Rough week, great weekend

This was a tough week, mostly because I seemed to be constantly doing something. The worst day was Thursday, when I had my acting lesson. It was a great lesson and I learned a lot, but I was totally exhausted and the lesson lasted about two hours. Also, the scene we were working on was about 7 minutes of intense emotion–specifically, my character was angry and distraught–and that’s just a lot of work.

The good news is I’ve had a great weekend so far. I’m playing in a basketball league that begins next week and we had our first team practice today. There are seven guys on our team and I’d only played with two of them before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Turns out we have a well-rounded, solid team and I expect we’ll be very competitive in our league. This evening, a buddy and I grilled some burgers and watched Master and Commander at my place. It was relaxing and we had a good time just chillin’ and chattin’.

Tomorrow evening, some people are comin’ down to my place so we can all cheer for Detroit in the NBA Finals together. This is a “must win” for both teams, but L.A. seems to have a lot more on the line right now. Of course, based on my previous comments, if Detroit loses either of the next two games, I think they’re going to lose the championship, so maybe this game is just as big for them. Regardless, I hope they stomp the Lakers again… The Lakers are good at winning, but horrible at losing and I take great pleasure in watching them tank a game.

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2004 NBA Finals: Game 2

I only saw the last 6 minutes of regulation and then the OT, but I thought the Pistons looked great until the melt-down. Really, if they had played just a tad better for the last 45 seconds of the game, they’d have gone up 2-0 before heading home for 3 games. Instead, they sort of gave up the ghost both physically and mentally and left L.A. hanging around. I thought there were two big plays, both involving Shaq, that just didn’t go right for the Pistons: First, Shaq’s 3-point play shoulda’ never happened. He should’ve been fouled before he ever had a chance to get the first shot off. Second, every Pistons player should’ve had the following phrase in the back of his mind: “They’re down 3. If Shaq catches the inbound, foul him and we win.”

The good news is I think the Pistons can actually take the Lakers. They have three games at home and they can finish it in Detroit. I think they’re doomed if they have to go back to L.A., but I also think they can wrap it up by game 5. They’re defense is obviously too good for the Lakers. That was true for all but Shaq and Kobe for both games so far. The trick is they can’t let Kobe break out for 14 points at the end of the game and expect to survive. Keep the ball outta’ his hands, force him to take bad shots and keep Shaq as far from the rim as possible. It sounds simple, but the Pistons are one of the few teams that can actually do it.

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Lazy weekend

Normally, I’d say a three-day weekend is super and then I’d talk about all the great stuff I did to take advantage of my extra day off. Unfortunately, I didn’t really do anything to take advantage of the extra day off and I wasted most of my weekend sleeping. I guess that’s not all bad–I hadn’t really had the chance to just sleep for no reason in a while–but it would’ve been nice to use the weekend for something productive.

I did play basketball on Saturday, but it was an all around bad experience. I didn’t feel right during the first game and then, about half way through the second game, I started feelin’ dizzy and my chest felt funny. So, I sat the rest of the game and decided I felt better. I played a few more games without any of those symptoms, but I also played at about half speed. I wasn’t really playing to compete, but just to see if my body was trying to tell me I needed to get checked out. After I played a few more games, I kinda’ figured maybe I just got started too fast or I was dehydrated or something. That was the last I heard of the dizziness and such. But then, half way through my last game, I jammed my thumb real good (during a dead ball, no less) and that’s probably going to keep me out of commission for a week or so.

So, I went home and slept and then watched a movie and then slept some more. Sunday was about the same and I slept till 11 this morning. The highlight for the weekend was my acting lesson. During my last lesson, my instructor said he was going to find something where the stakes were very high for me, emotionally. This time, he had a short scene from The Devil’s Advocate, which we cold-read, and a much longer scene that I’ll be working on this week. It was challenging and fun to work on the scene and I really had a chance to think outside the box and try to be present in the scene emotionally. I wasn’t completely satisfied with my performance, but I’m going to work on it this week and hopefully turn it into something good.

