Fencing

I was on the NYU fencing team during the first semester of my freshman year.  It’s one of those things, at least to me that sounds impressive when in reality it wasn’t at all.  I walked onto the team and I don’t know if there was a mandate to let any one join if they wanted or if I was barely acceptable enough to make it on my merits.  I had gotten into fencing a few years before that in high school, where I was a starter on the varsity team, a team that went on to win the city championship in my senior year.  I was either the worst or second worst starter on that team but due to my high self-confidence and recent medal, I figured I would try out.  A few guys from the high school team the year before (and the year after) ended up with scholarships and when they came back to visit they warned how very different the landscape was.  It shifted from the team-oriented environment that we all embraced to a very individual event.  For the layman, fencing had three different types of weapons and each has different areas on the body where points can be scored and first person to 5 wins.  There are only two fencers on the strip at a time.  The total number of bouts won determines the winner of the overall match.  So it’s an interesting mix of individual and team. Enough exposition. 

I remember finding out about the team after they had already started practicing.  I made a terrifying phone call to the coach, Steve at his day job, a civil war antique store in New Jersey.  Former Olympian, coach of a division 1 fencing team, owns and runs a civil war antique shop; you can’t script life.  He told me to come down on Tuesday and the normal practice schedule was Tuesdays, Thursdays at 6:30- 9 and on Saturdays at 9am for practice.   I showed up full of smiles and nervous energy expecting to find a familiar positive atmosphere like what my last team had been.  I couldn’t have been more off base.  Looking back on it now, it what I’d imagine training for the Olympics is like.  The three coaches ran us through the most intense workouts I had ever been a part of.  They were broken up into stretching, running, calisthenics and finally fencing.  Thankfully after each section there was a 2-3 minute water break.  I would spend the entire time with my mouth around the spigot and breathing heavily through my nose.  When we got to my first fencing portion the coach for foil took me to the equipment room and handed me some gear.  There are different types of handles on the foils and in high school I had always used a French grip but he had handed me a pistol grip.  I asked for a French grip and was curtly told in a Russian accent, no French only pistol.  I was off to a wonderful start!

The actual fencing practice was round robin tournament style where you’d fence about 6 bouts throughout the rest of practice.  I don’t remember exactly how did my first time but I think I ended up winning a few bouts but definitely losing more than I had won.  Those couple of wins justified me being there at I least I thought so.  They didn’t tell me to not come back, which I took as a positive.

I was in a serious amount of pain from being so out of shape after the first practice.  After the second practice, walking on stairs in any direction was not a possibility.  After the first Saturday practice, the third practice overall, I took the E train from West 4^th to 42^nd Street to catch the 7 train to get to Flushing.  If you aren’t familiar with the walk from the E to the 7 at 42^nd, there are/were a series of ramps with an incline deemed not safe for wheelchairs.  There’s a gradient that’s not that steep but steep enough to make you wonder how much fun it would be to on rollerblades.  Anyway, after that 3^rd practice of the week I started walking down the first ramp and quickly had the realization that the muscles in my legs had betrayed me and refused to follow any more orders.  Gravity had grabbed me and was pushing quickly down the ramp towards the wall where you would turn and descend another ramp.  There a flat area to make this turn around approximately 6 feet from the end of the ramp.  At each and every one of the 8 landings I was able to come to stop about a foot from the wall.  I was completely convinced that I wasn’t going to be able to stop myself and end up with a broken nose from slamming into any of the walls. 

The coaches would work individually with the fencers during practices.  I was never quite sure what the criteria was for being selected.  The team captain, I think was named Glen, I found out wasn’t chosen out of merit but because the guy who had the same seniority had gotten into a fist fight at the last tournament.   I kept my head down, showed up to all the practices and worked as hard as I could.  After about a month or so I had become pretty good and was consistently finishing between 4-2 and 6-0 during the round robin portion of practice.  Coach Steve had announced that there would be two events in the next few weeks.  The first was an out of state tournament and the second was a public practice to get alumni to come and see the team in an effort to raise some money. 

In one of my first disappointments on the team I was told that I would be going to the tournament only to be cut because of budgetary reasons a few days beforehand.  Not so much of a disappointment but more of an eye opening experience, was the open practice.  Apparently the people that were recruited for the team and received scholarships weren’t expected to show up to the normal practices and instead were to use that time to keep their grades up.  They were given a free ride, housing, and tutors.  I remember being incredibly bitter about all of it because I was up at 5:30 every morning, traveling at least an hour and a half each way (closer to 3 hours on practice nights) to and from school, working 5 hours a day, keeping my grades up and not receiving the time of day from the coaches.  So when the open practice came around, I was pumped. I had a chip on my shoulder and I had something to prove.  I was doing well against the rest of the team so this was my moment.  I went up against a few of the regulars before being called to fence, Alex (his name might not have been Alex).  Alex was a freshman like me but he was one of the team’s stars.  He had the privilege of the full ride and he had never come to a single practice. 

