long live sport

I love the Olympics.

I know a lot of folks seem bored by The Games, and some folks can be so annoyingly nationalistic as to become nauseating, but for me one of the most purely beautiful sporting moments is that odd 5 minute highlight reel now assembled and played at the close of every Olympic broadcast, where we see a parade of Olympic glories (and sometimes heartbreaks) set to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Yeah, yeah, Super Bowl and World Series and World Cup and whatever, blah blah blah... those are all professionals playing at the peaks of long well-publicized careers, with decades of pampering and pay behind and usually years more ahead.

But in the Olympics we get Nobodies. Anonymous people from anonymous places, often competing in sports we never even acknowledge except for these once-every-four-year events where we will sit and tolerate some swimming or decathlon highlights as we wait for the Dream Team to play.

I love the nobodies. Because every time you see someone lining up to compete in an Olympic event, that's a human being who has set their jaw with steely resolve and dedicated years of their life to answering a question most humans will always remain too timid and terrified to ever ponder: "how good can I be? Where is the absolute limit?"

Pushing one's self in pursuit of epic greatness is not something most people have the stomach to try. The ego cost is usually too great: It sucks to be shown -- conclusively, harshly -- that you're just average. Or maybe even worse. Instead, we mock those who dig deep onto reserves we lack. We ridicule the focus and dedication required to improve from the 99.9947 percentile to the 99.9983 percentile.

How razor thin is that difference? About 8 one-thousandths of a second, if Sunday's 4x100 Men's Freestyle Relay is any indication.

Everyone probably is aware of US swimmer Michael Phelps. He is a freak of nature, a condor-winged naturally-gifted talent with an unnatural drive to improve. He's on a chase to collect 8 golds and become the greatest collector of Olympic hardware in American history. He has huge endorsements and requests for appearances on all the shows and magazines. he is the Golden Boy of swimming right now.

But how many people can honestly say they'd hear of Jason Lezak before Sunday night?

Sunday, Lezak swam the anchor leg of the 4x100 relay for the US men's team. The French team was near-universally expected to win. Even Rowdy Gaines, former Olympian and commentator for NBCs swimming coverage at The Games, admitted "I've worked this race on paper a hundred times and I just don't see how the US can outswim the French-- they are just that good."

But there's a reason we actually run the races and play the games rather than just award medals and trophies based upon what the stats and numbers tell us is "supposed" to happen. Because we -- we, the less focused less committed less involved folks on the sidelines -- will never truly know when one human being is going to take a deep breath, step forward, and say "to hell with what is supposed to happen. Right now, right here -- I AM history."

If you did not see Sunday's epic race, check the video below. Words will not describe the just plain amazingness of it.



On the final turn of the final leg, the US team trailed the French team by roughly three quarters of a second -- a full body length -- with the French riding to certain gold on the back of the world record holder in the 100 freestyle, Alain Bernard. Bernard had expanded a small lead into a near-impossible lead with just one pool length to go. The commentators covering the race were saying there was no way to chase down Bernard, the world's fastest sprinter.

Except someone forgot to tell Lezak. With half a pool to go, Lezak unleashed what swim experts are already calling the most amazing and impossible surge ever witnessed. Suddenly, without any rational explanation, Lezak started closing. Fast.

Phelps and teammates watching from the finish line were screaming for Lezak to find one more calorie of strength. The announcers were screaming "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" Even Bernard, a "right breather" who turns his face over his right shoulder to breath between strokes, could be seen turning to his left underwater to steal a glimpse at what was totally completely and in all ways inconceivable -- "oh my God -- here he comes..."

Bernard, already the world's fastest-ever in this event, broke his own record in the race, covering 100 yards in a blistering 46.6 seconds, only the third time any human being had broken the 47-second mark over 100 meters.

Lezak? From some never expected corner of his heart, he summoned forth the insane effort needed to swim a 46-flat. Three quarters of a second better than Bernard's record. Lezak lunged forward with his last bit of strength to touch the finish 8 thousandths of a second before the mighty Bernard, and nobody in the building could quite believe what they had just seen. The French stood staring at the final times with a totally stunned expression, as Phelps, Gale and Jones flexed and howled with pure unfiltered screaming joyful wonder.

