The NBA Playoffs start this week, and the Utah Jazz will be part of it, something I wouldn't have believed at the beginning of the season. Back then, the youth of the Jazz roster and the inexperience of the coach, coupled with the lack of 3-point shooters, made me think the team was at least a year away from competing. After getting blown out in the first two games of the season I worried that even my modest expectations were too high, and that the Jazz might even be the worst team in the league.
But they righted the ship quickly, and played especially well after the All Star break. Second-year player Gordon Hayward was extremely timid at the beginning of the year, but changed seemingly overnight into an aggressive finisher at the basket and looks like a future 20 points-per-game guy. Rookie Alec Burks blossomed quickly and is probably already the best penetrator the Jazz have had in the 20+ years I've watched them, and is definitely my favorite player on the team. Devin Harris, who came to Utah in last year's Deron Williams trade, is still useless on defense but finally seems to be trying on offense. And all of those guys are shooting much better from the outside than I thought they were capable of.
Utah is not a great defensive team, but they've become very dangerous on offense. I don't think Tyrone Corbin is a great strategic coach, but his players seem to really like him (except Raja Bell, who is washed up and hopefully won't average more than 10 minutes per game in the postseason) and play hard for him, which may be even more important. I think they can surprise some people.
Since they've already exceeded my expectations, I don't really care how well they do in the playoffs. Well, I wouldn't care--but they're playing the San Antonio Spurs in the first round. Most Jazz fans would name the Lakers as their most hated rival, but the Spurs are the team I dislike most in all of professional sports. My animosity is based on a combination of smugness, flopping, predictability, and (perhaps most of all) dominance against my favorite team. Even though nobody expects the Jazz to win the series (including me), I will be really bummed out if San Antonio is victorious.
There are some parallels between this playoff scenario and the story of Zeniff, covered in this week's Sunday School lesson. Zeniff was overzealous to return to the land of his fathers' inheritance, just like the Jazz wanted to return to the playoffs, where the franchise made a regular home in years past. Utah beat San Antonio once this year, but the Spurs rested their three best players, perhaps giving the Jazz a false sense of security, just like the Lamanites did to Zeniff's people. To defend his people, Zeniff even armed his young men (Mosiah 10:9); four players age 22 or younger log significant minutes for Utah. After Zeniff's son Noah became king, his guards were insufficient to defeat the Lamanites (Mosiah 11:17); the strength of the Jazz is definitely their frontcourt, not their guard play. In later chapters, the Lamanite king is found lying among the dead on the battlefield, but he's ok--sounds like a Ginobili-esque flop to me! The concubines and wife stealing that happened under Noah's reign is more of a Spurs thing, but it's admittedly not a perfect analogy.
The good news for Jazz fans is that Zeniff's people ultimately triumphed over the evil Lamanites/Spurs. The bad news: it took about three generations for it to happen. I'm hoping Utah can bring their fans a happy ending much sooner than that. Go Jazz!
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The kids are all right
All right, I get it--pictures in a blog post equals comments. I can't remember the last time I got five comments on a post. I get it, but I don't "get" it, as evidenced by the lack of photos in this post.
One of the highlights of my Nebraska trip that I failed to mention in my last post: after Easter dinner with David's family, the girls did wedding stuff (David's sister just got engaged), and the boys retired to the living room to be entertained by David's 18-month-old nephew.
David's brother set out the keyboard, which the toddler has learned to turn on and then press the right button to start the built-in music. Then he'd dance around in that cute, bouncy toddler way, but every 30 seconds or so he would freeze, tensing up every muscle in his body, including his hands and face. He'd stay like that for a few seconds, then start dancing again. It was basically the most adorable thing ever.
I love little kids. I also like older kids, and in the last week I got to see a bunch of tweens prance around in more organized performances. First was my niece's dance competition. When I made plans to attend, I thought it was a recital where I'd get to see her a bunch of times, or else I probably wouldn't have gone. It turned out to be an all-day competition--when we arrived they were on group 117 of the day or something like that; Abbi's troupe was #139.
