I Ate Dinner In 5 Seconds For This?!

Yesterday I had one of the experiences you know will be impossible to top. I attended my first Syracuse vs. Georgetown basketball game. The game where the animosity reaches biblical proportions. Well not quite, but Cuse fans were ready to start throwing rocks at every passing GTown fan. I'm pretty sure they used to do that in the old days when the Vandals played the Romans at lion killing or something. But seriously, nobody was spared. A family of Hoya fans was booed as they passed the students' section. The reason I say family is because I saw a mom. A dad. A 5 year old kid. I never thought I'd see the day when the "Asshole" chant was directed at a kindergartner by thousands of angry students. In the middle of the game an elderly woman was taken out of the stadium on a stretcher because she fainted. If she was wearing blue and gray I'm pretty sure she would've gotten booed too. I'm just trying to set the scene, but to be more accurate I have to go back a couple hours.

The time is 5:05. The place is Syracuse University. 3 intrepid students convene at a sanctuary of modern learning. Battle plans are hurriedly drawn for the coming 7:00 onslaught while one of them changes into battle attire. After a minimal rest, the fellowship departs in hopes of obtaining sustenance for the war brought on by invaders from the Village of George. Reaching an inn only slightly off the path to battle, the warriors hurriedly feast on legs of lamb and drink mead. They then depart at a frantic pace to reach the battlefield before all of the good spots in the ranks of the Orange Horde were occupied.

So in modern language: Two friends and I met at my dorm room. I put on a bunch of Cuse stuff. We went to the dining hall and ate mad fast. We went to the Dome in hopes of not having nosebleed seats. You're right, the first version sounded much better.

So on to the actual game. We were packed in like sardines because we managed to get in on the lower level along with about 100,000 other students (or so it seamed). We start the game yelling, we yell in the middle, we yell at the end. We yelled when GTown got out to a 14-0 lead on us, we yelled when the Cuse came storming back. We yelled when there was a foul. We yelled at the timeouts. We yelled when a little kid came out to mop the floor. We yelled when we made a good play. We yelled when the refs made a bad call. Just to sum up, we yelled. My throat was about to explode, yet I always felt I could be louder. The team needed me! So, in conclusion, the game was loud regardless of the score. It's just that sometimes it got extra loud. PS-Kris Joseph scored 15 points and is fast living up to the cool new nickname I gave him: Kris "The Greatest Basketball Player Who Has Ever or Will Ever Live" Joseph. I could shorten it a bit, I guess. Kris "TGBPWHEOWEL" Joseph.

One last note on that. Those jersey t-shirt things are selling like hotcakes. I saw a ton of them at the game. Regrettably, I only saw one Kris Joseph #32 shirt (mine's in the wash because I played pickup basketball in it). There were a bunch of Scoop Jardine #11 shirts, which is good because he deserves a good amount of credit for taking over point guard duties when our starter decides to fold like a lawn chair. What surprised me the second most was the numerous Theodore "Mookie" Jones #3 shirts. When given a choice, I decide not to dress like the ugliest man in college sports.Believe it or not, this is a flattering picture of him. But anyway, on to the biggest surprise of the jersey shirts. A Nick Resavy #2 shirt was spotted not too far from me. Nick Resavy is a short, pudgy, white guy who hasn't gotten into a game in recent memory. Unlike Brandon Reese, he is not a fan favorite because he does not look like he is 12 years old. So, for grand totals, we have Kris Joseph on one hand- 10.2 points and 5.1 rebounds in 25.9 minutes per game for 21 games. On the other we have Nick Resavy- 0.3 points and 0.3 rebounds in 1.3 minutes per game for 8 games. The commonality: both had one jersey shirt present that I could observe at the game. Looks like KJ still has some fans to win over. Well, next game he will when he scores 20 points and picks up 9 rebounds. Quote me on that, it'll happen.

