Game Reset

I've always wondered why those updates in the middle of a sports game were called resets. Basically they're just game summary's that get you up to speed on the current situation. Well, that's a perfect title for this article. There's been several things happening in Minnesota sports that I haven't blogged about yet, and it's time that I made my voice heard (if only by our audience of three).

Gophers

• Joel Maturi might get my vote for Man of the Year right now. He's had an astounding start to 2007. He had the intestinal fortitude to can Glen Mason after the Texas Tech embarrassment. Then he had the wherewithal to bide his time, and hire replacement coaches for each of the two vacancies in basketball and football. Everything was done on his terms. And I'm very happy with the results. Kudos, Mr. Maturi.

• Starting with the football team, I can hardly contain my enthusiasm about the hiring of Tim Brewster. Right guy, right time for this team. The questions about whether a TE coach can handle head coaching duties still need to be answered, but Brewster was smart and got a good OC and a good DC to help lift the burden off of his shoulders in those areas. He's also smart enough to delegate those duties to the new hires. His job will be organization, promotion of the program, and - most importantly - recruiting. In his short time as head coach, he's already lured his son, Clint, a legitimate blue chip QB prospect, to the program. My only plea right now is this: Coach Brewster, by all means, red-shirt the boy, and recruit some talent next year to support him.

• Tubby Smith was absolutely the perfect hire for the Men's B-Ball program. Dan Monson failed as an up-and-comer, which was not entirely his own fault. What the U needed now, though, was something to legitimize the program, and Tubby gives it instant credibility (I really never thought I would be typing that phrase...can somebody named Tubby give anything credibility? Well, maybe a children's show). He's on the back end of his career, so we know that he won't be using this job as a stepping stone for bigger and better things. I've already blogged about my concerns with his on-the-court coaching style, but really, the record speaks for itself, and it's hard to finder a bigger program out there than UK. To top it all off, in his one week on the job, he already has a McDonald's All-American, Jai Lucas (John Lucas' son), potentially interested in becoming a rodent. Fantastic!

• I couldn't be happier that the Gophers' hockey team lost before it had a chance to make another run at a national championship. And then the team that beat them was none other than the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux. As someone who basically grew up across the street from the hockey arena in Grand Forks, here's a big WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO for the Sioux. P.S. Don't ever change your nickname...but that's another column.
  

Timberwolves

From eternal optimism to eternal pessimism, I bring you the current state of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Yuck. That 25-point shame ridden defeat at the hands of Seattle (who was minus Ray Allen, btw) pretty much sums it all up. I would say that I've never been more confident that we should move Garnett in the off-season and try to build around young talent, but I'm absolutely terrified that McHale would screw it up. This team needs some serious house cleaning, and unless Glen Taylor wakes up and realizes that his franchise has lost all favor in the eyes of its fans, it needs to start with ownership. Truly a depressing blot on the Minnesota sports map.

Wild

I'm actually going to try to write something meaningful about a team I know almost nothing about and a sport that I don't know anything about. The Wild have been putting something together that realistically has a chance at being something special. Marian Gaborik has been nearly unstoppable in the 2nd half, now that he's healthy. Pavel Demitra has been the offensive catalyst that the Wild lacked last season. To top it all off, the team has its choice of three goaltenders to use that have all been solid or better. I expect big things from them come playoff time.

Twins

Once again, Terry Ryan and Ron Gardenhire have decided to start the season off with a degree of difficulty, as Carlos Silva, Ramon Ortiz, and Sidney Ponson will make up 60% of the starting rotation. Last year, the team managed to come back after being offensively sunk by Tony Batista and Juan Castro, so this season the Twins are going to see if they can mess with the pitching staff before they go with the better alternatives in Matt Garza, Glen Perkins, and Kevin Slowey. Also, Chris Heintz unbelievably made the team as a third catcher, displacing two useful players who have hence been claimed by the Arizona Diamondbacks: Alex Romero & J.D. Durbin. I really think that it was worth a shot to let Durbin pitch in low-leverage situations out of the bullpen, as he was out of options and could not be returned to the minors without being exposed to waivers. A few good appearances, and they probably could have traded him for a low-level prospect at least. Instead, Ryan decided to lose something for nothing. If they didn't have such a successful track record, I would be really frustrated about this.

