The Almighty Sun

You know that ringing that goes off when you leave the refrigerator door open? That sound makes me want to kill.

Do you know about  Dr. Jack Kruse? I found him on YouTube.  He was on one of the podcasts where the host wears his hat backwards and talks with that lilt at the end of every sentence, yeaahhh. You know what I'm talking about.  Rogan has it now too. Yeahhh, at the end of the sentence. They trail off their sentences so strangely. Effeminately.  It's accepted now, guys talking like women on some housewife reality show.  I can only take so much.  Crossing their legs and shit. 

The good thing was that Jack Kruse dominated the conversation, and his voice didn't trail off. So it wasn't the usual host trying to show how much he knows about the subject.  Now, back to Kruse. He's a neurosurgeon. Smart as hell. Totally sure of himself. Comes off as a dick unless you have been around someone so smart that they don't even realize the way that they come off; smart people are just different, and sometimes dicks.  I can't understand a fucking thing he is talking about science-wise, not a bit. Deuterium water and shit. I do understand his message: the sun is the key to everything.  He believes this and paints a compelling case, lots of research and real-life stories, too. 

I will tell you that when summer comes, it's almost impossible for me to go to the gym on a sunny, hot day. I train outside every single day, sometimes twice a day. My mood is elevated after my first good sun exposure of the day. And that is sometimes when the sun is coming up, but usually the most intense and longest time during the day is when I train outside. I do rounds of one of the Bas Rutten audio programs (fightingmachine.com), usually five three-minute rounds,  but sometimes a little more. Sometimes I do one-arm kettlebell rows in the rest period of the rounds; sometimes I do twenty push-ups or hammer curls. Most of the time I do Bas's new fighting machine program. It's an eight-week program: videos, stretching, cable stuff, and then the tons of combos that you better pay attention to when you get tired. Bas himself does ten three-minute rounds of the boxing tape and does opposite knees after each combo. So if you finish with a right-handed punch, you follow it with a left knee. And in between rounds, he does continuous knees or does continuous leg swings above his head. With the ten-pound ankle weights on. Amazing. He is sixty-two. This is crazy; hard to imagine such hard training without collapsing. The first time I did one of the five-minute sessions, I threw up and then returned in the afternoon and did it again and threw up again. 

 

So I do my measly workout on the deck of my house, where it is hot- so hot that your feet burn right away. Poor Black Labs. They tap dance while I race to open the sliding glass door. It is at least ten degrees hotter on the deck. How I love it.  The heat draws me in. And when I am done and sweaty as all get out, my mood is as high as it can be; I feel wonderful and feel this way for hours. And sometimes when that high begins to decrease, I repeat the same workout as the morning, and then the high usually lasts me until bedtime. It's like being a drug addict,  but the drug is the hot sun. So I am glad that the science is strong and espoused by the good doctor, but I have known it for years; I just didn't know why, or that one day it would be scientifically proven. 

I remember training for football in the summer, running on the motocross trails behind my house. I would get in shape much faster than in the winter. The last two weeks before football camp at Boys' Club and all through high school and college, I would go to Ocean City, Maryland.  While there, I'd wake up, go to the gym to train, then spend the day at the beach riding waves, and sprint in the street next to the Sinepuxant Bay on Ninth Street in the evening. Everything improved with being in the sun and being in the ocean; the intensity of the sun there was different, and the salt water seemed to play a role also. 

Check out Jack Kruse. I really like that guy. He confirmed what I am sure many of us have figured out on our own: The Sun has magical powers for our well-being and health. Being out in the sun was demonized for so long; can you imagine? Even my sons were lathered in sunscreen as infants. At least it was zinc and had no shit in it. Now they barely wear clothes outside. They figured out the magic, whether they know it or not. I understand that super pale genetic people have to take it in doses, but Jack Kruse says if you just watch the sunrise every morning, you will add years to your life.  So,  no excuses. If you haven't noticed that your mood improves on sunny days, make yourself aware of it. I guarantee it'll make a difference.

