What's in a Name?

Fantasy football season is here!  As anyone who has ever “played” this great game knows, it’s not about how strong a team you draft, or about the in-season moves you make, or whether or not you hoist the trophy at season’s end.  The most important part of fantasy football is the team name!

The team name is your theme.  It’s what your team is known for.  It’s more than a moniker.  It’s a lifestyle.  A way of being.  It’s iconic. It’s John Cusack’s boombox over his head playing “In Your Eyes” for Diane Court. Yeah, it’s that important.

I put a lot of thought into my team name each year.  I take the top 8 best team names I can conjure, place them into a bracket, and then whittle it down until the best one comes out on top.  There are three different categories of team names when considering what effect you are going for: pride, funny, and just plain questionable.  

First, let’s start with questionable.  Every year players throw out a name that makes the others in the league scratch their head.  (This is what I am normally guilty of. The year I won league, my team name was Bullseyes, because everybody had their best game against me.  Nobody got it. Yep, questionable.)  Take this year’s entrant: Electric Mud.  There’s gotta be a story, right?  Brad is employing some kind of pun, right?  Is it a play off of Debbie Gibson’s 1989 album “Electric Youth”?  Does he still have an infatuation with the greatest female teen idol of all time? 

 

All I know is that without some semblance of explanation, “Electric Mud” is questionable, maybe even brilliant, much like my last-place finish last year with Dalvin and the Chipmunks.  Just like the game of Hearts, it takes brilliance to finish dead last. Who knew Dalvin Cook was going to suck that bad?

Next, let’s talk about serious names.  My team name for years was Steel Curtain, in honor of the great 1970’s Pittsburgh Steelers defenses that dominated the NFL.  I still get emotional thinking about Mean Joe Greene giving that kid a Coke.  Steel Curtain represented more than a team name.  It was an attitude of toughness to which I expected my players to rise. One of the guys in our league has the team name Thunder Hogs.  It makes sense, since he is a huge Arkansas Razorbacks fan.  Obviously he’s throwing some love at his alma mater.  Respect.

 

Finally, there’s the best category, funny.  This could include movie titles, fads, or my favorite, puns.  Let’s start with movie titles.  One of our players’ team is named The Goonies.  Great movie, shows a slightly whimsical side.  This is a great team name. One of our guys years ago had the team name The High Plains Drifters.  Great Clint Eastwood flick! 

That’s doing it right.  There are fads as well, like Kelly’s team “Blu Blockers” like what the sombrero-wearing LA based rapper Dr. Geek and a few others way back in the late ‘80s and ‘90’s wore.  Blu Blockers. That’s an awesome name.  

 

Last year Kelly took a shot at Kevin Durant with his Durant’s Cupcakes.  Love it!

I saved the best for last: puns.  Kirk’s team name this year is Where the Cleats Have No Name, which is a play off the famous song “Where the Streets Have No Name” by U2.  Some of his past names include Sparkling Apple Spiders and Lizards of Oz.  Even though he wins the league more often than not, with names like these, he doesn’t have to worry about wins and losses.  In fact, I wish he wouldn’t.  

Living Life Again

It's been nearly five years since I've written on this blog.  Why?  Here's the story:

I found out I had cancer in early August of 2014.  Not coincidentally, my last blog post was less than a week before.  Being diagnosed with the "C" word can do a number to a person. From my perspective, I was in the fight of my life.  That meant that everything else in my life (anything frivolous, that is--not important things like family) got put on hold.  And it's a real shame, because I was on a roll!

Martin Sisters Publishing had picked up my first novel The Mentor the year before and I watched in amazement as it climbed up the amazon charts.  I found out that getting accepted wasn't the finish line.  It is just the first of many hurdles to cross.  That's where the real work began.  As the book inched it's way towards its publication date, promoting it took front and center.  This meant book signings, getting it into stores, and a speaking tour.

From early 2013 up until August of 2014, I kept myself busy not only promoting The Mentor, but capitalizing on its success by writing its sequel, The Captain, which promised to be even better.  In some ways it was.  People wanted to know what happens next to "Vincent Preston" and I was happy to take what little time I had to continue the story.  That's when I was knocked for a loop with the "C" word.

