Jam Don't Stare

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Jordan, first game of the 1992 finals, after hitting his sixth 3 pointer in the first half.

The Zone is an ever-elusive upmost mythical place in sports performance, the peak of athletic experience. I haven't graced it's hallowed grounds nearly enough in my life but an insight struck me a few days ago while I was shooting baskets up in Bowling Green. I had the gym to myself and I was working my way through the Nash Drill, a phenomenal practice scheme created by the physics wizard himself, Steve Nash. You basically shoot ten shots from each side of the basket and you don't stop moving until you work through the whole routine of shots off the dribble, fading away, baseline jumpers, after a spin, running floaters, this, that and the others. I was running around the court shooting baskets and I couldn't quit thinking about this article in the Economist I had just read about our world being dominated by too much information. All of the sudden, a shot keranged off the rim and I hustled down after it (naturally before it went out of bounds). It was then when I realized how out of breath I was, how thoroughly soaked my shirt was and more importantly, how many shots I had just made in a row. The exact figure escaped me (more than ten), but it was one of those things where physically you can't really put a finger on it but subconsciously you can feel the weight of it all, very similar to passing a person in a big city and knowing you've seen that face before and can vaguely conjure up a memory of a fantastic conversation but you can't really pinpoint when or where. Right then and there, halfcourt of the practice gym, is where a slice of the mystery of the Zone was suddenly revealed to me.

I played in high school with this guy Tavarres who once told me that being in the Zone means "you never get tired." If perception is indeed reality, to be tired you must first realize the extent of you being tired. I believe he was saying that to be in zone, you never realize you're tired because it never occurs to you. You're not even thinking, you're just doing. Your form doesn't break down, you're still down low playing defense, you keep holding up your followthrough on the shot, you're still scrambling after rebounds. You're doing all this and not letting the effects weight down your performance. Self consciousness escapes you. The same applies to what's happening in real time during the game. It's akin to a real short memory, or even better, a mind that does not place emotional ramifications on the actions happening. One of the greatest books ever written, The Inner Game of Tennis, describes it like this. You've got Player A on one side who's serving and while he looks absolutely fantastic is his  neon green headband, he keeps double faulting. As a result, he becomes increasingly frustrated. Each double fault only leads to three more, and so on and so forth. Player B, who happens to be his wife, is on the other end, just loving it. She's not working up a sweat at all, loves her swishey new tennis skirt, and best of all, is beating her husband without even trying. She's queen of Cloud Nine.

After the illustration, the book then implores the reader to consider which player is better off in this scenario. Impulse would dictate the common answer to be the wife because she's on the beneficial receiving end of the happenings that be. But turns out, she's as bad as her husband. Because they both are emotionally attached to the actions on the court. The book encourages folks to become more like the line judge, the observer who see's each action from a matter-of-fact perspective, good for just the moment in time when it happened. Not connected to the preceding events nor the ones to come in the future.

I was shooting baskets that afternoon, thinking about something completely different than the task at hand, yet consciously aware of every pivot, every dribble and every shot, all at the same time. A seemingly impossible contradiction? Nah, just a paradox. Still in a bewonderment after my shoot around, I found the article and read it again over dinner. Here's the three main points the author highlights...

I. Information can make people anxious and powerless.

II. Data overload reduces creativity. 

III. Information overload also makes workers less productive. 

While the article was most talking about the business environment, it's amazing how it relates to the sports and particularly basketball. In the regards to the first, I can remember plenty of times in high school where I'd march on the court and be analyzing everything. "Allllllright, we're on offense okay, ball's moving around the top, defense shifts, alllright cut baseline, very wide open, hoorah catch the ball, swing around, the guy's on me real tight can't drive, post is fronted isn't open at all, pass the ball back out, shot's up, run in to rebound, snagged by their pretty tall guy, run down the court now, gotta play defense....." Nothing good at all can come from thinking that much, especially in the touch and go world of basketball. Thinking that much gets in the way of simply playing the game, which is the first step towards achieving the Zone. Quit thinking, just do it. It's like being at a concert in Nashville and looking at all the industry folks standing round with their arms crossed. Quit staring y'all, just dance. To analyze that much is essentially to live in reaction, which is last place creativity can reign supreme. Creativity thrives in a place far away from the deliberations of the conscious mind. Analyzing and rationalizing are tools the brain uses to figure things out, absolutely fantastic gifts that speak to the magic of human ingenuity and our constant struggle to make the world a better place. But they play a minor role in the mystical realm of optimal sports performance. Up there, the realm of thinking isn't the normal rational everyday Either*Or way of thinking, its more of a Both*And, holistic colour of things. A expansive, intricately connected big picture way of seeing the world vs. the small details of each individual parts. It's seeing the puzzle for its picture rather than its pieces. Both are absolutely important in the big scheme of life and speak to the importance of balance in our everyday. Its Left Brain vs. Right Brain. Western philosophy vs. Eastern. Individual achievement vs. collective responsibility. The epitome of sports performance inhabits the same similarly paradoxical zone where you're doing but not thinking about doing. It's not produced by effort, yet without effort nothing happens. The great Bill Russell says it best in his autobiography...

