The Pauley Pavilion epic is still a work in progress. As I told my man Lee Perry, I’m trying to get it under 15,000 words so you can actually read it all within one work day. Outcast’s “Hey Ya” really should have been released last summer. Everything about the song makes me think of being at the pool and hearing it endlessly. Or cruising the city with the windows down on warm summer nights.
Sadly, I arrived in Fresno extremely tired, so I’ve not had a chance to hunt down either Jerry Tarkanian, eat at a good Armenian restaurant, or see if Al Bohl was hanging out in the driveway of his old home. I may be staying in the world’s least impressive Courtyard by Marriott. Disappointing. Very disappointing. Since I’m a Silver Member of Marriott Rewards, I will be registering my displeasure at the highest level.
And so it begins: real life in Indianapolis. It was one thing to miss half of the best Royals season in a decade. The KU-MU football game. Or to not move my clocks a week ago. But not having access to a KU basketball game is a whole other thing. KU beat the EA Sports All Stars last night in a game that was not included in the ESPN Full Court package.
Nothing like an exciting MNF game that keeps you up until 12:30 AM. Come on, Tagliabue, start games at 8:00 Eastern! Seems like a good time to revisit my NFL picks from September. NFC East – Preseason pick: New York Giants. The Cowboys will not win this division. They make too many mistakes and I don’t trust Quincy Carter. They will, however, be in the playoffs. The Eagles are getting hot, Donovan McNabb is getting healthy, and Philly will win the East.
(Make no mistake; there will be some discussion of LeBron James in this space later today.) All this heightened solar activity has me thinking: why isn’t anyone taking advantage of this? It’s Halloween week, for crying out loud! I don’t care so much about sporadic cell phone usage, Arctic communications being cut off, or high frequency radio being wiped out at times. What better time to put a modern version of War of the Worlds out there?
Tuesday might have been the real Opening Night for the NBA, but Wednesday was my Opening Night. The wife was working. The Pacers on early; LeBron vs. the Kings late. With some help from some rare evening caffeine, and the picture-in-picture button, I made it through the night. 8:00 – Pacers vs. Pistons on local TV. Scot Pollard, the hometown team, and Larry Brown. Magic vs. Knicks on ESPN. Drew Gooden and Tyronn Lue.
Day four of “Eastern Standard Time”. I fell asleep before kick-off Monday night, waking when it was already 10-0 Miami. I’m struggling with the concept of being an hour ahead of most of my coworkers (why aren’t they in the office at 6:30 in KC when I turn the laptop on?). Also, finishing my workday around 5:00 local time and still getting calls for an hour is odd. I’m sure my West Coast clients appreciate the voice mails I leave them at 5:00 AM their time.
Good: Marlins win in six. Josh Beckett is a freaking stud. His arm may fall off, he may succumb to all the temptations that will be available to him, or he just may have pitched the best he’ll ever pitch. But I love the fact his first postseason experience was much better that Roger Clemens’ first experience. I’m not sure why I’ve become obsessive about hating Clemens, but I have. Jeff Loria may be one of the worst owners in baseball, and a personification of all that’s wrong with the game, but he ain’t George Steinbrenner.
Dumb sports announcer comment of the week: “Hard to believe” that Dick Vermeil coached in his first Monday Night Football game since 1981 this week, according to Al Michaels and Lisa Guerrero. Why is that hard to believe? He was retired from coaching for almost 20 years. The Rams weren’t expected to be good when he took them to the Super Bowl. He retired again after winning the Super Bowl. His first two years with the Chiefs, they weren’t good either.
Some songs you never really understand when you’re young and innocent. When U2’s Achtung Baby! was released in 1991, “One” was an immediate standout track. A co-worker at my summer job in 1992 was talking to me about music one day, and said that he hated U2 but loved “One”. I said I liked it, but didn’t think it was the best song on the album. “You’ve never had your heart broken, have you?
