With the major conferences wrapping up regular season play over the weekend and preparing for their tournaments later this week, it’s the perfect time to address some outstanding college hoops issues.
All Conference Teams/POY Choices The arguing about these things tends to be a little silly, but it’s generally the good, clean fun kind of silly. Things do get amplified a bit in the age of 8000 sports media outlets who all need to get their original take in, and thrown to another level with Twitter.
A good subtitle for this might be, “The Jig Is Up.”
We’ve had two Tooth Fairy visits in the past week. And they revealed something important: M.’s got it figured out.
It began last week, when L. lost tooth #2. I couldn’t remember what the going rate was for that tooth. She got $5 for her first tooth, but was the because it was the first tooth, or was that the same price for each front tooth?
At some point last fall, S. let the girls put some games on her iPhone, and they each get turns playing them each day. As you would expect, that has lead to a conflict or two.
Last night, we were talking about how the girls would, one day, have their own phones. We explained that it wouldn’t happen until they were able to babysit other kids, or were going to school/sports events on their own.
The Passage - Justin Cronin I resisted this book for some time. I would read a blurb about it, or see a positive review, and move it back up my To Read list. Then, I’d read a synopsis, see it had a vampire component to its plot, and decide to pass. What pushed me over the edge? I came across the AV Club review from when it was first released. That review was glowing, and as the AV Club is my most trusted pop culture opinion source, I could resist no longer.
I thought it had been longer, but it was March 5, 2013 when I last shared the list of shows I’ve been watching. With the fantastic return of “The Americans” last night, it seems like the perfect time to offer up my current list. Last season’s rank in parenthesis.
“The Americans” (4) A year ago it was too new to put this high, but season one was phenomenal and, as I’ve already said, last night’s season two debut did not disappoint.
The Americans returns tonight! The Americans returns tonight! With another potentially big winter storm in the forecast, this is just the news I needed to get out of bed in the morning.
The AV Club says season two starts off quite well. Here’s a good look at where the series is as the new year kicks off with some interesting details about how the show is created.
The Americans aims to break the second-season curse
After KU clinched at least a share of their 10th-straight Big 12 title last night, a discussion list I’m on started throwing out things that weren’t around the last time KU did not win the conference regular season championship. The iPhone and iPad. Mad Men and Breaking Bad. Twitter.
I realized that a lot of us have kids that have never known a world where KU didn’t rule the Big 12.
This weekend was L.’s turn with her class bear, Baxter.
If you’re not familiar with the concept, many classes send a bear or other stuffed animal home with kids for a weekend. They usually come with a book in which the adventures of the bear are recorded. When it’s your family’s turn, you take some pictures, write down the weekend’s activities, and send it back on Monday. C.’s class is still doing it, in fact.
I forgot to add this to yesterday’s Reporter’s Notebook, and it’s a must share.
At the game I covered Tuesday night, there were two older women sitting right behind me. I’m guessing they were both in the ballpark of 70 years old. Early in the game, they were aggressive in their comments towards the home team.
“Come on, Andrew! Follow your shot!” “You have to help from the weak side!” “Work for smarter shots!
As all of the US and Canada prepare for today’s women’s gold medal game and tomorrow’s men’s semifinal games in Sochi, here is a fun read on the 1960 gold medal winning US team.
On the first day of practice in Squaw Valley, for a workout open to coaches of all of his upcoming rivals, Riley told his team to stage a fake fight to give the impression that the U.
We are in the heart of the winter sports season. Girls basketball sectionals were last weekend, and none of the teams I cover survived to regionals. I believe that’s the first time that has been the case since I started working for my paper. Boys basketball has two more weeks before sectionals begin. I covered the girls state swimming and diving meet last weekend and will head back in a week for the boys finals.
I’ve tried not to get sucked in too much to the Beatles Arrive In America nostalgia wave. Mostly because I feel like I’ve read plenty about them already and it’s enough for me just to spin some of their tunes.
This piece, though, is fantastic. In it, Billboard takes an in-depth look at the process of getting the Beatles on American radio in 1963. I don’t think I realized how much work it took to get them on the cultural radar here, and then how quickly they became the biggest thing in the country.
A week ago Saturday was a big day in our house. After eight years and fourteen days, we cleaned out the minivan, drove it to a local car dealer and left it as we drove away in a new Jeep Grand Cherokee.
That’s right: our days as minivan owners are over!
I must admit, that minivan served us well. We drove it to Michigan, Florida, all over Indiana, and to Kansas City several times.
There are plenty of notes stocked up from the last month of high school basketball and swimming. But coming home Tuesday night, I had a bizarre encounter that warrants sharing on its own.
I had just left an especially scintillating girls basketball sectional game1 and pulled onto the main drag of a small town about half-an-hour east of Indianapolis. About a quarter of a mile in front of me, I saw an Indiana State Trooper pull on to the road and head the same direction I was traveling.
Feeling better today, although it was a busy Tuesday and Wednesday morning has me at St. P’s for my library duty. Thus, I’m going to try to breeze through some stuff before I get too far behind.
Marcus Smart A buddy of mine has said all year that he found Smart scary. Not in a threatening way, but rather, well, I’ll paraphrase, “That guy is just such a competitor, I’m afraid he’s going to snap at some point.
As I write this, I’m sitting in the living room, looking out the front window, waiting for the next snowstorm to hit. The first flurries are expected to start falling in the next hour, and by morning we’ll have 8-10” of new snow. Yeah, I’m about done with this winter bullshit.
What a waste of a month January was. St. P’s and St. E’s follow different schedules, so the girls had slightly different delay/cancellation experiences last month.
I’ve come up with a phrase or two over my ten years of publishing my thoughts online that I particularly enjoy. One of those is “comprehensive ass-kicking,” used to describe, well, comprehensive ass-kickings.
I’m pretty sure the Super Bowl is the classic example of one.
Man, that was ugly. I missed the opening 12 seconds, as we were hosting friends and there were kids running around and we lost track of time.
Four books in four weeks to kick off the year. But one of those was a children’s book I knocked out in an afternoon, so I’m feeling like I didn’t take advantage of January the way I should have. Also, I’m skipping one book, just because I’m still thinking about how to write about it. It’s the first time I’ve read a book written by someone I know, and while I liked it, for some weird reason I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts on it into words.
If Super Bowl week is all about absurdity, it gets no more absurd than this: SB Nation’s Breaking Madden creates a Super Bowl of giants vs. tiny people. Even if you don’t read it all, scroll through for the GIFs, which made me laugh until I cried.
With just under two minutes left in the first quarter, I was winning 366 to zero. I realized that I was on pace to score 1,500 points in a single game.
This all probably means nothing, and I can’t find a clever way to tie them all together, but there are four rather interesting anniversaries/birthdays that each end in zero, in close proximity to each other.
In reverse order, youngest to oldest…
Hoop Dreams just turned 20. I remember watching it in a little arty theater in Westport, in Kansas City, where you sat on folding chairs and the film was projected on a small screen.