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.
As a reminder to my faithful readers (and those who may bounce in here by accident) you can either comment on any topic by hitting the comment link under each entry. Or, for a more private comment, you can send me an e-mail by using the link to the right. With that in mind, I wanted to share some thoughts based on recent comments and e-mails I have received. I hope everyone either watched or taped Oprah and saw today’s episode with the Queer Eye guys.
I love to write. That’s the whole point of having the blog. However, the down side is the pressure to write on certain subjects. For example, someone who I’ll refer to as “Feldman” has all but demanded that I compare the Fab Five of Michigan to the Fab Five of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. “Feldman” really knows how to put me in a spot. One of the most dynamic college basketball teams of all-time compared and contrasted with my current favorite TV show.
No 18-hour football watching session yesterday. My step-dad was visiting, so we took him down to Bloomington for the day. You will be relieved to hear the Colts sold out in time for their thrashing of the Titans. Since they missed the blackout deadline, though, the only highlights available here were those shot by local stations from the sidelines. That’s how hard core the NFL is: if you can’t sell your game out at least 72 hours in advance, you can’t expect to see network highlights on local stations either.
(Year two. The first anniversary is always hardest. You know it’s coming, you keep thinking about it, and you long to get it over with. The second is easier. You’ve hopefully started to put things into perspective. Perhaps found ways to begin moving on. The pain is still there, but it’s a different pain than it was a year ago…) In the weeks and months following the attacks of September 11, 2001, there were countless musical tributes to the victims and relief workers.
First of a two-part summary of the first full weekend of football. Two years ago, I put together a list of things I wanted to do in my life. I included running a marathon (check), work from home (yep), kayak in the Pacific (some day), see live penguins, and a long list of places I wanted to see sporting events. Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Cameron Indoor Stadium, Neyland Stadium, and Michigan Stadium were all on there.