In non-sports news (but really it's still sports news), my SOC 318 (quantitative methods) class just got roughly 5693.23 times better. How's that for quantitative. It started with me sitting next to one of my top 3 favorite Cuse football players. Unfortunately, I think he's either dropped the class or has been struck with amnesia and is wandering around Peru or something because he only went to the first class. However, my angst (love that word) has been alleviated (that one too) and the malevolent (that one's my favorite word of all) presence of ennui (keeping it going with vocabulary far beyond what I need to use) is all but vanquished (last one, I promise). We got a new kid today. 6'9" forward, starting for the Syracuse Orange out of Philadelphia and now sitting behind me in sociology, Rick Jeeeeeeackson! I was so excited I couldn't concentrate on the class. Afterward, I walked by Rick as I was leaving and the following exchange took place:

Me: "Nice game, man."
Rick: "Thanks, man."

Easily the most fulfilling conversation I've had this year. Who knows? Maybe he needs a tutor. And I teach him sociology and he thinks I'm the coolest thing ever and introduces me to Kris Joseph. And I get to sit on the Cuse bench during the games. And I win $10 million. And the Broncos, Twins, Magic, and Orange (in football, basketball, and lacrosse) win national championships every year for the rest of forever. And they make ultimate an Olympic event and make me the captain. And I lead them to gold medals until I get too old to play and I settle down and set up a professional ultimate frisbee league. And all because Rick Jackson was in my SOC 318 class.

Contented sigh.

I can dream, can't I?

My Blog, My Rules

Hey, has it really been two weeks? Really, has it? Because to me it seems like one. And if you don't think so, tough. It's my blog and I do what I want with it so if I decide to spare you from a subpar blog in a down week, you have to trust my judgement. Cool? Cool.

So I've had a busy week getting back into the swing of things here at Cuse. First, I got back to school in time for the basketball game Saturday (not to be confused with Monday's game). We listened to the first half in the car, desperately trying to get to a place where we could actually watch it. The first half flew by in about .5 seconds so we didn't get to see any of it before we pulled up to my brother's apartment. And as if the basketball gods were laughing at our predicament, the second half seemed to drag on until the snow melted. Well, to be fair, the snow was already pretty much melted because on January 15 in Syracuse, NY it was about 50 degrees outside. Global warming? Who knows? But anyway, reverse the timeline of the halves and we get to see pretty much the whole game. But whatevs, it was exciting even when it didn't need to be.

As I stated before, it seems an unchangeable law of nature that every Syracuse opponent will automatically make any shot outside of 25 feet and inside of 300 feet. At the end of our contest against West Virginia, WVU was down 10 with 1:18 to go. Impossible to come back from that, right? Think again. WVU hits 5 of 6 threes and gets fouled to hit another 3 free throws down the stretch. Most of those threes were contested fadeaways from 5 feet behind the three point line. Just saying, no other team will ever put on a shooting spree like that ever again. Take that to the bank. Long story short, Cuse wins by one point because WVU botched a sure-thing 80 foot prayer that anyone else could've put in against Cuse with our luck. A win's a win, and now we've got 18 of them.

After that, I returned to the ghost town of main campus. Seriously, what's up with people not coming back to campus until the last night before classes start? Gone are the days of walking through the unused high school to find where classes are. I seemed to be the only person intent on doing that because I missed the memo of having to memorize every room of every building on campus. Well chumps, my preparation paid off. My econ class had two people come in and make themselves comfortable for 10 minutes before finding out they were in the wrong class. Two more popped in after class started and left immediately. I found it funny that they looked like grad students. And I thought that teachers said that if you weren't there for their class you should leave as a high-brow college-type joke. Guess not.

A kid I sat next to said it was a bad sign if a teacher lectured on the first day or thought their class was challenging. Most will say that if you work hard you'll make it through alright. Well I agree with him and so it's a bad sign that today I had one class where the teacher said the class was hard, one who started lecturing almost immediately, and one where the teacher delayed her lecturing just long enough to tell us how hard the class was. That's four bad omens and I've only had three classes so far. Sigh. I guess I deserve it after an easy semester, if only I could've spread the pain out over both semesters. And I haven't even been to writing yet. Unless the theme for my writing class is "Blogs Without Borders" it's going to be a loooong semester.

