Month: March 2011 (Page 1 of 2)

Baseball Season

March 31, 2011 / DB

Opening Day, bitches! In general, I’m against beginning the season on a Thursday. Opening Day should be on a Monday, preferably the Monday of the NCAA title game. But, needing something to take my mind off of basketball, I’m granting MLB a waiver this year. I can’t wait to fire up MLB.tv in a few hours and start watching some games. Of course it snowed here almost all day Wednesday, so odds are most of the early, East Coast games will either be played in shitty weather or not played at all.

It was an odd spring for Royals fans. Once again, it was a spring that held little promise of regular season success. In fact, this year’s edition of the Royals could be one of the worst squads they’ve ever run onto the field. And that’s saying something! But there was also the promise of the future, with the young studs getting another step closer to rescuing the big league club.

Although it was unrealistic to think that more than a pitcher or two from that crop of prospects would make the Opening Day roster, fans still carefully monitored the developments in Arizona. As excited we are about the future, there is a sense that the team could still screw this up. They could bring some of the kids up too quickly and ruin them before they have a chance. They could let them languish too long in the minors, killing their enthusiasm and spirit. They could mishandle the pitchers’ workloads. They could fail to identify issues in players’ makeups that could keep them from adjusting when they reach Kansas City (Hello, Alex Gordon!).

So as the raves about the prospects spilled out of the Twitter accounts of both Royals experts and impartial observers, it was hard to stay realistic about where the young guys should begin the season. When one prominent baseball scout spent an entire afternoon raving about how hard Eric Hosmer hit the ball, my expectations officially got destroyed. No longer was I content with the Royals making sure they were sure about Hosmer, Moustakas, etc. There was the temptation to go ahead and bring them up now. If a scout says Hosmer is a better player than anyone in the big league roster, why force him to start another year in the minors? It was going to be a shitty year anyway, why not get them up now and kickstart the final stage of the rebuilding process?

Fortunately that feeling passed and the Royals ignored any temptations to jump any of the prospects up too quickly.¹ But a lot of fans will be paying more attention to the boxscores from Omaha and Northwest Arkansas that what the big league Royals do this year. And if Moustakas and Hosmer continue to rake, there will be a lot of howling if they aren’t in Kansas City sooner rather than later.

It’s been a long two decades. Forgive Royals fans for being tired of waiting.

And now, some half-assed, mostly wrong predictions for the coming season.

As for the Royals, most think this is a 100-loss team. While I don’t think they will be nearly as good at the plate, this team does remind me a bit of the 1999-2001 teams that could hit but not get anyone out. I think the offense will be halfway decent. I wish I had the same hopes for the starting pitchers. 67-95 feel right.

American League

East: Boston. I kind of feel like this is a sucker bet. As though, despite their excellent off-season acquisitions, they still have too many questions in their rotation, too many fragile players across their lineup, and too much pressure to pull it off. But the Yankees are older, more fragile, and have more questions in their rotation. And it feels like this is a regression year for the Rays.

Central: Detroit. I’ve changed this one three times. I’m counting on Miguel Cabrera getting his shit together and someone behind their big two starters contributing.

West: Texas. Man, outside the East, these divisions suck. I don’t expect the Rangers to be as good as they were last year. I think they’re still good enough to win their division.

Wild Card: Yankees. I’d rather it was the Rays or A’s or Twins. But a bazillion dollar payroll probably means they squeak out another postseason appearance.

National League

East: Philadelphia. I know there are some people out there picking the Braves. And I don’t think that’s a ridiculous pick given the injury problems and age the Phillies are carrying. But I have to go with this pitching staff.

Central: Cincinnati. I don’t think last year was a fluke.

West: Colorado. I want to pick the Dodgers, why I don’t know. But the way this division works, whoever is 12 games out in June will get hot and win it.

Wild Card: Milwaukee. I have to go out on a limb somewhere. Their pitching gets them a narrow nod over the Braves.