Now, all of my time was taken up with the fight of my life. The Captain, which was, as I said earlier, in ways better than The Mentor, never had a chance.  Instead of doing book signings, I wore a mask out in public to keep from getting sick.  Instead of going on another speaking tour, I sat listlessly in my easy chair as the chemo punched holes in my brain like Swiss cheese. (I still have a hard time remembering certain events in my life, though it is getting better.)  Instead of finishing the trilogy, which was the plan all along, I sat at a computer screen and deleted each page from book number three I turned out, which wasn't many.  It just wasn't any good.  Here I had spent a lifetime honing my craft, and I couldn't even put together a simple plot.  It was depressing.

Though I was able to get The Captain into Brace Books in Ponca City, that was it.  It languished on the shelves just as the title sat untouched on amazon.com.  All of that hard work for naught.  I felt like I had wasted such a good piece of literature by not being able to give it my full promotional attention.  And here's the worst of it.  As for future books, I didn't know what was going to happen.

Even if I could write another book, I didn't know when I would start feeling like myself again and have the energy to promote it.  Anything I put out was going to flop.  On top of that, once I defeated the big "C" I didn't know if/when it would come back again.  It was a tough feeling of defeat that forced my hand.  I made the decision to stop writing books.

I didn't tell anybody.  I couldn't even tell my wife.  It was a purgatory and I felt helpless.

Every now-and-then, friends and fans who meant well would ask me when my next book was coming out.  Each time it made me want to cry.  It had taken me 15 years to break into the industry, and after a little bit of success, BAM!  It was all taken away.  I felt it was my ethical duty to abstain from publishing anything further.  I couldn't take having another failure like The Captain, and the hopelessness that came along with knowing I had something really good that wouldn't get read.  And that was only possible if my stinking brain could even marshal a competent thought to write in the first place!

So each time somebody asked, I smiled and played it off as best as I could.

They say it takes a couple of years after finishing chemo for the body to start feeling normal again.  That is true-ish...  I finished my chemo in the fall of '15 and took up oil painting as a substitute for my creative outlet.  Or maybe it was just my escape from not writing.  My excuse?  I told myself to accept the fact that I was no longer a writer.  Despite selling quite a few paintings, I couldn't call myself an artist, since I have such a great respect for true art and the masters, but lingering in the back of my mind for five years, nagging at me, pulling at my conscience was an irrefutable fact; I am still a writer.  No matter what I told myself about what I could or couldn't do anymore, writing was still in my blood.

In the summer of 2018, my inhibitions began to change.  Outside of The Mentor and The Captain, I had four other books that I had written over the years with the intent of publishing when I had my first break.  One was the very first book I ever wrote, titled The Unwritten Rules of Moccasin Crick and a second one was my most recent book (outside of The Captain) titled Four Sycamores.  These two books had been stored on a flash drive which was collecting dust.

It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but one hot July day last year, I plugged in the flash drive and pulled up Four Sycamores.  I think my intention was to just read it to see if it was any good.  Then I remembered that I had received a rejection letter from a publisher years prior, and the editor actually took the time to point out a few of my writing flaws with this book.  Well, rereading the letter led to a few revisions here and there, you know, just to right a few wrongs, but the I got into it, and the more I read, the more I revised, and in a beautiful two weeks of being totally mesmerized by the story I had once created, my passion for writing leapfrogged my inhibitions.  After I was done, I immediately got to work on Moccasin Crick and turned this book full of juvenile creativity into something I was very proud of.  I put my flash drive away and wondered what had just happened.

Another school year came and went, and in June, while visiting a Barnes and Noble in Wichita, I found myself in the publishing section.  It just so happened that I came home with the 2019 copy of Writer's Market.  I spent the last month marking it up with a highlighter, just like in the old days before I was a published author.  I imagine it's a lot like a band that is a one-hit wonder, who breaks up over a petty complication, and who ends up back together in the old garage, cranking out new material, or at least new spins on old material.

So yesterday I sent off my first query letter to a literary agency.  Tonight I sent off my fifth.  As this blog entry stretches into the early-morning hours of tomorrow, I can see that the purgatory into which I imprisoned myself is gone.  I can feel the excitement coursing through me that will keep my eyes open when I finally do go to bed.  I don't have a crystal ball.  I don't know if an agent will want to pick me up and help me write the next chapter in my writing career.  I don't know if a publisher will find either of these two books enticing, but no matter what, I am writing again, and it feels great!

Rocky

AMC has been showing the Rocky movies a lot lately.  In honor of the upcoming school year, I dedicate this blog to grading each of the six Rocky movies.

