*****SPOILER ALERT******

My theory is that the whole movie is a dream from the perspective of Michael Cane’s character. He is really the old version of Cobb, who could not get Mal out of his system, and who stayed forever in Limbo.

Discuss!

Not only did I want my father, the legendary Monte Vista High School football coach, to look Santa Sophia Coach Zack Peck, the legendary Monte Vista High School basketball coach whose daughter Vanessa was our opponent’s starting center, in the face the next day in the P.E. teacher’s lounge with the triumph of victory. I wanted him to know that all the games of H-O-R-S-E we’d played in the driveway had summarily made me, well, a baller. I said a quick prayer, threw the ball, and Sarah made it happen. At the girls basketball awards banquet the next week, the performance earned her the team’s Most Inspirational Award, an honor she has eschewed to this day, arguing that I only won Most Valuable Player because I was the coach’s daughter. Of course, she is now a surgeon and I am a lowly political blogger, but we both learned the important lesson that nepotism sucks.

The scene amuses us all now, considering that in our moment of glory we didn’t even break double digits. My mother in the stands, speckled about with 15 other dedicated fans, committed to being there while my father and I inflicted an emotional roller coaster on ourselves, yelling at the referees when they treated us unfairly, reveling in sports metaphor on the drive home. Of all the important things that would ebb and flow and change for the three of us after that moment: friends, ambitions, accolades, jobs, politics, bank accounts, pet cats, six seasons of “Lost,” and their only child ultimately living across the country in Chicago, New York and now Washington, D.C. (not to mention the dozens of times they moved all her furniture, including some 10 heavy boxes of books he can’t understand why I refuse to donate to a library); we remain a family of competitors.

On Monday, a tweet from @ESPN_ProdGirl popped up in my feed suggesting that women share on the WNBA Facebook page the stories of how they bonded with their fathers through sports as part of their Dads & Daughters program. I knew instantly that I wanted to share my story because I wouldn’t be who I am if both of my parents hadn’t valued sports. What was more interesting when I reflected on it, though, was that even though my father is a football coach and I was primarily a volleyball player, it was basketball that really brought us closer together.

I’ve stood on the sideline on the football field next to my father in almost every game he’s ever coached, with exceptions in recent years when I lived far away from San Diego. He’s a mastermind, playing an elaborate game of chess in a battle of wit, designed not merely to win but to inspire the young men to always live with that energy and confidence they feel when the game is on the line in the fourth quarter. It’s not that they have shoulder pads to protect them from injury or fear, because that won’t always be the case in real life, when they’ll put their cleats in a closet and reflect on the values learned in their adolescence. Winning a football game is a lesson in recalculating in adverse conditions, merging instinct with emotion, exuding poise in situations that provoke anxiety, overcoming inequity in athleticism, skill and experience to be the one to make a game-changing play, and sharing the journey, including practice!, with your friends and mentors.

I carried all these lessons from my dad’s teams with me on the volleyball court, where surely my friends and coaches never quite knew what to do with my foaming-at-the-mouth, athletic zeal. They just made me team captain and clapped obligingly at my passionate time-out speeches, looking forward to celebrating our assured victory with a post-game Slurpee, since when a Carberry decides something is going to happen, nothing short of Brian Urlacher knocking us on our backs could stop us from doing it. Even then, we’d get back up and try again.

Still, for all the joy our family derived from great moments like when Monte Vista beat Reggie Bush’s then-Helix High School on the football field, or watching me realize my dream of suiting up in UCLA gear at the Wooden Center for practice with an elite Div. 1 team, I think the basketball memories are my favorite. My dad has inspired thousands of students over his 20+ year coaching history, but I liked it best when he was my coach.

I loved the glorious afternoons when we would shoot around in the front yard after school, and it was a particular point of pride that he made sure I didn’t “shoot like a girl.” Flex your wrist, point at the rim, follow through. Flick. I didn’t even notice that I was 5′2″ and had no business running in circles around the taller girls on the court. There was a solution for that, he said. “Keep the ball up here,” he’d say, holding it high up by his head. “If you put it down low a kindergartener could steal it.”

That was good advice in life, if turns out. That delightfully delusional quality propelled me to believe that I could compete with giants. I’ve always tried to stay above the less-than-heroic components of working in politics and media, an industry I entered having no connections or family experience beyond a dad who was a U.S. History teacher and liked to stay up late with me talking about how to change the world. We hold the ball up high because the nature of the game means that there are winners and losers, those who cheat and those who play by the rules, those who want it more than others, those who get so caught up in winning they forget to respect the process, and those who suffer real consequences based on the outcomes.

