Miracle on 15-501

My dad's early and generous Christmas gift to me was a new set of tires for my car. He humorously made the appointment for today at 7:30 a.m. and suggested that we both go. I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night to blitz old friends with Christmas e-mails, my version of the Christmas card.

I felt a little blitzed myself this morning when we drove to the shop in my car. Of course the shop did not open until 8 a.m., but Dad wanted us to be ready when they got there. He and I put ourselves in the interesting position of giving the car to the shop in a strip mall that had no breakfast possibilities. At least I thought we would not be able to eat breakfast.

"Surely that Food Lion has a little diner in it," he said as optimistically as a new, working Santa.

"Dad, Food Lions don't have diners," I said as calmly as possible. I knew from experience that arguing any of his unusual falsities with even an ounce of emotion bore no fruit. "I have never seen a grocery store with a diner."

"All Food Lions have diners," he said.

"That's good. Does Illinois have Food Lions?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. His argument was falling apart already, but I doubt he knew it. Oh well. If I wanted to tire out this dog, I had to let him run free.

We walked into the Food Lion. His eyes darted along the overhead signs as if he could not remember whether the diner was between the bread and candy aisles or the health and frozen food aisles.

Oh God, please do not ask a cashier where the diner is, I thought desperately. If he tried to talk to anyone, I would have faked a hamstring cramp. My dad loves to stretch in public, so any sign of muscular discomfort would have averted his attention from the alleged diner.

I did not need to play the hamstring card. My dad patiently walked to the deli and poked his head around.

"Oh my goodness," he said. "This Food Lion doesn't have a diner."

I did not say a word. Maybe he believes what he said, I thought. Surely his neurons had connected. He figured out that he was in a grocery store and, in fact, should be outside of the grocery store to begin his search for a diner.

"Let's walk around to the other side and see," he said. The neurons had not connected. The best end to this story would have been us finding a lovely diner in the cheese and milk aisle, but then I probably would not be writing it. We found no diner, and my dad was OK with that.

"What a great idea a diner would be," I could have said. "Why have all this food and no diner? Better not mention it to anyone, though. Maybe we can sell the idea later."

I decided that such a comment would only enable future misunderstandings like this when I might not be around to feign bodily harm. I love my dad, and I would be the fool for him no matter what he does.

We walked outside and, incredibly, saw the 501 Diner across the street. Maybe I was the fool after all in this Christmas miracle.

Hygienist

I went to my dentist today. One of the great surprises of my adult life was how short a dentist appointment is when nobody stuffs your face with mouth guards full of fluoride for 20 minutes. You go in. They scrape your teeth and floss your gums to make sure you are not a crazy redneck who rinses with beer and flosses with yarn, and then you leave with a goody bag. Still they give you a goody bag. I am OK with that.

Adult appointments do maintain one illogical frustration: hygienists asking you questions while shoving some unpleasant combination of tartar picks, mirrors, polishers, water hoses and spit suckers into your mouth. They never laugh when you try to answer. They act like special education teachers, giving mostly positive reinforcement and simple instructions like "open" and "close" despite your obvious speech impediment.

Why do they do this? I know they cannot understand any of the patients. I think they test to see which patients will try to talk through the instruments. Maybe the receptionists place small bets when you announce your arrival and cash in by the water cooler later.

"That one will slobber all over himself to explain what he does for a living," the one on the left might have said as I retreated to the waiting room.

"No way," number two would respond. "He is reading 'How to Win at Chess,' and it says right here that he teaches high school. He has the patience and intelligence to wait it out. Two bucks."

Well done, number two. You would have won today if such a conversation occurred. The hygienist tried the same old trick, and I gave her the wait-a-minute index finger. I saw her register my response with a disappointed nod. How dare you bet against me, I thought. I am a well-rested teacher on winter break.

Pathetically, I babbled and choked for my whole life until today. The hygienist threw a consolation cheap shot.

"You have a cavity," she said.

Shoot. My first one. No more gargling with beer.

A plug for strangers

My friend Will and I went to a bluegrass show Friday night at The Cave. The band we expected to enjoy, Big Fat Gap, was not the treat of the evening. Instead a local Americana duet, Mandolin Orange, stole our attention for a couple hours. I absolutely have to see them play again next weekend when I might not be dog tired.

Why is Chapel Hill so amazing?

Losing to N.C. State

Carolina lost to N.C. State by a point in the final game of the regular season. The Tar Heels looked excellent in their previous four games, winning at Virginia Tech and Boston College and at home against Duke and Miami. I went to the State game with two friends. It was my fourth consecutive loss as a traveling fan.

Carolina athletes and fans generally agree that State fans are the worst in the ACC. I had no opinion until the fourth quarter when Carolina defensive end E.J. Wilson injured himself with minutes to play. When he stood up after about a minute, a chorus of boos rattled through Carter-Finley Stadium.

"Why are they booing?" I asked my friend. Everyone guessed that State fans booed because they thought Wilson was trying to stop the clock when Carolina needed more time. That pathetic argument disappeared when State milked the rest of the play clock after the referees set the game clock back in motion.

I had never seen fans of a team boo an opponent's injury. Apparently it was business as usual for Wolfpack fans. I was sort of enraged at and sympathetic for this immature group of 50,000. They had problems beyond losing football games. My friends who watched on television said the announcers had to comment since the booing eluded network censors.

We had by that time blown our 10-point halftime lead and missed a potential game-winning field goal. I was feeling almost as bad as I felt in Charlottesville in 2008. The walk of shame back to the car was tough, but not as tough as some. Our friends dodged beer bottles thrown from recreational vehicles. I dodged one belligerent fan who told me to "enjoy the tampon bowl." I think he meant the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte, which is the best Carolina fan experience in any sport because of its proximity to campus.

Another fan told us to "go back to Chapel Hill." That was good advice.

But of all the dodgy State fans I saw, none upset me more than a guy I heard on the radio the following Monday who thought he was a Carolina fan.

"It's no big deal to lose to State," he said. "All you have to do is go to the RBC Center and look at the empty rafters. We win championships in Chapel Hill."

I immediately placed this fellow into one of two categories. The first category struggles with losing so much that it cannot confront the emotion of disappointment with any honesty or resolve. The second honestly thinks basketball championships mitigate the pain of losing to State's inferior football team three years in a row. This latter category of people does not contain true Carolina fans. The former category is just childish.

We lost to those sad souls three years in a row after a decade of the opposite, and it hurts more than any loss to Duke. State and Virginia are both on next year's hit list. I can feel myself winding up already.

Bright flashes, Libertyville nightlife

I was sick last weekend. I probably had H1N1. I slept a lot, about 17 hours over Friday afternoon and night and more early this week. The rest has made me feel unlike myself. My senses prickled yesterday and today for minutes at some fresh, new feeling that was old at the same time. I felt like a younger person jogging under a bright sun. Is it really the rest? Could it be the spirit of the holidays?

I want to put some sort of reason behind these fleeting bright flashes. Sleep.

Seeing old friends over Thanksgiving was important to me. Libertyville has only three bars, and they all thrive on the same downtown block. Every Wednesday before Thanksgiving, all three fill to the twinkle light windowsills with Libertyville High School alumni of different ages and generations. Walking into any of them is like watching one of those old films that you could only see in a wooden box through a viewing window after turning a crank. Of course, I have never done that. But seeing his face and her face is almost like watching your life flash before your eyes.

I saw one girl whose name I could not remember. I felt detached enough from the reality of her presence to point at her with an outstretched arm.

"Don't do that," my friend said, snuffing out the finger.

"Is that . . . who is that?" I asked. This particular girl was not even a friend of friends in my high school days, but seeing her was sort of refreshing. We both had nowhere else to be on the eve of Thanksgiving. It made me so happy. Libertyville felt like home again for the first time in years.

Finding home

I saw "The Wizard of Oz" Saturday at the new and old Varsity Theatre on Franklin Street. My sister, cousins and I watched the film every Thanksgiving for years on our grandparents' VCR. I remembered only significant parts, the tornado in the beginning and Dorothy meeting her friends on the yellow brick road. At The Varsity last night I saw, for the first time, Dorothy leaving Oz with Glinda the good witch's help. Her wish came true.

That part stands as the film's most important message: you can find a way home, but you have to find it for yourself. And when you do, you must say goodbye to your best friends even though you will see them as another part of the animal kingdom upon your homecoming. I think.