"At that special level all sorts of odd things happened.... It was almost as if we were playing in slow motion. During those spells I could almost sense how the next play would develop and where the next shot would be taken. Even before the other team brought the ball in bounds, I could feel it so keenly that I'd want to shout to my teammates, "It's coming there!"-except that I knew everything would change if I did. My premonitions would be consistently correct, and I always felt then that I not only knew all the Celtics by heart but also all the opposing players, and that they all knew me."

{Too Much Information | The Economist}

The Future

Concert du Grand Journal - Selah Sue & Theophilius London - Why even try

Covering the Spectrum

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"I have a really interesting political point of view, and it's not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can't go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can't. I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since."

-Robert Downey Jr.

The Black Swan

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Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases. 

Your brain is most intelligent when you don't instruct it on what to do.

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love

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Fooled By Randomness

Jizo asked Hogen,
  "Where are you going, senior monk?"
Hogen said,
  "I am on pilgrimage, following the wind."
Jizo said,
  "What are you on pilgrimage for?"
Hogen said,
  "I don't know."
Jizo said,
  "Non knowing is most intimate."
Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.

Bloops

"During the Cold War, the US Navy created a vast network of underwater microphones (called hydrophones) to keep tabs on Soviet submarines. Called SOSUS (for SOund SUrveillance System), the hydrophones were first installed in the “GIUK gap” – the stretch of ocean between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, an area where Soviet subs were known to operate. By the 1960s, the Navy had expanded SOSUS to include most of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as many parts of the Pacific. In 1961, the system tracked the USS George Washington during her entire run between the United States and the United Kingdom. By early 1962, the system was capable of tracking the Soviet’s diesel submarines. And later that year, a SOSUS tracking station in the Bahamas played an important role in the Cuban Missile Crisis by keeping the Navy informed about Soviet submarine maneuvers around the Caribbean.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, the Navy suddenly had little use for the system. Additionally, better technology had led to the development of smaller, easier to use hydrophones that could be easily deployed in a theatre of war as necessary. Many listening stations were abandoned, and several others were condensed. Although the Navy still listens to the hydrophones, most of the day-to-day operation of SOSUS has been turned over to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who use it to listen for underwater earthquakes and volcanic activity, for monitoring whale migration patterns, and other scientific interests.

And, during the summer of 1997, those scientists suddenly became very interested. That’s because SOSUS recorded a sound that remains a mystery to this day. Something off the southwest coast of South America, at approximately 50° S 100° W, made a sound… a sound that defies explanation.

The sound is of a very low frequency, in the range that some animals use to communicate. But here’s the thing – the sound was picked up at two different hydrophones stationed some 3000 miles (5000km) apart! This automatically rules out almost any man-made source of the noise, as a sinking ship breaking up on the ocean floor or a shifting undersea cable can’t possibly make a noise that loud. It’s possible for whale calls to travel that far through certain “thermal layers” in the ocean, but those conditions didn’t apply in this case. In short, many scientists are convinced that the only possible source of the sound is an as-yet unidentified animal. The only thing is, that animal would have to be “several times” the size of a blue whale to make a sound that loud. And an animal just three times the size of a blue whale would be truly enormous – around 300 feet long and 570 tons in weight...."

Through The Trees

Tzu-chi Yeh

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Once upon a time, David had braces & was too cute to function and Conor wasn't taller than his brother. Times have changed indeed. 

The younger of the Venture Brothers combo have done graduated and its amazing. 

