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Darts Hit the Big Time but Keep Their Beer-Soaked Roots

As readers of this blog know, I tried to read the N.Y. Times often. I rarely read the Orlando Sentinel anymore, and my life seems to be evolving to the point where living and reading the blog world comes first with the available time that I have.

However, the Times really is sensational when they cover off the wall stuff. On January 11, Lizette Alvarez wrote this great piece 

Darts Hit the Big Time but Keep Their Beer-Soaked Roots

In it are a handful of great quotes, and for a moment that you doubt that we Americans are the only crazy members of the English speaking tribe, you will love these:

 "Darts is a cross between a Springsteen concert and professional wrestling now," said Sid Waddell, a longtime commentator, embellishing just a smidge. "It's a sport that needs dramatic lighting, and heavy rock music punctuated by the intensity of the crowd."

and

 Groupies, too, are budding, most notably a set calling themselves "Tarts for Darts."

and

 "In my view, the exclusion of darts (from the Olympics) is down to class-based prejudice," wrote Martin Kelner in The Guardian last year. "Because the drug of choice among darts people tends to be lager, and true Olympians like to go for something with a few more syllables in it, other sportsmen get all sniffy about darts."

and

 "You can take darts out of the pub, but you can never take the pub out of darts,"

But the final one is the one that got me thinking about what really is important in life. In quoting and describing  Andy (the Viking) Fordham, who seems to be the number 2 guy in Darts in the UK,

Alvarez wrote:

“It is Mr. Fordham, though, who is taking fitness the most seriously, because whenever he stepped on his home scale, as he put it, "it read 'error.' " At 420 pounds, Mr. Fordham - a pub owner whose theme song is "I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt" - is the first to tell you he enjoys the "relaxed" life.

To relax before a match, he used to drink 25 bottles of Holsten Pils. When he broke his wrist last year, his physical therapy consisted of lifting a beer bottle to his lips (the therapy worked beautifully, he said).

When he nearly collapsed from heat exhaustion at the pay-per-view showdown with Mr. Taylor in November, he went outside, took off his shirt, iced himself down and reportedly sipped a beer to recuperate. Too sick to continue playing, he was forced to concede.

"Drinking goes part and parcel with darts," said Mr. Fordham, 42, whose affable wife, Jenny, owns The Rose, a pub in Dartford. They live upstairs. "But I'm cutting back to as much I can." His initial goal is to reduce his daily intake of beer to 12 bottles.”

Clearly this is a guy, who has his mixed his true calling with his skills.

Thinking about Shakespeare....

Tonight I was invited to dinner at a friend’s home. He did the cooking and his wife worked late. After watching Duke come back and beat NC State, we surfed the various channels and landed on the local PBS channel. Showing was this great two hour long piece called “In Search of Shakespeare” .

I sometimes wonder what PBS would do without the BBC, and I haven’t been in the U.K. lately, so I don’t know if the BBC has a channel that runs American PBS programs, but maybe they do!

My friend’s wife asked me if I was enamored with and read Shakespeare. I thought for a moment, and replied that I thought reading Shakespeare was the wrong approach, it was in the listening to the poetry of the language of Shakespeare that I enjoyed, the speeches, the breadth and the depth of his work.

I thought of the various great plays, Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth,The Taming of the Shrew, and of the great soliloquy from from Henry V, the St. Crispen’s Day Speech which reads in part….

“  This story shall the good man teach his son;
    And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
    From this day to the ending of the world,
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
    Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day. “

As I drove home, I wondered if if Iraq tonight there is anyone who will write anything like this one day. For the sake of those who come after us, I hope there is.

 

Today's quote....

I read a lot, and love reading the N.Y. Times. Every so often they print stuff that I find pretty amusing.

On the 21st of December the Times ran a piece about Garrison Keillor. Entitled "Lake Wobegon? It's where the men are persistent"...

In just about the last paragraph there is an interesting quote from Keillor:

"What appeals to me about Minnesota is that it has a stubborness, it has a persistance. It treasures its own landscape, " he said. "People who live in Minnesota really love to stay. They're not migrants. They're not people who are going to fold their tent in another year and go elsewhere." (The author of the article they added...."Or even when they do, they will always be back").

A while back I did a little calculation. There are 17 children in my generation of my parents children's and of their siblings children. Exactly 3 of them still live in Minnesota, even though by my calculations only 1 of the 16 people in my parents generation ever lived more than 110 miles from International Falls, MN.

As I recall Keillor lived just northwest of Minneapolis, maybe the weather was better, or maybe he's just dreaming....

Thoughts in anticipation of Christmas...

For last number of years, Christmas has been a very depressing time for me. Not sure that I have my head around why. Perhaps it is because I miss my parents and those who have gone on. And for good friends and relationships that are no more.

This year is no different, I am not looking forward to the holidays. Certainly there is disappointment in myself and in the choices that I have made.

When I was a child and young person, our ritual was to go to church on Christmas Eve, then to return home, and to open our home to all of our relatives, our family friends, their children and as I got older my friends. My mother was a very average cook, but a couple times a year she would rally, and dazzle everyone who came to visit. On the evening of the 4th of July and on Christmas Eve, she would excel. The menu typically consisted of a well orchestrated raft of goodies that everyone looked forward to. My favorites were wild rice and her hot fudge sundaes. My father always bought great whiskey to share with his friends.

