Month: March 2009

The last time I successfully monetized this trivia bullshit was in the spring of 1990. We could have gotten medals for our third straight county championship, but instead they got us racks of ribs from Dreamland. And that was pretty much it for almost nineteen years.

Three weeks ago we stopped off at Trials for the pub quiz on the Presidents’ Day Monday. We were on the way back from San Juan Batista mission, it was on the way, Whitney was good enough to join us, they have 20 oz pints for $5, why not? And we did the quiz. Now, the wife insists that she had nothing to do with it, but I learned a long time ago that team is team and you don’t throw your crew under the bus unless they shoot you in the face or something similar, and she did come out again once (and would have probably let us win outright if she had been there tonight). Anyway, this is what the Ploughboy Bunnies were good for:

Week 1: won outright

Week 2: won outright

Week 3: tied for most points; lost on shady tiebreak of “number on team” (the other team dropped real quick from 2 to 1)

Week 4: tied for most points; won because the other team had 3 and I was on solo.

Four weeks. Most points every week. The last week, most points in any single tournament week, and I got that solo because the wife had her fluffy book club. Which means naturally that we won the overall title, by a whopping 9 points clear at the top of the table (and producing an audible gasp in the bar when the result was announced).

Total take for the double-fortnight: $120 worth of bar credit, which means that even if you count the cash paid in week 1, the whole expedition ended up paying for itself.

I think I’m going to sit it out for a while until they forget what I look like. Or until I’ve spent some more time at the gym. I am reminded of Ed Byrne’s answer to “You got a problem, mate?” “Yeah. You’re gonna kick the shit outta me.” At the very least, I’m going to come up with a better team name, and I’m scouring the Notre Dame Bookstore Basketball list of rejected names. Nevertheless, the fact remains: nineteen years on, I still got it, and I’ma keep it until they come take it away…or until I have to pawn it for beer money ;]

Congrats to Cornell for getting the first seat on the starship…64 to go.

Meanwhile, Vandy has rediscovered its defense. Don’t know how far we have to go this year – men and women alike – but we’re going to leave a trail of black and blue all the way there. =)

EDITED TO ADD: We OWN Auburn. Between the two basketball teams and the football, Vandy has met Auburn four times in athletic competition this academic year and has gone 4-0. The last win was women’s hoops, where two of Auburn’s three losses all year are to the Commodores. Instead of punching their ticket for a #1 seed, Auburn gets to watch Vandy win their second conference tournament crown in three years and sixth since 1993.

Play the Dores and you may get a W, you may get a L, but you will definitely get the S beat out of you.

In the back of The Return Of The King, Tolkien had a chronology of the Third Age. Most of it was demarcated by year, up until the events of the actual trilogy, when he began a much more specific enumeration of events, headed “THE GREAT YEARS.” For a big chunk of my life, this would have started in January of 1989, when first we won County and I started sending off applications for things like Governor’s School. But upon further review – and upon cutting up tracks for background music at my birthday party* – I think if you were going to do the breakdown, you have to start in 1988…

Continue reading “Flashback, part 6 of n”

I don’t know if Dave Keuning, Ronnie Vannucci Jr., Brandon Flowers, and Mark Stoermer realized that theywere writing another chapter in the soundtrack for my autobiography, but one song after another – “All These Things I’ve Done,” “Read My Mind,” “Why Do I Keep Counting” – well, it’s too much to be a coincidence now that the second single off Day and Age is out…

Continue reading “A Scalawag Looks At Thirty-Seven”