I had a few high school friends - Danny Webster, Greg Likens and John R. Pavletic - who represented the Lollipop Guild in their middle school musical. My junior year homecoming date, Deanna, was Dorothy in the same production. I went to a different middle school and missed the show. I guess she sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which is indeed one of the best songs of all time. I should ask her what it was like to sing that song.

The theater's opening was perfect. Tickets cost $3, and the popcorn followed suit. Families fighting for the best "Wizard" seats formed lines that spilled onto the sidewalk. Four Carolina students had repainted the foyer, and the owners had installed new carpet and lighting. Franklin Street found its way back home.

Taking care

If I could work from home, earning money from poker and this insanely popular blog, the world would be a better place. My students are lucky to have me, but the people who care about me would be luckier to have my time. My perception of the value of my work would rise if I could help the people I wanted to help when I knew they needed it.

Imagine a classroom in which a teacher sits at a large table. Students would come in only if they could not accomplish a preassigned task. Teachers would help but never spoon feed. All students would have to be literate for this to work, but if they were, teachers would love their jobs. I know I would.

What happens instead is this: mobs of unmotivated students sit down in high school classrooms across the country and try to sleep away their hour-long opportunity without interruption. Usually a kind, highly qualified teacher attempts to inspire and lead by example. In this country those teachers usually fail when their students do not see the point in not failing.

Now understand that these mostly failing teachers have husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends and children who care enough about themselves to fight the hurdles of life: depression, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, illness, addiction and personal loss. If you have a pulse, you love someone who struggles with one of these demons. Imagine what the world would be like if caring for these people was every man's primary occupation.

"What do you do?" a stranger might ask you at a party.

"I stay with my friend who just came out of surgery," you might say. "By the way things are going, we will both be ready for something new in two weeks. I might volunteer at the hospital until something pops up."

Is this societal fantasy socialism? Or is it plain European? You might say the impact of teachers is enormous and necessary no matter what I write in this wee hour. But the impact my teaching has on me is minimal. Teachers more often talk about feeling frustrated than rewarded. Who wrote that damn chicken soup book? Was it a teacher? I suspect it was a student.

I care about a lot of people because I am lucky. A lot of people care about me because they are lucky. If we had time for each other, living would be so full of life.

Happy to read Strunk and White

None of my unread thrift store books interested me in recent weeks, so I settled on Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." Its brevity and efficiency make it a classic for writers of all persuasions. The back cover boasted its required reading status and pocket convenience.

I liked the book enough to want to carry it on my person, so I packed that punctuation in my pants. I did not like the look. Critics must have enormous pockets. The print is not unusually small; if they really wanted to make the thing a pocket reference, they could. They tease us.

Their false claim reminded me of the horrible words editors like to clip from book reviews. They like the words "compelling" and "spellbinding." My personal favorite is the "Tour de Force," which brings to mind Lance Armstrong cycling up a mountainside in a yellow jersey. You know, just like any of Toni Morrison's novels.

I am convinced that a lot of book reviewers never read the books they review. They might squint at synopses on the Web and dig into that small but foolhardy word bank that nobody believed existed until now.

What happens when I grade papers

Grading tests is boring no matter how well students may have performed. But when they perform poorly, life can be as depressing as a football fan suggesting to convert Kenan Stadium into a water park.

Do not think I wallow in these red marks without reason. I try to surround myself with happy things while I grade. I am about to start now, and here are the positive interventions I already implemented for myself: Pandora bluegrass station entitled "Dueling Banjos," two hot dogs with mustard and sweet relish, the anticipation of reading another chapter of Dean Smith's book when I finish, and the sweet memory of a Carolina football victory that puts us in position to have the best regular season record since my arrival in 2003.

Here we go. The time is 4:30 p.m.

4:35 p.m.: Already this sucks. I am grading makeups, which are difficult to grade because I lose the solution key by the time my kids finish them. My best strategy is to group by test and grade the best student's test first. This test will almost serve as a key for the rest. The inherent inexactitude of this makes my blood boil. I have not graded a single paper yet. I feel like I need to change the Pandora station to reduce the panic settling between my ears. Cue Rage Against The Machine.

5:06 p.m.: I finished my first set of tests. Some of the tests were blank. Those are the easy ones. My days-old stubble is breaking my concentration. I might need to take a shower to give myself a shave and a break. The break needs to be an incentive to work, so I will shower after I work a bit more.

5:43 p.m.: I am feeling bad about life because one of my students wrote correct answers to the practice version of the test on the real version of the test. I am not sure how to tell this to his parents.

9 p.m.: I quit a long time ago and watched The Godfather.

A big day for Carolina

The top basketball recruit in the country, Harrison Barnes, signed with Carolina today. So did two other heralded recruits. Recruiting news usually does not excite me. The last time I was interested in a recruit was when Carolina fans thought Mike Paulus would carry the football program on his shoulders. Paulus brought a lot of top players to Chapel Hill but managed to lose one crucial game last year and drop to third on the depth chart.

Barnes announced his decision late this afternoon on ESPNU and ESPN Radio. I was listening in my car and did not know for sure that he would pick us. I imagined throwing my car radio out the window if he said he wanted to go to Duke. My worrying was a waste of energy. Barnes was smart enough to see the difference between the blues. On a day like today, it does not seem like we are in football season.

But on a day like tomorrow, it will not seem like we are in basketball season.

Raised a fan

My parents raised me to be a fan. They might have hoped they were raising me to be an athlete of local repute, but really they raised me to be a fan. My ill-fated competitive days were numbered, but I really do not mind. I know being a fan is better than being an athlete.

My parents and I used to trudge toward the Wildcat Den through heavy, wet snow in the Libertyville High School parking lot. The small hallway inside the door acted as a foyer for the auditorium of my youth. Parents sold orange and black afghans to snowflake-covered fans shaking out their coats while the jazz band serenaded inside. The scoreboard buzzer sounded inside the gymnasium before the team exited the court to a rousing standing ovation for their final pregame pep talk. If we arrived late, we had to wait outside the door with tens of others and rush in together at the next timeout. My parents found my friends' parents, and I tip-toed along the edge of being my parents' son and my friends' friend. I was 6, 7 and 8. I was 9 and 10. I was growing up.

All the kids my age sat in the same spot. We watched those games knowing we all wanted to be players when we grew up, and the pressure we applied to ourselves was entirely unfair. I hope I would look at those days in the same light if I never made the team years later. Those days were magical.

I remember it all: spark plug Brian Hamlett, linebacker convert Tim Beshel, shifty Chris Mitchell and his middle-school receptionist mother, the Warren kid with the curly hair, the Heldman-Kessel rivalry, high school students strolling the sideline, Coach Panther by the side door, Coach Sanders' reddened face, Super Fan Gary and a full-court swish at the Mundelein game's halftime buzzer.

My best Libertyville hoops memory was Chad Lee's 1994 sectional final, triple-overtime dagger in the doghouse by my dad's side. I have never seen a finish so frenzied, and I am a Carolina alumnus. I watched the video eight years later with my teammates in the locker room I could finally call my own. Most of them saw it in person too. I wish I watched their faces in 2002 when they saw the shot go in again on the fuzzy screen. We were little kids again.

When Heldman passed, Libertyville held a pregame tribute with comments from our coach and video footage from his Libertyville and Illinois careers. I remember warming up without several teammates who were still in the locker room with their hands on bowed heads. I do not think any of them ever met him. We scored just nine points against Warren in the first half.

My mother and I continue our basketball tradition by going to Carolina basketball games together. As one might expect, Carolina offers a better brand of basketball than my days of youth. We danced with Danny Green. We saw the greatest Carolina player of all time play his last two seasons in Chapel Hill. Our Carolina memories live forever in our minds but also on DVDs, ESPN Classic and YouTube. We rarely walk through snowy parking lots in Chapel Hill, and I never worry about working hard enough to make the team anymore. My remaining eligibility will go unspent.

One thing has not changed. We still go to the games together. My dad cannot always go, but he calls me after the games to talk. It's a family affair. And as much as I appreciate my family's shared experience, I think my parents appreciate it more.

Despite being as blessed as I am with Carolina football and basketball season tickets, I still have the fondest memories of the early 1990s in snowy Libertyville. That was my introduction to what it meant to be a fan. I learned about disappointment, relief, caring about something outside of myself and being a part of a family. I regret to say that all of those memories exist only in my head, but I did find one video that connects my Libertyville and Carolina families.

