A Few Thoughts on Osmosis.


I was having a conversation with a friend last night that, for reasons I do not entirely understand, devolved into an explanation of osmosis. This tends to happen to me. I’m sitting around, discussing Icelandic hedge funds and John Wall and Mario Kart, and suddenly I’m talking about sophomore year biology. It’s worth noting: I was not good at sophomore year biology 1..

So I struggled to explain how and why things move from cell to cell, because explaining the functions of multicellular organizations isn’t necessarily within my area of expertise. Then I tried a different tack: I used the lowest common denominator.

“Osmosis is basically Bluetooth technology,” I told my friend. This seemed to please both of us tremendously, especially since I didn’t have to continue talking about cells, and he didn’t have to pretend to listen. And the concept behind my explanation wasn’t that far off. Osmosis is a way of transporting molecules between cells. Bluetooth is a way of transporting data between wireless devices. Once you get past the big words that define osmosis — semipermeable membrane, solvents, etc — you’re left with the realization that Bluetooth also allows the movement of things from from cell (phone) to cell.

But now, I’m struck by a simple question: Where do we cross the line between explanation and oversimplification?

Or: If we’re in the business of oversimplifying things, does anyone actually benefit?

Or, maybe: if the only possible analogy in a situation is tech-related, have we do we become too reliant on technology?

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1. This was partially due to a small group of freshman girls in my class who were, semi-affectionately, referred to as “The Fannos,” but that’s a story for another time. >back to article

H/T on the photo at top via this site.

The Ballad of Johnny Wholestaff

If you are like most frequent readers of the blog — by which I mean to say, hi, Dad — then you remember when I ran photos from a Mizzou-Texas Tech baseball game a few weeks ago. Those photos became the root of a story about Mizzou pitching coach Tony Vitello. I’ve named it, somewhat unusually, the Ballad of Johnny Wholestaff.

It’s available via this link for your viewing and listening pleasure.

And for the curious: Audacity, Photoshop, and Flash were used in the making of this project.

My Mother and Her Puta Grande

The family

**I told this story live at Ignite NewsFoo in December 2011. You can watch it here.**

Right now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell you a story about my mother.

Eleven months ago, I was returning home. I’d spent six months studying abroad in a very pleasant beachside town in Spain. I was well-tanned and full of doner kebabs. My town was just a week away from celebrating its annual bullfights-and-sangria-and-fireworks festival, and the Spanish national team was in the semifinals of the European Championships. I very much did not want to leave.

But it is out of this — just before the crescendo — that I found myself leaving. I boarded a plane in the heart of the country and landed nine hours later in Atlanta, where the heat index was topping three figures. Baggage claim at customs was slightly less packed than a Mumbai rail station. The customs agents were surly, as their baggage sorter had just broken, which left thousands of bags piled up at the gates, looking surprisingly like the Agro Crag on Nickelodeon’s “Guts.” Atlanta, I should note, is really not the kind of place that America should be using to greet our foreign guests.

But soon enough, I found myself leaving Atlanta and heading home to Washington, D.C., where temperatures were cooling into the high 90s, where the humidity just sort of wicks away from your body until you’re left stewing like a game hen in a crock pot. I was flying into Dulles Airport; my family was meeting me there.

It is here that I must remind you that this is a story about my mother.

She had decided earlier in the day that she would make a sign with which to greet me at baggage claim. At the time, this seemed like a good idea 1..

She went to my younger sister, Ellen, and my brother, Sam. Both speak Spanish. She asked them to do a bit of light translation for her 2.. “I want the sign to say, ‘Welcome home, my big boy,'” she said. Ellen and Sam told her that they could help her with that. My mother, so overwhelmed by the return of her eldest, most prodigious son, neglected to realize that her two youngest children have a sense of humor more twisted than a licorice rope.

