John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 8

“Actually Important”: Debating The Dress

Other people love to tell you when you’re wrong, don’t they? They love to admonish you for wasting everyone else’s time.

For two days last week, an Internet debate raged across the world about the color of a dress. We argued vociferously about whether it was blue and black or white and gold. And we marveled that we couldn’t agree.

And then the Internet Police came along and told us we needed to stop. Snarky comments about The Dress debate were followed with the phrase, “Can we get back to talking about something actually important?”

Perhaps I can make a few observations on this whole controversy without offending the Internet Police overly so. After all, I wasn’t really involved in The Dress debate, so maybe it will be okay if I revisit it for 500 or 600 words before moving on to something “actually important.”

First, I’m really curious to know what “actually important” topics are discussed on Facebook and the other social media platforms where The Dress was debated.

We share pictures of our vacations, talk about chronic illnesses, and commiserate about the things our kids do to us. And we share videos of cute cats.

How are these things “actually important” but the debate over The Dress is not?

Now, I will grant a lot of politics and some religion get debated on Facebook, and many of the associated topics are important. But I can count on no more than two fingers the number of these debates where a civil exchange of ideas occurred, where people were genuinely interested in understanding the views of others and trying to come to some sort of consensus.

Mostly, what you see is a story forwarded from Fox News or MSNBC or one of the hyper-partisan political blogs. If it isn’t that, it’s a stridently phrased meme. Should the person who forwarded such materials happen to be friends with someone of the opposite political persuasion, a vitriolic debate with lots insults ensues. Few facts are quoted but lots of partisan talking points are.

Forgive me if a debate over what color a dress is seems refreshing.

But here’s the thing about The Dress debate. I contend it actually is important.

Here’s why: There is a fascinating science to this little phenomenon. In the last several days, I’ve looked at the picture countless times, either by choice or by accident. Every time, every single time, I see that dress as white and gold. I have never looked at the photo in question and seen blue and black.

But blue and black is the correct answer, and that means I’m seeing it wrong.

How can that be? Was it Photoshopped? Is there something wrong with my vision?

No, and that’s what makes this debate so fascinating. USA Today posted an article on the science behind this Internet sensation. It has to do with rods and cones and how individuals interpret the data they present.

When I was in high school, we did this exercise in psychology class. They showed us line drawings that contained two images. The most famous one was the “The Old Crone and The Beautiful Young Woman.” We were asked upon observation to tell the teacher which one we saw.

Most of my classmates saw the beautiful woman. In fact, most people do.

But I saw the old crone. What’s more, the teacher had to trace the outline of the beautiful woman for me to see it. Even then, I struggled. Everyone thought I was insane.

The Dress debate illuminates two things. First, how we perceive the world differs from individual to individual. Moreover, this diversion is not dependent on upbringing. There is a science behind it, and that was the point of the line drawings exercise in high school. The teacher was demonstrating that our minds interpret visual data differently.

Second, Americans live in a nation where science itself is under attack. Education is chronically underfunded, and proven scientific theory on critical environmental issues like climate change and vaccinations is disputed, loudly, on the Internet. Ignorant people are spewing misinformation, and they are influencing the uneducated and the gullible.

So I find something like the science of rods and cones and their impact on color perception, a critical thing to discuss. And presenting the debate in the innocuous form of “What color is this dress?” is a good idea, because it causes average people to engage with science. Perhaps, even though it is just a debate on the Internet about a dress, people will learn, come to understand their world better.

So I contend The Dress is “actually important.”

But it’s had its fifteen minutes. We can now get back to sharing cat videos and demonizing people with different political and religious views than we.

 

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: rods and cones, science, The Dress

Growing Old

So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink,

Put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink.

Oh, it could be so nice growing old with you.

I want to grow old with you.

–Adam Sandler, “Grow Old with You”

Every year, the same thing happens. For six weeks The Wife lords it over me how I am older than she. I am old. She is not. Ha-ha.

Then today happens, and we’re the same age again. The taunts are forgotten for another 46 weeks.

The amusing thing about this, of course, is that aging can’t be prevented. We grow old whether we want to or not. The only way to keep it from happening is to check out early, and no thanks. I like it here.

So why do we tease people about getting old? All things considered, it beats the alternative.

The answer perhaps lies in the fact that most of this ribbing comes from young people. The young believe youth is the pinnacle of human achievement. Old people are gross, out of touch, lame, etc. To quote Miguel Ferrer’s character in Robocop: “He’s old, we’re young, and that’s life.”