Playoffs

Red Sox over Rangers

Tigers over Yankees

Red Sox over Tigers

Phillies over Milwaukee

Rockies over Reds

Phillies over Rockies

World Series

Players on both teams may drop dead during this series, between the strain of a long season, the extra stress of the postseason, and the fact about half of each roster is on the wrong side of 35. Ryan Howard begins the series 0-27, but in the top of the ninth of game seven, his check-swing blooper brings in the winning run after Jonathan Papelbon blows a two-run lead. The Red Sox load the bases with no outs in the bottom of the ninth, but Jason “The Captain” Varitek grounds into a 1-2-3-2 triple play, with Carl Crawford nailed at the plate to end the game.

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Well, other than Aaron Crow who, despite his big struggles starting in AA last year, apparently deserves a spot in the Royals’ Opening Day bullpen. ↩

Old Songs Made New

March 29, 2011 / DB

This week Pearl Jam reissued their second and third albums, Vs. and Vitalogy. I’ve listened to both online, and neither is as interesting or exciting as last year’s reissue of Ten, their debut album. Ten was recorded and produced in a manner that did not fit with how the band’s sound evolved. While remixing and rereleasing it was probably self-indulgent, the result was surprisingly great. In fact, I now only have the remixed songs from Ten on my hard drive, the originals banished to the CD box in the basement.

The recording quality of the next two albums was fine from the beginning. The updated versions, which have only been cleaned up a bit rather than run through a total remix process, sound pretty much the same. Thus these are only purchases for real collectors who will spring for the Super DeLuxe version, or for those who long ago lost their original CDs and want to replace them.

The Onion AV Club’s excellent Steven Hyden uses the latest reissues as a chance to reexamine PJ circa 93-94, the moment the band chose their path and turned into the band they wanted to be instead of the band others wanted them to be. I’ve always been and always will be a fan, but I admit there are times I wonder how things would have turned out if they had made even a few small compromises. They probably wouldn’t be a band anymore, we may have lost someone along the way, but perhaps they would have had one more classic album in them.

It was only after Pearl Jam became massively successful that it had the chance to spend years on the road and gel into a unit. Then it figured out what it was: A band with a Fugazi mind trapped in an Aerosmith body.

Pisser

March 28, 2011 / DB

Well, that certainly sucked. I should have done what I threatened to do midway through the first half: turn off the TV, get in the car, and drive until the game was over. It worked against Davidson three years ago. Perhaps it would have worked yesterday.

Instead, I just turned the volume down when the second half began, pulled out the MacBook Air, and dove into some media file organization projects I had been putting off for awhile. I looked up at the TV from time-to-time, but didn’t get terribly excited when KU cut it to two. That game was over the moment that VCU kid drilled the three that put them up 18 in the first half. Too many things would have to turn around completely for KU to come back and win. They got a few of them to turn for about ten minutes, but the shots still weren’t dropping, the offense was still too rushed, too many missed free throws, not enough stops on defense, and too many close calls going the other way. KU could have won the game if four or even three of those changed, but when all five stayed the same, there was no hope.

And thus ends another season of KU basketball. I’m working through the normal grieving process. Actually, I think the grieving process for sports is much different than the standard grieving process. I keep cycling through anger, disbelief, and apathy. At some point I’ll look back on a team that won 35 games, conference and conference tournament championships, and made the Elite 8 and realize it was a fantastic year that all but a handful of schools would take in a minute.

But I’m not there yet.

There have been two fantastic coaching jobs in this year’s tournament which deserve praise.

Brad Stevens got a Butler team that isn’t nearly as good as last year’s back to the Final Four. He’s done it through his mental preparation of the Bulldogs and fantastic in-game adjustments. It’s interesting that he told Billy Donovan that Donovan out-coached him. I’m not sure what he meant by that, perhaps it was a polite way of saying “Your coaching blunders helped me win.” That game was over and all Florida had to do was keep throwing the ball inside on every possession. Instead they abandoned their big men and tried to match Butler from the outside. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

And now Butler is not only in the Final Four, but playing a #11 seed for a second-straight championship game appearance. When you look back on the history of the Final Four, there are times when smaller schools have appeared in multiple Final Fours. Often it was because they lucked into some seven-footer or NBA talent who blossomed late and powered their run. Butler had Gordon Hayward last year, and despite being a first round draft, I don’t think he qualifies as a big difference maker. Besides, he didn’t have a great tournament last year. It’s been entirely a team effort effort for Butler these two years, and Stevens deserves the bulk of the credit.