Heldman played in one game at Duke during his Illinois career. Illinois won and ended Duke's 95-game non-conference winning streak. Heldman, not surprisingly, was a victim of the infamous yet classic Duke flop.

Dale Christensen

My girlfriend called me a week ago to tell me she found a story on mentalfloss.com about a high school football coach who faked his own shooting death in front of his team to motivate them before a playoff game. She remembered me saying that the former coach Dale Christensen retained his employment with my alma mater and taught freshman physical education for years after the incident, which must have happened in the early 1990s. I was his student during the 1998-1999 school year.

Christensen was a burly, old man who I can best describe as a combination of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Santa Claus. He spoke in a low, gruff voice that complemented bushy white eyebrows and often broke into soldier marching songs while we patiently sat around him. He frequently told his innocent freshmen war stories about his personal war hero, Roy Benavidez, and then digressed into explanations of why men like himself could not "live on bread alone." At the end of the semester, he traditionally gave each student a physically uplifting bear hug. I was no exception. The man was cashews, almonds and peanuts.

Anyway, his weirdest act was faking his own murder in front of the entire Libertyville High School football team. I remember attending the game and reading the shocking story in the newspaper the next day. One of the players mentioned that Christensen's motivational message was lost in the team's concern of being shot in the school cafeteria with their coach.

As a high school student, I never thought it was strange for him to keep his job. He obviously had tenure, which was a more unshakable contract than I previously thought. In the late 1990s he was considered a colorful figure, a person unlike anyone else. He seemed to be an alien on Earth who we were allowed to observe each weekday.

Libertyville lost the game.

Three things

Carolina football returned to its modus operandi: breaking my hopeful heart. Already I find myself looking forward to next year's opener against LSU. Sigh. Tear. Lip quiver. Someday we will play for more than our pride, and I will be proud. Right now I need to get up for tomorrow's upset bid.

Life is good elsewhere. My girlfriend moved into a log cabin sans logs on a gravel road in the heart of Chapel Hill. The homes in her hood were for soldiers returning from World War II in the 1940s. These were the houses where the babies boomed. She has wood floors, a fireplace, a storage attic with drop-down stairs and a large screened porch. I thought about beautiful small places like hers when I named this blog.

My high school friend Nolan sent me a traveling journal that belongs to his groomsman's younger brother of Omaha, Nebraska. It's a sort of middle school project, a twist on the pen pal. Nolan wrote about "testing unmanned spy planes like the Global Hawk." I will settle for writing about a redemptive win at Virginia Tech and another chicken-cheddar biscuit from Time Out.

Fleet Feet

My girlfriend took me to a meeting at Fleet Feet for people interested in running for exercise. I was the only male in a surprisingly female bunch. We were probably the youngest people there by six years. The group's mission was to get people running with a group mentality.

"If you have to crawl, we'll make sure somebody crawls with you," the fitness guy said. He was a believer in inclusiveness. I am also a believer in inclusiveness but somehow felt like an outsider; dozens of women as inactive as myself pinned me against the sports bra rack.

I wonder what would happen if I put on one of these bras, I quietly thought. Would anyone notice? Would the women think I was one of them? How can I belong?

I did not answer any of these questions for myself before a bouncy woman delivered her 13-half-marathons-and-two-full testimony. She held back the tears. A man in his 40s lingered on the outside edge of the group, gave me a sad look and turned back toward the merchandise. He could not save me. I tucked the information sheet under my arm and stared at the back of my girlfriend's head. The fitness guy took over again and without giving me eye contact delivered the obvious knockout punch.

"We have a group for men too," he said.

Oh God, please stop.

"Some of the men run in groups with women, but we also have groups for men." He went on, but I could not tell you what else he said. My ears rang between the bras.

I tried to play it cool after the fitness guy broke the huddle. I looked at some running shirts with holes in them and wondered if they could work as pajamas. I smelled some shoes. A soccer mom nodded at me while she talked with a friend.

". . . and of course we always have a man or two come," she said. "It's so great." She pulled me in with one wrist flick. The two women chatted back and forth about something while my ears continued to ring. If I were half the man I wanted to be, I would have told her she was a loon to think I would come back to run with 55-year-old women searching for their physical prime. How could she not see that I was accompanying my girlfriend, who was shooting in the dark herself? My girlfriend browsed water bottles nearby while I pondered my escape line. But I could not think of anything to say.

"We need to leave," I told her, leading her by the elbow. I did not look back.

As we walked to the car, I felt defensive and proud of my inactive lifestyle that leans on a generous metabolism and acceptable male stereotypes. My doctor has never told me that my cholesterol was too high. My blood pressure is fine, and my red blood cell count is formidable. I drink socially and do not smoke. Sometimes I stretch my hamstrings at night for a minute or two. I like this healthy yet unfit profile. It carries with it a perfect balance of leisure and peace of mind. My body is the miracle pill.

But I am tired at the end of my workday. My glory days teammates probably play pick-up basketball between weight training sessions. Richard Simmons would tell me I would feel more energetic and spectacular if I ran for a couple miles each day, so I will. But I will have to do it by myself because I have an enormous ego and an 11-minute mile. I will start tomorrow.

Atlanta

The Carolina offense rushed for 17 yards behind Georgia Tech's 317 yesterday. It was a slower death than the numbers suggest. The loss came between two grueling six-hour car rides in flooding rain. Friday night we went out in a strange part of Atlanta and talked to several homeless people about whether we were Tar Heel fans or all wearing the same color. They felt sorry for us and for a small fee directed us to the nearest public house, which was not as public as we hoped. The blocks around campus seemed dead for a Friday night. We retired to our six-for-the-price-of-four club hotel room and struggled through a snorer. I did not learn to plug my ears with the pillow until 4 a.m.

Saturday morning was exciting. We saw plenty of Carolina fans walking among the Georgia Tech barbecues and fraternity houses. I saw the Georgia Tech xylophone choir play Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place." I ate some good pizza while talking to a Carolina senior who drove like we did to see the first big win. Then the game started.

No, it was not worse than Virginia. Yes, I still plan to go to Charlottesville in 2010 and come back with a win.

"You should not go on any more football road trips," nobody has yet had the gall to say.

I spent the weekend with a few of the best football fans I know. We are not going anywhere and will be around for Carolina's first perfect season. We flew our car flags in the rain on the way to Atlanta like Iwo Jima but lay them in the trunk for the ride home. Someday we will come home happy.

Number 22 and the boys in blue

In my first season of Carolina football, the great Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice passed. Justice defined an era of Tar Heel football that was long gone when I arrived in 2003; he was a two-time All-American in 1948 and 1949 and finished second in Heisman Trophy voting in both years. He gets the credit for taking us to the Sugar Bowl in 1947 and 1949. He remained humbly faithful to Carolina until his death in 2003.

Heavy hearts observed a moment for Justice on the saddest football Saturday in Carolina history. The athletic department painted his number 22 on the appropriate yard line, and the announcer barely finished his tribute to the man behind the elusive Carolina glory days.

I did not know who Charlie Justice was until I walked into the stadium that day, yet I felt the past swell around me in the hearts of alumni. I felt like a part of my new family. Years later I listened to a tape recording of Justice at the North Carolina Museum of History. He sounded like my own grandpa, affable and quiet.

Carolina has a basketball history as well. Friday night's pro alumni game marked the beginning of a year-long celebration of 100 years of Carolina basketball. Most of this history also escapes me, but I feel the tradition every time I walk the floor of the Dean Dome or listen to my friends talk about the Jerry Stackhouse dunk at Duke. The reunion game connected faces to the names I hear on the lips of reminiscent fans.

"Remember that game where so-and-so blocked so-and-so for the double overtime win?" my friend might ask.

I will shake my head or shrug my shoulders. I do know the national championship basics to stay afloat. We beat Wilt Chamberlain's heavily favored Kansas team in the 1957 NCAA championship under New Yorker Frank McGuire. In 1982 Michael Jordan hit the shot before Hoya Fred Brown accidentally passed the ball to James Worthy. In 1993 officials charged Michigan with a technical foul for calling an unavailable timeout. I saw 2005 and 2009, so the recent success helps me a bit.

