Forgive Those Who Tresspass Against Us

It's funny sometimes. Sometimes the most skilled individuals don't always work together to be the best team. Some people just have a knack of being a team player. Others don't. We know that it takes a special talent to be a Michael Jordan, or the Alpha. Not everyone has that ability. And it also takes a very high level of talent to be Scottie Pippen, or the Beta. Everyone else on the Bulls took on a special role, like Steve Kerr or Bill Wennington. Now here's the thing that's interesting to me. If Michael Jordan were on a team with someone like Wilt Chamberlain, where Wilt would be the Alpha, it's doubtful that MJ could take on the Beta role and have the team excel. It would be nearly impossible to convince MJ to become a role player. However, we do see many examples of where the Beta becomes the Alpha, with a relatively high level of success. For example, Scottie Pippen was able to be an Alpha when MJ was gone, and Pippen even became a role player later on in his career and was actually a very valuable member of some good teams. On the other hand, we all would prefer to forget MJ in Washington. So, in some ways, you see that not all Alphas are created equal. There are Alphas that have a very rigid set of abilities, and others that can go back and forth to play whatever role is needed.

So, we're out at the bars on Saturday. Me, CJ, and Jigga meet up with DE, The Fitz, and MTS at 11. First of all, it's nice going out with our Euro friends (The Fitz is from Norway, while MTS is from Sweden). They have much larger bankrolls than we do, so they buy quite a bit. Of course, this is interesting when they are intending to get blitzed and want everyone to go along for the ride. It went something like this. Me, CJ and Jigga walk in, and I get us each a beer and a shot to open up the night. Immediately, MTS buys everyone a shot. A few minutes later, he decides to buy us all another shot. We're all hanging out and talking for a bit, when DE and MTS peel off for a second. I decide that I need another beer, and after I get it, I drift over to catch up with DE and MTS. MTS decides that we need more shots. I buy this round, since MTS bought the last one for all of us. MTS immediately buys another round of shots to make up for me buying the previous one. So, within an hour, we've put away 2 beers and 4 shots. Happily, the shots are all weak, mixed shots. Basically, they were T-Bombs, which are like a 3/4 shot of Ciclon and some Red Bull, all for $1.50. But, taken in large quantities, it adds up. It may even multiply or go exponential at some point.

Anyway, a little while later me and DE are off talking to some girls at the bar (more on this later), MTS finds us, and drags us all off to the bar for more shots. So, instead of just buying each of us a shot, I think that he just give the bartender like $20 and gets 12 shots on a server's tray. So, we each end up doing 2 shots off of the tray. The thing was, as the night went on, MTS did this 3 more times. I'm guessing that I ended up doing something like 13 of those damned T-bombs, to go along with the 2 beers and a vodka and Red Bull at the end of the night. And the worst part is that it wasn't even the alcohol that got to me. I think that it was the acid in the Red Bull that tore up my stomach. I think that I'm still shitting Red Bull now, almost 24 hours later.

Moral of story? Beware when MTS is buying shots a tray at a time.

So what does this have to do with trespassing? Nothing. But it works its way in. See, DE is one of those guys who never goes into battle without a backup plan. Or a Plan C. Or D. And maybe even E. He's been sort of playing the game with this girl H. It's been this constant struggle to gain the upper hand in the evolving relationship. It's this game of not being the last one to call, not being the one that seems dependent, etc. It's pretty amazing, actually, in an awesome sort of way. In fact, one of the standard plays that we have is to take a peek, and if we see H, to call up Command Central, so that we can decide what play to send in. For example, I saw H on Saturday. "Dude. H is here." "Really? Let's start working the room." So, once we see that H is there, the play was to go hit on girls, and eventually walk by H with some random girls. And for those of you who may think that this is shallow, you may be right. But it's also effective.

As an aisde, we know that DE has something going on with H. Now, for most of us that would mean that H is basically off limits. Easy call, right? But for whatever reason, The Fitz has to go over to talk to H. See, even if he isn't making a play on H, it still makes whatever DE is doing seem awkward. I believe that the correct play is for the entire team to stonewall H, nothing more than a "hello, how are you, I'm fine" type of conversation. Instead, he's off, and largely ruining whatever play DE had set up. I think that we'll need to talk about that at some point.

Anyway, to set up our play, we wander off and start talking to these two girls, one of whom DE knew, named R, and her friend C. So, DE is talking to R, and I'm running interference on C. C was pretty cute, but she didn't seem to be the sort that was going to a be much action, so I wasn't really putting on the full court press. Which was good. Because I got the "hey, you're my TA." Which is often a death knell. But I played it alright, and the conversation actually stayed alive. That is, until MTS dragged us all over to force us to drink. I actually ran into another one of my students (check that, one of my students recognized me as I was talking to people). And I actually managed to escape without her either slapping me or throwing a drink on me. I chalk that up as a victory.

The rest of the night was alright. Individually, I think that we were OK. How it worked out was that MTS was just buying drinks like crazy and not really working much game. The Fitz always seems to run solo missions. And DE needed someone to run wing, so I went off with him, while CJ and Jigga were doing their thing. I think that this isn't a bad plan overall, though we need to get DE to slow down a bit at times. I think that he goes off too fast sometimes trying to make up for lost time. And the other thing that we need to do is to get CJ to not get shaken up and lose confidence. But we'll iron that out. I think that we need to call a "players only" meeting at some point so that we can go over some of the things that we're doing, and figure out how we can improve our play. We actually did pretty poorly as a team, since we had different moments where people left their wingmen, where people weren't sharing the Alpha role, where no one wanted to be the Beta, and where we were just off our games.

Anyway, just one more week of class left to go. Crazy. Just have to survive a few more days.

-Chairman