Thanks for all the kind words as I’ve stepped away for a bit.  So very, very much to put down here, and I’ll get to it next week.  The election, Sarah Palin, my 17th Anniversary, on and on.  Today, I’ve decided to chat about homosexuality.

The incident that brings this reflection is the closing of “Rent” on Broadway this weekend.

As many of you may know, I grew up in a small town in Mississippi.  Homosexuality, gay, and lesbians hadn’t been invented yet.  We had things like sissies, fags, tom-boys.  There was no coming out of the closet then, and being picked on and ostracized was the least of the worries of these deformed people.  These sinners would lose jobs, have businesses closed, or be physically abused if they were found out.  I had mentors, friends, and classmates who were in this hidden group.  I vigorously defended the most influential man in my youth (besides my father), getting into a heated argument with a friend of mine who accused this community leader of being seen in Las Vegas with his boyfriend.

Fast forward to college, and a strange plague was creeping into the consciousness of America: AIDS.  We didn’t really have diseases with cute names like this, and this particular disease was neatly focused on this evil, ostracized group of homosexual men.  I have a degree in Biology, and I was stunned by the minimal amount of understanding of how AIDS was transmitted and how it could be prevented.  It was a death sentence to anyone who contracted it, and the victims literally wasted away before our eyes.  I remember making a particularly horrible first impression at the Corporate HQ of my first employer during a management orientation, as I explained to some executive that I felt the company could start an outreach program communicating information about this disease and its prevention to the communities of Upstate South Carolina.  Needless to say, I left a lasting impression on those folks (not good, I might add).

AIDS quickly spread from San Francisco and New York to all parts of America and the world.  It spread beyond this secret community to heterosexuals, hemophiliacs, health workers, children, blood transfusion recipients.  Two ambitious projects were instrumental in shifting our view of this disease and, ultimately, much of our view of gays and lesbians.  One was the movie “Philadelphia,” the story of lawyer Andre Beckett’s battle with AIDS.  Tom Hanks won his first Oscar for the role, Denzel Washington was masterful, Antonio Benderas provided eye candy.  Hanks moved from one extreme to another, winning the our hearts in “Sleepless in Seattle” then taking on the role of a gay man in Philadelphia.  The move brought homosexuality out in the open, although it was fairly tame by our graphic standards today.

The second project was “Rent,” a musical originally inspired by a desire to merge theater with the music of the MTV generation.  It was a labor of love for Jonathan Larson, the composer who worked seven years on the project.  It was a stunning twist when he suddenly and tragically died from an aortic aneurysm the morning before its off-Broadway premier.  Here is a fascinating photo collage and audio about that last dress rehearsal from the NY Times.

With that is a fascinating video from the 1996 Democratic National Convention, a performance from the Original Broadway Cast of “Seasons of Love.”

And from the NY Times, the original review of “Rent.”  The final curtain falls on its run Sunday, and a video version of last night’s Final Show will be available soon after.  It is a different America today, and Rent was at least one of the catalysts for our transformation.  Rest in peace, Mr. Larson.  RIP, Rent.

For over three years, I started most every day pouring my thoughts, torments, and emotions on some blog.  The locale has shifted, but the ritual remained.  Jumping away for I’m not sure how long (maybe two week?) has had its own interesting twists.  The first day, I felt almost panicky, although I’d probably typed for a day or three before I finally stopped.  After three or four days, I started to consciously avoid this admin panel, feeling a different kind of anxiety.  I didn’t want to document much of anything inside of me.

I’ve gradually driven away my fans, my lurkers, those whom I revolted (I doubt there were many).  Now, I have a few deep friends and those who accidentally stumble upon the site.  For many months, I was consumed by poker while trying to live a normal life and work a normal day.  The last ten weeks, it’s been launching a youth soccer club that took the place of poker.  I’d felt I needed to do something constructive with all of that discretionary time and energy, so I focused it all in a new direction.

I haven’t enjoyed getting yelled at by parents who feel their daughter or son has been wronged or should be playing professionally by now.  I haven’t enjoyed being told I was clueless or incompetent by other parent-coaches.  I haven’t enjoyed feeling the weight of the eyes of 150 parents and 75 boys and girls, trying to control things that aren’t in my control.  I haven’t liked being called a control freak as I had to do 150 things to get this where it is today.

The bigger challenge for me is figuring out why I have to have some huge avocation that saps every ounce of energy and attention from me when I can’t do the same for my business and career.  This summer has been quite similar to my WSOP summer in that I was consumed.

I’ve lost alot of traction and energy for this site along the way.  I had a new vision when I redesigned the site to broaden my content, to share more of myself in a wider array of topics.  Maybe I’ll get it back.  Maybe this has been the final part of a cathartic process to relaunch my blog.  We’ll see.

