Olympic Observations

Uhh...this isn't about how NBC is jamming down our gullets Americana and the mass media personification of full volume shouts of 'MERKA!

Tonight on the main channel we've been getting the back and forth between the girls in gymnastics and the guys and girls in the pool swimming. These two body types are similar in that 1) everyone involved looks like each other; and 2) they're freaky as hell looking.

Is that just me?

The swimmers all look like aliens in their suits, all tight and pushing their muscles around to weird spots. I've seen that episode of The X-Files--it was scary then and it's scary now. What they're able to do in the water? Amazing...how they're arms and chests are elongated? Is it just me?

Now the gymnast girls. What those girls do, on the bars, on the vault and the balance beam, and the floor stunts and dances...all of that is just about the most amazing skill set for strength and balance. Watching it, I try to imagine myself simply walking across the balance beam, without a broken leg, and I nod to myself in the belief that, yeah, I could probably walk that shit. Backflip with no hands?

Those girls, though, remind me of chiseled ten-year-old boxers, little boys ready to throw down and beat up the fat bullies that patrol recess.

Very weird looking sets of people.

100th Post

Welcome to 100th post on The Observatory. This site started as a means for me to write up the little thoughts that I'd originally planned on skipping when I decided to write only long-form literary style blog posts back in January on my original site, Caliboyinbrooklyn.

That lasted pretty much the full month of January before I switched back to regular posts on the ...inBrooklyn site, and now both have similar things covered.

After realizing that I wanted something more serious for this site, the Observatory, I decided to put all the Central American posts up here, and then did the same with the broken leg material. Long series will likely all be over here. We'll see.

Thanks for keeping up with this site, if you do...you've been rewarded with weird stuff, like my obsession with my beard or covering the old-school plastic style DVD cases, or some other inane thing that crosses my brain.

I originally called the site "The Observatory of the Subconscious", but dropped that prepositional phrase because it sounded too pretentious. If anyone has even noticed, I have an all capital-letter acronym on the side of this column. I call it my own version of other, more famous (mostly religious) acronyms.

Mine, WDWG?, is a question, and I'll define it later. I'll field guesses if any of my few readers would like to guess.

Thanks again.

On the Cliche to Recovery

This should be my last entry before I start asking everyone to keep an eye out for a tiny self-published collection of broken-leg notes I plan on working up to raise money for the bill.

I'm not even sure how I want to go about this. I still can't put any weight on the knee, but many other things have changed, and for the better. The cat isn't afraid of me anymore, in fact, he gets in my way and doesn't flinch when I need to brandish my crutch at him to get him to move.

I can sleep through the night easy as pie.

At first, sleeping was one of the main things I didn't like. Well, going to sleep. I was stuck in one position in bed, sweating profusely, unable to sleep more than three hours in a row without having to hobble to the bathroom. Even while asleep the time was more like uneasy twilight, where my brain was running through different superhero scenarios, where each scenario was a sleeping position and my leg was the hero. Something like that. Anyway, it always felt like I never got any rest.

Then I started staying up real late, and that mostly fixed it. I could sleep through "the night", which consisted of 3 to 6:30ish. Now I'm good for a regular schedule.

My crutch stamina and palm-ache have been steadily increasing and decreasing, respectively. My lumberjack like beard--with a new segment of hairs encroaching on my left eye--is patiently waiting my brother's sending of my mechanical razor. The crazies are mostly abated, but I did work them in somewhere else, for sure. Made it constructive.

So, here are some pictures detailing my sad triple-fortnight on our big couch.

The first is a proud moment early on--I got pants on for the first time (before that I had been in a towel):

The next is from a few weeks later, as I was losing it. The picture was going to be used for a post, and I still think I'll write the post, but not for a few months, so I'll have time to reflect on the wackyness of the whole thing.

That is Old Spice deodorant, lit on fire...in case you couldn't tell.

The next picture I took from that day we went to the beach and I lounged under the umbrella and tried to read A Wild Sheep Chase. I felt, eh, what the hell...why not take a picture of one of the bastards that started it all.