Congratulations, fellas, y'all just finished the easiest 18 years of your life. 

Now introducing, Laura Catherine.

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For certain, you have to be lost to find the place that can't be found. 

Elseways, everyone would know where it twas. 

- Pirates, At World's End

Adventures

White Flag

Where you want to be

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Some of the most life-lighting insights come from where you'd least expect them. I was squirming in math one day in high school and the class was split up in groups, tackling some worksheet or project in the name of taking up time. One of my buddies from a nearby group leans over and asks a girl in our group if he can borrow her highlighter that's perched at the corner of her desk . "Absolutely not," she replies and quickly moves the marker out of reach. Taken aback by the unexpected vehemence, he hits a brick wall for a moment and almost quits the pursuit, but he's secretly intrigued by the irrationality. "Why in the world not? C'mon, I need it for this worksheet. It's right there in your hand, just let me borrow it for goodness sakes" Emma then ignores her duties as group mother and turns in her seat to face him. "Absolutely not John, you can borrow my Sharpie but not my highlighter." John's now staring at Emma, his mind spinning at her seemingly irrational logic, since Sharpies are highlighter's complete opposite on scale of classroom utilities. Having caught wind of something ridiculous, both groups have now forgotten their mathematical pursuits at the moment to tune in to the unscholarly exchange. The ball's in John's court and he lobs back a sound return by stating the obvious. "Emma, this is ridiculous. Just let me borrow the highlighter. I only for a moment. It's right THERE." Emma, loving having captivated John's complete attention as well as half the classroom, lifts her a chin slightly and whiffs her hair aside like only gorgeous gals know how. "No, John, you can't borrow the highlighter. You can borrow a pen or a Sharpie. Guys need to be bold."

We are the generation that has information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

-Bill Keller

Rio

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Lazy isn't the right word when it comes to writing. I'll go with metacarpally apprehensive. But it's looking up, getting better with every tryst. 

Every distraction steering me further away from the tasks at hand still productively serve a purpose. Dreaming may be initially fruitless but it gives the mind room to breathe and expend some energy, which is absolutely necessary when the end of school's griping like a vice and summer's looming large. Rio looks gorgeous, let's go. What a cool movie too. 

Jaws At Night

from Fortrus Sports on Vimeo.

Incredible

Swoon

I can change if it helps you fall in love.

-LCD Soundsystem

Bold moves abound on this side of paradise. The sun's slowly peeking into every day of the week and we couldn't be more thrilled. Here at the Feel Good Lost castle, we're hoisting the pirate flag back up and unpacking the badminton net, while conjuring up some loud and rowdy calls of the wild in hopes to attract some like minds over to celebrate the change of seasons and the future of great things to come. This spring is going to be rowdy. That was the general consensus at the show last night. I dashed down to Nashville yesterday night for a show with some of my favorite people in the world. Problems besetted me from the beginning of the venture though and all self induced too, which is the most maddening thing about it all. My car keys somehow escaped me on particularly rowdy night of carousing about town on foot so I was forced to either find a willing participant to share the evening's madness with or borrow their car. It's a wonder someone eventually acquiesced in the end, given the grand scale of previous inconsistencies but it all got worked out eventually. I eventually grinned down a deacon at church to let me borrow his blue '58 El Dorado. Darn thing shakes up a storm when you push it past 70 mph and it gets a bit chilly with the top down, but its absolutely worth hearing the roar.  Nah, none of that's true but wouldn't that be something else. The band worth seeing was Warpaint and they flat out tore it up. Four gals made very swoony, slightly gloomy but freewheelin' carefree psychedelia drenched in reverb and absolutely danceable. Sounds a bit like that photo up above looks. Interpol on a evening beach stroll. Except all girls! That's a mighty big difference in stage presence but they handled it rightly, dressing the stage up with faux candles and a glowing crystal ball looking thing. I suppose they were shooting towards capturing their aura that abounds in their living room practice sessions. Whatever the case may be, it got pulled off with stellar results. The gal that plays bass for them is one of the most interesting people I've seen on stage in a long time. Totally, happily stuck in her head and loving every minute of it, all on top of the fact that she was fucking stupendous at her instrument.