The other day I was giving a pep talk to my intern who just graduated from college, attempting to soothe his anxiety about how he’ll achieve the big things he wants to accomplish. I told him, “Look, at some point I realized that I could be whatever I wanted if I worked at it. If I wanted to switch gears now and be an astrophysicist, I’d dedicate myself to it entirely, overcome any obstacle and strive to be the best. You just have to begin somewhere, anywhere. In fact, I’ve learned over the course of my life that only thing I can’t do is dunk a basketball, and I live comfortably with that.”

Come to think of it, though, I could probably do it if I stood on my father’s shoulders.

Check it out here!

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The Embassy of Haiti is collecting relief items this SUNDAY 1/17, 11 - 4pm.

2311 Massachusetts Avenue, NW   20008

Phone: 202-332-4090

Baby formula (dry/powder)
Baby wipes
Baby bottles
Diapers
Baby clothes
Hand sanitizer
Vitamins
Toiletries (shampoo, soap, toothpaste)
First aid kits
Over the counter medicines
Socks
Blankets
Mosquito repellent
Flashlights
Batteries
Candles
Flip-flops
T-shirts, pants, lightweight jacket

Non-perishable food that’s not in cans (seal-packs of tuna or sardines, for example). There are dozens more items; this is just a starter list. Think flat, lightweight, easily packable.

It’s the first workday of the new decade. It’s a chance to reclaim what we lost, but more importantly, a chance to begin taking concrete steps toward the future we started to envision on the campaign trail a couple of years ago.

For the Millennial Generation, of which I am a proud member, the terror, disappointments, heroism and aspirations of the last decade contextualized the tumultuous socio-political climate that has the potential to define our future. As we came of age and consciousness, we observed bitter partisanship, fraudulent elections, timid leadership, convoluted priorities, bloodshed and intolerable inequities. However, we also saw the inklings of a renewed democracy, fueled primarily by Barack Obama’s strong leadership and a technological revolution that has redistributed power and provided us with opportunities to become a generation of entrepreneurs. Whether we succumb to pettiness and convention or set our own new standard of success is a choice that’s ours to make.

I think we should make that choice today, and refuse to be small-minded about it.

To that end, I’m starting “The 2020 Project” with my pals at Causecast.org, to ask my peers to thoroughly evaluate their perfect visions for the new decade. To get our brains warmed up and out of that post-Holiday lethargy, this week I’m beginning a series of conversations with the 25 most interesting Millennial leaders I know. For 10 minutes each, I will ask some of the most dynamic people in politics, media and technology to share with us how they’d like to see their industries, our generation and American society evolve over the next 10 years. The interviews will be available for iTunes download and published on Mondays and Thursdays. You can find them compiled on HuffPost Impact, on Causecast.org and here on MaeganCarberry.com.

I’ve been blessed over the last three years, as a web entrepreneur and blogger, to travel around the country and meet some of the most compelling members of the generation who are taking risks and leading by example. My friends and colleagues whom you are about to meet are Republicans, Democrats, business-owners, filmmakers, bloggers, new media strategists, activists, comedians, journalists, foodies, musicians, veterans, entertainers, and thought-leaders in all the things that they do. I have collected them meticulously for a number of reasons: their fierce patriotism, moral convictions, strong judgment, bold nature, unconventional thinking, raw talent, and – above all else – the ability to think beyond their own worldviews. I hope you will enjoy getting to know them as much as I have, and that they will inspire you to make your own contribution to our collective future.

Among the many inspiring things our president said in 2008, I was struck by two things in particular that I’ve decided to carry with me regardless of how I may feel about his various policies now that he’s in office. First, he said: “People don’t want to be against something, they want to be for something.” He also said, “We’re not going to settle for what the world is, we’re going to strive for what it might be.”

I truly believe that within our generation is the power to alter paradigms that have held us back. There’s no need to skulk under your covers this morning in fear of facing another workweek in another year that will pass us by. Today is our generation’s best day as Americans, because we don’t have to passively react to the rules established by our parents, teachers, bosses, mentors and elders. We have arrived, and we can decide in our decade what we’re for, and what the future might be.

As a new media robot who’s slowly starting to re-embrace real life, I found the incident to be somewhat crass, if still patriotic. Naturally, a subsequent conversation about the merits of the themes in “Back to the Future,” “Minority Report” and any flick starring Will Smith ensued with some of our other friends at the New Year’s Eve dinner party I hosted the next evening. As was often the case in 2009, my pals expressed a deep concern about our generation’s instantaneous culture and artificial intelligence (in every sense the term implies).

