We were invited to attend Monday’s Indiana Pacers - Chicago Bulls game by friends. They got tickets from a business associate that had messed up an important transaction at an especially inopportune time. Thus, we enjoyed a fine NBA game from the comfort of row six behind the Pacers bench. Row one is the seats that are on the court, equally close to the action as the bench. Rows two and three are actually the aisle behind the bench.
Some delayed, assorted thoughts from what was a pretty super Super Bowl. I struggled with which team to pull for. I much prefer John Harbaugh to Jim. But the Ravens have Ray Lewis. I admire Joe Flacco but am in awe of Colin Kaepernick. San Francisco is one of my favorite places in the world. But The Wire took place in Baltimore. So many factors. In the end I went with my pick and leaned Niners.
Last year at this time we were enjoying a perfect mid-winter week in Indianapolis. The temperature was in the mid-40s to low 50s all week, it was dry, and the hordes who had descended upon the city delighted in their Super Bowl week experiences. As I type this as 2:18 pm on February 1, 2013 the windchill is a brisk 5°. It snowed yesterday and last night. There was a massive pileup on one local interstate yesterday.
Book-ending our vacation were L.’s first two birthday parties that were her own. She’d been to several parties over the years, but always because she was the third sister, not because it was the party of someone her age. So she was awfully excited about these two gatherings. It was funny to watch her. As one of the two or three oldest kids in her class, and a third sister, she is one of the ringleaders for all class activities.
We haven’t taken a ton of family vacations over the years. But when we have we’ve always been fortunate to have safe travels and good times at our destination. Our luck held up once again and we had a fantastic time last week on our first (and still expected to be last) trip to Disney World. I’ll do my best to sum up the week without forcing you to read for half an hour.
There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to let it rip: we’re going to Disney World tomorrow. I didn’t go when I was a kid. My parents were never in position to afford it when I was little. And I wasn’t ever into anything Disney. In fact, the contrarian streak in my personality could probably be traced back to my early loathing of Mickey and the rest of the Disney gang.
So there I was, putting my final touches on my ode to Ben McLemore when a quick check of Twitter revealed that the sports news world was exploding. There have been some crazy sports stories over the years, hell even in the last couple weeks,1 but good freaking lord, this Manti Teo thing just blows them all away. I pride myself in avoiding stories that are more celebrity gossip than real sports news but man, I am all in on this one!
Some updates from the field. My last three games, going back to the week of Christmas, have all been interesting and each related to the same school, IHS. First I had their boys playing the #1 team in Class 3A. IHS fell behind 11-0 in the first 90 seconds and I was sure it was going to be just another blowout. IHS righted the ship, though, and got it down to four points before halftime.
This has been bouncing around for a week or so, thus some of you may have seen it. But it’s sooooo great. A Chicago culture blogger finds out what happens when you besmirch an 80s pop music sensation. Would you say that to my face? Let’s find out. I’ll meet you anywhere in the city, any time. I don’t travel again until the end of the week. Let’s hash this out like men.
As a friend we were out to dinner with Saturday texted to his friends as the afternoon stretched into evening, “I’ve seen this movie before.” Straight up, the Denver Broncos' shock, double overtime loss to the Ravens was not Peyton’s fault. Sure, he threw a couple bad picks and once again looked ordinary after an other-worldly regular season. But, as was often the case when the Colts shit the bed in the playoffs, the blame lay primarily with other Broncos.
Lots of sports over the past few days. Some assorted thoughts. The NFL playoffs were almost universally awful. Let’s hope the Divisional round is better.1 In Baltimore the Colts went down by a score that made sense, 24-9, but in a manner that did not. I hadn’t seen the Ravens play in over a month, so I still thought their defense was shitty. They’re not quite back to 2000 levels, but they’ve certainly improved, and were the difference in the game.
We’re back at it. M. and C. returned to school today and L. will head back tomorrow.1 It was a pretty good break. I was worried that things would spiral out of control last week, when S. was back at work. The girls were cuh-ray-zee in the first couple days after Christmas and I wondered how they were going to tolerate another week cooped up in the house. But they regulated themselves nicely and we had a solid week.
I just realized as the owner of a blog that dabbles in sports discussions, I have to get some NFL playoffs predictions posted before the action begins tomorrow. Wildcard Round Houston over Cincinnati. Against another opponent, I would be tempted to pick against the sagging Texans. But the Bengals don’t have the juice to pull the upset and I think Houston might get their act together this week. Green Bay over Minnesota.
I was a doubter, a hater, a shaker of the head. When Peter King and a few other NFL analysts said the Colts had a reasonable shot at the playoffs last August, I wondered what they had ingested that had so altered their judgement. This was a team that won 2 games last year! How in the hell did people think they would win 9-10 games and have a shot at the post-season?
I finished 2012 with two books about two of my favorite teams ever. Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever - Jack McCallum. This is a perfect accounting of the perfect team: the 1992 US men’s basketball team. The long-time Sports Illustrated NBA writer goes into the history of international basketball, how pros were approved to play in the Olympics, how the Dream Team came together, and then their epic two months as a functioning unit.
2012 was an interesting year for me, reading-wise. For the first time since I can recall, I struggled to read. I went an entire calendar month - April - without finishing a book. Where I normally went from one book straight to the next, I had a hard time picking books to read. For the previous four summers I spent a lot of time with a book on the deck or in the driveway, keeping one eye on the girls while they played.
Top 10 artists for 2012, based on my Last.fm stats, which sadly, aren’t necessarily a full representation of what I listened to. Close enough for blog purposes, I suppose. Wussy - 250 The Clash - 220 The White Stripes - 219 Japandroids - 188 Jack White - 184 Frightened Rabbit - 169 Radiohead - 150 Pearl Jam - 145 Dum Dum Girls - 118 School of Seven Bells - 115
Each year, when I post something around New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day, I make the joke that it’s the Xth straight good year in my life. I say it’s a joke because let’s face it, any year where you’re still upright at the end is a good year. You can go through mistakes and missteps, tragedy and loss, but if you’re still breathing at midnight, odds are you can find a way to call it a winner.
It was a pretty memorable Christmas for the B’s. Not because there were any super special presents, although we’re having trouble forcing the girls to stop playing with their Barbie Dream House. It wasn’t because of a surprise visitor, although we did have some fun guests. Nope, it was the anticipation of the Blizzard of 2012 that really added something special that set this year apart. So a quick review of the past few days.
I wonder how many songs I listened to this year. Thing is, despite using multiple tools to track what I listen to and how often I do so, I purge so many tracks after sampling them a time or two, that I would imagine the majority of the songs I screen are buried deep in a virtual pit of 1s and 0s. So there’s no real way of knowing exactly how many individual tracks I listened to over the past 12 months.