It is into this that I arrived at Dulles Airport. Over my shoulder, I had two bags. One was a guitar case that bulged in the middle and looked unusually like a Kirstie Alley “before” photo in a Weight Watchers commercial. The other was an LL Bean backpack that was only being held together with scotch tape and safety pins. In my rush to pack, I had attempted to load nearly 4,000 lbs. of souvenirs into four bags. My two checked bags had tipped the scales at 48 and 46.5 lbs., respectively, just under the 50 lb. airline-mandated limit. The remaining 3,905.5 lbs. had been stuffed into my carry-ons and maneuvered into overhead bins for my flights.

I mention this because, ordinarily, I am a fairly spry individual. And on this day, it would have been nice to have felt youthful legs beneath me. Instead, I was essentially anchored to the ground by my luggage.

This was an unfortunate break. Leaving the terminal, I saw the unmistakable figure of four Oshinskys. Behind them, a small crowd had seemed to gather around my mother. I mistook this for coincidence; unbeknownst to me 3., it was not.

The crowd was waiting to find out for whom this woman was holding her sign.

Minutes earlier, an Aeromexico flight from Mexico City had landed at Dulles Airport. One by one, the crowd had passed through baggage claim and seen my mother — a white, Jewish, non-Spanish speaker — proudly clutching a white sign with thick black lettering.

On its front, it read: “Hola, Dan, mí puta grande.”

Which, even if you’d spent your entire vacation inside a tequila slammer at Señor Frogs, you could accurately translate as “Hello, Dan, my big bitch.”

And so the entire adult male population of Mexico City — or something close to it — had collected their luggage and then moved toward my mother, waiting for her puta grande to appear.

It is into this that I appeared, some 3,905.5 lbs. of luggage dragging me down the hallway. I remember looking down the hall and seeing my mother, bouncing up and down, holding her sign. I remember getting close enough to read the words. I remember processing the words in my head, six months of Spanish still very fresh in my mind. I remember taking off, my legs breaking free from the ground, looking not unlike the Beast breaking his chains in “The Sandlot.” I remember my mother moving at top speed, setting what must’ve been a world record in the 60-meter dash, the sign still waving above her head. I remember her catching up to me at about baggage claim #7. I remember looking back; Ellen and Sam were laughing. The entire adult male population of Mexico City was laughing.

I remember looking up, into my mother’s eyes. She was crying.

“Do you like the sign?” she asked.

I smiled back. She wouldn’t know why until later. We’d wait until we were onto the highway, the TrailBlazer cruising along at 70 miles per hour, before we’d teach her her first four words in Spanish. We knew she wouldn’t throw Ellen and Sam out the window at 70 miles per hour.

I looked back up at my mother. Her eyes were fogging up. I smiled back and told her the only thing she wanted to hear.

“Yes, yes I do,” I said.

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1.) N.B.: The phrase at “at the time” can not and will not ever be followed by a clause of a positive nature. No one has ever used the phrase to introduce a pleasant memory. I have tried to find a way to do such a thing; I have failed. It is, at this point, my linguistic holy grail. >back to article

2.My mother, who does not fully understand the Internet, had never before heard of Google Translation. >back to article

3. “Unbeknownst to me” is the second most ominous phrase in the English language, only behind “at the time.” >back to article

That photo at top, from left to right: Sam, me, and my mother.

Yet Another Valid Reason to Dislike Yanni.

We’re about two hours from the drop of the puck tonight in Pittsburgh for game four of the Caps-Penguins second round playoff series, and some 26 hours from the drop of the puck in Washington tomorrow night for game five. It’s a less than ideal situation, playing these back-to-back games; and like the majority of bad things in life, it’s all Yanni’s fault.

I do not like Yanni — or John Tesh, or Kenny G, or any combination of the three. I do not like his ripped-from-a-frieze-at-the-Acropolis haircut. I do not like the even-Sgt.-Andy-Sipowicz-kept-it-cleaner mustache. I not like his let’s-remix-Bach-for-the-ride-between-the-34th-and-47th-floor style of music. I do not like the way he makes me abuse the hyphenated phrase.

But today, I have a new reason to dislike Yanni. Per the AP:

PITTSBURGH — Yanni is forcing the Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins to play two playoff games in as many nights, and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis doesn’t like it.