Of course, Ferrer’s character is assassinated by Ronny Cox’s old guy — the subject of Ferrer’s mockery — which illustrates another of life’s essential truths: Young people don’t what the hell they’re talking about.

But the rest of the ribbing old people take comes from people not��quite as old as they. The reason for this is simple: There are downsides to aging, and in a burst of��schadenfreude, the teaser thinks, “Hey, at least I don’t have it as bad��you!”

After all, aging hurts. You start waking up with pain you don’t understand. There doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. You just hurt somewhere. Ibuprofen doesn’t really help.

Suddenly, you can’t eat the way you used to. All that spicy food doesn’t like you as much as you like it. That third beer puts you to sleep instead of making you feel invincible.

Staying up late is next to impossible. Going up stairs leaves you winded. Running is a humorous concept and can only be undertaken following a lengthy warmup.

The middle-aged person who mocks someone older is doing so because she understands that this sucks, but someone else has it worse.

But if the body decays and betrays, there are some advantages to aging. Wisdom comes with experience. You start wondering how you are still alive, because it turns out young people are really stupid, and you used to be young.

You become more measured in your responses. You realize some things are really, really important, but most everything else is not. You wish you had all the energy you wasted in your youth, so you could spend it now on the things you recognize are actually worth worrying about.

Mostly, you learn to appreciate life for what it is — an amazing adventure you should ride for all it’s worth. Because it is short, and a lot of it gets misspent. You learn to be happy you’ve found the right person to grow old with and to smile when she teases you for six weeks about being younger.

Because Adam Sandler, of all people, is right: “It could be so nice growing old with you.”

So happy birthday to my no-longer-younger-than-me wife. May today be full of happiness for you, and may the next 46 weeks be filled with joy.

Then I’ll be older again, and you can go back to teasing me.

Here’s a birthday present for my dear wife.

 

Filed under: Uncategorized

Inspirations: TWIN PEAKS

Continuing my series on the various things that inspired and influenced me, I look today at Mark Frost and David Lynch’s seminal television series, Twin Peaks.

Getting Started

The Friday before Twin Peaks made its broadcast premiere in 1990, one of my college professors was excited. Despite having seen two of his films (Dune and The Elephant Man), I had never heard of David Lynch. My prof was excited due to Lynch’s reputation for weird material (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead) and couldn’t wait to see what he would bring to a television murder mystery. I was intrigued.

But I forgot to tune in.

The next morning, everyone was talking about it. Everyone had an opinion, good or bad, on this strange, new thing. This was the most buzzworthy television event I remembered since we all wondered who shot J.R.

I caught the rebroadcast and was instantly hooked. I’d never seen anything like “Peaks” with its strange characters, haunting music, and grim story line. When the third episode gave us the iconic dream with the dancing Little Man and people speaking backwards, I knew this was a very different show.

And I loved it. I watched every single episode as it aired, was crushed when it ended (although I could see it coming — ratings were tanking and so was the plot), was angered and thrilled at the cliffhanger series finale, and saw the film in the theater.

Digging In

But as much as I dug Twin Peaks that wasn’t how it had a profound impact on my imaginative consciousness.

It was several years later when I noticed the show had been released to VHS. There was a boxed set of the whole series, but I couldn’t afford that. I had to buy the tapes one at a time, each containing four or five episodes.

This is where my Twin Peaks obsession really began. Probably because I had to collect the series, I paid close attention to virtually every development. I was binge-watching but only in regimented blocks.

But as a result of obsessively re-watching the show, I dug deeply into its mythos, its themes, and its style.

I sought out the ancillary material. I found a copy of Jennifer Lynch’s The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and devoured it. It remains to this day the most frightening book I have ever read.

I got the other official materials — The Autobiography of Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes and Welcome to Twin Peaks. When a book of scholarly essays on Twin Peaks (Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to��Twin Peaks) came out, I bought it and read with passion.

Branching Out

And it was at this time Peaks’s signature surrealism started bleeding into my work. I ran a series of Vampire: The Masquerade campaigns in the early to mid-90’s, and they all featured strange otherworldly entities and trips to dream dimensions where clues were presented in the form of riddles.

In 1999, after working on it for three years, I published Heaven & Earth: A Role-Playing Game of Fate and Destiny. In it, I fused my two greatest obsessions, apocalyptic literature and Lynchian surrealism.

Set in the fictional town of Potter’s Lake, H&E was about the end of the world, and it featured possessing spirits like BOB, secretive magicians, ghosts, and angels and demons attempting to manipulate hapless mortals into choosing one side or the other. One reviewer said it looked like I was trying to reverse engineer what worked with Twin Peaks, and he was absolutely right.