It's been a while since I waxed philosophical but I just read the last Dan Brown book so cut me some slack. I just want to take a minute to say that there are few sights more beautiful than snow in the dark. Tonight when I was walking home I walked through the perfect snow shower. Perfect big fluffy flakes, perfectly no wind, perfect lighting by streetlamps, it was a sight to behold. It's been a while since I appreciated nature, and I guess it's hard to do that in a place like Syracuse. Maybe it's the fact that I saw the environmentalist movie Avatar twice, but I think it's important for people to notice the tapestry of sights and sounds that Mother Nature has woven for us, even if it's just looking up from picking a song on your iPod on the way to class.

Haha I just reread that sentence and I'm left hoping that my readership includes no lactose intolerant people because it was so cheesy. And that joke wasn't light on the Gouda either. Have a good week everyone, I know I will.

Smackdown 2010

Yep. Pretty tough week for me. Denver Broncos. Upstaging themselves from a year ago. Let's go back in time to December 2008. The Broncos have a 3 game lead in the division. 3 games to play. They're in the playoffs right? Wrong! 3 game losing streak = skiing in January instead of football. I'm told that's the first time that that's ever happened to any NFL team ever. Well, something even more impressive happened this year.

I'll start at the beginning. This past summer, Denver hired a new hotshot 32 year old coach. His first move was to try to trade his franchise quarterback, fail, piss off said quarterback, and then trade him. He also almost ended up trading the NFL's most beastly receiver but thankfully failed. I battened down the hatches for a crappy season of rebuilding. Well, surprise surprise, but what should Denver do but run off 6 wins in a row to start the season. I began to think they were an actual decent football team. I was wrong again. 2 wins and 8 losses later, the Broncos have done something that has only happened 3 times before-started 6-0 and missed the playoffs. Yeah, sometimes it sucks to be a Broncos fan.

To make matters worse, Cuse basketball lost. My rock, the team who would always succeed, my "Lean On Me" team for when my other teams are not strong. Doneskies. No more undefeated record. All because of 1-13 from beyond the arc. And poor officiating. And two guys on Pitt who couldn't miss a three. Ever. But besides that, we played pretty well. Oh well, we got Memphis tomorrow...today? and we'll get back on track. But, at least I got the one item I have been questing after since the beginning of last year's bball season (kind of). My Holy Grail (kind of). My golden fleece (kind of). A Kris Joseph #32 Syracuse basketball jersey (kind of)! Actually, it's a t-shirt, but I am wicked pumped nonetheless.

Ok, no more goofing around. Time to talk about Snakes on a Plane. I watched it for the first time this weekend. Probably one of the worst movies ever created. Let's take a look at the plot. A guy decides there's someone on the plane who he needs dead. So, he takes the most convoluted route to it that could possibly be taken. First, smuggle a bunch of snakes onto a plane. Next, a timer that will release the snakes. And third, commandeer the leis on the plane, spray them with pheremones and let the air circulators do the rest. Then, wait for results. Or, he could have done the following as an equally inefficient way of taking down the plane.

• Steal an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, shoot it at a satelite, make the satelite crash into the plane
• Inject a stewardess with swine flu, have her infect the guy, wait until he's in bed drinking gingerale, then drop a piano on him
• Have the person next to him offer him a cigarette , hook him on smoking, and wait until he dies of lung cancer
• Wait until humans create robots and time travel, send a killer robot back in time to kill his mom before he's born, if that doesn't work, keep sending more advanced models after him until it succeeds (did someone already try that?)

Let's take a second to see how tight security has become since then. Now the only way a terrorist can even think of taking down a plane is flammable underwear. I think that's a step in the right direction.

Well, here's to a better week coming at us. Only a week and a half at home then back to school. Hopefully by then I'll be back in my groove then and my blog'll be back to its normal awesome self. Woo!