Each group only got to dance to one song or part of a song, and they moved through the teams quite rapidly. I still had time to notice some highlights. The most entertaining thing was watching the coaches, who sat right in front of their squads, mimicking the choreography as much as they could from a seated position and making up for their lack of locomotion with overexaggerated facial expressions.
One out of every three or so groups had one or two boys in it, and it was fun to see how they chose to showcase them. My final favorite part (the dancers I saw ranged in age from 7-ish to 16-ish, and the performance quality was decent to pretty good relative to their experience, I'd say) was watching each group exit the "stage" the basketball court at Salt Lake Community College. Most of them seemed to have devoted significant practice time to walking away. I saw a lot of good strutting.
A few days later, I took the 11-year-old Scouts to see one of their fellow patrol members in his school's production of Taming of the Shrew. We got there just as it was starting and had to sit in the back of the hall; it's a good thing I knew the story already, because only a couple of the kids projected well enough for us to hear them. There was very little acting, mostly just standing on stage and reciting memorized lines, but it was still fun. Plus, they almost entirely eliminated the B plot (Bianca and her suitors), so the whole thing only lasted about an hour.
So, the leaders of today's youth are teaching them to strut, and that women should be obedient to their husbands in all circumstances. These are clearly important things to know, but maybe not as important as teaching them "to love another, and to serve one another," and "to walk in the ways of truth and soberness" (Mosiah 4:15), as covered in this week's Sunday School lesson. Once you're finished the assigned reading, and your kids have mastered those principles (which is actually part of becoming the children of Christ--see Mosiah 5:7), you'll have earned some strutting time.
One of the highlights of my Nebraska trip that I failed to mention in my last post: after Easter dinner with David's family, the girls did wedding stuff (David's sister just got engaged), and the boys retired to the living room to be entertained by David's 18-month-old nephew.
David's brother set out the keyboard, which the toddler has learned to turn on and then press the right button to start the built-in music. Then he'd dance around in that cute, bouncy toddler way, but every 30 seconds or so he would freeze, tensing up every muscle in his body, including his hands and face. He'd stay like that for a few seconds, then start dancing again. It was basically the most adorable thing ever.
I love little kids. I also like older kids, and in the last week I got to see a bunch of tweens prance around in more organized performances. First was my niece's dance competition. When I made plans to attend, I thought it was a recital where I'd get to see her a bunch of times, or else I probably wouldn't have gone. It turned out to be an all-day competition--when we arrived they were on group 117 of the day or something like that; Abbi's troupe was #139.
Each group only got to dance to one song or part of a song, and they moved through the teams quite rapidly. I still had time to notice some highlights. The most entertaining thing was watching the coaches, who sat right in front of their squads, mimicking the choreography as much as they could from a seated position and making up for their lack of locomotion with overexaggerated facial expressions.
One out of every three or so groups had one or two boys in it, and it was fun to see how they chose to showcase them. My final favorite part (the dancers I saw ranged in age from 7-ish to 16-ish, and the performance quality was decent to pretty good relative to their experience, I'd say) was watching each group exit the "stage" the basketball court at Salt Lake Community College. Most of them seemed to have devoted significant practice time to walking away. I saw a lot of good strutting.
A few days later, I took the 11-year-old Scouts to see one of their fellow patrol members in his school's production of Taming of the Shrew. We got there just as it was starting and had to sit in the back of the hall; it's a good thing I knew the story already, because only a couple of the kids projected well enough for us to hear them. There was very little acting, mostly just standing on stage and reciting memorized lines, but it was still fun. Plus, they almost entirely eliminated the B plot (Bianca and her suitors), so the whole thing only lasted about an hour.