Vikings

For a team that really, REALLY struggled last season, so far we've upgraded by signing Visanthe Shiancoe (pronounced Shank-O), Vinny Ciurciu (pronounce Church-OOO), and Bobby Wade (pronounced Uff Da). Yeah...so, how does this make the Vikes better? It doesn't. The Houston Texans cashed in on the Matt Schaub sweepstakes with a deal that would've been completely reasonable for the Vikings to make. If they believe that Tarvaris Jackson is really their guy, then I'm fine with not making the Schaub deal. But he's not ready, and it's foolish to think that either he or Brooks Bollinger will do anything but lose as the starter for this team. I'm now in favor of at least giving David Carr a look too see if he can be a stop-gap until the kid is ready. Remember, Carr at one point in time had enough talent to be selected as the #1 player in the draft (please don't bother with the Ryan Leaf comments, I'm well aware of this). Carr has had some mildly successful seasons as a starting QB, and might be able to improve considering that the one strength this team does have is offensive line. With that said, who's he going to throw to, if he does sign?

Well, that pretty much covers it. Thanks for stopping by.

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Pullin' for the Underdog

I was listening to my normal lineup of podcasts through my work day. I had finally gotten to the third part of the marathon known as the Bendis Tapes on the Wordballoon podcast. Brian Bendis is one of my favorite current writers. He's one of the master minds behind the re-thinking of the Marvel universe referred to as the "Ultimate" line. He's also done some fantastic work in a universe of his (and Michael Avon Oeming's) creation in Powers. Basically, anything that he writes, I recommend picking up. It's also a lot of fun to get a peek in to the thinking behind his writing through the Q&A session that he does with John Siuntres on a semi-regular basis. Check both of them out if you get the chance. Here's what Mr. Bendis had to say:

"We as a society - particularly Marvel readers as a group - tend to always root for the underdog. Spider-Man is the perpetual underdog and he is the...poster boy for the Marvel universe. That is who we are as readers. That is what we like." Brian Michael Bendis - Wordballoon, The Bendis Tapes, Feb '07, Pt. 3 34:31. (You can also find more Wordballoon episodes here.)

I didn't think much of it at the time, but it was one of those things that started percolating in my head.

There are many things in life that people try to break down, ad nauseam, into two groups: red vs blue, butter vs margarine, DH vs pitcher batting, etc. The one that I'm going to focus on, though, is the underdog vs those with advantages. The two major comics publishers are a good example of the dichotomy. Marvel has characters like Spider-man where Peter is a kid who lost his parents at a young age along with his uncle several years later and is raised by his poor aunt. DC has Batman who also lost his parents at a very young age and, like Spider-Man, the death of loved ones is a major driving force. However, for Bruce Wayne, he has the advantage of an enormous personal fortune along with his own personal butler to raise him. Bruce Banner is incredibly smart and the leader in his field of research, but he's haunted by the demons of an abusive father and an abused mother along with the very real monster inside that gives him the ability to right wrongs through his incredible strength but comes at the cost of any sort of self control. Superman also has incredible strength and the ability to champion justice in the world. However, unlike Bruce Banner, Clark Kent is the epitome of sentient life and is revered by the populace where the Hulk is feared and reviled. This is one the reasons that I've been more of a fan of Marvel comics as opposed the DC comics: The fact that I can identify more with the characters in Marvel stories. No, I haven't been caught in the explosion of an experimental explosive device or been bitten by a radioactive spider (though there was the case of a really nasty bee bite a few years ago), but the people behind the mask/transformation had real-life problems and struck me as real people. I knew what Peter felt like to be a bit of a geek (imagine that) and to have the issues of having a job and school and a girlfriend to all be making demands on his time. Not to mention the fact that I'm a masked crime fighter during the night that is constantly cracking wise at my adversaries, but that's not important right now.

