Nothing But Iron: The Fighting Filipino by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W., The Writing Filipino Started December 8, 2008 Finished December 20, 2008 Alternative Title: The 12 Days of NBI According to eye-witness accounts of pay-per-view television Manny Pacquiao pummeled, and this time I mean that literally, Oscar De La Hoya to win the championship in yet another weight class and further elevate his status as a real-live, pre-statue Filipino icon, something that those who know of him recognize as an achievement far beyond winning a boxing title. That’s because Pacquiao was already more famous than the pope in this predominantly Catholic country where my dad was born and raised. I had never heard of Pacquiao, but my brother Matt, who, this week became the first member of my immediate family to set foot on Philippine soil since my father immigrated to the U.S. in 1958, told me the story of the boxer’s rise to fame. Pacquiao was recently training in LA, and Matt got to stand next to him for a picture. That meeting could never have happened in the Philippines. Pacquiao, like Michael Jordan here, is unaccessible in his home country. He is so popular that, according to an SI article, he lost a congressional election because his opponent convinced voters Pacquiao was more important to the country as a boxer. I don’t write about Manny because my belly swells with the vicarious pride of my half-countrymen (although my belly is a little distended, but that could also be from pizza), or because I no longer think that boxing is still the most stupidly barbaric sport since the days of the gladiators or Michael Vick’s dog fighting business. I write to point out that despite our successes in the ring there is an astounding, even suspicious, paucity of head boxing coaches of Filipino heritage. You may accuse me of egregious small mindedness, and you would pretty much be right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is not a conspiracy to keep Filipinos off the corners of the ring. The first step, which will have been completed as soon as you read this, is to illustrate our plight in the electronic media. Step 2 is to form a coalition with other repressed coaches, for example would-be African American college basketball coaches, who are similarly discriminated against for no reason but ethnicity and maybe the fact that the guys that got hired were a little more qualified. Whatever. I’ll have the think about the steps after that, but I am sure there are some. (You guys never know where I am going, do you.) I bought a bike. It was 16 degrees and windy, so I think I was the only one who bought a bike that day. Though it’s a mountain bike, I don’t intend to ride it in the mountains. I tried mountain biking in Arizona and it was fun until blood started leaking out of my elbow. The problem with mountain biking in Arizona is gravity. It’s a dry gravity, but it is emitted from sharp rocks that define the trails like teeth define the mouth of shark. Would it be too much to ask for the rocks to break apart just a little more smoothly? My brother, Bruce, who mountain bikes several times a week, shaves his legs. Yes, that seems like too much unrelated information, but it has a point. I assumed he did that to decrease wind resistance, but it turns out that he does it so there is no hair in the abrasions and lacerations when he abrades and lacerates himself. My plan is to keep the hair and lose the sharp rocks. I will use my new bike for winter riding in Wisconsin. My skinny-wheeled hybrid (a road bike cross-pollinated with a mountain bike I guess) was too unstable on patches of ice and hard packed snow. Because December is known for these elements, my commuter biking season came to a sliding halt. But I noticed people were still riding, so I wondered if I had quit prematurely. A lot of winter riders were on mountain bikes, so I tested one and felt immediately empowered and adventurous. I figured my kids would not understand why a sane heated-seat SUV-owning person would ride a bike in the winter, so I explained it: My life is so easy that I have to contrive inconveniences so that I don’t become soft and incapable. I also do it because of the odd and unexpected exhilaration of reaching my destination through climatic conditions I recently considered intolerable, if not incapacitating. When I started riding in the summer I assumed that cold, snow and ice would serve as convenient excuses to retreat to the comforts of a covered vehicle. What I failed to anticipate was how much I missed the bike when I stopped. Now I may not have to stop. I went to a Packers game to watch another warm-weather team thumb its frosted nose at us, the Packers and mother nature. I did not ride my bike because Lambeau Field is over 100 miles worth of inconvenience away. You would not believe me if I told you that the game was riveting, and it was not, but I do enjoy going to Lambeau. I took my camera, and decided to walk the stadium and take pictures before I went to my seat, watching different plays in different sections and on the monitors above concession counters. I finally reached my own seat