The other, of course, is VCU’s Shaka Smart. He took a team that was ridiculed on national TV when the brackets came out, focused them, relaxed them, and now has them in the Final Four. He’s managed the tricky balance between intense effort and playing loose beautifully. They now have five wins over teams from power conferences. They hammered Georgetown and Purdue. They hammered KU in the first half, survived the comeback, and closed out the game comfortably. They’ve done it all on the back of unconscious outside shooting, something that is tough to sustain over a tournament run. Whether it was “Us against the World” or “We’re playing with house money” or some other motivational technique, Shaka has pushed the right button for the past two weeks.

I would expect both Stevens and Smart can name their price when it comes time to talk contract, either with their current school or another that offers them a job.

Bond

March 28, 2011 / DB

There are times in every man’s life when he must undertake a specific challenge: watch all the Bond movies. Some men are even more ambitious, endeavoring to read all the Bond novels as well.

Friends, it is time for me to climb this mountain.

This is not my first attempt at Mt. Bond. I believe it was the summer of 1986, the summer in which I turned 15 and still relied on my parents for transportation, that I acquired a stack of Bond books at a used bookstore and spent hours on our deck reading them in the Midwestern heat and humidity. The movies were tougher to catch back then, but I would scan the TV section of the paper each Sunday to see if ABC or TBS would be showing any over the coming week.

But, like most summer plans, this one fell apart in the dog days of August and when school began in the fall, i was off to other things.

A couple years later, when we had more movie channels and you could expect to grab a few Bonds movies a month with your VCR, I built a small stack of VHS tapes with several of the movies. But, again, it was not a project I could complete.

In time, my interest in Bond waned. I caught a couple of the new movies in theaters, but when I ran across the old ones on cable, I would watch for a minute or two, chuckle at their primitiveness, and move on.

Still, it was like a childhood scar that sometimes itched, and when I scratched it the memories of those past immersions poured forth.

What caused this latest flareup of the old itch? Partially it was completing >The Wire and wanting to move on to another viewing project. Also, the hosts of a technology podcast I listen to have been watching and reviewing a Bond movie each week. Listening to them discuss the details of the classic early films set me on my path.

The big dilemma, as I began, was how to handle the books/films split. The movies were not produced in the same order as Ian Fleming’s novels. Should I read the novels in order, to get the proper exposure to Bond’s backstory? Or should I read them in concert with the films? I chose the latter path, mostly because it seems like if you’re going to undertake a Bond project, you really need to begin with “Dr. No” and not “Casino Royale” since it was the movies that made Bond a world phenomenon.

That long-winded intro leads us to what I did last week: read “Dr. No” Monday through Wednesday, then watched the movie Wednesday night.

I thoroughly enjoyed both. I’ve read the book before, and who knows how many times I’ve seen the movie, so everything was familiar. Yet there were enough details that had faded over time that it was still enjoyable to rediscover them.

I won’t write detailed reviews of the series as I go through it, but I do want to offer a few observations of each movie and each Bond girl.¹

When you watch the oldest of the Bond movies, the production value is easy to laugh at. The sets look cheap and basic. The car chases cheesy, with the projection of the trailing vehicle on a screen behind an image of Bond filmed in a studio. The overdubbed voices of many characters. Night scenes clearly shot during the day with heavy filters over the camera lens.

The sexism and racism I write off to very different times. These movies were never trying to make social statements, but rather reflective of how much of the world operated at the time. Thank goodness we have evolved a little since then.

