…yes, the SEC was godawful this year. But consider that by January 1, the seniors on Tennessee, Kentucky and Vanderbilt – three teams used to playing into March – had combined to score a total of three points. This was an abnormally young league this year (example: fully half of Vanderbilt’s man-minutes this year were played by six different freshmen). That kind of youth means crazy inconsistency, and crazy inconsistency keeps you at home in front of the HDTV at tournament time.
However, much like the miracle 7-6 football team (returning 21 of 24 starters), this Vanderbilt team had no seniors – every single player is back including some who spent the whole year injured on the bench. I fully expect the SEC to pull six or seven bids in the 2011 tournament.
And while I have absolutely no problem with the Big Beast and the ACC getting 7 each, I think the Big Ten getting 7 and the Pac-10 getting 6 is a bit of a reach. I’m going to have to see some serious ass-kicking out there if we’re going to justify the likes of Wisconsin and Arizona getting seats on the starship at the expense of a St. Mary’s, for instance (ask Dick Vitale about that one and then plug your ears).
Let’s see: laptop charged, iPhone charged, Wi-Fi streaming video March Madness app installed ($4.99 at the iTunes App Store), and all onsite tickets closed in advance of tomorrow…maybe I can actually get away with going in to work and still not miss much…
Contractual obligations, my balls. So when the auto companies need $25 billion, that’s unacceptable because they won’t throw their unionized workers under the bus, but when AIG needs $170 billion, they MUST pay out huge bonuses to the very people who ran the company in the ground because of “contractual obligations?”
Burn it down. Let it die. That $170B will cover unemployment benefits for the innocents caught in the crossfire and the actual insurance part of the business can be spun off and sold to Lloyds or Swiss Re or the Willis Group or something, and just to cap it off, we’ll change the logo on Man U’s shirt from “AIG” to “I’M A PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS.”
There exists in this country and in this economy a class of scum, of unbearable douchebags who view the Whiffle Life as their divine right, who are so convinced of themselves as the engine of civilization that they threaten to drop out and bring us all to our knees for want of their unique gifts. They are full of shit. Their bluster is to cover their panic, because they realize two things: one, they are helpless without the indulgence of their “inferiors,” and two, in the words of Chris Rock, “ain’t NOBODY above an ass-whuppin’.”
The mighty Randian masters of the universe are dangling by the cliff from their fingertips. It is our duty as a society, as a civilization, as decent human beings, to tie on the steel-toed boots and stomp. Hard.
* This is the most wonderful time of the year. If you disagree, you are entitled to your opinion, but you are factually wrong.
* Back in the day, 19 wins and a .500 record in the SEC would almost be enough to get you into the Big Dance, but times have changed, and Vandy’s not going to pull any Cinderella shit this year. That said, to get that record with no seniors and getting major minutes from a lot of frosh is not a bad outcome. That said, I think this is the first year of blogging that I haven’t had a MEMORIAL MAGIC SIGHTING #n post anytime during the season, and I don’t think the ‘Dores really had a signature victory this season – the closest thing would be the road win at LSU and keeping the home victory streak against Kentucky. Make no mistake, it was a down year for the ‘Dores – but if this is a down year, the program is already at a higher level than it was when Kevin Stallings took over ten years ago.
* Think of what the Vanderbilt Class of ’09 has seen: a football win over UT at Knovxille, a run to the Sweet Sixteen and two home wins over the #1 team in the country,the baseball team spending almost an entire regular season ranked #1 in the nation, having both men’s and women’s basketball and baseball AND FOOTBALL all ranked in the top 25 in the same calendar year, ESPN College Gameday on campus, a WINNING SEASON in football, complete with a BOWL GAME WIN, a world of VU hand signs and charging out of the tunnel and “Who Ya Wit?” and one Thursday night win after another and “CONQUER! AND! PREVAIL!” and don’t look now, but Vanderbilt has finally established a baseline that you can be a top-25 school academically and athletically at the same time. Look out, Duke and Northwesten and Cal and Stanford and Virginia…the ‘Dores are on the way.