So, the leaders of today's youth are teaching them to strut, and that women should be obedient to their husbands in all circumstances. These are clearly important things to know, but maybe not as important as teaching them "to love another, and to serve one another," and "to walk in the ways of truth and soberness" (Mosiah 4:15), as covered in this week's Sunday School lesson. Once you're finished the assigned reading, and your kids have mastered those principles (which is actually part of becoming the children of Christ--see Mosiah 5:7), you'll have earned some strutting time.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
So put your drinks up for Nebraska
As a kid, I passed through Kansas and Nebraska many times on family road trips to Missouri. Over Easter weekend I took my first-ever trip specifically to these corn belt states. I used many Counting Crows lyrics in my tweets and Gchat stati while I was there, so I'm switching things up and going with Lady Gaga for this post's title.
I flew into Kansas City and spent the night with my former college roommate Will, who's a grad student at the University of Kansas. (My flight out was uneventful, but through a series of coincidences I found out two days later that my flight attendant and I used to be neighbors--she took the spot of the girl who married the guy whose spot I took in the apartment I'm in now. Weird, huh?) The next morning Will and I made the three-hour drive from Lawrence to Omaha, where we met up with some other good friends from our college days, David and Marlene. To give you some context on who I'm talking about, and some insight into our friendship, peep these shots from Halloween 2003.
Will is the hobbit (I can't recall who that is in the Gandalf getup), and the Justice League includes me as Batman, David as Superman and Marlene as Catwoman (so much for preserving secret identities). David's brother Aaron was Robin.
I hadn't seen David and Marlene in three years or spent more than two hours or so at a time with Will in four years, so I was excited for this trip. D and M were fantastic hosts, arranging with their landlord for us to stay in an empty loft in their building. Will and I felt very hip, like sitcom characters, just using the term "loft," let alone living in one. Here we are on the roof of the building, with the Omaha skyline behind us.
Back in our Provo days, we would mostly just talk and eat and hang out and watch TV, and there was a lot of that on this trip. I'll try to avoid going into excruciating detail on the food (like the excellent pulled pork sandwich and deep fried Monte Cristo I enjoyed, or the fact I spent three days in Omaha without eating a steak) and TV (I finally saw Nacho Libre and Hot Rod for the first time--why did I wait so long?) I consumed and just focus on the points of interest.
Omaha has 15 or 16 of these giant push pins throughout the city, marking the "points of interest" that tourists should check out. This one is outside of the visitors center at Winter Quarters. The center and accompanying tour were nice, but the LDS temple across the parking lot was much more impressive.
On the temple grounds there is a cemetery, with dozens of headstones and monuments honoring the hundreds of Mormon pioneers who lost their lives in this area, near the beginning of their trek to the West. Among the dead are some of the children of Stillman Pond, whose tale of endurance is the most gut-wrenching and inspiring of any pioneer story I've ever heard. You should all read it.
But moving on from death...I was surprised to find out that Omaha is the birthplace of many things. It's the birthplace of Malcolm X, and we visited the site on Malcom X Boulevard after eating at a seedy fried chicken place--it reminded me of Harlem! (My friend Erika, who is currently in a grad program at the University of Nebraska, met up with us there. She was instrumental in establishing the connection between me and the flight attendant, which happened right before I started choking and had to excuse myself to puke outside. No bathrooms in Time Out Fried Chicken. Sorry you guys had to witness that!)
Marlene also told us that Omaha (and more specifically this theater) is the birthplace of "indie" music. I dislike the label "indie," just as I don't care for the term "singer-songwriter." I'll have to blog about that some time.
Most importantly, I learned that Omaha is the birthplace of arguably the world's greatest sandwich, the Reuben! It was created at the Blackstone Hotel, which is now an office building, but a bar across the street sells one that they claim is made using the original recipe.
This shot of the wrong end of the sandwich shows that I'm clearly not a "foodie." This Reuben had big chunks of corned beef rather than sliced deli meat, and it was very good. Whoever came up with the idea, I will gladly try a Reuben practically anywhere.