That said, few things in movie history have been cooler than Sean Connery as Agent 007, of course. He was a baaaaaaad man. The cinema Bond was a far more confident man than the one of the books. In the novels, there are always moments of self-doubt, when Bond questions whether he’s made the right choice and if he can extricate himself from his predicament. Not of that doubt is present in the movies.

As for the Bond girls, Ursula Andress, as Honey Ryder, emerging from the sea is the enduring image of the movie and perhaps the most iconic image of the series. She was a baaaaaaaad woman, setting a difficult bar for later Bond girls to reach. Somewhat lost in Andress’ glow are two other impressive Bond women. Zena Marshall plays the exotic Miss Taro. And Eunice Gayson plays the glamorous and aggressive Sylvia Trench, who after battling Bond at the baccarat table, seeks more games. We’ll hear from her again. A promising start for horndogs everywhere.

Dr. No is a fine kickoff for the Bond franchise. The story lags a bit at points, and there is some era-based silliness in the writing and production. But all-in-all, it’s an entertaining flick.

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Seems kind of silly to do this and not give the Bond girls their due respect, no? ↩

How To Fix The Tournament

March 24, 2011 / DB

If you watched any of ESPN’s coverage the night the NCAA tournament pairings were announced, you know that Jay Bilas laid into the selection committee and some of their decisions. It was great TV as few analysts, no matter what issues they had with the teams that made and did not make the tournament, have attacked the committee so directly. Nearly two weeks later, some of his criticisms seem silly, especially with VCU winning three games and still being alive. But in other areas, he was right on target.

He posted some thoughts on how to improve the selection process on ESPN.com. You must have an ESPN Insider account to read the entire article, but one point that was especially interesting was moving the selection of tournament teams up a week.

He wrote:

We need to move Selection Sunday up one week to the Sunday before Championship Week begins. By doing that, we would make selection about the regular season and not about performance over one weekend in a conference tournament.
Right now, conference tournament play is skewed to the majors and hurts the mid-majors. Missouri State could not help its at-large bid profile in the Missouri Valley tournament, but Penn State could really help itself in the Big Ten tournament with a few big wins over top RPI teams.
Move Selection Sunday, select the best teams and rank them on the S-Curve, and then the automatic qualifiers would knock out the lowest-ranked teams on the curve, one by one. It would be tremendous, and we would have more interest and more weight on the regular season.

Hmmm, interesting. One of my big problems with how the tournament is selected is the weight that conference tournament performance gets. It’s less an issue than it used to be, when neither the Big 10 nor Pac 10 had tournaments, but I still think the tournaments count for too much.

His idea is both reasonable and fun. I love the idea of having teams at the bottom of the list being knocked out by others that earn their way in. Crappy State Tech could be the #65 team in the field and spend the week sweating whether four teams outside the tournament would win their tournament and knock them out. It would be terrific drama to have them play their conference championship game on Friday night, knowing there were three teams still could still knock them out on Saturday or Sunday if they didn’t win.

But there are still problems. This only addresses who is in and who is out. Can teams that are safely in the tournament change their status? What if the highest #4 seed in the initial rankings won three games over the weekend while the lowest #3 seed lost the opening round game of their conference tournament? Are you locking everything in and only knocking out the lowest teams, or will the seeding still be fluid?

Some might argue that this would cause teams safely in the NCAA tournament to half-ass it during their conference tournaments to avoid injury, gain a few extra days’ rest, etc. I don’t think that would happen any more than it does now. Some of the best games in the big conference tournaments are between teams that are safely in the tournament and reasonably sure of their seed. That one last chance for bragging rights can often bring out the best in teams, before the extra pressures of the NCAA tournament weigh them down.¹

Bilas also suggests that we need a better measure than the RPI, a subject I wrote about a week ago, need to add more “basketball people” to the committee, and have more transparency about the selection process, including in-season updates of where every team is. All fine suggestions.