Right here is the most interesting article I've read in a good long while. I can thank my buddy Mike Bowen for throwing it my way in a flash of inspiration. If you've made it this far, I'm counting on you to check it out and reap its wisdom. No man is an island, even if they believe themselves to be with every fiber of their being. The awareness of purposeful belonging still touches us, even out in the deep reaches of the middle of nowhere. This kayaker struggled with finding this balance and although he passed away in the most horrific fashion, his story is beautiful and fascinating to behold. It's got me leaning towards the Amazon as my next venture, that's for sure. 

Hey Yall

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Art is long and life is short

and success is very far off. 

-J. Conrad

Notes From a Plane (Please Land)

Thousands of miles above the beach and I can hear it shouting my name already, which just isn't fair at all because with half the plane windows shuttered and folks slowly snoozing off, I can't really holler back without it being extremely uncooth. But on the flip side, maybe that's exactly what they need. But for the good of the flight, I battle the urge to scramble over the older gentleman next to me, yank the microphone off the wall and start preaching from Job about the Dangers of Complacency and the value found in consciously fraying the edges of your comfort zone. But as I peer over the back of my seat, that's the last thing these folks have in mind. They're heading to the Bahamas to go sit by the pool. Might be best they do. I'll wager a coupon for my first born child that not one of those pale Vandy gals huddled in the back can swim.... Truly, the routines of tourism are more mundane than daily life. With that thought in mind, I plan on taking full advantage of every single breathing moment offered up by this here week in the Bahamas. Every day will be chock full of high speed frolicking, fish chasing, sun worshipping and so much merryment, it'll pretty much be work of sorts. My thumbs will have burns on them from all the pages turned. I don't deserve to be sitting on this plane right now, hovering thousands of miles up over swaths of the most gorgeous blue green ocean, headed to an even prettier rock of an island for a week. Holy smokes, what in the world have I done to deserve a vacation? These are the thoughts bouncing around seat 1D. It's an exit row seat at the front of the plane, yet it still can't contain my need to take my shoes off and run like mad. For the time being, 1D has me captured and with Miami twenty minutes behind us, I turn my attention elsewhere until the islands start creeping up at the corner of the window. There's a SkyMall poking up right in front of my knees. SkyMall is hilarious. What in the world to you truly Need from that magazine? It's got a crazy variety of shameless Wants though for sure and if you're not careful, the longer you're stuck on the plane, the more necessary all those things in that magazine seemingly become.....Ahhhhh yes an authentic Lord of the Rings Broadsword, in a specialty velour case would make a great birthday present indeed. Diamond carved crystal Star Wars Chess Set? Absolutely. Robot Vaccum cleaner? A must. Granite Pelican shaped Garden Fountain? My mom would absolutely love that. Gotta think about Dad too. Hand signed autographed game helmet from the 1965 Super Bowl champions? Absolutely....

Do you foul the president when you play him in pickup basketball? What would be the implications of the headup of another country seeing the President of the United States on crutches or in a wheelchair? What if he had to cancel a official visit to Central America, for example, all because you wanted to have him on locks on afternoon? 

Okay for now. More on the way. Y'all need to rag me in every rude way, shape, or form when i don't write on here for a while. But never fear because here's the most happiest song ever. Try not to dance, I dare you.

Temper Trap- Resurrection (Penguin Prison Remix)

King of Limbs

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And suddenly once again, the world is by another album announcing by the almighty Radiohead. The King of Limbs will be out this Saturday in digital format and then hard print later on in May. It comes no surprise to those who love the band that the public knows almost nothing about this album. There isn't a tracklist to be found and save for a few grainy youtube video scattered about, there's no a single clue to what any of the songs on the new album sound like. Why might this be? For starters, Radiohead is a pretty smart group of blokes. Not just in the well read sense either, but business savvy as well. The way they released In Rainbows a few years ago blew everyone's top hats clear off. Radiohead knows that selling music these days is not about closing the deal on the greatest total number of people. It's just about the people that care. That's exactly who they're catering with this release, which was absolutely true for In Rainbows as well. People are going to scoop up this deluxe "newspaper album" like free money, despite its $200 price tag. And that's going to completely baffle the record labels, who only believe the public want things for free....