Since we are moving obscenely fast in our everyday lives, it was lovely to have the opportunity over the last 10 days to be a tourist in my new city who had also recently lost her camera and had (mostly) taken a hiatus from Twitter. Instead of documenting every moment, I lived it and processed it. The experience reminded me often of my first trip to the nation’s capital in 1998, as a student in the Presidential Classroom program.

When I was younger DC invoked a vigorous response in me, that lives now only in old journals and a 12-year-old photo of my PC classmates that my mother found in my moving boxes last month. Though I had no Facebook statuses then to characterize my experience, I can remember standing breathless before the steps of the Supreme Court, a body that would disgust me three years later when judges from both parties reversed decades worth of states vs. federal rights decisions for political purposes in Bush v. Gore. I remember crying at the Sewall Belmont house over the sacrifices of women for equality. I remember visiting the Capitol the night of Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address, having walked past the Watergate where Monica Lewinsky was holed up the day before. (Imagine how disastrous social media would have been in those days? #TigerWoods)

I’ve been here on numerous occasions since then on business, but haven’t really allowed the weight of the city’s history and its symbolic significance to sink in as I did these past two weeks. I worked tirelessly to elect Barack Obama, yet standing with my parents and Nate at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at sunset and reading The Gettysburg Address etched in stone was not only majestic; It overwhelmed me with the reminder that America is not operating in a “post-racial” era now, despite our progress. This thought was cemented at Arlington a few days later, while Nate and I read the map of Robert E. Lee’s house, which listed the “Slave Quarters/Book Store” as a stopping point of interest, as though it were Thunder Mountain at Disneyland. Likewise, I may have poured over news about Teddy Kennedy’s death, which upset Megan and I a great deal this fall, but that didn’t at all prepare me to stand in front of his understated grave beside his fallen brothers, where Nate and I could still make out the rectangle of freshly dug grass that had been unearthed to bury a force of nature.

Was I supposed to post these thoughts and emotions as they came to me? Something in me just couldn’t bare to Twitpic the Lion of the Senate at rest. It was the same feeling we had watching that 5th-grader-turned-citizen-journalist at the Constitution, which was only magnified throughout the Archives as we watched our nation’s records evolve over the centuries. From early TV footage of Roosevelt, to Fidel Castro’s childhood letter to the White House requesting a $10 bill he’d never seen from the President, to an exhibit of 80s computer wiring the length or the wall that Maury aptly pointed out had less power than the iPhone in his pocket.

The holiday, for me, was an important contextual experience as I begin a new decade in this city. My mission has always been to tell the story of my peers as we come to fruition, and while I’ve made it a point in my career to be cutting edge, I am starting to feel that a responsible oracle - whether she etches hieroglyphics or codes a gnarly Facebook app - can never err too far on the side of human frailty.

I’ve come a long way, through the elites of Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York to the power center of the country, to try to capture the citizenship, possibility and progress we have at our feet as Americans in a way that’s grounded in reality. I’ve wondered many times if it’s better to be an insider who breaks stories at fancy parties by cozying up to even further entrenched insiders, or on the ground in places like Iowa and Ohio where I’ve worked directly with the people whose lives are effected by the elections those elite prey on with cyclical precision. Industries exist around this, gregarious inspiring and nefarious leaders enable it, zealous citizens of every party organize around it, modern day Thomas Paines blog it, disenfranchised people live it.

Some days, during the grind, it becomes dangerously close to sport. It’s reality, and history breathes around us, with us. When I look back on 2010 as it ends, I hope I can say I carried with me throughout the year the sense of obligation I feel right now to use the true value of networks and innovation to connect us back to what really matters.

At some point a monument becomes an edifice next to Starbucks, but the idea it represents is ubiquitous.

I certainly couldn’t have predicted that the year would end like this, and that’s what excites me about 2010. The things we can’t anticipate are always the ones to revel in, and I suspect the new decade will bring with it many surprises that will delight and energize me. I hope the many chapters to come will continue to be enjoyed in good company, and so a few “thank yous” to the people who made this bursting-at-the-seams year the kind of story I always wanted to write:

To my dear friend and business partner, Romi Lassally, for loving me enough to let me go out into the world on my own.

To Eric Kuhn and Maury Postal, whose minds congeal with mine in the perfect unconventional delicacy, like an ice cream bento box at Nobu.

