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Excellent Ultimate

Last night I had an excellent game of Ultimate. First of all, it has been warm the last few times we played, so I decided to dispense with the long-sleeved undershirt I've been wearing, and it was a fine choice; it was very warm, and I was surprised that it was cold enough for my breath to freeze, because it didn't feel that way! I was even a little sorry I'd put on my jogging tights.

But I'm finally building enough endurance, skills, and reflexes to make some better cuts and get the disc more often. I scored my first point reception! And almost scored another one! I need to work on being more patient with my throws, and getting off good throws to people who can do something with them, but getting the disc more often will let me do that.

On a few of our points we were playing something called "zone defense", which, rather than man-to-man coverage, involves three people trying to contain the person with the disc, and the other four people trying to prevent deep throws. The team we were playing against was not prepared for this, and needed a "strategic time out" to go over how to counter this form of defense. It was interesting; my first time playing it. It relies on the three people playing in the "cup" (i.e., being on the disc) running around and not getting too exhausted. It worked well.

There's nothing like a little success to build confidence!

A few other things have happened: For one, out of the blue I received e-mail from my first girlfriend, from college, whom I'd lost touch with back around 1995 or 96. I'd every so often tried to dig up an e-mail address for her, but to no avail (she has a fairly common name). Apparently a mutual friend was more insightful or something than I was, and he pointed her to my Web page. These voices from the past are always entertaining (usually in a good way!).

I also sent in my form to register to vote (you have to do so ahead of time in California; in Wisconsin you can register at the polls), and made an appointment to have a dental checkup - my first since moving out here. So I've nearly cleared my plate of outstanding 'life maintenance chores'. So it's quite possible I might soon start calling to look at apartments.

But don't quote me on that.

Comic book time:

Mage: The Hero Defined #1-15, by Matt Wagner (Dark Horse): The follow-up to Wagner's 80s series Mage: The Hero Discovered is finally concluded. The "hero" in question is Kevin Matchstick, the reincarnation of Arthur Pendragon, and Wagner's fantasy persona. In the first series, Matchstick learns who he is, and overcomes a great foe in his first trial.

This series is considerably less straightforward: Kevin meets various other heroes, notably Kirby Hero (a Hercules analogue), and falls in love with a beautiful blonde witch. He faces another trial against another, even more shadowy, foe, and without the social support environment which he had in the first series. The other heroes are as much competitors as anything else, and it's never entirely clear where Kevin's right-hand-man, the speedy Joe Phat, stands. He seems far more a sidekick than anything else. And the man claiming to be Kevin's magical mentor for this stage of his life seems dubious indeed.

The story, alas, never quite comes together. Kevin's biggest enemy usually seems to be himself, and I found myself unable to extract the purpose of the story from everything that happened. The best I could come up with was simply that Kevin walked through hell, divested himself of everything he'd been carrying with him, and found true love at the end of the tunnel. But that seemed like a terribly unsatisfying purpose given all the texture that was built up early in the story.

Ultimately, while reading some of the text pages in the series, it sounds like Mage is Wagner's metaphor for his own life, and therefore perhaps has plenty of meaning to him personally, but this second story didn't hang together for me, a reader who doesn't know him. It lacked meaning and purpose. A pity, since the first series had pointed to great things.