Pushup Test and UFC Stuff

 I have yet to see any compelling research that starting your kids at a young age in the weight room is a bad thing. Everybody is like, no heavy weights, but what are push-ups? If they can do push-ups, they can lift weights.  Touch your chest on the ground push-ups. Elbows locked out at the top. That's a good one. That's a good barometer for when to get started, don't you think? I forgot who said it, but if lifting weights is bad for youngsters, all those hard-working farm kids would be little people.  

 The whole McGregor thing was like a bad dream.  I'm a huge fight fan. I can't believe it still exists in this soft-ass society. But it does, and it is wonderful. It solves it all.  Fighting is just like life but on this whole other level, magnified ten-fold. The old warrior goes on a rampage for 5 years after a horrific injury, allegedly getting in much trouble with women other than his wife, allegedly doing cocaine and much drinking. He lived the high life, and he deserved to live a little. He trains like a madman to go in there and be a warrior, where the chance of dying is real. But that lifestyle is not so conducive to being a fighter. It takes years off your fighting life. Just retire and do what you want. If not, you have to live like Justin Gaethje, like a monk. No social life, fights consistently, stays home, and only goes out to golf and to be wonderful to his fans. You can't live like Conor and be a champ these days! Who are we kidding? These guys evolve so fast that the sport never stands still. These guys have personal chefs that watch all their macros and coaches for every damn thing. Some of the strength stuff isn't great. Does Strickland weight train? I never see it. Maybe bodyweight stuff. Works for him, and fighting is so mental that if you have a successful career going, I would think they would be hesitant to switch it up. I think Gaetsche trains pretty well. He works his ass off. Does bench and medball stuff. Trap bar with bands. It's fine. You have to be so precise with the balancing of all the training and the recovery. It has to be tough. McGregor needs to retire. What was up with his face? Was he holding water? I was like, what the fuck when he started falling on the ground. It was crazy! Mel Gibson, Vince Vaughn, Tyson all at the ring side. And Sophie Cunningham. She's smart. She knows that her window of fame is small, so she is taking every advantage of it. Smart, she is everywhere.

So McGregor was all bloated. He looked unsure of himself. I see him leave the facility after the fight,  the whole facility, into the parking lot, hobbling. Why wasn't he on a stretcher? Where was the medical staff? Where was he going? 

Dustin Poirier was not upset that he got hurt, not at all. He was like, "Karma is a bitch, couldn't have happened to a better guy." Dustin is not a fan, and McGregor does go too far in some shit talk;  however, he is unbelievably witty and quick at those press conferences. Not for this fight. He was just there. Like halfway there. Strange all around. How disappointing was that? Surreal, very strange. 

Josh Hokit is the future star.  The UFC has never seen an athlete like Josh. Maybe John Jones. Hokit was a pro football player and All -American wrestler? A true athlete.  Fast and mean. He has that wrestling, no-quit stuff. He will go and go and never ever quit. That's the way that group is. Wrestlers are unbelievably tough. They love to be exhausted and to prove that they can keep going. He's gonna be champ soon, I believe. 

Dogs and Keep Your Mouth Shut

It is summertime in South Jersey; the temperature is in the 90s. It gets humid here- not like Florida humidity, but hot enough that when you train outside at nine AM, you end up dripping sweat, and when you are done, your brain and body are satisfied. The heat is rough on jet black Black Labradors, though. Poor Tank and Rebel, my two Black Labs. Those black fur coats and insane energy levels, in the heat, those don't mix well.  Just walking on the deck burns their paws. They tap dance until I let them in. It's hot.  They still want to retrieve, of course, but they have no sense of how fatigued they are getting and overheating. Rebel has been close. I carried him into a pond one time when he was all wobbly, and he eventually cooled off. Scared the shit out of me. My fault. You have to keep a close eye on them. They will run themselves to death in that heat. Even when they come back inside, they pant until the sun goes down. They love cold weather the best; they love snow, ice, and freezing cold. They will sit in a goose blind, shiver, and be happy. 