I've always been one that appreciates the underdog. I prefer the Marvel heroes. I pull for anyone that's playing against the Yankees, the Lakers, the Cowboys, the Giants (football), and Duke. They're the ones that always have an advantage of money/prestige/officiating/cheating. Part of this comes from the fact that I was raised in a "flyover" state by a man who was a third generation farmer (i.e. not rich).

One of the things that struck me as interesting is that we as a culture are being strongly encouraged to be pulling for the underdog. Our movies have many examples of those that have the circumstances against them but are able to move forward and excel at something. Little Hickory High playing the Hilliard Gates basketball powerhouse. Rudy trying to get on the Notre Dame football team. The hapless Indians vs the powerhouse Yankees in Major League. We're encouraged by the media to be cheering for those that shouldn't win. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself. However, this mentality can get annoying. I'm weary of having to listen to every team that wins some form of championship get in front of the first camera/microphone they see and immediately start talking about how no one believed in them and that everyone was picking the other guys. I can almost guarantee you that the other team would have been saying the exact same things had they been on the winning side. Coaches just feed this mentality of "us against the world" to keep the reporters from getting any information because "they might be out to get us."

We carry this mentality as a society as a whole when we talk about how Europe and many other places in the world "hate America." We're one of the strongest and most influential nations in the world and we're supposed to view ourselves as underdogs? Really? Part of this comes from the strong Christian heritage in the US which traces its roots back to a time when Christians were strongly persecuted by the Roman Empire, specifically the emperor Nero. Also, there's the fact that the US was a huge underdog in the War for Independence because of the strength, funding and training of the British forces.

Here's the point: In competitions, it's at the least acceptable to have an us against them mentality. I just don't want to hear you spout the "no one believed in us" drivel when you were "underdogs" by three points. That said, the world is not a competition. Today more than ever, we have a global community. Don't believe me? Look at the ratio of things in your home that are made in the US and those that are made overseas (specifically China). We're all the same team. We might not always have the same goals or ambitions, but when it comes right down to it, we have to work together and there is no underdog. Wow. I got serious there. Crap.

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Awwwwww.......crud.

That was my first reaction upon hearing the news today that the University of Minnesota hired Tubby Smith to be its next men's basketball coach.

Being firmly planted in both of the Rick Majerus and Bobby Knight camps, this news was initially a disappointment to me. Smith is a big time "name" coach, to be sure, but his actually coaching acumen can be easily questioned.

Then I started thinking about it. Smith will be able to recruit. He is a household name, at least to college basketball fans. He has coached at a major program in Kentucky. I think I could talk myself into this.

Plus, I have instituted a three year moratorium on new head coaches before I really criticize them. I like them to show me what they can do before I blame them for the teams' problems. Except perhaps in the case of Brad Childress. I'm still deliberating on that one.

But anywho, short post, gut reaction, gut-check, new coach, go Gophers!

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Animosity TV

I've become fairly convinced over the last few years that my television hates me. I haven't figured out how it came to this point or, for that matter, why, but I'm pretty sure that it does. Now, I realize that you would say that it's an inanimate object and supposedly incapable of love, hate or many of the more complex feelings (like a football fan's feelings for an inconsistent quarterback), but people said the same thing about the Cylons and look at where things are for the humans now.