Three events in eight days at Mellon Arena required the NHL to schedule the Capitals and Penguins to play Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series in Pittsburgh on Friday night and Game 5 at the Verizon Center in Washington on Saturday….

The teams are playing every other day during the series except for the back-to-back games. Normally, the teams would have played Friday in Pittsburgh, Sunday in Washington and Tuesday [if necessary] in Pittsburgh, but the concert conflict ruled out Tuesday.

Instead, Game 6 would be played Monday night in Pittsburgh, the third game between the teams in four days.

A WWE wrestling event this past Tuesday and a Dane Cook show on Thursday in Pittsburgh also factored into the NHL schedule.

But any Caps fan worth his imitation Peter Bondra jersey remembers the 2000 Caps-Pens playoff series. Let me fire up Lexis Nexis and take you to the Apr. 11, 2000, edition of The Washington Times. “First-round schedule leaves many Caps fans angry,” the headline reads.

To say Washington Capitals fans were upset yesterday with the team’s first-round playoff schedule would be putting it mildly. Irate might not even do it justice….

A series of scheduling conflicts at Mellon Arena, home of the Penguins, forced a change from the traditional NHL playoffs that gives the higher-seeded team home ice for Games 1, 2, 5 and 7.

Instead, the Caps will have home ice for Games 1, 4, 5 and 7. A Washington loss in Game 1 would give the lower seeded Penguins a decided advantage with the next two games in Pittsburgh…

The NHL originally wanted to have Games 3 and 4 in Pittsburgh on April 16 and 18. But Mellon Arena is booked with the World Wrestling Federation on April 16 and the Burn the Floor dance show on April 18-19.

And so the cycle repeats. In 2000, WWF and a tango spectacular called “Burn the Floor” took home ice away from the Caps due to a Mellon Arena scheduling snafu. In 2009, WWF — since renamed WWE — plus Yanni and Dane Cook have forced an unorthodox back-to-back schedule.

Interestingly, the Caps chose to give essentially give up home ice in 2000, saying “this was the best thing we came up with and still not have to play back-to-back games.” In 2009, they kept home ice, but they’re forced to play back-to-back.

The 2000 Caps lost their first game of the series in a remarkable 7-0 loss. They lost games two and three in Pittsburgh. They eventually lost the series, 4-1.

One more thing worth noting. Caps owner Ted Leonsis — who was also the owner during the 2000 season — wrote on his blog recently:

It is a shame that both teams will have to play back to back games later in the series because the Pittsburgh building – against NHL rules – booked a series of concerts and forced the league to alter the playoff schedule. This is bad for the league, both fan bases and for the players.

But then there’s this quote from the 2000 incident:

“It would be irresponsible of me to sit back in November and block everything between early April and June for hockey,” said Hank Abate, general manager of the Mellon Arena. “I set aside some dates for the Pens, but it’s completely impossible for me to know back in the fall which specific dates were good. What usually happens is that we book the building and the NHL works around us.”

Apparently, not much has changed.

That Look.

Helpless.
We have two new puppies here at our house in Columbia. This, I must say, is a good thing. As college students — and more specifically, as college men — we’ve discovered that puppies are the ultimate icebreaker. You do not need to be charming or funny or even well-groomed when you have two four-month-old beagles waiting for you at home. My advice, immediately, to any college male, would be to invest in puppies.

And looking at the above image — that’s Levon in the bottom right, and Andre above him — it’s not too hard to figure out why.

One more image of the boys in mid-nap is over at my Flickr page.

Builder of Dallas Cowboys’ Practice Facility Also Constructed Mizzou Indoor Tennis Courts

Last weekend, the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility collapsed during a storm in which winds reached nearly 70 mph. The facility was built by Allentown, Pa.-based Summit Structures LLC in 2003.

But records obtained by the Associated Press yesterday indicate that the company has built at least three other facilities that have collapsed during severe weather storms.

According to their website, Summit has built dozens of sporting facilities around the world, including in Columbia, Mo. Summit completed work on the University of Missouri’s indoor tennis facility in 2002, according Missouri’s official athletic website.