1. Rocky A
One word: Oscars.  'nuff said.

2. Rocky II C
They had to make it.  America demanded that Rocky finish the Great American Dream.  Predictable ending.

3. Rocky III D-
Known as the one with Mr. T.  Honestly, how does this movie progress Rocky's characterization?

4. Rocky IV B+
East versus West.  Good versus Bad.  It could be said that this movie is what brought down the Berlin Wall.

5. Rocky V F
Rocky demotes himself to street fighting his protégé?  It's because of how bad that this movie was that a sixth one had to be made.  It had to be.

6. Rocky Balboa B
Ties up loose ends.  Plus it brings Rocky full circle: the end when he gives the champ all he wants, Rocky doesn't care whether he won or lost, just like in the original.  He's above all that, which is a great way for him to go out.  Just as long as they don't make a seventh movie!

Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 8

I too would look this content if I had caught 6 trophies, including the Manitoba record!

 

Day 8 “Secrets”

            On the last day I caught only one fish, a pike in Monster Cove that may have reached thirty inches if put in traction.  The sun shone all day long, which should have warmed the northern coves, but that cold front held on, as did that eastern breeze, and the coves never really warmed up, and the fish stayed deep where they were out of reach.

            Spending eight days up here has taught me some of the lake’s secrets.  For example, southern, eastern, and western coves don’t hold fish this early in the season.  Then, if it’s a good-looking northern cove but you’ve only managed to pull out a hammer handle or two in the inlet, there will be no big fish further in.  It’s quite simple, the big fish would have cannibalized the smaller ones on the way to his nap in the sun back in the cove.  Scientifically speaking, the water needs to be at least sixty degrees to get the hogs to come up from the depths.  If it’s not, it’s a better use of your time to head back to the cabin and play horseshoes.

            I learned to take it slow while piloting a boat in unknown water.

            I learned that a cabin and all the creature comforts of home are all dependent on the fuel supply.  One bottle of propane is in actuality a three-hour egg timer for how long before you become a cave man.

            I learned that northern pike know that they are on top of the food chain.  That’s why a pike will follow a bait all the way up to the boat, ignore the fishermen looking down  on him, and then thrash whatever lure had the audacity to swim in its home.  That's also why a pike with the tail of a five pound lake trout sticking out of its gullet will still go after your lure.

            Considering that last point, I learned that I should never, ever swim in these waters.  Picture Canada’s version of Jaws.

            I learned that when you are on a boat in the water in a northern lake, islands look just like the mainland.  You better take a map, a GPS, a compass (especially for cloudy days) and still pay attention to where you are.

            I learned that we are subject to God’s weather schedule   Staying dry means staying warm, (a lesson I have relearned many times between deer hunting and trout fishing in the mountains) and that everything, the fishing and the fisherman’s comfort level, is dependent on what the weather decides to do. 

            Still, we received the sunshine we prayed for and reaped few benefits.  I find it somehow fitting that we were baffled on the last day when we expected to catch the moose snot out of them.  It’s fitting that a monstrous lake such as Kamuchawie, with its maze of islands and boneyards of dead trees was unwilling to give up all her secrets.  The next party will have flown in the next day after the float plane flew us out, and they will have found success and had their share of head-scratching moments.  And just when they think they have it all figured out, like we did on day six, the northern pike will turn on them, just like they did on us numerous times this trip, the last day especially. 

            We will all go to our respective homes with our thirsts quenched, but also with an immense hunger for the secrets that hide uncovered beneath the surface of the water that we were only able to scratch.  As for myself, I did answer one question: I am not too old to fish.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 7

That must have been one big fish!

 

Day 7 “The Skatch”

After an unsuccessful morning of trolling the bay to the northeast of our cabin, a morning when I snapped a bait casting rod in half while casting (I so wanted to make up a fish story to go along with the busted rod,) the two boats split up.  Dick and Bryce ran over to Secret Lake while Chris and I ran over to the Skatch (Saskatchewan) side of the lake to check out a skinny cove we had pinpointed on the map.  Dick and Bryce had had success on it a few days before, and I told Chris that I wanted to say that I’ve been in Saskatchewan.

The cove turned into a small mud-bottomed stream with plenty of depth (3-4 feet) and no current.  The stream becomes no wider than the length of the boat.  To add to the difficulty, large boulders lay strewn throughout its course, making navigation a nightmare.  To add to that, mostly cloudy skies and a little ripple from the wind obscured the navigator’s view in the bow, so that we couldn’t see a boulder until it was almost under the boat.