I often have good intentions of getting to bed at a decent hour. Honestly, I do. Whenever I mention my intention of getting to bed early, Anne usually laughs at me. Our history says that when one of us states that we're going to go to bed early, we usually end up getting to bed substantially later than normal. My biggest problem is when Anne goes to bed before I do. It's not that I'm a completely irresponsible person, but I have trouble at times hitting the power button on the television and just going to bed. Normally, one would say that the tendency is not the fault of the appliance, but rather the fault of the person in control of the appliance. However, this gets to the crux of my issue. I would have a much easier time shutting off the television if the TV wouldn't be displaying such excellent programming at insane hours of the night. I could be tired from a long week at work and be watching bit of TV before heading to bed, but right as I'm just about ready to turn off the TV, an add will come up and say "Coming up next: Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer in Seinfeld." Well, I have to stay up for that, don't I?

Of course, while watching Seinfeld, they show what's going to be on after this half-hour. Wouldn't you know that Scrubs is going to be on. I really enjoy Scrubs. I love the pacing of the episodes where it's one beat right after another. They don't wait for the crowd to laugh or to revel in how clever they are that they figured how to make fun of a person's name by making it in to something dirty. They just keep on moving and wanting to get the next joke. I appreciate a show that doesn't hold anything back but keeps entertaining their viewers. Another good example of this is...well, there really isn't another good example of this that comes to mind. Maybe that's why I appreciate Scrubs so much.

After Scrubs is over, I make the mistake of doing a quick tour around the dial. Keep in mind that we don't have cable television. After I graduated from college, in order to save money Anne gave me the choice of getting cable television or high-speed internet. It wasn't even a hesitation. I have DSL and I have a fat pipe. I'm fairly certain that wasn't intended to be a penis reference. During my final perusal of the different channels' offerings, I cross several infomercials (current favorite: "Poop your way to better health."), and then I happen on an episode of Star Trek. It was the original series of Star Trek, which is my second favorite after The Next Generation. However, I've seen most of the episodes and the majority of those multiple times. I can turn off an episode of Star Trek whenever I want. Hey, wait. They're talking about a derelict space craft. (It couldn't be, could it?) It's one from the 1990's. (No. Well, maybe.) "Spock, Bones, and you, the late 20th century historian that no one's ever heard of but is mildly attractive, come with me. We're going to beam over." (I think it might be.) Hey, look, there's a very young Ricardo Montalban. (It is!) That's right, it's the Kahn episode. I hadn't seen this episode in forever and it's the precursor to possibly my favorite Trek movie in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Kahn. Let me just say, for the record, that in the '60's, Ricardo was stacked. Seriously, dude was huge in this episode. I had to watch.

So, that's how I found myself finally turning off the television in the wee hours and dragging my sorry tuchus up to bed. I knew that I'd be paying for it in the morning and that I'd have to explain to Anne why I was so tired. It's just easier to say that the TV hates me than I'm unable to shut off the TV when I need to.

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A Saturday in the Life

I've tried to not write many articles that are just a running journal of the happenings in my life. I mean, after all, what is this a log of things on the web? Er, wait, don't answer that. Anyway, I usually will use something that happened during my day/week as a jumping-off point for a rant on society, life, cheese, etc. However, I had an interesting Saturday, so I thought I'd relate it to you.

My day started off with a bang, or more appropriately, a cry. The youngest of my three children, Squeaker, decided that 6:30 was a fantastic time for the entire family to wake up. Anne and I have a tendency to disagree with that assessment, but the older children concurred and since they had a majority (and the volume to back it up), we all awoke. This was followed by the normal activities of getting juice for the older children, eating breakfast, taking showers, getting dressed, and so on.

All of this is slowed by the fact that my second child, Doodle, has begun demanding to do everything on his own. He's two now, so he's a big boy and should be allowed to handle everything on his own. At least, that's what he thinks. He can be very particular about it however. He gets quite upset if we do something for him that he's identified as one of his tasks to complete. For instance, he wanted his stuffed monkey, cleverly-named Monkey. It was sitting on the floor next to me, so I picked it up to hand it to him. That was not sufficient for Mr. Self-Sufficient, however. He took Monkey from my hands, placed it back where it was on the floor, then picked it up himself. This had been going on for a few days, so we thought we had grown smart. When he wanted his juice, Anne picked it up and began to hand it to him. This set off another round of "no, me pick up juice!", so Anne set it down where it was. Again, we thought that we had grown smart, but we still had a lot to learn. You see, Doodle had decided it was also his task to put the juice back where it was. Therefore, he picked up the juice cup, handed it to Anne, took the juice cup from her, placed it back where it was to begin the merry-go-round, and finally picked it up himself. We have since decided to become psychic so we know what we're "allowed" to do for him.