Of the building, the Mizzou athletic website says: “The unique facility is a metal frame and fabric structure. It will have the flexibility of indoor and outdoor play as it will have adjustable sides that will allow the facility to be opened in warm weather, and enclosed and heated during winter months.”

H/T to MUTigers.com for the photo of the tennis facility.

Rebranding Collegians for the Real World.

On May 16, I will graduate. I will walk across a stage and be handed a piece of paper that does not actually certify that I am a graduate of the University of Missouri. The actual piece of paper will be mailed to me later. Everyone in the audience will know that I am not being handed an actual diploma; they will clap anyway.

And effectively, at that moment, everything will change. On May 16, my fellow graduates and I will be rebranded. Among the things I am not looking forward to:

OUT
IN
Youthful ignorance. Stupidity.
Being a college kid who drinks frequently. Alcoholism.
Midday napping. Backward worker overflow.
Bliss. Retirement only 45-60 years away.
Not keeping track of your day. Not having a plan for your life.
Getting laid. Getting laid off.
Staying up to watch Conan at 12:35. Wondering how anyone can manage to stay awake for Conan at 11:35.
In-class texting. Synergy.
Going to bed after 6 a.m. Waking up before 6 a.m.
Parents getting excited to see you come home. Parents wondering when you’re going to leave.
Laziness: acceptable. Laziness: an offense worthy of firing.
Occasional late-night snacking. Morbid obesity.
“That’s what she said” jokes. Sexual harassment.
T&A. R&D.
Fraternity. Paternity.
Singing “Living on a Prayer” karaoke-style. Living on a prayer.
Donating plasma for cash. Monetization.
Meal points. Food stamps.
“Can I have fries with that?” “Would you like fries with that?”
Three-hour lunch breaks. Generating a negative cash-flow position.
Working hard, or hardly working? Unemployment.

One Funeral at a Time

Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway held their annual meeting last weekend in Omaha, and today, I’m reading a few notes passed along from the talk. Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t allow anyone to record the meeting, but a friend passed along some handwritten notes from the talk. And reading through it, I’m struck by one quote from Buffet:

What are we learning that is most wrong? Efficient market theory. If everything is priced properly, what do you do for the next hour?

That’s as good a commentary as any on what newspapers did wrong in the ’90s. Profits were up, but newspapers didn’t innovate. And when we shifted from print to digital, newspapers weren’t ready.

Buffet closes with a quote from Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Planck, who said, “Science advances one funeral at a time.”

Insert the word “technology” for “science,” and you’ll have summed up the newspaper industry’s last decade.

Mad Max, and a Few Thoughts on the Nature of Childhood

A brief comment in advance of this post: like the majority of the commentary on this blog, this post is meant as a representation of events observed. Somewhere, between observation and judgment, there’s truth. And yes, truth is not as universal a concept as we’d like it to be. Now: on with the post.

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My cousin Scott is about eight years old. He has short brown hair and all the energy of a Luna Bar. His favorite album is Green Day’s “American Idiot,” and when he sings along to the title track, he is his own seven-second tape delay. “And can you hear the sound of hysteria?” he’ll sing. “The subliminal mind bleep, America.” He does not fully understand that “bleep” is not an original Billie Joe Armstrong lyric.

Scott, so inspired by his favorite album, started taking guitar lessons about two years ago. His hands are not big enough to form many of the chord shapes, so he mostly just thumbs along to the bass lines. These days, he’s good enough to play versions of songs like “Iron Man” or “Seven Nation Army.”

I bring this up, because the only difference between Duke Maxwell and my cousin Scott is that on Monday, Scott will be attending class, because Scott is in the second grade. Duke, however, will be in Nashville. And then the week after, he’ll be in Denver. And then the week after that in Salt Lake City.

What I mean to say is that the only difference, really, between Duke Maxwell and my cousin Scott – once you get past the nylon-stringed guitar and the too-small-to-play-anything-in-the-key-of-G hands and the fact that they’re both eight years old – is that my cousin Scott isn’t the lead singer of a touring rockabilly family band.

