Tag: Joseph Lapin

Writing

Concussion, The Tuck Rule, and Man, I was bad at football.

This morning, I was exchanging emails with my dad about concussions in football, and he wanted to remind me that he never let me play football.  True, I wasn’t allowed to play football as a kid.  And my dad wasn’t allowed to play football either.  And he wanted to make sure that, one day, I kept the tradition alive.

Well, honestly, I’m not sure if I will or will not let my son play football.  I know that I won’t let my son play football before the age of 14.  The research shows that under 14, kids brains are still developing and their necks aren’t strong enough to support their oversized head.  But when it comes to beyond 14, I might just let my son make his own choice.

Honestly, football is one of my favorite games to watch.  I’m the biggest Patriots fan in the world.  The reason the Patriots lost against the Seahawks was because I wasn’t watching the game or wearing my jersey.  I cursed the team.  (I had to conduct an interview.)

I’ll never forget the game when Tom Brady came back against the Oakland Raiders.  I was still in high school, and I was watching the game at my grandparents’ house.  It was pitch black outside, and the snow was stacked high.  Cumulonimbus clouds were dumping down a wicked lot of snow.  I remember feeling that the game was over, and the miraculous Patriots run was finally finished.

That’s when Tom Brady started connecting to Jermaine Wiggins and Troy Brown in the second half.  That’s when Brady started to spike the ball into the snow so hard that he fell over with joy.  That’s when the tuck rule bailed out our team.  That’s when a sixth round draft pick — from out of no where — became a hero.

My grandmother, Mimi, was going crazy.  She was sitting right next to my brother and me, holding our hands and screaming out every play.  She didn’t like football — in fact she called it foosball and the Patriots the Pat ri awts.  I wish I could spell it out phonetically, but I can’t.  And she was right there with us, cheering at every play.  It was almost like we were cheering for ourselves, too.

Man, when I look back at this video, an intense memory comes back.  I watched the game back in my hometown, Clinton, Massachusetts.  I was still in high school.  I was lost and confused.  And I remember, while watching Tom Brady bring life to a somewhat miserable franchise, I felt that anything was possible.  Of course, when I write that everyone from Boston is going to be reminded of Kevin Garnett.  That felt forced when he screamed, “Anything is possible.”  But when Tom Brady marched down the field, in the snow, and Vinateri kicked that field goal, the snow didn’t seem so thick and the night didn’t seem so black.

Well, back to my original point.  I tried to play football when I was younger, and my dad wanted me to make sure I remembered how miserable I was at football.  Just in case I had any thoughts of letting my son play.  My dad hated watching me play.  He was so worried about me.  This is what he wrote: “I remember that one play the running back got easily outside the tackle and you were the only DB in the area.  You intentionally faked yourself out so you wouldn’t have to take him head on.”

I try to remember that season I played football differently.  He was right though: I was pretty terrible.

Writing

Music in My Life and Writing

Before I was even born, my mother was playing music directed towards her womb so I could hear.  My mother used to sing at church, and for hours a day she was in our basement, playing and singing in front of a beat-up upright piano.  The keys were jagged, and they would cut you if you weren’t careful.  She taught my brother and me how to play.

So when it came time for me to choose my instrument, I took up the drums.  I had a couple of bands as a kid, and I even went to college for music at Stetson University.  They had a great program, but they were mostly a classic program with a very strict and small jazz program.  Well, I wasn’t into that at the time — now I love classical — and during college I realized, suddenly, I didn’t want to make a living out of music.  I didn’t want it to be the only thing in my life.  One day, I will tell you the story of a great professor, Dr. Michael Raymond, who changed my life and made me want to be a writer.

I hated the music school at Stetson.  I liked the people, but I hated the program.  And it was a top-notch program — just not for me.  I wanted to play the drum set, and I wanted to play the set LOUD.  I used to go into the drum room, and one of the teachers used to complain that he couldn’t concentrate.  So I quite to become a writing major, which is eventually my chosen path.

But even though music isn’t what I wanted to center my life around, it still plays an integral part of my day and my writing.  Let me explain.   Continue reading “Music in My Life and Writing” →

Writing

Who Would Have Thought So Many People Are Still Interested in Jazz?