We decided that we couldn't decide what to make for supper, so instead we went to a local Mexican restaurant. The menu is limited, but the food is good and quick and we can find something that the kids want to eat. If was only cheaper, it'd be the perfect eating establishment. We go through the line, order our food, watch it prepared before our very eyes (well, my eyes, Anne and the kids were already sitting) and get to the cash register to pay. I pat my breast pocket where I always keep my wallet and my hand meets no padding as it hits my chest. There's no wallet in my pocket. I had done the checkbook earlier in the day and had neglected to replace the wallet in my coat. I turn to Anne and ask her if she brought her wallet. No joy. So, then I have to explain to the under-paid and over-worked restaurant employee that the idiot customer has forgotten his wallet. They were nice enough to allow Anne and the kids to eat while the fore-mentioned idiot customer runs home as quickly as he can after wolfing down his (large) burrito to retrieve his wallet. They knew that I wasn't just skipping out on the check, however, since Anne and the kids were left there and they were probably quite certain that the kids weren't going to be able to wash the dishes. Mop the floors, maybe, but they most likely wouldn't do a very good job. Idiot customer returns triumphantly (read: meekly), however, and pays for the food. Crisis averted and they can stop making wanted posters with my face on them. On to the grocery store.

The grocery store is another aspect of life that becomes exponentially more difficult with three children since there aren't many carts made to hold all three and, if left to their own devices without being tied down my a retraining system, the older kids will wander the isles, greeting fellow patrons and asking people why they decided to go with skim instead of 1%. Our kids are very taste-oriented. Normally, I will go to the grocery store with one or both of the older children and leave Anne and the baby, Squeaker, home to rest a bit. This day, however, the whole crew made the trip. The trip itself went by uneventfully, however getting groceries put away is an adventure of its own. The older kids will fight over who gets to put what away and where it should actually go. At one point, Doodle ran away with a container of chili powder because it was his duty to place that container in it's proper place. Somehow, the proper place in the mind of this toddler was the living room. Since it was then in the proper place, he saw no reason for the chili powder to be constrained my such a restrictive container any further. Doodle opened the chili powder. I don't know exactly how. I don't know why. I don't know that I want to know. However, he was somehow able to get the plastic wrapper off, the cover off and the shaker cover off and get chili powder on the carpet and the blanket that we keep in the living room.

Just another Saturday in the life of the Kamp family. *Sigh* I'll get the vacuum.

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Being a Superhero in the Modern Era

I want to apologize right away for the title of this piece of writing. It was late, I was tired, and I thought it would make me sound smart if the title looked like it belonged on a master's thesis. If to you it does look like it should be a master's thesis, I would really like to know what college you attended. That, however, is not the thrust of my discussion.

The majority of the well-known superheroes that we see in modern media were conceived from ideas in the '60's (Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four), the '40's (Captain America) and as early as the '30's (Superman). Needless to say, we live in a substantially different world from the one in which they were originally leaping tall buildings in a single bound (little-known fact: Superman couldn't fly originally. He could just jump really high and far. Seriously.) As such, I thought that it would be appropriate to put together some pointers for the heroes that have to live in this goofy, mixed-up world of ours and still want to maintain a secret identity.

Wear a full-body costume. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had it right when they created Spider-Man back in the '60s: Make sure that there is not a single part of your body showing. Not only does it help you keep warm (you think Wonder Woman does a significant portion of her work in the Arctic?), but it also helps you keep from leaving any evidence behind. After all, how many shows do we watch today in which someone is discovered due to the DNA evidence that they left behind at some scene that eventually finds them out?