Another "point of interest" is the controversial Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, connecting Omaha with Council Bluffs, Iowa, "the meth capital of the US" according to our hosts. I don't know if that is accurate, but Council Bluffs certainly has a negative reputation. But the bridge is nice.
Here I am at the world-famous "Two Corners."
We spent Easter Sunday there as well, attending church in their small branch, having an Easter egg hunt in their loft (seriously), and eating Easter dinner with David's parents and some other siblings. They're an awesome family and this was an awesome trip. Thanks to Will, David and Marlene for showing me some true Midwest hospitality. Hopefully I'll get to go back soon.
I flew into Kansas City and spent the night with my former college roommate Will, who's a grad student at the University of Kansas. (My flight out was uneventful, but through a series of coincidences I found out two days later that my flight attendant and I used to be neighbors--she took the spot of the girl who married the guy whose spot I took in the apartment I'm in now. Weird, huh?) The next morning Will and I made the three-hour drive from Lawrence to Omaha, where we met up with some other good friends from our college days, David and Marlene. To give you some context on who I'm talking about, and some insight into our friendship, peep these shots from Halloween 2003.
I hadn't seen David and Marlene in three years or spent more than two hours or so at a time with Will in four years, so I was excited for this trip. D and M were fantastic hosts, arranging with their landlord for us to stay in an empty loft in their building. Will and I felt very hip, like sitcom characters, just using the term "loft," let alone living in one. Here we are on the roof of the building, with the Omaha skyline behind us.
Back in our Provo days, we would mostly just talk and eat and hang out and watch TV, and there was a lot of that on this trip. I'll try to avoid going into excruciating detail on the food (like the excellent pulled pork sandwich and deep fried Monte Cristo I enjoyed, or the fact I spent three days in Omaha without eating a steak) and TV (I finally saw Nacho Libre and Hot Rod for the first time--why did I wait so long?) I consumed and just focus on the points of interest.
Omaha has 15 or 16 of these giant push pins throughout the city, marking the "points of interest" that tourists should check out. This one is outside of the visitors center at Winter Quarters. The center and accompanying tour were nice, but the LDS temple across the parking lot was much more impressive.
On the temple grounds there is a cemetery, with dozens of headstones and monuments honoring the hundreds of Mormon pioneers who lost their lives in this area, near the beginning of their trek to the West. Among the dead are some of the children of Stillman Pond, whose tale of endurance is the most gut-wrenching and inspiring of any pioneer story I've ever heard. You should all read it.
But moving on from death...I was surprised to find out that Omaha is the birthplace of many things. It's the birthplace of Malcolm X, and we visited the site on Malcom X Boulevard after eating at a seedy fried chicken place--it reminded me of Harlem! (My friend Erika, who is currently in a grad program at the University of Nebraska, met up with us there. She was instrumental in establishing the connection between me and the flight attendant, which happened right before I started choking and had to excuse myself to puke outside. No bathrooms in Time Out Fried Chicken. Sorry you guys had to witness that!)
Marlene also told us that Omaha (and more specifically this theater) is the birthplace of "indie" music. I dislike the label "indie," just as I don't care for the term "singer-songwriter." I'll have to blog about that some time.
Most importantly, I learned that Omaha is the birthplace of arguably the world's greatest sandwich, the Reuben! It was created at the Blackstone Hotel, which is now an office building, but a bar across the street sells one that they claim is made using the original recipe.
This shot of the wrong end of the sandwich shows that I'm clearly not a "foodie." This Reuben had big chunks of corned beef rather than sliced deli meat, and it was very good. Whoever came up with the idea, I will gladly try a Reuben practically anywhere.
Another "point of interest" is the controversial Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, connecting Omaha with Council Bluffs, Iowa, "the meth capital of the US" according to our hosts. I don't know if that is accurate, but Council Bluffs certainly has a negative reputation. But the bridge is nice.
Here I am at the world-famous "Two Corners."