In International Falls, MN, where I lived, storing ice cream at Christmas, notwithstanding the tiny freezer that resided in our refrigerator, was easy. Outside our front door around to the left was a wooden box with a lid. The temperature in the box, from mid-November to maybe April was below freezing, so we just put ice cream in the box, and didn't worry about it.

The Christmas evening party would go on until 1 or 2 A.M., and and for many years one of my closest friends would be the last to leave. I think I only realized years later that he didn't have much family, and that on this special evening, he wanted to be with a family.

Our family ritual would be to open one presents, as morning wasn't that far away. The belief that those presents were just waiting to be opened, was probably more than we could handle.

My mother realized one year that maybe getting my friend a present was a good idea. So we would pick up all the dishes, get things organized a bit, and then proceed to each open a present. My mother would pick them for us, and we would happily open whatever she picked.

I recently saw my friend, stayed with him for a day, and had a wonderful time. It had probably been more than 35 years since those Christmas evenings. As we were sitting quietly, talking drinking a glass of wine, he told me how much the time and those presents had meant to him.

This year, I plan to thank those people in my life who have given me the gifts of their time, and of their friendship, which are the greatest gifts of all.

Dan starts a new adventure...

One of my favorite people in the ActiveWords Odyssey is Dan Gillmor. Dan kindly included me in his book. I just saw on his blog that he is leaving the Merc and about to start another great adventure!

No news as to what it is, but knowing Dan I am sure it will be an excellent undertaking!

Every so often your friends write great things, and having re-invented myself 3 or 4 times, I really appareciate his thought:

" I hate the idea of leaving. But I'd hate not trying this even more."

I am honored to be his friend.

 

Staying alive on I-90

I left my cousin and good friends Sunday around 2 P.M. in Bozeman. Beautiful day, cold, clear, mountains everywhere. The highway West was clear, no ice, and there wasn't much traffic.

In this part of the world at this time of year the sun sets around 4:30 P.M. I stopped in Butte, bought some gas and headed west. Drove through beautiful high plains, past rivers, through mountain passes, and I as I got just outside of Missoula, I suddenly hit a wall of blowing snow, and icey roads. About 3 minutes later the little truck I was driving started skidding and sliding. I scrambled to get control of the vehicle, and to avoid hitting either another car or the rails. in my rear view mirror there was a semi tractor trailer, and I had visions of him driving over me.

I was barely able to keep from losing control. I guess all the driving in ice and snow in Minnesota as a kid plus a bit of divine intervention saved my skin.

Suddenly I saw cars in the ditch, cars turned totally around, and emergency vehicles everywhere. I saw ahead an exit, and the sign for a Days Inn.

15 minutes later I was checked in, had kicked back, and was mulling over how close I came to either wrecking the truck or myself.

This is a beautiful part of the world. But winters are hard, and it's not even December!

p.s. It's 11/29/2004 5:18 P.M. , I made it to Portland, about to take a train to Seattle. Truck delivered.... one journey ends, another begins...

 

 

 

 

Breakfast at the Cateye Cafe

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in Bozeman, MT. I just had a great breakfast on a snowy Sunday morning with great friends and my counsin Jim and his darling daughter Molly. Great food, great conversation in the Mt. West.

Bozeman seems to be a prosperous, lovely town. Pretty state university, mountains everywhere and about an inch of fresh snow on the ground.

i have about 700 miles more to drive, and will probaly drive into the mountains this afternoon heading towards Spokane and points west.

Mecca of Merchandising...next stop?

As I drove into Memphis last night the rain was coming down in sheets. Unfortunately the wipers on the truck that I am driving are awful. I asked someone this morning about where I might get some replacements. The immediately reply was Wal-Mart! Later today I think I am either driving either through or near Bentonville, AR. I have mulled over exiting from the interstate and making a commercial pilgrimage to the Mecca of merchandising.

About ten days ago I was reading in the N. Y. Times an article that talked about how Wal-Mart collects terabytes of data daily. After hurricane Charley, the Wal-Mart folks in anticipation of the next hurricane went back looked at their data and concluded that the two most profitable and fastest selling items were beer and pop-tarts. Trucks were immediately dispatched to all their stores in the path of the hurricane and the basic needs of Americans were met.

Are baseball caps the Yamacas of the Red States...

As I travel through the South I  struck by the fact that a great number of white males wear their baseball caps every moment of the day and night.

It doesn't matter whether they are indoors or out, eating, drinking or driving their trucks. They are never without their baseball caps! Most have the name or number of some live or recently dead Nascar driver.

It is almost as the caps have become their Yamacas!

Are you going to Graceland....

Late this afternoon I stopped in a great little Bar-B-Que spot on the NW side of Birminingham. I had some ribs, slaw, tea, and was mulling over my drive so far. Nice lady spoke to me and asked where I was headed. I replied Memphis tonight! She looked at me and smiled, and said: "Are you going to Graceland?"

I thought for a second, and replied, no, but said that I might if I was sure that Elvis was there! Then I asked her if she had heard that he was alive and working at Wal-Mart! She hesitated for a minute, and then laughed.

The moment I crossed into Georgia this morning the sun went away. Off and on it has been raining almost continuously. But now I am in Memphis, hanging out briefly at Kinko's and Mitch Rider and the Detroit Wheels are singing in the background, rain is coming down, and by my calculations I drove about 830 miles in the last 14 hours.