In 2003, I began writing the novel that I would eventually publish as Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale. While I had penned novels earlier in my life, this was when I actively began pursuing becoming an author.

It is perhaps no surprise, then, that my first book had heavy Twin Peaks influences. Sally, my protagonist, begins having strange dreams of giant dogs attempting to devour her. A mysterious, wolf-headed, cloaked figure makes regular appearances and becomes an antagonist. As the novel progresses, the images from Sally’s dreams manifest in reality.

To resolve the novel’s various conflicts, she must first pull a magical key (originally a ring) out of her dreams, and then use it to enter the parallel dimension she’s visited in her nightmares so she can at last defeat the monster.

The book becomes more and more Lynchian as it progresses, and it was digging into all the surtext of Twin Peaks years before that made it so.

LRRH is the seventh novel I’ve published, and it is by no means the only one with “Peaks” fingerprints. In the fourth Wolf Dasher adventure, Ghost of a Chance, the titular spirit visits Wolf in his dreams and gives him riddles to solve to help him catch the villain. The scene where he gets them is a direct homage to the Twin Peaks second season pilot, where The Giant appears to Cooper and tells him three things to help him solve the case. (There is another scene in GoaC, where the ghost appears to Wolf and uses The Giant’s line, “It is happening again.”)

In The Sword and the Sorcerer, my protagonist, Calibot, must enter his father’s tower to gain the powerful artifact, The Eye of the Dragon. The only way in is with the magical sword his deceased father has bequeathed him. Entering is more akin to breaching an other-dimensional portal than opening a door. Inside, the tower is a surreal landscape featuring non-Euclidean geometry, where getting from one room to the next requires solving magical puzzles.

And that’s only the surrealism. Twin Peaks’s theme that everyone has something to hide, that no one is innocent, plays through my work too. Few of my characters are pure. Most of them have some secret they guard, some motivation that makes them suspect.

“Let’s Rock”

I’ve seen most of Lynch’s films since really discovering his work in 1990, and his signature surreal horror shapes my thinking when I’m crafting the more disturbing scenes in my novels.

But it was Twin Peaks that really influenced me. A detective who used dreams to solve murders, a town full of people with secret crimes, an evil presence in the wilderness just outside town, secret societies, and strange creatures with unknown motivations lurk in my mind whenever I sit to write. Aside from�� Heaven & Earth, I’ve never written a direct adaptation of “Peaks,” but the specters of the show (coming back into style in 2016!) continue to infuse my imagination and create secret code in my fiction.

After all, the owls are not what they seem.

Filed under: Ghost of a Chance, Inspirations, Little Red Riding Hoodie, The Sword and the Sorcerer Tagged: John Phythyon, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Twin Peaks, writing

The Best Laid Plans . . .

It was going to be glorious.

The school district had plotted a four-day weekend. The kids were off on Friday for conferences and again on Monday for President’s Day.

So the kids were all flying back to Kansas to visit their other parents. The Wife and I had the house all to ourselves. Valentine’s Day was Saturday.

I had a whole weekend planned. We had some shopping we wanted to do. We wanted to visit Book Loft, the gargantuan independent bookstore in Columbus. There is a famous burger joint we wanted to try. We wanted to explore some of the pubs in town we hadn’t tried yet, and we had Christmas money left to blow on a weekend of kid-free entertainment.

But all three sniffling children handed me a cold before they left town. I woke up Friday morning completely congested and feeling lightheaded. Not only did that sour my mood, it made it hard to do anything.

But I loaded up on cold meds and gamely went out, trying to shop. It was hard to concentrate. I couldn’t make decisions on anything we looked at. We were supposed to go out to dinner that night, but by the time we made it back from our shopping excursion, we’d hit less than half the places we intended, and I didn’t feel like getting dressed up to go to nice restaurant.

We grabbed a quick bite at a pub we’d been meaning try and went home. I was in bed by 10. On a Friday night. Lame.

And I slept until past noon on Saturday. Fourteen hours of sleep did my head a world of good, but it was snowing when I woke up. We were undeterred until both the snow and the wind intensified to create near-whiteout conditions.

So much for going to bookstores and burger joints.

We braved the weather to get to the grocery store, so we would have food, and I made a modest meal (not the steak I had been planning to grill) that the kids don’t like, so it at least felt special. We watched a couple of romantic movies on Netflix.

The next day we went out and did some of the shopping we had intended to do Friday, but that prevented us from doing the pub crawl we had planned. The weather permitted me to grill those steaks (although it was freezing outside tending them), and we had our Valentine’s meal on the 15th, then watched a couple more movies.