We spent Easter Sunday there as well, attending church in their small branch, having an Easter egg hunt in their loft (seriously), and eating Easter dinner with David's parents and some other siblings. They're an awesome family and this was an awesome trip. Thanks to Will, David and Marlene for showing me some true Midwest hospitality. Hopefully I'll get to go back soon.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
It's all about the Jeffersons
Easter has come and gone, and that means, among other things, that I now have a $2 bill in my possession. My family has a strange obsession with the Thomas Jefferson-fronted currency. One of my great-aunts used to give them out every Christmas, one of my uncles used to send one to each niece and nephew on their birthdays, and every year there's a plastic egg containing a folded-up bill in my Easter basket. (Yes, the Easter Bunny is a Hofmann. Didn't know that, did you?) It's kind of a silly tradition, but I really look forward to it. If I ever got my basket Easter morning, and there was no money egg, I would totally go all Better Off Dead on everybody.
As far as I can recall, every $2 bill I've ever received has been fresh and crisp. Apparently a good number of them have been put in circulation in recent years, but this crispness was especially impressive during the great $2 bill famine of the 1990s. My relatives must horde them somewhere.
My cousin Rachel likes to keep her Jeffersons, but the sentimentality eventually wears off for me, and I spend them. Fortunately, I've never had any issues when doing so, whether comical or more serious.
So this post is all about the Jeffersons, and "Lazy Sunday" is all about the Hamiltons, but this week's Sunday School lesson is all about the Benjamins. King Benjamin, that is. He was just like Thomas Jefferson, in that the leaders who came before and after him had the same name (Mosiah vs. John and John Q. Adams, if you conveniently omit Madison and Monroe). So don't be lazy this Sunday--come to class having read the assigned chapters. It's the best way to get your money's worth (speaking of spiritual $2 bills, of course).
[In case you're new to the blog...this is my weekly BASOTRUSSL post, which, of course, stands for Blog About Something Only Tangentially Related to the Upcoming Sunday School Lesson.]
As far as I can recall, every $2 bill I've ever received has been fresh and crisp. Apparently a good number of them have been put in circulation in recent years, but this crispness was especially impressive during the great $2 bill famine of the 1990s. My relatives must horde them somewhere.
My cousin Rachel likes to keep her Jeffersons, but the sentimentality eventually wears off for me, and I spend them. Fortunately, I've never had any issues when doing so, whether comical or more serious.
So this post is all about the Jeffersons, and "Lazy Sunday" is all about the Hamiltons, but this week's Sunday School lesson is all about the Benjamins. King Benjamin, that is. He was just like Thomas Jefferson, in that the leaders who came before and after him had the same name (Mosiah vs. John and John Q. Adams, if you conveniently omit Madison and Monroe). So don't be lazy this Sunday--come to class having read the assigned chapters. It's the best way to get your money's worth (speaking of spiritual $2 bills, of course).
[In case you're new to the blog...this is my weekly BASOTRUSSL post, which, of course, stands for Blog About Something Only Tangentially Related to the Upcoming Sunday School Lesson.]
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Jeff, who stays at home
Two weeks ago today, I saw The Hunger Games. That's right, I saw it the day before it came out. So my 12 bucks are near the bottom of the $300 million-plus pile of cash that the flick has raked in so far.
This was a momentous thing for me, as it had been about 16 months since I had last seen a movie in a theater. That's right, I did not set foot in a cineplex in all of 2011. This was not a conscious boycott, not a deliberate fast; I just don't go to the movies that often. I'm much more of a TV guy. I'm not likely to suggest to my friends that we head to the theater, and I'm not a fan of going by myself. I did that, once, and saw the amazing Son of Rambow, a movie nobody saw (hence my alone-ness) but everyone should.
So when everyone else is catching the latest 3D blockbuster, I'm usually staying staying at home. The title of this post is actually an adaptation of a movie currently in theaters, another one that I'll probably never see. Jeff, Who Lives At Home tells the tale of a grown man who lives in his mom's basement, basically wasting away his humdrum life. Been there, done that. But I'll never be able to again--my parents are getting ready to sell the house they've lived in since before I was born. (Do you like how I've completely changed topics here?)