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On Friday night, I was walking toward the Blue Fugue, a Columbia bar that actually takes pride in the fact that it’s such a dive. The place is about as well lit as the inside of a nuclear submarine. They’ve got antique violins and tubas and shotguns pinned to their walls. In the back of the bar, there’s a bookcase featuring titles by Henry Cabot Lodge. Next to the bookcase, someone’s outlined images of naked women in chalk. Mistletoe hangs from a chandelier nearby. No one’s bothered to take it down from last Christmas, or maybe the Christmas before that. I can’t tell which.

The Fugue, as locals know it, is kind of a townie bar for the yuppie set, if that makes any sense. Half the men in the crowd are wearing plaid. The rest are wearing bandanas, except for two guys in the back who are still wearing their gas station uniforms.

The Fugue is a Missourian’s bar, and they’re damn proud of it. At the Fugue, you’re drinking whiskey, Bud, or Stag; Miller Lite is considered an export.

But more than the torn cushions on the barstools or the refusal to accept any trend not involving vintage clothing, the Fugue is defined by one quality: it’s loud. Like, Spinal-Tap-turn-it-to-11-loud. Like, inside-the-whammy-bar-on-Kirk-Hammett’s-guitar-at-a-Metallica-concert loud.

The Fugue is one of those places that you’ll always hear before you see 1.. On Friday night, walking up 9th Street, I heard it from about four blocks away. I wasn’t expecting to stop by; really, I wanted to go to Quinton’s, the bar next door that serves Boulevard Wheat in a glass that’s about the size of a household vase. But within earshot of the Fugue, my friend, Nate, made an observation that I seconded: whoever was playing at the Fugue was awesome. Their drummer kept the cymbals splashy. Their base lines were spot on.

So Nate and I went inside.

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The second thing you’ll notice about Mad Max and the Wild Ones is that they’re actually pretty good. That wasn’t a surprise; we could tell from 9th Street that whoever was playing the Fugue could do more than keep 4/4 time.

But if you ever see them in concert, you probably won’t even remember whether or not they were any good, and you certainly wouldn’t if you were at the Fugue on Friday night. That crowd was too hopped on Stag or PBR to care what was being played.

But I guarantee you that more than a handful of Fugue-goers woke up Saturday morning and asked themselves, “Was I drunk, or was that band last night headlined by an eight year old?”

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A few minutes before midnight, the four members of Mad Max and the Wild Ones are on stage at the Fugue, killing. The drummer, Cole Maxwell, has just finished an impressive two-minute drum solo, and the crowd is roaring.

Cole Maxwell is 13 years old.

Now he’s standing over a bass drum, keeping the beat while spinning the drumsticks in his hands and looking not unlike Iceman twirling his pen in “Top Gun.” Cole is wearing a red shirt and an unusual tie; he looks very much like KFC’s Colonel Sanders, only if the Colonel had been dressed by Meg White. He is wearing a black jacket with leopard print, the kind of print that stays in style only in Dirk Diggler films or Miami. His hair is slicked back in the style of Elvis Presley. The other three members of Mad Max and the Wild Ones are dressed in an identical manner.

The bass player leans into the microphone – an unusual, old-style radio mike, but with the catch that this mike is glowing a neon blue – and yells something. What, I’m not sure, and therein lies the problem with the Fugue: the acoustics make it impossible to hear anything being said or sung. The crowd, confused at what’s happening, just roars back their approval.

It’s at this point that the band’s eight-year-old lead singer starts in with Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere.”

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“I’ve Been Everywhere” is not so much a song as a warm-up exercise for auctioneers; in roughly three minutes, Johnny Cash croons out the names to 91 different locations.

Watching eight-year-old Duke Maxwell – pictured at right – sing it through, my only question is if the band’s lead singer can find a quarter of these places on a map.

And yet, Duke powers through the song, only taking a breather for an extended guitar solo, in which the band’s bass guitarist lays down his upright bass on the stage, and the guitarist hops on top of it to hammer out a few bars. Meanwhile, Duke slides out of the way.

