Travel Notes...Texas

[ Clearing the draft archives. Great trip. I should do it again. Note: in the "Fifth" part, I say paraphrasing, but from what my dim memories tell me, this was pretty accurate. The "taste of a mule" I definitely remember. The exchange was particularly memorable because it was broadcast as not part of a blooper reel. ]

Some remarkable things on a trip to Austin.

First, I find it a sign of the times that neither I nor my friend I was visiting mentioned directions in any of our conversations/emails. She (presumably) assumed I'd be okay since I had been there once before. I had, but I had flown, she had done all the driving, and I certainly hadn't been memorizing anything (this is not to say she should have known that since she has many visitors, I'm just saying that I didn't know where I was going because of the previous trip). But, even if I had been there before, it has never been the case before now that I was visiting anyone and "Do you know where you're going?" or "Where do I go now?" or a variation thereof was not brought up. It was just assumed by both of us that I'd find my way via google maps or similar.

Second, for the first time ever, I saw something being hauled under a vehicle. Someone had a van with some sort of long bar(s) attached via rope to the bumpers. The bars were longer than the van by some inches and bowed quite a bit in the middle, but seemed secure enough. Apparently, they didn't want to crush the roof of the van so they strapped 'em underneath.

Third, a guy (or gal) passed me on I-35 in Dallas doing about 90 mph in a 70 zone. The odd thing was that they had their hazards on. I don't know if this is code for "Hey, I'm (she's) about to give birth, get outta the way" or just to help people notice that someone's screaming up on their tailside or what, but certainly peculiar.

Fourth, Oklahoma had signs on the interstate saying "Don't drive into smoke." Where does that even come from? The brain boggles on the origin and target audience implications.

Fifth, I was listening to some humorous fellows on the radio who were reporting from Cowboys camp. One guy was wandering around on the field looking for interviewees and another couple of guys were up in a booth somewhere. This is a paraphrasing of a part of their conversation:

Booth Guy A: "Hey, talk to her"

Field Guy: "You have the taste of a mule" (!!)

Booth Guy A: "Gimme a break, I can't tell from way up here"

Field Guy: "She works for the Cowboys, what are you thinking?"

Apparently, there is no attractive woman that works for the Cowboys. Maybe Jerry keeps 'em ugly cuz he's so nasty looking.

Also, Field Guy apparently likes to run the gags on players, since one guy was looking at his ID, and when called on it, said something like, "Well, I'm trying to see if you're that guy that was asking the weird questions before." Booth Guy made it seem like he was busted. Booth Guy also likes to tell Field Guy weird questions to ask while Field Guy is in the middle of interviewing.

Sixth, saw a great limestone cavern. I highly recommending caving whenever possible.

Will the next John Hughes please stand up?

[ Another unfinished posting from my draft archives. But, to keep you entertained, I give you this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvAYNw8r9o#t=138. So many classic moments from that movie. ]

I was walking thru the mall today on my way to unlock the front door so we could all get in for African drumming/dance class and my ears perceived the dulcet tones of that fantastic 80's cheese-pop tune, "Escapade" by Janet Jackson. I was then dumbstruck by the epiphany that those weird dancing-in-the-mall moments from cheesy 80's cheese-pop movies were a normal way of thinking. I actually wanted to dance down the hallway and jump off the plant stands and railings and do goofy white-boy spins and (gods forbid!) do some cartwheels or some such nonsense. Could it really be that those directors/choreographers were tuned in to some primeval force of nature that spurs us on to dance like idiots down an empty mall corridor?

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!

Stunning! Amazing! Apalling!

After xx number of years, I've finally found a soccer play-by-play announcer to listen to. His name is Phil Schoen. I'm not saying he's great, but I can actually listen to him. I've probably heard him before, but just didn't put it together. I listened to him do the US-Mexico match on Mun2 and he was actually cogent.

((( PLEASE NOTE: This post was started a long, long time ago and I had lots of thoughts at the time that I didn't get in here so I think it sucks but I decided to throw it up in mid-creation. Read/interpret at your own risk. Phil Schoen is apparently at BeIN now. OUT. )))

So, I've decided that going to the World Cup in South Africa would be very bad. Apparently the entire cast of Killer Bees (trailer) has descended upon the country and have evolved the ability to look like people!!! It's people!!
Just listen to their horrible screaming!
Of course, the flipside is that I'll have to listen to the monkey-sucking cheese doodles that they toss up onto the airwaves over at espn (at least, I assume they'll cover it).

Ray Hudson rocks:
http://hudsonia.blogspot.com/

I don't have a problem with "onion bag." It's better than "could this be the one that puts xxxxx in the win column" or whatever by Ian Darke. A bit apples-and-oranges, but still.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/15/tommy-smyth-us-soccer-espn

A semi-anti-English take:
http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/accented-english-spoken-here/

Here's a current (7/13) note: I can't stand J.P. Dellacamera and I just saw his name in an above link and realized I haven't heard him for quite a while. He must have moved on or something. So I got that going for me.
Update 7/29: Speak of the Horrid, I think I heard him doing a Women's Euro game or something I was watching on ESPN a week or so ago. He's one of those word swallowers. That's mostly what bothers me about him.