As a family, we always joke that if you are a dog and you end up living at our house, you have hit the damn lottery. These dogs are so spoiled. The one good thing is that they are always my excuse for not doing something. Wanna visit the relatives? "Can't," I say, I have the dogs", meaning I can't go too far or spend the night anywhere; after all,  I have to take care of the dogs. Who will take care of the dogs? Sometimes they have been alone for 10 hours when we hit bad traffic coming back from a baseball tournament. And no accidents at all. Although Tank has been known to chew my baseball caps and socks. I try not to do that to them, leave them alone for that long. I run into the house when I pull up, let them out immediately, then retrieve them. 

Dogs, especially the retrieving breeds, have a bond with man that maybe a lot of other breeds don't. It's the history with them, man and dog, hunter and retriever. The Chesapeake Bay Retrievers guarded their master's shacks and retrieved all of the ducks; Labradors look to man for guidance; they read your moods, they study your face, they just want to please you above all else. They are unparalleled in the hunting world.  Goldens are loyal and beyond friendly and very smart. And although the hunting has been bred out of many of them, there are good goldens in the field out there, plenty of them. 

My job is to take care of these crazy dogs. I exercise them constantly, and the affection is overwhelming at times. I have to put Tank in the kennel or I can not type. He puts his head on the keyboard. 

Switching gears a litte-

I see where Matthew Mocaughnahy, or whatever the fuck you spell his name, decided to make another video against guns. He did one when that fucking cunt Biden was whatever he was. This motherfucking pompous bitch is giving a "talking to" to us law-abiding gun owners. We ain't the problem, dumbass. You sure you are from Texas? Texans I know protect their rights. Do you want to take the ability to have a gun away from a small lady who has to walk to her car every night in a sketchy parking garage? Of course you do. And minorities? Take their rights away, too? Bitch. And it doesn't matter what kind of gun it is. I haven't watched a thing he has put out on television since he made his last cunt speech. My family thinks I'm crazy, but seriously, just act and shut the fuck up. Guarantee this bitch has guns. Or is protected by men with guns? People aren't all as rich as you and can't afford all that personal security. The nerve of this asshole! I feel really passionate about this.  It's guns and don't hurt kids. After that, whatever. Guns are what keep us free. Ain't many of us left. You motherfuckers who are anti-gun, don't come hide behind me when the shit hits the fan. You will make a great shield. Stand in front. 

I got it. You commit a gun crime, and you die. Guarantee it works.

I have a problem with getting lectured by actors. You know their personal lives are all fucked up. Even Clint was banging babes and staying with them for a while, puts them in his movies (Sondra Locke never did a thing for me), and then would drop them. And he was the man. All those actors are nobodies. Arnold should have kept his mouth shut; now I can't watch his movies. I like Tom Hardy and Keanu Reeves. Don't tell me if they are anti-gun.  At least Tom Hardy rolls Jiu Jitsu. But he is still an actor. A guy who does make-believe, and we admire them so much. And meanwhile, I'm driving over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and guys are hundreds of feet in the air, balancing on thin beams, fixing something. Let's see, who lives in the real world? That motherfucker. I'll listen to him before an actor.

Reading

I have to find a good book to read. The last books that I read that kicked ass were Mark Powell's Hurricane Season and Frank Bill's Back to the Dirt. Both of these gritty books are the kind that keep your attention. Great writing. Those books have sentences in them that make you stop and go, "Whoa, I have to read that again." I love writing that makes you do that. Sometimes Hemingway's short stories have me rereading sentences over again. He wrote a paragraph in The Green Hills of Africa about the Gulf Stream that is otherworldly: 

That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they all say it is a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream, will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable parts going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with the occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student’s exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; well shepherded by the boats of garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in the ten miles along the coast it is clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing – the stream.