I came out with a quick attack, which he parried and hit me for a point.  1-0. Ok, I thought, stay aggressive.  I went back at him toying with his foil a little before going in. 2-0.  Ok, ok, time to dial it back and play a little defense.  I laid back waiting to see what he’d do. 3-0.  Defense has never been my strong suit, back to offense as I explode forward. 4-0.  Fencing masks are made of a metallic mesh that you can see through.  I’m pretty sure I saw Alex yawn during our exchange before he scored the fourth point.  At that point I was cooked.  I charged again and it was 5-0.    These guys didn’t have to come to practice because they were so far out of our league that it would be a waste of their time.  I never found out if they had their own practice time or if they had worked with the coaches individually. 

After going to one match at Yale, never getting any attention from the coaches and getting offered a promotion at work, I quit the fencing team with about a month to go in the season.  I remember feeling like I was wasting my time but looking back at all the time that I’ve wasted since then it’s something that I regret.  

Sneakers

Lately, I’ve been on a big sneaker kick, big enough to corrupt and/or taint my morals.  My newfound interest in footwear has sparked a lot of questions from friends and loved ones.   How much did this pair cost?  Did you really wait in line for those?  Why?   The first two answers are a lot and yes respectively but the third is more complicated and I’ve been giving it plenty of thought. 

A few years back after I quit my full time job to start my own company I was working from home most days and with that I needed background noise while I was working.  I plowed through the sitcoms and comedies in my collection until I hit upon on the few Pixar movies I had.  I watched all of them in succession, all the special features, and the commentaries.  During the early run of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2, I was at the theater opening day and buying the DVDs the first day of release but at some point before Monsters Inc. I either lost interest or something changed.  This thing that I was truly passionate about fell by the waste side.  Which got me thinking about things that defined us as individuals and how &why those things change or disappear from our lives. 

Growing up in Astoria, on the weekends and most certainly during the summers we’d walk up to Steinway Street starting from 30^th Avenue we’d hit ever sneaker store until Broadway.  There were five or six different shops, some were Army & Navy stores, other dedicated shoe stores.  Looking back on it now, they were all mom & pop shops.  In this weekly pilgrimage we’d ogle ever pair of new Nikes and Reeboks.  Keep in mind this was in the late 80’s to ear 90’s; and with no way of getting any information about release dates or even models, you had to continually go to each and every shop to see what was out.  Sneakers were making huge strides (sorry for the terrible pun) at that point with Michael Jordan and even Run DMC drawing fans to brands. 

Nike was definitely the true brand of choice for our neighborhood.  I can’t pin point the day but I can definitely pin point the year and more importantly the shoe that started me on this path.  It was 1988 and it was the first pair of Air Max 1s in red.  Others share my belief in the wow factor of this particular show, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1111890347/max100-the-book-project I don’t know if it was the shape, the use of red and grey or a combination of everything but I was floored.  If I remember correctly a pair cost between $80-$90, which given the time was a significant amount of money, somewhere around $170 in today’s dollars when adjusted for inflation.  I think our monthly rent on a two bedroom apartment in Astoria was about $500-$600 a month for some better perspective on how expensive they were.  I begged and begged for a pair and ended up getting a pair for my birthday.  I distinctly remember my mom’s unhappiness about the price when she gave them to me and recited an anecdote about overhearing another mother telling a son that the $35 pair was too expensive and to put them back.  The thing that both of these moms didn’t get was that sneakers weren’t just shoes.  They were everything.  Everything!  Sneakers were to the street as suits were to Wall Street.  With the burgeoning ad dollars and cultural significance, what you were wearing had a direct correlation with your coolness.  The latest pair of sneakers garnered immediate attention from friends and even strangers.  The peer pressure and jealously lead to the “game” of stepping on someone’s new shoes in an effort to dirty them up.  Given the low to middle class neighborhood that we grew up in, that pair had to last you a year, so getting the latest and greatest was imperative or you’d left behind.  Another aspect of it was that certain shoes’ desirability were enhanced not by those who were marketing them but the people who would wear them around the neighborhood. 

I think when we all reach a certain point, we spend our disposable income on the things that we wanted so desperately as kids but couldn’t afford at the time.  Reliving our childhoods one pair at a time, least in my case.