To Katy Tur and Katie Halper, who I met on the same cold January day over Cuban sandwiches and red wine, respectively. You became the best gal pals I needed to make New York a memorable experience.

To Ted Johnson, Teresa Valdez Klein and Blaise Nutter for a second amazing year of “Wilshire & Washington,” my favorite project.

To Rachel Goldstein and Michael Skolnik for building me a new family of visionaries, a group that serves as my compass in the ambitious journey of our generation.

To the brilliant, prolific and dashing Ari Melber, for setting the standard of punditry and pushing me to match it.

To Baratunde Thurston, for turning a tough year into a victory and reminding me that we can work through anything with the right attitude. You are the definition of poise under pressure.

To some of the amazing women I met on the professional event circuit: Megan Carpentier, Amanda Ernst, Deanna Zandt, Nichelle Stephens and Aly Campbell. Your work and ability to balance demanding lives is an inspiration.

To Jon Henke, David All, George Alafoginis, Lizzy Blackney, Patrick Ruffini and Kristen Soltis for opening my eyes to the robust nature of Republican principles and the possibilities of what that party can offer in the new decade.

To Cory Booker, the dynamic mayor of Newark, NJ, for sharing your powerful story. Sometimes when you’re giving a monologue in another random living room full of people you wonder who is listening. I heard you when you said, “do something.” Needed that.

To John Battelle, for taking my “What next?” phone call and giving good advice.

To Jeff Pulver, for the amazing Twitter conferences that gave me the chance to love all the nutty people I follow in 140 characters in real life as well.

To the Energy Action Coalition team of passionate activists where I’ve finally found a home and a cause worth fighting for: Pete, Whit, Lili, Anjali, Danny, Adam, Ethan and our fearless leader, Jessy.

To Katie Masterson, Aamer Madhani, Andrew Satter and Janet Rabin: I’m thrilled that we will get to resume our friendship in close proximity.

To Shannon Hawes, Jacqueline Bush and Rich Wisz for diving into the domestic adventure of a lifetime, and for staying friends and supporters no matter what happens.

To Amber and James Bracegirdle for being Scarlett O’Hara’s and my east coast family.

To my cousin Nora Fitzgerald, who suffered great losses and confronted life-changing fears. I am sad we were not able to spend as much time together this year, but my heart never leaves yours.

To Kate Hahn and Adam Davis, my spiritual heroes and the kindest people I know.

To Megan Rollins, who knows better than to have listened to me when I was 23 years old now that she is too.

To Sarah and Damon Carroll and Julie and Brent Price for making me overcome my fear of weddings. Yours weren’t half bad, and we can totally still hang out until you have kids.

To Gramma, for being resilient through adversity and looking life in the eye every day with a smile and a good book.

To Mom and Dad, who have always believed whole-heartedly that I can change the world, even before Barack Obama said it was cool.

We start with the health care debate, and how digital media has been driving a lot of this debate. Without the blogs, would the public option have lasted this long? Probably not. We tackle Obama’s First 100 Days™. Remember how CNN covered that “story” and then how they covered Obama’s first 200 days as well? They called it news; I call it basic arithmetic. Obviously these stories are moves for higher ratings (isn’t CNN behind the Fly Fishing Network at this point?) but did it work? Is it good for us?

We continue our beat-down of CNN with the coverage of the Iranian Election. Digital media was all over that story, yet CNN - which wants to be a “serious” news channel - defended its lack of coverage (remember #cnnfail?) As Stelter notes, cable news needs to be a live stream, and once Iran became a story, CNN should have followed. But isn’t it a little unfair to bash CNN? Our standards for them are so high (we don’t expect the same from MSNBC or Fox) but when CNN covers silly issues like Michael Jackson’s funeral so extensively, it just confuses us.

While digital has had its moments this year, Stelter believes the MSM is still driving the story most of the time, especially with topics like Afghanistan and Iraq, which - because of cost and safety - are impossible for bloggers to really cover. Then again, the major networks didn’t even have Kabul bureaus for years, even though we had a war going on in Afghanistan. Good job, guys. This begs the question: Should the MSM actually cover active US warzones? No? Err…

Finally, we discuss a couple of those nutty stories in the past year - balloon boy, the arrest of the Harvard Professor for being black and in his home, what kind of beer Obama is drinking… you know, real stories. With things like these dominating MSM coverage, don’t we need a filter for all these non-stories? (I’m told this filter is usually called “editors.” Never heard of ‘em.) And as we distribute, and redistribute, news and content, shouldn’t we ourselves take some responsibility and ask, “Is this news good for us?”

Listen to the show here.