just a few minutes before halftime. I roamed once again for much of the third quarter. Though the design of the stadium is superb, the fans give the place its character. They cheer in blaze-orange hunting suits, animal-pelt head gear, foam replicas of cheese on heads and breasts (in this case the cheese bra was worn on the outside of a heavy coat). They wear insulated boots, tan coveralls, jerseys of all numbers shapes and sizes, wacky glasses, green and gold Santa hats and they wave colorful signs. And they drink beer. An unbelievable amount of beer. Cold beer you might think refreshing on an 89-degree day, but consumed here like coffee at Starbucks. Times a thousand. Good or bad, and it is probably some of each, Lambeau is a culture of beer. Maybe it is so because the beer is reliable. It does not commit penalties or miss tackles or blow coverage in the secondary. It is cheap and plentiful and it takes the sting out of the cold and the loss. And it makes them smile. As of today the Packers own a hopeless 5-9 record. They are about to face the Bears on Monday night football. The Bears must win to stay alive in the division race, assuming that the Vikings lose today against Atlanta. Here is my prediction: If the Vikings win, then the Packers-Bears game will be close, because it will be inconceivably cold and nobody will care about anything other than avoiding testicular frostbite. Green Bay will lose by 2 after an interception with a minute left in the fourth quarter. If Atlanta wins, then Chicago will destroy the Packers, just like the Packers did to them before treading on the greasy part of the slippery slope to oblivion. Experts, like ever-positive Tom "Whole Grain" Oates, suggest that the organization is in a shambles, which is probably accurate because Tom gets paid to write stuff. I suppose then, that we should fire Ted Thompson and everyone who works for him and just start over, maybe even build a new stadium, say in Kaukauna, and get different colored uniforms. And we should hire Favre back. But not really. I am just playing the devil’s idiot. This is what I really think: The Packers are a couple impact players away from being a true contender. Aaron Rogers will learn how to win close games. Thompson does not write for a newspaper, but he is a professional football GM, who did recently field a team that was but an overtime away from the Super Bowl, so why wouldn’t there be a good chance he might snag a couple impact players? And when he does, will you stand up and say, yup, I called it, even though you don’t have a written record of that prediction like I do? Did I mention that I have been busy converting my back yard into a ski resort? I don’t ski, but if this snow keeps up–totals are ahead of last year’s record pace–I might as well make money off it. Let me know if you want to make a reservation. Amenities include wireless internet access, hot tub, indoor basketball, NBI back issues and complementary plugged toilet service. Which reminds me . . . It has been a few weeks since I wrote anything about toilets. My expert plunging skills came in handy Friday night after the teenagers plugged the downstairs toilet. I could tell from debris analysis that they had tried to remedy the problem themselves and that success had eluded them. After applauding their efforts, I cleared the obstruction in about three minutes, feeling every bit like the rock star that I am. I might have even flipped the plunger on its side and strummed the rubber part to simulate playing an electric guitar. I then called the four television-watching sixteen-year-olds (one of mine and three guests) into the bathroom for a man lesson. I showed them how to stop a plugged toilet from overflowing by lifting the float in the tank. No doubt they were impressed. Well, some doubt. We humans assume that a home’s appliances, receptacles and components live isolated lives, each functioning independently without desire or means to communicate with each other. That assumption makes it unlikely that the breakdown of our washing machine on the same day as the toilet overflow was anything more than coincidence. What seemed like a problem proved to be nothing more than an opportunity. Connor was still asleep when I broke the news: "Dude, you and Patrick are going to the laundromat." He asked if I was kidding. I told him that I was not and that I was not a figment of some elaborate nightmare. I managed the indignant look on his face by outlining his options: He could do it grudgingly or willingly, but as long as he did it well, I didn’t care how he felt about it. Teenagers need options. Patrick, who is scheduled to leave the nest in a few or several months, was more accepting of the opportunity. Together they gathered up the clothes, a water bottle full of laundry soap, and a bunch of quarters and began their mission. Kelly, realizing that we had given them little direction, had one of those uneasy moments that moms are programmed to have when their kids blaze new trail: "I don’t think they know where they are going." I promised her that they did know, or, if not, they would soon call. She sent Connor a text to be sure. His