That other blog

Written by my 4th grade son and mailed this morning.  (The spelling and punctuation are exactly as he wrote it.)

Dear Mr. Philip Rivers,

Hi! My name is Jay. I am nine years old and I am just finishing up fourth grade. The San Diego Chargers are my favorite  football team. I also think you are the best quarterback in the NFL.

I really enjoy watching you and the rest of the Chargers on TV. I think it’s really cool when you throw your sixty yard pass down the feild for a touchdown. I think you always do great when I watch you play.

I had some questions I wanted to ask you and I was wondering if you could answer them. What is it like playing in the NFL with the Chargers? Which of your teammates is your favorite and least favorite? What are the best and worst things about playing the NFL? Which teams in the NFL are your favorite and least favorite, other than the Chargers? Do you have any kids? If so, How many? I would really enjoy it if you could write back to me when you get a chance. Thanks!

Pretty cool. I’d been telling him for months that he could write a letter if he wanted to, and then all of a sudden he banged that out. Rough draft and all. So, we’re mailing it this morning with a picture of Jay in his Philip Rivers jersey.

We didn’t want to send him anything to sign… we just wanted to say “hi.” I found it interesting what questions Jay chose to ask – the personal stuff he can find out from the Chargers bio pages (we talked about it a bit afterward and he thought it was so cool the Rivers family is quite large compared to ours) and the favorite/least favorite questions are typical 4th grader thinking. It was cool.

Jay’s a fiercely loyal Charger fan… the kid bleeds powder blue.  And I couldn’t be happier with his choice of sports idol.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

My morning – a play by Scott Copperman  (based on a true story)

Pants: you know, this is a good day to get some exercise. Let’s go.
Knees: eh, I don’t think so.
Pants: come on, you used to be all about this stuff.
Knees: that was then, this is now.
Pants: Dudes, I don’t want to end up buried in the corner like those 34s over there. Come on, we can jog/walk, it doesn’t have to be a “run” per se.
Knees: maybe later.
Pants: that’s what you said in November…. and December… and last week… and…
Back: Hey beltless, they said “no!” Now go eat a cookie or something.

*sigh*  at least the cookie was Chocolate Chip.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

Welcome to the San Diego Chargers, Mr. Ryan Mathews. I hope you have a long and productive career for the bolts.

You have some big shoes to fill, but I have a feeling you’re going to have a good year. You have the benefit of a talented and respected passing game already in place, so you should get some room to run. And, your own talent seems legit. I’m not expecting 1500 yards from you this year, I just hope to see you be able to get a good number of 6 or 7 yard rushes off and to be able to hit the holes with a burst that we haven’t seen in San Diego for a year or two.

LT was great, and I was one of those who believed last year was going to be a big year for the man with lots to prove – but it just didn’t turn out that way. I hope no one puts the pressure on you to be “the next LT” we don’t need that. It’d be nice for everyone if you were able to duplicate his 2006 season at some point, but what we need is reliable, consistent, effective play… and I’m hoping you’ll make a name for yourself with your own style and accomplishments.

Welcome to San Diego, Mr. Mathews. My son will wear your #24 proudly.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

Going into the start of the 2010 NHL Playoffs, the home team had won 80 out of 129 (62%) Game 7s.

So what?

Let’s think about that for a moment…

The very fact the series went to a game seven suggests the two teams are somewhat evenly matched. Add in the fact that by design, the team with home court advantage for game 7 is the team which had a more successful regular season (in theory a better team). And you get the home team winning a little more often than they lose, but not overwhelmingly.

So what?

There’s nothing in that statistic that is counter intuitive. And yet ESPN, Versus, NBC, and the USA Today kept throwing it out there prior to the Detroit/Phoenix game. And, there’s nothing about the number that would make either team winning a “shock.”

I say again, “so what?” Show me a stat that runs against what you’d expect and then maybe I’ll say “oh, that’s what.”

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

Wow, has it really been more than 2 months since I posted on this blog? I guess so.

Well, I suppose it’s time to make a renewed effort.  And given my current schedule, this probably as good a time as any.

So welcome to That Other Blog 2.0  (ewww, I hate when places and people do that….)  okay, so…. welcome to That Other Other Blog…. (no)….

how about just plain ol’… “hi. Good to see you again.”
Yeah, I like that too.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

As you probably know, New Jersey is one of the 49 states to get snow in the recent snow storm. At my house we probably got 30-36 inches in total over a four day period. Ugh.

The skies have been clear for about five days now, and although there’s no snow in the forecast there’s plenty of it on the ground. So I’ve been drawing on the lessons I learned in Ms. McCarty’s 4th grade class at Driscoll Elementary.

