Heh. They pay people for this crap?

So I was bouncing around the stupidest word in my vocabulary today, and came across Bill Rini's post that not a single poker blog got nominated for a Bloggie, despite our efforts at ballot-box stuffing for Pauly, Al, Iggy, the Up4Poker boys, etc. and flipped over to see who did get nominated.

They didn't nominate anyone I like, they don't get a link. Google 'em.

So I bounced around some of their nominees and found an interesting post from a NYC stripper who wants to be a writer and is doing some columns for the Village Voice (is "the" a part of the title? I can never remember), and she's doing a column for the Voice on several women who have gotten book deals based on their blogs, one of them for some ridiculous amount of money like $500K. So I bounced over to see what was worth a cool half-million in the blogging world. And no, I can't really remember the chick whose blog I was on, or what the links were, and didn't care enough to save the urls.

Wow. Just like movie stars, financial success of blogging is sometimes inversely proportional to writing ability. I had silly business cards printed up with my email, blog address and cell number on there (vistaprint.com, free for 250 color cards and a few dollars for shipping, you gotta ask whythefucknot?) and my title I listed as Director, Designer, Degenerate, Scribbler. These folks don't even rate scribbler. There are blogs out there that I read for funny stories (is it BoozeDay again, yet, Al?), blogs that I read for news of the poker world, blogs that I read (and usually have to read 2-3 times) for strategy on the game, and then there are blogs that I read for the sheer damn literary quality of it.

Tao of Poker
The Obituarium
Up for Poker (you also get a fair number of entertaining stories, but these guys can ALL throw down the writing gauntlet)
Anything Daddy is guest-posting on
Boy Genius

These guys are writers. First, foremost and last, these guys are writers, and damn fine ones. I'll measure the work of these guys against these new novelist/bloggers any day. But the common thread I saw in my admittedly incredibly limited viewing of these blogs?

Boobs and bitching.

The few of these new novelist-bloggers that I visited, and there may be some that don't fit this mold, all seem like they must own the Sex and the City box set. Between the relationship drivel and bra pictures, I found very little writing that impressed me on any level.

Actually some of the imagery on the stripper's blog was pretty good, I thought. I think it was Mimi in NYC or something? I found her images to be much stronger than the crap on the booblogs. Yes, I chased it down. The one I liked was the stripper blog. She's got some serious moments of good imagery there. But the others? If I want to read about a hot chick, I'll go read the Blonde. And I do read The Blonde. Because she's a no-BS blonde, she just lays the truth right out there for you, and screw ya if you can't handle it. I respect that.

So I'd much rather read Pauly's as yet untitled Las Vegas novel than anything by this Jessica Lacy Bra chick. Not that I don't love lacy bras, but I do find them itchy under a dress shirt. But it looks like blogging for dollars is going to be like becoming a movie star - the talent (Steve Buscemi) gets the bit parts and the talent free lummox (Bruce Willis) gets $20 mill per flick. Hopefully somebody somewhere will read the folks I mentioned above and see that the are of writing is alive and well in the stupidest word in my vocabulary. Good luck, guys. It ain't a half-million dollar book deal, but you inspire me to keep plugging away.

Peace.

Coach

I was never an athlete. Not even close. Cut from Little League twice in elementary school, my athletic career was effectively blown at age 7 with the first of many sets of Coke-bottle eyeglasses. So I never had a coach when I was a kid. Until my senior year of high school.

Will Clark was one of my best friends, and had been since 6^th grade, when we met in the Gifted & Talented program (geek squad). Will wanted to go to the Air Force Academy more than anything, and had spent his entire high school career gearing up for it. So in January of our senior year, I was a little baffled when Will came up to me asking me to join the track team.

“Huh? What would I do that for? (the grammar of a future English minor)”

“I need somebody to run with me.”

“I suck at sports.”

“Doesn’t matter. I suck, too. But if I go through the whole season again this year, I get a varsity letter, and I can’t get into the Academy if I don’t letter in a sport.”

“You think of this now? And why me?”

“Who else would I ask?”

“I’m an idiot, but okay. What do I have to do?”
“Meet me at the track Tuesday after school. Bring sweats.”

This does not begin the tale of a gloriously undiscovered athletic drive, love for competition, or Olympic fire. I did a favor for a friend, and ran the 4,000-meter race for a track season. Poorly. Well enough to make the Upper State Championship team for our school, but only because we only had 4 guys running that race, and we had to field 3 for Upper State. I was marginally (and really only marginally) faster than Ricky, the sweet but brutally slow Special Ed kid who also ran the mile. Come to think of it, I think Ricky may have been our third guy, behind Will & me.

But somewhere in there, I got myself a coach. Now let’s not lump Durham Smith in with Bobby Knight, Bill Parcells, or even that Russian guy that carried Kerri Strug to the medal stand. Not to say that he wasn’t a great coach, but the competition wasn’t really the key to it with Coach Smith. Ricky the aforementioned Special Ed kid got every bit as much attention from Coach as the guys who actually placed in or won their events, because Coach Smith knew that we were all there for different things. Some guys were there to win races and get varsity letters. Some guys were there to hang out between seasons of football or basketball. Some guys were there for completely ridiculous reasons, like their best friend needed moral support to get into the Air Force Academy.

But Coach Smith encouraged us all to be our best, win or lose. It never mattered to him that I never ran the 5-minute mile that he believed I could. It only mattered to him that by the end of the season my 8-minute mile warmup pace was actually measurably different from my competition pace. I did manage 5:20 in the mile before we finished the season. Coach never once yelled, never expressed disappointment in us, not even when the scrawny white kids from Fort Mill actually lapped me and Ricky during the 8,000-meter race. Now, really, was it absolutely necessary for a 15-year-old kid to shave his legs and rub Afrosheen on his legs for aerodynamics? This kid sat still faster than I ran, I think all the other shite was just window dressing.

And you know what? I never felt like a loser. Not once in that spring did I feel like I couldn’t do it. Like I couldn’t succeed. That’s what a coach does, and it’s why I will run to the theatres and watch every lame-ass high school sports movie, or pick up every copy of Miracle of St. Anthony or My Losing Season that I run across. Because I do believe in the power of athletics to mold kids. I do believe that a coach is the second most important man in a kid’s life, and in too many cases, the single most important. I was fortunate enough to have a great coach for one spring, and I’ll never forget him.

I don’t run anymore. It’s been 15 years and 100 lbs. since I ran the mile in 5:20, or ran the mile at all for that matter. But I still bump into Coach Smith once in a while, and I still call him “Coach.” And I’m proud that once, for a little while, I was an athlete.

Will got his letter, and he got into the Air Force Academy. I haven’t seen him since right after graduation, but I know he’s somewhere – flying high.