Clint's X's and Big O's (And I'm talking football, not former girlfriends)

        This is my first post in many moons, so I wanted to come back with a bang. A big crazy bang. A big crazy really different bang.
        Every fall, myself and millions of others catch football fever. It’s an affliction that those who don’t catch can never understand. But those of us who have it are thrilled to be infected.
        As a passionate football fan for most of my life, I have a fairly good understanding of the game. What appeals to me most is the strategy involved. Coming up with innovative schemes and plays is a big part of the game. The X’s and O’s, as it’s called.
        I’ve been making up plays since I was a kid. Drawing the X’s and O’s and creating all sorts of chalkboard mayhem. I don’t care how feasible or effective the plays would be in real life, because the juice is in making them up, drawing them, and explaining how they function. Or dysfunction.
        Recently, I’ve been coming up with completely insane plays, delving into their absurdity, and explaining and analyzing them like they do with real NFL plays. It made me laugh enough to want to share them.
       To all you football fans out there who can’t get enough analysis, breakdown, or discussion of football, I present to you an absurdly delicious feast.

SUMMARY: This offensive play is designed to exploit aggressive defenses. Basically, the offense gets turned on it’s head. The line of scrimmage is manned with horrifically undersized special teams players. The huge offensive linemen line up in the wide receiver positions.

DIAGRAM:

BREAKDOWN:

The Offense lines up four undersized special teams players as offensive lineman.  They load the strong side with three offensive lineman, but in receiving positions: two in a tight wide receiver set and one in the slot. One tailback.

STRATEGIC ANALYSIS:

This is an absurd line up. So absurd, that the defense is genuinely shocked. Their focus is immediately drawn to the grossly undersized personnel on the line of scrimmage. When they see who’s defending the quarterback, they positively salivate. Especially an aggressive defense that likes to blitz.

They are also shocked by the three enormous, relatively slow offensive linemen with bad hands in the wide receiver and slot positions. They are hence not concerned in the least with a downfield threat.

An aggressive defense will see only one thing: an opportunity to maim the quarterback.  They call an all out blitz, unable to resist this opportunity to knock the quarterback out of the game. Or the season. Or his career.

The defense is in fact so obsessed with sending the quarterback to the intensive care unit that they don’t even notice the lone tailback.

When the ball is snapped to the quarterback in the shotgun, he lets the pocket collapse just enough to suck the mongrel hoard of blitzing defenders into the backfield to a point of no return. At the last second, he dumps a quick pass to the tailback behind the line of scrimmage, who purposely botches his blitz pick up, but makes it look like he made a mistake, so that any defender suspicious of him forgets about the bozo who blew his assignment .

Ball in hand and picking up speed, the tailback now has three offensive linemen and a tight end in front of him. The only thing between them and six points is a combination of cornerbacks, safeties, and maybe a stray linebacker. Who they should completely flatten on the tailback’s way to the end zone.

PLAY NAME:

Like every play in football, this one needs a manly, obtuse, cryptic name latent with secret code words and cool phrases:

SUICIDE JERRY 32 RIGHT CONVOY ONSLAUGHT

Here’s how the name breaks down:

SUICIDE JERRY: Jerry is the code name for the quarterback. Suicide tells a group of special teams players to line up on the line of scrimmage as offensive linemen and offer minimal resistance to the rush.

32: The number of the tailback who gets the pass from the quarterback.

RIGHT: Tells the team which is the strong side.

CONVOY: Tells the three offensive linemen to line up on the strong side in the two wide receiver and slot positions, and to form a wall with the tight end as they head up field, right ahead of the tailback.

ONSLAUGHT: Instructs the offensive linemen and the tight end to immediately obliterate the first person they contact and then continue downfield, laying waste to any other body foolish enough to get in their way.


©2010 Clint Piatelli. Positively Offensive Amount of Rights Reserved.

Enter Sandman (part 1)

       Metallica was never one of my favorite bands. Never, that is, until I heard the song “Enter Sandman” in the fall of 1991.
       I’m not sure where I first heard it, which is too bad. Sometimes, we remember those moments with stunning clarity. The transcendental emotions we experience become part of our body, part of our DNA. During those first few virgin minutes, our entire beings become galvanized by music.
       But, come to think of it, there aren’t very many songs where I can recall the very first time I heard them. Songs that stay with you are probably less like sledge hammers and more like seeds that grow once they’re inside you.
       Sometimes, those seeds are large and delivered with maximum impact, so we recall the moment of inception. Or more accurately, our moment of impregnation. Other times, the seeds are small and more discrete. In either case, a song that remains a part of you somehow makes it’s way in. It feeds on whatever is inside of you - your pain, your joy, your thoughts, your dreams. As it feeds, it grows. And, just like a tree or a flower, it also gives something back. That’s where the magic is. What this piece of music gives back to you as it grows inside, subtly transforming you.     
       These were the days before I kept a journal, for if I had, I may well have written about “Enter Sandman” then, when it’s initial impact was as fresh and drenching on me as the sweat from a run in torrid heat.
       What I do recall is buying the CD and playing it ad infinitum. At volumes that caused the walls of my five-hundred-eighty-five square foot condominium to vibrate like a tuning fork. With two sets of speakers, one in the living room and the other in my bedroom, my entire little home would be completely awash in sound. There was nowhere to run to escape the deliciously deafening roar of music. Not even the bathroom. And that’s exactly how I wanted it.