Work, work, work… blah, blah, blah

This is the part where I moan about having to get up early and go to work and all that. Mostly, I’m used to it, so it doesn’t bother me much. The thing that concerns me most is that I’ll have trouble getting to sleep tonight… I hope I don’t have any trouble because I don’t have any more Tylenol PM to bail me out.

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Need to rest up

As usual, I played basketball on Saturday morning. I played pretty well–I had several good plays on offense, some good passes, nice shots, some good defensive plays and such–but I also played “flat”. It’s hard to describe, but I basically just felt like I never really got out of second gear. I could do everything I wanted and everything I did do felt slow and forced. As I thought about it, I realized I may be pushing my body too hard with conditioning, weight lifting and playing basketball. I think I just haven’t given my body enough time to recover lately. So, this week, I’m going to seriously limit how hard I work out. Mostly, I’ll cut the shootarounds from my pre-workout routine and I won’t do any specific cardio. I’ll just go in, warm up on the bike for ten minutes or so and then hit the weights. It’s not exactly taking a week off, but it’s definitely toning things down a bit. I’ll try that and see how I feel next Saturday. I’m guessing I’ll feel looser and more energetic.

Watched 4 movies this week

I only saw one in the theatre and the other three were on DVD:

Troy

I had been careful not to get my hopes up because I’m not a big fan of epic war films and I’d also heard some mediocre reviews. Turns out the reviews were a reflection of the movie itself and I was better off not having gotten my hopes up. It was a good movie, but that’s about it. I certainly didn’t feel that the producers were justified in spending hundreds of millions on dollars producing it. Mostly, I just felt it was pretty lackluster in most aspects. Two scenes that stood out were Achilles’ fight with Hector and the Trojan king’s conversation with Achilles in his tent. These scenes were well written, shot and directed, but the rest of the movie felt pretty ho hum.

Chasing Liberty

Yeah, got this one by accident. Apparently, Netflix mistook Lawrence of Arabia for a 2003 chick flick. I figured I had it, so why not give it a shot. I got about half through and just couldn’t take it any more. I thought the acting was fine–a little over the top, but I got the sense that the actors were directed that way–but the writing just wasn’t holding my attention. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but this movie was asking way too much of me in that department.

Seven Samurai

This here was quite an experience. An old Japanese film, black and white, subtitles and three and a half hours of character development with the occasional battle scene to change things up a bit. Yes, it was a good movie. Yes, there were some great ideas and pieces of philosophy. Yes, I thought it was well written, directed, shot and acted. No, my American attention span would not ever allow me to try and watch it again. As it was, I had to watch it in four separate sittings, each one spent mostly watching the timer on my DVD player count closer to “03:28:00″, when I knew it would end. This was a good movie and I could see why it’s critically acclaimed, but it just ain’t for the regular person wanting to see a good movie. It should definitely be watched more as an intellectual pursuit than as entertainment.

Stuck on You

Another one I just couldn’t quite finish. I thought the premise was kind of funny, but it just didn’t play out very well on screen. I could see this story being written well by somebody like John Irving who has a knack for writing strange characters in strange situations, but this movie just didn’t get my attention. I tried and tried to finish watching it, but I didn’t even make it an hour into the movie before I had to call it quits. The jokes got old after the fifth telling and the gags were worn out just a few minutes into the movie. Thumbs down.

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Hanging curtains? What?

That was the highlight of my weekend. I’m not sure what it means, exactly, but let me explain. I moved in here about four months ago and, ever since, I’ve gone to sleep at night annoyed by how bright it is in my room. As with many apartments, there’re street lights outside and one (or two, or three) of them happens to be focused on lighting up my room. So, I’ve sort of gotten used to the light, but not completely. That’s just at night, though. In the day, it’s like God put a super nova in my room, just for me. About 6 am, when the sun comes up, I start tossing and turning because it’s just too bright to sleep well. Naps have been out of the question and “sleeping in” has meant 9 am.

So, this weekend, I went out and blew a bunch of money on stupid curtains. I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond, which I realize could have been a financial mistake. They have really nice stuff, but they’re not exactly bargain priced and that’s really what I was looking for. Next time, I’ll probably go to Target instead. Anyway, a couple hours and $130 later, I have navy curtains covering my windows and my room is dark as night whenever I want it to be. Naps are back and they’re here to stay.