Crazy I&S Professors

I had to take 3 semesters of a hybrid philosophy/humanities class in college called “Individual in Society” or something like that since we all referred to it as I&S.  For whatever reason I&S seemed to attract the quirky professors.  There were two incidents that I’ll never forget the level of awkwardness.  They were moments where you could feel the air getting sucked out of the room in an instant.

The first two semesters of I&S I had was with Professor Shippey, I must have the spelling wrong since he’s not coming up on any google searches.  Professor Shippey looked like if Mr. Roberts was a philosophy professor.  Button down shirt covered by a v-neck sweater, khaki pants, sensible shoes, coke bottle glasses, salt & pepper hair that went a little bit of everywhere and a propensity for keeping the chalk between both hands and shaking it.  If memory serves, he was a good professor who was diligent, kept things on track and stuck to the syllabus, except for this one time.

It was the second semester and I distinctly remember that we were talking about Plato’s idea forms and how there are certain forms for everything.  The professor was stuck on the notion of the forms for trees and dogs.  He was hammering the point home over and over again listing different types of dogs and trees, and how they shared some unique thing that tied them to their respective category.  I think these classes lasted an hour and fifteen minutes and we were about an hour in.  For some reason that to this day makes my head hurt, Professor Shippey doesn’t even go on a tangent as much as he stops the lecture to tell an anecdote about graduating college and back packing through Europe in the late 70’s early 80’s.  Mind you this class was in the spring of 1999 so he was probably in his early to mid 40’s.  I had always wanted to back pack through Europe after college or maybe because I was a highly conscientious student, I was actively listening to his story.  I remember wondering how he was going to relate it back to Plato as he started.  He started by laying out his route, France then heading East through Belgium and Holland on his way to Germany and then finally Italy.  He quickly guided us past the exposition of the first few countries and really the story began in Germany.  It was most likely the early 80’s and the Cold War was in full swing.  I’m not sure how travel between West and East Germany was for Americans but he said that he went over to East Germany for a bit where he met a woman and quickly fell in love.  He was so smitten that he gave up on going to Italy and spent the rest of his time with her.  I think they ended up getting married such that she could leave the country but it’s been a while and some of the details have been muddled over time.  Professor Shippey’s visa expires and he has to return home.  They write each other constantly with some of her letters never making through or they make it through redacted.  He goes through channel after channel trying to get her over to the US but the bureaucracy on the East Germany side is either holds things up or outwardly dismisses them.  This process of letter writing, bureaucratic undermining and trips to East Germany goes on for years; years of frustration, years of love, years of holding on to hope.  After all these years, she begins to waiver.  She doesn’t waiver with another man, but rather She waivers in her belief that her government will ever let her leave.  She decided to take matters into her own hands and escape the country in the most direct way possible, the Berlin Wall.  She decides to climb over the Berlin Wall under the cover of darkness only to be gunned down by the guards.  There might have been a long pause here in his story or very possibly the moment that it took for Professor Shippey to take a breathe felt like an eternity for every single person in the room.  Then without missing a beat, he starts shaking the chalk and goes right back into Plato’s forms.  It feels like no one has taken breathe in the last two minutes.  The air is stale and our eyes darted from the clock to each other for any hint as to how to react to this heart wrenching, out of place love story.  I remember thinking not to stare at the clock but at the same time making eye contact with the professor was out of the question.  The ten remaining minutes were dead silent from the student side.  Professor Shippey continued with his lesson without tying anything from the anecdote back into it, nor did his flow or cadence change.  If you had walked into that classroom as soon as his story finished, you’d have no idea that anything was different from when you left to go the bathroom.  The eternity that was those last ten minutes ended and everyone in the class had the wherewithal to not say a word about what just happened as we crossed the threshold.  We all took the stairs down  trying to wrap our minds around it and how to react.