I don't blame the ship. It was the bike...and me. That bike had a history, yet I rode it anyway.

Here's a shot of the incision with no tape of staples or anything. As I type this it looks even better than here, and sometime later I might include a picture if the scar, but since the pictures don't figure into that little self-published dealy I mentioned, it doesn't really matter.

I did finally finish A Wild Sheep Chase (courtesy of Norm). All I can say is...I love Murakami. If anyone reading this hasn't ever heard of Haruki Murakami, then surprise yourself and check out the great starter novel A Wild Sheep Chase. I also finished Calico Joe (courtesy of my mom). Normally I'm not a John Grisham reader, and I probably would have skipped this had it not been mailed to me, but it was fun and quick and was all about baseball and redemption.

So now I go about my days getting stronger, in the brain and the rest of my corporeal collection.

Stir Crazy and the Beach

As the days tick on, and my novel gets slowly worked up, I find myself getting a little stir crazy. This is evident by some of the posts I've put, like my proceeding hairline discussion. I have another post I realize was pretty damn loony, and I'm waiting for the right time to unleash it (after I'm healed and it'll make it more timed).

So, I started to think up ways to take pictures like from Rear Window. I started thinking that a closeup shot might be kinda cool, so here we go:

It took me five tries to get that shot. That stupid picture took almost a half-hour to set up, and at the time it was the most important thing I'd ever tried, a frustrating son of a bitch if ever it was a thing. Later on, I thought that if I moved outside it would look more like the film.

Setting my leg up was tough, because it was still very tight, and after a series of shots with the camera on a timer, I realized that I was just wearing my boxers, and that morning's activities were wasted.

Sweaty and now angry, I realized that another day would have to come for this attempt.

Eventually that day came, and this is the cream of the crop. It was difficult to get the leg in the frame, and this took five different tries, each time I had to get up and check the picture, and then get back into position in time for the ten second clock to fire.

So, as my writing projects developed slower than I really wanted, and my inner crazies started to envelope my alone time, Corrie kept designing different activities for us to do outside. Most were drive-to destinations we used to walk to. One was the nice trip to the beach.

Corrie drove us down to the close spot, the place I would travel on days off and ride bikes. I was having a good time, with the tape and the ocean in the same picture.

My crutches worked in the sand, even as they sank each time I staked them as I hobbled. As I laid on the sheet on the sand, I had to hold the umbrella, otherwise the wind was would take it, and I draped my shirt over my leg to keep it from getting sun damaged.

The beach trip seemed to rejuvenate me. The crazies subsided and I'm back to making some good time on my writing projects, and while at times it seemed like I'd been cooped up and immobile for years, it's still July, and I have only a few weeks left of no weight, and I need to make the best of them.

I've been venturing further and further on my own, and spending productive time at the same coffee house I was at before the incident itself. The long haul feels like it's past halfway and getting towards the end.

Pliers and Tape

How would you think a person trained in medicine would take staples out of a leg? Would you expect a little local anesthetic? Maybe assuming a sympathetic attitude is ridiculously out of the question.

Me? I didn't get either.

I finally got called back into the room with an orthopedic resident. Orthopedics is the study of the musculoskeletal system, which is exactly what I have going on.

This was for my two-week appointment. At this hospital, if you have an appointment with an orthopedic specialist, you come into the waiting room, take your "brown card" (of which they give you six after you leave the first time, so you'll always have one) and appointment paper and paper-clip them together and put them into a box.

Then you have a seat.

A nurse, apparently at some point, takes them out and goes through the information of who, what the app is for and at what time was it scheduled. Eventually they call your name. In my case I hobbled over to the nurses station and strenuously took the seat. The nurse asked me the same preliminary questions that you could imagine if you thought hard enough. Then there were a few detail specific things. Then there was the instruction to go back and sit down and wait for your name again.

The second time I heard my name both Corrie and I went looking for the room my page had directed me. Inside there was a young resident, taller than me but built similarly. He had me take the dressing off, while he looked up my case file on his little computer screen.

That remains the only time I really got any kind of eyeball on my post-op x-ray. It reminded me of Ray Charles building a dock. But that's not fair to either the brilliant Ray Charles or the guys who had to get shards of my knee to align properly.