For those of you who have occasionally peaked to see if there is anyone here, I appreciate that.  For those who have continued to encourage me, thanks as well.  I hope I am back soon, and I hope others are as well.  I hope so.

PokerStars Game #19777921814:  Hold’em No Limit ($0.25/$0.50) - 2008/08/21 - 00:47:39 (ET)
Table ‘Phereclos’ 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: peiscottster ($135.60 in chips)
Seat 2: Veritas618 ($54 in chips)
Seat 3: visavis1111 ($98.10 in chips)
Seat 4: csquard ($48.65 in chips)
Seat 5: jackiemike ($22.40 in chips)
Seat 6: rdbougi83 ($18 in chips)
visavis1111: posts small blind $0.25
csquard: posts big blind $0.50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to csquard [As Ah]
jackiemike: raises $1 to $1.50
rdbougi83: raises $3.50 to $5
peiscottster: folds
Veritas618: folds
visavis1111: folds
csquard: raises $18 to $23
jackiemike: folds
rdbougi83: calls $13 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($5) returned to csquard
*** FLOP *** [Qh Td Ad]
*** TURN *** [Qh Td Ad] [Ac]
*** RIVER *** [Qh Td Ad Ac] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
csquard: shows [As Ah] (four of a kind, Aces)
rdbougi83: shows [Qs Qd] (a full house, Queens full of Aces)
csquard collected $35.90 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $37.75 | Rake $1.85
Board [Qh Td Ad Ac 9d]
Seat 1: peiscottster folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 2: Veritas618 (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 3: visavis1111 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: csquard (big blind) showed [As Ah] and won ($35.90) with four of a kind, Aces
Seat 5: jackiemike folded before Flop
Seat 6: rdbougi83 showed [Qs Qd] and lost with a full house, Queens full of Aces

For the few people who have stumbled upon this site, I’ve always been known as one who will bare his soul at the drop of a hat.  I’ve drifted away from that, partly for lack of dialogue with others, partly due to a struggle I’m in the midst of.  I feel that I’ve slipped closer and closer to superficiality.  It’s complicated, and I’ve deleted about eight posts that I’ve written over the last few days.  That’s all I have for now on that.

Not a ton of content, but Marc Aspland’s blog on the Times (UK) website has just magnificent images as well as very insightful commentary on photography.  It is a must read and see every day, and you’ll be glad you stopped by again and again.

You might say Broadway is the best thing going for New York City.  Grabbing a slice, a bagel with a smear and a regular coffee, shoe shines, Junior’s cheesecake, Stage Deli, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston Sucks t-shirts at Yankee Stadium.  The list is as long as your imagination of what makes New York great.

There is now one less thing that makes New York the best city in the world.  Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo has left WFAN, ending his partnership with Mike Francesca after 19 years.  This pair arguably created sports talk radio.  Their level of preparation for each day combined with their strong opinions and quick recall to make those long afternoon and evening drives something I looked forward to.  I called in a couple of times, awed with the responsibility of sounding coherent and insightful, biting off as little as I felt I could make do with.

Their show is by far the biggest thing I miss about our time living in New Jersey, and there isn’t even a close second (shoveling snow and bailing out our basement after any heavy rain is somewhere way down the list).  It truly is the end of an era for sports fans everywhere.

We’re trained monkeys, we Americans.  Every four years, we plop down to watch teenage girls flipping over and over and over again.  They pound into the floor in ways that would rip every tendon and break every bone in my ankles (I sit here at two in the morning nursing my second strained calf after an afternoon of soccer coaching followed by two sets of tennis).

The daughter of this guy just took the All Around Gold Medal in Artistic Gymnastics (which used to be called Gymnastics).

We’re all experts in the bizarre scoring, with no clue how the parameters of the scoring are either established or ultimately determined.  Much like the ridiculousness that is figure skating, we somehow have to wade into all of this each Olympiad and hope we’ve learned enough to hold a conversation with our neighbor or wife (or our neighbor’s wife).

We weathered the outrageous controversy that the Chinese might actually be too young, giving them the incredible advantage of being too stupid to understand that they should feel terrified that they may lose out on a Wheaties box deal if they fall on their little butts.  I do know that if I need bypass surgery, I’m heading to some Middle School in Shanghai and letting one of those little pre-teens take a crack at it.

And now the lanky SMU student from Plano (where a childhood friend played in a 30,000 seat football stadium in high school in the mid-’80s before heading to A&M) has beaten the next Mary Lou Retton.  Of course, I stayed up to watch all this mess with an icepack on my calf, then cried as Nastia Liukin fought to hold back the tears on the medals stand as her father received hugs from overweight Pageant Moms in the background.

