Project Mayhem Post

Today is my day to post at Project Mayhem, and since we took the kids to their first NFL game yesterday, I'm asking you guys about books and sports. Head on over, to see if you can answer my question.

Draft Drama

Was there something big on TV last night? I heard there was a big wedding. Did I watch? Hell no. I only care about Princes and Princesses if they wield magic swords. I did hear that the Princess had a lot of knuckle fat when the Prince slipped the ring on her finger.

No, I'm not kidding. That's what they said on the radio this morning.

Last night I was busy flipping back and forth between the NFL Draft, and the Atlanta Hawks closing out the Orlando Magic in the NBA playoffs. Both were dramatic scenarios.

Yes. I am a D&D nerd who loves video games, fantasy novels, Star Wars, and all things dorky, but I also love sports and I'm not ashamed of any of it.

There is a great story behind the Hawks. A sports writer for the Orlando Sentinel, Mike Bianchi, lambasted the team for their alleged mental weakness, and basically said they would never be able to stand up to the Magic. The Hawks have traditionally struggled against Orlando in the playoffs in recent years. The story is that this writer, who is apparently about 4'10" was in the locker room last night before the game, and a fight nearly broke out.

I don't really care about that. I'm just glad the Hawks were able to motivate themselves to get past their nemesis. Now they're off to Chicago.

The NFL Draft is also interesting. I know most of my friends and readers are women writers, so I'll try not to bore you with all the details. I do think the draft makes for some great stories though. There are so many disparate characters involved, and so many cogs and wheels spinning, and it can be really interesting to see the last minute deals taking place.

This year was quite different because of the labor situation, but it was lots of fun watching NFL commissioner Roger Goodell get nearly booed off the stage.

Here's what happened with my three teams:

The Atlanta Falcons made an aggressive trade up to get Alabama Wide Receiver Julio Jones. I like Jones and think he will be a great player in the NFL, but my personal opinion is that we gave up too much to get him.

The Minnesota Vikings took Florida State Quarter Back Christian Ponder with the twelfth pick. They did not have to make any trades, as last year's dismal record earned us that pick. I get that we need a QB, but I was really hoping that Jake Locker would be there, and am disappointed we couldn't get a player I already knew and loved. I don't know much about Ponder.

The Seattle Seahawks drafted Alabama Guard James Carpenter with the twenty fifth pick. This one has me stumped. No one drafts guards in the first round.

Anyway, here endeth my sports rant. I've got to get to writing (for real). Please have a wonderful weekend!

Bracketology

As I watched the announcement of the NCAA men's basketball tournament on CBS last night, it dawned on me that making the tournament was a bit like getting published.

There's a lot of hard work involved, sure, and a lot of waiting for other people to make decisions that you have no control over, and frankly sometimes seem ridiculous, but honestly, it's sometimes entirely inexplicable why some teams make it, and others don't.

You have automatic qualifying conferences, at large bids, and a bunch of other formulae and reasons why certain teams make it, but they're generally quite hard for most people to understand, and there is inevitably someone left pissed off for getting skipped over. This year it's the University of Colorado, Virgina Tech, St. Mary's, the University of Alabama, and I'm sure several others.

Then you have the teams that probably shouldn't have made it, but did. I'm not knowledgeable enough about college hoops to judge this one for myself, but all the experts say that UAB, VCU, and USC don't belong.

Anyway, this needs to be a quick post today, but I think this sounds a lot like publishing. All my published friends say that first you have to write a good book, work really hard, and then there must be a sort of a perfect storm of timing, luck, and fundamentally subjective taste. I don't have any reason to doubt them.

You've got authors like James Patterson (think Ohio State), who can essentially write anything, and it will be published, and be commercially successful. Then you've got authors like Brunonia Barry, or Christopher Paolini, whose road to publication did not go through the normal routes, but who still found success (think Butler, last year). Finally, you've got authors like Amanda Hocking, who find incredible success without entering the traditional publishing waters (I'm not sure I have a perfect basketball analogy for this one, but maybe this would be the winner of the NIT).