But really one name made it all possible. A friend at Saturday's football tailgate told me a story about a sad soul he encountered who did not know Dean Smith, a leading integrator of college basketball and probably the best coach of all time.

"What was he the dean of?" she asked.

"Basketball," my friend said.

Enjoy the video. This is the best I have seen from the athletic department.

What I love about writing

Why do I like to write? Is it so I can ask two stupid questions at the beginning of a lead without consequence? No. Let me tell you the two things I love about writing.

Writing is communication that begins as private and becomes public at the writer's discretion. I delete nearly as many posts as I publish, and everything I write changes before I decide I want someone else to read it. This seems obvious, but many of you who have heard me speak can appreciate how one person can seem presentable as a writer while making little sense as a talking person. When I get hungry, take cover. I talk fast and don't like doing it. Sometimes I substitute body language and grunts for words. Ask my girlfriend.

Writing allows me to put my best foot forward and then change its shoe three or four times. Writing allows me to be the version of myself that I like the best. That best version beats up the lesser versions to keep them honest. But who keeps the best version in check? Is it me? That seems unfair. I need more comments.

Writing also allows me to communicate with people when I do not try to. Written words extend the self with a life of their own. I am writing this post now to show my world of five later, but I also worked on this post awhile ago since you are reading it now. I might be sitting in a public restroom this very second without any toilet paper. That is magical to me.

But in the words of my carpool buddy, let's be honest. I also like to write because some people tell me I am good at it. I can indulge in myself with the best and worst of them. A couple weeks ago a few of my clients and their families told me I was doing a good job. Suddenly I started to like what I did. I know I am 25 years old. I should be old enough to positively reinforce my own actions but sadly need more than that. I doubt I am alone.

What do you do when the toilet paper is gone?

Two headlights in the dark

My dad flew in for the weekend to see Carolina's pro alumni basketball game and the football season opener against The Citadel. Dad put together the best Carolina tailgate these eyes have seen for 25 of my friends and friends of friends.

Tar Heels old and new came together for a brief celebration of being young and carefree. We had nearly the entire audiology class of 2013, a medical student, a couple teachers and several graduate students. I stepped back and looked a few times at the incredible assortment of people. I am proud of my friends. I learned something about organizing a tailgate; it sort of takes your mind off football.

But the football team complied with my jovial mood and put the expected beating on The Citadel before claiming a 40-6 victory in the evening heat.

My parents would rather talk about Friday night's alumni game, which was also truly special. Vince Carter, Antawn Jamison, Raymond Felton, Danny Green and the rest shared the same court for us for the first time in history. The 2009 national champs were on hand for the unfurling of our new championship banner. And Michael Jordan - have you heard of him - received a thunderous applause for finally achieving Naismith status. Of course Roy and Dean were there for a Carolina family photograph, probably the last of its kind.

Today I woke up with the expected emotional hangover that such a weekend can produce. I rose after 11 and feebly ate a bowl of cereal. I had a golf date with an old high school friend so delayed showering off Saturday's football sweat until 6:30 p.m. I know, gross. But I'm clean now and feel a bit better.

My parents and I went to Maple View Farm after sundown for ice cream. The place has a nice porch with rocking chairs for countryside gazing, but the moonlight could only outline the trees bordering the farm. I stared into darkness. Solitary headlights crawled on a narrow side road between farm fields.

"Where does that road lead to?" my dad asked.

"I don't know," I said. I never thought about what exists beyond this beautiful countryside that sits 15 minutes outside of Chapel Hill. I have gone there often to sit, eat and watch the cows graze. But something is there that draws people besides the ice cream and view. Material surroundings cannot explain the farm's apparent peace.

I wondered if the motorists driving into the unknown dark knew how uplifting a silent pair of headlights in the night can be. If we get to choose how we enter the afterlife, I want to go in a car at night on Dairyland Road with bluegrass music in my ears.

'Maybe that road goes to heaven,' I thought to myself. One's perception is one's reality, and my perception was perfect for a moment. I came home and started to write.

Two one zero

Here we are. The football world is teetering on the edge of yet another optimistic season. No matter your colors, you feel good about your team at this point. Everyone is undefeated and dreaming of the Rose Bowl. I think this week is too often the sweetest for Carolina fans, but this year the preseason is different. We hold a sterling ranking with subdued speculation in lieu of the standard hype. That is the Carolina way.

"In 2010 we will be the strongest," I already admitted to myself today. It's true. We will be ready to take on the world next year with a speedy, mature defense and developed offense. We will explode onto the national scene with a neutral-site matchup against the LSU Tigers. The 'Hoos in Hooville will lose the streak. All these things I know. 2009 is the final year of doubt.

But college football is a sport of doubt. The national favorite needs quite a bit of luck on the long road to the title. That means we need more than quite a bit of luck. Sportswriters said only twenty teams have more of a claim to Pasadena than the Tar Heels, but we do not have to beat all of them to get there. We have to win games to get there. To be specific, we have to win all our games to get there.

Last year when we were 2-0 and sitting on a 17-3 lead at home against Virginia Tech, the faithful must have wondered. Is this it? Has Butch delivered his vision that only the few of us believed could happen? I saw the score in an Iowa City bar and did not allow myself such lofty hope. Ninety minutes later my instinct proved correct. Our quarterback was out indefinitely. The backup lost the game. And worst of all, my die-hard friend sounded hardly dead. She sounded the way I felt when I saw that 14-point tease of a lead.

And here we are again. Carolina will have a metaphorical 14-point lead for the next two seasons. We only need a killer instinct to go with our athletic prowess to keep that advantage. Cue Marvin Austin.

“Just go out there and blow some people up," he said last week. "Go out there and be hunters. When they snap that ball, that ball is the issue. If you’ve got that, we will come and get you, and if your mama got that ball, we will come and get her, too.”

Shake your dreadlocks, young man. Bounce beside the Tar Pit before the game with your line. Enjoy yourself while we enjoy ourselves strolling through Polk Place, clenching our fists in time to the beat of the drum corps. We will sniff through the thick smell of hot barbecue to find the first hints of September's autumnal perfume. Little girls in cheerleading uniforms will straddle their fathers' necks down the walk while little boys pet Rameses by the Bell Tower. We will drink our beer, cook our burgers and throw our beanbags with family and old friends from alma mater who were lost to years gone by.

Carolina will be born again to us. She will come to life as poplar leaves fall to stone walls. We will hear her slow chorale on the Wilson steps and boisterously march through her hedges. We will rediscover fond memories like they happened yesterday. We will revel in old-time traditions and new found enthusiasm. We will drink from the Old Well and look to the sky when the bell tolls. We will be young and vibrant as we were with fifteen credit hours and a Thursday night plan.

It will be so good to be home.

The tortoise and the hare

My friend Daniel challenged me last week to a footrace to be held the night before the Citadel game at Hooker Field. I do not remember the circumstances that brought about the challenge. I must have provoked him with a fork.

Daniel studies exercise physiology in graduate school and reads books on the human body for fun. He recently personalized his studies and lost 20 pounds of what he considered extra weight. As his friend, I did not notice the weight loss. I thought he looked like a healthy, hefty man before and after. He will hate me when he reads that. To be fair, he and Ryan have made accurate assessments of my own health.

"You looked like you weighed nothing," Ryan and Daniel have said about my physical state in Charlotte, something even I was worried about at the time. I once wrote a long list of all my Charlotte health problems; losing 20 pounds was at the top of the list. I did not look good. When your friends tell you that you have or had a problem, they are always correct.

My adolescent years taught me to hate being skinny, so I lifted weights through college. I had a relatively heavy muscle weight and felt good about it. Then I taught and shriveled up until I had the physique of a high school math teacher.

Anyway, I am happy Daniel lost weight if he thought it was an important thing to do. I suppose everyone sees themselves in a more unfavorable light than the people they know. Maybe that is nature's insurance policy on self preservation. Others know the truth, but the self lies.

Daniel might be the second healthiest person I know, and he is without doubt healthier than me. I suspect I am on the road to hypertension and heart disease while my body hides the symptoms. Daniel grows vegetables out of the ground and eats them. No, I am not kidding.