A nylon-stringed red guitar – the inscription “Wild West Sweethearts” painted onto its body – hangs over his left shoulder.

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The show ends a few minutes after midnight, but not before Cole Maxwell – standing on a two-foot-high box – plays the upright bass, and certainly not before the band’s closing number: “Radar Love” by Golden Earring. It’s played rockabilly style. Somehow.

Then the band packs up their things. I wander over to the guitarist. His name is Wyatt, and he’s the eldest Maxwell child. He tells me that they’re just a family rockabilly band from a town just south of Salt Lake City.

I’m suddenly frozen in an odd moment of clarity. In four years of living in mid-Missouri, I’d told myself that I’d seen every weird thing there was to see in this state.

But until that moment, I hadn’t considered the idea that Utah might be weirder.

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While Mad Max and the Wild Ones are packing up their instruments, the lead singer of the Fugue’s headlining band is on stage. He has a full beard, and he’s drinking beer directly out of a pitcher.

Conversely, Mad Max’s lead singer is two years away from learning that he can grow a beard, about five from shaving for the first time, and 13 years from that first beer.

The bass player – who turns out to be the father of the rest of the band – is outside. He’s taken off his leopard-print jacket and tie, and now he’s down to an undershirt and about three pounds of hair gel, and looking surprisingly like Michael Madsen. He’s loading up the band’s trailer. On one side, it has the band’s name, and beneath it, the words “Rockabilly Revue.” On the back, it simply reads: “Terrorizing a City Near You.”

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There is a tattoo of a woman on the father’s right bicep. Behind her, greenish-reddish-blackish flames shoot up his arm. Below her, five cards are flipped, face-side open. There are no dollar bills tattooed on his arm, but I can’t help but think that he’s been playing with house money all along.

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Later that night, I sit awake and think of freshman year. I was at a U2 concert in St. Louis; I’d snuck into much better seats than I deserved. A friend and I found seats near the stage, about a dozen rows up. Behind us, we noticed two gentlemen struggling to reserve seats for friends. We asked them why they were working so hard to keep their seats reserved.

“Oh,” they said, “these seats are for Hanson.”

“Excuse me?” my friend asked.

“Hanson,” one of the gentlemen said. “You know, ‘MMMBop’? Hanson? ‘MMMBop’?”

“Yes,” my friend said. “We know Hanson.” We had, after all, been in elementary school when a family band from Oklahoma hit #1 on the pop charts. We hadn’t forgotten the pre-N’Sync sensation that was “MMMBop.”

But what struck me that night was — once they showed up in their seats — how relatively normal the Hanson guys seemed. Almost a decade after topping the charts, they were just hanging out in St. Louis, listening to four Irish guys who’d been playing music since they were teenagers. The Hanson brothers were famous once; among my generation, they’ll be infamous for much longer. But that didn’t seem to bother them that much, at least on that night in St. Louis.

I do not believe that Mad Max and the Wild Ones are like Hanson or The Jackson Five or the Von Trapps, or any other family band. They do not sound like them; more notably, I do not believe that they are as talented as any of them. But that does not mean that they will end up any better or any worse than any of the bands I’ve just mentioned.

So I sit awake Friday night and wonder: Do these kids go to school? Do they want to be here? And if they don’t, would they even be able to tell their father so?

To me, what these kids are doing – dressing up like either Elvis or Jack White or Jack White impersonating Elvis – and playing regular tour dates on the road a few thousand miles from home seems like borderline child abuse. These kids are talented, sure, and I’d agree that talent is worth nurturing. But I want to know at what cost 2..

So I go to bed without answers. I wake up the next day and ask myself the same questions. Same questions; no answers.

I wonder if I will ever have answers. I wonder when I will ever have answers.

I wonder whether Cole or Duke Maxwell think this is normal.

I wonder whether they will ever forgive their father.

I wonder whether one day, thanks to a rockabilly band, Cole and Duke Maxwell will really go anywhere worth going.