He clicked the x-ray off pretty quick, likely because he thinks the sight of it would scare us. He obviously doesn't know us.

So, he starts looking at my knee, then opens a drawer and pulls out some sealed surgical pliers. Next is a packet of what look like tape strips. He fumbles around in his pocket for a second and eventually removes some (surgical grade) scissors. He then cuts the tape strips in half, both doubling the number of strips he has as well as making them shorter.

He opens the pliers as he asks both me and Corrie questions, mostly about tobacco use. Then he goes at it. Starting at the bottom he just starts plucking out my staples. Each one makes me flinch a little more than the last.

"No...(teeth hiss)...no smoking...(hiss)...quit a few years ago...(teeth hiss)..."

"That's good...(plink!)...nicotine use makes it...(plink!)...nearly impossible for bone to heal...(plink!)"

You saw how many staples there were, right? It went on from the bottom of my ankle to the top of my forehead.

"No tobacco, no nicotine...no chew...anything, okay?" He was done now, and I was trying to let my twitchy leg relax.

"Sure. Easy enough."

"Ganj is okay," he said with a nod as he turned to check something on the desk. Oh, so pot's okay. That makes sense. Almost made me wish I still hung out with that pretty lady.

Then he started putting on the tape. I was told they would fall off in a few days, that I shouldn't bathe for a week (to let the wound fully seal up), and even then don't soak for too long, and to keep all weight off the leg.

Yeah. On top of that one already boss. The staples were now tape. Moving on down the ladder of office supply suture elements.

Poor Dressings and Staples

As the first few days home chugged on, and as Corrie and I figured out what my first excursion outside would be, the healing process was doing it's thing. And by that I mean my leg was getting pretty itchy.

Due to the severity of the wound, I fully understand that the itchy-ness isn't from the actual healing, but rather, the surrounding skin beginning to regain feeling, and then needing a little attention. The hair was matted from sweat and whatever salve they might have used, or cleaning agent, while I was under, and damn if it couldn't be soothed.

As we discussed the differences between my plan for the first crutch trip (our favorite breakfast diner, The Pepper Corner) and Corrie's (the closer pizza parlor, Pizza Pie), I would slide my hand beneath the dressings to soothe the skin and hair. The dressings were starting to move as I tooled around the apartment, and were just loose enough to allow me to work inside. I made sure not to get that close to the region where I understood to have had surgical work done. I know that doesn't need to be disturbed by my grubby hands.

For the first trip outside, we settled on a trip to Signal Hill. It was a great idea; hobble down to the car, go for a ride up to the Hill and watch the sunset, and return home, hobbling back upstairs. Brilliant. It turned out that my stamina on the crutches was lower than I had thought, so this was the best idea.

Since I'd been home for eight days when we went out, just the sun in my face and breeze in my hair was glorious freedom.

Upon another soothing of my leg, my fingers ran across something that felt out of place: staples.

What the hell were staples doing this high? Now, I had tried to soothe a little closer to the sphere of surgical influence, but I thought this was still north of the incision. I was wrong, as this is quite the incision.

Before, I hadn't been sure what type of suture they were going to use, but on this afternoon, I knew.

Here's a bit more gruesome picture of the Frankenstein's monster look at the size of the incision. Also of note, the dressing, having fallen apart, in total disarray.

I had my two-week appointment the day after this, so Corrie wrapped up the clean remnants of gauze, the section that was wrapped around the dirty, blood clotted cotton sheet, with an ace bandage, and I was ready to go off and see a doctor.

Scare Tactics

One of the very few things the UCLA-Harbor Medical Center told me was not to put any wait on my newly finished left leg, and not for a while.

They didn't tell me how to redress the wound should I need to. Hey, is two weeks okay between checking in on a fresh suture? Sounds a little long to me, but I didn't go to med school.

They didn't tell me if there were any exercises I could do to get the ball rolling on healing, or a time frame on when something like that could be implemented. Okay, that's cool, I'll just sit on my bum until told otherwise. It was probably a bad idea for the first few weeks, but I would've liked to have known.