It will always be an imperfect system. With the age of the megaconferences dawning, it’s a perfect time to revisit how teams for the NCAA tournament are selected and seeded. The answer is more complex than just letting another 30 teams in.

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The most obvious example, at least to me, have been recent Big 12 tournament title games between KU and Texas and KU and K-State. They were all great games, but did little to affect the seed each team earned the following week. ↩

Lendle And Amazon

March 23, 2011 / DB

I had a nice long rant half-drafted, and then it got shot down.

Tuesday, Amazon removed API access for Lendle and several other Kindle book lending services. That killed these services as they rely on access to Amazon databases to facilitate sharing amongst users. Amazon said they removed access because the services did not aid Amazon in its primary mission: to sell things.

Fair enough. Amazon is a business and certainly has the right to deny access to their content to those they feel cut into their sales.

At the same time, though, when Amazon announced Kindle book lending in January, they touted it as a terrific benefit for Kindle owners, something that set the Kindle apart from the iPad and iBooks. Tuesday’s decision seemed petty and short-sighted. Frankly, it made me reconsider whether I wanted to continue as a Kindle owner or sell it and go back to checking out 40+ books from the library each year and buying only 5-10.

Fortunately, last night Amazon modified their stance, said only the syncing feature of Lendle, which allows users to upload their entire Kindle book list from Amazon, was problematic, and turned Lendle’s API access back on after the sync function was removed.

Lendle is using this as an opportunity to create a service that does not require access to Amazon’s database to operate. That’s smart. Rumor has it that people within Amazon are fans of the service and see it as a benefit to their company. In order to borrow on Lendle, you have to lend. The more you lend, the more requests for books you earn. You can’t just sign up and freeload. But companies like Amazon (and Apple) can be quick to defend their business, changing course when they feel threatened. Moving to a system that is independent of Amazon is the right way to grow Lendle. It makes users happy and should make Amazon happy.

After a brief moment of panic and disappointment, Lendle is up and running again. And owning a Kindle has gained another terrific bonus.

❖

52 Down

March 21, 2011 / DB

16 to go.

Some first weekend of the tournament. Or week, I guess, with the new First Four games. The NCAA thinks it’s being sneaky, but it’s pretty obvious that we’ll have another tournament expansion sooner rather than later. It’s just a matter of logistics, mostly securing sites for an additional weekend of games. But it’s happening. Two years from now, I bet. I’m really going out on a limb there, aren’t I?

I’ve always said the week between the round of 32 and Sweet 16 is the best of the tournament, if your school advances. So obviously I’m happy with how things have gone thus far. That’s all I’m saying for now.

For the most part, the expansion of the TV component of the tournament has been great. Switching among four games at a time was fabulous Thursday and Friday. And it gave America what we wanted: a chance to watch both North Carolina and Duke without any other games being on at the same time to ruin the experience. Sure, Notre Dame-Florida State didn’t tip off until nearly 10:00 pm Eastern time, but that’s a small price to pay for not being bothered with regional blackouts or highlights while the Carolina schools were playing, right?

There were two big downsides to having games on networks other than CBS, though. First was the unfamiliarity with the teams by many of the TBS/TNT announcers. Marv Albert and Steve Kerr had the Tulsa games, and they spent Friday and Sunday spouting the same PR notes over and over. Marv, who is a broadcast legend, seemed only passingly aware of who some of the players were. And how many times did he say “The Marcus twins, Markieff and…..er…..Marcus…”? I know they can be tough to distinguish if you haven’t watched a ton of KU games, but come on!

The worst thing, though, was the production quality. It was clearly the same production teams that handle the NBA on TNT. We were “treated” to lengthy views from cameras deep in the corners of the arena (something ESPN is guilty of, too), above the backboard, or from the opposite end of the court and floor level. It’s one thing to give you a view from a different perspective for five, ten seconds as a possession begins. But showing entire, 35 second possessions from an angle that gives you no idea what is going on is horrible. Between that and the 17 minute commercial breaks mandated by the NCAA, it sometimes feels like the networks hate the fans.

