Three Things I Don't Understand

Dr. Evil: [Upon being told his plans to expose Prince Charles' infidelity and to initiate the greehouse effect are worthless because those things have already happened] "Oh, hell, let's just do what we always do. Let's hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage."

--Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery

I want to talk about three things in sports that make absolutely no sense to illustrate a point below. Saddle up

First, football.

Situation: Its 4th and forever, and you need to punt. Unfortunately, the other team has a total stud, like Devon Hester, waiting to receive. You know if he catches the ball there's a really good chance he'll score, or at least go for a pretty long run back. What do you do?

Answer: In the NFL and college, the answer is to kick it straight down the field and let the receiver catch it and take your chances. But until about the last few years or so, teams routinely would kick away from that kind of receiver, trying to punch it out on the sidelines. The downsides are that you won't be able to kick it as far, and its easier to block a punt coming from the outside than straight up the middle. But at least you don't run the greater risk of a big return. The game used to always be played by kicking to the side. The last punter in the NFL who can still do this is old man Jeff Feagles, who creaks as he walks on the field and wipes out half of his team with the smell of Ben Gay, with his helmet hiding the too long in the fields melanomas on his balding head. Its like he's the last of some extinct species, the only person left on earth apparently capable of punting a ball other than straight down the field. But we know that the laws of physics haven't changed since punters routinely could punt to the sideline without getting the ball blocked. The ball hasn't changed shape. Global warming hasn't yet changed average barometric pressure to the point that the atmosphere cannot sustain a football projectile on a non-direct track. Why won't college and pro teams kick away from returners they have little chance of stopping?

Second, baseball.

Situation: Bottom of the 7th, and your starter is running out of gas. Your team is clinging to a one-run lead. Opposition hitters are torching your pitcher, your guy hasn't gotten anyone out, and the second, third, and fourth spots in the lineup are coming up. You go to the bullpen to replace the starter. Who do you bring in?

Answer: Instead of bringing in your best reliever, you bring in your third or maybe even fourth best reliever. Why? Because its only the 7th, and you need your second-best reliever to pitch the 8th as the "setup man," and your best reliever to pitch the ninth as your "closer" to get the "save." This makes no sense whatsoever. The game doesn't need saving when the closer would pitch, hopefully, to the eighth, ninth and first place hitters in the ninth. It needs saving in the seventh when the opponent's best hitters will come to bat, and especially if they have a rally going. Yet in today's game, managers pre-designate their relievers as closers, set up men, and everyone else, and will only put in their closer in the ninth, set up man in the eighth, and everyone else before. This means that you will put in some scrub to pitch to the other team's best hitters, keeping your best pitcher on the bench to use him against the other team's worst hitters. In the other sports this never happens. Defensive coaches put their best cornerbacks on the offense's best receivers. Basketball coaches put their best defender on the other team's best scorer. Hell, in Caddyshack, when Judge Smails told the head greenskeeper to do something about those gophers tunneling in from Al Czervik's condominium project across the street from Bushwood, the greenskeeper promised to put his best man on it (which turned out to be Carl Spackler). But in baseball, managers don't use their best pitchers to pitch to the other team's best hitters, just because the best hitters aren't hitting in the ninth inning. Is a run in the ninth worth more than a run in the seventh? No. When the "save" was first invented, relievers like Goose Gossage, Sparky Lyle, Rollie Fingers and Kent Tekulve (grasshopper looking, submarine throwing, John Lennon glasses wearing freak) all routinely pitched two and three innings to get their saves, precisely so they would face the heart of the other team's lineup. Now managers are intimidated by agents who maximize their client's salaries by pressuring the manager to only put the "closer" in when a save situation is easily attainable, but to the detriment of the overall enterprise of winning the game.

Third, basketball.

Situation: seconds left in the game, your team is up by three, the other team has the ball. If you foul, the other team gets to shoot two, but if you don't foul they can win the game with a three point shot. Do you foul?

