Play One on TV

Just suppose for a moment that you have lost all memory of where you are. It doesn’t matter how this happened — maybe you were hit on the head, or perhaps you overindulged on Oprah reruns.

How do you tell where you are?

Here’s my favorite method:

1. Wait for a tornado warning to hit and the storm sirens to sound.
2. Run outside your front door.
3. If everyone on your block has also run outside and is looking in the direction of the oncoming tornado, you’re in Oklahoma.

To recap the weather situation in Oklahoma:

• Seven days ago, I was wearing shorts and my air conditioner was running.
• Six days ago, I was wearing a raincoat and changing my socks after every walk outside.
• Four days ago, I was eyeballing the first tornadoes of spring.
• Three days ago, I was wearing a heavy coat and had turned the central heat back on.
• This morning, I was using a broom to brush a half-foot of snow off my car.
• This afternoon, I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
• This evening, I was back in the coat and wishing I could live someplace normal, like New Mexico.

I’m going camping with the Boy Scout troop this weekend. I had better make the appointment with the orthopedist for next Monday, because my backpack is going to be carrying one of everything.

Near the close of business yesterday, my benevolent employer sent out a general-attention email.

The National Weather Service has issued a TORNADO WATCH for Oklahoma County…

My reaction? “Aww-right! First sign of spring! Bring it on, baby! Woo-HOO!!!”

If the stunned silence around me was any indication, I probably should have remembered that most of my coworkers live in Moore.

Yesterday, I took my son to a trombone clinic held at the University of Oklahoma School of Music.* He joined about 40 other players, in ages ranging from 11 to 18, to learn more about the art of playing the trombone, euphonium, and tuba. It was quite instructional — I meant for me, not my son. Among the things I learned:

• Trombonists were calling their sound “fat” long before rap music appropriated the word (if not the spelling).
• With the right chord, twenty trombones can scare the hell out of you.
• Listening to professional trombonists discussing their instruments is like listening to car buffs at the auto show. I looked for, but could not find, a window sticker of a little boy peeing on a Yamaha logo.
• At the dealer exhibition, my son went straight to the $8,000 bass trombone and picked it up. Starbucks only wishes it could make my heart skip that many beats.
• With the right chord, eight tubas can kill.
• The three-second rule does not apply to food dropped in the band room. Two words: spit valves.
• Don’t have a heart attack at the OU School of Music. Yelling “is there a doctor in the house?” will immediately fill the room, but not one of them will have a clue how to administer CPR. Worse, the baroque specialists might try to administer CPE, and nobody wants to die from a fugue.
• Listening to three collegiate trombone choirs will convince you that every other instrument is ridiculously unnecessary. Throw in four trombone quartets and a classical audition and you’ll fervently believe that Jimi Hendrix should have been handed a bone at age five instead of an axe.
• In Dvořák’s New World Symphony, the tuba part has only five bars. This possibly makes tuba players the highest-paid members of the orchestra when computed on a per-note basis.
• Trombone players really love to play their instruments. They don’t call it “playing” for nothing.

*All kidding aside, if you have a budding trombone player, and you’re within driving distance of Norman, OK, this is a must-attend event. It’s held every year on the last Saturday in February. Drop me an email and I’ll let you know when the next one is announced.

Wisdom gleaned from observing my fellow Oklahomans in their vehicular battle against the white stuff:

• Since everyone is driving slower, assume it is okay to shorten your following distance.
• Save your brake pads by using them as close as possible to your desired stopping point.
• Drive the speed limit. That’s what it’s there for, right?
• Cut in front of slower-moving trucks, buses, and other large vehicles. It is their responsibility to control their vehicle, not yours.
• Don’t stock emergency supplies or an ice scraper in your car. Instead, borrow your co-worker’s ice scraper “just for a minute.”
• Don’t bother with completely scraping all your windows. All you really need is a porthole up front.
• Don’t trust your anti-lock brakes to do their job. Instead, pump your breaks, just like your grandfather used to.
• Use high gears at every intersection start. It helps to melt the ice for those that come after you.
• You know that two-mile stretch of bridge on the local highway? It’s okay to drive on it — really.

After a long, hard winter of sunny skies, 70-degree temperatures, grass fires, and a statewide burn-ban due to dry conditions, Oklahoma City has finally succumbed to the spirit of the season. We are now officially a Winter Wonderland. And just in time to cancel our Scout troop’s road trip, too.

When compared to the blizzards that routinely hammer the northern and northeastern portions of the US, this particular storm isn’t much to look at. Two days of on-again, off-again precipitation has accumulated barely 1/2 to an inch of the white stuff. However, that white stuff isn’t snow — it’s sleet. And let me tell you, it’s getting pretty ugly out there. We actually cancelled our church services. I would have sworn that only a Martian invasion could keep the Bible Belt home on Sunday morning.

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My wife recently shipped a business package to a customer on “Asphalt Road” in Altus, Oklahoma. She is willing to bet the name comes from a time when it was the only paved road in town.

This will make me think twice next time I’m about to drive through Hooker, Oklahoma.

Over the last two days, temperatures in Oklahoma City have been a bit on the cool side. Surely this is a side effect of hell freezing over. Why? Because I attended a Hornets game last night.