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What's this new album going to sound like? Well I'm going to go ahead and hedge my bets around the lines of Kid A pt. II. In all my earnest enthusiasm for this band, I keep pretty regularly with Thom's Office Charts, which is the corner of the interest where he regularly posts his loves that are currently blasting though his speakers. And Thom Yorke has been loving some bloopy yet gentle, futuristicly dubby, vaguely paranoid sounds. So let it be said, you heard it here first. Kid A Pt. II. Honestly part about it all will be gritting my teeth, hunkering down, and pushing it to the back of my head until Saturday. But I said the same thing about Spring Break a week ago, so I guess that's just life y'all. 

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Think about it yall.

Nah Right

Who says animals don't have personalities?

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Stephano Unterthiner

Don't Know Bout That

Is creativity inherently a selfish thing? I'm propped up here in the library looking around at all these books, thinking about how in the world could someone write so much about something. One of the most terrifying things in the whole world sometimes is the blank canvas. That's not because of its honesty, although you could make a case for that. I'm leaning more towards the freedom swing of things and the school of thought that explains how too much freedom inhibits decision making. I believe that to be absolutely true and its a concept that's absolutely fascinating to think about, especially in regards to art and our consumer culture. The simplicity of life as it has been for most of history is slowly on the decline, thanks to the flood of options available. With 38 varieties of just about everything, its easy to believe that the perfect choice is out there somewhere. The same things true for art. It's so easy to get all keyed up and flustered in the face of a blank canvas because holy smokes, it can turn into just about everything. But the remedy is slowly sinking in. Some choices are better than others, but the most important choice to make is one of action. Not choosing is not an option! That right there is what should be kept in mind when staring into the giant yawning pit of options and uncertainty. And everyone's afraid of the unknown, in some form or fashion. But why?

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But what about the unknown is so terrifying? The most fear stricken panic I've ever endured happened in one of the oddest and most unlikely circumstances. Spring break senior year of high school and I'm twenty miles off shore in Costa Rica, roasting in the sun. We're trolling for marlin and doing an awful job, so the monotony and beaming rays from above have flatten us out in various positions of loungitude around the boat.  The captain*owner of our third world yacht we're sprawled out on gets radioed by his brother that there's a pod of dolphins a few miles away and its a sight worth seeing. We reel in the lines and rev the engine. Pretty soon, we spot the scene. A gaggle of tuna has apparently crossed paths with a herd of dolphins and the later have pursued chase. Birds are divebombing from above and the moving spot of ocean is a rage of activity. Senor Captain steers us ahead of the pack and suggests we dive in to get a better look. Having not done nary a thing all morning, my man Kevin Patrick and I elect to take the plunge. The boat puttles off, leaving us behind and we've been bobbing for maybe three minutes before the bombardment smacks us. The tuna shoot past like silver bullets far pretty far below the surface. They're not the huge kind but they're still fast as lightning. It made for a beautiful spectacle but wasn't nearly as interesting as the folks in hot pursuit. When the dolphins caught up to us, life got real interesting real fast. I would love to be a dolphin because they seemingly have fun doing whatever they're doing. And what they were doing was beating us up for a few brief very exciting spell. We're floating in the water and dolphins are zipping past us in a furious yet incredibly happy manner, jumping out the water, ducking and dodging, zipping, zoodling, turning around sideways, and catching some tuna. It was like standing in the wake of the most couped up class of kindergardeners as they're finally let out for recess. Barraged by a herd of fun. The time was brief but incredibly exhilarating and pretty soon, they passed us by in the name of lunch and we were left in their wake, bobbing like we were before. Except now alone, floating twenty miles off shore, maybe 500 yards from the boat in two thousand feet of water. That's when life got terrifying. If you ever want to comprehend your own existence, star at the stars at night and float in the open ocean. I was suddenly overwhelmed by staring at the deep blue underneath me, thinking about everything down there and what might have been following the dolphins and my mind just floored it. Some monstrosity could just shoot out of the depths, pluck me out of the water in one fell swoop like you would a vegetable in Whole Foods and it wouldn't be a thing at all. Life would go on, the beast would be back lurking the depths, the dolphins continuing their merry chase and I'd be dead. I swam back to the boat as fast as I knew how, praying that I wasn't giving off any seal energy, and ruminating on the fact that there is a time and a place for imagination and the wandering mind and there between the sun and the wide open ocean was not the time. But the best way to overcome fear is to laugh and tackle it, so we'll see about next time...

Hey Beautiful

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Holy giant hammerheads yall
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Counter Smash!!!

Trip to the Aquarium