Biggest story of the first weekend was not the large number of upsets, which really wasn’t all that surprising when we knew after the top 5-7 teams everyone was pretty much equal. It was the Butler-Pittsburgh game. Specifically the two late fouls, which took some of the luster off what was a fantastic game. I’ve always been a “If it’s a foul in the first minute of the game, it’s a foul in the last minute of the game” guy. Sure, you let the players play, but you don’t swallow the whistle when there is a foul just because time is running out.

The two fouls called in the closing seconds of the Butler game were a little weak, but when you saw the replays, you say that either one was not a foul. Shelvin Mack fouled Gilbert Brown. Matt Howard was clearly grabbed across the arm when he caught the missed free throw. Both fouls. Both correct calls. Nothing controversial about either one, unless you think referees should only call obvious fouls in the final seconds.

Big time credit to Jamie Dixon and all the Pittsburgh players for handling the loss with class and respect and not railing against the referees. Pittsburgh has had a very difficult time in the tournament over the last decade, and it would have been easy to lash out.

Another game I wanted to highlight is the Kansas State-Wisconsin game. Jacob Pullen was fantastic. It’s fun to listen to how different KU fans react to him. Some hate him because he used to run his mouth a little and was a one-dimensional player, asked just to shoot when he was surrounded by a better supporting cast. I don’t fall into that camp. I’ve watched him grow up and develop into a fantastic, well-rounded player. In fact, it was tough to watch him Saturday and not think that’s what Sherron Collins should have been doing last year, had he been able to keep his weight down.

Pullen competes his ass off every minute he’s on the court, which no matter what uniform he wears, I admire. In some ways, he reminds me of Clarence Gilbert, another player who, when he arrived at Missouri, ran his mouth a little and was one-dimensional. But over time, I came to respect Clarence’s game. Especially when he was a senior and forced to run the point, a position he was ill-suited for at the D1 level. But he would put his head down and work as hard as he could to get his team into their offense. And no matter the score, Clarence was always working. He never had the kind of relationship with the KU players that Pullen seems to have, which certainly doesn’t hurt how I view Pullen. And I think Pullen is a much better player than Gilbert was. But my evolution in feeling towards them is similar.

Does any team fit the stereotype of their program better than Wisconsin? Bunch of lanky, floppy haired white dudes; heady, old-man game having black dudes; jump shooting; tough defending; nothing pretty about them. Not sure how they won that game.

Washington has no one to blame but themselves for their loss to North Carolina. Absolutely killed themselves with unforced turnovers and poor shot selection in the last five minutes of their game.

Shocked by the scores from Chicago last night. That Super Moon must have somehow been amplified at the United Center.

I missed the end of the Texas-Arizona game, but that was a crazy ending as well. I think Arizona is on their way back as one of the game’s elite programs. I doubt Derrick Williams will be back, but Sean Miller has been cleaning up in recruiting. I remember scratching my head when they hired him, since he seemed like a solid east coast guy. But it was an inspired decision and looks like the absolutely correct one.

I have a friend who went to Duke. We haven’t spoke in 3-4 years because of distance, kids, schedules, etc. Suddenly hear from him after Kyrie Irving played on Friday, telling me everyone is just playing for second place. There’s a typical Dukie for you!

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Friday Notes

March 18, 2011 / DB

I’ve been stuck on a couple longer pieces all week. So to make up for that, a few smaller ideas crammed into one post.

The new NCAA tournament broadcasting agreement is spectacular! Four channels with simultaneous games is about the coolest thing ever. We spent most of Thursday outside, enjoying the perfect weather, so I read e-mails and Tweets and blog posts carrying on about the viewing options jealously. Finally, after the girls collapsed into bed, I was able to watch. Naturally, the early evening games weren’t nearly as good as the afternoon games, but it was still like living in the future to be able to switch games at will.

I’d love to say I picked a few of yesterday’s upsets, but since I didn’t do a bracket, I can’t claim that. I would have picked Butler, which wasn’t really an upset as much as people were picking against them. I would have given Richmond a long, hard look. No way would I have thought to pick Morehead State. Shocked Princeton was in the game until late.