Answer: not if you're the Memphis Tigers. When this exact situation happened in this year's NCAA Final Four championship, Mario Chalmers for Kansas had the ball outside the three point line, Memphis didn't foul, Chalmers hit the three point shot to tie the game, and then Kansas won the game in overtime. I've seen this in many other games. Why wouldn't a team foul in that situation? The worst that can happen is the free throw shooter makes the first shot, then intentionally misses the second shot and his team gets a quick rebound and two point score. But that's the worst that can happen, and its less probable than the shooter hitting the three point shot. Today on sports talk radio, Memphis' coach said he had instructed his players to foul in that situation, but they just couldn't get it done. Then he said he had at least 20 coaches call him after the game to say that they NEVER foul in that situation. Why? Because they just don't want to commit intentional fouls.

The lesson here is that relatively sophisticated organizations across all sports, and these days sports is big business, adopt these approaches to certain situations without any real justification, and which conflict with their broader goals of winning the game. The only apparent reason in each case is because they've always played the game like that (or at least, have played it like that the last few years or so). But if they would simply think about it, they'd find these approaches have no real merit, and would change.

How many businesses, governments, families, non-profits, and people in general do the same thing? Just because you've always done something doesn't make it continue to be right. Like going to keg parties or to Sixth Street-at some point something that used to be cool and fun becomes pathetic. Or, what once made sense might not make sense anymore as the world changes around you. Like buying an SUV that consumes ten times the gas of conventional cars.

My advice to you, is to start drinking heavily, no, is to question the things you've always done, and ask if they continue to make sense.

Next-Jazz Festival

Jazz Festival Preview

That's a bit of a misnomer, since Jazz Fest actually started this weekend. In what has become something of a recent trend, I'm attending Jazz Festival yet again, this time on the second of the two weekends. You can see some pictures I took during previous Fests on Flickr. I put the Jazz Festival link on the right side here, and this guy has a pretty good site too. He also does a blog.

Jazz Festival, for those of you uninitiated, is not just a music festival, but a food festival, cultural, heritage, and art festival. The whole city pretty much focuses on Jazz Fest during those seven days. Post-Katrina, the Festival had been reduced to six days. This year, the second-weekend Thursday has been resumed. That was traditionally the "locals" day, with the lightest attendance overall but highest attendance from New Orleans-area residents.

Highlights of this year's second weekend include the return of the Neville Brothers. The Nevilles, longtime New Orleans and Jazz Fest stalwarts, had fled the city after Katrina, allegedly owing to Aaron's asthma flaring up. They have not played any shows in New Orleans since the storm, although brother Cyrill Neville has played with his band "Dumpstaphunk" many times. Other highlights include the initial Jazz Fest performances of Stevie Wonder and Diana Krall, as well as return engagements by Widespread Panic, Randy Newman, Santana, the Subdudes, Marcia Ball (sadly overlapping the Subdudes), everyone's favorite white trash rocker Kenny Wayne Shephard, Jimmy Buffett, Rebirth Brass Band, the Radiators, the Zion Harmonizers, the Dixie Cups ("Iko Iko"), and a return solo Gospel Tent performance by Aaron Neville.

Dozens of other acts I've never heard of will play, some of whom I'll hate, others I'll start to follow. Jazz Fest has introduced me to such great musicians as the Subdudes, Anders Osborne, Dash Rip Rock, Rebirth Brass Band, Cowboy Mouth, Charmaine Neville, Irma Thomas, Marcia Ball, and many others.

Some of my favorite things to do at the Festival are to take shade and a seat in the Gospel Tent and combine great music with a worshipful repose, tour the Heritage Festival displays, check out the circa 1900-1920 style jazz performances in the Economy Hall tent, stuff my face with the best food EVER (this isn't funnel cake and turkey legs, this is outstanding locally produced restaurant quality food), check out the chanky-chank music at the Fais-Do-Do stage, and just generally go searching for new acts I've never heard of. The two big stages can offer some treats as well, although the huge crowds generally make it difficult to experience any sort of musical nuance. One welcome development is the banning of lawn chairs in a large centered expanse near the stage. This allows more people to get an "up close" experience (and for better photos).