That kind of writing to me is so magical that reading it makes me want to write. Just the way the sentences run on into the next, so naturally.

So I am looking for a book that has that type of writing. Hard to match, I know. I will tell you this: I do not want a book where I have to use a dictionary to figure out what the fuck the author is talking about. Like, are we talking about a real bear, a metaphoric bear, a man that really is a bear? Just say a bear is a bear. That type of thing. I'd much rather read Bukowski. Not his poems, his writing. I was working as a bouncer at the 45th Street Pub one night about 15 years ago, and one of the waitresses was going to a community college down the road, and she was assigned Post Office by Bukowski for English class. She brought it to work and left it at the front of the place. I picked it up and was immediately drawn to his writing style. Like he was talking to you, simple, no bullshit, and funny. Lots of sex and drinking. Some weird shit once in a while, like when he was writing for that avant-garde magazine in San Francisco. I bought everything that I could about Bukowski. The only problem is that he never really played sports or served as a soldier. But he did fight. Lots of fights. When you get done reading him, you either want to start drinking or never drink again. When he wakes up every morning and pukes, not good. He beat up his wife. I was watching a documentary that I ordered on DVD many years ago, and he got drunk and kicked his wife and called her a "cunt" I believe. 

I like Cormac McCarthy. especially The Road. And the movie crushed me.  I started one of his books, but there was something about having sex with a watermelon. Oh, I know I should give it a chance. Some other time. 

And then I began to read this other book, and it had so much promise, and then one of the characters pays for sex with a boy. I mean, can we be real without being that real? Makes me wonder what's on the author's laptop. 

It doesn't matter if it's fiction or not, as long as it has good writing. 

Garry Smith of Sports Illustrated magazine was a great writer long ago. Pete Dexter. John Underwood. I knew a guy who was with a group who kicked the shit out of Pete Dexter, with pipes and shit. Fucked him up for life, not like in the movies. Dexter had written something derogatory about their neighborhood. Mistake. When Inside Sports magazine first came out, it had the best writers around. Then I guess it was losing money or got sold or something, and the quality was shit. Now there aren't any magazines, so I don't know who the good sportswriters are; there are just personalities who don't know shit, yapping on TV. I started David Foster Wallace because I saw that he dipped Skoal, but I couldn't figure out what the fuck he was talking about or Frantzen. I know they must be amazing. But writing tastes are like anything else; you like what you like, and you can't help what you like.

I almost forgot Gene Hill, the man when it came to outdoor writers. I take that back; he is one of my favorites regardless of the genre. He was a hunter who loved dogs and guns and fall and the Chesapeake and more. You must read Gene Hill. 

Who else? Candace Millard, Hampton Sides. I used to go to Barnes and Noble and buy stuff that looked good, and then I began it, and it turned political or woke or some shit. Or how bad white people are. The whole white supremacy thing is a little overused now.  And putting down Christians.  Give it a rest.  It's easy writing.  Germans can still get crushed, Russians, too. It's okay if they are the bad guys.  Not other "groups", right?  

I have boxes of books downstairs. I bet I can find one that I overlooked. One that makes me feel something.

Jump In

When I was a kid, I used to have nightmares of falling into the Sinepuxent Bay and being swept away. My parents always warned my sister and me about the powerful current. I had those nightmares for years. And then one day, I jumped into the Sinepuxent Bay and all my nightmares went away.

Gotta Write Something

I feel the need to write, but I don’t know that I have anything to say.