What do you guys think? Am I nuts? Did anyone get left out of the tournament that you would have liked to see make it? Is there anyone who made it that you think does not belong?

Disappointment

The title of this post has nothing to do with writing, thank god. I'm just disappointed by a terrible weekend of NFL football. Only one of the four teams I was pulling for actually won their game. And it's especially sad that I was only pulling for the New York Jets because I hate the Patriots.

Oh well, moving on before I make any enemies. I've got some great things coming up this week. I'm going to be interviewing Bryan Russell, who is the closest thing I have to a mentor in my so called writing career, and he is going to be sharing and analyzing his query as well this week.

Then, at some point, as soon as I can respond to her questions, I will be interviewed by JM Leotti, over at her blog, Restless Spirit. I intend to interview and promote her as well, over here, but I don't think I'm going to be able to fit that post in this week.

Anyway, I'm off to do some writing before I have to get to work. Scroll down for an awesome drawing of me by Vic if you haven't already seen the post from this weekend.

P.S. I notice I've gained several new followers over the weekend. Welcome! I will try to make it to all of your blogs as soon as I can.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Before I throw my (far less than) two cents in, watch this video:



In case you hadn't already heard or you had no idea what it meant, the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis Minnesota collapsed on Sunday. It had been leaking since two feet of snow were dumped over the area on Friday. I lived in Minnesota for years, and am a huge fan of the Minnesota Vikings, the principal professional sports team that uses the facilities at the Dome (the Minnesota Twins played there until Target Field was built last year).

I'm not shocked in the least bit. Why? You might ask. Because, I would tell you, whatever engineer designed that building was a moron. The roof is made of Teflon cloth, which is space age enough, I suppose, but what supports it? What keeps it from sagging in the middle? You would think steel girders of some kind would provide the structural integrity to hold the roof up in adverse conditions, or at least some kind of flying butress system that would support the weight from outside, using steel cabling to connect to the panels. But no. The roof of the Metrodome is supported by air pressure. This brilliant idea means that the roof has collapsed no less than 5 times since the Dome was built.

I could go on about this a lot longer, because there are many implications behind this newest occurrence, some good, some bad. Hopefully it means the Vikings will get a new stadium with a retractable roof that can support its own weight. The terrible thing, for now, is that the game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New York Giants that was supposed to be played at the Metrodome on Sunday will now be played tonight, in Detroit. Anyone who knows anything about football knows what a huge unfair advantage that is for the Giants. And how badly it screws other teams over. The Vikings don't really matter because they are essentially mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but what about NFC East teams like Philadelphia and Dallas? Or teams with better records than the Giants, like New Orleans and Atlanta? Suddenly the Giants have to play one less away game than everybody else.

Not fair. Anyway, here endeth the rant. Enjoy this aerial photo of the Dome's collapsed roof for a moment before you head to the next blog:

Camp Erin

As a died-in-the-wool Minnesota Vikings fan I REALLY REALLY don't want to post about Favre-la-palooza today. I AM actually quite glad that he has finally returned to Eden Prairie and is with the team, since I know he will help us win games this year, which is sort of the point of sports, but honestly, I'm pretty tired of hearing about him. I could go on for a long time about the subject, but I'm confident that very few of you will care.

So I'm going to talk about something else. It involves a different guy who is probably too old to still be playing his sport. His name is Jamie Moyer. Jamie is a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, a team which, as an Atlanta Braves fan, I hate by definition. But I don't really HATE them. I just want them to lose ... often.

Of course I don't know Jamie Moyer personally, but I did catch a special on ESPN last night that made me realize that he and his wife are one amazing pair of human beings. You can see some of it here. Their foundation, The Moyer Foundation, sponsors something called Camp Erin. Camp Erin is a system of camps around the country that helps young children who have lost a parent or other loved one grieve. It is the largest bereavement camp in the world and of course the campers, ages 6-17, get to stay free of charge.