I aim to blog each night after the day's shows. I'll also take tons of pictures and put those on flickr, again, each night (although they may not get labelled until later).

Each year's Jazz Fest seems to bring one-of-a-kind performances. My favorite performances include Rev. Al Green, Five Blind Boys of Alabama, Dash Rip Rock, Johnny Rivers, Isaac Hayes, Irma Thomas, Aretha Franklin, Tito Puente, and Solomon Burke. Without question the greatest single moments were (1) Randy Newman's performance of "Louisiana 1927" ("Louisiana...they're trying to wash us away") beginning right when it began to storm on the 1994 Festival, and (2) Marcia Ball singing the same song at the first post-Katrina Fest. Oh, and the first time I ever had Crawfish Monica, which along with the Prejean's quail, pheasant, and andouille gumbo (also available at the Festival) clearly is the food of the gods.

There's other things I like to do as well. Its fun driving around town in the mornings. I like the breakfast buffet at my hotel, which gives me a rare and treasured opportunity to read the paper and drink tea in solitude over breakfast. The local public TV station also plays old movies on weekend nights. I also like to jog on the streetcar lines on St. Charles Avenue in the mornings. It may be a bit trickier now that they've resumed full service (post-storm the streetcars stopped at Napoleon Avenue; now they go all the way). Oh, and I like calling my friend Donna to gloat that I'm there (again) and she's not (again-hope you're enjoying Thousand Oaks California you misplaced Cajun girl). Each night I used to hit one of the local music clubs, where other bands would usually play some great sets. Now I'm too tired and sore after standing out in the sun all day (and walking about 20 miles to and from my car at the Festival), so I generally just go back to my room at night (where I'll blog this year).

So make sure to check in this weekend if you can't make it to New Orleans. I'll be your eyes, ears, and mouth. Actually that sounds kind of disgusting. How about I'll let you know what I see, hear and eat?

Speaking to Engineers at LSU

A crushing workload has in part kept me from blogging lately, part of which owes to having to work on and deliver a speech to the LSU Center for Energy Studies Alternative Energy Conference. I think ultimately they will put my presentation on their web site, so those of you with absolutely nothing else to do can read it.

I did the speech so I could get a firm-paid trip to Baton Rouge out of it, thinking I'd have more time to run around town and enjoy the trip than I did. But it was great being on the LSU campus in spring. I ditched the conference lunch. Bad enough to be in a room with all those polyester shirt-wearing guys, worse to miss out on all the "scenery" on a walk to the student union for lunch (43 year old guy in a suit noticing LSU girls-that's completely still not creepy as far as I see it). The Center also took all the speakers to dinner the night before at Juban's, making the trip worth all the effort. Juban's turns out to be the best restaurant I've found in Baton Rouge. I had a crawfish cake to start, then a spinach salad with poppyseed dressing and orange slices (Mom's version of the same salad was slightly better, using mandarin oranges), and main course consisting of duck breast with blueberry sauce and quail stuffed with lump crab and sweet potato with bourbon cane syrup. Dessert of pecan pie with bluebell vanilla ice cream topped with Maker's Mark bourbon (getting faint thinking of it).

The speech itself was ok. For me the mark of a successful speech is if the audience somehow responds to you (you know, if they don't all fall asleep). I heard crickets after most of my jokes; they did like "Greetings from the People's Republic of Austin, island of blue in a sea of red." One idiot on the front row actually clapped. What do you expect from a guy who sits on the front row at a conference? I went overtime, proving once again that time moves a lot faster for the speaker than the audience. Promptly after finishing, someone leaped up to ask a couple of questions, and it turned out to be one of the Louisiana Public Service Commissioners. The questions were slightly tricky, but I managed.