I could write about training with weights and tell stories about years gone by and how it used to be before men began painting their nails and wearing some type of “Man Bag” and not even being embarrassed about it and pulling their hair back (if you are carrying a battleaxe and you are a Viking, get the hair out of your eyes. Other than that, get a haircut) and earrings everywhere and in their noses even, and a bunch of little tattoos all over and their whole persona is based off of what is hip on social media, but that would be boring. And they stand in front of you when you are trying to deadlift and have zero gym etiquette and all they see is some bullshit on Tick Tock and they all think they are fucking influencers. WTF is an influencer? Some kid who records him/herself and then people listen to them? Ugh.

I could write about how I discovered that Van Halen, particularly David Lee Roth, was feminine as all get out. You see, I had never seen a live concert from them. I had seen music videos, and they were cool. But the other day, I’m watching a live concert on YouTube and Roth is gyrating around with some skintight see through leather pants on. Dude. Then I watched Zeppelin! Same kind of stuff with Robert Plant. If any of my friends and I knew that this was happening, we would have just stuck with Skynyrd and ACDC. Fucking Jeans and T-shirts, dude. Can you imagine Ronnie Van Zant acting like that? 

I guess that I could write that it’s hunting season and I really don’t care about much else at all for a few months. It's my favorite time of the year and the ritual of it all is so special and the dogs are so alive during this time of the year. How we train every day, all year round for this time of the year.

 And I could write about my dogs and how crazy they are and how much I love them, but people would probably be bored with that. It’s probably like people talking about their kids. But my dogs are funny and crazy and smart and affectionate, and I am determined to get them as many days in the field, hunting, before their short lives end. They are always with me, I am away from them only a few hours a day. They are a royal pain in my ass, but they make me laugh so all that laughter cancels out the bad stuff. Right now, one of them wants to go outside for the twentieth time today, so he is jamming his head under my arm as I try to type. He will go outside and will want to come in a few minutes later. Of course, I fall for it every time.

I could write about what it was like to be a Graduate Assistant in the late 80’s and early 90’s at a NAIA school, an endless day after day of waking up hungover, taking the dog retrieving, driving to the Pantry and buying four hot dogs for a dollar (slaw dogs), with cole slaw and chili and everything else I could fit on there, then hustling my ass off to get to the field house for a 9 am staff meeting, then watching film, writing the practice plan, lifting weights or going for a run, then to practice, coaching for 2.5 hours, walking down to the field house with the other GA’s, Jimmy and Josh, talking about what we were doing that night. And then inside the field house reviewing practice with the defensive coordinator, then watching practice film, then another staff meeting. All the while, that post practice beer is calling to me. Me and Jimmy and Josh are waiting to go get beers, long neck Buds, oh those long necks, and then, the moment comes when we are released, and Josh says his wife is away and let’s go have some beers. If his wife was home, it fucking sucked because he had to ask pretty please and kiss her ass, but then sometimes he would escape and he’d call me and say, let’s go, or maybe just show up in his convertible truck and then I would hear him whoop and drive right up in the yard and I’d come out, and he’d say, fuck it, let's go, and then we’d crack open some Buds and head on out to the country and drive the roads and spotlight deer. And we'd do that for hours, driving dirt roads, drinking and laughing and looking for deer, and listening to .38 Special. One time we went into a Mexican restaurant and drank every last Red Dog beer. We could hear the guys in the back; "Hey Jose', put some more Red Dogs in the cooler!" But they were all gone. Josh would drop me and Jimmy off and then he’d go home to face the wicked witch of the South. I can picture her saying how Jimmy and I were bad influences, but deep down she knew her husband was the ringleader. And we loved him for it.

I could write about how people think they know everything about weight training and lifting weights and strength coaching, when in reality, all of us are still learning even when we have been doing it since 1979. You don’t know shit and if you don’t have a white belt mentality, you aren't going to learn shit. It does, however, help to have actually lifted weights, and some decently heavy ones in order to coach someone to get stronger. Basically, if you haven’t played the game (Bob Costas), you can’t say shit about the game. 

I’m going to think long and hard about what to write. Maybe about that one time in Charleston at the strip club run by the Hell’s Angels when Kirk Karwoski and I….