There’s no way I’m hauling shovelfulls of wet, icy snow from one side of my driveway to another. Instead I’ve been simply throwing the snow into the street… onto the clear, black asphalt.  Warm, toasty, sun’s energy absorbing black asphalt. I flick the snow onto the street, kick any clumps into smaller wisps of snow and watch them melt almost instantly and flow back into the gutters.

By the time I finished my most recent round of doing this, all the snow had melted and I’d cleared another 54 cubic feet of snow from in front of my house. (That’s an 18 foot wide, 1.5 foot deep rectangle of snow extending two feet from the curb, if you’re scoring at home.)

It’s tiring and my back hurts from all the twisting and throwing, but I’m pleased to have been able to apply the lesson I learned back when we put a piece of black felt and a piece of  white felt on the snow and watched the black felt sink about a foot into the snow over the course of a day back in 1978.

Thank you Ms. McCarty (and “Gifted and Talented” supplemental instruction teacher, Ms. Safran), you taught me well.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

I know it’s just a reality TV show/contest, and it’s hardly worth investing much thought in, but… it irks me (that’s right, I said “irks”… well, I typed it really, but you get the idea… I USED it) that they do not give equal airtime to all the potential finalists.

I know it’s a tough thing to do, but I think there’s an inherent advantage built in when the process is going to be handed over to the public and then not all the players have been given the same opportunity to connect with the voters.

I remember a few years ago, there was a woman who did not receive ANY air time until she made it to first week of voting America voting. We never saw her sing until the first week that the votes mattered, and … surprise surprise … she failed to garner enough votes to stay.

So, yes, I find it irksome (ohhh, there’s that word again, but in a different form) that they do not give equal air time to all of the potential top 24.

I do recognize they don’t have a whole of time, but you know what? They could cut down on the cutting down of genuinely misguided people who don’t realize they can’t sing. Some people are on there for a laugh, but some of those poor people really don’t know how bad they are. And they don’t realize the screeners have passed them through to the audition room to see them get humiliated.

We do so many things to protect people from their own stupidity, in this country. Shouldn’t we be doing that here too?

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

“snorple”

It’s a little bit darker than black, but a little lighter than white – snorple.

My kids and I debate the existence of snorple items all the time. They, of course, deny any such color exists. I, of course, say it does.

Yesterday, on the way home from the grocery store, I added in a discussion of a “spangle” (a shape with more sides than a rectangle but fewer than a triangle). How many sides does the spangle have? Why, “skezel” (more than 10 but less than 2), of course. Duh!

I wonder if they’ll torture their own children in the same way when they get older? My daughter will… I’m fairly sure. My son may look like me and want to be like me, but in terms of personality, my daughter is probably the one who inherited the greater share of the genetic contributors to personality.

Poor her (and her future husband).

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

I talked to one of my best friends on the phone for more than an hour last night. He had some updates on people I haven’t seen, heard from, or talked to in a while, but there were more than a few whom I have been wondering about quite a bit lately and about whom he had no info to share.

I don’t have a facebook account, and the big search engines are not so helpful for a variety of reasons : their names are too common, they don’t have a very large online footprint, etc., .

So, I decided to simply put their names here, in the hopes that while I haven’t been able to find them, they may stumble upon this site and (if interested) reach out.

[Note: if you're name's not here, it doesn't mean I don't care about or haven't been thinking/wondering about you... I may already have gotten an update, or may be following another lead to get in touch with you, or a whole slew of other things could be factors... don't take it personally, this is literally the tip of the "I wonder about ____ " iceberg].

In no particular order, here’s round one of my reverse search attempt:

• Jon Greenwald
• Corinne Houser (formerly Corinne Reiser) and Jeff Houser
• Tim Lawrence
• Shannon Sommerville
• Dawn Hurley (formerly Dawn Gasparri)
• Greg Weiss
• Dan Spoust

That’s probably a good start. If you’re the Jon, Corinne, Tim, Shannon, Dawn, or Greg I’m looking for, you’ll know it. If you don’t recognize me, then it’s probably someone else I had in mind.

And, again, if you’re not on this list… but you know them and me and want to leave a comment or send an email, please do.

Like I said, there are plenty of other people I wonder about, some of whom I’ve gotten rough updates from Coll, Jess, Dave, Amy, Hayes, or even Tully.  And some I’ve stumbled on bits of news about online, but that’s no where near as good as getting an update from you yourself.

We’ll see how this goes.

Contributed by: Scott Copperman

Hmmm, since posting about the cookie I’ve gone on to make myself a bowl of chili. The cookie’s were just not satisfying, and I was starting to feel read bad about myself for eating so many.

What does that mean in the metaphor from my previous post? I assume it means you all feel badly about yourselves for being here and have moved on to read other content online. So I’m basically talking to myself.

…

…

…

Well, all right then!

Contributed by: Scott Copperman