The next day, the kids came home.

We had a multitude of adventures planned that never came to fruition. It was frustrating, because we’d both been looking forward to it for a month.

Best laid plans and all that. As usual, fate and circumstance got together to mess with us.

But it was quiet. We didn’t have to referee any fights. No one rolled their eyes at us, implied we didn’t know anything about cool, or complained about what was served for dinner. We took two days off work. We did our best to relax.

So it was good, even if it wasn’t the high adventure we’d planned.

And Spring Break is only two months away.

Filed under: Uncategorized

I Hate Plumbing

I hate plumbing.

Don’t get me wrong — I prefer it to having to out back to an outhouse, especially since it gets pretty chilly in Central Ohio during the wintertime.

But I hate dealing with it. It is never, ever easy to fix, and it is the thing that seems to break most often in every house I’ve ever lived in.

I sat down to pen a new masterpiece yesterday afternoon. I opened my laptop, got comfy, and began to type.

I wrote three whole sentences before my stepson came upstairs to say, “Hey, John, there’s a sink or something leaking in the basement.”

We don’t have a sink in the basement, so I’m not sure what he thought had gone wrong, but he knew water didn’t belong on the floor, so he should come tell me about it.

What had actually happened was that a piece of polyurethane tubing had broken, enabling water from the heater to spill onto the floor.

This sounds like an easy problem to fix. But your ears deceive you.

The tubing was connected to some sort of backflow control device, and it had snapped off inside the apparatus. Not knowing what the thing was and hating plumbing, I disconnected the whole assembly and took it down to my local hardware store (which is quite excellent), showed them the piece, and asked for a new one.

This is where the odyssey began.

They had no idea what the hell this thing was. They sent me to a plumbing wholesaler place they figured would have anything I needed.

This place was way the hell down in central Columbus — a 20-minute drive over the highway when it isn’t rush hour. But it was rush hour.

I spent the last of my gas fighting my way through traffic to find this place, went in, and handed it to the three experts behind the counter.

And NONE OF THEM knew what the hell it was.

They looked it up on the Internet, determined it was nothing they — a plumbing supply wholesaler — would carry, and directed me to Lowe’s.

You know, the discount, every-person place, not a specialty plumbing wholesaler. Because that makes sense.

Did I mention I hate plumbing?

So I put a little gas in and started back home, when I saw there was a Lowe’s off the very next exit. I got off went in, and found someone to help me.

Three different people in the plumbing department at Lowe’s had no idea what the hell this thing was.

However, they at least spent some time trying to help me find some sort of solution. We looked at polyurethane tubing to replace the one that had cracked off. Naturally, their smallest size was 1/2″, and I needed 3/8″.

They recommended I order what I needed off the Internet. Okay, but how does that help me today?

I examined the tubing and began to imagine a different solution. The strange apparatus that no one knew what it was or what it did was threaded on the outside. The cracked 3/8″ tubing had been secured inside with a coupling. I wondered if I could just put some tubing on the outside and secure it with a band of some sort.

I picked up a piece of 1″ tubing to have a look. Not only was that the right size, I discovered I could screw it onto the threaded end of the mystery device and have it fit snugly.

What my brother calls a cob-job began to look like a real possibility to me.

I bought the 1″ tubing and went home, once again fighting horrific rush-hour traffic. I got home, screwed the tubing onto the unknown apparatus, reconnected it to the line from the water heater, and then jammed the whole thing into the drainage pipe.

My stepson ran another load of laundry. All the water went where it was supposed to go instead of on the floor. I felt like a genius.

A genius who had driven halfway across the city during rush hour to go to three different stores, all to find a $4 piece of plastic.

I hate plumbing.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Inspirations: Adam West as Batman

I’m starting a new series today I’m calling, “Inspirations.” In it, I’ll discuss the things that have inspired and shaped me as a writer. From pop culture to literature to life events, I’ll look at the influences that have made me the author I am and where appropriate, show examples in my work. First up, Adam West’s Batman.

In the beginning . . .

I was not very old when I discovered superheroes for the first time. We moved to Wisconsin shortly after my seventh birthday, and I have distinct superheroic memories from my time in West Virginia (ages two through six). I was not yet in school when I dressed as Spider-Man and my brother as Batman for a Halloween costume contest at the park down the street from our duplex. I had a large collection of Mego’s “World’s Greatest Superheroes” dolls that I brought with me to Green Bay.

The idea of guys in outlandish costumes running around with magical powers and defeating villains fired my young imagination like nothing else.