Bad Basketball Blues

I played pretty poorly yesterday and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who thought so. There were some highlights–I hit a couple “big” shots including a game-winner–but all in all, I played pretty miserably. I knew I was in trouble when, during the first game, I missed a couple layups on fastbreaks. They weren’t the easiest finishes in the world–both were reverse layups with a defender in pursuit–but they’re layups that I’ll usually make. I just couldn’t get anything rolling and, more importantly, I couldn’t seem to synch with my team. I have that problem with a lot of the guys that play on Saturday morning. It’s not that I’m a bad player or that they’re bad players, we just don’t play well together. It seems like whatever I’m thinking, they’re thinking the opposite: if I think we should switch on a pick, they think we should stay at home; if I think they’re going to the rim on a fast break, they’re actually spotting up at the 3-point line; if I think they’re trailing me in the lane, they’re actually trailing on the block.

Anyway, I feel like I’m in pretty good shape and I’ve been playing well overall, but I just can’t seem to get on the same page as the guys that play on Saturdays. To them, I’m sure I seem like I don’t know what I’m doing, but the real problem seems to be that they play a style of basketball that involves a lot of selfish play and yelling at teammates. I figure if I can learn to play well in that environment, then there aren’t many situations in which I won’t play well in the future. Here’s to learning to play well with dudes who don’t want to learn to play well with me.

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Hoopin’ it up

Last time I played here in Dallas was almost a month ago. I played really well that day, but my outside shot was hurting and I ran out of gas after about the third game. Today was a lot different, but I mostly played better. Last time I played, we played about 5 games and I finished the day 0-fer from the 3-point line. One thing that contributed to my abysmal 3-point performance was that once of my own teammates was counting (sort of) every time I missed a 3. First, he would moan that I was shooting, then when I missed, he’d add another one to a number that he basically made up (by his count, I missed about 15 3-pointers, but I and my friend only remembered me taking maybe 6; I don’t shoot a lot of I’m not hitting and I can make good passes).

That was all a setup for this: Guess who was guarding me for most of today? That’s right, my good friend with a knack for ficticious counting! And guess who freakin’ lit it up from the 3-point line? Right again! I did, and mostly over this guy. The first couple games we played, he wasn’t guarding me, but he was on the other team. Every time I caught the ball at the 3-point line, he’d encourage his teammates to let me shoot: “Oh yeah! That’s what we wan…”, but then I’d drain it. This happened 3 or 4 times before he stopped encouraging me to score. What I never figured out (and this goes for the rest of the games we played, too) was that no one ever really closed-out on me at the arc. I mean, all in all, I probably hit (conservatively) 7 or 8 3’s today. I did have one blocked (by my counter friend), but that just wised me and my team up to the fact that I was taking too long to load up before I shot. He didn’t get any more blocks and I realized that he was so eager to block me (when he did come outside) that I could head-fake and go in for the easy 10-footer.

Anyway, when the counter was guarding me, I really caught on fire: I had several 3’s (all long-range), a few mid-range jumpers and some good fastbreak points on him. In fact, I had at least 1, maybe 2 game-winners over him. He wasn’t encouraging me to shoot anymore by the time we were done. I think in 6 games, I had at least 2, maybe 3 game-winners. So, that’s the good.

The bad: My defense was sort of weak, but that was mostly because of mismatches. In most of the games I played, I was guarding a guy who was significantly bigger than me and always wanted to post up. I can play decent post defense, but it’s tough when the guy’s got 20 to 30 pounds on me and at least 3 or 4 inches. The good news was that my team was doing a great job with help defense and they were talking me through exactly where they wanted me: “Front him now, I got your back” or “You take his back, I got the front.”