I don't have time to write about this in great detail but I will say that it is a wonderful foundation. My own mom died when I was eleven years old and I would have loved to have somewhere safe like that to go and to experience my grief with others who had experienced similar loss, rather than feeling completely alone and like it was me against the world.

A lot of athletes have wonderful foundations that do great things for the world, and I applaud them. But this is the only thing like this I've ever heard of, and since it's near to my heart, I find it kind of special.

I hope it's okay with you all that I write about this kind of thing from time to time. I was discussing the topic with a reader yesterday (Lisa of In Pencil, visit her blog, she's awesome) and we agreed that was one of the things we liked about my blog. Yes I started it to be about queries. Bad ones at first. Then I started featuring guest posts with good queries, then eventually I wrote one myself. Anyway the point is that the main goal of this blog is still to help other novice writers avoid the mistakes I made, and to learn from them. But you can't write about writing every single day, at least I can't.

So I hope you guys don't mind if I throw in some humor or entertainment, or even something serious like this from time to time. I promise to keep the Friday successful query guest posts coming for as long as I am able.

The Milennium Trilogy

Some of you may remember I discussed this novel (the first one) briefly a few weeks ago. I have since finished reading it and have now discovered that apparently, according to an Entertainment Weekly article, this trilogy is the "hottest book on the planet".

Admittedly I have only read the first of the three but I don't quite understand why. Don't get me wrong, the book is quite good, but it's not the best thing since sliced bread and its commercial success baffles me a little. I do wonder whether becoming a more and more experienced writer has ruined me as a reader. A few short years ago I probably never would have noticed the drawbacks, like the achingly slow beginning and the physical relationship between the two main characters feeling contrived and unnecessary. Now they stand out to me, glaringly so. I can't decide whether or not that's a bad thing.

There is an interesting twist to the real life story behind these novels. The author, Steig Larsson, died before even the first one was published. He left behind only a girlfriend (common law wife) of 30 years, his father and his brother. There is now a legal battle over his estate, which with the success of his novels and the forthcoming Hollywood films (there are already Swedish language versions) is quite large. Sweden has no community property laws that would support the girlfriend's case but she holds a unique trump card, or at least claims to: She says she has an unpublished fourth book saved on a laptop that belonged to Larsson when he was still alive. It will be quite interesting to see what happens with that.

If you like crime thrillers go ahead and pick this novel up (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). I haven't read the other two but will probably pick them up even if I was slightly underwhelmed by the first.

Meanwhile some updates:

I've joined twitter. TH Mafi made me do it because she doesn't spacebook. Find me @MatthewMRush.

Speaking of Tahereh her guest blog post will be going up tomorrow morning. It's going to be epic so don't forget to come back for that. In the meantime go read her blog.

The US have made it though to the knockout round in the World Cup, which isn't a huge surprise unless you consider how hard the referees were making it for our side.

What this means is that I'll be at the bar on Saturday afternoon swilling beer with my male friends and getting surly.

Speaking of US soccer our team needs a better nickname. We're known as "The Yanks" which is really lame compared to other teams nicknames like: "Three Lions", "The Azzurri", "Le Bleu", "Bafani, Bafani" and so on.

And just to beat a dead horse regarding the World Cup I saw this in twitter yesterday: This World Cup is working out like WW2 - France have forfeited, the USA turned up late, and England are left to fight the Germans!

Have a great day everyone and don't forget to come back tomorrow!

Sometimes it is a Matter of Life and Death

Today I'm going to talk about soccer, or rather futbol. Most of you have probably never heard of Andres Escobar:

But you might remember Carlos Valderrama, or at least his awesome hair:

Both men were members of the Colombian national soccer team in the early 90's that was favored to win the World Cup in 1994. I figure this is an appropriate topic for the times since we our about to move out of the group stage and into the knockout round of this year's FIFA World Cup.