I’ll admit that at first I had to wonder if it was worth working our way so far into this stream until Chris hooked and released a forty-two inch, twenty pound chunk of a northern on the fly rod again.  We would motor upstream twenty yards, catch a few, move up again, until re ran out of real estate.

The lily pads were just starting to come to the surface.  We figured in a few weeks the whole inlet would be choked with them and boats would be cut off from such miraculous water.  I say miraculous because there was no way such large fish should have been in such a tiny stream.  I’m sure the forty-two incher planned to eat the smaller pike that made their way up the stream.  Since we didn’t catch many small ones, we assumed the big ones were gorging themselves, cleaning out the creek.

Grass lined the bank and stretched out for five feet from land, making great hiding spots for loons and hungry pike big enough to eat them.  We got creative with our approach.  Chris tied on a topwater lure that looked like a yellow and red drift boat and amused both of us when a big swirl in the grass announced another monster hookup.  I figure that the big pike use this grass as a garage to park tail first so they could see anything swim by and ambush it, whether that is unsuspecting prey or watercraft.

Half-way up the stream, it finally dawned on us to film these big pike crushing our baits.  Chris shot film of me catching one on a buzz bait while I filmed him catching one on his last red and white squid fly.  This was a visual keepsake to remind us of just how violent these fish are.

When we returned to camp, we started a camp fire to make a vegetable stew, since the stove’s propane supply was empty.  In fact we were working on our last tank of propane for power, which had to last us yet another night.  We had been rationing the propane as well as possible since the first day, saving it only for washing dishes and taking showers.  We were quickly becoming cave men.

As the stew cooked on the open flames, Chris shot video of what can only be considered a Yeti who was pushing over dead trees and yelling.  Since the Yeti was just over the ridge, they never got a look at me…um, er, I mean it.  Checking for footprints was inconclusive.  Perhaps a you tube video will surface and give more clues.



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 6

A New Manitoba Record!

 

Day 6 “49 Is the New 43”

            “Forty-one may be a trophy, but thirty-five will absolutely rip your arm off,” I said as Chris hauled in the first of three forty plus-inch fish he would pull in that afternoon.  Monster Cove was absolutely on fire!  After a successful morning of trolling for lake trout, following by an unsuccessful venture down the river that runs out of Lake Kamuchawie, we had our usual late lunch at 3:00 and didn’t get out of the cabin until after 4:00 that afternoon.  The good news was that the clouds had finally parted and we aimed at making a killing with the pike.

            First a note on the setting accompanying the boat ride to Monster Cove.  On the way to Monster Cove are the four small islands that give boaters a visual reminder that there is a reef to cross.  It’s like boating through the closing jaws of a monster.  On the other side of the jaws of death, all the trees are burned from the ’05 fire.  They stand upright like white bones sticking out of the ground, ominous femurs from a slaughterhouse that warn others not to enter through the gates or face the consequences of the monsters beyond.  Not that we listen.

            As if to punctuate that point, there is a reef with one white rock the size of a watermelon sticking up out of the water right before the entrance to the slaughterhouse, a depth charge left over from a long ago Canadian war perhaps.  Twice at cruising speed I’ve focused on the teeth of the reef and missed the depth charge by mere feet.  But if your boat makes it through to the other side and into the boneyard unscathed, ahead lies Monster Cove, a place with pike as scary as its name. 

            For the first time in days we had sunshine, and for the first time since we were dropped off nearly a week ago, there was no discernable wind.  It was by far the best day we were to have on the entire trip.  Monster Cove took on a mirror reflection of the bones lining its banks.  This led us to believe that topwater lures would again be the ticket.  They weren’t.

            Apparently the gurgle…gurgle…gurgle of a Top Raider, or the clack…clack…clacking of a buzz bait only disturbed the peaceful nature of this graveyard.  The fish didn’t find them appealing, and I didn’t want to waste time being an intruder in nature as opposed to part of nature, so I again went to the in-line spinners and wigglers and spoons that casted like cow bells and must have sounded to the fish like dinner bells.  We boated no fish under thirty-two inches, and Chris caught his fish of the trip, a forty-three inch monster pike that inhaled a spoon that looked to resemble a fish’s red gills. 