My dad retired last December, and with my youngest sibling being 22, my parents are looking to move to a house that better suits their current space needs (and they'll likely be serving an LDS mission soon). As a result, there have been ongoing renovation and redecoration projects at the house for the last several months. At first it was just the inside, but the last time I visited the front door had been painted a garish tangerine orange. It's weird. The weirdness will likely morph to sadness once they've actually moved out, but right now that still doesn't seem real to me.
They've been packing all their stuff, and tossing out all kinds of junk. Every time I go over, they have a new pile of my old stuff for me to look through, and either take it with me or throw it away. As a result, I've been reliving parts of my childhood, such as the big report I wrote on the Soviet Union in 6th grade which concluded with some comically strong anti-Communist statements, and most recently, putting my old WWF sheets on my bed (causing the He-Man pillowcase I've been using for over a decade to go into the closet for now). In many ways (especially considering how often I still get dinner and other food from them), it's like I'm living in a satellite extension of my parents' basement. I hope they don't move too far away.
Anyway...I'm sure you're all anxious for my HG review. Well, I liked it. I haven't read the books, so I can't compare it to the source material, but I'm not a snob about that kind of thing anyway. I have no interest in the Twilight franchise, but this movie was good enough that I can see myself reading the books someday.
But it turns out, maybe I have read the actual source material...the Book of Mormon prophet Enos describes how he "went to hunt beasts in the forests" (just like Katniss!), and his "soul hungered" (not clear if it was a game). In this case, the disembodied voice heard was the Lord, and He didn't lie, unlike Suzanne Collins's all-powerful, weird-bearded game creators who change the rules as they go (see Enos 1:2-6). But you've got to expect that some things will be changed.
This week's Sunday School lesson covers the lives of Enos and several other prophet-historians, including the one verse penned by Chemish (a name that sounds like it came right out of Hunger Games--somebody should really write some Chemish fan fiction). Go here for some info that will help you prepare.
This was a momentous thing for me, as it had been about 16 months since I had last seen a movie in a theater. That's right, I did not set foot in a cineplex in all of 2011. This was not a conscious boycott, not a deliberate fast; I just don't go to the movies that often. I'm much more of a TV guy. I'm not likely to suggest to my friends that we head to the theater, and I'm not a fan of going by myself. I did that, once, and saw the amazing Son of Rambow, a movie nobody saw (hence my alone-ness) but everyone should.
So when everyone else is catching the latest 3D blockbuster, I'm usually staying staying at home. The title of this post is actually an adaptation of a movie currently in theaters, another one that I'll probably never see. Jeff, Who Lives At Home tells the tale of a grown man who lives in his mom's basement, basically wasting away his humdrum life. Been there, done that. But I'll never be able to again--my parents are getting ready to sell the house they've lived in since before I was born. (Do you like how I've completely changed topics here?)
My dad retired last December, and with my youngest sibling being 22, my parents are looking to move to a house that better suits their current space needs (and they'll likely be serving an LDS mission soon). As a result, there have been ongoing renovation and redecoration projects at the house for the last several months. At first it was just the inside, but the last time I visited the front door had been painted a garish tangerine orange. It's weird. The weirdness will likely morph to sadness once they've actually moved out, but right now that still doesn't seem real to me.
They've been packing all their stuff, and tossing out all kinds of junk. Every time I go over, they have a new pile of my old stuff for me to look through, and either take it with me or throw it away. As a result, I've been reliving parts of my childhood, such as the big report I wrote on the Soviet Union in 6th grade which concluded with some comically strong anti-Communist statements, and most recently, putting my old WWF sheets on my bed (causing the He-Man pillowcase I've been using for over a decade to go into the closet for now). In many ways (especially considering how often I still get dinner and other food from them), it's like I'm living in a satellite extension of my parents' basement. I hope they don't move too far away.