Summer Days

 You know what a perfect day is?

When you are vacationing at the beach, let's say, Ocean City, Maryland, in early August. In my mind, it is in the early 80's, when the world and Ocean City were much better. It was more of a sleepy Eastern Shore town back then until summer, when it would get crowded. Now everyone is there all the time, and it's way too crowded in the summer. And a bunch of scrubby-ass people on the boardwalk. We used to dress up a little for the boardwalk. Now scrubby people abound, looking like shit, half-naked but with terrible bodies.

Anyway, it's an August day, and you are in high school. A junior in high school. You get up early, go to the local gym at the beach with the peroxide-haired dude with the big upper body and little legs who struts around, the gym manager. You pay 10 bucks and get a great session in, squats and presses for multiple sets, and then go out back of the gym on the asphalt with gravel on it and you do some 20 yard sprints (you estimate the distance),  sprints with short rests. The heat, even at 7 in the morning, is palpable. You can hear the locusts in the trees behind the gym where you are running. It's going to be a hot day. You love it. You stop back at the condo where you and your family is staying, and your girlfriend is staying there as well, and she is waiting for you when you get back and she is ready to go. Time to go to the beach. She's packed a white and blue Igloo cooler with lunch and drinks. You grab a couple of chairs and big beach towels. Your parents say that they are going fishing and to have a good time, guys. You two walk across side streets and Coastal Highway, and then you walk up the ramp on 9th Street with the Alaska Stand with your favorite hot dogs cooked on the grill to your right, across the boardwalk and onto the beach.  The sand is hot, and you both are barefoot, of course. Nobody ever wore shoes to the beach back then. Everyone's feet were tougher. You walked the boardwalk barefoot.  If the sand was burning you, you just moved quickly. 

The ocean is blue,the waves are good, and there is a slight breeze. Not too much breeze, just a little. You and your girlfriend ride waves and run around, and then she opens the Igloo and, bless her heart, she has some Coca-Cola bottles and she hands you one and grins. It's ice cold, and you take a sip, and she has spiked the drink with Jack Daniels. You feel the slight buzz coming on, and the sun is warm,the waves are crashing, and kids are screaming and chasing each other into the water. You sit right down where the water comes up to the shore, up to your shins before it recedes. You watch people, and you look at the girls in bikinis, but you are wearing mirrored sunglasses, so your girlfriend can't tell what you are looking at. 

After four hours or so, you pack up, still buzzing, feeling the sun in your chest and back. Everyone wanted to be tan back then; girls wore baby oil all over and tanning lotion. The smell, even today, reminds me of the beach.

You get back to the condo and you take showers and maybe a nap in the cool of the air conditioning. Then you get up, get dressed in a light button-down,  khaki shorts, and Chuck Taylors. Your girl has on a sundress, and you both are wearing the sun that you acquired earlier that day.

You take the bus, only fifty cents to wherever you want, and it stops at Lombardi's Pizza. You order a cold draft Budweiser because you look old enough, and nobody gave a shit back then. Your girl has sweet tea, and then you order pizza and a few more beers, and the buzz has come back from earlier.

You walk out of the restaurant and you are full to the gills, but feeling oh so good. The trraffic in Coactal Highway is buzzing.

The bus takes you down from Sixty-Ninth Street to Fourteenth Streetn and right to the boardwalk. You walk some, to ninth street and decide to walk down the beach where it is really wide, and you and your girl sip on the mini bottles that she has in her purse. The ocean pounds, so formidable, at night especially.

The night ends with a walk along the boardwalk, stopping at times to sit on benches and people watch,  and then you walk along the bay back to the condo, the water slapping against the sailboats and Chris Crafts.

