The Toadless Boy

Say you are a prospective student surfing the nets, and you want to get an idea of the atmosphere of your future school. Should you happen upon the University of Iowa’s website you’ll not only know, “Hey we’re damn proud to be an Iowan!” you might also see a familiar face.

If you catch it before they change images or ads, that’s my pa climbing down out of his tractor. The irony is he rarely, if ever, operates it. (My farmhand mother does.) But at least we know if he should ever step in to that tractor for something other than a photo-op, his field research will help prevent his death. Remarkably.

The lady and I drove to Des Moines yesterday evening to attend a book signing with Paul Shirley. It was a long drive for a short amount of time but how often do you get to see an almost NBA player talk about his journal-style book?

I’m just about 35 pages from finishing Paul’s book, Can I Keep My Jersey? It’s an interesting insight in to what it’s like to be in his shoes. Basically for those that don’t read NearlyAnyJedi’s blatherings about Paul, he is a guy from Iowa State via the state of Kansas who is good enough at basketball to be hovering around that cutoff of NBA player. This means he’s not really a player when he’s in the NBA, more of a spectator.

His writing goes through his mental process of everything related to playing professionally. Be it in the ABA or Europe or the NBA. It’s not a masterpiece by any means. I’m kind of wondering how the book’s going to “end” because typically you read a book with some sort of resolution. Even Anne Frank’s diary style writing I’m sure had an ending in that she wasn’t able to write anymore. Paul’s, I’m guessing, is “Today I signed a book deal to write this book. So this is where I am right now.” I’m not asking the guy to die to make the ending interesting, I’m just saying.

Meeting Paul was pretty cool though. His blogs on Suns.com took J from being completely uninterested in sports to a Suns fan and someone willing to listen to me explaining the asinine rules of a particular sport. Even football. Did you know a dunk is worth two points just like the rest of the baskets within the 3-point line? I started giving Paul the time of day when J showed me a picture of Paul on the chartered plane rocking a Dandy Warhols t-shirt. Considering I get around to reading about three books a year, Paul should consider himself lucky that I chose his book.

During the question period, I asked a few music related questions referring to his mention of his top 50 album list. I wondered if he finished it and if he was going to publish it. He did talk about music he’s currently listening to. He’s definitely someone that I can keep up with in music but I’d say we agree on about 50% of the artists he mentioned, which is pretty good considering my music snobbery. He mentioned bands like Tegan and Sara and Brand New alongside the Dandy Warhols and Interpol. But I’m sure he doesn’t understand my penchant for t.A.T.u.

One dilemma in meeting Paul was the whole “coolness” factor. Like Paul, I feel hard-pressed to find people I actually like. Most people are tolerable but very few I actually enjoy hanging out with. When I meet someone new who passes the primaries and is deemed a good friend candidate, I probably seem kinda needy. I don’t want to lose the few people that are worth it. So I get kinda nervous. I wasn’t like that with Paul because I was able to see the line between us. I mean I wasn’t there signing books for him. But, after seeing him speak, I confirmed that Paul would be someone I indeed would want to hang with and I left feeling a little bummed that we weren’t going to be hanging out. Sad really.

Friday evening former Hawkeye basketball player, Mike Henderson, was seen warming up and playing 5-on-5 with his protege, Iowa programmer Toadless Boy. Toadless Boy shot 60% from the field with the majority of his short-range jumpers finding the bottom of the net. Most attempts at layups were swatted away by the big men underneath. Despite his size, he raked in quite a few rebounds due to good positioning and boxing out. Mike even told him “Nice board” and “Good shot.” Coach Lickliter said, “It is clear Toadless will be a good addition to the team as the sixth man in row 14 next year.”

Seriously though, I’ve been playing basketball at the field house off and on for a while now and was aware that players that have earned things like scholarships for their play show up every now and then but I never actually played with one of them. Mike was practicing free throws and we needed a fifth so I asked him if he was playing and he jumped in.

The level of play at the field house is pretty varying. It’s never awful and occasionally I’m in the top half of my team but I’m pretty consistently second worst on my team. That was true last night too when I played with Mike. When I made the first basket of the game from a deep two short of the three line in the right corner, I clapped my hand once and smiled real big and thought, “Damn I’m outscoring Mike Henderson right now.”

That of course changed but I still had a lot of fun. Sometimes when you play with “good” players you never get the ball or a chance to “prove yourself.” (Man, I sound like Gilbert Arenas right now. I better “just pra-tice, pra-tice, pra-tice.”) That’s why I typically try to show up a little later than right after work. Right around 5 is when it is a younger crowd and sorry high-schoolers but you all think you are good. Guess what, you ain’t. And I’d like to shoot occasionally instead of just putting back up a rebound of your errant shot.

Mike knows he’s better than anyone else there though so he didn’t have to put on a show or anything. He was always looking to pass and tell his teammates when they did something good or when something was his bad. If I missed an easy shot, it didn’t guarantee I wouldn’t get the ball passed to me again and afterwards he didn’t shrug off “good game”s because it wasn’t his best.
It’s not like I tried out and made some team with Mike but it was still a lot of fun basketball and that’s why I play. That and I look for excuses to show off my sporadically hairy chest.

I’d recognize his child-molester-esque mug anywhere.

I’ve been sitting on this one but someone wanted to make sure they had enough content worth reading on their site before I “broke” it. Well, I’m still waiting for content worth reading but I figured I’d mention before I forget all about it.

Add a new person to your blogroll (I did). That person is the Ledge guy, Andrew R. Juhl. For those unfamiliar, the Ledge is a column on the back of the Daily Iowan and it has primarily been written by my buddy Andy for a while now. This is refreshing because I know the guy and they are consistently funny. For those familiar, you know that is a rare thing for Ledges past (or is it passed? Have I asked that before?).

I got the scoop when I worked with him on getting the WordPress rolling. When I set up the dummy site I threw in the title and the subtitle and am proud to say he’s either not bothered with changing it or Andy actually approved my quick thinking. Dude will hump anything, inanimate or not.

This story is clearly one where 50% of America should be really pissed off. The other 50% should prepare their talking points and be ready to defend their actions.

I guess because any one is still left to defend Bush, newswriters are presenting a story like Scooter Libby getting “pardoned”* as something that one camp can agree with and one camp can’t. I don’t see why everyone shouldn’t be pissed. Martha Stewart’s punishment was too strong (relatively) but Bush didn’t step in 5 hours after the fact.

I had so many fun topics backlogged to get myself back on the wagon (or is it off the wagon?) and entertain “them asses” with but a news story like this was enough inspiration to get the blood boiling and the blog bubbling. Pray for posts about friends and other things to drive ad traffic (note: I don’t have such a thing) in the future.

* I know he wasn’t pardoned because then that would acknowledge his guilt, wouldn’t it? But really, people will make that argument in defense of Bush (I don’t have the TVs this week so I couldn’t tell you what the talking heads are saying) but it just sounds like someone justifying a child’s actions: “But he didn’t know any better, he was just doing what he thought was right.” This man is the leader of our country and that shouldn’t be.