What they did tell me was, "If you put weight on it right now, it'll just...come apart," and as he said the last two words, he made a hand gesture that got my attention something fierce.

Actually, it scared the shit out of me. His hands were together, with interlocked fingers, and then he opened them up, like so:

Uh, come again? My eyes were wide and his instructions had had their desired effect. There was never going to be any weight put on my left leg ever. Well, obviously not forever, but goddamn. Just the thought of one stumble sending careening toward the ground and then landing on my left leg could produce, besides agonized screams from this writer, some kind of gnarled weapon last seen in an Australian post-apocalyptic movie, made of bone and topped with a ferocious and haphazard looking set of screws.

That's pretty much all they told me when we left: careful, or your leg could physically break apart.

Heavy duty, man, heavy fucking duty.

Introduction to New Leg Posts

I have another batch of posts about my leg that will be appearing soon. There will be, to warn any squeamish readers, some photos that are more gruesome than before.

These are also woven with angrier thread, a thread that also starts to fray with the frustration that sets in when a person is in this situation: cooped up, grimy, and able to do only the very simplest of tasks.

At one point the big news was that I had done the dishes. I was so proud of myself. I did the fucking dishes. That was it. It underscores the fact that I don't cook, or clean, or do much of any damn thing. I sit, use the restroom, get fruit for myself, and whatever snack I can carry while I hobble on the crutches.

But those dishes...my left foot was purple, I was sweating like a fat man eating a burger, and I occasionally had to stop my permanent lean on the counter to hold myself up in the air--lifting both feet off the ground and  taking a little weight off my now-chiseled ass cheek. The whole ordeal didn't take very long, but I felt like napping afterward. That's where I was.

Now, I venture out of the house from time to time on my own. My stamina is great, but my hands are what really prevent me fro getting too far. I have exercises too, and can feel progress happening, albeit on a small scale, but after five weeks, things are moving forward. My arms are the strongest they've been since I laid tile all summer that year, and I've lost whatever weight I'd put on in Sacramento for my brother's wedding, and then some. Those slacks should fit now just fine. (That wasn't something I worried about, but it's something I've noticed.)

The bill's another story.

HTML Test

I'm just testing some new HTML coding for links.

Check this out: the Dock Ellis documentary got fully funded!

From the "Uh...Okay" Files

A line from City Slickers, I think, is when Billy Crystal talks about aging and says that at some point you start losing the hair on the top of your head and gaining it in other places, like your back.

Well, in the world of men losing their hair (25% by the age of 30 start the process), I, for what it's worth, don't have that problem.

In fact, I'm actually afflicted with the opposite. I don't suffer from receding hairline, I have a proceeding hairline.

I noticed the other day that the hair on my right temple seemed to be creeping. My forehead seemed to be shrinking, and a new tuft of hair is now noticeable that wasn't their before. Is this regular for 33 year-olds? I kinda doubt it. I do have some pictures.

The first one shows, among other things (that I need a shave and a shower), the new wispy tufts:

Here's a closer look:

That hair is new, I'm pretty certain. Corrie laughed when I told her, but she did say that it didn't look usual. it's pretty long, right? But my hair grows fast, and sometimes grows unevenly, so, I don't know...

I'm officially starting to go stir crazy.

DVD Packaging

I noticed something strange the other day. It had to do with the last few DVDs I'd put in to watch or to have on as I did other things. What tripped me out about them was that they were all, all four of them, were of the old-school latching kind, you know, the first kind of DVD case:

So, the first disc is is the 1991 Funky Monks, the film Gus van Sant made of the Red Hot Chili Peppers when they were sequestered in the mansion recording their classic album "Blood Sugar Sex Magic". It's a must see for fans of the Chili Peppers or the album, or both. It's a nice slice of that magical time when the '90s were checking out the corpse of the '80s, which had just died.

The second DVD is The Matrix, an important movie for me (and Norm) when it first came out, and actually my very first DVD. We watched it recently, deluding ourselves that we could marathon the trilogy (quadrilogy if you count Animatrix) over a cloudy and stuffy weekend day. It was still pretty cool, if still somewhat slow. The photography and cinematography are all goddamned spectacular, if cliched nowadays. That's what happens to trend setters.