Then I beat it to the airport, giving a ride to another speaker. She turned out to be an interesting and engaging person-a New Yorker who consults with industrial customers. Her flight was delayed so we ate disgusting fried food at the airport lounge while waiting for our reflective flights. She is a lesbian pregnant (via IVF) with twins. Hate to go to the stereotype, but surely I get an off the charts point value for having dinner at the Baton Rouge airport lounge with a pregnant-with-twins New York lesbian industrial consultant. Sounds like the beginning of an English Lit 101 short story. Or the beginning of a movie on Cinemax.

Looking forward to next week's triumphant return to New Orleans Jazz Fest, then to attending Ron's play in mid-May.

The Daily Affirmations Approved and Disapproved List

Apologies for yet another rejected Esquire magazine style article. Here's my latest list of things approved and disapproved for the sporting life. Omitted are things I've discussed in previous posts.

Approved:

Chelsea Handler
Lance Zierlein
Tina Fey
Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls
Fred's Lounge in Mamou
Kilgore Rangerettes
early Beatles
Cajun food
Mangia Pizza
Mrs. Johnson's donuts
the Hill Country
Louisiana women calling you "baby"
Mountain laurel
Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival
1965 Mustangs
Austin in the spring
Family (and family businesses)
The Ramones
South Louisiana
Thank you notes
Dana Delany
Cleburne's Cafeteria
Crossword puzzles
"Aggressiveness on the basepaths" if you know what I mean
Letting people into traffic
Alamo Drafthouse
Fenway Park
The Mob
Paramount Theatre summer movie festival


Disapproved:

"Mom jeans"
Skorts
The Hills
Obesity
Airlines
Cell phones, blackberries, and texting
Downtown drivers
Tanning
Fake breasts (unless they're tastefully done of course)
Bling
Over 40s using teen slang
Meetings
The volleyball scene in Top Gun
Yard work
Oscar parties
The NCAA
High fives
Public financing of stadiums
Hauling air (i.e. owning a huge vehicle not used for its intended purpose)
Office parties
Celine Dion
Land Rovers and the people who own them
Cruises (except Alaska cruises)

* * * *

Last Monday at Central Market, the guy in the Hank Williams shirt was not there. In his place was a CM employee whom I encountered in the men's room working his mojo. This guy was working really hard-he'd wash his hands for about a minute, enter the stall and not close the door, exit after about a minute, then dance in front of the mirror Stevie Wonder-style for another minute to the music in his mind. The first time I thought it was just creepy, but after seeing it two or three times I was riveted. Was it obsessive compulsive disorder, leftover x, or just a really ill-timed flashback? I chalk it up to keeping Austin weird. Note to self-never go to the Central Market men's room.

Dialogues from the Road: Is Humiliation Necessary for Success?

On to something less momentous and more conceptual.

While on the way to the Sea Ranch earlier this year, we had several interesting conversations (when not making fun of Kimberly's complete inability to identify common livestock or stopping for bathroom breaks). Two will form the basis of posts here, one today, and one later.

Today's has to do with how best to educate a new employee. So in honor of education, we depict Edna Krabappel, teacher extraordinaire.

This started out as a discussion on whether its really necessary to go through all the pain and suffering and humiliation of making mistakes at the beginning of your career. Maybe its better to be spared all that by being brought along gradually.

Only recently have I had to work with new, or untrained, lawyers. I have to say its a huge pain. Most of my career, I've been the relatively new lawyer, so I've been the one trying to gain experience. As you can imagine, my "team player" skills never really developed, and I haven't worked much with other lawyers, and certainly haven't supervised many. Like Pee Wee Herman, I'm a loner. A rebel. You don't want to get mixed up with a guy like me. But as our firm's practice has expanded and we've had to bring in relatively inexperienced attorneys, its something I've had to focus on. Law school doesn't exactly teach you how to manage people, or train them. So this has been somewhat on the fly.