But I doubt Daniel is faster than me. He certainly was neither fast nor coordinated in college. He once halted a sanctioned game of inner tube water polo after he fell out of his tube and could not get back in. The other team did not have to stop playing its plus-one advantage to watch him struggle, but they did. He tired of the exercise after a couple minutes and climbed out of the pool to try to jump onto the tube. No, it did not work. He later let rip a string of expletives about inner tubes that he only matched when later losing a game of Nintendo's RBI Baseball.

Back to the race. At first I was intrigued that Daniel thought he could beat me in this 100-yard dash, and then I started to think he might. Many of our friends think he is the outright favorite. Only one person picked me. The question is whether his offensive-lineman legs have limbered enough to catch up to my digressing speed.

The horse race fan in me sees this as a betting opportunity, but I have not seen any official money on the table. I will not put any money down. I will approach the race like a horse. I will prance around before the race. I will run like hell during the race. But really I want to eat some food afterward.

Given this attitude and Daniel's license to kill after he reads this, he will probably have the odds. That means the big money bet will be on me, a guy whose New Year's resolution was to cancel his gym membership. But that same guy always had the green light after reaching first base for Libertyville High before he broke his face like the bad ass he was. Speed kills.

Rock the Cradle with me

Franklin Street bars close doors, sell to new owners and open again under new names with old feels. The Varsity is gone, but I can live without it. Pedestrians can eat good Mexican food if they jog with their mouths open. The girls wear dresses, and the boys talk loud while the homeless ask for change. Shoppers look for used books, clothes and music. People wonder how Chapel Hill has a brothel. It's all still Franklin Street.

Cat's Cradle is one of the last remaining classic names downtown, and I never take advantage of it. My job became manageable today for the first time in three years, so I decided to commit to a few weekday shows at the Cradle. I want to love it again like I used to.

Cat's Cradle's Web site is organized well for quick listens. Here are the shows that sounded good to me. The links go straight to the music samples pages.

James McMurtry, Wednesday, Sept. 16
Ra Ra Riot, Wednesday, Sept. 30
Andrew Bird, Wednesday, Oct. 7 and Thursday, Oct. 8
Blitzen Trapper, Friday, Oct. 9
Lucero, Tuesday, Oct. 13
Dr. Dog, Wednesday, Oct. 21
The Old Ceremony, Friday, Nov. 6
Chatham County Line, Saturday, Nov. 7
Blind Pilot, Monday, Nov. 9

Five four three

Where did the Saturdays go? I traveled in recent weeks and neglected my weekly countdown. Yesterday I went to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg and saw one of my best buds. People say he is quiet, but the truth is he only talks when he has something to say.

"Eighteen days until it starts," he said with clear eyes. True.

The news this week for the Heels was pessimistic. Our offensive linemen dropped like flies in physical practices. One player left after a misdemeanor assault charge, and another gave up his last year of eligibility to move on with life. A third tore his ACL. The coaches talked about changing player positions while forging ahead with early afternoon practices in stifling heat. As a fan who never played football, I have to wonder why hundreds of beastly offensive linemen don't knock down doors to play in Chapel Hill. I know it has to do with NCAA scholarship limits, but come on.

I would adjust my diet to lard, whey and whole milk and apply for graduate school in the next two weeks if I knew it would help my team. The problem is that I play for another team that needs me to stand on my feet, deliver instruction and maintain normal bowel movements during an eight-hour workday.

But the economy is bad. You know it is. You probably have unemployed male friends. You might have unemployed female friends who would forgo their figures for one season to get a piece of this gridiron action. Tell them all to apply for medical school and gorge themselves. All we need is a line!

All the other pieces are in place. The wide receivers will come around soon enough. The offensive backfield has experience. We finally have the smash-mouth defense that makes watching football fun. Our kicker's last name is Barth. A few more big bodies are all we need.

Sometimes even a little body can get the job done. Ask Kendric Burney. My friend Will raised his glass after this hit and exclaimed, "That is University of North Carolina Tar Heel football."

This game put Carolina up against Rutgers on their turf in the shadow of the New York skyline on Thursday, September 11. The nation watched Carolina win its first out-of-state game in too many attempts with a blowout win. The victory set the 2008 pace in the same way Connecticut and East Carolina could pave the way for a 2009 BCS run. And we got to sing our song in Jersey.

A letter to a stranger

Congratulations on becoming a corps member. I know you are up to your ears in planning and paperwork now. You might be wondering what the hell you are doing. The answer is: the right thing.

I don't remember feeling courageous as an applicant, but I do remember how it felt during those two years to drive to school with the odds stacked against me - against us. I want you to know that the effort and time you will put forth, your sacrifice, and the change you will bring about are shared among us. You will never be alone in your vision.

Do not forget to be yourself. If you used to go out to have a good time, keep doing it. You will hear many voices as a corps member. Do not forget to listen to your own.

They asked us to share a story with you. All mine would be like the ones you have already heard except one: a police dog nearly mauled me on my first day. I teach in North Carolina. I was in the Charlotte corps. Contact me if you need to talk to someone who has been in the fire. Best of luck. I feel vindicated in my efforts as younger, more energetic people like yourself fight for equity.

New York

This post is not quite tidy. Now I know why travelers write a post per day instead of this.

Wednesday

My college friend Sergio hosted my girlfriend and me for five days in his nicely priced Spanish Harlem apartment that sat atop a six-flight climb on 118th Street and 1st Avenue. His mother, who left the city later that night, met us on the street and made us feel at home while Sergio was at work at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Columbia University.

"This is his bachelor pad," she explained as she looked inside a Cool Whip container and found an odorous mold. "He likes it here. I come up to see him often. The neighborhood is not as bad as I thought it would be."

The neighborhood had several late-night convenience stores and Patsy's Pizzeria for our around-the-clock needs. The subway station was a ten-minute walk away. Friends from Chapel Hill who had stayed with Sergio months earlier told us not to walk late at night, but we did anyway and survived.

We ascended the Empire State Building soon after we said our goodbye to Sergio's mom. We shared one audio tour speakerphone, which forced my girlfriend to stand on her toes and myself to angle my body into the observatory walls. In this manner we listened to an Italian guy tell us about his city with lots of "now listen" and "this is the beauty of New York" and "see over there" and "my father came across that bridge with 17 cents in his pocket."

That night we bought tickets to "The 39 Steps" with a false hope it would be good. Before the show we found a decent outdoor restaurant called Mother Burger with $2 PBRs and a tiny bathroom in which I changed into theater clothes like Superman. The play had a lot of characters, some of whom spoke little English, and only four cast members. I felt stupid, but my girlfriend thinks I am smart.

Thursday

We took the subway to Union Square to have lunch with my Old East friend Victor. Victor is a born New Yorker who works for an Hispanic civil rights nonprofit that gives him big lunch breaks when his boss is not around. He and my girlfriend talked about crying when Dobby died in Harry Potter. Victor missed Chapel Hill, but I knew enough about New York after 24 hours to understand he was home.

We split with Victor and walked to Strand Book Store. I bought Don DeLillo's "Falling Man," a post-9/11 novel that actually refers to the book store in which I bought it. I am still working on this one; it is dense. I called my sister when we reached Greenwich Village because she lived there as an adolescent ballerina.

"Find where I lived," she said. I never did, but I remembered how it looked 13 years ago and how my mother cried in the Chicago airport when she left.

My girlfriend stopped in Chinatown to look at fake bags. Actually, she looked at real bags with fake names on them. I perused the bowler hats and obscene T-shirts. The merchandise vendors spoke in nouns as we walked by.

"Hats," one sharply said. "Bags. Water. Glasses." I got it, I got it. She had lots of stuff to sell.

We finally stopped at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge to visit with my high school friend Andrew. Andrew is a trader who loves New York more than Chicago but cheers for the Cubs in person when they come to town. His girlfriend finished a two-year Teach For America commitment and decided to stay at her placement school for the coming school year. Bravo.

"She did not drink the Kool-Aid," he said. Bravissimo. Andrew displayed a confident, affable discourse that I miss from my high school days among the leaders of today. We talked about some of them. Danny tries to cure cancer at Stanford and will marry his fiancee in due course. Nolan flies in an F-16. Jason is at Georgetown Law. Sophia works for Goldman, but I would see her in a couple days.

I asked Andrew if he thought New Yorkers stood outside their apartment buildings for no apparent reason. He grinned.

"Stoopin'," he explained with a half grin. In that moment he became a New Yorker to me.