reply: "Mom, u think we r retarded?" As expected, they didn’t fold anything, not even a wash cloth, but the clothes returned clean and almost dry. I went Christmas shopping this morning. Kelly was concerned that it would be a "zoo out there", because it is the Sunday before Christmas and the store opened at 8:00 AM and I could not get there before nine. She neglected the x-factor though: Seven below zero with wind chills in the minus-20 range. If it would have been a zoo it would have been stocked with penguins and polar bears. I was one of about a dozen people in Dick’s Sporting Goods and half of those were employees, which meant I was able to find help for once. I won’t tell you what I bought because the recipient is probably reading this. I’ll bet you wonder if you are the recipient. You’re probably not. On the way home I made this observation: Traction improves at extremely cold temperatures. This makes sense because it’s not the ice that makes roads slippery, it’s the film of water on top of the ice. When it is this cold, there is no water film, which is good because it will make my worrying mom feel better and because this would be a crappy day to be in the ditch. If I had gone to ditch I think I would have just waited until March to get out of my car. So, you up for some more sports? I watched parts of two bowl games yesterday. First was the Eaglebank Bowl between Navy and some other team I didn’t care about. I watched the part during a time out when the game's sponsors were trying to sell products I didn’t care about. After a couple disparaging comments, I changed the channel to watch some of the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, which is a misnomer, because it’s not really a bowl game, but the championship game of the Division III football playoff. UW-Whitewater, after trailing for most of the game, was making a comeback against rival Mt. Union. The Warhawks scored with less than two minutes to play, but fell four points short of glory when a Union player recovered the onside kick. Great season though, especially considering that UWW lost most of its starters from last year’s national championship team. I learned that both Mount Union and Whitewater earned the right to play for the title by playing other playoff teams. I was told that the scores from those games were used to determine which team would advance to the next round. Apparently popularity and balloting were not factors in the playoff outcomes. How weird is that? Later I went to watch the basketball Badgers play Coppin State. You have to admire Coppin State. The Eagles came in at 1-6, which could have been a deception considering their ridiculously hard non-conference schedule, which includes road games at Purdue, Kansas, Dayton, Syracuse, Missouri and Oklahoma, and so far home games against, well, there haven’t been any home games yet. C State has a talented point guard, Tywain McKee, and another lightning quick guard about the size of a seventh grader, but it lacked skill and size in the front line. The result was a lot of dunks for the Badgers. McKee displayed his resourcefulness late in the game, when his shoe came off. With Wisconsin pushing the ball up the court, he quickly fell to the floor, groaning loudly as he held is knee. The officials took the bait and stopped play. After fixing his shoe, McKee quickly limped back to the scorers table. The horn sounded. He was healed. I was amused. My assessment of the Badgers late in their nonconference schedule is that there is little for a true fan to dislike. There is no standout player, but players who stand out from time to time. Last year’s depth is gone, but you will not see a time when Bo Ryan has a guy on the floor who believes that there is an adequacy less than excellence. Moreover, you will not see a player who cares more about himself than about his team. Given the renewed strength of the Big Ten Conference–and the way Big Ten teams are knocking of ranked opponents, you would have to be a fool to see it any other way–hard work and sharing may not be enough to defend the conference title, but it will surely be enough to keep me engaged. I watched MSU beat Texas yesterday. It is hard to imagine how the Badgers will beat either team, which is why I leave that little detail to the best basketball coach who ever coached here. I am amused at how little respect the Big Ten is getting in the polls. You may laugh, but a .500 or better conference record will be no small accomplishment for this year’s Badgers. ___________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports, weather and home maintenance column written for the joy of writing, not to mention the occasional positive feedback such as "Steve, your grammar, spelling and punctuation were remakable," or "Steve, I loved your use of alliteration in the article about Joe Paterno," or "Steve, your work is awful, but thanks for not charging us to read it." Heartwarming stuff like that, but not "I would have rather had that gift from Dick’s Sporting Goods". The NBI staff wishes you a happy, safe, above-zero holiday season. ©2008 DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.