now 32. But for a few days a year, I think it’s cool to embrace your weirdness and just enjoy the creepiness of this time of year. I don’t get into the whole party thing – I think about 98 percent of the people I see with their drunken nonsense in New York City are pathetic. I enjoy the holiday in other ways; snowed in today, I indulged in a double-feature of Death Proof and Drag Me To Hell.
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It’s not often that you get to witness someone on the very day their dream is realized, but last Tuesday, I found myself face to face with J. Cole while that happened for him.
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I wrote something on the Jam video with Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan last week for Dime Magazine, and was pretty pleased with the reception – even the Jordan Brand seemed to dig it. (How about a pair of Concords to show that appreciation?)
But one group took some umbrage with some of my wording: fans of Michael Jackson, leading to an interesting – and mutually respectful – exchange in the Dime comment section.
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The past couple years, I’ve done a weekly post with some NFL thoughts and observations, mostly about the experience of watching such an Americana-driven sport. However, I’m not really a football guy, and I’ve found that I often simply don’t have a whole lot to say about the sport itself, especially on weeks when I don’t get to watch many games. As such, I’d still like to give this a go this year, but I’m going to expand it to whatever’s on my mind. Expect it anywhere between Monday and Wednesday.
Before the hurricane hit the New York area on Saturday, I hauled out to Long Island on Friday night for the annual draft of my main fantasy football league. It’s pretty hardcore: 14 teams, an archaic and esoteric scoring system, two keepers, and it started 16 years ago when the majority of the league owners were in high school together. (I’ve participated for 10.)
I probably would have driven through the hurricane itself to get there since for the first time since I joined my co-owner in the league, we won the whole thing, resulting in an $1,100 payday. We were powered by a well-balanced team and the shrewd first-week waiver-wire pickup of Michael Vick, which I commemorated by wearing his jersey to the draft, to the chagrin of everyone.
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As I stood under the stars a day after my 32nd birthday last week in Pittsburgh, watching A Perfect Circle in the shadow of Heinz Field and the Allegheny Mountains, it was almost an out of body experience.
I found myself very in touch with the music, which has meant much to me over the years, dating back to college. But more than that, I was taken back 10 years to a day experienced by an iteration of me that seems like someone else at this point.
And to think, I heard some people complain about the set list.
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A few football thoughts post-lockout. My usual reminder that I don’t really know a whole lot about the sport, though I did meet LT once.
A few football thoughts post-lockout. My usual reminder that I don’t really know a whole lot about the sport, though I did meet LT once.
While building itself into probably the most lucrative, powerful and popular major sports league, the NFL has accomplished a great deal. But I think its greatest achievement is finding a way to take the most loathed concept among American sports fans – the lockout – and turn it into an enormously successful marketing campaign.
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