Andrew walked us to Ground Zero. New York buzzed all around. It felt like a popular urban theme park next to a new ride under construction. We asked a couple workers what we could see as first-time visitors. They pointed us toward a small break in the tall fence meant to obstruct view. We saw nothing but a construction site that had not yet risen above the ground. I thought, perhaps correctly, that the city had removed all memorials and would restore them upon Freedom Tower's completion. I thought about the empty air, the New Yorkers around me and the unread book in my backpack. I thought about my friends and family.

"I was in Mrs. Gongol's second period class," Andrew said.

We remember.

Vivian, my friend's girlfriend, appeared and took us back to and across the Brooklyn Bridge for our first New York pizza at Grimaldi's. The walk on the bridge was long but nice; we turned frequently to gaze at the skyline and take pictures. Vivian, another true New Yorker, told us her father once gave her and her brother money to go to the World Trade Center observatory. They never went. She told her dad the truth years later when the towers were gone. She also told us about her work this summer as a public defender in the city. We listened to Vivian's tales of defending a flustered transvestite.

Grimaldi's had a short waiting line on the sidewalk and a surprise on the inside: no air conditioning. It did have delicious pizza and cheap wine for its pedestrian clientele. We walked to a place on the river for ice cream and saw hundreds of cop cars and boats speed toward Manhattan's southern tip. We looked on the news for the story later that night but found nothing.

We split with Vivian at a subway station and took a long ride back to Spanish Harlem. New York was fun and exhausting.

Friday

Either I promised my girlfriend we would see Harry Potter in New York or she told me we would. I probably failed to listen and declared what I thought was a generous promise but she knew was evidence of guilt. I thought the film was OK but could only understand the plot as good versus evil. The bad people did bad things, and this scared us. We were sad when the good people suffered. Yes, I cried a bit. Why the pointing of the wands?

We strolled through Times Square, which looked a lot like Vegas, looking for a couple empty chairs since the city recently cleared a certain area of traffic and delivered it to exhausted pedestrian tourists. Ripley's Believe It Or Not almost seduced us with its upside-down hallway, but the admissions charge pushed us out the door and into the "Avenue Q" lottery line, which we won.

After we won we luckily found Junior's, a delicious cheesecake place that Sergio recommended. We sat in the first row for the best musical I will ever see. "Avenue Q" starred several muppets who taught us adult lessons that Sesame Street omitted. The catchy numbers included "It Sucks To Be Me" and "I Wish I Could Go Back To College." Duh. This musical was timeless. I mean this musical is timeless.

We had a couple drinks at the Times Square Hard Rock Cafe, watched a Michael Jackson music video and went home. The next day we would finally be with Sergio.

Saturday

Central Park was big. It covered about fifty city blocks on each side, so it was more of a collection of parks than a park itself. The three of us rode rented bikes around the perimeter after Sergio bargained like a Chinatown pro. We saw a chess conservatory, children's playgrounds, the reservoir, music festivals, horse-drawn carriages, bicycle-drawn carriages and only one pissed New Yorker. I was enchanted.

My girlfriend and I rode back to Sergio's apartment to prepare for a night out with the aforementioned Sophia, her sister Michelle and her boyfriend J.B. They recommended Ippudo NY, a Japanese ramen restaurant. Now listen carefully. This is my new all-time favorite restaurant. It was trendy, reasonable and delicious. I never ate ramen before, so I could not compare it to the cheap stuff. The broth tasted better than anything I had ever dreamed about.

J.B. was exceptionally kind and talkative. He works for himself as an upstart financial adviser with a few friends and one investor. We snuck young Michelle into a couple SoHo establishments and danced. Sophia and I talked about our times at Libertyville High until we realized the unusual nature of discussing a Midwestern canned food drive over $9 beers in downtown Manhattan.

Sunday

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We could not stay for long since we promised Sergio we would meet him for a late lunch. The museum was sort of vanilla. We might not have been in the right wing for us. The American wing offered some familiar works like the female bust "America." I am not an art museum person.

After lunch with Sergio, we followed him to Central Park on his way to work. We sat on a rock next to a men's softball game for an hour. A small family gathered nearby. The mother made an octopus from balloons. She approached us, and we discovered that she was an off-duty, professional clown.

"If you ever need a clown," she hypothesized, "here is my business card." Sweet.

We walked back to the chess conservatory that we observed earlier to play a game. The supply room was closed, but a few players brought their own sets and hustled strangers. One guy, possibly named Jackass, challenged an Hispanic father of two, possibly named Protagonist.

Protagonist accepted, and his kids wandered off to play and watch from afar. Jackass unloaded a set from his backpack, and the two men agreed on a speed game. We decided to stay.

"Are you sure you know how to play," Jackass jeered after questioning his opponent's move.

"Yes," Protagonist quietly protested.

The game progressed until Protagonist pulled an unexpected sequence of moves for the beautiful upset.

"Oh!" Jackass gasped. "You got lucky!" We left with the sweet feeling of an upset victory.

We walked to Columbus Circle and rode a down escalator into Sergio's workplace, Whole Foods. This was the largest grocery store in the world, and Sergio was in charge of customer service at the bottom of the escalator. We talked for awhile and then walked through the stinky cheese aisle. The checkout lines were so long that store employees held large placards to display approximate waiting times.

We left and called Vivian for a second meeting at a Cuban restaurant. Our friends were great for the entire trip.

Monday

We had accomplished everything except for seeing the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. We let those go and instead rode to Tom's Restaurant, a breakfast diner better known as Monk's Cafe in "Seinfeld." The show used only the outside of the restaurant for its scene transitions. The actual inside was cozier and more authentic than the one you know. Tom's sat a couple blocks from Columbia University, so we strolled its quad before returning to Sergio's to pack for our return flight. Columbia was tiny but beautiful. It starts with a "C," ends with an "A," has eight letters and represents with light blue and white. Go . . . Lions?

The gate attendant at the airport offered us two $400 travel vouchers to take another flight home. We accepted. I have a compelling reason to get a passport and pick a city. I will travel abroad next summer.

Thoughts

New York is like nowhere else. The city is the world. I could not tell you how many languages I listened to on subway rides, on the streets and in Central Park. The spirit of the city is its sense of possibility and optimism. This was the gateway of America for most of its history, and it still stands as an image of the promised American melting pot.

My high school history teacher once told me that Chicago was a great American city and New York was a great international city. I understand why he said that, but I consider New York as patently American.

They came from the four corners in search of freedom in this new world, this New York. They opened businesses, built buildings, dug tunnels and educated. They sold hot dogs and played chess on Spanish Harlem street corners. They segregated. They desegregated. They segregated again. They argued at times about issues of race and religion. They learned from their differences yet understood what they had in common and passed this knowledge through the generations for a better America from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

The Italian guy from the audio tour spoke about a rescue worker he knew who worked at Ground Zero in the days after 9/11. He said his friend knew he would not find any survivors but was still looking for something. He said he was looking for his freedom as New Yorkers have for centuries.

Real cake

I do not like to watch television, but I do because I am American and have American people in my life. I have to watch what the people I love watch if I want to spend time with them. Not doing so would color me an unpatriotic color of rude.

Survivor made sense to me. Reality television producers at the turn of the century understood they could add an element of competition to the MTV Real World prototype, so they did. They did not create a contest based on point totals or timed events. No, these producers thought sports were going out of style, so they let a group of people decide which of the group would win a cool million. Miraculously, everyone in the group hated the guy who won.

Perhaps I oversimplified. The show did incorporate some athletic and mental contests among its members. The prizes for these contests ranged from a guarantee to last another episode to a deli sandwich. The contests were not the drama; the drama was the drama.

The producers added the backdrop of a deserted island, and the show clicked. No other place would have worked. A high school gymnasium? A library? A house? Big Brother tried that and was an inferior show. Only that dangerous, exotic set could remove us from our own realities of class rank, college admissions and tight budgets.

I would love to be on that show, Americans thought as boa constrictors circled a hopeless sleeping contestant who had not eaten all day.

What followed were variations: chef elimination, interior designer elimination, bachelor elimination, singer elimination and dancer elimination. The craze spread wide enough that we all seemed to know someone on one of these shows. My high school basketball teammate's brother was on Elimidate. He lost. My sister's colleague was on The Bachelor. She lost. My college friend was on American Idol. He lost, but the Carolina Alumni Review named him the sixth most popular guy in the world. But he lost. In America we have a few winners and many, many losers.