How about that one BYU Super Fan who clearly had violated an aspect or two of the honor code? I don’t think you can be that pumped up without some non-natural supplements.

If you are a KU fan, and I know there are a few of you out there, you should be reading Tully Corcoran’s work at the Topeka Capital Journal. His articles, columns, and Twitter observations are much better than anything coming from the Lawrence Journal World and the KC Star. Thursday, he did a better job sizing up the difference between this year’s team and last year’s than anyone I’ve seen.¹

It was a team that existed in a constructed reality. It was a team that dutifully accepted that Collins and Cole Aldrich were better than Marcus Morris, even when the evidence suggested otherwise. Morris willingly played the role of third fiddle because it was Sherron and Cole’s team. That was just a fact. Everyone knew that. I’m not even criticizing here. There was just no way around it.

We will soon see if the change in leadership makes a difference or not.

Random observation about KU’s bracket. The same set of upsets on the opposite side occurred in both 2008 and 1998, so there are no conclusions that can be drawn from those games. Can not worry about that until Tulsa has been taken care of.

I’m sure many of you saw some of the nonsense that popped up on Twitter and Facebook after the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. All the dumbasses who were making Pearl Harbor references. My response was, I hope, similar to that of most of you: WTF?!?! Because, you know, Pearl Harbor was avenged. We fought a brutal war over the next four years, bombing parts of Japan back to the stone age. Hiroshima and Nagasaki got some extra special vengence. Most importantly, WE WON THE WAR. Scoreboard is the best revenge. It also tends to be final.

Laughing because innocents were killed by a natural disaster and saying they deserved that fate because of something that happened 70 years ago is the epitome of ignorance. Figures it was people who looked like they were between 20 and 25 making the bulk of the comments. I weep for the future.²

It appears the Sacramento Kings are headed to Anaheim. First off, I don’t get it. Why does the LA area need a third NBA franchise? Shouldn’t they get a single NFL team before they get a third NBA team? And it also derails the dream (but impossible) scenario of the Kings going back to Kansas City. It would just have been good, clean fun for the Kings to return to the midwest after nearly 30 years out west. Maybe the Pacers will move to KC! Keep your fingers crossed, KC readers.

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Including me, and Lord knows I’ve tried. ↩
Ferris Bueller reference! ↩

F That

March 15, 2011 / DB

We are a filthy nation. Three songs currently in the Billboard Top 10 feature the most vile of vile words. That’s right, the F dash dash dash word!

Cee Lo’s song is a big hit in this house. Dad prefers the original version, not because it’s dirty but because it’s a hell of a soul song. Mom enjoys the original, the radio version, and the Glee version, which featured Gwyneth Paltrow on vocals. Because of that, each time we hear it the girls will shout, “This is the song from mom’s show!!” C. thinks that Cee Lo is the kid in the wheelchair.

Anyway, none of this bothers me. Yet. I listened to a lot of fithy music in high school, even tricking my step-dad into buying Too $hort’s Born to Mack album for me because the record stores in San Leandro, CA wouldn’t sell it to anyone under 18. It’s just a word.

But get back to me in a couple years, when M. is old enough to begin hearing some of the explicit versions of these songs and accidentally drops an F-bomb in front of her parents or sisters. I’d like to think I will be like my mom, and figure the values I’ve taught my daughters will help them to understand, too, that it is just a word. I’d like to think I will continue to listen to music that is aimed at much younger audiences and I will at least tolerate whatever nonsense my girls are listening to.

Don’t hold me to that, though.

Mr. Green, Mr. Iglesias and Pink got their competitive advantage by making a relatively early breach of pop’s (thinly maintained, mostly illusory) decorum. But any kind of bandwagon effect is going to get boring fast, even if radio stations never play that scary word. Deploying the f-bomb also defuses it; give or take a few copycats in the months to come, it’s going to sound about as potent as a popgun.