* Why is it that people who are wrong, over and over, who have absolutely nothing useful to contribute and do nothing more useful than they neighbor’s dog that won’t shut up – why does anyone take these people seriously? Why do people even acknowledge that this horseshit belongs in our discourse? I mean, to pull out the Slashdot line, you don’t blame a dog for doing what’s in its nature and humping your leg, but when he doesn’t stop, after a while, you cut his balls off.
* Every time I see Digger Phelps now, I just laugh my ass off thinking of him dancing with the Cal cheerleaders in a timeout. Don’t believe me? See for yourself:
* I am sorry to see the American version of Life On Mars go. Sure, it’s not a patch on the original, but for some reason I have always had an odd attraction to New York City in the early 1970s, after the age of the Dodgers and Guys and Dolls and the largest-city-in-the-world days but before the blackout and the Bronx Zoo and “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Basically that last transitional moment hanging over the precipice. And I think they’ve captured a lot of that, with Harvey Keitel as a much more understated Gene Hunt and Michael Imperioli almost stealing the whole damn show with a FAR more complex and interesting Ray Carling than has ever been offered in the UK shows. I think once you just accept that it’s never going to hold a candle to the original and look at it on its own, they did a fine job and deserve the opportunity to wrap up their story in a neat little package (and it looks like they will at least get that much).
* Can’t wait for the tournament. Gus Johnson could do commentary on a turtle trying to screw a doorknob and make it sound like the Miracle On Ice. He has officially become this generation’s guarantee to peg the needle on the Fun-O-Meter.
* My Buddy Vince Sez nothing. I blame him for buying a 40 of Miller for my birthday (and paying a college student to get it for him, in keeping with the high-school theme, only to go back in himself and demand a brown paper bag for it) and getting me all banged up. Besides, he should be focusing on beating “Looks like Heaven’s easier to get into than” Arizona State today.
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…
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…
Look, I know he’s a bit of a wackadoo*, but I’ve got a soft spot for Bobby Jindal. I mean, the guy was a Rhodes Scholar, he’s not an idiot by any stretch. But he aspires to be a player in the GOP, and that means he has to get up there and do the same shtick as every other aspiring GOP national figure since the rise of the crackers in the early 1990s. One wag suggested that Jindal only got the gig because he’s the only Republican who can sound like one of Boss Hogg’s constituents without looking like one. I wouldn’t go that far, but I will say this: forcing your rising star to sing off the same song sheet as everyone else is cataclysmically stupid. Like drafting Magic Johnson and then making him take two-handed set shots from fifteen feet every time down the court.
The big names in modern politics get to be big names because they change the game. Bobby Jindal has the talent to change the game, but not if he has to run the same offense as Newt Gingrich in 1993. You’re going to see a lot of commentary, and from conservatives, griping that Bobby Jindal had a golden opportunity presented to him and that he shit the bed. But I don’t think it’s all his fault – not as long as he’s being made to chase a jet with a biplane.
* Okay, maybe ‘wackadoo’ is a bit strong. He’s a Hindu-heritage convert to Catholicism who participated in an exorcism. I’m a Zen Baptist with alternating flashes of Catholicism and atheism who believes that how I smoke my pipe or order my drinks has a direct and immediate influence on what Vanderbilt does against Kentucky. Let he among you who is without metaphysical idiosyncrasy cast the first stone…
It probably shouldn’t make me this happy to win the Trials pub quiz for the second straight week. It definitely shouldn’t make me this happy to have the quizmaster ask who else is on my team, tell him ‘nobody’, and hear him announce “this one guy kicked all your asses!”
But winning $60 and counting worth of pub credit? Why the hell did it take me 37 years to monetize my heretofore worthless trivia skills?