All these shows did quite well. While I required the remote island, Americans needed only one elimination, one human failure, each week. I can thank my girlfriend for knowing Jason's confusion and Melissa's broken heart.

A new strain of reality shows deviated from the elimination theme. Americans now have a choice of three shows about cake makers: Ace of Cakes, Cake Boss and Amazing Wedding Cakes. The sheer number of shows about a niche as small as cake making is impossible to rationalize. Would it not make as much sense to have three separate shows about deep-sea fishermen? Do we have three shows about deep-sea fishermen? At least we are taking a step away from cutthroat elimination.

I would like to produce a show about a teacher who selects one of his friends to teach with him in the same school. Then those two teachers would pick another friend to do the same, and so on. Four other copycat shows would spawn from mine, and in a couple years we would have a surplus of teachers, small class sizes and television ratings to boot.

Amen.

Race track

My sister and I started our Sunday with a few options: the batting cages, the driving range or the race track. I play poker, I thought, I'll love the track. We went.

The guy who took my admissions fee gave me a program with all the information I needed to feel like a part of the experience. It defined types of bets and offered opinion on which horses looked particularly strong.

The betting options were extensive. I had the option to bet for a win, a place, a show, an exacta, a trifecta, a superfecta or any combination of any of these for any of nine races, each set apart from the others by a half hour of grueling, plentiful research. As soon as the crowd jumped and cheered at the conclusion of the first homestretch, I began to thumb through the program pages to find my strategy. I had 32 minutes.

Each horse had one of four labels: stalker, closer, presser or speed. All of these seemed like winners. I would have liked it if anyone used any one of these to describe me in a race, so I quickly learned to ignore this part of the program. The system had no category for losers. How could I go wrong? I should bet a lot of money, idiots thought all around me.

The track paraded the horses around a circle behind the grandstand during each half-hour break. This must be the secret, I thought. I'll bet on the biggest, baddest horse. This was also a lousy idea since the big, bad horse bucked its jockey while trying to eat its handler four minutes before the race because it wanted the damn oats.

My sister took to reading the wordy descriptions for each horse. An example:

"Lemon Drop Girl has been running into some tough ones in recent times as the winner two races back is red-hot right now and the winner of her last is a consistent type herself. This being her third start back from the layoff, she could be sitting on a peak effort, and one of her better runs would probably be enough to get the job done. There are a few in here who seem capable of giving her a run for her money, but she does look like a solid win candidate."

Another horse in the same race had her "three-race win streak snapped last time." Indeed, she was a "polytrack monster" that was often "nabbed by fast-closing winners." Hmm. The track seemed full of possibilities and passive voice. Of course this seemed like double-talk trash to me, but my sister saw prophetic magic in those words.

After I lost a couple bets I discovered the program declared four probable favorites in order of rank for each race. Yup. So all these gambling fools read the summaries and watched the horses walk around when they could have looked at the best-odds bets in ink.

This discounts the fact that a bettor won more money if he bet on a winning horse with poor odds. I suppose that was the excitement of the race track. Cosmo Kramer understands.

Brown line to Belmont

I meant to write about New York City when I got back to Chapel Hill. The trip was amazing. My girlfriend helped me write a long list of things I would write about. That list qualifies as metawriting, which I think means writing about writing. Even more useless than this is an educational concept called metacognitive thinking, which is thinking about thought. We inexplicably expect our struggling schoolchildren to understand this process. Right.

I am in Chicago now with my sister. My Carolina friend Anne and her boyfriend gathered friends for a night on the town that stands as my memory of real, adult Chicago.

Anne's friends were all exceptionally kind to me. The people make the town, and Chicago was a great town last night. I remember stranger hugs and calling the hogs with "soo-ie"; I met an Arkansas Razorback fan. Best of all I saw Anne happy, a seemingly perpetual state for her but one she confessed last night. A happy friend makes a happy friend.

It is strange that I know Manhattan better than Chicago since I grew up less than an hour's drive from the Windy City and spent only five days in the Big Apple. But it's true. Chicago will always seem like the neighbor next door I never knew.

Minnesota scruff

My grandparents have done 47 consecutive summers in a small northern Minnesota lake town called Orr. My dad and his brother spent all their youthful summers in this town of 249 trucker's hats and morning coffees. When they grew up, the brothers brought their families to Orr to fish, play hearts, eat fish, shoot, hike and fish.

I had not been here since May 2003 when I helped build a dock for my grandparents' new house across the lake. The dock is still functional; Grandpa has not fallen in.

This trip had as much fishing as the others, but this time we played table tennis too. I am currently the family champion awaiting the arrival of challenger Uncle Dennis in 30 minutes. My grandpa mistakenly calls me "Dennis" without hesitation and without correction. To my slight surprise, so did my dad. I tried to correct them at first but gave up. At least my Minnesota name is from a guy I like. Uncle Dennis is the relative I relate to the most besides my obvious peer cousin, Casey. My family delivered Barbies from Santa on my mom's side for years, but for Dennis and Casey we went to Bass Pro.

I started to feed bread bits to ducks and egrets around the dock, a job my grandma used to occupy. A giant pelican watched from a safe distance, so my grandpa threw a dead 30-inch northern pike toward it. Everyone eats well in Minnesota.

Amid all this fun I forgot to shower and shave for two days. I grew a northern scruff that I enjoyed hacking minutes ago into my familiar Southern self.

Six

I grew up loving Notre Dame. I remember wondering why anyone would ever root for another school since Notre Dame seemed so pure with their golden helmets, cold weather and plain uniforms. The Irish were the preferred football brand for Midwestern middle school boys in the 1990s regardless of religious affiliation or sensibility.

I got off it a little when my sister transferred out of Notre Dame. I got off it a lot when I transferred to Carolina. I wondered why I was ever on it when Carolina scheduled Notre Dame for a home-and-home series in 2006 and 2008.

I went to the 2006 game in South Bend. The experience was what I expected; lots of tailgaters spread over acres of concrete, posting the Irish flag and blasting U2. Some partied in and around permanent trailer homes built near the stadium specifically for tailgate rental six or seven times per year. Football traffic signs linger all year as inefficient homage to their fanaticism. I have to say that their tradition is impressive but they are still the Irish. It is our job to hate them. They can love themselves if they wish.

That game in South Bend stayed close enough until the very end. Carolina sacked Brady Quinn several times, and Hakeem Nicks and Brandon Tate both posted resume games. Fledgling quarterback Joe Dailey also had his career game in the NBC spotlight.

"What's your record again?" a bewildered Irish fan asked in the throes of Carolina's third-quarter comeback.

"One win, seven losses," I said with I-don't-care and you-suck bravado.

The 2008 game in Chapel Hill was witness to a different college football landscape. The 4-1 Tar Heels were ranked at 22, their first ranking since I arrived in 2003. The Irish were also 4-1 but could not get any respect from voters for the first time since the four horsemen broke the October sky.

The first Irish drive did not use any backs except for quarterback Jimmy Clausen. This took away all run-pass guesswork for our linebackers, but we still could not cover Golden Tate and company. The drive seemed like a bad omen, and we all hoped that Notre Dame would use a running back to break the rhythm.

They did, and the defense found its footing when the blitz seemed to expose invisible holes in the Irish line. Carolina trailed for most of the game but stayed close. Then Cameron Sexton jumped into the end zone and over a diving Irish defender. Brooks Foster caught a ball, but the referees saw it differently.

When the ball was in the air on the final play, it seemed that Notre Dame would pull off a comeback upset. But they fumbled inside the 10, and the rest is one of only two bright spots in Carolina-Notre Dame history. And through all of this, Rameses fell asleep.

Things that are not so

Today I connected three illogical, recurring thoughts of mine for having the common thread of making me seem nuts.

When I played high school basketball, my teammates ogled over the pom squad. These girls were the athletic, shapely types who walked the halls with collective gusto for the world to see. I did not know many of them well, but my teammates did and stole peeks at their practice sessions in the field house when our coaches looked away. I never watched because I was embarrassed to even witness these teenage moments. Come on. It was varsity basketball practice, a necessary bloodletting for the glory of our storied school. I did not see room for sneaking around the separating curtain to dance with girls. Further, I do not remember any of them ever peeking at any of us. Handle your business; this was my mantra.