The ugly: This ain’t really for me so much as some of the other dudes I played with today… There was some of the most sissy foul-calls I’ve ever seen. These are a couple that I was either in the play or standing close enough to see what actually happened: Once, I was guarding a guy who plays very physically, but also likes to call “ghost fouls” to bail himself out sometimes. He takes forever to set up for a jumper, so when I see it comin’, I can get my hand up and cause him to change his shot almost every time. Once, he shot it and, after the ball was well gone and the follow-through had ended, my finger tapped is elbow… he called foul and no one could believe it. The play was practically over and he had just shot an awful shot. Second, my friend–the counter–tried a crossover and tripped himself up. His defender was backing away and never touched the guy. I picked up the ball (which he’d unsuccessfully tried to recover), went the other way and had an assist on the fastbreak. Well, the counter decides–well after the ball is gone and we’re about to score–that he, in fact, was fouled on the play. I mean, people have already started walking back to get the ball, so they could inbound at the other end and everything. Anyway, they somehow ended up with the ball after the counter made a 3-pointer (see my last basketball post on the silly methods of conflict resolution they use out here).

So, all in all, I had a great day on the floor. That’s encouraging since our league starts up in a little over a month and I want to be ready to go when it does. My ankle is doing really well and I haven’t had any trouble with it in several weeks. Unfortunately, I have a heel spur (there’s some fancy-pants medical name for it that starts with “plantar fasc…”) that I’m nursing, but I’m thinking it’ll be good to go by the time we start playing in about 5 weeks.

I think this is officially the longest post I’ve written on playing basketball. I’m even boring myself this time.

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Gainesville trip: Day 6

Today was pretty good and I got to see a lot of people. First thing, I went and got lunch with a couple friends (yeah, my sleeping hours have slipped to the 4 am to noon window). Then, we played some Spades until we went to play basketball. Basketball was definitely the low-point of my day as I played very badly and didn’t score any points in two games. My assist to turnover ratio was far less than 1 and I missed plenty of wide open 5-foot shots. It was very frustrating.

Later, we went to Hops for dinner and then went to a friend’s place and hung out for a bit. We played croquet for a while (I won the first game in spite of having never played before and playing horribly), but got blasted the second game. It was a good time. Now, I think we’re about to play some more Spades or something, then I’m off to bed. I have a long day of traveling and packing tomorrow.

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Gainesville trip: Day 3

Yesterday’s support appointment went well and I’m not officially on three peoples’ MDPs (I think that’s right and I think it’s “Ministry Development Plan”; it’s a TLA–Three Letter Acronym). I’m excited to be giving to Crusade beginning in July and I think it’s awesome that I can help out three staff people.

Basketball… again

I played some more basketball yesterday and I’m really feelin’ it today. I think I ran seven games in two days. That’s not outrageous except I haven’t played that much basketball in that little time since some time last year. I’m pretty sore, but it’s good to be in good enough shape that I can at least run the games. I hope to play at least once more before the week’s out.

Gators Dockside

Last night was all-you-can-eat (AYCE) wings at Dockside, so about six of us went over there to try and break ‘em. Between us, we probably ate over 200 wings, but I can’t say that I contributed too much. I think I only had 20 or so because I’m just not used to eating that much grub in one sitting. At least it wasn’t AYCE pasta or pizza or something; I’m pretty sure I’d feel awful today. It was only wings and they were grilled, not breaded or fried, so I’m good to go for some more eatin’ today.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1

Man, what a strange movie. Of course, if I felt any differently after watching a QT creation, I’d have to check my senses. The guy just knows how to create interesting, strange violent stuff. It’s bizarre how he maintains an irony of violence without believable gore. I mean, there’re people gettin’ limbs lopped off and whatnot, but it looks so fake it’s hardly even so disturbing as odd. I’m not talking about being desensitized, I’m talking about recognizing what parts of the film QT wants the view to feel are real.

Anyway, I think we’re going to see Vol. 2 some time this week, so I wanted to make sure I’d seen the first part, first. Now, I’m off to lunch with some friends, so I’ll have to pause for a bit.

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Gainesville trip: Day 1

I’m including the little bit of time that I spent with my buddies last night in this day. Basically, we arrived in G-ville around midnight, went to a friend’s place and watched the end of the Rockets vs. Lakers playoff game, then I went home and went to sleep. For about 30 seconds, it was a little strange being in this house since I lived here for 2.5 years before I moved to Texas 3 months ago. But, from then on it was smooth sailin’. I can even still walk around in the dark without bumping into things. My poker table is gone (well, on loan really), so I’ll have to figure out how to get it back so we can play some poker here this week. I crashed in my roommate’s bed because he wasn’t around, but I’m afraid I won’t have the luxury all week… but I can hope, I guess.