But my first memory of seeing Adam West and Burt Ward tooling around Gotham City in that souped up Lincoln Futura (arguably the most famous car ever) was in first grade. Reruns of the 60’s classic aired on one of the local stations after school, and my brother and I never missed a single thrilling minute.

Batman has never been my favorite superhero. I like him. A lot. But Batman was my brother’s favorite. I was into Superman (because he could fly and was indestructible) and Spider-Man, because was amazingly cool.

But the thing is, at the time, Superman and Spider-Man had not made live action film or television appearances. I could see them on animated shows. I could read about them in the comic books. But they weren’t “real.”

Batman and Robin, on the other hand, were. West and Ward donned the costumes and went out as the Caped Crusaders every afternoon.

And the live-action nature of the show inspired me in a way animation did not. Seeing Batman and Robin climb up the side of a building with Bat-ropes and Batarangs, roar through Gotham City in the Batmobile, and get into real fistfights with The Joker, The Penguin, and The Riddler was the kind of thing that caused a seven-year-old to boggle.

It was all real. It was possible. There really could be superheroes.

I had no idea it was played for comedy. I only saw villainy and heroism play out live every afternoon after school.

Imitated but Never Duplicated

As the 1970’s wore on, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, and the Incredible Hulk would all get live-action shows of their own. I watched every episode of those shows too.

But the thing about those ’70’s superhero shows as opposed to 1960’s Batman was that the villains were all conventional. Spider-Man has one of the greatest rogues galleries in comics. In fact, only Spider-Man can rival Batman for the varied fiends he battles.

But the TV show never showed any of those guys. Spidey never fought The Green Goblin or The Scorpion or Rhino or Mysterio on the show. He battled mobsters and evil scientists. The same was true of Wonder Woman (although she fought Nazis in the first season), and The Hulk traveled from town to town looking for a cure to his problem and losing his temper.

It just wasn’t the same. Batman’s villains wore costumes. It looked like the comic books.

And the police were grateful for his help. Commissioner Gordon called in Batman whenever there was a problem too big for the Boys in Blue.

Seeing all this play out daily with real people made me believe in the superhero concept in a way other media did not. Because of Batman I wanted to be a superhero. When I was nine years old, I would actually try. (Read about that here.)

And wanting to be a superhero made me want to be heroic. As I grew into an adult with aspirations as a novelist, I was drawn inexorably to adventure stories. My heroes don’t inhabit a four-color world. I do not work with simple definitions of good and evil.

But they aspire to do the right thing. The TV show never discussed Batman’s motivations. We never learned that Bruce Wayne’s parents were murdered before his eyes.

On the show, Wayne was Batman, fighting against evil, because he could do it. He took in youthful Dick Grayson, because he could, and he mentored the young lad not only in the ways of superheroing, but also in upright, moral behavior and even, on occasion, good grammar.

Adam West’s Batman was an impossibly good saint. And if no one could ever be that altruistic, he at least gave me a goal to strive for. Wanting to emulate Batman wasn’t just about always winning and beating up the bad guys for me (although that was a big piece of it). It was about wanting to be good.

So in the innocence of my youth, before bullies and tragedy changed me into the guy who identified more with Michael Keaton’s Batman, Adam West set me on a path of being the hero — someone’s, anyone’s hero.

And that heroic ideal, that desire to do the right thing and triumph over darkness shapes all my stories. It shapes my life. A campy show from the 1960’s that went off the air before I was even born had one of the most profound impacts on my life — both as a person and an author — of anything I’ve ever experienced.

If you send up the Bat-signal, you can bet I’ll respond.

Filed under: Inspirations Tagged: Adam West, Batman, John Phythyon, Secret Identity

LITTLE RED RIDING HOODIE on sale after long journey

It’s here! It’s finally here.

Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale is on sale at Amazon.com and CreateSpace.com.

Like most novels, its journey to publication was long and had some pitfalls. Seeing it live in the e-stores is gratifying.

But this one is just a little more special. It’s not the story — although I’m really proud of that. It’s not the themes or the characters or the writing. Having just reread it to proof it for publication, I’m very pleased with all those things. This one turned out very well.

But Little Red Riding Hoodie makes me a little prouder than some of the other books I’ve penned, because in a way, it is where my publishing journey began.

Back in 2003, I conceived a fantasy novel I titled Little Girl Lost about a 12-year-old who was living in an abusive household and got a magic ring that would grant her wishes. I wrote the book, had several friends read it, made changes they suggested, and then started researching how to publish it.

I subscribed to Writer’s Digest. I bought a book on how to write effective query letters. I researched how to format your manuscript. I searched for agents who represented this kind of fiction.