Real World, Real Men

I think I have screwed up with my sons, especially my middle one, away at college, playing collegiate sports. I screwed up because I surrounded him with men his whole life, real men. Most of the men he grew up with were coaches or guys who had played at a high level of sports or Tier One Operators. Men who shake your hand and look you in the eye, men who tell you that they are going to do something and then they actually do it, men who don't berate you or put you down for no reason, men who are secure with their place in the world and their manhood, and men who wouldn't think of lying to you. 

Away at school, he has realized that there are men who lie right to your face, treat you like shit, and then lie some more.  He called me one day and he said to me, "Dad, I guess I am realizing how the real world works," and "I can't believe that there are men who are really like this," meaning cowards and unethical pussies. 

He grew up around my father, who was incapable of telling a lie, kind, and a teacher. He didn't cuss, drink, or smoke, and was as solid as they come. 

He grew up around guys like Justin Watson of the Houston Texans, who is among the finest people that I have ever met. A humble, family man in a world of NFL ME ME ME people.

He grew up around my strength staff, who were go-getters and teachers, and fine people.

He grew up hunting with my buddy Steve, a great outdoorsman, a pastor, a founder and principal of his own school, a farmer, a father, and a great man. 

He grew up with coaches who were demanding but deep down cared so much for him. It is tough when you go from all of that to being surrounded by men who really don't give a shit about you. 

The Tier One guys he knows treated him like gold. You can't be around those guys and not feel elevated as a person. I think sometimes that it is unbelievable that these guys exist, the toughest motherfuckers in the world who are also the most kind and generous. One time, I told one of them that my son wanted to be a Tier One guy for Halloween. A few days later, he received a full scuba diving kit, from my friend's locker, I assume. 

So, it has been rough on him, and it makes my heart ache that his eyes are so open now. One of his coaches tells him to "Shut the fuck up" all the time. That's a new one for him. That kind of level of disrespect, not just as an athlete, but as one fucking human being to another, is something that he has never been around. I am proud of my son for holding back his temper, because I don't know if I would have that kind of maturity, that kind of restraint. In fact, I wouldn't. I'm not as mature as he is. If one of my staff had ever treated an athlete like that, I would make them immediately apologize to the kid. And if they did it again, I would fire them so fast their head would spin. But he's easy to pick on, because he's coachable, eager to learn, and wants to please. 

I had a high school head coach that was an asshole. I despised him with all of my being. He wouldn't advocate for any of his athletes to get into college, because he said that one time, many years before I was coached by him, he had helped a kid get a scholarship to Nebraska, and the kid quit and came home. So that coach was done helping anyone, ever.  We always had more talent than the other high schools, but he was such a lousy coach that we never did much of anything record -wise. After your senior year of playing for him, as soon as the season was done, he would move you into the other side of the weight room and wouldn't allow you around the younger players.  We didn't know the reason, we just figured it was him being his usual asshole self. After he did that to me, I refused to listen to anything that he said, so he put me out in the hallway during class. I'd come to the weight room, grab a chair, and sit in the hallway.  Years later, a few of my old high school teammates came over my house to tell me that the fat bastard passed away. I remember asking them if they knew where he was buried so that I could piss on his grave. 

Some men think that they are so badass that they have no idea that they aren't, because they have never been called on their shitty behavior and condescending attitude. Sometimes I think that it would be better if, as soon as someone treated you like shit, you could immediately punch them in the throat without them calling the cops or suing you. The pecking order would be established right away.

The funny thing is that the most badass men that I know are the best men that I know. They know how dangerous they are so they don't even want to go down that road of getting physical and will pull out all stops not to go that way. Because they know that when the switch flips, there is no stopping, no going back. 

I was talking to a coach and former player of mine one day. He had just left a major university in Florida where he was coaching to take a job at a smaller school. I asked him why he left, and he said, "How would you like to work for a head coach who called you an asshole every day?" Who the fuck do these people think they are? In the movie , "All the Right Moves, " Tom Cruise sums up how some of these guys think that they hung the moon. 