To Be Continued....


State of Contraction

      With disbelief and shame, a warrior poet throws himself on the ground. Losing a battle fought from within, he is upon desperate times. Bringing himself to an unknown brink, his will, more often a strong "won't", has led him down a dead end road of his own design. There is nowhere else to go. Backwards is not an option. Neither is forward. Because there is no forward. All that remains is to blaze a new path. Or just shrink and vanish.
      The gift of desperation is the only thing that will shift his mind, his heart, his actions, his attitude, his life. Out of options, he chooses something new. He chooses surrender. He chooses faith. And he asks for help in manifesting those choices.
      His shrinking life slowly begins to expand.

Please look for more posts from me going forward. I'm going to force myself to write again. Peace...

Lord Of The Christmas Lights

    Today, I took down my Christmas tree, and all the holiday lights and trimming that went with it. The process reminded me of my dad. So I dug up something I wrote years ago about him and Christmas Lights...

     My dad, like most truly eccentric people, had several obsessions in his life; his compulsive stockpiling of flashlights, steak knives, and pens, were but a few.  But his most unbelievable obsession, for my money, was his diabolical preoccupation with Christmas lights. 
    The sheer magnitude of this particular yultide infatuation did not become apparent to me until about fifteen years ago, when I was in my early thirties, and my dad was still alive. 
    He and my mother where in New York city, and I was doing some last minute decorating for our annual black tie, gala, highly touted Piatelli family Christmas party.
    A few weeks before (in what had become a highly enjoyable custom between my dad and I), I had helped him light his property for Christmas. The totality of our yearly efforts included the following: two medium size trees at the foot of the driveway; the Japanese Maple and Cherry Blossom tree right in front of the house (and a few straw reindeer between them); the bough over the front porch; the two dwarf pines that bookend the porch: several large shrubs; and the rather massive holly tree in the back yard. Not to mention, the large Christmas tree that I bought for him and my mom each season. 
    All that had been done. Literally thousands of christmas lights had been deployed.  
    Knowing this, but still wanting to add a little more electric festivity to the property for our upcoming party, I was hoping to find a stray set of lights to do up one or two more shrubs at the corner of the driveway. I wasn’t hopeful, because I was well aware of how many lights had already been used. 
    So I went down cellar, hoping to find a spare set of lights in the storage room.  When I entered that room, however, I was met with a surreal sight: More Christmas lights. Thousands of them. I was not prepared for this, and frankly, it overwhelmed me. 
    There were boxes upon boxes of lights, all stacked neatly on the shelves. The boxes could not possibly all be full, I said to myself, so I started checking their contents.  But full they were. All of them. I stood there for a moment, frozen in my tracks, as though I was looking at something that could not possibly be real.
    The number of lights alone were astounding enough, but the sheer variety added an element of absolute insanity. There were funky, round, opalescent lights. Perpetually blinking lights.  Multi-colored lights.  Lights of a single color.  Lights in strange shapes. Small, new, LED style lights. Big, old, C-9 style lights. Lights shaped like Santa Claus. Lights with clear orbs the size of baseballs covering them (known as,  I discovered later, “snowball lights”). Indeed, I found lights of strange and exotic varieties that I didn’t even know existed. I slapped myself to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.  How could one man acquire so many lights in one lifetime? 
    Dazed and confused, I headed to an adjacent room in our cellar to collect my thoughts. This was known as “the pool room”, because it contained a regulation sized pool table. What I saw there sent me right over the edge. Just when I thought that no human could possibly stockpile more lights, I saw the impossible: more lights.  All over the room.  On the pool table.  On the couch.  In boxes on the floor. On the shelves.  And of even more bizarre varieties.  I saw strings of lights that obviously hadn’t been used in years; you know, the big old fashioned kind that would burn so hot they would send you to the hospital if you touched them. 
    Assaulted by this madness, I determined that I had to get the hell out of there.  “This is not possible”, I said to myself. “No human on earth, even my christmas-lights-obsessive-father, could possibly aquire this many christmas lights!”. Faced with this unerving reality, I suddenly felt as though my sanity was at stake.  So I bolted out of the cellar, my eyes fixed in a glaze of disbeleif, my mind a swirling malestrom of disturbing images and impossible visions.  I went outside, sat down, and took many long, deep breaths.   
    After a while, I calmed down, somehow came to grips with what I had just beheld, and went back into the cellar. to get the lights I needed. 
    But I warn those of inexperience to stay away from that place. That cavern of yuletide madness. That place where a man’s mind delves into a sea of insanity, born of electricity and glass.  Where logic is but a rumor, and where reality bends to the whim of a madman.  A madman known as My Father - Insane Lord of Christmas Lights.
   