I love America.

The Atlantic is bookmarked I think because my brother occasionally forwards things to me from it.  In the September 2008 issue, there is a brilliant article detailing the Senator Hillary Clinton campaign, looking in a detailed manner at how the staff worked to lose the Democratic nomination.  The core lesson to me is a lack of execution, the inability to decide on a path then complete actions with hopes for an expected outcome.  Regadless of who you have supported or do support, it is a fascinating read.  We can all learn from this in our professional lives especially.

It hasn’t been a great first couple hours this morning.  Unmotivated to start looking for new business from scratch, unconvinced on whether to pursue light bulbs in my mind, disappointed with the list of new efforts stagnating on my laptop.

I headed upstairs to click the coffee maker back on, heating up the final two cups of coffee.  After a quick pit stop, I wandered over to the now weathered kitchen table that the five of us eat almost all of our meals.  I plopped down to take in the wonderment of mother and son, at work with Play-Doh.

It’s a decision we’ve made or avoided making over the last decade or so, the mother of our boys setting aside her credentials as a Chemist and Chemical Engineer to take on her primary vocation of mother.  It is a rare blessing that we have as a family, these imperceptible nudges and nuanced directions to turn babies into boys, and hopefully boys into men.

Maybe it would be better if this asset called stay-at-home-mother was deployed rigorously toward advanced tutoring, contemporary fitness drills, some new-age art and creativity mind-melding.  Yet it was the two of them sitting on the bench, a plastic bin of realized profits amid stray plastic knives, clay becoming eyes and pizza and the imaginings of a fifty-month old.

I sat across from them, just taking it in after wasting two hours of my life this morning, trying to think up a way to think up a way to find what comes next.  If you stumbled here, hello.  If you have some youngster that shares your DNA, take a big step back this afternoon or evening and just be in his or her midst, either alone or with your spouse/lover/significant other.

Stay-at-home or not, travel heavily or not, juggle or not.  In my Suburbia with my Ti-Vo at the ready, the blessing of witnessing a mother nurturing a child is as magical today as ever.

In an ironic twist for me, I awarded a Republic of Georgia national jersey to the soccer coach working with me to launch a new soccer club (the new little hobby that has consumed me the last two months).  We used the specific red in the Georgia’s flag for the logo design of the new club.  All of this was the first I’d really thought of this nation in my life.  Since I handed Coach David that jersey, his homeland has been in upheaval, his brother was called into active duty since he was slightly under 50 years of age, even though he’d only recently had open-heart surgery.  He was raised as a Georgian Soviet, played football professionally in the Soviet Union, and won what would now be the Champions League back in the 1980’s.

So Russia has been at war with this nation over the last week, and today a cease fire has been announced.  Should we care about any of this?

Not only should we care about all of this, but we should be stunned by both the turn of events as well as anxious about the next decade.

Georgia was one of the few nations who joined the US in Iraq, brought to our collective attention when 2,000 troops were ordered back to Georgia this past week.  They have pursued NATO membership, wishing to join the ranks of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, and Slovakia among others.  President Bush was the first and only US president ever to visit the Republic of Georgia.

Regardless of who exactly did what to start this, Russia has been waging war against Georgia over the last week.  The US response seems to have been limited to chatting at the Olympics between Bush and Putin, as well as some sort of assistance to get the 2,000 Georgian troops from Iraq back to Georgia.

The aftermath of all this is much more important than the actual incident, with my apologies to the families of soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in Georgia this week.  Georgia is a relatively new ally of the US, much like Pakistan for that matter.  What exactly does that buy you in our new world order?  Who sets our foreign policy when it comes to our alliances, the President or Congress?  And how exactly should all of this work in the future?

Obviously, the US did not come to the defense of our dear friends, the Georgians.  We did not cut off diplomatic ties with Russia, did not send in aircraft to support the troops.  What have we told Russia, France, England, India, Pakistan, North Korea, China, Uganda, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Vietnam, Serbia, and countless others around the world?

No, the 21st Century is a much more complex one when it comes to good and evil, friend and foe.  Throw in diminishing raw materials and a finite energy supply, and we have indeed entered into a world of fractured misunderstanding.  We have only a hint of realization that we poorly understand these sub-nations, these emerging places of interest.

We had a severe problem once at the Aerospace company I worked in when we lived in Phoenix, and the CEO had a day where everyone would “Stand Down.”  Basically, we took a day where everyone stopped to focus on our core problem, much as he said the Navy would do in a time of crisis.

In the midst of this Election period and the aftermath of Iraq and this crisis in Georgia, it is time for a “Stand Down” for our leaders; really, for all of us.