Tourney Time

March 14, 2011 / DB

A lot of rambling thoughts about last weekend and the NCAA tournament.

If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you know I only saw a few minutes of the Big 12 tournament. M. had a school event Thursday, keeping me away from most of the KU-Oklahoma State game. Based on the quality of play, that was probably a good thing. Friday’s KU-Colorado game was, for some odd reason, blacked out in many areas on ESPN3.com. 1 Saturday M. again had a school function, and I failed to set the DVR for the Big 12 title game. To punish myself, I avoided the score until the girls went to bed, and thus saw the final 30 or so seconds of KU’s win. To complete the perfect weekend, I did set the DVR to record the late night replay, but thanks to the time change, it stopped recording eight minutes into the game.

Perhaps the Hoops Gods were trying to tell me something. I have to skip the entire NCAA tournament now, right? As a friend of mine said on Facebook, “Winning conventions are a bitch, man.”

Oh, indeed.

Secure in KU’s seed and reasonably sure of where they would play, I skipped the bracket reveal show Sunday night, as well. Even now, I’ve barely looked at the Southwest region, or any other region for that matter. I want to have zero worries about the other 15 teams in KU’s bracket or about what number one seed got a cakewalk to Houston vs. who got screwed. All year I’ve been dealing with Northern Iowa hangover, and I’m afraid if I start to examine the brackets too closely, all that angst is going to spill over and ruin this year’s tournament.

What last year proved, as pretty much every other year does, is that you have to play who is in front of you. It doesn’t matter whether a team was under-seeded or over-seeded or gets an unfair advantage by having to travel only within their home state for the first two weekends of the tournament. All that matters is how hard you play when your time comes.

I want to love this year’s KU team. Because of last year, that’s been very hard for me to do. Harder than any team I can remember. I’ve enjoyed them, I’ve wanted to believe, but have yet to totally let down my defenses for them.

Monday I went to the dentist. My hygienist, a very nice young lady who has been cleaning my teeth twice a year for almost eight years, asked if I was going to turn brackets into a pool somewhere. I sighed and told her that March was an emotional time of the year for me. She kind of gasped, got a very worried look on her face, and said, “Oh no.” I probably should have used a different word, because she clearly thought she had touched on a sore spot.

I quickly explained that I went to KU and even though we’re generally good, there have been some years, like last year, where we lost early and then I pout and it ruins the entire tournament for me. So I was having a hard time relaxing and getting excited about this year.

She nodded in understanding and mentioned that she remembered KU getting beat last year, because she picked them to win it all.

That didn’t help.

But then, after a pause, she asked, “Didn’t Kansas win the tournament like three or four years ago?”

I nodded and before she could call me on it, I said, “I know, but it’s still hard when they lose.”

That conversation shined a light on the lunacy of my angst. I’ve had it pretty freaking good as a fan over the past 25 years. Sure, there has been Northern Iowa and Bradley and Bucknell and Rhode Island and Arizona and Virginia and UTEP. And there were a few bitter defeats in the Final Four or Elite Eight.

But there was also the Clock Game, Danny and the Miracles, Down By 12 Win By 12, Rex to Adonis on the break, Langford’s follow dunk, Collison telling everyone he was going to the Final Four and they could either help him or get out of his f*&^ing way, “This game is ovah”, and Mario’s Miracle.

There’s been pain, made worse by the constant reminders by jackasses on ESPN and random fans of other schools, but there have been a lot of great moments, too. When I think about it, the great moments are way greater than the bad moments are bad.

So, starting now, I’m forgetting about last year. I’m freeing this year’s team of all the unfulfilled expectations of 2010, and embracing them for who they are. I’m going to sit back, watch their games, and enjoy them as much as possible. They might let me down, but they are more than capable of adding their own chapter to the great memories volume.

❖

Which is weird because the game was not available anywhere on my cable system. It’s not like ESPN3 was taking viewers away from locally-sold advertising. I blame the Big 10. ↩