Exhibit 1: A photograph of the buckaroo and myself sitting about eight miles above the arena floor.

Last month, I proudly declared myself free and clear of the influence of organized sports, professional or otherwise. I felt no compulsion to memorize team statistics or follow the in’s and out’s of player trades. My happiness did not depend on whether or not “my boyz” wound up on top. The state of my soul did not require the sacrifice of Monday nights at the altar of Michaels and Madden. My head remained free of licensed logowear.

My parents altered this complacency by giving me their tickets to last night’s game. Three hours of my life were given over to watching the Oklahoma City Hornets beat the living snot out of the Los Angeles Lakers.

And I enjoyed every ball-bouncing, Kobe-trouncing second of it.

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Note to denizens of Oklahoma City: If you’re a fan of the “all you can eat” style of restauranteering, I can heartily recommend Gaucho’s Grill on NW Expressway between Rockwell and MacArthur. Gaucho’s is a “Brazilian Grill and Steakhouse,” which didn’t mean a whole lot to me until my office took me there for my birthday lunch.

Unlike most buffet-style establishments, where “quantity is job one,” Gaucho’s somehow manages to maintain a high amount of quality amidst all the quantity. Lunch consisted of five meats, four side dishes, two dessert dishes, and a bevy of waitstaff ready to serve you more at the drop of an antacid, all for a reasonable price of $9.95. The review in the Oklahoma Gazette says it much better than I could (probably because they have professional writers, whereas I am only a professional eater.)

If I didn’t know any better, I would think that their unofficial slogan was “everything tastes better with a little meat on it.” I did not take accurate measurements, but it is highly probable that I ate enough protein to sustain a third-world family for a month. I didn’t walk out of the restaurant — I rolled, leaving behind many a grieving family of cattle, chickens, and swine.

Run, don’t walk to Gaucho’s. And after you’re finished, walk, don’t run. The pavement will thank you.

Two days ago it was 70+ degrees outside and I was wearing shorts. This morning, I wake up and there’s snow on the ground. This is beyond ridiculous. No wonder there’s no room in my closet — I can’t risk putting anything into seasonal storage for fear that I’ll die from either heatstroke or hypothermia.

I would complain to the management, but given recent weather instabilities, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I received a lightning storm in response.

Charles is a basketball fan, and nobody is more surprised than he, as described in his latest Vent.

I share Charles’ lack of interest in most things related to organized sports, but he’s one up on me with his newfound love of the New Orleans Oklahoma City Hornets. Not only have I never watched one of their games (live, televised, or otherwise), I would be hard-pressed to identify their logo on a t-Shirt. If it has the word “Hornets” somewhere in it, I might stand a chance.

This isn’t a matter of a lack of interest in the sporting disciplines. On the contrary: I love to watch a good, competitive game in any arena: football, basketball, hockey, soccer, jai-lai. It’s just that I have trouble mustering up any kind of interest in a specific team or player. I like watching the skill and strategy, not the drama and pathos.

Many of my friends get all frothy at the mouth over a Bedlam game (for the non-Okies, that’s what we call a matchup between the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University). My idea of a great football game is an absolute tie right down to the two-minute warning, followed by a game-winning touchdown in double-overtime. The identity of the winning team is irrelevant.

This viewpoint is considered high treason by most of my friends and family, living as I do in the middle of College Football country (which is quickly becoming NBA country). In short, they think I am a loon. By way of compensation, I can go shopping on game days and not wait in line (unless I’m in the television section).

Disclaimer: Everything I just said is immediately reversed where professional cycling is concerned. I can quote names, statistics, placings, standings, and drug test results with the most fannish of the fans. I scream at the television during the entire 21-day span of the Tour de France. This does nothing to improve my loon status.

For a city that was laid out in the post-automobile era, Oklahoma City has a remarkable supply of poorly-designed thoroughfares and intersections. To my mind, one of the worst is in the downtown area near Broadway and McGee.

The recipe: take one wicked S-curve that causes all but the best-aligned vehicles to squeal their tires. Add an intersection with 3rd Street and Dean A. McGee Avenue, a Bank One drive-in facility, the Santa Fe parking garage, and an entrance to the Bricktown restaurant and tourist district. Shake well.

This high-volume area sees three kinds of traffic: people looking for the Ford Center or the Myriad, who tend to drive slow; people trying to get to work on time, who tend to drive fast; and people trying to get in or out of Bricktown, who tend to drive drunk. In the end, you have the traffic equivalent of too much Cheez Wiz and not enough Twinkee.

While negotiating this stretch of asphalt last weekend, I encountered evidence of my government at work. It was a street sign at the top of the intersection that advised me to “Drive Friendly”.

I’ve done a few stints of preschool chaperoning in my day. When young children are fighting over toys, floor space, or cookies, I know from experience that the absolute last thing you should say is “Now, play nice!” I cannot see how telling a group of harassed drivers to “drive friendly” is going to have any different effect. It’s like throwing gasoline on Krakatoa.

This being Oklahoma, opinions of local signage are usually expressed with a shotgun. However, I think the only reason this particular sign has survived is that nobody in their right mind would stop on this street long enough to take aim.