    As I mentioned, I had this insight long before my dad passed away. I thus had the opportunity, on quite a few occasions, to share this writing with him. What I wouldn’t give to be able to sit with him, in his study, one more time, and read this to him aloud. To watch him smile. And shake his head. And experience how much he loved me. And how much I loved him.

Addicted To The Day Dream

    I am addicted to the day dream. I often feel less joy from doing than I do from imagining. The fantasy becomes my reality, and the reality becomes the fantasy. I have been doing this my whole life. An addict since I was ten. I am addicted to the fantasy of something, not the reality of it. 
    As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. It was how I survived the crushing pain of reality. It allowed me to survive in the constant barrage of hostile environments: Home. School. Camp. I survived by imagining a different life.
    But I never stopped doing that. It has gotten pathological, woven into my cells. Like an addict who can not see how he could possibly survive without the drug, I can not imagine myself without this omnipresent mental construct. I feel it is Who I Am. It is What I Am. I can not separate it from me, any more than the addict can separate themselves from the drug.
    But how do I kick THIS addiction? Where is there support for THIS? I could be the only person on the planet with this addiction. Where do I turn? 
    For many years, the pain of real life was unbearable, so I created an alternative life and spent as much time there as  I could. So when I do it now, I’m doing it to avoid pain. I’m still just trying to survive. I still don’t believe I can hack it in the real world. Years ago, reality crushed me beyond my own recognition. It robbed me of almost everything I truly was and almost everything I wanted to be. And despite all the work I’ve done on myself, that fear persists even today. My fear that life, real life, with all it’s responsibilities and unknowns, will destroy me. So I avoid it as often as I can. I go inside and fantasize. I’m doing it now, even as I write this. Imagining who may read this and who may respond to it and how brilliant and insightful it may be and how I will be applauded for my honesty and my courage and my depth and my sensitivity. And as in life, I have woven the fantasy of the event into the fabric of the event itself.
    A part of me believes that fantasy is always better than reality. That is my core fallacy around this addiction. Just as the alcoholic believes, with all his being, that life is better, easier to handle, more fun, less painful, more rewarding, with the drink than without it. I believe that my life of fantasy, inside my own head, is better than the real world. Even though I have plenty of evidence to the contrary. Even though I have years of proof that life can be fun and fulfilling and magical, this core fallacy remains; Untouched by the events of my life; Unaffected by the growth I’ve experienced; Undaunted by the revelations I’ve had. This core fallacy remains intact. Alive and well. Steadfast and relentless. It keeps me trapped in a prison of my own making.
    A piece of me is fully invested in the belief that the world I can create, moment to moment, in my own mind, is, in every respect, better than the world out there. All these wonderful ideas and creations and imaginative concepts are better served by keeping them inside my own head than by trying to make them work in the world.    
    My necessity to create a world of fantasy in order to cope with my unbearable reality, however, also facilitated my vivid imagination and my boundless creativity. My response to pain helped me develop some of my most valuable gifts. My method of survival was to create something else. I created whole new worlds inside of me, and that’s where I spent lots of my time. It disconnected me from reality. It made it difficult to connect to others. It made me feel alone and isolated and different. But it also honed my imagination and my creativity. If I could create entire realities, within the confines of my own mind, complete with feelings and perceptions and atmospheres and nuances and details and everything else, then I could create anything. After making a whole world from scratch, an entire reality from the ground up, anything else I had to create seemed easy. So when it came time for me to create something, anything, else, I excelled. That ability was a gift born of pain.
    I have carried that pain and fear into my adult life. Most of us do.  I have tried to stuff and deny that voice by having so much fun that I couldn’t hear it anymore. That hasn’t worked.  I don’t like this fearful voice, but it is a part of me. And I can not obliterate it by simply over indulging myself in pleasure and avoiding responsibility. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. What I need to do is listen to that voice, that voice I hate, and hear what it has to say. Then, and only then, can I speak to it from a different place and tell it that it doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. I can tell that voice that I’m not ten anymore. As I have learned over and over again, my way out is through. That means listening instead of squelching. Because the more I try to shut it out, the louder it gets. And then it takes over. And then I’m in trouble. Like I am now. 

©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and an Alternative Reality of Wrongs) Reserved.