Here's a closeup of this old school type of latch:

The third movie is Drop Dead Gorgeous. A fantastic Allison Janney steals every scene she's in in this movie headlined by two separate Kirstens. I joke, but this movie is probably the best work Denise Richards ever did--it's like she'd actually acting! Will Sasso also cracks me up. I had this on as I went through some comic books for another post. It's good background material. If you like Allison Janney, or are hungover, this film could be good for you.

The last one is Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, something I watched as I wrote my Ernest Borgnine Memories post over on the original site.

When I was going to put them all away I realized that out of the maybe three hundred DVDs we have, we have maybe five or six that sport these old-school latching cases, and I'd watched four of them close enough to each other to not have put them away yet.

Weird? Maybe not...must just be me...

Unearthed Sad Picture

I was troving Corrie's lappy for pictures for an upcoming post and found one of the saddest pictures.

Bars. Bars offering protection from bricks.

This was the "big window" in our Bed-Stuy apartment's bedroom. This picture was taken the first day we moved in, just to take stock of the conditions, and way before we made it pretty--or, made it us, anyway.

When you're excited and optimistic this kind of scene is just one of the stepping stones. Vague ideas of being cramped or crowded mean nothing. All part of the adventure.

I can only imagine how this view might affect people I've worked with, or met in my days not living in New York.

That's your basic "first New York apartment" view, or, more accurately, "first Brooklyn apartment".

Gives me the giggles now.

Notes on Uruguay

This post will have a little bit about sports in it, well, a little about soccer anyway, and...well, it'll be a little more than a alittle, and maybe shoudl be up on my Sports blog, but this is about maybe more than that.

Besides, I have a post up over there that resembles regular posts, and this is a regular post, it just has a bit (actually a shit-ton) of sports in it.

During the last World Cup I picked the South American team Uruguay to root for, along with Mexico and our very own Yanks, right from the outset. I liked the tenacity and long soccer history in the small nation; roughly the size of Washington state with maybe 3.5 million residents. The small size helped the country get it's economy right, and smart moves have propelled Uruguay to the very top of the living standard for the continent.

Uruguay is the first country on the planet, in 2009, to be able to give--for free--both laptops and internet service to every single student in country. Every student.

So, a little note about soccer. When you think of national soccer powerhouses teams, countries like Spain, Germany, Italy and Brazil may come to mind. Maybe Mexico and England. Maybe you could give a shit about international soccer tournaments. I understand.

But, so if you're someone who doesn't care, or do care but don't know, let me tell you a little history of a tiny nation's love of the futbol.

The biggest international soccer tournament is the World Cup. Non-soccer fans may know about this. Before FIFA established the World Cup, the Olympics was the major international tournament and the most prestigious title.

In 1924, the first year South American teams were admitted to the Olympics, the Uruguayans won the gold medal, beating Yugoslavia, the US, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland by a aggregate score of 20-2.

In 1928, the Uruguayans won the gold again, beating the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and in the final, first tying Argentina, and then beating them, with the final aggregate score of 12-3.

South American soccer had arrived, for damn sure. FIFA realized that the Olympic games were not going to be the best place to see the best soccer, and decided to organize a global tournament. The Olympics, for one, didn't allow professional players to compete, and this may have hindered the "better" European national squads.

FIFA picked 1930 to be the inaugural year, and they needed to find a venue. The only backer? Capitol city of Montevideo, in Uruguay. The only country willing to front the bill and house the teams was the tine powerhouse, Uruguay. Not too many European teams could make the journey, but some did. The winners were the home team, Uruguay itself. It won three consecutive major international titles, a rarity that it took 82 years to duplicate with Spain this year.

1934 and 1938 saw World Cups in Europe, and Brazil was the only South American team to make it to both. The next World Cup wasn't until 1950, because of WWII, and Brazil was the host. Uruguay won that one, too, giving them four FIFA recognized championships. If you look at national team logos, they each are "allowed" by FIFA to display a star for each championship. This is usually reserved for World Cups. Brazil has five stars, Italy has four, Germany three, Argentina two, and a bunch with just one. Uruguay? They rock four stars.