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1. In this way, the Blue Fugue is actually a lot like my mother. >back to article

2. To which I offer two cases of parents pushing kids at a young age: Tiger Woods (who turned out okay) and Todd Marinovich (who bombed out of the NFL and then hit rock bottom as a drug abuser). Certainly, the Wild Ones aren’t on the Marinovich scale; his father stretched him in his crib as an infant, and at four, had trained him to the point where Todd could run four miles at an eight-minute-mile pace. The point worth noting here: whether you’re talking about nurturing the best sixth grader in the country — be it a basketball player, like Allonzo Trier, or a drummer, like Cole — I do not believe that chilren are capable of handling such pressure. But I’m not a psychologist; I’m just a kid who was 12-years-old not all that long ago. >back to article

UPDATES: The band wrote in after the post with their comments. Sadly, when I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress, the comments disappeared. The long and short of it is: I was wrong. They were angry, and justified in their anger. I apologized for the post. In 2012, I went back and reflected upon this initial piece.

H/T to Mad Max’s MySpace page for all photos.

Nothing Runs Like a Deere. Except, Maybe, a Goat.

Yesterday, Google reported on its blog that it occasionally brings in goats to trim its campus’s lawn. The story was one of the most-Twittered articles of the day. Some questioned the veracity of the report (a late April Fool’s Joke, perhaps?). With Google stock nearing $400 a share, many wondered why Google couldn’t afford to fire up the weed whackers. Surprisingly few asked why goats were getting all the good grass-eating jobs.

I bring this up because, apparently, I am the only man in America who is not shocked to hear that goats are an effective substitute for lawn mowers.

The government has been contracting work out to goats — or, rather, goat-owning businesses — since at least 2003, says a Lexis Nexis search. And I should know: a search for previous stories about goats-that-mow-lawns-for-cheap turns up an article I wrote nearly six years ago.

The article — which was written for The Washington Post‘s Federal Page — never actually ran in print. (The Baltimore Sun had published a similar, shorter story from the AP wire about goats a few months earlier, and The Post opted against running my piece. Yet it’s worth noting: I was only 16 when I wrote the goat story. I was so blown away by the fact that The Post thought that something I’d written was clever enough for publication that I didn’t even care that the piece went unpublished.) But with the help of Lexis Nexis, I’ve managed to resurrect the story.

I’ve run it in full below. It’s just something to — oh, God, am I really going here? — chew on for the rest of the day.

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July 22, 2003 Tuesday

GOT PESKY WEEDS? TRY USING GOATS

BYLINE: By Dan Oshinsky States News Service

LENGTH: 292 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

When Oakland’s Naval Medical Center needed to clear 109-acres of its property of pesky shrubs and high grass in order to prevent brush fires, officials didn’t think of using lawn mowers or weed whackers.

They brought in the goats.

About 600 capra hirci – including Alpine, Spanish and Lamncha breeds from Goats R Us in nearby Martinez, Calif. – will munch their way through the grounds starting next week, with the government footing the $38,000 dinner bill.

“The vegetation has to be controlled because it’s a fire hazard,” a contract specialist from the U.S. Navy’s Southwest Engineering Field Division said. “The goats are very effective, and the terrain is very hilly.”

The Navy has had contracts for fire control with companies whose employees are human, the contract specialist said, but the landscape warranted using a different method to rid the area of potential hazards.

Goats R Us owner Terri Oyarzun, who runs the business with her husband Egon, said that her goats should be able to easily deal with the enormity of the medical center’s property because the goats are used to grazing in all types of terrain.

“We do projects that are hundreds and hundreds of acres,” she said. “We work in park systems that are thousands of acres.”

Oyarzun estimates that a flock of 300 goats can easily clear out an acre of land – even areas covered by heavy brush – in a day.

Goats R Us was tapped for the project because of the medical center’s intricate landscape, Oyarzun said.

“It would be very expensive to put machinery there,” she said. “It’s not very desirable for human crews.” The property is currently shut down, awaiting a decision on how to turn it over to the private sector through the Oakland Base Reuse Authority.

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If you’re wondering, yes, Goats R Us is still around. And H/T to Klearchos Kapoutsis for the photo of goats on the Greek coast.