Day: October 1, 2004

All joking aside you K-State and Mizzou fans, my football memories from college (and after) aren’t nearly as strong as my basketball memories. That’s not just because I went to a basketball school, although that’s a big reason. With college football, you have 4-6 home games vs. 15 in basketball. You’re generally playing all cupcakes outside the conference schedule as opposed to Kentucky, UConn, Indiana, and UCLA. Road games are less likely to be on TV. Despite all that, I have plenty of memories of sitting nervously on a chair in my dorm room listening to Glen Mason’s troops blowing late leads in Ames, IA and Stillwater, OK. I’d be hard pressed to pick a favorite KU basketball moment from my days in Lawrence, but three moments quickly jump up for football:
The Tony Sands game, when Tony ran for 496 yards against MU in 1991.
The Oklahoma game in 1992. The Sooners went down followed by the goal posts.
The KU-K-State game in 1990. An absolutely perfect day for two programs on the rise to play for state supremacy. Nary a cloud in the sky, a totally packed stadium (Back then maybe 5,000 of the seats were filled with Purples, as opposed to the 25,000 that come to Lawrence now). KU rushed out to a big lead and held on to win by three points. There was a race for the Kansas governor seat that year, so before, during, and after the game planes flew overhead trailing banners for each candidate. People plastered buttons and stickers of their preferred candidate above the school letters on their shirts. It was the perfect fall college day in a small state where almost the entire population was focused on one stadium for four hours.

I reference all of that because tomorrow I’m headed to South Bend for the Purdue-Notre Dame game. The weather isn’t supposed to be as gorgeous as that day 14 years ago, but it should still be a classic upper Midwestern fall day. Two in-state rivals will meet in one of the biggest games of the weekend. Where KU and K-State were fighting for respect a decade ago, Purdue is trying to get a 30 year South Bend monkey off their backs and Notre Dame is trying to prove they’re still an elite program. There just happens to be a governor’s race in Indiana this year, so I expect to see plenty of Kernan and Daniels paraphernalia. Well, the Notre Dame fans will be more concerned with the Illinois senate race or whatever state they all fly in from for the weekend, but you get my point. I won’t have the emotional stake in the game I had in 1990 (I’m officially neutral. While I do enjoy watching Purdue play quite a lot, their colors are far too similar to Missouri’s for me to become a fan. And while I’ve long hated Notre Dame, as I learned last year, there’s something about being in South Bend, seeing Touchdown Jesus, and walking into the stadium that makes you want them to win.) but everything is setting up for it to be a magical day. I just need to make sure I don’t go out too fast tomorrow morning so I can remember everything and report back to you next week.

By the way, although I still hold firmly to my belief that KU will never beat Nebraska in football in my lifetime, could tomorrow be the day it happens? After all, the football gods could ensure that result to punish me for going to a different game rather than ordering the pay-per-view of my game. Nah, it’s still Kansas vs. Nebraska. Won’t happen.

I’ve got a few short posts lined up for this afternoon. Hopefully I can get everything cranked out around nap times. First off, I’ve been watching a lot of VH1 Classic this week. It’s always fun to see the video for a song you liked 20 years ago but now realize is total crap. Even better is when the video is God-awful. Two examples:
Glenn Frey – “You Belong To The City”. Remember this one? It was the featured song in the first episode of season two of Miami Vice. I really thought the song was the shit, and it was a big reason why I listened to my Miami Vice soundtrack tape every afternoon when I got home from school in the fall of 1985. I had my white, unstructured blazer, a pastel shirt, and some faux linen pants to wear to adult gatherings. Fortunately I realized that wasn’t the kind of thing you wear to school in Raytown, MO. Perhaps I should have, though. I might have gotten my ass kicked, but people would still be talking about it! Anyway, getting back to the video, it’s really, really bad. It pretty much consists of Glenn Frey walking around New York at night, smoking. No less than eight cigarettes are lit, handled, or smoked during the four plus minutes of the song. Throughout the city, he just happens to pass TVs on which we can see Crockett and Tubbs from Miami doing their thing. At one point, a taxi nearly hits Frey, who was crossing with the light. He tosses a few choice words at the cabbie, then his cigarette to complete his point. As he prepares to walk away, he notices an attractive lady in the cab. Later on his endless trek through the city, he spies said woman in a club. He enters, takes a seat across the bar from her, and orders a drink. Behind him is a TV with, you guessed it, Miami Vice showing. Talk about product placement! Strange Man #1 approaches Attractive Woman and attempts to light her cigarette. She rejects him, and they argue. Clearly there is a history here. Mr. Frey takes this all in, finishes his drink, and exits to hail a cab. A hand settles on his shoulder; it’s Attractive Woman! They get in a cab together. As the song ends, he exits what we must assume is her apartment building. It was quite a night for Glenn! I’m not really sure what the point of the video was, other than smoking a lot and stopping for a drink will get you laid by an attractive person you don’t know. Oh, and Miami Vice was cool in 1985.
Quarterflash – Harden My Heart. Remember these guys? Soulful pop music that almost always had the word heart in the song titles. And the lead singer played saxophone. This could be the single worst video in the history of bad videos. The lead singer continually runs through a long, dark hallway. Bare lights hang from the ceiling, various painted doors are on each side. She’s wearing a black leotard and black tights. She should not be wearing such tight clothing. From time to time, she is replaced by a child that looks like her, singing her lines. Eventually, she sits on top of some kind of gravel pile with three youngsters that look like her, all singing. Well, one of the kids is singing with her, the other two are only singing every few lines. I guess a couple more takes or more time rehearsing the lines wasn’t in the budget. During the chorus, the entire band stands in a semi-circle in a darkened warehouse. The floor has been flooded with a couple inches of water, and the band is surrounded by men on motorcycles wearing helmets with visors and tuxedoes. After a few moments of remaining stationary, the motorcyclists start driving in slow patterns around the band. At the end of the song, the lead singer escapes from the long hallway into the aforementioned gravel pit. A bulldozer runs into the “hallway”, which was just a particle board chute, and destroys it as in a KC Bobcat commercial. That’s pretty much what happens, I tried several times to think of better ways of describing it and came up with nothing. It’s totally bizarre, lacks any details to help explain what’s going on, and as far as I can tell, has nothing to do with the song. Early 80s videos were full of absurd situations, but most of those were at least funny or artistic. This was probably the strangest and dumbest video I’ve ever seen. And the song sucked too.
Be watching this space for more critiques of bad 80s videos.