Now, I’m off to church and then lunch. I think we’ll probably play basketball some time today and maybe go see a movie tonight. I think it’s going to be a great day.

Basketball

We played four games today and I didn’t get a single win. All our games were decided by two or less, but it seemed like all my teams just ran outta’ gas right at the end of the game. Regardless, it was fun and I felt really good in all my games. I’m sure we’ll play at least one more time this week, but between ultimate frisbee, frisbee golf, bowling and shootin’ pool, I’m afraid there may not be time for more than one more basketball outting.

Tonight, I’m going to the last CRU leadership meeting of the year (as an honorary leader and old guy). I think it’ll be good to see everyone and it’ll guarantee that I see almost all my friends (that’re still around) while I’m here. I’m looking forward to it.

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Hoops went well

I think I played 5 games today. My first two were definitely my best and then I tapered way off for the last few. But, my first two were spectacular games. We play to 12, straight-up, by ones and twos. First game, I think I had 4 or 5 points and 3 or 4 assists (along with a few rebounds and a steal or two); second game, I had 5 or 6 points and at least 4 or 5 assists (along with a few rebounds and a block on a 2-pointer). Basically, my team ran through me and I got at least one touch per offensive possession for both games. In fact, we were mostly running a fastbreaking offense that rarely had to setup in the half-court.

Then, it started going downhill. I wouldn’t say I played poorly the last few games, but I just wasn’t playing super well on my teams. The last 3 games were all teams that intentionally slowed the ball down into a half-court offense and I rarely got any touches. I was “0-fer” from the 3-point line today and that was pretty discouraging. I didn’t take too many 3’s (maybe 6 or 7 over 5 games), but it would’ve been nice to hit at least one.

So anyway, I played really well for the first couple games and I’m seeing serious improvement from week to week. I’m realizing that I can’t allow myself to be a purely perimeter offensive player because my strength is in driving and scoring or dishing. I’m also remembering how to reward my teammates for running the floor on a fastbreak. It’s sometimes difficult to convince guys that if they run–even trailing–the length of the floor on every offensive possession, they’ll get buckets on put-backs and assists.

Strange rules

A couple summers ago, I wrote about the strange mid-west rules for “Twenty-One” or, as they call it here, “Twenty-Five”. Today, I ran into a strange rule in full-court basketball: If there’s a controversial call, instead of obeying the (invisible) possession arrow, someone shoots a 3-pointer (”do or die”) to see who gets possession. That sounds good and everything, but I’ve always played with the invisible possession arrow: whoever had last possession (either at the beginning of the game or on a jump-ball or a controversial call) gives the ball up on the next such possession. I tried to explain this to the guys, but they didn’t wanna’ hear it. Here’s their logic:

The team that has the ball first has it because they won*. So, because they “earned” first possession (along with their choice of end of the floor and the “right” to keep their status as either “shirts” or “skins”) they feel the possession arrow doesn’t point the other way. So, if there’s a controversial call where the possession arrow would come into play, they simply shoot for it. I guess that’s all good and well, but there’re reasons the possession arrow was invented to begin with. Also, claiming that they shouldn’t lose the possession arrow because they “earned” first possession is really a moot point. I mean, in a game with a tip-off, the first team with the ball “earned” the possession by winning the tip, but the possession arrow is still pointing to the other team. The “reward” for winning the previous game or for winning the tip is that they get first opportunity to score (and, in the unlikely event that a game came down to a shootout where each team hit a shot every trip down the floor, they’d win), not that they get a free possession and immunity from the possession arrow for the rest of the game.

I guess it just doesn’t make sense to me why they’d ignore a pretty fundamental part of the game. In reality, this rule didn’t hurt our team as we ended up with the ball anyway (more because of the controversy than the rules), but I could see where it might have a big effect on a game. Maybe I just need to lighten up.

*Their logic begs the question: What do you do the first game when there was no previous winner? Is the possession arrow in effect then? If not, why not?

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