Soft skin, rough hands

If you know anything about pistons, you know that their job is to go down and then back up, as they help your car engine push you down the highway. Tonight, my hometown's basketball team, the Detroit Pistons, are down (two games to three) to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and playing for their lives. It seems to be pretty much assumed that the Pistons are now too far down to come back up. The game is in Cleveland, the crowd is loud, and the home team has the greatest player in the NBA: Lebron James, a kid plucked out of high school and pressed into service in an entertainment service that is half-sport, half-theatre.

Still, an old sports fan can't help but watch, and hope, that somehow the basketball team can perform as their namesakes do, over and over, under the hood of your car. Stay tuned, later in this post, I'll let you know what happens.

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Being a Saturday, for a good chunk of each fall and spring, we have kids’ soccer games around here. Today it was my 12-year-old's chance to play in a championship game. They lost, so the season ends with his team as second best. It's been a tough season for our team and our families, losing Jimmy. Somehow, losing the championship game seemed the appropriate outcome on this gray, chilly day -- suicide weather, as we call it here in San Francisco.

Lest you think today was only about sports, the rest of this post will be devoted to our family "art." We make no claims, except that we hold nothing back. The results are for you, the viewer, to evaluate, if you wish.

It's Saturday night, I am alone, and I have no wisdom of any kind to share. But I do have this: The Wizard of the Upper Amazon. If you haven't read it, please do.

And I have this: "Highway Patrolman," by Johnny Cash. The only version I've found on YouTube is sung by Bruce Springsteen, but that (while good) cannot compare with Cash's.

Well, as I publish this, the Pistons-Cavs game is still in the second quarter, due to a technical problem that has turned off the "Jumbotron." So, in this electronic era, the coaches and players don't know what the score is. How interesting. The game devolves to basics.

Me, I'm betting on Motown in this situation...

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