Anyway...I'm sure you're all anxious for my HG review. Well, I liked it. I haven't read the books, so I can't compare it to the source material, but I'm not a snob about that kind of thing anyway. I have no interest in the Twilight franchise, but this movie was good enough that I can see myself reading the books someday.
But it turns out, maybe I have read the actual source material...the Book of Mormon prophet Enos describes how he "went to hunt beasts in the forests" (just like Katniss!), and his "soul hungered" (not clear if it was a game). In this case, the disembodied voice heard was the Lord, and He didn't lie, unlike Suzanne Collins's all-powerful, weird-bearded game creators who change the rules as they go (see Enos 1:2-6). But you've got to expect that some things will be changed.
This week's Sunday School lesson covers the lives of Enos and several other prophet-historians, including the one verse penned by Chemish (a name that sounds like it came right out of Hunger Games--somebody should really write some Chemish fan fiction). Go here for some info that will help you prepare.
Numbers don't lie
You know those people that they show on the early audition episodes of American Idol? The ones who are so committed to being a pop star, but are just plain terrible at singing? And Randy says, "Dude, that was terrible," and the kinder lady-judge says "Singing just isn't for you, sweetheart," and they're devastated, because it's the only thing they've ever wanted to do?
Well, that's me when it comes to filling out NCAA Tournament brackets. I LOVE March Madness. It's one of my favorite events of the year, sports or otherwise. And I used to think I was good at picking the winners, though I probably never really was. My futility reached its apex this year. I filled out 20 brackets this year, and here are the pitiful results:
On sites that let you create a bunch of entries, I use one as a baseline, where I pick zero upsets and see if any of my other brackets can do better than the selection committee. I filled out five bracket on Yahoo!; my baseline bracket finished in the 72nd percentile of all entries, but the best of the other four was in the 58th, and two of them were below the 20th.
Those four entries were all in groups with other people from church or work. My final placement in the groups: 5th out of 7, 9th out of 11, 11th out of 11, and 18th out of 20 (one of the two I "beat" in that group was someone who created an entry but didn't fill out their bracket). Pretty, pretty embarrassing performance.
I entered 10 brackets on ESPN; the baseline bracket finished in the 82nd percentile. I had one other entry that matched that performance, but six of the others finished in the 14th percentile or worse (with one in the bottom 1.5%). Yikes!
On the CBS site you can only submit one entry, and they don't give percentiles, but over one million people did better than me, and my final score was about one-third that of the winner. I finished in the 23rd percentile on my lone entry with the Deseret News. And finally, Fox Sports lets you enter three brackets. No percentiles given here, but it appears I had one awful bracket, one average one, and one that was actually pretty good (around 25,000th place out of what was probably around 350k entries). But that's a pretty poor silver lining when stacked up with the other results.
Some might argue that I'd do better if I didn't fill out so many brackets, but on these multi-pick sites I always fill out the first one the way I would if it was the only one I was doing, then tweak things from there on the others. So the truth is, I'm really, really bad at this.
All this number crunching made me a little sad, but then I thought of number munching, and that made me happy. If you're around my age, I guarantee the above picture and this video will make you smile too. No matter how bad I do, I will continue to fill out as many brackets as I can. I'm already looking forward to next March. Just 11 months away!
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Hoffmann of the Month update
Knock knock.
Who's there?
April.
April who?
April Fool's!
So, it turns out I'm NOT related to the inventor of the knock-knock joke. At least, not that I know of. There is no such person as Pirla Sofol Hofmann. Some of you may have noticed that that is an anagram for April Fool's Hofmann. The picture is of early-20th century poet/humorist Dorothy Parker, an appropriate choice since in addition to National Humor Month, April is also National Poetry Month.
I'll have a new "Hoffmann of the Month" in May, and I promise that one will be a real person. In the meantime, I want to know...did I fool you?
Who's there?
April.
April who?
April Fool's!