It was the smallest country by population to ever a Cup, and the next smallest, Argentina, has 40 million, more than ten-times the size.

In 1980 Uruguay hosted what they called the Mundialito, or "Little World Cup". It was a tournament only for countries that had won World Cups. The reigning Euro champs, West Germany (1980) and reigning World Cup holders, Argentina, were there, and the winners? Uruguay. It was a major sporting coup. The national team with the most international titles is Uruguay, but that's likely the result of the fact that South America historically held their tournaments much more often than Europe did. But it does mean something that they've won more often than both Brazil and Argentina.

All this is still not as interesting as Jose Artigas, Jose San Martin, and Simon Bolivar. They need to make movies about them

Eh...sports...

Booming Night Sky

Since I'm laid up, the Fourth of July festivities were just something I was going to skip. If I couldn't see the fireworks from my window, I wasn't really going to go out of my way to get a look at them. Besides being pretty immobile, I've had plenty of years of missing the shows because of work.

Certain cool, drinky holidays I've tended to miss over the years for one reason or another. Not St. Paddy's, of course, but things like Mardi Gras, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and the Fourth I usually had to work (go service industry--white collar days off are killer business days for restaurants)(except the Fourth of July) and miss the all day party time.

This time it's because of the leg. Whatever. There'll be other days of fireworks.

But last night, while I may not have been able to really see so much, I could certainly hear plenty. Strangely enough, as I've been staying up late recently in the past week or so, the nightly neighborhood mortars and bottle rocket show have kept my ears on their toes.

A booming cacophony last night was quite the auditory show. Sometimes I tried to imagine that's how a war-torn London or Berlin might have sounded, if you were further away than in the city.

The dogs we had when we were kids couldn't handle the Fourth. The sound was far too much for them. Tuxedo, though, hasn't been too bothered by the booming coming in the windows. He notices, but not like a fraidy cat, like he does when a fire-engine with full siren blares down the street. That sumbitch is loud.

Last night I tried to put up a post here. I wanted to put a random picture up and have a cool little post. I did put up a picture, changed my mind and erased it, put up another, erased that one too. I ended up with five different pictures and five different stories as the sky boomed away close by, far later than any city sanctioned show. Five times I didn't like the direction and just stopped.

How this one became the next post, eh...been thinking about bosons too much.

Notes on Population Centers and Sports

Last Saturday Corrie had a plan for us. We decided to move the breakfast trip to the diner to Sunday, and Saturday I could accompany her on her errands. We needed a printer cartridge from a ghetto Office Max (our printer is becoming increasingly outdated), and then we needed to go to a pick and pull to look for a mirror bracket for our Passat (somebody broke the passenger side mirror). 

I wasn't getting out of the car. I was more like a puppy, sitting with my head near the window and letting the air hit my face and rustle my grimy hair. It was glorious.

At the pick and pull yard, while Corrie was the third girl inside the whole place, and the only girl by herself, I sat in the car and looked through a big Rand McNally road atlas from 1988. I'd forgotten the newspaper at home (I'd planned on bringing it). As I looked through the atlas, my brain tripped out a little when I realized that the state of Florida has three NFL teams: Miami, Tampa Bay, and Jacksonville. Texas, America's football epicenter (while living there I saw high school football coverage more in-depth than their MLB Rangers coverage) only has two NFL teams, and one is only 10 years old.

Finding a pen in the car, I started to make notes in some white spaces of the atlas about states and teams covering the big 5 in American sports.

Usually, America is considered to have 4 main team sports leagues; baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. I added in Major League Soccer, because soccer is the main international sport, and in places like Seattle and Portland, soccer is madly popular, and the league itself is growing in exposure and status. Although it pales in comparison to the best European leagues (England, Spain, and Italy), it's a little more like the second tier of leagues (Turkey, the Netherlands), where scoring is still more based on defensive errors more often than offensive brilliance.