And then I started submitting. I got several rejections. I attended writers’ conferences, pitched agents in person, got their permission to send them my manuscript.

But all I got were form rejection letters.

I put the book aside and started writing another. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with Little Girl Lost, but I knew something was.

Over the next few years, I looked at it again several times. I tried to make changes. I began new iterations at least three times. I even examined it about a year-and-a-half ago. As an indie author, I thought it was time to clean it up and get it out there.

But I just couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

And then my stepdaughter and I were driving somewhere, and she used the phrase, “Little Red Riding Hoodie.” I chuckled at the cleverness of that title. I said I would have to use that as the title for my next modern fairy tale.

And then I suddenly realized I already had the book. I just needed to rewrite it. LGL already had the Big Bad Wolf imagery. Putting my protagonist in a red, hooded sweatshirt given to her by her grandmother was an easy adjustment. I put Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale on my plans for 2015.

Then Amazon announced the Kindle Scout program. Fantasy was one of the categories they would consider. But you needed a ready-to-go, never-before-published novel. LRRH was the only thing I had that came close.

I didn’t realize at the time that Kindle Scout would be an ongoing thing. I thought it was limited-time. So I pulled out the most recent version of Little Girl Lost, made some notes, and started working like a man possessed. I averaged 5000 words a day of writing or rewriting. The first draft was done in two weeks. Each subsequent draft took a week.

I had an extremely successful Kindle Scout campaign, but the book wasn’t chosen. So today, I’m releasing it myself.

I published my first novel, State of Grace, in 2011. But three-and-a-half years later, I’m finally releasing the novel that started my authorial journey twelve years before.

So I’m just a little prouder about this one.

Click here to get Little Red Riding Hoodie for your Kindle.

Click here to get Little Red Riding Hoodie in print.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Little Red Riding Hoodie

Deflategate Exposes NFL Hypocrisy on Race

The Super Bowl is this weekend. You might have heard about that. This year, there is controversy surrounding one of the teams playing in it. You’ve likely had a hard time not hearing about that.

It seems that, two weeks ago, the New England Patriots deflated 11 of the 12 balls they were supposed to provide for the AFC Championship Game, so they would be easier to grip in the rain and cold.

In other words, they cheated.

Despite the fact that the league has concluded the Patriots deliberately broke the rules to create an unfair competitive advantage, they were not barred from the Super Bowl and replaced by their opponents, the Indianapolis Colts. The NFL is still conducting an�� investigation into who was responsible and who knew about it.

Meanwhile the Patriots will get a chance to play for the title and activate the bonus clauses in the contracts of their players and coaches that are triggered by reaching a Super Bowl and winning one.

So, yeah. There’s a lot of money involved.

But that’s not really the point of this blog.

A lot has been made over “Deflategate” — how it tarnishes the Patriots’ legacy, who knew what, and whether or not this “manufactured controversy” is worthy of the media attention it is getting instead of real emergencies like climate change, homelessness, and racism.

If this whole flap were just over whether the Patriots cheated to get to the Super Bowl (and this is a team that was penalized three years ago for cheating, so it stands to reason they’ve been cheating all along and just got caught this time), I’d be behind the argument that Deflategate is getting too much attention. Yes, I’d still be rooting for the Seahawks on Sunday, because I hate cheaters, but I wouldn’t feel compelled to blog about in a space I usually reserve for discussing my writing and my life.

But speaking of those Seahawks, there’s a piece of this story that is not getting a lot of media attention. It’s getting some, to be sure, but not the sensationalized lead stories on the sports networks every night.

Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch wanted to wear gold shoes in the NFC Championship Game a few hours before the Patriots cheated to win the AFC game. This is a violation of the NFL uniform policy. So the league told him the first time he stepped out onto the field in illegal shoes, it would cost his team 15 yards for Unsportsmanlike Conduct. The second time, he would be ejected.

From a conference championship game. When he is one of the best, most important players on the team.

Lynch has also made a habit recently of grabbing his cr0tch when he scores. Such a gesture may have been good for Michael Jackson back in The Day, but the NFL finds it inconsistent with its alleged Wholesome Family Entertainment image.

So they’ve already fined him into the five figures for doing it, and they’ve threatened him with the same penalties if he does it in the Super Bowl as they did for his proposed footwear in the NFC Championship Game.

Now, I get it to an extent. There are a lot of people in Sunday’s audience who do not want to see a celebrity commit crude gestures in the biggest televised sports event of the year. And the only way to keep guys from violating multi-million-dollar sponsorship contracts is to make sure it’s painful for doing so.