I have thought of that scene many times over the years, and it is so true. You have these kids' lives in your hands and you mess it all up with a massive ego for no reason. You aren't God, you are just a guy who misuses his authority because you are insecure and a bitch.

So, if you are out there coaching or in a position of authority, remember your responsibilities as a man. Be a teacher, not an asshole. 

These days

Birthdays were great growing up. My parents would let me choose anything that I wanted for dinner. And what did I always choose? A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. It wasn't called "KFC", because we didn't need all thise silly abbreviations  like "Dunkin'" or "24/7", or any of that horseshit. 

There weren't any stand alone Kentucky Fried Chicken's in the 70's and 80's, at least not where I lived in Maryland . You could only find the Colonel's secret recipe at Gino's restaurant in Langley Park. Gino's was owned by Gino Marchetti of Baltimore Colt's fame. How cool is that? Freaking Gino's in Langley Park. My father would let me eat in the car on my birthday. By the time I got home, we had crushed almost the whole bucket. My Uncle George would come over to our house on my birthday. He would bake a birthday cake from scratch and decorate it. We didn't think anything about it, him baking the cake from scratch. It was common back then to bake from scratch. 

We didn't go out to eat like everyone does nowadays. Only on special occasions like a big 80 pound football win did we go to McDonald's. Shit, I order food all the time for my kids, and we spend a lot of meals eating at the diner. And everything is always 100 dollars at least. One hundred dollars. That used to buy a family sized visit or two to the grocery store. 

And people are so weird nowadays. There is an Alabama player who has his own nail polish line, and he isn't embarrassed about it at all. That's fucking weird. And youth sports are weird, all the ego's and crazy parents and shitty coaches. It wasn't that big of a deal in the old days. It was just a bunch of kids having fun. Sure, we wanted to win. But people weren't shooting people in the stands over a bad call. I was listening to a youth baseball coach the other day, cuss out his 13 year old team for losing. Fuck this and fuck that. To 13 year olds. A grown ass man talking like that to a bunch of kids. You are a man. You don't cuss out 13 year olds. As soon as you start cussing them out, they are only focused on the cuss words.  Be a teacher. And get this: They aren't trying to screw up. It's killing them when they lose, and piling on just shows some weak ass shit as a man. A man does not act that way. It's epidemic, though. I had great experiences with my little league coaches. But my parents weren't paying 2500 a season (they would never) and travelling to Tennesee for a tournament. They wouldn't have done that, either.  Too expensive. And as soon as a coach or parent acted like an ass, my Dad would have pulled me from the team and that would be that. But nobody acted like that to kids in the 70's and 80's. Like I said, it wasn't so big of a deal. Now, it's life or death. Grown men cussing at kids. Crazy. I'm about done with all of that shit. Maybe it's me. Maybe it is time to quit swimming against the tide so much. Maybe I need to jump up and down and act like a bitch when things don't go my way. That's what men do these days. 

You begin to wonder if the way the world is now is just a bad dream and we will wake up and Clint Eastwood will be in a new western or a new Dirty Harry and everyone would be proud of the USA again. 

I'm afraid that this world has become too much for me, with all of the information that you are bombarded with every damn day. And I can't believe how fast all of it changed. One day we are riding in the back of a station wagon going to get a 5 dollar pizza and the next thing ya know, there is Artificial Intelligence.  And these fucking phones. Man, they kill me. And now I feel naked without it.

 How did we do it? How did we find anything without GPS? I'm serious. We had maps, or we stopped at a gas sation and asked for directions. Three stop signs, take a right, third house on the right. Wait, did he say two stop signs or three? No phone when you broke down in your car so either you walked to a gas station to use the pay phone or you knocked on somebody's door and asked to use the phone, or for them to make a call for you. Happened all the time. I'm not approachiung a stranger's house these days and nobody I don't know personally is coming in my house. 

It all is happening very fast and in a few years, the kids these days will be talking like these days now were archaic and simple.