In any case, to summarize my notes, which I did at home, I made some strange discoveries. In baseball, California takes top spot, unsurprisingly, with 5 teams. Seven other states have two teams each, then a bunch of single team states (and a province). 

In the NFL, California is tied with Florida and (kinda) New York with the most teams per state, with 3. Two of the New York teams are branded as such, but play in New Jersey, so, that was tough to decide. Four states have 2 teams (five if you consider Jersey).

In the NBA, California comes out with the most teams again, with 4, but that makes a certain kind of sense, what with having the most population. Texas has 3 teams, Florida and New York each have 2, and everyone else has 1.

In the NHL, California and New York are tied with 3 teams each, while Florida, Pennsylvania, Ontario, and Alberta have 2 teams each. Seriously, how does Florida have more hockey teams than Quebec? Everyone else has 1 team.

With the MLS, 3 teams are in Canada, and 3 teams are in California, 2 teams are in Texas, and all other states and provinces have 1 team.

I did notice weird things, though. Like North Carolina has more professional teams (3) than Maryland (2) or Indiana (2), two states with iconic teams (Orioles; Colts). Also, Missouri has more teams than I would've thought, with 6. Ontario has the most for a Canadian province, with 5.

Lastly, percentages. 

Out of 141 teams spread over 5 sports, Canada has 12 teams. That percentage is roughly 8.5%. Canada's population percentage of the two combined is 9.8%, so that's not too off. California has 18 of the 141 teams, for 12.8%, with a population of 11% (or, if you're looking at only the US, California's numbers are 14.8% of teams with 12.2% of the population). 

The smallest state by population that has a team is Utah, and they have 2 (one NBA, one MLS) wit a population of 2.8 million. The smallest province with a major team is Manitoba, with 1 (NHL), and 1.2 million. Then you have Washington DC. The territory of less than 618 thousand people have exactly one baseball, one football, one basketball, one hockey and one soccer team, good for 5 total, and the Pentagram of sporting regional collections (exactly 1 team in each of the five sports). Only Massachusetts and Colorado can boast the same.

See how I fill up my time with these stupid and random thought exercises? None of this shit's important. Well, maybe it's important to me to help me keep my brain nimble and worked up a little, as I sit and try not to go crazy. And work up to energy level my brain needs to get back to my novel. But this is trivial and stupid thought exercise.

This particular exercise though combines many things I really enjoy (because I'm a goddamned nerd): lists, sports, looking at maps, and studying populations. How many people do you know that if they listed out things they enjoy would come up with "looking at maps" and "studying populations"?

Time...waster...

Stop the Madness! Logo Trilogy Ends Here!

Hopefully! For a while at least, right?

There were other ideas I had about team logos that I felt were pretty much unaddressed. I'm not the final judge on logos or uniforms. The first post in The Madness series was a bout of inspiration caused by the "fauxback" jerseys the Tampa Bay Rays sported the other night. I discussed the basis for them, then discussed some other things barely related, and then the updating of old brand identity, and then inspirations for other teams.

The second post in The Madness, the one from before my 800th post, was solely a discussion of the baseball team currently playing in Oakland; the A's.

This post, the final(?) in the trilogy, will cover a slew of ideas and topics, will be much less focused, and will have more pictures.

I'll start with the NFL and some weird observations. This kind of stuff always got me going: which animal or thing has the most entries when it comes to team logos? I'd usually imagine cats (Lions, Bengals, Jags, Panthers) or even guys (Raiders, Redskins, Patriots, Buccaneers, Vikings)(well that does kind of tie it, but their branded logo for both the Vikings and the Buccs aren't guys). Turns out it's birds.

Arizona; and the older versions of this cardinal are less angry looking, but only slightly:

 Atlanta, again with the updated hawk, more slanty and angry looking:

Baltimore; talk about an angry bird, named for Eddie Poe's poem:

Philly; and finally we get a badass bird of prey, eagle...yeah baby:

Seattle; this seahawk's changed shape and color a few times in it's history:

Ah, bloodsport and modern dinosaurs...