My third and final semester in I&S was with Professor Tenywa, who I learned today died almost ten years ago in his native Uganda which puts a damper on this story.  At the very first class Professor Tenywa with his ear-to-ear grin informs us of his basic tenant, punctuality is key and lateness to his class or on assignments will not be tolerated.   Professor Tenywa liked suits and tweed jackets and he was always smiling this enormous smile.  There was a string of bad weather in NYC the first few weeks of class and on our very next class the professor was late.  He explained and apologized for his lateness by informing us that he was an adjunct and was working at another college directly beforehand.  I remember having a hard time reconciling his personnel lateness with his policy concerning our lateness but I didn’t give it much thought since every once in a while we are all late.  On the third class day the professor is late again but this time there is no explanation and he sticks by how important it is that we the students be on time all the while showing off his pearly whites.  On the fourth day of classes the professor is late again, this time later than before.  There’s an unwritten college rule that if the professor doesn’t show up after fifteen minutes then class is cancelled, it’s the fifteen minute rule.  Now on this fourth day of class the troops are getting restless at the hypocrisy and at the thought of a cancelled class.  We were at or about the twelve minute mark when he walks through the door smiling.  The room deflated.  After class there was a sentiment rallied by a few students that we should report his perennial lateness.  To my knowledge it never came to that.  On the fifth day of classes, he was late again.  Now the class had basically had it.  It should be noted that Professor Tenywa was a nice man but he wasn’t what you’d call friendly, he was more authoritative which didn’t sit well with some.  Five minutes went by and the murmurs of the fifteen minute rule started.  Seven minutes went by and people started planning on how to handle the situation.  Ten minutes went by and the class is divided between walking out early and waiting until the full fifteen.  Twelve minutes went by and the conversation had degraded into whether or not to leave a note.  At the fifteen minute mark the class has reached its fever pitch and a student walks up to the board to write that the class has left since he was more than 15 minutes late.  As the chalk hit the blackboard Professor Tenywa walks through the door with his ear-to-ear.  The class looks around for its vocal leaders of dissent against the hypocrisy to say their piece.  Just then Professor Tenywa says, “I’m sorry for my lateness.  My wife died.”  He paused as everyone in the room felt like the worst person on the planet.  Here we were an angry mob ready to tear into this man and we were all very quickly put in our place by human understanding.  “Next class is cancelled as well since I have her wake. Thank you.”  Then he walked out with that same smile but this time you knew he was faking.   

The Last Super Star Band

The hugely popular rock ‘n roll bands throughout the history of rock ‘n roll have had one commonality, the budgets of major labels.  The marketing push exercised by the major labels allowed for bands to break through into the public consciousness and become mainstays in pop culture.  Broadband and the mp3 shifted the way people bought and didn’t buy music.  The revenue lost by the major labels lead to drastic cuts in staff and budgets.  A casualty that wasn’t immediately visible and may never be revived is the concept of the super star band.  A super star band is one whose songs and logo are instantly recognizable by a cross section of society’s demographics, for a significant duration of time.  Just to clarify, I mean the band that the soccer moms, the drunk guy at the bar, the music nerd and probably even the little kid can and will sing along to.

            The diminished marketing budgets of the late 90’s and early 2000’s force us to search in the early and mid 90’s for the last super star band.  These budgets are the key ingredient to the formula because without the posters, radio play, TV and billboard ads; the casual music listener doesn’t have access or the incidental contact with the band to enter their consciousness.   The hardcore music fan covers your costs.  The casual listener makes your profit.   With the communications prowess and the relative cheapness of promotion of the internet the argument could made that it will hamper a breeding ground even bigger bands.  The downfall to this argument is that without the budget to place ads on numerous sites for a significant duration, the band will get lost in the mire and languish in internet popularity and not the mainstream success that I’m alluding to. 

            Before we focus on the early and mid 90’s it makes sense to add the other half of our Venn diagram.  The second part is a band who lasted through a majority of 2000’s with similar or even greater popularity.  The rationale behind the second half is that longevity is key to for any band’s long term success.  Mind you it’s not an absolute when you factor in the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix whose respective careers are the Sandy Koufax hall of fame argument, where dominance over a short period is most important than duration.  In this specific case longevity matters because of the glacier like landscape change the music industry has seen.  Which brings to the candidates.  Pearl Jam, Green Day, Creed, DMB, Nickelback, and Radiohead.  All of these groups started in at some point in the 90’s are still going today and along the way sold a ton of records. 

            Here are the estimated album sales of each of the candidates, Pearl Jam’s sales are about 60; Green Day about 65 million; Creed 30 million; Dave Matthews Band 50 million; Nickelback 30 million and radiohead 30 million.  These numbers have come from my math and  various sources, who may or may not be verifiable.  The idea isn’t to get caught up in the numbers but rather to get a clearer picture of who should be included and who should be excluded.  Looking at those numbers, the three top rock acts would be the Dave Mathew Band, Pearl Jam, and Green Day.

The Dave Matthews Band is interesting when you focus on their long term success, the only band besides the Eagles to have 6 #1 albums on the Billboard charts and to do it 21 years apart.  DMB has embraced dealing directly with fans when it came to ticketing through the Warehouse Fan Association.   My major issue with DMB is they are on the outside of a fine line of what I think most people would consider rock or rock ‘n roll.  I think about it this way.  In 20 years will the classic rock stations on FM or XM play the David Mathews Band?  I’d guess no and with that I’m going to rule them out. 