So, it turns out I'm NOT related to the inventor of the knock-knock joke. At least, not that I know of. There is no such person as Pirla Sofol Hofmann. Some of you may have noticed that that is an anagram for April Fool's Hofmann. The picture is of early-20th century poet/humorist Dorothy Parker, an appropriate choice since in addition to National Humor Month, April is also National Poetry Month.
I'll have a new "Hoffmann of the Month" in May, and I promise that one will be a real person. In the meantime, I want to know...did I fool you?
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Hoffmann of the Month: April
The "Hoffmann of the Month" for April is the one and only Pirla Sofol Hofmann!
You're probably saying to yourself, "who?" And I would've been right there with you until a few months ago. (I first found out about Pirla in January, but saved her for April because it's National Humor Month. Keep reading and you'll see why that's relevant.) The late Mrs. Hofmann is my first relative to receive the monthly honor, but it's a distant relation and only by marriage, so it's not too nepotistic. Her husband Bernard's grandfather was first cousins with my great-great-great grandfather. So we're barely even related.
Anyway...my mom has gotten way into family history the last few years, and as a result has made some connections with descendants of some of our distant family like Pirla. One "cousin" even sent her three volumes of Pirla's journal a few months ago. I got to look at them a little bit before my mom returned them.
Pirla Sofol was born in what is now Bulgaria in 1881, and grew up in poverty. In 1901 she moved all the way to Germany and ended up working for a while as a nanny until she got married in 1903 to the aforementioned Bernard Hofmann. Their first child died a few days after he was born, and their only other child, Otto, was born in 1905. In 1908 they emigrated to America, eventually settling in Ohio.
Pirla was likely very intelligent--her journals are in English, so she was probably fluent in at least three languages. However, her journals are also pretty dull--mainly just a chronicle of the relative drudgery of her day-to-day life as an early 20th-century wife and mother. She shares very little about her thoughts or emotions, her goals or her interests. Except for one key passage from January of 1917...
In this entry, Pirla describes how it was a particularly harsh winter, too cold for Otto (who would've been 11 at the time) to be outside much. Bernard worked long hours trying to provide for his family, so day after day it was just mother and son cooped up in the house trying to keep each other entertained. In her journal, Pirla describes a game she made up that quickly became her son's favorite. They called it "Who's there?" From the journal:
One of us will knock on the parlor table, mimicking the sound of a knock on the door. The other will respond "Who's there?" and then the one who knocked will name an object, for example "Lettuce." The other will say "Lettuce who?" after which the object will be altered to something different. "Lettuce praise the Lord." Otto will sometimes be the one to knock but he especially loves to play the "Who's there" part.That's right...a relative of mine may have been the creator of the ultimate groan-inducing pun, the knock-knock joke! Our familial bonds may be tenuous, but she's definitely my spiritual kin. The interesting thing is that, if you look into the history of knock-knock jokes (and I'm sure you all have), they're generally believed to have originated in the 1930s. (Unless you buy the whole "Shakespeare invented them" argument presented in that link, but come on--that was NOT a knock-knock joke.) But Pirla Hofmann seems to have come up with the idea almost 20 years earlier!
I plan to look into this further, and hopefully I'll have an update on all this at some point.. I didn't get to look through all of the journals (and neither did my mom) before the owner (our "cousin") wanted them returned. I feel lucky I was able to even copy down that one passage. I've emailed them to see if we can borrow them again, or if they'd be willing to scan or photocopy some of the pages, but so far no response. Internet research has been largely fruitless; after scouring Google for hours, I did find the above photo (which I'm about 90% confident is actually Pirla), but nothing about her taste in jokes.
But still, this is amazing to me. However distant the relation may be, I'm proud to be connected to the (maybe) inventor of one of the most classic forms of comedy of all time! Congratulations to Pirla Hofmann--the "Hoffmann of the Month" for April! It's well deserved.
[April 3, 2012: UPDATE--I've uncovered some new information about Pirla. Check it out here.]
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