Boiling Coach Syndrome

Brad Stevens was hired today to coach the Boston Celtics. He comes from a remarkably successful six-year run at Butler. The first video I saw of this had J.A. Adande analyzing the move. He talked about the hiring process in general for a few sentences and then pulled the dreaded "saw the opportunity ... and jumped at it" soundbite.
I find this 'bite very misleading. We see and hear it a lot, and it's always implied to me that someone was called and offered something and before the caller could finish the sentence, they replied, "Yeah, I'm in." We do get the occasional, "wanted-guy did his research and discussed the freedoms/responsibilities/franchise direction/etc." before taking the job, but "jumped at it" is, to me, rather typical media-speak on the side of extremism. I'm not calling them out or complaining about this one since it's well down the list of extremist media-speak, but "took it" seems much more apt to the scenario barring extended information. There was bound to be a couple days of talking with the fam and breaking it down and coming up with follow-up questions to be answered and all that. But "jumped" just seems to me to be too active of a term for this process.
Of course, in his first news conference, Mr. Stevens may drop the "this was my dream job, I rejected Michigan, Illinois, Duke, Moscow Dynamo, Ajax, ManU, the All-Blacks, Vikings, D-backs and the Bad News Bears Celebrity Traveling Nostalgia Giggety for a reason. I was waiting for They'll-never-get-a-peek-into-my-head Danny to drop a dime and I'd be on the next bus."
It also may be that the guys in line for this type of job have a little card in their wallet that they can pull out and check their compiled info and get the process over with in a few ticks. But I don't understand that type of person anyway, so I'll ignore that possibility.

Zanzibar Red

I guess I still live. I have a half a dozen posts in my drafts section whose destination is currently unknown. Some of them end in partial sentences as if my brain will simply pick up their meaning and drive them home in the back of a luxury yacht. Yeah, right.
The good news is that we've been dumped on, 20 inches or so in the last couple weeks. It's truly glorious, except for the broken tree limbs part. But, as the old saying goes: with beauty comes death. Or maybe that's just my new saying. Copyright Me, so no stealing.
Meanwhile, I really need to find a band again. I still do the african and the pipe band, but I need to play the regs. I'm finally steaming ahead on the bagpipes also. We're doing a class to expand our group, so I go to that. Makes it easy.
Well, just wanted something up here. Hopefully, I'll get back soon.

The Cupcake Song

If I only had a cupcake
My day would be fine
I'd smile wide to everyone
And the sun would shine
Even if it were raining
I wouldn't pout or whine
Oh, look I have a cupcake
And my day is fine


I wrote this a couple weeks ago when someone brought in cupcakes for their kid's birthday. The only thing I don't like about it is the raining reference. I freaking love rain. But, I didn't want to say Even if I had a face boil.

(Plus, I like the connection between the sun line and the raining line. You can read the two together as indicating that the sun would be shining whether or not it was actually shining, you dig?)

Chips Ahoy!!!!

Wow, I made it back. Along the way, I had a number of moments of interest in putting something up here, but just never had the impetus to log on.

I have Chips Ahoy on my desk, hence the title. I blame Letterman. The other night he had Rachael Ray on and during his post-monologue/pre-guest bit (what do they call that, anyway?), he started talking about the obesity problem in the U.S. and why we're wasting tv time with Cupcake Wars and other such nonsense when we have this problem. One main point was that we had way too many cookie options here. He said specifically that we shouldn't go communist, but in those types of countries they only have one cookie to choose from and they don't have obesity problems.

It's a strange point. Firstly, because if we only had one type of cookie here, in order for it to affect obesity, it would need to be peanut butter coconut raisin or some other revolting variety. If we only had chocolate chip or sugar or something, I don't think cookie consumption would drop much. Secondly, it's not the variety, but the price of cookies that is going to make a difference. You jack up a package of Chips Ahoy to $10 or $15 and you're damn right people will stop eating them.

This is all tongue-in-cheek, obviously, since we are talking about Letterman. Besides, we all know that the obesity problem is caused by the strangely fascinating pulsing of Sammy Hagar's career. It throws off the mind/body signal syncopation and so we no longer know when we're full, our significant others are saying something important we'll be grilled on later, or that there is no pause in the screwing of all of us by the government-pharmaceutical-industrial-military complex and we may as well start a new spring college football league so we can have bowl games all year round and give up pretending to be appalled at our collective apathy.

My point is that after the commercial break, Dave busted open a package that had what looked like a chewy chocolate chip cookie in it and he proceeded to slowly eat it in a way that told you how just good it was. So, I had to stop on the way home and get mine.

Please note that this next section may get long since I haven't fully gotten in my own head.

Back to bowl games, I just read Joe Posnanski's latest blog* about the BCS being a giant crock of *&^%. I had some long-standing thoughts about this subject, and used my reaction as impetus to get back on here and write something down.

*If you read his columns, you may notice that I stole his asterisking policy.