Pearl Jam is also interesting example because of their progression from the early 90’s to today.  Since trying to eschew Ticketmaster they have seemingly opposed the corporate structure and focused on more running things in their own way.  They have seen their career change from moving away from arena shows to slightly smaller venues and along the way being voted the best American Rock Band.  I think a fair comparison, given their diehard fans, is the Grateful Dead.  I believe this comparison, although fair to a degree, hurts Pearl Jam in the sense that the Grateful Dead never had the big hits.  On top of in the tiers of most famous rock bands I’d argue that the Grateful Dead are seen as more of a second tier band vs. the likes of The Beatles, Led Zepplin, The Rolling Stones, The Who, or Jimi Hendrix.

Green Day is the most compelling example because although they started in 1987 they didn’t get any true national traction until 1994 with “Dookie.”  The band’s popularity dipped from the end of the 90’s through about 2003 only to see it reach new heights from then on culminating in the stage musical version of “American Idiot.”  More often than not because of mainly the musical, Green Day gets most associated with The Who.  Like our other two finalists, Green Day has also done things in their own way by either co-releasing or re-releasing their music on their own label. 

I hadn’t considered the point of these bands side stepping the establishment when I first was thinking about this article but the more I see that it’s a staple, the more I realize how important it is.  There’s obviously a symbiosis from working with a major label, even well into an artist’s career but there must be intrinsically off about the system that three of the most successful bands of the last 20 years have tried do some part (tickets or releases) on their own.

Clearly a case can be made for either but since I’m looking for the “last”, I’m going to have to invoke some technicality.  Yes, Green Day got started in 1987 and Pearl Jam got started in 1990; but Pearl Jam’s popularity in the mainstream started in 90-91 while Green Day didn’t get tremendously popular until 1994.  By judge’s decision, the “Last Super Star Band” is Green Day.

Peyton Manning for President!

Entertainers have always enjoyed success in politics.  Reagan was President, Schwarzenegger was Governor, Tom Petty will be Mayor at least according to “The Postman.”  Sports figures haven’t done quite as well.  There have been some Mayors or Governors like Dave Bing, Kevin Johnson and some Congressmen like Jack Kemp (Republican VP nominee in 1996), Steve Largent, Jon Runyan, Heath Shuler.  Not to mention some Senators like Jim Bunning and Bill Bradley who was probably the most successful and after 18 years in the Senate, he was unsuccessful in winning the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.  But aren’t athletes judged by winning the big one?  In this case the Presidency.

This got me thinking.  Is there any athlete competing right now that has a shot at being President of the United States of America after they retire?

To even be considered in the potential pool they’d need three things: visibility, likability and a track record of success.  Here are the candidates that I came up with: Tiger Woods, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, Lebron James, Alex Rodriguez, Michael Phelps, and Peyton Manning,

Right off the bat you can throw out Tiger Woods, Lebron James and Alex Rodriguez because of their likability.  I’m not saying they aren’t likable to some or even a majority, but there are enough people out there who’s opinions are already tainted to the point that would make these three unelectable.  Similarly, Tom Brady is out.  For every woman that I’ve met who loves Tom, I’ve met one who has brought up that he left his pregnant girlfriend for a supermodel. 

That leaves us with Derek Jeter, Michael Phelps and Peyton Manning.  These three have fewer flaws.  Phelps is probably out because of the marijuana thing but he’s also the youngest so there’s a lot of time left for him to overcome that, especially if marijuana ever becomes legal in the States.  Jeter and Manning are basically identical when it comes to individual successes (Jeter has more rings, Manning has more records), and likability.  We are left with visibility.  Jeter has only played for the Yankees which I’d argue does have tremendous benefits when it comes to global visibility but also has the downside of not being seen in more domestic markets.  That leaves only Peyton. 

Peyton Manning has one of the highest Q ratings of any athlete, as at least as a few years ago.  So he’s visible and likable.  His on-field successes are noted but even more so he comes from a successful family with his father (NFL quarterback) and his brother (NFL quarterback and two time Super Bowl MVP).  On top of all this his career has taken him around the country, from Louisiana to Tennessee, to Indianapolis to Denver.   When you factor in the charity work that the entire Manning family does and how highly regarded Eli is in the greater New York area, you see that Peyton easily hits several important areas in the Electoral College.  It’s very feasible that he could carry the South, the Mid West, the Mountain Region and parts of the North East (Massachusetts is probably out).  I’m not arguing that Peyton could take off the helmet and waltz into the Oval office but after a few terms as a Congressman or Senator, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was walking into the White House for at least 4 years.