Lezak? He panted in the water, seeming too spent even to lift his arms to accept a high five. He had no strength left to celebrate.

He'd left it all out there in the race -- one insane impossible unbelievable unforgettable race.

"The whole thing was remarkable," said Orjan Madsen, the German head coach. "It was one of those moments where you just sit back and say, 'Jesus Christ.' If I wouldn't have seen [Lezak overtaking Bernard] with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it."

Long Live Sport.
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B

by the mass, our hearts are in the trim

Things continue apace 'round the old hacienda. The Wife and I found four unclaimed minutes the other night and sat down together to compare and triple-check the schedules and day-planners which both steer and document the sordid slow-motion car wrecks known as our respective lives, and as we worked through the final week of October we both looked up with surprise and alarm.

"We seem to have nothing happening on Friday, October 26."

We blinked at each other, then again checked the schedules.

"That has to be a screw-up. We've must've forgotten something."

As it turns out, it's an actual hole in the schedule, an event so rare and bizarre these days that it hits us like a solar eclipse must have hit the earliest cavemen to look up to the sky with any awareness. This shit just does not happen in our lives: our daily schedule for the next run of months always looks like the flight log for O'Hare Airport.

Last night, for example, I had to get my daughter to her dance class from 4:30-5:30, The Wife woke (she worked the night shift that evening before) showered and met me at the dance class at 5 pm so that I could then get home in time to eat and feed the rest of the crew and then get to my 6 pm Leadership Meeting for Cub Scouts. The Wife brought the daughter home from dance, made sure eldest son was packed and ready to be picked up for Boy Scouts starting at 7 pm, and the The Wife left for work as the neighborhood teen babysitter chick came over to watch TV with my younger ones. I got home at 8:30, checked homework and bathing, got the younger crew in bed as son returned from Scouts, then I helped him with homework and got him into bed, then I dove into the 28 emails which had arrived since I had walked away from the computer that afternoon, plus tried to prep for a conference call from LA coming in at midnight local time. Took the call, scribbled notes, and then researched some producer leads and contacts til 1:30 am when it was time to call it a day.

That's what passes for a "slow Monday" 'round here these days. Most days we have more kid activities running in those evening hours. Example-- tonight I have three overlapping events (two different kids at two different locations for football practice while I am at a Little League board meeting, electing new officers).

Now, some people like to sit on their asses and judge from afar, saying "well, you need to learn to say 'no' sometime." I understand what they mean, but I also understand what I mean when I say fuck that in response. In my mind, laziness is as much a learned (and reinforced habit) as it is anything, and it becomes a lot easier to do the allegedly impossible at precisely the moment you fully and totally commit to just doing it.

By any rational measure, "screenwriting" as a career goal is an almost impossible task. The odds are long, the best opportunities few and often camouflaged, and the encouragement rare and fleeting. At any given moment one could do an objective analysis and legitimately decide that the entire pursuit is pointless and doomed. In fact, the entire situation is so hopeless that only the truly demented have the stomach to endure the trek.

Which is precisely why I launch myself into impossible duties and insane loads of activities. That screwy intensity — that relentless ferocious dedication to doing that glorious thing which everyone else was too damned frightened or lazy even to dream — is the only way I've found to making the impossible come true.

-=-=-=-

Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules,
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can quote them, disagree with them,
glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do
is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They push the human race forward.

And while some may see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world

are the ones who do.

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Raising a child so that he grows into a good man is, in our modern world, a sadly quixotic endeavor if you remain content only to sit back listening to the naysayers and stick to the smooth well-marked trails. To actually teach those lessons which matter — lessons about honor and respect and duty and courage and dedication and charity and commitment and dignity and hope and love — requires a sustained level of total commitment to purpose which too often is demeaned and dismissed out of hand as "impossible."

Nothing is impossible until you refuse to try.
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rah rah B