But let’s put this in perspective.

Marshawn Lynch is central to his team’s offensive strategy. His skill set will have an impact on the outcome of the game. And the league is suggesting he will be ejected if he does not play by the rules of good taste and what he’s allowed to wear.

And the league knows this will have an impact on the competitive balance of the game. They know it could influence the outcome. That’s why they’re doing it. They’re trying to pressure Lynch into doing what they want by making him feel he’d let his teammates down.

Meanwhile, the league does not feel any punishment needs to be handed out to the Patriots before the Super Bowl. Despite denials, there is little doubt Patriots quarterback Tom Brady knew the balls had been deflated. He almost certainly paid someone to take care of it for him. One Hall-of-Fame player and coach after another has come out this week saying there is no doubt that something like this only happens because that’s how the quarterback wants it.

But there is no talk of Brady being suspended from the Super Bowl.

The fact that the balls were deflated so they would be easier to grip, throw, and catch in the cold and rain obviously and certainly had an impact on the outcome of the AFC Championship Game. The Patriots had an advantage the Colts did not.

So the NFL is concerned enough about good taste and uniform codes that it is willing to change the competitive balance of the biggest game of the year by penalizing and/or ejecting a player from one team, but it is willing to look the other way (at least long enough for everyone involved to participate in the game) when the other team breaks the actual rules of the game. Grabbing your crotch is offensive and worthy of suspension. Cheating to win is not.

Now, so what? It’s just a football game. In the grand scheme of things, this doesn’t measure up to the deaths of Eric Garner or Trayvon Martin. This is way less important than Russia annexing parts of Ukraine and ISIS beheading Japanese citizens. All that is true.

But there’s another element to this story that is getting even less press than the Lynch controversies.

Tom Brady and his legendary coach, Bill Belichick, are white. Brady, in fact, is the very picture of Pretty White Boy. Marshawn Lynch is black.

So the white guys are allowed to cheat to win and there are no consequences, if any, until after the season. But if the black guy steps out of line, he’ll be tossed out of the championship game.

Does the NFL not understand that it is reinforcing, however unintentionally, institutionalized racism? Does it not get that it is telling everyone in America (and really the world) that there is a different set of rules for white people than for black?

The league understands very well how its image and players influence fans — particularly young fans. That’s why it has a personal conduct code and why guys get suspended for being arrested.

It’s also why players are suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs. It creates an unfair advantage on the field and sends a bad message. It’s cheating.

But apparently cheating doesn’t matter if it’s the ball that’s being modified instead of the player’s body.

And the league seems to have forgotten how this season started. One of its most successful players punched out his then-fiancee in an elevator and dragged her by the hair out of it. After giving him a slap-on-the-wrist, two-game suspension, it changed its mind when public outrage suggested they’d done the wrong thing. They suspended him for the rest of the season, and his team cut him.

Ray Rice is black.

Before the season was two weeks old, another of its most popular players, Adrian Petersen, was arrested for beating his four-year-old son with a switch so severely he drew blood. Petersen was suspended for the rest of the season.

Adrian Petersen is black.

Now both those guys behaved reprehensibly, and the league rightly took action.

But the lack of any pre-Super Bowl consequences for Deflategate, coupled with the Marshawn Lynch flap, has sent a pretty clear statement about the 2014 NFL season:

If you’re a black man, and you step out of line, you will be punished. But if you’re white, you won’t. If you’re black, your punishment will hurt your team’s chances to win right now. If you’re white, any consequences will be handed down after the season.

And of course, none of this touches on the other theme Deflategate offers, which is that winning at any cost is acceptable. Well, at least so long as you’re white.

The National Football League has been instrumental in breaking color barriers and fostering workplace integration.

But a league that still has a team whose mascot is a racial slur, that does not have a majority black owner, and that seems to think black men wearing gold shoes and grabbing their crotches is worse behavior than white guys cheating to win a championship game still has a long way to go when it comes to racial equality.

It’s time the league woke up and smelled its own hypocrisy.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Deflategate, Marshawn Lynch, NFL, Racism, Tom Brady

Proof of Joy

As you go through life, it’s important to retain your enthusiasm for things you do and enjoy.

I’ve been indie publishing for over three years now. I’ve released 12 books, and I’ve got a 13th on the way.

But I still geek out when I get a hard copy in the mail.

The print proof for Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale arrived on Saturday. It looks pretty good, although Jill wants to tweak the cover a bit.

And, of course, I have to read the whole thing this week to proof it, so it’s clean when it releases next Monday.

