50 deliberate thoughts

On words that never made it into print, basketball, Mike Johnson's imagined Chester Arthur-esque mutton chops, my bias about Len Bias, my kids' 22nd birthday and (too) much more.

If you were to review my 170 prior columns, you’d notice a pattern: there really isn’t one. Topics careen all over the place from week to week.

Often, I’ll have a main topic, then an additional item or two or three, stray stuff that I can’t keep inside my head and/or that my wife doesn’t prevail upon me to keep out of this space.

Well, today, we’re going to lean into that careening. Herewith is my debut installment of 50 Deliberate Thoughts.

1. I thought about calling them “random,” but they’re not at all random. They’re quite deliberate. You might see them as random—in fact, you should.

2. I really do like using “herewith” on occasion. See, I did it again!

3. There are plenty of words that I’ve said out loud, read in books and in other media and wished I could have found a way to use in my writing, especially as a newspaper reporter. But nope, I never got to sneak it into my prose.

4. Maybe some of those words will pop up here. (This is called foreshadowing, that sturdy literary device.) Come to think of it, I wonder if I’ve ever used “foreshadowing” before.

5. The jury is still out on whether I’ve used “foreshadowing” before in print. I’ve written thousands of newspaper stories—my daughter asked me the other day to estimate the number recently, and I think I came up with 7,500 as a good ballpark—and about 10% of those were with the Chicago Tribune.

6. I just searched my Trib stories via Newspapers.com and it turned up zip with “By Matt Baron” and “foreshadowing.” If I type “Elvis” and “scandal” and “Tax Increment Financing District,” well, that’s a different story—many stories, in fact.

Ugh! I really did not enjoy writing these TIF stories.

7. In fact, I so dreaded these articles that I developed a “save-get” excerpt where I’d drop in a brief backgrounder on what the heck a TIF was, every time I wrote about ’em. I’d vary a word or two here or there, just to feel like I wasn’t plagiarizing myself and/or being too lazy.

8. However, the “F” word (“foreshadowing,” in case you forgot) does appear once in my website blog, my July 2013 post on Len Bias, the college basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose a few days after being the 2nd pick (by my beloved Celtics) in the 1986 draft. The previous summer, I’d been at a basketball camp in my hometown of Marshfield, Mass., in the Boston ‘burbs and Bias was in my cabin.
   
   When he died, I was thunderstruck. Bereft. Other words I’ve rarely, if ever, employed in the course of my writing. And, for sure, I was in naive denial. I scoffed when I first heard, from a high school basektball teammate as we were gathering for a banquet that was strangely four months after our season ended, that Bias had died by cocaine overdose.

   
   So it would logically follow that I had a big blind spot when it came to writing about him that week for my hometown newspaper, a commentary with the maudlin headline, “Tragedy ends game too soon for Bias.”

   
   Reflecting on that column many years later, I wrote on my blog about how I’d left out the telltale signs of Bias’ partying side, including him coming into our cabin more than once, well after hours and roaring drunk (and perhaps stoned):
   
   ”Alas, my commentary contained no mention of this side of my weeklong encounter with Bias. When [my friend and teammate] Todd read the piece in the newspaper, he assumed that I decided to keep it out because I didn’t want to paint a less-than-flattering account of Bias. When he relayed that feedback, I groaned in disappointment at my memory lapse as well as my failure to seek Todd’s review of the commentary before submitting it to my editor. In fact, I had simply forgotten that part of our shared Len Bias experience.

   It was no small thing to have slipped my mind, either. Offering a glimpse of his partying ways and even foreshadowing the circumstances of his eventual death would have done much to elevate the commentary’s context and insight.”

9. That was one big honkin’ rabbit-hole excursion. At this pace, I’ll wrap up my 50 Deliberate Thoughts next May. I promise it’ll move along more briskly from here. I hope, anyway.

10. My kids turned 22 yesterday. Zach got the day off from his new job as a headhunter—though he still got a little bit of work in from his new apartment in Chicago. And Maggie Rose went out to lunch with one friend and then into the city with other friends later. In other words, no chair photo :-).

11. Oh, you don’t know what I mean by “chair photo”? You gotta check this out, from two years ago! (We took photos of our twinkies every month, on the 8th, for about 12 million years, give or take an epoch.)
    

12. Epoch. Now that’s a word I haven’t said out loud in a while (till I just murmured it). I suspect you know what it means…I think I know what it means: a really, really long period of time. [Just looked it up: it can mean a long span, like millions of years, but it can also mean a pretty brief period that’s marked by a certain characteristic. To wit: “The Beatles’ Hamburg epoch.”]

13. Just occurred to me: I also wrote a guest post for CelticsLife.com about Len Bias nine years ago, as part of a 30-year retrospective on his life and death. Basketball fans, in particular, might appreciate this link here to that column.

14. Len was a 79.5% free throw shooter during his college days at Maryland. But he was getting really good, up to 86.4% his senior year.

15. On Friday, I shot 220 of 260 (a lame 84.5%) righty and 27 of 30 (90%) lefty from the free-throw line. But I wasn’t exhausted from running up and down the court, and I didn’t have thousands of people cheering or jeering me on. (There was another guy shooting at the same hoop for most of that time, though.)

16. Time to change gears: let’s circle back to The Beatles for a moment. My parents got married the weekend they first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Kind of a cool tie-in, right?

17. Only 2 1/2 years later, the band played their last live concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. All those screaming fans made it a drag to perform.

18. Did anyone else notice that Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell Jr. was really knocking on a century’s door before he passed away? I’ll gladly take 97, especially if it includes being able to shoot free throws until I’m at least 87.