A fish that big takes a team effort to land., one on the rod and the other on the net.  As soon as the fish is netted, the anger drops the rod, grabs the slimy fish-handling gloves, the mouth spreader, and the hook remover.  While the net man does everything he can to keep the monster from twisting and turning in the net and getting tangled, the man with the tools says a little prayer and puts his hands within reach of the monster’s razor-sharp teeth.  Measurements, weighing, pictures, and reviving the behemoth, and it’s a five-minute rest in the boat as the scene is replayed over and over, and high fives are given out as heartbeats slowly come back down.

Then Chris’ fish of the trip was replaced by a behemoth forty-nine inch Laestrygonian pike.  Chris had casted another long, ugly-looking fly and was stripping it in slowly, tantalizingly, knowing that the hovering motion was too much for these monsters to resist.  When the pike hit the fly, Chris set the hook and knew immediately it was a good one, but he truly had no idea what he had on the line. 

While Chris was fighting the monster, the glare from the sun kept him from seeing it.  I caught a glimpse of it and made the mistake of saying out loud, “Holy cow!  That thing is fifty inches!”  Immediately I wished I could take it back because I didn’t want to put more pressure on Chris.  I know that if Chris had said that to me and I hadn’t seen it yet, I would probably go jelly-legged.

We sat for fifteen minutes afterwards just shaking our heads and repeating in as many different ways as we could, “That fish was forty-nine inches!” as if one of the wordings was going to help our unbelieving brains register the fact that we landed and released a four-foot beast on a fly rod.  Chris immediately retired that fly.

Chris confided to me afterwards, “When you said he was fifty, I told myself, ‘Ryan doesn’t know how to judge length,’ so that I could calm myself.”  I suspect that when he himself finally saw the monster, there were no amount of Jedi mind tricks that were going to slow his heartbeat.

Unless you’re talking about the size of the fish, monster pike fishing is not a numbers game, like, “I caught thirty fish today.”  Each monster takes as many as five minutes to land, as many as five minutes to release safely, and usually five minutes or more to rehash  the battle with high fives.  That’s fifteen minutes per fish on average if they are biting well.  Despite this, we boated a lot of fish that day, and all of them huge. 

It will be a day long remembered, but we were to get some interesting news a week after the fishing trip.  Chris applied for a Master Angler Award, sending the picture and the measurement in the Manitoba wildlife department.  We knew that we had a lake record in that forty-nine incher.  But when the officials e-mailed Chris back, they informed him that he now owned the Manitoba Provincial Record for a northern pike caught on a fly rod!  I shot a progression of pictures of Chris holding up that massive fish, and in each successive picture his arm is slumping.  It was so heavy that it was impossible for this former college football player to hold it up!



Journal: Lake Kamuchawie, Manitoba, 2014, Day 5

Apparently moose can swim.

 

Day 5 “When the Wind’s out of the East…”

            When I saw the high wispy cirrus clouds yesterday, I had a hunch storms were coming.  This morning everyone slept in a little longer.  I know I was exhausted from yesterday.

            So after French toast, we got out on the lake around 10:00, met by a drab, grey sky.  We graphed fish in the channel just south of the cabin, just south of the ancient Cree petroglyph, but I’ll be darned if we could get a hook into them.  The cold front sealed their mouths closed.

            After a late lunch, we ran our boats south through the rain along the eastern shore to a cove just southeast of Roper Island.  We had had pretty good luck a few days before, but now with the rain and the wind out of the east, we were uncomfortable, and not catching fish.  The rain even found a way around my Gor Tex rain jacket on my lower back and neck area.  Whereas the other day the fish were way back into the cove in three feet or less of water, these pike held in a staging area halfway into the cove, prompting the theory that pike move in shallow on warm, sunny days and retreat on cold, cloudy days.  Between the four of us, we managed maybe ten fish tops.  Not good fishing at all for northern Manitoba.  At one point I told Chris that this might be a good James Patterson day.  He asked me what that meant, and I told him that he’s the author of the book I was currently reading.  After the day was over, I was sticking to my statement.

            On a side note, we watched a moose swim across the lake on the way back to the cabin.  I’m sure we scared the living daylights out of the poor thing.  When we motored up close to her, she was only twenty yards from the shore and swimming for all she was worth.  As soon as she climbed the bank, she disappeared in the thick underbrush the way the fish had disappeared from us.  This was by far the most excitement we had all day.