Yawn. Apparently the wife is tired of having withdrawal headaches when she doesn’t have caffeine, so she’s switched to the half-caffeine type of coffee. So here I am at 10:00 already breaking into the Diet Coke. Guess I’m addicted. Basketball season arrived Friday night, yet I’m strangely still interested in football. The Dallas Cowboys are 5-1 and in first place in the NFC East. The Kansas Jayhawks are 5-2 and tied for first in the Big 12 North.
Well, every bit of last night’s Red Sox – Yankees game seven could have been predicted. The Red Sox get to Roger Clemens early while Pedro Martinez is just good enough to avoid jams. The Sox give themselves an insurance run late. Then, as soon as the “X outs to the World Series” threshold hits, things fall apart. Just like the Cubs Tuesday, the Sox were up three runs with five defensive outs standing between them and the World Series.
Another great day of baseball. The Red Sox and Yankees continued their heavyweight battle in the late afternoon and early evening, each team taking and losing leads, trading punches like Ali and Frazier. A couple wind-blown balls by the Red Sox and one massive, George Brett-like homerun from Trot Nixon, and we’ve got game seven: Pedro Martinez vs. Roger Clemens. Exactly what everyone was hoping for. I didn’t think the Sox had a shot yesterday.
Sixteen Candles 16 years later? No thanks, especially if you make it for TV rather than the big screens and lose the PG-13/R rating option. Let’s count the ways this is bad: No politically incorrect references to Orientals, a Chinaman named after a duck’s dork, retarded kids wearing red sweaters and tan trousers, alien breasts, public urination, shots of women nude in the shower, or oily-type beau-hunks. I bet you can’t even put Joan Cusack it the halo and make her try to use the drinking fountain these days.
Utterly incredible. That’s the only way to sum up what happened at Wrigley Field in the eighth inning last night. If you missed it, the Cubs were up 3-0, five outs from their first World Series since 1945, and ace Mark Prior was destroying the Marlins. A pop-up down the left field line is grabbed by a Cubs fan just before Moises Alou could catch it, Alex Gonzalez commits his first error in months, and next thing you know, the Fish have scored eight runs in the inning.
Didn’t I promise to do one of these each week? And now this is my first entry in a month. It’s not for a lack of effort, I promise. I’ve started probably ten of these in the last month. Apparently I’m starting the wrong ones, though, because I can’t seem to finish any. As I said back in the beginning, music often elicits very specific memories for me. Play a song; I lock into a distinct time and place.
Finally back home for a stretch, sitting in front of the TV preparing for my firs extensive use of picture-in-picture this year (Red Sox-Yankees in the main frame, Monday Night Football in the PIP frame). I didn’t do my Purdue friends justice with a full accounting of my trip to West Lafayette two weeks ago as I had done for my trip to South Bend. It was a beautiful day, the Boilermakers pounded Illinois, we spent the entire second half in the parking lot tailgating, and I ended the evening puking on the side of I-65 on the way back to Indy.
A few more notes to wrap up my Bay Area trip. I want to go on record as being extremely thankful the good folks at the Starbucks at DFW gave me a fully leaded coffee last night, rather than the decaf I asked for. Thanks to them, I was still awake at 3:00 this morning. That’s the way you want to end a trip in which you’ve been sleep deprived to begin with.
I was all prepared to write about the key to Saturday’s KU-MU game being the MU offensive line. On their two scoring drives, they looked like monsters, pushing the much smaller KU d-line around at will. Not sure if it was adjustments by KU, or failure to stick to what worked by MU, but that dominance wasn’t evident the rest of the game. Bill Whittemore was more able than Brad Smith to adjust to what the defense was giving him, and that pretty much was the game.
Let’s make this very clear to start: tomorrow’s Kansas-Missouri football game should be played the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Always. Without exception. I know, I know, when played in November, the game meant something to both teams other than just being a rivalry game exactly once in the past 20 years: 1981, when both teams entered the game 7-3. By moving the game to an earlier point in the season, the argument goes, hopefully both teams are still playing for something other than pride.