all things considered

LOG rollin'
I went to the LOG tournament in Burlington last weekend. Fun and frustrating. We only had 12, but that didn't keep the Ambush veterans from playing pretty much savage (well, with 8 or 9) for two of our five games. I understand they were close games, but it was a laid-back tournament - the championship game was decided by rosham so teams could play new opponents! The more I think about it, the more I really wish they had let me play more. I find that I can never really conjure up the same level of intensity in practice as I can in tournaments, and I didn't get to experience more than 5 points TOTAL of the high-intensity games we played this weekend. I think it would have been so good for me to play against great players on very good teams. How else am I supposed to find motivation to get better?

In any case, it's a very humbling (and new!) experience being a rookie. I realized that I didn't have to earn my stripes on NYPD because we were shorthanded my first season and I could throw forehand. So, of course, I get pissy when I get called in for two points in the first half and ZERO in the second. All this time, I thought I was better than that, that I could play on this team like it was mine. But I'm not. Not yet, anyway.

Truth seein'
Yesterday morning, Rox and I had a meeting with two representatives of the Legacy Foundation, which was established to be responsible for the money gained from the tobacco settlement. One of their major initiatives is the truth campaign, which began in 1999. The "truth guru" gave us a presentation about the campaign strategy and left us some fun souvenirs. I was impressed by the truth ads when they came out, and as she went on with her presentation I became more and more wowed by the logic behind the ads. I'm always happy to see older people understand the way that young people live and think - as opposed to the attitude that says, "teenagers are too melodramatic and just need discipline by a firm hand to keep them in line." The core idea is one of "brand replacement," where the campaign fights against the cigarette brands by making itself a competitor in the products-i-can-use-to-define-my-identity market. It's a very new idea to have a brand that doesn't have a product behind it, but if you think about it, it makes total sense when in the mind of the consumer the brand is 100x more important than the thing it actually represents.

I was the youngest person in the room (of course), and the only one who had been in the target audience of the truth campaign when it was actually ongoing, so I found myself laughing and nodding as she was explaining the marketing strategy. It felt weird to have been read so well by people who didn't know me at all.

Apparently, truth has a "crew" that goes on tour during the summer to spread the word. It's something I'll keep in mind for the future, perhaps the summer before I start school again. It'd be fun.

Car parkin'
Yesterday as Dave and I were walking back from East River Park, we saw a guy in a station wagon (and his embarrassed wife) squeeze his car into a parking space that was at most 5 inches longer than the car itself. We caught him just as he was starting his parking job and got to watch til the very end. There was a blue minivan behind the space and a silver sedan of some sort in front of it. The parker would go backwards, nudge the minivan back about a foot, move forwards, nudge the sedan up about a foot (into the car in front of it!), then move backwards again, over and over. It took him maybe 12 moves to get into the space, all the while bumping into the two cars around him. When he finished he had about 2 inches of space in the front and NO space - touching the van - in the back.

He and his wife got out and she proceeded to look at both ends of the car shaking her head. The whole time, we had been watching and laughing, trying to figure out whether he would actually get into the space or give up and move on (though getting out would probably at that point have been more difficult than getting in!). The wife looked over at us sheepishly, at which point Dave said, "that's the best parking job I've ever seen. Wow." I don't think she knew what to say to that.

I just felt bad for the cars on either side of that crazy station wagon. They'll have to do the same thing to get out of their spaces, but I doubt either will be as determined as the station wagon fool. As we were walking away, the only thing I could think - cliche as it is - was, "only in New York."