Andres Escobar was a simple family man. A devout Catholic who excelled on the pitch not only in skill but in his composure he was known as El Caballero del Futbol which means the gentleman of football. He was a kind and respectful person who cared deeply about his country and its people.

He was not related to the Colombian Druglord Pablo Escobar but their paths did cross. In the 80's the rise of the popularity of Cocaine for recreational drug use in the United States was so steep that the Colombian producers and traffickers were getting rich, fast. Any criminal organization with that much money is going to have to find a way to launder it. Club Soccer is big business and matches in places like Colombia at the time could deal with millions of dollars: in cash.

To make a long story short Pablo Escobar eventually bought the club team Atlético Nacional of Medellin that Andres played for. Pablo apparently loved soccer and went around the poor communities building fields for the children to learn the sport on. Pablo Escobar actually did many great things for the poor people of his country with the money he earned from the Cocaine Trade but let us not forget that he was a gangster and a ruthless murderer.

With the money that was coming in Colombian Soccer became suddenly relevant in the late 80's. They had the money to keep their best players and to bring in some others from around the world. Colombian Futbol had never stood up to powerhouses like Brazil and Argentina but now all of a sudden they mattered. With these resources Atlético Nacional won the Copa Libertadores in 1989. The Copa is the most prestigious tournament in South American Football, one of the most widely watched sporting events in the world, and essentially equates to the European Cup.

In 1994 the FIFA World Cup took place in the United States. Colombia entered the tournament ranked fourth in the World, heavily favored to make it deep into the tournament. Life back home in Colombia was going crazy. The whole country was in turmoil. Pablo Escobar and many of his empire's soldiers had been murdered by new, even more ruthless gangsters after he had finally stopped murdering politicians in order to change the constitution and eliminate extradition to the U.S. Violence was rampant and the fervor over the national team's chances in the World Cup was at a fever pitch.

Andres was the Captain of the team and the pillar of its defensive back line. They were an excellent side with stars like Midfielder Carlos Valderrama and Striker Faustino Asprilla, but they had just lost their amazingly athletic keeper René Higuita when he was arrested for visiting Pablo Escobar in prison earlier that year. In fact the entire team had visited Pablo and played soccer with him on the prison's field, but only Higuita was caught by the media.

The loss of the star goalkeeper and the violence in Colombia combined with threats from gangsters and gamblers who wagered astronomical amounts of money on the Colombian side's chances in the cup combined to place an insurmountable pressure on the team, its players and especially its captain, Andres. There were death threats coming in and one player even received news that his brother had been murdered. All of the pressure piled up unfairly on the team and caused them to lose their opening match to Romania.

Things got worse and the violence mounted back home. Children were kidnapped, murders continued and more threats were made. Then the unthinkable (in the eyes of futbol fans) occurred. The Colombians lost to the far inferior and lower ranked United States Team when Andres accidentally scored on his own goal by trying to deflect a shot by U.S. Midfielder John Harkes. The team never made it out of the group stage and returned home in shame and terror.

One night soon after Andres went to a club with some friends trying to show himself to the people and atone for his mistake but he was murdered, shot to death in his car by gangster Cocaine Traffickers who had lost large sums of money gambling on the matches. He was only 27 when he died. He had been engaged to be married and was being considered for transfer to AC Milan in Italy, one of the wealthiest and most prestigious club teams in the entire world. His life was cut tragically short.

So sometimes it really is a matter of life and death. Can you imagine being murdered for a mistake you made in a sporting match?

Here are a couple of links:

Andres Escobar on Wikipedia.

Pablo Escobar on Wikipedia.

The Copa Libertadores on Wikipedia.

If you are curious to know more about this sad tale check your local listings for the ESPN 30 for 30 special documentary: The Two Escobars.