A couple of years ago Auburn went undefeated but didn't get in to the "National Championship Game" and it was like the world ended. "Oh, my god!" They cried. "How can this be?!" And a big playoff push began in order to right this wrong. This was the 2004 season. Also during this season the following happened:

1. Tsunamis killed 230,000 people in 14 countries;
2. The Darfur crisis was officially labelled genocide as the death toll reached 70,000;
3. The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that the Bush administration had basically lied its ass off to justify attacking Iraq;
4. The federal budget deficit reached a record $413 billion;
5. My semi-adopted state of Missouri became the first state to vote to ban same-sex marriage;
6. Officers were found to be at fault for Abu Ghraib;
7. America chose between an asshole and a doofus for president (I'll let you pick which was which).

So, of course, the big news is how Auburn got screwed. There is apparently some now who think they should get the title for that year since USC had to vacate it. But the AP doesn't care and USC is still their champion.

The main point of the book discussed in the post is that we need a playoff and Joe (I'm going to refer to him as Joe) thinks the book's format is the best he's seen: 16 teams, 11 conference champs, 5 at-large chosen by committee. To which I say: puke.

Now I agree (without even needing to see data) that the BCS is a power- and money-mongering control structure that somehow has not been taken down by antitrust litigation.* But I simply cannot agree with a giant playoff system.

*I'm not sure it can be, but I'm surprised it hasn't been.

My thoughts, since that Auburn rebuffal*, was that I can only accept a playoff if it only consists of conference champions. So I agree with the authors in that respect. I also generally believe that only undefeated teams should make the playoffs. I'm way more Darwinian than most. But, that can be very problematic. Not only in the real sense of no one knowing how many teams are in and scheduling and all that jazz, but what if no team is undefeated? Or there is an odd number? Or the only one is the champion of the weakest conference? I don't have a problem crowning them on the spot, but I wouldn't feel great about it. The other problem with conference champs only is, of course, Notre Dame and now BYU and possibly other future independents.

*Yes, I made that word up.

The question is what are we trying to determine with a playoff? Which conference is the best? Which team is the best? Based on record? Head-to-head matchups? Last man standing after a few have been chosen to fight it out at the end? The last one seems to be what everyone wants. After all, that's how every other champion is found. But, that doesn't solve the basic problem in that this is all subjective. Where do you cut it off? 4? 8? 16?

I've always been against the plus-one format because I don't believe that solves the issue. The difference between 4 and 5 in the rankings could be way less in a given year than the difference between a 2 and a 3.

I also don't want a two or three loss team making a playoff over a one loss team because of subjective conference perceptions or, just like the issue is now, because one team started the season ahead of another.

If they could develop an RPI for football and use that, I'd probably accept it, but I'm not sure how that's different than the computer system portion of the BCS rankings they have now. So, I guess use that if it's equivalent.

What I really don't want is the "wildcard" champion, meaning a two or three loss team that gets an easy road somehow and wins it all. Does anyone really believe that the NY football Giants were the best team in the NFL a couple years ago? Hell no. I would not have wanted the Patriots given the title based on regular season record, but I don't like a team with six (6!) more regular season losses getting the trophy based on a couple lousy quarters by the better team. I'm okay with baseball having a couple wildcards, but football has too many based on way too few games.

There is also an analogy to March Madness that people trot out. I find this far-fetched at best. Interest may go up with an eight or 16 team playoff, but it would never match March Madness. What makes MM so special is that there is this mega-barrage of games for four days, then a few days to dissect what happened, then another big barrage of games. The last weekend is just some ice cream on the way home to see who can survive. But the real excitement is in those first two weekends, where you see people you've never had a chance to see, hear of colleges you didn't know existed, renew your love/hate relationship with Dickie V, be pleasantly surprised that Bryant Gumbel still works for a network, and fill yourself up with the ridiculousness of all the different fans from around the nation.

That's not going to happen with football. Unless you play mid-week, it will take four weeks to get a champion and there will be way fewer games total.

But, again: what do we want out of this? Personally, I want the "best" team. I'm admittedly a bit vague on what that is, but in this context, there is maybe one game between big conferences scheduled by any given school in a big conference. For example, this year Minnesota played USC.* The rest are generally cupcakes, although Boise State gets a couple a year against the "big boys". So, I want to see the conference champions duke it out to "even out" the the subjectivity of rankings and such. There are two problems with this. One, the independents as mentioned earlier. And two, I'm not sure all 11 conference champions should be in it. One issue I have with 16 teams is that there is probably too much of a gap between 1 and 16 to make an interesting game.

*No, I don't think Minny will be in any playoff system of fewer than 128 teams anytime soon.

So, what I think I would want is the top eight ranked conference champions. You'd be done in three weeks and it (hopefully) doesn't dilute the field with (very many) multiple loss teams. Of course, independence remains an issue. It may create a climate where more teams go independent and are more selective in who they play, e.g. more cupcakes, which would be bad. But, I don't want to force them into a conference either. So, I'm not sure how to handle that yet.

So, that's the built-up buzzing in my head spewed out in binary. I may change this post later, but it's close to what I mean.

Meanwhile:

A note of joy: Fag-ruh is 1-3, 5 TDs, 7 Picks, sets NFL career record for fumbles to go with his interception record. Suck it Brett.

Another note of joy: In case you haven't heard