I began listening to The Killers some months ago. Now when I hear the song "Somebody Told Me," my mind's eye sees that entire pom squad dancing in their black leotards. What the hell? I never watched a single routine all the way through, and now I think I could orchestrate an entire performance. I tend to skip that track.

Weezer's "Island in the Sun" has a similar effect. But instead of seeing the pom girls of 2oo2, I see Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the gang shrugging their shoulders and shuffling their feet in a repetitive trance. This vision makes more sense since you yourself have likely seen the characters do this dance to "Linus and Lucy," but the connection to the Weezer song stumps me.

The third thought is the strangest. I make a yielding left-hand turn onto Old 86 from Eubanks on my commute home from work. When I check traffic to the right, my mind substitutes a cow for a cluster of mailboxes. I correct this fleeting error in a fraction of a second, but I see a cow every time those black-and-white mailboxes appear in my peripheral vision.

Now that is something you cannot find on YouTube.

Seven

The 2008 game at Miami brought me to Ham's with the wax eater. Carolina had lost a huge lead to Virginia Tech the week before and sat at a most depressing 2-1 record. We needed our first ACC win, and we needed to do it without the injured T.J. Yates at the helm. Mike Paulus floundered until Cameron Sexton, the goat of seasons ago, came to the Heels' rescue. The Miami game solidified Sexton's presence as our new winning quarterback and the Heels' ability to win on the road.

Games at Miami always fall short of college football hype. The stadium is usually less than half full, and a fan like me wonders how such a program could have won a national championship. It was that afternoon at Ham's that I understood the reason: Butch Davis.

Bold play calls in the waning minutes led to a terrific Brooks Foster catch in the corner of the end zone. The Hurricanes responded with a threatening drive that ended with an award-winning highlight.

In the final minutes the wax eater and I bounced around the bar with the wait staff. Contrary to his opinion, I think Ham's is the best place to see an away game on Franklin Street.

The video is mostly Miami highlights, but you can find the good stuff at the end.

People out there like you

I went to New York City when I was 12. I saw a confusing Broadway musical, watched the Yankees win in the bottom of the ninth and ferried around Ellis Island and the French lady. I eyed the chess matches of Central Park and rode the sweltering subway when they still used tokens. My parents did not allow me to partake in the city's never-sleep lifestyle, but I remember hearing a clamor of noise from my window each night when I fell asleep. At the end of my visit, I watched a Joffrey Ballet School performance in which my sister played a beautiful tree to near perfection.

I will return to the great city tomorrow for a five-day vacation, staying with a good friend who crashed at my place for Carolina's homecoming.

"Come up to New York sometime," he said last fall. Thinking about going places is not my thing, let alone actually going to them. I told him I would consider and then forgot about it. But sometime in May I realized this kind former hallmate of mine lived in Spanish Harlem, a place named with reverence in my favorite Elton John song.

My girlfriend and I bought the plane tickets a month ago and planned our entire schedule today. We agreed on most things except for the television show tours. She wanted Sex and the City; I wanted Seinfeld. We both surrendered and substituted with the Empire State Building observatory and an unofficial visit to Monk's Cafe. To be fair, I should shop for lady shoes with her and think aloud 'Meanwhile, near the Upper West Side, Sophia and J.B. were learning to do a little compromising of their own . . .'

Sophia is a Libertyville friend who went to New York for a banking job after graduating from Princeton in 2006. In her better days she helped me study for high school English classes. She is like many of my other Libertyville friends in that I have almost completely lost touch with her for no good reason.

"Hello?" she mustered into the phone yesterday with uneasy hesitation like she had opened her front door to a guy wearing a ski mask and holding a bouquet of flowers. Maybe she thought Teach For America killed me. I hope to see her and Sergio again as two of the busy bees in the hive that some lovingly call New York City.

"And now I know
Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say.
I thought I knew.
But now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City.

Until you've seen this trash can dream come true,
you stand at the edge while people run you through.
And I thank the Lord there's people out there like you.
I thank the Lord there's people out there like you."

~Elton John

Eight

Last week I started the countdown with the best Carolina football memory I have from seven years of fanaticism. That memory sometimes overshadows another great finish three weeks earlier.

The 2003 N.C. State game took place in Raleigh and did not appear on television. I had little or no exposure to the State football rivalry when they came to Chapel Hill in 2004. The 2-3 Tar Heels took down the No. 25 Wolfpack in the greatest goal-line stand these eyes have ever seen. State sent T.A. "Touchdown Always" McClendon up the middle for a dagger at the buzzer. It was a touchdown, almost.

This game established Bunting's boys as a team that could beat anybody on the right day. The flip side of that coin was that we could also lose by 30 or 40 points on the wrong day. State and Miami were the height of excitement of the Bunting era and still stand as the best home wins in my memory. You can say what you want about John Bunting, and I will say what I want to say about him. He silenced the 'Pack nearly every year. I remember a football player on my floor wore a shirt with the state of North Carolina and the imperative "TAKE IT BACK" underneath. I am glad we appear to have moved on to better things.

The difference between the 2004 Miami and State games was the pregame and last-second expectation. Students expected to lose to Miami by 63 and beat State by a touchdown or two. But in the last seconds of the Miami game, I was almost certain we would win. I thought we had no chance on the last play of the State game. Our stop was a sudden, unexpected elation.

Go to hell State. I will see you in Raleigh with the two musketeers when we punch our ticket to the championship game. Will you be able to do the same?

Independence Day at Maple View

Chapel Hill's fireworks show did not impress me enough years ago to want to see it again last night. Mom and I instead enjoyed dessert at Maple View Farm, an ice cream store with a perfect countryside view. The store had several hundred customers last night for what we presumed to be a word-of-mouth fireworks show. We decided to wait until sundown.

To pass the time we counted little kids who fell on the few steps leading up to the store and dribbled ice cream all over themselves. Then their daddies brought them clear cups of water to clean, but the kids spilled the water all over as well. A bunch of old guys played bluegrass, Cash and Hank Williams. When the sun set, we saw a few neighboring towns' shows on the tiny edge of the biggest sky Chapel Hill offers. Chapel Hill's own show at Kenan Memorial Stadium barely poked over a few trees.

Several minutes later the farm itself began its own show of fireworks, the most pathetic display I have seen in 25 years. Foomp. Pop. Forty seconds passed. Foomp. Pop. Another long minute. Foomp, foomp. Pop, pop.

"This must be the grand finale," I quipped. We decided leaving would be difficult since people had set up blankets around our car. But we had to do it. We tried to be Southern and polite but could not stop laughing.

Our planned quiet escape failed when I fumbled with the car's key remote in the dark and set off the panic alarm. The 30 or so people in front of the bumper jumped like old folks hearing gunshots at a Broadway play. I tried to find the button to silence the alarm, but the darkness made it nearly impossible. Twenty seconds later the chaos subsided. My car was the loudest damn thing at the whole fireworks show.

We slowly drove away and promised not to hit any children. We will go back on a normal night.

Nine

"Barth for the possible win. Snap. Spot. Kick away. High enough. Long enough. IT'S GOOD! IT'S GOOD! CAROLINA HAS WON THE GAME ON A 42-YARD FIELD GOAL BY FRESHMAN CONNOR BARTH! GOOD GOSH GIRDY!"
~The Woody Durham call

Jackson

As a Libertyville child of rock and roll whose unofficial graduation party was a Dispatch concert, I never paid much attention to Michael Jackson. His music struck me in college for the first time as extremely popular. I heard his stuff at '80s nights, dance clubs and athletic events and in residence halls. I saw Franklin Street Thriller impersonations on Halloween and laughed because I had never seen the entire video. His death was a good example of not fully appreciating something until it is not there anymore.

Journalists force the question of his legacy; was he a good man or a bad man? The truth seems to be that we will not put him in any one box no matter how many times they ask. He was enigmatic at the end of his life and will continue to be until humans stop listening to music. But most people want to remember him for his enormous contributions to popular culture. He changed the way we think about music and dance. Every time you see one of your friends try to spin on his feet or snap his fingers, you have Michael Jackson to thank. This influence was easy to take for granted until this week.

His work might not have challenged him in our sense of the word, and he probably loved what he did. But there is no doubt that his contributions to our culture are positive and everlasting. He made us happy even when we did not know it was him who was doing it. Thank you, Michael, for making us want to dance.
~
Watch Michael do his thing 3:50 into this video.