Seems to me that roughly four models exist for how to train a new employee. Shockingly, I don't offer an opinion on which one is correct, other than "it depends." I learned that answer in law school, by the way.

One way is sink or swim. Give little or no guidance, just throw the rookie in with the sharks and hope for the best. Sometimes this works (Troy Aikman), sometimes not (David Carr).

The next is to apprentice. Spend months and years patiently watching and learning the master, helping out by doing little jobs along the way, until you've finally learned the craft and start doing it yourself. Like Darth Vader, or your plumber. In medicine, this is called an "internship." Which really means do all the doctor's work, charge the doctor's rates, the doctor gets all the money, and you don't get to sleep for most of about 2-3 years. Or maybe that's nursing.

Another is to just stay out of the way and watch. This is like NFL third-string quarterbacks holding a clipboard all season long. Or Maria in Sound of Music. You know, since she wasn't an asset to the abbey, the older nuns got together and shipped her down the road to the von Trapp mansion hoping she just wouldn't figure out how to get back to the convent?

I guess the last way is to go to school. Spend forever practicing doing what it is you're trying to do. Sort of like moot court, or jamming with your buddies in your stepmother's basement without ever actually playing a gig.

I pretty much became a lawyer under the sink or swim mode, although I obviously went to school and spent a couple of years clerking for judges. For most business and professional activities, though, you really can't learn how to do it unless you're actually doing it. For example, there's really no way to adequately practice trying a lawsuit. You have to just go do it. This method presupposes of course that you're going to make lots of mistakes, that you are able to recognize the mistakes, honest enough with yourself to admit them, and motivated enought to correct them. Not everyone can do that. Some people just aren't cut out for all the initial failure. You can't throw someone in the deep end if they don't have enough confidence to see them through that time. But for some, its worse having someone standing over you all day watching your every move, not giving you a chance to show what you can do. Now, a firm or company sometimes cannot afford a bunch of mistakes. No one would assign bet the company litigation, for example, to a first year lawyer (Legally Blonde notwithstanding). Generally the way to do this is to have someone with experience at least monitoring things to make sure they don't go too badly wrong.

The other viable way is the school method. This works best for people who don't handle failure that well. It tends to minimize the mistakes made at the beginning of your career, so it spares people the difficulty of dealing with the failure, and businesses the problem of cleaning up mistakes. The problem, though, is that from a business standpoint, its hard to subsidize an employee for so long while you're training them. That's the main reason why first round NFL draft picks start before they're actually ready-teams can't afford to have so much payroll tied up in a player who doesn't contribute. The same is true with every other business. This method also doesn't work well with individualists, who want to do their own thing instead of watching others. Studies have attributed the relative decline in male college attendance, for example, in this trait. The theory is that young men are generally more resistant to working within the highly structured academic environment, and are eager to begin their careers on their own terms instead of prolonging their learning time. Michael Dell did quite alright without spending years patiently learning the computer business.

So, whether to "grind someone into the dust" as part of their training depends on the person, and depends on the business.

No I will not be a guest lecturer in Management 305 this year.

Next up: the Daily Affirmations Approved and Dissapproved Lists

* * * *

I saw something pretty odd today, even by Austin standards. No I'm not referring to Trevor Hoffman's blown save tonight against the Astros. I said "odd" not "beyond the bounds of physical reality." The past three times I've eaten lunch at Central Market, the same older man was there, by himself, hunched over and wearing a shirt that looks like those cowboy flower design shirts Hank Williams and Buck Owens used to wear. Different shirt each time, same style. Who is he? Why is he always at Central Market? What's up with the shirts? Do people look at me and think the same things (only instead its "who's the guy always wearing the izod shirts with bloodshot eyes?").