19. Whoa, I almost veered back into Basketball-Land there.

20. I was flipping through my fraternity magazine last night and learned that famed TV game show host Wink Martindale was a Kappa Sigma. Cool!

21. How I came to learn this tidbit is because Wink passed away earlier this year, at 91 years old. Not cool! RIP, Winston Conrad Martindale.

    

22. In that same issue, I also discovered that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is a Kappa Sigma. Decidedly not cool, even if he is representin’ as best he can for the low-key sideburned folks in our midst.

23. I’ve had audacious, bodacious and borderline immoral sideburns during my younger days. If Johnson went all-in and sported some Chester Arthurs, I might just start voting Republican.

    

    How Mike Johnson would get my vote—and unceasing fealty.

24. That’s called sarcasm. Though I’d consider voting for a Republican who displayed the temerity to stand up to the Cult of Trump. Someone like Adam Kinzinger, whose Substack is here, in case you were wondering.

25. That Johnson-channeling-Arthur image was my first use of the latest version of ChatGPT, GPT-5. I wonder how much water it took to create that? This story suggests it might range between 1/15th of a teaspoon to two teaspoons (10 millileters), a 1:30 ratio. Hardly pinpointing the amount, but the overall impact is enormous. Do you remember where you were when you first learned that artificial intelligence consumed water? Am I breaking this news to you now?

26. I just took a sip of water. In a typical day, I’ll have 120 to 150 ounces of water. Not bragging, just sharing a data point. Here’s another water-related stat: 71% of the Earth is covered by water. But almost all if it is undrinkable.

27. Seventy-one (71) percent of the week is covered by weekdays. Coincidence?

28. One benefit of being born on August 8th is that even if someone flips the sequence—perhaps a European type who is used to the day of month-month-year order—they’ll still get it right. Same goes for January 1st, February 2nd, March 3rd….oh, you get the point.

29. …and April 4th (I always think of MLK with that date), and May 5th….and…

30. Yes, I am officially milking it now, to inch ever closer to 50. It’s now a minute before midnight.

31. I saw "Eddington” at the movie theater last weekend. It’s set during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a fictional New Mexico town (Eddington) in the middle of nowhere. Pedro Pascal’s the mayor, Joaquin Phoenix is the sheriff. It’s a wild ride—and about halfway in comes one of the most jarring moments I’ve ever experienced as a movie-goer. I won’t spoil it (further).
    

32. A “placeholder” in journalism and other forms of publishing is “TK,” meaning “to come.” Why’s it called “TK” and not “TC”? Because TK stands out more, and is more easily searchable. Why do I bring this up now? Because I’ve been typing TK on occasion as I move from one numbered item to the next, pending whatever deliberate thought comes to mind.

33. Usually it’s only a few seconds before that thought arrives.

34. I saw a mom-and-child outside the Trader Joe’s on Thursday, the same spot and the same scenario that prompted my “Breaking the ice” column in January.

    
    It couldn’t have been the same duo. Rather than freezing weather, with a bundled-up baby on mamma’s back, it was the standard August mugginess we’ve been getting and this child was standing sturdily--the one from January wouldn’t be a year old yet.

35. I gave a buck and a Clif bar, which is precisely one buck and one Clif bar more than I usually give to immigrants who are a regular fixture in my community. Still grappling with what, if anything, to do in these encounters!

36. The Chicago Cubs lost again, I see. And will the Milwaukee Brewers ever lose again? They’ve won 22 of 26 and might just run away with the best record in baseball this year. At least my Boston Red Sox are on a roll. Would be fantastic if the Red Sox and Cubs squared off in the World Series some time before the end of the century. It almost happened in 2003, but “close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

37. It’s been a long time since I tossed a horseshoe. And I hope I’m never in a position where I need to throw a hand grenade.

38. Time for a poll!

39. Hardly anything makes me giggle more than GIFs that I share by text on my smartphone. There’s something about it that just feels joyous. This week, my wife shared this one with me and the kids after Zach provided some specific data points about a trip to a Chipotle near his new apartment.

    

40. I’d put Zach’s over/under for meals per month at that Chipotle at 5.5. When he and I spent four days in New York City, eight years ago, we frequented at least three Chipotles. So, yeah, my over/under on Chipotle excursions per month if I were in his shoes: 11.5.

41. One month about 12 years ago, when Boston Market had a “two kids dine free with one paying adult” deal, I took the kids there 13 times. That’s one more than my record for most consecutive three-point shots made, which I accomplished yesterday.

42. See how I swung it back around to basketball again? And numbers, numbers, numbers!

43. I use “peripatetic” in conversation more than you’d think, even if you know me and my predeliction for 10-cent words. But I’d be hard-pressed to think of a time when I used it in a story; no self-respecting editor would have let it in without at least a little push-back.

44. Quaint, that notion of someone known as an “editor” at a publication. Yes, they still exist, but they’re fewer and farther between. Or is it further between? I need an editor!

45. Get a load of that semi-colon at the end of #43. Only in the last decade or so have I grown confident in my use of semi-colons; I’m almost, shall we say, too confident?

46. Oh, I see. So we’re going to punctuate this entire foray with a self-conscious evaluation of my punctuation from the preceding item?

47. Well, it is 12:56 a.m. If this were an American League baseball game, they’d be imposing curfew real soon.

48. No, they wouldn’t. They no longer have that provision.

49. And what’s with the italicizing of “is” before the time in #47? You don’t think your readers will have the sense to italicize it in their mind?

50. My screen is saying “Near email length limit.” About time.