But it’s still thrilling holding one of my books in my hands. Months of hard work, worrying over tiny details, and sometimes losing sleep have finally rendered something I can be proud of. Seeing a finished novel inspires me to keep working on the one I’m writing at the moment.

There’s a lot of misery involved with being an artist. Until you become commercially successful, the heartache and the struggles can make you want to quit.

But the little joys — like seeing your work in print — makes it worth it.

***

Little Red Riding Hoodie: A Modern Fairy Tale is available for pre-order through Amazon.com. The eBook version is only 99 cents. Get it here.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Writing Tagged: indie publishing, John Phythyon, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Red Riding Hood

“Domestic Disturbance” Excerpt

I’ve been so busy working firs ton the Kindle Scout campaign for Little Red Riding Hoodie and then getting it ready for release, I’ve sort of ignored the book I published on January 5th. “Domestic Disturbance: My True-Life Adventure in Sibling Rivalry” is my third mini-memoir and addresses the epic conflict between my brother and I when we were growing up in De Pere, Wisconsin in the 1970’s.

It’s funny now. I’m not sure my parents thought so at the the time.

Anyway, here’s an excerpt. You can get the rest of the book for only 99 cents here.

* * *

It was a warm, summer day in Bowling Green, Ohio, when my life came to an end. That was the day they brought him home. The epic clash that would ultimately consume an entire neighborhood and a large chunk of the student population of Dickinson School in De Pere began in northwestern Ohio, while my father was earning his Ph.D.

The battle didn���t stay there long. My dad���s academic career took us out of the Buckeye State, when I was only two. But the seeds for this story were sown in Bowling Green.

Anyone will tell you first impressions are important. That initial contact shapes a person���s opinion and informs everything they think and do concerning their interactions with you. A bad first impression can be overcome, but it takes a long time, years perhaps. If you don���t get it right at the outset, you���ve got a long climb in front of you to change things.

I understood this perfectly well at the age of eighteen months. My parents were bringing home a new member of the family. This was the first meeting with someone I was going to know for the rest of my life. He would be with me every step of the way until I graduated from high school. It was important we got off on the right foot. So when I first met my Little Brother, I did the most logical thing in the world.

I bit him on the head.

My mother was aghast, but what was she expecting? We���d had a perfectly happy arrangement before she brought this invader into the home without my permission. He had no right to Mom and Dad���s attention, but they cooed over him like he was some sort of gift from Heaven.

What were they thinking?

Besides, new arrivals need training. It���s just like when you bring a puppy home. You have to establish dominance early, so the puppy understands it is not the alpha in the pack; you are.

It���s the same way with Little Brothers. If you don���t demonstrate right away that you were here first and are therefore the best, they���ll walk all over you. You���ll have to share with them and make sure they get as big a piece of cake as you. And parents will act like that���s the way it should be. It���s insane but true.

So it was critical upon meeting my brother, David, that I establish our relationship from the get-go. I was the Big Brother. Certain rights and privileges came with that status. I had the rights and the privileges. He did not.

Incredibly, my mother didn���t see it this way. Given that she had not one but four Little Brothers, I do not understand how she could have objected to my perfectly reasonable behavior. She, of all people, knew how important it was to dominate the younger set.

Instead, she acted as if I were some sort of a monster. She actually punished me for biting my brother! I felt completely betrayed. I was her son! Had she no humanity?

I was undeterred by this shocking turn of events, however. I spent the early part of our lives together biting Dave whenever I felt he needed a reminder of who was in charge, which was often.

My mother grew concerned. She feared her first-born child was becoming a cannibal. Left unattended, I might actually eat my Little Brother. How ridiculous. It hadn���t occurred to me to take more than one bite at a time.

She consulted our pediatrician, and that fiend told her to bite me back the next time I did it. Can you imagine? What sort of a quack tells a mother to bite her darling, first-born son? But he did.

And she followed his advice!

Seriously! One day, I gave Dave the good biting he needed, and my mother ran over, grabbed me, and bit me!

I howled as though she had lit me on fire. Did she not understand how much that hurt?

That changed things. If she was going to bite me every time I bit Dave, I would have to stop biting him! I couldn���t have her doing that to me.

This would be Dave���s first great victory over me, not that he really earned it. All he did was cry. Regardless, I would be imposing a righteous, well earned, Big Brother smackdown on him, and I would be the one who got in trouble.

* * *

Click here to get “Domestic Disturbance: My True-Life Adventure in Sibling Rivalry” from Amazon.com.

Filed under: Memoir Tagged: John Phythyon, memoirs, sibling rivalry