Kyle Whelliston, the Jack Kerouac of the mid-majors, the talented, cerebral, and at times ornery sportswriting iconoclast/bubblefighter/philosopher whose Mid-Majority is the inspiration for my own humble effort at college basketball citizen-journalism, wrote earlier this week about the state of being in transit:
I love being in faraway airports early in the morning, or late at night, the feeling of not knowing exactly where I am. The butter-colored fluorescent lights, the empty chairs and shuttered kiosks, the smell and shine of floorwax, the uptempo contemporary jazz from distant speakers… all of these symbols for in between. No movement from point A to B, just stasis. A wristwatch is useless in these moments, spinning impotently against the local interpretation of time. To be suspended like this is to be in between in between.
As is often the case with TMM essays, I’m not entirely sure what Kyle is saying, but it’s beautifully put. Anyway, if being in transit, “in between in between,” is some sort of zen state, somehow related to college basketball, then perhaps it’s appropriate that the official mascot of my new University of Denver basketball blog — DU BALLZ, creation of Kyle and first cousin twice removed of Bally — will apparently spend the first day of actual play in DU’s basketball season somewhere in the mail stream of the United States Postal Service. He was shipped out last Wednesday, according to Kyle, but despite my eager checking of the mailbox every day since, he has yet to arrive here in Denver. [sad face]
But wait — not so fast, my friend! Maybe he won’t start the season in transit! Maybe the mail truck is dropping DU BALLZ in my mailbox right now! I won’t know until I get home and check, which will hopefully be before tipoff of the Denver-UCSB game at 5:30 PM Mountain Time tonight. So until I do that, according to [my mangled misunderstanding of] quantum theory, DU BALLZ is both in and not in my mailbox. He is both in transit and not in transit. He has both arrived and has not arrived. He is Schrödinger’s BALLZ!
(Okay, so I really just wanted to title this post “Schrödinger’s BALLZ,” and that was the best I could come up with as a rationale for doing so.)
I was originally planning to include DU BALLZ in The Pioneer Post‘s blog masthead, and I probably still will, meaning the current image is only temporary. But for now, you can see what DU BALLZ looks like at the top of the sidebar at right, thanks to a photo Kyle sent me last week. He’s painted in DU colors, per my request. Every TMM Season 7 member who bought their membership at a certain key point in Kyle’s fundraising cycle earned the right to order a specially designed BALLZ for their team of choice, and the fact that I was able to order a DU BALLZ was a crucial motivator to get this whole Pioneer Post thing off the ground.
Anyway… just a few housekeeping matters. First, the masthead is temporary, like I said. So there’s that. Second, I’ll be adding some stuff to the sidebar — a blogroll, a cool photo widget thingy linking to a Flickr gallery of DU photos, possibly a calendar of DU’s schedule, maybe a recent comments box — soon, or eventually, or when I have time, or never. But hopefully soon! Third, I may be blogging about tonight’s Denver-UCSB game after the fact, Boise-TCU style — hey, that blog post references Schrödinger, too! I’m nothing if not predictable in my mangling of quantum physics in sports-related posts! — because I doubt I’ll be able to watch live at 5:30 PM. Hopefully Pioneer Vision lets me go back and watch from the beginning. We’ll see.
I think that’s it for now. Go Pioneers! Beat Gauchos!
P.S. Oh! One more thing! Denver joined the WAC yesterday (effective July 2012). You may have heard about this. It’s kind of a big deal. I was at the press conference, and took pictures, and got quotes, and so forth. There are some tweets in the sidebar at right, live-tweeted from the event. But I’m not going to have time to write up a full blog post about it today. So instead of trying to compete with the many articles already written, I’m going to wait a day or two, basically until I have time, and then attempt some commentary on the issue, mixing in my pictures and so forth. Thrilling, I know! So stay tuned for that.
UPDATE: DU BALLZ is featured in Kyle’s latest post! He is in the sixth BALLZ photo down, stealing Kyle’s computer to watch #pixelvision. Hurrah!