Wear at least bullet-proof vest. Back when most of the heroes were created, most of the arch-villains were merely interested in getting rich through crime or, at worst, taking over the world. Our intrepid heroes would come out of the woodwork and stop them at the last minute from escaping with the cash bag or successfully turning all of the world's dry cleaning supplies in to gelatin with carrots so that all of the leaders of the free world couldn't dress for the job and they couldn't even eat the gelatin because it was spoiled with carrots. (Seriously, who does that to a dessert?) In the modern world, however, we find that a large portion of the villains are interested in death and destruction and have no interest in gelatin whatsoever. Even the useless gelatin. In fact, some of the "heroes" seem to have death and destruction follow them around (I'm looking at you Punisher and Spawn). Therefore, I believe it to be necessary for the modern hero to attire themselves in something appropriate for what they will be facing (i.e. bullets, claws, blades, etc.) The appropriate attire is Kevlar. Just make sure that it's not white Kevlar after labor day.

Don't tell anyone. We live in a culture that is connected. Someone is strange if they don't have a cell phone that can instantly connect them with any one of a huge amount of telephone numbers stored right in their phone. That same phone can snap pictures at the drop of a hat that can instantly be posted up to a blog. This especially applies to girlfriends. Sure, back in the day, Gwen Stacy was probably keeping a diary that talked about how groovy it was that her boyfriend, that way out Peter Parker, was also secretly Spider-Man. Now, she'd probably post something in her blog about it, and let's face it: That just isn't private. As an aside, I find it interesting that people post their innermost thoughts about life, their job and their relationships on the Internet for anyone to see. Then they wonder why they lose their job and their significant other and why their parents won't talk to them anymore. Bringing it back around, this makes me wonder what a blog done by Bruce Banner would sound like. "Today's mood: angry. I smashed some tanks today because they were infringing on my leap across the desert. Why won't they just leave me alone when I'm angry? By now they know that they don't like me when I'm angry. *Sigh.* I have a date with Betty tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be a little more mellow. I don't want to have to buy her a replacement pill-box hat again. The last one was white and didn't go well with red wine."

Wear something different. This is also related to the Hulk. You see, early in his career, Bruce Banner bought a large number of the same suit to simplify things in his life. Here's the problem with this theory: All of the suits were a very distinctive purple. Bad move when you might randomly turn into a rampaging green behemoth that is naked except for, thankfully, the purple pants. Now, I'm sure that this was originally intended to simplify the workload on the artists and colorists. You don't have to keep track of exactly what Banner was wearing when he had a hissy-fit two or three issues ago because he was wearing the same thing that he was wearing twenty issues ago. However, as previously mentioned, a large portion of the population carry devices that can take pictures in a format that can instantly be uploaded to any number of different websites for all to see. All it would take is for someone who knows Banner to see it and apply the barest-minimum of deductive reasoning. "Hey, the Hulk wears goofy-looking purple pants. You know who else wears purple pants like that? Bruce Banner. He's also currently in Nevada working at a top secret base doing something with radiation. Funny how small of a world it is, huh?" Now that I think of it, though, General Ross should have come up with that thought the first time he saw the Hulk in his purple pants. I guess Banner is lucky that I wasn't a general in the US Army when he was created. Or something like that.

Don't have a family. This is probably one of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give to any superhero in the modern world. Sure, there were villains back in the day that were out for blood, but a good portion were in it for the money or thought they had the best interest of the world in mind by taking it over. Now, most of the arch-nemesi are in it to simply ruin the lives of the heroes. Look at what happened to Daredevil when the Kingpin found out who he really was: He made it his mission to completely break apart Matt Murdock's world. A hero's spouse and kids will always be the first thing that a villain attacks on finding out the secret identity of the hero. My recommendation: vasectomy.

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