Today, my piece at the OC Weekly, 10 Jazz Albums to Listen to Before You Die, went viral.  It was incredible.  Okay, so I’m going to be honest with you here; I check my posts to see how many hits they get.  If I write a piece for the LA Weekly, OC Weekly, Long Beach Post, etc, well, I want them to do well.  I want them to be read.  That’s why I write the pieces in the first place.

Sometimes, I’m pleased with the turn out, but other times I just can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t that piece get read?  I mean, there is so much great writing out there, why doesn’t all of it get read by everyone?  Obvious reason: There is so much content and little time.

So today, I was working on my research for a piece I’m writing on concussions, when I went back to the OC Weekly page to check out the stats.  It was doing really well on StumbleUpon, but nothing really on Facebook.  All of sudden, I noticed the ticker at the bottom of the page said there were about 500 people reading.  I couldn’t believe 500 people were reading.  That was a hell of a lot of people.  Then click on the slide show.  You’ll be able to see the jump it took within minutes.

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The funny thing was that it just kept growing, and the count stayed like that for hours.  In fact, right now, it’s still growing and there are 800 people reading the piece right now.  If you’re one of the people who read the piece, thanks so much.  It’s great to know there is still an audience for jazz — even if you disagree with my choices.

Goodnight everyone.  Need to sleep.

Writing

Sci-Fi, Mental Health, Poetry Foundation — A Lost Weekend

This weekend, Heron went up to Sacramento, and when she’s out of town…I watch Sci-Fi movies.  Heron loves some pretty good movies, but it’s hard to get her into Sci-Fi.  I don’t push it.

But this weekend, I walked down to Broadway Video in Long Beach, and I asked one of the guys for a movie rec.  Told him I wanted to see a movie kind of like Blade Runner.  So he suggested THX 1138 — a George Lucas movie starring Robert Duvall.  Now, I had never heard of this movie, but I trusted the guy at Broadway Video, because he initially recommended a Kubrick film and an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick book.

Well, this movie, THX 1138, is everything I love about a good Sci Fi/dystopia story.  Here’s the plot overview from IMDb: “Set in the 25th century, the story centers around a man and a woman who rebel against their rigidly controlled society.”  Man, this movie pulls out all the stops to present a world controlled by machines where they imprison their citizens with psychological manipulation.  It was like watching a movie infused with 1984, The Allegory of the Cave, and anything written by Foucault.  At the heart, it’s a story about forbidden love and the repercussions.

There’s just something about these movies: a man fighting against society: to free himself from convention — literal and metaphorical — to understand what it truly means to have liberty.  That’s what I want my memoir to be like.  In a lot of ways, coming-of-age stories (bildungsroman) have a similar idea in mind.  A young kid rebels against society in order to remain an individual, but what he finds is that he becomes a part of the society — for good or bad.

But THX 1138 is pretty intense.  They keep their citizens sedated so they will remain calm at all times.  In fact, if they don’t take their medication, then they’re brought up on drug evasion chargers.  It’s like watching, at times, a series of psychological experiments.  There’s this one seen, which is the cover, where the “authority” has Robert Duvall’s character in a room.  They’re trying to rehabilitate him.  So they keep him in line with a series of electrified sticks.  Well, just check out the video.

So after this, I finished Freud’s “Civilization and It’s Discontents.”  I’ve been meaning to finish it for so long.  Guilt, Freud sure hates guilt.

But all this just kept me thinking about mental health.  Psychological freedom.  How is that possible?  All of my favorite movies and books are about a main character, in one way or the other, struggling against society for freedom and truth.  Is truth freedom?  The truth will set you free, as they say.  Ah, what am I even talking about?  I will develop these ideas over the next couple blogs.

I need to really work hard this next week, because I have about five major deadlines the following week.   Something I’m working on right now is balancing several projects and learning to stay focused on each project during certain time periods.  It’s difficult, but I’m managing.  Communication becomes difficult when you have so many projects.

Oh yeah, I was mentioned by the Poetry Foundation for my article at the LA Weekly: In Defense of the Future L.A. Poet Laureate.  Okay, goodnight everyone.  Tomorrow I’m going to share a post on the first time I read Slaughterhouse 5.