So, moving on to more interesting things: the ugmos. Now, I don't have an exhaustive list of the ugliest designs ever, but I do have a list of things I really despise, the looks and designs that make you scratch your head. The teams have since changed them up, but here we see how bad it can get.

This first one may say more about me than otherwise. I've said before that maybe a baseball team called the "Angels" might be a more historically natural team name for an LA entity, but that doesn't mean I have to like it so much. I begrudge them, and, on occasion, root for them. Very rare occasion, but that has nothing to do with their name. But the next two logos are my most hated baseball logos ever: the dreaded Disney Angels logo:

And the outfit...looking like a well-off softball team...

Disney made their way into hockey as well:

Yikes.

Next is my most hated NBA name and logo, the Washington Wizards:

Next we move on to hockey, and the NHL's most well-known and most-hated iteration of a logo, the dreaded Buffuslug. This was an ugly mistake by the Buffalo Sabres.

And my mom's favorites, the mustard and brown Padres from back in the day. Holy shit.

You can find their updated logos many places, and have probably seen some of them at some point. Hell, the very year the Angels changed their unis to what it is today they won the World Series.

If that was the ugly, what would constitute the good (I'll get to the bad in a second)? For me, and this is just an opinion thing of course, I've noticed that upstart leagues that challenge dominant major leagues yield some sharp looking logos on occasion. Especially in hockey.

Back in the early '70s the NBA was the main basketball league, and the ABA came along and brought both the 3-point line and flashy play, they brought stiff competition. Eventually they were folded into the NBA, which adopted the 3-point shot, and added four teams: the Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, Indiana Pacers, and the New York Nets (now Brooklyn). The Spurs and Pacers logos have changed very little over the years, while the Nuggets and Nets changed more often.

The AFL came along and challenged the NFL, and as a result we got the Super Bowl. The ALF was absorbed into the NFL, became the AFC, and something weird: the Dolphins logo has never changed dramatically in their history, and the same goes for their color scheme--virtually unchanged. The Broncos started out fugly, and slowly came out of it, almost. But, one of my favorite logos from the old AFL teams is from a team that's not around anymore (changed locations and graphics):

I don't know why I like this derrick so much. maybe the colors...

So, earlier I mentioned rival leagues and merges, smart designs, and hockey specifically. Some of my favorite major sports logos came from the AHL, the upstart rival that was eventually absorbed into the NHL.

The first: the Nordiques, a team that played in Quebec City, the furthest north of any major league team in North American history. This team eventually relocated to Denver and became the Avalanche. I don't know why I like this as much as I do...

The second: the Edmonton Oilers. Again, I don't what it is about this logo, but I always like it, even as a kid. I didn't even know who Wayne Gretzky or Mark Messier were back the, and I still liked it.

The last: the Hartford Whalers. Again, no idea about my infatuation with this. The "H" in the negative space, the whale-tail, the only major league team ever on Connecticut. I don't get it...I don't particularly care for whaling, like I do for, say, beer brewing--like, the Brewers are a team I like philosophically. But whaling? These guys moved to North Carolina and became the Hurricanes.

Three teams from the old AHL, pretty cool looking gear.

How does music look in team affiliated gear?

Well, the blues:

And, jazz:

Okay, so I'll get to what I'm calling the "bad", when it maybe really should be called the "bizarre" or the "out of place". These two logos were ones I found randomly picking up the logos I was putting together for this and the other two posts. These were the kinds of things that I mentioned in Post 800 about tangentially discovering things while looking up other things. Uh, here we go:

That first head is from a hockey team in Sweden, and the second, if you know your geography, is from the Czech Republic, for another hockey team.

The Swedes and the Czech are using aboriginal American, Native Americans, in their logos. Um, WTF, mate?

I got nothing.

I do, though, have a three tiny logos that correspond to a conversation I had with my mom:

I prefer the cursive "I". The block "C" is lame and Chief Wahoo? At least the Swedes and the Czech give their logos dignity.

Two teams use logos that are so intertwined with their regions identity that in those regions those symbols represent more than a "team":

(Sigh) I'm done.

What a waste.

My favorite random logo so far:

Too many fucking logos. Had enough?